Irving Babbitt's influence in China: four perspectives.

Since the 1920s Irving Babbitt has been a continuing influence in the moral and cultural life of China, his thought having been, in effect, "naturalized." The following four articles describe and elucidate the nature and extent of his impact.

The authors approach the subject from different perspectives and with different emphases; for example, two of the authors present contrasting views of the prominent literary figure Liang Shiqiu, who had been Babbitt's student at Harvard. But all agree that Babbitt's influence has been substantial and salutary, and that there is a major resurgence of interest in Babbitt that may prove significant for the future of China and thus the world.

The editing of a collection of articles like this one must confront the problem of transliteration of Chinese characters into the English alphabet. Several methods of transliteration are widely used, the most prominent being Pinyin--which recently has gained ascendancy because of its formal adoption by the People's Republic of China--and Wade-Giles, which previously had been...