This I call the second evil influence of Shaw: that he has e_George Bernard Shaw

many to throw themselves for justification upon the shapeless and the

unknown. In this, though courageous himself, he has encouraged cowards,

and though sincere himself, has helped a mean escape. The third evil in

his influence can, I think, be much more shortly dealt with. He has to a

very slight extent, but still perceptibly, encouraged a kind of

charlatanism of utterance among those who possess his Irish impudence

without his Irish virtue. For instance, his amusing trick of self-praise

is perfectly hearty and humorous in him; nay, it is even humble; for to

confess vanity is itself humble. All that is the matter with the proud

is that they will not admit that they are vain. Therefore when Shaw

says that he alone is able to write such and such admirable work, or

that he has just utterly wiped out some celebrated opponent, I for one

never feel anything offensive in the tone, but, indeed, only the

unmistakable intonation of a friend's voice. But I have noticed among

younger, harder, and much shallower men a certain disposition to ape

this insolent ease and certitude, and that without any fundamental

frankness or mirth. So far the influence is bad. Egoism can be learnt as

a lesson like any other "ism." It is not so easy to learn an Irish

accent or a good temper. In its lower forms the thing becomes a most

unmilitary trick of announcing the victory before one has gained it.

When one has said those three things, one has said, I think, all that

can be said by way of blaming Bernard Shaw. It is significant that he

was never blamed for any of these things by the Censor. Such censures as

the attitude of that official involves may be dismissed with a very

light sort of disdain. To represent Shaw as profane or provocatively

indecent is not a matter for discussion at all; it is a disgusting

criminal libel upon a particularly respectable gentleman of the middle

classes, of refined tastes and somewhat Puritanical views. But while

the negative defence of Shaw is easy, the just praise of him is almost

as complex as it is necessary; and I shall devote the last few pages of

this book to a triad corresponding to the last one--to the three

important elements in which the work of Shaw has been good as well as

great.

In the first place, and quite apart from all particular theories, the

world owes thanks to Bernard Shaw for having combined being intelligent

with being intelligible. He has popularised philosophy, or rather he has

repopularised it, for philosophy is always popular, except in peculiarly

corrupt and oligarchic ages like our own. We have passed the age of the

demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come

to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but

says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper. After all,

short words must mean something, even if they mean filth or lies; but

long words may sometimes mean literally nothing, especially if they are

used (as they mostly are in modern books and magazine articles) to

balance and modify each other. A plain figure 4, scrawled in chalk

anywhere, must always mean something; it must always mean 2 + 2. But

the most enormous and mysterious algebraic equation, full of letters,

brackets, and fractions, may all cancel out at last and be equal to

nothing. When a demagogue says to a mob, "There is the Bank of England,

why shouldn't you have some of that money?" he says something which is

at least as honest and intelligible as the figure 4. When a writer in

the _Times_ remarks, "We must raise the economic efficiency of the

masses without diverting anything from those classes which represent the

national prosperity and refinement," then his equation cancels out; in a

literal and logical sense his remark amounts to nothing.

There are two kinds of charlatans or people called quacks to-day. The

power of the first is that he advertises--and cures. The power of the

second is that though he is not learned enough to cure he is much too

learned to advertise. The former give away their dignity with a pound of

tea; the latter are paid a pound of tea merely for being dignified. I

think them the worse quacks of the two. Shaw is certainly of the other

sort. Dickens, another man who was great enough to be a demagogue (and

greater than Shaw because more heartily a demagogue), puts for ever the

true difference between the demagogue and the mystagogue in _Dr.

Marigold_: "Except that we're cheap-jacks and they're dear-jacks, I

don't see any difference between us." Bernard Shaw is a great

cheap-jack, with plenty of patter and I dare say plenty of nonsense, but

with this also (which is not wholly unimportant), with goods to sell.

People accuse such a man of self-advertisement. But at least the

cheap-jack does advertise his wares, whereas the don or dear-jack

advertises nothing except himself. His very silence, nay his very

sterility, are supposed to be marks of the richness of his erudition. He

is too learned to teach, and sometimes too wise even to talk. St. Thomas

Aquinas said: "In auctore auctoritas." But there is more than one man at

Oxford or Cambridge who is considered an authority because he has never

been an author.

Against all this mystification both of silence and verbosity Shaw has

been a splendid and smashing protest. He has stood up for the fact that

philosophy is not the concern of those who pass through Divinity and

Greats, but of those who pass through birth and death. Nearly all the

most awful and abstruse statements can be put in words of one syllable,

from "A child is born" to "A soul is damned." If the ordinary man may

not discuss existence, why should he be asked to conduct it? About

concrete matters indeed one naturally appeals to an oligarchy or select

class. For information about Lapland I go to an aristocracy of

Laplanders; for the ways of rabbits to an aristocracy of naturalists or,

preferably, an aristocracy of poachers. But only mankind itself can bear

witness to the abstract first principles of mankind, and in matters of

theory I would always consult the mob. Only the mass of men, for

instance, have authority to say whether life is good. Whether life is

good is an especially mystical and delicate question, and, like all such

questions, is asked in words of one syllable. It is also answered in

words of one syllable, and Bernard Shaw (as also mankind) answers "yes."

This plain, pugnacious style of Shaw has greatly clarified all

controversies. He has slain the polysyllable, that huge and slimy

centipede which has sprawled over all the valleys of England like the

"loathly worm" who was slain by the ancient knight. He does not think

that difficult questions will be made simpler by using difficult words

about them. He has achieved the admirable work, never to be mentioned

without gratitude, of discussing Evolution without mentioning it. The

good work is of course more evident in the case of philosophy than any

other region; because the case of philosophy was a crying one. It was

really preposterous that the things most carefully reserved for the

study of two or three men should actually be the things common to all

men. It was absurd that certain men should be experts on the special

subject of everything. But he stood for much the same spirit and style

in other matters; in economics, for example. There never has been a

better popular economist; one more lucid, entertaining, consistent, and

essentially exact. The very comicality of his examples makes them and

their argument stick in the mind; as in the case I remember in which he

said that the big shops had now to please everybody, and were not

entirely dependent on the lady who sails in "to order four governesses

and five grand pianos." He is always preaching collectivism; yet he does

not very often name it. He does not talk about collectivism, but about

cash; of which the populace feel a much more definite need. He talks

about cheese, boots, perambulators, and how people are really to live.

For him economics really means housekeeping, as it does in Greek. His

difference from the orthodox economists, like most of his differences,

is very different from the attacks made by the main body of Socialists.

The old Manchester economists are generally attacked for being too gross

and material. Shaw really attacks them for not being gross or material

enough. He thinks that they hide themselves behind long words, remote

hypotheses or unreal generalisations. When the orthodox economist begins

with his correct and primary formula, "Suppose there is a Man on an

Island----" Shaw is apt to interrupt him sharply, saying, "There is a

Man in the Street."

The second phase of the man's really fruitful efficacy is in a sense the

converse of this. He has improved philosophic discussions by making them

more popular. But he has also improved popular amusements by making them

more philosophic. And by more philosophic I do not mean duller, but

funnier; that is more varied. All real fun is in cosmic contrasts, which

involve a view of the cosmos. But I know that this second strength in

Shaw is really difficult to state and must be approached by explanations

and even by eliminations. Let me say at once that I think nothing of

Shaw or anybody else merely for playing the daring sceptic. I do not

think he has done any good or even achieved any effect simply by asking

startling questions. It is possible that there have been ages so

sluggish or automatic that anything that woke them up at all was a good

thing. It is sufficient to be certain that ours is not such an age. We

do not need waking up; rather we suffer from insomnia, with all its

results of fear and exaggeration and frightful waking dreams. The modern

mind is not a donkey which wants kicking to make it go on. The modern

mind is more like a motor-car on a lonely road which two amateur

motorists have been just clever enough to take to pieces, but are not

quite clever enough to put together again. Under these circumstances

kicking the car has never been found by the best experts to be

effective. No one, therefore, does any good to our age merely by asking

questions--unless he can answer the questions. Asking questions is

already the fashionable and aristocratic sport which has brought most of

us into the bankruptcy court. The note of our age is a note of

interrogation. And the final point is so plain; no sceptical philosopher

can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on

a hot afternoon. "Am I a boy?--Why am I a boy?--Why aren't I a

chair?--What is a chair?" A child will sometimes ask questions of this

sort for two hours. And the philosophers of Protestant Europe have asked

them for two hundred years.

If that were all that I meant by Shaw making men more philosophic, I

should put it not among his good influences but his bad. He did do that

to some extent; and so far he is bad. But there is a much bigger and

better sense in which he has been a philosopher. He has brought back

into English drama all the streams of fact or tendency which are

commonly called undramatic. They were there in Shakespeare's time; but

they have scarcely been there since until Shaw. I mean that Shakespeare,

being interested in everything, put everything into a play. If he had

lately been thinking about the irony and even contradiction confronting

us in self-preservation and suicide, he put it all into _Hamlet_. If he

was annoyed by some passing boom in theatrical babies he put that into

_Hamlet_ too. He would put anything into _Hamlet_ which he really

thought was true, from his favourite nursery ballads to his personal

(and perhaps unfashionable) conviction of the Catholic purgatory. There

is no fact that strikes one, I think, about Shakespeare, except the fact

of how dramatic he could be, so much as the fact of how undramatic he

could be.

In this great sense Shaw has brought philosophy back into

drama--philosophy in the sense of a certain freedom of the mind. This is

not a freedom to think what one likes (which is absurd, for one can only

think what one thinks); it is a freedom to think about what one likes,

which is quite a different thing and the spring of all thought.

Shakespeare (in a weak moment, I think) said that all the world is a

stage. But Shakespeare acted on the much finer principle that a stage is

all the world. So there are in all Bernard Shaw's plays patches of what

people would call essentially undramatic stuff, which the dramatist puts

in because he is honest and would rather prove his case than succeed

with his play. Shaw has brought back into English drama that

Shakespearian universality which, if you like, you can call

Shakespearian irrelevance. Perhaps a better definition than either is a

habit of thinking the truth worth telling even when you meet it by

accident. In Shaw's plays one meets an incredible number of truths by

accident.

To be up to date is a paltry ambition except in an almanac, and Shaw has

sometimes talked this almanac philosophy. Nevertheless there is a real

sense in which the phrase may be wisely used, and that is in cases where

some stereotyped version of what is happening hides what is really

happening from our eyes. Thus, for instance, newspapers are never up to

date. The men who write leading articles are always behind the times,

because they are in a hurry. They are forced to fall back on their

old-fashioned view of things; they have no time to fashion a new one.

Everything that is done in a hurry is certain to be antiquated; that is

why modern industrial civilisation bears so curious a resemblance to

barbarism. Thus when newspapers say that the _Times_ is a solemn old

Tory paper, they are out of date; their talk is behind the talk in Fleet

Street. Thus when newspapers say that Christian dogmas are crumbling,

they are out of date; their talk is behind the talk in public-houses.

Now in this sense Shaw has kept in a really stirring sense up to date.

He has introduced into the theatre the things that no one else had

introduced into a theatre--the things in the street outside. The theatre

is a sort of thing which proudly sends a hansom-cab across the stage as

Realism, while everybody outside is whistling for motor-cabs.

Consider in this respect how many and fine have been Shaw's intrusions

into the theatre with the things that were really going on. Daily papers

and daily matinées were still gravely explaining how much modern war

depended on gunpowder. _Arms and the Man_ explained how much modern war

depends on chocolate. Every play and paper described the Vicar who was a

mild Conservative. _Candida_ caught hold of the modern Vicar who is an

advanced Socialist. Numberless magazine articles and society comedies

describe the emancipated woman as new and wild. Only _You Never Can

Tell_ was young enough to see that the emancipated woman is already old

and respectable. Every comic paper has caricatured the uneducated

upstart. Only the author of _Man and Superman_ knew enough about the

modern world to caricature the educated upstart--the man Straker who can

quote Beaumarchais, though he cannot pronounce him. This is the second

real and great work of Shaw--the letting in of the world on to the

stage, as the rivers were let in upon the Augean Stable. He has let a

little of the Haymarket into the Haymarket Theatre. He has permitted

some whispers of the Strand to enter the Strand Theatre. A variety of

solutions in philosophy is as silly as it is in arithmetic, but one may

be justly proud of a variety of materials for a solution. After Shaw,

one may say, there is nothing that cannot be introduced into a play if

one can make it decent, amusing, and relevant. The state of a man's

health, the religion of his childhood, his ear for music, or his

ignorance of cookery can all be made vivid if they have anything to do

with the subject. A soldier may mention the commissariat as well as the

cavalry; and, better still, a priest may mention theology as well as

religion. That is being a philosopher; that is bringing the universe on

the stage.

Lastly, he has obliterated the mere cynic. He has been so much more

cynical than anyone else for the public good that no one has dared since

to be really cynical for anything smaller. The Chinese crackers of the

frivolous cynics fail to excite us after the dynamite of the serious and

aspiring cynic. Bernard Shaw and I (who are growing grey together) can

remember an epoch which many of his followers do not know: an epoch of

real pessimism. The years from 1885 to 1898 were like the hours of

afternoon in a rich house with large rooms; the hours before tea-time.

They believed in nothing except good manners; and the essence of good

manners is to conceal a yawn. A yawn may be defined as a silent yell.

The power which the young pessimist of that time showed in this

direction would have astonished anyone but him. He yawned so wide as to

swallow the world. He swallowed the world like an unpleasant pill before

retiring to an eternal rest. Now the last and best glory of Shaw is that

in the circles where this creature was found, he is not. He has not been

killed (I don't know exactly why), but he has actually turned into a

Shaw idealist. This is no exaggeration. I meet men who, when I knew them

in 1898, were just a little too lazy to destroy the universe. They are

now conscious of not being quite worthy to abolish some prison

regulations. This destruction and conversion seem to me the mark of

something actually great. It is always great to destroy a type without

destroying a man. The followers of Shaw are optimists; some of them are

so simple as even to use the word. They are sometimes rather pallid

optimists, frequently very worried optimists, occasionally, to tell the

truth, rather cross optimists: but they not pessimists; they can exult

though they cannot laugh. He has at least withered up among them the

mere pose of impossibility. Like every great teacher, he has cursed the

barren fig-tree. For nothing except that impossibility is really

impossible.

I know it is all very strange. From the height of eight hundred years

ago, or of eight hundred years hence, our age must look incredibly odd.

We call the twelfth century ascetic. We call our own time hedonist and

full of praise and pleasure. But in the ascetic age the love of life was

evident and enormous, so that it had to be restrained. In an hedonist

age pleasure has always sunk low, so that it has to be encouraged. How

high the sea of human happiness rose in the Middle Ages, we now only

know by the colossal walls that they built to keep it in bounds. How low

human happiness sank in the twentieth century our children will only

know by these extraordinary modern books, which tell people that it is a

duty to be cheerful and that life is not so bad after all. Humanity

never produces optimists till it has ceased to produce happy men. It is

strange to be obliged to impose a holiday like a fast, and to drive men

to a banquet with spears. But this shall be written of our time: that

when the spirit who denies besieged the last citadel, blaspheming life

itself, there were some, there was one especially, whose voice was heard

and whose spear was never broken.

THE END

This I call the second evil influence of Shaw: that he has encouraged