denounce a Squeers or a Copperfield or a Mulberry
Hawk. Shaw professed to attack the middle class,
and they resented the suggestion that any large
proportion of them lived on incomes derived from
slums or loose houses. As far as these things transpire,
the owners of such places are men and women whom
you do not meet in hotel-gardens on the Rhine or
in rural vicarages. Similarly, in " The Doctor's
Dilemma," the suggestion of inferior character is too
comprehensive ; the context of the published drama
shows that it is an attack on a class. In " Fanny's
First Play " it is too plainly implied that these drawing-
room and dining-room scenes, with their eternal
snarls and groans, only relieved by concertina-per-
formances in the butler's pantry with an hilarious
street-girl, represent daily life in an English home.
The balance is not restored, as it is in Dickens, by
the introduction of estimable members of the class.
These are Shaw's most directly propagandist plays,
and it is not surprising that, as such, they failed. In
most of the plays the philosophy is so implicit that
it has generally needed a subtle controversy and an
authoritative declaration by the author to make it
clear. The general public has enjoyed the play and
taken no interest in the subsequent discussion of
motives. " Man and Superman," for instance, has
no moral for the theatrical audience. They know
nothing of the Life-Force which impels Ann to hunt
Tanner and makes Tanner reluctant to marry her.
THE MAX AND HIS INFLUENCE 235
To them Tanner is an eccentric bachelor, and Ann a
young ladv of disputable taste ; even the impossible
iainting-scene at the close, when Ann keeps her
failing heart alive until she is assured that Tanner
has not repudiated her lie, merely amuses by its very
extravagance. " Candida " is, to the general public,
a study of an imaginary temperament in imaginary
circumstances ; as long as Candida acts as a British
matron ought to act we overlook the suggestion
that she was quite prepared to do otherwise if she
preferred it. Many, in fact, believed that Shaw had
been converted to a respectable view of duty, and
were greatly disturbed. " Major Barbara " is, to
the same general public, a trite recommendation of
the value of money. " John Bull's Other Island "
is a graceful vindication of the Englishman's beneficent
activity in Ireland. The great majority of the
comedies which have found any considerable favour
convey no lesson at all, except to the zealous few
who knew it beforehand.
It seems, therefore, not impossible to attempt
some estimate of the influence of Shaw's dramatic
work. The fact that one London theatre gave five
hundred performances of a few of his plays in three
years shows that he has at last reached a large circle.
Possibly it would not be unjust to say that this great
success* has not been sustained. Recently I noticed
that a suburban theatre was hardly one-third filled
at a performance of " Fanny's First Play," and a
little later I found "Man and Superman" being
performed to almost empty houses in a large provincial
city, and " Great Catherine," even with the help of Mr
Jerome's bright play, facing a half-empty house.
However that may be, an analysis of his audiences
would show that the overwhelming majority do not
236 BERNARD SHAW
regard his plays as problem-plays, and are very vague
about his ideas. They know only, as a rule, that he
is a Socialist and has very perverse views about
marriage. On this point they are more tolerant than
Shaw imagines. One can see a reference to himself
in Lady Britomart Undershaft's words to her son :
u I should not have minded his merely doing wrong
things : we are none of us perfect. But your father
didn't exactly do wrong things : he said them and
thought them : that was what was so dreadful."
The general public has become genially indifferent to
his heresies, as long as he confines the explicit declara-
tion of them to the prefaces of his plays, which they
do not read. They like Shaw as a humorist, a wit,
a paradoxist, a creator of uncommon and clearly
defined characters and refreshing situations. One
does not hear of many conversions to his views in
the theatre. Fiction is fiction : sociology deals with
facts. When you attempt to blend them the reader
or hearer will, according to his preconceptions, regard
the whole as fact or reject the whole as fiction.
The serious nucleus of Shaw's followers consists
of Socialists, Rationalists, Ethicists, Humanitarians,
and contingents from other advanced movements.
In each of these cases the admiration is sectional and
restricted. Socialists greatly admire his " Municipal
Trading " and generally smile at his equality of
income for babies. Rationalists and Ethicists applaud
his anti-Christian utterances and smile at his strictures
on themselves. Anti-vivisectors, anti-vaccinators,
anti-militarists, vegetarians, teetotallers, etc., speak
admiringly of him as " one of us," and shudder at
his blasphemies and his disdain of marriage. Con-
gregationalists are proud of his patronage and shocked
at nine-tenths of his opinions. What the real extent
THE MAN AND HIS INFLUENCE 237
of his influence is in this heterogeneous and conflicting
body it would be difficult to say. One is tempted to
say that he is applauded because he agrees with them
rather than that he is regarded as a master. ^
You have to distinguish between his critical and
his constructive ideas. On the critical side he has
abundant followers and a very real influence. There
was never yet, except in ages when the discontented
could be burned at the stake, a thoroughly self-
satisfied generation. It is an essential condition of
progress, and, the more rapid progress becomes, the
more surely the critical consciousness of the few will
outstrip it. We are so intensely and widely critical
to-day precisely because of that vast mental and
moral advance in the nineteenth century which Mr
Shaw denies. We are capable of higher ideals and
less docile to tradition. People who look darkly on
ancient or modern civilisations often forget that you
may measure the excellence of a generation by the
abominable things it says about itself. It has ideals—
not ancient illusions, but visions of fairer things—
and is impatient.
Shaw is himself one of the best vindications of our
age against his strictures. It inspired him, and
found him a pulpit from which he might read his
" Lamentations." In the preface to " Major Barbara "
he says :
" That is what is wrong with the world at present.
It scraps its obsolete steam-engines and dynamos ; but
it wont scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities
and its old religions and its old political constitutions.
What's the result ? In machinery it does very well ;
but in morals and religion and politics it is working
at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year."
It is precisely one of the most hopeful features of
238 BERNARD SHAW
our age that so many are saying, or listening to, these
things : for the first time in sixteen hundred years.
You could not say or listen to these things before,
because everybody was convinced that, while man
made engines, the gods made religions and moralities
and political constitutions. This broad and penetrat-
ing culture of our time which we call science, which
Shaw despises, has taught us that man made the
religions and moralities and political constitutions
as well as the engines, and it has restored our mastery
of them.
The distinctive thing in our age is, not that we
do not demand a reform of traditions as well as
machinery, but that there is so tremendous and
world-wide a demand for reform. A recent German
work which violently demands a reform of religious
traditions has sold three-quarters of a million copies
in England and Germany, and circulates in twenty
languages. The demand for a reform of moral
traditions is less conspicuous because, as I showed,
it is paradoxical and confusing. Men like Shaw who
breathe dreadful threats against morality turn out
to be amongst our most austere moralists. In sex-
morals alone is there a clear issue, and the demand
for greater freedom and reform in this direction may
be measured by the vast influence of the writers who
advocate it in every country in Europe. For a
hundred years a high proportion of the poets, drama-
tists, and novelists of Europe have openly advocated
alteration of the sex-standard in morals, and their
influence has been, and is, enormous. While, as to
our political constitutions, it is only Shaw's pessi-
mistic estimate of democracy which prevents him
from seeing how they have been revolutionised in
the last hundred years.
THE MAN AND HIS INFLUENCE 239
There might be a danger in telling our contempor-
aries that we are proceeding in this revision of our
traditions far faster than men ever proceeded before,
but Shaw's pessimism does not seem to be part of a
deliberate policy. He is so impatient and impetuous
that he will not study the historical facts, or calmly
appraise such as are within his knowledge. It is
part of his usefulness. Only a white-hot man can
make others white-hot. But it is interesting to
reflect that his incandescence is largely due to false
estimates. I have in an earlier chapter shown that
this is the case generally in his appreciation of modern
England, or modern times. To point out the evils of
our time you do not need to study history, but Shaw
wants to say a great deal more than this. He wants
to bully us into believing that we have made no
progress at all ; even that we are getting " nearer
bankruptcy every year." In this he shows a hardy
indifference to an exact determination of the facts ;
but there are always Englishmen who think the new
patriotism is to libel your country, and he is applauded
without discrimination.
It is the same with his assault on the middle class.
He does not, of course, confine his criticism to that
class, and hold up the manual workers as their virtu-
ous victims. In a recent pronouncement, a preface
to Brieux's " Woman on Her Own," he expresses
much the same feeling as he had done forty years
before. " Brieux," he says, with evident approval,
" shows you the working man as selfish, foul-mouthed,
ill-behaved, and violent, objecting far more to the
woman's capacity, orderliness, and industry than to
her weaknesses ; jealous of her attempts to do without
him, and afraid of being dominated by her in industry,
where he cannot resort to his fists, as he often does in
240 BERNARD SHAW
his home." The working man would probably resent
this description of his attitude as warmly as the
middle class would resent Shaw's description of their
characters and domestic life. It betrays Shaw's
proneness to describe a man only by his defects : it
ignores the fact that the workers form the only political
party which has given general support to the women
for whose gratification Shaw wrote these words, that
recent efforts of women Trade Unionists to improve
their condition have had the support of male Trade
Unionists, and that the real root of the jealousy, such
as it is, is the already overcrowded condition of the
labour market and the willingness of women to accept
low wages.
The same partiality and injustice are found in
Shaw's attack on the middle class. It is not wholly
clear why an opponent or disdainer of democracy
should blame the middle class for capturing the
democratic machinery. They might plead that they
were guarding the State from the inherent risks of an
uneducated democracy. If it be objected that certain
middle-class cliques have cornered the administration,
one may ask, as Carlyle might have been asked when
he thundered against democracy's statesmen seventy
years ago, where the alternatives are. Carlyle hesi-
tatingly suggested Robert Burns : Shaw is content
with general railing at the existing ruling class. I
have, however, pointed out that in this he is doing
little more than building on the foolish legend that
English statesmen " muddle through " everything.
Here it is only necessary to add that he displays a
complete insensibility to all that the middle class has
done for the workers during the last ninety years.
During the earlier half of that time nearly every
advance in the direction of general education, en-
THE MAN AXD HIS INFLUENCE 241
franchisement, and reform, all over Europe, was
initiated and chiefly won by the middle class. Shaw
himself has, in fact, relied all his life on the middle
class to adopt and enforce his ideas of reform, and
has had comparatively little influence with the manual
workers.
It is very difficult to make allowance for his ex-
aggerations and discover how far he has had an
influence in fostering resentment of real grievances.
If we set aside his purely artistic gifts and his immense
popularity as a humorist and fantasist — set them
aside only because he would not wish to be judged
by the possession of these gifts, but by his use of
them — we are compelled to classify him, in so far as
he has been and is a power, as a critic. With violence,
exaggeration, satire, persiflage, libel, scorn, and
laughter he has drawn our attention to the problems
which still confront us. The home, for instance, is
a problem, and a grave problem ; and there has been
too common a practice of concealing its disorders
under romantic perversions. Shaw has done more,
perhaps, than any other artist of our time to make
thoughtful people realise the need of reform. The
homes he has put before us on the stage are unreal,
and the majority of folk laugh when they return to
the reality of their comfortable firesides, but every
candid and sincere student of social matters knows
that there are large numbers of homes in which
the heavy strain of life-long companionship leads
to discourtesy, surliness, and hypocritical pretence
of harmony ; many homes, indeed, in which the
romantic ideal has completely failed and the relations
of parents to each other and to the children are
lamentable. Ampler facilities for divorce will remedy
much of this, but we are too apt to reconcile our-
Q
242 BERNARD SHAW
selves to a burden, especially if it does not fall on our
own shoulders, once it has been lightened. Some
future generation will provide for those who are unfit
for, or reluctant to venture upon, life-long intimacy,
and will see in Shaw one of the most outspoken
pioneers of reform in an age when such a reform was
still widely unpopular.
Similarly, his caricatures and exaggerations have
begotten a resentment of much of the lighter hypocrisy
of domestic life ; the costly and petty snobbishness,
the pretences of display beyond one's means, the
vanity which expresses itself in magazines of furniture
or troops of servants, the stubborn retention of ancient
points of view in a new age, the sheep-like docility
to fashions set by our grandfathers, the impermea-
bility to new ideas apart from trade and engineering,
the false standards of judgment — a score of really
foolish, yet widespread, habits which hinder reform
and prolong the life of illusions and disorders. A
generation which makes little effort to break these
traditions, and which bears with equanimity the
burden of militarism, crime, disease, and squalid
poverty, must expect the salutary lash of its prophets.
If they call usa" brood of vipers," we may remember
that it is the way of prophets. The filament of
carbon in the electric circuit cannot give light without
a violent rise of its temperature. Shaw's fund of
humour and volatility of imagination enabled him
to spend this heat in amusing caricature. But, when
the laugh is over, many — it would be hard to say how
many — have reflected on the critical truth in the
caricature.
That he has done more than shake us, and make us
think, it would be bold to claim. His constructive
suggestions have not had much influence : certainly
THE MAN AND HIS INFLUENCE 243
"beyond his service in spreading middle-class or Fabian
Socialism. At times he seems content to think that
he has done critical work. " Construction," he says,
" cumbers the ground with institutions made by busy-
bodies. Destruction clears it, and gives us breathing
space and liberty." Once I observed to a friend of
Shaw's that I appreciated him as a vigorous poker
of the mental fire of our generation. " That," he
Teplied, " is all that Shaw claims to be." Certainly
it is as useful a work as one can do. People need
to be unsettled before they will candidly examine a
constructive ideal.
But no man with imagination can restrict himself
to destructive work. We do not scrap our steam-
engines, to use Shaw's illustration, until we have a
design of better : we do not part with moralities and
polities, whatever we do as to religions (which are
statements about another world), until we find and
approve a new pattern. The alternative to war is
plain, but what is the alternative to marriage ?
Crime and poverty are repellent diseases of the social
body, but what is the remedy ? In fact, you cannot
definitely criticise current habits and institutions,
unless you have in mind alternative habits and
institutions ; you cannot lash people for their inert-
ness if you know no more than they how to act. So
Shaw was bound to be constructive, and his whole
literary and dramatic output is informed by a positive
philosophy.
Here I venture to say that he has failed. His
facility of imagination ruined him. He is not a cold
intellectual machine, but a very warm and rich
imaginative mechanism. In point of fact, few adopt
even the single conclusions which he regards as im-
portant, and hardly any adopt all of them. Aiming
244 BERNARD SHAW
at stimulation, and desiring the assertion of personality,
he is not likely to be disappointed that there is no
Shavian school, making a creed of the body of opinions
of the master. But the several ideas which he has
adopted or conceived have not had a much better fate.
In the main idea of his philosophy — if one give
this title by courtesy to the collection of his opinions —
the belief that a Life-Force is working upward through
the organic world, he is by no means isolated, because
he is by no means original. It is a very old contro-
versy in science and philosophy, and has been recentlv
revived in an acute form. This revival is not in the
smallest degree due to Mr Shaw. Inexpert people
may take some notice of Sir Oliver Lodge or of Pro-
fessor Bergson, who are popularising Vitalism, but
it is not even they who have given real life to the old
controversy. It is because a group of able scientists
on the continent (Driesch, Reinke, etc), and a few
prominent scientists in Britain (Thomson, Geddes,
etc.), have recently put forward a new defence of it.
L — • One can discover easily how little influence Shaw
has had in the revival (to some extent) of Vitalism.
His distinctive idea is that this Life-Force has " pur-
poses," and that, if man will not co-operate with, or
carry out, the designs which it inspires in the brains
of our abler thinkers, the human race will be super-
seded and some " lower animal " made the monarch
of the earth. The known facts of development justify
us in saying that this is an absurdity, and people
only smile at Mr Shaw's foreboding. In fact, if the
purposes of the Life-Force are only known as they
appear in the minds of men, you get at once such a
confusion of designs (in the minds of different prophets)
that humanity might well despair of even finding the
right road.
THE MAN AND HIS INFLUENCE 245
Mr Shaw naturally assumes that the particular con-
ception of life which has grown in his mind is the
message of the Life-Force. In this, of course, there
is no element of conceit. No man has a right to
press opinions unless he is convinced they are true.
Each of us is, to ourselves, the unique temple of
truth. What it is relevant to notice here is that
Shaw is again in a very isolated position. In effect,
we are divided into three classes. Some think happi-
ness in the next world the supreme ideal : some think
happiness in this world : and the majority are content
with happiness in both. Shaw is almost contra
mundum, a new Baptist in the wilds of Hertfordshire,
in proclaiming that happiness is not the ideal at all.
He is, it is true, not consistent ; the position is psycho-
logically impossible. The living machinery has been
evolved on the lines of seeking comfort and avoiding
pain, and it cannot undo the work of millions of years
in an hour of perverse philosophy. Consider Shaw's
most splendid revelation of his personality :
" This is the true joy in life, the being used for a
purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one ;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown
on the scrap-heap ; the being a force of Nature
instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and
grievances complaining that the world will not devote
itself to making you happy."
Andrew Undershaft — in this connection Bernard
Shaw — found his " joy " in strenuous work, in preach-
ing the gospel, in living on locusts and wild honey.
He advises others to seek " joy " where he has found
it. It is Browning's gospel of work : it is William
Watson's praise of
" The deeper transport and the mightier thrill
Than comes of commerce with mortality."
246 BERNARD SHAW
But it is, in the end, a recommendation that you
will find happiness in this high work. Moreover, it
is a gospel for a few, not for the many ; and even the
few do not find it necessary to embrace asceticism
as a condition of doing much work.
On the face of it, Shaw's hostility to hedonism puts
him in helpless opposition to the most powerful
current of f modern life. His reasons for this opposi-
tion are too frail and mystical, or too personal, to
weigh with more than a very few. Claiming to be the
most modern of modernists, the most drastic rebel
against traditions, he repeats venerable old puritanical
phrases about " lust " and " sterile pleasure," and he
depreciates sensuousness with the zest of a Neo-
Platonist or a monk of the Thebaid. Most charac-
teristic of all is the application of his principles to the
relations of men and women. After marching so far
in the company of the mystics and ascetics, he turns
round and derides their virtue of chastity, and insists
that a woman shall have children when she wills,
without blessing of Church or State. When this
heresy is in danger of attracting " free lovers " to his
standard, he tells them to go, if they are so weak and
sensual, and burn their fingers with their free love.
Most of those who are in general agreement with him
— Socialists and Rationalists — enter respectably into
matrimony, but decline to burden their homes and
overcrowd their professions by bringing babies- into
the world every year. Shaw's flail descends on them
with more vigour than ever. It is the last and most
damnable transgression to cohabit for pleasure ;
and it is one of the distinguishing features of the world
to which Shaw belongs. Only a few of the more
eccentric advocates of the simple life can follow his
elusive reasoning, while from the body of devout
THE xAIAN AND HIS INFLUENCE 247
Christians, who would agree with his conclusion, he
cuts himself off with the intimidating sword of blas-
phemy. Many women to-day would agree with him
that they have as much right as men to deliberately
seek and attract partners, but they are not prepared
to admit that this is merely because they are the
passive instruments of an imperious Life-Force ;
many men would agree that they are reluctant to
marry, but they do not attribute the reluctance to
some inner craving to mirror the purposes of the
cosmic will. Shaw, in a word, stands almost alone
in his more distinctive opinions.
Constructively, it is in the Socialist field alone that
he has laboured with some success. Eugenists do
not show a very marked delight at his adoption of
their creed, since he at once gives it an expression
that is not calculated to attract the general public.
Anti-Vivisectionists are proud of his company and
thrilled by his power of vituperation, but he goes too
far for them. The recent agitation against the public
exhibition of trained animals has sought his support
(December 19 13), but he has only made their work
seem foolish by declaring that it does not matter two
pins whether the animals were trained by means of
cruelty or not. Advocates of the endowment of
motherhood boast of his support, but they have to
conceal the fact that he equally advocates the endow-