{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_3789/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_3789","id":"gutenberg_3789","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3789","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Prefaces"],"text":"Produced by Eve Sobol.  HTML version by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA: FIRST AID TO CRITICS\n\n\nBERNARD SHAW\n\n\n\n\nN.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are not\nby me, or even directly by Euripides. They are by Professor Gilbert\nMurray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into our dramatic\nliterature with all the impulsive power of an original work shortly\nbefore Major Barbara was begun. The play, indeed, stands indebted to\nhim in more ways than one.\n\nG. B. S.\n\n\n\nBefore dealing with the deeper aspects of Major Barbara, let me, for\nthe credit of English literature, make a protest against an unpatriotic\nhabit into which many of my critics have fallen. Whenever my view\nstrikes them as being at all outside the range of, say, an ordinary\nsuburban churchwarden, they conclude that I am echoing Schopenhauer,\nNietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, or some other heresiarch in\nnorthern or eastern Europe.\n\nI confess there is something flattering in this simple faith in my\naccomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as a philosopher. But I\ncannot tolerate the assumption that life and literature is so poor in\nthese islands that we must go abroad for all dramatic material that is\nnot common and all ideas that are not superficial. I therefore venture\nto put my critics in possession of certain facts concerning my contact\nwith modern ideas.\n\nAbout half a century ago, an Irish novelist, Charles Lever, wrote a\nstory entitled A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. It was published by\nCharles Dickens in Household Words, and proved so strange to the public\ntaste that Dickens pressed Lever to make short work of it. I read\nscraps of this novel when I was a child; and it made an enduring\nimpression on me. The hero was a very romantic hero, trying to live\nbravely, chivalrously, and powerfully by dint of mere romance-fed\nimagination, without courage, without means, without knowledge, without\nskill, without anything real except his bodily appetites. Even in my\nchildhood I found in this poor devil's unsuccessful encounters with the\nfacts of life, a poignant quality that romantic fiction lacked. The\nbook, in spite of its first failure, is not dead: I saw its title the\nother day in the catalogue of Tauchnitz.\n\nNow why is it that when I also deal in the tragi-comic irony of the\nconflict between real life and the romantic imagination, no critic ever\naffiliates me to my countryman and immediate forerunner, Charles Lever,\nwhilst they confidently derive me from a Norwegian author of whose\nlanguage I do not know three words, and of whom I knew nothing until\nyears after the Shavian Anschauung was already unequivocally declared\nin books full of what came, ten years later, to be perfunctorily\nlabelled Ibsenism. I was not Ibsenist even at second hand; for Lever,\nthough he may have read Henri Beyle, alias Stendhal, certainly never\nread Ibsen. Of the books that made Lever popular, such as Charles\nO'Malley and Harry Lorrequer, I know nothing but the names and some of\nthe illustrations. But the story of the day's ride and life's romance\nof Potts (claiming alliance with Pozzo di Borgo) caught me and\nfascinated me as something strange and significant, though I already\nknew all about Alnaschar and Don Quixote and Simon Tappertit and many\nanother romantic hero mocked by reality. From the plays of Aristophanes\nto the tales of Stevenson that mockery has been made familiar to all\nwho are properly saturated with letters.\n\nWhere, then, was the novelty in Lever's tale? Partly, I think, in a new\nseriousness in dealing with Potts's disease. Formerly, the contrast\nbetween madness and sanity was deemed comic: Hogarth shows us how\nfashionable people went in parties to Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics.\nI myself have had a village idiot exhibited to me as some thing\nirresistibly funny. On the stage the madman was once a regular comic\nfigure; that was how Hamlet got his opportunity before Shakespear\ntouched him. The originality of Shakespear's version lay in his taking\nthe lunatic sympathetically and seriously, and thereby making an\nadvance towards the eastern consciousness of the fact that lunacy may\nbe inspiration in disguise, since a man who has more brains than his\nfellows necessarily appears as mad to them as one who has less. But\nShakespear did not do for Pistol and Parolles what he did for Hamlet.\nThe particular sort of madman they represented, the romantic\nmakebeliever, lay outside the pale of sympathy in literature: he was\npitilessly despised and ridiculed here as he was in the east under the\nname of Alnaschar, and was doomed to be, centuries later, under the\nname of Simon Tappertit. When Cervantes relented over Don Quixote, and\nDickens relented over Pickwick, they did not become impartial: they\nsimply changed sides, and became friends and apologists where they had\nformerly been mockers.\n\nIn Lever's story there is a real change of attitude. There is no\nrelenting towards Potts: he never gains our affections like Don Quixote\nand Pickwick: he has not even the infatuate courage of Tappertit. But\nwe dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we recognize ourselves in\nPotts. We may, some of us, have enough nerve, enough muscle, enough\nluck, enough tact or skill or address or knowledge to carry things off\nbetter than he did; to impose on the people who saw through him; to\nfascinate Katinka (who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the end of the\nstory); but for all that, we know that Potts plays an enormous part in\nourselves and in the world, and that the social problem is not a\nproblem of story-book heroes of the older pattern, but a problem of\nPottses, and of how to make men of them. To fall back on my old phrase,\nwe have the feeling--one that Alnaschar, Pistol, Parolles, and\nTappertit never gave us--that Potts is a piece of really scientific\nnatural history as distinguished from comic story telling. His author\nis not throwing a stone at a creature of another and inferior order,\nbut making a confession, with the effect that the stone hits everybody\nfull in the conscience and causes their self-esteem to smart very\nsorely. Hence the failure of Lever's book to please the readers of\nHousehold Words. That pain in the self-esteem nowadays causes critics\nto raise a cry of Ibsenism. I therefore assure them that the sensation\nfirst came to me from Lever and may have come to him from Beyle, or at\nleast out of the Stendhalian atmosphere. I exclude the hypothesis of\ncomplete originality on Lever's part, because a man can no more be\ncompletely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air.\n\nAnother mistake as to my literary ancestry is made whenever I violate\nthe romantic convention that all women are angels when they are not\ndevils; that they are better looking than men; that their part in\ncourtship is entirely passive; and that the human female form is the\nmost beautiful object in nature. Schopenhauer wrote a splenetic essay\nwhich, as it is neither polite nor profound, was probably intended to\nknock this nonsense violently on the head. A sentence denouncing the\nidolized form as ugly has been largely quoted. The English critics have\nread that sentence; and I must here affirm, with as much gentleness as\nthe implication will bear, that it has yet to be proved that they have\ndipped any deeper. At all events, whenever an English playwright\nrepresents a young and marriageable woman as being anything but a\nromantic heroine, he is disposed of without further thought as an echo\nof Schopenhauer. My own case is a specially hard one, because, when I\nimplore the critics who are obsessed with the Schopenhaurian formula to\nremember that playwrights, like sculptors, study their figures from\nlife, and not from philosophic essays, they reply passionately that I\nam not a playwright and that my stage figures do not live. But even so,\nI may and do ask them why, if they must give the credit of my plays to\na philosopher, they do not give it to an English philosopher? Long\nbefore I ever read a word by Schopenhauer, or even knew whether he was\na philosopher or a chemist, the Socialist revival of the\neighteen-eighties brought me into contact, both literary and personal,\nwith Mr Ernest Belfort Bax, an English Socialist and philosophic\nessayist, whose handling of modern feminism would provoke romantic\nprotests from Schopenhauer himself, or even Strindberg. As a matter of\nfact I hardly noticed Schopenhauer's disparagements of women when they\ncame under my notice later on, so thoroughly had Mr Bax familiarized me\nwith the homoist attitude, and forced me to recognize the extent to\nwhich public opinion, and consequently legislation and jurisprudence,\nis corrupted by feminist sentiment.\n\nBut Mr Bax's essays were not confined to the Feminist question. He was\na ruthless critic of current morality. Other writers have gained\nsympathy for dramatic criminals by eliciting the alleged \"soul of\ngoodness in things evil\"; but Mr Bax would propound some quite\nundramatic and apparently shabby violation of our commercial law and\nmorality, and not merely defend it with the most disconcerting\ningenuity, but actually prove it to be a positive duty that nothing but\nthe certainty of police persecution should prevent every right-minded\nman from at once doing on principle. The Socialists were naturally\nshocked, being for the most part morbidly moral people; but at all\nevents they were saved later on from the delusion that nobody but\nNietzsche had ever challenged our mercanto-Christian morality. I first\nheard the name of Nietzsche from a German mathematician, Miss\nBorchardt, who had read my Quintessence of Ibsenism, and told me that\nshe saw what I had been reading: namely, Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut\nand Bose. Which I protest I had never seen, and could not have read\nwith any comfort, for want of the necessary German, if I had seen it.\n\nNietzsche, like Schopenhauer, is the victim in England of a single much\nquoted sentence containing the phrase \"big blonde beast.\" On the\nstrength of this alliteration it is assumed that Nietzsche gained his\nEuropean reputation by a senseless glorification of selfish bullying as\nthe rule of life, just as it is assumed, on the strength of the single\nword Superman (Ubermensch) borrowed by me from Nietzsche, that I look\nfor the salvation of society to the despotism of a single Napoleonic\nSuperman, in spite of my careful demonstration of the folly of that\noutworn infatuation. But even the less recklessly superficial critics\nseem to believe that the modern objection to Christianity as a\npernicious slave-morality was first put forward by Nietzsche. It was\nfamiliar to me before I ever heard of Nietzsche. The late Captain\nWilson, author of several queer pamphlets, propagandist of a\nmetaphysical system called Comprehensionism, and inventor of the term\n\"Crosstianity\" to distinguish the retrograde element in Christendom,\nwas wont thirty years ago, in the discussions of the Dialectical\nSociety, to protest earnestly against the beatitudes of the Sermon on\nthe Mount as excuses for cowardice and servility, as destructive of our\nwill, and consequently of our honor and manhood. Now it is true that\nCaptain Wilson's moral criticism of Christianity was not a historical\ntheory of it, like Nietzsche's; but this objection cannot be made to Mr\nStuart-Glennie, the successor of Buckle as a philosophic historian, who\nhas devoted his life to the elaboration and propagation of his theory\nthat Christianity is part of an epoch (or rather an aberration, since\nit began as recently as 6000BC and is already collapsing) produced by\nthe necessity in which the numerically inferior white races found\nthemselves to impose their domination on the colored races by\npriestcraft, making a virtue and a popular religion of drudgery and\nsubmissiveness in this world not only as a means of achieving\nsaintliness of character but of securing a reward in heaven. Here you\nhave the slave-morality view formulated by a Scotch philosopher long\nbefore English writers began chattering about Nietzsche.\n\nAs Mr Stuart-Glennie traced the evolution of society to the conflict of\nraces, his theory made some sensation among Socialists--that is, among\nthe only people who were seriously thinking about historical evolution\nat all--by its collision with the class-conflict theory of Karl Marx.\nNietzsche, as I gather, regarded the slave-morality as having been\ninvented and imposed on the world by slaves making a virtue of\nnecessity and a religion of their servitude. Mr Stuart-Glennie regards\nthe slave-morality as an invention of the superior white race to\nsubjugate the minds of the inferior races whom they wished to exploit,\nand who would have destroyed them by force of numbers if their minds\nhad not been subjugated. As this process is in operation still, and can\nbe studied at first hand not only in our Church schools and in the\nstruggle between our modern proprietary classes and the proletariat,\nbut in the part played by Christian missionaries in reconciling the\nblack races of Africa to their subjugation by European Capitalism, we\ncan judge for ourselves whether the initiative came from above or\nbelow. My object here is not to argue the historical point, but simply\nto make our theatre critics ashamed of their habit of treating Britain\nas an intellectual void, and assuming that every philosophical idea,\nevery historic theory, every criticism of our moral, religious and\njuridical institutions, must necessarily be either imported from\nabroad, or else a fantastic sally (in rather questionable taste)\ntotally unrelated to the existing body of thought. I urge them to\nremember that this body of thought is the slowest of growths and the\nrarest of blossomings, and that if there is such a thing on the\nphilosophic plane as a matter of course, it is that no individual can\nmake more than a minute contribution to it. In fact, their conception\nof clever persons parthenogenetically bringing forth complete original\ncosmogonies by dint of sheer \"brilliancy\" is part of that ignorant\ncredulity which is the despair of the honest philosopher, and the\nopportunity of the religious impostor.\n\n\n\nTHE GOSPEL OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT\n\nIt is this credulity that drives me to help my critics out with Major\nBarbara by telling them what to say about it. In the millionaire\nUndershaft I have represented a man who has become intellectually and\nspiritually as well as practically conscious of the irresistible\nnatural truth which we all abhor and repudiate: to wit, that the\ngreatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty, and that our\nfirst duty--a duty to which every other consideration should be\nsacrificed--is not to be poor. \"Poor but honest,\" \"the respectable\npoor,\" and such phrases are as intolerable and as immoral as \"drunken\nbut amiable,\" \"fraudulent but a good after-dinner speaker,\" \"splendidly\ncriminal,\" or the like. Security, the chief pretence of civilization,\ncannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs\nover everyone's head, and where the alleged protection of our persons\nfrom violence is only an accidental result of the existence of a police\nforce whose real business is to force the poor man to see his children\nstarve whilst idle people overfeed pet dogs with the money that might\nfeed and clothe them.\n\nIt is exceedingly difficult to make people realize that an evil is an\nevil. For instance, we seize a man and deliberately do him a malicious\ninjury: say, imprison him for years. One would not suppose that it\nneeded any exceptional clearness of wit to recognize in this an act of\ndiabolical cruelty. But in England such a recognition provokes a stare\nof surprise, followed by an explanation that the outrage is punishment\nor justice or something else that is all right, or perhaps by a heated\nattempt to argue that we should all be robbed and murdered in our beds\nif such senseless villainies as sentences of imprisonment were not\ncommitted daily. It is useless to argue that even if this were true,\nwhich it is not, the alternative to adding crimes of our own to the\ncrimes from which we suffer is not helpless submission. Chickenpox is\nan evil; but if I were to declare that we must either submit to it or\nelse repress it sternly by seizing everyone who suffers from it and\npunishing them by inoculation with smallpox, I should be laughed at;\nfor though nobody could deny that the result would be to prevent\nchickenpox to some extent by making people avoid it much more\ncarefully, and to effect a further apparent prevention by making them\nconceal it very anxiously, yet people would have sense enough to see\nthat the deliberate propagation of smallpox was a creation of evil, and\nmust therefore be ruled out in favor of purely humane and hygienic\nmeasures. Yet in the precisely parallel case of a man breaking into my\nhouse and stealing my wife's diamonds I am expected as a matter of\ncourse to steal ten years of his life, torturing him all the time. If\nhe tries to defeat that monstrous retaliation by shooting me, my\nsurvivors hang him. The net result suggested by the police statistics\nis that we inflict atrocious injuries on the burglars we catch in order\nto make the rest take effectual precautions against detection; so that\ninstead of saving our wives' diamonds from burglary we only greatly\ndecrease our chances of ever getting them back, and increase our\nchances of being shot by the robber if we are unlucky enough to disturb\nhim at his work.\n\nBut the thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of\nimprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and\nflogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing\ncompared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it\nwere either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be\nembraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be\npoor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let\nhim be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure science\ninstead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to\nspend his urban eighteen shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen\nshillings a week on his beer and his family instead of saving it up for\nhis old age, let him be poor. Let nothing be done for \"the\nundeserving\": let him be poor. Serve him right! Also--somewhat\ninconsistently--blessed are the poor!\n\nNow what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be weak. Let\nhim be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease. Let him be a\nstanding exhibition and example of ugliness and dirt. Let him have\nrickety children. Let him be cheap and let him drag his fellows down to\nhis price by selling himself to do their work. Let his habitations turn\nour cities into poisonous congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect\nour young men with the diseases of the streets and his sons revenge him\nby turning the nation's manhood into scrofula, cowardice, cruelty,\nhypocrisy, political imbecility, and all the other fruits of oppression\nand malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still less deserving; and\nlet the deserving lay up for himself, not treasures in heaven, but\nhorrors in hell upon earth. This being so, is it really wise to let him\nbe poor? Would he not do ten times less harm as a prosperous burglar,\nincendiary, ravisher or murderer, to the utmost limits of humanity's\ncomparatively negligible impulses in these directions? Suppose we were\nto abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that poverty\nis the one thing we will not tolerate--that every adult with less than,\nsay, 365 pounds a year, shall be painlessly but inexorably killed, and\nevery hungry half naked child forcibly fattened and clothed, would not\nthat be an enormous improvement on our existing system, which has\nalready destroyed so many civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours\nin the same way?\n\nIs there any radicle of such legislation in our parliamentary system?\nWell, there are two measures just sprouting in the political soil,\nwhich may conceivably grow to something valuable. One is the\ninstitution of a Legal Minimum Wage. The other, Old Age Pensions. But\nthere is a better plan than either of these. Some time ago I mentioned\nthe subject of Universal Old Age Pensions to my fellow Socialist Mr\nCobden-Sanderson, famous as an artist-craftsman in bookbinding and\nprinting. \"Why not Universal Pensions for Life?\" said Cobden-Sanderson.\nIn saying this, he solved the industrial problem at a stroke. At\npresent we say callously to each citizen: \"If you want money, earn it,\"\nas if his having or not having it were a matter that concerned himself\nalone. We do not even secure for him the opportunity of earning it: on\nthe contrary, we allow our industry to be organized in open dependence\non the maintenance of \"a reserve army of unemployed\" for the sake of\n\"elasticity.\" The sensible course would be Cobden-Sanderson's: that is,\nto give every man enough to live well on, so as to guarantee the\ncommunity against the possibility of a case of the malignant disease of\npoverty, and then (necessarily) to see that he earned it.\n\nUndershaft, the hero of Major Barbara, is simply a man who, having\ngrasped the fact that poverty is a crime, knows that when society\noffered him the alternative of poverty or a lucrative trade in death\nand destruction, it offered him, not a choice between opulent villainy\nand humble virtue, but between energetic enterprise and cowardly\ninfamy. His conduct stands the Kantian test, which Peter Shirley's does\nnot. Peter Shirley is what we call the honest poor man. Undershaft is\nwhat we call the wicked rich one: Shirley is Lazarus, Undershaft Dives.\nWell, the misery of the world is due to the fact that the great mass of\nmen act and believe as Peter Shirley acts and believes. If they acted\nand believed as Undershaft acts and believes, the immediate result\nwould be a revolution of incalculable beneficence. To be wealthy, says\nUndershaft, is with me a point of honor for which I am prepared to kill\nat the risk of my own life. This preparedness is, as he says, the final\ntest of sincerity. Like Froissart's medieval hero, who saw that \"to rob\nand pill was a good life,\" he is not the dupe of that public sentiment\nagainst killing which is propagated and endowed by people who would\notherwise be killed themselves, or of the mouth-honor paid to poverty\nand obedience by rich and insubordinate do-nothings who want to rob the\npoor without courage and command them without superiority. Froissart's\nknight, in placing the achievement of a good life before all the other\nduties--which indeed are not duties at all when they conflict with it,\nbut plain wickednesses--behaved bravely, admirably, and, in the final\nanalysis, public-spiritedly. Medieval society, on the other hand,\nbehaved very badly indeed in organizing itself so stupidly that a good\nlife could be achieved by robbing and pilling. If the knight's\ncontemporaries had been all as resolute as he, robbing and pilling\nwould have been the shortest way to the gallows, just as, if we were\nall as resolute and clearsighted as Undershaft, an attempt to live by\nmeans of what is called \"an independent income\" would be the shortest\nway to the lethal chamber. But as, thanks to our political imbecility\nand personal cowardice (fruits of poverty both), the best imitation of\na good life now procurable is life on an independent income, all\nsensible people aim at securing such an income, and are, of course,\ncareful to legalize and moralize both it and all the actions and\nsentiments which lead to it and support it as an institution. What else\ncan they do? They know, of course, that they are rich because others\nare poor. But they cannot help that: it is for the poor to repudiate\npoverty when they have had enough of it. The thing can be done easily\nenough: the demonstrations to the contrary made by the economists,\njurists, moralists and sentimentalists hired by the rich to defend\nthem, or even doing the work gratuitously out of sheer folly and\nabjectness, impose only on the hirers.\n\nThe reason why the independent income-tax payers are not solid in\ndefence of their position is that since we are not medieval rovers\nthrough a sparsely populated country, the poverty of those we rob\nprevents our having the good life for which we sacrifice them. Rich men\nor aristocrats with a developed sense of life--men like Ruskin and\nWilliam Morris and Kropotkin--have enormous social appetites and very\nfastidious personal ones. They are not content with handsome houses:\nthey want handsome cities. They are not content with bediamonded wives\nand blooming daughters: they complain because the charwoman is badly\ndressed, because the laundress smells of gin, because the sempstress is\nanemic, because every man they meet is not a friend and every woman not\na romance. They turn up their noses at their neighbors' drains, and are\nmade ill by the architecture of their neighbors' houses. Trade patterns\nmade to suit vulgar people do not please them (and they can get nothing\nelse): they cannot sleep nor sit at ease upon \"slaughtered\" cabinet\nmakers' furniture. The very air is not good enough for them: there is\ntoo much factory smoke in it. They even demand abstract conditions:\njustice, honor, a noble moral atmosphere, a mystic nexus to replace the\ncash nexus. Finally they declare that though to rob and pill with your\nown hand on horseback and in steel coat may have been a good life, to\nrob and pill by the hands of the policeman, the bailiff, and the\nsoldier, and to underpay them meanly for doing it, is not a good life,\nbut rather fatal to all possibility of even a tolerable one. They call\non the poor to revolt, and, finding the poor shocked at their\nungentlemanliness, despairingly revile the proletariat for its \"damned\nwantlessness\" (verdammte Bedurfnislosigkeit).\n\nSo far, however, their attack on society has lacked simplicity. The\npoor do not share their tastes nor understand their art-criticisms.\nThey do not want the simple life, nor the esthetic life; on the\ncontrary, they want very much to wallow in all the costly vulgarities\nfrom which the elect souls among the rich turn away with loathing. It\nis by surfeit and not by abstinence that they will be cured of their\nhankering after unwholesome sweets. What they do dislike and despise\nand are ashamed of is poverty. To ask them to fight for the difference\nbetween the Christmas number of the Illustrated London News and the\nKelmscott Chaucer is silly: they prefer the News. The difference\nbetween a stockbroker's cheap and dirty starched white shirt and collar\nand the comparatively costly and carefully dyed blue shirt of William\nMorris is a difference so disgraceful to Morris in their eyes that if\nthey fought on the subject at all, they would fight in defence of the\nstarch. \"Cease to be slaves, in order that you may become cranks\" is\nnot a very inspiring call to arms; nor is it really improved by\nsubstituting saints for cranks. Both terms denote men of genius; and\nthe common man does not want to live the life of a man of genius: he\nwould much rather live the life of a pet collie if that were the only\nalternative. But he does want more money. Whatever else he may be vague\nabout, he is clear about that. He may or may not prefer Major Barbara\nto the Drury Lane pantomime; but he always prefers five hundred pounds\nto five hundred shillings.\n\nNow to deplore this preference as sordid, and teach children that it is\nsinful to desire money, is to strain towards the extreme possible limit\nof impudence in lying, and corruption in hypocrisy. The universal\nregard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one\nsound spot in our social conscience. Money is the most important thing\nin the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and\nbeauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents\nillness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of\nits virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it\nfortifies and dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened\nto worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that it\nbecomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish social\nconditions that life itself is a curse. For the two things are\ninseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed\nsocially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and bank notes are money.\nThe first duty of every citizen is to insist on having money on\nreasonable terms; and this demand is not complied with by giving four\nmen three shillings each for ten or twelve hours' drudgery and one man\na thousand pounds for nothing. The crying need of the nation is not for\nbetter morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption\nof fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and\nfellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money. And the evil to\nbe attacked is not sin, suffering, greed, priestcraft, kingcraft,\ndemagogy, monopoly, ignorance, drink, war, pestilence, nor any other of\nthe scapegoats which reformers sacrifice, but simply poverty.\n\nOnce take your eyes from the ends of the earth and fix them on this\ntruth just under your nose; and Andrew Undershaft's views will not\nperplex you in the least. Unless indeed his constant sense that he is\nonly the instrument of a Will or Life Force which uses him for purposes\nwider than his own, may puzzle you. If so, that is because you are\nwalking either in artificial Darwinian darkness, or to mere stupidity.\nAll genuinely religious people have that consciousness. To them\nUndershaft the Mystic will be quite intelligible, and his perfect\ncomprehension of his daughter the Salvationist and her lover the\nEuripidean republican natural and inevitable. That, however, is not\nnew, even on the stage. What is new, as far as I know, is that article\nin Undershaft's religion which recognizes in Money the first need and\nin poverty the vilest sin of man and society.\n\nThis dramatic conception has not, of course, been attained per saltum.\nNor has it been borrowed from Nietzsche or from any man born beyond the\nChannel. The late Samuel Butler, in his own department the greatest\nEnglish writer of the latter half of the XIX century, steadily\ninculcated the necessity and morality of a conscientious Laodiceanism\nin religion and of an earnest and constant sense of the importance of\nmoney. It drives one almost to despair of English literature when one\nsees so extraordinary a study of English life as Butler's posthumous\nWay of All Flesh making so little impression that when, some years\nlater, I produce plays in which Butler's extraordinarily fresh, free\nand future-piercing suggestions have an obvious share, I am met with\nnothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and Nietzsche, and am only too\nthankful that they are not about Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand.\nReally, the English do not deserve to have great men. They allowed\nButler to die practically unknown, whilst I, a comparatively\ninsignificant Irish journalist, was leading them by the nose into an\nadvertisement of me which has made my own life a burden. In Sicily\nthere is a Via Samuele Butler. When an English tourist sees it, he\neither asks \"Who the devil was Samuele Butler?\" or wonders why the\nSicilians should perpetuate the memory of the author of Hudibras.\n\nWell, it cannot be denied that the English are only too anxious to\nrecognize a man of genius if somebody will kindly point him out to\nthem. Having pointed myself out in this manner with some success, I now\npoint out Samuel Butler, and trust that in consequence I shall hear a\nlittle less in future of the novelty and foreign origin of the ideas\nwhich are now making their way into the English theatre through plays\nwritten by Socialists. There are living men whose originality and power\nare as obvious as Butler's; and when they die that fact will be\ndiscovered. Meanwhile I recommend them to insist on their own merits as\nan important part of their own business.\n\n\n\nTHE SALVATION ARMY\n\nWhen Major Barbara was produced in London, the second act was reported\nin an important northern newspaper as a withering attack on the\nSalvation Army, and the despairing ejaculation of Barbara deplored by a\nLondon daily as a tasteless blasphemy. And they were set right, not by\nthe professed critics of the theatre, but by religious and\nphilosophical publicists like Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr Stanton Coit, and\nstrenuous Nonconformist journalists like Mr William Stead, who not only\nunderstood the act as well as the Salvationists themselves, but also\nsaw it in its relation to the religious life of the nation, a life\nwhich seems to lie not only outside the sympathy of many of our theatre\ncritics, but actually outside their knowledge of society. Indeed\nnothing could be more ironically curious than the confrontation Major\nBarbara effected of the theatre enthusiasts with the religious\nenthusiasts. On the one hand was the playgoer, always seeking pleasure,\npaying exorbitantly for it, suffering unbearable discomforts for it,\nand hardly ever getting it. On the other hand was the Salvationist,\nrepudiating gaiety and courting effort and sacrifice, yet always in the\nwildest spirits, laughing, joking, singing, rejoicing, drumming, and\ntambourining: his life flying by in a flash of excitement, and his\ndeath arriving as a climax of triumph. And, if you please, the playgoer\ndespising the Salvationist as a joyless person, shut out from the\nheaven of the theatre, self-condemned to a life of hideous gloom; and\nthe Salvationist mourning over the playgoer as over a prodigal with\nvine leaves in his hair, careering outrageously to hell amid the\npopping of champagne corks and the ribald laughter of sirens! Could\nmisunderstanding be more complete, or sympathy worse misplaced?\n\nFortunately, the Salvationists are more accessible to the religious\ncharacter of the drama than the playgoers to the gay energy and\nartistic fertility of religion. They can see, when it is pointed out to\nthem, that a theatre, as a place where two or three are gathered\ntogether, takes from that divine presence an inalienable sanctity of\nwhich the grossest and profanest farce can no more deprive it than a\nhypocritical sermon by a snobbish bishop can desecrate Westminster\nAbbey. But in our professional playgoers this indispensable preliminary\nconception of sanctity seems wanting. They talk of actors as mimes and\nmummers, and, I fear, think of dramatic authors as liars and pandars,\nwhose main business is the voluptuous soothing of the tired city\nspeculator when what he calls the serious business of the day is over.\nPassion, the life of drama, means nothing to them but primitive sexual\nexcitement: such phrases as \"impassioned poetry\" or \"passionate love of\ntruth\" have fallen quite out of their vocabulary and been replaced by\n\"passional crime\" and the like. They assume, as far as I can gather,\nthat people in whom passion has a larger scope are passionless and\ntherefore uninteresting. Consequently they come to think of religious\npeople as people who are not interesting and not amusing. And so, when\nBarbara cuts the regular Salvation Army jokes, and snatches a kiss from\nher lover across his drum, the devotees of the theatre think they ought\nto appear shocked, and conclude that the whole play is an elaborate\nmockery of the Army. And then either hypocritically rebuke me for\nmocking, or foolishly take part in the supposed mockery! Even the\nhandful of mentally competent critics got into difficulties over my\ndemonstration of the economic deadlock in which the Salvation Army\nfinds itself. Some of them thought that the Army would not have taken\nmoney from a distiller and a cannon founder: others thought it should\nnot have taken it: all assumed more or less definitely that it reduced\nitself to absurdity or hypocrisy by taking it. On the first point the\nreply of the Army itself was prompt and conclusive. As one of its\nofficers said, they would take money from the devil himself and be only\ntoo glad to get it out of his hands and into God's. They gratefully\nacknowledged that publicans not only give them money but allow them to\ncollect it in the bar--sometimes even when there is a Salvation meeting\noutside preaching teetotalism. In fact, they questioned the\nverisimilitude of the play, not because Mrs Baines took the money, but\nbecause Barbara refused it.\n\nOn the point that the Army ought not to take such money, its\njustification is obvious. It must take the money because it cannot\nexist without money, and there is no other money to be had. Practically\nall the spare money in the country consists of a mass of rent,\ninterest, and profit, every penny of which is bound up with crime,\ndrink, prostitution, disease, and all the evil fruits of poverty, as\ninextricably as with enterprise, wealth, commercial probity, and\nnational prosperity. The notion that you can earmark certain coins as\ntainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the\nfact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest\nyoung souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them\nconscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the\nEstablished Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners\nreceive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating\ndens; or that the most generous contributor at his last charity sermon\nwas an employer trading in female labor cheapened by prostitution as\nunscrupulously as a hotel keeper trades in waiters' labor cheapened by\ntips, or commissionaire's labor cheapened by pensions; or that the only\npatron who can afford to rebuild his church or his schools or give his\nboys' brigade a gymnasium or a library is the son-in-law of a Chicago\nmeat King, that young clergyman has, like Barbara, a very bad quarter\nhour. But he cannot help himself by refusing to accept money from\nanybody except sweet old ladies with independent incomes and gentle and\nlovely ways of life. He has only to follow up the income of the sweet\nladies to its industrial source, and there he will find Mrs Warren's\nprofession and the poisonous canned meat and all the rest of it. His\nown stipend has the same root. He must either share the world's guilt\nor go to another planet. He must save the world's honor if he is to\nsave his own. This is what all the Churches find just as the Salvation\nArmy and Barbara find it in the play. Her discovery that she is her\nfather's accomplice; that the Salvation Army is the accomplice of the\ndistiller and the dynamite maker; that they can no more escape one\nanother than they can escape the air they breathe; that there is no\nsalvation for them through personal righteousness, but only through the\nredemption of the whole nation from its vicious, lazy, competitive\nanarchy: this discovery has been made by everyone except the Pharisees\nand (apparently) the professional playgoers, who still wear their Tom\nHood shirts and underpay their washerwomen without the slightest\nmisgiving as to the elevation of their private characters, the purity\nof their private atmospheres, and their right to repudiate as foreign\nto themselves the coarse depravity of the garret and the slum. Not that\nthey mean any harm: they only desire to be, in their little private\nway, what they call gentlemen. They do not understand Barbara's lesson\nbecause they have not, like her, learnt it by taking their part in the\nlarger life of the nation.\n\n\n\nBARBARA'S RETURN TO THE COLORS.\n\nBarbara's return to the colors may yet provide a subject for the\ndramatic historian of the future. To go back to the Salvation Army with\nthe knowledge that even the Salvationists themselves are not saved yet;\nthat poverty is not blessed, but a most damnable sin; and that when\nGeneral Booth chose Blood and Fire for the emblem of Salvation instead\nof the Cross, he was perhaps better inspired than he knew: such\nknowledge, for the daughter of Andrew Undershaft, will clearly lead to\nsomething hopefuller than distributing bread and treacle at the expense\nof Bodger.\n\nIt is a very significant thing, this instinctive choice of the military\nform of organization, this substitution of the drum for the organ, by\nthe Salvation Army. Does it not suggest that the Salvationists divine\nthat they must actually fight the devil instead of merely praying at\nhim? At present, it is true, they have not quite ascertained his\ncorrect address. When they do, they may give a very rude shock to that\nsense of security which he has gained from his experience of the fact\nthat hard words, even when uttered by eloquent essayists and lecturers,\nor carried unanimously at enthusiastic public meetings on the motion of\neminent reformers, break no bones. It has been said that the French\nRevolution was the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists.\nIt seems to me to have been the work of men who had observed that\nvirtuous indignation, caustic criticism, conclusive argument and\ninstructive pamphleteering, even when done by the most earnest and\nwitty literary geniuses, were as useless as praying, things going\nsteadily from bad to worse whilst the Social Contract and the pamphlets\nof Voltaire were at the height of their vogue. Eventually, as we know,\nperfectly respectable citizens and earnest philanthropists connived at\nthe September massacres because hard experience had convinced them that\nif they contented themselves with appeals to humanity and patriotism,\nthe aristocracy, though it would read their appeals with the greatest\nenjoyment and appreciation, flattering and admiring the writers, would\nnone the less continue to conspire with foreign monarchists to undo the\nrevolution and restore the old system with every circumstance of savage\nvengeance and ruthless repression of popular liberties.\n\nThe nineteenth century saw the same lesson repeated in England. It had\nits Utilitarians, its Christian Socialists, its Fabians (still extant):\nit had Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle, Butler, Henry George,\nand Morris. And the end of all their efforts is the Chicago described\nby Mr Upton Sinclair, and the London in which the people who pay to be\namused by my dramatic representation of Peter Shirley turned out to\nstarve at forty because there are younger slaves to be had for his\nwages, do not take, and have not the slightest intention of taking, any\neffective step to organize society in such a way as to make that\neveryday infamy impossible. I, who have preached and pamphleteered like\nany Encyclopedist, have to confess that my methods are no use, and\nwould be no use if I were Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens,\nCarlyle, Ruskin, George, Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with\nEuripides, More, Moliere, Shakespear, Beaumarchais, Swift, Goethe,\nIbsen, Tolstoy, Moses and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some\nsort I actually am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The\nproblem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles and\nartist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all the\nsensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept\nevery plunder, and submit to every oppression. Christianity, in making\na merit of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at\nwhich the very sense of shame is lost. The Christian has been like\nDickens' doctor in the debtor's prison, who tells the newcomer of its\nineffable peace and security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of\nrates, taxes, and rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties;\nnothing but the rest and safety of having no further to fall.\n\nYet in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom vitality\nsuddenly begins to germinate again. Joyousness, a sacred gift long\ndethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and obscenity, rises like\na flood miraculously out of the fetid dust and mud of the slums;\nrousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from\npeople among whom the depressing noise called \"sacred music\" is a\nstanding joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in\nmurderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and\nsplendid red; Fear, which we flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and\ntransfigured men and women carry their gospel through a transfigured\nworld, calling their leader General, themselves captains and\nbrigadiers, and their whole body an Army: praying, but praying only for\nrefreshment, for strength to fight, and for needful MONEY (a notable\nsign, that); preaching, but not preaching submission; daring ill-usage\nand abuse, but not putting up with more of it than is inevitable; and\npractising what the world will let them practise, including soap and\nwater, color and music. There is danger in such Activity; and where\nthere is danger there is hope. Our present security is nothing, and can\nbe nothing, but evil made irresistible.\n\n\n\nWEAKNESSES OF THE SALVATION ARMY.\n\nFor the present, however, it is not my business to flatter the\nSalvation Army. Rather must I point out to it that it has almost as\nmany weaknesses as the Church of England itself. It is building up a\nbusiness organization which will compel it eventually to see that its\npresent staff of enthusiast-commanders shall be succeeded by a\nbureaucracy of men of business who will be no better than bishops, and\nperhaps a good deal more unscrupulous. That has always happened sooner\nor later to great orders founded by saints; and the order founded by St\nWilliam Booth is not exempt from the same danger. It is even more\ndependent than the Church on rich people who would cut off supplies at\nonce if it began to preach that indispensable revolt against poverty\nwhich must also be a revolt against riches. It is hampered by a heavy\ncontingent of pious elders who are not really Salvationists at all, but\nEvangelicals of the old school. It still, as Commissioner Howard\naffirms, \"sticks to Moses,\" which is flat nonsense at this time of day\nif the Commissioner means, as I am afraid he does, that the Book of\nGenesis contains a trustworthy scientific account of the origin of\nspecies, and that the god to whom Jephthah sacrificed his daughter is\nany less obviously a tribal idol than Dagon or Chemosh.\n\nFurther, there is still too much other-worldliness about the Army. Like\nFrederick's grenadier, the Salvationist wants to live for ever (the\nmost monstrous way of crying for the moon); and though it is evident to\nanyone who has ever heard General Booth and his best officers that they\nwould work as hard for human salvation as they do at present if they\nbelieved that death would be the end of them individually, they and\ntheir followers have a bad habit of talking as if the Salvationists\nwere heroically enduring a very bad time on earth as an investment\nwhich will bring them in dividends later on in the form, not of a\nbetter life to come for the whole world, but of an eternity spent by\nthemselves personally in a sort of bliss which would bore any active\nperson to a second death. Surely the truth is that the Salvationists\nare unusually happy people. And is it not the very diagnostic of true\nsalvation that it shall overcome the fear of death? Now the man who has\ncome to believe that there is no such thing as death, the change so\ncalled being merely the transition to an exquisitely happy and utterly\ncareless life, has not overcome the fear of death at all: on the\ncontrary, it has overcome him so completely that he refuses to die on\nany terms whatever. I do not call a Salvationist really saved until he\nis ready to lie down cheerfully on the scrap heap, having paid scot and\nlot and something over, and let his eternal life pass on to renew its\nyouth in the battalions of the future.\n\nThen there is the nasty lying habit called confession, which the Army\nencourages because it lends itself to dramatic oratory, with plenty of\nthrilling incident. For my part, when I hear a convert relating the\nviolences and oaths and blasphemies he was guilty of before he was\nsaved, making out that he was a very terrible fellow then and is the\nmost contrite and chastened of Christians now, I believe him no more\nthan I believe the millionaire who says he came up to London or Chicago\nas a boy with only three halfpence in his pocket. Salvationists have\nsaid to me that Barbara in my play would never have been taken in by so\ntransparent a humbug as Snobby Price; and certainly I do not think\nSnobby could have taken in any experienced Salvationist on a point on\nwhich the Salvationist did not wish to be taken in. But on the point of\nconversion all Salvationists wish to be taken in; for the more obvious\nthe sinner the more obvious the miracle of his conversion. When you\nadvertize a converted burglar or reclaimed drunkard as one of the\nattractions at an experience meeting, your burglar can hardly have been\ntoo burglarious or your drunkard too drunken. As long as such\nattractions are relied on, you will have your Snobbies claiming to have\nbeaten their mothers when they were as a matter of prosaic fact\nhabitually beaten by them, and your Rummies of the tamest\nrespectability pretending to a past of reckless and dazzling vice. Even\nwhen confessions are sincerely autobiographic there is no reason to\nassume at once that the impulse to make them is pious or the interest\nof the hearers wholesome. It might as well be assumed that the poor\npeople who insist on showing appalling ulcers to district visitors are\nconvinced hygienists, or that the curiosity which sometimes welcomes\nsuch exhibitions is a pleasant and creditable one. One is often tempted\nto suggest that those who pester our police superintendents with\nconfessions of murder might very wisely be taken at their word and\nexecuted, except in the few cases in which a real murderer is seeking\nto be relieved of his guilt by confession and expiation. For though I\nam not, I hope, an unmerciful person, I do not think that the\ninexorability of the deed once done should be disguised by any ritual,\nwhether in the confessional or on the scaffold.\n\nAnd here my disagreement with the Salvation Army, and with all\npropagandists of the Cross (to which I object as I object to all\ngibbets) becomes deep indeed. Forgiveness, absolution, atonement, are\nfigments: punishment is only a pretence of cancelling one crime by\nanother; and you can no more have forgiveness without vindictiveness\nthan you can have a cure without a disease. You will never get a high\nmorality from people who conceive that their misdeeds are revocable and\npardonable, or in a society where absolution and expiation are\nofficially provided for us all. The demand may be very real; but the\nsupply is spurious. Thus Bill Walker, in my play, having assaulted the\nSalvation Lass, presently finds himself overwhelmed with an intolerable\nconviction of sin under the skilled treatment of Barbara. Straightway\nhe begins to try to unassault the lass and deruffianize his deed, first\nby getting punished for it in kind, and, when that relief is denied\nhim, by fining himself a pound to compensate the girl. He is foiled\nboth ways. He finds the Salvation Army as inexorable as fact itself. It\nwill not punish him: it will not take his money. It will not tolerate a\nredeemed ruffian: it leaves him no means of salvation except ceasing to\nbe a ruffian. In doing this, the Salvation Army instinctively grasps\nthe central truth of Christianity and discards its central\nsuperstition: that central truth being the vanity of revenge and\npunishment, and that central superstition the salvation of the world by\nthe gibbet.\n\nFor, be it noted, Bill has assaulted an old and starving woman also;\nand for this worse offence he feels no remorse whatever, because she\nmakes it clear that her malice is as great as his own. \"Let her have\nthe law of me, as she said she would,\" says Bill: \"what I done to her\nis no more on what you might call my conscience than sticking a pig.\"\nThis shows a perfectly natural and wholesome state of mind on his part.\nThe old woman, like the law she threatens him with, is perfectly ready\nto play the game of retaliation with him: to rob him if he steals, to\nflog him if he strikes, to murder him if he kills. By example and\nprecept the law and public opinion teach him to impose his will on\nothers by anger, violence, and cruelty, and to wipe off the moral score\nby punishment. That is sound Crosstianity. But this Crosstianity has\ngot entangled with something which Barbara calls Christianity, and\nwhich unexpectedly causes her to refuse to play the hangman's game of\nSatan casting out Satan. She refuses to prosecute a drunken ruffian;\nshe converses on equal terms with a blackguard whom no lady could be\nseen speaking to in the public street: in short, she behaves as\nillegally and unbecomingly as possible under the circumstances. Bill's\nconscience reacts to this just as naturally as it does to the old\nwoman's threats. He is placed in a position of unbearable moral\ninferiority, and strives by every means in his power to escape from it,\nwhilst he is still quite ready to meet the abuse of the old woman by\nattempting to smash a mug on her face. And that is the triumphant\njustification of Barbara's Christianity as against our system of\njudicial punishment and the vindictive villain-thrashings and \"poetic\njustice\" of the romantic stage.\n\nFor the credit of literature it must be pointed out that the situation\nis only partly novel. Victor Hugo long ago gave us the epic of the\nconvict and the bishop's candlesticks, of the Crosstian policeman\nannihilated by his encounter with the Christian Valjean. But Bill\nWalker is not, like Valjean, romantically changed from a demon into an\nangel. There are millions of Bill Walkers in all classes of society\nto-day; and the point which I, as a professor of natural psychology,\ndesire to demonstrate, is that Bill, without any change in his\ncharacter whatsoever, will react one way to one sort of treatment and\nanother way to another.\n\nIn proof I might point to the sensational object lesson provided by our\ncommercial millionaires to-day. They begin as brigands: merciless,\nunscrupulous, dealing out ruin and death and slavery to their\ncompetitors and employees, and facing desperately the worst that their\ncompetitors can do to them. The history of the English factories, the\nAmerican trusts, the exploitation of African gold, diamonds, ivory and\nrubber, outdoes in villainy the worst that has ever been imagined of\nthe buccaneers of the Spanish Main. Captain Kidd would have marooned a\nmodern Trust magnate for conduct unworthy of a gentleman of fortune.\nThe law every day seizes on unsuccessful scoundrels of this type and\npunishes them with a cruelty worse than their own, with the result that\nthey come out of the torture house more dangerous than they went in,\nand renew their evil doing (nobody will employ them at anything else)\nuntil they are again seized, again tormented, and again let loose, with\nthe same result.\n\nBut the successful scoundrel is dealt with very differently, and very\nChristianly. He is not only forgiven: he is idolized, respected, made\nmuch of, all but worshipped. Society returns him good for evil in the\nmost extravagant overmeasure. And with what result? He begins to\nidolize himself, to respect himself, to live up to the treatment he\nreceives. He preaches sermons; he writes books of the most edifying\nadvice to young men, and actually persuades himself that he got on by\ntaking his own advice; he endows educational institutions; he supports\ncharities; he dies finally in the odor of sanctity, leaving a will\nwhich is a monument of public spirit and bounty. And all this without\nany change in his character. The spots of the leopard and the stripes\nof the tiger are as brilliant as ever; but the conduct of the world\ntowards him has changed; and his conduct has changed accordingly. You\nhave only to reverse your attitude towards him--to lay hands on his\nproperty, revile him, assault him, and he will be a brigand again in a\nmoment, as ready to crush you as you are to crush him, and quite as\nfull of pretentious moral reasons for doing it.\n\nIn short, when Major Barbara says that there are no scoundrels, she is\nright: there are no absolute scoundrels, though there are impracticable\npeople of whom I shall treat presently. Every practicable man (and\nwoman) is a potential scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a\nman is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of\nwhat he does, depends on his circumstances. The characteristics that\nruin a man in one class make him eminent in another. The characters\nthat behave differently in different circumstances behave alike in\nsimilar circumstances. Take a common English character like that of\nBill Walker. We meet Bill everywhere: on the judicial bench, on the\nepiscopal bench, in the Privy Council, at the War Office and Admiralty,\nas well as in the Old Bailey dock or in the ranks of casual unskilled\nlabor. And the morality of Bill's characteristics varies with these\nvarious circumstances. The faults of the burglar are the qualities of\nthe financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk\nhis situation. In short, though character is independent of\ncircumstances, conduct is not; and our moral judgments of character are\nnot: both are circumstantial. Take any condition of life in which the\ncircumstances are for a mass of men practically alike: felony, the\nHouse of Lords, the factory, the stables, the gipsy encampment or where\nyou please! In spite of diversity of character and temperament, the\nconduct and morals of the individuals in each group are as predicable\nand as alike in the main as if they were a flock of sheep, morals being\nmostly only social habits and circumstantial necessities. Strong people\nknow this and count upon it. In nothing have the master-minds of the\nworld been distinguished from the ordinary suburban season-ticket\nholder more than in their straightforward perception of the fact that\nmankind is practically a single species, and not a menagerie of\ngentlemen and bounders, villains and heroes, cowards and daredevils,\npeers and peasants, grocers and aristocrats, artisans and laborers,\nwasherwomen and duchesses, in which all the grades of income and caste\nrepresent distinct animals who must not be introduced to one another or\nintermarry. Napoleon constructing a galaxy of generals and courtiers,\nand even of monarchs, out of his collection of social nobodies; Julius\nCaesar appointing as governor of Egypt the son of a freedman--one who\nbut a short time before would have been legally disqualified for the\npost even of a private soldier in the Roman army; Louis XI making his\nbarber his privy councillor: all these had in their different ways a\nfirm hold of the scientific fact of human equality, expressed by\nBarbara in the Christian formula that all men are children of one\nfather. A man who believes that men are naturally divided into upper\nand lower and middle classes morally is making exactly the same mistake\nas the man who believes that they are naturally divided in the same way\nsocially. And just as our persistent attempts to found political\ninstitutions on a basis of social inequality have always produced long\nperiods of destructive friction relieved from time to time by violent\nexplosions of revolution; so the attempt--will Americans please\nnote--to found moral institutions on a basis of moral inequality can\nlead to nothing but unnatural Reigns of the Saints relieved by\nlicentious Restorations; to Americans who have made divorce a public\ninstitution turning the face of Europe into one huge sardonic smile by\nrefusing to stay in the same hotel with a Russian man of genius who has\nchanged wives without the sanction of South Dakota; to grotesque\nhypocrisy, cruel persecution, and final utter confusion of conventions\nand compliances with benevolence and respectability. It is quite\nuseless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are\nborn good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of\nitself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his\nmoral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every\nman's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment, which any fool can\ntrump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or\nas a rascal. This is the lesson Democracy has to learn before it can\nbecome anything but the most oppressive of all the priesthoods.\n\nLet us now return to Bill Walker and his case of conscience against the\nSalvation Army. Major Barbara, not being a modern Tetzel, or the\ntreasurer of a hospital, refuses to sell Bill absolution for a\nsovereign. Unfortunately, what the Army can afford to refuse in the\ncase of Bill Walker, it cannot refuse in the case of Bodger. Bodger is\nmaster of the situation because he holds the purse strings. \"Strive as\nyou will,\" says Bodger, in effect: \"me you cannot do without. You\ncannot save Bill Walker without my money.\" And the Army answers, quite\nrightly under the circumstances, \"We will take money from the devil\nhimself sooner than abandon the work of Salvation.\" So Bodger pays his\nconscience-money and gets the absolution that is refused to Bill. In\nreal life Bill would perhaps never know this. But I, the dramatist,\nwhose business it is to show the connexion between things that seem\napart and unrelated in the haphazard order of events in real life, have\ncontrived to make it known to Bill, with the result that the Salvation\nArmy loses its hold of him at once.\n\nBut Bill may not be lost, for all that. He is still in the grip of the\nfacts and of his own conscience, and may find his taste for\nblackguardism permanently spoiled. Still, I cannot guarantee that happy\nending. Let anyone walk through the poorer quarters of our cities when\nthe men are not working, but resting and chewing the cud of their\nreflections; and he will find that there is one expression on every\nmature face: the expression of cynicism. The discovery made by Bill\nWalker about the Salvation Army has been made by every one of them.\nThey have found that every man has his price; and they have been\nfoolishly or corruptly taught to mistrust and despise him for that\nnecessary and salutary condition of social existence. When they learn\nthat General Booth, too, has his price, they do not admire him because\nit is a high one, and admit the need of organizing society so that he\nshall get it in an honorable way: they conclude that his character is\nunsound and that all religious men are hypocrites and allies of their\nsweaters and oppressors. They know that the large subscriptions which\nhelp to support the Army are endowments, not of religion, but of the\nwicked doctrine of docility in poverty and humility under oppression;\nand they are rent by the most agonizing of all the doubts of the soul,\nthe doubt whether their true salvation must not come from their most\nabhorrent passions, from murder, envy, greed, stubbornness, rage, and\nterrorism, rather than from public spirit, reasonableness, humanity,\ngenerosity, tenderness, delicacy, pity and kindness. The confirmation\nof that doubt, at which our newspapers have been working so hard for\nyears past, is the morality of militarism; and the justification of\nmilitarism is that circumstances may at any time make it the true\nmorality of the moment. It is by producing such moments that we produce\nviolent and sanguinary revolutions, such as the one now in progress in\nRussia and the one which Capitalism in England and America is daily and\ndiligently provoking.\n\nAt such moments it becomes the duty of the Churches to evoke all the\npowers of destruction against the existing order. But if they do this,\nthe existing order must forcibly suppress them. Churches are suffered\nto exist only on condition that they preach submission to the State as\nat present capitalistically organized. The Church of England itself is\ncompelled to add to the thirty-six articles in which it formulates its\nreligious tenets, three more in which it apologetically protests that\nthe moment any of these articles comes in conflict with the State it is\nto be entirely renounced, abjured, violated, abrogated and abhorred,\nthe policeman being a much more important person than any of the\nPersons of the Trinity. And this is why no tolerated Church nor\nSalvation Army can ever win the entire confidence of the poor. It must\nbe on the side of the police and the military, no matter what it\nbelieves or disbelieves; and as the police and the military are the\ninstruments by which the rich rob and oppress the poor (on legal and\nmoral principles made for the purpose), it is not possible to be on the\nside of the poor and of the police at the same time. Indeed the\nreligious bodies, as the almoners of the rich, become a sort of\nauxiliary police, taking off the insurrectionary edge of poverty with\ncoals and blankets, bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the\nvictims with hopes of immense and inexpensive happiness in another\nworld when the process of working them to premature death in the\nservice of the rich is complete in this.\n\n\n\nCHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM\n\nSuch is the false position from which neither the Salvation Army nor\nthe Church of England nor any other religious organization whatever can\nescape except through a reconstitution of society. Nor can they merely\nendure the State passively, washing their hands of its sins. The State\nis constantly forcing the consciences of men by violence and cruelty.\nNot content with exacting money from us for the maintenance of its\nsoldiers and policemen, its gaolers and executioners, it forces us to\ntake an active personal part in its proceedings on pain of becoming\nourselves the victims of its violence. As I write these lines, a\nsensational example is given to the world. A royal marriage has been\ncelebrated, first by sacrament in a cathedral, and then by a bullfight\nhaving for its main amusement the spectacle of horses gored and\ndisembowelled by the bull, after which, when the bull is so exhausted\nas to be no longer dangerous, he is killed by a cautious matador. But\nthe ironic contrast between the bullfight and the sacrament of marriage\ndoes not move anyone. Another contrast--that between the splendor, the\nhappiness, the atmosphere of kindly admiration surrounding the young\ncouple, and the price paid for it under our abominable social\narrangements in the misery, squalor and degradation of millions of\nother young couples--is drawn at the same moment by a novelist, Mr\nUpton Sinclair, who chips a corner of the veneering from the huge meat\npacking industries of Chicago, and shows it to us as a sample of what\nis going on all over the world underneath the top layer of prosperous\nplutocracy. One man is sufficiently moved by that contrast to pay his\nown life as the price of one terrible blow at the responsible parties.\nUnhappily his poverty leaves him also ignorant enough to be duped by\nthe pretence that the innocent young bride and bridegroom, put forth\nand crowned by plutocracy as the heads of a State in which they have\nless personal power than any policeman, and less influence than any\nchairman of a trust, are responsible. At them accordingly he launches\nhis sixpennorth of fulminate, missing his mark, but scattering the\nbowels of as many horses as any bull in the arena, and slaying\ntwenty-three persons, besides wounding ninety-nine. And of all these,\nthe horses alone are innocent of the guilt he is avenging: had he blown\nall Madrid to atoms with every adult person in it, not one could have\nescaped the charge of being an accessory, before, at, and after the\nfact, to poverty and prostitution, to such wholesale massacre of\ninfants as Herod never dreamt of, to plague, pestilence and famine,\nbattle, murder and lingering death--perhaps not one who had not helped,\nthrough example, precept, connivance, and even clamor, to teach the\ndynamiter his well-learnt gospel of hatred and vengeance, by approving\nevery day of sentences of years of imprisonment so infernal in its\nunnatural stupidity and panic-stricken cruelty, that their advocates\ncan disavow neither the dagger nor the bomb without stripping the mask\nof justice and humanity from themselves also. Be it noted that at this\nvery moment there appears the biography of one of our dukes, who, being\nScotch, could argue about politics, and therefore stood out as a great\nbrain among our aristocrats. And what, if you please, was his grace's\nfavorite historical episode, which he declared he never read without\nintense satisfaction? Why, the young General Bonapart's pounding of the\nParis mob to pieces in 1795, called in playful approval by our\nrespectable classes \"the whiff of grapeshot,\" though Napoleon, to do\nhim justice, took a deeper view of it, and would fain have had it\nforgotten. And since the Duke of Argyll was not a demon, but a man of\nlike passions with ourselves, by no means rancorous or cruel as men go,\nwho can doubt that all over the world proletarians of the ducal kidney\nare now revelling in \"the whiff of dynamite\" (the flavor of the joke\nseems to evaporate a little, does it not?) because it was aimed at the\nclass they hate even as our argute duke hated what he called the mob.\n\nIn such an atmosphere there can be only one sequel to the Madrid\nexplosion. All Europe burns to emulate it. Vengeance! More blood! Tear\n\"the Anarchist beast\" to shreds. Drag him to the scaffold. Imprison him\nfor life. Let all civilized States band together to drive his like off\nthe face of the earth; and if any State refuses to join, make war on\nit. This time the leading London newspaper, anti-Liberal and therefore\nanti-Russian in politics, does not say \"Serve you right\" to the\nvictims, as it did, in effect, when Bobrikofl; and De Plehve, and Grand\nDuke Sergius, were in the same manner unofficially fulminated into\nfragments. No: fulminate our rivals in Asia by all means, ye brave\nRussian revolutionaries; but to aim at an English princess-monstrous!\nhideous! hound down the wretch to his doom; and observe, please, that\nwe are a civilized and merciful people, and, however much we may regret\nit, must not treat him as Ravaillac and Damiens were treated. And\nmeanwhile, since we have not yet caught him, let us soothe our\nquivering nerves with the bullfight, and comment in a courtly way on\nthe unfailing tact and good taste of the ladies of our royal houses,\nwho, though presumably of full normal natural tenderness, have been so\neffectually broken in to fashionable routine that they can be taken to\nsee the horses slaughtered as helplessly as they could no doubt be\ntaken to a gladiator show, if that happened to be the mode just now.\n\nStrangely enough, in the midst of this raging fire of malice, the one\nman who still has faith in the kindness and intelligence of human\nnature is the fulminator, now a hunted wretch, with nothing,\napparently, to secure his triumph over all the prisons and scaffolds of\ninfuriate Europe except the revolver in his pocket and his readiness to\ndischarge it at a moment's notice into his own or any other head. Think\nof him setting out to find a gentleman and a Christian in the multitude\nof human wolves howling for his blood. Think also of this: that at the\nvery first essay he finds what he seeks, a veritable grandee of Spain,\na noble, high-thinking, unterrified, malice-void soul, in the guise--of\nall masquerades in the world!--of a modern editor. The Anarchist wolf,\nflying from the wolves of plutocracy, throws himself on the honor of\nthe man. The man, not being a wolf (nor a London editor), and therefore\nnot having enough sympathy with his exploit to be made bloodthirsty by\nit, does not throw him back to the pursuing wolves--gives him, instead,\nwhat help he can to escape, and sends him off acquainted at last with a\nforce that goes deeper than dynamite, though you cannot make so much of\nit for sixpence. That righteous and honorable high human deed is not\nwasted on Europe, let us hope, though it benefits the fugitive wolf\nonly for a moment. The plutocratic wolves presently smell him out. The\nfugitive shoots the unlucky wolf whose nose is nearest; shoots himself;\nand then convinces the world, by his photograph, that he was no\nmonstrous freak of reversion to the tiger, but a good looking young man\nwith nothing abnormal about him except his appalling courage and\nresolution (that is why the terrified shriek Coward at him): one to\nwhom murdering a happy young couple on their wedding morning would have\nbeen an unthinkably unnatural abomination under rational and kindly\nhuman circumstances.\n\nThen comes the climax of irony and blind stupidity. The wolves, balked\nof their meal of fellow-wolf, turn on the man, and proceed to torture\nhim, after their manner, by imprisonment, for refusing to fasten his\nteeth in the throat of the dynamiter and hold him down until they came\nto finish him.\n\nThus, you see, a man may not be a gentleman nowadays even if he wishes\nto. As to being a Christian, he is allowed some latitude in that\nmatter, because, I repeat, Christianity has two faces. Popular\nChristianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a\nsanguinary execution after torture, for its central mystery an insane\nvengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and\nprofounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of Equality,\nand forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance, often politely\ncalled punishment or justice. The gibbet part of Christianity is\ntolerated. The other is criminal felony. Connoisseurs in irony are well\naware of the fact that the only editor in England who denounces\npunishment as radically wrong, also repudiates Christianity; calls his\npaper The Freethinker; and has been imprisoned for two years for\nblasphemy.\n\n\n\nSANE CONCLUSIONS\n\nAnd now I must ask the excited reader not to lose his head on one side\nor the other, but to draw a sane moral from these grim absurdities. It\nis not good sense to propose that laws against crime should apply to\nprincipals only and not to accessories whose consent, counsel, or\nsilence may secure impunity to the principal. If you institute\npunishment as part of the law, you must punish people for refusing to\npunish. If you have a police, part of its duty must be to compel\neverybody to assist the police. No doubt if your laws are unjust, and\nyour policemen agents of oppression, the result will be an unbearable\nviolation of the private consciences of citizens. But that cannot be\nhelped: the remedy is, not to license everybody to thwart the law if\nthey please, but to make laws that will command the public assent, and\nnot to deal cruelly and stupidly with lawbreakers. Everybody\ndisapproves of burglars; but the modern burglar, when caught and\noverpowered by a householder usually appeals, and often, let us hope,\nwith success, to his captor not to deliver him over to the useless\nhorrors of penal servitude. In other cases the lawbreaker escapes\nbecause those who could give him up do not consider his breech of the\nlaw a guilty action. Sometimes, even, private tribunals are formed in\nopposition to the official tribunals; and these private tribunals\nemploy assassins as executioners, as was done, for example, by Mahomet\nbefore he had established his power officially, and by the Ribbon\nlodges of Ireland in their long struggle with the landlords. Under such\ncircumstances, the assassin goes free although everybody in the\ndistrict knows who he is and what he has done. They do not betray him,\npartly because they justify him exactly as the regular Government\njustifies its official executioner, and partly because they would\nthemselves be assassinated if they betrayed him: another method learnt\nfrom the official government. Given a tribunal, employing a slayer who\nhas no personal quarrel with the slain; and there is clearly no moral\ndifference between official and unofficial killing.\n\nIn short, all men are anarchists with regard to laws which are against\ntheir consciences, either in the preamble or in the penalty. In London\nour worst anarchists are the magistrates, because many of them are so\nold and ignorant that when they are called upon to administer any law\nthat is based on ideas or knowledge less than half a century old, they\ndisagree with it, and being mere ordinary homebred private Englishmen\nwithout any respect for law in the abstract, naively set the example of\nviolating it. In this instance the man lags behind the law; but when\nthe law lags behind the man, he becomes equally an anarchist. When some\nhuge change in social conditions, such as the industrial revolution of\nthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, throws our legal and\nindustrial institutions out of date, Anarchism becomes almost a\nreligion. The whole force of the most energetic geniuses of the time in\nphilosophy, economics, and art, concentrates itself on demonstrations\nand reminders that morality and law are only conventions, fallible and\ncontinually obsolescing. Tragedies in which the heroes are bandits, and\ncomedies in which law-abiding and conventionally moral folk are\ncompelled to satirize themselves by outraging the conscience of the\nspectators every time they do their duty, appear simultaneously with\neconomic treatises entitled \"What is Property? Theft!\" and with\nhistories of \"The Conflict between Religion and Science.\"\n\nNow this is not a healthy state of things. The advantages of living in\nsociety are proportionate, not to the freedom of the individual from a\ncode, but to the complexity and subtlety of the code he is prepared not\nonly to accept but to uphold as a matter of such vital importance that\na lawbreaker at large is hardly to be tolerated on any plea. Such an\nattitude becomes impossible when the only men who can make themselves\nheard and remembered throughout the world spend all their energy in\nraising our gorge against current law, current morality, current\nrespect ability, and legal property. The ordinary man, uneducated in\nsocial theory even when he is schooled in Latin verse, cannot be set\nagainst all the laws of his country and yet persuaded to regard law in\nthe abstract as vitally necessary to society. Once he is brought to\nrepudiate the laws and institutions he knows, he will repudiate the\nvery conception of law and the very groundwork of institutions,\nridiculing human rights, extolling brainless methods as \"historical,\"\nand tolerating nothing except pure empiricism in conduct, with dynamite\nas the basis of politics and vivisection as the basis of science. That\nis hideous; but what is to be done? Here am I, for instance, by class a\nrespectable man, by common sense a hater of waste and disorder, by\nintellectual constitution legally minded to the verge of pedantry, and\nby temperament apprehensive and economically disposed to the limit of\nold-maidishness; yet I am, and have always been, and shall now always\nbe, a revolutionary writer, because our laws make law impossible; our\nliberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our\nmorality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by\ninexperienced or malexperienced dupes, our power wielded by cowards and\nweaklings, and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the\nexisting order for good reasons; but that does not make my attacks any\nless encouraging or helpful to people who are its enemies for bad\nreasons. The existing order may shriek that if I tell the truth about\nit, some foolish person may drive it to become still worse by trying to\nassassinate it. I cannot help that, even if I could see what worse it\ncould do than it is already doing. And the disadvantage of that worst\neven from its own point of view is that society, with all its prisons\nand bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in\nthe face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in\nthe battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating\nexplosives which every Russian student can make, and every Russian\ngrenadier has learnt to handle in Manchuria, lies in the fact that\nbrave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their\nskins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough\nto care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their\nconsciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, simply not to\noutrage their consciences.\n\nDo not be afraid that they will not make allowances. All men make very\nlarge allowances indeed before they stake their own lives in a war to\nthe death with society. Nobody demands or expects the millennium. But\nthere are two things that must be set right, or we shall perish, like\nRome, of soul atrophy disguised as empire. The first is, that the daily\nceremony of dividing the wealth of the country among its inhabitants\nshall be so conducted that no crumb shall go to any able-bodied adults\nwho are not producing by their personal exertions not only a full\nequivalent for what they take, but a surplus sufficient to provide for\ntheir superannuation and pay back the debt due for their nurture.\n\nThe second is that the deliberate infliction of malicious injuries\nwhich now goes on under the name of punishment be abandoned; so that\nthe thief, the ruffian, the gambler, and the beggar, may without\ninhumanity be handed over to the law, and made to understand that a\nState which is too humane to punish will also be too thrifty to waste\nthe life of honest men in watching or restraining dishonest ones. That\nis why we do not imprison dogs. We even take our chance of their first\nbite. But if a dog delights to bark and bite, it goes to the lethal\nchamber. That seems to me sensible. To allow the dog to expiate his\nbite by a period of torment, and then let him loose in a much more\nsavage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite again and\nexpiate again, having meanwhile spent a great deal of human life and\nhappiness in the task of chaining and feeding and tormenting him, seems\nto me idiotic and superstitious. Yet that is what we do to men who bark\nand bite and steal. It would be far more sensible to put up with their\nvices, as we put up with their illnesses, until they give more trouble\nthan they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and\nexpressions of sympathy, and some generosity in complying with their\nlast wishes, then, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of\nthem. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to expiate their\nmisdeeds by a manufactured penalty, to subscribe to a charity, or to\ncompensate the victims. If there is to be no punishment there can be no\nforgiveness. We shall never have real moral responsibility until\neveryone knows that his deeds are irrevocable, and that his life\ndepends on his usefulness. Hitherto, alas! humanity has never dared\nface these hard facts. We frantically scatter conscience money and\ninvent systems of conscience banking, with expiatory penalties,\natonements, redemptions, salvations, hospital subscription lists and\nwhat not, to enable us to contract-out of the moral code. Not content\nwith the old scapegoat and sacrificial lamb, we deify human saviors,\nand pray to miraculous virgin intercessors. We attribute mercy to the\ninexorable; soothe our consciences after committing murder by throwing\nourselves on the bosom of divine love; and shrink even from our own\ngallows because we are forced to admit that it, at least, is\nirrevocable--as if one hour of imprisonment were not as irrevocable as\nany execution!\n\nIf a man cannot look evil in the face without illusion, he will never\nknow what it really is, or combat it effectually. The few men who have\nbeen able (relatively) to do this have been called cynics, and have\nsometimes had an abnormal share of evil in themselves, corresponding to\nthe abnormal strength of their minds; but they have never done mischief\nunless they intended to do it. That is why great scoundrels have been\nbeneficent rulers whilst amiable and privately harmless monarchs have\nruined their countries by trusting to the hocus-pocus of innocence and\nguilt, reward and punishment, virtuous indignation and pardon, instead\nof standing up to the facts without either malice or mercy. Major\nBarbara stands up to Bill Walker in that way, with the result that the\nruffian who cannot get hated, has to hate himself. To relieve this\nagony be tries to get punished; but the Salvationist whom he tries to\nprovoke is as merciless as Barbara, and only prays for him. Then he\ntries to pay, but can get nobody to take his money. His doom is the\ndoom of Cain, who, failing to find either a savior, a policeman, or an\nalmoner to help him to pretend that his brother's blood no longer cried\nfrom the ground, had to live and die a murderer. Cain took care not to\ncommit another murder, unlike our railway shareholders (I am one) who\nkill and maim shunters by hundreds to save the cost of automatic\ncouplings, and make atonement by annual subscriptions to deserving\ncharities. Had Cain been allowed to pay off his score, he might\npossibly have killed Adam and Eve for the mere sake of a second\nluxurious reconciliation with God afterwards. Bodger, you may depend on\nit, will go on to the end of his life poisoning people with bad whisky,\nbecause he can always depend on the Salvation Army or the Church of\nEngland to negotiate a redemption for him in consideration of a\ntrifling percentage of his profits. There is a third condition too,\nwhich must be fulfilled before the great teachers of the world will\ncease to scoff at its religions. Creeds must become intellectually\nhonest. At present there is not a single credible established religion\nin the world. That is perhaps the most stupendous fact in the whole\nworld-situation. This play of mine, Major Barbara, is, I hope, both\ntrue and inspired; but whoever says that it all happened, and that\nfaith in it and understanding of it consist in believing that it is a\nrecord of an actual occurrence, is, to speak according to Scripture, a\nfool and a liar, and is hereby solemnly denounced and cursed as such by\nme, the author, to all posterity.\n\nLondon, June 1906.","title":"Preface to Major Barbara: First Aid to Critics","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":14650}