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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3789-h.zip b/3789-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..de1233e --- /dev/null +++ b/3789-h.zip diff --git a/3789-h/3789-h.htm b/3789-h/3789-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9c9fc5 --- /dev/null +++ b/3789-h/3789-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1951 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara, +by George Bernard Shaw +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + font-size: small ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara, by +George Bernard Shaw + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara + +Author: George Bernard Shaw + +Posting Date: May 19, 2009 [EBook #3789] +Release Date: February, 2000 +First Posted: September 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAW'S PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA *** + + + + +Produced by Eve Sobol. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA:<BR>FIRST AID TO CRITICS +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BERNARD SHAW +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P> +N.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are not +by me, or even directly by Euripides. They are by Professor Gilbert +Murray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into our dramatic +literature with all the impulsive power of an original work shortly +before Major Barbara was begun. The play, indeed, stands indebted to +him in more ways than one. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +G. B. S. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P> +Before dealing with the deeper aspects of Major Barbara, let me, for +the credit of English literature, make a protest against an unpatriotic +habit into which many of my critics have fallen. Whenever my view +strikes them as being at all outside the range of, say, an ordinary +suburban churchwarden, they conclude that I am echoing Schopenhauer, +Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, or some other heresiarch in +northern or eastern Europe. +</P> + +<P> +I confess there is something flattering in this simple faith in my +accomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as a philosopher. But I +cannot tolerate the assumption that life and literature is so poor in +these islands that we must go abroad for all dramatic material that is +not common and all ideas that are not superficial. I therefore venture +to put my critics in possession of certain facts concerning my contact +with modern ideas. +</P> + +<P> +About half a century ago, an Irish novelist, Charles Lever, wrote a +story entitled A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. It was published by +Charles Dickens in Household Words, and proved so strange to the public +taste that Dickens pressed Lever to make short work of it. I read +scraps of this novel when I was a child; and it made an enduring +impression on me. The hero was a very romantic hero, trying to live +bravely, chivalrously, and powerfully by dint of mere romance-fed +imagination, without courage, without means, without knowledge, without +skill, without anything real except his bodily appetites. Even in my +childhood I found in this poor devil's unsuccessful encounters with the +facts of life, a poignant quality that romantic fiction lacked. The +book, in spite of its first failure, is not dead: I saw its title the +other day in the catalogue of Tauchnitz. +</P> + +<P> +Now why is it that when I also deal in the tragi-comic irony of the +conflict between real life and the romantic imagination, no critic ever +affiliates me to my countryman and immediate forerunner, Charles Lever, +whilst they confidently derive me from a Norwegian author of whose +language I do not know three words, and of whom I knew nothing until +years after the Shavian Anschauung was already unequivocally declared +in books full of what came, ten years later, to be perfunctorily +labelled Ibsenism. I was not Ibsenist even at second hand; for Lever, +though he may have read Henri Beyle, alias Stendhal, certainly never +read Ibsen. Of the books that made Lever popular, such as Charles +O'Malley and Harry Lorrequer, I know nothing but the names and some of +the illustrations. But the story of the day's ride and life's romance +of Potts (claiming alliance with Pozzo di Borgo) caught me and +fascinated me as something strange and significant, though I already +knew all about Alnaschar and Don Quixote and Simon Tappertit and many +another romantic hero mocked by reality. From the plays of Aristophanes +to the tales of Stevenson that mockery has been made familiar to all +who are properly saturated with letters. +</P> + +<P> +Where, then, was the novelty in Lever's tale? Partly, I think, in a new +seriousness in dealing with Potts's disease. Formerly, the contrast +between madness and sanity was deemed comic: Hogarth shows us how +fashionable people went in parties to Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics. +I myself have had a village idiot exhibited to me as some thing +irresistibly funny. On the stage the madman was once a regular comic +figure; that was how Hamlet got his opportunity before Shakespear +touched him. The originality of Shakespear's version lay in his taking +the lunatic sympathetically and seriously, and thereby making an +advance towards the eastern consciousness of the fact that lunacy may +be inspiration in disguise, since a man who has more brains than his +fellows necessarily appears as mad to them as one who has less. But +Shakespear did not do for Pistol and Parolles what he did for Hamlet. +The particular sort of madman they represented, the romantic +makebeliever, lay outside the pale of sympathy in literature: he was +pitilessly despised and ridiculed here as he was in the east under the +name of Alnaschar, and was doomed to be, centuries later, under the +name of Simon Tappertit. When Cervantes relented over Don Quixote, and +Dickens relented over Pickwick, they did not become impartial: they +simply changed sides, and became friends and apologists where they had +formerly been mockers. +</P> + +<P> +In Lever's story there is a real change of attitude. There is no +relenting towards Potts: he never gains our affections like Don Quixote +and Pickwick: he has not even the infatuate courage of Tappertit. But +we dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we recognize ourselves in +Potts. We may, some of us, have enough nerve, enough muscle, enough +luck, enough tact or skill or address or knowledge to carry things off +better than he did; to impose on the people who saw through him; to +fascinate Katinka (who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the end of the +story); but for all that, we know that Potts plays an enormous part in +ourselves and in the world, and that the social problem is not a +problem of story-book heroes of the older pattern, but a problem of +Pottses, and of how to make men of them. To fall back on my old phrase, +we have the feeling—one that Alnaschar, Pistol, Parolles, and +Tappertit never gave us—that Potts is a piece of really scientific +natural history as distinguished from comic story telling. His author +is not throwing a stone at a creature of another and inferior order, +but making a confession, with the effect that the stone hits everybody +full in the conscience and causes their self-esteem to smart very +sorely. Hence the failure of Lever's book to please the readers of +Household Words. That pain in the self-esteem nowadays causes critics +to raise a cry of Ibsenism. I therefore assure them that the sensation +first came to me from Lever and may have come to him from Beyle, or at +least out of the Stendhalian atmosphere. I exclude the hypothesis of +complete originality on Lever's part, because a man can no more be +completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air. +</P> + +<P> +Another mistake as to my literary ancestry is made whenever I violate +the romantic convention that all women are angels when they are not +devils; that they are better looking than men; that their part in +courtship is entirely passive; and that the human female form is the +most beautiful object in nature. Schopenhauer wrote a splenetic essay +which, as it is neither polite nor profound, was probably intended to +knock this nonsense violently on the head. A sentence denouncing the +idolized form as ugly has been largely quoted. The English critics have +read that sentence; and I must here affirm, with as much gentleness as +the implication will bear, that it has yet to be proved that they have +dipped any deeper. At all events, whenever an English playwright +represents a young and marriageable woman as being anything but a +romantic heroine, he is disposed of without further thought as an echo +of Schopenhauer. My own case is a specially hard one, because, when I +implore the critics who are obsessed with the Schopenhaurian formula to +remember that playwrights, like sculptors, study their figures from +life, and not from philosophic essays, they reply passionately that I +am not a playwright and that my stage figures do not live. But even so, +I may and do ask them why, if they must give the credit of my plays to +a philosopher, they do not give it to an English philosopher? Long +before I ever read a word by Schopenhauer, or even knew whether he was +a philosopher or a chemist, the Socialist revival of the +eighteen-eighties brought me into contact, both literary and personal, +with Mr Ernest Belfort Bax, an English Socialist and philosophic +essayist, whose handling of modern feminism would provoke romantic +protests from Schopenhauer himself, or even Strindberg. As a matter of +fact I hardly noticed Schopenhauer's disparagements of women when they +came under my notice later on, so thoroughly had Mr Bax familiarized me +with the homoist attitude, and forced me to recognize the extent to +which public opinion, and consequently legislation and jurisprudence, +is corrupted by feminist sentiment. +</P> + +<P> +But Mr Bax's essays were not confined to the Feminist question. He was +a ruthless critic of current morality. Other writers have gained +sympathy for dramatic criminals by eliciting the alleged "soul of +goodness in things evil"; but Mr Bax would propound some quite +undramatic and apparently shabby violation of our commercial law and +morality, and not merely defend it with the most disconcerting +ingenuity, but actually prove it to be a positive duty that nothing but +the certainty of police persecution should prevent every right-minded +man from at once doing on principle. The Socialists were naturally +shocked, being for the most part morbidly moral people; but at all +events they were saved later on from the delusion that nobody but +Nietzsche had ever challenged our mercanto-Christian morality. I first +heard the name of Nietzsche from a German mathematician, Miss +Borchardt, who had read my Quintessence of Ibsenism, and told me that +she saw what I had been reading: namely, Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut +and Bose. Which I protest I had never seen, and could not have read +with any comfort, for want of the necessary German, if I had seen it. +</P> + +<P> +Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, is the victim in England of a single much +quoted sentence containing the phrase "big blonde beast." On the +strength of this alliteration it is assumed that Nietzsche gained his +European reputation by a senseless glorification of selfish bullying as +the rule of life, just as it is assumed, on the strength of the single +word Superman (Ubermensch) borrowed by me from Nietzsche, that I look +for the salvation of society to the despotism of a single Napoleonic +Superman, in spite of my careful demonstration of the folly of that +outworn infatuation. But even the less recklessly superficial critics +seem to believe that the modern objection to Christianity as a +pernicious slave-morality was first put forward by Nietzsche. It was +familiar to me before I ever heard of Nietzsche. The late Captain +Wilson, author of several queer pamphlets, propagandist of a +metaphysical system called Comprehensionism, and inventor of the term +"Crosstianity" to distinguish the retrograde element in Christendom, +was wont thirty years ago, in the discussions of the Dialectical +Society, to protest earnestly against the beatitudes of the Sermon on +the Mount as excuses for cowardice and servility, as destructive of our +will, and consequently of our honor and manhood. Now it is true that +Captain Wilson's moral criticism of Christianity was not a historical +theory of it, like Nietzsche's; but this objection cannot be made to Mr +Stuart-Glennie, the successor of Buckle as a philosophic historian, who +has devoted his life to the elaboration and propagation of his theory +that Christianity is part of an epoch (or rather an aberration, since +it began as recently as 6000BC and is already collapsing) produced by +the necessity in which the numerically inferior white races found +themselves to impose their domination on the colored races by +priestcraft, making a virtue and a popular religion of drudgery and +submissiveness in this world not only as a means of achieving +saintliness of character but of securing a reward in heaven. Here you +have the slave-morality view formulated by a Scotch philosopher long +before English writers began chattering about Nietzsche. +</P> + +<P> +As Mr Stuart-Glennie traced the evolution of society to the conflict of +races, his theory made some sensation among Socialists—that is, among +the only people who were seriously thinking about historical evolution +at all—by its collision with the class-conflict theory of Karl Marx. +Nietzsche, as I gather, regarded the slave-morality as having been +invented and imposed on the world by slaves making a virtue of +necessity and a religion of their servitude. Mr Stuart-Glennie regards +the slave-morality as an invention of the superior white race to +subjugate the minds of the inferior races whom they wished to exploit, +and who would have destroyed them by force of numbers if their minds +had not been subjugated. As this process is in operation still, and can +be studied at first hand not only in our Church schools and in the +struggle between our modern proprietary classes and the proletariat, +but in the part played by Christian missionaries in reconciling the +black races of Africa to their subjugation by European Capitalism, we +can judge for ourselves whether the initiative came from above or +below. My object here is not to argue the historical point, but simply +to make our theatre critics ashamed of their habit of treating Britain +as an intellectual void, and assuming that every philosophical idea, +every historic theory, every criticism of our moral, religious and +juridical institutions, must necessarily be either imported from +abroad, or else a fantastic sally (in rather questionable taste) +totally unrelated to the existing body of thought. I urge them to +remember that this body of thought is the slowest of growths and the +rarest of blossomings, and that if there is such a thing on the +philosophic plane as a matter of course, it is that no individual can +make more than a minute contribution to it. In fact, their conception +of clever persons parthenogenetically bringing forth complete original +cosmogonies by dint of sheer "brilliancy" is part of that ignorant +credulity which is the despair of the honest philosopher, and the +opportunity of the religious impostor. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE GOSPEL OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT +</H3> + +<P> +It is this credulity that drives me to help my critics out with Major +Barbara by telling them what to say about it. In the millionaire +Undershaft I have represented a man who has become intellectually and +spiritually as well as practically conscious of the irresistible +natural truth which we all abhor and repudiate: to wit, that the +greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty, and that our +first duty—a duty to which every other consideration should be +sacrificed—is not to be poor. "Poor but honest," "the respectable +poor," and such phrases are as intolerable and as immoral as "drunken +but amiable," "fraudulent but a good after-dinner speaker," "splendidly +criminal," or the like. Security, the chief pretence of civilization, +cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs +over everyone's head, and where the alleged protection of our persons +from violence is only an accidental result of the existence of a police +force whose real business is to force the poor man to see his children +starve whilst idle people overfeed pet dogs with the money that might +feed and clothe them. +</P> + +<P> +It is exceedingly difficult to make people realize that an evil is an +evil. For instance, we seize a man and deliberately do him a malicious +injury: say, imprison him for years. One would not suppose that it +needed any exceptional clearness of wit to recognize in this an act of +diabolical cruelty. But in England such a recognition provokes a stare +of surprise, followed by an explanation that the outrage is punishment +or justice or something else that is all right, or perhaps by a heated +attempt to argue that we should all be robbed and murdered in our beds +if such senseless villainies as sentences of imprisonment were not +committed daily. It is useless to argue that even if this were true, +which it is not, the alternative to adding crimes of our own to the +crimes from which we suffer is not helpless submission. Chickenpox is +an evil; but if I were to declare that we must either submit to it or +else repress it sternly by seizing everyone who suffers from it and +punishing them by inoculation with smallpox, I should be laughed at; +for though nobody could deny that the result would be to prevent +chickenpox to some extent by making people avoid it much more +carefully, and to effect a further apparent prevention by making them +conceal it very anxiously, yet people would have sense enough to see +that the deliberate propagation of smallpox was a creation of evil, and +must therefore be ruled out in favor of purely humane and hygienic +measures. Yet in the precisely parallel case of a man breaking into my +house and stealing my wife's diamonds I am expected as a matter of +course to steal ten years of his life, torturing him all the time. If +he tries to defeat that monstrous retaliation by shooting me, my +survivors hang him. The net result suggested by the police statistics +is that we inflict atrocious injuries on the burglars we catch in order +to make the rest take effectual precautions against detection; so that +instead of saving our wives' diamonds from burglary we only greatly +decrease our chances of ever getting them back, and increase our +chances of being shot by the robber if we are unlucky enough to disturb +him at his work. +</P> + +<P> +But the thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of +imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and +flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing +compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it +were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be +embraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be +poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let +him be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure science +instead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to +spend his urban eighteen shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen +shillings a week on his beer and his family instead of saving it up for +his old age, let him be poor. Let nothing be done for "the +undeserving": let him be poor. Serve him right! Also—somewhat +inconsistently—blessed are the poor! +</P> + +<P> +Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be weak. Let +him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease. Let him be a +standing exhibition and example of ugliness and dirt. Let him have +rickety children. Let him be cheap and let him drag his fellows down to +his price by selling himself to do their work. Let his habitations turn +our cities into poisonous congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect +our young men with the diseases of the streets and his sons revenge him +by turning the nation's manhood into scrofula, cowardice, cruelty, +hypocrisy, political imbecility, and all the other fruits of oppression +and malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still less deserving; and +let the deserving lay up for himself, not treasures in heaven, but +horrors in hell upon earth. This being so, is it really wise to let him +be poor? Would he not do ten times less harm as a prosperous burglar, +incendiary, ravisher or murderer, to the utmost limits of humanity's +comparatively negligible impulses in these directions? Suppose we were +to abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that poverty +is the one thing we will not tolerate—that every adult with less than, +say, 365 pounds a year, shall be painlessly but inexorably killed, and +every hungry half naked child forcibly fattened and clothed, would not +that be an enormous improvement on our existing system, which has +already destroyed so many civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours +in the same way? +</P> + +<P> +Is there any radicle of such legislation in our parliamentary system? +Well, there are two measures just sprouting in the political soil, +which may conceivably grow to something valuable. One is the +institution of a Legal Minimum Wage. The other, Old Age Pensions. But +there is a better plan than either of these. Some time ago I mentioned +the subject of Universal Old Age Pensions to my fellow Socialist Mr +Cobden-Sanderson, famous as an artist-craftsman in bookbinding and +printing. "Why not Universal Pensions for Life?" said Cobden-Sanderson. +In saying this, he solved the industrial problem at a stroke. At +present we say callously to each citizen: "If you want money, earn it," +as if his having or not having it were a matter that concerned himself +alone. We do not even secure for him the opportunity of earning it: on +the contrary, we allow our industry to be organized in open dependence +on the maintenance of "a reserve army of unemployed" for the sake of +"elasticity." The sensible course would be Cobden-Sanderson's: that is, +to give every man enough to live well on, so as to guarantee the +community against the possibility of a case of the malignant disease of +poverty, and then (necessarily) to see that he earned it. +</P> + +<P> +Undershaft, the hero of Major Barbara, is simply a man who, having +grasped the fact that poverty is a crime, knows that when society +offered him the alternative of poverty or a lucrative trade in death +and destruction, it offered him, not a choice between opulent villainy +and humble virtue, but between energetic enterprise and cowardly +infamy. His conduct stands the Kantian test, which Peter Shirley's does +not. Peter Shirley is what we call the honest poor man. Undershaft is +what we call the wicked rich one: Shirley is Lazarus, Undershaft Dives. +Well, the misery of the world is due to the fact that the great mass of +men act and believe as Peter Shirley acts and believes. If they acted +and believed as Undershaft acts and believes, the immediate result +would be a revolution of incalculable beneficence. To be wealthy, says +Undershaft, is with me a point of honor for which I am prepared to kill +at the risk of my own life. This preparedness is, as he says, the final +test of sincerity. Like Froissart's medieval hero, who saw that "to rob +and pill was a good life," he is not the dupe of that public sentiment +against killing which is propagated and endowed by people who would +otherwise be killed themselves, or of the mouth-honor paid to poverty +and obedience by rich and insubordinate do-nothings who want to rob the +poor without courage and command them without superiority. Froissart's +knight, in placing the achievement of a good life before all the other +duties—which indeed are not duties at all when they conflict with it, +but plain wickednesses—behaved bravely, admirably, and, in the final +analysis, public-spiritedly. Medieval society, on the other hand, +behaved very badly indeed in organizing itself so stupidly that a good +life could be achieved by robbing and pilling. If the knight's +contemporaries had been all as resolute as he, robbing and pilling +would have been the shortest way to the gallows, just as, if we were +all as resolute and clearsighted as Undershaft, an attempt to live by +means of what is called "an independent income" would be the shortest +way to the lethal chamber. But as, thanks to our political imbecility +and personal cowardice (fruits of poverty both), the best imitation of +a good life now procurable is life on an independent income, all +sensible people aim at securing such an income, and are, of course, +careful to legalize and moralize both it and all the actions and +sentiments which lead to it and support it as an institution. What else +can they do? They know, of course, that they are rich because others +are poor. But they cannot help that: it is for the poor to repudiate +poverty when they have had enough of it. The thing can be done easily +enough: the demonstrations to the contrary made by the economists, +jurists, moralists and sentimentalists hired by the rich to defend +them, or even doing the work gratuitously out of sheer folly and +abjectness, impose only on the hirers. +</P> + +<P> +The reason why the independent income-tax payers are not solid in +defence of their position is that since we are not medieval rovers +through a sparsely populated country, the poverty of those we rob +prevents our having the good life for which we sacrifice them. Rich men +or aristocrats with a developed sense of life—men like Ruskin and +William Morris and Kropotkin—have enormous social appetites and very +fastidious personal ones. They are not content with handsome houses: +they want handsome cities. They are not content with bediamonded wives +and blooming daughters: they complain because the charwoman is badly +dressed, because the laundress smells of gin, because the sempstress is +anemic, because every man they meet is not a friend and every woman not +a romance. They turn up their noses at their neighbors' drains, and are +made ill by the architecture of their neighbors' houses. Trade patterns +made to suit vulgar people do not please them (and they can get nothing +else): they cannot sleep nor sit at ease upon "slaughtered" cabinet +makers' furniture. The very air is not good enough for them: there is +too much factory smoke in it. They even demand abstract conditions: +justice, honor, a noble moral atmosphere, a mystic nexus to replace the +cash nexus. Finally they declare that though to rob and pill with your +own hand on horseback and in steel coat may have been a good life, to +rob and pill by the hands of the policeman, the bailiff, and the +soldier, and to underpay them meanly for doing it, is not a good life, +but rather fatal to all possibility of even a tolerable one. They call +on the poor to revolt, and, finding the poor shocked at their +ungentlemanliness, despairingly revile the proletariat for its "damned +wantlessness" (verdammte Bedurfnislosigkeit). +</P> + +<P> +So far, however, their attack on society has lacked simplicity. The +poor do not share their tastes nor understand their art-criticisms. +They do not want the simple life, nor the esthetic life; on the +contrary, they want very much to wallow in all the costly vulgarities +from which the elect souls among the rich turn away with loathing. It +is by surfeit and not by abstinence that they will be cured of their +hankering after unwholesome sweets. What they do dislike and despise +and are ashamed of is poverty. To ask them to fight for the difference +between the Christmas number of the Illustrated London News and the +Kelmscott Chaucer is silly: they prefer the News. The difference +between a stockbroker's cheap and dirty starched white shirt and collar +and the comparatively costly and carefully dyed blue shirt of William +Morris is a difference so disgraceful to Morris in their eyes that if +they fought on the subject at all, they would fight in defence of the +starch. "Cease to be slaves, in order that you may become cranks" is +not a very inspiring call to arms; nor is it really improved by +substituting saints for cranks. Both terms denote men of genius; and +the common man does not want to live the life of a man of genius: he +would much rather live the life of a pet collie if that were the only +alternative. But he does want more money. Whatever else he may be vague +about, he is clear about that. He may or may not prefer Major Barbara +to the Drury Lane pantomime; but he always prefers five hundred pounds +to five hundred shillings. +</P> + +<P> +Now to deplore this preference as sordid, and teach children that it is +sinful to desire money, is to strain towards the extreme possible limit +of impudence in lying, and corruption in hypocrisy. The universal +regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one +sound spot in our social conscience. Money is the most important thing +in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and +beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents +illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of +its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it +fortifies and dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened +to worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that it +becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish social +conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two things are +inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed +socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and bank notes are money. +The first duty of every citizen is to insist on having money on +reasonable terms; and this demand is not complied with by giving four +men three shillings each for ten or twelve hours' drudgery and one man +a thousand pounds for nothing. The crying need of the nation is not for +better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption +of fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and +fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money. And the evil to +be attacked is not sin, suffering, greed, priestcraft, kingcraft, +demagogy, monopoly, ignorance, drink, war, pestilence, nor any other of +the scapegoats which reformers sacrifice, but simply poverty. +</P> + +<P> +Once take your eyes from the ends of the earth and fix them on this +truth just under your nose; and Andrew Undershaft's views will not +perplex you in the least. Unless indeed his constant sense that he is +only the instrument of a Will or Life Force which uses him for purposes +wider than his own, may puzzle you. If so, that is because you are +walking either in artificial Darwinian darkness, or to mere stupidity. +All genuinely religious people have that consciousness. To them +Undershaft the Mystic will be quite intelligible, and his perfect +comprehension of his daughter the Salvationist and her lover the +Euripidean republican natural and inevitable. That, however, is not +new, even on the stage. What is new, as far as I know, is that article +in Undershaft's religion which recognizes in Money the first need and +in poverty the vilest sin of man and society. +</P> + +<P> +This dramatic conception has not, of course, been attained per saltum. +Nor has it been borrowed from Nietzsche or from any man born beyond the +Channel. The late Samuel Butler, in his own department the greatest +English writer of the latter half of the XIX century, steadily +inculcated the necessity and morality of a conscientious Laodiceanism +in religion and of an earnest and constant sense of the importance of +money. It drives one almost to despair of English literature when one +sees so extraordinary a study of English life as Butler's posthumous +Way of All Flesh making so little impression that when, some years +later, I produce plays in which Butler's extraordinarily fresh, free +and future-piercing suggestions have an obvious share, I am met with +nothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and Nietzsche, and am only too +thankful that they are not about Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand. +Really, the English do not deserve to have great men. They allowed +Butler to die practically unknown, whilst I, a comparatively +insignificant Irish journalist, was leading them by the nose into an +advertisement of me which has made my own life a burden. In Sicily +there is a Via Samuele Butler. When an English tourist sees it, he +either asks "Who the devil was Samuele Butler?" or wonders why the +Sicilians should perpetuate the memory of the author of Hudibras. +</P> + +<P> +Well, it cannot be denied that the English are only too anxious to +recognize a man of genius if somebody will kindly point him out to +them. Having pointed myself out in this manner with some success, I now +point out Samuel Butler, and trust that in consequence I shall hear a +little less in future of the novelty and foreign origin of the ideas +which are now making their way into the English theatre through plays +written by Socialists. There are living men whose originality and power +are as obvious as Butler's; and when they die that fact will be +discovered. Meanwhile I recommend them to insist on their own merits as +an important part of their own business. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE SALVATION ARMY +</H3> + +<P> +When Major Barbara was produced in London, the second act was reported +in an important northern newspaper as a withering attack on the +Salvation Army, and the despairing ejaculation of Barbara deplored by a +London daily as a tasteless blasphemy. And they were set right, not by +the professed critics of the theatre, but by religious and +philosophical publicists like Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr Stanton Coit, and +strenuous Nonconformist journalists like Mr William Stead, who not only +understood the act as well as the Salvationists themselves, but also +saw it in its relation to the religious life of the nation, a life +which seems to lie not only outside the sympathy of many of our theatre +critics, but actually outside their knowledge of society. Indeed +nothing could be more ironically curious than the confrontation Major +Barbara effected of the theatre enthusiasts with the religious +enthusiasts. On the one hand was the playgoer, always seeking pleasure, +paying exorbitantly for it, suffering unbearable discomforts for it, +and hardly ever getting it. On the other hand was the Salvationist, +repudiating gaiety and courting effort and sacrifice, yet always in the +wildest spirits, laughing, joking, singing, rejoicing, drumming, and +tambourining: his life flying by in a flash of excitement, and his +death arriving as a climax of triumph. And, if you please, the playgoer +despising the Salvationist as a joyless person, shut out from the +heaven of the theatre, self-condemned to a life of hideous gloom; and +the Salvationist mourning over the playgoer as over a prodigal with +vine leaves in his hair, careering outrageously to hell amid the +popping of champagne corks and the ribald laughter of sirens! Could +misunderstanding be more complete, or sympathy worse misplaced? +</P> + +<P> +Fortunately, the Salvationists are more accessible to the religious +character of the drama than the playgoers to the gay energy and +artistic fertility of religion. They can see, when it is pointed out to +them, that a theatre, as a place where two or three are gathered +together, takes from that divine presence an inalienable sanctity of +which the grossest and profanest farce can no more deprive it than a +hypocritical sermon by a snobbish bishop can desecrate Westminster +Abbey. But in our professional playgoers this indispensable preliminary +conception of sanctity seems wanting. They talk of actors as mimes and +mummers, and, I fear, think of dramatic authors as liars and pandars, +whose main business is the voluptuous soothing of the tired city +speculator when what he calls the serious business of the day is over. +Passion, the life of drama, means nothing to them but primitive sexual +excitement: such phrases as "impassioned poetry" or "passionate love of +truth" have fallen quite out of their vocabulary and been replaced by +"passional crime" and the like. They assume, as far as I can gather, +that people in whom passion has a larger scope are passionless and +therefore uninteresting. Consequently they come to think of religious +people as people who are not interesting and not amusing. And so, when +Barbara cuts the regular Salvation Army jokes, and snatches a kiss from +her lover across his drum, the devotees of the theatre think they ought +to appear shocked, and conclude that the whole play is an elaborate +mockery of the Army. And then either hypocritically rebuke me for +mocking, or foolishly take part in the supposed mockery! Even the +handful of mentally competent critics got into difficulties over my +demonstration of the economic deadlock in which the Salvation Army +finds itself. Some of them thought that the Army would not have taken +money from a distiller and a cannon founder: others thought it should +not have taken it: all assumed more or less definitely that it reduced +itself to absurdity or hypocrisy by taking it. On the first point the +reply of the Army itself was prompt and conclusive. As one of its +officers said, they would take money from the devil himself and be only +too glad to get it out of his hands and into God's. They gratefully +acknowledged that publicans not only give them money but allow them to +collect it in the bar—sometimes even when there is a Salvation meeting +outside preaching teetotalism. In fact, they questioned the +verisimilitude of the play, not because Mrs Baines took the money, but +because Barbara refused it. +</P> + +<P> +On the point that the Army ought not to take such money, its +justification is obvious. It must take the money because it cannot +exist without money, and there is no other money to be had. Practically +all the spare money in the country consists of a mass of rent, +interest, and profit, every penny of which is bound up with crime, +drink, prostitution, disease, and all the evil fruits of poverty, as +inextricably as with enterprise, wealth, commercial probity, and +national prosperity. The notion that you can earmark certain coins as +tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the +fact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest +young souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them +conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the +Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners +receive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating +dens; or that the most generous contributor at his last charity sermon +was an employer trading in female labor cheapened by prostitution as +unscrupulously as a hotel keeper trades in waiters' labor cheapened by +tips, or commissionaire's labor cheapened by pensions; or that the only +patron who can afford to rebuild his church or his schools or give his +boys' brigade a gymnasium or a library is the son-in-law of a Chicago +meat King, that young clergyman has, like Barbara, a very bad quarter +hour. But he cannot help himself by refusing to accept money from +anybody except sweet old ladies with independent incomes and gentle and +lovely ways of life. He has only to follow up the income of the sweet +ladies to its industrial source, and there he will find Mrs Warren's +profession and the poisonous canned meat and all the rest of it. His +own stipend has the same root. He must either share the world's guilt +or go to another planet. He must save the world's honor if he is to +save his own. This is what all the Churches find just as the Salvation +Army and Barbara find it in the play. Her discovery that she is her +father's accomplice; that the Salvation Army is the accomplice of the +distiller and the dynamite maker; that they can no more escape one +another than they can escape the air they breathe; that there is no +salvation for them through personal righteousness, but only through the +redemption of the whole nation from its vicious, lazy, competitive +anarchy: this discovery has been made by everyone except the Pharisees +and (apparently) the professional playgoers, who still wear their Tom +Hood shirts and underpay their washerwomen without the slightest +misgiving as to the elevation of their private characters, the purity +of their private atmospheres, and their right to repudiate as foreign +to themselves the coarse depravity of the garret and the slum. Not that +they mean any harm: they only desire to be, in their little private +way, what they call gentlemen. They do not understand Barbara's lesson +because they have not, like her, learnt it by taking their part in the +larger life of the nation. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BARBARA'S RETURN TO THE COLORS. +</H3> + +<P> +Barbara's return to the colors may yet provide a subject for the +dramatic historian of the future. To go back to the Salvation Army with +the knowledge that even the Salvationists themselves are not saved yet; +that poverty is not blessed, but a most damnable sin; and that when +General Booth chose Blood and Fire for the emblem of Salvation instead +of the Cross, he was perhaps better inspired than he knew: such +knowledge, for the daughter of Andrew Undershaft, will clearly lead to +something hopefuller than distributing bread and treacle at the expense +of Bodger. +</P> + +<P> +It is a very significant thing, this instinctive choice of the military +form of organization, this substitution of the drum for the organ, by +the Salvation Army. Does it not suggest that the Salvationists divine +that they must actually fight the devil instead of merely praying at +him? At present, it is true, they have not quite ascertained his +correct address. When they do, they may give a very rude shock to that +sense of security which he has gained from his experience of the fact +that hard words, even when uttered by eloquent essayists and lecturers, +or carried unanimously at enthusiastic public meetings on the motion of +eminent reformers, break no bones. It has been said that the French +Revolution was the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists. +It seems to me to have been the work of men who had observed that +virtuous indignation, caustic criticism, conclusive argument and +instructive pamphleteering, even when done by the most earnest and +witty literary geniuses, were as useless as praying, things going +steadily from bad to worse whilst the Social Contract and the pamphlets +of Voltaire were at the height of their vogue. Eventually, as we know, +perfectly respectable citizens and earnest philanthropists connived at +the September massacres because hard experience had convinced them that +if they contented themselves with appeals to humanity and patriotism, +the aristocracy, though it would read their appeals with the greatest +enjoyment and appreciation, flattering and admiring the writers, would +none the less continue to conspire with foreign monarchists to undo the +revolution and restore the old system with every circumstance of savage +vengeance and ruthless repression of popular liberties. +</P> + +<P> +The nineteenth century saw the same lesson repeated in England. It had +its Utilitarians, its Christian Socialists, its Fabians (still extant): +it had Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle, Butler, Henry George, +and Morris. And the end of all their efforts is the Chicago described +by Mr Upton Sinclair, and the London in which the people who pay to be +amused by my dramatic representation of Peter Shirley turned out to +starve at forty because there are younger slaves to be had for his +wages, do not take, and have not the slightest intention of taking, any +effective step to organize society in such a way as to make that +everyday infamy impossible. I, who have preached and pamphleteered like +any Encyclopedist, have to confess that my methods are no use, and +would be no use if I were Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens, +Carlyle, Ruskin, George, Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with +Euripides, More, Moliere, Shakespear, Beaumarchais, Swift, Goethe, +Ibsen, Tolstoy, Moses and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some +sort I actually am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The +problem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles and +artist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all the +sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept +every plunder, and submit to every oppression. Christianity, in making +a merit of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at +which the very sense of shame is lost. The Christian has been like +Dickens' doctor in the debtor's prison, who tells the newcomer of its +ineffable peace and security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of +rates, taxes, and rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties; +nothing but the rest and safety of having no further to fall. +</P> + +<P> +Yet in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom vitality +suddenly begins to germinate again. Joyousness, a sacred gift long +dethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and obscenity, rises like +a flood miraculously out of the fetid dust and mud of the slums; +rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from +people among whom the depressing noise called "sacred music" is a +standing joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in +murderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and +splendid red; Fear, which we flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and +transfigured men and women carry their gospel through a transfigured +world, calling their leader General, themselves captains and +brigadiers, and their whole body an Army: praying, but praying only for +refreshment, for strength to fight, and for needful MONEY (a notable +sign, that); preaching, but not preaching submission; daring ill-usage +and abuse, but not putting up with more of it than is inevitable; and +practising what the world will let them practise, including soap and +water, color and music. There is danger in such Activity; and where +there is danger there is hope. Our present security is nothing, and can +be nothing, but evil made irresistible. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +WEAKNESSES OF THE SALVATION ARMY. +</H3> + +<P> +For the present, however, it is not my business to flatter the +Salvation Army. Rather must I point out to it that it has almost as +many weaknesses as the Church of England itself. It is building up a +business organization which will compel it eventually to see that its +present staff of enthusiast-commanders shall be succeeded by a +bureaucracy of men of business who will be no better than bishops, and +perhaps a good deal more unscrupulous. That has always happened sooner +or later to great orders founded by saints; and the order founded by St +William Booth is not exempt from the same danger. It is even more +dependent than the Church on rich people who would cut off supplies at +once if it began to preach that indispensable revolt against poverty +which must also be a revolt against riches. It is hampered by a heavy +contingent of pious elders who are not really Salvationists at all, but +Evangelicals of the old school. It still, as Commissioner Howard +affirms, "sticks to Moses," which is flat nonsense at this time of day +if the Commissioner means, as I am afraid he does, that the Book of +Genesis contains a trustworthy scientific account of the origin of +species, and that the god to whom Jephthah sacrificed his daughter is +any less obviously a tribal idol than Dagon or Chemosh. +</P> + +<P> +Further, there is still too much other-worldliness about the Army. Like +Frederick's grenadier, the Salvationist wants to live for ever (the +most monstrous way of crying for the moon); and though it is evident to +anyone who has ever heard General Booth and his best officers that they +would work as hard for human salvation as they do at present if they +believed that death would be the end of them individually, they and +their followers have a bad habit of talking as if the Salvationists +were heroically enduring a very bad time on earth as an investment +which will bring them in dividends later on in the form, not of a +better life to come for the whole world, but of an eternity spent by +themselves personally in a sort of bliss which would bore any active +person to a second death. Surely the truth is that the Salvationists +are unusually happy people. And is it not the very diagnostic of true +salvation that it shall overcome the fear of death? Now the man who has +come to believe that there is no such thing as death, the change so +called being merely the transition to an exquisitely happy and utterly +careless life, has not overcome the fear of death at all: on the +contrary, it has overcome him so completely that he refuses to die on +any terms whatever. I do not call a Salvationist really saved until he +is ready to lie down cheerfully on the scrap heap, having paid scot and +lot and something over, and let his eternal life pass on to renew its +youth in the battalions of the future. +</P> + +<P> +Then there is the nasty lying habit called confession, which the Army +encourages because it lends itself to dramatic oratory, with plenty of +thrilling incident. For my part, when I hear a convert relating the +violences and oaths and blasphemies he was guilty of before he was +saved, making out that he was a very terrible fellow then and is the +most contrite and chastened of Christians now, I believe him no more +than I believe the millionaire who says he came up to London or Chicago +as a boy with only three halfpence in his pocket. Salvationists have +said to me that Barbara in my play would never have been taken in by so +transparent a humbug as Snobby Price; and certainly I do not think +Snobby could have taken in any experienced Salvationist on a point on +which the Salvationist did not wish to be taken in. But on the point of +conversion all Salvationists wish to be taken in; for the more obvious +the sinner the more obvious the miracle of his conversion. When you +advertize a converted burglar or reclaimed drunkard as one of the +attractions at an experience meeting, your burglar can hardly have been +too burglarious or your drunkard too drunken. As long as such +attractions are relied on, you will have your Snobbies claiming to have +beaten their mothers when they were as a matter of prosaic fact +habitually beaten by them, and your Rummies of the tamest +respectability pretending to a past of reckless and dazzling vice. Even +when confessions are sincerely autobiographic there is no reason to +assume at once that the impulse to make them is pious or the interest +of the hearers wholesome. It might as well be assumed that the poor +people who insist on showing appalling ulcers to district visitors are +convinced hygienists, or that the curiosity which sometimes welcomes +such exhibitions is a pleasant and creditable one. One is often tempted +to suggest that those who pester our police superintendents with +confessions of murder might very wisely be taken at their word and +executed, except in the few cases in which a real murderer is seeking +to be relieved of his guilt by confession and expiation. For though I +am not, I hope, an unmerciful person, I do not think that the +inexorability of the deed once done should be disguised by any ritual, +whether in the confessional or on the scaffold. +</P> + +<P> +And here my disagreement with the Salvation Army, and with all +propagandists of the Cross (to which I object as I object to all +gibbets) becomes deep indeed. Forgiveness, absolution, atonement, are +figments: punishment is only a pretence of cancelling one crime by +another; and you can no more have forgiveness without vindictiveness +than you can have a cure without a disease. You will never get a high +morality from people who conceive that their misdeeds are revocable and +pardonable, or in a society where absolution and expiation are +officially provided for us all. The demand may be very real; but the +supply is spurious. Thus Bill Walker, in my play, having assaulted the +Salvation Lass, presently finds himself overwhelmed with an intolerable +conviction of sin under the skilled treatment of Barbara. Straightway +he begins to try to unassault the lass and deruffianize his deed, first +by getting punished for it in kind, and, when that relief is denied +him, by fining himself a pound to compensate the girl. He is foiled +both ways. He finds the Salvation Army as inexorable as fact itself. It +will not punish him: it will not take his money. It will not tolerate a +redeemed ruffian: it leaves him no means of salvation except ceasing to +be a ruffian. In doing this, the Salvation Army instinctively grasps +the central truth of Christianity and discards its central +superstition: that central truth being the vanity of revenge and +punishment, and that central superstition the salvation of the world by +the gibbet. +</P> + +<P> +For, be it noted, Bill has assaulted an old and starving woman also; +and for this worse offence he feels no remorse whatever, because she +makes it clear that her malice is as great as his own. "Let her have +the law of me, as she said she would," says Bill: "what I done to her +is no more on what you might call my conscience than sticking a pig." +This shows a perfectly natural and wholesome state of mind on his part. +The old woman, like the law she threatens him with, is perfectly ready +to play the game of retaliation with him: to rob him if he steals, to +flog him if he strikes, to murder him if he kills. By example and +precept the law and public opinion teach him to impose his will on +others by anger, violence, and cruelty, and to wipe off the moral score +by punishment. That is sound Crosstianity. But this Crosstianity has +got entangled with something which Barbara calls Christianity, and +which unexpectedly causes her to refuse to play the hangman's game of +Satan casting out Satan. She refuses to prosecute a drunken ruffian; +she converses on equal terms with a blackguard whom no lady could be +seen speaking to in the public street: in short, she behaves as +illegally and unbecomingly as possible under the circumstances. Bill's +conscience reacts to this just as naturally as it does to the old +woman's threats. He is placed in a position of unbearable moral +inferiority, and strives by every means in his power to escape from it, +whilst he is still quite ready to meet the abuse of the old woman by +attempting to smash a mug on her face. And that is the triumphant +justification of Barbara's Christianity as against our system of +judicial punishment and the vindictive villain-thrashings and "poetic +justice" of the romantic stage. +</P> + +<P> +For the credit of literature it must be pointed out that the situation +is only partly novel. Victor Hugo long ago gave us the epic of the +convict and the bishop's candlesticks, of the Crosstian policeman +annihilated by his encounter with the Christian Valjean. But Bill +Walker is not, like Valjean, romantically changed from a demon into an +angel. There are millions of Bill Walkers in all classes of society +to-day; and the point which I, as a professor of natural psychology, +desire to demonstrate, is that Bill, without any change in his +character whatsoever, will react one way to one sort of treatment and +another way to another. +</P> + +<P> +In proof I might point to the sensational object lesson provided by our +commercial millionaires to-day. They begin as brigands: merciless, +unscrupulous, dealing out ruin and death and slavery to their +competitors and employees, and facing desperately the worst that their +competitors can do to them. The history of the English factories, the +American trusts, the exploitation of African gold, diamonds, ivory and +rubber, outdoes in villainy the worst that has ever been imagined of +the buccaneers of the Spanish Main. Captain Kidd would have marooned a +modern Trust magnate for conduct unworthy of a gentleman of fortune. +The law every day seizes on unsuccessful scoundrels of this type and +punishes them with a cruelty worse than their own, with the result that +they come out of the torture house more dangerous than they went in, +and renew their evil doing (nobody will employ them at anything else) +until they are again seized, again tormented, and again let loose, with +the same result. +</P> + +<P> +But the successful scoundrel is dealt with very differently, and very +Christianly. He is not only forgiven: he is idolized, respected, made +much of, all but worshipped. Society returns him good for evil in the +most extravagant overmeasure. And with what result? He begins to +idolize himself, to respect himself, to live up to the treatment he +receives. He preaches sermons; he writes books of the most edifying +advice to young men, and actually persuades himself that he got on by +taking his own advice; he endows educational institutions; he supports +charities; he dies finally in the odor of sanctity, leaving a will +which is a monument of public spirit and bounty. And all this without +any change in his character. The spots of the leopard and the stripes +of the tiger are as brilliant as ever; but the conduct of the world +towards him has changed; and his conduct has changed accordingly. You +have only to reverse your attitude towards him—to lay hands on his +property, revile him, assault him, and he will be a brigand again in a +moment, as ready to crush you as you are to crush him, and quite as +full of pretentious moral reasons for doing it. +</P> + +<P> +In short, when Major Barbara says that there are no scoundrels, she is +right: there are no absolute scoundrels, though there are impracticable +people of whom I shall treat presently. Every practicable man (and +woman) is a potential scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a +man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of +what he does, depends on his circumstances. The characteristics that +ruin a man in one class make him eminent in another. The characters +that behave differently in different circumstances behave alike in +similar circumstances. Take a common English character like that of +Bill Walker. We meet Bill everywhere: on the judicial bench, on the +episcopal bench, in the Privy Council, at the War Office and Admiralty, +as well as in the Old Bailey dock or in the ranks of casual unskilled +labor. And the morality of Bill's characteristics varies with these +various circumstances. The faults of the burglar are the qualities of +the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk +his situation. In short, though character is independent of +circumstances, conduct is not; and our moral judgments of character are +not: both are circumstantial. Take any condition of life in which the +circumstances are for a mass of men practically alike: felony, the +House of Lords, the factory, the stables, the gipsy encampment or where +you please! In spite of diversity of character and temperament, the +conduct and morals of the individuals in each group are as predicable +and as alike in the main as if they were a flock of sheep, morals being +mostly only social habits and circumstantial necessities. Strong people +know this and count upon it. In nothing have the master-minds of the +world been distinguished from the ordinary suburban season-ticket +holder more than in their straightforward perception of the fact that +mankind is practically a single species, and not a menagerie of +gentlemen and bounders, villains and heroes, cowards and daredevils, +peers and peasants, grocers and aristocrats, artisans and laborers, +washerwomen and duchesses, in which all the grades of income and caste +represent distinct animals who must not be introduced to one another or +intermarry. Napoleon constructing a galaxy of generals and courtiers, +and even of monarchs, out of his collection of social nobodies; Julius +Caesar appointing as governor of Egypt the son of a freedman—one who +but a short time before would have been legally disqualified for the +post even of a private soldier in the Roman army; Louis XI making his +barber his privy councillor: all these had in their different ways a +firm hold of the scientific fact of human equality, expressed by +Barbara in the Christian formula that all men are children of one +father. A man who believes that men are naturally divided into upper +and lower and middle classes morally is making exactly the same mistake +as the man who believes that they are naturally divided in the same way +socially. And just as our persistent attempts to found political +institutions on a basis of social inequality have always produced long +periods of destructive friction relieved from time to time by violent +explosions of revolution; so the attempt—will Americans please +note—to found moral institutions on a basis of moral inequality can +lead to nothing but unnatural Reigns of the Saints relieved by +licentious Restorations; to Americans who have made divorce a public +institution turning the face of Europe into one huge sardonic smile by +refusing to stay in the same hotel with a Russian man of genius who has +changed wives without the sanction of South Dakota; to grotesque +hypocrisy, cruel persecution, and final utter confusion of conventions +and compliances with benevolence and respectability. It is quite +useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are +born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of +itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his +moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every +man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment, which any fool can +trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or +as a rascal. This is the lesson Democracy has to learn before it can +become anything but the most oppressive of all the priesthoods. +</P> + +<P> +Let us now return to Bill Walker and his case of conscience against the +Salvation Army. Major Barbara, not being a modern Tetzel, or the +treasurer of a hospital, refuses to sell Bill absolution for a +sovereign. Unfortunately, what the Army can afford to refuse in the +case of Bill Walker, it cannot refuse in the case of Bodger. Bodger is +master of the situation because he holds the purse strings. "Strive as +you will," says Bodger, in effect: "me you cannot do without. You +cannot save Bill Walker without my money." And the Army answers, quite +rightly under the circumstances, "We will take money from the devil +himself sooner than abandon the work of Salvation." So Bodger pays his +conscience-money and gets the absolution that is refused to Bill. In +real life Bill would perhaps never know this. But I, the dramatist, +whose business it is to show the connexion between things that seem +apart and unrelated in the haphazard order of events in real life, have +contrived to make it known to Bill, with the result that the Salvation +Army loses its hold of him at once. +</P> + +<P> +But Bill may not be lost, for all that. He is still in the grip of the +facts and of his own conscience, and may find his taste for +blackguardism permanently spoiled. Still, I cannot guarantee that happy +ending. Let anyone walk through the poorer quarters of our cities when +the men are not working, but resting and chewing the cud of their +reflections; and he will find that there is one expression on every +mature face: the expression of cynicism. The discovery made by Bill +Walker about the Salvation Army has been made by every one of them. +They have found that every man has his price; and they have been +foolishly or corruptly taught to mistrust and despise him for that +necessary and salutary condition of social existence. When they learn +that General Booth, too, has his price, they do not admire him because +it is a high one, and admit the need of organizing society so that he +shall get it in an honorable way: they conclude that his character is +unsound and that all religious men are hypocrites and allies of their +sweaters and oppressors. They know that the large subscriptions which +help to support the Army are endowments, not of religion, but of the +wicked doctrine of docility in poverty and humility under oppression; +and they are rent by the most agonizing of all the doubts of the soul, +the doubt whether their true salvation must not come from their most +abhorrent passions, from murder, envy, greed, stubbornness, rage, and +terrorism, rather than from public spirit, reasonableness, humanity, +generosity, tenderness, delicacy, pity and kindness. The confirmation +of that doubt, at which our newspapers have been working so hard for +years past, is the morality of militarism; and the justification of +militarism is that circumstances may at any time make it the true +morality of the moment. It is by producing such moments that we produce +violent and sanguinary revolutions, such as the one now in progress in +Russia and the one which Capitalism in England and America is daily and +diligently provoking. +</P> + +<P> +At such moments it becomes the duty of the Churches to evoke all the +powers of destruction against the existing order. But if they do this, +the existing order must forcibly suppress them. Churches are suffered +to exist only on condition that they preach submission to the State as +at present capitalistically organized. The Church of England itself is +compelled to add to the thirty-six articles in which it formulates its +religious tenets, three more in which it apologetically protests that +the moment any of these articles comes in conflict with the State it is +to be entirely renounced, abjured, violated, abrogated and abhorred, +the policeman being a much more important person than any of the +Persons of the Trinity. And this is why no tolerated Church nor +Salvation Army can ever win the entire confidence of the poor. It must +be on the side of the police and the military, no matter what it +believes or disbelieves; and as the police and the military are the +instruments by which the rich rob and oppress the poor (on legal and +moral principles made for the purpose), it is not possible to be on the +side of the poor and of the police at the same time. Indeed the +religious bodies, as the almoners of the rich, become a sort of +auxiliary police, taking off the insurrectionary edge of poverty with +coals and blankets, bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the +victims with hopes of immense and inexpensive happiness in another +world when the process of working them to premature death in the +service of the rich is complete in this. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM +</H3> + +<P> +Such is the false position from which neither the Salvation Army nor +the Church of England nor any other religious organization whatever can +escape except through a reconstitution of society. Nor can they merely +endure the State passively, washing their hands of its sins. The State +is constantly forcing the consciences of men by violence and cruelty. +Not content with exacting money from us for the maintenance of its +soldiers and policemen, its gaolers and executioners, it forces us to +take an active personal part in its proceedings on pain of becoming +ourselves the victims of its violence. As I write these lines, a +sensational example is given to the world. A royal marriage has been +celebrated, first by sacrament in a cathedral, and then by a bullfight +having for its main amusement the spectacle of horses gored and +disembowelled by the bull, after which, when the bull is so exhausted +as to be no longer dangerous, he is killed by a cautious matador. But +the ironic contrast between the bullfight and the sacrament of marriage +does not move anyone. Another contrast—that between the splendor, the +happiness, the atmosphere of kindly admiration surrounding the young +couple, and the price paid for it under our abominable social +arrangements in the misery, squalor and degradation of millions of +other young couples—is drawn at the same moment by a novelist, Mr +Upton Sinclair, who chips a corner of the veneering from the huge meat +packing industries of Chicago, and shows it to us as a sample of what +is going on all over the world underneath the top layer of prosperous +plutocracy. One man is sufficiently moved by that contrast to pay his +own life as the price of one terrible blow at the responsible parties. +Unhappily his poverty leaves him also ignorant enough to be duped by +the pretence that the innocent young bride and bridegroom, put forth +and crowned by plutocracy as the heads of a State in which they have +less personal power than any policeman, and less influence than any +chairman of a trust, are responsible. At them accordingly he launches +his sixpennorth of fulminate, missing his mark, but scattering the +bowels of as many horses as any bull in the arena, and slaying +twenty-three persons, besides wounding ninety-nine. And of all these, +the horses alone are innocent of the guilt he is avenging: had he blown +all Madrid to atoms with every adult person in it, not one could have +escaped the charge of being an accessory, before, at, and after the +fact, to poverty and prostitution, to such wholesale massacre of +infants as Herod never dreamt of, to plague, pestilence and famine, +battle, murder and lingering death—perhaps not one who had not helped, +through example, precept, connivance, and even clamor, to teach the +dynamiter his well-learnt gospel of hatred and vengeance, by approving +every day of sentences of years of imprisonment so infernal in its +unnatural stupidity and panic-stricken cruelty, that their advocates +can disavow neither the dagger nor the bomb without stripping the mask +of justice and humanity from themselves also. Be it noted that at this +very moment there appears the biography of one of our dukes, who, being +Scotch, could argue about politics, and therefore stood out as a great +brain among our aristocrats. And what, if you please, was his grace's +favorite historical episode, which he declared he never read without +intense satisfaction? Why, the young General Bonapart's pounding of the +Paris mob to pieces in 1795, called in playful approval by our +respectable classes "the whiff of grapeshot," though Napoleon, to do +him justice, took a deeper view of it, and would fain have had it +forgotten. And since the Duke of Argyll was not a demon, but a man of +like passions with ourselves, by no means rancorous or cruel as men go, +who can doubt that all over the world proletarians of the ducal kidney +are now revelling in "the whiff of dynamite" (the flavor of the joke +seems to evaporate a little, does it not?) because it was aimed at the +class they hate even as our argute duke hated what he called the mob. +</P> + +<P> +In such an atmosphere there can be only one sequel to the Madrid +explosion. All Europe burns to emulate it. Vengeance! More blood! Tear +"the Anarchist beast" to shreds. Drag him to the scaffold. Imprison him +for life. Let all civilized States band together to drive his like off +the face of the earth; and if any State refuses to join, make war on +it. This time the leading London newspaper, anti-Liberal and therefore +anti-Russian in politics, does not say "Serve you right" to the +victims, as it did, in effect, when Bobrikofl; and De Plehve, and Grand +Duke Sergius, were in the same manner unofficially fulminated into +fragments. No: fulminate our rivals in Asia by all means, ye brave +Russian revolutionaries; but to aim at an English princess-monstrous! +hideous! hound down the wretch to his doom; and observe, please, that +we are a civilized and merciful people, and, however much we may regret +it, must not treat him as Ravaillac and Damiens were treated. And +meanwhile, since we have not yet caught him, let us soothe our +quivering nerves with the bullfight, and comment in a courtly way on +the unfailing tact and good taste of the ladies of our royal houses, +who, though presumably of full normal natural tenderness, have been so +effectually broken in to fashionable routine that they can be taken to +see the horses slaughtered as helplessly as they could no doubt be +taken to a gladiator show, if that happened to be the mode just now. +</P> + +<P> +Strangely enough, in the midst of this raging fire of malice, the one +man who still has faith in the kindness and intelligence of human +nature is the fulminator, now a hunted wretch, with nothing, +apparently, to secure his triumph over all the prisons and scaffolds of +infuriate Europe except the revolver in his pocket and his readiness to +discharge it at a moment's notice into his own or any other head. Think +of him setting out to find a gentleman and a Christian in the multitude +of human wolves howling for his blood. Think also of this: that at the +very first essay he finds what he seeks, a veritable grandee of Spain, +a noble, high-thinking, unterrified, malice-void soul, in the guise—of +all masquerades in the world!—of a modern editor. The Anarchist wolf, +flying from the wolves of plutocracy, throws himself on the honor of +the man. The man, not being a wolf (nor a London editor), and therefore +not having enough sympathy with his exploit to be made bloodthirsty by +it, does not throw him back to the pursuing wolves—gives him, instead, +what help he can to escape, and sends him off acquainted at last with a +force that goes deeper than dynamite, though you cannot make so much of +it for sixpence. That righteous and honorable high human deed is not +wasted on Europe, let us hope, though it benefits the fugitive wolf +only for a moment. The plutocratic wolves presently smell him out. The +fugitive shoots the unlucky wolf whose nose is nearest; shoots himself; +and then convinces the world, by his photograph, that he was no +monstrous freak of reversion to the tiger, but a good looking young man +with nothing abnormal about him except his appalling courage and +resolution (that is why the terrified shriek Coward at him): one to +whom murdering a happy young couple on their wedding morning would have +been an unthinkably unnatural abomination under rational and kindly +human circumstances. +</P> + +<P> +Then comes the climax of irony and blind stupidity. The wolves, balked +of their meal of fellow-wolf, turn on the man, and proceed to torture +him, after their manner, by imprisonment, for refusing to fasten his +teeth in the throat of the dynamiter and hold him down until they came +to finish him. +</P> + +<P> +Thus, you see, a man may not be a gentleman nowadays even if he wishes +to. As to being a Christian, he is allowed some latitude in that +matter, because, I repeat, Christianity has two faces. Popular +Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a +sanguinary execution after torture, for its central mystery an insane +vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and +profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of Equality, +and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance, often politely +called punishment or justice. The gibbet part of Christianity is +tolerated. The other is criminal felony. Connoisseurs in irony are well +aware of the fact that the only editor in England who denounces +punishment as radically wrong, also repudiates Christianity; calls his +paper The Freethinker; and has been imprisoned for two years for +blasphemy. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SANE CONCLUSIONS +</H3> + +<P> +And now I must ask the excited reader not to lose his head on one side +or the other, but to draw a sane moral from these grim absurdities. It +is not good sense to propose that laws against crime should apply to +principals only and not to accessories whose consent, counsel, or +silence may secure impunity to the principal. If you institute +punishment as part of the law, you must punish people for refusing to +punish. If you have a police, part of its duty must be to compel +everybody to assist the police. No doubt if your laws are unjust, and +your policemen agents of oppression, the result will be an unbearable +violation of the private consciences of citizens. But that cannot be +helped: the remedy is, not to license everybody to thwart the law if +they please, but to make laws that will command the public assent, and +not to deal cruelly and stupidly with lawbreakers. Everybody +disapproves of burglars; but the modern burglar, when caught and +overpowered by a householder usually appeals, and often, let us hope, +with success, to his captor not to deliver him over to the useless +horrors of penal servitude. In other cases the lawbreaker escapes +because those who could give him up do not consider his breech of the +law a guilty action. Sometimes, even, private tribunals are formed in +opposition to the official tribunals; and these private tribunals +employ assassins as executioners, as was done, for example, by Mahomet +before he had established his power officially, and by the Ribbon +lodges of Ireland in their long struggle with the landlords. Under such +circumstances, the assassin goes free although everybody in the +district knows who he is and what he has done. They do not betray him, +partly because they justify him exactly as the regular Government +justifies its official executioner, and partly because they would +themselves be assassinated if they betrayed him: another method learnt +from the official government. Given a tribunal, employing a slayer who +has no personal quarrel with the slain; and there is clearly no moral +difference between official and unofficial killing. +</P> + +<P> +In short, all men are anarchists with regard to laws which are against +their consciences, either in the preamble or in the penalty. In London +our worst anarchists are the magistrates, because many of them are so +old and ignorant that when they are called upon to administer any law +that is based on ideas or knowledge less than half a century old, they +disagree with it, and being mere ordinary homebred private Englishmen +without any respect for law in the abstract, naively set the example of +violating it. In this instance the man lags behind the law; but when +the law lags behind the man, he becomes equally an anarchist. When some +huge change in social conditions, such as the industrial revolution of +the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, throws our legal and +industrial institutions out of date, Anarchism becomes almost a +religion. The whole force of the most energetic geniuses of the time in +philosophy, economics, and art, concentrates itself on demonstrations +and reminders that morality and law are only conventions, fallible and +continually obsolescing. Tragedies in which the heroes are bandits, and +comedies in which law-abiding and conventionally moral folk are +compelled to satirize themselves by outraging the conscience of the +spectators every time they do their duty, appear simultaneously with +economic treatises entitled "What is Property? Theft!" and with +histories of "The Conflict between Religion and Science." +</P> + +<P> +Now this is not a healthy state of things. The advantages of living in +society are proportionate, not to the freedom of the individual from a +code, but to the complexity and subtlety of the code he is prepared not +only to accept but to uphold as a matter of such vital importance that +a lawbreaker at large is hardly to be tolerated on any plea. Such an +attitude becomes impossible when the only men who can make themselves +heard and remembered throughout the world spend all their energy in +raising our gorge against current law, current morality, current +respect ability, and legal property. The ordinary man, uneducated in +social theory even when he is schooled in Latin verse, cannot be set +against all the laws of his country and yet persuaded to regard law in +the abstract as vitally necessary to society. Once he is brought to +repudiate the laws and institutions he knows, he will repudiate the +very conception of law and the very groundwork of institutions, +ridiculing human rights, extolling brainless methods as "historical," +and tolerating nothing except pure empiricism in conduct, with dynamite +as the basis of politics and vivisection as the basis of science. That +is hideous; but what is to be done? Here am I, for instance, by class a +respectable man, by common sense a hater of waste and disorder, by +intellectual constitution legally minded to the verge of pedantry, and +by temperament apprehensive and economically disposed to the limit of +old-maidishness; yet I am, and have always been, and shall now always +be, a revolutionary writer, because our laws make law impossible; our +liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our +morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by +inexperienced or malexperienced dupes, our power wielded by cowards and +weaklings, and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the +existing order for good reasons; but that does not make my attacks any +less encouraging or helpful to people who are its enemies for bad +reasons. The existing order may shriek that if I tell the truth about +it, some foolish person may drive it to become still worse by trying to +assassinate it. I cannot help that, even if I could see what worse it +could do than it is already doing. And the disadvantage of that worst +even from its own point of view is that society, with all its prisons +and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in +the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in +the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating +explosives which every Russian student can make, and every Russian +grenadier has learnt to handle in Manchuria, lies in the fact that +brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their +skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough +to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their +consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, simply not to +outrage their consciences. +</P> + +<P> +Do not be afraid that they will not make allowances. All men make very +large allowances indeed before they stake their own lives in a war to +the death with society. Nobody demands or expects the millennium. But +there are two things that must be set right, or we shall perish, like +Rome, of soul atrophy disguised as empire. The first is, that the daily +ceremony of dividing the wealth of the country among its inhabitants +shall be so conducted that no crumb shall go to any able-bodied adults +who are not producing by their personal exertions not only a full +equivalent for what they take, but a surplus sufficient to provide for +their superannuation and pay back the debt due for their nurture. +</P> + +<P> +The second is that the deliberate infliction of malicious injuries +which now goes on under the name of punishment be abandoned; so that +the thief, the ruffian, the gambler, and the beggar, may without +inhumanity be handed over to the law, and made to understand that a +State which is too humane to punish will also be too thrifty to waste +the life of honest men in watching or restraining dishonest ones. That +is why we do not imprison dogs. We even take our chance of their first +bite. But if a dog delights to bark and bite, it goes to the lethal +chamber. That seems to me sensible. To allow the dog to expiate his +bite by a period of torment, and then let him loose in a much more +savage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite again and +expiate again, having meanwhile spent a great deal of human life and +happiness in the task of chaining and feeding and tormenting him, seems +to me idiotic and superstitious. Yet that is what we do to men who bark +and bite and steal. It would be far more sensible to put up with their +vices, as we put up with their illnesses, until they give more trouble +than they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and +expressions of sympathy, and some generosity in complying with their +last wishes, then, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of +them. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to expiate their +misdeeds by a manufactured penalty, to subscribe to a charity, or to +compensate the victims. If there is to be no punishment there can be no +forgiveness. We shall never have real moral responsibility until +everyone knows that his deeds are irrevocable, and that his life +depends on his usefulness. Hitherto, alas! humanity has never dared +face these hard facts. We frantically scatter conscience money and +invent systems of conscience banking, with expiatory penalties, +atonements, redemptions, salvations, hospital subscription lists and +what not, to enable us to contract-out of the moral code. Not content +with the old scapegoat and sacrificial lamb, we deify human saviors, +and pray to miraculous virgin intercessors. We attribute mercy to the +inexorable; soothe our consciences after committing murder by throwing +ourselves on the bosom of divine love; and shrink even from our own +gallows because we are forced to admit that it, at least, is +irrevocable—as if one hour of imprisonment were not as irrevocable as +any execution! +</P> + +<P> +If a man cannot look evil in the face without illusion, he will never +know what it really is, or combat it effectually. The few men who have +been able (relatively) to do this have been called cynics, and have +sometimes had an abnormal share of evil in themselves, corresponding to +the abnormal strength of their minds; but they have never done mischief +unless they intended to do it. That is why great scoundrels have been +beneficent rulers whilst amiable and privately harmless monarchs have +ruined their countries by trusting to the hocus-pocus of innocence and +guilt, reward and punishment, virtuous indignation and pardon, instead +of standing up to the facts without either malice or mercy. Major +Barbara stands up to Bill Walker in that way, with the result that the +ruffian who cannot get hated, has to hate himself. To relieve this +agony be tries to get punished; but the Salvationist whom he tries to +provoke is as merciless as Barbara, and only prays for him. Then he +tries to pay, but can get nobody to take his money. His doom is the +doom of Cain, who, failing to find either a savior, a policeman, or an +almoner to help him to pretend that his brother's blood no longer cried +from the ground, had to live and die a murderer. Cain took care not to +commit another murder, unlike our railway shareholders (I am one) who +kill and maim shunters by hundreds to save the cost of automatic +couplings, and make atonement by annual subscriptions to deserving +charities. Had Cain been allowed to pay off his score, he might +possibly have killed Adam and Eve for the mere sake of a second +luxurious reconciliation with God afterwards. Bodger, you may depend on +it, will go on to the end of his life poisoning people with bad whisky, +because he can always depend on the Salvation Army or the Church of +England to negotiate a redemption for him in consideration of a +trifling percentage of his profits. There is a third condition too, +which must be fulfilled before the great teachers of the world will +cease to scoff at its religions. Creeds must become intellectually +honest. At present there is not a single credible established religion +in the world. That is perhaps the most stupendous fact in the whole +world-situation. This play of mine, Major Barbara, is, I hope, both +true and inspired; but whoever says that it all happened, and that +faith in it and understanding of it consist in believing that it is a +record of an actual occurrence, is, to speak according to Scripture, a +fool and a liar, and is hereby solemnly denounced and cursed as such by +me, the author, to all posterity. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +London, June 1906. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara, by +George Bernard Shaw + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAW'S PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA *** + +***** This file should be named 3789-h.htm or 3789-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/3789/ + +Produced by Eve Sobol. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara + +Author: George Bernard Shaw + +Posting Date: May 19, 2009 [EBook #3789] +Release Date: February, 2000 +First Posted: September 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAW'S PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA *** + + + + +Produced by Eve Sobol. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA: FIRST AID TO CRITICS + + +BERNARD SHAW + + + + +N.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are not +by me, or even directly by Euripides. They are by Professor Gilbert +Murray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into our dramatic +literature with all the impulsive power of an original work shortly +before Major Barbara was begun. The play, indeed, stands indebted to +him in more ways than one. + +G. B. S. + + + +Before dealing with the deeper aspects of Major Barbara, let me, for +the credit of English literature, make a protest against an unpatriotic +habit into which many of my critics have fallen. Whenever my view +strikes them as being at all outside the range of, say, an ordinary +suburban churchwarden, they conclude that I am echoing Schopenhauer, +Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, or some other heresiarch in +northern or eastern Europe. + +I confess there is something flattering in this simple faith in my +accomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as a philosopher. But I +cannot tolerate the assumption that life and literature is so poor in +these islands that we must go abroad for all dramatic material that is +not common and all ideas that are not superficial. I therefore venture +to put my critics in possession of certain facts concerning my contact +with modern ideas. + +About half a century ago, an Irish novelist, Charles Lever, wrote a +story entitled A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. It was published by +Charles Dickens in Household Words, and proved so strange to the public +taste that Dickens pressed Lever to make short work of it. I read +scraps of this novel when I was a child; and it made an enduring +impression on me. The hero was a very romantic hero, trying to live +bravely, chivalrously, and powerfully by dint of mere romance-fed +imagination, without courage, without means, without knowledge, without +skill, without anything real except his bodily appetites. Even in my +childhood I found in this poor devil's unsuccessful encounters with the +facts of life, a poignant quality that romantic fiction lacked. The +book, in spite of its first failure, is not dead: I saw its title the +other day in the catalogue of Tauchnitz. + +Now why is it that when I also deal in the tragi-comic irony of the +conflict between real life and the romantic imagination, no critic ever +affiliates me to my countryman and immediate forerunner, Charles Lever, +whilst they confidently derive me from a Norwegian author of whose +language I do not know three words, and of whom I knew nothing until +years after the Shavian Anschauung was already unequivocally declared +in books full of what came, ten years later, to be perfunctorily +labelled Ibsenism. I was not Ibsenist even at second hand; for Lever, +though he may have read Henri Beyle, alias Stendhal, certainly never +read Ibsen. Of the books that made Lever popular, such as Charles +O'Malley and Harry Lorrequer, I know nothing but the names and some of +the illustrations. But the story of the day's ride and life's romance +of Potts (claiming alliance with Pozzo di Borgo) caught me and +fascinated me as something strange and significant, though I already +knew all about Alnaschar and Don Quixote and Simon Tappertit and many +another romantic hero mocked by reality. From the plays of Aristophanes +to the tales of Stevenson that mockery has been made familiar to all +who are properly saturated with letters. + +Where, then, was the novelty in Lever's tale? Partly, I think, in a new +seriousness in dealing with Potts's disease. Formerly, the contrast +between madness and sanity was deemed comic: Hogarth shows us how +fashionable people went in parties to Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics. +I myself have had a village idiot exhibited to me as some thing +irresistibly funny. On the stage the madman was once a regular comic +figure; that was how Hamlet got his opportunity before Shakespear +touched him. The originality of Shakespear's version lay in his taking +the lunatic sympathetically and seriously, and thereby making an +advance towards the eastern consciousness of the fact that lunacy may +be inspiration in disguise, since a man who has more brains than his +fellows necessarily appears as mad to them as one who has less. But +Shakespear did not do for Pistol and Parolles what he did for Hamlet. +The particular sort of madman they represented, the romantic +makebeliever, lay outside the pale of sympathy in literature: he was +pitilessly despised and ridiculed here as he was in the east under the +name of Alnaschar, and was doomed to be, centuries later, under the +name of Simon Tappertit. When Cervantes relented over Don Quixote, and +Dickens relented over Pickwick, they did not become impartial: they +simply changed sides, and became friends and apologists where they had +formerly been mockers. + +In Lever's story there is a real change of attitude. There is no +relenting towards Potts: he never gains our affections like Don Quixote +and Pickwick: he has not even the infatuate courage of Tappertit. But +we dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we recognize ourselves in +Potts. We may, some of us, have enough nerve, enough muscle, enough +luck, enough tact or skill or address or knowledge to carry things off +better than he did; to impose on the people who saw through him; to +fascinate Katinka (who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the end of the +story); but for all that, we know that Potts plays an enormous part in +ourselves and in the world, and that the social problem is not a +problem of story-book heroes of the older pattern, but a problem of +Pottses, and of how to make men of them. To fall back on my old phrase, +we have the feeling--one that Alnaschar, Pistol, Parolles, and +Tappertit never gave us--that Potts is a piece of really scientific +natural history as distinguished from comic story telling. His author +is not throwing a stone at a creature of another and inferior order, +but making a confession, with the effect that the stone hits everybody +full in the conscience and causes their self-esteem to smart very +sorely. Hence the failure of Lever's book to please the readers of +Household Words. That pain in the self-esteem nowadays causes critics +to raise a cry of Ibsenism. I therefore assure them that the sensation +first came to me from Lever and may have come to him from Beyle, or at +least out of the Stendhalian atmosphere. I exclude the hypothesis of +complete originality on Lever's part, because a man can no more be +completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air. + +Another mistake as to my literary ancestry is made whenever I violate +the romantic convention that all women are angels when they are not +devils; that they are better looking than men; that their part in +courtship is entirely passive; and that the human female form is the +most beautiful object in nature. Schopenhauer wrote a splenetic essay +which, as it is neither polite nor profound, was probably intended to +knock this nonsense violently on the head. A sentence denouncing the +idolized form as ugly has been largely quoted. The English critics have +read that sentence; and I must here affirm, with as much gentleness as +the implication will bear, that it has yet to be proved that they have +dipped any deeper. At all events, whenever an English playwright +represents a young and marriageable woman as being anything but a +romantic heroine, he is disposed of without further thought as an echo +of Schopenhauer. My own case is a specially hard one, because, when I +implore the critics who are obsessed with the Schopenhaurian formula to +remember that playwrights, like sculptors, study their figures from +life, and not from philosophic essays, they reply passionately that I +am not a playwright and that my stage figures do not live. But even so, +I may and do ask them why, if they must give the credit of my plays to +a philosopher, they do not give it to an English philosopher? Long +before I ever read a word by Schopenhauer, or even knew whether he was +a philosopher or a chemist, the Socialist revival of the +eighteen-eighties brought me into contact, both literary and personal, +with Mr Ernest Belfort Bax, an English Socialist and philosophic +essayist, whose handling of modern feminism would provoke romantic +protests from Schopenhauer himself, or even Strindberg. As a matter of +fact I hardly noticed Schopenhauer's disparagements of women when they +came under my notice later on, so thoroughly had Mr Bax familiarized me +with the homoist attitude, and forced me to recognize the extent to +which public opinion, and consequently legislation and jurisprudence, +is corrupted by feminist sentiment. + +But Mr Bax's essays were not confined to the Feminist question. He was +a ruthless critic of current morality. Other writers have gained +sympathy for dramatic criminals by eliciting the alleged "soul of +goodness in things evil"; but Mr Bax would propound some quite +undramatic and apparently shabby violation of our commercial law and +morality, and not merely defend it with the most disconcerting +ingenuity, but actually prove it to be a positive duty that nothing but +the certainty of police persecution should prevent every right-minded +man from at once doing on principle. The Socialists were naturally +shocked, being for the most part morbidly moral people; but at all +events they were saved later on from the delusion that nobody but +Nietzsche had ever challenged our mercanto-Christian morality. I first +heard the name of Nietzsche from a German mathematician, Miss +Borchardt, who had read my Quintessence of Ibsenism, and told me that +she saw what I had been reading: namely, Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut +and Bose. Which I protest I had never seen, and could not have read +with any comfort, for want of the necessary German, if I had seen it. + +Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, is the victim in England of a single much +quoted sentence containing the phrase "big blonde beast." On the +strength of this alliteration it is assumed that Nietzsche gained his +European reputation by a senseless glorification of selfish bullying as +the rule of life, just as it is assumed, on the strength of the single +word Superman (Ubermensch) borrowed by me from Nietzsche, that I look +for the salvation of society to the despotism of a single Napoleonic +Superman, in spite of my careful demonstration of the folly of that +outworn infatuation. But even the less recklessly superficial critics +seem to believe that the modern objection to Christianity as a +pernicious slave-morality was first put forward by Nietzsche. It was +familiar to me before I ever heard of Nietzsche. The late Captain +Wilson, author of several queer pamphlets, propagandist of a +metaphysical system called Comprehensionism, and inventor of the term +"Crosstianity" to distinguish the retrograde element in Christendom, +was wont thirty years ago, in the discussions of the Dialectical +Society, to protest earnestly against the beatitudes of the Sermon on +the Mount as excuses for cowardice and servility, as destructive of our +will, and consequently of our honor and manhood. Now it is true that +Captain Wilson's moral criticism of Christianity was not a historical +theory of it, like Nietzsche's; but this objection cannot be made to Mr +Stuart-Glennie, the successor of Buckle as a philosophic historian, who +has devoted his life to the elaboration and propagation of his theory +that Christianity is part of an epoch (or rather an aberration, since +it began as recently as 6000BC and is already collapsing) produced by +the necessity in which the numerically inferior white races found +themselves to impose their domination on the colored races by +priestcraft, making a virtue and a popular religion of drudgery and +submissiveness in this world not only as a means of achieving +saintliness of character but of securing a reward in heaven. Here you +have the slave-morality view formulated by a Scotch philosopher long +before English writers began chattering about Nietzsche. + +As Mr Stuart-Glennie traced the evolution of society to the conflict of +races, his theory made some sensation among Socialists--that is, among +the only people who were seriously thinking about historical evolution +at all--by its collision with the class-conflict theory of Karl Marx. +Nietzsche, as I gather, regarded the slave-morality as having been +invented and imposed on the world by slaves making a virtue of +necessity and a religion of their servitude. Mr Stuart-Glennie regards +the slave-morality as an invention of the superior white race to +subjugate the minds of the inferior races whom they wished to exploit, +and who would have destroyed them by force of numbers if their minds +had not been subjugated. As this process is in operation still, and can +be studied at first hand not only in our Church schools and in the +struggle between our modern proprietary classes and the proletariat, +but in the part played by Christian missionaries in reconciling the +black races of Africa to their subjugation by European Capitalism, we +can judge for ourselves whether the initiative came from above or +below. My object here is not to argue the historical point, but simply +to make our theatre critics ashamed of their habit of treating Britain +as an intellectual void, and assuming that every philosophical idea, +every historic theory, every criticism of our moral, religious and +juridical institutions, must necessarily be either imported from +abroad, or else a fantastic sally (in rather questionable taste) +totally unrelated to the existing body of thought. I urge them to +remember that this body of thought is the slowest of growths and the +rarest of blossomings, and that if there is such a thing on the +philosophic plane as a matter of course, it is that no individual can +make more than a minute contribution to it. In fact, their conception +of clever persons parthenogenetically bringing forth complete original +cosmogonies by dint of sheer "brilliancy" is part of that ignorant +credulity which is the despair of the honest philosopher, and the +opportunity of the religious impostor. + + + +THE GOSPEL OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT + +It is this credulity that drives me to help my critics out with Major +Barbara by telling them what to say about it. In the millionaire +Undershaft I have represented a man who has become intellectually and +spiritually as well as practically conscious of the irresistible +natural truth which we all abhor and repudiate: to wit, that the +greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty, and that our +first duty--a duty to which every other consideration should be +sacrificed--is not to be poor. "Poor but honest," "the respectable +poor," and such phrases are as intolerable and as immoral as "drunken +but amiable," "fraudulent but a good after-dinner speaker," "splendidly +criminal," or the like. Security, the chief pretence of civilization, +cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs +over everyone's head, and where the alleged protection of our persons +from violence is only an accidental result of the existence of a police +force whose real business is to force the poor man to see his children +starve whilst idle people overfeed pet dogs with the money that might +feed and clothe them. + +It is exceedingly difficult to make people realize that an evil is an +evil. For instance, we seize a man and deliberately do him a malicious +injury: say, imprison him for years. One would not suppose that it +needed any exceptional clearness of wit to recognize in this an act of +diabolical cruelty. But in England such a recognition provokes a stare +of surprise, followed by an explanation that the outrage is punishment +or justice or something else that is all right, or perhaps by a heated +attempt to argue that we should all be robbed and murdered in our beds +if such senseless villainies as sentences of imprisonment were not +committed daily. It is useless to argue that even if this were true, +which it is not, the alternative to adding crimes of our own to the +crimes from which we suffer is not helpless submission. Chickenpox is +an evil; but if I were to declare that we must either submit to it or +else repress it sternly by seizing everyone who suffers from it and +punishing them by inoculation with smallpox, I should be laughed at; +for though nobody could deny that the result would be to prevent +chickenpox to some extent by making people avoid it much more +carefully, and to effect a further apparent prevention by making them +conceal it very anxiously, yet people would have sense enough to see +that the deliberate propagation of smallpox was a creation of evil, and +must therefore be ruled out in favor of purely humane and hygienic +measures. Yet in the precisely parallel case of a man breaking into my +house and stealing my wife's diamonds I am expected as a matter of +course to steal ten years of his life, torturing him all the time. If +he tries to defeat that monstrous retaliation by shooting me, my +survivors hang him. The net result suggested by the police statistics +is that we inflict atrocious injuries on the burglars we catch in order +to make the rest take effectual precautions against detection; so that +instead of saving our wives' diamonds from burglary we only greatly +decrease our chances of ever getting them back, and increase our +chances of being shot by the robber if we are unlucky enough to disturb +him at his work. + +But the thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of +imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and +flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing +compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it +were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be +embraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be +poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let +him be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure science +instead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to +spend his urban eighteen shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen +shillings a week on his beer and his family instead of saving it up for +his old age, let him be poor. Let nothing be done for "the +undeserving": let him be poor. Serve him right! Also--somewhat +inconsistently--blessed are the poor! + +Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be weak. Let +him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease. Let him be a +standing exhibition and example of ugliness and dirt. Let him have +rickety children. Let him be cheap and let him drag his fellows down to +his price by selling himself to do their work. Let his habitations turn +our cities into poisonous congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect +our young men with the diseases of the streets and his sons revenge him +by turning the nation's manhood into scrofula, cowardice, cruelty, +hypocrisy, political imbecility, and all the other fruits of oppression +and malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still less deserving; and +let the deserving lay up for himself, not treasures in heaven, but +horrors in hell upon earth. This being so, is it really wise to let him +be poor? Would he not do ten times less harm as a prosperous burglar, +incendiary, ravisher or murderer, to the utmost limits of humanity's +comparatively negligible impulses in these directions? Suppose we were +to abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that poverty +is the one thing we will not tolerate--that every adult with less than, +say, 365 pounds a year, shall be painlessly but inexorably killed, and +every hungry half naked child forcibly fattened and clothed, would not +that be an enormous improvement on our existing system, which has +already destroyed so many civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours +in the same way? + +Is there any radicle of such legislation in our parliamentary system? +Well, there are two measures just sprouting in the political soil, +which may conceivably grow to something valuable. One is the +institution of a Legal Minimum Wage. The other, Old Age Pensions. But +there is a better plan than either of these. Some time ago I mentioned +the subject of Universal Old Age Pensions to my fellow Socialist Mr +Cobden-Sanderson, famous as an artist-craftsman in bookbinding and +printing. "Why not Universal Pensions for Life?" said Cobden-Sanderson. +In saying this, he solved the industrial problem at a stroke. At +present we say callously to each citizen: "If you want money, earn it," +as if his having or not having it were a matter that concerned himself +alone. We do not even secure for him the opportunity of earning it: on +the contrary, we allow our industry to be organized in open dependence +on the maintenance of "a reserve army of unemployed" for the sake of +"elasticity." The sensible course would be Cobden-Sanderson's: that is, +to give every man enough to live well on, so as to guarantee the +community against the possibility of a case of the malignant disease of +poverty, and then (necessarily) to see that he earned it. + +Undershaft, the hero of Major Barbara, is simply a man who, having +grasped the fact that poverty is a crime, knows that when society +offered him the alternative of poverty or a lucrative trade in death +and destruction, it offered him, not a choice between opulent villainy +and humble virtue, but between energetic enterprise and cowardly +infamy. His conduct stands the Kantian test, which Peter Shirley's does +not. Peter Shirley is what we call the honest poor man. Undershaft is +what we call the wicked rich one: Shirley is Lazarus, Undershaft Dives. +Well, the misery of the world is due to the fact that the great mass of +men act and believe as Peter Shirley acts and believes. If they acted +and believed as Undershaft acts and believes, the immediate result +would be a revolution of incalculable beneficence. To be wealthy, says +Undershaft, is with me a point of honor for which I am prepared to kill +at the risk of my own life. This preparedness is, as he says, the final +test of sincerity. Like Froissart's medieval hero, who saw that "to rob +and pill was a good life," he is not the dupe of that public sentiment +against killing which is propagated and endowed by people who would +otherwise be killed themselves, or of the mouth-honor paid to poverty +and obedience by rich and insubordinate do-nothings who want to rob the +poor without courage and command them without superiority. Froissart's +knight, in placing the achievement of a good life before all the other +duties--which indeed are not duties at all when they conflict with it, +but plain wickednesses--behaved bravely, admirably, and, in the final +analysis, public-spiritedly. Medieval society, on the other hand, +behaved very badly indeed in organizing itself so stupidly that a good +life could be achieved by robbing and pilling. If the knight's +contemporaries had been all as resolute as he, robbing and pilling +would have been the shortest way to the gallows, just as, if we were +all as resolute and clearsighted as Undershaft, an attempt to live by +means of what is called "an independent income" would be the shortest +way to the lethal chamber. But as, thanks to our political imbecility +and personal cowardice (fruits of poverty both), the best imitation of +a good life now procurable is life on an independent income, all +sensible people aim at securing such an income, and are, of course, +careful to legalize and moralize both it and all the actions and +sentiments which lead to it and support it as an institution. What else +can they do? They know, of course, that they are rich because others +are poor. But they cannot help that: it is for the poor to repudiate +poverty when they have had enough of it. The thing can be done easily +enough: the demonstrations to the contrary made by the economists, +jurists, moralists and sentimentalists hired by the rich to defend +them, or even doing the work gratuitously out of sheer folly and +abjectness, impose only on the hirers. + +The reason why the independent income-tax payers are not solid in +defence of their position is that since we are not medieval rovers +through a sparsely populated country, the poverty of those we rob +prevents our having the good life for which we sacrifice them. Rich men +or aristocrats with a developed sense of life--men like Ruskin and +William Morris and Kropotkin--have enormous social appetites and very +fastidious personal ones. They are not content with handsome houses: +they want handsome cities. They are not content with bediamonded wives +and blooming daughters: they complain because the charwoman is badly +dressed, because the laundress smells of gin, because the sempstress is +anemic, because every man they meet is not a friend and every woman not +a romance. They turn up their noses at their neighbors' drains, and are +made ill by the architecture of their neighbors' houses. Trade patterns +made to suit vulgar people do not please them (and they can get nothing +else): they cannot sleep nor sit at ease upon "slaughtered" cabinet +makers' furniture. The very air is not good enough for them: there is +too much factory smoke in it. They even demand abstract conditions: +justice, honor, a noble moral atmosphere, a mystic nexus to replace the +cash nexus. Finally they declare that though to rob and pill with your +own hand on horseback and in steel coat may have been a good life, to +rob and pill by the hands of the policeman, the bailiff, and the +soldier, and to underpay them meanly for doing it, is not a good life, +but rather fatal to all possibility of even a tolerable one. They call +on the poor to revolt, and, finding the poor shocked at their +ungentlemanliness, despairingly revile the proletariat for its "damned +wantlessness" (verdammte Bedurfnislosigkeit). + +So far, however, their attack on society has lacked simplicity. The +poor do not share their tastes nor understand their art-criticisms. +They do not want the simple life, nor the esthetic life; on the +contrary, they want very much to wallow in all the costly vulgarities +from which the elect souls among the rich turn away with loathing. It +is by surfeit and not by abstinence that they will be cured of their +hankering after unwholesome sweets. What they do dislike and despise +and are ashamed of is poverty. To ask them to fight for the difference +between the Christmas number of the Illustrated London News and the +Kelmscott Chaucer is silly: they prefer the News. The difference +between a stockbroker's cheap and dirty starched white shirt and collar +and the comparatively costly and carefully dyed blue shirt of William +Morris is a difference so disgraceful to Morris in their eyes that if +they fought on the subject at all, they would fight in defence of the +starch. "Cease to be slaves, in order that you may become cranks" is +not a very inspiring call to arms; nor is it really improved by +substituting saints for cranks. Both terms denote men of genius; and +the common man does not want to live the life of a man of genius: he +would much rather live the life of a pet collie if that were the only +alternative. But he does want more money. Whatever else he may be vague +about, he is clear about that. He may or may not prefer Major Barbara +to the Drury Lane pantomime; but he always prefers five hundred pounds +to five hundred shillings. + +Now to deplore this preference as sordid, and teach children that it is +sinful to desire money, is to strain towards the extreme possible limit +of impudence in lying, and corruption in hypocrisy. The universal +regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one +sound spot in our social conscience. Money is the most important thing +in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and +beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents +illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of +its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it +fortifies and dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened +to worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that it +becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish social +conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two things are +inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed +socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and bank notes are money. +The first duty of every citizen is to insist on having money on +reasonable terms; and this demand is not complied with by giving four +men three shillings each for ten or twelve hours' drudgery and one man +a thousand pounds for nothing. The crying need of the nation is not for +better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption +of fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and +fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money. And the evil to +be attacked is not sin, suffering, greed, priestcraft, kingcraft, +demagogy, monopoly, ignorance, drink, war, pestilence, nor any other of +the scapegoats which reformers sacrifice, but simply poverty. + +Once take your eyes from the ends of the earth and fix them on this +truth just under your nose; and Andrew Undershaft's views will not +perplex you in the least. Unless indeed his constant sense that he is +only the instrument of a Will or Life Force which uses him for purposes +wider than his own, may puzzle you. If so, that is because you are +walking either in artificial Darwinian darkness, or to mere stupidity. +All genuinely religious people have that consciousness. To them +Undershaft the Mystic will be quite intelligible, and his perfect +comprehension of his daughter the Salvationist and her lover the +Euripidean republican natural and inevitable. That, however, is not +new, even on the stage. What is new, as far as I know, is that article +in Undershaft's religion which recognizes in Money the first need and +in poverty the vilest sin of man and society. + +This dramatic conception has not, of course, been attained per saltum. +Nor has it been borrowed from Nietzsche or from any man born beyond the +Channel. The late Samuel Butler, in his own department the greatest +English writer of the latter half of the XIX century, steadily +inculcated the necessity and morality of a conscientious Laodiceanism +in religion and of an earnest and constant sense of the importance of +money. It drives one almost to despair of English literature when one +sees so extraordinary a study of English life as Butler's posthumous +Way of All Flesh making so little impression that when, some years +later, I produce plays in which Butler's extraordinarily fresh, free +and future-piercing suggestions have an obvious share, I am met with +nothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and Nietzsche, and am only too +thankful that they are not about Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand. +Really, the English do not deserve to have great men. They allowed +Butler to die practically unknown, whilst I, a comparatively +insignificant Irish journalist, was leading them by the nose into an +advertisement of me which has made my own life a burden. In Sicily +there is a Via Samuele Butler. When an English tourist sees it, he +either asks "Who the devil was Samuele Butler?" or wonders why the +Sicilians should perpetuate the memory of the author of Hudibras. + +Well, it cannot be denied that the English are only too anxious to +recognize a man of genius if somebody will kindly point him out to +them. Having pointed myself out in this manner with some success, I now +point out Samuel Butler, and trust that in consequence I shall hear a +little less in future of the novelty and foreign origin of the ideas +which are now making their way into the English theatre through plays +written by Socialists. There are living men whose originality and power +are as obvious as Butler's; and when they die that fact will be +discovered. Meanwhile I recommend them to insist on their own merits as +an important part of their own business. + + + +THE SALVATION ARMY + +When Major Barbara was produced in London, the second act was reported +in an important northern newspaper as a withering attack on the +Salvation Army, and the despairing ejaculation of Barbara deplored by a +London daily as a tasteless blasphemy. And they were set right, not by +the professed critics of the theatre, but by religious and +philosophical publicists like Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr Stanton Coit, and +strenuous Nonconformist journalists like Mr William Stead, who not only +understood the act as well as the Salvationists themselves, but also +saw it in its relation to the religious life of the nation, a life +which seems to lie not only outside the sympathy of many of our theatre +critics, but actually outside their knowledge of society. Indeed +nothing could be more ironically curious than the confrontation Major +Barbara effected of the theatre enthusiasts with the religious +enthusiasts. On the one hand was the playgoer, always seeking pleasure, +paying exorbitantly for it, suffering unbearable discomforts for it, +and hardly ever getting it. On the other hand was the Salvationist, +repudiating gaiety and courting effort and sacrifice, yet always in the +wildest spirits, laughing, joking, singing, rejoicing, drumming, and +tambourining: his life flying by in a flash of excitement, and his +death arriving as a climax of triumph. And, if you please, the playgoer +despising the Salvationist as a joyless person, shut out from the +heaven of the theatre, self-condemned to a life of hideous gloom; and +the Salvationist mourning over the playgoer as over a prodigal with +vine leaves in his hair, careering outrageously to hell amid the +popping of champagne corks and the ribald laughter of sirens! Could +misunderstanding be more complete, or sympathy worse misplaced? + +Fortunately, the Salvationists are more accessible to the religious +character of the drama than the playgoers to the gay energy and +artistic fertility of religion. They can see, when it is pointed out to +them, that a theatre, as a place where two or three are gathered +together, takes from that divine presence an inalienable sanctity of +which the grossest and profanest farce can no more deprive it than a +hypocritical sermon by a snobbish bishop can desecrate Westminster +Abbey. But in our professional playgoers this indispensable preliminary +conception of sanctity seems wanting. They talk of actors as mimes and +mummers, and, I fear, think of dramatic authors as liars and pandars, +whose main business is the voluptuous soothing of the tired city +speculator when what he calls the serious business of the day is over. +Passion, the life of drama, means nothing to them but primitive sexual +excitement: such phrases as "impassioned poetry" or "passionate love of +truth" have fallen quite out of their vocabulary and been replaced by +"passional crime" and the like. They assume, as far as I can gather, +that people in whom passion has a larger scope are passionless and +therefore uninteresting. Consequently they come to think of religious +people as people who are not interesting and not amusing. And so, when +Barbara cuts the regular Salvation Army jokes, and snatches a kiss from +her lover across his drum, the devotees of the theatre think they ought +to appear shocked, and conclude that the whole play is an elaborate +mockery of the Army. And then either hypocritically rebuke me for +mocking, or foolishly take part in the supposed mockery! Even the +handful of mentally competent critics got into difficulties over my +demonstration of the economic deadlock in which the Salvation Army +finds itself. Some of them thought that the Army would not have taken +money from a distiller and a cannon founder: others thought it should +not have taken it: all assumed more or less definitely that it reduced +itself to absurdity or hypocrisy by taking it. On the first point the +reply of the Army itself was prompt and conclusive. As one of its +officers said, they would take money from the devil himself and be only +too glad to get it out of his hands and into God's. They gratefully +acknowledged that publicans not only give them money but allow them to +collect it in the bar--sometimes even when there is a Salvation meeting +outside preaching teetotalism. In fact, they questioned the +verisimilitude of the play, not because Mrs Baines took the money, but +because Barbara refused it. + +On the point that the Army ought not to take such money, its +justification is obvious. It must take the money because it cannot +exist without money, and there is no other money to be had. Practically +all the spare money in the country consists of a mass of rent, +interest, and profit, every penny of which is bound up with crime, +drink, prostitution, disease, and all the evil fruits of poverty, as +inextricably as with enterprise, wealth, commercial probity, and +national prosperity. The notion that you can earmark certain coins as +tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the +fact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest +young souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them +conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the +Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners +receive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating +dens; or that the most generous contributor at his last charity sermon +was an employer trading in female labor cheapened by prostitution as +unscrupulously as a hotel keeper trades in waiters' labor cheapened by +tips, or commissionaire's labor cheapened by pensions; or that the only +patron who can afford to rebuild his church or his schools or give his +boys' brigade a gymnasium or a library is the son-in-law of a Chicago +meat King, that young clergyman has, like Barbara, a very bad quarter +hour. But he cannot help himself by refusing to accept money from +anybody except sweet old ladies with independent incomes and gentle and +lovely ways of life. He has only to follow up the income of the sweet +ladies to its industrial source, and there he will find Mrs Warren's +profession and the poisonous canned meat and all the rest of it. His +own stipend has the same root. He must either share the world's guilt +or go to another planet. He must save the world's honor if he is to +save his own. This is what all the Churches find just as the Salvation +Army and Barbara find it in the play. Her discovery that she is her +father's accomplice; that the Salvation Army is the accomplice of the +distiller and the dynamite maker; that they can no more escape one +another than they can escape the air they breathe; that there is no +salvation for them through personal righteousness, but only through the +redemption of the whole nation from its vicious, lazy, competitive +anarchy: this discovery has been made by everyone except the Pharisees +and (apparently) the professional playgoers, who still wear their Tom +Hood shirts and underpay their washerwomen without the slightest +misgiving as to the elevation of their private characters, the purity +of their private atmospheres, and their right to repudiate as foreign +to themselves the coarse depravity of the garret and the slum. Not that +they mean any harm: they only desire to be, in their little private +way, what they call gentlemen. They do not understand Barbara's lesson +because they have not, like her, learnt it by taking their part in the +larger life of the nation. + + + +BARBARA'S RETURN TO THE COLORS. + +Barbara's return to the colors may yet provide a subject for the +dramatic historian of the future. To go back to the Salvation Army with +the knowledge that even the Salvationists themselves are not saved yet; +that poverty is not blessed, but a most damnable sin; and that when +General Booth chose Blood and Fire for the emblem of Salvation instead +of the Cross, he was perhaps better inspired than he knew: such +knowledge, for the daughter of Andrew Undershaft, will clearly lead to +something hopefuller than distributing bread and treacle at the expense +of Bodger. + +It is a very significant thing, this instinctive choice of the military +form of organization, this substitution of the drum for the organ, by +the Salvation Army. Does it not suggest that the Salvationists divine +that they must actually fight the devil instead of merely praying at +him? At present, it is true, they have not quite ascertained his +correct address. When they do, they may give a very rude shock to that +sense of security which he has gained from his experience of the fact +that hard words, even when uttered by eloquent essayists and lecturers, +or carried unanimously at enthusiastic public meetings on the motion of +eminent reformers, break no bones. It has been said that the French +Revolution was the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists. +It seems to me to have been the work of men who had observed that +virtuous indignation, caustic criticism, conclusive argument and +instructive pamphleteering, even when done by the most earnest and +witty literary geniuses, were as useless as praying, things going +steadily from bad to worse whilst the Social Contract and the pamphlets +of Voltaire were at the height of their vogue. Eventually, as we know, +perfectly respectable citizens and earnest philanthropists connived at +the September massacres because hard experience had convinced them that +if they contented themselves with appeals to humanity and patriotism, +the aristocracy, though it would read their appeals with the greatest +enjoyment and appreciation, flattering and admiring the writers, would +none the less continue to conspire with foreign monarchists to undo the +revolution and restore the old system with every circumstance of savage +vengeance and ruthless repression of popular liberties. + +The nineteenth century saw the same lesson repeated in England. It had +its Utilitarians, its Christian Socialists, its Fabians (still extant): +it had Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle, Butler, Henry George, +and Morris. And the end of all their efforts is the Chicago described +by Mr Upton Sinclair, and the London in which the people who pay to be +amused by my dramatic representation of Peter Shirley turned out to +starve at forty because there are younger slaves to be had for his +wages, do not take, and have not the slightest intention of taking, any +effective step to organize society in such a way as to make that +everyday infamy impossible. I, who have preached and pamphleteered like +any Encyclopedist, have to confess that my methods are no use, and +would be no use if I were Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens, +Carlyle, Ruskin, George, Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with +Euripides, More, Moliere, Shakespear, Beaumarchais, Swift, Goethe, +Ibsen, Tolstoy, Moses and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some +sort I actually am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The +problem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles and +artist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all the +sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept +every plunder, and submit to every oppression. Christianity, in making +a merit of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at +which the very sense of shame is lost. The Christian has been like +Dickens' doctor in the debtor's prison, who tells the newcomer of its +ineffable peace and security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of +rates, taxes, and rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties; +nothing but the rest and safety of having no further to fall. + +Yet in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom vitality +suddenly begins to germinate again. Joyousness, a sacred gift long +dethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and obscenity, rises like +a flood miraculously out of the fetid dust and mud of the slums; +rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from +people among whom the depressing noise called "sacred music" is a +standing joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in +murderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and +splendid red; Fear, which we flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and +transfigured men and women carry their gospel through a transfigured +world, calling their leader General, themselves captains and +brigadiers, and their whole body an Army: praying, but praying only for +refreshment, for strength to fight, and for needful MONEY (a notable +sign, that); preaching, but not preaching submission; daring ill-usage +and abuse, but not putting up with more of it than is inevitable; and +practising what the world will let them practise, including soap and +water, color and music. There is danger in such Activity; and where +there is danger there is hope. Our present security is nothing, and can +be nothing, but evil made irresistible. + + + +WEAKNESSES OF THE SALVATION ARMY. + +For the present, however, it is not my business to flatter the +Salvation Army. Rather must I point out to it that it has almost as +many weaknesses as the Church of England itself. It is building up a +business organization which will compel it eventually to see that its +present staff of enthusiast-commanders shall be succeeded by a +bureaucracy of men of business who will be no better than bishops, and +perhaps a good deal more unscrupulous. That has always happened sooner +or later to great orders founded by saints; and the order founded by St +William Booth is not exempt from the same danger. It is even more +dependent than the Church on rich people who would cut off supplies at +once if it began to preach that indispensable revolt against poverty +which must also be a revolt against riches. It is hampered by a heavy +contingent of pious elders who are not really Salvationists at all, but +Evangelicals of the old school. It still, as Commissioner Howard +affirms, "sticks to Moses," which is flat nonsense at this time of day +if the Commissioner means, as I am afraid he does, that the Book of +Genesis contains a trustworthy scientific account of the origin of +species, and that the god to whom Jephthah sacrificed his daughter is +any less obviously a tribal idol than Dagon or Chemosh. + +Further, there is still too much other-worldliness about the Army. Like +Frederick's grenadier, the Salvationist wants to live for ever (the +most monstrous way of crying for the moon); and though it is evident to +anyone who has ever heard General Booth and his best officers that they +would work as hard for human salvation as they do at present if they +believed that death would be the end of them individually, they and +their followers have a bad habit of talking as if the Salvationists +were heroically enduring a very bad time on earth as an investment +which will bring them in dividends later on in the form, not of a +better life to come for the whole world, but of an eternity spent by +themselves personally in a sort of bliss which would bore any active +person to a second death. Surely the truth is that the Salvationists +are unusually happy people. And is it not the very diagnostic of true +salvation that it shall overcome the fear of death? Now the man who has +come to believe that there is no such thing as death, the change so +called being merely the transition to an exquisitely happy and utterly +careless life, has not overcome the fear of death at all: on the +contrary, it has overcome him so completely that he refuses to die on +any terms whatever. I do not call a Salvationist really saved until he +is ready to lie down cheerfully on the scrap heap, having paid scot and +lot and something over, and let his eternal life pass on to renew its +youth in the battalions of the future. + +Then there is the nasty lying habit called confession, which the Army +encourages because it lends itself to dramatic oratory, with plenty of +thrilling incident. For my part, when I hear a convert relating the +violences and oaths and blasphemies he was guilty of before he was +saved, making out that he was a very terrible fellow then and is the +most contrite and chastened of Christians now, I believe him no more +than I believe the millionaire who says he came up to London or Chicago +as a boy with only three halfpence in his pocket. Salvationists have +said to me that Barbara in my play would never have been taken in by so +transparent a humbug as Snobby Price; and certainly I do not think +Snobby could have taken in any experienced Salvationist on a point on +which the Salvationist did not wish to be taken in. But on the point of +conversion all Salvationists wish to be taken in; for the more obvious +the sinner the more obvious the miracle of his conversion. When you +advertize a converted burglar or reclaimed drunkard as one of the +attractions at an experience meeting, your burglar can hardly have been +too burglarious or your drunkard too drunken. As long as such +attractions are relied on, you will have your Snobbies claiming to have +beaten their mothers when they were as a matter of prosaic fact +habitually beaten by them, and your Rummies of the tamest +respectability pretending to a past of reckless and dazzling vice. Even +when confessions are sincerely autobiographic there is no reason to +assume at once that the impulse to make them is pious or the interest +of the hearers wholesome. It might as well be assumed that the poor +people who insist on showing appalling ulcers to district visitors are +convinced hygienists, or that the curiosity which sometimes welcomes +such exhibitions is a pleasant and creditable one. One is often tempted +to suggest that those who pester our police superintendents with +confessions of murder might very wisely be taken at their word and +executed, except in the few cases in which a real murderer is seeking +to be relieved of his guilt by confession and expiation. For though I +am not, I hope, an unmerciful person, I do not think that the +inexorability of the deed once done should be disguised by any ritual, +whether in the confessional or on the scaffold. + +And here my disagreement with the Salvation Army, and with all +propagandists of the Cross (to which I object as I object to all +gibbets) becomes deep indeed. Forgiveness, absolution, atonement, are +figments: punishment is only a pretence of cancelling one crime by +another; and you can no more have forgiveness without vindictiveness +than you can have a cure without a disease. You will never get a high +morality from people who conceive that their misdeeds are revocable and +pardonable, or in a society where absolution and expiation are +officially provided for us all. The demand may be very real; but the +supply is spurious. Thus Bill Walker, in my play, having assaulted the +Salvation Lass, presently finds himself overwhelmed with an intolerable +conviction of sin under the skilled treatment of Barbara. Straightway +he begins to try to unassault the lass and deruffianize his deed, first +by getting punished for it in kind, and, when that relief is denied +him, by fining himself a pound to compensate the girl. He is foiled +both ways. He finds the Salvation Army as inexorable as fact itself. It +will not punish him: it will not take his money. It will not tolerate a +redeemed ruffian: it leaves him no means of salvation except ceasing to +be a ruffian. In doing this, the Salvation Army instinctively grasps +the central truth of Christianity and discards its central +superstition: that central truth being the vanity of revenge and +punishment, and that central superstition the salvation of the world by +the gibbet. + +For, be it noted, Bill has assaulted an old and starving woman also; +and for this worse offence he feels no remorse whatever, because she +makes it clear that her malice is as great as his own. "Let her have +the law of me, as she said she would," says Bill: "what I done to her +is no more on what you might call my conscience than sticking a pig." +This shows a perfectly natural and wholesome state of mind on his part. +The old woman, like the law she threatens him with, is perfectly ready +to play the game of retaliation with him: to rob him if he steals, to +flog him if he strikes, to murder him if he kills. By example and +precept the law and public opinion teach him to impose his will on +others by anger, violence, and cruelty, and to wipe off the moral score +by punishment. That is sound Crosstianity. But this Crosstianity has +got entangled with something which Barbara calls Christianity, and +which unexpectedly causes her to refuse to play the hangman's game of +Satan casting out Satan. She refuses to prosecute a drunken ruffian; +she converses on equal terms with a blackguard whom no lady could be +seen speaking to in the public street: in short, she behaves as +illegally and unbecomingly as possible under the circumstances. Bill's +conscience reacts to this just as naturally as it does to the old +woman's threats. He is placed in a position of unbearable moral +inferiority, and strives by every means in his power to escape from it, +whilst he is still quite ready to meet the abuse of the old woman by +attempting to smash a mug on her face. And that is the triumphant +justification of Barbara's Christianity as against our system of +judicial punishment and the vindictive villain-thrashings and "poetic +justice" of the romantic stage. + +For the credit of literature it must be pointed out that the situation +is only partly novel. Victor Hugo long ago gave us the epic of the +convict and the bishop's candlesticks, of the Crosstian policeman +annihilated by his encounter with the Christian Valjean. But Bill +Walker is not, like Valjean, romantically changed from a demon into an +angel. There are millions of Bill Walkers in all classes of society +to-day; and the point which I, as a professor of natural psychology, +desire to demonstrate, is that Bill, without any change in his +character whatsoever, will react one way to one sort of treatment and +another way to another. + +In proof I might point to the sensational object lesson provided by our +commercial millionaires to-day. They begin as brigands: merciless, +unscrupulous, dealing out ruin and death and slavery to their +competitors and employees, and facing desperately the worst that their +competitors can do to them. The history of the English factories, the +American trusts, the exploitation of African gold, diamonds, ivory and +rubber, outdoes in villainy the worst that has ever been imagined of +the buccaneers of the Spanish Main. Captain Kidd would have marooned a +modern Trust magnate for conduct unworthy of a gentleman of fortune. +The law every day seizes on unsuccessful scoundrels of this type and +punishes them with a cruelty worse than their own, with the result that +they come out of the torture house more dangerous than they went in, +and renew their evil doing (nobody will employ them at anything else) +until they are again seized, again tormented, and again let loose, with +the same result. + +But the successful scoundrel is dealt with very differently, and very +Christianly. He is not only forgiven: he is idolized, respected, made +much of, all but worshipped. Society returns him good for evil in the +most extravagant overmeasure. And with what result? He begins to +idolize himself, to respect himself, to live up to the treatment he +receives. He preaches sermons; he writes books of the most edifying +advice to young men, and actually persuades himself that he got on by +taking his own advice; he endows educational institutions; he supports +charities; he dies finally in the odor of sanctity, leaving a will +which is a monument of public spirit and bounty. And all this without +any change in his character. The spots of the leopard and the stripes +of the tiger are as brilliant as ever; but the conduct of the world +towards him has changed; and his conduct has changed accordingly. You +have only to reverse your attitude towards him--to lay hands on his +property, revile him, assault him, and he will be a brigand again in a +moment, as ready to crush you as you are to crush him, and quite as +full of pretentious moral reasons for doing it. + +In short, when Major Barbara says that there are no scoundrels, she is +right: there are no absolute scoundrels, though there are impracticable +people of whom I shall treat presently. Every practicable man (and +woman) is a potential scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a +man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of +what he does, depends on his circumstances. The characteristics that +ruin a man in one class make him eminent in another. The characters +that behave differently in different circumstances behave alike in +similar circumstances. Take a common English character like that of +Bill Walker. We meet Bill everywhere: on the judicial bench, on the +episcopal bench, in the Privy Council, at the War Office and Admiralty, +as well as in the Old Bailey dock or in the ranks of casual unskilled +labor. And the morality of Bill's characteristics varies with these +various circumstances. The faults of the burglar are the qualities of +the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk +his situation. In short, though character is independent of +circumstances, conduct is not; and our moral judgments of character are +not: both are circumstantial. Take any condition of life in which the +circumstances are for a mass of men practically alike: felony, the +House of Lords, the factory, the stables, the gipsy encampment or where +you please! In spite of diversity of character and temperament, the +conduct and morals of the individuals in each group are as predicable +and as alike in the main as if they were a flock of sheep, morals being +mostly only social habits and circumstantial necessities. Strong people +know this and count upon it. In nothing have the master-minds of the +world been distinguished from the ordinary suburban season-ticket +holder more than in their straightforward perception of the fact that +mankind is practically a single species, and not a menagerie of +gentlemen and bounders, villains and heroes, cowards and daredevils, +peers and peasants, grocers and aristocrats, artisans and laborers, +washerwomen and duchesses, in which all the grades of income and caste +represent distinct animals who must not be introduced to one another or +intermarry. Napoleon constructing a galaxy of generals and courtiers, +and even of monarchs, out of his collection of social nobodies; Julius +Caesar appointing as governor of Egypt the son of a freedman--one who +but a short time before would have been legally disqualified for the +post even of a private soldier in the Roman army; Louis XI making his +barber his privy councillor: all these had in their different ways a +firm hold of the scientific fact of human equality, expressed by +Barbara in the Christian formula that all men are children of one +father. A man who believes that men are naturally divided into upper +and lower and middle classes morally is making exactly the same mistake +as the man who believes that they are naturally divided in the same way +socially. And just as our persistent attempts to found political +institutions on a basis of social inequality have always produced long +periods of destructive friction relieved from time to time by violent +explosions of revolution; so the attempt--will Americans please +note--to found moral institutions on a basis of moral inequality can +lead to nothing but unnatural Reigns of the Saints relieved by +licentious Restorations; to Americans who have made divorce a public +institution turning the face of Europe into one huge sardonic smile by +refusing to stay in the same hotel with a Russian man of genius who has +changed wives without the sanction of South Dakota; to grotesque +hypocrisy, cruel persecution, and final utter confusion of conventions +and compliances with benevolence and respectability. It is quite +useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are +born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of +itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his +moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every +man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment, which any fool can +trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or +as a rascal. This is the lesson Democracy has to learn before it can +become anything but the most oppressive of all the priesthoods. + +Let us now return to Bill Walker and his case of conscience against the +Salvation Army. Major Barbara, not being a modern Tetzel, or the +treasurer of a hospital, refuses to sell Bill absolution for a +sovereign. Unfortunately, what the Army can afford to refuse in the +case of Bill Walker, it cannot refuse in the case of Bodger. Bodger is +master of the situation because he holds the purse strings. "Strive as +you will," says Bodger, in effect: "me you cannot do without. You +cannot save Bill Walker without my money." And the Army answers, quite +rightly under the circumstances, "We will take money from the devil +himself sooner than abandon the work of Salvation." So Bodger pays his +conscience-money and gets the absolution that is refused to Bill. In +real life Bill would perhaps never know this. But I, the dramatist, +whose business it is to show the connexion between things that seem +apart and unrelated in the haphazard order of events in real life, have +contrived to make it known to Bill, with the result that the Salvation +Army loses its hold of him at once. + +But Bill may not be lost, for all that. He is still in the grip of the +facts and of his own conscience, and may find his taste for +blackguardism permanently spoiled. Still, I cannot guarantee that happy +ending. Let anyone walk through the poorer quarters of our cities when +the men are not working, but resting and chewing the cud of their +reflections; and he will find that there is one expression on every +mature face: the expression of cynicism. The discovery made by Bill +Walker about the Salvation Army has been made by every one of them. +They have found that every man has his price; and they have been +foolishly or corruptly taught to mistrust and despise him for that +necessary and salutary condition of social existence. When they learn +that General Booth, too, has his price, they do not admire him because +it is a high one, and admit the need of organizing society so that he +shall get it in an honorable way: they conclude that his character is +unsound and that all religious men are hypocrites and allies of their +sweaters and oppressors. They know that the large subscriptions which +help to support the Army are endowments, not of religion, but of the +wicked doctrine of docility in poverty and humility under oppression; +and they are rent by the most agonizing of all the doubts of the soul, +the doubt whether their true salvation must not come from their most +abhorrent passions, from murder, envy, greed, stubbornness, rage, and +terrorism, rather than from public spirit, reasonableness, humanity, +generosity, tenderness, delicacy, pity and kindness. The confirmation +of that doubt, at which our newspapers have been working so hard for +years past, is the morality of militarism; and the justification of +militarism is that circumstances may at any time make it the true +morality of the moment. It is by producing such moments that we produce +violent and sanguinary revolutions, such as the one now in progress in +Russia and the one which Capitalism in England and America is daily and +diligently provoking. + +At such moments it becomes the duty of the Churches to evoke all the +powers of destruction against the existing order. But if they do this, +the existing order must forcibly suppress them. Churches are suffered +to exist only on condition that they preach submission to the State as +at present capitalistically organized. The Church of England itself is +compelled to add to the thirty-six articles in which it formulates its +religious tenets, three more in which it apologetically protests that +the moment any of these articles comes in conflict with the State it is +to be entirely renounced, abjured, violated, abrogated and abhorred, +the policeman being a much more important person than any of the +Persons of the Trinity. And this is why no tolerated Church nor +Salvation Army can ever win the entire confidence of the poor. It must +be on the side of the police and the military, no matter what it +believes or disbelieves; and as the police and the military are the +instruments by which the rich rob and oppress the poor (on legal and +moral principles made for the purpose), it is not possible to be on the +side of the poor and of the police at the same time. Indeed the +religious bodies, as the almoners of the rich, become a sort of +auxiliary police, taking off the insurrectionary edge of poverty with +coals and blankets, bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the +victims with hopes of immense and inexpensive happiness in another +world when the process of working them to premature death in the +service of the rich is complete in this. + + + +CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM + +Such is the false position from which neither the Salvation Army nor +the Church of England nor any other religious organization whatever can +escape except through a reconstitution of society. Nor can they merely +endure the State passively, washing their hands of its sins. The State +is constantly forcing the consciences of men by violence and cruelty. +Not content with exacting money from us for the maintenance of its +soldiers and policemen, its gaolers and executioners, it forces us to +take an active personal part in its proceedings on pain of becoming +ourselves the victims of its violence. As I write these lines, a +sensational example is given to the world. A royal marriage has been +celebrated, first by sacrament in a cathedral, and then by a bullfight +having for its main amusement the spectacle of horses gored and +disembowelled by the bull, after which, when the bull is so exhausted +as to be no longer dangerous, he is killed by a cautious matador. But +the ironic contrast between the bullfight and the sacrament of marriage +does not move anyone. Another contrast--that between the splendor, the +happiness, the atmosphere of kindly admiration surrounding the young +couple, and the price paid for it under our abominable social +arrangements in the misery, squalor and degradation of millions of +other young couples--is drawn at the same moment by a novelist, Mr +Upton Sinclair, who chips a corner of the veneering from the huge meat +packing industries of Chicago, and shows it to us as a sample of what +is going on all over the world underneath the top layer of prosperous +plutocracy. One man is sufficiently moved by that contrast to pay his +own life as the price of one terrible blow at the responsible parties. +Unhappily his poverty leaves him also ignorant enough to be duped by +the pretence that the innocent young bride and bridegroom, put forth +and crowned by plutocracy as the heads of a State in which they have +less personal power than any policeman, and less influence than any +chairman of a trust, are responsible. At them accordingly he launches +his sixpennorth of fulminate, missing his mark, but scattering the +bowels of as many horses as any bull in the arena, and slaying +twenty-three persons, besides wounding ninety-nine. And of all these, +the horses alone are innocent of the guilt he is avenging: had he blown +all Madrid to atoms with every adult person in it, not one could have +escaped the charge of being an accessory, before, at, and after the +fact, to poverty and prostitution, to such wholesale massacre of +infants as Herod never dreamt of, to plague, pestilence and famine, +battle, murder and lingering death--perhaps not one who had not helped, +through example, precept, connivance, and even clamor, to teach the +dynamiter his well-learnt gospel of hatred and vengeance, by approving +every day of sentences of years of imprisonment so infernal in its +unnatural stupidity and panic-stricken cruelty, that their advocates +can disavow neither the dagger nor the bomb without stripping the mask +of justice and humanity from themselves also. Be it noted that at this +very moment there appears the biography of one of our dukes, who, being +Scotch, could argue about politics, and therefore stood out as a great +brain among our aristocrats. And what, if you please, was his grace's +favorite historical episode, which he declared he never read without +intense satisfaction? Why, the young General Bonapart's pounding of the +Paris mob to pieces in 1795, called in playful approval by our +respectable classes "the whiff of grapeshot," though Napoleon, to do +him justice, took a deeper view of it, and would fain have had it +forgotten. And since the Duke of Argyll was not a demon, but a man of +like passions with ourselves, by no means rancorous or cruel as men go, +who can doubt that all over the world proletarians of the ducal kidney +are now revelling in "the whiff of dynamite" (the flavor of the joke +seems to evaporate a little, does it not?) because it was aimed at the +class they hate even as our argute duke hated what he called the mob. + +In such an atmosphere there can be only one sequel to the Madrid +explosion. All Europe burns to emulate it. Vengeance! More blood! Tear +"the Anarchist beast" to shreds. Drag him to the scaffold. Imprison him +for life. Let all civilized States band together to drive his like off +the face of the earth; and if any State refuses to join, make war on +it. This time the leading London newspaper, anti-Liberal and therefore +anti-Russian in politics, does not say "Serve you right" to the +victims, as it did, in effect, when Bobrikofl; and De Plehve, and Grand +Duke Sergius, were in the same manner unofficially fulminated into +fragments. No: fulminate our rivals in Asia by all means, ye brave +Russian revolutionaries; but to aim at an English princess-monstrous! +hideous! hound down the wretch to his doom; and observe, please, that +we are a civilized and merciful people, and, however much we may regret +it, must not treat him as Ravaillac and Damiens were treated. And +meanwhile, since we have not yet caught him, let us soothe our +quivering nerves with the bullfight, and comment in a courtly way on +the unfailing tact and good taste of the ladies of our royal houses, +who, though presumably of full normal natural tenderness, have been so +effectually broken in to fashionable routine that they can be taken to +see the horses slaughtered as helplessly as they could no doubt be +taken to a gladiator show, if that happened to be the mode just now. + +Strangely enough, in the midst of this raging fire of malice, the one +man who still has faith in the kindness and intelligence of human +nature is the fulminator, now a hunted wretch, with nothing, +apparently, to secure his triumph over all the prisons and scaffolds of +infuriate Europe except the revolver in his pocket and his readiness to +discharge it at a moment's notice into his own or any other head. Think +of him setting out to find a gentleman and a Christian in the multitude +of human wolves howling for his blood. Think also of this: that at the +very first essay he finds what he seeks, a veritable grandee of Spain, +a noble, high-thinking, unterrified, malice-void soul, in the guise--of +all masquerades in the world!--of a modern editor. The Anarchist wolf, +flying from the wolves of plutocracy, throws himself on the honor of +the man. The man, not being a wolf (nor a London editor), and therefore +not having enough sympathy with his exploit to be made bloodthirsty by +it, does not throw him back to the pursuing wolves--gives him, instead, +what help he can to escape, and sends him off acquainted at last with a +force that goes deeper than dynamite, though you cannot make so much of +it for sixpence. That righteous and honorable high human deed is not +wasted on Europe, let us hope, though it benefits the fugitive wolf +only for a moment. The plutocratic wolves presently smell him out. The +fugitive shoots the unlucky wolf whose nose is nearest; shoots himself; +and then convinces the world, by his photograph, that he was no +monstrous freak of reversion to the tiger, but a good looking young man +with nothing abnormal about him except his appalling courage and +resolution (that is why the terrified shriek Coward at him): one to +whom murdering a happy young couple on their wedding morning would have +been an unthinkably unnatural abomination under rational and kindly +human circumstances. + +Then comes the climax of irony and blind stupidity. The wolves, balked +of their meal of fellow-wolf, turn on the man, and proceed to torture +him, after their manner, by imprisonment, for refusing to fasten his +teeth in the throat of the dynamiter and hold him down until they came +to finish him. + +Thus, you see, a man may not be a gentleman nowadays even if he wishes +to. As to being a Christian, he is allowed some latitude in that +matter, because, I repeat, Christianity has two faces. Popular +Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a +sanguinary execution after torture, for its central mystery an insane +vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and +profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of Equality, +and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance, often politely +called punishment or justice. The gibbet part of Christianity is +tolerated. The other is criminal felony. Connoisseurs in irony are well +aware of the fact that the only editor in England who denounces +punishment as radically wrong, also repudiates Christianity; calls his +paper The Freethinker; and has been imprisoned for two years for +blasphemy. + + + +SANE CONCLUSIONS + +And now I must ask the excited reader not to lose his head on one side +or the other, but to draw a sane moral from these grim absurdities. It +is not good sense to propose that laws against crime should apply to +principals only and not to accessories whose consent, counsel, or +silence may secure impunity to the principal. If you institute +punishment as part of the law, you must punish people for refusing to +punish. If you have a police, part of its duty must be to compel +everybody to assist the police. No doubt if your laws are unjust, and +your policemen agents of oppression, the result will be an unbearable +violation of the private consciences of citizens. But that cannot be +helped: the remedy is, not to license everybody to thwart the law if +they please, but to make laws that will command the public assent, and +not to deal cruelly and stupidly with lawbreakers. Everybody +disapproves of burglars; but the modern burglar, when caught and +overpowered by a householder usually appeals, and often, let us hope, +with success, to his captor not to deliver him over to the useless +horrors of penal servitude. In other cases the lawbreaker escapes +because those who could give him up do not consider his breech of the +law a guilty action. Sometimes, even, private tribunals are formed in +opposition to the official tribunals; and these private tribunals +employ assassins as executioners, as was done, for example, by Mahomet +before he had established his power officially, and by the Ribbon +lodges of Ireland in their long struggle with the landlords. Under such +circumstances, the assassin goes free although everybody in the +district knows who he is and what he has done. They do not betray him, +partly because they justify him exactly as the regular Government +justifies its official executioner, and partly because they would +themselves be assassinated if they betrayed him: another method learnt +from the official government. Given a tribunal, employing a slayer who +has no personal quarrel with the slain; and there is clearly no moral +difference between official and unofficial killing. + +In short, all men are anarchists with regard to laws which are against +their consciences, either in the preamble or in the penalty. In London +our worst anarchists are the magistrates, because many of them are so +old and ignorant that when they are called upon to administer any law +that is based on ideas or knowledge less than half a century old, they +disagree with it, and being mere ordinary homebred private Englishmen +without any respect for law in the abstract, naively set the example of +violating it. In this instance the man lags behind the law; but when +the law lags behind the man, he becomes equally an anarchist. When some +huge change in social conditions, such as the industrial revolution of +the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, throws our legal and +industrial institutions out of date, Anarchism becomes almost a +religion. The whole force of the most energetic geniuses of the time in +philosophy, economics, and art, concentrates itself on demonstrations +and reminders that morality and law are only conventions, fallible and +continually obsolescing. Tragedies in which the heroes are bandits, and +comedies in which law-abiding and conventionally moral folk are +compelled to satirize themselves by outraging the conscience of the +spectators every time they do their duty, appear simultaneously with +economic treatises entitled "What is Property? Theft!" and with +histories of "The Conflict between Religion and Science." + +Now this is not a healthy state of things. The advantages of living in +society are proportionate, not to the freedom of the individual from a +code, but to the complexity and subtlety of the code he is prepared not +only to accept but to uphold as a matter of such vital importance that +a lawbreaker at large is hardly to be tolerated on any plea. Such an +attitude becomes impossible when the only men who can make themselves +heard and remembered throughout the world spend all their energy in +raising our gorge against current law, current morality, current +respect ability, and legal property. The ordinary man, uneducated in +social theory even when he is schooled in Latin verse, cannot be set +against all the laws of his country and yet persuaded to regard law in +the abstract as vitally necessary to society. Once he is brought to +repudiate the laws and institutions he knows, he will repudiate the +very conception of law and the very groundwork of institutions, +ridiculing human rights, extolling brainless methods as "historical," +and tolerating nothing except pure empiricism in conduct, with dynamite +as the basis of politics and vivisection as the basis of science. That +is hideous; but what is to be done? Here am I, for instance, by class a +respectable man, by common sense a hater of waste and disorder, by +intellectual constitution legally minded to the verge of pedantry, and +by temperament apprehensive and economically disposed to the limit of +old-maidishness; yet I am, and have always been, and shall now always +be, a revolutionary writer, because our laws make law impossible; our +liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our +morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by +inexperienced or malexperienced dupes, our power wielded by cowards and +weaklings, and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the +existing order for good reasons; but that does not make my attacks any +less encouraging or helpful to people who are its enemies for bad +reasons. The existing order may shriek that if I tell the truth about +it, some foolish person may drive it to become still worse by trying to +assassinate it. I cannot help that, even if I could see what worse it +could do than it is already doing. And the disadvantage of that worst +even from its own point of view is that society, with all its prisons +and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in +the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in +the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating +explosives which every Russian student can make, and every Russian +grenadier has learnt to handle in Manchuria, lies in the fact that +brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their +skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough +to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their +consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, simply not to +outrage their consciences. + +Do not be afraid that they will not make allowances. All men make very +large allowances indeed before they stake their own lives in a war to +the death with society. Nobody demands or expects the millennium. But +there are two things that must be set right, or we shall perish, like +Rome, of soul atrophy disguised as empire. The first is, that the daily +ceremony of dividing the wealth of the country among its inhabitants +shall be so conducted that no crumb shall go to any able-bodied adults +who are not producing by their personal exertions not only a full +equivalent for what they take, but a surplus sufficient to provide for +their superannuation and pay back the debt due for their nurture. + +The second is that the deliberate infliction of malicious injuries +which now goes on under the name of punishment be abandoned; so that +the thief, the ruffian, the gambler, and the beggar, may without +inhumanity be handed over to the law, and made to understand that a +State which is too humane to punish will also be too thrifty to waste +the life of honest men in watching or restraining dishonest ones. That +is why we do not imprison dogs. We even take our chance of their first +bite. But if a dog delights to bark and bite, it goes to the lethal +chamber. That seems to me sensible. To allow the dog to expiate his +bite by a period of torment, and then let him loose in a much more +savage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite again and +expiate again, having meanwhile spent a great deal of human life and +happiness in the task of chaining and feeding and tormenting him, seems +to me idiotic and superstitious. Yet that is what we do to men who bark +and bite and steal. It would be far more sensible to put up with their +vices, as we put up with their illnesses, until they give more trouble +than they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and +expressions of sympathy, and some generosity in complying with their +last wishes, then, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of +them. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to expiate their +misdeeds by a manufactured penalty, to subscribe to a charity, or to +compensate the victims. If there is to be no punishment there can be no +forgiveness. We shall never have real moral responsibility until +everyone knows that his deeds are irrevocable, and that his life +depends on his usefulness. Hitherto, alas! humanity has never dared +face these hard facts. We frantically scatter conscience money and +invent systems of conscience banking, with expiatory penalties, +atonements, redemptions, salvations, hospital subscription lists and +what not, to enable us to contract-out of the moral code. Not content +with the old scapegoat and sacrificial lamb, we deify human saviors, +and pray to miraculous virgin intercessors. We attribute mercy to the +inexorable; soothe our consciences after committing murder by throwing +ourselves on the bosom of divine love; and shrink even from our own +gallows because we are forced to admit that it, at least, is +irrevocable--as if one hour of imprisonment were not as irrevocable as +any execution! + +If a man cannot look evil in the face without illusion, he will never +know what it really is, or combat it effectually. The few men who have +been able (relatively) to do this have been called cynics, and have +sometimes had an abnormal share of evil in themselves, corresponding to +the abnormal strength of their minds; but they have never done mischief +unless they intended to do it. That is why great scoundrels have been +beneficent rulers whilst amiable and privately harmless monarchs have +ruined their countries by trusting to the hocus-pocus of innocence and +guilt, reward and punishment, virtuous indignation and pardon, instead +of standing up to the facts without either malice or mercy. Major +Barbara stands up to Bill Walker in that way, with the result that the +ruffian who cannot get hated, has to hate himself. To relieve this +agony be tries to get punished; but the Salvationist whom he tries to +provoke is as merciless as Barbara, and only prays for him. Then he +tries to pay, but can get nobody to take his money. His doom is the +doom of Cain, who, failing to find either a savior, a policeman, or an +almoner to help him to pretend that his brother's blood no longer cried +from the ground, had to live and die a murderer. Cain took care not to +commit another murder, unlike our railway shareholders (I am one) who +kill and maim shunters by hundreds to save the cost of automatic +couplings, and make atonement by annual subscriptions to deserving +charities. Had Cain been allowed to pay off his score, he might +possibly have killed Adam and Eve for the mere sake of a second +luxurious reconciliation with God afterwards. Bodger, you may depend on +it, will go on to the end of his life poisoning people with bad whisky, +because he can always depend on the Salvation Army or the Church of +England to negotiate a redemption for him in consideration of a +trifling percentage of his profits. There is a third condition too, +which must be fulfilled before the great teachers of the world will +cease to scoff at its religions. Creeds must become intellectually +honest. At present there is not a single credible established religion +in the world. That is perhaps the most stupendous fact in the whole +world-situation. This play of mine, Major Barbara, is, I hope, both +true and inspired; but whoever says that it all happened, and that +faith in it and understanding of it consist in believing that it is a +record of an actual occurrence, is, to speak according to Scripture, a +fool and a liar, and is hereby solemnly denounced and cursed as such by +me, the author, to all posterity. + +London, June 1906. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara, by +George Bernard Shaw + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAW'S PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA *** + +***** This file should be named 3789.txt or 3789.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/3789/ + +Produced by Eve Sobol. 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They are by Professor +Gilbert Murray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into +our dramatic literature with all the impulsive power of an +original work shortly before Major Barbara was begun. The play, +indeed, stands indebted to him in more ways than one. +G. B. S. + + + +Before dealing with the deeper aspects of Major Barbara, let me, +for the credit of English literature, make a protest against an +unpatriotic habit into which many of my critics have fallen. +Whenever my view strikes them as being at all outside the range +of, say, an ordinary suburban churchwarden, they conclude that I +am echoing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, +or some other heresiarch in northern or eastern Europe. + +I confess there is something flattering in this simple faith in +my accomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as a +philosopher. But I cannot tolerate the assumption that life and +literature is so poor in these islands that we must go abroad for +all dramatic material that is not common and all ideas that are +not superficial. I therefore venture to put my critics in +possession of certain facts concerning my contact with modern +ideas. + +About half a century ago, an Irish novelist, Charles Lever, wrote +a story entitled A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. It was published +by Charles Dickens in Household Words, and proved so strange to +the public taste that Dickens pressed Lever to make short work of +it. I read scraps of this novel when I was a child; and it made +an enduring impression on me. The hero was a very romantic hero, +trying to live bravely, chivalrously, and powerfully by dint +of mere romance-fed imagination, without courage, without means, +without knowledge, without skill, without anything real except +his bodily appetites. Even in my childhood I found in this poor +devil's unsuccessful encounters with the facts of life, a +poignant quality that romantic fiction lacked. The book, in spite +of its first failure, is not dead: I saw its title the other day +in the catalogue of Tauchnitz. + +Now why is it that when I also deal in the tragi-comic irony of +the conflict between real life and the romantic imagination, no +critic ever affiliates me to my countryman and immediate +forerunner, Charles Lever, whilst they confidently derive me from +a Norwegian author of whose language I do not know three words, +and of whom I knew nothing until years after the Shavian +Anschauung was already unequivocally declared in books full of +what came, ten years later, to be perfunctorily labelled +Ibsenism. I was not Ibsenist even at second hand; for Lever, +though he may have read Henri Beyle, alias Stendhal, certainly +never read Ibsen. Of the books that made Lever popular, such as +Charles O'Malley and Harry Lorrequer, I know nothing but the +names and some of the illustrations. But the story of the day's +ride and life's romance of Potts (claiming alliance with Pozzo di +Borgo) caught me and fascinated me as something strange and +significant, though I already knew all about Alnaschar and Don +Quixote and Simon Tappertit and many another romantic hero mocked +by reality. From the plays of Aristophanes to the tales of +Stevenson that mockery has been made familiar to all who are +properly saturated with letters. + +Where, then, was the novelty in Lever's tale? Partly, I think, in +a new seriousness in dealing with Potts's disease. Formerly, the +contrast between madness and sanity was deemed comic: Hogarth +shows us how fashionable people went in parties to Bedlam to +laugh at the lunatics. I myself have had a village idiot +exhibited to me as some thing irresistibly funny. On the stage +the madman was once a regular comic figure; that was how Hamlet +got his opportunity before Shakespear touched him. The +originality of Shakespear's version lay in his taking the lunatic +sympathetically and seriously, and thereby making an advance +towards the eastern consciousness of the fact that lunacy may be +inspiration in disguise, since a man who has more brains than his +fellows necessarily appears as mad to them as one who has less. +But Shakespear did not do for Pistol and Parolles what he did for +Hamlet. The particular sort of madman they represented, the +romantic makebeliever, lay outside the pale of sympathy in +literature: he was pitilessly despised and ridiculed here as he +was in the east under the name of Alnaschar, and was doomed to +be, centuries later, under the name of Simon Tappertit. When +Cervantes relented over Don Quixote, and Dickens relented over +Pickwick, they did not become impartial: they simply changed +sides, and became friends and apologists where they had formerly +been mockers. + +In Lever's story there is a real change of attitude. There is no +relenting towards Potts: he never gains our affections like Don +Quixote and Pickwick: he has not even the infatuate courage of +Tappertit. But we dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we +recognize ourselves in Potts. We may, some of us, have enough +nerve, enough muscle, enough luck, enough tact or skill or +address or knowledge to carry things off better than he did; to +impose on the people who saw through him; to fascinate Katinka +(who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the end of the story); but for +all that, we know that Potts plays an enormous part in ourselves +and in the world, and that the social problem is not a problem of +story-book heroes of the older pattern, but a problem of Pottses, +and of how to make men of them. To fall back on my old phrase, we +have the feeling--one that Alnaschar, Pistol, Parolles, and +Tappertit never gave us--that Potts is a piece of really +scientific natural history as distinguished from comic story +telling. His author is not throwing a stone at a creature of +another and inferior order, but making a confession, with the +effect that the stone hits everybody full in the conscience and +causes their self-esteem to smart very sorely. Hence the failure +of Lever's book to please the readers of Household Words. That +pain in the self-esteem nowadays causes critics to raise a cry of +Ibsenism. I therefore assure them that the sensation first came +to me from Lever and may have come to him from Beyle, or at least +out of the Stendhalian atmosphere. I exclude the hypothesis of +complete originality on Lever's part, because a man can no more +be completely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of +air. + +Another mistake as to my literary ancestry is made whenever I +violate the romantic convention that all women are angels when +they are not devils; that they are better looking than men; that +their part in courtship is entirely passive; and that the human +female form is the most beautiful object in nature. Schopenhauer +wrote a splenetic essay which, as it is neither polite nor +profound, was probably intended to knock this nonsense violently +on the head. A sentence denouncing the idolized form as ugly has +been largely quoted. The English critics have read that sentence; +and I must here affirm, with as much gentleness as the +implication will bear, that it has yet to be proved that they +have dipped any deeper. At all events, whenever an English +playwright represents a young and marriageable woman as being +anything but a romantic heroine, he is disposed of without +further thought as an echo of Schopenhauer. My own case is a +specially hard one, because, when I implore the critics who are +obsessed with the Schopenhaurian formula to remember that +playwrights, like sculptors, study their figures from life, and +not from philosophic essays, they reply passionately that I am +not a playwright and that my stage figures do not live. But even +so, I may and do ask them why, if they must give the credit of my +plays to a philosopher, they do not give it to an English +philosopher? Long before I ever read a word by Schopenhauer, or +even knew whether he was a philosopher or a chemist, the +Socialist revival of the eighteen-eighties brought me into +contact, both literary and personal, with Mr Ernest Belfort Bax, +an English Socialist and philosophic essayist, whose handling of +modern feminism would provoke romantic protests from Schopenhauer +himself, or even Strindberg. As a matter of fact I hardly noticed +Schopenhauer's disparagements of women when they came under my +notice later on, so thoroughly had Mr Bax familiarized me with +the homoist attitude, and forced me to recognize the extent to +which public opinion, and consequently legislation and +jurisprudence, is corrupted by feminist sentiment. + +But Mr Bax's essays were not confined to the Feminist question. +He was a ruthless critic of current morality. Other writers have +gained sympathy for dramatic criminals by eliciting the alleged +"soul of goodness in things evil"; but Mr Bax would propound some +quite undramatic and apparently shabby violation of our +commercial law and morality, and not merely defend it with the +most disconcerting ingenuity, but actually prove it to be a +positive duty that nothing but the certainty of police +persecution should prevent every right-minded man from at once +doing on principle. The Socialists were naturally shocked, being +for the most part morbidly moral people; but at all events they +were saved later on from the delusion that nobody but Nietzsche +had ever challenged our mercanto-Christian morality. I first +heard the name of Nietzsche from a German mathematician, Miss +Borchardt, who had read my Quintessence of Ibsenism, and told me +that she saw what I had been reading: namely, Nietzsche's +Jenseits von Gut and Bose. Which I protest I had never seen, and +could not have read with any comfort, for want of the necessary +German, if I had seen it. + +Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, is the victim in England of a +single much quoted sentence containing the phrase "big blonde +beast." On the strength of this alliteration it is assumed that +Nietzsche gained his European reputation by a senseless +glorification of selfish bullying as the rule of life, just as it +is assumed, on the strength of the single word Superman +(Ubermensch) borrowed by me from Nietzsche, that I look for the +salvation of society to the despotism of a single Napoleonic +Superman, in spite of my careful demonstration of the folly of +that outworn infatuation. But even the less recklessly +superficial critics seem to believe that the modern objection to +Christianity as a pernicious slave-morality was first put forward +by Nietzsche. It was familiar to me before I ever heard of +Nietzsche. The late Captain Wilson, author of several queer +pamphlets, propagandist of a metaphysical system called +Comprehensionism, and inventor of the term "Crosstianity" to +distinguish the retrograde element in Christendom, was wont +thirty years ago, in the discussions of the Dialectical Society, +to protest earnestly against the beatitudes of the Sermon on the +Mount as excuses for cowardice and servility, as destructive of +our will, and consequently of our honor and manhood. Now it is +true that Captain Wilson's moral criticism of Christianity was +not a historical theory of it, like Nietzsche's; but this +objection cannot be made to Mr Stuart-Glennie, the successor of +Buckle as a philosophic historian, who has devoted his life to +the elaboration and propagation of his theory that Christianity +is part of an epoch (or rather an aberration, since it began as +recently as 6000BC and is already collapsing) produced by the +necessity in which the numerically inferior white races found +themselves to impose their domination on the colored races by +priestcraft, making a virtue and a popular religion of drudgery +and submissiveness in this world not only as a means of achieving +saintliness of character but of securing a reward in heaven. Here +you have the slave-morality view formulated by a Scotch +philosopher long before English writers began chattering about +Nietzsche. + +As Mr Stuart-Glennie traced the evolution of society to the +conflict of races, his theory made some sensation among +Socialists--that is, among the only people who were seriously +thinking about historical evolution at all--by its collision with +the class-conflict theory of Karl Marx. Nietzsche, as I gather, +regarded the slave-morality as having been invented and imposed +on the world by slaves making a virtue of necessity and a +religion of their servitude. Mr Stuart-Glennie regards the +slave-morality as an invention of the superior white race to +subjugate the minds of the inferior races whom they wished to +exploit, and who would have destroyed them by force of numbers if +their minds had not been subjugated. As this process is in +operation still, and can be studied at first hand not only in our +Church schools and in the struggle between our modern proprietary +classes and the proletariat, but in the part played by Christian +missionaries in reconciling the black races of Africa to their +subjugation by European Capitalism, we can judge for ourselves +whether the initiative came from above or below. My object here +is not to argue the historical point, but simply to make our +theatre critics ashamed of their habit of treating Britain as an +intellectual void, and assuming that every philosophical idea, +every historic theory, every criticism of our moral, religious +and juridical institutions, must necessarily be either imported +from abroad, or else a fantastic sally (in rather questionable +taste) totally unrelated to the existing body of thought. I urge +them to remember that this body of thought is the slowest of +growths and the rarest of blossomings, and that if there is such +a thing on the philosophic plane as a matter of course, it is +that no individual can make more than a minute contribution to +it. In fact, their conception of clever persons +parthenogenetically bringing forth complete original cosmogonies +by dint of sheer "brilliancy" is part of that ignorant credulity +which is the despair of the honest philosopher, and the +opportunity of the religious impostor. + + +THE GOSPEL OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT + +It is this credulity that drives me to help my critics out with +Major Barbara by telling them what to say about it. In the +millionaire Undershaft I have represented a man who has become +intellectually and spiritually as well as practically conscious +of the irresistible natural truth which we all abhor and +repudiate: to wit, that the greatest of evils and the worst of +crimes is poverty, and that our first duty--a duty to which every +other consideration should be sacrificed--is not to be poor. +"Poor but honest," "the respectable poor," and such phrases are +as intolerable and as immoral as "drunken but amiable," +"fraudulent but a good after-dinner speaker," "splendidly +criminal," or the like. Security, the chief pretence of +civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger +of poverty, hangs over everyone's head, and where the alleged +protection of our persons from violence is only an accidental +result of the existence of a police force whose real business is +to force the poor man to see his children starve whilst idle +people overfeed pet dogs with the money that might feed and +clothe them. + +It is exceedingly difficult to make people realize that an evil +is an evil. For instance, we seize a man and deliberately do him +a malicious injury: say, imprison him for years. One would not +suppose that it needed any exceptional clearness of wit to +recognize in this an act of diabolical cruelty. But in England +such a recognition provokes a stare of surprise, followed by an +explanation that the outrage is punishment or justice or +something else that is all right, or perhaps by a heated attempt +to argue that we should all be robbed and murdered in our beds if +such senseless villainies as sentences of imprisonment were not +committed daily. It is useless to argue that even if this were +true, which it is not, the alternative to adding crimes of our +own to the crimes from which we suffer is not helpless +submission. Chickenpox is an evil; but if I were to declare that +we must either submit to it or else repress it sternly by seizing +everyone who suffers from it and punishing them by inoculation +with smallpox, I should be laughed at; for though nobody could +deny that the result would be to prevent chickenpox to some +extent by making people avoid it much more carefully, and to +effect a further apparent prevention by making them conceal it +very anxiously, yet people would have sense enough to see that +the deliberate propagation of smallpox was a creation of evil, +and must therefore be ruled out in favor of purely humane and +hygienic measures. Yet in the precisely parallel case of a man +breaking into my house and stealing my wife's diamonds I am +expected as a matter of course to steal ten years of his life, +torturing him all the time. If he tries to defeat that monstrous +retaliation by shooting me, my survivors hang him. The net result +suggested by the police statistics is that we inflict atrocious +injuries on the burglars we catch in order to make the rest take +effectual precautions against detection; so that instead of +saving our wives' diamonds from burglary we only greatly decrease +our chances of ever getting them back, and increase our chances +of being shot by the robber if we are unlucky enough to disturb +him at his work. + +But the thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of +imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, +and flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as +nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate +poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or +else a virtue to be embraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man +is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. +If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he is addicted to +the fine arts or to pure science instead of to trade and finance, +let him be poor. If he chooses to spend his urban eighteen +shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen shillings a week on +his beer and his family instead of saving it up for his old age, +let him be poor. Let nothing be done for "the undeserving": let +him be poor. Serve him right! Also--somewhat inconsistently-- +blessed are the poor! + +Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be +weak. Let him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease. +Let him be a standing exhibition and example of ugliness and +dirt. Let him have rickety children. Let him be cheap and let him +drag his fellows down to his price by selling himself to do their +work. Let his habitations turn our cities into poisonous +congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect our young men with +the diseases of the streets and his sons revenge him by turning +the nation's manhood into scrofula, cowardice, cruelty, +hypocrisy, political imbecility, and all the other fruits of +oppression and malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still +less deserving; and let the deserving lay up for himself, not +treasures in heaven, but horrors in hell upon earth. This being +so, is it really wise to let him be poor? Would he not do ten +times less harm as a prosperous burglar, incendiary, ravisher or +murderer, to the utmost limits of humanity's comparatively +negligible impulses in these directions? Suppose we were to +abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that +poverty is the one thing we will not tolerate--that every adult +with less than, say, 365 pounds a year, shall be painlessly but +inexorably killed, and every hungry half naked child forcibly +fattened and clothed, would not that be an enormous improvement +on our existing system, which has already destroyed so many +civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours in the same way? + +Is there any radicle of such legislation in our parliamentary +system? Well, there are two measures just sprouting in the +political soil, which may conceivably grow to something valuable. +One is the institution of a Legal Minimum Wage. The other, Old +Age Pensions. But there is a better plan than either of these. +Some time ago I mentioned the subject of Universal Old Age +Pensions to my fellow Socialist Mr Cobden-Sanderson, famous as an +artist-craftsman in bookbinding and printing. "Why not Universal +Pensions for Life?" said Cobden-Sanderson. In saying this, he +solved the industrial problem at a stroke. At present we say +callously to each citizen: "If you want money, earn it," as if +his having or not having it were a matter that concerned himself +alone. We do not even secure for him the opportunity of earning +it: on the contrary, we allow our industry to be organized in +open dependence on the maintenance of "a reserve army of +unemployed" for the sake of "elasticity." The sensible course +would be Cobden-Sanderson's: that is, to give every man enough to +live well on, so as to guarantee the community against the +possibility of a case of the malignant disease of poverty, and +then (necessarily) to see that he earned it. + +Undershaft, the hero of Major Barbara, is simply a man who, +having grasped the fact that poverty is a crime, knows that when +society offered him the alternative of poverty or a lucrative +trade in death and destruction, it offered him, not a choice +between opulent villainy and humble virtue, but between energetic +enterprise and cowardly infamy. His conduct stands the Kantian +test, which Peter Shirley's does not. Peter Shirley is what we +call the honest poor man. Undershaft is what we call the wicked +rich one: Shirley is Lazarus, Undershaft Dives. Well, the misery +of the world is due to the fact that the great mass of men act +and believe as Peter Shirley acts and believes. If they acted and +believed as Undershaft acts and believes, the immediate result +would be a revolution of incalculable beneficence. To be wealthy, +says Undershaft, is with me a point of honor for which I am +prepared to kill at the risk of my own life. This preparedness +is, as he says, the final test of sincerity. Like Froissart's +medieval hero, who saw that "to rob and pill was a good life," he +is not the dupe of that public sentiment against killing which is +propagated and endowed by people who would otherwise be killed +themselves, or of the mouth-honor paid to poverty and obedience +by rich and insubordinate do-nothings who want to rob the poor +without courage and command them without superiority. Froissart's +knight, in placing the achievement of a good life before all the +other duties--which indeed are not duties at all when they +conflict with it, but plain wickednesses--behaved bravely, +admirably, and, in the final analysis, public-spiritedly. +Medieval society, on the other hand, behaved very badly indeed in +organizing itself so stupidly that a good life could be achieved +by robbing and pilling. If the knight's contemporaries had been +all as resolute as he, robbing and pilling would have been the +shortest way to the gallows, just as, if we were all as resolute +and clearsighted as Undershaft, an attempt to live by means of +what is called "an independent income" would be the shortest way +to the lethal chamber. But as, thanks to our political imbecility +and personal cowardice (fruits of poverty both), the best +imitation of a good life now procurable is life on an independent +income, all sensible people aim at securing such an income, and +are, of course, careful to legalize and moralize both it and all +the actions and sentiments which lead to it and support it as an +institution. What else can they do? They know, of course, that +they are rich because others are poor. But they cannot help that: +it is for the poor to repudiate poverty when they have had enough +of it. The thing can be done easily enough: the demonstrations to +the contrary made by the economists, jurists, moralists and +sentimentalists hired by the rich to defend them, or even doing +the work gratuitously out of sheer folly and abjectness, impose +only on the hirers. + +The reason why the independent income-tax payers are not solid in +defence of their position is that since we are not medieval +rovers through a sparsely populated country, the poverty of those +we rob prevents our having the good life for which we sacrifice +them. Rich men or aristocrats with a developed sense of life--men +like Ruskin and William Morris and Kropotkin--have enormous +social appetites and very fastidious personal ones. They are not +content with handsome houses: they want handsome cities. They are +not content with bediamonded wives and blooming daughters: they +complain because the charwoman is badly dressed, because the +laundress smells of gin, because the sempstress is anemic, +because every man they meet is not a friend and every woman not a +romance. They turn up their noses at their neighbors' drains, and +are made ill by the architecture of their neighbors' houses. +Trade patterns made to suit vulgar people do not please them (and +they can get nothing else): they cannot sleep nor sit at ease +upon "slaughtered" cabinet makers' furniture. The very air is not +good enough for them: there is too much factory smoke in it. They +even demand abstract conditions: justice, honor, a noble moral +atmosphere, a mystic nexus to replace the cash nexus. Finally +they declare that though to rob and pill with your own hand on +horseback and in steel coat may have been a good life, to rob and +pill by the hands of the policeman, the bailiff, and the soldier, +and to underpay them meanly for doing it, is not a good life, but +rather fatal to all possibility of even a tolerable one. They +call on the poor to revolt, and, finding the poor shocked at +their ungentlemanliness, despairingly revile the proletariat for +its "damned wantlessness" (verdammte Bedurfnislosigkeit). + +So far, however, their attack on society has lacked simplicity. +The poor do not share their tastes nor understand their +art-criticisms. They do not want the simple life, nor the +esthetic life; on the contrary, they want very much to wallow in +all the costly vulgarities from which the elect souls among the +rich turn away with loathing. It is by surfeit and not by +abstinence that they will be cured of their hankering after +unwholesome sweets. What they do dislike and despise and are +ashamed of is poverty. To ask them to fight for the difference +between the Christmas number of the Illustrated London News and +the Kelmscott Chaucer is silly: they prefer the News. The +difference between a stockbroker's cheap and dirty starched white +shirt and collar and the comparatively costly and carefully dyed +blue shirt of William Morris is a difference so disgraceful to +Morris in their eyes that if they fought on the subject at all, +they would fight in defence of the starch. "Cease to be slaves, +in order that you may become cranks" is not a very inspiring call +to arms; nor is it really improved by substituting saints for +cranks. Both terms denote men of genius; and the common man does +not want to live the life of a man of genius: he would much +rather live the life of a pet collie if that were the only +alternative. But he does want more money. Whatever else he may be +vague about, he is clear about that. He may or may not prefer +Major Barbara to the Drury Lane pantomime; but he always prefers +five hundred pounds to five hundred shillings. + +Now to deplore this preference as sordid, and teach children that +it is sinful to desire money, is to strain towards the extreme +possible limit of impudence in lying, and corruption in +hypocrisy. The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact +in our civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience. +Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents +health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously +and undeniably as the want of it represents illness, weakness, +disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is +that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and +dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened to +worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that +it becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish +social conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two +things are inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to +be distributed socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and +bank notes are money. The first duty of every citizen is to +insist on having money on reasonable terms; and this demand is +not complied with by giving four men three shillings each for ten +or twelve hours' drudgery and one man a thousand pounds for +nothing. The crying need of the nation is not for better morals, +cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption of fallen +sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and fellowship +of the Trinity, but simply for enough money. And the evil to be +attacked is not sin, suffering, greed, priestcraft, kingcraft, +demagogy, monopoly, ignorance, drink, war, pestilence, nor any +other of the scapegoats which reformers sacrifice, but simply +poverty. + +Once take your eyes from the ends of the earth and fix them on +this truth just under your nose; and Andrew Undershaft's views +will not perplex you in the least. Unless indeed his constant +sense that he is only the instrument of a Will or Life Force +which uses him for purposes wider than his own, may puzzle you. +If so, that is because you are walking either in artificial +Darwinian darkness, or to mere stupidity. All genuinely religious +people have that consciousness. To them Undershaft the Mystic +will be quite intelligible, and his perfect comprehension of his +daughter the Salvationist and her lover the Euripidean republican +natural and inevitable. That, however, is not new, even on the +stage. What is new, as far as I know, is that article in +Undershaft's religion which recognizes in Money the first need +and in poverty the vilest sin of man and society. + +This dramatic conception has not, of course, been attained per +saltum. Nor has it been borrowed from Nietzsche or from any man +born beyond the Channel. The late Samuel Butler, in his own +department the greatest English writer of the latter half of the +XIX century, steadily inculcated the necessity and morality of a +conscientious Laodiceanism in religion and of an earnest and +constant sense of the importance of money. It drives one almost +to despair of English literature when one sees so extraordinary a +study of English life as Butler's posthumous Way of All Flesh +making so little impression that when, some years later, I +produce plays in which Butler's extraordinarily fresh, free and +future-piercing suggestions have an obvious share, I am met with +nothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and Nietzsche, and am +only too thankful that they are not about Alfred de Musset and +Georges Sand. Really, the English do not deserve to have great +men. They allowed Butler to die practically unknown, whilst I, a +comparatively insignificant Irish journalist, was leading them by +the nose into an advertisement of me which has made my own life a +burden. In Sicily there is a Via Samuele Butler. When an English +tourist sees it, he either asks "Who the devil was Samuele +Butler?" or wonders why the Sicilians should perpetuate the +memory of the author of Hudibras. + +Well, it cannot be denied that the English are only too anxious +to recognize a man of genius if somebody will kindly point him +out to them. Having pointed myself out in this manner with some +success, I now point out Samuel Butler, and trust that in +consequence I shall hear a little less in future of the novelty +and foreign origin of the ideas which are now making their way +into the English theatre through plays written by Socialists. +There are living men whose originality and power are as obvious +as Butler's; and when they die that fact will be discovered. +Meanwhile I recommend them to insist on their own merits as an +important part of their own business. + + +THE SALVATION ARMY + +When Major Barbara was produced in London, the second act was +reported in an important northern newspaper as a withering attack +on the Salvation Army, and the despairing ejaculation of Barbara +deplored by a London daily as a tasteless blasphemy. And they +were set right, not by the professed critics of the theatre, but +by religious and philosophical publicists like Sir Oliver Lodge +and Dr Stanton Coit, and strenuous Nonconformist journalists like +Mr William Stead, who not only understood the act as well as the +Salvationists themselves, but also saw it in its relation to the +religious life of the nation, a life which seems to lie not only +outside the sympathy of many of our theatre critics, but actually +outside their knowledge of society. Indeed nothing could be more +ironically curious than the confrontation Major Barbara effected +of the theatre enthusiasts with the religious enthusiasts. On the +one hand was the playgoer, always seeking pleasure, paying +exorbitantly for it, suffering unbearable discomforts for it, and +hardly ever getting it. On the other hand was the Salvationist, +repudiating gaiety and courting effort and sacrifice, yet always +in the wildest spirits, laughing, joking, singing, rejoicing, +drumming, and tambourining: his life flying by in a flash of +excitement, and his death arriving as a climax of triumph. And, +if you please, the playgoer despising the Salvationist as a +joyless person, shut out from the heaven of the theatre, +self-condemned to a life of hideous gloom; and the Salvationist +mourning over the playgoer as over a prodigal with vine leaves in +his hair, careering outrageously to hell amid the popping of +champagne corks and the ribald laughter of sirens! Could +misunderstanding be more complete, or sympathy worse misplaced? + +Fortunately, the Salvationists are more accessible to the +religious character of the drama than the playgoers to the gay +energy and artistic fertility of religion. They can see, when it +is pointed out to them, that a theatre, as a place where two or +three are gathered together, takes from that divine presence an +inalienable sanctity of which the grossest and profanest farce +can no more deprive it than a hypocritical sermon by a snobbish +bishop can desecrate Westminster Abbey. But in our professional +playgoers this indispensable preliminary conception of sanctity +seems wanting. They talk of actors as mimes and mummers, and, I +fear, think of dramatic authors as liars and pandars, whose main +business is the voluptuous soothing of the tired city speculator +when what he calls the serious business of the day is over. +Passion, the life of drama, means nothing to them but primitive +sexual excitement: such phrases as "impassioned poetry" or +"passionate love of truth" have fallen quite out of their +vocabulary and been replaced by "passional crime" and the like. +They assume, as far as I can gather, that people in whom passion +has a larger scope are passionless and therefore uninteresting. +Consequently they come to think of religious people as people who +are not interesting and not amusing. And so, when Barbara cuts +the regular Salvation Army jokes, and snatches a kiss from her +lover across his drum, the devotees of the theatre think they +ought to appear shocked, and conclude that the whole play is an +elaborate mockery of the Army. And then either hypocritically +rebuke me for mocking, or foolishly take part in the supposed +mockery! Even the handful of mentally competent critics got into +difficulties over my demonstration of the economic deadlock in +which the Salvation Army finds itself. Some of them thought that +the Army would not have taken money from a distiller and a cannon +founder: others thought it should not have taken it: all assumed +more or less definitely that it reduced itself to absurdity or +hypocrisy by taking it. On the first point the reply of the Army +itself was prompt and conclusive. As one of its officers said, +they would take money from the devil himself and be only too glad +to get it out of his hands and into God's. They gratefully +acknowledged that publicans not only give them money but allow +them to collect it in the bar--sometimes even when there is a +Salvation meeting outside preaching teetotalism. In fact, they +questioned the verisimilitude of the play, not because Mrs Baines +took the money, but because Barbara refused it. + +On the point that the Army ought not to take such money, its +justification is obvious. It must take the money because it +cannot exist without money, and there is no other money to be +had. Practically all the spare money in the country consists of a +mass of rent, interest, and profit, every penny of which is bound +up with crime, drink, prostitution, disease, and all the evil +fruits of poverty, as inextricably as with enterprise, wealth, +commercial probity, and national prosperity. The notion that you +can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical +individualist superstition. None the less the fact that all our +money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest young souls +when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them +conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the +Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical +Commissioners receive the rents of sporting public houses, +brothels, and sweating dens; or that the most generous +contributor at his last charity sermon was an employer trading in +female labor cheapened by prostitution as unscrupulously as a +hotel keeper trades in waiters' labor cheapened by tips, or +commissionaire's labor cheapened by pensions; or that the only +patron who can afford to rebuild his church or his schools or +give his boys' brigade a gymnasium or a library is the son-in-law +of a Chicago meat King, that young clergyman has, like Barbara, a +very bad quarter hour. But he cannot help himself by refusing to +accept money from anybody except sweet old ladies with +independent incomes and gentle and lovely ways of life. He has +only to follow up the income of the sweet ladies to its +industrial source, and there he will find Mrs Warren's profession +and the poisonous canned meat and all the rest of it. His own +stipend has the same root. He must either share the world's guilt +or go to another planet. He must save the world's honor if he is +to save his own. This is what all the Churches find just as the +Salvation Army and Barbara find it in the play. Her discovery +that she is her father's accomplice; that the Salvation Army is +the accomplice of the distiller and the dynamite maker; that they +can no more escape one another than they can escape the air they +breathe; that there is no salvation for them through personal +righteousness, but only through the redemption of the whole +nation from its vicious, lazy, competitive anarchy: this +discovery has been made by everyone except the Pharisees and +(apparently) the professional playgoers, who still wear their Tom +Hood shirts and underpay their washerwomen without the slightest +misgiving as to the elevation of their private characters, the +purity of their private atmospheres, and their right to repudiate +as foreign to themselves the coarse depravity of the garret and +the slum. Not that they mean any harm: they only desire to be, in +their little private way, what they call gentlemen. They do not +understand Barbara's lesson because they have not, like her, +learnt it by taking their part in the larger life of the nation. + + +BARBARA'S RETURN TO THE COLORS. + +Barbara's return to the colors may yet provide a subject for the +dramatic historian of the future. To go back to the Salvation +Army with the knowledge that even the Salvationists themselves +are not saved yet; that poverty is not blessed, but a most +damnable sin; and that when General Booth chose Blood and Fire +for the emblem of Salvation instead of the Cross, he was perhaps +better inspired than he knew: such knowledge, for the daughter of +Andrew Undershaft, will clearly lead to something hopefuller than +distributing bread and treacle at the expense of Bodger. + +It is a very significant thing, this instinctive choice of the +military form of organization, this substitution of the drum for +the organ, by the Salvation Army. Does it not suggest that the +Salvationists divine that they must actually fight the devil +instead of merely praying at him? At present, it is true, they +have not quite ascertained his correct address. When they do, +they may give a very rude shock to that sense of security which +he has gained from his experience of the fact that hard words, +even when uttered by eloquent essayists and lecturers, or carried +unanimously at enthusiastic public meetings on the motion of +eminent reformers, break no bones. It has been said that the +French Revolution was the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the +Encyclopedists. It seems to me to have been the work of men who +had observed that virtuous indignation, caustic criticism, +conclusive argument and instructive pamphleteering, even when +done by the most earnest and witty literary geniuses, were as +useless as praying, things going steadily from bad to worse +whilst the Social Contract and the pamphlets of Voltaire were at +the height of their vogue. Eventually, as we know, perfectly +respectable citizens and earnest philanthropists connived at the +September massacres because hard experience had convinced them +that if they contented themselves with appeals to humanity and +patriotism, the aristocracy, though it would read their appeals +with the greatest enjoyment and appreciation, flattering and +admiring the writers, would none the less continue to conspire +with foreign monarchists to undo the revolution and restore the +old system with every circumstance of savage vengeance and +ruthless repression of popular liberties. + +The nineteenth century saw the same lesson repeated in England. +It had its Utilitarians, its Christian Socialists, its Fabians +(still extant): it had Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle, +Butler, Henry George, and Morris. And the end of all their +efforts is the Chicago described by Mr Upton Sinclair, and the +London in which the people who pay to be amused by my dramatic +representation of Peter Shirley turned out to starve at forty +because there are younger slaves to be had for his wages, do not +take, and have not the slightest intention of taking, any +effective step to organize society in such a way as to make that +everyday infamy impossible. I, who have preached and +pamphleteered like any Encyclopedist, have to confess that my +methods are no use, and would be no use if I were Voltaire, +Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin, George, +Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with Euripides, More, +Moliere, Shakespear, Beaumarchais, Swift, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy, +Moses and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some sort I +actually am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The +problem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles +and artist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all +the sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, +accept every plunder, and submit to every oppression. +Christianity, in making a merit of such submission, has marked +only that depth in the abyss at which the very sense of shame is +lost. The Christian has been like Dickens' doctor in the debtor's +prison, who tells the newcomer of its ineffable peace and +security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of rates, taxes, and +rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties; nothing but the +rest and safety of having no further to fall. + +Yet in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom +vitality suddenly begins to germinate again. Joyousness, a sacred +gift long dethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and +obscenity, rises like a flood miraculously out of the fetid dust +and mud of the slums; rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs +rise to the heavens from people among whom the depressing noise +called "sacred music" is a standing joke; a flag with Blood and +Fire on it is unfurled, not in murderous rancor, but because fire +is beautiful and blood a vital and splendid red; Fear, which we +flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and transfigured men and women +carry their gospel through a transfigured world, calling their +leader General, themselves captains and brigadiers, and their +whole body an Army: praying, but praying only for refreshment, +for strength to fight, and for needful MONEY (a notable sign, +that); preaching, but not preaching submission; daring ill-usage +and abuse, but not putting up with more of it than is inevitable; +and practising what the world will let them practise, including +soap and water, color and music. There is danger in such +Activity; and where there is danger there is hope. Our present +security is nothing, and can be nothing, but evil made +irresistible. + +WEAKNESSES OF THE SALVATION ARMY. + +For the present, however, it is not my business to flatter the +Salvation Army. Rather must I point out to it that it has almost +as many weaknesses as the Church of England itself. It is +building up a business organization which will compel it +eventually to see that its present staff of enthusiast-commanders +shall be succeeded by a bureaucracy of men of business who will +be no better than bishops, and perhaps a good deal more +unscrupulous. That has always happened sooner or later to great +orders founded by saints; and the order founded by St William +Booth is not exempt from the same danger. It is even more +dependent than the Church on rich people who would cut off +supplies at once if it began to preach that indispensable revolt +against poverty which must also be a revolt against riches. It is +hampered by a heavy contingent of pious elders who are not really +Salvationists at all, but Evangelicals of the old school. It +still, as Commissioner Howard affirms, "sticks to Moses," which +is flat nonsense at this time of day if the Commissioner means, +as I am afraid he does, that the Book of Genesis contains a +trustworthy scientific account of the origin of species, and that +the god to whom Jephthah sacrificed his daughter is any less +obviously a tribal idol than Dagon or Chemosh. + +Further, there is still too much other-worldliness about the +Army. Like Frederick's grenadier, the Salvationist wants to live +for ever (the most monstrous way of crying for the moon); and +though it is evident to anyone who has ever heard General Booth +and his best officers that they would work as hard for human +salvation as they do at present if they believed that death would +be the end of them individually, they and their followers have a +bad habit of talking as if the Salvationists were heroically +enduring a very bad time on earth as an investment which will +bring them in dividends later on in the form, not of a better +life to come for the whole world, but of an eternity spent by +themselves personally in a sort of bliss which would bore any +active person to a second death. Surely the truth is that the +Salvationists are unusually happy people. And is it not the very +diagnostic of true salvation that it shall overcome the fear of +death? Now the man who has come to believe that there is no such +thing as death, the change so called being merely the transition +to an exquisitely happy and utterly careless life, has not +overcome the fear of death at all: on the contrary, it has +overcome him so completely that he refuses to die on any terms +whatever. I do not call a Salvationist really saved until he is +ready to lie down cheerfully on the scrap heap, having paid scot +and lot and something over, and let his eternal life pass on to +renew its youth in the battalions of the future. + +Then there is the nasty lying habit called confession, which the +Army encourages because it lends itself to dramatic oratory, with +plenty of thrilling incident. For my part, when I hear a convert +relating the violences and oaths and blasphemies he was guilty of +before he was saved, making out that he was a very terrible +fellow then and is the most contrite and chastened of Christians +now, I believe him no more than I believe the millionaire who +says he came up to London or Chicago as a boy with only three +halfpence in his pocket. Salvationists have said to me that +Barbara in my play would never have been taken in by so +transparent a humbug as Snobby Price; and certainly I do not +think Snobby could have taken in any experienced Salvationist on +a point on which the Salvationist did not wish to be taken in. +But on the point of conversion all Salvationists wish to be taken +in; for the more obvious the sinner the more obvious the miracle +of his conversion. When you advertize a converted burglar or +reclaimed drunkard as one of the attractions at an experience +meeting, your burglar can hardly have been too burglarious or +your drunkard too drunken. As long as such attractions are relied +on, you will have your Snobbies claiming to have beaten their +mothers when they were as a matter of prosaic fact habitually +beaten by them, and your Rummies of the tamest respectability +pretending to a past of reckless and dazzling vice. Even when +confessions are sincerely autobiographic there is no reason to +assume at once that the impulse to make them is pious or the +interest of the hearers wholesome. It might as well be assumed +that the poor people who insist on showing appalling ulcers to +district visitors are convinced hygienists, or that the curiosity +which sometimes welcomes such exhibitions is a pleasant and +creditable one. One is often tempted to suggest that those who +pester our police superintendents with confessions of murder +might very wisely be taken at their word and executed, except in +the few cases in which a real murderer is seeking to be relieved +of his guilt by confession and expiation. For though I am not, I +hope, an unmerciful person, I do not think that the inexorability +of the deed once done should be disguised by any ritual, whether +in the confessional or on the scaffold. + +And here my disagreement with the Salvation Army, and with all +propagandists of the Cross (to which I object as I object to all +gibbets) becomes deep indeed. Forgiveness, absolution, atonement, +are figments: punishment is only a pretence of cancelling one +crime by another; and you can no more have forgiveness without +vindictiveness than you can have a cure without a disease. You +will never get a high morality from people who conceive that +their misdeeds are revocable and pardonable, or in a society +where absolution and expiation are officially provided for us +all. The demand may be very real; but the supply is spurious. +Thus Bill Walker, in my play, having assaulted the Salvation +Lass, presently finds himself overwhelmed with an intolerable +conviction of sin under the skilled treatment of Barbara. +Straightway he begins to try to unassault the lass and +deruffianize his deed, first by getting punished for it in kind, +and, when that relief is denied him, by fining himself a pound to +compensate the girl. He is foiled both ways. He finds the +Salvation Army as inexorable as fact itself. It will not punish +him: it will not take his money. It will not tolerate a redeemed +ruffian: it leaves him no means of salvation except ceasing to be +a ruffian. In doing this, the Salvation Army instinctively +grasps the central truth of Christianity and discards its central +superstition: that central truth being the vanity of revenge and +punishment, and that central superstition the salvation of the +world by the gibbet. + +For, be it noted, Bill has assaulted an old and starving woman +also; and for this worse offence he feels no remorse whatever, +because she makes it clear that her malice is as great as his +own. "Let her have the law of me, as she said she would," says +Bill: "what I done to her is no more on what you might call my +conscience than sticking a pig." This shows a perfectly natural +and wholesome state of mind on his part. The old woman, like the +law she threatens him with, is perfectly ready to play the game +of retaliation with him: to rob him if he steals, to flog him if +he strikes, to murder him if he kills. By example and precept the +law and public opinion teach him to impose his will on others by +anger, violence, and cruelty, and to wipe off the moral score by +punishment. That is sound Crosstianity. But this Crosstianity has +got entangled with something which Barbara calls Christianity, +and which unexpectedly causes her to refuse to play the hangman's +game of Satan casting out Satan. She refuses to prosecute a +drunken ruffian; she converses on equal terms with a blackguard +whom no lady could be seen speaking to in the public street: in +short, she behaves as illegally and unbecomingly as possible +under the circumstances. Bill's conscience reacts to this just as +naturally as it does to the old woman's threats. He is placed in +a position of unbearable moral inferiority, and strives by every +means in his power to escape from it, whilst he is still quite +ready to meet the abuse of the old woman by attempting to smash a +mug on her face. And that is the triumphant justification of +Barbara's Christianity as against our system of judicial +punishment and the vindictive villain-thrashings and "poetic +justice" of the romantic stage. + +For the credit of literature it must be pointed out that the +situation is only partly novel. Victor Hugo long ago gave us the +epic of the convict and the bishop's candlesticks, of the +Crosstian policeman annihilated by his encounter with the +Christian Valjean. But Bill Walker is not, like Valjean, +romantically changed from a demon into an angel. There are +millions of Bill Walkers in all classes of society to-day; and +the point which I, as a professor of natural psychology, desire +to demonstrate, is that Bill, without any change in his character +whatsoever, will react one way to one sort of treatment and +another way to another. + +In proof I might point to the sensational object lesson provided +by our commercial millionaires to-day. They begin as brigands: +merciless, unscrupulous, dealing out ruin and death and slavery +to their competitors and employees, and facing desperately the +worst that their competitors can do to them. The history of the +English factories, the American trusts, the exploitation of +African gold, diamonds, ivory and rubber, outdoes in villainy the +worst that has ever been imagined of the buccaneers of the +Spanish Main. Captain Kidd would have marooned a modern Trust +magnate for conduct unworthy of a gentleman of fortune. The law +every day seizes on unsuccessful scoundrels of this type and +punishes them with a cruelty worse than their own, with the +result that they come out of the torture house more dangerous +than they went in, and renew their evil doing (nobody will employ +them at anything else) until they are again seized, again +tormented, and again let loose, with the same result. + +But the successful scoundrel is dealt with very differently, and +very Christianly. He is not only forgiven: he is idolized, +respected, made much of, all but worshipped. Society returns him +good for evil in the most extravagant overmeasure. And with what +result? He begins to idolize himself, to respect himself, to live +up to the treatment he receives. He preaches sermons; he writes +books of the most edifying advice to young men, and actually +persuades himself that he got on by taking his own advice; he +endows educational institutions; he supports charities; he dies +finally in the odor of sanctity, leaving a will which is a +monument of public spirit and bounty. And all this without any +change in his character. The spots of the leopard and the stripes +of the tiger are as brilliant as ever; but the conduct of the +world towards him has changed; and his conduct has changed +accordingly. You have only to reverse your attitude towards him-- +to lay hands on his property, revile him, assault him, and he +will be a brigand again in a moment, as ready to crush you as you +are to crush him, and quite as full of pretentious moral reasons +for doing it. + +In short, when Major Barbara says that there are no scoundrels, +she is right: there are no absolute scoundrels, though there are +impracticable people of whom I shall treat presently. Every +practicable man (and woman) is a potential scoundrel and a +potential good citizen. What a man is depends on his character; +but what he does, and what we think of what he does, depends on +his circumstances. The characteristics that ruin a man in one +class make him eminent in another. The characters that behave +differently in different circumstances behave alike in similar +circumstances. Take a common English character like that of Bill +Walker. We meet Bill everywhere: on the judicial bench, on the +episcopal bench, in the Privy Council, at the War Office and +Admiralty, as well as in the Old Bailey dock or in the ranks of +casual unskilled labor. And the morality of Bill's +characteristics varies with these various circumstances. The +faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier: the +manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk his +situation. In short, though character is independent of +circumstances, conduct is not; and our moral judgments of +character are not: both are circumstantial. Take any condition of +life in which the circumstances are for a mass of men practically +alike: felony, the House of Lords, the factory, the stables, the +gipsy encampment or where you please! In spite of diversity of +character and temperament, the conduct and morals of the +individuals in each group are as predicable and as alike in the +main as if they were a flock of sheep, morals being mostly only +social habits and circumstantial necessities. Strong people know +this and count upon it. In nothing have the master-minds of the +world been distinguished from the ordinary suburban season-ticket +holder more than in their straightforward perception of the fact +that mankind is practically a single species, and not a menagerie +of gentlemen and bounders, villains and heroes, cowards and +daredevils, peers and peasants, grocers and aristocrats, artisans +and laborers, washerwomen and duchesses, in which all the grades +of income and caste represent distinct animals who must not be +introduced to one another or intermarry. Napoleon constructing a +galaxy of generals and courtiers, and even of monarchs, out of +his collection of social nobodies; Julius Caesar appointing as +governor of Egypt the son of a freedman--one who but a short time +before would have been legally disqualified for the post even of +a private soldier in the Roman army; Louis XI making his barber +his privy councillor: all these had in their different ways a +firm hold of the scientific fact of human equality, expressed by +Barbara in the Christian formula that all men are children of one +father. A man who believes that men are naturally divided into +upper and lower and middle classes morally is making exactly the +same mistake as the man who believes that they are naturally +divided in the same way socially. And just as our persistent +attempts to found political institutions on a basis of social +inequality have always produced long periods of destructive +friction relieved from time to time by violent explosions of +revolution; so the attempt--will Americans please note--to found +moral institutions on a basis of moral inequality can lead to +nothing but unnatural Reigns of the Saints relieved by licentious +Restorations; to Americans who have made divorce a public +institution turning the face of Europe into one huge sardonic +smile by refusing to stay in the same hotel with a Russian man of +genius who has changed wives without the sanction of South +Dakota; to grotesque hypocrisy, cruel persecution, and final +utter confusion of conventions and compliances with benevolence +and respectability. It is quite useless to declare that all men +are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a +man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To +guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral +character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every +man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment, which any +fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether +as a prophet or as a rascal. This is the lesson Democracy has to +learn before it can become anything but the most oppressive of +all the priesthoods. + +Let us now return to Bill Walker and his case of conscience +against the Salvation Army. Major Barbara, not being a modern +Tetzel, or the treasurer of a hospital, refuses to sell Bill +absolution for a sovereign. Unfortunately, what the Army can +afford to refuse in the case of Bill Walker, it cannot refuse in +the case of Bodger. Bodger is master of the situation because he +holds the purse strings. "Strive as you will," says Bodger, in +effect: "me you cannot do without. You cannot save Bill Walker +without my money." And the Army answers, quite rightly under the +circumstances, "We will take money from the devil himself sooner +than abandon the work of Salvation." So Bodger pays his +conscience-money and gets the absolution that is refused to Bill. +In real life Bill would perhaps never know this. But I, the +dramatist, whose business it is to show the connexion between +things that seem apart and unrelated in the haphazard order of +events in real life, have contrived to make it known to Bill, +with the result that the Salvation Army loses its hold of him at +once. + +But Bill may not be lost, for all that. He is still in the grip +of the facts and of his own conscience, and may find his taste +for blackguardism permanently spoiled. Still, I cannot guarantee +that happy ending. Let anyone walk through the poorer quarters of +our cities when the men are not working, but resting and chewing +the cud of their reflections; and he will find that there is one +expression on every mature face: the expression of cynicism. The +discovery made by Bill Walker about the Salvation Army has been +made by every one of them. They have found that every man has his +price; and they have been foolishly or corruptly taught to +mistrust and despise him for that necessary and salutary +condition of social existence. When they learn that General +Booth, too, has his price, they do not admire him because it is a +high one, and admit the need of organizing society so that he +shall get it in an honorable way: they conclude that his +character is unsound and that all religious men are hypocrites +and allies of their sweaters and oppressors. They know that the +large subscriptions which help to support the Army are +endowments, not of religion, but of the wicked doctrine of +docility in poverty and humility under oppression; and they are +rent by the most agonizing of all the doubts of the soul, the +doubt whether their true salvation must not come from their most +abhorrent passions, from murder, envy, greed, stubbornness, rage, +and terrorism, rather than from public spirit, reasonableness, +humanity, generosity, tenderness, delicacy, pity and kindness. +The confirmation of that doubt, at which our newspapers have been +working so hard for years past, is the morality of militarism; +and the justification of militarism is that circumstances may at +any time make it the true morality of the moment. It is by +producing such moments that we produce violent and sanguinary +revolutions, such as the one now in progress in Russia and the +one which Capitalism in England and America is daily and +diligently provoking. + +At such moments it becomes the duty of the Churches to evoke all +the powers of destruction against the existing order. But if they +do this, the existing order must forcibly suppress them. Churches +are suffered to exist only on condition that they preach +submission to the State as at present capitalistically organized. +The Church of England itself is compelled to add to the +thirty-six articles in which it formulates its religious tenets, +three more in which it apologetically protests that the moment +any of these articles comes in conflict with the State it is to +be entirely renounced, abjured, violated, abrogated and abhorred, +the policeman being a much more important person than any +of the Persons of the Trinity. And this is why no tolerated +Church nor Salvation Army can ever win the entire confidence of +the poor. It must be on the side of the police and the military, +no matter what it believes or disbelieves; and as the police and +the military are the instruments by which the rich rob and +oppress the poor (on legal and moral principles made for the +purpose), it is not possible to be on the side of the poor and of +the police at the same time. Indeed the religious bodies, as the +almoners of the rich, become a sort of auxiliary police, taking +off the insurrectionary edge of poverty with coals and blankets, +bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the victims with +hopes of immense and inexpensive happiness in another world when +the process of working them to premature death in the service of +the rich is complete in this. + + +CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM + +Such is the false position from which neither the Salvation Army +nor the Church of England nor any other religious organization +whatever can escape except through a reconstitution of society. +Nor can they merely endure the State passively, washing their +hands of its sins. The State is constantly forcing the +consciences of men by violence and cruelty. Not content with +exacting money from us for the maintenance of its soldiers and +policemen, its gaolers and executioners, it forces us to take an +active personal part in its proceedings on pain of becoming +ourselves the victims of its violence. As I write these lines, a +sensational example is given to the world. A royal marriage has +been celebrated, first by sacrament in a cathedral, and then by a +bullfight having for its main amusement the spectacle of horses +gored and disembowelled by the bull, after which, when the bull +is so exhausted as to be no longer dangerous, he is killed by a +cautious matador. But the ironic contrast between the bullfight +and the sacrament of marriage does not move anyone. Another +contrast--that between the splendor, the happiness, the +atmosphere of kindly admiration surrounding the young couple, and +the price paid for it under our abominable social arrangements in +the misery, squalor and degradation of millions of other young +couples--is drawn at the same moment by a novelist, Mr Upton +Sinclair, who chips a corner of the veneering from the huge meat +packing industries of Chicago, and shows it to us as a sample of +what is going on all over the world underneath the top layer of +prosperous plutocracy. One man is sufficiently moved by that +contrast to pay his own life as the price of one terrible blow at +the responsible parties. Unhappily his poverty leaves him also +ignorant enough to be duped by the pretence that the innocent +young bride and bridegroom, put forth and crowned by plutocracy +as the heads of a State in which they have less personal power +than any policeman, and less influence than any chairman of a +trust, are responsible. At them accordingly he launches his +sixpennorth of fulminate, missing his mark, but scattering the +bowels of as many horses as any bull in the arena, and slaying +twenty-three persons, besides wounding ninety-nine. And of all +these, the horses alone are innocent of the guilt he is avenging: +had he blown all Madrid to atoms with every adult person in it, +not one could have escaped the charge of being an accessory, +before, at, and after the fact, to poverty and prostitution, to +such wholesale massacre of infants as Herod never dreamt of, to +plague, pestilence and famine, battle, murder and lingering +death--perhaps not one who had not helped, through example, +precept, connivance, and even clamor, to teach the dynamiter his +well-learnt gospel of hatred and vengeance, by approving every +day of sentences of years of imprisonment so infernal in its +unnatural stupidity and panic-stricken cruelty, that their +advocates can disavow neither the dagger nor the bomb without +stripping the mask of justice and humanity from themselves also. +Be it noted that at this very moment there appears the biography +of one of our dukes, who, being Scotch, could argue about +politics, and therefore stood out as a great brain among our +aristocrats. And what, if you please, was his grace's favorite +historical episode, which he declared he never read without +intense satisfaction? Why, the young General Bonapart's pounding +of the Paris mob to pieces in 1795, called in playful approval by +our respectable classes "the whiff of grapeshot," though +Napoleon, to do him justice, took a deeper view of it, and would +fain have had it forgotten. And since the Duke of Argyll was not +a demon, but a man of like passions with ourselves, by no means +rancorous or cruel as men go, who can doubt that all over the +world proletarians of the ducal kidney are now revelling in "the +whiff of dynamite" (the flavor of the joke seems to evaporate a +little, does it not?) because it was aimed at the class they hate +even as our argute duke hated what he called the mob. + +In such an atmosphere there can be only one sequel to the Madrid +explosion. All Europe burns to emulate it. Vengeance! More blood! +Tear "the Anarchist beast" to shreds. Drag him to the scaffold. +Imprison him for life. Let all civilized States band together to +drive his like off the face of the earth; and if any State +refuses to join, make war on it. This time the leading London +newspaper, anti-Liberal and therefore anti-Russian in politics, +does not say "Serve you right" to the victims, as it did, in +effect, when Bobrikofl; and De Plehve, and Grand Duke Sergius, +were in the same manner unofficially fulminated into fragments. +No: fulminate our rivals in Asia by all means, ye brave Russian +revolutionaries; but to aim at an English princess-monstrous! +hideous! hound down the wretch to his doom; and observe, please, +that we are a civilized and merciful people, and, however much we +may regret it, must not treat him as Ravaillac and Damiens were +treated. And meanwhile, since we have not yet caught him, let us +soothe our quivering nerves with the bullfight, and comment in a +courtly way on the unfailing tact and good taste of the ladies of +our royal houses, who, though presumably of full normal natural +tenderness, have been so effectually broken in to fashionable +routine that they can be taken to see the horses slaughtered as +helplessly as they could no doubt be taken to a gladiator show, +if that happened to be the mode just now. + +Strangely enough, in the midst of this raging fire of malice, the +one man who still has faith in the kindness and intelligence of +human nature is the fulminator, now a hunted wretch, with +nothing, apparently, to secure his triumph over all the prisons +and scaffolds of infuriate Europe except the revolver in his +pocket and his readiness to discharge it at a moment's notice +into his own or any other head. Think of him setting out to find +a gentleman and a Christian in the multitude of human wolves +howling for his blood. Think also of this: that at the very +first essay he finds what he seeks, a veritable grandee of Spain, +a noble, high-thinking, unterrified, malice-void soul, in the +guise--of all masquerades in the world!--of a modern editor. The +Anarchist wolf, flying from the wolves of plutocracy, throws +himself on the honor of the man. The man, not being a wolf (nor a +London editor), and therefore not having enough sympathy with his +exploit to be made bloodthirsty by it, does not throw him back to +the pursuing wolves--gives him, instead, what help he can to +escape, and sends him off acquainted at last with a force that +goes deeper than dynamite, though you cannot make so much of it +for sixpence. That righteous and honorable high human deed is not +wasted on Europe, let us hope, though it benefits the fugitive +wolf only for a moment. The plutocratic wolves presently smell +him out. The fugitive shoots the unlucky wolf whose nose is +nearest; shoots himself; and then convinces the world, by his +photograph, that he was no monstrous freak of reversion to the +tiger, but a good looking young man with nothing abnormal about +him except his appalling courage and resolution (that is why the +terrified shriek Coward at him): one to whom murdering a happy +young couple on their wedding morning would have been an +unthinkably unnatural abomination under rational and kindly human +circumstances. + +Then comes the climax of irony and blind stupidity. The wolves, +balked of their meal of fellow-wolf, turn on the man, and proceed +to torture him, after their manner, by imprisonment, for refusing +to fasten his teeth in the throat of the dynamiter and hold him +down until they came to finish him. + +Thus, you see, a man may not be a gentleman nowadays even if he +wishes to. As to being a Christian, he is allowed some latitude +in that matter, because, I repeat, Christianity has two faces. +Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief +sensation a sanguinary execution after torture, for its central +mystery an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. +But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms +the sacred mystery of Equality, and forbids the glaring futility +and folly of vengeance, often politely called punishment or +justice. The gibbet part of Christianity is tolerated. The other +is criminal felony. Connoisseurs in irony are well aware of the +fact that the only editor in England who denounces punishment as +radically wrong, also repudiates Christianity; calls his paper +The Freethinker; and has been imprisoned for two years for +blasphemy. + + +SANE CONCLUSIONS + +And now I must ask the excited reader not to lose his head on one +side or the other, but to draw a sane moral from these grim +absurdities. It is not good sense to propose that laws against +crime should apply to principals only and not to accessories +whose consent, counsel, or silence may secure impunity to the +principal. If you institute punishment as part of the law, you +must punish people for refusing to punish. If you have a police, +part of its duty must be to compel everybody to assist the +police. No doubt if your laws are unjust, and your policemen +agents of oppression, the result will be an unbearable violation +of the private consciences of citizens. But that cannot be +helped: the remedy is, not to license everybody to thwart the law +if they please, but to make laws that will command the public +assent, and not to deal cruelly and stupidly with lawbreakers. +Everybody disapproves of burglars; but the modern burglar, when +caught and overpowered by a householder usually appeals, and +often, let us hope, with success, to his captor not to deliver +him over to the useless horrors of penal servitude. In other +cases the lawbreaker escapes because those who could give him up +do not consider his breech of the law a guilty action. Sometimes, +even, private tribunals are formed in opposition to the official +tribunals; and these private tribunals employ assassins as +executioners, as was done, for example, by Mahomet before he had +established his power officially, and by the Ribbon lodges +of Ireland in their long struggle with the landlords. Under such +circumstances, the assassin goes free although everybody in the +district knows who he is and what he has done. They do not betray +him, partly because they justify him exactly as the regular +Government justifies its official executioner, and partly because +they would themselves be assassinated if they betrayed him: +another method learnt from the official government. Given a +tribunal, employing a slayer who has no personal quarrel with the +slain; and there is clearly no moral difference between official +and unofficial killing. + +In short, all men are anarchists with regard to laws which are +against their consciences, either in the preamble or in the +penalty. In London our worst anarchists are the magistrates, +because many of them are so old and ignorant that when they are +called upon to administer any law that is based on ideas or +knowledge less than half a century old, they disagree with it, +and being mere ordinary homebred private Englishmen without any +respect for law in the abstract, naively set the example of +violating it. In this instance the man lags behind the law; but +when the law lags behind the man, he becomes equally an +anarchist. When some huge change in social conditions, such as +the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth +centuries, throws our legal and industrial institutions out +of date, Anarchism becomes almost a religion. The whole force of +the most energetic geniuses of the time in philosophy, economics, +and art, concentrates itself on demonstrations and reminders that +morality and law are only conventions, fallible and continually +obsolescing. Tragedies in which the heroes are bandits, and +comedies in which law-abiding and conventionally moral folk are +compelled to satirize themselves by outraging the conscience of +the spectators every time they do their duty, appear +simultaneously with economic treatises entitled "What is +Property? Theft!" and with histories of "The Conflict between +Religion and Science." + +Now this is not a healthy state of things. The advantages of +living in society are proportionate, not to the freedom of the +individual from a code, but to the complexity and subtlety of the +code he is prepared not only to accept but to uphold as a matter +of such vital importance that a lawbreaker at large is hardly to +be tolerated on any plea. Such an attitude becomes impossible +when the only men who can make themselves heard and remembered +throughout the world spend all their energy in raising our gorge +against current law, current morality, current respect +ability, and legal property. The ordinary man, uneducated in +social theory even when he is schooled in Latin verse, cannot be +set against all the laws of his country and yet persuaded to +regard law in the abstract as vitally necessary to society. Once +he is brought to repudiate the laws and institutions he knows, he +will repudiate the very conception of law and the very groundwork +of institutions, ridiculing human rights, extolling brainless +methods as "historical," and tolerating nothing except pure +empiricism in conduct, with dynamite as the basis of politics and +vivisection as the basis of science. That is hideous; but what is +to be done? Here am I, for instance, by class a respectable man, +by common sense a hater of waste and disorder, by intellectual +constitution legally minded to the verge of pedantry, and by +temperament apprehensive and economically disposed to the limit +of old-maidishness; yet I am, and have always been, and shall now +always be, a revolutionary writer, because our laws make law +impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is +organized robbery; our morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our +wisdom is administered by inexperienced or malexperienced dupes, +our power wielded by cowards and weaklings, and our honor false +in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good +reasons; but that does not make my attacks any less encouraging +or helpful to people who are its enemies for bad reasons. The +existing order may shriek that if I tell the truth about it, some +foolish person may drive it to become still worse by trying to +assassinate it. I cannot help that, even if I could see what +worse it could do than it is already doing. And the disadvantage +of that worst even from its own point of view is that society, +with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and +starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is +prepared to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our +natural safety from the cheap and devastating explosives which +every Russian student can make, and every Russian grenadier has +learnt to handle in Manchuria, lies in the fact that brave and +resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins +for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough +to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until +their consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, +simply not to outrage their consciences. + +Do not be afraid that they will not make allowances. All men make +very large allowances indeed before they stake their own lives in +a war to the death with society. Nobody demands or expects the +millennium. But there are two things that must be set right, or +we shall perish, like Rome, of soul atrophy disguised as empire. +The first is, that the daily ceremony of dividing the wealth of +the country among its inhabitants shall be so conducted that no +crumb shall go to any able-bodied adults who are not producing by +their personal exertions not only a full equivalent for what they +take, but a surplus sufficient to provide for their +superannuation and pay back the debt due for their nurture. + +The second is that the deliberate infliction of malicious +injuries which now goes on under the name of punishment be +abandoned; so that the thief, the ruffian, the gambler, and the +beggar, may without inhumanity be handed over to the law, and +made to understand that a State which is too humane to punish +will also be too thrifty to waste the life of honest men in +watching or restraining dishonest ones. That is why we do not +imprison dogs. We even take our chance of their first bite. But +if a dog delights to bark and bite, it goes to the lethal +chamber. That seems to me sensible. To allow the dog to expiate +his bite by a period of torment, and then let him loose in a much +more savage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite +again and expiate again, having meanwhile spent a great deal of +human life and happiness in the task of chaining and feeding and +tormenting him, seems to me idiotic and superstitious. Yet that +is what we do to men who bark and bite and steal. It would be far +more sensible to put up with their vices, as we put up with their +illnesses, until they give more trouble than they are worth, at +which point we should, with many apologies and expressions of +sympathy, and some generosity in complying with their last +wishes, then, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of +them. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to expiate +their misdeeds by a manufactured penalty, to subscribe to a +charity, or to compensate the victims. If there is to be no +punishment there can be no forgiveness. We shall never have real +moral responsibility until everyone knows that his deeds are +irrevocable, and that his life depends on his usefulness. +Hitherto, alas! humanity has never dared face these hard facts. +We frantically scatter conscience money and invent systems of +conscience banking, with expiatory penalties, atonements, +redemptions, salvations, hospital subscription lists and what +not, to enable us to contract-out of the moral code. Not content +with the old scapegoat and sacrificial lamb, we deify human +saviors, and pray to miraculous virgin intercessors. We attribute +mercy to the inexorable; soothe our consciences after committing +murder by throwing ourselves on the bosom of divine love; and +shrink even from our own gallows because we are forced to admit +that it, at least, is irrevocable--as if one hour of imprisonment +were not as irrevocable as any execution! + +If a man cannot look evil in the face without illusion, he will +never know what it really is, or combat it effectually. The few +men who have been able (relatively) to do this have been called +cynics, and have sometimes had an abnormal share of evil in +themselves, corresponding to the abnormal strength of their +minds; but they have never done mischief unless they intended to +do it. That is why great scoundrels have been beneficent rulers +whilst amiable and privately harmless monarchs have ruined their +countries by trusting to the hocus-pocus of innocence and guilt, +reward and punishment, virtuous indignation and pardon, instead +of standing up to the facts without either malice or mercy. Major +Barbara stands up to Bill Walker in that way, with the result +that the ruffian who cannot get hated, has to hate himself. To +relieve this agony be tries to get punished; but the Salvationist +whom he tries to provoke is as merciless as Barbara, and only +prays for him. Then he tries to pay, but can get nobody to take +his money. His doom is the doom of Cain, who, failing to find +either a savior, a policeman, or an almoner to help him to +pretend that his brother's blood no longer cried from the ground, +had to live and die a murderer. Cain took care not to commit +another murder, unlike our railway shareholders (I am one) who +kill and maim shunters by hundreds to save the cost of automatic +couplings, and make atonement by annual subscriptions to +deserving charities. Had Cain been allowed to pay off his score, +he might possibly have killed Adam and Eve for the mere sake of a +second luxurious reconciliation with God afterwards. Bodger, you +may depend on it, will go on to the end of his life poisoning +people with bad whisky, because he can always depend on the +Salvation Army or the Church of England to negotiate a redemption +for him in consideration of a trifling percentage of his profits. +There is a third condition too, which must be fulfilled before +the great teachers of the world will cease to scoff at its +religions. Creeds must become intellectually honest. At present +there is not a single credible established religion in the world. +That is perhaps the most stupendous fact in the whole +world-situation. This play of mine, Major Barbara, is, I hope, +both true and inspired; but whoever says that it all happened, +and that faith in it and understanding of it consist in believing +that it is a record of an actual occurrence, is, to speak +according to Scripture, a fool and a liar, and is hereby solemnly +denounced and cursed as such by me, the author, to all posterity. + +London, June 1906. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Preface to Major Barbara: + diff --git a/old/pmbrb10.zip b/old/pmbrb10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..778c545 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pmbrb10.zip |