diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:22:21 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:22:21 -0700 |
| commit | 4aa1ecf0ac679912d6ea2f0f5acbc6da776758e6 (patch) | |
| tree | 625b906f4aa70680a0f45c1a7bdad421e311d11d /old | |
Diffstat (limited to 'old')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/pmbrb10.txt | 1860 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/pmbrb10.zip | bin | 0 -> 42219 bytes |
2 files changed, 1860 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/pmbrb10.txt b/old/pmbrb10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..22feb15 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pmbrb10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1860 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Preface to Major Barbara: +First Aid to Critics, #21 in our series by George Bernard Shaw. + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words +are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they +need about what they can legally do with the texts. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below, including for donations. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) +organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 + + + +Title: PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA: FIRST AID TO CRITICS + +Author: GEORGE BERNARD SHAW + +Release Date: February, 2003 [Etext #3789] +[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule] +[The actual date this file first posted = 09/09/01] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Preface to Major Barbara: +**This file should be named pmbrb10.txt or pmbrb10.zip** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, pmbrb11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, pmbrb10a.txt + +This etext was produced by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA + + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any +of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after +the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our sites at: +http://gutenberg.net +http://promo.net/pg + + +Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement +can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 +or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext +files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+ +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third +of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts unless we +manage to get some real funding. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of July 12, 2001 contributions are only being solicited from people in: +Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, +Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, +Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North +Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, +Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, +Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, +additions to this list will be made and fund raising +will begin in the additional states. Please feel +free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork +to legally request donations in all 50 states. If +your state is not listed and you would like to know +if we have added it since the list you have, just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in +states where we are not yet registered, we know +of no prohibition against accepting donations +from donors in these states who approach us with +an offer to donate. + + +International donations are accepted, +but we don't know ANYTHING about how +to make them tax-deductible, or +even if they CAN be made deductible, +and don't have the staff to handle it +even if there are ways. + +All donations should be made to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) +organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541, +and has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal +Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum +extent permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met, +additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the +additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org +if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if +it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . . + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +*** + + +Example command-line FTP session: + +ftp ftp.ibiblio.org +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg +cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc. +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] +GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.07/27/01*END* + + + + + +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any +sales of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they +hardware or software or any other related product without express +permission.] + + + + + +This etext was produced by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA + + + + + +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 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 |