has the intelligence to give them, and it is among
those of his paradoxes which contain a certain truth.

A far more important play is _The Philanderer_, an ironic comedy which
is full of fine strokes and real satire; it is more especially the
vehicle of some of Shaw's best satire upon physical science. Nothing
could be cleverer than the picture of the young, strenuous doctor, in
the utter innocence of his professional ambition, who has discovered a
new disease, and is delighted when he finds people suffering from it and
cast down to despair when he finds that it does not exist. The point is
worth a pause, because it is a good, short way of stating Shaw's
attitude, right or wrong, upon the whole of formal morality. What he
dislikes in young Doctor Paramore is that he has interposed a secondary
and false conscience between himself and the facts. When his disease is
disproved, instead of seeing the escape of a human being who thought he
was going to die of it, Paramore sees the downfall of a kind of flag or
cause. This is the whole contention of _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_,
put better than the book puts it; it is a really sharp exposition of the
dangers of "idealism," the sacrifice of people to principles, and Shaw
is even wiser in his suggestion that this excessive idealism exists
nowhere so strongly as in the world of physical science. He shows that
the scientist tends to be more concerned about the sickness than about
the sick man; but it was certainly in his mind to suggest here also that
the idealist is more concerned about the sin than about the sinner.

This business of Dr. Paramore's disease while it is the most farcical
thing in the play is also the most philosophic and important. The rest
of the figures, including the Philanderer himself, are in the full sense
of those blasting and obliterating words "funny without being vulgar,"
that is, funny without being of any importance to the masses of men. It
is a play about a dashing and advanced "Ibsen Club," and the squabble
between the young Ibsenites and the old people who are not yet up to
Ibsen. It would be hard to find a stronger example of Shaw's only
essential error, modernity--which means the seeking for truth in terms
of time. Only a few years have passed and already almost half the wit of
that wonderful play is wasted, because it all turns on the newness of a
fashion that is no longer new. Doubtless many people still think the
Ibsen drama a great thing,