politics, religion
and even literary criticism. Clearly it tends at all times to set up
individual conviction against authority, freedom against discipline.
It has as its virtue the quality of being opposed to red tape,
professionalism, departmentalism pedantry, officiousness, intolerance,
lethargy, and the tyranny of custom; it has its dangers in that,
resting as it does in the last resort on the personal and the
concrete, it tends in ill-balanced minds to neglect the value of
ancient and dear illusions, and to degenerate into chaos and caprice.
Chaos, however, is not so much to be feared as those "little
provisional fools' paradises of belief" exposed so brilliantly by
William James.

PART THREE

LITERATURE AND MEN

I

BERNARD SHAW

It is doubtful if any person in England exercises so many-sided and so
considerable an influence as that of Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not that
his books are read by very many thousands of readers; that his plays
have long runs or can compete in popularity with those of Mr. Barrie
or the Gaiety Theatre; that his lectures and speeches are reported so
fully as those of an ordinary Cabinet Minister; that his letters to
the newspapers are as numerous as those of Mr. Algernon Ashton or Dr.
Clifford in his prime. He seldom demonstrates his power by passing
Acts of Parliament or organising garden parties. He figures less often
in the Social and Personal columns than Sir H. Beerbohm Tree. He is
not so well known in the law courts as Mr. Horatio Bottomley. Yet
there is no other man in England who is so conspicuous in so many
spheres of activity, and wherever he appears he is always _facile
princeps_ in the public eye. Everyone who has any knowledge of him is
compelled to think about him, and those who have no direct knowledge
of him--so insidious is his influence--are to be found constantly
thinking in terms of Bernard Shaw. The active, talking, persuading,
book-writing, lecturing, propagandist population of England has been
bitten by him; it re-writes and popularises him; it even talks his
jargon when it is criticising him. It began by regarding him as a
brilliant and witty writer whom no one could take seriously; it now
regards him as a serious, and indeed responsible, thinker whose wit is
a matter of harmless inspiration, and often a tactical advantage.

Mr. Shaw, in fact, has thrust himself upon English public life.
Wherever anything is doing or being talked about he is in