ecting man and woman should be
given the opportunity to work out his or her own destiny fully,
unhampered by the tyrannies of caste, prestige, sentimental traditions,
false codes, and effete moral obligations.

But these ideas are of very considerable magnitude. They are capable
of almost infinite extension and application to life. And it should be
observed that, though Mr. Shaw thinks mainly about obvious "public
questions"--politics, the professions, the institution of marriage,
patriotism, public oratory, public health, etc., he has nothing in
common with the unimaginative public man who merely criticises
proposals and policies. He is always interested in the state of mind
which produces proposals and policies. When he pleads for the
abolition of the Dramatic Censorship before a Royal Commission, he
gives us not only the most effective practical exposure of the
Censorship that has ever been written, but also a far-reaching
philosophical analysis of liberty as freedom to express and propagate
ideas. "My reputation has been gained by my persistent struggle to
force the public to reconsider its morals," he says in the _Rejected
Statement_, the presentation of which to the Royal Commission affords
one of those delightful true stories that only a Shaw can make so
damaging. "I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the
nation to my opinion in these matters." That he has to a large extent
already converted the intellectuals--whether by his plays or by other
means--is beyond question. Many of the most powerful writers of the
last ten years have concentrated their efforts on exposing the tyranny
of the established idea and the established moral code. Such diverse
writers as Mr. Wells, Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Granville Barker, Mr.
Cunninghame-Graham, Mr. Belloc, and Mr. Chesterton have written books
the motives of which have been satire, divine anger, _saeva
indignatio_, directed against the established moral codes or
intellectual habits of the time. Mr. Shaw, who originally followed the
obscure Samuel Butler, showed the way for the others. His method was,
and is, to combine argument with the more telling weapon of ridicule.
In his Preface to _Blanco Posnet_ he exposes and ridicules the
Dramatic Censorship, just as in _Getting Married_ he exposes and
ridicules the popular conception of happy domestic life, and in like
manner in _The Doctor's Dilemma_ the superstition that the faculty of
medicine is infallible.

Th