he first movement of a man.

But the sensation connected with Mr. Shaw in recent years has been his
sudden development of the religion of the Superman. He who had to all
appearance mocked at the faiths in the forgotten past discovered a new
god in the unimaginable future. He who had laid all the blame on
ideals set up the most impossible of all ideals, the ideal of a new
creature. But the truth, nevertheless, is that any one who knows Mr.
Shaw's mind adequately, and admires it properly, must have guessed all
this long ago.

For the truth is that Mr. Shaw has never seen things as they really
are. If he had he would have fallen on his knees before them. He has
always had a secret ideal that has withered all the things of this
world. He has all the time been silently comparing humanity with
something that was not human, with a monster from Mars, with the Wise
Man of the Stoics, with the Economic Man of the Fabians, with Julius
Caesar, with Siegfried, with the Superman. Now, to have this inner and
merciless standard may be a very good thing, or a very bad one, it may
be excellent or unfortunate, but it is not seeing things as they are.
It is not seeing things as they are to think first of a Briareus with a
hundred hands, and then call every man a cripple for only having two.
It is not seeing things as they are to start with a vision of Argus
with his hundred eyes, and then jeer at every man with two eyes as if
he had only one. And it is not seeing things as they are to imagine a
demigod of infinite mental clarity, who may or may not appear in the
latter days of the earth, and then to see all men as idiots. And this
is what Mr. Shaw has always in some degree done. When we really see
men as they are, we do not criticise, but worship; and very rightly.
For a monster with mysterious eyes and miraculous thumbs, with strange
dreams in his skull, and a queer tenderness for this place or that
baby, is truly a wonderful and unnerving matter. It is only the quite
arbitrary and priggish habit of comparison with something else which
makes it possible to be at our ease in front of him. A sentiment of
superiority keeps us cool and practical; the mere facts would make, our
knees knock under as with religious fear. It is the fact that every
instant of conscious life is an unimaginable prodigy. It is the fact
that every face in the street has the incredible unexpectedness of a
fairy-tale. The thing which prevents a man from realizin