who pass through birth and death." In an age
that has almost chosen death, "Shaw follows the banner of life; but
austerely, not joyously." Nowhere, in dealing with Shaw's philosophy,
does Chesterton note his debt to Butler. Shaw has himself mentioned
it, and no reader of Butler could miss it, especially in this matter
of the Life Force. It is the special paradox of our age, Chesterton
notes, that the life force should thus need assertion and can thus be
followed without joy.

To every man and woman, bird, beast, and flower, life is a
love-call to be eagerly followed. To Bernard Shaw it is merely a
military bugle to be obeyed. In short, he fails to feel that the
command of Nature (if one must use the anthropomorphic fable of
Nature instead of the philosophic term God) can be enjoyed as well as
obeyed. He paints life at its darkest and then tells the babe unborn
to take the leap in the dark. That is heroic; and to my instinct at
least Schopenhauer looks like a pigmy beside his pupil. But it is the
heroism of a morbid and almost asphyxiated age. It is awful to think
that this world which so many poets have praised has even for a time
been depicted as a man-trap into which we may just have the manhood
to jump. Think of all those ages through which men have talked of
having the courage to die. And then remember that we have actually
fallen to talking of having the courage to live.*

[* _George Bernard Shaw_. Week-End Library, p. 190.]

Here comes the great parting of the two men's thought. G.K. believed
in God and in joy. But he saw that Shaw had much of value for this
strange diseased world. His primary value was not merely (as some
said) that he woke it up. The literary world might not be awake to
the social evil, but it was painfully awake to the ills, real or
imaginary, inherent in human life.

We do not need waking up; rather we suffer from insomnia, with all
its results of fear and exaggeration and frightful waking dreams. The
modern mind is not a donkey which wants kicking to make it go on. The
modern mind is more like a motor-car on a lonely road which two
amateur motorists have been just clever enough to take to pieces but
are not quite clever enough to put together again.*

[Ibid., pp. 245-6.]

Shaw had not merely asked questions of the age: that would have been
worse than useless. What he had done was at moments to rise above his
own thoughts and g