Life Is Given Us As A Passion.

Shaw Does Not Merely Decorate A Proposition, But Makes His Way From Point To Point Through New And Difficult Territory. This Explains Why Shaw Must Either Be Taken Whole Or Left Alone. He Must Be Disassembled And Put Together Again With Nothing Left Out, Under Pain Of Incomprehension; For His Politics, His Art, And His Religion - To Say Nothing Of The Shape Of His Sentences - Are Unique Expressions Of This Enormously Enlarged And Yet Concentrated Consciousness.

Since In Every European Country Between 1870 And 1914 There Was A War Party Demanding Armaments, An Individualist Party Demanding Ruthless Competition, An Imperialist Party Demanding A Free Hand Over Backward Peoples, A Socialist Party Demanding The Conquest Of Power And A Racialist Party Demanding Internal Purges Against Aliens - All Of Them, When Appeals To Greed And Glory Failed, Invoked Spencer And Darwin, Which Was To Say Science Incarnate.

Since It Is Seldom Clear Whether Intellectual Activity Denotes A Superior Mode Of Being Or A Vital Deficiency, Opinion Swings Between Considering Intellect A Privilege And Seeing It As A Handicap

To Delve Into History Entails, Besides The Grievance Of Hard Work, The Danger That In The Depths One May Lose One’s Scapegoats.

The Greatest Artists Have Never Been Men Of Taste. By Never Sophisticating Their Instincts They Have Never Lost The Awareness Of The Great Simplicities, Which They Relish Both From Appetite And From The Challenge These Offer To Skill In Competition With Popular Art.