pty wastes of the skies beyond starland
are silent. Or, worse, their one sound is the footfall of that buffoon
Fate.

The way to meet this black situation, according to Conrad, is to face it
with grim steady courage. And that's what he does. It's stirring to
discover the fineness of this man's tragic bravery. But when I get loose
from his spell, and reflect, independently, I ask myself, "After all, is
this performance so brave?"

We must all weigh the universe, each in his own penny-scales, and decide
for ourselves whether to regard it as inspiring or hollow. But letting
our penny-scales frighten us isn't stout-hearted.

If I were to tell myself ghost stories until I was trembling, and then,
with my heart turning cold, firmly walk through the dark, my courage
would be splendid, no doubt, but not finely applied. Conrad's courage is
splendid--it is as great as almost any modern's--but it isn't courageous
of him to busy it with self-conjured dreads.

The Wrong Lampman

It is odd, or no, it's not, but it's note-worthy, that Shaw has had few
disciples. Here is a witty, vivacious man, successful and keen: why
isn't he the head of a school of other keen, witty writers? He has
provided an attractive form--the play with an essay as preface. He has
provided stock characters, such as the handsome-hero male-moth, who
protests so indignantly at the fatal attraction of candles. He has
developed above all that useful formula which has served many a
dramatist--the comic confrontation of reason and instinct in man. Yet
this whole apparatus lies idle, except for the use that Shaw makes of
it. It is as though Henry Ford had perfected an automobile, and then no
one had taken a drive in it, ever, but Henry.

The explanation that Shaw's is too good a machine, or that it takes a
genius to run it, is not sufficiently plausible. The truth probably is
that his shiny car has some bad defect.

It has this defect certainly: in all his long arguments, Shaw has one
underlying assumption--that men could be perfectly reasonable and wise
if they would. They have only to let themselves; and if they won't,
it's downright perversity. This belief is at the center of his being,
and he can't get away from it. He doesn't hold it lightly: he's really
in earnest about it. Naturally, when he looks around at the world with
that belief in his heart, and sees men and women making blunders which
he thinks they don't need to, he becomes too exasperated