we know ourselves to be infinitesimal in
comparison. Nor in regard to home, and all that sanctifies and defends
it, does Mr. Shaw seem ever to have understood the real morality that is
in the heart of the average man. The nauseating thing which he quotes as
morality is a mere caricature of that vital sense of honour and
imperative conscience of righteousness which, thank God, are still alive
among us. "My dear," he says, "you are the incarnation of morality, your
conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody
names." Similar, and no less unfortunate, is his perversion of that
instinct of patriotism which, however mistaken in some of its
expressions, has yet proved its moral and practical worth during many a
century of British history. There is the less need to dwell upon this,
because those who discard patriotism have only to state their case
clearly in order to discredit it.

We do not fear greatly the permanent influence of these fundamental
errors. The great heart of the civilised world still beats true, and is
healthy enough to disown so maimed an account of human nature. Yet there
is danger in any such element in literature as this. Mr. Shaw's
biographer has virtually told us that in these matters he is but a child
in whom "Irish innocence is peculiar and fundamental." The pleadings of
the nurse for the precocious and yet defective infant are certainly very
touching. He may be the innocent creature that Mr. Chesterton takes him
for, but he has said things which will exactly suit the views of
libertines who read him. Such pleadings are quite unavailing to excuse
any such child if he does too much innocent mischief. His puritanism and
his childlikeness only make his teaching more dangerous because more
piquant. It has the air of proceeding from the same source as the ten
commandments, and the effect of this upon the unreflecting is always
considerable. If a child is playing in a powder magazine, the more
childish and innocent he is the more dangerous he will prove; and the
explosion, remember, will be just as violent if lit by a child's hand as
if it had been lit by an anarchist's. We have in England borne long
enough with people trifling with the best intentions among explosives,
moral and social, and we must consider our own safety and that of
society when we are judging them.

As to the relation in which Mr. Shaw stands to paganism, his relations
to anything are so "extensive and peculiar"