e; the knowledge that the majority of the human
race had no part or lot in such visions, but loved rather food and
drink and comfort and money and rude mirth; who did not care a pin what
happened to other people, or how frail and suffering beings spent their
lives, so long as they themselves were healthy and jolly. Then that
shadow deepens and thickens, until the sad dreamers do one of two
things--either immure themselves in a tiny scented garden of their own,
and try to drown the insistent noises without; or, on the other hand, if
they are of the nobler sort, lose heart and hope, and even forfeit their
own delight in things that are sweet and generous and pleasant and pure.
A mournful and inextricable dilemma!

Perhaps one or two of such visionaries, who are made of sterner stuff,
have deliberately embarked, hopefully and courageously, upon the
Pardiggle path; they have tried absurd experiments, like Ruskin, in
road-making and the formation of Guilds; they have taken to journalism
and committees like William Morris. But they have been baffled. I do not
mean to say that such lives of splendid renunciation may not have a deep
moral effect; but, on the other hand, it is little gain to humanity if
a richly-endowed spirit deserts a piece of work that he can do, to toil
unsuccessfully at a piece of work that cannot yet be done at all.

I myself believe that when Society is capable of using property and the
better pleasures, it will arise and take them quietly and firmly: and
as for the fine spirits who would try to organise things before they are
even sorted, well, they have done a noble, ineffectual thing, because
they could not do otherwise; and their desire to mend what is amiss
is at all events a sign that the impulse is there, that the sun has
brightened upon the peaks before it could warm the valleys.

I was reading to-day The Irrational Knot, an early book by Mr.
Bernard Shaw, whom I whole-heartedly admire because of his courage and
good-humour and energy. That book represents a type of the New Man, such
as I suppose Mr. Shaw would have us all to be; the book, in spite of
its radiant wit, is a melancholy one, because the novelist penetrates
so clearly past the disguises of humanity, and takes delight in dragging
the mean, ugly, shuddering, naked creature into the open. The New Man
himself is entirely vigorous, cheerful, affectionate, sensible, and
robust. He is afraid of nothing and shocked by nothing. I think it
wo