which makes the Englishman dangerous to him; and
the Englishman instinctively flatters the fault that makes the Irishman
harmless and amusing to him. What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman
is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity. The
vitality which places nourishment and children first, heaven and hell
a somewhat remote second, and the health of society as an organic whole
nowhere, may muddle successfully through the comparatively tribal stages
of gregariousness; but in nineteenth century nations and twentieth
century empires the determination of every man to be rich at all costs,
and of every woman to be married at all costs, must, without a highly
scientific social organization, produce a ruinous development of
poverty, celibacy, prostitution, infant mortality, adult degeneracy, and
everything that wise men most dread. In short, there is no future for
men, however brimming with crude vitality, who are neither intelligent
nor politically educated enough to be Socialists. So do not
misunderstand me in the other direction either: if I appreciate the
vital qualities of the Englishman as I appreciate the vital qualities of
the bee, I do not guarantee the Englishman against being, like the
bee (or the Canaanite) smoked out and unloaded of his honey by beings
inferior to himself in simple acquisitiveness, combativeness, and
fecundity, but superior to him in imagination and cunning.

The Don Juan play, however, is to deal with sexual attraction, and not
with nutrition, and to deal with it in a society in which the serious
business of sex is left by men to women, as the serious business of
nutrition is left by women to men. That the men, to protect themselves
against a too aggressive prosecution of the women's business, have set
up a feeble romantic convention that the initiative in sex business must
always come from the man, is true; but the pretence is so shallow that
even in the theatre, that last sanctuary of unreality, it imposes only
on the inexperienced. In Shakespear's plays the woman always takes the
initiative. In his problem plays and his popular plays alike the love
interest is the interest of seeing the woman hunt the man down. She may
do it by blandishment, like Rosalind, or by stratagem, like Mariana; but
in every case the relation between the woman and the man is the same:
she is the pursuer and contriver, he the pursued and disposed of. When
she is baffled, like Ophelia, she goes ma