The Project Gutenberg EBook of George Bernard Shaw, by Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Title: George Bernard Shaw

Author: Gilbert K. Chesterton

Release Date: October 13, 2006 [EBook #19535]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE BERNARD SHAW ***

Produced by Sigal Alon, Martin Pettit and the Online
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GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

_By_

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

NEW YORK

JOHN LANE COMPANY

MCMIX

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
JOHN LANE COMPANY

THE PLIMPTON PRESS, NORWOOD, MASS.

* * * * *

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

HERETICS.

ORTHODOXY.

THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL: A Romance.
Illustrated by W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

THE BALL AND THE CROSS.

* * * * *

_Introduction to the First Edition_

Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do
not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do
not agree with him.

G. K. C.

_The Problem of a Preface_

A peculiar difficulty arrests the writer of this rough study at the very
start. Many people know Mr. Bernard Shaw chiefly as a man who would
write a very long preface even to a very short play. And there is truth
in the idea; he is indeed a very prefatory sort of person. He always
gives the explanation before the incident; but so, for the matter of
that, does the Gospel of St. John. For Bernard Shaw, as for the mystics,
Christian and heathen (and Shaw is best described as a heathen mystic),
the philosophy of facts is anterior to the facts themselves. In due time
we come to the fact, the incarnation; but in the beginning was the Word.

This produces upon many minds an impression of needless preparation and
a kind of bustling prolixity. But the truth is that the very rapidity of
such a man's mind makes him seem slow in getting to the point. It is
positively because he is quick-witted that he is