oved by a moral generalisation.
"Actions," he says, "are to be judged by their effect on happiness, and
not by their conformity to any ideal." As we have already seen, there is
a certain inconsistency here; for while Shaw had always chucked all
ideals overboard the one he had chucked first was the ideal of
happiness. Passing this however for the present, we may mark the above
as the most satisfying summary. If I tell a lie I am not to blame myself
for having violated the ideal of truth, but only for having perhaps got
myself into a mess and made things worse than they were before. If I
have broken my word I need not feel (as my fathers did) that I have
broken something inside of me, as one who breaks a blood vessel. It all
depends on whether I have broken up something outside me; as one who
breaks up an evening party. If I shoot my father the only question is
whether I have made him happy. I must not admit the idealistic
conception that the mere shooting of my father might possibly make me
unhappy. We are to judge of every individual case as it arises,
apparently without any social summary or moral ready-reckoner at all.
"The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule." We must not say that
it is right to keep promises, but that it may be right to keep this
promise. Essentially it is anarchy; nor is it very easy to see how a
state could be very comfortable which was Socialist in all its public
morality and Anarchist in all its private. But if it is anarchy, it is
anarchy without any of the abandon and exuberance of anarchy. It is a
worried and conscientious anarchy; an anarchy of painful delicacy and
even caution. For it refuses to trust in traditional experiments or
plainly trodden tracks; every case must be considered anew from the
beginning, and yet considered with the most wide-eyed care for human
welfare; every man must act as if he were the first man made. Briefly,
we must always be worrying about what is best for our children, and we
must not take one hint or rule of thumb from our fathers. Some think
that this anarchism would make a man tread down mighty cities in his
madness. I think it would make a man walk down the street as if he were
walking on egg-shells. I do not think this experiment in opportunism
would end in frantic license; I think it would end in frozen timidity.
If a man was forbidden to solve moral problems by moral science or the
help of mankind, his course would be quite easy--he would not solve