e more mystified by the
incredibly weak fight which he makes in the play in answer to the
elephantine sophistries of Undershaft. It is really a disgraceful case,
and almost the only case in Shaw of there being no fair fight between
the two sides. For instance, the Professor mentions pity. Mr. Undershaft
says with melodramatic scorn, "Pity! the scavenger of the Universe!" Now
if any gentleman had said this to me, I should have replied, "If I
permit you to escape from the point by means of metaphors, will you tell
me whether you disapprove of scavengers?" Instead of this obvious
retort, the miserable Greek professor only says, "Well then, love," to
which Undershaft replies with unnecessary violence that he won't have
the Greek professor's love, to which the obvious answer of course would
be, "How the deuce can you prevent my loving you if I choose to do so?"
Instead of this, as far as I remember, that abject Hellenist says
nothing at all. I only mention this unfair dialogue, because it marks, I
think, the recent hardening, for good or evil, of Shaw out of a
dramatist into a mere philosopher, and whoever hardens into a
philosopher may be hardening into a fanatic.

And just as there is nothing really problematic in Shaw's mind, so there
is nothing really paradoxical. The meaning of the word paradoxical may
indeed be made the subject of argument. In Greek, of course, it simply
means something which is against the received opinion; in that sense a
missionary remonstrating with South Sea cannibals is paradoxical. But in
the much more important world, where words are used and altered in the
using, paradox does not mean merely this: it means at least something of
which the antinomy or apparent inconsistency is sufficiently plain in
the words used, and most commonly of all it means an idea expressed in a
form which is verbally contradictory. Thus, for instance, the great
saying, "He that shall lose his life, the same shall save it," is an
example of what modern people mean by a paradox. If any learned person
should read this book (which seems immeasurably improbable) he can
content himself with putting it this way, that the moderns mistakenly
say paradox when they should say oxymoron. Ultimately, in any case, it
may be agreed that we commonly mean by a paradox some kind of collision
between what is seemingly and what is really true.

Now if by paradox we mean truth inherent in a contradiction, as in the
saying of Christ that I h