o simple even to
be called a sophist. He understands everything in life except its
paradoxes, especially that ultimate paradox that the very things that we
cannot comprehend are the things that we have to take for granted.
Lastly, he is not especially social or collectivist. On the contrary, he
rather dislikes men in the mass, though he can appreciate them
individually. He has no respect for collective humanity in its two great
forms; either in that momentary form which we call a mob, or in that
enduring form which we call a convention.

The general cosmic theory which can so far be traced through the earlier
essays and plays of Bernard Shaw may be expressed in the image of
Schopenhauer standing on his head. I cheerfully concede that
Schopenhauer looks much nicer in that posture than in his original one,
but I can hardly suppose that he feels more comfortable. The substance
of the change is this. Roughly speaking, Schopenhauer maintained that
life is unreasonable. The intellect, if it could be impartial, would
tell us to cease; but a blind partiality, an instinct quite distinct
from thought, drives us on to take desperate chances in an essentially
bankrupt lottery. Shaw seems to accept this dingy estimate of the
rational outlook, but adds a somewhat arresting comment. Schopenhauer
had said, "Life is unreasonable; so much the worse for all living
things." Shaw said, "Life is unreasonable; so much the worse for
reason." Life is the higher call, life we must follow. It may be that
there is some undetected fallacy in reason itself. Perhaps the whole man
cannot get inside his own head any more than he can jump down his own
throat. But there is about the need to live, to suffer, and to create
that imperative quality which can truly be called supernatural, of whose
voice it can indeed be said that it speaks with authority, and not as
the scribes.

This is the first and finest item of the original Bernard Shaw creed:
that if reason says that life is irrational, life must be content to
reply that reason is lifeless; life is the primary thing, and if reason
impedes it, then reason must be trodden down into the mire amid the most
abject superstitions. In the ordinary sense it would be specially absurd
to suggest that Shaw desires man to be a mere animal. For that is always
associated with lust or incontinence; and Shaw's ideals are strict,
hygienic, and even, one might say, old-maidish. But there is a mystical
sense in which one