the Irish
peasants are certainly much stronger than the English merchants; for in
spite of all the efforts of the merchants, the land has remained a land
of peasants. No glorification of the English practicality as if it were
a universal thing can ever get over the fact that we have failed in
dealing with the one white people in our power who were markedly unlike
ourselves. And the kindness of Broadbent has failed just as much as his
common-sense; because he was dealing with a people whose desire and
ideal were different from his own. He did not share the Irish passion
for small possession in land or for the more pathetic virtues of
Christianity. In fact the kindness of Broadbent has failed for the same
reason that the gigantic kindness of Shaw has failed. The roots are
different; it is like tying the tops of two trees together. Briefly, the
philosophy of _John Bull's Other Island_ is quite effective and
satisfactory except for this incurable fault: the fact that John Bull's
other island is not John Bull's.

This clearing off of his last critical plays we may classify as the
first of the three facts which lead up to _Man and Superman_. The second
of the three facts may be found, I think, in Shaw's discovery of
Nietzsche. This eloquent sophist has an influence upon Shaw and his
school which it would require a separate book adequately to study. By
descent Nietzsche was a Pole, and probably a Polish noble; and to say
that he was a Polish noble is to say that he was a frail, fastidious,
and entirely useless anarchist. He had a wonderful poetic wit; and is
one of the best rhetoricians of the modern world. He had a remarkable
power of saying things that master the reason for a moment by their
gigantic unreasonableness; as, for instance, "Your life is intolerable
without immortality; but why should not your life be intolerable?" His
whole work is shot through with the pangs and fevers of his physical
life, which was one of extreme bad health; and in early middle age his
brilliant brain broke down into impotence and darkness. All that was
true in his teaching was this: that if a man looks fine on a horse it is
so far irrelevant to tell him that he would be more economical on a
donkey or more humane on a tricycle. In other words, the mere
achievement of dignity, beauty, or triumph is strictly to be called a
good thing. I do not know if Nietzsche ever used the illustration; but
it seems to me that all that is creditable or sound