s; for he is undoubtedly going to empty a good
deal of respectable morality out like so much dirty water, and replace
it by new and strange customs, shedding old obligations and accepting
new and heavier ones. Every step of his progress must horrify
conventional people; and if it were possible for even the most superior
man to march ahead all the time, every pioneer of the march towards the
Superman would be crucified."

When the most emphatic man alive, a man unmatched in violent precision
of statement, speaks with such avowed vagueness and doubt as this, it is
no wonder if all his more weak-minded followers are in a mere whirlpool
of uncritical and unmeaning innovation. If the superior person will be
apparently criminal, the most probable result is simply that the
criminal person will think himself superior. A very slight knowledge of
human nature is required in the matter. If the Superman may possibly be
a thief, you may bet your boots that the next thief will be a Superman.
But indeed the Supermen (of whom I have met many) have generally been
more weak in the head than in the moral conduct; they have simply
offered the first fancy which occupied their minds as the new morality.
I fear that Shaw had a way of encouraging these follies. It is obvious
from the passage I have quoted that he has no way of restraining them.

The truth is that all feeble spirits naturally live in the future,
because it is featureless; it is a soft job; you can make it what you
like. The next age is blank, and I can paint it freely with my favourite
colour. It requires real courage to face the past, because the past is
full of facts which cannot be got over; of men certainly wiser than we
and of things done which we could not do. I know I cannot write a poem
as good as _Lycidas_. But it is always easy to say that the particular
sort of poetry I can write will be the poetry of the future.

This I call the second evil influence of Shaw: that he has encouraged
many to throw themselves for justification upon the shapeless and the
unknown. In this, though courageous himself, he has encouraged cowards,
and though sincere himself, has helped a mean escape. The third evil in
his influence can, I think, be much more shortly dealt with. He has to a
very slight extent, but still perceptibly, encouraged a kind of
charlatanism of utterance among those who possess his Irish impudence
without his Irish virtue. For instance, his amusing trick of self-prais