those who pass through birth and death. Nearly all the
most awful and abstruse statements can be put in words of one syllable,
from "A child is born" to "A soul is damned." If the ordinary man may
not discuss existence, why should he be asked to conduct it? About
concrete matters indeed one naturally appeals to an oligarchy or select
class. For information about Lapland I go to an aristocracy of
Laplanders; for the ways of rabbits to an aristocracy of naturalists or,
preferably, an aristocracy of poachers. But only mankind itself can bear
witness to the abstract first principles of mankind, and in matters of
theory I would always consult the mob. Only the mass of men, for
instance, have authority to say whether life is good. Whether life is
good is an especially mystical and delicate question, and, like all such
questions, is asked in words of one syllable. It is also answered in
words of one syllable, and Bernard Shaw (as also mankind) answers "yes."

This plain, pugnacious style of Shaw has greatly clarified all
controversies. He has slain the polysyllable, that huge and slimy
centipede which has sprawled over all the valleys of England like the
"loathly worm" who was slain by the ancient knight. He does not think
that difficult questions will be made simpler by using difficult words
about them. He has achieved the admirable work, never to be mentioned
without gratitude, of discussing Evolution without mentioning it. The
good work is of course more evident in the case of philosophy than any
other region; because the case of philosophy was a crying one. It was
really preposterous that the things most carefully reserved for the
study of two or three men should actually be the things common to all
men. It was absurd that certain men should be experts on the special
subject of everything. But he stood for much the same spirit and style
in other matters; in economics, for example. There never has been a
better popular economist; one more lucid, entertaining, consistent, and
essentially exact. The very comicality of his examples makes them and
their argument stick in the mind; as in the case I remember in which he
said that the big shops had now to please everybody, and were not
entirely dependent on the lady who sails in "to order four governesses
and five grand pianos." He is always preaching collectivism; yet he does
not very often name it. He does not talk about collectivism, but about
cash; of which the populace feel a