much more definite need. He talks
about cheese, boots, perambulators, and how people are really to live.
For him economics really means housekeeping, as it does in Greek. His
difference from the orthodox economists, like most of his differences,
is very different from the attacks made by the main body of Socialists.
The old Manchester economists are generally attacked for being too gross
and material. Shaw really attacks them for not being gross or material
enough. He thinks that they hide themselves behind long words, remote
hypotheses or unreal generalisations. When the orthodox economist begins
with his correct and primary formula, "Suppose there is a Man on an
Island----" Shaw is apt to interrupt him sharply, saying, "There is a
Man in the Street."

The second phase of the man's really fruitful efficacy is in a sense the
converse of this. He has improved philosophic discussions by making them
more popular. But he has also improved popular amusements by making them
more philosophic. And by more philosophic I do not mean duller, but
funnier; that is more varied. All real fun is in cosmic contrasts, which
involve a view of the cosmos. But I know that this second strength in
Shaw is really difficult to state and must be approached by explanations
and even by eliminations. Let me say at once that I think nothing of
Shaw or anybody else merely for playing the daring sceptic. I do not
think he has done any good or even achieved any effect simply by asking
startling questions. It is possible that there have been ages so
sluggish or automatic that anything that woke them up at all was a good
thing. It is sufficient to be certain that ours is not such an age. We
do not need waking up; rather we suffer from insomnia, with all its
results of fear and exaggeration and frightful waking dreams. The modern
mind is not a donkey which wants kicking to make it go on. The modern
mind is more like a motor-car on a lonely road which two amateur
motorists have been just clever enough to take to pieces, but are not
quite clever enough to put together again. Under these circumstances
kicking the car has never been found by the best experts to be
effective. No one, therefore, does any good to our age merely by asking
questions--unless he can answer the questions. Asking questions is
already the fashionable and aristocratic sport which has brought most of
us into the bankruptcy court. The note of our age is a note of
interrogation. And the fi