the Haymarket into the Haymarket Theatre. He has permitted
some whispers of the Strand to enter the Strand Theatre. A variety of
solutions in philosophy is as silly as it is in arithmetic, but one may
be justly proud of a variety of materials for a solution. After Shaw,
one may say, there is nothing that cannot be introduced into a play if
one can make it decent, amusing, and relevant. The state of a man's
health, the religion of his childhood, his ear for music, or his
ignorance of cookery can all be made vivid if they have anything to do
with the subject. A soldier may mention the commissariat as well as the
cavalry; and, better still, a priest may mention theology as well as
religion. That is being a philosopher; that is bringing the universe on
the stage.

Lastly, he has obliterated the mere cynic. He has been so much more
cynical than anyone else for the public good that no one has dared since
to be really cynical for anything smaller. The Chinese crackers of the
frivolous cynics fail to excite us after the dynamite of the serious and
aspiring cynic. Bernard Shaw and I (who are growing grey together) can
remember an epoch which many of his followers do not know: an epoch of
real pessimism. The years from 1885 to 1898 were like the hours of
afternoon in a rich house with large rooms; the hours before tea-time.
They believed in nothing except good manners; and the essence of good
manners is to conceal a yawn. A yawn may be defined as a silent yell.
The power which the young pessimist of that time showed in this
direction would have astonished anyone but him. He yawned so wide as to
swallow the world. He swallowed the world like an unpleasant pill before
retiring to an eternal rest. Now the last and best glory of Shaw is that
in the circles where this creature was found, he is not. He has not been
killed (I don't know exactly why), but he has actually turned into a
Shaw idealist. This is no exaggeration. I meet men who, when I knew them
in 1898, were just a little too lazy to destroy the universe. They are
now conscious of not being quite worthy to abolish some prison
regulations. This destruction and conversion seem to me the mark of
something actually great. It is always great to destroy a type without
destroying a man. The followers of Shaw are optimists; some of them are
so simple as even to use the word. They are sometimes rather pallid
optimists, frequently very worried optimists, occasionally, to tell the
truth