ff love
or military valour, because it is all romance, and three thousand miles
thick. It cannot, I think, be denied that much of Bernard Shaw's
splendid mental energy has been wasted in this weary business of gnawing
at the necessary pillars of all possible society. But it would be
grossly unfair to indicate that even in his first and most destructive
stage he uttered nothing except these accidental, if arresting,
negations. He threw his whole genius heavily into the scale in favour of
two positive projects or causes of the period. When we have stated these
we have really stated the full intellectual equipment with which he
started his literary life.

I have said that Shaw was on the insurgent side in everything; but in
the case of these two important convictions he exercised a solid power
of choice. When he first went to London he mixed with every kind of
revolutionary society, and met every kind of person except the ordinary
person. He knew everybody, so to speak, except everybody. He was more
than once a momentary apparition among the respectable atheists. He knew
Bradlaugh and spoke on the platforms of that Hall of Science in which
very simple and sincere masses of men used to hail with shouts of joy
the assurance that they were not immortal. He retains to this day
something of the noise and narrowness of that room; as, for instance,
when he says that it is contemptible to have a craving for eternal life.
This prejudice remains in direct opposition to all his present opinions,
which are all to the effect that it is glorious to desire power,
consciousness, and vitality even for one's self. But this old secularist
tag, that it is selfish to save one's soul, remains with him long after
he has practically glorified selfishness. It is a relic of those chaotic
early days. And just as he mingled with the atheists he mingled with the
anarchists, who were in the eighties a much more formidable body than
now, disputing with the Socialists on almost equal terms the claim to
be the true heirs of the Revolution. Shaw still talks entertainingly
about this group. As far as I can make out, it was almost entirely
female. When a book came out called _A Girl among the Anarchists_,
G. B. S. was provoked to a sort of explosive reminiscence. "A girl among
the anarchists!" he exclaimed to his present biographer; "if they had
said 'A man among the anarchists' it would have been more of an
adventure." He is ready to tell other tales of thi