o owe him much. But when
we come to positive things (and passions are the only truly positive
things) that obstinate doubt remains which remains after all eulogies of
Shaw. That fixed fancy sticks to the mind; that Bernard Shaw is a
vegetarian more because he dislikes dead beasts than because he likes
live ones.

It was the same with the other great cause to which Shaw more
politically though not more publicly committed himself. The actual
English people, without representation in Press or Parliament, but
faintly expressed in public-houses and music-halls, would connect Shaw
(so far as they have heard of him) with two ideas; they would say first
that he was a vegetarian, and second that he was a Socialist. Like most
of the impressions of the ignorant, these impressions would be on the
whole very just. My only purpose here is to urge that Shaw's Socialism
exemplifies the same trait of temperament as his vegetarianism. This
book is not concerned with Bernard Shaw as a politician or a
sociologist, but as a critic and creator of drama. I will therefore end
in this chapter all that I have to say about Bernard Shaw as a
politician or a political philosopher. I propose here to dismiss this
aspect of Shaw: only let it be remembered, once and for all, that I am
here dismissing the most important aspect of Shaw. It is as if one
dismissed the sculpture of Michael Angelo and went on to his sonnets.
Perhaps the highest and purest thing in him is simply that he cares more
for politics than for anything else; more than for art or for
philosophy. Socialism is the noblest thing for Bernard Shaw; and it is
the noblest thing in him. He really desires less to win fame than to
bear fruit. He is an absolute follower of that early sage who wished
only to make two blades of grass grow instead of one. He is a loyal
subject of Henri Quatre, who said that he only wanted every Frenchman to
have a chicken in his pot on Sunday; except, of course, that he would
call the repast cannibalism. But _caeteris paribus_ he thinks more of
that chicken than of the eagle of the universal empire; and he is always
ready to support the grass against the laurel.

Yet by the nature of this book the account of the most important Shaw,
who is the Socialist, must be also the most brief. Socialism (which I am
not here concerned either to attack or defend) is, as everyone knows,
the proposal that all property should be nationally owned that it may be
more decently dist