to
say that Mr. Shaw is an original man. But if he means that Mr. Shaw has
ever professed or preached any doctrine but one, and that his own, then
what he says is not true. It is not my business to defend Mr. Shaw; as
has been seen already, I disagree with him altogether. But I do not
mind, on his behalf offering in this matter a flat defiance to all his
ordinary opponents, such as Mr. McCabe. I defy Mr. McCabe, or anybody
else, to mention one single instance in which Mr. Shaw has, for the
sake of wit or novelty, taken up any position which was not directly
deducible from the body of his doctrine as elsewhere expressed. I have
been, I am happy to say, a tolerably close student of Mr. Shaw's
utterances, and I request Mr. McCabe, if he will not believe that I
mean anything else, to believe that I mean this challenge.

All this, however, is a parenthesis. The thing with which I am here
immediately concerned is Mr. McCabe's appeal to me not to be so
frivolous. Let me return to the actual text of that appeal. There are,
of course, a great many things that I might say about it in detail. But
I may start with saying that Mr. McCabe is in error in supposing that
the danger which I anticipate from the disappearance of religion is the
increase of sensuality. On the contrary, I should be inclined to
anticipate a decrease in sensuality, because I anticipate a decrease in
life. I do not think that under modern Western materialism we should
have anarchy. I doubt whether we should have enough individual valour
and spirit even to have liberty. It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy
to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the
discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes
the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere
restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint. The McCabe
school advocates a political liberty, but it denies spiritual liberty.
That is, it abolishes the laws which could be broken, and substitutes
laws that cannot. And that is the real slavery.

The truth is that the scientific civilization in which Mr. McCabe
believes has one rather particular defect; it is perpetually tending to
destroy that democracy or power of the ordinary man in which Mr. McCabe
also believes. Science means specialism, and specialism means
oligarchy. If you once establish the habit of trusting particular men
to produce particular results in physics or astronomy, you l