The Project Gutenberg EBook of Overruled, by George Bernard Shaw

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Title: Overruled

Author: George Bernard Shaw

Posting Date: May 28, 2009 [EBook #3830]
Release Date: March, 2003
First Posted: September 30, 2001
Last Updated: March 5, 2006

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVERRULED ***

Produced by Eve Sobol. HTML version by Al Haines.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: In the printed version of this text, all
apostrophes for contractions such as "can't", "wouldn't" and "he'd"
were omitted, to read as "cant", "wouldnt" and "hed". This etext
restores the omitted apostrophes.

OVERRULED

BERNARD SHAW

1912

PREFACE TO OVERRULED.

THE ALLEVIATIONS OF MONOGAMY.

This piece is not an argument for or against polygamy. It is a clinical
study of how the thing actually occurs among quite ordinary people,
innocent of all unconventional views concerning it. The enormous
majority of cases in real life are those of people in that position.
Those who deliberately and conscientiously profess what are oddly
called advanced views by those others who believe them to be
retrograde, are often, and indeed mostly, the last people in the world
to engage in unconventional adventures of any kind, not only because
they have neither time nor disposition for them, but because the
friction set up between the individual and the community by the
expression of unusual views of any sort is quite enough hindrance to
the heretic without being complicated by personal scandals. Thus the
theoretic libertine is usually a person of blameless family life,
whilst the practical libertine is mercilessly severe on all other
libertines, and excessively conventional in professions of social
principle.

What is more, these professions are not hypocritical: they are for the
most part quite sincere. The common libertine, like the drunkard,
succumbs to a temptation which he does not defend, and against which he
warns others with an earnestness proportionate to the intensity of his
own remorse. He (or she) may be a liar and a humbug, pretending to be
better than the detected libertines, and clamoring for their condign