Moreover the view of
money, as the one essential world-force, so frankly confessed in
the book, puzzled me. I do not think that money is ever more than a
weapon in the hands of a man, or a convenient screening wall, and
the New Man ought to have neither weapons nor walls, except his
vigour and serenity of spirit. Again the New Man is too fond of
saying what he thinks, and doing what he chooses; and, in the new
earth, that independent instinct will surely be tempered by a
sense, every bit as instinctive, of the rights of other people. But
I suppose Mr. Shaw's point is that if you cannot mend the world,
you had better make it serve you, as in its folly and debility it
will, if you bully it enough. I suppose that Mr. Shaw would say
that the brutality of his hero is the shadow thrown on him by the
vileness of the world, and that if we were all alike courageous and
industrious and good-humoured, that shadow would disappear.
And this, I suppose, is after all the secret; that the world is not
going to be mended from without, but is mending itself from within;
and thus that the best kind of socialism is really the highest
individualism, in which a man leaves legislation to follow and
express, as it assuredly does, the growth of emotion, and sets
himself, in his own corner, to be as quiet and disinterested and
kindly as he can, choosing what is honest and pure, and rejecting
what is base and vile; and this is after all the socialism of
Christ; only we are all in such a hurry, and think it more
effective to clap a ruffian into gaol than to suffer his violence--
the result of which process is to make men sympathise with the
ruffian--while, if we endure his violence, we touch a spring in the
hearts of ruffian and spectators alike, which is more fruitful of
good than the criminal's infuriated seclusion, and his just quarrel
with the world.
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