MAN AND SUPERMAN.*
THE moral of the exceedingly self-righteous and disciplinary work before us is, briefly, that before any kind of civic improve- ment can be made the reproduction of the human species must • Han and Superman a Comedy and • Phaomphy. By Bernard Shaw. London : A. Constable and Co. Veal
be placed under intelligent control, and men and women mated upon strictly scientific principles. Only thus, says our author, can be evolved those necessary superbabies which, growing up into supermen, have in their hands the remodel- ling of society and the transformation of our present con- dition of universal unsatisfactoriness, if not rottenness, into the perfect state. The idea is by no means new. Modern sociologists with a consuming idea to make our flesh creep have (following Plato's raillery) propounded it before, most recently the late Mr. Grant Allen and Mr. H. (I. Wells, while the conception of the superman is Nietzsche's. But Mr. Shaw makes the panacea his own, and in order to prove its import- ance has written the present composite work, consisting of a long introductory letter to Mr. A. B. Walkley, a comedy of modern life, an intermezzo in hell (a tissue of interminable speeches between Don Juan, the Statue, Anna, and the Devil), and a collection of essays and apophthegms entitled "The Revolutionist's Handbook " ; in the course of which four- part compilation the greater portion of Mr. Shaw's new message is stated four distinct times, an excess upon the Bellman's reiterative habit in The Hunting of the Snark, but not always with the Bellman's gain in veracity.
We have read Mr. Shaw's book from beginning to end with some amusement; but never for an instant has it seemed to us that its author was in earnest, or that he was engaged in any task more serious than embroidering a daring idea with as much cleverness as it could carry. There must be, we hold, something radically wrong in the mind that can propound, with the gay insouciance displayed in this volume, a revolu- tionary scheme contrary to all the facts of human nature. Social reforms, to be acceptable, must suggest responsibility though they have it not. It is perfectly simple to sit down at a desk and, assuming a superior attitude, expose the other aide of every ideal that the average Englishman holds sacred (for everything may be shown by a mischievous mind to have two sides) ; but when all is done. . . ? Yet Mr. Shaw puts himself forward as a serious and constructive critic of life. Does he for a moment pretend that, after brilliantly belittling every human institution, he has performed his work by light-heartedly recommending as his fellow-beings' salva- tion the formation of a national human stud-farm, and then passing on to his next ingenuity ? To utter counsels of per- fection as Mr. Shaw does, and wash one's hands of further interest in humanity if humanity does not profit by one's radiant good sense and perspicacity, is to come very near being offensive. Mr. Shaw, however, is in the habit of "saving his face" by a timely joke—much being forgiven to him who makes us laugh—and in the end the reader's temper will recover. But there are signs that even a humourist may exceed his welcome.
Let us for a moment pay Mr. Shaw the compliment of examining his theory. The improvement that years of care- ful breeding have brought about in horses and cattle is un- deniable; but why is it so ? Because the selection of mates was the subject of serious consideration by responsible, far- sighted men, lifted by intellect above the beasts upon which they were experimenting. Before the first of Mr. Shaw's supermen can be born, superparents must be found. Here we are at a deadlock. Where are they coming from, and more important still, who is to find them ? (We really must apologise for taking the matter so seriously.) Logically, the selectors and controllers of Mr. Shaw's stud-farm must be as superior to the men and women whom they select as the ordinary breeder of horses or cattle is superior to those animals. And, as we said before, where are they coming from? We gather from Mr. Shaw's pages that besides him- self, and possibly Mr. Walkley (but upon this point we are not quite clear), there are now no supermen. Again, what makes Mr. Shaw suppose that the superman, when he does arrive, will be willing to fall into the plans of the National Reproduction Department ? Man has hitherto shown a determination to love where he will. A stroke of the pen may construct a pleasing Utopia, but it cannot alter the primal facts of life.
Nor is Mr. Shaw happier in his drama. His polemics we knew before; but his drama is a positive disappointment. Candida, among Mr. Shaw's earlier plays, is on a starry height above it while Arms and the Man, You Never Can Tell. and Mrs: Warren's Profession leave it far behind. In fact, the play remains what Mr. Shaw made it : a 'vehicle for his perverse falhwy, or rather he:If-truth, that man no longer pursues woman but woman man (a question into which we will not here enter). With admirable opportunities for setting upon paper several new types, Mr. Shaw has been satisfied to go, not to life, but to his own conceptions of life. The minatory character of the coming chauffeur is by no means exhaustively portrayed in Straker ; Mendoza and his followers are failures so complete as to be almost pathetic; while to say that Ann is every woman is a statement on a par with one, in the introductory letter, that English people of wealth visiting Paris do their shopping in the Rue de Rivoli. The fact is, Mr. Shaw has very much to learn : one could not be so clever as he is without being also astonishingly ignorant. We do not say that Ann is not true to life : she seems to us, indeed, to be mare vital than any one in the play ; but she is not, as Mr. Shaw holds, every woman, nor has Mr. Shaw proved that Tanner would have married her. This want of proof vitiates the whole play. We cannot believe in it; it remains merely a tissue of statements unsupported by evidence.
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