Howe, P: Bernard Shaw -

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Résumé :
Excerpt from Bernard Shaw: A Critical Study

Legal limit of twenty miles an hour has now for some time been an earnest (and a shameful thing it should be so low - that is what we to-day are saying); if Mr. Shaw tells us that twenty years ago it was a jest which was an earnest in the womb of time, we shall understand him quite perfectly. For centuries in England it was a jest to say that pigs might ?y, and pigs may ?y to-day any afternoon they are taken to Hendon. On general grounds, then, no quarrel is possible with our subject's utter ance, that a jest is an earnest in the womb of time. But on the particular ground of Mr. Shaw's own jests, we have to refuse very positively one inference from this utterance, or else this study cannot possibly be proceeded with. For one inference is that a jest of Mr. Shaw's cannot fairly be the subject of criticism until it has issued from the womb of time in good earnest. In other words, we may not say that we think Mr. Shaw wrong until we have given Time time to prove him right. We may not say that we think Mr. Shaw right for fear that posterity should know him to be wrong. If Mr. Shaw prophesies the full working beauties of Social Democracy in England (as he does, if only we miserable forty-eight millions have the will), we may not say whether we should personally fancy Social Democracy.

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