It appears a point of some mystery to the present writer that Bernard Shaw should have been so long unrecognised and almost in beggary. I should have thought his talent was of the ringing and arresting sort; such as even editors and publishers would have sense enough to seize. Yet it is quite certain that he almost starved in London for many years, writing occasional columns for an advertisement or words for a picture. And it is equally certain (it is proved by twenty anecdotes1, but no one who knows Shaw needs any anecdotes to prove it) that in those days of desperation he again and again threw up chances and flung back good bargains which did not suit his unique and erratic2 sense of honour. The fame of having first offered Shaw to the public upon a platform worthy3 of him belongs, like many other public services, to Mr. William Archer4.
I say it seems odd that such a writer should not be appreciated in a flash; but upon this point there is evidently a real difference of opinion, and it constitutes for me the strangest difficulty of the subject. I hear many people complain that Bernard Shaw deliberately5 mystifies them. I cannot imagine what they mean; it seems to me that he deliberately insults them. His language, especially on moral questions, is generally as straight and solid as that of a bargee and far less ornate and symbolic7 than that of a hansom-cabman. The prosperous English Philistine8 complains that Mr. Shaw is making a fool of him. Whereas Mr. Shaw is not in the least making a fool of him; Mr. Shaw is, with laborious9 lucidity10, calling him a fool. G. B. S. calls a landlord a thief; and the landlord, instead of denying or resenting it, says, “Ah, that fellow hides his meaning so cleverly that one can never make out what he means, it is all so fine spun11 and fantastical.” G. B. S. calls a statesman a liar12 to his face, and the statesman cries in a kind of ecstasy13, “Ah, what quaint14, intricate and half-tangled15 trains of thought! Ah, what elusive16 and many-coloured mysteries of half-meaning!” I think it is always quite plain what Mr. Shaw means, even when he is joking, and it generally means that the people he is talking to ought to howl aloud for their sins. But the average representative of them undoubtedly17 treats the Shavian meaning as tricky18 and complex, when it is really direct and offensive. He always accuses Shaw of pulling his leg, at the exact moment when Shaw is pulling his nose.
This prompt and pungent19 style he learnt in the open, upon political tubs and platforms; and he is very legitimately20 proud of it. He boasts of being a demagogue; “The cart and the trumpet21 for me,” he says, with admirable good sense. Everyone will remember the effective appearance of Cyrano de Bergerac in the first act of the fine play of that name; when instead of leaping in by any hackneyed door or window, he suddenly springs upon a chair above the crowd that has so far kept him invisible; “les bras croisés, le feutre en bataille, la moustache hérissée, le nez terrible.” I will not go so far as to say that when Bernard Shaw sprang upon a chair or tub in Trafalgar Square he had the hat in battle, or even that he had the nose terrible. But just as we see Cyrano best when he thus leaps above the crowd, I think we may take this moment of Shaw stepping on his little platform to see him clearly as he then was, and even as he has largely not ceased to be. I, at least, have only known him in his middle age; yet I think I can see him, younger yet only a little more alert, with hair more red but with face yet paler, as he first stood up upon some cart or barrow in the tossing glare of the gas.
The first fact that one realises about Shaw (independent of all one has read and often contradicting it) is his voice. Primarily it is the voice of an Irishman, and then something of the voice of a musician. It possibly explains much of his career; a man may be permitted to say so many impudent22 things with so pleasant an intonation23. But the voice is not only Irish and agreeable, it is also frank and as it were inviting24 conference. This goes with a style and gesture which can only be described as at once very casual and very emphatic25. He assumes that bodily supremacy26 which goes with oratory28, but he assumes it with almost ostentatious carelessness; he throws back the head, but loosely and laughingly. He is at once swaggering and yet shrugging his shoulders, as if to drop from them the mantle29 of the orator27 which he has confidently assumed. Lastly, no man ever used voice or gesture better for the purpose of expressing certainty; no man can say “I tell Mr. Jones he is totally wrong” with more air of unforced and even casual conviction.
This particular play of feature or pitch of voice, at once didactic and yet not uncomrade-like, must be counted a very important fact, especially in connection with the period when that voice was first heard. It must be remembered that Shaw emerged as a wit in a sort of secondary age of wits; one of those stale interludes of prematurely30 old young men, which separate the serious epochs of history. Oscar Wilde was its god; but he was somewhat more mystical, not to say monstrous31, than the average of its dried and decorous impudence32. The two survivals of that time, as far as I know, are Mr. Max Beerbohm and Mr. Graham Robertson; two most charming people; but the air they had to live in was the devil. One of its notes was an artificial reticence33 of speech, which waited till it could plant the perfect epigram. Its typical products were far too conceited34 to lay down the law. Now when people heard that Bernard Shaw was witty35, as he most certainly was, when they heard his mots repeated like those of Whistler or Wilde, when they heard things like “the Seven deadly Virtues” or “Who was Hall Caine?” they expected another of these silent sarcastic36 dandies who went about with one epigram, patient and poisonous, like a bee with his one sting. And when they saw and heard the new humorist they found no fixed37 sneer38, no frock coat, no green carnation39, no silent Savoy Restaurant good manners, no fear of looking a fool, no particular notion of looking a gentleman. They found a talkative Irishman with a kind voice and a brown coat; open gestures and an evident desire to make people really agree with him. He had his own kind of affectations no doubt, and his own kind of tricks of debate; but he broke, and, thank God, forever the spell of the little man with the single eye glass who had frozen both faith and fun at so many tea-tables. Shaw’s humane40 voice and hearty41 manner were so obviously more the things of a great man than the hard, gem-like brilliancy of Wilde or the careful ill-temper of Whistler. He brought in a breezier sort of insolence42; the single eye-glass fled before the single eye.
Added to the effect of the amiable43 dogmatic voice and lean, loose swaggering figure, is that of the face with which so many caricaturists have fantastically delighted themselves, the Mephistophelean face with the fierce tufted eyebrows44 and forked red beard. Yet those caricaturists in their natural delight in coming upon so striking a face, have somewhat misrepresented it, making it merely Satanic; whereas its actual expression has quite as much benevolence46 as mockery. By this time his costume has become a part of his personality; one has come to think of the reddish brown Jaeger suit as if it were a sort of reddish brown fur, and were, like the hair and eyebrows, a part of the animal; yet there are those who claim to remember a Bernard Shaw of yet more awful aspect before Jaeger came to his assistance; a Bernard Shaw in a dilapidated frock-coat and some sort of straw hat. I can hardly believe it; the man is so much of a piece, and must always have dressed appropriately. In any case his brown woollen clothes, at once artistic47 and hygienic, completed the appeal for which he stood; which might be defined as an eccentric healthy-mindedness. But something of the vagueness and equivocation48 of his first fame is probably due to the different functions which he performed in the contemporary world of art.
He began by writing novels. They are not much read, and indeed not imperatively49 worth reading, with the one exception of the crude and magnificent Cashel Byron’s Profession. Mr. William Archer, in the course of his kindly50 efforts on behalf of his young Irish friend, sent this book to Samoa, for the opinion of the most elvish and yet efficient of modern critics. Stevenson summed up much of Shaw even from that fragment when he spoke51 of a romantic griffin roaring with laughter at the nature of his own quest. He also added the not wholly unjustified postscript53: “I say, Archer,—my God, what women!”
The fiction was largely dropped; but when he began work he felt his way by the avenues of three arts. He was an art critic, a dramatic critic, and a musical critic; and in all three, it need hardly be said, he fought for the newest style and the most revolutionary school. He wrote on all these as he would have written on anything; but it was, I fancy, about the music that he cared most.
It may often be remarked that mathematicians54 love and understand music more than they love or understand poetry. Bernard Shaw is in much the same condition; indeed, in attempting to do justice to Shakespeare’s poetry, he always calls it “word music.” It is not difficult to explain this special attachment55 of the mere45 logician56 to music. The logician, like every other man on earth, must have sentiment and romance in his existence; in every man’s life, indeed, which can be called a life at all, sentiment is the most solid thing. But if the extreme logician turns for his emotions to poetry, he is exasperated57 and bewildered by discovering that the words of his own trade are used in an entirely58 different meaning. He conceives that he understands the word “visible,” and then finds Milton applying it to darkness, in which nothing is visible. He supposes that he understands the word “hide,” and then finds Shelley talking of a poet hidden in the light. He has reason to believe that he understands the common word “hung”; and then William Shakespeare, Esquire, of Stratford-on-Avon, gravely assures him that the tops of the tall sea waves were hung with deafening59 clamours on the slippery clouds. That is why the common arithmetician prefers music to poetry. Words are his scientific instruments. It irritates him that they should be anyone else’s musical instruments. He is willing to see men juggling60, but not men juggling with his own private tools and possessions—his terms. It is then that he turns with an utter relief to music. Here are all the same fascination61 and inspiration, all the same purity and plunging62 force as in poetry; but not requiring any verbal confession63 that light conceals64 things or that darkness can be seen in the dark. Music is mere beauty; it is beauty in the abstract, beauty in solution. It is a shapeless and liquid element of beauty, in which a man may really float, not indeed affirming the truth, but not denying it. Bernard Shaw, as I have already said, is infinitely65 far above all such mere mathematicians and pedantic66 reasoners; still his feeling is partly the same. He adores music because it cannot deal with romantic terms either in their right or their wrong sense. Music can be romantic without reminding him of Shakespeare and Walter Scott, with whom he has had personal quarrels. Music can be Catholic without reminding him verbally of the Catholic Church, which he has never seen, and is sure he does not like. Bernard Shaw can agree with Wagner, the musician, because he speaks without words; if it had been Wagner the man he would certainly have had words with him. Therefore I would suggest that Shaw’s love of music (which is so fundamental that it must be mentioned early, if not first, in his story) may itself be considered in the first case as the imaginative safety-valve of the rationalistic Irishman.
This much may be said conjecturally67 over the present signature; but more must not be said. Bernard Shaw understands music so much better than I do that it is just possible that he is, in that tongue and atmosphere, all that he is not elsewhere. While he is writing with a pen I know his limitations as much as I admire his genius; and I know it is true to say that he does not appreciate romance. But while he is playing on the piano he may be cocking a feather, drawing a sword or draining a flagon for all I know. While he is speaking I am sure that there are some things he does not understand. But while he is listening (at the Queen’s Hall) he may understand everything, including God and me. Upon this part of him I am a reverent68 agnostic; it is well to have some such dark continent in the character of a man of whom one writes. It preserves two very important things—modesty in the biographer and mystery in the biography.
For the purpose of our present generalisation it is only necessary to say that Shaw, as a musical critic, summed himself up as “The Perfect Wagnerite”; he threw himself into subtle and yet trenchant69 eulogy70 of that revolutionary voice in music. It was the same with the other arts. As he was a Perfect Wagnerite in music, so he was a Perfect Whistlerite in painting; so above all he was a Perfect Ibsenite in drama. And with this we enter that part of his career with which this book is more specially6 concerned. When Mr. William Archer got him established as dramatic critic of the Saturday Review, he became for the first time “a star of the stage”; a shooting star and sometimes a destroying comet.
On the day of that appointment opened one of the very few exhilarating and honest battles that broke the silence of the slow and cynical71 collapse72 of the nineteenth century. Bernard Shaw the demagogue had got his cart and his trumpet; and was resolved to make them like the car of destiny and the trumpet of judgment73. He had not the servility of the ordinary rebel, who is content to go on rebelling against kings and priests, because such rebellion is as old and as established as any priests or kings. He cast about him for something to attack which was not merely powerful or placid74, but was unattacked. After a little quite sincere reflection, he found it. He would not be content to be a common atheist75; he wished to blaspheme something in which even atheists believed. He was not satisfied with being revolutionary; there were so many revolutionists. He wanted to pick out some prominent institution which had been irrationally76 and instinctively77 accepted by the most violent and profane78; something of which Mr. Foote would speak as respectfully on the front page of the Freethinker as Mr. St. Loe Strachey on the front page of the Spectator. He found the thing; he found the great unassailed English institution—Shakespeare.
But Shaw’s attack on Shakespeare, though exaggerated for the fun of the thing, was not by any means the mere folly79 or firework paradox80 that has been supposed. He meant what he said; what was called his levity81 was merely the laughter of a man who enjoyed saying what he meant—an occupation which is indeed one of the greatest larks82 in life. Moreover, it can honestly be said that Shaw did good by shaking the mere idolatry of Him of Avon. That idolatry was bad for England; it buttressed84 our perilous85 self-complacency by making us think that we alone had, not merely a great poet, but the one poet above criticism. It was bad for literature; it made a minute model out of work that was really a hasty and faulty masterpiece. And it was bad for religion and morals that there should be so huge a terrestrial idol83, that we should put such utter and unreasoning trust in any child of man. It is true that it was largely through Shaw’s own defects that he beheld86 the defects of Shakespeare. But it needed someone equally prosaic87 to resist what was perilous in the charm of such poetry; it may not be altogether a mistake to send a deaf man to destroy the rock of the sirens.
This attitude of Shaw illustrates88 of course all three of the divisions or aspects to which the reader’s attention has been drawn89. It was partly the attitude of the Irishman objecting to the Englishman turning his mere artistic taste into a religion; especially when it was a taste merely taught him by his aunts and uncles. In Shaw’s opinion (one might say) the English do not really enjoy Shakespeare or even admire Shakespeare; one can only say, in the strong colloquialism90, that they swear by Shakespeare. He is a mere god; a thing to be invoked91. And Shaw’s whole business was to set up the things which were to be sworn by as things to be sworn at. It was partly again the revolutionist in pursuit of pure novelty, hating primarily the oppression of the past, almost hating history itself. For Bernard Shaw the prophets were to be stoned after, and not before, men had built their sepulchres. There was a Yankee smartness in the man which was irritated at the idea of being dominated by a person dead for three hundred years; like Mark Twain, he wanted a fresher corpse92.
These two motives93 there were, but they were small compared with the other. It was the third part of him, the Puritan, that was really at war with Shakespeare. He denounced that playwright94 almost exactly as any contemporary Puritan coming out of a conventicle in a steeple-crowned hat and stiff bands might have denounced the playwright coming out of the stage door of the old Globe Theatre. This is not a mere fancy; it is philosophically95 true. A legend has run round the newspapers that Bernard Shaw offered himself as a better writer than Shakespeare. This is false and quite unjust; Bernard Shaw never said anything of the kind. The writer whom he did say was better than Shakespeare was not himself, but Bunyan. And he justified52 it by attributing to Bunyan a virile96 acceptance of life as a high and harsh adventure, while in Shakespeare he saw nothing but profligate97 pessimism98, the vanitas vanitatum of a disappointed voluptuary. According to this view Shakespeare was always saying, “Out, out, brief candle,” because his was only a ballroom99 candle; while Bunyan was seeking to light such a candle as by God’s grace should never be put out.
It is odd that Bernard Shaw’s chief error or insensibility should have been the instrument of his noblest affirmation. The denunciation of Shakespeare was a mere misunderstanding. But the denunciation of Shakespeare’s pessimism was the most splendidly understanding of all his utterances100. This is the greatest thing in Shaw, a serious optimism—even a tragic101 optimism. Life is a thing too glorious to be enjoyed. To be is an exacting102 and exhausting business; the trumpet though inspiring is terrible. Nothing that he ever wrote is so noble as his simple reference to the sturdy man who stepped up to the Keeper of the Book of Life and said, “Put down my name, Sir.” It is true that Shaw called this heroic philosophy by wrong names and buttressed it with false metaphysics; that was the weakness of the age. The temporary decline of theology had involved the neglect of philosophy and all fine thinking; and Bernard Shaw had to find shaky justifications103 in Schopenhauer for the sons of God shouting for joy. He called it the Will to Live—a phrase invented by Prussian professors who would like to exist, but can’t. Afterwards he asked people to worship the Life–Force; as if one could worship a hyphen. But though he covered it with crude new names (which are now fortunately crumbling104 everywhere like bad mortar) he was on the side of the good old cause; the oldest and the best of all causes, the cause of creation against destruction, the cause of yes against no, the cause of the seed against the stony105 earth and the star against the abyss.
His misunderstanding of Shakespeare arose largely from the fact that he is a Puritan, while Shakespeare was spiritually a Catholic. The former is always screwing himself up to see truth; the latter is often content that truth is there. The Puritan is only strong enough to stiffen106; the Catholic is strong enough to relax. Shaw, I think, has entirely misunderstood the pessimistic passages of Shakespeare. They are flying moods which a man with a fixed faith can afford to entertain. That all is vanity, that life is dust and love is ashes, these are frivolities, these are jokes that a Catholic can afford to utter. He knows well enough that there is a life that is not dust and a love that is not ashes. But just as he may let himself go more than the Puritan in the matter of enjoyment108, so he may let himself go more than the Puritan in the matter of melancholy109. The sad exuberances of Hamlet are merely like the glad exuberances of Falstaff. This is not conjecture111; it is the text of Shakespeare. In the very act of uttering his pessimism, Hamlet admits that it is a mood and not the truth. Heaven is a heavenly thing, only to him it seems a foul112 congregation of vapours. Man is the paragon113 of animals, only to him he seems a quintessence of dust. Hamlet is quite the reverse of a sceptic. He is a man whose strong intellect believes much more than his weak temperament114 can make vivid to him. But this power of knowing a thing without feeling it, this power of believing a thing without experiencing it, this is an old Catholic complexity115, and the Puritan has never understood it. Shakespeare confesses his moods (mostly by the mouths of villains116 and failures), but he never sets up his moods against his mind. His cry of vanitas vanitatum is itself only a harmless vanity. Readers may not agree with my calling him Catholic with a big C; but they will hardly complain of my calling him catholic with a small one. And that is here the principal point. Shakespeare was not in any sense a pessimist107; he was, if anything, an optimist117 so universal as to be able to enjoy even pessimism. And this is exactly where he differs from the Puritan. The true Puritan is not squeamish: the true Puritan is free to say “Damn it!” But the Catholic Elizabethan was free (on passing provocation) to say “Damn it all!”
It need hardly be explained that Bernard Shaw added to his negative case of a dramatist to be depreciated118 a corresponding affirmative case of a dramatist to be exalted119 and advanced. He was not content with so remote a comparison as that between Shakespeare and Bunyan. In his vivacious121 weekly articles in the Saturday Review, the real comparison upon which everything turned was the comparison between Shakespeare and Ibsen. He early threw himself with all possible eagerness into the public disputes about the great Scandinavian; and though there was no doubt whatever about which side he supported, there was much that was individual in the line he took. It is not our business here to explore that extinct volcano. You may say that anti-Ibsenism is dead, or you may say that Ibsen is dead; in any case, that controversy122 is dead, and death, as the Roman poet says, can alone confess of what small atoms we are made. The opponents of Ibsen largely exhibited the permanent qualities of the populace; that is, their instincts were right and their reasons wrong. They made the complete controversial mistake of calling Ibsen a pessimist; whereas, indeed, his chief weakness is a rather childish confidence in mere nature and freedom, and a blindness (either of experience or of culture) in the matter of original sin. In this sense Ibsen is not so much a pessimist as a highly crude kind of optimist. Nevertheless the man in the street was right in his fundamental instinct, as he always is. Ibsen, in his pale northern style, is an optimist; but for all that he is a depressing person. The optimism of Ibsen is less comforting than the pessimism of Dante; just as a Norwegian sunrise, however splendid, is colder than a southern night.
But on the side of those who fought for Ibsen there was also a disagreement, and perhaps also a mistake. The vague army of “the advanced” (an army which advances in all directions) were united in feeling that they ought to be the friends of Ibsen because he also was advancing somewhere somehow. But they were also seriously impressed by Flaubert, by Oscar Wilde and all the rest who told them that a work of art was in another universe from ethics123 and social good. Therefore many, I think most, of the Ibsenites praised the Ibsen plays merely as choses vues, ?sthetic affirmations of what can be without any reference to what ought to be. Mr. William Archer himself inclined to this view, though his strong sagacity kept him in a haze124 of healthy doubt on the subject. Mr. Walkley certainly took this view. But this view Mr. George Bernard Shaw abruptly125 and violently refused to take.
With the full Puritan combination of passion and precision he informed everybody that Ibsen was not artistic, but moral; that his dramas were didactic, that all great art was didactic, that Ibsen was strongly on the side of some of his characters and strongly against others, that there was preaching and public spirit in the work of good dramatists; and that if this were not so, dramatists and all other artists would be mere panders126 of intellectual debauchery, to be locked up as the Puritans locked up the stage players. No one can understand Bernard Shaw who does not give full value to this early revolt of his on behalf of ethics against the ruling school of l’art pour l’art. It is interesting because it is connected with other ambitions in the man, especially with that which has made him somewhat vainer of being a Parish Councillor than of being one of the most popular dramatists in Europe. But its chief interest is again to be referred to our stratification of the psychology127; it is the lover of true things rebelling for once against merely new things; it is the Puritan suddenly refusing to be the mere Progressive.
But this attitude obviously laid on the ethical128 lover of Ibsen a not inconsiderable obligation. If the new drama had an ethical purpose, what was it? and if Ibsen was a moral teacher, what the deuce was he teaching? Answers to this question, answers of manifold brilliancy and promise, were scattered129 through all the dramatic criticisms of those years on the Saturday Review. But even Bernard Shaw grew tired after a time of discussing Ibsen only in connection with the current pantomime or the latest musical comedy. It was felt that so much sincerity130 and fertility of explanation justified a concentrated attack; and in 1891 appeared the brilliant book called The Quintessence of Ibsenism, which some have declared to be merely the quintessence of Shaw. However this may be, it was in fact and profession the quintessence of Shaw’s theory of the morality or propaganda of Ibsen.
The book itself is much longer than the book that I am writing; and as is only right in so spirited an apologist, every paragraph is provocative131. I could write an essay on every sentence which I accept and three essays on every sentence which I deny. Bernard Shaw himself is a master of compression; he can put a conception more compactly than any other man alive. It is therefore rather difficult to compress his compression; one feels as if one were trying to extract a beef essence from Bovril. But the shortest form in which I can state the idea of The Quintessence of Ibsenism is that it is the idea of distrusting ideals, which are universal, in comparison with facts, which are miscellaneous. The man whom he attacks throughout he calls “The Idealist”; that is the man who permits himself to be mainly moved by a moral generalisation. “Actions,” he says, “are to be judged by their effect on happiness, and not by their conformity132 to any ideal.” As we have already seen, there is a certain inconsistency here; for while Shaw had always chucked all ideals overboard the one he had chucked first was the ideal of happiness. Passing this however for the present, we may mark the above as the most satisfying summary. If I tell a lie I am not to blame myself for having violated the ideal of truth, but only for having perhaps got myself into a mess and made things worse than they were before. If I have broken my word I need not feel (as my fathers did) that I have broken something inside of me, as one who breaks a blood vessel133. It all depends on whether I have broken up something outside me; as one who breaks up an evening party. If I shoot my father the only question is whether I have made him happy. I must not admit the idealistic conception that the mere shooting of my father might possibly make me unhappy. We are to judge of every individual case as it arises, apparently134 without any social summary or moral ready-reckoner at all. “The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule.” We must not say that it is right to keep promises, but that it may be right to keep this promise. Essentially135 it is anarchy136; nor is it very easy to see how a state could be very comfortable which was Socialist137 in all its public morality and Anarchist138 in all its private. But if it is anarchy, it is anarchy without any of the abandon and exuberance110 of anarchy. It is a worried and conscientious139 anarchy; an anarchy of painful delicacy140 and even caution. For it refuses to trust in traditional experiments or plainly trodden tracks; every case must be considered anew from the beginning, and yet considered with the most wide-eyed care for human welfare; every man must act as if he were the first man made. Briefly141, we must always be worrying about what is best for our children, and we must not take one hint or rule of thumb from our fathers. Some think that this anarchism would make a man tread down mighty142 cities in his madness. I think it would make a man walk down the street as if he were walking on egg-shells. I do not think this experiment in opportunism would end in frantic143 license144; I think it would end in frozen timidity. If a man was forbidden to solve moral problems by moral science or the help of mankind, his course would be quite easy—he would not solve the problems. The world instead of being a knot so tangled as to need unravelling145, would simply become a piece of clockwork too complicated to be touched. I cannot think that this untutored worry was what Ibsen meant; I have my doubts as to whether it was what Shaw meant; but I do not think that it can be substantially doubted that it was what he said.
In any case it can be asserted that the general aim of the work was to exalt120 the immediate146 conclusions of practice against the general conclusions of theory. Shaw objected to the solution of every problem in a play being by its nature a general solution, applicable to all other such problems. He disliked the entrance of a universal justice at the end of the last act; treading down all the personal ultimatums147 and all the varied148 certainties of men. He disliked the god from the machine—because he was from a machine. But even without the machine he tended to dislike the god; because a god is more general than a man. His enemies have accused Shaw of being anti-domestic, a shaker of the roof-tree. But in this sense Shaw may be called almost madly domestic. He wishes each private problem to be settled in private, without reference to sociological ethics. And the only objection to this kind of gigantic casuistry is that the theatre is really too small to discuss it. It would not be fair to play David and Goliath on a stage too small to admit Goliath. And it is not fair to discuss private morality on a stage too small to admit the enormous presence of public morality; that character which has not appeared in a play since the Middle Ages; whose name is Everyman and whose honour we have all in our keeping.
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anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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erratic
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| adj.古怪的，反复无常的，不稳定的 | |
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worthy
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archer
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deliberately
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specially
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symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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philistine
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| n.庸俗的人；adj.市侩的，庸俗的 | |
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laborious
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lucidity
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spun
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liar
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ecstasy
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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tangled
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elusive
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undoubtedly
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tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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legitimately
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| ad.合法地；正当地，合理地 | |
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21
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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impudent
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| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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23
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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26
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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orator
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| n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家 | |
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oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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29
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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30
prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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31
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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32
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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33
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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34
conceited
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| adj.自负的，骄傲自满的 | |
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35
witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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36
sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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37
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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38
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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39
carnation
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| n.康乃馨（一种花） | |
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40
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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41
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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43
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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44
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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45
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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46
benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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48
equivocation
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| n.模棱两可的话，含糊话 | |
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49
imperatively
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| adv.命令式地 | |
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50
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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51
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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52
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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53
postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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54
mathematicians
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| 数学家( mathematician的名词复数 ) | |
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55
attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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56
logician
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| n.逻辑学家 | |
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57
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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58
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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59
deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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60
juggling
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| n. 欺骗, 杂耍(=jugglery) adj. 欺骗的, 欺诈的 动词juggle的现在分词 | |
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61
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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62
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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63
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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64
conceals
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的第三人称单数 ) | |
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65
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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66
pedantic
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| adj.卖弄学问的；迂腐的 | |
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67
conjecturally
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| adj.推测的，好推测的 | |
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68
reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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69
trenchant
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| adj.尖刻的，清晰的 | |
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70
eulogy
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| n.颂词；颂扬 | |
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71
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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72
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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73
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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74
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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75
atheist
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| n.无神论者 | |
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76
irrationally
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| ad.不理性地 | |
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77
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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78
profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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79
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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80
paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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81
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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82
larks
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| n.百灵科鸟（尤指云雀）( lark的名词复数 )；一大早就起床；鸡鸣即起；（因太费力而不想干时说）算了v.百灵科鸟（尤指云雀）( lark的第三人称单数 )；一大早就起床；鸡鸣即起；（因太费力而不想干时说）算了 | |
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83
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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84
buttressed
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| v.用扶壁支撑，加固( buttress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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85
perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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86
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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87
prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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88
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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89
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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90
colloquialism
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| n.俗话，白话，口语 | |
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91
invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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92
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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93
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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94
playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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95
philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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96
virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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97
profligate
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| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
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98
pessimism
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| n.悲观者，悲观主义者，厌世者 | |
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99
ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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100
utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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101
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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102
exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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103
justifications
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| 正当的理由，辩解的理由( justification的名词复数 ) | |
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104
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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105
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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106
stiffen
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| v.(使)硬，(使)变挺，(使)变僵硬 | |
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107
pessimist
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| n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世 | |
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108
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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109
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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110
exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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111
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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112
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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113
paragon
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| n.模范，典型 | |
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114
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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115
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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116
villains
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| n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 )；罪犯；（小说、戏剧等中的）反面人物；淘气鬼 | |
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117
optimist
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| n.乐观的人，乐观主义者 | |
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118
depreciated
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| v.贬值，跌价，减价( depreciate的过去式和过去分词 )；贬低，蔑视，轻视 | |
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119
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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120
exalt
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| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
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121
vivacious
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| adj.活泼的，快活的 | |
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122
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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123
ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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124
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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125
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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126
panders
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| v.迎合（他人的低级趣味或淫欲）( pander的第三人称单数 )；纵容某人；迁就某事物 | |
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127
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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128
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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129
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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130
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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131
provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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132
conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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133
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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134
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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135
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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136
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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137
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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138
anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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139
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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140
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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141
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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142
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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143
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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144
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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145
unravelling
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| 解开，拆散，散开( unravel的现在分词 )； 阐明； 澄清； 弄清楚 | |
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146
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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147
ultimatums
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| 最后通牒( ultimatum的名词复数 ) | |
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148
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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