Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw [hardest books to read txt] 📗

shall have made free white Christians cheaper in the labor market than by auction at the block. Don Juan Never fear! The white laborer shall have his turn too. But I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take. I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved whilst he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what he now calls God’s work to do, and what he will later on call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally. Ana Yes: he shirks all his responsibilities, and leaves his wife to grapple with them. The Statue Well said, daughter. Do not let him talk you out of your common sense. The Devil Alas! Señor Commander, now that we have got on to the subject of Woman, he will talk more than ever. However, I confess it is for me the one supremely interesting subject. Don Juan To a woman, Señora, man’s duties and responsibilities begin and end with the task of getting bread for her children. To her, Man is only a means to the end of getting children and rearing them. Ana Is that your idea of a woman’s mind? I call it cynical and disgusting materialism. Don Juan Pardon me, Ana: I said nothing about a woman’s whole mind. I spoke of her view of Man as a separate sex. It is no more cynical than her view of herself as above all things a mother. Sexually, Woman is Nature’s contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. Sexually, Man is Woman’s contrivance for fulfilling Nature’s behest in the most economical way. She knows by instinct that far back in the evolutional process she invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to produce something better than the single-sexed process can produce. Whilst he fulfils the purpose for which she made him, he is welcome to his dreams, his follies, his ideals, his heroisms, provided that the keystone of them all is the worship of woman, of motherhood, of the family, of the hearth. But how rash and dangerous it was to invent a separate creature whose sole function was her own impregnation! For mark what has happened. First, Man has multiplied on her hands until there are as many men as women; so that she has been unable to employ for her purposes more than a fraction of the immense energy she has left at his disposal by saving him the exhausting labor of gestation. This superfluous energy has gone to his brain and to his muscle. He has become too strong to be controlled by her bodily, and too imaginative and mentally vigorous to be content with mere self-reproduction. He has created civilization without consulting her, taking her domestic labor for granted as the foundation of it. Ana That is true, at all events. The Devil Yes; and this civilization! What is it, after all? Don Juan After all, an excellent peg to hang your cynical commonplaces on; but before all, it is an attempt on Man’s part to make himself something more than the mere instrument of Woman’s purpose. So far, the result of life’s continual effort not only to maintain itself, but to achieve higher and higher organization and completer self-consciousness, is only, at best, a doubtful campaign between its forces and those of death and degeneration. The battles in this campaign are mere blunders, mostly won, like actual military battles, in spite of the commanders. The Statue That is a dig at me. No matter: go on, go on. Don Juan It is a dig at a much higher power than you, Commander. Still, you must have noticed in your profession that even a stupid general can win battles when the enemy’s general is a little stupider. The Statue Very seriously. Most true, Juan, most true. Some donkeys have amazing luck. Don Juan Well, the life force is stupid; but it is not so stupid as the forces of death and degeneration. Besides, these are in its pay all the time. And so life wins, after a fashion. What mere copiousness of fecundity can supply and mere greed preserve, we possess. The survival of whatever form of civilization can produce the best rifle and the best fed riflemen is assured. The Devil Exactly! The survival, not of the most effective means of life but of the most effective means of death. You always come back to my point, in spite of your wrigglings and evasions and sophistries, not to mention the intolerable length of your speeches. Don Juan Oh come! Who began making long speeches? However, if I overtax your intellect, you can leave us and seek the society of love and beauty and the rest of your favorite boredoms. The Devil Much offended. This is not fair, Don Juan, and not civil. I am also on the intellectual plane. Nobody can appreciate it more than I do. I am arguing fairly with you, and, I think, utterly refuting you. Let us go on for another hour if you like. Don Juan Good: let us. The Statue Not that I see any prospect of your coming to any point in particular, Juan. Still, since in this place, instead of merely killing time we have to kill eternity, go ahead by all means. Don Juan Somewhat impatiently. My point, you marbleheaded old masterpiece, is only a step ahead of you. Are we agreed that life is a force which has made innumerable experiments in organizing itself; that the mammoth and the man, the mouse and the megatherium, the flies and the fleas and the Fathers of the Church, are all more or less successful attempts to build up that raw force into higher and higher