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

individuals, the ideal individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and withal completely, unilludedly self-conscious: in short, a god? The Devil I agree, for the sake of argument. The Statue I agree, for the sake of avoiding argument. Ana I most emphatically disagree as regards the Fathers of the Church; and I must beg you not to drag them into the argument. Don Juan I did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and I shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are, with that exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me further that life has not measured the success of its attempts at godhead by the beauty or bodily perfection of the result, since in both these respects the birds, as our friend Aristophanes long ago pointed out, are so extraordinarily superior, with their power of flight and their lovely plumage, and, may I add, the touching poetry of their loves and nestings, that it is inconceivable that life, having once produced them, should, if love and beauty were her object, start off on another line and labor at the clumsy elephant and the hideous ape, whose grandchildren we are? Ana Aristophanes was a heathen; and you, Juan, I am afraid, are very little better. The Devil You conclude, then, that life was driving at clumsiness and ugliness? Don Juan No, perverse devil that you are, a thousand times no. Life was driving at brains⁠—at its darling object: an organ by which it can attain not only self-consciousness but self-understanding. The Statue This is metaphysics, Juan. Why the devil should⁠—to the Devil I beg your pardon. The Devil Pray don’t mention it. I have always regarded the use of my name to secure additional emphasis as a high compliment to me. It is quite at your service, Commander. The Statue Thank you: that’s very good of you. Even in Heaven, I never quite got out of my old military habits of speech. What I was going to ask Juan was why life should bother itself about getting a brain. Why should it want to understand itself? Why not be content to enjoy itself? Don Juan Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself without knowing it, and so lose all the fun. The Statue True, most true. But I am quite content with brain enough to know that I’m enjoying myself. I don’t want to understand why. In fact, I’d rather not. My experience is that one’s pleasures don’t bear thinking about. Don Juan That is why intellect is so unpopular. But to life, the force behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without it he blunders into death. Just as life, after ages of struggle, evolved that wonderful bodily organ the eye, so that the living organism could see where it was going and what was coming to help or threaten it, and thus avoid a thousand dangers that formerly slew it, so it is evolving today a mind’s eye that shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of life, and thereby enable the individual to work for that purpose instead of thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal aims as at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever been happy, has ever been universally respected among all the conflicts of interests and illusions. The Statue You mean the military man. Don Juan Commander: I do not mean the military man. When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind. No: I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means. Of all other sorts of men I declare myself tired. They’re tedious failures. When I was on Earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself about that either; so they called me atheist and went their way. After them came the politician, who said there was only one purpose in Nature, and that was to get him into parliament. I told him I did not care whether he got into parliament or not; so he called me mugwump and went his way. Then came the romantic man, the artist, with his love songs and his paintings and his poems; and with him I had great delight for many years, and some profit; for I cultivated my senses for his sake; and his songs taught me to hear better, his paintings to see better, and his poems to feel more deeply. But he led me at last into the worship of Woman. Ana Juan! Don Juan Yes: I came to believe that in her voice was all the music of the song, in her face all the beauty of the painting, and in her soul all the emotion of the poem. Ana And you were disappointed, I suppose. Well, was it her fault that you attributed all these perfections to her? Don Juan Yes, partly. For with a wonderful instinctive cunning, she kept silent and allowed me to glorify her; to mistake my own visions, thoughts, and feelings for hers. Now my friend the romantic man was often too poor or too timid to approach those women who were beautiful or refined enough to seem to realize his ideal; and so he went to his grave believing in his dream. But I was more favored by Nature and circumstance. I was of