THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW 31 grasp this knowledge for me. "And this," says the Life-force to the philosopher, "must thou strive to do for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another philosopher to carry on the work."' So were arrogance justified and self -suspicion stilled : our infatuated Don Quixote has a Dulcinea now — this stringy, sterile German spinster of a Life-force ; and rides on solemnly enchanted. No lifting his hallu- cination now ! " Metaphysic " is only " metaphor " spelt in four syllables ; never yet was there a poet could resist one. Watch, now, how his conception forthwith clings and spreads — dilating organically, expanding spontaneously, exhibiting all the signs of true vitality, as all conceptions do, even the most damnatory, if ever they get a purchase in an artist's generative consciousness, and suck at his divine but undiscriminating vigour. Dogma dovetails into dogma ; pedant theories flower as plays ; these scatter seeds that shoot up fresher saplings to support and screen the skinny parent crook. Thus, the Superman plainly needing some solid social backing if he were going to keep the Artist-Philosopher on his feet, there spontaneously sprang to support him the now familiar Shavian doctrine (so soon, alas, to grow sadly shop- soiled) declaring the healthiness of wealthiness and the heavenliness of worldliness and the crime of being crushed.2 This in turn disclosing dangers {loe know the hands it played into — the greasy souls it fed with self -approval), up rose a fresh law to protect it — the law asserting that there is a safe Saturation-point to Human Sensuousness, that self-restraint follows indul- ' Man and Superman^ p. 134. "* " The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience." The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty ; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor."
