and ugly in their virtue; that they all have, men and women, something of the cad in them; that their language is the language of vulgar persons, is, perhaps, only to say that Mr. Shaw has chosen, for artistic reasons, to represent such people just as they are.  But there is something more to be said.  “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” is not a representation of life; it is a discussion about life.  Now, discussion on the stage may be interesting.  Why not?  Discussion is the most interesting thing in the world, off the stage; it is the only thing that makes an hour pass vividly in society; but when discussion ends art has not begun.  It is interesting to see a sculptor handling bits of clay, sticking them on here, scraping them off there; but that is only the interest of a process.  When he has finished I will consider whether his figure is well or ill done; until he has finished I can have no opinion about it.  It is the same thing with discussion on the stage.  The subject of Mr. Shaw’s discussion is what is called a “nasty” one.  That is neither here nor there, though it may be pointed out that there is no essential difference between the problem that he discusses and the problem that is at the root of “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.”

But Mr. Shaw, I believe, is never without his polemical intentions, and I should like, for a moment, to ask whether his discussion of his problem, taken on its own merits, is altogether the best way to discuss things.  Mr. Shaw has an ideal of life:  he asks that men and women should be perfectly reasonable, that they should clear their minds of cant, and speak out everything that is in their minds.  He asks for cold and clear logic, and when he talks about right and wrong he is really talking about right and wrong logic.  Now, logic is not the mainspring of every action, nor is justice only the inevitable working out of an equation.  Humanity, as Mr. Shaw sees it, moves like clockwork; and must be regulated as a watch is, and praised or blamed simply in proportion to its exactitude in keeping time.  Humanity, as Mr. Shaw knows, does not move by clockwork, and the ultimate justice will have to take count of more exceptions and irregularities than Mr. Shaw takes count of.  There is a great living writer who has brought to bear on human problems as consistent a logic as Mr. Shaw’s, together with something which Mr. Shaw disdains.  Mr. Shaw’s logic is sterile, because it is without sense of touch, sense of sight, or sense of hearing; once set going it is warranted to go straight, and to go through every obstacle.  Tolstoi’s logic is fruitful, because it allows for human weakness, because it understands, and because to understand is, among other things, to pardon.  In a word, the difference between the spirit of Tolstoi and the spirit of Mr. Shaw is the difference between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Euclid.

“Monna, Vanna”