For the supreme initiation into which we are led by these elaborate
and patient essays, is the initiation into the world of inner
austerity, which makes its clear-cut and passionate distinctions in
our emotional as well as in our intellectual life.
Everything, without exception, as we read Pater becomes "a matter of
taste"; but the high and exclusive nature of this taste, to which no
sensations but those which are vulgar and common are forbidden, is
itself a guarantee of the gentleness and delicacy of the passions
evoked. His ultimate philosophy seems to be that--as he himself has
described it in "Marius,"--of Aristippus of Cyrene; but this
"undermining of metaphysic by means of metaphysic" lands him in no
mere arid agnosticism or weary emptiness of suspended judgment; but in
a rich and imaginative region of infinite possibilities, from the
shores of which he is able to launch forth at will; or to gather up at
his pleasure the delicate shells strewn upon the sand.
85. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. MAN AND SUPERMAN.
Mr. Shaw has found his role and his occupation very happily cut out
for him in the unfailing stupidity, not untouched by a sense of humor,
of our Anglo-Saxon democracy in England and America.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73