Suffice it to say here that the only serious reason which I can imagine inducing any one person to listen to any other is, that the first person looks to the second person with an ardent faith and a fixed attention, expecting him to say what he does not expect him to say.
It may be a paradox, but that is because paradoxes are true.
It may not be rational, but that is because rationalism is wrong.
But clearly it is quite true that whenever we go to hear a prophet or teacher we may or may not expect wit, we may or may not expect eloquence, but we do expect what we do not expect. We may not expect the true, we may not even expect the wise, but we do expect the unexpected.
If we do not expect the unexpected, why do we go there at all?
If we expect the expected, why do we not sit at home and expect it by ourselves? If Mr. McCabe means merely this about Mr. Shaw, that he always has some unexpected application of his doctrine to give to those who listen to him, what he says is quite true, and to say it is only to say that Mr. Shaw is an original man.
But if he means that Mr. Shaw has ever professed or preached any doctrine but one, and that his own, then what he says is not true.
It is not my business to defend Mr. Shaw; as has been seen already, I disagree with him altogether. But I do not mind, on his behalf offering in this matter a flat defiance to all his ordinary opponents, such as Mr. McCabe. I defy Mr. McCabe, or anybody else, to mention one single instance in which Mr. Shaw has, for the sake of wit or novelty, taken up any position which was not directly deducible from the body of his doctrine as elsewhere expressed. I have been, I am happy to say, a tolerably close student of Mr. Shaw's utterances, and I request Mr. McCabe, if he will not believe that I mean anything else, to believe that I mean this challenge.
All this, however, is a parenthesis. The thing with which I am here immediately concerned is Mr. McCabe's appeal to me not to be so frivolous.
Let me return to the actual text of that appeal. There are, of course, a great many things that I might say about it in detail.
But I may start with saying that Mr. McCabe is in error in supposing that the danger which I anticipate from the disappearance of religion is the increase of sensuality. On the contrary, I should be inclined to anticipate a decrease in sensuality, because I anticipate a decrease in life. I do not think that under modern Western materialism we should have anarchy. I doubt whether we should have enough individual valour and spirit even to have liberty.
It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life.
Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power.
Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint.
Materialism itself is the great restraint. The McCabe school advocates a political liberty, but it denies spiritual liberty.
That is, it abolishes the laws which could be broken, and substitutes laws that cannot. And that is the real slavery.
The truth is that the scientific civilization in which Mr. McCabe believes has one rather particular defect; it is perpetually tending to destroy that democracy or power of the ordinary man in which Mr. McCabe also believes. Science means specialism, and specialism means oligarchy. If you once establish the habit of trusting particular men to produce particular results in physics or astronomy, you leave the door open for the equally natural demand that you should trust particular men to do particular things in government and the coercing of men. If, you feel it to be reasonable that one beetle should be the only study of one man, and that one man the only student of that one beetle, it is surely a very harmless consequence to go on to say that politics should be the only study of one man, and that one man the only student of politics.
As I have pointed out elsewhere in this book, the expert is more aristocratic than the aristocrat, because the aristocrat is only the man who lives well, while the expert is the man who knows better.
But if we look at the progress of our scientific civilization we see a gradual increase everywhere of the specialist over the popular function.
Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better.
If scientific civilization goes on (which is most improbable)only one man will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest.
I do not know that I can express this more shortly than by taking as a text the single sentence of Mr. McCabe, which runs as follows:
"The ballets of the Alhambra and the fireworks of the Crystal Palace and Mr. Chesterton's Daily News articles have their places in life."I wish that my articles had as noble a place as either of the other two things mentioned. But let us ask ourselves (in a spirit of love, as Mr. Chadband would say), what are the ballets of the Alhambra?
