Tuesday, July 26, 2005

GKC on GBS

I fear that C&F may have lost readers due to my post yesterday. Council on Drinking referenced a news article quoting George Bernard Shaw's teetotalism. But the post gave no rebuttal from his friend GKC. So this morning, remaining readers, I beg your forgiveness and provide a few quotations from GKC about GBS:

from the introduction to Heretics:
I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic — that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong.

from Heretics, Ch.4, "Mr. Bernard Shaw":
Mr. Shaw cannot understand that the thing which is valuable and lovable in our eyes is man — the old beer-drinking, creed-making, fighting, failing, sensual, respectable man.

from Do We Agree?, a debate between Chesterton and Shaw:
We show man's irrepressible desire to own property and because some landlords have been cruel, it is no use talking of abolishing, denying, and destroying property, saying no one shall have any property at all. It is characteristic of his school, of his age. The morality he represents is above all the morality of negations. Just as it says you must not drink wine at all as the only solution to a few people drinking too much: just as it would say you must not touch meat or smoke tobacco at all. Let us always remember, therefore, that when Mr. Shaw says he can persuade all men to give up the sentiment of private property, it is in exactly the same hopeful spirit that he says he will get all of you to give up meat, tobacco, beer, and a vast number of other things. He will not do anything of the sort and I suspect he himself suspects by this time that he will not do it.

3 comments:

Robert Pearson said...

I am borrowing from this excellent post and linking on my blog (with full acknowledgements). The trouble is, Joe, that I'm gradually finding out that most of the things I want to say were said already, and oh so much more entertainingly, by You-know-who...

Joe said...

You-know-who...

We must call things by their proper names - otherwise we breed fear. Just say it: VOLDEMORT!

Robert Pearson said...

Hehe! Good one.