Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/60

34 34 THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW And observe that always, like a prisoner tightening his knots by struggling, the curbed creativeness within him increases these grimaces, the cordial energy straining and jerking at the mask till it becomes a very nightmare of menace. For the choked delight in music and gaiety, in rhapsody and heartiness, bub- bling up where it can, spends itself on ecstasies of in- solence, wild arias of acrimony, arpeggios of contumely and spleen. For instance : — . . . the physician is still the credulous impostor and petu- lant scientific coxcomb whom Moli^re ridiculed ; the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child-farmer and at worst a flagello- maniac ; the philanthropist is still a parasite on misery as the doctor is on disease ; the miracles of priestcraft are none the less fraudulent and mischievous because they are now called scientific experiments and conducted by professors ; we shake our heads at the dirt of the Middle Ages in cities made grimy with soot and foul and disgusting with shameless tobacco-smoking ; public health authorities deliberately go through incantations with burning sulphur (which they know to be useless) because the people believe in it as devoutly as the Italian peasant believes in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius ; and straight- forward public lying has reached gigantic developments, there being nothing to choose in this respect between the pickpocket at the police-station and the minister on the Treasury bench, the editor in the newspaper office, the City magnate advertising bicycle tyres that do not side-slip, the clergyman subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles, and the vivisector who pledges his knightly honour that no animal operated on in the physiological laboratory suffers the slightest pain. Cowardice is universal : patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation, and cruelty, gluttony, and credulity keep cowardice in countenance. We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white ; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease ; we tear birds to pieces to decorate women's hats ; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion ; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them.