The Truth Is, When All Is Said

The Greatest Artists Have Never Been Men Of Taste. By Never Sophisticating Their Instincts They Have Never Lost The Awareness Of The Great Simplicities, Which They Relish Both From Appetite And From The Challenge These Offer To Skill In Competition With Popular Art.

Shaw Does Not Merely Decorate A Proposition, But Makes His Way From Point To Point Through New And Difficult Territory. This Explains Why Shaw Must Either Be Taken Whole Or Left Alone. He Must Be Disassembled And Put Together Again With Nothing Left Out, Under Pain Of Incomprehension; For His Politics, His Art, And His Religion - To Say Nothing Of The Shape Of His Sentences - Are Unique Expressions Of This Enormously Enlarged And Yet Concentrated Consciousness.

It Is Not Clear To Anyone, Least Of All The Practitioners, How Science And Technology In Their Headlong Course Do Or Should Influence Ethics And Law, Education And Government, Art And Social Philosophy, Religion And The Life Of The Affections. Yet Science Is An All-pervasive Energy, For It Is At Once A Mode Of Thought, A Source Of Strong Emotion, And A Faith As Fanatical As Any In History.

The Nation In Arms Is Virtually A Communist State: The People Must Be Paid Wages And Fed And Protected And Regimented Behind The Lines As Much As On The Front. Minds Must Be Kept Loyal And At The Right Pitch Of Hate, So That Successive Drafts Of Fighters Are Accepted Without Murmurings. Letters And Newspapers Must Be Censored While The Propaganda Mill Grinds On. As For Decisions Of Strategy And Overall Command, They Must Please Many Masters: Dissenters In The Cabinet, The Heads Of The Allied States And Public Opinion. Hence Failures Must Be Disguised Or Concealed.

No Subject Of Study Is More Important Than Reading…all Other Intellectual Powers Depend On It.