that it is a common practice with romancers to announce their hero as
a man of extraordinary genius, and to leave his works entirely to the
reader's imagination; so that at the end of the book you whisper to
yourself ruefully that but for the author's solemn preliminary assurance
you should hardly have given the gentleman credit for ordinary good
sense. You cannot accuse me of this pitiable barrenness, this feeble
evasion. I not only tell you that my hero wrote a revolutionists'
handbook: I give you the handbook at full length for your edification if
you care to read it. And in that handbook you will find the politics of
the sex question as I conceive Don Juan's descendant to understand them.
Not that I disclaim the fullest responsibility for his opinions and for
those of all my characters, pleasant and unpleasant. They are all right
from their several points of view; and their points of view are, for the
dramatic moment, mine also. This may puzzle the people who believe that
there is such a thing as an absolutely right point of view, usually
their own. It may seem to them that nobody who doubts this can be in a
state of grace. However that may be, it is certainly true that nobody
who agrees with them can possibly be a dramatist, or indeed anything
else that turns upon a knowledge of mankind. Hence it has been pointed
out that Shakespear had no conscience. Neither have I, in that sense.

You may, however, remind me that this digression of mine into politics
was preceded by a very convincing demonstration that the artist never
catches the point of view of the common man on the question of sex,
because he is not in the same predicament. I first prove that anything I
write on the relation of the sexes is sure to be misleading; and then I
proceed to write a Don Juan play. Well, if you insist on asking me why
I behave in this absurd way, I can only reply that you asked me to,
and that in any case my treatment of the subject may be valid for the
artist, amusing to the amateur, and at least intelligible and therefore