them to remember that this body of thought is the slowest of
growths and the rarest of blossomings, and that if there is such
a thing on the philosophic plane as a matter of course, it is
that no individual can make more than a minute contribution to
it. In fact, their conception of clever persons
parthenogenetically bringing forth complete original cosmogonies
by dint of sheer "brilliancy" is part of that ignorant credulity
which is the despair of the honest philosopher, and the
opportunity of the religious impostor.


THE GOSPEL OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT

It is this credulity that drives me to help my critics out with
Major Barbara by telling them what to say about it. In the
millionaire Undershaft I have represented a man who has become
intellectually and spiritually as well as practically conscious
of the irresistible natural truth which we all abhor and
repudiate: to wit, that the greatest of evils and the worst of
crimes is poverty, and that our first duty--a duty to which every
other consideration should be sacrificed--is not to be poor.
"Poor but honest," "the respectable poor," and such phrases are
as intolerable and as immoral as "drunken but amiable,"
"fraudulent but a good after-dinner speaker," "splendidly
criminal," or the like. Security, the chief pretence of
civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger
of poverty, hangs over everyone's head, and where the alleged
protection of our persons from violence is only an accidental
result of the existence of a police force whose real business is
to force the poor man to see his children starve whilst idle