OVERRULED

BERNARD SHAW

1912


PREFACE TO OVERRULED.

THE ALLEVIATIONS OF MONOGAMY.

This piece is not an argument for or against polygamy. It is a
clinical study of how the thing actually occurs among quite
ordinary people, innocent of all unconventional views concerning
it. The enormous majority of cases in real life are those of
people in that position. Those who deliberately and
conscientiously profess what are oddly called advanced views by
those others who believe them to be retrograde, are often, and
indeed mostly, the last people in the world to engage in
unconventional adventures of any kind, not only because they have
neither time nor disposition for them, but because the friction
set up between the individual and the community by the expression
of unusual views of any sort is quite enough hindrance to the
heretic without being complicated by personal scandals. Thus the
theoretic libertine is usually a person of blameless family life,
whilst the practical libertine is mercilessly severe on all other
libertines, and excessively conventional in professions of social
principle.

What is more, these professions are not hypocritical: they are