The solid and respectable statesman of that type does really
leap from position to position; he is really ready to defend
anything or nothing; he is really not to be taken seriously.
I know perfectly well what Mr. Bernard Shaw will be saying
thirty years hence; he will be saying what he has always said.
If thirty years hence I meet Mr. Shaw, a reverent being
with a silver beard sweeping the earth, and say to him,
"One can never, of course, make a verbal attack upon a lady,"
the patriarch will lift his aged hand and fell me to the earth.
We know, I say, what Mr. Shaw will be, saying thirty years hence.
But is there any one so darkly read in stars and oracles that he will
dare to predict what Mr. Asquith will be saying thirty years hence?

The truth is, that it is quite an error to suppose that absence
of definite convictions gives the mind freedom and agility.
A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has
all his weapons about him. he can apply his test in an instant.
The man engaged in conflict with a man like Mr. Bernard Shaw may
fancy he has ten faces; similarly a man engaged against a brilliant
duellist may fancy that the sword of his foe has turned to ten swords
in his hand. But this is not really because the man is playing
with ten swords, it is because he is aiming very straight with one.
Moreover, a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre,
because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into
a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope.
Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible
merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity,
because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom
of the world.