The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1921-07-30

, savage sports. and cigars and cham
payne. Political and social prob
lens raised by civilization cannot
be solved By mere human mush-
rooms who decay and die just when
they are beginning to have a
glimpse of the wisdom and knowl-
edge needed for government"
The remedy, according to Mr..
Shaw, is found in a few words
live longer, say for three hundred
years at beginning-andt the sug-
gestion is made entirely from
scientific standpoint and is carefully
explained by him, by evolution. In
the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve
were not created mortal, and natur-
al death as we call it, was not part
of life, but a later and quite sep
arate invention. To Adam and Eve
there were two frightful possibili-
ties, the extinction of mankind by
accid entail death, and the prospect
of living forever. They could bear
neither. They decided they would
just take short turn of a thousand
years and meanwhile hand over
their work to a new pair Conse-
quently they had to invent natural
birth and natural death that the
old could give way to the new when
the new were ready for the respon-
sibilities." At the present time, the
dramatist declares, the old desert
their posts two hundred years too
soon.
The impulse that produces evo-
luton is creative. 1t is a simple
fact that the will to do anything can
and does at a certain pitch of in
tensity set up by conviction of its
necessity create and organize new
tissue to do it with. If the weight
litter under the trivial stimulus Of
an athletic competition, can put
up a muscle it seems reasonable
to believe that an equally earnest
and convinced philosopher could
put up a brain Evolution shows
US this direction of vitality doing all
sorts of things as providing the
centipede with a thousand legs and
Kidding the fish of any legs at all.
Among other matters apparently
chargeable at will is the duration
of individual life. Death is not an
eternal condition of life but an ex-
pedlent to provide for continual re-
newal without overcrowding. But
men do not live long enough. They
are for all the purposes of high civ
ilization, mere children when they
die; and our prime ministers,
though rated as mature, divide their
time between the golf course and
tho treasury bench in parliament.
If on opportunist grounds, man
now fixes the term of his life at
three score and ten years, he can
equally fix it at three hundred or
three thousand or even at the gen.
uine limit which would be until
sooner-or-later fatal accident makes
an end of the Individual. All that is
necessary to make him extend his
present span is that tremendous ca
tastrophes, such as the late war,
shall convince him of the necessity
of cutliving his taste for golf and
cigars if the race is to be saved"
And there you have it. The long
er you live the more comfortable
you want the earth as n place to
live in. If you take a house on a
SO year lease you spend a good
deal of money ON it If you take it
a bill for delapidation to pay at the
end Of them, which is Shaw's phil
osophy in a nutshell.
Back to Methuselah," although
the sensation of the day, was writ
ten in all seriousness, and in all
seriousness is being read by the
most serious thinkers of the day.
The preface is illimitable, and typ
ically Shavian, and contains Shaw's
scientific, political and religious
creed. The play itself, begins with
the life of man in the Garden OF
Eden, and proceeds as far as thought
can reach, A. D. 1890 without
one doubt or disputing voice, critics
are proclaiming on both sides OF tne
Atlantic that Back to Methuselah'
is the best and biggest thing that
Shaw has ever done.