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dualism between the purely physical and the ethical, and it provided two moral orders: the perfect and the secular Manichæans, a distinction somewhat akin to that between the long- and short-lived individuals of Mr. Shaw's fourth play, and to the 'Ancients' of the fifth, while the asceticism of the Manichæan ethics offers one more point of similarity.

The critics have had curiously little to say of the fundamental thesis of both preface and play, namely, that eventual indefinite prolongation of human life is possible merely by effort of the human will, and that this prolongation is essential to the full development of humanity. Mr. Shaw is unblushingly Lamarckian in his appeal to sheer will to achieve a desired physical result, though biologists will not be lacking to say that he has misread Lamarck, while his ruthless attack on Natural Selection is certain to stir scientific protest.

Mr. Desmond McCarthy, in the New Statesman, is more impressed by the philosophic and scientific teaching of the new play than by its strictly religious aspects, and declares that

What he has attempted to write is not a series of plays with religion for its theme as an agent working in the minds of men, but a kind of Hegelian cosmology in pictures, which plausibly approximates to what conceivably might happen, if it turns out to be true that a giraffe has a long neck because its forbears have willed to have one, or a carrot is red for the same reason.

Even the startling speculations as to the prolongation of human life find Mr. McCarthy not quite incredulous,

for, he

says:

The idea looks silly; but I have been a close reader of Mr. Shaw for many years, and often his ideas which first struck me as silliest were the ones which I subsequently found had modified my thoughts most. There is no reason why science should not discover how to prolong life. I do not be

lieve it can be done in the way in which Mr. Shaw seems to believe, and the late Mrs. Eddy believed it could be done; but if men

determine to find out more about the nature of growth and decay and of their own bodies, they may make the necessary discovery. In that case, a world full of vigorous men and women of much greater experience than we can ever have would certainly stand more chance of progressing rapidly toward a better civilization. It is an idea worth storing in the armory of hope.

But, in the main, critics are content to point out that Mr. Shaw has stolen some of Mr. Wells's thunder, and let it go at that. To be sure, the title of the third act (or third play), "The Thing Happens,' has a very Wellsian sound, and the Morning Post thinks that ‘Mr. Shaw has played a nasty trick on Mr. H. G. Wells,' while Mr. J. C. Squire finds that he is unlike Mr. Wells in many respects, but he is like him in this, that so long as he can regard himself as an humble instrument of Evolution he is perfectly happy.'

Mr. Shaw is patently very happy; he undoubtedly had a glorious time writing Back to Methuselah.

A JAPANESE PAINTER DESCRIBED BY A JAPANESE POET

THE art of Hiroshige is discussed at length in a beautiful volume by Yone Noguchi, printed in Japan and got up in the delicate Japanese fashion, which has been published by Elkin Mathews, of London and Orientalia, of New York. Mr. Noguchi, who is better known in America as a poet and writer of fiction and literary criticism than as an artcritic, is enabled to treat the Japanese artist with a broader background than would be possible to many of his countrymen, because of his long residence in America and Europe and his wide acquaintance with our life, art, and thought.

His book is illustrated with a colored frontispiece and nineteen collotype reproductions of the works of Hiroshige, who during the first part of the last century was one of the principal painters of the popular Ukiyo-ye School. His family name was Ando Tokitaro, the name Hiroshige, by which he is generally known, having been adopted after the opening of his artistic career. His drawings began to attract attention when he was only ten, and at fifteen he applied unsuccessfully for admission to the studio of one of the masters of his time, being eventually accepted as a pupil by Toyohiro. The fact that Hiroshige gave his name to two of his pupils, whose style greatly resembles his own, sometimes leads to confusion.

Mr. Noguchi in his book claims a superiority for Eastern art as compared with Western, because of what he feels to be its greater truth to nature and higher degree of poetic feeling. Hiroshige is an especially interesting artist to form the basis of such a comparison, since his prints approach more nearly than any other Japanese art to Western methods in landscape.

Yone Noguchi is himself as interesting a figure as the artist of whom he writes. Many American readers will remember him gratefully for his Spirit of Japanese Poetry, which is, with the exception of the books of Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, the best work on the subject in English. His peculiar

qualifications for explaining the arts of the Orient to Occidental readers are due to his long residence in America and also in Europe, and to his complete familiarity with our art. Coming to America at eighteen, he worked as journalist, peddler, newsboy, translator, household servant, until his writings began to attract attention; but so great is the gulf between the languages of East and West, that even to-day, though he began to learn English at the age of ten and though he now occupies a chair in Keio University, there are times, as in the present book, where his command of English idiom is not quite perfect. Usually, however, this merely adds a quaint charm to what he writes. For some years he lived in the household of Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras, and to-day his English poems may be found in many anthologies of modern verse.

A NEW GERMAN BIBLE

HERR GURLITT, the Berlin publisher, is about to issue an edition of the Bible with 200 plates etched by the well-known artist, Jaeckel. The edition will be limited to a few hundred copies, varying in price from 15,000 to 75,000 marks. A wealthy American is said to have subscribed already for one copy, while the Bolshevist government will take ten. There is no clue as to the use to which they will be put.

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THE LIVING AGE

NUMBER 4026

SEPTEMBER 3, 1921

A WEEK OF THE WORLD

IRISH PREDICTIONS

SCRUTATOR, who contributes a weekly political article to the London Sunday Times, believes that the influence of General Smuts in the proposed Irish settlement has been exerted in favor of a federal solution. He says: 'It is by the mixing of the Irish people that union will be obtained'; and that this can best be had in a united federal Parliament of Ireland. "The great problem of Irish unity is to substitute genuine political divisions for the present racial and religious divisions.' He conjectures what the political divisions might be in such a Parliament.

A strong clerical party there would certainly be, sometimes acting with one section, at other times with another. There would be a strong Belfast Labor party, which would find its natural allies in the Labor men and agrarians of the South. The Conservative Irish landlords of the South, again, would tend to work with the capitalists of Ulster. In a few years the divisions of race and religion would disappear, as they have done in English politics; and we should have natural divisions obliterating the old ones and giving Ireland, for the first time in her history, politics in the English sense.

A NEW SOCIALIST PROGRAMME

THE majority Socialists of Germany, who profess to represent the old traditions of the party, revised their Erfurt

programme at the recent Kassel convention. As briefly summarized in press reports, the new platform opens with the following preamble:

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is the party of the laboring people. It seeks to replace the capitalist economic system by a Socialist economic system, guaranteeing the welfare of all members of society, and thereby the highest general intellectual and moral culture of the nation.

The economic programme contains the following demands: (1) Community control and utilization of the soil, natural sources of power, and other natural resources, under such conditions as will increase production and improve the general welfare; (2) state control of capitalist trusts and syndicates; (3) encouragement of consumers' coöperative societies, conducted without the intention of making profits; (4) elimination of bureaucratic red-tape from all government agencies having to do with production and distribution, guaranteed freedom of movement for labor, official conciliation of industrial disputes, and public regulation of prices; (5) compensation for private property taken over by the public in carrying out this programme, to the extent to which the latter is the product of the mental or manual labor of the owner.

Among other important points in the programme is: 'Rejection of any dicta

Copyright 1921, by the Living Age Co.

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