Six Major Prophets

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Edwin E. Slosson. Six Major Prophets

Six Major Prophets

Table of Contents

PREFACE

SIX MAJOR PROPHETS

CHAPTER I. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Dramatic Critic of Life

CHAPTER II. H. G. WELLS

Scientific Futurist

HOW TO READ WELLS

CHAPTER III. G. K. CHESTERTON

Knight Errant of Orthodoxy

HOW TO READ CHESTERTON

CHAPTER IV. F. C. S. SCHILLER

A BRITISH PRAGMATIST

Monosyllabic Definition of Pragmatism

HOW TO READ SCHILLER

CHAPTER V. JOHN DEWEY

Teacher of Teachers

HOW TO READ DEWEY

CHAPTER VI. RUDOLF EUCKEN

APOSTLE OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

POSTSCRIPT, 1917

HOW TO READ EUCKEN

Отрывок из книги

Edwin E. Slosson

Published by Good Press, 2019

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There is ever something in Bernard Shaw that suggests the eighteenth century, the age of Swift and Voltaire and Doctor Johnson. On the credit side we must reckon lucidity, incisive wit, cleareyed logic, unashamed common sense, love of discussion and openness to new ideas, freedom from prejudice of race or class, humanitarian aspiration—in a word the Aufklärung. On the debit side some items must unhappily be listed also: doctrinaire intellectualism, inability to see either the limits of one's own doctrines or the point in other people's, inadequate appreciation of historic institutions and popular sentiments, contempt for romance, intolerance for science, and incapacity for poetry.

Shaw seems to have inherited the famous saeva indignatio of his great countryman, Swift. For all his simple diet he is not so eupeptic as Chesterton. Chesterton is most closely akin to Dickens, as may be seen from his sympathetic appreciations of Dickens's works. If I may be permitted to express the relationship of the four in a mathematical formula, I should put it:

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