This amazingly bold projection of Shaw’s imagination into the void is elaborately wrought out and needs very careful reading to be rightly appraised. Almost every reader will agree that he goes much too far in disparaging about all that modern man has done or cared for so far in the world as childish doll-play. This is its pessimism. Its optimism, which lies in the hope of vastly increased longevity and wisdom, will be thought to compensate, or to fail to do so, according to the temperament of the reader. The new dispensation, which is to come when man has grown up, for in the last part it is seen that he may live even 700 or 800 years, will be ushered in by those individuals who are most perfectly convinced of the desperate state into which man has now fallen but nevertheless profoundly believe both that he is worth saving and that he can be saved. George Eliot’s way of prolonging life by giving to moments the significance of days will not do because great events often have no power to speed up but must evolve very slowly. The best type of old age as we know it is still too puerile to expect very much from. Shaw’s conceptions of the old are neither attractive nor constructive but priggish because presuming on their years to demand respect for a wisdom that is nowhere in evidence. There is almost no suggestion that they have done anything to improve the material or psychic conditions of human life. No great inventions are suggested unless telephonic communication by tuning forks. These Ancients seem to derive their greatest pleasure from disparagement of their own youth and, what is far worse, of youth in general. The long-livers are cynical, addicted to sneering, rebuke, criticise, and do not inspire, construct, achieve, or even teach; in fact they only make the gestures and show the affectations of sagehood. They are divided in their counsels whether to exterminate the short-livers or to leave them to natural selection. Thus they are a class apart and we have almost no hint as to the stages by which they evolved. Now we are told that they are “elected” to longevity or achieve it as “sports,” while in the Preface it is insisted that it comes by a long series of persistent efforts.