My list of the "Twelve Major Prophets of Today" consisted of the following names: Maurice Maeterlinck, Henri Bergson, Henri Poincaré, Elie Metchnikoff, Wilhelm Ostwald, Ernst Haeckel, George Bernard Shaw, Herbert George Wells, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, F. C. S. Schiller, John Dewey, and Rudolf Eucken. I had not taken nationality into consideration, but I found that I had chosen four from England, three from Germany, two from France, and one each from Belgium, Russia, and the United States of America. Four of the twelve were professors of philosophy; four were men of science, one of these a mathematician, one a physician, one a zoologist, one a chemist; and four were men of letters, authors of novels, dramas, or essays. The twelve sketches appeared in _The Independent_ during the last few years, but they have been considerably extended for book publication. The first six named above were published in the volume "Major Prophets of To-day." The other six are given in the following pages. EDWIN E. SLOSSON CONTENTS Preface I George Bernard Shaw II H. G. Wells III G. K. Chesterton IV F. C. S. Schiller V John Dewey VI Rudolf Eucken LIST OF PORTRAITS George Bernard Shaw H. G. Wells G. K. Chesterton F. C. S. Schiller John Dewey Rudolf Eucken To write a book about a man who has written books about himself is an impertinence which only an irresistible charm of manner can carry off. The unpardonable way of doing it, and the commonest, is to undertake to tell the public what a writer has already told them himself, and tell it worse or tell it wrong. G. B. SHAW. SIX MAJOR PROPHETS CHAPTER I GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Dramatic Critic of Life I am a journalist, proud of it, deliberately cutting out of my works all that is not journalism, convinced that nothing that is not journalism will live long as literature, or be of any use whilst it does live. I deal with all periods, but I never study any period but the present; and as a dramatist I have no clue to any historical or other personage save that part of him which is also myself.... The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.--G. B. S., in "The Sanity of Art."