The keenest intelligence in the British Isles has recently uttered what is perhaps its keenest observation. The intelligence is, of course, Bernard Shaw’s. The observation is that if a great teacher of his age has done all he ought to do he must expect, and he should desire, to come in time to seem outmoded, superfluous, even something of a nuisance. Thinking, Mr. Shaw perceives, is in this respect like walking: once the habit has been acquired the learner has to practise it alone. As he cannot be precisely the same person his teacher was, he must go by different paths to different goals. Indeed, the measure of the valuable teacher of thinking is his power to show his pupils how they may reach conclusions he himself never could reach. After Socrates, Plato; after Plato, Aristotle. It calls, indeed, for an almost inhuman degree of magnanimity to rejoice when we see ourselves distanced by those whom we first set upon their feet; Mr. Shaw’s attitude of willingness, even of eagerness, is a sign of that capacity for elevated vision which has lent wings to his words and barbs to his truth. But his prompt admission of a thing which his mind lets him see is only what he has taught his followers, and his age, to expect of him. No matter if it does not flatter his pride. He does not have the kind of pride by the exercise of which a man would rather be president than be right. He knows that the life of thought depends not upon the fidelity with which it continues in one direction but upon the vitality with which it stirs successive generations. For thinking is part of the human process no less than play or work or love or aspiration. Its roots are in the protoplasm and its nourishment comes from living growth. To look back over the long and jagged history of opinion is to discover that opinions rise and fall but that only the making and testing of opinion go on for ever; and it is to discover that opinion has always prospered most when it was most nearly allied with the creative forces of youth. Perhaps one should hardly call it opinion at all when those who cherish it are following it in full pursuit. Perhaps then it is instinct and little more. But the instincts of youth are precious as nothing else is precious. Youth, viewed broadly, is always right.