{"product_id":"2940013696471","title":"The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles","description":"The increasing bewilderment of my journalist critics as to why I\u003cbr\u003eshould write such plays as The Simpleton culminated in New York in\u003cbr\u003eFebruary 1935, when I was described as a dignified old monkey\u003cbr\u003ethrowing coco-nuts at the public in pure senile devilment.  This is\u003cbr\u003ean amusing and graphic description of the effect I produce on the\u003cbr\u003enewspapers; but as a scientific criticism it is open to the matter-\u003cbr\u003eof-fact objection that a play is not a coco-nut nor I a monkey.\u003cbr\u003eYet there is an analogy.  A coco-nut is impossible without a\u003cbr\u003esuitable climate; and a play is impossible without a suitable\u003cbr\u003ecivilization.  If author and journalist are both placid \u003cbr\u003ePanglossians, convinced that their civilization is the best of all\u003cbr\u003epossible civilizations, and their countrymen the greatest race on\u003cbr\u003eearth: in short, if they have had a university education, there is\u003cbr\u003eno trouble: the press notices are laudatory if the play is\u003cbr\u003eentertaining.  Even if the two are pessimists who agree with\u003cbr\u003eJeremiah that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and\u003cbr\u003edesperately wicked, and with Shakespear that political authority\u003cbr\u003eonly transforms its wielders into angry apes, there is still no\u003cbr\u003emisunderstanding; for that dismal view, or a familiar acquaintance\u003cbr\u003ewith it, is quite common.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuch perfect understanding covers much more than nine hundred and\u003cbr\u003eninety cases out of every thousand new plays.  But it does not\u003cbr\u003ecover the cases in which the author and the journalist are not\u003cbr\u003ewriting against the same background.  The simplest are those in\u003cbr\u003ewhich the journalist is ignorant and uncultivated, and the author\u003cbr\u003eis assuming a high degree of knowledge and culture in his audience.\u003cbr\u003eThis occurs oftener than it should; for some newspaper editors\u003cbr\u003ethink that any reporter who has become stage struck by seeing half\u003cbr\u003ea dozen crude melodramas is thereby qualified to deal with\u003cbr\u003eSophocles and Euripides, Shakespear and Goethe, Ibsen and\u003cbr\u003eStrindberg, Tolstoy and Tchekov, to say nothing of myself.  But the\u003cbr\u003ecase with which I am concerned here is one in which a reasonably\u003cbr\u003ewell equipped critic shoots wide because he cannot see the target\u003cbr\u003enor even conceive its existence.  The two parties have not the same\u003cbr\u003evision of the world.  This sort of vision varies enormously from\u003cbr\u003eindividual to individual.  Between the superstatesman whose vision\u003cbr\u003eembraces the whole politically organized world, or the astronomer\u003cbr\u003ewhose vision of the universe transcends the range of our utmost\u003cbr\u003etelescopes, and the peasant who fiercely resists a main drainage\u003cbr\u003escheme for his village because others as well as he will benefit by\u003cbr\u003eit, there are many degrees.  The Abyssinian Danakil kills a\u003cbr\u003estranger at sight and is continually seeking for an excuse to kill\u003cbr\u003ea friend to acquire trophies enough to attract a wife.  Livingstone\u003cbr\u003erisked his life in Africa every day to save a black man's soul.\u003cbr\u003eLivingstone did not say to the sun colored tribesman \"There is\u003cbr\u003ebetween me and thee a gulf that nothing can fill\": he proposed to\u003cbr\u003efill it by instructing the tribesman on the assumption that the\u003cbr\u003etribesman was as capable mentally as himself, but ignorant.  That\u003cbr\u003eis my attitude when I write prefaces.  My newspaper critics may\u003cbr\u003eseem incapable of anything better than the trash they write; but I\u003cbr\u003ebelieve they are capable enough and only lack instruction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wonder how many of them have given serious thought to the curious\u003cbr\u003echanges that take place in the operation of human credulity and\u003cbr\u003eincredulity.  I have pointed out on a former occasion that there is\u003cbr\u003ejust as much evidence for a law of the Conservation of Credulity as\u003cbr\u003eof the Conservation of Energy.  When we refuse to believe in the\u003cbr\u003emiracles of religion for no better reason fundamentally than that\u003cbr\u003ewe are no longer in the humor for them we refill our minds with the\u003cbr\u003emiracles of science, most of which the authors of the Bible would\u003cbr\u003ehave refused to believe.  The humans who have lost their simple\u003cbr\u003echildish faith in a flat earth and in Joshua's feat of stopping the\u003cbr\u003esun until he had finished his battle with the Amalekites, find no\u003cbr\u003edifficulty in swallowing an expanding boomerang universe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey will refuse to have their children baptized or circumcized,\u003cbr\u003eand insist on their being vaccinated, in the teeth of overwhelming\u003cbr\u003eevidence that vaccination has killed thousands of children in quite\u003cbr\u003ea horrible way whereas no child has ever been a penny the worse for\u003cbr\u003ebaptism since John the Baptist recommended it.  Religion is the\u003cbr\u003emother of scepticism: Science is the mother of credulity.  There is\u003cbr\u003enothing that people will not believe nowadays if only it be\u003cbr\u003epresented to them as Science, and nothing they will not disbelieve\u003cbr\u003eif it be presented to them as religion.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47152692134128,"sku":"2940013696471","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013696471_p0.jpg?v=1763597375","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013696471","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}