Back to Methuselah

by George Bernard Shaw

My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the shop assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy of Man and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for this was before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants who know how to read and know nothing else.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, Fiction, Philosophy, Theatre, Ireland

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

George Bernard Shaw stands as one of the most prolific and influential intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a man whose literary output was matched only by his fervent commitment to social reform. Rising from a modest background in Dublin to become a global icon of letters, Shaw redefined the purpose of the stage, transforming it from a place of mere entertainment into a forum for rigorous intellectual debate and moral inquiry. His unique "Shavian" style—characterized by sharp-witted dialogue, paradoxical reasoning, and a relentless assault on Victorian hypocrisy—ensured that his voice resonated far beyond the footlights. As a playwright, critic, and philosopher, he remains a singular figure in history, being one of only two individuals to have been honored with both a Nobel Prize in Literature and an Academy Award. This rare crossover of high-art recognition and mainstream cinematic success speaks to his versatility and the enduring relevance of his narratives. His dramatic work, which includes over sixty plays, often tackled the most pressing issues of his day, from the rigid structures of the British class system to the complexities of gender roles and the ethical dilemmas of capitalism. In masterpieces like Pygmalion, he used the science of phonetics to demonstrate the artificiality of class distinctions, a theme that would later reach millions through the musical adaptation My Fair Lady. In Man and Superman, he delved into the philosophical concepts of the "Life Force" and the evolution of the human spirit, while Major Barbara forced audiences to confront the uncomfortable relationship between religious idealism and the industrial military complex. Beyond his theatrical achievements, Shaw was a foundational force in political thought, serving as a leading light of the Fabian Society. His advocacy for gradual socialist reform, rather than violent revolution, helped shape the trajectory of modern British politics and social welfare. He was instrumental in the creation of the London School of Economics, an institution that continues to influence global policy and economic theory. Shaw was also a formidable critic, whose reviews of music and drama set new standards for the profession, characterized by an uncompromising honesty and a deep knowledge of the arts. His personal lifestyle was as distinctive as his writing; a committed vegetarian, teetotaler, and non-smoker, he lived with a disciplined focus that allowed him to remain productive well into his ninth decade. He was a man of contradictions, often engaging in provocative public discourse that challenged the status quo, even when his views sparked intense controversy. His fascination with the "Superman" archetype and his occasional support for authoritarian figures reflected a complex, often elitist worldview that sought the betterment of humanity through radical intellectual evolution. Despite these complexities, his core mission was always rooted in a profound humanitarianism and a desire to expose the delusions that prevented society from progressing. He believed that the power of the written word could strip away the masks of respectability that hid social injustice, and his plays continue to be staged worldwide because the human foibles he satirized remain as prevalent today as they were during his lifetime. By blending humor with gravity and intellect with accessibility, Shaw created a body of work that serves as both a mirror and a compass for modern civilization. His legacy is not just in the scripts he left behind, but in the very way we think about the intersection of art, politics, and the individual’s responsibility to the collective good. He remains the quintessential public intellectual, a man who never feared to speak his mind or to demand that the world become a more rational and equitable place.

Reviews

[David Sarkies · Rating 5 out of 5]

The evolution of Humanity played out on stage
27 March 2014

When I picked this book up again I noticed that I have already read and commented on it, and I suspect that the comment that I wrote was back when I simply commented on books that I had already read not realising that there were a number of books that I wanted to read again (including this one). However I have decided that what I will do is write an updated commentary, though I still believe the comments that I made originally still hold true. Further I will make some specific comments on each of the five parts.

Shaw calls this play a metabiological pentatuch, and the Biblical allusion is quite striking (and intentional). In the introduction Shaw indicates that when he first wrote about his theory of human evolution in Man and Superman the whole premise of the play was misinterpreted. Now, older and much wiser, he decided to approach it again, though we must be aware that Shaw rejects the idea of evolution being based around natural selection, otherwise described as 'red in tooth and claw'. As we will gather from this play Shaw believes that the violent nature of humanity is actually degenerative and in the end they will wipe themselves out leaving only the peaceful and wise intellectuals. However, as we gathered from Man and Superman, the nature of the violent aspects of humanity will go out to attack and in turn kill that part of humanity which it considers to be superior, namely the peaceful and the wise, and this is clearly identified in his statement in that play's postscript: 'when the divinity revealed itself we proceeded to crucify him'.

Part 1
This part is in two acts and takes us back to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Shaw adds a new twist to the idea of the corruption of humanity as we see with the conversation with the serpent. Shaw does not seem to be twisting the original story around but shining a new light upon the whole idea of humanity's corruption. The reason that he is doing this is because the church of his time (as it is today) was very resistance to change. In fact they fear change, as I discovered when I raised the point at my church as to why they still used the word catholic in the creed rather than changing it to universal (no, you can't change anything, you can only emphasise the meaning – once you begin to change things you begin to change other things). This, I would argue, is a case of weakness of faith because change is not only good, but necessary, and those who are strong in their faith can change things without destroying the faith. Without change we would never have had the Reformation and we never would have broken away from the Catholic Church.

The whole concept I see here is the introduction of ideas and the naming of ideas. Adam considers immortality to be a burden and discovers that he can die (in fact he discovers death after he discovers a dead faun in the garden). However the idea of death brings about the idea of extinction because if either Adam or Eve die then the other will not only be alone, but will also cease to exist (as was the case with the faun). The serpent however introduces the idea of procreation, and suggests that there are two forms – the egg, in which he creates more of himself, and the shedding of the skin, where he sheds his old self to take on a new and stronger self – the idea of rebirth. However with those ideas come the ideas of hope (the belief that not everything will stay the same but in the future get better), of fear (the belief that the future will not change), and procrastination (the idea that one does not need to do something now but can leave that something for tomorrow, another concept that is introduced). As such, with the ideas of death, of fear, and of procrastination entering the human mind humanity has become corrupted.

Then we jump forward to the story of Cain where another concept enters into the human consciousness: the concept of violence. The idea that Cain murdered Abel was that Abel was smart and that he brought good ideas to the race of humanity, ideas that Cain hated. Cain, being the violent one also brings in the idea of slavery and creating a two class system, namely the strong and violent ones who rule, and the weak and submissive ones, who are ruled. However there is a third class, as represented by Abel, that Cain sees a dangerous, and that is the intelligentsia. This class has no place in Cain's world and as such they must be destroyed.

Part 2
So we now jump thousands of years into the future to the years just after the end of the Great War (World War I). In this scene we have members of the elite class meeting together theorising on the future of humanity. In this scene we have people representing the clergy, the politicians, the scientists, and the business people. The strange thing is that the daughter is in love with the member of the clergy, the person who the rest of the company reject. He arrives and they are about to show him the door when the daughter comes down and tells them that he has come to visit her. The nature of the clergy here is that they represent a morality in humanity. Granted Shaw is an atheist, and he also believes that the church has problems with adapting to change, but he is not necessarily antagonistic towards the clergy. Granted, members of the clergy do represent the ruling class, but in some ways, as modernism begins to take hold, they begin to have less of a role in society and less of a say in the way society develops (these days one would hardly suggest that the clergy are members of the elite, but rather members of the intelligentsia).

In this discussion they theorise on the idea of the short lifespan. The idea is that a short life span hinders the ability to be able to evolve, which is why the politician's catch cry is 'Back to Methuselah'. Once humanity can increase its lifespan, humanity can gain wisdom, and in gaining wisdom, humanity and evolve into the next stage. While they have the short lifespans that they currently have they will not truly evolve because, to put it simply, they will not grow up.

However evolution does not come about through gene manipulation, or even mutilating a body, but rather through the force of will. As is suggested in the introduction, an experiment was performed upon mice by cutting off the tail and breeding them and it was discovered (not that it was not already known) that it did not matter how many tails that you cut off of the mice, they would still be born with tales. As such, evolution comes about through willpower, or as Nietzsche suggests, the will to power. However, unlike Nietzsche, Shaw does not see the will to become power as being a force for evolution, but rather the will to evolve, that is to move onto the next stage where humanity becomes wiser and thus begins to discard many of its childish ways (as the violent nature of humanity is not a strength but rather a weakness).

Part 3
We are now three hundred years in the future and once again the world has changed. There is a debate among the ruling class about the idea of the longer life, and many of them believe that it is a theft because they believe that by living longer they are stealing from those who are not living as long: namely by drawing a pension. If everybody draws a pension at the age of 70 yet they live for three hundred years, then it will be a drain on resources. In fact we are discovering it in many advanced states today because as we are living longer our resources are becoming strained, which is why the retirement age is being extended. However the counter argument, coming from one of the longlifers, is that because they live longer, and thus age slower, they are more productive and therefore they are not necessarily a drain on society.

There are a couple of interesting things that Shaw brings into this part of the play, the first being the discrimination against the long-lifers, and also the nature of wisdom. It is clear that the long-lifers are being discriminated against, and there are two in this part, the archbishop, and one of the secretaries. As it turns out both of them have had considerable problems being able to prove their identity because nobody would believe that they were as old as they claimed. As such the archbishop got into the habit of staging his own death and then taking on a new identity. However, due to the length of his life, and the associated accumulated wisdom, he has managed to rise to the top levels of society.

The second long-lifer was actually the parlour made from part II and has now, also, risen to the top of the social ladder, thanks in part due to her accumulated wisdom. However, unlike the archbishop, who has always lived a comfortable life (with the exception of the allegations of fraud when he attempted to draw a pension at the age of 70), the parlour maid has not. In fact, to her, a long life was a curse because by living a long life she would also be living in misery and poverty. However, as society changed, she found herself being lifted out of poverty, and also, like the archbishop, has risen to a ministerial position.

Of course, there are also discussions about killing off the long-lifers (due to them being a drain on the social coffers), but the conclusion is that it is an impossible thing to do because first of all they do not know who they are, and secondly they have no guarantee that more of them will be born.

The second thing is the nature of wisdom, and Shaw indicates that the accumulated wisdom of a long-lifer will be greater than the greatest of the wise men known of Earth, and to that extent, Shaw introduces the character of Confucius, who is the leader of the Chinese state. Of course, much of Confucius' writings were political in nature and argued along the grounds of how to behave in a political environment, but despite his wisdom being handed down to us, he is still one man who lived a relatively short life. However, Shaw does not seem to notice that wisdom can be accumulated and passed down from generation to generation, meaning that through the use of the written word, we can preserve the statements of our wise forefathers and from that continue to grow in our own wisdom. As is indicated in the book of Proverbs, the reason that the book is being compiled is so that the son may learn from the mistakes of the father.

Part 4
Now we have come to the year three thousand, and as happens between each of the parts, the world has changed significantly. There are now two distinct races of humans, the short-lifers and the long-lifers. The long-lifers have set themselves up in the British Isles, and for some strange reason the British people have relocated to Babylon, a place they consider their traditional home (I am not sure what is going through Shaw's mind, but maybe it has something to do with the Fertile Crescent being the cradle of Western Civilisation). The thing with the long-lifers is that they have evolved further so that the short-lifers can only associate with the younger ones, while the older ones can only be approached when they are wearing a veil, otherwise the short-lifer will die. It seems to reflect the idea that Moses could not see God's face because if he were then he would die.

The younger of the long-lifers are considered children, which is probably why the short-lifers can relate to them because they are still technically children, but once they hit their two-hundreth year, their wisdom will embarrass the short-lifer to a point where the short-lifer will simply die. The elder long-lifers have effectively become gods, with the leaders of the short-lifers making pilgrimages to the British Isles to visit the oracle, a particularly long lived long-lifer.

This part is divided into two acts, with one act set on the Irish Coast and the second part set at the oracle. The first part has a short-lifer, one of the leaders, speaking with a long-lifer, and discovering that he can only speak with the younger ones otherwise he will die, simply because the wisdom that they produce is intolerable. This follows through into the second act, however there is one interesting part, and that involves Napoleon.

I suspect that Shaw is using the same analogy with Napoleon as he did with Confucious in Part 3. Here Napoleon represents the ultimate in violent humanity, and against the power of the oracle Napoleon is made to look like a fool. Napoleon is what Cain, in part 1, aspired to become: the strong and warlike ruler. However what we discover here is that what Cain had set out to do in part one has come to naught because Napoleon is nothing in front of the oracle. The Oracle is the evolved humanity and has evolved to a point where his violent nature cannot overcome it.

Part 5
Now we come to the end of the play and to the far, far future where humanity has evolved again (but not to the final point). Here humanity lives for four years as children, where they play as children play. They are artists, they have partners, and they worship deities, but as they approach four they begin to change and begin to withdraw from their childish ways. The children protest at this but the truth is that they grow, and as they grow they change. This is not like what happens in our world, for there are many of us who as we grow up we do not want to put aside our childish ways, and in not doing so we never in effect grow up. There are many of us who still pursue childish pursuits and surround ourselves with wealth and luxury yet eschew wisdom. That is because growing up is a scary thing, and to have responsibility is hard work, but by eschewing responsibility we never learn to look after ourselves. This is why we hear bad guys in movies say that humans need to be lead, and in fact many of us still look to our leaders to make decisions for ourselves, but complain when the decisions that are made are not to our liking. However, unfortunately, we as humans need government because we as humans do not know how to make wise decisions for ourselves, but the catch is that we end up electing people who can't make wise decisions to make those decisions for us.

Another interesting part of this section is Pygmalion's creation of a male and a female automaton. Pygmalion comes from the Greek legend where a man was so disappointed with human women that he made a statue of a perfect woman, and in doing so the gods gave the statue life and they ended up living happily ever after. Yet despite their wisdom (or lack of because they are still children) they are not able to create perfect automatons. As much as they try the automatons are violent and warlike, as is evident when one of them kills Pygmalion. That is when the ancient arrives and kills both automatons because they are, in their words, abominations. Thus we have harkened back to the beginning.

The play ends with the characters from the beginning coming back and looking at the history of humanity. Cain is now obsolete because humanity is no longer violent, and Adam is obsolete because humanity no longer tills the soil. Eve is also obsolete because humanity no longer needs to pro-create through male and female, but have learned to pro-create asexually. Then we have the serpent whose wisdom has been overturned as humanity has evolved, and is thus also obsolete. This leaves what was at first called the voice and turns out to be Lilth, the first human. Lilith created male and female by splitting into two (something that sounds very Aristophanic). Lilith sees that humanity has come full circle, but still has a way to go because the next step, a step that Lilith herself has made, is to shed the flesh and to become pure energy (something that many cults have used to lure their followers into committing suicide and handing all of their wealth over to their leader).

[Warren Fournier · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Bernard Shaw's "Back to Methuselah" is perhaps one of his lesser known works, except to serious aficionados of the stage.  But should it have wider recognition today?  

The first thing you notice is that his "preface" takes up a quarter of the book.  If you are one of those readers that tends to skip over the author's preface, you may be very tempted to do so here, but I contend that you'll learn pretty much everything you need to know about the play from these initial ramblings.  It's an entire treatise on his thoughts about Darwin which inspired this play.  And it  manages to inspire a chuckle or two.  Shaw rivals Mark Twain in his constant but delightful dry wit, his smart-ass contempt for elitism, and his ingenious ability to point out stupidity among the intelligentsia.  One moment he is talking about a scientist who began cutting off the tails of successive generations of mice to see if eventually they would be born with no tails, proving to Shaw that even educated people can be swept up in hysteria and do the stupidest things with no regard for decency.  The next moment, he reviews the history of pre-Darwinian Evolutionist thought throughout the ages, showing that there is a difference between Darwin's brand of "circumstantial evolution" and the concept of "creative evolution."

It's this "creative evolution" that inspired this play, a reimagining of the Biblical book of Genesis mixed with Radium-Age science fiction.  What Shaw is attempting here is quite ambitious, perhaps too much so to capture as antics on the stage.  And after it was over, I wondered why Shaw just didn't publish his preface as an op ed and be done with the whole thing.

The play opens with Adam and Eve running across a dead deer that broke its neck in a fall.  They become paranoid that something like this might happen to one of them, leaving the other alone forever unless the same would happen to them.  They don't want to die, but the idea of going on living indefinitely is just too overwhelming, filled with perhaps endless threats and dangers.  A snake appears, who tells them that she was in the Garden of Eden before they were born, when Lilith split herself into two, and the snake teaches them the secret of birth, so that they don't have to necessarily live forever, but may be reborn.  

Millennia pass, and now we reach the "present day" of the 1920s.  Human lifespans have dwindled since "the Fall" from 1000 years to a paltry 70 to 80 years.  The Barnabas brothers, Franklin and Conrad, find this intolerable, because people do not mature fast enough to be good at anything in that time, or to develop enough wisdom to truly advance civilization.  Political leaders make a mess of things and behave like children into their senior years. Therefore, the brothers go on a new political campaign to make the term of human life not less than 300 years, and their slogan is "Back to Methuselah".  They don't have an elixir or any secret to longevity.  Their hope is that by planting the seed of thought in the minds of everyone in the country that it is necessary to live longer, then they eventually will.

Fast-forward again to the year 2170 and beyond...  not only has the thing happened, but eventually people who get old and die before their third century are looked upon as unfortunate children.  

I absolutely love this premise.  The execution, however, leaves a lot to be desired.  

Shaw was influenced directly by Henrik Ibsen, so much so that Ibsen is given a shout out in Part III.  Both playwrights had grown frustrated that the theatre was being used as mindless entertainment, and felt that there was nothing wrong with putting on a good show that could also be used as a platform for political, social, and religious ideas.  Kind of sounds like the debate people are having today when it comes to film and comics being inundated with "the message."  And indeed, some readers may find Shaw's plays a little heavy-handed with the often awkwardly placed detours where he has obviously inserted his own preaching.  It does get downright... Yawn... It does get pretty darn... Zzzz.... It can be boring. 

In fact, I think he could have trimmed down the length of this play considerably.  It seems there was a potentially great story here.  Instead, each segment that takes place in subsequent epochs is an excuse for new characters to artificially preach Shaw's ideas to the audience.  This is a classic case of telling rather than showing.

It's also fair to warn you that there's a good deal of racism in the play, which may not be surprising for the time it was written, but it is how Shaw ultimately handles it that is different.  His target was definitely and always the British government.  He portrays the British as an immature people, obsessed with golf and cigars, to the point where politicians have to appoint foreigners from more mature peoples like in China and Liberia.  A man they call Confucius, for instance, is one of these high-ranking officials, and clearly looks upon his English peers as barbarians, and bares their jibes with tested patience.  

You might find the unusual spelling to be irritating.  He uses archaic spellings like "shew" instead of "show," and he "doesnt" believe in using the apostraphe in contractions.  Some contractions are even further reduced, as in "arnt" instead of "aren't".  Americans may not notice that he  drops the "u" in words like "colour," but will notice that "mathematicians" is "methematicians."  He even lobbied for English spelling in general to be reformed to be more phonetic.  Shaw made everything he wrote a political statement, down to his trademark choices of alphabet.  

And because he is so obsessed with making a political point, he forgot to make any memorable or endearing characters.  Everyone is either a bumbling and selfish buffoon or preaching the gospel according to Shaw.  When longetivity becomes commonplace enough in the world, the elders  are unbearable in their arrogance, treating the short-lived with contempt to the point that they consider genocide.  This is the result of maturity?  I am not sure that Shaw considered the irony of this very element of his play, and if he did, then I don't really know what was his point.  That no matter how long or short we live is irrelevant, because we are all morons hopelessly bent on killing each other since Cain invented murder?  That there's really no point in living at all?  That we are a failed experiment of God?  Do I need to read almost 500 pages of smart-ass quips, drab oratory, and Socratic propaganda to end with such a conclusion?

Overall, I wish this play wasn't so dull, because I saw a lot of promise in this interesting scenario, one that could make you think about what you could do with a few extra centuries.  It's ironic, because I was just having this conversation with my wife.  I didn't fool around that much when I was young.  I completed my studies diligently and became a doctor at the relatively young age of 24.  But I certainly was a babe in the woods, and didn't really know what I was doing.  Decades later, I still don't know everything I need to know to be fully competent at my job.  No physician is.  Let alone learning about yourself, and how to be a better person and parent.  And to be savvy with your finances and keep up with the house maintenance.  Or to practice a hobby, music, or sports.  Or to write Goodreads reviews.  By the time you get the knack of anything, you get colon cancer and die before you can retire.  Wow, this book really put me in a cheerful mood, didn't it?  Or should I say, "didnt"?

Why were humans designed with such intelligence that they require such a long time to mature, only to degenerate after leaving behind offspring, no different than a common housefly?  I thought perhaps Shaw had some interesting ideas on the subject, but he doesn't really.  He just was using science fiction based on Creative Evolution as a launching point for poking fun at the British, and to make yuk yuk jokes.  That's a shame, because despite the actual content of the play, I found myself thinking of what I could do with the extra time, and what that could mean for civilization, for good or bad.

If we did live longer, perhaps creatives would have learned by now that insertion of one's political opinions in a play for stage or screen doesn't actually work.  It titillates the members of one's own club, but fails to actually reach anyone else to change their minds.  Such work never achieves timeless status, which is ironic for a play that spans tens of thousands of millennia and is supposed to be asking timeless questions. 

In the end, Shaw would have been better off just writing a play for good old fashioned entertainment after all.  


SCORE: 2.5 out of 5, rounded to 3

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of Dad's oldest friends, Ken Bennett, former professor of English at Lake Forest University, is a Shavian; I'd enjoyed the little Shaw I'd read and the description of Methuselah in a book of the world's greatest literature I'd poured through for ideas for future reading had made the five plays sound very intriguing, so I bought the thing and dived in, reading it every night at my ER desk at Evanston Hospital.

Well, I finished the thing, but couldn't say I was much impressed. The plays are intended to be satirically funny, but I didn't get many chuckles. Although he employs the science fiction genre to make his political points, his science is weak, if not crazy. Perhaps I'd enjoy it more if presented as spoken word (Shaw having not intended stage productions, the ones given flopped).

[Darby Gallagher · Rating 1 out of 5]

for my literature in the age of eugenics class - perhaps the dumbest book i have EVER read. like. this guy thinks he is the smartest man on the planet. he is potentially the dumbest. i dont even think this should be considered fiction or a play it is literally the ramblings of a madman his ideas are SO BAD and his writing is somehow worse. absolutely meaningless.

at no point in the whole thing was i like 'oh okay lowkey this parts kind of fun'. no. the whole thing was insufferable. at least i am free.

EDIT: i have more to say. This whole 'metabiological pentateuch' is so haughty and self-important and has to be written out of such an insane position of eugenic hubris for him to genuinely think he is a prophet starting a new religion w/ his ideas in here.

[Lloyd Earickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be perfectly honest, I made a mistake in picking up this book. In fact, I made a mistake even adding it to my reading list in the first place. I came across a reference to it when I was looking for the attribution for a quote I was using in an essay for work (that quote is: “You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”, in case you were curious), and thought the brief plot summary sounded interesting, so I added it to my list. This despite thinking to myself "self, in all of the George Bernard Shaw books and plays that you were forced to read in school, you hated precisely all of them. Why would you possibly think that you're going to like this one?" But being stubborn and intellectually curious, and always intent on keeping on open mind, I determined to give this story a fair chance.

Sometimes, I really come to regret that open-mindedness of mine. Despite having chosen this book, instead of having it foisted upon me by some over-analyzing and proselytizing English teacher, I still do not like George Bernard Shaw. It didn't help that this book contains not only the play, but a very, very long series of essays by Shaw explaining some very questionable science and opinions, and putting on full display the intellectual arrogance and snobbery that I find so off-putting (and ironic) about Shaw's writing. These essays went on for so long that I more than once wondered if I had somehow gotten the wrong book, because it seemed I was never going to get to the play itself that had first prompted me to against my better judgement place this book on my reading list.

You know, I feel much less guilty criticizing an author like Shaw, who is well-established, critically acclaimed, forced down poor, unsuspecting students' throats, and dead than I do about expressing my lack of enjoyment of something like The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and by extension its not-dead, relatively unknown, as-yet-unestablished author. Is that wrong of me? Though I do maintain that in that case my critique was not of the author herself, but of that particular book. In the case of Back to Methuselah, I am definitely criticizing both book and author. I think that by including a lengthy polemic in the beginning that seemed longer than the play itself, he kind of invited it.

Honestly, the play itself wasn't all bad, and if nearly a third of the book had not been composed of Shaw's barely coherent essays on pseudo-scientific garbly-gook and intellectually arrogant political haranguing I might have even found parts of the play enjoyable. The first parts involving Adam and Eve and the Snake were odd, as was the twentieth century part, but the first of the two future-set parts actually read like something out of a classic science fiction piece; the basic plot elements would have been right at home in something like HG Wells's Time Machine. The idea of exploring how longevity effects the human race is certainly a good one, although I think Shaw provided a rather close-minded, one-sided presentation of that idea. In the final part, where people apparently hatch from eggs and are functionally immortal (meaning they can die by accident or disease, but will not die of "old age"), there is yet another restatement of the Pygmalion myth, and the "Ancients" are trying to come up with ways to leave their bodies behind and become a vortex of energy. Perhaps, in another context, this could have been an interesting analysis of the idea, but there was not nearly enough background information to make this section seem anything but silly.

Having put it behind me, I find that I don't regret having read it, which I sort of expected to, especially as I was making my way through the essays. At its heart it's an idea story, and I almost always enjoy those in the classical science fiction sense. If the essays were left out (which some people, apparently, swear would be an abomination), I might be inclined to say that this would even be worth reading. So while I can't truly recommend this book, I will say that, if you are interested, skip the essays at the beginning and proceed straight to the play. That way, you'll be able to draw your own conclusions, and not be force-fed Shaw's propaganda.

[David Sarkies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The evolution of humanity played out on stage
23 July 2011

This play is my favourite Bernard Shaw play next to Pygmalion, and having been written in the early twenties, it not only shows some more maturity in the playwriting, but also explores a topic that was believed to be dead after World War I: the concept of Human Enlightenment.

The concept, popular in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century was that after almost a century of peace that the human race was on the doorstep of a new golden age. After the European wide devastation of the Napoleonic Wars it was believed that we had grown out of our barbarous past where we would constantly war with each other and had come to a point where all of Europe could live at peace. There are a lot of flaws in that belief, particularly since it views the European race as the only race worth mentioning and did not take into account the wars of conquest against our darker skinned brethren. However, this theory collapsed after the beginning of one of the most violent and deadly wars in history, and was then exceeded almost twenty years later with a war that was not only unprecedented in its ferocity and barbarity but also in its global reach.

But back to Bernard Shaw. At the beginning of the 1920's, an era of unprecedented prosperity at the time, Shaw produces this play which in its breadth endeavours to encompass all of human history from the Garden of Eden through to our ascension to godhood. However, this is not a Christian play, far from it. One of its main characters, Lilith, is a Jewish myth about Adam's first wife who refused to be his wife and was thus cursed by God. It was only after Lilith's betrayal that God raised up Eve for Adam. However, this has nothing to do with the play and everything to do with human development.

It is act 2 that is probably the centerpiece of the play. It is set in England in the 1920's where two gentlemen discuss the future of humanity. It is emphasised at the beginning that it does occur shortly after the Great War, and as such this is kept in mind as we move through the play. They are still speaking of the evolution of humanity, and then when we jump into the future in the next scene, we see that this evolution has come about, however it has arrived through the most unlikely of people: the chambermaid (who has not aged over the years that have passed between the acts).

The final scene we see humanity at their apex. They have done away with love, sex, and emotion, and are now purely logical beings. However something is wrong. While they live extra-ordinary long lives they only experience life for three years and then evolve. It appears that despite the desire to evolve, there is also a desire to maintain that which makes us truly us: our emotions. Many sci-fi books and shows treat emotion as something that needs to be done away with, but this undermines something that that God created as an essential part of us: an ability to love, to sing praises, to mourn for a loved one, or to be fuelled in anger at injustice. While our emotions can get carried away at times (and there are quite a few of those times), it is also something to hold onto and cherish as a gift of God.

[bubonic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back to Methuselah! is the rallying cry of this profound play. Shaw mentions in the preface that he never needs to reference a dictionary or thesaurus as the words just flow from his mind and it really shows in his writing. I felt as though I was laboring through the play during the middle part, however, by the time I got to the last Act: "As Far As Thought Can Reach" it was entirely worth it. The lessons are subtle and I do not want to give them away, but they may have a deep impact on me. I can understand why Alan Turing went through a metamorphosis after reading this in his late teens; there was a long discussion on creating what we now call AI and why humans have always had the urge to do so.

The play's essential theme and conflict is that we as "shortlived" humans never learn to appreciate, in our lifetime, the subtleties and intricacies of what this universe has to offer. And as Shaw put it, as we mature we take interest in more profound ideas and concepts and my favorite example was deliberating the realm of mathematics. If humankind can evolve to live 300 years or longer as the evolution of humankind's evolution takes place, what will be the final ends in achieving long lasting life? What do we as humans ultimately strive for as we become wiser? Why do we fuss with such trifles during a large portion of our life? Is it because our thought never matures and remains that of a child's our entire life? Well worth the read.

[Asher · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of Shaw's weirder ones. On one hand, I admire the epic scale of the work, the way that the five plays intertwine, the size of the ideas he's expressing. On the other hand, the ideas themselves are just dumb, and there's much more racial and gender stereotyping than usual.

This is Shaw at his peak Old Man Yells At Clouds, arguing full-throatedly against Darwinian evolution and for Lamarckian evolution, which had been out of favour and discredited for decades at the point he was writing it, largely on the basis that (as far as I can tell) he didn't like the idea of an uncaring universe where his own sheer willpower didn't allow him to directly affect his biological reality. In Man and Superman, the Life Force he talked about felt more like a general biological imperative, whereas here it's all mumbo-jumbo. I had to read the incredibly long preface, too, and good god is that simply not worth it.

[Steven · Rating 1 out of 5]

A piece of ludicrous, tediously didactic, crackpottery.

[Fabio · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two ideas you cannot even suggest in a society such as ours (early 21st century U.S.) without being automatically lumped with religious zealots: first, that something is missing from Darwin's fans view of evolution: you would just get people condescendingly trying to enlighten you as to the fact that dinosaurs existed. Second, that normal good natured men are puppets of profiteering when you remove religion from their lives.

Should you choose to combine both views in one writing you would probably be branded a mysticist anarchist, and I suppose that is how some people see George Bernard Shaw. However, if you have a truly scientific skepticism (and perhaps also an atheism advanced enough that you don't need to fight the town's priest over the existence of god) you might get a great deal of pleasure reading the thoughts of one of the truly great minds the world has produced, arguing precisely the two points above in the form of fanciful plays.

The book is made of five plays, spawning 36000 years of human changing interaction towards death, reproduction, longevity and evolution., From an allegorical Adam and Eve that discover death and reproduction, to an oviparous society of long lived post-humans achieving maturity at age four and building their own humans for art's sake. Each part is full of provocative ideas, but despite the theme do not expect a lot of theatrical plot or science fiction, this one of Shaw's books meant to be read rather than performed, and in fact if you should read only part of it, I recommend you read none of the plays but the preface, where GBS outlines two key thoughts:

First of all, the question mark over evolution is not on natural selection (and therefore people arguing his is a version of eugenics have the wrong focus). In fact Shaw spends quite a long passage of the preface highlighting how natural selection is so obvious it has become the selling point of Darwinism for all types of people and affiliations. Instead, the focus by Shaw is in the truly difficult question regarding evolution: the nature of supposedly random mutations.

Most people who think themselves as scientific (by which they mean mainly that they don't believe the biblical story of the creation in six days) take a surprisingly unexamined view of the question of random mutations. What is the statistical distribution of mutations? are they more related to certain traits than others? How many genes are expected to be mutated in a generation given the size of an organism? etc. People like John Tyler Bonner ask these questions, but for the most part the notion that mutations are "random" and there was a long enough timeline to arrive by chance at the right ones is taken blindly as an article of faith.

Second there is the notion of the role of religion. Here again the question is not the easy one of whether something is a legend but rather the usefulness and beauty of legends understood as legends. What's more, Shaw points out the danger of replacing incredible and silly legends for credible and clever ones calling them Truth. As he puts it this is "calling in Satan to cast out Satan, and getting more into his clutches than ever in the process."

This book is a fascinating and provocative read. It is also a risky one because the science of longevity is ostensibly its theme but not its point. It is a book from a hundred years ago from a mind and philosophy a thousand years ahead. It will benefit anyone open minded and ready to not mistake the book's scientific (or science fiction) credentials with its intellectual value.

[E.J. Matze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Methuselah
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a play by G. B. Shaw, first performed in 1922; it is its author's most complete dramatization of his theory of ‘creative evolution’. Subtitled ‘a metabiological pentateuch’, it opens in the Garden of Eden, where Eve is confronted with a serpent who teaches her the facts of life and death and shares its evolutionary hopes: ‘You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.’ After an episode involving Cain, pioneer of destruction and fake heroism, the action shifts to 1920. Lubin and Burge, parodies of Asquith and Lloyd George, come to discover whether there is party advantage in the new ‘gospel’ of Franklyn and Conrad Barnabas, brothers who believe that ‘life is too short for man to take it seriously’, that disasters such as the First World War will be avoided only if man learns wisdom by going ‘back to Methuselah’, and that creative evolution will be ‘the religion of the 20th century’, leading eventually to ‘omnipotence and omniscience’. Then it is ad 2170, and ‘the thing happens’: the Barnabases' local vicar reappears as an archbishop who, like their parlourmaid, has lived nearly 300 years. The next section of the play occurs in ad 3000 and is set in an Ireland which, like the rest of Britain, is occupied by ‘long-livers’ who are currently considering whether to exterminate more ordinary beings. In their enlightenment, they treat with derision those representatives of the British Common-wealth, among them the Prime Minister and his conventionally minded father-in-law, who come from its headquarters in Baghdad to seek advice on the petty electoral matters that still absorb them. The play then leaps forward ‘as far as thought can reach’, to the year 31,920, when humans emerge as fully grown adolescents from eggs, absorb themselves for four years with love, the arts, and other supposed frivolities, and then develop into ‘ancients’, sexless, ascetic creatures who spend the rest of their very long lives in contemplation and wish only to escape from their bodies. Finally, the creator, Lilith, prophesies another stage in evolution, with life becoming pure intelligence and energy, ‘a vortex freed from matter’. The play, though obviously difficult to take seriously on a literal level, contains plenty of lively observation, and remains of interest for the light it sheds both on Shaw's growing disenchantment with democratic politics and on his Manichaean mistrust of sense, feeling, and human relationships.



Read more: Back to Methuselah http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages...

[Brainsgalore · Rating 4 out of 5]

IN THE PREFACE,SHAW'S suggestion of an INCREASED LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH attainable through CREATIVE EVOLUTION is not a viable proposition - however i liked it - KNOWLEDGE IS AN ENDLESS PURSUIT AND ONE LIFETIME IS NOT ENOUGH - FRANKLYN AND CONRAD are unanimous in this context and even after things are out of scientific favour,the proposition rings out loud to me at least - our follies pave the path for future accomplishments and so EVE thinks that her future sons would indulge in better things other than commit follies like killing which CAIN committed - If living for centuries can disentangle complexities,one needs to stay safe - one cannot contract a serious illness which can endanger the lifespan - IF YOU HAVE TO LIVE FOR 300 YEARS YOU CANNOT RISK CONTRACTING RHEUMATISM,CAN YOU ?

[Paul Kieniewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those fascinating works that has the potential to change your life, or at the least the way you see your life. While countless science fiction novelists glibly deal with immortality as if it were just a fine way to live, Shaw explores the psychological consequences. What sort of mind would it take, if you decided to live for, say 300 years? Would you have the strength for such a life? Could you live with yourself for that long? Take a journey through the five plays of this cycle. You may come out feeling different.

BTW --- At book-signings of "Immortality Machine", a novel that owes much to Shaw, I asked every buyer to state their desired lifespan. I had very few takers for 300 years, Shaw's suggested lifespan; necessary if mankind is to survive.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An attempt by one of the most intelligent thinkers, writers, people of last century to peep into future of evolution - beyond the present limits of where we are.

Life spans of longer than a century or two, youth and ability well into third century, or lives a millennium long with growing up and reproduction finished soon so the true vocation can be taken up, of thought and creation? Sensational, either way.

Sunday, September 21, 2008.
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[شيماء الكثيري · Rating 4 out of 5]

العودة الى ميتوشالح !

القسم الأول : في البدء، عام 4004 ق. م ( في جنة عدن)
القسم الثاني : انجيل الأخوين بارناباس ( الوقت الحاضر )
القسم الثالث : الشيء يحدث ( عام 2170 )
القسم الرابع : مأساة السيد كهل ( عام 3000 م)
القسم الخامس : أقصى ما يمكن أن يصل إليه الفكر ( عام 31920 م)

أكثر فهرس ابهرني إطلاقًا، لم أتردد في استعارتها بعد قراءتي للفهرس

مسرحية محيّرة، فكرتها ساحرة وعظيمة، وتحتوي على أفكار رمزية وفلسفية .. لكن للأسف معالجتها سيئة، الكثير من الأشياء غير مترابطة وغير مفهومة .. اعجبني الفصل الأول والأخير

على الرغم من عدم فهمي للكثير من الأشياء إلا أن هذه المسرحية يصعب نسيانها

[Stephen Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shaw thought that this often labored meditation on "creative evolution" was his masterwork. Well, it's not, though it might just be his weirdest and most experimental work. It's sporadically funny and Part 2, The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas, is sharply satirical and quite good. As for the rest . . . well, Shaw said in his own Afterword, "Back to Methuselah is a World Classic or it is nothing." Well, you said it.

[Sejjad.ebn.Fatma · Rating 5 out of 5]

قليلة هي الكتب التى تدرك وانت تقراها بأنها ستبقى عالقة في ذاكرتك الى الوقت الذي تنطفئ تلك الذاكرة ، مسرحية ميتوشالح واحدة من تلك الكتب .
انها مسرحية الزمن كله ومراحل الانسان كلها ، هي البداية والصراع والنهاية .
الزمن فيها يبتدأ مع آدم وحواء ليصل الى سنة ٣١٩٢٠ م .
بحث فلسفي ضخم وقصة رائعة ، أضخم وأعظم ما كتبه برناردشو .
عمل يجب ويجب ويجب ان يقرأ ، ونادرا ً جدا ً ان أتحمس لكتاب ما .

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five interrelated (and slightly bonkers) plays on the theme of Evolution by the great contrarrian George Bernard Shaw, with a hundred page preface bemoaning Darwinism while extolling Lamarckian beliefs in its place.

Bernard Shaw thought that Natural Selection was a dead end, not just for religion but for politics and the arts as well. Rather than evolution through the survival of the fittest, progress could be achieved by merely willing it into existence, something he called Creative Evolution.

It sounds more appealing, certainly, but there's nothing scientific about it. Shaw's preference for Lamarck above Darwin seemed to be based entirely on faith. An odd crux for a confirmed atheist, but then Georgy was rather an odd fellow.

There is a third school of thought, best illustrated through the notion of Paley's Watch. This is the idea of 'the cunning artificer,' the cosmic designer behind the marvels of creation, the same God which Richard Dawkins, today's preeminent Darwinist, so enjoys dismantling.

The clearest illustration of the differences between these three ideas is presented via the example of the giraffe and his long neck:

'How did he come by his long neck? Lamarck would have said, by wanting to get at the tender leaves high up on the tree, and trying until he succeeded in wishing the necessary length of neck into existence. Another answer was also possible: namely, that some prehistoric stockbreeder, wishing to produce a natural curiosity, selected the longest-necked animals he could find, and bred from them until at last an animal with an abnormally long neck was evolved by intentional selection, just as the race-horse or the fantail pigeon has been evolved. Both these explanations, you will observe, involve consciousness, will, design, purpose, either on the part of the animal itself or on the part of a superior intelligence controlling its destiny. Darwin pointed out—and this and no more was Darwin's famous discovery—that a third explanation, involving neither will nor purpose nor design either in the animal or anyone else, was on the cards. If your neck is too short to reach your food, you die. That may be the simple explanation of the fact that all the surviving animals that feed on foliage have necks or trunks long enough to reach it.'

Shaw admits that each idea is essentially irrefutable, he simply prefers Lamarck's take on it. I agree with him, but it's not as scientifically compelling as Darwin's explanation. More appealing, yes, but not as compelling.

So what can we achieve by pinning our colours to Lamarck's mast? We can achieve anything, including immortality. This was Shaw's genuine belief (though he clearly didn't believe it enough to achieve it), and so onto the five plays, his 'Metabiological Pentateuch' as he collectively called them.

Where else to begin but at the beginning, with Adam and Eve, as Shaw does in In the Beginning: B.C. 4004. The first couple know nothing of mortality until they stumble upon a dead deer, which stirs up some troubling new thoughts. Fortunately the serpent is on hand to give Eve a lesson in sex and death.

Fast forward to a scene with their son Cain, fresh from murdering his brother and full of his own accomplishment. He berates his parents for their lack of ambition and storms off. I expected Shaw to make more out of one the world's greatest stories.

The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas moves forward to Shaw's own time, with the brothers of the title, one a scientist and the other a theologian, both reach the conclusion that humans need to live for three centuries to wrestle with the complexities of the modern world. Two politicians called Lubin and Burge join the debate:

Lubin: I see. The old must make room for the new.
Burge: Death is nothing but making room. That's all there is in it or ever has been in it.
Franklyn: Yes; but the old must not desert their posts until the new are ripe for them. They desert them now two hundred years too soon.

Unsurprisingly, the politicians can only look at the idea from what short-term use they can make of it, while a pair of young lovers moon about to no great comic effect. It's a better play than the one before it, but that's not saying much.

On now to the future and the year 2170, where The Thing Happens. The indolent English are governed by 'negresses and Chinks,' one of whom is none other than Confucius. This idea I like! Two minor characters from the last play have indeed lived for near three hundred years, changing their identities to fool the authorities.

An investigation into suspicious drownings rumbles one of the Methuselahs, and the frivolous English authorities suddenly start to understand that there could be more to life than flirting and golf. The imagination and humour were much more in keeping with what you might expect from a ready wit GBS.

Better still is the Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, set in the year 3000. The world is divided between the 'short-lived and the normal,' the former are religious and the latter scientific, the capital of Britain is now Baghdad, Ireland is the site of an oracle like the one at Delphi.

The short-lived are prone to suffering from 'discouragment' when they speak with the long-lived, but the elderly gentleman wants to stay among them when he comes to understand that his own type are inferior:

The Elderly Gentleman: At all events, madam, I may remind you, if you come to capping ages, that whatever your secondaries and tertiaries may be, you are younger than I am.

Zoo: Yes, Daddy; but it is not the number of years we have behind us, but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and determined to find out the truth about everything. What does it matter to you whether anything is true or not? your flesh is as grass: you come up like a flower, and wither in your second childhood. A lie will last your time: it will not last mine. If I knew I had to die in twenty years it would not be worth my while to educate myself: I should not bother about anything but having a little pleasure while I lasted.

A power-hungry general, a clear descendent of Cain who calls himself Napoleon, comes a cropper when he crosses the oracle. The British Prime Minister decides to ignore the message he receives from the oracle:: "Go home, poor fool." That's a sound message for a British Prime Minister from any era.

Shaw reserves his wildest flight of fancy for the final, far-future play As Far as Thought Can Reach, A.D. 31,920. All humanity are long-lived, hatch from eggs and are teenagers from birth. The young respect the elders but don't much like to look at them, while the young irritate the ancient:

The Newly Born: What is your destiny?
The He-Ancient: To be immortal.
The She-Ancient: The day will come when there will be no people, only thought.

One of Shaw's previous foils, Pygmalion, makes an appearance, the creator of an android couple who turn on him. The distant future Shaw conjures up struck me as both silly and not really worth living a long time to get to.

The preface spelt out what Shaw was trying to say, while the five plays themselves only fitfully did justice to his central idea.

[Adrian Manea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent play! My first reading of Shaw, coming from Hodges' biography of Alan Turing. It is both symbolic and scientific (sci-fi, rather), entertaining and sophisticated, creative and natural.

It is really a masterpiece, on which many analyses can be made, showing its political, social, scientific, philosophical, even theological sides, most of which are infused with great satire. One doesn't have to agree with Shaw's theses (explained in the beginning), I know I don't, but must admire and marvel at the author's creation.

[Amenah.☘︎ ݁˖ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was this book over the head for my brain? Perhaps..
I found it mesmerising and then again quite enigmatic ,maybe it’s due to my intellectual limits or the language barrier but i did grasp on much so it’s a win-win..
Didn’t expect the book to be theatric.
This doesn’t pass as a review because i am still puzzled by the book, i know how it discussed life and death and youth and how human lives can be much or less with how they think and the effects of consciousness and lacks of it; but i know there is much more to it in the entitled book…

[Ibraheem Wazir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Enjoyable to read. Although I do disagree with Shaw's attack on Darwinian evolution, and as a materialist, I disagree with his idea of the Life Force. But other themes, some of which are hidden behind humour and satire, are just great.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it for anyone whether shortlived or longlived.

[David]

Didn't finish. Overly long series of episodes dealing with life extension and immortality. Shaw portrays humans as being able to decide how long they will life (although not everyone can necessarily do so successfully.)

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for book group. I have no idea what this play is trying to say. It is so bizarre in structure and so didactic that I can't imagine it working well on stage. I would think it would take hours and hours to perform. I read somewhere that Shaw intended it to be read and not performed. OK.

[Alhusain Ghazala · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful piece of art

[HAKAN · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic approach to how we should live.

[Aristos Aresti · Rating 2 out of 5]

too long, and meaningless. could have been 1/10th of the size. a waste of time, especially compared to some of the other plays of Shaw.

[Freddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This man was too genius for his own good. Wish he really was my ancestor rather than just someone with the same name. Not his best work but his philosophy still exudes through and wows.

[percy · Rating 4 out of 5]

read acts 1 and 2 for class (4.5)

[Raully · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Shaw play. From 1921, Shaw is definitely reeling from the war in this imaginary retelling of a past and future Genesis. The surreality of the play however keeps me from wondering how serious - or comic - the play is supposed to be.

Another last thought: I kept reflecting on how contemporary audiences, even Christian ones, would probably not be biblically literate enough to understand such an anti-Christian play.

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I had not read the preface, I would have thought it was dated fiction punctuated by moments of humor. Knowing that Shaw saw his wishful thinking as some sort deep truth, however, spoiled the fun.

my favorite quote: "You are always in little squabbling cliques; and the worst cliques are those which consist of one man."