Back to Methuselah

Back to Methuselah
Written by	George Bernard Shaw
Date premiered	27 February 1922
Place premiered	Garrick Theatre, New York
Original language	English
Subject	Evolving stages in the future progress of humanity
Genre	visionary epic
Setting	Various

Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) by George Bernard Shaw consists of a preface (An Infidel Half Century) and a series of five plays: In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, and As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920.

All were written during 1918–20, published simultaneously by Constable (London) and Brentano's (New York) in 1921, and first performed in the United States in 1922 by the New York Theatre Guild at the old Garrick Theatre, New York and, in Britain, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1923.

In the preface, Shaw speaks of the pervasive discouragement and poverty in Europe after World War I, and relates these issues to inept government. Simple primitive societies, he says, were easily governable while the civilized societies of the twentieth century are so complex that learning to govern them properly can't be accomplished within the human lifespan: People with experience enough to serve the purpose fall into senility and die. Shaw's solution is enhanced longevity: we must learn to live much longer; a centenarian should be less than middle aged. (Shaw was in his mid-60s when the plays were written). This change, Shaw predicts, will happen through Creative Evolution (evolutionary change that occurs because it is needed or wanted—the Lamarckian view— and not as a result of natural selection—Darwinism) as influenced by the Life Force (l'élan vital). Neither Creative Evolution nor the Life Force were Shavian inventions. Shaw says they are his names for what the churches have called Providence and scientists call Functional Adaptation and Natural Selection (among other names) and gives due credit to Henri Bergson's élan vital. Nevertheless, he uses both terms in Man and Superman which was written nine years before Bergson's work was published. These concepts had some currency among Shaw's contemporaries, and the Methuselah plays are based on Shaw's extrapolations from the two principles. Although both ideas are out of scientific favour as the twenty-first century begins, Shaw accepted them completely (See Commentary, below.) Shaw also advocates what he calls homeopathy as a pedagogical method, arguing that society "can only be lamed and enslaved by" education. Shaw's "homeopathic" educational method consisted of lying to students, until the students were able to see through the lies and argue with the teachers.

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