George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

Hector, left alone, contracts his brows, and falls into a day-dream.
He does not move for some time. Then he folds his arms. Then,
throwing his hands behind him, and gripping one with the other,

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70
Heartbreak House
he strides tragically once to and fro. Suddenly he snatches his
walking stick from the teak table, and draws it; for it is a
swordstick. He fights a desperate duel with an imaginary an-
tagonist, and after many vicissitudes runs him through the body
up to the hilt. He sheathes his sword and throws it on the sofa,
falling into another reverie as he does so. He looks straight into
the eyes of an imaginary woman; seizes her by the arms; and
says in a deep and thrilling tone, “Do you love me!” The captain
comes out of the pantry at this moment; and Hector, caught
with his arms stretched out and his fists clenched, has to account
for his attitude by going through a series of gymnastic exercises.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. That sort of strength is no good.
You will never be as strong as a gorilla.
HECTOR
. What is the dynamite for?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. To kill fellows like Mangan.
HECTOR
. No use. They will always be able to buy more
dynamite than you.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. I will make a dynamite that he
cannot explode.
HECTOR
. And that you can, eh?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Yes: when I have attained the sev-
enth degree of concentration.
HECTOR
. What’s the use of that? You never do attain it.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. What then is to be done? Are we
to be kept forever in the mud by these hogs to whom the
universe is nothing but a machine for greasing their bristles
and filling their snouts?
HECTOR
. Are Mangan’s bristles worse than Randall’s
lovelocks?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
,. We must win powers of life and
death over them both. I refuse to die until I have invented
the means.
HECTOR
. Who are we that we should judge them?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. What are they that they should
judge us? Yet they do, unhesitatingly. There is enmity be-
tween our seed and their seed. They know it and act on it,
strangling our souls. They believe in themselves. When we
believe in ourselves, we shall kill them.
HECTOR
. It is the same seed. You forget that your pirate
has a very nice daughter. Mangan’s son may be a Plato:

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71
GB Shaw
Randall’s a Shelley. What was my father?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. The damnedst scoundrel I ever
met. [He replaces the drawing-board; sits down at the table;
and begins to mix a wash of color].
HECTOR
. Precisely. Well, dare you kill his innocent grand-
children?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. They are mine also.
HECTOR
. Just so—we are members one of another. [He
throws himself carelessly on the sofa]. I tell you I have often
thought of this killing of human vermin. Many men have
thought of it. Decent men are like Daniel in the lion’s den:
their survival is a miracle; and they do not always survive.
We live among the Mangans and Randalls and Billie Dunns
as they, poor devils, live among the disease germs and the
doctors and the lawyers and the parsons and the restaurant
chefs and the tradesmen and the servants and all the rest of
the parasites and blackmailers. What are our terrors to theirs?
Give me the power to kill them; and I’ll spare them in sheer—
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER 
[cutting in sharply]. Fellow feeling?
HECTOR
. No. I should kill myself if I believed that. I must
believe that my spark, small as it is, is divine, and that the
red light over their door is hell fire. I should spare them in
simple magnanimous pity.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. You can’t spare them until you
have the power to kill them. At present they have the power
to kill you. There are millions of blacks over the water for
them to train and let loose on us. They’re going to do it.
They’re doing it already.
HECTOR
. They are too stupid to use their power.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER 
[throwing down his brush and com-