Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

Ethics, Economics, and Government 173
these positions he is accused of espousing, the critics claim that he was
confused and contradictory. On the contrary, the misunderstanding arises
because Shaw was thoroughly true to his beliefs. If anything, it is the critics
who are inconsistent.
It is true that Shaw was fascinated with exceptionally intelligent, clever,
talented, and self-assured women and men; so is everyone else. Barbara
Undershaft is infinitely more interesting than her sister Sarah, just as
many people prefer Antigone to Ismene. That is not the same as believing
that these men and women are the salvation of the world, a position Shaw
specifically and emphatically rejected in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide
and elsewhere. His desire to point the way to the future led him to prefer
superior persons as dramatic subjects; when, in Widowers’ Houses, he held
the mirror up to common natures, those ordinary folks shrunk in horror
from their unfamiliar images and demanded that Shaw cease assaulting
them with immoral human monsters.
Shaw was also, in the same trivial way, an elitist. We are all elitists with
respect to airline pilots. The airline that challenged this assertion by announcing
that, henceforth, the passengers on each flight would elect their
pilot from among themselves would soon be out of business. That is exactly
Shaw’s elitism: he believed that government was a difficult and sensitive
job that required particular aptitudes and special training. He wanted
the ship of state to be piloted by those best qualified. But if an elitist is
someone who believes that “inferior” people should serve the needs of the
“superior,” then Shaw was the opposite of an elitist. His governmental
“elite” was to be women and men who were self-chosen because of a concern
for the public welfare, not a lust for power. Shaw told his imaginary
protégé, in his earliest literary effort: “Ridiculous as it may seem to you,
my dear Dorothea, the scullery maid is every whit as good a person as you
are, unless you can surpass her by learning more, being kinder and controlling
your temper better, and by doing work that requires more thought
than washing dishes. Such superiority alone deserves admiration and respect”
(My Dear Dorothea 44).
Shaw insisted that legislation must be by the “quality” rather than the
“mob,” but he went on to point out that those terms refer to the same
persons in different capacities:
In literature and drama, for instance, I belong to the quality. In mathematics,
athletics, mechanics, I am one of the mob, and not only accept
and obey authority but claim a neighborly right to be told what to do
by those who know better than I do. The best of us is nine hundred