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

Notes
Chapter 1. A Creed for Living: A Faith That Fits the Facts
1. The Quintessence of Ibsenism is most readily available to students of Shaw
in two different collections of Shaw’s writings: Shaw and Ibsen, edited by J. L.
Wisenthal, and Selected Non-Dramatic Writings of Bernard Shaw, edited by Dan H.
Laurence. These two volumes are not redundant, even with respect to the Quintessence.
As is by now notorious, Shaw was an inveterate reviser of his own work. The
Laurence collection is preferable if you want the original version of the work, while
the Wisenthal edition gives a better view of how Shaw changed the book over the
years. Both versions are available in The Drama Observed, a four- volume compendium
edited by Bernard Dukore, but this useful yet expensive edition is less likely to
be found in private collections. For the sake of clarity and convenience, references to
the Quintessence will be to the Wisenthal edition unless otherwise noted.
Chapter 2. Realism
1. Since this is a book about Shaw’s philosophy as well as his religion, it might be
wise to forestall a possible confusion. “Realism” and “idealism” are standard terms
in philosophy which are usually thought of as opposites, but while I refer to the
fundamental Shavian view of the world as “realism,” and will define it largely in
terms of its contrast with what Shaw calls idealism, these are in no way the same as
the realism and idealism of ordinary philosophical discussion. We will unfortunately
need to use the terms in their philosophical sense in the final chapters. Despite
the possibility of confusion, the terms are made inevitable by the way Shaw
uses them.
Chapter 3. The Will and Its Responsibilities
1. There are two earlier versions of this passage and the paragraph in which it
appears. In the original essay (“A Degenerate’s View of Nordau” 359) it is simply the
“cardinal Rationalist error.” When it was revised and republished as The Sanity of
Art in 1908 it became the “Rationalist-commercial error.”