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

248 Notes
peace among citizens with conflicting interests: “The moral nature in us asks for no
more than is compatible with the general good; the non-moral nature proclaims and
acts upon that fine old Scottish family motto, ‘Thou shalt starve ere I want’” (93).
The actual motto, that of the family of Cranstoun from the barony of Midlothian,
was “Thou shalt want ere I want.” Huxley stresses the egoism of the sentiment and
Shaw the extremity of need.
6. In his hysteria at the end of the second act, Cusins says, “Dionysos Undershaft
has descended. I am possessed,” but he also says that the Salvation Army “reveals
the true worship of Dionysos” to “the poor professor of Greek” and that he worshiped
Barbara because he saw “Dionysos and all the others” in her.
Chapter 6. Ethics, Economics, and Government
1. Shaw discusses economic theory at length in both The Intelligent Woman’s
Guide and Everybody’s Political What’s What?, but his most succinct presentation is
The Economic Basis of Socialism, one of the Fabian Essays in Socialism. More can be
found in Bernard Shaw and Karl Marx: A Symposium. Julian Kaye’s chapter “Shaw
and Nineteenth-Century Political Economists” provides an excellent summary of
the influences on Shaw’s economic thinking.
2. Many people find abstract mathematical concepts difficult, although those
presented here are in some ways quite simple. I have borrowed Shaw’s useful technique
of providing concrete illustrations (in many cases using his own illustrations)
while striving to make them clear to a contemporary audience.
3. See, for example, “The Illusions of Socialism” (413) and “The Simple Truth
About Socialism” 173–74.
4. The success of Japanese industry in adopting the ideas of W. Edward Deming
suggests one way this could be done. Much is made of the hierarchical nature of
Japanese society, but the real difference is that Deming’s management theories, as
practiced by the Japanese, stress cooperation and mutual trust rather than internal
competition and a system of rewards and punishments dictated form the top. See
Deming, Out of the Crisis.
5. See Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science. This is a careful yet passionate
book by a scientist (a geneticist) who came to the realization that scientists were
profoundly implicated in the extermination policies of the Nazis. As a scientist, he
was deeply disturbed by his conclusion that the scientific community of Germany,
not just a handful of aberrant individuals, was greatly involved in the practice of
mass extermination. These scientists not only justified extermination and made it
respectable, but they were often involved directly, sending victims to the lethal
chambers, vivisecting individuals who had been deprived of human rights, and organizing
the slaughter. Müller-Hill argues that attitudes and assumptions typically
held by scientists and inculcated in the teaching of science inclined these anthropologists,
psychiatrists, and others to the murderous purposes of the Nazis. Most dis-