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

A Creed for Living 9
ally—at the price of never being taken completely seriously. It is now time,
more than one hundred years after the Quintessence of Ibsenism, to probe
beneath the jester’s mask and take Shaw utterly seriously. It will not be
easy, for much of the essential Shaw will still be shocking and repellent
even to those who admire Shaw; even—no, especially—to those who idolize
him. In fact, although he never did drop the clown’s mask completely,
he let it slip rather carelessly after he became famous and relatively invulnerable.
The result is that the most enthusiastic admirers of the jester who
laughed the nineteenth century out of court and strewed the way with
witticisms for the entrance of the twentieth, are the most unhappy with
the ancient sage who earnestly tried to explain that brave new century to
them.
Shavian Eyesight
Warren Sylvester Smith wisely tells us that Shaw’s real value is not in the
answers he provided “but in his manner of looking at the problems. The
special quality of the light he throws is unique and likely to remain so”
(Shaw on Religion 10). The greatest difficulty in understanding Shaw’s
philosophy is finally the difficulty of describing his way of looking at the
world. As eloquent as he was, he could not overcome that difficulty himself.
Shaw did not indulge in deliberate mystification. He wrote in the
original Quintessence that “no great writer uses his skill to conceal his
meaning” (194), yet, in that very essay, generally regarded as the essential
statement of Shavian thought, he is unable or unwilling to define the
difference between the type of person he calls an idealist and the one he
deems a realist. He admits that a realist can in some ways be appropriately
called an idealist but avoids clarifying the difference with a clever yet unsatisfying
evasion. The omission is momentous; the difference between a
realist and an idealist is not the difference between a sensible, rational person
and a wild-eyed fanatic; it is the difference between Shaw and the enlightened,
progressive, educated, sensitive, and thoughtful persons who
were—and still are—his natural allies. To be sure, there are conservative
idealists as well as progressive ones; the point is that the crucial difference
is not that between progressive and conservative but something more important
and far more elusive.
Shaw is not very helpful in defining that difference. He offers us
parables, such as the well-known anecdote about his visit with an optometrist
who told him that his eyesight was “normal” and thus unusual,