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

The Will and Its Responsibilities 43
not in any way expressions of the rational. In fact, the scrupulous application
of reason reveals that a world composed of matter alone has no more
room in it for pain and pleasure than for spiritual transport or religious
ecstasy. The world of matter, as matter is conventionally understood, is a
world indifferent to its own state. The existence of pain and pleasure in our
world means that we are part of a universe that is capable of preferring one
state of existence to another. Pain is a teleological principle quite as much
as is the will to live or to nurture other living things. All such manifestations
of the world-will are of an entirely different order than the cold,
blind laws of physics.
The Will to Believe
Shaw’s objection to what he called rationalism was not limited to distaste
for the idolatry of egoism implicit in the utilitarian ethic; he disputed it on
epistemological as well as ethical grounds, and in so doing he attacked the
very reasonableness of rationalism. Shaw insisted that the will determines
belief as well as behavior. This is a direct assault on the rationalist’s cardinal
point of honor, which is that he follows where the facts and logical
thinking lead rather than along the easy path of wishful thinking. Shaw
wrote in 1891 to the secularist E. C. Chapman:
I agree with you that the motto “We seek for Truth” sufficiently
indicated the distinction between the old positive method of the
Secularist and the theological method of the Christian. But that does
not dispose of my objection that we do not seek for truth in the abstract.
The Rev. Benjamin Waugh seeks for facts that will support his
will-to-believe that secularists are worse men than Christians. Our
friend John Robertson seeks for facts that support his will-to-believe
that Materialist-Rationalists are the only honest Secularists, and that
all others are hypocrites and time servers. The result is that neither
Waugh or Robertson have ever discovered one of the glaring facts
that contradict them. . . . They have made statements which are false,
with the rebutting facts staring them in the face. . . . Therefore all I ask
both men to do is to give up pretending that they “seek for Truth.”
Every man sees what he looks for, and hears what he listens for, and
nothing else. (Collected Letters 1:301) 3
Thus the will not only determines values but governs, or at least guides,
belief. Shaw goes on to make an even stronger statement, asserting that