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

46 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
had felt the godhead in himself, but not in others. Being only able to
say, with half conviction, “The kingdom of heaven is within me,” he
had been utterly vanquished by the Galilean who had been able to
say, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” But he was on the way
to that full truth. A man cannot believe in others until he believes in
himself; for his conviction of the equal worth of his fellows must be
filled by the overflow of his conviction of his own worth. (Quintessence
242)
Realism and Moral Equality
The spiritual augmentation of the will, which Shaw presents in mystical
terms, can be understood in a perfectly rational way. The growth and transcendence
of the individual will proceeds in two different but related ways.
Easiest to understand is that the road to the appreciation of others lies
through the recognition of our own worth. The strength of our will emboldens
us to abandon ideals and imposed moral codes; then, having satisfied
our will, we cease “to be selfish” (Quintessence 217). What happens
next depends on our courage and the grasp of our intellect. We could, like
the young female mathematician in Shaw’s illustration, substitute congenial
ideals for those that thwarted us, declaring, in effect, “The Idol is dead;
long live the Idol.” Or we could see that all moral codes, principles, and
ideals are artificial and unnecessary and that all that matters is the individual
will. Then the waxing generosity of our newly satiated wills is supported
by our reason, which perceives that, in the absence of absolute standards,
all wills must be presumed equal. Casual observation forces us to
realize that individual wills differ, but we have no basis for thinking that
some are good and others evil. Such a consideration compels us to respect
even those individual wills that conflict with our own. Having become realists,
we have lost the right to denounce anyone else as wicked, no matter
how uncongenial, even hateful, the aspirations of such an individual may
be to us.
The second way in which the will transcends itself is more profound but
just as rational. It is the recognition that the “world-will,” which Julian
thought to be his opponent, is actually “the whole of which his will was but
a part.” For it is an observable fact that as people become secure in the
fulfillment of their wills they often (although not always) tend as well to
become generous, giving, and sensitive to the needs of others. Where does
such generosity come from? Why do we will to help others, sometimes at
considerable cost to ourselves? These are questions that the materialist-