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

56 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
and something close to inevitability. Thus it is a short hop from the primacy
of the will to Creative Evolution, and Shaw’s insistence that “the
way to Communism lies through the most resolute and uncompromising
Individualism” appears as a strictly logical development rather than an
inconsistent eccentricity (Quintessence 276). 7 Shavian moral principles
are also an inescapable consequence of his metaphysic. The metaphysical
principle that each individual’s will is the manifestation of a larger willprinciple
or Life Force leads directly to the ethical principle of moral equality,
the conviction that, as Barbara Undershaft puts it, “There are neither
good men nor scoundrels: there are just children of one Father; and the
sooner they stop calling one another names the better” (Major Barbara
3:90, and Preface 48). The will manifests itself in many ways, depending on
the circumstances in which it appears, but each manifestation is the result
of a consistent, universal principle.
A religion, of course, needs more than a consistent metaphysical principle.
A creed is, at least ostensibly, a guide for living. In the case of Shaw’s
religion, that “guidance” comes from accepting the responsibility of one’s
own will. That is why what he called realism is as important to his religious
ideas as is the primacy of the will. Most religions are founded on the masks
he called ideals, the imaginary forms into which we project our fears and
longings. We idealize the sources of our hates and fears as evil and comfort
ourselves with absolute morality, which both legitimizes our hatred and
absolves us of the awful responsibility of ever choosing the lesser of two
dreadful evils, for we can always idealize the evil we choose as a positive
good. Realism demands embracing a relativistic morality and accepting
responsibility for our own actions. An absolute morality leads to the division
of men and women into saints and scoundrels; relativism forces one to
conclude that we are all brothers and sisters. In the second part of this book
I will explore more fully how Shaw translated that aspect of his creed into
action in the world.
The Apostolic Attitude
Shaw’s approach to ethical persuasion is thus not obvious. At first glance it
may appear that, in this view, moral persuasion is impossible, or at least
inconsistent. How can you convince others to change their ethical beliefs
(presumably to make them closer to your own) without violating your
own principle that you are moral equals? Are you condemned to moral
inertia, forced to wait quietly for the wills of others spontaneously to grow