G.B. Shaw and "realism"

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

Hartmut Pilch wrote:
> 

> 
> There is a saying by G.B. Shaw saying something like
> 
>         When someone stresses that he is being a "realist", you can know
>         that somewhere inside he is ashamed of his actions.
> 

> Does anyone have the real Shaw quote ?


Perhaps:

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he will always
declare that it is his duty. - George Bernard Shaw

(found via google at
http://www.qotd.org/search/search2.phtml?keywords=shame)


I rather prefer Hartmut's version!  

Unfortunately, from the google search, it seems that "realism" was
something GBS apparently found rather seductive (ie somebody having
strength and vision enough to place themselves above morality).

Brooke Allen (http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/12/sep93/shaw.htm)
writes:

"Beginning to be well known both as a speaker and a writer, the
thirty-five-year-old Shaw wrote The Quintessence of Ibsenism in 1891. In
this polemical work he followed Arnold and divided mankind into three
categories: philistines (the majority), idealists (dangerous
intellectuals), and the one-in-a-thousand realist or Great Man. This
theoretical division was to dominate Shaw’s thinking, in one guise or
another, for the rest of his life, and the realist was to reappear in
Shaw’s later work as the superman. His preoccupation with this mythical
beast was eventually to lead him into political hot water with his
admiration of Force, typically embodied in such sinister personages as
Joseph Stalin and Oswald Mosley."


The actual 1891 essay is online at

http://eserver.org/drama/sources-of-idealism.html

"The realist at last loses patience with ideals altogether, and sees in
them only something to blind us, something to numb us, something to
murder self in us, something whereby, instead of resisting death, we can
disarm it by committing suicide. The idealist, who has taken refuge with
the ideals because he hates himself and is ashamed of himself, thinks
that all this is so much the better. The realist, who has come to have a
deep respect for himself and faith in the validity of his own will,
thinks it so much the worse. To the one, human nature, naturally
corrupt, is held back from ruinous excesses only by self-denying
conformity to the ideals. To the other these ideals are only swaddling
clothes which man has outgrown, and which insufferably impede his
movements."