The Shewing-Up 0f Blanco Posnet

Notes from Review of Reviews and World's Work - Volume 43 (1911): Shaw's individual and social morals are the direct outgrowth of his philosophical ideas, which he has not taken ready-made from others, as has been hinted more than once. Those ideas have come to him just as they came to Ibsen and Nietzsche: out of the spiritual atmosphere in which both he and they were born. In his day, these ideas were being scientifically formulated by men like Wilhelm Ostwald and...
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Notes from Review of Reviews and World's Work - Volume 43 (1911):

Shaw's individual and social morals are the direct outgrowth of his philosophical ideas, which he has not taken ready-made from others, as has been hinted more than once. Those ideas have come to him just as they came to Ibsen and Nietzsche: out of the spiritual atmosphere in which both he and they were born. In his day, these ideas were being scientifically formulated by men like Wilhelm Ostwald and Henri Bergson. They imply a new philosophy that may be called "psycho-sociological" in distinction from the older theological and mechanical philosophies. As Shaw sees life, it is never purposeless, never a matter of chance, never capable of turning back upon its already covered trail. Its way leads ever onward, and the direction is determined from within by a universal force, the Life Force-the same as Bergson's élan vital - which employs whatever has being for the accomplishment of its own unformulated aims.

It is this all-compelling force which Shaw has in mind when he makes Blanco Posnet, the horse-thief, cry, with the noose barely off his neck: "You bet He didn't make me for nothing; and He wouldn't have made us at all if He could have done His work without us."

"This little play is really a religious tract in dramatic form," says Shaw of "The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet," and he speaks the truth. For he is a very religious man, indeed, - so much so that his life and his art, his morals and his philosophy, are mere adjuncts to his religion: the great religion of the Life Force that demands of us at once so much and so little. What it does demand according to Shaw is merely that we learn to see and act upon the truth that flashed its illumination into Blanco Posnet's heart as he cried: "There's no good and bad; but, by Jiminy, gents, there's a rotten game, and there's a great game. I played the rotten game; but the great game was played on me; and now I'm for the great game every time. Amen."