Note 227 — Chapter XV

Shaw's philosophy has many points of contact with the Pragmatism of Schiller and James. Shaw sees in truth and justice, not abstract principles external to man, but human passions, which have, in their time, conflicted with higher passions as well as with lower ones. With James he is at one in the belief that “Truth has its palæontology, and its 'prescription' and may grow stiff with years of veteran service and petrified in men's regard by sheer antiquity”; and with Schiller's “humanistic” doctrine that “to an unascertainable extent our truths are man-made products too.” To Shaw, as to James, “'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.”