Tanner Monologue from Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy

From Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy by Bernard Shaw

male · philosophical · 1:14 min

It wasn't a box of sweets, Ann. It was something you'd never have let me call my own. (ANN: What?) My soul. (ANN: Oh, do be sensible, Jack. You know you're talking nonsense.) The most solemn earnest, Ann. You didn't notice at that time that you were getting a soul too. But you were. It was not for nothing that you suddenly found you had a moral duty to chastise and reform Rachel. Up to that time you had traded pretty extensively in being a good child; but you had never set up a sense of duty to others. Well, I set one up too. Up to that time I had played the boy buccaneer with no more conscience than a fox in a poultry farm. But now I began to have scruples, to feel obligations, to find that veracity and honor were no longer goody-goody expressions in the mouths of grown up people, but compelling principles in myself.

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