This sentence of G.B.Shaw’s essay Freedom contains the essence of his observation of the nature of man’s slavery to nature. While contending that no perfectly free person is possible, the author has mentioned the two-fold slavery of man to nature and to man. The remark is made in this connection.
Shaw has indicated the difference between the two kinds of slavery – the natural slavery of man to nature and his unnatural slavery to another man. In this connection, he contends that, whereas natural slavery of man to nature is often adorable, the unnatural slavery of man to man is always hard and cruel. In this context, he goes to assert how nature is found to be good and kind to those whose freedom is curtailed by her. Man’s natural necessities restrict definitely a good deal of his freedom. But such restrictions are neither hard nor unbearable but rather pleasant and desirable. The natural necessities of eating, drinking, and sleeping are vital for men and he prefers to enjoy them rather than to complain of the curtailment of his freedom by them.
Shaw’s brief sentence contains a good deal of Shavian profundity, expressed with immense diversion. Shaw is here specifically a logical observer who marks the desirable slavery that nature casts on man.
Also read: View of Bernard Shaw in the essay “Freedom”