CONSCIOUSNESS 105 



all science, all philosophy, all emotion, must set 

 out in exploration of the universe and to which they 

 must return. At the most we can conceive of it as 

 dimly beginning in the lower animals, a little clearer 

 in the apes, still clearer in savages, but even in our- 

 selves intermittent. And it is consciousness that 

 transforms all the qualities and faculties acquired 

 by human beings from the animal w^orld and that is 

 the foundation of free and intelligent existence. 



It is not the existence of alternatives, not unfore- 

 seeability or spontaneity but the consciousness of 

 these that puts man and the nations he makes above 

 the laws of the unconscious world. It is conscious- 

 ness that gives man the power of being at once the 

 actor, the spectator and the critic, that enables him 

 to distinguish between self and not-self ; and that 

 brings with it the sense of responsibility and of 

 reality. 



I trace back to Kant the dreaming megalomania 

 that has destroyed the German sense of reality and 

 that has made German " Kultur " the enemy of the 

 human race. Back to Kant, for corriiptio optinii 

 pessima. Nietzsche, of whom so much has been 

 made, is a terminal flower of the tree of idealistic 

 thought, beautiful, poisonous and sterile. No doubt 

 he has got into the newspapers through Mr. Bernard 

 Shaw, a very competent publicist whose antics were 

 agreeable in times of peace. But even Mr. Shaw is 

 only Nietzsche grinning through a horse-collar, a 

 spectacle that his old patrons tind indecent when 

 there are serious affairs on hand. 



Kant inherited from Plato through Berkeley, and 

 transmitted to Hegel and Schopenhauer the doctrine 



