Now that sounds pretty well for a scientist. It should seem to follow that literature, being, so to speak, the permanent mode of communication,--conveying ideas and emotions not merely from man to man, but from generation to generation,--is the predominant means by which this development of consciousness is attained. It is a pretty support we derive from the enemy. But mark the serpent in the grass--"the adjustment of the individual and the race to external reality." The real aim of evolution is purely external, the adjustment of man to environment; consciousness has value in so far as it promotes this adjustment. Flatly, to me, this is pure nonsense, a putting of the cart before the horse, a vulgar _hysteron-proteron_, none the less execrable because it is the working principle not of a single man, but of the whole of soctety to-day. Consciousness, I hold, is the supremely valuable thing, and progress, evolution, civilisation, etc., are only significant in so far as they afford nourishment to it. Literature is the self-sufficient fruit of this consciousness, I say; the world says it is a mere means of promoting our physical adjustment. You see I take up lightly the huge enmity of the world.
This is wild stuff to put into a journalistic letter, no doubt. If I were writing a treatise I would undertake to show that this difference of view in regard to consciousness and physical adjustment is the oldest and most serious debate of human intelligence. Saint Catharine, Thomas à Kempis, and all those religious fanatics who counted the world well lost, made a god of consciousness and thought very little of physical adjustment. The debate in their day was an equal one. To-day it is all on one side--and _væ victis_! I cry out--why should I not?--as one of the conquered, and I am charitable enough to advise another not to enter the combat. It is a poor consolation to wrap yourself in your virtue, mount a little pedestal, set your hand on your heart, and spout with Lucan: _The winning cause for the gods, but the vanquished for me_! Sometimes we begin to wonder whether, after all, the world may not be right, and at that moment the wind begins to blow pretty chill through our virtue.