est of the
world regarded in the opposite sense. Not only so; but it might even
happen that the genius and persuasiveness of such a person might
change into its direct opposite the moral valuation of the whole of
humanity. In many quite ordinary cases there may arise a clash
between the conventional morality of the community and the verdict
of an individual conscience. In such cases it would be towards what
the community termed "immoral" that the conscience of the
individual would point, and from the thing that the community
termed "moral" that it would turn instinctively away.

A conscience of this kind would suffer the pain of remorse when in
its weakness it let itself be swayed by the "community-morality"
and it would experience the pleasure of relief when in absolute
loneliness it defied the verdict of society.

Let us consider now an attribute of man's complex vision which
must instantaneously be accepted as basic and fundamental by every
living person. I refer to what we call "sensation." The impressions
of the outward senses may be criticized. They may be corrected,
modified, reduced to order, and supplemented by other considerations.
Conclusions based upon them may be questioned. But whatever be done
with them, or made by them, they must always remain an integral
and inveterate aspect of man's personality.

The sensations of pain and pleasure--who can deny the primordial
and inescapable character of these? Not that the pursuit of pleasure
or the avoidance of pain can be the unbroken motive-force even of
the most hedonistic among us. Our complex vision frequently flings
us passionately upon pain. We often embrace pain in an ecstasy of
welcome. Nor is this fierce embracing of pain "motivated" by a
deliberate desire to get pleasure out of pain. It seems in some
strange way due to an attraction towards pain for its own sake--
towards pain, as though pain were really beautiful and desirable in
itself. One element in all this is undoubtedly due to the desire of
the will to assert its freedom and the integrity of its being; in
other words to the desire of the will towards the irrational, the
capricious, the destructive, the chaotic.

It has been only the least imaginative of philosophers who have
taken for granted that man invariably desires his own welfare. Man
does not even invariably desire his own pleasure. He desires the
reactive vibration of power; and very often this "power" is the
power to rush blindly up