SOCRATES; or The Emancipation of Mankind. By H: F. Carlill.
(Kegan Paul. 2s. 6d.)—Mr. Carlill has taken Socrates as the symbol--perhaps as the saint—of the intellect. He shows that the real crime for which the Athenians made Socrates drink hemlock was that he strove to force them to a new level of consciousness, and by his candid questionings began to dig up the deepest and least conscious parts of their psyche. The process is an infinitely painful one, and in the early stases extremely dangerous. Naturally, - there- fore, the Athenians resisted ; but they resisted too late: Socrates had done his work : the old joyous, instinctive life was gone and it was impossible to go back to the more unconscious pro-Socratic mode of thinking. This may be quite true, but it is by no means new. In fact, every word of it is to be found in Nietzsche, both in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and in his last, The Twilight of the Idols.1- Mr. Carlill makes some acknowledgment of this in a footnote,t but frankly, we cannot regard this as adequate. It is true. that Nietzsche comes to a conclusion opposite to that oft Mr. Carlin. Nietzsche regarded the Socratic intellectualizing: of man as an appalling disaster. Mr. Carlill, on the Other hand, feels that it is a dangerous but necessary p Education will be merely an intensive course of training the art of using the psycho-physical apparatus with each of us is equipped. The author thinks that to the of to-morrow what we call human nature will be as as a pack of cards. They will know the mental consti of man better than we know the physical ; and with knowledge and the technique of education and morals will grow out of it they will produce a race of which we now have little conception. . . . I imagine that the 'nen the future will say to their children, in effect ` See This is the machine with which -you have got to live y life. The steering gear is a bit erratic, and wants wa The whole bag of tricks rusts up in no time unless you it going. Moreover, she is full of old.fashioned ga some of which are more trouble than they are worth ; will have to cut them out in this way and that. But if nurse her intelligently her horse-power is tremendous. n you have to learn is when to throttle her down and so to let her rip.' "
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