Superego

“ Hosannahs would they sing.
Strength superceding faith,
Joy superceding fear:
The Super-Christ has come;
The Superman is near....
TO A NEGRO BELLE
You make me dream of distant tropic climes,
Luxurious vegetation; nights serene
By burning passion made tempestuous,
The witching scent of rare exotic flowers
That sooth and render sweetly languorous,
Of music soft and weird, whose savage rhythm
Compels each fibre of the frame to dance. ”

“ Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there arises the blusterer, the "Saviour."
Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those whom the people call saviours, those rapturous blusterers!
And by still greater ones than any of the saviours must you be saved, my brothers, if you would find the way to freedom!
Never yet has there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest man and the small man:-
All-too-similar are they still to each other. Even the greatest found I- all-too-human!-
Thus spoke Zarathustra. ”

“ Now, however, a new table of valuations must be placed over mankind—namely, that of the strong, mighty, and magnificent man, overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith—the Superman, who is now put before us with overpowering passion as the aim of our life, hope, and will. ”

“ Have not our impulses and tendencies, our capacities and weaknesses, our heroisms and timidities, been created by those vanished myriads from whom we received the all-mysterious bequest of Life? Do we still think of that infinitely complex Something which is each one of us, and which we call EGO, as 'I' or as 'They'? ”

“ I wish not to penetrate the secrets of thy superstition; but if thou livest in belief of wonderful forebodings, and entanglements of fate, then, to cheer and hearten thee, I say, unite thyself to my good fortune, and let us see which genius is the stronger, thy dark or my bright one. ”

“ The real superman will be a BETTER man, a man of tenderness and chivalry, of loyalty and self-control, a man of disciplined heart and purified will; to attain to such a supermanliness is, indeed, a heroic and splendid achievement, worthy of our utmost endeavor, and calling into play all our noblest powers.
Some there are, accustomed to the vision of tables of stone engraved by the hand of God and set up for man's obedience amid Sinaitic thunders, for whom the discovery of the humble human and prehuman origin, and the stumbling hit-or-miss evolution, of morality dulls its sanctity. ”

“ Your evil genius is overcome. I have cast him down by my superior strength, and it is this strength I now exert for your happiness. Ascend, my son; ascend into the skies, and partake of the feast I have prepared for you in the stars, and bring with you those you love.
“The food set before you is enchanted and blessed. Fear not to partake of it. It is endowed with magic power to give immortality to mortals, and to change men to spirits. Your bowls and kettles shall no longer be wood and earth. ”

“ In Nowhere Man no longer creates, but enjoys. But creation and pain go hand in hand; for what is creation? The dissolution of the outworn, the birth of the new; a continuous fury in which the throes of death and of life are mingled. And Love calls Man to that fate.
What we need is an ideal of energy. But that must needs be an ideal of Man, not of Society; for Man is the dynamic, Society the static. Utopia is a goal, but the Superman is a goal beyond a goal; for, once attained, he is naught but the arrow to shoot into his future. To attain the Superman is to surpass the Superman. ”

“ This, this is my declivity and my danger, that my gaze shoots towards the summit, and my hand would rather clutch and lean- on the depth!
To man clings my will; with chains do I bind myself to man, because I am pulled upwards to the Superman: for there does my other will tend. ”

“ It lay rather, if it can be said to have had any fixed abiding place, in a visible majesty, in an imperial grace, in a godlike stamp of softened power, which shone upon that radiant countenance like a living halo. Never before had I guessed what beauty made sublime could be—and yet, the sublimity was a dark one—the glory was not all of heaven—though none the less was it glorious. ”

“ Will not riches bring beauty and fun and leisure for knowledge?” said the dwarf. “Riches do it all. Do as I say. Take me for your guide.”
“Strength is the thing!” said a great voice, suddenly. “We want to be big and strong and nothing else. I am going to rule in this.” And the voice of the Strong Self seemed to be everywhere. ”

“ Here, at every moment, man is overcome, and the concept "Superman" becomes the greatest reality,—out of sight, almost far away beneath him, lies all that which heretofore has been called great in man. The halcyonic brightness, the light feet, the presence of wickedness and exuberance throughout, and all that is the essence of the type Zarathustra, was never dreamt of before as a prerequisite of greatness. ”

“ Judge then, dear reader, whether the spirit of the soul was not strong within him, thus to rise and reprove the animal spirit, even at the very threshold of youth. Each was indeed powerful: the elements of earthly and immortal existence had been poured into him profusely; the eager, impassioned, vehement being of this world, was met by the calm, grand, mysterious essence of a higher sphere; and sometimes the impetuous energy of the one, sometimes the stern majesty of the other, gained the victory, and ruled the course of life. ”

“ His full, strongly-marked face, with its healthy colour, expressed, besides benevolent cheerfulness, a great deal of energetic character, and a decided, cultivated mind, which, separated from the great stream of life, had developed wonderfully in seclusion, framing a world of its own, where it found both peace and happiness. ”

“ For a more subtle study of the unities of time and place, for example, as outlined for the Greek drama, might have led us towards what is perhaps the last secret of all legend and literature. It might have suggested why poets, pagan or not, returned perpetually to the idea of happiness as a place for humanity as a person. It might suggest why the world is always seeking for absolutes that are not abstractions; why fairyland was always a land, and even the Superman was almost a man. ”

“ But the beauty of the superindividual is revealed in that rarer power which the dead lend the living to win trust, to inspire ideals, to create love, to brighten whole circles of existence with the charm and wonder of a personality never to be described save in the language of light and music. ”

“ Let us think, then, of the superhuman being succeeding to man, springing up into the vast plains of ether, and beginning the series of numerous transmigrations which, from one step to another, will lead him to the summit of the scale of spiritual perfection, from which every material substance has been eliminated, and where the soul, thus exalted to the purest degree of its essence, penetrates into the supreme abode of happiness, and of intellectual and moral power—the sun. ”

“ He would reach what would seem to be the very limit of his endurance, but if he held on, and would not rest, would not yield, this curious new vigor would come to him, this feeling of triumph, as if he had passed the boundary of normal endeavor and had become superhuman. ”

“ I had always rather fancied the idea that many apparently inanimate objects possessed life, and now, as I leaned against an elm by the park wall and felt its tremors, the giant stretching of its huge arms and the metallic clash of its foliage, I knew it to be endowed with superhuman power. ”

“ And I began to see how it came about that these Olympian gods had lost control over man. If the world, with all its joys and all its miseries, presents to the controlling power merely its joyous side, what sympathy can one look for in one's deity? ”

“ The fairy-folk, so small and nearly always invisible, yet possessed of an all-conquering and magical power, who bestow upon the good, health, wealth, and happiness, along with all the gifts of nature in lavish profusion, start again into reality and become immortalized in the soul-realm of him who, by growth in wisdom, has entered into a knowledge of the power of thought, and the laws which govern the inner world of being. ”

“ The Supernatural Birth we found related in various forms, not merely for amusement, but as sober fact, over so large an area of the world as to justify the belief that it was universal. Every nation has its heroes; and in the popular mind the mightier the hero, the greater the need for providing him with a worthy entrance upon his mortal existence. ”

“ Which hides a barren heart. She will be human—
Not saint or angel, but the superwoman—
Mother and mate and friend of superman.
She will bring strength to aid the larger Plan,
Wisdom and strength and sweetness all combined,
Drawn from the Cosmic Mind—
Wisdom to act, strength to attain,
And sweetness that finds growth in joy or pain. ”

“ It had two arms dividing the Supernal from the light of this world, which is darkness to the ones reposing in the sunshine of eternal peace. So vast was the chasm yawning between Spirit and Matter, that no mortal crossed the void for a million years. ”

“ Such superhuman experience might in its wholeness at once contain the answer to our questions, and the triumph over — yes, and through — our fragmentary experience. But, as we are, we can only question. ”

“ But as the individual does not derive this superiority from himself, not from a natural particularity and peculiarity in distinction from others, but only from the presence of a spiritual world, so he is securely guarded from all vain self-assurance and the arrogance of the idea of the Superman, which grotesquely distorts the great fact of the revelation of a universal life at individual points. ”

“ Does not our simplest reason tell us that all life that is more than human life, all higher beings, whether superman, or Christ, or God, can have no form perceptible to man with his five senses? Do not all endeavors of art and imagination to create something above man, remain limited to a perfected humanity? Has not the sole conception of a superhuman being always been the impossible one of a man with wings? Yet we know that there is a higher being, higher life with more exalted beauties ”

“ Enabled to despise, to put aside the idea of time, the superhuman being looks on with unutterable serenity, tranquillity, and majesty, at the majestic spectacle, always new and always marvellous, of the revolutions of the stars, and the great movements of the universe.
The Life of the Superhuman Being.—In completion of our speculation upon the attributes of the superhuman being, we shall consider the life which animates him and gives his body its active qualities. ”

“ You, on the other hand, live in a big world where there is room for the coming of the superman. Oh, Raymond, lay hold of the sensuous beauty that lies within your very grasp. Come out of your barren cloister and inhale the warmth of the sun and perfume of the blossoming flowers! Mere intellect has never achieved perfect happiness for any man. ”

“ Only the name of what to it, is superman and superwoman. A last appeal to the higher instincts of humanity.
There was one little sob. I thought I heard the beginning of the old refrain:
"The wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh----" Then he had found freedom.
"You seem to know their ways, sir," said a horsey-looking man who had come in with us and who had evidently something to do with the show. "So, if you could give us a 'elp with this pore fellar's beast, I'd be obliged. Hasn't touched food this ten days--never since the old man took worse, and a elephant, sir, is a dead loss to a show. ”

“ From the future come winds with stealthy pinions, and to fine ears good tidings are proclaimed.
Ye lonesome ones of to-day, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise:—and out of it the Superman. ”

“ The Supreme is the divine channel through which flows the creative infinity of the triodities that crystallizes into the galactic panorama of space, against which takes place the magnificent personality drama of time: the spirit conquest of energy-matter through the mediation of mind. ”

“ Upon her pinnacle of rock she felt herself in the presence of the Mysterious Power which governed her destiny and the world in which she lived, and after the manner of her fathers she besought that Mysterious Presence in unspoken words, to make her pure and noble and generous; to make her worthy to stand in its Presence--worthy to live in the beautiful world which surrounded her. ”

“ It seems clear, then, that sublimity very often arises from an overwhelming greatness of power. So abundant, indeed, are the instances that one begins to wonder whether it ever arises from any other kind of greatness, and whether we were right in supposing that mere magnitude of extension can produce it. Would such magnitude, however prodigious, seem to us sublime unless we insensibly construed it as the sign of power? ”

“ With some yet unborn perception blends.
You, Amati, never saw a sunset,—
Hear tornadoes in a spider’s loom;
I, at my wits’ end, may still develop
Unknown senses in life’s larger room.
Superhuman is not supernatural. ”

“ Before a race builds houses or prepares food with its hands, it creates in its mind that demigod, that superman, standing on a higher plane than the rest of humanity, more admirable, more powerful than the others. ”