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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now what is not human, and is above our level, and includes all of our insight, but transcends and corrects our indirect efforts by its direct grasp of facts as they are, can best be called superhuman. The thesis that such a superhuman consciousness is a reality is a thesis precisely equivalent to the assertion that our experience has any real sense or connection whatever beyond the mere fragment of connectedness that, at any one instant, we directly grasp. ”

“ No wonder that, under the propulsion of a motive so exhaustless, a motive not remote nor abstract, but concrete, and organized in indissoluble connection with the visible chain of eternal causes and effects, no wonder we see such tremendous exhibitions of superstition, voluntary sufferings, superhuman deeds. Here is the secret fountain of that irresistible force which enables the devotee to measure journeys of a thousand miles by prostrations of his body, to hold up his arm until it withers and remains immovably erect as a stick, or to swing himself by red hot hooks through his flesh. ”

“ There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. ”

“ What but the most eminent qualities of mind and feeling—discretion superhuman—readiness of invention, and dexterity of means, equal to the most desperate affairs—endurance, self-control, regulated ardor, restrained passion, caution mingled with boldness, and all the contrarieties of moral excellence—could have expanded the life of an individual into a career such as this? ”

“ We have learned from the study of these two sorts of experience that, whatever else we need for our salvation, one of our needs is to come into touch with a life that in its unity, in its meaning, in its perfection, is vastly superior to our present human type of life. And so the question has presented itself: Have we any evidence that such a superhuman type of life is a real fact in the world? ”

“ Men of heroic dimensions, both in good and ill, appeared in great numbers. They had astounding ability to accomplish achievements, and appeared to be possessed by devils, so superhuman was their energy in vice and crime as well as in war, art, discovery, and literature. ”

“ The superhuman is the superlative of human; we know what our senses and their 'interpenetration' teach us, but no man—positively, absolutely, no man—neither deity nor devil—angel nor spirit—ghost nor goblin—has ever wandered beyond the narrow limits of this world—has ever brought us a single idea or notion which belongs to another and a different world—has ever eluded the simple cognizance of man's five wits. ”

“ And deep down within themselves they felt that they were in the presence of an absolutely exceptional specimen of mankind, created to perform immoderate actions and fashioned by his own hand for a superhuman destiny. ”

“ See, a little later, the superhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains of ether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that will gradually lead him to the highest round of the ladder of spiritual growth, where all material substance has been eliminated, and where the time has come for the soul thus exalted, and with essence purified to the utmost, to enter the supreme home of bliss and intellectual and moral power ”

“ Changes are brought about in the disciples by an education, superhuman indeed in its wisdom, [pg 004] superhuman in its insight into the habits of mind which were wanted, and into the modes by which such habits might be fostered, but not superhuman in the means employed. We can analyse the influences which are brought to bear, judge what they were likely to effect, and estimate fairly well what they did effect, because they were the same in kind as we now find working in the world. ”

“ He is a new diabolic figure, yet showing the composite traits of the old, the dæmonic wisdom and sarcasm, the superhuman magnetism to draw men to him, and the human qualities of geniality, sympathy, and boyish charm. ”

“ You must also remember that if the immensity and variety of those products and effects lead to the conclusion that the power transcends all human faculty, is superhuman, and, so far as we can tell, boundless, all that we can know is that the power itself is illimitable. ”

“ But subsequent to the arrival of your Adjuster and concomitant with your progressive recognition of the nature and import of your bestowal mission, you should refrain from the formulation of any superhuman will-to-attainment, achievement, or power in view of the fact that your creator prerogatives will remain associated with your mortal personality because of the inseparability of these attributes from your personal presence. ”

“ Thus definite are my reasons for asserting that forms of consciousness superior to our own are real, {271} and that they are all finally united in a single, world-embracing insight, which has also the character of expressing a world-will. Thus definite are also my grounds for calling such higher unities of consciousness both superhuman and supernatural. ”

“ In spite of the many heroes and geniuses which arose from time to time, there never seems to have been that power, either human or superhuman, which might have welded these peoples indissolubly together, or which, taking its root in one of the contending races, could have made that race completely absorb and digest the others. ”

“ Upon none of the tested principles of inference now normally acted on by men of science, men of business, and men of affairs, is it rationally to be inferred that the universe is ruled by a superhuman Good Male Person, who loves and hates, punishes and rewards, plans and reconsiders, injures and compensates. ”

“ There is first and lowest the animal and sensual soul, which is closely bound up with the body; then there is the logical, reasoning soul, the distinctively human part; and, lastly, there is the superhuman stage or part, in which a man "thinks himself according to the higher intelligence, with which he has become identified, knowing himself no longer as a man, but as one who has become altogether changed, and has transferred himself into the higher region." ”

“ I reply, that if we view the question merely as an abstract one, it is quite possible, if a superhuman being of high intelligence is permitted to interfere in the affairs of men, that he should be able to perform actions which might have all the appearance of being supernatural. Such results might be even brought about by a superior acquaintance with the existing forces of nature, and by a successful combination of [pg 230] them, without the introduction of any new force whatever. ”

“ How is it that, when the human soul is called to pass through a fierce ordeal, and numbing despair seizes the faculties and energies in her sepulchral grasp, how is it that superhuman strength is often suddenly infused into the sinking spirit? There is a mysterious yet resistless power given, which winds up and sets again in motion that marvelous bit of mechanism, the human will ”

“ Other lives, human, subhuman, and superhuman, in unsunderable relationship to him are also in an important sense integral parts of him and they are the sole support of his life and of his varying awarenesses of nature. ”

“ But, do you really believe in supernatural manifestations?’
Here the voice of the little Professor, who had quietly entered the room, supplied an answer.
‘Certainly not, sir. The office of solar biology is not to vindicate, but to destroy, supernaturalism. You mean superhuman, which is quite another thing. ”

“ The soul has a preponderating share in the superhuman being. That is what we need to know, and to remember. Let us now endeavour to analyze the soul of the superhuman being, as we have analyzed his senses. ”

“ If some superior being endowed with superhuman, though not necessarily divine powers, should attempt to analyze the mind of man—to assign its relative position in creation, and to place it, properly ticketed and labeled, in some supra-terrestrial museum—it would be found to be a far less imposing object than man's own imagination has pictured it. ”

“ The application and use of superhuman procedures takes two lines of action: the powers of superhuman agents may be appropriated and used independently of them, or the object may be simply to discover their will in order to be guided by it. ”

“ We may ascribe sense to those superhuman elemental powers of whose action we are daily witnesses, or we may reverse this process and endow sentient beings, especially men, with powers which they do not actually possess. ”

“ Compulsion on the part of the superhuman powers, and pleasure, curiosity, greed, sheer folly, as also the performance of just and willing service on the part of the mortal, have been among the causes of his entrance thither and his sojourn amid its enchantments. ”

“ The note of superhuman excellence is struck at the outset; and though the surface reference is only to physical beauty, that is conceived of as the indication of a fair nature which moulds the fair form. ”

“ The periods of the domination of each phase of consciousness vary in duration, but alternate at intervals, sometimes fixed and sometimes not. The phenomena resemble what we might expect if two souls dwelt in one body with alternating mastery, and in earlier times such cases were interpreted as the obsession of superhuman beings. ”

“ Spiritual realities of a lower grade than man must more or less blindly cooperate with the superhuman spiritual reality in the development of their instinctive interests. If the .superhuman spiritual reality approves of their interests, it would react to them in such a way as to automatically provide them aid or energize them. ”

“ Men were very ready to admit the idea of the Supernatural, but it was in the merely superficial and popular sense of power working without means, rather than what we now {100} feel to be the far truer sense of superhuman knowledge of means, and power to use them. ”

“ There was, of course, even at this early period a natural tendency to picture on a superhuman scale the lives and deeds of remote predecessors, a tendency which increased in later times and led, as we shall see, to the elaboration of extravagant detail. ”

“ THESE letters have been put together to help our comrades at home to realise something of the nature of the forces ranged against us, that they may bring the Superhuman to bear upon the superhuman, and pray with an intelligence and intensity impossible to uninformed faith. ”

“ If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things- solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria-as forms of consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes and is present only as an idea. ”

“ In the other ordeals this is the fundamental idea on which they were based, and we may perhaps assume that they represent a later development in human progress, in which brute strength has declined somewhat from its earliest savage supremacy, and a reliance upon the interposition of a superhuman agency, whether the spirit of a fetish or an omnipotent and just Godhead, single or multiform, has250 grown sufficiently strong to be a controlling principle in the guidance of daily life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So, perhaps the superman will sometime quarry and explore, trace by trace, the evidences of a human biped representing our own stage of existence, and man as he is to-day be classified in a tongue as yet unborn. Are we really nearer any ultimate goal than was the amphioxus? We may be only a link to the higher man and that link may sometime be missing. ”

“ What will make itself a part of an ascending humanity, of a process by which the type will be raised and the power and splendor of the species shine forth, what will at last give us "supermen"?—that is the critical question. ”

“ I knew that all I met was part of myself and that what I could not comprehend was related by affinity to some yet unrealised forces in my being. We have within us the Lamp of the World; and Nature, the genie, is Slave of the Lamp, and must fashion life about us as we fashion it within ourselves. What we are alone has power. We may give up the outward personal struggle and ambition, and if we leave all to the Law all that is rightly ours will be paid. Man becomes truly the Superman when he has this proud consciousness. ”

“ 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. ”