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. ”

“ His theory of the superman is simply this, that the future of the world was in the hands of strong, combative, powerful, predatory people. Those are the supermen, a natural aristocracy of force and unscrupulousness and vigour. ”

“ Let all the guns of Britain roar or be forever dumb.
The Superman has burst his bonds. With Kultur-flag unfurled
And prayer on lip he runs amuck, imperilling the world.
The impious creed that might is right in him personified
Bids all creation bend before the insatiate Teuton pride,
Which, nourished on Valhalla dreams of empire unconfined,
Would make the cannon and the sword the despots of mankind.
Efficient, thorough, strong, and brave—his vision is to kill.
Force is the hearthstone of his might, the pole-star of his will. ”

“ But on the whole I do not regret this consistency, believing that the years 1896-1906 laid an almost holy constraint on the few who believed neither in Sham-Imperialism nor in the Superman, to stand together, to be stubborn, to refuse as doggedly as possible to bow the knee to these idols, to miss no opportunity of drawing attention to their feet of clay.
I seem to perceive that the day of the Superman is drawing to its close. He is a recurring nuisance, like the influenza, and no doubt will afflict mankind again in due season. ”

“ Judge us by the admitted and respected practice of our most reputable circles; and, if you know the facts and are strong enough to look them in the face, you must admit that unless we are replaced by a more highly evolved animal—in short, by the Superman—the world must remain a den of dangerous animals among whom our few accidental supermen, our Shakespears, Goethes, Shelleys, and their like, must live as precariously as lion tamers do, taking the humor of their situation, and the dignity of their superiority, as a set-off to the horror of the one and the loneliness of the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Evolution will Evolve in the right direction?
I have worried myself half to death at times over the Superman!
You know I feel personally responsible, to a certain extent, about what he will be like when he gets here. If he isn't what he should be, you know, it will be the fault of those of us who are the leaders in thought today — it will be because we haven't started him right, you know. Mamma — poor dear Mamma is SO unadvanced, you know! — has an idea that when the Superman does get here he won't be at all the sort of person that one would care to receive socially. ”

“ Did Nietzsche, perhaps, create his Superman, and give him his hardness and lightness for no other purpose than to carry out that task? Perfection is something that we have yet to discover! In this conception of progress all Utopias are transcended, all goals renounced, yet a set of values, a morality, is retained. The morality might be judged by the criterion, Does it aid us in our quest? A future of discovery, of creation and change, not of enjoyment: what a task for energetic Love does that open out! The Superman is a goal, but what is the Superman's goal? ”

“ He is never without an array of human idols who are all nothing but sham Supermen. That the real Superman will snap his superfingers at all Man’s present trumpery ideals of right, duty, honor, justice, religion, even decency, and accept moral obligations beyond present human endurance, is a thing that contemporary Man does not foresee: in fact he does not notice it when our casual Supermen do it in his very face. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His eyes glowed suddenly in their misshapen sockets. "You are. Your brain is as superior to mine as mine is to an anthropoid's. You solve instinctively problems that would take our mechanical computers hours of work. You are a superman." ”

“ The idea of the Superman, too, is an idea that could only have entered the brain of one, pushed on to think, at the spear-head of his own cruelty. It is a great and terrible idea, sublime and devastating, this idea of the human race yielding place to another race, stronger, wiser, fairer, sterner, gayer, and more godlike! Especially noble and compelling is Nietzsche's constant insistence that the moment has come for men to take their Destiny out of the blind power of Evolution, and to guide it themselves, with a strong hand and a clear will, towards a definite goal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, Marty, don't you realize that only unstable psis are taken into service? Stability is the mark of the superman. Do the majority of men want the minority—the supermen—running their world even though the supermen are their brothers, sisters and children? And they must surely realize that all mankind will evolve to psis one day. ”

“ II
"Superman" is a poetic designation for great individuals carried to their utmost human limit, for "persons" in the full sense of that term. a Superman is man as he might be—not another species, but our very human flesh and blood transfigured. As Professor Simmel, one of the critical writers on Nietzsche who has penetrated most deeply into his thought, puts it, "The superman is nothing but the crystallization of the thought that man can develop beyond the present stage of his existence—and hence should." ”

“ Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human. To a man, horses and dogs and cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well, to the Superman, men and women are a mere species too, also outside the moral world. This Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to men as your daughter here was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the exclusively human character of the soul.
THE STATUE And who the deuce is the Superman?
THE DEVIL Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics. ”

“ But would such a change be tolerated if Man must rise above himself to desire it? It would, through his misconception of its nature. Man does desire an ideal Superman with such energy as he can spare from his nutrition, and has in every age magnified the best living substitute for it he can find. ”

“ Nietszche summed up all that is interesting in the Superman idea when he said, "Man is a thing which has to be surpassed." But the very word "surpass" implies the existence of a standard common to us and the thing surpassing us. If the Superman is more manly than men are, of course they will ultimately deify him, even if they happen to kill him first. ”

“ The upshot of Napoleon’s career was to make Germany and mutilate France.
It is through lack of omniscience, too, that we cannot obey the frequent modern suggestion to breed the Superman—the Superman, that is, not as the cold-blooded manipulator of man, but as his moral superior and successor, Tennyson’s Superman, not Nietzsche’s. We are too abysmally ignorant for evolutionary eugenics. We breed horses and roses for higher types, but then we immeasurably transcend horses and roses. Who transcends us so immeasurably that he should breed us? ”

“ I know there are people who think transcendent genius such as that of Napoleon, or, in his way, of Wagner, affords a justification, or at least an{140} excuse, for such lawlessness. And you have heard much talk about the Superman, whose main attribute seems to me infra human, when the rights of others are concerned. To me the veritable Superman is not the slave of his own passions, who satisfies them at the expense of others, but the master of himself, who, because he is pure, feels and helps the weakness of his neighbours. ”

“ But of one thing, Heron Baynet already held the absolute certainty:—The superman, as preached by German philosophers, did not exist. Every human individuality possessed its breaking-strain, the point beyond which will-power could not force either the body or the brain. ”

“ As a child, as a youth, as a young man, he had this aspiration; at thirty-eight years of age, at this instant of crisis and of decision, he finds it again and desires to act. The Eternal Return no longer satisfies him: he cannot consent to live imprisoned in a blind nature. The idea of the Superman on the contrary captivates him: it is a principle of action, a hope of salvation. ”

“ In one of his least convincing phrases, Nietzsche had said that just as the ape ultimately produced the man, so should we ultimately produce something higher than the man. The immediate answer, of course, is sufficiently obvious: the ape did not worry about the man, so why should we worry about the Superman? If the Superman will come by natural selection, may we leave it to natural selection? If the Superman will come by human selection, what sort of Superman are we to select? ”

“ After we get thoroughly accustomed to him and his life, we are no longer vastly astonished, though always interested, at the various manifestations of his extraordinary powers. We go right along using the marvellous wireless, aeroplanes, motor cars, constructive machinery, and the like that make us confident-justly, of course-in that we are about the smartest lot of people on earth. And if we see red, white, and blue streamers of light crossing the zenith at noon, we do not manifest any very profound amazement. “There's that confounded Superman again,” we mutter, if we happen to be busy. ”

“ But do we want so crude a consummation? Similarly, we might unconsciously evolve along the opposite or Nietzschian line of development—superman crushing superman in one tower of tyrants until the universe is smashed up for fun. ”

“ I said, "you also consider yourself a bit of a superman."
"I admit," he said, "that I've gone a long way/"
"Towards Tipperary?"
"Beyond you," he said, tapping the page of Nietzsche he was reading; "we're not on the same plane." ”

“ THE DEVIL. And me also.
ANA. Stop! [The trap stops] .
THE DEVIL. You, Senora, cannot come this way. You will have an apotheosis. But you will be at the palace before us.
ANA. That is not what I stopped you for. Tell me where can I find the Superman?
THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora.
THE STATUE. And never will be, probably. Let us proceed: the red fire will make me sneeze. [They descend] .
ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing herself devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. ”

“ Nor need we be deterred by the journalistic scoffers who will tell us that we are in search of that mythical monster the Superman, for we have no such highfalutin’ schemes. The men we wish to rear again have already been reared once before in these islands, and history records their lives. ”

“ The Superman, alone upon his dizzy height, Diabolists and neo-Dionysians as yet unborn to cheer him, has his moments of human weakness. Before the crimes of Agathocles he falters, and remarks with delicious gravity, “Still it must not be called virtue to murder one’s fellow-citizens or to sacrifice one’s friends, or be insensible to the voice of faith, pity or religion. ”

“ And herein we perceive dimly the outlines of the superman. He will be rid of all delusions [Pg 110] that hamper and oppress the will to power. He will be perfect in body and perfect in mind. He will know everything worth knowing and have strength and skill and cunning to defend himself against any conceivable foe. Because the prospect of victory will feed his will to power he will delight in combat, and his increasing capacity for combat will decrease his sensitiveness to pain. Conscious of his efficiency, he will be happy; having no illusions regarding a heaven and a hell, he will be content. ”

“ Bernard Shaw and other modern writers may be interested to know that the Superman has been found. I found him; he lives in South Croydon. My success will be a great blow to Mr. Shaw, who has been following quite a false scent, and is now looking for the creature in Blackpool; and as for Mr. Wells's notion of generating him out of gases in a private laboratory, I always thought it doomed to failure. I assure Mr. Wells that the Superman at Croydon was born in the ordinary way, though he himself, of course, is anything but ordinary. ”

“ He accordingly draws the inference that if a higher form of humanity is to come in the future, great and terrible odds will be required—the superman will need for an antagonist a superdragon. [19] One application of the general idea is made that decidedly jars on us, living in an age of intellectual tolerance as we do. ”