THE SUPERMAN IN LITERATURE.*

THE Nietzschean idea of the superman is so familiarly associated with the German motive in making war that Herr Berg's attempt —translated into excellent English—to trace the superman through literature deserves some notice. At the same time, we ought to say at once that we doubt the genuine value of such attempts almost as much as we mistrust the superman himself. The Nietzschean superman is a windy, crack-brained, egotistical conception, and when sane men are shown to have helped to build up the idea we ask ourselves whether their reputed contributions are not entirely fanciful. In one sense reasonable men can be easily proved to have helped the development of fantastic ideas, since there are points at which all philosophies and all religions touch, and even overlap. But what is the good of proving that ? We are convinced before we begin to read. The literary examples of the gradual evolution of the superman which Herr Berg cites have an appearance of coherency, and yet if we remember the inevitable entanglement of philosophic and religious principles our judgment must be that his selection is purely arbitrary. He might have gone back much further than he does. The Messianic hope was, if you please to say so, nothing but the vision of a superman. And yet when you have put it so, and con- nected the moving Hebraic principle with a German decadent philosophy, have you achieved any conclusion distinguishable from nonsense ? We think not. Again, it might be plausibly argued that Chinese ancestor-worship is purely the cult of the superman. As Herr Berg himself says, he might have traced the idea back to Plate's ch4 fiaoiXik6r, or to Dante's universal monarch, or to Machiavelli ; and why he did not—why he should have thought one pedigree -worth tracing and another not—

we cannot imagine. As it is, he attributes a large share in the creation of the superman to Renan, whose portrait appears as a frontispiece, looking very comfortable and homely and worlds removed from what a German would wish the sponsor of a superman to be. Poor Renan ! Nor do we understand quite

• Th. Suporman in Meters Litersturt, BY Lee Berg. London; Jarrold sad Ewa. Lis. let.]

what. Herr Berg is at in his own beliefs. He unfolds the idea of the superman with something like enthusiasm, but when it comes to saying how it would work in practice he cries off. He tells us that the German people of to-day—if we understand him rightly

—could not have a superman because they are too servile ; they are not sufficiently of the mould of supermen themselves. We take leave to say, however, that it is precisely the servility of the German popular .mind which makes all this rubbish about supermen attractive and credible. A mind which sees the qualities of a superman in the Hohenzollems, and regards the German people as a super-race (proved in diplomacy, Kultur, and war), is slavish enough to believe in the existence of anything —even something which it is quite incapable of creating.

But let us look only at the streams of speculation which have united, according to Herr Berg, to produce the hero of modern culture. The positivism of Comte, Kant's subjective idealism, Darwin's theory of evolution, the will-philosophy of Schopen- hauer, Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Ronan, Emerson, Carlyle, and many other tendencies and persons, share the honour.

Herr Berg remarks that to Emerson is due the idea that a hero must come from heroic surroundings. To Emerson the hero was representative ; he was not the foundation of heroism as he was to Carlyle, still less was he the goal of heroism as in the Nietzschean philosophy. The contribution of Ronan was, in effect, to gather up and revive the discussions of the limits of personal power which had been suggested by the career of Napoleon. Can the world be destroyed by water or fire ? asked the French men of science of Napoleon's day. Renan answered that it could conceivably be destroyed, and that the men who acquired the means to destroy it would be absolute rulers of it :—

" ' The day, in fact,' says Renan, 'when some intellectual aristo- crats acquired the means of destroying the globe, their sovereignty would be assured. They would reign by force of absolute terror, having in their hand the existence of all ; one might almost say that they would be gods, and that the primitive theology dreamt of by the poet would become a reality—Primus in othe deo., fait timer.' Two elements compose Renan's idea of the Superman, the principle of reason, and the Hegelian principle of the Godhead, which is yet to be realised. As a matter of fact, his 'gods 'have still an Overlord —Reason whom they serve. They must form a strong social caste, in order ;hat their god may become all-powerful."

But Renan, after all, was only amusing himself in pressing his thoughts to the logical culminations beloved of Frenchmen.

To make him part-creator of the Nietzschean superman is really enough to cause the most orthodox opponent of Renan's de- structive criticism of Christianity to rise up in his defence. The manner in which Renan's sportive fancy played with Shake- epeare's Tempest would be enough, one would have thought, to

caution Herr Berg. But, on the contrary, Herr Berg quotes

Renan's speculations on the theme of The Tempest as evidence of the growth of the superman in his brain. Ronan, dreaming away the morning hours at Ischia, wondered in writing what

would be the outcome of such a rule as Prospero, who governed

Nature and men, exercised over the half-animal Caliban. Pros- pero has taught Caliban to speak and express emotions, and, as

Emerson says, has " disenchanted " him from his rude state of animality. And Caliban thanks Prospero with the whole intensity of his hatred. The worst of it is that Caliban, who mistrusts the learning which roused him from his brutish state, would be able to prevail against Prospero, for he could stir up people as ignorant and as non-understanding as himseli rmally, when this stupid mob had combined with "culture," not appre- ciating it or using it, but still boasting it, the rule of such reason as Prospero relied upon would be at an end. All this was a characteristic enough image for Ronan dreamily to "create as he listened to the chirping of the cicadas, but to say that his thoughts

on the need for an aristocracy of learned men envisaged the superman in any sense worth considering—well ! The point

where Ronan seems to be nearest to the German idea is when he says that if there is any country in which a State founded on reason can be reared it is Germany. Yet when he was nearest to the truth he was to be proved in the event furthest from it. The German State is built, after all, upon a reason, but certainly not on reason.

After reading so fax no one need be surprised to be told that the idea of the superman has been carried on by Ibsen, Strind-

berg, and oven by the great Russian novelist -Dostoievsky. We must here quote something from Strindberg's new decalogne at the end of his Tschandala. At all events it brings our feet back to firm ground, and shows us whither the Nietzschean insanity leads. Clough wrote a "New Decalogne' to point

men by means of his barbed satire back to the rightness and grandeur of the old one. But Strindberg meant his new com- mandments seriously enough, in the sense that he really believed that great men can rise only by making a ladder of the weak :—

" At the end of his book, Strindberg sets up the new table of commandments. 'Thus wrote the wise Menu, with the object of creating a race of degraded pariahs to lie below as warm, fertilising manure, so that the noble Aryan race might grow and every century produce one blossom like the aloe. Tschandala,, the fruit of adultery, incest, and crime, may only eat garlic and rotten onions ; no one may bring him corn or fruit or water and fire. Tschandala may draw no water from rivers, springs, or wells, but only from marshes and puddles which fill the foot-tracks of cattle. Tschandala may not wash himself, but water shall only be handed to him to quench his thirst. Tschandala may never have a fixed abode ; he must wear clothes taken from corpses ; use pieces of old iron when he wishes to adorn himself, and must pray only to evil spirits. Thus wrote the wise Menu.'" Herr Berg finally introduces us to a constellation of modern German writers who sing the superman. We need not trouble the reader with them. They one and all write sickly rubbish, unless Herr Berg has quoted unfairly from their works. Conradi

alone among them is described as a genius. He is the author of the inspiriting lines :—

" I am my own Dalai Lama, I am my own Messiah."

The moral of the book, if there is one, seems to us to be this. Philosophers and men of letters may launch ideas into the world from the ferment of their studious brains, and very often not mean very much by them. But sensual, ambitious, and less

philosophic men seize upon these ideas, and make them the pretext, if not the inspiration, of gross and material policies. All mon of letters, therefore, should weigh their responsibility when they write. And as for mad men of letters, it is desirable that they should not be treated indulgently because they happen to write with grace or pleasing rhetoric, but should be judged and condemned by the ordinary tests of the mental alienist.