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Man and Superman WHEN we speak of the superman we refer to a new race – almost a new
species – that will appear on earth as the inevitable result of Nature's
evolution. The new race will be developed out of the present humanity, there
seems to be no doubt about that; it does not mean however that the whole of
humanity will be so changed. As a matter of fact, humanity in general does not
ask for such a catastrophic change in itself or for itself. But Supermanhood
does mean a very radical change: it means giving up altogether many and some
very basic human qualities and attributes. It does not aim merely at a moral
uplift, that is to say, a shedding of the bad qualities, what are considered,
for example, as predominantly animal and brutish in man; it signifies also a
shedding of some at least of the good qualities or what are considered as such.
The superman is not a purified moralised man, even as he is not a magnified glorified animal man; he is a man
of a different type, qualitatively different. Let us take an analogy. What was
the situation at the crisis when man was about to come out of (or be superimposed
upon) an ape race? We can imagine a good part of that old race quite unwilling
to go in for the new type that would appear to them queer, outlandish, even if
not inferior on the whole or in some respects at least. They would not envisage
with equanimity the disappearance of many of their cherished characteristics
and powers: the glory of the tail, for example, the infinite capacity to swing
and jump, the strength to crack a nut with the sheer force of the jaws. And who
knows whether they would not consider their intelligence sharper and more
efficacious than the type of reason, dull and slow, displayed before them by
man! They would lose much to gain little. That would most probably be the
general verdict.
Page – 183 Even so mankind, at the crucial parting of
the ways, would very naturally look askance at the diminished value of many of
its qualities and attributes in the new status to come. First of all, as it has
been pointed out, the intellect and reasoning power will have to surrender and
abdicate. The very power by which man has attained his present high status and
maintains it in the world has to be sacrificed for something else called
intuition or revelation whose value and efficacy are unknown and have to be
rigorously tested. Anyhow, is not the known devil by far and large preferable
to the unknown entity? And then the zest of life, peculiar to man, that works
through contradictions – delight and suffering, victory and defeat, war and
peace, doubt and knowledge, all the play of light and shade, the spirit of
adventure, of combat and struggle and heroic effort, will have to go and give
place to something, peaceful and harmonious perhaps but monotonous, insipid,
unprogressive. The very character of human life is its passion to battle
through, even if it is not always "through". For it is often said
that the end or goal does not matter, the goal is always something uncertain;
it is the way, the means, the immediate action that is of supreme consequence:
for it is that that tests man's manhood, gives him the value he may have. And
above all man is asked to give up the very thing which he has laboured to build up through millenniums of his
terrestrial life, his individuality, his personality,
for the demand is that he must lose his ego in order to attain the superhuman
status. So, the probability is that a large part of
humanity will remain wedded to the normal human life. But this does not lessen
in any way the value, the tremendous importance of what happens to the other
part, may be, not insignificant or inconsiderable. Along with those that doubt
and deny, there will be those who believe and affirm, who will stand for divinisation, whatever dehumanisation it may imply. Now, one may ask, what would be the relation
between the two humanities – the human and the divine? And what would be the
effect of the appearance of the new race upon the older stock? Here again we
can take up the animal analogy. How has the advent of man affected the animal
kingdom? It has affected to a certain extent, even to a considerable extent,
Page – 184 one may venture to say. First of all, man has
parked around him a fairly large group of animals, domesticated them, as it is
termed, employing them in his service, using them for his purposes. Furthermore,
he has gone out into the woods, the forests and mountains, ice-bound regions
and deep seas, and there extended his sphere of influence, hunting and
capturing animals that were so long free and unmolested, bringing about a
change in the conditions of life even among wild animals. We do not say that
the superman will deal with man in the same way (although something of the kind
may be found in the Nietzschean ideology). For man was a
creature of Ignorance, and his behaviour
and influence were naturally of the ignorant kind. The superman,
however, being delivered of ignorance and living in perfect knowledge, has a
different nature and outlook. He is one with the universe, with all its
creatures; united with the Divine, he finds and realises his own self in each and every creature and
thing: his character and conduct are the automatic expression of this sense of perfect
identity. So he can do nothing that may seek to enslave or do real injury to
mankind. On the contrary, his love and his knowledge, being one with the cosmic
existence, will inevitably work for the progress and welfare of man too;
indeed, his will be the perfect aid that even ordinary humanity can ask for and
receive. In spite of all the achievements he has had
in the past, and in spite of the cul-de-sac or the blind alley into which he
seems now to be stagnating, there is yet possibility enough for man to progress
further, that is to say, even as a human being without taking the more
audacious jump into supermanhood. The present miseries of human society, the maldistribution of the
necessities of life, the ravages of illness and disease, the prevalence of
ignorance, are not and need not after all be a permanent and irrevocable
feature of human organisation. They can be remedied to a large extent, and
society made more decent to live in, even though it may not be transfigured
into the City of
Page – 185 large measure. The influence which the individuals
of such a race will exert by the force of their luminous consciousness and the
impact of their purified living, the sympathy and knowledge and comprehension
which their very presence carries, will materially
alter the nature and composition of the normal man and his society. There will
emerge a sort of higher humanity – an intermediary between the present more or
less animal, degraded humanity and the divine humanity of the future. The two
humanities may very well live amicably together and be of help and service to
each other. We may mention here the other extreme
possibility also. If, for example, the old humanity in a body rejects the New
Man and will not allow him an inch of ground on the earth which it holds now as
its fief and domain – as it may very well do – in view of the evidence that we
have of the envy, jealousy, hatred, incomprehension moving normal men when they
come in contact with men who do not follow their mode of life, who seem to
pursue avocations that are meaningless and even perhaps injurious to them; if
such is the case, then, we say, it would mean either the end of humanity, in
the same way as some species have become in fact extinct, or its reversion to a
wild savage state, something like that (or perhaps worse) out of which it came. Either you accept the Divine and allow
yourself to be influenced and moulded by it; in that case you are in the line
of progress and fulfilment. Or else if you stand against and come into clash
with the Power that drives inevitably towards its high goal, then the result
is, in the graphic words of the Bible: "And whatsoever shall fall on this stone
shall be broken; but on whatsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to
powder."! ¹ St. Matthew, 21
Page – 186
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