Conclusion
We will gladly grant that personifications are mythological fictions, that metaphysical entities are products of a philosophical imagination and that the scientific formulas are abstract generalizations, but we deny that generalizations are unmeaning; they signify some actual features of reality. Abstract ideas are not purely fictitious; they denote significant qualities or occurrences, and the relations in life, the forms of things, combinations, or in general the non-material configurations, co-operations, combinations and functions are the most important and the most significant aspects of existence. Indeed, matter and energy are only the clumsy conditions of being; they denote actuality and reality, but all things, all events, all facts are such as they are on account of their form—on account of that feature which is non-material and non-energetic.
According to Nietzsche the whole history of mankind, especially the development of reason, knowledge and science, is a great blunder, and the dawn of day begins with a radical break with the past. We see in the evolution of life a gradual ascent with a slow but constant approximation to truth. In the history of religion we see in the dawn of civilization the beginning of a comprehension of truth. Mythology is not error pure and simple, not a conglomeration of superstitions; it is plainly characterized by a groping after great truths, and myths become foolish inventions only when the poetic character of the tale is misunderstood. So dogmas become dangerous errors when the symbol is taken literally, when the letter is exalted and the spirit forgotten. It is true that science has taken away the charm of many religious beliefs, but the great lesson of the doctrine of evolution is to show us that our onward march in the humanization of man does not stop, that the periods of mythology and dogma are stages in the progress of our recognition of the truth. There is no need to fear a collapse of past results but we may boldly build higher. We must search for truth and we shall have a clearer vision of it, and the future will bring new glories, new fulfilments of old hopes and grander realization of our fondest dreams.
Verily, the overman will come, although he is not quite so near at hand as one might wish. He is at hand though, but he will not come, as Nietzsche announces him, in the storm of a catastrophe. The fire and the storm may precede the realization of a higher humanity; but the higher humanity will be found neither in the fire nor in the storm. The overman will be born of the present man, not by a contempt for the shortcomings of the present man, but by a recognition of the essential features of man’s manhood, by developing and purifying the truly human by making man conform to the eternal norm of rationality, humaneness and rightness of conduct.
What we need first is the standard of the higher man; and on this account we must purify our notions of the norm of truth and righteousness,—of God. Let us find first the over-God, and the overman will develop naturally. The belief in an individual God-being is giving way to the recognition of a superpersonal God, the norm of scientific truth, the standard of right and wrong, the standard of worth by which we measure the value of our own being; and the kingdom of the genuine overman will be established by the spread of the scientific comprehension of the world, in matters physical, social, intellectual, moral, and religious.