The Overman
He quintessence of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the “overman.” What is the overman?
The word (Uebermensch) comes from a good mint; it is of Goethe’s coinage, and he used it in the sense of an awe-inspiring being, almost in the sense of Unmensch, to characterize Faust, the titanic man of high aims and undaunted courage,—the man who would not be moved in the presence of hell and pursued his aspirations in spite of the forbidding countenance of God and the ugly grin of Satan. But the same expression was used in its proper sense about two and a half millenniums ago in ancient China, where at the time of Lao-tze the term chiün jen [Chin. chars], “superior man,” or chiün tse, “superior sage,” was in common usage. But the overman or chiün jen of Lao-tze, of Confucius and other Chinese sages is not a man of power, not a Napoleon, not an unprincipled tyrant, not a self-seeker of domineering will, not a man whose ego and its welfare is his sole and exclusive aim, but a Christlike figure, who puts his self behind and thus makes his self—a nobler and better self—come to the front, who does not retaliate, but returns good for evil,1 a man (as the Greek sage describes him) who would rather suffer wrong than commit wrong.2
This kind of higher man is the very opposite of Nietzsche’s overman, and it is the spirit of this nobler conception of a higher humanity which furnishes the best ideas of all the religions of the world, of Lao-tze’s Taoism, of Buddhism and of Christianity.
Alexander Tille, the English translator of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, translates the word Uebermensch by “beyond-man.” But “beyond” means jenseits; and Nietzsche wrote über, i. e., superior to, over, or higher than, and the literal translation “overman” appears to be the best. It is certainly better than the barbaric combination of “superman” in which Latin and Saxon are mixed against one of the main rules for the construction of words. Say “superhuman” and “overman,” but not “overhuman” or “superman.” Emerson in a similar vein, when attempting to characterize that which is higher than the soul, invented the term “oversoul,” and I can see no objection to the word “overman.”
The overman is the higher man, the superhuman man of the future, a higher, nobler, more powerful, a better being than the present man! What a splendid idea! Since evolution has been accepted as a truth, we may fairly trust that we all believe in the overman. All our reformers believe in the possibility of realizing a higher mankind. We Americans especially have faith in the coming of the kingdom of the overman, and our endeavor is concentrated in hastening his arrival. The question is only, What is the overman and how can we make this ideal of a higher development actual?
Happy Nietzsche! You need not trouble yourself about consistency; you reject all ideals as superstitions, and then introduce an ideal of your own. “There you see,” says an admirer of Nietzsche, “what a splendid principle it is not to own any allegiance to logic, or rule, or consistency. The best thought of Nietzsche’s would never have been uttered if he had remained faithful to his own principles.”
However ingenious the idea of an overman may be, Nietzsche carries his propositions to such extremes that in spite of many flashes of truth they become in the end ridiculous and even absurd. His ideal is good, but he utterly fails to comprehend its nature and also the mode in which alone the overman can be realized.
Nietzsche proclaims the coming of the “overman,” but his overman is not superior by intellect, wisdom, or nobility of character, but by vigor, by strength, by an unbending desire for power and an unscrupulous determination. The blond barbarian of the north who tramples under foot the citizens of Greece and Rome, Napoleon I, and the Assyrian conqueror,—such are his heroes in whom this higher manhood formerly manifested itself.
He saw in the history of human thought, the development of the notion of the “true world,” which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction must set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people, would become subservient. The “herd animal” (so Nietzsche called any one foolish enough to recognize morality and truth) is born to obey. He is destined to be trodden under foot by the overman who is strong, and also unscrupulous enough to use the herds and govern them.
Nietzsche was by no means under the illusion that the rule of the overman would be lasting, but he took comfort in the thought that though there would be periods in which the slaves would assert themselves and establish an era of the herd animals, the overman would nevertheless assert himself from time to time, and this was what he called his “doctrine of the eternal return”—the gospel of his philosophy. The highest summit of existence is reached in those phases of the denouement of human life when the overman has full control over the herds which are driven into the field, sheared and butchered for the sole benefit of him who knows the secret that this world has no moral significance beyond being a prey to his good pleasure. Nietzsche’s hope is certainly not desirable for the mass of mankind, but even the fate of the overman himself would appear as little enviable a condition as that of the tyrant Dionysius under the sword of Damocles, or the Czar of Russia living in constant fear of the anarchistic bomb.
Nietzsche, feeling that his thoughts were untimely, lived in the hope of “the coming of the great day” on which his views would find recognition. He looked upon the present as a rebellion against the spirit of strength and vigor; Christianity especially, and its doctrine of humility and love for the down-trodden was hateful to him. He speaks of it as a rebellion of slaves and places in the same category the democraticism that now characterizes the tendency of human development which he denounces as a pseudo-civilization.
He insists that the overman is beyond good and evil; and yet it is obvious that though he claims to be the first philosopher who maintained the principle of unmorality, he was only the first philosopher boldly to proclaim it. His maxim (or lack of maxims) has been stealthily and secretly in use among all those classes whom he calls “overmen,” great and small. The great overmen are conquerors and tyrants, who meteorlike appear and disappear, the small ones are commonly characterized as the criminal classes; but there is this difference between the two, that the former, at least so far as they have succeeded, recognize the absolute necessity of establishing law and order, and though they may temporarily have infringed upon the rules of morality themselves, they have finally come always to the conclusion that in order to maintain their position they must enforce upon others the usual rules of morality.
Both Alexander and Cæsar were magnanimous at the right moment. They showed mercy to the vanquished, they exercised justice frequently against their own personal likes or dislikes, and were by no means men of impulse as Nietzsche would have his overman be. The same is true of Napoleon whose success is mainly due to making himself subservient to the needs of his age. As soon as he assumed the highest power in France, Napoleon replaced the frivolous tone at his court, to which his first wife Josephine had been accustomed, by an observance of so-called bourgeois decency, and he enforced it against her inclinations and his own.
Further, Napoleon served the interests of Germany more than is commonly acknowledged by sweeping out of existence the mediæval system of innumerable sovereigns, ecclesiastical as well as secular, who in conformity with the conservative tenor of the German people had irremediably ensconced themselves in their hereditary rights to the disadvantage of the people. Moreover, the Code Napoleon, the new law book, perhaps the most enduring work of Napoleon, was compiled by the jurists of the time, not because Napoleon cared for justice, but because he saw that the only way of establishing a stable government was by acknowledging rules of equity and by enforcing their recognition. It is true that Napoleon made his service in the cause of right and justice a pedestal for himself, but in contrast to Nietzsche’s ideas we must notice that this recognition of principle was the only way of success to a man whose natural tendency was an unbounded egotism, an unlimited desire for power.
In spite of his enthusiasm in announcing the advent of an overman, Nietzsche would be a poor adviser for a rising usurper. He would be able to cause a great upheaval, to bring about a Volcanic eruption, or to raise a thunderstorm wherever restlessness prevails, but his philosophy lacks the principle of using discretion, or advising self-discipline, of applying scientific methods—all of which is indispensable for success. He preaches boldness, not wisdom; and a hero after Nietzsche’s heart would be like a navigator who courageously ventures into the storm but scorns a chart and leaves the mariners’ compass behind; he would steer not as circumstances demand but according to his own sweet will, and would be wrecked before ever reaching the harbor of overmanhood.
How much greater is the ideal of the overman as taught by the ancient philosopher of China! He, the chiün jen, the superior man, does not need power either political or financial to be great; he does not need a pedestal of oppressed slaves to stand on; he is great in himself, because he has a great compassionate heart and a broad comprehensive mind. He is simple, and, as we read in the Tao Teh King, “He wears wool [is not dressed in silk and purple] and wears his jewel concealed in his bosom.”
Notes
1 Lao-tse’s Tao Teh King, Chaps. 49 and 63.
2 For a collection of Greek quotations on the ethics of returning good for evil, see The Open Court, Vol. XV, 1901, pp. 9-12. ⁂