SUPERMAN???

But there is a deeper difficulty than any difference of taste about the chilly charms of an Earthly Paradise apparently situated at the North Pole. It is involved in this whole idea of endless evolutionary change, and it can perhaps best be considered under the particular myth or symbol of the Superman. 

SUPERMAN???

An intimate disciple of Shaw said to me at the time of the earlier play, “Nietzsche is at least right in one sentence: Man is a thing that has to be surpassed.’ ” I replied, “ In one sense the remark is most Christian and orthodox; but unless you have a permanent standard of good, how do you know when he has been surpassed?” The disciple had apparently never thought of this. Or, to put it shortly, suppose six Supermen appear at once and stand in a row, all quite different and departing from the human type in quite contrary directions. Suppose one is a giant, braver but more brutal than men; another a Hindu saint, milder but more ascetic than men ; another a great poet of pleasure, more joyous but more selfish than men ; and so on through any number of quite contrary examples of superior beings beyond the easy imitation of man. How does the Evolutionist know which of these superior beings is superior to the other superior being? How can he possibly know unless he already has a fixed and unalterable ideal of a superior being; and if he has, then the whole metaphysic of mutability falls to pieces. There is something from the beginning which survives all changes to the end; and it is not enough that there is always a beyond, for beyond it there is no beyond.

From 'The Later Phases' added to G K Chesterton's book, 'George Bernard Shaw, 26 years after he wrote the original.

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