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.