with Gods and heroes, and by way of contrast to "Nebenmenschen" and "Untermenschen" (such as dwarfs, fairies, satyrs).[1] Before this, he had made use of the adjective as we all do, speaking, for instance, of "superhuman goodness and justice"—and, indeed, "super" in general (or its equivalent) appears rather often, as in "super-German" (of Wagner's thoughts), "super-national" (of universal aims), "super-hellenic," "super-historical"; he spoke of man as the "super-animal" and of a "distant super-world."
During the period of reaction against his early idealization of Wagner, Nietzsche made adverse reflections on the elevation of individuals into superhuman beings. The cultus of genius seemed to him a continuation of the old worship of Gods and princes; when one raises certain men to a superhuman level, one is apt to look on whole classes as lower than they really are. He felt that there is a danger for genius itself when it begins to fancy itself superhuman.[2] It is curious that Nietzsche always had a more or less pronounced aversion to Carlyle's hero-worship.[3] Even as late as Thus spake Zarathustra there is a slighting reference to Gods and supermen (taken as people up in the clouds); Zarathustra is tired of them[4]—as of the poets who invent them. And yet, despite such chaffing, Nietzsche's early instinct for what is superior and great is by the time of Thus spake Zarathustra in full away again, and this book itself is a product of it. He had said almost at the outset of his career (I have quoted the words before, but they will bear repeating): "I see something higher and more human above me than I myself am; help me all to attain it, as I will help every one who feels and suffers as I do—in order that at last the man may arise who is full and measureless in knowledge and love and vision and power, and with his whole being cleaves to nature and takes his place in it as judge and valuer of things."[5] And now, after years of self-criticism in which everything in his early beliefs that could be shaken was shaken,
- ↑ Joyful Science, § 143. Cf. the description of the way in which he "picked up" the word, in Zarathustra, III, xii, § 3.
- ↑ Human, etc., §§ 461, 164; cf. Dawn of Day, § 298.
- ↑ The references to Carlyle are in Dawn of Day, § 298; Joyful Science, § 97; Will to Power, § 27; Ecce Homo, III, § 1.
- ↑ Zarathustra, II, xvii.
- ↑ "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 6.
