Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



latter alone would not suffice, and so he passed 

 on to his discovery or invention of the Beyond- 

 man, — i.e. of a childlike being who, without argu- 

 ment, affirms and creates, and before whom institu- 

 tions and conventions dissolve, as it were of their 

 own accord. I This was a stroke of genius ; but 

 even so it leaves doubtful what the relation of 

 such Beyond-men to each other may be, and 

 whether, if they have no common source of life, 

 their actions will not utterly cancel and destroy 

 each other. 



The truth is that Nietzsche never really pene- 

 trated to the realisation of that farther state of 

 consciousness in which the deep underlying unity 

 of man with Nature and his fellows is perceived 

 and felt. He saw apparently that there is a life 

 and an inspiration of life beyond all technical 

 good and evil. But for some reason — partly 

 because of the natural difficulty of the subject, 

 partly perhaps because the Eastern outlook was 

 uncongenial to his mind — he never found the 

 solution which he needed ; and his outline of 

 the Superman remains cloudy and uncertain, 

 vague and variously interpreted by followers and 

 critics. 



The question arises. What do we need ? We 

 are to-day, in this matter, in a somewhat parlous 

 state. The old codes of Morality are moribund ; 

 the Ten Commandments command only a very 



' It must be remembered that Nietzsche supposes three stages 

 of the spirit — (i) the Camel, (2) the Lion, and (3) the Child. 

 And the Beyond-man properly corresponds to the last stage, 



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