BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1371 



where we now are, and (3) in what direction our different groups 

 and communities, our civilisation-phases and processes, are tending ; 

 after which our approval and concurrence, or our criticism and 

 endeavour towards change, will have substantial grounds. The 

 opportunity for the advent of the superman is thus more a social 

 than a biological one. Let us see what of old he seemed. 



First then the traditions and the fertile imagination of the ancients 

 have here far surpassed ours. The mythic past, and yet more the 

 theologic systems so deeply meditated from of old, have evolved 

 an immense variety of presentments of more or less ultra-human 

 and super-human types. Witness, on simpler mythic levels, the 

 Olympians and other deities of Hellas ; and from the triadic unity of 

 Elephanta cave-temple to the "thirty-three crores" of Brahminical 

 surveys — as many as the present population of India! Again in the 

 strictly monotheistic systems of Judaism and Islam, there are 

 archangels and angels, seraphim and cherubim on the psychologic 

 level; while in their human tradition, patriarchs and prophets are 

 rightly honoiu-ed, as supermen none can fairly refuse to recognise. 

 Christianity too has incorporated all the preceding; hence Dante, or 

 Milton so vividty recalling "thrones, dominations, princedoms, 

 virtues, powers". In history and biography it has exalted, and not 

 without reason, its founders, as from apostles and evangelists, 

 doctors of the church and heroic martyrs, and its varioush^ influ- 

 ential and exemplary types as well; hence with institution of saint- 

 ship, honoured and continued to this day. Here, then — as well, of 

 course, as the mythic and historic heroes and heroines of all peoples 

 — are supermen of all kinds and types. 



With such wealth of examples, how is it that science has as yet 

 so little to say? Harrison's "Calendar of Great Men" is the fullest 

 outline-attempt at estimate of the world's leading men of genius 

 throughout the main fields of thought and action; and though, of 

 course, there are many fuller special and historic outlines, with 

 more or less interpretative biographies, and also not a few attempts 

 at interpretating the psychology of "genius", as by Ostwald, 

 Nordau, etc., these still remain insufficiently related to ordinary 

 life, and thus lacking in guidance for its development. So far, then, 

 the question of the "mute inglorious Milton" remains unsettled. 

 Let us consider it a little farther. 



Genius and its Development. — For the religious world, the 

 needed illumination is of ancient date: "The kingdom of Heaven 

 is within j'ou!" Does not this apply more widely? Discouragements 

 have naturally arisen, as reacting from the perfectibility preached 

 by Rousseau and long surviving him; and also from subsequent 

 social conditions, in many ways less favourable to individual 

 development than was anticipated in a world of confidently assumed 

 all-round "progress"; so that manj' now seem more sure of the 



