The new Adam

THIS is a story of a superman. It details his origin, his search for happiness, his loves, and finally, his success or failure, of which you alone can judge. It is a story perhaps fantastic, but a story based, nevertheless, on possibilities. A superman is not a man, not a creature of the species Homo Sapiens; this is the fallacy of Nietzsche, the fallacy of H. G. Wells. These, like others who deal with the matter, have believed that a man, a human being, raised to the nth degree, represents the superman. Nietzsche picked one set of qualities—those of fitness, potency, power—Wells chose another set, the contemplative, the serene, the intellectual. So probably, a Neanderthaler in his filthy cave, using his embryonic imagination, might have pictured his superman as a giant in strength and size, a mighty hunter, one whose meat-pot and belly is never empty. Certainly he never considered a race whose very thoughts were partly beyond his conception, and he saw nothing ironical in freezing to death upon a ledge of coal. As we are to the cave man, superman must be to us. His coming is surely a possibility; perhaps it is inevitable...