Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy
THE STATUE. Not that I see any prospect of your coming to any point in
particular, Juan. Still, since in this place, instead of merely killing
time we have to kill eternity, go ahead by all means.
DON JUAN. [somewhat impatiently] My point, you marbleheaded old
masterpiece, is only a step ahead of you. Are we agreed that Life is a
force which has made innumerable experiments in organizing itself; that
the mammoth and the man, the mouse and the megatherium, the flies and
the fleas and the Fathers of the Church, are all more or less successful
attempts to build up that raw force into higher and higher individuals,
the ideal individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and
withal completely, unilludedly self-conscious: in short, a god?
THE DEVIL. I agree, for the sake of argument.
THE STATUE. I agree, for the sake of avoiding argument.
ANA. I most emphatically disagree as regards the Fathers of the Church;
and I must beg you not to drag them into the argument.
DON JUAN. I did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and I
shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are, with that
exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me further that Life
has not measured the success of its attempts at godhead by the beauty or
bodily perfection of the result, since in both these respects the birds,
as our friend Aristophanes long ago pointed out, are so extraordinarily
superior, with their power of flight and their lovely plumage, and,
may I add, the touching poetry of their loves and nestings, that it is
inconceivable that Life, having once produced them, should, if love
and beauty were her object, start off on another line and labor at the
clumsy elephant and the hideous ape, whose grandchildren we are?
ANA. Aristophanes was a heathen; and you, Juan, I am afraid, are very
little better.
THE DEVIL. You conclude, then, that Life was driving at clumsiness and
ugliness?
DON JUAN. No, perverse devil that you are, a thousand times no. Life
was driving at brains--at its darling object: an organ by which it can
attain not only self-consciousness but self-understanding.
THE STATUE. This is metaphysics, Juan. Why the devil should--[to the
Devil] I BEG your pardon.
THE DEVIL. Pray don't mention it. I have always regarded the use of my
name to secure additional emphasis as a high compliment to me. It is
quite at your service, Commander.
THE STATUE. Thank you: that's very good of you. Even in heaven, I never
quite got out of my old military habits of speech. What I was going to
ask Juan was why Life should bother itself about getting a brain. Why
should it want to understand itself? Why not be content to enjoy itself?
DON JUAN. Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself without
knowing it, and so lose all the fun.
THE STATUE. True, most true. But I am quite content with brain enough to
know that I'm enjoying myself. I don't want to understand why. In
fact, I'd rather not. My experience is that one's pleasures don't bear
thinking about.
DON JUAN. That is why intellect is so unpopular. But to Life, the force
behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without it he blunders
into death. Just as Life, after ages of struggle, evolved that wonderful
bodily organ the eye, so that the living organism could see where it
was going and what was coming to help or threaten it, and thus avoid
a thousand dangers that formerly slew it, so it is evolving to-day a
mind's eye that shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of
Life, and thereby enable the individual to work for that purpose instead
of thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal aims as
at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever been happy, has
ever been universally respected among all the conflicts of interests and
illusions.
THE STATUE. You mean the military man.
DON JUAN. Commander: I do not mean the military man. When the military
man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its
womankind. No: I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man:
he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world,
in invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in
action to do that will by the so-discovered means. Of all other sorts
of men I declare myself tired. They're tedious failures. When I was on
earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy
spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me
consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for
imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they
called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade
me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual
hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself
about that either; so they called me Atheist and went their way. After
them came the politician, who said there was only one purpose in Nature,
and that was to get him into parliament. I told him I did not care
whether he got into parliament or not; so he called me Mugwump and went
his way. Then came the romantic man, the Artist, with his love songs and
his paintings and his poems; and with him I had great delight for many
years, and some profit; for I cultivated my senses for his sake; and
his songs taught me to hear better, his paintings to see better, and
his poems to feel more deeply. But he led me at last into the worship of
Woman.
ANA. Juan!
DON JUAN. Yes: I came to believe that in her voice was all the music of
the song, in her face all the beauty of the painting, and in her soul
all the emotion of the poem.
ANA. And you were disappointed, I suppose. Well, was it her fault that
you attributed all these perfections to her?
DON JUAN. Yes, partly. For with a wonderful instinctive cunning, she
kept silent and allowed me to glorify her; to mistake my own visions,
thoughts, and feelings for hers. Now my friend the romantic man was
often too poor or too timid to approach those women who were beautiful
or refined enough to seem to realize his ideal; and so he went to his
grave believing in his dream. But I was more favored by nature and
circumstance. I was of noble birth and rich; and when my person did
not please, my conversation flattered, though I generally found myself
fortunate in both.
THE STATUE. Coxcomb!
DON JUAN. Yes; but even my coxcombry pleased. Well, I found that when I
had touched a woman's imagination, she would allow me to persuade myself
that she loved me; but when my suit was granted she never said "I am
happy: my love is satisfied": she always said, first, "At last, the
barriers are down," and second, "When will you come again?"
ANA. That is exactly what men say.
DON JUAN. I protest I never said it. But all women say it. Well, these
two speeches always alarmed me; for the first meant that the lady's
impulse had been solely to throw down my fortifications and gain my
citadel; and the second openly announced that henceforth she regarded me
as her property, and counted my time as already wholly at her disposal.
THE DEVIL. That is where your want of heart came in.
THE STATUE. [shaking his head] You shouldn't repeat what a woman says,
Juan.
ANA. [severely] It should be sacred to you.
THE STATUE. Still, they certainly do always say it. I never minded the
barriers; but there was always a slight shock about the other, unless
one was very hard hit indeed.
DON JUAN. Then the lady, who had been happy and idle enough before,
became anxious, preoccupied with me, always intriguing, conspiring,
pursuing, watching, waiting, bent wholly on making sure of her prey--I
being the prey, you understand. Now this was not what I had bargained
for. It may have been very proper and very natural; but it was not
music, painting, poetry and joy incarnated in a beautiful woman. I ran
away from it. I ran away from it very often: in fact I became famous for
running away from it.
ANA. Infamous, you mean.
DON JUAN. I did not run away from you. Do you blame me for running away
from the others?
ANA. Nonsense, man. You are talking to a woman of 77 now. If you had had
the chance, you would have run away from me too--if I had let you. You
would not have found it so easy with me as with some of the others. If
men will not be faithful to their home and their duties, they must be
made to be. I daresay you all want to marry lovely incarnations of music
and painting and poetry. Well, you can't have them, because they
don't exist. If flesh and blood is not good enough for you you must
go without: that's all. Women have to put up with flesh-and-blood
husbands--and little enough of that too, sometimes; and you will have to
put up with flesh-and-blood wives. The Devil looks dubious. The Statue
makes a wry face. I see you don't like that, any of you; but it's true,
for all that; so if you don't like it you can lump it.
DON JUAN. My dear lady, you have put my whole case against romance into
a few sentences. That is just why I turned my back on the romantic man
with the artist nature, as he called his infatuation. I thanked him
for teaching me to use my eyes and ears; but I told him that his beauty
worshipping and happiness hunting and woman idealizing was not worth a
dump as a philosophy of life; so he called me Philistine and went his
way.
ANA. It seems that Woman taught you something, too, with all her
defects.
DON JUAN. She did more: she interpreted all the other teaching for me.
Ah, my friends, when the barriers were down for the first time, what
an astounding illumination! I had been prepared for infatuation, for
intoxication, for all the illusions of love's young dream; and lo! never
was my perception clearer, nor my criticism more ruthless. The most
jealous rival of my mistress never saw every blemish in her more keenly
than I. I was not duped: I took her without chloroform.
ANA. But you did take her.
DON JUAN. That was the revelation. Up to that moment I had never lost
the sense of being my own master; never consciously taken a single step
until my reason had examined and approved it. I had come to believe that
I was a purely rational creature: a thinker! I said, with the foolish
philosopher, "I think; therefore I am." It was Woman who taught me to
say "I am; therefore I think." And also "I would think more; therefore I
must be more."
THE STATUE. This is extremely abstract and metaphysical, Juan. If you
would stick to the concrete, and put your discoveries in the form
of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women, your
conversation would be easier to follow.
DON JUAN. Bah! what need I add? Do you not understand that when I stood
face to face with Woman, every fibre in my clear critical brain warned
me to spare her and save myself. My morals said No. My conscience said
No. My chivalry and pity for her said No. My prudent regard for myself
said No. My ear, practised on a thousand songs and symphonies; my eye,
exercised on a thousand paintings; tore her voice, her features, her
color to shreds. I caught all those tell-tale resemblances to her father
and mother by which I knew what she would be like in thirty years time.
I noted the gleam of gold from a dead tooth in the laughing mouth: I
made curious observations of the strange odors of the chemistry of the
nerves. The visions of my romantic reveries, in which I had trod the
plains of heaven with a deathless, ageless creature of coral and ivory,
deserted me in that supreme hour. I remembered them and desperately
strove to recover their illusion; but they now seemed the emptiest of
inventions: my judgment was not to be corrupted: my brain still said No
on every issue. And whilst I was in the act of framing my excuse to the