Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy
it would be interesting to watch; but you don't: you cheat at every
trick; and if your opponent outcheats you, you upset the table and try
to murder him.
THE DEVIL. On earth there may be some truth in this, because the people
are uneducated and cannot appreciate my religion of love and beauty; but
here--
DON JUAN. Oh yes: I know. Here there is nothing but love and beauty.
Ugh! it is like sitting for all eternity at the first act of a
fashionable play, before the complications begin. Never in my worst
moments of superstitious terror on earth did I dream that Hell was so
horrible. I live, like a hairdresser, in the continual contemplation
of beauty, toying with silken tresses. I breathe an atmosphere of
sweetness, like a confectioner's shopboy. Commander: are there any
beautiful women in Heaven?
THE STATUE. None. Absolutely none. All dowdies. Not two pennorth of
jewellery among a dozen of them. They might be men of fifty.
DON JUAN. I am impatient to get there. Is the word beauty ever
mentioned; and are there any artistic people?
THE STATUE. I give you my word they won't admire a fine statue even when
it walks past them.
DON JUAN. I go.
THE DEVIL. Don Juan: shall I be frank with you?
DON JUAN. Were you not so before?
THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and confess
to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell;
and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of
the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the
pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because
it is always moving. But when you are as old as I am; when you have a
thousand times wearied of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and
a thousand times wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no
longer imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation,
every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see reform,
progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on
the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will
see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion. You will discover
the profound truth of the saying of my friend Koheleth, that there is
nothing new under the sun. Vanitas vanitatum--
DON JUAN. [out of all patience] By Heaven, this is worse than your cant
about love and beauty. Clever dolt that you are, is a man no better than
a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets tired of everything?
Shall he give up eating because he destroys his appetite in the act
of gratifying it? Is a field idle when it is fallow? Can the Commander
expend his hellish energy here without accumulating heavenly energy for
his next term of blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit
on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its
bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us
the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay
more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the
earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up
a ball, and that the total of all our epochs is but the moment between
the toss and the catch, has the colossal mechanism no purpose?
THE DEVIL. None, my friend. You think, because you have a purpose,
Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and
toes because you have them.
DON JUAN. But I should not have them if they served no purpose. And I,
my friend, am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me.
If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the mandoline,
my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to understand itself.
My dog's brain serves only my dog's purposes; but my brain labors at a
knowledge which does nothing for me personally but make my body bitter
to me and my decay and death a calamity. Were I not possessed with a
purpose beyond my own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher;
for the ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more, sleeps
better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less misgiving. This
is because the philosopher is in the grip of the Life Force. This Life
Force says to him "I have done a thousand wonderful things unconsciously
by merely willing to live and following the line of least resistance:
now I want to know myself and my destination, and choose my path; so
I have made a special brain--a philosopher's brain--to grasp this
knowledge for me as the husbandman's hand grasps the plough for me. And
this" says the Life Force to the philosopher "must thou strive to do
for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another
philosopher to carry on the work."
THE DEVIL. What is the use of knowing?
DON JUAN. Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage
instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a
ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? The
philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be
in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
THE DEVIL. On the rocks, most likely.
DON JUAN. Pooh! which ship goes oftenest on the rocks or to the
bottom--the drifting ship or the ship with a pilot on board?
THE DEVIL. Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan. I prefer to be my
own master and not the tool of any blundering universal force. I know
that beauty is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is
good to feel; and that they are all good to think about and talk about.
I know that to be well exercised in these sensations, emotions, and
studies is to be a refined and cultivated being. Whatever they may say
of me in churches on earth, I know that it is universally admitted in
good society that the prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is
enough for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it
is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character.
But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it
will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on
babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion
into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water
sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it
accidentally; then you will take to politics, where you will become the
catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious humbugs;
and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve and
shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and silliest of wastes
and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of the power of enjoyment: in
a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the better before he has
secured the good.
DON JUAN. But at least I shall not be bored. The service of the Life
Force has that advantage, at all events. So fare you well, Senor Satan.
THE DEVIL. [amiably] Fare you well, Don Juan. I shall often think of our
interesting chats about things in general. I wish you every happiness:
Heaven, as I said before, suits some people. But if you should change
your mind, do not forget that the gates are always open here to the
repentant prodigal. If you feel at any time that warmth of heart,
sincere unforced affection, innocent enjoyment, and warm, breathing,
palpitating reality--
DON JUAN. Why not say flesh and blood at once, though we have left those
two greasy commonplaces behind us?
THE DEVIL. [angrily] You throw my friendly farewell back in my teeth,
then, Don Juan?
DON JUAN. By no means. But though there is much to be learnt from a
cynical devil, I really cannot stand a sentimental one. Senor Commander:
you know the way to the frontier of hell and heaven. Be good enough to
direct me.
THE STATUE. Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of
looking at things. Any road will take you across it if you really want
to get there.
DON JUAN. Good. [saluting Dona Ana] Senora: your servant.
ANA. But I am going with you.
DON JUAN. I can find my own way to heaven, Ana; but I cannot find yours
[he vanishes].
ANA. How annoying!
THE STATUE. [calling after him] Bon voyage, Juan! [He wafts a final
blast of his great rolling chords after him as a parting salute. A faint
echo of the first ghostly melody comes back in acknowledgment]. Ah!
there he goes. [Puffing a long breath out through his lips] Whew! How he
does talk! They'll never stand it in heaven.
THE DEVIL. [gloomily] His going is a political defeat. I cannot keep
these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest loss I have
had since that Dutch painter went--a fellow who would paint a hag of 70
with as much enjoyment as a Venus of 20.
THE STATUE. I remember: he came to heaven. Rembrandt.
THE DEVIL. Ay, Rembrandt. There a something unnatural about these
fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Senor Commander: it is
dangerous. Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an
indiscriminate contempt for the Human. To a man, horses and dogs and
cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well, to the Superman,
men and women are a mere species too, also outside the moral world. This
Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to men as your daughter here
was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the
exclusively human character of the soul.
THE STATUE. And who the deuce is the Superman?
THE DEVIL. Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics. Did
you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German Polish
madman--what was his name? Nietzsche?
THE STATUE. Never heard of him.
THE DEVIL. Well, he came here first, before he recovered his wits. I had
some hopes of him; but he was a confirmed Life Force worshipper. It was
he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as Prometheus; and the 20th
century will run after this newest of the old crazes when it gets tired
of the world, the flesh, and your humble servant.
THE STATUE. Superman is a good cry; and a good cry is half the battle. I
should like to see this Nietzsche.
THE DEVIL. Unfortunately he met Wagner here, and had a quarrel with him.
THE STATUE. Quite right, too. Mozart for me!
THE DEVIL. Oh, it was not about music. Wagner once drifted into Life
Force worship, and invented a Superman called Siegfried. But he came to
his senses afterwards. So when they met here, Nietzsche denounced him
as a renegade; and Wagner wrote a pamphlet to prove that Nietzsche was
a Jew; and it ended in Nietzsche's going to heaven in a huff. And a
good riddance too. And now, my friend, let us hasten to my palace and
celebrate your arrival with a grand musical service.
THE STATUE. With pleasure: you're most kind.
THE DEVIL. This way, Commander. We go down the old trap [he places
himself on the grave trap].
THE STATUE. Good. [Reflectively] All the same, the Superman is a fine
conception. There is something statuesque about it. [He places himself
on the grave trap beside The Devil. It begins to descend slowly. Red
glow from the abyss]. Ah, this reminds me of old times.
THE DEVIL. And me also.
ANA. Stop! [The trap stops].
THE DEVIL. You, Senora, cannot come this way. You will have an
apotheosis. But you will be at the palace before us.
ANA. That is not what I stopped you for. Tell me where can I find the
Superman?
THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora.
THE STATUE. And never will be, probably. Let us proceed: the red fire
will make me sneeze. [They descend].
ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing herself
devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. [Crying to the universe] A
father--a father for the Superman!
She vanishes into the void; and again there is nothing: all existence
seems suspended infinitely. Then, vaguely, there is a live human voice