Man and Superman [antikvár]

A FOREWORD TO THE POPULAR EDITION OF "MAN AND SUPERMAN"I have a special reason for making this book more widely accessible than it can be, even in these days of free libraries, at the customary price of my books. It is described on the title page as "A Comedy and a Philosophy." It might have been called a religion as well; for the vision of hell in the third act, which has never been performed on the stage except as a separate work, is expressly intended to be a revelation of the modern religion of evolution.Putting it roughly and briefly, the discovery and vogue of evolution, from 1790 to 1830, made an end, for the pioneers of thought, of XVIII century rationalist atheism and deism on the one hand, and, on the other, of what may be called Garden-of-Edenism. In the middle of the XIX century the discovery by Darwin and Wallace of Natural Selection, which might have had as its sub-title " The revelation of a method by which all the appearances of intelligent design in the universe may have been produced by pure accident," practically destroyed religion in cultured Europe for a whole generation, in spite of Darwin's and Wallace's own reservations and the urgent warnings and fierce criticisms of Samuel Butler. With the beginning of the present century the return swing of the pendulum has inaugurated a counterfashion of saying that Natural Selection, instead of accounting for everything, accounts for nothing. That it accounts for nothing in any religious sense is of course true; for it leaves untouched the whole sphere of will, purpose, design, intention, even consciousness ; and a religion is nothing but a common view of the nature of will, the purpose of life, the design of organism, and the intention of evolution. Such a common view has been gradually detaching itself from the welter of negation provoked by the extremely debased forms of religion which have masqueraded as Christianity in England during the period of petty commercialism from which we are emerging. The time has come for an attempt to formulate this common view as a modern religion, and to provide it with a body of doctrine, a poesy, and a political and industrial system. Shelley and Wagner made notable attempts to provide it with materials for a Bible ; and I, with later lights of science to guide me than either of these prophets had, have made a further attempt in this Man and Superman. As I have not been sparing of such lighter qualities as I could endow the book with for the sake of those who ask nothing from a play but an agreeable pastime, I think it well to affirm plainly that the third act, however fantastic its legendary framework may appear, is a careful attempt to write a new Book of Genesis for the Bible of the Evolutionists ; and as it is recognized that no matter how highly priced other works of art may be, Bibles must be cheap, I have consented to the issue of this edition at the lowest price possible in the book market of to-day. *G. B. S.22nd. March, igri.