counteracted in the work of human achievement.

As a boy, I believed my opportunities to be limited by the achievements of the past. As a man, I see in these past achievements not hindrances, but the foundation stones which the past has laid down, upon which the present must build, in order that the future may erect the perfected structure of a higher civilization. I see all of this clearly, and I see one thing more. In the old days which I had erstwhile envied, one event of world import might have been chronicled for each decade, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such an event may be chronicled for each year, or month or even for each day. The achievements of the past were noteworthy: these of the present are stupendous.

The process of social evolution reveals itself in these progressive steps. Because the past has built, the present is building—building in order that the future may stand higher in its realization of potential life. The past was an age of uncertain, hesitating advance. The present, an age of dynamic achievement, leads on into the future of human development.

In the twentieth century:

The despondent boy has thus evolved into the enthusiastic worker whose watchword is “Forward!”—forward towards a new goal, whose very existence is made attainable through the achievements of the past: a goal before which the triumphs of bygone ages pale into insignificance.

The past worked with things. Pyramids were built, cities constructed, mountains tunneled, trade augmented, fortunes amassed. Hear Ruskin’s comment on this devotion to material wealth: “Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, ... whether, among national manufactures, that of souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite lucrative one. Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamed of hour, I can even imagine that England ... as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a heathen one, and be able to lead forth her sons, saying: ‘These are my jewels.’”[1]

The past worked with things: the future, rising higher in the scale of civilization, must work with men—with the plastic, living clay of humanity. As Solomon long ago said, “He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.” The men of the past built cities and took them. They brought the forces of nature into subjection and remodeled the world as a living place for humanity, yet, save for a shadow in Rome and an echo from Greece, there is scarcely a trace in history of a consistent attempt to evolve nobler men.

Material objects have cost the nations untold effort, but human fiber—the life blood of nations—has been overlooked or forgotten. The world is weary of this emphasis on things and this forgetfulness of men; the ether trembles with the clamor for manhood. The fields, white to harvest, are awaiting the laborers who, building on the discoveries and inventions of things in the past, will so mold the human clay of the present that the future may boast a society of men and women possessing the qualities of the Super Race.

What is a Super Race? Nothing more nor less than a race representing, in the aggregate, the qualities of the Super Man—the qualities which enable one possessing them to live what Herbert Spencer described so luminously as a “complete life,” namely,—

1. Physical normality.
2. Mental capacity.
3. Concentration.
4. Aggressiveness.
5. Sympathy.
6. Vision.

These characteristics of the Super Man express themselves in his activity:

1. Physical normality provides energy.
2. Mental capacity gives mental grasp.
3. Aggressiveness. }
 }produce efficiency.
4. Concentration.   }
5. Sympathy leads to harmony with things and coöperation with men.
6. Vision shows itself in ideals.

The energy to do; and the mental grasp to appreciate; together with the capacity to choose efficiently, furnish the basis for achievement. Achievement, however, is not in itself a guarantee of worth unless its course is shaped by sympathy and directed toward a goal which is determined by the prophetic power of vision. Such are the characteristics which, combined in one individual, insure completeness of life. About them, philosophers have reasoned and poets have sung. They are the acme of human perfection—the ideal of individual attainment.

Though they have been thus idealized, these qualities are not new. They have existed for ages, as they exist to-day, occasionally combined in one individual but usually appearing separately in members of the social group. They form part of the heritage of the human race, and in spite of neglect and lack of fostering, they are widespread in all sections of the population. The production of a race of men and women, a great majority of whom shall possess these qualities, will mean the next great step in human achievement.

The Super Man has lived for ages. The Greeks traced the descent of their heroes and heroines—their Super Men—from the Gods. It was thus that they explained exceptional ability. Exceptional men live to-day, as they did in ancient Greece, directing the thought and work of the times. They possess the qualities of the Super Man—physical normality, mental capacity, aggressiveness, concentration, sympathy and vision; and, above all, we now understand that they are not the offspring of the gods, but the sons of men and women whose combined parental qualities inevitably produced Super Men. The Super Man is not a theory, nor an accident, but a natural product of natural conditions.

Though the Super Man may be met with occasionally in modern society, and though the qualities ascribed to him are manifest everywhere among those who have had an opportunity for their development; opinions still differ as to the possibility of producing a Super Race. An even greater difference of opinion is encountered when an attempt is made to formulate the means which should be adopted to secure such an end; yet there can be little difference of opinion as to the desirability, from a national as well as from an individual standpoint, of creating a race of Super Men.

The call of the present age for a Super Race is thus voiced by Yeats,[2]

“O Silver Trumpets! Be you lifted up,
And cry to the great race that is to come.
Long throated swans, amid the Waves of Time,
Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the World
It waits, and it may hear and come to us.”

We long for the coming of the Super Race. We aim toward this goal. Can it be compassed in finite time? Is Nietzsche right when he says,—“I teach you beyond-man.” “All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves.” “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.” “Not whence ye come, be your honor in the future, but whither ye go!” “In your children ye shall make