he sport of hunting with them. Caesar's capacity for
fighting without hatred or resentment was defeated by the determination
of his soldiers to kill their enemies in the field instead of taking
them prisoners to be spared by Caesar; and his civil supremacy was
purchased by colossal bribery of the citizens of Rome. What great
rulers cannot do, codes and religions cannot do. Man reads his own
nature into every ordinance: if you devise a superhuman commandment so
cunningly that it cannot be misinterpreted in terms of his will, he will
denounce it as seditious blasphemy, or else disregard it as either crazy
or totally unintelligible. Parliaments and synods may tinker as much as
they please with their codes and creeds as circumstances alter the
balance of classes and their interests; and, as a result of the
tinkering, there may be an occasional illusion of moral evolution, as
when the victory of the commercial caste over the military caste leads
to the substitution of social boycotting and pecuniary damages for
duelling. At certain moments there may even be a considerable material
advance, as when the conquest of political power by the working class
produces a better distribution of wealth through the simple action of
the selfishness of the new masters; but all this is mere readjustment
and reformation: until the heart and mind of the people is changed the
very greatest man will no more dare to govern on the assumption that all
are as great as he than a drover dare leave his flock to find its way
through the streets as he himself would. Until there is an England in
which every man is a Cromwell, a France in which every man is a
Napoleon, a Rome in which every man is a Caesar, a Germany in which every
man is a Luther plus a Goethe, the world will be no more improved by its
heroes than a Brixton villa is improved by the pyramid of Cheops. The
production of such nations is the only real change possible to us.

IV

MAN'S OBJECTION TO HIS OWN IMPROVEMENT

But would such a change be tolerated if Man must rise above himself to
desire it? It would, through his misconception of its nature. Man does
desire an ideal Superman with such energy as he can spare from his
nutrition, and has in every age magnified the best living substitute for
it he can find. His least incompetent general is set up as an
Alexander; his king is the first gentleman in the world; his Pope is a
saint. He is never without an array of human idols