Where were they now, those supermen? Where was the spirit of my race, which lived in me? All round me I beheld nothing but credulous and kindly ape, or—which is worse—pedantic apes, well-read but without faith, without the urge to fight for Something greater than themselves and than their narrow “happiness”; something for which men fight along their way to supermanhood.
The only place Nature entertains the idea of equality is the graveyard.
The Core Roman Virtues
But virtus usually wards off a cruel and dishonorable death, and virtus is the badge of the Roman race and breed. Cling fast to it, I beg you men of Rome, as a heritage that your ancestors bequeathed to you. All else is false and doubtful, ephemeral and changeful: only virtus stands firmly fixed, its roots run deep, it can never be shaken by any violence, never moved from its place. With this virtus your ancestors conquered all Italy first, then razed Carthage, overthrew Numantia, brought the most powerful kings and the most warlike peoples under the sway of this empire.
Concentrate every minute like a Roman— like a man— on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.
Modern society seeks Change. Traditional society sought Permanence.
martin-van-creveld.com/what-plato-would-have-said
Second, he would have questioned our ability to translate our various scientific and technological achievements into greater human happiness; also, he would have wondered whether enabling so many incurably sick and/or handicapped people to stay alive, sometimes even against their will, is really the right thing to do.
Third, he would have observed that, the vast number of mental health experts notwithstanding, we today are no more able to understand human psychology and motivation better than he and his contemporaries did. As the French philosopher/anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once put it, there was (and still) an uninvited guest seated among us: the human mind.
Fourth, he would have noted that we moderns have not come up with works of art—poetry, literature, drama, rhetoric, sculpture, architecture—at all superior to those already available in his day. Not to Aeschylus. Not to Sophocles, not to Euripides, not to Aristophanes. Not to Demosthenes, not to Phidias and Polycleitus. Not to the Parthenon.
And this is the great noontide: it is when man stands at the middle of his course between animal and Superman, and celebrates his journey to the evening as his highest hope, for it is the journey to a new morning.
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman–a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. … I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. … I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmL0km8UFChzKLmfLQpCStiXnDJFBnHKb
When justice is crushed, when evil is triumphant, then I come back. For the protection of the good, for the destruction of evildoers, for the establishment of the Reign of Righteousness, I am born again and again, age after age.
1919
by Savitri Devi
The vision of the ancient Rock,
—of the Acropolis, seat of Perfection,
white and golden beneath Attica’s cloudless sky—
lived in my memory.
And along with it, I adored the beauty of the manly virtues of heroes like unto the Gods
—whether of those who stormed immortal Troy,
three thousand years ago,
or of those no less great,
and no less godlike, who,
merely a century before the present day,
struggled for Hellas’ freedom,
in mountain fastnesses and on the sea,
under the banner of the Cross.
And along with it, I worshipped the beauty of the holy North
in by-gone days,
before its racial pride had yielded to the foreign god of meekness;
the beauty of the conquering men —my mother’s ancestors—
who, when in a deafening roar, an outburst of monstrous glee,
the sky and the Sea challenged each other’s might,
the tempest howled, the thunder growled, and lightning tore the crumbling clouds,
stood in their ships, erect, and beat their shields in cadence,
and answering the furious Voice of elemental Godhead
sang warrior-like hymns to Odin and Thor.
Where were they now, those supermen?
Where was the spirit of my race, which lived in me?
Where was I now to find men at the hearing of whose songs my heart would beat?
Men in whose words I would detect the spell of pride and power?
Whose voice I gladly would obey? Men whom I could admire?
All round me I beheld nothing but credulous and kindly ape,
or—which is worse—pedantic apes,
well-read, but without faith,
without the urge to fight for Something greater than themselves
and than their narrow “happiness”;
something for which men fight
along their way to supermanhood.
And only in the scattered lines of a few dreamers did I find an echo of my yearning.
“Come, O thou exile of the far-gone times”; said one of these.
“The axe has felled the sacred trees; where swords once clattered,
now, the slave doth crawl and pray. And all the Gods have gone away.
Come to them in the gleaming Walhall, where They await thee!”
The craze for originality is a manifestation of decadence, and the decadence of Europe is the ascendancy of the Barbarian.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
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But here the young trees grow thick and well because wolves walk in this forest. They’re deer-hunting wolves; canny wolves who know that fallen logs are the perfect place for an ambush. .. It’s dangerous for deer to be found around dead timber, so they avoid it. And the young trees can rise in safety with a wolf to thank for their straightness.
