hows his sense. It is not true that
everything changes; the things that change are all the manifest and
material things. There is something that does not change; and that is
precisely the abstract quality, the invisible idea. Mr. Wells says
truly enough, that a thing which we have seen in one connection as dark
we may see in another connection as light. But the thing common to both
incidents is the mere idea of light--which we have not seen at all.
Mr. Wells might grow taller and taller for unending aeons till his head
was higher than the loneliest star. I can imagine his writing a good
novel about it. In that case he would see the trees first as tall
things and then as short things; he would see the clouds first as high
and then as low. But there would remain with him through the ages in
that starry loneliness the idea of tallness; he would have in the awful
spaces for companion and comfort the definite conception that he was
growing taller and not (for instance) growing fatter.

And now it comes to my mind that Mr. H. G. Wells actually has written a
very delightful romance about men growing as tall as trees; and that
here, again, he seems to me to have been a victim of this vague
relativism. "The Food of the Gods" is, like Mr. Bernard Shaw's play,
in essence a study of the Superman idea. And it lies, I think, even
through the veil of a half-pantomimic allegory, open to the same
intellectual attack. We cannot be expected to have any regard for a
great creature if he does not in any manner conform to our standards.
For unless he passes our standard of greatness we cannot even call him
great. Nietszche summed up all that is interesting in the Superman
idea when he said, "Man is a thing which has to be surpassed." But the
very word "surpass" implies the existence of a standard common to us
and the thing surpassing us. If the Superman is more manly than men
are, of course they will ultimately deify him, even if they happen to
kill him first. But if he is simply more supermanly, they may be quite
indifferent to him as they would be to another seemingly aimless
monstrosity. He must submit to our test even in order to overawe us.
Mere force or size even is a standard; but that alone will never make
men think a man their superior. Giants, as in the wise old
fairy-tales, are vermin. Supermen, if not good men, are vermin.

"The Food of the Gods" is the tale of "Jack the Giant-Killer" told from
the point of view of the