The Superman in the mirror
those seekers after the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass
The joke makes a seeker of superior humanity discover it in his own reflection. Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra supplies the intellectual background, but also a qualification. In the Prologue, §3, the Superman requires humanity to surpass itself; §4 describes man as a bridge rather than the goal. Nietzsche, Prologue §§3–4. Chesterton targets seekers after the Superman, not a quotation in which Nietzsche professes solipsism. Against Zarathustra, the looking-glass image can expose a self-flattering appropriation of an ideal demanding self-surpassing. Chesterton places such admirers beside the publisher and self-advertising writers as symptoms of cultural egoism. That links them rhetorically to the solitary dreamer; it does not establish that Nietzsche's Superman entails disbelief in other people. The inspected witness is Thomas Common's English translation, Gutenberg #1998; the German work appeared in parts in 1883–85. This later English witness provides comparison, not evidence of Chesterton's source.
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