Self-surpassing is more demanding than self-confidence
the thrones of the Super-men
The capitalized name invites comparison with Nietzsche's Übermensch, but Chesterton's satire compresses a more demanding ideal into a boast of certainty. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue §3, Nietzsche makes humanity something to be surpassed; self-complacency belongs among the deficiencies to overcome. In Part I, 'The Bestowing Virtue', §3, Zarathustra sends his disciples away to discover themselves and distrust their teacher. These passages share the emphasis on independence that Chesterton resists, yet they do not make mere confidence evidence of greatness. Reading them alongside the paragraph distinguishes a criticism of complacent self-worship from a refutation of Nietzsche's project. The inspected text is Thomas Common's translation, first published in 1909, of a work whose first part appeared in 1883. Since this English edition postdates Orthodoxy (1908), it is a comparison with Nietzsche's argument, not evidence of Chesterton's wording source.
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