P.D. Ouspensky - "A New Model of the Universe" (1931), chapter III, "Superman""Side by side with the idea of hidden knowledge there runs through the whole history of human thought the idea of superman.
The idea of superman is as old as history. Through hundreds of centuries, humanity has lived with the idea of superman. Sayings and legends of all ancient peoples are full of images of a superman. Heroes of myths, Titans, demigods, Prometheus who brought fire from heaven; prophets, messiahs, and saints of all religions; heroes of fairy tales and epic songs; knights who rescue captive maidens, awaken sleeping beauties, vanquish dragons, and fight giants and ogres — all these are images of a superman.
Popular wisdom of all times and all peoples has always understood that man, as he is, cannot arrange his own life by himself; popular wisdom has never regarded man as the crowning achievement of creation. It has always understood the place of man, and always accepted and admitted the thought that there can and must be beings who, though human, are also much higher, stronger, more complex, more "miraculous", than ordinary man. It is only the opaque and sterilised thought of the last centuries of European culture which has lost touch with the idea of superman and put as its aim man as he is, as he always was and always will be. And in this comparatively short period of time, European thought so thoroughly forgot the idea of superman that when Nietzsche threw this idea out to the West, it appeared new, original, and unexpected. In reality this idea has existed from the very beginning of human thought known to us.
After all, superman has never completely vanished in modern Western thought. What, for instance, is the Napoleonic legend and what are all similar legends but attempts to create a new myth of superman? The masses in their own way still live with the idea of superman; they are never satisfied with man as he is; and the literature supplied to the masses invariably gives them a superman. What indeed is the Count of Monte Cristo, or Rocambole, or Sherlock Holmes, but a modern expression of the same idea of a strong, powerful being against whom ordinary men cannot fight, who surpasses them in strength, bravery and cunning, and whose power always has in it something mysterious, magical, miraculous."
http://www.ardue.org.uk/library/book18/chap03.htmlEDIT: This entire book is a good read, not just the chapter on Superman. I bought a copy pre-internet
