Because of this identification, it sometimes becomes difficult to tell exactly where my imagination fills in what were gaps in the documents and in the personal revelations. In some instances, the question will arise: Is this true; did this actually happen? And my answer is that it needed to happen; it needed to happen in the way I tell it or in some similar way, or else nothing can be explained for me. In the last analysis I suppose it will have to be understood that what I tell is the reality for me. For particularly where emotions must be dealt with, there is no finite reality; our idea of actuality always has to come through someone, and this is the reality through me.
NOTHING EVER ENDS, and if we retrace every link in causation, it seems there is nowhere a beginning. But there was a day on which this story began to be known to the world. On that day Judd Steiner, slipping into class a moment late, took a back seat for McKinnon’s lecture in the development of law. Judd sat alone in the rear row, raised a step above the others, and this elevation fitted his inward sense of being beyond all of them.
There was still, from yesterday, a quivering elation, as when you catch your balance on a pitching deck. Not that he had ever for a moment felt in danger of being out of control. No. In the highest moment, the moment of the deed itself, he had been a bit shaken. Artie had been superb.
Judd only wished Artie were here with him now, so they could share a quick wink, listening to McKinnon’s platitudes. At some particularly banal remark he would touch his knee against Artie’s, and Artie would turn his face and wink.
McKinnon was being what the fellows thought was brilliant. He was producing one of his sweeping summaries, casting his eye over the entire structure of the law, presenting it indeed as a construction, just as an algebraic equation is a construction built upon a first premise.
From the early and primitive Hebrew concept of an eye for an eye, McKinnon said—interjecting dryly, “Rather bloodthirsty, these Semitic tribes”—from that early concept to our law of today, was there really a great advance? Instead of an eye, it was the value of an eye, the value of a tooth, the value of a life, that was now exacted from the criminal. And in some cases the ancient primitive code remained intact, a life for a life.
Many of the fellows were making notes—especially those who were taking the Harvard Law entrance tomorrow. Directly in front of Judd, Milt Lewis was feverishly putting it all down, the hairs standing disgustingly on his fleshy, bent neck. Milt had an idea that because this was the last day before the Harvard exams, McKinnon might be giving out hints by purposely lecturing on subjects he knew would appear in the test.
As the professor talked, Judd’s pen too became busy in his notebook. Over and over he drew a hawk. The hawk was streaking down, talons open. . . . Where was Artie? Judd had passed Artie’s house, and driven past the frat, and he had looked around on campus. Surely nothing had gone wrong. Artie was purposely putting him on pins and needles. . . . Judd drew a vulture. The page filled; he turned it and drew a huge, elaborate cross, with an unfurled inscription. In Sanskrit, he wrote, “In Memoriam.” At the base of the cross, in elaborate Old English capitals, he drew his initials: J.S.
Then he glanced through the mullioned window. Artie might pass. He might stroll toward Sleepy Hollow, a few silly flappers tagging onto him. In any case, Artie had better be on hand after the ten-o’clock, as they had agreed. They had everything still to do.
McKinnon had come to a pause; he had lifted up the entire structure of human law and was holding it aloft for them to admire, perhaps not so much the structure itself as his Atlas feat in lifting it. Judd could not help, now, tickling the outstretched arm.
“But granted that the law applies to the ordinary person in society,” Judd said, “how would it apply in the case of the superman? The concept of an Übermensch in itself means that he must be above ordinary society. If he abided by ordinary laws he could never produce the actions that might in the end prove of the greatest benefit to humanity—not that even benefit to humanity should be a criterion.”
McKinnon smiled patronizingly. “By a superman I suppose you mean a powerful historical personality like Napoleon, or others who have, so to speak, taken the law into their own hands.”
Judd was going to interrupt, to debate Napoleon, for wasn’t Napoleon’s failure a proof per se that he was not a true superman? But Milt Lewis, always eager to hitch onto someone else’s idea, had filled in for McKinnon. “Didn’t many of the great American pioneers and industrialists consider themselves above the law?”
“Not exactly,” said McKinnon. “Often such a powerful figure, a conqueror or a revolutionist, considered that he was bringing law to the lawless, or adapting old laws to newer human ways. But always you will find such persons at pains to justify their actions in terms of law, rather than by pretending to be above the law.” And in the grand sweep of history, he pointed out, even these tremendous and commanding personalities were incorporated, for the general concept of right and wrong, of crime and punishment, remained organic with the social order, resisting individualistic innovations.
“In fact that’s a case in point—Crime and Punishment. The hero considered himself a kind of superman, and yet he broke down and yielded to the law,” parroted Milt Lewis, always ready to switch sides.
“But that’s no superman! That’s not the conception!” Judd cried. What was Raskolnikov after all but a weak sentimentalist, full of moral and religious drivel? What was his crime but a petty attempt at theft, motivated by abysmal poverty? Where was the superman conception? Raskolnikov’s was only a crime with a motive—his need for money. All he had done was to rationalize the murder by declaring that his need was greater than that of the miserly old female pawnbroker’s. To be above, beyond mundane conception, a crime had to be without need, without any of the emotional human drives of lust, hatred, greed. It had to be like some force beyond the reach of gravity itself. Then it became a pure action, the action of an absolutely free being—a superman.
Too dense to grasp a concept, they all began gabbling: How could there be such a person? If a person had no motive, then he would commit no action. . . . They didn’t get the concept at all; the whole idea was beyond them. Judd almost found himself yelling out the proof to them—“Look at Artie! Look at me!” But instead, he relished the situation inwardly. This was the true enjoyment. To see things from another area of knowledge, from a fourth dimension which none of them could enter.
“Well, it is an interesting speculation,” McKinnon was saying with his tight little smile; the hour was over. “As you put it, Steiner, it is a pure concept, something in the abstract. However”—he strove for his summarizing line—“a society of supermen would undoubtedly in turn evolve its own laws.”
“Superlaws!” Milt Lewis hawed.
In the corridor, Judd tried to dodge away from Lewis, who was surely going to try to set up a last cram session for tonight. He had almost got out of the Law building when he felt the thick paw on his arm. Always physically touchy, Judd overreacted, wrenching away.
“Say, Junior, how about a little session, going over those notes?” Milton said.
“I never cram before an exam,” Judd stated. “My system is to go out and dissipate.”
Milton made some inane remark about geniuses.
Halfway across to Sleepy Hollow, Judd saw Artie—Artie stretched on his elbow on the grass amidst a group of coeds, who squatted with their legs folded under them. Myra was there and a stupid new little girl, Dorothea, who had a crush on Artie. . . . The ease of Artie, lying there, bantering. Judd felt a surge of envy amounting almost to hatred. Though it was urgent that they
