"W. B. Yeats was an instinctive "aristocrat"; he was also more deeply influenced by Nietzsche‎‎ than any other English language writer. Yet although he was attracted to Nietzsche's elitism in general, Yeats differed from most of the other English-language writers involved in this story in that he remained critical of Nietzsche's central myth, that of the superman. … The clash between Yeats's moral self and aesthetic anti-self is exemplified in his attitude towards the superman. There is, of course, a very close parallel between his heroic ideal and that of Nietzsche, between the Yeatsian hero and the Nietzschean superman. Yeats's hero is more truly akin to Nietzsche's ideal than are the more obviously and superficially Nietzschean superman-types of writers like Jack London. Yeats and Nietzsche both tend to reject "the real world" and its vulgar, democratic ideals; they believe rather in a natural aristocracy of men whose ideals are "not of this world". Both believe in what Nietzsche calls "the eternal second coming" and insist that the heroic personality must respond to tragic knowledge with joy. But although Yeats accepted the idea that the great individual is the protagonist in the drama of history, he remained critical of Nietzsche's superman as such; he saw man through Blake's eyes rather than Nietzsche's, as something to be restored to his former estate rather than "surpassed". Though he deeply admired spiritual heroism of the type represented for him by Nietzsche, and shared Nietzsche‎‎'s ideal of "nobility" … he rejected the arrogance of the superman."