Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Alexander Tille - 1896.djvu/23

 The same tendencies which in political speculation take the form of theoretical anarchism, prevail, to a smaller extent, in modern ethics, in modern philosophy generally, and, perhaps even in larger measure, in modern religious concepts, in which everybody claims the right to build up for himself a Universe of his own. By Huxley this liberty has been sanctified by the name of Agnosticism.

Nietzsche's mind is as unpolitical as possible. The modern state is for him nothing but a new idol. He does not believe in nations and countries, and is indifferent about any special form of Government, except that he hates from the bottom of his soul democracy as the depth of decadence. In his eyes the teachers of equality are tarantulas, and Huxley's essay On the Natural Inequality of Men would have delighted him. But he pays no special attention to political and social questions. The competition of nations for the surface of the earth is neglected by him entirely, and his few speculations about a further evolution of larger groups of individuals suffer seriously from his apathy towards everything called social. He deals with men almost exclusively as individuals, and has beautiful words on man's moral self-education, on friendship, and on love, but none for labour and its reward. For him the struggle for existence is not the source of all power and efficiency. His ideal is the lonely philosopher, the creator, as he calls him ; and in what he demands from man in this respect he has scarcely been surpassed.

When, about the middle of last century, Lessing and Reimarus had considerably shaken the position of theoretical church doctrines, it did not take long, till, under the influence of the French encyclopaedists, attempts were made to replace them by altogether different concepts. Wieland's philosophical novels and part of Goethe's prose writings led the way.