[7] "Ich bin so gar nicht zum Hassen und zum Feind sein gemacht!"
[8] See, e. g., Leben, I., p. 135, where he speaks of a new "Freigeisterei," denouncing the "libres penseurs" as "unverbesserliche Flachköpfe und Hanswürste," adding, "Sie glauben allesammt noch an's 'Ideal.'"
[9] "Dass das Gewölbe wiederhallt,"—a quotation from Goethe's "Faust."
[10] Reproduced as the frontispiece of this book.
[11] "Ja, ich weiss woher ich stamme!
Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme,
Glühe und verzehr ich mich,
licht wird alles was ich fasse,
Kohle alles was ich lasse:
Flamme bin ich sicherlich!"
[NIETZSCHE'S PREDECESSOR]
Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of Thus Spake Zarathustra and the inventor of the new ideal called the "overman," is commonly regarded as the most extreme egotist, to whom morality is non-existent and who glories in the coming of the day in which a man of his liking—the overman—would live au grand jour. His philosophy is an individualism carried to its utmost extreme, sanctioning egotism, denouncing altruism and establishing the right of the strong to trample the weak under foot. It is little known, however, that he followed another thinker, Johann Caspar Schmidt, whose extreme individualism he adopted. But this forerunner who preached a philosophy of the sovereignty of self and an utter disregard of our neighbors' rights remained unheeded; he lived in obscurity, he died in poverty, and under the pseudonym "Max Stirner" he left behind a book entitled Der Einzige und sein Eigentum.
The historian Lange briefly mentioned him in his History of Materialism, and the novelist John Henry Mackay followed up the reference which led to the discovery of this lonely comet on the philosophical sky.[1]