Nietzsche and other Exponents of Individualism (Illustrated)

Friedrich Nietzsche is a philosopher who astonishes his readers by the boldness with which he rebels against every tradition, tearing down the holiest and dearest things, preaching destruction of all rule, and looking with disdain upon the heap of ruins in which his revolutionary thoughts would leave the world.

For more than a century Germany has been the storm-center of philosophical thought. The commotions that started in the Fatherland reached other countries, France, England, and the United States, after they had lost their force at home. Kant's transcendentalism and Hegel's phenomenalism began to flourish among the English-speaking races after having become almost extinct in the home of their founders. Prof. R. M. Wenley of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., expresses this truth with his native Scotch wit in the statement which I do not hesitate to endorse, that "German professors when they die go to Oxford," and we may add that from Oxford they travel west to settle for a while in Concord, Boston, Washington, or other American cities.

Hegelianism had scarcely died out in the United States when Schopenhauer and Nietzsche began to become fashionable. The influence of the former has been felt in a quiet way for some time while the Nietzsche movement is of more recent date and also of a more violent character.

Nietzsche represents a type of most modern date. His was a genius after the heart of Lombroso. He was eccentric and atypical.