OF THE GOOD. 



247 



1900), who stands in a certain historical connection 

 with Schopenhauer. From him he adopted the habit 

 of unmeasured denunciation of the views and persons 

 which he opposes, and a fundamental dislike for all 

 that is traditional, conventional, and generally accepted. 

 But whereas the line of Schopenhauer's thought found 

 its consummation and end in his own teaching, beyond 

 which no important step could be taken without 

 abandoning the master's central position, the writings 

 of Nietzsche, through their very absence of consistent 

 reasoning and logical conclusiveness, have acted greatly 

 as stimulants, and certainly have tended to reveal and 

 make plain to ordinary readers the unsatisfactory and 

 lifeless condition of the current philosophy of the day. 

 Moreover Nietzsche has succeeded more than any other 

 contemporary thinker in coining for his ideas watch- 

 words and incisive expressions which have become 



attempted. That he had arrived 

 at this, the sine qua non of all 

 useful speculation, can hardly be 

 maintained even by his greatest 

 admirers, but he was in searcli of 

 it. He belongs to that line of 

 thinkers during the nineteenth 

 century, beginning with Schopen- 

 hauer and represented, in the 

 middle of the century, by Feuer- 

 bach in Germany, by Comte in 

 France, and by Mill and Spencer 

 in England, who had completely 

 broken with that body of traditional 

 Christian thought which lay in 

 the background of the great ideal- 

 istic systems, and contains still, in 

 its core, the basal conceptions of 

 the transcendental and spiritualistic 

 schools, wherever they are to be 

 found. In this quest for a new 

 faith and a firm but novel founda- 

 tion Nietzsche's writings deserve 



to be fully appreciated as a charac- 

 teristic sign of the times. From 

 being extolled mainly by ardent 

 young minds, whom he not 

 infrequently unsettled, and de- 

 nounced by mature thinkers, he 

 has risen to the position of being 

 considered by some as worthy to 

 be placed in the company of the 

 small number of great original 

 thinkers of modern times from 

 which others, such as Lotze, 

 Schleiermacher, and Spencer, have 

 been excluded : thus, e.g., by E. 

 von Aster in the important collec- 

 tion of essays entitled ' Grosse 

 Denker ' (vol. ii.). This con- 

 tains an excellent characteristic of 

 Nietzsche's thought, by Prof. A. 

 Pfander, dwelling mainly upon the 

 successive stages in his mental 

 development. 



