Nietzsche is a nominalist with a vengeance. His philosophy is particularism carried to extremes. There is no unity of existence to him. The God-idea is dead--not only the old metaphysical notion of a God-individual, but also God in the sense of the ultimate ground of being, the supreme norm of the cosmos. Nietzsche's world is split up into particular selves. He does not ask how they originated; he only knows that they are here. Above all, he knows that his own self is here, and there is no bond of sympathy between it and other selves. The higher self is that which assumes dominion over the world. His ideal is brutal strength, his overman the tyrant who tramples under foot his fellowmen. Democracy is an abomination to him, and he despises the gospel of love as it is preached by both Christ and Buddha. This is the key to his anti-moralism and to the doctrine of the autonomy of selfhood. Nietzsche's philosophy might be called philosophical nihilism, if he did not object to the word. He calls it positivism, but it is particularism, or rather an aristocratic individualism which in the domain of thought plays the same role that political nihilism plays in Russia. It would dethrone the hereditary Czar, the ruler by God's grace, but it would not establish a republic. It would set on the throne a ruthless demagogue, a self-made political boss--the overman. It is the philosophy of protest, and Nietzsche is conscious of being Slavic in thought and aspiration. Nor does he forget that his ancestors belonged to the nobility. He claims to have been descended from a Polish nobleman by the name of Niëtzki, a Protestant who came to Germany in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee. Nietzsche's love of Slavism manifested itself in his childhood, for when the news of the fall of Sebastopol became known, Nietzsche, at that time a mere boy, was so dejected that he could not eat and gave expression to his chagrin in mournful strains of verse. He who has faith in truth accepts truth as authority; he who accepts truth as authority recognizes duty; he who recognizes duty beholds a goal of life. He has found a purpose for which life appears worth living, and reaches out beyond the bounds of his narrow individuality into the limitless cosmos. He transcends himself, he grows in truth, he increases in power, he widens in his sympathies. Here we touch upon the God problem. In denning God as the ultimate authority of conduct, we are confronted by the dilemma, Is there, or is there not a norm of morality, a standard of right and wrong, to which the self must submit? And this question is another version of the problem as to the existence of truth. Is there truth which we must heed, or is truth a fiction and is the self not bound to respect anything? We answer this question as to the existence of truth in the affirmative, Nietzsche in the negative.