Is it not an unusual coincidence that Bayreuth, the very hub of Wagner’s musical and of Nietzsche’s intellectual activities, is also the birthplace of a man who is one of Nietzsche’s forerunners, one is tempted to say, his real philosophical progenitor? In the thriving Bavarian village was born, October 25, 1806, Caspar Schmidt, later known to the world as Max Stirner, the author of The Individual and his Property (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Leipsic, 1845), the very gospel of modern philosophical anarchy, and a book which, with Guyau’s system of morals, paved the way for Nietzsche. Stirner, poor, unknown, died in Berlin, June 26, 1856. There is a sympathetic study of his life by John Henry Mackay, the German poet with Scotch blood in his veins. The best single study in the English language on Nietzsche is by Havelock Ellis. This writer hazards the just observation that there was a touch of the “prig” in the philosopher, and that Wagner’s free and easy manners often made him wince. “Your brother with his air of delicate distinction is a most uncomfortable fellow,” Wagner said to Frau Förster-Nietzsche, “one can always see what he is thinking; sometimes he is quite embarrassed at my jokes—and then I crack them more madly than ever.” And the motley crowd that was attracted to Bayreuth filled the exclusive Nietzsche with horror. An aristocrat, a promulgator of an aristocratic philosophy, writers on social science very properly refuse to class this thinker among the leaders of the anarchistic movement—Nietzsche loathed the promiscuous, the popular, in a word, the mob. Wagner was Teutonic (his friend doubted his Teutonism in a memorable passage); he was no longer Hellenic. And he seemed to be going Romeward. It was all too much for the idealist who broke away from his past; in reality, the attempt was made to break with himself. Impending madness was preceded by distressing melancholia. He loved Wagner to the last, and previous to the tragic crisis, Lou Salomé says that he went to Lucerne, and in Triebschen sat and wept at his ineluctable fate. He even wrote after The Wagner Case such a sentiment as this:— “Here, while I am speaking of the recreations of my life, I lack the word to express my gratitude for that which formed my deepest and my heartiest solace. This beyond all doubt was the intimate communion with Richard Wagner. I would give little for the rest of my human relations; at no price would I cut out of my life the days of Triebschen, days of trust, of cheerfulness, of sublime inspirations, of deep moments. I know not what others have gone through with Wagner; our heaven was never traversed by a cloud.”