The German people was doubtless less deeply and universally imbued with this faith than our war-prejudice assumes. But phenomena such as the enormous success of a cheap exposition of it, _Rembrandt als Erzieher_ (1890) by a fervent Bismarckian, and of the comic journal _Simplicissimus_ (founded 1895) devoted to systematic ridicule of the old-fashioned German virtues of tenderness and sympathy, indicated a current of formidable power and compass, which was soon to master all the other affluents of the national stream. But older, and in part foreign, influences concurred to colour and qualify, while they sustained, the Nietzschean influence,--the daemonic power of Carlyle, the iron intensity and masterful reticence of Ibsen. This was the case especially, as is well known, in the drama. Gerhardt Hauptmann, who painted the tragedy of the self-emancipated superman,--as Mr. Shaw about the same time showed us his self-achieved apotheosis,--was no doubt the most commanding (as Mr. Shaw was the most original) figure in the European drama of the early century. In poetry, the contributory forces were still more subtly mingled, and the Nietzschean spirit, which blows where it listeth, often touched men wholly alien from Nietzsche in cast of genius and sometimes stoutly hostile to him. Several of the most illustrious were not Germans at all. Among the younger men who resist, while they betray, his spell, is the most considerable lyric poet of the present generation in Germany. Richard Dehmel's vehement inspiration from the outset provoked comparison with Nietzsche, which he warmly resented. He began, in fact, as a disciple of Verlaine, and we may detect in the unrestraint of his early erotics the example of the French poet's _fureur d'aimer_. But Dehmel's more strongly-built nature, and perhaps the downright vigour of the German language, broke through the tenuities of _la nuance_. It was not the subtle artistry of the Symbolists, but the ethical and intellectual force of the German character, which finally drew into a less anarchic channel the vehement energy of Dehmel. Nietzsche had imagined an ethic of superhuman will 'beyond good and evil'. The poet, replied Dehmel, had indeed to know the passion which transcends good and evil, but he had to know no less the good and evil themselves of the world in and by which common men live. And if he can cry with the egoism of lawless passion, in the _Erloesungen_, 'I will fathom all pleasure to the deepest depths of thirst, ... Resign not pleasure, it waters power',--he can add, in the true spirit of Goethe and of the higher mind of Germany, 'Yet since it also makes slack, turn it into the stuff of duty!'