The time has already come when “the rays of thought that dawned upon the mountain-tops” are descending into the valley. The Twenty-second Convention of German Free-religionists, at Goerlitz, at the end of May, 1907, passed this resolution: “The Convention sees one of its chief tasks in the alliance of all anti-clericals and free-thinkers, and tries by united effort to obtain this common end and interest by promoting culture, liberty of mind, and humanitarianism.” There was, moreover, taken up for discussion the thesis: “Free-religionists reject the teaching that declares man lost by original sin, unable to raise himself of his own strength and reason, that directs him to revelation, redemption, and grace from above.” This view of the world finds its most characteristic expression in _pantheism_, which, though expressed in various and often fantastic forms, is eminently the religion of modern man. From this gloomy depth of autotheism the apotheosis of man and his earthly life, the modern consciousness of freedom, draws its strength and determination. To find this modern view of man expressed in the language of consistent radicalism, let us hear _Fr. Nietzsche_, the most modern of all philosophers. His ideal is the transcendental man, who knows that God is dead, that now there is no bar to stepping forth in unrestricted freedom to superhuman greatness and independence. To this “masterman,” who deems himself superior to others, everything is licit that serves his egotism and will, everything that will promote his interest to the disadvantage of the rabble; probity is cowardice! “But now this god is dead. Ye superior men, this god was your greatest danger.” Thus spoke Zarathustra. “Only since this god is buried do you begin to rise. Now at length the great Noon is in its zenith. Now the superior man becomes master. Onward and upward, then, ye superior men! At last the mountain of man’s future is in travail. God is dead; let the superior man arise and live.” (Also sprach Zarathustra, W. W. VI, 418.) And, in the consciousness that the Christian religion condemns this self-exaltation, he breaks out in this blasphemous charge: “I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great internal corruption.... I call it the one immortal, disgraceful, blot on mankind” (Antichrist, W. W. VIII, 313). This is independent humanity in the cloak of fanaticism. _Nietzsche_ has carried the modern view of the world to its final consequences; the autonomous man has developed into the god-like superman who carries into effect the behest: Ye shall be as gods; his code of ethics is that of the autocrat who is above the notions of good and bad.