And “let no one deceive himself,” writes an intelligent observer of the times, “the spirit of our time is attuned to _Nietzsche’s_ idea.” Consciously or unconsciously this sentiment dominates more minds than many a man learned in the wisdom of the schools may dream of. Did _Nietzsche_ create this spirit? Certainly not: he grew out of it, he has only given it a philosophical setting. _Nietzsche_ would never have caused that tremendous sensation, never have gathered around him his enthusiastic followers, had not the soil been prepared. As it was, he appeared to “his” men as the Messiah “in the fulness of time.” He, too, in his own way “loosened the tongue of the dumb and opened the eyes of the blind.” The veiled anti-Christian spirit, the unconscious religious and ethical nihilism, which no one before dared profess openly, though it was hatching in the minds, now had found its “master,” its “scientific system” (_Von Grotthuss_, Tuermer, VII, 1905, 79). It is, asserts _Wundt_, “the new ideal of free personality, dependent on precarious moods and chance influences, that has found in _Nietzsche’s_ philosophy a fantastic expression” (Ethik, ed. 3. 1905, p. 522). The Autonomous Man. Now we have a clearer idea of modern freedom. It is known as autonomism. The individual wants to be a law to himself, his own court of last appeal; he wants to develop his personality, feeling, desires, and thought, independently of all authority. Too long, it is said, have man’s aspirations been directed upward, away from things, of this world, to a supernatural world. Religion and Church seek to determine his thought and desire, to subject him to dogma. Too long has he clung like a child to the apron-strings of authority. Man has at last awoken to self-consciousness and to a sense of his own dignity, after a period of estrangement, so to say, from himself; he has become himself again, as the poet sang when the century of the “illuminati” was closing: “How beautiful, with palm of victory, O man, thou standest at the century’s close, The mightiest son thy Time has given birth, By reason free, by law and precept strong, Alike in meekness great and treasure rich, So long unknown concealed within thy breast.”