Under an ideal government--which Herbert Spencer defines as a government in which the number of laws has reached an irreducible minimum--such a man would prosper a great deal more than the priest-ridden, creed-barnacled masses about him.[10] In a state wherein communistic society, with its levelling usages and customs, had ceased to exist, and wherein each individual of the master class was permitted to live his life as much as possible in accordance with his own notions of good and bad, such a man would stand forth from the herd in proportion as his instincts were more nearly healthy and infallible than the instincts of the herd. Ideal anarchy, in brief, would insure the success of those men who were wisest mentally and strongest physically, and the race would make rapid progress. It is evident that the communistic and socialistic forms of government at present in fashion in the world oppose such a consummation as often as they facilitate it. Civilization, as we know it, makes more paupers than millionaires, and more cripples than Sandows. Its most conspicuous products, the church and the king, stand unalterably opposed to all progress. Like the frog of the fable, which essayed to climb out of a well, it slips back quite as often as it goes ahead. And for these reasons Nietzsche was an anarchist--in the true meaning of that much-bespattered word--just as Herbert Spencer and Arthur Schopenhauer were anarchists before him. [1] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_" I. [2] "The word _mos_, from signifying what is customary, has come to signify what is right." Sir Wm. Markby: "Elements of Law Considered with Reference to General Principles of Jurisprudence:" pp. 118, 5th ed., London, 1896. [3] In his masterly treatise, "Christian Origins," tr. by David A. Huebsch: New York, 1906. [4] "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_" III. [5] "_Jenseits von Gut und Böse_" § 259. [6] "_Zur Genealogie der Moral_" II, § 11. [7] "_Morgenröte,_" § 112. [8] "_Morgenröte,_" § 112. [9] "It is my experience," said Thomas H. Huxley, "that, aside from a few human affections, the only thing that gives lasting and untainted pleasure in the world, is the pursuit of truth and the destruction of error." See "The Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley," by Leonard Huxley; London, 1900. [10] "Read the suicide tables and see how many despairing men, hope less of keeping their homes together, pay with their lives the toil imposed upon them by squanderers of the public money." Helen Mathers in _P. T. O._, Feb. 9 1907, p. 180. This is one of Tolstoi's chief arguments against all government. IV THE SUPERMAN