The nineteenth century is more _animal,_ more subterranean, hateful, realistic, plebeian, and on that very account "better," "more honest," more submissive to "reality" of what kind soever, and _truer_; but weak of will, sad, obscurely exacting and fatalistic. It has no feeling of timidity or reverence, either in the presence of "reason" or the "heart"; thoroughly convinced of the dominion of the desires (Schopenhauer said "Will," but nothing is more characteristic of his philosophy than that it entirely lacks all actual _willing_). Even morality is reduced to an instinct ("Pity"). Auguste Comte is _the continuation of the_ eighteenth _century_ (the dominion of the heart over the head, sensuality in the theory of knowledge, altruistic exaltation). The fact that _science_ has become as sovereign as it is to-day, proves how the nineteenth century has _emancipated itself_ from the dominion of _ideals._ A certain absence of "needs" and wishes makes our scientific curiosity and rigour possible--this is our kind of virtue. Romanticism is the _counterstroke_ of the eighteenth century; a sort of accumulated longing for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of fact, largely mingled with mummery and self-deception: the desire was to represent _strong nature_ and _strong passion_). The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of _theories_ by means of which it may feel its _fatalistic, submission to the empire of facts_ justified. Hegel's success against sentimentality and romantic idealism was already a sign of its fatalistic trend of thought, in its belief that superior reason belongs to the triumphant side, and in its justification of the actual "state" (in the place of "humanity," etc.).--Schopenhauer: we are something foolish, and at the best self-suppressive. The success of determinism, the genealogical derivation of _obligations_ which were formerly held to be absolute, the teaching of environment and adaptation, the reduction of will to a process of reflex movement, the denial of the will as a "working cause"; finally--a real process of re-christening: so little will is observed that the word itself becomes _available_ for another purpose. Further theories: the teaching of _objectivity,_ "will-less" contemplation, as the only road to truth, _as also_ to _beauty_ (also the belief in "genius," in order to have _the right to be submissive_); mechanism, the determinable rigidity of the mechanical process; so-called "Naturalism," the elimination of the choosing, directing, interpreting subject, on principle. Kant, with his "practical reason," with his _moral fanaticism,_ is quite eighteenth century style; still completely outside the historical movement, without any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek philosophy; he is a phantasist of the notion of duty, a sensualist with a hidden leaning to dogmatic pampering.