Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ and the inventor of the new ideal called the "overman," is commonly regarded as the most extreme egotist, to whom morality is non-existent and who glories in the coming of the day in which a man of his liking--the overman--would live au grand jour. His philosophy is an individualism carried to its utmost extreme, sanctioning egotism, denouncing altruism and establishing the right of the strong to trample the weak under foot. It is little known, however, that he followed another thinker, Johann Caspar Schmidt, whose extreme individualism he adopted. But this forerunner who preached a philosophy of the sovereignty of self and an utter disregard of our neighbors' rights remained unheeded; he lived in obscurity, he died in poverty, and under the pseudonym "Max Stirner" he left behind a book entitled _Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_. The historian Lange briefly mentioned him in his _History of Materialism_, and the novelist John Henry Mackay followed up the reference which led to the discovery of this lonely comet on the philosophical sky.[1] The strangest thing about this remarkable book consists in the many coincidences with Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. It is commonly deemed impossible that the famous spokesman of the overman should not have been thoroughly familiar with this failure in the philosophical book market; but while Stirner was forgotten the same ideas transplanted into the volumes of the author of _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ found an echo first in Germany and soon afterwards all over the world.