Meanwhile, the reader who cares to go into the matter further will find Nietzsche elbowing other sages in a multitude of places. He himself has testified to his debt to Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle), that great apologist for Napoleon Bonaparte and exponent of the Napoleonic philosophy. "Stendhal," he says, "was one of the happiest accidents of my life.... He is quite priceless, with his penetrating psychologist's eye and his grip upon facts, recalling that of the greatest of all masters of facts (_ex ungue Napoleon_--); and last, but not least, as an _honest_ atheist--one of a species rare and hard to find in France.... Maybe I myself am jealous of Stendhal? He took from me the best of atheistic jokes, that I might best have made: 'the only excuse for God is that He doesn't exist.'"[9] Of his debt to Max Stirner the evidence is less clear, but it has been frequently alleged, and, as Dr. Mügge says, "quite a literature has grown up around the question." Stirner's chief work, "_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_,"[10] was first published in 1844, the year of Nietzsche's birth, and in its strong plea for the emancipation of the individual there are many ideas and even phrases that were later voiced by Nietzsche. Dr. Mügge quotes a few of them: "What is good and what is evil? I myself am my own rule, and I am neither good nor evil. Neither word means anything to me.... Between the two vicissitudes of victory and defeat swings the fate of the struggle--master or slave!... Egoism, not love, must decide." Others will greet the reader of Stirner's book: "As long as you believe in the truth, you do not believe in yourself; you are a servant, a religious man. You alone are the truth.... Whether what I think and do is Christian, what do I care? Whether it is human, liberal, humane, whether unhuman, illiberal, unhumane, what do I ask about that? If only it accomplishes what I want, if only I satisfy myself in it, then overlay it with predicates if you will: it is all one to me...." But, as Dr. J. L. Walker well says, in his introduction to Mr. Byington's English translation, there is a considerable gulf between Stirner and Nietzsche, even here. The former's plea is for absolute liberty for all men, great and small. The latter is for liberty only in the higher castes: the chandala he would keep in chains. Therefore, if Nietzsche actually got anything from Stirner, it certainly did not enter unchanged into the ultimate structure of his system.