It is the more to
be wondered at that an evolutionist like Dr. Brandes, in his impatience
at the tardiness of social progress, should lose his philosophic temper
and make common cause with a crack-brained visionary. The kind of
explosive radicalism which Nietschke betrays in his cynical questions
and explanations is no evidence of profundity or sagacity, but is the
equivalent of the dynamiter's activity, transferred to the world of
thought. His pretended re-investigation of the foundations of the moral
sentiments reminds one of the mud geysers of the Yellowstone, which
break out periodically and envelop everything within reach in an
indeterminate shower of mud. To me there is more of vanity than of
philosophic acumen in his onslaught on well-nigh all human institutions.
He would, like Ibsen, no doubt,
"Place 'neath the ark the torpedo most cheerfully;"
but torpedoes of his making would scarcely do the ark much harm. They
have not the explosive power of Ibsen's. There are in every age men who,
unable to achieve the fame of Dinocrates, who built the temple of the
Ephesian Diana, aspire to that of Herostratos, who destroyed it.
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