VI
SPENCER
I
The doctrine of individualism has had altogether too many devotees. Each of them has given it a new dress, motto, attitude, name, or seal, until the very mass of attributes has come to obscure the true nature of the doctrine. All men boast today of their individualism: conservative philosophers in search of theoretical weapons of defense; liberals and liberators who seek to bring free trade and competition under the banner of the struggle for existence; mild socialists, like Fournière, who see no incompatibility between the ideas of collectivism and individualism, and would enthrone Nietzsche among the prophets of socialism; and anarchists, dreamers or actors, who plunder Max Stirner by way of preparing themselves for the great destruction.
In a history of individualism you would find the soldiers of fortune of the Renaissance beside the disheveled philosophers of the Sturm und
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