Nietzsche resembles Hartmann in his attacks on socialists and anarchists, with the difference that Hartmann's attitude is here more that of the savant, while Nietzsche has the bad taste to delight in talking about "anarchist dogs," expressing in the same breath his own loathing of the State. Nietzsche further resembles Hartmann in his repeated demonstration of the impossibility of the ideals of equality and of peace, since life is nothing but inequality and war: "What is good? To be brave is good. I do not say, the good cause sanctifies war, but the good war sanctifies every cause." Like his predecessor, he dwells on the necessity of the struggle for power and on the supposed value of war to culture.
In both these authors, comparatively independent as they are, the one a mystical natural philosopher, the other a mystical immoralist, is reflected the all-dominating militarism of the new German Empire. Hartmann approaches on many points the German snobbish national feeling. Nietzsche is opposed to it on principle, as he is to the statesman "who has piled up for the Germans a new tower of Babel, a monster in extent of territory and power and for that reason called great," but something of Bismarck's spirit broods nevertheless over the works of both. As regards the question of war, the only difference between them is that Nietzsche does not desire war for the sake of a fantastic redemption of the world, but in order that manliness may not become extinct.