Nietzsche is naturally comparable to Machiavelli in that both have an ethic which aims at power and is deliberately anti-Christian, though Nietzsche is more frank in this respect, while Machiavelli was a man of affairs whose opinions were formed by close contact with public business whereas Nietzsche was a professor, an essentially bookish man and a philosopher in conscious opposition to what appeared to be the dominant political and ethical trends of his time.