The Ego and His Own
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Title: The Ego and His Own
Author: Max Stirner
Translator: Steven T. Byington
Release date: December 5, 2010 [eBook #34580]
Most recently updated: February 18, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EGO AND HIS OWN ***
THE EGO AND HIS
OWN
BY
MAX STIRNER
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
STEVEN T. BYINGTON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
J. L. WALKER
NEW YORK
BENJ. R. TUCKER, PUBLISHER
1907
Copyright. 1907, by
BENJAMIN R. TUCKER
TO MY SWEETHEART
MARIE DÄHNHARDT
CONTENTS
PAGE
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION xii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE xix
ALL THINGS ARE NOTHING TO ME 3
PART FIRST: _MAN_ 7
I.--A HUMAN LIFE 9
II.--MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 17
I.--THE ANCIENTS 17
II.--THE MODERNS 30
§ 1.--THE SPIRIT 34
§ 2.--THE POSSESSED 42
§ 3.--THE HIERARCHY 85
III.--THE FREE 127
§ 1.--POLITICAL LIBERALISM 128
§ 2.--SOCIAL LIBERALISM 152
§ 3.--HUMANE LIBERALISM 163
PART SECOND: _I_ 201
I.--OWNNESS 203
II.--THE OWNER 225
I.--MY POWER 242
II.--MY INTERCOURSE 275
III.--MY SELF-ENJOYMENT 425
III.--THE UNIQUE ONE 484
INDEX 491
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE
For more than twenty years I have entertained the design of publishing
an English translation of "_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_." When I
formed this design, the number of English-speaking persons who had ever
heard of the book was very limited. The memory of Max Stirner had been
virtually extinct for an entire generation. But in the last two decades
there has been a remarkable revival of interest both in the book and in
its author. It began in this country with a discussion in the pages of
the Anarchist periodical, "Liberty," in which Stirner's thought was
clearly expounded and vigorously championed by Dr. James L. Walker, who
adopted for this discussion the pseudonym "Tak Kak." At that time Dr.
Walker was the chief editorial writer for the Galveston "News." Some
years later he became a practising physician in Mexico, where he died in
1904. A series of essays which he began in an Anarchist periodical,
"Egoism," and which he lived to complete, was published after his death
in a small volume, "The Philosophy of Egoism." It is a very able and
convincing exposition of Stirner's teachings, and almost the only one
that exists in the English language. But the chief instrument in the
revival of Stirnerism was and is the German poet, John Henry Mackay.
Very early in his career he met Stirner's name in Lange's "History of
Materialism," and was moved thereby to read his book. The work made such
an impression on him that he resolved to devote a portion of his life to
the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the lost and forgotten genius.
Through years of toil and correspondence and travel, and triumphing over
tremendous obstacles, he carried his task to completion, and his
biography of Stirner appeared in Berlin in 1898. It is a tribute to the
thoroughness of Mackay's work that since its publication not one
important fact about Stirner has been discovered by anybody. During his
years of investigation Mackay's advertising for information had created
a new interest in Stirner, which was enhanced by the sudden fame of the
writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, an author whose intellectual kinship
with Stirner has been a subject of much controversy. "_Der Einzige_,"
previously obtainable only in an expensive form, was included in Philipp
Reclam's Universal-Bibliothek, and this cheap edition has enjoyed a wide
and ever-increasing circulation. During the last dozen years the book
has been translated twice into French, once into Italian, once into
Russian, and possibly into other languages. The Scandinavian critic,
Brandes, has written on Stirner. A large and appreciative volume,
entitled "_L'Individualisme Anarchiste: Max Stirner_," from the pen of
Prof. Victor Basch, of the University of Rennes, has appeared in Paris.
Another large and sympathetic volume, "Max Stirner," written by Dr.
Anselm Ruest, has been published very recently in Berlin. Dr. Paul
Eltzbacher, in his work, "_Der Anarchismus_," gives a chapter to
Stirner, making him one of the seven typical Anarchists, beginning with
William Godwin and ending with Tolstoi, of whom his book treats. There
is hardly a notable magazine or a review on the Continent that has not
given at least one leading article to the subject of Stirner. Upon the
initiative of Mackay and with the aid of other admirers a suitable stone
has been placed above the philosopher's previously-neglected grave, and
a memorial tablet upon the house in Berlin where he died in 1856; and
this spring another is to be placed upon the house in Bayreuth where he
was born in 1806. As a result of these various efforts, and though but
little has been written about Stirner in the English language, his name
is now known at least to thousands in America and England where formerly
it was known only to hundreds. Therefore conditions are now more
favorable for the reception of this volume than they were when I formed
the design of publishing it, more than twenty years ago.
The problem of securing a reasonably good translation (for in the case
of a work presenting difficulties so enormous it was idle to hope for an
adequate translation) was finally solved by entrusting the task to
Steven T. Byington, a scholar of remarkable attainments, whose specialty
is philology, and who is also one of the ablest workers in the
propaganda of Anarchism. But, for further security from error, it was
agreed with Mr. Byington that his translation should have the benefit of
revision by Dr. Walker, the most thorough American student of Stirner,
and by Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm, who are not only
sympathetic with Stirner, but familiar with the history of his time, and
who enjoy a knowledge of English and German that makes it difficult to
decide which is their native tongue. It was also agreed that, upon any
point of difference between the translator and his revisers which
consultation might fail to solve, the publisher should decide. This
method has been followed, and in a considerable number of instances it
has fallen to me to make a decision. It is only fair to say, therefore,
that the responsibility for special errors and imperfections properly
rests on my shoulders, whereas, on the other hand, the credit for
whatever general excellence the translation may possess belongs with the
same propriety to Mr. Byington and his coadjutors. One thing is certain:
its defects are due to no lack of loving care and pains. And I think I
may add with confidence, while realizing fully how far short of
perfection it necessarily falls, that it may safely challenge comparison
with the translations that have been made into other languages.
In particular, I am responsible for the admittedly erroneous rendering
of the title. "The Ego and His Own" is not an exact English equivalent
of "_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_." But then, there is no exact
English equivalent. Perhaps the nearest is "The Unique One and His
Property." But the unique one is not strictly the _Einzige_, for
uniqueness connotes not only singleness but an admirable singleness,
while Stirner's _Einzigkeit_ is admirable in his eyes only as such, it
being no part of the purpose of his book to distinguish a particular
_Einzigkeit_ as more excellent than another. Moreover, "The Unique One
and His Property" has no graces to compel our forgiveness of its slight
inaccuracy. It is clumsy and unattractive. And the same objections may
be urged with still greater force against all the other renderings that
have been suggested,--"The Single One and His Property," "The Only One
and His Property," "The Lone One and His Property," "The Unit and His
Property," and, last and least and worst, "The Individual and His
Prerogative." "The Ego and His Own," on the other hand, if not a precise
rendering, is at least an excellent title in itself; excellent by its
euphony, its monosyllabic incisiveness, and its telling--_Einzigkeit_.
Another strong argument in its favor is the emphatic correspondence of
the phrase "his own" with Mr. Byington's renderings of the kindred
words, _Eigenheit_ and _Eigner_. Moreover, no reader will be led astray
who bears in mind Stirner's distinction: "I am not an ego along with
other egos, but the sole ego; I am unique." And, to help the reader to
bear this in mind, the various renderings of the word _Einzige_ that
occur through the volume are often accompanied by foot-notes showing
that, in the German, one and the same word does duty for all.
If the reader finds the first quarter of this book somewhat forbidding
and obscure, he is advised nevertheless not to falter. Close attention
will master almost every difficulty, and, if he will but give it, he
will find abundant reward in what follows. For his guidance I may
specify one defect in the author's style. When controverting a view
opposite to his own, he seldom distinguishes with sufficient clearness
his statement of his own view from his re-statement of the antagonistic
view. As a result, the reader is plunged into deeper and deeper
mystification, until something suddenly reveals the cause of his
misunderstanding, after which he must go back and read again. I
therefore put him on his guard. The other difficulties lie, as a rule,
in the structure of the work. As to these I can hardly do better than
translate the following passage from Prof. Basch's book, alluded to
above: "There is nothing more disconcerting than the first approach to
this strange work. Stirner does not condescend to inform us as to the
architecture of his edifice, or furnish us the slightest guiding thread.
The apparent divisions of the book are few and misleading. From the
first page to the last a _unique_ thought circulates, but it divides
itself among an infinity of vessels and arteries in each of which runs a
blood so rich in ferments that one is tempted to describe them all.
There is no progress in the development, and the repetitions are
innumerable.... The reader who is not deterred by this oddity, or rather
absence, of composition gives proof of genuine intellectual courage. At
first one seems to be confronted with a collection of essays strung
together, with a throng of aphorisms.... But, if you read this book
several times; if, after having penetrated the intimacy of each of its
parts, you then traverse it as a whole,--gradually the fragments weld
themselves together, and Stirner's thought is revealed in all its unity,
in all its force, and in all its depth."
A word about the dedication. Mackay's investigations have brought to
light that Marie Daehnhardt had nothing whatever in common with Stirner,
and so was unworthy of the honor conferred upon her. She was no
_Eigene_. I therefore reproduce the dedication merely in the interest of
historical accuracy.
Happy as I am in the appearance of this book, my joy is not unmixed with
sorrow. The cherished project was as dear to the heart of Dr. Walker as
to mine, and I deeply grieve that he is no longer with us to share our
delight in the fruition. Nothing, however, can rob us of the masterly
introduction that he wrote for this volume (in 1903, or perhaps
earlier), from which I will not longer keep the reader. This
introduction, no more than the book itself, shall that _Einzige_,
Death, make his _Eigentum_.
_February, 1907._
B. R. T.
INTRODUCTION
Fifty years sooner or later can make little difference in the case of a
book so revolutionary as this.
It saw the light when a so-called revolutionary movement was preparing
in men's minds, which agitation was, however, only a disturbance due to
desires to participate in government, and to govern and to be governed,
in a manner different to that which prevails. The "revolutionists" of
1848 were bewitched with an idea. They were not at all the masters of
ideas. Most of those who since that time have prided themselves upon
being revolutionists have been and are likewise but the bondmen of an
idea,--that of the different lodgment of authority.
The temptation is, of course, present to attempt an explanation of the
central thought of this work; but such an effort appears to be
unnecessary to one who has the volume in his hand. The author's care in
illustrating his meaning shows that he realized how prone the possessed
man is to misunderstand whatever is not moulded according to the
fashions in thinking. The author's learning was considerable, his
command of words and ideas may never be excelled by another, and he
judged it needful to develop his argument in manifold ways. So those who
enter into the spirit of it will scarcely hope to impress others with
the same conclusion in a more summary manner. Or, if one might deem that
possible after reading Stirner, still one cannot think that it could be
done so surely. The author has made certain work of it, even though he
has to wait for his public; but still, the reception of the book by its
critics amply proves the truth of the saying that one can give another
arguments, but not understanding. The system-makers and
system-believers thus far cannot get it out of their heads that any
discourse about the nature of an ego must turn upon the common
characteristics of egos, to make a systematic scheme of what they share
as a generality. The critics inquire what kind of man the author is
talking about. They repeat the question: What does he believe in? They
fail to grasp the purport of the recorded answer: "I believe in myself";
which is attributed to a common soldier long before the time of Stirner.
They ask, What is the principle of the self-conscious egoist,--the
_Einzige_? To this perplexity Stirner says: Change the question; put
"who?" instead of "what?" and an answer can then be given by naming him!
This, of course, is too simple for persons governed by ideas, and for
persons in quest of new governing ideas. They wish to classify the man.
Now, that in me which you can classify is not my distinguishing self.
"Man" is the horizon or zero of my existence as an individual. Over that
I rise as I can. At least I am something more than "man in general."
Pre-existing worship of ideals and disrespect for self had made of the
ego at the very most a Somebody, oftener an empty vessel to be filled
with the grace or the leavings of a tyrannous doctrine; thus a Nobody.
Stirner dispels the morbid subjection, and recognizes each one who knows
and feels himself as his own property to be neither humble Nobody nor
befogged Somebody, but henceforth flat-footed and level-headed Mr.
Thisbody, who has a character and good pleasure of his own, just as he
has a name of his own.
The critics who attacked this work and were answered in the author's
minor writings, rescued from oblivion by John Henry Mackay, nearly all
display the most astonishing triviality and impotent malice.
We owe to Dr. Eduard von Hartmann the unquestionable service which he
rendered by directing attention to this book in his "_Philosophie des
Unbewussten_," the first edition of which was published in 1869, and in
other writings. I do not begrudge Dr. von Hartmann the liberty of
criticism which he used; and I think the admirers of Stirner's teaching
must quite appreciate one thing which Von Hartmann did at a much later
date. In "_Der Eigene_" of August 10, 1896, there appeared a letter
written by him and giving, among other things, certain data from which
to judge that, when Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his later essays,
Nietzsche was not ignorant of Stirner's book.
Von Hartmann wishes that Stirner had gone on and developed his
principle. Von Hartmann suggests that you and I are really the same
spirit, looking out through two pairs of eyes. Then, one may reply, I
need not concern myself about you, for in myself I have--us; and at that
rate Von Hartmann is merely accusing himself of inconsistency: for, when
Stirner wrote this book, Von Hartmann's spirit was writing it; and it is
just the pity that Von Hartmann in his present form does not indorse
what he said in the form of Stirner,--that Stirner was different from
any other man; that his ego was not Fichte's transcendental generality,
but "this transitory ego of flesh and blood." It is not as a generality
that you and I differ, but as a couple of facts which are not to be
reasoned into one. "I" is somewise Hartmann, and thus Hartmann is "I";
but I am not Hartmann, and Hartmann is not--I. Neither am I the "I" of
Stirner; only Stirner himself was Stirner's "I." Note how comparatively
indifferent a matter it is with Stirner that one is an ego, but how
all-important it is that one be a self-conscious ego,--a self-conscious,
self-willed person.
Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting from
self-interested motives, but clothing these in various garbs. Watch
those people closely in the light of Stirner's teaching, and they seem
to be hypocrites, they have so many good moral and religious plans of
which self-interest is at the end and bottom; but they, we may believe,
do not know that this is more than a coincidence.
In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty.
His interest in the practical development of egoism to the dissolution
of the State and the union of free men is clear and pronounced, and
harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of Josiah Warren.
Allowing for difference of temperament and language, there is a
substantial agreement between Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free,
and sees in every increase of the number of free people and their
intelligence an auxiliary force against the oppressor. But, on the other
hand, will any one for a moment seriously contend that Nietzsche and
Proudhon march together in general aim and tendency,--that they have
anything in common except the daring to profane the shrine and sepulchre
of superstition?
Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of Stirner, and, owing
to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's writings, it has occurred that
one of his books has been supposed to contain more sense than it really
does--so long as one had read only the extracts.
Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read everything,
and not read Stirner?
But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope performance is unlike
an algebraic equation.
Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all men and
women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. Democracy to him was
sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty.
Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon democracy
because it is not aristocratic. He is predatory to the point of
demanding that those who must succumb to feline rapacity shall be taught
to submit with resignation. When he speaks of "Anarchistic dogs"
scouring the streets of great civilized cities, it is true, the context
shows that he means the Communists; but his worship of Napoleon, his
bathos of anxiety for the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe
for thousands of years, his idea of treating women in the oriental
fashion, show that Nietzsche has struck out in a very old path--doing
the apotheosis of tyranny. We individual egoistic Anarchists, however,
may say to the Nietzsche school, so as not to be misunderstood: We do
not ask of the Napoleons to have pity, nor of the predatory barons to
do justice. They will find it convenient for their own welfare to make
terms with men who have learned of Stirner what a man can be who
worships nothing, bears allegiance to nothing. To Nietzsche's
rhodomontade of eagles in baronial form, born to prey on industrial
lambs, we rather tauntingly oppose the ironical question: Where are your
claws? What if the "eagles" are found to be plain barnyard fowls on
which more silly fowls have fastened steel spurs to hack the victims,
who, however, have the power to disarm the sham "eagles" between two
suns?
Stirner shows that men make their tyrants as they make their gods, and
his purpose is to unmake tyrants.
Nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant.
In style Stirner's work offers the greatest possible contrast to the
puerile, padded phraseology of Nietzsche's "_Zarathustra_" and its false
imagery. Who ever imagined such an unnatural conjuncture as an eagle
"toting" a serpent in friendship? which performance is told of in bare
words, but nothing comes of it. In Stirner we are treated to an
enlivening and earnest discussion addressed to serious minds, and every
reader feels that the word is to him, for his instruction and benefit,
so far as he has mental independence and courage to take it and use it.
The startling intrepidity of this book is infused with a whole-hearted
love for all mankind, as evidenced by the fact that the author shows not
one iota of prejudice or any idea of division of men into ranks. He
would lay aside government, but would establish any regulation deemed
convenient, and for this only _our_ convenience is consulted. Thus there
will be general liberty only when the disposition toward tyranny is met
by intelligent opposition that will no longer submit to such a rule.
Beyond this the manly sympathy and philosophical bent of Stirner are
such that rulership appears by contrast a vanity, an infatuation of
perverted pride. We know not whether we more admire our author or more
love him.
Stirner's attitude toward woman is not special. She is an individual if
she can be, not handicapped by anything he says, feels, thinks, or
plans. This was more fully exemplified in his life than even in this
book; but there is not a line in the book to put or keep woman in an
inferior position to man, neither is there anything of caste or
aristocracy in the book.
Likewise there is nothing of obscurantism or affected mysticism about
it. Everything in it is made as plain as the author could make it. He
who does not so is not Stirner's disciple nor successor nor co-worker.
Some one may ask: How does plumb-line Anarchism train with the unbridled
egoism proclaimed by Stirner? The plumb-line is not a fetish, but an
intellectual conviction, and egoism is a universal fact of animal life.
Nothing could seem clearer to my mind than that the reality of egoism
must first come into the consciousness of men, before we can have the
unbiased Einzige in place of the prejudiced biped who lends himself to
the support of tyrannies a million times stronger over me than the
natural self-interest of any individual. When plumb-line doctrine is
misconceived as duty between unequal-minded men,--as a religion of
humanity,--it is indeed the confusion of trying to read without knowing
the alphabet and of putting philanthropy in place of contract. But, if
the plumb-line be scientific, it is or can be my possession, my
property, and I choose it for its use--when circumstances admit of its
use. I do not feel bound to use it because it is scientific, in building
my house; but, as my will, to be intelligent, is not to be merely
wilful, the adoption of the plumb-line follows the discarding of
incantations. There is no plumb-line without the unvarying lead at the
end of the line; not a fluttering bird or a clawing cat.
On the practical side of the question of egoism _versus_ self-surrender
and for a trial of egoism in politics, this may be said: the belief that
men not moved by a sense of duty will be unkind or unjust to others is
but an indirect confession that those who hold that belief are greatly
interested in having others live for them rather than for themselves.
But I do not ask or expect so much. I am content if others individually
live for themselves, and thus cease in so many ways to act in opposition
to my living for myself,--to our living for ourselves.
If Christianity has failed to turn the world from evil, it is not to be
dreamed that rationalism of a pious moral stamp will succeed in the same
task. Christianity, or all philanthropic love, is tested in
non-resistance. It is a dream that example will change the hearts of
rulers, tyrants, mobs. If the extremest self-surrender fails, how can a
mixture of Christian love and worldly caution succeed? This at least
must be given up. The policy of Christ and Tolstoi can soon be tested,
but Tolstoi's belief is not satisfied with a present test and failure.
He has the infatuation of one who persists because this _ought_ to be.
The egoist who thinks "I should like this to be" still has the sense to
perceive that it is not accomplished by the fact of some believing and
submitting, inasmuch as others are alert to prey upon the unresisting.
The Pharaohs we have ever with us.
Several passages in this most remarkable book show the author as a man
full of sympathy. When we reflect upon his deliberately expressed
opinions and sentiments,--his spurning of the sense of moral obligation
as the last form of superstition,--may we not be warranted in thinking
that the total disappearance of the sentimental supposition of duty
liberates a quantity of nervous energy for the purest generosity and
clarifies the intellect for the more discriminating choice of objects of
merit?
J. L. WALKER.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
If the style of this book is found unattractive, it will show that I
have done my work ill and not represented the author truly; but, if it
is found odd, I beg that I may not bear all the blame. I have simply
tried to reproduce the author's own mixture of colloquialisms and
technicalities, and his preference for the precise expression of his
thought rather than the word conventionally expected.
One especial feature of the style, however, gives the reason why this
preface should exist. It is characteristic of Stirner's writing that the
thread of thought is carried on largely by the repetition of the same
word in a modified form or sense. That connection of ideas which has
guided popular instinct in the formation of words is made to suggest the
line of thought which the writer wishes to follow. If this echoing of
words is missed, the bearing of the statements on each other is in a
measure lost; and, where the ideas are very new, one cannot afford to
throw away any help in following their connection. Therefore, where a
useful echo (and there are few useless ones in the book) could not be
reproduced in English, I have generally called attention to it in a
note. My notes are distinguished from the author's by being enclosed in
brackets.
One or two of such coincidences of language, occurring in words which
are prominent throughout the book, should be borne constantly in mind as
a sort of _Keri perpetuum_: for instance, the identity in the original
of the words "spirit" and "mind," and of the phrases "supreme being" and
"highest essence." In such cases I have repeated the note where it
seemed that such repetition might be absolutely necessary, but have
trusted the reader to carry it in his head where a failure of his memory
would not be ruinous or likely.
For the same reason,--that is, in order not to miss any indication of
the drift of the thought,--I have followed the original in the very
liberal use of italics, and in the occasional eccentric use of a
punctuation mark, as I might not have done in translating a work of a
different nature.
I have set my face as a flint against the temptation to add notes that
were not part of the translation. There is no telling how much I might
have enlarged the book if I had put a note at every sentence which
deserved to have its truth brought out by fuller elucidation,--or even
at every one which I thought needed correction. It might have been
within my province, if I had been able, to explain all the allusions to
contemporary events, but I doubt whether any one could do that properly
without having access to the files of three or four well-chosen German
newspapers of Stirner's time. The allusions are clear enough, without
names and dates, to give a vivid picture of certain aspects of German
life then. The tone of some of them is explained by the fact that the
book was published under censorship.
I have usually preferred, for the sake of the connection, to translate
Biblical quotations somewhat as they stand in the German, rather than
conform them altogether to the English Bible. I am sometimes quite as
near the original Greek as if I had followed the current translation.
Where German books are referred to, the pages cited are those of the
German editions even when (usually because of some allusions in the
text) the titles of the books are translated.
STEVEN T. BYINGTON.
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
All Things are Nothing to Me[1]
What is not supposed, to be my concern[2]! First and foremost, the Good
Cause,[3] then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom,
of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my
fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other
causes. Only _my_ cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist
who thinks only of himself!"
Let us look and see, then, how they manage _their_ concerns--they for
whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.
You have much profound information to give about God, and have for
thousands of years "searched the depths of the Godhead," and looked into
its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to
"God's cause," which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the
Lord's doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of
us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are
shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God's cause
is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be
called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are
shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in
furthering an alien cause as his own. "Should God take up the cause of
truth if he were not himself truth?" He cares only for _his_ cause, but,
because he is all in all, therefore all is _his_ cause! But we, we are
not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible;
therefore we must "serve a higher cause."--Now it is clear, God cares
only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of
himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not
well-pleasing to him! He serves no higher person, and satisfies only
himself. His cause is--a purely egoistic cause.
How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause
that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind
looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind
only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations
and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they
have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of
history in gratitude. Is not mankind's cause--a purely egoistic cause?
I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us
and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with
its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth,
freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow
enthusiastic and serve them?
They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage.
Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The
patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want;
what does the nation care for that? Joy the manure of their corpses the
nation comes to "its bloom!" The individuals have died "for the great
cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after
them and--has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he
not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself
for his people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself
not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will
take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but
himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and
tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of "his people."
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets
on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of
further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist
myself.
God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but
themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for _myself_, who am
equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the
only one.[4]
If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves
to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that _I_ shall still less
lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness."
I am nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing,
the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You
think at least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's
bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither
has meaning for me.
The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the
divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely
what is _mine_, and it is not a general one, but is--_unique_,[5] as I
am unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself!
Part First
Man
_Man is to man the supreme being_, says Feuerbach.
_Man has just been discovered_, says Burno Bauer.
Then let us take a more careful look at this supreme being and
this new discovery.
I
A HUMAN LIFE
From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man
seeks to find out _himself_ and get hold of _himself_ out of its
confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley
mixture.
But everything that comes in contact with the child defends itself in
turn against his attacks, and asserts its own persistence.
Accordingly, because each thing _cares for itself_ and at the same time
comes into constant collision with other things, the _combat_ of
self-assertion is unavoidable.
_Victory_ or _defeat_--between the two alternatives the fate of the
combat wavers. The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the
_subject_: the former exercises _supremacy_ and "rights of supremacy,"
the latter fulfils in awe and deference the "duties of a subject."
But both remain _enemies_, and always lie in wait: they watch for each
other's _weaknesses_--children for those of their parents and parents
for those of their children (_e. g._ their fear); either the stick
conquers the man, or the man conquers the stick.
In childhood liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the
bottom of things, to get at what is "back of" things; therefore we spy
out the weak points of everybody, for which, it is well known, children
have a sure instinct; therefore we like to smash things, like to rummage
through hidden corners, pry after what is covered up or out of the way,
and try what we can do with everything. When we once get at what is back
of the things, we know we are safe; when, _e. g._, we have got at the
fact that the rod is too weak against our obduracy, then we no longer
fear it, "have outgrown it."
Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our--obduracy, our obdurate
courage. By degrees we get at what is back of everything that was
mysterious and uncanny to us, the mysteriously-dreaded might of the rod,
the father's stern look, etc., and back of all we find our--ataraxy,
_i. e._ imperturbability, intrepidity, our counter force, our odds of
strength, our invincibility. Before that which formerly inspired in us
fear and deference we no longer retreat shyly, but take _courage_. Back
of everything we find our _courage_, our superiority; back of the sharp
command of parents and authorities stands, after all, our courageous
choice or our outwitting shrewdness. And the more we feel ourselves, the
smaller appears that which before seemed invincible. And what is our
trickery, shrewdness, courage, obduracy? What else but--_mind!_[6]
Through a considerable time we are spared a fight that is so exhausting
later--the fight against _reason_. The fairest part of childhood passes
without the necessity of coming to blows with reason. We care nothing
at all about it, do not meddle with it, admit no reason. We are not to
be persuaded to anything by _conviction_, and are deaf to good
arguments, principles, etc.; on the other hand, coaxing, punishment, and
the like are hard for us to resist.
This stern life-and-death combat with _reason_ enter later, and begins a
new phase; in childhood we scamper about without racking our brains
much.
_Mind_ is the name of the _first_ self-discovery, the first
undeification of the divine, _i. e._ of the uncanny, the spooks, the
"powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now
defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are
_mind_.
Now for the first time we see that hitherto we have not looked at the
world _intelligently_ at all, but only stared at it.
We exercise the beginnings of our strength on _natural powers_. We defer
to parents as a natural power; later we say: Father and mother are to be
forsaken, all natural power to be counted as riven. They are vanquished.
For the rational, _i. e._ "intellectual" man there is no family as a
natural power; a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its
appearance. If these are "born again" as _intellectual, rational
powers_, they are no longer at all what they were before.
And not only parents, but _men in general_, are conquered by the young
man; they are no hindrance to him, and are no longer regarded; for now
he says: One must obey God rather than men.
From this high standpoint everything "_earthly_" recedes into
contemptible remoteness; for the standby point is--the _heavenly_.
The attitude is now altogether reversed; the youth takes up an
_intellectual_ position, while the boy, who did not yet feel himself as
mind, grew up in mindless learning. The former does not try to get hold
of _things_ (_e. g._ to get into his head the _data_ of history), but of
the _thoughts_ that lie hidden in things, and so, _e. g._, of the
_spirit_ of history. On the other hand, the boy understands
_connections_ no doubt, but not ideas, the spirit; therefore he strings
together whatever can be learned, without proceeding _a priori_ and
theoretically, _i. e._ without looking for ideas.
As in childhood one had to overcome the resistance of the _laws of the
world_, so now in everything that he proposes he is met by an objection
of the mind, of reason, of his _own conscience_. "That is unreasonable,
unchristian, unpatriotic," and the like, cries conscience to us,
and--frightens us away from it. Not the might of the avenging Eumenides,
not Poseidon's wrath, not God, far as he sees the hidden, not the
father's rod of punishment, do we fear, but--_conscience_.
We "run after our thoughts" now, and follow their commands just as
before we followed parental, human ones. Our course of action is
determined by our thoughts (ideas, conceptions, _faith_) as it is in
childhood by the commands of our parents.
For all that, we were already thinking when we were children, only our
thoughts were not fleshless, abstract, _absolute, i. e._ NOTHING BUT
THOUGHTS, a heaven in themselves, a pure world of thought, _logical_
thoughts.
On the contrary, they had been only thoughts that we had about a
_thing_; we thought of the thing so or so. Thus we may have thought "God
made the world that we see there," but we did not think of ("search")
the "depths of the Godhead itself"; we may have thought "that is the
truth about the matter," but we did not think of Truth itself, nor unite
into one sentence "God is truth." The "depths of the Godhead, who is
truth," we did not touch. Over such purely logical, _i. e._ theological
questions, "What is truth?" Pilate does not stop, though he does not
therefore hesitate to ascertain in an individual case "what truth there
is in the thing," _i. e._ whether the _thing_ is true.
Any thought bound to a _thing_ is not yet _nothing but a thought_,
absolute thought.
To bring to light _the pure thought_, or to be of its party, is the
delight of youth; and all the shapes of light in the world of thought,
like truth, freedom, humanity, Man, etc., illumine and inspire the
youthful soul.
But, when the spirit is recognized as the essential thing, it still
makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore one
seeks to become rich in spirit; the spirit wants to spread out so as to
found its empire--an empire that is not of this world, the world just
conquered. Thus, then, it longs to become all in all to itself; _i. e._,
although I am spirit, I am not yet _perfected_ spirit, and must first
seek the complete spirit.
But with that I, who had just now found myself as spirit, lose myself
again at once, bowing before the complete spirit as one not my own but
_supernal_, and feeling my emptiness.
Spirit is the essential point for everything, to be sure; but then is
every spirit the "right" spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal
of spirit, the "Holy Spirit." It is not my or your spirit, but just--an
ideal, supernal one, it is "God." "God is spirit." And this supernal
"Father in heaven gives it to those that pray to him."[7]
The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the
world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to
improve it, _i. e_. model it after his ideal; in him the view that one
must deal with the world according to his _interest_, not according to
his _ideals_, becomes confirmed.
So long as one knows himself only as _spirit_, and feels that all the
value of his existence consists in being spirit (it becomes easy for the
youth to give his life, the "bodily life," for a nothing, for the
silliest point of honor), so long it is only _thoughts_ that one has,
ideas that he hopes to be able to realize some day when he has found a
sphere of action; thus one has meanwhile only _ideals_, unexecuted ideas
or thoughts.
Not till one has fallen in love with his _corporeal_ self, and takes a
pleasure in himself as a living flesh-and-blood person,--but it is in
mature years, in the man, that we find it so,--not till then has one a
personal or _egoistic_ interest, _i. e._ an interest not only of our
spirit, for instance, but of total satisfaction, satisfaction of the
whole chap, a _selfish_ interest. Just compare a man with a youth, and
see if he will not appear to you harder, less magnanimous, more selfish.
Is he therefore worse? No, you say; he has only become more definite,
or, as you also call it, more "practical." But the main point is this,
that he makes _himself_ more the centre than does the youth, who is
infatuated about other things, _e. g._ God, fatherland, and so on.
Therefore the man shows a _second_ self-discovery. The youth found
himself as _spirit_ and lost himself again in the _general_ spirit, the
complete, holy spirit, Man, mankind,--in short, all ideals; the man
finds himself as _embodied_ spirit.
Boys had only _unintellectual_ interests (_i. e._ interests devoid of
thoughts and ideas), youths only _intellectual_ ones; the man has
bodily, personal, egoistic interests.
If the child has not an _object_ that it can occupy itself with, it
feels _ennui_; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with
_itself_. The youth, on the contrary, throws the object aside, because
for him _thoughts_ arose out of the object; he occupies himself with his
_thoughts_, his dreams, occupies himself intellectually, or "his mind is
occupied."
The young man includes everything not intellectual under the
contemptuous name of "externalities." If he nevertheless sticks to the
most trivial externalities (_e. g._ the customs of students' clubs and
other formalities), it is because, and when, he discovers _mind_ in
them, _i. e._ when they are _symbols_ to him.
As I find myself back of things, and that as mind, so I must later find
_myself_ also back of _thoughts_,--to wit, as their creator and _owner_.
In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head,
whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me
like fever-phantasies--an awful power. The thoughts had become
_corporeal_ on their own account, were ghosts, such as God, Emperor,
Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them
back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the
world as what it is to me, as _mine_, as my property; I refer all to
myself.
If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt, so as
owner I thrust spirits or ideas away into their "vanity." They have no
longer any power over me, as no "earthly might" has power over the
spirit.
The child was realistic, taken up with the things of this world, till
little by little he succeeded in getting at what was back of these very
things; the youth was idealistic, inspired by thoughts, till he worked
his way up to where he became the man, the egoistic man, who deals with
things and thoughts according to his heart's pleasure, and sets his
personal interest above everything. Finally, the old man? When I become
one, there will still be time enough to speak of that.
II.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW
How each of us developed himself, what he strove for, attained, or
missed, what objects he formerly pursued and what plans and wishes his
heart is now set on, what transformations his views have experienced,
what perturbations his principles,--in short, how he has to-day become
what yesterday or years ago he was not,--this he brings out again from
his memory with more or less ease, and he feels with especial vividness
what changes have taken place in himself when he has before his eyes the
unrolling of another's life.
Let us therefore look into the activities our fore-fathers busied
themselves with.
I.--THE ANCIENTS
Custom having once given the name of "the ancients" to our pre-Christian
ancestors, we will not throw it up against them that, in comparison with
us experienced people, they ought properly to be called children, but
will rather continue to honor them as our good old fathers. But how have
they come to be antiquated, and who could displace them through his
pretended newness?
We know, of course, the revolutionary innovator and disrespectful heir,
who even took away the sanctity of the fathers' sabbath to hallow his
Sunday, and interrupted the course of time to begin at himself with a
new chronology; we know him, and know that it is--the Christian. But
does he remain forever young, and is he to-day still the new man, or
will he too be superseded, as he has superseded the "ancients"?
The fathers must doubtless have themselves begotten the young one who
entombed them. Let us then peep at this act of generation.
"To the ancients the world was a truth," says Feuerbach, but he forgets
to make the important addition, "a truth whose untruth they tried to get
back of, and at last really did." What is meant by those words of
Feuerbach will be easily recognized if they are put alongside the
Christian thesis of the "vanity and transitoriness of the world." For,
as the Christian can never convince himself of the vanity of the divine
word, but believes in its eternal and unshakeable truth, which, the more
its depths are searched, must all the more brilliantly come to light and
triumph, so the ancients on their side lived in the feeling that the
world and mundane relations (_e. g_. the natural ties of blood) were the
truth before which their powerless "I" must bow. The very thing on which
the ancients set the highest value is spurned by Christians as the
valueless, and what they recognized as truth these brand as idle lies;
the high significance of the fatherland disappears, and the Christian
must regard himself as "a stranger on earth";[8] the sanctity of
funeral rites, from which sprang a work of art like the Antigone of
Sophocles, is designated as a paltry thing ("Let the dead bury their
dead"); the infrangible truth of family ties is represented as an
untruth which one cannot promptly enough get clear of;[9] and so in
everything.
If we now see that to the two sides opposite things appear as truth, to
one the natural, to the other the intellectual, to one earthly things
and relations, to the other heavenly (the heavenly fatherland,
"Jerusalem that is above," etc.), it still remains to be considered how
the new time and that undeniable reversal could come out of antiquity.
But the ancients themselves worked toward making their truth a lie.
Let us plunge at once into the midst of the most brilliant years of the
ancients, into the Periclean century. Then the Sophistic culture was
spreading, and Greece made a pastime of what had hitherto been to her a
monstrously serious matter.
The fathers had been enslaved by the undisturbed power of existing
things too long for the posterity not to have to learn by bitter
experience to _feel themselves_. Therefore the Sophists, with courageous
sauciness, pronounce the reassuring words, "Don't be bluffed!" and
diffuse the rationalistic doctrine, "Use your understanding, your wit,
your mind, against everything; it is by having a good and well-drilled
understanding that one gets through the world best, provides for himself
the best lot, the pleasantest _life_." Thus they recognize in _mind_
man's true weapon against the world. This is why they lay such stress
on dialectic skill, command of language, the art of disputation, etc.
They announce that mind is to be used against everything; but they are
still far removed from the holiness of the Spirit, for to them it is a
_means_, a weapon, as trickery and defiance serve children for the same
purpose; their mind is the unbribable _understanding_.
To-day we should call that a one-sided culture of the understanding, and
add the warning, "Cultivate not only your understanding, but also, and
especially, your heart." Socrates did the same. For, if the heart did
not become free from its natural impulses, but remained filled with the
most fortuitous contents and, as an uncriticised _avidity_, altogether
in the power of things, _i. e._ nothing but a vessel of the most various
_appetites_,--then it was unavoidable that the free understanding must
serve the "bad heart" and was ready to justify everything that the
wicked heart desired.
Therefore Socrates says that it is not enough for one to use his
understanding in all things, but it is a question of what _cause_ one
exerts it for. We should now say, one must serve the "good cause." But
serving the good cause is--being moral. Hence Socrates is the founder of
ethics.
Certainly the principle of the Sophistic doctrine must lead to the
possibility that the blindest and most dependent slave of his desires
might yet be an excellent sophist, and, with keen understanding, trim
and expound everything in favor of his coarse heart. What could there be
for which a "good reason" might not be found, or which might not be
defended through thick and thin?
Therefore Socrates says: "You must be 'pure-hearted' if your shrewdness
is to be valued." At this point begins the second period of Greek
liberation of the mind, the period of _purity of heart_. For the first
was brought to a close by the Sophists in their proclaiming the
omnipotence of the understanding. But the heart remained
_worldly-minded_, remained a servant of the world, always affected by
worldly wishes. This coarse heart was to be cultivated from now on--the
era of _culture of the heart_. But how is the heart to be cultivated?
What the understanding, this one side of the mind, has reached,--to wit,
the capability of playing freely with and over every concern,--awaits
the heart also; everything _worldly_ must come to grief before it, so
that at last family, commonwealth, fatherland, and the like, are given
up for the sake of the heart, _i. e._ of _blessedness_, the heart's
blessedness.
Daily experience confirms the truth that the understanding may have
renounced a thing many years before the heart has ceased to beat for it.
So the Sophistic understanding too had so far become master over the
dominant, ancient powers that they now needed only to be driven out of
the heart, in which they dwelt unmolested, to have at last no part at
all left in man.
This war is opened by Socrates, and not till the dying day of the old
world does it end in peace.
The examination of the heart takes its start with Socrates, and all the
contents of the heart are sifted. In their last and extremest struggles
the ancients threw all contents out of the heart and let it no longer
beat for anything; this was the deed of the Skeptics. The same purgation
of the heart was now achieved in the Skeptical age, as the understanding
had succeeded in establishing in the Sophistic age.
The Sophistic culture has brought it to pass that one's understanding no
longer _stands still_ before anything, and the Skeptical, that his heart
is no longer _moved_ by anything.
So long as man is entangled in the movements of the world and
embarrassed by relations to the world,--and he is so till the end of
antiquity, because his heart still has to struggle for independence from
the worldly,--so long he is not yet spirit; for spirit is without body,
and has no relations to the world and corporality; for it the world does
not exist, nor natural bonds, but only the spiritual, and spiritual
bonds. Therefore man must first become so completely unconcerned and
reckless, so altogether without relations, as the Skeptical culture
presents him,--so altogether indifferent to the world that even its
falling in ruins would not move him,--before he could feel himself as
worldless, _i. e._ as spirit. And this is the result of the gigantic
work of the ancients: that man knows himself as a being without
relations and without a world, as _spirit_.
Only now, after all worldly care has left him, is he all in all to
himself, is he only for himself, i. e. he is spirit for the spirit, or,
in plainer language, he cares only for the spiritual.
In the Christian wisdom of serpents and innocence of doves the two
sides--understanding and heart--of the ancient liberation of mind are
so completed that they appear young and new again, and neither the one
nor the other lets itself be bluffed any longer by the worldly and
natural.
Thus the ancients mounted to _spirit_, and strove to become _spiritual_.
But a man who wishes to be active as spirit is drawn to quite other
tasks than he was able to set himself formerly: to tasks which really
give something to do to the spirit and not to mere sense or
acuteness,[10] which exerts itself only to become master of _things_.
The spirit busies itself solely about the spiritual, and seeks out the
"traces of mind" in everything; to the _believing_ spirit "everything
comes from God," and interests him only to the extent that it reveals
this origin; to the _philosophic_ spirit everything appears with the
stamp of reason, and interests him only so far as he is able to discover
in it reason, _i. e._ spiritual content.
Not the spirit, then, which has to do with absolutely nothing
unspiritual, with no _thing_, but only with the essence which exists
behind and above things, with _thoughts_,--not that did the ancients
exert, for they did not yet have it; no, they had only reached the point
of struggling and longing for it, and therefore sharpened it against
their too-powerful foe, the world of sense (but what would not have been
sensuous for them, since Jehovah or the gods of the heathen were yet far
removed from the conception "God is _spirit_," since the "heavenly
fatherland" had not yet stepped into the place of the sensuous,
etc?)--they sharpened against the world of sense their _sense_, their
acuteness. To this day the Jews, those precocious children of antiquity,
have got no farther; and with all the subtlety and strength of their
prudence and understanding, which easily becomes master of things and
forces them to obey it, they cannot discover _spirit_, which _takes no
account whatever of things_.
The Christian has spiritual interests, because he allows himself to be a
_spiritual_ man; the Jew does not even understand these interests in
their purity, because he does not allow himself to assign _no value_ to
things. He does not arrive at pure _spirituality_, a spirituality such
as is religiously expressed, _e. g._, in the _faith_, of Christians,
which alone (_i. e._ without works) justifies. Their _unspirituality_
sets Jews forever apart from Christians; for the spiritual man is
incomprehensible to the unspiritual, as the unspiritual is contemptible
to the spiritual. But the Jews have only "the spirit of this world."
The ancient acuteness and profundity lies as far from the spirit and the
spirituality of the Christian world as earth from heaven.
He who feels himself as free spirit is not oppressed and made anxious by
the things of this world, because he does not care for them; if one is
still to feel their burden, he must be narrow enough to attach _weight_
to them,--as is evidently the case, for instance, when one is still
concerned for his "dear life." He to whom everything centres in knowing
and conducting himself as a free spirit gives little heed to how
scantily he is supplied meanwhile, and does not reflect at all on how he
must make his arrangements to have a thoroughly free or enjoyable
_life_. He is not disturbed by the inconveniences of the life that
depends on things, because he lives only spiritually and on spiritual
food, while aside from this he only gulps things down like a beast,
hardly knowing it, and dies bodily, to be sure, when his fodder gives
out, but knows himself immortal as spirit, and closes his eyes with an
adoration or a thought. His life is occupation with the spiritual,
is--_thinking_; the rest does not bother him; let him busy himself with
the spiritual in any way that he can and chooses,--in devotion, in
contemplation, or in philosophic cognition,--his doing is always
thinking; and therefore Descartes, to whom this had at last become quite
clear, could lay down the proposition: "I think, that is--I am." This
means, my thinking is my being or my life; only when I live spiritually
do I live; only as spirit am I really, or--I am spirit through and
through and nothing but spirit. Unlucky Peter Schlemihl, who has lost
his shadow, is the portrait of this man become a spirit; for the
spirit's body is shadowless.--Over against this, how different among the
ancients! Stoutly and manfully as they might bear themselves against the
might of things, they must yet acknowledge the might itself, and got no
farther than to protect their _life_ against it as well as possible.
Only at a late hour did they recognize that their "true life" was not
that which they led in the fight against the things of the world, but
the "spiritual life," "turned away" from these things; and, when they
saw this, they became--Christians, _i. e._ the moderns, and innovators
upon the ancients. But the life turned away from things, the spiritual
life, no longer draws any nourishment from nature, but "lives only on
thoughts," and therefore is no longer "life," but--_thinking_.
Yet it must not be supposed now that the ancients were _without
thoughts_, just as the most spiritual man is not to be conceived of as
if he could be without life. Rather, they had their thoughts about
everything, about the world, man, the gods, etc., and showed themselves
keenly active in bringing all this to their consciousness. But they did
not know _thought_, even though they thought of all sorts of things and
"worried themselves with their thoughts." Compare with their position
the Christian saying, "My thoughts are not your thoughts; as the heaven
is higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts,"
and remember what was said above about our child-thoughts.
What is antiquity seeking, then? The true _enjoyment of life_! You will
find that at bottom it is all the same as "the true life."
The Greek poet Simonides sings: "Health is the noblest good for mortal
man, the next to this is beauty, the third riches acquired without
guile, the fourth the enjoyment of social pleasures in the company of
young friends." These are all _good things of life_, pleasures of life.
What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of
life, which he discovered in having the least possible wants? What else
Aristippus, who found it in a cheery temper under all circumstances?
They are seeking for cheery, unclouded _life-courage_, for _cheeriness_;
they are seeking to "be of good _cheer_."
The Stoics want to realize the _wise man_, the man with _practical
philosophy_, the man who _knows how to live_,--a wise life, therefore;
they find him in contempt for the world, in a life without development,
without spreading out, without friendly relations with the world,
_i. e._ in the _isolated life_, in life as life, not in life with
others; only the Stoic _lives_, all else is dead for him. The
Epicureans, on the contrary, demand a moving life.
The ancients, as they want to be of good cheer, desire _good living_
(the Jews especially a long life, blessed with children and goods),
_eudaemonia_, well-being in the most various forms. Democritus, _e. g._,
praises as such the calm of the soul in which one "_lives_ smoothly,
without fear and without excitement."
So what he thinks is that with this he gets on best, provides for
himself the best lot, and gets through the world best. But as he cannot
get rid of the world,--and in fact cannot for the very reason that his
whole activity is taken up in the effort to get rid of it, that is, in
_repelling the world_ (for which it is yet necessary that what can be
and is repelled should remain existing, otherwise there would no longer
be anything to repel),--he reaches at most an extreme degree of
liberation, and is distinguishable only in degree from the less
liberated. If he even got as far as the deadening of the earthly sense,
which at last admits only the monotonous whisper of the word "Brahm," he
nevertheless would not be essentially distinguishable from the _sensual_
man.
Even the Stoic attitude and manly virtue amounts only to this,--that
one must maintain and assert himself against the world; and the ethics
of the Stoics (their only science, since they could tell nothing about
the spirit but how it should behave toward the world, and of nature
[physics] only this, that the wise man must assert himself against it)
is not a doctrine of the spirit, but only a doctrine of the repelling of
the world and of self-assertion against the world. And this consists in
"imperturbability and equanimity of life," and so in the most explicit
Roman virtue.
The Romans too (Horace, Cicero, etc.) went no further than this
_practical philosophy_.
The _comfort (hedone)_ of the Epicureans is the same _practical
philosophy_ the Stoics teach, only trickier, more deceitful. They teach
only another _behavior_ toward the world, exhort us only to take a
shrewd attitude toward the world; the world must be deceived, for it is
my enemy.
The break with the world is completely carried through by the Skeptics.
My entire relation to the world is "worthless and truthless." Timon
says, "The feelings and thoughts which we draw from the world contain no
truth." "What is truth?" cries Pilate. According to Pyrrho's doctrine
the world is neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, etc., but
these are _predicates_ which I give it. Timon says that "in itself
nothing is either good or bad, but man only _thinks_ of it thus or
thus"; to face the world only _ataraxia_ (unmovedness) and _aphasia_
(speechlessness--or, in other words, isolated _inwardness_) are left.
There is "no longer any truth to be recognized" in the world; things
contradict themselves; thoughts about things are without distinction
(good and bad are all the same, so that what one calls good another
finds bad); here the recognition of "truth" is at an end, and only the
_man without power of recognition_, the _man_ who finds in the world
nothing to recognize, is left, and this man just leaves the truth-vacant
world where it is and takes no account of it.
So antiquity gets trough with the _world of things_, the order of the
world, the world as a whole; but to the order of the world, or the
things of this world, belong not only nature, but all relations in which
man sees himself placed by nature, _e. g._ the family, the
community,--in short, the so-called "natural bonds." With the _world of
the spirit_ Christianity then begins. The man who still faces the world
_armed_ is the ancient, the--_heathen_ (to which class the Jew, too, as
non-Christian, belongs); the man who has come to be led by nothing but
his "heart's pleasure," the interest he takes, his fellow-feeling,
his--_spirit_, is the modern, the--Christian.
As the ancients worked toward the _conquest of the world_ and strove to
release man from the heavy trammels of connection with _other things_,
at last they came also to the dissolution of the State and giving
preference to everything private. Of course community, family, etc., as
_natural_ relations, are burdensome hindrances which diminish my
_spiritual freedom_.
II.--THE MODERNS
"If any man be in Christ, he is a _new creature_; the old is passed
away, behold, all is become _new_."[11]
As it was said above, "To the ancients the world was a truth," we must
say here, "To the moderns the spirit was a truth"; but here, as there,
we must not omit the supplement, "a truth whose untruth they tried to
get back of, and at last they really do."
A course similar to that which antiquity took may be demonstrated in
Christianity also, in that the _understanding_ was held a prisoner under
the dominion of the Christian dogmas up to the time preparatory to the
Reformation, but in the pre-Reformation century asserted itself
_sophistically_ and played heretical pranks with all tenets of the
faith. And the talk then was, especially in Italy and at the Roman
court, "If only the heart remains Christian-minded, the understanding
may go right on taking its pleasure."
Long before the Reformation people were so thoroughly accustomed to
fine-spun "wranglings" that the pope, and most others, looked on
Luther's appearance too as a mere "wrangling of monks" at first.
Humanism corresponds to Sophisticism, and, as in the time of the
Sophists Greek life stood in its fullest bloom (the Periclean age), so
the most brilliant things happened in the time of Humanism, or, as one
might perhaps also say, of Machiavellianism (printing, the New World,
etc.). At this time the heart was still far from wanting to relieve
itself of its Christian contents.
But finally the Reformation, like Socrates, took hold seriously of the
_heart_ itself, and since then hearts have kept growing visibly--more
unchristian. As with Luther people began to take the matter to heart,
the outcome of this step of the Reformation must be that the heart also
gets lightened of the heavy burden of Christian faith. The heart, from
day to day more unchristian, loses the contents with which it had busied
itself, till at last nothing but empty _warm-heartedness_ is left it,
the quite general love of men, the love of Man, the consciousness of
freedom, "self-consciousness."
Only so is Christianity complete, because it has become bald, withered,
and void of contents. There are now no contents whatever against which
the heart does not mutiny, unless indeed the heart unconsciously or
without "self-consciousness" lets them slip in. The heart _criticises_
to death with _hard-hearted_ mercilessness everything that wants to make
its way in, and is capable (except, as before, unconsciously or taken by
surprise) of no friendship, no love. What could there be in men to love,
since they are all alike "egoists," none of them _man_ as such, _i. e._
none _spirit_ only? The Christian loves only the spirit; but where could
one be found who should be really nothing but spirit?
To have a liking for the corporeal man with hide and hair,--why, that
would no longer be a "spiritual" warm-heartedness, it would be treason
against "pure" warm-heartedness, the "theoretical regard." For pure
warm-heartedness is by no means to be conceived as like that kindliness
that gives everybody a friendly hand-shake; on the contrary, pure
warm-heartedness is warm-hearted toward nobody, it is only a theoretical
interest, concern for man as man, not as a person. The person is
repulsive to it because of being "egoistic," because of not being that
abstraction, Man. But it is only for the abstraction that one can have a
theoretical regard. To pure warm-heartedness or pure theory men exist
only to be criticised, scoffed at, and thoroughly despised; to it, no
less than to the fanatical parson, they are only "filth" and other such
nice things.
Pushed to this extremity of disinterested warm-heartedness, we must
finally become conscious that the spirit, which alone the Christian
loves, is nothing; in other words, that the spirit is--a lie.
What has here been set down roughly, summarily, and doubtless as yet
incomprehensibly, will, it is to be hoped, become clear as we go on.
Let us take up the inheritance left by the ancients, and, as active
workmen, do with it as much as--can be done with it! The world lies
despised at our feet, far beneath us and our heaven, into which its
mighty arms are no longer thrust and its stupefying breath does not
come. Seductively as it may pose, it can delude nothing but our _sense_;
it cannot lead astray the spirit--and spirit alone, after all, we really
are. Having once got _back_ of things, the spirit has also got _above_
them, and become free from their bonds, emancipated supernal, free. So
speaks "spiritual freedom."
To the spirit which, after long toil, has got rid of the world, the
worldless spirit, nothing is left after the loss of the world and the
worldly but--the spirit and the spiritual.
Yet, as it has only moved away from the world and made of itself a being
_free from the world_, without being able really to annihilate the
world, this remains to it a stumbling-block that cannot be cleared away,
a discredited existence; and, as, on the other hand, it knows and
recognizes nothing but the spirit and the spiritual, it must perpetually
carry about with it the longing to spiritualize the world, _i. e._ to
redeem it from the "black list." Therefore, like a youth, it goes about
with plans for the redemption or improvement of the world.
The ancients, we saw, served the natural, the worldly, the natural order
of the world, but they incessantly asked themselves whether they could
not, then, relieve themselves of this service; and, when they had tired
themselves to death in ever-renewed attempts at revolt, then, among
their last sighs, was born to them the _God_, the "conqueror of the
world." All their doing had been nothing but _wisdom of the world_, an
effort to get back of the world and above it. And what is the wisdom of
the many following centuries? What did the moderns try to get back of?
No longer to get back of the world, for the ancients had accomplished
that; but back of the God whom the ancients bequeathed to them, back of
the God who "is spirit," back of everything that is the spirit's, the
spiritual. But the activity of the spirit, which "searches even the
depths of the Godhead," is _theology_. If the ancients have nothing to
show but wisdom of the world, the moderns never did nor do make their
way further than to theology. We shall see later that even the newest
revolts against God are nothing but the extremest efforts of "theology,"
_i. e._ theological insurrections.
§ 1.--THE SPIRIT
The realm of spirits is monstrously great, there is an infinite deal of
the spiritual; yet let us look and see what the spirit, this bequest of
the ancients, properly is.
Out of their birth-pangs it came forth, but they themselves could not
utter themselves as spirit; they could give birth to it, it itself must
speak. The "born God, the Son of Man," is the first to utter the word
that the spirit, _i. e._ he, God, has to do with nothing earthly and no
earthly relationship, but solely with the spirit and spiritual
relationships.
Is my courage, indestructible under all the world's blows, my
inflexibility and my obduracy, perchance already spirit in the full
sense, because the world cannot touch it? Why, then it would not yet be
at enmity with the world, and all its action would consist merely in not
succumbing to the world! No, so long as it does not busy itself with
itself alone, so long as it does not have to do with _its_ world, the
spiritual, alone, it is not _free_ spirit, but only the "spirit of this
world," the spirit fettered to it. The spirit is free spirit, _i. e._
really spirit, only in a world of _its own_; in "this," the world, it is
a stranger. Only through a spiritual world is the spirit really spirit,
for "this" world does not understand it and does not know how to keep
"the maiden from a foreign land"[12] from departing.
But where is it to get this spiritual world? Where but out of itself? It
must reveal itself; and the words that it speaks, the revelations in
which it unveils itself, these are _its_ world. As a visionary lives and
has _his_ world only in the visionary pictures that he himself creates,
as a crazy man generates for himself his own dream-world, without which
he could not be crazy, so the spirit must create for itself its spirit
world, and is not spirit till it creates it.
Thus its creations make it spirit, and by its creatures we know it, the
creator; in them it lives, they are its world.
Now, what is the spirit? It is the creator of a spiritual world! Even in
you and me people do not recognize spirit till they see that we have
appropriated to ourselves something spiritual,--_i. e._, though thoughts
may have been set before us, we have at least brought them to life in
ourselves; for, as long as we were children, the most edifying thoughts
might have been laid before us without our wishing, or being able to
reproduce them in ourselves. So the spirit also exists only when it
creates something spiritual; it is real only together with the
spiritual, its creature.
As, then, we know it by its works, the question is what these works are.
But the works or children of the spirit are nothing else but--spirits:
If I had before me Jews, Jews of the true metal, I should have to stop
here and leave them standing before this mystery as for almost two
thousand years they have remained standing before it, unbelieving and
without knowledge. But, as you, my dear reader, are at least not a
full-blooded Jew,--for such a one will not go astray as far as this,--we
will still go along a bit of road together, till perhaps you too turn
your back on me because I laugh in your face.
If somebody told you you were altogether spirit, you would take hold of
your body and not believe him, but answer: "I _have_ a spirit, no doubt,
but do not exist only as spirit, but am a man with a body." You would
still distinguish _yourself_ from "your spirit." "But," replies he, "it
is your destiny, even though now you are yet going about in the fetters
of the body, to be one day a 'blessed spirit,' and, however you may
conceive of the future aspect of your spirit, so much is yet certain,
that in death you will put off this body and yet keep yourself, _i. e._
your spirit, for all eternity; accordingly your spirit is the eternal
and true in you, the body only a dwelling here below, which you may
leave and perhaps exchange for another."
Now you believe him! For the present, indeed, _you_ are not spirit only;
but, when you emigrate from the mortal body, as one day you must, then
you will have to help yourself without the body, and therefore it is
needful that you be prudent and care in time for your proper self. "What
should it profit a man if he gained the whole world and yet suffered
damage in his soul?"
But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course of time against the
tenets of the Christian faith, have long since robbed you of faith in
the immortality of your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenet
undisturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one truth, that the
spirit is your better part, and that the spiritual has greater claims on
you than anything else. Despite all your atheism, in zeal against
_egoism_ you concur with the believers in immortality.
But whom do you think of under the name of egoist? A man who, instead of
living to an idea,--_i. e._ a spiritual thing--and sacrificing to it his
personal advantage, serves the latter. A good patriot, _e. g._, brings
his sacrifice to the altar of the fatherland; but it cannot be disputed
that the fatherland is an idea, since for beasts incapable of mind,[13]
or children as yet without mind, there is no fatherland and no
patriotism. Now, if any one does not approve himself as a good patriot,
he betrays his egoism with reference to the fatherland. And so the
matter stands in innumerable other cases: he who in human society takes
the benefit of a prerogative sins egoistically against the idea of
equality; he who exercises dominion is blamed as an egoist against the
idea of liberty,--etc.
You despise the egoist because he puts the spiritual in the background
as compared with the personal, and has his eyes on himself where you
would like to see him act to favor an idea. The distinction between you
is that he makes himself the central point, but you the spirit; or that
you cut your identity in two and exalt your "proper self," the spirit,
to be ruler of the paltrier remainder, while he will hear nothing of
this cutting in two, and pursues spiritual and material interests just
_as he pleases_. You think, to be sure, that you are falling foul of
those only who enter into no spiritual interest at all, but in fact you
curse at everybody who does not look on the spiritual interest as his
"true and highest" interest. You carry your knightly service for this
beauty so far that you affirm her to be the only beauty of the world.
You live not to _yourself_, but to your _spirit_ and to what is the
spirit's--_i. e._ ideas.
As the spirit exists only in its creating of the spiritual, let us take
a look about us for its first creation. If only it has accomplished
this, there follows thenceforth a natural propagation of creations, as
according to the myth only the first human beings needed to be created,
the rest of the race propagating of itself. The first creation, on the
other hand, must come forth "out of nothing,"--_i. e._, the spirit has
toward its realization nothing but itself, or rather it has not yet even
itself, but must create itself; hence its first creation is itself, _the
spirit_. Mystical as this sounds, we yet go through it as an every-day
experience. Are you a thinking being before you think? In creating the
first thought you create yourself, the thinking one; for you do not
think before you think a thought, _i. e._ have a thought. Is it not your
singing that first makes you a singer, your talking that makes you a
talker? Now, so too it is the production of the spiritual that first
makes you a spirit.
Meantime, as you distinguish _yourself_ from the thinker, singer, and
talker, so you no less distinguish yourself from the spirit, and feel
very clearly that you are something beside spirit. But, as in the
thinking ego hearing and sight easily vanish in the enthusiasm of
thought, so you also have been seized by the spirit-enthusiasm, and you
now long with all your might to become wholly spirit and to be dissolved
in spirit. The spirit is your _ideal_, the unattained, the otherworldly;
spirit is the name of your--god, "God is spirit."
Against all that is not spirit you are a zealot, and therefore you play
the zealot against _yourself_ who cannot get rid of a remainder of the
non-spiritual. Instead of saying, "I am _more_ than spirit," you say
with contrition, "I am less than spirit; and spirit, pure spirit, or the
spirit that is nothing but spirit, I can only think of, but am not; and,
since I am not it, it is another, exists as another, whom I call 'God'."
It lies in the nature of the case that the spirit that is to exist as
pure spirit must be an otherworldly one, for, since I am not it, it
follows that it can only be _outside_ me; since in any case a human
being is not fully comprehended in the concept "spirit," it follows that
the pure spirit, the spirit as such, can only be outside of men, beyond
the human world,--not earthly, but heavenly.
Only from this disunion in which I and the spirit lie; only because "I"
and "spirit" are not names for one and the same thing, but different
names for completely different things; only because I am not spirit and
spirit not I,--only from this do we get a quite tautological explanation
of the necessity that the spirit dwells in the other world, _i. e._ is
God.
But from this it also appears how thoroughly theological is the
liberation that Feuerbach[14] is laboring to give us. What he says is
that we had only mistaken our own essence, and therefore looked for it
in the other world, but that now, when we see that God was only our
human essence, we must recognize it again as ours and move it back out
of the other world into this. To God, who is spirit, Feuerbach gives the
name "Our Essence." Can we put up with this, that "Our Essence" is
brought into opposition to _us_,--that we are split into an essential
and an unessential self? Do we not therewith go back into the dreary
misery of seeing ourselves banished out of ourselves?
What have we gained, then, when for a variation we have transferred into
ourselves the divine outside us? _Are we_ that which is in us? As little
as we are that which is outside us. I am as little my heart as I am my
sweetheart, this "other self" of mine. Just because we are not the
spirit that dwells in us, just for that reason we had to take it and set
it outside us; it was not we, did not coincide with us, and therefore we
could not think of it as existing otherwise than outside us, on the
other side from us, in the other world.
With the strength of _despair_ Feuerbach clutches at the total substance
of Christianity, not to throw it away, no, to drag it to himself, to
draw it, the long-yearned-for, ever-distant, out of its heaven with a
last effort, and keep it by him forever. Is not that a clutch of the
uttermost despair, a clutch for life or death, and is it not at the
same time the Christian yearning and hungering for the other world? The
hero wants not to go into the other world, but to draw the other world
to him, and compel it to become this world! And since then has not all
the world, with more or less consciousness, been crying that "this
world" is the vital point, and heaven must come down on earth and be
experienced even here?
Let us, in brief, set Feuerbach's theological view and our contradiction
over against each other!
"The essence of man is man's supreme being;[15] now by religion, to be
sure, the _supreme being_ is called _God_ and regarded as an _objective_
essence, but in truth it is only man's own essence; and therefore the
turning point of the world's history is that henceforth no longer _God_,
but man, is to appear to man as God."[16]
To this we reply: The supreme being is indeed the essence of man, but,
just because it is his _essence_ and not he himself, it remains quite
immaterial whether we see it outside him and view it as "God," or find
it in him and call it "Essence of Man" or "Man." _I_ am neither God nor
_Man_,[17] neither the supreme essence nor my essence, and therefore it
is all one in the main whether I think of the essence as in me or
outside me. Nay, we really do always think of the supreme being as in
both kinds of otherworldliness, the inward and outward, at once; for
the "Spirit of God" is, according to the Christian view, also "our
spirit," and "dwells in us."[18] It dwells in heaven and dwells in us;
we poor things are just its "dwelling," and, if Feuerbach goes on to
destroy its heavenly dwelling and force it to move to us bag and
baggage, then we, its earthly apartments, will be badly overcrowded.
But after this digression (which, if we were at all proposing to work by
line and level, we should have had to save for later pages in order to
avoid repetition) we return to the spirit's first creation, the spirit
itself.
The spirit is something other than myself. But this other, what is it?
§ 2.--THE POSSESSED.
Have you ever seen a spirit? "No, not I, but my grandmother." Now, you
see, it's just so with me too; I myself haven't seen any, but my
grandmother had them running between her feet all sorts of ways, and out
of confidence in our grandmothers' honesty we believe in the existence
of spirits.
But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not shrug their shoulders
every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts? Yes, those were
unbelieving men who have harmed our good religion much, those
rationalists! We shall feel that! What else lies at the bottom of this
warm faith in ghosts, if not the faith in "the existence of spiritual
beings in general," and is not this latter itself disastrously unsettled
if saucy men of the understanding may disturb the former? The
Romanticists were quite conscious what a blow the very belief in God
suffered by the laying aside of the belief in spirits or ghosts, and
they tried to help us out of the baleful consequences not only by their
reawakened fairy world, but at last, and especially, by the "intrusion
of a higher world," by their somnambulists, prophetesses of Prevorst,
etc. The good believers and fathers of the church did not suspect that
with the belief in ghosts the foundation of religion was withdrawn, and
that since then it had been floating in the air. He who no longer
believes in any ghost needs only to travel on consistently in his
unbelief to see that there is no separate being at all concealed behind
things, no ghost or--what is naively reckoned as synonymous even in our
use of words--no "_spirit_."
"Spirits exist!" Look about in the world, and say for yourself whether a
spirit does not gaze upon you out of everything. Out of the lovely
little flower there speaks to you the spirit of the Creator, who has
shaped it so wonderfully; the stars proclaim the spirit that established
their order; from the mountain-tops a spirit of sublimity breathes down;
out of the waters a spirit of yearning murmurs up; and--out of men
millions of spirits speak. The mountains may sink, the flowers fade, the
world of stars fall in ruins, the men die--what matters the wreck of
these visible bodies? The spirit, the "invisible spirit," abides
eternally!
Yes, the whole world is haunted! Only _is_ haunted? Nay, it itself
"walks," it is uncanny through and through, it is the wandering
seeming-body of a spirit, it is a spook. What else should a ghost be,
then, than an apparent body, but real spirit? Well, the world is
"empty," is "naught," is only glamorous "semblance"; its truth is the
spirit alone; it is the seeming-body of a spirit.
Look out near or far, a _ghostly_ world surrounds you everywhere; you
are always having "apparitions" or visions. Everything that appears to
you is only the phantasm of an indwelling spirit, is a ghostly
"apparition"; the world is to you only a "world of appearances," behind
which the spirit walks. You "see spirits."
Are you perchance thinking of comparing yourself with the ancients, who
saw gods everywhere? Gods, my dear modern, are not spirits; gods do not
degrade the world to a semblance, and do not spiritualize it.
But to you the whole world is spiritualized, and has become an
enigmatical ghost; therefore do not wonder if you likewise find in
yourself nothing but a spook. Is not your body haunted by your spirit,
and is not the latter alone the true and real, the former only the
"transitory, naught" or a "semblance"? Are we not all ghosts, uncanny
beings that wait for "deliverance,"--to wit, "spirits"?
Since the spirit appeared in the world, since "the Word became flesh,"
since then the world has been spiritualized, enchanted, a spook.
You have spirit, for you have thoughts. What are your thoughts?
"Spiritual entities." Not things, then? "No, but the spirit of things,
the main point in all things, the inmost in them, their--idea."
Consequently what you think is not only your thought? "On the contrary,
it is that in the world which is most real, that which is properly to be
called true; it is the truth itself; if I only think truly, I think the
truth. I may, to be sure, err with regard to the truth, and _fail to
recognize_ it; but, if I _recognize_ truly, the object of my cognition
is the truth." So, I suppose, you strive at all times to recognize the
truth? "To me the truth is sacred. It may well happen that I find a
truth incomplete and replace it with a better, but _the_ truth I cannot
abrogate. I _believe_ in the truth, therefore I search in it; nothing
transcends it, it is eternal."
Sacred, eternal is the truth; it is the Sacred, the Eternal. But you,
who let yourself be filled and led by this sacred thing, are yourself
hallowed. Further, the sacred is not for your senses,--and you never as
a sensual man discover its trace,--but for your faith, or, more
definitely still, for your _spirit_; for it itself, you know, is a
spiritual thing, a spirit,--is spirit for the spirit.
The sacred is by no means so easily to be set aside as many at present
affirm, who no longer take this "unsuitable" word into their mouths. If
even in a single respect I am still _upbraided_ as an "egoist," there is
left the thought of something else which I should serve more than
myself, and which must be to me more important than everything; in
short, somewhat in which I should have to seek my true welfare,[19]
something--"sacred."[20] However human this sacred thing may look,
though it be the Human itself, that does not take away its sacredness,
but at most changes it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing,
from a divine one to a human.
Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not acknowledge
himself, the _involuntary egoist_, for him who is always looking after
his own and yet does not count himself as the highest being, who serves
only himself and at the same time always thinks he is serving a higher
being, who knows nothing higher than himself and yet is infatuated about
something higher; in short, for the egoist who would like not to be an
egoist, and abases himself (_i. e._ combats his egoism), but at the same
time abases himself only for the sake of "being exalted," and therefore
of gratifying his egoism. Because he would like to cease to be an
egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve
and sacrifice himself to; but, however much he shakes and disciplines
himself, in the end he does all for his own sake, and the disreputable
egoism will not come off him. On this account I call him the involuntary
egoist.
His toil and care to get away from himself is nothing but the
misunderstood impulse to self-dissolution. If you are bound to your past
hour, if you must babble to-day because you babbled yesterday,[21] if
you can not transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself fettered
in slavery and benumbed. Therefore over each minute of your existence a
fresh minute of the future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you
get away "from yourself,"--_i. e._ from the self that was at that
moment. As you are at each instant, you are your own creature, and in
this very "creature" you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator. You
are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass yourself. But that
_you_ are the one who is higher than you,--_i. e._ that you are not only
creature, but likewise your creator,--just this, as an involuntary
egoist, you fail to recognize; and therefore the "higher essence" is to
you--an alien[22] essence. Every higher essence, such as truth, mankind,
etc., is an essence _over_ us.
Alienness is a criterion of the "sacred." In everything sacred there
lies something "uncanny," _i. e._ strange,[23] such as we are not quite
familiar and at home in. What is sacred to me is _not my own_; and if,
_e. g._ the property of others was not sacred to me, I should look on it
as _mine_, which I should take to myself when occasion offered. Or, on
the other side, if I regard the face of the Chinese emperor as sacred,
it remains strange to my eye, which I close at its appearance.
Why is an incontrovertible mathematical truth, which might even be
called eternal according to the common understanding of words,
not--sacred? Because it is not revealed, or not the revelation of a
higher being. If by revealed we understand only the so-called religious
truths, we go far astray, and entirely fail to recognize the breadth of
the concept "higher being." Atheists keep up their scoffing at the
higher being, which was also honored under the name of the "highest" or
_être suprême_, and trample in the dust one "proof of his existence"
after another without noticing that they themselves, out of need for a
higher being, only annihilate the old to make room for a new. Is "Man"
perchance not a higher essence than an individual man, and must not the
truths, rights, and ideas which result from the concept of him be
honored and--counted sacred, as revelations of this very concept? For,
even though we should abrogate again many a truth that seemed to be made
manifest by this concept, yet this would only evince a misunderstanding
on our part, without in the least degree harming the sacred concept
itself or taking their sacredness from those truths that must rightly be
looked upon as its revelations. _Man_ reaches beyond every individual
man, and yet--though he be "his essence"--is not in fact _his_ essence
(which rather would be as single[24] as he the individual himself), but
a general and "higher," yes, for atheists "the highest essence."[25]
And, as the divine revelations were not written down by God with his own
hand, but made public through "the Lord's instruments," so also the new
highest essence does not write out its revelations itself, but lets them
come to our knowledge through "true men." Only the new essence betrays,
in fact, a more spiritual style of conception than the old God, because
the latter was still represented in a sort of embodiedness or form,
while the undimmed spirituality of the new is retained, and no special
material body is fancied for it. And withal it does not lack corporeity,
which even takes on a yet more seductive appearance because it looks
more natural and mundane and consists in nothing less than in every
bodily man,--yes, or outright in "humanity" or "all men." Thereby the
spectralness of the spirit in a seeming-body has once again become
really solid and popular.
Sacred, then, is the highest essence and everything in which this
highest essence reveals or will reveal itself; but hallowed are they who
recognize this highest essence together with its own, _i. e._ together
with its revelations. The sacred hallows in turn its reverer, who by his
worship becomes himself a saint, as likewise what he does is saintly, a
saintly walk, saintly thoughts and actions, imaginations and
aspirations, etc.
It is easily understood that the conflict over what is revered as the
highest essence can be significant only so long as even the most
embittered opponents concede to each other the main point,--that there
is a highest essence to which worship or service is due. If one should
smile compassionately at the whole struggle over a highest essence, as a
Christian might at the war of words between a Shiite and a Sunnite or
between a Brahman and a Buddhist, then the hypothesis of a highest
essence would be null in his eyes, and the conflict on this basis an
idle play. Whether then the one God or the three in one, whether the
Lutheran God or the _être suprême_ or not God at all, but "Man," may
represent the highest essence, that makes no difference at all for him
who denies the highest essence itself, for in his eyes those servants of
a highest essence are one and all--pious people, the most raging atheist
not less than the most faith-filled Christian.
In the foremost place of the sacred,[26] then, stands the highest
essence and the faith in this essence, our "holy[27] faith."
THE SPOOK
With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the realm of _essences_.
What haunts the universe, and has its occult, "incomprehensible" being
there, is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest essence.
And to get to the bottom of this _spook_, to _comprehend_ it, to
discover _reality_ in it (to prove "the existence of God")--this task
men set to themselves for thousands of years; with the horrible
impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into
a non-spook, the unreal into something real, the _spirit_ into an entire
and _corporeal_ person,--with this they tormented themselves to death.
Behind the existing world they sought the "thing in itself," the
essence; behind the _thing_ they sought the _un-thing_.
When one looks to the _bottom_ of anything, _i. e._ searches out its
_essence_, one often discovers something quite other than what it
_seems_ to be; honeyed speech and a lying heart, pompous words and
beggarly thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into prominence one
degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare _semblance_, a
deception. The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for
him who looks to the bottom of it--emptiness; emptiness is == world's
essence (world's doings). Now, he who is religious does not occupy
himself with the deceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but
looks upon the essence, and in the essence has--the truth.
The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil
essences, and conversely from others the good. The essence of human
feeling, _e. g._, is love; the essence of human will is the good; that
of one's thinking, the true; etc.
What at first passed for existence, such as the world and its like,
appears now as bare semblance, and the _truly existent_ is much rather
the essence, whose realm is filled with gods, spirits, demons, _i. e._
with good or bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of
essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless, but its
essence exists, God, "who is love"; human thought may wander in error,
but its essence, truth, exists; "God is truth,"--etc.
To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is
religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts.
The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize _non-sense_,
has brought about a _corporeal ghost_, a ghost or spirit with a real
body, an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians
have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition!
But there always remained the contradiction of two natures, the divine
and human, _i. e._ the ghostly and sensual; there remained the most
wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more
soul-torturing, and no shaman, who pricks himself to raving fury and
nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure such soul-torment
as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost.
But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to
light, that the veritable spirit or ghost is--man. The _corporeal_ or
embodied spirit is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the
same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no
longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts _outside_ him, but at
himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells
the _spirit of sin_; even the faintest _thought_ (and this is itself a
spirit, you know) may be a _devil_, etc.--The ghost has put on a body,
God has become man, but now man is himself the gruesome spook which he
seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to
speech; man is--_spirit_. What matter if the body wither, if only the
spirit is saved? everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or
"soul's" welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a
ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even assigned a distinct seat
in the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head,
etc.).
You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher essence. Nevertheless a
higher essence may be hidden in each of us, and call forth a mutual
reverence. To take at once the most general, Man lives in you and me.
If I did not see Man in you, what occasion should I have to respect you?
To be sure you are not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a
mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing;
but yet for the present this general and higher essence is housed in
you, and you present before me (because an imperishable spirit has in
you assumed a perishable body, so that really your form is only an
"assumed" one) a spirit that appears, appears in you, without being
bound to your body and to this particular mode of appearance,--therefore
a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence, but only respect
that higher essence which "walks" in you; I "respect Man in you." The
ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves, and the
higher essence "Man" found as yet little response. To make up for this,
they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher
essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit of Man, a spirit
haunting the individual,--the Spirit of the People. For this reason they
revered this spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit
related to it (_e. g._ the Spirit of the Family, etc.) could the
individual appear significant; only for the sake of the higher essence,
the People, was consideration allowed to the "member of the people." As
you are hallowed to us by "Man" who haunts you, so at every time men
have been hallowed by some higher essence or other, like People, Family,
and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honored
from of old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a
hallowed, _i. e._, protected and recognized person. If I cherish you
because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my
need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence
whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a
ghost, _i. e._ an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you
yourself with _your_ essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not
a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is unique[28]
like you yourself, because it is you.
But it is not only man that, "haunts"; so does everything. The higher
essence, the spirit, that walks in everything, is at the same time bound
to nothing, and only--"appears" in it. Ghosts in every corner!
Here would be the place to pass the haunting spirits in review, if they
were not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before
egoism. Hence let only a few of them be particularized by way of
example, in order to bring us at once to our attitude toward them.
Sacred above all, _e. g._, is the "holy Spirit," sacred the truth,
sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage, the common good,
order, the fatherland, etc.
WHEELS IN THE HEAD.
Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine
great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an
existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be
called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea!
Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard
those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority
belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable
fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed
idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize,
with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave
up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to
doubt; the majesty of (_e. g._) the people, which we are not to strike
at (he who does is guilty of--lese-majesty); virtue, against which the
censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure;
etc.,--are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of
(_e. g._) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the
fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to
go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad
a space? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have
to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. For these
great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point
too,--that they assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They
first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall
upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and
vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for
their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and
must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one
is shut up in a house with fools. "Thou shalt not call thy brother a
fool; if thou dost--etc." But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my
brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is
possessed by the fancy that he is God the Father, Emperor of Japan, the
Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances
conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful
Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man, etc.,--both these are one
and the same "fixed idea." He who has never tried and dared not to be a
good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is
_possessed_ and prepossessed[29] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as
the schoolmen philosophized only _inside_ the belief of the church; as
Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books _inside_ the papist superstition,
without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole
folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the
State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they
are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a _zoon
politicon_,--so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in
virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed
ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a
madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who
doubts them--lays hands on the _sacred_! Yes, the "fixed idea," that is
the truly sacred!
Is it perchance only people possessed by the devil that meet us, or do
we as often come upon people _possessed_ in the contrary way,--possessed
by "the good," by virtue, morality, the law, or some "principle" or
other? Possessions of the devil are not the only ones. God works on us,
and the devil does; the former "workings of grace," the latter "workings
of the devil." Possessed[30] people are _set_[31] in their opinions.
If the word "possession" displeases you, then call it prepossession;
yes, since the spirit possesses you, and all "inspirations" come from
it, call it--inspiration and enthusiasm. I add that complete
enthusiasm--for we cannot stop with the sluggish, half-way kind--is
called fanaticism.
It is precisely among cultured people that _fanaticism_ is at home; for
man is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things, and
interest in spiritual things, when it is alive, is and must be
_fanaticism_; it is a fanatical interest in the sacred (_fanum_).
Observe our liberals, look into the _Saechsischen Vaterlandsblaetter_,
hear what Schlosser says:[32] "Holbach's company constituted a regular
plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system, and its
members were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and
priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists, missionary and Bible
societies, commonly are for mechanical worship and orthodoxy."
Take notice how a "moral man" behaves, who to-day often thinks he is
through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you
ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and
sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial
piety is a sacred duty, etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at
the conception of one's being allowed to touch his sister as wife also,
etc. And whence this shudder? Because he _believes_ in those moral
commandments. This moral _faith_ is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as
he rages against the _pious_ Christians, he himself has nevertheless as
thoroughly remained a Christian,--to wit, a _moral_ Christian. In the
form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under
_faith_. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in
bigamy is punished as a _criminal_; he who commits incest suffers as a
_criminal_. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be
regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the
Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest
and monogamy a _dogma of faith_? Touch it, and you will learn by
experience how this moral man is a _hero of faith_ too, not less than
Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the
Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State;
for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than _their
faith_ will allow. The brand of "crime" is stamped upon him, and he may
languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as
religious faith! They call that "liberty of faith" then, when brother
and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with
their "conscience," are thrown into prison. "But they set a pernicious
example." Yes, indeed: others might have taken the notion that the
State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon
"purity of morals" would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of
faith are zealous for the "sacred God," the moral ones for the "sacred
good."
Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like
each other. How the strictly orthodox or old-style believers differ from
the fighters for "truth, light, and justice," from the Philalethes, the
Friends of Light, the Rationalists, etc. And yet, how utterly
unessential is this difference! If one buffets single traditional truths
(_e. g._ miracles, unlimited power of princes, etc.), then the
rationalists buffet them too, and only the old-style believers wail.
But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has both, as
_believers_, for opponents. So with moralities; the strict believers are
relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant. But he who attacks
morality itself gets both to deal with. "Truth, morality, justice,
light, etc.," are to be and remain "sacred." What any one finds to
censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be "unchristian" according
to the view of these rationalists; but Christianity must remain a
fixture, to buffet it is outrageous, "an outrage." To be sure, the
heretic against pure faith no longer exposes himself to the earlier fury
of persecution, but so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic
against pure morals.
* * * * *
Piety has for a century received so many blows, and had to hear its
superhuman essence reviled as an "inhuman" one so often, that one
cannot feel tempted to draw the sword against it again. And yet it has
almost always been only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena,
to assail the supreme essence in favor of--another supreme essence. So
Proudhon, unabashed, says:[33] "Man is destined to live without
religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. Who would dare
to-day to attack morality?" Moral people skimmed off the best fat from
religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid
of the resulting scrofula. If, therefore, we point out that religion has
not by any means been hurt in its inmost part so long as people reproach
it only with its superhuman essence, and that it takes its final appeal
to the "spirit" alone (for God is spirit), then we have sufficiently
indicated its final accord with morality, and can leave its stubborn
conflict with the latter lying behind us. It is a question of a supreme
essence with both, and whether this is a superhuman or a human one can
make (since it is in any case an essence over me, a super-mine one, so
to speak) but little difference to me. In the end the relation to the
human essence, or to "Man," as soon as ever it has shed the snake-skin
of the old religion, will yet wear a religious snake-skin again.
So Feuerbach instructs us that, "if one only _inverts_ speculative
philosophy, _i. e._ always makes the predicate the subject, and so makes
the subject the object and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure
and clean."[34] Herewith, to be sure, we lose the narrow religious
standpoint, lose the _God_, who from this standpoint is subject; but we
take in exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint, the
_moral_ standpoint. _E. g._, we no longer say "God is love," but "Love
is divine." If we further put in place of the predicate "divine" the
equivalent "sacred," then, as far as concerns the sense, all the old
comes back again. According to this, love is to be the _good_ in man,
his divineness, that which does him honor, his true _humanity_ (it
"makes him Man for the first time," makes for the first time a man out
of him). So then it would be more accurately worded thus: Love is what
is _human_ in man, and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist. But
precisely all that which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy
(_i. e._ theology) offers as the good, the absolute, is to
self-ownership simply not the good (or, what means the same, it is _only
the good_). Consequently, by the transformation of the predicate into
the subject, the Christian _essence_ (and it is the predicate that
contains the essence, you know) would only be fixed yet more
oppressively. God and the divine would entwine themselves all the more
inextricably with me. To expel God from his heaven and to rob him of his
"_transcendence_" cannot yet support a claim of complete victory, if
therein he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with
indelible _immanence_. Now they say, "The divine is the truly human!"
The same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the State,
_i. e._ oppose the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating
that morality is "the fundamental pillar of social life and of the
State." As if the dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of
the sacred, a "hierarchy."
So we may here mention by the way that rationalist movement which, after
theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping
religious truths, that only to believers did God reveal himself, etc.,
and that therefore only the heart, the feelings, the believing fancy was
religious, broke out with the assertion that the "natural
understanding," human reason, was also capable of discerning God. What
does that mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same visionary
as the fancy?[35] In this sense Reimarus wrote his "Most Notable Truths
of Natural Religion." It had to come to this,--that the _whole_ man with
all his faculties was found to be _religious_; heart and affections,
understanding and reason, feeling, knowledge, and will,--in short,
everything in man,--appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even
philosophy is religious. And what is not called religion to-day? The
"religion of love," the "religion of freedom," "political religion,"--in
short, every enthusiasm. So it is, too, in fact.
To this day we use the Romance word "religion," which expresses the
concept of a condition of being _bound_. To be sure, we remain bound, so
far as religion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the mind
also bound? On the contrary, that is free, is sole lord, is not our
mind, but absolute. Therefore the correct affirmative translation of the
word religion would be "_freedom of mind_"! In whomsoever the mind is
free, he is religious in just the same way as he in whom the senses have
free course is called a sensual man. The mind binds the former, the
desires the latter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or _religio_ with
reference to me,--I am bound; it is freedom with reference to the
mind,--the mind is free, or has freedom of mind. Many know from
experience how hard it is on _us_ when the desires run away with us,
free and unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellectuality,
enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however this jewel may in the
most various phrase be named, brings _us_ into yet more grievous straits
than even the wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can
they perceive it without being consciously egoists.
Reimarus, and all who have shown that our reason, our heart, etc., also
lead to God, have therewithal shown that we are possessed through and
through. To be sure, they vexed the theologians, from whom they took
away the prerogative of religious exaltation; but for religion, for
freedom of mind, they thereby only conquered yet more ground. For, when
the mind is no longer limited to feeling or faith, but also, as
understanding, reason, and thought in general, belongs to itself the
mind,--when, therefore, it may take part in the spiritual[36] and
heavenly truths in the form of understanding, etc., as well as in its
other forms,--then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual
things, _i. e._ with itself, and is therefore free. Now we are so
through-and-through religious that "jurors," _i. e._ "sworn men,"
condemn us to death, and every policeman, as a good Christian, takes us
to the lock-up by virtue of an "oath of office."
Morality could not come into opposition with piety till after the time
when in general the boisterous hate of everything that looked like an
"order" (decrees, commandments, etc.) spoke out in revolt, and the
personal "absolute lord" was scoffed at and persecuted; consequently it
could arrive at independence only through liberalism, whose first form
acquired significance in the world's history as "citizenship," and
weakened the specifically religious powers (see "Liberalism" below).
For, when morality not merely goes alongside of piety, but stands on
feet of its own, then its principle lies no longer in the divine
commandments, but in the law of reason, from which the commandments, so
far as they are still to remain valid, must first await justification
for their validity. In the law of reason man determines himself out of
himself, for "Man" is rational, and out of the "essence of Man" those
laws follow of necessity. Piety and morality part company in this,--that
the former makes God the lawgiver, the latter Man.
From a certain standpoint of morality people reason about as follows:
Either man is led by his sensuality, and is, following it, _immoral_, or
he is led by the good which, taken up into the will, is called moral
sentiment (sentiment and prepossession in favor of the good); then he
shows himself _moral_. From this point of view how, _e. g._, can Sand's
act against Kotzebue be called immoral? What is commonly understood by
unselfish it certainly was, in the same measure as (among other things)
St. Crispin's thieveries in favor of the poor. "He should not have
murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not murder!" Then to serve
the good, the welfare of the people, as Sand at least intended, or the
welfare of the poor, like Crispin,--is moral; but murder and theft are
immoral; the purpose moral, the means immoral. Why? "Because murder,
assassination, is something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas enticed
the enemies of the country into ravines and shot them down unseen from
the bushes, do you suppose that was not assassination? According to the
principle of morality, which commands us to serve the good, you could
really ask only whether murder could never in any case be a realization
of the good, and would have to endorse that murder which realized the
good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at all; it was moral, because in
the service of the good, because unselfish; it was an act of punishment,
which the individual inflicted, an--_execution_ inflicted at the risk of
the executioner's life. What else had his scheme been, after all, but
that he wanted to suppress writings by brute force? Are you not
acquainted with the same procedure as a "legal" and sanctioned one? And
what can be objected against it from your principle of morality?--"But
it was an illegal execution." So the immoral thing in it was the
illegality, the disobedience to law? Then you admit that the good is
nothing else than--law, morality nothing else than _loyalty_. And to
this externality of "loyalty" your morality must sink, to this
righteousness of works in the fulfilment of the law, only that the
latter is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than the old-time
righteousness of works. For in the latter only the _act_ is needed, but
you require the _disposition_ too; one must carry _in himself_ the law,
the statute; and he who is most legally disposed is the most moral. Even
the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life must perish in this
Protestant legality. Here at last the domination of the law is for the
first time complete. "Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus I have
really come so far as to be only the "vessel of its glory." "Every
Prussian carries his _gendarme_ in his breast," says a high Prussian
officer.
Why do certain _opposition parties_ fail to flourish? Solely for the
reason that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality.
Hence the measureless hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc., from whose
repulsiveness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at this rotten
and hypocritical relation of a "lawful opposition."--In the _moral_
relation of love and fidelity divided or opposed will cannot have place;
the beautiful relation is disturbed if the one wills this and the other
the reverse. But now, according to the practice hitherto and the old
prejudice of the opposition, the moral relation is to be preserved above
all. What is then left to the opposition? Perhaps the will to have a
liberty, if the beloved one sees fit to deny it? Not a bit! It may not
_will_ to have the freedom, it can only _wish_ for it, "petition" for
it, lisp a "Please, please!" What would come of it, if the opposition
really _willed_, willed with the full energy of the will? No, it must
renounce _will_ in order to live to _love_, renounce liberty--for love
of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only
to "beg as a favor." Love, devotion, etc., demand with undeviating
definiteness that there be only one will to which the others devote
themselves, which they serve, follow, love. Whether this will is
regarded as reasonable or as unreasonable, in both cases one acts
morally when one follows it, and immorally when one breaks away from it.
The will that commands the censorship seems to many unreasonable; but he
who in a land of censorship evades the censoring of his book acts
immorally, and he who submits it to the censorship acts morally. If some
one let his moral judgment go, and set up _e. g._ a secret press, one
would have to call him immoral, and imprudent into the bargain if he let
himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a value in the eyes
of the "moral"? Perhaps!--That is, if he fancied he was serving a
"higher morality."
The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the frontiers of two
domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its
fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough
to serve _morality_ without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough
to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward
the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of
_halfness_, catches only miserable, stupid flies. If one has once dared
to make a "free" motion, immediately one waters it again with assurances
of love, and--_shams resignation_; if, on the other side, they have had
the face to reject the free motion with _moral_ appeals to confidence,
etc., immediately the moral courage also sinks, and they assure one how
they hear the free words with special pleasure, etc.; they--_sham
approval_. In short, people would like to have the one, but not go
without the other; they would like to have a _free will_, but not for
their lives lack the _moral will_. Just come in contact with a servile
loyalist, you Liberals. You will sweeten every word of freedom with a
look of the most loyal confidence, and he will clothe his servilism in
the most flattering phrases of freedom. Then you go apart, and he, like
you, thinks "I know you, fox!" He scents the devil in you as much as you
do the dark old Lord God in him.
A Nero is a "bad" man only in the eyes of the "good"; in mine he is
nothing but a _possessed_ man, as are the good too. The good see in him
an arch-villain, and relegate him to hell. Why did nothing hinder him in
his arbitrary course? Why did people put up with so much? Do you suppose
the tame Romans, who let all their will be bound by such a tyrant, were
a hair the better? In old Rome they would have put him to death
instantly, would never have been his slaves. But the contemporary "good"
among the Romans opposed to him only moral demands, not their _will_;
they sighed that their emperor did not do homage to morality, like them;
they themselves remained "moral subjects," till at last one found
courage to give up "moral, obedient subjection." And then the same "good
Romans" who, as "obedient subjects," had borne all the ignominy of
having no will, hurrahed over the nefarious, immoral act of the rebel.
Where then in the "good" was the courage for the _revolution_, that
courage which they now praised, after another had mustered it up? The
good could not have this courage, for a revolution, and an insurrection
into the bargain, is always something "immoral," which one can resolve
upon only when one ceases to be "good" and becomes either "bad"
or--neither of the two. Nero was no viler than his time, in which one
could only be one of the two, good or bad. The judgment of his time on
him had to be that he was bad, and this in the highest degree: not a
milksop, but an arch-scoundrel. All moral people can pronounce only this
judgment on him. Rascals such as he was are still living here and there
to-day (see _e. g._ the Memoirs of Ritter von Lang) in the midst of the
moral. It is not convenient to live among them certainly, as one is not
sure of his life for a moment; but can you say that it is more
convenient to live among the moral? One is just as little sure of his
life there, only that one is hanged "in the way of justice," but least
of all is one sure of his honor, and the national cockade is gone before
you can say Jack Robinson. The hard fist of morality treats the noble
nature of egoism altogether without compassion.
"But surely one cannot put a rascal and an honest man on the same
level!" Now, no human being does that oftener than you judges of morals;
yes, still more than that, you imprison as a criminal an honest man who
speaks openly against the existing constitution, against the hallowed
institutions, etc., and you entrust portfolios and still more important
things to a crafty rascal. So _in praxi_ you have nothing to reproach me
with. "But in theory!" Now there I do put both on the same level, as two
opposite poles,--to wit, both on the level of the moral law. Both have
meaning only in the "moral" world, just as in the pre-Christian time a
Jew who kept the law and one who broke it had meaning and significance
only in respect to the Jewish law; before Jesus Christ, on the contrary,
the Pharisee was no more than the "sinner and publican." So before
self-ownership the moral Pharisee amounts to as much as the immoral
sinner.
Nero became very inconvenient by his possessedness. But a self-owning
man would not sillily oppose to him the "sacred," and whine if the
tyrant does not regard the sacred; he would oppose to him his will. How
often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been held up
to their foes, and some liberty or other shown and demonstrated to be a
"sacred right of man"! Those who do that deserve to be laughed out of
court--as they actually are,--were it not that in truth they do, even
though unconsciously, take the road that leads to the goal. They have a
presentiment that, if only the majority is once won for that liberty, it
will also will the liberty, and will then take what it _will_ have. The
sacredness of the liberty, and all possible proofs of this sacredness,
will never procure it; lamenting and petitioning only shows beggars.
The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he knows no other enemy than
the "immoral" man. "He who is not moral is immoral!" and accordingly
reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore the moral man can never comprehend
the egoist. Is not unwedded cohabitation an immorality? The moral man
may turn as he pleases, he will have to stand by this verdict; Emilia
Galotti gave up her life for this moral truth. And it is true, it is an
immorality. A virtuous girl may become an old maid; a virtuous man may
pass the time in fighting his natural impulses till he has perhaps
dulled them, he may castrate himself for the sake of virtue as St.
Origen did for the sake of heaven: he thereby honors sacred wedlock,
sacred chastity, as inviolable; he is--moral. Unchastity can never
become a moral act. However indulgently the moral man may judge and
excuse him who committed it, it remains a transgression, a sin against a
moral commandment; there clings to it an indelible stain. As chastity
once belonged to the monastic vow, so it does to moral conduct. Chastity
is a--good.--For the egoist, on the contrary, even chastity is not a
good without which he could not get along; he cares nothing at all about
it. What now follows from this for the judgment of the moral man? This:
that he throws the egoist into the only class of men that he knows
besides moral men, into that of the--immoral. He cannot do otherwise; he
must find the egoist immoral in everything in which the egoist
disregards morality. If he did not find him so, then he would already
have become an apostate from morality without confessing it to himself,
he would already no longer be a truly moral man. One should not let
himself be led astray by such phenomena, which at the present day are
certainly no longer to be classed as rare, but should reflect that he
who yields any point of morality can as little be counted among the
truly moral as Lessing was a pious Christian when, in the well-known
parable, he compared the Christian religion, as well as the Mohammedan
and Jewish, to a "counterfeit ring." Often people are already further
than they venture to confess to themselves. For Socrates, because in
culture he stood on the level of morality, it would have been an
immorality if he had been willing to follow Crito's seductive incitement
and escape from the dungeon; to remain was the only moral thing. But it
was solely because Socrates was--a moral man. The "unprincipled,
sacrilegious" men of the Revolution, on the contrary, had sworn fidelity
to Louis XVI, and decreed his deposition, yes, his death; but the act
was an immoral one, at which moral persons will be horrified to all
eternity.
* * * * *
Yet all this applies, more or less, only to "civic morality," on which
the freer look down with contempt. For it (like civism, its native
ground, in general) is still too little removed and free from the
religious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws without criticism
or further consideration to its domain instead of producing independent
doctrines of its own. Morality cuts a quite different figure when it
arrives at the consciousness of its dignity, and raises its principle,
the essence of man, or "Man," to be the only regulative power. Those who
have worked their way through to such a decided consciousness break
entirely with religion, whose God no longer finds any place alongside
their "Man," and, as they (see below) themselves scuttle the ship of
State, so too they crumble away that "morality" which flourishes only in
the State, and logically have no right to use even its name any further.
For what this "critical" party calls morality is very positively
distinguished from the so-called "civic or political morality," and
must appear to the citizen like an "insensate and unbridled liberty."
But at bottom it has only the advantage of the "purity of the
principle," which, freed from its defilement with the religious, has now
reached universal power in its clarified definiteness as "humanity."
Therefore one should not wonder that the name "morality" is retained
along with others, like freedom, benevolence, self-consciousness, etc.,
and is only garnished now and then with the addition, a "free"
morality,--just as, though the civic State is abused, yet the State is
to arise again as a "free State," or, if not even so, yet as a "free
society."
Because this morality completed into humanity has fully settled its
accounts with the religion out of which it historically came forth,
nothing hinders it from becoming a religion on its own account. For a
distinction prevails between religion and morality only so long as our
dealings with the world of men are regulated and hallowed by our
relation to a superhuman being, or so long as our doing is a doing "for
God's sake." If, on the other hand, it comes to the point that "man is
to man the supreme being," then that distinction vanishes, and morality,
being removed from its subordinate position, is completed
into--religion. For then the higher being who had hitherto been
subordinated to the highest, Man, has ascended to absolute height, and
we are related to him as one is related to the highest being, _i. e._
religiously. Morality and piety are now as synonymous as in the
beginning of Christianity, and it is only because the supreme being has
come to be a different one that a holy walk is no longer called a
"holy" one, but a "human" one. If morality has conquered, then a
complete--_change of masters_ has taken place.
After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the
supposedly safe harbor of _love_. "The first and highest law must be the
love of man to man. _Homo homini Deus est_--this is the supreme
practical maxim, this the turning point of the world's history."[37]
But, properly speaking, only the god is changed,--the _deus_; love has
remained: there love to the superhuman God, here love to the human God,
to _homo_ as _Deus_. Therefore man is to me--sacred. And everything
"truly human" is to me--sacred! "Marriage is sacred of itself. And so it
is with all moral relations. Friendship is and must be _sacred_ for you,
and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in
and of itself_."[38] Haven't we the priest again there? Who is his God?
Man with a great M! What is the divine? The human! Then the predicate
has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the
sentence "God is love," they say "love is divine"; instead of "God has
become man," "Man has become God," etc. It is nothing more or less than
a new--_religion_. "All moral relations are ethical, are cultivated with
a moral mind, only where of themselves (without religious consecration
by the priest's blessing) they are counted _religious_." Feuerbach's
proposition, "Theology is anthropology," means only "religion must be
ethics, ethics alone is religion."
Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a transposition of subject and
predicate, a giving of preference to the latter. But, since he himself
says, "Love is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred through
being a predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is
divine in and of itself," he might judge that the fight against the
predicates themselves, against love and all sanctities, must be
commenced. How could he hope to turn men away from God when he left them
the divine? And if, as Feuerbach says, God himself has never been the
main thing to them, but only his predicates, then he might have gone on
leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the real kernel, was
left at any rate. He recognizes, too, that with him it is "only a matter
of annihilating an illusion";[39] he thinks, however, that the effect of
the illusion on men is "downright ruinous, since even love, in itself
the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one
through religiousness, since religious love loves man[40] only for God's
sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only." Is
this different with moral love? Does it love the man, _this_ man for
_this_ man's sake, or for morality's sake, for _Man's_ sake, and so--for
_homo homini Deus_--for God's sake?
* * * * *
The wheels in the head have a number of other formal aspects, some of
which it may be useful to indicate here.
Thus _self-renunciation_ is common to the holy with the unholy, to the
pure and the impure. The impure man _renounces_ all "better feelings,"
all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the appetite that
rules him. The pure man renounces his natural relation to the world
("renounces the world") and follows only the "desire" which rules him.
Driven by the thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all
admonitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all gentleness and all
compassion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the appetite drags
him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He makes himself the
"laughing-stock of the world," is hard-hearted and "strictly just"; for
the desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces _himself_ before
Mammon, so the holy man renounces _himself_ before God and the divine
laws. We are now living in a time when the _shamelessness_ of the holy
is every day more and more felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same
time compelled to unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more and more
every day. Have not the shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with
which men antagonize the "progress of the age" long surpassed all
measure and all expectation? But it must be so. The self-renouncers
must, as holy men, take the same course that they do as unholy men;
as the latter little by little sink to the fullest measure of
self-renouncing vulgarity and _lowness_, so the former must ascend
to the most dishonorable _exaltation_. The mammon of the earth
and the _God_ of heaven both demand exactly the same degree
of--self-renunciation. The low man, like the exalted one, reaches out
for a "good,"--the former for the material good, the latter for the
ideal, the so-called "supreme good"; and at last both complete each
other again too, as the "materially-minded" man sacrifices everything to
an ideal phantasm, his _vanity_, and the "spiritually-minded" man to a
material gratification, the _life of enjoyment_.
Those who exhort men to "unselfishness"[41] think they are saying an
uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like
what they understand by "self-renunciation." But who is this self that
is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that _you_ yourself
are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish
self-renunciation recommended to you? Again for _your_ benefit and
behoof, only that through unselfishness you are procuring your "true
benefit."
You are to benefit _yourself_, and yet you are not seek _your_ benefit.
People regard as unselfish the _benefactor_ of men, a Franke who founded
the orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish
people; but also the _fanatic_ who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life
for the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, sacrifices
everything to virtue,--like Koerner, dies for God, king, and fatherland.
Hence, among others, O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him
some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Connell fund seemed
to give them a foundation; for, if they were successful in casting
suspicion on his "unselfishness," they would easily separate him from
his adherents.
Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for
another _end_ than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making
money or at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case
as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and that _his_ end;
selfishness here as there, only that his national self-interest would be
beneficial to _others too_, and so would be for the _common_ interest.
Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the
contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of
fashion in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable
that, if it costs too much in solid material, people at least adorn
themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it. Where does
unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be _our_ end and our
_property_, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it
becomes a fixed end or a--fixed idea; where it begins to inspire,
enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it passes into our
_stubbornness_ and becomes our--master. One is not unselfish so long as
he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that "Here I
stand, I cannot do otherwise," the fundamental maxim of all the
possessed; one becomes so in the case of a _sacred_ end, through the
corresponding sacred zeal.--
I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my _own_, and I, instead
of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfilment, leave it
always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker
than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it
frostily cold, unbelieving, and its most irreconcilable enemy; I remain
its _judge_, because I am its owner.
Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness reaches, as much on
possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit: there vice,
folly, etc.; here humility, devotion, etc.
Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There
sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices
to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a
deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her
youth. Poor child, how often the passions may have beaten at your heart,
and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head
rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your
limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam
of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul
and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves,
your tormented eye turned its look upward, you--prayed. The storms of
nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites.
Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the
tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous
waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a
powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint "Oh dear!"
moaned itself away, and--_the soul was at rest_. You fell asleep, to
awake in the morning to a new combat and a new--prayer. Now the habit of
renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth
are growing pale in the--chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is
saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon, how well you did to scorn
this pale virtue! One free _grisette_ against a thousand virgins grown
gray in virtue!
The fixed idea may also be perceived as "maxim," "principle,"
"standpoint," and the like. Archimedes, to move the earth, asked for a
standpoint _outside_ it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and
every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint
is the _world of mind_, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it
is _heaven_. Heaven is the "standpoint" from which the earth is moved,
earthly doings surveyed and--despised. To assure to themselves heaven,
to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever,--how painfully
and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!
Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature,
from the appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not
let himself be determined by his appetites. This does not involve the
idea that _he_ was not to _have_ appetites, but that the appetites were
not to have him, that they were not to become _fixed_, uncontrollable,
indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived
against the appetites be applied by us to its own precept that _mind_
(thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, etc.) must determine us; could we
not ask that neither should mind, or the conception, the idea, be
allowed to determine us, to become _fixed_ and inviolable or "sacred"?
Then it would end in the _dissolution of mind_, the dissolution of all
thoughts, of all conceptions. As we there had to say "We are indeed to
have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us," so we should now
say "We are indeed to have _mind_, but mind is not to have us." If the
latter seems lacking in sense, think _e. g._ of the fact that with so
many a man a thought becomes a "maxim," whereby he himself is made
prisoner to it, so that it is not he that has the maxim, but rather it
that has him. And with the maxim he has a "permanent standpoint" again.
The doctrines of the catechism become our _principles_ before we find it
out, and no longer brook rejection. Their thought, or--mind, has the
sole power, and no protest of the "flesh" is further listened to.
Nevertheless it is only through the "flesh" that I can break the tyranny
of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest
of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears
_himself_ that he is a hearing or rational[42] being. The Christian does
not hear the agony of his enthralled nature, but lives in "humility";
therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his _person_;
he thinks himself satisfied with the "freedom of the spirit." But, if
the flesh once takes the floor, and its tone is "passionate,"
"indecorous," "not well-disposed," "spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be
otherwise), then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices _against
the spirit_ (for decorum, passionlessness, kindly disposition, and the
like, is--spirit), and is justly zealous against them. He could not be a
Christian if he were willing to endure them. He listens only to
morality, and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to
legality, and gags the lawless word. The _spirit_ of morality and
legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, unbending _master_. They call
that the "mastery of the spirit,"--it is at the same time the
_standpoint_ of the spirit.
And now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen mean to make free? Whose
freedom is it that they cry out and thirst for? The _spirit's_! That of
the spirit of morality, legality, piety, the fear of God, etc. That is
what the anti-liberal gentlemen also want, and the whole contention
between the two turns on a matter of advantage,--whether the latter are
to be the only speakers, or the former are to receive a "share in the
enjoyment of the same advantage." The _spirit_ remains the absolute
_lord_ for both, and their only quarrel is over who shall occupy the
hierarchical throne that pertains to the "Vicegerent of the Lord." The
best of it is that one can calmly look upon the stir with the certainty
that the wild beasts of history will tear each other to pieces just like
those of nature; their putrefying corpses fertilize the ground for--our
crops.
We shall come back later to many another wheel in the head,--for
instance, those of vocation, truthfulness, love, etc.
* * * * *
When one's own is contrasted with what is _imparted_ to him, there is no
use in objecting that we cannot have anything isolated, but receive
everything as a part of the universal order, and therefore through the
impression of what is around us, and that consequently we have it as
something "imparted"; for there is a great difference between the
feelings and thoughts which are _aroused_ in me by other things and
those which are _given_ to me. God, immortality, freedom, humanity,
etc., are drilled into us from childhood as thoughts and feelings which
move our inner being more or less strongly, either ruling us without our
knowing it, or sometimes in richer natures manifesting themselves in
systems and works of art; but are always not aroused, but imparted,
feelings, because we must believe in them and cling to them. That an
Absolute existed, and that it must be taken in, felt, and thought by us,
was settled as a faith in the minds of those who spent all the strength
of their mind on recognizing it and setting it forth. The _feeling_ for
the Absolute exists there as an imparted one, and thenceforth results
only in the most manifold revelations of its own self. So in Klopstock
the religious feeling was an imparted one, which in the "Messiad" simply
found artistic expression. If, on the other hand, the religion with
which he was confronted had been for him only an incitation to feeling
and thought, and if he had known how to take an attitude completely _his
own_ toward it, then there would have resulted, instead of religious
inspiration, a dissolution and consumption of the religion itself.
Instead of that, he only continued in mature years his childish feelings
received in childhood, and squandered the powers of his manhood in
decking out his childish trifles.
The difference is, then, whether feelings are imparted to me or only
aroused. Those which are aroused are my own, egoistic, because they are
not _as feelings_ drilled into me, dictated to me, and pressed upon me;
but those which are imparted to me I receive, with open arms,--I cherish
them in me as a heritage, cultivate them, and am _possessed_ by them.
Who is there that has never, more or less consciously, noticed that our
whole education is calculated to produce _feelings_ in us, _i. e._
impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves
however they may turn out? If we hear thee name of God, we are to feel
veneration; if we hear that of the prince's majesty, it is to be
received with reverence, deference, submission; if we hear that of
morality, we are to think that we hear something inviolable; if we hear
of the Evil One or evil ones, we are to shudder; etc. The intention is
directed to these _feelings_, and he who _e. g._ should hear with
pleasure the deeds of the "bad" would have to be "taught what's what"
with the rod of discipline. Thus stuffed with _imparted feelings_, we
appear before the bar of majority and are "pronounced of age." Our
equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring
maxims, eternal principles," etc. The young are of age when they twitter
like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and,
when they have this by heart, they are declared of age.
We _must not_ feel at every thing and every name that comes before us
what we could and would like to feel thereat; _e. g._, at the name of
God we must think of nothing laughable, feel nothing disrespectful, it
being prescribed and imparted to us what and how we are to feel and
think at mention of that name.
That is the meaning of the _care of souls_,--that my soul or my mind be
tuned as others think right, not as I myself would like it. How much
trouble does it not cost one, finally to secure to oneself a feeling of
one's _own_ at the mention of at least this or that name, and to laugh
in the face of many who expect from us a holy face and a composed
expression at their speeches. What is imparted is _alien_ to us, is not
our own, and therefore is "sacred," and it is hard work to lay aside the
"sacred dread of it."
To-day one again hears "seriousness" praised, "seriousness in the
presence of highly important subjects and discussions," "German
seriousness," etc. This sort of seriousness proclaims clearly how old
and grave lunacy and possession have already become. For there is
nothing more serious than a lunatic when he comes to the central point
of his lunacy; then his great earnestness incapacitates him for taking a
joke. (See madhouses.)
§ 3.--THE HIERARCHY
The historical reflections on our Mongolism which I propose to insert
episodically at this place are not given with the claim of thoroughness,
or even of approved soundness, but solely because it seems to me that
they may contribute toward making the rest clear.
The history of the world, whose shaping properly belongs altogether to
the Caucasian race, seems till now to have run through two Caucasian
ages, in the first of which we had to work out and work off our innate
_negroidity_; this was followed in the second by _Mongoloidity_
(Chineseness), which must likewise be terribly made an end of.
Negroidity represents _antiquity_, the time of dependence on _things_
(on cocks' eating, birds' flight, on sneezing, on thunder and lightning,
on the rustling of sacred trees, etc.); Mongoloidity the time of
dependence on thoughts, the _Christian_ time. Reserved for the future
are the words "I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the
world of mind."
In the negroid age fall the campaigns of Sesostris and the importance of
Egypt and of northern Africa in general. To the Mongoloid age belong the
invasions of the Huns and Mongols, up to the Russians.
The value of _me_ cannot possibly be rated high so long as the hard
diamond of the _not-me_ bears so enormous a price as was the case both
with God and with the world. The not-me is still too stony and
indomitable to be consumed and absorbed by me; rather, men only creep
about with extraordinary _bustle_ on this _immovable_ entity, _i. e._ on
this _substance_, like parasitic animals on a body from whose juices
they draw nourishment, yet without consuming it. It is the bustle of
vermin, the assiduity of Mongolians. Among the Chinese, we know,
everything remains as it used to be, and nothing "essential" or
"substantial" suffers a change; all the more actively do they work away
_at_ that which remains, which bears the name of the "old," "ancestors,"
etc.
Accordingly, in our Mongolian age all change has been only reformatory
or ameliorative, not destructive or consuming and annihilating. The
substance, the object, _remains_. All our assiduity was only the
activity of ants and the hopping of fleas, jugglers' tricks on the
immovable tight-rope of the objective, _corvée_-service under the
lordship of the unchangeable or "eternal." The Chinese are doubtless the
most _positive_ nation, because totally buried in precepts; but neither
has the Christian age come out from the _positive, i. e._ from "limited
freedom," freedom "within certain limits." In the most advanced stage of
civilization this activity earns the name of _scientific_ activity, of
working on a motionless presupposition, a _hypothesis_ that is not to be
upset.
In its first and most unintelligible form morality shows itself as
_habit_. To act according to the habit and usage (_morem_) of one's
country--is to be moral there. Therefore pure moral action, clear,
unadulterated morality, is most straightforwardly practised in China;
they keep to the old habit and usage, and hate each innovation as a
crime worthy of death. For _innovation_ is the deadly enemy of _habit_,
of the _old_, of _permanence_. In fact, too, it admits of no doubt that
through habit man secures himself against the obtrusiveness of things,
of the world, and founds a world of his own in which alone he is and
feels at home, _i. e._ builds himself a _heaven_. Why, heaven has no
other meaning than that it is man's proper home, in which nothing alien
regulates and rules him any longer, no influence of the earthly any
longer makes him himself alien; in short, in which the dross of the
earthly is thrown off, and the combat against the world has found an
end,--in which, therefore, nothing is any longer _denied_ him. Heaven is
the end of _abnegation_, it is _free enjoyment_. There man no longer
denies himself anything, because nothing is any longer alien and hostile
to him. But now habit is a "second nature," which detaches and frees man
from his first and original natural condition, in securing him against
every casualty of it. The fully elaborated habit of the Chinese has
provided for all emergencies, and everything is "looked out for";
whatever may come, the Chinaman always knows how he has to behave, and
does not need to decide first according to the circumstances; no
unforeseen case throws him down from the heaven of his rest. The morally
habituated and inured Chinaman is not surprised and taken off his guard;
he behaves with equanimity (i. e. with equal spirit or temper) toward
everything, because his temper, protected by the precaution of his
traditional usage, does not lose its balance. Hence, on the ladder of
culture or civilization humanity mounts the first round through habit;
and, as it conceives that, in climbing to culture, it is at the same
time climbing to heaven, the realm of culture or second nature, it
really mounts the first round of the--ladder to heaven.
If Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual beings,--if it has
created a world of spirits, a heaven,--the Caucasians have wrestled for
thousands of years with these spiritual beings, to get to the bottom of
them. What were they doing, then, but building on Mongolian ground? They
have not built on sand, but in the air; they have wrestled with
Mongolism, stormed the Mongolian heaven, Tien. When will they at last
annihilate this heaven? When will they at last become _really
Caucasians_, and find themselves? When will the "immortality of the
soul," which in these latter days thought it was giving itself still
more security if it presented itself as "immortality of mind," at last
change to the _mortality of mind_?
It was when, in the industrious struggle of the Mongolian race, men had
_built a heaven_, that those of the Caucasian race, since in their
Mongolian complexion they have to do with heaven, took upon themselves
the opposite task, the task of storming that heaven of custom,
_heaven-storming_[43] activity. To dig under all human ordinance, in
order to set up a new and--better one on the cleared site, to wreck all
customs in order to put new and better customs in their place,
etc.,--their act is limited to this. But is it thus already purely and
really what it aspires to be, and does it reach its final aim? No, in
this creation of a "_better_" it is tainted with Mongolism. It storms
heaven only to make a heaven again, it overthrows an old power only to
legitimate a new power, it only--_improves_. Nevertheless the point
aimed at, often as it may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt, is
the real, complete downfall of heaven, customs, etc.,--in short, of man
secured only against the world, of the _isolation_ or _inwardness_ of
man. Through the heaven of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the
world, to break its hostile power. But this isolation of heaven must
likewise be broken, and the true end of heaven-storming is the--downfall
of heaven, the annihilation of heaven. _Improving_ and _reforming_ is
the Mongolism of the Caucasian, because thereby he is always setting up
again what already existed,--to wit, a _precept_, a generality, a
heaven. He harbors the most irreconcilable enmity to heaven, and yet
builds new heavens daily; piling heaven on heaven, he only crushes one
by another; the Jews' heaven destroys the Greeks', the Christians' the
Jews', the Protestants' the Catholics', etc.--If the _heaven-storming_
men of Caucasian blood throw on their Mongolian skin, they will bury the
emotional man under the ruins of the monstrous world of emotion, the
isolated man under his isolated world, the paradisiacal man under his
heaven. And heaven is the _realm of spirits_, the realm _of freedom of
the spirit_.
The realm of heaven, the realm of spirits and ghosts, has found its
right standing in the speculative philosophy. Here it was stated as the
realm of thoughts, concepts, and ideas; heaven is peopled with thoughts
and ideas, and this "realm of spirits" is then the true reality.
To want to win freedom for the _spirit_ is Mongolism; freedom of the
spirit is Mongolian freedom, freedom of feeling, moral freedom, etc.
We may find the word "morality" taken as synonymous with spontaneity,
self-determination. But that is not involved in it; rather has the
Caucasian shown himself spontaneous only _in spite of_ his Mongolian
morality. The Mongolian heaven, or morals,[44] remained the strong
castle, and only by storming incessantly at this castle did the
Caucasian show himself moral; if he had not had to do with morals at
all any longer, if he had not had therein his indomitable, continual
enemy, the relation to morals would cease, and consequently morality
would cease. That his spontaneity is still a moral spontaneity,
therefore, is just the Mongoloidity of it,--is a sign that in it he has
not arrived at himself. "Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with
"religious and orthodox philosophy," "constitutional monarchy," "the
Christian State," "freedom within certain limits," "the limited freedom
of the press," or, in a figure, to the hero fettered to a sick-bed.
Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses
the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits,
but also the belief in the spirit.
He who believes in a spook no more assumes the "introduction of a higher
world" than he who believes in the spirit, and both seek behind the
sensual world a supersensual one; in short, they produce and believe
_another_ world, and this other _world, the product of their mind_, is a
spiritual world; for their senses grasp and know nothing of another, a
non-sensual world, only their spirit lives in it. Going on from this
Mongolian belief in the _existence of spiritual beings_ to the point
that the _proper being_ of man too is his _spirit_, and that all care
must be directed to this alone, to the "welfare of his soul," is not
hard. Influence on the spirit, so-called "moral influence," is hereby
assured.
Hence it is manifest that Mongolism represents utter absence of any
rights of the sensuous, represents non-sensuousness and unnature, and
that sin and the consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that
lasted thousands of years.
But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its _nothing_? He who by
means of the spirit set forth nature as the _null_, finite, transitory,
he alone can bring down the spirit too to like nullity. _I_ can; each
one among you can, who does his will as an absolute I; in a word, the
_egoist_ can.
* * * * *
Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence;
they occupy a _powerless_ and _humble_ attitude toward it. And yet no
thing is sacred of itself, but by my _declaring it sacred_, by my
declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by
my--conscience.
Sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be unapproachable, not
to be touched, outside his _power_,--_i. e._ above _him_; sacred, in a
word, is every _matter of conscience_, for "this is a matter of
conscience to me" means simply "I hold this sacred."
For little children, just as for animals, nothing sacred exists,
because, in order to make room for this conception, one must already
have progressed so far in understanding that he can make distinctions
like "good and bad," "warranted and unwarranted," etc.; only at such a
level of reflection or intelligence--the proper standpoint of
religion--can unnatural (_i. e._ brought into existence by thinking)
_reverence_, "sacred dread," step into the place of natural _fear_. To
this sacred dread belongs holding something outside oneself for
mightier, greater, better warranted, better, etc.; _i. e._ the attitude
in which one acknowledges the might of something alien--not merely
feels it, then, but expressly acknowledges it, _i. e._ admits it,
yields, surrenders, lets himself be tied (devotion, humility, servility,
submission, etc.) Here walks the whole ghostly troop of the "Christian
virtues."
Everything toward which you cherish any respect or reverence deserves
the name of sacred; you yourselves, too, say that you would feel a
"_sacred dread_" of laying hands on it. And you give this tinge even to
the unholy (gallows, crime, etc.) You have a horror of touching it.
There lies in it something uncanny, _i. e._ unfamiliar or _not your
own_.
"If something or other did not rank as sacred in a man's mind, why, then
all bars would be let down to self-will, to unlimited subjectivity!"
Fear makes the beginning, and one can make himself fearful to the
coarsest man; already, therefore, a barrier against his insolence. But
in fear there always remains the attempt to liberate oneself from what
is feared, by guile, deception, tricks, etc. In reverence,[45] on the
contrary, it is quite otherwise. Here something is not only feared,[46]
but also honored[47]: what is feared has become an inward power which I
can no longer get clear of; I honor it, am captivated by it and devoted
to it, belong to it; by the honor which I pay it I am completely in its
power, and do not even attempt liberation any longer. Now I am attached
to it with all the strength of faith; I _believe_. I and what I fear are
one; "not I live, but the respected lives in me!" Because the spirit,
the infinite, does not allow of coming to any end, therefore it is
stationary; it fears _dying_, it cannot let go its dear Jesus, the
greatness of finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye; the
object of fear, now raised to veneration, may no longer be handled;
reverence is made eternal, the respected is deified. The man is now no
longer employed in creating, but in _learning_ (knowing, investigating,
etc.), _i. e._ occupied with a fixed _object_, losing himself in its
depths, without return to himself. The relation to this object is that
of knowing, fathoming, basing, etc., not that of _dissolution_
(abrogation, etc.) "Man is to be religious," that is settled; therefore
people busy themselves only with the question how this is to be
attained, what is the right meaning of religiousness, etc. Quite
otherwise when one makes the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in
question, even though it should go to smash. Morality too is such sacred
conception; one must be moral, and must look only for the right "how,"
the right way to be so. One dares not go at morality itself with the
question whether it is not itself an illusion; it remains exalted above
all doubt, unchangeable. And so we go on with the sacred, grade after
grade, from the "holy" to the "holy of holies."
* * * * *
Men are sometimes divided into two classes, _cultured_ and _uncultured_.
The former, so far as they were worthy of their name, occupied
themselves with thoughts, with mind, and (because in the time since
Christ, of which the very principle is thought, they were the ruling
ones) demanded a servile respect for the thoughts recognized by them.
State, emperor, church, God, morality, order, etc., are such thoughts
or spirits, that exist only for the mind. A merely living being, an
animal, cares as little for them as a child. But the uncultured are
really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the necessities
of his life is indifferent to those spirits; but, because he is also
weak before them, he succumbs to their power, and is ruled by--thoughts.
This is the meaning of hierarchy.
_Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind!_
We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by
thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred.
But the two are always clashing, now one and now the other giving the
offence; and this clash occurs, not only in the collision of two men,
but in one and the same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not
to find enjoyment in things too, and so be uncultured; and no uncultured
man is totally without thoughts. In Hegel it comes to light at last what
a longing for _things_ even the most cultured man has, and what a horror
of every "hollow theory" he harbors. With him reality, the world of
things, is altogether to correspond to the thought, and no concept to be
without reality. This caused Hegel's system to be known as the most
objective, as if in it thought and thing celebrated their union. But
this was simply the extremest case of violence on the part of thought,
its highest pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the triumph of mind,
and with it the triumph of _philosophy_. Philosophy cannot hereafter
achieve anything higher, for its highest is the _omnipotence of mind_,
the almightiness of mind.[48]
Spiritual men have _taken into their head_ something that is to be
realized. They have _concepts_ of love, goodness, and the like, which
they would like to see _realized_; therefore they want to set up a
kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from
selfishness, but each one "from love." Love is to _rule_. What they have
taken into their head, what shall we call it but--_fixed idea_? Why,
"their head is _haunted_." The most oppressive spook is _Man_. Think of
the proverb, "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions." The
intention to realize humanity altogether in oneself, to become
altogether man, is of such ruinous kind; here belong the intentions to
become good, noble, loving, etc.
In the sixth part of the "_Denkwuerdigkeiten_" p. 7, Bruno Bauer says:
"That middle class, which was to receive such a terrible importance for
modern history is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm
for an idea, no exaltation; it devotes itself to nothing but the
interests of its mediocrity; _i. e._ it remains always limited to
itself, and conquers at last only through its bulk, with which it has
succeeded in tiring out the efforts of passion, enthusiasm,
consistency,--through its surface, into which it absorbs a part of the
new ideas." And (p. 6) "It has turned the revolutionary ideas, for which
not it, but unselfish or impassioned men sacrificed themselves, solely
to its own profit, has turned spirit into money.--That is, to be sure,
after it had taken away from those ideas their point, their consistency,
their destructive seriousness, fanatical against all egoism." These
people, then, are not self-sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not
idealistic, not consistent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual
sense, selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober,
calculating, etc.
Who, then, is "self-sacrificing"?[49] In the full sense, surely, he who
ventures everything else for _one thing_, one object, one will, one
passion, etc. Is not the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and
mother, endures all dangers and privations, to reach his goal? Or the
ambitious man, who offers up all his desires, wishes, and satisfactions
to the single passion, or the avaricious man who denies himself
everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is
ruled by a passion to which he brings the rest as sacrifices.
And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not
egoists? As they have only one ruling passion, so they provide for only
one satisfaction, but for this the more strenuously; they are wholly
absorbed in it. Their entire activity is egoistic, but it is a
one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism; it is possessedness.
"Why, those are petty passions, by which, on the contrary, man must not
let himself be enthralled. Man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a
great cause!" A "great idea," a "good cause," is, it may be, the honor
of God, for which innumerable people have met death; Christianity, which
has found its willing martyrs; the Holy Catholic Church, which has
greedily demanded sacrifices of heretics; liberty and equality, which
were waited on by bloody guillotines.
He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a
lofty calling, may not let any worldly lusts, any self-seeking interest,
spring up in him. Here we have the concept of _clericalism_, or, as it
may also be called in its pedagogic activity, school-masterliness; for
the idealists play the schoolmaster over us. The clergyman is especially
called to live to the idea and to work for the idea, the truly good
cause. Therefore the people feel how little it befits him to show
worldly haughtiness, to desire good living, to join in such pleasures as
dancing and gaming,--in short, to have any other than a "sacred
interest." Hence too, doubtless, is derived the scanty salary of
teachers, who are to feel themselves repaid by the sacredness of their
calling alone, and to "renounce" other enjoyments.
Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more of which man is to
look upon as his calling, is not lacking. Family, fatherland, science,
etc., may find in man a servant faithful to his calling.
Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world which has not yet
learned to do without clericalism,--that to live and work _for an idea_
is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness of its fulfilment
his _human_ worth is measured.
This is the dominion of the idea; in other words, it is clericalism.
_E. g._, Robespierre, St. Just, etc., were priests through and through,
inspired by the idea, enthusiasts, consistent instruments of this idea,
idealistic men. So St. Just exclaims in a speech, "There is something
terrible in the sacred love of country; it is so exclusive that it
sacrifices everything to the public interest without mercy, without
fear, without human consideration. It hurls Manlius down the precipice;
it sacrifices its private inclinations; it leads Regulus to Carthage,
throws a Roman into the chasm, and sets Marat, as a victim of his
devotion, in the Pantheon."
Now, over against these representatives of ideal or sacred interests
stands a world of innumerable "personal" profane interests. No idea, no
system, no sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and
modified by these personal interests. Even if they are silent
momentarily, and in times of rage and fanaticism, yet they soon come
uppermost again through "the sound sense of the people." Those ideas do
not completely conquer till they are no longer hostile to personal
interests, _i. e._ till they satisfy egoism.
The man who is just now crying herrings in front of my window has a
personal interest in good sales, and, if his wife or anybody else wishes
him the like, this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on the
other hand, a thief deprived him of his basket, then there would at once
arise an interest of many, of the whole city, of the whole country, or,
in a word, of all who abhor theft; an interest in which the
herring-seller's person would become indifferent, and in its place the
category of the "robbed man" would come into the foreground. But even
here all might yet resolve itself into a personal interest, each of the
partakers reflecting that he must concur in the punishment of the thief
because unpunished stealing might otherwise become general and cause him
too to lose his own. Such a calculation, however, can hardly be assumed
on the part of many, and we shall rather hear the cry that the thief is
a "criminal." Here we have before us a judgment, the thief's action
receiving its expression in the concept "crime." Now the matter stands
thus: even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or
to any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless
_denounce_ it. Why? Because I am enthusiastic for _morality_, filled
with the _idea_ of morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere assail.
Because in his mind theft ranks as abominable without any question,
Proudhon, _e. g._, thinks that with the sentence "Property is theft" he
has at once put a brand on property. In the sense of the priestly, theft
is always a _crime_, or at least a misdeed.
Here the personal interest is at an end. This particular person who has
stolen the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person; it is only the
thief, this concept of which that person presents a specimen, that I
take an interest in. The thief and man are in my mind irreconcilable
opposites; for one is not truly man when one is a thief; one degrades
_Man_ or "humanity" in himself when one steals. Dropping out of personal
concern, one gets into _philanthropism_, friendliness to man, which is
usually misunderstood as if it was a love to men, to each individual,
while it is nothing but a love of Man, the unreal concept, the spook.
It is not [Greek: tous anthrôpous], men, but [Greek: ton anthrôpon],
Man, that the philanthropist carries in his heart. To be sure, he cares
for each individual, but only because he wants to see his beloved ideal
realized everywhere.
So there is nothing said here of care for me, you, us; that would be
personal interest, and belongs under the head of "worldly love."
Philanthropism is a heavenly, spiritual, a--priestly love. _Man_ must be
restored in us, even if thereby we poor devils should come to grief. It
is the same priestly principle as that famous _fiat justitia, pereat
mundus_; man and justice are ideas, ghosts, for love of which everything
is sacrificed; therefore the priestly spirits are the "self-sacrificing"
ones.
He who is infatuated with _Man_ leaves persons out of account so far as
that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest.
_Man_, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
Now, things as different as possible can belong to _Man_ and be so
regarded. If one finds Man's chief requirement in piety, there arises
religious clericalism; if one sees it in morality, then moral
clericalism raises its head. On this account the priestly spirits of our
day want to make a "religion" of everything, a "religion of liberty,"
"religion of equality," etc., and for them every idea becomes a "sacred
cause," _e. g._ even citizenship, politics, publicity, freedom of the
press, trial by jury, etc.
Now, what does "unselfishness" mean in this sense? Having only an ideal
interest, before which no respect of persons avails!
The stiff head of the worldly man opposes this, but for centuries has
always been worsted at least so far as to have to bend the unruly neck
and "honor the higher power"; clericalism pressed it down. When the
worldly egoist had shaken off a higher power (_e. g._ the Old Testament
law, the Roman pope, etc.), then at once a seven times higher one was
over him again, _e. g._ faith in the place of the law, the
transformation of all laymen into divines in place of the limited body
of clergy, etc. His experience was like that of the possessed man into
whom seven devils passed when he thought he had freed himself from one.
In the passage quoted above all ideality, etc., is denied to the middle
class. It certainly schemed against the ideal consistency with which
Robespierre wanted to carry out the principle. The instinct of its
interest told it that this consistency harmonized too little with what
its mind was set on, and that it would be acting against itself if it
were willing to further the enthusiasm for principle. Was it to behave
so unselfishly as to abandon all its aims in order to bring a harsh
theory to its triumph? It suits the priests admirably, to be sure, when
people listen to their summons, "Cast away everything and follow me," or
"Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Some decided idealists obey
this call; but most act like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a
behavior half clerical or religious and half worldly, serving God and
Mammon.
I do not blame the middle class for not wanting to let its aims be
frustrated by Robespierre, _i. e._ for inquiring of its egoism how far
it might give the revolutionary idea a chance. But one might blame (if
blame were in place here anyhow) those who let their own interests be
frustrated by the interests of the middle class. However, will not they
likewise sooner or later learn to understand what is to their advantage?
August Becker says:[50] "To win the producers (proletarians) a negation
of the traditional conception of right is by no means enough. Folks
unfortunately care little for the theoretical victory of the idea. One
must demonstrate to them _ad oculos_ how this victory can be practically
utilized in life." And (p. 32): "You must get hold of folks by their
real interests if you want to work upon them." Immediately after this he
shows how a fine looseness of morals is already spreading among our
peasants, because they prefer to follow their real interests rather than
the commands of morality.
Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters served _Man_, they
cut off the heads of _men_. The revolutionary laymen, those outside the
sacred circle, did not feel any greater horror of cutting off heads, but
were less anxious about the rights of Man than about their own.
How comes it, though, that the egoism of those who affirm personal
interest, and always inquire of it, is nevertheless forever succumbing
to a priestly or schoolmasterly (_i. e._ an ideal) interest? Their
person seems to them too small, too insignificant,--and is so in
fact,--to lay claim to everything and be able to put itself completely
in force. There is a sure sign of this in their dividing themselves into
two persons, an eternal and a temporal, and always caring either only
for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the eternal, on the
work-day for the temporal, in prayer for the former, in work for the
latter. They have the priest in themselves, therefore they do not get
rid of him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly every Sunday.
How men have struggled and calculated to get at a solution regarding
these dualistic essences! Idea followed upon idea, principle upon
principle, system upon system, and none knew how to keep down
permanently the contradiction of the "worldly" man, the so-called
"egoist." Does not this prove that all those ideas were too feeble to
take up my whole will into themselves and satisfy it? They were and
remained hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for a
considerable time. Will it be the same with _self-ownership_? Is it too
only an attempt at mediation? Whatever principle I turned to, it might
be to that of _reason_, I always had to turn away from it again. Or can
I always be rational, arrange my life according to reason in everything?
I can, no doubt, _strive_ after rationality, I can _love_ it, just as I
can also love God and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover
of wisdom, as I love God. But what I love, what I strive for, is only in
my idea, my conception, my thoughts; it is in my heart, my head, it is
in me like the heart, but it is not I, I am not it.
To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially what one often
hears called "_moral influence_."
Moral influence takes its start where _humiliation_ begins; yes, it is
nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of
the temper[51] down to _humility_.[52] If I call to some one to run away
when a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by this demand;
if I say to a child "You will go hungry if you will not eat what is put
on the table," this is not moral influence. But, if I say to it "You
will pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak the truth,
etc., for this belongs to man and is man's calling," or even "this is
God's will," then moral influence is complete; then a man is to bend
before the _calling_ of man, be tractable, become humble, give up his
will for an alien one which is set up as rule and law; he is to _abase_
himself before something _higher_: self-abasement. "He that abaseth
himself shall be exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be _made_ to
practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is
one into whom "good maxims" have been _instilled_ and _impressed_,
poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.
If one shrugs his shoulders at this, at once the good wring their hands
despairingly, and cry: "But, for heaven's sake, if one is to give
children no good instruction, why, then they will run straight into the
jaws of sin, and become good-for-nothing hoodlums!" Gently, you prophets
of evil. Good-for-nothing in your sense they certainly will become; but
your sense happens to be a very good-for-nothing sense. The impudent
lads will no longer let anything be whined and chattered into them by
you, and will have no sympathy for all the follies for which you have
been raving and driveling since the memory of man began; they will
abolish the law of inheritance, _i. e._ they will not be willing to
_inherit_ your stupidities as you inherited them from your fathers; they
destroy _inherited sin_.[53] If you command them, "Bend before the Most
High," they will answer: "If he wants to bend us, let him come himself
and do it; we, at least, will not bend of our own accord." And, if you
threaten them with his wrath and his punishment, they will take it like
being threatened with the bogie-man. If you are no longer successful in
making them afraid of ghosts, then the dominion of ghosts is at an end,
and nurses' tales find no--_faith_.
And is it not precisely the liberals again that press for good education
and improvement of the educational system? For how could their
liberalism, their "liberty within the bounds of law," come about without
discipline? Even if they do not exactly educate to the fear of God, yet
they demand the _fear of Man_ all the more strictly, and awaken
"enthusiasm for the truly human calling" by discipline.
* * * * *
A long time passed away, in which people were satisfied with the fancy
that they had the _truth_, without thinking seriously whether perhaps
they themselves must be true to possess the truth. This time was the
_Middle Ages_. With the common consciousness--_i. e._ the consciousness
which deals with things, that consciousness which has receptivity only
for things, or for what is sensuous and sense-moving--they thought to
grasp what did not deal with things and was not perceptible by the
senses. As one does indeed also exert his eye to see the remote, or
laboriously exercise his hand till its fingers have become dexterous
enough to press the keys correctly, so they chastened themselves in the
most manifold ways, in order to become capable of receiving the
supersensual wholly into themselves. But what they chastened was, after
all, only the sensual man, the common consciousness, so-called finite or
objective thought. Yet as this thought, this understanding, which Luther
decries under the name of reason, is incapable of comprehending the
divine, its chastening contributed just as much to the understanding of
the truth as if one exercised the feet year in and year out in dancing,
and hoped that in this way they would finally learn to play the flute.
Luther, with whom the so-called Middle Ages end, was the first who
understood that the man himself must become other than he was if he
wanted to comprehend truth,--must become as true as truth itself. Only
he who already has truth in his belief, only he who _believes_ in it,
can become a partaker of it; _i. e._, only the believer finds it
accessible and sounds its depths. Only that organ of man which is able
to blow can attain the further capacity of flute-playing, and only that
man can become a partaker of truth who has the right organ for it. He
who is capable of thinking only what is sensuous, objective, pertaining
to things, figures to himself in truth only what pertains to things. But
truth is spirit, stuff altogether inappreciable by the senses, and
therefore only for the "higher consciousness," not for that which is
"earthly-minded."
With Luther, accordingly, dawns the perception that truth, because it is
a _thought_, is only for the _thinking_ man. And this is to say that man
must henceforth take an utterly different standpoint, viz., the
heavenly, believing, scientific standpoint, or that of _thought_ in
relation to its object, the--_thought_,--that of mind in relation to
mind. Consequently: only the like apprehend the like. "You are like the
spirit that you understand."[54]
Because Protestantism broke the mediæval hierarchy, the opinion could
take root that hierarchy in general had been shattered by it, and it
could be wholly overlooked that it was precisely a "reformation," and so
a reinvigoration of the antiquated hierarchy. That mediæval hierarchy
had been only a weakly one, as it had to let all possible barbarism of
unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside it, and it was the
Reformation that first steeled the power of hierarchy. If Bruno Bauer
thinks:[55] "As the Reformation was mainly the abstract rending of the
religious principle from art, State, and science, and so its liberation
from those powers with which it had joined itself in the antiquity of
the church and in the hierarchy of the Middle Ages, so too the
theological and ecclesiastical movements which proceeded from the
Reformation are only the consistent carrying out of this abstraction of
the religious principle from the other powers of humanity," I regard
precisely the opposite as correct, and think that the dominion of
spirits, or freedom of mind (which comes to the same thing), was never
before so all-embracing and all-powerful, because the present one,
instead of rending the religious principle from art, State, and science,
lifted the latter altogether out of secularity into the "realm of
spirit" and made them religious.
Luther and Descartes have been appropriately put side by side in their
"He who believes is a God" and "I think, therefore I am" (_cogito, ergo
sum_). Man's heaven is _thought_,--mind. Everything can be wrested from
him, except thought, except faith. _Particular_ faith, like faith in
Zeus, Astarte, Jehovah, Allah, etc., may be destroyed, but faith itself
is indestructible. In thought is freedom. What I need and what I hunger
for is no longer granted to me by any _grace_, by the Virgin Mary, by
intercession of the saints, or by the binding and loosing church, but I
procure it for myself. In short, my being (the _sum_) is a living in the
heaven of thought, of mind, a _cogitare_. But I myself am nothing else
than mind, thinking mind (according to Descartes), believing mind
(according to Luther). My body I am not; my flesh may _suffer_ from
appetites or pains. I am not my flesh, but _I_ am _mind_, only mind.
This thought runs through the history of the Reformation till to-day.
Only by the more modern philosophy since Descartes has a serious effort
been made to bring Christianity to complete efficacy, by exalting the
"scientific consciousness" to be the only true and valid one. Hence it
begins with absolute _doubt_, _dubitare_, with grinding common
consciousness to atoms, with turning away from everything that "mind,"
"thought," does not legitimate. To it _Nature_ counts for nothing; the
opinion of men, their "human precepts," for nothing: and it does not
rest till it has brought reason into everything, and can say "The real
is the rational, and only the rational is the real." Thus it has at last
brought mind, reason, to victory; and everything is mind, because
everything is rational, because all nature, as well as even the
perversest opinions of men, contains reason; for "all must serve for the
best," _i. e._ lead to the victory of reason.
Descartes's _dubitare_ contains the decided statement that only
_cogitare_, thought, mind--_is_. A complete break with "common"
consciousness, which ascribes reality to _irrational_ things! Only the
rational is, only mind is! This is the principle of modern philosophy,
the genuine Christian principle. Descartes in his own time discriminated
the body sharply from the mind, and "the spirit 'tis that builds itself
the body," says Goethe.
But this philosophy itself, Christian philosophy, still does not get rid
of the rational, and therefore inveighs against the "merely subjective,"
against "fancies, fortuities, arbitrariness," etc. What it wants is that
the _divine_ should become visible in everything, and all consciousness
become a knowing of the divine, and man behold God everywhere; but God
never is, without the _devil_.
For this very reason the name of philosopher is not to be given to him
who has indeed open eyes for the things of the world, a clear and
undazzled gaze, a correct judgment about the world, but who sees in the
world just the world, in objects only objects, and, in short, everything
prosaically as it is; but he alone is a philosopher who sees, and points
out or demonstrates, heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly,
the--_divine_ in the mundane. The former may be ever so wise, there is
no getting away from this:
What wise men see not by their wisdom's art
Is practised simply by a childlike heart.[56]
It takes this childlike heart, this eye for the divine, to make a
philosopher. The first-named man has only a "common" consciousness, but
he who knows the divine, and knows how to tell it, has a "scientific"
one. On this ground Bacon was turned out of the realm of philosophers.
And certainly what is called English philosophy seems to have got no
further than to the discoveries of so-called "clear heads", such as
Bacon and Hume. The English did not know how to exalt the simplicity of
the childlike heart to philosophic significance, did not know how to
make--philosophers out of childlike hearts. This is as much as to say,
their philosophy was not able to become _theological_ or _theology_, and
yet it is only as theology that it can really _live itself out_,
complete itself. The field of its battle to the death is in theology.
Bacon did not trouble himself about theological questions and cardinal
points.
Cognition has its object in life. German thought seeks, more than that
of others, to reach the beginnings and fountain-heads of life, and sees
no life till it sees it in cognition itself. Descartes's _cogito, ergo
sum_ has the meaning "One lives only when one thinks." Thinking life is
called "intellectual life"! Only mind lives, its life is the true life.
Then, just so in nature only the "eternal laws," the mind or the reason
of nature, are its true life. In man, as in nature, only the thought
lives; everything else is dead! To this abstraction, to the life of
generalities or of that which is _lifeless_, the history of mind had to
come. God, who is spirit, alone lives. Nothing lives but the ghost.
How can one try to assert of modern philosophy or modern times that they
have reached freedom, since they have not freed us from the power of
objectivity? Or am I perhaps free from a despot when I am not afraid of
the personal potentate, to be sure, but of every infraction of the
loving reverence which I fancy I owe him? The case is the same with
modern times. They only changed the _existing_ objects, the real ruler,
etc., into _conceived_ objects, _i. e._ into _ideas_, before which the
old respect not only was not lost, but increased in intensity. Even if
people snapped their fingers at God and the devil in their former crass
reality, people devoted only the greater attention to their ideas. "They
are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[57] The decision having once
been made not to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and
palpable, little scruple was felt about revolting against the existing
State or overturning the existing laws; but to sin against the _idea_ of
the State, not to submit to the _idea_ of law, who would have dared
that? So one remained a "citizen" and a "law-respecting," loyal man;
yes, one seemed to himself to be only so much more law-respecting, the
more rationalistically one abrogated the former defective law in order
to do homage to the "spirit of the law." In all this the objects had
only suffered a change of form; they had remained in their prepollence
and pre-eminence; in short, one was still involved in obedience and
possessedness, lived in _refection_, and had an object on which one
reflected, which one respected, and before which one felt reverence and
fear. One had done nothing but transform the _things_ into _conceptions_
of the things, into thoughts and ideas, whereby one
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