To bring this figure to an end, the child of Labor and Money is again a girl, an unwedded one and therefore Money, but with the certain descent from Labor, her father. The form of the face, the "effigy," bears another stamp.
Finally, as regards competition once more, it has a continued existence by this very means, that all do not attend totheir affairand come to anunderstandingwith each other about it. Bread,e. g., is a need of all the inhabitants of a city; therefore they might easily agree on setting up a public bakery. Instead of this, they leave the furnishing of the needful to thecompeting bakers. Just so meat to the butchers, wine to the wine-dealers, etc.
Abolishing competition is not equivalent to favoring the guild. The difference is this: In theguildbaking, etc., is the affair of the guild-brothers; incompetition, the affair of chance competitors; in theunion, of those who require baked goods, and therefore my affair, yours, the affair of neither the guildic nor the concessionary baker, but the affair of theunited.
IfIdo not trouble myself aboutmyaffair, I must becontentwith what it pleases others to vouchsafe me. To have bread is my affair, my wish and desire, and yet people leave that to the bakers and hope at most to obtain through their wrangling, their getting ahead of each other, their rivalry,—in short, their competition,—an advantage which one could not count on in the case of the guild-brothers who were lodgedentirelyandalonein the proprietorship of the baking franchise.—What every one requires, every one should also take a hand in procuring and producing; it ishisaffair, his property, not the property of the guildic or concessionary master.
Let us look back once more. The world belongs to the children of this world, the children of men; it is no longer God's world, but man's. As much as every man can procure of it, let him call his; only the true man, the State, human society or mankind, will look to it that each shall make nothing else his own than what he appropriates as man,i. e.in human fashion. Unhuman appropriation is that which is not consented to by man,i. e.it is a "criminal" appropriation, as the human,vice versa, is a "rightful" one, one acquired in the "way of law."
So they talk since the Revolution.
But my property is not a thing, since this has an existence independent of me; only my might is my own. Not this tree, but my might or control over it, is what is mine.
Now, how is this might perversely expressed? They say I have arightto this tree, or it is myrightfulproperty. So I haveearnedit by might. That the might must last in order that the tree may also beheld,—or better, that the might is not a thing existing of itself, but has existence solely in themighty ego, in me the mighty,—is forgotten. Might, like other of myqualities(e. g.humanity, majesty, etc.), is exalted to something existing of itself, so that it still exists long after it has ceased to bemymight. Thus transformed into a ghost, might is—right. Thiseternalizedmight is not extinguished even with my death, but is transferred or "bequeathed."
Things now really belong not to me, but to right.
On the other side, this is nothing but a hallucination of vision. For the individual's might becomes permanent and a right only by others joining their might with his. The delusion consists in their believing that they cannot withdraw their might. The same phenomenon over again; might is separated from me. I cannot take back the might that I gave to the possessor. One has "granted power of attorney," has given away his power, has renounced coming to a better mind.
The proprietor can give up his might and his rightto a thing by giving the thing away, squandering it, and the like. Andweshould not be able likewise to let go the might that we lend to him?
The rightful man, thejust, desires to call nothing his own that he does not have "rightly" or have the right to, and therefore onlylegitimate property.
Now, who is to be judge, and adjudge his right to him? At last, surely, Man, who imparts to him the rights of man: then he can say, in an infinitely broader sense than Terence,humani nihil a me alienum puto,i. e.thehuman is my property. However he may go about it, so long as he occupies this standpoint he cannot get clear of a judge; and in our time the multifarious judges that had been selected have set themselves against each other in two persons at deadly enmity,—to wit, in God and Man. The one party appeal to divine right, the other to human right or the rights of man.
So much is clear, that in neither case does the individual do the entitling himself.
Just pick me out an action to-day that would not be a violation of right! Every moment the rights of man are trampled under foot by one side, while their opponents cannot open their mouth without uttering a blasphemy against divine right. Give an alms, you mock at a right of man, because the relation of beggar and benefactor is an inhuman relation; utter a doubt, you sin against a divine right. Eat dry bread with contentment, you violate the right of man by your equanimity; eat it with discontent, you revile divine right by your repining. There is not one among you who does not commit a crime at every moment; yourspeeches are crimes, and every hindrance to your freedom of speech is no less a crime. Ye are criminals altogether!
Yet you are so only in that you all stand on theground of right;i. e., in that you do not even know, and understand how to value, the fact that you are criminals.
Inviolable orsacredproperty has grown on this very ground: it is ajuridical concept.
A dog sees the bone in another's power, and stands off only if it feels itself too weak. But man respects the other'srightto his bone. The latter action, therefore, ranks ashuman, the former asbrutalor "egoistic."
And as here, so in general, it is called "human" when one sees in everything somethingspiritual(here right),i. e.makes everything a ghost and takes his attitude toward it as toward a ghost, which one can indeed scare away at its appearance, but cannot kill. It is human to look at what is individual not as individual, but as a generality.
In nature as such I no longer respect anything, but know myself to be entitled to everything against it; in the tree in that garden, on the other hand, I must respectalienness(they say in one-sided fashion "property"), I must keep my hand off it. This comes to an end only when I can indeed leave that tree to another as I leave my stick, etc., to another, but do not in advance regard it as alien to me,i. e.sacred. Rather, I make to myself nocrimeof felling it if I will, and it remains my property, however long I resign it to others: it is and remainsmine. In the banker's fortune I as little see anything alien as Napoleon did in the territories of kings: we have nodreadof "conquering" it, and we look about us also for the means thereto. We strip off from it, therefore, thespiritofalienness, of which we had been afraid.
Therefore it is necessary that I do not lay claim to anything moreas man, but to everything as I, this I; and accordingly to nothing human, but to mine;i. e.nothing that pertains to me as man, but—what I will and because I will it.
Rightful, or legitimate, property of another will be only that whichyouare content to recognize as such. If your content ceases, then this property has lost legitimacy for you, and you will laugh at absolute right to it.
Besides the hitherto discussed property in the limited sense, there is held up to our reverent heart another property against which we are far less "to sin." This property consists in spiritual goods, in the "sanctuary of the inner nature." What a man holds sacred, no other is to gibe at; because, untrue as it may be, and zealously as one may "in loving and modest wise" seek to convince of a true sanctity the man who adheres to it and believes in it, yetthe sacreditself is always to be honored in it: the mistaken man does believe in the sacred, even though in an incorrect essence of it, and so his belief in the sacred must at least be respected.
In ruder times than ours it was customary to demand a particular faith, and devotion to a particular sacred essence, and they did not take the gentlest way with those who believed otherwise; since, however,"freedom of belief" spread itself more and more abroad, the "jealous God and sole Lord" gradually melted into a pretty general "supreme being," and it satisfied humane tolerance if only every one revered "something sacred."
Reduces to the human expression, this sacred essence is "man himself" and "the human." With the deceptive semblance as if the human were altogether our own, and free from all the otherworldliness with which that divine is tainted,—yes, as if Man were as much as I or you,—there may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of a "sacred essence" and that we now feel ourselves everywhere at home and no longer in the uncanny,[195]i. e.in the sacred and in sacred awe: in the ecstasy over "Man discovered at last" the egoistic cry of pain passes unheard, and the spook that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego.
But "Humanus is the saint's name" (see Goethe), and the humane is only the most clarified sanctity.
The egoist makes the reverse declaration. For this precise reason, because you hold something sacred, I gibe at you; and, even if I respected everything in you, your sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect.
With these opposed views there must also be assumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the egoist insults them, the religious man (i. e.every one who puts his "essence" above himself) must consistently—protect them. But what kind of spiritualgoods are to be protected, and what left unprotected, depends entirely on the concept that one forms of the "supreme being"; and he who fears God,e. g., has more to shelter than he (the liberal) who fears Man.
In spiritual goods we are (in distinction from the sensuous) injured in a spiritual way, and the sin against them consists in a directdesecration, while against the sensuous a purloining or alienation takes place; the goods themselves are robbed of value and of consecration, not merely taken away; the sacred is immediately compromised. With the word "irreverence" or "flippancy" is designated everything that can be committed ascrimeagainst spiritual goods,i. e.against everything that is sacred for us; and scoffing, reviling, contempt, doubt, and the like, are only different shades ofcriminal flippancy.
That desecration can be practised in the most manifold wise is here to be passed over, and only that desecration is to be preferentially mentioned which threatens the sacred with danger through anunrestricted press.
As long as respect is demanded even for one spiritual essence, speech and the press must be enthralled in the name of this essence; for just so long the egoist might "trespass" against it by hisutterances, from which thing he must be hindered by "due punishment" at least, if one does not prefer to take up the more correct means against it, the preventive use of police authority,e. g.censorship.
What a sighing for liberty of the press! What then is the press to be liberated from? Surely from a dependence, a belonging, and a liability to service!But to liberate himself from that is every one's affair, and it may with safety be assumed that, when you have delivered yourself from liability to service, that which you compose and write will also belong to you as yourowninstead of having been thought and inditedin the serviceof some power. What can a believer in Christ say and have printed, that should be freer from that belief in Christ than he himself is? If I cannot or may not write something, perhaps the primary fault lies withme. Little as this seems to hit the point, so near is the application nevertheless to be found. By a press-law I draw a boundary for my publications, or let one be drawn, beyond which wrong and itspunishmentfollows. I myselflimitmyself.
If the press was to be free, nothing would be so important as precisely its liberation from every coercion that could be put on it in thename of a law. And, that it might come to that, I my own self should have to have absolved myself from obedience to the law.
Certainly, the absolute liberty of the press is like every absolute liberty, a nonentity. The press can become free from full many a thing, but always only from what I too am free from. If we make ourselves free from the sacred, if we have becomegracelessandlawless, our words too will become so.
As little aswecan be declared clear of every coercion in the world, so little can our writing be withdrawn from it. But as free as we are, so free we can make it too.
It must therefore become ourown, instead of, as hitherto, serving a spook.
People do not yet know what they mean by theircry for liberty of the press. What they ostensibly ask is that the State shall set the press free; but what they are really after, without knowing it themselves, is that the press become free from the State, or clear of the State. The former is apetitionto the State, the latter aninsurrection againstthe State. As a "petition for right," even as a serious demanding of the right of liberty of the press, it presupposes the State as thegiver, and can hope only for apresent, a permission, a chartering. Possible, no doubt, that a State acts so senselessly as to grant the demanded present; but you may bet everything that those who receive the present will not know how to use it so long as they regard the State as a truth: they will not trespass against this "sacred thing," and will call for a penal press-law against every one who would be willing to dare this.
In a word, the press does not become free from what I am not free from.
Do I perhaps hereby show myself an opponent of the liberty of the press? On the contrary, I only assert that one will never get it if one wants only it, the liberty of the press;i. e.if one sets out only for an unrestricted permission. Only beg right along for this permission: you may wait forever for it, for there is no one in the world who could give it to you. As long as you want to have yourselves "entitled" to the use of the press by a permission,i. e.liberty of the press, you live in vain hope and complaint.
"Nonsense! Why, you yourself, who harbor such thoughts as stand in your book, can unfortunately bring them to publicity only through a lucky chanceor by stealth; nevertheless you will inveigh against one's pressing and importuning his own State till it gives the refused permission to print?" But an author thus addressed would perhaps—for the impudence of such people goes far—give the following reply: "Consider well what you say! What then do I do to procure myself liberty of the press for my book? Do I ask for permission, or do I not rather, without any question of legality, seek a favorable occasion and grasp it in complete recklessness of the State and its wishes? I—the terrifying word must be uttered—I cheat the State. You unconsciously do the same. From your tribunes you talk it into the idea that it must give up its sanctity and inviolability, it must lay itself bare to the attacks of writers, without needing on that account to fear danger. But you are imposing on it; for its existence is done for as soon as it loses its unapproachableness. Toyouindeed it might well accord liberty of writing, as England has done; you arebelievers in the Stateand incapable of writing against the State, however much you would like to reform it and 'remedy its defects.' But what if opponents of the State availed themselves of free utterance, and stormed out against Church, State, morals, and everything 'sacred' with inexorable reasons? You would then be the first, in terrible agonies, to call into life theSeptember laws. Too late would you then rue the stupidity that earlier made you so ready to fool and palaver into compliance the State, or the government of the State.—But I prove by my act only two things. This for one, that the liberty of the press is always bound to 'favorable opportunities,' and accordingly will never be an absolute liberty; but secondly this, that he who would enjoy it must seek out and, if possible, create the favorable opportunity, availing himself of hisown advantageagainst the State, and counting himself and his will more than the State and every 'superior' power. Not in the State, but only against it, can the liberty of the press be carried through; if it is to be established, it is to be obtained not as the consequence of apetitionbut as the work of aninsurrection. Every petition and every motion for liberty of the press is already an insurrection, be it conscious or unconscious: a thing which Philistine halfness alone will not and cannot confess to itself until, with a shrinking shudder, it shall see it clearly and irrefutably by the outcome. For the requested liberty of the press has indeed a friendly and well-meaning face at the beginning, as it is not in the least minded ever to let the 'insolence of the press' come into vogue; but little by little its heart grows more hardened, and the inference flatters its way in that really a liberty is not a liberty if it stands in theserviceof the State, of morals, or of the law. A liberty indeed from the coercion of censorship, it is yet not a liberty from the coercion of law. The press, once seized by the lust for liberty, always wants to grow freer, till at last the writer says to himself, Really I am not wholly free till I ask about nothing; and writing is free only when it is myown, dictated to me by no power or authority, by no faith, no dread; the press must not be free—that is too little—it must bemine:—ownness of the pressorproperty in the press, that is what Iwill take.
"Why, liberty of the press is onlypermission of the press, and the State never will or can voluntarily permit me to grind it to nothingness by the press.
"Let us now, in conclusion, bettering the above language, which is still vague, owing to the phrase 'liberty of the press,' rather put it thus:Liberty of the press, the liberals' loud demand, is assuredly possible in the State; yes, it is possible onlyinthe State, because it is apermission, and consequently the permitter (the State) must not be lacking. But as permission it has its limit in this very State, which surely should not in reason permit more than is compatible with itself and its welfare: the State fixes for it this limit as thelawof its existence and of its extension. That one State brooks more than another is only a quantitative distinction, which alone, nevertheless, lies at the heart of the political liberals: they want in Germany,e. g., only a 'more extended, broaderaccordance of free utterance.' The liberty of the press which is sought for is an affair of thepeople's, and before the people (the State) possesses it I may make no use of it. From the standpoint of property in the press, the situation is different. Let my people, if they will, go without liberty of the press, I will manage to print by force or ruse; I get my permission to print only from—myselfand my strength.
"If the press ismy own, I as little need a permission of the State for employing it as I seek that permission in order to blow my nose. The press is mypropertyfrom the moment when nothing is more to me than myself; for from this moment State, Church,people, society, and the like, cease, because they have to thank for their existence only the disrespect that I have for myself, and with the vanishing of this undervaluation they themselves are extinguished: they exist only when they existabove me, exist only aspowers and power-holders. Or can you imagine a State whose citizens one and all think nothing of it? it would be as certainly a dream, an existence in seeming, as 'united Germany.'
"The press is my own as soon as I myself am my own, a self-owned man: to the egoist belongs the world, because he belongs to no power of the world.
"With this my press might still be veryunfree, ase. g., at this moment. But the world is large, and one helps himself as well as he can. If I were willing to abate from thepropertyof my press, I could easily attain the point where I might everywhere have as much printed as my fingers produced. But, as I want to assert my property, I must necessarily swindle my enemies. 'Would you not accept their permission if it were given you?' Certainly, with joy; for their permission would be to me a proof that I had fooled them and started them on the road to ruin. I am not concerned for their permission, but so much the more for their folly and their overthrow. I do not sue for their permission as if I flattered myself (like the political liberals) that we both, they and I, could make out peaceably alongside and with each other, yes, probably raise and prop each other; but I sue for it in order to make them bleed to death by it, that the permitters themselves may cease at last. I act as a conscious enemy, overreaching them andutilizingtheir heedlessness.
"The press isminewhen I recognize outside myself nojudgewhatever over its utilization,i. e.when my writing is no longer determined by morality or religion or respect for the State laws or the like, but by me and my egoism!"—
Now, what have you to reply to him who gives you so impudent an answer?—We shall perhaps put the question most strikingly by phrasing it as follows: Whose is the press, the people's (State's) or mine? The politicals on their side intend nothing further than to liberate the press from personal and arbitrary interferences of the possessors of power, without thinking of the point that to be really open for everybody it would also have to be free from the laws,i. e.from the people's (State's) will. They want to make a "people's affair" of it.
But, having become the people's property, it is still far from being mine; rather, it retains for me the subordinate significance of apermission. The people plays judge over my thoughts; it has the right of calling me to account for them, or, I am responsible to it for them. Jurors, when their fixed ideas are attacked, have just as hard heads and hearts as the stiffest despots and their servile officials.
In the "Liberale Bestrebungen"[196]E. Bauer asserts that liberty of the press is impossible in the absolutist and the constitutional State, whereas in the "free State" it finds its place. "Here," the statement is, "it is recognized that the individual, because he is nolonger an individual but a member of a true and rational generality, has the right to utter his mind." So not the individual, but the "member," has liberty of the press. But, if for the purpose of liberty of the press the individual must first give proof of himself regarding his belief in the generality, the people; if he does not have this libertythrough might of his own,—then it is apeople's liberty, a liberty that he is invested with for the sake of his faith, his "membership." The reverse is the case: it is precisely as an individual that every one has open to him the liberty to utter his mind. But he has not the "right": that liberty is assuredly not his "sacred right." He has only themight; but the might alone makes him owner. I need no concession for the liberty of the press, do not need the people's consent to it, do not need the "right" to it, nor any "justification." The liberty of the press too, like every liberty, I must "take"; the people, "as being the sole judge," cannotgiveit to me. It can put up with the liberty that I take, or defend itself against it; give, bestow, grant it it cannot. I exercise itdespitethe people, purely as an individual;i. e.I get it by fighting the people, my—enemy, and obtain it only when I really get it by such fighting,i. e. takeit. But I take it because it is my property.
Sander, against whom E. Bauer writes, lays claim (page 99) to the liberty of the press "as the right and the liberty of thecitizen in the State." What else does E. Bauer do? To him also it is only a right of the freecitizen.
The liberty of the press is also demanded under thename of a "general human right." Against this the objection was well-founded that not every man knew how to use it rightly, for not every individual was truly man. Never did a government refuse it toManas such; butManwrites nothing, for the reason that he is a ghost. It always refused it toindividualsonly, and gave it to others,e. g.its organs. If then one would have it for all, one must assert outright that it is due to the individual, me, not to man or to the individual so far as he is man. Besides, another than a man (e. g.a beast) can make no use of it. The French government,e. g., does not dispute the liberty of the press as a right of man, but demands from the individual a security for his really being man; for it assigns liberty of the press not to the individual, but to man.
Under the exact pretence that it wasnot human, what was mine was taken from me! what was human was left to me undiminished.
Liberty of the press can bring about only aresponsiblepress; theirresponsibleproceeds solely from property in the press.
For intercourse with men an express law (conformity to which one may venture at times sinfully to forget, but the absolute value of which one at no time ventures to deny) is placed foremost among all who live religiously: this is the law—oflove, to which not even those who seem to fight against its principle, and who hate its name, have as yet become untrue; for they also still have love, yes, they love with a deeper and more sublimated love, they love "man and mankind."
If we formulate the sense of this law, it will be about as follows: Every man must have a something that is more to him than himself. You are to put your "private interest" in the background when it is a question of the welfare of others, the weal of the fatherland, of society, the common weal, the weal of mankind, the good cause, and the like! Fatherland, society, mankind, etc., must be more to you than yourself, and as against their interest your "private interest" must stand back; for you must not be an—egoist.
Love is a far-reaching religious demand, which is not, as might be supposed, limited to love to God and man, but stands foremost in every regard. Whatever we do, think, will, the ground of it is always to be love. Thus we may indeed judge, but only "with love." The Bible may assuredly be criticised, and that very thoroughly, but the critic must before all thingsloveit and see in it the sacred book. Is this anything else than to say he must not criticise it to death, he must leave it standing, and that as a sacred thing that cannot be upset?—In our criticism on men too, love must remain the unchanged key-note. Certainly judgments that hatred inspires are not at all ourownjudgments, but judgments of the hatred that rules us, "rancorous judgments." But are judgments that love inspires in us any more ourown? They are judgments of the love that rules us, they are "loving, lenient" judgments, they are not ourown, and accordingly not real judgments at all. He who burns with love for justice cries out,fiat justitia, pereat mundus!He can doubtless ask and investigate what justice properly is or demands, andin whatit consists, but notwhetherit is anything.
It is very true, "He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him." (I John 4. 16.) God abides in him, he does not get rid of God, does not become godless; and he abides in God, does not come to himself and into his own home, abides in love to God and does not become loveless.
"God is love! All times and all races recognize in this word the central point of Christianity." God, who is love, is an officious God: he cannot leave the world in peace, but wants to make itblest. "God became man to make men divine."[197]He has his hand in the game everywhere, and nothing happens without it; everywhere he has his "best purposes," his "incomprehensible plans and decrees." Reason, which he himself is, is to be forwarded and realized in the whole world. His fatherly care deprives us of all independence. We can do nothing sensible without its being said, God did that! and can bring upon ourselves no misfortune without hearing, God ordained that; we have nothing that we have not from him, he "gave" everything. But, as God does, so does Man. God wants perforce to make the worldblest, and Man wants to make ithappy, to make all men happy. Hence every "man" wants to awaken in all men the reason which he supposes his own self to have: everything is to be rational throughout. God torments himself with the devil, and the philosopher does itwith unreason and the accidental. God lets no being goits owngait, and Man likewise wants to make us walk only in human wise.
But whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man, under the phlegmatic legal title of measures against the "un-man." He finds it praiseworthy and indispensable to exercise pitilessness in the harshest measure; for love to the spook or generality commands him to hate him who is not ghostly,i. e.the egoist or individual; such is the meaning of the renowned love-phenomenon that is called "justice."
The criminally arraigned man can expect no forbearance, and no one spreads a friendly veil over his unhappy nakedness. Without emotion the stern judge tears the last rags of excuse from the body of the poor accused; without compassion the jailer drags him into his damp abode; without placability, when the time of punishment has expired, he thrusts the branded man again among men, his good, Christian, loyal brethren! who contemptuously spit on him. Yes, without grace a criminal "deserving of death" is led to the scaffold, and before the eyes of a jubilating crowd the appeased moral law celebrates its sublime—revenge. For only one can live, the moral law or the criminal. Where criminals live unpunished, the moral law has fallen; and, where this prevails, those must go down. Their enmity is indestructible.
The Christian age is precisely that ofmercy, love, solicitude to have men receive what is due them, yes, to bring them to fulfil their human (divine) calling.Therefore the principle has been put foremost for intercourse, that this and that is man's essence and consequently his calling, to which either God has called him or (according to the concepts of to-day) his being man (the species) calls him. Hence the zeal for conversion. That the Communists and the humane expect from man more than the Christians do does not change the standpoint in the least. Man shall get what is human! If it was enough for the pious that what was divine became his part, the humane demand that he be not curtailed of what is human. Both set themselves against what is egoistic. Of course; for what is egoistic cannot be accorded to him or vested in him (a fief); he must procure it for himself. Love imparts the former, the latter can be given to me by myself alone.
Intercourse hitherto has rested on love,regardfulbehavior, doing for each other. As one owed it to himself to make himself blessed, or owed himself the bliss of taking up into himself the supreme essence and bringing it to avérité(a truth and reality), so one owed it toothersto help them realize their essence and their calling: in both cases one owed it to the essence of man to contribute to its realization.
But one owes it neither to himself to make anything out of himself, nor to others to make anything out of them; for one owes nothing to his essence and that of others. Intercourse resting on essence is an intercourse with the spook, not with anything real. If I hold intercourse with the supreme essence, I am not holding intercourse with myself, and, if I hold intercourse with the essence of man, I am not holdingintercourse with men.
The natural man's love becomes through culture acommandment. But as commandment it belongs toManas such, not tome; it is myessence,[198]about which much ado[199]is made, not my property.Man,i. e.humanity, presents that demand to me; love isdemanded, it is myduty. Instead, therefore, of being really won forme, it has been won for the generality,Man, as his property or peculiarity: "it becomes man,i. e.every man, to love; love is the duty and calling of man," etc.
Consequently I must again vindicate love formyself, and deliver it out of the power of Man with the great M.
What was originallymine, butaccidentallymine, instinctively mine, I was invested with as the property of Man; I became feoffee in loving, I became the retainer of mankind, only a specimen of this species, and acted, loving, not asI, but asman, as a specimen of man,i. e.humanly. The whole condition of civilization is thefeudal system, the property being Man's or mankind's, notmine. A monstrous feudal State was founded, the individual robbed of everything, everything left to "man." The individual had to appear at last as a "sinner through and through."
Am I perchance to have no lively interest in the person of another, arehisjoy andhisweal not to lie at my heart, is the enjoyment that I furnish him not to be more to me than other enjoyments of my own? On the contrary, I can with joy sacrifice to him numberless enjoyments, I can deny myself numberless things for the enhancement ofhispleasure, and I can hazard for him what without him was the dearest to me, my life, my welfare, my freedom. Why, it constitutes my pleasure and my happiness to refresh myself with his happiness and his pleasure. Butmyself, my own self, I do not sacrifice to him, but remain an egoist and—enjoy him. If I sacrifice to him everything that but for my love to him I should keep, that is very simple, and even more usual in life than it seems to be; but it proves nothing further than that this one passion is more powerful in me than all the rest. Christianity too teaches us to sacrifice all other passions to this. But, if to one passion I sacrifice others, I do not on that account go so far as to sacrificemyself, nor sacrifice anything of that whereby I truly am myself; I do not sacrifice my peculiar value, myownness. Where this bad case occurs, love cuts no better figure than any other passion that I obey blindly. The ambitious man, who is carried away by ambition and remains deaf to every warning that a calm moment begets in him, has let this passion grow up into a despot against whom he abandons all power of dissolution: he has given up himself, because he cannotdissolvehimself, and consequently cannot absolve himself from the passion: he is possessed.
I love men too,—not merely individuals, but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makesmehappy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no "commandment of love." I have afellow-feelingwith every feeling being, and their tormenttorments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them, not torture them.Per contra, the high-souled, virtuous Philistine prince Rudolph in "The Mysteries of Paris," because the wicked provoke his "indignation," plans their torture. That fellow-feeling proves only that the feeling of those who feel is mine too, my property; in opposition to which the pitiless dealing of the "righteous" man (e. g.against notary Ferrand) is like the unfeelingness of that robber who cut off or stretched his prisoners' legs to the measure of his bedstead: Rudolph's bedstead, which he cuts men to fit, is the concept of the "good." The feeling for right, virtue, etc., makes people hard-hearted and intolerant. Rudolph does not feel like the notary, but the reverse; he feels that "it serves the rascal right"; that is no fellow-feeling.
You love man, therefore you torture the individual man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men) is the tormenting of men.
If I see the loved one suffer, I suffer with him, and I know no rest till I have tried everything to comfort and cheer him; if I see him glad, I too become glad over his joy. From this it does not follow that suffering or joy is caused in me by the same thing that brings out this effect in him, as is sufficiently proved by every bodily pain which I do not feel as he does; his tooth pains him, but his pain pains me.
But, becauseIcannot bear the troubled crease on the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore for my sake, I kiss it away. If I did not love this person, he might go right on making creases, they would not trouble me; I am only driving awaymytrouble.
How now, has anybody or anything, whom and which I do not love, arightto be loved by me? Is my love first, or is his right first? Parents, kinsfolk, fatherland, nation, native town, etc., finally fellow-men in general ("brothers, fraternity"), assert that they have a right to my love, and lay claim to it without further ceremony. They look upon it astheir property, and upon me, if I do not respect this, as a robber who takes from them what pertains to them and is theirs. Ishouldlove. If love is a commandment and law, then I must be educated into it, cultivated up to it, and, if I trespass against it, punished. Hence people will exercise as strong a "moral influence" as possible on me to bring me to love. And there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce men to love as one can to other passions,—e. g., if you like, to hate. Hate runs through whole races merely because the ancestors of the one belonged to the Guelphs, those of the other to the Ghibellines.
But love is not a commandment, but, like each of my feelings,my property.Acquire,i. e.purchase, my property, and then I will make it over to you. A church, a nation, a fatherland, a family, etc., that does not know how to acquire my love, I need not love; and I fix the purchase price of my love quite at my pleasure.
Selfish love is far distant from unselfish, mystical, or romantic love. One can love everything possible, not merely men, but an "object" in general (wine, one's fatherland, etc.). Love becomes blind and crazy by amusttaking it out of my power (infatuation),romantic by ashouldentering into it,i. e.the "object's" becoming sacred for me, or my becoming bound to it by duty, conscience, oath. Now the object no longer exists for me, but I for it.
Love is a possessedness, not as my feeling—as such I rather keep it in my possession as property—, but through the alienness of the object. For religious love consists in the commandment to love in the beloved a "holy one," or to adhere to a holy one; for unselfish love there are objectsabsolutely lovablefor which my heart is to beat,—e. g.fellow-men, or my wedded mate, kinsfolk, etc. Holy love loves the holy in the beloved, and therefore exerts itself also to make of the beloved more and more a holy one (e. g.a "man").
The beloved is an object thatshouldbe loved by me. He is not an object of my love on account of, because of, or by, my loving him, but is an object of love in and of himself. Not I make him an object of love, but he is such to begin with; for it is here irrelevant that he has become so by my choice, if so it be (as with afiancée, a spouse, and the like), since even so he has in any case, as the person once chosen, obtained a "right of his own to my love," and I, because I have loved him, am under obligation to love him forever. He is therefore not an object ofmylove, but of love in general: an object thatshouldbe loved. Love appertains to him, is due to him, or is hisright, while I am underobligationto love him. My love,i. e.the toll of love that I pay him, is in truthhislove, which he only collects from me as toll.
Every love to which there clings but the smallestspeck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that heowesthe object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously.
Family love,e. g., as it is usually understood as "piety," is a religious love; love of fatherland, preached as "patriotism," likewise. All our romantic love moves in the same pattern: everywhere the hypocrisy, or rather self-deception, of an "unselfish love," an interest in the object for the object's sake, not for my sake and mine alone.
Religious or romantic love is distinguished from sensual love by the difference of the object indeed, but not by the dependence of the relation to it. In the latter regard both are possessedness; but in the former the one object is profane, the other sacred. The dominion of the object over me is the same in both cases, only that it is one time a sensuous one, the other time a spiritual (ghostly) one. My love is my own only when it consists altogether in a selfish and egoistic interest, and when consequently the object of my love is reallymyobject or my property. I owe my property nothing, and have no duty to it, as little as I might have a duty to my eye; if nevertheless I guard it with the greatest care, I do so on my account.
Antiquity lacked love as little as do Christian times; the god of love is older than the God of Love. But the mystical possessedness belongs to the moderns.
The possessedness of love lies in the alienation of the object, or in my powerlessness as against its alienness and superior power. To the egoist nothing ishigh enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so independent that he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would sacrifice himself to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness again.
Whether this can still be called love? If you know another word for it, go ahead and choose it; then the sweet word love may wither with the departed world; for the present I at least find none in ourChristianlanguage, and hence stick to the old sound and "love"myobject, my—property.
Only as one of my feelings do I harbor love; but as a power above me, as a divine power (Feuerbach), as a passion that I am not to cast off, as a religious and moral duty, I—scorn it. As my feeling it ismine; as a principle to which I consecrate and "vow" my soul it is a dominator anddivine, just as hatred as a principle isdiabolical; one not better than the other. In short, egoistic love,i. e., my love, is neither holy nor unholy, neither divine nor diabolical.
"A love that is limited by faith is an untrue love. The sole limitation that does not contradict the essence of love is the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. Love that scorns the rigor, the law, of intelligence, is theoretically a false love, practically a ruinous one."[200]So love is in its essencerational! So thinks Feuerbach; the believer, on the contrary, thinks, Love is in its essencebelieving. The one inveighs againstirrational, the other againstunbelieving, love. To both it can at most rank as asplendidum vitium. Do not both leave love standing, even in the form of unreason and unbelief? They do not dare to say, irrational or unbelieving love is nonsense, is not love; as little as they are willing to say, irrational or unbelieving tears are not tears. But, if even irrational love, etc., must count as love, and if they are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, there follows simply this: love is not the highest thing, but reason or faith; even the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love; but love has value only when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is an illusion when Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its "self-limitation"; the believer might with the same right call belief its "self-limitation." Irrational love is neither "false" nor "ruinous"; it does its service as love.
Toward the world, especially toward men, I am toassume a particular feeling, and "meet them with love," with the feeling of love, from the beginning. Certainly, in this there is revealed far more free-will and self-determination than when I let myself be stormed, by way of the world, by all possible feelings, and remain exposed to the most checkered, most accidental impressions. I go to the world rather with a preconceived feeling, as if it were a prejudice and a preconceived opinion: I have prescribed to myself in advance my behavior toward it, and, despite all its temptations, feel and think about it only as I have once determined to. Against the dominion of the world I secure myself by the principle of love; for, whatever may come, I—love. The ugly—e. g.—makes a repulsive impression on me; but, determined to love, I master this impression as I do every antipathy.
But the feeling to which I have determined and—condemned myself from the start is anarrowfeeling, because it is a predestined one, of which I myself am not able to get clear or to declare myself clear. Because preconceived, it is aprejudice.Ino longer show myself in face of the world, but my love shows itself. Theworldindeed does not rule me, but so much the more inevitably does the spirit ofloverule me. I have overcome the world to become a slave of this spirit.
If I first said, I love the world, I now add likewise: I do not love it, for Iannihilateit as I annihilate myself;I dissolve it. I do not limit myself to one feeling for men, but give free play to all that I am capable of. Why should I not dare speak it out in all its glaringness? Yes,I utilizethe world and men! With this I can keep myself open to every impression without being torn away from myself by one of them. I can love, love with a full heart, and let the most consuming glow of passion burn in my heart, without taking the beloved one for anything else than thenourishmentof my passion, on which it ever refreshes itself anew. All my care for him applies only to theobject of my love, only to him whom my loverequires, only to him, the "warmly loved." How indifferent would he be to me without this—my love! I feed only my love with him, Iutilizehim for this only: Ienjoyhim.
Let us choose another convenient example. I see how men are fretted in dark superstition by a swarm of ghosts. If to the extent of my powers I let a bit of daylight fall in on the nocturnal spookery, is it perchance because love to you inspires this in me? Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure formythoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought,—I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You will perhaps have only trouble, combat, and death from it, very few will draw joy from it. If your weal lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in withholding the Bible from the laity, or Christian governments, which make it a sacred duty for themselves to "protect the common people from bad books."
But not only not for your sake, not even for truth's sake either do I speak out what I think. No—