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 allgood 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, uncloudedlife-courage, forcheeriness; they are seeking to "be of goodcheer."
The Stoics want to realize thewise man, the man withpractical philosophy, the man whoknows 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 theisolated life, in life as life, not in life with others; only the Stoiclives, 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, desiregood 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 "livessmoothly, 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, inrepelling 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 thesensualman.
Even the Stoic attitude and manly virtue amountsonly 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 thispractical philosophy.
Thecomfort (hedone)of the Epicureans is the samepractical philosophythe Stoics teach, only trickier, more deceitful. They teach only anotherbehaviortoward 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 arepredicateswhich I give it. Timon says that "in itself nothing is either good or bad, but man onlythinksof it thus or thus"; to face the world onlyataraxia(unmovedness) andaphasia(speechlessness—or, in other words, isolatedinwardness) are left. There is "no longer any truth to be recognized" in the world; things contradict themselves; thoughts aboutthings 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 theman without power of recognition, themanwho 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 theworld 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 theworld of the spiritChristianity then begins. The man who still faces the worldarmedis 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 theconquest of the worldand strove to release man from the heavy trammels of connection withother things, at last they came also to the dissolution of the State and giving preference to everything private. Of course community, family, etc., asnaturalrelations, are burdensome hindrances which diminish myspiritual freedom.
"If any man be in Christ, he is anew creature; the old is passed away, behold, all is becomenew."[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 theunderstandingwas 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 itselfsophisticallyand 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 Christiancontents.
But finally the Reformation, like Socrates, took hold seriously of theheartitself, 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 emptywarm-heartednessis 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 heartcriticisesto death withhard-heartedmercilessness 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 themmanas such,i. e.nonespiritonly? 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 afriendly 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 oursense; it cannot lead astray the spirit—and spirit alone, after all, we really are. Having once gotbackof things, the spirit has also gotabovethem, 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 theloss 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 beingfree 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 theGod, the "conqueror of the world." All their doing had been nothing butwisdom 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," istheology. If the ancients have nothing to show but wisdom of the world, the moderns never did nor domake 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.
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 withitsworld, the spiritual, alone, it is notfreespirit, 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 ofits 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 areitsworld. As a visionary lives and hashisworld 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 yearsthey 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: "Ihavea spirit, no doubt, but do not exist only as spirit, but am a man with a body." You would still distinguishyourselffrom "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,youare 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 ofyour 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 againstegoismyou 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 twoand 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 justas 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 toyourself, but to yourspiritand 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 distinguishyourselffrom thethinker, 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 yourideal, 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 againstyourselfwho cannot get rid of a remainder of the non-spiritual. Instead of saying, "I ammorethan 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 beoutsideme; 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 spiritdwells 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 tous,—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 wethat 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 ofdespairFeuerbach 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 ordeath, 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, thesupreme beingis calledGodand regarded as anobjectiveessence, but in truth it is only man's own essence; and therefore the turning point of the world's history is that henceforth no longerGod, 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 hisessenceand 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."Iam neither God norMan,[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 andoutward, 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?
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 ifsaucy 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! Onlyishaunted? 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, aghostlyworld 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, andfail to recognizeit; but, if Irecognizetruly, 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, butthetruth I cannot abrogate. Ibelievein 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 yourspirit; 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 stillupbraidedas 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, thatdoes 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, theinvoluntary 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 yourselffettered 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 thatyouare 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 essenceoverus.
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 isnot my own; and if,e. g.the property of others was not sacred to me, I should look on it asmine, 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 theso-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" orêtre 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.Manreaches beyond every individual man, and yet—though he be "his essence"—is not in facthisessence (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 theêtre suprêmeor not God at all, but "Man," mayrepresent 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."
With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the realm ofessences.
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 thisspook, tocomprehendit, to discoverrealityin 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, thespiritinto an entire andcorporealperson,—with this they tormented themselves to death. Behind the existing world they sought the "thing in itself," the essence; behind thethingthey sought theun-thing.
When one looks to thebottomof anything,i. e.searches out itsessence, one often discovers something quite other than what itseemsto 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 baresemblance, 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 thetruly existentis 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 realizenon-sense, has brought about acorporeal 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 remainedthe 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. Thecorporealor 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 ghostsoutsidehim, but at himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells thespirit of sin; even the faintestthought(and this is itself a spirit, you know) may be adevil, 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 andme. 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 andrecognized 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 withyouressence 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.
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 yourselfto 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 convictionthat 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., ispossessedand prepossessed[29]by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized onlyinsidethe belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat booksinsidethe 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 azoon 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 thesacred! Yes, the "fixed idea," that is the truly sacred!
Is it perchance only people possessed by the devilthat meet us, or do we as often come upon peoplepossessedin 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 areset[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 thatfanaticismis 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 befanaticism; it is a fanatical interest in the sacred (fanum). Observe our liberals, look into theSaechsischen 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 himwhether 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 hebelievesin those moral commandments. This moralfaithis deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he rages against thepiousChristians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian,—to wit, amoralChristian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner underfaith. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as acriminal; he who commits incest suffers as acriminal. 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 adogma of faith? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is ahero of faithtoo, 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 thantheir faithwill 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, asbelievers, 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 onlyinvertsspeculative 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 narrowreligious standpoint, lose theGod, who from this standpoint is subject; but we take in exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint, themoralstandpoint.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 thegoodin man, his divineness, that which does him honor, his truehumanity(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 ishumanin 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 isonly the good). Consequently, by the transformation of the predicate into the subject, the Christianessence(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 indelibleimmanence. 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 thewholeman with all his faculties was found to bereligious; 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 beingbound. 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 themind 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 orreligiowith 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 onuswhen 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, bringsusinto 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 everypoliceman, 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 himselfmoral. 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—executioninflicted 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 thanloyalty. 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 thanthe old-time righteousness of works. For in the latter only theactis needed, but you require thedispositiontoo; one must carryin himselfthe 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 hisgendarmein his breast," says a high Prussian officer.
Why do certainopposition partiesfail 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 themoralrelation 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 notwillto have the freedom, it can onlywishfor it, "petition" for it, lisp a "Please, please!" What would come of it, if the opposition reallywilled, willed with the full energy of the will? No, it must renouncewillin order to live tolove, renounce liberty—for love of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only to "begas 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 upe. 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 servemoralitywithout 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 ofhalfness, 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 withmoralappeals 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 afree will, but not for their lives lack themoral 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 apossessedman, 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 theirwill; 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 therevolution, that courage which they now praised, after another had mustered it up? Thegood 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 (seee. 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.