A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the torment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoopla throws off year-long burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and believing.
"What clumsiness and frivolity, to want to solve the most difficult problems, acquit yourself of the most comprehensive tasks, by abreaking off!"
But have you tasks if you do not set them to yourself? So long as you set them, you will not give them up, and I certainly do not care if you think, and, thinking, create a thousand thoughts. But youwho have set the tasks, are you not to be able to upset them again? Must you be bound to these tasks, and must they become absolute tasks?
To cite only one thing, the government has been disparaged on account of its resorting to forcible means against thoughts, interfering against the press by means of the police power of the censorship, and making a personal fight out of a literary one. As if it were solely a matter of thoughts, and as if one's attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish, self-denying, and self-sacrificing! Do not those thoughts attack the governing parties themselves, and so call out egoism? And do the thinkers not set before the attacked ones thereligiousdemand to reverence the power of thought, of ideas? They are to succumb voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine power of thought, Minerva, fights on their enemies' side. Why, that would be an act of possession, a religious sacrifice. To be sure, the governing parties are themselves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the leading power of an idea or a faith; but they are at the same time unconfessed egoists, and right here, against the enemy, their pent-up egoism breaks loose: possessed in their faith, they are at the same time unpossessed by their opponents' faith,i. e.they are egoists toward this. If one wants to make them a reproach, it could only be the converse,—to wit, that they are possessed by their ideas.
Against thoughts no egoistic power is to appear, no police power and the like. So the believers in thinking believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not sacred tome, and I defendmy skinagainst them asagainst other things. That may be an unreasonable defence; but, if I am in duty bound to reason, then I, like Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest to it!
In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of faith, is the kingdom of heaven, every one is assuredly wrong who usesunthinkingforce, just as every one is wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, or, although he is a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts unchristianly; in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself to belong though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he is a "sinner" or "egoist." But it is only when he becomes acriminalagainst these kingdoms that he can throw off their dominion.
Here too the result is this, that the fight of the thinkers against the government is indeed in the right,viz., in might,—so far as it is carried on against the government's thoughts (the government is dumb, and does not succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of), but is, on the other hand, in the wrong,viz., in impotence, so far as it does not succeed in bringing into the field anything but thoughts against a personal power (the egoistic power stops the mouths of the thinkers). The theoretical fight cannot complete the victory, and the sacred power of thought succumbs to the might of egoism. Only the egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears up everything.
This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the single person,[103]a mere pastime or hobby as it were, and to take from it the importance of "being the last decisive power"; this degradation and desecration of thinking; this equalization of the unthinking and thoughtful ego; this clumsy but real "equality,"—criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond thinking but—the deluge.
Criticism does indeed affirm,e. g., that free criticism may overcome the State, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach which is laid upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and impudence"; it thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence" may not overcome, it alone may. The truth is rather the reverse: the State can be really overcome only by impudent self-will.
It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that in the critic's new change of front he has not transformed himself, but only "made good an oversight," "disentangled a subject," and is saying too much when he speaks of "criticism criticising itself": it, or rather he, has only criticised its "oversight" and cleared it of its "inconsistencies." If he wanted to criticise criticism, he would have to look and see if there was anything in its presupposition.
I on my part start from a presupposition in presupposingmyself; but my presupposition does not struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my presupposition, and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not a presupposition at all: for, as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the duality of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an "incomplete" and a "complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and, again, posited only in the moment when I posit myself;i. e., I am creator and creature in one.
If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again,—i. e.a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that dissolution is to be formygood; otherwise it would belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which, in favor of others, (e. g.this very Man, God, the State, pure morality, etc.), declared old truths to be untruths and did away with long-fostered presuppositions.
At the entrance of the modern time stands the "God-man." At its exit will only the God in the God-man evaporate? and can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were through when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the Illumination, the vanquishing of God; they did not notice that Man has killed God in order to become now—"sole God on high." Theother world outside usis indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the Illuminators completed; but theother world in ushas become a new heaven and calls us forth to renewed heaven-storming: God has had to give place, yet not to us, but to—Man. How can you believe that the God-man is dead before the Man in him, besides the God, is dead?
At the entrance of the modern time stands the "God-man." At its exit will only the God in the God-man evaporate? and can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were through when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the Illumination, the vanquishing of God; they did not notice that Man has killed God in order to become now—"sole God on high." Theother world outside usis indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the Illuminators completed; but theother world in ushas become a new heaven and calls us forth to renewed heaven-storming: God has had to give place, yet not to us, but to—Man. How can you believe that the God-man is dead before the Man in him, besides the God, is dead?
"Does not the spirit thirst for freedom?"—Alas, not my spirit alone, my body too thirsts for it hourly! When before the odorous castle-kitchen my nose tells my palate of the savory dishes that are being prepared therein, it feels a fearful pining at its dry bread; when my eyes tell the hardened back about soft down on which one may lie more delightfully than on its compressed straw, a suppressed rage seizes it; when—but let us not follow the pains further.—And you call that a longing for freedom? What do you want to become free from, then? From your hardtack and your straw bed? Then throw them away!—But that seems not to serve you: you want rather to have the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and downy beds. Are men to give you this "freedom,"—are they to permit it to you? You do not hope that from their philanthropy, because you know they all thinklike—you: each is the nearest to himself! How, therefore, do you mean to come to the enjoyment of those foods and beds? Evidently not otherwise than in making them your property!
If you think it over rightly, you do not want the freedom to have all these fine things, for with this freedom you still do not have them; you want really to have them, to call themyoursand possess them asyour property. Of what use is a freedom to you, indeed, if it brings in nothing? And, if you became free from everything, you would no longer have anything; for freedom is empty of substance. Whoso knows not how to make use of it, for him it has no value this useless permission; but how I make use of it depends on my personality.[105]
I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more than freedom for you: you should not merelybe ridof what you do not want, you should alsohavewhat you want; you should not only be a "freeman," you should be an "owner" too.
Free—from what? Oh! what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke of serfdom, of sovereignty, of aristocracy and princes, the dominion of the desires and passions; yes, even the dominion of one's own will, of self-will, for the completest self-denial is nothing but freedom—freedom, to wit, from self-determination, from one's own self. And the craving for freedom as for something absolute, worthy of every praise, deprived us of ownness: it created self-denial. However, the freer I become, the more compulsionpiles up before my eyes; and the more impotent I feel myself. The unfree son of the wilderness does not yet feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilized man: he seems to himself freer than this latter. In the measure that I conquer freedom for myself I create for myself new bounds and new tasks: if I have invented railroads, I feel myself weak again because I cannot yet sail through the skies like the bird; and, if I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed my mind, at once there await me innumerable others, whose perplexities impede my progress, dim my free gaze, make the limits of myfreedompainfully sensible to me. "Now that you have become free from sin, you have becomeservantsof righteousness."[106]Republicans in their broad freedom, do they not become servants of the law? How true Christian hearts at all times longed to "become free," how they pined to see themselves delivered from the "bonds of this earth-life"! they looked out toward the land of freedom. ("The Jerusalem that is above is the freewoman; she is the mother of us all." Gal. 4. 26.)
Being free from anything—means only being clear or rid. "He is free from headache" is equal to "he is rid of it." "He is free from this prejudice" is equal to "he has never conceived it" or "he has got rid of it." In "less" we complete the freedom recommended by Christianity, in sinless, godless, moralityless, etc.
Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. "Ye, dear brethren, are called to freedom."[107]"So speak and sodo, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom."[108]
Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give it up? No, nothing is to be lost, freedom no more than the rest; but it is to become our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot.
What a difference between freedom and ownness! One can getridof a great many things, one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free from much, not from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the condition of slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of things, not from everything; but from the whip, the domineering temper, etc., of the master, one does not as slave becomefree. "Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams!" Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I amridof, owner of what I have in mypoweror what Icontrol.My ownI am at all times and under all circumstances, if I know how to have myself and do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something that I cannot trulywill, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can only wish it and—aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook. The fetters of reality cut the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment. Butmy ownI remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my advantage; his blows strike me indeed, I am notfreefrom them; but I endure them only formy benefit, perhaps in order to deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or,again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. But, as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust. That I then becomefreefrom him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says I was "free" even in the condition of slavery,—to wit, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But "intrinsically free" is not "really free," and "inwardly" is not "outwardly." I was own, on the other hand,my own, altogether, inwardly and outwardly. Under the dominion of a cruel master my body is not "free" from torments and lashes; but it ismybones that moan under the torture,myfibres that quiver under the blows, andImoan becausemybody moans. ThatIsigh and shiver proves that I have not yet lostmyself, that I am still my own. Mylegis not "free" from the master's stick, but it ismyleg and is inseparable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he still has my leg! He retains in his hand nothing but the—corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a so-called dead dog has none and is therefore no longer a dog.
If one opines that a slave may yet be inwardly free, he says in fact only the most indisputable and trivial thing. For who is going to assert that any man iswhollywithout freedom? If I am an eye-servant, can I therefore not be free from innumerable things,e. g.from faith in Zeus, from the desire for fame, and the like? Why then should not a whipped slave also be able to be inwardly free from unchristian sentiments,from hatred, of his enemy, etc.? He then has "Christian freedom," is rid of the unchristian; but has he absolute freedom, freedom from everything,e. g.from the Christian delusion, or from bodily pain, etc.?
In the meantime, all this seems to be said more against names than against the thing. But is the name indifferent, and has not a word, a shibboleth, always inspired and—fooled men? Yet between freedom and ownness there lies still a deeper chasm than the mere difference of the words.
All the world desires freedom, all long for its reign to come. O enchantingly beautiful dream of a blooming "reign of freedom," a "free human race"!—who has not dreamed it? So men shall become free, entirely free, free from all constraint! From all constraint, really from all? Are they never to put constraint on themselves any more? "Oh yes, that, of course; don't you see, that is no constraint at all?" Well, then at any rate they are to become free from religious faith, from the strict duties of morality, from the inexorability of the law, from—"What a fearful misunderstanding!" Well,whatare they to be free from then, and what not?
The lovely dream is dissipated; awakened, one rubs his half-opened eyes and stares at the prosaic questioner. "What men are to be free from?"—From blind credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims another, all faith is blind credulity; they must become free from all faith. No, no, for God's sake,—inveighs the first again,—do not cast all faith from you, else the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the republic,—a third makes himself heard,—and become—free from all commanding lords. There is no help in that, says a fourth: we only get a new lord then, a "dominant majority"; let us rather free ourselves from this dreadful inequality.—O hapless equality, already I hear your plebeian roar again! How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a paradise offreedom, and what impudence and licentiousness now raises its wild clamor! Thus the first laments, and gets on his feet to grasp the sword against "unmeasured freedom." Soon we no longer hear anything but the clashing of the swords of the disagreeing dreamers of freedom.
What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for aparticularfreedom,e. g.freedom of faith;i. e., the believing man wanted to be free and independent; of what? of faith perhaps? no! but of the inquisitors of faith. So now "political or civil" freedom. The citizen wants to become free not from citizenhood, but from bureaucracy, the arbitrariness of princes, and the like. Prince Metternich once said he had "found a way that was adapted to guide men in the path ofgenuinefreedom for all the future." The Count of Provence ran away from France precisely at the time when she was preparing the "reign of freedom," and said: "My imprisonment had become intolerable to me; I had only one passion, the desire for—freedom; I thought only of it."
The craving for aparticularfreedom always includes the purpose of a newdominion, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed "could give its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for freedom," but in truth only because they wereafter a particular freedom, therefore a newdominion, the "dominion of the law."
Freedom you all want, you wantfreedom. Why then do you higgle over a more or less?Freedomcan only be the whole of freedom; a piece of freedom is notfreedom. You despair of the possibility of obtaining the whole of freedom, freedom from everything,—yes, you consider it insanity even to wish this?—Well, then leave off chasing after the phantom, and spend your pains on something better than the—unattainable.
"Ah, but there is nothing better than freedom!"
What have you then when you have freedom,viz.,—for I will not speak here of your piecemeal bits of freedom,—complete freedom? Then you are rid of everything that embarrasses you, everything, and there is probably nothing that does not once in your life embarrass you and cause you inconvenience. And for whose sake, then, did you want to be rid of it? Doubtlessfor your sake, because it is inyourway! But, if something were not inconvenient to you; if, on the contrary, it were quite to your mind (e. g.the gently butirresistibly commandinglook of your loved one),—then you would not want to be rid of it and free from it. Why not?For your sakeagain! So you takeyourselvesas measure and judge over all. You gladly let freedom go when unfreedom, the "sweetserviceof love," suitsyou; and you take up your freedom again on occasion when it begins to suityoubetter,—that is, supposing, which is not the point here, that you are not afraid of such a Repeal of the Union for other (perhaps religious) reasons.
Why will you not take courage now to really makeyourselvesthe central point and the main thing altogether? Why grasp in the air at freedom, your dream? Are you your dream? Do not begin by inquiring of your dreams, your notions, your thoughts, for that is all "hollow theory." Ask yourselves and ask after yourselves—that ispracticaland you know you want very much to be "practical." But there the one hearkens what his God (of course what he thinks of at the name God is his God) may be going to say to it, and another what his moral feelings, his conscience, his feeling of duty, may determine about it, and a third calculates what folks will think of it,—and, when each has thus asked his Lord God (folks are a Lord God just as good as, nay, even more compact than, the other-worldly and imaginary one:vox populi, vox dei), then he accommodates himself to his Lord's will and listens no more at all for whathe himselfwould like to say and decide.
Therefore turn to yourselves rather than to your gods or idols. Bring out from yourselves what is in you, bring it to the light, bring yourselves to revelation.
How one acts only from himself, and asks after nothing further, the Christians have realized in the notion "God." He acts "as it pleases him." And foolish man, who could do just so, is to act as it "pleases God" instead.—If it is said that even God proceeds according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my whole nature,i. e.in myself.
But one needs only admonish you of yourselves tobring you to despair at once. "What am I?" each of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding star! How am I to obtain a correct answer, if, without regard to God's commandments or to the duties which morality prescribes, without regard to the voice of reason, which in the course of history, after bitter experiences, has exalted the best and most reasonable thing into law, I simply appeal to myself? My passion would advise me to do the most senseless thing possible.—Thus each deems himself the—devil; for, if, so far as he is unconcerned about religion, etc., he only deemed himself a beast, he would easily find that the beast, which does follow onlyitsimpulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the "most senseless" things, but takes very correct steps. But the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are—terrified atourselvesin our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of course it comes into your head at once that your calling requires you to do the "good," the moral, the right. Now, if you askyourselveswhat is to be done, how can the right voice sound forth from you, the voice which points the way of the good, the right, the true, etc.? What concord have God and Belial?
But what would you think if one answered you by saying: "That one is to listen to God, conscience, duties, laws, etc., is flim-flam with which people have stuffed your head and heart and made you crazy"? And if he asked you how it is that you know so surelythat the voice of nature is a seducer? And if he even demanded of you to turn the thing about and actually to deem the voice of God and conscience to be the devil's work? There are such graceless men; how will you settle them? You cannot appeal to your parsons, parents, and good men, for precisely these are designated by them as yourseducers, as the true seducers and corrupters of youth, who busily sow broadcast the tares of self-contempt and reverence to God, who fill young hearts with mud and young heads with stupidity.
But now those people go on and ask: For whose sake do you care about God's and the other commandments? You surely do not suppose that this is done merely out of complaisance toward God? No, you are doing it—for your sakeagain.—Here too, therefore,youare the main thing, and each must say to himself,Iam everything to myself and I do everythingon my account. If it ever became clear to you that God, the commandments, etc., only harm you, that they reduce and ruinyou, to a certainty you would throw them from you just as the Christians once condemned Apollo or Minerva or heathen morality. They did indeed put in the place of these Christ and afterward Mary, as well as a Christian morality; but they did this for the sake oftheirsouls' welfare too, therefore out of egoism or ownness.
And it was by this egoism, this ownness, that they gotridof the old world of gods and becamefreefrom it. Ownnesscreateda newfreedom; for ownness is the creator of everything, as genius (a definite ownness), which is always originality, has for a longtime already been looked upon as the creator of new productions that have a place in the history of the world.
If your efforts are ever to make "freedom" the issue, then exhaust freedom's demands. Who is it that is to become free? You, I, we. Free from what? From everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, therefore, am the kernel that is to be delivered from all wrappings and—freed from all cramping shells. What is left when I have been freed from everything that is not I? Only I; nothing but I. But freedom has nothing to offer to this I himself. As to what is now to happen further after I have become free, freedom is silent,—as our governments, when the prisoner's time is up, merely let him go, thrusting him out into abandonment.
Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all,—why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end? Am I not worth more than freedom? Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the first? Even unfree, even laid in a thousand fetters, I yet am; and I am not, like freedom, extant only in the future and in hopes, but even as the most abject of slaves I am—present.
Think that over well, and decide whether you will place on your banner the dream of "freedom" or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness." "Freedom" awakens yourrageagainst everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you tojoyover yourselves, to self-enjoyment; "freedom" is and remains alonging, a romantic plaint, a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity; "ownness" is a reality, whichof itselfremoves just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way hinders you. What does not disturb you, you will not want to renounce; and, if it begins to disturb you, why, you know that "you must obeyyourselvesrather than men!"
Freedom teaches only: Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves, of everything burdensome; it does not teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid! so rings its rallying-cry, and you, eagerly following its call, get rid even of yourselves, "deny yourselves." But ownness calls you back to yourselves, it says "Come to yourself!" Under the ægis of freedom you get rid of many kinds of things, but something new pinches you again: "you are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[109]Asownyou arereally rid of everything, and what clings to youyou have accepted; it is your choice and your pleasure. Theownman is thefreeborn, the man free to begin with; the free man, on the contrary, is only theeleutheromaniac, the dreamer and enthusiast.
The former isoriginally free, because he recognizes nothing but himself; he does not need to free himself first, because at the start he rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, rates nothing higher, because, in short, he starts from himself and "comes to himself." Constrained by childish respect, he is nevertheless already working at "freeing" himself from this constraint. Ownness works in the little egoist, and procures him the desired—freedom.
Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have made you believe you are not egoists but arecalledto be idealists ("good men"). Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which does precisely deprive you of yourselves, in "self-denial"; but seek foryourselves, become egoists, become each of you analmighty ego. Or, more clearly: Just recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you really are, and let go your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania to be something else than you are. Hypocritical I call them because you have yet remained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleeping, self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heautontimorumenoses, you self-tormentors. Never yet has a religion been able to dispense with "promises," whether they referred us to the other world or to this ("long life," etc.); for man ismercenaryand does nothing "gratis." But how about that "doing the good for the good's sake without prospect of reward? As if here too the pay was not contained in the satisfaction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our egoism and—exploits it; calculated for ourdesires, it stifles many others for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon ofcheatedegoism, where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my desires,e. g.the impulse toward blessedness. Religion promises me the—"supreme good"; to gain this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake them.—All your doings areunconfessed, secret, covert, and concealed egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves,hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism,—therefore they arenot egoism, but thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists, and you are not, since you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word "egoist"—loathing and contempt.
I secure my freedom with regard to the world in the degree that I make the world my own,i. e."gain it and take possession of it" for myself, by whatever might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of categorical demand, yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc.; for the means that I use for it are determined by what I am. If I am weak, I have only weak means, like the aforesaid, which yet are good enough for a considerable part of the world. Besides, cheating, hypocrisy, lying, look worse than they are. Who has not cheated the police, the law? who has not quickly taken on an air of honorable loyalty before the sheriff's officer who meets him, in order to conceal an illegality that may have been committed, etc.? He who has not done it has simply let violence be done to him; he was aweaklingfrom—conscience. I know that my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my will on another object, be this other something without will, like a rock, or something with will, like a government, an individual, etc.; I deny my ownness when—in presence of another—I give myself up,i. e.give way, desist, submit; therefore byloyalty,submission. For it is one thing when I give up my previous course because it does not lead to the goal, and therefore turn out of a wrong road; it is another when I yield myself a prisoner. I getaround a rock that stands in my way, till I have powder enough to blast it; I get around the laws of a people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be "sacred" to me, an Astarte? If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! You inapprehensible one, you shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the might for apprehension and call you myown; I do not give myself up before you, but only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with my inability to touch you, I yet remember it against you.
Vigorous men have always done so. When the "loyal" had exalted an unsubdued power to be their master and had adored it, when they had demanded adoration from all, then there came some such son of nature who would not loyally submit, and drove the adored power from its inaccessible Olympus. He cried his "Stand still" to the rolling sun, and made the earth go round; the loyal had to make the best of it; he laid his axe to the sacred oaks, and the "loyal" were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him; he threw the pope off Peter's chair, and the "loyal" had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the divine-right business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, and at last are silent.
My freedom becomes complete only when it is my—might; but by this I cease to be a merely free man, and become an own man. Why is the freedom of the peoples a "hollow word"? Because the peoples have no might! With a breath of the living ego Iblow peoples over, be it the breath of a Nero, a Chinese emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that the G.....[110]legislatures pine in vain for freedom, and are lectured for it by the cabinet ministers? Because they are not of the "mighty"! Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right." You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might "stands above the law." How does this prospect taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? But you have no taste!
The cry for "freedom" rings loudly all around. But is it felt and known what a donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially—self-liberation,—i. e., that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Christian, permission to speak what he likes: he will yet utter only narrow-minded stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob you of the freedom of speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear something whereby those "certain" persons would lose their credit.
If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are simply knaves who give more than they have. Forthen they give you nothing of their own, but stolen wares: they give you your own freedom, the freedom that you must take for yourselves; and theygiveit to you only that you may not take it and call the thieves and cheats to an account to boot. In their slyness they know well that given (chartered) freedom is no freedom, since only the freedom onetakesfor himself, therefore the egoist's freedom, rides with full sails. Donated freedom strikes its sails as soon as there comes a storm—or calm; it requires always a—gentle and moderate breeze.
Here lies the difference between self-liberation and emancipation (manumission, setting free). Those who to-day "stand in the opposition" are thirsting and screaming to be "set free." The princes are to "declare their peoples of age,"i. e.emancipate them! Behave as if you were of age, and you are so without any declaration of majority; if you do not behave accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never be of age even by a declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their tyrants, and, when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his father. If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them their majority, they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a son who will not come of age, and keeps the house to himself; it serves the noodle right.
The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman, alibertinus, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing bettered in themselves, but only relieved asJews, although he who relieves their condition is certainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter cannot do this without inconsistency. But, emancipated or not emancipated, Jew remains Jew; he who is not self-freed is merely an—emancipated man. The Protestant State can certainly set free (emancipate) the Catholics; but, because they do not make themselves free, they remain simply—Catholics.
Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends of freedom are exasperated against selfishness because in their religious striving after freedom they cannot—free themselves from that sublime thing, "self-renunciation." The liberal's anger is directed against egoism, for the egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake: the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no thing a value of its own, an "absolute" value, but to seek its value in me. One often hears that pot-boiling study which is so common counted among the most repulsive traits of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most shameful desecration of science; but what is science for but to be consumed? If one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist's power is a limited power; but the egoistic element in it, and the desecration of science, only a possessed man can blame.
Because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an ego,[111]thought of him only as adependent, and was properly nothing but asocial theory,—a doctrine of living together, and that of man with God as well as of man with man,—thereforein it everything "own" must fall into mostwoefuldisrepute: selfishness, self-will, ownness, self-love, etc. The Christian way of looking at things has on all sides gradually re-stamped honorable words into dishonorable; why should they not be brought into honor again? SoSchimpf(contumely) is in its old sense equivalent to jest, but for Christian seriousness pastime became a dishonor,[112]for that seriousness cannot take a joke;frech(impudent) formerly meant only bold, brave;Frevel(wanton outrage) was only daring. It is well known how askance the word "reason" was looked at for a long time.
Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint, and the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in terror from everything unchristian as from something incomplete or evil. Therefore "selfishness" is in a bad way too.
Selfishness,[113]in the Christian sense, means something like this: I look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But is sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, myowndetermination, when I follow that? I ammy ownonly when I am master of myself, instead of being mastered either by sensuality or by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State,Church, etc.); what is of use to me, this self-owned or self-appertaining one,my selfishnesspursues.
Besides, one sees himself every moment compelled to believe in that constantly-blasphemed selfishness as an all-controlling power. In the session of February 10, 1844, Welcker argues a motion on the dependence of the judges, and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable, dismissable, transferable, and pensionable judges—in short, such members of a court of justice as can by mere administrative process be damaged and endangered,—are wholly without reliability, yes, lose all respect and all confidence among the people. The whole bench, Welcker cries, is demoralized by this dependence! In blunt words this means nothing else than that the judges find it more to their advantage to give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it as the law would have them. How is that to be helped? Perhaps by bringing home to the judges' hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, and then cherishing the confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize justice more highly than their selfishness? No, the people does not soar to this romantic confidence, for it feels that selfishness is mightier than any other motive. Therefore the same persons who have been judges hitherto may remain so, however thoroughly one has convinced himself that they behaved as egoists; only they must not any longer find their selfishness favored by the venality of justice, but must stand so independent of the government that by a judgment in conformity with the facts they do not throw into the shade their own cause, their "well-understood interest," but rather secure a comfortable combination of a good salary with respect among the citizens.
So Welcker and the commoners of Baden consider themselves secured only when they can count on selfishness. What is one to think, then, of the countless phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths overflow at other times?
To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have another relation than to one which I am serving unselfishly. The following criterion might be cited for it: against the one I cansinor commit asin, the other I can onlytrifle away, push from me, deprive myself of,—i. e.commit an imprudence. Free trade is looked at in both ways, being regarded partly as a freedom which mayunder certain circumstancesbe granted or withdrawn, partly as one which is to be heldsacred under all circumstances.
If I am not concerned about a thing in and for itself, and do not desire it for its own sake, then I desire it solely as ameans to an end, for its usefulness; for the sake of another end;e. g., oysters for a pleasant flavor. Now will not every thing whose final end he himself is serve the egoist as means? and is he to protect a thing that serves him for nothing,—e. g., the proletarian to protect the State?
Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again what Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien standard either, as it is not in any sense anidealike freedom, morality, humanity, and the like: it is only a description of the—owner.
I—do I come to myself and mine through liberalism?
Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man, and that you are anyway,—and the liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions and private follies, if only he can espy "Man" in you.
But, as he takes little heed of what you areprivatim,—nay, in a strict following out of his principle sets no value at all on it,—he sees in you only what you aregeneratim. In other words, he sees in you, notyou, but thespecies; not Tom or Jim, but Man; not the real or unique one,[114]but your essence or your concept; not the bodily man, but thespirit.
As Tom you would not be his equal, because he is Jim, therefore not Tom; as man you are the same that he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not exist at all for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy for himself: he loves in you not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to know nothing, but Man.
To see in you and me nothing further than "men," that is running the Christian way of looking at things, according to which one is for the other nothing but aconcept(e. g.a man called to salvation, etc.), into the ground.
Christianity properly so called gathers us under a less utterly general concept: there we are "sons of God" and "led by the Spirit of God."[115]Yet not all can boast of being God's sons, but "the same Spirit which witnesses to our spirit that we are sons of God reveals also who are the sons of the devil."[116]Consequently, to be a son of God one must not be a son of the devil; the sonship of God excluded certain men. To besons of men,—i. e.men,—on the contrary, we need nothing but to belong to the humanspecies, need only to be specimens of the same species. What I am as this I is no concern of yours as a good liberal, but is myprivate affairalone; enough that we are both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the human species: as "a son of man" I am your equal.
What am I now to you? Perhaps thisbodily Ias I walk and stand? Anything but that. This bodily I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in your eyes a "private affair" which is no concern of yours: it is an "affair by itself." As an "affair for you" there exists only my concept, my generic concept, onlythe Man, who, as he is called Tom, could just as well be Joe or Dick. You see in me not me, the bodily man, but an unreal thing, the spook,i. e.aMan.
In the course of the Christian centuries we declaredthe most various persons to be "our equals," but each time in the measure of thatspiritwhich we expected from them,—e. g.each one in whom the spirit of the need of redemption may be assumed, then later each one who has the spirit of integrity, finally each one who shows a human spirit and a human face. Thus the fundamental principle of "equality" varied.
Equality being now conceived as equality of thehuman spirit, there has certainly been discovered an equality that includesallmen; for who could deny that we men have a human spirit,i. e.no other than a human!
But are we on that account further on now than in the beginning of Christianity? Then we were to have adivine spirit, now ahuman; but, if the divine did not exhaust us, how should the human wholly express what we are? Feuerbach,e. g., thinks that, if he humanizes the divine, he has found the truth. No, if God has given us pain, "Man" is capable of pinching us still more torturingly. The long and the short of it is this: that we are men is the slightest thing about us, and has significance only in so far as it is one of ourqualities,[117]i. e.our property.[118]I am indeed among other things a man, as I am,e. g., a living being, therefore an animal, or a European, a Berliner, and the like; but he who chose to have regard for me only as a man, or as a Berliner, would pay me a regard that would be very unimportant to me. And wherefore? Because he would have regard only for one of myqualities, not forme.
It is just so with thespirittoo. A Christian spirit, an upright spirit, and the like may well be my acquired quality,i. e.my property, but I am not this spirit: it is mine, not I its.
Hence we have in liberalism only the continuation of the old Christian depreciation of the I, the bodily Tom. Instead of taking me as I am, one looks solely at my property, my qualities, and enters into marriage bonds with me only for the sake of my—possessions; one marries, as it were, what I have, not what I am. The Christian takes hold of my spirit, the liberal of my humanity.
But, if the spirit, which is not regarded as thepropertyof the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a ghost, then the Man too, who is not recognized as my quality but as the proper I, is nothing but a spook, a thought, a concept.
Therefore the liberal too revolves in the same circle as the Christian. Because the spirit of mankind,i. e.Man, dwells in you, you are a man, as when the spirit of Christ dwells in you you are a Christian; but, because it dwells in you only as a second ego, even though it be as your proper or "better" ego, it remains otherworldly to you, and you have to strive to become wholly man. A striving just as fruitless as the Christian's to become wholly a blessed spirit!
One can now, after liberalism has proclaimed Man, declare openly that herewith was only completed the consistent carrying out of Christianity, and that in truth Christianity set itself no other task from the start than to realize "man," the "true man." Hence, then, the illusion that Christianity ascribes an infinite valueto theego(ase. g.in the doctrine of immortality, in the cure of souls, etc.) comes to light. No, it assigns this value toManalone. OnlyManis immortal, and only because I am man am I too immortal. In fact, Christianity had to teach that no one is lost, just as liberalism too puts all on an equality as men; but that eternity, like this equality, applied only to theManin me, not to me. Only as the bearer and harborer of Man do I not die, as notoriously "the king never dies." Louis dies, but the king remains; I die, but my spirit, Man, remains. To identify me now entirely with Man the demand has been invented, and stated, that I must become a "real generic being."[119]
TheHUMANreligionis only the last metamorphosis of the Christian religion. For liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and sets it above me, because it exalts "Man" to the same extent as any other religion does its God or idol, because it makes what is mine into something otherworldly, because in general it makes out of what is mine, out of my qualities and my property, something alien,—to wit, an "essence"; in short, because it sets me beneath Man, and thereby creates for me a "vocation." But liberalism declares itself a religion in form too when it demands for this supreme being, Man, a zeal of faith, "a faith that some day will at last prove its fiery zeal too, a zeal that will be invincible."[120]But, as liberalism is a human religion, its professor takes atolerantattitude toward the professor of any other(Catholic, Jewish, etc.), as Frederick the Great did toward every one who performed his duties as a subject, whatever fashion of becoming blest he might be inclined toward. This religion is now to be raised to the rank of the generally customary one, and separated from the others as mere "private follies," toward which, besides, one takes a highlyliberalattitude on account of their unessentialness.
One may call it theState-religion, the religion of the "free State," not in the sense hitherto current that it is the one favored or privileged by the State, but as that religion which the "free State" not only has the right, but is compelled, to demand from each of those who belong to it, let him beprivatima Jew, a Christian, or anything else. For it does the same service to the State as filial piety to the family. If the family is to be recognized and maintained, in its existing condition, by each one of those who belong to it, then to him the tie of blood must be sacred, and his feeling for it must be that of piety, of respect for the ties of blood, by which every blood-relation becomes to him a consecrated person. So also to every member of the State-community this community must be sacred, and the concept which is the highest to the State must likewise be the highest to him.
But what concept is the highest to the State? Doubtless that of being a really human society, a society in which every one who is really a man,i. e. not an un-man, can obtain admission as a member. Let a State's tolerance go ever so far, toward an un-man and toward what is inhuman it ceases. And yet this "un-man" is a man, yet the "inhuman" itself issomething human, yes, possible only to a man, not to any beast; it is, in fact, something "possible to man." But, although every un-man is a man, yet the State excludes him;i. e., it locks him up, or transforms him from a fellow of the State into a fellow of the prison (fellow of the lunatic asylum or hospital, according to Communism).
To say in blunt words what an un-man is is not particularly hard: it is a man who does not correspond to theconceptman, as the inhuman is something human which is not conformed to the concept of the human. Logic calls this a "self-contradictory judgment." Would it be permissible for one to pronounce this judgment, that one can be a man without being a man, if he did not admit the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from the existence, the essence from the appearance? They say, heappearsindeed as a man, butisnot a man.
Men have passed this "self-contradictory judgment" through a long line of centuries! Nay, what is still more, in this long time there were only—un-men. What individual can have corresponded to his concept? Christianity knows only one Man, and this one—Christ—is at once an un-man again in the reverse sense, to wit, a superhuman man, a "God." Only the—un-man is arealman.
Men that are not men, what should they be butghosts? Every real man, because he does not correspond to the concept "man," or because he is not a "generic man," is a spook. But do I still remain an un-man even if I bring Man (who towered above me and remained otherworldly to me only as myideal, my task, my essence or concept) down to be myquality, my own and inherent in me; so that Man is nothing else than my humanity, my human existence, and everything that I do is human precisely becauseIdo it, but not because it corresponds to theconcept"man"?Iam really Man and the un-man in one; for I am a man and at the same time more than a man;i. e., I am the ego of this my mere quality.
It had to come to this at last, that it was no longer merely demanded of us to be Christians, but to become men; for, though we could never really become even Christians, but always remained "poor sinners" (for the Christian was an unattainable ideal too), yet in this the contradictoriness did not come before our consciousness so, and the illusion was easier than now when of us, who are men and act humanly (yes, cannot do otherwise than be such and act so), the demand is made that we are to be men, "real men."
Our States of to-day, because they still have all sorts of things sticking to them, left from their churchly mother, do indeed load those who belong to them with various obligations (e. g.churchly religiousness) which properly do not a bit concern them, the States; yet on the whole they do not deny their significance, since they want to be looked upon ashuman societies, in which man as man can be a member, even if he is less privileged than other members; most of them admit adherents of every religious sect, and receive people without distinction of race or nation: Jews, Turks, Moors, etc., can become French citizens. In the act of reception, therefore, the State looks only to see whether one is aman. The Church, as a society ofbelievers, could not receive every man into her bosom; the State, as a society of men, can. But, when the State has carried its principle clear through, of presupposing in its constituents nothing but that they are men (even the North Americans still presuppose in theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of integrity, of respectability), then it has dug its grave. While it will fancy that those whom it possesses are without exception men, these have meanwhile become without exceptionegoists, each of whom utilizes it according to his egoistic powers and ends. Against the egoists "human society" is wrecked; for they no longer have to do with each other asmen, but appear egoistically as anIagainst a You altogether different from me and in opposition to me.
If the State must count on our humanity, it is the same if one says it must count on ourmorality. Seeing Man in each other, and acting as men toward each other, is called moral behavior. This is every whit the "spiritual love" of Christianity. For, if I see Man in you, as in myself I see Man and nothing but Man, then I care for you as I would care for myself; for we represent, you see, nothing but the mathematical proposition: A = C and B = C, consequently A = B,—i. e., I nothing but man and you nothing but man, consequently I and you the same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the former does not allow validity tome, but only to the Man in me. But, if the State is asociety of men, not a union of egos each of whom has only himself before his eyes, then it cannot last without morality, and must insist on morality.
Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I,the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this "human society," I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my property and my creature,—i. e.I annihilate it, and form in its place theUnion of Egoists.
So the State betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man, which presupposes that I may also not be a man, but rank for it as an "un-man"; it imposes being a man upon me as aduty. Further, it desires me to do nothing along with whichitcannot last; soits permanenceis to be sacred for me. Then I am not to be an egoist, but a "respectable, upright,"i. e.moral, man. Enough, before it and its permanence I am to be impotent and respectful,—etc.
This State, not a present one indeed, but still in need of being first created, is the ideal of advancing liberalism. There is to come into existence a true "society of men," in which every "man" finds room. Liberalism means to realize "Man,"i. e.create a world for him; and this should be thehumanworld or the general (Communistic) society of men. It was said, "The Church could regard only the spirit, the State is to regard the whole man."[121]But is not "Man" "spirit"? The kernel of the State is simply "Man," this unreality, and it itself is only a "society of men." The world which the believer (believing spirit) creates is called Church, the world which the man (human or humane spirit) creates is called State. But that is notmyworld. I never execute anythinghumanin theabstract, but always myownthings;i. e.,myhuman act is diverse from every other human act, and only by this diversity is it a real act belonging to me. The human in it is an abstraction, and, as such, spirit,i. e.abstracted essence.
Br. Bauer states (e. g."Judenfrage," p. 84) that the truth of criticism is the final truth, and in fact the truth sought for by Christianity itself,—to wit, "Man." He says, "The history of the Christian world is the history of the supreme fight for truth, for in it—and in it only!—the thing at issue is the discovery of the final or the primal truth—man and freedom."
All right, let us accept this gain, and let us takemanas the ultimately found result of Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man in general. Now, who is Man?Iam!Man, the end and outcome of Christianity, is, asI, the beginning and raw material of the new history, a history of enjoyment after the history of sacrifices, a history not of man or humanity, but of—me.Manranks as the general. Now then, I and the egoistic are the really general, since every one is an egoist and of paramount importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely egoistic, because the Jew still devoteshimselfto Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the Christian lives on the grace of God and subjectshimselfto him. As Jew and as Christian alike a man satisfies only certain of his wants, only a certain need, nothimself: ahalf-egoism, because the egoism of a half-man, who is half he, half Jew, or half his own proprietor, half a slave. Therefore, too, Jew and Christian always half-way exclude each other;i. e., as men they recognizeeach other, as slaves they exclude each other, because they are servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists, they would exclude each otherwhollyand hold together so much the more firmly. Their ignominy is not that they exclude each other, but that this is done onlyhalf-way. Br. Bauer, on the contrary, thinks Jews and Christians cannot regard and treat each other as "men" till they give up the separate essence which parts them and obligates them to eternal separation, recognize the general essence of "Man," and regard this as their "true essence."
According to his representation the defect of the Jews and the Christians alike lies in their wanting to be and have something "particular" instead of only being men and endeavoring after what is human,—to wit, the "general rights of man." He thinks their fundamental error consists in the belief that they are "privileged," possess "prerogatives"; in general, in the belief inprerogative.[122]In opposition to this he holds up to them the general rights of man. The rights of man!—
Man is man in general, and in so far every one who is a man. Now every one is to have the eternal rights of man, and, according to the opinion of Communism, enjoy them in the complete "democracy," or, as it ought more correctly to be called,—anthropocracy. But it is I alone who have everything that I—procure for myself; as man I have nothing. People would like to give every man an affluence of all good, merelybecause he has the title "man." But I put the accent on me, not on my beingman.
Man is something only asmy quality[123](property[124]), like masculinity or femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one's beingmalein the full sense; their virtue isvirtusandarete,—i. e.manliness. What is one to think of a woman who should want only to be perfectly "woman"? That is not given to all, and many a one would therein be fixing for herself an unattainable goal.Feminine, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by nature; femininity is her quality, and she does not need "true femininity." I am a man just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the task of being a "thorough star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the call to be a "thorough man."
When Fichte says, "The ego is all," this seems to harmonize perfectly with my theses. But it is not that the egoisall, but the egodestroysall, and only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the—finiteego is really I. Fichte speaks of the "absolute" ego, but I speak of me, the transitory ego.
How natural is the supposition thatmanandegomean the same! and yet one sees,e. g., by Feuerbach, that the expression "man" is to designate the absolute ego, thespecies, not the transitory, individual ego. Egoism and humanity (humaneness) ought to mean the same, but according to Feuerbach the individual can "only lift himself above the limits of his individuality, but not above the laws, the positive ordinances,of his species."[125]But the species is nothing, and, if the individual lifts himself above the limits of his individuality, this is rather his very self as an individual; he exists only in raising himself, he exists only in not remaining what he is; otherwise he would be done, dead. Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of. To beaman is not to realize the ideal ofMan, but to presentoneself, the individual. It is not how I realize thegenerally humanthat needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself.Iam my species, am without norm, without law, without model, and the like. It is possible that I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State, etc. Better—if the talk is to be of better at all—better an unmannerly child than an old head on young shoulders, better a mulish man than a man compliant in everything. The unmannerly and mulish fellow is still on the way to form himself according to his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the "species," the general demands, etc.,—the species is law to him. He isdetermined[126]by it; for what else is the species to him but his "destiny,"[127]his "calling"? Whether I look to "humanity," the species, in order to strive toward this ideal, or to God and Christ with like endeavor, where is the essential dissimilarity? At most the former ismore washed-out than the latter. As the individual is the whole of nature, so he is the whole of the species too.
Everything that I do, think, etc.,—in short, my expression or manifestation—is indeedconditionedby what I am. The Jew,e. g., can will only thus or thus, can "present himself" only thus; the Christian can present and manifest himself only christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew or Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian; but it is not possible; in the most rigorous conduct you yet remain anegoist, a sinner against that concept—i. e.,youare not the precise equivalent of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through, people have inquired for a more perfect concept which should really wholly express what you are, and which, because it is your true nature, should contain all the laws of your activity. The most perfect thing of the kind has been attained in "Man." As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not your task; to be a Greek, a German, does not suffice. But be a—man, then you have everything; look upon the human as your calling.
Now I know what is expected of me, and the new catechism can be written. The subject is again subjected to the predicate, the individual to something general; the dominion is again secured to anidea, and the foundation laid for a newreligion. This is astep forwardin the domain of religion, and in particular of Christianity; not a step out beyond it.
The step out beyond it leads into theunspeakable. For me paltry language has no word, and "theWord," the Logos, is to me a "mere word."
My essenceis sought for. If not the Jew, the German, etc., then at any rate it is—the man. "Man is my essence."
I am repulsive or repugnant to myself; I have a horror and loathing of myself, I am a horror to myself, or, I am never enough for myself and never do enough to satisfy myself. From such feelings springs self-dissolution or self-criticism. Religiousness begins with self-renunciation, ends with completed criticism.
I am possessed, and want to get rid of the "evil spirit." How do I set about it? I fearlessly commit the sin that seems to the Christian the direst, the sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. "He who blasphemes the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever, but is liable to the eternal judgment!"[128]I want no forgiveness, and am not afraid of the judgment.
Manis the last evilspiritor spook, the most deceptive or most intimate, the craftiest liar with honest mien, the father of lies.
The egoist, turning against the demands and concepts of the present, executes pitilessly the most measureless—desecration. Nothing is holy to him!
It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be theenemyof every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it.