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276 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Because it can hardly escape anybody
that the present shows no such living interest in any question
as in the "social," one has to direct his gaze especially
to society. Nay, if the interest felt in it were less passionate
and dazzled, people would not so much, in looking at society,
lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that
a society cannot become new so long as those who form and constitute
it remain the old ones. If, e. g., there was to arise
in the Jewish people a society which should spread a new faith
over the earth, these apostles could in no case remain Pharisees.
As you are, so you present yourself,
so you behave toward men: a hypocrite as a hypocrite, a Christian
as a Christian. Therefore the character of a society is determined
by the character of its members: they are its creators. So much
at least one must perceive even if one were not willing to put
to the test the concept "society" itself.
Ever far from letting themselves
come to their full development and consequence, men have hitherto
not been able to found their societies on themselves;
or rather, they have been able only to found "societies"
and to live in societies. The societies were always persons, powerful
persons, so-called "moral persons," i.e. ghosts,
before which the individual had the appropriate wheel in his head,
the fear of ghosts. As such ghosts they may most suitably be designated
by the respective names "people" and "peoplet":
the people of the patriarchs, the people of the Hellenes, etc.,
at last the -- people of men, Mankind (Anacharsis Clootz was enthusiastic
for the "nation" of man-
| THE OWNER 277 |
kind); then every subdivision of this "people," which
could and must have its special societies, the Spanish, French
people, etc.; within it again classes, cities, in short all kinds
of corporations; lastly, tapering to the finest point, the little
peoplet of the --family. Hence, instead of saying that the person
that walked as ghost in all societies hitherto has been the people,
there might also have been named the two extremes -- to wit, either
"mankind" or the "family," both the most "natural-born
units." We choose the word "people"* because its
derivation has been brought into connection with the Greek polloi,
the "many" or "the masses," but still more
because "national efforts" are at present the order
of the day, and because even the newest mutineers have not yet
shaken off this deceptive person, although on the other hand the
latter consideration must give the preference to the expression
"mankind," since on all sides they are going in for
enthusiasm over "mankind."
The people, then -- mankind or the
family -- have hitherto, as it seems, played history: no egoistic
interest was to come up in these societies, but solely general
ones, national or popular interests, class interests, family interests,
and "general human interests." But who has brought to
their fall the peoples whose decline history relates? Who but
the egoist, who was seeking his satisfaction! If once
an egoistic interest crept in, the society was "corrupted"
and moved toward its dissolution, as Rome, e. g. proves
with its
*[Volk; but the etymological remark following applies equally to the English word "people." See Liddell & Scott's Greek lexicon, under pimplemi.]
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278 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
highly developed system of private rights, or Christianity with
the incessantly-breaking-in "rational self-determination,"
"self-consciousness," the "autonomy of the spirit,"
etc.
The Christian people has produced
two societies whose duration will keep equal measure with the
permanence of that people: these are the societies State
and Church. Can they be called a union of egoists? Do
we in them pursue an egoistic, personal, own interest, or do we
pursue a popular (i.e. an interest of the Christian people),
to wit, a State, and Church interest? Can I and may I be myself
in them? May I think and act as I will, may I reveal myself, live
myself out, busy myself? Must I not leave untouched the majesty
of the State, the sanctity of the Church?
Well, I may not do so as I will.
But shall I find in any society such an unmeasured freedom of
maying? Certainly no! Accordingly we might be content? Not a bit!
It is a different thing whether I rebound from an ego or from
a people, a generalization. There I am my opponent's opponent,
born his equal; here I am a despised opponent, bound and under
a guardian: there I stand man to man; here I am a schoolboy who
can accomplish nothing against his comrade because the latter
has called father and mother to aid and has crept under the apron,
while I am well scolded as an ill-bred brat, and I must not "argue":
there I fight against a bodily enemy; here against mankind, against
a generalization, against a "majesty," against a spook.
But to me no majesty, nothing sacred, is a limit; nothing that
I know how
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THE OWNER 279 |
to overpower. Only that which I cannot overpower still limits
my might; and I of limited might am temporarily a limited I, not
limited by the might outside me, but limited by my own
still deficient might, by my own impotence. However,
"the Guard dies, but does not surrender!" Above all,
only a bodily opponent!
Many privileges have indeed been
cancelled with time, but solely for the sake of the common weal,
of the State and the State's weal, by no means for the strengthening
of me. Vassalage, e. g., was abrogated only that a single
liege lord, the lord of the people, the monarchical power, might
be strengthened: vassalage under the one became yet more rigorous
thereby. Only in favor of the monarch, be he called "prince"
or "law," have privileges fallen. In France the citizens
are not, indeed, vassals of the king, but are instead vassals
of the "law" (the Charter). Subordination was
retained, only the Christian State recognized that man cannot
serve two masters (the lord of the manor and the prince); therefore
one obtained all the prerogatives; now he can again place
one above another, he can make "men in high place."
But of what concern to me is the
common weal? The common weal as such is not my weal,
but only the furthest extremity of self- renunciation.
The common weal may cheer aloud while I must "down";*
*[Kuschen, a word whose only use is in ordering dogs to keep quiet.]
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280 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
the State may shine while I starve. In what lies the folly of
the political liberals but in their opposing the people to the
government and talking of people's rights? So there is the people
going to be of age, etc. As if one who has no mouth could be mündig!*
Only the individual is able to be mündig. Thus the
whole question of the liberty of the press is turned upside down
when it is laid claim to as a "right of the people."
It is only a right, or better the might, of the individual.
If a people has liberty of the press, then I, although in the
midst of this people, have it not; a liberty of the people is
not my liberty, and the liberty of the press as a liberty
of the people must have at its side a press law directed against
me.
This must be insisted on all around
against the present-day efforts for liberty:
Liberty of the people is
not my liberty!
Let us admit these categories, liberty
of the people and right of the people: e. g., the right
of the people that everybody may bear arms. Does one not forfeit
such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but may well forfeit
a right that belongs not to me but to the people. I may be locked
up for the sake of the liberty of the people; I may, under sentence,
incur the loss of the right to bear arms.
Liberalism appears as the last attempt
at a creation of the liberty of the people, a liberty of the commune,
of "society," of the general, of mankind; the dream
of a humanity, a people, a commune, a "society,"
*This is the word for "of age"; but it is derived from Mund, "mouth," and refers properly to the right of speaking through one's own mouth, not by a guardian.]
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that shall be of age.
A people cannot be free otherwise
than at the individual's expense; for it is not the individual
that is the main point in this liberty, but the people. The freer
the people, the more bound the individual; the Athenian people,
precisely at its freest time, created ostracism, banished the
atheists, poisoned the most honest thinker.
How they do praise Socrates for
his conscientiousness, which makes him resist the advice to get
away from the dungeon! He is a fool that he concedes to the Athenians
a right to condemn him. Therefore it certainly serves him right;
why then does he remain standing on an equal footing with the
Athenians? Why does he not break with them? Had he known, and
been able to know, what he was, he would have conceded to such
judges no claim, no right. That he did not escape was
just his weakness, his delusion of still having something in common
with the Athenians, or the opinion that he was a member, a mere
member of this people. But he was rather this people itself in
person, and could only be his own judge. There was no judge
over him, as he himself had really pronounced a public sentence
on himself and rated himself worthy of the Prytaneum. He should
have stuck to that, and, as he had uttered no sentence of death
against himself, should have despised that of the Athenians too
and escaped. But he subordinated himself and recognized in the
people his judge; he seemed little to himself
before the majesty of the people. That he subjected himself to
might (to which alone he could succumb) as to a "right"
was
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282 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
treason against himself: it was virtue. To Christ, who,
it is alleged, refrained from using the power over his heavenly
legions, the same scrupulousness is thereby ascribed by the narrators.
Luther did very well and wisely to have the safety of his journey
to Worms warranted to him in black and white, and Socrates should
have known that the Athenians were his enemies, he alone
his judge. The self-deception of a "reign of law," etc.,
should have given way to the perception that the relation was
a relation of might.
It was with pettifoggery
and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why? Because the ordinary
Greeks could still less attain that logical conclusion which not
even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to draw. What then
is pettifoggery but a way of utilizing something established without
doing away with it? I might add "for one's own advantage,"
but, you see, that lies in "utilizing." Such pettifoggers
are the theologians who "wrest" and "force"
God's word; what would they have to wrest if it were not for the
"established" Word of God? So those liberals who only
shake and wrest the "established order." They are all
perverters, like those perverters of the law. Socrates recognized
law, right; the Greeks constantly retained the authority of right
and law. If with this recognition they wanted nevertheless to
assert their advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek
it in perversion of the law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, an intriguer
of genius, introduces the period of Athenian "decay";
the Spartan Lysander and others show that intrigue had become
universally Greek. Greek law, on which the Greek States
rested, had to be per-
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THE OWNER 283 |
verted and undermined by the egoists within these States, and
the States went down that the individuals might
become free, the Greek people fell because the individuals cared
less for this people than for themselves. In general, all States,
constitutions, churches, have sunk by the secession of
individuals; for the individual is the irreconcilable enemy of
every generality, every tie, i.e. every
fetter. Yet people fancy to this day that man needs "sacred
ties": he, the deadly enemy of every "tie." The
history of the world shows that no tie has yet remained unrent,
shows that man tirelessly defends himself against ties of every
sort; and yet, blinded, people think up new ties again and again,
and think, e. g., that they have arrived at the right
one if one puts upon them the tie of a so-called free constitution,
a beautiful, constitutional tie; decoration ribbons, the ties
of confidence between
"-- -- --," do seem gradually to have become somewhat
infirm, but people have made no further progress than from apron-strings
to garters and collars.
Everything sacred is a tie,
a fetter.
Everything sacred is and must be
perverted by perverters of the law; therefore our present time
has multitudes of such perverters in all spheres. They are preparing
the way for the break-up of law, for lawlessness.
Poor Athenians who are accused of
pettifoggery and sophistry! poor Alcibiades, of intrigue! Why,
that was just your best point, your first step in freedom. Your
Æeschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have a free Greek
people; you were the first to surmise
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284 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
something of your freedom.
A people represses those who tower
above its majesty, by ostracism against too-powerful
citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics of the Church,
by the -- Inquisition against traitors in the State.
For the people is concerned only
with its self-assertion; it demands "patriotic self-sacrifice"
from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one in himself
is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even suffer,
what the individual and he alone must do -- to wit, turn him
to account. Every people, every State, is unjust toward the
egoist.
As long as there still exists even
one institution which the individual may not dissolve, the ownness
and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote. How can I, e.
g. be free when I must bind myself by oath to a constitution,
a charter, a law, "vow body and soul" to my people?
How can I be my own when my faculties may develop only so far
as they "do not disturb the harmony of society" (Weitling)?
The fall of peoples and mankind
will invite me to my rise.
Listen, even as I am writing this,
the bells begin to sound, that they may jingle in for tomorrow
the festival of the thousand years' existence of our dear Germany.
Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough, as if your
tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy
to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind
them a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to
rest, never to rise again -- that all may become free whom you
so long have held in fetters. -- The
| THE OWNER 285 |
people is dead. -- Up with me!
O thou my much-tormented German
people -- what was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought
that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a walking spirit
that dissolves into nothing at every cock-crow and yet pines for
deliverance and fulfillment. In me too thou hast lived long, thou
dear -- thought, thou dear -- spook. Already I almost fancied
I had found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and
bones for the wandering spirit; then I hear them sound, the bells
that usher thee into eternal rest; then the last hope fades out,
then the notes of the last love die away, then I depart from the
desolate house of those who now are dead and enter at the door
of the -- living one:
For only he who is alive is in the right.
Farewell, thou dream of so many
millions; farewell, thou who hast tyrannized over thy children
for a thousand years!
Tomorrow they carry thee to the
grave; soon thy sisters, the peoples, will follow thee. But, when
they have all followed, then -- -- mankind is buried, and I am
my own, I am the laughing heir!
The word Gesellschaft (society) has its origin in the word Sal (hall). If one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these persons to be in society. They are in society, and at most constitute a parlor-society by talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech. When it comes to real intercourse, this is to be regarded as independent of society: it may occur
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286 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
or be lacking, without altering the nature of what is named society.
Those who are in the hall are a society even as mute persons,
or when they put each other off solely with empty phrases of courtesy.
Intercourse is mutuality, it is the action, the commercium,
of individuals; society is only community of the hall, and even
the statues of a museum-hall are in society, they are "grouped."
People are accustomed to say "they haben inne* this
hall in common," but the case is rather that the hall has
us inne or in it. So far the natural signification of
the word society. In this it comes out that society is not generated
by me and you, but by a third factor which makes associates out
of us two, and that it is just this third factor that is the creative
one, that which creates society.
Just so a prison society or prison
companionship (those who enjoy** the same prison). Here we already
hit upon a third factor fuller of significance than was that merely
local one, the hall. Prison no longer means a space only, but
a space with express reference to its inhabitants: for it is a
prison only through being destined for prisoners, without whom
it would be a mere building. What gives a common stamp to those
who are gathered in it? Evidently the prison, since it is only
by means of the prison that they are prisoners. What, then, determines
the manner of life of the prison society? The prison!
What determines their intercourse? The prison too, perhaps? Certainly
they can enter upon intercourse only as
*["Occupy"; literally, "have within".]
**[The word Genosse,
"companion," signifies originally a companion in enjoyment.]
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THE OWNER 287 |
prisoners, i.e. only so far as the prison laws allow
it; but that they themselves hold intercourse, I with
you, this the prison cannot bring to pass; on the contrary, it
must have an eye to guarding against such egoistic, purely personal
intercourse (and only as such is it really intercourse between
me and you). That we jointly execute a job, run a machine,
effectuate anything in general -- for this a prison will indeed
provide; but that I forget that I am a prisoner, and engage in
intercourse with you who likewise disregard it, brings danger
to the prison, and not only cannot be caused by it, but must not
even be permitted. For this reason the saintly and moral-minded
French chamber decides to introduce solitary confinement, and
other saints will do the like in order to cut off "demoralizing
intercourse." Imprisonment is the established and -- sacred
condition, to injure which no attempt must be made. The slightest
push of that kind is punishable, as is every uprising against
a sacred thing by which man is to be charmed and chained.
Like the hall, the prison does form
a society, a companionship, a communion (e. g. communion
of labor), but no intercourse, no reciprocity, no union.
On the contrary, every union in the prison bears within it the
dangerous seed of a "plot," which under favorable circumstances
might spring up and bear fruit.
Yet one does not usually enter the
prison voluntarily, and seldom remains in it voluntarily either,
but cherishes the egoistic desire for liberty. Here, therefore,
it sooner becomes manifest that personal inter-
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288 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
course is in hostile relations to the prison society and tends
to the dissolution of this very society, this joint incarceration.
Let us therefore look about for
such communions as, it seems, we remain in gladly and voluntarily,
without wanting to endanger them by our egoistic impulses.
As a communion of the required sort
the family offers itself in the first place. Parents,
husbands and wife, children, brothers and sisters, represent a
whole or form a family, for the further widening of which the
collateral relatives also may be made to serve if taken into account.
The family is a true communion only when the law of the family,
piety* or family love, is observed by its members. A son to whom
parents, brothers, and sisters have become indifferent has
been a son; for, as the sonship no longer shows itself efficacious,
it has no greater significance than the long-past connection of
mother and child by the navel-string. That one has once lived
in this bodily juncture cannot as a fact be undone; and so far
one remains irrevocably this mother's son and the brother of the
rest of her children; but it would come to a lasting connection
only by lasting piety, this spirit of the family. Individuals
are members of a family in the full sense only when they make
the persistence of the family their task; only as conservative
do they keep aloof from doubting their basis, the family. To every
member of the family one thing must be fixed and
*[This word in German does not mean religion, but, as in Latin, faithfulness to family ties -- as we speak of "filial piety." But the word elsewhere translated "pious" [fromm] means "religious," as usually in English.]
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THE OWNER 289 |
sacred -- viz., the family itself, or, more expressively,
piety. That the family is to persist remains to its member,
so long as he keeps himself free from that egoism which is hostile
to the family, an unassailable truth. In a word: -- If the family
is sacred, then nobody who belongs to it may secede from it; else
he becomes a "criminal" against the family: he may never
pursue an interest hostile to the family, e. g. form
a misalliance. He who does this has "dishonored the family,"
"put it to shame," etc.
Now, if in an individual the egoistic
impulse has not force enough, he complies and makes a marriage
which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank which harmonizes
with its position, etc.; in short, he "does honor to the
family."
If, on the contrary, the egoistic
blood flows fierily enough in his veins, he prefers to become
a "criminal" against the family and to throw off its
laws.
Which of the two lies nearer my
heart, the good of the family or my good? In innumerable cases
both go peacefully together; the advantage of the family is at
the same time mine, and vice versa. Then it is hard to
decide whether I am thinking selfishly or for the
common benefit, and perhaps I complacently flatter myself
with my unselfishness. But there comes the day when a necessity
of choice makes me tremble, when I have it in mind to dishonor
my family tree, to affront parents, brothers, and kindred. What
then? Now it will appear how I am disposed at the bottom of my
heart; now it will be revealed whether piety ever stood above
egoism for me, now the selfish one can no longer skulk behind
the sem-
| 290 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
blance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, and, growing
from hour to hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur at
first blush that the slightest thought which may result adversely
to the spirit of the family (piety) bears within it a transgression
against this? Nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely
conscious of the matter? It happens so with Juliet in "Romeo
and Juliet." The unruly passion can at last no longer be
tamed, and undermines the building of piety. You will say, indeed,
it is from self-will that the family casts out of its bosom those
wilful ones that grant more of a hearing to their passion than
to piety; the good Protestants used the same excuse with much
success against the Catholics, and believed in it themselves.
But it is just a subterfuge to roll the fault off oneself, nothing
more. The Catholics had regard for the common bond of the church,
and thrust those heretics from them only because these did not
have so much regard for the bond of the church as to sacrifice
their convictions to it; the former, therefore, held the bond
fast, because the bond, the Catholic (i.e. common and
united) church, was sacred to them; the latter, on the contrary,
disregarded the bond. Just so those who lack piety. They are not
thrust out, but thrust themselves out, prizing their passion,
their wilfulness, higher than the bond of the family.
But now sometimes a wish glimmers
in a less passionate and wilful heart than Juliet's. The pliable
girl brings herself as a sacrifice to the peace of the
family. One might say that here too selfishness prevailed, for
the decision came from the feeling that the
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THE OWNER 291 |
pliable girl felt herself more satisfied by the unity of the family
than by the fulfillment of her wish. That might be; but what if
there remained a sure sign that egoism had been sacrificed to
piety? What if, even after the wish that had been directed against
the peace of the family was sacrificed, it remained at least as
a recollection of a "sacrifice" brought to a sacred
tie? What if the pliable girl were conscious of having left her
self-will unsatisfied and humbly subjected herself to a higher
power? Subjected and sacrificed, because the superstition of piety
exercised its dominion over her!
There egoism won, here piety wins
and the egoistic heart bleeds; there egoism was strong, here it
was -- weak. But the weak, as we have long known, are the -- unselfish.
For them, for these its weak members, the family cares, because
they belong to the family, do not belong to themselves
and care for themselves. This weakness Hegel, e. g. praises
when he wants to have match- making left to the choice of the
parents.
As a sacred communion to which,
among the rest, the individual owes obedience, the family has
the judicial function too vested in it; such a "family court"
is described e. g. in the Cabanis of
Wilibald Alexis. There the father, in the name of the "family
council," puts the intractable son among the soldiers and
thrusts him out of the family, in order to cleanse the smirched
family again by means of this act of punishment. -- The most consistent
development of family responsibility is contained in Chinese law,
according to which the whole family has to expiate the individual's
fault.
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292 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Today, however, the arm of family
power seldom reaches far enough to take seriously in hand the
punishment of apostates (in most cases the State protects even
against disinheritance). The criminal against the family (family-criminal)
flees into the domain of the State and is free, as the State-criminal
who gets away to America is no longer reached by the punishments
of his State. He who has shamed his family, the graceless son,
is protected against the family's punishment because the State,
this protecting lord, takes away from family punishment its "sacredness"
and profanes it, decreeing that it is only --"revenge":
it restrains punishment, this sacred family right, because before
its, the State's, "sacredness" the subordinate sacredness
of the family always pales and loses its sanctity as soon as it
comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict,
the State lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family; but in
the opposite case it even commands crime against the family, charging,
e. g., the son to refuse obedience to his parents as
soon as they want to beguile him to a crime against the State.
Well, the egoist has broken the
ties of the family and found in the State a lord to shelter him
against the grievously affronted spirit of the family. But where
has he run now? Straight into a new society, in which
his egoism is awaited by the same snares and nets that it has
just escaped. For the State is likewise a society, not a union;
it is the broadened family ("Father of the Country
-- Mother of the Country -- children of the country").
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THE OWNER 293 |
What is called a State is a tissue
and plexus of dependence and adherence; it is a belonging
together, a holding together, in which those who are placed
together fit themselves to each other, or, in short, mutually
depend on each other: it is the order of this dependence.
Suppose the king, whose authority lends authority to all down
to the beadle, should vanish: still all in whom the will for order
was awake would keep order erect against the disorders of bestiality.
If disorder were victorious, the State would be at an end.
But is this thought of love, to
fit ourselves to each other, to adhere to each other and depend
on each other, really capable of winning us? According to this
the State should be love realized, the being for each
other and living for each other of all. Is not self-will being
lost while we attend to the will for order? Will people not be
satisfied when order is cared for by authority, i.e.
when authority sees to it that no one "gets in the way of"
another; when, then, the herd is judiciously distributed
or ordered? Why, then everything is in "the best order,"
and it is this best order that is called -- State!
Our societies and States are
without our making them, are united without our uniting,
are predestined and established, or have an independent standing*
of their own, are the indissolubly established against us egoists.
The fight of the world today is, as it is said, directed against
the "established." Yet people are wont to misunderstand
this as if it were only that
*[It should be remembered that the words "establish" and "State" are both derived from the root "stand."]
| 294 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better,
established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment
itself, the State, not a particular State, not any such
thing as the mere condition of the State at the time; it is not
another State (e. g. a "people's State") that
men aim at, but their union, uniting, this ever-fluid
uniting of everything standing. -- A State exists even without
my co-operation: I am born in it, brought up in it, under obligations
to it, and must "do it homage."* It takes me up into
its "favor,"* and I live by its "grace." Thus
the independent establishment of the State founds my lack of independence;
its condition as a "natural growth," its organism, demands
that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it. That
it may be able to unfold in natural growth, it applies
to me the shears of "civilization"; it gives me an education
and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me e. g.
to respect the laws, to refrain from injury to State property
(i.e. private property), to reverence divine and earthly
highness, etc.; in short, it teaches me to be -- unpunishable,
"sacrificing" my ownness to "sacredness" (everything
possible is sacred; e. g. property, others' life, etc.).
In this consists the sort of civilization and culture that the
State is able to give me: it brings me up to be a "serviceable
instrument," a "serviceable member of society."
This every State must do, the people's
State as well as the absolute or constitutional one. It must do
so
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as long as we rest in the error that it is an I, as which
it then applies to itself the name of a "moral, mystical,
or political person." I, who really am I, must pull off this
lion-skin of the I from the stalking thistle-eater. What manifold
robbery have I not put up with in the history of the world! There
I let sun, moon, and stars, cats and crocodiles, receive the honor
of ranking as I; there Jehovah, Allah, and Our Father came and
were invested with the I; there families, tribes, peoples, and
at last actually mankind, came and were honored as I's; there
the Church, the State, came with the pretension to be I -- and
I gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then there was always a
real I too that joined the company and affirmed in my face that
it was not my you but my real I. Why, the
Son of Man par excellence had done the like; why should
not a son of man do it too? So I saw my I always above
me and outside me, and could never really come to myself.
I never believed in myself; I never
believed in my present, I saw myself only in the future. The boy
believes he will be a proper I, a proper fellow, only when he
has become a man; the man thinks, only in the other world will
he be something proper. And, to enter more closely upon reality
at once, even the best are today still persuading each other that
one must have received into himself the State, his people, mankind,
and what not, in order to be a real I, a "free burgher,"
a "citizen," a "free or true man"; they too
see the truth and reality of me in the reception of an alien I
and devotion to it. And what sort of an I? An I that is neither
an I nor a you, a fancied I,
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a spook.
While in the Middle Ages the church
could well brook many States living united in it, the States learned
after the Reformation, especially after the Thirty Years' War,
to tolerate many churches (confessions) gathering under one crown.
But all States are religious and, as the case may be, "Christian
States," and make it their task to force the intractable,
the "egoists," under the bond of the unnatural, e.
g., Christianize them. All arrangements of the Christian
State have the object of Christianizing the people. Thus
the court has the object of forcing people to justice, the school
that of forcing them to mental culture -- in short, the object
of protecting those who act Christianly against those who act
un-Christianly, of bringing Christian action to dominion,
of making it powerful. Among these means of force the
State counted the Church too, it demanded a -- particular
religion from everybody. Dupin said lately against the clergy,
"Instruction and education belong to the State."
Certainly everything that regards
the principle of morality is a State affair. Hence it is that
the Chinese State meddles so much in family concerns, and one
is nothing there if one is not first of all a good child to his
parents. Family concerns are altogether State concerns with us
too, only that our State -- puts confidence in the families without
painful oversight; it holds the family bound by the marriage tie,
and this tie cannot be broken without it.
But that the State makes me responsible
for my principles, and demands certain ones from me, might
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make me ask, what concern has it with the "wheel in my head"
(principle)? Very much, for the State is the -- ruling principle.
It is supposed that in divorce matters, in marriage law in general,
the question is of the proportion of rights between Church and
States. Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is
to rule over man, be it called faith or ethical law (morality).
The State behaves as the same ruler that the Church was. The latter
rests on godliness, the former on morality.
People talk of the tolerance, the
leaving opposite tendencies free, etc., by which civilized States
are distinguished. Certainly some are strong enough to look with
complacency on even the most unrestrained meetings, while others
charge their catchpolls to go hunting for tobacco-pipes. Yet for
one State as for another the play of individuals among themselves,
their buzzing to and fro, their daily life, is an incident
which it must be content to leave to themselves because it can
do nothing with this. Many, indeed, still strain out gnats and
swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are "freer"
in the latter, because less pestered. But I am free in
no State. The lauded tolerance of States is simply a
tolerating of the "harmless," the "not dangerous";
it is only elevation above pettymindedness, only a more estimable,
grander, prouder -- despotism. A certain State seemed for a while
to mean to be pretty well elevated above literary combats,
which might be carried on with all heat; England is elevated above
popular turmoil and -- tobacco-smoking. But woe to the
literature that deals blows at the State
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itself, woe to the mobs that "endanger" the State. In
that certain State they dream of a "free science," in
England of a "free popular life."
The State does let individuals play
as freely as possible, only they must not be in earnest,
must not forget it. Man must not carry on intercourse
with man unconcernedly, not without "superior oversight
and mediation." I must not execute all that I am able to,
but only so much as the State allows; I must not turn to account
my thoughts, nor my work, nor, in general, anything
of mine.
The State always has the sole purpose
to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual -- to make him subject
to some generality or other; it lasts only so long as
the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly-marked
restriction of me, my limitation, my slavery. Never does
a State aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but
always that which is bound to the purpose of the State.
Through the State nothing in common comes to pass either,
as little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of
all the individual parts of a machine; it is rather the work of
the whole machine as a unit, machine work. In the same
style everything is done by the State machine too; for
it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which
follow their own impulse. The State seeks to hinder every free
activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds
this hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of
self-preservation. The State wants to make something out of man,
therefore there live in it only made men; every one who
wants to be his own self is its opponent
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and is nothing. "He is nothing" means as much as, the
State does not make use of him, grants him no position, no office,
no trade, etc.
Edgar Bauer,* in the Liberale
Bestrebungen (vol. II, p.50), is still dreaming of a "government
which, proceeding out of the people, can never stand in opposition
to it." He does indeed (p.69) himself take back the word
"government": "In the republic no government at
all obtains, but only an executive authority. An authority which
proceeds purely and alone out of the people; which has not an
independent power, independent principles, independent officers,
over against the people; but which has its foundation, the fountain
of its power and of its principles, in the sole, supreme authority
of the State, in the people. The concept government, therefore,
is not at all suitable in the people's State." But the thing
remains the same. That which has "proceeded, been founded,
sprung from the fountain" becomes something "independent"
and, like a child delivered from the womb, enters upon opposition
at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing,
would be nothing at all.
"In the free State there is
no government," etc. (p.94). This surely means that the people,
when it is the sovereign, does not let itself be conducted
by a superior authority. Is it perchance different in absolute
monarchy? Is there there for the sovereign,
perchance, a government standing over him? Over the
*What was said in the concluding remarks after Humane
Liberalism holds good of the following -- to wit, that it was
likewise written immediately after the appearance of the book
cited.
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300 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never stands a
government: that is understood of itself. But over me
there will stand a government in every "State," in the
absolute as well as in the republican or "free." I am
as badly off in one as in the other.
The republic is nothing whatever
but -- absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the
monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty."
Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing
to be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their master
the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Here, then,
the parties at least are already free -- videlicet,
the office-holders' party (so-called people's party). The prince
must conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance to
the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the
republic, because it is the State in incipient dissolution.
Edgar Bauer denies (p.56) that the
people is a "personality" in the constitutional State;
per contra, then, in the republic? Well, in the constitutional
State the people is -- a party, and a party is surely
a "personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a
"political" (p.76) moral person anyhow. The fact is
that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or
even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook.
Further, Edgar Bauer goes on (p.69):
"guardianship is the characteristic of a government."
Truly, still more that of a people and "people's State";
it is the characteristic of all dominion. A people's
State, which "unites in itself all completeness of power,"
the "absolute master," cannot let me become powerful.