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THE OWNER 301 |
And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's
officials" "servants, instruments," because they
"execute the free, rational law-will of the people!"
(p.73). He thinks (p.74): "Only by all official circles subordinating
themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into
the State"; but his "people's State" is to have
"unity" too; how will a lack of subordination be allowed
there? subordination to the -- people's will.
"In the constitutional State
it is the regent and his disposition that the whole structure
of government rests on in the end." (p. 130.) How would that
be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall I
not there be governed by the people's disposition too,
and does it make a difference for me whether I see myself
kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's
disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence
means as much as "religious relation," as Edgar Bauer
rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains
for me the superior power, the "majesty" (for
God and prince have their proper essence in "majesty")
to which I stand in religious relations. -- Like the sovereign
regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no law.
Edgar Bauer's whole attempt comes to a change of masters.
Instead of wanting to make the people free, he should
have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.
In the constitutional State absolutism
itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been
shattered into a duality; the government wants to be absolute,
and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will
wear out against each other.
| 302 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Edgar Bauer inveighs against the
determination of the regent by birth, by chance.
But, when "the people" have become "the sole power
in the State" (p. 132), have we not then in it a
master from chance? Why, what is the people? The people
has always been only the body of the government: it is
many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution.
And the constitution is the -- prince. Princes and peoples will
persist so long as both do not collapse, i. e.,
fall together. If under one constitution there are many
"peoples" -- as in the ancient Persian monarchy and
today --then these "peoples" rank only as "provinces."
For me the people is in any case an --accidental power, a force
of nature, an enemy that I must overcome.
What is one to think of under the
name of an "organized" people (p. 132)? A people "that
no longer has a government," that governs itself. In which,
therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a people organized by
ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people
autocrat.
If you speak of the people, you
must speak of the prince; for the people, if it is to be a subject*
and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a head,
its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in [Die
Europäische] Triarchie, and Proudhon declares, "une
société, pour ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut
vivre."**
The vox populi is now always
held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule our princes.
Certainly
*[In the philosophical sense [a thinking and acting
being] not in the political sense.]
**[Création de l'Ordre,"
p.485.]
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THE OWNER 303 |
the vox populi is at the same time vox dei;
but is either of any use, and is not the vox principis
also vox dei?
At this point the "Nationals"
may be brought to mind. To demand of the thirty-eight States of
Germany that they shall act as one nation can only be
put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of
bees, led by thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into
one swarm. Bees they all remain; but it is not the bees
as bees that belong together and can join themselves together,
it is only that the subject bees are connected with the
ruling queens. Bees and peoples are destitute of will,
and the instinct of their queens leads them.
If one were to point the bees to
their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each
other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing
so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why,
Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears
in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without
pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying
through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean,
to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide
itself into different peoples and tribes, i.e. beehives;
but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still
as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can
enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues
of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those
who come together, at least so far as the "peoples"
are regarded
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as the ones that have come together, are destitute of will.
Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change
to unification.
Now the Nationals are exerting themselves
to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned
are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for
union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they
want to set up something general, abstract, an empty,
lifeless concept, in distinction from which the self-owned
aspire to relieve the robust, lively particular from
the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be
glad to smite a people, a nation, forth from the earth;
the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials
the two efforts that are just now the order of the day - to wit,
the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions
(Franks, Bavarians, Lusatia, etc.), and the restoration of the
entire nationality -- coincide in one. But the Germans will come
into unison, i.e. unite themselves, only when
they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in
other words, when they are more than -- Germans: only then can
they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn
back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born
again, but let every one turn in to himself. How ridiculously
sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses
it with sacred awe because "he too is a German!" With
that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought
touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness,"
i.e. as long as they have a
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"family disposition". From the superstition
of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness"
or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run -- from the
family spirit -- the Nationals, who want to have a great
family of Germans, cannot liberate themselves.
Aside from this, the so-called Nationals
would only have to understand themselves rightly in order to lift
themselves out of their juncture with the good-natured Teutomaniacs.
For the uniting for material ends and interests, which they demand
of the Germans, comes to nothing else than a voluntary union.
Carrière, inspired, cries out,* "Railroads are to
the more penetrating eye the way to a life of the people
e. g. has not yet anywhere appeared in such significance."
Quite right, it will be a life of the people that has nowhere
appeared, because it is not a -- life of the people. -- So Carrière
then combats himself (p. 10): "Pure humanity or manhood cannot
be better represented than by a people fulfilling its mission."
Why, by this nationality only is represented. "Washed-out
generality is lower than the form complete in itself, which is
itself a whole, and lives as a living member of the truly general,
the organized." Why, the people is this very "washed-out
generality," and it is only a man that is the "form
complete in itself."
The impersonality of what they call
"people, nation," is clear also from this: that a people
which wants to bring its I into view to the best of its power
puts at its head the ruler without will. It finds itself
in the alternative either to be subjected to a prince
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306 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
who realizes only himself, his individual pleasure --
then it does not recognize in the "absolute master"
its own will, the so-called will of the people -- or to seat on
the throne a prince who gives effect to no will of his own --
then it has a prince without will, whose place some ingenious
clockwork would perhaps fill just as well. -- Therefore insight
need go only a step farther; then it becomes clear of itself that
the I of the people is an impersonal, "spiritual" power,
the -- law. The people's I, therefore, is a -- spook, not an I.
I am I only by this, that I make myself; i.e. that it
is not another who makes me, but I must be my own work. But how
is it with this I of the people? Chance plays it into
the people's hand, chance gives it this or that born lord, accidents
procure it the chosen one; he is not its (the "sovereign"
people's) product, as I am my product. Conceive of one
wanting to talk you into believing that you were not your I, but
Tom or Jack was your I! But so it is with the people, and rightly.
For the people has an I as little as the eleven planets counted
together have an I, though they revolve around a common center.
Bailly's utterance is representative
of the slave-disposition that folks manifest before the sovereign
people, as before the prince. "I have," says he, "no
longer any extra reason when the general reason has pronounced
itself. My first law was the nation's will; as soon as it had
assembled I knew nothing beyond its sovereign will." He would
have no "extra reason," and yet this extra reason alone
accomplishes everything. Just so Mirabeau inveighs in the words,
"No power on earth has the right to say to the nation's
| THE OWNER 307 |
representatives, It is my will!"
As with the Greeks, there is now
a wish to make man a zoon politicon, a citizen of the
State or political man. So he ranked for a long time as a "citizen
of heaven." But the Greek fell into ignominy along with his
State, the citizen of heaven likewise falls with heaven;
we, on the other hand, are not willing to go down along with the
people, the nation and nationality, not willing to be
merely political men or politicians. Since the Revolution
they have striven to "make the people happy," and in
making the people happy, great, etc., they make us unhappy: the
people's good hap is -- my mishap.
What empty talk the political liberals
utter with emphatic decorum is well seen again in Nauwerck's "On
Taking Part in the State". There complaint is made of those
who are indifferent and do not take part, who are not in the full
sense citizens, and the author speaks as if one could not be man
at all if one did not take a lively part in State affairs, i.e.
if one were not a politician. In this he is right; for, if the
State ranks as the warder of everything "human," we
can have nothing human without taking part in it. But what does
this make out against the egoist? Nothing at all, because the
egoist is to himself the warder of the human, and has nothing
to say to the State except "Get out of my sunshine."
Only when the State comes in contact with his ownness does the
egoist take an active interest in it. If the condition of the
State does not bear hard on the closet-philosopher, is he to occupy
himself with it because it is his "most sacred duty?"
So long as the State does
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308 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
according to his wish, what need has he to look up from his studies?
Let those who from an interest of their own want to have conditions
otherwise busy themselves with them. Not now, nor evermore, will
"sacred duty" bring folks to reflect about the State
-- as little as they become disciples of science, artists, etc.,
from "sacred duty." Egoism alone can impel them to it,
and will as soon as things have become much worse. If you showed
folks that their egoism demanded that they busy themselves with
State affairs, you would not have to call on them long; if, on
the other hand, you appeal to their love of fatherland etc., you
will long preach to deaf hearts in behalf of this "service
of love." Certainly, in your sense the egoists will not participate
in State affairs at all.
Nauwerck utters a genuine liberal
phrase on p. 16: "Man completely fulfills his calling only
in feeling and knowing himself as a member of humanity, and being
active as such. The individual cannot realize the idea of manhood
if he does not stay himself upon all humanity, if he does not
draw his powers from it like Antaeus."
In the same place it is said: "Man's
relation to the res publica is degraded to a purely private
matter by the theological view; is, accordingly, made away with
by denial." As if the political view did otherwise with religion!
There religion is a "private matter."
If, instead of "sacred duty,"
"man's destiny," the "calling to full manhood,"
and similar commandments, it were held up to people that their
self-interest was infringed on when they let everything
in the State go as it goes, then, without declamations, they would
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THE OWNER 309 |
be addressed as one will have to address them at the decisive
moment if he wants to attain his end. Instead of this, the theology-hating
author says, "If there has ever been a time when the State
laid claim to all that are hers, such a time is ours. -- The thinking
man sees in participation in the theory and practice of the State
a duty, one of the most sacred duties that rest upon
him" -- and then takes under closer consideration the "unconditional
necessity that everybody participate in the State."
He in whose head or heart or both
the State is seated, he who is possessed by the State,
or the believer in the State, is a politician, and remains
such to all eternity.
"The State is the most necessary
means for the complete development of mankind." It assuredly
has been so as long as we wanted to develop mankind; but, if we
want to develop ourselves, it can be to us only a means of hindrance.
Can State and people still be reformed
and bettered now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church,
etc.: they can be abrogated, annihilated, done away with, not
reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense into sense by reforming
it, or must I drop it outright?
Henceforth what is to be done is
no longer about the State (the form of the State, etc.),
but about me. With this all questions about the prince's power,
the constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their true
nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my creations
from myself.
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310 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
To the chapter of society belongs
also "the party," whose praise has of late been sung.
In the State the party
is current. "Party, party, who should not join one!"
But the individual is unique,* not a member of the party.
He unites freely, and separates freely again. The party is nothing
but a State in the State, and in this smaller bee- State "peace"
is also to rule just as in the greater. The very people who cry
loudest that there must be an opposition in the State
inveigh against every discord in the party. A proof that they
too want only a --State. All parties are shattered not against
the State, but against the ego.**
One hears nothing oftener now than
the admonition to remain true to his party; party men despise
nothing so much as a mugwump. One must run with his party through
thick and thin, and unconditionally approve and represent its
chief principles. It does not indeed go quite so badly here as
with closed societies, because these bind their members to fixed
laws or statutes (e. g. the orders, the Society of Jesus,
etc.). But yet the party ceases to be a union at the same moment
at which it makes certain principles binding and wants
to have them assured against attacks; but this moment is the very
birth-act of the party. As party it is already a born society,
a dead union, an idea that has become fixed. As party of absolutism
it cannot will that its members should doubt the irrefragable
truth of this principle; they could cherish this doubt only if
they were egoistic enough to want still
| THE OWNER 311 |
to be something outside their party, i.e. non-partisans.
Non-partisans they cannot be as party-men, but only as egoists.
If you are a Protestant and belong to that party, you must only
justify Protestantism, at most "purge" it, not reject
it; if you are a Christian and belong among men to the Christian
party, you cannot be beyond this as a member of this party, but
only when your egoism, i.e. non-partisanship, impels
you to it. What exertions the Christians, down to Hegel and the
Communists, have put forth to make their party strong! They stuck
to it that Christianity must contain the eternal truth, and that
one needs only to get at it, make sure of it, and justify it.
In short, the party cannot bear
non-partisanship, and it is in this that egoism appears. What
matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite
with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.
He who passes over from one party
to another is at once abused as a "turncoat." Certainly
morality demands that one stand by his party, and to
become apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of "faithlessness";
but ownness knows no commandment of "faithlessness";
adhesion, etc., ownness permits everything, even apostasy, defection.
Unconsciously even the moral themselves let themselves be led
by this principle when they have to judge one who passes over
to their party -- nay, they are likely to be making proselytes;
they should only at the same time acquire a consciousness of the
fact that one must commit immoral actions in order to
commit his own -- i.e. here, that one must break faith,
yes, even his oath, in order to determine himself instead of being
determined by
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312 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict moral judgment
an apostate always shimmers in equivocal colors, and will not
easily obtain their confidence; for there sticks to him the taint
of "faithlessness," i.e. of an immorality.
In the lower man this view is found almost generally; advanced
thinkers fall here too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment,
and the contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of
morality does not, on account of the confusion of their concepts,
come clearly to their consciousness. They do not venture to call
the apostate downright immoral, because they themselves entice
to apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, etc.;
still, they cannot give up the standpoint of morality either.
And yet here the occasion was to be seized to step outside of
morality.
Are the Own or Unique* perchance
a party? How could they be own if they were e. g.
belonged to a party?
Or is one to hold with no party?
In the very act of joining them and entering their circle one
forms a union with them that lasts as long as party and I pursue
one and the same goal. But today I still share the party's tendency,
as by tomorrow I can do so no longer and I become "untrue"
to it. The party has nothing binding (obligatory) for me, and
I do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, I become
its foe.
In every party that cares for itself
and its persistence, the members are unfree (or better, unown)
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THE OWNER 313 |
in that degree, they lack egoism in that degree, in which they
serve this desire of the party. The independence of the party
conditions the lack of independence in the party- members.
A party, of whatever kind it may
be, can never do without a confession of faith. For those
who belong to the party must believe in its principle,
it must not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, it
must be the certain, indubitable thing for the party-member. That
is: One must belong to a party body and soul, else one is not
truly a party-man, but more or less -- an egoist. Harbor a doubt
of Christianity, and you are already no longer a true Christian,
you have lifted yourself to the "effrontery" of putting
a question beyond it and haling Christianity before your egoistic
judgment-seat. You have -- sinned against Christianity,
this party cause (for it is surely not e. g. a cause
for the Jews, another party.) But well for you if you do not let
yourself be affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness.
So then an egoist could never embrace
a party or take up with a party? Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself
be embraced and taken up by the party. For him the party remains
all the time nothing but a gathering: he is one of the party,
he takes part.
The best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens, and the more the devoted mind for legality is lost, so much the more will the State, this system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished in force and quality. With the "good citizens" the good State too perishes and dissolves into anarchy
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314 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
and lawlessness. "Respect for the law!" By this cement
the total of the State is held together. "The law is sacred,
and he who affronts it a criminal". Without crime
no State: the moral world -- and this the State is -- is crammed
full of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is
the "lordship of law," its hierarchy, it follows that
the egoist, in all cases where his advantage runs against
the State's, can satisfy himself only by crime.
The State cannot give up the claim
that its laws and ordinances are sacred.* At
this the individual ranks as the unholy** (barbarian,
natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly
as he was once regarded by the Church; before the individual the
State takes on the nimbus of a saint.*** Thus it issues a law
against dueling. Two men who are both at one in this, that they
are willing to stake their life for a cause (no matter what),
are not to be allowed this, because the State will not have it:
it imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination
then? It is at once quite another situation if, as e. g.
in North America, society determines to let the duelists bear
certain evil consequences of their act, e. g.
withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is
everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for
this or that reason, the man who is hit cannot therefore complain
of encroachment on his liberty: the society is simply availing
itself of its own liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty
for a crime. The duel is no crime there, but only an
act
*[heilig]
**[unheilig]
***[Heiliger]
| THE OWNER 315 |
against which the society adopts counter-measures, resolves on
a defense. The State, on the contrary, stamps the duel
as a crime, i.e. as an injury to its sacred law: it makes
it a criminal case. The society leaves it to the individual's
decision whether he will draw upon himself evil consequences and
inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes his
free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse way, denying
all right to the individual's decision and, instead, ascribing
the sole right to its own decision, the law of the State, so that
he who transgresses the State's commandment is looked upon as
if he were acting against God's commandment -- a view which likewise
was once maintained by the Church. Here God is the Holy in and
of himself, and the commandments of the Church, as of the State,
are the commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to the
world through his anointed and Lords-by-the-Grace-of-God. If the
Church had deadly sins, the State has capital crimes;
if the one had heretics, the other has traitors;
the one ecclesiastical penalties, the other criminal
penalties; the one inquisitorial processes, the
other fiscal; in short, there sins, here crimes, there
inquisition and here -- inquisition. Will the sanctity of the
State not fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence
for its highness, the humility of its "subjects," will
this remain? Will the "saint's" face not be stripped
of its adornment?
What a folly, to ask of the State's
authority that it should enter into an honourable fight with the
individual, and, as they express themselves in the matter
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316 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If the State,
this thought, is to be a de facto power, it simply must
be a superior power against the individual. The State is "sacred"
and must not expose itself to the "impudent attacks"
of individuals. If the State is sacred, there must be
censorship. The political liberals admit the former and dispute
the inference. But in any case they concede repressive measures
to it, for -- they stick to this, that State is more
than the individual and exercises a justified revenge, called
punishment.
Punishment has a meaning
only when it is to afford expiation for the injuring of a
sacred thing. If something is sacred to any one, he certainly
deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who lets
a man's life continue in existence because to him it
is sacred and he has a dread of touching it is simply
a -- religious man.
Weitling lays crime at the door
of "social disorder," and lives in the expectation that
under Communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible,
because the temptations to them, e. g. money, fall away.
As, however, his organized society is also exalted into a sacred
and inviolable one, he miscalculates in that good-hearted opinion.
e. g. with their mouth professed allegiance to the Communistic
society, but worked underhand for its ruin, would not be lacking.
Besides, Weitling has to keep on with "curative means against
the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses,"
and "curative means" always announce to begin with that
individuals will be looked upon as "called" to a particular
"salvation"
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THE OWNER 317 |
and hence treated according to the requirements of this "human
calling." Curative means or healing is
only the reverse side of punishment, the theory of
cure runs parallel with the theory of punishment;
if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former
takes it for a sin of the man against himself, as a decadence
from his health. But the correct thing is that I regard it either
as an action that suits me or as one that does not
suit me, as hostile or friendly to me, i.e.
that I treat it as my property, which I cherish or demolish.
"Crime" or "disease" are not either of them
an egoistic view of the matter, i.e. a judgment
starting from me, but starting from another --
to wit, whether it injures right, general right, or the
health partly of the individual (the sick one), partly
of the generality (society). "Crime" is treated
inexorably, "disease" with "loving gentleness,
compassion," etc.
Punishment follows crime. If crime
falls because the sacred vanishes, punishment must not less be
drawn into its fall; for it too has significance only over against
something sacred. Ecclesiastical punishments have been abolished.
Why? Because how one behaves toward the "holy God" is
his own affair. But, as this one punishment, ecclesiastical
punishment, has fallen, so all punishments must
fall. As sin against the so-called God is a man's own affair,
so is that against every kind of the so-called sacred. According
to our theories of penal law, with whose "improvement in
conformity to the times" people are tormenting themselves
in vain, they want to punish men for this or that "inhumanity";
and therein they
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318 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
make the silliness of these theories especially plain by their
consistency, hanging the little thieves and letting the big ones
run. For injury to property they have the house of correction,
and for "violence to thought," suppression of "natural
rights of man," only --representations and petitions.
The criminal code has continued
existence only through the sacred, and perishes of itself if punishment
is given up. Now they want to create everywhere a new penal law,
without indulging in a misgiving about punishment itself. But
it is exactly punishment that must make room for satisfaction,
which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at
procuring us a satisfactory outcome. If one does to us
what we will not put up with, we break his power and
bring our own to bear: we satisfy ourselves on him, and
do not fall into the folly of wanting to satisfy right (the spook).
It is not the sacred that is to defend itself against
man, but man against man; as God too, you know, no longer
defends himself against man, God to whom formerly (and in part,
indeed, even now) all the "servants of God" offered
their hands to punish the blasphemer, as they still at this very
day lend their hands to the sacred. This devotion to the sacred
brings it to pass also that, without lively participation of one's
own, one only delivers misdoers into the hands of the police and
courts: a non-participating making over to the authorities, "who,
of course, will best administer sacred matters." The people
is quite crazy for hounding the police on against everything that
seems to it to be immoral, often only unseemly, and this popular
rage for the
| THE OWNER 319 |
moral protects the police institution more than the government
could in any way protect it.
In crime the egoist has hitherto
asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the
sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution
never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless, conscienceless.
proud --crime, does it not rumble in distant thunders,
and do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?
He who refuses to spend his powers
for such limited societies as family, party, nation, is still
always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found
the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society"
or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes
his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves mankind."
People is the name of the body,
State of the spirit, of that ruling person that
has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure peoples
and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general
reason"; but servitude would only become still more intense
with this widening, and philanthropists and humanitarians are
as absolute masters as politicians and diplomats.
Modern critics inveigh against religion
because it sets God, the divine, moral, etc., outside
of man, or makes them something objective, in opposition to which
the critics rather transfer these very subjects into
man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error
of religion, to give man a "destiny," in that they too
want to have him divine, human, and
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the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are his essence.
And, like religion politics too wanted to "educate"
man, to bring him to the realization of his "essence,"
his "destiny," to make something out of him
-- to wit, a "true man," the one in the form of the
"true believer," the other in that of the "true
citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether
one calls the destiny the divine or human.
Under religion and politics man
finds himself at the standpoint of should: he should
become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate,
this commandment, every one steps not only in front of another
but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be
a whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim
a new religion, to set up a new absolute, an ideal --
to wit, freedom. Men should be free. Then there might
even arise missionaries of freedom, as Christianity,
in the conviction that all were properly destined to become Christians,
sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would then (as have
hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) constitute itself
as a new community and carry on a like "propaganda"
therefrom. Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting
together; but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of
the old care for us, of culture directed toward an end
-- in short, the principle of making something out of
us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and men.
One may well say with Feuerbach
and others that religion has displaced the human from man, and
has transferred it so into another world that, unattainable,
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it went on with its own existence there as something personal
in itself, as a "God": but the error of religion is
by no means exhausted with this. One might very well let fall
the personality of the displaced human, might transform God into
the divine, and still remain religious. For the religious consists
in discontent with the present men, in the setting up
of a "perfection" to be striven for, in "man wrestling
for his completion."* ("Ye therefore should
be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5,
48): it consists in the fixation of an ideal, an absolute. Perfection
is the "supreme good," the finis bonorum; every
one's ideal is the perfect man, the true, the free man, etc.
The efforts of modern times aim
to set up the ideal of the "free man." If one could
find it, there would be a new -- religion, because a new ideal;
there would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a
new deity, a new contrition.
With the ideal of "absolute
liberty," the same turmoil is made as with everything absolute,
and according to Hess, e. g., it is said to "be
realizable in absolute human society."** Nay, this realization
is immediately afterward styled a "vocation"; just so
he then defines liberty as "morality": the kingdom of
"justice" (equality) and "morality" (i.e.
liberty) is to begin, etc.
Ridiculous is he who, while fellows
of his tribe, family, nation, rank high, is -- nothing but "puffed
up" over the merit of his fellows; but
*B. Bauer, "Lit. Ztg."
8,22.
**"E. u. Z. B.,"
p. 89ff.
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322 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
blinded too is he who wants only to be "man." Neither
of them puts his worth in exclusiveness, but in connectedness,
or in the "tie" that conjoins him with others, in the
ties of blood, of nationality, of humanity.
Through the "Nationals"
of today the conflict has again been stirred up between those
who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties
of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the
special ties of blood.
If we disregard the fact that pride
may mean conceit, and take it for consciousness alone, there is
found to be a vast difference between pride in "belonging
to" a nation and therefore being its property, and that in
calling a nationality one's property. Nationality is my quality,
but the nation my owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength,
you can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness
or pride of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has you,
then it pricks you everywhere, and at the most unsuitable place,
to show its strength: you can give nobody your hand without squeezing
his.
The perception that one is more
than a member of the family, more than a fellow of the tribe,
more than an individual of the people, has finally led to saying,
one is more than all this because one is man, or, the man is more
than the Jew, German, etc. "Therefore be every one wholly
and solely -- man." Could one not rather say: Because we
are more than what has been stated, therefore we will be this,
as well as that "more" also? Man and Germans, then,
man and Guelph, etc.? The Nationals are in the right;
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one cannot deny his nationality: and the humanitarians are in
the right; one must not remain in the narrowness of the national.
In uniqueness* the contradiction is solved; the national
is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality -- as the
human too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first
through my uniqueness.
History seeks for Man: but he is
I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious essence, as the divine,
first as God, then as Man (humanity, humaneness, and
mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique
one.
I am owner of humanity, am humanity,
and do nothing for the good of another humanity. Fool, you who
are a unique humanity, that you make a merit of wanting to live
for another than you are.
The hitherto-considered relation
of me to the world of men offers such a wealth of phenomena
that it will have to be taken up again and again on other occasions,
but here, where it was only to have its chief outlines made clear
to the eye, it must be broken off to make place for an apprehension
of two other sides toward which it radiates. For, as I find myself
in relation not merely to men so far as they present in themselves
the concept "man" or are children of men (children of
Man, as children of God are spoken of), but also to that
which they have of man and call their own, and as therefore I
relate myself not only to that which they are through
man, but also to their human possessions: so, besides
the world of men, the world of
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the senses and of ideas will have to be included in our survey,
and somewhat said of what men call their own of sensuous goods,
and of spiritual as well.
According as one had developed and
clearly grasped the concept of man, he gave it to us to respect
as this or that person of respect, and from the broadest
understanding of this concept there proceeded at last the command
"to respect Man in every one." But if I respect Man,
my respect must likewise extend to the human, or what is Man's.
Men have somewhat of their own,
and I am to recognize this own and hold it sacred. Their
own consists partly in outward, partly in inward possessions.
The former are things, the latter spiritualities, thoughts, convictions,
noble feelings, etc. But I am always to respect only rightful
or human possessions: the wrongful and unhuman I need
not spare, for only Man's own is men's real own. An inward
possession of this sort is, e. g., religion; because
religion is free, i. e. is Man's, I
must not strike at it. Just so honor is an inward possession;
it is free and must not be struck at my me. (Action for insult,
caricatures, etc.) Religion and honor are "spiritual property."
In tangible property the person stands foremost: my person is
my first property. Hence freedom of the person; but only the rightful
or human person is free, the other is locked up. Your life is
your property; but it is sacred for men only if it is not that
of an inhuman monster.
What a man as such cannot defend
of bodily goods, we may take from him: this is the meaning of
competition, of freedom of occupation. What he
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cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise:
so far goes the liberty of discussion, of science, of criticism.
But consecrated goods are
inviolable. Consecrated and guarantied by whom? Proximately by
the State, society, but properly by man or the "concept,"
the "concept of the thing"; for the concept of consecrated
goods is this, that they are truly human, or rather that the holder
possesses them as man and not as un-man.*
On the spiritual side man's faith
is such goods, his honor, his moral feeling -- yes, his feeling
of decency, modesty, etc. Actions (speeches, writings) that touch
honor are punishable; attacks on "the foundations of all
religion"; attacks on political faith; in short, attacks
on everything that a man "rightly" has.
How far critical liberalism would
extend the sanctity of goods -- on this point it has not yet made
any pronouncement, and doubtless fancies itself to be ill-disposed
toward all sanctity; but, as it combats egoism, it must set limits
to it, and must not let the un-man pounce on the human. To its
theoretical contempt for the "masses" there must correspond
a practical snub if it should get into power.
What extension the concept "man"
receives, and what comes to the individual man through it -- what,
therefore, man and the human are -- on this point the various
grades of liberalism differ, and the political, the social, the
humane man are each always claiming
*[See note on p. 184.]