|
THE OWNER 351 |
smiling, its playing, its screaming! in short, in its mere existence!
Are you capable of resisting its desire? Or do you not hold out
to it, as mother, your breast; as father, as much of your possessions
as it needs? It compels you, therefore it possesses what you call
yours.
If your person is of consequence
to me, you pay me with your very existence; if I am concerned
only with one of your qualities, then your compliance, perhaps,
or your aid, has a value (a money value) for me, and I purchase
it.
If you do not know how to give yourself
any other than a money value in my estimation, there may arise
the case of which history tells us, that Germans, sons of the
fatherland, were sold to America. Should those who let themselves
to be traded in be worth more to the seller? He preferred the
cash to this living ware that did not understand how to make itself
precious to him. That he discovered nothing more valuable in it
was assuredly a defect of his competence; but it takes a rogue
to give more than he has. How should he show respect when he did
not have it, nay, hardly could have it for such a pack!
You behave egoistically when you
respect each other neither as possessors nor as ragamuffins or
workers, but as a part of your competence, as "useful
bodies". Then you will neither give anything to the
possessor ("proprietor") for his possessions, nor to
him who works, but only to him whom you require. The
North Americans ask themselves, Do we require a king? and answer,
Not a farthing are he and his work worth to us.
|
352 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
If it is said that competition throws
every thing open to all, the expression is not accurate, and it
is better put thus: competition makes everything purchasable.
In abandoning* it to them, competition leaves it to their
appraisal** or their estimation, and demands a price*** for it.
But the would-be buyers mostly lack
the means to make themselves buyers: they have no money. For money,
then, the purchasable things are indeed to be had ("For money
everything is to be had!"), but it is exactly money that
is lacking. Where is one to get money, this current or circulating
property? Know then, you have as much money**** as you have --
might; for you count***** for as much as you make yourself count
for.
One pays not with money, of which
there may come a lack, but with his competence, by which alone
we are "competent";****** for one is proprietor only
so far as the arm of our power reaches.
Weitling has thought out a new means
of payment -- work. But the true means of payment remains, as
always, competence. With what you have "within your
competence" you pay. Therefore think on the enlargement of
your competence.
This being admitted, they are nevertheless
right on hand again with the motto, "To each according to
his competence!" Who is to give to me according
to my competence? Society? Then I should have to put up with its
estimation. Rather, I shall take
*[preisgeben]
**[Preis]
***[Preis]
****[Geld]
*****[gelten]
******[Equivalent in ordinary German use to our "possessed
of a competence."]
|
THE OWNER 353 |
according to my competence.
"All belongs to all!"
This proposition springs from the same unsubstantial theory. To
each belongs only what he is competent for. If I say, The world
belongs to me, properly that too is empty talk, which has a meaning
only in so far as I respect no alien property. But to me belongs
only as much as I am competent for, or have within my competence.
One is not worthy to have what one,
through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of
it because one is not capable of it.
They raise a mighty uproar over
the "wrong of a thousand years" which is being committed
by the rich against the poor. As if the rich were to blame for
poverty, and the poor were not in like manner responsible for
riches! Is there another difference between the two than that
of competence and incompetence, of the competent and incompetent?
Wherein, pray, does the crime of the rich consist? "In their
hardheartedness." But who then have maintained the poor?
Who have cared for their nourishment? Who have given alms, those
alms that have even their name from mercy (eleemosyne)?
Have not the rich been "merciful" at all times? Are
they not to this day "tender-hearted," as poor-taxes,
hospitals, foundations of all sorts, etc., prove?
But all this does not satisfy you!
Doubtless, then, they are to share with the poor? Now
you are demanding that they shall abolish poverty. Aside from
the point that there might be hardly one among you who would act
so, and that this one would be a fool for it, do ask yourselves:
why should the rich let go
| 354 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
their fleeces and give up themselves, thereby pursuing
the advantage of the poor rather than their own? You, who have
your thaler daily, are rich above thousands who live on four groschen.
Is it for your interest to share with the thousands, or is it
not rather for theirs? --
With competition is connected less
the intention to do the thing best than the intention
to make it as profitable, as productive, as possible.
Hence people study to get into the civil service (pot-boiling
study), study cringing and flattery, routine and "acquaintance
with business," work "for appearance." Hence, while
it is apparently a matter of doing "good service," in
truth only a "good business" and earning of money are
looked out for. The job is done only ostensibly for the job's
sake, but in fact on account of the gain that it yields. One would
indeed prefer not to be censor, but one wants to be -- advanced;
one would like to judge, administer, etc., according to his best
convictions, but one is afraid of transference or even dismissal;
one must, above all things -- live.
Thus these goings-on are a fight
for dear life, and, in gradation upward, for more or
less of a "good living."
And yet, withal, their whole round
of toil and care brings in for most only "bitter life"
and "bitter poverty." All the bitter painstaking for
this!
Restless acquisition does not let
us take breath, take a calm enjoyment: we do not get
the comfort of our possessions.
But the organization of labor touches
only such labors as others can do for us, slaughtering, till-
|
THE OWNER 355 |
age, etc.; the rest remain egoistic, because no one can in your
stead elaborate your musical compositions, carry out your projects
of painting, etc.; nobody can replace Raphael's labors. The latter
are labors of a unique person,* which only he is competent to
achieve, while the former deserved to be called "human,"
since what is anybody's own in them is of slight account,
and almost "any man" can be trained to it.
Now, as society can regard only
labors for the common benefit, human labors, he who does
anything unique remains without its care; nay, he may
find himself disturbed by its intervention. The unique person
will work himself forth out of society all right, but society
brings forth no unique person.
Hence it is at any rate helpful
that we come to an agreement about human labors, that
they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and toil.
So far Communism will bear its fruits. For before the dominion
of the commonalty even that for which all men are qualified, or
can be qualified, was tied up to a few and withheld from the rest:
it was a privilege. To the commonalty it looked equitable to leave
free all that seemed to exist for every "man." But,
because left** free, it was yet given to no one, but rather left
to each to be got hold of by his human power. By this
the mind was turned to the acquisition of the human, which henceforth
beckoned to every one; and there arose a movement which one hears
so loudly bemoaned under the name of "materialism."
*[Einzige]
**[Literally, "given."]
|
356 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Communism seeks to check its course,
spreading the belief that the human is not worth so much discomfort,
and, with sensible arrangements, could be gained without the great
expense of time and powers which has hitherto seemed requisite.
But for whom is time to be gained?
For what does man require more time than is necessary to refresh
his wearied powers of labor? Here Communism is silent.
For what? To take comfort in himself
as the unique, after he has done his part as man!
In the first joy over being allowed
to stretch out their hands toward everything human, people forgot
to want anything else; and they competed away vigorously, as if
the possession of the human were the goal of all our wishes.
But they have run themselves tired,
and are gradually noticing that "possession does not give
happiness." Therefore they are thinking of obtaining the
necessary by an easier bargain, and spending on it only so much
time and toil as its indispensableness exacts. Riches fall in
price, and contented poverty, the care-free ragamuffin, becomes
the seductive ideal.
Should such human activities, that
every one is confident of his capacity for, be highly salaried,
and sought for with toil and expenditure of all life-forces? Even
in the everyday form of speech, "If I were minister, or even
the., then it should go quite otherwise," that confidence
expresses itself -- that one holds himself capable of playing
the part of such a dignitary; one does get a perception that to
things of this sort there belongs not uniqueness, but only a
|
THE OWNER 357 |
culture which is attainable, even if not exactly by all, at any
rate by many; i.e. that for such a thing one need only
be an ordinary man.
If we assume that, as order
belongs to the essence of the State, so subordination
too is founded in its nature, then we see that the subordinates,
or those who have received preferment, disproportionately overcharge
and overreach those who are put in the lower ranks. But
the latter take heart (first from the Socialist standpoint, but
certainly with egoistic consciousness later, of which we will
therefore at once give their speech some coloring) for the question,
By what then is your property secure, you creatures of preferment?
-- and give themselves the answer, By our refraining from interference!
And so by our protection! And what do you give us for
it? Kicks and disdain you give to the "common people";
police supervision, and a catechism with the chief sentence "Respect
what is not yours, what belongs to others! respect
others, and especially your superiors!" But we reply, "If
you want our respect, buy it for a price agreeable to
us. We will leave you your property, if you give a due equivalent
for this leaving." Really, what equivalent does the general
in time of peace give for the many thousands of his yearly income.?
-- another for the sheer hundred-thousands and millions yearly?
What equivalent do you give for our chewing potatoes and looking
calmly on while you swallow oysters? Only buy the oysters of us
as dear as we have to buy the potatoes of you, then you may go
on eating them. Or do you suppose the oysters do not belong to
us as much as to you? You will make an
| 358 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
outcry over violence if we reach out our hands and help
consume them, and you are right. Without violence we do not get
them, as you no less have them by doing violence to us.
But take the oysters and have done
with it, and let us consider our nearer property, labor; for the
other is only possession. We distress ourselves twelve hours in
the sweat of our face, and you offer us a few groschen for it.
Then take the like for your labor too. Are you not willing? You
fancy that our labor is richly repaid with that wage, while yours
on the other hands is worth a wage of many thousands. But, if
you did not rate yours so high, and gave us a better chance to
realize value from ours, then we might well, if the case demanded
it, bring to pass still more important things than you do for
the many thousand thalers; and, if you got only such wages as
we, you would soon grow more industrious in order to receive more.
But, if you render any service that seems to us worth ten and
a hundred times more than our own labor, why, then you shall get
a hundred times more for it too; we, on the other hand, think
also to produce for you things for which you will requite us more
highly than with the ordinary day's wages. We shall be willing
to get along with each other all right, if only we have first
agreed on this -- that neither any longer needs to -- present
anything to the other. Then we may perhaps actually go so far
as to pay even the cripples and sick and old an appropriate price
for not parting from us by hunger and want; for, if we want them
to live, it is fitting also that we -- purchase the fulfillment
of our will. I say "purchase,"
|
THE OWNER 359 |
and therefore do not mean a wretched "alms." For their
life is the property even of those who cannot work; if we (no
matter for what reason) want them not to withdraw this life from
us, we can mean to bring this to pass only by purchase; nay, we
shall perhaps (maybe because we like to have friendly faces about
us) even want a life of comfort for them. In short, we want nothing
presented by you, but neither will we present you with anything.
For centuries we have handed alms to you from goodhearted -- stupidity,
have doled out the mite of the poor and given to the masters the
things that are -- not the masters'; now just open your wallet,
for henceforth our ware rises in price quite enormously. We do
not want to take from you anything, anything at all, only you
are to pay better for what you want to have. What then have you?
"I have an estate of a thousand acres." And I am your
plowman, and will henceforth attend to your fields only for one
thaler a day wages. "Then I'll take another." You won't
find any, for we plowmen are no longer doing otherwise, and, if
one puts in an appearance who takes less, then let him beware
of us. There is the housemaid, she too is now demanding as much,
and you will no longer find one below this price. "Why, then
it is all over with me." Not so fast! You will doubtless
take in as much as we; and, if it should not be so, we will take
off so much that you shall have wherewith to live like us. "But
I am accustomed to live better." We have nothing against
that, but it is not our look-out; if you can clear more, go ahead.
Are we to hire out under rates, that you may have a good living?
|
360 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
The rich man always puts off the poor with the words, "What
does your want concern me? See to it how you make your way through
the world; that is your affair, not mine." Well,
let us let it be our affair, then, and let us not let the means
that we have to realize value from ourselves be pilfered from
us by the rich. "But you uncultured people really do not
need so much." Well, we are taking somewhat more in order
that for it we may procure the culture that we perhaps need. "But,
if you thus bring down the rich, who is then to support the arts
and sciences hereafter?" Oh, well, we must make it up by
numbers; we club together, that gives a nice little sum -- besides,
you rich men now buy only the most tasteless books and the most
lamentable Madonnas or a pair of lively dancer's legs. "O
ill-starred equality!" No, my good old sir, nothing of equality.
We only want to count for what we are worth, and, if you are worth
more, you shall count for more right along. We only want to be
worth our price, and think to show ourselves worth the
price that you will pay.
Is the State likely to be able to
awaken so secure a temper and so forceful a self-consciousness
in the menial? Can it make man feel himself? Nay, may it even
do so much as set this goal for itself? Can it want the individual
to recognize his value and realize this value from himself? Let
us keep the parts of the double question separate, and see first
whether the State can bring about such a thing. As the unanimity
of the plowmen is required, only this unanimity can bring it to
pass, and a State law would be evaded in a thousand ways by competition
and in secret.
|
THE OWNER 361 |
But can the State bear with it? The State cannot possibly bear
with people's suffering coercion from another than it; it could
not, therefore, admit the self-help of the unanimous plowmen against
those who want to engage for lower wages. Suppose, however, that
the State made the law, and all the plowmen were in accord with
it: could the State bear with it then?
In the isolated case -- yes; but
the isolated case is more than that, it is a case of principle.
The question therein is of the whole range of the ego's self-realization
of value from himself, and therefore also of his self-consciousness
against the State. So far the Communists keep company;
but, as self-realization of value from self necessarily directs
itself against the State, so it does against society
too, and therewith reaches out beyond the commune and the communistic
-- out of egoism.
Communism makes the maxim of the
commonalty, that every one is a possessor ("proprietor"),
into an irrefragable truth, into a reality, since the anxiety
about obtaining now ceases and every one has
from the start what he requires. In his labor-force he has
his competence, and, if he makes no use of it, that is his fault.
The grasping and hounding is at an end, and no competition is
left (as so often now) without fruit, because with every stroke
of labor an adequate supply of the needful is brought into the
house. Now for the first time one is a real possessor,
because what one has in his labor-force can no longer escape from
him as it was continually threatening to do under the system of
competition. One is a care-free and assured
|
362 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
possessor. And one is this precisely by seeking his competence
no longer in a ware, but in his own labor, his competence for
labor; and therefore by being a ragamuffin, a man of
only ideal wealth. I, however, cannot content myself
with the little that I scrape up by my competence for labor, because
my competence does not consist merely in my labor.
By labor I can perform the official
functions of a president, a minister, etc.; these offices demand
only a general culture -- to wit, such a culture as is generally
attainable (for general culture is not merely that which every
one has attained, but broadly that which every one can attain,
and therefore every special culture, e. g. medical, military,
philological, of which no "cultivated man" believes
that they surpass his powers), or, broadly, only a skill possible
to all.
But, even if these offices may vest
in every one, yet it is only the individual's unique force, peculiar
to him alone. that gives them, so to speak, life and significance.
That he does not manage his office like an "ordinary man."
but puts in the competence of his uniqueness, this he is not yet
paid for when he is paid only in general as an official or a minister.
If he has done it so as to earn your thanks, and you wish to retain
this thank-worthy force of the unique one, you must not pay him
like a mere man who performed only what was human, but as one
who accomplishes what is unique. Do the like with your labor,
do!
There cannot be a general schedule-price
fixed for my uniqueness as there can for what I do as man. Only
for the latter can a schedule-price be set.
Go right on, then, setting up a
general appraisal
| THE OWNER 363 |
for human labors, but do not deprive your uniqueness of its desert.
Human or general
needs can be satisfied through society; for satisfaction of unique
needs you must do some seeking. A friend and a friendly service,
or even an individual's service, society cannot procure you. And
yet you will every moment be in need of such a service, and on
the slightest occasions require somebody who is helpful to you.
Therefore do not rely on society, but see to it that you have
the wherewithal to -- purchase the fulfillment of your wishes.
Whether money is to be retained
among egoists? To the old stamp an inherited possession adheres.
If you no longer let yourselves be paid with it, it is ruined:
if you do nothing for this money, it loses all power. Cancel the
inheritance, and you have broken off the executor's court-seal.
For now everything is an inheritance, whether it be already inherited
or await its heir. If it is yours, wherefore do you let it be
sealed up from you? Why do you respect the seal?
But why should you not create a
new money? Do you then annihilate the ware in taking from it the
hereditary stamp? Now, money is a ware, and an essential means
or competence. For it protects against the ossification of resources,
keeps them in flux and brings to pass their exchange. If you know
a better medium of exchange, go ahead; yet it will be a "money"
again. It is not the money that does you damage, but your incompetence
to take it. Let your competence take effect, collect yourselves,
and there will be no lack of money -- of your money, the money
of your stamp. But working I do not call "letting
|
364 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
your competence take effect." Those who are only "looking
for work" and "willing to work hard" are preparing
for their own selves the infallible upshot -- to be out of work.
Good and bad luck depend on money.
It is a power in the bourgeois period for this reason,
that it is only wooed on all hands like a girl, indissolubly wedded
by nobody. All the romance and chivalry of wooing for
a dear object come to life again in competition. Money, an object
of longing, is carried off by the bold "knights of industry."*
He who has luck takes home the bride.
The ragamuffin has luck; he takes her into his household, "society,"
and destroys the virgin. In his house she is no longer bride,
but wife; and with her virginity her family name is also lost.
As housewife the maiden Money is called "Labor," for
"Labor" is her husband's name. She is a possession of
her husband's.
To bring this figure to an end,
the child of Labor and Money is again a girl, an unwedded one
and therefore Money but with the certain descent from Labor, her
father. The form of the face, the "effigy," bears another
stamp.
Finally, as regards competition
once more, it has a continued existence by this very means, that
all do not attend to their affair and come to an understanding
with each other about it. Bread e. g. is a need of all
the inhabitants of a city; therefore they might easily agree on
setting up a public bakery. Instead of this, they leave the furnishing
of the needful to the
*[A German phrase for sharpers.]
|
THE OWNER 365 |
competing bakers. Just so meat to the butchers, wine to wine-dealers,
etc.
Abolishing competition is not equivalent
to favoring the guild. The difference is this: In the guild
baking, etc., is the affair of the guild-brothers; in competition,
the affair of chance competitors; in the union, of those
who require baked goods, and therefore my affair, yours, the affair
of neither the guildic nor the concessionary baker, but the affair
of the united.
If I do not trouble myself
about my affair, I must be content with what it pleases
others to vouchsafe me. To have bread is my affair, my wish and
desire, and yet people leave that to the bakers and hope at most
to obtain through their wrangling, their getting ahead of each
other, their rivalry --in short, their competition -- an advantage
which one could not count on in the case of the guild-brothers
who were lodged entirely and alone in the proprietorship
of the baking franchise. -- What every one requires, every one
should also take a hand in procuring and producing; it is his
affair, his property, not the property of the guildic or concessionary
master.
Let us look back once more. The
world belongs to the children of this world, the children of men;
it is no longer God's world, but man's. As much as every man can
procure of it, let him call his; only the true man, the State,
human society or mankind, will look to it that each shall make
nothing else his own than what he appropriates as man, i.e.
in human fashion. Unhuman appropriation is that which is not consented
to by man, i.e., it is a "criminal" ap-
|
366 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
propriation, as the human, vice versa, is a "rightful"
one, one acquired in the "way of law."
So they talk since the Revolution.
But my property is not a thing,
since this has an existence independent of me; only my might is
my own. Not this tree, but my might or control over it, is what
is mine.
Now, how is this might perversely
expressed? They say I have a right to this tree, or it
is my rightful property. So I have earned it
by might. That the might must last in order that the tree may
also be held -- or better, that the might is not a thing
existing of itself, but has existence solely in the mighty
ego, in me the mighty -- is forgotten. Might, like other
of my qualities (e. g. humanity, majesty, etc.),
is exalted to something existing of itself, so that it still exists
long after it has ceased to be my might. Thus transformed
into a ghost, might is -- right. This eternalized
might is not extinguished even with my death, but is transferred
to "bequeathed."
Things now really belong not to
me, but to right.
On the other side, this is nothing
but a hallucination of vision. For the individual's might becomes
permanent and a right only by others joining their might with
his. The delusion consists in their believing that they cannot
withdraw their might. The same phenomenon over again; might is
separated from me. I cannot take back the might that I gave to
the possessor. One has "granted power of attorney,"
has given away his power, has renounced coming to a better mind.
The proprietor can give up his might
and his right
| THE OWNER 367 |
to a thing by giving the thing away, squandering it, etc. And
we should not be able likewise to let go the might that
we lend to him?
The rightful man, the just,
desires to call nothing his own that he does not have "rightly"
or have the right to, and therefore only legitimate property.
Now, who is to be judge, and adjudge
his right to him? At last, surely, Man, who imparts to him the
rights of man: then he can say, in an infinitely broader sense
than Terence, humani nihil a me alienum puto, e.
g., the human is my property. However he may go
about it, so long as he occupies this standpoint he cannot get
clear of a judge; and in our time the multifarious judges that
had been selected have set themselves against each other in two
persons at deadly enmity -- to wit, in God and Man. The one party
appeal to divine right, the other to human right or the rights
of man.
So much is clear, that in neither
case does the individual do the entitling himself.
Just pick me out an action today
that would not be a violation of right! Every moment the rights
of man are trampled under foot by one side, while their opponents
cannot open their mouth without uttering a blasphemy against divine
right. Give an alms, you mock at a right of man, because the relation
of beggar and benefactor is an inhuman relation; utter a doubt,
you sin against a divine right. Eat dry bread with contentment,
you violate the right of man by your equanimity; eat it with discontent,
you revile divine right by your repining. There is not one among
you who does not commit a crime at every moment; your
|
368 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
speeches are crimes, and every hindrance to your freedom of speech
is no less a crime. Ye are criminals altogether!
Yet you are so only in that you
all stand on the ground of right, i.e. in that
you do not even know, and understand how to value, the fact that
you are criminals.
Inviolable or sacred property
has grown on this very ground: it is a juridical concept.
A dog sees the bone in another's
power, -- and stands off only if it feels itself too weak. But
man respects the other's right to his bone. The latter
action, therefore, ranks as human, the former as brutal
or "egoistic."
And as here, so in general, it is
called "human" when one sees in everything
something spiritual (here right), i.e. makes
everything a ghost and takes his attitude toward it as toward
a ghost, which one can indeed scare away at its appearance, but
cannot kill. It is human to look at what is individual not as
individual, but as a generality.
In nature as such I no longer respect
anything, but know myself to be entitled to everything against
it; in the tree in that garden, on the other hand, I must respect
alienness (they say in one-sided fashion "property"),
I must keep my hand off it. This comes to an end only when I can
indeed leave that tree to another as I leave my stick. etc., to
another, but do not in advance regard it as alien to me, i.e.
sacred. Rather, I make to myself no crime of felling
it if I will, and it remains my property, however long as I resign
it to others: it is and remains mine. In the banker's
for-
|
THE OWNER 369 |
tune I as little see anything alien as Napoleon did in the territories
of kings: we have no dread of "conquering"
it, and we look about us also for the means thereto. We strip
off from it, therefore, the spirit of alienness,
of which we had been afraid.
Therefore it is necessary that I
do not lay claim to, anything more as man, but to everything
as I, this I; and accordingly to nothing human, but to mine; i.
e., nothing that pertains to me as man, but -- what I will
and because I will it.
Rightful, or legitimate, property
of another will be only that which you are content to
recognize as such. If your content ceases, then this property
has lost legitimacy for you, and you will laugh at absolute right
to it.
Besides the hitherto discussed property
in the limited sense, there is held up to our reverent heart another
property against which we are far less "to sin." This
property consists in spiritual goods, in the "sanctuary of
the inner nature." What a man holds sacred, no other is to
gibe at; because, untrue as it may be, and zealously as one may
"in loving and modest wise" seek to convince of a true
sanctity the man who adheres to it and believes in it, yet the
sacred itself is always to be honored in it: the mistaken
man does believe in the sacred, even though in an incorrect essence
of it, and so his belief in the sacred must at least be respected.
In ruder times than ours it was
customary to demand a particular faith, and devotion to a particular
sacred essence, and they did not take the gentlest way with those
who believed otherwise; since, however,
|
370 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
"freedom of belief" spread itself more and more abroad,
the "jealous God and sole Lord" gradually melted into
a pretty general "supreme being," and it satisfied humane
tolerance if only every one revered "something sacred."
Reduced to the most human expression,
this sacred essence is "man himself" and "the human."
With the deceptive semblance as if the human were altogether our
own, and free from all the otherworldliness with which the divine
is tainted -- yes, as if Man were as much as I or you -- there
may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of a
"sacred essence" and that we now feel ourselves everywhere
at home and no longer in the uncanny,* i.e. in the sacred
and in sacred awe: in the ecstasy over "Man discovered at
last" the egoistic cry of pain passes unheard, and the spook
that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego.
But "Humanus is the saint's
name" (see Goethe), and the humane is only the most clarified
sanctity.
The egoist makes the reverse declaration.
For this precise reason, because you hold something sacred, I
gibe at you; and, even if I respected everything in you, your
sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect.
With these opposed views there must
also be assumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the
egoist insults them, the religious man (i.e. every one
who puts his "essence" above himself) must consistently
-- protect them. But what kind of spiritual
| THE OWNER 371 |
goods are to be protected, and what left unprotected, depends
entirely on the concept that one forms of the "supreme being";
and he who fears God, e. g., has more to shelter than
he (the liberal) who fears Man.
In spiritual goods we are (in distinction
from the sensuous) injured in a spiritual way, and the sin against
them consists in a direct desecration, while against
the sensuous a purloining or alienation takes place; the goods
themselves are robbed of value and of consecration, not merely
taken away; the sacred is immediately compromised. With the word
"irreverence" or "flippancy" is designated
everything that can be committed as crime against spiritual
goods, i.e. against everything that is sacred for us;
and scoffing, reviling, contempt, doubt, etc., are only different
shades of criminal flippancy.
That desecration can be practiced
in the most manifold way is here to be passed over, and only that
desecration is to be preferentially mentioned which threatens
the sacred with danger through an unrestricted press.
As long as respect is demanded even
for one spiritual essence, speech and the press must be enthralled
in the name of this essence; for just so long the egoist might
"trespass" against it by his utterances, from
which thing he must be hindered by "due punishment"
at least, if one does not prefer to take up the more correct means
against it, the preventive use of police authority, e. g.
censorship.
What a sighing for liberty of the
press! What then is the press to be liberated from? Surely from
a dependence, a belonging, and a liability to service!
|
372 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
But to liberate himself from that is every one's affair, and it
may with safety be assumed that, when you have delivered yourself
from liability to service, that which you compose and write will
also belong to you as your own instead of having been
thought and indicted in the service of some power. What
can a believer in Christ say and have printed, that should be
freer from that belief in Christ than he himself is? If I cannot
or may not write something, perhaps the primary fault lies with
me. Little as this seems to hit the point, so near is
the application nevertheless to be found. By a press-law I draw
a boundary for my publications, or let one be drawn, beyond which
wrong and its punishment follows. I myself limit
myself.
If the press was to be free, nothing
would be so important as precisely its liberation from every coercion
that could be put on it in the name of a law. And, that
it might come to that, I my own self should have to have absolved
myself from obedience to the law.
Certainly, the absolute liberty
of the press is like every absolute liberty, a nonentity. The
press can become free from full many a thing, but always only
from what I too am free from. If we make ourselves free from the
sacred, if we have become graceless and lawless,
our words too will become so.
As little as we can be
declared clear of every coercion in the world, so little can our
writing be withdrawn from it. But as free as we are, so free we
can make it too.
It must therefore become our own,
instead of, as hitherto, serving a spook.
People do not yet know what they
mean by their
|
THE OWNER 373 |
cry for liberty of the press. What they ostensibly ask is that
the State shall set the press free; but what they are really after,
without knowing it themselves, is that the press become free from
the State, or clear of the State. The former is a petition
to the State, the latter an insurrection against
the State. As a "petition for right," even as a serious
demanding of the right of liberty of the press, it presupposes
the State as the giver, and can hope only for a present,
a permission, a chartering. Possible, no doubt, that a State acts
so senselessly as to grant the demanded present; but you may bet
everything that those who receive the present will not know how
to use it so long as they regard the State as a truth: they will
not trespass against this "sacred thing," and will call
for a penal press-law against every one who would be willing to
dare this.
In a word, the press does not become
free from what I am not free from.
Do I perhaps hereby show myself
an opponent of the liberty of the press? On the contrary, I only
assert that one will never get it if one wants only it, the liberty
of the press, i.e. if one sets out only for an unrestricted
permission. Only beg right along for this permission: you may
wait forever for it, for there is no one in the world who could
give it to you. As long as you want to have yourselves "entitled"
to the use of the press by a permission, i.e. liberty
of the press, you live in vain hope and complaint.
"Nonsense! Why, you yourself,
who harbor such thoughts as stand in your book, can unfortunately
bring them to publicity only through a lucky
|
374 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
chance or by stealth; nevertheless you will inveigh against one's
pressing and importuning his own State till it gives the refused
permission to print?" But an author thus addressed would
perhaps -- for the impudence of such people goes far -- give the
following reply: "Consider well what you say! What then do
I do to procure myself liberty of the press for my book? Do I
ask for permission, or do I not rather, without any question of
legality, seek a favorable occasion and grasp it in complete recklessness
of the State and its wishes? I -- the terrifying word must be
uttered -- I cheat the State. You unconsciously do the same. From
your tribunes you talk it into the idea that it must give up its
sanctity and inviolability, it must lay itself bare to the attacks
of writers, without needing on that account to fear danger. But
you are imposing on it; for its existence is done for as soon
as it loses its unapproachableness. To you indeed it
might well accord liberty of writing, as England has done; you
are believers in the State and incapable of writing against
the State, however much you would like to reform it and 'remedy
its defects.' But what if opponents of the State availed themselves
of free utterance, and stormed out against Church, State, morals,
and everything 'sacred' with inexorable reasons? You would then
be the first, in terrible agonies, to call into life the September
laws. Too late would you then rue the stupidity that earlier
made you so ready to fool and palaver into compliance the State,
or the government of the State. -- But, I prove by my act only
two things. This for one, that the liberty of the press is always
bound to 'favor-
|
THE OWNER 375 |
able opportunities,' and accordingly will never be an absolute
liberty; but secondly this, that he who would enjoy it must seek
out and, if possible, create the favorable opportunity, availing
himself of his own advantage against the State; and counting
himself and his will more than the State and every 'superior'
power. Not in the State, but only against it, can the liberty
of the press be carried through; if it is to be established, it
is to be obtained not as the consequence of a petition
but as the work of an insurrection. Every petition and
every motion for liberty of the press is already an insurrection,
be it conscious or unconscious: a thing which Philistine halfness
alone will not and cannot confess to itself until, with a shrinking
shudder, it shall see it clearly and irrefutably by the outcome.
For the requested liberty of the press has indeed a friendly and
well-meaning face at the beginning, as it is not in the least
minded ever to let the 'insolence of the press' come into vogue;
but little by little its heart grows more hardened, and the inference
flatters its way in that really a liberty is not a liberty if
it stands in the service of the State, of morals, or
of the law. A liberty indeed from the coercion of censorship,
it is yet not a liberty from the coercion of law. The press, once
seized by the lust for liberty, always wants to grow freer, till
at last the writer says to himself, really I am not wholly free
till I ask about nothing; and writing is free only when it is
my own, dictated to me by no power or authority, by no
faith, no dread; the press must not be free -- that is too little
-- it must be mine: -- ownness of the press or property
in the press, that is what I