| 376 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
will take.
"Why, liberty of the press
is only permission of the press, and the State never
will or can voluntarily permit me to grind it to nothingness by
the press."
Let us now, in conclusion, bettering
the above language, which is still vague, owing to the phrase
'liberty of the press,' rather put it thus: "liberty
of the press, the liberals' loud demand, is assuredly possible
in the State; yes, it is possible only in the State,
because it is a permission, and consequently the permitter
(the State) must not be lacking. But as permission it has its
limit in this very State, which surely should not in reason permit
more than is compatible with itself and its welfare: the State
fixes for it this limit as the law of its existence and
of its extension. That one State brooks more than another is only
a quantitative distinction, which alone, nevertheless, lies at
the heart of the political liberals: they want in Germany, i.
e., only a 'more extended, broader accordance of
free utterance.' The liberty of the press which is sought for
is an affair of the people's, and before the people (the
State) possesses it I may make no use of it. From the standpoint
of property in the press, the situation is different. Let my people,
if they will, go without liberty of free press, I will manage
to print by force or ruse; I get my permission to print only from
-- myself and my strength.
If the press is my own,
I as little need a permission of the State for employing it as
I seek that permission in order to blow my nose. The press is
my property from the moment when nothing is more to me
than myself; for from this moment State, Church,
|
THE OWNER 377 |
people, society, etc., cease, because they have to thank for their
existence only the disrespect that I have for myself, and with
the vanishing of this undervaluation they themselves are extinguished:
they exist only when they exist above me, exist only
as powers and power-holders. Or can you imagine
a State whose citizens one and all think nothing of it? It would
be as certainly a dream, an existence in seeming, as 'united Germany.'
The press is my own as soon as I
myself am my own, a self- owned man: to the egoist belongs the
world, because he belongs to no power of the world.
With this my press might still be
very unfree, as e. g. at this moment. But the
world is large, and one helps himself as well as he can. If I
were willing to abate from the property of my press,
I could easily attain the point where I might everywhere have
as much printed as my fingers produced. But, as I want to assert
my property, I must necessarily swindle my enemies. 'Would you
not accept their permission if it were given you?' Certainly,
with joy; for their permission would be to me a proof that I had
fooled them and started them on the road to ruin. I am not concerned
for their permission, but so much the more for their folly and
their overthrow. I do not sue for their permission as if I flattered
myself (like the political liberals) that we both, they and I,
could make out peaceably alongside and with each other, yes, probably
raise and prop each other; but I sue for it in order to make them
bleed to death by it, that the permitters themselves may cease
at last. I act as a conscious enemy, overreaching them and utilizing
|
378 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
their heedlessness.
The press is mine when
I recognize outside myself no judge whatever over its
utilization, i.e. when my writing is no longer determined
by morality or religion or respect for the State laws or the like,
but by me and my egoism!"
Now, what have you to reply to him
who gives you so impudent an answer? -- We shall perhaps put the
question most strikingly by phrasing it as follows: Whose is the
press, the people's (State's) or mine? The politicals on their
side intend nothing further than to liberate the press from personal
and arbitrary interferences of the possessors of power, without
thinking of the point that to be really open for everybody it
would also have to be free from the laws, from the people's (State's)
will. They want to make a "people's affair" of it.
But, having become the people's
property, it is still far from being mine; rather, it retains
for me the subordinate significance of a permission.
The people plays judge over my thoughts; it has the right of calling
me to account for them, or, I am responsible to it for them. Jurors,
when their fixed ideas are attacked, have just as hard heads as
the stiffest despots and their servile officials.
In the "Liberale Bestrebungen"*
Edgar Bauer asserts that liberty of the press is impossible in
the absolutist and the constitutional State, whereas in the "free
State" it finds its place. "Here," the statement
is, "it is recognized that the individual, because he is
no
*II, p. 91ff. (See my note above.)
|
THE OWNER 379 |
longer an individual but a member of a true and rational generality,
has the right to utter his mind." So not the individual,
but the "member," has liberty of the press. But, if
for the purpose of liberty of the press the individual must first
give proof of himself regarding his belief in the generality,
the people; if he does not have this liberty through might
of his own -- then it is a people's liberty, a liberty
that he is invested with for the sake of his faith, his "membership."
The reverse is the case: it is precisely as an individual that
every one has open to him the liberty to utter his mind. But he
has not the "right": that liberty is assuredly not his
"sacred right." He has only the might; but
the might alone makes him owner. I need no concession for the
liberty of the press, do not need the people's consent to it,
do not need the "right" to it, nor any "justification."
The liberty of the press too, like every liberty, I must "take";
the people, "as being the sole judge," cannot give
it to me. It can put up with me the liberty that I take, or defend
itself against it; give, bestow, grant it cannot. I exercise it
despite the people, purely as an individual; i.e.
I get it by fighting the people, my -- enemy, and obtain it only
when I really get it by such fighting, i. e. take it.
But I take it because it is my property.
Sander, against whom E. Bauer writes,
lays claim (page 99) to the liberty of the press "as the
right and the liberty of the citizens in the State".
What else does Edgar Bauer do? To him also it is only a right
of the free citizen.
The liberty of the press is also
demanded under the
| 380 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
name of a "general human right." Against this the objection
was well-founded that not every man knew how to use it rightly,
for not every individual was truly man. Never did a government
refuse it to Man as such; but Man writes nothing,
for the reason that he is a ghost. It always refused it to individuals
only, and gave it to others, e. g. its organs. If then
one would have it for all, one must assert outright that it is
due to the individual, me, not to man or to the individual so
far as he is man. Besides, another than a man (a beast) can make
no use of it. The French government, e. g., does not
dispute the liberty of the press as a right of man, but demands
from the individual a security for his really being man; for it
assigns liberty of the press not to the individual, but to man.
Under the exact pretense that it
was not human, what was mine was taken from me! What
was human was left to me undiminished.
Liberty of the press can bring about
only a responsible press; the irresponsible
proceeds solely from property in the press.
|
THE OWNER 381 |
kind."
If we formulate the sense of this
law, it will be about as follows: Every man must have a something
that is more to him than himself. You are to put your "private
interest" in the background when it is a question of the
welfare of others, the weal of the fatherland, of society, the
common weal, the weal of mankind, the good cause, etc.! Fatherland,
society, mankind, must be more to you than yourself, and as against
their interest your "private interest" must stand back;
for you must not be an --egoist.
Love is a far-reaching religious
demand, which is not, as might be supposed, limited to love to
God and man, but stands foremost in every regard. Whatever we
do, think, will, the ground of it is always to be love. Thus we
may indeed judge, but only "with love." The Bible may
assuredly be criticized, and that very thoroughly, but the critic
must before all things love it and see in it the sacred
book. Is this anything else than to say he must not criticize
it to death, he must leave it standing, and that as a sacred thing
that cannot be upset? -- In our criticism on men too, love must
remain the unchanged key-note. Certainly judgments that hatred
inspires are not at all our own judgments, but judgments
of the hatred that rules us, "rancorous judgments."
But are judgments that love inspires in us any more our own?
They are judgments of the love that rules us, they are "loving,
lenient" judgments, they are not our own, and accordingly
not real judgments at all. He who burns with love for justice
cries out, fiat justitia, pereat mundus!
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382 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
He can doubtless ask and investigate what justice properly is
or demands, and in what it consists, but not whether
it is anything.
It is very true, "He who abides
in love abides in God, and God in him." (1 John 4. 16.) God
abides in him, he does not get rid of God, does not become godless;
and he abides in God, does not come to himself and into his own
home, abides in love to God and does not become loveless.
"God is love! All times and
all races recognize in this word the central point of Christianity."
God, who is love, is an officious God: he cannot leave the world
in peace, but wants to make it blest. "God became
man to make men divine."* He has his hand in the game everywhere,
and nothing happens without it; everywhere he has his "best
purposes," his "incomprehensible plans and decrees."
Reason, which he himself is, is to be forwarded and realized in
the whole world. His fatherly care deprives us of all independence.
We can do nothing sensible without its being said, God did that,
and can bring upon ourselves no misfortune without hearing, God
ordained that; we have nothing that we have not from him, he "gave"
everything. But, as God does, so does Man. God wants perforce
to make the world blest, and Man wants to make it happy,
to make all men happy. Hence every "man" wants to awaken
in all men the reason which he supposes his own self to have:
everything is to be rational throughout. God torments himself
with the devil, and the philosopher does it
|
THE OWNER 383 |
with unreason and the accidental. God lets no being go its
own gait, and Man likewise wants to make us walk only in
human wise.
But whoso is full of sacred (religious,
moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man,"
and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real
man, under the phlegmatic legal title of measures against the
"un- man." He finds it praiseworthy and indispensable
to exercise pitilessness in the harshest measure; for love to
the spook or generality commands him to hate him who is not ghostly,
i.e. the egoist or individual; such is the meaning of
the renowned love-phenomenon that is called "justice."
The criminally arraigned man can
expect no forbearance, and no one spreads a friendly veil over
his unhappy nakedness. Without emotion the stern judge tears the
last rags of excuse from the body of the poor accused; without
compassion the jailer drags him into his damp abode; without placability,
when the time of punishment has expired, he thrusts the branded
man again among men, his good, Christian, loyal brethren, who
contemptuously spit on him. Yes, without grace a criminal "deserving
of death" is led to the scaffold, and before the eyes of
a jubilating crowd the appeased moral law celebrates its sublime
-- revenge. For only one can live, the moral law or the criminal.
Where criminals live unpunished, the moral law has fallen; and,
where this prevails, those must go down. Their enmity is indestructible.
The Christian age is precisely that
of mercy, love, solicitude to have men receive what is
due them, yes, to bring them to fulfil their human (divine) calling.
Therefore the principle has been put foremost for intercourse,
that this and that is man's essence and consequently his calling,
| 384 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
to which either God has called him or (according to the concepts
of today) his being man (the species) calls him. Hence the zeal
for conversion. That the Communists and the humane expect from
man more than the Christians do does not change the standpoint
in the least. Man shall get what is human! If it was enough for
the pious that what was divine became his part, the humane demand
that he be not curtailed of what is human. Both set themselves
against what is egoistic. Of course; for what is egoistic cannot
be accorded to him or vested in him (a fief); he must procure
it for himself. Love imparts the former, the latter can be given
to me by myself alone.
Intercourse hitherto has rested
on love, regardful behavior, doing for each other. As
one owed it to himself to make himself blessed, or owed himself
the bliss of taking up into himself the supreme essence and bringing
it to a vérité (a truth and reality), so
one owed it to others to help them realize their essence
and their calling: in both cases one owed it to the essence of
man to contribute to its realization.
But one owes it neither to himself
to make anything out of himself, nor to others to make anything
out of them; for one owes nothing to his essence and that of others.
Intercourse resting on essence is an intercourse with the spook,
not with anything real. If I hold intercourse with the supreme
essence, I am not holding
|
THE OWNER 385 |
intercourse with myself, and, if I hold intercourse with the essence
of man, I am not holding intercourse with men.
The natural man's love becomes through
culture a commandment. But as commandment it belongs
to Man as such. not to me; it is my essence,*
about which much ado** is made. not my property. Man,
i.e. humanity, presents that demand to me; love is
demanded, it is my duty. Instead, therefore, of
being really won for me, it has been won for the generality,
Man, as his property or peculiarity: "it becomes
man, every man, to love; love is the duty and calling of man,"
etc.
Consequently I must again vindicate
love for myself, and deliver it out of the power of Man
with the great M.
What was originally mine,
but accidentally mine, instinctively mine, I was invested
with as the property of Man; I became feoffee in loving, I became
the retainer of mankind, only a specimen of this species, and
acted, loving, not as I, but as man, as a specimen
of man, the humanly. The whole condition of civilization is the
feudal system, the property being Man's or mankind's,
not mine. A monstrous feudal State was founded, the individual
robbed of everything, everything left to "man." The
individual had to appear at last as a "sinner through and
through."
Am I perchance to have no lively
interest in the person of another, are his joy and his
weal not to lie at my heart, is the enjoyment that I furnish him
not to be more to me than other enjoyments of my own? On the contrary,
I can with joy sacrifice to him num-
|
386 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
berless enjoyments, I can deny myself numberless things for the
enhancement of his pleasure, and I can hazard for him
what without him was the dearest to me, my life, my welfare, my
freedom. Why, it constitutes my pleasure and my happiness to refresh
myself with his happiness and his pleasure. But myself, my
own self, I do not sacrifice to him, but remain an egoist
and -- enjoy him. If I sacrifice to him everything that but for
my love to him I should keep, that is very simple, and even more
usual in life than it seems to be; but it proves nothing further
than that this one passion is more powerful in me than all the
rest. Christianity too teaches us to sacrifice all other passions
to this. But, if to one passion I sacrifice others, I do not on
that account go so far as to sacrifice myself, nor sacrifice
anything of that whereby I truly am myself; I do not sacrifice
my peculiar value, my ownness. Where this bad case occurs,
love cuts no better figure than any other passion that I obey
blindly. The ambitious man, who is carried away by ambition and
remains deaf to every warning that a calm moment begets in him,
has let this passion grow up into a despot against whom he abandons
all power of dissolution: he has given up himself, because he
cannot dissolve himself, and consequently cannot absolve
himself from the passion: he is possessed.
I love men too -- not merely individuals,
but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism;
I love them because love makes me happy, I love because
loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no "commandment
of love." I have a fellow-feeling with every feeling
being, and their torment
|
THE OWNER 387 |
torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them,
not torture them. Per contra, the high-souled, virtuous
Philistine prince Rudolph in The Mysteries of Paris,
because the wicked provoke his "indignation," plans
their torture. That fellow-feeling proves only that the feeling
of those who feel is mine too, my property; in opposition to which
the pitiless dealing of the "righteous" man (e.
g. against notary Ferrand) is like the unfeelingness of that
robber [Procrustes] who cut off or stretched his prisoners'
legs to the measure of his bedstead: Rudolph's bedstead, which
he cuts men to fit, is the concept of the "good." The
for right, virtue, etc., makes people hard-hearted and intolerant.
Rudolph does not feel like the notary, but the reverse; he feels
that "it serves the rascal right"; that is no fellow-feeling.
You love man, therefore you torture
the individual man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men)
is the tormenting of men.
If I see the loved one suffer, I
suffer with him, and I know no rest till I have tried everything
to comfort and cheer him; if I see him glad, I too become glad
over his joy. From this it does not follow that suffering or joy
is caused in me by the same thing that brings out this effect
in him, as is sufficiently proved by every bodily pain which I
do not feel as he does; his tooth pains him, but his pain pains
me.
But, because I cannot bear the troubled
crease on the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore
for my sake, I kiss it away. If I did not love this person, he
might go right on making creases, they would not trouble me; I
am only driving away my
|
388 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
trouble.
How now, has anybody or anything,
whom and which I do not love, a right to be loved by
me? Is my love first, or is his right first? Parents, kinsfolk,
fatherland, nation, native town, etc., finally fellowmen in general
("brothers, fraternity"), assert that they have a right
to my love, and lay claim to it without further ceremony. They
look upon it as their property, and upon me, if I do
not respect this, as a robber who takes from them what pertains
to them and is theirs. I should love. If love is a commandment
and law, then I must be educated into it, cultivated up to it,
and, if I trespass against it, punished. Hence people will exercise
as strong a "moral influence" as possible on me to bring
me to love. And there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce
men to love as one can to other passions -- if you like, to hate.
Hate runs through whole races merely because the ancestors of
the one belonged to the Guelphs, those of the other to the Ghibellines.
But love is not a commandment, but,
like each of my feelings, my property. Acquire, i.e.
purchase, my property, and then I will make it over to you. A
church, a nation, a fatherland, a family, etc., that does not
know how to acquire my love, I need not love; and I fix the purchase
price of my love quite at my pleasure.
Selfish love is far distant from
unselfish, mystical, or romantic love. One can love everything
possible, not merely men, but an "object" in general
(wine, one's fatherland, etc.). Love becomes blind and crazy by
a must taking it out of my power (infatuation),
| THE OWNER 389 |
romantic by a should entering into it, i.e.
by the "objects" becoming sacred for me, or my becoming
bound to it by duty, conscience, oath. Now the object no longer
exists for me, but I for it.
Love is a possessedness, not as
my feeling -- as such I rather keep it in my possession as property
-- but through the alienness of the object. For religious love
consists in the commandment to love in the beloved a "holy
one," or to adhere to a holy one; for unselfish love there
are objects absolutely lovable for which my heart is
to beat, e. g. fellow-men, or my wedded mate, kinsfolk,
etc. Holy Love loves the holy in the beloved, and therefore exerts
itself also to make of the beloved more and more a holy one (a
"man").
The beloved is an object that should
be loved by me. He is not an object of my love on account of,
because of, or by, my loving him, but is an object of love in
and of himself. Not I make him an object of love, but he is such
to begin with; for it is here irrelevant that he has become so
by my choice, if so it be (as with a fiancée,
a spouse, etc.), since even so he has in any case, as the person
once chosen, obtained a "right of his own to my love,"
and I, because I have loved him, am under obligation to love him
forever. He is therefore not an object of my love, but
of love in general: an object that should be loved. Love
appertains to him, is due to him, or is his right, while
I am under obligation to love him. My love, i.e.
the toll of love that I pay him, is in truth his love,
which he only collects from me as toll.
Every love to which there clings
but the smallest
|
390 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this
speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that he owes
the object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously.
Family love, e. g. as it
is usually understood as "piety," is a religious love;
love of fatherland, preached as "patriotism," likewise.
All our romantic loves move in the same pattern: everywhere the
hypocrisy, or rather self-deception, of an "unselfish love,"
an interest in the object for the object's sake, not for my sake
and mine alone.
Religious or romantic love is distinguished
from sensual love by the difference of the object indeed, but
not by the dependence of the relation to it. In the latter regard
both are possessedness; but in the former the one object is profane,
the other sacred. The dominion of the object over me is the same
in both cases, only that it is one time a sensuous one, the other
time a spiritual (ghostly) one. My love is my own only when it
consists altogether in a selfish and egoistic interest, and when
consequently the object of my love is really my object
or my property. I owe my property nothing, and have no duty to
it, as little as I might have a duty to my eye; if nevertheless
I guard it with the greatest care, I do so on my account.
Antiquity lacked love as little
as do Christian times; the god of love is older than the God of
Love. But the mystical possessedness belongs to the moderns.
The possessedness of love lies in
the alienation of the object, or in my powerlessness as against
its alienness and superior power. To the egoist nothing is
|
THE OWNER 391 |
high enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so independent
that he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would
sacrifice himself to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness,
flows in the bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness
again.
Whether this can still be called
love? If you know another word for it, go ahead and choose it;
then the sweet word love may wither with the departed world; for
the present I at least find none in our Christian language,
and hence stick to the old sound and "love" my
object, my -- property.
Only as one of my feelings do I
harbor love; but as a power above me, as a divine power, as Feuerbach
says, as a passion that I am not to cast off, as a religious and
moral duty, I -- scorn it. As my feeling it is mine;
as a principle to which I consecrate and "vow" my soul
it is a dominator and divine, just as hatred as a principle
is diabolical; one not better than the other. In short,
egoistic love, i.e. my love, is neither holy nor unholy,
neither divine nor diabolical.
"A love that is limited by
faith is an untrue love. The sole limitation that does not contradict
the essence of love is the self-limitation of love by reason,
intelligence. Love that scorns the rigor, the law, of intelligence,
is theoretically a false love, practically a ruinous one."*
So love is in its essence rational! So thinks Feuerbach;
the believer, on the contrary, thinks, Love is in its essence
believing. The one inveighs against irrational,
the other against unbelieving, love. To both it can at
most rank as a splen-
*Feuerbach, "Essence of Chr.," 394.
|
392 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
didum vitium. Do not both leave love standing, even in
the form of unreason and unbelief? They do not dare to say, irrational
or unbelieving love is nonsense, is not love; as little as they
are willing to say, irrational or unbelieving tears are not tears.
But, if even irrational love, etc., must count as love, and if
they are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, there follows simply
this: love is not the highest thing, but reason or faith; even
the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love; but love has value
only when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is
an illusion when Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its "self-limitation";
the believer might with the same right call belief its "self-limitation."
Irrational love is neither "false" nor "ruinous";
its does its service as love.
Toward the world, especially toward
men, I am to assume a particular feeling, and "meet
them with love," with the feeling of love, from the beginning.
Certainly, in this there is revealed far more free-will and self-determination
than when I let myself be stormed, by way of the world, by all
possible feelings, and remain exposed to the most checkered, most
accidental impressions. I go to the world rather with a preconceived
feeling, as if it were a prejudice and a preconceived opinion;
I have prescribed to myself in advance my behavior toward it,
and, despite all its temptations, feel and think about it only
as I have once determined to. Against the dominion of the world
I secure myself by the principle of love; for, whatever may come,
I -- love. The ugly -- e. g. --makes a repulsive impression
on me; but, determined to love, I master this impression as I
do every antipathy.
| THE OWNER 393 |
But the feeling to which I have
determined and -- condemned myself from the start is a narrow
feeling, because it is a predestined one, of which I myself am
not able to get clear or to declare myself clear. Because preconceived,
it is a prejudice. I no longer show myself in face of
the world, but my love shows itself. The world indeed
does not rule me, but so much the more inevitably does the spirit
of love rule this spirit.
If I first said, I love the world,
I now add likewise: I do not love it, for I annihilate
it as I annihilate myself; I dissolve it. I do not limit
myself to one feeling for men, but give free play to all that
I am capable of. Why should I not dare speak it out in all its
glaringness? Yes, I utilize the world and men! With this
I can keep myself open to every impression without being torn
away from myself by one of them. I can love, love with a full
heart, and let the most consuming glow of passion burn in my heart,
without taking the beloved one for anything else than the nourishment
of my passion, on which it ever refreshes itself anew. All my
care for him applies only to the object of my love, only
to him whom my love requires, only to him, the "warmly
loved." How indifferent would he be to me without this --
my love! I feed only my love with him, I utilize him
for this only: I enjoy him.
Let us choose another convenient
example. I see how men are fretted in dark superstition by a swarm
of ghosts. If to the extent of my powers I let a bit of daylight
fall in on the nocturnal spookery, is it per-
|
394 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
chance because love to you inspires this in me? Do I write out
of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure for my
thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that
these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace,
even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations
springing up from this seed of thought -- I would nevertheless
scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair
and does not trouble me. You will perhaps have only trouble, combat,
and death from it, very few will draw joy from it. If your weal
lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in withholding
the Bible from the laity, or Christian governments, which make
it a sacred duty for themselves to "protect the common people
from bad books."
But not only not for your sake,
not even for truth's sake either do I speak out what I think.
No --
I sing because -- I am a singer.
But I use* you for it because I -- need** ears.
Where the world comes in my way
-- and it comes in my way everywhere -- I consume it to quiet
the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but --my food,
even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only
one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility,
of use. We owe each
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THE OWNER 395 |
other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most
to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise,
then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my
air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not
aim to cheer, I do not show it.
One has to be educated up to that
love which founds itself on the "essence of man" or,
in the ecclesiastical and moral period, lies upon us as a "commandment."
In what fashion moral influence, the chief ingredient of our education,
seeks to regulate the intercourse of men shall here be looked
at with egoistic eyes in one example at least.
Those who educate us make it their
concern early to break us of lying and to inculcate the principle
that one must always tell the truth. If selfishness were made
the basis for this rule, every one would easily understand how
by lying he fools away that confidence in him which he hopes to
awaken in others, and how correct the maxim proves, Nobody believes
a liar even when he tells the truth. Yet, at the same time, he
would also feel that he had to meet with truth only him whom he
authorized to hear the truth. If a spy walks in disguise through
the hostile camp, and is asked who he is, the askers are assuredly
entitled to inquire after his name, but the disguised man does
not give them the right to learn the truth from him; he tells
them what he likes, only not the fact. And yet morality demands,
"Thou shalt not lie!" By morality those persons are
vested with the right to expect the truth; but by me they are
not vested with that
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396 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
right, and I recognize only the right that I impart.
In a gathering of revolutionists the police force their way in
and ask the orator for his name; everybody knows that the police
have the right to do so, but they do not have it from the revolutionist,
since he is their enemy; he tells them a false name and --cheats
them with a lie. The police do not act so foolishly either as
to count on their enemies' love of truth; on the contrary, they
do not believe without further ceremony, but have the questioned
individual "identified" if they can. Nay, the State
-- everywhere proceeds incredulously with individuals, because
in their egoism it recognizes its natural enemy; it invariably
demands a "voucher," and he who cannot show vouchers
falls a prey to its investigating inquisition. The State does
not believe nor trust the individual, and so of itself places
itself with him in the convention of lying; it trusts
me only when it has convinced itself of the truth of
my statement, for which there often remains to it no other means
than the oath. How clearly, too, this (the oath) proves that the
State does not count on our credibility and love of truth, but
on our interest, our selfishness: it relies on our not
wanting to fall foul of God by a perjury.
Now, let one imagine a French revolutionist
in the year 1788, who among friends let fall the now well-known
phrase, "the world will have no rest till the last king is
hanged with the guts of the last priest." The king then still
had all power, and, when the utterance is betrayed by an accident,
yet without its being possible to produce witnesses, confession
is demanded from the accused. Is he to confess or not?
| THE OWNER 397 |
If he denies, he lies and -- remains unpunished; if he confesses,
he is candid and -- is beheaded. If truth is more than everything
else to him, all right, let him die. Only a paltry poet could
try to make a tragedy out of the end of his life; for what interest
is there in seeing how a man succumbs from cowardice? But, if
he had the courage not to be a slave of truth and sincerity, he
would ask somewhat thus: Why need the judges know what I have
spoken among friends? If I had wished them to know, I
should have said it to them as I said it to my friends. I will
not have them know it. They force themselves into my confidence
without my having called them to it and made them my confidants;
they will learn what I will keep secret. Come
on then, you who wish to break my will by your will, and try your
arts. You can torture me by the rack, you can threaten me with
hell and eternal damnation, you can make me so nerveless that
I swear a false oath, but the truth you shall not press out of
me, for I will lie to you because I have given you no
claim and no right to my sincerity. Let God, "who is truth,"
look down ever so threateningly on me, let lying come ever so
hard to me, I have nevertheless the courage of a lie; and, even
if I were weary of my life, even if nothing appeared to me more
welcome than your executioner's sword, you nevertheless should
not have the joy of finding in me a slave of truth, whom by your
priestly arts you make a traitor to his will. When I
spoke those treasonable words, I would not have had you know anything
of them; I now retain the same will, and do not let myself be
frightened by the curse of the lie.
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398 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Sigismund is not a miserable caitiff
because he broke his princely word, but he broke the word because
he was a caitiff; he might have kept his word and would still
have been a caitiff, a priest-ridden man. Luther, driven by a
higher power, became unfaithful to his monastic vow: he became
so for God's sake. Both broke their oath as possessed persons:
Sigismund, because he wanted to appear as a sincere professor
of the divine truth, i. e., of the true, genuinely
Catholic faith; Luther, in order to give testimony for the gospel
sincerely and with entire truth. with body and soul;
both became perjured in order to be sincere toward the "higher
truth." Only, the priests absolved the one, the other absolved
himself. What else did both observe than what is contained in
those apostolic words, "Thou hast not lied to men, but to
God?" They lied to men, broke their oath before the world's
eyes, in order not to lie to God, but to serve him. Thus they
show us a way to deal with truth before men. For God's glory,
and for God's sake, a -- breach of oath, a lie, a prince's word
broken!
How would it be, now, if we changed
the thing a little and wrote, A perjury and lie for -- my
sake? Would not that be pleading for every baseness? It seems
so, assuredly, only in this it is altogether like the "for
God's sake." For was not every baseness committed for God's
sake, were not all the scaffolds filled for his sake and all the
autos-da-fé held for his sake, was not all stupefaction
introduced for his sake? And do they not today still for God's
sake fetter the mind in tender children by religious education?
Were not sacred vows broken for his sake, and do not
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THE OWNER 399 |
missionaries and priests still go around every day to bring Jews,
heathen, Protestants or Catholics, to treason against the faith
of their fathers -- for his sake? And that should be worse with
the for my sake? What then does on my account
mean? There people immediately think of "filthy lucre".
But he who acts from love of filthy lucre does it on his own account
indeed, as there is nothing anyhow that one does not do for his
own sake -- among other things, everything that is done for God's
glory; yet he, for whom he seeks the lucre, is a slave of lucre,
not raised above lucre; he is one who belongs to lucre, the money-bag,
not to himself; he is not his own. Must not a man whom the passion
of avarice rules follow the commands of this master?
And, if a weak goodnaturedness once beguiles him, does this not
appear as simply an exceptional case of precisely the same sort
as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by their Lord's
guidance and ensnared by the arts of the "devil?" So
an avaricious man is not a self-owned man, but a servant; and
he can do nothing for his own sake without at the same time doing
it for his lord's sake -- precisely like the godly man.
Famous is the breach of oath which
Francis I committed against Emperor Charles V. Not later, when
he ripely weighed his promise, but at once, when he swore the
oath, King Francis took it back in thought as well as by a secret
protestation documentarily subscribed before his councillors;
he uttered a perjury aforethought. Francis did not show himself
disinclined to buy his release, but the price that Charles put
on it seemed to him too high and unrea-
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400 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
sonable. Even though Charles behaved himself in a sordid fashion
when he sought to extort as much as possible, it was yet shabby
of Francis to want to purchase his freedom for a lower ransom;
and his later dealings, among which there occurs yet a second
breach of his word, prove sufficiently how the huckster spirit
held him enthralled and made him a shabby swindler. However, what
shall we say to the reproach of perjury against him? In the first
place, surely, this again: that not the perjury, but his sordidness,
shamed him; that he did not deserve contempt for his perjury,
but made himself guilty of perjury because he was a contemptible
man. But Francis's perjury, regarded in itself, demands another
judgment. One might say Francis did not respond to the confidence
that Charles put in him in setting him free. But, if Charles had
really favored him with confidence, he would have named to him
the price that he considered the release worth, and would then
have set him at liberty and expected Francis to pay the redemption-sum.
Charles harbored no such trust, but only believed in Francis's
impotence and credulity, which would not allow him to act against
his oath; but Francis deceived only this -- credulous calculation.
When Charles believed he was assuring himself of his enemy by
an oath, right there he was freeing him from every obligation.
Charles had given the king credit for a piece of stupidity, a
narrow conscience, and, without confidence in Francis, counted
only on Francis's stupidity, e. g., conscientiousness:
he let him go from the Madrid prison only to hold him the more
securely in the prison of conscientiousness, the great