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426 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
ers for "daily bread" ("Give us our daily bread")
or for "holy bread" ("the true bread from heaven"
"the bread of God, that comes from heaven and gives life
to the world"; "the bread of life," John 6), whether
one takes care for "dear life" or for "life to
eternity" -- this does not change the object of the strain
and care, which in the one case as in the other shows itself to
be life. Do the modern tendencies announce themselves
otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most
indispensable necessaries of life, but want every one to feel
secure as to these; and on the other hand they teach that man
has this life to attend to and the real world to adapt himself
to, without vain care for another.
Let us take up the same thing from
another side. When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in
this solicitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only concern
is for life, and he thinks "if I only have my dear life,"
he does not apply his full strength to using, i. e.,
enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like
the candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and
consequently himself the living one, in consuming it
and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up.
Now -- we are in search of the enjoyment
of life! And what did the religious world do? It went in search
of life. Wherein consists the true life, the blessed life; etc.?
How is it to be attained? What must man do and become in order
to become a truly living man? How does he fulfil this calling?
These and similar questions indicate that the askers were still
seeking for themselves -- to wit, themselves in the
| THE OWNER 427 |
true sense, in the sense of true living. "What I am is foam
and shadow; what I shall be is my true self." To chase after
this self, to produce it, to realize it, constitutes the hard
task of mortals, who die only to rise again, live only
to die, live only to find the true life.
Not till I am certain of myself,
and no longer seeking for myself, am I really my property; I have
myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On the other hand, I
can never take comfort in myself as long as I think that I have
still to find my true self and that it must come to this, that
not I but Christ or some other spiritual, i.e. ghostly,
self (e. g. the true man, the essence of man, etc.) lives
in me.
A vast interval separates the two
views. In the old I go toward myself, in the new I start from
myself; in the former I long for myself, in the latter I have
myself and do with myself as one does with any other property
-- I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for my
life, but "squander" it.
Henceforth, the question runs, not
how one can acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it;
or, not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but how
one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out.
What else should the ideal be but
the sought-for ever-distant self? One seeks for himself, consequently
one doth not yet have himself; one aspires toward what one ought
to be, consequently one is not it. One lives in longing
and has lived thousands of years in it, in hope. Living
is quite another thing in -- enjoyment!
Does this perchance apply only
to the so-called pious? No, it applies to all who belong to the
de-
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428 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
parting period of history, even to its men of pleasure. For them
too the work-days were followed by a Sunday, and the rush of the
world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness of
humanity; in short by an ideal. But philosophers especially are
contrasted with the pious. Now, have they been thinking of anything
else than the ideal, been planning for anything else than the
absolute self? Longing and hope everywhere, and nothing but these.
For me, call it romanticism.
If the enjoyment of life
is to triumph over the longing for life or hope of life,
it must vanquish this in its double significance which Schiller
introduces in his "Ideal and Life"; it must crush spiritual
and secular poverty, exterminate the ideal and -- the want of
daily bread. He who must expend his life to prolong life cannot
enjoy it, and he who is still seeking for his life does not have
it and can as little enjoy it: both are poor, but "blessed
are the poor."
Those who are hungering for the
true life have no power over their present life, but must apply
it for the purpose of thereby gaining that true life, and must
sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and this task. If in
the case of those devotees who hope for a life in the other world,
and look upon that in this world as merely a preparation for it,
the tributariness of their earthly existence, which they put solely
into the service of the hoped-for heavenly existence, is pretty
distinctly apparent; one would yet go far wrong if one wanted
to consider the most rationalistic and enlightened as less self-sacrificing.
Oh, there is to be found in the "true life" a much more
comprehensive significance
|
THE OWNER 429 |
than the "heavenly" is competent to express. Now, is
not -- to introduce the liberal concept of it at once -- the "human"
and "truly human" life the true one? And is every one
already leading this truly human life from the start, or must
he first raise himself to it with hard toil? Does he already have
it as his present life, or must he struggle for it as his future
life, which will become his part only when he "is no longer
tainted with any egoism"? In this view life exists only to
gain life, and one lives only to make the essence of man alive
in oneself, one lives for the sake of this essence. One has his
life only in order to procure by means of it the "true"
life cleansed of all egoism. Hence one is afraid to make any use
he likes of his life: it is to serve only for the "right
use."
In short, one has a calling
in life, a task in life; one has something to realize and
produce by his life, a something for which our life is only means
and implement, a something that is worth more than this life,
a something to which one owes his life. One has a God
who asks a living sacrifice. Only the rudeness of human
sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice itself has
remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice,
and we "poor sinners" slay our own selves as sacrifices
for "the human essence," the "idea of mankind,"
"humanity," and whatever the idols or gods are called
besides.
But, because we owe our life to
that something, therefore --this is the next point -- we have
no right to take it from us.
The conservative tendency of Christianity
does not permit thinking of death otherwise than with the pur-
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430 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
pose to take its sting from it and -- live on and preserve oneself
nicely. The Christian lets everything happen and come upon him
if he - the arch-Jew -- can only haggle and smuggle himself into
heaven; he must not kill himself, he must only -- preserve himself
and work at the "preparation of a future abode." Conservatism
or "conquest of death" lies at his heart; "the
last enemy that is abolished is death."* "Christ has
taken the power from death and brought life and imperishable
being to light by the gospel."** "Imperishableness,"
stability.
The moral man wants the good, the
right; and, if he takes to the means that lead to this goal, really
lead to it, then these means are not his means, but those
of the good, right, etc., itself. These means are never immoral,
because the good end itself mediates itself through them: the
end sanctifies the means. They call this maxim jesuitical, but
it is "moral" through and through. The moral man acts
in the service of an end or an idea: he makes himself
the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts
it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death
is what the moral commandment postulates as the good; to give
it to oneself is immoral and bad: suicide finds no excuse
before the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious man forbids
it because "you have not given yourself life, but God, who
alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even taking
in this conception, God did not take it from me just as much when
I kill myself as when a tile from the
*1 Cor. 15. 26.
**2 Tim. 1. 10.
| THE OWNER 431 |
roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused
the resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it
because I owe my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I
do not know whether I may not yet accomplish good by my life."
Of course, for in me good loses a tool, as God does an instrument.
If I am immoral, the good is served in my amendment;
if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my penitence.
Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose
standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness
of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts
in forgetfulness of duty, immorally. People worried themselves
much with the question whether Emilia Galotti's death can be justified
before morality (they take it as if it were suicide, which it
is too in substance). That she is so infatuated with chastity,
this moral good, as to yield up even her life for it is certainly
moral; but, again, that she fears the weakness of her flesh is
immoral. *
*[See the next to the last scene of the tragedy:
ODOARDO: Under the pretext of a
judicial investigation he tears you out of our arms and takes
you to Grimaldi. ...
EMILIA: Give me that dagger, father,
me! ...
ODOARDO: No, no! Reflect -- You
too have only one life to lose.
EMILIA: And only one innocence!
ODOARDO: Which is above the reach
of any violence. --
EMILIA: But not above the reach
of any seduction. -- Violence! violence! Who cannot defy violence?
What is called violence is nothing; seduction is the true violence.
-- I have blood, father; blood as youthful and warm as anybody's.
My senses are senses. -- I can warrant nothing. I am sure of nothing.
I know Grimaldi's house. It is the house of pleasure. An hour
there, under my mother's eyes -- and there arose in my soul so
much tumult as the strictest exercises of religion could hardly
quiet in weeks. -- Religion! And what religion? -- To escape nothing
worse, thousands sprang into the water and are saints. -- Give
me that dagger, father, give it to me. ...
EMILIA: Once indeed there was a
father who. to save his daughter from shame, drove into her heart
whatever steel he could quickest find -- gave life to her for
the second time. But all such deeds are of the past! Of such fathers
there are no more.
ODOARDO: Yes, daughter, yes! (Stabs
her.)]
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432 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Such contradictions form the tragic conflict universally in the
moral drama; and one must think and feel morally to be able to
take an interest in it.
What holds good of piety and morality
will necessarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his
life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I am under
obligation to no being is the maintaining of life -- my affair.
"A leap from this bridge makes me free!"
But, if we owe the maintaining of
our life to that being that we are to make alive in ourselves,
it is not less our duty not to lead this life according to our
pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that being. All my
feeling, thinking, and willing, all my doing and designing, belongs
to -- him.
What is in conformity to that being
is to be inferred from his concept; and how differently has this
concept been conceived! or how differently has that being been
imagined! What demands the Supreme Being makes on the Mohammedan;
what different ones the Christian, again, thinks he hears from
him; how divergent, therefore, must the shaping of the lives of
the two turn out! Only this do all hold fast, that the Supreme
Being is to judge* our life.
But the pious who have their judge
in God, and in his word a book of directions for their life, I
everywhere pass by only reminiscently, because they belong to
a period of development that has been lived through, and as petrifactions
they may remain in their fixed place right along; in our time
it is no
|
THE OWNER 433 |
longer the pious, but the liberals, who have the floor, and piety
itself cannot keep from reddening its pale face with liberal coloring.
But the liberals do not adore their judge in God, and do not unfold
their life by the directions of the divine word, but regulate*
themselves by man: they want to be not "divine" but
"human," and to live so.
Man is the liberal's supreme being,
man the judge of his life, humanity his directions,
or catechism. God is spirit, but man is the "most perfect
spirit," the final result of the long chase after the spirit
or of the "searching in the depths of the Godhead,"
i.e. in the depths of the spirit.
Every one of your traits is to be
human; you yourself are to be so from top to toe, in the inward
as in the outward; for humanity is your calling.
Calling -- destiny -- task! --
What one can become he does become.
A born poet may well be hindered by the disfavor of circumstances
from standing on the high level of his time, and, after the great
studies that are indispensable for this, producing consummate
works of art; but he will make poetry, be he a plowman or so lucky
as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make music,
no matter whether on all instruments or only on an oaten pipe.
A born philosophical head can give proof of itself as university
philosopher or as village philosopher. Finally, a born dolt, who,
as is very well compatible with this, may at the same time be
a sly-boots, will (as probably every one who has visited
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434 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
schools is in a position to exemplify to himself by many instances
of fellow-scholars) always remain a blockhead, let him have been
drilled and trained into the chief of a bureau, or let him serve
that same chief as bootblack. Nay, the born shallow-pates indisputably
form the most numerous class of men. And why. indeed, should not
the same distinctions show themselves in the human species that
are unmistakable in every species of beasts? The more gifted and
the less gifted are to be found everywhere.
Only a few, however, are so imbecile
that one could not get ideas into them. Hence, people usually
consider all men capable of having religion. In a certain degree
they may be trained to other ideas too, e. g. to some
musical intelligence, even some philosophy. At this point then
the priesthood of religion, of morality, of culture, of science,
etc., takes its start, and the Communists, e. g. want
to make everything accessible to all by their "public school."
There is heard a common assertion that this "great mass"
cannot get along without religion; the Communists broaden it into
the proposition that not only the "great mass," but
absolutely all, are called to everything.
Not enough that the great mass has
been trained to religion, now it is actually to have to occupy
itself with "everything human." Training is growing
ever more general and more comprehensive.
You poor beings who could live so
happily if you might skip according to your mind, you are to dance
to the pipe of schoolmasters and bear-leaders, in order to perform
tricks that you yourselves would never use
| THE OWNER 435 |
yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the traces at
last against being always taken otherwise than you want to give
yourselves. No, you mechanically recite to yourselves the question
that is recited to you: "What am I called to? What ought
I to do?" You need only ask thus, to have yourselves told
what you ought to do and ordered to do it, to have your
calling marked out for you, or else to order yourselves
and impose it on yourselves according to the spirit's prescription.
Then in reference to the will the word is, I will to do what I
ought.
A man is "called" to nothing,
and has no "calling," no "destiny," as little
as a plant or a beast has a "calling." The flower does
not follow the calling to complete itself, but it spends all its
forces to enjoy and consume the world as well as it can -- i.e.
it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air of
the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and lodge.
The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much
as is practicable; it catches beetles and sings to its heart's
delight. But the forces of the flower and the bird are slight
in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces
will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast.
A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves
where they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation,
and are as little able to abide inactive as life, which, if it
"stood still" only a second, would no longer be life.
Now, one might call out to the man, "use your force."
Yet to this imperative would be given the meaning that it was
man's task to use his force. It is not so. Rather,
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436 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
each one really uses his force without first looking upon this
as his calling: at all times every one uses as much force as he
possesses. One does say of a beaten man that he ought to have
exerted his force more; but one forgets that, if in the moment
of succumbing he had the force to exert his forces (e. g.
bodily forces), he would not have failed to do it: even if it
was only the discouragement of a minute, this was yet a --destitution
of force, a minute long. Forces may assuredly be sharpened and
redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly assistance;
but where one misses their application one may be sure of their
absence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but without the
blow none comes out; in like manner a man too needs "impact."
Now, for this reason that forces
always of themselves show themselves operative, the command to
use them would be superfluous and senseless. To use his forces
is not man's calling and task, but is his act,
real and extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for
manifestation of force.
Now, as this rose is a true rose
to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so
I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling,
live up to my destiny, but I am a "true man" from the
start. My first babble is the token of the life of a "true
man," the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his
force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the
"man."
The true man does not lie in the
future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in
the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and suffering,
|
THE OWNER 437 |
a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in
waking, I am it, I am the true man.
But, if I am Man, and have really
found in myself him whom religious humanity designated as the
distant goal, then everything "truly human" is also
my own. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity belongs
to me. That freedom of trade,
e. g., which humanity has yet to attain -- and which,
like an enchanting dream, people remove to humanity's golden future
-- I take by anticipation as my property, and carry it on for
the time in the form of smuggling. There may indeed be but few
smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account to
themselves for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces
their consciousness. Above I have shown the same thing about freedom
of the press.
Everything is my own, therefore
I bring back to myself what wants to withdraw from me; but above
all I always bring myself back when I have slipped away from myself
to any tributariness. But this too is not my calling, but my natural
act.
Enough, there is a mighty difference
whether I make myself the starting-point or the goal. As the latter
I do not have myself, am consequently still alien to myself, am
my essence, my "true essence," and this "true
essence," alien to me, will mock me as a spook of a thousand
different names. Because I am not yet I, another (like God, the
true man, the truly pious man, the rational man, the freeman,
etc.) is I, my ego.
Still far from myself, I separate
myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to
be ful-
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438 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
filled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought
as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true,
is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, "The
spirit is man's proper essence," or, "man exists as
man only spiritually." Now, there is a greedy rush to catch
the spirit, as if one would then have bagged himself;
and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself,
whom he is.
And, as one stormily pursues his
own self, the never-attained, so one also despises shrewd people's
rule to take men as they are, and prefers to take them as they
should be; and, for this reason, hounds every one on after his
should-be self and "endeavors to make all into equally entitled,
equally respectable, equally moral or rational men."*
Yes, "if men were what they
should be, could be, if all men were rational,
all loved each other as brothers," then it would be a paradisiacal
life.** -- All right, men are as they should be, can be. What
should they be? Surely not more than they can be! And what can
they be? Not more, again, than they -- can, than they have the
competence, the force, to be. But this they really are, because
what they are not they are incapable of being; for to
be capable means -- really to be. One is not capable for anything
that one really is not; one is not capable of anything that one
does not really do. Could a man blinded by cataracts see? Oh,
yes, if he had his cataracts successfully removed. But now he
cannot see because he does
*"Der Kommunismus in
der Schweiz", p. 24.
**Ibid, p. 63
|
THE OWNER 439 |
not see. Possibility and reality always coincide. One can do nothing
that one does not, as one does nothing that one cannot.
The singularity of this assertion
vanishes when one reflects that the words "it is possible
that." almost never contain another meaning than "I
can imagine that. . .," e. g., It is possible for
all men to live rationally; e. g., I can imagine that
all, etc. Now -- since my thinking cannot, and accordingly does
not, cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be
left to the men themselves -- general reason is for me only thinkable,
a thinkableness, but as such in fact a reality that is
called a possibility only in reference to what I can
not bring to pass, to wit, the rationality of others. So far as
depends on you, all men might be rational, for you have nothing
against it; nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps
cannot discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing
does stand in the way of the thing in your thinking; it is thinkable
to you.
As men are not all rational, though,
it is probable that they -- cannot be so.
If something which one imagines
to be easily possible is not, or does not happen, then one may
be assured that something stands in the way of the thing, and
that it is -- impossible. Our time has its art, science, etc.;
the art may be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we
deserved to have a better, and "could" have it if we
only would? We have just as much art as we can have. Our art of
today is the only art possible, and therefore real, at
the time.
| 440 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Even in the sense to which one might
at last still reduce the word "possible," that it should
mean "future," it retains the full force of the "real."
If one says, e. g., "It is possible that the sun
will rise tomorrow" -- this means only, "for today tomorrow
is the real future"; for I suppose there is hardly need of
the suggestion that a future is real "future" only when
it has not yet appeared.
Yet wherefore this dignifying of
a word? If the most prolific misunderstanding of thousands of
years were not in ambush behind it, if this single concept of
the little word "possible" were not haunted by all the
spooks of possessed men, its contemplation should trouble us little
here.
The thought, it was just now shown,
rules the possessed world. Well, then, possibility is nothing
but thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have hitherto been
made to hideous thinkableness. It was thinkable
that men might become rational; thinkable, that they might know
Christ; thinkable, that they might become moral and enthusiastic
for the good; thinkable, that they might all take refuge in the
Church's lap; thinkable, that they might meditate, speak, and
do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they might
be obedient subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was --
so ran the inference -- possible, and further, because it was
possible to men (right here lies the deceptive point; because
it is thinkable to me, it is possible to men), therefore
they ought to be so, it was their calling; and finally
-- one is to take men only according to this calling, only as
called men, "not as they are, but as they ought
to be."
|
THE OWNER 441 |
And the further inference? Man is
not the individual, but man is a thought, an ideal,
to which the individual is related not even as the child to the
man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a -- finite
creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to modern views,
as the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the glorification
of "humanity," the "eternal, immortal," for
whose glory (in majorem humanitatis gloriam) the individual
must devote himself and find his "immortal renown" in
having done something for the "spirit of humanity."
Thus the thinkers rule
in the world as long as the age of priests or of schoolmasters
lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is possible
must be realized. They think an ideal of man, which for
the time is real only in their thoughts; but they also think the
possibility of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute,
the carrying out is really -- thinkable, it is an -- idea.
But you and I, we may indeed be
people of whom a Krummacher can think that we might yet
become good Christians; if, however, he wanted to "labor
with" us, we should soon make it palpable to him that our
Christianity is only thinkable, but in other respects
impossible; if he grinned on and on at us with his obtrusive
thoughts, his "good belief," he would have
to learn that we do not at all need to become what we
do not like to become.
And so it goes on, far beyond the
most pious of the pious. "If all men were rational, if all
did right, if all were guided by philanthropy, etc."! Reason,
right, philanthropy, are put before the eyes of
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442 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. And what
does being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing?* No, reason
is a book full of laws, which are all enacted against egoism.
History hitherto is the history
of the intellectual man. After the period of sensuality,
history proper begins; i.e. the period of intellectuality,**
spirituality,*** non-sensuality, supersensuality, nonsensicality.
Man now begins to want to be and become something. What?
Good, beautiful, true; more precisely, moral, pious, agreeable,
etc. He wants to make of himself a "proper man," "something
proper." Man is his goal, his ought, his destiny,
calling, task, his -- ideal; he is to himself a future,
otherworldly he. And what makes a "proper fellow"
of him? Being true, being good, being moral, etc. Now he looks
askance at every one who does not recognize the same "what,"
seek the same morality, have the same faith, he chases out "separatists,
heretics, sects," etc.
No sheep, no dog, exerts itself
to become a "proper sheep, a proper dog"; no beast has
its essence appear to it as a task, i.e. as a concept
that it has to realize. It realizes itself in living itself out,
in dissolving itself, passing away. It does not ask to be or to
become anything other than it is.
Do I mean to advise you to be like
the beasts? That you ought to become beasts is an exhortation
which I certainly cannot give you, as that would again be a task,
an ideal ("How doth the little busy bee improve each shining
hour. In works of labor
*[Cf. note p. 81]
**[Geistigkeit]
***[Geistlichkeit]
|
THE OWNER 443 |
or of skill I would be busy too, for Satan finds some mischief
still for idle hands to do"). It would be the same, too,
as if one wished for the beasts that they should become human
beings. Your nature is, once for all, a human one; you are human
natures, human beings. But, just because you already are so, you
do not still need to become so. Beasts too are "trained,"
and a trained beast executes many unnatural things. But a trained
dog is no better for itself than a natural one, and has no profit
from it, even if it is more companionable for us.
Exertions to "form" all
men into moral, rational, pious, human, "beings" (i.e.
training) were in vogue from of yore. They are wrecked against
the indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against egoism.
Those who are trained never attain their ideal, and only profess
with their mouth the sublime principles, or make a profession,
a profession of faith. In face of this profession they must in
life "acknowledge themselves sinners altogether,"
and they fall short of their ideal, are "weak men,"
and bear with them the consciousness of "human weakness."
It is different if you do not chase
after an ideal as your "destiny," but dissolve
yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not
your "destiny," because it is present time.
Yet the culture, the religiousness,
of men has assuredly made them free, but only free from one lord,
to lead them to another. I have learned by religion to tame my
appetite, I break the world's resistance by the cunning that is
put in my hand by science; I even serve no man; "I
am no man's lackey." But then it
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comes. You must obey God more than man. Just so I am indeed free
from irrational determination by my impulses. but obedient to
the master Reason. I have gained "spiritual freedom,"
"freedom of the spirit." But with that I have then become
subject to that very spirit. The spirit gives me orders,
reason guides me, they are my leaders and commanders. The "rational,"
the "servants of the spirit," rule. But, if I
am not flesh, I am in truth not spirit either. Freedom of the
spirit is servitude of me, because I am more than spirit or flesh.
Without doubt culture has made me
powerful. It has given me power over all motives,
over the impulses of my nature as well as over the exactions and
violences of the world. I know, and have gained the force for
it by culture, that I need not let myself be coerced by any of
my appetites, pleasures, emotions, etc.; I am their -- master;
in like manner I become, through the sciences and arts, the master
of the refractory world, whom sea and earth obey, and to whom
even the stars must give an account of themselves. The spirit
has made me master. -- But I have no power over the spirit
itself. From religion (culture) I do learn the means for the "vanquishing
of the world," but not how I am to subdue God too
and become master of him; for God "is the spirit." And
this same spirit, of which I am unable to become master, may have
the most manifold shapes; he may be called God or National Spirit,
State, Family, Reason, also -- Liberty, Humanity, Man.
I receive with thanks what
the centuries of culture have acquired for me; I am not willing
to throw
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away and give up anything of it: I have not lived in vain. The
experience that I have power over my nature, and need
not be the slave of my appetites, shall not be lost to me; the
experience that I can subdue the world by culture's means is too
dear- bought for me to be able to forget it. But I want still
more.
People ask, what can man do? What
can he accomplish? What goods procure, and put down the highest
of everything as a calling. As if everything were possible to
me!
If one sees somebody going to ruin
in a mania, a passion, etc. (e. g. in the huckster-spirit,
in jealousy), the desire is stirred to deliver him out of this
possession and to help him to "self-conquest." "We
want to make a man of him!" That would be very fine if another
possession were not immediately put in the place of the earlier
one. But one frees from the love of money him who is a thrall
to it, only to deliver him over to piety, humanity, or some principle
else, and to transfer him to a fixed standpoint anew.
This transference from a narrow
standpoint to a sublime one is declared in the words that the
sense must not be directed to the perishable, but to the imperishable
alone: not to the temporal, but to the eternal, absolute, divine,
purely human, etc. -- to the spiritual.
People very soon discerned that
it was not indifferent what one set his affections on, or what
one occupied himself with; they recognized the importance of the
object. An object exalted above the individuality of
things is the essence of things; yes, the essence is
alone the thinkable in them. it is for the thinking
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446 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
man. Therefore direct no longer your sense to the things,
but your thoughts to the essence. "Blessed
are they who see not, and yet believe"; i. e., blessed
are the thinkers, for they have to do with the invisible
and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, that constituted
an essential point of contention centuries long, comes at last
to the point of being "No longer worth speaking of."
This was discerned, but nevertheless people always kept before
their eyes again a self-valid importance of the object, an absolute
value of it, as if the doll were not the most important thing
to the child, the Koran to the Turk. As long as I am not the sole
important thing to myself, it is indifferent of what object I
"make much," and only my greater or lesser delinquency
against it is of value. The degree of my attachment and devotion
marks the standpoint of my liability to service, the degree of
my sinning shows the measure of my ownness.
But finally, and in general, one
must know how to "put everything out of his mind," if
only so as to be able to -- go to sleep. Nothing may occupy us
with which we do not occupy ourselves: the victim of
ambition cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the God-fearing
man from the thought of God; infatuation and possessedness coincide.
To want to realize his essence or
live comfortably to his concept (which with believers in God signifies
as much as to be "pious," and with believers in humanity
means living "humanly") is what only the sensual and
sinful man can propose to himself, the man so long as he has the
anxious choice between happiness of sense and peace of soul, so
long as he is
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THE OWNER 447 |
a "poor sinner." The Christian is nothing but a sensual
man who, knowing of the sacred and being conscious that he violates
it, sees in himself a poor sinner: sensualness, recognized as
"sinfulness," is Christian consciousness, is the Christian
himself. And if "sin" and "sinfulness" are
now no longer taken into the mouths of moderns, but, instead of
that, "egoism," "self-seeking," "selfishness,"
etc., engage them; if the devil has been translated into the "un-man"
or "egoistic man" -- is the Christian less present then
than before? Is not the old discord between good and evil -- is
not a judge over us, man -- is not a calling, the calling to make
oneself man -- left? If they no longer name it calling, but "task"
or, very likely, "duty," the change of name is quite
correct, because "man" is not, like God, a personal
being that can "call"; but outside the name the thing
remains as of old.
Every one has a relation to objects,
and more, every one is differently related to them. Let us choose
as an example that book to which millions of men had a relation
for two thousand years, the Bible. What is it, what was it, to
each? Absolutely, only what he made out of it! For him
who makes to himself nothing at all out of it, it is nothing at
all; for him who uses it as an amulet, it has solely the value,
the significance, of a means of sorcery; for him who, like children,
plays with it, it is nothing but a plaything, etc.
Now, Christianity asks that it shall
be the same for all: say the sacred book or the "sacred
Scriptures." This means as much as that the Christian's view
shall
| 448 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
also be that of other men, and that no one may be otherwise related
to that object. And with this the ownness of the relation is destroyed,
and one mind, one disposition, is fixed as the "true",
the "only true" one. In the limitation of the freedom
to make of the Bible what I will, the freedom of making in general
is limited; and the coercion of a view or a judgment is put in
its place. He who should pass the judgment that the Bible was
a long error of mankind would judge -- criminally.
In fact, the child who tears it
to pieces or plays with it, the Inca Atahualpa who lays his ear
to it and throws it away contemptuously when it remains dumb,
judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest who praises
in it the "Word of God," or the critic who calls it
a job of men's hands. For how we toss things about is the affair
of our option, our free will: we use them according
to our heart's pleasure, or, more clearly, we use them
just as we can. Why, what do the parsons scream about
when they see how Hegel and the speculative theologians make speculative
thoughts out of the contents of the Bible? Precisely this, that
they deal with it according to their heart's pleasure, or "proceed
arbitrarily with it."
But, because we all show ourselves
arbitrary in the handling of objects, i.e. do with them
as we like best, at our liking (the philosopher
likes nothing so well as when he can trace out an "idea"
in everything, as the God-fearing man likes to make God his friend
by everything, and so, e. g., by keeping the Bible sacred),
therefore we nowhere meet such grievous arbitrariness, such a
frightful tendency to vio-
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THE OWNER 449 |
lence, such stupid coercion, as in this very domain of our --
own free will. If we proceed arbitrarily in
taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then that we want
to take it ill of the parson-spirits if they take us just as arbitrarily,
in their fashion, and esteem us worthy of the heretic's
fire or of another punishment, perhaps of the -- censorship?
What a man is, he makes out of things;
"as you look at the world, so it looks at you again."
Then the wise advice makes itself heard again at once, You must
only look at it "rightly, unbiasedly," etc. As if the
child did not look at the Bible "rightly and unbiasedly"
when it makes it a plaything. That shrewd precept is given us,
e. g. by Feuerbach. One does look at things rightly when
one makes of them what one will (by things objects in
general are here understood, e. g. God, our fellowmen,
a sweetheart, a book, a beast, etc.). And therefore the things
and the looking at them are not first, but I am, my will is. One
will brings thoughts out of the things, will
discover reason in the world, will have sacredness in
it: therefore one shall find them. "Seek and ye shall find."
What I will seek, I determine: I want, e. g.,
to get edification from the Bible; it is to be found; I want to
read and test the Bible thoroughly; my outcome will be a thorough
instruction and criticism -- to the extent of my powers. I elect
for myself what I have a fancy for, and in electing I show myself
-- arbitrary.
Connected with this is the discernment
that every judgment which I pass upon an object is the creature
of my will; and that discernment again leads me to
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450 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
not losing myself in the creature, the judgment, but
remaining the creator, the judge, who is ever creating
anew. All predicates of objects are my statements, my judgments,
my -- creatures. If they want to tear themselves loose from me
and be something for themselves, or actually overawe me, then
I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back into
their nothing, into me the creator. God, Christ, Trinity, morality,
the good, etc., are such creatures, of which I must not merely
allow myself to say that they are truths, but also that they are
deceptions. As I once willed and decreed their existence, so I
want to have license to will their non- existence too; I must
not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness to
let them become something "absolute," whereby they would
be eternalized and withdrawn from my power and decision. With
that I should fall a prey to the principle of stability,
the proper life-principle of religion, which concerns itself with
creating "sanctuaries that must not be touched," "eternal
truths" -- in short, that which shall be "sacred"
-- and depriving you of what is yours.
The object makes us into possessed
men in its sacred form just as in its profane, as a supersensuous
object, just as it does as a sensuous one. The appetite or mania
refers to both, and avarice and longing for heaven stand on a
level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for the sensuous
world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one
party wanted to call forth emotion, the other motion,
activity.
The conception of objects is altogether
diverse, even