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476 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
ideas, it still does not get clear of them. It pitches into the
ghosts, but it can do this only as it holds them to be ghosts.
The ideas it has to do with do not fully disappear; the morning
breeze of a new day does not scare them away.
The critic may indeed come to ataraxia
before ideas, but he never gets rid of them; i.e.
he will never comprehend that above the bodily man there
does not exist something higher -- to wit, liberty, his humanity,
etc. He always has a "calling" of man still left, "humanity."
And this idea of humanity remains unrealized, just because it
is an "idea" and is to remain such.
If, on the other hand, I grasp the
idea as my idea, then it is already realized, because
I am its reality; its reality consists in the fact that I, the
bodily, have it.
They say, the idea of liberty realizes
itself in the history of the world. The reverse is the case; this
idea is real as a man thinks it, and it is real in the measure
in which it is idea, i. e. in which I think it or have
it. It is not the idea of liberty that develops itself, but men
develop themselves, and, of course, in this self-development develop
their thinking too.
In short, the critic is not yet
owner, because he still fights with ideas as with powerful
aliens -- as the Christian is not owner of his "bad desires"
so long as he has to combat them; for him who contends against
vice, vice exists.
Criticism remains stuck fast in
the "freedom of knowing," the freedom of the spirit,
and the spirit gains its proper freedom when it fills itself with
the pure, true idea; this is the freedom of thinking, which cannot
be without thoughts.
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THE OWNER 477 |
Criticism smites one idea only by
another, e. g. that of privilege by that of manhood,
or that of egoism by that of unselfishness.
In general, the beginning of Christianity
comes on the stage again in its critical end, egoism being combated
here as there. I am not to make myself (the individual) count,
but the idea, the general.
Why, warfare of the priesthood with
egoism, of the spiritually minded with the worldly-minded,
constitutes the substance of all Christian history. In the newest
criticism this war only becomes all-embracing, fanaticism complete.
Indeed, neither can it pass away till it passes thus, after it
has had its life and its rage out.
Whether what I think and do is Christian,
what do I care? Whether it is human, liberal, humane, whether
unhuman, illiberal, inhuman, what do I ask about that? If only
it accomplishes what I want, if only I satisfy myself in it, then
overlay it with predicates as you will; it is all alike to me.
Perhaps I too, in the very next
moment, defend myself against my former thoughts; I too am likely
to change suddenly my mode of action; but not on account of its
not corresponding to Christianity, not on account of its running
counter to the eternal rights of man, not on account of its affronting
the idea of mankind, humanity, and humanitarianism, but -- because
I am no longer all in it, because it no longer furnishes me any
full enjoyment, because I doubt the earlier thought or no longer
please myself in the mode of action just now practiced.
| 478 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
As the world as property has become
a material with which I undertake what I will, so the
spirit too as property must sink down into a material
before which I no longer entertain any sacred dread. Then, firstly,
I shall shudder no more before a thought, let it appear as presumptuous
and "devilish" as it will, because, if it threatens
to become too inconvenient and unsatisfactory for me,
its end lies in my power; but neither shall I recoil from any
deed because there dwells in it a spirit of godlessness, immorality,
wrongfulness. as little as St. Boniface pleased to desist, through
religious scrupulousness, from cutting down the sacred oak of
the heathens. If the things of the world have once become
vain, the thoughts of the spirit must also become vain.
No thought is sacred, for let no
thought rank as "devotions";* no feeling is sacred (no
sacred feeling of friendship, mother's feelings, etc.), no belief
is sacred. They are all alienable, my alienable property,
and are annihilated, as they are created, by me.
The Christian can lose all things
or objects, the most loved persons, these "objects"
of his love, without giving up himself (i.e., in the
Christian sense, his spirit, his soul! as lost. The owner can
cast from him all the thoughts that were dear to his
heart and kindled his zeal, and will likewise "gain a thousandfold
again," because he, their creator, remains.
Unconsciously and involuntarily
we all strive toward ownness, and there will hardly be one among
us who has not given up a sacred feeling, a sacred
*[Andacht, a compound form of the word "thought"."]
|
THE OWNER 479 |
thought, a sacred belief; nay, we probably meet no one who could
not still deliver himself from one or another of his sacred thoughts.
All our contention against convictions starts from the opinion
that maybe we are capable of driving our opponent out of his entrenchments
of thought. But what I do unconsciously I half-do, and therefore
after every victory over a faith I become again the prisoner
(possessed) of a faith which then takes my whole self anew into
its service, and makes me an enthusiast for reason after
I have ceased to be enthusiastic for the Bible, or an enthusiast
for the idea of humanity after I have fought long enough for that
of Christianity.
Doubtless, as owner of thoughts,
I shall cover my property with my shield, just as I do not, as
owner of things, willingly let everybody help himself to them;
but at the same time I shall look forward smilingly to the outcome
of the battle, smilingly lay the shield on the corpses of my thoughts
and my faith, smilingly triumph when I am beaten. That is the
very humor of the thing. Every one who has "sublimer feelings"
is able to vent his humor on the pettiness of men; but to let
it play with all "great thoughts, sublime feelings, noble
inspiration, and sacred faith" presupposes that I am the
owner of all.
If religion has set up the proposition
that we are sinners altogether, I set over against it the other:
we are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, all that
we can be; and we never need be more. Since no defect cleaves
to us, sin has no meaning either. Show me a sinner in the world
still, if no one any longer needs to do what suits a superior!
If I
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480 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
only need do what suits myself, I am no sinner if I do not do
what suits myself, as I do not injure in myself a "holy one";
if, on the other hand, I am to be pious, then I must do what suits
God; if I am to act humanly, I must do what suits the essence
of man, the idea of mankind, etc. What religion calls the "sinner,"
humanitarianism calls the "egoist." But, once more:
if I need not do what suits any other, is the "egoist,"
in whom humanitarianism has borne to itself a new-fangled devil,
anything more than a piece of nonsense? The egoist, before whom
the humane shudder, is a spook as much as the devil is: he exists
only as a bogie and phantasm in their brain. If they were not
unsophisticatedly drifting back and forth in the antediluvian
opposition of good and evil, to which they have given the modern
names of "human" and "egoistic," they would
not have freshened up the hoary "sinner" into an "egoist"
either, and put a new patch on an old garment. But they could
not do otherwise, for they hold it for their task to be "men."
They are rid of the Good One; good is left!*
We are perfect altogether, and on
the whole earth there is not one man who is a sinner! There are
crazy people who imagine that they are God the Father, God the
Son, or the man in the moon, and so too the world swarms with
fools who seem to themselves to be sinners; but, as the former
are not the man in the moon, so the latter are -- not sinners.
Their sin is imaginary
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THE OWNER 481 |
Yet, it is insidiously objected,
their craziness or their possessedness is at least their sin.
Their possessedness is nothing but what they -- could achieve,
the result of their development, just as Luther's faith in the
Bible was all that he was -- competent to make out. The one brings
himself into the madhouse with his development, the other brings
himself therewith into the Pantheon and to the loss of --Valhalla.
There is no sinner and no sinful
egoism!
Get away from me with your "philanthropy"!
Creep in, you philanthropist, into the "dens of vice,"
linger awhile in the throng of the great city: will you not everywhere
find sin, and sin, and again sin? Will you not wail over corrupt
humanity, not lament at the monstrous egoism? Will you see a rich
man without finding him pitiless and "egoistic?" Perhaps
you already call yourself an atheist, but you remain true to the
Christian feeling that a camel will sooner go through a needle's
eye than a rich man not be an "un-man." How many do
you see anyhow that you would not throw into the "egoistic
mass"? What, therefore, has your philanthropy [love of man]
found? Nothing but unlovable men! And where do they all come from?
From you, from your philanthropy! You brought the sinner with
you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore you inserted
him everywhere. Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you
alone are the creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love
men, are the very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the
very one to divide them into vicious and virtuous, into men and
un-men, the very one to befoul them with the
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482 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
slaver of your possessedness; for you love not men, but
man. But I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you
have only -- dreamed of him.
Self-enjoyment is embittered to
me by my thinking I must serve another, by my fancying myself
under obligation to him, by my holding myself called to "self-sacrifice,"
"resignation," "enthusiasm." All right: if
I no longer serve any idea, any "higher essence," then
it is clear of itself that I no longer serve any man either, but
-- under all circumstances -- myself. But thus I am not
merely in fact or in being, but also for my consciousness, the
-- unique.*
There pertains to you more
than the divine, the human, etc.; yours pertains to you.
Look upon yourself as more powerful
than they give you out for, and you have more power; look upon
yourself as more, and you have more.
You are then not merely called
to everything divine, entitled to everything human, but
owner of what is yours, i.e. of all that you
possess the force to make your own; ** i.e. you are appropriate
*** and capacitated for everything that is yours.
People have always supposed that
they must give me a destiny lying outside myself, so that at last
they demanded that I should lay claim to the human because I am
-- man. This is the Christian magic circle. Fichte's ego too is
the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only
this ego has rights, then it is "the ego," it is not
I. But I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego:
I am
*[Einzige
**[Eigen]
***[geeignet]
| THE OWNER 483 |
unique. Hence my wants too are unique, and my deeds; in short,
everything about me is unique. And it is only as this unique I
that I take everything for my own, as I set myself to work, and
develop myself, only as this. I do not develop men, nor as man,
but, as I, I develop -- myself.
This is the meaning of the -- unique
one.
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484 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Pre-Christian and Christian times
pursue opposite goals; the former wants to idealize the real,
the latter to realize the ideal; the former seeks the "holy
spirit," the latter the "glorified body." Hence
the former closes with insensitivity to the real, with "contempt
for the world"; the latter will end with the casting off
of the ideal, with "contempt for the spirit."
The opposition of the real and the
ideal is an irreconcilable one, and the one can never become the
other: if the ideal became the real, it would no longer be the
ideal; and, if the real became the ideal, the ideal alone would
be, but not at all the real. The opposition of the two is not
to be vanquished otherwise than if some one annihilates both.
Only in this "some one," the third party, does
the opposition find its end; otherwise idea and reality will ever
fail to coincide. The idea cannot be so realized as to remain
idea, but is realized only when it dies as idea; and it is the
same with the real.
But now we have before us in the
ancients adherents of the idea, in the moderns adherents of reality.
Neither can get clear of the opposition, and both pine only, the
one party for the spirit, and, when this crav-
|
THE OWNER 485 |
ing of the ancient world seemed to be satisfied and this spirit
to have come, the others immediately for the secularization of
this spirit again, which must forever remain a "pious wish."
The pious wish of the ancients was
sanctity, the pious wish of the moderns is corporeity.
But, as antiquity had to go down if its longing was to be satisfied
(for it consisted only in the longing), so too corporeity can
never be attained within the ring of Christianness. As the trait
of sanctification or purification goes through the old world (the
washings, etc.), so that of incorporation goes through the Christian
world: God plunges down into this world, becomes flesh, and wants
to redeem it,
e. g., fill it with himself; but, since he is "the
idea" or "the spirit," people (e. g. Hegel)
in the end introduce the idea into everything, into the world,
and prove "that the idea is, that reason is, in everything."
"Man" corresponds in the culture of today to what the
heathen Stoics set up as "the wise man"; the latter,
like the former, a -- fleshless being. The unreal "wise
man," this bodiless "holy one" of the Stoics, became
a real person, a bodily "Holy One," in God made
flesh; the unreal "man," the bodiless ego, will
become real in the corporeal ego, in me.
There winds its way through
Christianity the question about the "existence of God,"
which, taken up ever and ever again, gives testimony that the
craving for existence, corporeity, personality, reality, was incessantly
busying the heart because it never found a satisfying solution.
At last the question about the existence of God fell, but only
to rise up again in the
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486 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
proposition that the "divine" had existence (Feuerbach).
But this too has no existence, and neither will the last refuge,
that the "purely human" is realizable, afford shelter
much longer. No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity.
The scholastic contention of realism and nominalism has the same
content; in short, this spins itself out through all Christian
history, and cannot end in it.
The world of Christians is working
at realizing ideas in the individual relations of life,
the institutions and laws of the Church and the State; but they
make resistance, and always keep back something unembodied (unrealizable).
Nevertheless this embodiment is restlessly rushed after, no matter
in what degree corporeity constantly fails to result.
For realities matter little to the
realizer, but it matters everything that they be realizations
of the idea. Hence he is ever examining anew whether the realized
does in truth have the idea, its kernel, dwelling in it; and in
testing the real he at the same time tests the idea, whether it
is realizable as he thinks it, or is only thought by him incorrectly,
and for that reason unfeasibly.
The Christian is no longer to care
for family, State, etc., as existences; Christians are
not to sacrifice themselves for these "divine things"
like the ancients, but these are only to be utilized to make the
spirit alive in them. The real family has become
indifferent, and there is to arise out of it an ideal
one which would then be the "truly real," a sacred family,
blessed by God, or, according to the liberal way of thinking,
a "rational" family. With the ancients, family, State,
|
THE OWNER 487 |
fatherland, is divine as a thing extant; with the moderns
it is still awaiting divinity, as extant it is only sinful, earthly,
and has still to be "redeemed," i. e., to become
truly real. This has the following meaning: The family, etc.,
is not the extant and real, but the divine, the idea, is extant
and real; whether this family will make itself real by
taking up the truly real, the idea, is still unsettled. It is
not the individual's task to serve the family as the divine, but,
reversely, to serve the divine and to bring to it the still undivine
family, to subject everything in the idea's name, to set up the
idea's banner everywhere, to bring the idea to real efficacy.
But, since the concern of Christianity,
as of antiquity, is for the divine, they always come
out at this again on their opposite ways. At the end of heathenism
the divine becomes the extramundane, at the end of Christianity
the intramundane. Antiquity does not succeed in putting
it entirely outside the world, and, when Christianity accomplishes
this task, the divine instantly longs to get back into the world
and wants to "redeem" the world. But within Christianity
it does not and cannot come to this, that the divine as intramundane
should really become the mundane itself: there is enough
left that does and must maintain itself unpenetrated as the "bad,"
irrational, accidental, "egoistic," the "mundane"
in the bad sense. Christianity begins with God's becoming man,
and carries on its work of conversion and redemption through all
time in order to prepare for God a reception in all men and in
everything human, and to penetrate everything with the spirit:
it sticks to
| 488 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
preparing a place for the "spirit."
When the accent was at last laid
on Man or mankind, it was again the idea that they "pronounced
eternal. " "Man does not die!" They thought
they had now found the reality of the idea: Man is the
I of history, of the world's history; it is he, this ideal,
that really develops, i.e. realizes, himself. He is the
really real and corporeal one, for history is his body, in which
individuals are only members. Christ is the I of the world's history,
even of the pre-Christian; in modern apprehension it is man, the
figure of Christ has developed into the figure of man:
man as such, man absolutely, is the "central point"
of history. In "man" the imaginary beginning returns
again; for "man" is as imaginary as Christ is. "Man,"
as the I of the world's history, closes the cycle of Christian
apprehensions.
Christianity's magic circle would
be broken if the strained relation between existence and calling,
e. g., between me as I am and me as I should be, ceased;
it persists only as the longing of the idea for its bodiliness,
and vanishes with the relaxing separation of the two: only when
the idea remains -- idea, as man or mankind is indeed a bodiless
idea, is Christianity still extant. The corporeal idea, the corporeal
or "completed" spirit, floats before the Christian as
"the end of the days" or as the "goal of history";
it is not present time to him.
The individual can only have a part
in the founding of the Kingdom of God, or, according to the modern
notion of the same thing, in the development and history of humanity;
and only so far as he has a
|
THE OWNER 489 |
part in it does a Christian, or according to the modern expression
human, value pertain to him; for the rest he is dust and a worm-bag.
That the individual is of himself a world's history, and possesses
his property in the rest of the world's history, goes beyond what
is Christian. To the Christian the world's history is the higher
thing, because it is the history of Christ or "man";
to the egoist only his history has value, because he
wants to develop only himself not the mankind-idea, not
God's plan, not the purposes of Providence, not liberty, etc.
He does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or a vessel
of God, he recognizes no calling, he does not fancy that he exists
for the further development of mankind and that he must contribute
his mite to it, but he lives himself out, careless of how well
or ill humanity may fare thereby. If it were not open to confusion
with the idea that a state of nature is to be praised, one might
recall Lenau's "Three Gypsies."- What, am I
in the world to realize ideas? To do my part by my citizenship,
say, toward the realization of the idea "State," or
by marriage, as husband and father, to bring the idea of the family
into an existence? What does such a calling concern me! I live
after a calling as little as the flower grows and gives fragrance
after a calling.
The ideal "Man" is realized
when the Christian apprehension turns about and becomes the proposition,
"I, this unique one, am man." The conceptual question,
"what is man?" -- has then changed into the personal
question, "who is man?" With "what" the concept
was sought for, in order to realize it; with
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490 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
"who" it is no longer any question at all, but the answer
is personally on hand at once in the asker: the question answers
itself.
They say of God, "Names name
thee not." That holds good of me: no concept expresses
me, nothing that is designated as my essence exhausts me; they
are only names. Likewise they say of God that he is perfect and
has no calling to strive after perfection. That too holds good
of me alone.
I am owner of my might,
and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the unique
one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing,
of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God,
be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only
before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for
myself,* the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory,
mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say:
All things are nothing to me.**
* [Stell' Ich auf Mich meine
Sache. Literally, "if I set my affair
on myself."]
**["Ich hab' Mein' Sach' auf Nichts
gestellt." Literally, "I have
set my affair on nothing." See note on p. 8.]
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