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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 101 |
nothing but a love of Man, the unreal concept, the spook.
It is not tous anthropous, men, but ton anthropon,
Man, that the philanthropist carries in his heart. To be sure,
he cares for each individual, but only because he wants to see
his beloved ideal realized everywhere.
So there is nothing said here of
care for me, you, us; that would be personal interest, and belongs
under the head of "worldly love." Philanthropy is a
heavenly, spiritual, a -- priestly love. Man must be
restored in us, even if thereby we poor devils should come to
grief. It is the same priestly principle as that famous fiat
justitia, pereat mundus; man and justice are ideas, ghosts,
for love of which everything is sacrificed; therefore, the priestly
spirits are the "self-sacrificing" ones.
He who is infatuated with Man
leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends,
and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see,
is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
Now, things as different as possible
can belong to Man and be so regarded. If one finds Man's
chief requirement in piety, there arises religious clericalism;
if one sees it in morality, then moral clericalism raises its
head. On this account the priestly spirits of our day want to
make a "religion" of everything, a "religion of
liberty," "religion of equality," etc., and for
them every idea becomes a "sacred cause," e. g.
even citizenship, politics, publicity, freedom of the press, trial
by jury, etc.
Now, what does "unselfishness"
mean in this sense? Having only an ideal interest, before which
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no respect of persons avails!
The stiff head of the worldly man
opposes this, but for centuries has always been worsted at least
so far as to have to bend the unruly neck and "honor the
higher power"; clericalism pressed it down. When the worldly
egoist had shaken off a higher power (e. g. the Old Testament
law, the Roman pope, etc.), then at once a seven times higher
one was over him again, e. g. faith in the place of the
law, the transformation of all laymen into divines in place of
the limited body of clergy, etc. His experience was like that
of the possessed man into whom seven devils passed when he thought
he had freed himself from one.
In the passage quoted above, all
ideality is denied to the middle class. It certainly schemed against
the ideal consistency with which Robespierre wanted to carry out
the principle. The instinct of its interest told it that this
consistency harmonized too little with what its mind was set on,
and that it would be acting against itself if it were willing
to further the enthusiasm for principle. Was it to behave so unselfishly
as to abandon all its aims in order to bring a harsh theory to
its triumph? It suits the priests admirably, to be sure, when
people listen to their summons, "Cast away everything and
follow me," or "Sell all that thou hast and give to
the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow
me." Some decided idealists obey this call; but most act
like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a behavior half clerical
or religious and half worldly, serving God and Mammon.
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 103 |
I do not blame the middle class
for not wanting to let its aims be frustrated by Robespierre,
i.e. for inquiring of its egoism how far it might give
the revolutionary idea a chance. But one might blame (if blame
were in place here anyhow) those who let their own interests be
frustrated by the interests of the middle class. However, will
not they likewise sooner or later learn to understand what is
to their advantage? August Becker says:* "To win the producers
(proletarians) a negation of the traditional conception of right
is by no means enough. Folks unfortunately care little for the
theoretical victory of the idea. One must demonstrate to them
ad oculos how this victory can be practically utilized
in life." And (p.32): "You must get hold of folks by
their real interests if you want to work upon them." Immediately
after this he shows how a fine looseness of morals is already
spreading among our peasants, because they prefer to follow their
real interests rather than the commands of morality.
Because the revolutionary priests
or schoolmasters served Man, they cut off the heads of
men. The revolutionary laymen, those outside the sacred
circle, did not feel any greater horror of cutting off heads,
but were less anxious about the rights of Man than about their
own.
How comes it, though, that the egoism
of those who affirm personal interest, and always inquire of it,
is nevertheless forever succumbing to a priestly or schoolmasterly
(i. e. an ideal) interest? Their per-
*"Die Volksphilosophie unserer Tage", p. 22.
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104 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
son seems to them too small, too insignificant -- and is so in
fact -- to lay claim to everything and be able to put itself completely
in force. There is a sure sign of this in their dividing themselves
into two persons, an eternal and a temporal, and always caring
either only for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the
eternal, on the work-day for the temporal, in prayer for the former,
in work for the latter. They have the priest in themselves, therefore
they do not get rid of him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly
every Sunday.
How men have struggled and calculated
to get at a solution regarding these dualistic essences! Idea
followed upon idea, principle upon principle, system upon system,
and none knew how to keep down permanently the contradiction of
the "worldly" man, the so-called "egoist."
Does not this prove that all those ideas were too feeble to take
up my whole will into themselves and satisfy it? They were and
remained hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for
a considerable time. Will it be the same with self-ownership?
Is it too only an attempt at mediation? Whatever principle I turned
to, it might be to that of reason, I always had to turn
away from it again. Or can I always be rational, arrange my life
according to reason in everything? I can, no doubt, strive
after rationality, I can love it, just as I can also
love God and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover
of wisdom, as I love God. But what I love, what I strive for,
is only in my idea, my conception, my thoughts; it is in my heart,
my head, it is in me like the heart, but it is not I, I am not
it.
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 105 |
To the activity of priestly minds
belongs especially what one often hears called "moral
influence."
Moral influence takes its start
where humiliation begins; yes, it is nothing else than
this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper*
down to humility.** If I call to some one to run away when a rock
is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by this demand; if
I say to a child "You will go hungry if you will not eat
what is put on the table," this is not moral influence. But,
if I say to it, "You will pray, honor your parents, respect
the crucifix, speak the truth, for this belongs to man and is
man's calling," or even "this is God's will," then
moral influence is complete; then a man is to bend before the
calling of man, be tractable, become humble, give up
his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and law; he
is to abase himself before something higher
: self-abasement. "He that abaseth himself shall be exalted."
Yes, yes, children must early be made to practice piety,
godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into
whom "good maxims" have been instilled and
impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and
preached in.
If one shrugs his shoulders at this,
at once the good wring their hands despairingly, and cry: "But,
for heaven's sake, if one is to give children no good instruction,
why, then they will run straight into the jaws of sin, and become
good-for-nothing hoodlums!" Gently, you prophets of evil.
Good-for-nothing in your sense they certainly will become; but
your sense
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happens to be a very good-for-nothing sense. The impudent lads
will no longer let anything be whined and chattered into them
by you, and will have no sympathy for all the follies for which
you have been raving and driveling since the memory of man began;
they will abolish the law of inheritance; they will not be willing
to inherit your stupidities as you inherited them from
your fathers; they destroy inherited sin.* If you command
them, "Bend before the Most High," they will answer:
"If he wants to bend us, let him come himself and do it;
we, at least, will not bend of our own accord." And, if you
threaten them with his wrath and his punishment, they will take
it like being threatened with the bogie-man. If you are no more
successful in making them afraid of ghosts, then the dominion
of ghosts is at an end, and nurses' tales find no -- faith.
And is it not precisely the liberals
again that press for good education and improvement of the educational
system? For how could their liberalism, their "liberty within
the bounds of law," come about without discipline? Even if
they do not exactly educate to the fear of God, yet they demand
the fear of Man all the more strictly, and awaken "enthusiasm
for the truly human calling" by discipline.
A long time passed away, in which people were satisfied with the fancy that they had the truth, without thinking seriously whether perhaps they themselves must be true to possess the truth. This time
*[Called in English theology "original sin."]
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 107 |
was the Middle Ages. With the common consciousness --
i.e. the consciousness which deals with things, that
consciousness which has receptivity only for things, or for what
is sensuous and sense-moving -- they thought to grasp what did
not deal with things and was not perceptible by the senses. As
one does indeed also exert his eye to see the remote, or laboriously
exercise his hand till its fingers have become dexterous enough
to press the keys correctly, so they chastened themselves in the
most manifold ways, in order to become capable of receiving the
supersensual wholly into themselves. But what they chastened was,
after all, only the sensual man, the common consciousness, so-called
finite or objective thought. Yet as this thought, this understanding,
which Luther decries under the name of reason, is incapable of
comprehending the divine, its chastening contributed just as much
to the understanding of the truth as if one exercised the feet
year in and year out in dancing, and hoped that in this way they
would finally learn to play the flute. Luther, with whom the so-called
Middle Ages end, was the first who understood that the man himself
must become other than he was if he wanted to comprehend truth
-- must become as true as truth itself. Only he who already has
truth in his belief, only he who believes in it, can
become a partaker of it; i.e. only the believer finds
it accessible and sounds its depths. Only that organ of man which
is able to blow can attain the further capacity of flute-playing,
and only that man can become a partaker of truth who has the right
organ for it. He who is capable of thinking only what is sensuous,
objective,
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108 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
pertaining to things, figures to himself in truth only what pertains
to things. But truth is spirit, stuff altogether inappreciable
by the senses, and therefore only for the "higher consciousness,"
not for that which is "earthly-minded."
With Luther, accordingly, dawns
the perception that truth, because it is a thought, is
only for the thinking man. And this is to say that man
must henceforth take an utterly different standpoint, to wit,
the heavenly, believing, scientific standpoint, or that of thought
in relation to its object, the -- thought -- that of
mind in relation to mind. Consequently: only the like apprehend
the like. "You are like the spirit that you understand."*
Because Protestantism broke the
medieval hierarchy, the opinion could take root that hierarchy
in general had been shattered by it, and it could be wholly overlooked
that it was precisely a "reformation," and so a reinvigoration
of the antiquated hierarchy. That medieval hierarchy had been
only a weakly one, as it had to let all possible barbarism of
unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside it, and it was the
Reformation that first steeled the power of hierarchy. If Bruno
Bauer thinks:** "As the Reformation was mainly the abstract
rending of the religious principle from art, State, and science,
and so its liberation from those powers with which it had joined
itself in the antiquity of the church and in the hierarchy of
the Middle Ages, so too the theological and ecclesiastical movements
which proceeded from the
*[Goethe, "Faust".]
**"Anekdota,
II, 152.
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 109 |
Reformation are only the consistent carrying out of this abstraction
of the religious principle from the other powers of humanity,"
I regard precisely the opposite as correct, and think that the
dominion of spirits, or freedom of mind (which comes to the same
thing), was never before so all-embracing and all-powerful, because
the present one, instead of rending the religious principle from
art, State, and science, lifted the latter altogether out of secularity
into the "realm of spirit" and made them religious.
Luther and Descartes have been appropriately
put side by side in their "He who believes in God" and
"I think, therefore I am" (cogito, ergo sum).
Man's heaven is thought -- mind. Everything can be wrested from
him, except thought, except faith. Particular faith,
like faith of Zeus, Astarte, Jehovah, Allah, may be destroyed,
but faith itself is indestructible. In thought is freedom. What
I need and what I hunger for is no longer granted to me by any
grace, by the Virgin Mary. by intercession of the saints,
or by the binding and loosing church, but I procure it for myself.
In short, my being (the sum) is a living in the heaven
of thought, of mind, a cogitare. But I myself am nothing
else than mind, thinking mind (according to Descartes), believing
mind (according to Luther). My body I am not; my flesh may suffer
from appetites or pains. I am not my flesh, but I am mind,
only mind.
This thought runs through the history
of the Reformation till today.
Only by the more modern philosophy
since Descartes has a serious effort been made to bring
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110 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Christianity to complete efficacy, by exalting the "scientific
consciousness." to be the only true and valid one. Hence
it begins with absolute doubt, dubitare, with grinding
common consciousness to atoms, with turning away from everything
that "mind," "thought," does not legitimate.
To it Nature counts for nothing; the opinion of men,
their "human precepts," for nothing: and it does not
rest till it has brought reason into everything, and can say "The
real is the rational, and only the rational is the real."
Thus it has at last brought mind, reason, to victory; and everything
is mind, because everything is rational, because all nature, as
well as even the most perverse opinions of men, contains reason;
for "all must serve for the best," i. e., lead
to the victory of reason.
Descartes's dubitare contains
the decided statement that only cogitare, thought, mind
-- is. A complete break with "common" consciousness,
which ascribes reality to irrational things! Only the
rational is, only mind is! This is the principle of modern philosophy,
the genuine Christian principle. Descartes in his own time discriminated
the body sharply from the mind, and "the spirit 'tis that
builds itself the body," says Goethe.
But this philosophy itself, Christian
philosophy, still does not get rid of the rational, and therefore
inveighs against the "merely subjective," against "fancies,
fortuities, arbitrariness," etc. What it wants is that the
divine should become visible in everything, and all consciousness
become a knowing of the divine, and man behold God everywhere;
but God never is, without the devil.
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 111 |
For this very reason the name of
philosopher is not to be given to him who has indeed open eyes
for the things of the world, a clear and undazzled gaze, a correct
judgment about the world, but who sees in the world just the world,
in objects only objects, and, in short, everything prosaically
as it is; but he alone is a philosopher who sees, and points out
or demonstrates, heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly,
the -- divine in the mundane. The former may be ever
so wise, there is no getting away from this:
What
wise men see not by their wisdom's art
Is
practiced simply by a childlike heart.*
It takes this childlike heart, this
eye for the divine, to make a philosopher. The first-named man
has only a "common" consciousness, but he who knows
the divine, and knows how to tell it, has a "scientific"
one. On this ground Bacon was turned out of the realm of philosophers.
And certainly what is called English philosophy seems to have
got no further than to the discoveries of so-called "clear
heads," e. g. Bacon and Hume. The English did not
know how to exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to philosophic
significance, did not know how to make -- philosophers out of
childlike hearts. This is as much as to say, their philosophy
was not able to become theological or theology,
and yet it is only as theology that it can really live itself
out, complete itself. The field of its battle to the death is
in theology. Bacon did not trouble himself about theological questions
and cardinal points.
*[Schiller, "Die Worte des Glaubens".]
| 112 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Cognition has its object in life.
German thought seeks, more than that of others, to reach the beginnings
and fountain-heads of life, and sees no life till it sees it in
cognition itself. Descartes's cogito, ergo sum has the
meaning "One lives only when one thinks." Thinking life
is called "intellectual life"! Only mind lives, its
life is the true life. Then, just so in nature only the "eternal
laws," the mind or the reason of nature, are its true life.
In man, as in nature, only the thought lives; everything else
is dead! To this abstraction, to the life of generalities or of
that which is lifeless, the history of mind had to come.
God, who is spirit, alone lives. Nothing lives but the ghost.
How can one try to assert of modern
philosophy or modern times that they have reached freedom, since
they have not freed us from the power of objectivity? Or am I
perhaps free from a despot when I am not afraid of the personal
potentate, to be sure, but of every infraction of the loving reverence
which I fancy I owe him? The case is the same with modern times.
They only changed the existing objects, the real ruler,
into conceived objects, i.e. into ideas,
before which the old respect not only was not lost, but increased
in intensity. Even if people snapped their fingers at God and
the devil in their former crass reality, people devoted only the
greater attention to their ideas. "They are rid of the Evil
One; evil is left."* The decision having once been made not
to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable,
*[Parodied from the words of Mephistopheles in the witch's kitchen in "Faust".]
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 113 |
little scruple was felt about revolting against the existing State
or overturning the existing laws; but to sin against the idea
of the State, not to submit to the idea of law, who would
have dared that? So one remained a "citizen" and a "law-respecting,"
loyal man; yes, one seemed to himself to be only so much more
law-respecting, the more rationalistically one abrogated the former
defective law in order to do homage to the "spirit of the
law." In all this the objects had only suffered a change
of form; they had remained in their preponderance and pre-eminence;
in short, one was still involved in obedience and possessedness,
lived in reflection, and had an object on which one reflected,
which one respected, and before which one felt reverence and fear.
One had done nothing but transform the things into conceptions
of the things, into thoughts and ideas, whereby one's dependence
became all the more intimate and indissoluble. So, e. g.,
it is not hard to emancipate oneself from the commands of parents,
or to set aside the admonitions of uncle and aunt, the entreaties
of brother and sister; but the renounced obedience easily gets
into one's conscience, and the less one does give way to the individual
demands, because he rationalistically, by his own reason, recognizes
them to be unreasonable, so much the more conscientiously does
he hold fast to filial piety and family love, and so much the
harder is it for him to forgive himself a trespass against the
conception which he has formed of family love and of
filial duty. Released from dependence as regards the existing
family, one falls into the more binding dependence on the idea
of the family; one is ruled by the spirit
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of the family. The family consisting of John, Maggie, etc., whose
dominion has become powerless, is only internalized, being left
as "family" in general, to which one just applies the
old saying, "We must obey God rather than man," whose
significance here is this: "I cannot, to be sure, accommodate
myself to your senseless requirements, but, as my 'family,' you
still remain the object of my love and care"; for "the
family" is a sacred idea, which the individual must never
offend against. -- And this family internalized and desensualized
into a thought, a conception, now ranks as the "sacred,"
whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it makes a racket
in my conscience. This despotism is broken when the conception,
family, also becomes a nothing to me The Christian dicta,
"Woman, what have I to do with thee?"* "I am come
to stir up a man against his father, and a daughter against her
mother,"** and others, are accompanied by something that
refers us to the heavenly or true family, and mean no more than
the State's demand, in case of a collision between it and the
family, that we obey its commands.
The case of morality is like that
of the family. Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty
the conception, "morality." Morality is the "idea"
of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience;
on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and
do not fetter an "intellectual" man, a so-called independent,
a "freethinker."
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 115 |
The Protestant may put it as he
will, the "holy* Scripture," the "Word of God,"
still remains sacred** for him. He for whom this is no longer
"holy" has ceased to -- be a Protestant. But herewith
what is "ordained" in it, the public authorities appointed
by God, etc., also remain sacred for him. For him these things
remain indissoluble, unapproachable, "raised above all doubt";
and, as doubt, which in practice becomes a buffeting,
is what is most man's own, these things remain "raised"
above himself. He who cannot get away from them will
-- believe; for to believe in them is to be bound
to them. Through the fact that in Protestantism the faith
becomes a more inward faith, the servitude has also become
a more inward servitude; one has taken those sanctities up into
himself, entwined them with all his thoughts and endeavors, made
them a "matter of conscience", constructed
out of them a "sacred duty" for himself. Therefore
what the Protestant's conscience cannot get away from is sacred
to him, and conscientiousness most clearly designates
his character.
Protestantism has actually put a
man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The
spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every
motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter
of conscience," i. e., police business. This tearing
apart of man into "natural impulse" and "conscience"
(inner populace and inner police) is what constitutes the Protestant.
The reason of the Bible (in place of the Catholic "reason
of the
| 116 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
church") ranks as sacred, and this feeling and consciousness
that the word of the Bible is sacred is called -- conscience.
With this, then, sacredness is "laid upon one's conscience."
If one does not free himself from conscience, the consciousness
of the sacred, he may act unconscientiously indeed, but never
consciencelessly.
The Catholic finds himself satisfied
when he fulfills the command; the Protestant acts according
to his "best judgment and conscience." For the Catholic
is only a layman; the Protestant is himself a clergyman.*
Just this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the
Middle Ages, and at the same time its curse -- that the spiritual
became complete.
What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy
than a continuation of the sale of indulgences? Only that the
man who was relieved of his burden of sin now gained also an insight
into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how really his
sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case
(casuists) it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed.
The sale of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible,
and silenced every movement of conscience. All sensuality might
hold sway, if it was only purchased from the church. This favoring
of sensuality was continued by the Jesuits, while the strictly
moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite, praying Protestants
(as the true completers of Christianity, to be sure) acknowledged
only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially
the
*[Geistlicher,
literally "spiritual man."]
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 117 |
Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involuntary and
unconscious adherents within Protestantism itself, and saved us
from the subversion and extinction of sensuality. Nevertheless
the Protestant spirit spreads its dominion farther and farther;
and, as, beside it the "divine," the Jesuit spirit represents
only the "diabolic" which is inseparable from everything
divine, the latter can never assert itself alone, but must look
on and see how in France, e. g., the Philistinism of
Protestantism wins at last, and mind is on top.
Protestantism is usually complimented
on having brought the mundane into repute again, e. g.
marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mundane, the
secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism, which
lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures,
while the rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating
the mundane altogether, and that simply by hallowing
it. So marriage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming
sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament, where it only
receives its consecration from the church and so is unholy at
bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to
begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, also. Formerly
the pope gave consecration and his blessing to it and its princes,
now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without
needing the priest's blessing. The order of nature, or natural
law, was altogether hallowed as "God's ordinance." Hence
it is said e. g. in the Augsburg Confession, Art. II:
"So now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults
have
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118 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
wisely and rightly said: that man and woman should be with each
other is a natural law. Now, if it is a natural law, then
it is God's ordinance, therefore implanted in nature, and
therefore a divine law also." And is it anything
more than Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach pronounces
moral relations sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, instead,
for the sake of the spirit that dwells in them? "But
marriage as a free alliance of love, of course -- is sacred
of itself, by the nature of the union that is formed here.
That marriage alone is a religious one that
is a true one, that corresponds to the essence
of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral relations. They
are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where
they rank as religious of themselves. True friendship
is only where the limits of friendship are preserved
with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness
with which the believer guards the dignity of his God. Friendship
is and must be sacred for you, and property, and marriage,
and the good of every man, but sacred in and of itself."*
That is a very essential consideration.
In Catholicism the mundane can indeed be consecrated
or hallowed, but it is not sacred without this priestly
blessing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane relations
are sacred of themselves, sacred by their mere existence.
The Jesuit maxim, "the end hallows the means," corresponds
precisely to the consecration by which sanctity is bestowed. No
means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their relation to
the church,
*"Essence of Christianity, p. 403.
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 119 |
their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide was named
as such; if it was committed for the church's behoof, it could
be certain of being hallowed by the church, even if the hallowing
was not openly pronounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as
sacred; to the Catholic only that majesty which is consecrated
by the pontiff can rank as such; and it does rank as such to him
only because the pope, even though it be without a special act,
confers this sacredness on it once for all. If he retracted his
consecration, the king would be left only a "man of the world
or layman," an "unconsecrated" man, to the Catholic.
If the Protestant seeks to discover
a sacredness in the sensual itself, that he may then be linked
only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to banish the
sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, like the
rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic church
eliminated mundane marriage from its consecrated order, and withdrew
those who were its own from the mundane family; the Protestant
church declared marriage and family ties to be holy, and therefore
not unsuitable for its clergymen.
A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic,
hallow everything. He needs only, e. g., to say to himself:
"I as a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it more
zealously when I appease my desires properly; consequently I will
seduce this girl, have my enemy there poisoned, etc.; my end is
holy because it is a priest's, consequently it hallows the means."
For in the end it is still done for the benefit of the church.
Why should the Catholic priest shrink from handing Em-
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peror Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the -- church's welfare?
The genuinely churchly Protestants
inveighed against every "innocent pleasure," because
only the sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent. What they could
not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants had to reject
-- dancing, the theatre, ostentation (e. g. in the church),
and the like.
Compared with this puritanical Calvinism,
Lutheranism is again more on the religious, spiritual, track --
is more radical. For the former excludes at once a great number
of things as sensual and worldly, and purifies the church;
Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring spirit into
all things as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as
an essence in everything, and so to hallow everything
worldly. ("No one can forbid a kiss in honor." The spirit
of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he
declares himself such in some passage or other: he "wants
to remain a Lutheran") was completely successful in carrying
the idea through everything. In everything there is reason, i.e.
holy spirit, or "the real is rational." For the real
is in fact everything; as in each thing, e. g., each
lie, the truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute
evil, etc.
Great "works of mind"
were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone were
the true disciples and consummators of mind.
How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea roll its waves, the
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mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before the
uncontrollable. Can he keep off the impression that he
is helpless against this gigantic world? It is a fixed law
to which he must submit, it determines his fate. Now,
what did pre-Christian humanity work toward? Toward getting rid
of the irruptions of the destinies, not letting oneself be vexed
by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks
of nature indifferent, and not letting themselves be
affected by them. Horace utters the famous Nil admirari,
by which he likewise announces the indifference of the other,
the world; it is not to influence us, not to rouse our astonishment.
And that impavidum ferient ruinae expresses the very
same imperturbability as Ps. 46.3: "We do not fear,
though the earth should perish." In all this there is room
made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty, for
the Christian contempt of the world.
The imperturbable spirit
of "the wise man," with which the old world worked to
prepare its end, now underwent an inner perturbation
against which no ataraxia, no Stoic courage, was able to protect
it. The spirit, secured against all influence of the world, insensible
to its shocks and exalted above its attacks, admiring
nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of the world --
foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were
evolved in its own interior, and, after the mechanical shock
that comes from without had become ineffective, chemical tensions,
that agitate within, began their wonderful play.
In fact, ancient history ends with
this -- that I have struggled till I won my ownership
of the world.
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"All things have been delivered to me by my Father"
(Matt. 11. 27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable,
sacred, divine, for me; it is undeified, and now I treat
it so entirely as I please that, if I cared, I could exert on
it all miracle-working power, i. e., power of mind --
remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves up
and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything
possible, thinkable : "All things are possible to
him who believes."* I am the lord of the world,
mine is the "glory."** The world has become prosaic,
for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which
I dispose of as I (to wit, the mind) choose.
When I had exalted myself to be
the owner of the world, egoism had won its first complete
victory, had vanquished the world, had become worldless, and put
the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.
The first property, the first "glory,"
has been acquired!
But the lord of the world is not
yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his will: he is not lord
and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred, the "Holy
Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not able
to become "godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle
against the world, the medieval (Christian) struggle
is a struggle against self, the mind; the former against the outer
world, the latter against the inner world. The medieval man is
the
* Mark. 9. 23.
** [Herrlichkeit,
which, according to its derivation, means "lordliness."]
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man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative
All wisdom of the ancients is the
science of the world, all wisdom of the moderns is the
science of God.
The heathen (Jews included) got
through with the world; but now the thing was to get
through with self, the spirit, too; i.e. to become spiritless
or godless.
For almost two thousand years we
have been working at subjecting the Holy Spirit to ourselves,
and little by little we have torn off and trodden under foot many
bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising
anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost
its divinity, its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has
long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove; to be sure, it
no longer gladdens its saints alone, but lets itself be caught
by the laity too; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit of Man,
it remains still an alien spirit to me or you, still
far from becoming our unrestricted property, which we
dispose of at our pleasure. However, one thing certainly happened,
and visibly guided the progress of post-Christian history: this
one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy Spirit more human,
and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it came
about that at last it could be conceived as the "spirit of
humanity," and, under different expressions like "idea
of humanity, mankind, humaneness, general philanthropy,"
appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more accessible.
Would not one think that now everybody
could possess the Holy Spirit, take up into himself the idea
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of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in himself?
No, the spirit is not stripped of
its holiness and robbed of its unapproachableness, is not accessible
to us, not our property; for the spirit of humanity is not my
spirit. My ideal it may be, and as a thought I call it
mine; the thought of humanity is my property, and I prove
this sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views,
and shaping it today so, tomorrow otherwise; we represent it to
ourselves in the most manifold ways. But it is at the same time
an entail, which I cannot alienate nor get rid of.
Among many transformations, the
Holy Spirit became in time the "absolute idea",
which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas
of philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc.
But can I call the idea my property
if it is the idea of humanity, and can I consider the Spirit as
vanquished if I am to serve it, "sacrifice myself" to
it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world
only when it had broken the world's overpoweringness and "divinity,"
recognized the world's powerlessness and "vanity."
The case with regard to the spirit
corresponds. When I have degraded it to a spook and its
control over me to a cranky notion, then it is to be
looked upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity,
and then I use it, as one uses nature at pleasure
without scruple.
The "nature of the case,"
the "concept of the relationship," is to guide me in
dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a
concept of the
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case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept
that one forms of the case! As if a relation which we enter into
was not, by the uniqueness of those who enter into it, itself
unique! As if it depended on how others stamp it! But, as people
separated the "essence of Man" from the real man, and
judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action
from him, and appraise it by "human value." Concepts
are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts
to rule. This is the religious world, to which Hegel
gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense
and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based
dogmatic. Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real
man, i.e. I, am compelled to live according to these
conceptual laws. Can there be a more grievous dominion of law,
and did not Christianity confess at the very beginning that it
meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? ("Not
a letter of the law shall be lost!")
Liberalism simply brought other
concepts on the carpet; human instead of divine, political instead
of ecclesiastical, "scientific" instead of doctrinal,
or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of
"crude dogmas" and precepts.
Now nothing but mind rules
in the world. An innumerable multitude of concepts buzz about
in people's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor to get
further? They are negating these concepts to put new ones in their
place! They are saying: "You form a false concept of right,
of the State, of man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc.;
the concept of