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126 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
right, etc., is rather that one which we now set up." Thus
the confusion of concepts moves forward.
The history of the world has dealt
cruelly with us, and the spirit has obtained an almighty power.
You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could protect
your naked foot, my salt, by which your potatoes would become
palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would relieve
you of all need at once; you must not reach out after them. Man
is to recognize the independence of all these and innumerable
other things: they are to rank in his mind as something that cannot
be seized or approached, are to be kept away from him. He must
have regard for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches out
his fingers desirously; we call that "being light-fingered!"
How beggarly little is left us,
yes, how really nothing! Everything has been removed, we must
not venture on anything unless it is given us; we continue to
live only by the grace of the giver. You must not pick
up a pin, unless indeed you have got leave to do so.
And got it from whom? From respect! Only when this lets
you have it as property, only when you can respect it
as property, only then may you take it. And again, you are not
to conceive a thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that
should have their warrant in you alone, instead of receiving it
from morality or reason or humanity. Happy unconstraint
of the desirous man, how mercilessly people have tried to slay
you on the altar of constraint!
But around the altar rise the arches
of a church,
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 127 |
and its walls keep moving further and further out. What they enclose
is sacred. You can no longer get to it, no longer touch
it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you wander round
about these walls in search of the little that is profane, and
the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended.
Soon that church will embrace the whole world, and you be driven
out to the extreme edge; another step, and the world of the
sacred has conquered: you sink into the abyss. Therefore
take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer in the
profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in
through the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you devour
the sacred, you have made it your own! Digest the
sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!
The ancients and the moderns having
been presented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the free
were here to be described in a third division as independent and
distinct. This is not so. The free are only the more modern and
most modern among the "moderns," and are put in a separate
division merely because they belong to the present, and what is
present, above all, claims our attention here. I give "the
free" only as a translation of "the liberals,"
but must with regard to the concept of freedom (as in general
with regard to so many other things whose anticipatory introduction
cannot be avoided) refer to what comes later.
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128 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
After the chalice of so-called absolute
monarchy had been drained down to the dregs, in the eighteenth
century people became aware that their drink did not taste human
-- too clearly aware not to begin to crave a different cup. Since
our fathers were "human beings" after all, they at last
desired also to be regarded as such.
Whoever sees in us something else
than human beings, in him we likewise will not see a human being,
but an inhuman being, and will meet him as an unhuman being; on
the other hand, whoever recognizes us as human beings and protects
us against the danger of being treated inhumanly, him we will
honor as our true protector and guardian.
Let us then hold together and protect
the man in each other; then we find the necessary protection in
our holding together, and in ourselves, those who
hold together, a fellowship of those who know their human
dignity and hold together as "human beings." Our holding
together is the State; we who hold together are the nation.
In our being together as nation
or State we are only human beings. How we deport ourselves in
other respects as individuals, and what self-seeking impulses
we may there succumb to, belongs solely to our private
life; our public or State life is a purely human one.
Everything un-human or "egoistic" that clings to us
is degraded to a "private matter" and we distinguish
the State definitely from "civil society," which is
the sphere of "egoism's" activity.
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 129 |
The true man is the nation, but
the individual is always an egoist. Therefore strip off your individuality
or isolation wherein dwells discord and egoistic inequality, and
consecrate yourselves wholly to the true man -- the nation or
the State. Then you will rank as men, and have all that is man's;
the State, the true man, will entitle you to what belongs to it,
and give you the "rights of man"; Man gives you his
rights!
So runs the speech of the commonalty.
The commonalty* is nothing else
than the thought that the State is all in all, the true man, and
that the individual's human value consists in being a citizen
of the State. In being a good citizen he seeks his highest honor;
beyond that he knows nothing higher than at most the antiquated
-- "being a good Christian."
The commonalty developed itself
in the struggle against the privileged classes, by whom it was
cavalierly treated as "third estate" and confounded
with the canaille. In other words, up to this time the
State had recognized caste.** The son of a nobleman was selected
for posts to which the most distinguished commoners aspired in
vain. The civic feeling revolted against this. No more distinction,
no giving preference to persons, no difference of classes! Let
all be alike! No separate interest is to be pursued longer,
but the general interest of all. The State is
*[Or "citizenhood." The word [das
Buergertum] means either the condition
of being a citizen, or citizen-like principles, of the body of
citizens or of the middle or business class, the bourgeoisie.]
**[Man hatte im Staate "die ungleiche
Person angesehen," there had been
"respect of unequal persons" in the State.]
|
THE EGO AND HIS 130 |
to be a fellowship of free and equal men, and every one is to
devote himself to the "welfare of the whole," to be
dissolved in the State, to make the State his end and
ideal. State! State! so ran the general cry, and thenceforth people
sought for the "right form of State," the best constitution,
and so the State in its best conception. The thought of the State
passed into all hearts and awakened enthusiasm; to serve it, this
mundane god, became the new divine service and worship. The properly
political epoch had dawned. To serve the State or the
nation became the highest ideal, the State's interest the highest
interest, State service (for which one does not by any means need
to be an official) the highest honor.
So then the separate interests and
personalities had been scared away, and sacrifice for the State
had become the shibboleth. One must give up himself,
and live only for the State. One must act "disinterestedly,"
not want to benefit himself, but the State. Hereby the
latter has become the true person. before whom the individual
personality vanishes; not I live, but it lives in me. Therefore,
in comparison with the former self-seeking, this was unselfishness
and impersonality itself. Before this god -- State --
all egoism vanished, and before it all were equal; they were without
any other distinction -- men, nothing but men.
The Revolution took fire from the
inflammable material of property. The government needed
money. Now it must prove the proposition that it is absolute,
and so master of all property, sole proprietor; it must take
to itself its money, which was only in the possession
of the subjects, not their property. Instead of
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 131 |
this, it calls States-general, to have this money granted
to it. The shrinking from strictly logical action destroyed the
illusion of an absolute government; he who must have
something "granted" to him cannot be regarded as absolute.
The subjects recognized that they were real proprietors,
and that it was their money that was demanded. Those
who had hitherto been subjects attained the consciousness that
they were proprietors. Bailly depicts this in a few words:
"If you cannot dispose of my property without my assent,
how much less can you of my person, of all that concerns my mental
and social position? All this is my property, like the piece of
land that I till; and I have a right, an interest, to make the
laws myself." Bailly's words sound, certainly, as if every
one was a proprietor now. However, instead of the government,
instead of the prince, the -- nation now became proprietor
and master. From this time on the ideal is spoken of as -- "popular
liberty" -- "a free people," etc.
As early as July 8, 1789, the declaration
of the bishop of Autun and Barrere took away all semblance of
the importance of each and every individual in legislation;
it showed the complete powerlessness of the constituents;
the majority of the representatives has become master.
When on July 9 the plan for division of the work on the constitution
is proposed, Mirabeau remarks that "the government has only
power, no rights; only in the people is the source of
all right to be found." On July 16 this same Mirabeau
exclaims: "Is not the people the source of all power?"
The source, therefore, of all right, and the source of
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132 THE EGO AND HIS |
all -- power!* By the way, here the substance of "right"
becomes visible; it is -- power. "He who has power
has right."
The commonalty is the heir of the
privileged classes. In fact, the rights of the barons, which were
taken from them as "usurpations," only passed over to
the commonalty. For the commonalty was now called the "nation."
"Into the hands of the nation" all prerogatives
were given back. Thereby they ceased to be "prerogatives":**
they became "rights."*** From this time on the nation
demands tithes, compulsory services; it has inherited the lord's
court, the rights of vert and venison, the -- serfs. The night
of August 4 was the death-night of privileges or "prerogatives"
(cities, communes, boards of magistrates, were also privileged,
furnished with prerogatives and seigniorial rights), and ended
with the new morning of "right," the "rights of
the State," the "rights of the nation."
The monarch in the person of the
"royal master" had been a paltry monarch compared with
this new monarch, the "sovereign nation." This monarchy
was a thousand times severer, stricter, and more consistent. Against
the new monarch there was no longer any right, any privilege at
all; how limited the "absolute king" of the ancien
regime looks in comparison! The Revolution effected the transformation
of limited monarchy into absolute monarchy.
From this time on every right that is not conferred by this monarch
is an "assumption"; but every prerog-
*[Gewalt,
a word which is also commonly used like the English "violence,"
denoting especially unlawful violence.]
**[Vorrechte]
***[Rechte]
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 133 |
ative that he bestows, a "right." The times demanded
absolute royalty, absolute monarchy; therefore down fell
that so-called absolute royalty which had so little understood
how to become absolute that it remained limited by a thousand
little lords.
What was longed for and striven
for through thousands of years -- to wit, to find that absolute
lord beside whom no other lords and lordlings any longer exist
to clip his power -- the bourgeoisie has brought to pass.
It has revealed the Lord who alone confers "rightful titles,"
and without whose warrant nothing is justified. "So
now we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there
is no other god save the one."*
Against right one can no
longer, as against a right, come forward with the assertion that
it is "a wrong." One can say now only that it is a piece
of nonsense, an illusion. If one called it wrong, one would have
to set up another right in opposition to it, and measure
it by this. If, on the contrary, one rejects right as such, right
in and of itself, altogether, then one also rejects the concept
of wrong, and dissolves the whole concept of right (to which the
concept of wrong belongs).
What is the meaning of the doctrine
that we all enjoy "equality of political rights"? Only
this -- that the State has no regard for my person, that to it
I, like every other, am only a man, without having another significance
that commands its deference. I do not command its deference as
an aristocrat, a
|
134 THE EGO AND HIS |
nobleman's son, or even as heir of an official whose office belongs
to me by inheritance (as in the Middle Ages countships, etc.,
and later under absolute royalty, where hereditary offices occur).
Now the State has an innumerable multitude of rights to give away,
e. g. the right to lead a battalion, a company, etc.;
the right to lecture at a university, and so forth; it has them
to give away because they are its own, i.e., State rights
or "political" rights. Withal, it makes no difference
to it to whom it gives them, if the receiver only fulfills the
duties that spring from the delegated rights. To it we are all
of us all right, and -- equal -- one worth no more and
no less than another. It is indifferent to me who receives the
command of the army, says the sovereign State, provided the grantee
understands the matter properly. "Equality of political rights"
has, consequently, the meaning that every one may acquire every
right that the State has to give away, if only he fulfills the
conditions annexed thereto -- conditions which are to be sought
only in the nature of the particular right, not in a predilection
for the person (persona grata): the nature of the right
to become an officer brings with it, e. g. the necessity
that one possess sound limbs and a suitable measure of knowledge,
but it does not have noble birth as a condition; if, on the other
hand, even the most deserving commoner could not reach that station,
then an inequality of political rights would exist. Among the
States of today one has carried out that maxim of equality more,
another less.
The monarchy of estates (so I will
call absolute royalty, the time of the kings before the revolution)
kept
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 135 |
the individual in dependence on a lot of little monarchies. These
were fellowships (societies) like the guilds, the nobility, the
priesthood, the burgher class, cities, communes. Everywhere the
individual must regard himself first as a member of this
little society, and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit,
the esprit de corps, as his monarch. More, e. g.
than the individual nobleman himself must his family, the honor
of his race, be to him. Only by means of his corporation,
his estate, did the individual have relation to the greater corporation,
the State -- as in Catholicism the individual deals with God only
through the priest. To this the third estate now, showing courage
to negate itself as an estate, made an end. It decided
no longer to be and be called an estate beside other
estates, but to glorify and generalize itself into the "nation."
Hereby it created a much more complete and absolute monarchy,'
and the entire previously ruling principle of estates,
the principle of little monarchies inside the great, went down.
Therefore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a revolution
against the first two privileged estates. It was against the little
monarchies of estates in general. But, if the estates and their
despotism were broken (the king too, we know, was only a king
of estates, not a citizen-king), the individuals freed from the
inequality of estate were left. Were they now really to be without
estate and "out of gear," no longer bound by any estate,
without a general bond of union? No, for the third estate had
declared itself the nation only in order not to remain an estate
beside other estates, but to become the sole estate.
This sole estate
|
136 THE EGO AND HIS |
is the nation, the "State." What had the individual
now become? A political Protestant, for he had come into immediate
connection with his God, the State. He was no longer, as an aristocrat,
in the monarchy of the nobility; as a mechanic, in the monarchy
of the guild; but he, like all, recognized and acknowledged only
-- one lord, the State, as whose servants they all received
the equal title of honor, "citizen."
The bourgeoisie is the
aristocracy of DESERT; its motto, "Let
desert wear its crowns." It fought against the "lazy"
aristocracy, for according to it (the industrious aristocracy
acquired by industry and desert) it is not the "born"
who is free, nor yet I who am free either, but the "deserving"
man, the honest servant (of his king; of the State; of
the people in constitutional States). Through service
one acquires freedom, i. e., acquires "deserts,"
even if one served -- mammon. One must deserve well of the State,
i.e. of the principle of the State, of its moral spirit.
He who serves this spirit of the State is a good citizen,
let him live to whatever honest branch of industry he will. In
its eyes innovators practice a "breadless art." Only
the "shopkeeper" is "practical," and the spirit
that chases after public offices is as much the shopkeeping spirit
as is that which tries in trade to feather its nest or otherwise
to become useful to itself and anybody else.
But, if the deserving count as the
free (for what does the comfortable commoner, the faithful office-holder,
lack of that freedom that his heart desires?), then the "servants"
are the -- free. The obedient
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 137 |
servant is the free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the
sense of the bourgeoisie, and its poet, Goethe, as well
as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence
of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world.
He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to
it," has the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was
-- reason, that which, like State and Church, gives --
general laws, and puts the individual man in irons by the thought
of humanity. It determines what is "true," according
to which one must then act. No more "rational" people
than the honest servants, who primarily are called good citizens
as servants of the State.
Be rich as Croesus or poor as Job
-- the State of the commonalty leaves that to your option; but
only have a "good disposition." This it demands of you,
and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all. Therefore
it will keep you from "evil promptings," holding the
"ill-disposed" in check and silencing their inflammatory
discourses under censors' canceling-marks or press-penalties and
behind dungeon walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint people
of "good disposition" as censors, and in every way have
a moral influence exerted on you by "well-disposed
and well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf to evil
promptings, then it opens your ears again all the more diligently
to good promptings.
With the time of the bourgeoisie
begins that of liberalism. People want to see what is
"rational," "suited to the times," etc., established
everywhere. The following definition of liberalism, which is sup-
|
138 THE EGO AND HIS |
posed to be pronounced in its honor, characterizes it completely:
"Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason,
applied to our existing relations."* Its aim is a "rational
order," a "moral behavior," a "limited freedom,"
not anarchy, lawlessness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then
the person succumbs. Art has for a long time not only
acknowledged the ugly, but considered the ugly as necessary to
its existence, and takes it up into itself; it needs the villain.
In the religious domain, too, the extremest liberals go so far
that they want to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen
-- i. e., the religious villain; they want to see no
more of trials for heresy. But against the "rational law"
no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest
penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and realization of
the person or of me, but of reason -- i.e. a dominion
of reason, a dominion. The liberals are zealots, not
exactly for the faith, for God, but certainly for reason,
their master. They brook no lack of breeding, and therefore no
self-development and self- determination; they play the guardian
as effectively as the most absolute rulers.
"Political liberty," what
are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual's independence
of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the individual's
subjection in the State and to the State's laws. But
why "liberty"? Because one is no longer separated from
the State by intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate
relation to it; because one is
*"Ein und zwanzig Bogen",
p. 12
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 139 |
a -- citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king
as a person, but only in his quality as "supreme head of
the State." Political liberty, this fundamental doctrine
of liberalism, is nothing but a second phase of -- Protestantism,
and runs quite parallel with "religious liberty."* Or
would it perhaps be right to understand by the latter an independence
of religion? Anything but that. Independence of intermediaries
is all that it is intended to express, independence of mediating
priests, the abolition of the "laity," and so, direct
and immediate relation to religion or to God. Only on the supposition
that one has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion; freedom
of religion does not mean being without religion, but inwardness
of faith, unmediated intercourse with God. To him who is "religiously
free" religion is an affair of the heart, it is to him his
own affair, it is to him a "sacredly serious matter."
So, too, to the "politically free" man the State is
a sacredly serious matter; it is his heart's affair, his chief
affair, his own affair.
Political liberty means that the
polis, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion
is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is
free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion,
from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not
mean my liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules
and subjugates me; it means that one of my despots, like
State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience,
these despots, make me a slave,
*Louis Blanc says ("Histoire des dix Ans", I, p. 138) of the time of the Restoration: "Le protestantisme devint le fond des idées et des moeurs."
|
140 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
and their liberty is my slavery. That in this they necessarily
follow the principle, "the end hallows the means," is
self-evident. If the welfare of the State is the end, war is a
hallowed means; if justice is the State's end, homicide is a hallowed
means, and is called by its sacred name, "execution";
the sacred State hallows everything that is serviceable
to it.
"Individual liberty,"
over which civic liberalism keeps jealous watch, does not by any
means signify a completely free self-determination, by which actions
become altogether mine, but only independence of persons.
Individually free is he who is responsible to no man.
Taken in this sense -- and we are not allowed to understand it
otherwise -- not only the ruler is individually free, i.e.,
irresponsible toward men ("before God," we
know, he acknowledges himself responsible), but all who are "responsible
only to the law." This kind of liberty was won through the
revolutionary movement of the century -- to wit, independence
of arbitrary will, or tel est notre plaisir. Hence the
constitutional prince must himself be stripped of all personality,
deprived of all individual decision, that he may not as a person,
as an individual man, violate the "individual liberty"
of others. The personal will of the ruler has disappeared
in the constitutional prince; it is with a right feeling, therefore,
that absolute princes resist this. Nevertheless these very ones
profess to be in the best sense "Christian princes."
For this, however, they must become a purely spiritual
power, as the Christian is subject only to spirit ("God
is spirit"). The purely spiritual power is consistently
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 141 |
represented only by the constitutional prince, he who, without
any personal significance, stands there spiritualized to the degree
that he can rank as a sheer, uncanny "spirit," as an
idea. The constitutional king is the truly Christian
king, the genuine, consistent carrying-out of the Christian principle.
In the constitutional monarchy individual dominion -- i.e.
a real ruler that wills -- has found its end; here, therefore,
individual liberty prevails, independence of every individual
dictator, of everyone who could dictate to me with a tel est
notre plaisir. It is the completed Christian State-life,
a spiritualized life.
The behavior of the commonalty is
liberal through and through. Every personal
invasion of another's sphere revolts the civic sense; if the citizen
sees that one is dependent on the humor, the pleasure, the will
of a man as individual (i.e. as not as authorized by
a "higher power"), at once he brings his liberalism
to the front and shrieks about "arbitrariness." In fine,
the citizen asserts his freedom from what is called orders
(ordonnance): "No one has any business to give
me -- orders!" Orders carries the idea that what I am
to do is another man's will, while law does not express a personal
authority of another. The liberty of the commonalty is liberty
or independence from the will of another person, so-called personal
or individual liberty; for being personally free means being only
so free that no other person can dispose of mine, or that what
I may or may not do does not depend on the personal decree of
another. The liberty of the press, e. g., is such a liberty
of liberalism, liberalism fighting only against the coercion of
the cen-
|
142 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
sorship as that of personal wilfulness, but otherwise showing
itself extremely inclined and willing to tyrannize over the press
by "press laws"; i.e. the civic liberals want
liberty of writing for themselves; for, as they are law-abiding,
their writings will not bring them under the law. Only liberal
matter, i.e. only lawful matter, is to be allowed to
be printed; otherwise the "press laws" threaten "press-penalties."
If one sees personal liberty assured, one does not notice at all
how, if a new issue happens to arise, the most glaring unfreedom
becomes dominant. For one is rid of orders indeed, and
"no one has any business to give us orders," but one
has become so much the more submissive to the -- law.
One is enthralled now in due legal form.
In the citizen-State there are only
"free people," who are compelled to thousands
of things (e. g. to deference, to a confession of faith,
etc.). But what does that amount to? Why, it is only the -- State,
the law, not any man, that compels them!
What does the commonalty mean by
inveighing against every personal order, i.e. every order
not founded on the "cause," on "reason"? It
is simply fighting in the interest of the "cause"* against
the dominion of "persons"! But the mind's cause is the
rational, good, lawful, etc.; that is the "good cause."
The commonalty wants an impersonal ruler.
Furthermore, if the principle is
this, that only the cause is to rule man -- to wit, the cause
of morality,
*[Sache, which commonly means thing].
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 143 |
the cause of legality, etc., then no personal balking of one by
the other may be authorized either (as formerly, e. g.
the commoner was balked of the aristocratic offices, the aristocrat
of common mechanical trades, etc.); free competition
must exist. Only through the thing* can one balk another (e.
g. the rich man balking the impecunious man by money, a thing),
not as a person. Henceforth only one lordship, the lordship of
the State, is admitted; personally no one is any longer
lord of another. Even at birth the children belong to the State,
and to the parents only in the name of the State, which e.
g. does not allow infanticide, demands their baptism etc.
But all the State's children, furthermore,
are of quite equal account in its eyes ("civic or political
equality"), and they may see to it themselves how they get
along with each other; they may compete.
Free competition means nothing else
than that every one can present himself, assert himself, fight,
against another. Of course the feudal party set itself against
this, as its existence depended on an absence of competition.
The contests in the time of the Restoration in France had no other
substance than this -- that the bourgeoisie was struggling
for free competition, and the feudalists were seeking to bring
back the guild system.
Now, free competition has won, and
against the guild system it had to win. (See below for the further
discussion.)
If the Revolution ended in a reaction,
this only
|
144 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
showed what the Revolution really was. For every effort
arrives at reaction when it comes to discreet reflection,
and storms forward in the original action only so long as it is
an intoxication, an "indiscretion." "Discretion"
will always be the cue of the reaction, because discretion sets
limits, and liberates what was really wanted, i. e.,
the principle, from the initial "unbridledness" and
"unrestrainedness." Wild young fellows, bumptious students,
who set aside all considerations, are really Philistines,
since with them, as with the latter, considerations form the substance
of their conduct; only that as swaggerers they are mutinous against
considerations and in negative relations to them, but as Philistines,
later, they give themselves up to considerations and have positive
relations to them. In both cases all their doing and thinking
turns upon "considerations," but the Philistine is reactionary
in relation to the student; he is the wild fellow come to discreet
reflection, as the latter is the unreflecting Philistine. Daily
experience confirms the truth of this transformation, and shows
how the swaggerers turn to Philistines in turning gray.
So, too, the so-called reaction
in Germany gives proof that it was only the discreet
continuation of the warlike jubilation of liberty.
The Revolution was not directed
against the established, but against the establishment
in question, against a particular establishment.
It did away with this ruler, not with the ruler
-- on the contrary, the French were ruled most inexorably; it
killed the old vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous
ones a securely established position, i. e., it simply
set
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 145 |
virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, are on their
part distinguished from each other only as a wild young fellow
from a Philistine.) Etc.
To this day the revolutionary principle
has gone no farther than to assail only one or another
particular establishment, i.e. be reformatory.
Much as may be improved, strongly as "discreet progress"
may be adhered to, always there is only a new master
set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a -- building
up. We are still at the distinction of the young Philistine from
the old one. The Revolution began in bourgeois fashion
with the uprising of the third estate, the middle class; in bourgeois
fashion it dries away. It was not the individual man --
and he alone is Man -- that became free, but the citizen,
the citoyen, the political man, who for that
very reason is not Man but a specimen of the human species,
and more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a free
citizen.
In the Revolution it was not the
individual who acted so as to affect the world's history,
but a people; the nation, the sovereign nation,
wanted to effect everything. A fancied I, an idea, e.
g. the nation is, appears acting; the individuals contribute
themselves as tools of this idea, and act as "citizens."
The commonalty has its power, and
at the same time its limits, in the fundamental law of the
State, in a charter, in a legitimate* or "just"**
prince who himself is guided, and rules, according to "rational
laws," in short, in legality. The period of the
*[Or "righteous." German rechtlich].
**[gerecht]
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146 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
bourgeoisie is ruled by the British spirit of legality.
An assembly of provincial estates, e. g. is ever recalling
that its authorization goes only so and so far, and that it is
called at all only through favor and can be thrown out again through
disfavor. It is always reminding itself of its -- vocation.
It is certainly not to be denied that my father begot me; but,
now that I am once begotten, surely his purposes in begetting
do not concern me a bit and, whatever he may have called
me to, I do what I myself will. Therefore even a called assembly
of estates, the French assembly in the beginning of the Revolution,
recognized quite rightly that it was independent of the caller.
It existed, and would have been stupid if it did not
avail itself of the right of existence, but fancied itself dependent
as on a father. The called one no longer has to ask "what
did the caller want when he created me?" but "what do
I want after I have once followed the call?" Not the caller,
not the constituents, not the charter according to which their
meeting was called out, nothing will be to him a sacred, inviolable
power. He is authorized for everything that is in his
power; he will know no restrictive "authorization,"
will not want to be loyal. This, if any such thing could
be expected from chambers at all, would give a completely egoistic
chamber, severed from all navel-string and without consideration.
But chambers are always devout, and therefore one cannot be surprised
if so much half-way or undecided,
i. e., hypocritical, "egoism" parades in them.
The members of the estates are to
remain within the limits that are traced for them by
the charter, by the
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 147 |
king's will, etc. If they will not or can not do that, then they
are to "step out." What dutiful man could act otherwise,
could put himself, his conviction, and his will as the first
thing? Who could be so immoral as to want to assert himself,
even if the body corporate and everything should go to ruin over
it? People keep carefully within the limits of their authorization;
of course one must remain within the limits of his power
anyhow, because no one can do more than he can. "My power,
or, if it be so, powerlessness, be my sole limit, but authorizations
only restraining -- precepts? Should I profess this all-subversive
view? No, I am a -- law-abiding citizen!"
The commonalty professes a morality
which is most closely connected with its essence. The first demand
of this morality is to the effect that one should carry on a solid
business, an honourable trade, lead a moral life. Immoral, to
it, is the sharper, the, demirep, the thief, robber, and murderer,
the gamester, the penniless man without a situation, the frivolous
man. The doughty commoner designates the feeling against these
"immoral" people as his "deepest indignation."
All these lack settlement, the solid
quality of business, a solid, seemly life, a fixed income, etc.;
in short, they belong, because their existence does not rest on
a secure basis to the dangerous "individuals or
isolated persons," to the dangerous proletariat;
they are "individual bawlers" who offer no "guarantee"
and have "nothing to lose," and so nothing to risk.
The forming of family ties, e. g., binds a man:
he who is bound furnishes security, can be taken hold of; not
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148 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
so the street-walker. The gamester stakes everything on the game,
ruins himself and others -- no guarantee. All who appear to the
commoner suspicious, hostile, and dangerous might be comprised
under the name "vagabonds"; every vagabondish way of
living displeases him. For there are intellectual vagabonds too,
to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their fathers seems too
cramped and oppressive for them to be willing to satisfy themselves
with the limited space any more: instead of keeping within the
limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable
truth what furnishes comfort and tranquillity to thousands, they
overlap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their
impudent criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating
vagabonds. They form the class of the unstable, restless, changeable,
i.e. of the prolétariat, and, if they
give voice to their unsettled nature, are called "unruly
fellows."
Such a broad sense has the so-called
proletariat, or pauperism. How much one would err if
one believed the commonalty to be desirous of doing away with
poverty (pauperism) to the best of its ability! On the contrary,
the good citizen helps himself with the incomparably comforting
conviction that "the fact is that the good things of fortune
are unequally divided and will always remain so -- according to
God's wise decree." The poverty which surrounds him in every
alley does not disturb the true commoner further than that at
most he clears his account with it by throwing an alms, or finds
work and food for an "honest and serviceable" fellow.
But so much the more does he feel his quiet enjoyment clouded
by innovating and
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 149 |
discontented poverty, by those poor who no longer behave
quietly and endure, but begin to run wild and become
restless. Lock up the vagabond, thrust the breeder of unrest into
the darkest dungeon! He wants to "arouse dissatisfaction
and incite people against existing institutions" in the State
-- stone him, stone him!
But from these identical discontented
ones comes a reasoning somewhat as follows: It need not make any
difference to the "good citizens" who protects them
and their principles, whether an absolute king or a constitutional
one, a republic, if only they are protected. And what is their
principle, whose protector they always "love"? Not that
of labor; not that of birth either. But, that of mediocrity,
of the golden mean: a little birth and a little labor, i.
e., an interest-bearing possession. Possession is
here the fixed, the given, inherited (birth); interest-drawing
is the exertion about it (labor); laboring capital, therefore.
Only no immoderation, no ultra, no radicalism! Right of birth
certainly, but only hereditary possessions; labor certainly, yet
little or none at all of one's own, but labor of capital and of
the -- subject laborers.
If an age is imbued with an error,
some always derive advantage from the error, while the rest have
to suffer from it. In the Middle Ages the error was general among
Christians that the church must have all power, or the supreme
lordship on earth; the hierarchs believed in this "truth"
not less than the laymen, and both were spellbound in the like
error. But by it the hierarchs had the advantage of power,
| 150 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
the laymen had to suffer subjection. However, as the
saying goes, "one learns wisdom by suffering"; and so
the laymen at last learned wisdom and no longer believed in the
medieval "truth." -- A like relation exists between
the commonalty and the laboring class. Commoner and laborer believe
in the "truth" of money; they who do not possess
it believe in it no less than those who possess it: the laymen,
therefore, as well as the priests.
"Money governs the world"
is the keynote of the civic epoch. A destitute aristocrat and
a destitute laborer, as "starvelings," amount to nothing
so far as political consideration is concerned; birth and labor
do not do it, but money brings consideration.*
The possessors rule, but the State trains up from the destitute
its "servants," to whom, in proportion as they are to
rule (govern) in its name, it gives money (a salary).
I receive everything from the State.
Have I anything without the State's assent? What I have
without this it takes from me as soon as it discovers
the lack of a "legal title." Do I not, therefore, have
everything through its grace, its assent?
On this alone, on the legal
title, the commonalty rests. The commoner is what he is through
the protection of the State, through the State's grace.
He would necessarily be afraid of losing everything if the State's
power were broken.
But how is it with him who has nothing
to lose,
*[das Geld gibt Geltung.]