[Pg v]

[Pg vi]

[Pg vii]

For more than twenty years I have entertained the design of publishing an English translation of "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum." When I formed this design, the number of English-speaking persons who had ever heard of the book was very limited. The memory of Max Stirner had been virtually extinct for an entire generation. But in the last two decades there has been a remarkable revival of interest both in the book and in its author. It began in this country with a discussion in the pages of the Anarchist periodical, "Liberty," in which Stirner's thought was clearly expounded and vigorously championed by Dr. James L. Walker, who adopted for this discussion the pseudonym "Tak Kak." At that time Dr. Walker was the chief editorial writer for the Galveston "News." Some years later he became a practising physician in Mexico, where he died in 1904. A series of essays which he began in an Anarchist periodical, "Egoism," and which he lived to complete, was published after his death in a small volume, "The Philosophy of Egoism." It is a very able and convincing exposition of Stirner's teachings, and almost the only one that exists in the English language. But the chief instrument in the revival of Stirnerism was and is the German poet, John Henry Mackay. Very early in his career he met Stirner's name in Lange's "History of Materialism," and was moved thereby to read his book. The work made such an impression on him that he resolved to devote a portion of his life to the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the lost and forgotten genius. Through years of toil and correspondence and travel, and triumphing over tremendous obstacles, [Pg viii] he carried his task to completion, and his biography of Stirner appeared in Berlin in 1898. It is a tribute to the thoroughness of Mackay's work that since its publication not one important fact about Stirner has been discovered by anybody. During his years of investigation Mackay's advertising for information had created a new interest in Stirner, which was enhanced by the sudden fame of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, an author whose intellectual kinship with Stirner has been a subject of much controversy. "Der Einzige," previously obtainable only in an expensive form, was included in Philipp Reclam's Universal-Bibliothek, and this cheap edition has enjoyed a wide and ever-increasing circulation. During the last dozen years the book has been translated twice into French, once into Italian, once into Russian, and possibly into other languages. The Scandinavian critic, Brandes, has written on Stirner. A large and appreciative volume, entitled "L'Individualisme Anarchiste: Max Stirner," from the pen of Prof. Victor Basch, of the University of Rennes, has appeared in Paris. Another large and sympathetic volume, "Max Stirner," written by Dr. Anselm Ruest, has been published very recently in Berlin. Dr. Paul Eltzbacher, in his work, "Der Anarchismus," gives a chapter to Stirner, making him one of the seven typical Anarchists, beginning with William Godwin and ending with Tolstoi, of whom his book treats. There is hardly a notable magazine or a review on the Continent that has not given at least one leading article to the subject of Stirner. Upon the initiative of Mackay and with the aid of other admirers a suitable stone has been placed above the philosopher's previously-neglected grave, and a memorial tablet upon the house in Berlin where he died in 1856; and this spring another is to be placed upon the house in Bayreuth where he was born in 1806. As a result of these various efforts, and though but little has been written about Stirner in the English language, his name is now known at least to thousands in America and England where formerly it was known only to hundreds. [Pg ix] Therefore conditions are now more favorable for the reception of this volume than they were when I formed the design of publishing it, more than twenty years ago.

The problem of securing a reasonably good translation (for in the case of a work presenting difficulties so enormous it was idle to hope for an adequate translation) was finally solved by entrusting the task to Steven T. Byington, a scholar of remarkable attainments, whose specialty is philology, and who is also one of the ablest workers in the propaganda of Anarchism. But, for further security from error, it was agreed with Mr. Byington that his translation should have the benefit of revision by Dr. Walker, the most thorough American student of Stirner, and by Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm, who are not only sympathetic with Stirner, but familiar with the history of his time, and who enjoy a knowledge of English and German that makes it difficult to decide which is their native tongue. It was also agreed that, upon any point of difference between the translator and his revisers which consultation might fail to solve, the publisher should decide. This method has been followed, and in a considerable number of instances it has fallen to me to make a decision. It is only fair to say, therefore, that the responsibility for special errors and imperfections properly rests on my shoulders, whereas, on the other hand, the credit for whatever general excellence the translation may possess belongs with the same propriety to Mr. Byington and his coadjutors. One thing is certain: its defects are due to no lack of loving care and pains. And I think I may add with confidence, while realizing fully how far short of perfection it necessarily falls, that it may safely challenge comparison with the translations that have been made into other languages.

In particular, I am responsible for the admittedly erroneous rendering of the title. "The Ego and His Own" is not an exact English equivalent of "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum." But then, there is no exact English equivalent. Perhaps the nearest is "The Unique One and His Property." But the unique one is [Pg x] not strictly the Einzige, for uniqueness connotes not only singleness but an admirable singleness, while Stirner's Einzigkeit is admirable in his eyes only as such, it being no part of the purpose of his book to distinguish a particular Einzigkeit as more excellent than another. Moreover, "The Unique One and His Property" has no graces to compel our forgiveness of its slight inaccuracy. It is clumsy and unattractive. And the same objections may be urged with still greater force against all the other renderings that have been suggested,—"The Single One and His Property," "The Only One and His Property," "The Lone One and His Property," "The Unit and His Property," and, last and least and worst, "The Individual and His Prerogative." "The Ego and His Own," on the other hand, if not a precise rendering, is at least an excellent title in itself; excellent by its euphony, its monosyllabic incisiveness, and its telling—Einzigkeit. Another strong argument in its favor is the emphatic correspondence of the phrase "his own" with Mr. Byington's renderings of the kindred words, Eigenheit and Eigner. Moreover, no reader will be led astray who bears in mind Stirner's distinction: "I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego; I am unique." And, to help the reader to bear this in mind, the various renderings of the word Einzige that occur through the volume are often accompanied by foot-notes showing that, in the German, one and the same word does duty for all.

If the reader finds the first quarter of this book somewhat forbidding and obscure, he is advised nevertheless not to falter. Close attention will master almost every difficulty, and, if he will but give it, he will find abundant reward in what follows. For his guidance I may specify one defect in the author's style. When controverting a view opposite to his own, he seldom distinguishes with sufficient clearness his statement of his own view from his re-statement of the antagonistic view. As a result, the reader is plunged into deeper and deeper mystification, until something suddenly reveals the cause of his misunderstanding, after which he must go back and read again. I [Pg xi] therefore put him on his guard. The other difficulties lie, as a rule, in the structure of the work. As to these I can hardly do better than translate the following passage from Prof. Basch's book, alluded to above: "There is nothing more disconcerting than the first approach to this strange work. Stirner does not condescend to inform us as to the architecture of his edifice, or furnish us the slightest guiding thread. The apparent divisions of the book are few and misleading. From the first page to the last a unique thought circulates, but it divides itself among an infinity of vessels and arteries in each of which runs a blood so rich in ferments that one is tempted to describe them all. There is no progress in the development, and the repetitions are innumerable.... The reader who is not deterred by this oddity, or rather absence, of composition gives proof of genuine intellectual courage. At first one seems to be confronted with a collection of essays strung together, with a throng of aphorisms.... But, if you read this book several times; if, after having penetrated the intimacy of each of its parts, you then traverse it as a whole,—gradually the fragments weld themselves together, and Stirner's thought is revealed in all its unity, in all its force, and in all its depth."

A word about the dedication. Mackay's investigations have brought to light that Marie Daehnhardt had nothing whatever in common with Stirner, and so was unworthy of the honor conferred upon her. She was no Eigene. I therefore reproduce the dedication merely in the interest of historical accuracy.

Happy as I am in the appearance of this book, my joy is not unmixed with sorrow. The cherished project was as dear to the heart of Dr. Walker as to mine, and I deeply grieve that he is no longer with us to share our delight in the fruition. Nothing, however, can rob us of the masterly introduction that he wrote for this volume (in 1903, or perhaps earlier), from which I will not longer keep the reader. This introduction, no more than the book itself, shall that Einzige, Death, make his Eigentum.

    February, 1907.

B. R. T.

[Pg xii]

Fifty years sooner or later can make little difference in the case of a book so revolutionary as this.

It saw the light when a so-called revolutionary movement was preparing in men's minds, which agitation was, however, only a disturbance due to desires to participate in government, and to govern and to be governed, in a manner different to that which prevails. The "revolutionists" of 1848 were bewitched with an idea. They were not at all the masters of ideas. Most of those who since that time have prided themselves upon being revolutionists have been and are likewise but the bondmen of an idea,—that of the different lodgment of authority.

The temptation is, of course, present to attempt an explanation of the central thought of this work; but such an effort appears to be unnecessary to one who has the volume in his hand. The author's care in illustrating his meaning shows that he realized how prone the possessed man is to misunderstand whatever is not moulded according to the fashions in thinking. The author's learning was considerable, his command of words and ideas may never be excelled by another, and he judged it needful to develop his argument in manifold ways. So those who enter into the spirit of it will scarcely hope to impress others with the same conclusion in a more summary manner. Or, if one might deem that possible after reading Stirner, still one cannot think that it could be done so surely. The author has made certain work of it, even though he has to wait for his public; but still, the reception of the book by its critics amply proves the truth of the saying that one can give another arguments, but not understanding. [Pg xiii] The system-makers and system-believers thus far cannot get it out of their heads that any discourse about the nature of an ego must turn upon the common characteristics of egos, to make a systematic scheme of what they share as a generality. The critics inquire what kind of man the author is talking about. They repeat the question: What does he believe in? They fail to grasp the purport of the recorded answer: "I believe in myself"; which is attributed to a common soldier long before the time of Stirner. They ask, What is the principle of the self-conscious egoist,—the Einzige? To this perplexity Stirner says: Change the question; put "who?" instead of "what?" and an answer can then be given by naming him!

This, of course, is too simple for persons governed by ideas, and for persons in quest of new governing ideas. They wish to classify the man. Now, that in me which you can classify is not my distinguishing self. "Man" is the horizon or zero of my existence as an individual. Over that I rise as I can. At least I am something more than "man in general." Pre-existing worship of ideals and disrespect for self had made of the ego at the very most a Somebody, oftener an empty vessel to be filled with the grace or the leavings of a tyrannous doctrine; thus a Nobody. Stirner dispels the morbid subjection, and recognizes each one who knows and feels himself as his own property to be neither humble Nobody nor befogged Somebody, but henceforth flat-footed and level-headed Mr. Thisbody, who has a character and good pleasure of his own, just as he has a name of his own.

The critics who attacked this work and were answered in the author's minor writings, rescued from oblivion by John Henry Mackay, nearly all display the most astonishing triviality and impotent malice.

We owe to Dr. Eduard von Hartmann the unquestionable service which he rendered by directing attention to this book in his "Philosophie des Unbewussten," the first edition of which was published in 1869, and in other writings. I do not begrudge Dr. von Hartmann the liberty of criticism which he used; and I [Pg xiv] think the admirers of Stirner's teaching must quite appreciate one thing which Von Hartmann did at a much later date. In "Der Eigene" of August 10, 1896, there appeared a letter written by him and giving, among other things, certain data from which to judge that, when Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his later essays, Nietzsche was not ignorant of Stirner's book.

Von Hartmann wishes that Stirner had gone on and developed his principle. Von Hartmann suggests that you and I are really the same spirit, looking out through two pairs of eyes. Then, one may reply, I need not concern myself about you, for in myself I have—us; and at that rate Von Hartmann is merely accusing himself of inconsistency: for, when Stirner wrote this book, Von Hartmann's spirit was writing it; and it is just the pity that Von Hartmann in his present form does not indorse what he said in the form of Stirner,—that Stirner was different from any other man; that his ego was not Fichte's transcendental generality, but "this transitory ego of flesh and blood." It is not as a generality that you and I differ, but as a couple of facts which are not to be reasoned into one. "I" is somewise Hartmann, and thus Hartmann is "I"; but I am not Hartmann, and Hartmann is not—I. Neither am I the "I" of Stirner; only Stirner himself was Stirner's "I." Note how comparatively indifferent a matter it is with Stirner that one is an ego, but how all-important it is that one be a self-conscious ego,—a self-conscious, self-willed person.

Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting from self-interested motives, but clothing these in various garbs. Watch those people closely in the light of Stirner's teaching, and they seem to be hypocrites, they have so many good moral and religious plans of which self-interest is at the end and bottom; but they, we may believe, do not know that this is more than a coincidence.

In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty. His interest in the practical development of egoism to the dissolution of the State and the union of free men is clear [Pg xv] and pronounced, and harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of temperament and language, there is a substantial agreement between Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free, and sees in every increase of the number of free people and their intelligence an auxiliary force against the oppressor. But, on the other hand, will any one for a moment seriously contend that Nietzsche and Proudhon march together in general aim and tendency,—that they have anything in common except the daring to profane the shrine and sepulchre of superstition?

Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of Stirner, and, owing to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's writings, it has occurred that one of his books has been supposed to contain more sense than it really does—so long as one had read only the extracts.

Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read everything, and not read Stirner?

But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope performance is unlike an algebraic equation.

Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. Democracy to him was sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty.

Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon democracy because it is not aristocratic. He is predatory to the point of demanding that those who must succumb to feline rapacity shall be taught to submit with resignation. When he speaks of "Anarchistic dogs" scouring the streets of great civilized cities, it is true, the context shows that he means the Communists; but his worship of Napoleon, his bathos of anxiety for the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe for thousands of years, his idea of treating women in the oriental fashion, show that Nietzsche has struck out in a very old path—doing the apotheosis of tyranny. We individual egoistic Anarchists, however, may say to the Nietzsche school, so as not to be misunderstood: We do not ask of the Napoleons to have pity, nor of the [Pg xvi] predatory barons to do justice. They will find it convenient for their own welfare to make terms with men who have learned of Stirner what a man can be who worships nothing, bears allegiance to nothing. To Nietzsche's rhodomontade of eagles in baronial form, born to prey on industrial lambs, we rather tauntingly oppose the ironical question: Where are your claws? What if the "eagles" are found to be plain barnyard fowls on which more silly fowls have fastened steel spurs to hack the victims, who, however, have the power to disarm the sham "eagles" between two suns?

Stirner shows that men make their tyrants as they make their gods, and his purpose is to unmake tyrants.

Nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant.

In style Stirner's work offers the greatest possible contrast to the puerile, padded phraseology of Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" and its false imagery. Who ever imagined such an unnatural conjuncture as an eagle "toting" a serpent in friendship? which performance is told of in bare words, but nothing comes of it. In Stirner we are treated to an enlivening and earnest discussion addressed to serious minds, and every reader feels that the word is to him, for his instruction and benefit, so far as he has mental independence and courage to take it and use it. The startling intrepidity of this book is infused with a whole-hearted love for all mankind, as evidenced by the fact that the author shows not one iota of prejudice or any idea of division of men into ranks. He would lay aside government, but would establish any regulation deemed convenient, and for this only our convenience is consulted. Thus there will be general liberty only when the disposition toward tyranny is met by intelligent opposition that will no longer submit to such a rule. Beyond this the manly sympathy and philosophical bent of Stirner are such that rulership appears by contrast a vanity, an infatuation of perverted pride. We know not whether we more admire our author or more love him.

Stirner's attitude toward woman is not special. She is an individual [Pg xvii] if she can be, not handicapped by anything he says, feels, thinks, or plans. This was more fully exemplified in his life than even in this book; but there is not a line in the book to put or keep woman in an inferior position to man, neither is there anything of caste or aristocracy in the book.

Likewise there is nothing of obscurantism or affected mysticism about it. Everything in it is made as plain as the author could make it. He who does not so is not Stirner's disciple nor successor nor co-worker.

Some one may ask: How does plumb-line Anarchism train with the unbridled egoism proclaimed by Stirner? The plumb-line is not a fetish, but an intellectual conviction, and egoism is a universal fact of animal life. Nothing could seem clearer to my mind than that the reality of egoism must first come into the consciousness of men, before we can have the unbiased Einzige in place of the prejudiced biped who lends himself to the support of tyrannies a million times stronger over me than the natural self-interest of any individual. When plumb-line doctrine is misconceived as duty between unequal-minded men,—as a religion of humanity,—it is indeed the confusion of trying to read without knowing the alphabet and of putting philanthropy in place of contract. But, if the plumb-line be scientific, it is or can be my possession, my property, and I choose it for its use—when circumstances admit of its use. I do not feel bound to use it because it is scientific, in building my house; but, as my will, to be intelligent, is not to be merely wilful, the adoption of the plumb-line follows the discarding of incantations. There is no plumb-line without the unvarying lead at the end of the line; not a fluttering bird or a clawing cat.

On the practical side of the question of egoism versus self-surrender and for a trial of egoism in politics, this may be said: the belief that men not moved by a sense of duty will be unkind or unjust to others is but an indirect confession that those who hold that belief are greatly interested in having others live for them rather than for themselves. But I do not ask or expect so much. [Pg xviii] I am content if others individually live for themselves, and thus cease in so many ways to act in opposition to my living for myself,—to our living for ourselves.

If Christianity has failed to turn the world from evil, it is not to be dreamed that rationalism of a pious moral stamp will succeed in the same task. Christianity, or all philanthropic love, is tested in non-resistance. It is a dream that example will change the hearts of rulers, tyrants, mobs. If the extremest self-surrender fails, how can a mixture of Christian love and worldly caution succeed? This at least must be given up. The policy of Christ and Tolstoi can soon be tested, but Tolstoi's belief is not satisfied with a present test and failure. He has the infatuation of one who persists because this ought to be. The egoist who thinks "I should like this to be" still has the sense to perceive that it is not accomplished by the fact of some believing and submitting, inasmuch as others are alert to prey upon the unresisting. The Pharaohs we have ever with us.

Several passages in this most remarkable book show the author as a man full of sympathy. When we reflect upon his deliberately expressed opinions and sentiments,—his spurning of the sense of moral obligation as the last form of superstition,—may we not be warranted in thinking that the total disappearance of the sentimental supposition of duty liberates a quantity of nervous energy for the purest generosity and clarifies the intellect for the more discriminating choice of objects of merit?

J. L. Walker.

[Pg xix]

If the style of this book is found unattractive, it will show that I have done my work ill and not represented the author truly; but, if it is found odd, I beg that I may not bear all the blame. I have simply tried to reproduce the author's own mixture of colloquialisms and technicalities, and his preference for the precise expression of his thought rather than the word conventionally expected.

One especial feature of the style, however, gives the reason why this preface should exist. It is characteristic of Stirner's writing that the thread of thought is carried on largely by the repetition of the same word in a modified form or sense. That connection of ideas which has guided popular instinct in the formation of words is made to suggest the line of thought which the writer wishes to follow. If this echoing of words is missed, the bearing of the statements on each other is in a measure lost; and, where the ideas are very new, one cannot afford to throw away any help in following their connection. Therefore, where a useful echo (and there are few useless ones in the book) could not be reproduced in English, I have generally called attention to it in a note. My notes are distinguished from the author's by being enclosed in brackets.

One or two of such coincidences of language, occurring in words which are prominent throughout the book, should be borne constantly in mind as a sort of Keri perpetuum: for instance, the identity in the original of the words "spirit" and "mind," and of the phrases "supreme being" and "highest essence." In such cases I have repeated the note where it [Pg xx] seemed that such repetition might be absolutely necessary, but have trusted the reader to carry it in his head where a failure of his memory would not be ruinous or likely.

For the same reason,—that is, in order not to miss any indication of the drift of the thought,—I have followed the original in the very liberal use of italics, and in the occasional eccentric use of a punctuation mark, as I might not have done in translating a work of a different nature.

I have set my face as a flint against the temptation to add notes that were not part of the translation. There is no telling how much I might have enlarged the book if I had put a note at every sentence which deserved to have its truth brought out by fuller elucidation,—or even at every one which I thought needed correction. It might have been within my province, if I had been able, to explain all the allusions to contemporary events, but I doubt whether any one could do that properly without having access to the files of three or four well-chosen German newspapers of Stirner's time. The allusions are clear enough, without names and dates, to give a vivid picture of certain aspects of German life then. The tone of some of them is explained by the fact that the book was published under censorship.

I have usually preferred, for the sake of the connection, to translate Biblical quotations somewhat as they stand in the German, rather than conform them altogether to the English Bible. I am sometimes quite as near the original Greek as if I had followed the current translation.

Where German books are referred to, the pages cited are those of the German editions even when (usually because of some allusions in the text) the titles of the books are translated.

Steven T. Byington.

[Pg 1]

[Pg 2]

[Pg 3]

What is not supposed, to be my concern[2]! First and foremost, the Good Cause,[3] then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!"

Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns—they for whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.

You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years "searched the depths of the Godhead," and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to "God's cause," which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord's doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding,[Pg 4] and you instruct us that God's cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. "Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?" He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must "serve a higher cause."—Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him! He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is—a purely egoistic cause.

How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind's cause—a purely egoistic cause?

I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than[Pg 5] that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?

They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? Joy the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom!" The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and—has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.

But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of "his people."

And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.

God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.[4]

[Pg 6]

If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.

Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is—unique,[5] as I am unique.

Nothing is more to me than myself!

[Pg 7]

[Pg 8]

[Pg 9]

From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man seeks to find out himself and get hold of himself out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.

But everything that comes in contact with the child defends itself in turn against his attacks, and asserts its own persistence.

Accordingly, because each thing cares for itself and at the same time comes into constant collision with other things, the combat of self-assertion is unavoidable.

Victory or defeat—between the two alternatives the fate of the combat wavers. The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the subject: the former exercises supremacy and "rights of supremacy," the latter fulfils in awe and deference the "duties of a subject."

But both remain enemies, and always lie in wait: they watch for each other's weaknesses—children for those of their parents and parents for those of their children (e. g. their fear); either the stick conquers the man, or the man conquers the stick.

In childhood liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the bottom of things, to get at what is "back[Pg 10] of" things; therefore we spy out the weak points of everybody, for which, it is well known, children have a sure instinct; therefore we like to smash things, like to rummage through hidden corners, pry after what is covered up or out of the way, and try what we can do with everything. When we once get at what is back of the things, we know we are safe; when, e. g., we have got at the fact that the rod is too weak against our obduracy, then we no longer fear it, "have outgrown it."

Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our—obduracy, our obdurate courage. By degrees we get at what is back of everything that was mysterious and uncanny to us, the mysteriously-dreaded might of the rod, the father's stern look, etc., and back of all we find our—ataraxy, i. e. imperturbability, intrepidity, our counter force, our odds of strength, our invincibility. Before that which formerly inspired in us fear and deference we no longer retreat shyly, but take courage. Back of everything we find our courage, our superiority; back of the sharp command of parents and authorities stands, after all, our courageous choice or our outwitting shrewdness. And the more we feel ourselves, the smaller appears that which before seemed invincible. And what is our trickery, shrewdness, courage, obduracy? What else but—mind![6]

Through a considerable time we are spared a fight that is so exhausting later—the fight against reason. The fairest part of childhood passes without the ne[Pg 11]cessity of coming to blows with reason. We care nothing at all about it, do not meddle with it, admit no reason. We are not to be persuaded to anything by conviction, and are deaf to good arguments, principles, etc.; on the other hand, coaxing, punishment, and the like are hard for us to resist.

This stern life-and-death combat with reason enter later, and begins a new phase; in childhood we scamper about without racking our brains much.

Mind is the name of the first self-discovery, the first undeification of the divine, i. e. of the uncanny, the spooks, the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are mind.

Now for the first time we see that hitherto we have not looked at the world intelligently at all, but only stared at it.

We exercise the beginnings of our strength on natural powers. We defer to parents as a natural power; later we say: Father and mother are to be forsaken, all natural power to be counted as riven. They are vanquished. For the rational, i. e. "intellectual" man there is no family as a natural power; a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its appearance. If these are "born again" as intellectual, rational powers, they are no longer at all what they were before.

And not only parents, but men in general, are conquered by the young man; they are no hindrance to him, and are no longer regarded; for now he says: One must obey God rather than men.

From this high standpoint everything "earthly"[Pg 12] recedes into contemptible remoteness; for the standby point is—the heavenly.

The attitude is now altogether reversed; the youth takes up an intellectual position, while the boy, who did not yet feel himself as mind, grew up in mindless learning. The former does not try to get hold of things (e. g. to get into his head the data of history), but of the thoughts that lie hidden in things, and so, e. g., of the spirit of history. On the other hand, the boy understands connections no doubt, but not ideas, the spirit; therefore he strings together whatever can be learned, without proceeding a priori and theoretically, i. e. without looking for ideas.

As in childhood one had to overcome the resistance of the laws of the world, so now in everything that he proposes he is met by an objection of the mind, of reason, of his own conscience. "That is unreasonable, unchristian, unpatriotic," and the like, cries conscience to us, and—frightens us away from it. Not the might of the avenging Eumenides, not Poseidon's wrath, not God, far as he sees the hidden, not the father's rod of punishment, do we fear, but—conscience.

We "run after our thoughts" now, and follow their commands just as before we followed parental, human ones. Our course of action is determined by our thoughts (ideas, conceptions, faith) as it is in childhood by the commands of our parents.

For all that, we were already thinking when we were children, only our thoughts were not fleshless, abstract, absolute, i. e. NOTHING BUT THOUGHTS, a heaven in themselves, a pure world of thought, logical thoughts.[Pg 13]

On the contrary, they had been only thoughts that we had about a thing; we thought of the thing so or so. Thus we may have thought "God made the world that we see there," but we did not think of ("search") the "depths of the Godhead itself"; we may have thought "that is the truth about the matter," but we did not think of Truth itself, nor unite into one sentence "God is truth." The "depths of the Godhead, who is truth," we did not touch. Over such purely logical, i. e. theological questions, "What is truth?" Pilate does not stop, though he does not therefore hesitate to ascertain in an individual case "what truth there is in the thing," i. e. whether the thing is true.

Any thought bound to a thing is not yet nothing but a thought, absolute thought.

To bring to light the pure thought, or to be of its party, is the delight of youth; and all the shapes of light in the world of thought, like truth, freedom, humanity, Man, etc., illumine and inspire the youthful soul.

But, when the spirit is recognized as the essential thing, it still makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore one seeks to become rich in spirit; the spirit wants to spread out so as to found its empire—an empire that is not of this world, the world just conquered. Thus, then, it longs to become all in all to itself; i. e., although I am spirit, I am not yet perfected spirit, and must first seek the complete spirit.

But with that I, who had just now found myself as spirit, lose myself again at once, bowing before the[Pg 14] complete spirit as one not my own but supernal, and feeling my emptiness.

Spirit is the essential point for everything, to be sure; but then is every spirit the "right" spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal of spirit, the "Holy Spirit." It is not my or your spirit, but just—an ideal, supernal one, it is "God." "God is spirit." And this supernal "Father in heaven gives it to those that pray to him."[7]

The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it, i. e. model it after his ideal; in him the view that one must deal with the world according to his interest, not according to his ideals, becomes confirmed.

So long as one knows himself only as spirit, and feels that all the value of his existence consists in being spirit (it becomes easy for the youth to give his life, the "bodily life," for a nothing, for the silliest point of honor), so long it is only thoughts that one has, ideas that he hopes to be able to realize some day when he has found a sphere of action; thus one has meanwhile only ideals, unexecuted ideas or thoughts.

Not till one has fallen in love with his corporeal self, and takes a pleasure in himself as a living flesh-and-blood person,—but it is in mature years, in the man, that we find it so,—not till then has one a personal or egoistic interest, i. e. an interest not only of our spirit, for instance, but of total satisfaction, satisfaction of the whole chap, a selfish interest. Just[Pg 15] compare a man with a youth, and see if he will not appear to you harder, less magnanimous, more selfish. Is he therefore worse? No, you say; he has only become more definite, or, as you also call it, more "practical." But the main point is this, that he makes himself more the centre than does the youth, who is infatuated about other things, e. g. God, fatherland, and so on.

Therefore the man shows a second self-discovery. The youth found himself as spirit and lost himself again in the general spirit, the complete, holy spirit, Man, mankind,—in short, all ideals; the man finds himself as embodied spirit.

Boys had only unintellectual interests (i. e. interests devoid of thoughts and ideas), youths only intellectual ones; the man has bodily, personal, egoistic interests.

If the child has not an object that it can occupy itself with, it feels ennui; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with itself. The youth, on the contrary, throws the object aside, because for him thoughts arose out of the object; he occupies himself with his thoughts, his dreams, occupies himself intellectually, or "his mind is occupied."

The young man includes everything not intellectual under the contemptuous name of "externalities." If he nevertheless sticks to the most trivial externalities (e. g. the customs of students' clubs and other formalities), it is because, and when, he discovers mind in them, i. e. when they are symbols to him.

As I find myself back of things, and that as mind, so I must later find myself also back of thoughts,—to wit, as their creator and owner. In the time of spirits[Pg 16] thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies—an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, such as God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.

If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt, so as owner I thrust spirits or ideas away into their "vanity." They have no longer any power over me, as no "earthly might" has power over the spirit.

The child was realistic, taken up with the things of this world, till little by little he succeeded in getting at what was back of these very things; the youth was idealistic, inspired by thoughts, till he worked his way up to where he became the man, the egoistic man, who deals with things and thoughts according to his heart's pleasure, and sets his personal interest above everything. Finally, the old man? When I become one, there will still be time enough to speak of that.

[Pg 17]

How each of us developed himself, what he strove for, attained, or missed, what objects he formerly pursued and what plans and wishes his heart is now set on, what transformations his views have experienced, what perturbations his principles,—in short, how he has to-day become what yesterday or years ago he was not,—this he brings out again from his memory with more or less ease, and he feels with especial vividness what changes have taken place in himself when he has before his eyes the unrolling of another's life.

Let us therefore look into the activities our fore-fathers busied themselves with.

Custom having once given the name of "the ancients" to our pre-Christian ancestors, we will not throw it up against them that, in comparison with us experienced people, they ought properly to be called children, but will rather continue to honor them as our good old fathers. But how have they come to be antiquated, and who could displace them through his pretended newness?

We know, of course, the revolutionary innovator and[Pg 18] disrespectful heir, who even took away the sanctity of the fathers' sabbath to hallow his Sunday, and interrupted the course of time to begin at himself with a new chronology; we know him, and know that it is—the Christian. But does he remain forever young, and is he to-day still the new man, or will he too be superseded, as he has superseded the "ancients"?

The fathers must doubtless have themselves begotten the young one who entombed them. Let us then peep at this act of generation.

"To the ancients the world was a truth," says Feuerbach, but he forgets to make the important addition, "a truth whose untruth they tried to get back of, and at last really did." What is meant by those words of Feuerbach will be easily recognized if they are put alongside the Christian thesis of the "vanity and transitoriness of the world." For, as the Christian can never convince himself of the vanity of the divine word, but believes in its eternal and unshakeable truth, which, the more its depths are searched, must all the more brilliantly come to light and triumph, so the ancients on their side lived in the feeling that the world and mundane relations (e. g. the natural ties of blood) were the truth before which their powerless "I" must bow. The very thing on which the ancients set the highest value is spurned by Christians as the valueless, and what they recognized as truth these brand as idle lies; the high significance of the fatherland disappears, and the Christian must regard himself as "a stranger on earth";[8] the sanc[Pg 19]tity of funeral rites, from which sprang a work of art like the Antigone of Sophocles, is designated as a paltry thing ("Let the dead bury their dead"); the infrangible truth of family ties is represented as an untruth which one cannot promptly enough get clear of;[9] and so in everything.

If we now see that to the two sides opposite things appear as truth, to one the natural, to the other the intellectual, to one earthly things and relations, to the other heavenly (the heavenly fatherland, "Jerusalem that is above," etc.), it still remains to be considered how the new time and that undeniable reversal could come out of antiquity. But the ancients themselves worked toward making their truth a lie.

Let us plunge at once into the midst of the most brilliant years of the ancients, into the Periclean century. Then the Sophistic culture was spreading, and Greece made a pastime of what had hitherto been to her a monstrously serious matter.

The fathers had been enslaved by the undisturbed power of existing things too long for the posterity not to have to learn by bitter experience to feel themselves. Therefore the Sophists, with courageous sauciness, pronounce the reassuring words, "Don't be bluffed!" and diffuse the rationalistic doctrine, "Use your understanding, your wit, your mind, against everything; it is by having a good and well-drilled understanding that one gets through the world best, provides for himself the best lot, the pleasantest life." Thus they recognize in mind man's true weapon[Pg 20] against the world. This is why they lay such stress on dialectic skill, command of language, the art of disputation, etc. They announce that mind is to be used against everything; but they are still far removed from the holiness of the Spirit, for to them it is a means, a weapon, as trickery and defiance serve children for the same purpose; their mind is the unbribable understanding.

To-day we should call that a one-sided culture of the understanding, and add the warning, "Cultivate not only your understanding, but also, and especially, your heart." Socrates did the same. For, if the heart did not become free from its natural impulses, but remained filled with the most fortuitous contents and, as an uncriticised avidity, altogether in the power of things, i. e. nothing but a vessel of the most various appetites,—then it was unavoidable that the free understanding must serve the "bad heart" and was ready to justify everything that the wicked heart desired.

Therefore Socrates says that it is not enough for one to use his understanding in all things, but it is a question of what cause one exerts it for. We should now say, one must serve the "good cause." But serving the good cause is—being moral. Hence Socrates is the founder of ethics.

Certainly the principle of the Sophistic doctrine must lead to the possibility that the blindest and most dependent slave of his desires might yet be an excellent sophist, and, with keen understanding, trim and expound everything in favor of his coarse heart. What could there be for which a "good reason"[Pg 21] might not be found, or which might not be defended through thick and thin?

Therefore Socrates says: "You must be 'pure-hearted' if your shrewdness is to be valued." At this point begins the second period of Greek liberation of the mind, the period of purity of heart. For the first was brought to a close by the Sophists in their proclaiming the omnipotence of the understanding. But the heart remained worldly-minded, remained a servant of the world, always affected by worldly wishes. This coarse heart was to be cultivated from now on—the era of culture of the heart. But how is the heart to be cultivated? What the understanding, this one side of the mind, has reached,—to wit, the capability of playing freely with and over every concern,—awaits the heart also; everything worldly must come to grief before it, so that at last family, commonwealth, fatherland, and the like, are given up for the sake of the heart, i. e. of blessedness, the heart's blessedness.

Daily experience confirms the truth that the understanding may have renounced a thing many years before the heart has ceased to beat for it. So the Sophistic understanding too had so far become master over the dominant, ancient powers that they now needed only to be driven out of the heart, in which they dwelt unmolested, to have at last no part at all left in man.

This war is opened by Socrates, and not till the dying day of the old world does it end in peace.

The examination of the heart takes its start with Socrates, and all the contents of the heart are sifted. In their last and extremest struggles the ancients[Pg 22] threw all contents out of the heart and let it no longer beat for anything; this was the deed of the Skeptics. The same purgation of the heart was now achieved in the Skeptical age, as the understanding had succeeded in establishing in the Sophistic age.

The Sophistic culture has brought it to pass that one's understanding no longer stands still before anything, and the Skeptical, that his heart is no longer moved by anything.

So long as man is entangled in the movements of the world and embarrassed by relations to the world,—and he is so till the end of antiquity, because his heart still has to struggle for independence from the worldly,—so long he is not yet spirit; for spirit is without body, and has no relations to the world and corporality; for it the world does not exist, nor natural bonds, but only the spiritual, and spiritual bonds. Therefore man must first become so completely unconcerned and reckless, so altogether without relations, as the Skeptical culture presents him,—so altogether indifferent to the world that even its falling in ruins would not move him,—before he could feel himself as worldless, i. e. as spirit. And this is the result of the gigantic work of the ancients: that man knows himself as a being without relations and without a world, as spirit.

Only now, after all worldly care has left him, is he all in all to himself, is he only for himself, i. e. he is spirit for the spirit, or, in plainer language, he cares only for the spiritual.

In the Christian wisdom of serpents and innocence of doves the two sides—understanding and heart—of[Pg 23] the ancient liberation of mind are so completed that they appear young and new again, and neither the one nor the other lets itself be bluffed any longer by the worldly and natural.

Thus the ancients mounted to spirit, and strove to become spiritual. But a man who wishes to be active as spirit is drawn to quite other tasks than he was able to set himself formerly: to tasks which really give something to do to the spirit and not to mere sense or acuteness,[10] which exerts itself only to become master of things. The spirit busies itself solely about the spiritual, and seeks out the "traces of mind" in everything; to the believing spirit "everything comes from God," and interests him only to the extent that it reveals this origin; to the philosophic spirit everything appears with the stamp of reason, and interests him only so far as he is able to discover in it reason, i. e. spiritual content.

Not the spirit, then, which has to do with absolutely nothing unspiritual, with no thing, but only with the essence which exists behind and above things, with thoughts,—not that did the ancients exert, for they did not yet have it; no, they had only reached the point of struggling and longing for it, and therefore sharpened it against their too-powerful foe, the world of sense (but what would not have been sensuous for them, since Jehovah or the gods of the heathen were yet far removed from the conception "God is spirit," since the "heavenly fatherland" had not yet stepped into the place of the sensuous, etc?)—they sharpened[Pg 24] against the world of sense their sense, their acuteness. To this day the Jews, those precocious children of antiquity, have got no farther; and with all the subtlety and strength of their prudence and understanding, which easily becomes master of things and forces them to obey it, they cannot discover spirit, which takes no account whatever of things.

The Christian has spiritual interests, because he allows himself to be a spiritual man; the Jew does not even understand these interests in their purity, because he does not allow himself to assign no value to things. He does not arrive at pure spirituality, a spirituality such as is religiously expressed, e. g., in the faith, of Christians, which alone (i. e. without works) justifies. Their unspirituality sets Jews forever apart from Christians; for the spiritual man is incomprehensible to the unspiritual, as the unspiritual is contemptible to the spiritual. But the Jews have only "the spirit of this world."

The ancient acuteness and profundity lies as far from the spirit and the spirituality of the Christian world as earth from heaven.

He who feels himself as free spirit is not oppressed and made anxious by the things of this world, because he does not care for them; if one is still to feel their burden, he must be narrow enough to attach weight to them,—as is evidently the case, for instance, when one is still concerned for his "dear life." He to whom everything centres in knowing and conducting himself as a free spirit gives little heed to how scantily he is supplied meanwhile, and does not reflect at all on how he must make his arrangements to have a thoroughly[Pg 25] free or enjoyable life. He is not disturbed by the inconveniences of the life that depends on things, because he lives only spiritually and on spiritual food, while aside from this he only gulps things down like a beast, hardly knowing it, and dies bodily, to be sure, when his fodder gives out, but knows himself immortal as spirit, and closes his eyes with an adoration or a thought. His life is occupation with the spiritual, is—thinking; the rest does not bother him; let him busy himself with the spiritual in any way that he can and chooses,—in devotion, in contemplation, or in philosophic cognition,—his doing is always thinking; and therefore Descartes, to whom this had at last become quite clear, could lay down the proposition: "I think, that is—I am." This means, my thinking is my being or my life; only when I live spiritually do I live; only as spirit am I really, or—I am spirit through and through and nothing but spirit. Unlucky Peter Schlemihl, who has lost his shadow, is the portrait of this man become a spirit; for the spirit's body is shadowless.—Over against this, how different among the ancients! Stoutly and manfully as they might bear themselves against the might of things, they must yet acknowledge the might itself, and got no farther than to protect their life against it as well as possible. Only at a late hour did they recognize that their "true life" was not that which they led in the fight against the things of the world, but the "spiritual life," "turned away" from these things; and, when they saw this, they became—Christians, i. e. the moderns, and innovators upon the ancients. But the life turned away from things, the spiritual life, no[Pg 26] longer draws any nourishment from nature, but "lives only on thoughts," and therefore is no longer "life," but—thinking.

Yet it must not be supposed now that the ancients were without thoughts, just as the most spiritual man is not to be conceived of as if he could be without life. Rather, they had their thoughts about everything, about the world, man, the gods, etc., and showed themselves keenly active in bringing all this to their consciousness. But they did not know thought, even though they thought of all sorts of things and "worried themselves with their thoughts." Compare with their position the Christian saying, "My thoughts are not your thoughts; as the heaven is higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts," and remember what was said above about our child-thoughts.

What is antiquity seeking, then? The true enjoyment of life! You will find that at bottom it is all the same as "the true life."

The Greek poet Simonides sings: "Health is the noblest good for mortal man, the next to this is beauty, the third riches acquired without guile, the fourth the enjoyment of social pleasures in the company of young friends." These are all good things of life, pleasures of life. What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in having the least possible wants? What else Aristippus, who found it in a cheery temper under all circumstances? They are seeking for cheery, unclouded life-courage, for cheeriness; they are seeking to "be of good cheer."[Pg 27]

The Stoics want to realize the wise man, the man with practical philosophy, the man who knows how to live,—a wise life, therefore; they find him in contempt for the world, in a life without development, without spreading out, without friendly relations with the world, i. e. in the isolated life, in life as life, not in life with others; only the Stoic lives, all else is dead for him. The Epicureans, on the contrary, demand a moving life.

The ancients, as they want to be of good cheer, desire good living (the Jews especially a long life, blessed with children and goods), eudaemonia, well-being in the most various forms. Democritus, e. g., praises as such the calm of the soul in which one "lives smoothly, without fear and without excitement."

So what he thinks is that with this he gets on best, provides for himself the best lot, and gets through the world best. But as he cannot get rid of the world,—and in fact cannot for the very reason that his whole activity is taken up in the effort to get rid of it, that is, in repelling the world (for which it is yet necessary that what can be and is repelled should remain existing, otherwise there would no longer be anything to repel),—he reaches at most an extreme degree of liberation, and is distinguishable only in degree from the less liberated. If he even got as far as the deadening of the earthly sense, which at last admits only the monotonous whisper of the word "Brahm," he nevertheless would not be essentially distinguishable from the sensual man.

Even the Stoic attitude and manly virtue amounts[Pg 28] only to this,—that one must maintain and assert himself against the world; and the ethics of the Stoics (their only science, since they could tell nothing about the spirit but how it should behave toward the world, and of nature [physics] only this, that the wise man must assert himself against it) is not a doctrine of the spirit, but only a doctrine of the repelling of the world and of self-assertion against the world. And this consists in "imperturbability and equanimity of life," and so in the most explicit Roman virtue.

The Romans too (Horace, Cicero, etc.) went no further than this practical philosophy.

The comfort (hedone) of the Epicureans is the same practical philosophy the Stoics teach, only trickier, more deceitful. They teach only another behavior toward the world, exhort us only to take a shrewd attitude toward the world; the world must be deceived, for it is my enemy.

The break with the world is completely carried through by the Skeptics. My entire relation to the world is "worthless and truthless." Timon says, "The feelings and thoughts which we draw from the world contain no truth." "What is truth?" cries Pilate. According to Pyrrho's doctrine the world is neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, etc., but these are predicates which I give it. Timon says that "in itself nothing is either good or bad, but man only thinks of it thus or thus"; to face the world only ataraxia (unmovedness) and aphasia (speechlessness—or, in other words, isolated inwardness) are left. There is "no longer any truth to be recognized" in the world; things contradict themselves; thoughts about[Pg 29] things are without distinction (good and bad are all the same, so that what one calls good another finds bad); here the recognition of "truth" is at an end, and only the man without power of recognition, the man who finds in the world nothing to recognize, is left, and this man just leaves the truth-vacant world where it is and takes no account of it.

So antiquity gets trough with the world of things, the order of the world, the world as a whole; but to the order of the world, or the things of this world, belong not only nature, but all relations in which man sees himself placed by nature, e. g. the family, the community,—in short, the so-called "natural bonds." With the world of the spirit Christianity then begins. The man who still faces the world armed is the ancient, the—heathen (to which class the Jew, too, as non-Christian, belongs); the man who has come to be led by nothing but his "heart's pleasure," the interest he takes, his fellow-feeling, his—spirit, is the modern, the—Christian.

As the ancients worked toward the conquest of the world and strove to release man from the heavy trammels of connection with other things, at last they came also to the dissolution of the State and giving preference to everything private. Of course community, family, etc., as natural relations, are burdensome hindrances which diminish my spiritual freedom.

[Pg 30]

"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; the old is passed away, behold, all is become new."[11]

As it was said above, "To the ancients the world was a truth," we must say here, "To the moderns the spirit was a truth"; but here, as there, we must not omit the supplement, "a truth whose untruth they tried to get back of, and at last they really do."

A course similar to that which antiquity took may be demonstrated in Christianity also, in that the understanding was held a prisoner under the dominion of the Christian dogmas up to the time preparatory to the Reformation, but in the pre-Reformation century asserted itself sophistically and played heretical pranks with all tenets of the faith. And the talk then was, especially in Italy and at the Roman court, "If only the heart remains Christian-minded, the understanding may go right on taking its pleasure."

Long before the Reformation people were so thoroughly accustomed to fine-spun "wranglings" that the pope, and most others, looked on Luther's appearance too as a mere "wrangling of monks" at first. Humanism corresponds to Sophisticism, and, as in the time of the Sophists Greek life stood in its fullest bloom (the Periclean age), so the most brilliant things happened in the time of Humanism, or, as one might perhaps also say, of Machiavellianism (printing, the New World, etc.). At this time the heart was still far from wanting to relieve itself of its Christian[Pg 31] contents.

But finally the Reformation, like Socrates, took hold seriously of the heart itself, and since then hearts have kept growing visibly—more unchristian. As with Luther people began to take the matter to heart, the outcome of this step of the Reformation must be that the heart also gets lightened of the heavy burden of Christian faith. The heart, from day to day more unchristian, loses the contents with which it had busied itself, till at last nothing but empty warm-heartedness is left it, the quite general love of men, the love of Man, the consciousness of freedom, "self-consciousness."

Only so is Christianity complete, because it has become bald, withered, and void of contents. There are now no contents whatever against which the heart does not mutiny, unless indeed the heart unconsciously or without "self-consciousness" lets them slip in. The heart criticises to death with hard-hearted mercilessness everything that wants to make its way in, and is capable (except, as before, unconsciously or taken by surprise) of no friendship, no love. What could there be in men to love, since they are all alike "egoists," none of them man as such, i. e. none spirit only? The Christian loves only the spirit; but where could one be found who should be really nothing but spirit?

To have a liking for the corporeal man with hide and hair,—why, that would no longer be a "spiritual" warm-heartedness, it would be treason against "pure" warm-heartedness, the "theoretical regard." For pure warm-heartedness is by no means to be conceived as like that kindliness that gives everybody a[Pg 32] friendly hand-shake; on the contrary, pure warm-heartedness is warm-hearted toward nobody, it is only a theoretical interest, concern for man as man, not as a person. The person is repulsive to it because of being "egoistic," because of not being that abstraction, Man. But it is only for the abstraction that one can have a theoretical regard. To pure warm-heartedness or pure theory men exist only to be criticised, scoffed at, and thoroughly despised; to it, no less than to the fanatical parson, they are only "filth" and other such nice things.

Pushed to this extremity of disinterested warm-heartedness, we must finally become conscious that the spirit, which alone the Christian loves, is nothing; in other words, that the spirit is—a lie.

What has here been set down roughly, summarily, and doubtless as yet incomprehensibly, will, it is to be hoped, become clear as we go on.

Let us take up the inheritance left by the ancients, and, as active workmen, do with it as much as—can be done with it! The world lies despised at our feet, far beneath us and our heaven, into which its mighty arms are no longer thrust and its stupefying breath does not come. Seductively as it may pose, it can delude nothing but our sense; it cannot lead astray the spirit—and spirit alone, after all, we really are. Having once got back of things, the spirit has also got above them, and become free from their bonds, emancipated supernal, free. So speaks "spiritual freedom."

To the spirit which, after long toil, has got rid of the world, the worldless spirit, nothing is left after the[Pg 33] loss of the world and the worldly but—the spirit and the spiritual.

Yet, as it has only moved away from the world and made of itself a being free from the world, without being able really to annihilate the world, this remains to it a stumbling-block that cannot be cleared away, a discredited existence; and, as, on the other hand, it knows and recognizes nothing but the spirit and the spiritual, it must perpetually carry about with it the longing to spiritualize the world, i. e. to redeem it from the "black list." Therefore, like a youth, it goes about with plans for the redemption or improvement of the world.

The ancients, we saw, served the natural, the worldly, the natural order of the world, but they incessantly asked themselves whether they could not, then, relieve themselves of this service; and, when they had tired themselves to death in ever-renewed attempts at revolt, then, among their last sighs, was born to them the God, the "conqueror of the world." All their doing had been nothing but wisdom of the world, an effort to get back of the world and above it. And what is the wisdom of the many following centuries? What did the moderns try to get back of? No longer to get back of the world, for the ancients had accomplished that; but back of the God whom the ancients bequeathed to them, back of the God who "is spirit," back of everything that is the spirit's, the spiritual. But the activity of the spirit, which "searches even the depths of the Godhead," is theology. If the ancients have nothing to show but wisdom of the world, the moderns never did nor do[Pg 34] make their way further than to theology. We shall see later that even the newest revolts against God are nothing but the extremest efforts of "theology," i. e. theological insurrections.

The realm of spirits is monstrously great, there is an infinite deal of the spiritual; yet let us look and see what the spirit, this bequest of the ancients, properly is.

Out of their birth-pangs it came forth, but they themselves could not utter themselves as spirit; they could give birth to it, it itself must speak. The "born God, the Son of Man," is the first to utter the word that the spirit, i. e. he, God, has to do with nothing earthly and no earthly relationship, but solely with the spirit and spiritual relationships.

Is my courage, indestructible under all the world's blows, my inflexibility and my obduracy, perchance already spirit in the full sense, because the world cannot touch it? Why, then it would not yet be at enmity with the world, and all its action would consist merely in not succumbing to the world! No, so long as it does not busy itself with itself alone, so long as it does not have to do with its world, the spiritual, alone, it is not free spirit, but only the "spirit of this world," the spirit fettered to it. The spirit is free spirit, i. e. really spirit, only in a world of its own; in "this," the world, it is a stranger. Only through a spiritual world is the spirit really spirit, for "this" world does not understand it and does not know how to keep[Pg 35] "the maiden from a foreign land"[12] from departing.

But where is it to get this spiritual world? Where but out of itself? It must reveal itself; and the words that it speaks, the revelations in which it unveils itself, these are its world. As a visionary lives and has his world only in the visionary pictures that he himself creates, as a crazy man generates for himself his own dream-world, without which he could not be crazy, so the spirit must create for itself its spirit world, and is not spirit till it creates it.

Thus its creations make it spirit, and by its creatures we know it, the creator; in them it lives, they are its world.

Now, what is the spirit? It is the creator of a spiritual world! Even in you and me people do not recognize spirit till they see that we have appropriated to ourselves something spiritual,—i. e., though thoughts may have been set before us, we have at least brought them to life in ourselves; for, as long as we were children, the most edifying thoughts might have been laid before us without our wishing, or being able to reproduce them in ourselves. So the spirit also exists only when it creates something spiritual; it is real only together with the spiritual, its creature.

As, then, we know it by its works, the question is what these works are. But the works or children of the spirit are nothing else but—spirits:

If I had before me Jews, Jews of the true metal, I should have to stop here and leave them standing before this mystery as for almost two thousand years[Pg 36] they have remained standing before it, unbelieving and without knowledge. But, as you, my dear reader, are at least not a full-blooded Jew,—for such a one will not go astray as far as this,—we will still go along a bit of road together, till perhaps you too turn your back on me because I laugh in your face.

If somebody told you you were altogether spirit, you would take hold of your body and not believe him, but answer: "I have a spirit, no doubt, but do not exist only as spirit, but am a man with a body." You would still distinguish yourself from "your spirit." "But," replies he, "it is your destiny, even though now you are yet going about in the fetters of the body, to be one day a 'blessed spirit,' and, however you may conceive of the future aspect of your spirit, so much is yet certain, that in death you will put off this body and yet keep yourself, i. e. your spirit, for all eternity; accordingly your spirit is the eternal and true in you, the body only a dwelling here below, which you may leave and perhaps exchange for another."

Now you believe him! For the present, indeed, you are not spirit only; but, when you emigrate from the mortal body, as one day you must, then you will have to help yourself without the body, and therefore it is needful that you be prudent and care in time for your proper self. "What should it profit a man if he gained the whole world and yet suffered damage in his soul?"

But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course of time against the tenets of the Christian faith, have long since robbed you of faith in the immortality of[Pg 37] your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenet undisturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one truth, that the spirit is your better part, and that the spiritual has greater claims on you than anything else. Despite all your atheism, in zeal against egoism you concur with the believers in immortality.

But whom do you think of under the name of egoist? A man who, instead of living to an idea,—i. e. a spiritual thing—and sacrificing to it his personal advantage, serves the latter. A good patriot, e. g., brings his sacrifice to the altar of the fatherland; but it cannot be disputed that the fatherland is an idea, since for beasts incapable of mind,[13] or children as yet without mind, there is no fatherland and no patriotism. Now, if any one does not approve himself as a good patriot, he betrays his egoism with reference to the fatherland. And so the matter stands in innumerable other cases: he who in human society takes the benefit of a prerogative sins egoistically against the idea of equality; he who exercises dominion is blamed as an egoist against the idea of liberty,—etc.

You despise the egoist because he puts the spiritual in the background as compared with the personal, and has his eyes on himself where you would like to see him act to favor an idea. The distinction between you is that he makes himself the central point, but you the spirit; or that you cut your identity in two[Pg 38] and exalt your "proper self," the spirit, to be ruler of the paltrier remainder, while he will hear nothing of this cutting in two, and pursues spiritual and material interests just as he pleases. You think, to be sure, that you are falling foul of those only who enter into no spiritual interest at all, but in fact you curse at everybody who does not look on the spiritual interest as his "true and highest" interest. You carry your knightly service for this beauty so far that you affirm her to be the only beauty of the world. You live not to yourself, but to your spirit and to what is the spirit's—i. e. ideas.

As the spirit exists only in its creating of the spiritual, let us take a look about us for its first creation. If only it has accomplished this, there follows thenceforth a natural propagation of creations, as according to the myth only the first human beings needed to be created, the rest of the race propagating of itself. The first creation, on the other hand, must come forth "out of nothing,"—i. e., the spirit has toward its realization nothing but itself, or rather it has not yet even itself, but must create itself; hence its first creation is itself, the spirit. Mystical as this sounds, we yet go through it as an every-day experience. Are you a thinking being before you think? In creating the first thought you create yourself, the thinking one; for you do not think before you think a thought, i. e. have a thought. Is it not your singing that first makes you a singer, your talking that makes you a talker? Now, so too it is the production of the spiritual that first makes you a spirit.

Meantime, as you distinguish yourself from the[Pg 39] thinker, singer, and talker, so you no less distinguish yourself from the spirit, and feel very clearly that you are something beside spirit. But, as in the thinking ego hearing and sight easily vanish in the enthusiasm of thought, so you also have been seized by the spirit-enthusiasm, and you now long with all your might to become wholly spirit and to be dissolved in spirit. The spirit is your ideal, the unattained, the otherworldly; spirit is the name of your—god, "God is spirit."

Against all that is not spirit you are a zealot, and therefore you play the zealot against yourself who cannot get rid of a remainder of the non-spiritual. Instead of saying, "I am more than spirit," you say with contrition, "I am less than spirit; and spirit, pure spirit, or the spirit that is nothing but spirit, I can only think of, but am not; and, since I am not it, it is another, exists as another, whom I call 'God'."

It lies in the nature of the case that the spirit that is to exist as pure spirit must be an otherworldly one, for, since I am not it, it follows that it can only be outside me; since in any case a human being is not fully comprehended in the concept "spirit," it follows that the pure spirit, the spirit as such, can only be outside of men, beyond the human world,—not earthly, but heavenly.

Only from this disunion in which I and the spirit lie; only because "I" and "spirit" are not names for one and the same thing, but different names for completely different things; only because I am not spirit and spirit not I,—only from this do we get a quite tautological explanation of the necessity that the spirit[Pg 40] dwells in the other world, i. e. is God.

But from this it also appears how thoroughly theological is the liberation that Feuerbach[14] is laboring to give us. What he says is that we had only mistaken our own essence, and therefore looked for it in the other world, but that now, when we see that God was only our human essence, we must recognize it again as ours and move it back out of the other world into this. To God, who is spirit, Feuerbach gives the name "Our Essence." Can we put up with this, that "Our Essence" is brought into opposition to us,—that we are split into an essential and an unessential self? Do we not therewith go back into the dreary misery of seeing ourselves banished out of ourselves?

What have we gained, then, when for a variation we have transferred into ourselves the divine outside us? Are we that which is in us? As little as we are that which is outside us. I am as little my heart as I am my sweetheart, this "other self" of mine. Just because we are not the spirit that dwells in us, just for that reason we had to take it and set it outside us; it was not we, did not coincide with us, and therefore we could not think of it as existing otherwise than outside us, on the other side from us, in the other world.

With the strength of despair Feuerbach clutches at the total substance of Christianity, not to throw it away, no, to drag it to himself, to draw it, the long-yearned-for, ever-distant, out of its heaven with a last effort, and keep it by him forever. Is not that a clutch of the uttermost despair, a clutch for life or[Pg 41] death, and is it not at the same time the Christian yearning and hungering for the other world? The hero wants not to go into the other world, but to draw the other world to him, and compel it to become this world! And since then has not all the world, with more or less consciousness, been crying that "this world" is the vital point, and heaven must come down on earth and be experienced even here?

Let us, in brief, set Feuerbach's theological view and our contradiction over against each other!

"The essence of man is man's supreme being;[15] now by religion, to be sure, the supreme being is called God and regarded as an objective essence, but in truth it is only man's own essence; and therefore the turning point of the world's history is that henceforth no longer God, but man, is to appear to man as God."[16]

To this we reply: The supreme being is indeed the essence of man, but, just because it is his essence and not he himself, it remains quite immaterial whether we see it outside him and view it as "God," or find it in him and call it "Essence of Man" or "Man." I am neither God nor Man,[17] neither the supreme essence nor my essence, and therefore it is all one in the main whether I think of the essence as in me or outside me. Nay, we really do always think of the supreme being as in both kinds of otherworldliness, the inward and[Pg 42] outward, at once; for the "Spirit of God" is, according to the Christian view, also "our spirit," and "dwells in us."[18] It dwells in heaven and dwells in us; we poor things are just its "dwelling," and, if Feuerbach goes on to destroy its heavenly dwelling and force it to move to us bag and baggage, then we, its earthly apartments, will be badly overcrowded.

But after this digression (which, if we were at all proposing to work by line and level, we should have had to save for later pages in order to avoid repetition) we return to the spirit's first creation, the spirit itself.

The spirit is something other than myself. But this other, what is it?

Have you ever seen a spirit? "No, not I, but my grandmother." Now, you see, it's just so with me too; I myself haven't seen any, but my grandmother had them running between her feet all sorts of ways, and out of confidence in our grandmothers' honesty we believe in the existence of spirits.

But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not shrug their shoulders every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts? Yes, those were unbelieving men who have harmed our good religion much, those rationalists! We shall feel that! What else lies at the bottom of this warm faith in ghosts, if not the faith in "the existence of spiritual beings in general," and is not this latter itself disastrously unsettled if[Pg 43] saucy men of the understanding may disturb the former? The Romanticists were quite conscious what a blow the very belief in God suffered by the laying aside of the belief in spirits or ghosts, and they tried to help us out of the baleful consequences not only by their reawakened fairy world, but at last, and especially, by the "intrusion of a higher world," by their somnambulists, prophetesses of Prevorst, etc. The good believers and fathers of the church did not suspect that with the belief in ghosts the foundation of religion was withdrawn, and that since then it had been floating in the air. He who no longer believes in any ghost needs only to travel on consistently in his unbelief to see that there is no separate being at all concealed behind things, no ghost or—what is naively reckoned as synonymous even in our use of words—no "spirit."

"Spirits exist!" Look about in the world, and say for yourself whether a spirit does not gaze upon you out of everything. Out of the lovely little flower there speaks to you the spirit of the Creator, who has shaped it so wonderfully; the stars proclaim the spirit that established their order; from the mountain-tops a spirit of sublimity breathes down; out of the waters a spirit of yearning murmurs up; and—out of men millions of spirits speak. The mountains may sink, the flowers fade, the world of stars fall in ruins, the men die—what matters the wreck of these visible bodies? The spirit, the "invisible spirit," abides eternally!

Yes, the whole world is haunted! Only is haunted? Nay, it itself "walks," it is uncanny through and through, it is the wandering seeming[Pg 44]-body of a spirit, it is a spook. What else should a ghost be, then, than an apparent body, but real spirit? Well, the world is "empty," is "naught," is only glamorous "semblance"; its truth is the spirit alone; it is the seeming-body of a spirit.

Look out near or far, a ghostly world surrounds you everywhere; you are always having "apparitions" or visions. Everything that appears to you is only the phantasm of an indwelling spirit, is a ghostly "apparition"; the world is to you only a "world of appearances," behind which the spirit walks. You "see spirits."

Are you perchance thinking of comparing yourself with the ancients, who saw gods everywhere? Gods, my dear modern, are not spirits; gods do not degrade the world to a semblance, and do not spiritualize it.

But to you the whole world is spiritualized, and has become an enigmatical ghost; therefore do not wonder if you likewise find in yourself nothing but a spook. Is not your body haunted by your spirit, and is not the latter alone the true and real, the former only the "transitory, naught" or a "semblance"? Are we not all ghosts, uncanny beings that wait for "deliverance,"—to wit, "spirits"?

Since the spirit appeared in the world, since "the Word became flesh," since then the world has been spiritualized, enchanted, a spook.

You have spirit, for you have thoughts. What are your thoughts? "Spiritual entities." Not things, then? "No, but the spirit of things, the main point in all things, the inmost in them, their—idea." Consequently what you think is not only your thought?[Pg 45] "On the contrary, it is that in the world which is most real, that which is properly to be called true; it is the truth itself; if I only think truly, I think the truth. I may, to be sure, err with regard to the truth, and fail to recognize it; but, if I recognize truly, the object of my cognition is the truth." So, I suppose, you strive at all times to recognize the truth? "To me the truth is sacred. It may well happen that I find a truth incomplete and replace it with a better, but the truth I cannot abrogate. I believe in the truth, therefore I search in it; nothing transcends it, it is eternal."

Sacred, eternal is the truth; it is the Sacred, the Eternal. But you, who let yourself be filled and led by this sacred thing, are yourself hallowed. Further, the sacred is not for your senses,—and you never as a sensual man discover its trace,—but for your faith, or, more definitely still, for your spirit; for it itself, you know, is a spiritual thing, a spirit,—is spirit for the spirit.

The sacred is by no means so easily to be set aside as many at present affirm, who no longer take this "unsuitable" word into their mouths. If even in a single respect I am still upbraided as an "egoist," there is left the thought of something else which I should serve more than myself, and which must be to me more important than everything; in short, somewhat in which I should have to seek my true welfare,[19] something—"sacred."[20] However human this sacred thing may look, though it be the Human itself, that [Pg 46]does not take away its sacredness, but at most changes it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing, from a divine one to a human.

Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not acknowledge himself, the involuntary egoist, for him who is always looking after his own and yet does not count himself as the highest being, who serves only himself and at the same time always thinks he is serving a higher being, who knows nothing higher than himself and yet is infatuated about something higher; in short, for the egoist who would like not to be an egoist, and abases himself (i. e. combats his egoism), but at the same time abases himself only for the sake of "being exalted," and therefore of gratifying his egoism. Because he would like to cease to be an egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself to; but, however much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end he does all for his own sake, and the disreputable egoism will not come off him. On this account I call him the involuntary egoist.

His toil and care to get away from himself is nothing but the misunderstood impulse to self-dissolution. If you are bound to your past hour, if you must babble to-day because you babbled yesterday,[21] if you can not transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself[Pg 47] fettered in slavery and benumbed. Therefore over each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you get away "from yourself,"—i. e. from the self that was at that moment. As you are at each instant, you are your own creature, and in this very "creature" you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator. You are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass yourself. But that you are the one who is higher than you,—i. e. that you are not only creature, but likewise your creator,—just this, as an involuntary egoist, you fail to recognize; and therefore the "higher essence" is to you—an alien[22] essence. Every higher essence, such as truth, mankind, etc., is an essence over us.

Alienness is a criterion of the "sacred." In everything sacred there lies something "uncanny," i. e. strange,[23] such as we are not quite familiar and at home in. What is sacred to me is not my own; and if, e. g. the property of others was not sacred to me, I should look on it as mine, which I should take to myself when occasion offered. Or, on the other side, if I regard the face of the Chinese emperor as sacred, it remains strange to my eye, which I close at its appearance.

Why is an incontrovertible mathematical truth, which might even be called eternal according to the common understanding of words, not—sacred? Because it is not revealed, or not the revelation of a higher being. If by revealed we understand only the[Pg 48] so-called religious truths, we go far astray, and entirely fail to recognize the breadth of the concept "higher being." Atheists keep up their scoffing at the higher being, which was also honored under the name of the "highest" or être suprême, and trample in the dust one "proof of his existence" after another without noticing that they themselves, out of need for a higher being, only annihilate the old to make room for a new. Is "Man" perchance not a higher essence than an individual man, and must not the truths, rights, and ideas which result from the concept of him be honored and—counted sacred, as revelations of this very concept? For, even though we should abrogate again many a truth that seemed to be made manifest by this concept, yet this would only evince a misunderstanding on our part, without in the least degree harming the sacred concept itself or taking their sacredness from those truths that must rightly be looked upon as its revelations. Man reaches beyond every individual man, and yet—though he be "his essence"—is not in fact his essence (which rather would be as single[24] as he the individual himself), but a general and "higher," yes, for atheists "the highest essence."[25] And, as the divine revelations were not written down by God with his own hand, but made public through "the Lord's instruments," so also the new highest essence does not write out its revelations itself, but lets them come to our knowledge through "true men." Only the new essence betrays, in fact, a more spiritual style of conception than the old God,[Pg 49] because the latter was still represented in a sort of embodiedness or form, while the undimmed spirituality of the new is retained, and no special material body is fancied for it. And withal it does not lack corporeity, which even takes on a yet more seductive appearance because it looks more natural and mundane and consists in nothing less than in every bodily man,—yes, or outright in "humanity" or "all men." Thereby the spectralness of the spirit in a seeming-body has once again become really solid and popular.

Sacred, then, is the highest essence and everything in which this highest essence reveals or will reveal itself; but hallowed are they who recognize this highest essence together with its own, i. e. together with its revelations. The sacred hallows in turn its reverer, who by his worship becomes himself a saint, as likewise what he does is saintly, a saintly walk, saintly thoughts and actions, imaginations and aspirations, etc.

It is easily understood that the conflict over what is revered as the highest essence can be significant only so long as even the most embittered opponents concede to each other the main point,—that there is a highest essence to which worship or service is due. If one should smile compassionately at the whole struggle over a highest essence, as a Christian might at the war of words between a Shiite and a Sunnite or between a Brahman and a Buddhist, then the hypothesis of a highest essence would be null in his eyes, and the conflict on this basis an idle play. Whether then the one God or the three in one, whether the Lutheran God or the être suprême or not God at all, but "Man," may[Pg 50] represent the highest essence, that makes no difference at all for him who denies the highest essence itself, for in his eyes those servants of a highest essence are one and all—pious people, the most raging atheist not less than the most faith-filled Christian.

In the foremost place of the sacred,[26] then, stands the highest essence and the faith in this essence, our "holy[27] faith."

With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the realm of essences.

What haunts the universe, and has its occult, "incomprehensible" being there, is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest essence. And to get to the bottom of this spook, to comprehend it, to discover reality in it (to prove "the existence of God")—this task men set to themselves for thousands of years; with the horrible impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into a non-spook, the unreal into something real, the spirit into an entire and corporeal person,—with this they tormented themselves to death. Behind the existing world they sought the "thing in itself," the essence; behind the thing they sought the un-thing.

When one looks to the bottom of anything, i. e. searches out its essence, one often discovers something quite other than what it seems to be; honeyed speech and a lying heart, pompous words and beggarly thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into promi[Pg 51]nence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare semblance, a deception. The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it—emptiness; emptiness is == world's essence (world's doings). Now, he who is religious does not occupy himself with the deceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but looks upon the essence, and in the essence has—the truth.

The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil essences, and conversely from others the good. The essence of human feeling, e. g., is love; the essence of human will is the good; that of one's thinking, the true; etc.

What at first passed for existence, such as the world and its like, appears now as bare semblance, and the truly existent is much rather the essence, whose realm is filled with gods, spirits, demons, i. e. with good or bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless, but its essence exists, God, "who is love"; human thought may wander in error, but its essence, truth, exists; "God is truth,"—etc.

To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts.

The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize non-sense, has brought about a corporeal ghost, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition! But there always remained[Pg 52] the contradiction of two natures, the divine and human, i. e. the ghostly and sensual; there remained the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul-torturing, and no shaman, who pricks himself to raving fury and nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost.

But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to light, that the veritable spirit or ghost is—man. The corporeal or embodied spirit is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts outside him, but at himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the spirit of sin; even the faintest thought (and this is itself a spirit, you know) may be a devil, etc.—The ghost has put on a body, God has become man, but now man is himself the gruesome spook which he seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to speech; man is—spirit. What matter if the body wither, if only the spirit is saved? everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or "soul's" welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even assigned a distinct seat in the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.).

You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher essence. Nevertheless a higher essence may be hidden in each of us, and call forth a mutual reverence. To take at once the most general, Man lives in you and[Pg 53] me. If I did not see Man in you, what occasion should I have to respect you? To be sure you are not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing; but yet for the present this general and higher essence is housed in you, and you present before me (because an imperishable spirit has in you assumed a perishable body, so that really your form is only an "assumed" one) a spirit that appears, appears in you, without being bound to your body and to this particular mode of appearance,—therefore a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence, but only respect that higher essence which "walks" in you; I "respect Man in you." The ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves, and the higher essence "Man" found as yet little response. To make up for this, they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit of Man, a spirit haunting the individual,—the Spirit of the People. For this reason they revered this spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit related to it (e. g. the Spirit of the Family, etc.) could the individual appear significant; only for the sake of the higher essence, the People, was consideration allowed to the "member of the people." As you are hallowed to us by "Man" who haunts you, so at every time men have been hallowed by some higher essence or other, like People, Family, and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honored from of old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a hallowed, i. e., protected and[Pg 54] recognized person. If I cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, i. e. an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with your essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is unique[28] like you yourself, because it is you.

But it is not only man that, "haunts"; so does everything. The higher essence, the spirit, that walks in everything, is at the same time bound to nothing, and only—"appears" in it. Ghosts in every corner!

Here would be the place to pass the haunting spirits in review, if they were not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before egoism. Hence let only a few of them be particularized by way of example, in order to bring us at once to our attitude toward them.

Sacred above all, e. g., is the "holy Spirit," sacred the truth, sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage, the common good, order, the fatherland, etc.

Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself[Pg 55] to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea!

Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (e. g.) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of—lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure; etc.,—are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of (e. g.) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. For these great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point too,—that they assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction[Pg 56] that one is shut up in a house with fools. "Thou shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost—etc." But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is God the Father, Emperor of Japan, the Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man, etc.,—both these are one and the same "fixed idea." He who has never tried and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is possessed and prepossessed[29] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books inside the papist superstition, without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a zoon politicon,—so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them—lays hands on the sacred! Yes, the "fixed idea," that is the truly sacred!

Is it perchance only people possessed by the devil[Pg 57] that meet us, or do we as often come upon people possessed in the contrary way,—possessed by "the good," by virtue, morality, the law, or some "principle" or other? Possessions of the devil are not the only ones. God works on us, and the devil does; the former "workings of grace," the latter "workings of the devil." Possessed[30] people are set[31] in their opinions.

If the word "possession" displeases you, then call it prepossession; yes, since the spirit possesses you, and all "inspirations" come from it, call it—inspiration and enthusiasm. I add that complete enthusiasm—for we cannot stop with the sluggish, half-way kind—is called fanaticism.

It is precisely among cultured people that fanaticism is at home; for man is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things, and interest in spiritual things, when it is alive, is and must be fanaticism; it is a fanatical interest in the sacred (fanum). Observe our liberals, look into the Saechsischen Vaterlandsblaetter, hear what Schlosser says:[32] "Holbach's company constituted a regular plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system, and its members were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists, missionary and Bible societies, commonly are for mechanical worship and orthodoxy."

Take notice how a "moral man" behaves, who to-day often thinks he is through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him [Pg 58]whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one's being allowed to touch his sister as wife also, etc. And whence this shudder? Because he believes in those moral commandments. This moral faith is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he rages against the pious Christians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian,—to wit, a moral Christian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under faith. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a criminal; he who commits incest suffers as a criminal. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a dogma of faith? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a hero of faith too, not less than Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State; for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than their faith will allow. The brand of "crime" is stamped upon him, and he may languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith! They call that "liberty of faith" then, when brother and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with their "conscience," are thrown into prison. "But they set a pernicious exam[Pg 59]ple." Yes, indeed: others might have taken the notion that the State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon "purity of morals" would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of faith are zealous for the "sacred God," the moral ones for the "sacred good."

Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other. How the strictly orthodox or old-style believers differ from the fighters for "truth, light, and justice," from the Philalethes, the Friends of Light, the Rationalists, etc. And yet, how utterly unessential is this difference! If one buffets single traditional truths (e. g. miracles, unlimited power of princes, etc.), then the rationalists buffet them too, and only the old-style believers wail. But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has both, as believers, for opponents. So with moralities; the strict believers are relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant. But he who attacks morality itself gets both to deal with. "Truth, morality, justice, light, etc.," are to be and remain "sacred." What any one finds to censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be "unchristian" according to the view of these rationalists; but Christianity must remain a fixture, to buffet it is outrageous, "an outrage." To be sure, the heretic against pure faith no longer exposes himself to the earlier fury of persecution, but so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic against pure morals.

Piety has for a century received so many blows, and had to hear its superhuman essence reviled as an "in[Pg 60]human" one so often, that one cannot feel tempted to draw the sword against it again. And yet it has almost always been only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena, to assail the supreme essence in favor of—another supreme essence. So Proudhon, unabashed, says:[33] "Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. Who would dare to-day to attack morality?" Moral people skimmed off the best fat from religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid of the resulting scrofula. If, therefore, we point out that religion has not by any means been hurt in its inmost part so long as people reproach it only with its superhuman essence, and that it takes its final appeal to the "spirit" alone (for God is spirit), then we have sufficiently indicated its final accord with morality, and can leave its stubborn conflict with the latter lying behind us. It is a question of a supreme essence with both, and whether this is a superhuman or a human one can make (since it is in any case an essence over me, a super-mine one, so to speak) but little difference to me. In the end the relation to the human essence, or to "Man," as soon as ever it has shed the snake-skin of the old religion, will yet wear a religious snake-skin again.

So Feuerbach instructs us that, "if one only inverts speculative philosophy, i. e. always makes the predicate the subject, and so makes the subject the object and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure and clean."[34] Herewith, to be sure, we lose the narrow[Pg 61] religious standpoint, lose the God, who from this standpoint is subject; but we take in exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint, the moral standpoint. E. g., we no longer say "God is love," but "Love is divine." If we further put in place of the predicate "divine" the equivalent "sacred," then, as far as concerns the sense, all the old comes back again. According to this, love is to be the good in man, his divineness, that which does him honor, his true humanity (it "makes him Man for the first time," makes for the first time a man out of him). So then it would be more accurately worded thus: Love is what is human in man, and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist. But precisely all that which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy (i. e. theology) offers as the good, the absolute, is to self-ownership simply not the good (or, what means the same, it is only the good). Consequently, by the transformation of the predicate into the subject, the Christian essence (and it is the predicate that contains the essence, you know) would only be fixed yet more oppressively. God and the divine would entwine themselves all the more inextricably with me. To expel God from his heaven and to rob him of his "transcendence" cannot yet support a claim of complete victory, if therein he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with indelible immanence. Now they say, "The divine is the truly human!"

The same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the State, i. e. oppose the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating that morality is "the fundamental pillar of social life and of the State."[Pg 62] As if the dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of the sacred, a "hierarchy."

So we may here mention by the way that rationalist movement which, after theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping religious truths, that only to believers did God reveal himself, etc., and that therefore only the heart, the feelings, the believing fancy was religious, broke out with the assertion that the "natural understanding," human reason, was also capable of discerning God. What does that mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same visionary as the fancy?[35] In this sense Reimarus wrote his "Most Notable Truths of Natural Religion." It had to come to this,—that the whole man with all his faculties was found to be religious; heart and affections, understanding and reason, feeling, knowledge, and will,—in short, everything in man,—appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even philosophy is religious. And what is not called religion to-day? The "religion of love," the "religion of freedom," "political religion,"—in short, every enthusiasm. So it is, too, in fact.

To this day we use the Romance word "religion," which expresses the concept of a condition of being bound. To be sure, we remain bound, so far as religion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the mind also bound? On the contrary, that is free, is sole lord, is not our mind, but absolute. Therefore the correct affirmative translation of the word religion would be "freedom of mind"! In whomsoever the [Pg 63]mind is free, he is religious in just the same way as he in whom the senses have free course is called a sensual man. The mind binds the former, the desires the latter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or religio with reference to me,—I am bound; it is freedom with reference to the mind,—the mind is free, or has freedom of mind. Many know from experience how hard it is on us when the desires run away with us, free and unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellectuality, enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however this jewel may in the most various phrase be named, brings us into yet more grievous straits than even the wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can they perceive it without being consciously egoists.

Reimarus, and all who have shown that our reason, our heart, etc., also lead to God, have therewithal shown that we are possessed through and through. To be sure, they vexed the theologians, from whom they took away the prerogative of religious exaltation; but for religion, for freedom of mind, they thereby only conquered yet more ground. For, when the mind is no longer limited to feeling or faith, but also, as understanding, reason, and thought in general, belongs to itself the mind,—when, therefore, it may take part in the spiritual[36] and heavenly truths in the form of understanding, etc., as well as in its other forms,—then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual things, i. e. with itself, and is therefore free. Now we are so through-and-through religious that "jurors," i. e. "sworn men," condemn us to death, and every[Pg 64] policeman, as a good Christian, takes us to the lock-up by virtue of an "oath of office."

Morality could not come into opposition with piety till after the time when in general the boisterous hate of everything that looked like an "order" (decrees, commandments, etc.) spoke out in revolt, and the personal "absolute lord" was scoffed at and persecuted; consequently it could arrive at independence only through liberalism, whose first form acquired significance in the world's history as "citizenship," and weakened the specifically religious powers (see "Liberalism" below). For, when morality not merely goes alongside of piety, but stands on feet of its own, then its principle lies no longer in the divine commandments, but in the law of reason, from which the commandments, so far as they are still to remain valid, must first await justification for their validity. In the law of reason man determines himself out of himself, for "Man" is rational, and out of the "essence of Man" those laws follow of necessity. Piety and morality part company in this,—that the former makes God the lawgiver, the latter Man.

From a certain standpoint of morality people reason about as follows: Either man is led by his sensuality, and is, following it, immoral, or he is led by the good which, taken up into the will, is called moral sentiment (sentiment and prepossession in favor of the good); then he shows himself moral. From this point of view how, e. g., can Sand's act against Kotzebue be called immoral? What is commonly understood by unselfish it certainly was, in the same measure as (among other things) St. Crispin's thiev[Pg 65]eries in favor of the poor. "He should not have murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not murder!" Then to serve the good, the welfare of the people, as Sand at least intended, or the welfare of the poor, like Crispin,—is moral; but murder and theft are immoral; the purpose moral, the means immoral. Why? "Because murder, assassination, is something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas enticed the enemies of the country into ravines and shot them down unseen from the bushes, do you suppose that was not assassination? According to the principle of morality, which commands us to serve the good, you could really ask only whether murder could never in any case be a realization of the good, and would have to endorse that murder which realized the good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at all; it was moral, because in the service of the good, because unselfish; it was an act of punishment, which the individual inflicted, an—execution inflicted at the risk of the executioner's life. What else had his scheme been, after all, but that he wanted to suppress writings by brute force? Are you not acquainted with the same procedure as a "legal" and sanctioned one? And what can be objected against it from your principle of morality?—"But it was an illegal execution." So the immoral thing in it was the illegality, the disobedience to law? Then you admit that the good is nothing else than—law, morality nothing else than loyalty. And to this externality of "loyalty" your morality must sink, to this righteousness of works in the fulfilment of the law, only that the latter is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than[Pg 66] the old-time righteousness of works. For in the latter only the act is needed, but you require the disposition too; one must carry in himself the law, the statute; and he who is most legally disposed is the most moral. Even the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life must perish in this Protestant legality. Here at last the domination of the law is for the first time complete. "Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus I have really come so far as to be only the "vessel of its glory." "Every Prussian carries his gendarme in his breast," says a high Prussian officer.

Why do certain opposition parties fail to flourish? Solely for the reason that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality. Hence the measureless hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc., from whose repulsiveness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at this rotten and hypocritical relation of a "lawful opposition."—In the moral relation of love and fidelity divided or opposed will cannot have place; the beautiful relation is disturbed if the one wills this and the other the reverse. But now, according to the practice hitherto and the old prejudice of the opposition, the moral relation is to be preserved above all. What is then left to the opposition? Perhaps the will to have a liberty, if the beloved one sees fit to deny it? Not a bit! It may not will to have the freedom, it can only wish for it, "petition" for it, lisp a "Please, please!" What would come of it, if the opposition really willed, willed with the full energy of the will? No, it must renounce will in order to live to love, renounce liberty—for love of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only to "beg[Pg 67] as a favor." Love, devotion, etc., demand with undeviating definiteness that there be only one will to which the others devote themselves, which they serve, follow, love. Whether this will is regarded as reasonable or as unreasonable, in both cases one acts morally when one follows it, and immorally when one breaks away from it. The will that commands the censorship seems to many unreasonable; but he who in a land of censorship evades the censoring of his book acts immorally, and he who submits it to the censorship acts morally. If some one let his moral judgment go, and set up e. g. a secret press, one would have to call him immoral, and imprudent into the bargain if he let himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a value in the eyes of the "moral"? Perhaps!—That is, if he fancied he was serving a "higher morality."

The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies. If one has once dared to make a "free" motion, immediately one waters it again with assurances of love, and—shams resignation; if, on the other side, they have had the face to reject the free motion with moral appeals to confidence, etc., immediately the moral courage also sinks, and they assure one how they hear the free words with special pleasure, etc.;[Pg 68] they—sham approval. In short, people would like to have the one, but not go without the other; they would like to have a free will, but not for their lives lack the moral will. Just come in contact with a servile loyalist, you Liberals. You will sweeten every word of freedom with a look of the most loyal confidence, and he will clothe his servilism in the most flattering phrases of freedom. Then you go apart, and he, like you, thinks "I know you, fox!" He scents the devil in you as much as you do the dark old Lord God in him.

A Nero is a "bad" man only in the eyes of the "good"; in mine he is nothing but a possessed man, as are the good too. The good see in him an arch-villain, and relegate him to hell. Why did nothing hinder him in his arbitrary course? Why did people put up with so much? Do you suppose the tame Romans, who let all their will be bound by such a tyrant, were a hair the better? In old Rome they would have put him to death instantly, would never have been his slaves. But the contemporary "good" among the Romans opposed to him only moral demands, not their will; they sighed that their emperor did not do homage to morality, like them; they themselves remained "moral subjects," till at last one found courage to give up "moral, obedient subjection." And then the same "good Romans" who, as "obedient subjects," had borne all the ignominy of having no will, hurrahed over the nefarious, immoral act of the rebel. Where then in the "good" was the courage for the revolution, that courage which they now praised, after another had mustered it up? The[Pg 69] good could not have this courage, for a revolution, and an insurrection into the bargain, is always something "immoral," which one can resolve upon only when one ceases to be "good" and becomes either "bad" or—neither of the two. Nero was no viler than his time, in which one could only be one of the two, good or bad. The judgment of his time on him had to be that he was bad, and this in the highest degree: not a milksop, but an arch-scoundrel. All moral people can pronounce only this judgment on him. Rascals such as he was are still living here and there to-day (see e. g. the Memoirs of Ritter von Lang) in the midst of the moral. It is not convenient to live among them certainly, as one is not sure of his life for a moment; but can you say that it is more convenient to live among the moral? One is just as little sure of his life there, only that one is hanged "in the way of justice," but least of all is one sure of his honor, and the national cockade is gone before you can say Jack Robinson. The hard fist of morality treats the noble nature of egoism altogether without compassion.

"But surely one cannot put a rascal and an honest man on the same level!" Now, no human being does that oftener than you judges of morals; yes, still more than that, you imprison as a criminal an honest man who speaks openly against the existing constitution, against the hallowed institutions, etc., and you entrust portfolios and still more important things to a crafty rascal. So in praxi you have nothing to reproach me with. "But in theory!" Now there I do put both on the same level, as two opposite poles,—to[Pg 70] wit, both on the level of the moral law. Both have meaning only in the "moral" world, just as in the pre-Christian time a Jew who kept the law and one who broke it had meaning and significance only in respect to the Jewish law; before Jesus Christ, on the contrary, the Pharisee was no more than the "sinner and publican." So before self-ownership the moral Pharisee amounts to as much as the immoral sinner.

Nero became very inconvenient by his possessedness. But a self-owning man would not sillily oppose to him the "sacred," and whine if the tyrant does not regard the sacred; he would oppose to him his will. How often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been held up to their foes, and some liberty or other shown and demonstrated to be a "sacred right of man"! Those who do that deserve to be laughed out of court—as they actually are,—were it not that in truth they do, even though unconsciously, take the road that leads to the goal. They have a presentiment that, if only the majority is once won for that liberty, it will also will the liberty, and will then take what it will have. The sacredness of the liberty, and all possible proofs of this sacredness, will never procure it; lamenting and petitioning only shows beggars.

The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he knows no other enemy than the "immoral" man. "He who is not moral is immoral!" and accordingly reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore the moral man can never comprehend the egoist. Is not unwedded cohabitation an immorality? The moral man may turn as he pleases, he will have to stand by this verdict; Emilia Galotti gave up her life for this moral[Pg 71] truth. And it is true, it is an immorality. A virtuous girl may become an old maid; a virtuous man may pass the time in fighting his natural impulses till he has perhaps dulled them, he may castrate himself for the sake of virtue as St. Origen did for the sake of heaven: he thereby honors sacred wedlock, sacred chastity, as inviolable; he is—moral. Unchastity can never become a moral act. However indulgently the moral man may judge and excuse him who committed it, it remains a transgression, a sin against a moral commandment; there clings to it an indelible stain. As chastity once belonged to the monastic vow, so it does to moral conduct. Chastity is a—good.—For the egoist, on the contrary, even chastity is not a good without which he could not get along; he cares nothing at all about it. What now follows from this for the judgment of the moral man? This: that he throws the egoist into the only class of men that he knows besides moral men, into that of the—immoral. He cannot do otherwise; he must find the egoist immoral in everything in which the egoist disregards morality. If he did not find him so, then he would already have become an apostate from morality without confessing it to himself, he would already no longer be a truly moral man. One should not let himself be led astray by such phenomena, which at the present day are certainly no longer to be classed as rare, but should reflect that he who yields any point of morality can as little be counted among the truly moral as Lessing was a pious Christian when, in the well-known parable, he compared the Christian religion, as well as the Mohammedan and Jewish, to a[Pg 72] "counterfeit ring." Often people are already further than they venture to confess to themselves. For Socrates, because in culture he stood on the level of morality, it would have been an immorality if he had been willing to follow Crito's seductive incitement and escape from the dungeon; to remain was the only moral thing. But it was solely because Socrates was—a moral man. The "unprincipled, sacrilegious" men of the Revolution, on the contrary, had sworn fidelity to Louis XVI, and decreed his deposition, yes, his death; but the act was an immoral one, at which moral persons will be horrified to all eternity.

Yet all this applies, more or less, only to "civic morality," on which the freer look down with contempt. For it (like civism, its native ground, in general) is still too little removed and free from the religious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws without criticism or further consideration to its domain instead of producing independent doctrines of its own. Morality cuts a quite different figure when it arrives at the consciousness of its dignity, and raises its principle, the essence of man, or "Man," to be the only regulative power. Those who have worked their way through to such a decided consciousness break entirely with religion, whose God no longer finds any place alongside their "Man," and, as they (see below) themselves scuttle the ship of State, so too they crumble away that "morality" which flourishes only in the State, and logically have no right to use even its name any further. For what this "critical" party calls morality is very positively distinguished from the[Pg 73] so-called "civic or political morality," and must appear to the citizen like an "insensate and unbridled liberty." But at bottom it has only the advantage of the "purity of the principle," which, freed from its defilement with the religious, has now reached universal power in its clarified definiteness as "humanity." Therefore one should not wonder that the name "morality" is retained along with others, like freedom, benevolence, self-consciousness, etc., and is only garnished now and then with the addition, a "free" morality,—just as, though the civic State is abused, yet the State is to arise again as a "free State," or, if not even so, yet as a "free society."

Because this morality completed into humanity has fully settled its accounts with the religion out of which it historically came forth, nothing hinders it from becoming a religion on its own account. For a distinction prevails between religion and morality only so long as our dealings with the world of men are regulated and hallowed by our relation to a superhuman being, or so long as our doing is a doing "for God's sake." If, on the other hand, it comes to the point that "man is to man the supreme being," then that distinction vanishes, and morality, being removed from its subordinate position, is completed into—religion. For then the higher being who had hitherto been subordinated to the highest, Man, has ascended to absolute height, and we are related to him as one is related to the highest being, i. e. religiously. Morality and piety are now as synonymous as in the beginning of Christianity, and it is only because the supreme being has come to be a different one that a holy walk is no[Pg 74] longer called a "holy" one, but a "human" one. If morality has conquered, then a complete—change of masters has taken place.

After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the supposedly safe harbor of love. "The first and highest law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est—this is the supreme practical maxim, this the turning point of the world's history."[37] But, properly speaking, only the god is changed,—the deus; love has remained: there love to the superhuman God, here love to the human God, to homo as Deus. Therefore man is to me—sacred. And everything "truly human" is to me—sacred! "Marriage is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral relations. Friendship is and must be sacred for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred in and of itself."[38] Haven't we the priest again there? Who is his God? Man with a great M! What is the divine? The human! Then the predicate has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the sentence "God is love," they say "love is divine"; instead of "God has become man," "Man has become God," etc. It is nothing more or less than a new—religion. "All moral relations are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where of themselves (without religious consecration by the priest's blessing) they are counted religious." Feuerbach's proposition, "Theology is anthropology," means only "religion must be ethics, ethics alone is religion."[Pg 75]

Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a transposition of subject and predicate, a giving of preference to the latter. But, since he himself says, "Love is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred through being a predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is divine in and of itself," he might judge that the fight against the predicates themselves, against love and all sanctities, must be commenced. How could he hope to turn men away from God when he left them the divine? And if, as Feuerbach says, God himself has never been the main thing to them, but only his predicates, then he might have gone on leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the real kernel, was left at any rate. He recognizes, too, that with him it is "only a matter of annihilating an illusion";[39] he thinks, however, that the effect of the illusion on men is "downright ruinous, since even love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves man[40] only for God's sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only." Is this different with moral love? Does it love the man, this man for this man's sake, or for morality's sake, for Man's sake, and so—for homo homini Deus—for God's sake?

The wheels in the head have a number of other formal aspects, some of which it may be useful to indicate here.

Thus self-renunciation is common to the holy with [Pg 76]the unholy, to the pure and the impure. The impure man renounces all "better feelings," all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the appetite that rules him. The pure man renounces his natural relation to the world ("renounces the world") and follows only the "desire" which rules him. Driven by the thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all admonitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all gentleness and all compassion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the appetite drags him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He makes himself the "laughing-stock of the world," is hard-hearted and "strictly just"; for the desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces himself before Mammon, so the holy man renounces himself before God and the divine laws. We are now living in a time when the shamelessness of the holy is every day more and more felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same time compelled to unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more and more every day. Have not the shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize the "progress of the age" long surpassed all measure and all expectation? But it must be so. The self-renouncers must, as holy men, take the same course that they do as unholy men; as the latter little by little sink to the fullest measure of self-renouncing vulgarity and lowness, so the former must ascend to the most dishonorable exaltation. The mammon of the earth and the God of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of—self-renunciation. The low man, like the exalted one, reaches out for a "good,"—the former for the material good, the latter for the ideal,[Pg 77] the so-called "supreme good"; and at last both complete each other again too, as the "materially-minded" man sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm, his vanity, and the "spiritually-minded" man to a material gratification, the life of enjoyment.

Those who exhort men to "unselfishness"[41] think they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they understand by "self-renunciation." But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that you yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again for your benefit and behoof, only that through unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit."

You are to benefit yourself, and yet you are not seek your benefit.

People regard as unselfish the benefactor of men, a Franke who founded the orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but also the fanatic who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, sacrifices everything to virtue,—like Koerner, dies for God, king, and fatherland. Hence, among others, O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Connell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if they were successful in casting suspicion on his "unselfishness," they would easily separate him from his adherents.[Pg 78]

Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for another end than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making money or at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and that his end; selfishness here as there, only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to others too, and so would be for the common interest.

Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fashion in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it costs too much in solid material, people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be our end and our property, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a—fixed idea; where it begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it passes into our stubbornness and becomes our—master. One is not unselfish so long as he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," the fundamental maxim of all the possessed; one becomes so in the case of a sacred end, through the corresponding sacred zeal.—

I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my own, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfilment, leave it always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its[Pg 79] most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its judge, because I am its owner.

Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness reaches, as much on possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit: there vice, folly, etc.; here humility, devotion, etc.

Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the passions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eye turned its look upward, you—prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites. Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint "Oh dear!" moaned itself away, and—the soul was at rest. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new—prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are[Pg 80] growing pale in the—chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free grisette against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!

The fixed idea may also be perceived as "maxim," "principle," "standpoint," and the like. Archimedes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint outside it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the world of mind, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it is heaven. Heaven is the "standpoint" from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and—despised. To assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever,—how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!

Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from the appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let himself be determined by his appetites. This does not involve the idea that he was not to have appetites, but that the appetites were not to have him, that they were not to become fixed, uncontrollable, indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived against the appetites be applied by us to its own precept that mind (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed to determine us, to become fixed and inviolable or "sacred"? Then it would end in the dissolution of mind, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all concep[Pg 81]tions. As we there had to say "We are indeed to have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us," so we should now say "We are indeed to have mind, but mind is not to have us." If the latter seems lacking in sense, think e. g. of the fact that with so many a man a thought becomes a "maxim," whereby he himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with the maxim he has a "permanent standpoint" again. The doctrines of the catechism become our principles before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection. Their thought, or—mind, has the sole power, and no protest of the "flesh" is further listened to. Nevertheless it is only through the "flesh" that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears himself that he is a hearing or rational[42] being. The Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled nature, but lives in "humility"; therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his person; he thinks himself satisfied with the "freedom of the spirit." But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its tone is "passionate," "indecorous," "not well-disposed," "spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be otherwise), then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices against the spirit (for decorum, passionlessness, kindly disposition, and the like, is—spirit), and is justly zealous against them. He could not be a Christian if he were willing to endure them. He listens only to morality,[Pg 82] and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to legality, and gags the lawless word. The spirit of morality and legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, unbending master. They call that the "mastery of the spirit,"—it is at the same time the standpoint of the spirit.

And now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen mean to make free? Whose freedom is it that they cry out and thirst for? The spirit's! That of the spirit of morality, legality, piety, the fear of God, etc. That is what the anti-liberal gentlemen also want, and the whole contention between the two turns on a matter of advantage,—whether the latter are to be the only speakers, or the former are to receive a "share in the enjoyment of the same advantage." The spirit remains the absolute lord for both, and their only quarrel is over who shall occupy the hierarchical throne that pertains to the "Vicegerent of the Lord." The best of it is that one can calmly look upon the stir with the certainty that the wild beasts of history will tear each other to pieces just like those of nature; their putrefying corpses fertilize the ground for—our crops.

We shall come back later to many another wheel in the head,—for instance, those of vocation, truthfulness, love, etc.

When one's own is contrasted with what is imparted to him, there is no use in objecting that we cannot have anything isolated, but receive everything as a part of the universal order, and therefore through the impression of what is around us, and that consequently[Pg 83] we have it as something "imparted"; for there is a great difference between the feelings and thoughts which are aroused in me by other things and those which are given to me. God, immortality, freedom, humanity, etc., are drilled into us from childhood as thoughts and feelings which move our inner being more or less strongly, either ruling us without our knowing it, or sometimes in richer natures manifesting themselves in systems and works of art; but are always not aroused, but imparted, feelings, because we must believe in them and cling to them. That an Absolute existed, and that it must be taken in, felt, and thought by us, was settled as a faith in the minds of those who spent all the strength of their mind on recognizing it and setting it forth. The feeling for the Absolute exists there as an imparted one, and thenceforth results only in the most manifold revelations of its own self. So in Klopstock the religious feeling was an imparted one, which in the "Messiad" simply found artistic expression. If, on the other hand, the religion with which he was confronted had been for him only an incitation to feeling and thought, and if he had known how to take an attitude completely his own toward it, then there would have resulted, instead of religious inspiration, a dissolution and consumption of the religion itself. Instead of that, he only continued in mature years his childish feelings received in childhood, and squandered the powers of his manhood in decking out his childish trifles.

The difference is, then, whether feelings are imparted to me or only aroused. Those which are[Pg 84] aroused are my own, egoistic, because they are not as feelings drilled into me, dictated to me, and pressed upon me; but those which are imparted to me I receive, with open arms,—I cherish them in me as a heritage, cultivate them, and am possessed by them. Who is there that has never, more or less consciously, noticed that our whole education is calculated to produce feelings in us, i. e. impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out? If we hear thee name of God, we are to feel veneration; if we hear that of the prince's majesty, it is to be received with reverence, deference, submission; if we hear that of morality, we are to think that we hear something inviolable; if we hear of the Evil One or evil ones, we are to shudder; etc. The intention is directed to these feelings, and he who e. g. should hear with pleasure the deeds of the "bad" would have to be "taught what's what" with the rod of discipline. Thus stuffed with imparted feelings, we appear before the bar of majority and are "pronounced of age." Our equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims, eternal principles," etc. The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age.

We must not feel at every thing and every name that comes before us what we could and would like to feel thereat; e. g., at the name of God we must think of nothing laughable, feel nothing disrespectful, it being prescribed and imparted to us what and how we are to feel and think at mention of that name.[Pg 85]

That is the meaning of the care of souls,—that my soul or my mind be tuned as others think right, not as I myself would like it. How much trouble does it not cost one, finally to secure to oneself a feeling of one's own at the mention of at least this or that name, and to laugh in the face of many who expect from us a holy face and a composed expression at their speeches. What is imparted is alien to us, is not our own, and therefore is "sacred," and it is hard work to lay aside the "sacred dread of it."

To-day one again hears "seriousness" praised, "seriousness in the presence of highly important subjects and discussions," "German seriousness," etc. This sort of seriousness proclaims clearly how old and grave lunacy and possession have already become. For there is nothing more serious than a lunatic when he comes to the central point of his lunacy; then his great earnestness incapacitates him for taking a joke. (See madhouses.)

The historical reflections on our Mongolism which I propose to insert episodically at this place are not given with the claim of thoroughness, or even of approved soundness, but solely because it seems to me that they may contribute toward making the rest clear.

The history of the world, whose shaping properly belongs altogether to the Caucasian race, seems till now to have run through two Caucasian ages, in the first of which we had to work out and work off our[Pg 86] innate negroidity; this was followed in the second by Mongoloidity (Chineseness), which must likewise be terribly made an end of. Negroidity represents antiquity, the time of dependence on things (on cocks' eating, birds' flight, on sneezing, on thunder and lightning, on the rustling of sacred trees, etc.); Mongoloidity the time of dependence on thoughts, the Christian time. Reserved for the future are the words "I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the world of mind."

In the negroid age fall the campaigns of Sesostris and the importance of Egypt and of northern Africa in general. To the Mongoloid age belong the invasions of the Huns and Mongols, up to the Russians.

The value of me cannot possibly be rated high so long as the hard diamond of the not-me bears so enormous a price as was the case both with God and with the world. The not-me is still too stony and indomitable to be consumed and absorbed by me; rather, men only creep about with extraordinary bustle on this immovable entity, i. e. on this substance, like parasitic animals on a body from whose juices they draw nourishment, yet without consuming it. It is the bustle of vermin, the assiduity of Mongolians. Among the Chinese, we know, everything remains as it used to be, and nothing "essential" or "substantial" suffers a change; all the more actively do they work away at that which remains, which bears the name of the "old," "ancestors," etc.

Accordingly, in our Mongolian age all change has been only reformatory or ameliorative, not destructive or consuming and annihilating. The substance, the[Pg 87] object, remains. All our assiduity was only the activity of ants and the hopping of fleas, jugglers' tricks on the immovable tight-rope of the objective, corvée-service under the lordship of the unchangeable or "eternal." The Chinese are doubtless the most positive nation, because totally buried in precepts; but neither has the Christian age come out from the positive, i. e. from "limited freedom," freedom "within certain limits." In the most advanced stage of civilization this activity earns the name of scientific activity, of working on a motionless presupposition, a hypothesis that is not to be upset.

In its first and most unintelligible form morality shows itself as habit. To act according to the habit and usage (morem) of one's country—is to be moral there. Therefore pure moral action, clear, unadulterated morality, is most straightforwardly practised in China; they keep to the old habit and usage, and hate each innovation as a crime worthy of death. For innovation is the deadly enemy of habit, of the old, of permanence. In fact, too, it admits of no doubt that through habit man secures himself against the obtrusiveness of things, of the world, and founds a world of his own in which alone he is and feels at home, i. e. builds himself a heaven. Why, heaven has no other meaning than that it is man's proper home, in which nothing alien regulates and rules him any longer, no influence of the earthly any longer makes him himself alien; in short, in which the dross of the earthly is thrown off, and the combat against the world has found an end,—in which, therefore, nothing is any longer denied him. Heaven is the end of abnegation,[Pg 88] it is free enjoyment. There man no longer denies himself anything, because nothing is any longer alien and hostile to him. But now habit is a "second nature," which detaches and frees man from his first and original natural condition, in securing him against every casualty of it. The fully elaborated habit of the Chinese has provided for all emergencies, and everything is "looked out for"; whatever may come, the Chinaman always knows how he has to behave, and does not need to decide first according to the circumstances; no unforeseen case throws him down from the heaven of his rest. The morally habituated and inured Chinaman is not surprised and taken off his guard; he behaves with equanimity (i. e. with equal spirit or temper) toward everything, because his temper, protected by the precaution of his traditional usage, does not lose its balance. Hence, on the ladder of culture or civilization humanity mounts the first round through habit; and, as it conceives that, in climbing to culture, it is at the same time climbing to heaven, the realm of culture or second nature, it really mounts the first round of the—ladder to heaven.

If Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual beings,—if it has created a world of spirits, a heaven,—the Caucasians have wrestled for thousands of years with these spiritual beings, to get to the bottom of them. What were they doing, then, but building on Mongolian ground? They have not built on sand, but in the air; they have wrestled with Mongolism, stormed the Mongolian heaven, Tien. When will they at last annihilate this heaven? When will they at last become really Caucasians, and find themselves?[Pg 89] When will the "immortality of the soul," which in these latter days thought it was giving itself still more security if it presented itself as "immortality of mind," at last change to the mortality of mind?

It was when, in the industrious struggle of the Mongolian race, men had built a heaven, that those of the Caucasian race, since in their Mongolian complexion they have to do with heaven, took upon themselves the opposite task, the task of storming that heaven of custom, heaven-storming[43] activity. To dig under all human ordinance, in order to set up a new and—better one on the cleared site, to wreck all customs in order to put new and better customs in their place, etc.,—their act is limited to this. But is it thus already purely and really what it aspires to be, and does it reach its final aim? No, in this creation of a "better" it is tainted with Mongolism. It storms heaven only to make a heaven again, it overthrows an old power only to legitimate a new power, it only—improves. Nevertheless the point aimed at, often as it may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt, is the real, complete downfall of heaven, customs, etc.,—in short, of man secured only against the world, of the isolation or inwardness of man. Through the heaven of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the world, to break its hostile power. But this isolation of heaven must likewise be broken, and the true end of heaven-storming is the—downfall of heaven, the annihilation of heaven. Improving and reforming is the Mongolism of the Caucasian, because thereby he is al[Pg 90]ways setting up again what already existed,—to wit, a precept, a generality, a heaven. He harbors the most irreconcilable enmity to heaven, and yet builds new heavens daily; piling heaven on heaven, he only crushes one by another; the Jews' heaven destroys the Greeks', the Christians' the Jews', the Protestants' the Catholics', etc.—If the heaven-storming men of Caucasian blood throw on their Mongolian skin, they will bury the emotional man under the ruins of the monstrous world of emotion, the isolated man under his isolated world, the paradisiacal man under his heaven. And heaven is the realm of spirits, the realm of freedom of the spirit.

The realm of heaven, the realm of spirits and ghosts, has found its right standing in the speculative philosophy. Here it was stated as the realm of thoughts, concepts, and ideas; heaven is peopled with thoughts and ideas, and this "realm of spirits" is then the true reality.

To want to win freedom for the spirit is Mongolism; freedom of the spirit is Mongolian freedom, freedom of feeling, moral freedom, etc.

We may find the word "morality" taken as synonymous with spontaneity, self-determination. But that is not involved in it; rather has the Caucasian shown himself spontaneous only in spite of his Mongolian morality. The Mongolian heaven, or morals,[44] remained the strong castle, and only by storming incessantly at this castle did the Caucasian show himself moral; if he had not had to do with morals at all[Pg 91] any longer, if he had not had therein his indomitable, continual enemy, the relation to morals would cease, and consequently morality would cease. That his spontaneity is still a moral spontaneity, therefore, is just the Mongoloidity of it,—is a sign that in it he has not arrived at himself. "Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with "religious and orthodox philosophy," "constitutional monarchy," "the Christian State," "freedom within certain limits," "the limited freedom of the press," or, in a figure, to the hero fettered to a sick-bed.

Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit.

He who believes in a spook no more assumes the "introduction of a higher world" than he who believes in the spirit, and both seek behind the sensual world a supersensual one; in short, they produce and believe another world, and this other world, the product of their mind, is a spiritual world; for their senses grasp and know nothing of another, a non-sensual world, only their spirit lives in it. Going on from this Mongolian belief in the existence of spiritual beings to the point that the proper being of man too is his spirit, and that all care must be directed to this alone, to the "welfare of his soul," is not hard. Influence on the spirit, so-called "moral influence," is hereby assured.

Hence it is manifest that Mongolism represents utter absence of any rights of the sensuous, represents non-sensuousness and unnature, and that sin and the[Pg 92] consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that lasted thousands of years.

But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its nothing? He who by means of the spirit set forth nature as the null, finite, transitory, he alone can bring down the spirit too to like nullity. I can; each one among you can, who does his will as an absolute I; in a word, the egoist can.

Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my—conscience.

Sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be unapproachable, not to be touched, outside his power,—i. e. above him; sacred, in a word, is every matter of conscience, for "this is a matter of conscience to me" means simply "I hold this sacred."

For little children, just as for animals, nothing sacred exists, because, in order to make room for this conception, one must already have progressed so far in understanding that he can make distinctions like "good and bad," "warranted and unwarranted," etc.; only at such a level of reflection or intelligence—the proper standpoint of religion—can unnatural (i. e. brought into existence by thinking) reverence, "sacred dread," step into the place of natural fear. To this sacred dread belongs holding something outside oneself for mightier, greater, better warranted, better, etc.; i. e. the attitude in which one acknowl[Pg 93]edges the might of something alien—not merely feels it, then, but expressly acknowledges it, i. e. admits it, yields, surrenders, lets himself be tied (devotion, humility, servility, submission, etc.) Here walks the whole ghostly troop of the "Christian virtues."

Everything toward which you cherish any respect or reverence deserves the name of sacred; you yourselves, too, say that you would feel a "sacred dread" of laying hands on it. And you give this tinge even to the unholy (gallows, crime, etc.) You have a horror of touching it. There lies in it something uncanny, i. e. unfamiliar or not your own.

"If something or other did not rank as sacred in a man's mind, why, then all bars would be let down to self-will, to unlimited subjectivity!" Fear makes the beginning, and one can make himself fearful to the coarsest man; already, therefore, a barrier against his insolence. But in fear there always remains the attempt to liberate oneself from what is feared, by guile, deception, tricks, etc. In reverence,[45] on the contrary, it is quite otherwise. Here something is not only feared,[46] but also honored[47]: what is feared has become an inward power which I can no longer get clear of; I honor it, am captivated by it and devoted to it, belong to it; by the honor which I pay it I am completely in its power, and do not even attempt liberation any longer. Now I am attached to it with all the strength of faith; I believe. I and what I fear are one; "not I live, but the respected lives in me!" Because the spirit, the infinite, does not allow of com[Pg 94]ing to any end, therefore it is stationary; it fears dying, it cannot let go its dear Jesus, the greatness of finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye; the object of fear, now raised to veneration, may no longer be handled; reverence is made eternal, the respected is deified. The man is now no longer employed in creating, but in learning (knowing, investigating, etc.), i. e. occupied with a fixed object, losing himself in its depths, without return to himself. The relation to this object is that of knowing, fathoming, basing, etc., not that of dissolution (abrogation, etc.) "Man is to be religious," that is settled; therefore people busy themselves only with the question how this is to be attained, what is the right meaning of religiousness, etc. Quite otherwise when one makes the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in question, even though it should go to smash. Morality too is such sacred conception; one must be moral, and must look only for the right "how," the right way to be so. One dares not go at morality itself with the question whether it is not itself an illusion; it remains exalted above all doubt, unchangeable. And so we go on with the sacred, grade after grade, from the "holy" to the "holy of holies."

Men are sometimes divided into two classes, cultured and uncultured. The former, so far as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with thoughts, with mind, and (because in the time since Christ, of which the very principle is thought, they were the ruling ones) demanded a servile respect for the thoughts recognized by them. State, emperor,[Pg 95] church, God, morality, order, etc., are such thoughts or spirits, that exist only for the mind. A merely living being, an animal, cares as little for them as a child. But the uncultured are really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the necessities of his life is indifferent to those spirits; but, because he is also weak before them, he succumbs to their power, and is ruled by—thoughts. This is the meaning of hierarchy.

Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind!

We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred.

But the two are always clashing, now one and now the other giving the offence; and this clash occurs, not only in the collision of two men, but in one and the same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not to find enjoyment in things too, and so be uncultured; and no uncultured man is totally without thoughts. In Hegel it comes to light at last what a longing for things even the most cultured man has, and what a horror of every "hollow theory" he harbors. With him reality, the world of things, is altogether to correspond to the thought, and no concept to be without reality. This caused Hegel's system to be known as the most objective, as if in it thought and thing celebrated their union. But this was simply the extremest case of violence on the part of thought, its highest pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the triumph of mind, and with it the triumph of philosophy. Philosophy cannot hereafter achieve anything higher, for its[Pg 96] highest is the omnipotence of mind, the almightiness of mind.[48]

Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized. They have concepts of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see realized; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one "from love." Love is to rule. What they have taken into their head, what shall we call it but—fixed idea? Why, "their head is haunted." The most oppressive spook is Man. Think of the proverb, "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions." The intention to realize humanity altogether in oneself, to become altogether man, is of such ruinous kind; here belong the intentions to become good, noble, loving, etc.

In the sixth part of the "Denkwuerdigkeiten" p. 7, Bruno Bauer says: "That middle class, which was to receive such a terrible importance for modern history is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm for an idea, no exaltation; it devotes itself to nothing but the interests of its mediocrity; i. e. it remains always limited to itself, and conquers at last only through its bulk, with which it has succeeded in tiring out the efforts of passion, enthusiasm, consistency,—through its surface, into which it absorbs a part of the new ideas." And (p. 6) "It has turned the revolutionary ideas, for which not it, but unselfish or impassioned men sacrificed themselves, solely to its own pro[Pg 97]fit, has turned spirit into money.—That is, to be sure, after it had taken away from those ideas their point, their consistency, their destructive seriousness, fanatical against all egoism." These people, then, are not self-sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not idealistic, not consistent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual sense, selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober, calculating, etc.

Who, then, is "self-sacrificing"?[49] In the full sense, surely, he who ventures everything else for one thing, one object, one will, one passion, etc. Is not the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and mother, endures all dangers and privations, to reach his goal? Or the ambitious man, who offers up all his desires, wishes, and satisfactions to the single passion, or the avaricious man who denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is ruled by a passion to which he brings the rest as sacrifices.

And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not egoists? As they have only one ruling passion, so they provide for only one satisfaction, but for this the more strenuously; they are wholly absorbed in it. Their entire activity is egoistic, but it is a one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism; it is possessedness.

"Why, those are petty passions, by which, on the contrary, man must not let himself be enthralled. Man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a great cause!" A "great idea," a "good cause," is, it may[Pg 98] be, the honor of God, for which innumerable people have met death; Christianity, which has found its willing martyrs; the Holy Catholic Church, which has greedily demanded sacrifices of heretics; liberty and equality, which were waited on by bloody guillotines.

He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty calling, may not let any worldly lusts, any self-seeking interest, spring up in him. Here we have the concept of clericalism, or, as it may also be called in its pedagogic activity, school-masterliness; for the idealists play the schoolmaster over us. The clergyman is especially called to live to the idea and to work for the idea, the truly good cause. Therefore the people feel how little it befits him to show worldly haughtiness, to desire good living, to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming,—in short, to have any other than a "sacred interest." Hence too, doubtless, is derived the scanty salary of teachers, who are to feel themselves repaid by the sacredness of their calling alone, and to "renounce" other enjoyments.

Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more of which man is to look upon as his calling, is not lacking. Family, fatherland, science, etc., may find in man a servant faithful to his calling.

Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world which has not yet learned to do without clericalism,—that to live and work for an idea is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness of its fulfilment his human worth is measured.

This is the dominion of the idea; in other words, it[Pg 99] is clericalism. E. g., Robespierre, St. Just, etc., were priests through and through, inspired by the idea, enthusiasts, consistent instruments of this idea, idealistic men. So St. Just exclaims in a speech, "There is something terrible in the sacred love of country; it is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the public interest without mercy, without fear, without human consideration. It hurls Manlius down the precipice; it sacrifices its private inclinations; it leads Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman into the chasm, and sets Marat, as a victim of his devotion, in the Pantheon."

Now, over against these representatives of ideal or sacred interests stands a world of innumerable "personal" profane interests. No idea, no system, no sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and modified by these personal interests. Even if they are silent momentarily, and in times of rage and fanaticism, yet they soon come uppermost again through "the sound sense of the people." Those ideas do not completely conquer till they are no longer hostile to personal interests, i. e. till they satisfy egoism.

The man who is just now crying herrings in front of my window has a personal interest in good sales, and, if his wife or anybody else wishes him the like, this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on the other hand, a thief deprived him of his basket, then there would at once arise an interest of many, of the whole city, of the whole country, or, in a word, of all who abhor theft; an interest in which the herring-seller's person would become indifferent, and in its place the category of the "robbed man" would come[Pg 100] into the foreground. But even here all might yet resolve itself into a personal interest, each of the partakers reflecting that he must concur in the punishment of the thief because unpunished stealing might otherwise become general and cause him too to lose his own. Such a calculation, however, can hardly be assumed on the part of many, and we shall rather hear the cry that the thief is a "criminal." Here we have before us a judgment, the thief's action receiving its expression in the concept "crime." Now the matter stands thus: even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or to any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless denounce it. Why? Because I am enthusiastic for morality, filled with the idea of morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere assail. Because in his mind theft ranks as abominable without any question, Proudhon, e. g., thinks that with the sentence "Property is theft" he has at once put a brand on property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always a crime, or at least a misdeed.

Here the personal interest is at an end. This particular person who has stolen the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person; it is only the thief, this concept of which that person presents a specimen, that I take an interest in. The thief and man are in my mind irreconcilable opposites; for one is not truly man when one is a thief; one degrades Man or "humanity" in himself when one steals. Dropping out of personal concern, one gets into philanthropism, friendliness to man, which is usually misunderstood as if it was a love to men, to each individual, while it is[Pg 101] nothing but a love of Man, the unreal concept, the spook. It is not τους ανθρώπους, men, but τον ανθρωπον, 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." Philanthropism 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[Pg 102] 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, etc., 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.[Pg 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:[50] "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[Pg 104]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.[Pg 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[51] down to humility.[52] 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, etc., 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 practise 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[Pg 106] 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, i. e. they will not be willing to inherit your stupidities as you inherited them from your fathers; they destroy inherited sin.[53] 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 longer 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[Pg 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,[Pg 108] 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, viz., 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."[54]

Because Protestantism broke the mediæval 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 mediæval 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:[55] "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[Pg 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 is a 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 in Zeus, Astarte, Jehovah, Allah, etc., 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 to-day.

Only by the more modern philosophy since Descartes has a serious effort been made to bring[Pg 110] 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 perversest 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.[Pg 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:

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", such as 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.[Pg 112]

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, etc., 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."[57] The decision having once been made not to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable,[Pg 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 prepollence and pre-eminence; in short, one was still involved in obedience and possessedness, lived in refection, 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 of[Pg 114] 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 only when the conception, family, also becomes a nothing to me. The Christian dicta, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"[58] "I am come to stir up a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,"[59] 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."[Pg 115]

The Protestant may put it as he will, the "holy[60] Scripture," the "Word of God," still remains sacred[61] 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 became 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[Pg 116] 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 fulfils 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.[62] 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[Pg 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, etc. 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. 11: "So now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have[Pg 118] 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."[63]

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,[Pg 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[Pg 120]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, i. e. 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, and the like.

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[Pg 121] 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 arouse 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 ataraxy, 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.[Pg 122] "All things have been delivered, to me by my Father" (Matt. 11.27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc., 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, i. e. thinkable: "All things are possible to him who believes."[64] I am the lord of the world, mine is the "glory."[65] 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 mediæval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against self, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The mediæval man is the[Pg 123] man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative man.

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, etc.; 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," etc., 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[Pg 124] 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 to-day so, to-morrow 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[Pg 125] 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, viz., 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[Pg 126] 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,[Pg 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.

[Pg 128]

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.[Pg 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[66] 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.[67] The son of a nobleman was selected for posts to which the most distinguished commoners aspired in vain, etc. 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[Pg 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[Pg 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 Barrère 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[Pg 132] all—power![68] 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":[69] they became "rights."[70] 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 régime 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[Pg 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."[71]

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[Pg 134] 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 fulfils 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 fulfils 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 to-day 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[Pg 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, etc. 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[Pg 136] 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 practise 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[Pg 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, etc. 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 Crœsus 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' cancelling-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[Pg 138]posed to be pronounced in its honor, characterizes it completely: "Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations."[72] 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 taken it up into itself; it needs the villain, etc. 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, etc., 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[Pg 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."[73] 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,[Pg 140] 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," etc.; 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, of 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[Pg 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 every one 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 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, for instance, is such a liberty of liberalism, liberalism fighting only against the coercion of the cen[Pg 142]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, and the like). 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," etc.? It is simply fighting in the interest of the "cause"[74] 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,[Pg 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.); i. e. free competition must exist. Only through the thing[75] 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[Pg 144] 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[Pg 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, such as the nation is, appears acting; i. e., 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[76] or "just"[77] prince who himself is guided, and rules, according to "rational laws"; in short, in legality. The period of the [Pg 146]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[Pg 147] king's will, and the like. 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 honorable 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 prolétariat; 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[Pg 148] 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 overleap 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 prolétariat, 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[Pg 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, etc., 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,[Pg 150] 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 mediæval "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.[78] 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, how with the proletarian? As he has nothing to lose,[Pg 151] he does not need the protection of the State for his "nothing." He may gain, on the contrary, if that protection of the State is withdrawn from the protégé.

Therefore the non-possessor will regard the State as a power protecting the possessor, which privileges the latter, but does nothing for him, the non-possessor, but to—suck his blood. The State is a—commoners' State, is the estate of the commonalty. It protects man not according to his labor, but according to his tractableness ("loyalty"),—to wit, according to whether the rights entrusted to him by the State are enjoyed and managed in accordance with the will, i. e. laws, of the State.

Under the régime of the commonalty the laborers always fall into the hands of the possessors,—i. e. of those who have at their disposal some bit of the State domains (and everything possessible is State domain, belongs to the State, and is only a fief of the individual), especially money and land; of the capitalists, therefore. The laborer cannot realize on his labor to the extent of the value that it has for the consumer. "Labor is badly paid!" The capitalist has the greatest profit from it.—Well paid, and more than well paid, are only the labors of those who heighten the splendor and dominion of the State, the labors of high State servants. The State pays well that its "good citizens," the possessors, may be able to pay badly without danger; it secures to itself by good payment its servants, out of whom it forms a protecting power, a "police" (to the police belong soldiers, officials of all kinds, e. g. those of justice, education, etc.,—in short, the whole "machinery of the State")[Pg 152] for the "good citizens," and the "good citizens" gladly pay high tax-rates to it in order to pay so much lower rates to their laborers.

But the class of laborers, because unprotected in what they essentially are (for they do not enjoy the protection of the State as laborers, but as its subjects they have a share in the enjoyment of the police, a so-called protection of the law), remains a power hostile to this State, this State of possessors, this "citizen kingship." Its principle, labor, is not recognized as to its value; it is exploited,[79] a spoil[80] of the possessors, the enemy.

The laborers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing would withstand them; they would only have to stop labor, regard the product of labor as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labor disturbances which show themselves here and there.

The State rests on the—slavery of labor. If labor becomes free, the State is lost.

We are freeborn men, and wherever we look we see ourselves made servants of egoists! Are we therefore to become egoists too? Heaven forbid! we want rather to make egoists impossible! We want to make them all "ragamuffins"; all of us must have nothing, that "all may have."

So say the Socialists.[Pg 153]

Who is this person that you call "All"?—It is "society"!—But is it corporeal, then?—We are its body!—You? Why, you are not a body yourselves;—you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the "nation" of the politicians, it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body only semblance.

The freedom of man is, in political liberalism, freedom from persons, from personal dominion, from the master; the securing of each individual person against other persons, personal freedom.

No one has any orders to give; the law alone gives orders.

But, even if the persons have become equal, yet their possessions have not. And yet the poor man needs the rich, the rich the poor, the former the rich man's money, the latter the poor man's labor. So no one needs another as a person, but needs him as a giver, and thus as one who has something to give, as holder or possessor. So what he has makes the man. And in having, or in "possessions," people are unequal.

Consequently, social liberalism concludes, no one must have, as according to political liberalism no one was to give orders; i. e., as in that case the State alone obtained the command, so now society alone obtains the possessions.

For the State, protecting each one's person and property against the other, separates them from one another; each one is his special part and has his[Pg 154] special part. He who is satisfied with what he is and has finds this state of things profitable; but he who would like to be and have more looks around for this "more," and finds it in the power of other persons. Here he comes upon a contradiction; as a person no one is inferior to another, and yet one person has what another has not but would like to have. So, he concludes, the one person is more than the other, after all, for the former has what he needs, the latter has not; the former is a rich man, the latter a poor man.

He now asks himself further, are we to let what we rightly buried come to life again? are we to let this circuitously restored inequality of persons pass? No; on the contrary, we must bring quite to an end what was only half accomplished. Our freedom from another's person still lacks the freedom from what the other's person can command, from what he has in his personal power,—in short, from "personal property." Let us then do away with personal property. Let no one have anything any longer, let every one be a—ragamuffin. Let property be impersonal, let it belong to—society.

Before the supreme ruler, the sole commander, we had all become equal, equal persons, i. e. nullities.

Before the supreme proprietor we all become equal—ragamuffins. For the present, one is still in another's estimation a "ragamuffin," a "have-nothing"; but then this estimation ceases. We are all ragamuffins together, and as the aggregate of Communistic society we might call ourselves a "ragamuffin crew."

When the proletarian shall really have founded his purposed "society" in which the interval between rich[Pg 155] and poor is to be removed, then he will be a ragamuffin, for then he will feel that it amounts to something to be a ragamuffin, and might lift "Ragamuffin" to be an honorable form of address, just as the Revolution did with the word "Citizen." Ragamuffin is his ideal; we are all to become ragamuffins.

This is the second robbery of the "personal" in the interest of "humanity." Neither command nor property is left to the individual; the State took the former, society the latter.

Because in society the most oppressive evils make themselves felt, therefore the oppressed especially, and consequently the members in the lower regions of society, think they find the fault in society, and make it their task to discover the right society. This is only the old phenomenon,—that one looks for the fault first in everything but himself, and consequently in the State, in the self-seeking of the rich, etc., which yet have precisely our fault to thank for their existence.

The reflections and conclusions of Communism look very simple. As matters lie at this time,—in the present situation with regard to the State, therefore,—some, and they the majority, are at a disadvantage compared to others, the minority. In this state of things the former are in a state of prosperity, the latter in a state of need. Hence the present state of things, i. e. the State, must be done away with. And what in its place? Instead of the isolated state of prosperity—a general state of prosperity, a prosperity of all.

Through the Revolution the bourgeoisie became[Pg 156] omnipotent, and all inequality was abolished by every one's being raised or degraded to the dignity of a citizen: the common man—raised, the aristocrat—degraded; the third estate became sole estate,—viz., the estate of—citizens of the State. Now Communism responds: Our dignity and our essence consist not in our being all—the equal children of our mother, the State, all born with equal claim to her love and her protection, but in our all existing for each other. This is our equality, or herein we are equal, in that we, I as well as you and you and all of you, are active or "labor" each one for the rest; in that each of us is a laborer, then. The point for us is not what we are for the State (viz., citizens), not our citizenship therefore, but what we are for each other,—viz., that each of us exists only through the other, who, caring for my wants, at the same time sees his own satisfied by me. He labors, e. g., for my clothing (tailor), I for his need of amusement (comedy-writer, rope-dancer, etc.), he for my food (farmer, etc.), I for his instruction (scientist, etc.). It is labor that constitutes our dignity and our—equality.

What advantage does citizenship bring us? Burdens! And how high is our labor appraised? As low as possible! But labor is our sole value all the same; that we are laborers is the best thing about us, this is our significance in the world, and therefore it must be our consideration too and must come to receive consideration. What can you meet us with? Surely nothing but—labor too. Only for labor or services do we owe you a recompense, not for your bare existence; not for what you are for yourselves[Pg 157] either, but only for what you are for us. By what have you claims on us? Perhaps by your high birth, etc.? No, only by what you do for us that is desirable or useful. Be it thus then: we are willing to be worth to you only so much as we do for you; but you are to be held likewise by us. Services determine value,—i. e. those services that are worth something to us, and consequently labors for each other, labors for the common good. Let each one be in the other's eyes a laborer. He who accomplishes something useful is inferior to none, or—all laborers (laborers, of course, in the sense of laborers "for the common good," i. e. communistic laborers) are equal. But, as the laborer is worth his wages,[81] let the wages too be equal.

As long as faith sufficed for man's honor and dignity, no labor, however harassing, could be objected to if it only did not hinder a man in his faith. Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must become a master in it too, i. e. be able to perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-factory only puts on the heads, only draws the wire, etc., works, as it were, mechanically, like a machine; he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labor cannot satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in[Pg 158] itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other. For this laborer in another's service there is no enjoyment of a cultivated mind, at most crude amusements: culture, you see, is barred against him. To be a good Christian one needs only to believe, and that can be done under the most oppressive circumstances. Hence the Christian-minded take care only of the oppressed laborers' piety, their patience, submission, etc. Only so long as the downtrodden classes were Christians could they bear all their misery: for Christianity does not let their murmurings and exasperation rise. Now the hushing of desires is no longer enough, but their sating is demanded. The bourgeoisie has proclaimed the gospel of the enjoyment of the world, of material enjoyment, and now wonders that this doctrine finds adherents among us poor: it has shown that not faith and poverty, but culture and possessions, make a man blessed; we proletarians understand that too.

The commonalty freed us from the orders and arbitrariness of individuals. But that arbitrariness was left which springs from the conjuncture of situations, and may be called the fortuity of circumstances; favoring fortune, and those "favored by fortune," still remain.

When e. g. a branch of industry is ruined and thousands of laborers become breadless, people think reasonably enough to acknowledge that it is not the individual who must bear the blame, but that "the evil lies in the situation."

Let us change the situation then, but let us change it thoroughly, and so that its fortuity becomes power[Pg 159]less, and a law! Let us no longer be slaves of chance! Let us create a new order that makes an end of fluctuations. Let this order then be sacred!

Formerly one had to suit the lords to come to anything; after the Revolution the word was "Grasp fortune!" Luck-hunting or hazard-playing, civil life was absorbed in this. Then, alongside this, the demand that he who has obtained something shall not frivolously stake it again.

Strange and yet supremely natural contradiction. Competition, in which alone civil or political life unrolls itself, is a game of luck through and through, from the speculations of the exchange down to the solicitation of offices, the hunt for customers, looking for work, aspiring to promotion and decorations, the second-hand dealer's petty haggling, etc. If one succeeds in supplanting and outbidding his rivals, then the "lucky throw" is made; for it must be taken as a piece of luck to begin with that the victor sees himself equipped with an ability (even though it has been developed by the most careful industry) against which the others do not know how to rise, consequently that—no abler ones are found. And now those who ply their daily lives in the midst of these changes of fortune without seeing any harm in it are seized with the most virtuous indignation when their own principle appears in naked form and "breeds misfortune" as—hazard-playing. Hazard-playing, you see, is too clear, too barefaced a competition, and, like every decided nakedness, offends honorable modesty.

The Socialists want to put a stop to this activity of chance, and to form a society in which men are no[Pg 160] longer dependent on fortune, but free.

In the most natural way in the world this endeavor first utters itself as hatred of the "unfortunate" against the "fortunate," i. e., of those for whom fortune has done little or nothing, against those for whom it has done everything.

But properly the ill-feeling is not directed against the fortunate, but against fortune, this rotten spot of the commonalty.

As the Communists first declare free activity to be man's essence, they, like all work-day dispositions, need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need a God, an uplifting and edification alongside their witless "labor."

That the Communist sees in you the man, the brother, is only the Sunday side of Communism. According to the work-day side he does not by any means take you as man simply, but as human laborer or laboring man. The first view has in it the liberal principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed. If you were a "lazybones," he would not indeed fail to recognize the man in you, but would endeavor to cleanse him as a "lazy man" from laziness and to convert you to the faith that labor is man's "destiny and calling."

Therefore he shows a double face: with the one he takes heed that the spiritual man be satisfied, with the other he looks about him for means for the material or corporeal man. He gives man a twofold post,—an office of material acquisition and one of spiritual.

The commonalty had thrown open spiritual and material goods, and left it with each one to reach out[Pg 161] for them if he liked.

Communism really procures them for each one, presses them upon him, and compels him to acquire them. It takes seriously the idea that, because only spiritual and material goods make us men, we must unquestionably acquire these goods in order to be man. The commonalty made acquisition free; Communism compels to acquisition, and recognizes only the acquirer, him who practises a trade. It is not enough that the trade is free, but you must take it up.

So all that is left for criticism to do is to prove that the acquisition of these goods does not yet by any means make us men.

With the liberal commandment that every one is to make a man of himself, or every one to make himself man, there was posited the necessity that every one must gain time for this labor of humanization, i. e. that it should become possible for every one to labor on himself.

The commonalty thought it had brought this about if it handed over everything human to competition, but gave the individual a right to every human thing. "Each may strive after everything!"

Social liberalism finds that the matter is not settled with the "may," because may means only "it is forbidden to none" but not "it is made possible to every one." Hence it affirms that the commonalty is liberal only with the mouth and in words, supremely illiberal in act. It on its part wants to give all of us the means to be able to labor on ourselves.

By the principle of labor that of fortune or compe[Pg 162]tition is certainly outdone. But at the same time the laborer, in his consciousness that the essential thing in him is "the laborer," holds himself aloof from egoism and subjects himself to the supremacy of a society of laborers, as the commoner clung with self-abandonment to the competition-State. The beautiful dream of a "social duty" still continues to be dreamed. People think again that society gives what we need, and we are under obligations to it on that account, owe it everything.[82] They are still at the point of wanting to serve a "supreme giver of all good." That society is no ego at all, which could give, bestow, or grant, but an instrument or means, from which we may derive benefit; that we have no social duties, but solely interests for the pursuance of which society must serve us; that we owe society no sacrifice, but, if we sacrifice anything, sacrifice it to ourselves,—of this the Socialists do not think, because they—as liberals—are imprisoned in the religious principle, and zealously aspire after—a sacred society, such as the State was hitherto.

Society, from which we have everything, is a new master, a new spook, a new "supreme being," which "takes us into its service and allegiance"!

The more precise appreciation of political as well as social liberalism must wait to find its place further on. For the present we pass this over, in order first to summon them before the tribunal of humane or critical liberalism.

[Pg 163]

As liberalism is completed in self-criticising, "critical"[83] liberalism, in which the critic remains a liberal and does not go beyond the principle of liberalism, Man,—this may distinctively be named after Man and called the "humane."

The laborer is counted as the most material and egoistical man. He does nothing at all for humanity, does everything for himself, for his welfare.

The commonalty, because it proclaimed the freedom of Man only as to his birth, had to leave him in the claws of the un-human man (the egoist) for the rest of life. Hence under the régime of political liberalism egoism has an immense field for free utilization.

The laborer will utilize society for his egoistic ends as the commoner does the State. You have only an egoistic end after all, your welfare! is the humane liberal's reproach to the Socialist; take up a purely human interest, then I will be your companion. "But to this there belongs a consciousness stronger, more comprehensive, than a laborer-consciousness." "The laborer makes nothing, therefore he has nothing; but he makes nothing because his labor is always a labor that remains individual, calculated strictly for[Pg 164] his own want, a labor day by day."[84] In opposition to this one might, for instance, consider the fact that Gutenberg's labor did not remain individual, but begot innumerable children, and still lives to-day; it was calculated for the want of humanity, and was an eternal, imperishable labor.

The humane consciousness despises the commoner-consciousness as well as the laborer-consciousness: for the commoner is "indignant" only at vagabonds (at all who have "no definite occupation") and their "immorality"; the laborer is "disgusted" by the idler ("lazybones") and his "immoral," because parasitic and unsocial, principles. To this the humane liberal retorts: The unsettledness of many is only your product, Philistine! But that you, proletarian, demand the grind of all, and want to make drudgery general, is a part, still clinging to you, of your pack-mule life up to this time. Certainly you want to lighten drudgery itself by all having to drudge equally hard, yet only for this reason, that all may gain leisure to an equal extent. But what are they to do with their leisure? What does your "society" do, that this leisure may be passed humanly? It must leave the gained leisure to egoistic preference again, and the very gain that your society furthers falls to the egoist, as the gain of the commonalty, the masterlessness of man, could not be filled with a human element by the State, and therefore was left to arbitrary choice.

It is assuredly necessary that man be masterless: but[Pg 165] therefore the egoist is not to become master over man again either, but man over the egoist. Man must assuredly find leisure: but, if the egoist makes use of it, it will be lost for man; therefore you ought to have given leisure a human significance. But you laborers undertake even your labor from an egoistic impulse, because you want to eat, drink, live; how should you be less egoists in leisure? You labor only because having your time to yourselves (idling) goes well after work done, and what you are to while away your leisure time with is left to chance.

But, if every door is to be bolted against egoism, it would be necessary to strive after completely "disinterested" action, total disinterestedness. This alone is human, because only Man is disinterested, the egoist always interested.

If we let disinterestedness pass unchallenged for a while, then we ask, do you mean not to take an interest in anything, not to be enthusiastic for anything, not for liberty, humanity, etc.? "Oh, yes, but that is not an egoistic interest, not interestedness, but a human, i. e. a—theoretical interest, to wit, an interest not for an individual or individuals ('all'), but for the idea, for Man!"

And you do not notice that you too are enthusiastic only for your idea, your idea of liberty?

And, further, do you not notice that your disinterestedness is again, like religious disinterestedness, a heavenly interestedness? Certainly benefit to the individual leaves you cold, and abstractly you could cry fiat libertas, pereat mundus. You do not take[Pg 166] thought for the coming day either, and take no serious care for the individual's wants anyhow, not for your own comfort nor for that of the rest; but you make nothing of all this, because you are a—dreamer.

Do you suppose the humane liberal will be so liberal as to aver that everything possible to man is human? On the contrary! He does not, indeed, share the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, but "that this woman turns her body into a money-getting machine"[85] makes her despicable to him as "human being." His judgment is, The strumpet is not a human being; or, So far as a woman is a strumpet, so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further: The Jew, the Christian, the privileged person, the theologian, etc., is not a human being; so far as you are a Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything peculiar, criticise it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, etc., but be a human being, nothing but a human being. Assert your humanity against every restrictive specification; make yourself, by means of it, a human being, and free from those limits; make yourself a "free man," i. e. recognize humanity as your all-determining essence.

I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you are also more than a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal. Do you suppose, then, that you can ever become "a human being as such"? Do you suppose our posterity will find no prejudices and limits to clear away, for[Pg 167] which our powers were not sufficient? Or do you perhaps think that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you have come so far that the following days have nothing more to dissipate in you, and that you are a human being? The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. What do you need that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself as nothing before you had become a human being, you would have to wait till the "last judgment," till the day when man, or humanity, shall have attained perfection. But, as you will surely die before that, what becomes of your prize of victory?

Rather, therefore, invert the case, and say to yourself, I am a human being! I do not need to begin by producing the human being in myself, for he belongs to me already, like all my qualities.

But, asks the critic, how can one be a Jew and a man at once? In the first place, I answer, one cannot be either a Jew or a man at all, if "one" and Jew or man are to mean the same; "one" always reaches beyond those specifications, and,—let Isaacs be ever so Jewish,—a Jew, nothing but a Jew, he cannot be, just because he is this Jew. In the second place, as a Jew one assuredly cannot be a man, if being a man means being nothing special. But in the third place—and this is the point—I can, as a Jew, be entirely what I—can be. From Samuel or Moses, and others, you hardly expect that they should have raised themselves above Judaism, although you must say that they were not yet "men." They simply were what they could be. Is it otherwise with the Jews of to-day? Because you have discovered the idea of humanity, does it fol[Pg 168]low from this that every Jew can become a convert to it? If he can, he does not fail to, and, if he fails to, he—cannot. What does your demand concern him? what the call to be a man, which you address to him?

As a universal principle, in the "human society" which the humane liberal promises, nothing "special" which one or another has is to find recognition, nothing which bears the character of "private" is to have value. In this way the circle of liberalism, which has its good principle in man and human liberty, its bad in the egoist and everything private, its God in the former, its devil in the latter, rounds itself off completely; and, if the special or private person lost his value in the State (no personal prerogative), if in the "laborers' or ragamuffins' society" special (private) property is no longer recognized, so in "human society" everything special or private will be left out of account; and, when "pure criticism" shall have accomplished its arduous task, then it will be known just what we must look upon as private, and what, "penetrated with a sense of our nothingness," we must—let stand.

Because State and society do not suffice for humane liberalism, it negates both, and at the same time retains them. So at one time the cry is that the task of the day is "not a political, but a social, one," and then again the "free State" is promised for the future. In truth, "human society" is both,—the most general State and the most general society. Only against the limited State is it asserted that it makes too much stir about spiritual private interests (e. g. people's religious[Pg 169] belief), and against limited society that it makes too much of material private interests. Both are to leave private interests to private people, and, as human society, concern themselves solely about general human interests.

The politicians, thinking to abolish personal will, self-will or arbitrariness, did not observe that through property[86] our self-will[87] gained a secure place of refuge.

The Socialists, taking away property too, do not notice that this secures itself a continued existence in self-ownership. Is it only money and goods, then, that are a property, or is every opinion something of mine, something of my own?

So every opinion must be abolished or made impersonal. The person is entitled to no opinion, but, as self-will was transferred to the State, property to society, so opinion too must be transferred to something general, "Man," and thereby become a general human opinion.

If opinion persists, then I have my God (why, God exists only as "my God," he is an opinion or my "faith"), and consequently my faith, my religion, my thoughts, my ideals. Therefore a general human faith must come into existence, the "fanaticism of liberty." For this would be a faith that agreed with the "essence of man," and, because only "man" is reasonable (you and I might be very unreasonable!), a reasonable faith.

As self-will and property become powerless, so must[Pg 170] self-ownership or egoism in general.

In this supreme development of "free man" egoism, self-ownership, is combated on principle, and such subordinate ends as the social "welfare" of the Socialists, etc., vanish before the lofty "idea of humanity." Everything that is not a "general human" entity is something separate, satisfies only some or one; or, if it satisfies all, it does this to them only as individuals, not as men, and is therefore called "egoistic."

To the Socialists welfare is still the supreme aim, as free rivalry was the approved thing to the political liberals; now welfare is free too, and we are free to achieve welfare, just as he who wanted to enter into rivalry (competition) was free to do so.

But to take part in the rivalry you need only to be commoners; to take part in the welfare, only to be laborers. Neither reaches the point of being synonymous with "man." It is "truly well" with man only when he is also "intellectually free"! For man is mind: therefore all powers that are alien to him, the mind,—all superhuman, heavenly, unhuman powers,—must be overthrown, and the name "man" must be above every name.

So in this end of the modern age (age of the moderns) there returns again, as the main point, what had been the main point at its beginning: "intellectual liberty."

To the Communist in particular the humane liberal says: If society prescribes to you your activity, then this is indeed free from the influence of the individual, i. e. the egoist, but it still does not on that account need to be a purely human activity, nor you to be a[Pg 171] complete organ of humanity. What kind of activity society demands of you remains accidental, you know; it might give you a place in building a temple or something of that sort, or, even if not that, you might yet on your own impulse be active for something foolish, therefore unhuman; yes, more yet, you really labor only to nourish yourself, in general to live, for dear life's sake, not for the glorification of humanity. Consequently free activity is not attained till you make yourself free from all stupidities, from everything non-human, i.e. egoistic (pertaining only to the individual, not to the Man in the individual), dissipate all untrue thoughts that obscure man or the idea of humanity: in short, when you are not merely unhampered in your activity, but the substance too of your activity is only what is human, and you live and work only for humanity. But this is not the case so long as the aim of your effort is only your welfare and that of all; what you do for the society of ragamuffins is not yet anything done for "human society."

Laboring does not alone make you a man, because it is something formal and its object accidental; the question is who you that labor are. As far as laboring goes, you might do it from an egoistic (material) impulse, merely to procure nourishment and the like; it must be a labor furthering humanity, calculated for the good of humanity, serving historical (i. e. human) evolution,—in short, a humane labor. This implies two things: one, that it be useful to humanity; next, that it be the work of a "man." The first alone may be the case with every labor, as even the labors of nature, e. g. of animals, are utilized by humanity for[Pg 172] the furthering of science, etc.; the second requires that he who labors should know the human object of his labor; and, as he can have this consciousness only when he knows himself as man, the crucial condition is—self-consciousness.

Unquestionably much is already attained when you cease to be a "fragment-laborer,"[88] yet therewith you only get a view of the whole of your labor, and acquire a consciousness about it, which is still far removed from a self-consciousness, a consciousness about your true "self" or "essence," Man. The laborer has still remaining the desire for a "higher consciousness," which, because the activity of labor is unable to quiet it, he satisfies in a leisure hour. Hence leisure stands by the side of his labor, and he sees himself compelled to proclaim labor and idling human in one breath, yes, to attribute the true elevation to the idler, the leisure-enjoyer. He labors only to get rid of labor; he wants to make labor free, only that he may be free from labor.

In fine, his work has no satisfying substance, because it is only imposed by society, only a stint, a task, a calling; and, conversely, his society does not satisfy, because it gives only work.

His labor ought to satisfy him as a man; instead of that, it satisfies society; society ought to treat him as a man, and it treats him as—a rag-tag laborer, or a laboring ragamuffin.

Labor and society are of use to him not as he needs them as a man, but only as he needs them as an[Pg 173] "egoist."

Such is the attitude of criticism toward labor. It points to "mind," wages the war "of mind with the masses,"[89] and pronounces communistic labor unintellectual mass-labor. Averse to labor as they are, the masses love to make labor easy for themselves. In literature, which is to-day furnished in mass, this aversion to labor begets the universally-known superficiality, which puts from it "the toil of research."[90]

Therefore humane liberalism says: You want labor; all right, we want it likewise, but we want it in the fullest measure. We want it, not that we may gain spare time, but that we may find all satisfaction in it itself. We want labor because it is our self-development.

But then the labor too must be adapted to that end! Man is honored only by human, self-conscious labor, only by the labor that has for its end no "egoistic" purpose, but Man, and is Man's self-revelation; so that the saying should be laboro, ergo sum, I labor, therefore I am a man. The humane liberal wants that labor of the mind which works up all material; he wants the mind, that leaves no thing quiet or in its existing condition, that acquiesces in nothing, analyzes everything, criticises anew every result that has been gained. This restless mind is the true laborer, it obliterates prejudices, shatters limits and narrownesses, and raises man above everything that would like to dominate over him, while the Communist labors only for himself, and not even freely, but from necessity,[Pg 174]—in short, represents a man condemned to hard labor.

The laborer of such a type is not "egoistic," because he does not labor for individuals, neither for himself nor for other individuals, not for private men therefore, but for humanity and its progress: he does not ease individual pains, does not care for individual wants, but removes limits within which humanity is pressed, dispels prejudices which dominate an entire time, vanquishes hindrances that obstruct the path of all, clears away errors in which men entangle themselves, discovers truths which are found through him for all and for all time; in short—he lives and labors for humanity.

Now, in the first place, the discoverer of a great truth doubtless knows that it can be useful to the rest of men, and, as a jealous withholding furnishes him no enjoyment, he communicates it; but, even though he has the consciousness that his communication is highly valuable to the rest, yet he has in no wise sought and found his truth for the sake of the rest, but for his own sake, because he himself desired it, because darkness and fancies left him no rest till he had procured for himself light and enlightenment to the best of his powers.

He labors, therefore, for his own sake and for the satisfaction of his want. That along with this he was also useful to others, yes, to posterity, does not take from his labor the egoistic character.

In the next place, if he did labor only on his own account, like the rest, why should his act be human, those of the rest unhuman, i. e. egoistic? Perhaps, because this book, painting, symphony, etc., is the[Pg 175] labor of his whole being, because he has done his best in it, has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only the handicraftsman, i. e. the skill in handicraft, not "the man"? In his poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not "the man."

But does this mean more than "in the one work you see me as completely as possible, in the other only my skill"? Is it not me again that the act expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offer oneself to the world in a work, to work out and shape oneself, than to remain concealed behind one's labor? You say, to be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the handicraftsman,—that he does not understand how to compress himself into one labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched out in his other relations of life, and that your want, through whose satisfaction that work came into being, was a—theoretical want.

But you will reply that you reveal quite another man, a worthier, higher, greater, a man that is more man than that other. I will assume that you accomplish all that is possible to man, that you bring to pass what no other succeeds in. Wherein, then, does your greatness consist? Precisely in this, that you are more than other men (the "masses"), more than men ordinarily are, more than "ordinary men"; precisely in your elevation above men. You are distinguished beyond other men not by being man, but be[Pg 176]cause you are a "unique"[91] man. Doubtless you show what a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, this by no means shows that others, also men, are able to do as much; you have executed it only as a unique man, and are unique therein.

It is not man that makes up your greatness, but you create it, because you are more than man, and mightier than other—men.

It is believed that one cannot be more than man. Rather, one cannot be less!

It is believed further that whatever one attains is good for Man. In so far as I remain at all times a man—or, like Schiller, a Swabian; like Kant, a Prussian; like Gustavus Adolphus, a near-sighted person—I certainly become by my superior qualities a notable man, Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted person. But the case is not much better with that than with Frederick the Great's cane, which became famous for Frederick's sake.

To "Give God the glory" corresponds the modern "Give Man the glory." But I mean to keep it for myself.

Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be "human," enunciates the necessary condition of sociability; for only as a man among men is one companionable. Herewith it makes known its social object, the establishment of "human society."

Among social theories criticism is indisputably the most complete, because it removes and deprives of value everything that separates man from man: all[Pg 177] prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle of Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest fulfilment, and the last possible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness and repulsion from men: a fight against egoism in its simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of singleness,[92] exclusiveness, itself.

"How can you live a truly social life so long as even one exclusiveness still exists between you?"

I ask conversely, How can you be truly single so long as even one connection still exists between you? If you are connected, you cannot leave each other; if a "tie" clasps you, you are something only with another, and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of you humanity.

"Only when you are human can you keep company with each other as men, just as you can understand each other as patriots only when you are patriotic!"

All right; then I answer, Only when you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what you are.

It is precisely the keenest critic who is hit hardest by the curse of his principle. Putting from him one exclusive thing after another, shaking off churchliness, patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and separates himself from the churchly man, from the patriot, etc., till at last, when all ties are undone, he stands—alone. He, of all men, must exclude all that have anything exclusive or private; and, when you get to the bottom, what can be more exclusive than[Pg 178] the exclusive, single person himself!

Or does he perhaps think that the situation would be better if all became men and gave up exclusiveness? Why, for the very reason that "all" means "every individual" the most glaring contradiction is still maintained, for the "individual" is exclusiveness itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes to the individual anything private or exclusive, any private thought, any private folly; if he criticises everything away from him before his face, since his hatred of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred; if he knows no tolerance toward what is private, because everything private is unhuman,—yet he cannot criticise away the private person himself, since the hardness of the individual person resists his criticism, and he must be satisfied with declaring this person a "private person" and really leaving everything private to him again.

What will the society that no longer cares about anything private do? Make the private impossible? No, but "subordinate it to the interests of society, and, e. g., leave it to private will to institute holidays, as many as it chooses, if only it does not come in collision with the general interest."[93] Everything private is left free; i. e. it has no interest for society.

"By their raising of barriers against science the church and religiousness have declared that they are what they always were, only that this was hidden under another semblance when they were proclaimed to be the basis and necessary foundation of the State[Pg 179]——a matter of purely private concern. Even when they were connected with the State and made it Christian, they were only the proof that the State had not yet developed its general political idea, that it was only instituting private rights——they were only the highest expression for the fact that the State was a private affair and had to do only with private affairs. When the State shall at last have the courage and strength to fulfil its general destiny and to be free; when, therefore, it is also able to give separate interests and private concerns their true position,—then religion and the church will be free as they have never been hitherto. As a matter of the most purely private concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal want, they will be left to themselves; and every individual, every congregation and ecclesiastical communion, will be able to care for the blessedness of their souls as they choose and as they think necessary. Every one will care for his soul's blessedness so far as it is to him a personal want, and will accept and pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to him to offer the best guarantee for the satisfaction of his want. Science is at last left entirely out of the game."[94]

What is to happen, though? Is social life to have an end, and all companionableness, all fraternization, everything that is created by the love or society principle, to disappear?

As if one will not always seek the other because he needs him; as if one must not accommodate himself to[Pg 180] the other when he needs him. But the difference is this, that then the individual really unites with the individual, while formerly they were bound together by a tie; son and father are bound together before majority, after it they can come together independently; before it they belonged together as members of the family, after it they unite as egoists; sonship and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer pin themselves down to these.

The last privilege, in truth, is "Man"; with it all are privileged or invested. For, as Bruno Bauer himself says, "privilege remains even when it is extended to all."[95]

Thus liberalism runs its course in the following transformations: "First, the individual is not man, therefore his individual personality is of no account: no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates!

"Second, the individual has nothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or property, is valid.

"Third, as the individual neither is man nor has anything human, he shall not exist at all: he shall, as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated by criticism to make room for Man, 'Man, just discovered'."

But, although the individual is not Man, Man is yet present in the individual, and, like every spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence political liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to him as "a man by birth,"[Pg 181] as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of conscience, the possession of goods, etc.,—in short, the "rights of man"; Socialism grants to the individual what pertains to him as an active man, as a "laboring" man; finally, humane liberalism gives the individual what he has as "a man," i. e. everything that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the single one[96] has nothing at all, humanity everything; and the necessity of the "regeneration" preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the completest measure. Become a new creature, become "man"!

One might even think himself reminded of the close of the Lord's Prayer. To Man belongs the lordship (the "power" or dynamis); therefore no individual may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals;—Man's is the kingdom, i. e. the world, consequently the individual is not to be proprietor, but Man, "all," commands the world as property;—to Man is due renown, glorification or "glory" (doxa) from all, for Man or humanity is the individual's end, for which he labors, thinks, lives, and for whose glorification he must become "man."

Hitherto men have always striven to find out a fellowship in which their inequalities in other respects should become "non-essential"; they strove for equalization, consequently for equality, and wanted to come all under one hat, which means nothing less than that they were seeking for one lord, one tie, one faith ("'Tis in one God we all believe"). There cannot be[Pg 182] for men anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself, and in this fellowship the love-craving has found its contentment: it did not rest till it had brought on this last equalization, leveled all inequality, laid man on the breast of man. But under this very fellowship decay and ruin become most glaring. In a more limited fellowship the Frenchman still stood against the German, the Christian against the Mohammedan, etc. Now, on the contrary, man stands against men, or, as men are not man, man stands against the un-man.

The sentence "God has become man" is now followed by the other, "Man has become I." This is the human I. But we invert it and say: I was not able to find myself so long as I sought myself as Man. But, now that it appears that Man is aspiring to become I and to gain a corporeity in me, I note that, after all, everything depends on me, and Man is lost without me. But I do not care to give myself up to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not ask henceforward whether I am man or un-man in what I set about; let this spirit keep off my neck!

Humane liberalism goes to work radically. If you want to be or have anything especial even in one point, if you want to retain for yourself even one prerogative above others, to claim even one right that is not a general "right of man," you are an egoist.

Very good! I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, I do not want to claim any prerogative against them, but—I do not measure myself by others either, and do not want to have any right whatever. I want to be all and have all that I can be[Pg 183] and have. Whether others are and have anything similar, what do I care? The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have. I cause no detriment to them, as I cause no detriment to the rock by being "ahead of it" in having motion. If they could have it, they would have it.

To cause other men no detriment is the point of the demand to possess no prerogative; to renounce all "being ahead," the strictest theory of renunciation. One is not to count himself as "anything especial," such as e. g. a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself as anything especial, but as unique.[97] Doubtless I have similarity with others; yet that holds good only for comparison or reflection; in fact I am incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the generalities "flesh, mind," those are your thoughts, which have nothing to do with my flesh, my mind, and can least of all issue a "call" to mine.

I do not want to recognize or respect in you anything, neither the proprietor nor the ragamuffin, nor even the man, but to use you. In salt I find that it makes food palatable to me, therefore I dissolve it; in the fish I recognize an aliment, therefore I eat it; in you I discover the gift of making my life agreeable, therefore I choose you as a companion. Or, in salt I study crystallization, in the fish animality, in you men, etc. But to me you are only what you are for me,—to wit, my object; and, because my object, therefore my property.[Pg 184]

In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood is completed. We must first come down to the most ragamuffin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive at ownness, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more ragamuffin-like than naked—Man.

It is more than ragamuffinhood, however, when I throw away Man too because I feel that he too is alien to me and that I can make no pretensions on that basis. This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood: because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself, and therewith has ceased, to be what he was, a ragamuffin.

I am no longer a ragamuffin, but have been one.

Up to this time the discord could not come to an outbreak, because properly there is current only a contention of modern liberals with antiquated liberals, a contention of those who understand "freedom" in a small measure and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of the moderate and measureless, therefore. Everything turns on the question, how free must man be? That man must be free, in this all believe; therefore all are liberal too. But the un-man[98] who is somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? flow can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same time with man?[Pg 185]

Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as God has the devil: by the side of man stands always the un-man, the individual, the egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this devil.

Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of showing the other liberals that they still do not want "freedom."

If the other liberals had before their eyes only isolated egoism and were for the most part blind, radical liberalism has against it egoism "in mass," throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of freedom their own as it does, so that now man and un-man, rigorously separated, stand over against each other as enemies, to wit, the "masses" and "criticism";[99] namely, "free, human criticism," as it is called ("Judenfrage," p. 114), in opposition to crude, e. g. religious, criticism.

Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the masses and "give them a general certificate of insolvency."[100] So it means finally to make itself out in the right, and to represent all contention of the "faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoistic stubbornness,[101] as pettiness, paltriness. All wrangling loses significance, and petty dissensions are given up, because in criticism a common enemy enters the field. "You are egoists altogether, one no better than another!" Now the egoists stand together against criticism.[Pg 186]

Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism precisely because it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty to egoism. Accordingly criticism and the masses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other.

Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, freedom from egoism, and wrangle only over which of them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains it.

The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men of darkness and men of light, politicians, Communists,—all, in short,—hold the reproach of egoism far from them; and, as criticism brings against them this reproach in plain terms and in the most extended sense, all justify themselves against the accusation of egoism, and combat—egoism, the same enemy with whom criticism wages war.

Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, and both seek to liberate themselves from egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashing themselves as by ascribing it to the opposite party.

The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" who gives them the "simple concept and the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph is denied in "Lit. Ztg." V. 24 were only bunglers. He is their prince and general in the war against egoism for freedom; what he fights against they fight against. But at the same time he is their enemy too, only not the enemy before them, but the friendly enemy who wields the knout behind the timorous to force courage into them.

Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses is[Pg 187] reduced to the following contradiction: "You are egoists"! "No, we are not"! "I will prove it to you"! "You shall have our justification"!

Let us then take both for what they give themselves out for, non-egoists, and what they take each other for, egoists. They are egoists and are not.

Properly criticism says: You must liberate your ego from all limitedness so entirely that it becomes a human ego. I say: Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively: not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing down even one limit for all men? Are not countless persons to-day, as at all times, running about with all the "limitations of humanity"? He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair. Nobody does anything else either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is to call on them to cast down all human limits. That is impossible, because Man has no limits. I have some indeed, but then it is only mine that concern me any, and only they can be overcome by me. A human ego I cannot become, just because I am I and not merely man.

Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught us something that we can lay to heart! I am not free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not disinterested? Well, even if it makes little difference[Pg 188] to me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave unused any occasion to realize myself or make myself count. Criticism offers me this occasion by the teaching that, if anything plants itself firmly in me, and becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and servant, i. e. a possessed man. An interest, be it for what it may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot get away from it, and is no longer my property, but I I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson to let no part of our property become stable, and to feel comfortable only in—dissolving it.

So, if criticism says: You are man only when you are restlessly criticising and dissolving! then we say: Man I am without that, and I am I likewise; therefore I want only to be careful to secure my property to myself; and, in order to secure it, I continually take it back into myself, annihilate in it every movement toward independence, and swallow it before it can fix itself and become a "fixed idea" or a "mania."

But I do that not for the sake of my "human calling," but because I call myself to it. I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is possible for a man to dissolve, and, e. g., while not yet ten years old I do not criticise the nonsense of the Commandments, but I am man all the same, and act humanly in just this,—that I still leave them uncriticised. In short, I have no calling, and follow none, not even that to be a man.

Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be the day that anything won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become free[Pg 189] through liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself and confess to myself openly: What Man seems to have gained, I alone have gained.

Man is free when "Man is to man the supreme being." So it belongs to the completion of liberalism that every other supreme being be annulled, theology overturned by anthropology, God and his grace laughed down, "atheism" universal.

The egoism of property has given up the last that it had to give when even the "My God" has become senseless; for God exists only when he has at heart the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in him.

Political liberalism abolished, the inequality of masters and servants: it made people masterless, anarchic. The master was now removed from the individual, the "egoist," to become a ghost,—the law or the State. Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the poor and rich, and makes people possessionless or propertyless. Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society. Humane liberalism makes people godless, atheistic. Therefore the individual's God, "my God", must be put an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at the same time freedom from service, possessionlessness at the same time freedom from care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from prejudice: for with the master the servant falls away; with possession, the care about it; with the firmly-rooted God, prejudice. But, since the master rises again as State, the servant appears again as subject; since possession becomes the property of society, care is be[Pg 190]gotten anew as labor; and, since God as Man becomes a prejudice, there arises a new faith, faith in humanity or liberty. For the individual's God the God of all, viz., "Man," is now exalted; "for it is the highest thing in us all to be man." But, as nobody can become entirely what the idea "man" imports, Man remains to the individual a lofty other world, an unattained supreme being, a God. But at the same time this is the "true God," because he is fully adequate to us,—to wit, our own "self"; we ourselves, but separated from us and lifted above us.

The foregoing review of "free human criticism" was written by bits immediately after the appearance of the books in question, as was also that which elsewhere refers to writings of this tendency, and I did little more than bring together the fragments. But criticism is restlessly pressing forward, and thereby makes it necessary for me to come back to it once more, now that my book is finished, and insert this concluding note.

I have before me the latest (eighth) number of the "Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung" of Bruno Bauer.

There again "the general interests of society" stand at the top. But criticism has reflected, and given this "society" a specification by which it is discriminated from a form which previously had still been confused with it: the "State," in former passages still celebrated as "free State," is quite given up because it can in no wise fulfil the task of "human[Pg 191] society." Criticism only "saw itself compelled to identify for a moment human and political affairs" in 1842; but now it has found that the State, even as "free State," is not human society, or, as it could likewise say, that the people is not "man." We saw how it got through with theology and showed clearly that God sinks into dust before Man; we see it now come to a clearance with politics in the same way, and show that before Man peoples and nationalities fall: so we see how it has its explanation with Church and State, declaring them both unhuman, and we shall see—for it betrays this to us already—how it can also give proof that before Man the "masses," which it even calls a "spiritual being," appear worthless. And how should the lesser "spiritual beings" be able to maintain themselves before the supreme spirit? "Man" casts down the false idols.

So what the critic has in view for the present is the scrutiny of the "masses," which he will place before "Man" in order to combat them from the standpoint of Man. "What is now the object of criticism?" "The masses, a spiritual being!" These the critic will "learn to know," and will find that they are in contradiction with Man; he will demonstrate that they are unhuman, and will succeed just as well in this demonstration as in the former ones, that the divine and the national, or the concerns of Church and of State, were the unhuman.

The masses are defined as "the most significant product of the Revolution, as the deceived multitude which the illusions of political Illumination, and in general the entire Illumination movement of the[Pg 192] eighteenth century, have given over to boundless disgruntlement." The Revolution satisfied some by its result, and left others unsatisfied; the satisfied part is the commonalty (bourgeoisie, etc.), the unsatisfied is the—masses. Does not the critic, so placed, himself belong to the "masses"?

But the unsatisfied are still in great mistiness, and their discontent utters itself only in a "boundless disgruntlement." This the likewise unsatisfied critic now wants to master: he cannot want and attain more than to bring that "spiritual being," the masses, out of its disgruntlement, and to "uplift" those who were only disgruntled, i. e. to give them the right attitude toward those results of the Revolution which are to be overcome;—he can become the head of the masses, their decided spokesman. Therefore he wants also to "abolish the deep chasm which parts him from the multitude." From those who want to "uplift the lower classes of the people" he is distinguished by wanting to deliver from "disgruntlement," not merely these, but himself too.

But assuredly his consciousness does not deceive him either, when he takes the masses to be the "natural opponents of theory," and foresees that, "the more this theory shall develop itself, so much the more will it make the masses compact." For the critic cannot enlighten or satisfy the masses with his presupposition, Man. If over against the commonalty they are only the "lower classes of the people," politically insignificant masses, over against "Man" they must still more be mere "masses," humanly insignificant—yes, unhuman—masses, or a multitude of un-men.[Pg 193]

The critic clears away everything human; and, starting from the presupposition that the human is the true, he works against himself, denying it wherever it had been hitherto found. He proves only that the human is to be found nowhere except in his head, but the unhuman everywhere. The unhuman is the real, the extant on all hands, and by the proof that it is "not human" the critic only enunciates plainly the tautological sentence that it is the unhuman.

But what if the unhuman, turning its back on itself with resolute heart, should at the same time turn away from the disturbing critic and leave him standing, untouched and unstung by his remonstrance?

"You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not—unique.[102] But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently—adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be mea[Pg 194]sured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the—unique."

We have to pay attention to still another sentence of the same number. "Criticism sets up no dogmas, and wants to learn to know nothing but things."

The critic is afraid of becoming "dogmatic" or setting up dogmas. Of course: why, thereby he would become the opposite of the critic,—the dogmatist; he would now become bad, as he is good as critic, or would become from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. "Of all things, no dogma!" this is his—dogma. For the critic remains on one and the same ground with the dogmatist,—that of thoughts. Like the latter he always starts from a thought, but varies in this, that he never ceases to keep the principle-thought in the process of thinking, and so does not let it become stable. He only asserts the thought-process against stationariness in it. From criticism no thought is safe, since criticism is thought or the thinking mind itself.

Therefore I repeat that the religious world—and this is the world of thoughts—reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may "egoistically" establish itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity of thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to gibe gently here and there at the thought of Man, of humanity and humaneness, because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic[Pg 195] fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a—"higher" in which it dissolves; for he moves only—in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of thinking itself, i. e. as the thought of thinking or of criticism.

Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph: for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the—dogma of free thinking or of criticism.

Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in the right, i. e. in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is "up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is no power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it in all its "turns."

I am no opponent of criticism, i. e. I am no dogmatist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If I were a "dogmatist," I should place at the head a dogma, i. e. a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete this as a "systematist," spinning it out to a system, i. e. a structure of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic, viz., an opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the champion of think[Pg 196]ing; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking, and mind is shattered.

Criticism is the possessed man's fight against possession as such, against all possession: a fight which is founded in the consciousness that everywhere possession, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude, is extant. He knows that people stand in a religious or believing attitude not only toward God, but toward other ideas as well, like right, the State, law, etc.; i. e. he recognizes possession in all places. So he wants to break up thoughts by thinking; but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It it not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees me from possession.

A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the torment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoopla throws off year-long burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and believing.

"What clumsiness and frivolity, to want to solve the most difficult problems, acquit yourself of the most comprehensive tasks, by a breaking off!"

But have you tasks if you do not set them to yourself? So long as you set them, you will not give them up, and I certainly do not care if you think, and, thinking, create a thousand thoughts. But you[Pg 197] who have set the tasks, are you not to be able to upset them again? Must you be bound to these tasks, and must they become absolute tasks?

To cite only one thing, the government has been disparaged on account of its resorting to forcible means against thoughts, interfering against the press by means of the police power of the censorship, and making a personal fight out of a literary one. As if it were solely a matter of thoughts, and as if one's attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish, self-denying, and self-sacrificing! Do not those thoughts attack the governing parties themselves, and so call out egoism? And do the thinkers not set before the attacked ones the religious demand to reverence the power of thought, of ideas? They are to succumb voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine power of thought, Minerva, fights on their enemies' side. Why, that would be an act of possession, a religious sacrifice. To be sure, the governing parties are themselves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the leading power of an idea or a faith; but they are at the same time unconfessed egoists, and right here, against the enemy, their pent-up egoism breaks loose: possessed in their faith, they are at the same time unpossessed by their opponents' faith, i. e. they are egoists toward this. If one wants to make them a reproach, it could only be the converse,—to wit, that they are possessed by their ideas.

Against thoughts no egoistic power is to appear, no police power and the like. So the believers in thinking believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not sacred to me, and I defend my skin against them as[Pg 198] against other things. That may be an unreasonable defence; but, if I am in duty bound to reason, then I, like Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest to it!

In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of faith, is the kingdom of heaven, every one is assuredly wrong who uses unthinking force, just as every one is wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, or, although he is a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts unchristianly; in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself to belong though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he is a "sinner" or "egoist." But it is only when he becomes a criminal against these kingdoms that he can throw off their dominion.

Here too the result is this, that the fight of the thinkers against the government is indeed in the right, viz., in might,—so far as it is carried on against the government's thoughts (the government is dumb, and does not succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of), but is, on the other hand, in the wrong, viz., in impotence, so far as it does not succeed in bringing into the field anything but thoughts against a personal power (the egoistic power stops the mouths of the thinkers). The theoretical fight cannot complete the victory, and the sacred power of thought succumbs to the might of egoism. Only the egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears up everything.

This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the single person,[103] a mere pas[Pg 199]time or hobby as it were, and to take from it the importance of "being the last decisive power"; this degradation and desecration of thinking; this equalization of the unthinking and thoughtful ego; this clumsy but real "equality,"—criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond thinking but—the deluge.

Criticism does indeed affirm, e. g., that free criticism may overcome the State, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach which is laid upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and impudence"; it thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence" may not overcome, it alone may. The truth is rather the reverse: the State can be really overcome only by impudent self-will.

It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that in the critic's new change of front he has not transformed himself, but only "made good an oversight," "disentangled a subject," and is saying too much when he speaks of "criticism criticising itself": it, or rather he, has only criticised its "oversight" and cleared it of its "inconsistencies." If he wanted to criticise criticism, he would have to look and see if there was anything in its presupposition.

I on my part start from a presupposition in presupposing myself; but my presupposition does not struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my presupposition, and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not a presupposition at all: for, as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the dual[Pg 200]ity of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an "incomplete" and a "complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and, again, posited only in the moment when I posit myself; i. e., I am creator and creature in one.

If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again,—i. e. a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that dissolution is to be for my good; otherwise it would belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which, in favor of others, (e. g. this very Man, God, the State, pure morality, etc.), declared old truths to be untruths and did away with long-fostered presuppositions.

[Pg 201]

[Pg 202]

[Pg 203]

"Does not the spirit thirst for freedom?"—Alas, not my spirit alone, my body too thirsts for it hourly! When before the odorous castle-kitchen my nose tells my palate of the savory dishes that are being prepared therein, it feels a fearful pining at its dry bread; when my eyes tell the hardened back about soft down on which one may lie more delightfully than on its compressed straw, a suppressed rage seizes it; when—but let us not follow the pains further.—And you call that a longing for freedom? What do you want to become free from, then? From your hardtack and your straw bed? Then throw them away!—But that seems not to serve you: you want rather to have the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and downy beds. Are men to give you this "freedom,"—are they to permit it to you? You do not hope that from their philanthropy, because you know they all think[Pg 204] like—you: each is the nearest to himself! How, therefore, do you mean to come to the enjoyment of those foods and beds? Evidently not otherwise than in making them your property!

If you think it over rightly, you do not want the freedom to have all these fine things, for with this freedom you still do not have them; you want really to have them, to call them yours and possess them as your property. Of what use is a freedom to you, indeed, if it brings in nothing? And, if you became free from everything, you would no longer have anything; for freedom is empty of substance. Whoso knows not how to make use of it, for him it has no value this useless permission; but how I make use of it depends on my personality.[105]

I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more than freedom for you: you should not merely be rid of what you do not want, you should also have what you want; you should not only be a "freeman," you should be an "owner" too.

Free—from what? Oh! what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke of serfdom, of sovereignty, of aristocracy and princes, the dominion of the desires and passions; yes, even the dominion of one's own will, of self-will, for the completest self-denial is nothing but freedom—freedom, to wit, from self-determination, from one's own self. And the craving for freedom as for something absolute, worthy of every praise, deprived us of ownness: it created self-denial. However, the freer I become, the more compulsion[Pg 205] piles up before my eyes; and the more impotent I feel myself. The unfree son of the wilderness does not yet feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilized man: he seems to himself freer than this latter. In the measure that I conquer freedom for myself I create for myself new bounds and new tasks: if I have invented railroads, I feel myself weak again because I cannot yet sail through the skies like the bird; and, if I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed my mind, at once there await me innumerable others, whose perplexities impede my progress, dim my free gaze, make the limits of my freedom painfully sensible to me. "Now that you have become free from sin, you have become servants of righteousness."[106] Republicans in their broad freedom, do they not become servants of the law? How true Christian hearts at all times longed to "become free," how they pined to see themselves delivered from the "bonds of this earth-life"! they looked out toward the land of freedom. ("The Jerusalem that is above is the freewoman; she is the mother of us all." Gal. 4. 26.)

Being free from anything—means only being clear or rid. "He is free from headache" is equal to "he is rid of it." "He is free from this prejudice" is equal to "he has never conceived it" or "he has got rid of it." In "less" we complete the freedom recommended by Christianity, in sinless, godless, moralityless, etc.

Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. "Ye, dear brethren, are called to freedom."[107] "So speak and so[Pg 206] do, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom."[108]

Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give it up? No, nothing is to be lost, freedom no more than the rest; but it is to become our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot.

What a difference between freedom and ownness! One can get rid of a great many things, one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free from much, not from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the condition of slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of things, not from everything; but from the whip, the domineering temper, etc., of the master, one does not as slave become free. "Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams!" Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I control. My own I am at all times and under all circumstances, if I know how to have myself and do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something that I cannot truly will, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can only wish it and—aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook. The fetters of reality cut the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment. But my own I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my advantage; his blows strike me indeed, I am not free from them; but I endure them only for my benefit, perhaps in order to deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or,[Pg 207] again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. But, as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust. That I then become free from him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says I was "free" even in the condition of slavery,—to wit, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But "intrinsically free" is not "really free," and "inwardly" is not "outwardly." I was own, on the other hand, my own, altogether, inwardly and outwardly. Under the dominion of a cruel master my body is not "free" from torments and lashes; but it is my bones that moan under the torture, my fibres that quiver under the blows, and I moan because my body moans. That I sigh and shiver proves that I have not yet lost myself, that I am still my own. My leg is not "free" from the master's stick, but it is my leg and is inseparable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he still has my leg! He retains in his hand nothing but the—corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a so-called dead dog has none and is therefore no longer a dog.

If one opines that a slave may yet be inwardly free, he says in fact only the most indisputable and trivial thing. For who is going to assert that any man is wholly without freedom? If I am an eye-servant, can I therefore not be free from innumerable things, e. g. from faith in Zeus, from the desire for fame, and the like? Why then should not a whipped slave also be able to be inwardly free from unchristian sentiments,[Pg 208] from hatred, of his enemy, etc.? He then has "Christian freedom," is rid of the unchristian; but has he absolute freedom, freedom from everything, e. g. from the Christian delusion, or from bodily pain, etc.?

In the meantime, all this seems to be said more against names than against the thing. But is the name indifferent, and has not a word, a shibboleth, always inspired and—fooled men? Yet between freedom and ownness there lies still a deeper chasm than the mere difference of the words.

All the world desires freedom, all long for its reign to come. O enchantingly beautiful dream of a blooming "reign of freedom," a "free human race"!—who has not dreamed it? So men shall become free, entirely free, free from all constraint! From all constraint, really from all? Are they never to put constraint on themselves any more? "Oh yes, that, of course; don't you see, that is no constraint at all?" Well, then at any rate they are to become free from religious faith, from the strict duties of morality, from the inexorability of the law, from—"What a fearful misunderstanding!" Well, what are they to be free from then, and what not?

The lovely dream is dissipated; awakened, one rubs his half-opened eyes and stares at the prosaic questioner. "What men are to be free from?"—From blind credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims another, all faith is blind credulity; they must become free from all faith. No, no, for God's sake,—inveighs the first again,—do not cast all faith from you, else the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the republic,—a third makes himself heard,—and be[Pg 209]come—free from all commanding lords. There is no help in that, says a fourth: we only get a new lord then, a "dominant majority"; let us rather free ourselves from this dreadful inequality.—O hapless equality, already I hear your plebeian roar again! How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a paradise of freedom, and what impudence and licentiousness now raises its wild clamor! Thus the first laments, and gets on his feet to grasp the sword against "unmeasured freedom." Soon we no longer hear anything but the clashing of the swords of the disagreeing dreamers of freedom.

What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for a particular freedom, e. g. freedom of faith; i. e., the believing man wanted to be free and independent; of what? of faith perhaps? no! but of the inquisitors of faith. So now "political or civil" freedom. The citizen wants to become free not from citizenhood, but from bureaucracy, the arbitrariness of princes, and the like. Prince Metternich once said he had "found a way that was adapted to guide men in the path of genuine freedom for all the future." The Count of Provence ran away from France precisely at the time when she was preparing the "reign of freedom," and said: "My imprisonment had become intolerable to me; I had only one passion, the desire for—freedom; I thought only of it."

The craving for a particular freedom always includes the purpose of a new dominion, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed "could give its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for freedom," but in truth only because they were[Pg 210] after a particular freedom, therefore a new dominion, the "dominion of the law."

Freedom you all want, you want freedom. Why then do you higgle over a more or less? Freedom can only be the whole of freedom; a piece of freedom is not freedom. You despair of the possibility of obtaining the whole of freedom, freedom from everything,—yes, you consider it insanity even to wish this?—Well, then leave off chasing after the phantom, and spend your pains on something better than the—unattainable.

"Ah, but there is nothing better than freedom!"

What have you then when you have freedom, viz.,—for I will not speak here of your piecemeal bits of freedom,—complete freedom? Then you are rid of everything that embarrasses you, everything, and there is probably nothing that does not once in your life embarrass you and cause you inconvenience. And for whose sake, then, did you want to be rid of it? Doubtless for your sake, because it is in your way! But, if something were not inconvenient to you; if, on the contrary, it were quite to your mind (e. g. the gently but irresistibly commanding look of your loved one),—then you would not want to be rid of it and free from it. Why not? For your sake again! So you take yourselves as measure and judge over all. You gladly let freedom go when unfreedom, the "sweet service of love," suits you; and you take up your freedom again on occasion when it begins to suit you better,—that is, supposing, which is not the point here, that you are not afraid of such a Repeal of the Union for other (perhaps religious) reasons.[Pg 211]

Why will you not take courage now to really make yourselves the central point and the main thing altogether? Why grasp in the air at freedom, your dream? Are you your dream? Do not begin by inquiring of your dreams, your notions, your thoughts, for that is all "hollow theory." Ask yourselves and ask after yourselves—that is practical and you know you want very much to be "practical." But there the one hearkens what his God (of course what he thinks of at the name God is his God) may be going to say to it, and another what his moral feelings, his conscience, his feeling of duty, may determine about it, and a third calculates what folks will think of it,—and, when each has thus asked his Lord God (folks are a Lord God just as good as, nay, even more compact than, the other-worldly and imaginary one: vox populi, vox dei), then he accommodates himself to his Lord's will and listens no more at all for what he himself would like to say and decide.

Therefore turn to yourselves rather than to your gods or idols. Bring out from yourselves what is in you, bring it to the light, bring yourselves to revelation.

How one acts only from himself, and asks after nothing further, the Christians have realized in the notion "God." He acts "as it pleases him." And foolish man, who could do just so, is to act as it "pleases God" instead.—If it is said that even God proceeds according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my whole nature, i. e. in myself.

But one needs only admonish you of yourselves to[Pg 212] bring you to despair at once. "What am I?" each of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding star! How am I to obtain a correct answer, if, without regard to God's commandments or to the duties which morality prescribes, without regard to the voice of reason, which in the course of history, after bitter experiences, has exalted the best and most reasonable thing into law, I simply appeal to myself? My passion would advise me to do the most senseless thing possible.—Thus each deems himself the—devil; for, if, so far as he is unconcerned about religion, etc., he only deemed himself a beast, he would easily find that the beast, which does follow only its impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the "most senseless" things, but takes very correct steps. But the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are—terrified at ourselves in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of course it comes into your head at once that your calling requires you to do the "good," the moral, the right. Now, if you ask yourselves what is to be done, how can the right voice sound forth from you, the voice which points the way of the good, the right, the true, etc.? What concord have God and Belial?

But what would you think if one answered you by saying: "That one is to listen to God, conscience, duties, laws, etc., is flim-flam with which people have stuffed your head and heart and made you crazy"? And if he asked you how it is that you know so surely[Pg 213] that the voice of nature is a seducer? And if he even demanded of you to turn the thing about and actually to deem the voice of God and conscience to be the devil's work? There are such graceless men; how will you settle them? You cannot appeal to your parsons, parents, and good men, for precisely these are designated by them as your seducers, as the true seducers and corrupters of youth, who busily sow broadcast the tares of self-contempt and reverence to God, who fill young hearts with mud and young heads with stupidity.

But now those people go on and ask: For whose sake do you care about God's and the other commandments? You surely do not suppose that this is done merely out of complaisance toward God? No, you are doing it—for your sake again.—Here too, therefore, you are the main thing, and each must say to himself, I am everything to myself and I do everything on my account. If it ever became clear to you that God, the commandments, etc., only harm you, that they reduce and ruin you, to a certainty you would throw them from you just as the Christians once condemned Apollo or Minerva or heathen morality. They did indeed put in the place of these Christ and afterward Mary, as well as a Christian morality; but they did this for the sake of their souls' welfare too, therefore out of egoism or ownness.

And it was by this egoism, this ownness, that they got rid of the old world of gods and became free from it. Ownness created a new freedom; for ownness is the creator of everything, as genius (a definite ownness), which is always originality, has for a long[Pg 214] time already been looked upon as the creator of new productions that have a place in the history of the world.

If your efforts are ever to make "freedom" the issue, then exhaust freedom's demands. Who is it that is to become free? You, I, we. Free from what? From everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, therefore, am the kernel that is to be delivered from all wrappings and—freed from all cramping shells. What is left when I have been freed from everything that is not I? Only I; nothing but I. But freedom has nothing to offer to this I himself. As to what is now to happen further after I have become free, freedom is silent,—as our governments, when the prisoner's time is up, merely let him go, thrusting him out into abandonment.

Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all,—why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end? Am I not worth more than freedom? Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the first? Even unfree, even laid in a thousand fetters, I yet am; and I am not, like freedom, extant only in the future and in hopes, but even as the most abject of slaves I am—present.

Think that over well, and decide whether you will place on your banner the dream of "freedom" or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness." "Freedom" awakens your rage against everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you to joy over yourselves, to self-enjoyment; "freedom" is and remains a longing, a romantic plaint, a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity; "ownness" is a reality, which of itself[Pg 215] removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way hinders you. What does not disturb you, you will not want to renounce; and, if it begins to disturb you, why, you know that "you must obey yourselves rather than men!"

Freedom teaches only: Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves, of everything burdensome; it does not teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid! so rings its rallying-cry, and you, eagerly following its call, get rid even of yourselves, "deny yourselves." But ownness calls you back to yourselves, it says "Come to yourself!" Under the ægis of freedom you get rid of many kinds of things, but something new pinches you again: "you are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[109] As own you are really rid of everything, and what clings to you you have accepted; it is your choice and your pleasure. The own man is the freeborn, the man free to begin with; the free man, on the contrary, is only the eleutheromaniac, the dreamer and enthusiast.

The former is originally free, because he recognizes nothing but himself; he does not need to free himself first, because at the start he rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, rates nothing higher, because, in short, he starts from himself and "comes to himself." Constrained by childish respect, he is nevertheless already working at "freeing" himself from this constraint. Ownness works in the little egoist, and procures him the desired—freedom.[Pg 216]

Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have made you believe you are not egoists but are called to be idealists ("good men"). Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which does precisely deprive you of yourselves, in "self-denial"; but seek for yourselves, become egoists, become each of you an almighty ego. Or, more clearly: Just recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you really are, and let go your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania to be something else than you are. Hypocritical I call them because you have yet remained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleeping, self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heautontimorumenoses, you self-tormentors. Never yet has a religion been able to dispense with "promises," whether they referred us to the other world or to this ("long life," etc.); for man is mercenary and does nothing "gratis." But how about that "doing the good for the good's sake without prospect of reward? As if here too the pay was not contained in the satisfaction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our egoism and—exploits it; calculated for our desires, it stifles many others for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon of cheated egoism, where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my desires, e. g. the impulse toward blessedness. Religion promises me the—"supreme good"; to gain this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake them.—All your doings are unconfessed, secret, covert, and concealed egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves,[Pg 217] hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism,—therefore they are not egoism, but thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists, and you are not, since you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word "egoist"—loathing and contempt.

I secure my freedom with regard to the world in the degree that I make the world my own, i. e. "gain it and take possession of it" for myself, by whatever might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of categorical demand, yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc.; for the means that I use for it are determined by what I am. If I am weak, I have only weak means, like the aforesaid, which yet are good enough for a considerable part of the world. Besides, cheating, hypocrisy, lying, look worse than they are. Who has not cheated the police, the law? who has not quickly taken on an air of honorable loyalty before the sheriff's officer who meets him, in order to conceal an illegality that may have been committed, etc.? He who has not done it has simply let violence be done to him; he was a weakling from—conscience. I know that my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my will on another object, be this other something without will, like a rock, or something with will, like a government, an individual, etc.; I deny my ownness when—in presence of another—I give myself up, i. e. give way, desist, submit; therefore by loyalty, submission. For it is one thing when I give up my previous course because it does not lead to the goal, and therefore turn out of a wrong road; it is another when I yield myself a prisoner. I get[Pg 218] around a rock that stands in my way, till I have powder enough to blast it; I get around the laws of a people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be "sacred" to me, an Astarte? If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! You inapprehensible one, you shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the might for apprehension and call you my own; I do not give myself up before you, but only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with my inability to touch you, I yet remember it against you.

Vigorous men have always done so. When the "loyal" had exalted an unsubdued power to be their master and had adored it, when they had demanded adoration from all, then there came some such son of nature who would not loyally submit, and drove the adored power from its inaccessible Olympus. He cried his "Stand still" to the rolling sun, and made the earth go round; the loyal had to make the best of it; he laid his axe to the sacred oaks, and the "loyal" were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him; he threw the pope off Peter's chair, and the "loyal" had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the divine-right business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, and at last are silent.

My freedom becomes complete only when it is my—might; but by this I cease to be a merely free man, and become an own man. Why is the freedom of the peoples a "hollow word"? Because the peoples have no might! With a breath of the living ego I[Pg 219] blow peoples over, be it the breath of a Nero, a Chinese emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that the G.....[110] legislatures pine in vain for freedom, and are lectured for it by the cabinet ministers? Because they are not of the "mighty"! Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right." You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might "stands above the law." How does this prospect taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? But you have no taste!

The cry for "freedom" rings loudly all around. But is it felt and known what a donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially—self-liberation,—i. e., that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Christian, permission to speak what he likes: he will yet utter only narrow-minded stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob you of the freedom of speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear something whereby those "certain" persons would lose their credit.

If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are simply knaves who give more than they have. For[Pg 220] then they give you nothing of their own, but stolen wares: they give you your own freedom, the freedom that you must take for yourselves; and they give it to you only that you may not take it and call the thieves and cheats to an account to boot. In their slyness they know well that given (chartered) freedom is no freedom, since only the freedom one takes for himself, therefore the egoist's freedom, rides with full sails. Donated freedom strikes its sails as soon as there comes a storm—or calm; it requires always a—gentle and moderate breeze.

Here lies the difference between self-liberation and emancipation (manumission, setting free). Those who to-day "stand in the opposition" are thirsting and screaming to be "set free." The princes are to "declare their peoples of age," i. e. emancipate them! Behave as if you were of age, and you are so without any declaration of majority; if you do not behave accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never be of age even by a declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their tyrants, and, when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his father. If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them their majority, they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a son who will not come of age, and keeps the house to himself; it serves the noodle right.

The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman, a libertinus, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing bettered in themselves, but only relieved as[Pg 221] Jews, although he who relieves their condition is certainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter cannot do this without inconsistency. But, emancipated or not emancipated, Jew remains Jew; he who is not self-freed is merely an—emancipated man. The Protestant State can certainly set free (emancipate) the Catholics; but, because they do not make themselves free, they remain simply—Catholics.

Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends of freedom are exasperated against selfishness because in their religious striving after freedom they cannot—free themselves from that sublime thing, "self-renunciation." The liberal's anger is directed against egoism, for the egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake: the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no thing a value of its own, an "absolute" value, but to seek its value in me. One often hears that pot-boiling study which is so common counted among the most repulsive traits of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most shameful desecration of science; but what is science for but to be consumed? If one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist's power is a limited power; but the egoistic element in it, and the desecration of science, only a possessed man can blame.

Because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an ego,[111] thought of him only as a[Pg 222] dependent, and was properly nothing but a social theory,—a doctrine of living together, and that of man with God as well as of man with man,—therefore in it everything "own" must fall into most woeful disrepute: selfishness, self-will, ownness, self-love, etc. The Christian way of looking at things has on all sides gradually re-stamped honorable words into dishonorable; why should they not be brought into honor again? So Schimpf (contumely) is in its old sense equivalent to jest, but for Christian seriousness pastime became a dishonor,[112] for that seriousness cannot take a joke; frech (impudent) formerly meant only bold, brave; Frevel (wanton outrage) was only daring. It is well known how askance the word "reason" was looked at for a long time.

Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint, and the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in terror from everything unchristian as from something incomplete or evil. Therefore "selfishness" is in a bad way too.

Selfishness,[113] in the Christian sense, means something like this: I look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But is sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, my own determination, when I follow that? I am my own only when I am master of myself, instead of being mastered either by sensuality or by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State,[Pg 223] Church, etc.); what is of use to me, this self-owned or self-appertaining one, my selfishness pursues.

Besides, one sees himself every moment compelled to believe in that constantly-blasphemed selfishness as an all-controlling power. In the session of February 10, 1844, Welcker argues a motion on the dependence of the judges, and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable, dismissable, transferable, and pensionable judges—in short, such members of a court of justice as can by mere administrative process be damaged and endangered,—are wholly without reliability, yes, lose all respect and all confidence among the people. The whole bench, Welcker cries, is demoralized by this dependence! In blunt words this means nothing else than that the judges find it more to their advantage to give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it as the law would have them. How is that to be helped? Perhaps by bringing home to the judges' hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, and then cherishing the confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize justice more highly than their selfishness? No, the people does not soar to this romantic confidence, for it feels that selfishness is mightier than any other motive. Therefore the same persons who have been judges hitherto may remain so, however thoroughly one has convinced himself that they behaved as egoists; only they must not any longer find their selfishness favored by the venality of justice, but must stand so independent of the government that by a judgment in conformity with the facts they do not throw into the shade their own cause, their "well-understood interest," but rather secure a com[Pg 224]fortable combination of a good salary with respect among the citizens.

So Welcker and the commoners of Baden consider themselves secured only when they can count on selfishness. What is one to think, then, of the countless phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths overflow at other times?

To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have another relation than to one which I am serving unselfishly. The following criterion might be cited for it: against the one I can sin or commit a sin, the other I can only trifle away, push from me, deprive myself of,—i. e. commit an imprudence. Free trade is looked at in both ways, being regarded partly as a freedom which may under certain circumstances be granted or withdrawn, partly as one which is to be held sacred under all circumstances.

If I am not concerned about a thing in and for itself, and do not desire it for its own sake, then I desire it solely as a means to an end, for its usefulness; for the sake of another end; e. g., oysters for a pleasant flavor. Now will not every thing whose final end he himself is serve the egoist as means? and is he to protect a thing that serves him for nothing,—e. g., the proletarian to protect the State?

Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again what Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien standard either, as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom, morality, humanity, and the like: it is only a description of the—owner.

[Pg 225]

I—do I come to myself and mine through liberalism?

Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man, and that you are anyway,—and the liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions and private follies, if only he can espy "Man" in you.

But, as he takes little heed of what you are privatim,—nay, in a strict following out of his principle sets no value at all on it,—he sees in you only what you are generatim. In other words, he sees in you, not you, but the species; not Tom or Jim, but Man; not the real or unique one,[114] but your essence or your concept; not the bodily man, but the spirit.

As Tom you would not be his equal, because he is Jim, therefore not Tom; as man you are the same that he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not exist at all for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy for himself: he loves in you not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to know nothing, but Man.[Pg 226]

To see in you and me nothing further than "men," that is running the Christian way of looking at things, according to which one is for the other nothing but a concept (e. g. a man called to salvation, etc.), into the ground.

Christianity properly so called gathers us under a less utterly general concept: there we are "sons of God" and "led by the Spirit of God."[115] Yet not all can boast of being God's sons, but "the same Spirit which witnesses to our spirit that we are sons of God reveals also who are the sons of the devil."[116] Consequently, to be a son of God one must not be a son of the devil; the sonship of God excluded certain men. To be sons of men,—i. e. men,—on the contrary, we need nothing but to belong to the human species, need only to be specimens of the same species. What I am as this I is no concern of yours as a good liberal, but is my private affair alone; enough that we are both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the human species: as "a son of man" I am your equal.

What am I now to you? Perhaps this bodily I as I walk and stand? Anything but that. This bodily I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in your eyes a "private affair" which is no concern of yours: it is an "affair by itself." As an "affair for you" there exists only my concept, my generic concept, only the Man, who, as he is called Tom, could just as well be Joe or Dick. You see in me not me, the bodily man, but an unreal thing, the spook, i. e. a Man.

In the course of the Christian centuries we declared[Pg 227] the most various persons to be "our equals," but each time in the measure of that spirit which we expected from them,—e. g. each one in whom the spirit of the need of redemption may be assumed, then later each one who has the spirit of integrity, finally each one who shows a human spirit and a human face. Thus the fundamental principle of "equality" varied.

Equality being now conceived as equality of the human spirit, there has certainly been discovered an equality that includes all men; for who could deny that we men have a human spirit, i. e. no other than a human!

But are we on that account further on now than in the beginning of Christianity? Then we were to have a divine spirit, now a human; but, if the divine did not exhaust us, how should the human wholly express what we are? Feuerbach, e. g., thinks that, if he humanizes the divine, he has found the truth. No, if God has given us pain, "Man" is capable of pinching us still more torturingly. The long and the short of it is this: that we are men is the slightest thing about us, and has significance only in so far as it is one of our qualities,[117] i. e. our property.[118] I am indeed among other things a man, as I am, e. g., a living being, therefore an animal, or a European, a Berliner, and the like; but he who chose to have regard for me only as a man, or as a Berliner, would pay me a regard that would be very unimportant to me. And wherefore? Because he would have regard only for one of my qualities, not for me.[Pg 228]

It is just so with the spirit too. A Christian spirit, an upright spirit, and the like may well be my acquired quality, i. e. my property, but I am not this spirit: it is mine, not I its.

Hence we have in liberalism only the continuation of the old Christian depreciation of the I, the bodily Tom. Instead of taking me as I am, one looks solely at my property, my qualities, and enters into marriage bonds with me only for the sake of my—possessions; one marries, as it were, what I have, not what I am. The Christian takes hold of my spirit, the liberal of my humanity.

But, if the spirit, which is not regarded as the property of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a ghost, then the Man too, who is not recognized as my quality but as the proper I, is nothing but a spook, a thought, a concept.

Therefore the liberal too revolves in the same circle as the Christian. Because the spirit of mankind, i. e. Man, dwells in you, you are a man, as when the spirit of Christ dwells in you you are a Christian; but, because it dwells in you only as a second ego, even though it be as your proper or "better" ego, it remains otherworldly to you, and you have to strive to become wholly man. A striving just as fruitless as the Christian's to become wholly a blessed spirit!

One can now, after liberalism has proclaimed Man, declare openly that herewith was only completed the consistent carrying out of Christianity, and that in truth Christianity set itself no other task from the start than to realize "man," the "true man." Hence, then, the illusion that Christianity ascribes an infinite value[Pg 229] to the ego (as e. g. in the doctrine of immortality, in the cure of souls, etc.) comes to light. No, it assigns this value to Man alone. Only Man is immortal, and only because I am man am I too immortal. In fact, Christianity had to teach that no one is lost, just as liberalism too puts all on an equality as men; but that eternity, like this equality, applied only to the Man in me, not to me. Only as the bearer and harborer of Man do I not die, as notoriously "the king never dies." Louis dies, but the king remains; I die, but my spirit, Man, remains. To identify me now entirely with Man the demand has been invented, and stated, that I must become a "real generic being."[119]

The HUMAN religion is only the last metamorphosis of the Christian religion. For liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and sets it above me, because it exalts "Man" to the same extent as any other religion does its God or idol, because it makes what is mine into something otherworldly, because in general it makes out of what is mine, out of my qualities and my property, something alien,—to wit, an "essence"; in short, because it sets me beneath Man, and thereby creates for me a "vocation." But liberalism declares itself a religion in form too when it demands for this supreme being, Man, a zeal of faith, "a faith that some day will at last prove its fiery zeal too, a zeal that will be invincible."[120] But, as liberalism is a human religion, its professor takes a tolerant attitude toward the professor of any other[Pg 230] (Catholic, Jewish, etc.), as Frederick the Great did toward every one who performed his duties as a subject, whatever fashion of becoming blest he might be inclined toward. This religion is now to be raised to the rank of the generally customary one, and separated from the others as mere "private follies," toward which, besides, one takes a highly liberal attitude on account of their unessentialness.

One may call it the State-religion, the religion of the "free State," not in the sense hitherto current that it is the one favored or privileged by the State, but as that religion which the "free State" not only has the right, but is compelled, to demand from each of those who belong to it, let him be privatim a Jew, a Christian, or anything else. For it does the same service to the State as filial piety to the family. If the family is to be recognized and maintained, in its existing condition, by each one of those who belong to it, then to him the tie of blood must be sacred, and his feeling for it must be that of piety, of respect for the ties of blood, by which every blood-relation becomes to him a consecrated person. So also to every member of the State-community this community must be sacred, and the concept which is the highest to the State must likewise be the highest to him.

But what concept is the highest to the State? Doubtless that of being a really human society, a society in which every one who is really a man, i. e. not an un-man, can obtain admission as a member. Let a State's tolerance go ever so far, toward an un-man and toward what is inhuman it ceases. And yet this "un-man" is a man, yet the "inhuman" itself is[Pg 231] something human, yes, possible only to a man, not to any beast; it is, in fact, something "possible to man." But, although every un-man is a man, yet the State excludes him; i. e., it locks him up, or transforms him from a fellow of the State into a fellow of the prison (fellow of the lunatic asylum or hospital, according to Communism).

To say in blunt words what an un-man is is not particularly hard: it is a man who does not correspond to the concept man, as the inhuman is something human which is not conformed to the concept of the human. Logic calls this a "self-contradictory judgment." Would it be permissible for one to pronounce this judgment, that one can be a man without being a man, if he did not admit the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from the existence, the essence from the appearance? They say, he appears indeed as a man, but is not a man.

Men have passed this "self-contradictory judgment" through a long line of centuries! Nay, what is still more, in this long time there were only—un-men. What individual can have corresponded to his concept? Christianity knows only one Man, and this one—Christ—is at once an un-man again in the reverse sense, to wit, a superhuman man, a "God." Only the—un-man is a real man.

Men that are not men, what should they be but ghosts? Every real man, because he does not correspond to the concept "man," or because he is not a "generic man," is a spook. But do I still remain an un-man even if I bring Man (who towered above me and remained otherworldly to me only as my[Pg 232] ideal, my task, my essence or concept) down to be my quality, my own and inherent in me; so that Man is nothing else than my humanity, my human existence, and everything that I do is human precisely because I do it, but not because it corresponds to the concept "man"? I am really Man and the un-man in one; for I am a man and at the same time more than a man; i. e., I am the ego of this my mere quality.

It had to come to this at last, that it was no longer merely demanded of us to be Christians, but to become men; for, though we could never really become even Christians, but always remained "poor sinners" (for the Christian was an unattainable ideal too), yet in this the contradictoriness did not come before our consciousness so, and the illusion was easier than now when of us, who are men and act humanly (yes, cannot do otherwise than be such and act so), the demand is made that we are to be men, "real men."

Our States of to-day, because they still have all sorts of things sticking to them, left from their churchly mother, do indeed load those who belong to them with various obligations (e. g. churchly religiousness) which properly do not a bit concern them, the States; yet on the whole they do not deny their significance, since they want to be looked upon as human societies, in which man as man can be a member, even if he is less privileged than other members; most of them admit adherents of every religious sect, and receive people without distinction of race or nation: Jews, Turks, Moors, etc., can become French citizens. In the act of reception, therefore, the State looks only to see whether one is a man. The Church, as a society of[Pg 233] believers, could not receive every man into her bosom; the State, as a society of men, can. But, when the State has carried its principle clear through, of presupposing in its constituents nothing but that they are men (even the North Americans still presuppose in theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of integrity, of respectability), then it has dug its grave. While it will fancy that those whom it possesses are without exception men, these have meanwhile become without exception egoists, each of whom utilizes it according to his egoistic powers and ends. Against the egoists "human society" is wrecked; for they no longer have to do with each other as men, but appear egoistically as an I against a You altogether different from me and in opposition to me.

If the State must count on our humanity, it is the same if one says it must count on our morality. Seeing Man in each other, and acting as men toward each other, is called moral behavior. This is every whit the "spiritual love" of Christianity. For, if I see Man in you, as in myself I see Man and nothing but Man, then I care for you as I would care for myself; for we represent, you see, nothing but the mathematical proposition: A = C and B = C, consequently A = B,—i. e., I nothing but man and you nothing but man, consequently I and you the same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the former does not allow validity to me, but only to the Man in me. But, if the State is a society of men, not a union of egos each of whom has only himself before his eyes, then it cannot last without morality, and must insist on morality.

Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I,[Pg 234] the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this "human society," I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my property and my creature,—i. e. I annihilate it, and form in its place the Union of Egoists.

So the State betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man, which presupposes that I may also not be a man, but rank for it as an "un-man"; it imposes being a man upon me as a duty. Further, it desires me to do nothing along with which it cannot last; so its permanence is to be sacred for me. Then I am not to be an egoist, but a "respectable, upright," i. e. moral, man. Enough, before it and its permanence I am to be impotent and respectful,—etc.

This State, not a present one indeed, but still in need of being first created, is the ideal of advancing liberalism. There is to come into existence a true "society of men," in which every "man" finds room. Liberalism means to realize "Man," i. e. create a world for him; and this should be the human world or the general (Communistic) society of men. It was said, "The Church could regard only the spirit, the State is to regard the whole man."[121] But is not "Man" "spirit"? The kernel of the State is simply "Man," this unreality, and it itself is only a "society of men." The world which the believer (believing spirit) creates is called Church, the world which the man (human or humane spirit) creates is called State. But that is not my world. I never execute anything human in the[Pg 235] abstract, but always my own things; i. e., my human act is diverse from every other human act, and only by this diversity is it a real act belonging to me. The human in it is an abstraction, and, as such, spirit, i. e. abstracted essence.

Br. Bauer states (e. g. "Judenfrage," p. 84) that the truth of criticism is the final truth, and in fact the truth sought for by Christianity itself,—to wit, "Man." He says, "The history of the Christian world is the history of the supreme fight for truth, for in it—and in it only!—the thing at issue is the discovery of the final or the primal truth—man and freedom."

All right, let us accept this gain, and let us take man as the ultimately found result of Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man in general. Now, who is Man? I am! Man, the end and outcome of Christianity, is, as I, the beginning and raw material of the new history, a history of enjoyment after the history of sacrifices, a history not of man or humanity, but of—me. Man ranks as the general. Now then, I and the egoistic are the really general, since every one is an egoist and of paramount importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely egoistic, because the Jew still devotes himself to Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the Christian lives on the grace of God and subjects himself to him. As Jew and as Christian alike a man satisfies only certain of his wants, only a certain need, not himself: a half-egoism, because the egoism of a half-man, who is half he, half Jew, or half his own proprietor, half a slave. Therefore, too, Jew and Christian always half-way exclude each other; i. e., as men they recognize[Pg 236] each other, as slaves they exclude each other, because they are servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists, they would exclude each other wholly and hold together so much the more firmly. Their ignominy is not that they exclude each other, but that this is done only half-way. Br. Bauer, on the contrary, thinks Jews and Christians cannot regard and treat each other as "men" till they give up the separate essence which parts them and obligates them to eternal separation, recognize the general essence of "Man," and regard this as their "true essence."

According to his representation the defect of the Jews and the Christians alike lies in their wanting to be and have something "particular" instead of only being men and endeavoring after what is human,—to wit, the "general rights of man." He thinks their fundamental error consists in the belief that they are "privileged," possess "prerogatives"; in general, in the belief in prerogative.[122] In opposition to this he holds up to them the general rights of man. The rights of man!—

Man is man in general, and in so far every one who is a man. Now every one is to have the eternal rights of man, and, according to the opinion of Communism, enjoy them in the complete "democracy," or, as it ought more correctly to be called,—anthropocracy. But it is I alone who have everything that I—procure for myself; as man I have nothing. People would like to give every man an affluence of all good, merely[Pg 237] because he has the title "man." But I put the accent on me, not on my being man.

Man is something only as my quality[123] (property[124]), like masculinity or femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one's being male in the full sense; their virtue is virtus and arete,—i. e. manliness. What is one to think of a woman who should want only to be perfectly "woman"? That is not given to all, and many a one would therein be fixing for herself an unattainable goal. Feminine, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by nature; femininity is her quality, and she does not need "true femininity." I am a man just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the task of being a "thorough star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the call to be a "thorough man."

When Fichte says, "The ego is all," this seems to harmonize perfectly with my theses. But it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys all, and only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the—finite ego is really I. Fichte speaks of the "absolute" ego, but I speak of me, the transitory ego.

How natural is the supposition that man and ego mean the same! and yet one sees, e. g., by Feuerbach, that the expression "man" is to designate the absolute ego, the species, not the transitory, individual ego. Egoism and humanity (humaneness) ought to mean the same, but according to Feuerbach the individual can "only lift himself above the limits of his individuality, but not above the laws, the positive ordinances,[Pg 238] of his species."[125] But the species is nothing, and, if the individual lifts himself above the limits of his individuality, this is rather his very self as an individual; he exists only in raising himself, he exists only in not remaining what he is; otherwise he would be done, dead. Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of. To be a man is not to realize the ideal of Man, but to present oneself, the individual. It is not how I realize the generally human that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my species, am without norm, without law, without model, and the like. It is possible that I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State, etc. Better—if the talk is to be of better at all—better an unmannerly child than an old head on young shoulders, better a mulish man than a man compliant in everything. The unmannerly and mulish fellow is still on the way to form himself according to his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the "species," the general demands, etc.,—the species is law to him. He is determined[126] by it; for what else is the species to him but his "destiny,"[127] his "calling"? Whether I look to "humanity," the species, in order to strive toward this ideal, or to God and Christ with like endeavor, where is the essential dissimilarity? At most the former is[Pg 239] more washed-out than the latter. As the individual is the whole of nature, so he is the whole of the species too.

Everything that I do, think, etc.,—in short, my expression or manifestation—is indeed conditioned by what I am. The Jew, e. g., can will only thus or thus, can "present himself" only thus; the Christian can present and manifest himself only christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew or Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian; but it is not possible; in the most rigorous conduct you yet remain an egoist, a sinner against that concept—i. e., you are not the precise equivalent of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through, people have inquired for a more perfect concept which should really wholly express what you are, and which, because it is your true nature, should contain all the laws of your activity. The most perfect thing of the kind has been attained in "Man." As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not your task; to be a Greek, a German, does not suffice. But be a—man, then you have everything; look upon the human as your calling.

Now I know what is expected of me, and the new catechism can be written. The subject is again subjected to the predicate, the individual to something general; the dominion is again secured to an idea, and the foundation laid for a new religion. This is a step forward in the domain of religion, and in particular of Christianity; not a step out beyond it.

The step out beyond it leads into the unspeakable. For me paltry language has no word, and "the[Pg 240] Word," the Logos, is to me a "mere word."

My essence is sought for. If not the Jew, the German, etc., then at any rate it is—the man. "Man is my essence."

I am repulsive or repugnant to myself; I have a horror and loathing of myself, I am a horror to myself, or, I am never enough for myself and never do enough to satisfy myself. From such feelings springs self-dissolution or self-criticism. Religiousness begins with self-renunciation, ends with completed criticism.

I am possessed, and want to get rid of the "evil spirit." How do I set about it? I fearlessly commit the sin that seems to the Christian the direst, the sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. "He who blasphemes the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever, but is liable to the eternal judgment!"[128] I want no forgiveness, and am not afraid of the judgment.

Man is the last evil spirit or spook, the most deceptive or most intimate, the craftiest liar with honest mien, the father of lies.

The egoist, turning against the demands and concepts of the present, executes pitilessly the most measureless—desecration. Nothing is holy to him!

It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be the enemy of every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it.

The desecrator puts forth his strength against every[Pg 241] fear of God, for fear of God would determine him in everything that he left standing as sacred. Whether it is the God or the Man that exercises the hallowing power in the God-man,—whether, therefore, anything is held sacred for God's sake or for Man's (Humanity's),—this does not change the fear of God, since Man is revered as "supreme essence," as much as on the specifically religious standpoint God as "supreme essence" calls for our fear and reverence; both overawe us.

The fear of God in the proper sense was shaken long ago, and a more or less conscious "atheism," externally recognizable by a wide-spread "unchurchliness," has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken from God has been superadded to Man, and the power of humanity grew greater in just the degree that that of piety lost weight: "Man" is the God of to-day, and fear of Man has taken the place of the old fear of God.

But, because Man represents only another Supreme Being, nothing has in fact taken place but a metamorphosis in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is merely an altered form of the fear of God.

Our atheists are pious people.

If in the so-called feudal times we held everything as a fief from God, in the liberal period the same feudal relation exists with Man. God was the Lord, now Man is the Lord; God was the Mediator, now Man is; God was the Spirit, now Man is. In this threefold regard the feudal relation has experienced a transformation. For now, firstly, we hold as a fief from all-powerful Man our power, which, because it[Pg 242] comes from a higher, is not called power or might, but "right,"—the "rights of man"; we further hold as a fief from him our position in the world, for he, the mediator, mediates our intercourse with others, which therefore may not be otherwise than "human"; finally, we hold as a fief from him ourselves,—to wit, our own value, or all that we are worth,—inasmuch as we are worth nothing when he does not dwell in us, and when or where we are not "human." The power is Man's, the world is Man's, I am Man's.

But am I not still unrestrained from declaring myself the entitler, the mediator, and the own self? Then it runs thus:

My power is my property.

My power gives me property.

My power am I myself, and through it am I my property.

Right[129] is the spirit of society. If society has a will, this will is simply right: society exists only through right. But, as it endures only by exercising a sovereignty over individuals, right is its SOVEREIGN WILL. Aristotle says justice is the advantage of society.

All existing right is—foreign law; some one makes me out to be in the right, "does right by me." But should I therefore be in the right if all the world made me out so? And yet what else is the right that I obtain in the State, in society, but a right of those[Pg 243] foreign to me? When a blockhead makes me out in the right, I grow distrustful of my rightness; I don't like to receive it from him. But, even when a wise man makes me out in the right, I nevertheless am not in the right on that account. Whether I am in the right is completely independent of the fool's making out and of the wise man's.

All the same, we have coveted this right till now. We seek for right, and turn to the court for that purpose. To what? To a royal, a papal, a popular court, etc. Can a sultanic court declare another right than that which the sultan has ordained to be right? Can it make me out in the right if I seek for a right that does not agree with the sultan's law? Can it, e. g., concede to me high treason as a right, since it is assuredly not a right according to the sultan's mind? Can it as a court of censorship allow me the free utterance of opinion as a right, since the sultan will hear nothing of this my right? What am I seeking for in this court, then? I am seeking for sultanic right, not my right; I am seeking for—foreign right. As long as this foreign right harmonizes with mine, to be sure, I shall find in it the latter too.

The State does not permit pitching into each other man to man; it opposes the duel. Even every ordinary appeal to blows, notwithstanding that neither of the fighters calls the police to it, is punished; except when it is not an I whacking away at a you, but, say, the head of a family at the child. The family is entitled to this, and in its name the father; I as Ego am not.[Pg 244]

The "Vossische Zeitung" presents to us the "commonwealth of right." There everything is to be decided by the judge and a court. It ranks the supreme court of censorship as a "court" where "right is declared" What sort of a right? The right of the censorship. To recognize the sentences of that court as right one must regard the censorship as right. But it is thought nevertheless that this court offers a protection. Yes, protection against an individual censor's error: it protects only the censorship-legislator against false interpretation of his will, at the same time making his statute, by the "sacred power of right," all the firmer against writers.

Whether I am in the right or not there is no judge but myself. Others can judge only whether they endorse my right, and whether it exists as right for them too.

In the meantime let us take the matter yet another way. I am to reverence sultanic law in the sultanate, popular law in republics, canon law in Catholic communities, etc. To these laws I am to subordinate myself; I am to regard them as sacred. A "sense of right" and "law-abiding mind" of such a sort is so firmly planted in people's heads that the most revolutionary persons of our days want to subject us to a new "sacred law," the "law of society," the law of mankind, the "right of all," and the like. The right of "all" is to go before my right. As a right of all it would indeed be my right among the rest, since I, with the rest, am included in all; but that it is at the same time a right of others, or even of all others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a[Pg 245] right of all will I defend it, but as my right; and then every other may see to it how he shall likewise maintain it for himself. The right of all (e. g. to eat) is a right of every individual. Let each keep this right unabridged for himself, then all exercise it spontaneously; let him not take care for all though,—let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all.

But the social reformers preach to us a "law of society." There the individual becomes society's slave, and is in the right only when society makes him out in the right, i. e. when he lives according to society's statutes and so is—loyal. Whether I am loyal under a despotism or in a "society" à la Weitling, it is the same absence of right in so far as in both cases I have not my right but foreign right.

In considerations of right the question is always asked, "What or who gives me the right to it?" Answer: God, love, reason, nature, humanity, etc. No, only your might, your power gives you the right (your reason, e. g., may give it to you).

Communism, which assumes that men "have equal rights by nature," contradicts its own proposition till it comes to this, that men have no right at all by nature. For it is not willing to recognize, e. g., that parents have "by nature" rights as against their children, or the children as against the parents: it abolishes the family. Nature gives parents, brothers, etc., no right at all. Altogether, this entire revolutionary or Babouvist principle[130] rests on a religious, i. e. false, view of things. Who can ask after "right"[Pg 246] if he does not occupy the religious standpoint himself? Is not "right" a religious concept, i. e. something sacred? Why, "equality of rights," as the Revolution propounded it, is only another name for "Christian equality," the "equality of the brethren," "of God's children," "of Christians," etc.: in short fraternité. Each and every inquiry after right deserves to be lashed with Schillers words:

When the Revolution stamped equality as a "right," it took flight into the religious domain, into the region of the sacred, of the ideal. Hence, since then, the fight for the "sacred, inalienable rights of man." Against the "eternal rights of man" the "well-earned rights of the established order" are quite naturally, and with equal right, brought to bear: right against right, where of course one is decried by the other as "wrong." This has been the contest of rights[131] since the Revolution.

You want to be "in the right" as against the rest. That you cannot; as against them you remain forever "in the wrong"; for they surely would not be your opponents if they were not in "their right" too; they will always make you out "in the wrong." But, as against the right of the rest, yours is a higher, greater, more powerful right, is it not? No such thing! Your right is not more powerful if you are[Pg 247] not more powerful. Have Chinese subjects a right to freedom? Just bestow it on them, and then look how far you have gone wrong in your attempt: because they do not know how to use freedom they have no right to it, or, in clearer terms, because they have not freedom they have not the right to it. Children have no right to the condition of majority because they are not of age, i. e. because they are children. Peoples that let themselves be kept in nonage have no right to the condition of majority; if they ceased to be in nonage, then only would they have the right to be of age. This means nothing else than "What you have the power to be you have the right to." I derive all right and all warrant from me; I am entitled to everything that I have in my power. I am entitled to overthrow Zeus, Jehovah, God, etc., if I can; if I cannot, then these gods will always remain in the right and in power as against me, and what I do will be to fear their right and their power in impotent "god-fearingness," to keep their commandments and believe that I do right in everything that I do according to their right, about as the Russian boundary-sentinels think themselves rightfully entitled to shoot dead the suspicious persons who are escaping, since they murder "by superior authority," i. e. "with right." But I am entitled by myself to murder if I myself do not forbid it to myself, if I myself do not fear murder as a "wrong." This view of things lies at the foundation of Chamisso's poem, "The Valley of Murder," where the gray-haired Indian murderer compels reverence from the white man whose brethren he has murdered. The only thing I am not entitled to is what I do not[Pg 248] do with a free cheer, i. e. what I do not entitle myself to.

I decide whether it is the right thing in me; there is no right outside me. If it is right for me,[132] it is right. Possibly this may not suffice to make it right for the rest; that is their care, not mine: let them defend themselves. And if for the whole world something were not right, but it were right for me, i. e. I wanted it, then I would ask nothing about the whole world. So every one does who knows how to value himself, every one in the degree that he is an egoist; for might goes before right, and that—with perfect right.

Because I am "by nature" a man I have an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say: because I am "by nature" a first-born prince I have a right to the throne? The rights of man and the "well-earned rights" come to the same thing in the end, to wit, to nature, which gives me a right, i. e. to birth (and, further, inheritance, etc.). "I am born as a man" is equal to "I am born as a king's son." The natural man has only a natural right (because he has only a natural power) and natural claims: he has right of birth and claims of birth. But nature cannot entitle me, i. e. give me capacity or might, to that to which only my act entitles me. That the king's child sets himself above other children, even this is his act, which secures to him the precedence; and that the other children approve and recognize this act is their act, which makes[Pg 249] them worthy to be—subjects.

Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same foreign right, a right that I do not give or take to myself.

Thus the Communists say, equal labor entitles man to equal enjoyment. Formerly the question was raised whether the "virtuous" man must not be "happy" on earth. The Jews actually drew this inference: "That it may go well with thee on earth." No, equal labor does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. But, if you have labored and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then—"it serves you right."

If you take the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before, a "well-earned right" of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their right, as by laying hands on it it would become your right.

The conflict over the "right of property" wavers in vehement commotion. The Communists affirm[133] that "the earth belongs rightfully to him who tills it, and its products to those who bring them out." I think it belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him, does not let himself be deprived of it. If he appropriates it, then not only the earth, but the right to it too, belongs to him. This is egoistic right: i. e., it is right for me, therefore[Pg 250] it is right.

Aside from this, right does have "a wax nose." The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who strike him down am also in the right. I defend against him not my right, but myself.

As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give. i. e. "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. It will be objected, the children had nevertheless "by nature" the right to exist; only the Spartans refused recognition to this right. But then they simply had no right to this recognition,—no more than they had to recognition of their life by the wild beasts to which they were thrown.

People talk so much about birthright, and complain:

What sort of right, then, is there that was born with me? The right to receive an entailed estate, to inherit a throne, to enjoy a princely or noble education; or, again, because poor parents begot me, to—get free schooling, be clothed out of contributions of alms, and at last earn my bread and my herring in[Pg 251] the coal-mines or at the loom? Are these not birthrights, rights that have come down to me from my parents through birth? You think—no; you think these are only rights improperly so called, it is just these rights that you aim to abolish through the real birthright. To give a basis for this you go back to the simplest thing and affirm that every one is by birth equal to another,—to wit, a man. I will grant you that every one is born as man, hence the new-born are therein equal to each other. Why are they? Only because they do not yet show and exert themselves as anything but bare—children of men, naked little human beings. But thereby they are at once different from those who have already made something out of themselves, who thus are no longer bare "children of men," but—children of their own creation. The latter possess more than bare birthrights: they have earned rights. What an antithesis, what a field of combat! The old combat of the birthrights of man and well-earned rights. Go right on appealing to your birthrights; people will not fail to oppose to you the well-earned. Both stand on the "ground of right"; for each of the two has a "right" against the other, the one the birthright or natural right, the other the earned or "well-earned" right.

If you remain on the ground of right, you remain in—Rechthaberei.[135] The other cannot give you your right; he cannot "mete out right" to you. He who has might has—right; if you have not the former,[Pg 252] neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to attain? Just look at the mighty and their doings! We are talking here only of China and Japan, of course. Just try it once, you Chinese and Japanese, to make them out in the wrong, and learn by experience how they throw you into jail. (Only do not confuse with this the "well-meaning counsels" which—in China and Japan—are permitted, because they do not hinder the mighty one, but possibly help him on.) For him who should want to make them out in the wrong there would stand open only one way thereto, that of might. If he deprives them of their might, then he has really made them out in the wrong, deprived them of their right; in any other case he can do nothing but clench his little fist in his pocket, or fall a victim as an obtrusive fool.

In short, if you Chinese and Japanese did not ask after right, and in particular if you did not ask after the rights "that were born with you," then you would not need to ask at all after the well-earned rights either.

You start back in fright before others, because you think you see beside them the ghost of right, which, as in the Homeric combats, seems to fight as a goddess at their side, helping them. What do you do? Do you throw the spear? No, you creep around to gain the spook over to yourselves, that it may fight on your side: you woo for the ghost's favor. Another would simply ask thus: Do I will what my opponent wills? "No!" Now then, there may fight for him a thousand devils or gods, I go at him all the same![Pg 253]

The "commonwealth of right," as the "Vossische Zeitung" among others stands for it, asks that office-holders be removable only by the judge, not by the administration. Vain illusion! If it were settled by law that an office-holder who is once seen drunken shall lose his office, then the judges would have to condemn him on the word of the witnesses, etc. In short, the lawgiver would only have to state precisely all the possible grounds which entail the loss of office, however laughable they might be (e. g. he who laughs in his superiors' faces, who does not go to church every Sunday, who does not take the communion every four weeks, who runs in debt, who has disreputable associates, who shows no determination, etc., shall be removed. These things the lawgiver might take it into his head to prescribe, e. g., for a court of honor); then the judge would solely have to investigate whether the accused had "become guilty" of those "offences," and, on presentation of the proof, pronounce sentence of removal against him "in the name of the law."

The judge is lost when he ceases to be mechanical, when he "is forsaken by the rules of evidence." Then he no longer has anything but an opinion like everybody else; and, if he decides according to this opinion, his action is no longer an official action. As judge he must decide only according to the law. Commend me rather to the old French parliaments, which wanted to examine for themselves what was to be matter of right, and to register it only after their own approval. They at least judged according to a right of their own, and were not willing to give themselves[Pg 254] up to be machines of the lawgiver, although as judges they must, to be sure, become their own machines.