The Egoist Archive
THE
EGO AND HIS
OWN
Publisher's Preface vii
Introduction xii
Translator's Preface xix
All Things are Nothing to Me 3
Part First: MAN. 7
I.���A Human Life 9
II.���Men of the Old Time and the New 17
I.���The Ancients 17
II.���The Moderns 30
§ 1.���The Spirit 34
§ 2.���The Possessed 42
§ 3.���The Hierarchy 85
III.���The Free 127
§ 1.���Political Liberalism 128
§ 2.���Social Liberalism 152
§ 3.���Humane Liberalism 163
Part Second: I 201
I.���Ownness 203
II.���The Owner 225
I.���My Power 242
II.���My Intercourse 275
III.���My Self-enjoyment 425
III.���The Unique One 484
Index 501
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 cham-
pioned 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 "
His-
tory 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 cor-
respondence and travel, and triumphing over
tremendous ob-
viii PUBLISHER'S PREFACE
stacles, he carried his task
to completion, and his biography of
Stirner appeared in Berlin in
1898. It is a tribute to the thor-
oughness of Mackay's work
that since its publication not one im-
portant fact about Stirner
has been discovered by anybody.
During his years of investigation
Mackay's advertising for infor-
mation 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
Uni-
versal-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 Anar-
chiste: 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
suit-
able 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.
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 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 en-
trusting the task to Steven
T. Byington, a scholar of remark-
able attainments, whose
specialty is philology, and who is
also one of the ablest workers
in the propaganda of Anarch-
ism. 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 imperfec-
tions 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 confi-
dence, while realizing fully how far short of
perfection it neces-
sarily 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
x PUBLISHER'S PREFACE
not strictly the Einzige,
for uniqueness connotes not only single-
ness but an
admirable singleness, while Stirner's Einzigkeit
is ad-
mirable in his eyes only as such, it being no
part of the purpose
of his book to distinguish a particular
Einzigkeit as more excel-
lent
than another. Moreover, " The Unique One and His Prop-
erty
" has no graces to compel our forgiveness of its slight
inac-
curacy. It is clumsy and unattractive. And the same
objections
may be urged with still greater force against all the
other render-
ings 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 correspond-
ence 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 mystifi-
cation, until something
suddenly reveals the cause of his mis-
understanding, after which
he must go back and read again, I
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 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 in-
numerable.
............... The reader who is not de-
terred 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 con-
ferred 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.
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 revolu-
tionists 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 explana-
tion of the central thought of this work;
but such an effort ap-
pears to be unnecessary to one who has the
volume in his hand.
The author's care in illustrating his meaning
shows that he real-
ized 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 under-
INTRODUCTION xiii
standing. The system-makers
and system-believers thus far can-
not 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 my-
self "; 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
wor-
ship 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
No-
body. 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
xiv INTRODUCTION
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
writ-
ten 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 my-
self I
have���us; and at that rate Von Hartmann is
merely accus-
ing 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
gen-
erality 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 him-
self was
Stirner's " I." Note how comparatively indifferent
a
matter it is with Stirner that one is an ego, but how
all-impor-
tant 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 bot-
tom ; 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
INTRODUCTION xv
and pronounced, and harmonizes
perfectly with the economic
philosophy of Josiah Warren.
Allowing for difference of tem-
perament and language, there is a
substantial agreement be-
tween Stirner and Proudhon. Bach
would be free, and sees in
every increase of the number of free
people and their intelli-
gence 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 ten-
dency,���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 civi-
lized cities, it is true, the context shows
that he means the Com-
munists; 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, how-
ever, may say to the Nietzsche school, so as not
to be misunder-
stood ; We do not ask of the Napoleons to have
pity, nor of the
xvi INTRODUCTION
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 alle-
giance to nothing. To Nietzsche's
rhodomontade of eagles in
baronial form, born to prey on
industrial lambs, we rather taunt-
ingly 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 vic-
tims, 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
regula-
tion deemed convenient, and for this only our
convenience is
consulted. Thus there will be general
liberty only when the dis-
position toward tyranny is met by
intelligent opposition that will
no longer submit to such a rule.
Beyond this the manly sym-
pathy 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 in-
INTRODUCTION xvii
dividual 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 mystic-
ism 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 sup-
port of tyrannies a
million times stronger over me than the nat-
ural self-interest of
any individual. When plumb-line doctrine
is misconceived as
duty between unequal-minded men,���as a reli-
gion 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-sur-
render 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.
xviii INTRODUCTION
I am content if others
individually live for themselves, and thug
cease in so many ways
to act in opposition to my living for my-
self,���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 suc-
ceed 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-surren-
der
fails, how can a mixture of Christian love and worldly cau-
tion
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 un-
resisting. The Pharaohs we have ever with us.
Several passages in this most
remarkable book show the au-
thor as a man full of sympathy.
When we reflect upon his de-
liberately 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 disappear-
ance of the sentimental supposition of
duty liberates a quantity
of nervous energy for the purest
generosity and clarifies the in-
tellect for the more
discriminating choice of objects of merit ?
J. L. WALKER.
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 mix-
ture of colloquialisms and technicalities,
and his preference for
the precise expression of his thought
rather than the word con-
ventionally 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 in-
stance, 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
xx TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
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 indi-
cation 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 transla-
ting 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 ex-
plained 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 Ger-
man, rather than conform them altogether to
the English Bible.
I am sometimes quite as near the original Greek
as if I had fol-
lowed 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.
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
What is not supposed to be my concern ���!
First
and foremost, the Good Cause, ���
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 at-
tends 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,
*["Ich hab' Mein'
Sach' auf Nichts gestellt," first line of
Goethe's
poem, ' Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!" Literal
translation: " I have set
my affair on nothing."]
��� [Sache] ��� [Sache]
4 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
ac-
complished 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
ALL THINGS ARE NOTHING TO ME 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 ? By the manure of
their corpses the nation comes
to " its bloom! " The
individuals have died "
for the great cause of the na-
tion," 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.*
* [der Einzige]
6 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
alto-
gether 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 nei-
ther 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,* as I am
unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself!
*[einzig]
Part
First
Man
Man is to man the supreme being, says Feuerbach.
Man has just been discovered, says Bruno Bauer
Then let us take a more
careful look at this supreme being and
this new discovery.
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 un-
avoidable.
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
exer-
cises 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
10 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 out-
grown it."
Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands
our���ob-
duracy, 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 invinci-
bility. 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 courage-
ous
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!*
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-
* [Geist
This word will be translated sometimes " mind "
and sometimes
spirit" in the following pages ]
A HUMAN LIFE 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, princi-
ples,
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. " intel-
lectual
" man there is no family as a natural power;
a renunciation
of parents, brothers, etc., makes its ap-
pearance. 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 "
12 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
recedes into contemptible
remoteness; for the stand-
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
theoretic-
ally, 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.
A HUMAN LIFE 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 mat-
ter," 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 youth-
ful 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
14 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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." *
The man is distinguished from the youth by
the
fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of every-
where
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
be-
ing 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
* Luke 11 13.
A HUMAN LIFE 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
be-
come more definite, or, as you also call it, more "
prac-
tical." 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 con-
trary, 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 formali-
ties), 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
16 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
ac-
count, 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 every-
thing. Finally, the old man ? When I become
one,
there will still be time enough to speak of that.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 17
How each of us developed himself, what he strove
for, attained, or missed, what objects he formerly pur-
sued 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
18 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
disrespectful heir, who even took
away the sanctity of
the fathers' sabbath to hallow his Sunday,
and inter-
rupted 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 super-
seded, 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 ad-
dition, " 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
Chris-
tian can never convince himself of the vanity of the
divine
word, but believes in its eternal and unshake-
able 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 feel-
ing 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 ";
* the sanc-
* Heb. 11. 13.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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; * 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
cen-
tury. 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 every-
thing;
it is by having a good and well-drilled under-
standing that one
gets through the world best, pro-
vides for himself the best lot,
the pleasantest life"
Thus they recognize in mind
man's true weapon
* Mark 10. 29.
20 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
against the world. This is why
they lay such stress on
dialectic skill, command of language, the
art of dispu-
tation, 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 chil-
dren for the same
purpose; their mind is the unbriba-
ble 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 excel-
lent
sophist, and, with keen understanding, trim and
expound everything
in favor of his coarse heart.
What could there be for which a "
good reason "
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 pro-
claiming 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,
father-
land, 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
under-
standing 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 mas-
ter 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
22 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
any-
thing, 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 com-
pletely 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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,* 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 every-
thing 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
* Italicized in the original for
the sake of its etymology, Scharfsinn���
"
sharp sense " Compare next paragraph.
24 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
against the world of sense their
sense, their acuteness.
To this day the Jews, those
precocious children of an-
tiquity, 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
al-
lows 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 25
free or enjoyable life. He
is not disturbed by the in-
conveniences 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 immor-
tal 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 be-
come 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.
Un-
lucky 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
26 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 them-
selves keenly
active in bringing all this to their con-
sciousness. But they
did not know thought, even
though they thought of all sorts
of things and " wor-
ried 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
enjoy-
ment 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 Aristip-
pus, who found it in a cheery temper under all
circum-
stances ? They are seeking for cheery, unclouded
life-
courage, for cheeriness; they are seeking to "
be of
good cheer."
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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,
de-
sire 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 exist-
ing, otherwise there would no
longer be anything to
repel),���he reaches at most an extreme
degree of liber-
ation, 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 never-
theless would
not be essentially distinguishable from
the sensual man.
Even the Stoic attitude and manly virtue amounts
28 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
only to this,���that one must
maintain and assert him-
self 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 con-
sists 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
to-
ward the world, exhort us only to take a shrewd atti-
tude
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 ata-
raxia
(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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 through 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, be-
long
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 an-
cient, 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 tram-
mels
of connection with other things, at last they came
also to
the dissolution of the State and giving prefer-
ence to everything
private. Of course community,
family, etc., as natural
relations, are burdensome hin-
drances which diminish my
spiritual freedom.
30 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
" If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature; the
old is passed away, behold, all is become
new.''*
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
un-
derstanding 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
tho-
roughly accustomed to fine-spun " wranglings "
that
the pope, and most others, looked on Luther's appear-
ance
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
* 2 Cor. 5.17. [The words "
new " and " modern " are the same m
Ger-
man.]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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
be-
come 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
ca-
pable (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 " spirit-
ual
" warm-heartedness, it would be treason against
" pure "
warm-heartedness, the " theoretical regard."
For pure
warm-heartedness is by no means to be con-
ceived as like that
kindliness that gives everybody a
32 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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-heart-
edness, 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 de-
lude nothing but our sense; it cannot lead
astray the
spirit���and spirit alone, after all, we really are.
Hav-
ing once got back of things, the spirit has also
got
above them, and become free from their bonds,
eman-
cipated, 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 improve-
ment of the world.
The ancients, we saw, served the natural,
the
worldly, the natural order of the world, but they
in-
cessantly 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
34 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 no-
thing 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 can-
not touch it ?
Why, then it would not yet be at en-
mity 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 Us 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
earthly world, it is a stranger.
Only through a spirit-
ual world is the spirit really spirit, for
" this " world
does not understand it and does not know
how to keep
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 35
"the maiden from a foreign land"* 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
crea-
tures we know it, the creator; in them it lives, they
are
its world.
Now, what is the spirit ? It is the creator of
a spi-
ritual world ! Even in you and me people do not
re-
cognize 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 be-
fore
this mystery as for almost two thousand years
* [Title of a poem by Schiller ]
36 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 spi-
rit."
'' 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, how-
ever 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 37
your spirit, you have
nevertheless left one tenet un-
disturbed, 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
ego-
ist ? 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,* or children as yet
without mind,
there is no fatherland and no patriot-
ism. 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
innumer-
able 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
* [The reader will remember (it
is to be hoped he has never forgotten)
that " mind" and
"spirit" are one and the same word in German. For
se-
veral pages back the connection of the discourse has seemed to
require the
almost exclusive use of the translation "spirit,"
but to complete the sense
it has often been necessary that the
reader recall the thought of its iden-
tity with " mind,"
as stated in a previous note.]
38 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
spirit-
ual, let us take a look about us for its first
creation.
If only it has accomplished this, there follows
thence-
forth 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 re-
alization nothing but
itself, or rather it has not yet
even itself, but must create
itself; hence its first cre-
ation 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 spirit-
ual that first makes you a
spirit.
Meantime, as you distinguish yourself from the
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 other-
worldly; 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
com-
pletely 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
40 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
dwells in the other world, i, e. is God.
But from this it also appears how thoroughly
theo-
logical is the liberation that Feuerbach*
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
* " Essence of Christianity."
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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; * 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 turn-
ing point of
the world's history is that henceforth
no longer God, but
man, is to appear to man as
God."���
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, ��� 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
* [Or, " highest essence "
The Word Wesen, which means both "
es-
sence " and " being," will be translated now
one way and now the other in
the following pages. The reader
must bear in mind that these two words
are identical in German,
and so are " supreme " and " highest "]
��� Cf. e. g. " Essence of Christianity," p 402.
��� [That is, the abstract conception of man, as in the preceding sentence.]
42 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
outward, at once; for the "
Spirit of God " is, accord-
ing to the Christian view, also "
our spirit," and
" dwells in us."* 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 repeti-
tion) 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
* E g , Rom 8 9,1 Cor, 3, 16, John 20, 22, and innumerable other passages.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 mil-
lions 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-
44 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 "appari-
tions
" 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 " deliver-
ance,"���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."
Con-
sequently what you think is not only your thought ?
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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
sup-
pose, 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, some-
what in which I should
have to seek my true welfare,*
something���" sacred."���
However human this sacred
thing may look, though it be the
Human itself, that
*[Heil] ���[heiling]
46 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 serv-
ing 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
noth-
ing but the misunderstood impulse to self-dissolution.
If
you are bound to your past hour, if you must bab-
ble to-day
because you babbled yesterday,* if you can-
not transform yourself
each instant, you feel yourself
* How the priests tinkle ! how
important they
Would make it out, that men should come their
way
And babble, just as yesterday, to day '
Oh! blame them not! They know
man's need, I say;
For he takes all his
happiness this way,
To babble just tomorrow as to day
��� Translated from Goethe's " Venetian Epigrams
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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,
bub
likewise your creator,���just this, as an involuntary
egoist,
you fail to recognize; and therefore the
" higher essence "
is to you���an alien* essence. Every
higher essence, such as
truth, mankind, etc., is an
essence over us.
Alienness is a criterion of the "
sacred." In every-
thing sacred there lies something "
uncanny," i. e.
strange,��� 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 my-
self 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 ? Be-
cause it is not
revealed, or not the revelation of a
higher being. If by
revealed we understand only the
* [fremd] ��� [fremd]
48 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
so-called religious
truths, we go far astray, and en-
tirely 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 mis-
understanding on
our part, without in the least de-
gree 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* as he the individual himself), but
a
general and "higher," yes, for atheists "the
highest
essence."��� 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,
* [einzig] ��� [" the supreme being "]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 49
because the latter was still
represented in a sort of
embodiedness or form, while the undimmed
spiritual-
ity 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 mun-
dane
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
it-
self; 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 like-
wise 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 con-
flict
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
50 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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,*
then, stands
the highest essence and the faith in this essence,
our
"holy��� faith."
With ghosts we arrive in the
spirit-realm, in the
realm of essences
What haunts the universe, and has its occult, "
in-
comprehensible " being there, is precisely the
myste-
rious spook that we call highest essence. And to get
to
the bottom of this spook, to comprehend it, to
dis-
cover 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 tor-
mented
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-
* [heilig] ��� [heilig]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 51
nence one degrades the hitherto
misapprehended ap-
pearance 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;
empti-
ness is = world's essence (world's doings). Now, he
who
is religious does not occupy himself with the de-
ceitful
semblance, with the empty appearances, but
looks upon the essence,
and in the essence has���the
truth.
The essences which are deduced from some
appear-
ances 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
Chris-
tians have tortured themselves to get a conception of
this
ghostly apparition ! But there always remained
52 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 as-
signed 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 with-
out himself ceasing
; but yet for the present this gen-
eral and higher essence is
housed in you, and you pre-
sent 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 considera-
tion 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 re-
garded in the light of a hallowed, i. e.,
protected and
54 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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* like you
yourself, be-
cause 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 ex-
ample, 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
* [einzig]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 55
to be called, an ideal that
beckons to you. You have
a fixed idea !
Do not think that I am jesting or speaking
figura-
tively 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
riot all the stupid chatter
of (e. g.) most of our news-
papers 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
56 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 con-
ceives 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* 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,
vir-
tuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., with-
out
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
* [gefangen und befangen, literally " imprisoned and prepossessed "]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 "
princi-
ple " 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* people are set���
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). Ob-
serve our
liberals, look into the Saechsischen Vater-
landsblaetter, hear
what Schlosser says: ���
" Holbach's
company constituted a regular plot against the
tradi-
tional doctrine and the existing system, and its mem-
bers
were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as
monks and
priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists,
missionary and Bible
societies, commonly are for me-
chanical 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
* [besessene] ��� [versessen] ��� "Achtzehntes Jahrhundert," II, 519.
58 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 crim-
inal; 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 ex-
perience 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
reformato-
ries, 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-
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 59
ple." Yes,
indeed: others might have taken the no-
tion 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
or-
thodox 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, un-
limited 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
sup-
posed 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-
60 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
human " one so often, that
one cannot feel tempted to
draw the sword against it again. And
yet it has al-
most always been only moral opponents that have
ap-
peared in the arena, to assail the supreme essence in
favor
of���another supreme essence. So Proudhon, un-
abashed, says: *
" 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 moral-
ity, 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 es-
sence 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 predi-
cate the subject, and so
makes the subject the object
and principle, one has the undraped
truth, pure and
clean."��� Herewith,
to be sure, we lose the narrow
*" De la Création de l'Ordre" etc., p. 36. ���" Anekdota," II, 64.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 com-
plete victory, if therein he is only
chased into the hu-
man breast and gifted with indelible
immanence.
Now they say, " The divine is the truly
human ! "
The same people who oppose Christianity as the
ba-
sis 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."
62 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 asser-
tion 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 ? * 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, know-
ledge,
and will,���in short, everything in man,���
appeared religious.
Hegel has shown that even phi-
losophy is religious. And what
is not called religion
to-day ? The " religion of love,"
the " religion of
freedom," " political
religion,"���in short, every enthu-
siasm. 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 reli-
gion 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
* [dieselbe Phantastin wie die Phantasie]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 lat-
ter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or religio
with
reference to me,���I am bound; it is freedom with
re-
ference 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 intellect-
uality, 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, be-
longs to itself
the mind,���when, therefore, it may take
part in the spiritual*
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
* [The same word as "
intellectual," us "mind" and "spirit" are
the
same.]
64 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
per-
sonal " absolute lord " was scoffed at and
persecuted ;
consequently it could arrive at independence
only
through liberalism, whose first form acquired signifi-
cance
in the world's history as " citizenship," and
weakened
the specifically religious powers (see " Lib-
eralism "
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 com-
mandments, 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 senti-
ment (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-
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 65
eries in favor of the poor. "
He should not have
murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not
mur-
der ! " 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 im-
moral. Why ? "
Because murder, assassination, is
something absolutely bad."
When the Guerrillas en-
ticed 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
prin-
ciple 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
indi-
vidual 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 prin-
ciple of morality ?��� "But it was an
illegal execu-
tion." 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
66 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 com-
plete. "
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
repulsive-
ness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at
this
rotten and hypocritical relation of a " lawful op-
position."���In
the moral relation of love and fidelity a
divided or
opposed will cannot have place; the beauti-
ful 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, re-
nounce liberty���for love of morality. It may
never
" claim as a right " what it is permitted only to
" beg
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 67
as a favor." Love,
devotion, etc., demand with unde-
viating definiteness that there
be only one will to
which the others devote themselves, which they
serve,
follow, love. Whether this will is regarded as
reason-
able 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 im-
morally, 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 " mo-
tion,
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. ;
68 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 ser-
vile loyalist, you Liberals. You will sweeten
every
word of freedom with a look of the most loyal confi-
dence,
and he will clothe his servilism in the most flat-
tering 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 de-
mands, not their will;
they sighed that their emperor
did not do homage to morality,
like them ; they them-
selves remained " moral subjects,"
till at last one
found courage to give up " moral, obedient
subjec-
tion." 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 69
good could not have this courage,
for a revolution,
and an insurrection into the bargain, is always
some-
thing " 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 en-
trust portfolios and still more
important things to a
crafty rascal. So in praxi you
have nothing to re-
proach me with. " But in theory ! "
Now there I do
put both on the same level, as two opposite
poles,���to
70 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
re-
spect 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 presenti-
ment
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 pro-
cure 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
ver-
dict; Emilia Galotti gave up her life for this moral
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 71
truth. And it is true, it is
an immorality. A vir-
tuous 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 noth-
ing 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 im-
moral 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
with-
out 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 re-
ligion,
as well as the Mohammedan and Jewish, to a
72 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
" 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
con-
tempt. For it (like civism, its native ground, in
en-
eral) is still too little removed and free from the
reli-
gious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws with-
out
criticism or further consideration to its domain in-
stead 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 prin-
ciple, 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 crum-
ble
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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 73
so-called " civic or
political morality," and must ap-
pear 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 de-
filement 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 free-
dom,
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 be-
coming a
religion on its own account. For a distinc-
tion prevails
between religion and morality only so
long as our dealings with
the world of men are regu-
lated 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 sub-
ordinated to the highest,
Man, has ascended to abso-
lute 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
74 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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."*
But, properly speaking, only the god is
changed,���
the deus ; love has remained : there love to
the super-
human God, here love to the human God, to homo
as
Deus. Therefore man is to me���sacred. And
every-
thing " truly human " is to me���sacred!
" Marriage
is sacred of itself. And so it is
with all moral rela-
tions. Friendship is and must be sacred
for you, and
property, and marriage, and the good of every
man,
but sacred in and of itself."���
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 sub-
ject, 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 rela-
tions are ethical, are
cultivated with a moral mind,
only where of themselves
(without religious consecra-
tion by the priest's blessing) they
are counted reli-
gious." Feuerbach's proposition,
"Theology is an-
thropology," means only " religion
must be ethics,
ethics alone is religion."
*"Essence of Christianity," second edition, p 402 ��� P. 403.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 75
Altogether Feuerbach
accomplishes only a trans-
position of subject and
predicate, a giving of prefer-
ence 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 " ; * he thinks,
however, that the effect of the
illusion on men is "
downright ruinous, since even
love, in itself the truest, most
inward sentiment, be-
comes an obscure, illusory one through
religiousness,
since religious love loves man���
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 mo-
rality'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 in-
dicate
here.
Thus self-renunciation is common to the holy with
* P. 408 ��� [Literally " the man "]
76 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
rela-
tion 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
ad-
monitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all
gentleness
and all compassion; he puts all considera-
tions 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 vul-
garity 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,
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 77
the so-called " supreme good
" ; and at last both com-
plete each other again too, as the
" materially-
minded " man sacrifices everything to an
ideal phan-
tasm, his vanity, and the "
spiritually-minded " man
to a material gratification, the
life of enjoyment.
Those who exhort men to " unselfishness "*
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 bene-
fit ? 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 pro-
curing your "true benefit."
You are to benefit yourself, and yet you
are not to
seek your benefit.
People regard as unselfish the benefactor of
men, a
Franke who founded the orphan
asylum, an O'Con-
nell 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'Con-
nell fund seemed to give them
a foundation; for, if
they were successful in casting suspicion on
his " un-
selfishness," they would easily separate him
from his
adherents.
* [Uneigennuetzigkeit, literally " un-self-benefitingness."]
78 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
Yet what could they show further than that
O'Con-
nell 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 indispen-
sable that, if it costs
too much in solid material, peo-
ple 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
pleas-
ure; 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 be-
comes 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
correspond-
ing 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 ap-
peared 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 ten-
sion 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
un-
resisting bosom, one last faint " Oh dear ! " moaned
it-
self 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
80 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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. Archi-
medes, to move the earth, asked for a
standpoint out-
side 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
de-
termined 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 in-
volve 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
pre-
cept 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-
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 lack-
ing 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. Never-
theless 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 him-
self wholly, and it is only when he
wholly hears him-
self that he is a hearing or rational*
being. The
Christian does not hear the agony of his
enthralled
nature, but lives in "humility"; therefore
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-dis-
posed," " spiteful," etc. (as it
cannot be otherwise),
then he thinks he hears voices of devils,
voices against
the spirit (for decorum, passionlessness,
kindly disposi-
tion, 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,
* [vernuenftig, derived from vernehmen, to hear.]
82 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 mat-
ter 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 re-
mains the absolute
lord for both, and their only quar-
rel is over who shall
occupy the hierarchical throne
that pertains to the "
Viceregent 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, truthful-
ness,
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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 al-
ways 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
revela-
tions 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
im-
parted to me or only aroused. Those which are
84 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
re-
ceive, 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 pro-
duce feelings in us, i.
e. impart them to us, instead of
leaving their production to
ourselves however they
may turn out ? If we hear the name of
God, we are
to feel veneration ; if we hear that of the prince's
ma-
jesty, 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 feel-
ings, 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
be-
ing prescribed and imparted to us what and how we
are to
feel and think at mention of that name.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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
sub-
jects 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 ap-
proved
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
86 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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.) ;
Mon-
goloidity 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 in-
vasions 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 "
substan-
tial" 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 posi-
tive, i. e. from " limited
freedom," freedom " within
certain limits." In
the most advanced stage of civili-
zation this activity earns the
name of scientific activ-
ity, 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,
unadulter-
ated 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 ob-
trusiveness 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,
88 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 be-
have, 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 habit-
uated 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?
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 com-
plexion
they have to do with heaven, took upon them-
selves the opposite
task, the task of storming that
heaven of custom, heaven-storming*
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 anni-
hilation of heaven.
Improving and reforming is the
Mongolism of the
Caucasian, because thereby he is al-
*[A German idiom for destructive radicalism.]
90 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
Cau-
casian blood throw off their Mongolian skin, they will
bury
the emotional man under the ruins of the mon-
strous 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 free-
dom 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
Mon-
golism; freedom of the spirit is Mongolian freedom,
freedom
of feeling, moral freedom, etc.
We may find the word " morality " taken
as syn-
onymous with spontaneity, self-determination. But
that
is not involved in it; rather has the Caucasian
shown himself
spontaneous only in spite of his Mon-
golian morality.
The Mongolian heaven, or morals,*
remained the strong castle, and
only by storming in-
cessantly at this castle did the Caucasian
show him-
self moral; if he had not had to do with morals at all
* [The same word that has been
translated " custom " several times in
this section.]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 " cor-
responds
entirely with " religious and orthodox phil-
osophy," "
constitutional monarchy," " the Christian
State," "
freedom within certain limits," " the limited
freedom of
the press," or, in a figure, to the hero fet-
tered 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 be-
lief 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 pro-
duct 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
being's 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. In-
fluence 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
92 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
consciousness of sin was our
Mongolian torment that
lasted thousands of years.
But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its
noth-
ing? 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
it-
self, 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 Mm ; 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 out-
side oneself for mightier, greater,
better warranted,
better, etc.; i. e. the attitude in which
one acknowl-
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 your-
selves, 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 hor-
ror of touching it.
There lies in it something un-
canny, 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 at-
tempt to liberate oneself
from what is feared, by guile,
deception, tricks, etc. In
reverence,* on the contrary,
it is quite otherwise. Here
something is not only
feared,��� but also
honored���: 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, be-
long to it; by the honor
which I pay it I am com-
pletely in its power, and do not even
attempt libera-
tion 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-
*[Ehrfurcht] ���[gefuerchtet] ���[geehrt]
94 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 re-
spected
is deified. The man is now no longer em-
ployed in creating,
but in learning (knowing, investi-
gating, 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
a
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,
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 95
church, God, morality, order,
etc., are such thoughts
or spirits, that exist only for the mind.
A merely liv-
ing 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
cor-
respond 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 cele-
brated 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.
Philo-
sophy cannot hereafter achieve anything higher, for its
96 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
highest is the omnipotence of
mind, the almightiness of
mind.*
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 inten-
tions 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 al-
ways 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 revolu-
tionary ideas, for
which not it, but unselfish or impas-
sioned men sacrificed
themselves, solely to its own pro-
* Rousseau, the Philanthropists,
and others were hostile to culture and
intelligence, but they
overlooked the fact that this is present in all men of
the
Christian type, and assailed only learned and refined culture.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 consis-
tent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual
sense,
selfish people, looking out for their advantage,
sober,
calculating, etc.
Who, then, is " self-sacrificing " ?*
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 ab-
sorbed 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
* [Literally, " sacrificing "; the German word has not the prefix " self."]
98 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
doc-
trine, 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 liv-
ing,
to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming,
���in short, to
have any other than a " sacred inter-
est:" 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 " re-
nounce " other enjoyments.
Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more
of
which man is to look upon as his calling, is not lack-
ing.
Family, fatherland, science, etc., may find in me
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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 99
is clericalism. E. g.,
Robespierre, St. Just, etc., were
priests through and through,
inspired by the idea, en-
thusiasts, 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 "
per-
sonal " 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 fanati-
cism, 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
100 the ego and his own
into the foreground. But even
here all might yet re-
solve itself into a personal interest, each
of the par-
takers reflecting that he must concur in the
punish-
ment 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 de-
nounce
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
par-
ticular person who has stolen the basket is
perfectly
indifferent to my person ; it is only the thief, this
con-
cept 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 101
nothing but a love of Man, the
unreal concept, the
spooks. It is not ������
�������������,
men, but ����
������������,
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 " re-
ligion 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
102 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
trans-
formation 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
unself-
ishly as to abandon all its aims in order to bring a
harsh
theory to its triumph ? It suits the priests ad-
mirably, to
be sure, when people listen to their sum-
mons, " Cast away
everything and follow me," or
" Sell all that thou hast
and give to the poor, and
thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and
come, follow
me." Some decided idealists obey this call;
but most
act like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a
behavior
half clerical or religious and half worldly,
serving God and
Mammon.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 103
I do not blame the middle class for not wanting
to
let its aims be frustrated by Robespierre, i. e. for
in-
quiring of its egoism how far it might give the
revo-
lutionary 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 mid-
dle class. However,
will not they likewise sooner or
later learn to understand what is
to their advantage ?
August Becker says : * " To win the
producers (pro-
letarians) 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 revo-
lutionary 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-
* Volksphilosophie unserer Tage," p 22.
104 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
son seems to them too small, too
insignificant,���and is
so in fact,���to lay claim to everything
and be able to
put itself completely in force. There is a sure
sign of
this in their dividing themselves into two persons,
an
eternal and a temporal, and always caring either only
for
the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the
eternal, on the
work-day for the temporal, in prayer
for the former, in work for
the latter. They have the
priest in themselves, therefore they
do not get rid of
him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly
every
Sunday.
How men have struggled and calculated to get at
a
solution regarding these dualistic essences ! Idea
fol-
lowed upon idea, principle upon principle, system up-
on
system, and none knew how to keep down perma-
nently 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.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 105
To the activity of priestly minds belongs
especially
what one often hears called " moral influence."
Moral influence takes its start where humiliation
be-
gins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation
it-
self, the breaking and bending of the temper * down
to
humility.��� If I call to some one to
run away when
a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence
by
this demand; if I say to a child " You will go hungry
if
you will not eat what is put on the table," this is
not moral
influence. But, if I say to it " You will
pray, honor your
parents, respect the crucifix, speak
the truth, etc., for this
belongs to man and is man's
calling," or even " this is
God's will," then moral in-
fluence 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 fun-
nel,
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
in-
struction, why, theft 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
* [Muth] ��� [Demuth]
106 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 in-
herited them from your
fathers; they destroy inherited
sin.* If you command
them, " Bend before the Most
High," they will answer : "
If he wants to bend us,
let him come himself and do it; we, at
least, will not
bend of our own accord." And, if you
threaten them
with his wrath and his punishment, they will take
it
like being threatened with the bogie-man. If you are
no
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 educa-
tional
system ? For how could their liberalism, their
" liberty
within the bounds of law," come about with-
out 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,
with-
out thinking seriously whether perhaps they them-
selves
must be true to possess the truth. This time
* [Called in English theology " original sin."]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 107
was the Middle Ages. With
the common conscious-
ness���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 labori-
ously 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 con-
sciousness, so-called finite or
objective thought. Yet
as this thought, this understanding,
which Luther de-
cries under the name of reason, is incapable of
com-
prehending 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 Mid-
dle 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 par-
taker 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,
108 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
pertaining to things, figures to
himself in truth only
what pertains to things. But truth is
spirit, stuff al-
together 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. Con-
sequently: only the like
apprehend the like. " You
are like the spirit that you
understand."*
Because Protestantism broke the mediaeval
hier-
archy, 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 " reforma-
tion," and so a
reinvigoration of the antiquated hier-
archy. That mediaeval
hierarchy had been only a
weakly one, as it had to let all
possible barbarism of
unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside
it, and it
was the Reformation that first steeled the power
of
hierarchy. If Bruno Bauer thinks: ��� "
As the Re-
formation was mainly the abstract rending of the
re-
ligious principle from art, State, and science, and so
its
liberation from those powers with which it had
joined itself in
the antiquity of the church and in the
hierarchy of the Middle
Ages, so too the theological
and ecclesiastical movements which
proceeded from the
* [Goethe, " Faust "] ��� " Anekdota," II, 152.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 109
Reformation are only the
consistent carrying out of
this abstraction of the religious
principle from the
other powers of humanity," I regard
precisely the op-
posite 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 in-
destructible. 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
Re-
formation till to-day.
Only by the more modern philosophy since
Descartes
has a serious effort been made to bring
110 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
Christianity to complete
efficacy, by exalting the
" scientific consciousness "
to be the only true and
valid one. Hence it begins with
absolute doubt, du-
bitare, 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 pre-
cepts," 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 opin-
ions 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
phil-
osophy, 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, with-
out the devil.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 111
For this very reason the name of philosopher is
not
to be given to him who has indeed open eyes for the
things
of the world, a clear and undazzled gaze, a cor-
rect judgment
about the world, but who sees in the
world just the world, in
objects only objects, and, in
short, everything prosaically as it
is; but he alone is a
philosopher who sees, and points out or
demonstrates,
heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly,
the���
divine in the mundane. The former may be ever
so
wise, there is no getting away from this:
What wise men see not by their
wisdom's art
Is practised simply by a childlike heart.*
It takes this childlike heart, this eye for the
divine, to
make a philosopher. The first-named man has only a
"
common " consciousness, but he who knows the
divine, and
knows how to tell it, has a " scientific "
one. On
this ground Bacon was turned out of the
realm of philosophers.
And certainly what is called
English philosophy seems to have got
no further than
to the discoveries of so-called " clear
heads," such as
Bacon and Hume. The English did not know
how to
exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to
philo-
sophic significance, did not know how to
make���phil-
osophers out of childlike hearts. This is as much
as
to say, their philosophy was not able to become theo-
logical
or theology, and yet it is only as theology that
it can
really live itself out, complete itself. The field
of
its battle to the death is in theology. Bacon did
not trouble
himself about theological questions and
cardinal points.
��� [Schiller, " Die Worte des Glaubens "]
112 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
Cognition has its object in life. German
thought
seeks, more than that of others, to reach the begin-
nings
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 na-
ture, 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
in-
creased in intensity. Even if people snapped their
fin-
gers, at God and the devil in their
former crass reality,
people devoted only the greater attention to
their
ideas. " They are rid of the Evil One; evil is
left."*
The decision having once been made not to let
oneself
be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable,
[Parodied from the words of
Mephistopheles in the witch's kitchen in
"
Faust " ]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 113
little scruple was felt about
revolting against the exist-
ing 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 re-
mained 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 hom-
age
to the " spirit of the law." In all this the objects
had
only suffered a change of form ; they had re-
mained in their
prepollence and pre-eminence; in
short, one was still involved in
obedience and pos-
sessedness, lived in reflection, and had
an object on
which one reflected, which one respected, and
before
which one felt reverence and fear. One had done
no-
thing but transform the things into conceptions of
the
things, into thoughts and ideas, whereby one's depend-
ence
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 con-
science, and the less one does give
way to the individ-
ual 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
114 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 ?"*
" I
am come to stir up a man against his father, and
a
daughter against her mother,"��� and
others, are accom-
panied by something that refers us to the
heavenly or
true family, and mean no more than the State's
de-
mand, 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 diffi-
culty
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."
��� Matt. 10. 35. * John 2 4
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 115
The Protestant may put it as he will, the "
holy *
Scripture," the " Word of God," still
remains sacred���
for him. He for whom
this is no longer " holy " has
ceased to���be a
Protestant. But herewith what is
" ordained " in it,
the public authorities appointed by
God, etc., also remain sacred
for him. For him these
things remain indissoluble,
unapproachable, " raised
above all doubt " ; and, as
doubt, which in practice
becomes a buffeting, is
what is most man's own, these
things remain " raised "
above himself. He who can-
not 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 him-
pelf, entwined them with all his thoughts
and en-
deavors, made them a " matter of conscience,"
con-
structed 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
posi-
tion 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
* [heilig] ��� [heilig]
116 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
church ") ranks as sacred,
and this feeling and con-
sciousness 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*
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 con-
vinced 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
con-
science. 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 Chris-
tianity, to be sure) acknowledged only the
intellectual
and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially the
* [Geistlicher, literally " spiritual man "]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 117
Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in
this way, found involun-
tary 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 every-
thing
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. mar-
riage,
the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mun-
dane, 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, consist-
ent Protestant sets about
annihilating the mundane
altogether, and that simply by hallowing
it. So mar-
riage 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 re-
lation. Just so the State, etc.
Formerly the pope
gave consecration and his blessing to it and its
prin-
ces; now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty
is
sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The or-
der
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 reason-
ably
abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have
118 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
wisely and rightly said: that man
and woman should
be with each other is a natural law. Now, if
it is a
natural law, then it is God's ordinance, therefore
im-
planted in nature, and therefore a divine law
also."
And is it anything more than Protestantism brought
up
to date, when Feuerbach pronounces moral
rela-
tions sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, in-
stead,
for the sake of the spirit that dwells in them ?
" But
marriage���as a free alliance of love, of course���
is sacred
of itself, by the nature of the union that is
formed
here. That marriage alone is a religious one
that
is a true one, that corresponds to the essence of
marriage,
love. And so it is with all moral relations.
They are ethical,
are cultivated with a moral mind,
only where they rank as
religious of themselves.
True friendship is only where the
limits of friendship
are preserved with religious
conscientiousness, with the
same conscientiousness with which the
believer guards
the dignity of his God. Friendship is and must
be
sacred for you, and property, and marriage, and the
good
of every man, but sacred in and of itself."*
That is a very essential consideration. In
Cathol-
icism the mundane can indeed be consecrated or
hal-
lowed, but it is not sacred without this priestly
bless-
ing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane rela-
tions
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 un-
holy in themselves, but
their relation to the church,
* " Essence of Christianity," p. 403.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 119
their use for the church, hallows
the means. Regicide
was named as such ; if it was committed for
the
church's behoof, it could be certain of being hallowed
by
the church, even if the hallowing was not openly
pronounced. To
the Protestant, majesty ranks as
sacred; to the Catholic only that
majesty which is
consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and
it
does rank as such to him only because the pope, even
though
it be without a special act, confers this sacred-
ness on it once
for all. If he retracted his consecra-
tion, 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
every-
thing. 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; conse-
quently
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-
120 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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,
Luther-
anism 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
con-
trary, tries to bring spirit into all things as far as
pos-
sible, 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 com-
pletely successful in carrying the
idea through every-
thing. 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
MEN OK THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 121
mountains rise to heaven. Thus
he stands powerless
before the uncontrollable. Can he
keep off the im-
pression that he is helpless against this
gigantic world?
It is a fixed law to which he must submit,
it deter-
mines his fate. Now, what did pre-Christian
human-
ity work toward ? Toward getting rid of the
irrup-
tions 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 them-
selves be affected by them. Horace utters the
famous
Nil admirari, by which he likewise announces the
in-
difference 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 im-
perturbability 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.
122 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
" All things have been
delivered to me by my
Father" (Matt. 11. 27). It has
ceased to be over-
powering, unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc.,
fra-
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
moun-
tains, 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."* I am the
lord of the world,
mine is the "glory.''��� The
world
has become prosaic, for the divine has vanished
from
it: it is my property, which I dispose of as I (to wit,
the
mind) choose.
When I had exalted myself to be the owner of
the
world, egoism had won its first complete victory,
had
vanquished the world, had become worldless, and put
the
acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.
The first property, the first "glory,"
has been
acquired !
But the lord of the world is not yet lord of
his
thoughts, his feelings, his will : he is not lord and
owner
of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred, the
" Holy
Spirit," and the " worldless " Christian is not
able
to become " godless." If the ancient struggle
was a
struggle against the world, the mediaeval
(Christian)
struggle is a struggle against self, the
mind ; the former
against the outer world, the latter
against the inner world.
The mediaeval man is the
* Mark 9 23.
���[Heirlichkeit, which, according to its derivation, means "lordliness "]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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
work-
ing 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 human-
ity, 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. How-
ever, 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 hu-
man, 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 dif-
ferent
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
124 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
be-
came 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 van-
quished
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 overpower-
ingness and "
divinity," recognized the world's power-
lessness 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 re-
lationship," is to guide me in dealing
with the case or
in contracting the relation. As if a concept
of the
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 125
case existed
on its own account, and was not rather
the concept that one forms
of the case ! As if a rela-
tion which we enter into was not,
by the uniqueness of
those who enter into it, itself unique !
As if it de-
pended on how others stamp it ! But, as people
sep-
arated 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 dog-
matic. 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 Juda-
ism'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
in-
stead of ecclesiastical, " scientific " instead of
doctrinal,
or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws
in-
stead of " crude dogmas " and precepts.
Now nothing but mind rules in the world.
An in-
numerable multitude of concepts buzz about in peo-
ple'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
126 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
right, etc., is rather that one
which we now set up."
Thus the confusion of concepts moves
forward.
The history of the world has dealt cruelly with
us,
and the spirit has obtained an almighty power. You
must
have regard for my miserable shoes, which could
protect your naked
foot, my salt, by which your pota-
toes 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
innumer-
able 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 con-
tinue 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
re-
ceiving it from morality or reason or humanity.
Happy
unconstraint of the desirous man, how merci-
lessly people
have tried to slay you on the altar of
constraint !
But around the altar rise the arches of a church,
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 127
and its walls keep moving further
and further out.
What they enclose is���sacred. You can
no longer
get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the
hun-
ger 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 ex-
tended. 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
con-
quered: 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
pre-
sented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the
free
were here to be described in a third division as in-
dependent 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.
128 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
After the chalice of so-called absolute monarchy
had
been drained down to the dregs, in the eighteenth
century
people became aware that their drink did not
taste human���too
clearly aware not to begin to crave
a different cup. Since our
fathers were " human
beings " after all, they at last
desired also to be
regarded as such.
Whoever sees in us something else than
human
beings, in him we likewise will not see a human being,
but
an inhuman being, and will meet him as an un-
human 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 im-
pulses we may
there succumb to, belongs solely
to our private life ; our
public or State life is a purely
human one.
Everything un-human or " egoistic "
that clings to us is
degraded to a " private matter "
and we distinguish the
State definitely from " civil
society," which is the
sphere of "egoism's" activity.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 129
The true man is the nation, but the individual
is
always an egoist. Therefore strip off your individ-
uality
or isolation wherein dwells discord and egoistic
inequality, and
consecrate yourselves wholly to the
true man,���the nation or the
State. Then you will
rank as men, and have all that is man's;
the State,
the true man, will entitle you to what belongs to
it,
and give you the " rights of man " ; Man gives
you
his rights !
So runs the speech of the commonalty.
The commonalty* is nothing else than the
thought
that the State is all in all, the true man, and that
the
individual's human value consists in being a citizen of
the
State. In being a good citizen he seeks his high-
est 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
cav-
alierly treated as " third estate " and confounded
with
the canaille. In other words, up to this time the
State
had recognized caste.��� The son of
a nobleman was
selected for posts to which the most
distinguished
commoners aspired in vain, 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
* [Or "citizenhood "
The word (das Buergertum) means either the con
dition of
being a citizen, or citizen like principles, or the body of citizens
or
of the middle or business class, the bourgeoisie )
��� [Man hatte
im Staate " die ungleiche Person
angesehen," there had
been respect of unequal
persons " in the State ]
130 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 be-
come
the shibboleth. One must give up himself, and
live only
for the State. One must act " disinterest-
edly," 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 imper-
sonality 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
ma-
terial 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 posses-
sion of the
subjects, not their property. Instead of
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 131
this, it calls States-general, to
have this money
granted to it. The shrinking from
strictly logical
action destroyed the illusion of an absolute
govern-
ment; he who must have something " granted "
to him
cannot be regarded as absolute. The subjects
recog-
nized 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 my-
self." Bailly's words sound, certainly, as if
every one
Was a proprietor now. However, instead of the
gov-
ernment, instead of the prince, the���nation now
be-
came 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 leg-
islation ; it showed the
complete powerlessness of the
constituents; the majority
of the representatives has
become master. When on
July 9 the plan for divi-
sion of the work on the constitution is
proposed, Mira-
beau 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 ex-
claims: " Is
not the people the source of all power ? "
The source,
therefore, of all right, and the source of
132 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
all���-power ! * By the way,
here the substance of
" right " becomes visible ; it
is���power. " He who
has power has right."
The commonalty is the heir of the privileged
classes.
In fact, the rights of the barons, which were taken
from
them as " usurpations," only passed over to the
commonalty.
For the commonalty was now called the
" nation." "
Into the hands of the nation " all pre-
rogatives were
given back. Thereby they ceased to
be " prerogatives "
: ��� they became " rights."���
From
this time on the nation demands tithes,
compulsory
services; it has inherited the lord's court, the
rights
of vert and venison, the���serfs. The night of August
4
was the death-night of privileges or " prerogatives
"
(cities, communes, boards of magistrates, were
also
privileged, furnished with prerogatives and
seigniorial
rights), and ended with the new morning of "
right,"
the " rights of the State," the "
rights of the nation."
The monarch in the person of the " royal
master "
had been a paltry monarch compared with this
new
monarch, the " sovereign nation." This
monarchy
was a thousand times severer, stricter, and more
con-
sistent. 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 transforma-
tion
of limited monarchy into absolute monarchy.
From
this time on every right that is not conferred by
this monarch is
an " assumption"; but every prerog-
* [Gewalt,
a word which is also commonly used like the English "
vio-
lence," denoting especially unlawful violence ]
���[Vorrechte] ��� [Rechte]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 133
ative that he bestows, a "
right." The times de-
manded absolute royalty, absolute
monarchy; there-
fore 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
thou-
sands of years,���to wit, to find that absolute lord
be-
side whom no other lords and lordlings any longer ex-
ist
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 noth-
ing in the world,
and that there is no other god save
the one."*
Against right one can no longer, as against
a right,
come forward with the assertion that it is "
a wrong."
One can say now only that it is a piece of
nonsense, an
illusion. If one called it wrong, one would have
to
set up another right in opposition to it, and measure
it
by this. If, on the contrary, one rejects right as
such, right
in and of itself, altogether, then one also
rejects the concept of
wrong, and dissolves the whole
concept of right (to which the
concept of wrong be-
longs).
What is the meaning of the doctrine that we all
en-
joy " 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
* 1 Corinthians 8 4
134 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 re-
ceiver only fulfils the duties that spring from
the dele-
gated 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
polit-
ical 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 there-
to,���conditions
which are to be sought only in the na-
ture 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 con-
dition; if, on the other hand, even the most
deserving
commoner could not reach that station, then an
in-
equality 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
roy-
alty, the time of the kings before the revolution)
kept
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 135
the individual in dependence on a
lot of little mon-
archies. 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 so-
ciety,
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 re-
lation
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 es-
tate 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. 1
There-
fore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a
revo-
lution 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 with-
out 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 es-
tates,
but to become the sole estate. This sole estate
136 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
is the nation, the "State.'"
What had the indi-
vidual 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 mon-
archy
of the guild ; but he, like all, recognized and
acknowledged
only���one lord, the State, as whose ser-
vants 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 137
servant is the free man !
What glaring nonsense !
Yet this is the sense of the bourgeoisie,
and its poet,
Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel,
succeeded in
glorifying the dependence of the subject on the
object,
obedience to the objective world, 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 Croesus or poor as Job���the State of
the
commonalty leaves that to your option; but only have
a "
good disposition." This it demands of you, and
counts it
its most urgent task to establish this in all.
Therefore it will
keep you from " evil promptings,"
holding the
"ill-disposed " in check and silencing
their
inflammatory discourses under censors' cancel-
ling-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 lib-
eralism. People want to see what is
"rational,"
"suited to the times." etc.,
established everywhere.
The following definition of liberalism,
which is sup-
138 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
posed to be pronounced in its
honor, characterizes it
completely: " Liberalism is nothing
else than the
knowledge of reason, applied to our existing
rela-
tions."* Its aim is a " rational order," a
" moral be-
havior," a " limited freedom," not
anarchy, lawless-
ness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then
the person
succumbs. Art has for a long time not only
acknowl-
edged 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 ex-
tremest
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
individ-
ual's subjection in the State and to the State's
laws.
But why "liberty"? Because one is no longer
sep-
arated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in
direct
and immediate relation to it; because one is
* " Ein und zwanzig Bogen," p 12
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 139
a���citizen, not the subject of
another, not even of the
king as a person, but only in his quality
as " su-
preme head of the State." Political liberty,
this fun-
damental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a
sec-
ond phase of���Protestantism, and runs quite parallel
with
"religious liberty."* Or would it perhaps be
right to
understand by the latter an independence of
religion? Anything
but that. Independence of
intermediaries is all that it is
intended to express, in-
dependence of mediating priests, the
abolition of the
" laity," and so direct and immediate
relation to re-
ligion or to God. Only on the supposition that
one
has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion ; free-
dom
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 free-
dom of conscience signifies that conscience is
free;
not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from
reli-
gion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them.
It
does not mean my liberty, but the liberty of a
power
that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of
my
despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free.
State,
religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave,
*Louis Diane says ("Histoire
des Dix Ans "I p 138) of the time
of the
Restoration " Le
protestantisme devint le fond des idées
et des m��urs."
140 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
and their liberty is my
slavery. That in this they
necessarily follow the
principle, " the end hallows the
means," is
self-evident. If the welfare of the State is
the end, war is a
hallowed means ; if justice is the
State's end, homicide is a
hallowed means, and is
called by its sacred name, "execution,"
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 be-
come
altogether mine, but only independence of per-
sons.
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 indi-
vidually 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 con-
stitutional prince
must himself be stripped of all per-
sonality, 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
ab-
solute princes resist this. Nevertheless these very
ones
profess to be in the best sense " Christian
princes."
For this, however, they must become a purely
spiritual
power, as the Christian is subject only to spirit
(" God
is spirit"). The purely spiritual power is
consistently
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 141
represented only by the
constitutional prince, he who,
without any personal significance,
stands there spirit-
ualized 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 consti-
tutional monarchy individual dominion,���i. e., a
real
ruler that wills���has found its end ; here,
therefore,
individual liberty prevails, independence of
every in-
dividual 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 fee 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,
lib-
eralism fighting only against the coercion of the cen-
142 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
sorship as that of personal
wilfulness, but otherwise
showing itself extremely inclined and
willing to tyr-
annize 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; oth-
erwise the " press laws " threaten "
press-penalties."
If one sees personal liberty assured, one
does not no-
tice 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 de-
ference, 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 "*
against the dominion of " persons " !
But the mind's
cause is the rational, good, lawful, etc. ; that is
the
" good cause." The commonalty wants an
impersonal
ruler.
Furthermore, if the principle is this, that only
the
cause is to rule man���to wit, the cause of morality,
* [Sache, which commonly means thing.]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 143
the cause of legality, etc.,���then
no personal balking
of one by the other may be authorized either
(as for-
merly, e. g., the
commoner was balked of the aristo-
tocratic offices, the
aristocrat of common mechanical
trades, etc.) ; i. e. free
competition must exist. Only
through the thing* can one
balk another (e. g. the
rich man
balking the impecunious man by money, a
thing), not as a person.
Henceforth only one lord-
ship, 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 Res-
toration in France had no other
substance than this,���
that the bourgeoisie was struggling
for free competi-
tion, 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
* [Sache]
144 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
showed what the Revolution really was.
For every
effort arrives at reaction when it comes to discreet
re-
flection, 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 reac-
tion, 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 rela-
tions
to them, but as Philistines, later, they give them-
selves up to
considerations and have positive relations
to them. In both
cases all their doing and thinking
turns upon "
considerations," but the Philistine is re-
actionary 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
estab-
lished, but against the establishment in
question,
against a particular establishment. It did
away with
this ruler, not with the ruler���on the
contrary, the
French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the
old
vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous
ones a
securely established position, i. e. it simply set
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 145
virtue in the place of vice.
(Vice and virtue, again,
are on their part distinguished from each
other only
as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc.
To this day the revolutionary principle has gone
no
farther than to assail only one or another
particular
establishment, i. e. be ? reformatory.
Much ass 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* or "just"���
prince who
himself is guided, and rules, according to "
rational
laws " ; in short, in legality. The period
of the
* [Or " righteous." German rechtlich ] ���[gerecht]
146 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
bourgeoisie is ruled by
the British spirit of legality.
An assembly of provincial estates,
e. g., is ever recall-
ing 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
re-
minding 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
ex-
isted, and would have been stupid if it did not
avail
itself of the right of existence, but fancied itself
de-
pendent 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 fol-
lowed 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 con-
viction, 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, pow-
erlessness, 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 penni-
less 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 " in-
dividual 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
148 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
so the street-walker. The
gamester stakes everything
on the game, ruins himself and
others;���no guaran-
tee. 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 thou-
sands, 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, change-
able, 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 149
discontented poverty, by
those poor who no longer
behave quietly and endure, but
begin to run wild and
become restless. Lock up the
vagabond, thrust the
breeder of unrest into the darkest dungeon !
He
wants to " arouse dissatisfaction and incite
people
against existing institutions " in the
State���stone
him, stone him!
But from these identical discontented ones comes
a
reasoning somewhat as follows: It need not make
any
difference to the " good citizens " who protects
them
and their principles, whether an absolute king or
a constitutional
one, a republic, etc., if only they are
protected. And what is
their principle, whose pro-
tector 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
rad-
icalism ! 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
de-
rive advantage from the error, while the rest have to
suffer
from it. In the Middle Ages the error was
general among
Christians that the church must have
all power, or the supreme
lordship on earth; the
hierarchs believed in this " truth "
not less than the
laymen, and both were spellbound in the like
error.
But by it the hierarchs had the advantage of power,
150 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
the laymen had to suffer
subjection. However, as
the saying goes, " one learns
wisdom by suffering";
and so the laymen at last learned
wisdom and no
longer believed in the mediaeval " truth."���A
like re-
lation exists between the commonalty and the
laboring
class. Commoner and laborer believe in the "
truth "
of money ; they who do not possess it believe
in it no
less than those who possess it: the laymen, therefore,
as
well as the priests.
" Money governs the world " is the
keynote of the
civic epoch. A destitute aristocrat and a
destitute
laborer, as " starvelings," amount to nothing
so far as
political consideration is concerned; birth and labor
do
not do it, but money brings consideration.*
The
possessors rule, but the State trains up from the
desti-
tute 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
any-
thing without the State's assent ? What I have
with-
out 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
pro-
tection 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,
*[das Geld gibt Geltung ]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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
protege.
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
indi-
vidual), 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 protect-
ing 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 ")
152 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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,* a spoil
��� of the possess-
ors, 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.
* [ausgebeutet] ��� [Kriegsbeute]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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,
free-
dom 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 un-
equal.
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
154 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
an-
other's estimation a " ragamuffin," a "
have-nothing " ;
but then this estimation ceases. We are
all ragamuf-
fins 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 155
and poor is to be removed, then
he will be a raga-
muffin, for then he will feel that it
amounts to some-
thing to be a ragamuffin, and might lift "
Ragamuf-
fin " to be an honorable form of address, just as
the
Revolution did with the word "Citizen."
Ragamuf-
fin 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 conse-
quently 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 lat-
ter 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
156 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 consti-
tutes our dignity and our���equality.
What advantage does citizenship bring us ?
Bur-
dens ! 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW l57
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 desir-
able 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,*
let the wages too be equal.
As long as faith sufficed for man's honor and
dig-
nity, 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.
c. be
able to perform it as a totality. He who in a
pin-fac-
tory 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
* [In German an exact quotation of Luke 10 7.]
158 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 enjoy-
ment 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
arbi-
trariness of individuals. But that arbitrariness was
left
which springs from the conjuncture of situations,
and may be
called the fortuity of circumstances ; fa-
voring 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-
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 159
less, and a law! Let us no
longer be slaves op chance!
Let us create a new order that makes
an end of fluctu-
ations. Let this order then be sacred
!
Formerly one had to suit the lords to come
to any-
thing; 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
un-
rolls itself, is a game of luck through and through,
from
the speculations of the exchange down to the so-
licitation of
offices, the hunt for customers, looking for
work, aspiring to
promotion and decorations, the
second-hand dealer's petty
haggling, etc. If one suc-
ceeds 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
de-
veloped 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 for-
tune 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 de-
cided 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
160 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 for-
tune 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
bro-
ther, is only the Sunday side of Communism. Accord-
ing
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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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;
Com-
munism 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 for-
bidden 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-
162 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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-abandon-
ment
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.* 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 as-
pire 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 crit-
ical liberalism.
* Proudhon (" Création
de l'Ordre") cries out, e. g., p. 414, "
In industry,
as in science, the publication of an invention is the
first and most sacred of
duties!"
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 163
As liberalism is completed in self-criticising,
"criti-
cal"* liberalism,���in which the critic remains
a lib-
eral and does not go beyond the principle of liberal-
ism,
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 noth-
ing; but he makes
nothing because his labor is always
a labor that remains
individual, calculated strictly for
* [In his strictures on "
criticism " Stirner refers to a special movement
known by
that name in the early forties of the last century, of which
Bruno
Bauer was the principal exponent. After his official
separation from the
faculty of the university of Bonn on account
of his views in regard to the
Bible, Bruno Bauer in 1841 settled
near Berlin and founded the Allgemeine
Literatur-Zeitung,
in which he and his friends, at war with their surround-
ings,
championed the '' absolute emancipation " of the individual
within
the limits of " pure humanity" and fought as
their foe "the mass," com-
prehending in that term the
radical aspirations of political liberalism and
the communistic
demands of the rising Socialist movement of that time.
For a brief
account of Bruno Bauer's movement of criticism, see John
Henry
Mackay, " Max Stirner. Sein Leben und
sein Werk,"]
164 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
his own want, a labor day by
day."* In opposition
to this one might, for instance,
consider the fact that
Gutenberg's labor did not remain
individual, but be-
got 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 par-
asitic 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 lei-
sure 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 master-
lessness of man, could not be
filled with a human ele-
ment by the State, and therefore was left
to arbitrary
choice.
It is assuredly necessary that man be masterless: but
* Br. Bauer, " Lit. Ztg." V, 18.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 165
therefore the egoist is not to
become master over man
again either, but man over the egoist.
Man must as-
suredly 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
lei-
sure time with is left to chance.
But, if every door is to be bolted against egoism,
it
would be necessary to strive after completely "
disin-
terested " 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 inter-
est 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 hu-
man, 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
disinter-
estedness is again, like religious disinterestedness,
a
heavenly interestedness? Certainly benefit to the
in-
dividual leaves you cold, and abstractly you could
cry
fiat libertas, pereat mundus. You do not take
166 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 lib-
eral as to aver that everything possible to man is
hu-
man? 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
"* 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
theolo-
gian, etc., is not a human being; so far as you are a
Jew,
etc., you are not a human being. Again the im-
perious
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 specifi-
cation; 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 hu-
man being as such"? Do
you suppose our posterity
will find no prejudices and limits to
clear away, for
* "Lit Ztg " V, 26.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 167
which our powers were not
sufficient ? Or do you per-
haps 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 be-
come 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
your-
self, 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-
168 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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,
noth-
ing 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 com-
pletely; 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 so-
ciety " 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 re-
tains
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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 so-
ciety, concern themselves solely about general
human
interests.
The politicians, thinking to abolish personal
will,
self-will or arbitrariness, did not observe that
through
property * our self-will ���
gained a secure place of
refuge.
The Socialists, taking away property too,
do not no-
tice 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
im-
personal. The person is entitled to no opinion, but,
as
self-will was transferred to the State, property to so-
ciety, so
opinion too must be transferred to something
general, "
Man," and thereby become a general hu-
man 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
" es-
sence of man," and, because only " man "
is reason-
able (you and I might be very unreasonable!), a
rea-
sonable faith.
As self-will and property become powerless, so must
[Eigentum, " owndom "] ��� [Eigenwille, " own will "]
170 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
self-ownership or egoism in general.
In this supreme development of "free man"
egoism,
self-ownership, is combated on principle, and such
sub-
ordinate ends as the social "welfare" of the
Social-
ists, 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
synony-
mous 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
mod-
erns) 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 fool-
ish, 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
every-
thing non-human, i. e. egoistic (pertaining only to
the
individual, not to the Man in the individual), dissi-
pate
all untrue thoughts that obscure man or the idea
of humanity: in
short, when you are not merely un-
hampered 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 ragamuf-
fins 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 labor-
ing 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
172 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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,"* yet therewith
you
only get a view of the whole of your labor, and ac-
quire a
consciousness about it, which is still far re-
moved 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,
be-
cause 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
* [Referring to minute
subdivision of labor, whereby the single workman
produces, not a
whole, but a part.]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 173
"egoist."
Such is the attitude of criticism toward labor.
It
points to " mind," wages the war " of mind with
the
masses,"* and pronounces communistic labor
unintel-
lectual 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 aver-
sion
to labor begets the universally-known superficial-
ity, which
puts from it "the toil of research."���
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 "
ego-
istic " 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 ob-
literates 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,���
* " Lit. Ztg." V, 24. ��� " Lit. Ztg." ibid.
174 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
in short, represents a man condemned to hard labor.
The laborer of such a type is not "
egoistic," be-
cause 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 them-
selves, 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 dark-
ness
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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 accom-
plish 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
"; pre-
cisely in your elevation above men. You are
distin-
guished beyond other men not by being man, but be-
176 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
cause you are a "unique"*
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 Prus-
sian; like Gustavus
Adolphus, a near-sighted person
���I
certainly become by my superior qualities a not-
able man,
Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted per-
son. 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 "
hu-
man," enunciates the necessary condition of
sociabil-
ity; for only as a man among men is one companion-
able.
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
* ["einziger"]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 177
prerogatives, down to the
prerogative of faith. In it
the love-principle of Christianity,
the true social prin-
ciple, comes to the purest fulfilment, and
the last pos-
sible 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,* 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
churchlincss,
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
* [Einzigkeit]
178 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
the exclusive, single person himself !
Or does he perhaps think that the situation
would
be better if all became " men " and gave up
exclusive-
ness? 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
pri-
vate thought, any private folly; if he criticises
every-
thing 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 criti-
cise away the private
person himself, since the hard-
ness of the individual person
resists his criticism, and
he must be satisfied with declaring
this person a " pri-
vate 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 col-
lision with the
general interest."* Everything pri-
vate 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
* Bruno Bauer, "Judenfrage," p. 66
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 179
a matter of purely private
concern. Even when
they were connected with the State and made
it Chris-
tian, 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
inter-
ests 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 pri-
vate
concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal
want, they will be
left to themselves; and every indi-
vidual, every congregation and
ecclesiastical commun-
ion, 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."*
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
prin-
ciple, to disappear?
As if one will not always seek the other because
he
needs him ; as if one must not accommodate, himself to
* Bruno Bauer, "Die gute Sache der Freiheit," pp 62-63
180 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
the other when he needs him.
But the difference is
this, that then the individual really
unites with the in-
dividual, while formerly they were
bound together by
a tie ; son and father are bound together
before
majority, after it they can come together indepen-
dently;
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
him-
self says, " privilege remains even when it is
extended
to all."*
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, there-
fore 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 dis-
covered '."
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,"
* Bruno Bauer, "Judenfrage," p. 60.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 individ-
ual 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. every-
thing that belongs to humanity.
Accordingly the
single one* 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 re-
nown, 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
fel-
lowship in which their inequalities in other respects
should
become " non-essential "; they strove for equali-
zation,
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
* [Einzige]
182 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 Moham-
medan, 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 fol-
lowed 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 pre-
rogative 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
pre-
rogative 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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*
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
any-
thing, 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,
there-
fore my property.
* [einzig]
184 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
con-
tention 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;
there-
fore all are liberal too. But the un-man * who
is
somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked?
How can it
be arranged not to leave the un-man free
at the same time with man
?
* [It should be remembered that
to be an Unmensch (" un
man ") one
must be a man The word means an inhuman or
unhuman man, a man
who is not man A tiger, an avalanche, a
drought, a cabbage, is not an
un-man.]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 185
Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an
in-
vincible 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
show-
ing the other liberals that they still do not
want
"freedom."
If the other liberals had before their eyes only
iso-
lated 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 " criti-
cism"; * 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
victor-
ious over all the masses and " give them a
general
certificate of insolvency."���
So it means finally to
make itself out in the right, and to
represent all con-
tention of the " faint-hearted and
timorous " as an
egoistic stubbornness,���
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.
* "Lit. Ztg." V, 23 ; as comment, V, 12 ff. ��� "Lit. Ztg." V, 15.
���[Rechthaberei,
literally the character of always insisting on
making
one's self out to be m the right]
186 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
Really the egoists? No, they fight against
criti-
cism 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,
free-
dom 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, Commun-
ists,���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 as-
cribing 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 ego-
ism 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 ex-
pressively: 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 limits 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
188 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
teach-
ing that, if anything plants itself firmly in me,
and
becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and ser-
vant,
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 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; there-
fore 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 move-
ment 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 Com-
mandments, but I am man
all the same, and act
humanly in just this,���that I still leave
them uncriti-
cised. 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 inequal-
ity 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 masterless-
ness 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 preju-
dice: 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-
190 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 be-
come entirely what the idea "man" imports, Man
re-
mains to the individual a lofty other world, an unat-
tained
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 sepa-
rated 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
else-
where 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 be-
cause
it can in no wise fulfil the task of "human
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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
192 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
eighteenth century, have given
over to boundless dis-
gruntlement." 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
dis-
gruntlement." 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 can-
not enlighten or
satisfy the masses with his presupposi-
tion, Man. If
over against the commonalty they are
only the "lower classes
of the people," politically in-
significant masses, over
against " Man " they must
still more be mere "
masses," humanly insignificant���
yes, unhuman���masses, or a
multitude of un-men.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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 stand-
ing, 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 be-
cause 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 re-
sembled 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.* 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-
* [einzig]
194 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 thing's.'''
The critic is afraid of becoming " dogmatic "
or
setting up dogmas. Of course: why, thereby he
would
become the opposite of the critic,���the dogmat-
ist; 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
the thought-faith, the
progress of thinking 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
encroach-
ments 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 sus-
pects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 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
pro-
cess 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 dog-
matist, 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. Con-
versely, 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-
196 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
ing; for " I," from
whom I start, am not a thought,
nor do I consist in thinking.
Against me, the un-
nameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking, and
mind
is shattered.
Criticism is the possessed man's fight against
pos-
session as such, against all possession : a fight which
is
founded in the consciousness that everywhere posses-
sion,
or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theologi-
cal
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 think-
ing; but I say, only thoughtlessness really
saves me
from thoughts. It it not thinking, but my
thought-
lessness, 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
tor-
ment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast
the
nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoop-
la 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
your-
self ? 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
MEN OF THE OLD TIME. AND THE NEW 197
who have set the tasks, arc 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
them-
selves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the
lead-
ing 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: pos-
sessed in their faith, they are
at the samp time unpos-
sessed 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 think-
ing
believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not
sacred to me,
and I defend my skin against them as
198 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 unlov-
ingly, 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
be-
long though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he
is a
"sinner" or "egoist." But it is only when he
be-
comes 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 can-
not
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,* a mere pas-
* [des Einzigen]
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 199
time or hobby as it were, and to
take from it the im-
portance of " being the last decisive
power" ; this
degradation and desecration of thinking ; this
equali-
zation 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 criti-
cism 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
im-
pudence" 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
trans-
formed 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
presup-
posing 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 noth-
ing 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-
200 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
ity of a presupposing and a
presupposed ego (an " in-
complete " 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 be-
ing 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
cur-
rent 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 dissolu-
tions 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.
Part
Second
I
At the entrance
of the modern time stands the " God-man."
At its exit
will only the God in the God-man evaporate ? and can
the God-man
really die if only the God in him dies ? They did
not think of
this question, and thought they were through when
in our days they
brought to a victorious end the work of the
Illumination, the
vanquishing of God; they did not notice that
Man has killed God in
order to become now���" sole God on
high." The other
world outside us is indeed brushed away,
and the great
undertaking of the Illuminators completed ; but the
other world
in us has become a new heaven and calls us forth to
renewed
heaven-storming : God has had to give place, yet not to
us, but
to���Man. How can you believe that the God-man is
dead before
the Man in him, besides the God, is dead?
" 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
* [This is a literal translation
of the German word Eigenheit, which,
with
its primitive eigen, "
own," is used in this chapter in a way that the Ger-
man
dictionaries do not quite recognize. The author's conception
being:
new, he had to make an innovation in the German language to
express it.
The translator is under the like necessity. In most
passages " self-owner-
ship," or else "
personality," would translate the word, but there are some
where
the thought is so eigen, that is, so
peculiar or so thoroughly the
author's own, that no English
word I can think of would express it. It will
explain itself to
one who has read Part First intelligently.]
204 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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, in-
deed, if it
brings in nothing? And, if you became
free from everything,
you would no longer have any-
thing; 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.*
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
* [Eigenheit]
OWNNESS 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 in-
vented 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."* Repub-
licans 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 recom-
mended by Christianity, in sinless,
godless, morality-
less, etc.
Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. "
Ye, dear
brethren, are called to freedom."���
"So speak and so
* Rom. 6. 18. ��� 1 Pet. 2. 16.
206 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
do, as those who are to be judged
by the law of
freedom."*
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. "
Free-
dom 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 can-
not truly will, because I cannot make
it, cannot create
it: I can only wish it and���aspire toward it,
for it re-
mains 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,
* James 2.12.
OWNNESS 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 conse-
quence of my
antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps
says I was " free "
even in the condition of slavery,���
to wit, "intrinsically"
or "inwardly." But "intrinsi-
cally 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 insepa-
rable. 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,
208 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
from hatred of his enemy, etc. ?
He then has " Chris-
tian 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. 0 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 ques-
tioner.
" What men are to be free from?"���From
blind
credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims an-
other, 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-
OWNNESS 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 our-
selves from this dreadful
inequality.���0 hapless
equality, already I hear your plebeian
roar again !
How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a
para-
dise of freedom, and what���impudence and
licentious-
ness now raises its wild clamor! Thus the first
la-
ments, and gets on his feet to grasp the sword against
"
unmeasured freedom." Soon we no longer hear any-
thing 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 arbitrari-
ness 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 imprison-
ment 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
in-
cludes the purpose of a new dominion, as it was
with
the Revolution, which indeed "could give its de-
fenders
the uplifting feeling that they were fighting
for freedom,"
but in truth only because they were
210 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 ob-
taining
the whole of freedom, freedom from every-
thing,���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 Re-
peal
of the Union for other (perhaps religious) reasons.
OWNNESS 211
Why will you not take courage now to really
make
yourselves the central point and the main thing
alto-
gether? Why grasp in the air at freedom, your
dream?
Are you your dream? Do not begin by in-
quiring 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
con-
science, 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 com-
pact 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
noth-
ing 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
212 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
bring you to despair at once.
" What am I?" each
of you asks himself. An abyss of
lawless and unregu-
lated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a
chaos with-
out light or guiding star ! How am I to obtain
a
correct answer, if, without regard to God's command-
ments or
to the duties which morality prescribes, with-
out 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 re-
ligious way of thinking has biased our mind
so griev-
ously that we are���terrified at ourselves in our
naked-
ness 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
OWNNESS 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 se-
ducers and corrupters of youth,
who busily sow broad-
cast 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 command-
ments?
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, there-
fore, you, are the main
thing, and each must say to
himself, I am everything to
myself and I do every-
thing 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
214 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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, free-
dom is
silent,���as our governments, when the pris-
oner'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
free-
dom? 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
OWNNESS 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 aegis 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."* 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 free-
born, 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
de-
sired���freedom.
* [See note, p 112 ]
216 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 recog-
nize
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
re-
mained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleep-
ing,
self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heautontimoru-
menoses, 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 satis-
faction 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. Reli-
gion 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,
OWNNESS 217
hence not manifest and public
egoism, consequently
unconscious egoism,���therefore they are not
egoism,
but thraldom, service, self-renunciation ; you are
ego-
ists, 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 categori-
cal 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
con-
siderable part of the world. Besides, cheating,
hypoc-
risy, 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
218 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 there-
fore 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 in-
apprehensible 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
OWNNESS 219
blow peoples over,
be it the breath of a Nero, a
Chinese emperor, or a poor writer.
Why is it that
the G * legislatures
pine in vain for freedom,
and are lectured for it by the cabinet
ministers? Be-
cause 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 free-
dom
of speech ? They stick to bleating. Give one
who is inwardly
a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Chris-
tian, 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
* [Meaning " German " Written in this form because of the censorship ]
220 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 him-
self, 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 " de-
clare
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 ac-
cordingly, 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
inde-
pendent 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
OWNNESS 221
Jews, although he who relieves
their condition is cer-
tainly more than a churchly Christian, as
the latter
cannot do this without inconsistency. But,
emanci-
pated 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 them-
selves 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 boil-
ing, 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
indi-
vidual count as an ego, * thought of him only as a
* [Einzige}
222 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 dis-
repute: selfishness, self-will, ownness,
self-love, etc.
The Christian way of looking at things has on
all
sides gradually re-stamped honorable words into
dis-
honorable; 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,* for that seriousness
can-
not 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 every-
thing
unchristian as from something incomplete or
evil. Therefore "
selfishness " is in a bad way too.
Selfishness,��� in the
Christian sense, means some-
thing 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 fol-
low myself, my own
determination, when I follow
that? I am my own only
when I am master of my-
self, instead of being mastered either by
sensuality or
by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State,
* [I take Entbehrung,
"destitution," to be a misprint for Entehrung.]
���
[Eigennutz, literally "
own-use. "]
OWNNESS 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 de-
pendence ! 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 re-
pent 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 govern-
ment
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-
224 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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
self-
ishness. What is one to think, then, of the
countless
phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths
over-
flow at other times?
To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have
an-
other relation than to one which I am serving unself-
ishly.
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
it-
self, and do not desire it for its own sake, then I de-
sire
it solely as a means to an end, for its usefulness;
for the
sake of another end; e. g., oysters for a pleas-
ant
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 dis-
honored.
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 descrip-
tion of the���owner.
THE OWNER 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
priva-
tim,���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,* 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.
* [Einzigen]
226 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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." * 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." ���
Con-
sequently, 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 hu-
man 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
* Rom. 8.14. ��� Cf. 1 John 3. 10 with Rom. 8.16.
THE OWNER 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
hu-
manizes 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,* i.
e. our property.��� 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 where-
fore?
Because he would have regard only for one of'
my qualities,
not for me.
* [Eigenschaften] ��� [Eigentum]
228 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
It is just so with the spirit too. A
Christian spirit,
an upright spirit, and the like may well be my
ac-
quired 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���pos-
sessions; 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
prop-
erty 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, be-
cause it
dwells in you only as a, second ego, even
though it be as your
proper or " better " ego, it re-
mains 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
THE OWNER 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 en-
tirely with Man the demand has
been invented, and
stated, that I must become a " real
generic being." *
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 ex-
tent 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 be-
neath 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." ���
But,
as liberalism is a human religion, its professor takes
a
tolerant attitude toward the professor of any other
*E.g. Marx in the "
Deutsch-franzoesische Jahrbuecher," p. 197.
���
Br. Bauer, " Judenfrage," p. 81.
230 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
(Catholic, Jewish, etc.), as
Frederick the Great did to-
ward every one who performed his
duties as a subject,
whatever fashion of becoming blest he might
be in-
clined 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 Stale " 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 Chris-
tian, or anything else. For it does the same
service
to the State as filial piety to the family. If the
fam-
ily 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 like-
wise
be the highest to him.
But what concept is the highest to the
State?
Doubtless that of being a really human society, a so-
ciety
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
THE OWNER 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 corre-
spond 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 judg-
ment." 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 con-
cept 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 con-
cept?
Christianity knows only one Man, and this
one���-Christ���is at
once an un-man again in the re-
verse 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
cor-
respond 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
232 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
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 ad-
mit adherents of every religious sect, and receive
peo-
ple 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
THE OWNER 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
presup-
posing 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 ac-
cording 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. See-
ing
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
prop-
osition: 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 incom-
patible 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 can-
not last without morality, and must insist on morality.
Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I,
234 THE EGO AND HIS OWN
the egoist, have not at heart the
welfare of this " hu-
man 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, up-
right," 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." * 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
* Hess, " Triarchie," p. 76.
THE OWNER 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
�ï