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