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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

does not take away its sacredness, but at most changes
it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing, from
a divine one to a human.

Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not

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

His toil and care to get away from himself is noth-

ing but the misunderstood impulse to self-dissolution.
If you are bound to your past hour, if you must bab-
ble to-day because you babbled yesterday,* if you can-
not transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself

* How the priests tinkle ! how important they
Would make it out, that men should come their way
And babble, just as yesterday, to day '

Oh! blame them not! They know man's need, I say;
For he takes all his happiness this way,
To babble just tomorrow as to day

-- Translated from Goethe's " Venetian Epigrams

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 47

fettered in slavery and benumbed. Therefore over
each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the
future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you
get away " from yourself,"--i. e. from the self that
was at that moment. As you are at each instant, you
are your own creature, and in this very " creature "
you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator. You
are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass
yourself. But that you are the one who is higher
than you,--i. e. that you are not only creature, bub
likewise your creator,--just this, as an involuntary
egoist, you fail to recognize; and therefore the
" higher essence " is to you--an alien* essence. Every
higher essence, such as truth, mankind, etc., is an
essence over us.

Alienness is a criterion of the " sacred." In every-

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

Why is an incontrovertible mathematical truth,

which might even be called eternal according to the
common understanding of words, not--sacred ? Be-
cause it is not revealed, or not the revelation of a
higher being. If by revealed we understand only the

* [fremd]

[fre m d ]