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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

policeman, as a good Christian, takes us to the lock-up
by virtue of an " oath of office."

Morality could not come into opposition with piety

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

From a certain standpoint of morality people reason

about as follows: Either man is led by his sensuality,
and is, following it, immoral, or he is led by the good,
which, taken up into the will, is called moral senti-
ment (sentiment and prepossession in favor of the
good) ; then he shows himself moral. From this
point of view how, e. g., can Sand's act against
Kotzebue be called immoral ? What is commonly
understood by unselfish it certainly was, in the same
measure as (among other things) St. Crispin's thiev-

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 65

eries in favor of the poor. " He should not have
murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not mur-
der ! " Then to serve the good, the welfare of the
people, as Sand at least intended, or the welfare of
the poor, like Crispin,--is moral; but murder and
theft are immoral; the purpose moral, the means im-
moral. Why ? " Because murder, assassination, is
something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas en-
ticed the enemies of the country into ravines and shot
them down unseen from the bushes, do you suppose
that was not assassination ? According to the prin-
ciple of morality, which commands us to serve the
good, you could really ask only whether murder could
never in any case be a realization of the good, and
would have to endorse that murder which realized the
good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at all; it
was moral, because in the service of the good, because
unselfish ; it was an act of punishment, which the indi-
vidual inflicted, an--execution inflicted at the risk of
the executioner's life. What else had his scheme
been, after all, but that he wanted to suppress writings
by brute force ? Are you not acquainted with the
same procedure as a " legal " and sanctioned one ?
And what can be objected against it from your prin-
ciple of morality ?-- "But it was an illegal execu-
tion." So the immoral thing in it was the illegality,
the disobedience to law ? Then you admit that the
good is nothing else than--law, morality nothing else
than loyalty. And to this externality of " loyalty "
your morality must sink, to this righteousness of
works in the fulfilment of the law, only that the latter
is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than