Page 47

THE EGO AND HIS OWN

" counterfeit ring." Often people are already further
than they venture to confess to themselves. For
Socrates, because in culture he stood on the level of
morality, it would have been an immorality if he had
been willing to follow Crito's seductive incitement and
escape from the dungeon ; to remain was the only
moral thing. But it was solely because Socrates was
--a moral man. The "unprincipled, sacrilegious"
men of the Revolution, on the contrary, had sworn
fidelity to Louis XVI, and decreed his deposition, yes,
his death; but the act was an immoral one, at which
moral persons will be horrified to all eternity.

Yet all this applies, more or less, only to " civic

morality," on which the freer look down with con-
tempt. For it (like civism, its native ground, in en-
eral) is still too little removed and free from the reli-
gious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws with-
out criticism or further consideration to its domain in-
stead of producing independent doctrines of its own.
Morality cuts a quite different figure when it arrives
at the consciousness of its dignity, and raises its prin-
ciple, the essence of man, or " Man," to be the only
regulative power. Those who have worked their way
through to such a decided consciousness break entirely
with religion, whose God no longer finds any place
alongside their " Man," and, as they (see below)
themselves scuttle the ship of State, so too they crum-
ble away that " morality " which flourishes only in
the State, and logically have no right to use even its
name any further. For what this " critical" party
calls morality is very positively distinguished from the

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 73

so-called " civic or political morality," and must ap-
pear to the citizen like an " insensate and unbridled
liberty." But at bottom it has only the advantage of
the " purity of the principle," which, freed from its de-
filement with the religious, has now reached universal
power in its clarified definiteness as " humanity."
Therefore one should not wonder that the name
" morality " is retained along with others, like free-
dom, benevolence, self-consciousness, etc., and is only
garnished now and then with the addition, a " free "
morality,--just as, though the civic State is abused,
yet the State is to arise again as a " free State," or, if
not even so, yet as a " free society."

Because this morality completed into humanity has

fully settled its accounts with the religion out of which
it historically came forth, nothing hinders it from be-
coming a religion on its own account. For a distinc-
tion prevails between religion and morality only so
long as our dealings with the world of men are regu-
lated and hallowed by our relation to a superhuman
being, or so long as our doing is a doing " for God's
sake." If, on the other hand, it comes to the point
that " man is to man the supreme being," then that
distinction vanishes, and morality, being removed from
its subordinate position, is completed into--religion.
For then the higher being who had hitherto been sub-
ordinated to the highest, Man, has ascended to abso-
lute height, and we are related to him as one is related
to the highest being, i. e. religiously. Morality and
piety are now as synonymous as in the beginning of
Christianity, and it is only because the supreme being
has come to be a different one that a holy walk is no