< prev
next>
126
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
right, etc., is rather that one which we now set up."
Thus the confusion of concepts moves forward.
The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us,
and the spirit has obtained an almighty power. You
must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could
protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your pota-
toes would become palatable, and my state-carriage,
whose possession would relieve you of all need at
once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to
recognize the independence of all these and innumer-
able other things: they are to rank in his mind as
something that cannot be seized or approached, are to
be kept away from him. He must have regard
for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches out his
fingers desirously; we call that "being light-
fingered ! "
How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really
nothing ! Everything has been removed, we must
not venture on anything unless it is given us; we con-
tinue to live only by the grace of the giver. You
must not pick up a pin, unless indeed you have got
leave to do so. And got it from whom ? From
respect ! Only when this lets you have it as property,
only when you can respect it as property, only then
may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive
a thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that
should have their warrant in you alone, instead of re-
ceiving it from morality or reason or humanity.
Happy unconstraint of the desirous man, how merci-
lessly people have tried to slay you on the altar of
constraint !
But around the altar rise the arches of a church,
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 127
and its walls keep moving further and further out.
What they enclose is--sacred. You can no longer
get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hun-
ger that devours you, you wander round about these
walls in search of the little that is profane, and the
circles of your course keep growing more and more ex-
tended. Soon that church will embrace the whole
world, and you be driven out to the extreme edge ;
another step, and the world of the sacred has con-
quered: you sink into the abyss. Therefore take
courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer
in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the
leap, and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary
itself. If you devour the sacred, you have made it
your own ! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you
are rid of it !
III.--THE FREE
The ancients and the moderns having been pre-
sented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the
free were here to be described in a third division as in-
dependent and distinct. This, is not so. The free are
only the more modern and most modern among the
" moderns," and are put in a separate division merely
because they belong to the present, and what is
present, above all, claims our attention here. I give
" the free" only as a translation of " the liberals," but
must with regard to the concept of freedom (as in
general with regard to so many other things whose
anticipatory introduction cannot be avoided) refer to
what comes later.