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144
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
showed what the Revolution really was. For every
effort arrives at reaction when it comes to discreet re-
flection, and storms forward in the original action only
so long as it is an intoxication, an " indiscretion."
" Discretion " will always be the cue of the reac-
tion, because discretion sets limits, and liberates what
was really wanted, i. e. the principle, from the initial
" unbridledness " and " unrestrainedness." Wild
young fellows, bumptious students, who set aside all
considerations, are really Philistines, since with them,
as with the latter, considerations form the substance
of their conduct; only that as swaggerers they are
mutinous against considerations and in negative rela-
tions to them, but as Philistines, later, they give them-
selves up to considerations and have positive relations
to them. In both cases all their doing and thinking
turns upon " considerations," but the Philistine is re-
actionary in relation to the student; he is the wild
fellow come to discreet reflection, as the latter is the
unreflecting Philistine. Daily experience confirms
the truth of this transformation, and shows how the
swaggerers turn to Philistines in turning gray.
So too the so-called reaction in Germany gives
proof that it was only the discreet continuation of the
warlike jubilation of liberty.
The Revolution was not directed against the estab-
lished, but against the establishment in question,
against a particular establishment. It did away with
this ruler, not with the ruler--on the contrary, the
French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old
vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous
ones a securely established position, i. e. it simply set
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 145
virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again,
are on their part distinguished from each other only
as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc.
To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no
farther than to assail only one or another particular
establishment, i. e. be ? reformatory. Much ass may
be improved, strongly as " discreet progress " may
be adhered to, always there is only a new master
set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a--
building up. We are still at the distinction of the
young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution
began in bourgeois fashion with the uprising of the
third estate, the "middle class; in bourgeois fashion it
dries away. It was not the individual man--and he
alone is Man--that became free, but the citizen, the
citoyen, the political man, who for that very reason is
not Man but a specimen of the human species, and
more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a
free citizen.
In the Revolution it was not the individual who
acted so as to affect the world's history, but a people ;
the nation, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect
everything. A fancied I, an idea, such as the nation
is, appears acting ; i. e., the individuals contribute
themselves as tools of this idea, and act as " citizens."
The commonalty has its power, and at the same
time its limits, in the fundamental law of the State,
in a charter, in a legitimate* or "just" prince who
himself is guided, and rules, according to " rational
laws " ; in short, in legality. The period of the
* [Or " righteous." German
rechtlich
]
[
gerecht]