pp. 449-450, The Ego and His Own
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THE OWNER 449 |
...
Connected with this is the discernment that every judgment which I pass upon an object is the creature of my will; and that discernment again leads me to
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450 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
not losing myself in the creature, the judgment, but remaining
the creator, the judge, who is ever creating anew. All predicates
of objects are my statements, my judgments, my -- creatures. If they want
to tear themselves loose from me and be something for themselves, or actually
overawe me, then I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back
into their nothing, into me the creator. God, Christ, Trinity, morality, the
good, etc., are such creatures, of which I must not merely allow myself to
say that they are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed
and decreed their existence, so I want to have license to will their non-
existence too; I must not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness
to let them become something "absolute," whereby they would be eternalized
and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should fall a prey
to the principle of stability, the proper life-principle of religion,
which concerns itself with creating "sanctuaries that must not be touched,"
"eternal truths" -- in short, that which shall be "sacred" -- and depriving
you of what is yours.
| 478 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
As the world as property has become a
material with which I undertake what I will, so the spirit too as property
must sink down into a material before which I no longer entertain
any sacred dread. Then, firstly, I shall shudder no more before a thought,
let it appear as presumptuous and "devilish" as it will, because, if it threatens
to become too inconvenient and unsatisfactory for me, its end lies
in my power; but neither shall I recoil from any deed because there dwells
in it a spirit of godlessness, immorality, wrongfulness. as little as St.
Boniface pleased to desist, through religious scrupulousness, from cutting
down the sacred oak of the heathens. If the things of the world
have once become vain, the thoughts of the spirit must also become vain.
No thought is sacred, for let no thought rank
as "devotions";* no feeling is sacred (no sacred feeling of friendship, mother's
feelings, etc.), no belief is sacred. They are all alienable, my
alienable property, and are annihilated, as they are created, by me
.
The Christian can lose all things
or objects, the most loved persons, these "objects" of his love, without
giving up himself (i.e., in the Christian sense, his spirit, his
soul! as lost. The owner can cast from him all the thoughts that
were dear to his heart and kindled his zeal, and will likewise "gain a thousandfold
again," because he, their creator, remains.
*[Andacht , a compound form of the word "thought"."]