pp. 385-393, The Ego and His Own
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...
Am I perchance to have no lively interest in
the person of another, are his joy and his weal not to
lie at my heart, is the enjoyment that I furnish him not to be more to me
than other enjoyments of my own? On the contrary, I can with joy sacrifice
to him num-
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berless enjoyments, I can deny myself numberless things for the enhancement
of his pleasure, and I can hazard for him what without him was the
dearest to me, my life, my welfare, my freedom. Why, it constitutes my pleasure
and my happiness to refresh myself with his happiness and his pleasure. But
myself, my own self, I do not sacrifice to him, but remain an egoist
and -- enjoy him. If I sacrifice to him everything that but for my love to
him I should keep, that is very simple, and even more usual in life than
it seems to be; but it proves nothing further than that this one passion
is more powerful in me than all the rest. Christianity too teaches us to
sacrifice all other passions to this. But, if to one passion I sacrifice
others, I do not on that account go so far as to sacrifice myself
, nor sacrifice anything of that whereby I truly am myself; I do not sacrifice
my peculiar value, my ownness. Where this bad case occurs, love
cuts no better figure than any other passion that I obey blindly. The ambitious
man, who is carried away by ambition and remains deaf to every warning that
a calm moment begets in him, has let this passion grow up into a despot against
whom he abandons all power of dissolution: he has given up himself, because
he cannot dissolve himself, and consequently cannot absolve himself
from the passion: he is possessed.
I love men too -- not merely individuals, but
every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them
because love makes me happy, I love because loving is natural to
me, because it pleases me. I know no "commandment of love." I have a
fellow-feeling with every feeling being, and their torment
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torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them, not torture
them. Per contra, the high-souled, virtuous Philistine prince Rudolph
in The Mysteries of Paris, because the wicked provoke his "indignation,"
plans their torture. That fellow-feeling proves only that the feeling of
those who feel is mine too, my property; in opposition to which the pitiless
dealing of the "righteous" man (e. g. against notary Ferrand) is
like the unfeelingness of that robber [Procrustes] who cut off or
stretched his prisoners' legs to the measure of his bedstead: Rudolph's bedstead,
which he cuts men to fit, is the concept of the "good." The for right, virtue,
etc., makes people hard-hearted and intolerant. Rudolph does not feel like
the notary, but the reverse; he feels that "it serves the rascal right";
that is no fellow-feeling.
You love man, therefore you torture the individual
man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men) is the tormenting of men.
If I see the loved one suffer, I suffer with
him, and I know no rest till I have tried everything to comfort and cheer
him; if I see him glad, I too become glad over his joy. From this it does
not follow that suffering or joy is caused in me by the same thing that brings
out this effect in him, as is sufficiently proved by every bodily pain which
I do not feel as he does; his tooth pains him, but his pain pains me.
But, because I cannot bear the troubled crease
on the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore for my sake, I kiss
it away. If I did not love this person, he might go right on making creases,
they would not trouble me; I am only driving away my
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trouble.
How now, has anybody or anything, whom and
which I do not love, a right to be loved by me? Is my love first,
or is his right first? Parents, kinsfolk, fatherland, nation, native town,
etc., finally fellowmen in general ("brothers, fraternity"), assert that
they have a right to my love, and lay claim to it without further ceremony.
They look upon it as their property, and upon me, if I do not respect
this, as a robber who takes from them what pertains to them and is theirs.
I should love. If love is a commandment and law, then I must be
educated into it, cultivated up to it, and, if I trespass against it, punished.
Hence people will exercise as strong a "moral influence" as possible on me
to bring me to love. And there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce
men to love as one can to other passions -- if you like, to hate. Hate runs
through whole races merely because the ancestors of the one belonged to the
Guelphs, those of the other to the Ghibellines.
But love is not a commandment, but, like each
of my feelings, my property. Acquire, i.e. purchase, my
property, and then I will make it over to you. A church, a nation, a fatherland,
a family, etc., that does not know how to acquire my love, I need not love;
and I fix the purchase price of my love quite at my pleasure.
Selfish love is far distant from unselfish,
mystical, or romantic love. One can love everything possible, not merely
men, but an "object" in general (wine, one's fatherland, etc.). Love becomes
blind and crazy by a must taking it out of my power (infatuation),
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romantic by a should entering into it, i.e. by the "objects"
becoming sacred for me, or my becoming bound to it by duty, conscience, oath.
Now the object no longer exists for me, but I for it.
Love is a possessedness, not as my feeling
-- as such I rather keep it in my possession as property -- but through the
alienness of the object. For religious love consists in the commandment to
love in the beloved a "holy one," or to adhere to a holy one; for unselfish
love there are objects absolutely lovable for which my heart is to
beat, e. g. fellow-men, or my wedded mate, kinsfolk, etc. Holy Love
loves the holy in the beloved, and therefore exerts itself also to make of
the beloved more and more a holy one (a "man").
The beloved is an object that should
be loved by me. He is not an object of my love on account of, because of,
or by, my loving him, but is an object of love in and of himself. Not I make
him an object of love, but he is such to begin with; for it is here irrelevant
that he has become so by my choice, if so it be (as with a fiancée
, a spouse, etc.), since even so he has in any case, as the person once chosen,
obtained a "right of his own to my love," and I, because I have loved him,
am under obligation to love him forever. He is therefore not an object of
my love, but of love in general: an object that should
be loved. Love appertains to him, is due to him, or is his right
, while I am under obligation to love him. My love, i.e.
the toll of love that I pay him, is in truth his love, which he
only collects from me as toll.
Every love to which there clings but the smallest
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speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches,
a possessedness. He who believes that he owes the object of his
love anything loves romantically or religiously.
Family love, e. g. as it is usually
understood as "piety," is a religious love; love of fatherland, preached
as "patriotism," likewise. All our romantic loves move in the same pattern:
everywhere the hypocrisy, or rather self-deception, of an "unselfish love,"
an interest in the object for the object's sake, not for my sake and mine
alone.
Religious or romantic love is distinguished
from sensual love by the difference of the object indeed, but not by the
dependence of the relation to it. In the latter regard both are possessedness;
but in the former the one object is profane, the other sacred. The dominion
of the object over me is the same in both cases, only that it is one time
a sensuous one, the other time a spiritual (ghostly) one. My love is my own
only when it consists altogether in a selfish and egoistic interest, and
when consequently the object of my love is really my object or my
property. I owe my property nothing, and have no duty to it, as little as
I might have a duty to my eye; if nevertheless I guard it with the greatest
care, I do so on my account.
Antiquity lacked love as little as do Christian
times; the god of love is older than the God of Love. But the mystical possessedness
belongs to the moderns.
The possessedness of love lies in the alienation
of the object, or in my powerlessness as against its alienness and superior
power. To the egoist nothing is
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high enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so independent that
he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would sacrifice himself
to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the bed of selfishness,
and empties into selfishness again.
Whether this can still be called love? If
you know another word for it, go ahead and choose it; then the sweet word
love may wither with the departed world; for the present I at least find
none in our Christian language, and hence stick to the old sound
and "love" my object, my -- property.
Only as one of my feelings do I harbor love;
but as a power above me, as a divine power, as Feuerbach says, as a passion
that I am not to cast off, as a religious and moral duty, I -- scorn it.
As my feeling it is mine; as a principle to which I consecrate and
"vow" my soul it is a dominator and divine, just as hatred as a
principle is diabolical; one not better than the other. In short,
egoistic love, i.e. my love, is neither holy nor unholy, neither
divine nor diabolical.
"A love that is limited by faith is an untrue
love. The sole limitation that does not contradict the essence of love is
the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. Love that scorns the
rigor, the law, of intelligence, is theoretically a false love, practically
a ruinous one."* So love is in its essence rational! So thinks Feuerbach;
the believer, on the contrary, thinks, Love is in its essence believing
. The one inveighs against irrational, the other against unbelieving
, love. To both it can at most rank as a splen-
*Feuerbach, "Essence of Chr.," 394.
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didum vitium. Do not both leave love standing, even in the form
of unreason and unbelief? They do not dare to say, irrational or unbelieving
love is nonsense, is not love; as little as they are willing to say, irrational
or unbelieving tears are not tears. But, if even irrational love, etc., must
count as love, and if they are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, there
follows simply this: love is not the highest thing, but reason or faith;
even the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love; but love has value only
when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is an illusion when
Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its "self-limitation"; the believer
might with the same right call belief its "self-limitation." Irrational love
is neither "false" nor "ruinous"; its does its service as love.
Toward the world, especially toward men, I
am to assume a particular feeling, and "meet them with love," with
the feeling of love, from the beginning. Certainly, in this there is revealed
far more free-will and self-determination than when I let myself be stormed,
by way of the world, by all possible feelings, and remain exposed to the
most checkered, most accidental impressions. I go to the world rather with
a preconceived feeling, as if it were a prejudice and a preconceived opinion;
I have prescribed to myself in advance my behavior toward it, and, despite
all its temptations, feel and think about it only as I have once determined
to. Against the dominion of the world I secure myself by the principle of
love; for, whatever may come, I -- love. The ugly -- e. g. --makes
a repulsive impression on me; but, determined to love, I master this impression
as I do every antipathy.
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But the feeling to which I have determined
and -- condemned myself from the start is a narrow feeling, because
it is a predestined one, of which I myself am not able to get clear or to
declare myself clear. Because preconceived, it is a prejudice. I
no longer show myself in face of the world, but my love shows itself. The
world indeed does not rule me, but so much the more inevitably does
the spirit of love rule this spirit.
If I first said, I love the world, I now add
likewise: I do not love it, for I annihilate it as I annihilate
myself; I dissolve it. I do not limit myself to one feeling for
men, but give free play to all that I am capable of. Why should I not dare
speak it out in all its glaringness? Yes, I utilize the world and
men! With this I can keep myself open to every impression without being torn
away from myself by one of them. I can love, love with a full heart, and
let the most consuming glow of passion burn in my heart, without taking the
beloved one for anything else than the nourishment of my passion,
on which it ever refreshes itself anew. All my care for him applies only
to the object of my love, only to him whom my love requires
, only to him, the "warmly loved." How indifferent would he be to me without
this -- my love! I feed only my love with him, I utilize him for
this only: I enjoy him.