pp. 206-207, The Ego and His Own
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206 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
What a difference between freedom
and ownness! One can get rid of a great many things,
one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free from much, not
from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the condition
of slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of
things, not from everything; but from the whip, the domineering
temper, of the master, one does not as slave become free.
"Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams!" Ownness,
on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself.
I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have
in my power or what I control. My own I am at
all times and under all circumstances, if I know how to have myself
and do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something
that I cannot truly will, because I cannot make it, cannot
create it: I can only wish it and -- aspire toward it, for it
remains an ideal, a spook. The fetters of reality cut the sharpest
welts in my flesh every moment. But my own I remain.
Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my advantage;
his blows strike me indeed, I am not free from them;
but I endure them only for my benefit, perhaps in order
to deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience,
or,
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again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. But, as I keep
my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the
first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust.
That I then become free from him and his whip is only
the consequence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says
I was "free" even in the condition of slavery -- to
wit, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But "intrinsically
free" is not "really free," and "inwardly"
is not "outwardly." I was own, on the other hand, my
own, altogether, inwardly and outwardly.
pp. 214-215, The Ego and His Own
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214 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
If your efforts are ever to make
"freedom" the issue, then exhaust freedom's demands.
Who is it that is to become free? You, I, we. Free from what?
From everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, therefore,
am the kernel that is to be delivered from all wrappings and --
freed from all cramping shells. What is left when I have been
freed from everything that is not I? Only I; nothing but I. But
freedom has nothing to offer to this I himself. As to what is
now to happen further after I have become free, freedom is silent
-- as our governments, when the prisoner's time is up, merely
let him go, thrusting him out into abandonment.
Now why, if freedom is striven after
for love of the I after all -- why not choose the I himself as
beginning, middle, and end? Am I not worth more than freedom?
Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the first? Even unfree,
even laid in a thousand fetters, I yet am; and I am not, like
freedom, extant only in the future and in hopes, but even as the
most abject of slaves I am -- present.
Think that over well, and decide
whether you will place on your banner the dream of "freedom"
or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness."
"Freedom" awakens your rage against everything
that is not you; "egoism" calls you to joy
over yourselves, to self-enjoyment; "freedom" is and
remains a longing , a romantic plaint, a Christian hope
for unearthliness and futurity; "ownness" is a reality,
which of itself
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THE OWNER 215 |
removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way hinders
you.