pp. 408-410, The Ego and His Own
|
408 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
...
There is a difference whether my liberty
or my ownness is limited by a society. If the former only is the
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THE OWNER 409 |
case, it is a coalition, an agreement, a union; but, if ruin is threatened
to ownness, it is a power of itself, a power above me,
a thing unattainable by me, which I can indeed admire, adore, reverence,
respect, but cannot subdue and consume, and that for the reason that I
am resigned. It exists by my resignation, my self-renunciation
, my spiritlessness,* called --
HUMILITY.** My humility makes its courage,*** my submissiveness
gives it its dominion.
But in reference to liberty, State
and union are subject to no essential difference. The latter can just as
little come into existence, or continue in existence, without liberty's being
limited in all sorts of ways, as the State is compatible with unmeasured
liberty. Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere, for one cannot get
rid of everything; one cannot fly like a bird merely because one
would like to fly so, for one does not get free from his own weight; one
cannot live under water as long as he likes, like a fish, because one cannot
do without air and cannot get free from this indispensable necessity; etc.
As religion, and most decidedly Christianity, tormented man with the demand
to realize the unnatural and self- contradictory, so it is to be looked upon
only as the true logical outcome of that religious over-straining and overwroughtness
that finally liberty itself, absolute liberty, was exalted into
an ideal, and thus the nonsense of the impossible to come glaringly to the
light. -- The union will assuredly offer a greater measure of liberty, as
well as (and especially because
*[Muthlösigkeit
]
**[Demuth]
***[Muth]
| 410 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
by it one escapes all the coercion peculiar to State and society life) admit
of being considered as "a new liberty"; but nevertheless it will still contain
enough of unfreedom and involuntariness. For its object is not this -- liberty
(which on the contrary it sacrifices to ownness), but only ownness
. Referred to this, the difference between State and union is great enough.
The former is an enemy and murderer of ownness, the latter a son
and co-worker of it; the former a spirit that would be adored in spirit and
in truth, the latter my work, my product ; the State is the lord of my spirit,
who demands faith and prescribes to me articles of faith, the creed of legality;
it exerts moral influence, dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put
itself in its place as "my true ego" -- in short, the State is sacred, and
as against me, the individual man, it is the true man, the spirit, the ghost;
but the union is my own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual
power above my spirit, as little as any association of whatever sort. As
I am not willing to be a slave of my maxims, but lay them bare to my continual
criticism without any warrant, and admit no bail at all for their
persistence, so still less do I obligate myself to the union for my future
and pledge my soul to it, as is said to be done with the devil, and is really
the case with the State and all spiritual authority; but I am and remain
more to myself than State, Church, God, etc.; consequently infinitely
more than the union too.