We stand at the boundary of a period. The world
hitherto took thought for nothing but the gain of life, took care for -- life.
For whether all activity is put on the stretch for the life of this world or
of the other, for the temporal or for the eternal, whether one hankers for "daily
bread" ("Give us our daily bread") or for "holy bread"
("the true bread from heaven" "the bread of God, that comes from
heaven and gives life to the world"; "the bread of life," John
6), whether one takes care for "dear life" or for "life to eternity"
-- this does not change the object of the strain and care, which in the one
case as in the other shows itself to be life. Do the modern tendencies announce
themselves otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most
indispensable necessaries of life, but want every one to feel secure as to these;
and on the other hand they teach that man has this life to attend to and the
real world to adapt himself to, without vain care for another.
Let us take up the same thing from another side.
When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the
enjoyment of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks "if I
only have my dear life," he does not apply his full strength to using,
i. e., enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like the candle,
which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the
living one, in consuming it and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up.
Now -- we are in search of the enjoyment of life!
And what did the religious world do? It went in search of life. Wherein consists
the true life, the blessed life; etc.? How is it to be attained? What must man
do and become in order to become a truly living man? How does he fulfil this
calling? These and similar questions indicate that the askers were still seeking
for themselves -- to wit, themselves in the true sense, in the sense of true
living. "What I am is foam and shadow; what I shall be is my true self."
To chase after this self, to produce it, to realize it, constitutes the hard
task of mortals, who die only to rise again, live only to die, live only to
find the true life.
Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer
seeking for myself, am I really my property; I have myself, therefore I use
and enjoy myself. On the other hand, I can never take comfort in myself as long
as I think that I have still to find my true self and that it must come to this,
that not I but Christ or some other spiritual, i.e. ghostly, self (e. g. the
true man, the essence of man, etc.) lives in me.
A vast interval separates the two views. In the
old I go toward myself, in the new I start from myself; in the former I long
for myself, in the latter I have myself and do with myself as one does with
any other property -- I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for
my life, but "squander" it.
Henceforth, the question runs, not how one can
acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce
the true self in himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself
out.
What else should the ideal be but the sought-for
ever-distant self? One seeks for himself, consequently one doth not yet have
himself; one aspires toward what one ought to be, consequently one is not it.
One lives in longing and has lived thousands of years in it, in hope. Living
is quite another thing in -- enjoyment!
Does this perchance apply only to the so-called
pious? No, it applies to all who belong to the departing period of history,
even to its men of pleasure. For them too the work-days were followed by a Sunday,
and the rush of the world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness
of humanity; in short by an ideal. But philosophers especially are contrasted
with the pious. Now, have they been thinking of anything else than the ideal,
been planning for anything else than the absolute self? Longing and hope everywhere,
and nothing but these. For me, call it romanticism.
If the enjoyment of life is to triumph over the
longing for life or hope of life, it must vanquish this in its double significance
which Schiller introduces in his "Ideal and Life"; it must crush spiritual
and secular poverty, exterminate the ideal and -- the want of daily bread. He
who must expend his life to prolong life cannot enjoy it, and he who is still
seeking for his life does not have it and can as little enjoy it: both are poor,
but "blessed are the poor."
Those who are hungering for the true life have
no power over their present life, but must apply it for the purpose of thereby
gaining that true life, and must sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and
this task. If in the case of those devotees who hope for a life in the other
world, and look upon that in this world as merely a preparation for it, the
tributariness of their earthly existence, which they put solely into the service
of the hoped-for heavenly existence, is pretty distinctly apparent; one would
yet go far wrong if one wanted to consider the most rationalistic and enlightened
as less self-sacrificing. Oh, there is to be found in the "true life"
a much more comprehensive significance than the "heavenly" is competent
to express. Now, is not -- to introduce the liberal concept of it at once --
the "human" and "truly human" life the true one? And is
every one already leading this truly human life from the start, or must he first
raise himself to it with hard toil? Does he already have it as his present life,
or must he struggle for it as his future life, which will become his part only
when he "is no longer tainted with any egoism"? In this view life
exists only to gain life, and one lives only to make the essence of man alive
in oneself, one lives for the sake of this essence. One has his life only in
order to procure by means of it the "true" life cleansed of all egoism.
Hence one is afraid to make any use he likes of his life: it is to serve only
for the "right use."
In short, one has a calling in life, a task in
life; one has something to realize and produce by his life, a something for
which our life is only means and implement, a something that is worth more than
this life, a something to which one owes his life. One has a God who asks a
living sacrifice. Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time;
human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices
to justice, and we "poor sinners" slay our own selves as sacrifices
for "the human essence," the "idea of mankind," "humanity,"
and whatever the idols or gods are called besides.
But, because we owe our life to that something,
therefore --this is the next point -- we have no right to take it from us.
The conservative tendency of Christianity does
not permit thinking of death otherwise than with the purpose to take its sting
from it and -- live on and preserve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything
happen and come upon him if he - the arch-Jew -- can only haggle and smuggle
himself into heaven; he must not kill himself, he must only -- preserve himself
and work at the "preparation of a future abode." Conservatism or "conquest
of death" lies at his heart; "the last enemy that is abolished is
death." "Christ has taken the power from death and brought life and
imperishable being to light by the gospel." "Imperishableness,"
stability.
The moral man wants the good, the right; and,
if he takes to the means that lead to this goal, really lead to it, then these
means are not his means, but those of the good, right, etc., itself. These means
are never immoral, because the good end itself mediates itself through them:
the end sanctifies the means. They call this maxim jesuitical, but it is "moral"
through and through. The moral man acts in the service of an end or an idea:
he makes himself the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it
his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death is what the moral
commandment postulates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and bad:
suicide finds no excuse before the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious
man forbids it because "you have not given yourself life, but God, who
alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even taking in this conception,
God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from
the roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused the resolution
of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because I owe my life to the
fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may not yet accomplish
good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a tool, as God does an
instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my amendment; if I am "ungodly,"
God has joy in my penitence. Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious.
If one whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness
of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness
of duty, immorally. People worried themselves much with the question whether
Emilia Galotti's death can be justified before morality (they take it as if
it were suicide, which it is too in substance). That she is so infatuated with
chastity, this moral good, as to yield up even her life for it is certainly
moral; but, again, that she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral.
ODOARDO: Under the pretext of a judicial investigation
he tears you out of our arms and takes you to Grimaldi. ...
EMILIA: Give me that dagger, father, me! ...
ODOARDO: No, no! Reflect -- You too have only
one life to lose.
EMILIA: And only one innocence!
ODOARDO: Which is above the reach of any violence.
--
EMILIA: But not above the reach of any seduction.
-- Violence! violence! Who cannot defy violence? What is called violence is
nothing; seduction is the true violence. -- I have blood, father; blood as youthful
and warm as anybody's. My senses are senses. -- I can warrant nothing. I am
sure of nothing. I know Grimaldi's house. It is the house of pleasure. An hour
there, under my mother's eyes -- and there arose in my soul so much tumult as
the strictest exercises of religion could hardly quiet in weeks. -- Religion!
And what religion? -- To escape nothing worse, thousands sprang into the water
and are saints. -- Give me that dagger, father, give it to me. ...
EMILIA: Once indeed there was a father who. to
save his daughter from shame, drove into her heart whatever steel he could quickest
find -- gave life to her for the second time. But all such deeds are of the
past! Of such fathers there are no more.
ODOARDO: Yes, daughter, yes! (Stabs her.)]
Such contradictions form the tragic conflict
universally in the moral drama; and one must think and feel morally to be able
to take an interest in it.
What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily
apply to humanity also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or
the species. Only when I am under obligation to no being is the maintaining
of life -- my affair. "A leap from this bridge makes me free!"
But, if we owe the maintaining of our life to
that being that we are to make alive in ourselves, it is not less our duty not
to lead this life according to our pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to
that being. All my feeling, thinking, and willing, all my doing and designing,
belongs to -- him.
What is in conformity to that being is to be inferred
from his concept; and how differently has this concept been conceived! or how
differently has that being been imagined! What demands the Supreme Being makes
on the Mohammedan; what different ones the Christian, again, thinks he hears
from him; how divergent, therefore, must the shaping of the lives of the two
turn out! Only this do all hold fast, that the Supreme Being is to judge our
life.
But the pious who have their judge in God, and
in his word a book of directions for their life, I everywhere pass by only reminiscently,
because they belong to a period of development that has been lived through,
and as petrifactions they may remain in their fixed place right along; in our
time it is no longer the pious, but the liberals, who have the floor, and piety
itself cannot keep from reddening its pale face with liberal coloring. But the
liberals do not adore their judge in God, and do not unfold their life by the
directions of the divine word, but regulate themselves by man: they want to
be not "divine" but "human," and to live so.
Man is the liberal's supreme being, man the judge
of his life, humanity his directions, or catechism. God is spirit, but man is
the "most perfect spirit," the final result of the long chase after
the spiritor of the "searching in the depths of the Godhead," i.e.
in the depths of the spirit.
Every one of your traits is to be human; you yourself
are to be so from top to toe, in the inward as in the outward; for humanity
is your calling.
Calling -- destiny -- task! --
What one can become he does become. A born poet
may well be hindered by the disfavor of circumstances from standing on the high
level of his time, and, after the great studies that are indispensable for this,
producing consummate works of art; but he will make poetry, be he a plowman
or so lucky as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make music,
no matter whether on all instruments or only on an oaten pipe. A born philosophical
head can give proof of itself as university philosopher or as village philosopher.
Finally, a born dolt, who, as is very well compatible with this, may at the
same time be a sly-boots, will (as probably every one who has visited schools
is in a position to exemplify to himself by many instances of fellow-scholars)
always remain a blockhead, let him have been drilled and trained into the chief
of a bureau, or let him serve that same chief as bootblack. Nay, the born shallow-pates
indisputably form the most numerous class of men. And why. indeed, should not
the same distinctions show themselves in the human species that are unmistakable
in every species of beasts? The more gifted and the less gifted are to be found
everywhere.
Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one
could not get ideas into them. Hence, people usually consider all men capable
of having religion. In a certain degree they may be trained to other ideas too,
e. g. to some musical intelligence, even some philosophy. At this point then
the priesthood of religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc., takes
its start, and the Communists, e. g. want to make everything accessible to all
by their "public school." There is heard a common assertion that this
"great mass" cannot get along without religion; the Communists broaden
it into the proposition that not only the "great mass," but absolutely
all, are called to everything.
Not enough that the great mass has been trained
to religion, now it is actually to have to occupy itself with "everything
human." Training is growing ever more general and more comprehensive.
You poor beings who could live so happily if you
might skip according to your mind, you are to dance to the pipe of schoolmasters
and bear-leaders, in order to perform tricks that you yourselves would never
use yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the traces at last against
being always taken otherwise than you want to give yourselves. No, you mechanically
recite to yourselves the question that is recited to you: "What am I called
to? What ought I to do?" You need only ask thus, to have yourselves told
what you ought to do and ordered to do it, to have your calling marked out for
you, or else to order yourselves and impose it on yourselves according to the
spirit's prescription. Then in reference to the will the word is, I will to
do what I ought.
A man is "called" to nothing, and has
no "calling," no "destiny," as little as a plant or a beast
has a "calling." The flower does not follow the calling to complete
itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy and consume the world as well
as it can -- i.e. it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air
of the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and lodge. The bird lives
up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as is practicable; it catches
beetles and sings to its heart's delight. But the forces of the flower and the
bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces
will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast. A calling
he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where they are because
their being consists solely in their manifestation, and are as little able to
abide inactive as life, which, if it "stood still" only a second,
would no longer be life. Now, one might call out to the man, "use your
force." Yet to this imperative would be given the meaning that it was man's
task to use his force. It is not so. Rather, each one really uses his force
without first looking upon this as his calling: at all times every one uses
as much force as he possesses. One does say of a beaten man that he ought to
have exerted his force more; but one forgets that, if in the moment of succumbing
he had the force to exert his forces (e. g. bodily forces), he would not have
failed to do it: even if it was only the discouragement of a minute, this was
yet a --destitution of force, a minute long. Forces may assuredly be sharpened
and redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly assistance; but
where one misses their application one may be sure of their absence too. One
can strike fire out of a stone, but without the blow none comes out; in like
manner a man too needs "impact."
Now, for this reason that forces always of themselves
show themselves operative, the command to use them would be superfluous and
senseless. To use his forces is not man's calling and task, but is his act,
real and extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for manifestation
of force.
Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with,
this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a
true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a "true
man" from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a "true
man," the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last
breath is the last exhalation of the force of the "man."
The true man does not lie in the future, an object
of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever
I may be, joyous and suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt,
in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.
But, if I am Man, and have really found in myself
him whom religious humanity designated as the distant goal, then everything
"truly human" is also my own. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity
belongs to me. That freedom of trade,
e. g., which humanity has yet to attain -- and which, like an enchanting dream,
people remove to humanity's golden future -- I take by anticipation as my property,
and carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. There may indeed be but
few smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account to themselves
for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces their consciousness. Above
I have shown the same thing about freedom of the press.
Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to
myself what wants to withdraw from me; but above all I always bring myself back
when I have slipped away from myself to any tributariness. But this too is not
my calling, but my natural act.
Enough, there is a mighty difference whether I
make myself the starting-point or the goal. As the latter I do not have myself,
am consequently still alien to myself, am my essence, my "true essence,"
and this "true essence," alien to me, will mock me as a spook of a
thousand different names. Because I am not yet I, another (like God, the true
man, the truly pious man, the rational man, the freeman, etc.) is I, my ego.
Still far from myself, I separate myself into
two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true
one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual
one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it
is said, "The spirit is man's proper essence," or, "man exists
as man only spiritually." Now, there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit,
as if one would then have bagged himself; and so, in chasing after himself,
one loses sight of himself, whom he is.
And, as one stormily pursues his own self, the
never-attained, so one also despises shrewd people's rule to take men as they
are, and prefers to take them as they should be; and, for this reason, hounds
every one on after his should-be self and "endeavors to make all into equally
entitled, equally respectable, equally moral or rational men."
Yes, "if men were what they should be, could
be, if all men were rational, all loved each other as brothers," then it
would be a paradisiacal life. -- All right, men are as they should be, can be.
What should they be? Surely not more than they can be! And what can they be?
Not more, again, than they -- can, than they have the competence, the force,
to be. But this they really are, because what they are not they are incapable
of being; for to be capable means -- really to be. One is not capable for anything
that one really is not; one is not capable of anything that one does not really
do. Could a man blinded by cataracts see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataracts successfully
removed. But now he cannot see because he does not see. Possibility and reality
always coincide. One can do nothing that one does not, as one does nothing that
one cannot.
The singularity of this assertion vanishes when
one reflects that the words "it is possible that." almost never contain
another meaning than "I can imagine that. . .," e. g., It is possible
for all men to live rationally; e. g., I can imagine that all, etc. Now -- since
my thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, cause all men to live rationally,
but this must still be left to the men themselves -- general reason is for me
only thinkable, a thinkableness, but as such in fact a reality that is called
a possibility only in reference to what I can not bring to pass, to wit, the
rationality of others. So far as depends on you, all men might be rational,
for you have nothing against it; nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps
cannot discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in
the way of the thing in your thinking; it is thinkable to you.
As men are not all rational, though, it is probable
that they -- cannot be so.
If something which one imagines to be easily possible
is not, or does not happen, then one may be assured that something stands in
the way of the thing, and that it is -- impossible. Our time has its art, science,
etc.; the art may be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we deserved
to have a better, and "could" have it if we only would? We have just
as much art as we can have. Our art of today is the only art possible, and therefore
real, at the time.
Even in the sense to which one might at last still
reduce the word "possible," that it should mean "future,"
it retains the full force of the "real." If one says, e. g., "It
is possible that the sun will rise tomorrow" -- this means only, "for
today tomorrow is the real future"; for I suppose there is hardly need
of the suggestion that a future is real "future" only when it has
not yet appeared.
Yet wherefore this dignifying of a word? If the
most prolific misunderstanding of thousands of years were not in ambush behind
it, if this single concept of the little word "possible" were not
haunted by all the spooks of possessed men, its contemplation should trouble
us little here.
The thought, it was just now shown, rules the
possessed world. Well, then, possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable
sacrifices have hitherto been made to hideous thinkableness. It was thinkable
that men might become rational; thinkable, that they might know Christ; thinkable,
that they might become moral and enthusiastic for the good; thinkable, that
they might all take refuge in the Church's lap; thinkable, that they might meditate,
speak, and do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they might be
obedient subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was -- so ran the inference
-- possible, and further, because it was possible to men (right here lies the
deceptive point; because it is thinkable to me, it is possible to men), therefore
they ought to be so, it was their calling; and finally -- one is to take men
only according to this calling, only as called men, "not as they are, but
as they ought to be."
And the further inference? Man is not the individual,
but man is a thought, an ideal, to which the individual is related not even
as the child to the man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a
-- finite creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to modern views, as
the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the glorification of "humanity,"
the "eternal, immortal," for whose glory (in majorem humanitatis gloriam)
the individual must devote himself and find his "immortal renown"
in having done something for the "spirit of humanity."
Thus the thinkers rule in the world as long as
the age of priests or of schoolmasters lasts, and what they think of is possible,
but what is possible must be realized. They think an ideal of man, which for
the time is real only in their thoughts; but they also think the possibility
of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute, the carrying out is
really -- thinkable, it is an -- idea.
But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom
a Krummacher can think that we might yet become good Christians; if, however,
he wanted to "labor with" us, we should soon make it palpable to him
that our Christianity is only thinkable, but in other respects impossible; if
he grinned on and on at us with his obtrusive thoughts, his "good belief,"
he would have to learn that we do not at all need to become what we do not like
to become.
And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of
the pious. "If all men were rational, if all did right, if all were guided
by philanthropy, etc."! Reason, right, philanthropy, are put before the
eyes of men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. And what does
being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing? No, reason is a book full of
laws, which are all enacted against egoism.
History hitherto is the history of the intellectual
man. After the period of sensuality, history proper begins; i.e. the period
of intellectuality, spirituality, non-sensuality, supersensuality, nonsensicality.
Man now begins to want to be and become something. What? Good, beautiful, true;
more precisely, moral, pious, agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a
"proper man," "something proper." Man is his goal, his ought,
his destiny, calling, task, his -- ideal; he is to himself a future, otherworldly
he. And what makes a "proper fellow" of him? Being true, being good,
being moral, etc. Now he looks askance at every one who does not recognize the
same "what," seek the same morality, have the same faith, he chases
out "separatists, heretics, sects," etc.
No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper
sheep, a proper dog"; no beast has its essence appear to it as a task,
i.e. as a concept that it has to realize. It realizes itself in living itself
out, in dissolving itself, passing away. It does not ask to be or to become
anything other than it is.
Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts?
That you ought to become beasts is an exhortation which I certainly cannot give
you, as that would again be a task, an ideal ("How doth the little busy
bee improve each shining hour. In works of labor or of skill I would be busy
too, for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do"). It would
be the same, too, as if one wished for the beasts that they should become human
beings. Your nature is, once for all, a human one; you are human natures, human
beings. But, just because you already are so, you do not still need to become
so. Beasts too are "trained," and a trained beast executes many unnatural
things. But a trained dog is no better for itself than a natural one, and has
no profit from it, even if it is more companionable for us.
Exertions to "form" all men into moral,
rational, pious, human, "beings" (i.e. training) were in vogue from
of yore. They are wrecked against the indomitable quality of I, against own
nature, against egoism. Those who are trained never attain their ideal, and
only profess with their mouth the sublime principles, or make a profession,
a profession of faith. In face of this profession they must in life "acknowledge
themselves sinners altogether," and they fall short of their ideal, are
"weak men," and bear with them the consciousness of "human weakness."
It is different if you do not chase after an ideal
as your "destiny," but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything.
The dissolution is not your "destiny," because it is present time.
Yet the culture, the religiousness, of men has
assuredly made them free, but only free from one lord, to lead them to another.
I have learned by religion to tame my appetite, I break the world's resistance
by the cunning that is put in my hand by science; I even serve no man; "I
am no man's lackey." But then it comes. You must obey God more than man.
Just so I am indeed free from irrational determination by my impulses. but obedient
to the master Reason. I have gained "spiritual freedom," "freedom
of the spirit." But with that I have then become subject to that very spirit.
The spirit gives me orders, reason guides me, they are my leaders and commanders.
The "rational," the "servants of the spirit," rule. But,
if I am not flesh, I am in truth not spirit either. Freedom of the spirit is
servitude of me, because I am more than spirit or flesh.
Without doubt culture has made me powerful. It
has given me power over all motives, over the impulses of my nature as well
as over the exactions and violences of the world. I know, and have gained the
force for it by culture, that I need not let myself be coerced by any of my
appetites, pleasures, emotions, etc.; I am their -- master; in like manner I
become, through the sciences and arts, the master of the refractory world, whom
sea and earth obey, and to whom even the stars must give an account of themselves.
The spirit has made me master. -- But I have no power over the spirit itself.
From religion (culture) I do learn the means for the "vanquishing of the
world," but not how I am to subdue God too and become master of him; for
God "is the spirit." And this same spirit, of which I am unable to
become master, may have the most manifold shapes; he may be called God or National
Spirit, State, Family, Reason, also -- Liberty, Humanity, Man.
I receive with thanks what the centuries of culture
have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw away and give up anything of
it: I have not lived in vain. The experience that I have power over my nature,
and need not be the slave of my appetites, shall not be lost to me; the experience
that I can subdue the world by culture's means is too dear- bought for me to
be able to forget it. But I want still more.
People ask, what can man do? What can he accomplish?
What goods procure, and put down the highest of everything as a calling. As
if everything were possible to me!
If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania,
a passion, etc. (e. g. in the huckster-spirit, in jealousy), the desire is stirred
to deliver him out of this possession and to help him to "self-conquest."
"We want to make a man of him!" That would be very fine if another
possession were not immediately put in the place of the earlier one. But one
frees from the love of money him who is a thrall to it, only to deliver him
over to piety, humanity, or some principle else, and to transfer him to a fixed
standpoint anew.
This transference from a narrow standpoint to
a sublime one is declared in the words that the sense must not be directed to
the perishable, but to the imperishable alone: not to the temporal, but to the
eternal, absolute, divine, purely human, etc. -- to the spiritual.
People very soon discerned that it was not indifferent
what one set his affections on, or what one occupied himself with; they recognized
the importance of the object. An object exalted above the individuality of things
is the essence of things; yes, the essence is alone the thinkable in them. it
is for the thinking man. Therefore direct no longer your sense to the things,
but your thoughts to the essence. "Blessed are they who see not, and yet
believe"; i. e., blessed are the thinkers, for they have to do with the
invisible and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, that constituted
an essential point of contention centuries long, comes at last to the point
of being "No longer worth speaking of." This was discerned, but nevertheless
people always kept before their eyes again a self-valid importance of the object,
an absolute value of it, as if the doll were not the most important thing to
the child, the Koran to the Turk. As long as I am not the sole important thing
to myself, it is indifferent of what object I "make much," and only
my greater or lesser delinquency against it is of value. The degree of my attachment
and devotion marks the standpoint of my liability to service, the degree of
my sinning shows the measure of my ownness.
But finally, and in general, one must know how
to "put everything out of his mind," if only so as to be able to --
go to sleep. Nothing may occupy us with which we do not occupy ourselves: the
victim of ambition cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the God-fearing
man from the thought of God; infatuation and possessedness coincide.
To want to realize his essence or live comfortably
to his concept (which with believers in God signifies as much as to be "pious,"
and with believers in humanity means living "humanly") is what only
the sensual and sinful man can propose to himself, the man so long as he has
the anxious choice between happiness of sense and peace of soul, so long as
he is a "poor sinner." The Christian is nothing but a sensual man
who, knowing of the sacred and being conscious that he violates it, sees in
himself a poor sinner: sensualness, recognized as "sinfulness," is
Christian consciousness, is the Christian himself. And if "sin" and
"sinfulness" are now no longer taken into the mouths of moderns, but,
instead of that, "egoism," "self-seeking," "selfishness,"
etc., engage them; if the devil has been translated into the "un-man"
or "egoistic man" -- is the Christian less present then than before?
Is not the old discord between good and evil -- is not a judge over us, man
-- is not a calling, the calling to make oneself man -- left? If they no longer
name it calling, but "task" or, very likely, "duty," the
change of name is quite correct, because "man" is not, like God, a
personal being that can "call"; but outside the name the thing remains
as of old.
________
Every
one has a relation to objects, and more, every one is differently related to
them. Let us choose as an example that book to which millions of men had a relation
for two thousand years, the Bible. What is it, what was it, to each? Absolutely,
only what he made out of it! For him who makes to himself nothing at all out
of it, it is nothing at all; for him who uses it as an amulet, it has solely
the value, the significance, of a means of sorcery; for him who, like children,
plays with it, it is nothing but a plaything, etc.
Now, Christianity asks that it shall be the same
for all: say the sacred book or the "sacred Scriptures." This means
as much as that the Christian's view shall also be that of other men, and that
no one may be otherwise related to that object. And with this the ownness of
the relation is destroyed, and one mind, one disposition, is fixed as the "true",
the "only true" one. In the limitation of the freedom to make of the
Bible what I will, the freedom of making in general is limited; and the coercion
of a view or a judgment is put in its place. He who should pass the judgment
that the Bible was a long error of mankind would judge -- criminally.
In fact, the child who tears it to pieces or plays
with it, the Inca Atahualpa who lays his ear to it and throws it away contemptuously
when it remains dumb, judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest
who praises in it the "Word of God," or the critic who calls it a
job of men's hands. For how we toss things about is the affair of our option,
our free will: we use them according to our heart's pleasure, or, more clearly,
we use them just as we can. Why, what do the parsons scream about when they
see how Hegel and the speculative theologians make speculative thoughts out
of the contents of the Bible? Precisely this, that they deal with it according
to their heart's pleasure, or "proceed arbitrarily with it."
But, because we all show ourselves arbitrary in
the handling of objects, i.e. do with them as we like best, at our liking (the
philosopher likes nothing so well as when he can trace out an "idea"
in everything, as the God-fearing man likes to make God his friend by everything,
and so, e. g., by keeping the Bible sacred), therefore we nowhere meet such
grievous arbitrariness, such a frightful tendency to violence, such stupid coercion,
as in this very domain of our -- own free will. If we proceed arbitrarily in
taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then that we want to take it
ill of the parson-spirits if they take us just as arbitrarily, in their fashion,
and esteem us worthy of the heretic's fire or of another punishment, perhaps
of the -- censorship?
What a man is, he makes out of things; "as
you look at the world, so it looks at you again." Then the wise advice
makes itself heard again at once, You must only look at it "rightly, unbiasedly,"
etc. As if the child did not look at the Bible "rightly and unbiasedly"
when it makes it a plaything. That shrewd precept is given us, e. g. by Feuerbach.
One does look at things rightly when one makes of them what one will (by things
objects in general are here understood, e. g. God, our fellowmen, a sweetheart,
a book, a beast, etc.). And therefore the things and the looking at them are
not first, but I am, my will is. One will brings thoughts out of the things,
will discover reason in the world, will have sacredness in it: therefore one
shall find them. "Seek and ye shall find." What I will seek, I determine:
I want, e. g., to get edification from the Bible; it is to be found; I want
to read and test the Bible thoroughly; my outcome will be a thorough instruction
and criticism -- to the extent of my powers. I elect for myself what I have
a fancy for, and in electing I show myself -- arbitrary.
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 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.
The object makes us into possessed men in its
sacred form just as in its profane, as a supersensuous object, just as it does
as a sensuous one. The appetite or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing
for heaven stand on a level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for
the sensuous world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one
party wanted to call forth emotion, the other motion, activity.
The conception of objects is altogether diverse,
even as God, Christ, the world, were and are conceived of in the most manifold
wise. In this every one is a "dissenter," and after bloody combats
so much has at last been attained, that opposite views about one and the same
object are no longer condemned as heresies worthy of death. The "dissenters"
reconcile themselves to each other. But why should I only dissent (think otherwise)
about a thing? Why not push the thinking otherwise to its last extremity, that
of no longer having any regard at all for the thing, and therefore thinking
its nothingness, crushing it? Then the conception itself has an end, because
there is no longer anything to conceive of. Why am I to say, let us suppose,
"God is not Allah, not Brahma, not Jehovah, but -- God"; but not,
"God is nothing but a deception"? Why do people brand me if I am an
"atheist"? Because they put the creature above the creator ("They
honor and serve the creature more than the Creator") and require a ruling
object, that the subject may be right submissive. I am to bend beneath the absolute,
I ought to.
By the "realm of thoughts" Christianity
has completed itself; the thought is that inwardness in which all the world's
lights go out, all existence becomes existenceless, the inward. man (the heart,
the head) is all in all. This realm of thoughts awaits its deliverance, awaits,
like the Sphinx, Oedipus's key- word to the riddle, that it may enter in at
last to its death. I am the annihilator of its continuance, for in the creator's
realm it no longer forms a realm of its own, not a State in the State, but a
creature of my creative -- thoughtlessness. Only together and at the same time
with the benumbed thinking world can the world of Christians, Christianity and
religion itself, come to its downfall; only when thoughts run out are there
no more believers. To the thinker his thinking is a "sublime labor, a sacred
activity," and it rests on a firm faith, the faith in truth. At first praying
is a sacred activity, then this sacred "devotion" passes over into
a rational and reasoning "thinking," which, however, likewise retains
in the "sacred truth" its underangeable basis of faith, and is only
a marvelous machine that the spirit of truth winds up for its service. Free
thinking and free science busy me -- for it is not I that am free, not I that
busy myself, but thinking is free and busies me -- with heaven and the heavenly
or "divine"; e. g., properly, with the world and the worldly, not
this world but "another" world; it is only the reversing and deranging
of the world, a busying with the essence of the world, therefore a derangement.
The thinker is blind to the immediateness of things, and incapable of mastering
them: he does not eat, does not drink, does not enjoy; for the eater and drinker
is never the thinker, nay, the latter forgets eating and drinking, his getting
on in life, the cares of nourishment, etc., over his thinking; he forgets it
as the praying man too forgets it. This is why he appears to the forceful son
of nature as a queer Dick, a fool -- even if he does look upon him as holy,
just as lunatics appeared so to the ancients. Free thinking is lunacy, because
it is pure movement of the inwardness, of the merely inward man, which guides
and regulates the rest of the man. The shaman and the speculative philosopher
mark the bottom and top rounds on the ladder of the inward man, the -- Mongol.
Shaman and philosopher fight with ghosts, demons, spirits, gods.
Totally different from this free thinking is own
thinking, my thinking, a thinking which does not guide me, but is guided, continued,
or broken off, by me at my pleasure. The distinction of this own thinking from
free thinking is similar to that of own sensuality, which I satisfy at pleasure,
from free, unruly sensuality to which I succumb.
Feuerbach, in the Principles of the Philosophy
of the Future, is always harping upon being. In this he too, with all his antagonism
to Hegel and the absolute philosophy, is stuck fast in abstraction; for "being"
is abstraction, as is even "the I." Only I am not abstraction alone:
I am all in all, consequently even abstraction or nothing; I am all and nothing;
I am not a mere thought, but at the same time I am full of thoughts, a thought-world.
Hegel condemns the own, mine, -- "opinion." "Absolute thinking"
is that which forgets that it is my thinking, that I think, and that it exists
only through me. But I, as I, swallow up again what is mine, am its master;
it is only my opinion, which I can at any moment change, i.e. annihilate, take
back into myself, and consume. Feuerbach wants to smite Hegel's "absolute
thinking" with unconquered being. But in me being is as much conquered
as thinking is. It is my being, as the other is my thinking.
With this, of course, Feuerbach does not get further
than to the proof, trivial in itself, that I require the senses for everything,
or that I cannot entirely do without these organs. Certainly I cannot think
if I do not exist sensuously. But for thinking as well as for feeling, and so
for the abstract as well as for the sensuous, I need above all things myself,
this quite particular myself, this unique myself. If I were not this one, e.
g. Hegel, I should not look at the world as I do look at it, I should not pick
out of it that philosophical system which just I as Hegel do, etc. I should
indeed have senses, as do other people too, but I should not utilize them as
I do.
Thus the reproach is brought up against Hegel
by Feuerbach that he misuses language, understanding by many words something
else than what natural consciousness takes them for; and yet he too commits
the same fault when he gives the "sensuous" a sense of unusual eminence.
Thus it is said, p. 69, "the sensuous is not the profane, the destitute
of thought, the obvious, that which is understood of itself." But, if it
is the sacred, the full of thought, the recondite, that which can be understood
only through mediation -- well, then it is no longer what people call the sensuous.
The sensuous is only that which exists for the senses; what, on the other hand,
is enjoyable only to those who enjoy with more than the senses, who go beyond
sense-enjoyment or sense-reception, is at most mediated or introduced by the
senses, i. e., the senses constitute a condition for obtaining it, but it is
no longer anything sensuous. The sensuous, whatever it may be, when taken up
into me becomes something non-sensuous, which, however, may again have sensuous
effects, e. g. as by the stirring of my emotions and my blood.
It is well that Feuerbach brings sensuousness
to honor, but the only thing he is able to do with it is to clothe the materialism
of his "new philosophy" with what had hitherto been the property of
idealism, the "absolute philosophy." As little as people let it be
talked into them that one can live on the "spiritual" alone without
bread, so little will they believe his word that as a sensuous being one is
already everything, and so spiritual, full of thoughts, etc.
Nothing at all is justified by being. What is
thought of is as well as what is not thought of; the stone in the street is,
and my notion of it is too. Both are only in different spaces, the former in
airy space, the latter in my head, in me; for I am space like the street.
The professionals, the privileged, brook no freedom
of thought, i.e. no thoughts that do not come from the "Giver of all good,"
be he called God, pope, church, or whatever else. If anybody has such illegitimate
thoughts, he must whisper them into his confessor's ear, and have himself chastised
by him till the slave-whip becomes unendurable to the free thoughts. In other
ways too the professional spirit takes care that free thoughts shall not come
at all: first and foremost, by a wise education. He on whom the principles of
morality have been duly inculcated never becomes free again from moralizing
thoughts, and robbery, perjury, overreaching, etc., remain to him fixed ideas
against which no freedom of thought protects him. He has his thoughts "from
above," and gets no further.
It is different with the holders of concessions
or patents. Every one must be able to have and form thoughts as he will. If
he has the patent, or the concession, of a capacity to think, he needs no special
privilege. But, as "all men are rational," it is free to every one
to put into his head any thoughts whatever, and, to the extent of the patent
of his natural endowment, to have a greater or less wealth of thoughts. Now
one hears the admonitions that one "is to honor all opinions and convictions,"
that "every conviction is authorized," that one must be "tolerant
to the views of others," etc.
But "your thoughts are not my thoughts, and
your ways are not my ways." Or rather, I mean the reverse: Your thoughts
are my thoughts, which I dispose of as I will, and which I strike down unmercifully;
they are my property, which I annihilate as I list. I do not wait for authorization
from you first, to decompose and blow away your thoughts. It does not matter
to me that you call these thoughts yours too, they remain mine nevertheless,
and how I will proceed with them is my affair, not a usurpation. It may please
me to leave you in your thoughts; then I keep still. Do you believe thoughts
fly around free like birds, so that every one may get himself some which he
may then make good against me as his inviolable property? What is flying around
is all -- mine.
Do you believe you have your thoughts for yourselves
and need answer to no one for them, or as you do also say, you have to give
an account of them to God only? No, your great and small thoughts belong to
me, and I handle them at my pleasure.
The thought is my own only when I have no misgiving
about bringing it in danger of death every moment, when I do not have to fear
its loss as a loss for me, a loss of me. The thought is my own only when I can
indeed subjugate it, but it never can subjugate me, never fanaticizes me, makes
me the tool of its realization.
So freedom of thought exists when I can have all
possible thoughts; but the thoughts become property only by not being able to
become masters. In the time of freedom of thought, thoughts (ideas) rule; but,
if I attain to property in thought, they stand as my creatures.
If the hierarchy had not so penetrated men to
the innermost as to take from them all courage to pursue free thoughts, e. g.,
thoughts perhaps displeasing to God, one would have to consider freedom of thought
just as empty a word as, say, a freedom of digestion.
According to the professionals' opinion, the thought
is given to me; according to the freethinkers', I seek the thought. There the
truth is already found and extant, only I must -- receive it from its Giver
by grace; here the truth is to be sought and is my goal, lying in the future,
toward which I have to run.
In both cases the truth (the true thought) lies
outside me, and I aspire to get it, be it by presentation (grace), be it by
earning (merit of my own). Therefore, (1) The truth is a privilege; (2) No,
the way to it is patent to all, and neither the Bible nor the holy fathers nor
the church nor any one else is in possession of the truth; but one can come
into possession of it by -- speculating.
Both, one sees, are property-less in relation
to the truth: they have it either as a fief (for the "holy father,"
e. g. is not a unique person; as unique he is this Sixtus, Clement, but he does
not have the truth as Sixtus, Clement, but as "holy father," i.e.
as a spirit) or as an ideal. As a fief, it is only for a few (the privileged);
as an ideal, for all (the patentees).
Freedom of thought, then, has the meaning that
we do indeed all walk in the dark and in the paths of error, but every one can
on this path approach the truth and is accordingly on the right path ("All
roads lead to Rome, to the world's end, etc."). Hence freedom of thought
means this much, that the true thought is not my own; for, if it were this,
how should people want to shut me off from it?
Thinking has become entirely free, and has laid
down a lot of truths which I must accommodate myself to. It seeks to complete
itself into a system and to bring itself to an absolute "constitution."
In the State e. g. it seeks for the idea, say, till it has brought out the "rational
State," in which I am then obliged to be suited; in man (anthropology),
till it "has found man."
The thinker is distinguished from the believer
only by believing much more than the latter, who on his part thinks of much
less as signified by his faith (creed). The thinker has a thousand tenets of
faith where the believer gets along with few; but the former brings coherence
into his tenets, and takes the coherence in turn for the scale to estimate their
worth by. If one or the other does not fit into his budget, he throws it out.
The thinkers run parallel to the believers in
their pronouncements. Instead of "If it is from God you will not root it
out," the word is "If it is from the truth, is true, etc."; instead
of "Give God the glory" -- "Give truth the glory." But it
is very much the same to me whether God or the truth wins; first and foremost
I want to win.
Aside from this, how is an "unlimited freedom"
to be thinkable inside of the State or society? The State may well protect one
against another, but yet it must not let itself be endangered by an unmeasured
freedom, a so-called unbridledness. Thus in "freedom of instruction"
the State declares only this -- that it is suited with every one who instructs
as the State (or, speaking more comprehensibly, the political power) would have
it. The point for the competitors is this "as the State would have it."
If the clergy, e. g., does not will as the State does, then it itself excludes
itself from competition (vid. France). The limit that is necessarily drawn in
the State for any and all competition is called "the oversight and superintendence
of the State." In bidding freedom of instruction keep within the due bounds,
the State at the same time fixes the scope of freedom of thought; because, as
a rule, people do not think farther than their teachers have thought.
Hear Minister Guizot: "The great difficulty
of today is the guiding and dominating of the mind. Formerly the church fulfilled
this mission; now it is not adequate to it. It is from the university that this
great service must be expected, and the university will not fail to perform
it. We, the government, have the duty of supporting it therein. The charter
calls for the freedom of thought and that of conscience." So, in favor
of freedom of thought and conscience, the minister demands "the guiding
and dominating of the mind."
Catholicism haled the examinee before the forum
of ecclesiasticism, Protestantism before that of biblical Christianity. It would
be but little bettered if one haled him before that of reason, as Ruge, e. g.,
wants to. Whether the church, the Bible, or reason (to which, moreover, Luther
and Huss already appealed) is the sacred authority makes no difference in essentials.
The "question of our time" does not
become soluble even when one puts it thus: Is anything general authorized, or
only the individual? Is the generality (e. g. State, law, custom, morality,
etc.) authorized, or individuality? It becomes soluble for the first time when
one no longer asks after an "authorization" at all, and does not carry
on a mere fight against "privileges." -- A "rational" freedom
of teaching, which recognizes only the conscience of reason," does not
bring us to the goal; we require an egoistic freedom of teaching rather, a freedom
of teaching for all ownness, wherein I become audible and can announce myself
unchecked. That I make myself "audible", this alone is "reason,"
be I ever so irrational; in my making myself heard, and so hearing myself, others
as well as I myself enjoy me, and at the same time consume me.
What would be gained if, as formerly the orthodox
I, the loyal I, the moral I, etc., was free, now the rational I should become
free? Would this be the freedom of me?
If I am free as "rational I," then the
rational in me, or reason, is free; and this freedom of reason, or freedom of
the thought, was the ideal of the Christian world from of old. They wanted to
make thinking -- and, as aforesaid, faith is also thinking, as thinking is faith
-- free; the thinkers, i.e. the believers as well as the rational, were to be
free; for the rest freedom was impossible. But the freedom of thinkers is the
"freedom of the children of God," and at the same time the most merciless
--hierarchy or dominion of the thought; for I succumb to the thought. If thoughts
are free, I am their slave; I have no power over them, and am dominated by them.
But I want to have the thought, want to be full of thoughts, but at the same
time I want to be thoughtless, and, instead of freedom of thought, I preserve
for myself thoughtlessness.
If the point is to have myself understood and
to make communications, then assuredly I can make use only of human means, which
are at my command because I am at the same time man. And really I have thoughts
only as man; as I, I am at the same time thoughtless. He who cannot get rid
of a thought is so far only man, is a thrall of language, this human institution,
this treasury of human thoughts. Language or "the word" tyrannizes
hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas.
Just observe yourself in the act of reflection, right now, and you will find
how you make progress only by becoming thoughtless and speechless every moment.
You are not thoughtless and speechless merely in (say) sleep, but even in the
deepest reflection; yes, precisely then most so. And only by this thoughtlessness,
this unrecognized "freedom of thought" or freedom from the thought,
are you your own. Only from it do you arrive at putting language to use as your
property.
If thinking is not my thinking, it is merely a
spun-out thought; it is slave work, or the work of a "servant obeying at
the word." For not a thought, but I, am the beginning for my thinking,
and therefore I am its goal too, even as its whole course is only a course of
my self-enjoyment; for absolute or free thinking, on the other hand, thinking
itself is the beginning, and it plagues itself with propounding this beginning
as the extremest "abstraction" (e. g. as being). This very abstraction,
or this thought, is then spun out further.
Absolute thinking is the affair of the human spirit,
and this is a holy spirit. Hence this thinking is an affair of the parsons,
who have "a sense for it," a sense for the "highest interests
of mankind," for "the spirit."
To the believer, truths are a settled thing, a
fact; to the freethinker, a thing that is still to be settled. Be absolute thinking
ever so unbelieving, its incredulity has its limits, and there does remain a
belief in the truth, in the spirit, in the idea and its final victory: this
thinking does not sin against the holy spirit. But all thinking that does not
sin against the holy spirit is belief in spirits or ghosts.
I can as little renounce thinking as feeling,
the spirit's activity as little as the activity of the senses. As feeling is
our sense for things, so thinking is our sense for essences (thoughts). Essences
have their existence in everything sensuous, especially in the word. The power
of words follows that of things: first one is coerced by the rod, afterward
by conviction. The might of things overcomes our courage, our spirit; against
the power of a conviction, and so of the word, even the rack and the sword lose
their overpoweringness and force. The men of conviction are the priestly men,
who resist every enticement of Satan.
Christianity took away from the things of this
world only their irresistibleness, made us independent of them. In like manner
I raise myself above truths and their power: as I am supersensual, so I am supertrue.
Before me truths are as common and as indifferent as things; they do not carry
me away, and do not inspire me with enthusiasm. There exists not even one truth,
not right, not freedom, humanity, etc., that has stability before me, and to
which I subject myself. They are words, nothing but words, as to the Christian
nothing but "vain things." In words and truths (every word is a truth,
as Hegel asserts that one cannot tell a lie) there is no salvation for me, as
little as there is for the Christian in things and vanities. As the riches of
this world do not make me happy, so neither do its truths. It is now no longer
Satan, but the spirit, that plays the story of the temptation; and he does not
seduce by the things of this world, but by its thoughts, by the "glitter
of the idea."
Along with worldly goods, all sacred goods too
must be put away as no longer valuable.
Truths are phrases, ways of speaking, words (lógos);
brought into connection, or into an articulate series, they form logic, science,
philosophy.
For thinking and speaking I need truths and words,
as I do foods for eating; without them I cannot think nor speak. Truths are
men's thoughts, set down in words and therefore just as extant as other things,
although extant only for the mind or for thinking. They are human institutions
and human creatures, and, even if they are given out for divine revelations,
there still remains in them the quality of alienness for me; yes, as my own
creatures they are already alienated from me after the act of creation.
The Christian man is the man with faith in thinking,
who believes in the supreme dominion of thoughts and wants to bring thoughts,
so-called "principles," to dominion. Many a one does indeed test the
thoughts, and chooses none of them for his master without criticism, but in
this he is like the dog who sniffs at people to smell out "his master";
he is always aiming at the ruling thought. The Christian may reform and revolt
an infinite deal, may demolish the ruling concepts of centuries; he will always
aspire to a new "principle" or new master again, always set up a higher
or "deeper" truth again, always call forth a cult again, always proclaim
a spirit called to dominion, lay down a law for all.
If there is even one truth only to which man has
to devote his life and his powers because he is man, then he is subjected to
a rule, dominion, law; he is a servingman. It is supposed that, e. g. man, humanity,
liberty, etc., are such truths.
On the other hand, one can say thus: Whether you
will further occupy yourself with thinking depends on you; only know that, if
in your thinking you would like to make out anything worthy of notice, many
hard problems are to be solved, without vanquishing which you cannot get far.
There exists, therefore, no duty and no calling for you to meddle with thoughts
(ideas, truths); but, if you will do so, you will do well to utilize what the
forces of others have already achieved toward clearing up these difficult subjects.
Thus, therefore, he who will think does assuredly
have a task, which he consciously or unconsciously sets for himself in willing
that; but no one has the task of thinking or of believing. In the former case
it may be said, "You do not go far enough, you have a narrow and biased
interest, you do not go to the bottom of the thing; in short, you do not completely
subdue it. But, on the other hand, however far you may come at any time, you
are still always at the end, you have no call to step farther, and you can have
it as you will or as you are able. It stands with this as with any other piece
of work, which you can give up when the humor for it wears off. Just so, if
you can no longer believe a thing, you do not have to force yourself into faith
or to busy yourself lastingly as if with a sacred truth of the faith, as theologians
or philosophers do, but you can tranquilly draw back your interest from it and
let it run. Priestly spirits will indeed expound this your lack of interest
as "laziness, thoughtlessness, obduracy, self-deception," etc. But
do you just let the trumpery lie, notwithstanding. No thing, no so-called "highest
interest of mankind," no "sacred cause," is worth your serving
it, and occupying yourself with it for its sake; you may seek its worth in this
alone, whether it is worth anything to you for your sake. Become like children,
the biblical saying admonishes us. But children have no sacred interest and
know nothing of a "good cause." They know all the more accurately
what they have a fancy for; and they think over, to the best of their powers,
how they are to arrive at it.
Thinking will as little cease as feeling. But
the power of thoughts and ideas, the dominion of theories and principles, the
sovereignty of the spirit, in short the -- hierarchy, lasts as long as the parsons,
i.e., theologians, philosophers, statesmen, philistines, liberals, schoolmasters,
servants, parents, children, married couples, Proudhon, George Sand, Bluntschli,
etc., etc., have the floor; the hierarchy will endure as long as people believe
in, think of, or even criticize, principles; for even the most inexorable criticism,
which undermines all current principles, still does finally believe in the principle.
Every one criticises, but the criterion is different.
People run after the "right" criterion. The right criterion is the
first presupposition. The critic starts from a proposition, a truth, a belief.
This is not a creation of the critic, but of the dogmatist; nay, commonly it
is actually taken up out of the culture of the time without further ceremony,
like e. g. "liberty," "humanity," etc. The critic has not
"discovered man," but this truth has been established as "man"
by the dogmatist, and the critic (who, besides, may be the same person with
him) believes in this truth, this article of faith. In this faith, and possessed
by this faith, he criticises.
The secret of criticism is some "truth"
or other: this remains its energizing mystery.
But I distinguish between servile and own criticism.
If I criticize under the presupposition of a supreme being, my criticism serves
the being and is carried on for its sake: if e. g. I am possessed by the belief
in a "free State," then everything that has a bearing on it I criticize
from the standpoint of whether it is suitable to this State, for I love this
State; if I criticize as a pious man, then for me everything falls into the
classes of divine and diabolical, and before my criticism nature consists of
traces of God or traces of the devil (hence names like Godsgift, Godmount, the
Devil's Pulpit), men of believers and unbelievers; if I criticize while believing
in man as the "true essence," then for me everything falls primarily
into the classes of man and the un-man, etc.
Criticism has to this day remained a work of love:
for at all times we exercised it for the love of some being. All servile criticism
is a product of love, a possessedness, and proceeds according to that New Testament
precept, "Test everything and hold fast the good." "The good"
is the touchstone, the criterion. The good, returning under a thousand names
and forms, remained always the presupposition, remained the dogmatic fixed point
for this criticism, remained the -- fixed idea.
The critic, in setting to work, impartially presupposes
the "truth," and seeks for the truth in the belief that it is to be
found. He wants to ascertain the true, and has in it that very "good."
Presuppose means nothing else than put a thought
in front, or think something before everything else and think the rest from
the starting-point of this that has been thought, i.e. measure and criticize
it by this. In other words, this is as much as to say that thinking is to begin
with something already thought. If thinking began at all, instead of being begun,
if thinking were a subject, an acting personality of its own, as even the plant
is such, then indeed there would be no abandoning the principle that thinking
must begin with itself. But it is just the personification of thinking that
brings to pass those innumerable errors. In the Hegelian system they always
talk as if thinking or "the thinking spirit" (i.e. personified thinking,
thinking as a ghost) thought and acted; in critical liberalism it is always
said that "criticism" does this and that, or else that "self-
consciousness" finds this and that. But, if thinking ranks as the personal
actor, thinking itself must be presupposed; if criticism ranks as such, a thought
must likewise stand in front. Thinking and criticism could be active only starting
from themselves, would have to be themselves the presupposition of their activity,
as without being they could not be active. But thinking, as a thing presupposed,
is a fixed thought, a dogma; thinking and criticism, therefore, can start only
from a dogma, i. e. from a thought, a fixed idea, a presupposition.
With this we come back again to what was enunciated
above, that Christianity consists in the development of a world of thoughts,
or that it is the proper "freedom of thought," the "free thought,"
the "free spirit." The "true" criticism, which I called
"servile," is therefore just as much "free" criticism, for
it is not my own.
The case stands otherwise when what is yours is
not made into something that is of itself, not personified, not made independent
as a "spirit" to itself. Your thinking has for a presupposition not
"thinking," but you. But thus you do presuppose yourself after all?
Yes, but not for myself, but for my thinking. Before my thinking, there is --
I. From this it follows that my thinking is not preceded by a thought, or that
my thinking is without a "presupposition." For the presupposition
which I am for my thinking is not one made by thinking, not one thought of,
but it is posited thinking itself, it is the owner of the thought, and proves
only that thinking is nothing more than -- property, i. e. that an "independent"
thinking, a "thinking spirit," does not exist at all.
This reversal of the usual way of regarding things
might so resemble an empty playing with abstractions that even those against
whom it is directed would acquiesce in the harmless aspect I give it, if practical
consequences were not connected with it.
To bring these into a concise expression, the
assertion now made is that man is not the measure of all things, but I am this
measure. The servile critic has before his eyes another being, an idea, which
he means to serve; therefore he only slays the false idols for his God. What
is done for the love of this being, what else should it be but a -- work of
love? But I, when I criticize, do not even have myself before my eyes, but am
only doing myself a pleasure, amusing myself according to my taste; according
to my several needs I chew the thing up or only inhale its odor.
The distinction between the two attitudes will
come out still more strikingly if one reflects that the servile critic, because
love guides him, supposes he is serving the thing (cause) itself.
The truth, or "truth in general," people
are bound not to give up, but to seek for. What else is it but the Être
suprême, the highest essence? Even "true criticism" would have
to despair if it lost faith in the truth. And yet the truth is only a -- thought;
but it is not merely "a" thought, but the thought that is above all
thoughts, the irrefragable thought; it is the thought itself, which gives the
first hallowing to all others; it is the consecration of thoughts, the "absolute,"
the "sacred" thought. The truth wears longer than all the gods; for
it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that people have overthrown
the gods and at last God himself. "The truth" outlasts the downfall
of the world of gods, for it is the immortal soul of this transitory world of
gods, it is Deity itself.
I will answer Pilate's question, What is truth?
Truth is the free thought, the free idea, the free spirit; truth is what is
free from you, what is not your own, what is not in your power. But truth is
also the completely unindependent, impersonal, unreal, and incorporeal; truth
cannot step forward as you do, cannot move, change, develop; truth awaits and
receives everything from you, and itself is only through you; for it exists
only -- in your head. You concede that the truth is a thought, but say that
not every thought is a true one, or, as you are also likely to express it, not
every thought is truly and really a thought. And by what do you measure and
recognize the thought? By your impotence, to wit, by your being no longer able
to make any successful assault on it! When it overpowers you, inspires you,
and carries you away, then you hold it to be the true one. Its dominion over
you certifies to you its truth; and, when it possesses you, and you are possessed
by it, then you feel well with it, for then you have found your -- lord and
master. When you were seeking the truth, what did your heart then long for?
For your master! You did not aspire to your might, but to a Mighty One, and
wanted to exalt a Mighty One ("Exalt ye the Lord our God!"). The truth,
my dear Pilate, is -- the Lord, and all who seek the truth are seeking and praising
the Lord. Where does the Lord exist? Where else but in your head? He is only
spirit, and, wherever you believe you really see him, there he is a -- ghost;
for the Lord is merely something that is thought of, and it was only the Christian
pains and agony to make the invisible visible, the spiritual corporeal, that
generated the ghost and was the frightful misery of the belief in ghosts.
As long as you believe in the truth, you do not
believe in yourself, and you are a -- servant, a -- religious man. You alone
are the truth, or rather, you are more than the truth, which is nothing at all
before you. You too do assuredly ask about the truth, you too do assuredly "criticize,"
but you do not ask about a "highertruth" -- to wit, one that should
be higher than you -- nor criticize according to the criterion of such a truth.
You address yourself to thoughts and notions, as you do to the appearances of
things, only for the purpose of making them palatable to you, enjoyable to you,
and your own: you want only to subdue them and become their owner, you want
to orient yourself and feel at home in them, and you find them true, or see
them in their true light, when they can no longer slip away from you, no longer
have any unseized or uncomprehended place, or when they are right for you, when
they are your property. If afterward they become heavier again, if they wriggle
themselves out of your power again, then that is just their untruth -- to wit,
your impotence. Your impotence is their power, your humility their exaltation.
Their truth, therefore, is you, or is the nothing which you are for them and
in which they dissolve: their truth is their nothingness.
Only as the property of me do the spirits, the
truths, get to rest; and they then for the first time really are, when they
have been deprived of their sorry existence and made a property of mine, when
it is no longer said "the truth develops itself, rules, asserts itself;
history (also a concept) wins the victory," etc. The truth never has won
a victory, but was always my means to the victory, like the sword ("the
sword of truth"). The truth is dead, a letter, a word, a material that
I can use up. All truth by itself is dead, a corpse; it is alive only in the
same way as my lungs are alive -- to wit, in the measure of my own vitality.
Truths are material, like vegetables and weeds; as to whether vegetable or weed,
the decision lies in me.
Objects are to me only material that I use up.
Wherever I put my hand I grasp a truth, which I trim for myself. The truth is
certain to me, and I do not need to long after it. To do the truth a service
is in no case my intent; it is to me only a nourishment for my thinking head,
as potatoes are for my digesting stomach, or as a friend is for my social heart.
As long as I have the humor and force for thinking, every truth serves me only
for me to work it up according to my powers. As reality or worldliness is "vain
and a thing of naught" for Christians, so is the truth for me. It exists,
exactly as much as the things of this world go on existing although the Christian
has proved their nothingness; but it is vain, because it has its value not in
itself but in me. Of itself it is valueless. The truth is a -- creature.
As you produce innumerable things by your activity,
yes, shape the earth's surface anew and set up works of men everywhere, so too
you may still ascertain numberless truths by your thinking, and we will gladly
take delight in them. Nevertheless, as I do not please to hand myself over to
serve your newly discovered machines mechanically, but only help to set them
running for my benefit, so too I will only use your truths, without letting
myself be used for their demands.
All truths beneath me are to my liking; a truth
above me, a truth that I should have to direct myself by, I am not acquainted
with. For me there is no truth, for nothing is more than I! Not even my essence,
not even the essence of man, is more than I! than I, this "drop in the
bucket," this "insignificant man"!
You believe that you have done the utmost when
you boldly assert that, because every time has its own truth, there is no "absolute
truth." Why, with this you nevertheless still leave to each time its truth,
and thus you quite genuinely create an "absolute truth," a truth that
no time lacks, because every time, however its truth may be, still has a "truth."
Is it meant only that people have been thinking
in every time, and so have had thoughts or truths, and that in the subsequent
time these were other than they were in the earlier? No, the word is to be that
every time had its "truth of faith"; and in fact none has yet appeared
in which a "higher truth" has not been recognized, a truth that people
believed they must subject themselves to as "highness and majesty."