Chapter II: The Owner (3)

If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows fierily enough in his veins, he prefers to become a "criminal" against the family and to throw off its laws.

Which of the two lies nearer my heart, the good of the family or my good? In innumerable cases both go peacefully together; the advantage of the family is at the same time mine, and _vice versa_. Then it is hard to decide whether I am thinking _selfishly_ or _for the common benefit_, and perhaps I complacently flatter myself with my unselfishness. But there comes the day when a necessity of choice makes me tremble, when I have it in mind to dishonor my family tree, to affront parents, brothers, and kindred. What then? Now it will appear how I am disposed at the bottom of my heart; now it will be revealed whether piety ever stood above egoism for me, now the selfish one can no longer skulk behind the semblance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, and, growing from hour to hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur at first blush that the slightest thought which may result adversely to the spirit of the family (piety) bears within it a transgression against this? nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely conscious of the matter? It happens so with Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet." The unruly passion can at last no longer be tamed, and undermines the building of piety. You will say, indeed, it is from self-will that the family casts out of its bosom those wilful ones that grant more of a hearing to their passion than to piety; the good Protestants used the same excuse with much success against the Catholics, and believed in it themselves. But it is just a subterfuge to roll the fault off oneself, nothing more. The Catholics had regard for the common bond of the church, and thrust those heretics from them only because these did not have so much regard for the bond of the church as to sacrifice their convictions to it; the former, therefore, held the bond fast, because the bond, the Catholic (_i. e._ common and united) church, was sacred to them; the latter, on the contrary, disregarded the bond. Just so those who lack piety. They are not thrust out, but thrust themselves out, prizing their passion, their wilfulness, higher than the bond of the family.

But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less passionate and wilful heart than Juliet's. The pliable girl brings herself as a _sacrifice_ to the peace of the family. One might say that here too selfishness prevailed, for the decision came from the feeling that the pliable girl felt herself more satisfied by the unity of the family than by the fulfilment of her wish. That might be; but what if there remained a sure sign that egoism had been sacrificed to piety? What if, even after the wish that had been directed against the peace of the family was sacrificed, it remained at least as a recollection of a "sacrifice" brought to a sacred tie? What if the pliable girl were conscious of having left her self-will unsatisfied and humbly subjected herself to a higher power? Subjected and sacrificed, because the superstition of piety exercised its dominion over her!

There egoism won, here piety wins and the egoistic heart bleeds; there egoism was strong, here it was--weak. But the weak, as we have long known, are the--unselfish. For them, for these its weak members, the family cares, because they _belong_ to the family, do not belong to themselves and care for themselves. This weakness Hegel, _e. g._, praises when he wants to have match-making left to the choice of the parents.

As a sacred communion to which, among the rest, the individual owes obedience, the family has the judicial function too vested in it; such a "family court" is described _e. g._ in the "Cabanis" of Wilibald Alexis. There the father, in the name of the "family council," puts the intractable son among the soldiers and thrusts him out of the family, in order to cleanse the smirched family again by means of this act of punishment.--The most consistent development of family responsibility is contained in Chinese law, according to which the whole family has to expiate the individual's fault.

To-day, however, the arm of family power seldom reaches far enough to take seriously in hand the punishment of apostates (in most cases the State protects even against disinheritance). The criminal against the family (family-criminal) flees into the domain of the State and is free, as the State-criminal who gets away to America is no longer reached by the punishments of his State. He who has shamed his family, the graceless son, is protected against the family's punishment because the State, this protecting lord, takes away from family punishment its "sacredness" and profanes it, decreeing that it is only--"revenge": it restrains punishment, this sacred family right, because before its, the State's, "sacredness" the subordinate sacredness of the family always pales and loses its sanctity as soon as it comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict, the State lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family; but in the opposite case it even commands crime against the family, charging, _e. g._, the son to refuse obedience to his parents as soon as they want to beguile him to a crime against the State.

Well, the egoist has broken the ties of the family and found in the State a lord to shelter him against the grievously affronted spirit of the family. But where has he run now? Straight into a new _society_, in which his egoism is awaited by the same snares and nets that it has just escaped. For the State is likewise a society, not a union; it is the broadened _family_ ("Father of the Country--Mother of the Country--children of the country").

* * * * *

What is called a State is a tissue and plexus of dependence and adherence; it is a _belonging together_, a holding together, in which those who are placed together fit themselves to each other, or, in short, mutually depend on each other: it is the _order_ of this _dependence_. Suppose the king, whose authority lends authority to all down to the beadle, should vanish: still all in whom the will for order was awake would keep order erect against the disorders of bestiality. If disorder were victorious, the State would be at an end.

But is this thought of love, to fit ourselves to each other, to adhere to each other and depend on each other, really capable of winning us? According to this the State would be _love_ realized, the being for each other and living for each other of all. Is not self-will being lost while we attend to the will for order? Will people not be satisfied when order is cared for by authority, _i. e._ when authority sees to it that no one "gets in the way of" another; when, then, the _herd_ is judiciously distributed or ordered? Why, then everything is in "the best order," and it is this best order that is called--State!

Our societies and States _are_ without our _making_ them, are united without our uniting, are predestined and established, or have an independent standing[161] of their own, are the indissolubly established against us egoists. The fight of the world to-day is, as it is said, directed against the "established." Yet people are wont to misunderstand this as if it were only that what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better, established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment itself, _i. e._ the _State_, not a particular State, not any such thing as the mere condition of the State at the time; it is not another State (such as a "people's State") that men aim at, but their _union_, uniting, this ever-fluid uniting of everything standing.--A State exists even without my co-operation: I am born in it, brought up in it, under obligations to it, and must "do it homage."[162] It takes me up into its "favor,"[163] and I live by its "grace." Thus the independent establishment of the State founds my lack of independence; its condition as a "natural growth," its organism, demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it. That _it_ may be able to unfold in natural growth, it applies to me the shears of "civilization"; it gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me _e. g._ to respect the laws, to refrain from injury to State property (_i. e._ private property), to reverence divine and earthly highness, etc.; in short, it teaches me to be--_unpunishable_, "sacrificing" my ownness to "sacredness" (everything possible is sacred, _e. g._ property, others' life, etc.). In this consists the sort of civilization and culture that the State is able to give me: it brings me up to be a "serviceable instrument," a "serviceable member of society."

This every State must do, the people's State as well as the absolute or constitutional one. It must do so as long as we rest in the error that it is an _I_, as which it then applies to itself the name of a "moral, mystical, or political person." I, who really am I, must pull off this lion-skin of the I from the stalking thistle-eater. What manifold robbery have I not put up with in the history of the world! There I let sun, moon, and stars, cats and crocodiles, receive the honor of ranking as I; there Jehovah, Allah, and Our Father came and were invested with the I; there families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually mankind, came and were honored as I's; there the Church, the State, came with the pretension to be I,--and I gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then there was always a real I too that joined the company and affirmed in my face that it was not my _you_ but my real _I_. Why, _the_ Son of Man _par excellence_ had done the like; why should not a son of man do it too? So I saw my I always above me and outside me, and could never really come to myself.

I never believed in myself; I never believed in my present, I saw myself only in the future. The boy believes he will be a proper I, a proper fellow, only when he has become a man; the man thinks, only in the other world will he be something proper. And, to enter more closely upon reality at once, even the best are to-day still persuading each other that one must have received into himself the State, his people, mankind, and what not, in order to be a real I, a "free burgher," a "citizen," a "free or true man"; they too see the truth and reality of me in the reception of an alien I and devotion to it. And what sort of an I? An I that is neither an I nor a you, a _fancied_ I, a spook.

While in the Middle Ages the church could well brook many States living united in it, the States learned after the Reformation, especially after the Thirty Years' War, to tolerate many churches (confessions) gathering under one crown. But all States are religious and, as the case may be, "Christian States," and make it their task to force the intractable, the "egoists," under the bond of the unnatural, _i. e._ Christianize them. All arrangements of the Christian State have the object of _Christianizing the people_. Thus the court has the object of forcing people to justice, the school that of forcing them to mental culture,--in short, the object of protecting those who act Christianly against those who act unchristianly, of bringing Christian action to _dominion_, of making it _powerful_. Among these means of force the State counted the _Church_, too, it demanded a--particular religion from everybody. Dupin said lately against the clergy, "Instruction and education belong to the State."

Certainly everything that regards the principle of morality is a State affair. Hence it is that the Chinese State meddles so much in family concerns, and one is nothing there if one is not first of all a good child to his parents. Family concerns are altogether State concerns with us too, only that our State--puts confidence in the families without painful oversight; it holds the family bound by the marriage tie, and this tie cannot be broken without it.

But that the State makes me responsible for my principles, and demands certain ones from me, might make me ask, what concern has it with the "wheel in my head" (principle)? Very much, for the State is the--_ruling principle_. It is supposed that in divorce matters, in marriage law in general, the question is of the proportion of rights between Church and State. Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is to rule over man, be it called faith or ethical law (morality). The State behaves as the same ruler that the Church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality.

People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite tendencies free, and the like, by which civilized States are distinguished. Certainly some are strong enough to look with complacency on even the most unrestrained meetings, while others charge their catchpolls to go hunting for tobacco-pipes. Yet for one State as for another the play of individuals among themselves, their buzzing to and fro, their daily life, is an _incident_ which it must be content to leave to themselves because it can do nothing with this. Many, indeed, still strain out gnats and swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are "freer" in the latter, because less pestered. But _I_ am free in _no_ State. The lauded tolerance of States is simply a tolerating of the "harmless," the "not dangerous"; it is only elevation above pettymindedness, only a more estimable, grander, prouder--despotism. A certain State seemed for a while to mean to be pretty well elevated above _literary_ combats, which might be carried on with all heat; England is elevated above _popular turmoil_ and--tobacco-smoking. But woe to the literature that deals blows at the State itself, woe to the mobs that "endanger" the State. In that certain State they dream of a "free science," in England of a "free popular life."

The State does let individuals _play_ as freely as possible, only they must not be in _earnest_, must not forget _it_. Man must not carry on intercourse with man _unconcernedly_, not without "superior oversight and mediation." I must not execute all that I am able to, but only so much as the State allows; I must not turn to account _my_ thoughts, nor _my_ work, nor, in general, anything of mine.

The State always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual--to make him subject to some _generality_ or other; it lasts only so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly-marked _restriction of me_, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a State aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to the _purpose of the State_. Through the State nothing _in common_ comes to pass either, as little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of all the individual parts of a machine; it is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit, _machine work_. In the same style everything is done by the _State machine_ too; for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The State seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The State wants to make something out of man, therefore there live in it only _made_ men; every one who wants to be his own self is its opponent and is nothing. "He is nothing" means as much as, The State does not make use of him, grants him no position, no office, no trade, and the like.

E. Bauer,[164] in the "_Liberale Bestrebungen_," II, 50, is still dreaming of a "government which, proceeding out of the people, can never stand in opposition to it." He does indeed (p. 69) himself take back the word "government": "In the republic no government at all obtains, but only an executive authority. An authority which proceeds purely and alone out of the people; which has not an independent power, independent principles, independent officers, over against the people; but which has its foundation, the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the sole, supreme authority of the State, in the people. The concept government, therefore, is not at all suitable in the people's State." But the thing remains the same. That which has "proceeded, been founded, sprung from the fountain" becomes something "independent" and, like a child delivered from the womb, enters upon opposition at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would be nothing at all.

"In the free State there is no government," etc. (p. 94). This surely means that the people, when it is the _sovereign_, does not let itself be conducted by a superior authority. Is it perchance different in absolute monarchy? Is there there for the _sovereign_, perchance, a government standing over him? _Over_ the sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never stands a government: that is understood of itself. But over _me_ there will stand a government in every "State," in the absolute as well as in the republican or "free." _I_ am as badly off in one as in the other.

The republic is nothing whatever but--absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing to be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their master the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Here, then, the _parties_ at least are already free,--_videlicet_, the office-holders' party (so-called people's party). The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic, because it is the _State_ in incipient _dissolution_.

E. Bauer denies (p. 56) that the people is a "personality" in the constitutional State; _per contra_, then, in the republic? Well, in the constitutional State the people is--a _party_, and a party is surely a "personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a "political" (p. 76) moral person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook.

Further, E. Bauer goes on (p. 69): "guardianship is the characteristic of a government." Truly, still more that of a people and "people's State"; it is the characteristic of all _dominion_. A people's State, which "unites in itself all completeness of power," the "absolute master," cannot let me become powerful. And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's officials" "servants, instruments," because they "execute the free, rational law-will of the people!" (p. 73). He thinks (p. 74): "Only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how will a lack of subordination be allowable there? subordination to the--people's will.

"In the constitutional State it is the regent and his _disposition_ that the whole structure of government rests on in the end." (_Ibid._, p. 130.) How would that be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall _I_ not there be governed by the people's _disposition_ too, and does it make a difference _for me_ whether I see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence means as much as "religious relation," as E. Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains _for me_ the superior power, the "majesty" (for God and prince have their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in religious relations.--Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no _law_. E. Bauer's whole attempt comes to a _change of masters_. Instead of wanting to make the _people_ free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.

In the constitutional State _absolutism_ itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will wear out against each other.

E. Bauer inveighs against the determination of the regent by _birth_, by _chance_. But, when "the people" have become "the sole power in the State" (p. 132), have _we_ not then in it a master from _chance_? Why, what is the people? The people has always been only the _body_ of the government: it is many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution. And the constitution is the--prince. Princes and peoples will persist so long as both do not _col_lapse, _i. e._ fall _together_. If under one constitution there are many "peoples,"--_e. g._ in the ancient Persian monarchy and to-day,--then these "peoples" rank only as "provinces." For me the people is in any case an--accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome.

What is one to think of under the name of an "organized" people (_ibid._, p. 132)? A people "that no longer has a government," that governs itself. In which, therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a people organized by ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat.

If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the people, if it is to be a subject[165] and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a _head_, its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in the "Trio," and Proudhon declares, "_une société, pour ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut vivre_."[166]

The _vox populi_ is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule our princes. Certainly the _vox populi_ is at the same time _vox dei_; but is either of any use, and is not the _vox principis_ also _vox dei_?

At this point the "Nationals" may be brought to mind. To demand of the thirty-eight States of Germany that they shall act as _one nation_ can only be put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of bees, led by thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into one swarm. _Bees_ they all remain; but it is not the bees as bees that belong together and can join themselves together, it is only that the _subject_ bees are connected with the _ruling_ queens. Bees and peoples are destitute of will, and the _instinct_ of their queens leads them.

If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, _i. e._ beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the "peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together, are _destitute of will_. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to unification.

Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something _general_, abstract, an empty, lifeless _concept_, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively _particular_ from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a _people_, a _nation_, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just now the order of the day--to wit, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, etc., Lusatia, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality--coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, _i. e._ unite _themselves_, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other words, when they are more than--Germans: only then can they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in _to himself_. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German"! With that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," _i. e._ as long as they have a "_family disposition_." From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run,--from the _family spirit_,--the Nationals, who want to have a great _family of Germans_, cannot liberate themselves.

Aside from this, the so-called Nationals would only have to understand themselves rightly in order to lift themselves out of their juncture with the good-natured Teutomaniacs. For the uniting for material ends and interests, which they demand of the Germans, comes to nothing else than a voluntary union. Carriere, inspired, cries out,[167] "Railroads are to the more penetrating eye the way to a _life of the people_ such as has not yet anywhere appeared in such significance." Quite right, it will be a life of the people that has nowhere appeared, because it is not a--life of the people.--So Carriere then combats himself (p. 10): "Pure humanity or manhood cannot be better represented than by a people fulfilling its mission." Why, by this nationality only is represented. "Washed-out generality is lower than the form complete in itself, which is itself a whole, and lives as a living member of the truly general, the organized." Why, the people is this very "washed-out generality," and it is only a man that is the "form complete in itself."

The impersonality of what they call "people, nation," is clear also from this: that a people which wants to bring its I into view to the best of its power puts at its head the ruler _without will_. It finds itself in the alternative either to be subjected to a prince who realizes only _himself, his individual_ pleasure--then it does not recognize in the "absolute master" its own will, the so-called will of the people--, or to seat on the throne a prince who gives effect to _no_ will of his _own_--then it has a prince _without will_, whose place some ingenious clockwork would perhaps fill just as well.--Therefore insight need go only a step farther; then it becomes clear of itself that the I of the people is an impersonal, "spiritual" power, the--law. The people's I, therefore, is a--spook, not an I. I am I only by this, that I make myself; _i. e._ that it is not another who makes me, but I must be my own work. But how is it with this I of the people? _Chance_ plays it into the people's hand, chance gives it this or that born lord, accidents procure it the chosen one; he is not its (the "_sovereign_" people's) product, as I am _my_ product. Conceive of one wanting to talk you into believing that you were not your I, but Tom or Jack was your I! But so it is with the people, and rightly. For the people has an I as little as the eleven planets counted together have an _I_, though they revolve around a common _centre_.

Bailly's utterance is representative of the slave-disposition that folks manifest before the sovereign people, as before the prince. "I have," says he, "no longer any extra reason when the general reason has pronounced itself. My first law was the nation's will; as soon as it had assembled I knew nothing beyond its sovereign will." He would have no "extra reason," and yet this extra reason alone accomplishes everything. Just so Mirabeau inveighs in the words, "No power on earth has the _right_ to say to the nation's representatives, It is my will!"

As with the Greeks, there is now a wish to make man a _zoon politicon_, a citizen of the State or political man. So he ranked for a long time as a "citizen of heaven." But the Greek fell into ignominy along with his _State_, the citizen of heaven likewise falls with heaven; we, on the other hand, are not willing to go down along with the _people_, the nation and nationality, not willing to be merely _political_ men or politicians. Since the Revolution they have striven to "make the people happy," and in making the people happy, great, and the like, they make Us unhappy: the people's good hap is--my mishap.

What empty talk the political liberals utter with emphatic decorum is well seen again in Nauwerk's "On Taking Part in the State." There complaint is made of those who are indifferent and do not take part, who are not in the full sense citizens, and the author speaks as if one could not be man at all if one did not take a lively part in State affairs, _i. e._ if one were not a politician. In this he is right; for, if the State ranks as the warder of everything "human," we can have nothing human without taking part in it. But what does this make out against the egoist? Nothing at all, because the egoist is to himself the warder of the human, and has nothing to say to the State except "Get out of my sunshine." Only when the State comes in contact with his ownness does the egoist take an active interest in it. If the condition of the State does not bear hard on the closet-philosopher, is he to occupy himself with it because it is his "most sacred duty"? So long as the State does according to his wish, what need has he to look up from his studies? Let those who from an interest of their own want to have conditions otherwise busy themselves with them. Not now, nor evermore, will "sacred duty" bring folks to reflect about the State,--as little as they become disciples of science, artists, etc., from "sacred duty." Egoism alone can impel them to it, and will as soon as things have become much worse. If you showed folks that their egoism demanded that they busy themselves with State affairs, you would not have to call on them long; if, on the other hand, you appeal to their love of fatherland and the like, you will long preach to deaf hearts in behalf of this "service of love." Certainly, in your sense the egoists will not participate in State affairs at all.

Nauwerk utters a genuine liberal phrase on p. 16: "Man completely fulfils his calling only in feeling and knowing himself as a member of humanity, and being active as such. The individual cannot realize the idea of _manhood_ if he does not stay himself upon all humanity, if he does not draw his powers from it like Antæus."

In the same place it is said: "Man's relation to the _res publica_ is degraded to a purely private matter by the theological view; is, accordingly, made away with by denial." As if the political view did otherwise with religion! There religion is a "private matter."

If, instead of "sacred duty," "man's destiny," the "calling to full manhood," and similar commandments, it were held up to people that their _self-interest_ was infringed on when they let everything in the State go as it goes, then, without declamations, they would be addressed as one will have to address them at the decisive moment if he wants to attain his end. Instead of this, the theology-hating author says, "If there has ever been a time when the _State_ laid claim to all that are _hers_, such a time is ours.--The thinking man sees in participation in the theory and practice of the State a _duty_, one of the most sacred duties that rest upon him"--and then takes under closer consideration the "unconditional necessity that everybody participate in the State."

He in whose head or heart or both the _State_ is seated, he who is possessed by the State, or the _believer in the State_, is a politician, and remains such to all eternity.

"The State is the most necessary means for the complete development of mankind." It assuredly has been so as long as we wanted to develop mankind; but, if we want to develop ourselves, it can be to us only a means of hindrance.

Can State and people still be reformed and bettered now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church, etc.: they can be abrogated, annihilated, done away with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense into sense by reforming it, or must I drop it outright?

Henceforth what is to be done is no longer about the _State_ (the form of the State, etc.), but about me. With this all questions about the prince's power, the constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my _creations_ from myself.

To the chapter of society belongs also "the party," whose praise has of late been sung.

In the State the _party_ is current. "Party, party, who should not join one!" But the individual is _unique_,[168] not a member of the party. He unites freely, and separates freely again. The party is nothing but a State in the State, and in this smaller bee-State "peace" is also to rule just as in the greater. The very people who cry loudest that there must be an _opposition_ in the State inveigh against every discord in the party. A proof that they too want only a--State. All parties are shattered not against the State, but against the ego.[169]

One hears nothing oftener now than the admonition to remain true to his party; party men despise nothing so much as a mugwump. One must run with his party through thick and thin, and unconditionally approve and represent its chief principles. It does not indeed go quite so badly here as with closed societies, because these bind their members to fixed laws or statutes (_e. g._ the orders, the Society of Jesus, etc.). But yet the party ceases to be a union at the same moment at which it makes certain principles _binding_ and wants to have them assured against attacks; but this moment is the very birth-act of the party. As party it is already a _born society_, a dead union, an idea that has become fixed. As party of absolutism it cannot will that its members should doubt the irrefragable truth of this principle; they could cherish this doubt only if they were egoistic enough to want still to be something outside their party, _i. e._ non-partisans. Non-partisan they cannot be as party-men, but only as egoists. If you are a Protestant and belong to that party, you must only justify Protestantism, at most "purge" it, not reject it; if you are a Christian and belong among men to the Christian party, you cannot go beyond this as a member of this party, but only when your egoism, _i. e._ non-partisanship, impels you to it. What exertions the Christians, down to Hegel and the Communists, have put forth to make their party strong! they stuck to it that Christianity must contain the eternal truth, and that one needs only to get at it, make sure of it, and justify it.

In short, the party cannot bear non-partisanship, and it is in this that egoism appears. What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who _unite_ with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.

He who passes over from one party to another is at once abused as a "turncoat." Certainly _morality_ demands that one stand by his party, and to become apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of "faithlessness"; but ownness knows no commandment of "faithfulness, adhesion, etc.," ownness permits everything, even apostasy, defection. Unconsciously even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this principle when they have to judge one who passes over to _their_ party,--nay, they are likely to be making proselytes; they should only at the same time acquire a consciousness of the fact that one must commit _immoral_ actions in order to commit his own,--_i. e._ here, that one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order to determine himself instead of being determined by moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in equivocal colors, and will not easily obtain their confidence; for there sticks to him the taint of "faithlessness," _i. e._ of an immorality. In the lower man this view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall here too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment, and the contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of morality does not, on account of the confusion of their concepts, come clearly to their consciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate immoral downright, because they themselves entice to apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, etc.; still, they cannot give up the standpoint of morality either. And yet here the occasion was to be seized to step outside of morality.

Are the Own or Unique[170] perchance a party? How could they be _own_ if they were such as _belonged_ to a party?

Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and entering their circle one forms a _union_ with them that lasts as long as party and I pursue one and the same goal. But to-day I still share the party's tendency, and by to-morrow I can do so no longer and I become "untrue" to it. The party has nothing _binding_ (obligatory) for me, and I do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, I become its foe.

In every party that cares for itself and its persistence, the members are unfree (or better, unown) in that degree, they lack egoism in that degree, in which they serve this desire of the party. The independence of the party conditions the lack of independence in the party-members.

A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never do without a _confession of faith_. For those who belong to the party must _believe_ in its principle, it must not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, it must be the certain, indubitable thing for the party-member. That is: One must belong to a party body and soul, else one is not truly a party-man, but more or less--an egoist. Harbor a doubt of Christianity, and you are already no longer a true Christian, you have lifted yourself to the "effrontery" of putting a question beyond it and haling Christianity before your egoistic judgment-seat. You have--_sinned_ against Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not _e. g._ a cause for the Jews, another party). But well for you if you do not let yourself be affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness.

So then an egoist could never embrace a party or take up with a party? Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself be embraced and taken up by the party. For him the party remains all the time nothing but a _gathering_: he is one of the party, he takes part.

* * * * *

The best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens, and the more the devoted mind for _legality_ is lost, so much the more will the State, this system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished in force and quality. With the "good citizens" the good State too perishes and dissolves into anarchy and lawlessness. "Respect for the law!" By this cement the total of the State is held together. "The law is _sacred_, and he who affronts it a _criminal_." Without crime no State: the moral world--and this the State is--is crammed full of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is the "lordship of law," its hierarchy, it follows that the egoist, in all cases where _his_ advantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself only by crime.

The State cannot give up the claim that its _laws_ and ordinances are _sacred_.[171] At this the individual ranks as the _unholy_[172] (barbarian, natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly as he was once regarded by the Church; before the individual the State takes on the nimbus of a saint.[173] Thus it issues a law against dueling. Two men who are both at one in this, that they are willing to stake their life for a cause (no matter what), are not to be allowed this, because the State will not have it: it imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? It is at once quite another situation if, as _e. g._ in North America, society determines to let the duelists bear certain evil _consequences_ of their act, _e. g._ withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for this or that reason, the man who is hit cannot therefore complain of encroachment on his liberty: the society is simply availing itself of its own liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a _crime_. The duel is no crime there, but only an act against which the society adopts counter-measures, resolves on a _defence_. The State, on the contrary, stamps the duel as a crime, _i. e._ as an injury to its sacred law: it makes it a _criminal case_. The society leaves it to the individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes his free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse way, denying all right to the individual's decision and, instead, ascribing the sole right to its own decision, the law of the State, so that he who transgresses the State's commandment is looked upon as if he were acting against God's commandment,--a view which likewise was once maintained by the Church. Here God is the Holy in and of himself, and the commandments of the Church, as of the State, are the commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to the world through his anointed and Lords-by-the-Grace-of-God. If the Church had _deadly sins_, the State has _capital crimes_; if the one had _heretics_, the other has _traitors_; the one _ecclesiastical penalties_, the other _criminal penalties_; the one _inquisitorial_ processes, the other _fiscal_; in short, there sins, here crimes, there sinners, here criminals, there inquisition and here--inquisition. Will the sanctity of the State not fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its "subjects," will this remain? Will the "saint's" face not be stripped of its adornment?

What a folly, to ask of the State's authority that it should enter into an honorable fight with the individual, and, as they express themselves in the matter of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If the State, this thought, is to be a _de facto_ power, it simply must be a superior power against the individual. The State is "sacred" and must not expose itself to the "impudent attacks" of individuals. If the State is _sacred_, there must be censorship. The political liberals admit the former and dispute the inference. But in any case they concede repressive measures to it, for--they stick to this, that State is _more_ than the individual and exercises a justified revenge, called punishment.

_Punishment_ has a meaning only when it is to afford expiation for the injuring of a _sacred_ thing. If something is sacred to any one, he certainly deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who lets a man's life continue in existence _because_ to him it is sacred and he has a _dread_ of touching it is simply a--_religious_ man.

Weitling lays crime at the door of "social disorder," and lives in the expectation that under Communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible, because the temptations to them, _e. g._ money, fall away. As, however, his organized society is also exalted into a sacred and inviolable one, he miscalculates in that good-hearted opinion. Such as with their mouth professed allegiance to the Communistic society, but worked underhand for its ruin, would not be lacking. Besides, Weitling has to keep on with "curative means against the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses," and "curative means" always announce to begin with that individuals will be looked upon as "called" to a particular "salvation" and hence treated according to the requirements of this "human calling." _Curative means_ or _healing_ is only the reverse side of _punishment_, the _theory of cure_ runs parallel with the _theory of punishment_; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former takes it for a sin of the man _against himself_, as a decadence from his health. But the correct thing is that I regard it either as an action that _suits me_ or as one that _does not suit me_, as hostile or friendly to _me_, _i. e._ that I treat it as my _property_, which I cherish or demolish. "Crime" or "disease" are not either of them an _egoistic_ view of the matter, _i. e._ a judgment _starting from me_, but starting from _another_,--to wit, whether it injures _right_, general right, or the _health_ partly of the individual (the sick one), partly of the generality (_society_). "Crime" is treated inexorably, "disease" with "loving gentleness, compassion," and the like.

Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred vanishes, punishment must not less be drawn into its fall; for it too has significance only over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical punishments have been abolished. Why? Because how one behaves toward the "holy God" is his own affair. But, as this one punishment, _ecclesiastical punishment_, has fallen, so all _punishments_ must fall. As sin against the so-called God is a man's own affair, so that against every kind of the so-called sacred. According to our theories of penal law, with whose "improvement in conformity to the times" people are tormenting themselves in vain, they want to _punish_ men for this or that "inhumanity"; and therein they make the silliness of these theories especially plain by their consistency, hanging the little thieves and letting the big ones run. For injury to property they have the house of correction, and for "violence to thought," suppression of "natural rights of man," only--representations and petitions.

The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred, and perishes of itself if punishment is given up. Now they want to create everywhere a new penal law, without indulging in a misgiving about punishment itself. But it is exactly punishment that must make room for satisfaction, which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at procuring _us_ a satisfactory outcome. If one does to us what we _will not put up with_, we break his power and bring our own to bear: we satisfy _ourselves_ on him, and do not fall into the folly of wanting to satisfy right (the spook). It is not the _sacred_ that is to defend itself against man, but man against man; as _God_ too, you know, no longer defends himself against man, God to whom formerly (and in part, indeed, even now) all the "servants of God" offered their hands to punish the blasphemer, as they still at this very day lend their hands to the sacred. This devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also that, without lively participation of one's own, one only delivers misdoers into the hands of the police and courts: a non-participating making over to the authorities, "who, of course, will best administer sacred matters." The people is quite crazy for hounding the police on against everything that seems to it to be immoral, often only unseemly, and this popular rage for the moral protects the police institution more than the government could in any way protect it.

In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud--_crime_, does it not rumble in distant thunders, and do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?

* * * * *

He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family, party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society" or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves _mankind_."

_People_ is the name of the body, _State_ of the spirit, of that _ruling person_ that has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure peoples and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general reason"; but servitude would only become still more intense with this widening, and philanthropists and humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians and diplomats.

Modern critics inveigh against religion because it sets God, the divine, moral, etc., _outside_ of man, or makes them something objective, in opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects _into_ man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error of religion, to give man a "destiny," in that they too want to have him divine, human, and the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are his essence. And, like religion, politics too wanted to "_educate_" man, to bring him to the realization of his "essence," his "destiny," to _make_ something out of him,--to wit, a "true man," the one in the form of the "true believer," the other in that of the "true citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether one calls the destiny the divine or human.

Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of _should_: he _should_ become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate, this commandment, every one steps not only in front of another but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new _religion_, to set up a new absolute, an ideal,--to wit, freedom. Men _should_ be free. Then there might even arise _missionaries_ of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction that all were properly destined to become Christians, sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) constitute itself as a new _community_ and carry on a like "propaganda" therefrom. Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together; but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old _care_ for us, of culture directed toward an end,--in short, the principle of _making something_ out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and men.

One may well say with Feuerbach and others that religion has displaced the human from man, and has transferred it so into another world that, unattainable, it went on with its own existence there as something personal in itself, as a "God": but the error of religion is by no means exhausted with this. One might very well let fall the personality of the displaced human, might transform God into the divine, and still remain religious. For the religious consists in discontent with the _present_ man, _i. e._ in the setting up of a "perfection" to be striven for, in "man wrestling for his completion."[174] ("Ye therefore _should_ be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5. 48): it consists in the fixation of an _ideal_, an absolute. Perfection is the "supreme good," the _finis bonorum_; every one's ideal is the perfect man, the true, the free man, etc.

The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of the "free man." If one could find it, there would be a new--religion, because a new ideal; there would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a new deity, a new contrition.