Chapter II: The Owner (7)

The State exerts itself to tame the desirous man; in other words, it seeks to direct his desire to it alone, and to _content_ that desire with what it offers. To sate the desire for the desirous man's sake does not come into its mind: on the contrary, it stigmatizes as an "egoistic man" the man who breathes out unbridled desire, and the "egoistic man" is its enemy. He is this for it because the capacity to agree with him is wanting to the State; the egoist is precisely what it cannot "comprehend." Since the State (as nothing else is possible) has to do only for itself, it does not take care for my needs, but takes care only of how it shall make away with me, _i. e._ make out of me another ego, a good citizen. It takes measures for the "improvement of morals."--And with what does it win individuals for itself? With itself, _i. e._ with what is the State's, with _State property_. It will be unremittingly active in making all participants in its "goods," providing all with the "good things of culture": it presents them its education, opens to them the access to its institutions of culture, capacitates them to come to property (_i. e._ to a fief) in the way of industry, etc. For all these _fiefs_ it demands only the just rent of continual _thanks_. But the "unthankful" forget to pay these thanks.--Now, neither can "society" do essentially otherwise than the State.

You bring into a union your whole power, your competence, and _make yourself count_; in a society you are _employed_, with your working power; in the former you live egoistically, in the latter humanly, _i. e._ religiously, as a "member in the body of this Lord"; to a society you owe what you have, and are in duty bound to it, are--possessed by "social duties"; a union you utilize, and give it up undutifully and unfaithfully when you see no way to use it further. If a society is more than you, then it is more to you than yourself; a union is only your instrument, or the sword with which you sharpen and increase your natural force; the union exists for you and through you, the society conversely lays claim to you for itself and exists even without you; in short, the society is _sacred_, the union your _own_; the society consumes _you_, _you_ consume the union.

Nevertheless people will not be backward with the objection that the agreement which has been concluded may again become burdensome to us and limit our freedom; they will say, we too would at last come to this, that "every one must sacrifice a part of his freedom for the sake of the generality." But the sacrifice would not be made for the "generality's" sake a bit, as little as I concluded the agreement for the "generality's" or even, for any other man's sake; rather I came into it only for the sake of my own benefit, from _selfishness_.[209] But, as regards the sacrificing, surely I "sacrifice" only that which does not stand in my power, _i. e._ I "sacrifice" nothing at all.

To come back to property, the lord is proprietor. Choose then whether you want to be lord, or whether society shall be! On this depends whether you are to be an _owner_ or a _ragamuffin!_ The egoist is owner, the Socialist a ragamuffin. But ragamuffinism or propertylessness is the sense of feudalism, of the feudal system, which since the last century has only changed its overlord, putting "Man" in the place of God, and accepting as a fief from Man what had before been a fief from the grace of God. That the ragamuffinism of Communism is carried out by the humane principle into the absolute or most ragamuffinly ragamuffinism has been shown above; but at the same time also, how ragamuffinism can only thus swing around into ownness. The _old_ feudal system was so thoroughly trampled into the ground in the Revolution that since then all reactionary craft has remained fruitless, and will always remain fruitless, because the dead is--dead; but the resurrection too had to prove itself a truth in Christian history, and has so proved itself: for in another world feudalism is risen again with a glorified body, the _new_ feudalism under the suzerainty of "Man."

Christianity is not annihilated, but the faithful are right in having hitherto trustfully assumed of every combat against it that this could serve only for the purgation and confirmation of Christianity; for it has really only been glorified, and "Christianity exposed" is the--_human Christianity_. We are still living entirely in the Christian age, and the very ones who feel worst about it are the most zealously contributing to "complete" it. The more human, the dearer has feudalism become to us; for we the less believe that it still is feudalism, we take it the more confidently for ownness and think we have found what is "most absolutely our own" when we discover "the human."

Liberalism wants to give me what is mine, but it thinks to procure it for me not under the title of mine, but under that of the "human." As if it were attainable under this mask! The rights of man, the precious work of the Revolution, have the meaning that the Man in me _entitles_[210] me to this and that; I as individual, _i. e._ as this man, am not entitled, but Man has the right and entitles me. Hence as man I may well be entitled; but, as I am more than man, to wit, a _special_ man, it may be refused to this very me, the special one. If on the other hand you insist on the _value_ of your gifts, keep up their price, do not let yourselves be forced to sell out below price, do not let yourselves be talked into the idea that your ware is not worth its price, do not make yourselves ridiculous by a "ridiculous price," but imitate the brave man who says, I will _sell_ my life (property) dear, the enemy shall not have it at a cheap _bargain_; then you have recognized the reverse of Communism as the correct thing, and the word then is not "Give up your property!" but "_Get the value out of_ your property!"

Over the portal of our time stands not that "Know thyself" of Apollo, but a "_Get the value out of thyself!_"

Proudhon calls property "robbery" (_le vol_). But alien property--and he is talking of this alone--is not less existent by renunciation, cession, and humility; it is a _present_. Why so sentimentally call for compassion as a poor victim of robbery, when one is just a foolish, cowardly giver of presents? Why here again put the fault on others as if they were robbing us, while we ourselves do bear the fault in leaving the others, unrobbed? The poor are to blame for there being rich men.

Universally, no one grows indignant at _his_, but at _alien_ property. They do not in truth attack property, but the alienation of property. They want to be able to call _more_, not less, _theirs_; they want to call everything _theirs_. They are fighting, therefore, against _alienness_, or, to form a word similar to property, against alienty. And how do they help themselves therein? Instead of transforming the alien into own, they play impartial and ask only that all property be left to a third party (_e. g._ human society). They revendicate the alien not in their own name but in a third party's. Now the "egoistic" coloring is wiped off, and everything is so clean and--human!

Propertylessness or ragamuffinism, this then is the "essence of Christianity," as it is the essence of all religiousness (_i. e._ godliness, morality, humanity), and only announced itself most clearly, and, as glad tidings, became a gospel capable of development, in the "absolute religion." We have before us the most striking development in the present fight against property, a fight which is to bring "Man" to victory and make propertylessness complete: victorious humanity is the victory of--Christianity. But the "Christianity exposed" thus is feudalism completed, the most all-embracing feudal system, _i. e._ perfect ragamuffinism.

Once more then, doubtless, a "revolution" against the feudal system?--

Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or _status_, the State or society, and is accordingly a _political_ or _social_ act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new _arrangements_; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on "institutions." It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an _egoistic_ purpose and deed.

The revolution commands one to make _arrangements_, the insurrection[211] demands that he _rise or exalt himself_.[212] What _constitution_ was to be chosen, this question busied the revolutionary heads, and the whole political period foams with constitutional fights and constitutional questions, as the social talents too were uncommonly inventive in societary arrangement (phalansteries and the like). The insurgent[213] strives to become constitutionless.

While, to get greater clearness, I am thinking up a comparison, the founding of Christianity comes unexpectedly into my mind. On the liberal side it is noted as a bad point in the first Christians that they preached obedience to the established heathen civil order, enjoined recognition of the heathen authorities, and confidently delivered a command, "Give to the emperor that which is the emperor's." Yet how much disturbance arose at the same time against the Roman supremacy, how mutinous did the Jews and even the Romans show themselves against their own temporal government! in short, how popular was "political discontent"! Those Christians would hear nothing of it; would not side with the "liberal tendencies." The time was politically so agitated that, as is said in the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the founder of Christianity more successfully than if they arraigned him for "political intrigue," and yet the same gospels report that he was precisely the one who took least part in these political doings. But why was he not a revolutionist, not a demagogue, as the Jews would gladly have seen him? why was he not a liberal? Because he expected no salvation from a change of _conditions_, and this whole business was indifferent to him. He was not a revolutionist like _e. g._ Cæsar, but an insurgent; not a State-overturner, but one who straightened _himself_ up. That was why it was for him only a matter of "Be ye wise as serpents," which expresses the same sense as, in the special case, that "Give to the emperor that which is the emperor's"; for he was not carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities, but wanted to walk his _own_ way, untroubled about, and undisturbed by, these authorities. Not less indifferent to him than the government were its enemies, for neither understood what he wanted, and he had only to keep them off from him with the wisdom of the serpent. But, even though not a ringleader of popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revolutionist, he (and every one of the ancient Christians) was so much the more an _insurgent_, who lifted himself above everything that seemed sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to, and who at the same time cut off the sources of life of the whole heathen world, with which the established State must wither away as a matter of course; precisely because he put from him the upsetting of the established, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator; for he walled it in, confidently and recklessly carrying up the building of _his_ temple over it, without heeding the pains of the immured.

Now, as it happened to the heathen order of the world, will the Christian order fare likewise? A revolution certainly does not bring on the end if an insurrection is not consummated first!

My intercourse with the world, what does it aim at? I want to have the enjoyment of it, therefore it must be my property, and therefore I want to win it. I do not want the liberty of men, nor their equality; I want only _my_ power over them, I want to make them my property, _i. e._ _material for enjoyment_. And, if I do not succeed in that, well, then I call even the power over life and death, which Church and State reserved to themselves,--mine. Brand that officer's widow who, in the flight in Russia, after her leg has been shot away, takes the garter from it, strangles her child therewith, and then bleeds to death alongside the corpse,--brand the memory of the--infanticide. Who knows, if this child had remained alive, how much it might have "been of use to the world"! The mother murdered it because she wanted to die _satisfied_ and at rest. Perhaps this case still appeals to your sentimentality, and you do not know how to read out of it anything further. Be it so; I on my part use it as an example for this, that _my_ satisfaction decides about my relation to men, and that I do not renounce, from any access of humility, even the power over life and death.

As regards "social duties" in general, another does not give me my position toward others, therefore neither God nor humanity prescribes to me my relation to men, but I give myself this position. This is more strikingly said thus: I have no _duty_ to others, as I have a duty even to myself (_e. g._ that of self-preservation, and therefore not suicide) only so long as I distinguish myself from myself (my immortal soul from my earthly existence, etc.).

I no longer _humble_ myself before any power, and I recognize that all powers are only my power, which I have to subject at once when they threaten to become a power _against_ or _above_ me; each of them must be only one of _my means_ to carry my point, as a hound is our power against game, but is killed by us if it should fall upon us ourselves. All powers that dominate me I then reduce to serving me. The idols exist through me; I need only refrain from creating them anew, then they exist no longer: "higher powers" exist only through my exalting them and abasing myself.

Consequently my relation to the world is this: I no longer do anything for it "for God's sake," I do nothing "for man's sake," but what I do I do "for my sake." Thus alone does the world satisfy me, while it is characteristic of the religious standpoint, in which I include the moral and humane also, that from it everything remains a _pious wish_ (_pium desiderium_), _i. e._ an other-world matter, something unattained. Thus the general salvation of men, the moral world of a general love, eternal peace, the cessation of egoism, etc. "Nothing in this world is perfect." With this miserable phrase the good part from it, and take flight into their closet to God, or into their proud "self-consciousness." But we remain in this "imperfect" world, because even so we can use it for our--self-enjoyment.

My intercourse with the world consists in my enjoying it, and so consuming it for my self-enjoyment. _Intercourse_ is the _enjoyment of the world_, and belongs to my--self-enjoyment.

III.--MY SELF-ENJOYMENT

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 so 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, and the like) 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 does 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."[214] "Christ has taken the power from death and brought life and _imperishable_ being to light by the gospel."[215] "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 talking 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.[216] 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_[217] 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[218] 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 spirit or 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, etc. 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 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."[219]

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.[220]--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, _i. e._ 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 cataract see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataract 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, _i. e._ 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 to-day 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 to-morrow,"--this means only, "for to-day to-morrow 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, etc., 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?[221] 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,[222] spirituality,[223] 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, and the like. 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, _i. e._ 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, _i. e._ 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, etc., "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 conformably 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," and the like, 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.

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