Chapter II: Men of the Old Time and the New (4)

Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of conscience," _i. e._ police business. This tearing apart of man into "natural impulse" and "conscience" (inner populace and inner police) is what constitutes the Protestant. The reason of the Bible (in place of the Catholic "reason of the church") ranks as sacred, and this feeling and consciousness that the word of the Bible is sacred is called--conscience. With this, then, sacredness is "laid upon one's conscience." If one does not free himself from conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he may act unconscientiously indeed, but never consciencelessly.

The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfils the _command_; the Protestant acts according to his "best judgment and conscience." For the Catholic is only a _layman_; the Protestant is himself a _clergyman_.[62] Just this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the Middle Ages, and at the same time its curse,--that _the spiritual_ became complete.

What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of indulgences? only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now gained also an _insight_ into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how really his sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case (Casuists) it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible, and silenced every movement of conscience. All sensuality might hold sway, if it was only purchased from the church. This favoring of sensuality was continued by the Jesuits, while the strictly moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite, praying Protestants (as the true completers of Christianity, to be sure) acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially the Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involuntary and unconscious adherents within Protestantism itself, and saved us from the subversion and extinction of _sensuality_. Nevertheless the Protestant spirit spreads its dominion farther and farther; and, as, beside it the "divine," the Jesuit spirit represents only the "diabolic" which is inseparable from everything divine, the latter can never assert itself alone, but must look on and see how in France, _e. g._, the Philistinism of Protestantism wins at last, and mind is on top.

Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into repute again, _e. g._ marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mundane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism, which lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures, while the rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane altogether, and that simply by _hallowing_ it. So marriage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament, where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, etc. Formerly the pope gave consecration and his blessing to it and its princes; now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The order of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed as "God's ordinance." Hence it is said _e. g._ in the Augsburg Confession, Art. 11: "So now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have wisely and rightly said: that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law. Now, if it is a _natural law, then it is God's ordinance_, therefore implanted in nature, and therefore a _divine_ law also." And is it anything more than Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach pronounces moral relations sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, instead, for the sake of the _spirit_ that dwells in them? "But marriage--as a free alliance of love, of course--is _sacred of itself_, by the _nature_ of the union that is formed here. _That_ marriage alone is a _religious_ one that is a _true_ one, that corresponds to the _essence_ of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral relations. They are _ethical_, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where they rank as _religious of themselves_. True friendship is only where the _limits_ of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his God. Friendship is and must be _sacred_ for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in and of itself_."[63]

That is a very essential consideration. In Catholicism the mundane can indeed be _consecrated_ or _hallowed_, but it is not sacred without this priestly blessing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane relations are sacred _of themselves_, sacred by their mere existence. The Jesuit maxim, "the end hallows the means," corresponds precisely to the consecration by which sanctity is bestowed. No means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their relation to the church, their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide was named as such; if it was committed for the church's behoof, it could be certain of being hallowed by the church, even if the hallowing was not openly pronounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as sacred; to the Catholic only that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and it does rank as such to him only because the pope, even though it be without a special act, confers this sacredness on it once for all. If he retracted his consecration, the king would be left only a "man of the world or layman," an "unconsecrated" man, to the Catholic.

If the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in the sensual itself, that he may then be linked only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to banish the sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, like the rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic church eliminated mundane marriage from its consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its own from the mundane family; the Protestant church declared marriage and family ties to be holy, and therefore not unsuitable for its clergymen.

A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic, hallow everything. He needs only _e. g._ to say to himself: "I as a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it more zealously when I appease my desires properly; consequently I will seduce this girl, have my enemy there poisoned, etc.; my end is holy because it is a priest's, consequently it hallows the means." For in the end it is still done for the benefit of the church. Why should the Catholic priest shrink from handing Emperor Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the--church's welfare?

The genuinely--churchly Protestants inveighed against every "innocent pleasure," because only the sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent. What they could not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants had to reject,--dancing, the theatre, ostentation (_e. g._ in the church), and the like.

Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism is again more on the religious, _i. e._ spiritual, track,--is more radical. For the former excludes at once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and _purifies_ the church; Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring _spirit_ into all things as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything, and so to _hallow_ everything worldly. ("No one can forbid a kiss in honor." The spirit of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he declares himself such in some passage or other: he "wants to remain a Lutheran") was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything. In everything there is reason, _i. e._ holy spirit, or "the real is rational." For the real is in fact everything, as in each thing, _e. g._ each lie, the truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute evil, and the like.

Great "works of mind" were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone were the true disciples and consummators of _mind_.

* * * * *

How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before the _uncontrollable_. Can he keep off the impression that he is _helpless_ against this gigantic world? It is a fixed _law_ to which he must submit, it determines his _fate_. Now, what did pre-Christian humanity work toward? Toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies, not letting oneself be vexed by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks of nature _indifferent_, and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace utters the famous _Nil admirari_, by which he likewise announces the indifference of the _other_, the world; it is not to influence us, not to arouse our astonishment. And that _impavidum ferient ruinae_ expresses the very same _imperturbability_ as Ps. 46.3: "We do not fear, though the earth should perish." In all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty, for the Christian _contempt of the world_.

The _imperturbable_ spirit of "the wise man," with which the old world worked to prepare its end, now underwent an _inner perturbation_ against which no ataraxy, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. The spirit, secured against all influence of the world, insensible to its shocks and _exalted_ above its attacks, admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of the world,--foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were evolved in its own interior, and, after the _mechanical shock_ that comes from without had become ineffective, _chemical tensions_, that agitate within, began their wonderful play.

In fact, ancient history ends with this,--that _I_ have struggled till I won my ownership of the world. "All things have been delivered, to me by my Father" (Matt. 11.27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc., for me; it is _undeified_, and now I treat it so entirely as I please that, if I cared, I could exert on it all miracle-working power, _i. e._ power of mind,--remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves up and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything possible, _i. e. thinkable_: "All things are possible to him who believes."[64] I am the _lord_ of the world, mine is the "_glory_."[65] The world has become _prosaic_, for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which I dispose of as I (to wit, the mind) choose.

When I had exalted myself to be the _owner of the world_, egoism had won its first complete victory, had vanquished the world, had become _worldless_, and put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.

The first property, the first "glory," has been acquired!

But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred, the "Holy Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not able to become "godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the _world_, the mediæval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against _self_, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The mediæval man is the man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative man.

All wisdom of the ancients is _the science of the world_, all wisdom of the moderns is _the science of God_.

The heathen (Jews included) got through with the _world_; but now the thing was to get through with self, the _spirit_, too; _i. e._ to become spiritless or godless.

For almost two thousand years we have been working at subjecting the Holy Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we have torn off and trodden under foot many bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost its divinity, its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove; to be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but lets itself be caught by the laity too, etc.; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit of Man, it remains still an _alien_ spirit to me or you, still far from becoming our unrestricted _property_, which we dispose of at our pleasure. However, one thing certainly happened, and visibly guided the progress of post-Christian history: this one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy Spirit _more human_, and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it came about that at last it could be conceived as the "spirit of humanity," and, under different expressions like "idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness, general philanthropy," etc., appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more accessible.

Would not one think that now everybody could possess the Holy Spirit, take up into himself the idea of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in himself?

No, the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its unapproachableness, is not accessible to us, not our property; for the spirit of humanity is not _my_ spirit. My _ideal_ it may be, and as a thought I call it mine; the _thought_ of humanity is my property, and I prove this sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views, and shaping it to-day so, to-morrow otherwise; we represent it to ourselves in the most manifold ways. But it is at the same time an entail, which I cannot alienate nor get rid of.

Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the "_absolute idea_," which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc.

But can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity, and can I consider the Spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it, "sacrifice myself" to it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world only when it had broken the world's overpoweringness and "divinity," recognized the world's powerlessness and "vanity."

The case with regard to the _spirit_ corresponds. When I have degraded it to a _spook_ and its control over me to a _cranky notion_, then it is to be looked upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I _use_ it, as one uses _nature_ at pleasure without scruple.

The "nature of the case," the "concept of the relationship," is to guide me in dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms of the case! As if a relation which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness of those who enter into it, itself unique! As if it depended on how others stamp it! But, as people separated the "essence of Man" from the real man, and judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from him, and appraise it by "human value." _Concepts_ are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts to _rule_. This is the religious world, to which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic. Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, _i. e._ I, am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. Can there be a more grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess at the very beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? ("Not a letter of the law shall be lost!")

Liberalism simply brought other concepts on the carpet, _viz._, human instead of divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, "scientific" instead of doctrinal, or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of "crude dogmas" and precepts.

Now nothing but _mind_ rules in the world. An innumerable multitude of concepts buzz about in people's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor to get further? They are negating these concepts to put new ones in their place! They are saying: "You form a false concept of right, of the State, of man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc.; the concept of right, etc., is rather that one which we now set up." Thus the confusion of concepts moves forward.

The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has obtained an almighty power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your potatoes would become palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would relieve you of all need at once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to recognize the _independence_ of all these and innumerable other things: they are to rank in his mind as something that cannot be seized or approached, are to be kept away from him. He must have regard for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches out his fingers desirously; we call that "being light-fingered!"

How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really nothing! Everything has been removed, we must not venture on anything unless it is given us; we continue to live only by the _grace_ of the giver. You must not pick up a pin, unless indeed you have got _leave_ to do so. And got it from whom? From _respect_! Only when this lets you have it as property, only when you can _respect_ it as property, only then may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive a thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that should have their warrant in you alone, instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity. Happy _unconstraint_ of the desirous man, how mercilessly people have tried to slay you on the altar of _constraint_!

But around the altar rise the arches of a church, and its walls keep moving further and further out. What they enclose is--_sacred_. You can no longer get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you wander round about these walls in search of the little that is profane, and the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended. Soon that church will embrace the whole world, and you be driven out to the extreme edge; another step, and the _world of the sacred_ has conquered: you sink into the abyss. Therefore take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you _devour the sacred_, you have made it your _own_! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!

III.--THE FREE

The ancients and the moderns having been presented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the free were here to be described in a third division as independent and distinct. This is not so. The free are only the more modern and most modern among the "moderns," and are put in a separate division merely because they belong to the present, and what is present, above all, claims our attention here. I give "the free" only as a translation of "the liberals," but must with regard to the concept of freedom (as in general with regard to so many other things whose anticipatory introduction cannot be avoided) refer to what comes later.

§ 1.--POLITICAL LIBERALISM

After the chalice of so-called absolute monarchy had been drained down to the dregs, in the eighteenth century people became aware that their drink did not taste human--too clearly aware not to begin to crave a different cup. Since our fathers were "human beings" after all, they at last desired also to be regarded as such.

Whoever sees in us something else than human beings, in him we likewise will not see a human being, but an inhuman being, and will meet him as an unhuman being; on the other hand, whoever recognizes us as human beings and protects us against the danger of being treated inhumanly, him we will honor as our true protector and guardian.

Let us then hold together and protect the man in each other; then we find the necessary protection in our _holding together_, and in ourselves, _those who hold together_, a fellowship of those who know their human dignity and hold together as "human beings." Our holding together is the _State_; we who hold together are the _nation_.

In our being together as nation or State we are only human beings. How we deport ourselves in other respects as individuals, and what self-seeking impulses we may there succumb to, belongs solely to our _private_ life; our _public_ or State life is a _purely human_ one. Everything un-human or "egoistic" that clings to us is degraded to a "private matter" and we distinguish the State definitely from "civil society," which is the sphere of "egoism's" activity.

The true man is the nation, but the individual is always an egoist. Therefore strip off your individuality or isolation wherein dwells discord and egoistic inequality, and consecrate yourselves wholly to the true man,--the nation or the State. Then you will rank as men, and have all that is man's; the State, the true man, will entitle you to what belongs to it, and give you the "rights of man"; Man gives you his rights!

So runs the speech of the commonalty.

The commonalty[66] is nothing else than the thought that the State is all in all, the true man, and that the individual's human value consists in being a citizen of the State. In being a good citizen he seeks his highest honor; beyond that he knows nothing higher than at most the antiquated--"being a good Christian."

The commonalty developed itself in the struggle against the privileged classes, by whom it was cavalierly treated as "third estate" and confounded with the _canaille_. In other words, up to this time the State had recognized caste.[67] The son of a nobleman was selected for posts to which the most distinguished commoners aspired in vain, etc. The civic feeling revolted against this. No more distinction, no giving preference to persons, no difference of classes! Let all be alike! No _separate interest_ is to be pursued longer, but the _general interest of all_. The State is to be a fellowship of free and equal men, and every one is to devote himself to the "welfare of the whole," to be dissolved in the _State_, to make the State his end and ideal. State! State! so ran the general cry, and thenceforth people sought for the "right form of State," the best constitution, and so the State in its best conception. The thought of the State passed into all hearts and awakened enthusiasm; to serve it, this mundane god, became the new divine service and worship. The properly _political_ epoch had dawned. To serve the State or the nation became the highest ideal, the State's interest the highest interest, State service (for which one does not by any means need to be an official) the highest honor.

So then the separate interests and personalities had been scared away, and sacrifice for the State had become the shibboleth. One must give up _himself_, and live only for the State. One must act "disinterestedly," not want to benefit _himself_, but the State. Hereby the latter has become the true person, before whom the individual personality vanishes; not I live, but it lives in me. Therefore, in comparison with the former self-seeking, this was unselfishness and _impersonality_ itself. Before this god--State--all egoism vanished, and before it all were equal; they were without any other distinction--men, nothing but men.

The Revolution took fire from the inflammable material of _property_. The government needed money. Now it must prove the proposition that it is _absolute_, and so master of all property, sole proprietor; it must _take_ to itself _its_ money, which was only in the possession of the subjects, not their property. Instead of this, it calls States-general, to have this money _granted_ to it. The shrinking from strictly logical action destroyed the illusion of an _absolute_ government; he who must have something "granted" to him cannot be regarded as absolute. The subjects recognized that they were _real proprietors_, and that it was _their_ money that was demanded. Those who had hitherto been subjects attained the consciousness that they were _proprietors_. Bailly depicts this in a few words: "If you cannot dispose of my property without my assent, how much less can you of my person, of all that concerns my mental and social position? All this is my property, like the piece of land that I till; and I have a right, an interest, to make the laws myself." Bailly's words sound, certainly, as if _every one_ was a proprietor now. However, instead of the government, instead of the prince, the--_nation_ now became proprietor and master. From this time on the ideal is spoken of as--"popular liberty"--"a free people," etc.

As early as July 8, 1789, the declaration of the bishop of Autun and Barrère took away all semblance of the importance of each and every _individual_ in legislation; it showed the complete _powerlessness_ of the constituents; the _majority of the representatives_ has become _master_. When on July 9 the plan for division of the work on the constitution is proposed, Mirabeau remarks that "the government has only power, no rights; only in the _people_ is the source of all _right_ to be found." On July 16 this same Mirabeau exclaims: "Is not the people the source of all _power_?" The source, therefore, of all right, and the source of all--power![68] By the way, here the substance of "right" becomes visible; it is--_power_. "He who has power has right."

The commonalty is the heir of the privileged classes. In fact, the rights of the barons, which were taken from them as "usurpations," only passed over to the commonalty. For the commonalty was now called the "nation." "Into the hands of the nation" all _prerogatives_ were given back. Thereby they ceased to be "prerogatives":[69] they became "rights."[70] From this time on the nation demands tithes, compulsory services; it has inherited the lord's court, the rights of vert and venison, the--serfs. The night of August 4 was the death-night of privileges or "prerogatives" (cities, communes, boards of magistrates, were also privileged, furnished with prerogatives and seigniorial rights), and ended with the new morning of "right," the "rights of the State," the "rights of the nation."

The monarch in the person of the "royal master" had been a paltry monarch compared with this new monarch, the "sovereign nation." This _monarchy_ was a thousand times severer, stricter, and more consistent. Against the new monarch there was no longer any right, any privilege at all; how limited the "absolute king" of the _ancien régime_ looks in comparison! The Revolution effected the transformation of _limited monarchy_ into _absolute monarchy_. From this time on every right that is not conferred by this monarch is an "assumption"; but every prerogative that he bestows, a "right." The times demanded _absolute royalty_, absolute monarchy; therefore down fell that so-called absolute royalty which had so little understood how to become absolute that it remained limited by a thousand little lords.

What was longed for and striven for through thousands of years,--to wit, to find that absolute lord beside whom no other lords and lordlings any longer exist to clip his power,--the _bourgeoisie_ has brought to pass. It has revealed the Lord who alone confers "rightful titles," and without whose warrant _nothing is justified_. "So now we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other god save the one."[71]

Against _right_ one can no longer, as against a right, come forward with the assertion that it is "a wrong." One can say now only that it is a piece of nonsense, an illusion. If one called it wrong, one would have to set up _another right_ in opposition to it, and measure it by this. If, on the contrary, one rejects right as such, right in and of itself, altogether, then one also rejects the concept of wrong, and dissolves the whole concept of right (to which the concept of wrong belongs).

What is the meaning of the doctrine that we all enjoy "equality of political rights"? Only this,--that the State has no regard for my person, that to it I, like every other, am only a man, without having another significance that commands its deference. I do not command its deference as an aristocrat, a nobleman's son, or even as heir of an official whose office belongs to me by inheritance (as in the Middle Ages countships, etc., and later under absolute royalty, where hereditary offices occur). Now the State has an innumerable multitude of rights to give away, _e. g._ the right to lead a battalion, a company, etc.; the right to lecture at a university; and so forth; it has them to give away because they are its own, _i. e._ State rights or "political" rights. Withal, it makes no difference to it to whom it gives them, if the receiver only fulfils the duties that spring from the delegated rights. To it we are all of us all right, and--_equal_,--one worth no more and no less than another. It is indifferent to me who receives the command of the army, says the sovereign State, provided the grantee understands the matter properly. "Equality of political rights" has, consequently, the meaning that every one may acquire every right that the State has to give away, if only he fulfils the conditions annexed thereto,--conditions which are to be sought only in the nature of the particular right, not in a predilection for the person (_persona grata_): the nature of the right to become an officer brings with it, _e. g._, the necessity that one possess sound limbs and a suitable measure of knowledge, but it does not have noble birth as a condition; if, on the other hand, even the most deserving commoner could not reach that station, then an inequality of political rights would exist. Among the States of to-day one has carried out that maxim of equality more, another less.

The monarchy of estates (so I will call absolute royalty, the time of the kings _before_ the revolution) kept the individual in dependence on a lot of little monarchies. These were fellowships (societies) like the guilds, the nobility, the priesthood, the burgher class, cities, communes, etc. Everywhere the individual must regard himself _first_ as a member of this little society, and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit, the _esprit de corps_, as his monarch. More, _e. g._, than the individual nobleman himself must his family, the honor of his race, be to him. Only by means of his _corporation_, his estate, did the individual have relation to the greater corporation, the State,--as in Catholicism the individual deals with God only through the priest. To this the third estate now, showing courage to negate _itself as an estate_, made an end. It decided no longer to be and be called an _estate_ beside other estates, but to glorify and generalize itself into the "_nation_." Hereby it created a much more complete and absolute monarchy, and the entire previously ruling _principle of estates_, the principle of little monarchies inside the great, went down. Therefore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a revolution against the first two privileged estates: it was against the little monarchies of estates in general. But, if the estates and their despotism were broken (the king too, we know, was only a king of estates, not a citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality of estate were left. Were they now really to be without estate and "out of gear," no longer bound by any estate, without a general bond of union? No, for the third estate had declared itself the nation only in order not to remain an estate _beside_ other estates, but to become the _sole estate_. This sole _estate_ is the nation, the "_State_." What had the individual now become? A political Protestant, for he had come into immediate connection with his God, the State. He was no longer, as an aristocrat, in the monarchy of the nobility; as a mechanic, in the monarchy of the guild; but he, like all, recognized and acknowledged only--_one lord_, the State, as whose servants they all received the equal title of honor, "citizen."

The _bourgeoisie_ is the _aristocracy of_ DESERT; its motto, "Let desert wear its crowns." It fought against the "lazy" aristocracy, for according to it (the industrious aristocracy acquired by industry and desert) it is not the "born" who is free, nor yet I who am free either, but the "deserving" man, the honest _servant_ (of his king; of the State; of the people in constitutional States). Through _service_ one acquires freedom, _i. e._ acquires "deserts," even if one served--mammon. One must deserve well of the State, _i. e._ of the principle of the State, of its moral spirit. He who _serves_ this spirit of the State is a good citizen, let him live to whatever honest branch of industry he will. In its eyes innovators practise a "breadless art." Only the "shopkeeper" is "practical," and the spirit that chases after public offices is as much the shopkeeping spirit as is that which tries in trade to feather its nest or otherwise to become useful to itself and anybody else.

But, if the deserving count as the free (for what does the comfortable commoner, the faithful office-holder, lack of that freedom that his heart desires?), then the "servants" are the--free. The obedient servant is the free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the sense of the _bourgeoisie_, and its poet, Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world, etc. He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to it," has the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was--_reason_, that which, like State and Church, gives--general laws, and puts the individual man in irons by the _thought of humanity_. It determines what is "true," according to which one must then act. No more "rational" people than the honest servants, who primarily are called good citizens as servants of the State.

Be rich as Croesus or poor as Job--the State of the commonalty leaves that to your option; but only have a "good disposition." This it demands of you, and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all. Therefore it will keep you from "evil promptings," holding the "ill-disposed" in check and silencing their inflammatory discourses under censors' cancelling-marks or press-penalties and behind dungeon walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint people of "good disposition" as censors, and in every way have a _moral influence_ exerted on you by "well-disposed and well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf to evil promptings, then it opens your ears again all the more diligently to good _promptings_.

With the time of the _bourgeoisie_ begins that of _liberalism_. People want to see what is "rational," "suited to the times," etc., established everywhere. The following definition of liberalism, which is supposed to be pronounced in its honor, characterizes it completely: "Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations."[72] Its aim is a "rational order," a "moral behavior," a "limited freedom," not anarchy, lawlessness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then the _person_ succumbs. Art has for a long time not only acknowledged the ugly, but considered the ugly as necessary to its existence, and taken it up into itself; it needs the villain, etc. In the religious domain, too, the extremest liberals go so far that they want to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen--_i. e._ the religious villain; they want to see no more of trials for heresy. But against the "rational law" no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest--penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and realization of the person or of me, but of reason,--_i. e._ a dominion of reason, a dominion. The liberals are _zealots_, not exactly for the faith, for God, etc., but certainly for _reason_, their master. They brook no lack of breeding, and therefore no self-development and self-determination; they _play the guardian_ as effectively as the most absolute rulers.

"Political liberty," what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual's independence of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the individual's _subjection_ in the State and to the State's laws. But why "liberty"? Because one is no longer separated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate relation to it; because one is a--citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king as a person, but only in his quality as "supreme head of the State." Political liberty, this fundamental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a second phase of--Protestantism, and runs quite parallel with "religious liberty."[73] Or would it perhaps be right to understand by the latter an independence of religion? Anything but that. Independence of intermediaries is all that it is intended to express, independence of mediating priests, the abolition of the "laity," and so direct and immediate relation to religion or to God. Only on the supposition that one has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion; freedom of religion does not mean being without religion, but inwardness of faith, unmediated intercourse with God. To him who is "religiously free" religion is an affair of the heart, it is to him his _own affair_, it is to him a "sacredly serious matter." So, too, to the "politically free" man the State is a sacredly serious matter; it is his heart's affair, his chief affair, his own affair.

Political liberty means that the _polis_, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am _rid_ of them. It does not mean _my_ liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my _despots_, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and _their_ liberty is _my_ slavery. That in this they necessarily follow the principle, "the end hallows the means," is self-evident. If the welfare of the State is the end, war is a hallowed means; if justice is the State's end, homicide is a hallowed means, and is called by its sacred name, "execution," etc.; the sacred State _hallows_ everything that is serviceable to it.

"Individual liberty," over which civic liberalism keeps jealous watch, does not by any means signify a completely free self-determination, by which actions become altogether _mine_, but only independence of _persons_. Individually free is he who is responsible to no _man_. Taken in this sense,--and we are not allowed to understand it otherwise,--not only the ruler is individually free, _i. e., irresponsible toward men_ ("before God," we know, he acknowledges himself responsible), but all who are "responsible only to the law." This kind of liberty was won through the revolutionary movement of the century,--to wit, independence of arbitrary will, of _tel est notre plaisir_. Hence the constitutional prince must himself be stripped of all personality, deprived of all individual decision, that he may not as a person, as an _individual man_, violate the "individual liberty" of others. The _personal will of the ruler_ has disappeared in the constitutional prince; it is with a right feeling, therefore, that absolute princes resist this. Nevertheless these very ones profess to be in the best sense "Christian princes." For this, however, they must become a _purely spiritual_ power, as the Christian is subject only to _spirit_ ("God is spirit"). The purely spiritual power is consistently represented only by the constitutional prince, he who, without any personal significance, stands there spiritualized to the degree that he can rank as a sheer, uncanny "spirit," as an _idea_. The constitutional king is the truly _Christian_ king, the genuine, consistent carrying-out of the Christian principle. In the constitutional monarchy individual dominion,--_i. e._, a real ruler that _wills_--has found its end; here, therefore, _individual liberty_ prevails, independence of every individual dictator, of every one who could dictate to me with a _tel est notre plaisir_. It is the completed _Christian_ State-life, a spiritualized life.

The behavior of the commonalty is _liberal_ through and through. Every _personal_ invasion of another's sphere revolts the civic sense; if the citizen sees that one is dependent on the humor, the pleasure, the will of a man as individual (_i. e._ as not authorized by a "higher power"), at once he brings his liberalism to the front and shrieks about "arbitrariness." In fine, the citizen asserts his freedom from what is called _orders_ (_ordonnance_): "No one has any business to give me--orders!" _Orders_ carries the idea that what I am to do is another man's will, while _law_ does not express a personal authority of another. The liberty of the commonalty is liberty or independence from the will of another person, so-called personal or individual liberty; for being personally free means being only so free that no other person can dispose of mine, or that what I may or may not do does not depend on the personal decree of another. The liberty of the press, for instance, is such a liberty of liberalism, liberalism fighting only against the coercion of the censorship as that of personal wilfulness, but otherwise showing itself extremely inclined and willing to tyrannize over the press by "press laws"; _i. e._, the civic liberals want liberty of writing _for themselves_; for, as they are _law-abiding_, their writings will not bring them under the law. Only liberal matter, _i. e._ only lawful matter, is to be allowed to be printed; otherwise the "press laws" threaten "press-penalties." If one sees personal liberty assured, one does not notice at all how, if a new issue happens to arise, the most glaring unfreedom becomes dominant. For one is rid of _orders_ indeed, and "no one has any business to give us orders," but one has become so much the more submissive to the--_law_. One is enthralled now in due legal form.

In the citizen-State there are only "free people," who are _compelled_ to thousands of things (_e. g._ to deference, to a confession of faith, and the like). But what does that amount to? Why, it is only the--State, the law, not any man, that compels them!

What does the commonalty mean by inveighing against every personal order, _i. e._ every order not founded on the "cause," on "reason," etc.? It is simply fighting in the interest of the "cause"[74] against the dominion of "persons"! But the mind's cause is the rational, good, lawful, etc.; that is the "good cause." The commonalty wants an _impersonal_ ruler.

Furthermore, if the principle is this, that only the cause is to rule man--to wit, the cause of morality, the cause of legality, etc.,--then no personal balking of one by the other may be authorized either (as formerly, _e. g._, the commoner was balked of the aristocratic offices, the aristocrat of common mechanical trades, etc.); _i. e. free competition_ must exist. Only through the thing[75] can one balk another (_e. g._ the rich man balking the impecunious man by money, a thing), not as a person. Henceforth only one lordship, the lordship of the _State_, is admitted; personally no one is any longer lord of another. Even at birth the children belong to the State, and to the parents only in the name of the State, which, _e. g._, does not allow infanticide, demands their baptism, etc.

But all the State's children, furthermore, are of quite equal account in its eyes ("civic or political equality"), and they may see to it themselves how they get along with each other; they may _compete_.

Free competition means nothing else than that every one can present himself, assert himself, fight, against another. Of course the feudal party set itself against this, as its existence depended on an absence of competition. The contests in the time of the Restoration in France had no other substance than this,--that the _bourgeoisie_ was struggling for free competition, and the feudalists were seeking to bring back the guild system.

Now, free competition has won, and against the guild system it had to win. (See below for the further discussion.)

If the Revolution ended in a reaction, this only showed what the Revolution _really_ was. For every effort arrives at reaction when it _comes to discreet reflection_, and storms forward in the original action only so long as it is an _intoxication_, an "indiscretion." "Discretion" will always be the cue of the reaction, because discretion sets limits, and liberates what was really wanted, _i. e._ the principle, from the initial "unbridledness" and "unrestrainedness." Wild young fellows, bumptious students, who set aside all considerations, are _really_ Philistines, since with them, as with the latter, considerations form the substance of their conduct; only that as swaggerers they are mutinous against considerations and in negative relations to them, but as Philistines, later, they give themselves up to considerations and have positive relations to them. In both cases all their doing and thinking turns upon "considerations," but the Philistine is _reactionary_ in relation to the student; he is the wild fellow come to discreet reflection, as the latter is the unreflecting Philistine. Daily experience confirms the truth of this transformation, and shows how the swaggerers turn to Philistines in turning gray.

So too the so-called reaction in Germany gives proof that it was only the _discreet_ continuation of the warlike jubilation of liberty.

The Revolution was not directed against _the established_, but against _the establishment in question_, against a _particular_ establishment. It did away with _this_ ruler, not with _the_ ruler--on the contrary, the French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous ones a securely established position, _i. e._ it simply set virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, are on their part distinguished from each other only as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc.

To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no farther than to assail only _one_ or _another_ particular establishment, _i. e._ be _reformatory_. Much as may be _improved_, strongly as "discreet progress" may be adhered to, always there is only a _new master_ set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a--building up. We are still at the distinction of the young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution began in _bourgeois_ fashion with the uprising of the third estate, the middle class; in _bourgeois_ fashion it dries away. It was not the _individual man_--and he alone is _Man_--that became free, but the _citizen_, the _citoyen_, the _political_ man, who for that very reason is not _Man_ but a specimen of the human species, and more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a _free citizen_.

In the Revolution it was not the _individual_ who acted so as to affect the world's history, but a _people_; the _nation_, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect everything. A fancied _I_, an idea, such as the nation is, appears acting; _i. e._, the individuals contribute themselves as tools of this idea, and act as "citizens."

The commonalty has its power, and at the same time its limits, in the _fundamental law of the State_, in a charter, in a legitimate[76] or "just"[77] prince who himself is guided, and rules, according to "rational laws"; in short, in _legality_. The period of the _bourgeoisie_ is ruled by the British spirit of legality. An assembly of provincial estates, _e. g._, is ever recalling that its authorization goes only so and so far, and that it is called at all only through favor and can be thrown out again through disfavor. It is always reminding itself of its--_vocation_. It is certainly not to be denied that my father begot me; but, now that I am once begotten, surely his purposes in begetting do not concern me a bit and, whatever he may have _called_ me to, I do what I myself will. Therefore even a called assembly of estates, the French assembly in the beginning of the Revolution, recognized quite rightly that it was independent of the caller. It _existed_, and would have been stupid if it did not avail itself of the right of existence, but fancied itself dependent as on a father. The called one no longer has to ask "what did the caller want when he created me?" but "what do I want after I have once followed the call?" Not the caller, not the constituents, not the charter according to which their meeting was called out, nothing will be to him a sacred, inviolable power. He is _authorized_ for everything that is in his power; he will know no restrictive "authorization," will not want to be _loyal_. This, if any such thing could be expected from chambers at all, would give a completely _egoistic_ chamber, severed from all navel-string and without consideration. But chambers are always devout, and therefore one cannot be surprised if so much half-way or undecided, _i. e._ hypocritical, "egoism" parades in them.

The members of the estates are to remain within the _limits_ that are traced for them by the charter, by the king's will, and the like. If they will not or can not do that, then they are to "step out." What dutiful man could act otherwise, could put himself, his conviction, and his will as the _first_ thing? who could be so immoral as to want to assert _himself_, even if the body corporate and everything should go to ruin over it? People keep carefully within the limits of their _authorization_; of course one must remain within the limits of his _power_ anyhow, because no one can do more than he can. "My power, or, if it be so, powerlessness, be my sole limit, but authorizations only restraining--precepts? Should I profess this all-subversive view? No, I am a--law-abiding citizen!"

The commonalty professes a morality which is most closely connected with its essence. The first demand of this morality is to the effect that one should carry on a solid business, an honorable trade, lead a moral life. Immoral, to it, is the sharper, the demirep, the thief, robber, and murderer, the gamester, the penniless man without a situation, the frivolous man. The doughty commoner designates the feeling against these "immoral" people as his "deepest indignation." All these lack settlement, the _solid_ quality of business, a solid, seemly life, a fixed income, etc.; in short, they belong, because their existence does not rest on a _secure basis_, to the dangerous "individuals or isolated persons," to the dangerous _prolétariat_; they are "individual bawlers" who offer no "guarantee" and have "nothing to lose," and so nothing to risk. The forming of family ties, _e. g., binds_ a man: he who is bound furnishes security, can be taken hold of; not so the street-walker. The gamester stakes everything on the game, ruins himself and others;--no guarantee. All who appear to the commoner suspicious, hostile, and dangerous might be comprised under the name "vagabonds"; every vagabondish way of living displeases him. For there are intellectual vagabonds too, to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space any more: instead of keeping within the limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable truth what furnishes comfort and tranquillity to thousands, they overleap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their impudent criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds. They form the class of the unstable, restless, changeable, _i. e._ of the _prolétariat_, and, if they give voice to their unsettled nature, are called "unruly fellows."

Such a broad sense has the so-called _prolétariat_, or pauperism. How much one would err if one believed the commonalty to be desirous of doing away with poverty (pauperism) to the best of its ability! On the contrary, the good citizen helps himself with the incomparably comforting conviction that "the fact is that the good things of fortune are unequally divided and will always remain so--according to God's wise decree." The poverty which surrounds him in every alley does not disturb the true commoner further than that at most he clears his account with it by throwing an alms, or finds work and food for an "honest and serviceable" fellow. But so much the more does he feel his quiet enjoyment clouded by _innovating_ and _discontented_ poverty, by those poor who no longer behave _quietly_ and endure, but begin to _run wild_ and become restless. Lock up the vagabond, thrust the breeder of unrest into the darkest dungeon! He wants to "arouse dissatisfaction and incite people against existing institutions" in the State--stone him, stone him!