The Ego and His Own Part 21

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

The State cannot give up the claim that its _laws_ and ordinances are _sacred_.[171] At this the individual ranks as the _unholy_[172]

(barbarian, natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly as he was once regarded by the Church; before the individual the State takes on the nimbus of a saint.[173] Thus it issues a law against dueling. Two men who are both at one in this, that they are willing to stake their life for a cause (no matter what), are not to be allowed this, because the State will not have it: it imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? It is at once quite another situation if, as _e. g._ in North America, society determines to let the duelists bear certain evil _consequences_ of their act, _e. g._ withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for this or that reason, the man who is. .h.i.t cannot therefore complain of encroachment on his liberty: the society is simply availing itself of its own liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a _crime_.

The duel is no crime there, but only an act against which the society adopts counter-measures, resolves on a _defence_. The State, on the contrary, stamps the duel as a crime, _i. e._ as an injury to its sacred law: it makes it a _criminal case_. The society leaves it to the individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes his free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse way, denying all right to the individual's decision and, instead, ascribing the sole right to its own decision, the law of the State, so that he who transgresses the State's commandment is looked upon as if he were acting against G.o.d's commandment,--a view which likewise was once maintained by the Church. Here G.o.d is the Holy in and of himself, and the commandments of the Church, as of the State, are the commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to the world through his anointed and Lords-by-the-Grace-of-G.o.d. If the Church had _deadly sins_, the State has _capital crimes_; if the one had _heretics_, the other has _traitors_; the one _ecclesiastical penalties_, the other _criminal penalties_; the one _inquisitorial_ processes, the other _fiscal_; in short, there sins, here crimes, there sinners, here criminals, there inquisition and here--inquisition. Will the sanct.i.ty of the State not fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its "subjects," will this remain? Will the "saint's" face not be stripped of its adornment?

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

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

Weitling lays crime at the door of "social disorder," and lives in the expectation that under Communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible, because the temptations to them, _e. g._ money, fall away.

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

Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred vanishes, punishment must not less be drawn into its fall; for it too has significance only over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical punishments have been abolished. Why? Because how one behaves toward the "holy G.o.d" is his own affair. But, as this one punishment, _ecclesiastical punishment_, has fallen, so all _punishments_ must fall.

As sin against the so-called G.o.d is a man's own affair, so that against every kind of the so-called sacred. According to our theories of penal law, with whose "improvement in conformity to the times" people are tormenting themselves in vain, they want to _punish_ men for this or that "inhumanity"; and therein they make the silliness of these theories especially plain by their consistency, hanging the little thieves and letting the big ones run. For injury to property they have the house of correction, and for "violence to thought," suppression of "natural rights of man," only--representations and pet.i.tions.

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

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

He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family, party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society"

or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which const.i.tutes his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves _mankind_."

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

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

Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of _should_: he _should_ become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate, this commandment, every one steps not only in front of another but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new _religion_, to set up a new absolute, an ideal,--to wit, freedom. Men _should_ be free. Then there might even arise _missionaries_ of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction that all were properly destined to become Christians, sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) const.i.tute itself as a new _community_ and carry on a like "propaganda" therefrom.

Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together; but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old _care_ for us, of culture directed toward an end,--in short, the principle of _making something_ out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and men.

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

The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of the "free man."

If one could find it, there would be a new--religion, because a new ideal; there would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a new deity, a new contrition.

With the ideal of "absolute liberty," the same turmoil is made as with everything absolute, and according to Hess, _e. g._, it is said to "be realizable in absolute human society."[175] Nay, this realization is immediately afterward styled a "vocation"; just so he then defines liberty as "morality": the kingdom of "justice" (_i. e._ equality) and "morality" (_i. e._ liberty) is to begin, etc.

Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, family, nation, etc., rank high, is--nothing but "puffed up" over the merit of his fellows; but blinded too is he who wants only to be "man." Neither of them puts his worth in _exclusiveness_, but in _connectedness_, or in the "tie"

that conjoins him with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of humanity.

Through the "Nationals" of to-day the conflict has again been stirred up between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the special ties of blood.

If we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit, and take it for consciousness alone, there is found to be a vast difference between pride in "belonging to" a nation and therefore being its property, and that in calling a nationality one's property. Nationality is my quality, but the nation my owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength, you can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has you, then it p.r.i.c.ks you everywhere, and at the most unsuitable place, to show its strength: you can give n.o.body your hand without squeezing his.

The perception that one is more than a member of the family, more than a fellow of the tribe, more than an individual of the people, etc., has finally led to saying, one is more than all this because one is man, or, the man is more than the Jew, German, etc. "Therefore be every one wholly and solely--man!" Could one not rather say: Because we are more than what has been stated, therefore we will be this, as well as that "more" also? Man and German, then, man and Guelph, etc.? The Nationals are in the right; one cannot deny his nationality: and the humanitarians are in the right; one must not remain in the narrowness of the national. In _uniqueness_[176] the contradiction is solved; the national is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality,--as the human too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first through my uniqueness.

History seeks for Man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious _essence_, as the divine, first as _G.o.d_, then as _Man_ (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one.

I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do nothing for the good of another humanity. Fool, you who are a unique humanity, that you make a merit of wanting to live for another than you are.

The hitherto-considered relation of me to the _world of men_ offers such a wealth of phenomena that it will have to be taken up again and again on other occasions, but here, where it was only to have its chief outlines made clear to the eye, it must be broken off to make place for an apprehension of two other sides toward which it radiates. For, as I find myself in relation not merely to men so far as they present in themselves the concept "man" or are children of men (children of _Man_, as children of G.o.d are spoken of), but also to that which they have of man and call their own, and as therefore I relate myself not only to that which they _are_ through man, but also to their human _possessions_: so, besides the world of men, the world of the senses and of ideas will have to be included in our survey, and somewhat said of what men call their own of sensuous goods, and of spiritual as well.

According as one had developed and clearly grasped the concept of man, he gave it to us to respect as this or that _person of respect_, and from the broadest understanding of this concept there proceeded at last the command "to respect Man in every one." But, if I respect Man, my respect must likewise extend to the human, or what is Man's.

Men have somewhat of their _own_, and _I_ am to recognize this own and hold it sacred. Their own consists partly in outward, partly in inward _possessions_. The former are things, the latter spiritualities, thoughts, convictions, n.o.ble feelings, etc. But I am always to respect only _rightful_ or _human_ possessions; the wrongful and unhuman I need not spare, for only _Man's_ own is men's real own. An inward possession of this sort is, _e. g._, religion; because _religion_ is free, _i. e._ is Man's, _I_ must not strike at it. Just so _honor_ is an inward possession; it is free and must not be struck at by me. (Action for insult, caricatures, etc.) Religion and honor are "spiritual property."

In tangible property the person stands foremost: my person is my first property. Hence freedom of the person; but only the _rightful_ or human person is free, the other is locked up. Your life is your property; but it is sacred for men only if it is not that of an inhuman monster.

What a man as such cannot defend of bodily goods, we may take from him: this is the meaning of compet.i.tion, of freedom of occupation. What he cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise: so far goes the liberty of discussion, of science, of criticism.

But _consecrated_ goods are inviolable. Consecrated and guaranteed by whom? Proximately by the State, society, but properly by man or the "concept," the "concept of the thing": for the concept of consecrated goods is this, that they are truly human, or rather that the holder possesses them as man and not as un-man.[177]

On the spiritual side man's faith is such goods, his honor, his moral feeling,--yes, his feeling of decency, modesty, etc. Actions (speeches, writings) that touch honor are punishable; attacks on "the foundation of all religion"; attacks on political faith; in short, attacks on everything that a man "rightly" has.

How far critical liberalism would extend, the sanct.i.ty of goods,--on this point it has not yet made any p.r.o.nouncement, and doubtless fancies itself to be ill-disposed toward all sanct.i.ty; but, as it combats egoism, it must set limits to it, and must not let the un-man pounce on the human. To its theoretical contempt for the "ma.s.ses" there must correspond a practical snub if it should get into power.

What extension the concept "man" receives, and what comes to the individual man through it,--what, therefore, man and the human are,--on this point the various grades of liberalism differ, and the political, the social, the humane man are each always claiming more than the other for "man." He who has best grasped this concept knows best what is "man's." The State still grasps this concept in political restriction, society in social; mankind, so it is said, is the first to comprehend it entirely, or "the history of mankind develops it." But, if "man is discovered," then we know also what pertains to man as his own, man's property, the human.

But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man "ent.i.tles" him to them, _i. e._ because his being man does it: what do _I_ care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from _me_, then for _me_ he has no right. His life, _e. g._, counts to _me_ only for what it is _worth to me_. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the "sanctuary of his inner nature"

(or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his G.o.ds, remain unaggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are _mine_, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my--might.

In the _property question_ lies a broader meaning than the limited statement of the question allows to be brought out. Referred solely to what men call our possessions, it is capable of no solution; the decision is to be found only in him "from whom we have everything."

Property depends on the _owner_.

The Revolution directed its weapons against everything which came "from the grace of G.o.d," _e. g._, against divine right, in whose place the human was confirmed. To that which is granted by the grace of G.o.d, there is opposed that which is derived "from the essence of man."

Now, as men's relation to each other, in opposition to the religious dogma which commands a "Love one another for G.o.d's sake," had to receive its human position by a "Love each other for man's sake," so the revolutionary teaching could not do otherwise than, first as to what concerns the relation of men to the things of this world, settle it that the world, which hitherto was arranged according to G.o.d's ordinance, henceforth belongs to "Man."

The world belongs to "Man," and is to be respected by me as his property.

Property is what is mine!

Property in the civic sense means _sacred_ property, such that I must _respect_ your property. "Respect for property!" Hence the politicians would like to have every one possess his little bit of property, and they have in part brought about an incredible parcellation by this effort. Each must have his bone on which he may find something to bite.

The position of affairs is different in the egoistic sense. I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as _my_ property, in which I need to "respect" nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!

With this view we shall most easily come to an understanding with each other.

The political liberals are anxious that, if possible, all servitudes be dissolved, and every one be free lord on his ground, even if this ground has only so much area as can have its requirements adequately filled by the manure of one person. (The farmer in the story married even in his old age "that he might profit by his wife's dung.") Be it ever so little, if one only has somewhat of his own,--to wit, a _respected_ property! The more such owners, such cotters,[178] the more "free people and good patriots" has the State.

Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on _respect_, humaneness, the virtues of love. Therefore does it live in incessant vexation. For in practice people respect nothing, and every day the small possessions are bought up again by greater proprietors, and the "free people" change into day-laborers.

If, on the contrary, the "small proprietors" had reflected that the great property was also theirs, they would not have respectfully shut themselves out from it, and would not have been shut out.

Property as the civic liberals understand it deserves the attacks of the Communists and Proudhon: it is untenable, because the civic proprietor is in truth nothing but a propertyless man, one who is everywhere _shut out_. Instead of owning the world, as he might, he does not own even the paltry point on which he turns around.

Proudhon wants not the _proprietaire_ but the _possesseur_ or _usufruitier_.[179] What does that mean? He wants no one to own the land; but the benefit of it--even though one were allowed only the hundredth part of this benefit, this fruit--is at any rate one's property, which he can dispose of at will. He who has only the benefit of a field is a.s.suredly not the proprietor of it; still less he who, as Proudhon would have it, must give up so much of this benefit as is not required for his wants; but he is the proprietor of the share that is left him. Proudhon, therefore, denies only such and such property, not _property_ itself. If we want no longer to leave the land to the landed proprietors, but to appropriate it to _ourselves_, we unite ourselves to this end, form a union, a _societe_, that makes _itself_ proprietor; if we have good luck in this, then those persons cease to be landed proprietors. And, as from the land, so we can drive them out of many another property yet, in order to make it _our_ property, the property of the--_conquerors_. The conquerors form a society which one may imagine so great that it by degrees embraces all humanity; but so-called humanity too is as such only a thought (spook); the individuals are its reality. And these individuals as a collective ma.s.s will treat land and earth not less arbitrarily than an isolated individual or so-called _proprietaire_. Even so, therefore, _property_ remains standing, and that as "exclusive" too, in that _humanity_, this great society, excludes the _individual_ from its property (perhaps only leases to him, gives him as a fief, a piece of it) as it besides excludes everything that is not humanity, _e. g._ does not allow animals to have property.--So too it will remain, and will grow to be. That in which _all_ want to have a _share_ will be withdrawn from that individual who wants to have it for himself alone: it is made a _common estate_. As a _common estate_ every one has his _share_ in it, and this share is his _property_. Why, so in our old relations a house which belongs to five heirs is their common estate; but the fifth part of the revenue is each one's property. Proudhon might spare his prolix pathos if he said: "There are some things that belong only to a few, and to which we others will from now on lay claim or--siege. Let us take them, because one comes to property by taking, and the property of which for the present we are still deprived came to the proprietors likewise only by taking.

It can be utilized better if it is in the hands of _us all_ than if the few control it. Let us therefore a.s.sociate ourselves for the purpose of this robbery (_vol_)."--Instead of this, he tries to get us to believe that society is the original possessor and the sole proprietor, of imprescriptible right; against it the so-called proprietors have become thieves (_La propriete c'est le vol_); if it now deprives of his property the present proprietor, it robs him of nothing, as it is only availing itself of its imprescriptible right.--So far one comes with the spook of society as a _moral person_. On the contrary, what man can obtain belongs to him: the world belongs to _me_. Do you say anything else by your opposite proposition, "The world belongs to _all_"? All are I and again I, etc. But you make out of the "all" a spook, and make it sacred, so that then the "all" become the individual's fearful _master_.

Then the ghost of "right" places itself on their side.