The Ego and His Own Part 29

What a man is, he makes out of things; "as you look at the world, so it looks at you again." Then the wise advice makes itself heard again at once, You must only look at it "rightly, unbiasedly," etc. As if the child did not look at the Bible "rightly and unbiasedly" when it makes it a plaything. That shrewd precept is given us, _e. g._, by Feuerbach.

One does look at things rightly when one makes of them what one _will_ (by things objects in general are here understood, such as G.o.d, our fellow-men, a sweetheart, a book, a beast, etc.). And therefore the things and the looking at them are not first, but I am, my will is. One _will_ bring thoughts out of the things, _will_ discover reason in the world, _will_ have sacredness in it: therefore one shall find them.

"Seek and ye shall find." _What_ I will seek, _I_ determine: I want, _e. g._, to get edification from the Bible; it is to be found; I want to read and test the Bible thoroughly; my outcome will be a thorough instruction and criticism--to the extent of my powers.

I elect for myself what I have a fancy for, and in electing I show myself--arbitrary.

Connected with this is the discernment that every judgment which I pa.s.s upon an object is the _creature_ of my will; and that discernment again leads me to not losing myself in the _creature_, the judgment, but remaining the _creator_, the judger, who is ever creating anew. All predicates of objects are my statements, my judgments, my--creatures. If they want to tear themselves loose from me and be something for themselves, or actually overawe me, then I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back into their nothing, _i. e._ into me the creator. G.o.d, Christ, trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such creatures, of which I must not merely allow myself to say that they are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed and decreed their existence, so I want to have license to will their non-existence too; I must not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness to let them become something "absolute," whereby they would be eternalized and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should fall a prey to the _principle of stability_, the proper life-principle of religion, which concerns itself with creating "sanctuaries that must not be touched," "eternal truths,"--in short, that which shall be "sacred,"--and depriving you of what is _yours_.

The object makes us into possessed men in its sacred form just as in its profane; as a supersensuous object, just as it does as a sensuous one.

The appet.i.te or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing for heaven stand on a level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for the sensuous world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one party wanted to call forth _emotion_, the other _motion_, activity.

The conception of objects is altogether diverse, even as G.o.d, Christ, the world, etc., were and are conceived of in the most manifold wise. In this every one is a "dissenter," and after b.l.o.o.d.y combats so much has at last been attained, that opposite views about one and the same object are no longer condemned as heresies worthy of death. The "dissenters"

reconcile themselves to each other. But why should I only dissent (think otherwise) about a thing? why not push the thinking otherwise to its last extremity, _viz._, that of no longer having any regard at all for the thing, and therefore thinking its nothingness, crushing it? Then the _conception_ itself has an end, because there is no longer anything to conceive of. Why am I to say, let us suppose, "G.o.d is not Allah, not Brahma, not Jehovah, but--G.o.d"; but not, "G.o.d is nothing but a deception"? Why do people brand me if I am an "atheist"? Because they put the creature above the creator ("They honor and serve the creature more than the Creator"[224]) and require a _ruling object_, that the subject may be right _submissive_. I am to bend _beneath_ the absolute, I _ought_ to.

By the "realm of thoughts" Christianity has completed itself; the thought is that inwardness in which all the world's lights go out, all existence becomes existenceless, the inward man (the heart, the head) is all in all. This realm of thoughts awaits its deliverance, awaits, like the Sphinx, Oedipus's key-word to the riddle, that it may enter in at last to its death. I am the annihilator of its continuance, for in the creator's realm it no longer forms a realm of its own, not a State in the State, but a creature of my creative--thoughtlessness. Only together and at the same time with the benumbed _thinking_ world can the world of Christians, Christianity and religion itself, come to its downfall; only when thoughts run out are there no more believers. To the thinker his thinking is a "sublime labor, a sacred activity," and it rests on a firm _faith_, the faith in truth. At first praying is a sacred activity, then this sacred "devotion" pa.s.ses over into a rational and reasoning "thinking," which, however, likewise retains in the "sacred truth" its un-derangeable basis of faith, and is only a marvelous machine that the spirit of truth winds up for its service. Free thinking and free science busy _me_--for it is not I that am free, not _I_ that busy myself, but thinking is free and busies me--with heaven and the heavenly or "divine"; that is, properly, with the world and the worldly, not this world but "another" world; it is only the reversing and deranging of the world, a busying with the _essence_ of the world, therefore a _derangement_. The thinker is blind to the immediateness of things, and incapable of mastering them: he does not eat, does not drink, does not enjoy; for the eater and drinker is never the thinker, nay, the latter forgets eating and drinking, his getting on in life, the cares of nourishment, etc., over his thinking; he forgets it as the praying man too forgets it. This is why he appears to the forceful son of nature as a queer d.i.c.k, a _fool_,--even if he does look upon him as holy, just as lunatics appeared so to the ancients. Free thinking is lunacy, because it is _pure movement of the inwardness_, of the merely _inward man_, which guides and regulates the rest of the man. The shaman and the speculative philosopher mark the bottom and top rounds on the ladder of the _inward_ man, the--Mongol. Shaman and philosopher fight with ghosts, demons, _spirits_, G.o.ds.

Totally different from this _free_ thinking is _own_ thinking, _my_ thinking, a thinking which does not guide me, but is guided, continued, or broken off, by me at my pleasure. The distinction of this own thinking from free thinking is similar to that of own sensuality, which I satisfy at pleasure, from free, unruly sensuality to which I succ.u.mb.

Feuerbach, in the "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future," is always harping upon _being_. In this he too, with all his antagonism to Hegel and the absolute philosophy, is stuck fast in abstraction; for "being" is abstraction, as is even "the I." Only _I am_ not abstraction alone: _I am_ all in all, consequently even abstraction or nothing; I am all and nothing; I am not a mere thought, but at the same time I am full of thoughts, a thought-world. Hegel condemns the own, mine,[225]--"opinion."[226] "Absolute thinking" is that thinking which forgets that it is _my_ thinking, that I think, and that it exists only through _me_. But I, as I, swallow up again what is mine, am its master; it is only my _opinion_, which I can at any moment _change_, _i. e._ annihilate, take back into myself, and consume. Feuerbach wants to smite Hegel's "absolute thinking" with _unconquered being_. But in me being is as much conquered as thinking is. It is _my_ being, as the other is _my_ thinking.

With this, of course, Feuerbach does not get further than to the proof, trivial in itself, that I require the _senses_ for everything, or that I cannot entirely do without these organs. Certainly I cannot think if I do not exist sensuously. But for thinking as well as for feeling, and so for the abstract as well as for the sensuous, I need above all things _myself_, this quite particular myself, this _unique_ myself. If I were not this one, _e. g._ Hegel, I should not look at the world as I do look at it, I should not pick out of it that philosophical system which just I as Hegel do, etc. I should indeed have senses, as do other people too, but I should not utilize them as I do.

Thus the reproach is brought up against Hegel by Feuerbach[227] that he misuses language, understanding by many words something else than what natural consciousness takes them for; and yet he too commits the same fault when he gives the "sensuous" a sense of unusual eminence. Thus it is said, p. 69, "the sensuous is not the profane, the dest.i.tute of thought, the obvious, that which is understood of itself." But, if it is the sacred, the full of thought, the recondite, that which can be understood only through mediation,--well, then it is no longer what people call the sensuous. The sensuous is only that which exists for _the senses_; what, on the other hand, is enjoyable only to those who enjoy with _more_ than the senses, who go beyond sense-enjoyment or sense-reception, is at most mediated or introduced by the senses, _i. e._ the senses const.i.tute a _condition_ for obtaining it, but it is no longer anything sensuous. The sensuous, whatever it may be, when taken up into me becomes something non-sensuous, which, however, may again have sensuous effects, _e. g._ by the stirring of my emotions and my blood.

It is well that Feuerbach brings sensuousness to honor, but the only thing he is able to do with it is to clothe the materialism of his "new philosophy" with what had hitherto been the property of idealism, the "absolute philosophy." As little as people let it be talked into them that one can live on the "spiritual" alone without bread, so little will they believe his word that as a sensuous being one is already everything, and so spiritual, full of thoughts, etc.

Nothing at all is justified by _being_. What is thought of _is_ as well as what is not thought of; the stone in the street _is_, and my notion of it _is_ too. Both are only in different _s.p.a.ces_, the former in airy s.p.a.ce, the latter in my head, in _me_; for I am s.p.a.ce like the street.

The professionals, the privileged, brook no freedom of thought, _i. e._ no thoughts that do not come from the "Giver of all good," be he called G.o.d, pope, church, or whatever else. If anybody has such illegitimate thoughts, he must whisper them into his confessor's ear, and have himself chastised by him till the slave-whip becomes unendurable to the free thoughts. In other ways too the professional spirit takes care that free thoughts shall not come at all: first and foremost, by a wise education. He on whom the principles of morality have been duly inculcated never becomes free again from moralizing thoughts, and robbery, perjury, overreaching, and the like, remain to him fixed ideas against which no freedom of thought protects him. He has his thoughts "from above," and gets no further.

It is different with the holders of concessions or patents. Every one must be able to have and form thoughts as he will. If he has the patent, or the concession, of a capacity to think, he needs no special _privilege_. But, as "all men are rational," it is free to every one to put into his head any thoughts whatever, and, to the extent of the patent of his natural endowment, to have a greater or less wealth of thoughts. Now one hears the admonitions that one "is to honor all opinions and convictions," that "every conviction is authorized," that one must be "tolerant to the views of others," etc.

But "your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways."

Or rather, I mean the reverse: Your thoughts are _my_ thoughts, which I dispose of as I will, and which I strike down unmercifully; they are my property, which I annihilate as I list. I do not wait for authorization from you first, to decompose and blow away your thoughts. It does not matter to me that you call these thoughts yours too, they remain mine nevertheless, and how I will proceed with them is _my affair_, not a usurpation. It may please me to leave you in your thoughts; then I keep still. Do you believe thoughts fly around free like birds, so that every one may get himself some which he may then make good against me as his inviolable property? What is flying around is all--_mine_.

Do you believe you have your thoughts for yourselves and need answer to no one for them, or, as you do also say, you have to give an account of them to G.o.d only? No, your great and small thoughts belong to me, and I handle them at my pleasure.

The thought is my _own_ only when I have no misgiving about bringing it in danger of death every moment, when I do not have to fear its loss as a _loss for me_, a loss of me. The thought is my own only when I can indeed subjugate it, but it never can subjugate me, never fanaticizes me, makes me the tool of its realization.

So freedom of thought exists when I can have all possible thoughts; but the thoughts become property only by not being able to become masters.

In the time of freedom of thought, thoughts (ideas) _rule_; but, if I attain to property in thought, they stand as my creatures.

If the hierarchy had not so penetrated men to the innermost as to take from them all courage to pursue free thoughts, _i. e._ thoughts perhaps displeasing to G.o.d, one would have to consider freedom of thought just as empty a word as, say, a freedom of digestion.

According to the professionals' opinion, the thought is _given_ to me; according to the freethinkers', _I seek_ the thought. There the _truth_ is already found and extant, only I must--receive it from its Giver by grace; here the truth is to be sought and is my goal, lying in the future, toward which I have to run.

In both cases the truth (the true thought) lies outside me, and I aspire to _get_ it, be it by presentation (grace), be it by earning (merit of my own). Therefore, (1) The truth is a _privilege_, (2) No, the way to it is _patent_ to all, and neither the Bible nor the holy fathers nor the church nor any one else is in possession of the truth; but one can come into possession of it by--speculating.

Both, one sees, are _propertyless_ in relation to the truth: they have it either as a _fief_ (for the "holy father," _e. g._, is not a unique person; as unique he is this Sixtus, Clement, etc., but he does not have the truth as Sixtus, Clement, etc., but as "holy father," _i. e._ as a spirit) or as an _ideal_. As a fief, it is only for a few (the privileged); as an ideal, for _all_ (the patentees).

Freedom of thought, then, has the meaning that we do indeed all walk in the dark and in the paths of error, but every one can on this path approach _the truth_ and is accordingly on the right path ("All roads lead to Rome, to the world's end, etc."). Hence freedom of thought means this much, that the true thought is not my _own_; for, if it were this, how should people want to shut me off from it?

Thinking has become entirely free, and has laid down a lot of truths which _I_ must accommodate myself to. It seeks to complete itself into a _system_ and to bring itself to an absolute "const.i.tution." In the State _e. g._ it seeks for the idea, say, till it has brought out the "rational State," in which I am then obliged to be suited; in man (anthropology), till it "has found man."

The thinker is distinguished from the believer only by believing _much more_ than the latter, who on his part thinks of much less as signified by his faith (creed). The thinker has a thousand tenets of faith where the believer gets along with few; but the former brings _coherence_ into his tenets, and takes the coherence in turn for the scale to estimate their worth by. If one or the other does not fit into his budget, he throws it out.

The thinkers run parallel to the believers in their p.r.o.nouncements.

Instead of "If it is from G.o.d you will not root it out," the word is "If it is from the _truth_, is true, etc."; instead of "Give G.o.d the glory,"--"Give truth the glory." But it is very much the same to me whether G.o.d or the truth wins; first and foremost _I_ want to win.

Aside from this, how is an "unlimited freedom" to be thinkable inside of the State or society? The State may well protect one against another, but yet it must not let itself be endangered by an unmeasured freedom, a so-called unbridledness. Thus in "freedom of instruction" the State declares only this,--that it is suited with every one who instructs as the State (or, speaking more comprehensibly, the political power) would have it. The point for the compet.i.tors is this "as the State would have it." If the clergy, _e. g._, does not will as the State does, then it itself excludes itself from _compet.i.tion_ (_vid._ France). The limit that is necessarily drawn in the State for any and all compet.i.tion is called "the oversight and superintendence of the State." In bidding freedom of instruction keep within the due bounds, the State at the same time fixes the scope of freedom of thought; because, as a rule, people do not think farther than their teachers have thought.

Hear Minister Guizot: "The great difficulty of to-day is the _guiding and dominating of the mind_. Formerly the church fulfilled this mission; now it is not adequate to it. It is from the university that this great service must be expected, and the university will not fail to perform it. We, the _government_, have the duty of supporting it therein. The charter calls for the freedom of thought and that of conscience."[228]

So, in favor of freedom of thought and conscience, the minister demands "the guiding and dominating of the mind."

Catholicism haled the examinee before the forum of ecclesiasticism, Protestantism before that of biblical Christianity. It would be but little bettered if one haled him before that of reason, as Ruge, _e. g._, wants to.[229] Whether the church, the Bible, or reason (to which, moreover, Luther and Huss already appealed) is the _sacred authority_ makes no difference in essentials.

The "question of our time" does not become soluble even when one puts it thus: Is anything general authorized, or only the individual? Is the generality (such as State, law, custom, morality, etc.) authorized, or individuality? It becomes soluble for the first time when one no longer asks after an "authorization" at all, and does not carry on a mere fight against "privileges."--A "rational" freedom of teaching, which "recognizes only the conscience of reason,"[230] does not bring us to the goal; we require an _egoistic_ freedom of teaching rather, a freedom of teaching for all ownness, wherein _I_ become _audible_ and can announce myself unchecked. That I make myself "_audible_,"[231] this alone is "reason,"[232] be I ever so irrational; in my making myself heard, and so hearing myself, others as well as I myself enjoy me, and at the same time consume me.

What would be gained if, as formerly the orthodox I, the loyal I, the moral I, etc., was free, now the rational I should become free? Would this be the freedom of me?

If I am free as "rational I," then the rational in me, or reason, is free; and this freedom of reason, or freedom of the thought, was the ideal of the Christian world from of old. They wanted to make thinking--and, as aforesaid, faith is also thinking, as thinking is faith--free; the thinkers, _i. e._ the believers as well as the rational, were to be free; for the rest freedom was impossible. But the freedom of thinkers is the "freedom of the children of G.o.d," and at the same time the most merciless--hierarchy or dominion of the thought; for _I_ succ.u.mb to the thought. If thoughts are free, I am their slave; I have no power over them, and am dominated by them. But I want to have the thought, want to be full of thoughts, but at the same time I want to be thoughtless, and, instead of freedom of thought, I preserve for myself thoughtlessness.

If the point is to have myself understood and to make communications, then a.s.suredly I can make use only of _human_ means, which are at my command because I am at the same time man. And really I have thoughts only as _man_; as I, I am at the same time _thoughtless_.[233] He who cannot get rid of a thought is so far only man, is a thrall of _language_, this human inst.i.tution, this treasury of _human_ thoughts.

Language or "the word" tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of _fixed ideas_. Just observe yourself in the act of reflection, right now, and you will find how you make progress only by becoming thoughtless and speechless every moment. You are not thoughtless and speechless merely in (say) sleep, but even in the deepest reflection; yes, precisely then most so. And only by this thoughtlessness, this unrecognized "freedom of thought" or freedom from the thought, are you your own. Only from it do you arrive at putting language to use as your _property_.

If thinking is not _my_ thinking, it is merely a spun-out thought; it is slave work, or the work of a "servant obeying at the word." For not a thought, but I, am the beginning for my thinking, and therefore I am its goal too, even as its whole course is only a course of my self-enjoyment; for absolute or free thinking, on the other hand, thinking itself is the beginning, and it plagues itself with propounding this beginning as the extremest "abstraction" (_e. g._ as being). This very abstraction, or this thought, is then spun out further.

Absolute thinking is the affair of the human spirit, and this is a holy spirit. Hence this thinking is an affair of the parsons, who have "a sense for it," a sense for the "highest interests of mankind," for "the spirit."

To the believer, truths are a _settled_ thing, a fact; to the freethinker, a thing that is still to be _settled_. Be absolute thinking ever so unbelieving, its incredulity has its limits, and there does remain a belief in the truth, in the spirit, in the idea and its final victory: this thinking does not sin against the holy spirit. But all thinking that does not sin against the holy spirit is belief in spirits or ghosts.

I can as little renounce thinking as feeling, the spirit's activity as little as the activity of the senses. As feeling is our sense for things, so thinking is our sense for essences (thoughts). Essences have their existence in everything sensuous, especially in the word. The power of words follows that of things: first one is coerced by the rod, afterward by conviction. The might of things overcomes our courage, our spirit; against the power of a conviction, and so of the word, even the rack and the sword lose their overpoweringness and force. The men of conviction are the priestly men, who resist every enticement of Satan.

Christianity took away from the things of this world only their irresistibleness, made us independent of them. In like manner I raise myself above truths and their power: as I am supersensual, so I am supertrue. _Before me_ truths are as common and as indifferent as things; they do not carry me away, and do not inspire me with enthusiasm. There exists not even one truth, not right, not freedom, humanity, etc., that has stability before me, and to which I subject myself. They are _words_, nothing but words, as all things are to the Christian nothing but "vain things." In words and truths (every word is a truth, as Hegel a.s.serts that one cannot _tell_ a lie) there is no salvation for me, as little as there is for the Christian in things and vanities. As the riches of this world do not make me happy, so neither do its truths. It is now no longer Satan, but the spirit, that plays the story of the temptation; and he does not seduce by the things of this world, but by its thoughts, by the "glitter of the idea."

Along with worldly goods, all sacred goods too must be put away as no longer valuable.

Truths are phrases, ways of speaking, words ([Greek: logos]); brought into connection, or into an articulate series, they form logic, science, philosophy.

For thinking and speaking I need truths and words, as I do foods for eating; without them I cannot think nor speak. Truths are men's thoughts, set down in words and therefore just as extant as other things, although extant only for the mind or for thinking, they are human inst.i.tutions and human creatures, and, even if they are given out for divine revelations, there still remains in them the quality of alienness for me; yes, as my own creatures they are already alienated from me after the act of creation.

The Christian man is the man with faith in thinking, who believes in the supreme dominion of thoughts and wants to bring thoughts, so-called "principles," to dominion. Many a one does indeed test the thoughts, and chooses none of them for his master without criticism, but in this he is like the dog who sniffs at people to smell out "his master": he is always aiming at the _ruling_ thought. The Christian may reform and revolt an infinite deal, may demolish the ruling concepts of centuries; he will always aspire to a new "principle" or new master again, always set up a higher or "deeper" truth again, always call forth a cult again, always proclaim a spirit called to dominion, lay down a _law_ for all.

If there is even one truth only to which man has to devote his life and his powers because he is man, then he is subjected to a rule, dominion, law, etc.; he is a servingman. It is supposed that, _e. g._, man, humanity, liberty, etc., are such truths.

On the other hand, one can say thus: Whether you will further occupy yourself with thinking depends on you; only know that, _if_ in your thinking you would like to make out anything worthy of notice, many hard problems are to be solved, without vanquishing which you cannot get far.

There exists, therefore, no duty and no calling for you to meddle with thoughts (ideas, truths); but, if you will do so, you will do well to utilize what the forces of others have already achieved toward clearing up these difficult subjects.

Thus, therefore, he who will think does a.s.suredly have a task, which _he_ consciously or unconsciously sets for himself in willing that; but no one has the task of thinking or of believing.--In the former case it may be said, You do not go far enough, you have a narrow and biased interest, you do not go to the bottom of the thing; in short, you do not completely subdue it. But, on the other hand, however far you may come at any time, you are still always at the end, you have no call to step farther, and you can have it as you will or as you are able. It stands with this as with any other piece of work, which you can give up when the humor for it wears off. Just so, if you can no longer _believe_ a thing, you do not have to force yourself into faith or to busy yourself lastingly as if with a sacred truth of the faith, as theologians or philosophers do, but you can tranquilly draw back your interest from it and let it run. Priestly spirits will indeed expound this your lack of interest as "laziness, thoughtlessness, obduracy, self-deception," and the like. But do you just let the trumpery lie, notwithstanding. No thing,[234] no so-called "highest interest of mankind," no "sacred cause,"[235] is worth your serving it, and occupying yourself with it for _its sake_; you may seek its worth in this alone, whether it is worth anything to _you_ for your sake. Become like children, the biblical saying admonishes us. But children have no sacred interest and know nothing of a "good cause." They know all the more accurately what they have a fancy for; and they think over, to the best of their powers, how they are to arrive at it.