The Ego and His Own Part 31

Yet, it is insidiously objected, their craziness or their possessedness is at least their sin. Their possessedness is nothing but what they--could achieve, the result of their development, just as Luther's faith in the Bible was all that he was--competent to make out. The one brings himself into the madhouse with his development, the other brings himself therewith into the Pantheon and to the loss of--Valhalla.

There is no sinner and no sinful egoism!

Get away from me with your "philanthropy"! Creep in, you philanthropist, into the "dens of vice," linger awhile in the throng of the great city: will you not everywhere find sin, and sin, and again sin? Will you not wail over corrupt humanity, not lament at the monstrous egoism? Will you see a rich man without finding him pitiless and "egoistic"? Perhaps you already call yourself an atheist, but you remain true to the Christian feeling that a camel will sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man not be an "un-man." How many do you see anyhow that you would not throw into the "egoistic ma.s.s"? What, therefore, has your philanthropy [love of man] found? Nothing but unlovable men! And where do they all come from? From you, from your philanthropy! You brought the sinner with you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore you inserted him everywhere. Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you alone are the creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love men, are the very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into vicious and virtuous, into men and un-men, the very one to befoul them with the slaver of your possessedness; for you love not _men_, but _man_. But I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have only--dreamed of him.

Self-enjoyment is embittered to me by my thinking I must serve another, by my fancying myself under obligation to him, by my holding myself called to "self-sacrifice," "resignation," "enthusiasm." All right: if I no longer serve any idea, any "higher essence," then it is clear of itself that I no longer serve any man either, but--under all circ.u.mstances--_myself_. But thus I am not merely in fact or in being, but also for my consciousness, the--unique.[239]

There pertains to _you_ more than the divine, the human, etc.; _yours_ pertains to you.

Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you have more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more.

You are then not merely _called_ to everything divine, _ent.i.tled_ to everything human, but _owner_ of what is yours, _i. e._ of all that you possess the force to make your own;[240] _i. e._ you are _appropriate_[241] and capacitated for everything that is yours.

People have always supposed that they must give me a destiny lying outside myself, so that at last they demanded that I should lay claim to the human because I am = man. This is the Christian magic circle.

Fichte's ego too is the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego has rights, then it is "the ego," it is not I. But I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique.

Hence my wants too are unique, and my deeds; in short, everything about me is unique. And it is only as this unique I that I take everything for my own, as I set myself to work, and develop myself, only as this. I do not develop man, nor as man, but, as I, I develop--myself.

This is the meaning of the--_unique one_.

III

THE UNIQUE ONE

Pre-Christian and Christian times pursue opposite goals; the former wants to idealize the real, the latter to realize the ideal; the former seeks the "holy spirit," the latter the "glorified body." Hence the former closes with insensitiveness to the real, with "contempt for the world"; the latter will end with the casting off of the ideal, with "contempt for the spirit."

The opposition of the real and the ideal is an irreconcilable one, and the one can never become the other: if the ideal became the real, it would no longer be the ideal; and, if the real became the ideal, the ideal alone would be, but not at all the real. The opposition of the two is not to be vanquished otherwise than if _some one_ annihilates both.

Only in this "some one," the third party, does the opposition find its end; otherwise idea and reality will ever fail to coincide. The idea cannot be so realized as to remain idea, but is realized only when it dies as idea; and it is the same with the real.

But now we have before us in the ancients adherents of the idea, in the moderns adherents of reality. Neither can get clear of the opposition, and both pine only, the one party for the spirit, and, when this craving of the ancient world seemed to be satisfied and this spirit to have come, the others immediately for the secularization of this spirit again, which must forever remain a "pious wish."

The pious wish of the ancients was _sanct.i.ty_, the pious wish of the moderns is _corporeity_. But, as antiquity had to go down if its longing was to be satisfied (for it consisted only in the longing), so too corporeity can never be attained within the ring of Christianness. As the trait of sanctification or purification goes through the old world (the washings, etc.), so that of incorporation goes through the Christian world: G.o.d plunges down into this world, becomes flesh, and wants to redeem it, _i. e._ fill it with himself; but, since he is "the idea" or "the spirit," people (_e. g._ Hegel) in the end introduce the idea into everything, into the world, and prove "that the idea is, that reason is, in everything." "Man" corresponds in the culture of to-day to what the heathen Stoics set up as "the wise man"; the latter, like the former, a--_fleshless_ being. The unreal "wise man," this bodiless "holy one" of the Stoics, became a real person, a bodily "Holy One," in G.o.d _made flesh_; the unreal "man," the bodiless ego, will become real in the _corporeal ego_, in me.

There winds its way through Christianity the question about the "existence of G.o.d," which, taken up ever and ever again, gives testimony that the craving for existence, corporeity, personality, reality, was incessantly busying the heart because it never found a satisfying solution. At last the question about the existence of G.o.d fell, but only to rise up again in the proposition that the "divine" had existence (Feuerbach). But this too has no existence, and neither will the last refuge, that the "purely human" is realizable, afford shelter much longer. No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity. The scholastic contention of realism and nominalism has the same content; in short, this spins itself out through all Christian history, and cannot end _in_ it.

The world of Christians is working at _realizing ideas_ in the individual relations of life, the inst.i.tutions and laws of the Church and the State; but they make resistance, and always keep back something unembodied (unrealizable). Nevertheless this embodiment is restlessly rushed after, no matter in what degree _corporeity_ constantly fails to result.

For realities matter little to the realizer, but it matters everything that they be realizations of the idea. Hence he is ever examining anew whether the realized does in truth have the idea, its kernel, dwelling in it; and in testing the real he at the same time tests the idea, whether it is realizable as he thinks it, or is only thought by him incorrectly, and for that reason unfeasibly.

The Christian is no longer to care for family, State, etc., as _existences_; Christians are not to sacrifice themselves for these "divine things" like the ancients, but these are only to be utilized to make the _spirit alive_ in them. The _real_ family has become indifferent, and there is to arise out of it an _ideal_ one which would then be the "truly real," a sacred family, blessed by G.o.d, or, according to the liberal way of thinking, a "rational" family. With the ancients family, State, fatherland, etc., is divine as a thing _extant_; with the moderns it is still awaiting divinity, as extant it is only sinful, earthly, and has still to be "redeemed," _i. e._ to become truly real.

This has the following meaning: The family, etc., is not the extant and real, but the divine, the idea, is extant and real; whether _this_ family will make itself real by taking up the truly real, the idea, is still unsettled. It is not the individual's task to serve the family as the divine, but, reversely, to serve the divine and to bring to it the still undivine family, _i. e._ to subject everything in the idea's name, to set up the idea's banner everywhere, to bring the idea to real efficacy.

But, since the concern of Christianity, as of antiquity, is for the _divine_, they always come out at this again on their opposite ways. At the end of heathenism the divine becomes the _extramundane_, at the end of Christianity the _intramundane_. Antiquity does not succeed in putting it entirely outside the world, and, when Christianity accomplishes this task, the divine instantly longs to get back into the world and wants to "redeem" the world. But within Christianity it does not and cannot come to this, that the divine as _intramundane_ should really become the _mundane itself_: there is enough left that does and must maintain itself unpenetrated as the "bad," irrational, accidental, "egoistic," the "mundane" in the bad sense. Christianity begins with G.o.d's becoming man, and carries on its work of conversion and redemption through all time in order to prepare for G.o.d a reception in all men and in everything human, and to penetrate everything with the spirit: it sticks to preparing a place for the "spirit."

When the accent was at last laid on Man or mankind, it was again the idea that they "_p.r.o.nounced eternal_." "Man does not die!" They thought they had now found the reality of the idea: _Man_ is the I of history, of the world's history; it is he, this _ideal_, that really develops, _i. e._ _realizes_, himself. He is the really real and corporeal one, for history is his body, in which individuals are only members. Christ is the I of the world's history, even of the pre-Christian; in modern apprehension it is man, the figure of Christ has developed into the _figure of man_: man as such, man absolutely, is the "central point" of history. In "man" the imaginary beginning returns again; for "man" is as imaginary as Christ is. "Man," as the I of the world's history, closes the cycle of Christian apprehensions.

Christianity's magic circle would be broken if the strained relation between existence and calling, _i. e._ between me as I am and me as I should be, ceased; it persists only as the longing of the idea for its bodiliness, and vanishes with the relaxing separation of the two: only when the idea remains--idea, as man or mankind is indeed a bodiless idea, is Christianity still extant. The corporeal idea, the corporeal or "completed" spirit, floats before the Christian as "the end of the days"

or as the "goal of history"; it is not present time to him.

The individual can only have a part in the founding of the Kingdom of G.o.d, or, according to the modern notion of the same thing, in the development and history of humanity; and only so far as he has a part in it does a Christian, or according to the modern expression human, value pertain to him; for the rest he is dust and a worm-bag.

That the individual is of himself a world's history, and possesses his property in the rest of the world's history, goes beyond what is Christian. To the Christian the world's history is the higher thing, because it is the history of Christ or "man"; to the egoist only _his_ history has value, because he wants to develop only _himself_, not the mankind-idea, not G.o.d's plan, not the purposes of Providence, not liberty, and the like. He does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or a vessel of G.o.d, he recognizes no calling, he does not fancy that he exists for the further development of mankind and that he must contribute his mite to it, but he lives himself out, careless of how well or ill humanity may fare thereby. If it were not open to confusion with the idea that a state of nature is to be praised, one might recall Lenau's "Three Gypsies."--What, am I in the world to realize ideas? To do my part by my citizenship, say, toward the realization of the idea "State," or by marriage, as husband and father, to bring the idea of the family into an existence? What does such a calling concern me! I live after a calling as little as the flower grows and gives fragrance after a calling.

The ideal "Man" is _realized_ when the Christian apprehension turns about and becomes the proposition, "I, this unique one, am man." The conceptual question, "what is man?"--has then changed into the personal question, "who is man?" With "what" the concept was sought for, in order to realize it; with "who" it is no longer any question at all, but the answer is personally on hand at once in the asker: the question answers itself.

They say of G.o.d, "Names name thee not." That holds good of me: no _concept_ expresses me, nothing that is designated as my essence exhausts me; they are only names. Likewise they say of G.o.d that he is perfect and has no calling to strive after perfection. That too holds good of me alone.

I am _owner_ of my might, and I am so when I know myself as _unique_. In the _unique one_ the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, out of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it G.o.d, be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for myself,[242] the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say:

All things are nothing to me.[243]

THE END

INDEX

The following index to this translation of "_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_" is intended to help one, after reading the book, to find a pa.s.sage which he remembers. It is not a concordance to aid in a.n.a.lytical study. Hence the designations of the matter referred to are in a form intended to be recognized by the person who remembers the pa.s.sage; I have generally preferred, so far as convenience permitted, to use the words of the text itself, being confident that a description of the subject-matter in words more appropriate to the summary form of the index would never help any person to find his pa.s.sage. If the designations are recognizable, I have permitted them to be rough.

Of necessity the index has been made hastily, and I hereby confess it to be guilty of all the faults that an index can possess, though I hope that the page numbers will prove to be accurate. The faults that I am most ashamed of are the incompleteness which usually omits the shorter occurrences of a given word or idea and the indefiniteness of the "ff."

which does not tell the reader how far the reference extends. It has actually not been in my power to avoid either of these faults, and I hope they will not prevent the index from being of very considerable use to those who pay continued attention to the book. These two faults will be found least noticeable in the references to proper names and quotations: therefore the reader who wants to find a pa.s.sage will do best to remember, if possible, a conspicuous proper name or a quotation whose source is known--perhaps oftenest from the Bible--and look up his pa.s.sage by that. In the indexing of quotations, however, I have omitted anonymous proverbs, lines of German hymns, and quotations of whose authorship I was (whether pardonably or unpardonably) ignorant.

The abbreviations are: ftn., "footnote"; f., "and next page"; ff., "and following pages."

S. T. B.

Age: coming of age, 220.

Alcibiades: 282 f.

Alexis, Wilibald: "Cabanis," 291.

Algiers: 343.

Alien: the same in German as "strange," 47 ftn.

America: citizens presumed respectable, 233.

duelists how treated, 314.

Germans sold to, 351.

kings not valued in, 351.

Ananias and Sapphira: 102.