The Ego and His Own Part 6

The wheels in the head have a number of other formal aspects, some of which it may be useful to indicate here.

Thus _self-renunciation_ is common to the holy with the unholy, to the pure and the impure. The impure man _renounces_ all "better feelings,"

all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the appet.i.te that rules him. The pure man renounces his natural relation to the world ("renounces the world") and follows only the "desire" which rules him.

Driven by the thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all admonitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all gentleness and all compa.s.sion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the appet.i.te drags him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He makes himself the "laughing-stock of the world," is hard-hearted and "strictly just"; for the desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces _himself_ before Mammon, so the holy man renounces _himself_ before G.o.d and the divine laws. We are now living in a time when the _shamelessness_ of the holy is every day more and more felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same time compelled to unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more and more every day. Have not the shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize the "progress of the age" long surpa.s.sed all measure and all expectation? But it must be so. The self-renouncers must, as holy men, take the same course that they do as unholy men; as the latter little by little sink to the fullest measure of self-renouncing vulgarity and _lowness_, so the former must ascend to the most dishonorable _exaltation_. The mammon of the earth and the _G.o.d_ of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of--self-renunciation. The low man, like the exalted one, reaches out for a "good,"--the former for the material good, the latter for the ideal, the so-called "supreme good"; and at last both complete each other again too, as the "materially-minded" man sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm, his _vanity_, and the "spiritually-minded" man to a material gratification, the _life of enjoyment_.

Those who exhort men to "unselfishness"[41] think they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they understand by "self-renunciation." But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that _you_ yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again for _your_ benefit and behoof, only that through unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit."

You are to benefit _yourself_, and yet you are not seek _your_ benefit.

People regard as unselfish the _benefactor_ of men, a Franke who founded the orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but also the _fanatic_ who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, sacrifices everything to virtue,--like Koerner, dies for G.o.d, king, and fatherland.

Hence, among others, O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Connell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if they were successful in casting suspicion on his "unselfishness," they would easily separate him from his adherents.

Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for another _end_ than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making money or at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and that _his_ end; selfishness here as there, only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to _others too_, and so would be for the _common_ interest.

Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fashion in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it costs too much in solid material, people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be _our_ end and our _property_, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a--fixed idea; where it begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it pa.s.ses into our _stubbornness_ and becomes our--master. One is not unselfish so long as he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," the fundamental maxim of all the possessed; one becomes so in the case of a _sacred_ end, through the corresponding sacred zeal.--

I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my _own_, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfilment, leave it always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its _judge_, because I am its owner.

Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness reaches, as much on possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit: there vice, folly, etc.; here humility, devotion, etc.

Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the pa.s.sions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eye turned its look upward, you--prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appet.i.tes.

Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint "Oh dear!"

moaned itself away, and--_the soul was at rest_. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new--prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the--chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free _grisette_ against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!

The fixed idea may also be perceived as "maxim," "principle,"

"standpoint," and the like. Archimedes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint _outside_ it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the _world of mind_, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it is _heaven_. Heaven is the "standpoint" from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and--despised. To a.s.sure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever,--how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!

Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from the appet.i.tes as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let himself be determined by his appet.i.tes. This does not involve the idea that _he_ was not to _have_ appet.i.tes, but that the appet.i.tes were not to have him, that they were not to become _fixed_, uncontrollable, indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived against the appet.i.tes be applied by us to its own precept that _mind_ (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed to determine us, to become _fixed_ and inviolable or "sacred"?

Then it would end in the _dissolution of mind_, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all conceptions. As we there had to say "We are indeed to have appet.i.tes, but the appet.i.tes are not to have us," so we should now say "We are indeed to have _mind_, but mind is not to have us." If the latter seems lacking in sense, think _e. g._ of the fact that with so many a man a thought becomes a "maxim," whereby he himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with the maxim he has a "permanent standpoint" again.

The doctrines of the catechism become our _principles_ before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection. Their thought, or--mind, has the sole power, and no protest of the "flesh" is further listened to.

Nevertheless it is only through the "flesh" that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears _himself_ that he is a hearing or rational[42] being. The Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled nature, but lives in "humility"; therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his _person_; he thinks himself satisfied with the "freedom of the spirit." But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its tone is "pa.s.sionate,"

"indecorous," "not well-disposed," "spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be otherwise), then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices _against the spirit_ (for decorum, pa.s.sionlessness, kindly disposition, and the like, is--spirit), and is justly zealous against them. He could not be a Christian if he were willing to endure them. He listens only to morality, and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to legality, and gags the lawless word. The _spirit_ of morality and legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, unbending _master_. They call that the "mastery of the spirit,"--it is at the same time the _standpoint_ of the spirit.

And now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen mean to make free? Whose freedom is it that they cry out and thirst for? The _spirit's_! That of the spirit of morality, legality, piety, the fear of G.o.d, etc. That is what the anti-liberal gentlemen also want, and the whole contention between the two turns on a matter of advantage,--whether the latter are to be the only speakers, or the former are to receive a "share in the enjoyment of the same advantage." The _spirit_ remains the absolute _lord_ for both, and their only quarrel is over who shall occupy the hierarchical throne that pertains to the "Vicegerent of the Lord." The best of it is that one can calmly look upon the stir with the certainty that the wild beasts of history will tear each other to pieces just like those of nature; their putrefying corpses fertilize the ground for--our crops.

We shall come back later to many another wheel in the head,--for instance, those of vocation, truthfulness, love, etc.

When one's own is contrasted with what is _imparted_ to him, there is no use in objecting that we cannot have anything isolated, but receive everything as a part of the universal order, and therefore through the impression of what is around us, and that consequently we have it as something "imparted"; for there is a great difference between the feelings and thoughts which are _aroused_ in me by other things and those which are _given_ to me. G.o.d, immortality, freedom, humanity, etc., are drilled into us from childhood as thoughts and feelings which move our inner being more or less strongly, either ruling us without our knowing it, or sometimes in richer natures manifesting themselves in systems and works of art; but are always not aroused, but imparted, feelings, because we must believe in them and cling to them. That an Absolute existed, and that it must be taken in, felt, and thought by us, was settled as a faith in the minds of those who spent all the strength of their mind on recognizing it and setting it forth. The _feeling_ for the Absolute exists there as an imparted one, and thenceforth results only in the most manifold revelations of its own self. So in Klopstock the religious feeling was an imparted one, which in the "Messiad" simply found artistic expression. If, on the other hand, the religion with which he was confronted had been for him only an incitation to feeling and thought, and if he had known how to take an att.i.tude completely _his own_ toward it, then there would have resulted, instead of religious inspiration, a dissolution and consumption of the religion itself.

Instead of that, he only continued in mature years his childish feelings received in childhood, and squandered the powers of his manhood in decking out his childish trifles.

The difference is, then, whether feelings are imparted to me or only aroused. Those which are aroused are my own, egoistic, because they are not _as feelings_ drilled into me, dictated to me, and pressed upon me; but those which are imparted to me I receive, with open arms,--I cherish them in me as a heritage, cultivate them, and am _possessed_ by them.

Who is there that has never, more or less consciously, noticed that our whole education is calculated to produce _feelings_ in us, _i. e._ impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out? If we hear thee name of G.o.d, we are to feel veneration; if we hear that of the prince's majesty, it is to be received with reverence, deference, submission; if we hear that of morality, we are to think that we hear something inviolable; if we hear of the Evil One or evil ones, we are to shudder; etc. The intention is directed to these _feelings_, and he who _e. g._ should hear with pleasure the deeds of the "bad" would have to be "taught what's what"

with the rod of discipline. Thus stuffed with _imparted feelings_, we appear before the bar of majority and are "p.r.o.nounced of age." Our equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims, eternal principles," etc. The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age.

We _must not_ feel at every thing and every name that comes before us what we could and would like to feel thereat; _e. g._, at the name of G.o.d we must think of nothing laughable, feel nothing disrespectful, it being prescribed and imparted to us what and how we are to feel and think at mention of that name.

That is the meaning of the _care of souls_,--that my soul or my mind be tuned as others think right, not as I myself would like it. How much trouble does it not cost one, finally to secure to oneself a feeling of one's _own_ at the mention of at least this or that name, and to laugh in the face of many who expect from us a holy face and a composed expression at their speeches. What is imparted is _alien_ to us, is not our own, and therefore is "sacred," and it is hard work to lay aside the "sacred dread of it."

To-day one again hears "seriousness" praised, "seriousness in the presence of highly important subjects and discussions," "German seriousness," etc. This sort of seriousness proclaims clearly how old and grave lunacy and possession have already become. For there is nothing more serious than a lunatic when he comes to the central point of his lunacy; then his great earnestness incapacitates him for taking a joke. (See madhouses.)

-- 3.--THE HIERARCHY

The historical reflections on our Mongolism which I propose to insert episodically at this place are not given with the claim of thoroughness, or even of approved soundness, but solely because it seems to me that they may contribute toward making the rest clear.

The history of the world, whose shaping properly belongs altogether to the Caucasian race, seems till now to have run through two Caucasian ages, in the first of which we had to work out and work off our innate _negroidity_; this was followed in the second by _Mongoloidity_ (Chineseness), which must likewise be terribly made an end of.

Negroidity represents _antiquity_, the time of dependence on _things_ (on c.o.c.ks' eating, birds' flight, on sneezing, on thunder and lightning, on the rustling of sacred trees, etc.); Mongoloidity the time of dependence on thoughts, the _Christian_ time. Reserved for the future are the words "I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the world of mind."

In the negroid age fall the campaigns of Sesostris and the importance of Egypt and of northern Africa in general. To the Mongoloid age belong the invasions of the Huns and Mongols, up to the Russians.

The value of _me_ cannot possibly be rated high so long as the hard diamond of the _not-me_ bears so enormous a price as was the case both with G.o.d and with the world. The not-me is still too stony and indomitable to be consumed and absorbed by me; rather, men only creep about with extraordinary _bustle_ on this _immovable_ ent.i.ty, _i. e._ on this _substance_, like parasitic animals on a body from whose juices they draw nourishment, yet without consuming it. It is the bustle of vermin, the a.s.siduity of Mongolians. Among the Chinese, we know, everything remains as it used to be, and nothing "essential" or "substantial" suffers a change; all the more actively do they work away _at_ that which remains, which bears the name of the "old," "ancestors,"

etc.

Accordingly, in our Mongolian age all change has been only reformatory or ameliorative, not destructive or consuming and annihilating. The substance, the object, _remains_. All our a.s.siduity was only the activity of ants and the hopping of fleas, jugglers' tricks on the immovable tight-rope of the objective, _corvee_-service under the lordship of the unchangeable or "eternal." The Chinese are doubtless the most _positive_ nation, because totally buried in precepts; but neither has the Christian age come out from the _positive, i. e._ from "limited freedom," freedom "within certain limits." In the most advanced stage of civilization this activity earns the name of _scientific_ activity, of working on a motionless presupposition, a _hypothesis_ that is not to be upset.

In its first and most unintelligible form morality shows itself as _habit_. To act according to the habit and usage (_morem_) of one's country--is to be moral there. Therefore pure moral action, clear, unadulterated morality, is most straightforwardly practised in China; they keep to the old habit and usage, and hate each innovation as a crime worthy of death. For _innovation_ is the deadly enemy of _habit_, of the _old_, of _permanence_. In fact, too, it admits of no doubt that through habit man secures himself against the obtrusiveness of things, of the world, and founds a world of his own in which alone he is and feels at home, _i. e._ builds himself a _heaven_. Why, heaven has no other meaning than that it is man's proper home, in which nothing alien regulates and rules him any longer, no influence of the earthly any longer makes him himself alien; in short, in which the dross of the earthly is thrown off, and the combat against the world has found an end,--in which, therefore, nothing is any longer _denied_ him. Heaven is the end of _abnegation_, it is _free enjoyment_. There man no longer denies himself anything, because nothing is any longer alien and hostile to him. But now habit is a "second nature," which detaches and frees man from his first and original natural condition, in securing him against every casualty of it. The fully elaborated habit of the Chinese has provided for all emergencies, and everything is "looked out for"; whatever may come, the Chinaman always knows how he has to behave, and does not need to decide first according to the circ.u.mstances; no unforeseen case throws him down from the heaven of his rest. The morally habituated and inured Chinaman is not surprised and taken off his guard; he behaves with equanimity (i. e. with equal spirit or temper) toward everything, because his temper, protected by the precaution of his traditional usage, does not lose its balance. Hence, on the ladder of culture or civilization humanity mounts the first round through habit; and, as it conceives that, in climbing to culture, it is at the same time climbing to heaven, the realm of culture or second nature, it really mounts the first round of the--ladder to heaven.

If Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual beings,--if it has created a world of spirits, a heaven,--the Caucasians have wrestled for thousands of years with these spiritual beings, to get to the bottom of them. What were they doing, then, but building on Mongolian ground? They have not built on sand, but in the air; they have wrestled with Mongolism, stormed the Mongolian heaven, Tien. When will they at last annihilate this heaven? When will they at last become _really Caucasians_, and find themselves? When will the "immortality of the soul," which in these latter days thought it was giving itself still more security if it presented itself as "immortality of mind," at last change to the _mortality of mind_?

It was when, in the industrious struggle of the Mongolian race, men had _built a heaven_, that those of the Caucasian race, since in their Mongolian complexion they have to do with heaven, took upon themselves the opposite task, the task of storming that heaven of custom, _heaven-storming_[43] activity. To dig under all human ordinance, in order to set up a new and--better one on the cleared site, to wreck all customs in order to put new and better customs in their place, etc.,--their act is limited to this. But is it thus already purely and really what it aspires to be, and does it reach its final aim? No, in this creation of a "_better_" it is tainted with Mongolism. It storms heaven only to make a heaven again, it overthrows an old power only to legitimate a new power, it only--_improves_. Nevertheless the point aimed at, often as it may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt, is the real, complete downfall of heaven, customs, etc.,--in short, of man secured only against the world, of the _isolation_ or _inwardness_ of man. Through the heaven of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the world, to break its hostile power. But this isolation of heaven must likewise be broken, and the true end of heaven-storming is the--downfall of heaven, the annihilation of heaven. _Improving_ and _reforming_ is the Mongolism of the Caucasian, because thereby he is always setting up again what already existed,--to wit, a _precept_, a generality, a heaven. He harbors the most irreconcilable enmity to heaven, and yet builds new heavens daily; piling heaven on heaven, he only crushes one by another; the Jews' heaven destroys the Greeks', the Christians' the Jews', the Protestants' the Catholics', etc.--If the _heaven-storming_ men of Caucasian blood throw on their Mongolian skin, they will bury the emotional man under the ruins of the monstrous world of emotion, the isolated man under his isolated world, the paradisiacal man under his heaven. And heaven is the _realm of spirits_, the realm _of freedom of the spirit_.

The realm of heaven, the realm of spirits and ghosts, has found its right standing in the speculative philosophy. Here it was stated as the realm of thoughts, concepts, and ideas; heaven is peopled with thoughts and ideas, and this "realm of spirits" is then the true reality.

To want to win freedom for the _spirit_ is Mongolism; freedom of the spirit is Mongolian freedom, freedom of feeling, moral freedom, etc.

We may find the word "morality" taken as synonymous with spontaneity, self-determination. But that is not involved in it; rather has the Caucasian shown himself spontaneous only _in spite of_ his Mongolian morality. The Mongolian heaven, or morals,[44] remained the strong castle, and only by storming incessantly at this castle did the Caucasian show himself moral; if he had not had to do with morals at all any longer, if he had not had therein his indomitable, continual enemy, the relation to morals would cease, and consequently morality would cease. That his spontaneity is still a moral spontaneity, therefore, is just the Mongoloidity of it,--is a sign that in it he has not arrived at himself. "Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with "religious and orthodox philosophy," "const.i.tutional monarchy," "the Christian State," "freedom within certain limits," "the limited freedom of the press," or, in a figure, to the hero fettered to a sick-bed.

Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit.

He who believes in a spook no more a.s.sumes the "introduction of a higher world" than he who believes in the spirit, and both seek behind the sensual world a supersensual one; in short, they produce and believe _another_ world, and this other _world, the product of their mind_, is a spiritual world; for their senses grasp and know nothing of another, a non-sensual world, only their spirit lives in it. Going on from this Mongolian belief in the _existence of spiritual beings_ to the point that the _proper being_ of man too is his _spirit_, and that all care must be directed to this alone, to the "welfare of his soul," is not hard. Influence on the spirit, so-called "moral influence," is hereby a.s.sured.

Hence it is manifest that Mongolism represents utter absence of any rights of the sensuous, represents non-sensuousness and unnature, and that sin and the consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that lasted thousands of years.

But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its _nothing_? He who by means of the spirit set forth nature as the _null_, finite, transitory, he alone can bring down the spirit too to like nullity. _I_ can; each one among you can, who does his will as an absolute I; in a word, the _egoist_ can.

Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a _powerless_ and _humble_ att.i.tude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my _declaring it sacred_, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my--conscience.

Sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be unapproachable, not to be touched, outside his _power_,--_i. e._ above _him_; sacred, in a word, is every _matter of conscience_, for "this is a matter of conscience to me" means simply "I hold this sacred."

For little children, just as for animals, nothing sacred exists, because, in order to make room for this conception, one must already have progressed so far in understanding that he can make distinctions like "good and bad," "warranted and unwarranted," etc.; only at such a level of reflection or intelligence--the proper standpoint of religion--can unnatural (_i. e._ brought into existence by thinking) _reverence_, "sacred dread," step into the place of natural _fear_. To this sacred dread belongs holding something outside oneself for mightier, greater, better warranted, better, etc.; _i. e._ the att.i.tude in which one acknowledges the might of something alien--not merely feels it, then, but expressly acknowledges it, _i. e._ admits it, yields, surrenders, lets himself be tied (devotion, humility, servility, submission, etc.) Here walks the whole ghostly troop of the "Christian virtues."

Everything toward which you cherish any respect or reverence deserves the name of sacred; you yourselves, too, say that you would feel a "_sacred dread_" of laying hands on it. And you give this tinge even to the unholy (gallows, crime, etc.) You have a horror of touching it.

There lies in it something uncanny, _i. e._ unfamiliar or _not your own_.