The Ego and His Own Part 7

"If something or other did not rank as sacred in a man's mind, why, then all bars would be let down to self-will, to unlimited subjectivity!"

Fear makes the beginning, and one can make himself fearful to the coa.r.s.est man; already, therefore, a barrier against his insolence. But in fear there always remains the attempt to liberate oneself from what is feared, by guile, deception, tricks, etc. In reverence,[45] on the contrary, it is quite otherwise. Here something is not only feared,[46]

but also honored[47]: what is feared has become an inward power which I can no longer get clear of; I honor it, am captivated by it and devoted to it, belong to it; by the honor which I pay it I am completely in its power, and do not even attempt liberation any longer. Now I am attached to it with all the strength of faith; I _believe_. I and what I fear are one; "not I live, but the respected lives in me!" Because the spirit, the infinite, does not allow of coming to any end, therefore it is stationary; it fears _dying_, it cannot let go its dear Jesus, the greatness of finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye; the object of fear, now raised to veneration, may no longer be handled; reverence is made eternal, the respected is deified. The man is now no longer employed in creating, but in _learning_ (knowing, investigating, etc.), _i. e._ occupied with a fixed _object_, losing himself in its depths, without return to himself. The relation to this object is that of knowing, fathoming, basing, etc., not that of _dissolution_ (abrogation, etc.) "Man is to be religious," that is settled; therefore people busy themselves only with the question how this is to be attained, what is the right meaning of religiousness, etc. Quite otherwise when one makes the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in question, even though it should go to smash. Morality too is such sacred conception; one must be moral, and must look only for the right "how,"

the right way to be so. One dares not go at morality itself with the question whether it is not itself an illusion; it remains exalted above all doubt, unchangeable. And so we go on with the sacred, grade after grade, from the "holy" to the "holy of holies."

Men are sometimes divided into two cla.s.ses, _cultured_ and _uncultured_.

The former, so far as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with thoughts, with mind, and (because in the time since Christ, of which the very principle is thought, they were the ruling ones) demanded a servile respect for the thoughts recognized by them.

State, emperor, church, G.o.d, morality, order, etc., are such thoughts or spirits, that exist only for the mind. A merely living being, an animal, cares as little for them as a child. But the uncultured are really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the necessities of his life is indifferent to those spirits; but, because he is also weak before them, he succ.u.mbs to their power, and is ruled by--thoughts.

This is the meaning of hierarchy.

_Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind!_

We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred.

But the two are always clashing, now one and now the other giving the offence; and this clash occurs, not only in the collision of two men, but in one and the same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not to find enjoyment in things too, and so be uncultured; and no uncultured man is totally without thoughts. In Hegel it comes to light at last what a longing for _things_ even the most cultured man has, and what a horror of every "hollow theory" he harbors. With him reality, the world of things, is altogether to correspond to the thought, and no concept to be without reality. This caused Hegel's system to be known as the most objective, as if in it thought and thing celebrated their union. But this was simply the extremest case of violence on the part of thought, its highest pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the triumph of mind, and with it the triumph of _philosophy_. Philosophy cannot hereafter achieve anything higher, for its highest is the _omnipotence of mind_, the almightiness of mind.[48]

Spiritual men have _taken into their head_ something that is to be realized. They have _concepts_ of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see _realized_; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one "from love." Love is to _rule_. What they have taken into their head, what shall we call it but--_fixed idea_? Why, "their head is _haunted_." The most oppressive spook is _Man_. Think of the proverb, "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions." The intention to realize humanity altogether in oneself, to become altogether man, is of such ruinous kind; here belong the intentions to become good, n.o.ble, loving, etc.

In the sixth part of the "_Denkwuerdigkeiten_" p. 7, Bruno Bauer says: "That middle cla.s.s, which was to receive such a terrible importance for modern history is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm for an idea, no exaltation; it devotes itself to nothing but the interests of its mediocrity; _i. e._ it remains always limited to itself, and conquers at last only through its bulk, with which it has succeeded in tiring out the efforts of pa.s.sion, enthusiasm, consistency,--through its surface, into which it absorbs a part of the new ideas." And (p. 6) "It has turned the revolutionary ideas, for which not it, but unselfish or impa.s.sioned men sacrificed themselves, solely to its own profit, has turned spirit into money.--That is, to be sure, after it had taken away from those ideas their point, their consistency, their destructive seriousness, fanatical against all egoism." These people, then, are not self-sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not idealistic, not consistent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual sense, selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober, calculating, etc.

Who, then, is "self-sacrificing"?[49] In the full sense, surely, he who ventures everything else for _one thing_, one object, one will, one pa.s.sion, etc. Is not the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and mother, endures all dangers and privations, to reach his goal? Or the ambitious man, who offers up all his desires, wishes, and satisfactions to the single pa.s.sion, or the avaricious man who denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is ruled by a pa.s.sion to which he brings the rest as sacrifices.

And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not egoists? As they have only one ruling pa.s.sion, so they provide for only one satisfaction, but for this the more strenuously; they are wholly absorbed in it. Their entire activity is egoistic, but it is a one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism; it is possessedness.

"Why, those are petty pa.s.sions, by which, on the contrary, man must not let himself be enthralled. Man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a great cause!" A "great idea," a "good cause," is, it may be, the honor of G.o.d, for which innumerable people have met death; Christianity, which has found its willing martyrs; the Holy Catholic Church, which has greedily demanded sacrifices of heretics; liberty and equality, which were waited on by b.l.o.o.d.y guillotines.

He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty calling, may not let any worldly l.u.s.ts, any self-seeking interest, spring up in him. Here we have the concept of _clericalism_, or, as it may also be called in its pedagogic activity, school-masterliness; for the idealists play the schoolmaster over us. The clergyman is especially called to live to the idea and to work for the idea, the truly good cause. Therefore the people feel how little it befits him to show worldly haughtiness, to desire good living, to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming,--in short, to have any other than a "sacred interest." Hence too, doubtless, is derived the scanty salary of teachers, who are to feel themselves repaid by the sacredness of their calling alone, and to "renounce" other enjoyments.

Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more of which man is to look upon as his calling, is not lacking. Family, fatherland, science, etc., may find in man a servant faithful to his calling.

Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world which has not yet learned to do without clericalism,--that to live and work _for an idea_ is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness of its fulfilment his _human_ worth is measured.

This is the dominion of the idea; in other words, it is clericalism.

_E. g._, Robespierre, St. Just, etc., were priests through and through, inspired by the idea, enthusiasts, consistent instruments of this idea, idealistic men. So St. Just exclaims in a speech, "There is something terrible in the sacred love of country; it is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the public interest without mercy, without fear, without human consideration. It hurls Manlius down the precipice; it sacrifices its private inclinations; it leads Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman into the chasm, and sets Marat, as a victim of his devotion, in the Pantheon."

Now, over against these representatives of ideal or sacred interests stands a world of innumerable "personal" profane interests. No idea, no system, no sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and modified by these personal interests. Even if they are silent momentarily, and in times of rage and fanaticism, yet they soon come uppermost again through "the sound sense of the people." Those ideas do not completely conquer till they are no longer hostile to personal interests, _i. e._ till they satisfy egoism.

The man who is just now crying herrings in front of my window has a personal interest in good sales, and, if his wife or anybody else wishes him the like, this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on the other hand, a thief deprived him of his basket, then there would at once arise an interest of many, of the whole city, of the whole country, or, in a word, of all who abhor theft; an interest in which the herring-seller's person would become indifferent, and in its place the category of the "robbed man" would come into the foreground. But even here all might yet resolve itself into a personal interest, each of the partakers reflecting that he must concur in the punishment of the thief because unpunished stealing might otherwise become general and cause him too to lose his own. Such a calculation, however, can hardly be a.s.sumed on the part of many, and we shall rather hear the cry that the thief is a "criminal." Here we have before us a judgment, the thief's action receiving its expression in the concept "crime." Now the matter stands thus: even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or to any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless _denounce_ it. Why? Because I am enthusiastic for _morality_, filled with the _idea_ of morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere a.s.sail.

Because in his mind theft ranks as abominable without any question, Proudhon, _e. g._, thinks that with the sentence "Property is theft" he has at once put a brand on property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always a _crime_, or at least a misdeed.

Here the personal interest is at an end. This particular person who has stolen the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person; it is only the thief, this concept of which that person presents a specimen, that I take an interest in. The thief and man are in my mind irreconcilable opposites; for one is not truly man when one is a thief; one degrades _Man_ or "humanity" in himself when one steals. Dropping out of personal concern, one gets into _philanthropism_, friendliness to man, which is usually misunderstood as if it was a love to men, to each individual, while it is nothing but a love of Man, the unreal concept, the spook.

It is not [Greek: tous anthropous], men, but [Greek: ton anthropon], Man, that the philanthropist carries in his heart. To be sure, he cares for each individual, but only because he wants to see his beloved ideal realized everywhere.

So there is nothing said here of care for me, you, us; that would be personal interest, and belongs under the head of "worldly love."

Philanthropism is a heavenly, spiritual, a--priestly love. _Man_ must be restored in us, even if thereby we poor devils should come to grief. It is the same priestly principle as that famous _fiat just.i.tia, pereat mundus_; man and justice are ideas, ghosts, for love of which everything is sacrificed; therefore the priestly spirits are the "self-sacrificing"

ones.

He who is infatuated with _Man_ leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest.

_Man_, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

Now, things as different as possible can belong to _Man_ and be so regarded. If one finds Man's chief requirement in piety, there arises religious clericalism; if one sees it in morality, then moral clericalism raises its head. On this account the priestly spirits of our day want to make a "religion" of everything, a "religion of liberty,"

"religion of equality," etc., and for them every idea becomes a "sacred cause," _e. g._ even citizenship, politics, publicity, freedom of the press, trial by jury, etc.

Now, what does "unselfishness" mean in this sense? Having only an ideal interest, before which no respect of persons avails!

The stiff head of the worldly man opposes this, but for centuries has always been worsted at least so far as to have to bend the unruly neck and "honor the higher power"; clericalism pressed it down. When the worldly egoist had shaken off a higher power (_e. g._ the Old Testament law, the Roman pope, etc.), then at once a seven times higher one was over him again, _e. g._ faith in the place of the law, the transformation of all laymen into divines in place of the limited body of clergy, etc. His experience was like that of the possessed man into whom seven devils pa.s.sed when he thought he had freed himself from one.

In the pa.s.sage quoted above all ideality, etc., is denied to the middle cla.s.s. It certainly schemed against the ideal consistency with which Robespierre wanted to carry out the principle. The instinct of its interest told it that this consistency harmonized too little with what its mind was set on, and that it would be acting against itself if it were willing to further the enthusiasm for principle. Was it to behave so unselfishly as to abandon all its aims in order to bring a harsh theory to its triumph? It suits the priests admirably, to be sure, when people listen to their summons, "Cast away everything and follow me," or "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Some decided idealists obey this call; but most act like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a behavior half clerical or religious and half worldly, serving G.o.d and Mammon.

I do not blame the middle cla.s.s for not wanting to let its aims be frustrated by Robespierre, _i. e._ for inquiring of its egoism how far it might give the revolutionary idea a chance. But one might blame (if blame were in place here anyhow) those who let their own interests be frustrated by the interests of the middle cla.s.s. However, will not they likewise sooner or later learn to understand what is to their advantage?

August Becker says:[50] "To win the producers (proletarians) a negation of the traditional conception of right is by no means enough. Folks unfortunately care little for the theoretical victory of the idea. One must demonstrate to them _ad oculos_ how this victory can be practically utilized in life." And (p. 32): "You must get hold of folks by their real interests if you want to work upon them." Immediately after this he shows how a fine looseness of morals is already spreading among our peasants, because they prefer to follow their real interests rather than the commands of morality.

Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters served _Man_, they cut off the heads of _men_. The revolutionary laymen, those outside the sacred circle, did not feel any greater horror of cutting off heads, but were less anxious about the rights of Man than about their own.

How comes it, though, that the egoism of those who affirm personal interest, and always inquire of it, is nevertheless forever succ.u.mbing to a priestly or schoolmasterly (_i. e._ an ideal) interest? Their person seems to them too small, too insignificant,--and is so in fact,--to lay claim to everything and be able to put itself completely in force. There is a sure sign of this in their dividing themselves into two persons, an eternal and a temporal, and always caring either only for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the eternal, on the work-day for the temporal, in prayer for the former, in work for the latter. They have the priest in themselves, therefore they do not get rid of him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly every Sunday.

How men have struggled and calculated to get at a solution regarding these dualistic essences! Idea followed upon idea, principle upon principle, system upon system, and none knew how to keep down permanently the contradiction of the "worldly" man, the so-called "egoist." Does not this prove that all those ideas were too feeble to take up my whole will into themselves and satisfy it? They were and remained hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for a considerable time. Will it be the same with _self-ownership_? Is it too only an attempt at mediation? Whatever principle I turned to, it might be to that of _reason_, I always had to turn away from it again. Or can I always be rational, arrange my life according to reason in everything?

I can, no doubt, _strive_ after rationality, I can _love_ it, just as I can also love G.o.d and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, as I love G.o.d. But what I love, what I strive for, is only in my idea, my conception, my thoughts; it is in my heart, my head, it is in me like the heart, but it is not I, I am not it.

To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially what one often hears called "_moral influence_."

Moral influence takes its start where _humiliation_ begins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper[51] down to _humility_.[52] If I call to some one to run away when a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by this demand; if I say to a child "You will go hungry if you will not eat what is put on the table," this is not moral influence. But, if I say to it "You will pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak the truth, etc., for this belongs to man and is man's calling," or even "this is G.o.d's will," then moral influence is complete; then a man is to bend before the _calling_ of man, be tractable, become humble, give up his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and law; he is to _abase_ himself before something _higher_: self-abas.e.m.e.nt. "He that abaseth himself shall be exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be _made_ to practise piety, G.o.dliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom "good maxims" have been _instilled_ and _impressed_, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.

If one shrugs his shoulders at this, at once the good wring their hands despairingly, and cry: "But, for heaven's sake, if one is to give children no good instruction, why, then they will run straight into the jaws of sin, and become good-for-nothing hoodlums!" Gently, you prophets of evil. Good-for-nothing in your sense they certainly will become; but your sense happens to be a very good-for-nothing sense. The impudent lads will no longer let anything be whined and chattered into them by you, and will have no sympathy for all the follies for which you have been raving and driveling since the memory of man began; they will abolish the law of inheritance, _i. e._ they will not be willing to _inherit_ your stupidities as you inherited them from your fathers; they destroy _inherited sin_.[53] If you command them, "Bend before the Most High," they will answer: "If he wants to bend us, let him come himself and do it; we, at least, will not bend of our own accord." And, if you threaten them with his wrath and his punishment, they will take it like being threatened with the bogie-man. If you are no longer successful in making them afraid of ghosts, then the dominion of ghosts is at an end, and nurses' tales find no--_faith_.

And is it not precisely the liberals again that press for good education and improvement of the educational system? For how could their liberalism, their "liberty within the bounds of law," come about without discipline? Even if they do not exactly educate to the fear of G.o.d, yet they demand the _fear of Man_ all the more strictly, and awaken "enthusiasm for the truly human calling" by discipline.

A long time pa.s.sed away, in which people were satisfied with the fancy that they had the _truth_, without thinking seriously whether perhaps they themselves must be true to possess the truth. This time was the _Middle Ages_. With the common consciousness--_i. e._ the consciousness which deals with things, that consciousness which has receptivity only for things, or for what is sensuous and sense-moving--they thought to grasp what did not deal with things and was not perceptible by the senses. As one does indeed also exert his eye to see the remote, or laboriously exercise his hand till its fingers have become dexterous enough to press the keys correctly, so they chastened themselves in the most manifold ways, in order to become capable of receiving the supersensual wholly into themselves. But what they chastened was, after all, only the sensual man, the common consciousness, so-called finite or objective thought. Yet as this thought, this understanding, which Luther decries under the name of reason, is incapable of comprehending the divine, its chastening contributed just as much to the understanding of the truth as if one exercised the feet year in and year out in dancing, and hoped that in this way they would finally learn to play the flute.

Luther, with whom the so-called Middle Ages end, was the first who understood that the man himself must become other than he was if he wanted to comprehend truth,--must become as true as truth itself. Only he who already has truth in his belief, only he who _believes_ in it, can become a partaker of it; _i. e._, only the believer finds it accessible and sounds its depths. Only that organ of man which is able to blow can attain the further capacity of flute-playing, and only that man can become a partaker of truth who has the right organ for it. He who is capable of thinking only what is sensuous, objective, pertaining to things, figures to himself in truth only what pertains to things. But truth is spirit, stuff altogether inappreciable by the senses, and therefore only for the "higher consciousness," not for that which is "earthly-minded."

With Luther, accordingly, dawns the perception that truth, because it is a _thought_, is only for the _thinking_ man. And this is to say that man must henceforth take an utterly different standpoint, viz., the heavenly, believing, scientific standpoint, or that of _thought_ in relation to its object, the--_thought_,--that of mind in relation to mind. Consequently: only the like apprehend the like. "You are like the spirit that you understand."[54]

Because Protestantism broke the mediaeval hierarchy, the opinion could take root that hierarchy in general had been shattered by it, and it could be wholly overlooked that it was precisely a "reformation," and so a reinvigoration of the antiquated hierarchy. That mediaeval hierarchy had been only a weakly one, as it had to let all possible barbarism of unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside it, and it was the Reformation that first steeled the power of hierarchy. If Bruno Bauer thinks:[55] "As the Reformation was mainly the abstract rending of the religious principle from art, State, and science, and so its liberation from those powers with which it had joined itself in the antiquity of the church and in the hierarchy of the Middle Ages, so too the theological and ecclesiastical movements which proceeded from the Reformation are only the consistent carrying out of this abstraction of the religious principle from the other powers of humanity," I regard precisely the opposite as correct, and think that the dominion of spirits, or freedom of mind (which comes to the same thing), was never before so all-embracing and all-powerful, because the present one, instead of rending the religious principle from art, State, and science, lifted the latter altogether out of secularity into the "realm of spirit" and made them religious.

Luther and Descartes have been appropriately put side by side in their "He who believes is a G.o.d" and "I think, therefore I am" (_cogito, ergo sum_). Man's heaven is _thought_,--mind. Everything can be wrested from him, except thought, except faith. _Particular_ faith, like faith in Zeus, Astarte, Jehovah, Allah, etc., may be destroyed, but faith itself is indestructible. In thought is freedom. What I need and what I hunger for is no longer granted to me by any _grace_, by the Virgin Mary, by intercession of the saints, or by the binding and loosing church, but I procure it for myself. In short, my being (the _sum_) is a living in the heaven of thought, of mind, a _cogitare_. But I myself am nothing else than mind, thinking mind (according to Descartes), believing mind (according to Luther). My body I am not; my flesh may _suffer_ from appet.i.tes or pains. I am not my flesh, but _I_ am _mind_, only mind.

This thought runs through the history of the Reformation till to-day.

Only by the more modern philosophy since Descartes has a serious effort been made to bring Christianity to complete efficacy, by exalting the "scientific consciousness" to be the only true and valid one. Hence it begins with absolute _doubt_, _dubitare_, with grinding common consciousness to atoms, with turning away from everything that "mind,"

"thought," does not legitimate. To it _Nature_ counts for nothing; the opinion of men, their "human precepts," for nothing: and it does not rest till it has brought reason into everything, and can say "The real is the rational, and only the rational is the real." Thus it has at last brought mind, reason, to victory; and everything is mind, because everything is rational, because all nature, as well as even the perversest opinions of men, contains reason; for "all must serve for the best," _i. e._ lead to the victory of reason.

Descartes's _dubitare_ contains the decided statement that only _cogitare_, thought, mind--_is_. A complete break with "common"

consciousness, which ascribes reality to _irrational_ things! Only the rational is, only mind is! This is the principle of modern philosophy, the genuine Christian principle. Descartes in his own time discriminated the body sharply from the mind, and "the spirit 'tis that builds itself the body," says Goethe.

But this philosophy itself, Christian philosophy, still does not get rid of the rational, and therefore inveighs against the "merely subjective,"