The Ego and His Own Part 8

against "fancies, fortuities, arbitrariness," etc. What it wants is that the _divine_ should become visible in everything, and all consciousness become a knowing of the divine, and man behold G.o.d everywhere; but G.o.d never is, without the _devil_.

For this very reason the name of philosopher is not to be given to him who has indeed open eyes for the things of the world, a clear and undazzled gaze, a correct judgment about the world, but who sees in the world just the world, in objects only objects, and, in short, everything prosaically as it is; but he alone is a philosopher who sees, and points out or demonstrates, heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly, the--_divine_ in the mundane. The former may be ever so wise, there is no getting away from this:

What wise men see not by their wisdom's art Is practised simply by a childlike heart.[56]

It takes this childlike heart, this eye for the divine, to make a philosopher. The first-named man has only a "common" consciousness, but he who knows the divine, and knows how to tell it, has a "scientific"

one. On this ground Bacon was turned out of the realm of philosophers.

And certainly what is called English philosophy seems to have got no further than to the discoveries of so-called "clear heads", such as Bacon and Hume. The English did not know how to exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to philosophic significance, did not know how to make--philosophers out of childlike hearts. This is as much as to say, their philosophy was not able to become _theological_ or _theology_, and yet it is only as theology that it can really _live itself out_, complete itself. The field of its battle to the death is in theology.

Bacon did not trouble himself about theological questions and cardinal points.

Cognition has its object in life. German thought seeks, more than that of others, to reach the beginnings and fountain-heads of life, and sees no life till it sees it in cognition itself. Descartes's _cogito, ergo sum_ has the meaning "One lives only when one thinks." Thinking life is called "intellectual life"! Only mind lives, its life is the true life.

Then, just so in nature only the "eternal laws," the mind or the reason of nature, are its true life. In man, as in nature, only the thought lives; everything else is dead! To this abstraction, to the life of generalities or of that which is _lifeless_, the history of mind had to come. G.o.d, who is spirit, alone lives. Nothing lives but the ghost.

How can one try to a.s.sert of modern philosophy or modern times that they have reached freedom, since they have not freed us from the power of objectivity? Or am I perhaps free from a despot when I am not afraid of the personal potentate, to be sure, but of every infraction of the loving reverence which I fancy I owe him? The case is the same with modern times. They only changed the _existing_ objects, the real ruler, etc., into _conceived_ objects, _i. e._ into _ideas_, before which the old respect not only was not lost, but increased in intensity. Even if people snapped their fingers at G.o.d and the devil in their former cra.s.s reality, people devoted only the greater attention to their ideas. "They are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[57] The decision having once been made not to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable, little scruple was felt about revolting against the existing State or overturning the existing laws; but to sin against the _idea_ of the State, not to submit to the _idea_ of law, who would have dared that? So one remained a "citizen" and a "law-respecting," loyal man; yes, one seemed to himself to be only so much more law-respecting, the more rationalistically one abrogated the former defective law in order to do homage to the "spirit of the law." In all this the objects had only suffered a change of form; they had remained in their prepollence and pre-eminence; in short, one was still involved in obedience and possessedness, lived in _refection_, and had an object on which one reflected, which one respected, and before which one felt reverence and fear. One had done nothing but transform the _things_ into _conceptions_ of the things, into thoughts and ideas, whereby one's _dependence_ became all the more intimate and indissoluble. So, _e. g._, it is not hard to emanc.i.p.ate oneself from the commands of parents, or to set aside the admonitions of uncle and aunt, the entreaties of brother and sister; but the renounced obedience easily gets into one's conscience, and the less one does give way to the individual demands, because he rationalistically, by his own reason, recognizes them to be unreasonable, so much the more conscientiously does he hold fast to filial piety and family love, and so much the harder is it for him to forgive himself a trespa.s.s against the _conception_ which he has formed of family love and of filial duty. Released from dependence as regards the existing family, one falls into the more binding dependence on the idea of the family; one is ruled by the spirit of the family. The family consisting of John, Maggie, etc., whose dominion has become powerless, is only internalized, being left as "family" in general, to which one just applies the old saying, "We must obey G.o.d rather than man," whose significance here is this: "I cannot, to be sure, accommodate myself to your senseless requirements, but, as my 'family,'

you still remain the object of my love and care"; for "the family" is a sacred idea, which the individual must never offend against.--And this family internalized and desensualized into a thought, a conception, now ranks as the "sacred," whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it makes a racket in my conscience. This despotism is broken only when the conception, family, also becomes a _nothing_ to me. The Christian dicta, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"[58] "I am come to stir up a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,"[59] and others, are accompanied by something that refers us to the heavenly or true family, and mean no more than the State's demand, in case of a collision between it and the family, that we obey _its_ commands.

The case of morality is like that of the family. Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, "morality." Morality is the "idea" of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an "intellectual" man, a so-called independent, a "freethinker."

The Protestant may put it as he will, the "holy[60] Scripture," the "Word of G.o.d," still remains sacred[61] for him. He for whom this is no longer "holy" has ceased to--be a Protestant. But herewith what is "ordained" in it, the public authorities appointed by G.o.d, etc., also remain sacred for him. For him these things remain indissoluble, unapproachable, "raised above all doubt"; and, as _doubt_, which in practice becomes a _buffeting_, is what is most man's own, these things remain "raised" above himself. He who cannot _get away_ from them will--_believe_; for to believe in them is to be _bound_ to them.

Through the fact that in Protestantism the _faith_ became a more inward faith, the _servitude_ has also become a more inward servitude; one has taken those sanct.i.ties up into himself, entwined them with all his thoughts and endeavors, made them a "_matter of conscience_,"

constructed out of them a "_sacred duty_" for himself. Therefore what the Protestant's conscience cannot get away from is sacred to him, and _conscientiousness_ most clearly designates his character.

Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience,"

watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of conscience," _i. e._ police business. This tearing apart of man into "natural impulse" and "conscience" (inner populace and inner police) is what const.i.tutes the Protestant. The reason of the Bible (in place of the Catholic "reason of the church") ranks as sacred, and this feeling and consciousness that the word of the Bible is sacred is called--conscience. With this, then, sacredness is "laid upon one's conscience." If one does not free himself from conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he may act unconscientiously indeed, but never consciencelessly.

The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfils the _command_; the Protestant acts according to his "best judgment and conscience." For the Catholic is only a _layman_; the Protestant is himself a _clergyman_.[62] Just this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the Middle Ages, and at the same time its curse,--that _the spiritual_ became complete.

What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of indulgences? only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now gained also an _insight_ into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how really his sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case (Casuists) it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible, and silenced every movement of conscience.

All sensuality might hold sway, if it was only purchased from the church. This favoring of sensuality was continued by the Jesuits, while the strictly moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite, praying Protestants (as the true completers of Christianity, to be sure) acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially the Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involuntary and unconscious adherents within Protestantism itself, and saved us from the subversion and extinction of _sensuality_.

Nevertheless the Protestant spirit spreads its dominion farther and farther; and, as, beside it the "divine," the Jesuit spirit represents only the "diabolic" which is inseparable from everything divine, the latter can never a.s.sert itself alone, but must look on and see how in France, _e. g._, the Philistinism of Protestantism wins at last, and mind is on top.

Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into repute again, _e. g._ marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mundane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism, which lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures, while the rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane altogether, and that simply by _hallowing_ it.

So marriage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament, where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, etc. Formerly the pope gave consecration and his blessing to it and its princes; now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The order of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed as "G.o.d's ordinance." Hence it is said _e. g._ in the Augsburg Confession, Art.

11: "So now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have wisely and rightly said: that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law. Now, if it is a _natural law, then it is G.o.d's ordinance_, therefore implanted in nature, and therefore a _divine_ law also." And is it anything more than Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach p.r.o.nounces moral relations sacred, not as G.o.d's ordinance indeed, but, instead, for the sake of the _spirit_ that dwells in them?

"But marriage--as a free alliance of love, of course--is _sacred of itself_, by the _nature_ of the union that is formed here. _That_ marriage alone is a _religious_ one that is a _true_ one, that corresponds to the _essence_ of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral relations. They are _ethical_, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where they rank as _religious of themselves_. True friendship is only where the _limits_ of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his G.o.d. Friendship is and must be _sacred_ for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in and of itself_."[63]

That is a very essential consideration. In Catholicism the mundane can indeed be _consecrated_ or _hallowed_, but it is not sacred without this priestly blessing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane relations are sacred _of themselves_, sacred by their mere existence. The Jesuit maxim, "the end hallows the means," corresponds precisely to the consecration by which sanct.i.ty is bestowed. No means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their relation to the church, their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide was named as such; if it was committed for the church's behoof, it could be certain of being hallowed by the church, even if the hallowing was not openly p.r.o.nounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as sacred; to the Catholic only that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and it does rank as such to him only because the pope, even though it be without a special act, confers this sacredness on it once for all. If he retracted his consecration, the king would be left only a "man of the world or layman," an "unconsecrated" man, to the Catholic.

If the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in the sensual itself, that he may then be linked only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to banish the sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, like the rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic church eliminated mundane marriage from its consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its own from the mundane family; the Protestant church declared marriage and family ties to be holy, and therefore not unsuitable for its clergymen.

A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic, hallow everything. He needs only _e. g._ to say to himself: "I as a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it more zealously when I appease my desires properly; consequently I will seduce this girl, have my enemy there poisoned, etc.; my end is holy because it is a priest's, consequently it hallows the means." For in the end it is still done for the benefit of the church. Why should the Catholic priest shrink from handing Emperor Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the--church's welfare?

The genuinely--churchly Protestants inveighed against every "innocent pleasure," because only the sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent.

What they could not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants had to reject,--dancing, the theatre, ostentation (_e. g._ in the church), and the like.

Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism is again more on the religious, _i. e._ spiritual, track,--is more radical. For the former excludes at once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and _purifies_ the church; Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring _spirit_ into all things as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything, and so to _hallow_ everything worldly. ("No one can forbid a kiss in honor." The spirit of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he declares himself such in some pa.s.sage or other: he "wants to remain a Lutheran") was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything. In everything there is reason, _i. e._ holy spirit, or "the real is rational." For the real is in fact everything, as in each thing, _e. g._ each lie, the truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute evil, and the like.

Great "works of mind" were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone were the true disciples and consummators of _mind_.

How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before the _uncontrollable_. Can he keep off the impression that he is _helpless_ against this gigantic world? It is a fixed _law_ to which he must submit, it determines his _fate_. Now, what did pre-Christian humanity work toward? Toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies, not letting oneself be vexed by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks of nature _indifferent_, and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace utters the famous _Nil admirari_, by which he likewise announces the indifference of the _other_, the world; it is not to influence us, not to arouse our astonishment. And that _impavidum ferient ruinae_ expresses the very same _imperturbability_ as Ps. 46.3: "We do not fear, though the earth should perish." In all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty, for the Christian _contempt of the world_.

The _imperturbable_ spirit of "the wise man," with which the old world worked to prepare its end, now underwent an _inner perturbation_ against which no ataraxy, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. The spirit, secured against all influence of the world, insensible to its shocks and _exalted_ above its attacks, admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of the world,--foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were evolved in its own interior, and, after the _mechanical shock_ that comes from without had become ineffective, _chemical tensions_, that agitate within, began their wonderful play.

In fact, ancient history ends with this,--that _I_ have struggled till I won my ownership of the world. "All things have been delivered, to me by my Father" (Matt. 11.27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc., for me; it is _undeified_, and now I treat it so entirely as I please that, if I cared, I could exert on it all miracle-working power, _i. e._ power of mind,--remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves up and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything possible, _i. e. thinkable_: "All things are possible to him who believes."[64] I am the _lord_ of the world, mine is the "_glory_."[65] The world has become _prosaic_, for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which I dispose of as I (to wit, the mind) choose.

When I had exalted myself to be the _owner of the world_, egoism had won its first complete victory, had vanquished the world, had become _worldless_, and put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.

The first property, the first "glory," has been acquired!

But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred, the "Holy Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not able to become "G.o.dless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the _world_, the mediaeval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against _self_, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The mediaeval man is the man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative man.

All wisdom of the ancients is _the science of the world_, all wisdom of the moderns is _the science of G.o.d_.

The heathen (Jews included) got through with the _world_; but now the thing was to get through with self, the _spirit_, too; _i. e._ to become spiritless or G.o.dless.

For almost two thousand years we have been working at subjecting the Holy Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we have torn off and trodden under foot many bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost its divinity, its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove; to be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but lets itself be caught by the laity too, etc.; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit of Man, it remains still an _alien_ spirit to me or you, still far from becoming our unrestricted _property_, which we dispose of at our pleasure. However, one thing certainly happened, and visibly guided the progress of post-Christian history: this one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy Spirit _more human_, and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it came about that at last it could be conceived as the "spirit of humanity,"

and, under different expressions like "idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness, general philanthropy," etc., appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more accessible.

Would not one think that now everybody could possess the Holy Spirit, take up into himself the idea of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in himself?

No, the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its unapproachableness, is not accessible to us, not our property; for the spirit of humanity is not _my_ spirit. My _ideal_ it may be, and as a thought I call it mine; the _thought_ of humanity is my property, and I prove this sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views, and shaping it to-day so, to-morrow otherwise; we represent it to ourselves in the most manifold ways. But it is at the same time an entail, which I cannot alienate nor get rid of.

Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the "_absolute idea_," which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc.

But can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity, and can I consider the Spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it, "sacrifice myself" to it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world only when it had broken the world's overpoweringness and "divinity," recognized the world's powerlessness and "vanity."

The case with regard to the _spirit_ corresponds. When I have degraded it to a _spook_ and its control over me to a _cranky notion_, then it is to be looked upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I _use_ it, as one uses _nature_ at pleasure without scruple.

The "nature of the case," the "concept of the relationship," is to guide me in dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms of the case! As if a relation which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness of those who enter into it, itself unique! As if it depended on how others stamp it! But, as people separated the "essence of Man" from the real man, and judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from him, and appraise it by "human value." _Concepts_ are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts to _rule_. This is the religious world, to which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic.

Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, _i. e._ I, am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. Can there be a more grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess at the very beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? ("Not a letter of the law shall be lost!")

Liberalism simply brought other concepts on the carpet, _viz._, human instead of divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, "scientific"

instead of doctrinal, or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of "crude dogmas" and precepts.

Now nothing but _mind_ rules in the world. An innumerable mult.i.tude of concepts buzz about in people's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor to get further? They are negating these concepts to put new ones in their place! They are saying: "You form a false concept of right, of the State, of man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc.; the concept of right, etc., is rather that one which we now set up."

Thus the confusion of concepts moves forward.

The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has obtained an almighty power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your potatoes would become palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would relieve you of all need at once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to recognize the _independence_ of all these and innumerable other things: they are to rank in his mind as something that cannot be seized or approached, are to be kept away from him. He must have regard for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches out his fingers desirously; we call that "being light-fingered!"

How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really nothing! Everything has been removed, we must not venture on anything unless it is given us; we continue to live only by the _grace_ of the giver. You must not pick up a pin, unless indeed you have got _leave_ to do so. And got it from whom? From _respect_! Only when this lets you have it as property, only when you can _respect_ it as property, only then may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive a thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that should have their warrant in you alone, instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity. Happy _unconstraint_ of the desirous man, how mercilessly people have tried to slay you on the altar of _constraint_!

But around the altar rise the arches of a church, and its walls keep moving further and further out. What they enclose is--_sacred_. You can no longer get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you wander round about these walls in search of the little that is profane, and the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended. Soon that church will embrace the whole world, and you be driven out to the extreme edge; another step, and the _world of the sacred_ has conquered: you sink into the abyss. Therefore take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you _devour the sacred_, you have made it your _own_! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!

III.--THE FREE

The ancients and the moderns having been presented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the free were here to be described in a third division as independent and distinct. This is not so. The free are only the more modern and most modern among the "moderns," and are put in a separate division merely because they belong to the present, and what is present, above all, claims our attention here. I give "the free" only as a translation of "the liberals," but must with regard to the concept of freedom (as in general with regard to so many other things whose antic.i.p.atory introduction cannot be avoided) refer to what comes later.