With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the realm of _essences_.
What haunts the universe, and has its occult, "incomprehensible" being
there, is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest essence.
And to get to the bottom of this _spook_, to _comprehend_ it, to
discover _reality_ in it (to prove "the existence of God")--this task
men set to themselves for thousands of years; with the horrible
impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into
a non-spook, the unreal into something real, the _spirit_ into an entire
and _corporeal_ person,--with this they tormented themselves to death.
Behind the existing world they sought the "thing in itself," the
essence; behind the _thing_ they sought the _un-thing_.
When one looks to the _bottom_ of anything, _i. e._ searches out its
_essence_, one often discovers something quite other than what it
_seems_ to be; honeyed speech and a lying heart, pompous words and
beggarly thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into prominence one
degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare _semblance_, a
deception. The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for
him who looks to the bottom of it--emptiness; emptiness is == world's
essence (world's doings). Now, he who is religious does not occupy
himself with the deceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but
looks upon the essence, and in the essence has--the truth.
The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil
essences, and conversely from others the good. The essence of human
feeling, _e. g._, is love; the essence of human will is the good; that
of one's thinking, the true; etc.
What at first passed for existence, such as the world and its like,
appears now as bare semblance, and the _truly existent_ is much rather
the essence, whose realm is filled with gods, spirits, demons, _i. e._
with good or bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of
essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless, but its
essence exists, God, "who is love"; human thought may wander in error,
but its essence, truth, exists; "God is truth,"--etc.
To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is
religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts.
The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize _non-sense_,
has brought about a _corporeal ghost_, a ghost or spirit with a real
body, an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians
have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition!
But there always remained the contradiction of two natures, the divine
and human, _i. e._ the ghostly and sensual; there remained the most
wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more
soul-torturing, and no shaman, who pricks himself to raving fury and
nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure such soul-torment
as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost.
But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to
light, that the veritable spirit or ghost is--man. The _corporeal_ or
embodied spirit is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the
same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no
longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts _outside_ him, but at
himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells
the _spirit of sin_; even the faintest _thought_ (and this is itself a
spirit, you know) may be a _devil_, etc.--The ghost has put on a body,
God has become man, but now man is himself the gruesome spook which he
seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to
speech; man is--_spirit_. What matter if the body wither, if only the
spirit is saved? everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or
"soul's" welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a
ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even assigned a distinct seat
in the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head,
etc.).
You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher essence. Nevertheless a
higher essence may be hidden in each of us, and call forth a mutual
reverence. To take at once the most general, Man lives in you and me.
If I did not see Man in you, what occasion should I have to respect you?
To be sure you are not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a
mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing;
but yet for the present this general and higher essence is housed in
you, and you present before me (because an imperishable spirit has in
you assumed a perishable body, so that really your form is only an
"assumed" one) a spirit that appears, appears in you, without being
bound to your body and to this particular mode of appearance,--therefore
a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence, but only respect
that higher essence which "walks" in you; I "respect Man in you." The
ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves, and the
higher essence "Man" found as yet little response. To make up for this,
they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher
essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit of Man, a spirit
haunting the individual,--the Spirit of the People. For this reason they
revered this spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit
related to it (_e. g._ the Spirit of the Family, etc.) could the
individual appear significant; only for the sake of the higher essence,
the People, was consideration allowed to the "member of the people." As
you are hallowed to us by "Man" who haunts you, so at every time men
have been hallowed by some higher essence or other, like People, Family,
and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honored
from of old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a
hallowed, _i. e._, protected and recognized person. If I cherish you
because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my
need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence
whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a
ghost, _i. e._ an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you
yourself with _your_ essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not
a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is unique[28]
like you yourself, because it is you.
But it is not only man that, "haunts"; so does everything. The higher
essence, the spirit, that walks in everything, is at the same time bound
to nothing, and only--"appears" in it. Ghosts in every corner!
Here would be the place to pass the haunting spirits in review, if they
were not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before
egoism. Hence let only a few of them be particularized by way of
example, in order to bring us at once to our attitude toward them.
Sacred above all, _e. g._, is the "holy Spirit," sacred the truth,
sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage, the common good,
order, the fatherland, etc.