WHEELS IN THE HEAD.

Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine

great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an

existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be

called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea!

Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard

those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority

belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable

fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed

idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize,

with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave

up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to

doubt; the majesty of (_e. g._) the people, which we are not to strike

at (he who does is guilty of--lese-majesty); virtue, against which the

censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure;

etc.,--are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of

(_e. g._) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the

fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to

go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad

a space? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have

to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. For these

great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point

too,--that they assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They

first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall

upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and

vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for

their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and

must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one

is shut up in a house with fools. "Thou shalt not call thy brother a

fool; if thou dost--etc." But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my

brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is

possessed by the fancy that he is God the Father, Emperor of Japan, the

Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances

conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful

Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man, etc.,--both these are one

and the same "fixed idea." He who has never tried and dared not to be a

good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is

_possessed_ and prepossessed[29] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as

the schoolmen philosophized only _inside_ the belief of the church; as

Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books _inside_ the papist superstition,

without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole

folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the

State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they

are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a _zoon

politicon_,--so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in

virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed

ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a

madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who

doubts them--lays hands on the _sacred_! Yes, the "fixed idea," that is

the truly sacred!

Is it perchance only people possessed by the devil that meet us, or do

we as often come upon people _possessed_ in the contrary way,--possessed

by "the good," by virtue, morality, the law, or some "principle" or

other? Possessions of the devil are not the only ones. God works on us,

and the devil does; the former "workings of grace," the latter "workings

of the devil." Possessed[30] people are _set_[31] in their opinions.

If the word "possession" displeases you, then call it prepossession;

yes, since the spirit possesses you, and all "inspirations" come from

it, call it--inspiration and enthusiasm. I add that complete

enthusiasm--for we cannot stop with the sluggish, half-way kind--is

called fanaticism.

It is precisely among cultured people that _fanaticism_ is at home; for

man is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things, and

interest in spiritual things, when it is alive, is and must be

_fanaticism_; it is a fanatical interest in the sacred (_fanum_).

Observe our liberals, look into the _Saechsischen Vaterlandsblaetter_,

hear what Schlosser says:[32] "Holbach's company constituted a regular

plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system, and its

members were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and

priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists, missionary and Bible

societies, commonly are for mechanical worship and orthodoxy."

Take notice how a "moral man" behaves, who to-day often thinks he is

through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you

ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and

sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial

piety is a sacred duty, etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at

the conception of one's being allowed to touch his sister as wife also,

etc. And whence this shudder? Because he _believes_ in those moral

commandments. This moral _faith_ is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as

he rages against the _pious_ Christians, he himself has nevertheless as

thoroughly remained a Christian,--to wit, a _moral_ Christian. In the

form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under

_faith_. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in

bigamy is punished as a _criminal_; he who commits incest suffers as a

_criminal_. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be

regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the

Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest

and monogamy a _dogma of faith_? Touch it, and you will learn by

experience how this moral man is a _hero of faith_ too, not less than

Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the

Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State;

for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than _their

faith_ will allow. The brand of "crime" is stamped upon him, and he may

languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as

religious faith! They call that "liberty of faith" then, when brother

and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with

their "conscience," are thrown into prison. "But they set a pernicious

example." Yes, indeed: others might have taken the notion that the

State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon

"purity of morals" would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of

faith are zealous for the "sacred God," the moral ones for the "sacred

good."

Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like

each other. How the strictly orthodox or old-style believers differ from

the fighters for "truth, light, and justice," from the Philalethes, the

Friends of Light, the Rationalists, etc. And yet, how utterly

unessential is this difference! If one buffets single traditional truths

(_e. g._ miracles, unlimited power of princes, etc.), then the

rationalists buffet them too, and only the old-style believers wail.

But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has both, as

_believers_, for opponents. So with moralities; the strict believers are

relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant. But he who attacks

morality itself gets both to deal with. "Truth, morality, justice,

light, etc.," are to be and remain "sacred." What any one finds to

censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be "unchristian" according

to the view of these rationalists; but Christianity must remain a

fixture, to buffet it is outrageous, "an outrage." To be sure, the

heretic against pure faith no longer exposes himself to the earlier fury

of persecution, but so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic

against pure morals.

* * * * *

Piety has for a century received so many blows, and had to hear its

superhuman essence reviled as an "inhuman" one so often, that one

cannot feel tempted to draw the sword against it again. And yet it has

almost always been only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena,

to assail the supreme essence in favor of--another supreme essence. So

Proudhon, unabashed, says:[33] "Man is destined to live without

religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. Who would dare

to-day to attack morality?" Moral people skimmed off the best fat from

religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid

of the resulting scrofula. If, therefore, we point out that religion has

not by any means been hurt in its inmost part so long as people reproach

it only with its superhuman essence, and that it takes its final appeal

to the "spirit" alone (for God is spirit), then we have sufficiently

indicated its final accord with morality, and can leave its stubborn

conflict with the latter lying behind us. It is a question of a supreme

essence with both, and whether this is a superhuman or a human one can

make (since it is in any case an essence over me, a super-mine one, so

to speak) but little difference to me. In the end the relation to the

human essence, or to "Man," as soon as ever it has shed the snake-skin

of the old religion, will yet wear a religious snake-skin again.

So Feuerbach instructs us that, "if one only _inverts_ speculative

philosophy, _i. e._ always makes the predicate the subject, and so makes

the subject the object and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure

and clean."[34] Herewith, to be sure, we lose the narrow religious

standpoint, lose the _God_, who from this standpoint is subject; but we

take in exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint, the

_moral_ standpoint. _E. g._, we no longer say "God is love," but "Love

is divine." If we further put in place of the predicate "divine" the

equivalent "sacred," then, as far as concerns the sense, all the old

comes back again. According to this, love is to be the _good_ in man,

his divineness, that which does him honor, his true _humanity_ (it

"makes him Man for the first time," makes for the first time a man out

of him). So then it would be more accurately worded thus: Love is what

is _human_ in man, and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist. But

precisely all that which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy

(_i. e._ theology) offers as the good, the absolute, is to

self-ownership simply not the good (or, what means the same, it is _only

the good_). Consequently, by the transformation of the predicate into

the subject, the Christian _essence_ (and it is the predicate that

contains the essence, you know) would only be fixed yet more

oppressively. God and the divine would entwine themselves all the more

inextricably with me. To expel God from his heaven and to rob him of his

"_transcendence_" cannot yet support a claim of complete victory, if

therein he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with

indelible _immanence_. Now they say, "The divine is the truly human!"

The same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the State,

_i. e._ oppose the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating

that morality is "the fundamental pillar of social life and of the

State." As if the dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of

the sacred, a "hierarchy."

So we may here mention by the way that rationalist movement which, after

theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping

religious truths, that only to believers did God reveal himself, etc.,

and that therefore only the heart, the feelings, the believing fancy was

religious, broke out with the assertion that the "natural

understanding," human reason, was also capable of discerning God. What

does that mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same visionary

as the fancy?[35] In this sense Reimarus wrote his "Most Notable Truths

of Natural Religion." It had to come to this,--that the _whole_ man with

all his faculties was found to be _religious_; heart and affections,

understanding and reason, feeling, knowledge, and will,--in short,

everything in man,--appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even

philosophy is religious. And what is not called religion to-day? The

"religion of love," the "religion of freedom," "political religion,"--in

short, every enthusiasm. So it is, too, in fact.

To this day we use the Romance word "religion," which expresses the

concept of a condition of being _bound_. To be sure, we remain bound, so

far as religion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the mind

also bound? On the contrary, that is free, is sole lord, is not our

mind, but absolute. Therefore the correct affirmative translation of the

word religion would be "_freedom of mind_"! In whomsoever the mind is

free, he is religious in just the same way as he in whom the senses have

free course is called a sensual man. The mind binds the former, the

desires the latter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or _religio_ with

reference to me,--I am bound; it is freedom with reference to the

mind,--the mind is free, or has freedom of mind. Many know from

experience how hard it is on _us_ when the desires run away with us,

free and unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellectuality,

enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however this jewel may in the

most various phrase be named, brings _us_ into yet more grievous straits

than even the wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can

they perceive it without being consciously egoists.

Reimarus, and all who have shown that our reason, our heart, etc., also

lead to God, have therewithal shown that we are possessed through and

through. To be sure, they vexed the theologians, from whom they took

away the prerogative of religious exaltation; but for religion, for

freedom of mind, they thereby only conquered yet more ground. For, when

the mind is no longer limited to feeling or faith, but also, as

understanding, reason, and thought in general, belongs to itself the

mind,--when, therefore, it may take part in the spiritual[36] and

heavenly truths in the form of understanding, etc., as well as in its

other forms,--then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual

things, _i. e._ with itself, and is therefore free. Now we are so

through-and-through religious that "jurors," _i. e._ "sworn men,"

condemn us to death, and every policeman, as a good Christian, takes us

to the lock-up by virtue of an "oath of office."

Morality could not come into opposition with piety till after the time

when in general the boisterous hate of everything that looked like an

"order" (decrees, commandments, etc.) spoke out in revolt, and the

personal "absolute lord" was scoffed at and persecuted; consequently it

could arrive at independence only through liberalism, whose first form

acquired significance in the world's history as "citizenship," and

weakened the specifically religious powers (see "Liberalism" below).

For, when morality not merely goes alongside of piety, but stands on

feet of its own, then its principle lies no longer in the divine

commandments, but in the law of reason, from which the commandments, so

far as they are still to remain valid, must first await justification

for their validity. In the law of reason man determines himself out of

himself, for "Man" is rational, and out of the "essence of Man" those

laws follow of necessity. Piety and morality part company in this,--that

the former makes God the lawgiver, the latter Man.

From a certain standpoint of morality people reason about as follows:

Either man is led by his sensuality, and is, following it, _immoral_, or

he is led by the good which, taken up into the will, is called moral

sentiment (sentiment and prepossession in favor of the good); then he

shows himself _moral_. From this point of view how, _e. g._, can Sand's

act against Kotzebue be called immoral? What is commonly understood by

unselfish it certainly was, in the same measure as (among other things)

St. Crispin's thieveries in favor of the poor. "He should not have

murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not murder!" Then to serve

the good, the welfare of the people, as Sand at least intended, or the

welfare of the poor, like Crispin,--is moral; but murder and theft are

immoral; the purpose moral, the means immoral. Why? "Because murder,

assassination, is something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas enticed

the enemies of the country into ravines and shot them down unseen from

the bushes, do you suppose that was not assassination? According to the

principle of morality, which commands us to serve the good, you could

really ask only whether murder could never in any case be a realization

of the good, and would have to endorse that murder which realized the

good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at all; it was moral, because in

the service of the good, because unselfish; it was an act of punishment,

which the individual inflicted, an--_execution_ inflicted at the risk of

the executioner's life. What else had his scheme been, after all, but

that he wanted to suppress writings by brute force? Are you not

acquainted with the same procedure as a "legal" and sanctioned one? And

what can be objected against it from your principle of morality?--"But

it was an illegal execution." So the immoral thing in it was the

illegality, the disobedience to law? Then you admit that the good is

nothing else than--law, morality nothing else than _loyalty_. And to

this externality of "loyalty" your morality must sink, to this

righteousness of works in the fulfilment of the law, only that the

latter is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than the old-time

righteousness of works. For in the latter only the _act_ is needed, but

you require the _disposition_ too; one must carry _in himself_ the law,

the statute; and he who is most legally disposed is the most moral. Even

the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life must perish in this

Protestant legality. Here at last the domination of the law is for the

first time complete. "Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus I have

really come so far as to be only the "vessel of its glory." "Every

Prussian carries his _gendarme_ in his breast," says a high Prussian

officer.

Why do certain _opposition parties_ fail to flourish? Solely for the

reason that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality.

Hence the measureless hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc., from whose

repulsiveness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at this rotten

and hypocritical relation of a "lawful opposition."--In the _moral_

relation of love and fidelity divided or opposed will cannot have place;

the beautiful relation is disturbed if the one wills this and the other

the reverse. But now, according to the practice hitherto and the old

prejudice of the opposition, the moral relation is to be preserved above

all. What is then left to the opposition? Perhaps the will to have a

liberty, if the beloved one sees fit to deny it? Not a bit! It may not

_will_ to have the freedom, it can only _wish_ for it, "petition" for

it, lisp a "Please, please!" What would come of it, if the opposition

really _willed_, willed with the full energy of the will? No, it must

renounce _will_ in order to live to _love_, renounce liberty--for love

of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only

to "beg as a favor." Love, devotion, etc., demand with undeviating

definiteness that there be only one will to which the others devote

themselves, which they serve, follow, love. Whether this will is

regarded as reasonable or as unreasonable, in both cases one acts

morally when one follows it, and immorally when one breaks away from it.

The will that commands the censorship seems to many unreasonable; but he

who in a land of censorship evades the censoring of his book acts

immorally, and he who submits it to the censorship acts morally. If some

one let his moral judgment go, and set up _e. g._ a secret press, one

would have to call him immoral, and imprudent into the bargain if he let

himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a value in the eyes

of the "moral"? Perhaps!--That is, if he fancied he was serving a

"higher morality."

The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the frontiers of two

domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its

fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough

to serve _morality_ without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough

to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward

the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of

_halfness_, catches only miserable, stupid flies. If one has once dared

to make a "free" motion, immediately one waters it again with assurances

of love, and--_shams resignation_; if, on the other side, they have had

the face to reject the free motion with _moral_ appeals to confidence,

etc., immediately the moral courage also sinks, and they assure one how

they hear the free words with special pleasure, etc.; they--_sham

approval_. In short, people would like to have the one, but not go

without the other; they would like to have a _free will_, but not for

their lives lack the _moral will_. Just come in contact with a servile

loyalist, you Liberals. You will sweeten every word of freedom with a

look of the most loyal confidence, and he will clothe his servilism in

the most flattering phrases of freedom. Then you go apart, and he, like

you, thinks "I know you, fox!" He scents the devil in you as much as you

do the dark old Lord God in him.

A Nero is a "bad" man only in the eyes of the "good"; in mine he is

nothing but a _possessed_ man, as are the good too. The good see in him

an arch-villain, and relegate him to hell. Why did nothing hinder him in

his arbitrary course? Why did people put up with so much? Do you suppose

the tame Romans, who let all their will be bound by such a tyrant, were

a hair the better? In old Rome they would have put him to death

instantly, would never have been his slaves. But the contemporary "good"

among the Romans opposed to him only moral demands, not their _will_;

they sighed that their emperor did not do homage to morality, like them;

they themselves remained "moral subjects," till at last one found

courage to give up "moral, obedient subjection." And then the same "good

Romans" who, as "obedient subjects," had borne all the ignominy of

having no will, hurrahed over the nefarious, immoral act of the rebel.

Where then in the "good" was the courage for the _revolution_, that

courage which they now praised, after another had mustered it up? The

good could not have this courage, for a revolution, and an insurrection

into the bargain, is always something "immoral," which one can resolve

upon only when one ceases to be "good" and becomes either "bad"

or--neither of the two. Nero was no viler than his time, in which one

could only be one of the two, good or bad. The judgment of his time on

him had to be that he was bad, and this in the highest degree: not a

milksop, but an arch-scoundrel. All moral people can pronounce only this

judgment on him. Rascals such as he was are still living here and there

to-day (see _e. g._ the Memoirs of Ritter von Lang) in the midst of the

moral. It is not convenient to live among them certainly, as one is not

sure of his life for a moment; but can you say that it is more

convenient to live among the moral? One is just as little sure of his

life there, only that one is hanged "in the way of justice," but least

of all is one sure of his honor, and the national cockade is gone before

you can say Jack Robinson. The hard fist of morality treats the noble

nature of egoism altogether without compassion.

"But surely one cannot put a rascal and an honest man on the same

level!" Now, no human being does that oftener than you judges of morals;

yes, still more than that, you imprison as a criminal an honest man who

speaks openly against the existing constitution, against the hallowed

institutions, etc., and you entrust portfolios and still more important

things to a crafty rascal. So _in praxi_ you have nothing to reproach me

with. "But in theory!" Now there I do put both on the same level, as two

opposite poles,--to wit, both on the level of the moral law. Both have

meaning only in the "moral" world, just as in the pre-Christian time a

Jew who kept the law and one who broke it had meaning and significance

only in respect to the Jewish law; before Jesus Christ, on the contrary,

the Pharisee was no more than the "sinner and publican." So before

self-ownership the moral Pharisee amounts to as much as the immoral

sinner.

Nero became very inconvenient by his possessedness. But a self-owning

man would not sillily oppose to him the "sacred," and whine if the

tyrant does not regard the sacred; he would oppose to him his will. How

often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been held up

to their foes, and some liberty or other shown and demonstrated to be a

"sacred right of man"! Those who do that deserve to be laughed out of

court--as they actually are,--were it not that in truth they do, even

though unconsciously, take the road that leads to the goal. They have a

presentiment that, if only the majority is once won for that liberty, it

will also will the liberty, and will then take what it _will_ have. The

sacredness of the liberty, and all possible proofs of this sacredness,

will never procure it; lamenting and petitioning only shows beggars.

The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he knows no other enemy than

the "immoral" man. "He who is not moral is immoral!" and accordingly

reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore the moral man can never comprehend

the egoist. Is not unwedded cohabitation an immorality? The moral man

may turn as he pleases, he will have to stand by this verdict; Emilia

Galotti gave up her life for this moral truth. And it is true, it is an

immorality. A virtuous girl may become an old maid; a virtuous man may

pass the time in fighting his natural impulses till he has perhaps

dulled them, he may castrate himself for the sake of virtue as St.

Origen did for the sake of heaven: he thereby honors sacred wedlock,

sacred chastity, as inviolable; he is--moral. Unchastity can never

become a moral act. However indulgently the moral man may judge and

excuse him who committed it, it remains a transgression, a sin against a

moral commandment; there clings to it an indelible stain. As chastity

once belonged to the monastic vow, so it does to moral conduct. Chastity

is a--good.--For the egoist, on the contrary, even chastity is not a

good without which he could not get along; he cares nothing at all about

it. What now follows from this for the judgment of the moral man? This:

that he throws the egoist into the only class of men that he knows

besides moral men, into that of the--immoral. He cannot do otherwise; he

must find the egoist immoral in everything in which the egoist

disregards morality. If he did not find him so, then he would already

have become an apostate from morality without confessing it to himself,

he would already no longer be a truly moral man. One should not let

himself be led astray by such phenomena, which at the present day are

certainly no longer to be classed as rare, but should reflect that he

who yields any point of morality can as little be counted among the

truly moral as Lessing was a pious Christian when, in the well-known

parable, he compared the Christian religion, as well as the Mohammedan

and Jewish, to a "counterfeit ring." Often people are already further

than they venture to confess to themselves. For Socrates, because in

culture he stood on the level of morality, it would have been an

immorality if he had been willing to follow Crito's seductive incitement

and escape from the dungeon; to remain was the only moral thing. But it

was solely because Socrates was--a moral man. The "unprincipled,

sacrilegious" men of the Revolution, on the contrary, had sworn fidelity

to Louis XVI, and decreed his deposition, yes, his death; but the act

was an immoral one, at which moral persons will be horrified to all

eternity.

* * * * *

Yet all this applies, more or less, only to "civic morality," on which

the freer look down with contempt. For it (like civism, its native

ground, in general) is still too little removed and free from the

religious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws without criticism

or further consideration to its domain instead of producing independent

doctrines of its own. Morality cuts a quite different figure when it

arrives at the consciousness of its dignity, and raises its principle,

the essence of man, or "Man," to be the only regulative power. Those who

have worked their way through to such a decided consciousness break

entirely with religion, whose God no longer finds any place alongside

their "Man," and, as they (see below) themselves scuttle the ship of

State, so too they crumble away that "morality" which flourishes only in

the State, and logically have no right to use even its name any further.

For what this "critical" party calls morality is very positively

distinguished from the so-called "civic or political morality," and

must appear to the citizen like an "insensate and unbridled liberty."

But at bottom it has only the advantage of the "purity of the

principle," which, freed from its defilement with the religious, has now

reached universal power in its clarified definiteness as "humanity."

Therefore one should not wonder that the name "morality" is retained

along with others, like freedom, benevolence, self-consciousness, etc.,

and is only garnished now and then with the addition, a "free"

morality,--just as, though the civic State is abused, yet the State is

to arise again as a "free State," or, if not even so, yet as a "free

society."

Because this morality completed into humanity has fully settled its

accounts with the religion out of which it historically came forth,

nothing hinders it from becoming a religion on its own account. For a

distinction prevails between religion and morality only so long as our

dealings with the world of men are regulated and hallowed by our

relation to a superhuman being, or so long as our doing is a doing "for

God's sake." If, on the other hand, it comes to the point that "man is

to man the supreme being," then that distinction vanishes, and morality,

being removed from its subordinate position, is completed

into--religion. For then the higher being who had hitherto been

subordinated to the highest, Man, has ascended to absolute height, and

we are related to him as one is related to the highest being, _i. e._

religiously. Morality and piety are now as synonymous as in the

beginning of Christianity, and it is only because the supreme being has

come to be a different one that a holy walk is no longer called a

"holy" one, but a "human" one. If morality has conquered, then a

complete--_change of masters_ has taken place.

After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the

supposedly safe harbor of _love_. "The first and highest law must be the

love of man to man. _Homo homini Deus est_--this is the supreme

practical maxim, this the turning point of the world's history."[37]

But, properly speaking, only the god is changed,--the _deus_; love has

remained: there love to the superhuman God, here love to the human God,

to _homo_ as _Deus_. Therefore man is to me--sacred. And everything

"truly human" is to me--sacred! "Marriage is sacred of itself. And so it

is with all moral relations. Friendship is and must be _sacred_ for you,

and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in

and of itself_."[38] Haven't we the priest again there? Who is his God?

Man with a great M! What is the divine? The human! Then the predicate

has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the

sentence "God is love," they say "love is divine"; instead of "God has

become man," "Man has become God," etc. It is nothing more or less than

a new--_religion_. "All moral relations are ethical, are cultivated with

a moral mind, only where of themselves (without religious consecration

by the priest's blessing) they are counted _religious_." Feuerbach's

proposition, "Theology is anthropology," means only "religion must be

ethics, ethics alone is religion."

Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a transposition of subject and

predicate, a giving of preference to the latter. But, since he himself

says, "Love is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred through

being a predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is

divine in and of itself," he might judge that the fight against the

predicates themselves, against love and all sanctities, must be

commenced. How could he hope to turn men away from God when he left them

the divine? And if, as Feuerbach says, God himself has never been the

main thing to them, but only his predicates, then he might have gone on

leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the real kernel, was

left at any rate. He recognizes, too, that with him it is "only a matter

of annihilating an illusion";[39] he thinks, however, that the effect of

the illusion on men is "downright ruinous, since even love, in itself

the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one

through religiousness, since religious love loves man[40] only for God's

sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only." Is

this different with moral love? Does it love the man, _this_ man for

_this_ man's sake, or for morality's sake, for _Man's_ sake, and so--for

_homo homini Deus_--for God's sake?

* * * * *

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 appetite 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

compassion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the appetite 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 God 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 surpassed 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 _God_ 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 God, 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 passes 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 bloody 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 passions 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 appetites.

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 assure 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 appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not

let himself be determined by his appetites. This does not involve the

idea that _he_ was not to _have_ appetites, but that the appetites were

not to have him, that they were not to become _fixed_, uncontrollable,

indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived

against the appetites 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 appetites, but the appetites 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 "passionate,"

"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, passionlessness, 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 God, 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. God, 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 attitude 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 God, 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 "pronounced 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

God 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 cocks' 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 God 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_ entity, _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 assiduity 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 assiduity was only the

activity of ants and the hopping of fleas, jugglers' tricks on the

immovable tight-rope of the objective, _corvée_-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 circumstances; 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," "constitutional 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 assumes 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

assured.

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_ attitude 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 attitude

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_.

"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

coarsest 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 classes, _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, God, 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 succumbs 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, noble, loving, etc.

In the sixth part of the "_Denkwuerdigkeiten_" p. 7, Bruno Bauer says:

"That middle class, 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 passion, 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 impassioned 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

passion, 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 passion, or the avaricious man who denies himself

everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is

ruled by a passion 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 passion, 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 passions, 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 God, 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 bloody guillotines.

He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a

lofty calling, may not let any worldly lusts, 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 assumed

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 assail.

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 anthrôpous], men, but [Greek: ton anthrôpon],

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 justitia, 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 passed when he thought he had freed himself from one.

In the passage quoted above all ideality, etc., is denied to the middle

class. 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 God and

Mammon.

I do not blame the middle class 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 class. 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 succumbing

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 God and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover

of wisdom, as I love God. 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

God'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-abasement. "He that abaseth

himself shall be exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be _made_ to

practise piety, godliness, 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 God, yet

they demand the _fear of Man_ all the more strictly, and awaken

"enthusiasm for the truly human calling" by discipline.

* * * * *

A long time passed 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 God" 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

appetites 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,"

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 God everywhere; but God

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. God, who is spirit, alone lives. Nothing lives but the ghost.

How can one try to assert 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 God and the devil in their former crass

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 emancipate 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 trespass 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 God 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 God," 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 God, 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 sanctities 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 constitutes 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 assert 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 "God'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 God'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 pronounces moral relations sacred, not as God'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 God. 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 sanctity 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 pronounced. 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 passage 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 "godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against

the _world_, the mediæval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against

_self_, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against

the inner world. The mediæval 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 God_.

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 godless.

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 multitude 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!