* * * * *
Up to this time the discord could not come to an outbreak, because
properly there is current only a contention of modern liberals with
antiquated liberals, a contention of those who understand "freedom" in a
small measure and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of the
_moderate_ and _measureless_, therefore. Everything turns on the
question, _how free_ must _man_ be? That man must be free, in this all
believe; therefore all are liberal too. But the un-man[98] who is
somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? flow can it be
arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same time with man?
Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as God
has the devil: by the side of man stands always the un-man, the
individual, the egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this
devil.
Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of showing the other liberals
that they still do not want "freedom."
If the other liberals had before their eyes only isolated egoism and
were for the most part blind, radical liberalism has against it egoism
"in mass," throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of
freedom their own as it does, so that now man and un-man, rigorously
separated, stand over against each other as enemies, to wit, the
"masses" and "criticism";[99] namely, "free, human criticism," as it is
called ("_Judenfrage_," p. 114), in opposition to crude, _e. g._
religious, criticism.
Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the
masses and "give them a general certificate of insolvency."[100] So it
means finally to make itself out in the right, and to represent all
contention of the "faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoistic
_stubbornness_,[101] as pettiness, paltriness. All wrangling loses
significance, and petty dissensions are given up, because in criticism a
common enemy enters the field. "You are egoists altogether, one no
better than another!" Now the egoists stand together against criticism.
Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism precisely because
it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty to egoism.
Accordingly criticism and the masses stand on the same basis: both fight
against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each
other.
Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, freedom from egoism, and
wrangle only over which of them approaches nearest to the goal or even
attains it.
The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men of darkness and men
of light, politicians, Communists,--all, in short,--hold the reproach of
egoism far from them; and, as criticism brings against them this
reproach in plain terms and in the most extended sense, all _justify_
themselves against the accusation of egoism, and combat--egoism, the
same enemy with whom criticism wages war.
Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, and both seek to
liberate themselves from egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashing
_themselves_ as by ascribing it to the opposite party.
The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" who gives them the
"simple concept and the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom
the triumph is denied in "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 24 were only bunglers. He is
their prince and general in the war against egoism for freedom; what he
fights against they fight against. But at the same time he is their
enemy too, only not the enemy before them, but the friendly enemy who
wields the knout behind the timorous to force courage into them.
Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses is reduced to the
following contradiction: "You are egoists"! "No, we are not"! "I will
prove it to you"! "You shall have our justification"!
Let us then take both for what they give themselves out for,
non-egoists, and what they take each other for, egoists. They are
egoists and are not.
Properly criticism says: You must liberate your ego from all limitedness
so entirely that it becomes a _human_ ego. I say: Liberate yourself as
far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to
every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively: not to
every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently,
do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you
tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing down even one limit
_for all men_? Are not countless persons to-day, as at all times,
running about with all the "limitations of humanity"? He who overturns
one of _his_ limits may have shown others the way and the means; the
overturning of _their_ limits remains their affair. Nobody does anything
else either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is to call
on them to cast down all human limits. That is impossible, because _Man_
has no limits. I have some indeed, but then it is only _mine_ that
concern me any, and only they can be overcome by me. A _human_ ego I
cannot become, just because I am I and not merely man.
Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught us something that
we can lay to heart! I am not free if I am not without interests, not
man if I am not disinterested? Well, even if it makes little difference
to me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave unused any occasion
to realize _myself_ or make myself count. Criticism offers me this
occasion by the teaching that, if anything plants itself firmly in me,
and becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and servant, _i. e._ a
possessed man. An interest, be it for what it may, has kidnapped a slave
in me if I cannot get away from it, and is no longer my property, but I
I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson to let no part of
our property become stable, and to feel comfortable only
in--_dissolving_ it.
So, if criticism says: You are man only when you are restlessly
criticising and dissolving! then we say: Man I am without that, and I am
I likewise; therefore I want only to be careful to secure my property to
myself; and, in order to secure it, I continually take it back into
myself, annihilate in it every movement toward independence, and swallow
it before it can fix itself and become a "fixed idea" or a "mania."
But I do that not for the sake of my "human calling," but because I call
myself to it. I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is
possible for a man to dissolve, and, _e. g._, while not yet ten years
old I do not criticise the nonsense of the Commandments, but I am man
all the same, and act humanly in just this,--that I still leave them
uncriticised. In short, I have no calling, and follow none, not even
that to be a man.
Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be
the day that anything won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become
free through liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself and confess to
myself openly: What Man seems to have gained, _I_ alone have gained.
Man is free when "Man is to man the supreme being." So it belongs to the
completion of liberalism that every other supreme being be annulled,
theology overturned by anthropology, God and his grace laughed down,
"atheism" universal.
The egoism of property has given up the last that it had to give when
even the "My God" has become senseless; for God exists only when he has
at heart the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in
him.
Political liberalism abolished, the inequality of masters and servants:
it made people _masterless_, anarchic. The master was now removed from
the individual, the "egoist," to become a ghost,--the law or the State.
Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the poor
and rich, and makes people _possessionless_ or propertyless. Property is
withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society. Humane
liberalism makes people _godless_, atheistic. Therefore the individual's
God, "my God", must be put an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at
the same time freedom from service, possessionlessness at the same time
freedom from care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from
prejudice: for with the master the servant falls away; with possession,
the care about it; with the firmly-rooted God, prejudice. But, since the
master rises again as State, the servant appears again as subject; since
possession becomes the property of society, care is begotten anew as
labor; and, since God as Man becomes a prejudice, there arises a new
faith, faith in humanity or liberty. For the individual's God the God of
all, _viz._, "Man," is now exalted; "for it is the highest thing in us
all to be man." But, as nobody can become entirely what the idea "man"
imports, Man remains to the individual a lofty other world, an
unattained supreme being, a God. But at the same time this is the "true
God," because he is fully adequate to us,--to wit, our own "_self_"; we
ourselves, but separated from us and lifted above us.