"Does not the spirit thirst for freedom?"--Alas, not my spirit alone, my
body too thirsts for it hourly! When before the odorous castle-kitchen
my nose tells my palate of the savory dishes that are being prepared
therein, it feels a fearful pining at its dry bread; when my eyes tell
the hardened back about soft down on which one may lie more delightfully
than on its compressed straw, a suppressed rage seizes it; when--but let
us not follow the pains further.--And you call that a longing for
freedom? What do you want to become free from, then? From your hardtack
and your straw bed? Then throw them away!--But that seems not to serve
you: you want rather to have the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and
downy beds. Are men to give you this "freedom,"--are they to permit it
to you? You do not hope that from their philanthropy, because you know
they all think like--you: each is the nearest to himself! How,
therefore, do you mean to come to the enjoyment of those foods and beds?
Evidently not otherwise than in making them your property!
If you think it over rightly, you do not want the freedom to have all
these fine things, for with this freedom you still do not have them; you
want really to have them, to call them _yours_ and possess them as _your
property_. Of what use is a freedom to you, indeed, if it brings in
nothing? And, if you became free from everything, you would no longer
have anything; for freedom is empty of substance. Whoso knows not how to
make use of it, for him it has no value this useless permission; but how
I make use of it depends on my personality.[105]
I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more than freedom for you:
you should not merely _be rid_ of what you do not want, you should also
_have_ what you want; you should not only be a "freeman," you should be
an "owner" too.
Free--from what? Oh! what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke
of serfdom, of sovereignty, of aristocracy and princes, the dominion of
the desires and passions; yes, even the dominion of one's own will, of
self-will, for the completest self-denial is nothing but
freedom--freedom, to wit, from self-determination, from one's own self.
And the craving for freedom as for something absolute, worthy of every
praise, deprived us of ownness: it created self-denial. However, the
freer I become, the more compulsion piles up before my eyes; and the
more impotent I feel myself. The unfree son of the wilderness does not
yet feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilized man: he seems
to himself freer than this latter. In the measure that I conquer freedom
for myself I create for myself new bounds and new tasks: if I have
invented railroads, I feel myself weak again because I cannot yet sail
through the skies like the bird; and, if I have solved a problem whose
obscurity disturbed my mind, at once there await me innumerable others,
whose perplexities impede my progress, dim my free gaze, make the limits
of my _freedom_ painfully sensible to me. "Now that you have become free
from sin, you have become _servants_ of righteousness."[106] Republicans
in their broad freedom, do they not become servants of the law? How true
Christian hearts at all times longed to "become free," how they pined to
see themselves delivered from the "bonds of this earth-life"! they
looked out toward the land of freedom. ("The Jerusalem that is above is
the freewoman; she is the mother of us all." Gal. 4. 26.)
Being free from anything--means only being clear or rid. "He is free
from headache" is equal to "he is rid of it." "He is free from this
prejudice" is equal to "he has never conceived it" or "he has got rid of
it." In "less" we complete the freedom recommended by Christianity, in
sinless, godless, moralityless, etc.
Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. "Ye, dear brethren, are called
to freedom."[107] "So speak and so do, as those who are to be judged by
the law of freedom."[108]
Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give
it up? No, nothing is to be lost, freedom no more than the rest; but it
is to become our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot.
What a difference between freedom and ownness! One can get _rid_ of a
great many things, one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free
from much, not from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the
condition of slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of
things, not from everything; but from the whip, the domineering temper,
etc., of the master, one does not as slave become _free_. "Freedom lives
only in the realm of dreams!" Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole
being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am _rid_ of,
owner of what I have in my _power_ or what I _control_. _My own_ I am at
all times and under all circumstances, if I know how to have myself and
do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something that I
cannot truly _will_, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can
only wish it and--aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook.
The fetters of reality cut the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment.
But _my own_ I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of
myself and my advantage; his blows strike me indeed, I am not _free_
from them; but I endure them only for _my benefit_, perhaps in order to
deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or,
again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. But, as I keep my eye
on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the first good
opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust. That I then become
_free_ from him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent
egoism. Here one perhaps says I was "free" even in the condition of
slavery,--to wit, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But "intrinsically
free" is not "really free," and "inwardly" is not "outwardly." I was
own, on the other hand, _my own_, altogether, inwardly and outwardly.
Under the dominion of a cruel master my body is not "free" from torments
and lashes; but it is _my_ bones that moan under the torture, _my_
fibres that quiver under the blows, and _I_ moan because _my_ body
moans. That _I_ sigh and shiver proves that I have not yet lost
_myself_, that I am still my own. My _leg_ is not "free" from the
master's stick, but it is _my_ leg and is inseparable. Let him tear it
off me and look and see if he still has my leg! He retains in his hand
nothing but the--corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead
dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a so-called dead dog
has none and is therefore no longer a dog.
If one opines that a slave may yet be inwardly free, he says in fact
only the most indisputable and trivial thing. For who is going to assert
that any man is _wholly_ without freedom? If I am an eye-servant, can I
therefore not be free from innumerable things, _e. g._ from faith in
Zeus, from the desire for fame, and the like? Why then should not a
whipped slave also be able to be inwardly free from unchristian
sentiments, from hatred, of his enemy, etc.? He then has "Christian
freedom," is rid of the unchristian; but has he absolute freedom,
freedom from everything, _e. g._ from the Christian delusion, or from
bodily pain, etc.?
In the meantime, all this seems to be said more against names than
against the thing. But is the name indifferent, and has not a word, a
shibboleth, always inspired and--fooled men? Yet between freedom and
ownness there lies still a deeper chasm than the mere difference of the
words.
All the world desires freedom, all long for its reign to come. O
enchantingly beautiful dream of a blooming "reign of freedom," a "free
human race"!--who has not dreamed it? So men shall become free, entirely
free, free from all constraint! From all constraint, really from all?
Are they never to put constraint on themselves any more? "Oh yes, that,
of course; don't you see, that is no constraint at all?" Well, then at
any rate they are to become free from religious faith, from the strict
duties of morality, from the inexorability of the law, from--"What a
fearful misunderstanding!" Well, _what_ are they to be free from then,
and what not?
The lovely dream is dissipated; awakened, one rubs his half-opened eyes
and stares at the prosaic questioner. "What men are to be free
from?"--From blind credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims another,
all faith is blind credulity; they must become free from all faith. No,
no, for God's sake,--inveighs the first again,--do not cast all faith
from you, else the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the
republic,--a third makes himself heard,--and become--free from all
commanding lords. There is no help in that, says a fourth: we only get a
new lord then, a "dominant majority"; let us rather free ourselves from
this dreadful inequality.--O hapless equality, already I hear your
plebeian roar again! How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a
paradise of _freedom_, and what impudence and licentiousness now raises
its wild clamor! Thus the first laments, and gets on his feet to grasp
the sword against "unmeasured freedom." Soon we no longer hear anything
but the clashing of the swords of the disagreeing dreamers of freedom.
What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for
a _particular_ freedom, _e. g._ freedom of faith; _i. e._, the believing
man wanted to be free and independent; of what? of faith perhaps? no!
but of the inquisitors of faith. So now "political or civil" freedom.
The citizen wants to become free not from citizenhood, but from
bureaucracy, the arbitrariness of princes, and the like. Prince
Metternich once said he had "found a way that was adapted to guide men
in the path of _genuine_ freedom for all the future." The Count of
Provence ran away from France precisely at the time when she was
preparing the "reign of freedom," and said: "My imprisonment had become
intolerable to me; I had only one passion, the desire for--_freedom_; I
thought only of it."
The craving for a _particular_ freedom always includes the purpose of a
new _dominion_, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed "could give
its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for
freedom," but in truth only because they were after a particular
freedom, therefore a new _dominion_, the "dominion of the law."
Freedom you all want, you want _freedom_. Why then do you higgle
over a more or less? _Freedom_ can only be the whole of freedom; a
piece of freedom is not _freedom_. You despair of the possibility of
obtaining the whole of freedom, freedom from everything,--yes, you
consider it insanity even to wish this?--Well, then leave off chasing
after the phantom, and spend your pains on something better than
the--_unattainable_.
"Ah, but there is nothing better than freedom!"
What have you then when you have freedom, _viz._,--for I will not speak
here of your piecemeal bits of freedom,--complete freedom? Then you are
rid of everything that embarrasses you, everything, and there is
probably nothing that does not once in your life embarrass you and cause
you inconvenience. And for whose sake, then, did you want to be rid of
it? Doubtless _for your sake_, because it is in _your_ way! But, if
something were not inconvenient to you; if, on the contrary, it were
quite to your mind (_e. g._ the gently but _irresistibly commanding_
look of your loved one),--then you would not want to be rid of it and
free from it. Why not? _For your sake_ again! So you take _yourselves_
as measure and judge over all. You gladly let freedom go when unfreedom,
the "sweet _service_ of love," suits _you_; and you take up your freedom
again on occasion when it begins to suit _you_ better,--that is,
supposing, which is not the point here, that you are not afraid of such
a Repeal of the Union for other (perhaps religious) reasons.
Why will you not take courage now to really make _yourselves_ the
central point and the main thing altogether? Why grasp in the air at
freedom, your dream? Are you your dream? Do not begin by inquiring of
your dreams, your notions, your thoughts, for that is all "hollow
theory." Ask yourselves and ask after yourselves--that is _practical_
and you know you want very much to be "practical." But there the one
hearkens what his God (of course what he thinks of at the name God is
his God) may be going to say to it, and another what his moral feelings,
his conscience, his feeling of duty, may determine about it, and a third
calculates what folks will think of it,--and, when each has thus asked
his Lord God (folks are a Lord God just as good as, nay, even more
compact than, the other-worldly and imaginary one: _vox populi, vox
dei_), then he accommodates himself to his Lord's will and listens no
more at all for what _he himself_ would like to say and decide.
Therefore turn to yourselves rather than to your gods or idols. Bring
out from yourselves what is in you, bring it to the light, bring
yourselves to revelation.
How one acts only from himself, and asks after nothing further, the
Christians have realized in the notion "God." He acts "as it pleases
him." And foolish man, who could do just so, is to act as it "pleases
God" instead.--If it is said that even God proceeds according to eternal
laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have
my law in my whole nature, _i. e._ in myself.
But one needs only admonish you of yourselves to bring you to despair
at once. "What am I?" each of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and
unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light
or guiding star! How am I to obtain a correct answer, if, without regard
to God's commandments or to the duties which morality prescribes,
without regard to the voice of reason, which in the course of history,
after bitter experiences, has exalted the best and most reasonable thing
into law, I simply appeal to myself? My passion would advise me to do
the most senseless thing possible.--Thus each deems himself
the--_devil_; for, if, so far as he is unconcerned about religion, etc.,
he only deemed himself a beast, he would easily find that the beast,
which does follow only _its_ impulse (as it were, its advice), does not
advise and impel itself to do the "most senseless" things, but takes
very correct steps. But the habit of the religious way of thinking has
biased our mind so grievously that we are--terrified at _ourselves_ in
our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem
ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of course it comes into your
head at once that your calling requires you to do the "good," the moral,
the right. Now, if you ask _yourselves_ what is to be done, how can the
right voice sound forth from you, the voice which points the way of the
good, the right, the true, etc.? What concord have God and Belial?
But what would you think if one answered you by saying: "That one is to
listen to God, conscience, duties, laws, etc., is flim-flam with which
people have stuffed your head and heart and made you crazy"? And if he
asked you how it is that you know so surely that the voice of nature is
a seducer? And if he even demanded of you to turn the thing about and
actually to deem the voice of God and conscience to be the devil's work?
There are such graceless men; how will you settle them? You cannot
appeal to your parsons, parents, and good men, for precisely these are
designated by them as your _seducers_, as the true seducers and
corrupters of youth, who busily sow broadcast the tares of self-contempt
and reverence to God, who fill young hearts with mud and young heads
with stupidity.
But now those people go on and ask: For whose sake do you care about
God's and the other commandments? You surely do not suppose that this is
done merely out of complaisance toward God? No, you are doing it--_for
your sake_ again.--Here too, therefore, _you_ are the main thing, and
each must say to himself, _I_ am everything to myself and I do
everything _on my account_. If it ever became clear to you that God, the
commandments, etc., only harm you, that they reduce and ruin _you_, to a
certainty you would throw them from you just as the Christians once
condemned Apollo or Minerva or heathen morality. They did indeed put in
the place of these Christ and afterward Mary, as well as a Christian
morality; but they did this for the sake of _their_ souls' welfare too,
therefore out of egoism or ownness.
And it was by this egoism, this ownness, that they got _rid_ of the old
world of gods and became _free_ from it. Ownness _created_ a new
_freedom_; for ownness is the creator of everything, as genius (a
definite ownness), which is always originality, has for a long time
already been looked upon as the creator of new productions that have a
place in the history of the world.
If your efforts are ever to make "freedom" the issue, then exhaust
freedom's demands. Who is it that is to become free? You, I, we. Free
from what? From everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, therefore,
am the kernel that is to be delivered from all wrappings and--freed from
all cramping shells. What is left when I have been freed from everything
that is not I? Only I; nothing but I. But freedom has nothing to offer
to this I himself. As to what is now to happen further after I have
become free, freedom is silent,--as our governments, when the prisoner's
time is up, merely let him go, thrusting him out into abandonment.
Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all,--why
not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end? Am I not worth
more than freedom? Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the
first? Even unfree, even laid in a thousand fetters, I yet am; and I am
not, like freedom, extant only in the future and in hopes, but even as
the most abject of slaves I am--present.
Think that over well, and decide whether you will place on your banner
the dream of "freedom" or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness."
"Freedom" awakens your _rage_ against everything that is not you;
"egoism" calls you to _joy_ over yourselves, to self-enjoyment;
"freedom" is and remains a _longing_, a romantic plaint, a Christian
hope for unearthliness and futurity; "ownness" is a reality, which _of
itself_ removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way
hinders you. What does not disturb you, you will not want to renounce;
and, if it begins to disturb you, why, you know that "you must obey
_yourselves_ rather than men!"
Freedom teaches only: Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves, of
everything burdensome; it does not teach you who you yourselves are.
Rid, rid! so rings its rallying-cry, and you, eagerly following its
call, get rid even of yourselves, "deny yourselves." But ownness calls
you back to yourselves, it says "Come to yourself!" Under the ægis of
freedom you get rid of many kinds of things, but something new pinches
you again: "you are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[109] As _own_
you are _really rid of everything_, and what clings to you _you have
accepted_; it is your choice and your pleasure. The _own_ man is the
_freeborn_, the man free to begin with; the free man, on the contrary,
is only the _eleutheromaniac_, the dreamer and enthusiast.
The former is _originally free_, because he recognizes nothing but
himself; he does not need to free himself first, because at the start he
rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than
himself, rates nothing higher, because, in short, he starts from himself
and "comes to himself." Constrained by childish respect, he is
nevertheless already working at "freeing" himself from this constraint.
Ownness works in the little egoist, and procures him the
desired--freedom.
Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are,
have made you believe you are not egoists but are _called_ to be
idealists ("good men"). Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which
does precisely deprive you of yourselves, in "self-denial"; but seek for
_yourselves_, become egoists, become each of you an _almighty ego_. Or,
more clearly: Just recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you
really are, and let go your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania
to be something else than you are. Hypocritical I call them because you
have yet remained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleeping,
self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heautontimorumenoses, you
self-tormentors. Never yet has a religion been able to dispense with
"promises," whether they referred us to the other world or to this
("long life," etc.); for man is _mercenary_ and does nothing "gratis."
But how about that "doing the good for the good's sake without prospect
of reward? As if here too the pay was not contained in the satisfaction
that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our egoism
and--exploits it; calculated for our _desires_, it stifles many others
for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon of _cheated_ egoism,
where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my desires, _e. g._ the impulse
toward blessedness. Religion promises me the--"supreme good"; to gain
this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake
them.--All your doings are _unconfessed_, secret, covert, and concealed
egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to
yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest
and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism,--therefore they are
_not egoism_, but thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists,
and you are not, since you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be
such, you have drawn upon the word "egoist"--loathing and contempt.
I secure my freedom with regard to the world in the degree that I make
the world my own, _i. e._ "gain it and take possession of it" for
myself, by whatever might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of
categorical demand, yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc.; for the
means that I use for it are determined by what I am. If I am weak, I
have only weak means, like the aforesaid, which yet are good enough for
a considerable part of the world. Besides, cheating, hypocrisy, lying,
look worse than they are. Who has not cheated the police, the law? who
has not quickly taken on an air of honorable loyalty before the
sheriff's officer who meets him, in order to conceal an illegality that
may have been committed, etc.? He who has not done it has simply let
violence be done to him; he was a _weakling_ from--conscience. I know
that my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my
will on another object, be this other something without will, like a
rock, or something with will, like a government, an individual, etc.; I
deny my ownness when--in presence of another--I give myself up, _i. e._
give way, desist, submit; therefore by _loyalty_, _submission_. For it
is one thing when I give up my previous course because it does not lead
to the goal, and therefore turn out of a wrong road; it is another when
I yield myself a prisoner. I get around a rock that stands in my way,
till I have powder enough to blast it; I get around the laws of a
people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow them. Because I
cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be "sacred" to me, an Astarte?
If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a means
to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! You inapprehensible one,
you shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the
might for apprehension and call you my _own_; I do not give myself up
before you, but only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with
my inability to touch you, I yet remember it against you.
Vigorous men have always done so. When the "loyal" had exalted an
unsubdued power to be their master and had adored it, when they had
demanded adoration from all, then there came some such son of nature who
would not loyally submit, and drove the adored power from its
inaccessible Olympus. He cried his "Stand still" to the rolling sun, and
made the earth go round; the loyal had to make the best of it; he laid
his axe to the sacred oaks, and the "loyal" were astonished that no
heavenly fire consumed him; he threw the pope off Peter's chair, and the
"loyal" had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the divine-right
business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, and at last are silent.
My freedom becomes complete only when it is my--_might_; but by this I
cease to be a merely free man, and become an own man. Why is the freedom
of the peoples a "hollow word"? Because the peoples have no might! With
a breath of the living ego I blow peoples over, be it the breath of a
Nero, a Chinese emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that the
G.....[110] legislatures pine in vain for freedom, and are lectured for
it by the cabinet ministers? Because they are not of the "mighty"! Might
is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further
with a handful of might than with a bagful of right." You long for
freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself.
See, he who has might "stands above the law." How does this prospect
taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? But you have no taste!
The cry for "freedom" rings loudly all around. But is it felt
and known what a donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not
recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is
essentially--self-liberation,--_i. e._, that I can have only so much
freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. Of what use is it to
sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to
bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Christian,
permission to speak what he likes: he will yet utter only narrow-minded
stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob you of the freedom of
speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their
temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear
something whereby those "certain" persons would lose their credit.
If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are simply knaves who give
more than they have. For then they give you nothing of their own, but
stolen wares: they give you your own freedom, the freedom that you must
take for yourselves; and they _give_ it to you only that you may not
take it and call the thieves and cheats to an account to boot. In their
slyness they know well that given (chartered) freedom is no freedom,
since only the freedom one _takes_ for himself, therefore the egoist's
freedom, rides with full sails. Donated freedom strikes its sails as
soon as there comes a storm--or calm; it requires always a--gentle and
moderate breeze.
Here lies the difference between self-liberation and emancipation
(manumission, setting free). Those who to-day "stand in the opposition"
are thirsting and screaming to be "set free." The princes are to
"declare their peoples of age," _i. e._ emancipate them! Behave as if
you were of age, and you are so without any declaration of majority; if
you do not behave accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never
be of age even by a declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of
age, they drove out their tyrants, and, when the son is of age, he makes
himself independent of his father. If the Greeks had waited till their
tyrants graciously allowed them their majority, they might have waited
long. A sensible father throws out a son who will not come of age, and
keeps the house to himself; it serves the noodle right.
The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman, a _libertinus_, a dog
dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment
of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are
nothing bettered in themselves, but only relieved as Jews, although he
who relieves their condition is certainly more than a churchly
Christian, as the latter cannot do this without inconsistency. But,
emancipated or not emancipated, Jew remains Jew; he who is not
self-freed is merely an--emancipated man. The Protestant State can
certainly set free (emancipate) the Catholics; but, because they do not
make themselves free, they remain simply--Catholics.
Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends
of freedom are exasperated against selfishness because in their
religious striving after freedom they cannot--free themselves from that
sublime thing, "self-renunciation." The liberal's anger is directed
against egoism, for the egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a
thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake: the thing must serve
him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no thing a value of its own, an
"absolute" value, but to seek its value in me. One often hears that
pot-boiling study which is so common counted among the most repulsive
traits of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most shameful
desecration of science; but what is science for but to be consumed? If
one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot
boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist's
power is a limited power; but the egoistic element in it, and the
desecration of science, only a possessed man can blame.
Because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an
ego,[111] thought of him only as a dependent, and was properly nothing
but a _social theory_,--a doctrine of living together, and that of man
with God as well as of man with man,--therefore in it everything "own"
must fall into most woeful disrepute: selfishness, self-will, ownness,
self-love, etc. The Christian way of looking at things has on all sides
gradually re-stamped honorable words into dishonorable; why should they
not be brought into honor again? So _Schimpf_ (contumely) is in its old
sense equivalent to jest, but for Christian seriousness pastime became a
dishonor,[112] for that seriousness cannot take a joke; _frech_
(impudent) formerly meant only bold, brave; _Frevel_ (wanton outrage)
was only daring. It is well known how askance the word "reason" was
looked at for a long time.
Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint,
and the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in
terror from everything unchristian as from something incomplete or evil.
Therefore "selfishness" is in a bad way too.
Selfishness,[113] in the Christian sense, means something like this: I
look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But
is sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I
am given up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, my _own_ determination,
when I follow that? I am _my own_ only when I am master of myself,
instead of being mastered either by sensuality or by anything else (God,
man, authority, law, State, Church, etc.); what is of use to me, this
self-owned or self-appertaining one, _my selfishness_ pursues.
Besides, one sees himself every moment compelled to believe in that
constantly-blasphemed selfishness as an all-controlling power. In the
session of February 10, 1844, Welcker argues a motion on the dependence
of the judges, and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable,
dismissable, transferable, and pensionable judges--in short, such
members of a court of justice as can by mere administrative process be
damaged and endangered,--are wholly without reliability, yes, lose all
respect and all confidence among the people. The whole bench, Welcker
cries, is demoralized by this dependence! In blunt words this means
nothing else than that the judges find it more to their advantage to
give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it as the
law would have them. How is that to be helped? Perhaps by bringing home
to the judges' hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, and then
cherishing the confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize
justice more highly than their selfishness? No, the people does not soar
to this romantic confidence, for it feels that selfishness is mightier
than any other motive. Therefore the same persons who have been judges
hitherto may remain so, however thoroughly one has convinced himself
that they behaved as egoists; only they must not any longer find their
selfishness favored by the venality of justice, but must stand so
independent of the government that by a judgment in conformity with the
facts they do not throw into the shade their own cause, their
"well-understood interest," but rather secure a comfortable combination
of a good salary with respect among the citizens.
So Welcker and the commoners of Baden consider themselves secured only
when they can count on selfishness. What is one to think, then, of the
countless phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths overflow at
other times?
To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have another relation than to
one which I am serving unselfishly. The following criterion might be
cited for it: against the one I can _sin_ or commit a _sin_, the other I
can only _trifle away_, push from me, deprive myself of,--_i. e._ commit
an imprudence. Free trade is looked at in both ways, being regarded
partly as a freedom which may _under certain circumstances_ be granted
or withdrawn, partly as one which is to be held _sacred under all
circumstances_.
If I am not concerned about a thing in and for itself, and do not desire
it for its own sake, then I desire it solely as a _means to an end_, for
its usefulness; for the sake of another end; _e. g._, oysters for a
pleasant flavor. Now will not every thing whose final end he himself is
serve the egoist as means? and is he to protect a thing that serves him
for nothing,--_e. g._, the proletarian to protect the State?
Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again
what Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien
standard either, as it is not in any sense an _idea_ like freedom,
morality, humanity, and the like: it is only a description of
the--_owner_.