II.--MY INTERCOURSE

In society the human demand at most can be satisfied, while the egoistic

must always come short.

Because it can hardly escape anybody that the present shows no such

living interest in any question as in the "social," one has to direct

his gaze especially to society. Nay, if the interest felt in it were

less passionate and dazzled, people would not so much, in looking at

society, lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that a

society cannot become new so long as those who form and constitute it

remain the old ones. If, _e. g._, there was to arise in the Jewish

people a society which should spread a new faith over the earth, these

apostles could in no case remain Pharisees.

As you are, so you present yourself, so you behave toward men: a

hypocrite as a hypocrite, a Christian as a Christian. Therefore the

character of a society is determined by the character of its members:

they are its creators. So much at least one must perceive even if one

were not willing to put to the test the concept "society" itself.

Ever far from letting _themselves_ come to their full development and

consequence, men have hitherto not been able to found their societies on

_themselves_; or rather, they have been able only to found "societies"

and to live in societies. The societies were always persons, powerful

persons, so-called "moral persons," _i. e._ ghosts, before which the

individual had the appropriate wheel in his head, the fear of ghosts. As

such ghosts they may most suitably be designated by the respective names

"people" and "peoplet": the people of the patriarchs, the people of the

Hellenes, etc., at last the--people of men, Mankind (Anacharsis Clootz

was enthusiastic for the "nation" of mankind); then every subdivision

of this "people," which could and must have its special societies, the

Spanish, French people, etc.; within it again classes, cities, in short

all kinds of corporations; lastly, tapering to the finest point, the

little people of the--_family_. Hence, instead of saying that the person

that walked as ghost in all societies hitherto has been the people,

there might also have been named the two extremes,--to wit, either

"mankind" or the "family," both the most "natural-born units." We choose

the word "people"[155] because its derivation has been brought into

connection with the Greek _polloi_, the "many" or "the masses," but

still more because "national efforts" are at present the order of the

day, and because even the newest mutineers have not yet shaken off this

deceptive person, although on the other hand the latter consideration

must give the preference to the expression "mankind," since on all sides

they are going in for enthusiasm over "mankind."

The people, then,--mankind or the family,--have hitherto, as it seems,

played history: no _egoistic_ interest was to come up in these

societies, but solely general ones, national or popular interests, class

interests, family interests, and "general human interests." But who has

brought to their fall the peoples whose decline history relates? Who but

the egoist, who was seeking _his_ satisfaction! If once an egoistic

interest crept in, the society was "corrupted" and moved toward its

dissolution, as Rome, _e. g._, proves with its highly developed system

of private rights, or Christianity with the incessantly-breaking-in

"rational self-determination," "self-consciousness," the "autonomy of

the spirit," etc.

The Christian people has produced two societies whose duration will keep

equal measure with the permanence of that people: these are the

societies _State_ and _Church_. Can they be called a union of egoists?

Do we in them pursue an egoistic, personal, own interest, or do we

pursue a popular (_i. e._ an interest of the Christian _people_), to

wit, a State and Church interest? Can I and may I be myself in them? May

I think and act as I will, may I reveal myself, live myself out, busy

myself? Must I not leave untouched the majesty of the State, the

sanctity of the Church?

Well, I may not do as I will. But shall I find in any society such an

unmeasured freedom of maying? Certainly no! Accordingly we might be

content? Not a bit! It is a different thing whether I rebound from an

ego or from a people, a generalization. There I am my opponent's

opponent, born his equal; here I am a despised opponent, bound and under

a guardian: there I stand man to man; here I am a schoolboy who can

accomplish nothing against his comrade because the latter has called

father and mother to aid and has crept under the apron, while I am well

scolded as an ill-bred brat, and I must not "argue": there I fight

against a bodily enemy; here against mankind, against a generalization,

against a "majesty," against a spook. But to me no majesty, nothing

sacred, is a limit; nothing that I know how to overpower. Only that

which I cannot overpower still limits my might; and I of limited might

am temporarily a limited I, not limited by the might _outside_ me, but

limited by my _own_ still deficient might, by my _own impotence_.

However, "the Guard dies, but does not surrender!" Above all, only a

bodily opponent!

I dare meet every foeman

Whom I can see and measure with my eye,

Whose mettle fires my mettle for the fight,--etc.

Many privileges have indeed been cancelled with time, but solely for the

sake of the common weal, of the State and the State's weal, by no means

for the strengthening of me. Vassalage, _e. g._, was abrogated only that

a single liege lord, the lord of the people, the monarchical power,

might be strengthened: vassalage under the one became yet more rigorous

thereby. Only in favor of the monarch, be he called "prince" or "law,"

have privileges fallen. In France the citizens are not, indeed, vassals

of the king, but are instead vassals of the "law" (the Charter).

_Subordination_ was retained, only the Christian State recognized that

man cannot serve two masters (the lord of the manor and the prince,

etc.); therefore one obtained all the prerogatives; now he can again

_place_ one above another, he can make "men in high place."

But of what concern to me is the common weal? The common weal as such is

not _my weal_, but only the furthest extremity of _self-renunciation_.

The common weal may cheer aloud while I must "down";[156] the State may

shine while I starve. In what lies the folly of the political liberals

but in their opposing the people to the government and talking of

people's rights? So there is the people going to be of age, etc. As if

one who has no mouth could be _muendig_![157] Only the individual is

able to be _muendig_. Thus the whole question of the liberty of the

press is turned upside down when it is laid claim to as a "right of the

people." It is only a right, or better the might, of the _individual_.

If a people has liberty of the press, then _I_, although in the midst of

this people, have it not; a liberty of the people is not _my_ liberty,

and the liberty of the press as a liberty of the people must have at its

side a press law directed against _me_.

This must be insisted on all around against the present-day efforts for

liberty:

Liberty of the _people_ is not _my_ liberty!

Let us admit these categories, liberty of the people and right of the

people: _e. g._ the right of the people that everybody may bear arms.

Does one not forfeit such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but

may well forfeit a right that belongs not to me but to the people. I may

be locked, up for the sake of the liberty of the people; I may, under

sentence, incur the loss of the right to bear arms.

Liberalism appears as the last attempt at a creation of the liberty of

the people, a liberty of the commune, of "society," of the general, of

mankind; the dream of a humanity, a people, a commune, a "society,"

that shall be of age.

A people cannot be free otherwise than at the individual's expense; for

it is not the individual that is the main point in this liberty, but the

people. The freer the people, the more bound the individual; the

Athenian people, precisely at its freest time, created ostracism,

banished the atheists, poisoned the most honest thinker.

How they do praise Socrates for his conscientiousness, which makes nun

resist the advice to get away from the dungeon! He is a fool that he

concedes to the Athenians a right to condemn him. Therefore it certainly

serves him right; why then does he remain standing on an equal footing

with the Athenians? Why does he not break with them? Had he known, and

been able to know, what he was, he would have conceded to such judges no

claim, no right. That _he did not escape_ was just his weakness, his

delusion of still having something in common with the Athenians, or the

opinion that he was a member, a mere member of this people. But he was

rather this people itself in person, and could only be his own judge.

There was no _judge over him_, as he himself had really pronounced a

public sentence on himself and rated himself worthy of the Prytaneum. He

should have stuck to that, and, as he had uttered no sentence of death

against himself, should have despised that of the Athenians too and

escaped. But he subordinated himself and recognized in the _people_ his

_judge_; he seemed little to himself before the majesty of the people.

That he subjected himself to _might_ (to which alone he could succumb)

as to a "right" was treason against himself: it was _virtue_. To

Christ, who, it is alleged, refrained from using the power over his

heavenly legions, the same scrupulousness is thereby ascribed by the

narrators. Luther did very well and wisely to have the safety of his

journey to Worms warranted to him in black and white, and Socrates

should have known that the Athenians were his _enemies_, he alone his

judge. The self-deception of a "reign of law," etc., should have given

way to the perception that the relation was a relation of _might_.

It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why?

Because the ordinary Greeks could still less attain that logical

conclusion which not even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to

draw. What then is pettifoggery but a way of utilizing something

established without doing away with it? I might add "for one's own

advantage," but, you see, that lies in "utilizing." Such pettifoggers

are the theologians who "wrest" and "force" God's word; what would they

have to wrest if it were not for the "established" Word of God? So those

liberals who only shake and wrest the "established order." They are all

perverters, like those perverters of the law. Socrates recognized law,

right; the Greeks constantly retained the authority of right and law. If

with this recognition they wanted nevertheless to assert their

advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek it in perversion of

the law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, an intriguer of genius, introduces the

period of Athenian "decay"; the Spartan Lysander and others show that

intrigue had become universally Greek. Greek _law_, on which the Greek

_States_ rested, had to be perverted and undermined by the egoists

within these States, and the _States_ went down that the _individuals_

might become free, the Greek people fell because the individuals cared

less for this people than for themselves. In general, all States,

constitutions, churches, etc., have sunk by the _secession_ of

individuals; for the individual is the irreconcilable enemy of every

_generality_, every _tie_, _i. e._ every fetter. Yet people fancy to

this day that man needs "sacred ties": he, the deadly enemy of every

"tie." The history of the world shows that no tie has yet remained

unrent, shows that man tirelessly defends himself against ties of every

sort; and yet, blinded, people think up new ties again and again, and

think, _e. g._, that they have arrived at the right one if one puts upon

them the tie of a so-called free constitution, a beautiful,

constitutional tie; decoration ribbons, the ties of confidence between

"---- ---- ----," do seem gradually to have become somewhat infirm, but

people have made no further progress than from apron-strings to garters

and collars.

_Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter._

Everything sacred is and must be perverted by perverters of the law;

therefore our present time has multitudes of such perverters in all

spheres. They are preparing the way for the break-up of law, for

lawlessness.

Poor Athenians who are accused of pettifoggery and sophistry! poor

Alcibiades, of intrigue! Why, that was just your best point, your first

step in freedom. Your Æschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have a

free Greek _people_; you were the first to surmise something of _your_

freedom.

A people represses those who tower above _its majesty_, by ostracism

against too-powerful citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics

of the Church, by the--Inquisition against traitors in the State, etc.

For the people is concerned only with its self-assertion; it demands

"patriotic self-sacrifice" from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one

_in himself_ is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even

suffer, what the individual and he alone must do,--to wit, _turn him to

account_. Every people, every State, is unjust toward the _egoist_.

As long as there still exists even one institution which the individual

may not dissolve, the ownness and self-appurtenance of Me is still very

remote. How can I, _e. g._, be free when I must bind myself by oath to a

constitution, a charter, a law, "vow body and soul" to my people? How

can I be my own when my faculties may develop only so far as they "do

not disturb the harmony of society" (Weitling)?

The fall of peoples and mankind will invite _me_ to my rise.

Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, that they

may jingle in for to-morrow the festival of the thousand years existence

of our dear Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough,

as if your tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy

to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind them a

history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to

rise again,--that all may become free whom you so long have held in

fetters.--The _people_ is dead.--Up with _me_!

O thou my much-tormented German people--what was thy torment? It was the

torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a

walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every cock-crow and yet

pines for deliverance and fulfilment. In me too thou hast lived long,

thou dear--thought, thou dear--spook. Already I almost fancied I had

found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and bones for the

wandering spirit; then I hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into

eternal rest; then the last hope fades out, then the notes of the last

love die away, then I depart from the desolate house of those who now

are dead and enter at the door of the--living one:

For only he who is alive is in the right.

Farewell, thou dream of so many millions; farewell, thou who hast

tyrannized over thy children for a thousand years!

To-morrow they carry thee to the grave; soon thy sisters, the peoples,

will follow thee. But, when they have all followed, then----mankind is

buried, and I am my own, I am the laughing heir!

* * * * *

The word _Gesellschaft_ (society) has its origin in the word _Sal_

(hall). If one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these

persons to be in society. They _are_ in society, and at most constitute

a parlor-society by talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech.

When it comes to real _intercourse_, this is to be regarded as

independent of society: it may occur or be lacking, without altering

the nature of what is named society. Those who are in the hall are a

society even as mute persons, or when they put each other off solely

with empty phrases of courtesy. Intercourse is mutuality, it is the

action, the _commercium_, of individuals; society is only community of

the hall, and even the statues of a museum-hall are in society, they are

"grouped." People are accustomed to say "they _haben inne_[158] this

hall in common," but the case is rather that the hall has us _inne_ or

in it. So far the natural signification of the word society. In this it

comes out that society is not generated by me and you, but by a third

factor which makes associates out of us two, and that it is just this

third factor that is the creative one, that which creates society.

Just so a prison society or prison companionship (those who enjoy[159]

the same prison). Here we already hit upon a third factor fuller of

significance than was that merely local one, the hall. Prison no longer

means a space only, but a space with express reference to its

inhabitants: for it is a prison only through being destined for

prisoners, without whom it would be a mere building. What gives a common

stamp to those who are gathered in it? Evidently the prison, since it is

only by means of the prison that they are prisoners. What, then,

determines the _manner of life_ of the prison society? The prison! What

determines their intercourse? The prison too, perhaps? Certainly they

can enter upon intercourse only as prisoners, _i. e._ only so far as

the prison laws allow it; but that _they themselves_ hold intercourse, I

with you, this the prison cannot bring to pass; on the contrary, it must

have an eye to guarding against such egoistic, purely personal

intercourse (and only as such is it really intercourse between me and

you). That we _jointly_ execute a job, run a machine, effectuate

anything in general,--for this a prison will indeed provide; but that I

forget that I am a prisoner, and engage in intercourse with you who

likewise disregard it, brings danger to the prison, and not only cannot

be caused by it, but must not even be permitted. For this reason the

saintly and moral-minded French chamber decides to introduce solitary

confinement, and other saints will do the like in order to cut off

"demoralizing intercourse." Imprisonment is the established and--sacred

condition, to injure which no attempt must be made. The slightest push

of that kind is punishable, as is every uprising against a sacred thing

by which man is to be charmed and chained.

Like the hall, the prison does form a society, a companionship, a

communion (_e. g._ communion of labor), but no _intercourse_, no

reciprocity, no _union_. On the contrary, every union in the prison

bears within it the dangerous seed of a "plot," which under favorable

circumstances might spring up and bear fruit.

Yet one does not usually enter the prison voluntarily, and seldom

remains in it voluntarily either, but cherishes the egoistic desire for

liberty. Here, therefore, it sooner becomes manifest that personal

intercourse is in hostile relations to the prison society and tends to

the dissolution of this very society, this joint incarceration.

Let us therefore look about for such communions as, it seems, we remain

in gladly and voluntarily, without wanting to endanger them by our

egoistic impulses.

As a communion of the required sort the _family_ offers itself in the

first place. Parents, husband and wife, children, brothers and sisters,

represent a whole or form a family, for the further widening of which

the collateral relatives also may be made to serve if taken into

account. The family is a true communion only when the law of the family,

piety[160] or family love, is observed by its members. A son to whom

parents, brothers, and sisters have become indifferent _has been_ a son;

for, as the sonship no longer shows itself efficacious, it has no

greater significance than the long-past connection of mother and child

by the navel-string. That one has once lived in this bodily juncture

cannot as a fact be undone; and so far one remains irrevocably this

mother's son and the brother of the rest of her children; but it would

come to a lasting connection only by lasting piety, this spirit of the

family. Individuals are members of a family in the full sense only when

they make the _persistence_ of the family their task; only as

_conservative_ do they keep aloof from doubting their basis, the family.

To every member of the family one thing must be fixed and

sacred,--_viz._, the family itself, or, more expressively, piety. That

the family is to _persist_ remains to its member, so long as he keeps

himself free from that egoism which is hostile to the family, an

unassailable truth. In a word:--If the family is sacred, then nobody who

belongs to it may secede from it; else he becomes a "criminal" against

the family: he may never pursue an interest hostile to the family,

_e. g._ form a misalliance. He who does this has "dishonored the

family," "put it to shame," etc.

Now, if in an individual the egoistic impulse has not force enough, he

complies and makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family,

takes a rank which harmonizes with its position, and the like; in short,

he "does honor to the family."

If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows fierily enough in his

veins, he prefers to become a "criminal" against the family and to throw

off its laws.

Which of the two lies nearer my heart, the good of the family or my

good? In innumerable cases both go peacefully together; the advantage of

the family is at the same time mine, and _vice versa_. Then it is hard

to decide whether I am thinking _selfishly_ or _for the common benefit_,

and perhaps I complacently flatter myself with my unselfishness. But

there comes the day when a necessity of choice makes me tremble, when I

have it in mind to dishonor my family tree, to affront parents,

brothers, and kindred. What then? Now it will appear how I am disposed

at the bottom of my heart; now it will be revealed whether piety ever

stood above egoism for me, now the selfish one can no longer skulk

behind the semblance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, and,

growing from hour to hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur at

first blush that the slightest thought which may result adversely to the

spirit of the family (piety) bears within it a transgression against

this? nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely

conscious of the matter? It happens so with Juliet in "Romeo and

Juliet." The unruly passion can at last no longer be tamed, and

undermines the building of piety. You will say, indeed, it is from

self-will that the family casts out of its bosom those wilful ones that

grant more of a hearing to their passion than to piety; the good

Protestants used the same excuse with much success against the

Catholics, and believed in it themselves. But it is just a subterfuge to

roll the fault off oneself, nothing more. The Catholics had regard for

the common bond of the church, and thrust those heretics from them only

because these did not have so much regard for the bond of the church as

to sacrifice their convictions to it; the former, therefore, held the

bond fast, because the bond, the Catholic (_i. e._ common and united)

church, was sacred to them; the latter, on the contrary, disregarded the

bond. Just so those who lack piety. They are not thrust out, but thrust

themselves out, prizing their passion, their wilfulness, higher than the

bond of the family.

But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less passionate and wilful heart

than Juliet's. The pliable girl brings herself as a _sacrifice_ to the

peace of the family. One might say that here too selfishness prevailed,

for the decision came from the feeling that the pliable girl felt

herself more satisfied by the unity of the family than by the fulfilment

of her wish. That might be; but what if there remained a sure sign that

egoism had been sacrificed to piety? What if, even after the wish that

had been directed against the peace of the family was sacrificed, it

remained at least as a recollection of a "sacrifice" brought to a sacred

tie? What if the pliable girl were conscious of having left her

self-will unsatisfied and humbly subjected herself to a higher power?

Subjected and sacrificed, because the superstition of piety exercised

its dominion over her!

There egoism won, here piety wins and the egoistic heart bleeds; there

egoism was strong, here it was--weak. But the weak, as we have long

known, are the--unselfish. For them, for these its weak members, the

family cares, because they _belong_ to the family, do not belong to

themselves and care for themselves. This weakness Hegel, _e. g._,

praises when he wants to have match-making left to the choice of the

parents.

As a sacred communion to which, among the rest, the individual owes

obedience, the family has the judicial function too vested in it; such a

"family court" is described _e. g._ in the "Cabanis" of Wilibald Alexis.

There the father, in the name of the "family council," puts the

intractable son among the soldiers and thrusts him out of the family, in

order to cleanse the smirched family again by means of this act of

punishment.--The most consistent development of family responsibility is

contained in Chinese law, according to which the whole family has to

expiate the individual's fault.

To-day, however, the arm of family power seldom reaches far enough to

take seriously in hand the punishment of apostates (in most cases the

State protects even against disinheritance). The criminal against the

family (family-criminal) flees into the domain of the State and is free,

as the State-criminal who gets away to America is no longer reached by

the punishments of his State. He who has shamed his family, the

graceless son, is protected against the family's punishment because the

State, this protecting lord, takes away from family punishment its

"sacredness" and profanes it, decreeing that it is only--"revenge": it

restrains punishment, this sacred family right, because before its, the

State's, "sacredness" the subordinate sacredness of the family always

pales and loses its sanctity as soon as it comes in conflict with this

higher sacredness. Without the conflict, the State lets pass the lesser

sacredness of the family; but in the opposite case it even commands

crime against the family, charging, _e. g._, the son to refuse obedience

to his parents as soon as they want to beguile him to a crime against

the State.

Well, the egoist has broken the ties of the family and found in the

State a lord to shelter him against the grievously affronted spirit of

the family. But where has he run now? Straight into a new _society_, in

which his egoism is awaited by the same snares and nets that it has just

escaped. For the State is likewise a society, not a union; it is the

broadened _family_ ("Father of the Country--Mother of the

Country--children of the country").

* * * * *

What is called a State is a tissue and plexus of dependence and

adherence; it is a _belonging together_, a holding together, in which

those who are placed together fit themselves to each other, or, in

short, mutually depend on each other: it is the _order_ of this

_dependence_. Suppose the king, whose authority lends authority to all

down to the beadle, should vanish: still all in whom the will for order

was awake would keep order erect against the disorders of bestiality. If

disorder were victorious, the State would be at an end.

But is this thought of love, to fit ourselves to each other, to adhere

to each other and depend on each other, really capable of winning us?

According to this the State would be _love_ realized, the being for each

other and living for each other of all. Is not self-will being lost

while we attend to the will for order? Will people not be satisfied when

order is cared for by authority, _i. e._ when authority sees to it that

no one "gets in the way of" another; when, then, the _herd_ is

judiciously distributed or ordered? Why, then everything is in "the best

order," and it is this best order that is called--State!

Our societies and States _are_ without our _making_ them, are united

without our uniting, are predestined and established, or have an

independent standing[161] of their own, are the indissolubly established

against us egoists. The fight of the world to-day is, as it is said,

directed against the "established." Yet people are wont to misunderstand

this as if it were only that what is now established was to be

exchanged for another, a better, established system. But war might

rather be declared against establishment itself, _i. e._ the _State_,

not a particular State, not any such thing as the mere condition of the

State at the time; it is not another State (such as a "people's State")

that men aim at, but their _union_, uniting, this ever-fluid uniting of

everything standing.--A State exists even without my co-operation: I am

born in it, brought up in it, under obligations to it, and must "do it

homage."[162] It takes me up into its "favor,"[163] and I live by its

"grace." Thus the independent establishment of the State founds my lack

of independence; its condition as a "natural growth," its organism,

demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it. That

_it_ may be able to unfold in natural growth, it applies to me the

shears of "civilization"; it gives me an education and culture adapted

to it, not to me, and teaches me _e. g._ to respect the laws, to refrain

from injury to State property (_i. e._ private property), to reverence

divine and earthly highness, etc.; in short, it teaches me to

be--_unpunishable_, "sacrificing" my ownness to "sacredness" (everything

possible is sacred, _e. g._ property, others' life, etc.). In this

consists the sort of civilization and culture that the State is able to

give me: it brings me up to be a "serviceable instrument," a

"serviceable member of society."

This every State must do, the people's State as well as the absolute or

constitutional one. It must do so as long as we rest in the error that

it is an _I_, as which it then applies to itself the name of a "moral,

mystical, or political person." I, who really am I, must pull off this

lion-skin of the I from the stalking thistle-eater. What manifold

robbery have I not put up with in the history of the world! There I let

sun, moon, and stars, cats and crocodiles, receive the honor of ranking

as I; there Jehovah, Allah, and Our Father came and were invested with

the I; there families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually mankind,

came and were honored as I's; there the Church, the State, came with the

pretension to be I,--and I gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then

there was always a real I too that joined the company and affirmed in my

face that it was not my _you_ but my real _I_. Why, _the_ Son of Man

_par excellence_ had done the like; why should not a son of man do it

too? So I saw my I always above me and outside me, and could never

really come to myself.

I never believed in myself; I never believed in my present, I saw myself

only in the future. The boy believes he will be a proper I, a proper

fellow, only when he has become a man; the man thinks, only in the other

world will he be something proper. And, to enter more closely upon

reality at once, even the best are to-day still persuading each other

that one must have received into himself the State, his people, mankind,

and what not, in order to be a real I, a "free burgher," a "citizen," a

"free or true man"; they too see the truth and reality of me in the

reception of an alien I and devotion to it. And what sort of an I? An I

that is neither an I nor a you, a _fancied_ I, a spook.

While in the Middle Ages the church could well brook many States living

united in it, the States learned after the Reformation, especially after

the Thirty Years' War, to tolerate many churches (confessions) gathering

under one crown. But all States are religious and, as the case may be,

"Christian States," and make it their task to force the intractable, the

"egoists," under the bond of the unnatural, _i. e._ Christianize them.

All arrangements of the Christian State have the object of

_Christianizing the people_. Thus the court has the object of forcing

people to justice, the school that of forcing them to mental

culture,--in short, the object of protecting those who act Christianly

against those who act unchristianly, of bringing Christian action to

_dominion_, of making it _powerful_. Among these means of force the

State counted the _Church_, too, it demanded a--particular religion from

everybody. Dupin said lately against the clergy, "Instruction and

education belong to the State."

Certainly everything that regards the principle of morality is a State

affair. Hence it is that the Chinese State meddles so much in family

concerns, and one is nothing there if one is not first of all a good

child to his parents. Family concerns are altogether State concerns with

us too, only that our State--puts confidence in the families without

painful oversight; it holds the family bound by the marriage tie, and

this tie cannot be broken without it.

But that the State makes me responsible for my principles, and demands

certain ones from me, might make me ask, what concern has it with the

"wheel in my head" (principle)? Very much, for the State is the--_ruling

principle_. It is supposed that in divorce matters, in marriage law in

general, the question is of the proportion of rights between Church and

State. Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is to rule

over man, be it called faith or ethical law (morality). The State

behaves as the same ruler that the Church was. The latter rests on

godliness, the former on morality.

People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite tendencies free, and

the like, by which civilized States are distinguished. Certainly some

are strong enough to look with complacency on even the most unrestrained

meetings, while others charge their catchpolls to go hunting for

tobacco-pipes. Yet for one State as for another the play of individuals

among themselves, their buzzing to and fro, their daily life, is an

_incident_ which it must be content to leave to themselves because it

can do nothing with this. Many, indeed, still strain out gnats and

swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are "freer" in

the latter, because less pestered. But _I_ am free in _no_ State. The

lauded tolerance of States is simply a tolerating of the "harmless," the

"not dangerous"; it is only elevation above pettymindedness, only a more

estimable, grander, prouder--despotism. A certain State seemed for a

while to mean to be pretty well elevated above _literary_ combats, which

might be carried on with all heat; England is elevated above _popular

turmoil_ and--tobacco-smoking. But woe to the literature that deals

blows at the State itself, woe to the mobs that "endanger" the State.

In that certain State they dream of a "free science," in England of a

"free popular life."

The State does let individuals _play_ as freely as possible, only they

must not be in _earnest_, must not forget _it_. Man must not carry on

intercourse with man _unconcernedly_, not without "superior oversight

and mediation." I must not execute all that I am able to, but only so

much as the State allows; I must not turn to account _my_ thoughts, nor

_my_ work, nor, in general, anything of mine.

The State always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the

individual--to make him subject to some _generality_ or other; it lasts

only so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the

clearly-marked _restriction of me_, my limitation, my slavery. Never

does a State aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but

always that which is bound to the _purpose of the State_. Through the

State nothing _in common_ comes to pass either, as little as one can

call a piece of cloth the common work of all the individual parts of a

machine; it is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit, _machine

work_. In the same style everything is done by the _State machine_ too;

for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which follow

their own impulse. The State seeks to hinder every free activity by its

censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be

its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The State

wants to make something out of man, therefore there live in it only

_made_ men; every one who wants to be his own self is its opponent and

is nothing. "He is nothing" means as much as, The State does not make

use of him, grants him no position, no office, no trade, and the like.

E. Bauer,[164] in the "_Liberale Bestrebungen_," II, 50, is still

dreaming of a "government which, proceeding out of the people, can never

stand in opposition to it." He does indeed (p. 69) himself take back the

word "government": "In the republic no government at all obtains, but

only an executive authority. An authority which proceeds purely and

alone out of the people; which has not an independent power, independent

principles, independent officers, over against the people; but which has

its foundation, the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the

sole, supreme authority of the State, in the people. The concept

government, therefore, is not at all suitable in the people's State."

But the thing remains the same. That which has "proceeded, been founded,

sprung from the fountain" becomes something "independent" and, like a

child delivered from the womb, enters upon opposition at once. The

government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would be

nothing at all.

"In the free State there is no government," etc. (p. 94). This surely

means that the people, when it is the _sovereign_, does not let itself

be conducted by a superior authority. Is it perchance different in

absolute monarchy? Is there there for the _sovereign_, perchance, a

government standing over him? _Over_ the sovereign, be he called prince

or people, there never stands a government: that is understood of

itself. But over _me_ there will stand a government in every "State," in

the absolute as well as in the republican or "free." _I_ am as badly off

in one as in the other.

The republic is nothing whatever but--absolute monarchy; for it makes no

difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a

"majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and

willing to be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their

master the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Here,

then, the _parties_ at least are already free,--_videlicet_, the

office-holders' party (so-called people's party). The prince must

conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance to the pipe of

the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic, because it

is the _State_ in incipient _dissolution_.

E. Bauer denies (p. 56) that the people is a "personality" in the

constitutional State; _per contra_, then, in the republic? Well, in the

constitutional State the people is--a _party_, and a party is surely a

"personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a "political" (p. 76)

moral person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called

people's party or people or even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but

a spook.

Further, E. Bauer goes on (p. 69): "guardianship is the characteristic

of a government." Truly, still more that of a people and "people's

State"; it is the characteristic of all _dominion_. A people's State,

which "unites in itself all completeness of power," the "absolute

master," cannot let me become powerful. And what a chimera, to be no

longer willing to call the "people's officials" "servants, instruments,"

because they "execute the free, rational law-will of the people!" (p.

73). He thinks (p. 74): "Only by all official circles subordinating

themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the

State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how will a lack

of subordination be allowable there? subordination to the--people's

will.

"In the constitutional State it is the regent and his _disposition_ that

the whole structure of government rests on in the end." (_Ibid._, p.

130.) How would that be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall _I_ not

there be governed by the people's _disposition_ too, and does it make a

difference _for me_ whether I see myself kept in dependence by the

prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called "public

opinion"? If dependence means as much as "religious relation," as E.

Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains

_for me_ the superior power, the "majesty" (for God and prince have

their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in religious

relations.--Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be

reached by no _law_. E. Bauer's whole attempt comes to a _change of

masters_. Instead of wanting to make the _people_ free, he should have

had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.

In the constitutional State _absolutism_ itself has at last come in

conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the

government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute.

These two absolutes will wear out against each other.

E. Bauer inveighs against the determination of the regent by _birth_, by

_chance_. But, when "the people" have become "the sole power in the

State" (p. 132), have _we_ not then in it a master from _chance_? Why,

what is the people? The people has always been only the _body_ of the

government: it is many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one

constitution. And the constitution is the--prince. Princes and peoples

will persist so long as both do not _col_lapse, _i. e._ fall _together_.

If under one constitution there are many "peoples,"--_e. g._ in the

ancient Persian monarchy and to-day,--then these "peoples" rank only as

"provinces." For me the people is in any case an--accidental power, a

force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome.

What is one to think of under the name of an "organized" people

(_ibid._, p. 132)? A people "that no longer has a government," that

governs itself. In which, therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a

people organized by ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes

the people autocrat.

If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the

people, if it is to be a subject[165] and make history, must, like

everything that acts, have a _head_, its "supreme head." Weitling sets

this forth in the "Trio," and Proudhon declares, "_une société, pour

ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut vivre_."[166]

The _vox populi_ is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to

rule our princes. Certainly the _vox populi_ is at the same time _vox

dei_; but is either of any use, and is not the _vox principis_ also _vox

dei_?

At this point the "Nationals" may be brought to mind. To demand of the

thirty-eight States of Germany that they shall act as _one nation_ can

only be put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of

bees, led by thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into one

swarm. _Bees_ they all remain; but it is not the bees as bees that

belong together and can join themselves together, it is only that the

_subject_ bees are connected with the _ruling_ queens. Bees and peoples

are destitute of will, and the _instinct_ of their queens leads them.

If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate

they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that

they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their

Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing,

that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet

without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete

carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean,

to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself

into different peoples and tribes, _i. e._ beehives; but the individual

who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the

isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each

other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain

mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so

far as the "peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together,

are _destitute of will_. Only with the last separation does separation

itself end and change to unification.

Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract,

lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the

unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all

reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something _general_,

abstract, an empty, lifeless _concept_, in distinction from which the

self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively _particular_ from the

trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite

a _people_, a _nation_, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before

their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just

now the order of the day--to wit, the restoration of provincial rights

and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, etc., Lusatia,

etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality--coincide in one.

But the Germans will come into unison, _i. e._ unite _themselves_, only

when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other

words, when they are more than--Germans: only then can they form a

"German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality,

into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in _to

himself_. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's

hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German"! With

that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought

touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," _i. e._

as long as they have a "_family disposition_." From the superstition of

"piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the

soft-hearted piety-phrases run,--from the _family spirit_,--the

Nationals, who want to have a great _family of Germans_, cannot liberate

themselves.

Aside from this, the so-called Nationals would only have to understand

themselves rightly in order to lift themselves out of their juncture

with the good-natured Teutomaniacs. For the uniting for material ends

and interests, which they demand of the Germans, comes to nothing else

than a voluntary union. Carriere, inspired, cries out,[167] "Railroads

are to the more penetrating eye the way to a _life of the people_ such

as has not yet anywhere appeared in such significance." Quite right, it

will be a life of the people that has nowhere appeared, because it is

not a--life of the people.--So Carriere then combats himself (p. 10):

"Pure humanity or manhood cannot be better represented than by a people

fulfilling its mission." Why, by this nationality only is represented.

"Washed-out generality is lower than the form complete in itself, which

is itself a whole, and lives as a living member of the truly general,

the organized." Why, the people is this very "washed-out generality,"

and it is only a man that is the "form complete in itself."

The impersonality of what they call "people, nation," is clear also from

this: that a people which wants to bring its I into view to the best of

its power puts at its head the ruler _without will_. It finds itself in

the alternative either to be subjected to a prince who realizes only

_himself, his individual_ pleasure--then it does not recognize in the

"absolute master" its own will, the so-called will of the people--, or

to seat on the throne a prince who gives effect to _no_ will of his

_own_--then it has a prince _without will_, whose place some ingenious

clockwork would perhaps fill just as well.--Therefore insight need go

only a step farther; then it becomes clear of itself that the I of the

people is an impersonal, "spiritual" power, the--law. The people's I,

therefore, is a--spook, not an I. I am I only by this, that I make

myself; _i. e._ that it is not another who makes me, but I must be my

own work. But how is it with this I of the people? _Chance_ plays it

into the people's hand, chance gives it this or that born lord,

accidents procure it the chosen one; he is not its (the "_sovereign_"

people's) product, as I am _my_ product. Conceive of one wanting to talk

you into believing that you were not your I, but Tom or Jack was your I!

But so it is with the people, and rightly. For the people has an I as

little as the eleven planets counted together have an _I_, though they

revolve around a common _centre_.

Bailly's utterance is representative of the slave-disposition that folks

manifest before the sovereign people, as before the prince. "I have,"

says he, "no longer any extra reason when the general reason has

pronounced itself. My first law was the nation's will; as soon as it had

assembled I knew nothing beyond its sovereign will." He would have no

"extra reason," and yet this extra reason alone accomplishes everything.

Just so Mirabeau inveighs in the words, "No power on earth has the

_right_ to say to the nation's representatives, It is my will!"

As with the Greeks, there is now a wish to make man a _zoon politicon_,

a citizen of the State or political man. So he ranked for a long time as

a "citizen of heaven." But the Greek fell into ignominy along with his

_State_, the citizen of heaven likewise falls with heaven; we, on the

other hand, are not willing to go down along with the _people_, the

nation and nationality, not willing to be merely _political_ men or

politicians. Since the Revolution they have striven to "make the people

happy," and in making the people happy, great, and the like, they make

Us unhappy: the people's good hap is--my mishap.

What empty talk the political liberals utter with emphatic decorum is

well seen again in Nauwerk's "On Taking Part in the State." There

complaint is made of those who are indifferent and do not take part, who

are not in the full sense citizens, and the author speaks as if one

could not be man at all if one did not take a lively part in State

affairs, _i. e._ if one were not a politician. In this he is right; for,

if the State ranks as the warder of everything "human," we can have

nothing human without taking part in it. But what does this make out

against the egoist? Nothing at all, because the egoist is to himself the

warder of the human, and has nothing to say to the State except "Get out

of my sunshine." Only when the State comes in contact with his ownness

does the egoist take an active interest in it. If the condition of the

State does not bear hard on the closet-philosopher, is he to occupy

himself with it because it is his "most sacred duty"? So long as the

State does according to his wish, what need has he to look up from his

studies? Let those who from an interest of their own want to have

conditions otherwise busy themselves with them. Not now, nor evermore,

will "sacred duty" bring folks to reflect about the State,--as little as

they become disciples of science, artists, etc., from "sacred duty."

Egoism alone can impel them to it, and will as soon as things have

become much worse. If you showed folks that their egoism demanded that

they busy themselves with State affairs, you would not have to call on

them long; if, on the other hand, you appeal to their love of fatherland

and the like, you will long preach to deaf hearts in behalf of this

"service of love." Certainly, in your sense the egoists will not

participate in State affairs at all.

Nauwerk utters a genuine liberal phrase on p. 16: "Man completely

fulfils his calling only in feeling and knowing himself as a member of

humanity, and being active as such. The individual cannot realize the

idea of _manhood_ if he does not stay himself upon all humanity, if he

does not draw his powers from it like Antæus."

In the same place it is said: "Man's relation to the _res publica_ is

degraded to a purely private matter by the theological view; is,

accordingly, made away with by denial." As if the political view did

otherwise with religion! There religion is a "private matter."

If, instead of "sacred duty," "man's destiny," the "calling to full

manhood," and similar commandments, it were held up to people that their

_self-interest_ was infringed on when they let everything in the State

go as it goes, then, without declamations, they would be addressed as

one will have to address them at the decisive moment if he wants to

attain his end. Instead of this, the theology-hating author says, "If

there has ever been a time when the _State_ laid claim to all that are

_hers_, such a time is ours.--The thinking man sees in participation in

the theory and practice of the State a _duty_, one of the most sacred

duties that rest upon him"--and then takes under closer consideration

the "unconditional necessity that everybody participate in the State."

He in whose head or heart or both the _State_ is seated, he who is

possessed by the State, or the _believer in the State_, is a politician,

and remains such to all eternity.

"The State is the most necessary means for the complete development of

mankind." It assuredly has been so as long as we wanted to develop

mankind; but, if we want to develop ourselves, it can be to us only a

means of hindrance.

Can State and people still be reformed and bettered now? As little as

the nobility, the clergy, the church, etc.: they can be abrogated,

annihilated, done away with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of

nonsense into sense by reforming it, or must I drop it outright?

Henceforth what is to be done is no longer about the _State_ (the form

of the State, etc.), but about me. With this all questions about the

prince's power, the constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and

their true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my _creations_

from myself.

To the chapter of society belongs also "the party," whose praise has of

late been sung.

In the State the _party_ is current. "Party, party, who should not join

one!" But the individual is _unique_,[168] not a member of the party. He

unites freely, and separates freely again. The party is nothing but a

State in the State, and in this smaller bee-State "peace" is also to

rule just as in the greater. The very people who cry loudest that there

must be an _opposition_ in the State inveigh against every discord in

the party. A proof that they too want only a--State. All parties are

shattered not against the State, but against the ego.[169]

One hears nothing oftener now than the admonition to remain true to his

party; party men despise nothing so much as a mugwump. One must run with

his party through thick and thin, and unconditionally approve and

represent its chief principles. It does not indeed go quite so badly

here as with closed societies, because these bind their members to fixed

laws or statutes (_e. g._ the orders, the Society of Jesus, etc.). But

yet the party ceases to be a union at the same moment at which it makes

certain principles _binding_ and wants to have them assured against

attacks; but this moment is the very birth-act of the party. As party it

is already a _born society_, a dead union, an idea that has become

fixed. As party of absolutism it cannot will that its members should

doubt the irrefragable truth of this principle; they could cherish this

doubt only if they were egoistic enough to want still to be something

outside their party, _i. e._ non-partisans. Non-partisan they cannot be

as party-men, but only as egoists. If you are a Protestant and belong to

that party, you must only justify Protestantism, at most "purge" it, not

reject it; if you are a Christian and belong among men to the Christian

party, you cannot go beyond this as a member of this party, but only

when your egoism, _i. e._ non-partisanship, impels you to it. What

exertions the Christians, down to Hegel and the Communists, have put

forth to make their party strong! they stuck to it that Christianity

must contain the eternal truth, and that one needs only to get at it,

make sure of it, and justify it.

In short, the party cannot bear non-partisanship, and it is in this that

egoism appears. What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow

who _unite_ with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.

He who passes over from one party to another is at once abused as a

"turncoat." Certainly _morality_ demands that one stand by his party,

and to become apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of

"faithlessness"; but ownness knows no commandment of "faithfulness,

adhesion, etc.," ownness permits everything, even apostasy, defection.

Unconsciously even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this

principle when they have to judge one who passes over to _their_

party,--nay, they are likely to be making proselytes; they should only

at the same time acquire a consciousness of the fact that one must

commit _immoral_ actions in order to commit his own,--_i. e._ here, that

one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order to determine himself

instead of being determined by moral considerations. In the eyes of

people of strict moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in equivocal

colors, and will not easily obtain their confidence; for there sticks to

him the taint of "faithlessness," _i. e._ of an immorality. In the lower

man this view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall here

too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment, and the

contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of morality does not,

on account of the confusion of their concepts, come clearly to their

consciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate immoral

downright, because they themselves entice to apostasy, to defection from

one religion to another, etc.; still, they cannot give up the standpoint

of morality either. And yet here the occasion was to be seized to step

outside of morality.

Are the Own or Unique[170] perchance a party? How could they be _own_ if

they were such as _belonged_ to a party?

Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and

entering their circle one forms a _union_ with them that lasts as long

as party and I pursue one and the same goal. But to-day I still share

the party's tendency, and by to-morrow I can do so no longer and I

become "untrue" to it. The party has nothing _binding_ (obligatory) for

me, and I do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, I

become its foe.

In every party that cares for itself and its persistence, the members

are unfree (or better, unown) in that degree, they lack egoism in that

degree, in which they serve this desire of the party. The independence

of the party conditions the lack of independence in the party-members.

A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never do without a _confession

of faith_. For those who belong to the party must _believe_ in its

principle, it must not be brought in doubt or put in question by them,

it must be the certain, indubitable thing for the party-member. That is:

One must belong to a party body and soul, else one is not truly a

party-man, but more or less--an egoist. Harbor a doubt of Christianity,

and you are already no longer a true Christian, you have lifted yourself

to the "effrontery" of putting a question beyond it and haling

Christianity before your egoistic judgment-seat. You have--_sinned_

against Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not _e. g._ a

cause for the Jews, another party). But well for you if you do not let

yourself be affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness.

So then an egoist could never embrace a party or take up with a party?

Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself be embraced and taken up by the

party. For him the party remains all the time nothing but a _gathering_:

he is one of the party, he takes part.

* * * * *

The best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens,

and the more the devoted mind for _legality_ is lost, so much the more

will the State, this system of morality, this moral life itself, be

diminished in force and quality. With the "good citizens" the good State

too perishes and dissolves into anarchy and lawlessness. "Respect for

the law!" By this cement the total of the State is held together. "The

law is _sacred_, and he who affronts it a _criminal_." Without crime no

State: the moral world--and this the State is--is crammed full of

scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is the "lordship of

law," its hierarchy, it follows that the egoist, in all cases where

_his_ advantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself only by

crime.

The State cannot give up the claim that its _laws_ and ordinances are

_sacred_.[171] At this the individual ranks as the _unholy_[172]

(barbarian, natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly as he

was once regarded by the Church; before the individual the State takes

on the nimbus of a saint.[173] Thus it issues a law against dueling. Two

men who are both at one in this, that they are willing to stake their

life for a cause (no matter what), are not to be allowed this, because

the State will not have it: it imposes a penalty on it. Where is the

liberty of self-determination then? It is at once quite another

situation if, as _e. g._ in North America, society determines to let the

duelists bear certain evil _consequences_ of their act, _e. g._

withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is

everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for this or

that reason, the man who is hit cannot therefore complain of

encroachment on his liberty: the society is simply availing itself of

its own liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a _crime_.

The duel is no crime there, but only an act against which the society

adopts counter-measures, resolves on a _defence_. The State, on the

contrary, stamps the duel as a crime, _i. e._ as an injury to its sacred

law: it makes it a _criminal case_. The society leaves it to the

individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil

consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby

recognizes his free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse

way, denying all right to the individual's decision and, instead,

ascribing the sole right to its own decision, the law of the State, so

that he who transgresses the State's commandment is looked upon as if he

were acting against God's commandment,--a view which likewise was once

maintained by the Church. Here God is the Holy in and of himself, and

the commandments of the Church, as of the State, are the commandments of

this Holy One, which he transmits to the world through his anointed and

Lords-by-the-Grace-of-God. If the Church had _deadly sins_, the State

has _capital crimes_; if the one had _heretics_, the other has

_traitors_; the one _ecclesiastical penalties_, the other _criminal

penalties_; the one _inquisitorial_ processes, the other _fiscal_; in

short, there sins, here crimes, there sinners, here criminals, there

inquisition and here--inquisition. Will the sanctity of the State not

fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its

highness, the humility of its "subjects," will this remain? Will the

"saint's" face not be stripped of its adornment?

What a folly, to ask of the State's authority that it should enter into

an honorable fight with the individual, and, as they express themselves

in the matter of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If

the State, this thought, is to be a _de facto_ power, it simply must be

a superior power against the individual. The State is "sacred" and must

not expose itself to the "impudent attacks" of individuals. If the State

is _sacred_, there must be censorship. The political liberals admit the

former and dispute the inference. But in any case they concede

repressive measures to it, for--they stick to this, that State is _more_

than the individual and exercises a justified revenge, called

punishment.

_Punishment_ has a meaning only when it is to afford expiation for the

injuring of a _sacred_ thing. If something is sacred to any one, he

certainly deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who lets

a man's life continue in existence _because_ to him it is sacred and he

has a _dread_ of touching it is simply a--_religious_ man.

Weitling lays crime at the door of "social disorder," and lives in the

expectation that under Communistic arrangements crimes will become

impossible, because the temptations to them, _e. g._ money, fall away.

As, however, his organized society is also exalted into a sacred and

inviolable one, he miscalculates in that good-hearted opinion. Such as

with their mouth professed allegiance to the Communistic society, but

worked underhand for its ruin, would not be lacking. Besides, Weitling

has to keep on with "curative means against the natural remainder of

human diseases and weaknesses," and "curative means" always announce to

begin with that individuals will be looked upon as "called" to a

particular "salvation" and hence treated according to the requirements

of this "human calling." _Curative means_ or _healing_ is only the

reverse side of _punishment_, the _theory of cure_ runs parallel with

the _theory of punishment_; if the latter sees in an action a sin

against right, the former takes it for a sin of the man _against

himself_, as a decadence from his health. But the correct thing is that

I regard it either as an action that _suits me_ or as one that _does not

suit me_, as hostile or friendly to _me_, _i. e._ that I treat it as my

_property_, which I cherish or demolish. "Crime" or "disease" are not

either of them an _egoistic_ view of the matter, _i. e._ a judgment

_starting from me_, but starting from _another_,--to wit, whether it

injures _right_, general right, or the _health_ partly of the individual

(the sick one), partly of the generality (_society_). "Crime" is treated

inexorably, "disease" with "loving gentleness, compassion," and the

like.

Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred vanishes,

punishment must not less be drawn into its fall; for it too has

significance only over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical

punishments have been abolished. Why? Because how one behaves toward the

"holy God" is his own affair. But, as this one punishment,

_ecclesiastical punishment_, has fallen, so all _punishments_ must fall.

As sin against the so-called God is a man's own affair, so that against

every kind of the so-called sacred. According to our theories of penal

law, with whose "improvement in conformity to the times" people are

tormenting themselves in vain, they want to _punish_ men for this or

that "inhumanity"; and therein they make the silliness of these

theories especially plain by their consistency, hanging the little

thieves and letting the big ones run. For injury to property they have

the house of correction, and for "violence to thought," suppression of

"natural rights of man," only--representations and petitions.

The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred, and

perishes of itself if punishment is given up. Now they want to create

everywhere a new penal law, without indulging in a misgiving about

punishment itself. But it is exactly punishment that must make room for

satisfaction, which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice,

but at procuring _us_ a satisfactory outcome. If one does to us what we

_will not put up with_, we break his power and bring our own to bear: we

satisfy _ourselves_ on him, and do not fall into the folly of wanting to

satisfy right (the spook). It is not the _sacred_ that is to defend

itself against man, but man against man; as _God_ too, you know, no

longer defends himself against man, God to whom formerly (and in part,

indeed, even now) all the "servants of God" offered their hands to

punish the blasphemer, as they still at this very day lend their hands

to the sacred. This devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also that,

without lively participation of one's own, one only delivers misdoers

into the hands of the police and courts: a non-participating making over

to the authorities, "who, of course, will best administer sacred

matters." The people is quite crazy for hounding the police on against

everything that seems to it to be immoral, often only unseemly, and this

popular rage for the moral protects the police institution more than

the government could in any way protect it.

In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the

sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become

general. A revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless,

conscienceless, proud--_crime_, does it not rumble in distant thunders,

and do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?

* * * * *

He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family,

party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and

thinks he has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society"

or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor; from

now on he "lives for and serves _mankind_."

_People_ is the name of the body, _State_ of the spirit, of that _ruling

person_ that has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure

peoples and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general

reason"; but servitude would only become still more intense with this

widening, and philanthropists and humanitarians are as absolute masters

as politicians and diplomats.

Modern critics inveigh against religion because it sets God, the divine,

moral, etc., _outside_ of man, or makes them something objective, in

opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects

_into_ man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error

of religion, to give man a "destiny," in that they too want to have him

divine, human, and the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are

his essence. And, like religion, politics too wanted to "_educate_" man,

to bring him to the realization of his "essence," his "destiny," to

_make_ something out of him,--to wit, a "true man," the one in the form

of the "true believer," the other in that of the "true citizen or

subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether one calls the destiny

the divine or human.

Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of

_should_: he _should_ become this and that, should be so and so. With

this postulate, this commandment, every one steps not only in front of

another but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be a

whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new

_religion_, to set up a new absolute, an ideal,--to wit, freedom. Men

_should_ be free. Then there might even arise _missionaries_ of freedom,

as Christianity, in the conviction that all were properly destined to

become Christians, sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would

then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) constitute

itself as a new _community_ and carry on a like "propaganda" therefrom.

Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together; but so

much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old _care_ for us, of

culture directed toward an end,--in short, the principle of _making

something_ out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen

and men.

One may well say with Feuerbach and others that religion has displaced

the human from man, and has transferred it so into another world that,

unattainable, it went on with its own existence there as something

personal in itself, as a "God": but the error of religion is by no means

exhausted with this. One might very well let fall the personality of the

displaced human, might transform God into the divine, and still remain

religious. For the religious consists in discontent with the _present_

man, _i. e._ in the setting up of a "perfection" to be striven for, in

"man wrestling for his completion."[174] ("Ye therefore _should_ be

perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5. 48): it consists

in the fixation of an _ideal_, an absolute. Perfection is the "supreme

good," the _finis bonorum_; every one's ideal is the perfect man, the

true, the free man, etc.

The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of the "free man."

If one could find it, there would be a new--religion, because a new

ideal; there would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a

new deity, a new contrition.

With the ideal of "absolute liberty," the same turmoil is made as with

everything absolute, and according to Hess, _e. g._, it is said to "be

realizable in absolute human society."[175] Nay, this realization is

immediately afterward styled a "vocation"; just so he then defines

liberty as "morality": the kingdom of "justice" (_i. e._ equality) and

"morality" (_i. e._ liberty) is to begin, etc.

Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, family, nation, etc.,

rank high, is--nothing but "puffed up" over the merit of his fellows;

but blinded too is he who wants only to be "man." Neither of them puts

his worth in _exclusiveness_, but in _connectedness_, or in the "tie"

that conjoins him with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of

humanity.

Through the "Nationals" of to-day the conflict has again been stirred up

between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human

ties of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the

special ties of blood.

If we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit, and take it for

consciousness alone, there is found to be a vast difference between

pride in "belonging to" a nation and therefore being its property, and

that in calling a nationality one's property. Nationality is my quality,

but the nation my owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength, you

can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride

of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has you, then it pricks you

everywhere, and at the most unsuitable place, to show its strength: you

can give nobody your hand without squeezing his.

The perception that one is more than a member of the family, more than a

fellow of the tribe, more than an individual of the people, etc., has

finally led to saying, one is more than all this because one is man, or,

the man is more than the Jew, German, etc. "Therefore be every one

wholly and solely--man!" Could one not rather say: Because we are more

than what has been stated, therefore we will be this, as well as that

"more" also? Man and German, then, man and Guelph, etc.? The Nationals

are in the right; one cannot deny his nationality: and the

humanitarians are in the right; one must not remain in the narrowness of

the national. In _uniqueness_[176] the contradiction is solved; the

national is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality,--as the

human too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first through

my uniqueness.

History seeks for Man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious

_essence_, as the divine, first as _God_, then as _Man_ (humanity,

humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the

unique one.

I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do nothing for the good of

another humanity. Fool, you who are a unique humanity, that you make a

merit of wanting to live for another than you are.

The hitherto-considered relation of me to the _world of men_ offers such

a wealth of phenomena that it will have to be taken up again and again

on other occasions, but here, where it was only to have its chief

outlines made clear to the eye, it must be broken off to make place for

an apprehension of two other sides toward which it radiates. For, as I

find myself in relation not merely to men so far as they present in

themselves the concept "man" or are children of men (children of _Man_,

as children of God are spoken of), but also to that which they have of

man and call their own, and as therefore I relate myself not only to

that which they _are_ through man, but also to their human

_possessions_: so, besides the world of men, the world of the senses

and of ideas will have to be included in our survey, and somewhat said

of what men call their own of sensuous goods, and of spiritual as well.

According as one had developed and clearly grasped the concept of man,

he gave it to us to respect as this or that _person of respect_, and

from the broadest understanding of this concept there proceeded at last

the command "to respect Man in every one." But, if I respect Man, my

respect must likewise extend to the human, or what is Man's.

Men have somewhat of their _own_, and _I_ am to recognize this own and

hold it sacred. Their own consists partly in outward, partly in inward

_possessions_. The former are things, the latter spiritualities,

thoughts, convictions, noble feelings, etc. But I am always to respect

only _rightful_ or _human_ possessions; the wrongful and unhuman I need

not spare, for only _Man's_ own is men's real own. An inward possession

of this sort is, _e. g._, religion; because _religion_ is free, _i. e._

is Man's, _I_ must not strike at it. Just so _honor_ is an inward

possession; it is free and must not be struck at by me. (Action for

insult, caricatures, etc.) Religion and honor are "spiritual property."

In tangible property the person stands foremost: my person is my first

property. Hence freedom of the person; but only the _rightful_ or human

person is free, the other is locked up. Your life is your property; but

it is sacred for men only if it is not that of an inhuman monster.

What a man as such cannot defend of bodily goods, we may take from him:

this is the meaning of competition, of freedom of occupation. What he

cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise: so far

goes the liberty of discussion, of science, of criticism.

But _consecrated_ goods are inviolable. Consecrated and guaranteed by

whom? Proximately by the State, society, but properly by man or the

"concept," the "concept of the thing": for the concept of consecrated

goods is this, that they are truly human, or rather that the holder

possesses them as man and not as un-man.[177]

On the spiritual side man's faith is such goods, his honor, his moral

feeling,--yes, his feeling of decency, modesty, etc. Actions (speeches,

writings) that touch honor are punishable; attacks on "the foundation of

all religion"; attacks on political faith; in short, attacks on

everything that a man "rightly" has.

How far critical liberalism would extend, the sanctity of goods,--on

this point it has not yet made any pronouncement, and doubtless fancies

itself to be ill-disposed toward all sanctity; but, as it combats

egoism, it must set limits to it, and must not let the un-man pounce on

the human. To its theoretical contempt for the "masses" there must

correspond a practical snub if it should get into power.

What extension the concept "man" receives, and what comes to the

individual man through it,--what, therefore, man and the human are,--on

this point the various grades of liberalism differ, and the political,

the social, the humane man are each always claiming more than the other

for "man." He who has best grasped this concept knows best what is

"man's." The State still grasps this concept in political restriction,

society in social; mankind, so it is said, is the first to comprehend it

entirely, or "the history of mankind develops it." But, if "man is

discovered," then we know also what pertains to man as his own, man's

property, the human.

But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man

or the concept man "entitles" him to them, _i. e._ because his being man

does it: what do _I_ care for his right and his claim? If he has his

right only from Man and does not have it from _me_, then for _me_ he has

no right. His life, _e. g._, counts to _me_ only for what it is _worth

to me_. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to

tangible goods) nor yet his right to the "sanctuary of his inner nature"

(or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods,

remain unaggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual,

are _mine_, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of

my--might.

In the _property question_ lies a broader meaning than the limited

statement of the question allows to be brought out. Referred solely to

what men call our possessions, it is capable of no solution; the

decision is to be found only in him "from whom we have everything."

Property depends on the _owner_.

The Revolution directed its weapons against everything which came "from

the grace of God," _e. g._, against divine right, in whose place the

human was confirmed. To that which is granted by the grace of God,

there is opposed that which is derived "from the essence of man."

Now, as men's relation to each other, in opposition to the religious

dogma which commands a "Love one another for God's sake," had to receive

its human position by a "Love each other for man's sake," so the

revolutionary teaching could not do otherwise than, first as to what

concerns the relation of men to the things of this world, settle it that

the world, which hitherto was arranged according to God's ordinance,

henceforth belongs to "Man."

The world belongs to "Man," and is to be respected by me as his

property.

Property is what is mine!

Property in the civic sense means _sacred_ property, such that I must

_respect_ your property. "Respect for property!" Hence the politicians

would like to have every one possess his little bit of property, and

they have in part brought about an incredible parcellation by this

effort. Each must have his bone on which he may find something to bite.

The position of affairs is different in the egoistic sense. I do not

step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as _my_

property, in which I need to "respect" nothing. Pray do the like with

what you call my property!

With this view we shall most easily come to an understanding with each

other.

The political liberals are anxious that, if possible, all servitudes be

dissolved, and every one be free lord on his ground, even if this ground

has only so much area as can have its requirements adequately filled by

the manure of one person. (The farmer in the story married even in his

old age "that he might profit by his wife's dung.") Be it ever so

little, if one only has somewhat of his own,--to wit, a _respected_

property! The more such owners, such cotters,[178] the more "free people

and good patriots" has the State.

Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on _respect_,

humaneness, the virtues of love. Therefore does it live in incessant

vexation. For in practice people respect nothing, and every day the

small possessions are bought up again by greater proprietors, and the

"free people" change into day-laborers.

If, on the contrary, the "small proprietors" had reflected that the

great property was also theirs, they would not have respectfully shut

themselves out from it, and would not have been shut out.

Property as the civic liberals understand it deserves the attacks of the

Communists and Proudhon: it is untenable, because the civic proprietor

is in truth nothing but a propertyless man, one who is everywhere _shut

out_. Instead of owning the world, as he might, he does not own even the

paltry point on which he turns around.

Proudhon wants not the _propriétaire_ but the _possesseur_ or

_usufruitier_.[179] What does that mean? He wants no one to own the

land; but the benefit of it--even though one were allowed only the

hundredth part of this benefit, this fruit--is at any rate one's

property, which he can dispose of at will. He who has only the benefit

of a field is assuredly not the proprietor of it; still less he who, as

Proudhon would have it, must give up so much of this benefit as is not

required for his wants; but he is the proprietor of the share that is

left him. Proudhon, therefore, denies only such and such property, not

_property_ itself. If we want no longer to leave the land to the landed

proprietors, but to appropriate it to _ourselves_, we unite ourselves to

this end, form a union, a _société_, that makes _itself_ proprietor; if

we have good luck in this, then those persons cease to be landed

proprietors. And, as from the land, so we can drive them out of many

another property yet, in order to make it _our_ property, the property

of the--_conquerors_. The conquerors form a society which one may

imagine so great that it by degrees embraces all humanity; but so-called

humanity too is as such only a thought (spook); the individuals are its

reality. And these individuals as a collective mass will treat land and

earth not less arbitrarily than an isolated individual or so-called

_propriétaire_. Even so, therefore, _property_ remains standing, and

that as "exclusive" too, in that _humanity_, this great society,

excludes the _individual_ from its property (perhaps only leases to him,

gives him as a fief, a piece of it) as it besides excludes everything

that is not humanity, _e. g._ does not allow animals to have

property.--So too it will remain, and will grow to be. That in which

_all_ want to have a _share_ will be withdrawn from that individual who

wants to have it for himself alone: it is made a _common estate_. As a

_common estate_ every one has his _share_ in it, and this share is his

_property_. Why, so in our old relations a house which belongs to five

heirs is their common estate; but the fifth part of the revenue is each

one's property. Proudhon might spare his prolix pathos if he said:

"There are some things that belong only to a few, and to which we others

will from now on lay claim or--siege. Let us take them, because one

comes to property by taking, and the property of which for the present

we are still deprived came to the proprietors likewise only by taking.

It can be utilized better if it is in the hands of _us all_ than if the

few control it. Let us therefore associate ourselves for the purpose of

this robbery (_vol_)."--Instead of this, he tries to get us to believe

that society is the original possessor and the sole proprietor, of

imprescriptible right; against it the so-called proprietors have become

thieves (_La propriété c'est le vol_); if it now deprives of his

property the present proprietor, it robs him of nothing, as it is only

availing itself of its imprescriptible right.--So far one comes with the

spook of society as a _moral person_. On the contrary, what man can

obtain belongs to him: the world belongs to _me_. Do you say anything

else by your opposite proposition, "The world belongs to _all_"? All are

I and again I, etc. But you make out of the "all" a spook, and make it

sacred, so that then the "all" become the individual's fearful _master_.

Then the ghost of "right" places itself on their side.

Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against _egoism_. Therefore they

are continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian

principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general,

something alien. They complete in property, _e. g._, only what has long

been extant as a matter of fact,--_viz._, the propertylessness of the

individual. When the law says, _Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad

singulos proprietas; omnia rex imperio possidet, singuli dominio_,

this means: The king is proprietor, for he alone can control and

dispose of "everything," he has _potestas_ and _imperium_ over it.

The Communists make this clearer, transferring that _imperium_ to the

"society of all." Therefore: Because enemies of egoism, they are on

that account--Christians, or, more generally speaking, religious men,

believers in ghosts, dependents, servants of some generality (God,

society, etc.). In this too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he

ascribes to God that which he denies to men. He names him (_e. g._, page

90) the Propriétaire of the earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot

think away the _proprietor as such_; he comes to a proprietor at last,

but removes him to the other world.

Neither God nor Man ("human society") is proprietor, but the individual.

* * * * *

Proudhon (Weitling too) thinks he is telling the worst about property

when he calls it theft (_vol_). Passing quite over the embarrassing

question, what well-founded objection could be made against theft, we

only ask: Is the concept "theft" at all possible unless one allows

validity to the concept "property"? How can one steal if property is not

already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be _stolen_; the water

that one draws out of the sea he does _not steal_. Accordingly property

is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property.

Weitling has to come to this too, as he does regard everything as the

_property of all_: if something is "the property of all," then indeed

the individual who appropriates it to himself steals.

Private property lives by grace of the _law_. Only in the law has it its

warrant--for possession is not yet property, it becomes "mine" only by

assent of the law--; it is not a fact, not _un fait_ as Proudhon thinks,

but a fiction, a thought. This is legal property, legitimate property,

guaranteed property. It is mine not through _me_ but through the--_law_.

Nevertheless, property is the expression for _unlimited dominion_ over

somewhat (thing, beast, man) which "I can judge and dispose of as seems

good to me." According to Roman law, indeed, _jus utendi et abutendi re

sua, quatenus juris ratio patitur_, an _exclusive_ and _unlimited

right_; but property is conditioned by might. What I have in my power,

that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the

proprietor of the thing; if it gets away from me again, no matter by

what power, _e. g._ through my recognition of a title of others to the

thing,--then the property is extinct. Thus property and possession

coincide. It is not a right lying outside my might that legitimizes me,

but solely my might: if I no longer have this, the thing vanishes away

from me. When the Romans no longer had any might against the Germans,

the world-empire of Rome _belonged_ to the latter, and it would sound

ridiculous to insist that the Romans had nevertheless remained properly

the proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to defend the thing, to

him it belongs till it is again taken from him, as liberty belongs to

him who _takes_ it.--

Only might decides about property, and, as the State (no matter whether

State of well-to-do citizens or of ragamuffins or of men in the

absolute) is the sole mighty one, it alone is proprietor; I, the

unique,[180] have nothing, and am only enfeoffed, am vassal and, as

such, servitor. Under the dominion of the State there is no property of

_mine_.

I want to raise the value of myself, the value of ownness, and should I

cheapen property? No, as I was not respected hitherto because people,

mankind, and a thousand other generalities were put higher, so property

too has to this day not yet been recognized in its full value. Property

too was only the property of a ghost, _e. g._ the people's property; my

whole existence "belonged to the fatherland": _I_ belonged to the

fatherland, the people, the State, and therefore also everything that I

called _my own_. It is demanded of States that they make away with

pauperism. It seems to me this is asking that the State should cut off

its own head and lay it at its feet; for so long as the State is the ego

the individual ego must remain a poor devil, a non-ego. The State has an

interest only in being itself rich; whether Michael is rich and Peter

poor is alike to it; Peter might also be rich and Michael poor. It looks

on indifferently as one grows poor and the other rich, unruffled by this

alternation. As _individuals_ they are really equal before its face; in

this it is just: before it both of them are--nothing, as we "are

altogether sinners before God"; on the other hand, it has a very great

interest in this, that those individuals who make it their ego should

have a part in its wealth; it makes them partakers in _its property_.

Through property, with which it rewards the individuals, it tames them;

but this remains _its_ property, and every one has the usufruct of it

only so long as he bears in himself the ego of the State, or is a "loyal

member of society"; in the opposite case the property is confiscated, or

made to melt away by vexatious lawsuits. The property, then, is and

remains _State property_, not property of the ego. That the State does

not arbitrarily deprive the individual of what he has from the State

means simply that the State does not rob itself. He who is a State-ego,

_i. e._ a good citizen or subject, holds his fief undisturbed as _such

an ego_, not as being an ego of his own. According to the code, property

is what I call mine "by virtue of God and law." But it is mine by virtue

of God and law only so long as--the State has nothing against it.

In expropriations, disarmaments, and the like (as, _e. g._, the

exchequer confiscates inheritances if the heirs do not put in an

appearance early enough) how plainly the else-veiled principle that only

the _people_, "the State," is proprietor, while the individual is

feoffee, strikes the eye!

The State, I mean to say, cannot intend that anybody should _for his own

sake_ have property or actually be rich, nay, even well-to-do; it can

acknowledge nothing, grant nothing to me as me. The State cannot check

pauperism, because the poverty of possession is a poverty of me. He who

_is_ nothing but what chance or another--to wit, the State--makes out

of him also _has_ quite rightly nothing but what another gives him. And

this other will give him only what he _deserves_, _i. e._ what he is

worth by _service_. It is not he that realizes a value from himself; the

State realizes a value from him.

National economy busies itself much with this subject. It lies far out

beyond the "national," however, and goes beyond the concepts and horizon

of the State, which knows only State property and can distribute nothing

else. For this reason it binds the possession of property to

_conditions_,--as it binds everything to them, _e. g._ marriage,

allowing validity only to the marriage sanctioned by it, and wresting

this out of my power. But property is _my_ property only when I hold it

_unconditionally_: only I, as _unconditioned_ ego, have property, enter

a relation of love, carry on free trade.

The State has no anxiety about me and mine, but about itself and its: I

count for something to it only as _its child_, as "a son of the

country"; as _ego_ I am nothing at all for it. For the State's

understanding, what befalls me as ego is something accidental, my wealth

as well as my impoverishment. But, if I with all that is mine am an

accident in the State's eyes, this proves that it cannot comprehend

_me_: _I_ go beyond its concepts, or, its understanding is too limited

to comprehend me. Therefore it cannot do anything for me either.

Pauperism is the _valuelessness of me_, the phenomenon that I cannot

realize value from myself. For this reason State and pauperism are one

and the same. The State does not let me come to my value, and continues

in existence only through my valuelessness: it is forever intent on

_getting benefit_ from me, _i. e._ exploiting me, turning me to account,

using me up, even if the use it gets from me consists only in my

supplying a _proles_ (_prolétariat_); it wants me to be "its creature."

Pauperism can be removed only when I as ego _realize value_ from myself,

when I give my own self value, and make my price myself. I must rise in

revolt to rise in the world.

What I produce, flour, linen, or iron and coal, which I toilsomely win

from the earth, etc., is _my_ work that I want to realize value from.

But then I may long complain that I am not paid for my work according to

its value: the payer will not listen to me, and the State likewise will

maintain an apathetic attitude so long as it does not think it must

"appease" me that _I_ may not break out with my dreaded might. But this

"appeasing" will be all, and, if it comes into my head to ask for more,

the State turns against me with all the force of its lion-paws and

eagle-claws: for it is the king of beasts, it is lion and eagle. If I

refuse to be content with the price that it fixes for my ware and labor,

if I rather aspire to determine the price of my ware myself, _i. e._ "to

pay myself," in the first place I come into a conflict with the buyers

of the ware. If this were stilled by a mutual understanding, the State

would not readily make objections; for how individuals get along with

each other troubles it little, so long as therein they do not get in its

way. Its damage and its danger begin only when they do not agree, but,

in the absence of a settlement, take each other by the hair. The State

cannot endure that man stand in a direct relation to man; it must step

between as--_mediator_, must--_intervene_. What Christ was, what the

saints, the Church were, the State has become,--to wit, "mediator." It

tears man from man to put itself between them as "spirit." The laborers

who ask for higher pay are treated as criminals as soon as they want to

_compel_ it. What are they to do? Without compulsion they don't get it,

and in compulsion the State sees a self-help, a determination of price

by the ego, a genuine, free realization of value from his property,

which it cannot admit of. What then are the laborers to do? Look to

themselves and ask nothing about the State?-- --

But, as is the situation with regard to my material work, so it is with

my intellectual too. The State allows me to realize value from all my

thoughts and to find customers for them (I do realize value from them,

_e. g._, in the very fact that they bring me honor from the listeners,

and the like); but only so long as my thoughts are--_its_ thoughts. If,

on the other hand, I harbor thoughts that it cannot approve (_i. e._

make its own), then it does not allow me at all to realize value from

them, to bring them into _exchange_, into _commerce_. _My_ thoughts are

free only if they are granted to me by the State's _grace_, _i. e._ if

they are the State's thoughts. It lets me philosophize freely only so

far as I approve myself a "philosopher of State"; _against_ the State I

must not philosophize, gladly as it tolerates my helping it out of its

"deficiencies," "furthering" it.--Therefore, as I may behave only as an

ego most graciously permitted by the State, provided with its

testimonial of legitimacy and police pass, so too it is not granted me

to realize value from what is mine, unless this proves to be its, which

I hold as fief from it. My ways must be its ways, else it distrains me;

my thoughts its thoughts, else it stops my mouth.

The State has nothing to be more afraid of than the value of me, and

nothing must it more carefully guard against than every occasion that

offers itself to me for _realizing value_ from myself. _I_ am the deadly

enemy of the State, which always hovers between the alternatives, it or

I. Therefore it strictly insists not only on not letting _me_ have a

standing, but also on keeping down what is _mine_. In the State there is

no--property, _i. e._ no property of the individual, but only State

property. Only through the State have I what I have, as I am only

through it what I am. My private property is only that which the State

leaves to me of _its, cutting off_ others from it (depriving them,

making it private); it is State property.

But, in opposition to the State, I feel more and more clearly that there

is still left me a great might, the might over myself, _i. e._ over

everything that pertains only to me and that _exists_ only in being my

own.

What do I do if my ways are no longer its ways, my thoughts no longer

its thoughts? I look to myself, and ask nothing about it! In _my_

thoughts, which I get sanctioned by no assent, grant, or grace, I have

my real property, a property with which I can trade. For as mine they

are my _creatures_, and I am in a position to give them away in return

for _other_ thoughts: I give them up and take in exchange for them

others, which then are my new purchased property.

What then is _my_ property? Nothing but what is in my _power_! To what

property am I entitled? To every property to which I--_empower_

myself.[181] I give myself the right of property in taking property to

myself, or giving myself the proprietor's _power_, full power,

empowerment.

Everything over which I have might that cannot be torn from me remains

my property; well, then let might decide about property, and I will

expect everything from my might! Alien might, might that I leave to

another, makes me an owned slave: then let my own might make me an

owner. Let me then withdraw the might that I have conceded to others out

of ignorance regarding the strength of my _own_ might! Let me say to

myself, what my might reaches to is my property; and let me claim as

property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let

me extend my actual property as far as _I_ entitle, _i. e._--empower,

myself to take.

Here egoism, selfishness, must decide; not the principle of _love,_ not

love-motives like mercy, gentleness, good-nature, or even justice and

equity (for _justitia_ too is a phenomenon of--love, a product of love):

love knows only _sacrifices_ and demands "self-sacrifice."

Egoism does not think of sacrificing anything, giving away anything that

it wants; it simply decides, What I want I must have and will procure.

All attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the

bay of _love_ into a desolate sea of regulations. Even Socialism and

Communism cannot be excepted from this. Every one is to be provided with

adequate means, for which it is little to the point whether one

socialistically finds them still in a personal property, or

communistically draws them from the community of goods. The individual's

mind in this remains the same; it remains a mind of dependence. The

distributing _board of equity_ lets me have only what the sense of

equity, its _loving_ care for all, prescribes. For me, the individual,

there lies no less of a check in _collective wealth_ than in that of

_individual others_; neither that is mine, nor this: whether the wealth

belongs to the collectivity, which confers part of it on me, or to

individual possessors, is for me the same constraint, as I cannot decide

about either of the two. On the contrary, Communism, by the abolition of

all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence

on another, _viz._, on the generality or collectivity; and, loudly as it

always attacks the "State," what it intends is itself again a State, a

_status_, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over

me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure that I experience

from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that

it puts in the hands of the collectivity.

Egoism takes another way to root out the non-possessing rabble. It does

not say: Wait for what the board of equity will--bestow on you in the

name of the collectivity (for such bestowal took place in "States" from

the most ancient times, each receiving "according to his desert," and

therefore according to the measure in which each was able to _deserve_

it, to acquire it by _service_), but: Take hold, and take what you

require! With this the war of all against all is declared. _I_ alone

decide what I will have.

"Now, that is truly no new wisdom, for self-seekers have acted so at all

times!" Not at all necessary either that the thing be new, if only

_consciousness_ of it is present. But this latter will not be able to

claim great age, unless perhaps one counts in the Egyptian and Spartan

law; for how little current it is appears even from the stricture above,

which speaks with contempt of "self-seekers." One is to know just this,

that the procedure of taking hold is not contemptible, but manifests the

pure deed of the egoist at one with himself.

Only when I expect neither from individuals nor from a collectivity what

I can give to myself, only then do I slip out of the snares of--love;

the rabble ceases to be rabble only when it _takes hold_. Only the dread

of taking hold, and the corresponding punishment thereof, makes it a

rabble. Only that taking hold is _sin_, crime,--only this dogma creates

a rabble. For the fact that the rabble remains what it is, it (because

it allows validity to that dogma) is to blame as well as, more

especially, those who "self-seekingly" (to give them back their favorite

word) demand that the dogma be respected. In short, the lack of

_consciousness_ of that "new wisdom," the old consciousness of sin,

alone bears the blame.

If men reach the point of losing respect for property, every one will

have property, as all slaves become free men as soon as they no longer

respect the master as master. _Unions_ will then, in this matter too,

multiply the individual's means and secure his assailed property.

According to the Communists' opinion the commune should be proprietor.

On the contrary, _I_ am proprietor, and I only come to an understanding

with others about my property. If the commune does not do what suits me,

I rise against it and defend my property. I am proprietor, but property

is _not sacred_. I should be merely possessor? No, hitherto one was only

possessor, secured in the possession of a parcel by leaving others also

in possession of a parcel; but now _everything_ belongs to me, I am

proprietor of _everything that I require_ and can get possession of. If

it is said socialistically, society gives me what I require,--then the

egoist says, I take what I require. If the Communists conduct themselves

as ragamuffins, the egoist behaves as proprietor.

All swan-fraternities,[182] and attempts at making the rabble happy,

that spring from the principle of love, must miscarry. Only from egoism

can the rabble get help, and this help it must give to itself and--will

give to itself. If it does not let itself be coerced into fear, it is a

power. "People would lose all respect if one did not coerce them so into

fear," says bugbear Law in "_Der gestiefelte Kater_."

Property, therefore, should not and cannot be abolished; it must rather

be torn from ghostly hands and become _my_ property; then the erroneous

consciousness, that I cannot entitle myself to as much as I require,

will vanish.--

"But what cannot man require!" Well, whoever requires much, and

understands how to get it, has at all times helped himself to it, as

Napoleon did with the Continent and France with Algiers. Hence the exact

point is that the respectful "rabble" should learn at last to help

itself to what it requires. If it reaches out too far for you, why, then

defend yourselves. You have no need at all to good-heartedly--bestow

anything on it; and, when it learns to know itself, it--or rather:

whoever of the rabble learns to know himself, he--casts off the

rabble-quality in refusing your alms with thanks. But it remains

ridiculous that you declare the rabble "sinful and criminal" if it is

not pleased to live from your favors because it can do something in its

own favor. Your bestowals cheat it and put it off. Defend your property,

then you will be strong; if, on the other hand, you want to retain your

ability to bestow, and perhaps actually have the more political rights

the more alms (poor-rates) you can give, this will work just as long as

the recipients let you work it.[183]

In short, the property question cannot be solved so amicably as the

Socialists, yes, even the Communists, dream. It is solved only by the

war of all against all. The poor become free and proprietors only when

they--_rise_. Bestow ever so much on them, they will still always want

more; for they want nothing less than that at last--nothing more be

bestowed.

It will be asked, But how then will it be when the have-nots take heart?

Of what sort is the settlement to be? One might as well ask that I cast

a child's nativity. What a slave will do as soon as he has broken his

fetters, one must--await.

In Kaiser's pamphlet, worthless for lack of form as well as substance

("_Die Persoenlichkeit des Eigentuemers in Bezug auf den Socialismus und

Communismus_," etc.), he hopes from the _State_ that it will bring about

a leveling of property. Always the State! Herr Papa! As the Church was

proclaimed and looked upon as the "mother" of believers, so the State

has altogether the face of the provident father.

* * * * *

_Competition_ shows itself most strictly connected with the principle of

civism. Is it anything else than _equality_ (_égalité_)? And is not

equality a product of that same Revolution which was brought on by the

commonalty, the middle classes? As no one is barred from competing with

all in the State (except the prince, because he represents the State

itself) and working himself up to their height, yes, overthrowing or

exploiting them for his own advantage, soaring above them and by

stronger exertion depriving them of their favorable circumstances,--this

serves as a clear proof that before the State's judgment-seat every one

has only the value of a "simple individual" and may not count on any

favoritism. Outrun and outbid each other as much as you like and can;

that shall not trouble me, the State! Among yourselves you are free in

competing, you are competitors; that is your _social_ position. But

before me, the State, you are nothing but "simple individuals"![184]

What in the form of principle or theory was propounded as the equality

of all has found here in competition its realization and practical

carrying out; for _égalité_ is--free competition. All are, before the

State,--simple individuals; in society, or in relation to each

other,--competitors.

I need be nothing further than a simple individual to be able to compete

with all others aside from the prince and his family: a freedom which

formerly was made impossible by the fact that only by means of one's

corporation, and within it, did one enjoy any freedom of effort.

In the guild and feudality the State is in an intolerant and fastidious

attitude, granting _privileges_; in competition and liberalism it is in

a tolerant and indulgent attitude, granting only _patents_ (letters

assuring the applicant that the business stands open [patent] to him) or

"concessions." Now, as the State has thus left everything to the

_applicants_, it must come in conflict with _all_, because each and all

are entitled to make application. It will be "stormed," and will go down

in this storm.

Is "free competition" then really "free"? nay, is it really a

"competition,"--to wit, one of _persons_,--as it gives itself out to be

because on this title it bases its right? It originated, you know, in

persons becoming free of all personal rule. Is a competition "free"

which the State, this ruler in the civic principle, hems in by a

thousand barriers? There is a rich manufacturer doing a brilliant

business, and I should like to compete with him. "Go ahead," says the

State, "I have no objection to make to your _person_ as competitor."

Yes, I reply, but for that I need a space for buildings, I need money!

"That's bad; but, if you have no money, you cannot compete. You must not

take anything from anybody, for I protect property and grant it

privileges." Free competition is not "free," because I lack the THINGS

for competition. Against my _person_ no objection can be made, but

because I have not the things my person too must step to the rear. And

who has the necessary things? Perhaps that manufacturer? Why, from him I

could take them away! No, the State has them as property, the

manufacturer only as fief, as possession.

But, since it is no use trying it with the manufacturer, I will compete

with that professor of jurisprudence; the man is a booby, and I, who

know a hundred times more than he, shall make his class-room empty.

"Have you studied and graduated, friend?" No, but what of that? I

understand abundantly what is necessary for instruction in that

department. "Sorry, but competition is not 'free' here. Against your

person there is nothing to be said, but the _thing_, the doctor's

diploma, is lacking. And this diploma I, the State, demand. Ask me for

it respectfully first; then we will see what is to be done."

This, therefore, is the "freedom" of competition. The State, _my lord_,

first qualifies me to compete.

But do _persons_ really compete? No, again _things_ only! Moneys in the

first place, etc.

In the rivalry one will always be left behind another (_e. g._ a

poetaster behind a poet). But it makes a difference whether the means

that the unlucky competitor lacks are personal or material, and likewise

whether the material means can be won by _personal energy_ or are to be

obtained only by _grace_, only as a present; as when, _e. g._, the

poorer man must leave, _i. e._ present, to the rich man his riches. But,

if I must all along wait for the _State's approval_ to obtain or to use

(_e. g._ in the case of graduation) the means, I have the means by the

_grace of the State_.[185]

Free competition, therefore, has only the following meaning: To the

State all rank as its equal children, and every one can scud and run to

_earn the State's goods and largess_. Therefore all do chase after

havings, holdings, possessions (be it of money or offices, titles of

honor, etc.), after the _things_.

In the mind of the commonalty every one is possessor or "owner." Now,

whence comes it that the most have in fact next to nothing? From this,

that the most are already joyful over being possessors at all, even

though it be of some rags, as children are joyful in their first

trousers or even the first penny that is presented to them. More

precisely, however, the matter is to be taken as follows. Liberalism

came forward at once with the declaration that it belonged to man's

essence not to be property, but proprietor. As the consideration here

was about "man," not about the individual, the how-much (which formed

exactly the point of the individual's special interest) was left to him.

Hence the individual's egoism retained room for the freest play in this

how-much, and carried on an indefatigable competition.

However, the lucky egoism had to become a snag in the way of the less

fortunate, and the latter, still keeping its feet planted on the

principle of humanity, put forward the question as to the how-much of

possession, and answered it to the effect that "man must have as much as

he requires."

Will it be possible for _my_ egoism to let itself be satisfied with

that? What "man" requires furnishes by no means a scale for measuring me

and my needs; for I may have use for less or more. I must rather have so

much as I am competent to appropriate.

Competition suffers from the unfavorable circumstance that the _means_

for competing are not at every one's command, because they are not taken

from personality, but from accident. Most are _without means_, and for

this reason _without goods_.