We stand at the boundary of a period. The world hitherto took thought
for nothing but the gain of life, took care for--_life_. For whether all
activity is put on the stretch for the life of this world or of the
other, for the temporal or for the eternal, whether one hankers for
"daily bread" ("Give us our daily bread") or for "holy bread" ("the true
bread from heaven"; "the bread of God, that comes from heaven and _gives
life_ to the world"; "the bread of life," John 6), whether one takes
care for "dear life" or for "life to eternity,"--this does not change
the object of the strain and care, which in the one case as in the other
shows itself to be _life_. Do the modern tendencies announce themselves
otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most
indispensable necessaries of life, but want every one to feel secure as
to these; and on the other hand they teach that man has this life to
attend to and the real world to adapt himself to, without vain care for
another.
Let us take up the same thing from another side. When one is anxious
only to _live_, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the _enjoyment_
of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks "if I only have
my dear life," he does not apply his full strength to using, _i. e._
enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like the
candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently
himself the living one, in _consuming_ it and himself. _Enjoyment of
life_ is using life up.
Now--we are in search of the _enjoyment_ of life! And what did the
religious world do? It went in search of _life_. "Wherein consists the
true life, the blessed life, etc.? How is it to be attained? What must
man do and become in order to become a truly living man? How does he
fulfil this calling?" These and similar questions indicate that the
askers were still seeking for _themselves_,--to wit, themselves in the
true sense, in the sense of true living. "What I am is foam and shadow;
what I shall be is my true self." To chase after this self, to produce
it, to realize it, constitutes the hard task of mortals, who die only to
_rise again_, live only to die, live only to find the true life.
Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, am I
really my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On
the other hand, I can never take comfort in myself so long as I think
that I have still to find my true self and that it must come to this,
that not I but Christ or some other spiritual, _i. e._ ghostly, self
(_e. g._ the true man, the essence of man, and the like) lives in me.
A vast interval separates the two views. In the old I go toward myself,
in the new I start from myself; in the former I long for myself, in the
latter I have myself and do with myself as one does with any other
property,--I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for my
life, but "squander" it.
Henceforth the question runs, not how one can acquire life, but how one
can squander, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce the true self in
himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out.
What else should the ideal be but the sought-for, ever-distant self? One
seeks for himself, consequently one does not yet have himself; one
aspires toward what one _ought_ to be, consequently one is not it. One
lives in _longing_ and has lived thousands of years in it, in _hope_.
Living is quite another thing in--_enjoyment_!
Does this perchance apply only to the so-called pious? No, it applies to
all who belong to the departing period of history, even to its men of
pleasure. For them too the work-days were followed by a Sunday, and the
rush of the world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness
of humanity; in short, by an ideal. But philosophers especially are
contrasted with the pious. Now, have they been thinking of anything else
than the ideal, been planning for anything else than the absolute self?
Longing and hope everywhere, and nothing but these. For me, call it
romanticism.
If the _enjoyment of life_ is to triumph over the _longing for life_ or
hope of life, it must vanquish this in its double significance, which
Schiller introduces in his "Ideal and Life"; it must crush spiritual and
secular poverty, exterminate the ideal and--the want of daily bread. He
who must expend his life to prolong life cannot enjoy it, and he who is
still seeking for his life does not have it and can as little enjoy it:
both are poor, but "blessed are the poor."
Those who are hungering for the true life have no power over their
present life, but must apply it for the purpose of thereby gaining that
true life, and must sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and this
task. If in the case of those devotees who hope for a life in the other
world, and look upon that in this world as merely a preparation for it,
the tributariness of their earthly existence, which they put solely into
the service of the hoped-for heavenly existence, is pretty distinctly
apparent; one would yet go far wrong if one wanted to consider the most
rationalistic and enlightened as less self-sacrificing. Oh, there is to
be found in the "true life" a much more comprehensive significance than
the "heavenly" is competent to express. Now, is not--to introduce the
liberal concept of it at once--the "human" and "truly human" life the
true one? And is every one already leading this truly human life from
the start, or must he first raise himself to it with hard toil? Does he
already have it as his present life, or must he struggle for it as his
future life, which will become his part only when he "is no longer
tainted with any egoism"? In this view life exists only to gain life,
and one lives only to make the essence of man alive in oneself, one
lives for the sake of this essence. One has his life only in order to
procure by means of it the "true" life cleansed of all egoism. Hence one
is afraid to make any use he likes of his life: it is to serve only for
the "right use."
In short, one has a _calling in life_, a task in life; one has something
to realize and produce by his life, a something for which our life is
only means and implement, a something that is worth more than this life,
a something to which one _owes_ his life. One has a God who asks a
_living sacrifice_. Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost
with time; human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals
hourly fall sacrifices to justice, and we "poor sinners" slay our own
selves as sacrifices for "the human essence," the "idea of mankind,"
"humanity," and whatever the idols or gods are called besides.
But, because we owe our life to that something, therefore--this is the
next point--we have no right to take it from us.
The conservative tendency of Christianity does not permit thinking of
death otherwise than with the purpose to take its sting from it
and--live on and preserve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything
happen and come upon him if he--the arch-Jew--can only haggle and
smuggle himself into heaven; he must not kill himself, he must
only--preserve himself and work at the "preparation of a future abode."
Conservatism or "conquest of death" lies at his heart; "the last enemy
that is abolished is death."[214] "Christ has taken the power from death
and brought life and _imperishable_ being to light by the gospel."[215]
"Imperishableness," stability.
The moral man wants the good, the right; and, if he takes to the means
that lead to this goal, really lead to it, then these means are not
_his_ means, but those of the good, right, etc., itself. These means are
never immoral, because the good end itself mediates itself through them:
the end sanctifies the means. They call this maxim jesuitical, but it is
"moral" through and through. The moral man acts _in the service_ of an
end or an idea: he makes himself the _tool_ of the idea of the good, as
the pious man counts it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To
await death is what the moral commandment postulates as the good; to
give it to oneself is immoral and bad: _suicide_ finds no excuse before
the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious man forbids it because
"you have not given yourself life, but God, who alone can also take it
from you again" (as if, even talking in this conception, God did not
take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the
roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused the
resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because I owe
my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may
not yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a
tool, as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in
my _amendment_; if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my _penitence_.
Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose
standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness
of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in
forgetfulness of duty, immorally. People worried themselves much with
the question whether Emilia Galotti's death can be justified before
morality (they take it as if it were suicide, which it is too in
substance). That she is so infatuated with chastity, this moral good, as
to yield up even her life for it is certainly moral; but, again, that
she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral.[216] Such
contradictions form the tragic conflict universally in the moral drama;
and one must think and feel morally to be able to take an interest in
it.
What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity
also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species.
Only when I am under obligation to no being is the maintaining of
life--my affair. "A leap from this bridge makes me free!"
But, if we owe the maintaining of our life to that being that we are to
make alive in ourselves, it is not less our duty not to lead this life
according to _our_ pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that
being. All my feeling, thinking, and willing, all my doing and
designing, belongs to--him.
What is in conformity to that being is to be inferred from his concept;
and how differently has this concept been conceived! or how differently
has that being been imagined! What demands the Supreme Being makes on
the Mohammedan; what different ones the Christian, again, thinks he
hears from him; how divergent, therefore, must the shaping of the lives
of the two turn out! Only this do all hold fast, that the Supreme Being
is to _judge_[217] our life.
But the pious who have their judge in God, and in his word a book of
directions for their life, I everywhere pass by only reminiscently,
because they belong to a period of development that has been lived
through, and as petrifactions they may remain in their fixed place right
along; in our time it is no longer the pious, but the liberals, who
have the floor, and piety itself cannot keep from reddening its pale
face with liberal coloring. But the liberals do not adore their judge in
God, and do not unfold their life by the directions of the divine word,
but regulate[218] themselves by man: they want to be not "divine" but
"human," and to live so.
Man is the liberal's supreme being, man the _judge_ of his life,
humanity his _directions_, or catechism. God is spirit, but man is the
"most perfect spirit," the final result of the long chase after the
spirit or of the "searching in the depths of the Godhead," _i. e._ in
the depths of the spirit.
Every one of your traits is to be human; you yourself are to be so from
top to toe, in the inward as in the outward; for humanity is your
_calling_.