What one can become he does become. A born poet may well be hindered by
the disfavor of circumstances from standing on the high level of his
time, and, after the great studies that are indispensable for this,
producing _consummate_ works of art; but he will make poetry, be he a
plowman or so lucky as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician
will make music, no matter whether on all instruments or only on an
oaten pipe. A born philosophical head can give proof of itself as
university philosopher or as village philosopher. Finally, a born dolt,
who, as is very well compatible with this, may at the same time be a
sly-boots, will (as probably every one who has visited schools is in a
position to exemplify to himself by many instances of fellow-scholars)
always remain a blockhead, let him have been drilled and trained into
the chief of a bureau, or let him serve that same chief as bootblack.
Nay, the born shallow-pates indisputably form the most numerous class of
men. And why, indeed, should not the same distinctions show themselves
in the human species that are unmistakable in every species of beasts?
The more gifted and the less gifted are to be found everywhere.
Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one could not get ideas into
them. Hence people usually consider all men capable of having religion.
In a certain degree they may be trained to other ideas too, _e. g._ to
some musical intelligence, even some philosophy, etc. At this point then
the priesthood of religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc.,
takes its start, and the Communists, _e. g._, want to make everything
accessible to all by their "public school." There is heard a common
assertion that this "great mass" cannot get along without religion; the
Communists broaden it into the proposition that not only the "great
mass," but absolutely all, are called to everything.
Not enough that the great mass has been trained to religion, now it is
actually to have to occupy itself with "everything human." Training is
growing ever more general and more comprehensive.
You poor beings who could live so happily if you might skip according to
your mind, you are to dance to the pipe of schoolmasters and
bear-leaders, in order to perform tricks that you yourselves would never
use yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the traces at last
against being always taken otherwise than you want to give yourselves.
No, you mechanically recite to yourselves the question that is recited
to you: "What am I called to? What _ought_ I to do?" You need only ask
thus, to have yourselves _told_ what you ought to do and _ordered_ to do
it, to have your _calling_ marked out for you, or else to order
yourselves and impose it on yourselves according to the spirit's
prescription. Then in reference to the will the word is, I will to do
what I _ought_.
A man is "called" to nothing, and has no "calling," no "destiny," as
little as a plant or a beast has a "calling." The flower does not follow
the calling to complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy
and consume the world as well as it can,--_i. e._ it sucks in as much of
the juices of the earth, as much air of the ether, as much light of the
sun, as it can get and lodge. The bird lives up to no calling, but it
uses its forces as much as is practicable; it catches beetles and sings
to its heart's delight. But the forces of the flower and the bird are
slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces
will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast. A
calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where
they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and
are as little able to abide inactive as life, which, if it "stood still"
only a second, would no longer be life. Now, one might call out to the
man, "use your force." Yet to this imperative would be given the meaning
that it was man's task to use his force. It is not so. Rather, each one
really uses his force without first looking upon this as his calling: at
all times every one uses as much force as he possesses. One does say of
a beaten man that he ought to have exerted his force more; but one
forgets that, if in the moment of succumbing he had had the force to
exert his forces (_e. g._ bodily forces), he would not have failed to do
it: even if it was only the discouragement of a minute, this was yet
a--destitution of force, a minute long. Forces may assuredly be
sharpened and redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly
assistance; but where one misses their application one may be sure of
their absence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but without the
blow none comes out; in like manner a man too needs "impact."
Now, for this reason that forces always of themselves show themselves
operative, the command to use them would be superfluous and senseless.
To use his forces is not man's _calling_ and task, but is his _act_,
real and extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for
manifestation of force.
Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always
a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I
fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a "true man" from the
start. My first babble is the token of the life of a "true man," the
struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is
the last exhalation of the force of the "man."
The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies,
existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous
and suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep
or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.
But, if I am Man, and have really found in myself him whom religious
humanity designated as the distant goal, then everything "truly human"
is also _my own_. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity belongs to
me. That freedom of trade, _e. g._, which humanity has yet to
attain,--and which, like an enchanting dream, people remove to
humanity's golden future,--I take by anticipation as my property, and
carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. There may indeed be
but few smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account to
themselves for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces their
consciousness. Above I have shown the same thing about freedom of the
press.
Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to myself what wants to
withdraw from me; but above all I always bring myself back when I have
slipped away from myself to any tributariness. But this too is not my
calling, but my natural act.
Enough, there is a mighty difference whether I make myself the
starting-point or the goal. As the latter I do not have myself, am
consequently still alien to myself, am my _essence_, my "true essence,"
and this "true essence," alien to me, will mock me as a spook of a
thousand different names. Because I am not yet I, another (like God, the
true man, the truly pious man, the rational man, the freeman, etc.) is
I, my ego.
Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one,
the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the
untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The
other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is
said, "The spirit is man's proper essence," or, "man exists as man only
spiritually." Now there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one
would then have bagged _himself_; and so, in chasing after himself, one
loses sight of himself, whom he is.
And, as one stormily pursues his own self, the never-attained, so one
also despises shrewd people's rule to take men as they are, and prefers
to take them as they should be; and, for this reason, hounds every one
on after his should-be self and "endeavors to make all into equally
entitled, equally respectable, equally moral or rational men."[219]
Yes, "if men were what they _should_ be, _could_ be, if all men were
rational, all loved each other as brothers," then it would be a
paradisiacal life.[220]--All right, men are as they should be, can be.
What should they be? Surely not more than they can be! And what can they
be? Not more, again, than they--can, _i. e._ than they have the
competence, the force, to be. But this they really are, because what
they are not they are _incapable_ of being; for to be capable
means--really to be. One is not capable for anything that one really is
not; one is not capable of anything that one does not really do. Could a
man blinded by cataract see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataract
successfully removed. But now he cannot see because he does not see.
Possibility and reality always coincide. One can do nothing that one
does not, as one does nothing that one cannot.
The singularity of this assertion vanishes when one reflects that the
words "it is possible that ..." almost never contain another meaning
than "I can imagine that ...," _e. g._, It is possible for all men to
live rationally, _i. e._ I can imagine that all, etc. Now,--since my
thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, cause all men to live
rationally, but this must still be left to the men themselves,--general
reason is for me only thinkable, a thinkableness, but as such in fact a
_reality_ that is called a possibility only in reference to what I _can_
not bring to pass, to wit, the rationality of others. So far as depends
on you, all men might be rational, for you have nothing against it; nay,
so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot discover any
hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in the way of the
thing in your thinking; it is thinkable to you.
As men are not all rational, though, it is probable that they--cannot be
so.
If something which one imagines to be easily possible is not, or does
not happen, then one may be assured that something stands in the way of
the thing, and that it is--impossible. Our time has its art, science,
etc.; the art may be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we
deserved to have a better, and "could" have it if we only would? We have
just as much art as we can have. Our art of to-day is the _only art
possible_, and therefore real, at the time.
Even in the sense to which one might at last still reduce the word
"possible," that it should mean "future," it retains the full force of
the "real." If one says, _e. g._, "It is possible that the sun will rise
to-morrow,"--this means only, "for to-day to-morrow is the real future";
for I suppose there is hardly need of the suggestion that a future is
real "future" only when it has not yet appeared.
Yet wherefore this dignifying of a word? If the most prolific
misunderstanding of thousands of years were not in ambush behind it, if
this single concept of the little word "possible" were not haunted by
all the spooks of possessed men, its contemplation should trouble us
little here.
The thought, it was just now shown, rules the possessed world. Well,
then, possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable
sacrifices have hitherto been made to hideous _thinkableness_. It was
_thinkable_ that men might become rational; thinkable, that they might
know Christ; thinkable, that they might become moral and enthusiastic
for the good; thinkable, that they might all take refuge in the Church's
lap; thinkable, that they might meditate, speak, and do, nothing
dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they _might_ be obedient
subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was--so ran the
inference--possible, and further, because it was possible to men (right
here lies the deceptive point: because it is thinkable to me, it is
possible to _men_), therefore they _ought_ to be so, it was their
_calling_; and finally--one is to take men only according to this
calling, only as _called_ men, "not as they are, but as they ought to
be."
And the further inference? Man is not the individual, but man is a
_thought_, an _ideal_, to which the individual is related not even as
the child to the man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as
a--finite creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to modern
views, as the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the
glorification of "humanity," the "eternal, immortal," for whose glory
(_in majorem humanitatis gloriam_) the individual must devote himself
and find his "immortal renown" in having done something for the "spirit
of humanity."
Thus the _thinkers_ rule in the world as long as the age of priests or
of schoolmasters lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is
possible must be realized. They _think_ an ideal of man, which for the
time is real only in their thoughts; but they also think the possibility
of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute, the carrying out
is really--thinkable, it is an--idea.
But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom a Krummacher can _think_
that we might yet become good Christians; if, however, he wanted to
"labor with" us, we should soon make it palpable to him that our
Christianity is only _thinkable_, but in other respects _impossible_; if
he grinned on and on at us with his obtrusive _thoughts_, his "good
belief," he would have to learn that we do not at all _need_ to become
what we do not like to become.
And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the pious. "If all men
were rational, if all did right, if all were guided by philanthropy,
etc."! Reason, right, philanthropy, etc., are put before the eyes of
men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. And what does
being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing?[221] No, reason is a book
full of laws, which are all enacted against egoism.
History hitherto is the history of the _intellectual_ man. After the
period of sensuality, history proper begins; _i. e._, the period of
intellectuality,[222] spirituality,[223] non-sensuality,
supersensuality, nonsensicality. Man now begins to want to be and become
_something_. What? Good, beautiful, true; more precisely, moral, pious,
agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a "proper man," "something
proper." _Man_ is his goal, his ought, his destiny, calling, task,
his--_ideal_; he is to himself a future, otherworldly he. And _what_
makes a "proper fellow" of him? Being true, being good, being moral, and
the like. Now he looks askance at every one who does not recognize the
same "what," seek the same morality, have the same faith; he chases out
"separatists, heretics, sects," etc.
No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper sheep, a proper
dog"; no beast has its essence appear to it as a task, _i. e._ as a
concept that it has to realize. It realizes itself in living itself out,
_i. e._ dissolving itself, passing away. It does not ask to be or to
become anything _other_ than it is.
Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts? That you ought to become
beasts is an exhortation which I certainly cannot give you, as that
would again be a task, an ideal ("How doth the little busy bee improve
each shining hour.... In works of labor or of skill I would be busy
too, for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do"). It
would be the same, too, as if one wished for the beasts that they should
become human beings. Your nature is, once for all, a human one; you are
human natures, _i. e._ human beings. But, just because you already are
so, you do not still need to become so. Beasts too are "trained," and a
trained beast executes many unnatural things. But a trained dog is no
better for itself than a natural one, and has no profit from it, even if
it is more companionable for us.
Exertions to "form" all men into moral, rational, pious, human, etc.,
"beings" (_i. e._ training) were in vogue from of yore. They are wrecked
against the indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against
egoism. Those who are trained never attain their ideal, and only profess
with their _mouth_ the sublime principles, or make a _profession_, a
profession of faith. In face of this profession they must in _life_
"acknowledge themselves sinners altogether," and they fall short of
their ideal, are "weak men," and bear with them the consciousness of
"human weakness."
It is different if you do not chase after an _ideal_ as your "destiny,"
but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is
not your "destiny," because it is present time.
Yet the _culture_, the religiousness, of men has assuredly made them
free, but only free from one lord, to lead them to another. I have
learned by religion to tame my appetite, I break the world's resistance
by the cunning that is put in my hand by _science_; I even serve no man:
"I am, no man's lackey." But then it comes, You must obey God more than
man. Just so I am indeed free from irrational determination by my
impulses, but obedient to the master _Reason_. I have gained "spiritual
freedom," "freedom of the spirit." But with that _I_ have then become
subject to that very _spirit_. The spirit gives me orders, reason guides
me, they are my leaders and commanders. The "rational," the "servants of
the spirit," rule. But, if _I_ am not flesh, I am in truth not spirit
either. Freedom of the spirit is servitude of me, because I am more than
spirit or flesh.
Without doubt culture has made me _powerful_. It has given me power over
all _motives_, over the impulses of my nature as well as over the
exactions and violences of the world. I know, and have gained the force
for it by culture, that I need not let myself be coerced by any of my
appetites, pleasures, emotions, etc.; I am their--_master_; in like
manner I become, through the sciences and arts, the _master_ of the
refractory world, whom sea and earth obey, and to whom even the stars
must give an account of themselves. The spirit has made me
_master_.--But I have no power over the spirit itself. From religion
(culture) I do learn the means for the "vanquishing of the world," but
not how I am to subdue _God_ too and become master of him; for God "is
the spirit." And this same spirit, of which I am unable to become
master, may have the most manifold shapes: he may be called God or
National Spirit, State, Family, Reason, also--Liberty, Humanity, Man.
_I_ receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for
me; I am not willing to throw away and give up anything of it: _I_ have
not lived in vain. The experience that I have _power_ over my nature,
and need not be the slave of my appetites, shall not be lost to me; the
experience that I can subdue the world by culture's means is too
dear-bought for me to be able to forget it. But I want still more.
People ask, what can man do? what can he accomplish? what goods procure?
and put down the highest of everything as a calling. As if everything
were possible to _me_!
If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania, a passion, etc. (_e. g._
in the huckster-spirit, in jealousy), the desire is stirred to deliver
him out of this possession and to help him to "self-conquest." "We want
to make a man of him!" That would be very fine if another possession
were not immediately put in the place of the earlier one. But one frees
from the love of money him who is a thrall to it, only to deliver him
over to piety, humanity, or some principle else, and to transfer him to
a _fixed standpoint_ anew.
This transference from a narrow standpoint to a sublime one is declared
in the words that the sense must not be directed to the perishable, but
to the imperishable alone: not to the temporal, but to the eternal,
absolute, divine, purely human, etc.,--to the _spiritual_.
People very soon discerned that it was not indifferent what one set his
affections on, or what one occupied himself with; they recognized the
importance of the _object_. An object exalted above the individuality of
things is the _essence_ of things; yes, the essence is alone the
thinkable in them, it is for the _thinking_ man. Therefore direct no
longer your _sense_ to the _things_, but your _thoughts_ to the
_essence_. "Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe"; _i. e._,
blessed are the _thinkers_ for they have to do with the invisible and
believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, that constituted an
essential point of contention centuries long, comes at last to the point
of being "no longer worth speaking of." This was discerned, but
nevertheless people always kept before their eyes again a self-valid
importance of the object, an absolute value of it, as if the doll were
not the most important thing to the child, the Koran to the Turk. As
long as I am not the sole important thing to myself, it is indifferent
of what object I "make much," and only my greater or lesser
_delinquency_ against it is of value. The degree of my attachment and
devotion marks the standpoint of my liability to service, the degree of
my sinning shows the measure of my ownness.
But finally, and in general, one must know how to "put everything out of
his mind," if only so as to be able to--go to sleep. Nothing may occupy
us with which _we_ do not occupy ourselves: the victim of ambition
cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the God-fearing man from
the thought of God; infatuation and possessedness coincide.
To want to realize his essence or live conformably to his concept (which
with believers in God signifies as much as to be "pious," and with
believers in humanity means living "humanly") is what only the sensual
and sinful man can propose to himself, the man so long as he has the
anxious choice between happiness of sense and peace of soul, so long as
he is a "poor sinner." The Christian is nothing but a sensual man who,
knowing of the sacred and being conscious that he violates it, sees in
himself a poor sinner: sensualness, recognized as "sinfulness," is
Christian consciousness, is the Christian himself. And if "sin" and
"sinfulness" are now no longer taken into the mouths of moderns, but,
instead of that, "egoism," "self-seeking," "selfishness," and the like,
engage them; if the devil has been translated into the "un-man" or
"egoistic man,"--is the Christian less present then than before? Is not
the old discord between good and evil,--is not a judge over us, man,--is
not a calling, the calling to make oneself man--left? If they no longer
name it calling, but "task" or, very likely, "duty," the change of name
is quite correct, because "man" is not, like God, a personal being that
can "call"; but outside the name the thing remains as of old.
* * * * *
Every one has a relation to objects, and more, every one is differently
related to them. Let us choose as an example that book to which millions
of men had a relation for two thousand years, the Bible. What is it,
what was it, to each? Absolutely, only what he _made out of it_! For him
who makes to himself nothing at all out of it, it is nothing at all; for
him who uses it as an amulet, it has solely the value, the significance,
of a means of sorcery; for him who, like children, plays with it, it is
nothing but a plaything; etc.
Now, Christianity asks that it shall _be the same for all_: say, the
sacred book or the "sacred Scriptures." This means as much as that the
Christian's view shall also be that of other men, and that no one may
be otherwise related to that object. And with this the ownness of the
relation is destroyed, and one mind, one disposition, is fixed as the
"_true_," the "only true" one. In the limitation of the freedom to make
of the Bible what I will, the freedom of making in general is limited;
and the coercion of a view or a judgment is put in its place. He who
should pass the judgment that the Bible was a long error of mankind
would judge--_criminally_.
In fact, the child who tears it to pieces or plays with it, the Inca
Atahualpa who lays his ear to it and throws it away contemptuously when
it remains dumb, judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest
who praises in it the "Word of God," or the critic who calls it a job of
men's hands. For how we toss things about is the affair of our _option_,
our _free will_: we use them according to our _heart's pleasure_, or,
more clearly, we use them just as we _can_. Why, what do the parsons
scream about when they see how Hegel and the speculative theologians
make speculative thoughts out of the contents of the Bible? Precisely
this, that they deal with it according to their heart's pleasure, or
"proceed arbitrarily with it."
But, because we all show ourselves arbitrary in the handling of objects,
_i. e._ do with them as we _like_ best, at our _liking_ (the philosopher
likes nothing so well as when he can trace out an "idea" in everything,
as the God-fearing man likes to make God his friend by everything, and
so, _e. g._, by keeping the Bible sacred), therefore we nowhere meet
such grievous arbitrariness, such a frightful tendency to violence,
such stupid coercion, as in this very domain of our--_own free will_. If
_we_ proceed arbitrarily in taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is
it then that we want to take it ill of the parson-spirits if they take
us just as arbitrarily _in their fashion_, and esteem us worthy of the
heretic's fire or of another punishment, perhaps of the--censorship?
What a man is, he makes out of things; "as you look at the world, so it
looks at you again." Then the wise advice makes itself heard again at
once, You must only look at it "rightly, unbiasedly," etc. As if the
child did not look at the Bible "rightly and unbiasedly" when it makes
it a plaything. That shrewd precept is given us, _e. g._, by Feuerbach.
One does look at things rightly when one makes of them what one _will_
(by things objects in general are here understood, such as God, our
fellow-men, a sweetheart, a book, a beast, etc.). And therefore the
things and the looking at them are not first, but I am, my will is. One
_will_ bring thoughts out of the things, _will_ discover reason in the
world, _will_ have sacredness in it: therefore one shall find them.
"Seek and ye shall find." _What_ I will seek, _I_ determine: I want,
_e. g._, to get edification from the Bible; it is to be found;
I want to read and test the Bible thoroughly; my outcome will be
a thorough instruction and criticism--to the extent of my powers.
I elect for myself what I have a fancy for, and in electing I show
myself--arbitrary.
Connected with this is the discernment that every judgment which I pass
upon an object is the _creature_ of my will; and that discernment again
leads me to not losing myself in the _creature_, the judgment, but
remaining the _creator_, the judger, who is ever creating anew. All
predicates of objects are my statements, my judgments, my--creatures. If
they want to tear themselves loose from me and be something for
themselves, or actually overawe me, then I have nothing more pressing to
do than to take them back into their nothing, _i. e._ into me the
creator. God, Christ, trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such
creatures, of which I must not merely allow myself to say that they are
truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed and decreed
their existence, so I want to have license to will their non-existence
too; I must not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness
to let them become something "absolute," whereby they would be
eternalized and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should
fall a prey to the _principle of stability_, the proper life-principle
of religion, which concerns itself with creating "sanctuaries that must
not be touched," "eternal truths,"--in short, that which shall be
"sacred,"--and depriving you of what is _yours_.
The object makes us into possessed men in its sacred form just as in its
profane; as a supersensuous object, just as it does as a sensuous one.
The appetite or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing for heaven
stand on a level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for the
sensuous world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one
party wanted to call forth _emotion_, the other _motion_, activity.
The conception of objects is altogether diverse, even as God, Christ,
the world, etc., were and are conceived of in the most manifold wise. In
this every one is a "dissenter," and after bloody combats so much has at
last been attained, that opposite views about one and the same object
are no longer condemned as heresies worthy of death. The "dissenters"
reconcile themselves to each other. But why should I only dissent (think
otherwise) about a thing? why not push the thinking otherwise to its
last extremity, _viz._, that of no longer having any regard at all for
the thing, and therefore thinking its nothingness, crushing it? Then the
_conception_ itself has an end, because there is no longer anything to
conceive of. Why am I to say, let us suppose, "God is not Allah, not
Brahma, not Jehovah, but--God"; but not, "God is nothing but a
deception"? Why do people brand me if I am an "atheist"? Because they
put the creature above the creator ("They honor and serve the creature
more than the Creator"[224]) and require a _ruling object_, that the
subject may be right _submissive_. I am to bend _beneath_ the absolute,
I _ought_ to.
By the "realm of thoughts" Christianity has completed itself; the
thought is that inwardness in which all the world's lights go out, all
existence becomes existenceless, the inward man (the heart, the head) is
all in all. This realm of thoughts awaits its deliverance, awaits, like
the Sphinx, Oedipus's key-word to the riddle, that it may enter in at
last to its death. I am the annihilator of its continuance, for in the
creator's realm it no longer forms a realm of its own, not a State in
the State, but a creature of my creative--thoughtlessness. Only together
and at the same time with the benumbed _thinking_ world can the world of
Christians, Christianity and religion itself, come to its downfall; only
when thoughts run out are there no more believers. To the thinker his
thinking is a "sublime labor, a sacred activity," and it rests on a firm
_faith_, the faith in truth. At first praying is a sacred activity, then
this sacred "devotion" passes over into a rational and reasoning
"thinking," which, however, likewise retains in the "sacred truth" its
un-derangeable basis of faith, and is only a marvelous machine that the
spirit of truth winds up for its service. Free thinking and free science
busy _me_--for it is not I that am free, not _I_ that busy myself, but
thinking is free and busies me--with heaven and the heavenly or
"divine"; that is, properly, with the world and the worldly, not this
world but "another" world; it is only the reversing and deranging of the
world, a busying with the _essence_ of the world, therefore a
_derangement_. The thinker is blind to the immediateness of things, and
incapable of mastering them: he does not eat, does not drink, does not
enjoy; for the eater and drinker is never the thinker, nay, the latter
forgets eating and drinking, his getting on in life, the cares of
nourishment, etc., over his thinking; he forgets it as the praying man
too forgets it. This is why he appears to the forceful son of nature as
a queer Dick, a _fool_,--even if he does look upon him as holy, just as
lunatics appeared so to the ancients. Free thinking is lunacy, because
it is _pure movement of the inwardness_, of the merely _inward man_,
which guides and regulates the rest of the man. The shaman and the
speculative philosopher mark the bottom and top rounds on the ladder of
the _inward_ man, the--Mongol. Shaman and philosopher fight with ghosts,
demons, _spirits_, gods.
Totally different from this _free_ thinking is _own_ thinking, _my_
thinking, a thinking which does not guide me, but is guided, continued,
or broken off, by me at my pleasure. The distinction of this own
thinking from free thinking is similar to that of own sensuality, which
I satisfy at pleasure, from free, unruly sensuality to which I succumb.
Feuerbach, in the "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future," is
always harping upon _being_. In this he too, with all his antagonism to
Hegel and the absolute philosophy, is stuck fast in abstraction; for
"being" is abstraction, as is even "the I." Only _I am_ not abstraction
alone: _I am_ all in all, consequently even abstraction or nothing;
I am all and nothing; I am not a mere thought, but at the same time
I am full of thoughts, a thought-world. Hegel condemns the own,
mine,[225]--"opinion."[226] "Absolute thinking" is that thinking which
forgets that it is _my_ thinking, that I think, and that it exists only
through _me_. But I, as I, swallow up again what is mine, am its master;
it is only my _opinion_, which I can at any moment _change_, _i. e._
annihilate, take back into myself, and consume. Feuerbach wants to smite
Hegel's "absolute thinking" with _unconquered being_. But in me being is
as much conquered as thinking is. It is _my_ being, as the other is
_my_ thinking.
With this, of course, Feuerbach does not get further than to the proof,
trivial in itself, that I require the _senses_ for everything, or that I
cannot entirely do without these organs. Certainly I cannot think if I
do not exist sensuously. But for thinking as well as for feeling, and so
for the abstract as well as for the sensuous, I need above all things
_myself_, this quite particular myself, this _unique_ myself. If I were
not this one, _e. g._ Hegel, I should not look at the world as I do look
at it, I should not pick out of it that philosophical system which just
I as Hegel do, etc. I should indeed have senses, as do other people too,
but I should not utilize them as I do.
Thus the reproach is brought up against Hegel by Feuerbach[227] that he
misuses language, understanding by many words something else than what
natural consciousness takes them for; and yet he too commits the same
fault when he gives the "sensuous" a sense of unusual eminence. Thus it
is said, p. 69, "the sensuous is not the profane, the destitute of
thought, the obvious, that which is understood of itself." But, if it is
the sacred, the full of thought, the recondite, that which can be
understood only through mediation,--well, then it is no longer what
people call the sensuous. The sensuous is only that which exists for
_the senses_; what, on the other hand, is enjoyable only to those who
enjoy with _more_ than the senses, who go beyond sense-enjoyment or
sense-reception, is at most mediated or introduced by the senses,
_i. e._ the senses constitute a _condition_ for obtaining it, but it is
no longer anything sensuous. The sensuous, whatever it may be, when
taken up into me becomes something non-sensuous, which, however, may
again have sensuous effects, _e. g._ by the stirring of my emotions and
my blood.
It is well that Feuerbach brings sensuousness to honor, but the only
thing he is able to do with it is to clothe the materialism of his "new
philosophy" with what had hitherto been the property of idealism, the
"absolute philosophy." As little as people let it be talked into them
that one can live on the "spiritual" alone without bread, so little will
they believe his word that as a sensuous being one is already
everything, and so spiritual, full of thoughts, etc.
Nothing at all is justified by _being_. What is thought of _is_ as well
as what is not thought of; the stone in the street _is_, and my notion
of it _is_ too. Both are only in different _spaces_, the former in airy
space, the latter in my head, in _me_; for I am space like the street.
The professionals, the privileged, brook no freedom of thought, _i. e._
no thoughts that do not come from the "Giver of all good," be he called
God, pope, church, or whatever else. If anybody has such illegitimate
thoughts, he must whisper them into his confessor's ear, and have
himself chastised by him till the slave-whip becomes unendurable to the
free thoughts. In other ways too the professional spirit takes care that
free thoughts shall not come at all: first and foremost, by a wise
education. He on whom the principles of morality have been duly
inculcated never becomes free again from moralizing thoughts, and
robbery, perjury, overreaching, and the like, remain to him fixed ideas
against which no freedom of thought protects him. He has his thoughts
"from above," and gets no further.
It is different with the holders of concessions or patents. Every one
must be able to have and form thoughts as he will. If he has the patent,
or the concession, of a capacity to think, he needs no special
_privilege_. But, as "all men are rational," it is free to every one to
put into his head any thoughts whatever, and, to the extent of the
patent of his natural endowment, to have a greater or less wealth of
thoughts. Now one hears the admonitions that one "is to honor all
opinions and convictions," that "every conviction is authorized," that
one must be "tolerant to the views of others," etc.
But "your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways."
Or rather, I mean the reverse: Your thoughts are _my_ thoughts, which I
dispose of as I will, and which I strike down unmercifully; they are my
property, which I annihilate as I list. I do not wait for authorization
from you first, to decompose and blow away your thoughts. It does not
matter to me that you call these thoughts yours too, they remain mine
nevertheless, and how I will proceed with them is _my affair_, not a
usurpation. It may please me to leave you in your thoughts; then I keep
still. Do you believe thoughts fly around free like birds, so that every
one may get himself some which he may then make good against me as his
inviolable property? What is flying around is all--_mine_.
Do you believe you have your thoughts for yourselves and need answer to
no one for them, or, as you do also say, you have to give an account of
them to God only? No, your great and small thoughts belong to me, and I
handle them at my pleasure.
The thought is my _own_ only when I have no misgiving about bringing it
in danger of death every moment, when I do not have to fear its loss as
a _loss for me_, a loss of me. The thought is my own only when I can
indeed subjugate it, but it never can subjugate me, never fanaticizes
me, makes me the tool of its realization.
So freedom of thought exists when I can have all possible thoughts; but
the thoughts become property only by not being able to become masters.
In the time of freedom of thought, thoughts (ideas) _rule_; but, if I
attain to property in thought, they stand as my creatures.
If the hierarchy had not so penetrated men to the innermost as to take
from them all courage to pursue free thoughts, _i. e._ thoughts perhaps
displeasing to God, one would have to consider freedom of thought just
as empty a word as, say, a freedom of digestion.
According to the professionals' opinion, the thought is _given_ to me;
according to the freethinkers', _I seek_ the thought. There the _truth_
is already found and extant, only I must--receive it from its Giver by
grace; here the truth is to be sought and is my goal, lying in the
future, toward which I have to run.
In both cases the truth (the true thought) lies outside me, and I aspire
to _get_ it, be it by presentation (grace), be it by earning (merit of
my own). Therefore, (1) The truth is a _privilege_, (2) No, the way to
it is _patent_ to all, and neither the Bible nor the holy fathers nor
the church nor any one else is in possession of the truth; but one can
come into possession of it by--speculating.
Both, one sees, are _propertyless_ in relation to the truth: they have
it either as a _fief_ (for the "holy father," _e. g._, is not a unique
person; as unique he is this Sixtus, Clement, etc., but he does not have
the truth as Sixtus, Clement, etc., but as "holy father," _i. e._ as a
spirit) or as an _ideal_. As a fief, it is only for a few (the
privileged); as an ideal, for _all_ (the patentees).
Freedom of thought, then, has the meaning that we do indeed all walk in
the dark and in the paths of error, but every one can on this path
approach _the truth_ and is accordingly on the right path ("All roads
lead to Rome, to the world's end, etc."). Hence freedom of thought means
this much, that the true thought is not my _own_; for, if it were this,
how should people want to shut me off from it?
Thinking has become entirely free, and has laid down a lot of truths
which _I_ must accommodate myself to. It seeks to complete itself into a
_system_ and to bring itself to an absolute "constitution." In the State
_e. g._ it seeks for the idea, say, till it has brought out the
"rational State," in which I am then obliged to be suited; in man
(anthropology), till it "has found man."
The thinker is distinguished from the believer only by believing _much
more_ than the latter, who on his part thinks of much less as signified
by his faith (creed). The thinker has a thousand tenets of faith where
the believer gets along with few; but the former brings _coherence_ into
his tenets, and takes the coherence in turn for the scale to estimate
their worth by. If one or the other does not fit into his budget, he
throws it out.
The thinkers run parallel to the believers in their pronouncements.
Instead of "If it is from God you will not root it out," the word is "If
it is from the _truth_, is true, etc."; instead of "Give God the
glory,"--"Give truth the glory." But it is very much the same to me
whether God or the truth wins; first and foremost _I_ want to win.
Aside from this, how is an "unlimited freedom" to be thinkable inside of
the State or society? The State may well protect one against another,
but yet it must not let itself be endangered by an unmeasured freedom, a
so-called unbridledness. Thus in "freedom of instruction" the State
declares only this,--that it is suited with every one who instructs as
the State (or, speaking more comprehensibly, the political power) would
have it. The point for the competitors is this "as the State would have
it." If the clergy, _e. g._, does not will as the State does, then it
itself excludes itself from _competition_ (_vid._ France). The limit
that is necessarily drawn in the State for any and all competition is
called "the oversight and superintendence of the State." In bidding
freedom of instruction keep within the due bounds, the State at the same
time fixes the scope of freedom of thought; because, as a rule, people
do not think farther than their teachers have thought.
Hear Minister Guizot: "The great difficulty of to-day is the _guiding
and dominating of the mind_. Formerly the church fulfilled this mission;
now it is not adequate to it. It is from the university that this great
service must be expected, and the university will not fail to perform
it. We, the _government_, have the duty of supporting it therein. The
charter calls for the freedom of thought and that of conscience."[228]
So, in favor of freedom of thought and conscience, the minister demands
"the guiding and dominating of the mind."
Catholicism haled the examinee before the forum of ecclesiasticism,
Protestantism before that of biblical Christianity. It would be but
little bettered if one haled him before that of reason, as Ruge,
_e. g._, wants to.[229] Whether the church, the Bible, or reason (to
which, moreover, Luther and Huss already appealed) is the _sacred
authority_ makes no difference in essentials.
The "question of our time" does not become soluble even when one puts it
thus: Is anything general authorized, or only the individual? Is the
generality (such as State, law, custom, morality, etc.) authorized, or
individuality? It becomes soluble for the first time when one no longer
asks after an "authorization" at all, and does not carry on a mere fight
against "privileges."--A "rational" freedom of teaching, which
"recognizes only the conscience of reason,"[230] does not bring us to
the goal; we require an _egoistic_ freedom of teaching rather, a freedom
of teaching for all ownness, wherein _I_ become _audible_ and can
announce myself unchecked. That I make myself "_audible_,"[231] this
alone is "reason,"[232] be I ever so irrational; in my making myself
heard, and so hearing myself, others as well as I myself enjoy me, and
at the same time consume me.
What would be gained if, as formerly the orthodox I, the loyal I, the
moral I, etc., was free, now the rational I should become free? Would
this be the freedom of me?
If I am free as "rational I," then the rational in me, or reason, is
free; and this freedom of reason, or freedom of the thought, was the
ideal of the Christian world from of old. They wanted to make
thinking--and, as aforesaid, faith is also thinking, as thinking is
faith--free; the thinkers, _i. e._ the believers as well as the
rational, were to be free; for the rest freedom was impossible. But the
freedom of thinkers is the "freedom of the children of God," and at the
same time the most merciless--hierarchy or dominion of the thought; for
_I_ succumb to the thought. If thoughts are free, I am their slave; I
have no power over them, and am dominated by them. But I want to have
the thought, want to be full of thoughts, but at the same time I want to
be thoughtless, and, instead of freedom of thought, I preserve for
myself thoughtlessness.
If the point is to have myself understood and to make communications,
then assuredly I can make use only of _human_ means, which are at my
command because I am at the same time man. And really I have thoughts
only as _man_; as I, I am at the same time _thoughtless_.[233] He who
cannot get rid of a thought is so far only man, is a thrall of
_language_, this human institution, this treasury of _human_ thoughts.
Language or "the word" tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up
against us a whole army of _fixed ideas_. Just observe yourself in the
act of reflection, right now, and you will find how you make progress
only by becoming thoughtless and speechless every moment. You are not
thoughtless and speechless merely in (say) sleep, but even in the
deepest reflection; yes, precisely then most so. And only by this
thoughtlessness, this unrecognized "freedom of thought" or freedom from
the thought, are you your own. Only from it do you arrive at putting
language to use as your _property_.
If thinking is not _my_ thinking, it is merely a spun-out thought; it is
slave work, or the work of a "servant obeying at the word." For not a
thought, but I, am the beginning for my thinking, and therefore I am its
goal too, even as its whole course is only a course of my
self-enjoyment; for absolute or free thinking, on the other hand,
thinking itself is the beginning, and it plagues itself with propounding
this beginning as the extremest "abstraction" (_e. g._ as being). This
very abstraction, or this thought, is then spun out further.
Absolute thinking is the affair of the human spirit, and this is a holy
spirit. Hence this thinking is an affair of the parsons, who have "a
sense for it," a sense for the "highest interests of mankind," for "the
spirit."
To the believer, truths are a _settled_ thing, a fact; to the
freethinker, a thing that is still to be _settled_. Be absolute thinking
ever so unbelieving, its incredulity has its limits, and there does
remain a belief in the truth, in the spirit, in the idea and its final
victory: this thinking does not sin against the holy spirit. But all
thinking that does not sin against the holy spirit is belief in spirits
or ghosts.
I can as little renounce thinking as feeling, the spirit's activity as
little as the activity of the senses. As feeling is our sense for
things, so thinking is our sense for essences (thoughts). Essences have
their existence in everything sensuous, especially in the word. The
power of words follows that of things: first one is coerced by the rod,
afterward by conviction. The might of things overcomes our courage, our
spirit; against the power of a conviction, and so of the word, even the
rack and the sword lose their overpoweringness and force. The men of
conviction are the priestly men, who resist every enticement of Satan.
Christianity took away from the things of this world only their
irresistibleness, made us independent of them. In like manner I raise
myself above truths and their power: as I am supersensual, so I am
supertrue. _Before me_ truths are as common and as indifferent as
things; they do not carry me away, and do not inspire me with
enthusiasm. There exists not even one truth, not right, not freedom,
humanity, etc., that has stability before me, and to which I subject
myself. They are _words_, nothing but words, as all things are to the
Christian nothing but "vain things." In words and truths (every word is
a truth, as Hegel asserts that one cannot _tell_ a lie) there is no
salvation for me, as little as there is for the Christian in things and
vanities. As the riches of this world do not make me happy, so neither
do its truths. It is now no longer Satan, but the spirit, that plays the
story of the temptation; and he does not seduce by the things of this
world, but by its thoughts, by the "glitter of the idea."
Along with worldly goods, all sacred goods too must be put away as no
longer valuable.
Truths are phrases, ways of speaking, words ([Greek: logos]); brought
into connection, or into an articulate series, they form logic, science,
philosophy.
For thinking and speaking I need truths and words, as I do foods for
eating; without them I cannot think nor speak. Truths are men's
thoughts, set down in words and therefore just as extant as other
things, although extant only for the mind or for thinking, they are
human institutions and human creatures, and, even if they are given out
for divine revelations, there still remains in them the quality of
alienness for me; yes, as my own creatures they are already alienated
from me after the act of creation.
The Christian man is the man with faith in thinking, who believes in the
supreme dominion of thoughts and wants to bring thoughts, so-called
"principles," to dominion. Many a one does indeed test the thoughts, and
chooses none of them for his master without criticism, but in this he is
like the dog who sniffs at people to smell out "his master": he is
always aiming at the _ruling_ thought. The Christian may reform and
revolt an infinite deal, may demolish the ruling concepts of centuries;
he will always aspire to a new "principle" or new master again, always
set up a higher or "deeper" truth again, always call forth a cult again,
always proclaim a spirit called to dominion, lay down a _law_ for all.
If there is even one truth only to which man has to devote his life and
his powers because he is man, then he is subjected to a rule, dominion,
law, etc.; he is a servingman. It is supposed that, _e. g._, man,
humanity, liberty, etc., are such truths.
On the other hand, one can say thus: Whether you will further occupy
yourself with thinking depends on you; only know that, _if_ in your
thinking you would like to make out anything worthy of notice, many hard
problems are to be solved, without vanquishing which you cannot get far.
There exists, therefore, no duty and no calling for you to meddle with
thoughts (ideas, truths); but, if you will do so, you will do well to
utilize what the forces of others have already achieved toward clearing
up these difficult subjects.
Thus, therefore, he who will think does assuredly have a task, which
_he_ consciously or unconsciously sets for himself in willing that; but
no one has the task of thinking or of believing.--In the former case it
may be said, You do not go far enough, you have a narrow and biased
interest, you do not go to the bottom of the thing; in short, you do not
completely subdue it. But, on the other hand, however far you may come
at any time, you are still always at the end, you have no call to step
farther, and you can have it as you will or as you are able. It stands
with this as with any other piece of work, which you can give up when
the humor for it wears off. Just so, if you can no longer _believe_ a
thing, you do not have to force yourself into faith or to busy yourself
lastingly as if with a sacred truth of the faith, as theologians or
philosophers do, but you can tranquilly draw back your interest from it
and let it run. Priestly spirits will indeed expound this your lack of
interest as "laziness, thoughtlessness, obduracy, self-deception," and
the like. But do you just let the trumpery lie, notwithstanding. No
thing,[234] no so-called "highest interest of mankind," no "sacred
cause,"[235] is worth your serving it, and occupying yourself with it
for _its sake_; you may seek its worth in this alone, whether it is
worth anything to _you_ for your sake. Become like children, the
biblical saying admonishes us. But children have no sacred interest and
know nothing of a "good cause." They know all the more accurately what
they have a fancy for; and they think over, to the best of their powers,
how they are to arrive at it.
Thinking will as little cease as feeling. But the power of thoughts and
ideas, the dominion of theories and principles, the sovereignty of the
spirit, in short the--_hierarchy_, lasts as long as the parsons, _i. e._
theologians, philosophers, statesmen, philistines, liberals,
schoolmasters, servants, parents, children, married couples, Proudhon,
George Sand, Bluntschli, etc., etc., have the floor; the hierarchy will
endure as long as people believe in, think of, or even criticise,
principles; for even the most inexorable criticism, which undermines
all current principles, still does finally _believe_ in _the principle_.
Every one criticises, but the criterion is different. People run after
the "right" criterion. The right criterion is the first presupposition.
The critic starts from a proposition, a truth, a belief. This is not a
creation of the critic, but of the dogmatist; nay, commonly it is
actually taken up out of the culture of the time without further
ceremony, like _e. g._ "liberty," "humanity," etc. The critic has not
"discovered man," but this truth has been established as "man" by the
dogmatist, and the critic (who, besides, may be the same person with
him) believes in this truth, this article of faith. In this faith, and
possessed by this faith, he criticises.
The secret of criticism is some "truth" or other: this remains its
energizing mystery.
But I distinguish between _servile_ and _own_ criticism. If I criticise
under the presupposition of a supreme being, my criticism _serves_ the
being and is carried on for its sake: if, _e. g._, I am possessed by the
belief in a "free State," then everything that has a bearing on it I
criticise from the standpoint of whether it is suitable to this State,
for I _love_ this State; if I criticise as a pious man, then for me
everything falls into the classes of divine and diabolical, and before
my criticism nature consists of traces of God or traces of the devil
(hence names like Godsgift, Godmount, the Devil's Pulpit, etc.), men of
believers and unbelievers, etc.; if I criticise while believing in man
as the "true essence," then for me everything falls primarily into the
classes of man and the un-man, etc.
Criticism has to this day remained a work of love: for at all times we
exercised it for the love of some being. All servile criticism is a
product of love, a possessedness, and proceeds according to that New
Testament precept, "Test everything and hold fast the _good_."[236] "The
good" is the touchstone, the criterion. The good, returning under a
thousand names and forms, remained always the presupposition, remained
the dogmatic fixed point for this criticism, remained the--fixed idea.
The critic, in setting to work, impartially presupposes the "truth," and
seeks for the truth in the belief that it is to be found. He wants to
ascertain the true, and has in it that very "good."
Presuppose means nothing else than put a _thought_ in front, or think
something before everything else and think the rest from the
starting-point of this that has _been thought_, _i. e._ measure and
criticise it by this. In other words, this is as much as to say that
thinking is to begin with something already thought. If thinking began
at all, instead of being begun, if thinking were a subject, an acting
personality of its own, as even the plant is such, then indeed there
would be no abandoning the principle that thinking must begin with
itself. But it is just the personification of thinking that brings to
pass those innumerable errors. In the Hegelian system they always talk
as if thinking or "the thinking spirit" (_i. e._ personified thinking,
thinking as a ghost) thought and acted; in critical liberalism it is
always said that "criticism" does this and that, or else that
"self-consciousness" finds this and that. But, if thinking ranks as the
personal actor, thinking itself must be presupposed; if criticism ranks
as such, a thought must likewise stand in front. Thinking and criticism
could be active only starting from themselves, would have to be
themselves the presupposition of their activity, as without being they
could not be active. But thinking, as a thing presupposed, is a fixed
thought, a _dogma_; thinking and criticism, therefore, can start only
from a _dogma_, _i. e._ from a thought, a fixed idea, a presupposition.
With this we come back again to what was enunciated above, that
Christianity consists in the development of a world of thoughts, or that
it is the proper "freedom of thought," the "free thought," the "free
spirit." The "true" criticism, which I called "servile," is therefore
just as much "free" criticism, for it is not _my own_.
The case stands otherwise when what is yours is not made into something
that is of itself, not personified, not made independent an a "spirit"
to itself. _Your_ thinking has for a presupposition not "thinking," but
_you_. But thus you do presuppose yourself after all? Yes, but not for
myself, but for my thinking. Before my thinking, there is--I. From this
it follows that my thinking is not preceded by a _thought_, or that my
thinking is without a "presupposition." For the presupposition which I
am for my thinking is not one _made by thinking_, not one _thought of_,
but it is _posited_ thinking _itself_, it is the _owner_ of the thought,
and proves only that thinking is nothing more than--_property_, _i. e._
that an "independent" thinking, a "thinking spirit," does not exist at
all.
This reversal of the usual way of regarding things might so resemble an
empty playing with abstractions that even those against whom it is
directed would acquiesce in the harmless aspect I give it, if practical
consequences were not connected with it.
To bring these into a concise expression, the assertion now made is that
man is not the measure of all things, but I am this measure. The servile
critic has before his eye another being, an idea, which he means to
serve; therefore he only slays the false idols for his God. What is done
for the love of this being, what else should it be but a--work of love?
But I, when I criticise, do not even have myself before my eyes, but am
only doing myself a pleasure, amusing myself according to my taste;
according to my several needs I chew the thing up or only inhale its
odor.
The distinction between the two attitudes will come out still more
strikingly if one reflects that the servile critic, because love guides
him, supposes he is serving the thing [cause] itself.
_The_ truth, or "truth in general," people are bound not to give up, but
to seek for. What else is it but the _être suprême_, the highest
essence? Even "true criticism" would have to despair if it lost faith in
the truth. And yet the truth is only a--_thought_; but it is not merely
"a" thought, but the thought that is above all thoughts, the
irrefragable thought; it is _the_ thought itself, which gives the first
hallowing to all others; it is the consecration of thoughts, the
"absolute," the "sacred" thought. The truth wears longer than all the
gods; for it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that
people have overthrown the gods and at last God himself. "The truth"
outlasts the downfall of the world of gods, for it is the immortal soul
of this transitory world of gods, it is Deity itself.
I will answer Pilate's question, What is truth? Truth is the free
thought, the free idea, the free spirit; truth is what is free from you,
what is not your own, what is not in your power. But truth is also the
completely unindependent, impersonal, unreal, and incorporeal; truth
cannot step forward as you do, cannot move, change, develop; truth
awaits and receives everything from you, and itself is only through you;
for it exists only--in your head. You concede that the truth is a
thought, but say that not every thought is a true one, or, as you are
also likely to express it, not every thought is truly and really a
thought. And by what do you measure and recognize the thought? By _your
impotence_, to wit, by your being no longer able to make any successful
assault on it! When it overpowers you, inspires you, and carries you
away, then you hold it to be the true one. Its dominion over you
certifies to you its truth; and, when it possesses you, and you are
possessed by it, then you feel well with it, for then you have found
your--_lord and master_. When you were seeking the truth, what did your
heart then long for? For your master! You did not aspire to _your_
might, but to a Mighty One, and wanted to exalt a Mighty One ("Exalt ye
the Lord our God!"). The truth, my dear Pilate, is--the Lord, and all
who seek the truth are seeking and praising the Lord. Where does the
Lord exist? Where else but in your head? He is only spirit, and,
wherever you believe you really see him, there he is a--ghost; for the
Lord is merely something that is thought of, and it was only the
Christian pains and agony to make the invisible visible, the spiritual
corporeal, that generated the ghost and was the frightful misery of the
belief in ghosts.
As long as you believe in the truth, you do not believe in yourself, and
you are a--_servant_, a--_religious man_. You alone are the truth, or
rather, you are more than the truth, which is nothing at all before you.
You too do assuredly ask about the truth, you too do assuredly
"criticise," but you do not ask about a "higher truth,"--to wit, one
that should be higher than you,--nor criticise according to the
criterion of such a truth. You address yourself to thoughts and notions,
as you do to the appearances of things, only for the purpose of making
them palatable to you, enjoyable to you, and your _own_: you want only
to subdue them and become their _owner_, you want to orient yourself and
feel at home in them, and you find them true, or see them in their true
light, when they can no longer slip away from you, no longer have any
unseized or uncomprehended place, or when they are _right for you_, when
they are your _property_. If afterward they become heavier again, if
they wriggle themselves out of your power again, then that is just their
untruth,--to wit, your impotence. Your impotence is their power, your
humility their exaltation. Their truth, therefore, is you, or is the
nothing which you are for them and in which they dissolve: their truth
is their _nothingness_.
Only as the property of me do the spirits, the truths, get to rest; and
they then for the first time really are, when they have been deprived of
their sorry existence and made a property of mine, when it is no longer
said "the truth develops itself, rules, asserts itself; history (also a
concept) wins the victory," and the like. The truth never has won a
victory, but was always my _means_ to the victory, like the sword ("the
sword of truth"). The truth is dead, a letter, a word, a material that I
can use up. All truth by itself is dead, a corpse; it is alive only in
the same way as my lungs are alive,--to wit, in the measure of my own
vitality. Truths are material, like vegetables and weeds; as to whether
vegetable or weed, the decision lies in me.
Objects are to me only material that I use up. Wherever I put my hand I
grasp a truth, which I trim for myself. The truth is certain to me, and
I do not need to long after it. To do the truth a service is in no case
my intent; it is to me only a nourishment for my thinking head, as
potatoes are for my digesting stomach, or as a friend is for my social
heart. As long as I have the humor and force for thinking, every truth
serves me only for me to work it up according to my powers. As reality
or worldliness is "vain and a thing of naught" for Christians, so is the
truth for me. It exists, exactly as much as the things of this world go
on existing although the Christian has proved their nothingness; but it
is vain, because it has its _value_ not _in itself_ but _in me_. _Of
itself_ it is _valueless_. The truth is a--_creature_.
As you produce innumerable things by your activity, yes, shape the
earth's surface anew and set up works of men everywhere, so too you may
still ascertain numberless truths by your thinking, and we will gladly
take delight in them. Nevertheless, as I do not please to hand myself
over to serve your newly discovered machines mechanically, but only help
to set them running for my benefit, so too I will only use your truths,
without letting myself be used for their demands.
All truths _beneath_ me are to my liking; a truth _above_ me, a truth
that I should have to _direct_ myself by, I am not acquainted with. For
me there is no truth, for nothing is more than I! Not even my essence,
not even the essence of man, is more than I! than I, this "drop in the
bucket," this "insignificant man!"
You believe that you have done the utmost when you boldly assert that,
because every time has its own truth, there is no "absolute truth." Why,
with this you nevertheless still leave to each time its truth, and you
quite genuinely create an "absolute truth," a truth that no time lacks,
because every time, however its truth may be, still has a "truth."
Is it meant only that people have been thinking in every time, and so
have had thoughts or truths, and that in the subsequent time these were
other than they were in the earlier? No, the word is to be that every
time had its "truth of faith"; and in fact none has yet appeared in
which a "higher truth" has not been recognized, a truth that people
believed they must subject themselves to as "highness and majesty."
Every truth of a time is its fixed idea, and, if people later found
another truth, this always happened only because they sought for
another; they only reformed the folly and put a modern dress on it.
For they did want--who would dare doubt their justification for
this?--they wanted to be "inspired by an idea." They wanted to be
dominated,--possessed, by a _thought_! The most modern ruler of this
kind is "our essence," or "man."
For all free criticism a thought was the criterion; for own criticism I
am, I the unspeakable, and so not the merely thought-of; for what is
merely thought of is always speakable, because word and thought
coincide. That is true which is mine, untrue that whose own I am; true,
_e. g._, the union; untrue, the State and society. "Free and true"
criticism takes care for the consistent dominion of a thought, an idea,
a spirit; "own" criticism, for nothing but my _self-enjoyment_. But in
this the latter is in fact--and we will not spare it this
"ignominy"!--like the bestial criticism of instinct. I, like the
criticising beast, am concerned only for _myself_, not "for the cause."
_I_ am the criterion of truth, but I am not an idea, but more than idea,
_i. e._ unutterable. _My_ criticism is not a "free" criticism, not free
from me, and not "servile," not in the service of an idea, but an _own_
criticism.
True or human criticism makes out only whether something is _suitable_
to man, to the true man; but by own criticism you ascertain whether it
is suitable to _you_.
Free criticism busies itself with _ideas_, and therefore is always
theoretical. However it may rage against ideas, it still does not get
clear of them. It pitches into the ghosts, but it can do this only as it
holds them to be ghosts. The ideas it has to do with do not fully
disappear; the morning breeze of a new day does not scare them away.
The critic may indeed come to ataraxy before ideas, but he never gets
_rid_ of them, _i. e._ he will never comprehend that above the _bodily
man_ there does not exist something higher,--to wit, liberty, his
humanity, etc. He always has a "calling" of man still left, "humanity."
And this idea of humanity remains unrealized, just because it is an
"idea" and is to remain such.
If, on the other hand, I grasp the idea as _my_ idea, then it is already
realized, because _I_ am its reality; its reality consists in the fact
that I, the bodily, have it.
They say, the idea of liberty realizes itself in the history of the
world. The reverse is the case; this idea is real as a man thinks it,
and it is real in the measure in which it is idea, _i. e._ in which I
think it or _have_ it. It is not the idea of liberty that develops
itself, but men develop themselves, and, of course, in this
self-development develop their thinking too.
In short, the critic is not yet _owner_; because he still fights with
ideas as with powerful aliens,--as the Christian is not owner of his
"bad desires" so long as he has to combat them; for him who contends
against vice, vice _exists_.
Criticism remains stuck fast in the "freedom of knowing," the freedom of
the spirit, and the spirit gains its proper freedom when it fills itself
with the pure, true idea; this is the freedom of thinking, which cannot
be without thoughts.
Criticism smites one idea only by another, _e. g._ that of privilege by
that of manhood, or that of egoism by that of unselfishness.
In general, the beginning of Christianity comes on the stage again in
its critical end, egoism being combated here as there. I am not to make
myself (the individual) count, but the idea, the general.
Why, warfare of the priesthood with _egoism_, of the spiritually-minded
with the worldly-minded, constitutes the substance of all Christian
history. In the newest criticism this war only becomes all-embracing,
fanaticism complete. Indeed, neither can it pass away till it passes
thus, after it has had its life and its rage out.
* * * * *
Whether what I think and do is Christian, what do I care? Whether it is
human, liberal, humane, whether unhuman, illiberal, inhuman, what do I
ask about that? If only it accomplishes what I want, if only I satisfy
myself in it, then overlay it with predicates as you will; it is all
alike to me.
Perhaps I too, in the very next moment, defend myself against my former
thoughts; I too am likely to change suddenly my mode of action; but not
on account of its not corresponding to Christianity, not on account of
its running counter to the eternal rights of man, not on account of its
affronting the idea of mankind, humanity, and humanitarianism,
but--because I am no longer all in it, because it no longer furnishes me
any full enjoyment, because I doubt the earlier thought or no longer
please myself in the mode of action just now practised.
As the world as property has become a _material_ with which I undertake
what I will, so the spirit too as property must sink down into a
_material_ before which I no longer entertain any sacred dread. Then,
firstly, I shall shudder no more before a thought, let it appear as
presumptuous and "devilish" as it will, because, if it threatens to
become too inconvenient and unsatisfactory for _me_, its end lies in my
power; but neither shall I recoil from any deed because there dwells in
it a spirit of godlessness, immorality, wrongfulness, as little as St.
Boniface pleased to desist, through religious scrupulousness, from
cutting down the sacred oak of the heathens. If the _things_ of the
world have once become vain, the _thoughts_ of the spirit must also
become vain.
No thought is sacred, for let no thought rank as "devotions";[237] no
feeling is sacred (no sacred feeling of friendship, mother's feelings,
etc.), no belief is sacred. They are all _alienable_, my alienable
property, and are annihilated, as they are created, by _me_.
The Christian can lose all _things_ or objects, the most loved persons,
these "objects" of his love, without giving up himself (_i. e._, in the
Christian sense, his spirit, his soul) as lost. The owner can cast from
him all the _thoughts_ that were dear to his heart and kindled his zeal,
and will likewise "gain a thousandfold again," because he, their
creator, remains.
Unconsciously and involuntarily we all strive toward ownness, and there
will hardly be one among us who has not given up a sacred feeling, a
sacred thought, a sacred belief; nay, we probably meet no one who could
not still deliver himself from one or another of his sacred thoughts.
All our contention against convictions starts from the opinion that
maybe we are capable of driving our opponent out of his intrenchments of
thought. But what I do unconsciously I half do, and therefore after
every victory over a faith I become again the _prisoner_ (possessed) of
a faith which then takes my whole self anew into its _service_, and
makes me an enthusiast for reason after I have ceased to be enthusiastic
for the Bible, or an enthusiast for the idea of humanity after I have
fought long enough for that of Christianity.
Doubtless, as owner of thoughts, I shall cover my property with my
shield, just as I do not, as owner of things, willingly let everybody
help himself to them; but at the same time I shall look forward
smilingly to the outcome of the battle, smilingly lay the shield on the
corpses of my thoughts and my faith, smilingly triumph when I am beaten.
That is the very humor of the thing. Every one who has "sublimer
feelings" is able to vent his humor on the pettinesses of men; but to
let it play with all "great thoughts, sublime feelings, noble
inspiration, and sacred faith" presupposes that I am the owner of all.
If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I
set over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are,
every moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more. Since no
defect cleaves to us, sin has no meaning either. Show me a sinner in the
world still, if no one any longer needs to do what suits a superior! If
I only need do what suits myself, I am no sinner if I do not do what
suits myself, as I do not injure in myself a "holy one"; if, on the
other hand, I am to be pious, then I must do what suits God; if I am to
act humanly, I must do what suits the essence of man, the idea of
mankind, etc. What religion calls the "sinner," humanitarianism calls
the "egoist." But, once more: if I need not do what suits any other, is
the "egoist," in whom humanitarianism has borne to itself a new-fangled
devil, anything more than a piece of nonsense? The egoist, before whom
the humane shudder, is a spook as much as the devil is: he exists only
as a bogie and phantasm in their brain. If they were not
unsophisticatedly drifting back and forth in the antediluvian opposition
of good and evil, to which they have given the modern names of "human"
and "egoistic," they would not have freshened up the hoary "sinner" into
an "egoist" either, and put a new patch on an old garment. But they
could not do otherwise, for they hold it for their task to be "men."
They are rid of the Good One; good is left![238]
We are perfect altogether, and on the whole earth there is not one man
who is a sinner! There are crazy people who imagine that they are God
the Father, God the Son, or the man in the moon, and so too the world
swarms with fools who seem to themselves to be sinners; but, as the
former are not the man in the moon, so the latter are--not sinners.
Their sin is imaginary.
Yet, it is insidiously objected, their craziness or their possessedness
is at least their sin. Their possessedness is nothing but what
they--could achieve, the result of their development, just as Luther's
faith in the Bible was all that he was--competent to make out. The one
brings himself into the madhouse with his development, the other brings
himself therewith into the Pantheon and to the loss of--Valhalla.
There is no sinner and no sinful egoism!
Get away from me with your "philanthropy"! Creep in, you philanthropist,
into the "dens of vice," linger awhile in the throng of the great city:
will you not everywhere find sin, and sin, and again sin? Will you not
wail over corrupt humanity, not lament at the monstrous egoism? Will you
see a rich man without finding him pitiless and "egoistic"? Perhaps you
already call yourself an atheist, but you remain true to the Christian
feeling that a camel will sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich
man not be an "un-man." How many do you see anyhow that you would not
throw into the "egoistic mass"? What, therefore, has your philanthropy
[love of man] found? Nothing but unlovable men! And where do they all
come from? From you, from your philanthropy! You brought the sinner with
you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore you inserted him
everywhere. Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you alone are the
creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love men, are the very one
to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into
vicious and virtuous, into men and un-men, the very one to befoul them
with the slaver of your possessedness; for you love not _men_, but
_man_. But I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have
only--dreamed of him.
Self-enjoyment is embittered to me by my thinking I must serve another,
by my fancying myself under obligation to him, by my holding myself
called to "self-sacrifice," "resignation," "enthusiasm." All right: if I
no longer serve any idea, any "higher essence," then it is clear of
itself that I no longer serve any man either, but--under all
circumstances--_myself_. But thus I am not merely in fact or in being,
but also for my consciousness, the--unique.[239]
There pertains to _you_ more than the divine, the human, etc.; _yours_
pertains to you.
Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you
have more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more.
You are then not merely _called_ to everything divine, _entitled_ to
everything human, but _owner_ of what is yours, _i. e._ of all that you
possess the force to make your own;[240] _i. e._ you are
_appropriate_[241] and capacitated for everything that is yours.
People have always supposed that they must give me a destiny lying
outside myself, so that at last they demanded that I should lay claim to
the human because I am = man. This is the Christian magic circle.
Fichte's ego too is the same essence outside me, for every one is ego;
and, if only this ego has rights, then it is "the ego," it is not I. But
I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique.
Hence my wants too are unique, and my deeds; in short, everything about
me is unique. And it is only as this unique I that I take everything for
my own, as I set myself to work, and develop myself, only as this. I do
not develop man, nor as man, but, as I, I develop--myself.
This is the meaning of the--_unique one_.