The Ego and His Own Part 19

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 s.h.i.+ne 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 succ.u.mb) 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" G.o.d's word; what would they have to wrest if it were not for the "established" Word of G.o.d? 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 a.s.sert 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, const.i.tutions, 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 const.i.tution, a beautiful, const.i.tutional 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 ap.r.o.n-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 mult.i.tudes 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 aeschylus, 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-a.s.sertion; 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 inst.i.tution 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 const.i.tution, 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 c.o.c.k-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 const.i.tute 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 a.s.sociates 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 companions.h.i.+p (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 s.p.a.ce only, but a s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.s; 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 companions.h.i.+p, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 sons.h.i.+p 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 una.s.sailable truth. In a word:--If the family is sacred, then n.o.body 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 pa.s.sion. 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion, their wilfulness, higher than the bond of the family.

But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less pa.s.sionate 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 superst.i.tion 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 sanct.i.ty as soon as it comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict, the State lets pa.s.s 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. 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 const.i.tutional 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.