The Ego and His Own Part 5

And to get to the bottom of this _spook_, to _comprehend_ it, to discover _reality_ in it (to prove "the existence of G.o.d")--this task men set to themselves for thousands of years; with the horrible impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into a non-spook, the unreal into something real, the _spirit_ into an entire and _corporeal_ person,--with this they tormented themselves to death.

Behind the existing world they sought the "thing in itself," the essence; behind the _thing_ they sought the _un-thing_.

When one looks to the _bottom_ of anything, _i. e._ searches out its _essence_, one often discovers something quite other than what it _seems_ to be; honeyed speech and a lying heart, pompous words and beggarly thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into prominence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare _semblance_, a deception. The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it--emptiness; emptiness is == world's essence (world's doings). Now, he who is religious does not occupy himself with the deceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but looks upon the essence, and in the essence has--the truth.

The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil essences, and conversely from others the good. The essence of human feeling, _e. g._, is love; the essence of human will is the good; that of one's thinking, the true; etc.

What at first pa.s.sed for existence, such as the world and its like, appears now as bare semblance, and the _truly existent_ is much rather the essence, whose realm is filled with G.o.ds, spirits, demons, _i. e._ with good or bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless, but its essence exists, G.o.d, "who is love"; human thought may wander in error, but its essence, truth, exists; "G.o.d is truth,"--etc.

To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts.

The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize _non-sense_, has brought about a _corporeal ghost_, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition!

But there always remained the contradiction of two natures, the divine and human, _i. e._ the ghostly and sensual; there remained the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul-torturing, and no shaman, who p.r.i.c.ks himself to raving fury and nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost.

But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to light, that the veritable spirit or ghost is--man. The _corporeal_ or embodied spirit is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts _outside_ him, but at himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the _spirit of sin_; even the faintest _thought_ (and this is itself a spirit, you know) may be a _devil_, etc.--The ghost has put on a body, G.o.d has become man, but now man is himself the gruesome spook which he seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to speech; man is--_spirit_. What matter if the body wither, if only the spirit is saved? everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or "soul's" welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even a.s.signed a distinct seat in the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.).

You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher essence. Nevertheless a higher essence may be hidden in each of us, and call forth a mutual reverence. To take at once the most general, Man lives in you and me.

If I did not see Man in you, what occasion should I have to respect you?

To be sure you are not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing; but yet for the present this general and higher essence is housed in you, and you present before me (because an imperishable spirit has in you a.s.sumed a perishable body, so that really your form is only an "a.s.sumed" one) a spirit that appears, appears in you, without being bound to your body and to this particular mode of appearance,--therefore a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence, but only respect that higher essence which "walks" in you; I "respect Man in you." The ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves, and the higher essence "Man" found as yet little response. To make up for this, they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit of Man, a spirit haunting the individual,--the Spirit of the People. For this reason they revered this spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit related to it (_e. g._ the Spirit of the Family, etc.) could the individual appear significant; only for the sake of the higher essence, the People, was consideration allowed to the "member of the people." As you are hallowed to us by "Man" who haunts you, so at every time men have been hallowed by some higher essence or other, like People, Family, and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honored from of old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a hallowed, _i. e._, protected and recognized person. If I cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, _i. e._ an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with _your_ essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is unique[28]

like you yourself, because it is you.

But it is not only man that, "haunts"; so does everything. The higher essence, the spirit, that walks in everything, is at the same time bound to nothing, and only--"appears" in it. Ghosts in every corner!

Here would be the place to pa.s.s the haunting spirits in review, if they were not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before egoism. Hence let only a few of them be particularized by way of example, in order to bring us at once to our att.i.tude toward them.

Sacred above all, _e. g._, is the "holy Spirit," sacred the truth, sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage, the common good, order, the fatherland, etc.

WHEELS IN THE HEAD.

Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of G.o.ds that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea!

Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (_e. g._) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of--lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pa.s.s, that morality may be kept pure; etc.,--are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of (_e. g._) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a s.p.a.ce? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. For these great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point too,--that they a.s.sail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools. "Thou shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost--etc." But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is G.o.d the Father, Emperor of j.a.pan, the Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circ.u.mstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man, etc.,--both these are one and the same "fixed idea." He who has never tried and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is _possessed_ and prepossessed[29] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized only _inside_ the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books _inside_ the papist superst.i.tion, without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a _zoon politicon_,--so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them--lays hands on the _sacred_! Yes, the "fixed idea," that is the truly sacred!

Is it perchance only people possessed by the devil that meet us, or do we as often come upon people _possessed_ in the contrary way,--possessed by "the good," by virtue, morality, the law, or some "principle" or other? Possessions of the devil are not the only ones. G.o.d works on us, and the devil does; the former "workings of grace," the latter "workings of the devil." Possessed[30] people are _set_[31] in their opinions.

If the word "possession" displeases you, then call it prepossession; yes, since the spirit possesses you, and all "inspirations" come from it, call it--inspiration and enthusiasm. I add that complete enthusiasm--for we cannot stop with the sluggish, half-way kind--is called fanaticism.

It is precisely among cultured people that _fanaticism_ is at home; for man is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things, and interest in spiritual things, when it is alive, is and must be _fanaticism_; it is a fanatical interest in the sacred (_fanum_).

Observe our liberals, look into the _Saechsischen Vaterlandsblaetter_, hear what Schlosser says:[32] "Holbach's company const.i.tuted a regular plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system, and its members were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists, missionary and Bible societies, commonly are for mechanical wors.h.i.+p and orthodoxy."

Take notice how a "moral man" behaves, who to-day often thinks he is through with G.o.d and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one's being allowed to touch his sister as wife also, etc. And whence this shudder? Because he _believes_ in those moral commandments. This moral _faith_ is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he rages against the _pious_ Christians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian,--to wit, a _moral_ Christian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under _faith_. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a _criminal_; he who commits incest suffers as a _criminal_. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a _dogma of faith_? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a _hero of faith_ too, not less than Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State; for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than _their faith_ will allow. The brand of "crime" is stamped upon him, and he may languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith! They call that "liberty of faith" then, when brother and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with their "conscience," are thrown into prison. "But they set a pernicious example." Yes, indeed: others might have taken the notion that the State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon "purity of morals" would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of faith are zealous for the "sacred G.o.d," the moral ones for the "sacred good."

Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other. How the strictly orthodox or old-style believers differ from the fighters for "truth, light, and justice," from the Philalethes, the Friends of Light, the Rationalists, etc. And yet, how utterly unessential is this difference! If one buffets single traditional truths (_e. g._ miracles, unlimited power of princes, etc.), then the rationalists buffet them too, and only the old-style believers wail.

But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has both, as _believers_, for opponents. So with moralities; the strict believers are relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant. But he who attacks morality itself gets both to deal with. "Truth, morality, justice, light, etc.," are to be and remain "sacred." What any one finds to censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be "unchristian" according to the view of these rationalists; but Christianity must remain a fixture, to buffet it is outrageous, "an outrage." To be sure, the heretic against pure faith no longer exposes himself to the earlier fury of persecution, but so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic against pure morals.

Piety has for a century received so many blows, and had to hear its superhuman essence reviled as an "inhuman" one so often, that one cannot feel tempted to draw the sword against it again. And yet it has almost always been only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena, to a.s.sail the supreme essence in favor of--another supreme essence. So Proudhon, unabashed, says:[33] "Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. Who would dare to-day to attack morality?" Moral people skimmed off the best fat from religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid of the resulting scrofula. If, therefore, we point out that religion has not by any means been hurt in its inmost part so long as people reproach it only with its superhuman essence, and that it takes its final appeal to the "spirit" alone (for G.o.d is spirit), then we have sufficiently indicated its final accord with morality, and can leave its stubborn conflict with the latter lying behind us. It is a question of a supreme essence with both, and whether this is a superhuman or a human one can make (since it is in any case an essence over me, a super-mine one, so to speak) but little difference to me. In the end the relation to the human essence, or to "Man," as soon as ever it has shed the snake-skin of the old religion, will yet wear a religious snake-skin again.

So Feuerbach instructs us that, "if one only _inverts_ speculative philosophy, _i. e._ always makes the predicate the subject, and so makes the subject the object and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure and clean."[34] Herewith, to be sure, we lose the narrow religious standpoint, lose the _G.o.d_, who from this standpoint is subject; but we take in exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint, the _moral_ standpoint. _E. g._, we no longer say "G.o.d is love," but "Love is divine." If we further put in place of the predicate "divine" the equivalent "sacred," then, as far as concerns the sense, all the old comes back again. According to this, love is to be the _good_ in man, his divineness, that which does him honor, his true _humanity_ (it "makes him Man for the first time," makes for the first time a man out of him). So then it would be more accurately worded thus: Love is what is _human_ in man, and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist. But precisely all that which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy (_i. e._ theology) offers as the good, the absolute, is to self-owners.h.i.+p simply not the good (or, what means the same, it is _only the good_). Consequently, by the transformation of the predicate into the subject, the Christian _essence_ (and it is the predicate that contains the essence, you know) would only be fixed yet more oppressively. G.o.d and the divine would entwine themselves all the more inextricably with me. To expel G.o.d from his heaven and to rob him of his "_transcendence_" cannot yet support a claim of complete victory, if therein he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with indelible _immanence_. Now they say, "The divine is the truly human!"

The same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the State, _i. e._ oppose the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating that morality is "the fundamental pillar of social life and of the State." As if the dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of the sacred, a "hierarchy."

So we may here mention by the way that rationalist movement which, after theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping religious truths, that only to believers did G.o.d reveal himself, etc., and that therefore only the heart, the feelings, the believing fancy was religious, broke out with the a.s.sertion that the "natural understanding," human reason, was also capable of discerning G.o.d. What does that mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same visionary as the fancy?[35] In this sense Reimarus wrote his "Most Notable Truths of Natural Religion." It had to come to this,--that the _whole_ man with all his faculties was found to be _religious_; heart and affections, understanding and reason, feeling, knowledge, and will,--in short, everything in man,--appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even philosophy is religious. And what is not called religion to-day? The "religion of love," the "religion of freedom," "political religion,"--in short, every enthusiasm. So it is, too, in fact.

To this day we use the Romance word "religion," which expresses the concept of a condition of being _bound_. To be sure, we remain bound, so far as religion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the mind also bound? On the contrary, that is free, is sole lord, is not our mind, but absolute. Therefore the correct affirmative translation of the word religion would be "_freedom of mind_"! In whomsoever the mind is free, he is religious in just the same way as he in whom the senses have free course is called a sensual man. The mind binds the former, the desires the latter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or _religio_ with reference to me,--I am bound; it is freedom with reference to the mind,--the mind is free, or has freedom of mind. Many know from experience how hard it is on _us_ when the desires run away with us, free and unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellectuality, enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however this jewel may in the most various phrase be named, brings _us_ into yet more grievous straits than even the wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can they perceive it without being consciously egoists.

Reimarus, and all who have shown that our reason, our heart, etc., also lead to G.o.d, have therewithal shown that we are possessed through and through. To be sure, they vexed the theologians, from whom they took away the prerogative of religious exaltation; but for religion, for freedom of mind, they thereby only conquered yet more ground. For, when the mind is no longer limited to feeling or faith, but also, as understanding, reason, and thought in general, belongs to itself the mind,--when, therefore, it may take part in the spiritual[36] and heavenly truths in the form of understanding, etc., as well as in its other forms,--then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual things, _i. e._ with itself, and is therefore free. Now we are so through-and-through religious that "jurors," _i. e._ "sworn men,"

condemn us to death, and every policeman, as a good Christian, takes us to the lock-up by virtue of an "oath of office."

Morality could not come into opposition with piety till after the time when in general the boisterous hate of everything that looked like an "order" (decrees, commandments, etc.) spoke out in revolt, and the personal "absolute lord" was scoffed at and persecuted; consequently it could arrive at independence only through liberalism, whose first form acquired significance in the world's history as "citizens.h.i.+p," and weakened the specifically religious powers (see "Liberalism" below).

For, when morality not merely goes alongside of piety, but stands on feet of its own, then its principle lies no longer in the divine commandments, but in the law of reason, from which the commandments, so far as they are still to remain valid, must first await justification for their validity. In the law of reason man determines himself out of himself, for "Man" is rational, and out of the "essence of Man" those laws follow of necessity. Piety and morality part company in this,--that the former makes G.o.d the lawgiver, the latter Man.

From a certain standpoint of morality people reason about as follows: Either man is led by his sensuality, and is, following it, _immoral_, or he is led by the good which, taken up into the will, is called moral sentiment (sentiment and prepossession in favor of the good); then he shows himself _moral_. From this point of view how, _e. g._, can Sand's act against Kotzebue be called immoral? What is commonly understood by unselfish it certainly was, in the same measure as (among other things) St. Crispin's thieveries in favor of the poor. "He should not have murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not murder!" Then to serve the good, the welfare of the people, as Sand at least intended, or the welfare of the poor, like Crispin,--is moral; but murder and theft are immoral; the purpose moral, the means immoral. Why? "Because murder, a.s.sa.s.sination, is something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas enticed the enemies of the country into ravines and shot them down unseen from the bushes, do you suppose that was not a.s.sa.s.sination? According to the principle of morality, which commands us to serve the good, you could really ask only whether murder could never in any case be a realization of the good, and would have to endorse that murder which realized the good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at all; it was moral, because in the service of the good, because unselfish; it was an act of punishment, which the individual inflicted, an--_execution_ inflicted at the risk of the executioner's life. What else had his scheme been, after all, but that he wanted to suppress writings by brute force? Are you not acquainted with the same procedure as a "legal" and sanctioned one? And what can be objected against it from your principle of morality?--"But it was an illegal execution." So the immoral thing in it was the illegality, the disobedience to law? Then you admit that the good is nothing else than--law, morality nothing else than _loyalty_. And to this externality of "loyalty" your morality must sink, to this righteousness of works in the fulfilment of the law, only that the latter is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than the old-time righteousness of works. For in the latter only the _act_ is needed, but you require the _disposition_ too; one must carry _in himself_ the law, the statute; and he who is most legally disposed is the most moral. Even the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life must perish in this Protestant legality. Here at last the domination of the law is for the first time complete. "Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus I have really come so far as to be only the "vessel of its glory." "Every Prussian carries his _gendarme_ in his breast," says a high Prussian officer.

Why do certain _opposition parties_ fail to flourish? Solely for the reason that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality.

Hence the measureless hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc., from whose repulsiveness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at this rotten and hypocritical relation of a "lawful opposition."--In the _moral_ relation of love and fidelity divided or opposed will cannot have place; the beautiful relation is disturbed if the one wills this and the other the reverse. But now, according to the practice hitherto and the old prejudice of the opposition, the moral relation is to be preserved above all. What is then left to the opposition? Perhaps the will to have a liberty, if the beloved one sees fit to deny it? Not a bit! It may not _will_ to have the freedom, it can only _wish_ for it, "pet.i.tion" for it, lisp a "Please, please!" What would come of it, if the opposition really _willed_, willed with the full energy of the will? No, it must renounce _will_ in order to live to _love_, renounce liberty--for love of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only to "beg as a favor." Love, devotion, etc., demand with undeviating definiteness that there be only one will to which the others devote themselves, which they serve, follow, love. Whether this will is regarded as reasonable or as unreasonable, in both cases one acts morally when one follows it, and immorally when one breaks away from it.

The will that commands the censors.h.i.+p seems to many unreasonable; but he who in a land of censors.h.i.+p evades the censoring of his book acts immorally, and he who submits it to the censors.h.i.+p acts morally. If some one let his moral judgment go, and set up _e. g._ a secret press, one would have to call him immoral, and imprudent into the bargain if he let himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a value in the eyes of the "moral"? Perhaps!--That is, if he fancied he was serving a "higher morality."

The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve _morality_ without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of _halfness_, catches only miserable, stupid flies. If one has once dared to make a "free" motion, immediately one waters it again with a.s.surances of love, and--_shams resignation_; if, on the other side, they have had the face to reject the free motion with _moral_ appeals to confidence, etc., immediately the moral courage also sinks, and they a.s.sure one how they hear the free words with special pleasure, etc.; they--_sham approval_. In short, people would like to have the one, but not go without the other; they would like to have a _free will_, but not for their lives lack the _moral will_. Just come in contact with a servile loyalist, you Liberals. You will sweeten every word of freedom with a look of the most loyal confidence, and he will clothe his servilism in the most flattering phrases of freedom. Then you go apart, and he, like you, thinks "I know you, fox!" He scents the devil in you as much as you do the dark old Lord G.o.d in him.

A Nero is a "bad" man only in the eyes of the "good"; in mine he is nothing but a _possessed_ man, as are the good too. The good see in him an arch-villain, and relegate him to h.e.l.l. Why did nothing hinder him in his arbitrary course? Why did people put up with so much? Do you suppose the tame Romans, who let all their will be bound by such a tyrant, were a hair the better? In old Rome they would have put him to death instantly, would never have been his slaves. But the contemporary "good"

among the Romans opposed to him only moral demands, not their _will_; they sighed that their emperor did not do homage to morality, like them; they themselves remained "moral subjects," till at last one found courage to give up "moral, obedient subjection." And then the same "good Romans" who, as "obedient subjects," had borne all the ignominy of having no will, hurrahed over the nefarious, immoral act of the rebel.

Where then in the "good" was the courage for the _revolution_, that courage which they now praised, after another had mustered it up? The good could not have this courage, for a revolution, and an insurrection into the bargain, is always something "immoral," which one can resolve upon only when one ceases to be "good" and becomes either "bad"

or--neither of the two. Nero was no viler than his time, in which one could only be one of the two, good or bad. The judgment of his time on him had to be that he was bad, and this in the highest degree: not a milksop, but an arch-scoundrel. All moral people can p.r.o.nounce only this judgment on him. Rascals such as he was are still living here and there to-day (see _e. g._ the Memoirs of Ritter von Lang) in the midst of the moral. It is not convenient to live among them certainly, as one is not sure of his life for a moment; but can you say that it is more convenient to live among the moral? One is just as little sure of his life there, only that one is hanged "in the way of justice," but least of all is one sure of his honor, and the national c.o.c.kade is gone before you can say Jack Robinson. The hard fist of morality treats the n.o.ble nature of egoism altogether without compa.s.sion.

"But surely one cannot put a rascal and an honest man on the same level!" Now, no human being does that oftener than you judges of morals; yes, still more than that, you imprison as a criminal an honest man who speaks openly against the existing const.i.tution, against the hallowed inst.i.tutions, etc., and you entrust portfolios and still more important things to a crafty rascal. So _in praxi_ you have nothing to reproach me with. "But in theory!" Now there I do put both on the same level, as two opposite poles,--to wit, both on the level of the moral law. Both have meaning only in the "moral" world, just as in the pre-Christian time a Jew who kept the law and one who broke it had meaning and significance only in respect to the Jewish law; before Jesus Christ, on the contrary, the Pharisee was no more than the "sinner and publican." So before self-owners.h.i.+p the moral Pharisee amounts to as much as the immoral sinner.

Nero became very inconvenient by his possessedness. But a self-owning man would not sillily oppose to him the "sacred," and whine if the tyrant does not regard the sacred; he would oppose to him his will. How often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been held up to their foes, and some liberty or other shown and demonstrated to be a "sacred right of man"! Those who do that deserve to be laughed out of court--as they actually are,--were it not that in truth they do, even though unconsciously, take the road that leads to the goal. They have a presentiment that, if only the majority is once won for that liberty, it will also will the liberty, and will then take what it _will_ have. The sacredness of the liberty, and all possible proofs of this sacredness, will never procure it; lamenting and pet.i.tioning only shows beggars.

The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he knows no other enemy than the "immoral" man. "He who is not moral is immoral!" and accordingly reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore the moral man can never comprehend the egoist. Is not unwedded cohabitation an immorality? The moral man may turn as he pleases, he will have to stand by this verdict; Emilia Galotti gave up her life for this moral truth. And it is true, it is an immorality. A virtuous girl may become an old maid; a virtuous man may pa.s.s the time in fighting his natural impulses till he has perhaps dulled them, he may castrate himself for the sake of virtue as St.

Origen did for the sake of heaven: he thereby honors sacred wedlock, sacred chast.i.ty, as inviolable; he is--moral. Unchast.i.ty can never become a moral act. However indulgently the moral man may judge and excuse him who committed it, it remains a transgression, a sin against a moral commandment; there clings to it an indelible stain. As chast.i.ty once belonged to the monastic vow, so it does to moral conduct. Chast.i.ty is a--good.--For the egoist, on the contrary, even chast.i.ty is not a good without which he could not get along; he cares nothing at all about it. What now follows from this for the judgment of the moral man? This: that he throws the egoist into the only cla.s.s of men that he knows besides moral men, into that of the--immoral. He cannot do otherwise; he must find the egoist immoral in everything in which the egoist disregards morality. If he did not find him so, then he would already have become an apostate from morality without confessing it to himself, he would already no longer be a truly moral man. One should not let himself be led astray by such phenomena, which at the present day are certainly no longer to be cla.s.sed as rare, but should reflect that he who yields any point of morality can as little be counted among the truly moral as Lessing was a pious Christian when, in the well-known parable, he compared the Christian religion, as well as the Mohammedan and Jewish, to a "counterfeit ring." Often people are already further than they venture to confess to themselves. For Socrates, because in culture he stood on the level of morality, it would have been an immorality if he had been willing to follow Crito's seductive incitement and escape from the dungeon; to remain was the only moral thing. But it was solely because Socrates was--a moral man. The "unprincipled, sacrilegious" men of the Revolution, on the contrary, had sworn fidelity to Louis XVI, and decreed his deposition, yes, his death; but the act was an immoral one, at which moral persons will be horrified to all eternity.

Yet all this applies, more or less, only to "civic morality," on which the freer look down with contempt. For it (like civism, its native ground, in general) is still too little removed and free from the religious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws without criticism or further consideration to its domain instead of producing independent doctrines of its own. Morality cuts a quite different figure when it arrives at the consciousness of its dignity, and raises its principle, the essence of man, or "Man," to be the only regulative power. Those who have worked their way through to such a decided consciousness break entirely with religion, whose G.o.d no longer finds any place alongside their "Man," and, as they (see below) themselves scuttle the s.h.i.+p of State, so too they crumble away that "morality" which flourishes only in the State, and logically have no right to use even its name any further.

For what this "critical" party calls morality is very positively distinguished from the so-called "civic or political morality," and must appear to the citizen like an "insensate and unbridled liberty."

But at bottom it has only the advantage of the "purity of the principle," which, freed from its defilement with the religious, has now reached universal power in its clarified definiteness as "humanity."

Therefore one should not wonder that the name "morality" is retained along with others, like freedom, benevolence, self-consciousness, etc., and is only garnished now and then with the addition, a "free"

morality,--just as, though the civic State is abused, yet the State is to arise again as a "free State," or, if not even so, yet as a "free society."

Because this morality completed into humanity has fully settled its accounts with the religion out of which it historically came forth, nothing hinders it from becoming a religion on its own account. For a distinction prevails between religion and morality only so long as our dealings with the world of men are regulated and hallowed by our relation to a superhuman being, or so long as our doing is a doing "for G.o.d's sake." If, on the other hand, it comes to the point that "man is to man the supreme being," then that distinction vanishes, and morality, being removed from its subordinate position, is completed into--religion. For then the higher being who had hitherto been subordinated to the highest, Man, has ascended to absolute height, and we are related to him as one is related to the highest being, _i. e._ religiously. Morality and piety are now as synonymous as in the beginning of Christianity, and it is only because the supreme being has come to be a different one that a holy walk is no longer called a "holy" one, but a "human" one. If morality has conquered, then a complete--_change of masters_ has taken place.

After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the supposedly safe harbor of _love_. "The first and highest law must be the love of man to man. _h.o.m.o homini Deus est_--this is the supreme practical maxim, this the turning point of the world's history."[37]

But, properly speaking, only the G.o.d is changed,--the _deus_; love has remained: there love to the superhuman G.o.d, here love to the human G.o.d, to _h.o.m.o_ as _Deus_. Therefore man is to me--sacred. And everything "truly human" is to me--sacred! "Marriage is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral relations. Friends.h.i.+p is and must be _sacred_ for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in and of itself_."[38] Haven't we the priest again there? Who is his G.o.d?

Man with a great M! What is the divine? The human! Then the predicate has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the sentence "G.o.d is love," they say "love is divine"; instead of "G.o.d has become man," "Man has become G.o.d," etc. It is nothing more or less than a new--_religion_. "All moral relations are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where of themselves (without religious consecration by the priest's blessing) they are counted _religious_." Feuerbach's proposition, "Theology is anthropology," means only "religion must be ethics, ethics alone is religion."

Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a transposition of subject and predicate, a giving of preference to the latter. But, since he himself says, "Love is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred through being a predicate of G.o.d, but it is a predicate of G.o.d because it is divine in and of itself," he might judge that the fight against the predicates themselves, against love and all sanct.i.ties, must be commenced. How could he hope to turn men away from G.o.d when he left them the divine? And if, as Feuerbach says, G.o.d himself has never been the main thing to them, but only his predicates, then he might have gone on leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the real kernel, was left at any rate. He recognizes, too, that with him it is "only a matter of annihilating an illusion";[39] he thinks, however, that the effect of the illusion on men is "downright ruinous, since even love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves man[40] only for G.o.d's sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth G.o.d only." Is this different with moral love? Does it love the man, _this_ man for _this_ man's sake, or for morality's sake, for _Man's_ sake, and so--for _h.o.m.o homini Deus_--for G.o.d's sake?