He in whose head or heart or both the _State_ is seated, he who is possessed by the State, or the _believer in the State_, is a politician, and remains such to all eternity.
"The State is the most necessary means for the complete development of mankind." It assuredly has been so as long as we wanted to develop mankind; but, if we want to develop ourselves, it can be to us only a means of hindrance.
Can State and people still be reformed and bettered now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church, etc.: they can be abrogated, annihilated, done away with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense into sense by reforming it, or must I drop it outright?
Henceforth what is to be done is no longer about the _State_ (the form of the State, etc.), but about me. With this all questions about the prince's power, the constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my _creations_ from myself.
To the chapter of society belongs also "the party," whose praise has of late been sung.
In the State the _party_ is current. "Party, party, who should not join one!" But the individual is _unique_,[168] not a member of the party. He unites freely, and separates freely again. The party is nothing but a State in the State, and in this smaller bee-State "peace" is also to rule just as in the greater. The very people who cry loudest that there must be an _opposition_ in the State inveigh against every discord in the party. A proof that they too want only a--State. All parties are shattered not against the State, but against the ego.[169] One hears nothing oftener now than the admonition to remain true to his party; party men despise nothing so much as a mugwump. One must run with his party through thick and thin, and unconditionally approve and represent its chief principles. It does not indeed go quite so badly here as with closed societies, because these bind their members to fixed laws or statutes (_e. g._ the orders, the Society of Jesus, etc.). But yet the party ceases to be a union at the same moment at which it makes certain principles _binding_ and wants to have them assured against attacks; but this moment is the very birth-act of the party. As party it is already a _born society_, a dead union, an idea that has become fixed. As party of absolutism it cannot will that its members should doubt the irrefragable truth of this principle; they could cherish this doubt only if they were egoistic enough to want still to be something outside their party, _i. e._ non-partisans. Non-partisan they cannot be as party-men, but only as egoists. If you are a Protestant and belong to that party, you must only justify Protestantism, at most "purge" it, not reject it; if you are a Christian and belong among men to the Christian party, you cannot go beyond this as a member of this party, but only when your egoism, _i. e._ non-partisanship, impels you to it. What exertions the Christians, down to Hegel and the Communists, have put forth to make their party strong! they stuck to it that Christianity must contain the eternal truth, and that one needs only to get at it, make sure of it, and justify it.
In short, the party cannot bear non-partisanship, and it is in this that egoism appears. What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who _unite_ with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.
He who passes over from one party to another is at once abused as a "turncoat." Certainly _morality_ demands that one stand by his party, and to become apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of "faithlessness"; but ownness knows no commandment of "faithfulness, adhesion, etc.," ownness permits everything, even apostasy, defection. Unconsciously even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this principle when they have to judge one who passes over to _their_ party,--nay, they are likely to be making proselytes; they should only at the same time acquire a consciousness of the fact that one must commit _immoral_ actions in order to commit his own,--_i. e._ here, that one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order to determine himself instead of being determined by moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in equivocal colors, and will not easily obtain their confidence; for there sticks to him the taint of "faithlessness," _i. e._ of an immorality. In the lower man this view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall here too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment, and the contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of morality does not, on account of the confusion of their concepts, come clearly to their consciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate immoral downright, because they themselves entice to apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, etc.; still, they cannot give up the standpoint of morality either. And yet here the occasion was to be seized to step outside of morality.
Are the Own or Unique[170] perchance a party? How could they be _own_ if they were such as _belonged_ to a party?
Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and entering their circle one forms a _union_ with them that lasts as long as party and I pursue one and the same goal. But to-day I still share the party's tendency, and by to-morrow I can do so no longer and I become "untrue" to it. The party has nothing _binding_ (obligatory) for me, and I do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, I become its foe.
In every party that cares for itself and its persistence, the members are unfree (or better, unown) in that degree, they lack egoism in that degree, in which they serve this desire of the party. The independence of the party conditions the lack of independence in the party-members.
A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never do without a _confession of faith_. For those who belong to the party must _believe_ in its principle, it must not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, it must be the certain, indubitable thing for the party-member. That is: One must belong to a party body and soul, else one is not truly a party-man, but more or less--an egoist. Harbor a doubt of Christianity, and you are already no longer a true Christian, you have lifted yourself to the "effrontery" of putting a question beyond it and haling Christianity before your egoistic judgment-seat. You have--_sinned_ against Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not _e. g._ a cause for the Jews, another party). But well for you if you do not let yourself be affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness.
So then an egoist could never embrace a party or take up with a party? Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself be embraced and taken up by the party. For him the party remains all the time nothing but a _gathering_: he is one of the party, he takes part.
* * * * * The best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens, and the more the devoted mind for _legality_ is lost, so much the more will the State, this system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished in force and quality. With the "good citizens" the good State too perishes and dissolves into anarchy and lawlessness. "Respect for the law!" By this cement the total of the State is held together. "The law is _sacred_, and he who affronts it a _criminal_." Without crime no State: the moral world--and this the State is--is crammed full of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is the "lordship of law," its hierarchy, it follows that the egoist, in all cases where _his_ advantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself only by crime.
The State cannot give up the claim that its _laws_ and ordinances are _sacred_.[171] At this the individual ranks as the _unholy_[172] (barbarian, natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly as he was once regarded by the Church; before the individual the State takes on the nimbus of a saint.[173] Thus it issues a law against dueling. Two men who are both at one in this, that they are willing to stake their life for a cause (no matter what), are not to be allowed this, because the State will not have it: it imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? It is at once quite another situation if, as _e. g._ in North America, society determines to let the duelists bear certain evil _consequences_ of their act, _e. g._ withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for this or that reason, the man who is hit cannot therefore complain of encroachment on his liberty: the society is simply availing itself of its own liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a _crime_. The duel is no crime there, but only an act against which the society adopts counter-measures, resolves on a _defence_. The State, on the contrary, stamps the duel as a crime, _i. e._ as an injury to its sacred law: it makes it a _criminal case_. The society leaves it to the individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes his free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse way, denying all right to the individual's decision and, instead, ascribing the sole right to its own decision, the law of the State, so that he who transgresses the State's commandment is looked upon as if he were acting against God's commandment,--a view which likewise was once maintained by the Church. Here God is the Holy in and of himself, and the commandments of the Church, as of the State, are the commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to the world through his anointed and Lords-by-the-Grace-of-God. If the Church had _deadly sins_, the State has _capital crimes_; if the one had _heretics_, the other has _traitors_; the one _ecclesiastical penalties_, the other _criminal penalties_; the one _inquisitorial_ processes, the other _fiscal_; in short, there sins, here crimes, there sinners, here criminals, there inquisition and here--inquisition. Will the sanctity of the State not fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its "subjects," will this remain? Will the "saint's" face not be stripped of its adornment?
What a folly, to ask of the State's authority that it should enter into an honorable fight with the individual, and, as they express themselves in the matter of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If the State, this thought, is to be a _de facto_ power, it simply must be a superior power against the individual. The State is "sacred" and must not expose itself to the "impudent attacks" of individuals. If the State is _sacred_, there must be censorship. The political liberals admit the former and dispute the inference. But in any case they concede repressive measures to it, for--they stick to this, that State is _more_ than the individual and exercises a justified revenge, called punishment.
_Punishment_ has a meaning only when it is to afford expiation for the injuring of a _sacred_ thing. If something is sacred to any one, he certainly deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who lets a man's life continue in existence _because_ to him it is sacred and he has a _dread_ of touching it is simply a--_religious_ man.
Weitling lays crime at the door of "social disorder," and lives in the expectation that under Communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible, because the temptations to them, _e. g._ money, fall away. As, however, his organized society is also exalted into a sacred and inviolable one, he miscalculates in that good-hearted opinion. Such as with their mouth professed allegiance to the Communistic society, but worked underhand for its ruin, would not be lacking. Besides, Weitling has to keep on with "curative means against the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses," and "curative means" always announce to begin with that individuals will be looked upon as "called" to a particular "salvation" and hence treated according to the requirements of this "human calling." _Curative means_ or _healing_ is only the reverse side of _punishment_, the _theory of cure_ runs parallel with the _theory of punishment_; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former takes it for a sin of the man _against himself_, as a decadence from his health. But the correct thing is that I regard it either as an action that _suits me_ or as one that _does not suit me_, as hostile or friendly to _me_, _i. e._ that I treat it as my _property_, which I cherish or demolish. "Crime" or "disease" are not either of them an _egoistic_ view of the matter, _i. e._ a judgment _starting from me_, but starting from _another_,--to wit, whether it injures _right_, general right, or the _health_ partly of the individual (the sick one), partly of the generality (_society_). "Crime" is treated inexorably, "disease" with "loving gentleness, compassion," and the like.
Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred vanishes, punishment must not less be drawn into its fall; for it too has significance only over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical punishments have been abolished. Why? Because how one behaves toward the "holy God" is his own affair. But, as this one punishment, _ecclesiastical punishment_, has fallen, so all _punishments_ must fall. As sin against the so-called God is a man's own affair, so that against every kind of the so-called sacred. According to our theories of penal law, with whose "improvement in conformity to the times" people are tormenting themselves in vain, they want to _punish_ men for this or that "inhumanity"; and therein they make the silliness of these theories especially plain by their consistency, hanging the little thieves and letting the big ones run. For injury to property they have the house of correction, and for "violence to thought," suppression of "natural rights of man," only--representations and petitions.
The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred, and perishes of itself if punishment is given up. Now they want to create everywhere a new penal law, without indulging in a misgiving about punishment itself. But it is exactly punishment that must make room for satisfaction, which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at procuring _us_ a satisfactory outcome. If one does to us what we _will not put up with_, we break his power and bring our own to bear: we satisfy _ourselves_ on him, and do not fall into the folly of wanting to satisfy right (the spook). It is not the _sacred_ that is to defend itself against man, but man against man; as _God_ too, you know, no longer defends himself against man, God to whom formerly (and in part, indeed, even now) all the "servants of God" offered their hands to punish the blasphemer, as they still at this very day lend their hands to the sacred. This devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also that, without lively participation of one's own, one only delivers misdoers into the hands of the police and courts: a non-participating making over to the authorities, "who, of course, will best administer sacred matters." The people is quite crazy for hounding the police on against everything that seems to it to be immoral, often only unseemly, and this popular rage for the moral protects the police institution more than the government could in any way protect it.
In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud--_crime_, does it not rumble in distant thunders, and do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?
* * * * * He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family, party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society" or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves _mankind_."
_People_ is the name of the body, _State_ of the spirit, of that _ruling person_ that has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure peoples and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general reason"; but servitude would only become still more intense with this widening, and philanthropists and humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians and diplomats.
Modern critics inveigh against religion because it sets God, the divine, moral, etc., _outside_ of man, or makes them something objective, in opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects _into_ man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error of religion, to give man a "destiny," in that they too want to have him divine, human, and the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are his essence. And, like religion, politics too wanted to "_educate_" man, to bring him to the realization of his "essence," his "destiny," to _make_ something out of him,--to wit, a "true man," the one in the form of the "true believer," the other in that of the "true citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether one calls the destiny the divine or human.
Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of _should_: he _should_ become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate, this commandment, every one steps not only in front of another but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new _religion_, to set up a new absolute, an ideal,--to wit, freedom. Men _should_ be free. Then there might even arise _missionaries_ of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction that all were properly destined to become Christians, sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) constitute itself as a new _community_ and carry on a like "propaganda" therefrom. Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together; but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old _care_ for us, of culture directed toward an end,--in short, the principle of _making something_ out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and men.
One may well say with Feuerbach and others that religion has displaced the human from man, and has transferred it so into another world that, unattainable, it went on with its own existence there as something personal in itself, as a "God": but the error of religion is by no means exhausted with this. One might very well let fall the personality of the displaced human, might transform God into the divine, and still remain religious. For the religious consists in discontent with the _present_ man, _i. e._ in the setting up of a "perfection" to be striven for, in "man wrestling for his completion."[174] ("Ye therefore _should_ be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5. 48): it consists in the fixation of an _ideal_, an absolute. Perfection is the "supreme good," the _finis bonorum_; every one's ideal is the perfect man, the true, the free man, etc.
The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of the "free man." If one could find it, there would be a new--religion, because a new ideal; there would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a new deity, a new contrition.
With the ideal of "absolute liberty," the same turmoil is made as with everything absolute, and according to Hess, _e. g._, it is said to "be realizable in absolute human society."[175] Nay, this realization is immediately afterward styled a "vocation"; just so he then defines liberty as "morality": the kingdom of "justice" (_i. e._ equality) and "morality" (_i. e._ liberty) is to begin, etc.
Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, family, nation, etc., rank high, is--nothing but "puffed up" over the merit of his fellows; but blinded too is he who wants only to be "man." Neither of them puts his worth in _exclusiveness_, but in _connectedness_, or in the "tie" that conjoins him with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of humanity.
Through the "Nationals" of to-day the conflict has again been stirred up between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the special ties of blood.
If we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit, and take it for consciousness alone, there is found to be a vast difference between pride in "belonging to" a nation and therefore being its property, and that in calling a nationality one's property. Nationality is my quality, but the nation my owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength, you can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has you, then it pricks you everywhere, and at the most unsuitable place, to show its strength: you can give nobody your hand without squeezing his.
The perception that one is more than a member of the family, more than a fellow of the tribe, more than an individual of the people, etc., has finally led to saying, one is more than all this because one is man, or, the man is more than the Jew, German, etc. "Therefore be every one wholly and solely--man!" Could one not rather say: Because we are more than what has been stated, therefore we will be this, as well as that "more" also? Man and German, then, man and Guelph, etc.? The Nationals are in the right; one cannot deny his nationality: and the humanitarians are in the right; one must not remain in the narrowness of the national. In _uniqueness_[176] the contradiction is solved; the national is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality,--as the human too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first through my uniqueness.
History seeks for Man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious _essence_, as the divine, first as _God_, then as _Man_ (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one.
I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do nothing for the good of another humanity. Fool, you who are a unique humanity, that you make a merit of wanting to live for another than you are.
The hitherto-considered relation of me to the _world of men_ offers such a wealth of phenomena that it will have to be taken up again and again on other occasions, but here, where it was only to have its chief outlines made clear to the eye, it must be broken off to make place for an apprehension of two other sides toward which it radiates. For, as I find myself in relation not merely to men so far as they present in themselves the concept "man" or are children of men (children of _Man_, as children of God are spoken of), but also to that which they have of man and call their own, and as therefore I relate myself not only to that which they _are_ through man, but also to their human _possessions_: so, besides the world of men, the world of the senses and of ideas will have to be included in our survey, and somewhat said of what men call their own of sensuous goods, and of spiritual as well.
According as one had developed and clearly grasped the concept of man, he gave it to us to respect as this or that _person of respect_, and from the broadest understanding of this concept there proceeded at last the command "to respect Man in every one." But, if I respect Man, my respect must likewise extend to the human, or what is Man's.
Men have somewhat of their _own_, and _I_ am to recognize this own and hold it sacred. Their own consists partly in outward, partly in inward _possessions_. The former are things, the latter spiritualities, thoughts, convictions, noble feelings, etc. But I am always to respect only _rightful_ or _human_ possessions; the wrongful and unhuman I need not spare, for only _Man's_ own is men's real own. An inward possession of this sort is, _e. g._, religion; because _religion_ is free, _i. e._ is Man's, _I_ must not strike at it. Just so _honor_ is an inward possession; it is free and must not be struck at by me. (Action for insult, caricatures, etc.) Religion and honor are "spiritual property." In tangible property the person stands foremost: my person is my first property. Hence freedom of the person; but only the _rightful_ or human person is free, the other is locked up. Your life is your property; but it is sacred for men only if it is not that of an inhuman monster.
What a man as such cannot defend of bodily goods, we may take from him: this is the meaning of competition, of freedom of occupation. What he cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise: so far goes the liberty of discussion, of science, of criticism.
But _consecrated_ goods are inviolable. Consecrated and guaranteed by whom? Proximately by the State, society, but properly by man or the "concept," the "concept of the thing": for the concept of consecrated goods is this, that they are truly human, or rather that the holder possesses them as man and not as un-man.[177] On the spiritual side man's faith is such goods, his honor, his moral feeling,--yes, his feeling of decency, modesty, etc. Actions (speeches, writings) that touch honor are punishable; attacks on "the foundation of all religion"; attacks on political faith; in short, attacks on everything that a man "rightly" has.
How far critical liberalism would extend, the sanctity of goods,--on this point it has not yet made any pronouncement, and doubtless fancies itself to be ill-disposed toward all sanctity; but, as it combats egoism, it must set limits to it, and must not let the un-man pounce on the human. To its theoretical contempt for the "masses" there must correspond a practical snub if it should get into power.
What extension the concept "man" receives, and what comes to the individual man through it,--what, therefore, man and the human are,--on this point the various grades of liberalism differ, and the political, the social, the humane man are each always claiming more than the other for "man." He who has best grasped this concept knows best what is "man's." The State still grasps this concept in political restriction, society in social; mankind, so it is said, is the first to comprehend it entirely, or "the history of mankind develops it." But, if "man is discovered," then we know also what pertains to man as his own, man's property, the human.
But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man "entitles" him to them, _i. e._ because his being man does it: what do _I_ care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from _me_, then for _me_ he has no right. His life, _e. g._, counts to _me_ only for what it is _worth to me_. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the "sanctuary of his inner nature" (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain unaggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are _mine_, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my--might.
In the _property question_ lies a broader meaning than the limited statement of the question allows to be brought out. Referred solely to what men call our possessions, it is capable of no solution; the decision is to be found only in him "from whom we have everything." Property depends on the _owner_.
The Revolution directed its weapons against everything which came "from the grace of God," _e. g._, against divine right, in whose place the human was confirmed. To that which is granted by the grace of God, there is opposed that which is derived "from the essence of man."
Now, as men's relation to each other, in opposition to the religious dogma which commands a "Love one another for God's sake," had to receive its human position by a "Love each other for man's sake," so the revolutionary teaching could not do otherwise than, first as to what concerns the relation of men to the things of this world, settle it that the world, which hitherto was arranged according to God's ordinance, henceforth belongs to "Man."
The world belongs to "Man," and is to be respected by me as his property.
Property is what is mine!
Property in the civic sense means _sacred_ property, such that I must _respect_ your property. "Respect for property!" Hence the politicians would like to have every one possess his little bit of property, and they have in part brought about an incredible parcellation by this effort. Each must have his bone on which he may find something to bite.
The position of affairs is different in the egoistic sense. I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as _my_ property, in which I need to "respect" nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!
With this view we shall most easily come to an understanding with each other.
The political liberals are anxious that, if possible, all servitudes be dissolved, and every one be free lord on his ground, even if this ground has only so much area as can have its requirements adequately filled by the manure of one person. (The farmer in the story married even in his old age "that he might profit by his wife's dung.") Be it ever so little, if one only has somewhat of his own,--to wit, a _respected_ property! The more such owners, such cotters,[178] the more "free people and good patriots" has the State.
Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on _respect_, humaneness, the virtues of love. Therefore does it live in incessant vexation. For in practice people respect nothing, and every day the small possessions are bought up again by greater proprietors, and the "free people" change into day-laborers.
If, on the contrary, the "small proprietors" had reflected that the great property was also theirs, they would not have respectfully shut themselves out from it, and would not have been shut out.