Part 11

But, if the deserving count as the free (for what does the comfortable commoner, the faithful office-holder, lack of that freedom that his heart desires?), then the "servants" are the--free. The obedient servant is the free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the sense of the _bourgeoisie_, and its poet, Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world, etc. He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to it," has the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was--_reason_, that which, like State and Church, gives--general laws, and puts the individual man in irons by the _thought of humanity_. It determines what is "true," according to which one must then act. No more "rational" people than the honest servants, who primarily are called good citizens as servants of the State.

Be rich as Croesus or poor as Job--the State of the commonalty leaves that to your option; but only have a "good disposition." This it demands of you, and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all. Therefore it will keep you from "evil promptings," holding the "ill-disposed" in check and silencing their inflammatory discourses under censors' cancelling-marks or press-penalties and behind dungeon walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint people of "good disposition" as censors, and in every way have a _moral influence_ exerted on you by "well-disposed and well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf to evil promptings, then it opens your ears again all the more diligently to good _promptings_.

With the time of the _bourgeoisie_ begins that of _liberalism_. People want to see what is "rational," "suited to the times," etc., established everywhere. The following definition of liberalism, which is supposed to be pronounced in its honor, characterizes it completely: "Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations."[72] Its aim is a "rational order," a "moral behavior," a "limited freedom," not anarchy, lawlessness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then the _person_ succumbs. Art has for a long time not only acknowledged the ugly, but considered the ugly as necessary to its existence, and taken it up into itself; it needs the villain, etc. In the religious domain, too, the extremest liberals go so far that they want to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen--_i. e._ the religious villain; they want to see no more of trials for heresy. But against the "rational law" no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest--penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and realization of the person or of me, but of reason,--_i. e._ a dominion of reason, a dominion. The liberals are _zealots_, not exactly for the faith, for God, etc., but certainly for _reason_, their master. They brook no lack of breeding, and therefore no self-development and self-determination; they _play the guardian_ as effectively as the most absolute rulers.

"Political liberty," what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual's independence of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the individual's _subjection_ in the State and to the State's laws. But why "liberty"? Because one is no longer separated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate relation to it; because one is a--citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king as a person, but only in his quality as "supreme head of the State." Political liberty, this fundamental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a second phase of--Protestantism, and runs quite parallel with "religious liberty."[73] Or would it perhaps be right to understand by the latter an independence of religion? Anything but that. Independence of intermediaries is all that it is intended to express, independence of mediating priests, the abolition of the "laity," and so direct and immediate relation to religion or to God. Only on the supposition that one has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion; freedom of religion does not mean being without religion, but inwardness of faith, unmediated intercourse with God. To him who is "religiously free" religion is an affair of the heart, it is to him his _own affair_, it is to him a "sacredly serious matter." So, too, to the "politically free" man the State is a sacredly serious matter; it is his heart's affair, his chief affair, his own affair.

Political liberty means that the _polis_, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am _rid_ of them. It does not mean _my_ liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my _despots_, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and _their_ liberty is _my_ slavery. That in this they necessarily follow the principle, "the end hallows the means," is self-evident. If the welfare of the State is the end, war is a hallowed means; if justice is the State's end, homicide is a hallowed means, and is called by its sacred name, "execution," etc.; the sacred State _hallows_ everything that is serviceable to it.

"Individual liberty," over which civic liberalism keeps jealous watch, does not by any means signify a completely free self-determination, by which actions become altogether _mine_, but only independence of _persons_. Individually free is he who is responsible to no _man_. Taken in this sense,--and we are not allowed to understand it otherwise,--not only the ruler is individually free, _i. e., irresponsible toward men_ ("before God," we know, he acknowledges himself responsible), but all who are "responsible only to the law." This kind of liberty was won through the revolutionary movement of the century,--to wit, independence of arbitrary will, of _tel est notre plaisir_. Hence the constitutional prince must himself be stripped of all personality, deprived of all individual decision, that he may not as a person, as an _individual man_, violate the "individual liberty" of others. The _personal will of the ruler_ has disappeared in the constitutional prince; it is with a right feeling, therefore, that absolute princes resist this. Nevertheless these very ones profess to be in the best sense "Christian princes." For this, however, they must become a _purely spiritual_ power, as the Christian is subject only to _spirit_ ("God is spirit"). The purely spiritual power is consistently represented only by the constitutional prince, he who, without any personal significance, stands there spiritualized to the degree that he can rank as a sheer, uncanny "spirit," as an _idea_. The constitutional king is the truly _Christian_ king, the genuine, consistent carrying-out of the Christian principle. In the constitutional monarchy individual dominion,--_i. e._, a real ruler that _wills_--has found its end; here, therefore, _individual liberty_ prevails, independence of every individual dictator, of every one who could dictate to me with a _tel est notre plaisir_. It is the completed _Christian_ State-life, a spiritualized life.

The behavior of the commonalty is _liberal_ through and through. Every _personal_ invasion of another's sphere revolts the civic sense; if the citizen sees that one is dependent on the humor, the pleasure, the will of a man as individual (_i. e._ as not authorized by a "higher power"), at once he brings his liberalism to the front and shrieks about "arbitrariness." In fine, the citizen asserts his freedom from what is called _orders_ (_ordonnance_): "No one has any business to give me--orders!" _Orders_ carries the idea that what I am to do is another man's will, while _law_ does not express a personal authority of another. The liberty of the commonalty is liberty or independence from the will of another person, so-called personal or individual liberty; for being personally free means being only so free that no other person can dispose of mine, or that what I may or may not do does not depend on the personal decree of another. The liberty of the press, for instance, is such a liberty of liberalism, liberalism fighting only against the coercion of the censorship as that of personal wilfulness, but otherwise showing itself extremely inclined and willing to tyrannize over the press by "press laws"; _i. e._, the civic liberals want liberty of writing _for themselves_; for, as they are _law-abiding_, their writings will not bring them under the law. Only liberal matter, _i. e._ only lawful matter, is to be allowed to be printed; otherwise the "press laws" threaten "press-penalties." If one sees personal liberty assured, one does not notice at all how, if a new issue happens to arise, the most glaring unfreedom becomes dominant. For one is rid of _orders_ indeed, and "no one has any business to give us orders," but one has become so much the more submissive to the--_law_. One is enthralled now in due legal form.

In the citizen-State there are only "free people," who are _compelled_ to thousands of things (_e. g._ to deference, to a confession of faith, and the like). But what does that amount to? Why, it is only the--State, the law, not any man, that compels them!

What does the commonalty mean by inveighing against every personal order, _i. e._ every order not founded on the "cause," on "reason," etc.? It is simply fighting in the interest of the "cause"[74] against the dominion of "persons"! But the mind's cause is the rational, good, lawful, etc.; that is the "good cause." The commonalty wants an _impersonal_ ruler.

Furthermore, if the principle is this, that only the cause is to rule man--to wit, the cause of morality, the cause of legality, etc.,--then no personal balking of one by the other may be authorized either (as formerly, _e. g._, the commoner was balked of the aristocratic offices, the aristocrat of common mechanical trades, etc.); _i. e. free competition_ must exist. Only through the thing[75] can one balk another (_e. g._ the rich man balking the impecunious man by money, a thing), not as a person. Henceforth only one lordship, the lordship of the _State_, is admitted; personally no one is any longer lord of another. Even at birth the children belong to the State, and to the parents only in the name of the State, which, _e. g._, does not allow infanticide, demands their baptism, etc.

But all the State's children, furthermore, are of quite equal account in its eyes ("civic or political equality"), and they may see to it themselves how they get along with each other; they may _compete_.

Free competition means nothing else than that every one can present himself, assert himself, fight, against another. Of course the feudal party set itself against this, as its existence depended on an absence of competition. The contests in the time of the Restoration in France had no other substance than this,--that the _bourgeoisie_ was struggling for free competition, and the feudalists were seeking to bring back the guild system.

Now, free competition has won, and against the guild system it had to win. (See below for the further discussion.)

If the Revolution ended in a reaction, this only showed what the Revolution _really_ was. For every effort arrives at reaction when it _comes to discreet reflection_, and storms forward in the original action only so long as it is an _intoxication_, an "indiscretion." "Discretion" will always be the cue of the reaction, because discretion sets limits, and liberates what was really wanted, _i. e._ the principle, from the initial "unbridledness" and "unrestrainedness." Wild young fellows, bumptious students, who set aside all considerations, are _really_ Philistines, since with them, as with the latter, considerations form the substance of their conduct; only that as swaggerers they are mutinous against considerations and in negative relations to them, but as Philistines, later, they give themselves up to considerations and have positive relations to them. In both cases all their doing and thinking turns upon "considerations," but the Philistine is _reactionary_ in relation to the student; he is the wild fellow come to discreet reflection, as the latter is the unreflecting Philistine. Daily experience confirms the truth of this transformation, and shows how the swaggerers turn to Philistines in turning gray.

So too the so-called reaction in Germany gives proof that it was only the _discreet_ continuation of the warlike jubilation of liberty.

The Revolution was not directed against _the established_, but against _the establishment in question_, against a _particular_ establishment. It did away with _this_ ruler, not with _the_ ruler--on the contrary, the French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous ones a securely established position, _i. e._ it simply set virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, are on their part distinguished from each other only as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc.

To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no farther than to assail only _one_ or _another_ particular establishment, _i. e._ be _reformatory_. Much as may be _improved_, strongly as "discreet progress" may be adhered to, always there is only a _new master_ set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a--building up. We are still at the distinction of the young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution began in _bourgeois_ fashion with the uprising of the third estate, the middle class; in _bourgeois_ fashion it dries away. It was not the _individual man_--and he alone is _Man_--that became free, but the _citizen_, the _citoyen_, the _political_ man, who for that very reason is not _Man_ but a specimen of the human species, and more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a _free citizen_.

In the Revolution it was not the _individual_ who acted so as to affect the world's history, but a _people_; the _nation_, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect everything. A fancied _I_, an idea, such as the nation is, appears acting; _i. e._, the individuals contribute themselves as tools of this idea, and act as "citizens."

The commonalty has its power, and at the same time its limits, in the _fundamental law of the State_, in a charter, in a legitimate[76] or "just"[77] prince who himself is guided, and rules, according to "rational laws"; in short, in _legality_. The period of the _bourgeoisie_ is ruled by the British spirit of legality. An assembly of provincial estates, _e. g._, is ever recalling that its authorization goes only so and so far, and that it is called at all only through favor and can be thrown out again through disfavor. It is always reminding itself of its--_vocation_. It is certainly not to be denied that my father begot me; but, now that I am once begotten, surely his purposes in begetting do not concern me a bit and, whatever he may have _called_ me to, I do what I myself will. Therefore even a called assembly of estates, the French assembly in the beginning of the Revolution, recognized quite rightly that it was independent of the caller. It _existed_, and would have been stupid if it did not avail itself of the right of existence, but fancied itself dependent as on a father. The called one no longer has to ask "what did the caller want when he created me?" but "what do I want after I have once followed the call?" Not the caller, not the constituents, not the charter according to which their meeting was called out, nothing will be to him a sacred, inviolable power. He is _authorized_ for everything that is in his power; he will know no restrictive "authorization," will not want to be _loyal_. This, if any such thing could be expected from chambers at all, would give a completely _egoistic_ chamber, severed from all navel-string and without consideration. But chambers are always devout, and therefore one cannot be surprised if so much half-way or undecided, _i. e._ hypocritical, "egoism" parades in them.

The members of the estates are to remain within the _limits_ that are traced for them by the charter, by the king's will, and the like. If they will not or can not do that, then they are to "step out." What dutiful man could act otherwise, could put himself, his conviction, and his will as the _first_ thing? who could be so immoral as to want to assert _himself_, even if the body corporate and everything should go to ruin over it? People keep carefully within the limits of their _authorization_; of course one must remain within the limits of his _power_ anyhow, because no one can do more than he can. "My power, or, if it be so, powerlessness, be my sole limit, but authorizations only restraining--precepts? Should I profess this all-subversive view? No, I am a--law-abiding citizen!"

The commonalty professes a morality which is most closely connected with its essence. The first demand of this morality is to the effect that one should carry on a solid business, an honorable trade, lead a moral life. Immoral, to it, is the sharper, the demirep, the thief, robber, and murderer, the gamester, the penniless man without a situation, the frivolous man. The doughty commoner designates the feeling against these "immoral" people as his "deepest indignation." All these lack settlement, the _solid_ quality of business, a solid, seemly life, a fixed income, etc.; in short, they belong, because their existence does not rest on a _secure basis_, to the dangerous "individuals or isolated persons," to the dangerous _prolétariat_; they are "individual bawlers" who offer no "guarantee" and have "nothing to lose," and so nothing to risk. The forming of family ties, _e. g., binds_ a man: he who is bound furnishes security, can be taken hold of; not so the street-walker. The gamester stakes everything on the game, ruins himself and others;--no guarantee. All who appear to the commoner suspicious, hostile, and dangerous might be comprised under the name "vagabonds"; every vagabondish way of living displeases him. For there are intellectual vagabonds too, to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space any more: instead of keeping within the limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable truth what furnishes comfort and tranquillity to thousands, they overleap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their impudent criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds. They form the class of the unstable, restless, changeable, _i. e._ of the _prolétariat_, and, if they give voice to their unsettled nature, are called "unruly fellows."

Such a broad sense has the so-called _prolétariat_, or pauperism. How much one would err if one believed the commonalty to be desirous of doing away with poverty (pauperism) to the best of its ability! On the contrary, the good citizen helps himself with the incomparably comforting conviction that "the fact is that the good things of fortune are unequally divided and will always remain so--according to God's wise decree." The poverty which surrounds him in every alley does not disturb the true commoner further than that at most he clears his account with it by throwing an alms, or finds work and food for an "honest and serviceable" fellow. But so much the more does he feel his quiet enjoyment clouded by _innovating_ and _discontented_ poverty, by those poor who no longer behave _quietly_ and endure, but begin to _run wild_ and become restless. Lock up the vagabond, thrust the breeder of unrest into the darkest dungeon! He wants to "arouse dissatisfaction and incite people against existing institutions" in the State--stone him, stone him!

But from these identical discontented ones comes a reasoning somewhat as follows: It need not make any difference to the "good citizens" who protects them and their principles, whether an absolute king or a constitutional one, a republic, etc., if only they are protected. And what is their principle, whose protector they always "love"? Not that of labor; not that of birth either. But that of _mediocrity_, of the golden mean: a little birth and a little labor, _i. e._, an _interest-bearing possession_. Possession is here the fixed, the given, inherited (birth); interest-drawing is the exertion about it (labor); _laboring capital_, therefore. Only no immoderation, no ultra, no radicalism! Right of birth certainly, but only hereditary possessions; labor certainly, yet little or none at all of one's own, but labor of capital and of the--subject laborers.

If an age is imbued with an error, some always derive advantage from the error, while the rest have to suffer from it. In the Middle Ages the error was general among Christians that the church must have all power, or the supreme lordship on earth; the hierarchs believed in this "truth" not less than the laymen, and both were spellbound in the like error. But by it the hierarchs had the _advantage_ of power, the laymen had to _suffer_ subjection. However, as the saying goes, "one learns wisdom by suffering"; and so the laymen at last learned wisdom and no longer believed in the mediæval "truth."--A like relation exists between the commonalty and the laboring class. Commoner and laborer believe in the "truth" of _money_; they who do not possess it believe in it no less than those who possess it: the laymen, therefore, as well as the priests.

"Money governs the world" is the keynote of the civic epoch. A destitute aristocrat and a destitute laborer, as "starvelings," amount to nothing so far as political consideration is concerned; birth and labor do not do it, but _money_ brings _consideration_.[78] The possessors rule, but the State trains up from the destitute its "servants," to whom, in proportion as they are to rule (govern) in its name, it gives money (a salary).

I receive everything from the State. Have I anything without the _State's assent_? What I have without this it _takes_ from me as soon as it discovers the lack of a "legal title." Do I not, therefore, have everything through its grace, its assent?

On this alone, on the _legal title_, the commonalty rests. The commoner is what he is through the _protection of the State_, through the State's grace. He would necessarily be afraid of losing everything if the State's power were broken.

But how is it with him who has nothing to lose, how with the proletarian? As he has nothing to lose, he does not need the protection of the State for his "nothing." He may gain, on the contrary, if that protection of the State is withdrawn from the _protégé_.

Therefore the non-possessor will regard the State as a power protecting the possessor, which privileges the latter, but does nothing for him, the non-possessor, but to--suck his blood. The State is a--_commoners' State_, is the estate of the commonalty. It protects man not according to his labor, but according to his tractableness ("loyalty"),--to wit, according to whether the rights entrusted to him by the State are enjoyed and managed in accordance with the will, _i. e._ laws, of the State.