Part 14

The sentence "God has become man" is now followed by the other, "Man has become I." This is _the human I_. But we invert it and say: I was not able to find myself so long as I sought myself as Man. But, now that it appears that Man is aspiring to become I and to gain a corporeity in me, I note that, after all, everything depends on me, and Man is lost without me. But I do not care to give myself up to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not ask henceforward whether I am man or un-man in what I set about; let this _spirit_ keep off my neck!

Humane liberalism goes to work radically. If you want to be or have anything especial even in one point, if you want to retain for yourself even one prerogative above others, to claim even one right that is not a general "right of man," you are an egoist.

Very good! I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, I do not want to claim any prerogative against them, but--I do not measure myself by others either, and do not want to have any _right_ whatever. I want to be all and have all that I can be and have. Whether others are and have anything _similar_, what do I care? The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have. I cause no _detriment_ to them, as I cause no detriment to the rock by being "ahead of it" in having motion. If they _could_ have it, they would have it.

To cause other men no _detriment_ is the point of the demand to possess no prerogative; to renounce all "being ahead," the strictest theory of _renunciation_. One is not to count himself as "anything especial," such as _e. g._ a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself as anything especial, but as _unique_.[97] Doubtless I have _similarity_ with others; yet that holds good only for comparison or reflection; in fact I am incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the generalities "flesh, mind," those are your _thoughts_, which have nothing to do with _my_ flesh, _my_ mind, and can least of all issue a "call" to mine.

I do not want to recognize or respect in you anything, neither the proprietor nor the ragamuffin, nor even the man, but to _use you_. In salt I find that it makes food palatable to me, therefore I dissolve it; in the fish I recognize an aliment, therefore I eat it; in you I discover the gift of making my life agreeable, therefore I choose you as a companion. Or, in salt I study crystallization, in the fish animality, in you men, etc. But to me you are only what you are for me,--to wit, my object; and, because _my_ object, therefore my property.

In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood is completed. We must first come down to the most ragamuffin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive at _ownness_, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more ragamuffin-like than naked--Man.

It is more than ragamuffinhood, however, when I throw away Man too because I feel that he too is alien to me and that I can make no pretensions on that basis. This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood: because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself, and therewith has ceased, to be what he was, a ragamuffin.

I am no longer a ragamuffin, but have been one.

* * * * *

Up to this time the discord could not come to an outbreak, because properly there is current only a contention of modern liberals with antiquated liberals, a contention of those who understand "freedom" in a small measure and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of the _moderate_ and _measureless_, therefore. Everything turns on the question, _how free_ must _man_ be? That man must be free, in this all believe; therefore all are liberal too. But the un-man[98] who is somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? flow can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same time with man?

Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as God has the devil: by the side of man stands always the un-man, the individual, the egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this devil.

Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of showing the other liberals that they still do not want "freedom."

If the other liberals had before their eyes only isolated egoism and were for the most part blind, radical liberalism has against it egoism "in mass," throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of freedom their own as it does, so that now man and un-man, rigorously separated, stand over against each other as enemies, to wit, the "masses" and "criticism";[99] namely, "free, human criticism," as it is called ("_Judenfrage_," p. 114), in opposition to crude, _e. g._ religious, criticism.

Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the masses and "give them a general certificate of insolvency."[100] So it means finally to make itself out in the right, and to represent all contention of the "faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoistic _stubbornness_,[101] as pettiness, paltriness. All wrangling loses significance, and petty dissensions are given up, because in criticism a common enemy enters the field. "You are egoists altogether, one no better than another!" Now the egoists stand together against criticism.

Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism precisely because it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty to egoism. Accordingly criticism and the masses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other.

Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, freedom from egoism, and wrangle only over which of them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains it.

The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men of darkness and men of light, politicians, Communists,--all, in short,--hold the reproach of egoism far from them; and, as criticism brings against them this reproach in plain terms and in the most extended sense, all _justify_ themselves against the accusation of egoism, and combat--egoism, the same enemy with whom criticism wages war.

Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, and both seek to liberate themselves from egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashing _themselves_ as by ascribing it to the opposite party.

The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" who gives them the "simple concept and the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph is denied in "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 24 were only bunglers. He is their prince and general in the war against egoism for freedom; what he fights against they fight against. But at the same time he is their enemy too, only not the enemy before them, but the friendly enemy who wields the knout behind the timorous to force courage into them.

Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses is reduced to the following contradiction: "You are egoists"! "No, we are not"! "I will prove it to you"! "You shall have our justification"!

Let us then take both for what they give themselves out for, non-egoists, and what they take each other for, egoists. They are egoists and are not.

Properly criticism says: You must liberate your ego from all limitedness so entirely that it becomes a _human_ ego. I say: Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively: not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing down even one limit _for all men_? Are not countless persons to-day, as at all times, running about with all the "limitations of humanity"? He who overturns one of _his_ limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of _their_ limits remains their affair. Nobody does anything else either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is to call on them to cast down all human limits. That is impossible, because _Man_ has no limits. I have some indeed, but then it is only _mine_ that concern me any, and only they can be overcome by me. A _human_ ego I cannot become, just because I am I and not merely man.

Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught us something that we can lay to heart! I am not free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not disinterested? Well, even if it makes little difference to me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave unused any occasion to realize _myself_ or make myself count. Criticism offers me this occasion by the teaching that, if anything plants itself firmly in me, and becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and servant, _i. e._ a possessed man. An interest, be it for what it may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot get away from it, and is no longer my property, but I I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson to let no part of our property become stable, and to feel comfortable only in--_dissolving_ it.

So, if criticism says: You are man only when you are restlessly criticising and dissolving! then we say: Man I am without that, and I am I likewise; therefore I want only to be careful to secure my property to myself; and, in order to secure it, I continually take it back into myself, annihilate in it every movement toward independence, and swallow it before it can fix itself and become a "fixed idea" or a "mania."

But I do that not for the sake of my "human calling," but because I call myself to it. I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is possible for a man to dissolve, and, _e. g._, while not yet ten years old I do not criticise the nonsense of the Commandments, but I am man all the same, and act humanly in just this,--that I still leave them uncriticised. In short, I have no calling, and follow none, not even that to be a man.

Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be the day that anything won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become free through liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself and confess to myself openly: What Man seems to have gained, _I_ alone have gained.

Man is free when "Man is to man the supreme being." So it belongs to the completion of liberalism that every other supreme being be annulled, theology overturned by anthropology, God and his grace laughed down, "atheism" universal.

The egoism of property has given up the last that it had to give when even the "My God" has become senseless; for God exists only when he has at heart the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in him.

Political liberalism abolished, the inequality of masters and servants: it made people _masterless_, anarchic. The master was now removed from the individual, the "egoist," to become a ghost,--the law or the State. Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the poor and rich, and makes people _possessionless_ or propertyless. Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society. Humane liberalism makes people _godless_, atheistic. Therefore the individual's God, "my God", must be put an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at the same time freedom from service, possessionlessness at the same time freedom from care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from prejudice: for with the master the servant falls away; with possession, the care about it; with the firmly-rooted God, prejudice. But, since the master rises again as State, the servant appears again as subject; since possession becomes the property of society, care is begotten anew as labor; and, since God as Man becomes a prejudice, there arises a new faith, faith in humanity or liberty. For the individual's God the God of all, _viz._, "Man," is now exalted; "for it is the highest thing in us all to be man." But, as nobody can become entirely what the idea "man" imports, Man remains to the individual a lofty other world, an unattained supreme being, a God. But at the same time this is the "true God," because he is fully adequate to us,--to wit, our own "_self_"; we ourselves, but separated from us and lifted above us.

POSTSCRIPT

The foregoing review of "free human criticism" was written by bits immediately after the appearance of the books in question, as was also that which elsewhere refers to writings of this tendency, and I did little more than bring together the fragments. But criticism is restlessly pressing forward, and thereby makes it necessary for me to come back to it once more, now that my book is finished, and insert this concluding note.

I have before me the latest (eighth) number of the "_Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung_" of Bruno Bauer.

There again "the general interests of society" stand at the top. But criticism has reflected, and given this "society" a specification by which it is discriminated from a form which previously had still been confused with it: the "State," in former passages still celebrated as "free State," is quite given up because it can in no wise fulfil the task of "human society." Criticism only "saw itself compelled to identify for a moment human and political affairs" in 1842; but now it has found that the State, even as "free State," is not human society, or, as it could likewise say, that the people is not "man." We saw how it got through with theology and showed clearly that God sinks into dust before Man; we see it now come to a clearance with politics in the same way, and show that before Man peoples and nationalities fall: so we see how it has its explanation with Church and State, declaring them both unhuman, and we shall see--for it betrays this to us already--how it can also give proof that before Man the "masses," which it even calls a "spiritual being," appear worthless. And how should the lesser "spiritual beings" be able to maintain themselves before the supreme spirit? "Man" casts down the false idols.

So what the critic has in view for the present is the scrutiny of the "masses," which he will place before "Man" in order to combat them from the standpoint of Man. "What is now the object of criticism?" "The masses, a spiritual being!" These the critic will "learn to know," and will find that they are in contradiction with Man; he will demonstrate that they are unhuman, and will succeed just as well in this demonstration as in the former ones, that the divine and the national, or the concerns of Church and of State, were the unhuman.

The masses are defined as "the most significant product of the Revolution, as the deceived multitude which the illusions of political Illumination, and in general the entire Illumination movement of the eighteenth century, have given over to boundless disgruntlement." The Revolution satisfied some by its result, and left others unsatisfied; the satisfied part is the commonalty (_bourgeoisie_, etc.), the unsatisfied is the--masses. Does not the critic, so placed, himself belong to the "masses"?

But the unsatisfied are still in great mistiness, and their discontent utters itself only in a "boundless disgruntlement." This the likewise unsatisfied critic now wants to master: he cannot want and attain more than to bring that "spiritual being," the masses, out of its disgruntlement, and to "uplift" those who were only disgruntled, _i. e._ to give them the right attitude toward those results of the Revolution which are to be overcome;--he can become the head of the masses, their decided spokesman. Therefore he wants also to "abolish the deep chasm which parts him from the multitude." From those who want to "uplift the lower classes of the people" he is distinguished by wanting to deliver from "disgruntlement," not merely these, but himself too.

But assuredly his consciousness does not deceive him either, when he takes the masses to be the "natural opponents of theory," and foresees that, "the more this theory shall develop itself, so much the more will it make the masses compact." For the critic cannot enlighten or satisfy the masses with his _presupposition_, Man. If over against the commonalty they are only the "lower classes of the people," politically insignificant masses, over against "Man" they must still more be mere "masses," humanly insignificant--yes, unhuman--masses, or a multitude of un-men.

The critic clears away everything human; and, starting from the presupposition that the human is the true, he works against himself, denying it wherever it had been hitherto found. He proves only that the human is to be found nowhere except in his head, but the unhuman everywhere. The unhuman is the real, the extant on all hands, and by the proof that it is "not human" the critic only enunciates plainly the tautological sentence that it is the unhuman.

But what if the unhuman, turning its back on itself with resolute heart, should at the same time turn away from the disturbing critic and leave him standing, untouched and unstung by his remonstrance?

"You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am--for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not--_unique_.[102] But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently--adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the--unique."

We have to pay attention to still another sentence of the same number. "Criticism sets up no dogmas, and wants to learn to know nothing but _things_."

The critic is afraid of becoming "dogmatic" or setting up dogmas. Of course: why, thereby he would become the opposite of the critic,--the dogmatist; he would now become bad, as he is good as critic, or would become from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. "Of all things, no dogma!" this is his--dogma. For the critic remains on one and the same ground with the dogmatist,--that of _thoughts_. Like the latter he always starts from a thought, but varies in this, that he never ceases to keep the principle-thought in the _process of thinking_, and so does not let it become stable. He only asserts the thought-process against stationariness in it. From criticism no thought is safe, since criticism is thought or the thinking mind itself.

Therefore I repeat that the religious world--and this is the world of thoughts--reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may "egoistically" establish itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity of thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to gibe gently here and there at the thought of Man, of humanity and humaneness, because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a--"higher" in which it dissolves; for he moves only--in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of thinking itself, _i. e._ as the thought of thinking or of criticism.

Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph: for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the--dogma of free thinking or of criticism.

Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in the right, _i. e._ in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is "up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is no power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it in all its "turns."

I am no opponent of criticism, _i. e._ I am no dogmatist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If I were a "dogmatist," I should place at the head a dogma, _i. e._ a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete this as a "systematist," spinning it out to a system, _i. e._ a structure of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic, _viz._, an opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the champion of thinking; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking, and mind is shattered.

Criticism is the possessed man's fight against possession as such, against all possession: a fight which is founded in the consciousness that everywhere possession, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude, is extant. He knows that people stand in a religious or believing attitude not only toward God, but toward other ideas as well, like right, the State, law, etc.; _i. e._ he recognizes possession in all places. So he wants to break up thoughts by thinking; but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It it not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees me from possession.

A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the torment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoopla throws off year-long burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and believing.

"What clumsiness and frivolity, to want to solve the most difficult problems, acquit yourself of the most comprehensive tasks, by a _breaking off_!"

But have you tasks if you do not set them to yourself? So long as you set them, you will not give them up, and I certainly do not care if you think, and, thinking, create a thousand thoughts. But you who have set the tasks, are you not to be able to upset them again? Must you be bound to these tasks, and must they become absolute tasks?