Part 20
Now, in conclusion, I have still to take back the half-way form of expression of which I was willing to make use only so long as I was still rooting among the entrails of right, and letting the word at least stand. But, in fact, with the concept the word too loses its meaning. What I called "my right" is no longer "right" at all, because right can be bestowed only by a spirit, be it the spirit of nature or that of the species, of mankind, the Spirit of God or that of His Holiness or His Highness, etc. What I have without an entitling spirit I have without right; I have it solely and alone through my _power_.
I do not demand any right, therefore I need not recognize any either. What I can get by force I get by force, and what I do not get by force I have no right to, nor do I give myself airs, or consolation, with my imprescriptible right.
With absolute right, right itself passes away; the dominion of the "concept of right" is canceled at the same time. For it is not to be forgotten that hitherto concepts, ideas, or principles ruled us, and that among these rulers the concept of right, or of justice, played one of the most important parts.
Entitled or unentitled--that does not concern me; if I am only _powerful_, I am of myself _empowered_, and need no other empowering or entitling.
Right--is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook; power--that am I myself, I am the powerful one and owner of power. Right is above me, is absolute, and exists in one higher, as whose grace it flows to me: right is a gift of grace from the judge; power and might exist only in me the powerful and mighty.
II.--MY INTERCOURSE
In society the human demand at most can be satisfied, while the egoistic must always come short.
Because it can hardly escape anybody that the present shows no such living interest in any question as in the "social," one has to direct his gaze especially to society. Nay, if the interest felt in it were less passionate and dazzled, people would not so much, in looking at society, lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that a society cannot become new so long as those who form and constitute it remain the old ones. If, _e. g._, there was to arise in the Jewish people a society which should spread a new faith over the earth, these apostles could in no case remain Pharisees.
As you are, so you present yourself, so you behave toward men: a hypocrite as a hypocrite, a Christian as a Christian. Therefore the character of a society is determined by the character of its members: they are its creators. So much at least one must perceive even if one were not willing to put to the test the concept "society" itself.
Ever far from letting _themselves_ come to their full development and consequence, men have hitherto not been able to found their societies on _themselves_; or rather, they have been able only to found "societies" and to live in societies. The societies were always persons, powerful persons, so-called "moral persons," _i. e._ ghosts, before which the individual had the appropriate wheel in his head, the fear of ghosts. As such ghosts they may most suitably be designated by the respective names "people" and "peoplet": the people of the patriarchs, the people of the Hellenes, etc., at last the--people of men, Mankind (Anacharsis Clootz was enthusiastic for the "nation" of mankind); then every subdivision of this "people," which could and must have its special societies, the Spanish, French people, etc.; within it again classes, cities, in short all kinds of corporations; lastly, tapering to the finest point, the little people of the--_family_. Hence, instead of saying that the person that walked as ghost in all societies hitherto has been the people, there might also have been named the two extremes,--to wit, either "mankind" or the "family," both the most "natural-born units." We choose the word "people"[155] because its derivation has been brought into connection with the Greek _polloi_, the "many" or "the masses," but still more because "national efforts" are at present the order of the day, and because even the newest mutineers have not yet shaken off this deceptive person, although on the other hand the latter consideration must give the preference to the expression "mankind," since on all sides they are going in for enthusiasm over "mankind."
The people, then,--mankind or the family,--have hitherto, as it seems, played history: no _egoistic_ interest was to come up in these societies, but solely general ones, national or popular interests, class interests, family interests, and "general human interests." But who has brought to their fall the peoples whose decline history relates? Who but the egoist, who was seeking _his_ satisfaction! If once an egoistic interest crept in, the society was "corrupted" and moved toward its dissolution, as Rome, _e. g._, proves with its highly developed system of private rights, or Christianity with the incessantly-breaking-in "rational self-determination," "self-consciousness," the "autonomy of the spirit," etc.
The Christian people has produced two societies whose duration will keep equal measure with the permanence of that people: these are the societies _State_ and _Church_. Can they be called a union of egoists? Do we in them pursue an egoistic, personal, own interest, or do we pursue a popular (_i. e._ an interest of the Christian _people_), to wit, a State and Church interest? Can I and may I be myself in them? May I think and act as I will, may I reveal myself, live myself out, busy myself? Must I not leave untouched the majesty of the State, the sanctity of the Church?
Well, I may not do as I will. But shall I find in any society such an unmeasured freedom of maying? Certainly no! Accordingly we might be content? Not a bit! It is a different thing whether I rebound from an ego or from a people, a generalization. There I am my opponent's opponent, born his equal; here I am a despised opponent, bound and under a guardian: there I stand man to man; here I am a schoolboy who can accomplish nothing against his comrade because the latter has called father and mother to aid and has crept under the apron, while I am well scolded as an ill-bred brat, and I must not "argue": there I fight against a bodily enemy; here against mankind, against a generalization, against a "majesty," against a spook. But to me no majesty, nothing sacred, is a limit; nothing that I know how to overpower. Only that which I cannot overpower still limits my might; and I of limited might am temporarily a limited I, not limited by the might _outside_ me, but limited by my _own_ still deficient might, by my _own impotence_. However, "the Guard dies, but does not surrender!" Above all, only a bodily opponent!
I dare meet every foeman Whom I can see and measure with my eye, Whose mettle fires my mettle for the fight,--etc.
Many privileges have indeed been cancelled with time, but solely for the sake of the common weal, of the State and the State's weal, by no means for the strengthening of me. Vassalage, _e. g._, was abrogated only that a single liege lord, the lord of the people, the monarchical power, might be strengthened: vassalage under the one became yet more rigorous thereby. Only in favor of the monarch, be he called "prince" or "law," have privileges fallen. In France the citizens are not, indeed, vassals of the king, but are instead vassals of the "law" (the Charter). _Subordination_ was retained, only the Christian State recognized that man cannot serve two masters (the lord of the manor and the prince, etc.); therefore one obtained all the prerogatives; now he can again _place_ one above another, he can make "men in high place."
But of what concern to me is the common weal? The common weal as such is not _my weal_, but only the furthest extremity of _self-renunciation_. The common weal may cheer aloud while I must "down";[156] the State may shine while I starve. In what lies the folly of the political liberals but in their opposing the people to the government and talking of people's rights? So there is the people going to be of age, etc. As if one who has no mouth could be _muendig_![157] Only the individual is able to be _muendig_. Thus the whole question of the liberty of the press is turned upside down when it is laid claim to as a "right of the people." It is only a right, or better the might, of the _individual_. If a people has liberty of the press, then _I_, although in the midst of this people, have it not; a liberty of the people is not _my_ liberty, and the liberty of the press as a liberty of the people must have at its side a press law directed against _me_.
This must be insisted on all around against the present-day efforts for liberty:
Liberty of the _people_ is not _my_ liberty!
Let us admit these categories, liberty of the people and right of the people: _e. g._ the right of the people that everybody may bear arms. Does one not forfeit such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but may well forfeit a right that belongs not to me but to the people. I may be locked, up for the sake of the liberty of the people; I may, under sentence, incur the loss of the right to bear arms.
Liberalism appears as the last attempt at a creation of the liberty of the people, a liberty of the commune, of "society," of the general, of mankind; the dream of a humanity, a people, a commune, a "society," that shall be of age.
A people cannot be free otherwise than at the individual's expense; for it is not the individual that is the main point in this liberty, but the people. The freer the people, the more bound the individual; the Athenian people, precisely at its freest time, created ostracism, banished the atheists, poisoned the most honest thinker.
How they do praise Socrates for his conscientiousness, which makes nun resist the advice to get away from the dungeon! He is a fool that he concedes to the Athenians a right to condemn him. Therefore it certainly serves him right; why then does he remain standing on an equal footing with the Athenians? Why does he not break with them? Had he known, and been able to know, what he was, he would have conceded to such judges no claim, no right. That _he did not escape_ was just his weakness, his delusion of still having something in common with the Athenians, or the opinion that he was a member, a mere member of this people. But he was rather this people itself in person, and could only be his own judge. There was no _judge over him_, as he himself had really pronounced a public sentence on himself and rated himself worthy of the Prytaneum. He should have stuck to that, and, as he had uttered no sentence of death against himself, should have despised that of the Athenians too and escaped. But he subordinated himself and recognized in the _people_ his _judge_; he seemed little to himself before the majesty of the people. That he subjected himself to _might_ (to which alone he could succumb) as to a "right" was treason against himself: it was _virtue_. To Christ, who, it is alleged, refrained from using the power over his heavenly legions, the same scrupulousness is thereby ascribed by the narrators. Luther did very well and wisely to have the safety of his journey to Worms warranted to him in black and white, and Socrates should have known that the Athenians were his _enemies_, he alone his judge. The self-deception of a "reign of law," etc., should have given way to the perception that the relation was a relation of _might_.
It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why? Because the ordinary Greeks could still less attain that logical conclusion which not even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to draw. What then is pettifoggery but a way of utilizing something established without doing away with it? I might add "for one's own advantage," but, you see, that lies in "utilizing." Such pettifoggers are the theologians who "wrest" and "force" God's word; what would they have to wrest if it were not for the "established" Word of God? So those liberals who only shake and wrest the "established order." They are all perverters, like those perverters of the law. Socrates recognized law, right; the Greeks constantly retained the authority of right and law. If with this recognition they wanted nevertheless to assert their advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek it in perversion of the law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, an intriguer of genius, introduces the period of Athenian "decay"; the Spartan Lysander and others show that intrigue had become universally Greek. Greek _law_, on which the Greek _States_ rested, had to be perverted and undermined by the egoists within these States, and the _States_ went down that the _individuals_ might become free, the Greek people fell because the individuals cared less for this people than for themselves. In general, all States, constitutions, churches, etc., have sunk by the _secession_ of individuals; for the individual is the irreconcilable enemy of every _generality_, every _tie_, _i. e._ every fetter. Yet people fancy to this day that man needs "sacred ties": he, the deadly enemy of every "tie." The history of the world shows that no tie has yet remained unrent, shows that man tirelessly defends himself against ties of every sort; and yet, blinded, people think up new ties again and again, and think, _e. g._, that they have arrived at the right one if one puts upon them the tie of a so-called free constitution, a beautiful, constitutional tie; decoration ribbons, the ties of confidence between "---- ---- ----," do seem gradually to have become somewhat infirm, but people have made no further progress than from apron-strings to garters and collars.
_Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter._
Everything sacred is and must be perverted by perverters of the law; therefore our present time has multitudes of such perverters in all spheres. They are preparing the way for the break-up of law, for lawlessness.
Poor Athenians who are accused of pettifoggery and sophistry! poor Alcibiades, of intrigue! Why, that was just your best point, your first step in freedom. Your Æschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have a free Greek _people_; you were the first to surmise something of _your_ freedom.
A people represses those who tower above _its majesty_, by ostracism against too-powerful citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics of the Church, by the--Inquisition against traitors in the State, etc.
For the people is concerned only with its self-assertion; it demands "patriotic self-sacrifice" from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one _in himself_ is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even suffer, what the individual and he alone must do,--to wit, _turn him to account_. Every people, every State, is unjust toward the _egoist_.
As long as there still exists even one institution which the individual may not dissolve, the ownness and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote. How can I, _e. g._, be free when I must bind myself by oath to a constitution, a charter, a law, "vow body and soul" to my people? How can I be my own when my faculties may develop only so far as they "do not disturb the harmony of society" (Weitling)?
The fall of peoples and mankind will invite _me_ to my rise.
Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, that they may jingle in for to-morrow the festival of the thousand years existence of our dear Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough, as if your tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to rise again,--that all may become free whom you so long have held in fetters.--The _people_ is dead.--Up with _me_!
O thou my much-tormented German people--what was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every cock-crow and yet pines for deliverance and fulfilment. In me too thou hast lived long, thou dear--thought, thou dear--spook. Already I almost fancied I had found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and bones for the wandering spirit; then I hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest; then the last hope fades out, then the notes of the last love die away, then I depart from the desolate house of those who now are dead and enter at the door of the--living one:
For only he who is alive is in the right.
Farewell, thou dream of so many millions; farewell, thou who hast tyrannized over thy children for a thousand years!
To-morrow they carry thee to the grave; soon thy sisters, the peoples, will follow thee. But, when they have all followed, then----mankind is buried, and I am my own, I am the laughing heir!
* * * * *
The word _Gesellschaft_ (society) has its origin in the word _Sal_ (hall). If one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these persons to be in society. They _are_ in society, and at most constitute a parlor-society by talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech. When it comes to real _intercourse_, this is to be regarded as independent of society: it may occur or be lacking, without altering the nature of what is named society. Those who are in the hall are a society even as mute persons, or when they put each other off solely with empty phrases of courtesy. Intercourse is mutuality, it is the action, the _commercium_, of individuals; society is only community of the hall, and even the statues of a museum-hall are in society, they are "grouped." People are accustomed to say "they _haben inne_[158] this hall in common," but the case is rather that the hall has us _inne_ or in it. So far the natural signification of the word society. In this it comes out that society is not generated by me and you, but by a third factor which makes associates out of us two, and that it is just this third factor that is the creative one, that which creates society.
Just so a prison society or prison companionship (those who enjoy[159] the same prison). Here we already hit upon a third factor fuller of significance than was that merely local one, the hall. Prison no longer means a space only, but a space with express reference to its inhabitants: for it is a prison only through being destined for prisoners, without whom it would be a mere building. What gives a common stamp to those who are gathered in it? Evidently the prison, since it is only by means of the prison that they are prisoners. What, then, determines the _manner of life_ of the prison society? The prison! What determines their intercourse? The prison too, perhaps? Certainly they can enter upon intercourse only as prisoners, _i. e._ only so far as the prison laws allow it; but that _they themselves_ hold intercourse, I with you, this the prison cannot bring to pass; on the contrary, it must have an eye to guarding against such egoistic, purely personal intercourse (and only as such is it really intercourse between me and you). That we _jointly_ execute a job, run a machine, effectuate anything in general,--for this a prison will indeed provide; but that I forget that I am a prisoner, and engage in intercourse with you who likewise disregard it, brings danger to the prison, and not only cannot be caused by it, but must not even be permitted. For this reason the saintly and moral-minded French chamber decides to introduce solitary confinement, and other saints will do the like in order to cut off "demoralizing intercourse." Imprisonment is the established and--sacred condition, to injure which no attempt must be made. The slightest push of that kind is punishable, as is every uprising against a sacred thing by which man is to be charmed and chained.
Like the hall, the prison does form a society, a companionship, a communion (_e. g._ communion of labor), but no _intercourse_, no reciprocity, no _union_. On the contrary, every union in the prison bears within it the dangerous seed of a "plot," which under favorable circumstances might spring up and bear fruit.
Yet one does not usually enter the prison voluntarily, and seldom remains in it voluntarily either, but cherishes the egoistic desire for liberty. Here, therefore, it sooner becomes manifest that personal intercourse is in hostile relations to the prison society and tends to the dissolution of this very society, this joint incarceration.
Let us therefore look about for such communions as, it seems, we remain in gladly and voluntarily, without wanting to endanger them by our egoistic impulses.
As a communion of the required sort the _family_ offers itself in the first place. Parents, husband and wife, children, brothers and sisters, represent a whole or form a family, for the further widening of which the collateral relatives also may be made to serve if taken into account. The family is a true communion only when the law of the family, piety[160] or family love, is observed by its members. A son to whom parents, brothers, and sisters have become indifferent _has been_ a son; for, as the sonship no longer shows itself efficacious, it has no greater significance than the long-past connection of mother and child by the navel-string. That one has once lived in this bodily juncture cannot as a fact be undone; and so far one remains irrevocably this mother's son and the brother of the rest of her children; but it would come to a lasting connection only by lasting piety, this spirit of the family. Individuals are members of a family in the full sense only when they make the _persistence_ of the family their task; only as _conservative_ do they keep aloof from doubting their basis, the family. To every member of the family one thing must be fixed and sacred,--_viz._, the family itself, or, more expressively, piety. That the family is to _persist_ remains to its member, so long as he keeps himself free from that egoism which is hostile to the family, an unassailable truth. In a word:--If the family is sacred, then nobody who belongs to it may secede from it; else he becomes a "criminal" against the family: he may never pursue an interest hostile to the family, _e. g._ form a misalliance. He who does this has "dishonored the family," "put it to shame," etc.
Now, if in an individual the egoistic impulse has not force enough, he complies and makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank which harmonizes with its position, and the like; in short, he "does honor to the family."
If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows fierily enough in his veins, he prefers to become a "criminal" against the family and to throw off its laws.