I -- do I come to myself and mine
through liberalism? Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal?
Man! Be only man -- and that you are anyway -- and the liberal
calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private
opinions and private follies, if only he can espy "Man"
in you.
But, as he takes little heed of
what you are privatim -- nay, in a strict following out
of his principle sets no value at all on it -- he sees in you
only what you are generatim. In other words, he sees
in you, not you, but the species; not Tom or Jim, but
Man; not the real or unique one,1 but your essence or your concept;
not the bodily man, but the spirit.
As Tom you would not be his equal,
because he is Jim, therefore not Tom; as man you are the same
that he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not exist at all
for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously
an egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy
for himself: he loves in you not Tom, of whom he knows nothing
and wants to know nothing, but Man.
To see in you and me nothing further
than "men," that is running the Christian way of looking
at things, according to which one is for the other nothing but
a concept (e. g. a man called to salvation,
etc.), into the ground.
Christianity properly so called
gathers us under a less utterly general concept: there we are
"sons of God" and "led by the Spirit of God."2
Yet not all can boast of being God's sons, but "the same
Spirit which witnesses to our spirit that we are sons of God reveals
also who are the sons of the devil."3 Consequently, to be
a son of God one must not be a son of the devil; the sonship of
God excluded certain men. To be sons of men -- i.
e., men -- on the contrary, we need nothing but to belong
to the human species, need only to be specimens of the
same species. What I am as this I is no concern of yours as a
good liberal, but is my private affair alone; enough
that we are both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the
human species: as "a son of man" I am your equal.
What am I now to you? Perhaps this
bodily I as I walk and stand? Anything but that. This
bodily I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in your
eyes a "private affair" which is no concern of yours:
it is an "affair by itself." As an "affair for
you" there exists only my concept, my generic concept, only
the Man, who, as he is called Tom, could just as well
be Joe or Dick. You see in me not me, the bodily man, but an unreal
thing, the spook, i.e. a Man.
In the course of the Christian centuries
we declared
the most various persons to be "our equals," but each
time in the measure of that spirit which we expected
from them -- e. g. each one in whom the spirit of the
need of redemption may be assumed, then later each one who has
the spirit of integrity, finally each one who shows a human spirit
and a human face. Thus the fundamental principle of "equality"
varied.
Equality being now conceived as
equality of the human spirit, there has certainly been
discovered an equality that includes all men; for who
could deny that we men have a human spirit, i. e., no
other than a human!
But are we on that account further
on now than in the beginning of Christianity? Then we were to
have a divine spirit, now a human; but, if the
divine did not exhaust us, how should the human wholly express
what we are? Feuerbach e. g. thinks, that if
he humanizes the divine, he has found the truth. No, if God has
given us pain, "Man" is capable of pinching us still
more torturingly. The long and the short of it is this: that we
are men is the slightest thing about us, and has significance
only in so far as it is one of our qualities,4 i.
e. our property.5 I am indeed among other things a man,
as I am e. g. a living being, therefore an animal, or
a European, a Berliner, etc.; but he who chose to have regard
for me only as a man, or as a Berliner, would pay me a regard
that would be very unimportant to me. And wherefore? Because he
would have regard only for one of my qualities, not for
me.
It is just so with the spirit
too. A Christian spirit, an upright spirit, etc. may well
be my acquired quality, my property, but I am not this spirit:
it is mine, not I its.
Hence we have in liberalism only
the continuation of the old Christian depreciation of the I, the
bodily Tom. Instead of taking me as I am, one looks solely at
my property, my qualities, and enters into marriage bonds with
me only for the sake of my -- possessions; one marries, as it
were, what I have, not what I am. The Christian takes hold of
my spirit, the liberal of my humanity.
But, if the spirit, which is not
regarded as the property of the bodily ego but as the
proper ego itself, is a ghost, then the Man too, who is not recognized
as my quality but as the proper I, is nothing but a spook, a thought,
a concept.
Therefore the liberal too revolves
in the same circle as the Christian. Because the spirit of mankind,
i.e. Man, dwells in you, you are a man, as when the spirit
of Christ dwells in you are a Christian; but, because it dwells
in you only as a second ego, even though it be as your proper
or "better" ego, it remains otherworldly to you, and
you have to strive to become wholly man. A striving just as fruitless
as the Christian's to become wholly a blessed spirit!
One can now, after liberalism has
proclaimed Man, declare openly that herewith was only completed
the consistent carrying out of Christianity, and that in truth
Christianity set itself no other task from the start than to realize
"man," the "true man." Hence, then, the illusion
that Christianity ascribes an infinite value
to the ego (as e. g. in the doctrine of immortality,
in the cure of souls, etc.) comes to light. No, it assigns this
value to Man alone. Only Man is immortal, and
only because I am Man am I too immortal. In fact, Christianity
had to teach that no one is lost, just as liberalism too puts
all on an equality as men; but that eternity, like this equality,
applied only to the Man in me, not to me. Only as the
bearer and harborer of Man do I not die, as notoriously "the
king never dies." Louis dies, but the king remains; I die,
but my spirit, Man, remains. To identify me now entirely with
Man the demand has been invented, and stated, that I must become
a "real generic being."6
The HUMAN religion
is only the last metamorphosis of the Christian religion. For
liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from
me and sets it above me, because it exalts "Man" to
the same extent as any other religion does its God or idol, because
it makes what is mine into something otherworldly, because in
general it makes out of what is mine, out of my qualities and
my property, something alien -- to wit, an "essence";
in short, because it sets me beneath Man, and thereby creates
for me a "vocation." But liberalism declares itself
a religion in form too when it demands for this supreme being,
Man, a zeal of faith, "a faith that some day will at last
prove its fiery zeal too, a zeal that will be invincible."7
But, as liberalism is a human religion, its professor takes a
tolerant attitude toward the professor of any other
(Catholic, Jewish, etc.), as Frederick the Great did toward every
one who performed his duties as a subject, whatever fashion of
becoming blest he might be inclined toward. This religion is now
to be raised to the rank of the generally customary one, and separated
from the others as mere "private follies," toward which,
besides, one takes a highly liberal attitude on account
of their unessentialness.
One may call it the State-religion,
the religion of the "free State," not in the sense hitherto
current that it is the one favored or privileged by the State,
but as that religion which the "free State" not only
has the right, but is compelled, to demand from each of those
who belong to it, let him be privatim a Jew, a Christian,
or anything else. For it does the same service to the State as
filial piety to the family. If the family is to be recognized
and maintained, in its existing condition, by each one of those
who belong to it, then to him the tie of blood must be sacred,
and his feeling for it must be that of piety, of respect for the
ties of blood, by which every blood-relation becomes to him a
consecrated person. So also to every member of the State-community
this community must be sacred, and the concept which is the highest
to the State must likewise be the highest to him.
But what concept is the highest
to the State? Doubtless that of being a really human society,
a society in which every one who is really a man, i. e.,
not an un-man, can obtain admission as a member. Let a State's
tolerance go ever so far, toward an un-man and toward what is
inhuman it ceases. And yet this "un-man" is a man, yet
the "inhuman" itself is
something human, yes, possible only to a man, not to any beast;
it is, in fact, something "possible to man." But, although
every un-man is a man, yet the State excludes him; i.e.
it locks him up, or transforms him from a fellow of the State
into a fellow of the prison (fellow of the lunatic asylum or hospital,
according to Communism).
To say in blunt words what an un-man
is not particularly hard: it is a man who does not correspond
to the concept man, as the inhuman is something human
which is not conformed to the concept of the human. Logic calls
this a "self-contradictory judgment." Would it be permissible
for one to pronounce this judgment, that one can be a man without
being a man, if he did not admit the hypothesis that the concept
of man can be separated from the existence, the essence from the
appearance? They say, he appears indeed as a man, but
is not a man.
Men have passed this "self-contradictory
judgment" through a long line of centuries! Nay, what is
still more, in this long time there were only -- un-men.
What individual can have corresponded to his concept? Christianity
knows only one Man, and this one -- Christ -- is at once an un-man
again in the reverse sense, to wit, a superhuman man, a "God."
Only the -- un-man is a real man.
Men that are not men, what should
they be but ghosts? Every real man, because he does not
correspond to the concept "man," or because he is not
a "generic man," is a spook. But do I still remain an
un-man even if I bring Man (who towered above me and remained
otherworldly to me only as my
ideal, my task, my essence or concept) down to be my quality,
my own and inherent in me; so that Man is nothing else than my
humanity, my human existence, and everything that I do is human
precisely because I do it, but not because it corresponds
to the concept "man"? I am really
Man and the un-man in one; for I am a man and at the same time
more than a man; i.e. I am the ego of this my mere quality.
It had to come to this at last,
that it was no longer merely demanded of us to be Christians,
but to become men; for, though we could never really become even
Christians, but always remained "poor sinners" (for
the Christian was an unattainable ideal too), yet in this the
contradictoriness did not come before our consciousness so, and
the illusion was easier than now when of us, who are men act humanly
(yes, cannot do otherwise than be such and act so), the demand
is made that we are to be men, "real men."
Our States of today, because they
still have all sorts of things sticking to them, left from their
churchly mother, do indeed load those who belong to them with
various obligations (e. g. churchly religiousness) which
properly do not a bit concern them, the States; yet on the whole
they do not deny their significance, since they want to be looked
upon as human societies, in which man as man can be a
member, even if he is less privileged than other members; most
of them admit adherence of every religious sect, and receive people
without distinction of race or nation: Jews, Turks, Moors, etc.,
can become French citizens. In the act of reception, therefore,
the State looks only to see whether one is a man. The
Church, as a society of
believers, could not receive every man into her bosom; the State,
as a society of men, can. But, when the State has carried its
principle clear through, of presupposing in its constituents nothing
but that they are men (even the North Americans still presuppose
in theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of integrity,
of responsibility), then it has dug its grave. While it will fancy
that those whom it possesses are without exception men, these
have meanwhile become without exception egoists, each
of whom utilizes it according to his egoistic powers and ends.
Against the egoists "human society" is wrecked; for
they no longer have to do with each other as men, but
appear egoistically as an I against a You altogether
different from me and in opposition to me.
If the State must count on our humanity,
it is the same if one says it must count on our morality.
Seeing Man in each other, and acting as men toward each other,
is called moral behavior. This is every whit the "spiritual
love" of Christianity. For, if I see Man in you, as in myself
I see Man and nothing but Man, then I care for you as I would
care for myself; for we represent, you see, nothing but the mathematical
proposition: A = C and B = C, consequently A = B -- i.e.
I nothing but man and you nothing but man, consequently I and
you the same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the
former does not allow validity to me, but only to the
Man in me. But, if the State is a society of men, not
a union of egos each of whom has only himself before his eyes,
then it cannot last without morality, and must insist on morality.
Therefore we two, the State and
I, are enemies. I,
the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this "human
society," I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but
to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into
my property and my creature; i. e., I annihilate it,
and form in its place the Union of Egoists.
So the State betrays its enmity
to me by demanding that I be a man, which presupposes that I may
also not be a man, but rank for it as an "un- man";
it imposes being a man upon me as a duty. Further, it
desires me to do nothing along with which it cannot last;
so its permanence is to be sacred for me. Then I am not
to be an egoist, but a "respectable, upright," i.e.
moral, man. Enough: before it and its permanence I am to be impotent
and respectful.
This State, not a present one indeed,
but still in need of being first created, is the ideal of advancing
liberalism. There is to come into existence a true "society
of men," in which every "man" finds room. Liberalism
means to realize "Man," i.e. create a world
for him; and this should be the human world or the general
(Communistic) society of men. It was said, "The Church could
regard only the spirit, the State is to regard the whole man."8
But is not "Man" "spirit"? The kernel of the
State is simply "Man," this unreality, and it itself
is only a "society of men." The world which the believer
(believing spirit) creates is called Church, the world which the
man (human or humane spirit) creates is called State. But that
is not my world. I never execute anything human
in the
abstract, but always my own things; my human
act is diverse from every other human act, and only by this diversity
is it a real act belonging to me. The human in it is an abstraction,
and, as such, spirit, i.e. abstracted essence.
Bruno Bauer states (e. g. Judenfrage,
p. 84) that the truth of criticism is the final truth, and in
fact the truth sought for by Christianity itself --to wit, "Man."
He says, "The history of the Christian world is the history
of the supreme fight for truth, for in it -- and in it only! --
the thing at issue is the discovery of the final or the primal
truth -- man and freedom."
All right, let us accept this gain,
and let us take man as the ultimately found result of
Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man
in general. Now, who is Man? I am! Man, the
end and outcome of Christianity, is, as I, the beginning
and raw material of the new history, a history of enjoyment after
the history of sacrifices, a history not of man or humanity, but
of -- me. Man ranks as the general. Now then, I and the
egoistic are the really general, since every one is an egoist
and of paramount importance to himself. The Jewish is not the
purely egoistic, because the Jew still devotes himself
to Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the Christian lives
on the grace of God and subjects himself to him. As Jew
and as Christian alike a man satisfies only certain of his wants,
only a certain need, not himself: a half-egoism, because
the egoism of a half-man, who is half he, half Jew, or half his
own proprietor, half a slave. Therefore, too, Jew and Christian
always half-way exclude each other; i.e. as men they
recognize
each other, as slaves they exclude each other, because they are
servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists,
they would exclude each other wholly and hold together
so much the more firmly. Their ignominy is not that they exclude
each other, but that this is done only half-way. Bruno
Bauer, on the contrary, thinks Jews and Christians cannot regard
and treat each other as "men" till they give up the
separate essence which parts them and obligates them to eternal
separation, recognize the general essence of "Man,"
and regard this as their "true essence."
According to his representation
the defect of the Jews and the Christians alike lies in their
wanting to be and have something "particular" instead
of only being men and endeavoring after what is human -- to wit,
the "general rights of man." He thinks their fundamental
error consists in the belief that they are "privileged,"
possess "prerogatives"; in general, in the belief in
prerogative .9 In opposition to this he holds up to them
the general rights of man. The rights of man! --
Man is man in general,
and in so far every one who is a man. Now every one is to have
the eternal rights of man, and, according to the opinion of Communism,
enjoy them in the complete "democracy," or, as it ought
more correctly to be called -- anthropocracy. But it is I alone
who have everything that I -- procure for myself; as man I have
nothing. People would like to give every man an affluence of all
good, merely
because he has the title "man." But I put the accent
on me, not on my being man.
Man is something only as my
quality10 (property11), like masculinity or femininity. The ancients
found the ideal in one's being male in the full sense;
their virtue is virtus and arete -- i.e.
manliness. What is one to think of a woman who should want only
to be perfectly "woman?" That is not given to all, and
many a one would therein be fixing for herself an unattainable
goal. Feminine, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by
nature; femininity is her quality, and she does not need "true
femininity." I am a man just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous
as it would be to set the earth the task of being a "thorough
star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the call to
be a "thorough man."
When Fichte says, "The ego
is all," this seems to harmonize perfectly with my thesis.
But it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys
all, and only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the
-- finite ego is really I. Fichte speaks of the "absolute"
ego, but I speak of me, the transitory ego.
How natural is the supposition that
man and ego mean the same! And yet one sees,
e. g., by Feuerbach, that the expression "man"
is to designate the absolute ego, the species, not the
transitory, individual ego. Egoism and humanity (humaneness) ought
to mean the same, but according to Feuerbach the individual can
"only lift himself above the limits of his individuality,
but not above the laws, the positive ordinances,
of his species."12 But the species is nothing, and, if the
individual lifts himself above the limits of his individuality,
this is rather his very self as an individual; he exists only
in raising himself, he exists only in not remaining what he is;
otherwise he would be done, dead. Man with the great M is only
an ideal, the species only something thought of. To be a man is
not to realize the ideal of Man, but to present oneself,
the individual. It is not how I realize the generally human
that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my species,
am without norm, without law, without model, etc. It is possible
that I can make very little out of myself; but this little is
everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of
me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion,
the laws, the State. Better -- if the talk is to be of better
at all -- better an unmannerly child than an old head on young
shoulders, better a mulish man than a man compliant in everything.
The unmannerly and mulish fellow is still on the way to form himself
according to his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant
one is determined by the "species," the general demands
-- the species is law to him. He is determined13 by it;
for what else is the species to him but his "destiny,"14
his "calling"? Whether I look to "humanity,"
the species, in order to strive toward this ideal, or to God and
Christ with like endeavor, where is the essential dissimilarity?
At most the former is
more washed-out than the latter. As the individual is the whole
of nature, so he is the whole of the species too.
Everything that I do, think -- in
short, my expression or manifestation -- is indeed conditioned
by what I am. The Jew
e. g. can will only thus or thus, can "present himself"
only thus; the Christian can present and manifest himself only
Christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew
or Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish
or Christian; but it is not possible; in the most rigorous conduct
you yet remain an egoist, a sinner against that concept
-- i.e., you are not the precise equivalent
of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through,
people have inquired for a more perfect concept which should really
wholly express what you are, and which, because it is your true
nature, should contain all the laws of your activity. The most
perfect thing of the kind has been attained in "Man."
As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not your task;
to be a Greek, a German, does not suffice. But be a -- man, then
you have everything; look upon the human as your calling.
Now I know what is expected of me,
and the new catechism can be written. The subject is again subjected
to the predicate, the individual to something general; the dominion
is again secured to an idea, and the foundation laid
for a new religion. This is a step forward in
the domain of religion, and in particular of Christianity; not
a step out beyond it.
To step out beyond it leads into
the unspeakable. For me paltry language has no word,
and "the
Word," the Logos, is to me a "mere word."
My essence is sought for.
If not the Jew, the German, etc., then at any rate it is -- the
man. "Man is my essence."
I am repulsive or repugnant to myself;
I have a horror and loathing of myself, I am a horror to myself,
or, I am never enough for myself and never do enough to satisfy
myself. From such feelings springs self-dissolution or self-criticism.
Religiousness begins with self-renunciation, ends with completed
criticism.
I am possessed, and want to get
rid of the "evil spirit." How do I set about it? I fearlessly
commit the sin that seems to the Christian the most dire, the
sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. "He who blasphemes
the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever, but is liable to the
eternal judgment!"15 I want no forgiveness, and am not afraid
of the judgment.
Man is the last evil spirit
or spook, the most deceptive or most intimate, the craftiest liar
with honest mien, the father of lies.
The egoist, turning against the
demands and concepts of the present, executes pitilessly the most
measureless -- desecration. Nothing is holy to him!
It would be foolish to assert that
there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward
it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall
be the enemy of -- every higher power, while religion
teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it.
The desecrator puts forth
his strength against every
fear of God, for fear of God would determine him in everything
that he left standing as sacred. Whether it is the God or the
Man that exercises the hallowing power in the God-man -- whether,
therefore, anything is held sacred for God's sake or for Man's
(Humanity's) -- this does not change the fear of God, since Man
is revered as "supreme essence," as much as on the specifically
religious standpoint God as "supreme essence" calls
for our fear and reverence; both overawe us.
The fear of God in the proper sense
was shaken long ago, and a more or less conscious "atheism,"
externally recognizable by a wide-spread "unchurchliness,"
has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken from God
has been superadded to Man, and the power of humanity grew greater
in just the degree that of piety lost weight: "Man"
is the God of today, and fear of Man has taken the place of the
old fear of God.
But, because Man represents only
another Supreme Being, nothing in fact has taken place but a metamorphosis
in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is merely an altered
form of the fear of God.
Our atheists are pious people.
If in the so-called feudal times
we held everything as a fief from God, in the liberal period the
same feudal relation exists with Man. God was the Lord, now Man
is the Lord; God was the Mediator, now Man is; God was the Spirit,
now Man is. In this three fold regard the feudal relation has
experienced a transformation. For now, firstly, we hold as a fief
from all-powerful Man our power, which, because it
comes from a higher, is not called power or might, but "right"
-- the "rights of man"; we further hold as a fief from
him our position in the world, for he, the mediator, mediates
our intercourse with others, which therefore may not
be otherwise than "human"; finally, we hold as a fief
from him ourselves -- to wit, our own value, or all that we are
worth -- inasmuch as we are worth nothing when he does
not dwell in us, and when or where we are not "human."
The power is Man's, the world is Man's, I am Man's.
But am I not still unrestrained
from declaring myself the entitler, the mediator, and
the own self? Then it runs thus:
My power is my property.
My power gives me property.
My power am I myself, and
through it am I my property.