The Ego and His Own Part 12

But then the labor too must be adapted to that end! Man is honored only by human, self-conscious labor, only by the labor that has for its end no "egoistic" purpose, but Man, and is Man's self-revelation; so that the saying should be _laboro, ergo sum_, I labor, therefore I am a man.

The humane liberal wants that labor of the _mind_ which _works up_ all material; he wants the mind, that leaves no thing quiet or in its existing condition, that acquiesces in nothing, a.n.a.lyzes everything, criticises anew every result that has been gained. This restless mind is the true laborer, it obliterates prejudices, shatters limits and narrownesses, and raises man above everything that would like to dominate over him, while the Communist labors only for himself, and not even freely, but from necessity,--in short, represents a man condemned to hard labor.

The laborer of such a type is not "egoistic," because he does not labor for individuals, neither for himself nor for other individuals, not for _private_ men therefore, but for humanity and its progress: he does not ease individual pains, does not care for individual wants, but removes limits within which humanity is pressed, dispels prejudices which dominate an entire time, vanquishes hindrances that obstruct the path of all, clears away errors in which men entangle themselves, discovers truths which are found through him for all and for all time; in short--he lives and labors for humanity.

Now, in the first place, the discoverer of a great truth doubtless knows that it can be useful to the rest of men, and, as a jealous withholding furnishes him no enjoyment, he communicates it; but, even though he has the consciousness that his communication is highly valuable to the rest, yet he has in no wise sought and found his truth for the sake of the rest, but for his own sake, because he himself desired it, because darkness and fancies left him no rest till he had procured for himself light and enlightenment to the best of his powers.

He labors, therefore, for his own sake and for the satisfaction of _his_ want. That along with this he was also useful to others, yes, to posterity, does not take from his labor the _egoistic_ character.

In the next place, if he did labor only on his own account, like the rest, why should his act be human, those of the rest unhuman, _i. e._ egoistic? Perhaps, because this book, painting, symphony, etc., is the labor of his whole being, because he has done his best in it, has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only the handicraftsman, _i. e._ the skill in handicraft, not "the man"? In his poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not "the man."

But does this mean more than "in the one work you see _me_ as completely as possible, in the other only my skill"? Is it not _me_ again that the act expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offer _oneself_ to the world in a work, to work out and shape _oneself_, than to remain concealed behind one's labor? You say, to be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the handicraftsman,--that he does not understand how to compress himself into one labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched out in his other relations of life, and that your want, through whose satisfaction that work came into being, was a--theoretical want.

But you will reply that you reveal quite another man, a worthier, higher, greater, a man that is more man than that other. I will a.s.sume that you accomplish all that is possible to man, that you bring to pa.s.s what no other succeeds in. Wherein, then, does your greatness consist?

Precisely in this, that you are more than other men (the "ma.s.ses"), more than _men_ ordinarily are, more than "ordinary men"; precisely in your elevation above men. You are distinguished beyond other men not by being man, but because you are a "unique"[91] man. Doubtless you show what a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, this by no means shows that others, also men, are able to do as much; you have executed it only as a _unique_ man, and are unique therein.

It is not man that makes up your greatness, but you create it, because you are more than man, and mightier than other--men.

It is believed that one cannot be more than man. Rather, one cannot be less!

It is believed further that whatever one attains is good for Man. In so far as I remain at all times a man--or, like Schiller, a Swabian; like Kant, a Prussian; like Gustavus Adolphus, a near-sighted person--I certainly become by my superior qualities a notable man, Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted person. But the case is not much better with that than with Frederick the Great's cane, which became famous for Frederick's sake.

To "Give G.o.d the glory" corresponds the modern "Give Man the glory." But I mean to keep it for myself.

Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be "human," enunciates the necessary condition of sociability; for only as a man among men is one _companionable_. Herewith it makes known its _social_ object, the establishment of "human society."

Among social theories criticism is indisputably the most complete, because it removes and deprives of value everything that _separates_ man from man: all prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle of Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest fulfilment, and the last possible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness and repulsion from men: a fight against egoism in its simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of singleness,[92]

exclusiveness, itself.

"How can you live a truly social life so long as even one exclusiveness still exists between you?"

I ask conversely, How can you be truly single so long as even one connection still exists between you? If you are connected, you cannot leave each other; if a "tie" clasps you, you are something only _with another_, and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of you humanity.

"Only when you are human can you keep company with each other as men, just as you can understand each other as patriots only when you are patriotic!"

All right; then I answer, Only when you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what you are.

It is precisely the keenest critic who is. .h.i.t hardest by the curse of his principle. Putting from him one exclusive thing after another, shaking off churchliness, patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and separates himself from the churchly man, from the patriot, etc., till at last, when all ties are undone, he stands--alone. He, of all men, must exclude all that have anything exclusive or private; and, when you get to the bottom, what can be more exclusive than the exclusive, single person himself!

Or does he perhaps think that the situation would be better if _all_ became men and gave up exclusiveness? Why, for the very reason that "all" means "every individual" the most glaring contradiction is still maintained, for the "individual" is exclusiveness itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes to the individual anything private or exclusive, any private thought, any private folly; if he criticises everything away from him before his face, since his hatred of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred; if he knows no tolerance toward what is private, because everything private is _unhuman_,--yet he cannot criticise away the private person himself, since the hardness of the individual person resists his criticism, and he must be satisfied with declaring this person a "private person" and really leaving everything private to him again.

What will the society that no longer cares about anything private do?

Make the private impossible? No, but "subordinate it to the interests of society, and, _e. g._, leave it to private will to inst.i.tute holidays, as many as it chooses, if only it does not come in collision with the general interest."[93] Everything private is _left free_; _i. e._ it has no interest for society.

"By their raising of barriers against science the church and religiousness have declared that they are what they always were, only that this was hidden under another semblance when they were proclaimed to be the basis and necessary foundation of the State----a matter of purely private concern. Even when they were connected with the State and made it Christian, they were only the proof that the State had not yet developed its general political idea, that it was only inst.i.tuting private rights----they were only the highest expression for the fact that the State was a private affair and had to do only with private affairs. When the State shall at last have the courage and strength to fulfil its general destiny and to be free; when, therefore, it is also able to give separate interests and private concerns their true position,--then religion and the church will be free as they have never been hitherto. As a matter of the most purely private concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal want, they will be left to themselves; and every individual, every congregation and ecclesiastical communion, will be able to care for the blessedness of their souls as they choose and as they think necessary. Every one will care for his soul's blessedness so far as it is to him a personal want, and will accept and pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to him to offer the best guarantee for the satisfaction of his want. Science is at last left entirely out of the game."[94]

What is to happen, though? Is social life to have an end, and all companionableness, all fraternization, everything that is created by the love or society principle, to disappear?

As if one will not always seek the other because he _needs_ him; as if one must not accommodate himself to the other when he _needs_ him. But the difference is this, that then the individual really _unites_ with the individual, while formerly they were _bound together_ by a tie; son and father are bound together before majority, after it they can come together independently; before it they _belonged_ together as members of the family, after it they unite as egoists; sons.h.i.+p and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer pin themselves down to these.

The last privilege, in truth, is "Man"; with it all are privileged or invested. For, as Bruno Bauer himself says, "privilege remains even when it is extended to all."[95]

Thus liberalism runs its course in the following transformations: "First, the individual _is_ not man, therefore his individual personality is of no account: no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates!

"Second, the individual _has_ nothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or property, is valid.

"Third, as the individual neither is man nor has anything human, he shall not exist at all: he shall, as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated by criticism to make room for Man, 'Man, just discovered'."

But, although the individual is not Man, Man is yet present in the individual, and, like every spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence political liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to him as "a man by birth," as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of conscience, the possession of goods, etc.,--in short, the "rights of man"; Socialism grants to the individual what pertains to him as an _active_ man, as a "laboring" man; finally, humane liberalism gives the individual what he has as "a man,"

_i. e._ everything that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the single one[96] has nothing at all, humanity everything; and the necessity of the "regeneration" preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the completest measure. Become a new creature, become "man"!

One might even think himself reminded of the close of the Lord's Prayer.

To Man belongs the _lords.h.i.+p_ (the "power" or _dynamis_); therefore no individual may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals;--Man's is the _kingdom_, _i. e._ the world, consequently the individual is not to be proprietor, but Man, "all," commands the world as property;--to Man is due renown, _glorification_ or "glory" (_doxa_) from all, for Man or humanity is the individual's end, for which he labors, thinks, lives, and for whose glorification he must become "man."

Hitherto men have always striven to find out a fellows.h.i.+p in which their inequalities in other respects should become "non-essential"; they strove for equalization, consequently for _equality_, and wanted to come all under one hat, which means nothing less than that they were seeking for one lord, one tie, one faith ("'Tis in one G.o.d we all believe").

There cannot be for men anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself, and in this fellows.h.i.+p the love-craving has found its contentment: it did not rest till it had brought on this last equalization, leveled all inequality, laid man on the breast of man. But under this very fellows.h.i.+p decay and ruin become most glaring. In a more limited fellows.h.i.+p the Frenchman still stood against the German, the Christian against the Mohammedan, etc. Now, on the contrary, _man_ stands against men, or, as men are not man, man stands against the un-man.

The sentence "G.o.d 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 ragam.u.f.fin, 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 ragam.u.f.finhood is completed. We must first come down to the most ragam.u.f.fin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive at _ownness_, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more ragam.u.f.fin-like than naked--Man.

It is more than ragam.u.f.finhood, 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 ragam.u.f.finhood: because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The ragam.u.f.fin has stripped off ragam.u.f.finhood itself, and therewith has ceased, to be what he was, a ragam.u.f.fin.

I am no longer a ragam.u.f.fin, 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 G.o.d 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 ma.s.s," throws among the ma.s.ses 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 "ma.s.ses" 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other.