The Ego and His Own Part 24

But, even if these offices may vest in every one, yet it is only the individual's unique force, peculiar to him alone, that gives them, so to speak, life and significance. That he does not manage his office like an "ordinary man," but puts in the competence of his uniqueness, this he is not yet paid for when he is paid only in general as an official or a minister. If he has done it so as to earn your thanks, and you wish to retain this thankworthy force of the unique one, you must not pay him like a mere man who performed only what was human, but as one who accomplishes what is unique. Do the like with your labor, do!

There cannot be a general schedule-price fixed for my uniqueness as there can for what I do as man. Only for the latter can a schedule-price be set.

Go right on, then, setting up a general appraisal for human labors, but do not deprive your uniqueness of its desert.

_Human_ or _general_ needs can be satisfied through society; for satisfaction of _unique_ needs you must do some seeking. A friend and a friendly service, or even an individual's service, society cannot procure you. And yet you will every moment be in need of such a service, and on the slightest occasions require somebody who is helpful to you.

Therefore do not rely on society, but see to it that you have the wherewithal to--purchase the fulfiment of your wishes.

Whether money is to be retained among egoists?--To the old stamp an inherited possession adheres. If you no longer let yourselves be paid with it, it is ruined: if you do nothing for this money, it loses all power. Cancel the _inheritance_, and you have broken off the executor's court-seal. For now everything is an inheritance, whether it be already inherited or await its heir. If it is yours, wherefore do you let it be sealed up from you? why do you respect the seal?

But why should you not create a new money? Do you then annihilate the ware in taking from it the hereditary stamp? Now, money is a ware, and an essential _means_ or competence. For it protects against the ossification of resources, keeps them in flux and brings to pa.s.s their exchange. If you know a better medium of exchange, go ahead; yet it will be a "money" again. It is not the money that does you damage, but your incompetence to take it. Let your competence take effect, collect yourselves, and there will be no lack of money--of your money, the money of _your_ stamp. But working I do not call "letting your competence take effect." Those who are only "looking for work" and "willing to work hard" are preparing for their own selves the infallible upshot--to be out of work.

Good and bad luck depend on money. It is a power in the _bourgeois_ period for this reason, that it is only wooed on all hands like a girl, indissolubly wedded by n.o.body. All the romance and chivalry of _wooing_ for a dear object come to life again in compet.i.tion. Money, an object of longing, is carried off by the bold "knights of industry."[194]

He who has luck takes home the bride. The ragam.u.f.fin has luck; he takes her into his household, "society," and destroys the virgin. In his house she is no longer bride, but wife; and with her virginity her family name is also lost. As housewife the maiden Money is called "Labor," for "Labor" is her husband's name. She is a possession of her husband's.

To bring this figure to an end, the child of Labor and Money is again a girl, an unwedded one and therefore Money, but with the certain descent from Labor, her father. The form of the face, the "effigy," bears another stamp.

Finally, as regards compet.i.tion once more, it has a continued existence by this very means, that all do not attend to _their affair_ and come to an _understanding_ with each other about it. Bread, _e. g._, is a need of all the inhabitants of a city; therefore they might easily agree on setting up a public bakery. Instead of this, they leave the furnis.h.i.+ng of the needful to the competing bakers. Just so meat to the butchers, wine to the wine-dealers, etc.

Abolis.h.i.+ng compet.i.tion is not equivalent to favoring the guild. The difference is this: In the _guild_ baking, etc., is the affair of the guild-brothers; in _compet.i.tion_, the affair of chance compet.i.tors; in the _union_, of those who require baked goods, and therefore my affair, yours, the affair of neither the guildic nor the concessionary baker, but the affair of the _united_.

If _I_ do not trouble myself about _my_ affair, I must be _content_ with what it pleases others to vouchsafe me. To have bread is my affair, my wish and desire, and yet people leave that to the bakers and hope at most to obtain through their wrangling, their getting ahead of each other, their rivalry,--in short, their compet.i.tion,--an advantage which one could not count on in the case of the guild-brothers who were lodged _entirely_ and _alone_ in the proprietors.h.i.+p of the baking franchise.--What every one requires, every one should also take a hand in procuring and producing; it is _his_ affair, his property, not the property of the guildic or concessionary master.

Let us look back once more. The world belongs to the children of this world, the children of men; it is no longer G.o.d's world, but man's. As much as every man can procure of it, let him call his; only the true man, the State, human society or mankind, will look to it that each shall make nothing else his own than what he appropriates as man, _i. e._ in human fas.h.i.+on. Unhuman appropriation is that which is not consented to by man, _i. e._ it is a "criminal" appropriation, as the human, _vice versa_, is a "rightful" one, one acquired in the "way of law."

So they talk since the Revolution.

But my property is not a thing, since this has an existence independent of me; only my might is my own. Not this tree, but my might or control over it, is what is mine.

Now, how is this might perversely expressed? They say I have a _right_ to this tree, or it is my _rightful_ property. So I have _earned_ it by might. That the might must last in order that the tree may also be _held_,--or better, that the might is not a thing existing of itself, but has existence solely in the _mighty ego_, in me the mighty,--is forgotten. Might, like other of my _qualities_ (_e. g._ humanity, majesty, etc.), is exalted to something existing of itself, so that it still exists long after it has ceased to be _my_ might. Thus transformed into a ghost, might is--_right_. This _eternalized_ might is not extinguished even with my death, but is transferred or "bequeathed."

Things now really belong not to me, but to right.

On the other side, this is nothing but a hallucination of vision. For the individual's might becomes permanent and a right only by others joining their might with his. The delusion consists in their believing that they cannot withdraw their might. The same phenomenon over again; might is separated from me. I cannot take back the might that I gave to the possessor. One has "granted power of attorney," has given away his power, has renounced coming to a better mind.

The proprietor can give up his might and his right to a thing by giving the thing away, squandering it, and the like. And _we_ should not be able likewise to let go the might that we lend to him?

The rightful man, the _just_, desires to call nothing his own that he does not have "rightly" or have the right to, and therefore only _legitimate property_.

Now, who is to be judge, and adjudge his right to him? At last, surely, Man, who imparts to him the rights of man: then he can say, in an infinitely broader sense than Terence, _humani nihil a me alienum puto_, _i. e._ the _human is my property_. However he may go about it, so long as he occupies this standpoint he cannot get clear of a judge; and in our time the multifarious judges that had been selected have set themselves against each other in two persons at deadly enmity,--to wit, in G.o.d and Man. The one party appeal to divine right, the other to human right or the rights of man.

So much is clear, that in neither case does the individual do the ent.i.tling himself.

Just pick me out an action to-day that would not be a violation of right! Every moment the rights of man are trampled under foot by one side, while their opponents cannot open their mouth without uttering a blasphemy against divine right. Give an alms, you mock at a right of man, because the relation of beggar and benefactor is an inhuman relation; utter a doubt, you sin against a divine right. Eat dry bread with contentment, you violate the right of man by your equanimity; eat it with discontent, you revile divine right by your repining. There is not one among you who does not commit a crime at every moment; your speeches are crimes, and every hindrance to your freedom of speech is no less a crime. Ye are criminals altogether!

Yet you are so only in that you all stand on the _ground of right_; _i. e._, in that you do not even know, and understand how to value, the fact that you are criminals.

Inviolable or _sacred_ property has grown on this very ground: it is a _juridical concept_.

A dog sees the bone in another's power, and stands off only if it feels itself too weak. But man respects the other's _right_ to his bone. The latter action, therefore, ranks as _human_, the former as _brutal_ or "egoistic."

And as here, so in general, it is called "_human_" when one sees in everything something _spiritual_ (here right), _i. e._ makes everything a ghost and takes his att.i.tude toward it as toward a ghost, which one can indeed scare away at its appearance, but cannot kill. It is human to look at what is individual not as individual, but as a generality.

In nature as such I no longer respect anything, but know myself to be ent.i.tled to everything against it; in the tree in that garden, on the other hand, I must respect _alienness_ (they say in one-sided fas.h.i.+on "property"), I must keep my hand off it. This comes to an end only when I can indeed leave that tree to another as I leave my stick, etc., to another, but do not in advance regard it as alien to me, _i. e._ sacred.

Rather, I make to myself no _crime_ of felling it if I will, and it remains my property, however long I resign it to others: it is and remains _mine_. In the banker's fortune I as little see anything alien as Napoleon did in the territories of kings: we have no _dread_ of "_conquering_" it, and we look about us also for the means thereto. We strip off from it, therefore, the _spirit_ of _alienness_, of which we had been afraid.

Therefore it is necessary that I do not lay claim to anything more _as man_, but to everything as I, this I; and accordingly to nothing human, but to mine; _i. e._ nothing that pertains to me as man, but--what I will and because I will it.

Rightful, or legitimate, property of another will be only that which _you_ are content to recognize as such. If your content ceases, then this property has lost legitimacy for you, and you will laugh at absolute right to it.

Besides the hitherto discussed property in the limited sense, there is held up to our reverent heart another property against which we are far less "to sin." This property consists in spiritual goods, in the "sanctuary of the inner nature." What a man holds sacred, no other is to gibe at; because, untrue as it may be, and zealously as one may "in loving and modest wise" seek to convince of a true sanct.i.ty the man who adheres to it and believes in it, yet _the sacred_ itself is always to be honored in it: the mistaken man does believe in the sacred, even though in an incorrect essence of it, and so his belief in the sacred must at least be respected.

In ruder times than ours it was customary to demand a particular faith, and devotion to a particular sacred essence, and they did not take the gentlest way with those who believed otherwise; since, however, "freedom of belief" spread itself more and more abroad, the "jealous G.o.d and sole Lord" gradually melted into a pretty general "supreme being,"

and it satisfied humane tolerance if only every one revered "something sacred."

Reduces to the human expression, this sacred essence is "man himself"

and "the human." With the deceptive semblance as if the human were altogether our own, and free from all the otherworldliness with which that divine is tainted,--yes, as if Man were as much as I or you,--there may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of a "sacred essence" and that we now feel ourselves everywhere at home and no longer in the uncanny,[195] _i. e._ in the sacred and in sacred awe: in the ecstasy over "Man discovered at last" the egoistic cry of pain pa.s.ses unheard, and the spook that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego.

But "Huma.n.u.s is the saint's name" (see Goethe), and the humane is only the most clarified sanct.i.ty.

The egoist makes the reverse declaration. For this precise reason, because you hold something sacred, I gibe at you; and, even if I respected everything in you, your sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect.

With these opposed views there must also be a.s.sumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the egoist insults them, the religious man (_i. e._ every one who puts his "essence" above himself) must consistently--protect them. But what kind of spiritual goods are to be protected, and what left unprotected, depends entirely on the concept that one forms of the "supreme being"; and he who fears G.o.d, _e. g._, has more to shelter than he (the liberal) who fears Man.

In spiritual goods we are (in distinction from the sensuous) injured in a spiritual way, and the sin against them consists in a direct _desecration_, while against the sensuous a purloining or alienation takes place; the goods themselves are robbed of value and of consecration, not merely taken away; the sacred is immediately compromised. With the word "irreverence" or "flippancy" is designated everything that can be committed as _crime_ against spiritual goods, _i. e._ against everything that is sacred for us; and scoffing, reviling, contempt, doubt, and the like, are only different shades of _criminal flippancy_.

That desecration can be practised in the most manifold wise is here to be pa.s.sed over, and only that desecration is to be preferentially mentioned which threatens the sacred with danger through an _unrestricted press_.

As long as respect is demanded even for one spiritual essence, speech and the press must be enthralled in the name of this essence; for just so long the egoist might "trespa.s.s" against it by his _utterances_, from which thing he must be hindered by "due punishment" at least, if one does not prefer to take up the more correct means against it, the preventive use of police authority, _e. g._ censors.h.i.+p.

What a sighing for liberty of the press! What then is the press to be liberated from? Surely from a dependence, a belonging, and a liability to service! But to liberate himself from that is every one's affair, and it may with safety be a.s.sumed that, when you have delivered yourself from liability to service, that which you compose and write will also belong to you as your _own_ instead of having been thought and indited _in the service_ of some power. What can a believer in Christ say and have printed, that should be freer from that belief in Christ than he himself is? If I cannot or may not write something, perhaps the primary fault lies with _me_. Little as this seems to hit the point, so near is the application nevertheless to be found. By a press-law I draw a boundary for my publications, or let one be drawn, beyond which wrong and its _punishment_ follows. I myself _limit_ myself.

If the press was to be free, nothing would be so important as precisely its liberation from every coercion that could be put on it in the _name of a law_. And, that it might come to that, I my own self should have to have absolved myself from obedience to the law.

Certainly, the absolute liberty of the press is like every absolute liberty, a nonent.i.ty. The press can become free from full many a thing, but always only from what I too am free from. If we make ourselves free from the sacred, if we have become _graceless_ and _lawless_, our words too will become so.

As little as _we_ can be declared clear of every coercion in the world, so little can our writing be withdrawn from it. But as free as we are, so free we can make it too.

It must therefore become our _own_, instead of, as. .h.i.therto, serving a spook.

People do not yet know what they mean by their cry for liberty of the press. What they ostensibly ask is that the State shall set the press free; but what they are really after, without knowing it themselves, is that the press become free from the State, or clear of the State. The former is a _pet.i.tion_ to the State, the latter an _insurrection against_ the State. As a "pet.i.tion for right," even as a serious demanding of the right of liberty of the press, it presupposes the State as the _giver_, and can hope only for a _present_, a permission, a chartering. Possible, no doubt, that a State acts so senselessly as to grant the demanded present; but you may bet everything that those who receive the present will not know how to use it so long as they regard the State as a truth: they will not trespa.s.s against this "sacred thing," and will call for a penal press-law against every one who would be willing to dare this.

In a word, the press does not become free from what I am not free from.

Do I perhaps hereby show myself an opponent of the liberty of the press?

On the contrary, I only a.s.sert that one will never get it if one wants only it, the liberty of the press; _i. e._ if one sets out only for an unrestricted permission. Only beg right along for this permission: you may wait forever for it, for there is no one in the world who could give it to you. As long as you want to have yourselves "ent.i.tled" to the use of the press by a permission, _i. e._ liberty of the press, you live in vain hope and complaint.