The Ego and His Own Part 9

-- 1.--POLITICAL LIBERALISM

After the chalice of so-called absolute monarchy had been drained down to the dregs, in the eighteenth century people became aware that their drink did not taste human--too clearly aware not to begin to crave a different cup. Since our fathers were "human beings" after all, they at last desired also to be regarded as such.

Whoever sees in us something else than human beings, in him we likewise will not see a human being, but an inhuman being, and will meet him as an unhuman being; on the other hand, whoever recognizes us as human beings and protects us against the danger of being treated inhumanly, him we will honor as our true protector and guardian.

Let us then hold together and protect the man in each other; then we find the necessary protection in our _holding together_, and in ourselves, _those who hold together_, a fellows.h.i.+p of those who know their human dignity and hold together as "human beings." Our holding together is the _State_; we who hold together are the _nation_.

In our being together as nation or State we are only human beings. How we deport ourselves in other respects as individuals, and what self-seeking impulses we may there succ.u.mb to, belongs solely to our _private_ life; our _public_ or State life is a _purely human_ one.

Everything un-human or "egoistic" that clings to us is degraded to a "private matter" and we distinguish the State definitely from "civil society," which is the sphere of "egoism's" activity.

The true man is the nation, but the individual is always an egoist.

Therefore strip off your individuality or isolation wherein dwells discord and egoistic inequality, and consecrate yourselves wholly to the true man,--the nation or the State. Then you will rank as men, and have all that is man's; the State, the true man, will ent.i.tle you to what belongs to it, and give you the "rights of man"; Man gives you his rights!

So runs the speech of the commonalty.

The commonalty[66] is nothing else than the thought that the State is all in all, the true man, and that the individual's human value consists in being a citizen of the State. In being a good citizen he seeks his highest honor; beyond that he knows nothing higher than at most the antiquated--"being a good Christian."

The commonalty developed itself in the struggle against the privileged cla.s.ses, by whom it was cavalierly treated as "third estate" and confounded with the _canaille_. In other words, up to this time the State had recognized caste.[67] The son of a n.o.bleman was selected for posts to which the most distinguished commoners aspired in vain, etc.

The civic feeling revolted against this. No more distinction, no giving preference to persons, no difference of cla.s.ses! Let all be alike! No _separate interest_ is to be pursued longer, but the _general interest of all_. The State is to be a fellows.h.i.+p of free and equal men, and every one is to devote himself to the "welfare of the whole," to be dissolved in the _State_, to make the State his end and ideal. State!

State! so ran the general cry, and thenceforth people sought for the "right form of State," the best const.i.tution, and so the State in its best conception. The thought of the State pa.s.sed into all hearts and awakened enthusiasm; to serve it, this mundane G.o.d, became the new divine service and wors.h.i.+p. The properly _political_ epoch had dawned.

To serve the State or the nation became the highest ideal, the State's interest the highest interest, State service (for which one does not by any means need to be an official) the highest honor.

So then the separate interests and personalities had been scared away, and sacrifice for the State had become the s.h.i.+bboleth. One must give up _himself_, and live only for the State. One must act "disinterestedly,"

not want to benefit _himself_, but the State. Hereby the latter has become the true person, before whom the individual personality vanishes; not I live, but it lives in me. Therefore, in comparison with the former self-seeking, this was unselfishness and _impersonality_ itself. Before this G.o.d--State--all egoism vanished, and before it all were equal; they were without any other distinction--men, nothing but men.

The Revolution took fire from the inflammable material of _property_.

The government needed money. Now it must prove the proposition that it is _absolute_, and so master of all property, sole proprietor; it must _take_ to itself _its_ money, which was only in the possession of the subjects, not their property. Instead of this, it calls States-general, to have this money _granted_ to it. The shrinking from strictly logical action destroyed the illusion of an _absolute_ government; he who must have something "granted" to him cannot be regarded as absolute. The subjects recognized that they were _real proprietors_, and that it was _their_ money that was demanded. Those who had hitherto been subjects attained the consciousness that they were _proprietors_. Bailly depicts this in a few words: "If you cannot dispose of my property without my a.s.sent, how much less can you of my person, of all that concerns my mental and social position? All this is my property, like the piece of land that I till; and I have a right, an interest, to make the laws myself." Bailly's words sound, certainly, as if _every one_ was a proprietor now. However, instead of the government, instead of the prince, the--_nation_ now became proprietor and master. From this time on the ideal is spoken of as--"popular liberty"--"a free people," etc.

As early as July 8, 1789, the declaration of the bishop of Autun and Barrere took away all semblance of the importance of each and every _individual_ in legislation; it showed the complete _powerlessness_ of the const.i.tuents; the _majority of the representatives_ has become _master_. When on July 9 the plan for division of the work on the const.i.tution is proposed, Mirabeau remarks that "the government has only power, no rights; only in the _people_ is the source of all _right_ to be found." On July 16 this same Mirabeau exclaims: "Is not the people the source of all _power_?" The source, therefore, of all right, and the source of all--power![68] By the way, here the substance of "right"

becomes visible; it is--_power_. "He who has power has right."

The commonalty is the heir of the privileged cla.s.ses. In fact, the rights of the barons, which were taken from them as "usurpations," only pa.s.sed over to the commonalty. For the commonalty was now called the "nation." "Into the hands of the nation" all _prerogatives_ were given back. Thereby they ceased to be "prerogatives":[69] they became "rights."[70] From this time on the nation demands t.i.thes, compulsory services; it has inherited the lord's court, the rights of vert and venison, the--serfs. The night of August 4 was the death-night of privileges or "prerogatives" (cities, communes, boards of magistrates, were also privileged, furnished with prerogatives and seigniorial rights), and ended with the new morning of "right," the "rights of the State," the "rights of the nation."

The monarch in the person of the "royal master" had been a paltry monarch compared with this new monarch, the "sovereign nation." This _monarchy_ was a thousand times severer, stricter, and more consistent.

Against the new monarch there was no longer any right, any privilege at all; how limited the "absolute king" of the _ancien regime_ looks in comparison! The Revolution effected the transformation of _limited monarchy_ into _absolute monarchy_. From this time on every right that is not conferred by this monarch is an "a.s.sumption"; but every prerogative that he bestows, a "right." The times demanded _absolute royalty_, absolute monarchy; therefore down fell that so-called absolute royalty which had so little understood how to become absolute that it remained limited by a thousand little lords.

What was longed for and striven for through thousands of years,--to wit, to find that absolute lord beside whom no other lords and lordlings any longer exist to clip his power,--the _bourgeoisie_ has brought to pa.s.s.

It has revealed the Lord who alone confers "rightful t.i.tles," and without whose warrant _nothing is justified_. "So now we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other G.o.d save the one."[71]

Against _right_ one can no longer, as against a right, come forward with the a.s.sertion that it is "a wrong." One can say now only that it is a piece of nonsense, an illusion. If one called it wrong, one would have to set up _another right_ in opposition to it, and measure it by this.

If, on the contrary, one rejects right as such, right in and of itself, altogether, then one also rejects the concept of wrong, and dissolves the whole concept of right (to which the concept of wrong belongs).

What is the meaning of the doctrine that we all enjoy "equality of political rights"? Only this,--that the State has no regard for my person, that to it I, like every other, am only a man, without having another significance that commands its deference. I do not command its deference as an aristocrat, a n.o.bleman's son, or even as heir of an official whose office belongs to me by inheritance (as in the Middle Ages counts.h.i.+ps, etc., and later under absolute royalty, where hereditary offices occur). Now the State has an innumerable mult.i.tude of rights to give away, _e. g._ the right to lead a battalion, a company, etc.; the right to lecture at a university; and so forth; it has them to give away because they are its own, _i. e._ State rights or "political"

rights. Withal, it makes no difference to it to whom it gives them, if the receiver only fulfils the duties that spring from the delegated rights. To it we are all of us all right, and--_equal_,--one worth no more and no less than another. It is indifferent to me who receives the command of the army, says the sovereign State, provided the grantee understands the matter properly. "Equality of political rights" has, consequently, the meaning that every one may acquire every right that the State has to give away, if only he fulfils the conditions annexed thereto,--conditions which are to be sought only in the nature of the particular right, not in a predilection for the person (_persona grata_): the nature of the right to become an officer brings with it, _e. g._, the necessity that one possess sound limbs and a suitable measure of knowledge, but it does not have n.o.ble birth as a condition; if, on the other hand, even the most deserving commoner could not reach that station, then an inequality of political rights would exist. Among the States of to-day one has carried out that maxim of equality more, another less.

The monarchy of estates (so I will call absolute royalty, the time of the kings _before_ the revolution) kept the individual in dependence on a lot of little monarchies. These were fellows.h.i.+ps (societies) like the guilds, the n.o.bility, the priesthood, the burgher cla.s.s, cities, communes, etc. Everywhere the individual must regard himself _first_ as a member of this little society, and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit, the _esprit de corps_, as his monarch. More, _e. g._, than the individual n.o.bleman himself must his family, the honor of his race, be to him. Only by means of his _corporation_, his estate, did the individual have relation to the greater corporation, the State,--as in Catholicism the individual deals with G.o.d only through the priest. To this the third estate now, showing courage to negate _itself as an estate_, made an end. It decided no longer to be and be called an _estate_ beside other estates, but to glorify and generalize itself into the "_nation_." Hereby it created a much more complete and absolute monarchy, and the entire previously ruling _principle of estates_, the principle of little monarchies inside the great, went down. Therefore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a revolution against the first two privileged estates: it was against the little monarchies of estates in general. But, if the estates and their despotism were broken (the king too, we know, was only a king of estates, not a citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality of estate were left. Were they now really to be without estate and "out of gear," no longer bound by any estate, without a general bond of union? No, for the third estate had declared itself the nation only in order not to remain an estate _beside_ other estates, but to become the _sole estate_. This sole _estate_ is the nation, the "_State_." What had the individual now become? A political Protestant, for he had come into immediate connection with his G.o.d, the State. He was no longer, as an aristocrat, in the monarchy of the n.o.bility; as a mechanic, in the monarchy of the guild; but he, like all, recognized and acknowledged only--_one lord_, the State, as whose servants they all received the equal t.i.tle of honor, "citizen."

The _bourgeoisie_ is the _aristocracy of_ DESERT; its motto, "Let desert wear its crowns." It fought against the "lazy" aristocracy, for according to it (the industrious aristocracy acquired by industry and desert) it is not the "born" who is free, nor yet I who am free either, but the "deserving" man, the honest _servant_ (of his king; of the State; of the people in const.i.tutional States). Through _service_ one acquires freedom, _i. e._ acquires "deserts," even if one served--mammon. One must deserve well of the State, _i. e._ of the principle of the State, of its moral spirit. He who _serves_ this spirit of the State is a good citizen, let him live to whatever honest branch of industry he will. In its eyes innovators practise a "breadless art."

Only the "shopkeeper" is "practical," and the spirit that chases after public offices is as much the shopkeeping spirit as is that which tries in trade to feather its nest or otherwise to become useful to itself and anybody else.

But, if the deserving count as the free (for what does the comfortable commoner, the faithful office-holder, lack of that freedom that his heart desires?), then the "servants" are the--free. The obedient servant is the free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the sense of the _bourgeoisie_, and its poet, Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world, etc. He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to it," has the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was--_reason_, that which, like State and Church, gives--general laws, and puts the individual man in irons by the _thought of humanity_. It determines what is "true," according to which one must then act. No more "rational" people than the honest servants, who primarily are called good citizens as servants of the State.

Be rich as Croesus or poor as Job--the State of the commonalty leaves that to your option; but only have a "good disposition." This it demands of you, and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all.

Therefore it will keep you from "evil promptings," holding the "ill-disposed" in check and silencing their inflammatory discourses under censors' cancelling-marks or press-penalties and behind dungeon walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint people of "good disposition"

as censors, and in every way have a _moral influence_ exerted on you by "well-disposed and well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf to evil promptings, then it opens your ears again all the more diligently to good _promptings_.

With the time of the _bourgeoisie_ begins that of _liberalism_. People want to see what is "rational," "suited to the times," etc., established everywhere. The following definition of liberalism, which is supposed to be p.r.o.nounced in its honor, characterizes it completely: "Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations."[72] Its aim is a "rational order," a "moral behavior," a "limited freedom," not anarchy, lawlessness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then the _person_ succ.u.mbs. Art has for a long time not only acknowledged the ugly, but considered the ugly as necessary to its existence, and taken it up into itself; it needs the villain, etc. In the religious domain, too, the extremest liberals go so far that they want to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen--_i. e._ the religious villain; they want to see no more of trials for heresy. But against the "rational law" no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest--penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and realization of the person or of me, but of reason,--_i. e._ a dominion of reason, a dominion. The liberals are _zealots_, not exactly for the faith, for G.o.d, etc., but certainly for _reason_, their master. They brook no lack of breeding, and therefore no self-development and self-determination; they _play the guardian_ as effectively as the most absolute rulers.

"Political liberty," what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual's independence of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the individual's _subjection_ in the State and to the State's laws. But why "liberty"? Because one is no longer separated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate relation to it; because one is a--citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king as a person, but only in his quality as "supreme head of the State." Political liberty, this fundamental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a second phase of--Protestantism, and runs quite parallel with "religious liberty."[73] Or would it perhaps be right to understand by the latter an independence of religion? Anything but that.

Independence of intermediaries is all that it is intended to express, independence of mediating priests, the abolition of the "laity," and so direct and immediate relation to religion or to G.o.d. Only on the supposition that one has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion; freedom of religion does not mean being without religion, but inwardness of faith, unmediated intercourse with G.o.d. To him who is "religiously free" religion is an affair of the heart, it is to him his _own affair_, it is to him a "sacredly serious matter." So, too, to the "politically free" man the State is a sacredly serious matter; it is his heart's affair, his chief affair, his own affair.

Political liberty means that the _polis_, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am _rid_ of them. It does not mean _my_ liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my _despots_, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and _their_ liberty is _my_ slavery. That in this they necessarily follow the principle, "the end hallows the means," is self-evident. If the welfare of the State is the end, war is a hallowed means; if justice is the State's end, homicide is a hallowed means, and is called by its sacred name, "execution," etc.; the sacred State _hallows_ everything that is serviceable to it.

"Individual liberty," over which civic liberalism keeps jealous watch, does not by any means signify a completely free self-determination, by which actions become altogether _mine_, but only independence of _persons_. Individually free is he who is responsible to no _man_. Taken in this sense,--and we are not allowed to understand it otherwise,--not only the ruler is individually free, _i. e., irresponsible toward men_ ("before G.o.d," we know, he acknowledges himself responsible), but all who are "responsible only to the law." This kind of liberty was won through the revolutionary movement of the century,--to wit, independence of arbitrary will, of _tel est notre plaisir_. Hence the const.i.tutional prince must himself be stripped of all personality, deprived of all individual decision, that he may not as a person, as an _individual man_, violate the "individual liberty" of others. The _personal will of the ruler_ has disappeared in the const.i.tutional prince; it is with a right feeling, therefore, that absolute princes resist this.

Nevertheless these very ones profess to be in the best sense "Christian princes." For this, however, they must become a _purely spiritual_ power, as the Christian is subject only to _spirit_ ("G.o.d is spirit").

The purely spiritual power is consistently represented only by the const.i.tutional prince, he who, without any personal significance, stands there spiritualized to the degree that he can rank as a sheer, uncanny "spirit," as an _idea_. The const.i.tutional king is the truly _Christian_ king, the genuine, consistent carrying-out of the Christian principle.

In the const.i.tutional monarchy individual dominion,--_i. e._, a real ruler that _wills_--has found its end; here, therefore, _individual liberty_ prevails, independence of every individual dictator, of every one who could dictate to me with a _tel est notre plaisir_. It is the completed _Christian_ State-life, a spiritualized life.

The behavior of the commonalty is _liberal_ through and through. Every _personal_ invasion of another's sphere revolts the civic sense; if the citizen sees that one is dependent on the humor, the pleasure, the will of a man as individual (_i. e._ as not authorized by a "higher power"), at once he brings his liberalism to the front and shrieks about "arbitrariness." In fine, the citizen a.s.serts his freedom from what is called _orders_ (_ordonnance_): "No one has any business to give me--orders!" _Orders_ carries the idea that what I am to do is another man's will, while _law_ does not express a personal authority of another. The liberty of the commonalty is liberty or independence from the will of another person, so-called personal or individual liberty; for being personally free means being only so free that no other person can dispose of mine, or that what I may or may not do does not depend on the personal decree of another. The liberty of the press, for instance, is such a liberty of liberalism, liberalism fighting only against the coercion of the censors.h.i.+p as that of personal wilfulness, but otherwise showing itself extremely inclined and willing to tyrannize over the press by "press laws"; _i. e._, the civic liberals want liberty of writing _for themselves_; for, as they are _law-abiding_, their writings will not bring them under the law. Only liberal matter, _i. e._ only lawful matter, is to be allowed to be printed; otherwise the "press laws" threaten "press-penalties." If one sees personal liberty a.s.sured, one does not notice at all how, if a new issue happens to arise, the most glaring unfreedom becomes dominant. For one is rid of _orders_ indeed, and "no one has any business to give us orders," but one has become so much the more submissive to the--_law_. One is enthralled now in due legal form.

In the citizen-State there are only "free people," who are _compelled_ to thousands of things (_e. g._ to deference, to a confession of faith, and the like). But what does that amount to? Why, it is only the--State, the law, not any man, that compels them!

What does the commonalty mean by inveighing against every personal order, _i. e._ every order not founded on the "cause," on "reason,"

etc.? It is simply fighting in the interest of the "cause"[74] against the dominion of "persons"! But the mind's cause is the rational, good, lawful, etc.; that is the "good cause." The commonalty wants an _impersonal_ ruler.

Furthermore, if the principle is this, that only the cause is to rule man--to wit, the cause of morality, the cause of legality, etc.,--then no personal balking of one by the other may be authorized either (as formerly, _e. g._, the commoner was balked of the aristocratic offices, the aristocrat of common mechanical trades, etc.); _i. e. free compet.i.tion_ must exist. Only through the thing[75] can one balk another (_e. g._ the rich man balking the impecunious man by money, a thing), not as a person. Henceforth only one lords.h.i.+p, the lords.h.i.+p of the _State_, is admitted; personally no one is any longer lord of another.

Even at birth the children belong to the State, and to the parents only in the name of the State, which, _e. g._, does not allow infanticide, demands their baptism, etc.

But all the State's children, furthermore, are of quite equal account in its eyes ("civic or political equality"), and they may see to it themselves how they get along with each other; they may _compete_.

Free compet.i.tion means nothing else than that every one can present himself, a.s.sert himself, fight, against another. Of course the feudal party set itself against this, as its existence depended on an absence of compet.i.tion. The contests in the time of the Restoration in France had no other substance than this,--that the _bourgeoisie_ was struggling for free compet.i.tion, and the feudalists were seeking to bring back the guild system.

Now, free compet.i.tion has won, and against the guild system it had to win. (See below for the further discussion.)

If the Revolution ended in a reaction, this only showed what the Revolution _really_ was. For every effort arrives at reaction when it _comes to discreet reflection_, and storms forward in the original action only so long as it is an _intoxication_, an "indiscretion."

"Discretion" will always be the cue of the reaction, because discretion sets limits, and liberates what was really wanted, _i. e._ the principle, from the initial "unbridledness" and "unrestrainedness." Wild young fellows, b.u.mptious students, who set aside all considerations, are _really_ Philistines, since with them, as with the latter, considerations form the substance of their conduct; only that as swaggerers they are mutinous against considerations and in negative relations to them, but as Philistines, later, they give themselves up to considerations and have positive relations to them. In both cases all their doing and thinking turns upon "considerations," but the Philistine is _reactionary_ in relation to the student; he is the wild fellow come to discreet reflection, as the latter is the unreflecting Philistine.

Daily experience confirms the truth of this transformation, and shows how the swaggerers turn to Philistines in turning gray.

So too the so-called reaction in Germany gives proof that it was only the _discreet_ continuation of the warlike jubilation of liberty.

The Revolution was not directed against _the established_, but against _the establishment in question_, against a _particular_ establishment.

It did away with _this_ ruler, not with _the_ ruler--on the contrary, the French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous ones a securely established position, _i. e._ it simply set virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, are on their part distinguished from each other only as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc.

To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no farther than to a.s.sail only _one_ or _another_ particular establishment, _i. e._ be _reformatory_. Much as may be _improved_, strongly as "discreet progress" may be adhered to, always there is only a _new master_ set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a--building up. We are still at the distinction of the young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution began in _bourgeois_ fas.h.i.+on with the uprising of the third estate, the middle cla.s.s; in _bourgeois_ fas.h.i.+on it dries away. It was not the _individual man_--and he alone is _Man_--that became free, but the _citizen_, the _citoyen_, the _political_ man, who for that very reason is not _Man_ but a specimen of the human species, and more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a _free citizen_.

In the Revolution it was not the _individual_ who acted so as to affect the world's history, but a _people_; the _nation_, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect everything. A fancied _I_, an idea, such as the nation is, appears acting; _i. e._, the individuals contribute themselves as tools of this idea, and act as "citizens."