 Publishers' Preface, Introduction, and Translators' Preface of the 1907 English Language Publication of the Ego and His Own by Mach Steiner. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Matt Messerschmitt in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Publishers' Preface of the Ego and His Own by Mach Steiner. For more than 20 years, I have entertained the design of publishing an English translation of Der Einzige Unzein Eigentum. When I formed this design, the number of English-speaking persons who had ever heard of the book was very limited. The memory of Mach Steiner had been virtually extinct for an entire generation. But in the last two decades, there has been a remarkable revival of interest, both in the book and in its author. It began in this country with a discussion in the pages of the Anarchist Periodical Liberty, in which Steiner's thought was clearly expounded and vigorously championed by Dr. James L. Walker, who adopted for this discussion the pseudonym Tak Kok. At that time, Dr. Walker was the chief editorial writer for the Galveston News. Some years later, he became a practicing physician in Mexico, where he died in 1904. A series of essays, which he began in an Anarchist Periodical Egoism, and which he lived to complete, was published after his death in a small volume, The Philosophy of Egoism. It is a very able and convincing exposition of Steiner's teachings, and almost the only one that exists in the English language. But the chief instrument in the revival of Steinerism was and is the German poet John Henry McKay. Very early in his career, he met Steiner's name along his history of materialism, and was moved thereby to read his book. The work made such an impression on him that he resolved to devote a portion of his life to the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the lost and forgotten genius. Through years of toil and correspondence and travel, and triumphing over tremendous obstacles, he carried his task to completion, and his biography of Steiner appeared in Berlin in 1898. It is a tribute to the thoroughness of McKay's work that since its publication, not one important fact about Steiner has been discovered by anybody. During his years of investigation, McKay's advertising for information had created a new interest in Steiner, which was enhanced by the sudden fame of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, an author whose intellectual kinship with Steiner has been a subject of some controversy. Der Einzige, previously obtainable only in an expensive form, was included in Philipp Reklams Universal Bibliotheque, and this cheap addition has enjoyed a wide and ever-increasing circulation. During the last dozen years, the book has been translated twice into French, once into Italian, once into Russian, and possibly into other languages. The Scandinavian critic Brandes has written on Steiner. A large and appreciative volume entitled, The Individualesim, Anarchist, Max Steiner, from the pen of Professor Victor Bosch of the University of Renz, has appeared in Paris. Another large and sympathetic volume, Max Steiner, written by Dr. Anselm Ruest, has been published very recently in Berlin. Dr. Paul Elzbacher, in his work de anarchismus, gives a chapter to Steiner, making him one of the seven typical anarchists, beginning with William Godwin and ending with Tolstoy, of whom his book treats. There is hardly a notable magazine or review on the continent that has not given at least one leading article to the subject of Steiner. Upon the initiative of McKay, and with the aid of other admirers, a suitable stone has been placed above the philosopher's previously neglected grave, and a memorial tablet upon the house in Berlin where he died in 1856. And this spring, another is to be placed upon the house in Bayreuth where he was born in 1806. As a result of these various efforts, and though but little has been written about Steiner in the English language, his name is now known to at least thousands in America and England, where formerly it was known only to hundreds. Therefore conditions are now more favorable for the reception of this volume than they were when I formed the design of publishing it more than 20 years ago. The problem of securing a reasonably good translation, for in the case of a work presenting difficulty so enormous it was idle to hope for an adequate translation, was finally solved by entrusting the task to Stephen T. Byington, a scholar of remarkable attainments, whose specialty is philology, and who is also one of the ablest workers in the propaganda of anarchism. But for further security from error, it was agreed with Mr. Byington that his translation should have the benefit of revision by Dr. Walker, the most thorough American student of Steiner, and by Emma Heller Schum and George Schum, who are not only sympathetic with Steiner, but familiar with the history of his time, and who enjoy a knowledge of English and German that makes it difficult to decide which is their native tongue. It was also agreed that upon any point of difference between the translator and his revisers which consultation might fail to solve, the publisher should decide. This method has been followed, and in a considerable number of instances it has fallen to me to make a decision. It is not only fair to say, therefore, that the responsibility for special errors and imperfections properly rests on my shoulders, whereas, on the other hand, the credit for whatever general excellence the translation may possess belongs with the same propriety to Mr. Byington and his co-agenters. One thing is certain, its defects are due to no lack of loving care and pains, and I think I may add with confidence, while realizing fully how far short of perfection it necessarily falls, that it may safely challenge comparison with the translations that have been made into other languages. In particular, I am responsible for the admittedly erroneous rendering of the title, the ego and his own is not an exact English equivalent of de Einzige und sein Eigentum, but then there is no exact English equivalent. Perhaps the nearest is the unique one and his property, but the unique one is not strictly de Einzige, for uniqueness connotes not only singleness, but an admirable singleness, while Student's Einzige Kite is admirable in his eyes only as such, it being no part of the purpose of his book to distinguish a particular Einzige Kite as more excellent than another. Moreover, the unique one in his property has no graces to compel our forgiveness of its slight inaccuracy, it is clumsy and unattractive, and the same objections may be urged with still greater force against all the other renderings that have been suggested, the single one in his property, the only one in his property, the lone one in his property, the unit in his property, and last and least and worst, the individual in his prerogative. The ego and his own on the other hand, if not a precise rendering, is at least an excellent title in itself, excellent by its euphony, its monosyllabic incisiveness, and its telling Einzige Kite. Another strong argument in its favor is the emphatic correspondence of the phrase, his own, with Mr. Byington's renderings of the kindred words, Eigenheit und Aigne. Moreover, no reader will be led astray who bears in mind Sternes' distinction. I am not an ego along with all other egos, but the sole ego. I am unique. And to help the reader bear this in mind, the various renderings of the word Einzige that occur through the volume are often accompanied by footnotes showing that, in the German, one in the same word does duty for all. If the reader finds the first quarter of this book somewhat forbidding and obscure, he is advised nevertheless not to falter. Close attention will master almost every difficulty, and if he will but give it, he will find abundant reward in what follows. For his guidance I may specify one defect in the author's style. While controverting a view opposite to his own, he seldom distinguishes with sufficient clearness his statement of his own view from his restatement of the antagonist view. As a result, the reader is plunged to deeper and deeper mystification, until something suddenly reveals the cause of his misunderstanding, after which he must go back and read again. I therefore put him on his guard. The other difficulties lie as a rule in the structure of the work. As to these I can hardly do better than translate the following passage from Professor Bosch's book, alluded to above. There is nothing more disconcerting than the first approach to this strange work. Stena does not condescend to inform us as to the architecture of Zedaphis, or furnish us the slightest guiding thread. The apparent divisions of this book are few and misleading. From the first page to the last, a unique thought circulates, but it divides itself among an infinity of vessels and arteries in which each runs a blood so rich in ferments, that one is tempted to describe them all. There is no progress in the development, and the repetitions are innumerable. The reader who is not deterred by this oddity, or rather, absence of composition, gives proof of genuine intellectual courage. At first one seems to be confronted with a collection of essays strung together with a throng of aphorisms. But if you read this book several times, if after having penetrated the intimacy of each of its parts, you then traverse it as a whole. Gradually the fragments weld themselves together, and Stena's thought is revealed in all its unity, in all its force, and in all its depth. A word about the dedication. Backe's investigations have brought to light that Maria Danhot had nothing whatever in common with Stena, and was unworthy of the honor conferred upon her. She was no Ikena. I therefore reproduced the dedication merely in the interest of historical accuracy. Happy as I am in the appearance of this book, my joy is not unmixed with sorrow. The cherished project was as dear to the heart of Dr. Walker as to mine, and I deeply grieve that he is no longer with us to share our delight in the fruition. Nothing, however, can rob us of the masterly introduction that he wrote for this volume in 1903, or perhaps earlier, from which I will not longer keep the reader. This introduction, no more than the book itself, shall that Einzige, death, make his eigentum. February 1907. Benjamin R. Tucker, publisher. Introduction. Fifty years sooner or later can make little difference in the case of a book so revolutionary as this. It saw the light when a so-called revolutionary movement was preparing in men's minds which attestation was, however, only a disturbance due to desires to participate in government and to govern and to be governed in a manner different to that which prevails. The revolutionists of 1848 were bewitched with an idea. They were not at all the masters of ideas. Most of those who since that time have prided themselves upon being revolutionists have been and are, likewise but the bond men of an idea, that of the different lodgements of authority. The temptation is, of course, present to attempt an explanation of the central thought of this work, but such an effort appears to be unnecessary to one who has the volume in his hand. The author's care in illustrating his meeting shows that he realized how prone the possessed man is to misunderstand whatever is not molded according to the fashions in thinking. The author's learning was considerable. His command of words and ideas may never be excelled by another and he judged it needful to develop his argument in manifold ways. So those who enter into the spirit of it will scarcely hope to impress others with the same conclusion in a more summary manner or if one might deem that possible after reading Steerna. Still one cannot think that it could be done so surely. The author has made certain work of it even though he has to wait for his public. But still, the reception of the book by its critics amply proves the truth of the saying that one can give another arguments but not understanding. The system makers and the system believers thus far cannot get it out of their heads that any discourse about the nature of an ego must turn upon the common characteristics of egos to make a systematic scheme of what they share as a generality. The critics inquire what kind of man the author is talking about. They repeat the question, what does he believe in? They fail to grasp the purport of the recorded answer. I believe in myself which is attributed to a common soldier long before the time of Steerna. They ask, what is the principle of the self-conscious egoist, the Einzige? To this perplexity Steerna says, change the question, put who instead of what and an answer can then be given by naming him. This, of course, is too simple for persons governed by ideas and for persons in quest of new governing ideas. They wish to classify the man. Now, that in me which you can classify is not my distinguishing self. Man is the horizon or zero of my existence as an individual. Over that I rise as I can. At least I am something more than man in general. Pre-existing worship of ideas and disrespect for self has made of this ego at the very most as somebody. Often are an empty vessel to be filled with the grace or the leavings of a tyrannous doctrine, thus the nobody. Steerna dispels the morbid subjugation and recognizes each one who knows and feels himself as his own property to be neither humble nobody nor be fogged somebody, but henceforth, flat-footed and level-headed mister this body who has a character and good pleasure of his own just as he has a name of his own. The critics who attacked this work and were answered in the author's minor writings rescued from oblivion by John Henry McKay nearly all display the most astonishing triviality and impotent malice. We owe to Dr. Edward von Hartmann the unquestionable service which he rendered by directing attention to this book in his Philosophie des Umbivusten, the first edition of which was published in 1869 and in other writings. I do not begrudge Dr. von Hartmann the liberty of criticism which he used and I think the admirers of Steerna's teaching must quite appreciate his work which Dr. Hartmann did at a much later date. In Der Eigene of August 10th, 1896 there appeared a letter written by him and giving, among other things, certain data from which to judge that when Nietzsche wrote his later essays Nietzsche was not ignorant of Steerna's book. Von Hartmann wishes that Steerna had gone on and developed his principle that Steerna would be the one Von Hartmann suggests that you and I are really the same spirit looking out through two pairs of eyes. Then one may reply I need not concern myself about you for in myself I have us and at that rate Von Hartmann is merely accusing himself of inconsistency for when Steerna wrote this book Von Hartmann's spirit was writing it and it is just the pity that Von Hartmann in his present form does not endorse what he said in the form of Steerna that Steerna was different from any other man that his ego is not Fichte's transcendental generality but this transitory ego of flesh and blood. It is not as a generality that you and I differ but as a couple of facts which are not to be reasoned into one. I is some wise Hartmann and thus Hartmann is I but I am not Hartmann and Hartmann is not I neither am I the eye of Steerna only Steerna himself is Steerna's eye. Note how comparatively indifferent it is with Steerna that one is an ego but how all important it is that one be a self-conscious ego a self-conscious, self-willed person. Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting from self-interested motives but clothing these in various garbs. Watch those people closely in the light of Steerna's teachings and they seem to be hypocrites. They have so many good moral and religious paths of which self-interest is at the end and bottom but they we may believe do not know that this is more than a coincidence. In Steerna we have the Philosophical Foundation for Political Liberty. His interest in the practical development of egoism to the dissolution of the state and the union of free men is clear and pronounced and harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of temperament and language is the central agreement between Steerna and Proudhon. Each would be free and sees in every increase of the number of free people and their intelligence on auxiliary force against the oppressor. But, on the other hand, will anyone for a moment seriously contend that Nietzsche and Proudhon march together in general aim and tendency that they have anything in common except the daring to profane superstition? Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of Steerna and owing to favorable collings from Nietzsche's writings it has occurred that one of his books has been supposed to contain more sense than it really does so long as one has read only the extracts. Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Has he read everything and not read Steerna? But Nietzsche is as unlike Steerna as a tightrope performance is unlike an algebraic equation. Steerna loved liberty for himself and loved to see any and all men and women taking liberty and he had no lust for power. Democracy was to him sham liberty. Egoism, the genuine liberty. Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon democracy because it is not aristocratic. He is predatory to the point of demanding that those who must succumb to feline rapacity must be taught to submit with resignation. When he speaks of anarchistic dogs scouring the streets of great civilized cities it is true the context shows that he means the communists but his worship of Napoleon his pathos of anxiety for the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe for thousands of years his idea of treating women in the oriental fashion show that Nietzsche has struck out in a very old path doing the apotheosis of tyranny. We individual egoistic anarchists, however may say to the Nietzsche school so as not to be misunderstood to have pity nor of the predatory barons to do justice they will find it convenient for their own welfare to make terms with men who have learned of Steiner what a man can be who worships nothing bears allegiance to nothing. To Nietzsche's roto montade of eagles in baronial form born to prey on industrial lambs we rather tauntingly oppose the ironical question where are your claws? what if the eagles are found to be plain barnyard fowls on which more silly fowls have fastened steel spurs to hack the victims, who however have the power to disarm the sham eagles between two sons Steiner shows that men make their tyrants as they make their gods and his purpose is to unmake tyrants Nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant in style Steiner's work offers the greatest possible contrast to the purile padded phraseology of Nietzsche Zarathustra and its false imagery whoever imagined such an unnatural conjuncture as an eagle toting a serpent in friendship which performance is told of in bare words but nothing comes of it in Steiner we are treated to an enlivening and earnest discussion addressed to serious minds and every reader feels that the word is to him for his instruction and benefit so far as he has mental independence and courage to take it and use it the startling intrepidity of this book is infused with a wholehearted love for all mankind as evidenced by the fact that the author shows not one iota of prejudice or any idea of division of men into ranks he would lay aside government but would establish any regulation deemed convenient and for this only our convenience is consulted thus there will be general liberty only when the disposition toward tyranny is met by intelligent opposition that will no longer submit to such a rule beyond this the manly sympathy and philosophical bent of Steiner are such that rulership appears by contrast of vanity an infatuation of perverted pride we know not whether we more admire our author or more love him Steiner's attitude toward women is not special she is an individual if she can be not handicapped by anything he says feels things or plans this was more fully exemplified in his life than even in his book but there is not a line in the book to put or keep women in an inferior position to men neither is there anything of caste or aristocracy in the book likewise there is nothing of obscurantism or affected mysticism about it everything in it is made as plain as the author could make it he who does not so is not Steiner's disciple nor successor nor coworker someone may ask how does plum line anarchism train with the unbridled egoism proclaimed by Steiner the plum line is not a fetish intellectual conviction and egoism is a universal fact of animal life nothing could seem clear to my mind that the reality of egoism must first come into the consciousness of men before we can have the unbiased Einzige in place of the prejudiced biped who lends himself to the support of Tierney's a million times stronger over me than the natural self-interest of any individual when plum line doctrine is misconceived as duty between unequal minded men as a religion of humanity it is indeed the confusion of trying to read without knowing the alphabet and of putting philanthropy in place of contract but if the plum line be scientific it is or can be my possession my property and I choose it for its use when circumstances admit of its use I do not feel bound to use it because it is scientific in building my house but as my will to be intelligent it is not to be merely willful the adoption of the plum line follows the discarding of incantations there is no plum line without the unvarying lead at the end of the line not a fluttering bird or a clawing cat on the practical side of egoism versus self-surrender and for a trial of egoism and politics this may be said the belief that men not moved by a sense of duty will be unkind or unjust to others is but an indirect confession that those who hold that belief are greatly interested in having others live for them rather than for themselves but I do not ask or expect so much I am content if others individually live for themselves and thus cease in so many ways to act in opposition to my living for myself to our living for ourselves if Christianity has failed to turn the world from evil it is not to be dreamed that rationalism of a pious moral stamp will succeed in the same task Christianity or all philanthropic love is tested in non-resistance it is a dream that example will change the hearts of rulers, tyrants, mobs if the extremist self-surrender fails how can a mixture of Christian love and worldly caution succeed this at least must be given up the policy of Christ and Tolstoy can soon be tested but Tolstoy's belief is not satisfied with the present test and failure he has the infatuation of one who persists because this ought to be the egoist who thinks I should like this to be still has the sense to perceive that it is not accomplished by the fact of some believing and submitting in as much as others are alert to pray upon the unresisting the pharaohs we have ever with us several passages in this most remarkable book show the author as a man full of sympathy when we reflect upon his deliberately expressed opinions and sentiments his spurning of the sense of moral obligation as the last form of superstition may we not be warranted in thinking that the total disappearance of the sentimental supposition of duty liberates a quantity of nervous energy for the purest enjoyment and clarifies the intellect for the more discriminating choice of objects of merit J. L. Walker translators preface if the style of this book is found unattractive it will show that I have done my work ill and not represented the author truly but if it is found odd I beg that I may not bear all the blame I have simply tried to reproduce the author's own mixture of colloquialisms and technicalities and his preference for the precise expression of his thought rather than the word conventionally expected one a special feature of the style however gives the reason why this preface should exist it is characteristic of Steiner's writing that the thread of thought is carried on largely by the repetition of the same word in a modified form or sense that connection of ideas which has guided popular instinct in the formation of words is made to suggest the line of thought which the writer wishes to follow if this echoing of words is missed the bearing of the statements on each other is in a measure lost and where the ideas are very new one cannot afford to throw away any help in following their connection therefore where a useful echo and there are a few useless ones in the book could not be reproduced in English I have generally called attention to it in a note my notes are distinguished from the authors by being enclosed in parentheses one or two such coincidences of language occurring in words which are prominent throughout the book should be born constantly in mind as a sort of kere perpetuum for instance the identity and the original of the word spirit and mind and of the phrases supreme being and highest essence in such cases I have repeated the note where it seemed that such repetition may be absolutely necessary but if trusted the reader to carry it in his head or a failure of his memory would not be ruinous or likely for the same reason that is in order not to miss any indication of the drift of the thought I have followed the original in the very liberal use of italics and in the occasional eccentric use of a punctuation mark as I might not have done in translating a work of a different nature I have set my face as a flint against the temptation to add notes that were not part of the translation there is no telling how much I might have enlarged the book if I had put a note at every sentence which deserved to have its truth brought out by fuller elucidation or even at every one which I thought needed correction it might have been within my province if I had been able to explain all the illusions to contemporary events but I doubt whether anyone could do that properly without having access to the files of three or four well chosen newspapers of Shearner's time the illusions are clear enough without names and dates to give a vivid picture of certain aspects of German life then the tone of some of them is explained by the fact that the book was published under censorship I have usually preferred for the sake of the connection to translate biblical quotations somewhat as they stand in the German rather than conform them all together to the English Bible I am sometimes quite as near the original Greek as if I had followed the current translation where German books are referred to the pages cited are those of the German editions even when usually because of some illusions in the text the titles of the books are translated Stephen T. Byington End of Front Material Next section The Ego and His Own by Mach Steiner Translated by Stephen T. Byington This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Matt Messerschmitt in Freiberg, Germany The Ego and His Own by Mach Steiner Introduction All things are nothing to me What is not supposed to be my concern First and foremost the good cause Then God's cause The cause of mankind Of truth Of freedom Of humanity Of justice Of freedom Of justice Further The cause of my people My prince My fatherland Finally Even the cause of mind And a thousand other causes Only my cause Is never to be my concern Shame on the Ego as to thinks only of himself Let us look and see then How they manage their concerns Those for whose cause we are to labor Devote ourselves And grow enthusiastic You have much profound information to give about God And have for thousands of years Searched the depths of the Godhead And looked into its heart So that you can doubtless tell us How God himself attends to God's cause Which we are called to serve To shield the Lord's doings either Now what is his cause Has he as is demanded of us Made an alien cause The cause of truth or love His own You are shocked by this misunderstanding And you instruct us that God's cause Is indeed the cause of truth and love But that this cause cannot be called alien to him Because God is himself truth and love You are shocked by the assumption That God could be like us poor worms In furthering an alien cause As his own Should God take up the cause of truth If he were not himself truth He cares only for his cause But because he is all in all Therefore all is his cause But we We are not all in all And our cause is altogether little And contemptible Therefore we must serve a higher cause Now it is clear God cares only for what is his Busies himself only with himself Thinks only of himself And has only himself before his eyes Woe to all that is not well pleasing to him He serves no higher person And satisfies only himself His cause is A purely egoistic cause How is it with mankind Whose cause we are to make our own Is its cause that of another And does mankind serve a higher cause No Mankind looks only at itself Mankind will promote the interests of mankind only Mankind is its own cause That it may develop It causes nations and individuals To wear themselves out in its service And when they have accomplished what mankind needs It throws them on the dung heap of history and gratitude Is not mankind's cause A purely egoistic cause I have no need to take up each thing That wants to show its cause on us And show that it is occupied only with itself Not with us Only with its good Not with ours Look at the rest for yourselves Do truth Freedom Humanity Justice Is it enthusiastic and serve them They all have an admirable time of it When they receive zealous homage Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots The patriots fall in bloody battle Or in the fight with hunger and want What does the nation care for that By the manure of their corpses The nation comes to its bloom And the nation sends some words of thanks after them And has the profit of it I call that a paying kind of egoism But only look at that sultan who cares so lovingly for his people Is he not pure unselfishness itself And does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people Oh yes For his people Just try it Show yourself not as his But as your own For breaking away from his egoism You will take a trip to jail The sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself He is to himself all in all He is to himself the only one And tolerates nobody who would dare Not to be one of his people And you will not learn by these brilliant examples That the egoist gets on best I for my part take a lesson from them And propose Instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists Rather To be the egoist myself God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing For nothing but themselves Let me then likewise concern myself for myself Who am equally with God the nothing of all others Who am my all I am the only one If God If mankind As you affirm Have substance enough in themselves To be all in all to themselves Then I feel that I Shall still less lack that And that I shall have no complaint to make Of my emptiness I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness But I am the creative nothing The nothing out of which I myself as creator Create everything Away then with every concern that is not all together My concern You think at least the good cause must be my concern What's good What's bad Why I myself am my concern And I am neither good nor bad Neither has any meaning for me The divine is God's concern The human man's My concern is neither the divine nor the human Not the true Good Just Free Etc But solely what is mine And it is not a general one But is Unique As I am unique Nothing is more to me Than myself End of introduction Part 1 Chapter 1 Of The Ego and His Own By Max Steiner This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information Or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Recorded By Matt Messerschmitt In Freiberg, Germany Part 1 Man Man is to man the supreme being Says Feuerbach Man has just been discovered Says Bruno Bauer Let us then take a more careful look at this supreme being And this new discovery Chapter 1 A Human Life From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world A man seeks to find out himself And get a hold of himself out of its confusion In which he, with everything else Is tossed about in motley mixture But everything that comes into contact with the child Defends itself in turn against his attacks And asserts its own persistence Accordingly Because each thing cares for itself And at the same time comes into constant collision with other things The combat of self-assertion is unavoidable Victory or defeat Between the two alternatives The fate of the combat waivers The victor becomes the lord The vanquished one The subject The former exercises supremacy And the rites of supremacy The latter fulfills an awe and deference The duties of a subject But both remain enemies And always lie in wait They watch for each other's weaknesses Children for those of their parents And parents for those of their children Their fear, for example Either the stick conquers the man Or the man conquers the stick In childhood Liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the bottom of things To get at what is back of things Therefore we spy out the weak points of everybody For which it is well known Children have a sure instinct Therefore we like to smash things Like to rummage through hidden corners Pry after what is covered up or out of the way And try what we can do with everything When we once get at what is back of things We know we are safe When we have got at the fact that the rod is too weak Against our obduracy We no longer fear it Have outgrown it Back of the rod Mightier than it Stands our obduracy Our obdurate courage By degrees We get at what is back of everything That was mysterious and uncanny to us The mysteriously dreaded might of the rod The father's stern look Etc And back of all we find our adoraxia Our imperturbability Intrepidity Our counter forces Our odds of strength Our invincibility Before that which formerly inspired in us Fear and deference We no longer retreat shyly But take courage Back of everything we find our courage Our superiority Back of the sharp command of parents and authorities Stands after all Our courageous choice Or our outwitting shrewdness And the more we feel ourselves The smaller appears that which before seemed invincible And what is our trickery Shrewdness Courage Obduracy What else but Mind Through a considerable time We are spared a fight that is so exhausting later The fight against reason The fairest part of childhood passes Without the necessity of coming to blows with reason We hear nothing at all about it Do not meddle with it Admit no reason We are not to be persuaded to anything by conviction And our deft to good arguments and principles On the other hand Coaxing punishment and the like Are hard for us to resist This stern life and death combat with reason Enters later And begins a new phase In childhood we scamper about without racking our brains much Mind is the name of the first self-discovery The first undiification of the divine That is of the uncanny The spooks The powers above Our fresh feeling of youth This feeling of self Now defers to nothing The world is discredited For we are above it We are Mind Now for the first time we see that hitherto We have not looked at the world intelligently at all But only stared at it We exercise the beginnings of our strength on natural powers We defer to parents as a natural power Later we say Father and mother are to be forsaken All natural power to be counted as riven They are vanquished For the rational The intellectual man There is no family as a natural power A renunciation of parents, brothers, etc. Makes its appearance If these are born again As intellectual Rational powers They are no longer at all what they were before And not only parents, but men in general Are conquered by the young man They are no hindrance to him And are no longer regarded For now he says One must obey God Rather than men From this high standpoint Everything earthly Receives into contemptible remoteness For the standpoint is The heavenly The attitude is now all together reversed The youth takes up an intellectual position While the boy Who did not yet feel himself as mind Grew up on mindless learning The former does not try to get hold of things For instance To get into his head the data of history But of the thoughts that lie hidden in things And so therefore Of the spirit of history On the other hand The boy understands connections, no doubt But not ideas The spirit Therefore he strings together Whatever can be learned Without proceeding a priori And theoretically Without looking For ideas As in childhood One had to overcome the resistance Of the laws of the world So now in everything that he proposes He is met by an objection of the mind Of reason Of his own conscience That is unreasonable Un-Christian Unpatriotic And the like Cries conscience to us And frightens us away from it Not the might of the avenging amenities Not Poseidon's wrath Not God Far as he sees the hidden Not the father's rod of punishment Do we fear But conscience We run after our thoughts now And follow their commands Just as before we followed parental Human ones Our course of action Thoughts Ideas, conceptions Faith As it is in childhood by the commands of our parents For all that We were already thinking we were children Only our thoughts were not fleshless Abstract Absolute That is Nothing but Thoughts A heaven in themselves Logical Thoughts On the contrary They had been only thoughts that we had about a thing We thought of the thing so or so Thus we may have thought God made the world that we see there But we did not think of search The depths that God had itself We may have thought That is the truth about the matter But we did not think of truth itself Nor unite into one sentence God is truth The depths that the God had Who is truth We did not touch Over such purely logical Theological questions What is truth Pilot does not stop Though he does not therefore Hesitate to ascertain an individual case What truth there is in the thing Whether the thing is true Any thought bound to a thing Is not yet nothing but a thought Absolute thought To bring to light the pure thought Or to be of its party Is the delight of youth And all the shapes of light in the world of thought Like truth, freedom, humanity, man Illuminant and inspire the youthful soul But when the spirit is recognized as the essential thing It still makes a difference Whether the spirit is poor or rich And therefore one seeks to become rich in spirit The spirit wants to spread out So as to found its empire An empire that is not of this world The world just conquered Thus then It longs to become all in all to itself For although I am spirit I am not yet perfected spirit And must first seek the complete spirit But with that I Who had just now found myself as spirit Lose myself again at once Bowing before the complete spirit Is one not my own but supernal And feeling my emptiness Spirit is the essential point for everything To be sure But then is every spirit the right spirit The right and true spirit Is the ideal of spirit The holy spirit It is not my or your spirit But just An ideal Supernal one It is God His spirit And this supernal father in heaven Gives it to those that pray to him The man is distinguished from the youth By the fact that he takes the world as it is Instead of everywhere fancying it A miss and wanting to improve it Model it after his ideal In him The view that one must deal with the world According to his interest Not according to his ideals Becomes confirmed So long as one knows himself Only as spirit And feels that all the value of his existence Consists in being spirit It becomes easy for the youth to give his life The bodily life For nothing For the silliest point of honor So long it is only thoughts that one has Ideas that he hopes to be able to realize some day When he has found a sphere of action Thus one has meanwhile only ideals Unexecuted ideas or thoughts Not till one has fallen in love with his corporeal self And takes a pleasure in himself As a living flesh and blood person But it is in mature years In the man that we find it so Not till then has one a personal Or egoistic interest An interest not only of our spirit For instance But of total satisfaction Satisfaction of the whole chap A selfish interest Just compare a man with the youth And see if he will not appear to you harder Less magnanimous More selfish Is he therefore worse? No, you say He has only become more definite Or as you also call it More practical But the main point is this That he makes himself more the center Than does the youth Who is infatuated about other things For example God Fatherland And so on Therefore the man shows a second self-discovery The youth found himself as spirit And lost himself again in the general spirit The complete Holy spirit Man Mankind In short All ideals The man finds himself as embodied spirit Boys had only unintellectual interests Those interests devoid of thoughts and ideas Youths only intellectual ones The man has bodily, personal Egoistic interests If the child has not an object That it can occupy itself with It feels ennui For it does not yet know how to occupy itself With itself The youth on the contrary Throws the object aside Because for him Thoughts arose out of the object He occupies himself with his thoughts His dreams Occupies himself intellectually Or His mind is occupied The young man includes everything not intellectual Under the contemptuous name of Externalities If he nevertheless sticks to the most trivial externalities Such as the customs of students' clubs And other formalities It is because and when He discovers mind in them When they are symbols to him As I find myself back of things And that as mind So I must later find myself Also back of thoughts To it As their creator and owner In the time of spirits Thoughts grew till they overtopped my head Whose offspring they yet were They hovered about me and convulsed me Like fever fantasies And awful power The thoughts had become corporeal On their own account Were ghosts Such as God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc If I destroy their corporality Then I take them back into mind And I take them back into mind Then I take them back into mind And say I alone am corporeal And now I take the world as what it is to me As mind As my property I refer all to myself If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt So as owner I thrust spirits Or ideas away into their vanity They have no longer any power over me As no earthly might Has power over the spirit The child was realistic Taken up with the things of this world Till little by little he succeeded in getting at what was back of those very things The youth was idealistic Inspired by thoughts Till he worked his way up to where he became the man The egoistic man Who deals with things and thoughts according to his heart's pleasure And sets his personal interest above everything Finally the old man When I become one there will still be time enough to speak of that End of chapter Part first Chapter 2 Section A Of The Ego and His Own By Mochster This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public dome For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Matt Messerschmitt In Friberg, Germany Chapter 2 End of the old times and the new How each of us developed himself What he strove for Attained Or missed What objects he formerly pursued And what plans and wishes his heart is now set on What transformations his views have experienced What perturbations his principles In short How he has today become what yesterday or years ago he was not This he brings out again from his memory with more or less ease And he feels with a special vividness What changes have taken place in himself When he has before his eyes the unrulying of another's life Let us therefore look into the activities our forefathers Busied themselves with Section A The Ancients Custom having once given the name of The Ancients to our pre-Christian ancestors We will not throw it up against them that In comparison with us experienced people They ought properly to be called children Who will continue rather to honor them As our good old fathers But how have they come to be antiquated And who could displace them through his pretended newness We know of course The revolutionary innovator and disrespectful heir Who even took away the sanctity of the father's Sabbath to hollow his Sunday And interrupted the course of time to begin it himself with a new chronology We know him And know that it is The Christian But does he remain forever young And is he today still the new man Or will he too be superseded As he has superseded the ancients The fathers must doubtless have themselves Begotten the young one to entomb them Let us then keep at this active generation To the ancients the world was a truth Says Foyer Bach But he forgets to make the important addition A truth whose untruth they tried to get back of And at last really did What is meant by those words of Foyer Bach Will be easily recognized if they are put alongside the Christian thesis Of the vanity and transitoriness of the world For as the Christian can never convince himself of the vanity of the divine world But believes in its eternal and unshakable truth Which the more it steps they are searched Must all the more brilliantly come to light and triumph So the ancients on their side lived in the feelings of the world and mundane relations Such as the nature of ties of blood Where the truth before which their powerless eye must bow The very thing on which the ancients set the highest value Is spooned by Christians as the value is And what they recognized as truth These brand as idol lies The high significance of the fatherland disappears And the Christian must regard himself as a stranger on earth The sanctity of funeral rites Which sprang a work of art like the antiquity of Sophocles Is designated as a paltry thing Let the dead bury their dead The infrangeable truth of family ties is represented as an untruth Which one cannot promptly enough get clear of And so in everything If we now see that to the two sides opposite things appear as truth To the one the natural To the other the intellectual To one earthly things and relations To the other heavenly The heavenly fatherland Jerusalem that is above Etc It still remains to be considered how the new time and that undeniable reversal Could come out of antiquity But the ancients themselves worked toward making their truth alive Let us plunge it once into the midst of the most brilliant years of the ancients Into the Periclean century Then the Sophistic culture was spreading And Greece made a pastime of what it hitherto been to her A monstrously serious matter The fathers had been enslaved by the undisturbed power of existing things Too long for the posterity not to have to learn By bitter experience to feel themselves Therefore the Sophists with courageous sauciness Pronounced the reassuring words Don't be bluffed And diffuse the rationalistic doctrine Use your understanding, your wit, your mind against everything It is by having a good and well-drilled understanding That one gets through the world best Provides for himself the best lot, the pleasantest life Thus they recognize in mind man's true weapon against the world This is why they lay such stress on dialectic skill Command of language, the art of disputation, etc. They announce that mind is to be used against everything But they are still far removed from the holiness of the spirit For to them it is a means A weapon, as trickery and defiance serve children for the same purpose Their mind is the unbridable understanding Today we should call that a one-sided culture of the understanding And add the warning Cultivate not only your understanding But also, and especially, your heart Socrates did the same For, if the heart did not become free from its natural impulses But remained filled with the most fortuitous contents and As an uncriticized evidity Altogether in the power of things Nothing but a vessel of the most various appetites Then it was unavoidable that the free understanding must serve the bad heart And was ready to justify everything that the wicked heart desired Therefore Socrates says that it is not enough for one to use his understanding in all things But it is a question of what cause one exerts it for We should now say, one must serve the good cause But serving the good cause is being moral Hence Socrates is the founder of ethics Certainly the principle of the Sophistic doctrine Must lead to the possibility that the blindest and most dependent slave of his desires Might yet be an excellent Sophist And, with keen understanding Trim and expound everything in favor of his coarse heart What could there be for which a good reason might not be found Or which might not be defended through thick and thin Therefore Socrates says We must be pure hearted if your shrewdness is to be valued At this point begins the second period of Greek liberation of the mind The period of purity of heart For the first was brought to a close by the Sophists And they were proclaiming the omnipotence of the understanding But the heart remained worldly minded Remained a servant of the world Always affected by worldly wishes This coarse heart was to be cultivated from now on The era of culture of the heart But how is the heart to be cultivated? What the understanding, this one side of the mind Has reached to it the capability of playing freely with and over every concern Awaits the heart also Everything worldly must come to grief before it So that at last family, commonwealth, fatherland, and the like Are given up for the sake of the heart That is a blessedness The heart's blessedness Daily experience confirms the truth The understanding must have renounced a thing many years before the heart has ceased to be for it So the Sophistic understanding too Had so far become master over its dominant ancient powers That they now needed only to be driven out of the heart In which they dwelt unmolested To have at last no part at all left in the man This war is opened by Socrates And not till the dying day of the old world Does it end in peace The examination of the heart takes its start with Socrates And all the contents of the heart are sifting In their last and extremist struggles The ancients threw all the contents out of the heart And let it no longer be for anything This was the deed of the skeptics The same purgation of the heart was now achieved in the skeptical age As the understanding had succeeded in establishing the Sophistic age The Sophistic culture has brought it to pass The one's understanding no longer stands still Before anything And the skeptical That his heart is no longer moved by anything So long as man is entangled in the movements of the world And embarrassed by relations to the world And he is so till the end of antiquity Because his heart still has to struggle For independence from the worldly So long he is not yet spirit For spirit is without body And has no relations to the world and corporality For it the world does not exist Nor natural bonds But only the spiritual And spiritual bonds Therefore man must first become so completely unconcerned and reckless So altogether without relations that the skeptical culture presents him So altogether indifferent to the world that even its falling and ruins would not move him Before he could feel himself as world-less That is, as spirit And this is the result of the gigantic work of the ancients The man knows himself as a being without relations And without a world As spirit Only now after all worldly care has left him Is he all in all to himself Is he only for himself Is he spirit for the spirit Or in plainer language he cares only for the spiritual In the Christian wisdom of serpents and innocence of doves The two sides Understanding and heart Of the ancient liberation of mind are so completed That they appear young and new again And neither the one nor the other lets itself be bluffed any longer By the worldly and natural Thus the ancients mounted to spirit And strove to become spiritual But a man who wishes to be active as spirit Is drawn to quite other tasks than he was able to set himself formally To tasks which really give something to do the spirit Than not to mere sense or acuteness Which exerts itself only to become master of things The spirit busies itself solely about the spiritual And seeks out the traces of mind in everything To the believing spirit Everything comes from God And interests him only to the extent that it reveals this origin To the philosophic spirit Everything appears with the stamp of reason And it interests him only so far as he is able to discover in it reason That is spiritual content Not the spirit then Which has to do with absolutely nothing unspiritual With no thing But only with the essence which exists behind and above things With thoughts Not that did the ancients exert They did not yet have it No They had only reached the point of struggling and longing for it And therefore sharpened it against their too powerful foe The world of sense But what would not have been sensuous for them Since Jehovah Or the gods of the heathens Were yet far removed from the conception God is spirit Since the heavenly fatherland Had not yet stepped into the place of the sensuous, etc They sharpened against the world of sense their sense Their acuteness To this day the Jews Those precocious children of antiquity Have gotten no farther And with all the subtlety and strength of their prudence and understanding Which easily becomes master of things And forces them to obey They cannot discover spirit Which takes no account whatever of things The Christian has spiritual interests Because he allows himself to be a spiritual man The Jew does not even understand these interests in their purity Because he does not allow himself to assign No value to things He does not arrive at pure spirituality A spirituality such as is religiously expressed For instance In the faith of Christians Which alone without works justifies Their unspirituality sets Jews forever apart from Christians And the spiritual man is incomprehensible to the unspiritual As the unspiritual is contemptible to the spiritual But the Jews have only the spirit of this world The ancient acuteness and profundity lies as far from the spirit And the spirituality of the Christian world As earth from heaven He who feels himself as free spirit Is not oppressed and made anxious by the things of this world Because he does not care for them If one is still to feel their burden He must be narrow enough to attach weight to them As is evidently the case for instance When one is still concerned for his dear life He to whom everything centers in knowing and conducting himself as a free spirit Gives little heed to how scantily he is supplied meanwhile And does not reflect at all on how he must make his arrangements To have a thoroughly free or enjoyable life He is not disturbed by the inconveniences of the life that depends on things Because he lives only spiritually and on spiritual food While aside from this he only gulps things down like a beast Hardly knowing it And dies bodily to be sure When his fodder gives out But knows himself immortal as spirit And closes his eyes with an adoration or a thought His life is occupation with the spiritual His thinking The rest does not bother him Let him busy himself with the spiritual in any way that he can And chooses In devotion In contemplation Or in philosophic cognition His doing is always thinking And therefore Descartes To whom this at last become quite clear Could lay down the proposition I think That is I am This means My thinking is my being or my life Only when I live spiritually do I live Only as spirit am I really Or I am spirit through and through And nothing but spirit Unlucky Peter Schlimmer Who has lost his shadow Is the portrait of this man become a spirit For the spirit's body Is shadowless Over against this how different among the ancients Stoutly and manfully as they might bear themselves against the might of things They must yet acknowledge the might itself And got no farther than to protect their life against it as well as possible Only at a late hour did they recognize that their true life Was not that which they let in the fight against the things of the world But the spiritual life Turned away from these things And when they saw this they became Christians The moderns And innovators upon the ancients But the life turned away from things The spiritual life No longer draws any nourishment from nature But lives only on thoughts And therefore is no longer life But Thinking Yet it is not to be supposed now That the ancients were without thoughts Just as the most spiritual man is not to be conceived of as if he could be without life Rather They had their thoughts about everything About the world Man The gods, etc And showed themselves keenly active in bringing all this to their consciousness But they did not know thought Even though they thought of all sorts of things And worried themselves with their thoughts Compare with their position the Christians say My thoughts are not your thoughts As the heaven is higher than the earth So are my thoughts higher than your thoughts And remember what was said above about our child thoughts What is antiquity seeking them? The true enjoyment of life We will find that at bottom it is all the same as the true life The Greek poet Simonides sings Health is the noblest good for mortal man The next to this is beauty The third riches acquired without guile The fourth the enjoyment of social pleasures in the company of young friends These are all good things of life Pleasures of life Pleasures of life What else was theogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of life Which he discovered in having the least possible wants What else Aristopis Who founded in a cheery temple under all circumstances They are all seeking for cheery Unclouded life courage For cheeriness They are seeking to be of good cheer The Stoics want to realize the wise man The man with practical philosophy The man who knows how to live A wise life Therefore They find him in contempt for the world In a life without development Without spreading out Without friendly relations with the world Thus in the isolated life In life as life Not in life with others Only the Stoic lives All else is dead for him The Epicureans on the contrary Demand a moving life For which is yet necessary That what can be and what is repelled should remain existing Otherwise there would be no longer anything to repel He reaches at most an extreme degree of liberation And is distinguished only in degree from the less liberated If he even got as far as the deadening of the earthly sense Which at last admits only the monotonous whisper of the word Brah He nevertheless would not be essentially distinguishable From the sensual man Even the Stoic attitude in manly virtue Amounts only to this The one must maintain and assert oneself against the world And the ethics of the Stoics They're only science Since they could tell nothing about the spirit But how it should behave toward the world And of nature, physics Only this The wise man must assert himself against it Is not a doctrine of the spirit But only a doctrine of the repelling of the world And of self assertion against the world And this consists in imperturbability And equanimity of life And so in the most explicit Of human virtue The Romans too Horus, Cicero, and others Went no further than this practical philosophy The comfort, Hedone Of the Epicureans Is the same practical philosophy the Stoics teach Only trickier More deceitful They teach only another behavior toward the world Exhort us only to take a shrewd attitude toward the world The world must be deceived For it is my enemy The break with the world is completely carried through by the skeptics My entire relation to the world is worthless and truthless Timon says The feelings and thoughts which we draw from the world contain no truth What is truth, cries Pilate According to Piero's doctrine The world is neither good nor bad Neither beautiful nor ugly But these are predicates which I give Timon says that In itself nothing is either good or bad The man only thinks of it thus or thus To face the world only adoraxia Unmovenness Anaphasia Speechlessness Or in other words Isolated inwardness are left There is No longer any truth to be recognized in the world Things contradict themselves Thoughts about things are without distinction Good and bad are all the same So what one calls good and other finds bad Here the recognition of truth is at an end And only the man without power of recognition The man who finds in the world nothing to recognize Is left And this man just leaves the truth vacant world where it is And takes no account of it So antiquity gets through with the world of things The order of the world The world as a whole But to the order of the world Or the things of this world Belong not only nature But all relations in which man sees himself placed by nature As in the family The community In short The so-called natural bonds With the world of the spirit Christianity then begins The man who still faces the world armed Is the ancient The heathen To which class the Jew too Is non-Christian belongs The man who has come to be led by nothing But his heart's pleasure The interest he takes His fellow feeling Spirit Is the modern The Christian As the ancients work toward the conquest of the world And strove to release man From the heavy trammels And connection with other things At last they came also to the dissolution of the state And giving preference to everything private Of course community Family and so forth As natural relations Are burdensome hindrances Which diminish my spiritual freedom End of chapter two, section A Part first Chapter two, section B Of The Ego and His Own by Moch Steerner This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information Or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Matt Messerschmitt In Freiberg, Germany Section B The Moderns If any man be in Christ He is a new creature The old is passed away Behold All has become new As it was said above To the ancients the world was a truth We must say here To the moderns the spirit was a truth But here As there We must not omit the supplement A truth whose untruth they tried to get back of And at last they really do Of course similar to that which antiquity took May be demonstrated in Christianity also In that the understanding was held a prisoner Under the dominion of the Christian dogmas Up to the time preparatory to the Reformation But in the pre-Reformation century Asserted itself sophisticly In heretical pranks with all tenets of the faith And the talk then was Especially in Italy And at the Roman court If only the heart remains Christian minded The understanding may go right on Taking its pleasure Long before the Reformation People were so thoroughly accustomed To find spun wranglings that the Pope And most others Looked on Luther's appearance too As a mere wrangling of monks at first Humanism corresponds to Sophisticism And as in the time of the Sophists Greek life stood in its fullest bloom The Paraclean Age So the most brilliant things happened In the time of humanism Or as one might perhaps also say Of Machiavellianism Printing the New World Etc All this time the heart was still far From wanting to relieve itself Of the content But finally The Reformation like Socrates Took hold seriously of the heart itself And since then hearts have kept growing Visibly more un-Christian As with Luther People began to take the matter to heart The outcome of this step Of the Reformation Must be that the heart also gets lightened Of the heavy burden of Christian faith The heart From day to day More un-Christian Loses the contents With which it had busied itself Till it last nothing but empty warm heartedness Is left it The quite general love of men The love of man The love of freedom Self-consciousness Only so is Christianity complete Because it has become bald Withered The weight of contents There are now no contents whatsoever Against which the heart does not mutiny Unless indeed the heart unconsciously Or without self-consciousness Let's them slip in The heart criticizes to death With hard hearted mercilessness Everything that wants to make its way in And is capable Except As before unconsciously Or taken by surprise Of no friendship No love What could there be in men to love Since they are all alike egoists None of them man as such None are spirit only The Christian loves only the spirit But where could one be found Who should really be nothing but spirit To have a liking for the corporeal man With hide and hair Why that would no longer be a spiritual warm heartedness It would be treason against pure warm heartedness The theoretical regard For pure warm heartedness Is by no means to be conceived as that kindness That gives everybody a friendly handshake On the contrary Pure warm heartedness is warm hearted toward nobody It is only a theoretical interest Concerned for man as man Not as a person The person is repulsive to it Because of being egoistic Because of not being that abstraction Man But it is only for the abstraction That one can have a theoretical regard To pure warm heartedness Or pure theory Men exist only to be criticized Scoffed at And thoroughly despised To it No less than to the fanatical person They are only filth And other such nice things Pushed to this extremity of disinterested warm heartedness We must finally become conscious that the spirit Which alone the Christian loves Is nothing In other words That the spirit is A lie What has here been set down roughly Samarily And doubtless as yet incomprehensibly Will it is to be hoped Become clear as we go on Let us take up the inheritance left by the ancients And as active workmen Do with it as much as Can be done with it The world lies despised at our feet Far beneath us in our heaven Into which its mighty arms are no longer thrust And its stupefying breath does not come Seductively as it may pose It can delude nothing but our senses It cannot lead astray the spirit And spirit Alone after all We really are Having once got back of things The spirit has also got above them And become free from their bonds Emancipated Supernal Free So speaks spiritual freedom To the spirit which After long toil Has got rid of the world The worldless spirit Nothing is left after the loss of the world And the worldly but The spirit And the spiritual As it has only moved away from the world The self of being free from the world Without really being able to annihilate the world This remains to it a stumbling block That cannot be cleared away A discredited existence And as On the other hand It knows and recognizes nothing but the spirit And the spiritual It must perpetually carry about with it The longing to spiritualize the world To redeem it from the blacklist Therefore Like a youth It goes about with plans for the redemption Or improvement of the world The ancients we saw Serve the worldly The natural The natural order of the world But they incessantly asked themselves of this service And They had tired themselves to death In ever renewed attempts at revolt Then Among their last size Was born to them the God The conqueror of the world All they're doing Had been nothing but wisdom of the world An effort to get back of the world And above it And what is the wisdom Of the many following centuries What did the moderns try to get back of? No longer to get back of the world For the ancients had accomplished that But back of the God whom the ancients bequeathed to them Back of the God who is spirit Back of everything that is the spirits The spiritual But the activity of the spirit Which searches even the depths of the Godhead Is theology If the ancients have nothing to show But wisdom of the world The moderns never did Nor do make their way further Than to theology We shall later see That even the newest revolts against God Are nothing but the extremist efforts of theology That is Theological insurrection End of section Part first Chapter 2 Section B Of The Ego and His Own By Mox Stern This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings Are in the public domain For more information Or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Matt Messerschmitt In Freiburg, Germany The Moderns The realm of spirits Is monstrously great There is an infinite deal of the spiritual Yet let us look and see what the spirit Does be quest of the ancients Properly is Out of their birth pangs It came forth But they themselves Could not utter themselves as spirit They could give birth to it It itself must speak The born God The son of man Is the first out of the word The spirit He, God Has to do with nothing earthly And no earthly relationship But solely with the spirit And spiritual relationships Is my courage Indestructible under all the world's blows My inflexibility and my obduracy Perchance already spirit In the full sense Because the world cannot touch it Then it would not yet be at enmity with the world And all its actions would consist merely In not succumbing to the world No, as long as it does not busy itself With itself alone As long as it does not have to do with its world The spiritual Alone It is not free spirit But only the spirit of this world The spirit fettered to it The spirit is free spirit That is, really spirit Only in a world of its own In this, the earthly world It is a stranger Only through a spiritual world Is the spirit, really spirit For this world does not understand it And does not know how to keep the maiden From a foreign land, from departing But where is it to get this spiritual world Where but out of itself It must reveal itself In the words that it speaks The revelations in which it unveils itself These are its world As a visionary lives And has his world Only in the visionary pictures That he himself creates As a crazy man Generates for himself his own dream world Without which he could not be crazy For the spirit must create for itself Its spirit world And is not spirit Till it creates it Thus its creations make its spirit And by its creatures we know it The creator In them it lives They are its world Now What is the spirit? It is the creator of a spiritual world Even in you and me People do not recognize spirit Until they see that we have appropriated A spiritual world Though thoughts may have been set before us We have at least brought them to live In ourselves For as long as we were children The most edifying thoughts Might have been laid before us Without our wishing Or being able to reproduce them In ourselves So the spirit also exists Only when it creates something spiritual It is real Only together with the spiritual Its creature As then We know it by its works The question is what these works are But the works or children of the spirit Are nothing else but Spirits If I had before me Jews Jews of the true metal I should have to stop here And leave them standing before this mystery As for almost 2,000 years They have remained standing before it Unbelieving and without knowledge But as you My dear reader Are at least not a full-blooded Jew For such a one will not go astray As far as this We will still go along a bit of road together Till perhaps you too Turn your back on me Because I laugh in your face If someone told you You were altogether spirit You would take hold of your body And not believe him But answer I have a spirit, no doubt You would still distinguish yourself From your spirit But, replies he It is your destiny Even though you are yet going about In the fetters of the body To be one day a blessed spirit And however you may conceive Of the future aspect of your spirit So much is yet certain That in death You will put off this body And yet keep yourself Your spirit Or all eternity In you The body only a dwelling here below Which you may leave And perhaps exchange for another Now you believe him For the present indeed You are not spirit only But when you emigrate From the mortal body As one day you must Then you will have to help yourself Without this body And therefore it is needful That you be prudent and care and time For your proper self And yet suffer damage in his soul But even granted the doubts Raised in the course of time Against the tenets of the Christian faith Have long since robbed you of faith And the immortality of your spirit You have nevertheless left One tenet undisturbed And yet ingenuously Adhere to the one truth That the spirit is your better part And that the spiritual Has greater claims on you Than anything else Despite all your atheism And zeal against egoism You concur with the believers In immortality But whom do you think of Under the name of egoist A man who instead of living To an idea that is a spiritual thing And sacrificing it to his personal advantage Serves the latter A good patriot Brings his sacrifice to the altar Of the fatherland But it cannot be disputed That the fatherland is an idea Since for beasts incapable of mind Or children as yet without mind There is no fatherland And no patriotism Now if anyone does not approve himself As a good patriot He betrays his egoism With reference to the fatherland And so the matter stands In innumerable other cases He who in human society Sins egoistically Against the idea of equality He who exercises dominion Is blamed as an egoist Against the idea of liberty And so on You despise the egoist Because he puts the spiritual In the background as compared with the personal And has his eyes on himself Where you would like to see him act To favor an idea The distinction between you Is that he makes himself The central point But you the spirit Or that you cut your identity Into and exalt your proper self The spirit To be ruler of the paltry or remainder While he will hear nothing Of this cutting into And pursues spiritual And material interests Just as he pleases You think to be sure That you are falling foul Only of those who enter Into no spiritual interest at all But he does not look on the spiritual interest As his true and highest interest You carry your nightly service For this beauty so far That you affirm her to be the only beauty Of the world You live not to yourself But to your spirit And to what is the spirits And that is ideas As the spirit exists Only in its creating of the spiritual Let us take a look about us For its first creation If only it has accomplished this There follows thenceforth A natural propagation of creations As according to the myth Only the first human beings Needed to be created The rest of the race Propagating of itself The first creation On the other hand Must come forth out of nothing The spirit has toward its realization Nothing but itself Or rather It has not yet even itself But must create itself Hence its first creation Is itself The spirit Mystical as this sounds We yet go through it as an everyday experience Are you a thinking being before you think? In creating the first thought You create yourself The thinking one For you do not think before you think a thought Or have a thought Is it not your singing that first makes you a singer? Your talking that first makes you a talker? Now so too It is the production of the spiritual That first makes you a spirit Meantime As you distinguish yourself from the thinker Singer and talker So you no less distinguish yourself from the spirit And feel very clearly That you are something beside spirit But as in the thinking ego Hearing and sight easily vanish In the enthusiasm of thought So you also have been seized by the spirit enthusiasm And you now long with all your might To become holy spirit And to be dissolved in spirit The spirit is your ideal The unattained The otherworldly Spirit is the name of your God God is spirit Against all that is not spirit You are a zealot And therefore you play the zealot against yourself Who cannot get rid of the remainder of the non spiritual Instead of saying I am more than spirit You say with contrition I am less than spirit And spirit, pure spirit With a spirit that is nothing but spirit I can only think of But am not And since I am not it It is another Exists as another Who may call God It exists in the nature of the case That the spirit that is to exist as pure spirit Must be anotherworldly one For since I am not it It follows that it can only be outside me Since in any case A human being is not fully comprehended In the concept spirit It follows that the pure spirit The spirit as such Can only be outside of men Beyond the human world Not earthly But heavenly Only from this disunion In which I and the spirit lie Only because I and spirit Are not names for one and the same thing But different names For completely different things Only because I am not spirit And spirit not I Only from this Do we get a quite tautological explanation Of the necessity That the spirit dwells in the other world That is Is God But from this it also appears How thoroughly theological Is the liberation that Feuerbach Is laboring to give us What he says Is that we had only mistaken our own essence And therefore looked for it in the other world But that now I believe that God was only our human essence We must recognize it again as ours And move it back out of the other world Into this To God Who is spirit Feuerbach gives the name our essence Can we put up with this That our essence is brought into opposition to us That we are split into an essential And an unessential self Do we not therewith go back Into the dreary misery of seeing ourselves Vanished out of ourselves What have we gained then When for a variation We have transferred into ourselves The divine outside us Are we that which is in us As little as we are that which is outside us I am as little my heart As I am my sweetheart This other self in mine Just because we are not the spirit That dwells in us Just for that reason We had to take it and set it outside us It was not we Did not coincide with us And therefore We could not think of it as existing Otherwise than outside us On the other side from us In the other world With the strength of despair Feuerbach clutches at the total substance Of Christianity Not to throw it away No To draw it Long yearned for Ever distant Out of its heaven with a last effort And keep it by him forever Is not that a clutch of the uttermost despair A clutch for life or death And is it not at the same time The Christian yearning and hungering For the other world The hero wants not to go into the other world But to draw the other world to him And compel it to become this world And since then has not all the world With more or less consciousness Been crying that this world is the vital point And heaven must come down on earth And be experienced even here Let us in brief Set Feuerbach's theological view And our contradiction over against each other The essence of man is man's supreme being Now by religion to be sure The supreme being is called God And regarded as an objective essence But in truth it is only man's own essence And therefore the turning point Of the world's history Is that henceforth no longer God But man Is to appear to man as God To this we reply The supreme being is indeed the essence of man But just because it is his essence And not he himself It remains quite immaterial Whether we see it outside him And view it as God Or find it in him And call it essence of man Or man I am neither God nor man Neither the supreme essence Nor my essence And therefore it is all one in the main Whether I think of the essence As in me or outside me Nay We really do always think Of the supreme being As in both kinds of other worldliness The inward and the outward At once Who the spirit of God is According to the Christian view Also our spirit And dwells in us It dwells in heaven And dwells in us We poor things are just its dwelling And if Feuerbach goes on To destroy its heavenly dwelling And force it to move to us Then we Its earthly apartments Will be badly overcrowded But after this digression Which if we were at all proposing To work by line and level We should have had to save For later pages in order to avoid repetition We return to the spirit's first creation The spirit itself The spirit is something other than myself But this other What is it? 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