 Part 1, Chapter 2, Section B of The Ego and His Own by Mox 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 Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. The Moderns, Subdivision 2, The Possessed. Have you ever seen a spirit? No, not I, but my grandmother. Now you see, it's just so with me too. I myself haven't seen any, but my grandmother had them running between her feet all sorts of ways. And out of confidence in our grandmother's honesty, we believe in the existence of spirits. But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not shrug their shoulders every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts? Yes, these were unbelieving men who have harmed our good religion much, those rationalists. We shall feel that. What else lies at the bottom of this warm faith in ghosts, if not the good faith in the existence of spiritual beings in general, and is not this latter itself disastrously unsettled if saucy men of the understanding may disturb the former? The romanticists were quite conscious or to blow the very belief in God suffered by the laying aside of the belief in spirits or ghosts. And they tried to help us out of the baleful consequences, not only by their reawakened fairy world, but at last, and especially, by the intrusion of a higher world, by the some nambulous of prevorist, etc. The good believers and fathers of the church did not suspect that with the belief in ghosts, the foundation of religion was withdrawn, and that since then it had been floating in the air. He who no longer believes in any ghost, need only to travel on consistently in his unbelief to see that there is no separate being at all concealed behind things, no ghost, or what is naively reckoned as synonymous even in our use of words, no spirit. Spirits exist. Look about in the world and say for yourself whether a spirit does not gaze upon you out of everything. Out of the lovely little flower there speaks to you the spirit of the Creator who has shaped it so wonderfully. The stars proclaim the spirit that established their order. From the mountaintops the spirit of sublimity breathes down. Out of the waters a spirit of yearning murmurs up. Not of men, millions of spirits speak. The mountains may sink, the flowers fade, the world of stars fall in ruins, the men die. What matters the wreck of these visible bodies? The spirit, the invisible spirit, abides eternally. Yes, the whole world is haunted. Only is haunted? Nay, it itself walks. It is uncanny through and through. It is the wandering, seeming body of a spirit. It is a spook. What else should a ghost be then than an apparent body but real spirit? Well, the world is empty, is not, is only glamorous semblance. Its truth is the spirit alone. It is the seeming body of a spirit. Look out near or far, a ghostly world surrounds you everywhere. You are always having apparitions or visions. Everything that appears to you is only the phantom of an indwelling spirit. It is a ghostly apparition. The world is to you only a world of appearances behind which the spirit walks. You see spirits. Are you perchance thinking of comparing yourself with the ancients who saw gods everywhere? Gods, my dear modern, are not spirits. Gods do not degrade the world to assemblance and do not spiritualize it. But to you the whole world is spiritualized and have become an enigmatic ghost. Therefore do not wonder if you likewise find in yourself nothing but a spook. Is not your body haunted by your spirit and is not the latter alone, the true and real, the former only the transitory, not or assemblance? Are we not all ghosts, uncanny beings that wait for deliverance to wit spirits? Since the spirit appeared in the world since the word became flesh, since then the world has been spiritualized, enchanted, a spook. You have spirit for you have thoughts. What are your thoughts? Spiritual entities. Not things then? No, but the spirit of things. The main point in all things. The inmost in them. Their idea. Consequently what you think is not only your thought. On the contrary, it is that in the world which is most real. That which is properly to be called true. It is the truth itself. If only I think truly, I think the truth. I may to be sure, err with regard to the truth and fail to recognize it. But if I recognize truly, the object of my cognition is the truth. So I suppose you strive at all times to recognize the truth. To me the truth is sacred. It may well happen that I find a truth incomplete and replace it with a better. But the truth I cannot abrogate. I believe in the truth. Therefore I search in it. Nothing transcends it. It is eternal. Sacred, eternal is the truth. It is the sacred, the eternal. But you, who let yourself be filled and led by the sacred thing, are yourself hollowed. Further, the sacred is not for your senses. And you never as a sensual man discover its trace. But for your faith, or more definitely still, for your spirit. For it itself, you know, is a spiritual thing. A spirit. It is spirit for the spirit. The sacred is by no means so easily to be set aside, as many at present affirm. Who no longer take this unsuitable word into their mouths. If even in a single respect, I am still upgraded as an egoist. There is left the thought of something else which I should serve more than myself. And which must be to me more important than everything. Sure, somewhat in which I should have to seek my true welfare. Something sacred. However human this sacred thing may look, though it be the human itself. That does not take away its sacredness. But it most changes it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing. From a divine one to a human. Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not acknowledge himself. The involuntary egoist. For him who is always looking after his own and yet does not count himself as the highest being. Who serves only himself and at the same time always thinks he is serving a higher being. Who knows nothing higher than himself and is yet infatuated about something higher. In short, for the egoist who would not like to be an egoist. And abases himself, combats his egoism. But at the same time abases himself only for the sake of being exalted. And therefore of gratifying his egoism. Because he would like to cease to be an egoist. He looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself too. But however much he shakes and disciplines himself. In the end he does all for his own sake. And the disreputable egoism will not come off him. On this account I call him the involuntary egoist. Oil and care to get away from himself is nothing but the misunderstood impulse to self-dissolution. If you are bound to your past hour. If you must babble today because you babbled yesterday. If you cannot transform yourself each instant. You feel yourself fettered to slavery and benumbed. Therefore over each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the future beckons to you. And developing yourself you get away from yourself. That is in the self that was at that moment. As you are at each instant you are your own creature. And in this very creature you do not wish to lose yourself. The creator. You are yourself a higher being than you are. And surpass yourself. But that you are the one who is higher than you. That is you are not only creature but likewise your creator. Just this as an involuntary egoist you fail to recognize. And therefore the higher essence is to you an alien essence. Every higher essence such as truth mankind and so on is an essence over us. Alien this is a criterion of the sacred. In everything sacred there lies something uncanny. Strange such as we are not quite familiar and at home in. What is sacred to me is not my own. And if for instance the property of others was not sacred to me. I should look on it as mine. Which I should take to myself one occasion offered. Or on the other side. If I regard the face of the Chinese emperor as sacred. It remains strange to my eye. Which I close at its appearance. Why is an incontrovertible mathematical truth. Which might even be called eternal according to the common understanding of words. Not sacred. Because it is not revealed. Or not the revelation of a higher being. If by revealed we understand only the so-called religious truths. We go far astray. And entirely fail to recognize the breadth of the concept higher being. Atheists keep up their scoffing at the higher being. Which was also honored under the name of the highest or atreus supreme. And trample in the dust one proof of his existence after another. Without noticing that they themselves, out of need for a higher being. Only annihilate the old to make room for a new. Is man a chance not a higher essence than an individual man. And must not the truths, rights, and ideas which result from the concept of him be honored. And counted sacred. As revelations of this very concept. For even though we should abrogate again many a truth that seemed to be made manifest by this concept. Yet this would only evince a misunderstanding on our part. Without in the least degree harming the sacred concept itself. Or taking their sacredness from those truths that must rightly be looked upon as its revelations. Man reaches beyond every individual man. And yet though he be his essence. Is not in fact his essence. Which rather would be as single as he the individual who sell. But a general and higher. Yes, for atheists the highest essence. And as the divine revelations were not written down by God with his own hand. But made public through the Lord's instruments. So also the new highest essence does not write out its revelations itself. But lets them come to our knowledge through true man. Only the new essence betrays in fact. A more spiritual style of conception than the old God. Because the latter was still represented in a sort of embodiedness or form. While the undimmed spirituality of the new is retained. And no special material body is fancied for it. And with all it does not lack corporality. Which even takes on a yet more seductive appearance. Because it looks more natural and mundane. And consists in nothing less than an every bodily man. Yes, or outright in humanity. Or all men. Thereby the spectralness of the spirit in a seeming body. Has once again become really solid and popular. Sacred then is the highest essence and everything in which the highest essence reveals or will reveal itself. But hallowed are they who recognize this highest essence together with its own. Together with its revelations. The sacred hallows in turn its reverer. And by his worship becomes himself a saint. As likewise what he does is saintly. A saintly walk. Saintly thoughts. And saintly actions. Imaginations. And aspirations. It is easily understood that the conflict over what is revered as the highest essence. Can be significant only so long as even the most embittered opponents. Concede to each other the main point. That there is a highest essence to which worship or service is due. If one should smile compassionately at the whole struggle over a highest essence. As a Christian might at the war of words between a Shia and a Sunni. Or between a Brahmin and a Buddhist. Then the hypothesis of a highest essence would be null in his eyes. The conflict on this basis an idle play. Whether then the one God or the three in one. Whether the Lutheran God or the Atreus Supreme. Or not God at all. But man. May represent the highest essence. That makes no difference at all for him who denies the highest essence itself. For in his eyes those servants of a highest essence are one and all. Pious people. The most raging atheist not less than the most faith filled Christian. In the foremost place of the sacred then. Stands the highest essence and the faith in this essence. Our holy faith. The spook. With ghosts re-arriving the spirit realm. In the realm of essences. What haunts the universe and has its occult incomprehensible being there. Is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest essence. And to get to the bottom of this spook. To comprehend it. To discover reality in it. To prove the existence of God. This task men set to themselves for thousands of years. With the horrible impossibility. The endless dinner labor. Of transforming the spook into a non-spook. The unreal into something real. The spirit into an entire and corporeal person. With this they tormented themselves to death. Behind the existing world they saw the thing in itself. The essence. Behind the thing they saw the un-thing. One one looks to the bottom of anything. Searches out its essence. One often discovers something quite other than what it seems to be. Honeyed speech and a lying heart. Pompous words and barely thoughts. And so on. By bringing the essence into prominence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare semblance. A deception. The essence of the world so attractive and splendid. Is for him who looks to the bottom of it. Emptiness. Emptiness equals world's essence. World's doings. Now he who is religious does not occupy himself with the deceitful semblance. With the empty appearances. But looks upon the essence. And in the essence has the truth. The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil essences. And conversely from others the good. The essence of human feeling, for instance, is love. The essence of human will is the good. That of one's thinking the true. And so on. What at first passed for existence. Such as the world and its like. Appears now as bare semblance. And the truly existent is much rather the essence. Whose realm is filled with gods. Spirits. Demons. With good or bad essences. Only this inverted world. The world of essences. Truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless. But its essence exists. God. Who is love. Human thought may wander in air. But its essence, truth exists. God is truth. And the like. To know and acknowledge essences alone. And nothing but essences. That is religion. Its realm is a realm of essences. Spooks. And ghosts. The longing to make the spook comprehensible. Or to realize nonsense. Has brought about a corporeal ghost. A ghost or spirit with a real body. An embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition. But there always remained the contradiction of two natures. The divine and the human. The ghostly and sensual. There remained the most wondrous spook. A thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul torturing. And no shaman. Who pricks himself to raving fury and nerve lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost. Can endure such soul torment as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost. But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to light. That the veritable spirit or ghost is man. The corporeal or embodied spirit is just man. He himself is the ghostly being and at the same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no longer in typical cases shutters it ghosts outside himself. But at himself. He is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the spirit of sin. Even the faintest thought and this is itself a spirit you know. Maybe a devil etc. The ghost has put on a body. God has become man. But now man is himself gruesome spook which he seeks to get back of. To exercise. To fathom. To bring to reality into speech. Man is spirit. What matter if the body wither if only the spirit is saved. Everything rests on the spirit. And the spirits or souls welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a ghost. An uncanny spook. To which there is even a sign a distinct seat in the body. Dispute over the seat of the soul. Whether in the head etc. You are not to me and I am not to you a higher essence. Nevertheless a higher essence may be hidden in each of us and call forth a mutual reference. To take at once the most general man lives in you and in me. If I did not see man in you what occasion should I have to respect you? To be sure you are not man in his true and adequate form but only a mortal veil of his from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing. But yet for the present this general and higher essence is housed in you. And you present before me because an imperishable spirit as in you assumed a perishable body so that really your form is only an assumed one. A spirit that appears appears in you without being bound to your body into this particular mode of appearance. Therefore a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence but only respect that higher essence which walks in you. I respect man. The ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves and the higher essence man found his yet little response. To make up for this they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The people is a higher essence than an individual or a man. A spirit haunting the individual the spirit of the people. For this reason they reviewed the spirit and only so far as he served this or else a spirit related to it as in the spirit of the family but the individual appeared significant only for the sake of the higher essence the people was consideration allowed to the member of the people. As you are hollowed to us by man who haunts you so at every time men have been hollowed by some higher essence or other like people family and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has anyone been honored from of old. Only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a hollowed a protected and recognized person. If I cherish you because I hold you dear because in you my heart finds nourishment my need satisfaction then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hollowed body you are not on account of my beholding in you a ghost an appearing spirit but from egoistic pleasure you yourself with your essence are valuable to me for your essence is not a higher one is not a higher and more general than you like yourself because it is you but it is not only man that haunts so does everything the higher essence the spirit that walks in everything is at the same time bound to nothing and only appears in it. Ghosts in every corner here would be the place to pass the haunting spirits in the view if they were not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before egoism hence let only a few of them be particularized by way of example in order to bring us at once to our attitude toward them sacred above all is the Holy Spirit sacred the truth sacred our right law a good cause majesty marriage the common good order fatherland and so on wheels in the head man your head is haunted you have wheels in your head you imagine great things and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you a spirit realm to which you suppose yourself to be called an ideal that beckons to you you have a fixed idea do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the higher and because the vast majority belongs under this head almost the whole world of men as veritable fools fools in a mad house what is it then that is called a fixed idea an idea that has subjected the man to itself when you recognize with regard to such a fixed idea that it is a folly you shut its slave up in an asylum and is the truth of the faith say which we are not to doubt the majesty of the people which we are not to strike yet he who does is guilty of lay's majesty virtue against which the censor is not to let a word pass that morality may be kept pure these not fixed ideas is not the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality christianity and so forth and only seem to go about free because the mad house in which they walk takes in some broad of space touch the fixed idea of such a fool and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic stealthy malice for these great lunatics are like the little so called lunatics in this point too they assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea they first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him and then they fall upon him with their nails every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictivus of these maniacs and the stupid populace who are like the useless hurrahs for their crazy measures one must read the journals of this period and must hear the philistines talk to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools thou shalt not call thy brother a fool if thou dost etc but I do not fear the curse and I say my brothers are arch fools whether a poor fool of the insane sees that he is god the father emperor of Japan the holy spirit or what not or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good christian a faithful protestant a loyal citizen a virtuous man both these are one in the same fixed idea he who has never tried and dared not to be a good christian a faithful protestant a virtuous man and the like is possessed and prepossessed by faith virtuousness etc just as the school men philosophized only inside the belief of the church as pope benedict the fourteenth wrote fat books inside the papist superstition without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief as authors fill whole folios on the state without calling into question the fixed idea of the state itself as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a zoon politikon and so also subjects vegetate and subjection virtuous people and virtue liberals and humanity without ever putting to these fixed ideas if there is the searching knife of criticism undislogable like a mad man's delusion those thoughts stand on a firm footing and he who doubts them lays hands on the sacred yes, the fixed idea that is the truly sacred is it perchance only people possessed by the devil that meet us or do we as often come upon people possessed in the contrary way possessed by the good by virtue morality, the law from principle or other possessions of the devil are not the only ones God works on us and the devil does the former workings of grace the latter workings of the devil possessed people are said in their opinions if the word possession displeases you then call it prepossession yes, since the spirit possesses you and all inspirations come from it call it inspiration and enthusiasm I add the complete enthusiasm for we cannot stop with the sluggish half way kind it is called fanaticism it is precisely among cultured people that fanaticism is at home for man is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things an interest in spiritual things when it is alive is and must be fanaticism it is a fanatical interest in the sacred finally observe our liberals look into the zexious and fatisland's butto hear what Schlosser says Bolbach's company constituted a regular plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system and its members were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and priests and pietists methodists missionary and bible societies commonly are for mechanical worship and orthodoxy take notice how a moral man behaves who today often thinks he is through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing if you ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest that monogamy is the truth of marriage that filial piety is a sacred duty that a moral shutter will come over him at the conception of ones being allowed to touch his sister as wife also and whence this shutter because he believes in those moral commandments this moral faith is deeply rooted in his breast much as he rages against the pious Christians he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian to wit a moral Christian in the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner and a prisoner under faith monogamy is to be something sacred and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a criminal he who commits incest suffers as a criminal those who are always crying the religion is not to be regarded in the state and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with a Christian show themselves in accord with this is not this of incest and monogamy a dogma of faith touch it and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a hero of faith also not less than crew maker not less than Philip II these fight for the faith of the church he for the faith of the state or the moral law of the state for articles of faith both condemn him who act otherwise than their faith will allow the brand of crime is stamped upon him and he may languish in reformatories in jails moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith they call that liberty of faith then when brother and sister are patient they should have settled with their conscience are thrown into prison but they set a pernicious example yes indeed others might have taken the notion the state had no business to meddle with their relation and there upon purity of morals would go to ruin so then the religious heroes of faith are zealous for the sacred God the moral ones for the sacred good those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other how the strictly orthodox or old style believers differ from the fighters for truth, light and justice from the Philathes, the friends of light the rationalists and others and yet how utterly unessential is this difference if one buffets single traditional truths miracles and limited power of princes then the rationalists buffet them too and only the old style believers wail but if one buffets truth itself he immediately has both as believers for opponents and so with moralities the strict believers are relentless the clear heads are more tolerant but he who attacks morality itself gets both to deal with truth, morality justice light etc are to be and remain sacred what anyone finds to censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be un-Christian according to the view of these rationalists but Christianity must remain a fixture to buffet it is outrageous and outrage to be sure the heretic against pure faith no longer exposes himself to the earlier fury of persecution but so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic against pure morals end of section read by Matt Messerschmitt in Ann Arbor Michigan USA the moderns continuation of subdivision 2 the possessed piety has for a century received so many blows and had to hear its superhuman essence reviled as an inhuman one so often the one cannot feel tempted to draw the sword against it again and yet almost always been only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena to assail the supreme essence in favor of another supreme essence so prudone unabashed man is destined to live without religion but the moral law is eternal and absolute who would dare today to attack morality moral people skimmed off at from religion aided themselves and are now having a tough job to get rid of the resulting scruffola if therefore we point out that religion has not by any means been hurt in its inmost part so long as people reproach it only with its superhuman essence and that it takes its final appeal to the spirit alone for God is spirit then we have sufficiently indicated its final accord with morality and can leave its stubborn conflict with the latter lying behind us it is a question of a supreme essence with both and whether this is a superhuman or a human one can make, since it is any case an essence over me a supermind one so to speak but little difference to me in the end the relation to the human essence or to man as soon as ever it has shed the snakeskin of the old religion will yet wear a religious snakeskin again so Feuerbach instructs us that if one only inverts speculative philosophy always makes the predicate the subject and so makes the subject the object and principle one has the undraped truth pure and clean herewith to be sure we lost the narrow religious standpoint lost the God who from this standpoint is subject but we take an exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint the moral standpoint thus we no longer say God is love but love is divine if we further put the place of the predicate divine the equivalent sacred then as far as concerns the sense all the old comes back again according to this love is to be the good in man his divineness that which does him honor his true humanity it makes him man for the first time a man out of him so then it would be more accurately worded thus love is what is human in man and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist but precisely all that which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy i.e. theology offers as the good the absolute is to self ownership simply not the good or what means the same it is only the good consequently by the transformation of the predicate into the subject the Christian essence and with it the predicate that contains the essence you know would only be fixed yet more oppressively God and the divine would entwine themselves all the more inextricably with me to expel God from his heaven and to rob him of his transcendence cannot yet support a claim of complete victory if therein he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with indelible immanence now they say the divine is the truly human the same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the state who oppose the so-called Christian state do not tire of repeating that morality is the fundamental pillar of social life and of the state as if the dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of the sacred a hierarchy so we may hear mentioned by the way that rationalist movement which after theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping religious truths that only to believers did God reveal himself and that therefore only the heart the feelings the believing fancy was religious broke out with the assertion that the natural understanding human reason was also capable of discerning God what does that mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same visionary as the fancy in this sense Ramaris wrote his most notable truths of natural religion it had to come to this that the whole man with all his faculties was found to be religious heart and affections understanding and reason feeling knowledge and will ensure everything in man appeared religious Hegel has shown that even philosophy is religious and what is not called religion today the religion of love the religion of freedom political religion in short every enthusiasm and so it is too in fact to this day we use the romance word religion which expresses the concept of a condition of being bound to be sure we remain bound so far as religion takes possession of our inward parts but is the mind also bound on the contrary that is free is so Lord is not our mind but absolute therefore the correct affirmative translation of the word religion would be freedom of mind in whom so ever the mind is free he is religious in just the same way as he in whom the senses have free course is called a sensual man the mind binds the former that desires the latter religion therefore is boundless or religio with reference to me I am bound it is freedom with reference to the mind the mind is free or has freedom of mind many know from experience how hard it is on us when the desires run away with us free and unbridled but that the free mind splendid intellectuality enthusiasm for intellectual interests or however this jewel may in the most various phrase be named brings us into yet more grievous traits than even the wildest impropriety people will not perceive nor can they perceive it without being consciously egoists remerous and all who have shown that our reason our heart etc also lead to God have there with all shown that we are possessed through and through to be sure they vexed the theologians from whom they took away the prerogative of religious exaltation but for religion for freedom of mind they thereby conquered yet more ground for when the mind is no longer limited to feeling or faith but also as understanding reason and thought in general belongs to itself the mind when therefore it may take part in the spiritual and heavenly truths in the form of understanding as well as in its other forms then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual things that is with itself and is therefore free now we are so through and through religious that jurors sworn men condemn us to death and every policeman as a good Christian takes us to the lock up by virtue of an oath of office morality could not come into opposition with piety till after the time when in general the boisterous hate of everything that looked like an order decrees, commandments etc spoke out in revolt and the personal absolute lord was scoffed at and persecuted consequently it could arrive at independence only through liberalism whose first form acquired significance in the world's history as citizenship and weakened the specifically religious powers see liberalism below for when morality not merely goes alongside of piety but stands on feet of its own then its principle lies no longer in the divine commandments but in the law of reason from which the commandments so far as they are still to remain valid must first await justification for their validity in the law of reason which determines himself out of himself for man is rational and out of the essence of man those laws follow of necessity piety and morality part company in this that the former makes god the law giver the latter man from a certain standpoint of morality people reason about as follows either man is led by his sensuality and is following it immoral or he is led by the good which taken up into will is called moral sentiment sentiment and prepossession in favor of the good then he shows himself moral from this point of view how for instance can sands act against kotsubu be called immoral what is commonly understood by unselfish it certainly was in the same measure as among other things saint krispen's thievery in favor of the poor you should not have murdered for it stands written thou shalt not murder then to serve the good the welfare of the people as sand at least intended or the welfare of the poor krispen is moral but murder and theft are immoral the purpose moral the means immoral because murder assassination is something absolutely bad when the gorillas enticed the enemies of the country into ravines and shot them down unseen from the bushes do you suppose that was assassination according to the principle of morality which commands us to serve the good you could really ask only whether murder could never in any case be a realization of the good and would have to endorse that murder which realized the good you cannot condemn sands deed at all it was moral because in the service of the good because unselfish it was an act of punishment which the individual inflicted on execution inflicted at the risk of the executioner's life what else had it's scheme been after all but that he wanted to suppress writings by brute force are you not acquainted with the same procedure as a legal and sanctioned one and what can be objected against it from your principle of morality but it was an illegal execution so the immoral thing in it was the illegality the disobedience to law then you admit that the good is nothing else than law morality nothing else than loyalty and to this externality of loyalty your morality must sink to this righteousness of works in the fulfillment of the law only that the latter is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than the old time righteousness of works for in the latter only to act is needed but you require the disposition to one must carry in himself the law the statute and he who is most legally disposed is the most moral even the last vestige of cheerfulness and catholic life must perish in this protestant legality here at last the domination of the law is for the first time complete not I live but the law lives in me thus I have really come so far to be only the vessel of its glory every Prussian carries his gendarm in his breast Prussian officer why do certain opposition parties fail to flourish solely for the reason that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality hence the measureless hypocrisy of devotion love etc from whose repulsiveness one may daily get the most thrown at this rotten and hypocritical relation of a lawful opposition in the moral relation of love legality a divided or opposed will cannot have place the beautiful relation is disturbed if the one wills this and the other the reverse but now according to the practice hitherto and the old prejudice of the opposition the moral relation is to be preserved above all what is then left to the opposition perhaps the will to have a liberty love at one sees fit to deny it not a bit it may not will to have the freedom it can only wish for it petition for it lisp a please please what would come of it if the opposition really willed willed with the full energy of the will no it must renounce will in order to live to love renounce liberty for love of morality it may never claim as a right what it is permitted only to beg as a favor love devotion etc demand with undeviating definiteness that there be only one will to which the others devote themselves which they serve follow love whether this will is regarded as reasonable or is unreasonable in both cases one acts morally when one follows it and immorally when one breaks away from it the will that commands the censorship seems to many unreasonable but he who in a land of censorship evades the censoring of his book acts immorally and he who submits it to the censorship acts morally if someone let his moral judgment go and set up a secret press one would have to call him immoral and imprudent in the bargain if he let himself be caught but will such a man lay claim to a value in the eyes of the moral perhaps that is if he fancied he was serving a higher morality the web of the hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two things between which our time swings back and forth attaching its fine threads of deception and self deception no longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening not yet reckless enough to live holy to egoism it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider web of hypocrisy and crippled by the curse of halfness catches only miserable stupid flies if one has dared to make a free motion immediately one waters it again with assurances of love and sham's resignation if on the other hand they have had the face to reject the free motion with moral appeals to confidence immediately the moral courage also sinks and they assure one how they hear the free words with special pleasure they sham approval in short people would like to have the one but not go without the other they would like to have a free will but not for their lives lack the moral will just come into contact with a servile loyalist you liberals you will sweeten every word of freedom with a look of the most loyal confidence and he will clothe his servilism in the most flattering phrases of freedom then you go apart and he like you thinks I know you fox he sense the devil in you as much as you do the dark old lord god in him a Nero is a bad man only in the eyes of the good in mind he is nothing but a possessed man as are the good too the good see in him an arch villain and relegate him to hell why did nothing hinder him in his arbitrary course why did people put up with so much do you suppose the tame romans who let all their will bound by such tyrant were a hair the better in old Rome they would have put him to death instantly never would have been his slaves but the contemporary good among the romans opposed to him only moral demands not their will they sighed that their emperor did not do homage to morality like them they themselves remained moral subjects until at last one found courage to give up moral obedient subjection and then the same good romans who as obedient subjects had born all the ignominy of having no will hurrahed over the nefarious immoral act of the rebel where then in the good was the courage for the revolution that courage which they now praised after another had mustered it up the good could not have this courage for a revolution and an insurrection to the bargain is always something immoral which one can resolve upon only when one ceases to be good and becomes either bad or neither of the two Mira was no vile than his time in which one could only be one of the two good or bad the judgment of his time on him had to be that he was bad and this in the highest degree not a milksop but an arch scoundrel all moral people can pronounce only this judgment on him rascals such as he was are still living here in there today see for example the memoirs of Ritter von Lang in the midst of the moral it is not convenient to live among them certainly as one is not sure of his life for a moment but can you say that it is more convenient to live among the moral one is just as little sure of his life there only that one is hanged in the way of justice but least of all is one sure of his honor and the national taqued is gone before you can say Jack Robinson the hard fist of morality treats the noble nature of egoism all together without compassion but surely one cannot put a rascal and an honest man on the same level now no human being does that oftener than you judges of morals yes still more than that you imprison as a criminal an honest man who speaks openly against the existing institution against the hallowed institutions and you entrust portfolios and still more important things to a crafty rascal so in proxy you have nothing to approach me with but in theory now there I do put both on the same level as two opposite poles to it both on the level of the moral law both have meaning only in the moral world just as in the pre-christian time the Jew who kept the law and one who broke it had meaning and significance only in respect to the Jewish law before Jesus Christ on the contrary the Pharisee was no more than the sinner and publican so before self ownership the moral Pharisee amounts to as much as the immoral sinner Nero became very inconvenient by his possessiveness but a self owning man would not solely oppose to him the sacred and whine if the tyrant does not regard the sacred he would oppose to him his will how often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been held up to their foes and some liberty or other shown demonstrated to be a sacred right of man those who do that deserve to be laughed out of court as they actually are were it not that in truth they do even though unconsciously take the road that leads to the goal they have a presentiment that if only the majority is once one for that liberty it will also will the liberty and will then take what it will have the sacredness of the liberty and all possible proofs of this sacredness will never procure it lamenting and petitioning only shows beggars the moral man is necessarily Nero in that he knows no other enemy than the immoral man he who is not moral is immoral and accordingly reprobate etc therefore the moral man can never comprehend the egoist is not unwetted cohabitation and immorality the moral man may turn as he pleases he will have to stand by this verdict Emilia Galati gave up her life for this moral truth and it is true it is an immorality a virtuous girl may become an old maid a virtuous man may pass the time in fighting his natural impulses until he is perhaps doled them he may castrate himself for the sake of virtue as Saint Origen did for the sake of heaven he thereby honors sacred wedlock sacred chastity as inviolable he is moral unchastity can never become a moral act however indulgently the moral man may judge and excuse him who committed it it remains a transgression a sin against a moral commandment there clings to it an indelible stain as chastity once belonged to the monastic vow so it does to moral conduct chastity is a good for the egoist on the contrary he is not a good without which he could not get along he cares nothing at all about it what now follows from this for the judgment of the moral man this that he throws the egoist into the only class of men that he knows besides moral men into that of the immoral he cannot do otherwise he must find the egoist immoral everything in which the egoist disregards morality if he did not find him so then he would already have become an apostate from morality without confessing it to himself he would already no longer be a truly moral man one should not let himself be led astray by such phenomena which at the present day are certainly no longer to be classed as rare which would reflect he who yields any point of morality can as little be counted among the truly moral as lessing was a pious Christian when in the well-known parable he compared the Christian religion as well as the Mohammedan and Jewish to a counterfeit ring often people are already further than they ventured to confess to themselves for Socrates because in culture it would have been an immorality if he had been willing to follow Credo's seductive indictment and escape from the dungeon to remain was the only moral thing but it was solely because Socrates was a moral man the unprincipled sacrilegious men of the revolution on the contrary had sworn fidelity to his 16th and decreed his deposition yes, his death but the act was an immoral one at which moral persons will be horrified to all eternity yet all this applies more or less only to civic morality on which the freer looked down with contempt for it like civism its native ground in general was still too little removed and free from the religious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws without criticism or further consideration to its domain instead of producing independent doctrines of its own morality cuts quite a different figure when it arrives at the consciousness of its dignity and raises its principle the essence of man or man with a capital M to be the only regulative power those who have worked their way through to such a decided consciousness break entirely with religion whose god no longer finds any place alongside their man and, as they see below themselves scuttle the ship of state so too they crumble away that morality which flourishes only in the state and logically have no right to use even its name any further for what this critical party calls morality is very positively distinguished from the so called civic or political morality and must appear to the citizen like an insensate and unbridled liberty but at bottom it has only the advantage of the purity of the principle which freed from its defilement with the religious has now reached universal power in its clarified definiteness as humanity therefore one should not wonder that the name morality is retained along with others like freedom benevolence self-consciousness and has only garnered now and then with the addition a free morality just as though the civic state is abused yet the state is to arise again as a free state or if not even so yet as a free society because this morality completed into humanity has fully settled its accounts with the religion out of which it historically came forth nothing hinders it from becoming a religion on its own account for a distinction prevails between religion and morality only so long as our dealings with the world of men are regulated and hollowed by our relation to a superhuman being or so long as our doing is a doing for God's sake if on the other hand it comes to the point that man is to man the supreme being then that distinction vanishes and morality being removed from its subordinate position is completed into religion for then the higher being who had hitherto been subordinated to the highest man has ascended to absolute height and we are related to him as one is related to the highest being religiously morality and piety are now as synonymous as in the beginning of Christianity and it is only because the supreme being has come to be a different one that a holy walk is no longer called a holy one but a human one if morality has conquered then a complete change of masters has taken place after the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put into the supposedly safe harbor of love the first and highest law must be the love of man to man homo homini deus est this is the supreme practical maxim this is the turning point of the world's history but properly speaking only the god has changed the deus love has remained their love to the superhuman god hear love to the human god to homo as deus therefore man is to me sacred and everything truly human is to me sacred marriage is sacred of itself and so it is with all moral relations friendship is and must be sacred for you and property marriage and the good of every man but sacred in and of itself haven't we the priest again there who is his god man with a great M what is the divine the human then the predicate has indeed only been changed into the subject and instead of the sentence god is love they say love is divine love god has become man man has become god etc it is nothing more or less than a new religion all moral relations are ethical are cultivated with a moral mind only where of themselves without religious consecration by the priest's blessing they are counted religious for your box proposition theology is anthropology means only religion must be ethics ethics alone is religion all together for your box accomplishes only a transposition of subject and predicate a giving of preference to the latter but since he himself says love is not has never been considered by man sacred through being a predicate of god but it is a predicate of god because it is divine in and of itself he might judge that the fight against the predicates themselves against love and all sanctities must be commenced how could he hope to turn men away from god when he left them the divine if, as foyerbach says god himself has never been the main thing to them but only his predicates then he might have gone on leaving them the tinsel longer yet since the doll the real colonel was left at any rate he recognizes too that with him it is only a matter of annihilating an illusion he thinks however the effect of the illusion on men is downright ruinous since even love in itself the truest most inward sentiment becomes an obscure illusory one through religiousness since religious love loves man only for god's sake therefore loves man only apparently but in truth god only is this different with moral love does it love the man this man for this man's sake or for morality's sake and so for homo homini deus for god's sake end of section part first chapter 2 section b of the ego and his own this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org read by Matt Messerschmitt in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA the moderns continuation of subdivision 2 the possessed the wheels in the head have a number of other aspects some of which may be useful to indicate here thus self renunciation is common to the holy with the unholy to the pure and the impure the impure man renounces all better feelings all shame even natural timidity and follows only the appetite that rules him the pure man renounces his natural relation to the world renounces the world and follows only the desire which rules him driven by the thirst for money the avaricious man renounces all admonitions of conscience all feeling of honor all gentleness and all compassion he puts all considerations out of sight the appetite drags him along the holy man behaves similarly he makes himself the laughing stock of the world is hard-hearted and strictly just for the desire drags him along as the unholy man renounces himself before mammon so the holy man renounces himself before god and the divine laws we are now living in a time when the shamelessness of the holy is every day more and more felt and uncovered whereby it is at the same time held to unveil itself and lay itself bare more and more every day have not the shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize the progress of the age long surpassed all measure and all expectation but it must be so the self renouncers must as holy men take the same course that they do as unholy men as the latter little by little sink to the fullest measure of self renouncing vulgarity and lowness so the former must ascend to the most dishonorable exaltation the mammon of the earth and the god of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of self renunciation the low man like the exalted one reaches out for a good the former for the material good the latter for the ideal the so-called supreme good and at last both complete each other again too as the material minded man sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm his vanity and the spiritually minded man to a material gratification the life of enjoyment those who exhort men to unselfishness think they are saying an uncommon deal what do they understand by it probably something like what they understand by self renunciation but who is the self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit it seems that you yourself are supposed to be it and for whose benefit is unselfish self renunciation recommended to you again for your benefit and be hoofed only that through unselfishness you are procuring your true benefit you are to benefit yourself and yet you are not to seek your benefit people regard as unselfish the benefactor of men a Franke who founded the orphan asylum an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people but also the Fanatic who like Saint Boniface hazards his life for the conversion of the heathen or like Rose Pierre sacrifices everything to virtue like Conna dies for God King and Fatherland hence among others O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness for which the O'Connell fund seems to give them a foundation for if they were successful in casting suspicion on his unselfishness they would easily separate him from his adherence yet what could they show further than the O'Connell was working for another end than the ostensible one but whether he may aim at making money or liberating the people it still remains certain in one cases in the other that he is striving for an end and that his end selfishness here as there only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to others too and so would be for the common interest now do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant on the contrary nothing is more ordinary one may even call it an article of fashion in the civilized world which is considered so indispensable that if it costs too much in solid material people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it where does unselfishness begin right where an end ceases to be our end and our property which we as owners can dispose of at pleasure where it becomes a fixed end or a fixed idea where it begins to inspire, enthuse fanaticize us in short where it passes into our stubbornness and becomes our master one is not unselfish so long as he retains the end in his power one becomes so only at that here I stand here I cannot do otherwise the fundamental maxim of all the possessed one becomes so in the case of a sacred end through the corresponding sacred zeal I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my own and I instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfillment leave it always an open question my zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold leaving and its most irreconcilable enemy I remain its judge because I am its owner unselfishness grows rank as far as possessiveness reaches as much on possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit their vice folly and the like here humility devotion and so forth look at one look without meeting victims of self renunciation there sits a girl opposite me who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul for ten years already over the buxom form droops a deathly tired head and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth poor child how often the passions may have beaten at your heart powers of youth have demanded their right when your head rolled in the soft pillow how awakening nature quivered through your limbs the blood swelled your veins and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes then appeared the ghost of the soul and its external bliss you were terrified your hands folded themselves your tormented eyes turned look upward you prayed the storms of nature were hushed a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs the boisterous waves dried up in the heart the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight unresisting bosom one last faint oh dear moaned itself away and the soul was at rest you fell asleep to awaken the morning to a new combat and a new prayer now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the chlorosis of your heavenliness the soul is saved the body may perish oleas oninon how well you did to score in this pale virtue one free grisette against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue the fixed idea may also be perceived as maxim principle standpoint and the like Archimedes to move the earth asked for a standpoint outside it men sought continually for this standpoint and everyone seized upon it as well as he was able this foreign standpoint is the world of mind of ideas thoughts concepts essences it is heaven heaven is the standpoint that was moved earthly doings surveyed and despised to assure to themselves heaven to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and forever how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature from the appetites as actuating us so meant the man should not let himself be determined by his appetites this does not involve the idea that he was not to have appetites but that the appetites were not to have him they were not to become fixed uncontrollable indissoluble now could not what Christianity, religion contrived against the appetites be applied to us to its own precept that mind thought, conceptions ideas, faith must determine us could we not ask that neither should mind or the conception, the idea be allowed to determine us to become fixed and inviolable or sacred then it would end in the dissolution of mind the dissolution of all thoughts of all conceptions as we there had to say we are indeed to have appetites but the appetites are not to have us so we should now say we are indeed to have mind but mind is not to have us if the latter seems lacking in sense think of the fact that with so many a man a thought becomes a maxim whereby he himself is made prisoner to it so that it is not he that has the maxim but rather it that has him and with the maxim he has a permanent standpoint again the doctrines of the catechism become our principles before we find it out for projection their thought or mind has the soul power and no protest of the flesh is further listened to nevertheless it is only through the flesh that I can break the tyranny of mind for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly and that is only when he hears himself that he is a hearing or rational being the Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled nature but lives in humility therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his person he thinks himself satisfied with the freedom of the spirit but if the flesh once takes the floor and its tone is passionate in decorous not well disposed spiteful as it cannot be otherwise then he thinks he hears voices of devils voices against the spirit for decorum passionlessness kindly disposition and the like of his spirit and is justly zealous against them he could not be a Christian if he were willing to endure them he listens only to morality and slaps on morality in the mouth he listens only to legality and gags the lawless word the spirit of morality and legality holds him a prisoner a rigid unbending master they call that the mastery of the spirit it is at the same time the standpoint of the spirit and now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen mean to make free whose freedom is that they cry out and thirst for the spirits that of the spirit of morality legality legality piety the fear of God that is what the anti liberal gentlemen also want and the whole contention between the two turns on a matter of advantage whether the latter are to be the only speakers or the former are to receive a share in the enjoyment of the same advantage the spirit remains the absolute lord for both and their only quarrel is over who shall occupy the hierarchical throne that pertains to the vice-regent of the lord the best of it is that one can calmly look upon the stirrer with the certainty that the wild beasts of history will tear each other to pieces just like those of nature their putrifying corpses fertilize the ground for our crops we shall come back later to many other wheels in the head for instance those of vocation truthfulness love and the like when one's own is contrasted with what is imparted to him there is no use in objecting that we cannot have anything isolated but receive everything as a part of the universal order and therefore through the impression of what is around us and that consequently we have it as something imparted for there is a great difference between the feelings and thoughts which are aroused in me by other things and those which are given to me God immortality freedom humanity are drilled into us from childhood as thoughts and feelings which move our inner being more or less strongly either ruling us without our knowing it or sometimes in richer natures manifesting themselves in systems and works of art but are always not aroused but imparted feelings because we must be leaving them and cling to them that an absolute existed and that it must be taken in felt and thought by us was settled as a faith in the minds of those who spent all the strength of their mind on recognizing it and setting it forth the feeling for the absolute exists there as an imparted one and thenceforth results only in the most manifold revelations of itself so in Klopstuk the religious feeling was an imparted one which in the messiah simply found artistic expression if on the other hand the religion with which he was confronted had been for him only an incitation feeling and thought and if he had known how to take an attitude completely his own toward it then there would have resulted instead of religious inspiration a dissolution and consumption of the religion itself instead of that he only continued in mature years his childish feelings received in childhood and squandered the powers of his manhood in decking out his childish trifles the difference is then whether feelings are imparted to me or only aroused those feelings which are aroused are my own egoistic because they are not as feelings drilled into me dictated to me and pressed upon me but those which are imparted to me I receive with open arms I cherish them in me as a heritage cultivate them and possessed by them who is there that has never more or less consciously notice that our whole education is calculated to produce feelings in us impart them to us instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out if we hear the name of God we are to feel veneration if we hear that of the prince's majesty it is to be received with reverence deference, submission if we hear that of morality we are to think that we hear something inviolable if we hear of the evil one or evil ones we are to shudder the intention is directed to these feelings and he who should hear with pleasure the deeds of the bad would have to be taught what's what with the rod of discipline thus stuffed with imparted feelings we appear before the bar of majority and are pronounced of age our equipment consists of elevated feelings lofty thoughts inspiring maxims eternal principles the young are of age when they twitter like the old they are driven through school to learn the old song and when they have this by heart they are declared of age we must not think anything and every name that comes before us what we could and would like to feel there at at the name of God we must think of nothing laughable feel nothing disrespectful it being prescribed and imparted to us what and how we are to feel and think at the mention of that name that is the meaning of the care of souls that my soul or my mind think right not as I myself would like how much trouble does it not cost one finally to secure to oneself a feeling of one's own at the mention of at least this or that name and to laugh in the face of many who expect from us a holy face and a composed expression at their speeches what is imparted is alien to us it is not our own and therefore is sacred and it is hard work to lay aside the sacred dread of it today one again hears seriousness praised seriousness in the presence of highly important subjects and discussions german seriousness and so on this sort of seriousness proclaims clearly how old and grave lunacy and possession have already become for there is nothing more serious than a lunatic when he comes to the central point of his lunacy then his great earnestness incapacitates him for taking a joke see mad houses end of section please visit libravox.org recording by Matt Messerschmitt in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA chapter 2 section A subdivision 3 the hierarchy the historical reflections on our Mongolism which I propose to insert episodically at this place are not given with the claim of thoroughness but solely because it seems to me that they may contribute toward making the rest clear the history of the world whose shaping properly belongs altogether to the Caucasian race seems till now to have run through two Caucasian ages in the first of which we had to work out and work off our innate negroidity this was followed in the second negroidity, chineseness which must likewise be terribly made an end of negroidity represents antiquity the time of dependence on things on cox eating birds flight on sneezing on thunder and lightning on the rustling of sacred trees and so forth mongoloidity the gods the christian time reserved for the future are the words I am owner of the world of things and I am owner of the world of mind in the negroid age fall the campaigns of sassastras and the importance of Egypt and of northern Africa in general to the mongoloid age belong the invasions of the Huns and Mongols up to the Russians the value of me cannot possibly be rated high so long as the hard diamond of the not me bears so enormous a price as was the case both with God and with the world the not me is still too stony and indomitable to be consumed and absorbed by me rather men only creep about an extraordinary bustle on this immovable entity on this substance like parasitic animals on a body from whose juices they draw nourishment yet without consuming it it is the bustle of vermin the aciduity of mongolians among the Chinese we know everything remains as it used to be and nothing essential or substantial suffers a change all the more actively do they work away at that which remains which bears the name of the old ancestors and the like accordingly in our Mongolian age all change has been only reformatory or ameliorative not destructive or consuming the substance the object remains all our aciduity was only the activity of ants and the hopping of fleas jugglers tricks on the immovable tightrope of the objective Corvay service under the leadership of the unchangeable or eternal the Chinese are doubtless the most positive nation because totally buried in precepts but neither has the Christian age come out from the positive from limited freedom freedom within certain limits in the most advanced stage of civilization this activity earns the name of scientific activity of working on a motionless presupposition a hypothesis that is not to be upset in its first and most intelligible form morality shows itself as habit to act according to the habit and usage more race of one's country is to be moral there therefore pure moral action clear unadulterated morality is most straightforwardly practiced in China they keep to the old habit and usage and hate each innovation as a crime worthy of death for innovation is the deadly enemy of habit of the old of permanence in fact too it admits of no doubt that through habit man secures himself against the obtrusiveness of things of the world and forms a world of his own in which alone he is and feels at home builds himself a heaven why heaven has no other meaning than that it is a man's proper home in which nothing alien regulates and rules him any longer no influence of the earthly any longer makes him himself alien in short in which the dross of the earthly is thrown off and the combat against the world has found an end in which therefore nothing is any longer denied him heaven is the end of abnegation it is free enjoyment there man no longer denies himself anything because nothing is any longer alien and hostile to him but now habit is a second nature which detaches and frees man from his first and original natural condition in securing him against every casualty of it the fully elaborated habit of the Chinese has provided for all emergencies and everything is looked out for whatever may come the Chinaman always knows how he has to behave and does not need to decide first according to the circumstances no one foreseen case throws him down from the heaven of his rest the morally habituated and enured Chinaman is not surprised and taken off his guard he behaves with equanimity that is with equal spirit or temper toward everything because his temper protected by the precaution of his traditional usage does not lose its balance hence on the ladder of culture or civilization humanity mounts the first round through habit and as it conceives that in climbing to culture it is at the same time climbing to heaven the realm of culture or second nature it really mounts the first round of the ladder to heaven if Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual beings if it has created a world of spirits a heaven the Caucasians have wrestled for thousands of years with these spiritual beings to get to the bottom of them what were they doing then but building on Mongolian ground they have not built on sand but in the air they have wrestled with Mongolism stormed the Mongolian heaven Tian when will they at last annihilate this heaven when will they at last become really Caucasians and find themselves when will the immortality of the soul which in these latter days thought it was giving itself still more security if it presented itself as an immortality of mind at last changed to the mortality of mind it was when in the industrious struggle of the Mongolian race men had built a heaven that those of the Caucasian race since in their Mongolian complexion they have to do with heaven took upon themselves the opposite task the task of storming that heaven of custom heaven storming activity to dig under all human ordinance in order to set up a new and better one on the cleared site to wreck all customs in order to put up new and better customs in their place their act is limited to this but is it thus already purely and really what it aspires to be and does it reach its final aim no in this creation of a better it is tainted with Mongolism it storms heaven only to make a heaven again it overthrows an old power only to legitimate a new power it only improves nevertheless the point aimed at often as it may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt is the real complete downfall of heaven customs in short of man secured only against the world of the isolation or inwardness of man through the heaven of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the world to break its hostile power but this isolation of heaven must likewise be broken and the true end of heaven storming is the downfall of heaven the annihilation of heaven improving and reforming is the Mongolism of the Caucasian because thereby he is always getting up again what already existed to it a precept a generality a heaven he harbors the most irreconcilable enmity to heaven and yet builds new heavens daily piling heaven on heaven he only crushes one by another the Jews heaven destroys the Greeks the Christians the Jews the Protestants the Catholics if the heaven storming men of Caucasian blood throw off their Mongolian skin they will bury the emotional man under the ruins of the monstrous world of emotion the isolated man under his isolated world the paradisaical man under his heaven and heaven is the realm of spirits the realm of freedom of the spirit the realm of heaven the realm of spirits and ghosts has found its right standing in the speculative philosophy here it was stated as the realm of thoughts concepts and ideas heaven is peopled with thoughts and ideas and this realm of spirits is then the true reality to want to win freedom for the spirit is Mongolism freedom of the spirit is Mongolian freedom freedom of feeling moral freedom and so forth we may find the word morality taken as synonymous with spontaneity self-determination but that is not involved in it rather has the Caucasian shown himself spontaneous only in spite of his Mongolian morality the Mongolian heaven or morals remained the strong castle and only by storming incessantly at this castle did the Caucasian show himself moral if he had not had to do with morals at all any longer if he had not had therein his indomitable continual enemy the relation to morals would cease and consequently morality would cease that his spontaneity is still a moral spontaneity therefore is just the Mongoloidity of it is a sign that in it he has not arrived at himself moral spontaneity corresponds entirely with religious and orthodox philosophy constitutional monarchy the Christian state freedom within certain limits the limited freedom of the press or in a figure to the hero fettered to a sick bed man has not really vanquished shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits but also the belief in the spirit he who believes in a spook no more assumes the introduction of a higher world than he who believes in the spirit and both seek behind the sensual world a super sensual one in short they produce and believe another world and this other world the product of their mind is a spiritual world for their senses grasp and know nothing of another a non sensual world only their spirit lives in it going on from this Mongolian belief in the existence of spiritual beings to the point that the proper being of man too is his spirit and that all care must be directed to this alone to the welfare of his soul is not hard influence on the spirit so called moral influence is hereby assured hence it is manifest that mongolism represents utter absence of any rights of the sensuous represents non sensuousness and unnature and that sin and the consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that lasted thousands of years but who then will dissolve the spirit into its nothing he who by means of the spirit set forth nature as the null finite transitory he alone can bring down the spirit too to like military I can each one among you can who does his will as an absolute I in a word the egoist can before the sacred people lose all sense of power and all confidence they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it and yet no thing is sacred of itself but by my declaring it sacred by my declaration my judgment my bending the knee in short sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be unapproachable not to be touched outside his power above him sacred in a word is every matter of conscience for this is a matter of conscience to me means simply I hold this sacred for little children as for animals nothing sacred exists because in order to make room for this conception one must already have progressed so far in understanding that he can make distinctions like good and bad warranted and unwarranted only at such a level of reflection or intelligence the proper standpoint of religion can unnatural that is brought into existence by thinking reverence sacred dread step into the place of natural fear to this sacred dread belongs holding something outside oneself for mightier greater better warranted better the attitude in which one acknowledges the might of something alien not merely feels it then and expressly acknowledges it admits it yields surrenders lets himself be tied devotion humility servility submission here walks the whole ghostly troop of the Christian virtues everything toward which you cherish any respect or reverence deserves the name of sacred you yourself too say that you would feel a sacred dread of laying hands on it and you give this tinge even to the unholding gallows crime etc you have a horror of touching it there lies in it something uncanny that is unfamiliar oh if something or other did not rank as sacred in a man's mind why then all bars would be let down to self-will to unlimited subjectivity fear makes the beginning and one can make himself fearful to the coarsest man already therefore a barrier against his insolence but in fear there always remains the attempt to liberate oneself from what is feared by guile deception tricks etc in reverence on the contrary it is quite otherwise here something is not only feared but also honored what is feared has become an inward power which I can no longer get clear of I honor it and captivated by it and devoted to it belong to it by the honor which I pay it I am completely in its power and do not even attempt liberation any longer now I am attached to it with all the strength of faith I believe I and what I fear are one not I live in fact it lives in me because the spirit the infinite does not allow of coming to any end therefore it is stationary it fears dying it cannot let go it's dear Jesus the greatness of finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye the object of fear now raised to veneration no longer be handled reverence is made eternal the respected is deified the man is now no longer employed in creating but in learning knowing investigating occupied with a fixed object losing himself in its depths without returning to himself the relation to this object is that of knowing fathoming basing not that of dissolution abrogation man is to be religious that is settled therefore people busy themselves only with the question how this is to be attained what is the right meaning of religiousness etc quite otherwise the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in question even though it should go to smash morality too is such a sacred conception one must be moral and must look only for the right how the right way to be so one dares not go at morality itself with the question whether it is not itself an illusion it remains exalted above all doubt unchangeable and so we go on with the sacred grade after grade from the holy to the holiest of holies