 section 35 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. The Ego and His Own by Matt Sterner. My Self-Enjoyment. Part 1. We stand at the boundary of a period. The world hitherto took thought for nothing but the gain of life, took care for life. For whether all activity is put on the stretch for the life of this world or of the other, for the temple or for the eternal, whether one hankers for daily bread, give us our daily bread, or for holy bread, the true bread from heaven, the bread of God that comes from heaven and gives life to the world, the bread of life. John 6. Whether one takes care for dear life or for life to eternity, this does not change the object of the strain and care which in the one case as in the other shows itself to being life. Do the modern tendencies enounce themselves otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most indispensable necessities of life, but want everyone to feel secure as to these, and on the other hand, they teach that man has this life to attempt to, and a real world to adapt himself to, without fame, care for another. Let us take up the same thing from another side. When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks, if I only have my dear life, he does not apply his full strength to using, i.e., enjoying life. But how does one use life? In using it up like the candle which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the living one. In consuming it, and himself, enjoyment of life is using life up. Now we are in search of the enjoyment of life, and what did the religious world do? It went in search of life. Wherein consists the true life, the blessed life, etc. How is it to be attained? What must man do and become in order to become a truly living man? How does he fulfil this calling? These and similar questions indicate that the astras were still seeking for themselves to wit themselves in the true sense, in the sense of true living. What I am is foam and shadow. What I shall be is my true self. To chase after this self, to produce it, to realise it, constitutes the hard task of mortals, who die only to rise again, live only to die, live only to find the true life. Not that I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, and I really my property. I have myself, therefore, I use, and enjoy myself. On the other hand, I can never take comfort in myself, as long as I think that I have still to find my true self, and that it must come to this. That not I, but Christ, or some other spiritual, i.e. ghostly self, e.g. the true man, the essence of man, etc., lives in me. The vast interval separates the two views. In the old, I go toward myself. In the new, I start from myself. In the former, I long for myself. In the latter, I have myself, and do with myself, as one does with any other property. I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for my life, but squander it. Henceforth, the question runs, not how one can acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it, or not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out. What else should the ideal be but the sought-for, ever-distant self? One seeks for himself. Consequently, one does not yet have himself. One aspires toward what one ought to be. Consequently, one is not it. One lives in longing, and has lived thousands of years in it, in hope. Living is quite another thing, in enjoyment. Does this perchance apply only to the so-called pious? No, it applies to all who belong to the departing period of history, even to its men of pleasure. For them, too, the work days were followed by a Sunday, and the rush of the world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness of humanity, in short, by an ideal. But philosophers especially are contrasted with the pious. Now, have they been thinking of anything else than the ideal, been planning for anything else than the absolute self? Longing and hope everywhere, and nothing but these. For me, call it romanticism. If the enjoyment of life is to triumph over the longing for life, or hope of life, it must vanquish this in its double significance, which Schiele introduces in his ideal and life. It must crush spiritual and secular poverty, exterminate the ideal and the want of daily bread. He who must expend his life to prolong life cannot enjoy it, and he who is still seeking for his life does not have it, and can as little enjoy it. Both are poor, but blessed are the poor. Those who are hungering for the true life have no power over their present life, but must apply it for the purpose of thereby gaining that true life, and must sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and this task. If in the case of those devotees who hope for a life in the other world, and look upon that in this world as merely a preparation for it, the tributaness of their earthly existence, which they put solely into the service of the hoped for heavenly existence, is pretty distinctly apparent. One would yet go far wrong if one wanted to consider the most rationalistic and enlightened as less self-sacrificing. Oh, there is to be found in the true life a much more comprehensive significance than the heavenly is content to express. Now is not to introduce the liberal concept of it at once, the human and truly human life the true one, and is everyone already leading this truly human life from the start, or must he first raise himself to it with hard toil? Does he already have it as his present life, or must he struggle for it as his future life, which will become his part only when he is no longer tainted with any egoism? In this view, life exists only to gain life, and one lives only to make the essence of man alive in oneself. One lives for the sake of this essence. One has his life only in order to procure by means of it the true life, plans of all egoism. Hence, one is afraid to make any use he likes of his life. It is to serve only for the right use. In short, one has a calling in life, a task in life. One has something to realise and produce by his life, a something for which our life is only means and implement, a something that is worth more than this life, a something to which one owes his life. One has a God who asks a living sacrifice. Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time. Human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice, and we poor sinners slay our own selves as sacrifice for the human essence. The idea of mankind, humanity, and whatever the idols or gods are called besides, but because we owe our life to that something, therefore, this is the next point. We have no right to take it from us. The conservative tendency of Christianity does not permit thinking of death, otherwise, than with the purpose to take its sting from it, and live on preserved oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything happen, and come upon him if he, the Ark Jew, can only haggle and smuggle himself into heaven. He must not kill himself. He must only preserve himself and work at the preparation of the future abode. Conservatism, or conquest of death, lies at his heart. The last enemy that is abolished is death. Christ has taken the power from death, and brought life and imperishable being to light by the gospel, imperishableness, stability. The moral man wants the good, the right, and if he takes to the means that lead to this goal, really lead to it, then these means are not his means, but those of the good, right, etc. itself. These means are never immoral, because the good end itself mediates itself through them. The end sanctifies the means. They call this maxim Jesusutakol, but it is moral through and through. The moral man acts in the surface of an end or an idea. He makes himself the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To awake death is what the moral commandment postulates as the good. To give it to oneself is immoral and bad. Suicide finds no excuse before the judgment seat of morality. If the religious man forbids it because you have not given yourself life, but God, who alone can also take it from you again. As if, even taking in this conception, God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the roof or a hostile bullet tells me, for he would have arrived the resolution of death in me too. The moral man forbids it because I owe my life to the Fatherland, etc. Because I do not know whether I may not yet accomplish good by my life, of course, for in me good loses at all, as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my amendment. If I am ungodly, God has joy in my penitence. Suicide, therefore, is ungodly, as well as nefious. If one whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness of God, but if the Suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of duty immorally. People worried themselves much with the question whether Emma Gallotti's death can be justified before morality. They take it as if it were suicide, which it is to in substance. That she is so infatuated with chastity, this moral good has to yield up even her life, but it is certainly moral, but again, that she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral. See the next to the last scene of the tragedy. Orado. Under the pretext of a judical investigation, he tears you out of your arms and takes you to Grimaldi. Emilia, give me that dagger, father, me. Orado, no, no, reflect, you two have only one life to lose. Emilia, and only one innocence. Orado, which is above the reach of any violence. Emilia, but not above the reach of any seduction, violence, violence, who cannot defy violence. What is called violence is nothing. Seduction is the true violence. I have blood, father, blood as you fall, and warm as anybody's. My senses are senses. I can want nothing. I am short of nothing. I know Grimaldi's house. It is the house of pleasure. An hour there under my mother's eyes, and there arose in my soul so much turmoil as the strictest exercise of religion could hardly quiet in weeks. Religion, and what religion? To escape nothing worse, thousands sprang into the water and our saints. Give me that dagger, father, give it to me. Emilia, once indeed there was a father who, to save his daughter from shame, drove into her heart whatever still he could quick as find, gave life to her for the second time, but all such deeds are of the past, of such fathers there are no more. Orado, yes, daughter, yes, stabs her. End of footnote. Such contradictions from the tragic conflict universally in the moral drama, and one must think and feel morally to be able to take an interest in it. What holds good or piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I am under obligation to know being is the maintaining of my life my affair. A leap from this bridge makes me free. But if we owe the maintaining of our life to that being that we are to make alive in ourselves, it is not less our duty not to lead this life according to our pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that being. All my feeling, thinking and willing, all my doing and designing belongs to him. What is in conformity to that being is to be inferred from his concept, and how differently has this concept been conceived? Or how differently has that being been imagined? What demands the Supreme Being makes on the Mohammedan? What different ones the Christian, again, thinks he hears from him? How divergent, therefore, has the shaping of the lives of the two turn out? Only this do all hold fast that the Supreme Being is to judge our life. But the pious who have their judge in God, and in his word a book of directions for their life, I ever were passed by only romantously, because they belong to a period of development that has been lived through, and as part of factions they may remain in a fixed place right along. In our time it is no longer the pious, but the liberals who have the flaw, and piety itself cannot keep from reddening its cow face with liberal colouring. But the liberals do not adore their judge in God, and do not unfold their life by the directions of the divine word, but regulate themselves by man. They want to be not divine, but human, and to live so. Man is the liberals' supreme being. Man is the judge of his life. Humanity hears directions, or catechisms. God is spirit, but man is the most perfect spirit. The final result of the long chase after the spirit, or of the searching in the depths of the Godhead, i.e. in the depths of the spirit. Every one of your traits is to be human. You yourself are to be so from top to toe, in the inward as in the outward, for humanity is your calling. Calling. Destiny. Task. What one can become he does become. A born poet may well be hindered by the disfavour of circumstances from standing on the high level of his time, and after the great studies that are indispensable for this, producing constant works of art, but he will make poetry, be he a plain man, or so lucky as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make music, no matter whether on all instruments, or only on an otun pipe. A born philosopher in head can give proof of itself as university philosopher, or as village philosopher. Finally, a born adult who, as is very well compatible with this, may at the same time be a slideboots, will, as probably everyone who has visited schools in a position to amplify to himself by many instances of fellow scholars, always remain a blockhead. Let him have been drilled and trained into the chief of a bureau, or let him serve that same chief as boot black. May the born shall have hates indisputably from the most numerous class of men, and why, indeed, should not the same distinctions show themselves in the human species that are unrestakeable in every species of beast. The more gifted and the less gifted are to be found everywhere. Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one could not get ideas into them, hence people usually consider all men capable of having religion. In a certain degree, they may be trained to other ideas too, e.g. to some musical intelligence, even some philosophy. At this point, then, the priesthood of religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc., takes its start, and the communists, e.g., want to make everything accessible to all by their public school. There is heard a common ascetician that this great mass cannot get along without religion. The communists broaden it into the proposition that not only the great mass, but absolutely all, are called to everything. Not enough that the great mass has been trained to religion. Now it is actually to have to occupy itself with everything human. Training is growing ever more general and more comprehensive. You poor beings who could live so happily if you might skip according to your mind, you are to dance to the pipe of school masters and bear leaders, in order to perform tricks that you yourselves would never use yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the tracers at last against being always taken otherwise than you want to give yourselves. No, you mechanically recite to yourselves the question that is recited to you. What am I called to? What ought I to do? You need only ask thus. To have yourselves told what you ought to do and ordered to do it. To have your calling marked out for you or else to order yourselves and impose it on yourselves according to the spirit's prescription. Then in reference to the will, the word is, I will too do what I ought. A man is called to nothing and has no calling, no destiny, as little as a plant or a beast has a calling. The flower does not follow the calling to complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy and consume the world as well as it can, i.e. it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air of the ether, as much light of the sun as it can get and lodge. The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as it is practicable. It catches beetles and sings to its heart's delight, but the forces of the flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and are as little able to abide inactive as life, which if it stood still, only a second would no longer be life. Now one might call out to the man, use your force, yet to this imperative would be given the meaning that it was man's task to use his force. It is not so, rather each one really uses his force without first looking upon this as his calling. At all times everyone uses as much force as he possesses. One does say of a beaten man that he ought to have exerted his force more, but one forgets that if in the moment of succumbing he had the force to exert his forces, e.g. body forces, he would not have failed to do it, even if it was only the discouragement of a minute. This was yet a destitution of force, a minute long. Forces may assuredly be sharpened and redoubled, especially by hostile assistance or friendly assistance, but where one misses their application, one may be sure of their absence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but without the blow none comes out. In like manner, a man too needs impact. Now for this reason, that forces always of themselves show themselves operative. The command to use them would be superficial and senseless. To use his forces is not man's calling and task, but is his act real and extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for manifestation of force. Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale. So I am not for the first time a true man, when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a true man from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a true man. The struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force. My last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the man. The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies existent and real in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and suffering, a child or a greybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it. I am the true man. But if I am man and have really found in myself him who religiously humanity designated as the distant goal, then everything truly human is also my own. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity belongs to me, that freedom of trade, e.g. when humanity has yet to attain, and which, like an enchanting dream, people will move to humanity's golden future. I take by anticipation as my property, and carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. There may indeed be but few smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account to themselves for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces their consciousness. Above I have shown the same thing about freedom of the press. Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to myself what wants to withdraw from me, but above all I always bring myself back when I have slipped away from myself to any tributaries. But this too is not my calling, but my natural act. There is a mighty difference whether I make myself the starting point or the goal. As the latter I do not have myself, I am consequently still alien to myself, and my essence, my true essence, and this true essence alien to me will mock me as a spook of a thousand different names, because I am not yet I. Another, like God, the true man, the truly pious man, the rational man, the free man, etc., is I, my ego. Still far from myself I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice, to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man, to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, the spirit is man's proper essence, or man exists as man only spiritually. Now there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bathed himself, and so in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is. And as one stormily pursues his own self, the never attained, so one also despises true people's rules, to take men as they are, and prefers to take them as they should be, and for this reason hounds everyone on after his should be self, and endeavours to make all into equally entitled, equally respectable, equally moral or rational men. Yes, if men were what they should be, could be, if all men were rational, all loved each other as brothers, then it would be a paradisical life. All right men are as they should be, can be, what should they be? Surely not more than they can be, and what can they be? Not more again than they can, than they have the competence, the force to be, but this they really are, because what they are not, they are incapable of being, for to be capable means really to be. One is not capable for anything that one really is not. One is not capable of anything that one does not really do. Could a man blinded by cataracts see? Oh yes, if he had his cataracts successfully removed, but now he cannot see, because he does not see. Possibility and reality always coincide. One can do nothing that one does not, as one does nothing that one cannot. The singularity of this assertion vanishes when one reflects that the words, it is possible that, almost never contain another meaning than, I can imagine that, e.g. it is possible for all men to live rationally, e.g. I can imagine that all, etc., now since my thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be left to the men themselves. General reason is for me only thinkableness, but as such in fact a reality that is called a possibility only in reference to what I cannot bring to pass, to wit, the rationality of others. So far as depends on you, all men might be rational, for you have nothing against it. Nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in the way of the thing in your thinking, and it is thinkable to you. As men are not all rational though, it is probable that they cannot be so. If something which one imagines to be easily possible is not, or does not happen, then one may be assured that something stands in the way of the thing, and that it is impossible. Our time has its art, science, etc. The art may be bad in all conscience, but one may say that we deserved to have a better, and could have it if we only would. We have just as much art as we can have. Our art of today is the only art possible, and therefore real at a time. End of section 35. Recording by Elaine Webb, Bristol, England. Section 36 of The Ego and His Own. This is Librabox Recording. All Librabox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librabox.org. The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner. Even in the sense to which one might at last still reduce the word possible, that it should mean future, it retains the full force of the real. If one says EG, it is possible that the sun will rise tomorrow. This means only for today, tomorrow is the real future. There is hardly need of the suggestion that a future is real future, only when it has not yet appeared. Yet wherefore is dignifying of a word, if the most prolific misunderstanding of thousands of years were not in ambush behind it? If this single concept of the little word possible were not haunted by all the spooks of possessed men, this contemplation should trouble us little here. The thought it was just now shown rules the possessed world. Well then, possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have hitherto been made to hideous thinkableness. It was thinkable that men might become rational, thinkable that they might know Christ, thinkable that they might become moral and enthusiastic for the good, thinkable that they might all take refuge in the church's lap, thinkable that they might mediate, speak and do nothing dangerous to the state, thinkable that they might be obedient subjects, but because it was thinkable, it was so roundly influence, possible, and further, because it was possible to men, right here lies their deceptive point, because it is thinkable to me, it is possible to men. Therefore they ought to be so, it was their calling, and finally one is to take men only according to this calling, only as called men, not as they are, but as they ought to be. And the further influence, man is not the individual, but man is a thought and ideal, to which the individual is related, not even as the child to the man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a finite creature to the internal creator, or according to model views, as the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the glorification of humanity, the eternal immortal, for whose glory, in marjoram humanitators glory am, the individual must devote himself and find his immortal renown, in having done something for the spirit of humanity. Thus the thinkers rule in the world as long as the age of priests or of school masters lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is possible must be realised. They think an ideal of man, which for the time is real only in their thoughts, but they also think the possibility of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute. The carrying out is really thinkable, it is an idea. But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom a comma-catcher can think that we might yet become good Christians, if however, he wanted to labour with us, we should soon make it plallable to him that our Christianity is only thinkable, but in other respects impossible. If he grinned on and on at us, with his obtrusive thoughts, his good belief, he would have to learn that we do not at all need to become what we do not like to become. And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the pious, if all men were rational, if all did right, if all were guarded by philanthropy, etc. Reason, right, philanthropy, are put before the eyes of men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration, and what does being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing? No. Reason is a book full of laws, which are all enacted against egoism. History, here the two, is the history of the intellectual man. After the period of sensuality, history, pop-up, begins, i.e. the period of intellectuality, spirituality, non-sensuality, super sensuality, non-sensuality. Man now begins to want to be and become something. What? Good, beautiful, true, more precisely moral, pious, agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a proper man. Something proper. Man is his goal, his ought, his destiny, calling, task, his ideal. He is to himself a future, otherworldly he. And what makes a proper fellow of him? Being true, being good, being moral, etc. Now he looks a scant at everyone who does not recognise the same what. Seek the same morality, have the same faith. He chases out separatists, heretics, sex, etc. No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a proper sheep, a proper dog. No beast has its essence appear to it as a task, i.e. as a concept that it has to realise. It realises itself in living itself out, in dissolving itself, passing away. It does not ask to be or to become anything other than it is. Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts? That you ought to become beasts is an exhortation which I certainly cannot give you, as that would again be a task and ideal. How doth the little busy be improve each shining hour? It works of labour or of skill. I would be busy too. For Satan finds some mischievous still for idle hands to do. It would be the same too, as if one wished for the beasts that they should become human beings. Your nature is, once for all, a human one. You are human nature's human beings. But just because you already are so, you do not still need to become so. Beasts too are trained, and a trained beast executes many unnatural things, but a trained dog is no better for itself than a natural one, and has no profit from it, even if it is more companionable for us. Exursions to form all men into moral, rational, pious human beings, i.e. training, were in both form of your. They are repped against the indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against egoism. Those who are trained never attain their ideal, and only profess with their mouth their sublime principles, or make a profession, a profession of faith. In face of this profession, they must in life acknowledge themselves sinners altogether, and they, for short of their ideal, are weak men, and bear with them the consciousness of human weakness. It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your destiny, but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your destiny, because it is present time. Yet the culture, their religiousness on men, has assuredly made them free, but only free from one Lord, to lead them to another. I have learned by religion to tame my appetite. I break the world's resistance by the cunning that is put in my hand by science. I even serve no man. I am no man's lacquery, but then it comes. You must obey God more than man, just so I am indeed free from irrational determination by my impulses. But obedient to the master reason, I have gained spiritual freedom, freedom of the spirit, but with that I have then become subject to that very spirit. The spirit gives me orders, reason guides me, they are my leaders and commanders. The rational, the servants of the spirit, rule. But if I am not flesh, I am in truth, not spirit either. Freedom of the spirit is servitude of me, because I am more than spirit or flesh. Without doubt, culture has made me powerful. It has given me power over all motives, over the impulses of my nature, as well as over the exations and violences of the world. I know and have gained the force for it by culture. That I need not let myself be coerced by any of my appetite, pleasures, emotions, etc. I am their master, in like manner I become, through the sciences and arts, the master of the refractory world, whom sea and earth obey, and to whom even the stars must give an account of themselves. The spirit has made me master, but I have no power over the spirit itself. From religion, culture, I do learn the means for the vanquishing of the world, but not how I am to subdue God too and become master of Him. For God is the spirit, and this same spirit, of which I am unable to become master, may have the most magnified shapes. He may be called God or national spirit, state, family reason, also liberty, humanity, man. I receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me. I am not willing to throw away and give up everything of it. I have not lived in vain. The experience that I have power over my nature and need not be the slave of my appetites shall not be lost to me. The experience that I can subdue the world by culture's means is too dear, bought for me to be able to forget it, but I want still more. People ask what can man do, what can he accomplish, what goods procure and put down the highest of everything as a calling, as if everything were possible to me. If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania a passion etc, e.g. in the huxter spirit in jealousy, the desire is stirred to deliver him out of this possession and to help him to self-conquest. We want to make a man of him. That would be very fine if another possession were not immediately put in a place of the earlier one, but one frees from the love of money, him who is a fraud to it, only to deliver him over to piety, humanity or some principle else and to transfer him to a fit standpoint anew. This transference from a narrow standpoint to a sublime one is declared in the words that the sense must not be directed to the perishable, but to the imperishable alone, not to the temporal, but to the eternal, absolute, divine, purely human etc, to the spiritual. People very soon discerned that it was not indifferent what one set his affections on or what one occupied himself with. They recognized the importance of the object. An object exalted above the individuality of things is the essence of things. Yes, the essence is alone, but thinkable in them. It is for the thinking man. Therefore direct no longer your sense to the things, but your thoughts to the essence. Blessed are they who see not and yet believe, i.e. blessed are the thinkers, for they have to do with the invisible and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought that constituted an essential point of connection centuries long comes at last to the point of being no longer worth speaking of. This was discerned, but nevertheless people always kept before their eyes again a self-valued importance of the object, an absolute value of it, as if the doll were not the most important thing to the child, though Quran to the Turk. As long as I am not a sole important thing to myself, it is indifferent of what object I make much, and only my greater or lesser delinquency against it is of value. The degree of my attachment and devotion marks the standpoint of my liability to service. The degree of my sinning shows the measure of my oneness. But finally, and in general, one must know how to put everything out of his mind, if only so as to be able to go to sleep. Nothing may occupy us, with which we do not occupy ourselves. The victim of ambition cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the God-fearing man from the thought of God infatuation and possessiveness go inside. To want to realise his essence, or live comfortably to his concept, which with believers in God signifies as much as to be pious, and with believers in humanity means living humanity, is what only the sensual and sinful man can propose to himself. The man so long as he has the anxious choice between happiness of sense and peace of soul, so long as he is a poor sinner. The Christian is nothing but a sensual man, who, knowing of the sacred and being conscious that he violates it, sees in himself a poor sinner. Sensualness, recognised as sinfulness, is Christian consciousness, is the Christian himself, and if sin and sinfulness are now no longer taken into the mouths of moderns, but instead of that, egoism, self-seeking, selfishness, etc. engage them. If the devil has been translated into the unman, or egoistic man, is the Christian less present than before? Is not the old discord between God and evil, is not a judge over us, man is not a calling, the calling to make oneself man, left? If they no longer name it calling, but task, or very likely, duty, the change of name is quite correct, because man is not, like God, a personal being that can call, but outside the name of the thing remains as of old. Everyone has a relation to objects, and more, everyone is differently related to them. Let us choose as an example that book to which millions of men had a relation for two thousand years, the Bible. What is it, what was it, to each? Absolutely only what he made out of it. For him who makes to himself nothing at all out of it, it is nothing at all. Now Christianity asks that it shall be for the same for all, say the sacred book or the sacred scriptures. This means as much as that the Christians view shall also be that of other men, and that no one may be otherwise related to that object. And with this the oneness of the relation is destroyed, and one mind, one disposition, is fixed as the true, the only true one. In the limitation of the freedom to make of the Bible what I will, the freedom of making in general is limited, and the coercion of a view or a judgment is put in its place. He who should pass the judgment that the Bible was a long era of mankind would judge criminally. In fact the child who tears it to pieces or plays with it, the Inca actor who lapper, who lays his ear to it and throws it away contemptuously when it remains dumb, judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest who praises in it the word of God, or the critic who calls it a job of men's hands. For how we toss things about is the affair of our option, our free will. We use them according to our heart's pleasure, or more clearly we use them just as we can. Why? What do the Parsons scream about when they see how Hegel and the speculative Philologians make speculative thoughts out of the contents of the Bible? Precisely this, that they deal with it according to their heart's pleasure, or proceed obitunary with it. But because we all show ourselves our victory in the handling of objects, i.e. deal with them as we like best, at our liking, the philosopher likes nothing so well as when he can trace out an idea in everything, as the God-fearing man likes to make God his friend by everything, and so, e.g., by keeping the Bible sacred. Therefore, we nowhere need such grievous obituriness, such a frightful tendency to violence, such stupid coercion, as in this very domain of our own free will. If we proceed obitunary in taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then that we want to take it ill of the Parsons spirits, if they take us just as obitunary in their fashion, and esteem us worthy of the heretics prior, or of another's punishment, perhaps of the censorship? What a man is, he makes out of things, as you look at the world, so it looks at you again. Then the wise advice makes itself heard again at once. You must only look at it rightly, unbiasedly, etc. As if a child did not look at the Bible rightly and unbiasedly when it makes it a plaything, that shrewd percent is given us, e.g., by fewer bark, one does look at things rightly when one makes of them what one will, by things objects in general are he understood, e.g., God our fellow men, a sweetheart, a book, a beast, etc. Therefore the things and the looking at them are not first, but I am, my will is. One will brings thoughts out of the things, will discover reason in the world, will have sacredness in it, therefore one shall find them, seek and ye shall find. What I will seek, I determine. I want, e.g., to get edification from the Bible. It is to be found. I want to read and test the Bible thoroughly. My outcome will be a thorough instruction and criticism, to the extent of my powers. I elect for myself what I have a fancy for, and in electing I show myself arbitrary. Connected with this is the discernment that every judge which I pass upon an object is the creator of my will, and that discernment again leads me to not losing myself in the creature, the judgment but remaining the creator, the judge who is ever creating a new. All predicates of objects are my statements, my judgements, my creatures. If they want to tear themselves loose from me and be something for themselves or actually over all me, then I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back into their nothing, into me the creator. God, Christ, Trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such creatures of which I must not merely allow myself to say that they are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed and decreed their existence, so I want to have license to will their nonexistence too. I must not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness to let them become something absolute, whereby they would be internalised and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should fall a prey to the principle of stability, the proper life principle of religion, which concerns itself with creating sanctuaries that must not be touched, eternal truths, in short, that which shall be sacred and depriving you of what is yours. The object makes us into possessed men, in its sacred form just as in its profane, as a super-sensuous object, just as it does a sensuous one. The appetite or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing for heaven stand on a level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for the centuries world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one party wanted to call forth emotion, and the other motion, activity. The conception of objects is altogether diverse, even as God tries the world were and are conceived of in the most manifold wise. In this everyone is a dissenter, and after bloody combats so much has at last been attained, and that opposite views about one and the same object are no longer condemned as heresies worthy of death. The dissenters reconcile themselves to each other, but why should I only dissent, think otherwise, about a thing? Why not push the thinking otherwise to its last extremity, that of no longer having any regard at all for the thing, and therefore thinking its nothingness, crushing it? Then the conception itself has an end, because there is no longer anything to conceive of. Why am I to say, let us suppose, God is not Allah, not Brahma, not Jehovah, but God, but not, God is nothing but a deception. Why do people brand me if I am an atheist? Because they put the creature above the creator, they honour and serve the creature more than the creator, and require a ruling object, that the subject may be right submissive. I am to bend beneath the absolute, I ought to. By the round of thoughts Christianity has completed itself. The thought is that inwardness, in which all the worlds light go out, all existence becomes existent-less. The inward man, the heart the head, is all in all. This round of thoughts awaits its deliverance, awaits, like the sphinx, Odipus' key, word to the riddle, but it may enter in at last to its death. I am the annihilator of its continuance, for in the creator's realm it no longer forms a realm of its own, not a state in the state, but a creature of my creative thoughtlessness. Only together and at the same time, with the benumbed thinking world, and the world of Christians, Christianity, and religion itself, come to its downfall. Only when thoughts run out of their normal believers, to the thinker his thinking is a sublime labour, a sacred activity, and it rests on affirmed faith, the faith in truth. At first, praying is a sacred activity, then the sacred devotion passes over into irrational and reasoning thinking, which, however, likewise, retains in the sacred truth. Its underrangeable basis of faith, and is only a marvelous machine, that the spirits of truth winds up for its service. Free thinking and free science busy me, for it is not that I am free, not I that busy myself, but thinking is free and busy as me, with heaven and the heavenly all divine, e.g., properly with the world and the worldly, not this world but another world. It is only the reversing and deranging of the world, and busying with the essence of the world, therefore a derangement. The thinker is blind to the immediateness of things, and incapable of mastering them. He does not eat, does not drink, does not enjoy. For the eater and drinker is never the thinker, nay, the latter forgets eating and drinking, he is getting on in life, the cares of nourishment, etc. Over his thinking, he forgets it as the praying man too forgets it. This is why he appears to the forceful son of nature as a queer dick, a fool, even if he does look upon him as holy, just as lunatics appeared so to the ancients. Free thinking is lunacy, because it is pure movement of the inwardness of the merely inward man, which guides and regulates the rest of the man. The shaman and the speculative philosopher mark the bottom and top rounds on the ladder of the inward man, the mongol. Shaman and philosopher fight with ghosts, demons, spirits, gods. Totally different from this free thinking is own thinking, my thinking, a thinking which does not guide me, but is guided, continued or broken off by me at my pleasure. The distinction of this own thinking from free thinking is similar to that of own sensuality, which I satisfy at pleasure from free unruly sensuality to which I succumb. Pure bark in the principles of the philosophy of the future is always harping upon being. In this he too, with all his antigenerism, to Hegel and the absolute philosophy is stuck fast in an abstraction, for being is abstraction, as is even the I. Only I am not abstraction alone, I am all in all, consequently even abstraction or nothing. I am all and nothing, I am not a mere thought, but at the same time I am fall of thoughts, a thought world. Hegel condemns the own, mine, opinion. Absolute thinking is that which forgets that it is my thinking, that I think, and that it exists only through me. But I, as I, swallow up again what is mine, and its master, it is only my opinion, which I can at any moment change. I.e. annihilate, take back into myself and consume. Pure bark wants to smite Hegel's absolute thinking with unconquered being. But in me, being is as much conquered as thinking is. It is my being, as the other is my thinking. With this, of course, pure bark does not get further than to the proof, trivial in itself, that I require the senses for everything, or that I cannot entirely do without these organs. Certainly I cannot think if I do not exist sensuously, but for thinking as well as for feeling, and so for the abstract as well as for the sensuous, I need above all things myself. This quite particular myself, this unique myself. If I were not this one, e.g. Hegel, I should not look at the world as I do look at it. I should not pick out of it that philosophical system, which just as I, Hegel, do, etc. I should indeed have senses, as do other people too, but I should not utilise them as I do. Thus the reproach is brought up against Hegel by pure bark, that he misuses language, understanding, by many words, something else than what natural consciousness takes them for, and yet he too commits the same fault when he gives the sensuous a sense of unusual eminence. Thus it is said, p. 69, What, on the other hand, is enjoyable only to those who enjoy with more than the senses, who go beyond sense enjoyment or sense reception, is at most mediated or introduced by the senses, i.e. the senses constitute a condition for obtaining it, but it is no longer anything sensuous. A sensuous whatever it may be, when taken up into me, becomes something non-sensuous, which however may again have sensuous effects, e.g. as by the stirring of my emotions and my blood. It is well that pure bark brings sensuous to honour, but the only thing he is able to do with it is to clothe the materialism of his new philosophy, with what had hitherto been the property of idealism, the absolute philosophy. As little as people let it be tucked into them, that one can live on the spiritual alone, without bread, so little will they believe his words, that as a sensuous being, one is already everything, and so spiritual, full of thoughts, etc. Nothing at all is justified by being. What is thought of is as well as what is not thought of. The stone in the street is, and my notion of it is too. Both are only in different spaces, the former in airy space, the latter in my head, in me, for I am space like the street. End of section 36, recording by Elaine Webb, Bristol, England. Section 37 of The Ego and His Own. This is a LibreBox recording. All LibreBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreBox.org. The Ego and His Own by Matt Sterner. My Self-Enjoyment Part 3. The professionals, the privileged, broke no freedom of thought, i.e., no thoughts that do not come from the giver of all good, be he called God, Pope, Church or whatever else. If anybody has such illegitimate thoughts, he must whisper them into his confessor's ear, and have himself chastised by him, till the slave whip becomes unenjoyable to the three thoughts. In other ways too, the professional spirit takes care that three thoughts shall not come at all, first and foremost by a wise education. He, on whom the principles of morality have been duly inculcated, never becomes free again. Moralising thoughts and robbery, perjury, overreaching, etc. The main thing to him affects ideas against which no freedom or thought protects him. He has his thoughts from above and gets no further. It is different with the holders of concessions or patterns. Everyone must be able to have and form thoughts as he will. If he has the patent or the concession of a capacity to think, he needs no special privilege. But, as all men are rational, it is free to everyone to put into his head any thoughts whatever, and to the extent of the patent of his natural indictment, to have a greater or less wealth of thoughts. Now, one hears the admonitions that one is to honour all opinions and convictions, but every conviction is authorised, but one must be tolerant to the views of others, etc. But your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways, or rather, I mean the reverse. Your thoughts are my thoughts, which I dispose of as I will, and which I strike down unversively. They are my property, which I annihilate as I list. I do not wait for authorisation from you first. To decompose and blow away your thoughts, it does not matter to me that you call these thoughts yours too. They remain mine, nevertheless, and how I will proceed with them is my affair, not the exploitation. It may please me to leave you in your thoughts, then I keep still. Do you believe thoughts fly around free like birds, so that everyone may get himself some which he may then make good against me as his enviable property? What is flying around is all mine. Do you believe you have your thoughts for yourselves, and need answer to no one for them? Or, as you do also say, you have to give an account of them to God only. No, your great and small thoughts belong to me, and I handle them at my pleasure. The thought is my own, only when I have no misgiving about bringing it in danger of death every moment, when I do not have to fear its loss as a loss for me, a loss of me. The thought is my own, only when I can indeed subjugate it, but it never can subjugate me, never fantasises me, makes me the tool of its realisation. So, freedom of thought exists when I can have all possible thoughts, but the thoughts become property only by not being able to become masters. In the time of freedom of thought, thoughts, ideas, rule. But if I attain to property in thought, they stand as my creatures. If the hierarchy had not so penetrated men to the innermost as to take from them all courage to pursue three thoughts, e.g. thoughts perhaps displeasing to God, one would have to consider freedom of thought just as empty a word as, say, a freedom of digestum. According to the professional's opinion, the thought is given to me. According to the three thinkers, I seek the thought. There the truth is already found and extant. Only I must receive it from its giver by grace. Here the truth is to be sought and is my goal, lying in the future toward which I have to run. In both cases the truth, the true thought, lies outside me, and I aspire to get it, be it by presentation, grace, be it by earning, merit of my own. Therefore, one, the truth is a privilege. Two, no, the way to it is patterned to all, and neither the Bible nor the holy fathers nor the church nor anyone else is in possession of the truth. But one can come into possession of it by speculating. Both one sees a property less in relation to the truth. They have it either as a thief from the holy father, e.g. is not a unique person, as unique he is the Sixtus Clement, but he does not have the truth as Sixtus Clement, but as Holy Father, i.e. as a spirit, or an ideal as a thief. It is only for a few, the privileged, as an ideal for all the patentees. Freedom of thought then has the meaning that we do indeed all walk in the dark and in the paths of error. But everyone can on this path approach the truth, and is accordingly on the right path, all roads lead to Rome, to the world's end, etc. Hence, freedom of thought means this much, that the truth thought is not my own. For, if it were this, how should people want to shut me off from it? Thinking has become entirely free, and has laid down a lot of truths which I must accommodate myself to. It seeks to complete itself into a system, and to bring itself into an absolute constitution. In the state, e.g., it seeks for the idea, say, till it has brought out the rational state, in which I am then obliged to be suited. In man, anthropology, till it has found man. The thinker is distinguished from the believer, only by believing much more than the latter, who, on his part, thinks of much less as signified by his faith, freed. The thinker has a thousand tenths of faith, where the believer gets along with few. But the former brings coherence into his tenants, and takes the coherence in turn for the scowl to estimate their worth by. If one or the other does not fit into his budget, he throws it out. The thinkers run parallel to the believers in their pronouncements. Instead of, if it is from God you are not rooted out, the word is, if it is from the truth, is true, etc. Instead of, give God the glory, give truth the glory. But it is very much the same to me, whether God or the truth wins, first and foremost, I want to win. Aside from this, how is an unlimited freedom to be thinkable inside of the state or society? The state may well protect one against another, but yet it must, not lest itself be endangered by an unmeasured freedom, a so-called unbridledness. Thus, in freedom of instruction, the state declares only this, that it is suited with everyone who instructs as the state, or speaking more comprehensively, the political power, would have it. The point for the competitors is this, as the state would have it, if the clergy, e.g., does not will as the state does, then it itself excludes itself from competition. The limit that is necessarily drawn in the state for any and all competition is called the oversight and superintendence of the state. In bidding freedom of instruction, keeping within the due bonds, the state at the same time fixes the scope of freedom of thought, because as a rule, people do not think farther than their teachers have thought. Here, Minster Grisotte, the great difficulty of the day is the guiding and dominating of the mind. Formally, the church fulfilled this mission. Now, it is not adequate to it. It is from the university that this great service must be expected, and the university will not fail to perform it. We, the government, have the duty of supporting it therein. The charter calls for the freedom of thought and that of conscience. So, in favour of freedom of thought and conscience, the minister demands the guiding and dominating of the mind. Catholicism held the examinee before the form of Euclasticism, Cotatism, before that of biblical Christianity. It would be but little bettered if one held him before that of reason as Ruge, e.g., wants to. Whether the church, the Bible, or reason to which moreover Luther and Huss already appealed is the sacred authority makes no difference in essentials. The question of our time does not become soluble even when one puts it thus. Is anything general, authorised, or only the individual? Is the generality, e.g., state, law, custom, morality, etc. authorised or individuality? It becomes soluble for the first time when one no longer asks after an authorisation at all and does not carry on a mere fight against privileges. A rational freedom of teaching, which recognises only the conscience of reason, does not bring us to the goal. We require an egoistic freedom of teaching rather, a freedom of teaching for all oneness. Wherein I become audible and can announce myself unchecked. That I make myself audible, this alone is reason. Be I ever so irrational in my making myself heard and so hearing myself, others as well as I myself enjoy me, and at the same time consume me. What would be gained if, as formerly the orthodox I, the loyal I, the moral I, etc. was free? Now the rational I should become free? Would this be the freedom of me? If I am free as rational I, then the rational in me or reason is free, and this freedom of reason, or freedom of the thought, was the ideal of the Christian world from of old. They wanted to make thinking, and, as aforesaid, faith is also thinking, as thinking is faith, free. The thinkers, i.e. the believers as well as the rational, were to be free, for the rest freedom was impossible. The freedom of thinkers is the freedom of the children of God, and, at the same time, the most merciless hierarchy or dominion of the thought, for I succumb to the thought. If thoughts are free, I am their slave. I have no power over them, and am dominated by them. But I want to have the thought, want to be full of thoughts, but at the same time I want to be thoughtless, and, instead of freedom of thought, I preserve for myself thoughtlessness. If the point is to have myself understood, and to make communications, then assuredly I can make use only of human means, which are at my command, because I am at the same time man, and really I have thoughts only as man, as I am at the same time thoughtless. He who cannot get rid of a thought is so far only man, is a thrall of language, this human institution, this treasury of human thoughts, language or the word, canonizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas. Just observe yourself in the act of reflection, right now, and you will find how you make progress, only by becoming thoughtless and speechless every moment. You are not thoughtless and speechless merely in, say, sleep, but even in the deepest reflection. Yes, precisely, then most so. And only by this thoughtlessness, this unrecognized freedom of thought, or freedom from the thought, are you your own. From only it do you arrive at putting language to use as your property. If thinking is not my thinking, it is merely a spun-out thought. It is slave work, or the work of a servant obeying at the word. For not a thought, but I am the beginning for my thinking, and therefore I am its goal too, even as its whole course is only a course of myself enjoyment, for absolute or free thinking. On the other hand, thinking itself is the beginning, and it plagues itself with propounding this beginning as the extremist abstraction, e.g. as being. This very abstraction, or this thought, is then spun out further. Absolute thinking is the affair of the human spirit, and this is a holy spirit, hence this thinking is an affair of the persons who have a sense for it, a sense for the highest interests of mankind, for the spirit. To the believer truths are a settled thing, a fact, to the free thinker a thing that is still to be settled. The absolute thinking ever so unbelieving, its infidelity has its limits, and there does remain a belief in the truth, in the spirit, in the idea and its final victory. This thinking does not sin against the holy spirit, but all thinking that does not sin against the holy spirit is believed in spirits or ghosts. I can as little renounce thinking as feeling, the spirit's activity as little as the activity of the senses. As feeling is our sense for things, so thinking is our sense for essence, thoughts. Essence have their existence in everything sensuous, especially in the word. The power of words follows better things, first one is coerced by the rod, afterward by conviction. The might of things overcomes our courage, our spirit, against the power of a conviction, and so of the word even the rack and the sword lose their overpoweringness and force. The men of conviction are the priestly men who resist every enticement of Satan. Christianity took away from the things of this world only their irresistableness made us independent of them. In like manner I raise myself above truths and their power as I am super sensual, so I am super true. Before me truths are as common and as indifferent as things. They do not carry me away and do not inspire me with enthusiasm. There exists not even one truth, not right, not freedom, humanity, etc. That has stability before me and to which I subject myself. They are words, nothing but words, as to the Christian nothing but vain things. In words and truths every word is a truth, as He called asserts that one cannot tell a lie. There is no salvation for me, as little as there is for the Christian in things and vanities. As the riches of this world do not make me happy, so neither do its troops. It is now no longer Satan but the spirit that plays the story of the temptation and He does not seduce by the things of this world but by its thoughts, by the glitter of the idea. Along with worldly goods all sacred goods too must be put away as no longer valuable. Truths are phrases, ways of speaking, words, logos, brought into connection or into an articulate series. They form logic, science, philosophy. For thinking and speaking I need truths and words, as I do foods for eating. Without them I cannot think nor speak. Truths are men's thoughts, set down in words and therefore just as extant as other things. Although extant only for the mind or for thinking they are human institutions and human creatures and even if they are given out for divine revelations their story remains in them the quality of alienness for me. Yes, as my own creatures they are already alienated from me after the act of creation. The Christian man is the man with faith in thinking who believes in the supreme dominion of thoughts and wants to bring thoughts so-called principles to dominion. Many a one does indeed test the thoughts and chooses none of them for his master without criticism. But in this he is like the dog who sniffs at people to smell out his master. He is always aiming at the ruling thought. The Christian may reform and revolt an infinite deal, may demolish the ruling concepts of centuries. He will always aspire to a new principle or new master again. Always set up a higher or deeper truth again. Always call forth a cult again. Always proclaim a spirit called the dominion. Lay down a law for all. If there is even one truth only to which man has to devote his life and his powers because he is man then he is subjected to a rule, dominion, law. He is a serving man. It is supposed that e.g. man, humanity, liberty etc are such truths. On the other hand one can say thus. Whether you are further occupy yourself with thinking depends on you. Only know that if in your thinking you would like to make act anything worthy of notice many hard problems are to be solved without vanquishing which you cannot get far. There exists therefore no duty and no calling for you to meddle with thoughts, ideas, truths. But if you will do so you will do well to utilize what the forces of others have already achieved toward clearing up these difficult subjects. Thus therefore he who will think does assuredly have a task which he consciously or unconsciously sets for himself in willing that. But no one has the task of thinking or of believing. In the former case it may be said You do not go far enough. You have a narrow and biased interest. You do not go to the bottom of the thing. In short you do not completely subdue it. But on the other hand however far you may come at any time you are still always at the end. You have no call to step further and you can have it as you will or as you are able. It stands with this as with any other piece of work which you can give up from the humour for it wears off. Just so if you can no longer believe a thing you do not have to force yourself into faith or to busy yourself lastingly as if with a safer truth of the faith as theologians or philosophers do. But you can tranquilly draw back your interest from it and let it run. Prusely spirits will indeed expand this your lack of interest as laziness thoughtlessness, obduracy, self-deception, etc. But do you just let the Trumpery lie? Not of standing? No thing no so-called highest interest of mankind no sacred cause is worth your serving it and occupying yourself with it for its sake. You may seek its worth in this alone whether it is worth anything to you for your sake. Become like children the biblical saying admonishes us but children have no sacred interest and know nothing of a good cause. They know all the more accurately what they have a fancy for and they think over to the best of their powers how they are to arrive at it. Thinking will as little cease as feeling and they think over to the best of their powers how they are to arrive at it. Thinking will as little cease as feeling but the power of thoughts and ideas the dominion of theories and principles the sovereignty of the spirit in short the hierarchy lasts as long as the Parsons i.e. theologians, philosophers, statesmen philiantres, liberals, school masters parents, children, married couples proudhon, george sand, blanchilly, etc etc have the flow the hierarchy will endure as long as people believe in think of or even criticise principles or even the most inexorable criticism which undermines all current principles still does finally believe in the principle everyone criticises but the criterion is different people run after the right criterion the right criterion is the first pre-submission the critic starts from a proposition a truth, a belief this is not a creation of the critic but of the dogmastic nay, commonly it is actually taken up out of the culture of the time without further ceremony like eg, liberty, humanity, etc the critic has not discovered man but his truth has been established as man by the dogmatist and the critic, who besides may be the same person with him believes in this truth this article of faith in this faith and possessed by this faith he criticises the secret of criticism the truth or other this remains its energising mystery but I distinguish between servile and own criticism if I criticise under the pre-submission of a supreme being my criticise serves the being and is carried on for its sake if eg, I am possessed by the belief in a free state then everything that has a bearing on it I criticise from the standpoint that it is suitable to this state for I love this state if I criticise as a pious man then for me everything falls into the classes of divine and diabolical and before my criticism nature consists of traces of God or traces of the devil hence names like God's gift God Mount the devil's pulpit men of believers and unbelievers if I criticise while believing in man as the true essence then for me everything falls primarily into the classes of man and the un-man etc criticism has to this day remained a work of love for at all times we exercised it for the love of some being all servile criticism is a product of love a possessiveness and proceeds according to that New Testament precept test everything and hold fast the good the good is the touchstone the criterion the good returning under a thousand names and forms remained always the presupposition remained the dogmatic fixed point for this criticism remained the fixed idea the critic in certain to work impartially presupposes the truth and seeks for the truth in the belief that it is to be found he wants to ascertain the true and has in it that very good presuppose means nothing else than put a thought in front or think something before everything else and think the rest from the starting point of this that has been thought i.e. measure and criticise it by this in other words this is as much as to say thinking is to begin with something already thought if thinking began at all instead of being begun if thinking were a subject and acting personality of its own as even the plant is such then indeed there would be no abandoning the principle that thinking must begin with itself but it is just the personification of thinking that brings to pass those innumerable errors in the Hegelian system they always talk as if thinking or the thinking spirit i.e. personified thinking thinking as a ghost thought and acted in critical liberalism it is always said that criticism does this and that or else that self-consciousness finds this and that but if thinking ranks as the personal actor thinking itself must be presupposed if criticism ranks as such a thought must likewise stand in front thinking and criticism could be active only starting from themselves would have to be themselves the presupposition of their activity as without being they could not be active but thinking as a thing presupposed is a fixed thought a dogma thinking and criticism therefore can start only from a dogma i.e. from a thought a fixed idea a presupposition with this we come back again to what was enundrated above but Christianity consists in the development of a world of thoughts or that it is the proper freedom of thought the free thought the free spirit the true criticism is therefore just as much free criticism for it is not my own the case stands otherwise when what is yours is not made into something that is of itself not personified not made independent as a spirit to itself your thinking has for a presupposition not thinking but you but thus you do presuppose yourself after all not for myself but for my thinking before my thinking there is I from this it follows that my thinking is not preceded by a thought or that my thinking is without a presupposition for the presupposition which I am for my thinking is not one made by thinking not one thought of but is position thinking itself it is the owner of the thought and proves only that thinking is nothing more than property i.e. that an independent thinking of thinking spirit does not exist at all this reversal of the usual way of regarding things might so resemble an empty playing with abstractions that even those against whom it is directed would acquiesce in the harmless aspect I give if practical consequences were not connected with it to bring these into a concise expression the assertion I made is that man is not the measure of all things but I am this measure a survival critic has before his eyes another being an idea which he means to serve therefore he only slays the false idols for his god what is done for the love of this being what else should it be but a work of love when I criticise do not even have myself before my eyes but I am only doing myself a pleasure amusing myself according to my taste according to my several needs I chew the thing up or only inhale its odour the distinction between the two attitudes will come out still more strikingly if one reflects that the survival critic because love guides him because he is serving the thing cause itself end of section 37 recording by Elaine Webb for Storn England