 The Ego and his Own by Mach Steiner. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Matt Messerschmitt in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Chapter 2, Section A. Continuation of Subdivision 3. The Hierarchy. Men are sometimes divided into two classes, cultured and uncultured. The former, so far as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with thoughts, with mind, and, because in the time since Christ, of which the very principalist thought they were the ruling ones, demanded a servile respect for the thoughts recognized by them. State, Emperor, Church, God, Morality, Order are such thoughts or spirits that exist only for the mind. A merely living being, an animal, cures as little for them as a child. But the uncultured are really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the necessities of his life is indifferent to those spirits. But because he is also weak before them, he succumbs to their power and is ruled by thoughts. This is the meaning of Hierarchy. Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind. We are Hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred. But the two are always clashing, now one and now the other giving the offense. And this clash occurs not only in the collision of two men, but in one and the same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not to find enjoyment in things too, and so be uncultured. And no uncultured man is totally without thoughts. In Hegel it comes to light at last what a longing for things even the most cultured man has, and what a horror of every hollow theory he harbors. With him, reality, the world of things, is altogether to correspond to the thought, and no concept is to be without reality. This caused Hegel's system to be known as the most objective, as if in it thought and thing celebrated their union. But this was simply the extremist case of violence on the part of thought, its highest pitch of despotism and soul dominion, the triumph of mind, and with it the triumph of philosophy. Philosophy cannot hear after achieve anything higher, for its highest is the omnipotence of mind, the almightiness of mind. Stunner's footnote, Rousseau, the philanthropists and others were hostile to culture and intelligence, but they overlooked the fact that this is present in all men of the Christian type and assailed only learned and refined culture. Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized. They have concepts of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see realized. Therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one from love. Love is to rule. What have they taken into their head? What shall we call it, but fixed idea? Why, their head is haunted. The most oppressive spook is man. Think of the proverb, the road to ruin is paved with good intentions. The intention to realize humanity altogether in oneself, to become altogether man, is of such ruinous kind. Here belong the intentions to become good, noble, loving, and so forth. In the sixth part of the Denk Fürich Keiten, page 7, Bruno Bauer says, quote, that middle class which was to receive such a terrible importance in modern history, is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm for an idea, no exaltation. It devotes itself to nothing but the interests of its mediocrity, i.e. it remains always limited to itself, and conquers at last only through its bulk, into which it has succeeded in tiring out the efforts of passion, enthusiasm, consistency, through its surface, into which it absorbs a part of the new ideas, end quote, and page 6, quote, it has turned the revolutionary ideas, for which not it, but unselfish or impassioned men sacrifice themselves, into its own profit, has turned spirit into money, i.e. to be sure after it has taken away from those ideas their point, their consistency, their destructive seriousness, fanatical against all egoism, end quote. These people then are not self-sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not idealistic, not consistent, not zealots. They are egoists in the usual sense, selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober, calculating. Who then is self-sacrificing? In the fullest sense, surely, he who ventures everything else for one thing, one object, one will, one passion, is not the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and mother, endures all dangers and privations to reach his goal, or the ambitious man who offers up all his desires, wishes and satisfactions to the single passion, or the avaricious man who denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker he is ruled by a passion to which he brings the rest as sacrifices. And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not egoist, as they have only one ruling passion? So they provide for only one satisfaction, but for this, the more strenuously, they are wholly absorbed in it. Their entire activity is egoistic, but it is a one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism. It is possessiveness. Why, those are petty passions, by which, on the contrary, man must not let himself be enthralled, man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a great cause. A great idea, a good cause, is, it may be, the honor of God, for which innumerable people have met death. Christianity, which has found its willing martyrs. The Holy Catholic Church, which has greedily demanded sacrifices of heretics. Liberty and equality, which were weighted on by bloody guillotines. He who lives for a great idea, a great cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty calling, may not let any worldly lusts, any self-seeking interest spring up in him. Here we have the concept of clericalism, or, as it may be also called in its pedagogic activity, school masterliness. For the idealists play the schoolmaster over us. The clergyman is especially called to live to the idea and to work for the idea, the truly good cause. Therefore the people feel how little it befits him to show worldly haughtiness, to desire good living, to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming, in short, to have any other than a sacred interest. Hence too, doubtless, is derived the scanty salary of teachers who are to feel themselves repaid by the sacredness of their calling alone and to renounce other enjoyments. Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more of which man is to look upon as his calling, is not lacking. Family, fatherland, science, et cetera, may find in me a faithful servant to his calling. Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned to do without clericalism. But to live and work for an idea is man's calling. And according to the faithfulness of its fulfillment, his human worth is measured. This is the dominion of the idea. In other words, it is clericalism. Thus Robespierre and Chandraust were priests through and through, inspired by the idea, enthusiasts, consistent instruments of the idea, idealistic men. So Sanjust claims in a speech, there is something terrible in the sacred love of country. It is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the public interest without mercy, without fear, without human consideration. It hurls Monlius down the precipice. It sacrifices its private inclinations. It leads Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman into the chasm, and sets Marat as a victim of his devotion in the pantheon. Now, over these representatives of ideal or sacred interests, stands a world of innumerable personal profane interests. No idea. No system. No sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and modified by these personal interests. Even if they are silent momentarily, and in times of rage and fanaticism, yet they soon come uppermost again through the sound sense of the people. Those ideas do not completely conquer until they are no longer hostile to personal interests, until they satisfy egoism. The man who is just now crying herrings in front of my window has a personal interest in good sales. And if his wife or anyone else wishes him the like, this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on the other hand, a thief deprived him of his basket, then there would at once arise an interest of the many, of the whole city, of the whole country, or, in a word, of all who abhor theft, an interest in which the herring seller's person would become indifferent, and in its place the category of the robbed man would come into the foreground. But even here all might yet resolve itself into a personal interest. Each of the partakers reflecting that he must concur in the punishment of the thief because unpunished stealing might otherwise become general and cause him too to lose his own. Such a calculation, however, can hardly be assumed on the part of many, and we shall rather hear the cry that the thief is a criminal. Here we have before us a judgment. The thief's action receiving its expression in the concept crime. Now the matter stands thus. Even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage, either to me or to any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless denounce it. Why? Because I am enthusiastic for morality, filled with the idea of morality. What is hostile to it? I everywhere assail. Because in his mind theft ranks as abominable without any question. Proudhon, for instance, thinks that with the sentence property is theft, he has at once put a brand on property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always a crime or at least a misdeed. Here the personal interest is at an end. This particular person who has stolen the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person. It is only the thief, this concept of which that person represents a specimen, that I take an interest in. The thief and man are in my mind irreconcilable opposites. For one is not truly man, when one is a thief. One degrades man or humanity in himself when one steals. Dropping out of personal concern, one gets into philanthropism, friendliness to man, which is usually misunderstood as if it were a love to men, to each individual, while it is nothing but a love of man, the unreal concept, the spook. It is not tous anthropus men, but ton anthropon man that the philanthropist carries in his heart. To be sure, he cares for each individual, but only because he wants to see his beloved ideal realized everywhere. So there is nothing said here of care for me you, us. That would be personal interest and belongs to the head of worldly love. Philanthropism is a heavenly, spiritual, a priestly love. Man must be restored in us, even if thereby we poor devils should come to grief. It is the same priestly principle as that famous fiat justizia, period mundus. Man and justice are ideas, ghosts, for love of which everything is sacrificed. Therefore, the priestly spirits are the self-sacrificing ones. He who is infatuated with man leaves persons out of account as far as that infatuation extends and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook. Now, things as different as possible can belong to man and be so regarded. If one finds man's chief requirement in piety, there arises religious clericalism. If one sees it in morality, then moral clericalism raises its head. On this account, the priestly spirits of our day want to make a religion of everything, a religion of liberty, religion of equality, etc. And for them, every idea becomes a sacred cause. Even citizenship, politics, publicity, freedom of the press, trial by jury. Now, what does unselfishness mean in this sense? Having only an ideal interest before which no respect of persons avails. The stiff head of the worldly man opposes this, but for centuries has always been worst at least so far as to have to bend the unruly neck and honor the higher power. Clericalism pressed it down. When the worldly egoist had shaken off a higher power, such as the Old Testament law, the Roman Pope, then at once a seven times greater one was over him again, such as faith in the place of the law, the transformation of all laymen into divines in place of the limited body of clergy, and so on. His experience was like that of the possessed man into whom seven devils passed when he thought he had freed himself from one. In the passage quoted above, all ideality is denied to the middle class. It certainly schemed against the ideal consistency where one had to carry out the principle. The instinct of its interest told it that this consistency harmonized too little with what its mind was set on, and that it would be acting against itself if it were willing to further the enthusiasm for principle. Was it to behave so unselfishly as to abandon all its aims in order to bring a harsh theory to its triumph? It suits the priests admirably to be sure. When people listen to their summons, cast away everything and follow me, or sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow me. Some decided idealists obey this call, but most act like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a behavior half clerical or religious and half worldly, serving God and man. I do not blame the middle class for not wanting to let its aims be frustrated by Robespierre, for inquiring of its egoism how far it might give the revolutionary idea a chance. But one might blame, if blame were in place here anyhow, those who let their own interest be frustrated by the interests of the middle class. However, will not they likewise, sooner or later, learn to understand what is to their advantage? August Becker says, To win the producers, proletarians, a negation of the traditional conception of right is by no means enough. Folks unfortunately care little for the theoretical victory of the idea. One must demonstrate to them, at Oculus, how this victory can be practically utilized in life. End quote. End quote. You must get hold of folks by their real interests if you want to work upon them. End quote. Immediately after this, he shows how a fine looseness of morals is already spreading among our peasants, because they prefer to follow their real interests rather than the commands of morality. Because the revolutionary priests or school masters served man, they cut off the heads of men, the revolutionary laymen, those outside the sacred circle did not feel any great horror of cutting off heads, but were less anxious about the rights of man than about the room. How comes it, though, that the egoism of those who affirm personal interests and always inquire of it is nevertheless forever succumbing to a priestly or schoolmasterly, that is an ideal, interest? Their person seems to them too small, too insignificant, and is so, in fact, to lay claim to everything and be able to put itself completely in force. There is a sure sign of this, and they're dividing themselves into two persons, an eternal and a temporal, always caring either only for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the eternal, on the workday for the temporal, in prayer for the former, in work for the latter. They have the priest in themselves, therefore they do not get rid of him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly every Sunday. How men have struggled and calculated to get a solution regarding these dualistic essences. Idea followed upon idea, principle upon principle, system upon system, and none knew how to keep down permanently the contradiction of the worldly man, the so-called egoist. Does not this prove that all those ideas were too feeble to take up my whole will into themselves and satisfy it? They were and remained hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for a considerable time. Will it be the same with self-ownership? Is it too only an attempt at mediation? Whatever principle I turned to, it might be to that of reason. I always had to turn away from it again. Or can I always be rational, arrange my life according to reason and everything? I can no doubt strive after rationality. I can love it, just as I can also love God and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, as I love God. But what I love, what I strive for, is only in my idea, my conception, my thoughts. It is in my heart, my head. It is in me like thought, it is not I, I am not it. To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially what one often hears called moral influence. Moral influence takes a start where humiliation begins. Yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper down to humility. If I call to someone to run away when a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by this demand. If I say to a child, you will go hungry if you will not eat what is put on the table. This is not moral influence. But if I say to it, you will pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak the truth. For this belongs to man his calling. Or even this is God's will. Then moral influence is complete. Then a man is to bend before the calling of man, be tractable, become humble, give up his will for an alien one which is set up as a rule and law. He is to abase himself before something higher, self-abasement. He that abaseth himself will be exalted. Yes, yes, children must early be made to practice piety, godliness, and propriety. A person of good breeding is one into whom good maxims have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in, and preached in. If one shrugs his shoulders at this, at once the good ring their hands and cry. But for heaven's sake, if one is to give children no good instruction, why, then they will run straight into the jaws of sin and become good for nothing hoodlums. Gently, you prophets of evil. Good for nothing in your sense they certainly will become, but your sense happens to be a very good for nothing sense. The impudent lads will no longer anything be whined and chattered into them by you, and will have no sympathy for all the follies for which you have been raving and driveling since the memory of man began. They will abolish the law of inheritance. They will not be willing to inherit your stupidities as you inherited them from your fathers. They destroy inherited sin. I've only been reading stearness footnotes, but here is an important footnote from the translator and editor footnote called in English theology original sin and footnote. If you command them bend before the most high they will answer if he wants to bend us let him come himself and do it. We at least will not bend of our own accord and if you threaten them with his wrath and his punishment they will take it like being threatened with the boogeyman. If you are no more successful in making them afraid of ghosts the dominion of ghosts is a nint and nurses tales find no faith. And is it not precisely the liberals again that press for good education and improvement of the educational system for how could their liberalism their liberty within the bounds of law come about without discipline even if they do not exactly educate to the fear of God yet they demand the fear of man all the more strictly and awaken enthusiasm for the truly human calling by discipline. A long time passed away in which people were satisfied with the fancy that they had the truth without thinking seriously whether perhaps they themselves must be true to possess the truth this time was the middle ages with the common consciousness the consciousness which deals with things that consciousness which has receptivity only for things or for what is sensuous and sense moving they thought to grasp what did not deal with things and what was not perceptible in their senses as one does indeed also exert his eye to see the remote or laboriously exercise his hand till its fingers have become dexterous enough to press the keys correctly so they chastened themselves in the most manifold ways in order to become capable of receiving the super sensual wholly into themselves but what they chastened was after all the sensual man the common consciousness so called finite or objective thought yet as this thought this understanding which Luther decries under the name of reason is incapable of comprehending the divine its chastening contributed just as much to the understanding of the truth as if one exercised the feet year in and year out in dancing that way they would finally learn to play the flute Luther with whom the so called middle ages end was the first to understood that the man himself must become other than he was if he wanted to comprehend truth must become as true as truth itself only he who already has truth in his belief only he who believes in it can become a partaker of it only the believer finds it accessible and sounds its depths only that organ of man which is able to blow can attain the further capacity of flute playing and only the man can become a partaker of truth who has the right organ for it he who is capable of thinking only what is sensuous objective and sense figures to himself in truth only what pertains to things but truth is spirit stuff altogether in appreciable by the senses and therefore only for the higher consciousness not for that which is earthly minded with Luther accordingly dons the perception that truth of thought is only for the thinking man and this is to say that man must henceforth take an utterly different standpoint to it the heavenly believing scientific standpoint or that of thought in relation to its object the thought that of mind in relation to mind consequently apprehend the like you are like the spirit that you understand because Protestantism broke the medieval hierarchy the opinion could take root that hierarchy in general had been shattered by it and it could be wholly overlooked that it was precisely a reformation and so a reinvigoration of the antiquated hierarchy that medieval hierarchy had been only a weekly one as it had to let all possible barbarism of unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside it and it was the reformation that first steeled the power of hierarchy if Bruno Bauer thinks quote as the reformation was mainly the abstract rendering of the religious principle from art, state and science and so its liberation from those powers with which it had joined itself in the antiquity of the church and in the hierarchy of the middle ages so too the theological and ecclesiastical movements which proceeded from the reformation are only the consistent carrying out of this abstraction of the religious principle from the other powers of humanity end quote and precisely the opposite is correct and think that the dominion of spirits or freedom of mind which comes to the same thing was never before so all embracing and all powerful because the present one instead of rending the religious principle from art state and science lifted the latter altogether out of secularity into the realm of spirit and made them religious Luther and Descartes have been appropriately put side by side in their he who believes in God and I think therefore I am cogito ergo su mans heaven is thought mind everything can be rested from him except thought except faith particular faith like faith of Zeus Astarte Jehovah may be destroyed but faith itself is indestructible in thought is freedom what I need and what I hunger for is no longer granted to me by any grace by the virgin Mary my intercession of the saints or by the binding and loosing church but I procure it for myself in short my being the sum is a living in the heaven of thought of mind a cogito ergo su but I myself am nothing other than mind thinking mind according to Descartes believing mind according to Luther my body I am not my flesh may suffer from appetites or pains I am not my flesh but I am mind only mind this thought runs through the history of the Reformation till today only by the more modern philosophy since Descartes has a serious effort been made to bring Christianity to complete efficacy by exalting the scientific consciousness to be the only true and valid one hence it begins with absolute doubt to be tarre with grinding common consciousness to atoms with turning away from everything that mind does not legitimate to it nature counts for nothing and it does not rest to let his brought reason into everything and can say the real is the rational and only the rational is the real thus it is at last brought mind reason to victory and everything is mind because everything is rational because all nature as well as even the perverses opinions of men contains reason for all must serve for the best that is, lead to the victory of reason Descartes's doubitare contains the decided statement that only cogitare thought mind a complete break with common consciousness which ascribes reality to irrational things only the rational is only mind is this is the principle of modern philosophy the genuine Christian principle Descartes in his own time discriminated the body sharply from the mind and the spirit tis that builds itself the body says Gritta that this philosophy itself Christian philosophy still does not get rid of the rational and therefore invades against the merely subjective against fantasies fortuities arbitrariness etc what it wants is that the divine should become visible in everything and all consciousness become a knowing of the divine and man behold God everywhere but God never is without the devil for this very reason the name of philosopher is not to be given to him who has indeed open eyes for the things of the world a clear and undazzled gaze a correct judgment about the world but who sees in the world just the world in objects only objects and in short everything prosaically as it is but he alone is a philosopher who sees and points out or demonstrates heaven in the world the supernal in the earthly the divine in the mundane the former maybe ever so wise there is no getting away from this quote what wise men see not by their wisdom's art is practiced simply by a childlike heart it takes this childlike heart this eye for the divine to make a philosopher the first named man has only a common consciousness but he who knows the divine and knows how to tell it has a scientific one on this ground bacon was turned out of the realm of philosophers and certainly what is called English philosophy seems to have got no further than to the discoveries of so called clear heads such as bacon and you the English did not know how to exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to philosophic significance did not know how to make philosophers out of childlike hearts this is as much as to say the philosophy was not able to become theological or theology and yet it is only as theology that it can really live itself out complete itself the field of its battle to the death is in theology bacon did not trouble himself about theological questions and cardinal points end of this section for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Matt Messerschmitt in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA chapter 2 section a continuation of subdivision 3 the hierarchy to reach the beginnings and fountain heads of life and sees no life till it sees it in cognition itself Descartes cogito ergo sum has the meaning one lives only when one thinks thinking life is called intellectual life only mind lives its life with the true life then just so in nature only the eternal laws the mind or the reason of nature are its true life in man as in nature only the thought lives everything else is dead to this abstraction to the life of generalities or of that which is lifeless the history of mind had to come God who is spirit alone lives nothing lives but the ghost how can one try to assert of modern philosophy or modern time that they have reached freedom since they have not freed us from the power of objectivity or am I perhaps free from a despot when I am not afraid of the personal potented to be sure but of every infraction of the loving reverence which I fancy I owe him the case is the same with modern times they only changed the existing objects the real ruler into conceived objects into ideas before which the old respect not only was not lost but increased in intensity even if people snapped their fingers at God and the devil in their former crass reality people devoted only the greater attention to their ideas quote they are rid of the evil one evil is left the decision having once been made not to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable little scruple was felt about revolting against the existing state or overturning the existing laws but to sin against the idea of the state not to submit to the idea of law who would have dared that so one remained a citizen in a law respecting loyal man yes one seemed to himself to be only so much more law respecting the more rationalistically and abrogated the former defective law in order to do homage to the spirit of the law in all this the objects had only suffered a change of form they had remained in their preponderance and preeminence in short one was still involved in obedience and possessiveness lived in reflection and had an object on which one reflected which one respected and before which one felt reverence and fear one had done nothing but transform the things into conceptions of the things into thoughts and ideas whereby one's dependence became all the more intimate and indissoluble thus it is not hard to emancipate oneself from the commands of parents or to set aside the admonitions of uncle and aunt the entreaties of brother and sister but the renounced obedience easily gets into one's conscience when the less one does give way to the individual demands because he rationalistically by his own reason recognizes them to be unreasonable so much the more conscientiously does he hold fast to filial piety and family love and so much the harder is it for him to give himself a trust pass against the conception which he has formed of family love and of filial duty released from dependence as regards the existing family one falls into the more binding dependence on the idea of the family one is ruled by the spirit of the family the family consisting of John Maggie etc whose dominion has become powerless is only internalized being left as family in general to which one just applies the old saying we must obey God rather than man whose significance here is this I cannot to be sure accommodate myself to your senseless requirements but as my family you still remain the object of my love and care for the family is a sacred idea which the individual must never offend against and this family internalized and decentralized into a thought a conception now ranks as the sacred whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it makes a racket in my conscious this despotism is broken this conception family also becomes a nothing to me the Christian dicta woman what have I to do with thee I am come to stir up a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and others are accompanied by something that prefers us to the heavenly or true family and me no more than the state's demand in the case of a collision between it and the family we obey its commands the case of morality is like that of the family many a man renounces morals but with great difficulty the conception morality morality is the idea of morals their intellectual power their power over the conscience on the one hand morals are too material to rule the mind and do not feather an intellectual man a so called independent a free thinker the Protestant may put it as he will the Holy Scripture the word of God still remains sacred for him he for whom this is no longer holy has ceased to be a Protestant but herewith what is ordained in it the public authorities appointed by God etc also remain sacred for him for him these things remain indissoluble unapproachable raised above all doubt and as doubt which in practice becomes a buffeting is what is most man's own these things remain raised above himself he who cannot get away from them will believe for to believe in them is to be bound to them through the fact that in Protestantism the faith becomes a more inward faith the servitude has also become a more inward servitude one has taken those sanctities up into himself entwined them with all his interests and endeavors made them a matter of conscience constructed out of them a sacred duty for himself therefore what the Protestant's conscience cannot get away from is sacred to him and conscientiousness most clearly designates his character Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police the spy and the eavesdropper conscience watches over every motion of the mind and all thought and action is for it a matter of conscience that is police business this tearing apart of man into natural impulse and conscience inner populace and inner police is what constitutes the Protestant the reason of the Bible in place of the Catholic reason of the church ranks as sacred and this feeling and consciousness that the word of the Bible is sacred is called conscience with this then sacredness is laid upon one's conscience if one does not free himself from conscience the consciousness of the sacred he may act unconsciously indeed but never consciousnesslessly the Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfills the command the Protestant acts according to his best judgment and conscience for the Catholic is only a layman the Protestant is himself a clergyman just this is the progress of the reformation period beyond the middle ages and at the same time it's curse that the spiritual becomes complete what else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of indulgences only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now gained also an insight into the remission of sins and convinced himself how really his sin was taken from him since in this or that particular case it was so clearly sin at all that he committed the sale of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible and silenced every movement of conscience all sensuality might hold sway if it was only purchased from the church this favoring of sensuality was continued by the Jesuits while the strictly moral dark fanatic contrite as the true completers of Christianity to be sure acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man Catholicism especially the Jesuits gave aid to egoism in this way found involuntary and unconscious adherence within Protestantism itself and saved us from the subversion and extinction of sensuality nevertheless the Protestant spirit spreads its dominion farther and farther and as beside at the divine the Jesuit spirit represents only the diabolical which is inseparable from everything divine the latter can never assert itself alone but must look on and see how in France for example the Philistinism of Protestantism wins at less and mind is on top Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into repute again such as marriage the state etc but the mundane itself as mundane the secular is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism which lets the profane world stand yes and relishes its pleasures all the rational consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane all together and that simply by hollowing it so marriage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming sacred not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is unholy at bottom but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to begin with a sacred relation just so the state also formerly the pope gave consecration and his blessing to it and its princes now the state is intrinsically sacred majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing the order of nature or natural law was altogether hollowed as God's ordinance hence it is said in the Augsburg Confession article 2 so now we reasonably abide by the saying as the jurist consuls have wisely and rightly said that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law now if it is a natural law then it is God's ordinance therefore implanted in nature and therefore a divine law also and is it anything more than Protestantism brought up to date when Foyabach pronounces moral relations sacred not as God's ordinance indeed but instead for the sake of the spirit that dwells in them quote but marriage as a free alliance of love is sacred of itself by the nature of the union that is formed here that marriage alone is a religious one that is a true one that corresponds to the essence of marriage love and so it is with all moral relations they are ethical are cultivated with a moral mind they rank as religious of themselves true friendship is only where the limits of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness with the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his God friendship is and must be sacred for you and property and marriage and the good of every man but sacred in and of itself that is a very essential consideration in Catholicism the mundane can indeed be consecrated or hallowed but it is not sacred without this priestly blessing in Protestantism on the contrary mundane relations are sacred in themselves sacred by their mere existence the Jesuit maxim the end hallows the means corresponds precisely to the consecration by which sanctity is bestowed no means are holy or unholy in themselves but their relation to the church their use for the church hallows the means regicide was named as such if it was committed for the church's behoof it could be certain of being hallowed by the church even if the hallowing was not openly pronounced to the Protestant majesty ranks as sacred to the Catholic only that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such and it does rank as such to him only because the pope even though it be without a special act confers this sacredness on it once and for all if he retracted his consecration the king would be left only a man of the world or layman an unconsecrated man to the Catholic if the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness the sensual itself that he may then be linked only to what is holy the Catholic strives rather to banish the sensual from himself into a separate domain where it, like the rest of nature keeps its value for itself the Catholic church eliminated mundane marriage from its consecrated order and withdrew those who were its own from the mundane family the Protestant church declared marriage and family ties to be holy and therefore not unsuitable for its clergy a Jesuit may, as a good Catholic follow everything he needs only for example to say to himself I as a priest am necessary to the church but serve it more zealously when I appease my desires properly consequently I will seduce this girl have my enemy there poisoned etc my end is holy because it is a priest consequently it hollows the means for in the end it is still done for the benefit of the church why should the Catholic priest shrink from handing Emperor Henry the 7th for the church's welfare the genuinely churchly Protestants invade against every innocent pleasure because only the sacred the spiritual can be innocent what they could not point out the holy spirit in the Protestants had to reject dancing theater ostentation in the church and the like this puritanical Calvinism Lutheranism is again more on the religious spiritual track is more radical for the former excludes at once a great number of things as sensual and worldly and purifies the church Lutheranism on the contrary tries to bring spirit into all things as far as possible to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything and so to hollow everything worldly no one can forbid a kiss in honor the spirit of honor hollows it hence it was the Lutheran Hegel he declares himself such in some passages or other he quote wants to remain a Lutheran quote was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything in everything there is reason holy spirit or the real is rational for the real is in fact everything as in each thing for instance each lie can be detected there is no absolute lie no absolute evil and the like great works of mind were created almost solely by protestants as they alone were the true disciples and consumators of mind how little man is able to control he must let the sun run its course the sea roll its waves the mountains rise to heaven thus he stands powerless before the uncontrollable can he keep off the impression that he is helpless against this gigantic world it is a fixed law to which he must submit it determines his fate now what did pre-christian humanity work toward toward getting rid of the eruptions of the destinies not letting oneself be vexed by them the Stoics attained this in apathy declaring the attacks of nature indifferent and not letting themselves be affected by them Horace orders the famous Admirari by which he likewise announces the indifference of the other the world it is not to influence us not to rouse our astonishment and that impafidium ferient ruinae expresses the very same imperturbability as Psalms chapter 46 verse 3 we do not fear of the earth should perish in all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty for the Christian contempt of the world the imperturbable spirit of the wise man with which the old world worked to prepare its end now underwent an inner perturbation with which no adoraxia no stoic courage was able to protect it the spirit secured against all influence of the world insensible to its shocks and exalted above its attacks admiring nothing not to be disconcerted by any downfall of the world phoned over irrepressibly again castes spirits were evolved in its own interior and after the mechanical shock that comes from without had become ineffective chemical tensions that agitate within began their wonderful play in fact ancient history ends with this that I have struggled till I have won my ownership of the world all things have been delivered to me by my father Matthew chapter 11 verse 27 it has ceased to be overpowering unapproachable sacred divine for me it is undefined and now I treat it so entirely please that if I cared I could exert on it all miracle working power that is power of mind remove mountains command mulberry trees to tear themselves up and transplant themselves into the sea Luke 17 verse 6 and do everything possible thinkable all things are possible to him who believes Mark chapter 7 verse 23 I am the lord of the world mine is the glory the world has become prosaic for the divine has vanished from it it is my property which I dispose of as I to it the mind choose when I had exalted myself to be the owner of the world egoism had won its first complete victory had vanquished the world had become worldless and put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key the first property the first glory has been acquired but the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts his feelings his will he is not lord and owner of the spirit for the spirit is still sacred the holy spirit and the worldless Christian is not able to become godless if the ancient struggle was a struggle against the world the medieval Christian struggle is a struggle against self the mind the former against the outer world the latter against the inner world the medieval man is the man whose gaze is turned inward the thinking meditative man all wisdom of the ancients is the science of the world all wisdom of the moderns is the science of God the heathen, Jews included got through with the world but now the thing was to get through with self the spirit too to become spiritless or godless for almost 2,000 years we have been working at subjecting the holy spirit to ourselves and little by little we have torn off and trodden underfoot many bits of sacredness but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising anew under a changed form and name the spirit has not yet lost its divinity its holiness its sacredness to be sure it has long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove to be sure it no longer gladdens its saints alone but lets itself be caught by the lady too but as spirit of humanity as spirit of man it remains still an alien spirit to me or you still far from becoming our unrestricted property which we dispose of at our pleasure however, one thing certainly happened and visibly guided the progress of post-christian history this one thing was the endeavor to make the holy spirit more human and bring it nearer to men or men to it through this it came about that at last it could be conceived as the spirit of humanity and under different expressions like idea of humanity mankind humaneness general philanthropy appeared more attractive more familiar and more accessible would not one think that now everybody could possess the holy spirit take up into himself the idea of humanity bring mankind to form an existence in himself no the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its unapproachableness is not accessible to us not our property for the spirit of humanity is not my spirit my ideal it may be and as a thought I call it mine the idea of humanity is my property and I prove this sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views and shaping it today so tomorrow otherwise we represented to ourselves in the most manifold ways but it is at the same time an entail which I cannot alienate nor get rid of among many transformations the holy spirit became in time the absolute idea which again in manifold refractions split into the different areas of philanthropy reasonableness civic virtue what can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity and can I consider the spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it myself to it antiquity at its close had gained its ownership of the world only when it had broken the world over poweriness and divinity recognized the world's powerlessness and vanity the case with regard to the spirit corresponds when I have degraded it to a spook and its control over me to a cranky notion then it is to be looked upon as having lost its sacredness its holiness, its divinity and then I use it as one uses nature at pleasure without scruple the nature of the case the concept of the relation is to guide me in dealing with the case or in contracting the relation as if a concept of the case existed on its own account and was not rather the concept the one forms of the case as if a relation which we enter into was not by the uniqueness of those who enter into it itself unique as if it depended on how others stamp it but as people separated the essence of man from the real man and judged the latter by the former so they also separate his action from him and appraise it human value concepts are to decide everywhere concepts to regulate life concepts to rule this is the religious world to which Hegel gave a systematic expression bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly based dogmatic everything is sum according to concepts and the real man I am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws can there be a more grievous dominion of law and did not Christianity confess at the very beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter not a letter of the law shall be lost liberalism simply brought other concepts on the carpet human instead of divine political instead of ecclesiastical scientific instead of doctrinal or more generally real concepts and eternal laws instead of crude dogmas and precepts now nothing but mind rules in the world an innumerable multitude of concepts buzz about in people's heads what are those doing who endeavor to get further to negating these concepts to put new ones in their place that are saying you form a false concept of right of the state of man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage the concept of right etc. is rather that one which we now set up thus the confusion of concepts moves forward the history of the world has dealt cruelly with us and the spirit has obtained an almighty power you must have regard for my miserable shoes which could protect your naked foot my salt by which your potatoes would become palatable and my stage carriage whose possession would relieve you of all need at once you must not reach out after them man is to recognize the independence of all these and innumerable other things there to rank his mind as something that cannot be seized or approached there to be kept away from him he must have regard for it respect woe to him if he stretches out his fingers desirously we call that being light fingered how beggarly little has left us yes how really nothing everything has been removed we must not venture on anything unless it has given us we continue to live only by the grace of the giver you must not pick up a pin unless you have got leave to do so and got it from whom from respect only when this lets you have it as property only when you can respect it as property only then may you take it and again you are not to conceive a thought speak a syllable commit an action that should have their warrant in you alone instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity happy unconstraint of the desirous man how mercilessly people have tried to slay you on the altar of constraint but around the altar rise the arches of a church and its walls keep moving further and further out what they enclose is sacred you can no longer get to it no longer touch it shrieking with the hunger that devours you you wander around these walls in search of the little that is profane in the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended soon that church will embrace the whole world and you will be driven out to the extreme edge another step of the sacred has conquered you sink into the abyss therefore take courage while it is yet time wander about no longer in the profane where now it is dry feeding dare the leap and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary itself if you devour the sacred you have made it your own digest the sacramental wafer and you are rid of it Section 11 The Ego and His Own by Mach Shtirna 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 Chapter 2 The Free The ancients and the moderns having been presented above in two divisions it may seem as if the free were here to be described in a third division as independent and distinct this is not so free are only the more modern and most modern among the moderns and are put in a separate division merely because they belong to the present and what is present above all claims our attention I give the free only as a translation of the liberals but must with regard to the concept of freedom as in general with regard to so many other things whose anticipatory introduction cannot be avoided refer to what comes later Section 1 Political Liberalism after the chalice of so called absolute monarchy had been drained down to the dregs in the 18th century people became aware that their drink did not taste human too clearly aware not to begin to crave a different cup since our fathers were human beings after all they at last desired also to be regarded as such whoever sees in us something else in him we likewise will not see a human being but an inhuman being and will meet him as an inhuman being on the other hand whoever recognizes us as human beings and protects us against the danger of being treated inhumanly him we will honor as our true protector and guardian let us then hold together and protect the man and each other then we find the necessary and our holding together and in ourselves those who hold together a fellowship of those who know their human dignity and hold together as human beings our holding together is the state we who hold together are the nation and our being together as nation or state we are only human beings how we deport ourselves as individuals and what self-seeking impulses we may very succumb to belong solely to our private life our public or state life is a purely human one everything unhuman or egoistic the clings to us is degraded to a private matter and we distinguish the state definitely from civil society which is the sphere of egoisms activity the true man is the nation but the individual is always an egoist therefore strip off your individuality or isolation wherein dwells discord egoistic inequality and consecrate yourself wholly to the true man the nation the state then you will rank as men and have all that is man's the state the true man will entitle you to what belongs to it and give you the rights of man man gives you his rights so runs the speech of the comalty editors footnote regarding the word comalty comalty citizenhood the word means either the condition of being a citizen or a citizen like principles of the body of citizens or of the middle or business class of bourgeoisie and footnote the comalty is nothing else than the thought the state is all in all the true man and that the individual's human value consists in being a citizen of the state in being a good citizen he seeks his highest honor beyond that he knows nothing higher than at most the antiquated being a good Christian the comalty developed itself in the struggle against the privileged classes by whom it was cavalierly treated as third estate and confounded with the kanayu in other words up to this time the state had recognized caste the son of a nobleman was selected for a post to which the most distinguished commoners aspired in vain the civic feeling revolted against this no more distinction no giving preference to persons no difference of classes let all be alike no separate interest is to be pursued longer with the general interest of all the state is to be a fellowship of free and equal men and everyone is to devote themselves to the welfare of the whole to be dissolved in the state to make the state is end and ideal state state so ran the general cry and thenceforth people sought for the right form of state the best constitution and so the state and its best conception the thought of the state passed into all hearts and awakened enthusiasm to serve it this mundane God became the new divine service and worship the properly political epoch had dawned to serve the state with the nation became the highest ideal the state's interest the highest interest state service for which one does not by any means need to be an official the highest honor so then the separate interests and personalities had been scared away and sacrifice for the state had become the shibboleth one must give up himself and live only for the state one must act disinterestedly not want to benefit himself but the state hereby the latter has become the true person before whom the individual personality vanishes not I live but it lives in me therefore in comparison with the former self-seeking this was unselfishness and impersonality itself before this God state all ego is vanished before it all were equal without any other distinction man nothing but man the revolution took fire from the inflammable material of property the government needed money now it must prove the proposition that it is absolute and so master of all property sole proprietor it must take to itself its money which was only in the possession of the subjects not their property instead of this it calls states general to have this money granted to it the shrinking from strictly logical action destroyed the illusion of an absolute government he who must have something granted to it cannot be regarded as absolute the subjects recognized that they were real proprietors and that it was their money those who had hitherto been subjects attained to consciousness that they were proprietors by ye depicts this in a few words if you cannot dispose of my property without my consent how much less can you of my person of all the concerns my mental and social position all this is my property like the piece of land that I till I have a right and interest to make the laws myself by ye's word sound certainly as if everyone was a proprietor now however instead of the government instead of the prince the nation now became proprietor and master from this time on the ideal is spoken of as quote popular liberty quote a free people unquote et cetera as early as july 8 1789 the declaration of the bishop about toon and berrere took away all semblance of the importance of each and every individual in legislation it showed the complete powerlessness of the constituents the majority of the representatives has become master when on july 9 the plan for division of the work on the constitution is proposed meribo remarks that quote the government has only power no rights only in the people is the source of all right to be found on july 16 the same meribo exclaims is not the people the source of all power the source therefore of the right and the source of all power by the way here the substance of right becomes visible it is power he who has power has right the commonality is the air of the privileged classes fact the rights of the barons which were taken from them as usurpations were to the commonality the commonality was now called the nation quote into the hands of the nation quote all prerogatives were given back thereby they ceased to be prerogatives they became rights from this time on the nation demands tides compulsory services it is inherited the lords court the air and venison the serfs the night of august 4 was the death night of privileges or prerogatives cities, communes boards of magistrates were also privileged furnished with prerogatives and seniorial rights and ended with the new morning of right the quote rights of the state the quote rights of the nation the monarch in the person of the royal master been a paltry monarch compared with this new monarch the sovereign nation this monarchy was a thousand times severe, stricter and more consistent against the new monarch there was no longer any right any privilege at all how limited the absolute king of the ancient regime looks in comparison the revolution affected the transformation of limited monarchy into absolute monarchy from this time on every right that is not conferred by this monarchy is an assumption but every prerogative that he bestows a right the times demanded absolute royalty absolute monarchy therefore down fell that so-called absolute royalty which had so little understood how to become absolute that it remained limited by a thousand little lords what was long for and striving for through thousands of years to wit define that absolute lord beside whom no other lords and lordlings any longer exist to clip his power the bourgeoisie has brought to pass it has revealed the lord who alone confers rightful titles and without whose warrant nothing is justified quote so now we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other god save the one first Corinthians chapter 8 verse 4 against right one can no longer as against a right come forward with the assertion that it is quote a wrong unquote one can say now only that it is a piece of nonsense an illusion if one called it wrong one would have to set up another right in opposition to it and measure it by this if on the contrary one rejects right as such right in and of itself altogether then one also rejects the concept of wrong and dissolves the whole concept of right to which the concept of wrong belongs what is the meaning of the doctrine that we all enjoy equality of political rights only this that the state has no regard for my person that to it I like every other am only a man without having another significance that commands its deference I do not command its deference as an aristocrat a nobleman's son or even as heir of an official whose office belongs to me by inheritance as in the middle age countships etc and later under absolute royalty where hereditary offices occur now the state has an innumerable multitude of rights to give away the right to lead a battalion a company etc the right to lecture at a university and so forth it has them to give away because they are its own namely state rights or quote political rights with all it makes no difference to whom it gives them if the receiver only fulfills the duties that spring from the delegated rights to it we are all of us all right and equal one worth no more and no less than another it is indifferent to me who receives the command of the army says the sovereign state provided the grantee understands the matter properly quote equality of political rights quote has consequently the meaning that everyone may acquire every right that the state has to give away if only he fulfills the conditions annexed there too conditions that are to be sought only in the nature of the particular one not in a predilection for the person or sonograta the nature of the right to become an officer bears with it the necessity that one possess sound limbs and a suitable measure of knowledge but it does not have noble birth as a condition if on the other hand even the most deserving cometer could not reach that station and an inequality of political rights would exist among the states of today one has carried out that maximum equality more and other less the monarchy of the states so I will call absolute royalty the time of the kings before the revolution kept the individual independence on a lot of little monarchies these were fellowships societies like the guilds nobility the priesthood the burger class cities congress where the individual must regard himself first as a member of this little society and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit the esprit décor as his monarch more than the individual nobleman himself must his family the honor of his race be to him only by means of his corporation his estate would the individual have relation to the greater corporation the state as in Catholicism the individual deals with God only through the priest to this the third estate now show encourage to negate itself as an estate made an end it decided no longer to be and be called an estate beside other estates but to glorify and generalize itself into the nation created a much more complete and absolute monarchy the entire previously ruled principle of estates the principle of little monarchies inside the great went down therefore it cannot be said that the revolution was a revolution against the first two privileged estates it was against the little monarchies and the states in general but if the estates and their despotism were broken the king too we know was only a king of estates not a citizen king the individuals freed from the inequality of estate were left were they now really to be without estate and quote out of gear no longer bound by any estate without a general bond of union no for the third estate had declared itself the nation only in order not to remain an estate beside other estates but to become the soul estate this soul estate is the nation the quote state unquote what had the individual now become a political protestant for he had come into immediate connection with his god the state he was no longer as an aristocrat in the monarchy of the nobility as a mechanic in the monarchy of the guild but he like all recognized and acknowledged only one lord the state as whose servants they all received the equal title of citizen the bourgeoisie is the aristocracy of dessert it's motto let dessert wear its crowns it fought against the lazy aristocracy for according to it the industrious aristocracy acquired by industry and dessert it is not the quote born unquote who are free nor yet I who am free either but the quote deserving unquote man the honest servant of his king of the state of the people in constitutional states through service one acquires freedom that is acquires desserts even if one served man one must deserve well of the state of the principle of the state of its moral spirit he who serves the spirit of the state is a good citizen let him live to whatever honest branch of industry he will in it's eyes innovators practice a breathless art only the quote unquote shopkeeper is quote unquote practical and the spirit that chases after public office is as much the shopkeeping spirit as is that which tries in trade to feather it's nest or otherwise to become useful to itself and anybody else but if the deserving count as the free for what does the comfortable commoner the faithful office holder lack of that freedom that his heart desires then the servants are the free the obedient servant is the free man what glaring nonsense yet this is the sense of the bourgeoisie and its poet Goethe as well as its philosopher Hegel succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object obedience to the objective world he who only serves the cause devotes himself entirely to it as the true freedom and among thinkers the cause was reason that which like the state and church gives general laws and puts the individual man in irons by the thought of humanity it determines what is quote true according to which one must then act no more quote-unquote rational people than the honest servants who primarily are called good citizens as servants of the state be rich as crosses or poor as Job the state of the commonality leaves that to your option but only have a good disposition this it demands of you and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all therefore it will keep you from evil promptings holding the ill-disposed in check and silencing their inflammatory discourses under censors cancelling marks or press penalties and behind dungeon walls and will on the other hand point people of quote good disposition unquote as censors and in every way have a moral influence exerted on you by quote well-disposed and well-meaning unquote people if it has made you deaf to evil promptings then it opens your ears again all the more diligently to good promptings with the time of the bourgeoisie begins that of liberalism people want to see what is rational suited to the times established everywhere following definition of liberalism which is supposed to be pronounced in its honor characterizes it completely quote liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason applied to our existing relations unquote its aim is a quote rational order a quote moral behavior unquote limited freedom not anarchy lawlessness selfhood but if reason rules then the person succumbs art has for a long time acknowledged the ugly but considered the ugly as necessary to its existence and takes it up into itself it needs the villain in the religious domain too the extremist liberals go so far that they want to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen that is the religious villain they want to see no more of trials for heresy but against the quote rational law no one is to be revel otherwise he is threatened with severest penalty what is wanted is not free movement and realization of the person or of me but of reason the dominion of reason a dominion liberals are zealots not exactly for the faith or god but certainly for reason their master they broke no lack of breeding and therefore no self-development and self-determination they play the guardian as effectively as the most absolute rulers quote political liberty unquote what are we to understand by that perhaps the individual's independence of the state and its laws no on the contrary the individual's subjection in the state and the state's laws but why quote unquote liberty because one is no longer separated from the state by intermediaries that stands and direct an immediate relation to it because one is a citizen not the subject of another not even of the king as a person but only in his quality as quote supreme head of the state unquote political liberty this fundamental doctrine of liberalism is nothing but a second phase of Protestantism and runs quite parallel with quote religious liberty unquote or what a perchance be right to understand by the latter an independence of religion anything but that independence of intermediaries is all that it is intended to express independence of mediating priests the abolition of the quote unquote laity and so directs an immediate relation to religion or to God only on the supposition that one has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion freedom of religion does not mean being without religion but an inwardness of faith unmediated intercourse with God to him who is religiously free religion is an affair of the heart it is to him own affair it is to him a sacredly serious matter to the quote politically free unquote man the state is a sacredly serious matter it is his heart's affair his chief affair his own affair end of section 12