Part 14

Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be "human," enunciates the necessary condition of sociability; for only as a man among men is one _companionable_. Herewith it makes known its _social_ object, the establishment of "human society."

Among social theories criticism is indisputably the most complete, because it removes and deprives of value everything that _separates_ man from man: all prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle of Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest fulfilment, and the last possible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness and repulsion from men: a fight against egoism in its simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of singleness,[92] exclusiveness, itself.

"How can you live a truly social life so long as even one exclusiveness still exists between you?"

I ask conversely, How can you be truly single so long as even one connection still exists between you? If you are connected, you cannot leave each other; if a "tie" clasps you, you are something only _with another_, and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of you humanity.

"Only when you are human can you keep company with each other as men, just as you can understand each other as patriots only when you are patriotic!"

All right; then I answer, Only when you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what you are.

It is precisely the keenest critic who is hit hardest by the curse of his principle. Putting from him one exclusive thing after another, shaking off churchliness, patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and separates himself from the churchly man, from the patriot, etc., till at last, when all ties are undone, he stands--alone. He, of all men, must exclude all that have anything exclusive or private; and, when you get to the bottom, what can be more exclusive than the exclusive, single person himself!

Or does he perhaps think that the situation would be better if _all_ became men and gave up exclusiveness? Why, for the very reason that "all" means "every individual" the most glaring contradiction is still maintained, for the "individual" is exclusiveness itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes to the individual anything private or exclusive, any private thought, any private folly; if he criticises everything away from him before his face, since his hatred of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred; if he knows no tolerance toward what is private, because everything private is _unhuman_,--yet he cannot criticise away the private person himself, since the hardness of the individual person resists his criticism, and he must be satisfied with declaring this person a "private person" and really leaving everything private to him again.

What will the society that no longer cares about anything private do? Make the private impossible? No, but "subordinate it to the interests of society, and, _e. g._, leave it to private will to institute holidays, as many as it chooses, if only it does not come in collision with the general interest."[93] Everything private is _left free_; _i. e._ it has no interest for society.

"By their raising of barriers against science the church and religiousness have declared that they are what they always were, only that this was hidden under another semblance when they were proclaimed to be the basis and necessary foundation of the State----a matter of purely private concern. Even when they were connected with the State and made it Christian, they were only the proof that the State had not yet developed its general political idea, that it was only instituting private rights----they were only the highest expression for the fact that the State was a private affair and had to do only with private affairs. When the State shall at last have the courage and strength to fulfil its general destiny and to be free; when, therefore, it is also able to give separate interests and private concerns their true position,--then religion and the church will be free as they have never been hitherto. As a matter of the most purely private concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal want, they will be left to themselves; and every individual, every congregation and ecclesiastical communion, will be able to care for the blessedness of their souls as they choose and as they think necessary. Every one will care for his soul's blessedness so far as it is to him a personal want, and will accept and pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to him to offer the best guarantee for the satisfaction of his want. Science is at last left entirely out of the game."[94]

What is to happen, though? Is social life to have an end, and all companionableness, all fraternization, everything that is created by the love or society principle, to disappear?

As if one will not always seek the other because he _needs_ him; as if one must not accommodate himself to the other when he _needs_ him. But the difference is this, that then the individual really _unites_ with the individual, while formerly they were _bound together_ by a tie; son and father are bound together before majority, after it they can come together independently; before it they _belonged_ together as members of the family, after it they unite as egoists; sonship and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer pin themselves down to these.

The last privilege, in truth, is "Man"; with it all are privileged or invested. For, as Bruno Bauer himself says, "privilege remains even when it is extended to all."[95]

Thus liberalism runs its course in the following transformations: "First, the individual _is_ not man, therefore his individual personality is of no account: no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates!

"Second, the individual _has_ nothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or property, is valid.

"Third, as the individual neither is man nor has anything human, he shall not exist at all: he shall, as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated by criticism to make room for Man, 'Man, just discovered'."

But, although the individual is not Man, Man is yet present in the individual, and, like every spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence political liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to him as "a man by birth," as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of conscience, the possession of goods, etc.,--in short, the "rights of man"; Socialism grants to the individual what pertains to him as an _active_ man, as a "laboring" man; finally, humane liberalism gives the individual what he has as "a man," _i. e._ everything that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the single one[96] has nothing at all, humanity everything; and the necessity of the "regeneration" preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the completest measure. Become a new creature, become "man"!

One might even think himself reminded of the close of the Lord's Prayer. To Man belongs the _lordship_ (the "power" or _dynamis_); therefore no individual may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals;--Man's is the _kingdom_, _i. e._ the world, consequently the individual is not to be proprietor, but Man, "all," commands the world as property;--to Man is due renown, _glorification_ or "glory" (_doxa_) from all, for Man or humanity is the individual's end, for which he labors, thinks, lives, and for whose glorification he must become "man."

Hitherto men have always striven to find out a fellowship in which their inequalities in other respects should become "non-essential"; they strove for equalization, consequently for _equality_, and wanted to come all under one hat, which means nothing less than that they were seeking for one lord, one tie, one faith ("'Tis in one God we all believe"). There cannot be for men anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself, and in this fellowship the love-craving has found its contentment: it did not rest till it had brought on this last equalization, leveled all inequality, laid man on the breast of man. But under this very fellowship decay and ruin become most glaring. In a more limited fellowship the Frenchman still stood against the German, the Christian against the Mohammedan, etc. Now, on the contrary, _man_ stands against men, or, as men are not man, man stands against the un-man.

The sentence "God has become man" is now followed by the other, "Man has become I." This is _the human I_. But we invert it and say: I was not able to find myself so long as I sought myself as Man. But, now that it appears that Man is aspiring to become I and to gain a corporeity in me, I note that, after all, everything depends on me, and Man is lost without me. But I do not care to give myself up to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not ask henceforward whether I am man or un-man in what I set about; let this _spirit_ keep off my neck!

Humane liberalism goes to work radically. If you want to be or have anything especial even in one point, if you want to retain for yourself even one prerogative above others, to claim even one right that is not a general "right of man," you are an egoist.

Very good! I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, I do not want to claim any prerogative against them, but--I do not measure myself by others either, and do not want to have any _right_ whatever. I want to be all and have all that I can be and have. Whether others are and have anything _similar_, what do I care? The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have. I cause no _detriment_ to them, as I cause no detriment to the rock by being "ahead of it" in having motion. If they _could_ have it, they would have it.

To cause other men no _detriment_ is the point of the demand to possess no prerogative; to renounce all "being ahead," the strictest theory of _renunciation_. One is not to count himself as "anything especial," such as _e. g._ a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself as anything especial, but as _unique_.[97] Doubtless I have _similarity_ with others; yet that holds good only for comparison or reflection; in fact I am incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the generalities "flesh, mind," those are your _thoughts_, which have nothing to do with _my_ flesh, _my_ mind, and can least of all issue a "call" to mine.

I do not want to recognize or respect in you anything, neither the proprietor nor the ragamuffin, nor even the man, but to _use you_. In salt I find that it makes food palatable to me, therefore I dissolve it; in the fish I recognize an aliment, therefore I eat it; in you I discover the gift of making my life agreeable, therefore I choose you as a companion. Or, in salt I study crystallization, in the fish animality, in you men, etc. But to me you are only what you are for me,--to wit, my object; and, because _my_ object, therefore my property.

In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood is completed. We must first come down to the most ragamuffin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive at _ownness_, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more ragamuffin-like than naked--Man.

It is more than ragamuffinhood, however, when I throw away Man too because I feel that he too is alien to me and that I can make no pretensions on that basis. This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood: because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself, and therewith has ceased, to be what he was, a ragamuffin.

I am no longer a ragamuffin, but have been one.

* * * * *

Up to this time the discord could not come to an outbreak, because properly there is current only a contention of modern liberals with antiquated liberals, a contention of those who understand "freedom" in a small measure and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of the _moderate_ and _measureless_, therefore. Everything turns on the question, _how free_ must _man_ be? That man must be free, in this all believe; therefore all are liberal too. But the un-man[98] who is somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? flow can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same time with man?

Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as God has the devil: by the side of man stands always the un-man, the individual, the egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this devil.

Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of showing the other liberals that they still do not want "freedom."

If the other liberals had before their eyes only isolated egoism and were for the most part blind, radical liberalism has against it egoism "in mass," throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of freedom their own as it does, so that now man and un-man, rigorously separated, stand over against each other as enemies, to wit, the "masses" and "criticism";[99] namely, "free, human criticism," as it is called ("_Judenfrage_," p. 114), in opposition to crude, _e. g._ religious, criticism.

Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the masses and "give them a general certificate of insolvency."[100] So it means finally to make itself out in the right, and to represent all contention of the "faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoistic _stubbornness_,[101] as pettiness, paltriness. All wrangling loses significance, and petty dissensions are given up, because in criticism a common enemy enters the field. "You are egoists altogether, one no better than another!" Now the egoists stand together against criticism.

Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism precisely because it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty to egoism. Accordingly criticism and the masses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other.

Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, freedom from egoism, and wrangle only over which of them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains it.

The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men of darkness and men of light, politicians, Communists,--all, in short,--hold the reproach of egoism far from them; and, as criticism brings against them this reproach in plain terms and in the most extended sense, all _justify_ themselves against the accusation of egoism, and combat--egoism, the same enemy with whom criticism wages war.

Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, and both seek to liberate themselves from egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashing _themselves_ as by ascribing it to the opposite party.

The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" who gives them the "simple concept and the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph is denied in "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 24 were only bunglers. He is their prince and general in the war against egoism for freedom; what he fights against they fight against. But at the same time he is their enemy too, only not the enemy before them, but the friendly enemy who wields the knout behind the timorous to force courage into them.

Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses is reduced to the following contradiction: "You are egoists"! "No, we are not"! "I will prove it to you"! "You shall have our justification"!

Let us then take both for what they give themselves out for, non-egoists, and what they take each other for, egoists. They are egoists and are not.

Properly criticism says: You must liberate your ego from all limitedness so entirely that it becomes a _human_ ego. I say: Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively: not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing down even one limit _for all men_? Are not countless persons to-day, as at all times, running about with all the "limitations of humanity"? He who overturns one of _his_ limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of _their_ limits remains their affair. Nobody does anything else either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is to call on them to cast down all human limits. That is impossible, because _Man_ has no limits. I have some indeed, but then it is only _mine_ that concern me any, and only they can be overcome by me. A _human_ ego I cannot become, just because I am I and not merely man.

Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught us something that we can lay to heart! I am not free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not disinterested? Well, even if it makes little difference to me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave unused any occasion to realize _myself_ or make myself count. Criticism offers me this occasion by the teaching that, if anything plants itself firmly in me, and becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and servant, _i. e._ a possessed man. An interest, be it for what it may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot get away from it, and is no longer my property, but I I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson to let no part of our property become stable, and to feel comfortable only in--_dissolving_ it.

So, if criticism says: You are man only when you are restlessly criticising and dissolving! then we say: Man I am without that, and I am I likewise; therefore I want only to be careful to secure my property to myself; and, in order to secure it, I continually take it back into myself, annihilate in it every movement toward independence, and swallow it before it can fix itself and become a "fixed idea" or a "mania."

But I do that not for the sake of my "human calling," but because I call myself to it. I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is possible for a man to dissolve, and, _e. g._, while not yet ten years old I do not criticise the nonsense of the Commandments, but I am man all the same, and act humanly in just this,--that I still leave them uncriticised. In short, I have no calling, and follow none, not even that to be a man.

Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be the day that anything won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become free through liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself and confess to myself openly: What Man seems to have gained, _I_ alone have gained.

Man is free when "Man is to man the supreme being." So it belongs to the completion of liberalism that every other supreme being be annulled, theology overturned by anthropology, God and his grace laughed down, "atheism" universal.

The egoism of property has given up the last that it had to give when even the "My God" has become senseless; for God exists only when he has at heart the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in him.

Political liberalism abolished, the inequality of masters and servants: it made people _masterless_, anarchic. The master was now removed from the individual, the "egoist," to become a ghost,--the law or the State. Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the poor and rich, and makes people _possessionless_ or propertyless. Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society. Humane liberalism makes people _godless_, atheistic. Therefore the individual's God, "my God", must be put an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at the same time freedom from service, possessionlessness at the same time freedom from care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from prejudice: for with the master the servant falls away; with possession, the care about it; with the firmly-rooted God, prejudice. But, since the master rises again as State, the servant appears again as subject; since possession becomes the property of society, care is begotten anew as labor; and, since God as Man becomes a prejudice, there arises a new faith, faith in humanity or liberty. For the individual's God the God of all, _viz._, "Man," is now exalted; "for it is the highest thing in us all to be man." But, as nobody can become entirely what the idea "man" imports, Man remains to the individual a lofty other world, an unattained supreme being, a God. But at the same time this is the "true God," because he is fully adequate to us,--to wit, our own "_self_"; we ourselves, but separated from us and lifted above us.

POSTSCRIPT

The foregoing review of "free human criticism" was written by bits immediately after the appearance of the books in question, as was also that which elsewhere refers to writings of this tendency, and I did little more than bring together the fragments. But criticism is restlessly pressing forward, and thereby makes it necessary for me to come back to it once more, now that my book is finished, and insert this concluding note.

I have before me the latest (eighth) number of the "_Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung_" of Bruno Bauer.

There again "the general interests of society" stand at the top. But criticism has reflected, and given this "society" a specification by which it is discriminated from a form which previously had still been confused with it: the "State," in former passages still celebrated as "free State," is quite given up because it can in no wise fulfil the task of "human society." Criticism only "saw itself compelled to identify for a moment human and political affairs" in 1842; but now it has found that the State, even as "free State," is not human society, or, as it could likewise say, that the people is not "man." We saw how it got through with theology and showed clearly that God sinks into dust before Man; we see it now come to a clearance with politics in the same way, and show that before Man peoples and nationalities fall: so we see how it has its explanation with Church and State, declaring them both unhuman, and we shall see--for it betrays this to us already--how it can also give proof that before Man the "masses," which it even calls a "spiritual being," appear worthless. And how should the lesser "spiritual beings" be able to maintain themselves before the supreme spirit? "Man" casts down the false idols.

So what the critic has in view for the present is the scrutiny of the "masses," which he will place before "Man" in order to combat them from the standpoint of Man. "What is now the object of criticism?" "The masses, a spiritual being!" These the critic will "learn to know," and will find that they are in contradiction with Man; he will demonstrate that they are unhuman, and will succeed just as well in this demonstration as in the former ones, that the divine and the national, or the concerns of Church and of State, were the unhuman.