Part 16

The lovely dream is dissipated; awakened, one rubs his half-opened eyes and stares at the prosaic questioner. "What men are to be free from?"--From blind credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims another, all faith is blind credulity; they must become free from all faith. No, no, for God's sake,--inveighs the first again,--do not cast all faith from you, else the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the republic,--a third makes himself heard,--and become--free from all commanding lords. There is no help in that, says a fourth: we only get a new lord then, a "dominant majority"; let us rather free ourselves from this dreadful inequality.--O hapless equality, already I hear your plebeian roar again! How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a paradise of _freedom_, and what impudence and licentiousness now raises its wild clamor! Thus the first laments, and gets on his feet to grasp the sword against "unmeasured freedom." Soon we no longer hear anything but the clashing of the swords of the disagreeing dreamers of freedom.

What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for a _particular_ freedom, _e. g._ freedom of faith; _i. e._, the believing man wanted to be free and independent; of what? of faith perhaps? no! but of the inquisitors of faith. So now "political or civil" freedom. The citizen wants to become free not from citizenhood, but from bureaucracy, the arbitrariness of princes, and the like. Prince Metternich once said he had "found a way that was adapted to guide men in the path of _genuine_ freedom for all the future." The Count of Provence ran away from France precisely at the time when she was preparing the "reign of freedom," and said: "My imprisonment had become intolerable to me; I had only one passion, the desire for--_freedom_; I thought only of it."

The craving for a _particular_ freedom always includes the purpose of a new _dominion_, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed "could give its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for freedom," but in truth only because they were after a particular freedom, therefore a new _dominion_, the "dominion of the law."

Freedom you all want, you want _freedom_. Why then do you higgle over a more or less? _Freedom_ can only be the whole of freedom; a piece of freedom is not _freedom_. You despair of the possibility of obtaining the whole of freedom, freedom from everything,--yes, you consider it insanity even to wish this?--Well, then leave off chasing after the phantom, and spend your pains on something better than the--_unattainable_.

"Ah, but there is nothing better than freedom!"

What have you then when you have freedom, _viz._,--for I will not speak here of your piecemeal bits of freedom,--complete freedom? Then you are rid of everything that embarrasses you, everything, and there is probably nothing that does not once in your life embarrass you and cause you inconvenience. And for whose sake, then, did you want to be rid of it? Doubtless _for your sake_, because it is in _your_ way! But, if something were not inconvenient to you; if, on the contrary, it were quite to your mind (_e. g._ the gently but _irresistibly commanding_ look of your loved one),--then you would not want to be rid of it and free from it. Why not? _For your sake_ again! So you take _yourselves_ as measure and judge over all. You gladly let freedom go when unfreedom, the "sweet _service_ of love," suits _you_; and you take up your freedom again on occasion when it begins to suit _you_ better,--that is, supposing, which is not the point here, that you are not afraid of such a Repeal of the Union for other (perhaps religious) reasons.

Why will you not take courage now to really make _yourselves_ the central point and the main thing altogether? Why grasp in the air at freedom, your dream? Are you your dream? Do not begin by inquiring of your dreams, your notions, your thoughts, for that is all "hollow theory." Ask yourselves and ask after yourselves--that is _practical_ and you know you want very much to be "practical." But there the one hearkens what his God (of course what he thinks of at the name God is his God) may be going to say to it, and another what his moral feelings, his conscience, his feeling of duty, may determine about it, and a third calculates what folks will think of it,--and, when each has thus asked his Lord God (folks are a Lord God just as good as, nay, even more compact than, the other-worldly and imaginary one: _vox populi, vox dei_), then he accommodates himself to his Lord's will and listens no more at all for what _he himself_ would like to say and decide.

Therefore turn to yourselves rather than to your gods or idols. Bring out from yourselves what is in you, bring it to the light, bring yourselves to revelation.

How one acts only from himself, and asks after nothing further, the Christians have realized in the notion "God." He acts "as it pleases him." And foolish man, who could do just so, is to act as it "pleases God" instead.--If it is said that even God proceeds according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my whole nature, _i. e._ in myself.

But one needs only admonish you of yourselves to bring you to despair at once. "What am I?" each of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding star! How am I to obtain a correct answer, if, without regard to God's commandments or to the duties which morality prescribes, without regard to the voice of reason, which in the course of history, after bitter experiences, has exalted the best and most reasonable thing into law, I simply appeal to myself? My passion would advise me to do the most senseless thing possible.--Thus each deems himself the--_devil_; for, if, so far as he is unconcerned about religion, etc., he only deemed himself a beast, he would easily find that the beast, which does follow only _its_ impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the "most senseless" things, but takes very correct steps. But the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are--terrified at _ourselves_ in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of course it comes into your head at once that your calling requires you to do the "good," the moral, the right. Now, if you ask _yourselves_ what is to be done, how can the right voice sound forth from you, the voice which points the way of the good, the right, the true, etc.? What concord have God and Belial?

But what would you think if one answered you by saying: "That one is to listen to God, conscience, duties, laws, etc., is flim-flam with which people have stuffed your head and heart and made you crazy"? And if he asked you how it is that you know so surely that the voice of nature is a seducer? And if he even demanded of you to turn the thing about and actually to deem the voice of God and conscience to be the devil's work? There are such graceless men; how will you settle them? You cannot appeal to your parsons, parents, and good men, for precisely these are designated by them as your _seducers_, as the true seducers and corrupters of youth, who busily sow broadcast the tares of self-contempt and reverence to God, who fill young hearts with mud and young heads with stupidity.

But now those people go on and ask: For whose sake do you care about God's and the other commandments? You surely do not suppose that this is done merely out of complaisance toward God? No, you are doing it--_for your sake_ again.--Here too, therefore, _you_ are the main thing, and each must say to himself, _I_ am everything to myself and I do everything _on my account_. If it ever became clear to you that God, the commandments, etc., only harm you, that they reduce and ruin _you_, to a certainty you would throw them from you just as the Christians once condemned Apollo or Minerva or heathen morality. They did indeed put in the place of these Christ and afterward Mary, as well as a Christian morality; but they did this for the sake of _their_ souls' welfare too, therefore out of egoism or ownness.

And it was by this egoism, this ownness, that they got _rid_ of the old world of gods and became _free_ from it. Ownness _created_ a new _freedom_; for ownness is the creator of everything, as genius (a definite ownness), which is always originality, has for a long time already been looked upon as the creator of new productions that have a place in the history of the world.

If your efforts are ever to make "freedom" the issue, then exhaust freedom's demands. Who is it that is to become free? You, I, we. Free from what? From everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, therefore, am the kernel that is to be delivered from all wrappings and--freed from all cramping shells. What is left when I have been freed from everything that is not I? Only I; nothing but I. But freedom has nothing to offer to this I himself. As to what is now to happen further after I have become free, freedom is silent,--as our governments, when the prisoner's time is up, merely let him go, thrusting him out into abandonment.

Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all,--why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end? Am I not worth more than freedom? Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the first? Even unfree, even laid in a thousand fetters, I yet am; and I am not, like freedom, extant only in the future and in hopes, but even as the most abject of slaves I am--present.

Think that over well, and decide whether you will place on your banner the dream of "freedom" or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness." "Freedom" awakens your _rage_ against everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you to _joy_ over yourselves, to self-enjoyment; "freedom" is and remains a _longing_, a romantic plaint, a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity; "ownness" is a reality, which _of itself_ removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way hinders you. What does not disturb you, you will not want to renounce; and, if it begins to disturb you, why, you know that "you must obey _yourselves_ rather than men!"

Freedom teaches only: Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves, of everything burdensome; it does not teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid! so rings its rallying-cry, and you, eagerly following its call, get rid even of yourselves, "deny yourselves." But ownness calls you back to yourselves, it says "Come to yourself!" Under the ægis of freedom you get rid of many kinds of things, but something new pinches you again: "you are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[109] As _own_ you are _really rid of everything_, and what clings to you _you have accepted_; it is your choice and your pleasure. The _own_ man is the _freeborn_, the man free to begin with; the free man, on the contrary, is only the _eleutheromaniac_, the dreamer and enthusiast.

The former is _originally free_, because he recognizes nothing but himself; he does not need to free himself first, because at the start he rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, rates nothing higher, because, in short, he starts from himself and "comes to himself." Constrained by childish respect, he is nevertheless already working at "freeing" himself from this constraint. Ownness works in the little egoist, and procures him the desired--freedom.

Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have made you believe you are not egoists but are _called_ to be idealists ("good men"). Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which does precisely deprive you of yourselves, in "self-denial"; but seek for _yourselves_, become egoists, become each of you an _almighty ego_. Or, more clearly: Just recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you really are, and let go your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania to be something else than you are. Hypocritical I call them because you have yet remained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleeping, self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heautontimorumenoses, you self-tormentors. Never yet has a religion been able to dispense with "promises," whether they referred us to the other world or to this ("long life," etc.); for man is _mercenary_ and does nothing "gratis." But how about that "doing the good for the good's sake without prospect of reward? As if here too the pay was not contained in the satisfaction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our egoism and--exploits it; calculated for our _desires_, it stifles many others for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon of _cheated_ egoism, where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my desires, _e. g._ the impulse toward blessedness. Religion promises me the--"supreme good"; to gain this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake them.--All your doings are _unconfessed_, secret, covert, and concealed egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism,--therefore they are _not egoism_, but thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists, and you are not, since you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word "egoist"--loathing and contempt.

I secure my freedom with regard to the world in the degree that I make the world my own, _i. e._ "gain it and take possession of it" for myself, by whatever might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of categorical demand, yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc.; for the means that I use for it are determined by what I am. If I am weak, I have only weak means, like the aforesaid, which yet are good enough for a considerable part of the world. Besides, cheating, hypocrisy, lying, look worse than they are. Who has not cheated the police, the law? who has not quickly taken on an air of honorable loyalty before the sheriff's officer who meets him, in order to conceal an illegality that may have been committed, etc.? He who has not done it has simply let violence be done to him; he was a _weakling_ from--conscience. I know that my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my will on another object, be this other something without will, like a rock, or something with will, like a government, an individual, etc.; I deny my ownness when--in presence of another--I give myself up, _i. e._ give way, desist, submit; therefore by _loyalty_, _submission_. For it is one thing when I give up my previous course because it does not lead to the goal, and therefore turn out of a wrong road; it is another when I yield myself a prisoner. I get around a rock that stands in my way, till I have powder enough to blast it; I get around the laws of a people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be "sacred" to me, an Astarte? If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! You inapprehensible one, you shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the might for apprehension and call you my _own_; I do not give myself up before you, but only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with my inability to touch you, I yet remember it against you.

Vigorous men have always done so. When the "loyal" had exalted an unsubdued power to be their master and had adored it, when they had demanded adoration from all, then there came some such son of nature who would not loyally submit, and drove the adored power from its inaccessible Olympus. He cried his "Stand still" to the rolling sun, and made the earth go round; the loyal had to make the best of it; he laid his axe to the sacred oaks, and the "loyal" were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him; he threw the pope off Peter's chair, and the "loyal" had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the divine-right business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, and at last are silent.

My freedom becomes complete only when it is my--_might_; but by this I cease to be a merely free man, and become an own man. Why is the freedom of the peoples a "hollow word"? Because the peoples have no might! With a breath of the living ego I blow peoples over, be it the breath of a Nero, a Chinese emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that the G.....[110] legislatures pine in vain for freedom, and are lectured for it by the cabinet ministers? Because they are not of the "mighty"! Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right." You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might "stands above the law." How does this prospect taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? But you have no taste!

The cry for "freedom" rings loudly all around. But is it felt and known what a donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially--self-liberation,--_i. e._, that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Christian, permission to speak what he likes: he will yet utter only narrow-minded stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob you of the freedom of speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear something whereby those "certain" persons would lose their credit.

If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are simply knaves who give more than they have. For then they give you nothing of their own, but stolen wares: they give you your own freedom, the freedom that you must take for yourselves; and they _give_ it to you only that you may not take it and call the thieves and cheats to an account to boot. In their slyness they know well that given (chartered) freedom is no freedom, since only the freedom one _takes_ for himself, therefore the egoist's freedom, rides with full sails. Donated freedom strikes its sails as soon as there comes a storm--or calm; it requires always a--gentle and moderate breeze.

Here lies the difference between self-liberation and emancipation (manumission, setting free). Those who to-day "stand in the opposition" are thirsting and screaming to be "set free." The princes are to "declare their peoples of age," _i. e._ emancipate them! Behave as if you were of age, and you are so without any declaration of majority; if you do not behave accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never be of age even by a declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their tyrants, and, when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his father. If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them their majority, they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a son who will not come of age, and keeps the house to himself; it serves the noodle right.

The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman, a _libertinus_, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing bettered in themselves, but only relieved as Jews, although he who relieves their condition is certainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter cannot do this without inconsistency. But, emancipated or not emancipated, Jew remains Jew; he who is not self-freed is merely an--emancipated man. The Protestant State can certainly set free (emancipate) the Catholics; but, because they do not make themselves free, they remain simply--Catholics.

Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends of freedom are exasperated against selfishness because in their religious striving after freedom they cannot--free themselves from that sublime thing, "self-renunciation." The liberal's anger is directed against egoism, for the egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake: the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no thing a value of its own, an "absolute" value, but to seek its value in me. One often hears that pot-boiling study which is so common counted among the most repulsive traits of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most shameful desecration of science; but what is science for but to be consumed? If one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist's power is a limited power; but the egoistic element in it, and the desecration of science, only a possessed man can blame.

Because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an ego,[111] thought of him only as a dependent, and was properly nothing but a _social theory_,--a doctrine of living together, and that of man with God as well as of man with man,--therefore in it everything "own" must fall into most woeful disrepute: selfishness, self-will, ownness, self-love, etc. The Christian way of looking at things has on all sides gradually re-stamped honorable words into dishonorable; why should they not be brought into honor again? So _Schimpf_ (contumely) is in its old sense equivalent to jest, but for Christian seriousness pastime became a dishonor,[112] for that seriousness cannot take a joke; _frech_ (impudent) formerly meant only bold, brave; _Frevel_ (wanton outrage) was only daring. It is well known how askance the word "reason" was looked at for a long time.

Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint, and the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in terror from everything unchristian as from something incomplete or evil. Therefore "selfishness" is in a bad way too.

Selfishness,[113] in the Christian sense, means something like this: I look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But is sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, my _own_ determination, when I follow that? I am _my own_ only when I am master of myself, instead of being mastered either by sensuality or by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State, Church, etc.); what is of use to me, this self-owned or self-appertaining one, _my selfishness_ pursues.