Part 22

Our societies and States _are_ without our _making_ them, are united without our uniting, are predestined and established, or have an independent standing[161] of their own, are the indissolubly established against us egoists. The fight of the world to-day is, as it is said, directed against the "established." Yet people are wont to misunderstand this as if it were only that what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better, established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment itself, _i. e._ the _State_, not a particular State, not any such thing as the mere condition of the State at the time; it is not another State (such as a "people's State") that men aim at, but their _union_, uniting, this ever-fluid uniting of everything standing.--A State exists even without my co-operation: I am born in it, brought up in it, under obligations to it, and must "do it homage."[162] It takes me up into its "favor,"[163] and I live by its "grace." Thus the independent establishment of the State founds my lack of independence; its condition as a "natural growth," its organism, demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it. That _it_ may be able to unfold in natural growth, it applies to me the shears of "civilization"; it gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me _e. g._ to respect the laws, to refrain from injury to State property (_i. e._ private property), to reverence divine and earthly highness, etc.; in short, it teaches me to be--_unpunishable_, "sacrificing" my ownness to "sacredness" (everything possible is sacred, _e. g._ property, others' life, etc.). In this consists the sort of civilization and culture that the State is able to give me: it brings me up to be a "serviceable instrument," a "serviceable member of society."

This every State must do, the people's State as well as the absolute or constitutional one. It must do so as long as we rest in the error that it is an _I_, as which it then applies to itself the name of a "moral, mystical, or political person." I, who really am I, must pull off this lion-skin of the I from the stalking thistle-eater. What manifold robbery have I not put up with in the history of the world! There I let sun, moon, and stars, cats and crocodiles, receive the honor of ranking as I; there Jehovah, Allah, and Our Father came and were invested with the I; there families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually mankind, came and were honored as I's; there the Church, the State, came with the pretension to be I,--and I gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then there was always a real I too that joined the company and affirmed in my face that it was not my _you_ but my real _I_. Why, _the_ Son of Man _par excellence_ had done the like; why should not a son of man do it too? So I saw my I always above me and outside me, and could never really come to myself.

I never believed in myself; I never believed in my present, I saw myself only in the future. The boy believes he will be a proper I, a proper fellow, only when he has become a man; the man thinks, only in the other world will he be something proper. And, to enter more closely upon reality at once, even the best are to-day still persuading each other that one must have received into himself the State, his people, mankind, and what not, in order to be a real I, a "free burgher," a "citizen," a "free or true man"; they too see the truth and reality of me in the reception of an alien I and devotion to it. And what sort of an I? An I that is neither an I nor a you, a _fancied_ I, a spook.

While in the Middle Ages the church could well brook many States living united in it, the States learned after the Reformation, especially after the Thirty Years' War, to tolerate many churches (confessions) gathering under one crown. But all States are religious and, as the case may be, "Christian States," and make it their task to force the intractable, the "egoists," under the bond of the unnatural, _i. e._ Christianize them. All arrangements of the Christian State have the object of _Christianizing the people_. Thus the court has the object of forcing people to justice, the school that of forcing them to mental culture,--in short, the object of protecting those who act Christianly against those who act unchristianly, of bringing Christian action to _dominion_, of making it _powerful_. Among these means of force the State counted the _Church_, too, it demanded a--particular religion from everybody. Dupin said lately against the clergy, "Instruction and education belong to the State."

Certainly everything that regards the principle of morality is a State affair. Hence it is that the Chinese State meddles so much in family concerns, and one is nothing there if one is not first of all a good child to his parents. Family concerns are altogether State concerns with us too, only that our State--puts confidence in the families without painful oversight; it holds the family bound by the marriage tie, and this tie cannot be broken without it.

But that the State makes me responsible for my principles, and demands certain ones from me, might make me ask, what concern has it with the "wheel in my head" (principle)? Very much, for the State is the--_ruling principle_. It is supposed that in divorce matters, in marriage law in general, the question is of the proportion of rights between Church and State. Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is to rule over man, be it called faith or ethical law (morality). The State behaves as the same ruler that the Church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality.

People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite tendencies free, and the like, by which civilized States are distinguished. Certainly some are strong enough to look with complacency on even the most unrestrained meetings, while others charge their catchpolls to go hunting for tobacco-pipes. Yet for one State as for another the play of individuals among themselves, their buzzing to and fro, their daily life, is an _incident_ which it must be content to leave to themselves because it can do nothing with this. Many, indeed, still strain out gnats and swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are "freer" in the latter, because less pestered. But _I_ am free in _no_ State. The lauded tolerance of States is simply a tolerating of the "harmless," the "not dangerous"; it is only elevation above pettymindedness, only a more estimable, grander, prouder--despotism. A certain State seemed for a while to mean to be pretty well elevated above _literary_ combats, which might be carried on with all heat; England is elevated above _popular turmoil_ and--tobacco-smoking. But woe to the literature that deals blows at the State itself, woe to the mobs that "endanger" the State. In that certain State they dream of a "free science," in England of a "free popular life."

The State does let individuals _play_ as freely as possible, only they must not be in _earnest_, must not forget _it_. Man must not carry on intercourse with man _unconcernedly_, not without "superior oversight and mediation." I must not execute all that I am able to, but only so much as the State allows; I must not turn to account _my_ thoughts, nor _my_ work, nor, in general, anything of mine.

The State always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual--to make him subject to some _generality_ or other; it lasts only so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly-marked _restriction of me_, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a State aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to the _purpose of the State_. Through the State nothing _in common_ comes to pass either, as little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of all the individual parts of a machine; it is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit, _machine work_. In the same style everything is done by the _State machine_ too; for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The State seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The State wants to make something out of man, therefore there live in it only _made_ men; every one who wants to be his own self is its opponent and is nothing. "He is nothing" means as much as, The State does not make use of him, grants him no position, no office, no trade, and the like.

E. Bauer,[164] in the "_Liberale Bestrebungen_," II, 50, is still dreaming of a "government which, proceeding out of the people, can never stand in opposition to it." He does indeed (p. 69) himself take back the word "government": "In the republic no government at all obtains, but only an executive authority. An authority which proceeds purely and alone out of the people; which has not an independent power, independent principles, independent officers, over against the people; but which has its foundation, the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the sole, supreme authority of the State, in the people. The concept government, therefore, is not at all suitable in the people's State." But the thing remains the same. That which has "proceeded, been founded, sprung from the fountain" becomes something "independent" and, like a child delivered from the womb, enters upon opposition at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would be nothing at all.

"In the free State there is no government," etc. (p. 94). This surely means that the people, when it is the _sovereign_, does not let itself be conducted by a superior authority. Is it perchance different in absolute monarchy? Is there there for the _sovereign_, perchance, a government standing over him? _Over_ the sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never stands a government: that is understood of itself. But over _me_ there will stand a government in every "State," in the absolute as well as in the republican or "free." _I_ am as badly off in one as in the other.

The republic is nothing whatever but--absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing to be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their master the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Here, then, the _parties_ at least are already free,--_videlicet_, the office-holders' party (so-called people's party). The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic, because it is the _State_ in incipient _dissolution_.

E. Bauer denies (p. 56) that the people is a "personality" in the constitutional State; _per contra_, then, in the republic? Well, in the constitutional State the people is--a _party_, and a party is surely a "personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a "political" (p. 76) moral person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook.

Further, E. Bauer goes on (p. 69): "guardianship is the characteristic of a government." Truly, still more that of a people and "people's State"; it is the characteristic of all _dominion_. A people's State, which "unites in itself all completeness of power," the "absolute master," cannot let me become powerful. And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's officials" "servants, instruments," because they "execute the free, rational law-will of the people!" (p. 73). He thinks (p. 74): "Only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how will a lack of subordination be allowable there? subordination to the--people's will.

"In the constitutional State it is the regent and his _disposition_ that the whole structure of government rests on in the end." (_Ibid._, p. 130.) How would that be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall _I_ not there be governed by the people's _disposition_ too, and does it make a difference _for me_ whether I see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence means as much as "religious relation," as E. Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains _for me_ the superior power, the "majesty" (for God and prince have their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in religious relations.--Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no _law_. E. Bauer's whole attempt comes to a _change of masters_. Instead of wanting to make the _people_ free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.

In the constitutional State _absolutism_ itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will wear out against each other.

E. Bauer inveighs against the determination of the regent by _birth_, by _chance_. But, when "the people" have become "the sole power in the State" (p. 132), have _we_ not then in it a master from _chance_? Why, what is the people? The people has always been only the _body_ of the government: it is many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution. And the constitution is the--prince. Princes and peoples will persist so long as both do not _col_lapse, _i. e._ fall _together_. If under one constitution there are many "peoples,"--_e. g._ in the ancient Persian monarchy and to-day,--then these "peoples" rank only as "provinces." For me the people is in any case an--accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome.

What is one to think of under the name of an "organized" people (_ibid._, p. 132)? A people "that no longer has a government," that governs itself. In which, therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a people organized by ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat.

If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the people, if it is to be a subject[165] and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a _head_, its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in the "Trio," and Proudhon declares, "_une société, pour ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut vivre_."[166]

The _vox populi_ is now always held up to