"Nonsense! Why, you yourself, who harbor such thoughts as stand in your book, can unfortunately bring them to publicity only through a lucky chance or by stealth; nevertheless you will inveigh against one's pressing and importuning his own State till it gives the refused permission to print?" But an author thus addressed would perhaps--for the impudence of such people goes far--give the following reply: "Consider well what you say! What then do I do to procure myself liberty of the press for my book? Do I ask for permission, or do I not rather, without any question of legality, seek a favorable occasion and grasp it in complete recklessness of the State and its wishes? I--the terrifying word must be uttered--I cheat the State. You unconsciously do the same.

From your tribunes you talk it into the idea that it must give up its sanct.i.ty and inviolability, it must lay itself bare to the attacks of writers, without needing on that account to fear danger. But you are imposing on it; for its existence is done for as soon as it loses its unapproachableness. To _you_ indeed it might well accord liberty of writing, as England has done; you are _believers in the State_ and incapable of writing against the State, however much you would like to reform it and 'remedy its defects.' But what if opponents of the State availed themselves of free utterance, and stormed out against Church, State, morals, and everything 'sacred' with inexorable reasons? You would then be the first, in terrible agonies, to call into life the _September laws_. Too late would you then rue the stupidity that earlier made you so ready to fool and palaver into compliance the State, or the government of the State.--But I prove by my act only two things. This for one, that the liberty of the press is always bound to 'favorable opportunities,' and accordingly will never be an absolute liberty; but secondly this, that he who would enjoy it must seek out and, if possible, create the favorable opportunity, availing himself of his _own advantage_ against the State, and counting himself and his will more than the State and every 'superior' power. Not in the State, but only against it, can the liberty of the press be carried through; if it is to be established, it is to be obtained not as the consequence of a _pet.i.tion_ but as the work of an _insurrection_. Every pet.i.tion and every motion for liberty of the press is already an insurrection, be it conscious or unconscious: a thing which Philistine halfness alone will not and cannot confess to itself until, with a shrinking shudder, it shall see it clearly and irrefutably by the outcome. For the requested liberty of the press has indeed a friendly and well-meaning face at the beginning, as it is not in the least minded ever to let the 'insolence of the press' come into vogue; but little by little its heart grows more hardened, and the inference flatters its way in that really a liberty is not a liberty if it stands in the _service_ of the State, of morals, or of the law. A liberty indeed from the coercion of censorship, it is yet not a liberty from the coercion of law. The press, once seized by the l.u.s.t for liberty, always wants to grow freer, till at last the writer says to himself, Really I am not wholly free till I ask about nothing; and writing is free only when it is my _own_, dictated to me by no power or authority, by no faith, no dread; the press must not be free--that is too little--it must be _mine_:--_ownness of the press_ or _property in the press_, that is what I will take.

"Why, liberty of the press is only _permission of the press_, and the State never will or can voluntarily permit me to grind it to nothingness by the press.

"Let us now, in conclusion, bettering the above language, which is still vague, owing to the phrase 'liberty of the press,' rather put it thus: _Liberty of the press_, the liberals' loud demand, is a.s.suredly possible in the State; yes, it is possible only _in_ the State, because it is a _permission_, and consequently the permitter (the State) must not be lacking. But as permission it has its limit in this very State, which surely should not in reason permit more than is compatible with itself and its welfare: the State fixes for it this limit as the _law_ of its existence and of its extension. That one State brooks more than another is only a quant.i.tative distinction, which alone, nevertheless, lies at the heart of the political liberals: they want in Germany, _e. g._, only a '_more extended, broader_ accordance of free utterance.' The liberty of the press which is sought for is an affair of the _people's_, and before the people (the State) possesses it I may make no use of it. From the standpoint of property in the press, the situation is different. Let my people, if they will, go without liberty of the press, I will manage to print by force or ruse; I get my permission to print only from--_myself_ and my strength.

"If the press is _my own_, I as little need a permission of the State for employing it as I seek that permission in order to blow my nose. The press is my _property_ from the moment when nothing is more to me than myself; for from this moment State, Church, people, society, and the like, cease, because they have to thank for their existence only the disrespect that I have for myself, and with the vanishing of this undervaluation they themselves are extinguished: they exist only when they exist _above me_, exist only as _powers and power-holders_. Or can you imagine a State whose citizens one and all think nothing of it? it would be as certainly a dream, an existence in seeming, as 'united Germany.'

"The press is my own as soon as I myself am my own, a self-owned man: to the egoist belongs the world, because he belongs to no power of the world.

"With this my press might still be very _unfree_, as _e. g._, at this moment. But the world is large, and one helps himself as well as he can.

If I were willing to abate from the _property_ of my press, I could easily attain the point where I might everywhere have as much printed as my fingers produced. But, as I want to a.s.sert my property, I must necessarily swindle my enemies. 'Would you not accept their permission if it were given you?' Certainly, with joy; for their permission would be to me a proof that I had fooled them and started them on the road to ruin. I am not concerned for their permission, but so much the more for their folly and their overthrow. I do not sue for their permission as if I flattered myself (like the political liberals) that we both, they and I, could make out peaceably alongside and with each other, yes, probably raise and prop each other; but I sue for it in order to make them bleed to death by it, that the permitters themselves may cease at last. I act as a conscious enemy, overreaching them and _utilizing_ their heedlessness.

"The press is _mine_ when I recognize outside myself no _judge_ whatever over its utilization, _i. e._ when my writing is no longer determined by morality or religion or respect for the State laws or the like, but by me and my egoism!"--

Now, what have you to reply to him who gives you so impudent an answer?--We shall perhaps put the question most strikingly by phrasing it as follows: Whose is the press, the people's (State's) or mine? The politicals on their side intend nothing further than to liberate the press from personal and arbitrary interferences of the possessors of power, without thinking of the point that to be really open for everybody it would also have to be free from the laws, _i. e._ from the people's (State's) will. They want to make a "people's affair" of it.

But, having become the people's property, it is still far from being mine; rather, it retains for me the subordinate significance of a _permission_. The people plays judge over my thoughts; it has the right of calling me to account for them, or, I am responsible to it for them.

Jurors, when their fixed ideas are attacked, have just as hard heads and hearts as the stiffest despots and their servile officials.

In the "_Liberale Bestrebungen_"[196] E. Bauer a.s.serts that liberty of the press is impossible in the absolutist and the const.i.tutional State, whereas in the "free State" it finds its place. "Here," the statement is, "it is recognized that the individual, because he is no longer an individual but a member of a true and rational generality, has the right to utter his mind." So not the individual, but the "member," has liberty of the press. But, if for the purpose of liberty of the press the individual must first give proof of himself regarding his belief in the generality, the people; if he does not have this liberty _through might of his own_,--then it is a _people's liberty_, a liberty that he is invested with for the sake of his faith, his "membership." The reverse is the case: it is precisely as an individual that every one has open to him the liberty to utter his mind. But he has not the "right": that liberty is a.s.suredly not his "sacred right." He has only the _might_; but the might alone makes him owner. I need no concession for the liberty of the press, do not need the people's consent to it, do not need the "right" to it, nor any "justification." The liberty of the press too, like every liberty, I must "take"; the people, "as being the sole judge," cannot _give_ it to me. It can put up with the liberty that I take, or defend itself against it; give, bestow, grant it it cannot. I exercise it _despite_ the people, purely as an individual; _i. e._ I get it by fighting the people, my--enemy, and obtain it only when I really get it by such fighting, _i. e. take_ it. But I take it because it is my property.

Sander, against whom E. Bauer writes, lays claim (page 99) to the liberty of the press "as the right and the liberty of the _citizen in the State_." What else does E. Bauer do? To him also it is only a right of the free _citizen_.

The liberty of the press is also demanded under the name of a "general human right." Against this the objection was well-founded that not every man knew how to use it rightly, for not every individual was truly man.

Never did a government refuse it to _Man_ as such; but _Man_ writes nothing, for the reason that he is a ghost. It always refused it to _individuals_ only, and gave it to others, _e. g._ its organs. If then one would have it for all, one must a.s.sert outright that it is due to the individual, me, not to man or to the individual so far as he is man.

Besides, another than a man (_e. g._ a beast) can make no use of it. The French government, _e. g._, does not dispute the liberty of the press as a right of man, but demands from the individual a security for his really being man; for it a.s.signs liberty of the press not to the individual, but to man.

Under the exact pretence that it was _not human_, what was mine was taken from me! what was human was left to me undiminished.

Liberty of the press can bring about only a _responsible_ press; the _irresponsible_ proceeds solely from property in the press.

For intercourse with men an express law (conformity to which one may venture at times sinfully to forget, but the absolute value of which one at no time ventures to deny) is placed foremost among all who live religiously: this is the law--of _love_, to which not even those who seem to fight against its principle, and who hate its name, have as yet become untrue; for they also still have love, yes, they love with a deeper and more sublimated love, they love "man and mankind."

If we formulate the sense of this law, it will be about as follows: Every man must have a something that is more to him than himself. You are to put your "private interest" in the background when it is a question of the welfare of others, the weal of the fatherland, of society, the common weal, the weal of mankind, the good cause, and the like! Fatherland, society, mankind, etc., must be more to you than yourself, and as against their interest your "private interest" must stand back; for you must not be an--egoist.

Love is a far-reaching religious demand, which is not, as might be supposed, limited to love to G.o.d and man, but stands foremost in every regard. Whatever we do, think, will, the ground of it is always to be love. Thus we may indeed judge, but only "with love." The Bible may a.s.suredly be criticised, and that very thoroughly, but the critic must before all things _love_ it and see in it the sacred book. Is this anything else than to say he must not criticise it to death, he must leave it standing, and that as a sacred thing that cannot be upset?--In our criticism on men too, love must remain the unchanged key-note.

Certainly judgments that hatred inspires are not at all our _own_ judgments, but judgments of the hatred that rules us, "rancorous judgments." But are judgments that love inspires in us any more our _own_? They are judgments of the love that rules us, they are "loving, lenient" judgments, they are not our _own_, and accordingly not real judgments at all. He who burns with love for justice cries out, _fiat just.i.tia, pereat mundus_! He can doubtless ask and investigate what justice properly is or demands, and _in what_ it consists, but not _whether_ it is anything.

It is very true, "He who abides in love abides in G.o.d, and G.o.d in him."

(I John 4. 16.) G.o.d abides in him, he does not get rid of G.o.d, does not become G.o.dless; and he abides in G.o.d, does not come to himself and into his own home, abides in love to G.o.d and does not become loveless.

"G.o.d is love! All times and all races recognize in this word the central point of Christianity." G.o.d, who is love, is an officious G.o.d: he cannot leave the world in peace, but wants to make it _blest_. "G.o.d became man to make men divine."[197] He has his hand in the game everywhere, and nothing happens without it; everywhere he has his "best purposes," his "incomprehensible plans and decrees." Reason, which he himself is, is to be forwarded and realized in the whole world. His fatherly care deprives us of all independence. We can do nothing sensible without its being said, G.o.d did that! and can bring upon ourselves no misfortune without hearing, G.o.d ordained that; we have nothing that we have not from him, he "gave" everything. But, as G.o.d does, so does Man. G.o.d wants perforce to make the world _blest_, and Man wants to make it _happy_, to make all men happy. Hence every "man" wants to awaken in all men the reason which he supposes his own self to have: everything is to be rational throughout. G.o.d torments himself with the devil, and the philosopher does it with unreason and the accidental. G.o.d lets no being go _its own_ gait, and Man likewise wants to make us walk only in human wise.

But whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man, under the phlegmatic legal t.i.tle of measures against the "un-man." He finds it praiseworthy and indispensable to exercise pitilessness in the harshest measure; for love to the spook or generality commands him to hate him who is not ghostly, _i. e._ the egoist or individual; such is the meaning of the renowned love-phenomenon that is called "justice."

The criminally arraigned man can expect no forbearance, and no one spreads a friendly veil over his unhappy nakedness. Without emotion the stern judge tears the last rags of excuse from the body of the poor accused; without compa.s.sion the jailer drags him into his damp abode; without placability, when the time of punishment has expired, he thrusts the branded man again among men, his good, Christian, loyal brethren!

who contemptuously spit on him. Yes, without grace a criminal "deserving of death" is led to the scaffold, and before the eyes of a jubilating crowd the appeased moral law celebrates its sublime--revenge. For only one can live, the moral law or the criminal. Where criminals live unpunished, the moral law has fallen; and, where this prevails, those must go down. Their enmity is indestructible.

The Christian age is precisely that of _mercy, love_, solicitude to have men receive what is due them, yes, to bring them to fulfil their human (divine) calling. Therefore the principle has been put foremost for intercourse, that this and that is man's essence and consequently his calling, to which either G.o.d has called him or (according to the concepts of to-day) his being man (the species) calls him. Hence the zeal for conversion. That the Communists and the humane expect from man more than the Christians do does not change the standpoint in the least.

Man shall get what is human! If it was enough for the pious that what was divine became his part, the humane demand that he be not curtailed of what is human. Both set themselves against what is egoistic. Of course; for what is egoistic cannot be accorded to him or vested in him (a fief); he must procure it for himself. Love imparts the former, the latter can be given to me by myself alone.

Intercourse hitherto has rested on love, _regardful_ behavior, doing for each other. As one owed it to himself to make himself blessed, or owed himself the bliss of taking up into himself the supreme essence and bringing it to a _verite_ (a truth and reality), so one owed it to _others_ to help them realize their essence and their calling: in both cases one owed it to the essence of man to contribute to its realization.

But one owes it neither to himself to make anything out of himself, nor to others to make anything out of them; for one owes nothing to his essence and that of others. Intercourse resting on essence is an intercourse with the spook, not with anything real. If I hold intercourse with the supreme essence, I am not holding intercourse with myself, and, if I hold intercourse with the essence of man, I am not holding intercourse with men.

The natural man's love becomes through culture a _commandment_. But as commandment it belongs to _Man_ as such, not to _me_; it is my _essence_,[198] about which much ado[199] is made, not my property.

_Man_, _i. e._ humanity, presents that demand to me; love is _demanded_, it is my _duty_. Instead, therefore, of being really won for _me_, it has been won for the generality, _Man_, as his property or peculiarity: "it becomes man, _i. e._ every man, to love; love is the duty and calling of man," etc.

Consequently I must again vindicate love for _myself_, and deliver it out of the power of Man with the great M.

What was originally _mine_, but _accidentally_ mine, instinctively mine, I was invested with as the property of Man; I became feoffee in loving, I became the retainer of mankind, only a specimen of this species, and acted, loving, not as _I_, but as _man_, as a specimen of man, _i. e._ humanly. The whole condition of civilization is the _feudal system_, the property being Man's or mankind's, not _mine_. A monstrous feudal State was founded, the individual robbed of everything, everything left to "man." The individual had to appear at last as a "sinner through and through."

Am I perchance to have no lively interest in the person of another, are _his_ joy and _his_ weal not to lie at my heart, is the enjoyment that I furnish him not to be more to me than other enjoyments of my own? On the contrary, I can with joy sacrifice to him numberless enjoyments, I can deny myself numberless things for the enhancement of _his_ pleasure, and I can hazard for him what without him was the dearest to me, my life, my welfare, my freedom. Why, it const.i.tutes my pleasure and my happiness to refresh myself with his happiness and his pleasure. But _myself, my own self_, I do not sacrifice to him, but remain an egoist and--enjoy him.

If I sacrifice to him everything that but for my love to him I should keep, that is very simple, and even more usual in life than it seems to be; but it proves nothing further than that this one pa.s.sion is more powerful in me than all the rest. Christianity too teaches us to sacrifice all other pa.s.sions to this. But, if to one pa.s.sion I sacrifice others, I do not on that account go so far as to sacrifice _myself_, nor sacrifice anything of that whereby I truly am myself; I do not sacrifice my peculiar value, my _ownness_. Where this bad case occurs, love cuts no better figure than any other pa.s.sion that I obey blindly. The ambitious man, who is carried away by ambition and remains deaf to every warning that a calm moment begets in him, has let this pa.s.sion grow up into a despot against whom he abandons all power of dissolution: he has given up himself, because he cannot _dissolve_ himself, and consequently cannot absolve himself from the pa.s.sion: he is possessed.

I love men too,--not merely individuals, but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes _me_ happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no "commandment of love." I have a _fellow-feeling_ with every feeling being, and their torment torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them, not torture them. _Per contra_, the high-souled, virtuous Philistine prince Rudolph in "The Mysteries of Paris," because the wicked provoke his "indignation," plans their torture. That fellow-feeling proves only that the feeling of those who feel is mine too, my property; in opposition to which the pitiless dealing of the "righteous" man (_e. g._ against notary Ferrand) is like the unfeelingness of that robber who cut off or stretched his prisoners'

legs to the measure of his bedstead: Rudolph's bedstead, which he cuts men to fit, is the concept of the "good." The feeling for right, virtue, etc., makes people hard-hearted and intolerant. Rudolph does not feel like the notary, but the reverse; he feels that "it serves the rascal right"; that is no fellow-feeling.

You love man, therefore you torture the individual man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men) is the tormenting of men.

If I see the loved one suffer, I suffer with him, and I know no rest till I have tried everything to comfort and cheer him; if I see him glad, I too become glad over his joy. From this it does not follow that suffering or joy is caused in me by the same thing that brings out this effect in him, as is sufficiently proved by every bodily pain which I do not feel as he does; his tooth pains him, but his pain pains me.

But, because _I_ cannot bear the troubled crease on the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore for my sake, I kiss it away. If I did not love this person, he might go right on making creases, they would not trouble me; I am only driving away _my_ trouble.

How now, has anybody or anything, whom and which I do not love, a _right_ to be loved by me? Is my love first, or is his right first?

Parents, kinsfolk, fatherland, nation, native town, etc., finally fellow-men in general ("brothers, fraternity"), a.s.sert that they have a right to my love, and lay claim to it without further ceremony. They look upon it as _their property_, and upon me, if I do not respect this, as a robber who takes from them what pertains to them and is theirs. I _should_ love. If love is a commandment and law, then I must be educated into it, cultivated up to it, and, if I trespa.s.s against it, punished.

Hence people will exercise as strong a "moral influence" as possible on me to bring me to love. And there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce men to love as one can to other pa.s.sions,--_e. g._, if you like, to hate. Hate runs through whole races merely because the ancestors of the one belonged to the Guelphs, those of the other to the Ghibellines.

But love is not a commandment, but, like each of my feelings, _my property_. _Acquire_, _i. e._ purchase, my property, and then I will make it over to you. A church, a nation, a fatherland, a family, etc., that does not know how to acquire my love, I need not love; and I fix the purchase price of my love quite at my pleasure.

Selfish love is far distant from unselfish, mystical, or romantic love.

One can love everything possible, not merely men, but an "object" in general (wine, one's fatherland, etc.). Love becomes blind and crazy by a _must_ taking it out of my power (infatuation), romantic by a _should_ entering into it, _i. e._ the "object's" becoming sacred for me, or my becoming bound to it by duty, conscience, oath. Now the object no longer exists for me, but I for it.

Love is a possessedness, not as my feeling--as such I rather keep it in my possession as property--, but through the alienness of the object.

For religious love consists in the commandment to love in the beloved a "holy one," or to adhere to a holy one; for unselfish love there are objects _absolutely lovable_ for which my heart is to beat,--_e. g._ fellow-men, or my wedded mate, kinsfolk, etc. Holy love loves the holy in the beloved, and therefore exerts itself also to make of the beloved more and more a holy one (_e. g._ a "man").

The beloved is an object that _should_ be loved by me. He is not an object of my love on account of, because of, or by, my loving him, but is an object of love in and of himself. Not I make him an object of love, but he is such to begin with; for it is here irrelevant that he has become so by my choice, if so it be (as with a _fiancee_, a spouse, and the like), since even so he has in any case, as the person once chosen, obtained a "right of his own to my love," and I, because I have loved him, am under obligation to love him forever. He is therefore not an object of _my_ love, but of love in general: an object that _should_ be loved. Love appertains to him, is due to him, or is his _right_, while I am under _obligation_ to love him. My love, _i. e._ the toll of love that I pay him, is in truth _his_ love, which he only collects from me as toll.

Every love to which there clings but the smallest speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that he _owes_ the object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously.

Family love, _e. g._, as it is usually understood as "piety," is a religious love; love of fatherland, preached as "patriotism," likewise.

All our romantic love moves in the same pattern: everywhere the hypocrisy, or rather self-deception, of an "unselfish love," an interest in the object for the object's sake, not for my sake and mine alone.

Religious or romantic love is distinguished from sensual love by the difference of the object indeed, but not by the dependence of the relation to it. In the latter regard both are possessedness; but in the former the one object is profane, the other sacred. The dominion of the object over me is the same in both cases, only that it is one time a sensuous one, the other time a spiritual (ghostly) one. My love is my own only when it consists altogether in a selfish and egoistic interest, and when consequently the object of my love is really _my_ object or my property. I owe my property nothing, and have no duty to it, as little as I might have a duty to my eye; if nevertheless I guard it with the greatest care, I do so on my account.

Antiquity lacked love as little as do Christian times; the G.o.d of love is older than the G.o.d of Love. But the mystical possessedness belongs to the moderns.