The possessedness of love lies in the alienation of the object, or in my powerlessness as against its alienness and superior power. To the egoist nothing is high enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so independent that he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would sacrifice himself to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness again.

Whether this can still be called love? If you know another word for it, go ahead and choose it; then the sweet word love may wither with the departed world; for the present I at least find none in our _Christian_ language, and hence stick to the old sound and "love" _my_ object, my--property.

Only as one of my feelings do I harbor love; but as a power above me, as a divine power (Feuerbach), as a pa.s.sion that I am not to cast off, as a religious and moral duty, I--scorn it. As my feeling it is _mine_; as a principle to which I consecrate and "vow" my soul it is a dominator and _divine_, just as hatred as a principle is _diabolical_; one not better than the other. In short, egoistic love, _i. e._, my love, is neither holy nor unholy, neither divine nor diabolical.

"A love that is limited by faith is an untrue love. The sole limitation that does not contradict the essence of love is the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. Love that scorns the rigor, the law, of intelligence, is theoretically a false love, practically a ruinous one."[200] So love is in its essence _rational_! So thinks Feuerbach; the believer, on the contrary, thinks, Love is in its essence _believing_. The one inveighs against _irrational_, the other against _unbelieving_, love. To both it can at most rank as a _splen__didum vitium_. Do not both leave love standing, even in the form of unreason and unbelief? They do not dare to say, irrational or unbelieving love is nonsense, is not love; as little as they are willing to say, irrational or unbelieving tears are not tears. But, if even irrational love, etc., must count as love, and if they are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, there follows simply this: love is not the highest thing, but reason or faith; even the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love; but love has value only when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is an illusion when Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its "self-limitation"; the believer might with the same right call belief its "self-limitation." Irrational love is neither "false" nor "ruinous"; it does its service as love.

Toward the world, especially toward men, I am to _a.s.sume a particular feeling_, and "meet them with love," with the feeling of love, from the beginning. Certainly, in this there is revealed far more free-will and self-determination than when I let myself be stormed, by way of the world, by all possible feelings, and remain exposed to the most checkered, most accidental impressions. I go to the world rather with a preconceived feeling, as if it were a prejudice and a preconceived opinion: I have prescribed to myself in advance my behavior toward it, and, despite all its temptations, feel and think about it only as I have once determined to. Against the dominion of the world I secure myself by the principle of love; for, whatever may come, I--love. The ugly--_e. g._--makes a repulsive impression on me; but, determined to love, I master this impression as I do every antipathy.

But the feeling to which I have determined and--condemned myself from the start is a _narrow_ feeling, because it is a predestined one, of which I myself am not able to get clear or to declare myself clear.

Because preconceived, it is a _prejudice_. _I_ no longer show myself in face of the world, but my love shows itself. The _world_ indeed does not rule me, but so much the more inevitably does the spirit of _love_ rule me. I have overcome the world to become a slave of this spirit.

If I first said, I love the world, I now add likewise: I do not love it, for I _annihilate_ it as I annihilate myself; _I dissolve it_. I do not limit myself to one feeling for men, but give free play to all that I am capable of. Why should I not dare speak it out in all its glaringness?

Yes, _I utilize_ the world and men! With this I can keep myself open to every impression without being torn away from myself by one of them. I can love, love with a full heart, and let the most consuming glow of pa.s.sion burn in my heart, without taking the beloved one for anything else than the _nourishment_ of my pa.s.sion, on which it ever refreshes itself anew. All my care for him applies only to the _object of my love_, only to him whom my love _requires_, only to him, the "warmly loved." How indifferent would he be to me without this--my love! I feed only my love with him, I _utilize_ him for this only: I _enjoy_ him.

Let us choose another convenient example. I see how men are fretted in dark superst.i.tion by a swarm of ghosts. If to the extent of my powers I let a bit of daylight fall in on the nocturnal spookery, is it perchance because love to you inspires this in me? Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure for _my_ thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought,--I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You will perhaps have only trouble, combat, and death from it, very few will draw joy from it.

If your weal lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in withholding the Bible from the laity, or Christian governments, which make it a sacred duty for themselves to "protect the common people from bad books."

But not only not for your sake, not even for truth's sake either do I speak out what I think. No--

I sing as the bird sings That on the bough alights; The song that from me springs Is pay that well requites.

I sing because--I am a singer. But I _use_[201] you for it because I--need[202] ears.

Where the world comes in my way--and it comes in my way everywhere--I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but--my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of _usableness_, of utility, of use. We owe _each other_ nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to _me_, and my air serves _my_ wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.

One has to be educated up to that love which founds itself on the "essence of man," or, in the ecclesiastical and moral period, lies upon us as a "commandment." In what fashion moral influence, the chief ingredient of our education, seeks to regulate the intercourse of men shall here be looked at with egoistic eyes in one example at least.

Those who educate us make it their concern early to break us of lying and to inculcate the principle that one must always tell the truth. If selfishness were made the basis for this rule, every one would easily understand how by lying he fools away that confidence in him which he hopes to awaken in others, and how correct the maxim proves, n.o.body believes a liar even when he tells the truth. Yet, at the same time, he would also feel that he had to meet with truth only him whom _he_ authorized to hear the truth. If a spy walks in disguise through the hostile camp, and is asked who he is, the askers are a.s.suredly ent.i.tled to inquire after his name, but the disguised man does not give them the right to learn the truth from him; he tells them what he likes, only not the fact. And yet morality demands, "Thou shalt not lie!" By morality those persons are vested with the right to expect the truth; but by me they are not vested with that right, and I recognize only the right that I impart. In a gathering of revolutionists the police force their way in and ask the orator for his name; everybody knows that the police have the right to do so, but they do not have it from the _revolutionist_, since he is their enemy; he tells them a false name and--cheats them with a lie. The police do not act so foolishly either as to count on their enemies' love of truth; on the contrary, they do not believe without further ceremony, but have the questioned individual "identified" if they can. Nay, the State everywhere proceeds incredulously with individuals, because in their egoism it recognizes its natural enemy; it invariably demands a "voucher," and he who cannot show vouchers falls a prey to its investigating inquisition. The State does not believe nor trust the individual, and so of itself places itself with him in the _convention of lying_; it trusts me only when it has _convinced_ itself of the truth of my statement, for which there often remains to it no other means than the oath. How clearly, too, this (the oath) proves that the State does not count on our credibility and love of truth, but on our _interest_, our selfishness: it relies on our not wanting to fall foul of G.o.d by a perjury.

Now, let one imagine a French revolutionist in the year 1788, who among friends let fall the now well-known phrase, "the world will have no rest till the last king is hanged with the guts of the last priest." The king then still had all power, and, when the utterance is betrayed by an accident, yet without its being possible to produce witnesses, confession is demanded from the accused. Is he to confess or not? If he denies, he lies and--remains unpunished; if he confesses, he is candid and--is beheaded. If truth is more than everything else to him, all right, let him die. Only a paltry poet could try to make a tragedy out of the end of his life; for what interest is there in seeing how a man succ.u.mbs from cowardice? But, if he had the courage not to be a slave of truth and sincerity, he would ask somewhat thus: Why need the judges know what I have spoken among friends? If I had _wished_ them to know, I should have said it to them as I said it to my friends. I will not have them know it. They force themselves into my confidence without my having called them to it and made them my confidants; they _will_ learn what I _will_ keep secret. Come on then, you who wish to break my will by your will, and try your arts. You can torture me by the rack, you can threaten me with h.e.l.l and eternal d.a.m.nation, you can make me so nerveless that I swear a false oath, but the truth you shall not press out of me, for I _will_ lie to you because I have given you no claim and no right to my sincerity. Let G.o.d, "who is truth," look down ever so threateningly on me, let lying come ever so hard to me, I have nevertheless the courage of a lie; and, even if I were weary of my life, even if nothing appeared to me more welcome than your executioner's sword, you nevertheless should not have the joy of finding in me a slave of truth, whom by your priestly arts you make a traitor to his _will_.

When I spoke those treasonable words, I would not have had you know anything of them; I now retain the same will, and do not let myself be frightened by the curse of the lie.

Sigismund is not a miserable caitiff because he broke his princely word, but he broke the word because he was a caitiff; he might have kept his word and would still have been a caitiff, a priest-ridden man. Luther, driven by a higher power, became unfaithful to his monastic vow: he became so for G.o.d's sake. Both broke their oath as possessed persons: Sigismund, because he wanted to appear as a _sincere_ professor of the divine _truth_, _i. e._ of the true, genuinely Catholic faith; Luther, in order to give testimony for the gospel _sincerely_ and with entire truth, with body and soul; both became perjured in order to be sincere toward the "higher truth." Only, the priests absolved the one, the other absolved himself. What else did both observe than what is contained in those apostolic words, "Thou hast not lied to men, but to G.o.d"? They lied to men, broke their oath before the world's eyes, in order not to lie to G.o.d, but to serve him. Thus they show us a way to deal with truth before men. For G.o.d's glory, and for G.o.d's sake, a--breach of oath, a lie, a prince's word broken!

How would it be, now, if we changed the thing a little and wrote, A perjury and lie for--_my sake_? Would not that be pleading for every baseness? It seems so a.s.suredly, only in this it is altogether like the "for G.o.d's sake." For was not every baseness committed for G.o.d's sake, were not all the scaffolds filled for his sake and all the _auto-da-fes_ held for his sake, was not all stupefaction introduced for his sake? and do they not to-day still for G.o.d's sake fetter the mind in tender children by religious education? Were not sacred vows broken for his sake, and do not missionaries and priests still go around every day to bring Jews, heathen, Protestants or Catholics, etc., to treason against the faith of their fathers,--for his sake? And that should be worse with the _for my sake_? What then does _on my account_ mean? There people immediately think of "filthy lucre." But he who acts from love of filthy lucre does it on his own account indeed, as there is nothing anyhow that one does not do for his own sake,--among other things, everything that is done for G.o.d's glory; yet he, for whom he seeks the lucre, is a slave of lucre, not raised above lucre; he is one who belongs to lucre, the money-bag, not to himself; he is not his own. Must not a man whom the pa.s.sion of avarice rules follow the commands of this _master_? and, if a weak good-naturedness once beguiles him, does this not appear as simply an exceptional case of precisely the same sort as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by their Lord's guidance and ensnared by the arts of the "devil"? So an avaricious man is not a self-owned man, but a servant; and he can do nothing for his own sake without at the same time doing it for his lord's sake,--precisely like the G.o.dly man.

Famous is the breach of oath which Francis II committed against Emperor Charles V. Not later, when he ripely weighed his promise, but at once, when he swore the oath, King Francis took it back in thought as well as by a secret protestation doc.u.mentarily subscribed before his councillors; he uttered a perjury aforethought. Francis did not show himself disinclined to buy his release, but the price that Charles put on it seemed to him too high and unreasonable. Even though Charles behaved himself in a sordid fashion when he sought to extort as much as possible, it was yet shabby of Francis to want to purchase his freedom for a lower ransom; and his later dealings, among which there occurs yet a second breach of his word, prove sufficiently how the huckster spirit held him enthralled and made him a shabby swindler. However, what shall we say to the reproach of perjury against him? In the first place, surely, this again: that not the perjury, but his sordidness, shamed him; that he did not deserve contempt for his perjury, but made himself guilty of perjury because he was a contemptible man. But Francis's perjury, regarded in itself, demands another judgment. One might say Francis did not respond to the confidence that Charles put in him in setting him free. But, if Charles had really favored him with confidence, he would have named to him the price that he considered the release worth, and would then have set him at liberty and expected Francis to pay the redemption-sum. Charles harbored no such trust, but only believed in Francis's impotence and credulity, which would not allow him to act against his oath; but Francis deceived only this--credulous calculation. When Charles believed he was a.s.suring himself of his enemy by an oath, right there he was freeing him from every obligation. Charles had given the king credit for a piece of stupidity, a narrow conscience, and, without confidence in Francis, counted only on Francis's stupidity, _i. e._ conscientiousness: he let him go from the Madrid prison only to hold him the more securely in the prison of conscientiousness, the great jail built about the mind of man by religion: he sent him back to France locked fast in invisible chains, what wonder if Francis sought to escape and sawed the chains apart? No man would have taken it amiss of him if he had secretly fled from Madrid, for he was in an enemy's power; but every good Christian cries out upon him, that he wanted to loose himself from G.o.d's bonds too. (It was only later that the pope absolved him from his oath.)

It is despicable to deceive a confidence that we voluntarily call forth; but it is no shame to egoism to let every one who wants to get us into his power by an oath bleed to death by the unsuccessfulness of his untrustful craft. If you have wanted to bind me, then learn that I know how to burst your bonds.

The point is whether _I_ give the confider the right to confidence. If the pursuer of my friend asks me where he has fled to, I shall surely put him on a false trail. Why does he ask precisely me, the pursued man's friend? In order not to be a false, traitorous friend, I prefer to be false to the enemy. I might certainly, in courageous conscientiousness, answer "I will not tell" (so Fichte decides the case); by that I should salve my love of truth and do for my friend as much as--nothing, for, if I do not mislead the enemy, he may accidentally take the right street, and my love of truth would have given up my friend as a prey, because it hindered me from the--courage for a lie. He who has in the truth an idol, a sacred thing, must _humble_ himself before it, must not defy its demands, not resist courageously; in short, he must renounce the _heroism of the lie_. For to the lie belongs not less courage than to the truth: a courage that young men are most apt to be defective in, who would rather confess the truth and mount the scaffold for it than confound the enemy's power by the impudence of a lie. To them the truth is "sacred," and the sacred at all times demands blind reverence, submission, and self-sacrifice. If you are not impudent, not mockers of the sacred, you are tame and its servants. Let one but lay a grain of truth in the trap for you, you peck at it to a certainty, and the fool is caught. You will not lie? Well, then, fall as sacrifices to the truth and become--martyrs! Martyrs!--for what? For yourselves, for self-ownership? No, for your G.o.ddess,--the truth. You know only two _services_, only two kinds of servants: servants of the truth and servants of the lie. Then in G.o.d's name serve the truth!

Others, again, serve the truth also; but they serve it "in moderation,"

and make, _e. g._, a great distinction between a simple lie and a lie sworn to. And yet the whole chapter of the oath coincides with that of the lie, since an oath, everybody knows, is only a strongly a.s.sured statement. You consider yourselves ent.i.tled to lie, if only you do not swear to it besides? One who is particular about it must judge and condemn a lie as sharply as a false oath. But now there has been kept up in morality an ancient point of controversy, which is customarily treated of under the name of the "lie of necessity." No one who dares plead for this can consistently put from him an "oath of necessity." If I justify my lie as a lie of necessity, I should not be so pusillanimous as to rob the justified lie of the strongest corroboration. Whatever I do, why should I not do it entirely and without reservation (_reservatio mentalis_)? If I once lie, why then not lie completely, with entire consciousness and all my might? As a spy I should have to swear to each of my false statements at the enemy's demand; determined to lie to him, should I suddenly become cowardly and undecided in face of an oath? Then I should have been ruined in advance for a liar and spy; for, you see, I should be voluntarily putting into the enemy's hands a means to catch me.--The State too fears the oath of necessity, and for this reason does not give the accused a chance to swear. But you do not justify the State's fear; you lie, but do not swear falsely. If, _e. g._, you show some one a kindness, and he is not to know it, but he guesses it and tells you so to your face, you deny; if he insists, you say "honestly, no!" If it came to swearing, then you would refuse; for, from fear of the sacred, you always stop half way. _Against_ the sacred you have no _will of your own_. You lie in--moderation, as you are free "in moderation," religious "in moderation" (the clergy are not to "encroach"; over this point the most vapid of controversies is now being carried on, on the part of the university against the church), monarchically disposed "in moderation" (you want a monarch limited by the const.i.tution, by a fundamental law of the State), everything nicely _tempered_, lukewarm, half G.o.d's, half the devil's.

There was a university where the usage was that every word of honor that must be given to the university judge was looked upon by the students as null and void. For the students saw in the demanding of it nothing but a snare, which they could not escape otherwise than by taking away all its significance. He who at that same university broke his word of honor to one of the fellows was infamous; he who gave it to the university judge derided, in union with these very fellows, the dupe who fancied that a word had the same value among friends and among foes. It was less a correct theory than the constraint of practice that had there taught the students to act so, as, without that means of getting out, they would have been pitilessly driven to treachery against their comrades.

But, as the means approved itself in practice, so it has its theoretical probation too. A word of honor, an oath, is one only for him whom _I_ ent.i.tle to receive it; he who forces me to it obtains only a forced, _i. e._ a _hostile_ word, the word of a foe, whom one has no right to trust; for the foe does not give us the right.

Aside from this, the courts of the State do not even recognize the inviolability of an oath. For, if I had sworn to one who comes under examination that I would not declare anything against him, the court would demand my declaration in spite of the fact that an oath binds me, and, in case of refusal, would lock me up till I decided to become--an oath-breaker. The court "absolves me from my oath";--how magnanimous! If any power can absolve me from the oath, I myself am surely the very first power that has a claim to.

As a curiosity, and to remind us of customary oaths of all sorts, let place be given here to that which Emperor Paul commanded the captured Poles (Kosciusko, Potocki, Niemcewicz, etc.) to take when he released them: "We not merely swear fidelity and obedience to the emperor, but also further promise to pour out our blood for his glory; we obligate ourselves to discover everything threatening to his person or his empire that we ever learn; we declare finally that, in whatever part of the earth we may be, a single word of the emperor shall suffice to make us leave everything and repair to him at once."

In one domain the principle of love seems to have been long outsoared by egoism, and to be still in need only of sure consciousness, as it were of victory with a good conscience. This domain is speculation, in its double manifestation as thinking and as trade. One thinks with a will, whatever may come of it; one speculates, however many may suffer under our speculative undertakings. But, when it finally becomes serious, when even the last remnant of religiousness, romance, or "humanity" is to be done away, then the pulse of religious conscience beats, and one at least _professes_ humanity. The avaricious speculator throws some coppers into the poor-box and "does good," the bold thinker consoles himself with the fact that he is working for the advancement of the human race and that his devastation "turns to the good" of mankind, or, in another case, that he is "serving the idea"; mankind, the idea, is to him that something of which he must say, It is more to me than myself.

To this day thinking and trading have been done for--G.o.d's sake. Those who for six days were trampling down everything by their selfish aims sacrificed on the seventh to the Lord; and those who destroyed a hundred "good causes" by their reckless thinking still did this in the service of another "good cause," and had yet to think of another--besides themselves--to whose good their self-indulgence should turn: of the people, mankind, and the like. But this other thing is a being above them, a higher or supreme being; and therefore I say, they are toiling for G.o.d's sake.

Hence I can also say that the ultimate basis of their actions is--_love_. Not a voluntary love however, not their own, but a tributary love, or the higher being's own (_i. e._ G.o.d's, who himself is love); in short, not the egoistic, but the religious; a love that springs from their fancy that they _must_ discharge a tribute of love, _i. e._ that they must not be "egoists."

If _we_ want to deliver the world from many kinds of unfreedom, we want this not on its account but on ours; for, as we are not world-liberators by profession and out of "love," we only want to win it away from others. We want to make it our own; it is not to be any longer _owned as serf_ by G.o.d (the church) nor by the law (State), but to be _our own_; therefore we seek to "win" it, to "captivate" it, and, by meeting it half-way and "devoting" ourselves to it as to ourselves as soon as it belongs to us, to complete and make superfluous the force that it turns against us. If the world is ours, it no longer attempts any force _against_ us, but only _with_ us. My selfishness has an interest in the liberation of the world, that it may become--my property.

Not isolation or being alone, but society, is man's original state. Our existence begins with the most intimate conjunction, as we are already living with our mother before we breathe; when we see the light of the world, we at once lie on a human being's breast again, her love cradles us in the lap, leads us in the go-cart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties. Society is our _state of nature_. And this is why, the more we learn to feel ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser and the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once again for herself the child that once lay under her heart, the mother must fetch it from the street and from the midst of its playmates. The child prefers the _intercourse_ that it enters into with _its fellows_ to the _society_ that it has not entered into, but only been born in.

But the dissolution of _society_ is _intercourse_ or _union_. A society does a.s.suredly arise by union too, but only as a fixed idea arises by a thought,--to wit, by the vanishing of the energy of the thought (the thinking itself, this restless taking back all thoughts that make themselves fast) from the thought. If a union[203] has crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coalition;[204] for coalition is an incessant self-uniting; it has become a unitedness, come to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity; it is--_dead_ as a union, it is the corpse of the union or the coalition, _i. e._ it is--society, community. A striking example of this kind is furnished by the _party_.

That a society (_e. g._ the society of the State) diminishes my _liberty_ offends me little. Why, I have to let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers and by every one who is stronger; nay, by every fellow-man; and, were I the autocrat of all the R......, I yet should not enjoy absolute liberty. But _ownness_ I will not have taken from me.

And ownness is precisely what every society has designs on, precisely what is to succ.u.mb to its power.

A society which I join does indeed take from me many liberties, but in return it affords me other liberties; neither does it matter if I myself deprive myself of this and that liberty (_e. g._ by any contract). On the other hand, I want to hold jealously to my ownness. Every community has the propensity, stronger or weaker according to the fulness of its power, to become an _authority_ to its members and to set _limits_ for them: it asks, and must ask, for a "subject's limited understanding"; it asks that those who belong to it be subject to it, be its "subjects"; it exists only by _subjection_. In this a certain tolerance need by no means be excluded; on the contrary, the society will welcome improvements, corrections, and blame, so far as such are calculated for its gain: but the blame must be "well-meaning," it may not be "insolent and disrespectful,"--in other words, one must leave uninjured, and hold sacred, the substance of the society. The society demands that those who belong to it shall not go _beyond it_ and exalt themselves, but remain "within the bounds of legality," _i. e._ allow themselves only so much as the society and its law allow them.

There is a difference whether my liberty or my ownness is limited by a society. If the former only is the case, it is a _coalition_, an agreement, a union; but, if ruin is threatened to ownness, it is a _power of itself_, a power _above me_, a thing unattainable by me, which I can indeed admire, adore, reverence, respect, but cannot subdue and consume, and that for the reason that I _am resigned_. It exists by my _resignation_, my _self-renunciation_, my spiritlessness,[205]

called--HUMILITY.[206] My humility makes its courage,[207] my submissiveness gives it its dominion.

But in reference to _liberty_ State and union are subject to no essential difference. The latter can just as little come into existence, or continue in existence, without liberty's being limited in all sorts of ways, as the State is compatible with unmeasured liberty. Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere, for one cannot get _rid_ of everything; one cannot fly like a bird merely because one would like to fly so, for one does not get free from his own weight; one cannot live under water as long as he likes, like a fish, because one cannot do without air and cannot get free from this indispensable necessity; and the like. As religion, and most decidedly Christianity, tormented man with the demand to realize the unnatural and self-contradictory, so it is to be looked upon only as the true logical outcome of that religious overstraining and overwroughtness that finally _liberty itself, absolute liberty_, was exalted into an ideal, and thus the nonsense of the impossible had to come glaringly to the light.--The union will a.s.suredly offer a greater measure of liberty, as well as (and especially because by it one escapes all the coercion peculiar to State and society life) admit of being considered as "a new liberty"; but nevertheless it will still contain enough of unfreedom and involuntariness. For its object is not this--liberty (which on the contrary it sacrifices to ownness), but only _ownness_. Referred to this, the difference between State and union is great enough. The former is an enemy and murderer of _ownness_, the latter a son and co-worker of it; the former a spirit that would be adored in spirit and in truth, the latter my work, my _product_; the State is the lord of my spirit, who demands faith and prescribes to me articles of faith, the creed of legality; it exerts moral influence, dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself in its place as "my true ego,"--in short, the State is _sacred_, and as against me, the individual man, it is the true man, the spirit, the ghost; but the union is my own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual power above my spirit, as little as any a.s.sociation of whatever sort. As I am not willing to be a slave of my maxims, but lay them bare to my continual criticism without _any warrant_, and admit no bail at all for their persistence, so still less do I obligate myself to the union for my future and pledge my soul to it, as is said to be done with the devil and is really the case with the State and all spiritual authority; but I am and remain _more_ to myself than State, Church, G.o.d, and the like; consequently infinitely more than the union too.

That society which Communism wants to found seems to stand nearest to _coalition_. For it is to aim at the "welfare of all," oh, yes, of all, cries Weitling innumerable times, of all! That does really look as if in it no one needed to take a back seat. But what then will this welfare be? Have all one and the same welfare, are all equally well off with one and the same thing? If that be so, the question is of the "true welfare." Do we not with this come right to the point where religion begins its dominion of violence? Christianity says, Look not on earthly toys, but seek your true welfare, become--pious Christians; being Christians is the true welfare. It is the true welfare of "all," because it is the welfare of Man as such (this spook). Now, the welfare of all is surely to be _your_ and _my_ welfare too? But, if you and I do not look upon that welfare as _our_ welfare, will care then be taken for that in which _we_ feel well? On the contrary, society has decreed a welfare as the "true welfare"; and, if this welfare were called _e. g._ "enjoyment honestly worked for," but you preferred enjoyable laziness, enjoyment without work, then society, which cares for the "welfare of all," would wisely avoid caring for that in which you are well off.

Communism, in proclaiming the welfare of all, annuls outright the well-being of those who hitherto lived on their income from investments and apparently felt better in that than in the prospect of Weitling's strict hours of labor. Hence the latter a.s.serts that with the welfare of thousands the welfare of millions cannot exist, and the former must give up _their_ special welfare "for the sake of the general welfare." No, let people not be summoned to sacrifice their special welfare for the general, for this Christian admonition will not carry you through; they will better understand the opposite admonition, not to let their _own_ welfare be s.n.a.t.c.hed from them by anybody, but to put it on a permanent foundation. Then they are of themselves led to the point that they care best for their welfare if they _unite_ with others for this purpose, _i. e._ "sacrifice a part of their liberty," yet not to the welfare of others, but to their own. An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love ought at last to have lost its seductive plausibility when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the--_misere_ of to-day. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better times? why not rather hope for them from _usurpation_? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the _taker_, the appropriater (usurper), the owner. Communism, and, consciously or unconsciously, egoism-reviling humanism, still count on _love_.

If community is once a need of man, and he finds himself furthered by it in his aims, then very soon, because it has become his principle, it prescribes to him its laws too, the laws of--society. The principle of men exalts itself into a sovereign power over them, becomes their supreme essence, their G.o.d, and, as such,--lawgiver. Communism gives this principle the strictest effect, and Christianity is the religion of society, for, as Feuerbach rightly says although he does not mean it rightly, love is the essence of man; _i. e._ the essence of society or of societary (Communistic) man. All religion is a cult of society, this principle by which societary (cultivated) man is dominated; neither is any G.o.d an ego's exclusive G.o.d, but always a society's or community's, be it of the society "family" (Lar, Penates) or of a "people" ("national G.o.d") or of "all men" ("he is a Father of all men").

Consequently one has a prospect of extirpating religion down to the ground only when one antiquates _society_ and everything that flows from this principle. But it is precisely in Communism that this principle seeks to culminate, as in it everything is to become _common_ for the establishment of--"equality." If this "equality" is won, "liberty" too is not lacking. But whose liberty? _Society's!_ Society is then all in all, and men are only "for each other." It would be the glory of the--love-State.

But I would rather be referred to men's selfishness than to their "kindnesses,"[208] their mercy, pity, etc. The former demands _reciprocity_ (as thou to me, so I to thee), does nothing "gratis," and may be won and--_bought_. But with what shall I obtain the kindness? It is a matter of chance whether I am at the time having to do with a "loving" person. The affectionate one's service can be had only by--_begging_, be it by my lamentable appearance, by my need of help, my misery, my--_suffering_. What can I offer him for his a.s.sistance?

Nothing! I must accept it as a--present. Love is _unpayable_, or rather, love can a.s.suredly be paid for, but only by counter-love ("One good turn deserves another"). What paltriness and beggarliness does it not take to accept gifts year in and year out without service in return, as they are regularly collected _e. g._ from the poor day-laborer? What can the receiver do for him and his donated pennies, in which his wealth consists? The day-laborer would really have more enjoyment if the receiver with his laws, his inst.i.tutions, etc., all of which the day-laborer has to pay for though, did not exist at all. And yet, with it all, the poor wight _loves_ his master.

No, community, as the "goal" of history hitherto, is impossible. Let us rather renounce every hypocrisy of community, and recognize that, if we are equal as men, we are not equal for the very reason that we are not men. We are equal _only in thoughts_, only when "we" are _thought_, not as we really and bodily are. I am ego, and you are ego: but I am not this thought-of ego; this ego in which we are all equal is only _my thought_. I am man, and you are man: but "man" is only a thought, a generality; neither you nor I are speakable, we are _unutterable_, because only _thoughts_ are speakable and consist in speaking.

Let us therefore not aspire to community, but to _one-sidedness_. Let us not seek the most comprehensive commune, "human society," but let us seek in others only means and organs which we may use as our property!

As we do not see our equals in the tree, the beast, so the presupposition that others are _our equals_ springs from a hypocrisy. No one is _my equal_, but I regard him, equally with all other beings, as my property. In opposition to this I am told that I should be a man among "fellow-men" ("_Judenfrage_," p. 60); I should "respect" the fellow-man in them. For me no one is a person to be respected, not even the fellow-man, but solely, like other beings, an _object_ in which I take an interest or else do not, an interesting or uninteresting object, a usable or unusable person.

And, if I can use him, I doubtless come to an understanding and make myself at one with him, in order, by the agreement, to strengthen _my power_, and by combined force to accomplish more than individual force could effect. In this combination I see nothing whatever but a multiplication of my force, and I retain it only so long as it is _my_ multiplied force. But thus it is a--union.

Neither a natural ligature nor a spiritual one holds the union together, and it is not a natural, not a spiritual league. It is not brought about by one _blood_, not by one _faith_ (spirit). In a natural league--like a family, a tribe, a nation, yes, mankind--the individuals have only the value of _specimens_ of the same species or genus; in a spiritual league--like a commune, a church--the individual signifies only a _member_ of the same spirit; what you are in both cases as a unique person must be--suppressed. Only in the union can you a.s.sert yourself as unique, because the union does not possess you, but you possess it or make it of use to you.