Thinking will as little cease as feeling. But the power of thoughts and ideas, the dominion of theories and principles, the sovereignty of the spirit, in short the--_hierarchy_, lasts as long as the parsons, _i. e._ theologians, philosophers, statesmen, philistines, liberals, schoolmasters, servants, parents, children, married couples, Proudhon, George Sand, Bluntschli, etc., etc., have the floor; the hierarchy will endure as long as people believe in, think of, or even criticise, principles; for even the most inexorable criticism, which undermines all current principles, still does finally _believe_ in _the principle_.

Every one criticises, but the criterion is different. People run after the "right" criterion. The right criterion is the first presupposition.

The critic starts from a proposition, a truth, a belief. This is not a creation of the critic, but of the dogmatist; nay, commonly it is actually taken up out of the culture of the time without further ceremony, like _e. g._ "liberty," "humanity," etc. The critic has not "discovered man," but this truth has been established as "man" by the dogmatist, and the critic (who, besides, may be the same person with him) believes in this truth, this article of faith. In this faith, and possessed by this faith, he criticises.

The secret of criticism is some "truth" or other: this remains its energizing mystery.

But I distinguish between _servile_ and _own_ criticism. If I criticise under the presupposition of a supreme being, my criticism _serves_ the being and is carried on for its sake: if, _e. g._, I am possessed by the belief in a "free State," then everything that has a bearing on it I criticise from the standpoint of whether it is suitable to this State, for I _love_ this State; if I criticise as a pious man, then for me everything falls into the cla.s.ses of divine and diabolical, and before my criticism nature consists of traces of G.o.d or traces of the devil (hence names like G.o.dsgift, G.o.dmount, the Devil's Pulpit, etc.), men of believers and unbelievers, etc.; if I criticise while believing in man as the "true essence," then for me everything falls primarily into the cla.s.ses of man and the un-man, etc.

Criticism has to this day remained a work of love: for at all times we exercised it for the love of some being. All servile criticism is a product of love, a possessedness, and proceeds according to that New Testament precept, "Test everything and hold fast the _good_."[236] "The good" is the touchstone, the criterion. The good, returning under a thousand names and forms, remained always the presupposition, remained the dogmatic fixed point for this criticism, remained the--fixed idea.

The critic, in setting to work, impartially presupposes the "truth," and seeks for the truth in the belief that it is to be found. He wants to ascertain the true, and has in it that very "good."

Presuppose means nothing else than put a _thought_ in front, or think something before everything else and think the rest from the starting-point of this that has _been thought_, _i. e._ measure and criticise it by this. In other words, this is as much as to say that thinking is to begin with something already thought. If thinking began at all, instead of being begun, if thinking were a subject, an acting personality of its own, as even the plant is such, then indeed there would be no abandoning the principle that thinking must begin with itself. But it is just the personification of thinking that brings to pa.s.s those innumerable errors. In the Hegelian system they always talk as if thinking or "the thinking spirit" (_i. e._ personified thinking, thinking as a ghost) thought and acted; in critical liberalism it is always said that "criticism" does this and that, or else that "self-consciousness" finds this and that. But, if thinking ranks as the personal actor, thinking itself must be presupposed; if criticism ranks as such, a thought must likewise stand in front. Thinking and criticism could be active only starting from themselves, would have to be themselves the presupposition of their activity, as without being they could not be active. But thinking, as a thing presupposed, is a fixed thought, a _dogma_; thinking and criticism, therefore, can start only from a _dogma_, _i. e._ from a thought, a fixed idea, a presupposition.

With this we come back again to what was enunciated above, that Christianity consists in the development of a world of thoughts, or that it is the proper "freedom of thought," the "free thought," the "free spirit." The "true" criticism, which I called "servile," is therefore just as much "free" criticism, for it is not _my own_.

The case stands otherwise when what is yours is not made into something that is of itself, not personified, not made independent an a "spirit"

to itself. _Your_ thinking has for a presupposition not "thinking," but _you_. But thus you do presuppose yourself after all? Yes, but not for myself, but for my thinking. Before my thinking, there is--I. From this it follows that my thinking is not preceded by a _thought_, or that my thinking is without a "presupposition." For the presupposition which I am for my thinking is not one _made by thinking_, not one _thought of_, but it is _posited_ thinking _itself_, it is the _owner_ of the thought, and proves only that thinking is nothing more than--_property_, _i. e._ that an "independent" thinking, a "thinking spirit," does not exist at all.

This reversal of the usual way of regarding things might so resemble an empty playing with abstractions that even those against whom it is directed would acquiesce in the harmless aspect I give it, if practical consequences were not connected with it.

To bring these into a concise expression, the a.s.sertion now made is that man is not the measure of all things, but I am this measure. The servile critic has before his eye another being, an idea, which he means to serve; therefore he only slays the false idols for his G.o.d. What is done for the love of this being, what else should it be but a--work of love?

But I, when I criticise, do not even have myself before my eyes, but am only doing myself a pleasure, amusing myself according to my taste; according to my several needs I chew the thing up or only inhale its odor.

The distinction between the two att.i.tudes will come out still more strikingly if one reflects that the servile critic, because love guides him, supposes he is serving the thing [cause] itself.

_The_ truth, or "truth in general," people are bound not to give up, but to seek for. What else is it but the _etre supreme_, the highest essence? Even "true criticism" would have to despair if it lost faith in the truth. And yet the truth is only a--_thought_; but it is not merely "a" thought, but the thought that is above all thoughts, the irrefragable thought; it is _the_ thought itself, which gives the first hallowing to all others; it is the consecration of thoughts, the "absolute," the "sacred" thought. The truth wears longer than all the G.o.ds; for it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that people have overthrown the G.o.ds and at last G.o.d himself. "The truth"

outlasts the downfall of the world of G.o.ds, for it is the immortal soul of this transitory world of G.o.ds, it is Deity itself.

I will answer Pilate's question, What is truth? Truth is the free thought, the free idea, the free spirit; truth is what is free from you, what is not your own, what is not in your power. But truth is also the completely unindependent, impersonal, unreal, and incorporeal; truth cannot step forward as you do, cannot move, change, develop; truth awaits and receives everything from you, and itself is only through you; for it exists only--in your head. You concede that the truth is a thought, but say that not every thought is a true one, or, as you are also likely to express it, not every thought is truly and really a thought. And by what do you measure and recognize the thought? By _your impotence_, to wit, by your being no longer able to make any successful a.s.sault on it! When it overpowers you, inspires you, and carries you away, then you hold it to be the true one. Its dominion over you certifies to you its truth; and, when it possesses you, and you are possessed by it, then you feel well with it, for then you have found your--_lord and master_. When you were seeking the truth, what did your heart then long for? For your master! You did not aspire to _your_ might, but to a Mighty One, and wanted to exalt a Mighty One ("Exalt ye the Lord our G.o.d!"). The truth, my dear Pilate, is--the Lord, and all who seek the truth are seeking and praising the Lord. Where does the Lord exist? Where else but in your head? He is only spirit, and, wherever you believe you really see him, there he is a--ghost; for the Lord is merely something that is thought of, and it was only the Christian pains and agony to make the invisible visible, the spiritual corporeal, that generated the ghost and was the frightful misery of the belief in ghosts.

As long as you believe in the truth, you do not believe in yourself, and you are a--_servant_, a--_religious man_. You alone are the truth, or rather, you are more than the truth, which is nothing at all before you.

You too do a.s.suredly ask about the truth, you too do a.s.suredly "criticise," but you do not ask about a "higher truth,"--to wit, one that should be higher than you,--nor criticise according to the criterion of such a truth. You address yourself to thoughts and notions, as you do to the appearances of things, only for the purpose of making them palatable to you, enjoyable to you, and your _own_: you want only to subdue them and become their _owner_, you want to orient yourself and feel at home in them, and you find them true, or see them in their true light, when they can no longer slip away from you, no longer have any unseized or uncomprehended place, or when they are _right for you_, when they are your _property_. If afterward they become heavier again, if they wriggle themselves out of your power again, then that is just their untruth,--to wit, your impotence. Your impotence is their power, your humility their exaltation. Their truth, therefore, is you, or is the nothing which you are for them and in which they dissolve: their truth is their _nothingness_.

Only as the property of me do the spirits, the truths, get to rest; and they then for the first time really are, when they have been deprived of their sorry existence and made a property of mine, when it is no longer said "the truth develops itself, rules, a.s.serts itself; history (also a concept) wins the victory," and the like. The truth never has won a victory, but was always my _means_ to the victory, like the sword ("the sword of truth"). The truth is dead, a letter, a word, a material that I can use up. All truth by itself is dead, a corpse; it is alive only in the same way as my lungs are alive,--to wit, in the measure of my own vitality. Truths are material, like vegetables and weeds; as to whether vegetable or weed, the decision lies in me.

Objects are to me only material that I use up. Wherever I put my hand I grasp a truth, which I trim for myself. The truth is certain to me, and I do not need to long after it. To do the truth a service is in no case my intent; it is to me only a nourishment for my thinking head, as potatoes are for my digesting stomach, or as a friend is for my social heart. As long as I have the humor and force for thinking, every truth serves me only for me to work it up according to my powers. As reality or worldliness is "vain and a thing of naught" for Christians, so is the truth for me. It exists, exactly as much as the things of this world go on existing although the Christian has proved their nothingness; but it is vain, because it has its _value_ not _in itself_ but _in me_. _Of itself_ it is _valueless_. The truth is a--_creature_.

As you produce innumerable things by your activity, yes, shape the earth's surface anew and set up works of men everywhere, so too you may still ascertain numberless truths by your thinking, and we will gladly take delight in them. Nevertheless, as I do not please to hand myself over to serve your newly discovered machines mechanically, but only help to set them running for my benefit, so too I will only use your truths, without letting myself be used for their demands.

All truths _beneath_ me are to my liking; a truth _above_ me, a truth that I should have to _direct_ myself by, I am not acquainted with. For me there is no truth, for nothing is more than I! Not even my essence, not even the essence of man, is more than I! than I, this "drop in the bucket," this "insignificant man!"

You believe that you have done the utmost when you boldly a.s.sert that, because every time has its own truth, there is no "absolute truth." Why, with this you nevertheless still leave to each time its truth, and you quite genuinely create an "absolute truth," a truth that no time lacks, because every time, however its truth may be, still has a "truth."

Is it meant only that people have been thinking in every time, and so have had thoughts or truths, and that in the subsequent time these were other than they were in the earlier? No, the word is to be that every time had its "truth of faith"; and in fact none has yet appeared in which a "higher truth" has not been recognized, a truth that people believed they must subject themselves to as "highness and majesty."

Every truth of a time is its fixed idea, and, if people later found another truth, this always happened only because they sought for another; they only reformed the folly and put a modern dress on it.

For they did want--who would dare doubt their justification for this?--they wanted to be "inspired by an idea." They wanted to be dominated,--possessed, by a _thought_! The most modern ruler of this kind is "our essence," or "man."

For all free criticism a thought was the criterion; for own criticism I am, I the unspeakable, and so not the merely thought-of; for what is merely thought of is always speakable, because word and thought coincide. That is true which is mine, untrue that whose own I am; true, _e. g._, the union; untrue, the State and society. "Free and true"

criticism takes care for the consistent dominion of a thought, an idea, a spirit; "own" criticism, for nothing but my _self-enjoyment_. But in this the latter is in fact--and we will not spare it this "ignominy"!--like the b.e.s.t.i.a.l criticism of instinct. I, like the criticising beast, am concerned only for _myself_, not "for the cause."

_I_ am the criterion of truth, but I am not an idea, but more than idea, _i. e._ unutterable. _My_ criticism is not a "free" criticism, not free from me, and not "servile," not in the service of an idea, but an _own_ criticism.

True or human criticism makes out only whether something is _suitable_ to man, to the true man; but by own criticism you ascertain whether it is suitable to _you_.

Free criticism busies itself with _ideas_, and therefore is always theoretical. However it may rage against ideas, it still does not get clear of them. It pitches into the ghosts, but it can do this only as it holds them to be ghosts. The ideas it has to do with do not fully disappear; the morning breeze of a new day does not scare them away.

The critic may indeed come to ataraxy before ideas, but he never gets _rid_ of them, _i. e._ he will never comprehend that above the _bodily man_ there does not exist something higher,--to wit, liberty, his humanity, etc. He always has a "calling" of man still left, "humanity."

And this idea of humanity remains unrealized, just because it is an "idea" and is to remain such.

If, on the other hand, I grasp the idea as _my_ idea, then it is already realized, because _I_ am its reality; its reality consists in the fact that I, the bodily, have it.

They say, the idea of liberty realizes itself in the history of the world. The reverse is the case; this idea is real as a man thinks it, and it is real in the measure in which it is idea, _i. e._ in which I think it or _have_ it. It is not the idea of liberty that develops itself, but men develop themselves, and, of course, in this self-development develop their thinking too.

In short, the critic is not yet _owner_; because he still fights with ideas as with powerful aliens,--as the Christian is not owner of his "bad desires" so long as he has to combat them; for him who contends against vice, vice _exists_.

Criticism remains stuck fast in the "freedom of knowing," the freedom of the spirit, and the spirit gains its proper freedom when it fills itself with the pure, true idea; this is the freedom of thinking, which cannot be without thoughts.

Criticism smites one idea only by another, _e. g._ that of privilege by that of manhood, or that of egoism by that of unselfishness.

In general, the beginning of Christianity comes on the stage again in its critical end, egoism being combated here as there. I am not to make myself (the individual) count, but the idea, the general.

Why, warfare of the priesthood with _egoism_, of the spiritually-minded with the worldly-minded, const.i.tutes the substance of all Christian history. In the newest criticism this war only becomes all-embracing, fanaticism complete. Indeed, neither can it pa.s.s away till it pa.s.ses thus, after it has had its life and its rage out.

Whether what I think and do is Christian, what do I care? Whether it is human, liberal, humane, whether unhuman, illiberal, inhuman, what do I ask about that? If only it accomplishes what I want, if only I satisfy myself in it, then overlay it with predicates as you will; it is all alike to me.

Perhaps I too, in the very next moment, defend myself against my former thoughts; I too am likely to change suddenly my mode of action; but not on account of its not corresponding to Christianity, not on account of its running counter to the eternal rights of man, not on account of its affronting the idea of mankind, humanity, and humanitarianism, but--because I am no longer all in it, because it no longer furnishes me any full enjoyment, because I doubt the earlier thought or no longer please myself in the mode of action just now practised.

As the world as property has become a _material_ with which I undertake what I will, so the spirit too as property must sink down into a _material_ before which I no longer entertain any sacred dread. Then, firstly, I shall shudder no more before a thought, let it appear as presumptuous and "devilish" as it will, because, if it threatens to become too inconvenient and unsatisfactory for _me_, its end lies in my power; but neither shall I recoil from any deed because there dwells in it a spirit of G.o.dlessness, immorality, wrongfulness, as little as St.

Boniface pleased to desist, through religious scrupulousness, from cutting down the sacred oak of the heathens. If the _things_ of the world have once become vain, the _thoughts_ of the spirit must also become vain.

No thought is sacred, for let no thought rank as "devotions";[237] no feeling is sacred (no sacred feeling of friendship, mother's feelings, etc.), no belief is sacred. They are all _alienable_, my alienable property, and are annihilated, as they are created, by _me_.

The Christian can lose all _things_ or objects, the most loved persons, these "objects" of his love, without giving up himself (_i. e._, in the Christian sense, his spirit, his soul) as lost. The owner can cast from him all the _thoughts_ that were dear to his heart and kindled his zeal, and will likewise "gain a thousandfold again," because he, their creator, remains.

Unconsciously and involuntarily we all strive toward ownness, and there will hardly be one among us who has not given up a sacred feeling, a sacred thought, a sacred belief; nay, we probably meet no one who could not still deliver himself from one or another of his sacred thoughts.

All our contention against convictions starts from the opinion that maybe we are capable of driving our opponent out of his intrenchments of thought. But what I do unconsciously I half do, and therefore after every victory over a faith I become again the _prisoner_ (possessed) of a faith which then takes my whole self anew into its _service_, and makes me an enthusiast for reason after I have ceased to be enthusiastic for the Bible, or an enthusiast for the idea of humanity after I have fought long enough for that of Christianity.

Doubtless, as owner of thoughts, I shall cover my property with my shield, just as I do not, as owner of things, willingly let everybody help himself to them; but at the same time I shall look forward smilingly to the outcome of the battle, smilingly lay the shield on the corpses of my thoughts and my faith, smilingly triumph when I am beaten.

That is the very humor of the thing. Every one who has "sublimer feelings" is able to vent his humor on the pettinesses of men; but to let it play with all "great thoughts, sublime feelings, n.o.ble inspiration, and sacred faith" presupposes that I am the owner of all.

If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I set over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more. Since no defect cleaves to us, sin has no meaning either. Show me a sinner in the world still, if no one any longer needs to do what suits a superior! If I only need do what suits myself, I am no sinner if I do not do what suits myself, as I do not injure in myself a "holy one"; if, on the other hand, I am to be pious, then I must do what suits G.o.d; if I am to act humanly, I must do what suits the essence of man, the idea of mankind, etc. What religion calls the "sinner," humanitarianism calls the "egoist." But, once more: if I need not do what suits any other, is the "egoist," in whom humanitarianism has borne to itself a new-fangled devil, anything more than a piece of nonsense? The egoist, before whom the humane shudder, is a spook as much as the devil is: he exists only as a bogie and phantasm in their brain. If they were not unsophisticatedly drifting back and forth in the antediluvian opposition of good and evil, to which they have given the modern names of "human"

and "egoistic," they would not have freshened up the h.o.a.ry "sinner" into an "egoist" either, and put a new patch on an old garment. But they could not do otherwise, for they hold it for their task to be "men."

They are rid of the Good One; good is left![238]

We are perfect altogether, and on the whole earth there is not one man who is a sinner! There are crazy people who imagine that they are G.o.d the Father, G.o.d the Son, or the man in the moon, and so too the world swarms with fools who seem to themselves to be sinners; but, as the former are not the man in the moon, so the latter are--not sinners.

Their sin is imaginary.