Part 5 (1/2)

And to get to the bottom of this _spook_, to _comprehend_ it, to discover _reality_ in it (to prove ”the existence of G.o.d”)--this task men set to themselves for thousands of years; with the horrible impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into a non-spook, the unreal into something real, the _spirit_ into an entire and _corporeal_ person,--with this they tormented themselves to death.

Behind the existing world they sought the ”thing in itself,” the essence; behind the _thing_ they sought the _un-thing_.

When one looks to the _bottom_ of anything, _i. e._ searches out its _essence_, one often discovers something quite other than what it _seems_ to be; honeyed speech and a lying heart, pompous words and beggarly thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into prominence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare _semblance_, a deception. The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it--emptiness; emptiness is == world's essence (world's doings). Now, he who is religious does not occupy himself with the deceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but looks upon the essence, and in the essence has--the truth.

The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil essences, and conversely from others the good. The essence of human feeling, _e. g._, is love; the essence of human will is the good; that of one's thinking, the true; etc.

What at first pa.s.sed for existence, such as the world and its like, appears now as bare semblance, and the _truly existent_ is much rather the essence, whose realm is filled with G.o.ds, spirits, demons, _i. e._ with good or bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless, but its essence exists, G.o.d, ”who is love”; human thought may wander in error, but its essence, truth, exists; ”G.o.d is truth,”--etc.

To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts.

The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize _non-sense_, has brought about a _corporeal ghost_, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition!

But there always remained the contradiction of two natures, the divine and human, _i. e._ the ghostly and sensual; there remained the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul-torturing, and no shaman, who p.r.i.c.ks himself to raving fury and nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost.

But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to light, that the veritable spirit or ghost is--man. The _corporeal_ or embodied spirit is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts _outside_ him, but at himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the _spirit of sin_; even the faintest _thought_ (and this is itself a spirit, you know) may be a _devil_, etc.--The ghost has put on a body, G.o.d has become man, but now man is himself the gruesome spook which he seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to speech; man is--_spirit_. What matter if the body wither, if only the spirit is saved? everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or ”soul's” welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even a.s.signed a distinct seat in the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.).

You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher essence. Nevertheless a higher essence may be hidden in each of us, and call forth a mutual reverence. To take at once the most general, Man lives in you and me.

If I did not see Man in you, what occasion should I have to respect you?

To be sure you are not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing; but yet for the present this general and higher essence is housed in you, and you present before me (because an imperishable spirit has in you a.s.sumed a perishable body, so that really your form is only an ”a.s.sumed” one) a spirit that appears, appears in you, without being bound to your body and to this particular mode of appearance,--therefore a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence, but only respect that higher essence which ”walks” in you; I ”respect Man in you.” The ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves, and the higher essence ”Man” found as yet little response. To make up for this, they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit of Man, a spirit haunting the individual,--the Spirit of the People. For this reason they revered this spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit related to it (_e. g._ the Spirit of the Family, etc.) could the individual appear significant; only for the sake of the higher essence, the People, was consideration allowed to the ”member of the people.” As you are hallowed to us by ”Man” who haunts you, so at every time men have been hallowed by some higher essence or other, like People, Family, and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honored from of old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a hallowed, _i. e._, protected and recognized person. If I cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, _i. e._ an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with _your_ essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is unique[28]

like you yourself, because it is you.

But it is not only man that, ”haunts”; so does everything. The higher essence, the spirit, that walks in everything, is at the same time bound to nothing, and only--”appears” in it. Ghosts in every corner!

Here would be the place to pa.s.s the haunting spirits in review, if they were not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before egoism. Hence let only a few of them be particularized by way of example, in order to bring us at once to our att.i.tude toward them.

Sacred above all, _e. g._, is the ”holy Spirit,” sacred the truth, sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage, the common good, order, the fatherland, etc.

WHEELS IN THE HEAD.

Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of G.o.ds that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea!

Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a ”fixed idea”? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (_e. g._) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of--lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pa.s.s, that morality may be kept pure; etc.,--are these not ”fixed ideas”? Is not all the stupid chatter of (_e. g._) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a s.p.a.ce? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. For these great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point too,--that they a.s.sail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools. ”Thou shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost--etc.” But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is G.o.d the Father, Emperor of j.a.pan, the Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circ.u.mstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man, etc.,--both these are one and the same ”fixed idea.” He who has never tried and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is _possessed_ and prepossessed[29] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized only _inside_ the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books _inside_ the papist superst.i.tion, without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a _zoon politicon_,--so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them--lays hands on the _sacred_! Yes, the ”fixed idea,” that is the truly sacred!

Is it perchance only people possessed by the devil that meet us, or do we as often come upon people _possessed_ in the contrary way,--possessed by ”the good,” by virtue, morality, the law, or some ”principle” or other? Possessions of the devil are not the only ones. G.o.d works on us, and the devil does; the former ”workings of grace,” the latter ”workings of the devil.” Possessed[30] people are _set_[31] in their opinions.

If the word ”possession” displeases you, then call it prepossession; yes, since the spirit possesses you, and all ”inspirations” come from it, call it--inspiration and enthusiasm. I add that complete enthusiasm--for we cannot stop with the sluggish, half-way kind--is called fanaticism.

It is precisely among cultured people that _fanaticism_ is at home; for man is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things, and interest in spiritual things, when it is alive, is and must be _fanaticism_; it is a fanatical interest in the sacred (_fanum_).

Observe our liberals, look into the _Saechsischen Vaterlandsblaetter_, hear what Schlosser says:[32] ”Holbach's company const.i.tuted a regular plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system, and its members were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists, missionary and Bible societies, commonly are for mechanical wors.h.i.+p and orthodoxy.”

Take notice how a ”moral man” behaves, who to-day often thinks he is through with G.o.d and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one's being allowed to touch his sister as wife also, etc. And whence this shudder? Because he _believes_ in those moral commandments. This moral _faith_ is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he rages against the _pious_ Christians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian,--to wit, a _moral_ Christian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under _faith_. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a _criminal_; he who commits incest suffers as a _criminal_. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a _dogma of faith_? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a _hero of faith_ too, not less than Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State; for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than _their faith_ will allow. The brand of ”crime” is stamped upon him, and he may languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith! They call that ”liberty of faith” then, when brother and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with their ”conscience,” are thrown into prison. ”But they set a pernicious example.” Yes, indeed: others might have taken the notion that the State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon ”purity of morals” would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of faith are zealous for the ”sacred G.o.d,” the moral ones for the ”sacred good.”

Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other. How the strictly orthodox or old-style believers differ from the fighters for ”truth, light, and justice,” from the Philalethes, the Friends of Light, the Rationalists, etc. And yet, how utterly unessential is this difference! If one buffets single traditional truths (_e. g._ miracles, unlimited power of princes, etc.), then the rationalists buffet them too, and only the old-style believers wail.

But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has both, as _believers_, for opponents. So with moralities; the strict believers are relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant. But he who attacks morality itself gets both to deal with. ”Truth, morality, justice, light, etc.,” are to be and remain ”sacred.” What any one finds to censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be ”unchristian” according to the view of these rationalists; but Christianity must remain a fixture, to buffet it is outrageous, ”an outrage.” To be sure, the heretic against pure faith no longer exposes himself to the earlier fury of persecution, but so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic against pure morals.

Piety has for a century received so many blows, and had to hear its superhuman essence reviled as an ”inhuman” one so often, that one cannot feel tempted to draw the sword against it again. And yet it has almost always been only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena, to a.s.sail the supreme essence in favor of--another supreme essence. So Proudhon, unabashed, says:[33] ”Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. Who would dare to-day to attack morality?” Moral people skimmed off the best fat from religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid of the resulting scrofula. If, therefore, we point out that religion has not by any means been hurt in its inmost part so long as people reproach it only with its superhuman essence, and that it takes its final appeal to the ”spirit” alone (for G.o.d is spirit), then we have sufficiently indicated its final accord with morality, and can leave its stubborn conflict with the latter lying behind us. It is a question of a supreme essence with both, and whether this is a superhuman or a human one can make (since it is in any case an essence over me, a super-mine one, so to speak) but little difference to me. In the end the relation to the human essence, or to ”Man,” as soon as ever it has shed the snake-skin of the old religion, will yet wear a religious snake-skin again.

So Feuerbach instructs us that, ”if one only _inverts_ speculative philosophy, _i. e._ always makes the predicate the subject, and so makes the subject the object and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure and clean.”[34] Herewith, to be sure, we lose the narrow religious standpoint, lose the _G.o.d_, who from this standpoint is subject; but we take in exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint, the _moral_ standpoint. _E. g._, we no longer say ”G.o.d is love,” but ”Love is divine.” If we further put in place of the predicate ”divine” the equivalent ”sacred,” then, as far as concerns the sense, all the old comes back again. According to this, love is to be the _good_ in man, his divineness, that which does him honor, his true _humanity_ (it ”makes him Man for the first time,” makes for the first time a man out of him). So then it would be more accurately worded thus: Love is what is _human_ in man, and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist. But precisely all that which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy (_i. e._ theology) offers as the good, the absolute, is to self-owners.h.i.+p simply not the good (or, what means the same, it is _only the good_). Consequently, by the transformation of the predicate into the subject, the Christian _essence_ (and it is the predicate that contains the essence, you know) would only be fixed yet more oppressively. G.o.d and the divine would entwine themselves all the more inextricably with me. To expel G.o.d from his heaven and to rob him of his ”_transcendence_” cannot yet support a claim of complete victory, if therein he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with indelible _immanence_. Now they say, ”The divine is the truly human!”

The same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the State, _i. e._ oppose the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating that morality is ”the fundamental pillar of social life and of the State.” As if the dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of the sacred, a ”hierarchy.”

So we may here mention by the way that rationalist movement which, after theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping religious truths, that only to believers did G.o.d reveal himself, etc., and that therefore only the heart, the feelings, the believing fancy was religious, broke out with the a.s.sertion that the ”natural understanding,” human reason, was also capable of discerning G.o.d. What does that mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same visionary as the fancy?[35] In this sense Reimarus wrote his ”Most Notable Truths of Natural Religion.” It had to come to this,--that the _whole_ man with all his faculties was found to be _religious_; heart and affections, understanding and reason, feeling, knowledge, and will,--in short, everything in man,--appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even philosophy is religious. And what is not called religion to-day? The ”religion of love,” the ”religion of freedom,” ”political religion,”--in short, every enthusiasm. So it is, too, in fact.