Part 6 (1/2)
The wheels in the head have a number of other formal aspects, some of which it may be useful to indicate here.
Thus _self-renunciation_ is common to the holy with the unholy, to the pure and the impure. The impure man _renounces_ all ”better feelings,”
all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the appet.i.te that rules him. The pure man renounces his natural relation to the world (”renounces the world”) and follows only the ”desire” which rules him.
Driven by the thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all admonitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all gentleness and all compa.s.sion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the appet.i.te drags him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He makes himself the ”laughing-stock of the world,” is hard-hearted and ”strictly just”; for the desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces _himself_ before Mammon, so the holy man renounces _himself_ before G.o.d and the divine laws. We are now living in a time when the _shamelessness_ of the holy is every day more and more felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same time compelled to unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more and more every day. Have not the shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize the ”progress of the age” long surpa.s.sed all measure and all expectation? But it must be so. The self-renouncers must, as holy men, take the same course that they do as unholy men; as the latter little by little sink to the fullest measure of self-renouncing vulgarity and _lowness_, so the former must ascend to the most dishonorable _exaltation_. The mammon of the earth and the _G.o.d_ of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of--self-renunciation. The low man, like the exalted one, reaches out for a ”good,”--the former for the material good, the latter for the ideal, the so-called ”supreme good”; and at last both complete each other again too, as the ”materially-minded” man sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm, his _vanity_, and the ”spiritually-minded” man to a material gratification, the _life of enjoyment_.
Those who exhort men to ”unselfishness”[41] think they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they understand by ”self-renunciation.” But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that _you_ yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again for _your_ benefit and behoof, only that through unselfishness you are procuring your ”true benefit.”
You are to benefit _yourself_, and yet you are not seek _your_ benefit.
People regard as unselfish the _benefactor_ of men, a Franke who founded the orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but also the _fanatic_ who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, sacrifices everything to virtue,--like Koerner, dies for G.o.d, king, and fatherland.
Hence, among others, O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Connell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if they were successful in casting suspicion on his ”unselfishness,” they would easily separate him from his adherents.
Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for another _end_ than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making money or at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and that _his_ end; selfishness here as there, only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to _others too_, and so would be for the _common_ interest.
Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fas.h.i.+on in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it costs too much in solid material, people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be _our_ end and our _property_, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a--fixed idea; where it begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it pa.s.ses into our _stubbornness_ and becomes our--master. One is not unselfish so long as he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that ”Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise,” the fundamental maxim of all the possessed; one becomes so in the case of a _sacred_ end, through the corresponding sacred zeal.--
I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my _own_, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfilment, leave it always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its _judge_, because I am its owner.
Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness reaches, as much on possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit: there vice, folly, etc.; here humility, devotion, etc.
Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the pa.s.sions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eye turned its look upward, you--prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appet.i.tes.
Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint ”Oh dear!”
moaned itself away, and--_the soul was at rest_. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new--prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the--chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may peris.h.!.+ O Lais, O Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free _grisette_ against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!
The fixed idea may also be perceived as ”maxim,” ”principle,”
”standpoint,” and the like. Archimedes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint _outside_ it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the _world of mind_, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it is _heaven_. Heaven is the ”standpoint” from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and--despised. To a.s.sure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever,--how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!
Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from the appet.i.tes as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let himself be determined by his appet.i.tes. This does not involve the idea that _he_ was not to _have_ appet.i.tes, but that the appet.i.tes were not to have him, that they were not to become _fixed_, uncontrollable, indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived against the appet.i.tes be applied by us to its own precept that _mind_ (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed to determine us, to become _fixed_ and inviolable or ”sacred”?
Then it would end in the _dissolution of mind_, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all conceptions. As we there had to say ”We are indeed to have appet.i.tes, but the appet.i.tes are not to have us,” so we should now say ”We are indeed to have _mind_, but mind is not to have us.” If the latter seems lacking in sense, think _e. g._ of the fact that with so many a man a thought becomes a ”maxim,” whereby he himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with the maxim he has a ”permanent standpoint” again.
The doctrines of the catechism become our _principles_ before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection. Their thought, or--mind, has the sole power, and no protest of the ”flesh” is further listened to.
Nevertheless it is only through the ”flesh” that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears _himself_ that he is a hearing or rational[42] being. The Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled nature, but lives in ”humility”; therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his _person_; he thinks himself satisfied with the ”freedom of the spirit.” But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its tone is ”pa.s.sionate,”
”indecorous,” ”not well-disposed,” ”spiteful,” etc. (as it cannot be otherwise), then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices _against the spirit_ (for decorum, pa.s.sionlessness, kindly disposition, and the like, is--spirit), and is justly zealous against them. He could not be a Christian if he were willing to endure them. He listens only to morality, and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to legality, and gags the lawless word. The _spirit_ of morality and legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, unbending _master_. They call that the ”mastery of the spirit,”--it is at the same time the _standpoint_ of the spirit.
And now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen mean to make free? Whose freedom is it that they cry out and thirst for? The _spirit's_! That of the spirit of morality, legality, piety, the fear of G.o.d, etc. That is what the anti-liberal gentlemen also want, and the whole contention between the two turns on a matter of advantage,--whether the latter are to be the only speakers, or the former are to receive a ”share in the enjoyment of the same advantage.” The _spirit_ remains the absolute _lord_ for both, and their only quarrel is over who shall occupy the hierarchical throne that pertains to the ”Vicegerent of the Lord.” The best of it is that one can calmly look upon the stir with the certainty that the wild beasts of history will tear each other to pieces just like those of nature; their putrefying corpses fertilize the ground for--our crops.
We shall come back later to many another wheel in the head,--for instance, those of vocation, truthfulness, love, etc.
When one's own is contrasted with what is _imparted_ to him, there is no use in objecting that we cannot have anything isolated, but receive everything as a part of the universal order, and therefore through the impression of what is around us, and that consequently we have it as something ”imparted”; for there is a great difference between the feelings and thoughts which are _aroused_ in me by other things and those which are _given_ to me. G.o.d, immortality, freedom, humanity, etc., are drilled into us from childhood as thoughts and feelings which move our inner being more or less strongly, either ruling us without our knowing it, or sometimes in richer natures manifesting themselves in systems and works of art; but are always not aroused, but imparted, feelings, because we must believe in them and cling to them. That an Absolute existed, and that it must be taken in, felt, and thought by us, was settled as a faith in the minds of those who spent all the strength of their mind on recognizing it and setting it forth. The _feeling_ for the Absolute exists there as an imparted one, and thenceforth results only in the most manifold revelations of its own self. So in Klopstock the religious feeling was an imparted one, which in the ”Messiad” simply found artistic expression. If, on the other hand, the religion with which he was confronted had been for him only an incitation to feeling and thought, and if he had known how to take an att.i.tude completely _his own_ toward it, then there would have resulted, instead of religious inspiration, a dissolution and consumption of the religion itself.
Instead of that, he only continued in mature years his childish feelings received in childhood, and squandered the powers of his manhood in decking out his childish trifles.
The difference is, then, whether feelings are imparted to me or only aroused. Those which are aroused are my own, egoistic, because they are not _as feelings_ drilled into me, dictated to me, and pressed upon me; but those which are imparted to me I receive, with open arms,--I cherish them in me as a heritage, cultivate them, and am _possessed_ by them.
Who is there that has never, more or less consciously, noticed that our whole education is calculated to produce _feelings_ in us, _i. e._ impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out? If we hear thee name of G.o.d, we are to feel veneration; if we hear that of the prince's majesty, it is to be received with reverence, deference, submission; if we hear that of morality, we are to think that we hear something inviolable; if we hear of the Evil One or evil ones, we are to shudder; etc. The intention is directed to these _feelings_, and he who _e. g._ should hear with pleasure the deeds of the ”bad” would have to be ”taught what's what”