Part 8 (1/2)
against ”fancies, fortuities, arbitrariness,” etc. What it wants is that the _divine_ should become visible in everything, and all consciousness become a knowing of the divine, and man behold G.o.d everywhere; but G.o.d never is, without the _devil_.
For this very reason the name of philosopher is not to be given to him who has indeed open eyes for the things of the world, a clear and undazzled gaze, a correct judgment about the world, but who sees in the world just the world, in objects only objects, and, in short, everything prosaically as it is; but he alone is a philosopher who sees, and points out or demonstrates, heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly, the--_divine_ in the mundane. The former may be ever so wise, there is no getting away from this:
What wise men see not by their wisdom's art Is practised simply by a childlike heart.[56]
It takes this childlike heart, this eye for the divine, to make a philosopher. The first-named man has only a ”common” consciousness, but he who knows the divine, and knows how to tell it, has a ”scientific”
one. On this ground Bacon was turned out of the realm of philosophers.
And certainly what is called English philosophy seems to have got no further than to the discoveries of so-called ”clear heads”, such as Bacon and Hume. The English did not know how to exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to philosophic significance, did not know how to make--philosophers out of childlike hearts. This is as much as to say, their philosophy was not able to become _theological_ or _theology_, and yet it is only as theology that it can really _live itself out_, complete itself. The field of its battle to the death is in theology.
Bacon did not trouble himself about theological questions and cardinal points.
Cognition has its object in life. German thought seeks, more than that of others, to reach the beginnings and fountain-heads of life, and sees no life till it sees it in cognition itself. Descartes's _cogito, ergo sum_ has the meaning ”One lives only when one thinks.” Thinking life is called ”intellectual life”! Only mind lives, its life is the true life.
Then, just so in nature only the ”eternal laws,” the mind or the reason of nature, are its true life. In man, as in nature, only the thought lives; everything else is dead! To this abstraction, to the life of generalities or of that which is _lifeless_, the history of mind had to come. G.o.d, who is spirit, alone lives. Nothing lives but the ghost.
How can one try to a.s.sert of modern philosophy or modern times that they have reached freedom, since they have not freed us from the power of objectivity? Or am I perhaps free from a despot when I am not afraid of the personal potentate, to be sure, but of every infraction of the loving reverence which I fancy I owe him? The case is the same with modern times. They only changed the _existing_ objects, the real ruler, etc., into _conceived_ objects, _i. e._ into _ideas_, before which the old respect not only was not lost, but increased in intensity. Even if people snapped their fingers at G.o.d and the devil in their former cra.s.s reality, people devoted only the greater attention to their ideas. ”They are rid of the Evil One; evil is left.”[57] The decision having once been made not to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable, little scruple was felt about revolting against the existing State or overturning the existing laws; but to sin against the _idea_ of the State, not to submit to the _idea_ of law, who would have dared that? So one remained a ”citizen” and a ”law-respecting,” loyal man; yes, one seemed to himself to be only so much more law-respecting, the more rationalistically one abrogated the former defective law in order to do homage to the ”spirit of the law.” In all this the objects had only suffered a change of form; they had remained in their prepollence and pre-eminence; in short, one was still involved in obedience and possessedness, lived in _refection_, and had an object on which one reflected, which one respected, and before which one felt reverence and fear. One had done nothing but transform the _things_ into _conceptions_ of the things, into thoughts and ideas, whereby one's _dependence_ became all the more intimate and indissoluble. So, _e. g._, it is not hard to emanc.i.p.ate oneself from the commands of parents, or to set aside the admonitions of uncle and aunt, the entreaties of brother and sister; but the renounced obedience easily gets into one's conscience, and the less one does give way to the individual demands, because he rationalistically, by his own reason, recognizes them to be unreasonable, so much the more conscientiously does he hold fast to filial piety and family love, and so much the harder is it for him to forgive himself a trespa.s.s against the _conception_ which he has formed of family love and of filial duty. Released from dependence as regards the existing family, one falls into the more binding dependence on the idea of the family; one is ruled by the spirit of the family. The family consisting of John, Maggie, etc., whose dominion has become powerless, is only internalized, being left as ”family” in general, to which one just applies the old saying, ”We must obey G.o.d rather than man,” whose significance here is this: ”I cannot, to be sure, accommodate myself to your senseless requirements, but, as my 'family,'
you still remain the object of my love and care”; for ”the family” is a sacred idea, which the individual must never offend against.--And this family internalized and desensualized into a thought, a conception, now ranks as the ”sacred,” whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it makes a racket in my conscience. This despotism is broken only when the conception, family, also becomes a _nothing_ to me. The Christian dicta, ”Woman, what have I to do with thee?”[58] ”I am come to stir up a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,”[59] and others, are accompanied by something that refers us to the heavenly or true family, and mean no more than the State's demand, in case of a collision between it and the family, that we obey _its_ commands.
The case of morality is like that of the family. Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, ”morality.” Morality is the ”idea” of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an ”intellectual” man, a so-called independent, a ”freethinker.”
The Protestant may put it as he will, the ”holy[60] Scripture,” the ”Word of G.o.d,” still remains sacred[61] for him. He for whom this is no longer ”holy” has ceased to--be a Protestant. But herewith what is ”ordained” in it, the public authorities appointed by G.o.d, etc., also remain sacred for him. For him these things remain indissoluble, unapproachable, ”raised above all doubt”; and, as _doubt_, which in practice becomes a _buffeting_, is what is most man's own, these things remain ”raised” above himself. He who cannot _get away_ from them will--_believe_; for to believe in them is to be _bound_ to them.
Through the fact that in Protestantism the _faith_ became a more inward faith, the _servitude_ has also become a more inward servitude; one has taken those sanct.i.ties up into himself, entwined them with all his thoughts and endeavors, made them a ”_matter of conscience_,”
constructed out of them a ”_sacred duty_” for himself. Therefore what the Protestant's conscience cannot get away from is sacred to him, and _conscientiousness_ most clearly designates his character.
Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, ”conscience,”
watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a ”matter of conscience,” _i. e._ police business. This tearing apart of man into ”natural impulse” and ”conscience” (inner populace and inner police) is what const.i.tutes the Protestant. The reason of the Bible (in place of the Catholic ”reason of the church”) ranks as sacred, and this feeling and consciousness that the word of the Bible is sacred is called--conscience. With this, then, sacredness is ”laid upon one's conscience.” If one does not free himself from conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he may act unconscientiously indeed, but never consciencelessly.
The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfils the _command_; the Protestant acts according to his ”best judgment and conscience.” For the Catholic is only a _layman_; the Protestant is himself a _clergyman_.[62] Just this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the Middle Ages, and at the same time its curse,--that _the spiritual_ became complete.
What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of indulgences? only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now gained also an _insight_ into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how really his sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case (Casuists) it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible, and silenced every movement of conscience.
All sensuality might hold sway, if it was only purchased from the church. This favoring of sensuality was continued by the Jesuits, while the strictly moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite, praying Protestants (as the true completers of Christianity, to be sure) acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially the Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involuntary and unconscious adherents within Protestantism itself, and saved us from the subversion and extinction of _sensuality_.
Nevertheless the Protestant spirit spreads its dominion farther and farther; and, as, beside it the ”divine,” the Jesuit spirit represents only the ”diabolic” which is inseparable from everything divine, the latter can never a.s.sert itself alone, but must look on and see how in France, _e. g._, the Philistinism of Protestantism wins at last, and mind is on top.
Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into repute again, _e. g._ marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mundane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism, which lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures, while the rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane altogether, and that simply by _hallowing_ it.
So marriage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament, where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, etc. Formerly the pope gave consecration and his blessing to it and its princes; now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The order of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed as ”G.o.d's ordinance.” Hence it is said _e. g._ in the Augsburg Confession, Art.
11: ”So now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have wisely and rightly said: that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law. Now, if it is a _natural law, then it is G.o.d's ordinance_, therefore implanted in nature, and therefore a _divine_ law also.” And is it anything more than Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach p.r.o.nounces moral relations sacred, not as G.o.d's ordinance indeed, but, instead, for the sake of the _spirit_ that dwells in them?
”But marriage--as a free alliance of love, of course--is _sacred of itself_, by the _nature_ of the union that is formed here. _That_ marriage alone is a _religious_ one that is a _true_ one, that corresponds to the _essence_ of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral relations. They are _ethical_, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where they rank as _religious of themselves_. True friends.h.i.+p is only where the _limits_ of friends.h.i.+p are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his G.o.d. Friends.h.i.+p is and must be _sacred_ for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in and of itself_.”[63]
That is a very essential consideration. In Catholicism the mundane can indeed be _consecrated_ or _hallowed_, but it is not sacred without this priestly blessing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane relations are sacred _of themselves_, sacred by their mere existence. The Jesuit maxim, ”the end hallows the means,” corresponds precisely to the consecration by which sanct.i.ty is bestowed. No means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their relation to the church, their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide was named as such; if it was committed for the church's behoof, it could be certain of being hallowed by the church, even if the hallowing was not openly p.r.o.nounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as sacred; to the Catholic only that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and it does rank as such to him only because the pope, even though it be without a special act, confers this sacredness on it once for all. If he retracted his consecration, the king would be left only a ”man of the world or layman,” an ”unconsecrated” man, to the Catholic.
If the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in the sensual itself, that he may then be linked only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to banish the sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, like the rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic church eliminated mundane marriage from its consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its own from the mundane family; the Protestant church declared marriage and family ties to be holy, and therefore not unsuitable for its clergymen.
A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic, hallow everything. He needs only _e. g._ to say to himself: ”I as a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it more zealously when I appease my desires properly; consequently I will seduce this girl, have my enemy there poisoned, etc.; my end is holy because it is a priest's, consequently it hallows the means.” For in the end it is still done for the benefit of the church. Why should the Catholic priest shrink from handing Emperor Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the--church's welfare?
The genuinely--churchly Protestants inveighed against every ”innocent pleasure,” because only the sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent.
What they could not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants had to reject,--dancing, the theatre, ostentation (_e. g._ in the church), and the like.