Part 8 (2/2)
Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism is again more on the religious, _i. e._ spiritual, track,--is more radical. For the former excludes at once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and _purifies_ the church; Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring _spirit_ into all things as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything, and so to _hallow_ everything worldly. (”No one can forbid a kiss in honor.” The spirit of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he declares himself such in some pa.s.sage or other: he ”wants to remain a Lutheran”) was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything. In everything there is reason, _i. e._ holy spirit, or ”the real is rational.” For the real is in fact everything, as in each thing, _e. g._ each lie, the truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute evil, and the like.
Great ”works of mind” were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone were the true disciples and consummators of _mind_.
How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before the _uncontrollable_. Can he keep off the impression that he is _helpless_ against this gigantic world? It is a fixed _law_ to which he must submit, it determines his _fate_. Now, what did pre-Christian humanity work toward? Toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies, not letting oneself be vexed by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks of nature _indifferent_, and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace utters the famous _Nil admirari_, by which he likewise announces the indifference of the _other_, the world; it is not to influence us, not to arouse our astonishment. And that _impavidum ferient ruinae_ expresses the very same _imperturbability_ as Ps. 46.3: ”We do not fear, though the earth should perish.” In all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty, for the Christian _contempt of the world_.
The _imperturbable_ spirit of ”the wise man,” with which the old world worked to prepare its end, now underwent an _inner perturbation_ against which no ataraxy, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. The spirit, secured against all influence of the world, insensible to its shocks and _exalted_ above its attacks, admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of the world,--foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were evolved in its own interior, and, after the _mechanical shock_ that comes from without had become ineffective, _chemical tensions_, that agitate within, began their wonderful play.
In fact, ancient history ends with this,--that _I_ have struggled till I won my owners.h.i.+p of the world. ”All things have been delivered, to me by my Father” (Matt. 11.27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc., for me; it is _undeified_, and now I treat it so entirely as I please that, if I cared, I could exert on it all miracle-working power, _i. e._ power of mind,--remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves up and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything possible, _i. e. thinkable_: ”All things are possible to him who believes.”[64] I am the _lord_ of the world, mine is the ”_glory_.”[65] The world has become _prosaic_, for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which I dispose of as I (to wit, the mind) choose.
When I had exalted myself to be the _owner of the world_, egoism had won its first complete victory, had vanquished the world, had become _worldless_, and put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.
The first property, the first ”glory,” has been acquired!
But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred, the ”Holy Spirit,” and the ”worldless” Christian is not able to become ”G.o.dless.” If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the _world_, the mediaeval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against _self_, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The mediaeval man is the man ”whose gaze is turned inward,” the thinking, meditative man.
All wisdom of the ancients is _the science of the world_, all wisdom of the moderns is _the science of G.o.d_.
The heathen (Jews included) got through with the _world_; but now the thing was to get through with self, the _spirit_, too; _i. e._ to become spiritless or G.o.dless.
For almost two thousand years we have been working at subjecting the Holy Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we have torn off and trodden under foot many bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost its divinity, its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove; to be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but lets itself be caught by the laity too, etc.; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit of Man, it remains still an _alien_ spirit to me or you, still far from becoming our unrestricted _property_, which we dispose of at our pleasure. However, one thing certainly happened, and visibly guided the progress of post-Christian history: this one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy Spirit _more human_, and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it came about that at last it could be conceived as the ”spirit of humanity,”
and, under different expressions like ”idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness, general philanthropy,” etc., appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more accessible.
Would not one think that now everybody could possess the Holy Spirit, take up into himself the idea of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in himself?
No, the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its unapproachableness, is not accessible to us, not our property; for the spirit of humanity is not _my_ spirit. My _ideal_ it may be, and as a thought I call it mine; the _thought_ of humanity is my property, and I prove this sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views, and shaping it to-day so, to-morrow otherwise; we represent it to ourselves in the most manifold ways. But it is at the same time an entail, which I cannot alienate nor get rid of.
Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the ”_absolute idea_,” which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc.
But can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity, and can I consider the Spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it, ”sacrifice myself” to it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its owners.h.i.+p of the world only when it had broken the world's overpoweringness and ”divinity,” recognized the world's powerlessness and ”vanity.”
The case with regard to the _spirit_ corresponds. When I have degraded it to a _spook_ and its control over me to a _cranky notion_, then it is to be looked upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I _use_ it, as one uses _nature_ at pleasure without scruple.
The ”nature of the case,” the ”concept of the relations.h.i.+p,” is to guide me in dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms of the case! As if a relation which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness of those who enter into it, itself unique! As if it depended on how others stamp it! But, as people separated the ”essence of Man” from the real man, and judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from him, and appraise it by ”human value.” _Concepts_ are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts to _rule_. This is the religious world, to which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic.
Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, _i. e._ I, am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. Can there be a more grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess at the very beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? (”Not a letter of the law shall be lost!”)
Liberalism simply brought other concepts on the carpet, _viz._, human instead of divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, ”scientific”
instead of doctrinal, or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of ”crude dogmas” and precepts.
Now nothing but _mind_ rules in the world. An innumerable mult.i.tude of concepts buzz about in people's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor to get further? They are negating these concepts to put new ones in their place! They are saying: ”You form a false concept of right, of the State, of man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc.; the concept of right, etc., is rather that one which we now set up.”
Thus the confusion of concepts moves forward.
The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has obtained an almighty power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your potatoes would become palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would relieve you of all need at once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to recognize the _independence_ of all these and innumerable other things: they are to rank in his mind as something that cannot be seized or approached, are to be kept away from him. He must have regard for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches out his fingers desirously; we call that ”being light-fingered!”
How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really nothing! Everything has been removed, we must not venture on anything unless it is given us; we continue to live only by the _grace_ of the giver. You must not pick up a pin, unless indeed you have got _leave_ to do so. And got it from whom? From _respect_! Only when this lets you have it as property, only when you can _respect_ it as property, only then may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive a thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that should have their warrant in you alone, instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity. Happy _unconstraint_ of the desirous man, how mercilessly people have tried to slay you on the altar of _constraint_!
But around the altar rise the arches of a church, and its walls keep moving further and further out. What they enclose is--_sacred_. You can no longer get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you wander round about these walls in search of the little that is profane, and the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended. Soon that church will embrace the whole world, and you be driven out to the extreme edge; another step, and the _world of the sacred_ has conquered: you sink into the abyss. Therefore take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you _devour the sacred_, you have made it your _own_! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!
III.--THE FREE
The ancients and the moderns having been presented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the free were here to be described in a third division as independent and distinct. This is not so. The free are only the more modern and most modern among the ”moderns,” and are put in a separate division merely because they belong to the present, and what is present, above all, claims our attention here. I give ”the free” only as a translation of ”the liberals,” but must with regard to the concept of freedom (as in general with regard to so many other things whose antic.i.p.atory introduction cannot be avoided) refer to what comes later.
<script>