Part 14 (1/2)

Part Second

I

At the entrance of the modern time stands the ”G.o.d-man.” At its exit will only the G.o.d in the G.o.d-man evaporate? and can the G.o.d-man really die if only the G.o.d in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were through when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the Illumination, the vanquis.h.i.+ng of G.o.d; they did not notice that Man has killed G.o.d in order to become now--”sole G.o.d on high.”

The _other world outside us_ is indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the Illuminators completed; but the _other world in us_ has become a new heaven and calls us forth to renewed heaven-storming: G.o.d has had to give place, yet not to us, but to--Man. How can you believe that the G.o.d-man is dead before the Man in him, besides the G.o.d, is dead?

I

OWNNESS[104]

”Does not the spirit thirst for freedom?”--Alas, not my spirit alone, my body too thirsts for it hourly! When before the odorous castle-kitchen my nose tells my palate of the savory dishes that are being prepared therein, it feels a fearful pining at its dry bread; when my eyes tell the hardened back about soft down on which one may lie more delightfully than on its compressed straw, a suppressed rage seizes it; when--but let us not follow the pains further.--And you call that a longing for freedom? What do you want to become free from, then? From your hardtack and your straw bed? Then throw them away!--But that seems not to serve you: you want rather to have the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and downy beds. Are men to give you this ”freedom,”--are they to permit it to you? You do not hope that from their philanthropy, because you know they all think like--you: each is the nearest to himself! How, therefore, do you mean to come to the enjoyment of those foods and beds?

Evidently not otherwise than in making them your property!

If you think it over rightly, you do not want the freedom to have all these fine things, for with this freedom you still do not have them; you want really to have them, to call them _yours_ and possess them as _your property_. Of what use is a freedom to you, indeed, if it brings in nothing? And, if you became free from everything, you would no longer have anything; for freedom is empty of substance. Whoso knows not how to make use of it, for him it has no value this useless permission; but how I make use of it depends on my personality.[105]

I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more than freedom for you: you should not merely _be rid_ of what you do not want, you should also _have_ what you want; you should not only be a ”freeman,” you should be an ”owner” too.

Free--from what? Oh! what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke of serfdom, of sovereignty, of aristocracy and princes, the dominion of the desires and pa.s.sions; yes, even the dominion of one's own will, of self-will, for the completest self-denial is nothing but freedom--freedom, to wit, from self-determination, from one's own self.

And the craving for freedom as for something absolute, worthy of every praise, deprived us of ownness: it created self-denial. However, the freer I become, the more compulsion piles up before my eyes; and the more impotent I feel myself. The unfree son of the wilderness does not yet feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilized man: he seems to himself freer than this latter. In the measure that I conquer freedom for myself I create for myself new bounds and new tasks: if I have invented railroads, I feel myself weak again because I cannot yet sail through the skies like the bird; and, if I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed my mind, at once there await me innumerable others, whose perplexities impede my progress, dim my free gaze, make the limits of my _freedom_ painfully sensible to me. ”Now that you have become free from sin, you have become _servants_ of righteousness.”[106] Republicans in their broad freedom, do they not become servants of the law? How true Christian hearts at all times longed to ”become free,” how they pined to see themselves delivered from the ”bonds of this earth-life”! they looked out toward the land of freedom. (”The Jerusalem that is above is the freewoman; she is the mother of us all.” Gal. 4. 26.)

Being free from anything--means only being clear or rid. ”He is free from headache” is equal to ”he is rid of it.” ”He is free from this prejudice” is equal to ”he has never conceived it” or ”he has got rid of it.” In ”less” we complete the freedom recommended by Christianity, in sinless, G.o.dless, moralityless, etc.

Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. ”Ye, dear brethren, are called to freedom.”[107] ”So speak and so do, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom.”[108]

Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give it up? No, nothing is to be lost, freedom no more than the rest; but it is to become our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot.

What a difference between freedom and ownness! One can get _rid_ of a great many things, one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free from much, not from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the condition of slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of things, not from everything; but from the whip, the domineering temper, etc., of the master, one does not as slave become _free_. ”Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams!” Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am _rid_ of, owner of what I have in my _power_ or what I _control_. _My own_ I am at all times and under all circ.u.mstances, if I know how to have myself and do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something that I cannot truly _will_, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can only wish it and--aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook.

The fetters of reality cut the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment.

But _my own_ I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my advantage; his blows strike me indeed, I am not _free_ from them; but I endure them only for _my benefit_, perhaps in order to deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or, again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. But, as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust. That I then become _free_ from him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says I was ”free” even in the condition of slavery,--to wit, ”intrinsically” or ”inwardly.” But ”intrinsically free” is not ”really free,” and ”inwardly” is not ”outwardly.” I was own, on the other hand, _my own_, altogether, inwardly and outwardly.

Under the dominion of a cruel master my body is not ”free” from torments and lashes; but it is _my_ bones that moan under the torture, _my_ fibres that quiver under the blows, and _I_ moan because _my_ body moans. That _I_ sigh and s.h.i.+ver proves that I have not yet lost _myself_, that I am still my own. My _leg_ is not ”free” from the master's stick, but it is _my_ leg and is inseparable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he still has my leg! He retains in his hand nothing but the--corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a so-called dead dog has none and is therefore no longer a dog.

If one opines that a slave may yet be inwardly free, he says in fact only the most indisputable and trivial thing. For who is going to a.s.sert that any man is _wholly_ without freedom? If I am an eye-servant, can I therefore not be free from innumerable things, _e. g._ from faith in Zeus, from the desire for fame, and the like? Why then should not a whipped slave also be able to be inwardly free from unchristian sentiments, from hatred, of his enemy, etc.? He then has ”Christian freedom,” is rid of the unchristian; but has he absolute freedom, freedom from everything, _e. g._ from the Christian delusion, or from bodily pain, etc.?

In the meantime, all this seems to be said more against names than against the thing. But is the name indifferent, and has not a word, a s.h.i.+bboleth, always inspired and--fooled men? Yet between freedom and ownness there lies still a deeper chasm than the mere difference of the words.

All the world desires freedom, all long for its reign to come. O enchantingly beautiful dream of a blooming ”reign of freedom,” a ”free human race”!--who has not dreamed it? So men shall become free, entirely free, free from all constraint! From all constraint, really from all?

Are they never to put constraint on themselves any more? ”Oh yes, that, of course; don't you see, that is no constraint at all?” Well, then at any rate they are to become free from religious faith, from the strict duties of morality, from the inexorability of the law, from--”What a fearful misunderstanding!” Well, _what_ are they to be free from then, and what not?

The lovely dream is dissipated; awakened, one rubs his half-opened eyes and stares at the prosaic questioner. ”What men are to be free from?”--From blind credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims another, all faith is blind credulity; they must become free from all faith. No, no, for G.o.d's sake,--inveighs the first again,--do not cast all faith from you, else the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the republic,--a third makes himself heard,--and become--free from all commanding lords. There is no help in that, says a fourth: we only get a new lord then, a ”dominant majority”; let us rather free ourselves from this dreadful inequality.--O hapless equality, already I hear your plebeian roar again! How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a paradise of _freedom_, and what impudence and licentiousness now raises its wild clamor! Thus the first laments, and gets on his feet to grasp the sword against ”unmeasured freedom.” Soon we no longer hear anything but the clas.h.i.+ng of the swords of the disagreeing dreamers of freedom.

What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for a _particular_ freedom, _e. g._ freedom of faith; _i. e._, the believing man wanted to be free and independent; of what? of faith perhaps? no!

but of the inquisitors of faith. So now ”political or civil” freedom.

The citizen wants to become free not from citizenhood, but from bureaucracy, the arbitrariness of princes, and the like. Prince Metternich once said he had ”found a way that was adapted to guide men in the path of _genuine_ freedom for all the future.” The Count of Provence ran away from France precisely at the time when she was preparing the ”reign of freedom,” and said: ”My imprisonment had become intolerable to me; I had only one pa.s.sion, the desire for--_freedom_; I thought only of it.”

The craving for a _particular_ freedom always includes the purpose of a new _dominion_, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed ”could give its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for freedom,” but in truth only because they were after a particular freedom, therefore a new _dominion_, the ”dominion of the law.”