Part 19 (1/2)
But of what concern to me is the common weal? The common weal as such is not _my weal_, but only the furthest extremity of _self-renunciation_.
The common weal may cheer aloud while I must ”down”;[156] the State may s.h.i.+ne while I starve. In what lies the folly of the political liberals but in their opposing the people to the government and talking of people's rights? So there is the people going to be of age, etc. As if one who has no mouth could be _muendig_![157] Only the individual is able to be _muendig_. Thus the whole question of the liberty of the press is turned upside down when it is laid claim to as a ”right of the people.” It is only a right, or better the might, of the _individual_.
If a people has liberty of the press, then _I_, although in the midst of this people, have it not; a liberty of the people is not _my_ liberty, and the liberty of the press as a liberty of the people must have at its side a press law directed against _me_.
This must be insisted on all around against the present-day efforts for liberty:
Liberty of the _people_ is not _my_ liberty!
Let us admit these categories, liberty of the people and right of the people: _e. g._ the right of the people that everybody may bear arms.
Does one not forfeit such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but may well forfeit a right that belongs not to me but to the people. I may be locked, up for the sake of the liberty of the people; I may, under sentence, incur the loss of the right to bear arms.
Liberalism appears as the last attempt at a creation of the liberty of the people, a liberty of the commune, of ”society,” of the general, of mankind; the dream of a humanity, a people, a commune, a ”society,”
that shall be of age.
A people cannot be free otherwise than at the individual's expense; for it is not the individual that is the main point in this liberty, but the people. The freer the people, the more bound the individual; the Athenian people, precisely at its freest time, created ostracism, banished the atheists, poisoned the most honest thinker.
How they do praise Socrates for his conscientiousness, which makes nun resist the advice to get away from the dungeon! He is a fool that he concedes to the Athenians a right to condemn him. Therefore it certainly serves him right; why then does he remain standing on an equal footing with the Athenians? Why does he not break with them? Had he known, and been able to know, what he was, he would have conceded to such judges no claim, no right. That _he did not escape_ was just his weakness, his delusion of still having something in common with the Athenians, or the opinion that he was a member, a mere member of this people. But he was rather this people itself in person, and could only be his own judge.
There was no _judge over him_, as he himself had really p.r.o.nounced a public sentence on himself and rated himself worthy of the Prytaneum. He should have stuck to that, and, as he had uttered no sentence of death against himself, should have despised that of the Athenians too and escaped. But he subordinated himself and recognized in the _people_ his _judge_; he seemed little to himself before the majesty of the people.
That he subjected himself to _might_ (to which alone he could succ.u.mb) as to a ”right” was treason against himself: it was _virtue_. To Christ, who, it is alleged, refrained from using the power over his heavenly legions, the same scrupulousness is thereby ascribed by the narrators. Luther did very well and wisely to have the safety of his journey to Worms warranted to him in black and white, and Socrates should have known that the Athenians were his _enemies_, he alone his judge. The self-deception of a ”reign of law,” etc., should have given way to the perception that the relation was a relation of _might_.
It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why?
Because the ordinary Greeks could still less attain that logical conclusion which not even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to draw. What then is pettifoggery but a way of utilizing something established without doing away with it? I might add ”for one's own advantage,” but, you see, that lies in ”utilizing.” Such pettifoggers are the theologians who ”wrest” and ”force” G.o.d's word; what would they have to wrest if it were not for the ”established” Word of G.o.d? So those liberals who only shake and wrest the ”established order.” They are all perverters, like those perverters of the law. Socrates recognized law, right; the Greeks constantly retained the authority of right and law. If with this recognition they wanted nevertheless to a.s.sert their advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek it in perversion of the law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, an intriguer of genius, introduces the period of Athenian ”decay”; the Spartan Lysander and others show that intrigue had become universally Greek. Greek _law_, on which the Greek _States_ rested, had to be perverted and undermined by the egoists within these States, and the _States_ went down that the _individuals_ might become free, the Greek people fell because the individuals cared less for this people than for themselves. In general, all States, const.i.tutions, churches, etc., have sunk by the _secession_ of individuals; for the individual is the irreconcilable enemy of every _generality_, every _tie_, _i. e._ every fetter. Yet people fancy to this day that man needs ”sacred ties”: he, the deadly enemy of every ”tie.” The history of the world shows that no tie has yet remained unrent, shows that man tirelessly defends himself against ties of every sort; and yet, blinded, people think up new ties again and again, and think, _e. g._, that they have arrived at the right one if one puts upon them the tie of a so-called free const.i.tution, a beautiful, const.i.tutional tie; decoration ribbons, the ties of confidence between ”---- ---- ----,” do seem gradually to have become somewhat infirm, but people have made no further progress than from ap.r.o.n-strings to garters and collars.
_Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter._
Everything sacred is and must be perverted by perverters of the law; therefore our present time has mult.i.tudes of such perverters in all spheres. They are preparing the way for the break-up of law, for lawlessness.
Poor Athenians who are accused of pettifoggery and sophistry! poor Alcibiades, of intrigue! Why, that was just your best point, your first step in freedom. Your aeschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have a free Greek _people_; you were the first to surmise something of _your_ freedom.
A people represses those who tower above _its majesty_, by ostracism against too-powerful citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics of the Church, by the--Inquisition against traitors in the State, etc.
For the people is concerned only with its self-a.s.sertion; it demands ”patriotic self-sacrifice” from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one _in himself_ is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even suffer, what the individual and he alone must do,--to wit, _turn him to account_. Every people, every State, is unjust toward the _egoist_.
As long as there still exists even one inst.i.tution which the individual may not dissolve, the ownness and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote. How can I, _e. g._, be free when I must bind myself by oath to a const.i.tution, a charter, a law, ”vow body and soul” to my people? How can I be my own when my faculties may develop only so far as they ”do not disturb the harmony of society” (Weitling)?
The fall of peoples and mankind will invite _me_ to my rise.
Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, that they may jingle in for to-morrow the festival of the thousand years existence of our dear Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough, as if your tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to rise again,--that all may become free whom you so long have held in fetters.--The _people_ is dead.--Up with _me_!
O thou my much-tormented German people--what was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every c.o.c.k-crow and yet pines for deliverance and fulfilment. In me too thou hast lived long, thou dear--thought, thou dear--spook. Already I almost fancied I had found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and bones for the wandering spirit; then I hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest; then the last hope fades out, then the notes of the last love die away, then I depart from the desolate house of those who now are dead and enter at the door of the--living one:
For only he who is alive is in the right.
Farewell, thou dream of so many millions; farewell, thou who hast tyrannized over thy children for a thousand years!
To-morrow they carry thee to the grave; soon thy sisters, the peoples, will follow thee. But, when they have all followed, then----mankind is buried, and I am my own, I am the laughing heir!
The word _Gesellschaft_ (society) has its origin in the word _Sal_ (hall). If one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these persons to be in society. They _are_ in society, and at most const.i.tute a parlor-society by talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech.