Part 24 (2/2)
And as here, so in general, it is called ”_human_” when one sees in everything something _spiritual_ (here right), _i. e._ makes everything a ghost and takes his att.i.tude toward it as toward a ghost, which one can indeed scare away at its appearance, but cannot kill. It is human to look at what is individual not as individual, but as a generality.
In nature as such I no longer respect anything, but know myself to be ent.i.tled to everything against it; in the tree in that garden, on the other hand, I must respect _alienness_ (they say in one-sided fas.h.i.+on ”property”), I must keep my hand off it. This comes to an end only when I can indeed leave that tree to another as I leave my stick, etc., to another, but do not in advance regard it as alien to me, _i. e._ sacred.
Rather, I make to myself no _crime_ of felling it if I will, and it remains my property, however long I resign it to others: it is and remains _mine_. In the banker's fortune I as little see anything alien as Napoleon did in the territories of kings: we have no _dread_ of ”_conquering_” it, and we look about us also for the means thereto. We strip off from it, therefore, the _spirit_ of _alienness_, of which we had been afraid.
Therefore it is necessary that I do not lay claim to anything more _as man_, but to everything as I, this I; and accordingly to nothing human, but to mine; _i. e._ nothing that pertains to me as man, but--what I will and because I will it.
Rightful, or legitimate, property of another will be only that which _you_ are content to recognize as such. If your content ceases, then this property has lost legitimacy for you, and you will laugh at absolute right to it.
Besides the hitherto discussed property in the limited sense, there is held up to our reverent heart another property against which we are far less ”to sin.” This property consists in spiritual goods, in the ”sanctuary of the inner nature.” What a man holds sacred, no other is to gibe at; because, untrue as it may be, and zealously as one may ”in loving and modest wise” seek to convince of a true sanct.i.ty the man who adheres to it and believes in it, yet _the sacred_ itself is always to be honored in it: the mistaken man does believe in the sacred, even though in an incorrect essence of it, and so his belief in the sacred must at least be respected.
In ruder times than ours it was customary to demand a particular faith, and devotion to a particular sacred essence, and they did not take the gentlest way with those who believed otherwise; since, however, ”freedom of belief” spread itself more and more abroad, the ”jealous G.o.d and sole Lord” gradually melted into a pretty general ”supreme being,”
and it satisfied humane tolerance if only every one revered ”something sacred.”
Reduces to the human expression, this sacred essence is ”man himself”
and ”the human.” With the deceptive semblance as if the human were altogether our own, and free from all the otherworldliness with which that divine is tainted,--yes, as if Man were as much as I or you,--there may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of a ”sacred essence” and that we now feel ourselves everywhere at home and no longer in the uncanny,[195] _i. e._ in the sacred and in sacred awe: in the ecstasy over ”Man discovered at last” the egoistic cry of pain pa.s.ses unheard, and the spook that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego.
But ”Huma.n.u.s is the saint's name” (see Goethe), and the humane is only the most clarified sanct.i.ty.
The egoist makes the reverse declaration. For this precise reason, because you hold something sacred, I gibe at you; and, even if I respected everything in you, your sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect.
With these opposed views there must also be a.s.sumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the egoist insults them, the religious man (_i. e._ every one who puts his ”essence” above himself) must consistently--protect them. But what kind of spiritual goods are to be protected, and what left unprotected, depends entirely on the concept that one forms of the ”supreme being”; and he who fears G.o.d, _e. g._, has more to shelter than he (the liberal) who fears Man.
In spiritual goods we are (in distinction from the sensuous) injured in a spiritual way, and the sin against them consists in a direct _desecration_, while against the sensuous a purloining or alienation takes place; the goods themselves are robbed of value and of consecration, not merely taken away; the sacred is immediately compromised. With the word ”irreverence” or ”flippancy” is designated everything that can be committed as _crime_ against spiritual goods, _i. e._ against everything that is sacred for us; and scoffing, reviling, contempt, doubt, and the like, are only different shades of _criminal flippancy_.
That desecration can be practised in the most manifold wise is here to be pa.s.sed over, and only that desecration is to be preferentially mentioned which threatens the sacred with danger through an _unrestricted press_.
As long as respect is demanded even for one spiritual essence, speech and the press must be enthralled in the name of this essence; for just so long the egoist might ”trespa.s.s” against it by his _utterances_, from which thing he must be hindered by ”due punishment” at least, if one does not prefer to take up the more correct means against it, the preventive use of police authority, _e. g._ censors.h.i.+p.
What a sighing for liberty of the press! What then is the press to be liberated from? Surely from a dependence, a belonging, and a liability to service! But to liberate himself from that is every one's affair, and it may with safety be a.s.sumed that, when you have delivered yourself from liability to service, that which you compose and write will also belong to you as your _own_ instead of having been thought and indited _in the service_ of some power. What can a believer in Christ say and have printed, that should be freer from that belief in Christ than he himself is? If I cannot or may not write something, perhaps the primary fault lies with _me_. Little as this seems to hit the point, so near is the application nevertheless to be found. By a press-law I draw a boundary for my publications, or let one be drawn, beyond which wrong and its _punishment_ follows. I myself _limit_ myself.
If the press was to be free, nothing would be so important as precisely its liberation from every coercion that could be put on it in the _name of a law_. And, that it might come to that, I my own self should have to have absolved myself from obedience to the law.
Certainly, the absolute liberty of the press is like every absolute liberty, a nonent.i.ty. The press can become free from full many a thing, but always only from what I too am free from. If we make ourselves free from the sacred, if we have become _graceless_ and _lawless_, our words too will become so.
As little as _we_ can be declared clear of every coercion in the world, so little can our writing be withdrawn from it. But as free as we are, so free we can make it too.
It must therefore become our _own_, instead of, as. .h.i.therto, serving a spook.
People do not yet know what they mean by their cry for liberty of the press. What they ostensibly ask is that the State shall set the press free; but what they are really after, without knowing it themselves, is that the press become free from the State, or clear of the State. The former is a _pet.i.tion_ to the State, the latter an _insurrection against_ the State. As a ”pet.i.tion for right,” even as a serious demanding of the right of liberty of the press, it presupposes the State as the _giver_, and can hope only for a _present_, a permission, a chartering. Possible, no doubt, that a State acts so senselessly as to grant the demanded present; but you may bet everything that those who receive the present will not know how to use it so long as they regard the State as a truth: they will not trespa.s.s against this ”sacred thing,” and will call for a penal press-law against every one who would be willing to dare this.
In a word, the press does not become free from what I am not free from.
Do I perhaps hereby show myself an opponent of the liberty of the press?
On the contrary, I only a.s.sert that one will never get it if one wants only it, the liberty of the press; _i. e._ if one sets out only for an unrestricted permission. Only beg right along for this permission: you may wait forever for it, for there is no one in the world who could give it to you. As long as you want to have yourselves ”ent.i.tled” to the use of the press by a permission, _i. e._ liberty of the press, you live in vain hope and complaint.
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