Part 28 (1/2)
Calling--destiny--task!--
What one can become he does become. A born poet may well be hindered by the disfavor of circ.u.mstances from standing on the high level of his time, and, after the great studies that are indispensable for this, producing _consummate_ works of art; but he will make poetry, be he a plowman or so lucky as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make music, no matter whether on all instruments or only on an oaten pipe. A born philosophical head can give proof of itself as university philosopher or as village philosopher. Finally, a born dolt, who, as is very well compatible with this, may at the same time be a sly-boots, will (as probably every one who has visited schools is in a position to exemplify to himself by many instances of fellow-scholars) always remain a blockhead, let him have been drilled and trained into the chief of a bureau, or let him serve that same chief as bootblack.
Nay, the born shallow-pates indisputably form the most numerous cla.s.s of men. And why, indeed, should not the same distinctions show themselves in the human species that are unmistakable in every species of beasts?
The more gifted and the less gifted are to be found everywhere.
Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one could not get ideas into them. Hence people usually consider all men capable of having religion.
In a certain degree they may be trained to other ideas too, _e. g._ to some musical intelligence, even some philosophy, etc. At this point then the priesthood of religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc., takes its start, and the Communists, _e. g._, want to make everything accessible to all by their ”public school.” There is heard a common a.s.sertion that this ”great ma.s.s” cannot get along without religion; the Communists broaden it into the proposition that not only the ”great ma.s.s,” but absolutely all, are called to everything.
Not enough that the great ma.s.s has been trained to religion, now it is actually to have to occupy itself with ”everything human.” Training is growing ever more general and more comprehensive.
You poor beings who could live so happily if you might skip according to your mind, you are to dance to the pipe of schoolmasters and bear-leaders, in order to perform tricks that you yourselves would never use yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the traces at last against being always taken otherwise than you want to give yourselves.
No, you mechanically recite to yourselves the question that is recited to you: ”What am I called to? What _ought_ I to do?” You need only ask thus, to have yourselves _told_ what you ought to do and _ordered_ to do it, to have your _calling_ marked out for you, or else to order yourselves and impose it on yourselves according to the spirit's prescription. Then in reference to the will the word is, I will to do what I _ought_.
A man is ”called” to nothing, and has no ”calling,” no ”destiny,” as little as a plant or a beast has a ”calling.” The flower does not follow the calling to complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy and consume the world as well as it can,--_i. e._ it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air of the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and lodge. The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as is practicable; it catches beetles and sings to its heart's delight. But the forces of the flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and are as little able to abide inactive as life, which, if it ”stood still”
only a second, would no longer be life. Now, one might call out to the man, ”use your force.” Yet to this imperative would be given the meaning that it was man's task to use his force. It is not so. Rather, each one really uses his force without first looking upon this as his calling: at all times every one uses as much force as he possesses. One does say of a beaten man that he ought to have exerted his force more; but one forgets that, if in the moment of succ.u.mbing he had had the force to exert his forces (_e. g._ bodily forces), he would not have failed to do it: even if it was only the discouragement of a minute, this was yet a--dest.i.tution of force, a minute long. Forces may a.s.suredly be sharpened and redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly a.s.sistance; but where one misses their application one may be sure of their absence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but without the blow none comes out; in like manner a man too needs ”impact.”
Now, for this reason that forces always of themselves show themselves operative, the command to use them would be superfluous and senseless.
To use his forces is not man's _calling_ and task, but is his _act_, real and extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for manifestation of force.
Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a ”true man” from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a ”true man,” the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the ”man.”
The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.
But, if I am Man, and have really found in myself him whom religious humanity designated as the distant goal, then everything ”truly human”
is also _my own_. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity belongs to me. That freedom of trade, _e. g._, which humanity has yet to attain,--and which, like an enchanting dream, people remove to humanity's golden future,--I take by antic.i.p.ation as my property, and carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. There may indeed be but few smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account to themselves for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces their consciousness. Above I have shown the same thing about freedom of the press.
Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to myself what wants to withdraw from me; but above all I always bring myself back when I have slipped away from myself to any tributariness. But this too is not my calling, but my natural act.
Enough, there is a mighty difference whether I make myself the starting-point or the goal. As the latter I do not have myself, am consequently still alien to myself, am my _essence_, my ”true essence,”
and this ”true essence,” alien to me, will mock me as a spook of a thousand different names. Because I am not yet I, another (like G.o.d, the true man, the truly pious man, the rational man, the freeman, etc.) is I, my ego.
Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, ”The spirit is man's proper essence,” or, ”man exists as man only spiritually.” Now there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged _himself_; and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is.
And, as one stormily pursues his own self, the never-attained, so one also despises shrewd people's rule to take men as they are, and prefers to take them as they should be; and, for this reason, hounds every one on after his should-be self and ”endeavors to make all into equally ent.i.tled, equally respectable, equally moral or rational men.”[219]
Yes, ”if men were what they _should_ be, _could_ be, if all men were rational, all loved each other as brothers,” then it would be a paradisiacal life.[220]--All right, men are as they should be, can be.
What should they be? Surely not more than they can be! And what can they be? Not more, again, than they--can, _i. e._ than they have the competence, the force, to be. But this they really are, because what they are not they are _incapable_ of being; for to be capable means--really to be. One is not capable for anything that one really is not; one is not capable of anything that one does not really do. Could a man blinded by cataract see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataract successfully removed. But now he cannot see because he does not see.
Possibility and reality always coincide. One can do nothing that one does not, as one does nothing that one cannot.
The singularity of this a.s.sertion vanishes when one reflects that the words ”it is possible that ...” almost never contain another meaning than ”I can imagine that ...,” _e. g._, It is possible for all men to live rationally, _i. e._ I can imagine that all, etc. Now,--since my thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be left to the men themselves,--general reason is for me only thinkable, a thinkableness, but as such in fact a _reality_ that is called a possibility only in reference to what I _can_ not bring to pa.s.s, to wit, the rationality of others. So far as depends on you, all men might be rational, for you have nothing against it; nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in the way of the thing in your thinking; it is thinkable to you.
As men are not all rational, though, it is probable that they--cannot be so.
If something which one imagines to be easily possible is not, or does not happen, then one may be a.s.sured that something stands in the way of the thing, and that it is--impossible. Our time has its art, science, etc.; the art may be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we deserved to have a better, and ”could” have it if we only would? We have just as much art as we can have. Our art of to-day is the _only art possible_, and therefore real, at the time.