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And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's officials" "servants, instruments," because they "execute the free, rational law-will of the people!" (p.73). He thinks (p.74): "Only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how will a lack of subordination be allowed there? subordination to the -- people's will.
     "In the constitutional State it is the regent and his disposition that the whole structure of government rests on in the end." (p. 130.) How would that be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall I not there be governed by the people's disposition too, and does it make a difference for me whether I see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence means as much as "religious relation," as Edgar Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains for me the superior power, the "majesty" (for God and prince have their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in religious relations. -- Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no law. Edgar Bauer's whole attempt comes to a change of masters. Instead of wanting to make the people free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.
     In the constitutional State absolutism itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will wear out against each other.

     Edgar Bauer inveighs against the determination of the regent by birth, by chance. But, when "the people" have become "the sole power in the State" (p. 132), have we not then in it a master from chance? Why, what is the people? The people has always been only the body of the government: it is many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution. And the constitution is the -- prince. Princes and peoples will persist so long as both do not collapse, i. e., fall together. If under one constitution there are many "peoples" -- as in the ancient Persian monarchy and today --then these "peoples" rank only as "provinces." For me the people is in any case an --accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome.
     What is one to think of under the name of an "organized" people (p. 132)? A people "that no longer has a government," that governs itself. In which, therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a people organized by ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat.
     If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the people, if it is to be a subject* and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a head, its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in [Die Europäische] Triarchie, and Proudhon declares, "une société, pour ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut vivre."**
     The vox populi is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule our princes. Certainly

*[In the philosophical sense [a thinking and acting being] not in the political sense.]
**[Création de l'Ordre," p.485.]

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the vox populi is at the same time vox dei; but is either of any use, and is not the vox principis also vox dei?
     At this point the "Nationals" may be brought to mind. To demand of the thirty-eight States of Germany that they shall act as one nation can only be put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of bees, led by thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into one swarm. Bees they all remain; but it is not the bees as bees that belong together and can join themselves together, it is only that the subject bees are connected with the ruling queens. Bees and peoples are destitute of will, and the instinct of their queens leads them.
     If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, i.e. beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the "peoples" are regarded

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as the ones that have come together, are destitute of will. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to unification.
     Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something general, abstract, an empty, lifeless concept, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively particular from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a people, a nation, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just now the order of the day - to wit, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, Lusatia, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality -- coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, i.e. unite themselves, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other words, when they are more than -- Germans: only then can they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in to himself. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German!" With that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," i.e. as long as they have a

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"family disposition". From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run -- from the family spirit -- the Nationals, who want to have a great family of Germans, cannot liberate themselves.
     Aside from this, the so-called Nationals would only have to understand themselves rightly in order to lift themselves out of their juncture with the good-natured Teutomaniacs. For the uniting for material ends and interests, which they demand of the Germans, comes to nothing else than a voluntary union. Carrière, inspired, cries out,* "Railroads are to the more penetrating eye the way to a life of the people e. g. has not yet anywhere appeared in such significance." Quite right, it will be a life of the people that has nowhere appeared, because it is not a -- life of the people. -- So Carrière then combats himself (p. 10): "Pure humanity or manhood cannot be better represented than by a people fulfilling its mission." Why, by this nationality only is represented. "Washed-out generality is lower than the form complete in itself, which is itself a whole, and lives as a living member of the truly general, the organized." Why, the people is this very "washed-out generality," and it is only a man that is the "form complete in itself."
     The impersonality of what they call "people, nation," is clear also from this: that a people which wants to bring its I into view to the best of its power puts at its head the ruler without will. It finds itself in the alternative either to be subjected to a prince

*["Kölner Dom," p. 4.]

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who realizes only himself, his individual pleasure -- then it does not recognize in the "absolute master" its own will, the so-called will of the people -- or to seat on the throne a prince who gives effect to no will of his own -- then it has a prince without will, whose place some ingenious clockwork would perhaps fill just as well. -- Therefore insight need go only a step farther; then it becomes clear of itself that the I of the people is an impersonal, "spiritual" power, the -- law. The people's I, therefore, is a -- spook, not an I. I am I only by this, that I make myself; i.e. that it is not another who makes me, but I must be my own work. But how is it with this I of the people? Chance plays it into the people's hand, chance gives it this or that born lord, accidents procure it the chosen one; he is not its (the "sovereign" people's) product, as I am my product. Conceive of one wanting to talk you into believing that you were not your I, but Tom or Jack was your I! But so it is with the people, and rightly. For the people has an I as little as the eleven planets counted together have an I, though they revolve around a common center.
     Bailly's utterance is representative of the slave-disposition that folks manifest before the sovereign people, as before the prince. "I have," says he, "no longer any extra reason when the general reason has pronounced itself. My first law was the nation's will; as soon as it had assembled I knew nothing beyond its sovereign will." He would have no "extra reason," and yet this extra reason alone accomplishes everything. Just so Mirabeau inveighs in the words, "No power on earth has the right to say to the nation's

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representatives, It is my will!"
     As with the Greeks, there is now a wish to make man a zoon politicon, a citizen of the State or political man. So he ranked for a long time as a "citizen of heaven." But the Greek fell into ignominy along with his State, the citizen of heaven likewise falls with heaven; we, on the other hand, are not willing to go down along with the people, the nation and nationality, not willing to be merely political men or politicians. Since the Revolution they have striven to "make the people happy," and in making the people happy, great, etc., they make us unhappy: the people's good hap is -- my mishap.
     What empty talk the political liberals utter with emphatic decorum is well seen again in Nauwerck's "On Taking Part in the State". There complaint is made of those who are indifferent and do not take part, who are not in the full sense citizens, and the author speaks as if one could not be man at all if one did not take a lively part in State affairs, i.e. if one were not a politician. In this he is right; for, if the State ranks as the warder of everything "human," we can have nothing human without taking part in it. But what does this make out against the egoist? Nothing at all, because the egoist is to himself the warder of the human, and has nothing to say to the State except "Get out of my sunshine." Only when the State comes in contact with his ownness does the egoist take an active interest in it. If the condition of the State does not bear hard on the closet-philosopher, is he to occupy himself with it because it is his "most sacred duty?" So long as the State does

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according to his wish, what need has he to look up from his studies? Let those who from an interest of their own want to have conditions otherwise busy themselves with them. Not now, nor evermore, will "sacred duty" bring folks to reflect about the State -- as little as they become disciples of science, artists, etc., from "sacred duty." Egoism alone can impel them to it, and will as soon as things have become much worse. If you showed folks that their egoism demanded that they busy themselves with State affairs, you would not have to call on them long; if, on the other hand, you appeal to their love of fatherland etc., you will long preach to deaf hearts in behalf of this "service of love." Certainly, in your sense the egoists will not participate in State affairs at all.
     Nauwerck utters a genuine liberal phrase on p. 16: "Man completely fulfills his calling only in feeling and knowing himself as a member of humanity, and being active as such. The individual cannot realize the idea of manhood if he does not stay himself upon all humanity, if he does not draw his powers from it like Antaeus."
     In the same place it is said: "Man's relation to the res publica is degraded to a purely private matter by the theological view; is, accordingly, made away with by denial." As if the political view did otherwise with religion! There religion is a "private matter."
     If, instead of "sacred duty," "man's destiny," the "calling to full manhood," and similar commandments, it were held up to people that their self-interest was infringed on when they let everything in the State go as it goes, then, without declamations, they would

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be addressed as one will have to address them at the decisive moment if he wants to attain his end. Instead of this, the theology-hating author says, "If there has ever been a time when the State laid claim to all that are hers, such a time is ours. -- The thinking man sees in participation in the theory and practice of the State a duty, one of the most sacred duties that rest upon him" -- and then takes under closer consideration the "unconditional necessity that everybody participate in the State."
     He in whose head or heart or both the State is seated, he who is possessed by the State, or the believer in the State, is a politician, and remains such to all eternity.
     "The State is the most necessary means for the complete development of mankind." It assuredly has been so as long as we wanted to develop mankind; but, if we want to develop ourselves, it can be to us only a means of hindrance.
     Can State and people still be reformed and bettered now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church, etc.: they can be abrogated, annihilated, done away with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense into sense by reforming it, or must I drop it outright?
     Henceforth what is to be done is no longer about the State (the form of the State, etc.), but about me. With this all questions about the prince's power, the constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my creations from myself.

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     To the chapter of society belongs also "the party," whose praise has of late been sung.
     In the State the party is current. "Party, party, who should not join one!" But the individual is unique,* not a member of the party. He unites freely, and separates freely again. The party is nothing but a State in the State, and in this smaller bee- State "peace" is also to rule just as in the greater. The very people who cry loudest that there must be an opposition in the State inveigh against every discord in the party. A proof that they too want only a --State. All parties are shattered not against the State, but against the ego.**
     One hears nothing oftener now than the admonition to remain true to his party; party men despise nothing so much as a mugwump. One must run with his party through thick and thin, and unconditionally approve and represent its chief principles. It does not indeed go quite so badly here as with closed societies, because these bind their members to fixed laws or statutes (e. g. the orders, the Society of Jesus, etc.). But yet the party ceases to be a union at the same moment at which it makes certain principles binding and wants to have them assured against attacks; but this moment is the very birth-act of the party. As party it is already a born society, a dead union, an idea that has become fixed. As party of absolutism it cannot will that its members should doubt the irrefragable truth of this principle; they could cherish this doubt only if they were egoistic enough to want still

*[einzig]
**[am Einzigen]

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to be something outside their party, i.e. non-partisans. Non-partisans they cannot be as party-men, but only as egoists. If you are a Protestant and belong to that party, you must only justify Protestantism, at most "purge" it, not reject it; if you are a Christian and belong among men to the Christian party, you cannot be beyond this as a member of this party, but only when your egoism, i.e. non-partisanship, impels you to it. What exertions the Christians, down to Hegel and the Communists, have put forth to make their party strong! They stuck to it that Christianity must contain the eternal truth, and that one needs only to get at it, make sure of it, and justify it.
     In short, the party cannot bear non-partisanship, and it is in this that egoism appears. What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.
     He who passes over from one party to another is at once abused as a "turncoat." Certainly morality demands that one stand by his party, and to become apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of "faithlessness"; but ownness knows no commandment of "faithlessness"; adhesion, etc., ownness permits everything, even apostasy, defection. Unconsciously even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this principle when they have to judge one who passes over to their party -- nay, they are likely to be making proselytes; they should only at the same time acquire a consciousness of the fact that one must commit immoral actions in order to commit his own -- i.e. here, that one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order to determine himself instead of being determined by

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moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in equivocal colors, and will not easily obtain their confidence; for there sticks to him the taint of "faithlessness," i.e. of an immorality. In the lower man this view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall here too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment, and the contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of morality does not, on account of the confusion of their concepts, come clearly to their consciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate downright immoral, because they themselves entice to apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, etc.; still, they cannot give up the standpoint of morality either. And yet here the occasion was to be seized to step outside of morality.
     Are the Own or Unique* perchance a party? How could they be own if they were e. g. belonged to a party?
     Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and entering their circle one forms a union with them that lasts as long as party and I pursue one and the same goal. But today I still share the party's tendency, as by tomorrow I can do so no longer and I become "untrue" to it. The party has nothing binding (obligatory) for me, and I do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, I become its foe.
     In every party that cares for itself and its persistence, the members are unfree (or better, unown)

*[Einzigen]

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in that degree, they lack egoism in that degree, in which they serve this desire of the party. The independence of the party conditions the lack of independence in the party- members.
     A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never do without a confession of faith. For those who belong to the party must believe in its principle, it must not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, it must be the certain, indubitable thing for the party-member. That is: One must belong to a party body and soul, else one is not truly a party-man, but more or less -- an egoist. Harbor a doubt of Christianity, and you are already no longer a true Christian, you have lifted yourself to the "effrontery" of putting a question beyond it and haling Christianity before your egoistic judgment-seat. You have -- sinned against Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not e. g. a cause for the Jews, another party.) But well for you if you do not let yourself be affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness.
     So then an egoist could never embrace a party or take up with a party? Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself be embraced and taken up by the party. For him the party remains all the time nothing but a gathering: he is one of the party, he takes part.

     The best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens, and the more the devoted mind for legality is lost, so much the more will the State, this system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished in force and quality. With the "good citizens" the good State too perishes and dissolves into anarchy

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and lawlessness. "Respect for the law!" By this cement the total of the State is held together. "The law is sacred, and he who affronts it a criminal". Without crime no State: the moral world -- and this the State is -- is crammed full of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is the "lordship of law," its hierarchy, it follows that the egoist, in all cases where his advantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself only by crime.
     The State cannot give up the claim that its laws and ordinances are sacred.* At this the individual ranks as the unholy** (barbarian, natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly as he was once regarded by the Church; before the individual the State takes on the nimbus of a saint.*** Thus it issues a law against dueling. Two men who are both at one in this, that they are willing to stake their life for a cause (no matter what), are not to be allowed this, because the State will not have it: it imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? It is at once quite another situation if, as e. g. in North America, society determines to let the duelists bear certain evil consequences of their act, e. g. withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for this or that reason, the man who is hit cannot therefore complain of encroachment on his liberty: the society is simply availing itself of its own liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a crime. The duel is no crime there, but only an act

*[heilig]
**[unheilig]
***[Heiliger]

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against which the society adopts counter-measures, resolves on a defense. The State, on the contrary, stamps the duel as a crime, i.e. as an injury to its sacred law: it makes it a criminal case. The society leaves it to the individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes his free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse way, denying all right to the individual's decision and, instead, ascribing the sole right to its own decision, the law of the State, so that he who transgresses the State's commandment is looked upon as if he were acting against God's commandment -- a view which likewise was once maintained by the Church. Here God is the Holy in and of himself, and the commandments of the Church, as of the State, are the commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to the world through his anointed and Lords-by-the-Grace-of-God. If the Church had deadly sins, the State has capital crimes; if the one had heretics, the other has traitors; the one ecclesiastical penalties, the other criminal penalties; the one inquisitorial processes, the other fiscal; in short, there sins, here crimes, there inquisition and here -- inquisition. Will the sanctity of the State not fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its "subjects," will this remain? Will the "saint's" face not be stripped of its adornment?
     What a folly, to ask of the State's authority that it should enter into an honourable fight with the individual, and, as they express themselves in the matter

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of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If the State, this thought, is to be a de facto power, it simply must be a superior power against the individual. The State is "sacred" and must not expose itself to the "impudent attacks" of individuals. If the State is sacred, there must be censorship. The political liberals admit the former and dispute the inference. But in any case they concede repressive measures to it, for -- they stick to this, that State is more than the individual and exercises a justified revenge, called punishment.
     Punishment has a meaning only when it is to afford expiation for the injuring of a sacred thing. If something is sacred to any one, he certainly deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who lets a man's life continue in existence because to him it is sacred and he has a dread of touching it is simply a -- religious man.
     Weitling lays crime at the door of "social disorder," and lives in the expectation that under Communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible, because the temptations to them, e. g. money, fall away. As, however, his organized society is also exalted into a sacred and inviolable one, he miscalculates in that good-hearted opinion. e. g. with their mouth professed allegiance to the Communistic society, but worked underhand for its ruin, would not be lacking. Besides, Weitling has to keep on with "curative means against the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses," and "curative means" always announce to begin with that individuals will be looked upon as "called" to a particular "salvation"

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and hence treated according to the requirements of this "human calling." Curative means or healing is only the reverse side of punishment, the theory of cure runs parallel with the theory of punishment; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former takes it for a sin of the man against himself, as a decadence from his health. But the correct thing is that I regard it either as an action that suits me or as one that does not suit me, as hostile or friendly to me, i.e. that I treat it as my property, which I cherish or demolish. "Crime" or "disease" are not either of them an egoistic view of the matter, i.e. a judgment starting from me, but starting from another -- to wit, whether it injures right, general right, or the health partly of the individual (the sick one), partly of the generality (society). "Crime" is treated inexorably, "disease" with "loving gentleness, compassion," etc.
     Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred vanishes, punishment must not less be drawn into its fall; for it too has significance only over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical punishments have been abolished. Why? Because how one behaves toward the "holy God" is his own affair. But, as this one punishment, ecclesiastical punishment, has fallen, so all punishments must fall. As sin against the so-called God is a man's own affair, so is that against every kind of the so-called sacred. According to our theories of penal law, with whose "improvement in conformity to the times" people are tormenting themselves in vain, they want to punish men for this or that "inhumanity"; and therein they

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make the silliness of these theories especially plain by their consistency, hanging the little thieves and letting the big ones run. For injury to property they have the house of correction, and for "violence to thought," suppression of "natural rights of man," only --representations and petitions.
     The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred, and perishes of itself if punishment is given up. Now they want to create everywhere a new penal law, without indulging in a misgiving about punishment itself. But it is exactly punishment that must make room for satisfaction, which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at procuring us a satisfactory outcome. If one does to us what we will not put up with, we break his power and bring our own to bear: we satisfy ourselves on him, and do not fall into the folly of wanting to satisfy right (the spook). It is not the sacred that is to defend itself against man, but man against man; as God too, you know, no longer defends himself against man, God to whom formerly (and in part, indeed, even now) all the "servants of God" offered their hands to punish the blasphemer, as they still at this very day lend their hands to the sacred. This devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also that, without lively participation of one's own, one only delivers misdoers into the hands of the police and courts: a non-participating making over to the authorities, "who, of course, will best administer sacred matters." The people is quite crazy for hounding the police on against everything that seems to it to be immoral, often only unseemly, and this popular rage for the

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moral protects the police institution more than the government could in any way protect it.
     In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless, conscienceless. proud --crime, does it not rumble in distant thunders, and do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?

     He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family, party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society" or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves mankind."
     People is the name of the body, State of the spirit, of that ruling person that has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure peoples and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general reason"; but servitude would only become still more intense with this widening, and philanthropists and humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians and diplomats.
     Modern critics inveigh against religion because it sets God, the divine, moral, etc., outside of man, or makes them something objective, in opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects into man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error of religion, to give man a "destiny," in that they too want to have him divine, human, and

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the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are his essence. And, like religion politics too wanted to "educate" man, to bring him to the realization of his "essence," his "destiny," to make something out of him -- to wit, a "true man," the one in the form of the "true believer," the other in that of the "true citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether one calls the destiny the divine or human.
     Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of should: he should become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate, this commandment, every one steps not only in front of another but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new religion, to set up a new absolute, an ideal -- to wit, freedom. Men should be free. Then there might even arise missionaries of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction that all were properly destined to become Christians, sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) constitute itself as a new community and carry on a like "propaganda" therefrom. Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together; but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old care for us, of culture directed toward an end -- in short, the principle of making something out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and men.
     One may well say with Feuerbach and others that religion has displaced the human from man, and has transferred it so into another world that, unattainable,

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it went on with its own existence there as something personal in itself, as a "God": but the error of religion is by no means exhausted with this. One might very well let fall the personality of the displaced human, might transform God into the divine, and still remain religious. For the religious consists in discontent with the present men, in the setting up of a "perfection" to be striven for, in "man wrestling for his completion."* ("Ye therefore should be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5, 48): it consists in the fixation of an ideal, an absolute. Perfection is the "supreme good," the finis bonorum; every one's ideal is the perfect man, the true, the free man, etc.
     The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of the "free man." If one could find it, there would be a new -- religion, because a new ideal; there would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a new deity, a new contrition.
     With the ideal of "absolute liberty," the same turmoil is made as with everything absolute, and according to Hess, e. g., it is said to "be realizable in absolute human society."** Nay, this realization is immediately afterward styled a "vocation"; just so he then defines liberty as "morality": the kingdom of "justice" (equality) and "morality" (i.e. liberty) is to begin, etc.
     Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, family, nation, rank high, is -- nothing but "puffed up" over the merit of his fellows; but

*B. Bauer, "Lit. Ztg." 8,22.
**"E. u. Z. B.," p. 89ff.

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blinded too is he who wants only to be "man." Neither of them puts his worth in exclusiveness, but in connectedness, or in the "tie" that conjoins him with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of humanity.
     Through the "Nationals" of today the conflict has again been stirred up between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the special ties of blood.
     If we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit, and take it for consciousness alone, there is found to be a vast difference between pride in "belonging to" a nation and therefore being its property, and that in calling a nationality one's property. Nationality is my quality, but the nation my owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength, you can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has you, then it pricks you everywhere, and at the most unsuitable place, to show its strength: you can give nobody your hand without squeezing his.
     The perception that one is more than a member of the family, more than a fellow of the tribe, more than an individual of the people, has finally led to saying, one is more than all this because one is man, or, the man is more than the Jew, German, etc. "Therefore be every one wholly and solely -- man." Could one not rather say: Because we are more than what has been stated, therefore we will be this, as well as that "more" also? Man and Germans, then, man and Guelph, etc.? The Nationals are in the right;

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one cannot deny his nationality: and the humanitarians are in the right; one must not remain in the narrowness of the national. In uniqueness* the contradiction is solved; the national is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality -- as the human too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first through my uniqueness.
     History seeks for Man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious essence, as the divine, first as God, then as Man (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one.
     I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do nothing for the good of another humanity. Fool, you who are a unique humanity, that you make a merit of wanting to live for another than you are.
     The hitherto-considered relation of me to the world of men offers such a wealth of phenomena that it will have to be taken up again and again on other occasions, but here, where it was only to have its chief outlines made clear to the eye, it must be broken off to make place for an apprehension of two other sides toward which it radiates. For, as I find myself in relation not merely to men so far as they present in themselves the concept "man" or are children of men (children of Man, as children of God are spoken of), but also to that which they have of man and call their own, and as therefore I relate myself not only to that which they are through man, but also to their human possessions: so, besides the world of men, the world of

*[Einzigkeit]

the senses and of ideas will have to be included in our survey, and somewhat said of what men call their own of sensuous goods, and of spiritual as well.
     According as one had developed and clearly grasped the concept of man, he gave it to us to respect as this or that person of respect, and from the broadest understanding of this concept there proceeded at last the command "to respect Man in every one." But if I respect Man, my respect must likewise extend to the human, or what is Man's.
     Men have somewhat of their own, and I am to recognize this own and hold it sacred. Their own consists partly in outward, partly in inward possessions. The former are things, the latter spiritualities, thoughts, convictions, noble feelings, etc. But I am always to respect only rightful or human possessions: the wrongful and unhuman I need not spare, for only Man's own is men's real own. An inward possession of this sort is, e. g., religion; because religion is free, i. e. is Man's, I must not strike at it. Just so honor is an inward possession; it is free and must not be struck at my me. (Action for insult, caricatures, etc.) Religion and honor are "spiritual property." In tangible property the person stands foremost: my person is my first property. Hence freedom of the person; but only the rightful or human person is free, the other is locked up. Your life is your property; but it is sacred for men only if it is not that of an inhuman monster.
     What a man as such cannot defend of bodily goods, we may take from him: this is the meaning of competition, of freedom of occupation. What he

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cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise: so far goes the liberty of discussion, of science, of criticism.
     But consecrated goods are inviolable. Consecrated and guarantied by whom? Proximately by the State, society, but properly by man or the "concept," the "concept of the thing"; for the concept of consecrated goods is this, that they are truly human, or rather that the holder possesses them as man and not as un-man.*
     On the spiritual side man's faith is such goods, his honor, his moral feeling -- yes, his feeling of decency, modesty, etc. Actions (speeches, writings) that touch honor are punishable; attacks on "the foundations of all religion"; attacks on political faith; in short, attacks on everything that a man "rightly" has.
     How far critical liberalism would extend the sanctity of goods -- on this point it has not yet made any pronouncement, and doubtless fancies itself to be ill-disposed toward all sanctity; but, as it combats egoism, it must set limits to it, and must not let the un-man pounce on the human. To its theoretical contempt for the "masses" there must correspond a practical snub if it should get into power.
     What extension the concept "man" receives, and what comes to the individual man through it -- what, therefore, man and the human are -- on this point the various grades of liberalism differ, and the political, the social, the humane man are each always claiming

*[See note on p. 184.]