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ers for "daily bread" ("Give us our daily bread") or for "holy bread" ("the true bread from heaven" "the bread of God, that comes from heaven and gives life to the world"; "the bread of life," John 6), whether one takes care for "dear life" or for "life to eternity" -- this does not change the object of the strain and care, which in the one case as in the other shows itself to be life. Do the modern tendencies announce themselves otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most indispensable necessaries of life, but want every one to feel secure as to these; and on the other hand they teach that man has this life to attend to and the real world to adapt himself to, without vain care for another.
     Let us take up the same thing from another side. When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks "if I only have my dear life," he does not apply his full strength to using, i. e., enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like the candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the living one, in consuming it and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up.
     Now -- we are in search of the enjoyment of life! And what did the religious world do? It went in search of life. Wherein consists the true life, the blessed life; etc.? How is it to be attained? What must man do and become in order to become a truly living man? How does he fulfil this calling? These and similar questions indicate that the askers were still seeking for themselves -- to wit, themselves in the

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true sense, in the sense of true living. "What I am is foam and shadow; what I shall be is my true self." To chase after this self, to produce it, to realize it, constitutes the hard task of mortals, who die only to rise again, live only to die, live only to find the true life.
     Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, am I really my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On the other hand, I can never take comfort in myself as long as I think that I have still to find my true self and that it must come to this, that not I but Christ or some other spiritual, i.e. ghostly, self (e. g. the true man, the essence of man, etc.) lives in me.
     A vast interval separates the two views. In the old I go toward myself, in the new I start from myself; in the former I long for myself, in the latter I have myself and do with myself as one does with any other property -- I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for my life, but "squander" it.
     Henceforth, the question runs, not how one can acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out.
     What else should the ideal be but the sought-for ever-distant self? One seeks for himself, consequently one doth not yet have himself; one aspires toward what one ought to be, consequently one is not it. One lives in longing and has lived thousands of years in it, in hope. Living is quite another thing in -- enjoyment!
     Does this perchance apply only to the so-called pious? No, it applies to all who belong to the de-

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parting period of history, even to its men of pleasure. For them too the work-days were followed by a Sunday, and the rush of the world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness of humanity; in short by an ideal. But philosophers especially are contrasted with the pious. Now, have they been thinking of anything else than the ideal, been planning for anything else than the absolute self? Longing and hope everywhere, and nothing but these. For me, call it romanticism.
     If the enjoyment of life is to triumph over the longing for life or hope of life, it must vanquish this in its double significance which Schiller introduces in his "Ideal and Life"; it must crush spiritual and secular poverty, exterminate the ideal and -- the want of daily bread. He who must expend his life to prolong life cannot enjoy it, and he who is still seeking for his life does not have it and can as little enjoy it: both are poor, but "blessed are the poor."
     Those who are hungering for the true life have no power over their present life, but must apply it for the purpose of thereby gaining that true life, and must sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and this task. If in the case of those devotees who hope for a life in the other world, and look upon that in this world as merely a preparation for it, the tributariness of their earthly existence, which they put solely into the service of the hoped-for heavenly existence, is pretty distinctly apparent; one would yet go far wrong if one wanted to consider the most rationalistic and enlightened as less self-sacrificing. Oh, there is to be found in the "true life" a much more comprehensive significance

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than the "heavenly" is competent to express. Now, is not -- to introduce the liberal concept of it at once -- the "human" and "truly human" life the true one? And is every one already leading this truly human life from the start, or must he first raise himself to it with hard toil? Does he already have it as his present life, or must he struggle for it as his future life, which will become his part only when he "is no longer tainted with any egoism"? In this view life exists only to gain life, and one lives only to make the essence of man alive in oneself, one lives for the sake of this essence. One has his life only in order to procure by means of it the "true" life cleansed of all egoism. Hence one is afraid to make any use he likes of his life: it is to serve only for the "right use."
     In short, one has a calling in life, a task in life; one has something to realize and produce by his life, a something for which our life is only means and implement, a something that is worth more than this life, a something to which one owes his life. One has a God who asks a living sacrifice. Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice, and we "poor sinners" slay our own selves as sacrifices for "the human essence," the "idea of mankind," "humanity," and whatever the idols or gods are called besides.
     But, because we owe our life to that something, therefore --this is the next point -- we have no right to take it from us.
     The conservative tendency of Christianity does not permit thinking of death otherwise than with the pur-

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pose to take its sting from it and -- live on and preserve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything happen and come upon him if he - the arch-Jew -- can only haggle and smuggle himself into heaven; he must not kill himself, he must only -- preserve himself and work at the "preparation of a future abode." Conservatism or "conquest of death" lies at his heart; "the last enemy that is abolished is death."* "Christ has taken the power from death and brought life and imperishable being to light by the gospel."** "Imperishableness," stability.
     The moral man wants the good, the right; and, if he takes to the means that lead to this goal, really lead to it, then these means are not his means, but those of the good, right, etc., itself. These means are never immoral, because the good end itself mediates itself through them: the end sanctifies the means. They call this maxim jesuitical, but it is "moral" through and through. The moral man acts in the service of an end or an idea: he makes himself the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death is what the moral commandment postulates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and bad: suicide finds no excuse before the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious man forbids it because "you have not given yourself life, but God, who alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even taking in this conception, God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the

*1 Cor. 15. 26.
**2 Tim. 1. 10.

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roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused the resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because I owe my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may not yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a tool, as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my amendment; if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my penitence. Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of duty, immorally. People worried themselves much with the question whether Emilia Galotti's death can be justified before morality (they take it as if it were suicide, which it is too in substance). That she is so infatuated with chastity, this moral good, as to yield up even her life for it is certainly moral; but, again, that she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral. *

*[See the next to the last scene of the tragedy:
     ODOARDO: Under the pretext of a judicial investigation he tears you out of our arms and takes you to Grimaldi. ...
     EMILIA: Give me that dagger, father, me! ...
     ODOARDO: No, no! Reflect -- You too have only one life to lose.
     EMILIA: And only one innocence!
     ODOARDO: Which is above the reach of any violence. --
     EMILIA: But not above the reach of any seduction. -- Violence! violence! Who cannot defy violence? What is called violence is nothing; seduction is the true violence. -- I have blood, father; blood as youthful and warm as anybody's. My senses are senses. -- I can warrant nothing. I am sure of nothing. I know Grimaldi's house. It is the house of pleasure. An hour there, under my mother's eyes -- and there arose in my soul so much tumult as the strictest exercises of religion could hardly quiet in weeks. -- Religion! And what religion? -- To escape nothing worse, thousands sprang into the water and are saints. -- Give me that dagger, father, give it to me. ...
     EMILIA: Once indeed there was a father who. to save his daughter from shame, drove into her heart whatever steel he could quickest find -- gave life to her for the second time. But all such deeds are of the past! Of such fathers there are no more.
     ODOARDO: Yes, daughter, yes! (Stabs her.)]

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Such contradictions form the tragic conflict universally in the moral drama; and one must think and feel morally to be able to take an interest in it.
     What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I am under obligation to no being is the maintaining of life -- my affair. "A leap from this bridge makes me free!"
     But, if we owe the maintaining of our life to that being that we are to make alive in ourselves, it is not less our duty not to lead this life according to our pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that being. All my feeling, thinking, and willing, all my doing and designing, belongs to -- him.
     What is in conformity to that being is to be inferred from his concept; and how differently has this concept been conceived! or how differently has that being been imagined! What demands the Supreme Being makes on the Mohammedan; what different ones the Christian, again, thinks he hears from him; how divergent, therefore, must the shaping of the lives of the two turn out! Only this do all hold fast, that the Supreme Being is to judge* our life.
     But the pious who have their judge in God, and in his word a book of directions for their life, I everywhere pass by only reminiscently, because they belong to a period of development that has been lived through, and as petrifactions they may remain in their fixed place right along; in our time it is no

*[Or, "regulate" (richten]

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longer the pious, but the liberals, who have the floor, and piety itself cannot keep from reddening its pale face with liberal coloring. But the liberals do not adore their judge in God, and do not unfold their life by the directions of the divine word, but regulate* themselves by man: they want to be not "divine" but "human," and to live so.
     Man is the liberal's supreme being, man the judge of his life, humanity his directions, or catechism. God is spirit, but man is the "most perfect spirit," the final result of the long chase after the spirit or of the "searching in the depths of the Godhead," i.e. in the depths of the spirit.
     Every one of your traits is to be human; you yourself are to be so from top to toe, in the inward as in the outward; for humanity is your calling.
     Calling -- destiny -- task! --
     What one can become he does become. A born poet may well be hindered by the disfavor of circumstances 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

*[richten]

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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 class 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. 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 assertion that this "great mass" cannot get along without religion; the Communists broaden it into the proposition that not only the "great mass," but absolutely all, are called to everything.
     Not enough that the great mass 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

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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,

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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 succumbing he 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 --destitution of force, a minute long. Forces may assuredly be sharpened and redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly assistance; 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,

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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 anticipation 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 God, 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 ful-

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filled, 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 entitled, equally respectable, equally moral or rational men."*
     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.** -- 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, 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 cataracts see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataracts successfully removed. But now he cannot see because he does

*"Der Kommunismus in der Schweiz", p. 24.
**Ibid, p. 63

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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 assertion 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; e. g., 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 pass, 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 assured 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 today is the only art possible, and therefore real, at the time.

     Even in the sense to which one might at last still reduce the word "possible," that it should mean "future," it retains the full force of the "real." If one says, e. g., "It is possible that the sun will rise tomorrow" -- this means only, "for today tomorrow is the real future"; for I suppose there is hardly need of the suggestion that a future is real "future" only when it has not yet appeared.
     Yet wherefore this dignifying of a word? If the most prolific misunderstanding of thousands of years were not in ambush behind it, if this single concept of the little word "possible" were not haunted by all the spooks of possessed men, its contemplation should trouble us little here.
     The thought, it was just now shown, rules the possessed world. Well, then, possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have hitherto been made to hideous thinkableness. It was thinkable that men might become rational; thinkable, that they might know Christ; thinkable, that they might become moral and enthusiastic for the good; thinkable, that they might all take refuge in the Church's lap; thinkable, that they might meditate, speak, and do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they might be obedient subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was -- so ran the inference -- possible, and further, because it was possible to men (right here lies the deceptive point; because it is thinkable to me, it is possible to men), therefore they ought to be so, it was their calling; and finally -- one is to take men only according to this calling, only as called men, "not as they are, but as they ought to be."

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     And the further inference? Man is not the individual, but man is a thought, an ideal, to which the individual is related not even as the child to the man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a -- finite creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to modern views, as the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the glorification of "humanity," the "eternal, immortal," for whose glory (in majorem humanitatis gloriam) the individual must devote himself and find his "immortal renown" in having done something for the "spirit of humanity."
     Thus the thinkers rule in the world as long as the age of priests or of schoolmasters lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is possible must be realized. They think an ideal of man, which for the time is real only in their thoughts; but they also think the possibility of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute, the carrying out is really -- thinkable, it is an -- idea.
     But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom a Krummacher can think that we might yet become good Christians; if, however, he wanted to "labor with" us, we should soon make it palpable to him that our Christianity is only thinkable, but in other respects impossible; if he grinned on and on at us with his obtrusive thoughts, his "good belief," he would have to learn that we do not at all need to become what we do not like to become.
     And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the pious. "If all men were rational, if all did right, if all were guided by philanthropy, etc."! Reason, right, philanthropy, are put before the eyes of

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men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. And what does being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing?* No, reason is a book full of laws, which are all enacted against egoism.
     History hitherto is the history of the intellectual man. After the period of sensuality, history proper begins; i.e. the period of intellectuality,** spirituality,*** non-sensuality, supersensuality, nonsensicality. Man now begins to want to be and become something. What? Good, beautiful, true; more precisely, moral, pious, agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a "proper man," "something proper." Man is his goal, his ought, his destiny, calling, task, his -- ideal; he is to himself a future, otherworldly he. And what makes a "proper fellow" of him? Being true, being good, being moral, etc. Now he looks askance at every one who does not recognize the same "what," seek the same morality, have the same faith, he chases out "separatists, heretics, sects," etc.
     No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper sheep, a proper dog"; no beast has its essence appear to it as a task, i.e. as a concept that it has to realize. It realizes itself in living itself out, in dissolving itself, passing away. It does not ask to be or to become anything other than it is.
     Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts? That you ought to become beasts is an exhortation which I certainly cannot give you, as that would again be a task, an ideal ("How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour. In works of labor

*[Cf. note p. 81]
**[Geistigkeit]
***[Geistlichkeit]

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or of skill I would be busy too, for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do"). It would be the same, too, as if one wished for the beasts that they should become human beings. Your nature is, once for all, a human one; you are human natures, human beings. But, just because you already are so, you do not still need to become so. Beasts too are "trained," and a trained beast executes many unnatural things. But a trained dog is no better for itself than a natural one, and has no profit from it, even if it is more companionable for us.
     Exertions to "form" all men into moral, rational, pious, human, "beings" (i.e. training) were in vogue from of yore. They are wrecked against the indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against egoism. Those who are trained never attain their ideal, and only profess with their mouth the sublime principles, or make a profession, a profession of faith. In face of this profession they must in life "acknowledge themselves sinners altogether," and they fall short of their ideal, are "weak men," and bear with them the consciousness of "human weakness."
     It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your "destiny," but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your "destiny," because it is present time.
     Yet the culture, the religiousness, of men has assuredly made them free, but only free from one lord, to lead them to another. I have learned by religion to tame my appetite, I break the world's resistance by the cunning that is put in my hand by science; I even serve no man; "I am no man's lackey." But then it

comes. You must obey God more than man. Just so I am indeed free from irrational determination by my impulses. but obedient to the master Reason. I have gained "spiritual freedom," "freedom of the spirit." But with that I have then become subject to that very spirit. The spirit gives me orders, reason guides me, they are my leaders and commanders. The "rational," the "servants of the spirit," rule. But, if I am not flesh, I am in truth not spirit either. Freedom of the spirit is servitude of me, because I am more than spirit or flesh.
     Without doubt culture has made me powerful. It has given me power over all motives, over the impulses of my nature as well as over the exactions and violences of the world. I know, and have gained the force for it by culture, that I need not let myself be coerced by any of my appetites, pleasures, emotions, etc.; I am their -- master; in like manner I become, through the sciences and arts, the master of the refractory world, whom sea and earth obey, and to whom even the stars must give an account of themselves. The spirit has made me master. -- But I have no power over the spirit itself. From religion (culture) I do learn the means for the "vanquishing of the world," but not how I am to subdue God too and become master of him; for God "is the spirit." And this same spirit, of which I am unable to become master, may have the most manifold shapes; he may be called God or National Spirit, State, Family, Reason, also -- Liberty, Humanity, Man.
     I receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw

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away and give up anything of it: I have not lived in vain. The experience that I have power over my nature, and need not be the slave of my appetites, shall not be lost to me; the experience that I can subdue the world by culture's means is too dear- bought for me to be able to forget it. But I want still more.
     People ask, what can man do? What can he accomplish? What goods procure, and put down the highest of everything as a calling. As if everything were possible to me!
     If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania, a passion, etc. (e. g. in the huckster-spirit, in jealousy), the desire is stirred to deliver him out of this possession and to help him to "self-conquest." "We want to make a man of him!" That would be very fine if another possession were not immediately put in the place of the earlier one. But one frees from the love of money him who is a thrall to it, only to deliver him over to piety, humanity, or some principle else, and to transfer him to a fixed standpoint anew.
     This transference from a narrow standpoint to a sublime one is declared in the words that the sense must not be directed to the perishable, but to the imperishable alone: not to the temporal, but to the eternal, absolute, divine, purely human, etc. -- to the spiritual.
     People very soon discerned that it was not indifferent what one set his affections on, or what one occupied himself with; they recognized the importance of the object. An object exalted above the individuality of things is the essence of things; yes, the essence is alone the thinkable in them. it is for the thinking

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man. Therefore direct no longer your sense to the things, but your thoughts to the essence. "Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe"; i. e., blessed are the thinkers, for they have to do with the invisible and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, that constituted an essential point of contention centuries long, comes at last to the point of being "No longer worth speaking of." This was discerned, but nevertheless people always kept before their eyes again a self-valid importance of the object, an absolute value of it, as if the doll were not the most important thing to the child, the Koran to the Turk. As long as I am not the sole important thing to myself, it is indifferent of what object I "make much," and only my greater or lesser delinquency against it is of value. The degree of my attachment and devotion marks the standpoint of my liability to service, the degree of my sinning shows the measure of my ownness.
     But finally, and in general, one must know how to "put everything out of his mind," if only so as to be able to -- go to sleep. Nothing may occupy us with which we do not occupy ourselves: the victim of ambition cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the God-fearing man from the thought of God; infatuation and possessedness coincide.
     To want to realize his essence or live comfortably to his concept (which with believers in God signifies as much as to be "pious," and with believers in humanity means living "humanly") is what only the sensual and sinful man can propose to himself, the man so long as he has the anxious choice between happiness of sense and peace of soul, so long as he is

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a "poor sinner." The Christian is nothing but a sensual man who, knowing of the sacred and being conscious that he violates it, sees in himself a poor sinner: sensualness, recognized as "sinfulness," is Christian consciousness, is the Christian himself. And if "sin" and "sinfulness" are now no longer taken into the mouths of moderns, but, instead of that, "egoism," "self-seeking," "selfishness," etc., engage them; if the devil has been translated into the "un-man" or "egoistic man" -- is the Christian less present then than before? Is not the old discord between good and evil -- is not a judge over us, man -- is not a calling, the calling to make oneself man -- left? If they no longer name it calling, but "task" or, very likely, "duty," the change of name is quite correct, because "man" is not, like God, a personal being that can "call"; but outside the name the thing remains as of old.

     Every one has a relation to objects, and more, every one is differently related to them. Let us choose as an example that book to which millions of men had a relation for two thousand years, the Bible. What is it, what was it, to each? Absolutely, only what he made out of it! For him who makes to himself nothing at all out of it, it is nothing at all; for him who uses it as an amulet, it has solely the value, the significance, of a means of sorcery; for him who, like children, plays with it, it is nothing but a plaything, etc.
     Now, Christianity asks that it shall be the same for all: say the sacred book or the "sacred Scriptures." This means as much as that the Christian's view shall

also be that of other men, and that no one may be otherwise related to that object. And with this the ownness of the relation is destroyed, and one mind, one disposition, is fixed as the "true", the "only true" one. In the limitation of the freedom to make of the Bible what I will, the freedom of making in general is limited; and the coercion of a view or a judgment is put in its place. He who should pass the judgment that the Bible was a long error of mankind would judge -- criminally.
     In fact, the child who tears it to pieces or plays with it, the Inca Atahualpa who lays his ear to it and throws it away contemptuously when it remains dumb, judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest who praises in it the "Word of God," or the critic who calls it a job of men's hands. For how we toss things about is the affair of our option, our free will: we use them according to our heart's pleasure, or, more clearly, we use them just as we can. Why, what do the parsons scream about when they see how Hegel and the speculative theologians make speculative thoughts out of the contents of the Bible? Precisely this, that they deal with it according to their heart's pleasure, or "proceed arbitrarily with it."
     But, because we all show ourselves arbitrary in the handling of objects, i.e. do with them as we like best, at our liking (the philosopher likes nothing so well as when he can trace out an "idea" in everything, as the God-fearing man likes to make God his friend by everything, and so, e. g., by keeping the Bible sacred), therefore we nowhere meet such grievous arbitrariness, such a frightful tendency to vio-

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lence, such stupid coercion, as in this very domain of our -- own free will. If we proceed arbitrarily in taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then that we want to take it ill of the parson-spirits if they take us just as arbitrarily, in their fashion, and esteem us worthy of the heretic's fire or of another punishment, perhaps of the -- censorship?
     What a man is, he makes out of things; "as you look at the world, so it looks at you again." Then the wise advice makes itself heard again at once, You must only look at it "rightly, unbiasedly," etc. As if the child did not look at the Bible "rightly and unbiasedly" when it makes it a plaything. That shrewd precept is given us, e. g. by Feuerbach. One does look at things rightly when one makes of them what one will (by things objects in general are here understood, e. g. God, our fellowmen, a sweetheart, a book, a beast, etc.). And therefore the things and the looking at them are not first, but I am, my will is. One will brings thoughts out of the things, will discover reason in the world, will have sacredness in it: therefore one shall find them. "Seek and ye shall find." What I will seek, I determine: I want, e. g., to get edification from the Bible; it is to be found; I want to read and test the Bible thoroughly; my outcome will be a thorough instruction and criticism -- to the extent of my powers. I elect for myself what I have a fancy for, and in electing I show myself -- arbitrary.
     Connected with this is the discernment that every judgment which I pass upon an object is the creature of my will; and that discernment again leads me to

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not losing myself in the creature, the judgment, but remaining the creator, the judge, who is ever creating anew. All predicates of objects are my statements, my judgments, my -- creatures. If they want to tear themselves loose from me and be something for themselves, or actually overawe me, then I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back into their nothing, into me the creator. God, Christ, Trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such creatures, of which I must not merely allow myself to say that they are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed and decreed their existence, so I want to have license to will their non- existence too; I must not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness to let them become something "absolute," whereby they would be eternalized and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should fall a prey to the principle of stability, the proper life-principle of religion, which concerns itself with creating "sanctuaries that must not be touched," "eternal truths" -- in short, that which shall be "sacred" -- and depriving you of what is yours.
     The object makes us into possessed men in its sacred form just as in its profane, as a supersensuous object, just as it does as a sensuous one. The appetite or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing for heaven stand on a level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for the sensuous world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one party wanted to call forth emotion, the other motion, activity.
     The conception of objects is altogether diverse, even

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