“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.”
The world hitherto took thought
for nothing but the gain of life, took care for--_life_. For whether all
activity is put on the stretch for the life of this world or of the
other, for the temporal or for the eternal, whether one hankers 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
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.
“The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss”
is not a human being; so far as you are a
Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again the imperious postulate:
Cast from you everything peculiar, criticise it away! Be not a Jew, not
a Christian, etc., but be a human being, nothing but a human being.
Assert your _humanity_ against every restrictive specification; make
yourself, by means of it, a human being, and _free_ from those limits;
make yourself a "free man," _i. e._ recognize humanity as your
all-determining essence.
I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but
you are also more than a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are
corporeal. Do you suppose, then, that you can ever become "a human being
as such"? Do you suppose our posterity will find no prejudices and
limits to clear away, for which our powers were not sufficient? Or do
you perhaps think that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you have come
so far that the following days have nothing more to dissipate in you,
and that you are a human being? The men of the future will yet fight
their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. What do you need
that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself as nothing
before you had become a human being, you would have to wait till the
"last judgment," till the day when man, or humanity, shall have attained
perfection. But, as you will surely die before that, what becomes of
your prize of victory?
Rather, therefore, invert the case, and say to yourself, _I am a human
being_! I do not need to begin by producing the human being in myself,
for he belongs to me already, like all my qualities.
But, asks the critic, how can one be a Jew and a man at once? In the
first place, I answer, one cannot be either a Jew or a man at all, if
"one" and Jew or man are to mean the same; "one" always reaches beyond
those specifications, and,--let Isaacs be ever so Jewish,--a Jew,
nothing but a Jew, he cannot be, just because he is _this_ Jew. In the
second place, as a Jew one assuredly cannot be a man, if being a man
means being nothing special. But in the third place--and this is the
point--I can, as a Jew, be entirely what I--_can_ be.
“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.”
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 departing 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 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?
“Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right”
When the "loyal" had exalted an
unsubdued power to be their master and had adored it, when they had
demanded adoration from all, then there came some such son of nature who
would not loyally submit, and drove the adored power from its
inaccessible Olympus. He cried his "Stand still" to the rolling sun, and
made the earth go round; the loyal had to make the best of it; he laid
his axe to the sacred oaks, and the "loyal" were astonished that no
heavenly fire consumed him; he threw the pope off Peter's chair, and the
"loyal" had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the divine-right
business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, and at last are silent.
My freedom becomes complete only when it is my--_might_; but by this I
cease to be a merely free man, and become an own man. Why is the freedom
of the peoples a "hollow word"? Because the peoples have no might! With
a breath of the living ego I blow peoples over, be it the breath of a
Nero, a Chinese emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that the
G.....[110] legislatures pine in vain for freedom, and are lectured for
it by the cabinet ministers? Because they are not of the "mighty"! Might
is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further
with a handful of might than with a bagful of right." You long for
freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself.
See, he who has might "stands above the law." How does this prospect
taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? But you have no taste!
The cry for "freedom" rings loudly all around. But is it felt
and known what a donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not
recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is
essentially--self-liberation,--_i. e._, that I can have only so much
freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. Of what use is it to
sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to
bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Christian,
permission to speak what he likes: he will yet utter only narrow-minded
stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob you of the freedom of
speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their
temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear
something whereby those "certain" persons would lose their credit.
“Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a mans lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for ones self.”
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.”
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a mans lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for ones self.
Our whole education system is calculated to produce *feelings* in us, impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out...Thus stuffed with imparted feelings, we appear before the bar of majority and are pronounced of age. Our equipment consists of elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims,eternal principles.
But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course of time against the tenants of the Christian faith, have long since robbed you of faith in the immortality of your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenant undisturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one truth, that the spirit is your better part, and that the spiritual has greater claims on you than anything else
It is possible I can make very little of myself; but this little is everything, and better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State.
Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits,or,more expressively, not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently,do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others...He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.
You call me the unhuman, it might say to him, and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my better self outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the human; I resembled the pious who hunger for their true self and always remain poor sinners; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not—unique.[102] But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently—adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the—unique.
Where the world comes in my way - and it comes in my way everywhere - I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but - my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.
But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that *you* yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again, for *your* benefit and behoof, only through that unselfishness you are procuring your true benefit. You are to benefit *yourself*, and yet you are not to seek *your* benefit
Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned to do without clericalism--that to live and work *for an idea*is mans calling, and according to the faithfulness its fulfilment his *human worth* is measured
If i cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with *your* essence are valuable to me.
The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.
No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.
God cares only for what is his, busies himself with only himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes...He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is--A purely egoistic cause.
