and lowness, so the former must ascend to the most dishonorable exaltation. The mammon of the earth and the God of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of—self-renunciation. The low man, like the exalted one, reaches out for a "good,"—the former for the material good, the latter for the ideal, the so-called "supreme good"; and at last both complete each other again too, as the "materially-minded" man sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm, his vanity, and the "spiritually-minded" man to a material gratification, the life of enjoyment.
Those who exhort men to "unselfishness"[41] think they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they understand by "self-renunciation." 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 that through unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit."
You are to benefit yourself, and yet you are not seek your benefit.
People regard as unselfish the benefactor of men, a Franke who founded the orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but also the fanatic who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, sacrifices everything to virtue—like Koerner, dies for God, king, and fatherland. Hence, among others, O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Connell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if they were successful in casting suspicion on his "unselfishness," they would easily separate him from his adherents.
Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for another end than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making money or at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and that his end; selfishness here as there, only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to others too, and so would be for the common interest.
Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fashion in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it costs too much in solid material, people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be our end and our property, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a—fixed idea; where it begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it passes into our stubbornness and becomes our—master. One is not unselfish so long as he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," the fundamental maxim of all the possessed; one becomes so in the case of a sacred end, through the corresponding sacred zeal.—
I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my own, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfilment, leave it always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its judge, because I am its owner.
Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness reaches, as much on possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit: there vice, folly, etc.; here humility, devotion, etc.
Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the passions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eye turned its look upward, you—prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites. Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint "Oh dear!" moaned itself away, and—the soul was at rest. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new—prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the—chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free grisette against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!
The fixed idea may also be perceived as "maxim," "principle," "standpoint," and the like. Archimedes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint outside it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the world of mind, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it is heaven. Heaven is the "standpoint" from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and—despised. To assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever—how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!
Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from the appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let himself be determined by his appetites. This does not involve the idea that he was not to have appetites, but that the appetites were not to have him, that they were not to become fixed, uncontrollable, indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived against the appetites be applied by us to its own precept that mind (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed to determine us, to become fixed and inviolable or "sacred"? Then it would end in the dissolution of mind, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all conceptions. As we there had to say "We are indeed to have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us," so we should now say "We are indeed to have mind, but mind is not to have us." If the latter seems lacking in sense, think e.g. of the fact that with so many a man a thought becomes a "maxim," whereby he himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with the maxim he has a "permanent standpoint" again. The doctrines of the catechism become our principles before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection. Their thought, or—mind, has the sole power, and no protest of the "flesh" is further listened to. Nevertheless it is only through the "flesh" that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears himself that he is a hearing or rational[42] being. The Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled nature, but lives in "humility"; therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his person; he thinks himself satisfied with the "freedom of the spirit." But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its tone is "passionate," "indecorous," "not well-disposed," "spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be otherwise), then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices against the spirit (for decorum, passionlessness, kindly disposition, and the like, is—spirit), and is justly zealous against them. He could not be a Christian if he were willing to endure them. He listens only to morality, and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to legality, and gags the lawless word. The spirit of morality and legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, unbending master. They call that the "mastery of the spirit,"—it is at the same time the standpoint of the spirit.
And now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen mean to make free? Whose freedom is it that they cry out and thirst for? The spirit's! That of the spirit of morality, legality, piety, the fear of God, etc. That is what the anti-liberal gentlemen also want, and the whole contention between the two turns on a matter of advantage—whether the latter are to be the only speakers, or the former are to receive a "share
