It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why? Because the ordinary Greeks could still less attain that logical conclusion which not even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to draw. What then is pettifoggery but a way of utilizing something established without doing away with it? I might add "for one's own advantage," but, you see, that lies in "utilizing." Such pettifoggers are the theologians who "wrest" and "force" God's word; what would they have to wrest if it were not for the "established" Word of God? So those liberals who only shake and wrest the "established order." They are all perverters, like those perverters of the law. Socrates recognized law, right; the Greeks constantly retained the authority of right and law. If with this recognition they wanted nevertheless to assert their advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek it in perversion of the law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, an intriguer of genius, introduces the period of Athenian "decay"; the Spartan Lysander and others show that intrigue had become universally Greek. Greek law, on which the Greek States rested, had to be perverted and undermined by the egoists within these States, and the States went down that the individuals might become free, the Greek people fell because the individuals cared less for this people than for themselves. In general, all States, constitutions, churches, etc., have sunk by the secession of individuals; for the individual is the irreconcilable enemy of every generality, every tie, i. e. every fetter. Yet people fancy to this day that man needs "sacred ties": he, the deadly enemy of every "tie." The history of the world shows that no tie has yet remained unrent, shows that man tirelessly defends himself against ties of every sort; and yet, blinded, people think up new ties again and again, and think, e. g., that they have arrived at the right one if one puts upon them the tie of a so-called free constitution, a beautiful, constitutional tie; decoration ribbons, the ties of confidence between "—— —— ——," do seem gradually to have become somewhat infirm, but people have made no further progress than from apron-strings to garters and collars.
Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.
Everything sacred is and must be perverted by perverters of the law; therefore our present time has multitudes of such perverters in all spheres. They are preparing the way for the break-up of law, for lawlessness.
Poor Athenians who are accused of pettifoggery and sophistry! poor Alcibiades, of intrigue! Why, that was just your best point, your first step in freedom. Your Æschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have a free Greek people; you were the first to surmise something of your freedom.
A people represses those who tower above its majesty, by ostracism against too-powerful citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics of the Church, by the—Inquisition against traitors in the State, etc.
For the people is concerned only with its self-assertion; it demands "patriotic self-sacrifice" from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one in himself is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even suffer, what the individual and he alone must do,—to wit, turn him to account. Every people, every State, is unjust toward the egoist.
As long as there still exists even one institution which the individual may not dissolve, the ownness and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote. How can I, e. g., be free when I must bind myself by oath to a constitution, a charter, a law, "vow body and soul" to my people? How can I be my own when my faculties may develop only so far as they "do not disturb the harmony of society" (Weitling)?
The fall of peoples and mankind will invite me to my rise.
Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, that they may jingle in for to-morrow the festival of the thousand years existence of our dear Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough, as if your tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to rise again,—that all may become free whom you so long have held in fetters.—The people is dead.—Up with me!
O thou my much-tormented German people—what was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every cock-crow and yet pines for deliverance and fulfilment. In me too thou hast lived long, thou dear—thought, thou dear—spook. Already I almost fancied I had found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and bones for the wandering spirit; then I hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest; then the last hope fades out, then the notes of the last love die away, then I depart from the desolate house of those who now are dead and enter at the door of the—living one: