"Everything in me that conspires to break the unity and
continuity of my life conspires to destroy me and consequently
to destroy itself. Every individual in a people
who conspires to break the spiritual unity and continuity
of that people tends to destroy it and to destroy himself
as a part of that people. What if some other people is
better than our own? Very possibly, although perhaps
we do not clearly understand what is meant by better or
worse. Richer? Granted. More cultured? Granted
likewise. Happier? Well, happiness ... but still, let
it pass! A conquering people (or what is called conquering)
while we are conquered? Well and good. All this
is good—but it is something different. And that is
enough. Because for me the becoming other than I am,
the breaking of the unity and continuity of my life, is to
cease to be he who I am—that is to say, it is simply to
cease to be. And that—no! Anything rather than that!
Another, you say, might play the part that I play as
well or better? Another might fulfil my function in
society? Yes, but it would not be I.
'I, I, I, always I!' some reader will exclaim; 'and who are you?' I might reply in the words of Obermann, that tremendous man Obermann: 'For the universe, nothing—for myself, everything'; but no, I would rather remind him of a doctrine of the man Kant—to wit, that we ought to think of our fellow-men not as means but as ends. For the question does not touch me alone, it touches you also, grumbling reader, it touches each and all. Singular judgments have the value of universal judgments, the logicians say. The singular is not particular, it is universal.
'I, I, I, always I!' some reader will exclaim; 'and who are you?' I might reply in the words of Obermann, that tremendous man Obermann: 'For the universe, nothing—for myself, everything'; but no, I would rather remind him of a doctrine of the man Kant—to wit, that we ought to think of our fellow-men not as means but as ends. For the question does not touch me alone, it touches you also, grumbling reader, it touches each and all. Singular judgments have the value of universal judgments, the logicians say. The singular is not particular, it is universal.
Man is an end, not a means. All civilization addresses
itself to man, to each man, to each I. What is that idol,
call it Humanity or call it what you like, to which all
men and each individual man must be sacrificed? For
I sacrifice myself for my neighbours, for my fellow-countrymen,
for my children, and these sacrifice themselves
in their turn for theirs, and theirs again for those
that come after them, and so on in a never-ending series
of generations. And who receives the fruit of this
sacrifice?
Those who talk to us about this fantastic sacrifice, this
dedication without an object, are wont to talk to us also
about the right to live. What is this right to live? They
tell me I am here to realize I know not what social end;
but I feel that I, like each one of my fellows, am here to
realize myself, to live.
Yes, yes, I see it all!—an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwards, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums, and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist—for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?
'Why!' the reader will exclaim again, 'we are coming back to what the Catechism says: 'Q. For whom did God create the world? A. For man.' Well, why not?—so ought the man who is a man to reply. The ant, if it took account of these matters and were a person, would reply 'For the ant', and it would reply rightly. The world is made for consciousness, for each consciousness.
Yes, yes, I see it all!—an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwards, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums, and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist—for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?
'Why!' the reader will exclaim again, 'we are coming back to what the Catechism says: 'Q. For whom did God create the world? A. For man.' Well, why not?—so ought the man who is a man to reply. The ant, if it took account of these matters and were a person, would reply 'For the ant', and it would reply rightly. The world is made for consciousness, for each consciousness.
A human soul is worth all the universe, someone—I
know not whom—has said and said magnificently. A
human soul, mind you! Not a human life. Not this
life. And it happens that the less a man believes in the
soul—that is to say in his conscious immortality, personal
and concrete—the more he will exaggerate the worth of
this poor transitory life. This is the source from which
springs all that effeminate, sentimental ebullition against
war. True, a man ought not to wish to die, but the
death to be renounced is the death of the soul. 'Whosoever
will save his life shall lose it', says the Gospel;
but it does not say 'whosoever will save his soul', the
immortal soul—or, at any rate, which we believe and
wish to be immortal.
And what all the objectivists do not see, or rather do
not wish to see, is that when a man affirms his "I," his
personal consciousness, he affirms man, man concrete
and real, affirms the true humanism—the humanism of
man, not of the things of man—and in affirming man he
affirms consciousness. For the only consciousness of
which we have consciousness is that of man."
Aus The tragic sense of life (1912), nach der Ausgabe New York 1954 bei gutenberg.org.
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