If you remain on the ground of right, you remain
in--_Rechthaberei_.[135] The other cannot give you your right; he cannot
"mete out right" to you. He who has might has--right; if you have not
the former, neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to
attain? Just look at the mighty and their doings! We are talking here
only of China and Japan, of course. Just try it once, you Chinese and
Japanese, to make them out in the wrong, and learn by experience how
they throw you into jail. (Only do not confuse with this the
"well-meaning counsels" which--in China and Japan--are permitted,
because they do not hinder the mighty one, but possibly _help him on_.)
For him who should want to make them out in the wrong there would stand
open only one way thereto, that of might. If he deprives them of their
_might_, then he has _really_ made them out in the wrong, deprived them
of their right; in any other case he can do nothing but clench his
little fist in his pocket, or fall a victim as an obtrusive fool.
In short, if you Chinese and Japanese did not ask after right, and in
particular if you did not ask after the rights "that were born with
you," then you would not need to ask at all after the well-earned rights
either.
You start back in fright before others, because you think you see beside
them the _ghost of right_, which, as in the Homeric combats, seems to
fight as a goddess at their side, helping them. What do you do? Do you
throw the spear? No, you creep around to gain the spook over to
yourselves, that it may fight on your side: you woo for the ghost's
favor. Another would simply ask thus: Do I will what my opponent wills?
"No!" Now then, there may fight for him a thousand devils or gods, I go
at him all the same!
The "commonwealth of right," as the "_Vossische Zeitung_" among others
stands for it, asks that office-holders be removable only by the
_judge_, not by the _administration_. Vain illusion! If it were settled
by law that an office-holder who is once seen drunken shall lose his
office, then the judges would have to condemn him on the word of the
witnesses, etc. In short, the lawgiver would only have to state
precisely all the possible grounds which entail the loss of office,
however laughable they might be (_e. g._ he who laughs in his superiors'
faces, who does not go to church every Sunday, who does not take the
communion every four weeks, who runs in debt, who has disreputable
associates, who shows no determination, etc., shall be removed. These
things the lawgiver might take it into his head to prescribe, _e. g._,
for a court of honor); then the judge would solely have to investigate
whether the accused had "become guilty" of those "offences," and, on
presentation of the proof, pronounce sentence of removal against him "in
the name of the law."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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