But whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only
the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the
individual, the real man, under the phlegmatic legal title of measures
against the "un-man." He finds it praiseworthy and indispensable to
exercise pitilessness in the harshest measure; for love to the spook or
generality commands him to hate him who is not ghostly, _i. e._ the
egoist or individual; such is the meaning of the renowned
love-phenomenon that is called "justice."
The criminally arraigned man can expect no forbearance, and no one
spreads a friendly veil over his unhappy nakedness. Without emotion the
stern judge tears the last rags of excuse from the body of the poor
accused; without compassion the jailer drags him into his damp abode;
without placability, when the time of punishment has expired, he thrusts
the branded man again among men, his good, Christian, loyal brethren!
who contemptuously spit on him. Yes, without grace a criminal "deserving
of death" is led to the scaffold, and before the eyes of a jubilating
crowd the appeased moral law celebrates its sublime--revenge. For only
one can live, the moral law or the criminal. Where criminals live
unpunished, the moral law has fallen; and, where this prevails, those
must go down. Their enmity is indestructible.
The Christian age is precisely that of _mercy, love_, solicitude to have
men receive what is due them, yes, to bring them to fulfil their human
(divine) calling. Therefore the principle has been put foremost for
intercourse, that this and that is man's essence and consequently his
calling, to which either God has called him or (according to the
concepts of to-day) his being man (the species) calls him. Hence the
zeal for conversion. That the Communists and the humane expect from man
more than the Christians do does not change the standpoint in the least.
Man shall get what is human! If it was enough for the pious that what
was divine became his part, the humane demand that he be not curtailed
of what is human. Both set themselves against what is egoistic. Of
course; for what is egoistic cannot be accorded to him or vested in him
(a fief); he must procure it for himself. Love imparts the former, the
latter can be given to me by myself alone.
Intercourse hitherto has rested on love, _regardful_ behavior, doing for
each other. As one owed it to himself to make himself blessed, or owed
himself the bliss of taking up into himself the supreme essence and
bringing it to a _vérité_ (a truth and reality), so one owed it to
_others_ to help them realize their essence and their calling: in both
cases one owed it to the essence of man to contribute to its
realization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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