We may find the word "morality" taken as synonymous with spontaneity,
self-determination. But that is not involved in it; rather has the
Caucasian shown himself spontaneous only _in spite of_ his Mongolian
morality. The Mongolian heaven, or morals,[44] remained the strong
castle, and only by storming incessantly at this castle did the
Caucasian show himself moral; if he had not had to do with morals at
all any longer, if he had not had therein his indomitable, continual
enemy, the relation to morals would cease, and consequently morality
would cease. That his spontaneity is still a moral spontaneity,
therefore, is just the Mongoloidity of it,--is a sign that in it he has
not arrived at himself. "Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with
"religious and orthodox philosophy," "constitutional monarchy," "the
Christian State," "freedom within certain limits," "the limited freedom
of the press," or, in a figure, to the hero fettered to a sick-bed.
Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses
the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits,
but also the belief in the spirit.
He who believes in a spook no more assumes the "introduction of a higher
world" than he who believes in the spirit, and both seek behind the
sensual world a supersensual one; in short, they produce and believe
_another_ world, and this other _world, the product of their mind_, is a
spiritual world; for their senses grasp and know nothing of another, a
non-sensual world, only their spirit lives in it. Going on from this
Mongolian belief in the _existence of spiritual beings_ to the point
that the _proper being_ of man too is his _spirit_, and that all care
must be directed to this alone, to the "welfare of his soul," is not
hard. Influence on the spirit, so-called "moral influence," is hereby
assured.
Hence it is manifest that Mongolism represents utter absence of any
rights of the sensuous, represents non-sensuousness and unnature, and
that sin and the consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that
lasted thousands of years.
But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its _nothing_? He who by
means of the spirit set forth nature as the _null_, finite, transitory,
he alone can bring down the spirit too to like nullity. _I_ can; each
one among you can, who does his will as an absolute I; in a word, the
_egoist_ can.
* * * * *
Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence;
they occupy a _powerless_ and _humble_ attitude toward it. And yet no
thing is sacred of itself, but by my _declaring it sacred_, by my
declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by
my--conscience.
Sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be unapproachable, not
to be touched, outside his _power_,--_i. e._ above _him_; sacred, in a
word, is every _matter of conscience_, for "this is a matter of
conscience to me" means simply "I hold this sacred."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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