In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud--_crime_, does it not rumble in distant thunders, and do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?
He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family, party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society" or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves _mankind_."
_People_ is the name of the body, _State_ of the spirit, of that _ruling person_ that has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure peoples and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general reason"; but servitude would only become still more intense with this widening, and philanthropists and humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians and diplomats.
Modern critics inveigh against religion because it sets God, the divine, moral, etc., _outside_ of man, or makes them something objective, in opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects _into_ man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error of religion, to give man a "destiny," in that they too want to have him divine, human, and the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are his essence. And, like religion, politics too wanted to "_educate_" man, to bring him to the realization of his "essence," his "destiny," to _make_ something out of him,--to wit, a "true man," the one in the form of the "true believer," the other in that of the "true citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether one calls the destiny the divine or human.
Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of _should_: he _should_ become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate, this commandment, every one steps not only in front of another but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new _religion_, to set up a new absolute, an ideal,--to wit, freedom. Men _should_ be free. Then there might even arise _missionaries_ of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction that all were properly destined to become Christians, sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) constitute itself as a new _community_ and carry on a like "propaganda" therefrom. Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together; but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old _care_ for us, of culture directed toward an end,--in short, the principle of _making something_ out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and men.