If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that _I_ shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.
The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is _mine_, and it is not a general one, but is--_unique_,[5] as I am unique.
_Man is to man the supreme being_, says Feuerbach.
_Man has just been discovered_, says Burno Bauer.
Then let us take a more careful look at this supreme being and this new discovery.
From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man seeks to find out _himself_ and get hold of _himself_ out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.
But everything that comes in contact with the child defends itself in turn against his attacks, and asserts its own persistence.
Accordingly, because each thing _cares for itself_ and at the same time comes into constant collision with other things, the _combat_ of self-assertion is unavoidable.
_Victory_ or _defeat_--between the two alternatives the fate of the combat wavers. The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the _subject_: the former exercises _supremacy_ and "rights of supremacy," the latter fulfils in awe and deference the "duties of a subject."
But both remain _enemies_, and always lie in wait: they watch for each other's _weaknesses_--children for those of their parents and parents for those of their children (_e. g._ their fear); either the stick conquers the man, or the man conquers the stick.
In childhood liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the bottom of things, to get at what is "back of" things; therefore we spy out the weak points of everybody, for which, it is well known, children have a sure instinct; therefore we like to smash things, like to rummage through hidden corners, pry after what is covered up or out of the way, and try what we can do with everything. When we once get at what is back of the things, we know we are safe; when, _e. g._, we have got at the fact that the rod is too weak against our obduracy, then we no longer fear it, "have outgrown it."