115.

The so-called “Ego.”—Language and the prejudices upon which language is based very often act as obstacles in our paths when we proceed to explore internal phenomena and impulses: as one example, we may instance the fact that there are only words to express the superlative degrees of these phenomena and impulses. Now, it is our habit no longer to observe accurately when words fail us, since it is difficult in such cases to think with precision: in former times, even, people involuntarily came to the conclusion that where the domain of words ceased, the domain of existence ceased also. Wrath, hatred, love, pity, desire, recognition, joy, pain: all these are names indicating extreme conditions; the milder and middle stages, and even more particularly the ever active lower stages, escape our attention, and yet it is they which weave the warp and woof of our character and destiny. It often happens that these extreme outbursts—and even the most moderate pleasure or displeasure of which we are actually conscious, whether in partaking of food or listening to a sound, is possibly, if properly estimated, merely an extreme outburst,—destroy the texture and are then violent exceptions, in most cases the consequences of some congestions,—and how easily as such can they [pg 120] mislead the observer! as indeed they mislead the person acting! We are all of us not what we appear to be according to the conditions for which alone we have consciousness and words, and consequently praise and blame. We fail to recognise ourselves after these coarse outbursts which are known to ourselves alone, we draw conclusions from data where the exceptions prove stronger than the rules; we misinterpret ourselves in reading our own ego's pronouncements, which appeared to be so clear. But our opinion of ourselves, this so-called ego which we have arrived at by this wrong method, contributes henceforth to form our character and destiny.

116.

The Unknown World of the “Subject.”—What men have found it so difficult to understand from the most ancient times down to the present day is their ignorance in regard to themselves, not merely with respect to good and evil, but something even more essential. The oldest of illusions lives on, namely, that we know, and know precisely in each case, how human action is originated. Not only “God who looks into the heart,” not only the man who acts and reflects upon his action, but everybody does not doubt that he understands the phenomena of action in every one else. “I know what I want and what I have done, I am free and responsible for my act, and I make others responsible for their acts; I can mention by its name every moral possibility and every internal movement which precedes an act,—ye may act as [pg 121] ye will, I understand myself and I understand you all!” Such was what every one thought once upon a time, and almost every one thinks so even now. Socrates and Plato, who in this matter were great sceptics and admirable innovators, were nevertheless intensely credulous in regard to that fatal prejudice, that profound error, which holds that “The right knowledge must necessarily be followed by the right action.” In holding this principle they were still the heirs of the universal folly and presumption that knowledge exists concerning the essence of an action.

“It would indeed be dreadful if the comprehension of the essence of a right action were not followed by that right action itself”—this was the only manner in which these great men thought it necessary to demonstrate this idea, the contrary seemed to them to be inconceivable and mad; and nevertheless this contrary corresponds to the naked reality which has been demonstrated daily and hourly from time immemorial. Is it not a “dreadful” truth that all that we know about an act is never sufficient to accomplish it, that the bridge connecting the knowledge of the act with the act itself has never yet been built? Acts are never what they appear to us to be. We have taken great pains to learn that external things are not as they appear to us.—Well! It is the same with internal phenomena. All moral acts are in reality “something different,”—we cannot say anything more about them, and all acts are essentially unknown to us. The general belief, however, has been and still is quite the contrary: the most ancient realism [pg 122] is against us: up to the present humanity has thought, “An action is what it appears to be.” (In re-reading these words a very expressive passage from Schopenhauer occurs to me, and I will quote it as a proof that he, too, without the slightest scruple, continued to adhere to this moral realism: “Each one of us is in reality a competent and perfect moral judge, knowing exactly good and evil, made holy by loving good and despising evil,—such is every one of us in so far as the acts of others and not his own are under consideration, and when he has merely to approve or disapprove, whilst the burden of the performance of the acts is borne by other shoulders. Every one is therefore justified in occupying as confessor the place of God.”)