Happier? Well, happiness ... but still, let it pass! A
conquering people (or what is called conquering) while we are conquered?
Well and good. All this is good--but it is something different. And that
is enough. Because for me the becoming other than I am, the breaking of
the unity and continuity of my life, is to cease to be he who I am--that
is to say, it is simply to cease to be. And that--no! Anything rather
than that!
Another, you say, might play the part that I play as well or better?
Another might fulfil my function in society? Yes, but it would not be I.
"I, I, I, always I!" some reader will exclaim; "and who are you?" I
might reply in the words of Obermann, that tremendous man Obermann: "For
the universe, nothing--for myself, everything"; but no, I would rather
remind him of a doctrine of the man Kant--to wit, that we ought to think
of our fellow-men not as means but as ends. For the question does not
touch me alone, it touches you also, grumbling reader, it touches each
and all. Singular judgments have the value of universal judgments, the
logicians say. The singular is not particular, it is universal.
Man is an end, not a means. All civilization addresses itself to man, to
each man, to each I. What is that idol, call it Humanity or call it what
you like, to which all men and each individual man must be sacrificed?
For I sacrifice myself for my neighbours, for my fellow-countrymen, for
my children, and these sacrifice themselves in their turn for theirs,
and theirs again for those that come after them, and so on in a
never-ending series of generations.
Pages:
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61