Where are the spirits?

I say: Nowhere! - Nowhere. I'm not joking!

For two thousand years, humanity has been desperately trying to draw a radical dividing line through the human being: here the spiritual — there the material! People would very much like to make a dual being out of the one and only man. At times, especially during executions, one really regrets not being able to neatly saw him in half — so artfully, in fact, that at least one half might escape with nothing more than a fright. I believe one may assume that in 1600, had they only managed to catch hold of that damned “spirit” of Giordano Bruno in its entirety, they might well have spared the roasting of his pitiful “flesh.” And I confidently believe that our modern justice system (to its credit!) would gladly let many a murderer and half-wit freely walk around — if only it were possible to isolate that “spirit” alone!

But that’s not all.

At some point, a great philosopher carried out this separation so thoroughly — on paper, of course — that not only two aspects but an actual contrast, even an irreconcilable opposition, emerged. That, in turn, went too far for most, and so they continued (at least covertly) to ensure some intercourse between the humble body and its elusive “soul.” What good did it do? The confusion was now embedded, and the ever-so-graciously patched-up human being naturally suffered from tearing pains in all his limbs! At long last, Stirner and Nietzsche identified the true root of the affliction — and though they themselves were not yet healed, the diagnosis was for the first time correctly posed, and remedies built on such a basis stood a real chance of success.

And what have we experienced instead? A heeding of their prescriptions? Never in the past eighty years has the old delusion — of a being made either solely of matter or solely of spirit — returned with such force, simply repackaged. On one side, we see the rapidly spreading belief that one need only consider and secure the material “basis,” the physical stock (proles), the numerically-quantifiable (economic) side — and the rest of the world’s phenomena will automatically follow in perfect order. On the other side, we hear — again and with a medieval consistency — endless talk of the “spirit” and the spiritual, of the “spiritual human being” (to the point of nausea), to whom, of course, only the physical (properly drained) human can correspond.

They fail to realize that confusion usually begins with language, and that once one starts to feed the crude absurdity that there is even such a thing as “the spiritual,” that is, a unified, internally coherent community of purely “spiritual” people, then naturally a counterpart appears: the “purely physical,” i.e., true clusters of unspirituality, mindlessness, and brute force. One can already see and feel the two factions grabbing each other by the hair, squawking like fighting cocks — here the body, there the soul, here Leibniz, there La Mettrie, the depths of scholasticism, the seventeenth century rises again — —

But just then — thank God — Ida! A particularly bold intellectual of our own time (i.e., the 20th century) shouts at the last moment:

“W-wait! Stop — that’s not how it was meant! Today — today, in the great age of socializations, of human brotherhood, we have of course discovered something that can still unite both parties with confidence, something that will not let us clash but rather turn us into neighborly groups within the same whole — w-wait, you with your fearsomely clenched fist, worker! I too call myself a worker, a ‘mental worker’ — proletarian! I too call myself — a ‘spiritual proletarian’...

(The “intellectuals,” with bold oversight of the situation, have suddenly had to realize once again — in more mundane times they were terribly proud of this fact! — that, faced with the visibly advancing battalions of “real” workers, they are likely to remain in the minority and so fall behind. This time, they even loyally took along the entire spiritual riffraff. They have therefore, as always, only come up with the cleverest, most intellectual — “idea,” just as befits them, the intellectuals... )

“Yes indeed,” they say, “we intellectuals are also workers; we ‘work’ too (that is, we produce) all sorts of things for which society apparently has the same or similar interest as in hand-stitched buttonholes — for example, leading articles, museum catalogs, readers for sixth-grade classes, etc. etc....”

And this is what they call a “spiritual worker,” whose first concern — and one entirely understandable from the worker’s perspective! — is whether the others, the many, the strangers, will assign a market value to his services and be willing to pay a price for them? If the only thing being pursued here — so fervently and obviously — is the strength of unification, the possibility of alignment: then why in the world add this “decorative” adjective at all, and this one in particular, which evidently has something to do with actual spirit and spiritual being — which, however, must above all be rooted and manifest in a true I, in a complete uniqueness! And yet, in the same breath, one yokes this same autonomous individual — self-contained and self-moving — to the normal needs and demands of a society that can indeed only be satisfied and fulfilled through “labor,” labor that is always a service and a burden imposed by the will of others, by the whims of the many? In contrast, the truly self-realized I, the self-conscious spirit — will he ever allow his own innermost, thoroughly spontaneous activity, which surely consists in thinking, to become “labor” — labor priced by market value? Is there such a thing as — unique labor?

What then would be the laboring spirit of the spiritual worker? Is there such a thing as spirit which labors — and does not think? Alas, alas, such a thing does exist, it exists in droves — and here we have the full prostitution of spirit! Have you ever seen spirit properly sweating and gasping under its “labor”? Then rest assured, that was no true spirit — it was some counterfeit spirit, one that was just producing refuse! Spirit is — thinking, nothing else. But because this thinking already possesses from the outset its innermost, inherent laws (don’t worry: these are only the ones that come from within you yourself, not laws imposed from any Outside!), namely the logical laws — for that reason alone (now finally no more evasion!) there can never be, and may never be, a pretentious, spotlight-seeking, flitting-about-everywhere kind of spirit, and certainly no “laboring,” self-dissipating spirit, but simply — rightly thinking spirit! Spirit is: correct thinking. Correct thinking always refers to the things of this world, rests upon the bathos of experience. And that is why it also has the most intimate relation to action, to any doing by the self-conscious I — correct thinking and correct action can do no other than enter into the closest union! Instead, we are now being told again — just as in the deadest times of flat esprit-culture or the most barren journalistic skepticism — that the thinking person (that is, the truly thinking one, not just someone striking a thinking pose) must somehow be in fundamental opposition to the acting, doing (that is, truly active, in every and the most exceptional sense) person. And we know them all too well, those who always want to claim that the pallor of “thought” is an ailment that is supposed to wash out the quick color of resolution. But from the fact that time and again — fortunately and praise be! — a proper, correcting thought can precede a hasty, perhaps all-too-hastily decided deed, can paralyze the already-raised arm: from that they want to derive a principled, ever-present opposition between thinking and acting, spirit and deed? Are there truly still people who do not recognize precisely in Hamlet the most active type of person who ever lived? Does it not shine forth clearly: even a fully realized I, in its unique constitution — ?! His spirit is not just “cultivated,” clever, witty, bluffing, but truly real and honest — and he simply will not let some fake-spirit (the lingering “ghost” of the Middle Ages, of scholasticism) hand him mere “assignments” prescribing traditional, crudely illogical “atonement.” Hamlet’s spirit is thoroughly autonomous, unique, unconventional — he is by no means a “spiritual worker,” always doing something whose value is immediately obvious to the many. And so he brings about, at the very end (after so much hesitation and delay, which un-spirit never understands!), something which is again nothing but the perfectly unique, individual solution of the no-longer-commanded but self-recognized task: a deed, an atonement — despite everything, as we inevitably feel. Yet in the process, the hated “villainous” king has simply become — an “opponent,” and there is no longer any mob-like “as you did to me, so I do to you”; the whole lineage simply disappears...Was this pale, “sickly,” this typically “decadent” Hamlet really too small for his task? Or did he simply possess that one and only genuine, logically discerning spirit, that can enter into an unbreakable union only with rational action — and which avoids the spontaneous, drive-born (hasty, falsely taken as “authentic”) deed?!

Well then, we have now come to know all the varieties of “spirit” and what nowadays tries to pass for it, and we will know how to draw the consequences from this.

If the “spiritual ones,” the “intellectual people,” the “intellectual workers” now want to socialize, come together, and unite in a completely “spontaneous,” that is, suggested, probably also hopelessly fearful and cowardly adaptation to the current ideas of the day — then they thereby prove that they cannot mean the true, the knowing spirit, for this logical spirit, thinking through to all consequences, would have immediately rejected any parallel action to the workers’ coalitions, which, though purely physical, are enormously strengthened. It would have seen through the fallacy by analogy. If, then, they indeed turn only to an after-image of the spirit, if they truly consider a union of all so-called spiritual ones, the intellectual “workers,” the prostitutes of the spirit, all those who think, write, and teach only according to bread, wages, and market value as possible — then we should actually not waste any more time on them and rather leave them with great Schadenfreude to their own fate. For the dragon’s seed sown here — if it is seed at all! — will confidently sprout very quickly, and in the end the editorial writer of the “Kreuzzeitung” (a decidedly intellectual) may well bite off the head of the editorial writer of the “Freiheit” (a “proper” intellectual worker) — and not only the intellectual one. But in any case, the entire remaining workers’ movement should be warned against this whole tail of lies, which would all too gladly and slyly attach itself to it — for these very intellectuals, who also like to call themselves intellectuals, if nothing else, would finally muster enough intelligence, cunning, and spiritual power (yes, power!) to thoroughly fool Jörg and Michel. On the other hand, the true, the real spirit, not just thinking somehow, wandering aimlessly, but precisely the knowing one, the only one who is justified in calling itself such because it only has roots in a real self, a completely individual self-consciousness: how could this unique spirit unite with others? Above all, why would it need such a union, since its sole reason can also dive alone into the depths of things, and no other (much less a multitude) could bring forth the insight concerning its own self that makes it strong? And this spirit, always so strong, incomparable, unassailable, invincible in itself — should it suddenly have become so fearful before the “masses,” the threatening workers’ battalions, that it (which is in fact the most spiritless, lost thing that could no longer have been itself!) immediately cried out for union, socialization? Had it not always ruled over the merely numerical, the quantitative, the physical, the material (let us assume the completely de-spiritualized)? And now, because it previously had become master of the mostly disunited, very fragmented, solitary — should it lose courage before the united, massed throng and draw the shorter straw?

Meanwhile: the “spiritual one” I mean — under all circumstances can only be the spirit of trust; (just as the entire workers’ and proletarian movement, upon closer inspection, must reveal itself only as faith and trust in the physical). Here the spirit-trusting, spirit-emphasizing, here the body-emphasizing, muscle-trusting — this problem alone ought to be grasped with the utmost sharpness by a socialist-tinged age. To then of course realize that all socialism itself — is a thinking error... Or what? — will the true, genuine spirit also be so hopelessly frightened by the advancing workers’ armies and give itself up (like that false, deceptive spirit that invents the “intellectual worker”)? Will this true spirit not also become master again of the added, united matter into vast planes, as before it was master only of fragmented, separated matter which could not help itself? Surely! It will only have to examine and penetrate anew the new situation of all material things and relations according to its deepest essence — which is recognition — yes, it will also seem completely revolutionary in a certain sense (with respect to its effect in the sphere of the senses): because, as we have seen, there can be no real chasm between true recognition and right action, its new insights will naturally also be transformed into new deeds. In itself, however, the spiritual and the bodily always stand only in the relation of the one that directs and the one that is directed — even in the vast masses of workers not merely physical things have been gathered and rallied (as the arrogant “intellectual worker” would like to contrast), but all that multitude, that enormous, massive, numerous force only by virtue of one issued, mental slogan: “Many together are strong!” This “thought” unquestionably belongs to the spirit, but it is again only partial spirit, wandering, not concentrated spirit, half-truth (namely only applicable to the quantitative, not to the self, the unique), therefore it drags only half, never the whole, along with it.

And to this half, simple, “truth” that seems only to apply to the senses, it is of course necessary to oppose the whole, the only truth:

No, it is not many that are strong: only one, the one, the individual, can be strong! Many is composite and will fall apart again; individuality, however, is indivisible, not composite, is — unique; therefore also — “everything”! Here, indeed — for the first time I, the unique one, want to know an everything? — begins the realm of metaphysics; and thus no one is further obligated to follow me. However — the one alone: socialism, which you all so far have been accustomed to regard as such a sober, exact, mathematically and empirically so finely grounded fact: it is metaphysics through and through! A “unio mystica,” as no scholastic Middle Ages knows better, a “brotherhood,” which unfortunately always only rests on senses, on eyewitness and earwitness testimony, lies at its foundation. Now well, I do not appeal merely to matter and senses — I appeal to a unio that each individual carries around in his self, his spirit, his uniqueness — to a unity that everyone knows from the foundation when he thinks of the mysterious will that moves his limbs, and which is not much more complicated (because it is without parts) could also take care of the steering of all world things...

“The spiritual ones” — that would be nothing...

Those who place their trust in Spirit, insofar as they indeed trust that true Spirit also has knowledge — that would be everything.

“And the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea bed.”

A. R.