Selected Essays | Page 3

which it will not refute but destroy. For the spirit of the
conditions has been refuted. In and for themselves they are no
memorable objects, but existences as contemptible as they are despised.
Criticism has already settled all accounts with this subject. It no longer
figures as an end in itself, but only as a means. Its essential pathos is
indignation, its essential work is denunciation.
What we have to do is to describe a series of social spheres, all
exercising a somewhat sluggish pressure upon each other, a general
state of inactive dejection, a limitation which recognizes itself as much
as it misunderstands itself, squeezed within the framework of a
governmental system, which, living on the conservation of all
meannesses, is itself nothing less than meanness in government.
What a spectacle! On the one hand, the infinitely ramified division of
society into the most varied races, which confront each other with small
antipathies, bad consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and precisely
because of the ambiguous and suspicious positions which they occupy
towards each other, such positions being devoid of all real distinctions
although coupled with various formalities, are treated by their lords as

existences on sufferance. And even more. The fact that they are ruled,
governed, and owned they must acknowledge and confess as a favour
of heaven! On the other hand, there are those rulers themselves whose
greatness is in inverse proportion to their number.
The criticism which addresses itself to this object is criticism in
hand-to-hand fighting, and in hand-to-hand fighting, it is not a question
of whether the opponent is a noble opponent, of equal birth, or an
interesting opponent; it is a question of meeting him. It is thus
imperative that the Germans should have no opportunity for
self-deception and resignation. The real pressure must be made more
oppressive by making men conscious of the pressure, and the disgrace
more disgraceful by publishing it.
Every sphere of German society must be described as the partie
honteuse[2] of German society, these petrified conditions must be made
to dance by singing to them their own melody! The people must be
taught to be startled at their own appearance, in order to implant
courage into them.
And even for modern nations this struggle against the narrow-minded
actuality of the German status quo cannot be without interest, for the
German status quo represents the frank completion of the ancien
régime, and the ancien régime is the concealed defect of the modern
State. The struggle against the German political present is the struggle
against the past of modern nations, which are still vexed by the
recollections of this past. For them it is instructive to see the ancien
régime, which enacted its tragedy with them, playing its comedy as the
German revenant. Its history was tragic so long as it was the
pre-existing power of the world, and freedom, on the other hand, a
personal invasion, in a word, so long as it believed and was obliged to
believe in its justification. So long as the ancien régime as the existing
world order struggled with a nascent world, historical error was on its
side, but not personal perversity. Its downfall was therefore tragic.
On the other hand, the present German régime, which is an
anachronism, a flagrant contradiction of the generally recognized
axiom of the obsolescence of the ancien régime, imagines that it

believes in itself, and extorts from the world the same homage. If it
believed in its own being, would it seek to hide it under the semblance
of an alien being and look for its salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry?
The modern ancien régime is merely the comedian of a world order
whose real heroes are dead.
History is thorough, and passes through many phases when it bears an
old figure to the grave. The last phase of a world historical figure is its
comedy. The gods of Greece, once tragically wounded to death in the
chained Prometheus of Æschylus, were fated to die a comic death in
Lucian's dialogues. Why does history take this course? In order that
mankind may break away in a jolly mood from its past.
In the light of this historical foresight, the political powers of Germany
are vindicated. As soon then as the modern politico-social reality is
itself subjected to criticism, as soon, therefore, as criticism raises itself
to the height of truly human problems, it either finds itself outside the
German status quo, or it would delve beneath the latter to find its
object.
To take an example! The relation of industry, and of the world of
wealth generally, to the political world is one of the chief problems of
modern times. Under what form is this problem beginning to engage
the attention of Germans? Under the form of protective tariffs, of the