In short, the party cannot bear non-partisanship, and it is in this that egoism appears. What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who _unite_ with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.
He who passes over from one party to another is at once abused as a "turncoat." Certainly _morality_ demands that one stand by his party, and to become apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of "faithlessness"; but ownness knows no commandment of "faithfulness, adhesion, etc.," ownness permits everything, even apostasy, defection. Unconsciously even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this principle when they have to judge one who passes over to _their_ party,--nay, they are likely to be making proselytes; they should only at the same time acquire a consciousness of the fact that one must commit _immoral_ actions in order to commit his own,--_i. e._ here, that one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order to determine himself instead of being determined by moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in equivocal colors, and will not easily obtain their confidence; for there sticks to him the taint of "faithlessness," _i. e._ of an immorality. In the lower man this view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall here too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment, and the contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of morality does not, on account of the confusion of their concepts, come clearly to their consciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate immoral downright, because they themselves entice to apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, etc.; still, they cannot give up the standpoint of morality either. And yet here the occasion was to be seized to step outside of morality.
Are the Own or Unique[170] perchance a party? How could they be _own_ if they were such as _belonged_ to a party?
Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and entering their circle one forms a _union_ with them that lasts as long as party and I pursue one and the same goal. But to-day I still share the party's tendency, and by to-morrow I can do so no longer and I become "untrue" to it. The party has nothing _binding_ (obligatory) for me, and I do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, I become its foe.