To say in blunt words what an un-man is is not particularly hard: it is a man who does not correspond to the _concept_ man, as the inhuman is something human which is not conformed to the concept of the human. Logic calls this a "self-contradictory judgment." Would it be permissible for one to pronounce this judgment, that one can be a man without being a man, if he did not admit the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from the existence, the essence from the appearance? They say, he _appears_ indeed as a man, but _is_ not a man.
Men have passed this "self-contradictory judgment" through a long line of centuries! Nay, what is still more, in this long time there were only--_un-men_. What individual can have corresponded to his concept? Christianity knows only one Man, and this one--Christ--is at once an un-man again in the reverse sense, to wit, a superhuman man, a "God." Only the--un-man is a _real_ man.
Men that are not men, what should they be but _ghosts_? Every real man, because he does not correspond to the concept "man," or because he is not a "generic man," is a spook. But do I still remain an un-man even if I bring Man (who towered above me and remained otherworldly to me only as my ideal, my task, my essence or concept) down to be my _quality_, my own and inherent in me; so that Man is nothing else than my humanity, my human existence, and everything that I do is human precisely because _I_ do it, but not because it corresponds to the _concept_ "man"? _I_ am really Man and the un-man in one; for I am a man and at the same time more than a man; _i. e._, I am the ego of this my mere quality.
It had to come to this at last, that it was no longer merely demanded of us to be Christians, but to become men; for, though we could never really become even Christians, but always remained "poor sinners" (for the Christian was an unattainable ideal too), yet in this the contradictoriness did not come before our consciousness so, and the illusion was easier than now when of us, who are men and act humanly (yes, cannot do otherwise than be such and act so), the demand is made that we are to be men, "real men."
Our States of to-day, because they still have all sorts of things sticking to them, left from their churchly mother, do indeed load those who belong to them with various obligations (_e. g._ churchly religiousness) which properly do not a bit concern them, the States; yet on the whole they do not deny their significance, since they want to be looked upon as _human societies_, in which man as man can be a member, even if he is less privileged than other members; most of them admit adherents of every religious sect, and receive people without distinction of race or nation: Jews, Turks, Moors, etc., can become French citizens. In the act of reception, therefore, the State looks only to see whether one is a _man_. The Church, as a society of believers, could not receive every man into her bosom; the State, as a society of men, can. But, when the State has carried its principle clear through, of presupposing in its constituents nothing but that they are men (even the North Americans still presuppose in theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of integrity, of respectability), then it has dug its grave. While it will fancy that those whom it possesses are without exception men, these have meanwhile become without exception _egoists_, each of whom utilizes it according to his egoistic powers and ends. Against the egoists "human society" is wrecked; for they no longer have to do with each other as _men_, but appear egoistically as an _I_ against a You altogether different from me and in opposition to me.