Against thoughts no egoistic power is to appear, no police power and the like. So the believers in thinking believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not sacred to _me_, and I defend _my skin_ against them as against other things. That may be an unreasonable defence; but, if I am in duty bound to reason, then I, like Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest to it!
In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of faith, is the kingdom of heaven, every one is assuredly wrong who uses _unthinking_ force, just as every one is wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, or, although he is a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts unchristianly; in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself to belong though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he is a "sinner" or "egoist." But it is only when he becomes a _criminal_ against these kingdoms that he can throw off their dominion.
Here too the result is this, that the fight of the thinkers against the government is indeed in the right, _viz___., in might,--so far as it is carried on against the government's thoughts (the government is dumb, and does not succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of), but is, on the other hand, in the wrong, _viz._, in impotence, so far as it does not succeed in bringing into the field anything but thoughts against a personal power (the egoistic power stops the mouths of the thinkers). The theoretical fight cannot complete the victory, and the sacred power of thought succumbs to the might of egoism. Only the egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears up everything.
This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the single person,[103] a mere pastime or hobby as it were, and to take from it the importance of "being the last decisive power"; this degradation and desecration of thinking; this equalization of the unthinking and thoughtful ego; this clumsy but real "equality,"--criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond thinking but--the deluge.
Criticism does indeed affirm, _e. g._, that free criticism may overcome the State, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach which is laid upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and impudence"; it thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence" may not overcome, it alone may. The truth is rather the reverse: the State can be really overcome only by impudent self-will.