Postscript to the “Two Notes”
POSTSCRIPT TO THE “TWO NOTES”103 [XIII 611]
March 1855
On reading through these two pieces now, I want to add the following.
Jesus Christ, to name the supreme example, truth itself, certainly had followers; and, to name a human example, Socrates had followers.
If, then, I seem in one sense to force the ideality of the single individual even higher, how do I understand this? I understand it partly as an imperfection in me and partly as connected with the special nature of my task. I understand it as my imperfection, because, as I have frequently said, my entire work as an author has also been my own development, in which I myself have ever more deeply concentrated on my idea, my task. But as long as this was my situation, I was not matured enough to be able to draw individuals closer to me, even if I had wanted to. —I understand this as connected with the special nature of my task. My task is to work against a given wrong propagation (therefore not a task of propagating something) along the line of what could be called smoke-abatement, but in that case it is important to keep watch with great circumspection over the extent to which one becomes involved with individuals, lest the smoke-abatement in turn become a false propagation. It is not my task, and “in Christendom” it cannot truly be the task to create more nominal Christians or to contribute to strengthening millions in the notion that they are Christians. No, the task is precisely to shed light upon this scoundrel trick that to the benefit of the princes of the Church, of the pastors, of mediocrity—under the name of Christian fervor and zeal (how sophisticated!)—has procured these [XIII 612] millions. It is a matter of shedding light upon and of shining light through this scoundrel trick and of getting it made clear that “in Christendom” Christian fervor and zeal will be precisely the thankless (and here, too, is the mark of the essentially Christian, just as profit is the mark of worldliness) task of relieving Christianity of some of those battalions of Christians.
Just one word more. Christ certainly had followers, and, to take a human example, Socrates also had followers; but neither Christ nor Socrates had followers in the sense that the thesis as I have presented it would become false—ethically, ethically-religiously, the crowd is untruth, the untruth of wanting to exert influence by means of the crowd, the numerical, of wanting to make the numerical the authority for what truth is.