The Ego and his Own, Max Stirner [ebook reader for surface pro .txt] 📗
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with which I undertake what I will, so the spirit too as property must sink
down into a material before which I no longer entertain any sacred dread.
Then, firstly, I shall shudder no more before a thought, let it appear as
presumptuous and "devilish" as it will, because, if it threatens to become too
inconvenient and unsatisfactory for me, its end lies in my power; but
neither shall I recoil from any deed because there dwells in it a spirit of
godlessness, immorality, wrongfulness. as little as St. Boniface pleased to
desist, through religious scrupulousness, from cutting down the sacred oak of
the heathens. If the things of the world have once become vain, the thoughts
of the spirit must also become vain.
No thought is sacred, for let no thought rank as "devotions";(124) no feeling
is sacred (no sacred feeling of friendship, mother's feelings, etc.), no
belief is sacred. They are all alienable, my alienable property, and are
annihilated, as they are created, by me.
The Christian can lose all things or objects, the most loved persons, these
"objects" of his love, without giving up himself (i.e., in the Christian
sense, his spirit, his soul! as lost. The owner can cast from him all the
thoughts that were dear to his heart and kindled his zeal, and will likewise
"gain a thousandfold again," because he, their creator, remains.
Unconsciously and involuntarily we all strive toward ownness, and there will
hardly be one among us who has not given up a sacred feeling, a sacred
thought, a sacred belief; nay, we probably meet no one who could not still
deliver himself from one or another of his sacred thoughts. All our contention
against convictions starts from the opinion that maybe we are capable of
driving our opponent out of his entrenchments of thought. But what I do
unconsciously I half-do, and therefore after every victory over a faith I
become again the prisoner (possessed) of a faith which then takes my whole
self anew into its service, and makes me an enthusiast for reason after I
have ceased to be enthusiastic for the Bible, or an enthusiast for the idea of
humanity after I have fought long enough for that of Christianity.
Doubtless, as owner of thoughts, I shall cover my property with my shield,
just as I do not, as owner of things, willingly let everybody help himself to
them; but at the same time I shall look forward smilingly to the outcome of
the battle, smilingly lay the shield on the corpses of my thoughts and my
faith, smilingly triumph when I am beaten. That is the very humor of the
thing. Every one who has "sublimer feelings" is able to vent his humor on the
pettiness of men; but to let it play with all "great thoughts, sublime
feelings, noble inspiration, and sacred faith" presupposes that I am the owner
of all.
If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I set
over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are, every
moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more. Since no defect cleaves
to us, sin has no meaning either. Show me a sinner in the world still, if no
one any longer needs to do what suits a superior! If I only need do what suits
myself, I am no sinner if I do not do what suits myself, as I do not injure in
myself a "holy one"; if, on the other hand, I am to be pious, then I must do
what suits God; if I am to act humanly, I must do what suits the essence of
man, the idea of mankind, etc. What religion calls the "sinner,"
humanitarianism calls the "egoist." But, once more: if I need not do what
suits any other, is the "egoist," in whom humanitarianism has borne to itself
a new-fangled devil, anything more than a piece of nonsense? The egoist,
before whom the humane shudder, is a spook as much as the devil is: he exists
only as a bogie and phantasm in their brain. If they were not
unsophisticatedly drifting back and forth in the antediluvian opposition of
good and evil, to which they have given the modern names of "human" and
"egoistic," they would not have freshened up the hoary "sinner" into an
"egoist" either, and put a new patch on an old garment. But they could not do
otherwise, for they hold it for their task to be "men." They are rid of the
Good One; good is left!(125)
We are perfect altogether, and on the whole earth there is not one man who is
a sinner! There are crazy people who imagine that they are God the Father, God
the Son, or the man in the moon, and so too the world swarms with fools who
seem to themselves to be sinners; but, as the former are not the man in the
moon, so the latter are -- not sinners. Their sin is imaginary, yet, it is
insidiously objected, their craziness or their possessedness is at least their
sin. Their possessedness is nothing but what they -- could achieve, the result
of their development, just as Luther's faith in the Bible was all that he was
-- competent to make out. The one brings himself into the madhouse with his
development, the other brings himself therewith into the Pantheon and to the
loss of -- Valhalla.
There is no sinner and no sinful egoism!
Get away from me with your "philanthropy"! Creep in, you philanthropist, into
the "dens of vice," linger awhile in the throng of the great city: will you
not everywhere find sin, and sin, and again sin? Will you not wail over
corrupt humanity, not lament at the monstrous egoism? Will you see a rich man
without finding him pitiless and "egoistic?" Perhaps you already call yourself
an atheist, but you remain true to the Christian feeling that a camel will
sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man not be an "un-man." How many
do you see anyhow that you would not throw into the "egoistic mass"? What,
therefore, has your philanthropy [love of man] found? Nothing but unlovable
men! And where do they all come from? From you, from your philanthropy! You
brought the sinner with you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore
you inserted him everywhere. Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you
alone are the creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love men, are the
very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into
vicious and virtuous, into men and un-men, the very one to befoul them with
the slaver of your possessedness; for you love not men, but man. But I
tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have only -- dreamed of him.
Self-enjoyment is embittered to me by my thinking I must serve another, by my
fancying myself under obligation to him, by my holding myself called to
"self-sacrifice," "resignation," "enthusiasm." All right: if I no longer serve
any idea, any "higher essence," then it is clear of itself that I no longer
serve any man either, but -- under all circumstances -- myself. But thus I
am not merely in fact or in being, but also for my consciousness, the --
unique.(126)
There pertains to you more than the divine, the human, etc.; yours
pertains to you.
Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you have
more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more.
You are then not merely called to everything divine, entitled to
everything human, but owner of what is yours, i.e. of all that you possess
the force to make your own;(127) i.e. you are appropriate(128) and
capacitated for everything that is yours.
People have always supposed that they must give me a destiny lying outside
myself, so that at last they demanded that I should lay claim to the human
because I am -- man. This is the Christian magic circle. Fichte's ego too is
the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego has
rights, then it is "the ego," it is not I. But I am not an ego along with
other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique. Hence my wants too are unique, and
my deeds; in short, everything about me is unique. And it is only as this
unique I that I take everything for my own, as I set myself to work, and
develop myself, only as this. I do not develop men, nor as man, but, as I, I
develop -- myself.
This is the meaning of the -- unique one.
Footnotes:
(1) [Einzigen]
(2) Rom 8. 14.
(3) Cf. John 3. 10. with Rom. 8. 16.
(4) [Eigenschaften]
(5) [Eigentum]
(6) Karl Marx, in the "Deutsch-französische Jahrbucher," p. 197.
(7) Br. Bauer, "Judenfrage", p. 61.
(8) Hess, "Triarchie," p. 76.
(9) [Vorrecht, literally "precedent right."]
(10) [Eigenschaft]
(11) [Eigentum]
(12) "Essence of Christianity," 2nd ed., p. 401
(13) [bestimmt]
(14) [Bestimmung]
(15) Mark 3. 29.
(16) [This word has also, in German, the meaning of "common law," and will
sometimes be translated "law" in the following paragraphs.]
(17) Cf. "Die Kommunisten in der Schweiz," committee report, p. 3.
(18) [Rechtsstreit, a word which usually means "lawsuit."]
(19) [A common German phrase for "it suits me."]
(20) A. Becker, "Volksphilosophie", p. 22f.
(21) [Mephistopheles in "Faust."]
(22) "I beg you, spare my lungs! He who insists on proving himself right, if
he but has one of those things called tongues, can hold his own in all the
world's despite!" [Faust's words to Mephistopheles, slightly misquoted. -- For
Rechthabereisee note on p. 185.]
(23) [Gesetz, statute; no longer the same German word as "right"]
(24) [Verbrechen]
(25) [brechen]
(26) "This Book Belongs to the King,", p. 376.
(27) P. 376.
(28) P. 374.
(29) [An unnatural mother]
(30) P. 381.
(31) P. 385.
(32) [Gerechte]
(33) [macht Alles hübsch gerecht]
(34) [Einzige]
(35) See "Political Speeches," 10, p. 153
(36) [Literally, "precedent right."]
(37) [Spannung]
(38) [gespannt]
(39) [spannen]
(40) [Einzig]
(41) [Einzigkeit]
(42) [Volk; but the etymological remark following applies equally to the
English word "people." See Liddell & Scott's Greek lexicon, under pimplemi.]
(43) [Kuschen, a word whose only use is in ordering dogs to keep quiet.]
(44) This is the word for "of age"; but it is derived from Mund, "mouth,"
and refers properly to the right of speaking through one's own mouth, not by a
guardian.]
(45) ["Occupy"; literally, "have within".]
(46) [The word Genosse, "companion," signifies originally a companion in
enjoyment.]
(47) [This word in German does not mean religion, but, as in Latin,
faithfulness to family ties -- as we speak of "filial piety." But the word
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