The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (most read books txt) 📕

concept "higher being." Atheists

keep up their scoffing at the higher being, which was also honored under the

name of the "highest" or Être suprême, and trample in the dust one "proof of

his existence" after another, without noticing that they themselves, out of

need for a higher being, only annihilate the old to make room for a new. Is

"Man" perchance not a higher essence than an individual man, and must not the

truths, rights, and ideas which result from the concept of him be honored and

--counted sacred, as revelations of this very concept? For, even though we

should abrogate again many a truth that seemed to be made manifest by this

concept, yet this would only evince a misunderstanding on our part, without in

the least degree harming the sacred concept itself or taking their sacredness

from those truths that must "rightly" be looked upon as its revelations. Man

reaches beyond every individual man, and yet -- though he be "his essence" --

is not in fact his essence (which rather would be as single(17) as he the

individual himself), but a general and "higher," yes, for atheists "the

highest essence."(18) And, as the divine revelations were not written down by

God with his own hand, but made public through "the Lord's instruments," so

also the new highest essence does not write out its revelations itself, but

lets them come to our knowledge through "true men." Only the new essence

betrays, in fact, a more spiritual style of conception than the old God,

because the latter was still represented in a sort of embodiedness or form,

while the undimmed spirituality of the new is retained, and no special

material body is fancied for it. And withal it does not lack corporeity, which

even takes on a yet more seductive appearance because it looks more natural

and mundane and consists in nothing less than in every bodily man -- yes, or

outright in "humanity" or "all men." Thereby the spectralness of the spirit in

a seeming body has once again become really solid and popular.

Sacred, then, is the highest essence and everything in which this highest

essence reveals or will reveal itself; but hallowed are they who recognize

this highest essence together with its own, i.e. together with its

revelations. The sacred hallows in turn its reverer, who by his worship

becomes himself a saint, as Likewise what he does is saintly, a saintly walk,

saintly thoughts and actions, imaginations and aspirations.

It is easily understood that the conflict over what is revered as the highest

essence can be significant only so long as even the most embittered opponents

concede to each other the main point -- that there is a highest essence to

which worship or service is due. If one should smile compassionately at the

whole struggle over a highest essence, as a Christian might at the war of

words between a Shiite and a Sunnite or between a Brahman and a Buddhist, then

the hypothesis of a highest essence would be null in his eyes, and the

conflict on this basis an idle play. Whether then the one God or the three in

one. whether the Lutheran God or the Être suprême or not God at all, but

"Man," may represent the highest essence, that makes no difference at all for

him who denies the highest essence itself, for in his eyes those servants of a

highest essence are one and all-pious people, the most raging atheist not less

than the most faith-filled Christian.

In the foremost place of the sacred,(19) then, stands the highest essence and

the faith in this essence, our "holy(20) faith."

---- * ----

The spook

With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the realm of essences.

What haunts the universe, and has its occult, "incomprehensible" being there,

is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest essence. And to get to

the bottom of this spook, to comprehend it, to discover reality in it (to

prove "the existence of God") -- this task men set to themselves for thousands

of years; with the horrible impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of

transforming the spook into a non-spook, the unreal into something real, the

spirit into an entire and corporeal person -- with this they tormented

themselves to death. Behind the existing world they sought the "thing in

itself," the essence; behind the thing they sought the un-thing.

When one looks to the bottom of anything, i.e. searches out its essence,

one often discovers something quite other than what it seems to be; honeyed

speech and a lying heart, pompous words and beggarly thoughts, etc. By

bringing the essence into prominence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended

appearance to a bare semblance, a deception. The essence of the world, so

attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it --

emptiness; emptiness is = world's essence (world's doings). Now, he who is

religious does not occupy himself with the deceitful semblance, with the empty

appearances, but looks upon the essence, and in the essence has -- the truth.

The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil essences,

and conversely from others the good. The essence of human feeling, e. g., is

love; the essence of human will is the good; that of one's thinking, the true,

etc.

What at first passed for existence, e. g. the world and its like, appears

now as bare semblance, and the truly existent is much rather the essence,

whose realm is filled with gods, spirits, demons, with good or bad essences.

Only this inverted world, the world of essences, truly exists now. The human

heart may be loveless, but its essence exists, God, "who is love"; human

thought may wander in error, but its essence, truth, exists; "God is truth,"

and the like.

To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is

religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts.

The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize non-sense, has

brought about a corporeal ghost, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an

embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured

themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition! But there always

remained the contradiction of two natures, the divine and human, i. e., the

ghostly and sensual; there remained the most wondrous spook, a thing that was

not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul torturing, and no shaman, who

pricks himself to raving fury and nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost,

can endure such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most

incomprehensible ghost.

But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to light,

that the veritable spirit or ghost is -- man. The corporeal or embodied

spirit is just man; he himself is the ghostly being and at the same time the

being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases,

shudders at ghosts outside him, but at himself; he is terrified at himself.

In the depth of his breast dwells the spirit of sin; even the faintest

thought (and this is itself a spirit, you know) may be a devil, etc. -- The

ghost has put on a body, God has become man, but now man is himself the

gruesome spook which he seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring

to reality and to speech; man is -- spirit. What matter if the body wither,

if only the spirit is saved? Everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's

or "soul's" welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a

ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even assigned a distinct seat in

the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.).

You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher essence. Nevertheless a

higher essence may be hidden in each of us, and call forth a mutual reverence.

To take at once the most general, Man lives in you and me. If I did not see

Man in you, what occasion should I have to respect you? To be sure, you are

not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a mortal veil of his, from

which he can withdraw without himself ceasing; but yet for the present this

general and higher essence is housed in you, and you present before me

(because an imperishable spirit has in you assumed a perishable body, so that

really your form is only an "assumed" one) a spirit that appears, appears in

you, without being bound to your body and to this particular mode of

appearance -- therefore a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence

but only respect that higher essence which "walks" in you; I "respect Man in

you." The ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves, and

the higher essence "Man" found as yet little response. To make up for this,

they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher essence

than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit of Man, a spirit haunting the

individual -- the Spirit of the People. For this reason they revered this

spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit related to it (*e.

g.* the Spirit of the Family) could the individual appear significant; only

for the sake of the higher essence, the People, was consideration allowed to

the "member of the people." As you are hallowed to us by "Man" who haunts you,

so at every time men have been hallowed by some higher essence or other, like

People, Family, and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one

been honored from of old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of

a hallowed, i.e., protected and recognized person. If I cherish you because

I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need

satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence, whose

hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, i.e.

an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with your

essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not a higher one, is not

higher and more general than you, is unique(21) like you yourself, because it

is you.

But it is not only man that "haunts"; so does everything. The higher essence,

the spirit, that walks in everything, is at the same time bound to nothing,

and only -- "appears" in it. Ghosts in every corner!

Here would be the place to pass the haunting spirits in review, if they were

not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before egoism. Hence

let only a few of them be particularized by way of example, in order to bring