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

the first time," makes for the first time a man out of

him). So then it would be more accurately worded thus: Love is what is human

in man, and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist. But precisely all that

which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy (i.e., theology)

offers as the good, the absolute, is to self-ownership simply not the good

(or, what means the same, it is only the good). Consequently, by the

transformation of the predicate into the subject, the Christian essence (and

it is the predicate that contains the essence, you know) would only be fixed

yet more oppressively. God and the divine would entwine themselves all the

more inextricably with me. To expel God from his heaven and to rob him of his

"transcendence" cannot yet support a claim of complete victory, if therein

he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with indelible immanence.

Now they say, "The divine is the truly human!"

The same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the State, i.e.

oppose the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating that morality

is "the fundamental pillar of social life and of the State." As if the

dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of the sacred, a

"hierarchy."

So we may here mention by the way that rationalist movement which, after

theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping

religious truths, that only to believers did God reveal himself, and that

therefore only the heart, the feelings, the believing fancy was religious,

broke out with the assertion that the "natural understanding," human reason,

was also capable of discerning God. What does that mean but that the reason

laid claim to be the same visionary as the fancy?(28) In this sense Reimarus

wrote his Most Notable Truths of Natural Religion. It had to come to this --

that the whole man with all his faculties was found to be religious; heart

and affections, understanding and reason, feeling, knowledge, and will -- in

short, everything in man -- appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even

philosophy is religious. And what is not called religion today? The "religion

of love," the "religion of freedom," "political religion" -- in short, every

enthusiasm. So it is, too, in fact.

To this day we use the Romance word "religion," which expresses the concept of

a condition of being bound. To be sure, we remain bound, so far as

religion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the mind also bound? On

the contrary, that is free, is sole lord, is not our mind, but absolute.

Therefore the correct affirmative translation of the word religion would be

"freedom of mind"! In whomsoever the mind is free, he is religious in just

the same way as he in whom the senses have free course is called a sensual

man. The mind binds the former, the desires the latter. Religion, therefore,

is boundness or religion with reference to me -- I am bound; it is freedom

with reference to the mind -- the mind is free, or has freedom of mind. Many

know from experience how hard it is on us when the desires run away with us,

free and unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellectuality,

enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however this jewel may in the most

various phrase be named, brings us into yet more grievous straits than even

the wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can they perceive it

without being consciously egoists.

Reimarus, and all who have shown that our reason, our heart, etc., also lead

to God, have therewithal shown that we are possessed through and through. To

be sure, they vexed the theologians, from whom they took away the prerogative

of religious exaltation; but for religion, for freedom of mind, they thereby

conquered yet more ground. For, when the mind is no longer limited to feeling

or faith, but also, as understanding, reason, and thought in general, belongs

to itself the mind -- when therefore, it may take part in the spiritual(29)

and heavenly truths in the form of understanding, as well as in its other

forms -- then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual things, i. e.,

with itself, and is therefore free. Now we are so through-and-through

religious that "jurors," i.e. "sworn men," condemn us to death, and every

policeman, as a good Christian, takes us to the lock-up by virtue of an "oath

of office."

Morality could not come into opposition with piety till after the time when in

general the boisterous hate of everything that looked like an "order"

(decrees, commandments, etc.) spoke out in revolt, and the personal "absolute

lord" was scoffed at and persecuted; consequently it could arrive at

independence only through liberalism, whose first form acquired significance

in the world's history as "citizenship," and weakened the specifically

religious powers (see "Liberalism" below). For, when morality not merely goes

alongside of piety, but stands on feet of its own, then its principle lies no

longer in the divine commandments, but in the law of reason, from which the

commandments, so far as they are still to remain valid, must first await

justification for their validity. In the law of reason man determines himself

out of himself, for "Man" is rational, and out of the "essence of Man" those

laws follow of necessity. Piety and morality part company in this -- that the

former makes God the law-giver, the latter Man.

From a certain standpoint of morality people reason about as follows: Either

man is led by his sensuality, and is, following it, immoral, or he is led by

the good, which, taken up into the will, is called moral sentiment (sentiment

and prepossession in favor of the good); then he shows himself moral. From

this point of view how, e. g., can Sand's act against Kotzebue be called

immoral? What is commonly understood by unselfish it certainly was, in the

same measure as (among other things) St. Crispin's thieveries in favor of the

poor. "He should not have murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not

murder!" Then to serve the good, the welfare of the people, as Sand at least

intended, or the welfare of the poor, like Crispin -- is moral; but murder and

theft are immoral; the purpose moral, the means immoral. Why? "Because murder,

assassination, is something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas enticed the

enemies of the country into ravines and shot them down unseen from the bushes,

do you suppose that was assassination? According to the principle of morality,

which commands us to serve the good, you could really ask only whether murder

could never in any case be a realization of the good, and would have to

endorse that murder which realized the good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at

all; it was moral, because in the service of the good, because unselfish; it

was an act of punishment, which the individual inflicted, an -- execution

inflicted at the risk of the executioner's life. What else had his scheme

been, after all, but that he wanted to suppress writings by brute force? Are

you not acquainted with the same procedure as a "legal" and sanctioned one?

And what can be objected against it from your principle of morality? -- "But

it was an illegal execution." So the immoral thing in it was the illegality,

the disobedience to law? Then you admit that the good is nothing else than --

law, morality nothing else than loyalty. And to this externality of

"loyalty" your morality must sink, to this righteousness of works in the

fulfillment of the law, only that the latter is at once more tyrannical and

more revolting than the old-time righteousness of works. For in the latter

only the act is needed, but you require the disposition too; one must

carry in himself the law, the statute; and he who is most legally disposed

is the most moral. Even the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life must

perish in this Protestant legality. Here at last the domination of the law is

for the first time complete. "Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus I

have really come so far to be only the "vessel of its glory." "Every Prussian

carries his gendarme in his breast," says a high Prussian officer.

Why do certain opposition parties fail to flourish? Solely for the reason

that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality. Hence the

measureless hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc., from whose repulsiveness one

may daily get the most thorough nausea at this rotten and hypocritical

relation of a "lawful opposition." -- In the moral relation of love and

fidelity a divided or opposed will cannot have place; the beautiful relation

is disturbed if the one wills this and the other the reverse. But now,

according to the practice hitherto and the old prejudice of the opposition,

the moral relation is to be preserved above all. What is then left to the

opposition? Perhaps the will to have a liberty, if the beloved one sees fit to

deny it? Not a bit! It may not will to have the freedom, it can only wish

for it, "petition" for it, lisp a "Please, please!" What would come of it, if

the opposition really willed, willed with the full energy of the will? No,

it must renounce will in order to live to love, renounce liberty -- for love

of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only to "beg

as a favor." Love, devotion. etc., demand with undeviating definiteness that

there be only one will to which the others devote themselves, which they

serve, follow, love. Whether this will is regarded as reasonable or as

unreasonable, in both cases one acts morally when one follows it, and

immorally when one breaks away from it. The will that commands the censorship

seems to many unreasonable; but he who in a land of censorship evades the

censoring of his book acts immorally, and he who submits it to the censorship

acts morally. If some one let his moral judgment go, and set up e. g. a

secret press, one would have to call him immoral, and imprudent in the bargain

if he let himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a value in the

eyes of the "moral"? Perhaps! -- That is, if he fancied he was serving a

"higher morality."

The web of the hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two domains,

between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of

deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality

without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism,

it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of

hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of