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

-- change of masters has taken place.

After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the supposedly

safe harbor of love. "The first and highest law must be the love of man to

man. Homo homini Deus est -- this is the supreme practical maxim, this is

the turning point of the world's history."(30) But, properly speaking, only

the god is changed -- the deus; love has remained: there love to the

superhuman God, here love to the human God, to homo as Deus. Therefore man

is to me -- sacred. And everything "truly human" is to me -- sacred! "Marriage

is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral relations. Friendship is and

must be sacred for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every

man, but sacred in and of itself.(31) " Haven't we the priest again there?

Who is his God? Man with a great M! What is the divine? The human! Then the

predicate has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the

sentence "God is love," they say "love is divine"; instead of "God has become

man," "Man has become God," etc. It is nothing more or less than a new --

religion. "All moral relations are ethical, are cultivated with a moral

mind, only where of themselves (without religious consecration by the priest's

blessing) they are counted religious. " Feuerbach's proposition, "Theology

is anthropology," means only "religion must be ethics, ethics alone is

religion."

Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a transposition of subject and

predicate, a giving of preference to the latter. But, since he himself says,

"Love is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred through being a

predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is divine in and of

itself," he might judge that the fight against the predicates themselves,

against love and all sanctities, must be commenced. How could he hope to turn

men away from God when he left them the divine? And if, as Feuerbach says, God

himself has never been the main thing to them, but only his predicates, then

he might have gone on leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the

real kernel, was left at any rate. He recognizes, too, that with him it is

"only a matter of annihilating an illusion";(32) he thinks, however, that the

effect of the illusion on men is "downright ruinous, since even love, in

itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one

through religiousness, since religious love loves man(33) only for God's sake,

therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only." Is this different

with moral love? Does it love the man, this man for this man's sake, or

for morality's sake, and so -- for homo homini Deus -- for God's sake?

The wheels in the head have a number of other formal aspects, some of which it

may be useful to indicate here.

Thus self-renunciation is common to the holy with the unholy, to the pure

and the impure. The impure man renounces all "better feelings," all shame,

even natural timidity, and follows only the appetite that rules him. The pure

man renounces his natural relation to the world ("renounces the world") and

follows only the "desire" which rules him. Driven by the thirst for money, the

avaricious man renounces all admonitions of conscience, all feeling of honor,

all gentleness and all compassion; he puts all considerations out of sight;

the appetite drags him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He makes himself

the "laughing-stock of the world," is hard-hearted and "strictly just"; for

the desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces himself before

Mammon, so the holy man renounces himself before God and the divine laws. We

are now living in a time when the shamelessness of the holy is every day

more and more felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same time compelled to

unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more and more every day. Have not the

shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize the

"progress of the age" long surpassed all measure and all expectation? But it

must be so. The self-renouncers must, as holy men, take the same course that

they do so as unholy men; as the latter little by little sink to the fullest

measure of self-renouncing vulgarity and lowness, so the former must ascend

to the most dishonorable exaltation. The mammon of the earth and the God

of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of -- self-renunciation. The low

man, like the exalted one, reaches out for a "good" -- the former for the

material good, the latter for the ideal, the so-called "supreme good"; and at

last both complete each other again too, as the "materially-minded" man

sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm, his vanity, and the

"spiritually-minded" man to a material gratification, the life of enjoyment.

Those who exhort men to "unselfishness"(34) think they are saying an uncommon

deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they

understand by "self-renunciation." But who is this self that is to be

renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that you yourself are supposed to

be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to

you? Again for your benefit and behoof, only that through unselfishness you

are procuring your "true benefit."

You are to benefit yourself, and yet you are not to seek your benefit.

People regard as unselfish the benefactor of men, a Francke who founded the

orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but

also the fanatic who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for the conversion

of the heathen, or, like Robespierre," sacrifices everything to virtue -- like

Körner, dies for God, king, and fatherland. Hence, among others, O'Connell's

opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness, for

which the O'Connell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if they were

successful in casting suspicion on his "unselfishness," they would easily

separate him from his adherents.

Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for another

end than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making money or at

liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case as in the other,

that he is striving for an end, and that his end; selfishness here as there,

only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to others too, and

so would be for the common interest.

Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the

contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fashion

in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it costs

too much in solid material, people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel

counterfeit and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end

ceases to be our end and our property, which we, as owners, can dispose of

at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a -- fixed idea; where it begins

to inspire, enthuse, fantasize us; in short, where it passes into our

stubbornness and becomes our -- master. One is not unselfish so long as he

retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that "Here I stand, I

cannot do otherwise," the fundamental maxim of all the possessed; one becomes

so in the case of a sacred end, through the corresponding sacred zeal.

I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my own, and I, instead of giving

myself up to be the blind means of its fulfillment, leave it always an open

question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical,

but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its

most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its judge, because I am its owner.

Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness reaches, as much on

possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit; there vice, folly,

etc.; here humility, devotion, etc.

Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits

a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul

for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and

pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often

the passions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have

demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening

nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery

fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the

ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded

themselves, your tormented eyes turned their look upward, you -- prayed. The

storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites.

Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the

tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves

dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight

on the unresisting bosom, one last faint "Oh dear!" moaned itself away, and --

the soul was at rest. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new

combat and a new -- prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of

your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the -- chlorosis

of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon,

how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free grisette against a

thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!

The fixed idea may also be perceived as "maxim," "principle," "standpoint,"

etc. Archimedes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint outside it. Men

sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well

as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the world of mind, of ideas,

thoughts, concepts, essences; it is heaven. Heaven is the "standpoint" from

which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and -- despised. To assure

to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever --

how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!

Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from

the appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let

himself be determined by his appetites. This does not involve the idea that

he was not to have appetites, but that the appetites were not to have him,

that they were not to become fixed, uncontrollable, indissoluble. Now, could

not what Christianity (religion) contrived against the appetites be applied by

us to its own precept that mind (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith) must

determine