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

as habit. To

act according to the habit and usage (mores) of one's country -- is to be

moral there. Therefore pure moral action, clear, unadulterated morality, is

most straightforwardly practiced in China; they keep to the old habit and

usage, and hate each innovation as a crime worthy of death. For innovation

is the deadly enemy of habit, of the old, of permanence. In fact, too,

it admits of no doubt that through habit man secures himself against the

obtrusiveness of things, of the world, and founds a world of his own in which

alone he is and feels at home, builds himself a heaven. Why, heaven has no

other meaning than that it is man's proper home, in which nothing alien

regulates and rules him any longer, no influence of the earthly any longer

makes him himself alien; in short, in which the dross of the earthly is thrown

off, and the combat against the world has found an end -- in which, therefore,

nothing is any longer denied him. Heaven is the end of abnegation, it is

free enjoyment. There man no longer denies himself anything, because nothing

is any longer alien and hostile to him. But now habit is a "second nature,"

which detaches and frees man from his first and original natural condition, in

securing him against every casualty of it. The fully elaborated habit of the

Chinese has provided for all emergencies, and everything is "looked out for";

whatever may come, the Chinaman always knows how he has to behave, and does

not need to decide first according to the circumstances; no unforeseen case

throws him down from the heaven of his rest. The morally habituated and inured

Chinaman is not surprised and taken off his guard; he behaves with equanimity

(i. e., with equal spirit or temper) toward everything, because his temper,

protected by the precaution of his traditional usage, does not lose its

balance. Hence, on the ladder of culture or civilization humanity mounts the

first round through habit; and, as it conceives that, in climbing to culture,

it is at the same time climbing to heaven, the realm of culture or second

nature, it really mounts the first round of the -- ladder to heaven.

If Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual beings -- if it has

created a world of spirits, a heaven -- the Caucasians have wrestled for

thousands of years with these spiritual beings, to get to the bottom of them.

What were they doing, then, but building on Mongolian ground? They have not

built on sand, but in the air; they have wrestled with Mongolism, stormed the

Mongolian heaven, Tien. When will they at last annihilate this heaven? When

will they at last become really Caucasians, and find themselves? When will

the "immortality of the soul," which in these latter days thought it was

giving itself still more security if it presented itself as "immortality of

mind," at last change to the mortality of mind?

It was when, in the industrious struggle of the Mongolian race, men had *built

a heaven*, that those of the Caucasian race, since in their Mongolian

complexion they have to do with heaven, took upon themselves the opposite

task, the task of storming that heaven of custom, heaven-storming(36)

activity. To dig under all human ordinance, in order to set up a new and --

better one on the cleared site, to wreck all customs in order to put new and

-- better customs in their place -- their act is limited to this. But is it

thus already purely and really what it aspires to be, and does it reach its

final aim? No, in this creation of a "better" it is tainted with Mongolism.

It storms heaven only to make a heaven again, it overthrows an old power only

to legitimate a new power, it only -- improves. Nevertheless the point aimed

at, often as it may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt, is the real,

complete downfall of heaven, customs, etc. -- in short, of man secured only

against the world, of the isolation or inwardness of man. Through the

heaven of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the world, to break its

hostile power. But this isolation of heaven must likewise be broken, and the

true end of heaven-storming is the -- downfall of heaven, the annihilation of

heaven. Improving and reforming is the Mongolism of the Caucasian, because

thereby he is always getting up again what already existed -- to wit, a

precept, a generality, a heaven. He harbors the most irreconcilable enmity

to heaven, and yet builds new heavens daily; piling heaven on heaven, he only

crushes one by another; the Jews' heaven destroys the Greeks', the Christians'

the Jews', the Protestants' the Catholics', etc. -- If the heaven-storming

men of Caucasian blood throw off their Mongolian skin, they will bury the

emotional man under the ruins of the monstrous world of emotion, the isolated

man under his isolated world, the paradisiacal man under his heaven. And

heaven is the realm of spirits, the realm of freedom of the spirit.

The realm of heaven, the realm of spirits and ghosts, has found its right

standing in the speculative philosophy. Here it was stated as the realm of

thoughts, concepts, and ideas; heaven is peopled with thoughts and ideas, and

this "realm of spirits" is then the true reality.

To want to win freedom for the spirit is Mongolism; freedom of the spirit is

Mongolian freedom, freedom of feeling, moral freedom, etc.

We may find the word "morality" taken as synonymous with spontaneity,

self-determination. But that is not involved in it; rather has the Caucasian

shown himself spontaneous only in spite of his Mongolian morality. The

Mongolian heaven, or morals,(37) remained the strong castle, and only by

storming incessantly at this castle did the Caucasian show himself moral; if

he had not had to do with morals at all any longer, if he had not had therein

his indomitable, continual enemy, the relation to morals would cease, and

consequently morality would cease. That his spontaneity is still a moral

spontaneity, therefore, is just the Mongoloidity of it -- is a sign that in it

he has not arrived at himself. "Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with

"religious and orthodox philosophy," "constitutional monarchy," "the Christian

State," "freedom within certain limits," "the limited freedom of the press,"

or, in a figure, to the hero fettered to a sick-bed.

Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the

strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also

the belief in the spirit.

He who believes in a spook no more assumes the "introduction of a higher

world" than he who believes in the spirit, and both seek behind the sensual

world a supersensual one; in short, they produce and believe another world,

and this other world, the product of their mind, is a spiritual world; for

their senses grasp and know nothing of another, a non-sensual world, only

their spirit lives in it. Going on from this Mongolian belief in the

existence of spiritual beings to the point that the proper being of man

too is his spirit, and that all care must be directed to this alone, to the

"welfare of his soul," is not hard. Influence on the spirit, so-called "moral

influence," is hereby assured.

Hence it is manifest that Mongolism represents utter absence of any rights of

the sensuous, represents non-sensuousness and unnature, and that sin and the

consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that lasted thousands of years.

But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its nothing? He who by means of

the spirit set forth nature as the null, finite, transitory, he alone can

bring down the spirit too to like nullity. I can; each one among you can, who

does his will as an absolute I; in a word, the egoist can.

Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they

occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is

sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my

judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my -- conscience.

Sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be unapproachable, not to be

touched, outside his power -- i.e. above him; sacred, in a word, is

every matter of conscience, for "this is a matter of conscience to me" means

simply, "I hold this sacred."

For little children, just as for animals, nothing sacred exists, because, in

order to make room for this conception, one must already have progressed so

far in understanding that he can make distinctions like "good and bad,"

"warranted and unwarranted"; only at such a level of reflection or

intelligence -- the proper standpoint of religion -- can unnatural (i. e.,

brought into existence by thinking) reverence, "sacred dread," step into the

place of natural fear. To this sacred dread belongs holding something outside

oneself for mightier, greater, better warranted, better, etc.; i.e. the

attitude in which one acknowledges the might of something alien -- not merely

feels it, then, but expressly acknowledges it, i.e. admits it, yields,

surrenders, lets himself be tied (devotion, humility, servility, submission).

Here walks the whole ghostly troop of the "Christian virtues."

Everything toward which you cherish any respect or reverence deserves the name

of sacred; you yourselves, too, say that you would feel a "sacred dread" of

laying hands on it. And you give this tinge even to the unholy (gallows,

crime, etc.). You have a horror of touching it. There lies in it something

uncanny, that is, unfamiliar or not your own.

"If something or other did not rank as sacred in a man's mind, why, then all

bars would be let down to self-will, to unlimited subjectivity!" Fear makes

the beginning, and one can make himself fearful to the coarsest man; already,

therefore, a barrier against his insolence. But in fear there always remains

the attempt to liberate oneself from what is feared, by guile, deception,

tricks, etc. In reverence,(38) on the contrary, it is quite otherwise. Here

something is not only feared,(39) but also honored(40): what is feared has

become an inward power which I can no longer get clear of; I honor it, am

captivated by it and devoted to it, belong to it; by the honor which I pay it

I am completely in its power, and do not even attempt liberation any longer.

Now I am attached to it with all the strength of faith; I believe. I and

what I fear are one; "not I live, but the respected lives in me!" Because the

spirit, the infinite, does not allow of coming to any end, therefore it is

stationary; it fears dying, it cannot let go its dear Jesus, the greatness