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

of finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye; the object of fear,

now raised to veneration, may no longer be handled; reverence is made eternal,

the respected is deified. The man is now no longer employed in creating, but

in learning (knowing, investigating, etc.), i.e. occupied with a fixed

object, losing himself in its depths, without return to himself. The

relation to this object is that of knowing, fathoming, basing, not that of

dissolution (abrogation, etc.). "Man is to be religious," that is settled;

therefore people busy themselves only with the question how this is to be

attained, what is the right meaning of religiousness, etc. Quite otherwise

when one makes the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in question, even though

it should go to smash. Morality too is such a sacred conception; one must be

moral, and must look only for the right "how," the right way to be so. One

dares not go at morality itself with the question whether it is not itself an

illusion; it remains exalted above all doubt, unchangeable. And so we go on

with the sacred, grade after grade, from the "holy" to the "holy of holies."

Men are sometimes divided into two classes: cultured and uncultured. The

former, so far as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with

thoughts, with mind, and (because in the time since Christ, of which the very

principle is thought, they were the ruling ones) demanded a servile respect

for the thoughts recognized by them. State, emperor, church, God, morality,

order, are such thoughts or spirits, that exist only for the mind. A merely

living being, an animal, cares as little for them as a child. But the

uncultured are really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the

necessities of his life is indifferent to those spirits; but, because he is

also weak before them, he succumbs to their power, and is ruled by --

thoughts. This is the meaning of hierarchy.

Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind!

We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by

thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred.

But the two are always clashing, now one and now the other giving the offence;

and this clash occurs, not only in the collision of two men, but in one and

the same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not to find enjoyment in

things too, and so be uncultured; and no uncultured man is totally without

thoughts. In Hegel it comes to light at last what a longing for things even

the most cultured man has, and what a horror of every "hollow theory" he

harbors. With him reality, the world of things, is altogether to correspond to

the thought, and no concept is to be without reality. This caused Hegel's

system to be known as the most objective, as if in it thought and thing

celebrated their union. But this was simply the extremest case of violence on

the part of thought, its highest pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the

triumph of mind, and with it the triumph of philosophy. Philosophy cannot

hereafter achieve anything higher, for its highest is the *omnipotence of

mind*, the almightiness of mind.(41)

Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized.

They have concepts of love, goodness, etc., which they would like to see

realized; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which

no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one "from love." Love is to

rule. What they have taken into their head, what shall we call it but --

fixed idea? Why, "their head is haunted." The most oppressive spook is

Man. Think of the proverb, "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions."

The intention to realize humanity altogether in oneself, to become altogether

man, is of such ruinous kind; here belong the intentions to become good,

noble, loving, etc.

In the sixth part of the Denkwürdigkeiten," p. 7, Bruno Bauer says: "That

middle class, which was to receive such a terrible importance for modern

history, is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm for an idea,

no exaltation; it devotes itself to nothing but the interests of its

mediocrity; i.e. it remains always limited to itself, and conquers at last

only through its bulk, with which it has succeeded in tiring out the efforts

of passion, enthusiasm, consistency -- through its surface, into which it

absorbs a part of the new ideas." And (p. 6) "It has turned the revolutionary

ideas, for which not it, but unselfish or impassioned men sacrificed

themselves, solely to its own profit, has turned spirit into money. -- That

is, to be sure, after it had taken away from those ideas their point, their

consistency, their destructive seriousness, fanatical against all egoism."

These people, then, are not self-sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not

idealistic, not consistent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual sense,

selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober, calculating, etc.

Who, then, is "self-sacrificing?"(42) In the full sense, surely, he who

ventures everything else for one thing, one object, one will, one passion.

Is not the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and mother, endures all

dangers and privations, to reach his goal? Or the ambitious man, who offers up

all his desires, wishes, and satisfactions to the single passion, or the

avaricious man who denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the

pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is ruled by a passion to which he brings the rest as

sacrifices.

And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not egoist? As

they have only one ruling passion, so they provide for only one satisfaction,

but for this the more strenuously, they are wholly absorbed in it. Their

entire activity is egoistic, but it is a one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism;

it is possessedness.

"Why, those are petty passions, by which, on the contrary, man must not let

himself be enthralled. Man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a great

cause!" A "great idea," a "good cause," is, it may be, the honor of God, for

which innumerable people have met death; Christianity, which has found its

willing martyrs; the Holy Catholic Church, which has greedily demanded

sacrifices of heretics; liberty and equality, which were waited on by bloody

guillotines.

He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty

calling, may not let any worldly lusts, any self-seeking interest, spring up

in him. Here we have the concept of clericalism, or, as it may also be

called in its pedagogic activity, school-masterliness; for the idealists play

the schoolmaster over us. The clergyman is especially called to live to the

idea and to work for the idea, the truly good cause. Therefore the people feel

how little it befits him to show worldly haughtiness, to desire good living,

to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming -- in short, to have any other

than a "sacred interest." Hence, too, doubtless, is derived the scanty salary

of teachers, who are to feel themselves repaid by the sacredness of their

calling alone, and to "renounce" other enjoyments.

Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more of which man is to look upon

as his calling, is not lacking. Family, fatherland, science, etc., may find in

me a servant faithful to his calling.

Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned

to do without clericalism -- that to live and work for an idea is man's

calling, and according to the faithfulness of its fulfillment his human

worth is measured.

This is the dominion of the idea; in other words, it is clericalism. Thus

Robespierre and St. Just were priests through and through, inspired by the

idea, enthusiasts, consistent instruments of this idea, idealistic men. So St.

Just exclaims in a speech, "There is something terrible in the sacred love of

country; it is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the public

interest without mercy, without fear, without human consideration. It hurls

Manlius down the precipice; it sacrifices its private inclinations; it leads

Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman into the chasm, and sets Marat, as a

victim of his devotion, in the Pantheon."

Now, over against these representatives of ideal or sacred interests stands a

world of innumerable "personal" profane interests. No idea, no system, no

sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and modified by these

personal interests. Even if they are silent momentarily, and in times of rage,

and fanaticism, yet they soon come uppermost again through "the sound sense of

the people." Those ideas do not completely conquer till they are no longer

hostile to personal interests, till they satisfy egoism.

The man who is just now crying herrings in front of my window has a personal

interest in good sales, and, if his wife or anybody else wishes him the like,

this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on the other hand, a thief

deprived him of his basket, then there would at once arise an interest of

many, of the whole city, of the whole country, or, in a word, of all who abhor

theft; an interest in which the herring-seller's person would become

indifferent, and in its place the category of the "robbed man" would come into

the foreground. But even here all might yet resolve itself into a personal

interest, each of the partakers reflecting that he must concur in the

punishment of the thief because unpunished stealing might otherwise become

general and cause him too to lose his own. Such a calculation, however, can

hardly be assumed on the part of many, and we shall rather hear the cry that

the thief is a "criminal." Here we have before us a judgment, the thief's

action receiving its expression in the concept "crime." Now the matter stands

thus: even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or to

any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless denounce it.

Why? Because I am enthusiastic for morality, filled with the idea of

morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere assail. Because in his mind theft

ranks as abominable without any question, Proudhon, e. g., thinks that with

the sentence "Property is theft" he has at once put a brand on property. In

the sense of the priestly, theft is always a crime, or at least a misdeed.

Here the personal interest is at an end. This particular person who has stolen

the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person; it is only the thief, this

concept of which that person presents a specimen, that I take an interest in.

The thief and man are in my mind irreconcilable opposites; for one is not

truly man when one is a thief; one degrades Man or "humanity" in himself

when one steals.