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

>family" is a sacred idea, which the individual must never offend against. --

And this family internalized and desensualized into a thought, a conception,

now ranks as the "sacred," whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it

makes a racket in my conscience. This despotism is broken when the conception,

family, also becomes a nothing to me The Christian dicta, "Woman, what have

I to do with thee?"(51) "I am come to stir up a man against his father, and a

daughter against her mother,"(52) and others, are accompanied by something

that refers us to the heavenly or true family, and mean no more than the

State's demand, in case of a collision between it and the family, that we obey

its commands.

The case of morality is like that of the family. Many a man renounces morals,

but with great difficulty the conception, "morality." Morality is the "idea"

of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the

other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an

"intellectual" man, a so-called independent, a "freethinker."

The Protestant may put it as he will, the "holy(53) Scripture," the "Word of

God," still remains sacred(54) for him. He for whom this is no longer "holy"

has ceased to -- be a Protestant. But herewith what is "ordained" in it, the

public authorities appointed by God, etc., also remain sacred for him. For him

these things remain indissoluble, unapproachable, "raised above all doubt";

and, as doubt, which in practice becomes a buffeting, is what is most

man's own, these things remain "raised" above himself. He who cannot *get

away from them will -- believe; for to believe in them is to be bound* to

them. Through the fact that in Protestantism the faith becomes a more inward

faith, the servitude has also become a more inward servitude; one has taken

those sanctities up into himself, entwined them with all his thoughts and

endeavors, made them a "matter of conscience", constructed out of them a

"sacred duty" for himself. Therefore what the Protestant's conscience cannot

get away from is sacred to him, and conscientiousness most clearly

designates his character.

Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by

secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every

motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of

conscience," i. e., police business. This tearing apart of man into "natural

impulse" and "conscience" (inner populace and inner police) is what

constitutes the Protestant. The reason of the Bible (in place of the Catholic

"reason of the church") ranks as sacred, and this feeling and consciousness

that the word of the Bible is sacred is called -- conscience. With this, then,

sacredness is "laid upon one's conscience." If one does not free himself from

conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he may act unconscientiously

indeed, but never consciencelessly.

The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfills the command; the

Protestant acts according to his "best judgment and conscience." For the

Catholic is only a layman; the Protestant is himself a clergyman.(55) Just

this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the Middle Ages, and at

the same time its curse -- that the spiritual became complete.

What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of

indulgences? Only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now

gained also an insight into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how

really his sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case

(casuists) it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale of

indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible, and silenced

every movement of conscience. All sensuality might hold sway, if it was only

purchased from the church. This favoring of sensuality was continued by the

Jesuits, while the strictly moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite,

praying Protestants (as the true completers of Christianity, to be sure)

acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially

the Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involuntary and unconscious

adherents within Protestantism itself, and saved us from the subversion and

extinction of sensuality. Nevertheless the Protestant spirit spreads its

dominion farther and farther; and, as, beside it the "divine," the Jesuit

spirit represents only the "diabolic" which is inseparable from everything

divine, the latter can never assert itself alone, but must look on and see how

in France, e. g., the Philistinism of Protestantism wins at last, and mind

is on top.

Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into

repute again, e. g. marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as

mundane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism,

which lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures, while the

rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane

altogether, and that simply by hallowing it. So marriage has been deprived

of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic

sacrament, where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is

unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to

begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, also. Formerly the pope gave

consecration and his blessing to it and its princes, now the State is

intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing.

The order of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed as "God's

ordinance." Hence it is said e. g. in the Augsburg Confession, Art. II: "So

now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have wisely and

rightly said: that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law.

Now, if it is a natural law, then it is God's ordinance, therefore implanted

in nature, and therefore a divine law also." And is it anything more than

Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach pronounces moral relations

sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, instead, for the sake of the

spirit that dwells in them? "But marriage as a free alliance of love, of

course -- is sacred of itself, by the nature of the union that is formed

here. That marriage alone is a religious one that is a true one, that

corresponds to the essence of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral

relations. They are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where

they rank as religious of themselves. True friendship is only where the

limits of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with

the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his

God. Friendship is and must be sacred for you, and property, and marriage,

and the good of every man, but sacred in and of itself."(56)

That is a very essential consideration. In Catholicism the mundane can indeed

be consecrated or hallowed, but it is not sacred without this priestly

blessing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane relations are sacred *of

themselves*, sacred by their mere existence. The Jesuit maxim, "the end

hallows the means," corresponds precisely to the consecration by which

sanctity is bestowed. No means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their

relation to the church, their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide

was named as such; if it was committed for the church's behoof, it could be

certain of being hallowed by the church, even if the hallowing was not openly

pronounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as sacred; to the Catholic only

that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and it does

rank as such to him only because the pope, even though it be without a special

act, confers this sacredness on it once for all. If he retracted his

consecration, the king would be left only a "man of the world or layman," an

"unconsecrated" man, to the Catholic.

If the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in the sensual itself, that

he may then be linked only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to

banish the sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, like the

rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic church eliminated

mundane marriage from its consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its

own from the mundane family; the Protestant church declared marriage and

family ties to be holy, and therefore not unsuitable for its clergymen.

A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic, hallow everything. He needs only, e. g.,

to say to himself: "I as a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it

more zealously when I appease my desires properly; consequently I will seduce

this girl, have my enemy there poisoned, etc.; my end is holy because it is a

priest's, consequently it hallows the means." For in the end it is still done

for the benefit of the church. Why should the Catholic priest shrink from

handing Emperor Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the -- church's welfare?

The genuinely churchly Protestants inveighed against every "innocent

pleasure," because only the sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent. What

they could not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants had to reject --

dancing, the theatre, ostentation (e. g. in the church), and the like.

Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism is again more on the

religious, spiritual, track -- is more radical. For the former excludes at

once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and purifies the

church; Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring spirit into all things

as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything,

and so to hallow everything worldly. ("No one can forbid a kiss in honor."

The spirit of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he

declares himself such in some passage or other: he "wants to remain a

Lutheran") was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything.

In everything there is reason, i.e. holy spirit, or "the real is rational."

For the real is in fact everything; as in each thing, e. g., each lie, the

truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute evil, etc.

Great "works of mind" were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone

were the true disciples and consummators of mind.

How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea

roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before

the uncontrollable. Can he keep off the impression that he is helpless

against this gigantic world? It is a fixed law to which he must submit, it

determines his fate. Now, what did pre-Christian humanity work toward?

Toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies,