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

not letting oneself be

vexed by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks of

nature indifferent, and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace

utters the famous Nil admirari, by which he likewise announces the

indifference of the other, the world; it is not to influence us, not to

rouse our astonishment. And that impavidum ferient ruinae expresses the very

same imperturbability as Ps. 46.3: "We do not fear, though the earth should

perish." In all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the

world is empty, for the Christian contempt of the world.

The imperturbable spirit of "the wise man," with which the old world worked

to prepare its end, now underwent an inner perturbation against which no

ataraxia, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. The spirit, secured

against all influence of the world, insensible to its shocks and exalted

above its attacks, admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of

the world -- foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were

evolved in its own interior, and, after the mechanical shock that comes from

without had become ineffective, chemical tensions, that agitate within,

began their wonderful play.

In fact, ancient history ends with this -- that I have struggled till I won

my ownership of the world. "All things have been delivered to me by my Father"

(Matt. 11. 27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred,

divine, for me; it is undeified, and now I treat it so entirely as I please

that, if I cared, I could exert on it all miracle-working power, i. e.,

power of mind -- remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves

up and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything

possible, thinkable : "All things are possible to him who believes."(57) I

am the lord of the world, mine is the "glory."(58) The world has become

prosaic, for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which I

dispose of as I (to wit, the mind) choose.

When I had exalted myself to be the owner of the world, egoism had won its

first complete victory, had vanquished the world, had become worldless, and

put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.

The first property, the first "glory," has been acquired!

But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his

will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred,

the "Holy Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not able to become

"godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the world, the

medieval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against self, the mind; the former

against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The medieval man

is the man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative

All wisdom of the ancients is the science of the world, all wisdom of the

moderns is the science of God.

The heathen (Jews included) got through with the world; but now the thing

was to get through with self, the spirit, too; i.e. to become spiritless or

godless.

For almost two thousand years we have been working at subjecting the Holy

Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we have torn off and trodden under

foot many bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising

anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost its divinity,

its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has long ceased to flutter over

our heads as a dove; to be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but

lets itself be caught by the laity too; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit

of Man, it remains still an alien spirit to me or you, still far from

becoming our unrestricted property, which we dispose of at our pleasure.

However, one thing certainly happened, and visibly guided the progress of

post-Christian history: this one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy

Spirit more human, and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it

came about that at last it could be conceived as the "spirit of humanity,"

and, under different expressions like "idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness,

general philanthropy," appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more

accessible.

Would not one think that now everybody could possess the Holy Spirit, take up

into himself the idea of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in

himself?

No, the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its

unapproachableness, is not accessible to us, not our property; for the spirit

of humanity is not my spirit. My ideal it may be, and as a thought I call

it mine; the thought of humanity is my property, and I prove this

sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views, and shaping it

today so, tomorrow otherwise; we represent it to ourselves in the most

manifold ways. But it is at the same time an entail, which I cannot alienate

nor get rid of.

Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the *"absolute

idea"*, which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of

philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc.

But can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity, and can I

consider the Spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it, "sacrifice myself" to

it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world only when

it had broken the world's overpoweringness and "divinity," recognized the

world's powerlessness and "vanity."

The case with regard to the spirit corresponds. When I have degraded it to a

spook and its control over me to a cranky notion, then it is to be looked

upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I

use it, as one uses nature at pleasure without scruple.

The "nature of the case," the "concept of the relationship," is to guide me in

dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the

case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms

of the case! As if a relation which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness

of those who enter into it, itself unique! As if it depended on how others

stamp it! But, as people separated the "essence of Man" from the real man, and

judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from him,

and appraise it by "human value." Concepts are to decide everywhere,

concepts to regulate life, concepts to rule. This is the religious world, to

which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense

and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic.

Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, i.e. I, am

compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. Can there be a more

grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess at the very

beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? ("Not

a letter of the law shall be lost!")

Liberalism simply brought other concepts on the carpet; human instead of

divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, "scientific" instead of

doctrinal, or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of

"crude dogmas" and precepts.

Now nothing but mind rules in the world. An innumerable multitude of

concepts buzz about in people's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor

to get further? They are negating these concepts to put new ones in their

place! They are saying: "You form a false concept of right, of the State, of

man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc.; the concept of right, etc., is

rather that one which we now set up." Thus the confusion of concepts moves

forward.

The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has

obtained an almighty power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which

could protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your potatoes would become

palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would relieve you of all

need at once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to recognize the

independence of all these and innumerable other things: they are to rank in

his mind as something that cannot be seized or approached, are to be kept away

from him. He must have regard for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches

out his fingers desirously; we call that "being light-fingered!"

How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really nothing! Everything has been

removed, we must not venture on anything unless it is given us; we continue to

live only by the grace of the giver. You must not pick up a pin, unless

indeed you have got leave to do so. And got it from whom? From respect!

Only when this lets you have it as property, only when you can respect it as

property, only then may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive a

thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that should have their warrant in

you alone, instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity. Happy

unconstraint of the desirous man, how mercilessly people have tried to slay

you on the altar of constraint!

But around the altar rise the arches of a church, and its walls keep moving

further and further out. What they enclose is sacred. You can no longer get

to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you

wander round about these walls in search of the little that is profane, and

the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended. Soon that

church will embrace the whole world, and you be driven out to the extreme

edge; another step, and the world of the sacred has conquered: you sink into

the abyss. Therefore take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer

in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in through

the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you devour the sacred, you have made

it your own! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!

The Free

The ancients and the moderns having been presented above in two divisions, it

may seem as if the free were here to be described in a third division as

independent and distinct. This is not so. The free are only the more modern

and most modern among the "moderns," and are put in a separate division merely

because they belong to the present, and what is present, above all, claims our

attention here. I give "the free" only as a translation of "the liberals," but

must with regard to the