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

battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care

for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The

individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation

sends some words of thanks after them and -- has the profit of it. I call that

a paying kind of egoism.

But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not

pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his

people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but

as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail.

The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in

all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to

be one of "his people."

And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on

best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further

unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.

God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but

themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally

with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.(4)

If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be

all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and

that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am not nothing in

the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of

which I myself as creator create everything.

Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at

least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I

myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for

me.

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the

divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is

mine, and it is not a general one, but is -- unique,(5) as I am unique.

Nothing is more to me than myself!

Footnotes:

(1) "Ich hab' Mein' Sach' auf Nichts gestellt, first line of Goethe's poem,

"Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!" Literal translation: "I have set my affair on

nothing."

(2) Sache

(3) Sache

(4) Der Einzige

(5) Einzig

Part First

MAN

---- * ----

Man is to man the supreme being,, says Feuerbach.

Man has just been discovered,says Bruno Bauer.

Then let us take a more careful look at this supreme being and this new

discovery.

---- * ----

I

A HUMAN LIFE

From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man seeks to

find out himself and get hold of himself out of its confusion, in which

he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.

But everything that comes in contact with the child defends itself in turn

against his attacks, and asserts its own persistence.

Accordingly, because each thingcares for itself at the same time comes into

constant collision with other things, the combat of self-assertion is

unavoidable.

Victory or defeat -- between the two alternatives the fate of the combat

wavers. The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the subject: the

former exercises supremacy and "rights of supremacy," the latter fulfills in

awe and deference the "duties of a subject.

But both remain enemies, and always lie in wait: they watch for each other's

weaknesses -- children for those of their parents and parents for those of

their children (e.g., their fear); either the stick conquers the man, or the

man conquers the stick.

In childhood liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the bottom of

things, to get at what is "back of" things; therefore we spy out the weak

points of everybody, for which, it is well known, children have a sure

instinct; therefore we like to smash things, like to rummage through hidden

corners, pry after what is covered up or out of the way, and try what we can

do with everything. When we once get at what is back of the things, we know we

are safe; when, e.g., we have got at the fact that the rod is too weak

against our obduracy, then we no longer fear it, "have out-grown it."

Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our -- obduracy, our obdurate

courage. By degrees we get at what is back of everything that was mysterious

and uncanny to us, the mysteriously-dreaded might of the rod, the father's

stern look, etc., and back of all we find our ataraxia, i. e.

imperturbability, intrepidity, our counter force, our odds of strength, our

invincibility. Before that which formerly inspired in us fear and deference we

no longer retreat shyly, but take courage. Back of everything we find our

courage, our superiority; back of the sharp command of parents and

authorities stands, after all, our courageous choice or our outwitting

shrewdness. And the more we feel ourselves, the smaller appears that which

before seemed invincible. And what is our trickery, shrewdness, courage,

obduracy? What else but -- mind!(1)

Through a considerable time we are spared a fight that is so exhausting later

-- the fight against reason. The fairest part of childhood passes without

the necessity of coming to blows with reason. We care nothing at all about it,

do not meddle with it, admit no reason. We are not to be persuaded to anything

by conviction, and are deaf to good arguments, principles, etc.; on the

other hand, coaxing, punishment, etc. are hard for us to resist.

This stern life-and-death combat with reason enters later, and begins a new

phase; in childhood we scamper about without racking our brains much.

Mind is the name of the first self-discovery, the first self-discovery,

the first undeification of the divine; i. e., of the uncanny, the spooks,

the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now

defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are

mind.

Now for the first time we see that hitherto we have not looked at the world

intelligently at all, but only stared at it.

We exercise the beginnings of our strength on natural powers. We defer to

parents as a natural power; later we say: Father and mother are to be

forsaken, all natural power to be counted as riven. They are vanquished. For

the rational, i.e. the "intellectual" man, there is no family as a natural

power; a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its appearance. If

these are "born again" as intellectual, rational powers, they are no longer

at all what they were before.

And not only parents, but men in general, are conquered by the young man;

they are no hindrance to him, and are no longer regarded; for now he says: One

must obey God rather than men.

From this high standpoint everything "earthly" recedes into contemptible

remoteness; for the standpoint is -- the heavenly.

The attitude is now altogether reversed; the youth takes up an intellectual

position, while the boy, who did not yet feel himself as mind, grew up on

mindless learning. The former does not try to get hold of things (e.g. to

get into his head the data of history), but of the thoughts that lie

hidden in things, and so, e.g., of the spirit of history. On the other

hand, the boy understands connections no doubt, but not ideas, the spirit;

therefore he strings together whatever can be learned, without proceeding *a

priori and theoretically, i.e.* without looking for ideas.

As in childhood one had to overcome the resistance of the laws of the world,

so now in everything that he proposes he is met by an objection of the mind,

of reason, of his own conscience. "That is unreasonable, unchristian,

unpatriotic," etc., cries conscience to us, and -- frightens us away from it.

Not the might of the avenging Eumenides, not Poseidon's wrath, not God, far as

he sees the hidden, not the father's rod of punishment, do we fear, but --

conscience.

We "run after our thoughts" now, and follow their commands just as before we

followed parental, human ones. Our course of action is determined by our

thoughts (ideas, conceptions, faith) as it is in childhood by the commands

of our parents.

For all that, we were already thinking when we were children, only our

thoughts were not fleshless, abstract, absolute, i. e., NOTHING BUT

THOUGHTS, a heaven in themselves, a pure world of thought, logical thoughts.

On the contrary, they had been only thoughts that we had about a thing; we

thought of the thing so or so. Thus we may have thought "God made the world

that we see there," but we did not think of ("search") the "depths of the

Godhead itself"; we may have thought "that is the truth about the matter," but

we do not think of Truth itself, nor unite into one sentence "God is truth."

The "depths of the Godhead, who is truth," we did not touch. Over such purely

logical, i.e. theological questions, "What is truth?" Pilate does not stop,

though he does not therefore hesitate to ascertain in an individual case "what

truth there is in the thing," i.e. whether the thing is true.

Any thought bound to a thing is not yet nothing but a thought, absolute

thought.

To bring to light the pure thought, or to be of its party, is the delight of

youth; and all the shapes of light in the world of thought, like truth,

freedom, humanity, Man, etc., illumine and inspire the youthful soul.

But, when the spirit is recognized as the essential thing, it still makes a

difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore one seeks to

become rich in spirit; the spirit wants to spread out so as to found its

empire -- an empire that is not of this world, the world just conquered. Thus,

then, it longs to become all in all to itself; i.e., although I am spirit, I

am not yet perfected spirit, and must first seek the complete spirit.

But with that I, who had just now found myself as spirit, lose myself again at

once, bowing before the complete spirit as one not my own but supernal, and

feeling my emptiness.

Spirit is the essential point for everything, to be sure; but then is every

spirit the "right" spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal of spirit,

the "Holy Spirit." It is not my or your spirit, but just --