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

against a spook. But to me no majesty,

nothing sacred, is a limit; nothing that I know how to overpower. Only that

which I cannot overpower still limits my might; and I of limited might am

temporarily a limited I, not limited by the might outside me, but limited by

my own still deficient might, by my own impotence. However, "the Guard

dies, but does not surrender!" Above all, only a bodily opponent!

I dare meet every foeman Whom I can see and measure with my eye, mettle fires my mettle for the fight -- etc.

Many privileges have indeed been cancelled with time, but solely for the sake

of the common weal, of the State and the State's weal, by no means for the

strengthening of me. Vassalage, e. g., was abrogated only that a single

liege lord, the lord of the people, the monarchical power, might be

strengthened: vassalage under the one became yet more rigorous thereby. Only

in favor of the monarch, be he called "prince" or "law," have privileges

fallen. In France the citizens are not, indeed, vassals of the king, but are

instead vassals of the "law" (the Charter). Subordination was retained, only

the Christian State recognized that man cannot serve two masters (the lord of

the manor and the prince); therefore one obtained all the prerogatives; now he

can again place one above another, he can make "men in high place."

But of what concern to me is the common weal? The common weal as such is not

my weal, but only the furthest extremity of self- renunciation. The common

weal may cheer aloud while I must "down";(43) the State may shine while I

starve. In what lies the folly of the political liberals but in their opposing

the people to the government and talking of people's rights? So there is the

people going to be of age, etc. As if one who has no mouth could be

mündig!(44) Only the individual is able to be mündig. Thus the whole

question of the liberty of the press is turned upside down when it is laid

claim to as a "right of the people." It is only a right, or better the might,

of the individual. If a people has liberty of the press, then I, although in

the midst of this people, have it not; a liberty of the people is not my

liberty, and the liberty of the press as a liberty of the people must have at

its side a press law directed against me.

This must be insisted on all around against the present-day efforts for

liberty:

Liberty of the people is not my liberty!

Let us admit these categories, liberty of the people and right of the people:

e. g., the right of the people that everybody may bear arms. Does one not

forfeit such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but may well forfeit a

right that belongs not to me but to the people. I may be locked up for the

sake of the liberty of the people; I may, under sentence, incur the loss of

the right to bear arms.

Liberalism appears as the last attempt at a creation of the liberty of the

people, a liberty of the commune, of "society," of the general, of mankind;

the dream of a humanity, a people, a commune, a "society," that shall be of

age.

A people cannot be free otherwise than at the individual's expense; for it is

not the individual that is the main point in this liberty, but the people. The

freer the people, the more bound the individual; the Athenian people,

precisely at its freest time, created ostracism, banished the atheists,

poisoned the most honest thinker.

How they do praise Socrates for his conscientiousness, which makes him resist

the advice to get away from the dungeon! He is a fool that he concedes to the

Athenians a right to condemn him. Therefore it certainly serves him right; why

then does he remain standing on an equal footing with the Athenians? Why does

he not break with them? Had he known, and been able to know, what he was, he

would have conceded to such judges no claim, no right. That *he did not

escape* was just his weakness, his delusion of still having something in

common with the Athenians, or the opinion that he was a member, a mere member

of this people. But he was rather this people itself in person, and could only

be his own judge. There was no judge over him, as he himself had really

pronounced a public sentence on himself and rated himself worthy of the

Prytaneum. He should have stuck to that, and, as he had uttered no sentence of

death against himself, should have despised that of the Athenians too and

escaped. But he subordinated himself and recognized in the people his

judge; he seemed little to himself before the majesty of the people. That he

subjected himself to might (to which alone he could succumb) as to a "right"

was treason against himself: it was virtue. To Christ, who, it is alleged,

refrained from using the power over his heavenly legions, the same

scrupulousness is thereby ascribed by the narrators. Luther did very well and

wisely to have the safety of his journey to Worms warranted to him in black

and white, and Socrates should have known that the Athenians were his

enemies, he alone his judge. The self-deception of a "reign of law," etc.,

should have given way to the perception that the relation was a relation of

might.

It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why? Because

the ordinary Greeks could still less attain that logical conclusion which not

even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to draw. What then is

pettifoggery but a way of utilizing something established without doing away

with it? I might add "for one's own advantage," but, you see, that lies in

"utilizing." Such pettifoggers are the theologians who "wrest" and "force"

God's word; what would they have to wrest if it were not for the "established"

Word of God? So those liberals who only shake and wrest the "established

order." They are all perverters, like those perverters of the law. Socrates

recognized law, right; the Greeks constantly retained the authority of right

and law. If with this recognition they wanted nevertheless to assert their

advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek it in perversion of the

law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, an intriguer of genius, introduces the period of

Athenian "decay"; the Spartan Lysander and others show that intrigue had

become universally Greek. Greek law, on which the Greek States rested, had

to be perverted and undermined by the egoists within these States, and the

States went down that the individuals might become free, the Greek people

fell because the individuals cared less for this people than for themselves.

In general, all States, constitutions, churches, have sunk by the secession

of individuals; for the individual is the irreconcilable enemy of every

generality, every tie, i.e. every fetter. Yet people fancy to this day

that man needs "sacred ties": he, the deadly enemy of every "tie." The history

of the world shows that no tie has yet remained unrent, shows that man

tirelessly defends himself against ties of every sort; and yet, blinded,

people think up new ties again and again, and think, e.g., that they have

arrived at the right one if one puts upon them the tie of a so-called free

constitution, a beautiful, constitutional tie; decoration ribbons, the ties of

confidence between

"-- -- --," do seem gradually to have become somewhat infirm, but people have

made no further progress than from apron-strings to garters and collars.

Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.

Everything sacred is and must be perverted by perverters of the law; therefore

our present time has multitudes of such perverters in all spheres. They are

preparing the way for the break-up of law, for lawlessness.

Poor Athenians who are accused of pettifoggery and sophistry! poor Alcibiades,

of intrigue! Why, that was just your best point, your first step in freedom.

Your Æeschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have a free Greek people;

you were the first to surmise something of your freedom.

A people represses those who tower above its majesty, by ostracism against

too-powerful citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics of the Church,

by the -- Inquisition against traitors in the State.

For the people is concerned only with its self-assertion; it demands

"patriotic self-sacrifice" from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one *in

himself* is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even suffer, what

the individual and he alone must do -- to wit, turn him to account. Every

people, every State, is unjust toward the egoist.

As long as there still exists even one institution which the individual may

not dissolve, the ownness and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote.

How can I, e.g. be free when I must bind myself by oath to a constitution, a

charter, a law, "vow body and soul" to my people? How can I be my own when my

faculties may develop only so far as they "do not disturb the harmony of

society" (Weitling)?

The fall of peoples and mankind will invite me to my rise.

Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, that they may

jingle in for tomorrow the festival of the thousand years' existence of our

dear Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough, as if your

tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The

German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand

years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to rise again -- that all may

become free whom you so long have held in fetters. -- The people is dead. --

Up with me!

O thou my much-tormented German people -- what was thy torment? It was the

torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a

walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every cock-crow and yet pines

for deliverance and fulfillment. In me too thou hast lived long, thou dear --

thought, thou dear -- spook. Already I almost fancied I had found the word of

thy deliverance, discovered flesh and bones for the wandering spirit; then I

hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest; then the last

hope fades out, then the notes of the last love die away, then I depart from

the desolate house of those who now are dead and enter at the door of the --

living one:

For only he who is alive is in the right.

Farewell, thou dream of so many millions; farewell, thou who hast tyrannized

over thy children for a