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

against the family's punishment because the State, this protecting

lord, takes away from family punishment its "sacredness" and profanes it,

decreeing that it is only --"revenge": it restrains punishment, this sacred

family right, because before its, the State's, "sacredness" the subordinate

sacredness of the family always pales and loses its sanctity as soon as it

comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict, the State

lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family; but in the opposite case it

even commands crime against the family, charging, e. g., the son to refuse

obedience to his parents as soon as they want to beguile him to a crime

against the State.

Well, the egoist has broken the ties of the family and found in the State a

lord to shelter him against the grievously affronted spirit of the family. But

where has he run now? Straight into a new society, in which his egoism is

awaited by the same snares and nets that it has just escaped. For the State is

likewise a society, not a union; it is the broadened family ("Father of the

Country -- Mother of the Country -- children of the country").

What is called a State is a tissue and plexus of dependence and adherence; it

is a belonging together, a holding together, in which those who are placed

together fit themselves to each other, or, in short, mutually depend on each

other: it is the order of this dependence. Suppose the king, whose

authority lends authority to all down to the beadle, should vanish: still all

in whom the will for order was awake would keep order erect against the

disorders of bestiality. If disorder were victorious, the State would be at an

end.

But is this thought of love, to fit ourselves to each other, to adhere to each

other and depend on each other, really capable of winning us? According to

this the State should be love realized, the being for each other and living

for each other of all. Is not self-will being lost while we attend to the will

for order? Will people not be satisfied when order is cared for by authority,

i.e. when authority sees to it that no one "gets in the way of" another;

when, then, the herd is judiciously distributed or ordered? Why, then

everything is in "the best order," and it is this best order that is called --

State!

Our societies and States are without our making them, are united without

our uniting, are predestined and established, or have an independent

standing(48) of their own, are the indissolubly established against us

egoists. The fight of the world today is, as it is said, directed against the

"established." Yet people are wont to misunderstand this as if it were only

that what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better,

established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment

itself, the State, not a particular State, not any such thing as the mere

condition of the State at the time; it is not another State (e. g. a

"people's State") that men aim at, but their union, uniting, this ever-fluid

uniting of everything standing. -- A State exists even without my

co-operation: I am born in it, brought up in it, under obligations to it, and

must "do it homage."(49) It takes me up into its "favor,"(50) and I live by

its "grace." Thus the independent establishment of the State founds my lack of

independence; its condition as a "natural growth," its organism, demands that

my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it. That it may be able to

unfold in natural growth, it applies to me the shears of "civilization"; it

gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me *e.

g. to respect the laws, to refrain from injury to State property (i.e.*

private property), to reverence divine and earthly highness, etc.; in short,

it teaches me to be -- unpunishable, "sacrificing" my ownness to

"sacredness" (everything possible is sacred; e. g. property, others' life,

etc.). In this consists the sort of civilization and culture that the State is

able to give me: it brings me up to be a "serviceable instrument," a

"serviceable member of society."

This every State must do, the people's State as well as the absolute or

constitutional one. It must do so as long as we rest in the error that it is

an I, as which it then applies to itself the name of a "moral, mystical, or

political person." I, who really am I, must pull off this lion-skin of the I

from the stalking thistle-eater. What manifold robbery have I not put up with

in the history of the world! There I let sun, moon, and stars, cats and

crocodiles, receive the honor of ranking as I; there Jehovah, Allah, and Our

Father came and were invested with the I; there families, tribes, peoples, and

at last actually mankind, came and were honored as I's; there the Church, the

State, came with the pretension to be I -- and I gazed calmly on all. What

wonder if then there was always a real I too that joined the company and

affirmed in my face that it was not my you but my real I. Why, the Son

of Man par excellence had done the like; why should not a son of man do it

too? So I saw my I always above me and outside me, and could never really come

to myself.

I never believed in myself; I never believed in my present, I saw myself only

in the future. The boy believes he will be a proper I, a proper fellow, only

when he has become a man; the man thinks, only in the other world will he be

something proper. And, to enter more closely upon reality at once, even the

best are today still persuading each other that one must have received into

himself the State, his people, mankind, and what not, in order to be a real I,

a "free burgher," a "citizen," a "free or true man"; they too see the truth

and reality of me in the reception of an alien I and devotion to it. And what

sort of an I? An I that is neither an I nor a you, a fancied I, a spook.

While in the Middle Ages the church could well brook many States living united

in it, the States learned after the Reformation, especially after the Thirty

Years' War, to tolerate many churches (confessions) gathering under one crown.

But all States are religious and, as the case may be, "Christian States," and

make it their task to force the intractable, the "egoists," under the bond of

the unnatural, e. g., Christianize them. All arrangements of the Christian

State have the object of Christianizing the people. Thus the court has the

object of forcing people to justice, the school that of forcing them to mental

culture -- in short, the object of protecting those who act Christianly

against those who act un-Christianly, of bringing Christian action to

dominion, of making it powerful. Among these means of force the State

counted the Church too, it demanded a -- particular religion from everybody.

Dupin said lately against the clergy, "Instruction and education belong to the

State."

Certainly everything that regards the principle of morality is a State affair.

Hence it is that the Chinese State meddles so much in family concerns, and one

is nothing there if one is not first of all a good child to his parents.

Family concerns are altogether State concerns with us too, only that our State

-- puts confidence in the families without painful oversight; it holds the

family bound by the marriage tie, and this tie cannot be broken without it.

But that the State makes me responsible for my principles, and demands certain

ones from me, might make me ask, what concern has it with the "wheel in my

head" (principle)? Very much, for the State is the -- ruling principle. It

is supposed that in divorce matters, in marriage law in general, the question

is of the proportion of rights between Church and States. Rather, the question

is of whether anything sacred is to rule over man, be it called faith or

ethical law (morality). The State behaves as the same ruler that the Church

was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality.

People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite tendencies free, etc., by

which civilized States are distinguished. Certainly some are strong enough to

look with complacency on even the most unrestrained meetings, while others

charge their catchpolls to go hunting for tobacco-pipes. Yet for one State as

for another the play of individuals among themselves, their buzzing to and

fro, their daily life, is an incident which it must be content to leave to

themselves because it can do nothing with this. Many, indeed, still strain out

gnats and swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are "freer"

in the latter, because less pestered. But I am free in no State. The

lauded tolerance of States is simply a tolerating of the "harmless," the "not

dangerous"; it is only elevation above pettymindedness, only a more estimable,

grander, prouder -- despotism. A certain State seemed for a while to mean to

be pretty well elevated above literary combats, which might be carried on

with all heat; England is elevated above popular turmoil and --

tobacco-smoking. But woe to the literature that deals blows at the State

itself, woe to the mobs that "endanger" the State. In that certain State they

dream of a "free science," in England of a "free popular life."

The State does let individuals play as freely as possible, only they must

not be in earnest, must not forget it. Man must not carry on intercourse

with man unconcernedly, not without "superior oversight and mediation." I

must not execute all that I am able to, but only so much as the State allows;

I must not turn to account my thoughts, nor my work, nor, in general,

anything of mine.

The State always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the

individual -- to make him subject to some generality or other; it lasts only

so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly-marked

restriction of me, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a State aim to

bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to

the purpose of the State. Through the State nothing in common comes to

pass either, as little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of all

the individual parts of a machine; it is rather the work of the whole machine

as a unit,