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

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everywhere a new penal law, without indulging in a misgiving about punishment

itself. But it is exactly punishment that must make room for satisfaction,

which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at procuring us

a satisfactory outcome. If one does to us what we will not put up with, we

break his power and bring our own to bear: we satisfy ourselves on him, and

do not fall into the folly of wanting to satisfy right (the spook). It is not

the sacred that is to defend itself against man, but man against man; as

God too, you know, no longer defends himself against man, God to whom

formerly (and in part, indeed, even now) all the "servants of God" offered

their hands to punish the blasphemer, as they still at this very day lend

their hands to the sacred. This devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also

that, without lively participation of one's own, one only delivers misdoers

into the hands of the police and courts: a non-participating making over to

the authorities, "who, of course, will best administer sacred matters." The

people is quite crazy for hounding the police on against everything that seems

to it to be immoral, often only unseemly, and this popular rage for the moral

protects the police institution more than the government could in any way

protect it.

In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred;

the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A

revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless, conscienceless.

proud --crime, does it not rumble in distant thunders, and do you not see

how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?

He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family,

party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he

has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society" or "mankind,"

to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor; from now on he "lives for

and serves mankind."

People is the name of the body, State of the spirit, of that *ruling

person* that has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure

peoples and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general reason";

but servitude would only become still more intense with this widening, and

philanthropists and humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians and

diplomats.

Modern critics inveigh against religion because it sets God, the divine,

moral, etc., outside of man, or makes them something objective, in

opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects into

man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error of religion,

to give man a "destiny," in that they too want to have him divine, human, and

the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are his essence. And, like

religion politics too wanted to "educate" man, to bring him to the

realization of his "essence," his "destiny," to make something out of him --

to wit, a "true man," the one in the form of the "true believer," the other in

that of the "true citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether

one calls the destiny the divine or human.

Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of *should: he

should* become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate, this

commandment, every one steps not only in front of another but also in front of

himself. Those critics say: You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too

stand in the temptation to proclaim a new religion, to set up a new

absolute, an ideal -- to wit, freedom. Men should be free. Then there might

even arise missionaries of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction that

all were properly destined to become Christians, sent out missionaries of the

faith. Freedom would then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as

State) constitute itself as a new community and carry on a like "propaganda"

therefrom. Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together;

but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old care for us,

of culture directed toward an end -- in short, the principle of *making

something* out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and

men.

One may well say with Feuerbach and others that religion has displaced the

human from man, and has transferred it so into another world that,

unattainable, it went on with its own existence there as something personal in

itself, as a "God": but the error of religion is by no means exhausted with

this. One might very well let fall the personality of the displaced human,

might transform God into the divine, and still remain religious. For the

religious consists in discontent with the present men, in the setting up of

a "perfection" to be striven for, in "man wrestling for his completion."(61)

("Ye therefore should be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt.

5, 48): it consists in the fixation of an ideal, an absolute. Perfection is

the "supreme good," the finis bonorum; every one's ideal is the perfect man,

the true, the free man, etc.

The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of the "free man." If one

could find it, there would be a new -- religion, because a new ideal; there

would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a new deity, a new

contrition.

With the ideal of "absolute liberty," the same turmoil is made as with

everything absolute, and according to Hess, e. g., it is said to "be

realizable in absolute human society."(62) Nay, this realization is

immediately afterward styled a "vocation"; just so he then defines liberty as

"morality": the kingdom of "justice" (equality) and "morality" (i.e.

liberty) is to begin, etc.

Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, family, nation, rank high,

is -- nothing but "puffed up" over the merit of his fellows; but blinded too

is he who wants only to be "man." Neither of them puts his worth in

exclusiveness, but in connectedness, or in the "tie" that conjoins him

with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of humanity.

Through the "Nationals" of today the conflict has again been stirred up

between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties

of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the special ties

of blood.

If we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit, and take it for

consciousness alone, there is found to be a vast difference between pride in

"belonging to" a nation and therefore being its property, and that in calling

a nationality one's property. Nationality is my quality, but the nation my

owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength, you can apply it at a

suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride of it; if, on the

contrary, your strong body has you, then it pricks you everywhere, and at the

most unsuitable place, to show its strength: you can give nobody your hand

without squeezing his.

The perception that one is more than a member of the family, more than a

fellow of the tribe, more than an individual of the people, has finally led to

saying, one is more than all this because one is man, or, the man is more than

the Jew, German, etc. "Therefore be every one wholly and solely -- man." Could

one not rather say: Because we are more than what has been stated, therefore

we will be this, as well as that "more" also? Man and Germans, then, man and

Guelph, etc.? The Nationals are in the right; one cannot deny his nationality:

and the humanitarians are in the right; one must not remain in the narrowness

of the national. In uniqueness(63) the contradiction is solved; the national

is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality -- as the human too is

my quality, but I give to man his existence first through my uniqueness.

History seeks for Man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious essence,

as the divine, first as God, then as Man (humanity, humaneness, and

mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one.

I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do nothing for the good of another

humanity. Fool, you who are a unique humanity, that you make a merit of

wanting to live for another than you are.

The hitherto-considered relation of me to the world of men offers such a

wealth of phenomena that it will have to be taken up again and again on other

occasions, but here, where it was only to have its chief outlines made clear

to the eye, it must be broken off to make place for an apprehension of two

other sides toward which it radiates. For, as I find myself in relation not

merely to men so far as they present in themselves the concept "man" or are

children of men (children of Man, as children of God are spoken of), but

also to that which they have of man and call their own, and as therefore I

relate myself not only to that which they are through man, but also to their

human possessions: so, besides the world of men, the world of the senses and

of ideas will have to be included in our survey, and somewhat said of what men

call their own of sensuous goods, and of spiritual as well.

According as one had developed and clearly grasped the concept of man, he gave

it to us to respect as this or that person of respect, and from the broadest

understanding of this concept there proceeded at last the command "to respect

Man in every one." But if I respect Man, my respect must likewise extend to

the human, or what is Man's.

Men have somewhat of their own, and I am to recognize this own and hold it

sacred. Their own consists partly in outward, partly in inward possessions.

The former are things, the latter spiritualities, thoughts, convictions, noble

feelings, etc. But I am always to respect only rightful or human

possessions: the wrongful and unhuman I need not spare, for only Man's own

is men's real own. An inward possession of this sort is, e. g., religion;

because religion is free, i. e. is Man's, I must not strike at it. Just

so honor is an inward possession; it is free and must not be struck at my

me. (Action for insult, caricatures, etc.) Religion and honor are "spiritual

property." In tangible property the person stands foremost: my person is my

first property. Hence freedom of the person; but only the rightful or human

person is free, the