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

lovable for which my heart is to beat, e. g. fellow-men, or my

wedded mate, kinsfolk, etc. Holy Love loves the holy in the beloved, and

therefore exerts itself also to make of the beloved more and more a holy one

(a "man").

The beloved is an object that should be loved by me. He is not an object of

my love on account of, because of, or by, my loving him, but is an object of

love in and of himself. Not I make him an object of love, but he is such to

begin with; for it is here irrelevant that he has become so by my choice, if

so it be (as with a fiancée, a spouse, etc.), since even so he has in any

case, as the person once chosen, obtained a "right of his own to my love," and

I, because I have loved him, am under obligation to love him forever. He is

therefore not an object of my love, but of love in general: an object that

should be loved. Love appertains to him, is due to him, or is his right,

while I am under obligation to love him. My love, i.e. the toll of love

that I pay him, is in truth his love, which he only collects from me as

toll.

Every love to which there clings but the smallest speck of obligation is an

unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who

believes that he owes the object of his love anything loves romantically or

religiously.

Family love, e. g. as it is usually understood as "piety," is a religious

love; love of fatherland, preached as "patriotism," likewise. All our romantic

loves move in the same pattern: everywhere the hypocrisy, or rather

self-deception, of an "unselfish love," an interest in the object for the

object's sake, not for my sake and mine alone.

Religious or romantic love is distinguished from sensual love by the

difference of the object indeed, but not by the dependence of the relation to

it. In the latter regard both are possessedness; but in the former the one

object is profane, the other sacred. The dominion of the object over me is the

same in both cases, only that it is one time a sensuous one, the other time a

spiritual (ghostly) one. My love is my own only when it consists altogether in

a selfish and egoistic interest, and when consequently the object of my love

is really my object or my property. I owe my property nothing, and have no

duty to it, as little as I might have a duty to my eye; if nevertheless I

guard it with the greatest care, I do so on my account.

Antiquity lacked love as little as do Christian times; the god of love is

older than the God of Love. But the mystical possessedness belongs to the

moderns.

The possessedness of love lies in the alienation of the object, or in my

powerlessness as against its alienness and superior power. To the egoist

nothing is high enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so

independent that he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would

sacrifice himself to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the

bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness again.

Whether this can still be called love? If you know another word for it, go

ahead and choose it; then the sweet word love may wither with the departed

world; for the present I at least find none in our Christian language, and

hence stick to the old sound and "love" my object, my -- property.

Only as one of my feelings do I harbor love; but as a power above me, as a

divine power, as Feuerbach says, as a passion that I am not to cast off, as a

religious and moral duty, I -- scorn it. As my feeling it is mine; as a

principle to which I consecrate and "vow" my soul it is a dominator and

divine, just as hatred as a principle is diabolical; one not better than

the other. In short, egoistic love, i.e. my love, is neither holy nor

unholy, neither divine nor diabolical.

"A love that is limited by faith is an untrue love. The sole limitation that

does not contradict the essence of love is the self-limitation of love by

reason, intelligence. Love that scorns the rigor, the law, of intelligence, is

theoretically a false love, practically a ruinous one."(87) So love is in its

essence rational! So thinks Feuerbach; the believer, on the contrary,

thinks, Love is in its essence believing. The one inveighs against

irrational, the other against unbelieving, love. To both it can at most

rank as a splendidum vitium. Do not both leave love standing, even in the

form of unreason and unbelief? They do not dare to say, irrational or

unbelieving love is nonsense, is not love; as little as they are willing to

say, irrational or unbelieving tears are not tears. But, if even irrational

love, etc., must count as love, and if they are nevertheless to be unworthy of

man, there follows simply this: love is not the highest thing, but reason or

faith; even the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love; but love has value

only when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is an illusion when

Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its "self-limitation"; the believer

might with the same right call belief its "self-limitation." Irrational love

is neither "false" nor "ruinous"; its does its service as love.

Toward the world, especially toward men, I am to *assume a particular

feeling*, and "meet them with love," with the feeling of love, from the

beginning. Certainly, in this there is revealed far more free-will and

self-determination than when I let myself be stormed, by way of the world, by

all possible feelings, and remain exposed to the most checkered, most

accidental impressions. I go to the world rather with a preconceived feeling,

as if it were a prejudice and a preconceived opinion; I have prescribed to

myself in advance my behavior toward it, and, despite all its temptations,

feel and think about it only as I have once determined to. Against the

dominion of the world I secure myself by the principle of love; for, whatever

may come, I -- love. The ugly -- e. g. --makes a repulsive impression on me;

but, determined to love, I master this impression as I do every antipathy.

But the feeling to which I have determined and -- condemned myself from the

start is a narrow feeling, because it is a predestined one, of which I

myself am not able to get clear or to declare myself clear. Because

preconceived, it is a prejudice. I no longer show myself in face of the

world, but my love shows itself. The world indeed does not rule me, but so

much the more inevitably does the spirit of love rule this spirit.

If I first said, I love the world, I now add likewise: I do not love it, for I

annihilate it as I annihilate myself; I dissolve it. I do not limit myself

to one feeling for men, but give free play to all that I am capable of. Why

should I not dare speak it out in all its glaringness? Yes, I utilize the

world and men! With this I can keep myself open to every impression without

being torn away from myself by one of them. I can love, love with a full

heart, and let the most consuming glow of passion burn in my heart, without

taking the beloved one for anything else than the nourishment of my passion,

on which it ever refreshes itself anew. All my care for him applies only to

the object of my love, only to him whom my love requires, only to him, the

"warmly loved." How indifferent would he be to me without this -- my love! I

feed only my love with him, I utilize him for this only: I enjoy him.

Let us choose another convenient example. I see how men are fretted in dark

superstition by a swarm of ghosts. If to the extent of my powers I let a bit

of daylight fall in on the nocturnal spookery, is it perchance because love to

you inspires this in me? Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I

want to procure for my thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I

foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace,

even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up

from this seed of thought -- I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what

you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You will

perhaps have only trouble, combat, and death from it, very few will draw joy

from it. If your weal lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in

withholding the Bible from the laity, or Christian governments, which make it

a sacred duty for themselves to "protect the common people from bad books."

But not only not for your sake, not even for truth's sake either do I speak

out what I think. No --

I sing as the bird sings That on the bough alights; The song that from me springs Is pay that well requites.

I sing because -- I am a singer. But I use(88) you for it because I --

need(89) ears.

Where the world comes in my way -- and it comes in my way everywhere -- I

consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but --my

food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one

relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe *each

other* nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show

you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of

consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I

do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.

One has to be educated up to that love which founds itself on the "essence of

man" or, in the ecclesiastical and moral period, lies upon us as a

"commandment." In what fashion moral influence, the chief ingredient of our

education, seeks to regulate the intercourse of men shall here be looked at

with egoistic eyes in one example at least.

Those who educate us make it their concern early to break us of lying and to

inculcate the principle that one must always tell the truth. If selfishness

were made the basis for this rule,