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

every one would easily understand how by

lying he fools away that confidence in him which he hopes to awaken in others,

and how correct the maxim proves, Nobody believes a liar even when he tells

the truth. Yet, at the same time, he would also feel that he had to meet with

truth only him whom he authorized to hear the truth. If a spy walks in

disguise through the hostile camp, and is asked who he is, the askers are

assuredly entitled to inquire after his name, but the disguised man does not

give them the right to learn the truth from him; he tells them what he likes,

only not the fact. And yet morality demands, "Thou shalt not lie!" By morality

those persons are vested with the right to expect the truth; but by me they

are not vested with that right, and I recognize only the right that I

impart. In a gathering of revolutionists the police force their way in and ask

the orator for his name; everybody knows that the police have the right to do

so, but they do not have it from the revolutionist, since he is their enemy;

he tells them a false name and --cheats them with a lie. The police do not act

so foolishly either as to count on their enemies' love of truth; on the

contrary, they do not believe without further ceremony, but have the

questioned individual "identified" if they can. Nay, the State -- everywhere

proceeds incredulously with individuals, because in their egoism it recognizes

its natural enemy; it invariably demands a "voucher," and he who cannot show

vouchers falls a prey to its investigating inquisition. The State does not

believe nor trust the individual, and so of itself places itself with him in

the convention of lying; it trusts me only when it has convinced itself of

the truth of my statement, for which there often remains to it no other means

than the oath. How clearly, too, this (the oath) proves that the State does

not count on our credibility and love of truth, but on our interest, our

selfishness: it relies on our not wanting to fall foul of God by a perjury.

Now, let one imagine a French revolutionist in the year 1788, who among

friends let fall the now well-known phrase, "the world will have no rest till

the last king is hanged with the guts of the last priest." The king then still

had all power, and, when the utterance is betrayed by an accident, yet without

its being possible to produce witnesses, confession is demanded from the

accused. Is he to confess or not?

If he denies, he lies and -- remains unpunished; if he confesses, he is candid

and -- is beheaded. If truth is more than everything else to him, all right,

let him die. Only a paltry poet could try to make a tragedy out of the end of

his life; for what interest is there in seeing how a man succumbs from

cowardice? But, if he had the courage not to be a slave of truth and

sincerity, he would ask somewhat thus: Why need the judges know what I have

spoken among friends? If I had wished them to know, I should have said it to

them as I said it to my friends. I will not have them know it. They force

themselves into my confidence without my having called them to it and made

them my confidants; they will learn what I will keep secret. Come on then,

you who wish to break my will by your will, and try your arts. You can torture

me by the rack, you can threaten me with hell and eternal damnation, you can

make me so nerveless that I swear a false oath, but the truth you shall not

press out of me, for I will lie to you because I have given you no claim and

no right to my sincerity. Let God, "who is truth," look down ever so

threateningly on me, let lying come ever so hard to me, I have nevertheless

the courage of a lie; and, even if I were weary of my life, even if nothing

appeared to me more welcome than your executioner's sword, you nevertheless

should not have the joy of finding in me a slave of truth, whom by your

priestly arts you make a traitor to his will. When I spoke those treasonable

words, I would not have had you know anything of them; I now retain the same

will, and do not let myself be frightened by the curse of the lie.

Sigismund is not a miserable caitiff because he broke his princely word, but

he broke the word because he was a caitiff; he might have kept his word and

would still have been a caitiff, a priest-ridden man. Luther, driven by a

higher power, became unfaithful to his monastic vow: he became so for God's

sake. Both broke their oath as possessed persons: Sigismund, because he wanted

to appear as a sincere professor of the divine truth, i. e., of the

true, genuinely Catholic faith; Luther, in order to give testimony for the

gospel sincerely and with entire truth. with body and soul; both became

perjured in order to be sincere toward the "higher truth." Only, the priests

absolved the one, the other absolved himself. What else did both observe than

what is contained in those apostolic words, "Thou hast not lied to men, but to

God?" They lied to men, broke their oath before the world's eyes, in order not

to lie to God, but to serve him. Thus they show us a way to deal with truth

before men. For God's glory, and for God's sake, a -- breach of oath, a lie, a

prince's word broken!

How would it be, now, if we changed the thing a little and wrote, A perjury

and lie for -- my sake? Would not that be pleading for every baseness? It

seems so, assuredly, only in this it is altogether like the "for God's sake."

For was not every baseness committed for God's sake, were not all the

scaffolds filled for his sake and all the autos-da-fé held for his sake, was

not all stupefaction introduced for his sake? And do they not today still for

God's sake fetter the mind in tender children by religious education? Were not

sacred vows broken for his sake, and do not missionaries and priests still go

around every day to bring Jews, heathen, Protestants or Catholics, to treason

against the faith of their fathers -- for his sake? And that should be worse

with the for my sake? What then does on my account mean? There people

immediately think of "filthy lucre". But he who acts from love of filthy

lucre does it on his own account indeed, as there is nothing anyhow that one

does not do for his own sake -- among other things, everything that is done

for God's glory; yet he, for whom he seeks the lucre, is a slave of lucre, not

raised above lucre; he is one who belongs to lucre, the money-bag, not to

himself; he is not his own. Must not a man whom the passion of avarice rules

follow the commands of this master? And, if a weak goodnaturedness once

beguiles him, does this not appear as simply an exceptional case of precisely

the same sort as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by their Lord's

guidance and ensnared by the arts of the "devil?" So an avaricious man is not

a self-owned man, but a servant; and he can do nothing for his own sake

without at the same time doing it for his lord's sake -- precisely like the

godly man.

Famous is the breach of oath which Francis I committed against Emperor Charles

V. Not later, when he ripely weighed his promise, but at once, when he swore

the oath, King Francis took it back in thought as well as by a secret

protestation documentarily subscribed before his councillors; he uttered a

perjury aforethought. Francis did not show himself disinclined to buy his

release, but the price that Charles put on it seemed to him too high and

unreasonable. Even though Charles behaved himself in a sordid fashion when he

sought to extort as much as possible, it was yet shabby of Francis to want to

purchase his freedom for a lower ransom; and his later dealings, among which

there occurs yet a second breach of his word, prove sufficiently how the

huckster spirit held him enthralled and made him a shabby swindler. However,

what shall we say to the reproach of perjury against him? In the first place,

surely, this again: that not the perjury, but his sordidness, shamed him; that

he did not deserve contempt for his perjury, but made himself guilty of

perjury because he was a contemptible man. But Francis's perjury, regarded in

itself, demands another judgment. One might say Francis did not respond to the

confidence that Charles put in him in setting him free. But, if Charles had

really favored him with confidence, he would have named to him the price that

he considered the release worth, and would then have set him at liberty and

expected Francis to pay the redemption-sum. Charles harbored no such trust,

but only believed in Francis's impotence and credulity, which would not allow

him to act against his oath; but Francis deceived only this -- credulous

calculation. When Charles believed he was assuring himself of his enemy by an

oath, right there he was freeing him from every obligation. Charles had given

the king credit for a piece of stupidity, a narrow conscience, and, without

confidence in Francis, counted only on Francis's stupidity, e. g.,

conscientiousness: he let him go from the Madrid prison only to hold him the

more securely in the prison of conscientiousness, the great jail built about

the mind of man by religion: he sent him back to France locked fast in

invisible chains, what wonder if Francis sought to escape and sawed the chains

apart? No man would have taken it amiss of him if he had secretly fled from

Madrid, for he was in an enemy's power; but every good Christian cries out

upon him, that he wanted to loose himself from God's bonds too. (It was only

later that the pope absolved him from his oath.)

It is despicable to deceive a confidence that we voluntarily call forth; but

it is no shame to egoism to let every one who wants to get us into his power

by an oath bleed to death by the failure of his untrustful craft. If you have

wanted to bind me, then learn that I know how to burst your bonds.

The point is whether I give the confider the right to confidence. If the

pursuer of my friend asks me where he has fled to, I shall surely put him on a

false trail. Why does he