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

ask precisely me, the pursued man's friend? In order

not to be a false, traitorous friend, I prefer to be false to the enemy. I

might certainly in courageous conscientiousness, answer, "I will not tell" (so

Fichte decides the case); by that I should salve my love of truth and do for

my friend as much as -- nothing, for, if I do not mislead the enemy, he may

accidentally take the right street, and my love of truth would have given up

my friend as a prey, because it hindered me from the --courage for a lie. He

who has in the truth an idol, a sacred thing, must humble himself before it,

must not defy its demands, not resist courageously; in short, he must renounce

the heroism of the lie. For to the lie belongs not less courage than to the

truth: a courage that young men are most apt to be defective in, who would

rather confess the truth and mount the scaffold for it than confound the

enemy's power by the impudence of a lie. To them the truth is "sacred," and

the sacred at all times demands blind reverence, submission, and

self-sacrifice. If you are not impudent, not mockers of the sacred, you are

tame and its servants. Let one but lay a grain of truth in the trap for you,

you peck at it to a certainty, and the fool is caught. You will not lie? Well,

then, fall as sacrifices to the truth and become -- martyrs! Martyrs! -- for

what? For yourselves, for self-ownership? No, for your goddess -- the truth.

You know only two services, only two kinds of servants: servants of the

truth and servants of the lie. Then in God's name serve the truth!

Others, again, serve the truth also; but they serve it "in moderation," and

make, e. g. a great distinction between a simple lie and a lie sworn to. And

yet the whole chapter of the oath coincides with that of the lie, since an

oath, everybody knows, is only a strongly assured statement. You consider

yourselves entitled to lie, if only you do not swear to it besides? One who is

particular about it must judge and condemn a lie as sharply as a false oath.

But now there has been kept up in morality an ancient point of controversy,

which is customarily treated of under the name of the "lie of necessity." No

one who dares plead for this can consistently put from him an "oath of

necessity." If I justify my lie as a lie of necessity, I should not be so

pusillanimous as to rob the justified lie of the strongest corroboration.

Whatever I do, why should I not do it entirely and without reservations

(reservatio mentalis)? If I once lie, why then not lie completely, with

entire consciousness and all my might? As a spy I should have to swear to each

of my false statements at the enemy's demand; determined to lie to him, should

I suddenly become cowardly and undecided in face of an oath? Then I should

have been ruined in advance for a liar and spy; for, you see, I should be

voluntarily putting into the enemy's hands a means to catch me. -- The State

too fears the oath of necessity, and for this reason does not give the accused

a chance to swear. But you do not justify the State's fear; you lie, but do

not swear falsely. If, e. g. you show some one a kindness, and he is not to

know it, but he guesses it and tells you so to your face, you deny; if he

insists, you say, "honestly, no!" If it came to swearing, then you would

refuse; for, from fear of the sacred, you always stop half way. Against the

sacred you have no will of your own. You lie in -- moderation, as you are

free "in moderation," religious "in moderation" (the clergy are not to

"encroach"; over this point the most rapid of controversies is now being

carried on, on the part of the university against the church), monarchically

disposed "in moderation" (you want a monarch limited by the constitution, by a

fundamental law of the State), everything nicely tempered, lukewarm, half

God's, half the devil's.

There was a university where the usage was that every word of honor that must

be given to the university judge was looked upon by the students as null and

void. For the students saw in the demanding of it nothing but a snare, which

they could not escape otherwise than by taking away all its significance. He

who at that same university broke his word of honor to one of the fellows was

infamous; he who gave it to the university judge derided, in union with these

very fellows, the dupe who fancied that a word had the same value among

friends and among foes. It was less a correct theory than the constraint of

practice that had there taught the students to act so, as, without that means

of getting out, they would have been pitilessly driven to treachery against

their comrades. But, as the means approved itself in practice, so it has its

theoretical probation too. A word of honor, an oath, is one only for him whom

I entitle to receive it; he who forces me to it obtains only a forced, i.e.

a hostile word, the word of a foe, whom one has no right to trust; for the

foe does not give us the right.

Aside from this, the courts of the State do not even recognize the

inviolability of an oath. For, if I had sworn to one who comes under

examination that I would not declare anything against him, the court would

demand my declaration in spite of the fact that an oath binds me, and, in case

of refusal, would lock me up till I decided to become -- an oath-breaker. The

court "absolves me from my oath"; -- how magnanimous! If any power can absolve

me from the oath, I myself am surely the very first power that has a claim to.

As a curiosity, and to remind us of customary oaths of all sorts, let place be

given here to that which Emperor Paul commanded the captured Poles

(Kosciuszko, Potocki, Niemcewicz, and others) to take when he released them:

"We not merely swear fidelity and obedience to the emperor, but also further

promise to pour out our blood for his glory; we obligate ourselves to discover

everything threatening to his person or his empire that we ever learn; we

declare finally that, in whatever part of the earth we may be, a single word

of the emperor shall suffice to make us leave everything and repair to him at

once."

In one domain the principle of love seems to have been long outsoared by

egoism, and to be still in need only of sure consciousness, as it were of

victory with a good conscience. This domain is speculation, in its double

manifestation as thinking and as trade. One thinks with a will, whatever may

come of it; one speculates, however many may suffer under our speculative

undertakings. But, when it finally becomes serious, when even the last remnant

of religiousness, romance, or "humanity" is to be done away, then the pulse of

religious conscience beats, and one at least professes humanity. The

avaricious speculator throws some coppers into the poor-box and "does good,"

the bold thinker consoles himself with the fact that he is working for the

advancement of the human race and that his devastation "turns to the good" of

mankind, or, in another case, that he is "serving the idea"; mankind, the

idea, is to him that something of which he must say, It is more to me than

myself.

To this day thinking and trading have been done for -- God's sake. Those who

for six days were trampling down everything by their selfish aims sacrificed

on the seventh to the Lord; and those who destroyed a hundred "good causes" by

their reckless thinking still did this in the service of another "good cause,"

and had yet to think of another -- besides themselves -- to whose good their

self-indulgence should turn; of the people, mankind, etc. But this other thing

is a being above them, a higher or supreme being; and therefore I say, they

are toiling for God's sake.

Hence I can also say that the ultimate basis of their actions is -- love. Not

a voluntary love however, not their own, but a tributary love, or the higher

being's own (God's, who himself is love); in short, not the egoistic, but the

religious; a love that springs from their fancy that they must discharge a

tribute of love, i.e. that they must not be "egoists."

If we want to deliver the world from many kinds of unfreedom, we want this

not on its account but on ours; for, as we are not world-liberators by

profession and out of "love," we only want to win it away from others. We want

to make it our own; it is not to be any longer owned as serf by God (the

church) nor by the law (State), but to be our own; therefore we seek to

"win" it, to "captivate" it, and, by meeting it halfway and "devoting"

ourselves to it as to ourselves as soon as it belongs to us, to complete and

make superfluous the force that it turns against us. If the world is ours, it

no longer attempts any force against us, but only with us. My selfishness

has an interest in the liberation of the world, that it may become -- my

property.

Not isolation or being alone, but society, is man's original state. Our

existence begins with the most intimate conjunction, as we are already living

with our mother before we breathe; when we see the light of the world, we at

once lie on a human being's breast again, her love cradles us in the lap,

leads us in the go-cart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties.

Society is our state of nature. And this is why, the more we learn to feel

ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser

and the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once

again for herself the child that once lay under her heart, the mother must

fetch it from the street and from the midst of its playmates. The child

prefers the intercourse that it enters into with its fellows to the

society that it has not entered into, but only been born in.

But the dissolution of society is intercourse or union. A society does

assuredly arise by union too, but only as a fixed idea arises by a thought --

to wit, by the vanishing of the energy of the thought (the thinking itself,

this restless taking back all thoughts that make themselves fast) from the