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

foam and shadow; what I shall be is my true self." To chase after this

self, to produce it, to realize it, constitutes the hard task of mortals, who

die only to rise again, live only to die, live only to find the true life.

Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, am I really

my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On the other

hand, I can never take comfort in myself as long as I think that I have still

to find my true self and that it must come to this, that not I but Christ or

some other spiritual, i.e. ghostly, self (e. g. the true man, the essence

of man, etc.) lives in me.

A vast interval separates the two views. In the old I go toward myself, in the

new I start from myself; in the former I long for myself, in the latter I have

myself and do with myself as one does with any other property -- I enjoy

myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for my life, but "squander" it.

Henceforth, the question runs, not how one can acquire life, but how one can

squander, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce the true self in himself,

but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out.

What else should the ideal be but the sought-for ever-distant self? One seeks

for himself, consequently one doth not yet have himself; one aspires toward

what one ought to be, consequently one is not it. One lives in longing

and has lived thousands of years in it, in hope. Living is quite another

thing in -- enjoyment!

Does this perchance apply only to the so-called pious? No, it applies to all

who belong to the departing period of history, even to its men of pleasure.

For them too the work-days were followed by a Sunday, and the rush of the

world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness of humanity; in

short by an ideal. But philosophers especially are contrasted with the pious.

Now, have they been thinking of anything else than the ideal, been planning

for anything else than the absolute self? Longing and hope everywhere, and

nothing but these. For me, call it romanticism.

If the enjoyment of life is to triumph over the longing for life or hope

of life, it must vanquish this in its double significance which Schiller

introduces in his "Ideal and Life"; it must crush spiritual and secular

poverty, exterminate the ideal and -- the want of daily bread. He who must

expend his life to prolong life cannot enjoy it, and he who is still seeking

for his life does not have it and can as little enjoy it: both are poor, but

"blessed are the poor."

Those who are hungering for the true life have no power over their present

life, but must apply it for the purpose of thereby gaining that true life, and

must sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and this task. If in the case of

those devotees who hope for a life in the other world, and look upon that in

this world as merely a preparation for it, the tributariness of their earthly

existence, which they put solely into the service of the hoped-for heavenly

existence, is pretty distinctly apparent; one would yet go far wrong if one

wanted to consider the most rationalistic and enlightened as less

self-sacrificing. Oh, there is to be found in the "true life" a much more

comprehensive significance than the "heavenly" is competent to express. Now,

is not -- to introduce the liberal concept of it at once -- the "human" and

"truly human" life the true one? And is every one already leading this truly

human life from the start, or must he first raise himself to it with hard

toil? Does he already have it as his present life, or must he struggle for it

as his future life, which will become his part only when he "is no longer

tainted with any egoism"? In this view life exists only to gain life, and one

lives only to make the essence of man alive in oneself, one lives for the sake

of this essence. One has his life only in order to procure by means of it the

"true" life cleansed of all egoism. Hence one is afraid to make any use he

likes of his life: it is to serve only for the "right use."

In short, one has a calling in life, a task in life; one has something to

realize and produce by his life, a something for which our life is only means

and implement, a something that is worth more than this life, a something to

which one owes his life. One has a God who asks a living sacrifice. Only

the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice

itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice,

and we "poor sinners" slay our own selves as sacrifices for "the human

essence," the "idea of mankind," "humanity," and whatever the idols or gods

are called besides.

But, because we owe our life to that something, therefore --this is the next

point -- we have no right to take it from us.

The conservative tendency of Christianity does not permit thinking of death

otherwise than with the purpose to take its sting from it and -- live on and

preserve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything happen and come upon

him if he -- the arch-Jew -- can only haggle and smuggle himself into heaven;

he must not kill himself, he must only -- preserve himself and work at the

"preparation of a future abode." Conservatism or "conquest of death" lies at

his heart; "the last enemy that is abolished is death."(101) "Christ has taken

the power from death and brought life and imperishable being to light by the

gospel."(102) "Imperishableness," stability.

The moral man wants the good, the right; and, if he takes to the means that

lead to this goal, really lead to it, then these means are not his means,

but those of the good, right, etc., itself. These means are never immoral,

because the good end itself mediates itself through them: the end sanctifies

the means. They call this maxim jesuitical, but it is "moral" through and

through. The moral man acts in the service of an end or an idea: he makes

himself the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it his

glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death is what the moral

commandment postulates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and bad:

suicide finds no excuse before the judgment-seat of morality. If the

religious man forbids it because "you have not given yourself life, but God,

who alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even taking in this

conception, God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as

when a tile from the roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have

aroused the resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because

I owe my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may

not yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a tool,

as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my

amendment; if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my penitence. Suicide,

therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose standpoint is

religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness of God; but, if the

suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of duty, immorally.

People worried themselves much with the question whether Emilia Galotti's

death can be justified before morality (they take it as if it were suicide,

which it is too in substance). That she is so infatuated with chastity, this

moral good, as to yield up even her life for it is certainly moral; but,

again, that she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral.(103)

Such contradictions form the tragic conflict universally in the moral drama;

and one must think and feel morally to be able to take an interest in it.

What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity also,

because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I

am under obligation to no being is the maintaining of life -- my affair. "A

leap from this bridge makes me free!"

But, if we owe the maintaining of our life to that being that we are to make

alive in ourselves, it is not less our duty not to lead this life according to

our pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that being. All my feeling,

thinking, and willing, all my doing and designing, belongs to -- him.

What is in conformity to that being is to be inferred from his concept; and

how differently has this concept been conceived! or how differently has that

being been imagined! What demands the Supreme Being makes on the Mohammedan;

what different ones the Christian, again, thinks he hears from him; how

divergent, therefore, must the shaping of the lives of the two turn out! Only

this do all hold fast, that the Supreme Being is to judge(104) our life.

But the pious who have their judge in God, and in his word a book of

directions for their life, I everywhere pass by only reminiscently, because

they belong to a period of development that has been lived through, and as

petrifactions they may remain in their fixed place right along; in our time it

is no longer the pious, but the liberals, who have the floor, and piety itself

cannot keep from reddening its pale face with liberal coloring. But the

liberals do not adore their judge in God, and do not unfold their life by the

directions of the divine word, but regulate(105) themselves by man: they want

to be not "divine" but "human," and to live so.

Man is the liberal's supreme being, man the judge of his life, humanity his

directions, or catechism. God is spirit, but man is the "most perfect

spirit," the final result of the long chase after the spirit or of the

"searching in the depths of the Godhead," i.e. in the depths of the spirit.

Every one of your traits is to be human; you yourself are to be so from top to

toe, in the inward as in the outward; for humanity is your calling.

Calling -- destiny -- task! --

What one can become he does become. A born poet may well be hindered by the

disfavor of circumstances from standing on the high level of his time, and,

after the great studies that are indispensable for this, producing

consummate works of art;