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

but he will make poetry, be he a plowman or so

lucky as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make music, no

matter whether on all instruments or only on an oaten pipe. A born

philosophical head can give proof of itself as university philosopher or as

village philosopher. Finally, a born dolt, who, as is very well compatible

with this, may at the same time be a sly-boots, will (as probably every one

who has visited schools is in a position to exemplify to himself by many

instances of fellow-scholars) always remain a blockhead, let him have been

drilled and trained into the chief of a bureau, or let him serve that same

chief as bootblack. Nay, the born shallow-pates indisputably form the most

numerous class of men. And why. indeed, should not the same distinctions show

themselves in the human species that are unmistakable in every species of

beasts? The more gifted and the less gifted are to be found everywhere.

Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one could not get ideas into them.

Hence, people usually consider all men capable of having religion. In a

certain degree they may be trained to other ideas too, e. g. to some musical

intelligence, even some philosophy. At this point then the priesthood of

religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc., takes its start, and the

Communists, e. g. want to make everything accessible to all by their "public

school." There is heard a common assertion that this "great mass" cannot get

along without religion; the Communists broaden it into the proposition that

not only the "great mass," but absolutely all, are called to everything.

Not enough that the great mass has been trained to religion, now it is

actually to have to occupy itself with "everything human." Training is growing

ever more general and more comprehensive.

You poor beings who could live so happily if you might skip according to your

mind, you are to dance to the pipe of schoolmasters and bear-leaders, in order

to perform tricks that you yourselves would never use yourselves for. And you

do not even kick out of the traces at last against being always taken

otherwise than you want to give yourselves. No, you mechanically recite to

yourselves the question that is recited to you: "What am I called to? What

ought I to do?" You need only ask thus, to have yourselves told what you

ought to do and ordered to do it, to have your calling marked out for you,

or else to order yourselves and impose it on yourselves according to the

spirit's prescription. Then in reference to the will the word is, I will to do

what I ought.

A man is "called" to nothing, and has no "calling," no "destiny," as little as

a plant or a beast has a "calling." The flower does not follow the calling to

complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy and consume the world

as well as it can -- i.e. it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as

much air of the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and lodge. The

bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as is practicable;

it catches beetles and sings to its heart's delight. But the forces of the

flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who

applies his forces will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and

beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where

they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and are

as little able to abide inactive as life, which, if it "stood still" only a

second, would no longer be life. Now, one might call out to the man, "use your

force." Yet to this imperative would be given the meaning that it was man's

task to use his force. It is not so. Rather, each one really uses his force

without first looking upon this as his calling: at all times every one uses as

much force as he possesses. One does say of a beaten man that he ought to have

exerted his force more; but one forgets that, if in the moment of succumbing

he had the force to exert his forces (e. g. bodily forces), he would not

have failed to do it: even if it was only the discouragement of a minute, this

was yet a --destitution of force, a minute long. Forces may assuredly be

sharpened and redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly

assistance; but where one misses their application one may be sure of their

absence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but without the blow none

comes out; in like manner a man too needs "impact."

Now, for this reason that forces always of themselves show themselves

operative, the command to use them would be superfluous and senseless. To use

his forces is not man's calling and task, but is his act, real and extant

at all times. Force is only a simpler word for manifestation of force.

Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true

nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my

calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a "true man" from the start. My first

babble is the token of the life of a "true man," the struggles of my life are

the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the

force of the "man."

The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies,

existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and

suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in

waking, I am it, I am the true man.

But, if I am Man, and have really found in myself him whom religious humanity

designated as the distant goal, then everything "truly human" is also my

own. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity belongs to me. That freedom of

trade,

e. g., which humanity has yet to attain -- and which, like an enchanting

dream, people remove to humanity's golden future -- I take by anticipation as

my property, and carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. There may

indeed be but few smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account

to themselves for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces their

consciousness. Above I have shown the same thing about freedom of the press.

Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to myself what wants to withdraw

from me; but above all I always bring myself back when I have slipped away

from myself to any tributariness. But this too is not my calling, but my

natural act.

Enough, there is a mighty difference whether I make myself the starting-point

or the goal. As the latter I do not have myself, am consequently still alien

to myself, am my essence, my "true essence," and this "true essence," alien

to me, will mock me as a spook of a thousand different names. Because I am not

yet I, another (like God, the true man, the truly pious man, the rational man,

the freeman, etc.) is I, my ego.

Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the

one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must

be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true,

is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, "The spirit is

man's proper essence," or, "man exists as man only spiritually." Now, there is

a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged himself;

and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is.

And, as one stormily pursues his own self, the never-attained, so one also

despises shrewd people's rule to take men as they are, and prefers to take

them as they should be; and, for this reason, hounds every one on after his

should-be self and "endeavors to make all into equally entitled, equally

respectable, equally moral or rational men."(106)

Yes, "if men were what they should be, could be, if all men were rational,

all loved each other as brothers," then it would be a paradisiacal life.(107)

-- All right, men are as they should be, can be. What should they be? Surely

not more than they can be! And what can they be? Not more, again, than they --

can, than they have the competence, the force, to be. But this they really

are, because what they are not they are incapable of being; for to be

capable means -- really to be. One is not capable for anything that one really

is not; one is not capable of anything that one does not really do. Could a

man blinded by cataracts see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataracts successfully

removed. But now he cannot see because he does not see. Possibility and

reality always coincide. One can do nothing that one does not, as one does

nothing that one cannot.

The singularity of this assertion vanishes when one reflects that the words

"it is possible that." almost never contain another meaning than "I can

imagine that. . .," e. g., It is possible for all men to live rationally;

e. g., I can imagine that all, etc. Now -- since my thinking cannot, and

accordingly does not, cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be

left to the men themselves -- general reason is for me only thinkable, a

thinkableness, but as such in fact a reality that is called a possibility

only in reference to what I can not bring to pass, to wit, the rationality

of others. So far as depends on you, all men might be rational, for you have

nothing against it; nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot

discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in the way

of the thing in your thinking; it is thinkable to you.

As men are not all rational, though, it is probable that they -- cannot be so.

If something which one imagines to be easily possible is not, or does not

happen, then one may be assured that something stands in the way of the thing,

and that it is -- impossible. Our time has its art, science, etc.; the art may

be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we deserved to have a better,

and "could" have it if we only would? We have just as much art as we can have.

Our art of today is the only art possible, and therefore real, at the time.