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

>Even in the sense to which one might at last still reduce the word "possible,"

that it should mean "future," it retains the full force of the "real." If one

says, e. g., "It is possible that the sun will rise tomorrow" -- this means

only, "for today tomorrow is the real future"; for I suppose there is hardly

need of the suggestion that a future is real "future" only when it has not yet

appeared.

Yet wherefore this dignifying of a word? If the most prolific misunderstanding

of thousands of years were not in ambush behind it, if this single concept of

the little word "possible" were not haunted by all the spooks of possessed

men, its contemplation should trouble us little here.

The thought, it was just now shown, rules the possessed world. Well, then,

possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have

hitherto been made to hideous thinkableness. It was thinkable that men

might become rational; thinkable, that they might know Christ; thinkable, that

they might become moral and enthusiastic for the good; thinkable, that they

might all take refuge in the Church's lap; thinkable, that they might

meditate, speak, and do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they

might be obedient subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was -- so ran

the inference -- possible, and further, because it was possible to men (right

here lies the deceptive point; because it is thinkable to me, it is possible

to men), therefore they ought to be so, it was their calling; and finally

-- one is to take men only according to this calling, only as called men,

"not as they are, but as they ought to be."

And the further inference? Man is not the individual, but man is a thought,

an ideal, to which the individual is related not even as the child to the

man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a -- finite creature to

the eternal Creator, or, according to modern views, as the specimen to the

species. Here then comes to light the glorification of "humanity," the

"eternal, immortal," for whose glory (in majorem humanitatis gloriam) the

individual must devote himself and find his "immortal renown" in having done

something for the "spirit of humanity."

Thus the thinkers rule in the world as long as the age of priests or of

schoolmasters lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is possible

must be realized. They think an ideal of man, which for the time is real

only in their thoughts; but they also think the possibility of carrying it

out, and there is no chance for dispute, the carrying out is really --

thinkable, it is an -- idea.

But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom a Krummacher can think that

we might yet become good Christians; if, however, he wanted to "labor with"

us, we should soon make it palpable to him that our Christianity is only

thinkable, but in other respects impossible; if he grinned on and on at us

with his obtrusive thoughts, his "good belief," he would have to learn that

we do not at all need to become what we do not like to become.

And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the pious. "If all men were

rational, if all did right, if all were guided by philanthropy, etc."! Reason,

right, philanthropy, are put before the eyes of men as their calling, as the

goal of their aspiration. And what does being rational mean? Giving oneself a

hearing?(108) No, reason is a book full of laws, which are all enacted against

egoism.

History hitherto is the history of the intellectual man. After the period of

sensuality, history proper begins; i.e. the period of intellectuality,(109)

spirituality,(110) non-sensuality, supersensuality, nonsensicality. Man now

begins to want to be and become something. What? Good, beautiful, true; more

precisely, moral, pious, agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a "proper

man," "something proper." Man is his goal, his ought, his destiny, calling,

task, his -- ideal; he is to himself a future, otherworldly he. And what

makes a "proper fellow" of him? Being true, being good, being moral, etc. Now

he looks askance at every one who does not recognize the same "what," seek the

same morality, have the same faith, he chases out "separatists, heretics,

sects," etc.

No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper sheep, a proper dog"; no

beast has its essence appear to it as a task, i.e. as a concept that it has

to realize. It realizes itself in living itself out, in dissolving itself,

passing away. It does not ask to be or to become anything other than it is.

Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts? That you ought to become beasts

is an exhortation which I certainly cannot give you, as that would again be a

task, an ideal ("How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour. In

works of labor or of skill I would be busy too, for Satan finds some mischief

still for idle hands to do"). It would be the same, too, as if one wished for

the beasts that they should become human beings. Your nature is, once for all,

a human one; you are human natures, human beings. But, just because you

already are so, you do not still need to become so. Beasts too are "trained,"

and a trained beast executes many unnatural things. But a trained dog is no

better for itself than a natural one, and has no profit from it, even if it is

more companionable for us.

Exertions to "form" all men into moral, rational, pious, human, "beings"

(i.e. training) were in vogue from of yore. They are wrecked against the

indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against egoism. Those who are

trained never attain their ideal, and only profess with their mouth the

sublime principles, or make a profession, a profession of faith. In face of

this profession they must in life "acknowledge themselves sinners

altogether," and they fall short of their ideal, are "weak men," and bear with

them the consciousness of "human weakness."

It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your "destiny," but

dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your

"destiny," because it is present time.

Yet the culture, the religiousness, of men has assuredly made them free, but

only free from one lord, to lead them to another. I have learned by religion

to tame my appetite, I break the world's resistance by the cunning that is put

in my hand by science; I even serve no man; "I am no man's lackey." But then

it comes. You must obey God more than man. Just so I am indeed free from

irrational determination by my impulses. but obedient to the master Reason.

I have gained "spiritual freedom," "freedom of the spirit." But with that I

have then become subject to that very spirit. The spirit gives me orders,

reason guides me, they are my leaders and commanders. The "rational," the

"servants of the spirit," rule. But, if I am not flesh, I am in truth not

spirit either. Freedom of the spirit is servitude of me, because I am more

than spirit or flesh.

Without doubt culture has made me powerful. It has given me power over all

motives, over the impulses of my nature as well as over the exactions and

violences of the world. I know, and have gained the force for it by culture,

that I need not let myself be coerced by any of my appetites, pleasures,

emotions, etc.; I am their -- master; in like manner I become, through the

sciences and arts, the master of the refractory world, whom sea and earth

obey, and to whom even the stars must give an account of themselves. The

spirit has made me master. -- But I have no power over the spirit itself.

From religion (culture) I do learn the means for the "vanquishing of the

world," but not how I am to subdue God too and become master of him; for God

"is the spirit." And this same spirit, of which I am unable to become master,

may have the most manifold shapes; he may be called God or National Spirit,

State, Family, Reason, also -- Liberty, Humanity, Man.

I receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me; I

am not willing to throw away and give up anything of it: I have not lived in

vain. The experience that I have power over my nature, and need not be the

slave of my appetites, shall not be lost to me; the experience that I can

subdue the world by culture's means is too dear- bought for me to be able to

forget it. But I want still more.

People ask, what can man do? What can he accomplish? What goods procure, and

put down the highest of everything as a calling. As if everything were

possible to me!

If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania, a passion, etc. (e. g. in the

huckster-spirit, in jealousy), the desire is stirred to deliver him out of

this possession and to help him to "self-conquest." "We want to make a man of

him!" That would be very fine if another possession were not immediately put

in the place of the earlier one. But one frees from the love of money him who

is a thrall to it, only to deliver him over to piety, humanity, or some

principle else, and to transfer him to a fixed standpoint anew.

This transference from a narrow standpoint to a sublime one is declared in the

words that the sense must not be directed to the perishable, but to the

imperishable alone: not to the temporal, but to the eternal, absolute, divine,

purely human, etc. -- to the spiritual.

People very soon discerned that it was not indifferent what one set his

affections on, or what one occupied himself with; they recognized the

importance of the object. An object exalted above the individuality of

things is the essence of things; yes, the essence is alone the thinkable in

them. it is for the thinking man. Therefore direct no longer your sense to

the things, but your thoughts to the essence. "Blessed are they who see

not, and yet believe"; i. e., blessed are the thinkers, for they have to

do with the invisible and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, that

constituted an essential point of contention centuries long, comes at last to

the point of being "No longer worth speaking of." This was discerned, but

nevertheless people always kept before their eyes again a self-valid

importance of the object,