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

property has become a material

with which I undertake what I will, so the spirit too as property must sink

down into a material before which I no longer entertain any sacred dread.

Then, firstly, I shall shudder no more before a thought, let it appear as

presumptuous and "devilish" as it will, because, if it threatens to become too

inconvenient and unsatisfactory for me, its end lies in my power; but

neither shall I recoil from any deed because there dwells in it a spirit of

godlessness, immorality, wrongfulness. as little as St. Boniface pleased to

desist, through religious scrupulousness, from cutting down the sacred oak of

the heathens. If the things of the world have once become vain, the thoughts

of the spirit must also become vain.

No thought is sacred, for let no thought rank as "devotions";(124) no feeling

is sacred (no sacred feeling of friendship, mother's feelings, etc.), no

belief is sacred. They are all alienable, my alienable property, and are

annihilated, as they are created, by me.

The Christian can lose all things or objects, the most loved persons, these

"objects" of his love, without giving up himself (i.e., in the Christian

sense, his spirit, his soul! as lost. The owner can cast from him all the

thoughts that were dear to his heart and kindled his zeal, and will likewise

"gain a thousandfold again," because he, their creator, remains.

Unconsciously and involuntarily we all strive toward ownness, and there will

hardly be one among us who has not given up a sacred feeling, a sacred

thought, a sacred belief; nay, we probably meet no one who could not still

deliver himself from one or another of his sacred thoughts. All our contention

against convictions starts from the opinion that maybe we are capable of

driving our opponent out of his entrenchments of thought. But what I do

unconsciously I half-do, and therefore after every victory over a faith I

become again the prisoner (possessed) of a faith which then takes my whole

self anew into its service, and makes me an enthusiast for reason after I

have ceased to be enthusiastic for the Bible, or an enthusiast for the idea of

humanity after I have fought long enough for that of Christianity.

Doubtless, as owner of thoughts, I shall cover my property with my shield,

just as I do not, as owner of things, willingly let everybody help himself to

them; but at the same time I shall look forward smilingly to the outcome of

the battle, smilingly lay the shield on the corpses of my thoughts and my

faith, smilingly triumph when I am beaten. That is the very humor of the

thing. Every one who has "sublimer feelings" is able to vent his humor on the

pettiness of men; but to let it play with all "great thoughts, sublime

feelings, noble inspiration, and sacred faith" presupposes that I am the owner

of all.

If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I set

over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are, every

moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more. Since no defect cleaves

to us, sin has no meaning either. Show me a sinner in the world still, if no

one any longer needs to do what suits a superior! If I only need do what suits

myself, I am no sinner if I do not do what suits myself, as I do not injure in

myself a "holy one"; if, on the other hand, I am to be pious, then I must do

what suits God; if I am to act humanly, I must do what suits the essence of

man, the idea of mankind, etc. What religion calls the "sinner,"

humanitarianism calls the "egoist." But, once more: if I need not do what

suits any other, is the "egoist," in whom humanitarianism has borne to itself

a new-fangled devil, anything more than a piece of nonsense? The egoist,

before whom the humane shudder, is a spook as much as the devil is: he exists

only as a bogie and phantasm in their brain. If they were not

unsophisticatedly drifting back and forth in the antediluvian opposition of

good and evil, to which they have given the modern names of "human" and

"egoistic," they would not have freshened up the hoary "sinner" into an

"egoist" either, and put a new patch on an old garment. But they could not do

otherwise, for they hold it for their task to be "men." They are rid of the

Good One; good is left!(125)

We are perfect altogether, and on the whole earth there is not one man who is

a sinner! There are crazy people who imagine that they are God the Father, God

the Son, or the man in the moon, and so too the world swarms with fools who

seem to themselves to be sinners; but, as the former are not the man in the

moon, so the latter are -- not sinners. Their sin is imaginary, yet, it is

insidiously objected, their craziness or their possessedness is at least their

sin. Their possessedness is nothing but what they -- could achieve, the result

of their development, just as Luther's faith in the Bible was all that he was

-- competent to make out. The one brings himself into the madhouse with his

development, the other brings himself therewith into the Pantheon and to the

loss of -- Valhalla.

There is no sinner and no sinful egoism!

Get away from me with your "philanthropy"! Creep in, you philanthropist, into

the "dens of vice," linger awhile in the throng of the great city: will you

not everywhere find sin, and sin, and again sin? Will you not wail over

corrupt humanity, not lament at the monstrous egoism? Will you see a rich man

without finding him pitiless and "egoistic?" Perhaps you already call yourself

an atheist, but you remain true to the Christian feeling that a camel will

sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man not be an "un-man." How many

do you see anyhow that you would not throw into the "egoistic mass"? What,

therefore, has your philanthropy [love of man] found? Nothing but unlovable

men! And where do they all come from? From you, from your philanthropy! You

brought the sinner with you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore

you inserted him everywhere. Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you

alone are the creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love men, are the

very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into

vicious and virtuous, into men and un-men, the very one to befoul them with

the slaver of your possessedness; for you love not men, but man. But I

tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have only -- dreamed of him.

Self-enjoyment is embittered to me by my thinking I must serve another, by my

fancying myself under obligation to him, by my holding myself called to

"self-sacrifice," "resignation," "enthusiasm." All right: if I no longer serve

any idea, any "higher essence," then it is clear of itself that I no longer

serve any man either, but -- under all circumstances -- myself. But thus I

am not merely in fact or in being, but also for my consciousness, the --

unique.(126)

There pertains to you more than the divine, the human, etc.; yours

pertains to you.

Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you have

more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more.

You are then not merely called to everything divine, entitled to

everything human, but owner of what is yours, i.e. of all that you possess

the force to make your own;(127) i.e. you are appropriate(128) and

capacitated for everything that is yours.

People have always supposed that they must give me a destiny lying outside

myself, so that at last they demanded that I should lay claim to the human

because I am -- man. This is the Christian magic circle. Fichte's ego too is

the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego has

rights, then it is "the ego," it is not I. But I am not an ego along with

other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique. Hence my wants too are unique, and

my deeds; in short, everything about me is unique. And it is only as this

unique I that I take everything for my own, as I set myself to work, and

develop myself, only as this. I do not develop men, nor as man, but, as I, I

develop -- myself.

This is the meaning of the -- unique one.

Footnotes:

(1) [Einzigen]

(2) Rom 8. 14.

(3) Cf. John 3. 10. with Rom. 8. 16.

(4) [Eigenschaften]

(5) [Eigentum]

(6) Karl Marx, in the "Deutsch-französische Jahrbucher," p. 197.

(7) Br. Bauer, "Judenfrage", p. 61.

(8) Hess, "Triarchie," p. 76.

(9) [Vorrecht, literally "precedent right."]

(10) [Eigenschaft]

(11) [Eigentum]

(12) "Essence of Christianity," 2nd ed., p. 401

(13) [bestimmt]

(14) [Bestimmung]

(15) Mark 3. 29.

(16) [This word has also, in German, the meaning of "common law," and will

sometimes be translated "law" in the following paragraphs.]

(17) Cf. "Die Kommunisten in der Schweiz," committee report, p. 3.

(18) [Rechtsstreit, a word which usually means "lawsuit."]

(19) [A common German phrase for "it suits me."]

(20) A. Becker, "Volksphilosophie", p. 22f.

(21) [Mephistopheles in "Faust."]

(22) "I beg you, spare my lungs! He who insists on proving himself right, if

he but has one of those things called tongues, can hold his own in all the

world's despite!" [Faust's words to Mephistopheles, slightly misquoted. -- For

Rechthabereisee note on p. 185.]

(23) [Gesetz, statute; no longer the same German word as "right"]

(24) [Verbrechen]

(25) [brechen]

(26) "This Book Belongs to the King,", p. 376.

(27) P. 376.

(28) P. 374.

(29) [An unnatural mother]

(30) P. 381.

(31) P. 385.

(32) [Gerechte]

(33) [macht Alles hübsch gerecht]

(34) [Einzige]

(35) See "Political Speeches," 10, p. 153

(36) [Literally, "precedent right."]

(37) [Spannung]

(38) [gespannt]

(39) [spannen]

(40) [Einzig]

(41) [Einzigkeit]

(42) [Volk; but the etymological remark following applies equally to the

English word "people." See Liddell & Scott's Greek lexicon, under pimplemi.]

(43) [Kuschen, a word whose only use is in ordering dogs to keep quiet.]

(44) This is the word for "of age"; but it is derived from Mund, "mouth,"

and refers properly to the right of speaking through one's own mouth, not by a

guardian.]

(45) ["Occupy"; literally, "have within".]

(46) [The word Genosse, "companion," signifies originally a companion in

enjoyment.]

(47) [This word in German does not mean religion, but, as in Latin,

faithfulness to family ties -- as we speak of "filial piety." But the word