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

>elsewhere translated "pious" [fromm] means "religious," as usually in

English.]

(48) [It should be remembered that the words "establish" and "State" are both

derived from the root "stand."]

(49) [huldigen]

(50) [Huld]

(51) What was said in the concluding remarks after Humane Liberalism holds

good of the following -- to wit, that it was likewise written immediately

after the appearance of the book cited.

(52) [In the philosophical sense [a thinking and acting being] not in the

political sense.]

(53) [Création de l'Ordre," p.485.]

(54) ["Kölner Dom," p. 4.]

(55) [einzig]

(56) [am Einzigen]

(57) [Einzigen]

(58) [heilig]

(59) [unheilig]

(60) [Heiliger]

(61) B. Bauer, "Lit. Ztg." 8,22.

(62) "E. u. Z. B.," p. 89ff.

(63) [Einzigkeit]

(64) [See note on p. 184.]

(65) [The words "cot" and "dung" are alike in German.]

(66) e. g., "Qu'est-ce que la Propriété?" p. 83

(67) [Einzige]

(68) [A German idiom for "take upon myself," "assume."]

(69) [Apparently some benevolent scheme of the day; compare note on p. 343.]

(70) In a registration bill for Ireland the government made the proposal to

let those be electors who pay £5 sterling of poor-rates. He who gives alms,

therefore, acquires political rights, or elsewhere becomes a swan-knight. [See

p. 342.]

(71) Minister Stein used this expression about Count von Reisach, when he

cold-bloodedly left the latter at the mercy of the Bavarian government because

to him, as he said, "a government like Bavaria must be worth more than a

simple individual." Reisach had written against Montgelas at Stein's bidding,

and Stein later agreed to the giving up of Reisach, which was demanded by

Montgelas on account of this very book. See Hinrichs, *"Politische

Vorlesungen*," I, 280.

(72) In colleges and universities poor men compete with rich. But they are

able to do in most eases only through scholarships, which -- a significant

point -- almost all come down to us from a time when free competition was

still far from being a controlling principle. The principle of competition

founds no scholarship, but says, Help yourself; provide yourself the means.

What the State gives for such purposes it pays out from interested motives, to

educate "servants" for itself.

(73) [preisgeben]

(74) [Preis]

(75) [Preis]

(76) [Geld]

(77) [gelten]

(78) [Equivalent in ordinary German use to our "possessed of a competence."]

(79) [Einzige]

(80) [Literally, "given."]

(81) [A German phrase for sharpers.]

(82) [Literally, "unhomely."]

(83) II, p. 91ff. (See my note above.)

(84) Athanasius.

(85) [Wesen]

(86) [Wesen]

(87) Feuerbach, "Essence of Chr.," 394.

(88) [gebrauche]

(89) [brauche]

(90) [Verein]

(91) [Vereinigung]

(92) [Muthlösigkeit]

(93) [Demuth]

(94) [Muth]

(95) [Literally, "love-services."]

(96) [Literally, "own-benefit."]

(97) [Literally, furnishes me with a right.]

(98) [Empörung]

(99) [sich auf-oder empörzurichten]

(100) To secure myself against a criminal charge I superfluously make the

express remark that I choose the word "insurrection" on account of its

etymological sense, and therefore am not using it in the limited sense which

is disallowed by the penal code.

(101) 1 Cor. 15. 26.

(102) 2 Tim. 1. 10.

(103) [See the next to the last scene of the tragedy:

ODOARDO: Under the pretext of a judicial investigation he tears you out of our

arms and takes you to Grimaldi. ...

EMILIA: Give me that dagger, father, me! ...

ODOARDO: No, no! Reflect -- You too have only one life to lose.

EMILIA: And only one innocence!

ODOARDO: Which is above the reach of any violence. --

EMILIA: But not above the reach of any seduction. -- Violence! violence! Who

cannot defy violence? What is called violence is nothing; seduction is the

true violence. -- I have blood, father; blood as youthful and warm as

anybody's. My senses are senses. -- I can warrant nothing. I am sure of

nothing. I know Grimaldi's house. It is the house of pleasure. An hour there,

under my mother's eyes -- and there arose in my soul so much tumult as the

strictest exercises of religion could hardly quiet in weeks. -- Religion! And

what religion? -- To escape nothing worse, thousands sprang into the water and

are saints. -- Give me that dagger, father, give it to me. ...

EMILIA: Once indeed there was a father who. to save his daughter from shame,

drove into her heart whatever steel he could quickest find -- gave life to her

for the second time. But all such deeds are of the past! Of such fathers there

are no more.

ODOARDO: Yes, daughter, yes! (Stabs her.)]

(104) [Or, "regulate" (richten)]

(105) [richten]

(106) "Der Kommunismus in der Schweiz", p. 24.

(107) Ibid, p. 63

(108) [Cf. note p. 81]

(109) [Geistigkeit]

(110) [Geistlichkeit]

(111) Rom. 1. 25.

(112) [das Meinige]

(113) [die --"Meinung]

(114) P. 47ff.

(115) Chamber of peers, Apr. 25, 1844.

(116) "Anekdota," 1, 120.

(117) "Anekdota," 1, 127.

(118) [vernehmbar]

(119) [Vernunft]

(120) [Literally, "thought-rid."]

(121) [Sache]

(122) [Sache]

(123) 1 Thess. 5. 21.

(124) [Andacht, a compound form of the word "thought"."]

(125) [See note on p. 112.]

(126) [Einzige]

(127) [Eigen]

(128) [geeignet]

III.

THE UNIQUE ONE

Pre-Christian and Christian times pursue opposite goals; the former wants to

idealize the real, the latter to realize the ideal; the former seeks the "holy

spirit," the latter the "glorified body." Hence the former closes with

insensitivity to the real, with "contempt for the world"; the latter will end

with the casting off of the ideal, with "contempt for the spirit."

The opposition of the real and the ideal is an irreconcilable one, and the one

can never become the other: if the ideal became the real, it would no longer

be the ideal; and, if the real became the ideal, the ideal alone would be, but

not at all the real. The opposition of the two is not to be vanquished

otherwise than if some one annihilates both. Only in this "some one," the

third party, does the opposition find its end; otherwise idea and reality will

ever fail to coincide. The idea cannot be so realized as to remain idea, but

is realized only when it dies as idea; and it is the same with the real.

But now we have before us in the ancients adherents of the idea, in the

moderns adherents of reality. Neither can get clear of the opposition, and

both pine only, the one party for the spirit, and, when this craving of the

ancient world seemed to be satisfied and this spirit to have come, the others

immediately for the secularization of this spirit again, which must forever

remain a "pious wish."

The pious wish of the ancients was sanctity, the pious wish of the moderns

is corporeity. But, as antiquity had to go down if its longing was to be

satisfied (for it consisted only in the longing), so too corporeity can never

be attained within the ring of Christianness. As the trait of sanctification

or purification goes through the old world (the washings, etc.), so that of

incorporation goes through the Christian world: God plunges down into this

world, becomes flesh, and wants to redeem it, e. g., fill it with himself;

but, since he is "the idea" or "the spirit," people (e. g. Hegel) in the end

introduce the idea into everything, into the world, and prove "that the idea

is, that reason is, in everything." "Man" corresponds in the culture of today

to what the heathen Stoics set up as "the wise man"; the latter, like the

former, a -- fleshless being. The unreal "wise man," this bodiless "holy

one" of the Stoics, became a real person, a bodily "Holy One," in God *made

flesh; the unreal "man," the bodiless ego, will become real in the corporeal

ego, in me*.

There winds its way through Christianity the question about the "existence of

God," which, taken up ever and ever again, gives testimony that the craving

for existence, corporeity, personality, reality, was incessantly busying the

heart because it never found a satisfying solution. At last the question about

the existence of God fell, but only to rise up again in the proposition that

the "divine" had existence (Feuerbach). But this too has no existence, and

neither will the last refuge, that the "purely human" is realizable, afford

shelter much longer. No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity.

The scholastic contention of realism and nominalism has the same content; in

short, this spins itself out through all Christian history, and cannot end

in it.

The world of Christians is working at realizing ideas in the individual

relations of life, the institutions and laws of the Church and the State; but

they make resistance, and always keep back something unembodied

(unrealizable). Nevertheless this embodiment is restlessly rushed after, no

matter in what degree corporeity constantly fails to result.

For realities matter little to the realizer, but it matters everything that

they be realizations of the idea. Hence he is ever examining anew whether the

realized does in truth have the idea, its kernel, dwelling in it; and in

testing the real he at the same time tests the idea, whether it is realizable

as he thinks it, or is only thought by him incorrectly, and for that reason

unfeasibly.

The Christian is no longer to care for family, State, etc., as existences;

Christians are not to sacrifice themselves for these "divine things" like the

ancients, but these are only to be utilized to make the spirit alive in

them. The real family has become indifferent, and there is to arise out of

it an ideal one which would then be the "truly real," a sacred family,

blessed by God, or, according to the liberal way of thinking, a "rational"

family. With the ancients, family, State, fatherland, is divine as a thing

extant; with the moderns it is still awaiting divinity, as extant it is only

sinful, earthly, and has still to be "redeemed," i. e., to become truly

real. This has the following meaning: The family, etc., is not the extant and

real, but the divine, the idea, is extant and real; whether this family will

make itself real by taking up the truly real, the idea, is still unsettled. It

is not the individual's task to serve the family as the divine, but,

reversely, to serve the divine and to bring to it the still undivine family,

to subject everything in the idea's name, to set up the idea's banner

everywhere, to bring the idea to real efficacy.

But, since the concern of Christianity, as of antiquity, is for the divine,

they always come out at this again on their opposite ways. At the end of

heathenism the divine becomes the extramundane, at the end of Christianity

the intramundane. Antiquity does not succeed in putting it entirely outside

the world, and, when Christianity accomplishes this task, the divine instantly

longs to get back into the world and wants to "redeem" the world. But within