The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖
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philanthropy, friendliness to man, which is usually misunderstood as if it
was a love to men, to each individual, while it is nothing but a love of
Man, the unreal concept, the spook. It is not tous anthropous, men, but
ton anthropon, Man, that the philanthropist carries in his heart. To be
sure, he cares for each individual, but only because he wants to see his
beloved ideal realized everywhere.
So there is nothing said here of care for me, you, us; that would be personal
interest, and belongs under the head of "worldly love." Philanthropy is a
heavenly, spiritual, a -- priestly love. Man must be restored in us, even if
thereby we poor devils should come to grief. It is the same priestly principle
as that famous fiat justitia, pereat mundus; man and justice are ideas,
ghosts, for love of which everything is sacrificed; therefore, the priestly
spirits are the "self-sacrificing" ones.
He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that
infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see,
is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
Now, things as different as possible can belong to Man and be so regarded.
If one finds Man's chief requirement in piety, there arises religious
clericalism; if one sees it in morality, then moral clericalism raises its
head. On this account the priestly spirits of our day want to make a
"religion" of everything, a "religion of liberty," "religion of equality,"
etc., and for them every idea becomes a "sacred cause," e. g. even
citizenship, politics, publicity, freedom of the press, trial by jury, etc.
Now, what does "unselfishness" mean in this sense? Having only an ideal
interest, before which no respect of persons avails!
The stiff head of the worldly man opposes this, but for centuries has always
been worsted at least so far as to have to bend the unruly neck and "honor the
higher power"; clericalism pressed it down. When the worldly egoist had shaken
off a higher power (e. g. the Old Testament law, the Roman pope, etc.), then
at once a seven times higher one was over him again, e. g. faith in the
place of the law, the transformation of all laymen into divines in place of
the limited body of clergy, etc. His experience was like that of the possessed
man into whom seven devils passed when he thought he had freed himself from
one.
In the passage quoted above, all ideality is denied to the middle class. It
certainly schemed against the ideal consistency with which Robespierre wanted
to carry out the principle. The instinct of its interest told it that this
consistency harmonized too little with what its mind was set on, and that it
would be acting against itself if it were willing to further the enthusiasm
for principle. Was it to behave so unselfishly as to abandon all its aims in
order to bring a harsh theory to its triumph? It suits the priests admirably,
to be sure, when people listen to their summons, "Cast away everything and
follow me," or "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt
have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Some decided idealists obey
this call; but most act like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a behavior half
clerical or religious and half worldly, serving God and Mammon.
I do not blame the middle class for not wanting to let its aims be frustrated
by Robespierre, i.e. for inquiring of its egoism how far it might give the
revolutionary idea a chance. But one might blame (if blame were in place here
anyhow) those who let their own interests be frustrated by the interests of
the middle class. However, will not they likewise sooner or later learn to
understand what is to their advantage? August Becker says:(43) "To win the
producers (proletarians) a negation of the traditional conception of right is
by no means enough. Folks unfortunately care little for the theoretical
victory of the idea. One must demonstrate to them ad oculos how this victory
can be practically utilized in life." And (p.32): "You must get hold of folks
by their real interests if you want to work upon them." Immediately after this
he shows how a fine looseness of morals is already spreading among our
peasants, because they prefer to follow their real interests rather than the
commands of morality.
Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters served Man, they cut off
the heads of men. The revolutionary laymen, those outside the sacred circle,
did not feel any greater horror of cutting off heads, but were less anxious
about the rights of Man than about their own.
How comes it, though, that the egoism of those who affirm personal interest,
and always inquire of it, is nevertheless forever succumbing to a priestly or
schoolmasterly (i. e. an ideal) interest? Their person seems to them too
small, too insignificant -- and is so in fact -- to lay claim to everything
and be able to put itself completely in force. There is a sure sign of this in
their dividing themselves into two persons, an eternal and a temporal, and
always caring either only for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the
eternal, on the work-day for the temporal, in prayer for the former, in work
for the latter. They have the priest in themselves, therefore they do not get
rid of him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly every Sunday.
How men have struggled and calculated to get at a solution regarding these
dualistic essences! Idea followed upon idea, principle upon principle, system
upon system, and none knew how to keep down permanently the contradiction of
the "worldly" man, the so-called "egoist." Does not this prove that all those
ideas were too feeble to take up my whole will into themselves and satisfy it?
They were and remained hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for
a considerable time. Will it be the same with self-ownership? Is it too only
an attempt at mediation? Whatever principle I turned to, it might be to that
of reason, I always had to turn away from it again. Or can I always be
rational, arrange my life according to reason in everything? I can, no doubt,
strive after rationality, I can love it, just as I can also love God and
every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, as I love God.
But what I love, what I strive for, is only in my idea, my conception, my
thoughts; it is in my heart, my head, it is in me like the heart, but it is
not I, I am not it.
To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially what one often hears
called "moral influence."
Moral influence takes its start where humiliation begins; yes, it is nothing
else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper(44)
down to humility.(45) If I call to some one to run away when a rock is to be
blasted, I exert no moral influence by this demand; if I say to a child "You
will go hungry if you will not eat what is put on the table," this is not
moral influence. But, if I say to it, "You will pray, honor your parents,
respect the crucifix, speak the truth, for this belongs to man and is man's
calling," or even "this is God's will," then moral influence is complete; then
a man is to bend before the calling of man, be tractable, become humble,
give up his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and law; he is to
abase himself before something higher: self-abasement. "He that abaseth
himself shall be exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be made to practice
piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom
"good maxims" have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a
funnel, thrashed in and preached in.
If one shrugs his shoulders at this, at once the good wring their hands
despairingly, and cry: "But, for heaven's sake, if one is to give children no
good instruction, why, then they will run straight into the jaws of sin, and
become good-for-nothing hoodlums!" Gently, you prophets of evil.
Good-for-nothing in your sense they certainly will become; but your sense
happens to be a very good-for-nothing sense. The impudent lads will no longer
let anything be whined and chattered into them by you, and will have no
sympathy for all the follies for which you have been raving and driveling
since the memory of man began; they will abolish the law of inheritance; they
will not be willing to inherit your stupidities as you inherited them from
your fathers; they destroy inherited sin.(46) If you command them, "Bend
before the Most High," they will answer: "If he wants to bend us, let him come
himself and do it; we, at least, will not bend of our own accord." And, if you
threaten them with his wrath and his punishment, they will take it like being
threatened with the bogie-man. If you are no more successful in making them
afraid of ghosts, then the dominion of ghosts is at an end, and nurses' tales
find no -- faith.
And is it not precisely the liberals again that press for good education and
improvement of the educational system? For how could their liberalism, their
"liberty within the bounds of law," come about without discipline? Even if
they do not exactly educate to the fear of God, yet they demand the *fear of
Man* all the more strictly, and awaken "enthusiasm for the truly human
calling" by discipline.
A long time passed away, in which people were satisfied with the fancy that
they had the truth, without thinking seriously whether perhaps they
themselves must be true to possess the truth. This time was the Middle Ages.
With the common consciousness -- i.e. the consciousness which deals with
things, that consciousness which has receptivity only for things, or for what
is sensuous and sense-moving -- they thought to grasp what did not deal with
things and was not perceptible by the senses. As one does indeed also exert
his eye to see the remote, or laboriously exercise his hand till its fingers
have become dexterous enough to press the keys correctly, so they chastened
themselves in the most manifold ways, in order to become capable of receiving
the supersensual wholly into themselves. But what they chastened was, after
all, only the sensual man, the common consciousness, so-called finite or
objective thought. Yet as this thought, this understanding, which Luther
decries under the name of reason, is incapable of comprehending the divine,
its chastening contributed just as much to the understanding of the truth as
if one exercised the feet year in
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