The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖
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And this family internalized and desensualized into a thought, a conception,
now ranks as the "sacred," whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it
makes a racket in my conscience. This despotism is broken when the conception,
family, also becomes a nothing to me The Christian dicta, "Woman, what have
I to do with thee?"(51) "I am come to stir up a man against his father, and a
daughter against her mother,"(52) and others, are accompanied by something
that refers us to the heavenly or true family, and mean no more than the
State's demand, in case of a collision between it and the family, that we obey
its commands.
The case of morality is like that of the family. Many a man renounces morals,
but with great difficulty the conception, "morality." Morality is the "idea"
of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the
other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an
"intellectual" man, a so-called independent, a "freethinker."
The Protestant may put it as he will, the "holy(53) Scripture," the "Word of
God," still remains sacred(54) for him. He for whom this is no longer "holy"
has ceased to -- be a Protestant. But herewith what is "ordained" in it, the
public authorities appointed by God, etc., also remain sacred for him. For him
these things remain indissoluble, unapproachable, "raised above all doubt";
and, as doubt, which in practice becomes a buffeting, is what is most
man's own, these things remain "raised" above himself. He who cannot *get
away from them will -- believe; for to believe in them is to be bound* to
them. Through the fact that in Protestantism the faith becomes a more inward
faith, the servitude has also become a more inward servitude; one has taken
those sanctities up into himself, entwined them with all his thoughts and
endeavors, made them a "matter of conscience", constructed out of them a
"sacred duty" for himself. Therefore what the Protestant's conscience cannot
get away from is sacred to him, and conscientiousness most clearly
designates his character.
Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by
secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every
motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of
conscience," i. e., police business. This tearing apart of man into "natural
impulse" and "conscience" (inner populace and inner police) is what
constitutes the Protestant. The reason of the Bible (in place of the Catholic
"reason of the church") ranks as sacred, and this feeling and consciousness
that the word of the Bible is sacred is called -- conscience. With this, then,
sacredness is "laid upon one's conscience." If one does not free himself from
conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he may act unconscientiously
indeed, but never consciencelessly.
The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfills the command; the
Protestant acts according to his "best judgment and conscience." For the
Catholic is only a layman; the Protestant is himself a clergyman.(55) Just
this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the Middle Ages, and at
the same time its curse -- that the spiritual became complete.
What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of
indulgences? Only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now
gained also an insight into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how
really his sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case
(casuists) it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale of
indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible, and silenced
every movement of conscience. All sensuality might hold sway, if it was only
purchased from the church. This favoring of sensuality was continued by the
Jesuits, while the strictly moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite,
praying Protestants (as the true completers of Christianity, to be sure)
acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially
the Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involuntary and unconscious
adherents within Protestantism itself, and saved us from the subversion and
extinction of sensuality. Nevertheless the Protestant spirit spreads its
dominion farther and farther; and, as, beside it the "divine," the Jesuit
spirit represents only the "diabolic" which is inseparable from everything
divine, the latter can never assert itself alone, but must look on and see how
in France, e. g., the Philistinism of Protestantism wins at last, and mind
is on top.
Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into
repute again, e. g. marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as
mundane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism,
which lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures, while the
rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane
altogether, and that simply by hallowing it. So marriage has been deprived
of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic
sacrament, where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is
unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to
begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, also. Formerly the pope gave
consecration and his blessing to it and its princes, now the State is
intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing.
The order of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed as "God's
ordinance." Hence it is said e. g. in the Augsburg Confession, Art. II: "So
now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have wisely and
rightly said: that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law.
Now, if it is a natural law, then it is God's ordinance, therefore implanted
in nature, and therefore a divine law also." And is it anything more than
Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach pronounces moral relations
sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, instead, for the sake of the
spirit that dwells in them? "But marriage as a free alliance of love, of
course -- is sacred of itself, by the nature of the union that is formed
here. That marriage alone is a religious one that is a true one, that
corresponds to the essence of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral
relations. They are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where
they rank as religious of themselves. True friendship is only where the
limits of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with
the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his
God. Friendship is and must be sacred for you, and property, and marriage,
and the good of every man, but sacred in and of itself."(56)
That is a very essential consideration. In Catholicism the mundane can indeed
be consecrated or hallowed, but it is not sacred without this priestly
blessing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane relations are sacred *of
themselves*, sacred by their mere existence. The Jesuit maxim, "the end
hallows the means," corresponds precisely to the consecration by which
sanctity is bestowed. No means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their
relation to the church, their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide
was named as such; if it was committed for the church's behoof, it could be
certain of being hallowed by the church, even if the hallowing was not openly
pronounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as sacred; to the Catholic only
that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and it does
rank as such to him only because the pope, even though it be without a special
act, confers this sacredness on it once for all. If he retracted his
consecration, the king would be left only a "man of the world or layman," an
"unconsecrated" man, to the Catholic.
If the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in the sensual itself, that
he may then be linked only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to
banish the sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, like the
rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic church eliminated
mundane marriage from its consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its
own from the mundane family; the Protestant church declared marriage and
family ties to be holy, and therefore not unsuitable for its clergymen.
A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic, hallow everything. He needs only, e. g.,
to say to himself: "I as a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it
more zealously when I appease my desires properly; consequently I will seduce
this girl, have my enemy there poisoned, etc.; my end is holy because it is a
priest's, consequently it hallows the means." For in the end it is still done
for the benefit of the church. Why should the Catholic priest shrink from
handing Emperor Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the -- church's welfare?
The genuinely churchly Protestants inveighed against every "innocent
pleasure," because only the sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent. What
they could not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants had to reject --
dancing, the theatre, ostentation (e. g. in the church), and the like.
Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism is again more on the
religious, spiritual, track -- is more radical. For the former excludes at
once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and purifies the
church; Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring spirit into all things
as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything,
and so to hallow everything worldly. ("No one can forbid a kiss in honor."
The spirit of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he
declares himself such in some passage or other: he "wants to remain a
Lutheran") was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything.
In everything there is reason, i.e. holy spirit, or "the real is rational."
For the real is in fact everything; as in each thing, e. g., each lie, the
truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute evil, etc.
Great "works of mind" were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone
were the true disciples and consummators of mind.
How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea
roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before
the uncontrollable. Can he keep off the impression that he is helpless
against this gigantic world? It is a fixed law to which he must submit, it
determines his fate. Now, what did pre-Christian humanity work toward?
Toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies,
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