The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖
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vexed by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks of
nature indifferent, and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace
utters the famous Nil admirari, by which he likewise announces the
indifference of the other, the world; it is not to influence us, not to
rouse our astonishment. And that impavidum ferient ruinae expresses the very
same imperturbability as Ps. 46.3: "We do not fear, though the earth should
perish." In all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the
world is empty, for the Christian contempt of the world.
The imperturbable spirit of "the wise man," with which the old world worked
to prepare its end, now underwent an inner perturbation against which no
ataraxia, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. The spirit, secured
against all influence of the world, insensible to its shocks and exalted
above its attacks, admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of
the world -- foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were
evolved in its own interior, and, after the mechanical shock that comes from
without had become ineffective, chemical tensions, that agitate within,
began their wonderful play.
In fact, ancient history ends with this -- that I have struggled till I won
my ownership of the world. "All things have been delivered to me by my Father"
(Matt. 11. 27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred,
divine, for me; it is undeified, and now I treat it so entirely as I please
that, if I cared, I could exert on it all miracle-working power, i. e.,
power of mind -- remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves
up and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything
possible, thinkable : "All things are possible to him who believes."(57) I
am the lord of the world, mine is the "glory."(58) The world has become
prosaic, for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which I
dispose of as I (to wit, the mind) choose.
When I had exalted myself to be the owner of the world, egoism had won its
first complete victory, had vanquished the world, had become worldless, and
put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.
The first property, the first "glory," has been acquired!
But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his
will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred,
the "Holy Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not able to become
"godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the world, the
medieval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against self, the mind; the former
against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The medieval man
is the man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative
All wisdom of the ancients is the science of the world, all wisdom of the
moderns is the science of God.
The heathen (Jews included) got through with the world; but now the thing
was to get through with self, the spirit, too; i.e. to become spiritless or
godless.
For almost two thousand years we have been working at subjecting the Holy
Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we have torn off and trodden under
foot many bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising
anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost its divinity,
its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has long ceased to flutter over
our heads as a dove; to be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but
lets itself be caught by the laity too; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit
of Man, it remains still an alien spirit to me or you, still far from
becoming our unrestricted property, which we dispose of at our pleasure.
However, one thing certainly happened, and visibly guided the progress of
post-Christian history: this one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy
Spirit more human, and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it
came about that at last it could be conceived as the "spirit of humanity,"
and, under different expressions like "idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness,
general philanthropy," appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more
accessible.
Would not one think that now everybody could possess the Holy Spirit, take up
into himself the idea of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in
himself?
No, the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its
unapproachableness, is not accessible to us, not our property; for the spirit
of humanity is not my spirit. My ideal it may be, and as a thought I call
it mine; the thought of humanity is my property, and I prove this
sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views, and shaping it
today so, tomorrow otherwise; we represent it to ourselves in the most
manifold ways. But it is at the same time an entail, which I cannot alienate
nor get rid of.
Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the *"absolute
idea"*, which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of
philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc.
But can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity, and can I
consider the Spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it, "sacrifice myself" to
it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world only when
it had broken the world's overpoweringness and "divinity," recognized the
world's powerlessness and "vanity."
The case with regard to the spirit corresponds. When I have degraded it to a
spook and its control over me to a cranky notion, then it is to be looked
upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I
use it, as one uses nature at pleasure without scruple.
The "nature of the case," the "concept of the relationship," is to guide me in
dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the
case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms
of the case! As if a relation which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness
of those who enter into it, itself unique! As if it depended on how others
stamp it! But, as people separated the "essence of Man" from the real man, and
judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from him,
and appraise it by "human value." Concepts are to decide everywhere,
concepts to regulate life, concepts to rule. This is the religious world, to
which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense
and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic.
Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, i.e. I, am
compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. Can there be a more
grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess at the very
beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? ("Not
a letter of the law shall be lost!")
Liberalism simply brought other concepts on the carpet; human instead of
divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, "scientific" instead of
doctrinal, or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of
"crude dogmas" and precepts.
Now nothing but mind rules in the world. An innumerable multitude of
concepts buzz about in people's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor
to get further? They are negating these concepts to put new ones in their
place! They are saying: "You form a false concept of right, of the State, of
man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc.; the concept of right, etc., is
rather that one which we now set up." Thus the confusion of concepts moves
forward.
The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has
obtained an almighty power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which
could protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your potatoes would become
palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would relieve you of all
need at once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to recognize the
independence of all these and innumerable other things: they are to rank in
his mind as something that cannot be seized or approached, are to be kept away
from him. He must have regard for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches
out his fingers desirously; we call that "being light-fingered!"
How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really nothing! Everything has been
removed, we must not venture on anything unless it is given us; we continue to
live only by the grace of the giver. You must not pick up a pin, unless
indeed you have got leave to do so. And got it from whom? From respect!
Only when this lets you have it as property, only when you can respect it as
property, only then may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive a
thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that should have their warrant in
you alone, instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity. Happy
unconstraint of the desirous man, how mercilessly people have tried to slay
you on the altar of constraint!
But around the altar rise the arches of a church, and its walls keep moving
further and further out. What they enclose is sacred. You can no longer get
to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you
wander round about these walls in search of the little that is profane, and
the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended. Soon that
church will embrace the whole world, and you be driven out to the extreme
edge; another step, and the world of the sacred has conquered: you sink into
the abyss. Therefore take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer
in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in through
the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you devour the sacred, you have made
it your own! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!
The FreeThe ancients and the moderns having been presented above in two divisions, it
may seem as if the free were here to be described in a third division as
independent and distinct. This is not so. The free are only the more modern
and most modern among the "moderns," and are put in a separate division merely
because they belong to the present, and what is present, above all, claims our
attention here. I give "the free" only as a translation of "the liberals," but
must with regard to the
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