The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖
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for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The
individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation
sends some words of thanks after them and -- has the profit of it. I call that
a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not
pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his
people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but
as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail.
The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in
all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to
be one of "his people."
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on
best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further
unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.
God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but
themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally
with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.(4)
If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be
all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and
that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am not nothing in
the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of
which I myself as creator create everything.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at
least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I
myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for
me.
The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the
divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is
mine, and it is not a general one, but is -- unique,(5) as I am unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself!
Footnotes:
(1) "Ich hab' Mein' Sach' auf Nichts gestellt, first line of Goethe's poem,
"Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!" Literal translation: "I have set my affair on
nothing."
(2) Sache
(3) Sache
(4) Der Einzige
(5) Einzig
Part First
MAN
---- * ----
Man is to man the supreme being,, says Feuerbach.
Man has just been discovered,says Bruno Bauer.
Then let us take a more careful look at this supreme being and this new
discovery.
---- * ----
I
A HUMAN LIFE
From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man seeks to
find out himself and get hold of himself out of its confusion, in which
he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.
But everything that comes in contact with the child defends itself in turn
against his attacks, and asserts its own persistence.
Accordingly, because each thingcares for itself at the same time comes into
constant collision with other things, the combat of self-assertion is
unavoidable.
Victory or defeat -- between the two alternatives the fate of the combat
wavers. The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the subject: the
former exercises supremacy and "rights of supremacy," the latter fulfills in
awe and deference the "duties of a subject.
But both remain enemies, and always lie in wait: they watch for each other's
weaknesses -- children for those of their parents and parents for those of
their children (e.g., their fear); either the stick conquers the man, or the
man conquers the stick.
In childhood liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the bottom of
things, to get at what is "back of" things; therefore we spy out the weak
points of everybody, for which, it is well known, children have a sure
instinct; therefore we like to smash things, like to rummage through hidden
corners, pry after what is covered up or out of the way, and try what we can
do with everything. When we once get at what is back of the things, we know we
are safe; when, e.g., we have got at the fact that the rod is too weak
against our obduracy, then we no longer fear it, "have out-grown it."
Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our -- obduracy, our obdurate
courage. By degrees we get at what is back of everything that was mysterious
and uncanny to us, the mysteriously-dreaded might of the rod, the father's
stern look, etc., and back of all we find our ataraxia, i. e.
imperturbability, intrepidity, our counter force, our odds of strength, our
invincibility. Before that which formerly inspired in us fear and deference we
no longer retreat shyly, but take courage. Back of everything we find our
courage, our superiority; back of the sharp command of parents and
authorities stands, after all, our courageous choice or our outwitting
shrewdness. And the more we feel ourselves, the smaller appears that which
before seemed invincible. And what is our trickery, shrewdness, courage,
obduracy? What else but -- mind!(1)
Through a considerable time we are spared a fight that is so exhausting later
-- the fight against reason. The fairest part of childhood passes without
the necessity of coming to blows with reason. We care nothing at all about it,
do not meddle with it, admit no reason. We are not to be persuaded to anything
by conviction, and are deaf to good arguments, principles, etc.; on the
other hand, coaxing, punishment, etc. are hard for us to resist.
This stern life-and-death combat with reason enters later, and begins a new
phase; in childhood we scamper about without racking our brains much.
Mind is the name of the first self-discovery, the first self-discovery,
the first undeification of the divine; i. e., of the uncanny, the spooks,
the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now
defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are
mind.
Now for the first time we see that hitherto we have not looked at the world
intelligently at all, but only stared at it.
We exercise the beginnings of our strength on natural powers. We defer to
parents as a natural power; later we say: Father and mother are to be
forsaken, all natural power to be counted as riven. They are vanquished. For
the rational, i.e. the "intellectual" man, there is no family as a natural
power; a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its appearance. If
these are "born again" as intellectual, rational powers, they are no longer
at all what they were before.
And not only parents, but men in general, are conquered by the young man;
they are no hindrance to him, and are no longer regarded; for now he says: One
must obey God rather than men.
From this high standpoint everything "earthly" recedes into contemptible
remoteness; for the standpoint is -- the heavenly.
The attitude is now altogether reversed; the youth takes up an intellectual
position, while the boy, who did not yet feel himself as mind, grew up on
mindless learning. The former does not try to get hold of things (e.g. to
get into his head the data of history), but of the thoughts that lie
hidden in things, and so, e.g., of the spirit of history. On the other
hand, the boy understands connections no doubt, but not ideas, the spirit;
therefore he strings together whatever can be learned, without proceeding *a
priori and theoretically, i.e.* without looking for ideas.
As in childhood one had to overcome the resistance of the laws of the world,
so now in everything that he proposes he is met by an objection of the mind,
of reason, of his own conscience. "That is unreasonable, unchristian,
unpatriotic," etc., cries conscience to us, and -- frightens us away from it.
Not the might of the avenging Eumenides, not Poseidon's wrath, not God, far as
he sees the hidden, not the father's rod of punishment, do we fear, but --
conscience.
We "run after our thoughts" now, and follow their commands just as before we
followed parental, human ones. Our course of action is determined by our
thoughts (ideas, conceptions, faith) as it is in childhood by the commands
of our parents.
For all that, we were already thinking when we were children, only our
thoughts were not fleshless, abstract, absolute, i. e., NOTHING BUT
THOUGHTS, a heaven in themselves, a pure world of thought, logical thoughts.
On the contrary, they had been only thoughts that we had about a thing; we
thought of the thing so or so. Thus we may have thought "God made the world
that we see there," but we did not think of ("search") the "depths of the
Godhead itself"; we may have thought "that is the truth about the matter," but
we do not think of Truth itself, nor unite into one sentence "God is truth."
The "depths of the Godhead, who is truth," we did not touch. Over such purely
logical, i.e. theological questions, "What is truth?" Pilate does not stop,
though he does not therefore hesitate to ascertain in an individual case "what
truth there is in the thing," i.e. whether the thing is true.
Any thought bound to a thing is not yet nothing but a thought, absolute
thought.
To bring to light the pure thought, or to be of its party, is the delight of
youth; and all the shapes of light in the world of thought, like truth,
freedom, humanity, Man, etc., illumine and inspire the youthful soul.
But, when the spirit is recognized as the essential thing, it still makes a
difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore one seeks to
become rich in spirit; the spirit wants to spread out so as to found its
empire -- an empire that is not of this world, the world just conquered. Thus,
then, it longs to become all in all to itself; i.e., although I am spirit, I
am not yet perfected spirit, and must first seek the complete spirit.
But with that I, who had just now found myself as spirit, lose myself again at
once, bowing before the complete spirit as one not my own but supernal, and
feeling my emptiness.
Spirit is the essential point for everything, to be sure; but then is every
spirit the "right" spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal of spirit,
the "Holy Spirit." It is not my or your spirit, but just --
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