The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖

thousand years!

Tomorrow they carry thee to the grave; soon thy sisters, the peoples, will

follow thee. But, when they have all followed, then -- -- mankind is buried,

and I am my own, I am the laughing heir!

The word Gesellschaft (society) has its origin in the word Sal (hall). If

one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these persons to be in

society. They are in society, and at most constitute a parlor-society by

talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech. When it comes to real

intercourse, this is to be regarded as independent of society: it may occur

or be lacking, without altering the nature of what is named society. Those who

are in the hall are a society even as mute persons, or when they put each

other off solely with empty phrases of courtesy. Intercourse is mutuality, it

is the action, the commercium, of individuals; society is only community of

the hall, and even the statues of a museum-hall are in society, they are

"grouped." People are accustomed to say "they haben inne(45) this hall in

common," but the case is rather that the hall has us inne or in it. So far

the natural signification of the word society. In this it comes out that

society is not generated by me and you, but by a third factor which makes

associates out of us two, and that it is just this third factor that is the

creative one, that which creates society.

Just so a prison society or prison companionship (those who enjoy(46) the same

prison). Here we already hit upon a third factor fuller of significance than

was that merely local one, the hall. Prison no longer means a space only, but

a space with express reference to its inhabitants: for it is a prison only

through being destined for prisoners, without whom it would be a mere

building. What gives a common stamp to those who are gathered in it? Evidently

the prison, since it is only by means of the prison that they are prisoners.

What, then, determines the manner of life of the prison society? The prison!

What determines their intercourse? The prison too, perhaps? Certainly they can

enter upon intercourse only as prisoners, i.e. only so far as the prison

laws allow it; but that they themselves hold intercourse, I with you, this

the prison cannot bring to pass; on the contrary, it must have an eye to

guarding against such egoistic, purely personal intercourse (and only as such

is it really intercourse between me and you). That we jointly execute a job,

run a machine, effectuate anything in general -- for this a prison will indeed

provide; but that I forget that I am a prisoner, and engage in intercourse

with you who likewise disregard it, brings danger to the prison, and not only

cannot be caused by it, but must not even be permitted. For this reason the

saintly and moral-minded French chamber decides to introduce solitary

confinement, and other saints will do the like in order to cut off

"demoralizing intercourse." Imprisonment is the established and -- sacred

condition, to injure which no attempt must be made. The slightest push of that

kind is punishable, as is every uprising against a sacred thing by which man

is to be charmed and chained.

Like the hall, the prison does form a society, a companionship, a communion

(e. g. communion of labor), but no intercourse, no reciprocity, no

union. On the contrary, every union in the prison bears within it the

dangerous seed of a "plot," which under favorable circumstances might spring

up and bear fruit.

Yet one does not usually enter the prison voluntarily, and seldom remains in

it voluntarily either, but cherishes the egoistic desire for liberty. Here,

therefore, it sooner becomes manifest that personal intercourse is in hostile

relations to the prison society and tends to the dissolution of this very

society, this joint incarceration.

Let us therefore look about for such communions as, it seems, we remain in

gladly and voluntarily, without wanting to endanger them by our egoistic

impulses.

As a communion of the required sort the family offers itself in the first

place. Parents, husbands and wife, children, brothers and sisters, represent a

whole or form a family, for the further widening of which the collateral

relatives also may be made to serve if taken into account. The family is a

true communion only when the law of the family, piety(47) or family love, is

observed by its members. A son to whom parents, brothers, and sisters have

become indifferent has been a son; for, as the sonship no longer shows

itself efficacious, it has no greater significance than the long-past

connection of mother and child by the navel-string. That one has once lived in

this bodily juncture cannot as a fact be undone; and so far one remains

irrevocably this mother's son and the brother of the rest of her children; but

it would come to a lasting connection only by lasting piety, this spirit of

the family. Individuals are members of a family in the full sense only when

they make the persistence of the family their task; only as conservative

do they keep aloof from doubting their basis, the family. To every member of

the family one thing must be fixed and sacred -- viz., the family itself,

or, more expressively, piety. That the family is to persist remains to its

member, so long as he keeps himself free from that egoism which is hostile to

the family, an unassailable truth. In a word: -- If the family is sacred, then

nobody who belongs to it may secede from it; else he becomes a "criminal"

against the family: he may never pursue an interest hostile to the family, *e.

g.* form a misalliance. He who does this has "dishonored the family," "put it

to shame," etc.

Now, if in an individual the egoistic impulse has not force enough, he

complies and makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family, takes a

rank which harmonizes with its position, etc.; in short, he "does honor to the

family."

If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows fierily enough in his veins, he

prefers to become a "criminal" against the family and to throw off its laws.

Which of the two lies nearer my heart, the good of the family or my good? In

innumerable cases both go peacefully together; the advantage of the family is

at the same time mine, and vice versa. Then it is hard to decide whether I

am thinking selfishly or for the common benefit, and perhaps I

complacently flatter myself with my unselfishness. But there comes the day

when a necessity of choice makes me tremble, when I have it in mind to

dishonor my family tree, to affront parents, brothers, and kindred. What then?

Now it will appear how I am disposed at the bottom of my heart; now it will be

revealed whether piety ever stood above egoism for me, now the selfish one can

no longer skulk behind the semblance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my

soul, and, growing from hour to hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur

at first blush that the slightest thought which may result adversely to the

spirit of the family (piety) bears within it a transgression against this?

Nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely conscious of the

matter? It happens so with Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet." The unruly passion

can at last no longer be tamed, and undermines the building of piety. You will

say, indeed, it is from self-will that the family casts out of its bosom those

wilful ones that grant more of a hearing to their passion than to piety; the

good Protestants used the same excuse with much success against the Catholics,

and believed in it themselves. But it is just a subterfuge to roll the fault

off oneself, nothing more. The Catholics had regard for the common bond of the

church, and thrust those heretics from them only because these did not have so

much regard for the bond of the church as to sacrifice their convictions to

it; the former, therefore, held the bond fast, because the bond, the Catholic

(i.e. common and united) church, was sacred to them; the latter, on the

contrary, disregarded the bond. Just so those who lack piety. They are not

thrust out, but thrust themselves out, prizing their passion, their

wilfulness, higher than the bond of the family.

But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less passionate and wilful heart than

Juliet's. The pliable girl brings herself as a sacrifice to the peace of the

family. One might say that here too selfishness prevailed, for the decision

came from the feeling that the pliable girl felt herself more satisfied by the

unity of the family than by the fulfillment of her wish. That might be; but

what if there remained a sure sign that egoism had been sacrificed to piety?

What if, even after the wish that had been directed against the peace of the

family was sacrificed, it remained at least as a recollection of a "sacrifice"

brought to a sacred tie? What if the pliable girl were conscious of having

left her self-will unsatisfied and humbly subjected herself to a higher power?

Subjected and sacrificed, because the superstition of piety exercised its

dominion over her!

There egoism won, here piety wins and the egoistic heart bleeds; there egoism

was strong, here it was -- weak. But the weak, as we have long known, are the

-- unselfish. For them, for these its weak members, the family cares, because

they belong to the family, do not belong to themselves and care for

themselves. This weakness Hegel, e. g. praises when he wants to have match-

making left to the choice of the parents.

As a sacred communion to which, among the rest, the individual owes obedience,

the family has the judicial function too vested in it; such a "family court"

is described e. g. in the Cabanis **of Wilibald Alexis. There the father,

in the name of the "family council," puts the intractable son among the

soldiers and thrusts him out of the family, in order to cleanse the smirched

family again by means of this act of punishment. -- The most consistent

development of family responsibility is contained in Chinese law, according to

which the whole family has to expiate the individual's fault.

Today, however, the arm of family power seldom reaches far enough to take

seriously in hand the punishment of apostates (in most cases the State

protects even against disinheritance). The criminal against the family

(family-criminal) flees into the domain of the State and is free, as the

State-criminal who gets away to America is no longer reached by the

punishments of his State. He who has shamed his family, the graceless son, is

protected