The Ego and Its Own

by Max Stirner

The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it, i.e. model it after his ideal; in him the view that one must deal with the world according to his interest, not according to his ideals, becomes confirmed.

Are you a thinking being before you think? In creating the first thought you create yourself, the thinking one; for you do not think before you think a thought, i.e. have a thought.

Because he would like to cease to be an egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself to; but, however much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end he does all for his own sake, and the disreputable egoism will not come off him. On this account I call him the involuntary egoist.

Whether then the one God or the three in one. whether the Lutheran God or the Être suprême or not God at all, but "Man," may represent the highest essence, that makes no difference at all for him who denies the highest essence itself, for in his eyes those servants of a highest essence are one and all-pious people, the most raging atheist not less than the most faith-filled Christian.

I do not regard you as a higher essence but only respect that higher essence which "walks" in you; I "respect Man in you."

Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other.

Nevertheless it is only through the "flesh" that I can break tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears himself that he is a hearing or rational[42] being.

Instead of that, he only continued in mature years his childish feelings received in childhood, and squandered the powers of his manhood in decking out his childish trifles.

What is imparted is alien to us, is not our own, and therefore is "sacred," and it is hard work to lay aside the "sacred dread of it."

For innovation is the deadly enemy of habit, of the old, of permanence.

Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

Moral influence takes its start where humiliation begins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper[51] down to humility.[52] 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.

This is hysterically funny. "Gently"

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.

If you devour the sacred, you have made it your own! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!

Yet this is the sense of the bourgeoisie, and its poet, Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world. He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to it," has the true freedom.

Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free.

Society, from which we have everything, is a new master, a new spook, a new "supreme being," which "takes us into its service and allegiance!"

The fear of God in the proper sense was shaken long ago, and a more or less conscious "atheism," externally recognizable by a wide-spread "unchurchliness," has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken from God has been superadded to Man, and the power of humanity grew greater in just the degree that of piety lost weight: "Man" is the God of today, and fear of Man has taken the place of the old fear of God.

We are accustomed to classify States according to the different ways in which "the supreme might" is distributed. If an individual has it — monarchy; if all have it — democracy; etc. Supreme might then! Might against whom? Against the individual and his "self-will." The State practices "violence," the individual must not do so. The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime." Crime, then[137] — so the individual's violence is called; and only by crime does he overcome[138] the State's violence when he thinks that the State is not above him, but he is above the State.

Big oof

What I called "my right" is no longer "right" at all, because right can be bestowed only by a spirit, be it the spirit of nature or that of the species, of mankind, the Spirit of God or that of His Holiness or His Highness, etc. What I have without an entitling spirit I have without right; I have it solely and alone through my power.

Right — is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook; power — that am I myself, I am the powerful one and owner of power. Right is above me, is absolute, and exists in one higher, as whose grace it flows to me: right is a gift of grace from the judge; power and might exist only in me the powerful and mighty.

The republic is nothing whatever but — absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty."

The vox populi is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule our princes. Certainly the vox populi is at the same time vox dei; but is either of any use, and is not the vox principis also vox dei?

In the State there is no property, i.e. no property of the individual, but only State property. Only through the State have I what I have, as I am only through it what I am. My private property is only that which the State leaves to me of its, cutting off others from it (depriving them, making it private); it is State property.

What then is my property? Nothing but what is in my power! To what property am I entitled? To every property to which I — empower myself.

The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as is practicable; it catches beetles and sings to its heart's delight. But the forces of the flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and are as little able to abide inactive as life, which, if it "stood still" only a second, would no longer be life.

Nothing may occupy us with which we do not occupy ourselves: the victim of ambition cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the God-fearing man from the thought of God; infatuation and possessedness coincide.

With that I should fall a prey to the principle of stability, the proper life-principle of religion, which concerns itself with creating "sanctuaries that must not be touched," "eternal truths" — in short, that which shall be "sacred" — and depriving you of what is yours.

Nothing at all is justified by being. What is thought of is as well as what is not thought of; the stone in the street is, and my notion of it is too. Both are only in different spaces, the former in airy space, the latter in my head, in me; for I am space like the street.

Your thinking has for a presupposition not "thinking," but you.

Get away from me with your "philanthropy"! Creep in, you philanthropist, into the "dens of vice," linger awhile in the throng of the great city: will you not everywhere find sin, and sin, and again sin? Will you not wail over corrupt humanity, not lament at the monstrous egoism? Will you see a rich man without finding him pitiless and "egoistic?" Perhaps you already call yourself an atheist, but you remain true to the Christian feeling that a camel will sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man not be an "un-man." How many do you see anyhow that you would not throw into the "egoistic mass"? What, therefore, has your philanthropy [love of man] found? Nothing but unlovable men! And where do they all come from? From you, from your philanthropy! You brought the sinner with you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore you inserted him everywhere. Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you alone are the creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love men, are the very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into vicious and virtuous, into men and un-men, the very one to befoul them with the slaver of your possessedness; for you love not men, but man. But I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have only — dreamed of him.

People have always supposed that they must give me a destiny lying outside myself, so that at last they demanded that I should lay claim to the human because I am — man. This is the Christian magic circle. Fichte's ego too is the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego has rights, then it is "the ego," it is not I. But I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique. Hence my wants too are unique, and my deeds; in short, everything about me is unique. And it is only as this unique I that I take everything for my own, as I set myself to work, and develop myself, only as this. I do not develop men, nor as man, but, as I, I develop — myself. This is the meaning of the — unique one.

I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique.