 Section 25 of the Ego and His Own This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner. Now into Course Part 2. 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 or family love is observed by its members. The 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 his 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 a laugh from doubting their basis, the family. To every member of the family one thing must be fixed and sacred, this. 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 makes you cede from it, else he becomes a criminal against the family. He may never pursue and interest hostile to the family, e.g. from a misalliance. He who does this has dishonoured the family, put it to shame, etc. Now if an individual, the egoistic impulse has not forced enough, he complies and makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank which harmonises with its position, etc. Going short he does honour to the family. If on the contrary the egoistic blood flows priorly through his things 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 dishonour my family tree, to affront parents, brothers and kindred. 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 sculpt behind the semblance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul and growing from hour to hour becomes a passion. So whom does it occur at first blush that the slightest thought which may result adversely to the spirit of the family, piety, bears with it a transgression against this? Nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely conscious of the matter. It happens so with Juliet, Eromio 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 willful ones that grant more other hearing to their passion than to piety. The good Protestants use the same excuse with much success against the Catholics and believed in it themselves, but it is just a subterfuge to roll the fault of 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 lacked piety. They are not thrust out but thrust themselves out, pricing their passion, their willfulness, higher than the bond of the family. But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less passionate and willful 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 the 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 time. What if the pliable girl, unconscious of having left herself well unsatisfied and humbly subjected herself to a higher power, subjected and sacrificed because the superstition or piety exercised its dominion over her? Their egoism won. Here piety wins and the egoistic heart bleeds. Their 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, ego, e.g. phrases when he wants to have matchmaking left at the choice of the parents. As a sacred communion to which, among the rest, the individual owes obedience. The family has the judicial function to vested in it, such as a family court is described, e.g. in the Cannabis of Rolabad, 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 from the means of his 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 the post-states. In most cases, the state protects even against disinheritance. The criminal against the family, family Grinmore, 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 graceful son, is protected against the family's punishment because the state, this protecting lord, takes away from family punishments its sacredness and profanes it, decreeing that it is only revenge. It restrains punishment, this sacred family right, because before it, the state's sacredness, the subordinate sacredness of the family always perils and loses its sanctity as soon as it comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict, the state lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family, but in the opposite case, it even commands crime against the family, charging E.G. the son to refuse obedience to his parents as soon as they want to beguile him to a crime against the state. Well, the egoist has broken the ties of the family and found in the state a lord to shelter him against the grievously affronted spirit of the family. But where has he run now? Straight into a new society in which his egoism is awaited by the same snares and nets that it has just escaped. For the state is likewise a society, not a union. It is the broadened family, father of the country, mother of the country, children of the country. What is called a state is a tissue and plexus of dependence and adherence. It is a belonging together, a holding together, in which those who are placed together fit themselves to each other. Or, in short, mutually dependent on each other. It is the order of this dependence. Suppose the king, whose authority learns authority to all down to the beedle, should vanish. Still, all in whom the will for order was awake would keep order erect against the disorders of personality. If order were victorious, the state would be at an end. But is this thought of love to fit ourselves to each other, to adhere to each other and depend on each other, really capable of winning us? According to this, the state should be loved realize, the being for each other and living for each other of all. Is not self-will being lost while we attend to the will for order? While people not be satisfied when order is cared for by authority, i.e. when authority sees to it that no one gets in the way of a mother, when, then, the herd is judiciously disrupted or ordered. Why, then, everything is in the best order, and it is this best order that is called state. Our societies and states are without our making them, are united without our uniting, are predestined and established or have an independent standing of their own, are the indissolubly established against us egoists. The fight of the world today is, as it is said, directed against the established. Yet people are wont to misunderstand this, as if it were only that what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment itself. The state, not a particular state, not ends such thing as the mere condition of the state at the time. It is not another state, e.g. a people state, that men aim at, but their union, uniting, is ever fluid uniting of everything standing. A state exists even without my cooperation. I am born in it, brought up in it, and obligations to it, and must do it homage. It takes me up into its favor, and I live by its grace. Thus, the independent establishment of the state finds my lack of independence, its condition as a natural growth. Its organism demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it, but it may be able to unfold in natural growth. It applies to me the shears of civilization. It gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me, e.g., to respect the laws, to refrain from injury to state property, i.e. private property, to reverence divine and earthly highness, etc. In short, it teaches me to be unpunishable, sacrificing my ownness to sacredness. Everything possible is sacred, e.g., property, others, life, etc. In this consists a sort of civilization and culture that the state is able to give me. It brings me up to be a serviceable instrument, a serviceable member of society. Yes, every state must do. The people's state as well as the absolute or constitutional one. It must do so as long as we rest in the error that it is an I, as which it then applies to itself the name of a moral, mystical or political person. I, who really am I, must pull off this lion's skin of the eye from the stalking fissile eater. What many thought robbery have I not put up with in the history of the world? There I let sun, moon and stars, cats and crocodiles receive the honour of ranking as I. There Jehovah, Allah, and our father came and were invested with the I. There families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually mankind came and were honoured as I's. There the church and the state came with the potential to be I, and I gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then there was always a real I to that joined the company and affirmed in my face that it was not my you but my real I. Why the son of man, par excellence, had done the like, why should not a son of man do it too? So I saw my I always above me and outside me and could never really come to myself. I never believed in myself. I never believed in my present. I saw myself only in the future. The boy believes he will be a proper I, a proper fellow only when he has become a man. The man thinks only in the other world will he be something proper and to enter more closely upon reality at once even the best are today still persuading each other that one must have received into himself the state, his people, mankind and what not in order to be a real I, a free burger, a citizen, a free or true man. They too see the truth and reality of me in the reception of an alien I and devotion to it and what sort of an I an I that is neither an I nor a you, a fancied I, a spook. While in the Middle Ages the church would well book many states living united in it, the states learned after the reformation especially after the Thirty Years' War to tolerate many churches, confessions, gathering under one crown. But all states are religious and as the case may be Christian states and make it their task to force the intractable the egoists under the bond of the unnatural, eg, Christianize them. All arrangements of the Christian state have the object of Christianizing the people. Thus the court has the object of forcing people to justice, the school back of forcing them to mental culture. In short, the object of protecting those who act Christianly against those who act un-Christianly of bringing Christian action to dominion, of making it powerful. Among these means of force, the state counted the church too. It demanded a particular religion from everybody. Dupin said lately against the clergy, instruction and education belonging to the state. Certainly everything that regards the principle of morality is a state affair. Hence it is that the Chinese state meddles so much in family concerns and one is nothing there if one is not first of all a good child to his parents. Family concerns are altogether state concerns with us too, only that our state puts confidence in the families without painful oversight. It holds the family bonds by the marriage tie and this tie cannot be broken without it. But that the state makes me responsible for my principles and demands certain ones from me might make me ask what concern has it with the wheel in my head? Principle? Very much, for the state is the ruling principle. It is supposed that in divorced matters, in marriage law in general, the question is of the proportion of rights between church and states. Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is to rule over man, be it good faith or ethical law, morality. The state behaves as the same ruler that the church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality. People talk of the tolerance, believing opposite tendencies, free, etc. by which civilised states are distinguished. Certainly some are strong enough to lurk without complacency or even the most unrestrained meetings, while others charge their catch-polls to go hunting for tobacco pipes. Yet for one state, as for another, the play of individuals among themselves, their buzzing to and fro, their daily life, is an incident which it must be content to leave to themselves because it can do nothing with this. Many indeed still strain out mats and swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are freer in the latter, because less pestered. But I am free in no state. The lauded tolerance of states is simply a tolerating of the harmless, but not dangerous. It is only elevation above petty-mindedness, only a more esteemed, grander, prouder despotism. A certain state seemed for a while to mean to be pretty well elevated above literary combats, which might be carried on with all heat. England is elevated above popular turmoil and tobacco smoking, but woe to the literature that deals blows at the state itself. Woe to the mobs that endanger the state. In that certain state, they dream of a free silence, in England of a free, popular life. A state does let individuals play as free as possible, only they must not be in earnest, must not forget it. Man must not carry on intercourse with man, unconcernedly, not without superior oversight and radiation. I must not execute all that I am able to, but only so much as the state allows. I must not turn to account my faults nor my work, nor in general anything of mine. The state always has the sole purpose to limit ten subordinate the individual to making subject to some generality or other. It lasts only so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly marked restriction of me, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a state aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to the purpose of the state. Through the state, nothing in common comes to pass either, as little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of all the individual parts of a machine. It is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit, machine work. In the same style everything is done by the state machines too, for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The state seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The state wants to make something out of man, therefore they're living it only made man. Everyone who wants to be his own self is its opponent and is nothing. He is nothing means as much as the state does not make use of him, grants him no position, no office, no trade, etc. Edgar Buehr in the Liberal-Best-Rebanjan, volume 2 page 50, is still dreaming of a government which proceeding out of the people can never stand in opposition to it. He does indeed, page 69, himself take back the word government. In the Republic no government at all obtains but only an executive authority, an authority which proceeds purely and alone out of the people, which has not an independent power, independent principles, independent officers, over against the people, but which has its foundation, the fountain of its power and of its principles in the sole supreme authority of the state in the people. The concept government, therefore, is not at all suitable in the people state, but the thing remains the same. That which has proceeded, been founded, sprung from the fountain, becomes something independent and, like a child delivered from the room, enters upon a position at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would be nothing at all. In the free state there is no government, etc. Page 94, this surely means that the people, when it is the sovereign, does not let itself be conducted by a superior authority. Is it per chance different in absolute monarchy? Is there, there, for the sovereign, per chance, a government standing over him, even the sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never stands a government that is understood of itself, but over me there will stand a government in every state, in the absolute as well as in the republican or free. I am as badly off in one as in the other. 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. Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing to be only an instrument. The ministers dominion over the master the prince, the deputies over the master the people, here then the parties at least are already free, the delicients, the office holders party, so called people's party. The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, the people down to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic, because it is the state, in super-20 dissolution. Edgar Bure denies page 56 that the people is a personality and the constitutional state, her contra, then in the republic, well in the constitutional state the people is a party, the party is surely a personality if one is once resolved to talk of a political page 76, moral person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or even the lord, is a no-wise a person but a spoof. Further, Edgar Bure goes on page 69. Guardianship is the characteristic of a government, truly still more than other people and people's state. It is the characteristics of all dominion, a people's state which unites in itself all completeness of power. The absolute master cannot let me become powerful. And what a chimera to be no longer willing to call the people's official servants instruments, because they execute the free rational law will of the people, page 73. He thinks page 74, only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the state, but his people's state is to have unity too. How will a lack of subordination be allowed there? Subordination to the people's will. In the constitutional state it is the regent and his disposition that the whole structure of government rests on in the end, page 130. How would that be otherwise in the people's state? Shall I not there be governed by the people's disposition too? And does it make a difference for me whether I see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called public opinion? If dependence means as much as religious relation as Edgar Bure rightly alleges, then in the people's state the people remains for me, the superior power, the majesty. For God and princes have their proper essence in majesty, to which I stand in religious relations. Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no law. Edgar Bure's whole attempt comes to a change of masters. Instead of wanting to make the people free, he should have had his mind on the sole realisable freedom, his own. In the constitutional state, absolutism itself has at last come a conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into agility. The government wants to be absolute, and the people want to be absolute. These two absolutes will wear out against each other. End of section 25, recording by Elaine Webb, restored England. Section 26 of The Ego and His Own. This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org. The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner. My Intercourse Part 3. Edgar Bure invades against the determination of the regent by birth, by chance, but when the people have become the sole power in the state, page 132, have we not been in it a master from chance? Why, what is the people? The people has always been only the body of the government. It is many under one hat, a prince's hat, or many under one constitution, and the constitution is the prince. Princes and peoples will persist so long as both do not collapse, i.e., fall together. If under one constitution there are many peoples, as in the ancient Persian, Monarchy and today, then these peoples rank only as provinces. For me, the people is, in any case, an accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome. What is one to think of under the name of an organized people, page 132? A people that no longer has a government, that governs itself in which, therefore, no ego stands out commonly. A people organized by ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat. If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince, for the people, if it is to be a subject and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a head, its supreme head. Whitelink sets this forth in Diyupayashi, Taiachi and Proudhon, declares, unsusai-te, pro-eng-zi-da-ashif-el, ne-pu-vi-ev. The Vox Populi is now always held up to us, and public opinion is to rule our prince. Certainly, the Vox Populi is, at the same time, the Vox Dei, but is either of any use, and is not the Vox principal's also Vox Dei. At this point, the nationals may be brought to mind, to demand of the thirty-eight states of Germany, that they shall act as one nation, and only be put alongside the censeless desire, that thirty-eight swarms of bees, led by thirty-eight queen bees, unite themselves into one swarm. Bees they all remain, but it is not the bees as bees, that belong together and can join themselves together. It is only that the subject bees are connected with the ruling queens. Bees and people are destitute of will, and the instinct of their queens leads them. If one were to point the bees to their beehood, which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why Germanhood is just like beehood, in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears, I mean to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, i.e. beehives, but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as perilous as the isolated bee, and yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of people are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the peoples are regarded, as one that have come together, are destitute of will, only with the last separation, the separation itself end and change to unification. Now the nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood, but the self-owed are going to fight for the unity will by their own will for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes that they want to set up something general, abstract and empty, lifeless concept, indistinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively, particular, from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a people, a nation, wrought from the earth. The self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials, the two efforts that have just married the order of the day to wit, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions, Franks Bavarians, Lucetisha, etc., and the restoration of the entire nationality, coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, i.e. unite themselves, only when they knock over their beehood, as well as all the beehives, in other words, when they are more than Germans, only then can they form a German union. They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let everyone turn into himself. How ridiculously sentimental will one German grasp another's hand and presses it with sacred awe, because he too is a German? With that, he is something great. But this will certainly still be thought touching, as long as people are enthusiastic for brotherliness, i.e. as long as they have a family disposition. From the superstition of piety, from brotherliness, or charred likeness, or however else the soft-hearted piety phrases run, from the family spirit, the nationals, who want to have a great family of Germans, cannot liberate themselves. Aside from this, the so-called nationals would only have to understand themselves rightly in order to lift themselves out of their juncture with the good nature to terminates. For the uniting of material ends and interests, which they demand of the Germans, comes to nothing else than the voluntary union. Carrier, inspired cries out, Well roads are to the more penetrating eye the way to a life of the people, e.g. has not yet anywhere appeared in such significance. Quite right, it will be a life of the people that has nowhere appeared, because it is not a life of the people. So Carrier then conducts himself, page 10. Pure humanity, or manhood, cannot be better represented than by a people fulfilling its mission. Why, by this nationality, only is represented. Washed-out gem-reality is lower than the form complete in itself, which is itself a whole, and lives as a living member of the truly general, the organized. Why, the people is this very washed-out gem-reality, and it is only a man that is the form complete in itself. The impersonality of what they call people-nation is clear also from this, that a people which wants to bring its eye into view to the best of its power puts at its head the ruler without will. It finds itself in the alternative either to be subjected to a prince who realizes only himself is individual pleasure, then it does not recognize in the absolute master its own will, the so-called will of the people, or to seat on the throne a prince who gives effort to know will of his own. Then it has a prince without will, who's placed some ingenious clockwork would perhaps fail just as well. Therefore, inside need go only a step further, then it becomes clear of itself that the eye of the people is an impersonal spiritual power, the law. The people's eye, therefore, is a spook, not an eye, eye and eye only by this, that I make myself, i.e. that it is not another who makes me, but I must be my own work. But how is it with this eye of the people? Chance plays it into the people's hand, chance gives it this or that, or the lord. Accidents procure it the chosen one. He is not its, the sovereign, people's product, as I am my product. Conceive of one wanting to talk you into believing that you were not your eye, but Tom or Jack was your eye. But so it is with the people, and rightly, all the people has an eye as little as the eleven planets counter-together have an eye, though they revolve around a common centre. Bailey's utterance is representative of the slave disposition that folks manifest before the sovereign people as before the prince. I have, says he, no longer any extra reason why the general reason has pronounced itself. My first law was the nation's will, but as soon as it had assembled, I knew nothing beyond its sovereign will. He would have no extra reason, and yet his extra reason alone accomplishes everything. Just so, Mirabia invades in the world no power on earth has the right to say to the nation's representatives, it is my will. As with the Greeks, there is now a wish to make a man zoon politicion, a scientist of the state or political man. So he ramped for a long time as a citizen of heaven, but the Greek fell into ignominy, along with his state, the citizen of heaven likewise falls with heaven. We, on the other hand, are not willing to go down along with the people, the nation and nationality, not willing to be merely political men or politicians. Since the revolution, they have striven to make the people happy, and in making the people happy, great, etc., they make us unhappy. The people's good clap is my mishap. What empty talk the political liberals utter with empathic decorum is well seen again in murex on taking part in the state. Fair complaint is made of those who are indifferent and do not take part, who are not in the false sense citizens, and the author speaks as if one cannot be man at all if one did not take a lively part in state affairs, i.e. if one were not a politician. In this he is right, for if the state ranks as the warder of everything human, we can have nothing human without taking part in it. But what does this make out against the egoist? Nothing at all. Because the egoist is to himself the warder of the human and has nothing to say to the state except get out of my sunshine. Only when the state comes in contact with his ownness does the egoist take an active interest in it. If the condition of the state does not bear hard on the closet philosopher is he to occupy himself with it because it is his most sacred duty? So long as the state does according to his wish what need has he to look up from his studies? Let those who form an interest of their own want to have conditions otherwise busy themselves with them. Not now, more ever more, but sacred duty bring folks to reflect about the state as little as they become disciples of science, artists, etc. from sacred duty. Egoism alone can impel them to it and will as soon as things have become much worse. If you showed folks that the egoism demanded that they busy themselves with state affairs you would not have to call on them long. If, on the other hand, you appealed to their love of Babylon, etc. you will long preach to the deaf hearts in behalf of this service of love. Certainly, in your sense, the egoists will not participate in state affairs at all. In Newell Wreck utters a genuine liberal phrase on page 16 Man completely fulfills his calling only in feeling and knowing himself as a member of humanity and being active as such. The individual cannot realise the idea of manhood if he does not stay himself upon all humanity if he does not draw his powers from it like Anteus. In the same place it is said man's relation to the rarest publicer is degraded to a purely private matter by the theological view is accordingly made away with by denial as it if the political view did otherwise with religion their religion is a private matter. If instead of sacred duty, man's destiny, the calling to full manhood and similar commandments, it were held up to the people that their self-interest was infringed on when they let everything in the state go as it goes. Then, without declamations, they would be addressed as one will have to address them at the decisive moment if he wants to attain his end. Instead of this, the theology-heating author says if there has ever been a time when the state laid claim to all that are hers, such a time is ours. The thinking man sees in participation in the theory and practice of the state a duty, one of the most sacred duties that rest upon him and then takes under closer consideration the unconditional necessity that everybody participates in the state. He in whose head or heart or both the state is seated, he who is possessed by the state or the believer in the state is a politician and remains such to all eternity. The state is the most necessary means for the complete development of mankind. It assuredly has been so long as we wanted to develop mankind and develop ourselves, it can be to us only a means of hindrance. Can state and people still be reformed and better now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church, etc. they can be abrogated, annihilated, burn away with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense into sense by reforming it? Almost I drop it outright. Henceforth, what is to be done is no longer about the state, the form of the state, etc., but about me. With this, all questions about the Prince's power, the Constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my creations from myself. To the chapter of society belongs also the party, whose praise has of late been sung. In the state the party is current, party-party who should not join one, but the individual is unique, not a member of the party. He unites freely and separates freely again. The party is nothing but a state in the state, and in the smaller the state, peace is also to rule just as in the greater. The very people who cry loudest that there must be an opposition in the state convey against every discord in the party, a proof that they too want only a state. All parties are shattered, not against the state, but against the ego. One hears nothing, often learn now, to remain true to his party. Party-men despise nothing so much as a mugwump. One must run with his party through thick and thin, and unconditionally approve and represent its chief principles. It does not need to go quite so badly here as with closed societies, because these bind the members to fixed laws or statutes, e.g. the orders, the society of Jesus, etc. But yet the party ceases to be a union at the same moment at which it makes certain principles binding and wants to have them assured against the tax. But this moment is the very birth act of the party. As party it is already a born society, a dead union, an idea that has become fixed. As a party of absolutism, it cannot well that its members should not doubt the irrefutable truth of this principle. They could cherish this doubt only if they were egoistic enough to want still to be something outside their party, i.e. non-partisans. Non-partisans they cannot be as party-men, but only as egoists. If you are a Protestant and belong to that party, you must only justify Protestantism at most, urge it, not reject it. If you are a Christian and belong among men to the Christian party, you cannot be beyond this as a member of this party, but only when your egoism, i.e. non-partanship, inhales you to it. What exertions the Christians down to Hegel and the Communists have put forth to make the party strong? They stuck to it that Christianity must contain the eternal truth, and that one needs only to get at it, make sure of it and justify it. In the short, the party cannot bear non-partianship and it is in this that egoism appears. What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag. He who passes over from one party to another is at once abused as a turncoat. Certainly, morality demands that one stand by his party and to become a prostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of faithfulness. Oneness knows no commandment of faithlessness, adhesion, etc. Oneness permits everything, even apostasy, defection. Unconsciously, even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this principle when they have to judge one who passes over to their party. Nay, they are likely to be making proselytes. They should only at the same time require a consciousness of the fact that one must commit immoral actions in order to commit his own, i.e. here that one must break faith, yes, even his own, in order to determine himself instead of being determined by moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict moral judgments and will not easily obtain their confidence for theirs sticks to him the stain of faithfulness, i.e. of an immorality. In the lower man, this view is found almost generally advanced thinkers fall here too as always into an uncertainty and bewilderment and the contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of morality on account of the confusion of their concepts come clearly to their consciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate downright immoral because they themselves entice the apostasy to defection from one religion to another, etc. Still, they cannot give up the standpoint of morality either and yet here the occasion was to be seized Are the own or unique? Could chance a party? How could they be owned if they were e.g. belonged to a party? Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and entertaining their circle, one forms a union with them that lasts as long as party and I pursue one and the same goal. But today I still share the party's tendency as by tomorrow I can do so no longer and I become untrue to it. The party has nothing binding, obligatory for me and I do not have respect for it if it no longer pleases me I become its foam. In every party that cares for itself and its persistence, the members are unfree or better unknown. In that degree, they lack egoism in which they serve the desire of the party. The independence of the party conditions the lack of independence in the party members. A party of whatever kind it may be can never deal without a confession of faith. For those who belong to the party must believe in its principle and doubt or put in question by them. It must be certain in due to both being for the party member that is one must belong to a party body and soul. Else one is not truly a party man, but more or less an egoist. Harbour a doubt of Christianity and you are already no longer a true Christian. You have lifted yourself to the effrontery of putting a question beyond it and hailing Christianity before your egoistic judgment seat. You have sinned against Christianity. This party cause, but it is surely not a cause for the Jews, another party. But well for you if you do not let yourself be affrighted, your effrontery helps you to own us. An egoist could never embrace a party or take up with a party. Oh yes only he cannot let himself be embraced and taken up by the party. For him the party remains all the time nothing but a gathering. He is one of the party. He takes part. The best state will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens and the devoted mind for legality is lost. So much the more will the state, this system of morality, this more life itself be diminished in force and quality. With the good citizens the good state too perishes and dissolves into anarchy and lawlessness. Respect for the law. By this cement the total of the state is held together. The law is sacred and he who affronts it a criminal. Without crime no state the moral world and this the state is is crammed full of stamps, cheats, liars, thieves etc. Since the state is the lordship of law it's hierarchy it follows that the egoist in all cases where his advantage runs against the states can satisfy himself by crime. A state cannot give up the claim that its laws and ordinances are sacred. At this the individual ranks as the unholy barbarian matrimon, egoist. Over against the state exactly as he once was regarded by the church before the individual the state takes on the nimbus of a saint. Thus it issues a law against dueling two men who are both at one in this that they are willing to stake their life for a cause no matter what are not to be allowed this because the state will not have it. It imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? It is at once quite another situation if as E.G. in North America society determines to let the individualists spare certain evil consequences of their act. E.G. withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is everybody's affair and if a society wants to withdraw it for this or that reason the man who is hit cannot therefore complain of enroachment on his liberty. The society is simply availing itself of its own liberty. Fact is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a crime. The dual is no crime there but only an act against which the society adopts countermeasures resolves on a defence. The state on the contrary stamps the dual as a crime i.e. as an injury to its sacred law. It makes a criminal case. The society leaves it to the individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action and thereby recognises his free decision. The state behaves in exactly the reverse way denying all right to the individual's decision and instead prescribing the soul right to its own decision. The law of the state so that he retraces the state's commandment is looked upon as if he were acting against God's commandment a view which likewise was once maintained by the church. Here God is the holy in and of himself and the commandments of the church as of the state are the commandments of this holy one which he transmits to the world through his eminent and lords by the grace of God. If the church had deadly sins the state has capital crimes. If the one had heretics the other has traitors the one ecclesiastical penalties the other criminal penalties the one in custodial process the other fiscal. In short their sins hear crimes their inquisition and hear inquisition Will the sanctity of the state not fall like the church's? The awe of its laws the reverence for its highness the humility of its subjects Will this remain? Will the saint's face not be stripped of its adornment? What a folly to ask of the state's authority that it should enter into an honourable fight with the individual and as they express themselves in the matter of freedom of the press share sun and wind equally If the state, this thought is to be a de facto power it simply must be a superior power against the individual The state is sacred and must not expose itself to the impudent attacks of individuals If the state is sacred there must be censorship the political liberals emit the former and dispute the interference but in any case they concede depressive measures to it for they stick to this that state is more than the individual and exercises a justified revenge called punishment Punishment has a meaning only when it is to afford expiation for the injuring of a sacred thing If something is sacred to anyone he certainly deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy A man who lets a man's life continue in existence because to him it is sacred and he has a dread of touching it is simply a religious man Wightling lays pride at the door of social disorder and lives in the expectation that under communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible because the temptations to them e.g. money fall away as however his organized society is also exalted into a sacred and embroilable one he miscopilates in that good-hearted opinion e.g. with their mouth professed alliance to the communistic society but worked underhand for its ruin but not the lacking besides Wightling has to keep on with curative means against the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses and curative means always announced to begin with that individual's will be looked upon as to a particular salvation and hence treated according to the requirements of this human calling Curative means or healing is only the reversed side of punishment The theory of cure is parallel with the theory of punishment If Galata sees in an action a sin against Wight the former takes it for a sin of the man against himself as a decadence from his health but the correct thing is that I regard it either as an action that suits me or as one that does not suit me as hostile or friendly to me i.e. that I treat it as my property which I cherish or demolish Crime or disease are not either of them an egoistic view of the matter i.e. a judgment starting from me but starting from another to Witt whether it injures Wight General Wight or the health partly of the individual that a sick one partly of the gene reality society Crime is treated inerexibly disease with loving gentleness compassion etc End of Section 26 Recording by Elaine Webb Restore England Section 27 of the Ego and His Own This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information on the volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner My Intercourse Part 4 Punishment follows crime If crime falls because the sacred vanishes punishment must not less be drawn into its fall for it too has significance only over against something sacred Ecclesiastical punishments have been abolished Why? Because how one behaves toward the Holy God is his own affair But as this one punishment Ecclesiastical punishment has fallen so all punishments must fall as sin against the so called God is a man's own affair so is that against every kind of the so called sacred According to our theories of Plino Law with whose improvement in conformity to the times people are tormenting themselves in vain They want to punish men for this or that in humanity and therein they make the silliness of these theories especially played by their consistency Hang in the little fees and letting the big ones run For injury to property they have the house of correction and for violence to fought suppression of natural rights of man only representations and petitions The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred and perishes of itself if punishment is given up Now they want to create everywhere a new Plino Law without indulging in a misgiving about punishment itself But it is exactly punishment that must make room for satisfaction cannot aim at satisfying rightful justice but at procuring us a satisfactory outcome If one does to us what we will not put up with we break his power and bring our own to bear We satisfy ourselves on him and do not fall into the folly of wanting to satisfy right the spook It is not the sacred that is to treat itself against man but man against man as God too you know no longer defends himself against man God to whom formally and in part indeed even now all the servants of God offered their hands to punish the blasphemer as they still at this very day lend their hands to the sacred This devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also that without lively participation of one's own one only delivers misduers into the hands of the police and courts a non-participating maker over to the authorities who of course for the best administers sacred matters The people is quite crazy for hounding the police on against everything that seems to be immoral often only unseemingly and this popular rage for the moral protects the police institution more than the government could in any way protect it In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred to break with the sacred or rather of the sacred may become general The revolution never returns but a mighty, reckless, shameless, consciousness proud crime does it not rumble in distant thunders and do you not see how the sky grows persistently silent and gloomy He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family party nation is still always looking for a worthier society and thinks he has found the true object of love perhaps in human society or mankind to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor from now on he lives for and serves mankind People is the name of the body state of the spirit of that ruling person that has hitherto suppressed me some have wanted to force figure peoples and states by broadening them out to mankind and general reason that servitude would only become still more intense with this widening and philanthropist and humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians and diplomats Modern critics invade against religion because it sets God the divine, moral et cetera outside of man or makes them something objective in opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects into man but those critics none the less fall into the proper error of religion to give man a destiny in that they too want to have him divine, human and the like morality, freedom and humanity et cetera are his essence and like religion politics too wanted to educate man to bring him to the realization of his essence his destiny to make something out of him to wit a true man the one in the form of the true believer the other in fact of the true citizen or subject in fact it comes to the same whether one calls the destiny the divine or human under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of should he should become this and that should be so and so with this postulate this commandment everyone steps not only in front of another but also in front of himself those critics say you should be a whole free man thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new religion to set up a new absolute an ideal to wit, freedom men should be free then there might even arise missionaries of freedom as Christianity in the conviction that all were destined to become Christians sent out missionaries of the faith freedom would then as have hitherto faith as church morality as state constitute itself as a new community and carry on a like propaganda therefrom certainly no objection can be raised against the getting together but so much the more must one choose every renewal of the old care for us of culture directed to reward and end in short the principle of making something out of us no matter whether Christians subjects or free men and men one may well say we are few about and others that religion has displaced the human from man and has transferred it to a world that unattainable it went on with its own existence there as something personal in itself as the god but the error of religion is by no means exhausted with this one might very well let fall the personality of the displaced human might transform god into the divine and still remain religious for the religious it consists in discontent with the present men in the setting up of a perfection to be striven for in man wrestling for his completion yet therefore should be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect Matthew 548 it consists in the fixation of an ideal an absolute perfection is the supreme good the phenus borenum everyone's ideal is the perfect man the true the free man etc the efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of that free man if one could find it there would be a new religion because a new ideal there would be a new longing a new torment a new devotion a new reality a new contrition with the ideal of absolute liberty the same term rule is made as with everything absolute and according to Hess e.g it is said to be realizable in absolute human society may this realization is immediately afterward styled a vocation just so he then defines liberty as morality the kingdom of justice equality and morality i.e liberty is to begin etc ridiculous is he who while fellows of his tribe family nation rank high is nothing but puffed up over the merit of his fellows but blinded too is he who wants only to be man neither of them puts his work in exclusiveness but in connectedness or in the tie that conjoins with him with others in the ties of blood of nationality of humanity through the nationals of today the conflict has again be stirred up between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties of blood and the others who brag of their special blood and the special ties of blood if we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit and take it for consciousness alone there is bound to be a vast difference between pride in belonging to a nation and therefore being its property and that in calling a nationality one's property nationality is my quality but the nation my owner and mistress if you have bodily strength you can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride of it if on the contrary your strong body has you then it pricks you everywhere and at the most unsuitable place to show its strength you can give nobody your hand without squeezing his the perception that one is more than a member of the family more than a fellow of the tribe more than an individual of the people has finally led to saying one is more than all of this because one is man or the man is more than the Jew, German etc therefore be everyone, holy and solely man could one not rather say because we are more than what has been stated therefore we will be this as well as that more also man and Germans then man and Guru etc the nationals are in the right one cannot deny his nationality and the humanitarians are in the right one must not remain in the narrowness of the national in uniqueness the contradiction is solved the national is my quality but I am not swallowed up in my quality as the human too is my quality but I give to man his existence first through my uniqueness history seeks for man but he is I, you, we sought as a mysterious essence as the divine first as God then as man, humanity humaneness and mankind he is found as the individual, the finite the unique one I am owner of humanity and humanity and do nothing for the good of another humanity for you you are a unique humanity that you make a merit of wanting to live for another than you are the hitherto considered relation of me to the world of men offers such a wealth of phenomena that it will have to be taken up again and again on other occasions but here where it was only to have its chief outlines made clear to the eye it must be broken off to make place for an apprehension of two other sides toward which it radiates for as I find myself in relation not merely to men so far as they present in themselves the concept of man or our children of men children of man as children of God are spoken of but also to that which they have of man and called their own and as therefore I relate myself not only to that which they are through man but also to their human possessions so besides the world of men the world of the sense and of ideas will have to be included in our survey and somewhat said of what men call their own of sensuous goods and of spiritual as well according as one had developed and clearly grasped the concept of man he gave it to us respect as this or that person of respect and from the broadest understanding of this concept there proceeded at last the command to respect man in everyone but if I respect man my respect must likewise extend to the human or what is man's men have somewhat of their own and I am to recognise this own and hold it sacred their own consists partly in outward partly in inward possessions the former are things the latter spiritualities thoughts convictions noble feelings etc but I am always to respect only right for or human possessions the wrongful and unhuman I need not spare for only man's own is man's real own and inward possession of this sort is e.g. religion because religion is free i.e. is man's I must not strike at it just so honour is an inward possession it is free and must not be struck at by me action for insult caricatures etc religion and honour are spiritual property tangible property the person stands foremost my person is my first property hence freedom of the person but only the rightful or human person is free the other is locked up your life is your property but it is sacred for man only if it is not that of an inhuman monster what a man as such cannot defend of bodily goods take from him this is the meaning of competition of freedom of occupation what he cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise so far goes the liberty of discussion of science of criticism but consecrated goods are enviable consecrated and guaranteed by whom approximately by the state society properly by man or the concept the concept of the thing for the concept of consecrated goods is this that they are truly human or rather that the holder possesses them as man and not as unman on the spiritual side man's faith is such goods his honour his moral feeling yes his feeling of decency modesty etc actions speeches writings that touch honour are punishable attacks on the foundations of all religion attacks on political faith in short attacks on everything that a man rightly has how far could colliberalism would extend the sensitivity of goods on this point it has not yet made any pronouncement and doubtless fancies itself to be ill disposed towards or insanity but as it combats egoism it must set limits to it and must not let the unman pounce on the human to its theoretical content for the masses there must correspond a practical snub if it should get into power what extension the concept man receives and what comes to the individual man through it what therefore man and the human are on this point the various grades of liberalism differ and the political the social the humane man are each always claiming more than the other for man he who has best grabbed this concept knows best what is man's the state still grasps this concept in political restriction society and social mankind so it is said is the first to comprehend it entirely or the history of mankind develops it but if man is discovered then we know also what pertains to man as his own man's property the human but let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because man or the concept man entitles him to them because his being man does it what do I care for his right and his claim if he has the right only for man and does not have it from me then for me he has no right his life e.g counts to me only for what it is worth to me I respect either a so-called right of property or his claim to tangible goods nor yet his right to the sanctuary of his inner nature or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities his gods remain un-agreed his goods the sensuous as well as the spiritual are mine and I disclose of them as proprietor in the measure of my might in the property question lies a broader meaning than the limited statement of the question allows to be brought out the third solely to what man call our possessions it is capable of no solution the decision is to be found in him from whom we have everything property depends on the owner the revolution directed his weapons against everything which came from the grace of god e.g. against divine right in whose place the human was confirmed to that which is granted by the grace of god there is a post that which is derived from the essence of man now as men's relation to each other in opposition to the religious dogma which commands a love one another for god's sake had to receive its human position by a love each other for man's sake so the revolutionary teaching could not do otherwise than first as to what concerns the relation of men to the things of this world settle it that the world which hitherto was arranged according to god's ordinance henceforth belongs to man the world belongs to man and is to be accepted by me as his property property is what is mine property in the civic sense means sacred property such that I must respect your property respect for property hence the politicians would like to have everyone possess his little bit of property and they have in part brought about an incredible parcelation by this effort each must have his bone on which he may find something to bite the position of affairs is different in the egoistic sense I do not step shyly back from your property but look upon it always as my property in which I need to respect nothing pray do the like with what you call my property with this view we shall most easily come to an understanding with each other the political liberals are anxious that if possible all servitudes be dissolved and everyone be free lord on his ground even if this ground has only so much area as can have its requirements adequately filled by the manure of one person a farmer in the story married even in his old age that he might profit by his wife's thumb be it ever so little if one only has somewhat of his own to wit a respected property the more such owners such cotters the more free people and good patriots has the state political liberalism like everything religious counts on respect humanness the virtues of love therefore does it live in incestant fixation for in practice people respect nothing and every day the small possessions are brought up again by greater proprietors and that three people change into day laborers if on the contrary the small proprietors had reflected that the great property was also theirs they would not have respectfully themselves out from it and would not have been shut out property as the civic liberals understand it deserves the attacks of the communists and crowd on it is untainable because the civic proprietor is in truth nothing but a property lust man one who is everywhere shut out instead of owning the world as he might he does not own even the poetry point on which he turns around crowd on once not the proprietor but the possessor or our sufferer what does that mean he wants no one to own the land but the benefits of it even though one were allowed only the hundred part of this benefit this fruit is at any rate one's property which he can dispose of at will he who has only the benefit of a field is assuredly not the proprietor of it still less he who as proud on would have it must give up so much of this benefit as is not required for his once but he is the proprietor of the share that has left him proud on therefore denies only such as such property not property itself if we want no longer to leave the land to the landed proprietors but to appropriate it to ourselves we unite ourselves to this end from a union the society that makes itself proprietor if we have good luck in this then those persons cease to be landed proprietors and as from the land so we can drive them out of many another property yet in order to make it our property the property of the conquerors the conquerors form a society which one may imagine so great that it by degrees embraces all humanity but so called humanity too is as such only a thought spook the individuals are its reality and these individuals as a collective mass will treat land and earth not less arbitrarily than an isolated individual or so called proprietor even so therefore property remain standing and that as exclusive too in that humanity this great society excludes the individual from its property perhaps only leases to him gives as a thief a piece of it as it besides excludes everything that is not humanity e.g. does not allow animals to have property so too it will remain and will grow to be that in which all want to have a share will be withdrawn from that individual who wants to have it for himself alone it is made a common estate as a common estate everyone has his share in it and this share is his property right so in our old relations a house which belongs to five heirs is their common estate but the fifth part of the revenue is each one's property proud harm might spare this prolix pathos if he said there are some things that belong only to a few which we others will from now on lay claim or siege let us take them because one comes to property by taking and the property of which for the present we are still deprived came to the proprietors likewise only by taking it can be utilized better if it is in the hands of us all than if the few control it let us therefore associate ourselves for the purpose of this robbery instead of this he tries to get us to believe that society is the original possessor and the sole proprietor of imperceptible right against it the so called proprietors have become thieves if it now deprives of his property the present proprietor it robs him of nothing as it is only availing itself of its imperceptible right so far one comes with the spook of society as a moral person on the contrary what man can obtain belongs to him the world belongs to me do you say anything else by your opposite proposition the world belongs to all all are I and again I but you make out of the all a spook and make it sacred so that then the all becomes the individual's fearful master then the ghost of right places itself on their side proud hon like the communists fights against eagrism therefore they are continuations and consistent carrying out of the Christian principle of love, of sacrifice for something general something alien they complete in property e.g. only what has long been extant as a matter of fact to wit the propertylessness of the individual when the law says add regus potasus omnium pertoinate add singulus proprietus omnirets impero singulidomino this means the king is proprietor for he alone can control and dispose of everything he has potasus and imperium over it the communists make this clearer transferring that imperium to the society of all therefore because enemies of eagrism they are on that account or more generally speaking religious men believers in ghosts, dependence servants of some generality god society etc in this too proud hon is like the Christians that he ascribes to god that which he denies to men he names him the proprietor of the earth herewith he proves that he cannot think away the proprietor as such he comes to a proprietor at last but removes him to the other world neither god nor man human society is proprietor but the individual end of section 27 recording by Elaine Webb Bristol, England