 Section 17 of The Ego and His Own, Humane Liberalism Part 3. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mungol French. The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner. Do I now reject what Liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be the day that anything one should be lost, only after man has become free through Liberalism. I turn my gaze upon myself and confess to myself openly. What man seems to have gained, I alone have gained. Man is free when man is to man the Supreme Being. So it belongs to the completion of Liberalism that every other Supreme Being be annulled. Theology overturned by Anthropology. God and His Grace laughed down. Atheism universal. The egoism of property has given up the last that it had to give when even that my God has become senseless. For God exists only when he has at heart the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in him. Political Liberalism abolished the inequality of masters and servants. It made people masterless and archic. The master was now removed from the individual, the egoist, to become a ghost. The law or the state. Social Liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, or the poor and rich, and makes people possessionless or propertyless. Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society. Humane Liberalism makes people godless, atheistic. Therefore the individual's God, my God, must be put an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at the same time freedom from service, possessionlessness at the same time freedom from care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from prejudice. But with the master the servant falls away. With possession, the care about it. With the firmly rooted God, the prejudice. But since the master rises again as state, the servants appear again as subject. Since possession becomes the property of society, care is to be gotten anew as labour. And since God as man becomes a prejudice, there arises a new faith. Faith in humanity or liberty. For the individual's God, the God of all, vis-a-vis, man is now exalted. For it is the highest thing in all of us to be man. But as nobody can become entirely what the idea man import. Man remains to the individual aloft the other world, an unattain supreme being, a God. But at the same time this is the true God, because he is fully adequate to us, to wit our own self. We ourselves, but separated from us and lifted above us. Post script. The foregoing review of free human criticism was written by bits immediately after the appearance of the books in question. As was also that which elsewhere refers to writings of this tendency. And I did little more than bring together the fragments. But criticism is restlessly pressing forward. And thereby makes it necessary for me to come back to it once more. Now that my book is finished, and insert this concluding note. I have before me the latest eighth number of the algeminer, literature, Zeitung of Bruno Bauer. There again the general interests of society stand at the top. But criticism has reflected and given this society a specification by which it is discriminated from a form which previously had still been confused with it, the state. In former passages still celebrated as free state, quite is given up, given up because it can in no wise fulfill the task of human society. Criticism only saw itself compelled to identify for a moment human and political affairs in 1842. But now it has found that the state even as free state is not human society. Or as it could likewise say that the people is not man. We saw how it got through with theology and showed clearly that God sinks into dust before man. We see it now come to a clearance with politics in the same way. And show that before man peoples and nationalities fall. So we see how it has its explanation with church and state. Declaring them both unhuman and we shall see for it betrays this to us already. How it can also give proof that before man the masses which it even calls a spiritual being appear worthless. And how should the lesser spiritual beings be able to maintain themselves before the supreme spirit. Man casts down the false idols. So what the critic has in view the present in the scrutiny of the masses which he will place before man. In order to combat them from the standpoint of man. What is now the object of criticism the masses a spiritual being. These the critic will learn to know and will find that they are in contradiction with man. He will demonstrate that they are unhuman and will succeed just as well in this demonstration as in the former ones. That the divine and the national or the concerns of church and of state were the unhuman. The masses are defined as the most significant product of the revolution. As the deceived multitude which the illusions of political illumination and in general the entire illumination movement of the 18th century. Have given over to boundless disgruntlement. The revolution satisfied some by its result and left others unsatisfied. The satisfied part is the commonality bourgeoisie etc. The unsatisfied is the masses does not the critic so placed himself belong to the masses. But the unsatisfied are still in great mistiness and their discontent utters itself only in a boundless disgruntlement. This the likewise unsatisfied critic now wants to master. He cannot want and attain more than to bring that spiritual being the masses out of its disgruntlement and to uplift those who will only disgruntle. I.e. to give them the right attitude toward those results of the revolution which are to be overcome. He can become the head of the masses their decided spokesman. Therefore he wants also to abolish the deep chasm which parts him from the multitude from those who want to uplift the lower classes of the people. He is distinguished by wanting to deliver from disgruntlement not merely these but himself too. But assuredly his consciousness does not deceive him either. When he takes the masses to be the natural opponents of theory and foresees that the more this theory shall develop itself so much the more will it make the masses compact. For the critic cannot enlighten or satisfy the masses with his presupposition. If over against the commonality they are only the lower classes of the people politically insignificant masses. Over against man they must still more be mere masses. Humanly insignificant yes unhuman masses or a multitude of unmen. The critic clears away everything human and starting from the presupposition that the human is the true. He works against himself denying it wherever it had been hitherto found. He proves only that the human is to be found nowhere except in his head but the unhuman everywhere. The unhuman is the real the extant on all hands and by the proof that it is not human. The critic only enunciates plainly the tautological sentence that is the unhuman. But what if the unhuman turning its back on itself with resolute heart should at the same time turn away from the disturbing critic and leave him standing untouched and unstung by his remonstrance. You call me the unhuman it might say to him and so I really am for you. But I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my better self outside me. I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the human. I resemble the pious who hunger for their true self and always remain poor sinners. I thought of myself only in comparison to another. Enough. I was not all in all was not unique. Note original German for unique. Einzig end of note. But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man cease to recognize anything above me. Consequently I do humane critic. I only have been the unhuman and make now no longer but I'm the unique. Yes to your loathing egoistic yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human humane and unselfish by the egoistic as the unique. We have to pay attention to still another sentence of the same number. Criticism sets up no dogmas and wants to learn to know nothing but things. The critic is afraid of becoming dogmatic or setting up dogmas. Of course, why thereby he would become the opposite of the critic, the dogma test. He would now become bad as he is good as critic or would become from an unselfish man and egoist, etc. Of all things, no dogma. This is his dogma. The critic remains on one and the same ground with the dogma test, that of thoughts. Like the latter, he always starts from a thought that varies in this. But he never ceases to keep the principle thought in the process of thinking and so does not let it become stable. He only asserts the thought process against the thought faith, the progress of thinking against stationariness in it. From criticism, no thought is safe since criticism is thought or the thinking mind itself. Therefore, I repeat that the religious world, and this is the world of thought, reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may egoistically establish itself. Where would the purity of criticism, the purity of thinking, be left if even one thought escape the process of thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to jive gently here and there at the thought of man, of humanity and humaneness because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a higher in which it dissolves, for he moves only in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of thinking itself, i.e. as the thought of thinking or of criticism, for example. Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby. Freedom of mind celebrates its triumph. For the individual, egoistic thoughts have lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the dogma of free thinking or of criticism. Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in the right, i.e. in might. It is the victor. Criticism and criticism alone is up to date. From the standpoint of thought there is no power capable of being an overmatch for criticisms. And it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists to be sure a criticism crushes it in all its turns. I am no opponent of criticism, i.e. I am no dogmatist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If I were a dogmatist, I should place at the head of a dogma, i.e. a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete this as a systematist, spinning it out to a system, a structure of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic, vis-a-vis an opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking against the enthralling thought. I should defend thinking against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the champion of thinking for I, from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking and mind is shattered. Criticism is the possessed man's fight against possession as such, against all possession, a fight which is founded in the consciousness that everywhere possession, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude, is extant. He knows that people stand in a religious, believing attitude not only toward God, but toward other ideas as well, like right, the state, law. I, he recognizes possession in all places, so he wants to break up thoughts by thinking. But I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. Which is not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or, I, the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees me from possession. A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of the limb shakes off the torment of thoughts. A leap upward hails from my breast the nightmare of the religious world. A jubilant hooplet throws off year-long burdens, but the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and believing. What clumsiness and frivolity to want to solve the most difficult problems acquit yourself of the most comprehensive tasks by breaking off. But have you tasks if you do not set them to yourself? So long as you set them, you will not give them up, and I certainly do not care if you think, and thinking create a thousand thoughts. But you who have set the tasks, are you not to be able to upset them again? Must you be bound to these tasks, and must they become absolute tasks? To cite only one thing, the government has been disparaged on account of its resorting to forceful means against thoughts, interfering against the press by means of the police power of the censorship, and making a personal fight out of a literary one, as if it were solely a matter of thoughts, and as if one's attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish. Self-denying and self-sacrificing. Do not these thoughts attack the governing parties themselves, and so call out egoism? And do the thinkers not set before the attacked ones the religious demand to reverence the power of thought, of ideas? They are to succumb voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine power of thought, Minerva, fights on their enemy's side. Why? That would be an act of possession, a religious sacrifice to be sure. The governing parties are themselves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the leading power of an idea or a faith, but they are at the same time, unconfessed egoists, and right there, against the enemy, their pent-up egoism breaks loose, possessed in their faith, they are at the same time un-possessed by their opponent's faith, i.e. they are egoists towards this. If one wants to make them a reproach, it could only be the converse, to wit, that they are possessed by their ideas. Against thoughts, no egoistic power is to appear, no police power, etc. So the believers in thinking believe, but thinking and its thoughts are not sacred to me, and I defend my skin against them as against other things. That may be an unreasonable defence, but if I am in duty bound to reason then I, like Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest to it. In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of faith, is the kingdom of heaven, everyone is assuredly wrong who uses unthinking force, just as everyone is wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, although he is a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts un-Christianly in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself to belong though, he nevertheless throws off their laws. He is a sinner or egoist, but it is only when he becomes a criminal against these kingdoms that he can throw off their dominion. Here too the result is this, that the fight of the thinkers against the government is indeed in the right, namely in might, so far as it is carried on against the government's thoughts, the government is dumb and does not succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of, but is on the other hand in the wrong, to wit, in impotence, so far as it does not succeed in bringing into the field anything but thoughts against a personal power, the egoistic power stops the mouth of the thinkers, the theoretical fight cannot complete the victory, and the sacred power of thought succumbs to the might of egoism. Only the egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears up everything. This lasts now to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the single person. Note, original German, des Einzigen, and note, a mere pastime or hobby as it were, and to take from it the importance of being the last decisive power, this degradation and desecration of thinking, this equalization of the unthinking and thoughtful ego at this clumsy but real equality criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only the priest of thinking and sees nothing beyond thinking but the deluge. Criticism does indeed affirm, e.g., that free criticism may overcome the state, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach which is laid upon it by the state government, that it is self-will and impudence. It thinks then that self-will and impudence may not overcome. It alone may. The truth is rather the reverse. The state can be really overcome only by impudent self-will. It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that in the critic's new change of front, he has not transformed himself, but only made good and oversight, disentangled a subject, and is saying too much when he speaks of criticism criticising itself. It, or rather he, has only criticised its oversight and cleared it of its inconsistencies. If he wanted to criticise criticism, he would have to look and see if there was anything in his presupposition. I and my part start from a presupposition in presupposing myself, but my presupposition does not struggle for its perfection, like man struggling for his perfection, which only serves me to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my presupposition and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not presupposition at all, for as I am the unique, I know nothing of the duality of a presupposing and a presupposed ego, an incomplete and a complete ego or man. But this, that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself. And am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and again posited only in the moment when I posit myself, i.e. I am creator and creature in one. If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again, i.e. a thought, or thinking self, criticism. For that dissolution is to be for my good, otherwise it would belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which, in favour of others, e.g. this very man, God, the state, pure morality, etc., declared old truths to be untruths and did away with long fostered presuppositions. End of Section 17, Humane Liberalism Part 3, Recording by Morgan Gullfrench Section 18 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 Matt Sterner. Section 18, Part 2, Owners Part 1 At the entrance of the modern time stands the God-man. At its exit will only the God in the God-man evaporate, and can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were through when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of their illumination. The vanquishing of God, they did not notice that man has killed God in order to become now, soul God on high. The other world outside us is indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the illuminators completed. But the other world in us has become a new heaven, and cause us forth to renewed heaven-storming. God has had to give place, yet not to us, but to man. How can you believe that the God-man is dead before the man in him, besides the God is dead? 1. Owners Subtitle This is a literal translation of the German word einheit, which with its primitive ein, own is used in this chapter in a way that the German dictionaries do not quite recognise. The author's conception being new, he had to make an innovation in the German language to express it. The translator is under the like necessity. In most passages self-ownership, or else personality, would translate the word, but there are some where the fort is so ein, i.e., so peculiar, or so thoroughly the author's own, that no English word I can think of would express it. I will explain itself to one who has read part first intelligently. End of Footnote Does not the spirit thirst for freedom? Alas, not my spirit alone, my body to thirst for it hourly. When before the Adoria's castle kitchen, my nose tells my palate of the savoury dishes that are being prepared therein. It feels a fearful pining as its dry bread, when my eyes tell the hardened back about soft down, on which one may lie more delightfully than on its compressed straw. A suppressed rage seizes it when, but let us not follow the pains further. And you call that a longing for freedom? What do you want to become free from then? From your heart attack and your straw bed? Then throw them away, but that seems not to serve you. You won't rather to have the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and downy beds. Are men to give you this freedom? Are they to permit it to you? You do not hope that from their philanthropy, because you know, they all think like you. Each is the nearest to himself. How therefore do you mean to come to the enjoyment of those foods and beds? Evidently not otherwise than in making them your own property. If you think it over rightly, you do not want the freedom to have all these fine things. For with this freedom, you still do not have them. You want really to have them, to call them yours and possess them as your property. Of what use is a freedom to you? Indeed, if it brings in nothing. And if you become free from everything, you would no longer have anything. For freedom is empty of substance. Who so knows not how to make use of it? For him it has no value. It's useless permission. But how I make use of it depends on my personality. I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more than freedom for you. You should not merely be rid of what you do not want. You should only be a free man. You should be an owner too. 3. From what? Oh, what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke of serfdom, of sovereignty, of aristocracy, and prince, the dominant of the desires and passions. Yes, even the dominion of the desires and passions. Yes, even the domain of one's own will, of self-will. For the completest self-denial is nothing but freedom. Freedom to which? From self-determination, from one's own self. And the craving for freedom, as for something absolute, worthy of every praise, deprived us of oneness. It created self-denial. However, the freer I become, the more compulsion piles up before my eyes, and the more impotent I feel myself. The unfree son of the wilderness does not yet feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilised man. He seems to himself freer than this latter. In the measure that I conquer freedom for myself, I create for myself new bounds and new tasks. If I have invented railroads, I fill myself weak, again because I cannot yet sail through the skies like a bird. And if I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed my mind, at once there await me innumerable others whose perplexities impede my progress, dim my free gaze, make the limits of my freedom painfully sensible to me. Now that you have become free from your sin, you have become servants of righteousness. Do they not become servants of the law? How true Christian hearts at all times long to become free. How they pined to see themselves delivered from the bonds of this earth-life. They looked out toward the land of freedom. The Jerusalem that is above is free woman. She is the mother of all us. Galatians 426 Being free from anything means only being clear or rid. He is free from headache, is equal to, he is rid of it. He is free from his prejudice, is equal to, he has never conceived it, or he has got rid of it, unless we complete the freedom recommended by Christianity, in sinless, godless, morality-less, etc. Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. Ye, dear brethren, are called to freedom, so speak, and so do, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom. Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give it up? No, nothing is to be lost. Freedom no more than the rest, but it is to become our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot. What a difference between freedom and oneness. One can get rid of a great many things. One yet does not get rid of all. One becomes free from much, not from everything. Inwardly, one may be free in spite of the condition of slavery. But though too, it is again only from all sorts of things, not from everything, but from the whip, the domineering temper of the master. One does not as a slave become free. Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams. Oneness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence. It is I myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I control. My own I am at all times and under all circumstances. If I know how to have myself and do not throw myself away on others, to be free is something that I cannot truly will. Because I cannot make it, cannot create it, I can only wish it and aspire toward it. But it remains an ideal, a spook. The fetters of reality put the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment, but my own I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my advantage. His blows strike me indeed. I am not free from them. But I enjoy them only for my benefit, perhaps in order to deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumers. But as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust. But I then become free from him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says I was free, even in the condition of slavery. To wit, intrinsically, or inwardly, but intrinsically free, is not really free, and inwardly is not outwardly. I was own, on the other hand, my own, altogether, inwardly and outwardly. Under the dominion of a cruel master, my body is not free from torment and lashes. But it is my bones that moan under the torture, my fibres that quiver under the blows, and I moan because my body moans. That I sigh and shiver proves that I have not yet lost myself, but I am still my own. My leg is not free from the master's dip, but it is my leg and is inseparable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he still has my leg. He retains in his hand nothing but the corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead dog is still a dog. A dog has a pulsating heart. A so-called dead dog has none, and is therefore no longer a dog. If one opines that a slave may yet be inwardly free, he is said in fact only the most indisputable and trivial thing, for who is going to assert that any man is holy without freedom? If I am an eye-servant, can I therefore not be free from innumerable things, e.g. from faith in Zeus, for the desire for fame, etc. Why then should not a whipped slave also be able to be inwardly free from un-Christian sentiments, from hatred of his enemy, etc. He then has Christian freedom, is rid of the un-Christian, but has he absolute freedom, freedom from everything, e.g. from the Christian delusion, or from bodily pain? In the meantime all this seems to be said more against names than against the thing, but it is the name of indifferent, and has not a word, as syllabus, or is inspired and called men, yet between freedom and oneness, then lies still a deeper chasm than the mere difference of the words. All of the world desires freedom, all long for its reign to come, an enchantingly beautiful dream of a blooming reign of freedom, a free human race, who has not dreamed of it, so men shall become free, entirely free, free from orchestrate. From all constraint, really, from all? Are they never to put constraint on themselves any more? Oh yes, that of course, don't you see, that is no constraint at all, while then, at any rate, they are to become free from religious faith, from the strict duties of morality, from the inexability of the law, from what a fearful misunderstanding. Well, what are they to be free from then, and what not? The lovely dream is dissipated, awakened, one rubs his half-opened eyes, and stares at the prosaic questioner. What men are to be free from? From blind crudility, cries one. What's that? exclaims another. All faith is blind crudility. They must become free from all faith. No, no for God's sake. Invades the first again. Do not cast all faith from you, else the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the republic, a third makes himself heard, and become free from all commanding lords. There is no help in that, says a fourth. We only get a new lord then, a dominant majority. Let us rather free ourselves from this dreadful inequality. O hapless equality, already I hear you plebeian roar again, how I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a paradise of freedom, and what impudence and my situness now raises its wild clamour. Thus the first laments, and get some of his feet to grasp the sword against unmeasured freedom. Soon we no longer hear anything but the clashing of the swords of the disagreeing dreamers of freedom. What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for a particular freedom, e.g. freedom of faith, i.e. the believing man wanted to be free and independent of what? Of faith perhaps? No, but of the inquisitors of faith, so nigh political or civil freedom. The citizen wants to become free, not from citizenhood, but from bureaucracy, the originaries of princes, etc. Prince Medinich once said, he had found a way that was adapted to guide men in the path of genuine freedom for all of the future. The Count of Provence ran away from France, precisely at the time when he was preparing that reign of freedom, and said, my imprisonment had become intolerable to me. I had only one passion, the desire for freedom, I thought only of it. Waving for a particular freedom always includes the purpose of a new dominion, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed could give its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for freedom, but in truth only because they were after a particular freedom, therefore a new dominion, the dominion of the law. Freedom you all want, you want freedom. Why then do you haggle over a more or less? Freedom can only be the whole of freedom. A piece of freedom is not freedom. You despair of the possibility of obtaining the whole of freedom, freedom from everything. Yes, you consider it insanity even to wish this. Well, then leave of chasing after the phantom, and spend your pains on something better than the unattainable. Ah, but there is nothing better than freedom. What have you then when you have freedom, this, for I will not speak here of your piece of bits of freedom, complete freedom. Then you are rid of everything that embraces you. Everything and there is probably nothing that does not once in your life embarrass you and cause you inconvenience. And for whose sake, then, did you want to be rid of it? Boutless, for your sake, because it is in your way. But if something were not inconvenient to you, if on the contrary, it was quite to your mind, e.g. a gently but irresistibly commanding look of your loved one, then you would not want to be rid of it and free from it? Why not, for your sake again? So you take yourselves as measure and judge over all. You gladly let freedom go when unfreedom, the sweet service of love, suits you, and you take up your freedom again on occasion when it begins to suit you better, i.e. supposing which is not the point here, that you are not afraid of such a repel of the union for other, perhaps religious reasons. Why will you not take courage now to really make yourselves the central point and the main thing altogether? Why grasp in the air at freedom in your dream? Are you your dream? Do not begin by inquiring of your dreams, the notions, your thoughts, for that is all hollow theory. Ask yourselves, and ask after yourselves, what is practical, and you know you want very much to be practical, but there the one harkens with his God, of course what he thinks at the name God is his God, may be going to say to it, and another what his moral feelings, his conscience, his feeling of duty may determine about it, and a third calculates what folks will think of it, and when each has thus asked his Lord God, folks are at Lord God, just as good as, nay, even more compact than the otherworldly imaginary one, rocks pulpy, rocks thee. Then he accommodates himself to his Lord's will, and listens no more at all for what he himself would like to say and decide. Therefore turn to yourselves, rather than to your gods or idols, bring out from yourselves what is in you, bring it to the light, bring yourselves to revelation. How one acts only from himself, and asks after nothing further, the Christians have realised in the notion God. He acts as it pleases him, and foolish man who could do just so, is to act as it pleases God, instead, if it is said that even God proceeds according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my whole nature, are you, in myself? But one needs only admonish you of yourself, to bring you to despair at once, what am I, each of you asks himself, and a base of lawless and unregulated impulses, desire, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding star. How am I to obtain a correct answer, if without regard to God's commandments, or to the duties which morality prescribes, without regard to the voice of reason, which in the course of history, after bitter experiences, has exalted the best and most reasonable thing into law. I simply appeal to myself, my passion would advise me to do the most senseless thing possible, thus each deems himself the devil, for if, so far as he is unconcerned about religion, etc., he only deems himself a beast, as he would easily find that the beast, which does follow only its impulse, as it were its advice, does not advise and impel itself to do the most senseless things, but takes very correct steps, but the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously, that we are terrified at ourselves, in our nakedness and naturalness. It has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of course it comes into your head at once, but your calling requires you to do the good, the moral, the right. Now, if you ask yourselves what is to be done, how can the right voice sound full from you, the voice which points the way of the good, the right, the true, etc. What concord have God and rely on? But what would you think if one answered you by saying, that one is to listen to God, conscience, duties, laws and so forth, is flimflam with which people have stuffed your head and heart, and made you crazy? And if he asked you how it is that you know so surely, that the voice of nature is a seducer, and if he even demanded of you to turn the thing about and actually to deem the voice of God and conscience to the devil's work, there are such graceless men, how will you settle them? You cannot appeal to your parson, parents and good men, for precisely these are designated by them as your seducers, as the true seducers and corruptors of youth, who busily so broadcast the tears of self-contempt and reverence to God, who filled young hearts with mud and young heads with stupidity. But now those people go on and ask, for whose sake do you care about God's and the other commandments? You surely do not suppose that this is done merely out of compliance toward God? No, you are doing it for your sake again, here too, therefore you are the main thing, and each must say to himself, I am everything to myself, and I do everything on my account. If it ever became clear to you that God, the commandments, etc., only harm you, that they reduce and ruin you, do a certainty you would throw them from you, just as the Christians once condemned Apollo or Minerva, or heathen morality. They did indeed put in the place of these Christ and Atheroth Mary, as well as a Christian morality, but they did this for the sake of their souls, well, there too. Therefore, out of egoism or oneness, and it was by this egoism, this oneness, that they got rid of the old world of God's and became free from it. But oneness created a new freedom, for oneness is the creator of everything, as genius, definite oneness, which is always originality, has for a long time already been looked upon as the creator of the new productions that have a place in the history of the world. End of section 20. Recording by Elaine Webb, Thrustall, England. Section 19 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. Recording by Morgan Goldfrench. The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner. Section 19, Oneness Part 2. As to what is now to happen further after I've become free, freedom is silent, as are governments, when the prisoner's time is up, merely letting go, thrusting him out into abandonment. Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all, why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle and end? Am I not worth more than freedom? Is it not I that make myself free? Am not I the first? Even unfree, even laden a thousand fetters, I yet am, and I am not, like freedom, extant only in the future and in hopes. But even as the most abject of slaves, I am present. Think that over well and decide whether you will place on your banner the dream of freedom or the resolution of egoism, of oneness. Freedom awakens your rage against everything that is not you. Egoism calls you to joy over yourselves, to self enjoyment. Freedom is and remains a longing, a romantic plant, a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity. Oneness is a reality, which of itself removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way hinders you. What does not disturb you, you will not want to renounce, and if it begins to disturb you, why, you know that you must obey yourselves rather than men. Freedom teaches only. Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves of everything burdensome. It does not teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid, so call, get rid, even of yourselves, deny yourselves, but oneness calls you back to yourselves. It says come to yourself. Up under the aegis of freedom, you get rid of many kinds of things, but something new pinches you again. You are rid of the evil one. Evil is left. Note, C note, page 112, end note. As own, you are really rid of everything, and what clings to you, you have accepted. It is your choice and your pleasure. The own man is the freeborn, the man free to begin with, the free man. On the contrary, he's only the elite theomaniac, the dreamer and enthusiast. The former is originally free, because he recognizes nothing but himself. He does not need to free himself first, because at the start he rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, rates nothing higher, because in short, he starts from himself and comes to himself. Constrained by childish respect, he is nevertheless already working at freeing himself from his constraint. Ownness works in the little egoist, and procures him the desired freedom. Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have made you believe you are not egoist, but are called to be idealist, good men. Shake that off, do not seek for freedom, which has precisely deprived you of yourself, in self-denial, but seek for yourselves. Become egoist, become each of you an almighty ego, or more clearly, just recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you really are, and let go your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania to be something else than you are. Hypocritical, I call them, because you have yet remained egoist all these thousands of years, but sleeping, self-deceiving, crazy egoist, you... Heutontimorum enoses, you self-tormentors, never yet has a religion been able to dispense with promises, whether they referred us to the other world, or to this, long life, etc., for man is mercenary and does nothing at gratis. But how about that, doing the good for the good's sake, without prospect of reward, as if here to the pay was not contained in the satisfaction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our egoism and exploits it, calculated for our desires, stifles many others for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon of cheated egoism, where I satisfy not myself, but one of my desires, e.g. the impulse towards blessedness. Religion promised me the supreme good, to gain this, I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slay them. All your doings are unconfessed, secret, covert, and concealed egoism, but because they are egoism, that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism. Therefore, they are not egoism, but thralldom, service, self renunciation, you are egoists and you are not, since you renounce egoism, where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word egoist, loathing, and contempt. I secure my freedom with regard to the world and the degree that I make the world my own, i.e. gain it and take possession of it for myself, by whatever might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of categorical demand, yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc. For the means that I use for it are determined by what I am, if I am weak, I have only weak means, like the aforesaid, which yet are good enough for a considerable part of the world. Besides, cheating, hypocrisy, lying look worse than they are. Who has not cheated the police, the law? Who has not quickly taken on an air of honourable loyalty, before the sheriff's officer who meets him, in order to conceal an illegality that may have been committed, etc. He who has not done it has simply let violence be done to him, he was a weakling for conscience. I know that my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my will on another object, be this other something without will, like a rock or something with will, like a government, an individual. I deny my ownness then, in presence of another, I give myself up, i.e. give away, desist, submit, therefore by loyalty, submission. For it is one thing when I give up my previous course, because it does not lead to the goal, and therefore turn out of a wrong road, because another one I yield myself a prisoner. I get around a rock that stands in my way, till I have powder enough to blast it. I get around the laws of a people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be sacred to me, an astarte? If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and if I only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me, you inapprehensible one. You shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the might for apprehension and call you my own. I do not give myself up before you, but only by my time, even if for the present I put up with my inability to touch you. I yet remember it against you, vigorous men have always done so, when the loyal had exalted and unsubdued power to be their master and had adored it. When they had demanded adoration from all, then there came some such son of nature who would not loyally submit and drove the adored power from its inaccessible Olympus. He cried his stand still to the rolling sun and made the earth go round, the loyal had to make the best of it. He laid his axe to the sacred oaks and the loyal were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him. He threw the pope off Peter's chair and the loyal had no way to hinder it. He is tearing down the divine right of hisness and the loyal croak in vain, and at last are silent. My freedom becomes complete only when it is my might, but by this I cease to be a merely free man and become an own man. Why is the freedom of the people's hollow word? Because the people's have no might, with the breath of the living ego I blow people's over, be it by the breath of a Nero, a Chinese Emperor or a poor writer. Why is it that the G note, meaning German, written in this form because of the censorship, original form in text G dot dot dot. N note, legislatures pine in vain for freedom and are lectured for it by the cabinet ministers because they are not the mighty. Might is a fine thing and useful for many purposes, for one goes further with a handful of might than with a bag full of right. You long for freedom, you fools, if you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might stands above the law. How does this prospect taste to you, you law-abiding people, but you have no taste. The cry for freedom rings loudly all around. But is it felt unknown what a donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not recognised in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially self-liberation, i.e. that I can have only so much freedom as I procured for myself by my ownness. Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to bleeding, give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew or a Christian, permission to speak what he likes. He will yet utter only narrow-minded stuff. If on the contrary, certain others rob you of the freedom of speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear something whereby those certain persons would lose their credit. If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are simply naves who give more than they have. For then they give you nothing of their own, but stolen wares. They give you your own freedom, the freedom that you must take for yourselves, and they give it to you only that you may not take it and call the thieves and cheats to an account to boot. In their slainess they know well that given chartered freedom is no freedom, since only the freedom one takes for himself, therefore the egoist freedom rides with full sails. Donated freedom strikes its sails as soon as there comes a storm or calm. It requires always a gentle and moderate breeze. Here lies the difference between self-liberation and emancipation, manumission setting free. Those who today stand in the opposition are thirsting and screaming to be set free, and princes are to declare their peoples of age, i.e. emancipate them, behave as if you were of age and you are so without any declaration of majority. If you do not behave accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never be of age even by declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their tyrants, and when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his father. If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them their majority, they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a son who will not come of age, and keeps the house to himself. It serves the noodle right. The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman, a libertinus, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him. He is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing bettered in themselves, but only relieved as Jews. Although he who relieves their condition is certainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter can do this without inconsistency. But emancipated or not emancipated, Jew remains Jew. He who is not self- freed is merely an emancipated man. The Protestant state can certainly set free emancipate the Catholics, but because they do not make themselves free, they remain simply Catholics. Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends of freedom are exasperated against selfishness, because in their religious striving after freedom, they cannot free themselves from that sublime thing, self-renunciation. The Liberals' anger is directed against egoism. For the egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake, the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no thing a value of its own, an absolute value, but to seek its value in me. One often hears that pot boiling study, which is so common, counted among the most repulsive traits of egoistic behaviour, because it manifests the most shameful desecration of science. But what is science for but to be consumed? If one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist power is a limited power, but the egoistic element in it and the desecration of science only a possessed man can blame, because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an ego, note original German for ego, Einziger, end note, thought of him only as a dependent and was properly nothing but a social theory, a doctrine of living together, and that of man with God as well as of man with man. Therefore in it everything own must fall into most woeful disrepute, selfishness, self-will, oneness, self-love, etc. The Christian way of looking at things has on all sides gradually re-stamped honourable words into dishonourable. Why should they not be brought into honour again? So Schimpf, brackets, contumely, and brackets, is in its old sense equivalent to Jess, but for Christian seriousness pastime became a dishonour note. I take Enth-berong destitution to be a misprint of Enth-erong, end note, for that serious cannot take a joke, frac impudent, formerly meant only bold, brave, frevel want an outrage, was only daring. It is well known how askens the word reason was looked at for a long time. Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint and the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in terror from everything un-Christian as from something incomplete or evil. Therefore selfishness is in a bad way too. Selfishness, note, Eigenuts, literally own use, end note, in the Christian sense means something like this. I look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man, but is the sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, my own determination when I follow that? I am my own only when I am master of myself instead of being mastered either by sensuality or by anything else, God, man, authority, law, state, church etc. What is of use to me this self-owned or self-appertaining one my selfishness pursues? On the sides, one sees himself every moment compelled to believe in that constantly blasphemed selfishness as an all-controlling power. In the session of February 10, 1844, Welker argues a motion on the dependence of the judges and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable, dismissable, transferable and pensionable judges in short, such members of a court of justice as can by mere administrative process be damaged and endangered are wholly without reliability. Yes, lose all respect and all confidence among the people. The whole bench, Welker cries, is demoralized by this dependence. In blunt words, this means nothing else than that the judges find it more to their advantages to give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it as the law would have them. How is that to be helped? Perhaps by bringing home to the judges' hearts the ignominiousness of their banality and then cherishing the confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize justice more highly than their selfishness? No, the people does not sort of this romantic confidence for it feels that selfishness is mightier than any other motive. Therefore the same person who have been judges hitherto may remain so. However thoroughly one has convinced himself that they behaved as egoists only they must not any longer find their selfishness favored by the banality of justice but must stand so independent of the government that by a judgment in conformity with the facts they do not throw into the shade their own cause their well understood interest but rather secure a comfortable combination of a good salary and spectrum among citizens. So Welker and the commoners of Barden consider themselves secured only when they can count on selfishness. What is one to think then of the countless phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths overflow at other times? To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have another relation than to one which I am serving unselfishly the following criterion might be cited for it against the one I can sin or commit a sin the other I can only trifle away push from me deprive myself of i.e. commit an imprudence free trade is looked at in both ways being regarded partly as a freedom which may under certain circumstances be granted or withdrawn partly as one which is to be held sacred under all circumstances for I am not concerned about a thing in and for itself and do not desire it for its own sake then I desire it solely as a means to an end for its usefulness for the sake of another end i.e. oysters for a pleasant flavour now will not everything whose final end he himself is serve the egoist as means and is he to protect a thing that serves him for nothing i.e. the proletarian to protect the state oneness includes in itself everything own and brings to honour again what Christian language dishonoured but oneness has not any alien standard either as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom morality, humanity, etc it is only a description of the owner End of Section 19 Oneness Part 2 Recording by Morgan Goldfranch Section 20 of the Ego and His Own This is a Librebox recording All Librebox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to volunteer please visit Librebox.org The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner Section 20 The Owner I Do I come to myself and mine through liberalism? Whom does the liberal look upon as is equal? Man, the only man and that you are anyway and the liberal calls you his brother he asks very little about your private opinions and private follies if only he can ascribe man in you but as he takes little heed of what you are privatim nay, in a strict following out of his principles sets no value at all on it he sees in you only what you are generatim in other words he sees in you not you but the species not Tom or Jim but man not the real or unique one but the essence your concept not the bodily man but the spirit as Tom you would not be his equal because he is Jim therefore not Tom as man you are the same that he is and since as Tom you virtually do not exist at all for him so far to wit as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an egoist he has really made brother love very easy for him he loves in you not Tom of whom he knows nothing and wants to know nothing but man to see in you and me nothing further than men that is running the Christian way of looking at things according to which one is for the other nothing but a concept e.g. a man called to salvation etc into the ground Christianity probably so called gathers us under a less utterly general concept there we are sons of God and led by the spirit of God yet not all can boast of being God's sons but the same spirit which witnesses to our spirit that we are sons of God reveals also who are the sons of the devil consequently to be a son of God one must not be a son of the devil a sonship of God excluded certain men to be sons of men i.e. men on the contrary we need nothing but to belong to the human species we need only to be specimens of the same species what I am as this I is no concern of yours as a good liberal but it is my private affair alone enough that we are both sons of one and the same mother to wit the human species as a son of man I am your equal what am I now to you perhaps this bodily I as I walk and stand anything but that this bodily I with its thoughts, decisions and passions is in your eyes a private affair which is no concern of yours it is an affair by itself as an affair for you there exists only my concept my generic concept only the man who as he is called could just as well be Joe or Dick you see in me not me the bodily man but an unreal thing the spook i.e. a man in the course of the Christian centuries we declared the most various persons to be our equals but each time in the measure of that spirit which we expected from them e.g. each one in whom the spirit of the need of redemption may be assumed latter each one who has the spirit of integrity finally each one who shows a human spirit and a human face thus the fundamental principle of equality varied equality being now conceived as equally of the human spirit there has certainly been discovered an equality that includes all men for who could deny that we men have a human spirit i.e. no other than a human but are we on that account further on now than in the beginning of Christianity then we were to have a divine spirit now a human but if the divine did not exhaust us how should the human wholly express what we are fewer bark e.g. thinks that if he humanizes the divine he has found the truth no if God has given us pain man is capable of pinching more torturingly the long and the short of it is this that we are men is the slightest thing about us and has significance only in so far as it is one of our equalities i.e. our property I am indeed among other things a man as I am e.g. a living being therefore an animal or a European but he who chose to have regard for me only as a man or as a Belina would pay me a regard that would be very unimportant to me and therefore because he would have regarded only for one of my qualities not for me it is just so with the spirit too the Christian spirit and upright spirit e.g. may well be my acquired quality but I am not the spirit it is mine not I its hence we have in liberalism only the continuation of the old Christian depreciation of the I the bodily Tom instead of taking me as I am one looks solely at my property my qualities and enters into marriage bonds with me only for the sake of my possessions one marries as it were I have not what I am the Christian takes hold of my spirit the liberal of my humanity but if the spirit which is not regarded as the property of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself is a ghost then the man too who is not recognized as my quality but as the proper I is nothing but a spook a thought a concept therefore the liberal too as the Christian because the spirit of mankind I am man dwells in you you are a man as well the spirit of Christ draws in you you are a Christian but because it draws in you only as a second ego even though it be as your proper or better ego it remains otherworldly to you and you have to strive to become holy man striving just as fruitless as the Christians as holy a blessed spirit one can now after the liberalism have proclaimed man declare openly that herewith was only completed the constant carrying out of Christianity and that in truth Christianity set itself no other task from the start than to realize man the true man hence then the illusion that Christianity ascribes an infinite value to the ego as e.g. in the doctrine of immortality in the cure of souls etc comes to light now it assigns this value to man alone only man is immortal and only because I am man am I too immortal in fact Christianity had to teach that no one is lost just as a liberalism too puts on all equality as men but that eternity like this equality applied only to the man in me not to me only as the bearer and harborer of man do I not die as notoriously the king never dies Louis dies but the king remains I die but my skirt man remains to identify me now entirely with man the demand has been invented and stated that I must become a real generic being the human religion is only the last metamorphis of the Christian religion for liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and sets it above me because it exalts man to the same extent as any other religion does its god or idol because it makes what is mine into something otherworldly thus in general it makes out of what is mine out of my qualities and my property something alien to wit and essence in short because it sets me beneath man and thereby creates for me a vocation but liberalism declares itself a religion in form too when it demands for this supreme being man a zeal of faith a faith that someday will at last be fight into a zeal that will be invincible but as liberalism is a human religion its professor takes a tolerant attitude towards the professor of any other Catholic, Jewish etc as Frederick the Great did towards everyone who performed his duties as a subject whatever fashion of becoming blessed he might be inclined towards this religion is now to be raised of the generally customary one and separated from the others as mere private follies toward which besides one tapes a highly liberal attitude on account of the unessentialness one may call it the state religion the religion of the three state not in the sense hitherto current that it is the one favoured or privileged by the state but as that religion which the three state not only has the right but is compelled to demand for each of those who belong to it let him be privatim a dune, a Christian or anything else for it does the same service to the state as flinial of priority to the family if the family is to be recognised and maintained in its existing condition by each one of those who belong to it then to him the tie of blood must be sacred and his feeling for it must be that of priority of respect for the ties of blood by which every blood relation becomes to him a concentrated person so also as to every member of the state community this community must be sacred and the concept which is the highest to the state must likewise be the highest to him but what concept is the highest to the state doubtless that of being a really human society a society in which everyone who is really a man i.e. not an unman can obtain admission as a member let a state's tolerance go ever so far toward an unman and toward what is in human it ceases and yet this unman is a man yet the inhuman itself is something human yes possibly only to a man not to any beast it is in fact something possible to man but although every unhuman is a man yet the state excludes him i.e. locks him up or transforms him from a fellow of the state into a fellow of the prison fellow of the lunatic asylum or hospital to communism to say in blunt words what an unman is not particularly hard it is a man who does not correspond to the conceptions of man as the inhuman is something human which is not conformed to the concept of the human logic cause this a self contradictory judgement would it be permissible for one to pronounce this judgement that one can be a man without being a man if he did not admit the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from the existence the essence from the appearance they say he appears indeed as a man but is not a man men have passed this self contradictory judgement through a long line of centuries nay what is still more in this long time there were only unmen and the individual can have corresponded to his concept Christianity knows only one man and this one Christ is at once an unman again in their reverse sense to which a superhuman man a god only the unman is a real man men that are not men what should they be but ghosts every real man because he does not correspond to the concept of man and not a generic man is a spook but do I still remain an unman even if I bring man who towered above me and remained otherworldly to me only as my ideal my task my essence or concepts dying to be my quality my own and inherent in me so that man is nothing else than my humanity my human existence and everything that I do because I do it but not because it corresponds to the concept man I am really man and the unman in one but I am a man and the same time more than a man i.e. I am the ego of this my male quality it had to come to this at last but it was no longer merely demanded of us to be Christians but to become men for though we could never really become even Christians but always remained crossing us for the Christian was an unattainable ideal too yet in this the quantidictiveness did not come before our conscience and the illusion was easier than now one of us who are men and humanely yes could not do otherwise than be such an act so the demand is made that we are to men we are men today because they still have all sorts of things sticking to them left from their churchly mother do indeed load those who belong to them with various obligations e.g. churchly religiousness which properly do not a bit concern them the states yet on the whole they do not deny their significance since they want to be looked upon as human societies in which man as man can be a member even if he is less privileged than other members most of them admit adherence of every religious sect and receive people without distinction of race or nation Jews, Turks, Moors etc can become French citizens in the act of perception therefore the state looks only to see whether one is a man the church as a society of believers could not receive every man into her bosom the state as a society of men can but when the state has carried its principle clear through of presupposing in its constituents nothing but that they are men even the North Americans still presuppose in theirs that they have religion at least the religion of integrity of responsibility then it has dug its grave while it will fancy that those whom it possesses are without exception men these have meanwhile become without exception egoists each of whom utilizes it according to his egoistic powers and ends against the egoists human society is wrecked for they no longer have to do with each other now as men but appear egoistically as an eye against a you altogether different from me and in opposition to me if the state must count on our humanity it is the same if one says it must count on our morality seeing man in each other and acting as men toward each other is called moral behavior this is every wit the spiritual love of Christianity for if I see man in you as in myself I see man and nothing but man then I care for you as I would care for myself for we represent you see nothing but the mathematical proposition A equals C and B equals C consequently A equals B i.e. I nothing but man and you nothing but man consequently and I you the same morality is incompatible with egoism because the format does not allow validity to me but only to the man in me but if the state is a society of men not a union of egos each of whom has only himself before his eyes then it cannot last without morality and must insist on morality therefore we too state and I are enemies I the egoist have not had heart the welfare of this human society I sacrifice nothing to it I only utilize it but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my property and my creature i.e. I annihilate it and form in its place the union of egoists so to the state betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man which presupposes that I may also not be a man but rank it for as an unman it imposes being a man upon me as a duty further it desires me to do nothing along with which it cannot last so its permanence is to be sacred for me then I am not to be an egoist but a respectable upright i.e. Mole man enough before it and its permanence I am to be important and respectful this state not a present one indeed but still in need of being first created is the ideal of advancing liberalism there is to come to essence a true society of men in which every man finds room liberalism means to realise man i.e. create a world for him and this should be the human world or the general communistic society of men it was said the church could regard only the spirit the state is to regard the whole man but is not man spirit the kernel of the state is simply man this unreality and itself is only a society of men the world which the believer believing spirit creates is called church the world which the man human or humane spirit creates is called state but that is not my world I never execute anything human in the abstract but always my own things my human act is diverse from every other human act and only by this diversity is it a real act belonging to me the human in it is an abstraction and as such spirit i.e. abstracted essence Bruno Braille states e.g. student range page 84 that the church of criticism is the final truth and in fact the truth sought for by Christianity itself to wit man it he says the history of the Christian world is the history of the supreme fight for truth for in it and in it only the thing at issue is the discovery of the final or the primal truth man and freedom alright let us accept this game and let us take man as the ultimately found resort of Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man in general now who is man I am man the end and outcome of Christianity is as I the beginning and raw material of the new history a history of enjoyment after the history of sacrifices a history not of man or humanity but of me man ranks as the general now then I and the egoistic are the really general since everyone is an egoist and a paramount importance to himself the Jewish is not the purely egoistic because the Jews still divides himself to Jehovah the Christian is not because the Christian lives on the grace of God and subjects himself to him as Jew and as Christian are like a man satisfies only certain of his wants only a certain need not himself a half egoism because the egoism of half a man who is half he half Jew or half his own proprietor half a slave therefore too Jew and Christian always half way exclude each other as men they recognise each other as slaves they exclude each other because they are servants of two different masters if they could be complete egoists they would exclude each other wholly and hold together so much the more firmly their ignominy is not that they exclude each other but that this is done only half way Bruno Bure on the country slaves Jews and Christians cannot regard and treat each other as men so they give up a separate essence which parts them and obligates them to eternal separation recognise the general essence of man and regard this as their true essence according to his representations the defect of the Jews and the Christians are like lies in their wanting to be and have something particular instead of only being men and endeavouring after what is human to wit the general rights of man he thinks their fundamental error consists in the belief that they are privileged possesses paragraphs in general in the belief of prerogative in opposition to this he holds up to them the general rights of man the rights of man man is man in general and in so far everyone who is a man now everyone is to have the eternal rights of man and according to the opinion of the Communism enjoy them in the complete democracy or as it ought more correctly to be called Anthropocracy but it is I alone who have everything that I procured for myself as man I have nothing people would like to give every man an affluence of all good merely because he has the title man but I put the accent on me not on my being man man is something only as my quality property like masculinity or femininity the actions found the ideal in ones being nailed in the false sense their virtue is virtues anality i.e. manliness what is one to think of a woman who should want only to be a perfectly woman that is not given to all and many a one would bear if he fixing for herself an unattainable goal femininity on the other hand she is anyhow by nature femininity is her quality and she does not need true femininity I am a man just as the earth is a star as ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the task of being a thorough star so ridiculous is it to burden me with the call to be a thorough man when the chaise says the ego is all this seems to harmonise perfectly with my thesis but it is not that the ego is all but the ego destroys all and only the self-dissolving ego the never-being ego the tonight ego is really I the chaise speaks of the absolute ego but I speak of me the transitory ego how natural is the supposition that man and ego mean the same and yet one sees e.g. by a few of us that the expression in man is to designate the absolute ego the species but the transitory individual ego egoism and humanity humane-ness ought to mean the same but according to Furibach the individual can only lift himself above the limits of his individuality but not above the laws the positive ordinances of his species but the species is nothing and if the individual lifts himself above the limits of his individuality this is rather his very self as an individual he exists only amazing himself he exists only in not remaining what he is otherwise he would be done dead man with the great M is only an ideal the species only something thought of to be a man is not to realise the ideal of man but present oneself to the individual it is not how I realise the generally human that needs to be my task but how I satisfy myself I am my species I am without norm without law without model etc it is possible that I can make very little out of myself but this little is everything and it is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the state better if the talk is to be of better at all better an unmanly child than an old head on young shoulders better a mollish man than a man compliant in everything the unmanly and mollish fellow is still on the way to form himself according to his own will the prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the species the general demands the species is nor to him he is determined by it for what else is the species to him but his destiny his calling whether I look to humanity the species in order to strive toward this ideal or to God and Christ with like endeavour is the essential dissimilarity at most the former is more rushed out than the latter as the individual is the whole of nature so he is the whole of the species too everything that I do think in short my expression or manifestation is indeed conditioned by what I am the due eg can wield only thus or thus can present himself only thus the Christian can present and manifest himself only Christianly etc if it were possible that you could be a due or Christian you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian but it is not possible in the most rigorous conduct you yet remain an egorist a sinner against that concept i.e. you are not the precise equivalent of due now because the egorist always keeps peeping through people have inquired for a more perfect concept which should really wholly express what you are and which because it is your true nature should contain all the laws of your activity the most perfect thing of the kind has been attained in man as a Jew you are too little and the Jewish is not your task to be a Greek a German does not suffice but be a man then you have everything look upon the human as you are calling now I know what is expected of me and the new catechism can be written the subject is again subjected to the predicate the individual to something general the dominion is again secured to an idea and the foundation laid for a new religion this is a step forward in the domain of religion and in particular of Christianity not a step out beyond it to step out beyond it leads into the unspeakable for me poetry language has no word and the word the logos is to me a mere word my essence is sought for if not the Jew the German etc then at any rate it is man man is my essence I am repulsive or repungent to myself I have a horror and loathing of myself I am a horror to myself or I am never enough for myself and never do enough to satisfy myself from such feelings spring self-dissolution or self-criticism religiousness begins with self renunciation ends with completed criticism I am possessed and want to get rid of the evil spirit how do I set about it I fearlessly commit the sin that seems to the Christian the most dire the sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit he who blasphemes the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness for ever but is liable to the eternal judgment I want no forgiveness and I'm not afraid of the judgment man is the last evil spirit or spook the most deceptive or most intimate the craftiest liar with honest mien the father of lies the egoist turning against the demands and concepts of the present executes pitilessly the most mesurous desecration nothing is holy to him it would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age I shall be the enemy of every high power while religion teaches us to make it our offence and be humble toward it the desecrator puts forth his strength against every fear of God thought fear of God would determine him in everything that he left standing as sacred whether it is the God or the man that exercises the hallowing power in the God man whether therefore anything is held sacred for God's sake or humanity's this does not change the fear of God since man is revered as supreme essence as much as on the specifically religious standpoint of God as supreme essence calls for our fear and reverence both over all us the fear of God in the proper sense was shaken long ago and a more or less conscious atheism externally recognisable by a widespread un-churchliness has involuntarily become the mode but what was taken from God has been super added to man and the power of humanity grew greater in just the degree that of priority lost weight man is the God of today and fear of man has taken the place of the old fear of God but because man represents only another supreme being nothing in fact has taken place but a metamorphis in the supreme being and the fear of man is merely an altered form of the fear of God our atheists are pious people in a circled feudal times we held everything as a fight from God in the liberal period the same feudal relation exists with man God was the Lord my man is the Lord God was the mediator my man is God was the spirit my man is in this free fold met God the feudal relation as experienced the transformation for adversely we hold as a beef which because it comes from a higher it is not called power or might but right the rights of man we further hold as a thief from him a position in the world for he the mediator mediates our impulses with others which therefore may not be otherwise than human finally we hold as a thief from him ourselves to which our own value all that we are worth in as much as we are worth nothing when he does not dwell in us and when or where we are not human the power is man's the world is man's I am man's but I am not still unrestrained from declaring myself the entitler, the mediator and the own self then it runs thus my power is my property my power gives me property my power am I myself and through it am I my property end of section 20 recording by Elaine Webb Bristol, England