 Section 28 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. My Intercourse Part 5 Trouton, wiggling too, thinks he is telling the worst about poverty when he calls it theft. Passing quite over the embarrassing question, what well-founded objection could be made against theft? We only asked, is the concept of theft at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept of property? How can one steal if property is not already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be stolen. The water that one draws out of the sea he does not steal. Accordingly, property is not theft, but a theft becomes possibly only through property. Wiggling has to come to this too, as he does regard everything as the property of all. If something is the property of all, then indeed the individual who appropriates it to himself steals. Private property lives by grace of the law. Only in the law has it its warrant. For possession is not yet property. It becomes mine only by a sense of the law. It is not a fact, not unfair as Proudhon thinks, but a fiction, a thought. This is legal property, legitimate property, guaranteed property. It is mine not through me, but through the law. Nevertheless, property is the expression for unlimited dominion, over somewhat thing-beast-man, which I can judge and dispose of as seems good to me. According to Roman law, indeed, just eutendae, a ergretendae, rei soar, quaterus, eurus, presce patitor, an exclusive and unlimited right, but property is conditioned by might. What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing, if it gets away from me again, no matter by what power, e.g. through my recognition of the title of others to the thing, then the property is extinct. Thus, property and possession coincide. It is not a right lying outside my might that legitimizes me, but solely my might. If I no longer have this, the thing vanishes away from me. When the Romans no longer had any might against the Germans, the world empire of Rome belonged to the latter, and it would sound ridiculous to insist that the Romans had nevertheless remained properly the proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to defend the thing, to him it belongs, so it is again taken from him, as liberty belongs to him who takes it. Only might decides about property, and as the state, no matter whether state or world to do citizens, or of ragamuffins, or of men in the absolute, is the sole mighty one. It alone is proprietor. I, the unique, have nothing, and only enfield, and vessel, and as such servitor. Under the domain of the state, there is no property of mine. I want to raise the value of myself, the value of oneness, and should I cheapen property? No, as I was not respected hitherto because people, mankind, and a thousand other generalities were put higher, so property too has to this day not yet been recognized in its full value. Property too was only the property of a ghost, e.g. the people's property. My whole existence belonged to the Fatherland. I belonged to the Fatherland, the people, the state, and therefore also everything that I called mine own. It is demanded of states that they make away with corporism. It seems to me this is asking that the state should cut off its own head and lay it at its feet, for so long as the state is the ego, the individual ego, must remain a poor devil, a non-ego. A state has an interest only in being itself rich, whether Michael is rich and Peter poor is alike to it. Peter might also be rich and Michael poor. It looks on indifferently as one grows poor and the other rich, unruffled by this alternation. As individuals, they are really equal before its face. In this, it is just. Before it, both of them are nothing as we are altogether sinners before God. On the other hand, it has a very great interest in this, that those individuals who make it their ego should have a part in its wealth. It makes them partakers in its property. Through property with which it rewards the individuals, it tames them. But this remains its property and everyone has the usufruct of it only so long as he bears in himself the ego of the state or is a loyal member of society. In the opposite case, the property is confiscated or made to melt away by vexatious lawsuits. The property then is and remains state property, not property of the ego. That the state does not habitually deprive the individual of what he has from the state means simply that the state does not rob itself. He who is state ego, i.e. a good citizen or subject, holds his faith undisturbed as such an ego, not as being an ego of his own. According to the code, property is what I call a mind, by virtue of God and law, but it is mind by virtue of God and law only so long as the state has nothing against it. In expropriations, disarmament, etc., as when the extreper confiscates inheritance is, if the heirs do not put in an appearance early enough, how plainly the else failed principle that only the people, the state, is proprietor, while the individual is fioffy, strikes the eye. The state, I mean to say, cannot intend that anybody, should for its own sake have property, or actually be rich, may, even well to do. It can acknowledge nothing, yield nothing, grant nothing to me as me. The state cannot check populism, because the poverty of possession is a poverty of me. He who is nothing but what chance or another to it the state makes out of him, also has quite rightly nothing but what another gives him, and this other will give him only what he deserves, i.e. what he is worth by service. It is not he that realises a value from himself, the state realises a value from him. National economy busies itself much of this subject. It lies far out beyond the national, however, and goes beyond the concept and horizon of the state, which knows only state property and can distribute nothing else. For this reason, it binds on the possessions of property to conditions, as it binds everything to them, e.g. marriage, allowing validity only to the marriage sanctioned by it, and resting this out of my power. But property is my property, only when I hold it unconditionally. Only I, an unconditional ego, have property enter a relation of love, carry on free trade. The state has no anxiety about me and mine, but about itself and its. I count for something to it only as its child, as a son of the country. As ego, I am nothing at all for it. For the state's understanding, what befalls me as ego, is something accidental, my wealth as well as my impoverishment. But, if I live all that is mine, I am an accident in the state's eyes, this proves that it cannot comprehend me. I go beyond its concepts, or its understanding is too limited to comprehend me. Therefore, it cannot do anything for me, either. Porporism is the valuelessness of me, the phenomenon that I cannot realise value for myself. For this reason, state and porporism are one and the same. The state does not let me come to my value, and continues in existence only through my valuelessness. It is forever intent on getting benefit from me, i.e. exploiting me, turning me to account, using me up. Even if the use it gets from me consists only in my supply of proles, it wants me to be its creature. Porporism can be removed only when I as ego realise value for myself, when I give my own self-value, and make my price myself. I must rise in revolt to rise in the world. What I produce, flour, linen, or iron and coal, which I toy or similarly win from the earth, is my work that I want to realise value for. But then I may non-complain that I am not paid for my work, according to its value. The payer will not listen to me, and the state likewise will maintain an apathetic attitude, so long as it does not think it must appease me, that I may not break out with my dreaded might. But this appeasing will be all, and if it comes into my head to ask for more, the snake turns against me with all of the force of its lion paws and eagle claws. For it is the king of beasts, it is lion and eagle. If I refuse to be content with the price that it fixes for my wear and labour, if I rather aspire to determine the price of my wear myself, e.g. to pay myself, in the first place, I'll turn into a conflict with the buyers of the wear. If this was stilled by a mutual understanding, the state would not readily make objections, for how individuals get along with each other troubles it little, so long as they're in, they do not get in its way. Its damage and its danger begin only when they do not agree, but in the absence of a settlement take each other by the hair. The state cannot endure that man stands in a direct relation to man, it must step between us as mediator, must intervene. What Christ was, what the saints, the church were, the state has become, to wit, mediator. It tears man from man to put itself between them as spirit. The labourers who ask for higher pay are treated as criminals as soon as they want to compel it. What are they to do? Without compulsion they don't get it, and in compulsion the state sees a self-help, a determination of price by the ego, a genuine free realisation of value from his property, which it cannot admit of. What then are the labourers to do? Look to themselves and ask nothing about the state, but as is the situation with regard to my material work, so it is with my intellectual too. The state allows me to realise value from all my thoughts and to find customers for them. I do not realise value from them, e.g. in the very fact that they bring the honour from the listeners etc. But only so long as my thoughts are its thoughts. If, on the other hand, I harbour thoughts that it cannot approve, i.e. make its own, then it does not allow me at all to realise value from them, to bring them into exchange, into commerce. It lets me philosophise freely, only so far as I approve myself a philosopher of state. Against the state I must not philosophise, gladly, as it tolerates my helping it out of its deficiencies, furthering it. Therefore, as I may behave only as an ego most gracefully permitted by the state, provided with its testimonial of legitimacy and police pass, so too it is not granted me to realise value from what is mine. Unless this proves to be its, which I hold as beef from it, my ways must be its ways, else it distrains me, my thoughts its thoughts, else it stops my mouth. The state has nothing to be more afraid of than the value of me, and nothing must it more carefully guard against than every occasion that offers itself to me for realising value from myself, i.e. the deadly enemy of the state, which always hovers between the alternatives, it or I. Therefore, it strictly assists not only on not letting me have a standing, but also on keeping down what is mine. In the state there is no property, i.e. no property of the individual, but only state property. Only through the state have I what I have, as I am only through it what I am. My private property is only that which the state leaves to me of its cutting off others from it, depriving them, making it private. It is state property. But in opposition to the state, I feel more and more clearly that there is still left me a great might, a might over myself, i.e. over everything that pertains only to me, and that exists only in being mine own. What do I do if my ways are no longer its ways, my thoughts no longer its thoughts? I look to myself and ask nothing about it. In my thoughts which I get sanctioned by no assent, grant or grace, I have my real property, a property with which I can trade, for as mine they are my creators, and I am in a position to give them away in return for other thoughts. I give them up and take in exchange for them others, which then are my new purchased property. What then is my property? Nothing but what is in my power. To what property am I entitled? To every property to which I empower myself. I give myself the right of property in taking property to myself, or giving myself the proprietor's power, full power, empowerment. Everything over which I have, might that cannot be torn from me, remains my property. Well, then let might decide about property, and I will expect everything from my might. Alien might, might that I leave to another, makes me an owned slave. Then let my own might take me an owner. Let me then withdraw the might that I have conceded to others out of ignorance, regarding the strength of my own might. Let me say to myself, what my might reaches to is my property, and let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as far as I entitled, i.e. empower myself to take. Here egoism, selfishness, must decide, not to the principle of love, not love motives like mercy, gentleness, good nature, or even justice and equity, for justia too is a phenomenon of love, a product of love. Love knows only sacrifices and demands self-sacrifice. Egoism does not think of sacrificing anything, giving away anything that it wants, it simply decides what I want, I must have, and will procure. All attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the Bay of Love into a desolate sea of regulations. Even socialism and communism cannot be expected from this. Everyone is to be provided with adequate means, for which it is literally the point whether one socialistically finds them still in a personal property, or communistically draws them from the community of goods. The individual's mind in this remains the same. It remains a mind of dependence. The disturbing board of equity lets me have only what the sense of equity its loving care for all prescribes. For me the individual there lies no less of a check in collective wealth than in that of the individual others. Neither that is mine nor this, whether the wealth belongs to the collectivity which confers part of it on me or to individual possessors is for me the same constraint as I cannot decide about either of the two. On the contrary, Communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on another fears. On the generality or collectivity, and loudly as it always attacks the state, what it intends is itself a gain a state, a status, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure that I experience from individual proprietors, but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity. Egoism takes another way to root out the non-processing rabble. It does not say wait for what the board of equity will bestow on you in the name of the collectivity, for such bestowal took place in states from the most ancient times each receiving according to his dessert, and therefore according to the measure in which each was able to deserve it, to acquire it by service. But take hold, and take what you require. With this the wall of all against all is declared, I alone decide what I will have. Now, that is truly no new wisdom, or self-seekers have acted so at all times, not at all the necessary thing that the thing be new, if only consciousness of its present. But this latter will not be able to claim great age, unless perhaps one counts in the Egyptian and Spartan law for how little current it is appears even from the structure above. Which speaks with contempt of self-seekers. One is to know just this, that the procedure of taking hold is not compatible, but manifests the pure deed of the egoist at one with himself. Only when I expect neither from individuals nor from a collectivity what I can give to myself, only then do I slip out of the snares of love. The rabble ceases to be rabble only when it takes hold. Only the dread of taking hold and the corresponding punishment thereof makes it a rabble. Only that taken hold is sin, crime. Only this dogma creates a rabble. For the fact that the rabble remains what it is, it because it allows validity to that dogma, is to blame as well as, more especially, those who self-seekingly to give them back their favourite word, demand that the dogma be respected. In short, the lack of consciousness of that new wisdom, the old consciousness of sin alone bears the blame. If men reach the point of losing respect for property, everyone will have property, as all slaves become free men as they no longer respect the master as master. Unions will then, in this matter too, multiply the individual's means and secure his assailed property. According to the communists opinion, the commune should be proprietor. On the contrary, I am proprietor, and I only come to an understanding with others about my property. If the commune does not do what suits me, I rise against it and defend my property. I am proprietor, but property is not sacred. I should be merely possessor? No, hitherto one was only possessor, secured in the possession of a parcel by leaving others also in possession of a parcel. But now everything belongs to me. I am proprietor of everything that I require and can get possession of. If, it is said socialistically, society gives me what I require, then the egoist says I take what I require. If the communists conduct themselves as ragamuffins, the egoist behaves as proprietor. All swan fraternities and attempts at making the rabble happy that spring from the principle of love must miscarry. Only from egoism can the rabble get help, and this help it must give to itself and will give to itself. If it does not let itself be coerced into fear, it is a power. People would lose all respect, if one did not coerce them into fear, says Broubert Law in de Gastefeldt Carter. Property, therefore, should not and cannot be abolished. It must rather be torn from ghostly hands, and become my property, then the erroneous consciousness that I cannot entud myself to as much as I require will vanish. But what cannot man require? Well, whoever requires much and understands how to get it, has at all times helped himself to it, as the Polion did with the Continent and France of Algiers. His the exact point is that the respectful rabble should learn at last to help itself to what it requires. If it reaches out too far for you, why then defend yourselves? You have no need at all to good heartily bestow anything on it, and when it learns to know itself, it or rather, whoever of the rabble learns to know himself, he casts off the rabble quality in refusing your arms with Section 29 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, My Intercourse Part 6 Competition shows itself most strictly connected with the principle of civism. Is it anything else than equality, equality, and is not equally a product of that same revolution, which was brought on by the commonality, the middle classes, as no one is barred from competing with all in the state except the Prince because he represents the state itself, and working himself up to their height, yes, overflowing or exploiting them for his own advantage, soaring above them and by stronger exertion depriving them of their favourable circumstances. This serves as a clear proof that before the state's judgement seat, everyone has only the value of a simple individual and may not count on any favourism. Outrun and outbid each other as much as you like and can. That shall not trouble me, the state. Among yourselves, you are free in competing. You are competitors. That is your social position. But before me, the state, you are nothing but simple individuals. What in the form of principle or theory was propounded, as the equality of all has found here in competition, is realisation and practical carrying out, for eglity is free competition. All are before a state, simple individuals, in society or in relation to each other, competitors. I need be nothing further than a simple individual to be able to compete with all others aside from the Prince and his family. A freedom which formerly was made impossible by the fact that only by means of one's co-operation and within it, did one enjoy any freedom of effort. In the guild and feudality, the state is in an intolerant and fastitious attitude, granting privileges in competition and liberalism. It is in a tolerant and indulgent attitude, granting only patents, let us assuring the applicant that the business stands open, patent to him or concessions. Now, as the state has thus left everything to the applicants, it must come in conflict with all, because each and all are entitled to make application. It will be stormed and will go down in the storm. Is free competition then really free? Nay, is it really a competition to wit one of persons as it gives itself out to be, because on this title it bases its right? It originated, you know, in persons becoming free of all personal rule. Is a competition free? Which a state, this ruler in the civic principle, hems in by a thousand barriers. There is a rich manufacturer, doing a brilliant business, and I should like to compete with him. Go ahead, says the state. I have no objection to make to your person as competitor. Yes, I reply, but for that I need a space for buildings. I need money. That's bad. But if you have no money, you cannot compete. You must not take anything from anybody, for I protect property and grant it privileges. Free competition is not free, because I lack the things for competition. Against my person, no objection can be made, but because I have not the things my person too must step to the rear. And who has the necessary things? Perhaps that manufacturer? Right, from him I could take them away. No, the state has them as property, the manufacturer only as faith, as possession. But since it is no use trying it with the manufacturer, I would compete with that professor of jurisprudence. The man is a booby, and I, who know a hundred times more than he, shall make his classroom empty. Have you ever studied and graduated, friend? No, but what of that? I understand abundantly what is necessary for instruction in that department. Sorry, but competition is not free here. Against your person, there is nothing to be said. But the thing the doctor's diploma is lacking, and this diploma I, the state, demand. Ask me for it respectively first, then we shall see what is to be done. This, therefore, is the freedom of competition. The state, my world, first qualifies me to compete. But do persons really compete? No, a game, things only, monies in the first place, etc. In the rivalry, one will always be left behind another, e.g. a peritaster behind a poet. But it makes a difference whether the means that the unlucky competitor lacks are personal or material, and likewise whether the material means can be won by personal energy, or are to be obtained only by grace, only as a present, as when, e.g. the poorer man must leave, i.e. present, to the rich man his riches. But if I must all along wait for the state's approval to obtain or to use, e.g. in the case for graduation, then means I have the means by the grace of the state. Free competition, therefore, has only the following meaning. To the state, all rank as its equal children, and everyone can scud and run to earn the state's goods and largesse. Therefore, all do chase after havings, holdings, possessions, be it of money or offices, titles of honour, etc., after the things. In the mind of the commonality, everyone is possessor or owner. Now, once comes it that the most have, in fact, next to nothing. From this, that the most are already joyful over being possessors at all, even though it be of some rags, as children are joyful in their first trousers, or even the first penny that is presented to them. More precisely, however, the matter is to be taken as follows. Liberism came forward at once with the declaration that it belonged to man's essence, not to be property, but proprietor. As the consideration here was about man, not about the individual, but how much, which formed exactly the point of the individual's special interest, was left to him. Hence, the individual's egoism retained room for the freest play in this how much, and carried on an undefeatable competition. However, a lucky egoism had to become a snag in the way of the less fortunate, and the latter still keeping its feet planted on the principle of humanity. Put forward the question as to how much of possession, and answered it to the effect that man must have as much as he requires. Will it be possible for my egoism to let itself be satisfied with that? What man requires furnishes by no means a scale for measuring me and my needs. For I may have use for less or more. I must rather have so much as I am competent to appropriate. Competition suffers from the unfavourable circumstance that the means for competing are not at everyone's command, because they are not taken from personality, but from accident. Most are without means, and for this reason without goods. Hence, the socialists demand the means for all, and aim at a society that shall offer means. Your money value, says they, we no longer recognise as your competence. You must show another competence, to which you're working force. In the possession of a property, or as possessor, man does certainly show himself as man. It was for this reason that we let the possessor, whom we call proprietor, keep his standing so long. Yet, you possess the things only so long as you are not put out of this property. The possessor is competent, but only so far as the others are incompetent. Since you wear forms your competence only so long as you are the competent to defend it, i.e. as we are not competent to do anything with it. Look about you for another competence, for we now, by our might, surpass your alleged competence. It was an extraordinarily large game made, when the point of being regarded as possessors was put through. Therein bond service was abolished, and everyone who till then had been bound to the lord's service, and more or less had been his property, now became a lord. But henceforth, your having and what you have are no longer adequate and no longer recognised. Per contra, your working and your work rise in value. We now respect your subduing things, as we formally did your possessing them. Your work is your competence. You are lord or possessor, only of what comes by work, not by inheritance. But as at the time everything has come by inheritance, and every copper that you possess, there is not a labour stamp, but an inheritance stamp, everything must be melted over. But is my work then really, as the communitists suppose, my sole competence, or does not this consist rather in everything that I am competent for, and does not the worker's society itself have to concede this? E.g. in supporting also the sick, children, old men, in short, those who are incapable of work, these are still competent for a good deal, e.g. for instance, to preserve their life instead of taking it. If they are competent to cause you to desire their continued existence, they have a power over you. To him who exercised utterly no power over you, you would go shave, nothing, he might perish. Therefore, what you are competent for is your competence. If you are competent to furnish pleasure to thousands, then thousands will pay you an honour-aerium for it. For it would stand in your power to prepare doing it, hence they must purchase your deed. If you are not competent to captivate anyone, you may simply starve. Now am I, who am competent for much, a chance to have no advantage over the less competent? We are all in the midst of abundance. Now shall I not help myself as well as I can, but only wait and see how much is left me in an equal division? Against competition there rises up the principle of ragamuffin society, partition. To be looked upon as a mere part, part of society, the individual cannot bear, because he is more. His uniqueness puts from it this limited concept. Hence he does not await his competence from the sharing of others, and even in the worker's society, there arises the misgiving that an equal partition, the strong, will be exploited by the weak. He awaits his competence rather from himself, and says now, what I am competent to have, that is my competence. What competence does the child not possess in its smiling, its playing, its screaming? In short, in its mere existence. Are you capable of restraining its desire, or do you not hold out to it as mother, your breast as father, as much of your possessions as it needs? It compares you, therefore it possesses what you call yours. If your person is of consequence to me, you pay me with your very existence. If I am concerned only with one of your qualities, then your compliance, perhaps, or your aid, has a value, a money value, for me, and I purchase it. If you do not know how to give yourself any other than a money value in my estimation, there may arise the case of which history tells us that Germans, sons of the fatherland, were sold to America. Should those who let themselves to be traded in be worth more to the seller, he preferred the cash to this living where that did not understand how to make itself precious to him. That he discovered nothing more valuable in it was assuredly a defect of his competence. But it takes a rogue to give more than he has. How should he show respect when he did not have it? Nay, hardly could have it for such a pack. You behave egoistically when you respect each other neither as possessors nor as rugged muffins, or workers, but as part of your competence, useful bodies. Then you will neither give anything to the possessor, the priorter, for his possessions, nor to him who works, but only to him whom you require. The North Americans ask themselves, do we require a king? And answer, not a far-being are he and his work worth to us. If it is said that competition throws everything open to all, the expression is not accurate, and it is better put thus, competition makes everything purchasable. In abandoning it to them, competition leaves it to their appraisal, or their estimation and demands a price for it. But the would-be buyers mostly lack the means to make themselves buyers. They have no money. For money then the purchasable things are indeed to be had. For money everything is to be had. But it is exactly money that is lacking. Where is one to get money? This covered or circulating property? No then you have as much money as you have, might for you count, but as much as you make yourself count for. One pays not the money, of which there may come a lack, but with his competence, by which alone we are competent. For one is proprietor only so far as the arm of our power reaches. Waitling has bought out a new means of payment, work. But the true means of payment remains, as always, competence. With what you have within your competence you pay, therefore think on the enlargement of your competence. This being admitted, they are nevertheless right on hand, again with the motto, to teach according to his competence. Who is to give to me according to my competence, society? Then I should have to put up with its estimation, rather I should take according to my competence. All belongs to all. This proposition springs from the same unsubstantial theory, to each belongs only what he is competent for. If I say the world belongs to me, probably that too is empty talk, which has a meaning only in so far as I respect no alien property. But to me belongs only as much as I am competent for, or have within my competence. One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, let be taken from him. One is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it. They raised a mighty uproar over the wrong of a thousand years, which is being committed by the rich against the poor. As if the rich were to blame for poverty, and the poor were not in like manner responsible for riches. Is there another difference between the two than that of competence and incompetence, of the competent and incompetent, wherein trade does the crime of the rich consist, in their hard-heartedness, but who then have maintained the poor, who have cared for their nourishment, who have given alms, those alms that have even the name from mercy? Have not the rich been merciful at all times? Are they not to this day tender-hearted, as poor taxes, hospitals, foundations of all sorts etc prove? But all this does not satisfy you. Doubtless then, they are to share with the poor. Now you are demanding that they shall abolish poverty, aside from the point that there might be hardly one among you who would act so, and that this one would be a fault for it. Do ask yourselves, why should the rich let go their fleeces and give up themselves, thereby pursuing the advantage of the poor rather than their own? You, who have your fellow-daily, are rich above thousands who live on four grossions. Is it for your interest to share with the thousands, or is it not rather for theirs? With competition, it is connected less the intention to do the thing best than the intention to make it as profitable, as productive as possible. Hence, people study to get into the civil service, hot-boiling study, study, cringing and flattery, routine and acquaintance with business, work for appearance. Hence, while it is apparently a matter of doing good service, in truth only a good business and earning of money are looked out for. The job is done only ostensensibly, for the job's sake, but in fact, on account of the grain that it yields, one would indeed prefer not to be censored, but one wants to be advanced. One would like to judge, administer, etc., according to his best convictions, but one is afraid of transference or even dismissal. One must, above all things, live. Thus, these goings on are a fight for dear life and in gradation upward for more or less of a good thing. And yet, with all their whole round of toil and care brings in for most only bitter life and bitter poverty, all the bitter pain staking for this. Restless acquisition does not let us take breath, take a calm enjoyment. We do not get the comfort of our possessions, but the organisation of labour touches only such labourers as others can do for us. Slaughtering, tillage, etc. The rest remain egoistic because no one can in your stead elaborate your musical compositions, carry out your projects of painting, etc. Nobody can replace Raphael's labours. The latter are labours of a unique person, which only he is competent to achieve, while the former deserved to be called human. Since what is anybody's own in them is of slight account and almost any man can be trained to it. Now, as society can regard only labours for the common benefit, human labours, he who does anything unique remains without its care. Nay, he may find himself disturbed by his intervention. The unique person will work himself off at a society alright, but society brings forth no unique person. Hence, it is at any rate helpful that we come to an agreement about human labours, that they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and toil. So far, Communism will bear its fruits, for before the dominion of the commonality, even that for which all men are qualified or can be qualified, was tied up to a few and withheld from the rest. It was a privilege. To the Communality, it looked equitable to lead free all that seemed to exist for every man, but because left free, it was yet given to no one, but rather left to each to be got hold of by this human power. By this the mind was turned to the acquisition of the human, which henceforth beckoned to everyone and there arose a movement which one hears so loudly bemoaned under the name of materialism. Communism seeks to check its course, spreading the belief that the human is not worth so much discomfort and with sensible arrangements could be gained without the great expense of time and powers which has hitherto seemed requisite. But for whom is time to be gained? For what does man require more time than is necessary to refresh his weary powers of labour? Here Communism is silent. For what to take comfort in himself as the unique after he has done his part as a man? In the first joy over being allowed to stretch out their hands toward everything human, people forget to want anything else and they competed away vigorously as if the possession of the human were the goal of all our wishes. But they have run themselves tired and are gradually noticing that possession does not give happiness. Therefore they are thinking of obtaining the necessary by easier bargain and spending on it only so much time to toil as it's indispensable and thus exacts. Which is for in price and contented poverty the carefree ragamuffin becomes a seductive ideal. Should such human activities that everyone is confident of his capacity for be highly salaried and sought for with toil and expenditure of all life forces even in the everyday form of speech if I were a minister or even third then it should go quite otherwise. That confidence expresses itself that one holds himself capable of playing the part of such a dignitary. One does get a perception that to things of this sort there belongs no uniqueness but only a culture which is attainable even if not exactly by all at any rate by many i.e. that for such a thing one need only be an ordinary man. End of section 29 Recording by Elaine Webb Restored England Section 30 of the Ego and His Own This is a LibriVoct recording All LibriVoct recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVoct.org The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner My intercourse Part 7 If we assume that as order belongs to the essence of the state so subordination 2 is founded in its nature then we see that the subordinates or those who have received preferment disproportionately overcharge and overreach those who are put in the lower ranks but the latter take part first from the socialist standpoint but certainly with egoistic consciousness later of which we were therefore at once gave their speech some colouring for the question by what then is your property secure you creatures of preferment and give themselves the answer by our reframing from interference and so by our protection and what do you give us for it kicks and disdain you give to the common people holy supervision and a kichizum with the chief sentence respect what is not yours what belongs to others respect others and especially your superiors but we reply if you want our respect buy it for a price agreeable to us we will leave you your property if you give a due equivalent for this leaving really what equivalent does the general in time of peace give for the many thousands of his yearly income another for the sheer hundred thousands and millions yearly what equivalent do you give for our chewing potatoes and looking calmly on while you swallow oysters only by the oysters of us as dear as we have to buy the potatoes of you then you may go on eating them or do you suppose that oysters do not belong to us as much as to you you will make an outcry over violence if we reach out our hands and help consume them and you are right without violence we do not get them as you no less have them by doing violence to us but take the oysters and have done with it and let us consider our nearer property for the other is only possession we distress ourselves 12 hours in the sweat of our face and you offer us the food grossing for it then take the light for your labor too are you not willing you fancy that our labor is richly repaid with that wage while yours on the other hands is worth a wage of many thousands but if you did not rate yours so high and gave us a better chance to realise value from ours then we might as well if the case demanded it bring to pass still more important things than you do for the many thousand fellas and if you got only such wages as we you would soon grow more industrious in order to receive more but if you render any service seems to us worth ten and a hundred times more than our own labor why then you should get a hundred times more for it too we on the other hand think also to produce for you things for which you will recrite as more highly than with the ordinary days wages we shall be willing to get along with each other all right only we have first agreed on this that neither any longer needs to present anything to the other then we may perhaps actually go so far as to pay even of the cause and sit and old an appropriate price for not parting from us by hunger and what for if we want them to live it is fitting also that we purchase the fulfillment of our will I say purchase and therefore do not mean a wretched arms for their life is the property even of those who cannot work if we, no matter for what reason want them not to withdraw this life from us we can mean to bring this to pass only by purchase nay, we shall perhaps maybe because we like to have friendly faces about us even want a life of comfort for them in short we want nothing presented by you but neither will we present you with anything for centuries we have handed arms to you from good-hearted stupidity have doled out the might of the poor and given to the masters the things that are the masters now just open your wallet for henceforth our ware rises in price quite enormously we do not want to take from you anything anything at all only you are to play better for what you want to have what then have you I have an estate of a thousand acres and I am your playman and I will henceforth attend to your fields only for one fella a day wages then I'll take another you won't find any for we pro-men are no longer doing otherwise and if one puts in appearance who takes less then let him beware of us there is the house maid she too is now demanding as much we are no longer find one below this price why then is it all over with me not so fast you are doubtless take in as much as we and if it should not be so we will take off so much that you shall have weather with to live like us but I am accustomed to live better we have nothing against that but it is not our look out if you can clear more go ahead are we to hire out under rates that you may have a good living the rich man always puts off the poor with the words what does your want concern me see to it how you make your way through the world that is your affair not mine let us let it be our affair then and let us not let the means that we have to realise value from ourselves to be pilfered from us by the rich but you uncultured people really do not need so much well we are taking somewhat more in order that for it we may procure the culture that we perhaps need but if you thus bring down the rich who is there to support the arts and sciences hereafter oh well we must make it up by numbers we club together that gives a nice little sum besides, you rich men now buy only the most tasteless books and the most lamentous pedonnas or a pair of lively dancers legs oh ill scardy quality oh my good old sir nothing of equality we only want to count for what we are worth and if you are worth more use your count for more right along we only want to be worth our price and think to show ourselves worth the price that you will pay is the state likely to be able to awaken so secure a temper so forceful a self-consciousness in the menial can it make man feel himself nay may it even do so much as set this goal for itself can it want the individual to recognize his value and realize this value from himself let us keep the parts of the double question separate and see first whether the state can bring about such a thing as the anonymity of the plomo is required only this anonymity can bring it to pass and a state law would be evaded in a thousand ways by competition and in secret but can the state bear with it a state cannot possibly bear with people suffering coercion from another than it could not therefore admit the self-help of the unanonymous plowmen against those who want to engage for lower wages suppose however that the state made the law and all the plowmen were in accord with it could the state bear with it then in the isolated case yes but the isolated case is more than that it is a case of principle the question there in is of the whole range of the ego's self-realization of value from himself and therefore also of his self-consciousness against the state so far the communists keep company but as self-realization of value from self necessarily directs itself against the state so it does against society too and therewith reaches out beyond the commune and the communistic out of egoism Communism makes the maximum of the commonality but everyone is a possessor, proprietor into an irrefragable truth into a reality since the anxiety about obtaining malices and everyone has from the start what he requires in his labour force he has his competence and if he makes no use of it that is his fault the grasping and hounding is at an end and no competition is left as so often now without fruit because with every stroke of labour an adequate supply of the needfall is brought into the house now for the first time one is a real possessor because what one has in his labour force can no longer escape from him as it was continually threatening to do under the system of competition one is a carefree and assured possessor and one is this precisely by seeking his competence no longer in aware but in his own labour is competence for labour and therefore by being a mother muffin a man of only ideal wealth I however cannot contend myself with the little that I scrape up by my competence for labour because my competence does not consist nearly in my labour by labour I can perform the official functions of a president minister etc these offices demand only a general culture to which such a culture as is generally attainable for general culture is not merely that which everyone has attained but broadly that which everyone can attain and therefore every special culture e.g. medical, military theological of which no cultivated man believes that they surpass his powers or broadly only a skill possible to all but even if these offices may best in everyone yet it is only the individual's unique force peculiar to him alone that gives them so to speak life and significance but he does not manage his office like an ordinary man but puts in the competence of his uniqueness this he is not yet pay for when he is paid only in general as an official or a minister if he has done it so as to earn your facts and you wish to attain this bank worthy force of their unique one you must not pay him like a mere man who performed only what was human but as one who accomplishes what is unique do the like with your labour do there cannot be a general scheduled price fixed for my uniqueness as there can for what I do as man only for the latter can a scheduled price be set go right on then setting up a general appraisal of human labours to provide your uniqueness of its dessert human or general needs can be satisfied through society for satisfaction of unique needs you must do some not seeking a friend and a friendly service or even an individual's service society cannot procure you and yet you will every moment be in need of such a service and on the slightest occasions require somebody who is helpful to you therefore do not rely on society but see to it that you have the wherewithal to purchase the fulfilment of your wishes whether money is to be retained among egoists to the old stamp and inherited possession adheres if you no longer let yourselves be paid with it it is ruined if you do nothing for this money it loses all power cancel the inheritance and you have broken off the executor's court sealed for now everything is an inheritance whether it be already inherited or awaits its heir if it is yours wherefore do you let it be sealed up from you why do you respect the seal but why should you not create a new money do you then annihilate the where in taking from it the hereditary stamp now money is a where and an essential means for confidence for it protects against the ossification of resources keeps them in flux and brings to pass their exchange if you know a better medium of exchange go ahead yet it will be a money again it is not the money that does you damage but your incompetence to take it let your competence take effect collect yourselves and there will be no lack of money of your money the money of your stamp but working I do not call letting your competence take effect those who are only looking for work and willing to work hard are preparing for their own selves the infallible upshot to be out of work good and bad luck depend on money it is a power in the bogus period for this reason that it is only rude of all hands like a girl into solubly wedded by nobody all the romance and chivalry of mooring for a dear object come to life again in competition money an object of longing is powered off by the bold lights of industry he who has luck takes home the bride the ragamuffin has luck he takes her into his household society and destroys the virgin in his house she is no longer bride but wife and with her virginity her family name is also lost as housewife the maiden money is called labor or labor is her husband's name she is a possession of her husbands to bring this figure to an end the child of labor and money is again a girl an unwedded one and therefore money but with a certain descent from labor her father the form of the face the edfugee bears another stamp finally as regards competition once more it has a continued existence by this very means that all do not attend their affair and come to an understanding with each other about it bread e.g. is a need of all the inhabitants of the city therefore they might easily agree on setting up a public bakery instead of this they leave the furnishing of the needful to the computing bakers just so neat to the butchers wine to wine dealers etc. abolishing competition is not equivalent to favouring the guild the difference is this in the guild baking etc. is the affair of the guild brothers in competition the affair of Chinese competitors in the union of those who require baked goods and therefore might affair yours the affair of neither the guildic nor the concessionary baker but the affair of the united if I do not trouble myself about my affair I must be content with what it pleases others to boutch save me to have bread is my affair my wish and desire and yet people leave that to the bakers and hope at most to obtain their gambling their getting ahead of each other their rivalry in short their competition an advantage which one could not count on in the case of the guild brothers who were lodged entirely and alone in the proprietorship of the bacon franchise what everyone requires everyone should also take a hand in procuring and producing his affair his property not the property of the guildic but concessionary master let us look back once more the world belongs to the children of this world the children of men it is no longer God's world but man's as much every man can procure of it let him call his only the true man the state, human society kind will look to it that each shall make nothing else his own than what he appropriates as man i.e. in human fashion unhuman appropriation is that which is not consented to by man i.e. it is a criminal appropriation as the human vice versa is a rightful one one acquired in the way of law so they talk since revolution but my property is not a thing since this has an existence independent of me only my might is my own not this tree but my might or control over it is what is mine now how is this might perversely expressed they say i have a right to this tree or it is my rightful property so i have earned it by might that the might must last in order that the tree may also be held or better that the might is not a thing existing of itself but has existence solely in the mighty ego in me the mighty is forgotten might like another of my qualities i.e. humanity, majesty etc is exalted to something existing of itself so that it still exists long after it has ceased to be my might thus transformed into a ghost might is right this eternalized might is not extinguished even with my death but is transferred to bequeathed things now really belong not to me but to right on the other side this is nothing but an hallucination of vision for the individuals might becomes permanent and a right only by others joining their might with his the delusion consists in their believing that they cannot withdraw their might the same phenomenon over again might is separated from me i cannot take back the might that i gave to the possessor one has granted power of attorney has given away his power has renounced coming to a better mind the proprietor can give up his might and his right to a thing by giving the thing away squandering it etc and we should not be able to let go the might that we lend to him the rightful man desires to call it nothing his own that he does not have rightly or have the right to and therefore only legitimate property now who is to be judged and a judge his right to him and last surely man who imparts to him the rights of man then he can say in an indefinitely broader sense than Terence Humane, Nehal, Ami, Alenium, Bruto, Egi the human is my property however he may go about it so long as he occupies this standpoint we cannot get clear of a judge and in our time the multifarious judges that had been selected have set themselves against each other in two persons at deadly enmity to wit in God and man the one party appealed to divine right the other to human right or the rights of man so much is clear that in neither case does the individual do the entitling himself just pick me out an action today that would not be a violation of right every moment the rights of man are trampled under foot by one side while their opponents cannot open their mouth without uttering a blasphemy against divine right give an arms you mock at a right of man because the relation of beggar and benefactor is an inhuman relation utter a doubt you sin against a divine right eat dry bread with contentment you violate the right of man by your eponymity eat it with discontent you revile divine right by your repining there is not one among you who does not commit a crime at every moment your speeches are crimes and every hindrance to your freedom of speech is no less a crime ye are criminals all together yet you are so only in that you all stand on the ground of right i.e. in that you do not even know and understand how to value the fact that you are criminals enviable or safe and poverty has grown on this very ground it is a juridical concept a dog sees the bone in another's power and stands off only if it feels itself too weak but man respects the other's right to his bone the latter action therefore ranks as human a former as brutal or egoistic and as here so in general it is called human when one sees in everything something spiritual hear right i.e. makes everything a ghost and takes his attitude toward it as toward a ghost which one can indeed scare away at its appearance but cannot kill it is human to look at what is individual not as individual but as a gem reality in nature as such i no longer respect anything but i know myself to be entitled to everything against it in the tree in that garden on the other hand i must respect alienness they say in one side of fashion poverty i must keep my hand off it this comes to an end only when i can indeed leave that tree to another as i leave my stick etc to another but do not in advance regard it as alien to me i.e. sacred rather i make to myself no crime of telling it if i will and it remains my poverty however long as i resign it to others it is and remains mine in the bankers fortune i as little see everything alien as napoleon did in the territories of kings we have no dread of conquering it and we look about us also for the what is here too we strip off from it therefore the spirit of alienness of which we had been afraid therefore it is necessary that i do not lay claim to anything more as man but to everything as i this i and accordingly to nothing human but to mine i.e. nothing appetise to me as man but what i will and because i will it rightfully or legitimate property of another will be only that which you are content to recognise as yours if your content ceases then this property has lost legitimacy for you and you will laugh at absolute right to it besides the hitherto discussed property in the limited sense there is held up to our reverent heart another property against which we are far less to sin this property consists in spiritual goods in the sanctuary of the inner nature what a man beholds sacred no other is to guide that because untrue as it may be and zealously as one may in loving and modest wise seek to convince untrue sanctity the man who adheres to it and believes in it yet the sacred itself is always to be honoured in it the mistaken man does not believe in the sacred even though in an incorrect essence of it and so his belief in the sacred must at least be respected in ruder times than ours it was customary to demand the particular faith and devotion to a particular sacred essence and they did not take the gentlest way with those who believed otherwise since however freedom of belief spread itself more and more abroad the jealous god and soul lord gradually melted into a pretty general supreme being and it satisfied humane tolerance if only everyone revered something sacred reduced to the most human expression the sacred essence is man himself and the human with the deceptive semblance as if the human were all together our own and free from all the other worldliness with which the divine is tainted yes as if man were as much as I or you there may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of the sacred essence and that we now feel ourselves everywhere at home and no longer in the uncanny i.e. in the sacred and in sacred awe in the ecstasy over man discovered at last the egoistic cry of pain passes unheard and the spook that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego but humane us is the saint's name see go see and the humane is only the most clarified sanctity the egoist makes the reverse declaration for this precise reason because you hold something sacred I guide you and even if I respected everything in you the sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect with these opposed views must also be assumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods the egoist insults them the religious man i.e. everyone who puts his essence above himself must constantly protect them but what kind of spiritual goods are to be protected and what left unprotected depends entirely on the concept that one forms of the supreme being he who fears God i.e. has more to shelter than he, the liberal who fears man in spiritual goods we are in distinction from the sensuous injured in a spiritual way and the sin against them consists in a direct justification while again the sensuous a collining or alienation takes place is robbed of value and of consecration not merely taken away the sacred is immediately compromised with the word irreverence or flippancy is designated everything that can be committed as crying against spiritual goods i.e. against everything that is sacred for us and scoffing, re-violent, contempt, doubt, etc for shades of criminal flippancy that desecration can be practiced in the most manifold way is here to be passed over and only that desecration is to be preferentially mentioned which threatens the sacred with danger through an unrestricted press End of Section 30 Recording by Elaine Webb Bristol, England Section 31 of The Ego and His Own This is a LibriVox Recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information of the volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner My Intercourse Part 8 As long as respect is demanded even for one spiritual essence speech and the press must be enthralled in the name of this essence For just so long as the egoist might trespass against it by his utterances from which thing he must be hindered by due punishment at least if one does not prefer to take up the more correct means against it the preventative use of police authority e.g. censorship What a sign for liberty of the press What then is the press to be liberated from surely from a dependence a belonging and a liability to service But to liberate himself from that is everyone's affair and it may with safety be assumed that when you have delivered yourself from liability to service that which you compose and write will also belong to you as your own instead of having been thought and addicted in the service of some power What can a believer in Christ say and have printed that should be freer from that belief in Christ than he himself is If I cannot or may not write something perhaps the primary fault lies with me little as this seems to hit the post so near is the application nevertheless to be found by a press law I draw a boundary for my publications or let one be drawn beyond which wrong and its punishment follows I must limit myself If the press was to be free nothing would be so important as precisely its liberation from every coercion that could be put on it in the name of a law and that it might come to that I my own self should have to have absolved myself from obedience to the law Certainly the absolute liberty of the press is like every absolute liberty a nunnity the press can become free from all many a thing but always only from what I too am free from if we make ourselves free from the sacred if we have become graceless and lawless our words too will become so as little as we can be declared clear of every coercion in the world so little can our writing be withdrawn from it but as free as we are so free we can make it too it must therefore become our own instead of as hitherto serving a spook people do not yet know what they mean by their cry for liberty of the press what they ostensibly ask is that the state shall set the press free but what they are really after without knowing it themselves is that the press become free from the state or clear of the state the former is a petition to the state the latter an insurrection against the state as a petition for right even as a serious demanding of the right of liberty of the press it presupposes the state as the giver and can hope only for a present a permission a charting possible no doubt so sensuously as to grant the demanded present but you may bet everything that those who receive the present will not know how to use it so long as they regard the state as a truth they will not trespass against this sacred thing and will call for a penal press law against everyone who would be willing to dare this in a word the press does not become free from what I am not free from do I perhaps hereby show myself and a cometh of the liberty of the press on the contrary I only assert that one will never get it if one wants only it the liberty of the press i.e. if one sets out only for an unrestricted permission only beg right along for this permission you may wait forever for it for there is no one in the world who could give it to you as long as you want to have yourselves entitled to the use of the press by a permission i.e. liberty of the press you live in vain hope and complaint nonsense why you yourself force as stand in your book can unfortunately bring them to publicity only through a lucky chance or by stealth nevertheless you will obey against one's pressing and in protruding his own state till it gives the refused permission to print but an author thus addressed would perhaps for the impudence of such people goes far give the following reply consider well what you say what then do I do to procure myself liberty of the press for my book do I ask for permission or do I not rather without any question of legality seek a favourable occasion and grasp it in complete recklessness of this state and it wishes the terrifying word must be uttered I cheat the state you unconsciously do the same from your tribunes you talk it into the idea that it must give up its centre city and inviolability it must lay itself bare to the attacks of writers without needing on that account to fear danger but you are imposing on it for its existence is done for as soon as it loses its unapproachableness to you indeed it might well accord liberty of writing as England has done you are believers in the state and incapable of writing against the state however much you would like to reform it and remedy its defects but what if the citizens of the state availed themselves of free utterance and stormed out against church, state, malls and everything sacred with inerexable reason you would then be the first in terrible agonies to crawl into life their September laws too late would you then rule the stupidity that earlier made you so ready to fall and plough it into compliance with the state or the government of the state but I proved by my act only two things this for one that the liberty of the press is always bound to favourable opportunities and accordingly will never be an absolute liberty but secondly this that he who won't enjoy it must seek out and if possible create the favourable opportunity availing himself of his own advantage against the state and counting himself and his will more than the state and every superior power not in the state but only against it and the liberty of the press be carried through if it is to be established it is to be obtained not as the consequence of a petition but as the work of an insurrection every petition and every motion for liberty of the press is already an insurrection be it conscious or unconscious a thing which Palestine healthness alone will not and cannot confess to itself until with a shrinking shudder it shall see it clearly and irrefutably by the outcome for the requested liberty of the press has indeed a friendly and well-meaning face at the beginning as it is not in the least minded ever to let the insulate of the press come into bogue but little by little its heart grows more hardened and the influence flatters its way in that really a liberty is not a liberty if it stands in the service of the state of morals or of the law a liberty indeed from the coercion of censorship it is yet not a liberty from the coercion of law the press once seized by the lust for liberty always wants to grow freer till at last the writer says to himself really I am not wholly free till I ask about nothing and writing is free only when it is my own dictated to me by no power or authority by no faith no dread the press must not be free that is too little it must be mine oneness of the press or property of the press that is what I will take why liberty of the press is only permission of the press and the state never will or can voluntarily permit me to grind it into nothingness by the press let us now in conclusion uttering the above language which is still vague owing to the phrase liberty of the press rather put it thus liberty of the press the liberal's loud demand is assuredly possible in the state yes it is possible only in the state because it is a permission and consequently the permitter the state must not be lacking but as permission it has its limit in this very state which surely should not in reason permit more than is compatible with itself and its welfare the state fixes for it this limit as the law of its existence and of its extension that one state brooks more than another is only a quantitative distinction which alone, nevertheless lies at the heart of the political liberals they want in Germany, i.e. only a more extended broader occurrence of free utterance the liberty of the press which is sought for is an affair of the peoples and before the people the state possesses it to make no use of it from the standpoint of property in the press the situation is different let my people, if they will go without liberty of free press i will manage to print by force or ruse i get my permission to print only from myself and my strength if the press is my own i as little need a permission of the state for employing it as i seek that permission in order to blow my nose the press is my property from the moment when nothing is more to me than myself for from this moment state, church, people society, etc. cease because they have to thank for their existence only the disrespect that i have for myself and with the vanishing of this undervaluation they themselves are extinguished they exist only when they exist above me exist only as powers and power horridors or can you imagine a state whose citizens one and all think nothing of it it would be as certainly a dream, an existence in seeming as united germany the press is my own as soon as i myself am my own a self-owned man to the egoist belongs the world because he belongs to no power of the world with this my press might still be very unfree as e.g. at this moment but the world is large and one helps himself as well as he can if i were willing to abate from the property of my press i could easily attain the point where i might everywhere have as much printed as my fingers produced but as i want to assert my property i must necessarily swindle my enemies would you not accept their permission if it were given you certainly with joy for their permission would be to me a proof that i had called them and started them on the road to ruin i am not concerned for their permission but so much the more for their folly and their overthrow i do not sue for their permission as if i flattered myself like the political liberals that we both they and i could make at peaceably alongside and with each other yes probably they copy each other but i sue for it in order to make them bleed to death by it that the permitters themselves may cease at last i act as a conscious enemy overreaching them and utilising their headlessness the press is mine when i recognise outside myself no judge whatever over its utilisation i.e. when my writing is no longer determined by morality or religion or respect for the state laws or the alike burnt by me and my egoism now what have you to reply to him who gives you so impudent an answer we shall perhaps put the question most strikingly by phasing it as follows whose is the press the peoples states or mine the politicals on their side intend nothing further than to liberate the press from personal and arbitrary interferences of the possessors of power without thinking of the point that to be really open for everybody it would also have to be free from the laws from the peoples states will they want to make a peoples affair of it but having become the peoples property it is still far from being mine rather it retains for me the subordinate significance of a permission the people place judge over my thoughts it has the right of calling me to account for them or i am responsible to it for them jurors when their fixed ideas are attacked have just as hard heads as the stiffest to spots and their servile officials in the liberal the strip engine edgar viewer asserts that liberty of the press is impossible in the absolutist and the constitutional state whereas in the free state it finds its place here the statement is it is recognised that the individual because he is no longer an individual but a member of the true and rational generality has the right to utter his mind so not the individual but the member has liberty of the press but if for the purpose of liberty of the press the individual must first give proof of himself regarding his belief in the generality the people if he does not have this liberty through might of his own then it is a people's liberty a liberty that he is invested with for the sake of his faith his membership the reverse is the case it is precisely as an individual that everyone has open to him the liberty to utter his mind but he has not the right that liberty is assuredly not his sacred right he has only the might but the might alone makes him owner I need no concession for the liberty of the press do not need the people's consent to it do not need the right to it nor any justification the liberty of the press too like every liberty I must take the people as being the sole judge cannot give it to me it can put up with me the liberty that I take or defend itself against it give, bestow grant it cannot I exercise it despite the people purely as an individual i.e. I get it by fighting the people my enemy and obtain it only when I really get it by such fighting i.e. take it but I take it because it is my property Sander against whom E. Bure writes lay's claim page 99 to the liberty of the press as the right and the liberty of the citizens in the state what else does Edgar Bure do to him also it is only a right of the three citizens the liberty of the press is also demanded under the name of a general human right against this the objection was well founded that not every man knew how to use it rightly for not every individual was truly man never did a government refuse it to man as such but man writes nothing for the reason that he is a ghost it always refused it to individuals only and gave it to others e.g. its organs if then one would have it for all one must assert outright that it is due to the individual me not to the man or to the individual so far as he is man besides another than man a beast can make no use of it the French government e.g. does not dispute the liberty of the press as a right of man but demands from the individual a security for his really being man for it assigns liberty of the press not to the individual but to man under the exact pretense that it was not human what was mine was taken from me what was human was left to me undiminished liberty of the press can bring about only a responsible press the irresponsible proceeds solely from property in the press for into the course with men and express law conformity to which one may venture at times simply to forget that the absolute value of which one at no time ventures to deny is placed foremost among all who live religiously this is the law of love to which even those who seem to fight against its principle and who hate its name have as yet become untrue for they also still have love yes they love with a deeper and more subliminated love they love man and mankind if reformulate the sense of this law it will be about as follows every man must have that is more to him than himself you are to put your private interest in the background when it is a question of the welfare of others the will of the fatherland of society the common will the will of mankind the good cause etc fatherland society, mankind must be more to you than yourself and as against their interest your private interest must stand back for you must not be an egoist love is a far reaching religious demand which is not as might be supposed limited to love to god and man that stands foremost in every regard whatever we do think, will the ground of it is always to be love thus we may indeed judge but only with love the bible may assuredly be criticised and that very thoroughly but the critic must before all things love it and see it in the sacred book is this anything else than to say he must not criticise it to death he must leave it standing and that as a sacred thing he cannot be upset in our criticism on men too love must remain the unchanged keynote certainly judgements that hatred inspires are not at all our own judgements but judgements of the hatred that rules us but are judgements that love inspires in us any more our own they are judgements of the love that rule us they are loving, lenient judgements they are not our own and accordingly not real judgements at all he who burns with love for justice cries out they justia perimundus he can doubtless ask and investigate what justice probably is or demands and in what it consists but not whether it is anything it is very true that he who abides in love abides in God and God in him 1 John 4 16 God abides in him he does not get rid of God does not become godless and he abides in God does not come to himself and into his own home abides in love to God and does not become loveless God is love all times and all races recognize in this word the central point of Christianity God who is love is an athacious God he cannot leave the world in peace but wants to make it less God became man to make men divine he has his hands in the game everywhere and nothing happens without it everywhere he has his best purposes incomprehensible plans and decrees reasons which he himself is is to be forwarded and realized in the whole world his fatherly care deprives us of all independence we can do nothing sensible without it being said God did that and can bring upon ourselves no misfortune without hearing God ordained that we have nothing for him he gave everything but as God does so does man God wants preforce to make the world blessed and man wants to make it happy to make all men happy hence every man wants to awaken in all men the reason which he supposes his own self to have everything is to be rational God torments himself with the devil and the philosopher does it with a reason and the accidental God lets no being go its own gate and man likewise wants to make us walk only in human wise but who so is full of sacred religious moral humane love loves only the spook the true man and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual the real man under the thematic legal title of measures against the unman he finds it praise worthy and indispensable to exercise pitilessness in the harshest measure for love to the spook or generality commands him to hate him who is not ghostly i.e. the egoist or individual such is the meaning of the renowned love phenomenon that is called justice a criminally unrained man can expect no forbearance and no one spreads a friendly veil over his unhappy nakedness without emotion the stern judge tears the last rags of excuse from the body of the poor accused without compassion the jailer drags him into his damper boat without passability when the time of punishment has expired he thrusts the branded man again among men his good Christian loyal brethren who contentiously spit on him yes without grace or criminal deserving of death is led to the scaffold and before the eyes of a jubilating crowd the appeased moral law celebrates its sublime revenge for only one can live the moral law or the criminal where criminals live unpunished the moral law has fallen and where this prevails those must go down their enmity is indestructible the Christian age is precisely that of mercy love, solicitude to have men receive or just do them yes to bring them to fulfill their human divine calling or the principle has been put for most for intercourse that this and that is man's essence and consequently there's calling to which either God has called him or according to the concept of today here's being man the species calls him hence the zeal for conversion that the communists and the humane expect from man more than the Christians do does not change the standpoint in the least man shall get what is human if it was enough for the pious that what was defined became his part the humane demand that he be not curtailed of what is human both set themselves against what is egoistic of course for what is egoistic cannot be according to him or vested in him a thief he must procure it for himself love imparts the former the latter can be given to me by myself alone end of section 31 recording by Lane Webb, Bristol, England