 Section 21 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 Morgengolf French. The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner. Section 21 My Power Part 1. Right, note this word has also in German the meaning of common law and will sometimes be translated law in the following paragraphs. End note. Is the spirit of society. If society has a will this will is simply right. Society exists only through right. But as it endures only exercising a sovereignty over individuals right is its sovereign will. Aristotle says justice is the advantage of society. All existing right is foreign law. Someone makes me out to be in the right. Does right by me? But should I therefore be in the right if all the world made me out so? And yet what else is the right that I obtain in the state, in society, but a right of those foreign to me? When a blockhead makes me out in the right I grow distrustful of my rightness. I don't like to receive it from him. But even when a wise man makes me out in the right I nevertheless am not in the right on that account. Whether I am in the right is completely independent of the fools making out and of the wise man's. All the same we have coveted this right till now. We seek for right and turn to the court for that purpose. To what? To a royal, a papal, a popular court etc. Can a Sultanic court declare another right than that which the Sultan has ordained to be right? Can it make me out in the right if I seek for a right that does not agree with the Sultan's law? Can it, e.g. concede to me high treason as a right, since it is assuredly not a right according to the Sultan's mind? Can it as a court of censorship allow me the free utterance of opinion as a right, since the Sultan will hear nothing of this my right? What am I seeking for in this court then? I am seeking for Sultanic right, not my right. I am seeking for foreign right. As long as this foreign right harmonizes with mine, to be sure I shall find in it the latter too. The state does not permit pitching into each other man to man, it opposes the duel. Even every ordinary appeal to blows, notwithstanding that neither of the fighters calls the police to it, is punished, except when it is not an I whacking away at a you, but say they're head of a family at the child. The family is entitled to this, and in his name the father, I as ego am not. The Vosichke Zeitung presents to us the commonwealth of right. There everything is to be decided by the judge and a court. It ranks the supreme court of censorship as a court where right is declared. What sort of right? The right of the censorship. To recognize the sentences of that court as right, one must regard the censorship as right, but it is thought nevertheless that this court offers a protection. Yes, protection against an individual censor's error. It protects only the censorship legislator against false interpretation of his will, at the same time making his statute by the sacred power of right, all the firmer against writers. Whether I am in the right or not, there is no judge but myself. Others can judge only whether they endorse my right and whether it exists as right for them too. In the meantime, let us take the manner yet another way. I am to reverence sultanic law in the sultanate, popular law in the republics, canon law in Catholic communities. To these laws, I am to subordinate myself. I am to regard them as sacred, a censor right and law abiding mind. Of such a sort is so firmly planted in people's heads that the most revolutionary persons of our days want to subject us to a new sacred law, the law of society, the law of mankind, the right of all and the like. The right of all is to go before my right. As a right of all, it would indeed be my right among the rest. Since I, with the rest, am included in all, but that it is at the same time a right of others, or even of all others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a right of all will I defend it, but as my right and then every other may see to it how he shall likewise maintain it for himself. The right of all, e.g. to eat, is a right of every individual. Let each keep this right an abridged for himself, and all exercise it spontaneously. Let him not take care for all, though. Let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all. But the social reformers preach to us a law of society. There the individual becomes society's slave, and is in the right only when society makes him out in the right, i.e. when he lives, according to society's statutes and so is loyal. Whether I am loyal under a despotism or in a society, a la rightling, it is the same absence of right insofar as in both cases I have not my right but foreign right. In consideration of right, the question is always asked. What or who gives me the right to it? Answer, God, love, reason, nature, humanity, etc. No, only your might, your power gives you the right, your reason, e.g. may give it to you. Communism, which assumes that men have equal rights by nature, contradicts its own proposition till it comes to this, that men have no right at all by nature, for it is not willing to recognize, e.g., that parents have by nature rights as against their children, or the children as against their parents, it abolishes the family. Nature gives parents, brothers, etc. no right at all. Altogether, this entire revolutionary or Babuist principle note. See, the communist and in the Schweitz committee report, page three, rests on a religious, i.e. false, view of things. Who can ask after right if he does not occupy the religious standpoint himself, is not right a religious concept, i.e., something sacred, why equality of right, as the revolution propounded it, is only another name for Christian equality, the equality of the brethren, of God's children, of Christians, in short, fraternity. Each and every inquiry after right deserves to be lashed with Schiller's words. Many a year I've used my nose to smell the onion and the rose, is there any proof which shows that I have a right to that same nose? When the revolution stamped equality as a right, it took flight into the religious domain, into the region of the sacred, of the ideal. Hence, since then, the fight for the sacred, inalienable rights of man against the eternal rights of man, the well-earned rights of the established order, are quite naturally, and with equal right brought to bear, right against right, where of course one is decried by the other as wrong. This has been the contest of right. Rex strikes a word which usually means lawsuit, since the revolution. You want to be in the right as against the rest, that you cannot, as against them, you remain forever in the wrong, for they surely would not be your opponents if they were not in their right too. They will always make you out in the wrong, but as against the right of the rest, yours is a higher, greater, more powerful right, is it not? No such thing, your right is not more powerful if you are not more powerful. Have Chinese subjects a right to freedom? Just bestow it on them, and then look how far you have gone wrong in your attempt, because they do not know how to use freedom, they have no right to it, or in clearer terms, because they have not freedom, they have not the right to it. Children have no right to the condition of majority, because they are not of age, i.e. because they are children. People that let themselves be kept in knowledge have no rights to the condition of majority. If they ceased to be in knowledge, then only would they have the right to be of age. This means nothing else than what you have the power to be, you have the right to. I derive all right and all warrant from me. I am entitled to everything that I have in my power. I am entitled to overthrow Zeus, Jehovah, God, etc. If I can, if I cannot, then these gods will always remain in the right and in power as against me, and what I do will be to fear their right and their power in impotent God-fearingness, to keep their commandments and believe that I do right in everything that I do according to their right, about as the Russian boundary sentinels think themselves rightfully entitled to shoot dead the suspicious persons who are escaping, since they murder by superior authority, i.e. with right. But I am entitled by myself to murder if I myself do not forbid it to myself. If I myself do not fear murder as a wrong, this view of things lies at the foundation of Camiso's poem, The Valley of Murder, where the grey-haired Indian murderer compels reverence from the white man whose brethren he has murdered. The only thing I am not entitled to is what I do not do with a free cheer, i.e. what I do not entitle myself to. I decide what is the right thing in me, there is no right outside me, if it is right for me. Note a common German phrase for it suits me, and note it is right, possibly this may not suffice to make it right for the rest, i.e. their care not mine, let them defend themselves, and if for the whole world something were not right, but it were right for me, i.e. I wanted it, then I would ask nothing about the whole world. So everyone does who knows how to value himself, everyone in the degree that he is an egoist, for might goes before right, and that with perfect right. Because I am by nature a man I have an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods, says Bavioff. Must he not also say because I am by nature a first born prince, I have a right to the throne, the rights of man and the well earned rights come to the same thing in the end, i.e. to nature, which gives me a right i.e. to birth, and further inheritance etc. I am born as a man, is equal to, I am born as a king's son, the natural man has only a natural right because he has only a natural power and natural claims, he has right of birth and claims of birth, but nature cannot entitle me, i.e. give me capacity or might, to that to which only my act entitles me, that the king's child sets himself above other children, even this is his act, which secures to him the precedence, and that the other children approve and recognise this act is their act, which makes them worthy to be subjects, whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice etc. does so, all of i.e. the same foreign right, a right that I do not give or take to myself. Thus the communists say equal labour entitles man to equal enjoyment. Formerly the question was raised whether the virtuous man must not be happy on earth, the Jews actually drew this inference that it may go well with the on earth. No, equal labour does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment, but if you have laboured and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then it serves you right. If you take the enjoyment it is your right, if on the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before a well earned right. Of those who are privileged for enjoyment, it is their right, as by laying hands on it would become your right. The conflict over the right of property wavers in vehement commotion. The communists affirm, note, A. Becker, Volksphilosophie, page 22f, end note, that the earth belongs rightfully to him who tills it, and its products to those who bring them out. I think it belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him, does not let himself be deprived of it. If he appropriates it, then not only the earth, but the right to it too belongs to him. This is egoistic right, i.e. it is right for me, therefore it is right. Aside from this, right does have a wax nose. The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who strike him down, I'm also in the right. I defend against him, not my right, but myself. As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, i.e. concede to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to newborn children, then they have the right. If it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it, for only society can give or concede it to them. They themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. It will be objected the children had nevertheless by nature the right to exist, only the Spartans refused recognition to this right. But then they simply had no right to this recognition, no more than they had to recognition of their life by the wild beasts to which they were thrown. People talk so much about birthright and complain, there is a last no mention of the rights that were born with us. What sort of right, then, is there that was born with me? The right to receive an entailed estate, to inherit a throne, to enjoy a princely or noble education, or again because poor parents begot me to get free schooling, be clothed out of contributions of arms, and at last earn my bread and my herring in, the coal mines are at the loom. Are these not birthrights, rights that have come down to me from my parents through birth? You think no, you think these are only rights improperly so called, it is just these rights that you aim to abolish through the real birthright. To give a basis for this you go back to the simplest thing and affirm that everyone is by birth equal to another, to wit a man. I will grant you that everyone is born a man, hence the newborn are there in equal to each other. Why are they? Only because they do not yet show and exert themselves as anything but bare children of men, naked little human beings, but thereby they are at once different from those who have already made something out of themselves who thus are no longer bare children of man, but children of their own creation. The latter possesses more than bare birthrights, they have earned rights, what an antithesis, what a field of combat, the old combat of the birthrights of man, and well earned rights, go right on appealing to your birthrights, people will not fail to oppose to you the well earned, both stand on the ground of right, for each of the two has a right against the other, the one the birthright of natural right, the other the earned or well earned right. If you remain on the ground of right, you remain in Rekthaberai, note, I beg you, spare my lungs, he who insists on proving himself right, if he but has one of those things called tones, can hold his own in all the worlds despite. False words to Mephistopheles, slightly misquoted. For Rekthaberai, see note on page 185, end note, the other cannot give you your right, he cannot meet out right to you, he who has might has right, if you have not the former, neither have you the latter, is this wisdom so hard to attain, just look at the mighty and their doings, we are talking here only of China and Japan of course, just try it once you Chinese and Japanese to make them out in the wrong and learn by experience how they throw you into jail, only do not confuse with this the well-meaning councils which in China and Japan are permitted because they do not hinder the mighty one but possibly help him on, for him who should want to make them out in the wrong, they would stand open only one way there too, that of might, if he deprives them of their might then he has really made them out in the wrong, deprive them of their right in any other case, he can do nothing but clench his little fist in his pocket or fall a victim as an obtrusive fool, in short few Chinese or Japanese did not ask after right and in particular if you did not ask after the right that were born with you then you would not need to ask at all after the well-earned rights either, you start back in fright before others, because you think you see beside them the ghosts of right which as in the Homeric combats seems to fight as a goddess at their side, helping them, what do you do do you throw the spear, no you creep around to gain the spook over to yourselves, that it may fight on your side, you woo for the ghost's favour, another would simply ask thus, do I will with my opponent wills, no now then there may fight for him a thousand devils or gods, I go at him all the same, the commonwealth of right as the Vosizhge Zhaitung among others stands for it, asks that office holders be removable only by the judge, not by the administration, they in illusion if it were settled by law that an office holder who is once seen drunken shall lose his office, then the judges would have to condemn him on the word of the witnesses, in short the lawgiver would only have to state precisely all the possible grounds which entail the loss of office, however laughable they might be, e.g. he who laughs in his superior's faces, who does not go to church every Sunday, who does not take the communion every four weeks, who runs in debt, who has disreputable associates, who shows no determination etc. shall be removed, these things the lawgiver might take it into his head to prescribe, e.g. for a court of honor, then the judge would solely have to investigate whether the accused had become guilty of those offenses, and on presentation of the proof, pronounced sentence of removal against him, in the name of the law, the judge is lost when he ceases to be mechanical, when he is forsaken by the rules of evidence, then he no longer has anything but an opinion like everybody else, and if he decides according to his opinion, his action is no longer an official action. As judge, he must decide only according to the law, commend me rather to the old French parliaments which wanted to examine for themselves what was to be matters of right, and to register it only after their own approval. They at least judge according to a right of their own, and were not willing to give themselves up to be machines of the lawgiver, although as judges they must, to be sure, become their own machines. It is said that punishment is the criminal's right, but impunity is just as much his right, if his undertaking proceeds, it serves him right, and if it does not succeed, it likewise serves him right. You make your bed and lie in it. If someone goes foolhardily into dangers and perishes in them, we are apt to say it serves him right, he would have it so, but if he conquered the dangers, i.e. if his might was victorious, then he would be in the right too. If a child plays with the knife and gets cut, it is served right, but if it doesn't get cut, it is served right too. Hence right befalls the criminal doubtless, when he suffers what he risked. Why, what did he risk it for? Since he knew the possible consequences, but the punishment that we decree against him is only our right, not his. Our right reacts against his, and he is in the wrong at last, because we get the upper hand. Sterner. Section 22. My power. Part 2. But what is right, what is matter of right in a society, is voice too in the law. Whatever the law may be, it must be respected by the local citizen. Thus the law abiding mind of old England is eulogised, to this that Euribidian sentiment, all sitters, four, one, eight, entirely corresponds. We serve the gods whatever the gods are. Law as such, God as such. Thus far we are today. People aren't painless to distinguish law from arbitrary orders. From an ordinance, the former comes from a duly entitled authority, but a law over human action, ethical law, state law, etc., is always a declaration of will, and so an order. Yes, even if I myself gave myself the law, it would yet be only my order, to which in the next moment I can refuse obedience. One may well enough declare what he will put up with, and so depreciate the opposite of the law. Making known that in the contrary case, he will treat the transgressor as his enemy, but no one has any business to command my actions, to say what course I shall pursue, and set up a code to govern it. I must put up with it that he treats me as his enemy, but never that he makes free with me as his creature, and that he makes his reason, or even unreason, my plumb line. States last only so long as there is a ruling will, and this ruling will is looked upon as tantamount to the own will. The lord's will is law. What do your laws amount to if no one obeys them? What your orders if nobody lets himself be ordered? The state cannot forbear the claim, to determine the individual's will, to speculate and count on this. For the state it is indispensable, that nobody have an own will. If one had, the state would have to exclude, lock up, banish, etc. This one. If all had, they would do away with the state. The state is not thinkable, without lordship and servitude, subjection. For the state must will to be the lord of all that it embraces, and this will is called the will of the state. He who has to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others, is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be over with all lordship. The own will of me is the state's destroyer. It is therefore branded by the state as self-will. Own will and the state are powers in deadly hostility, between which no eternal peace is possible. As long as the state asserts itself, it represents own will. It's ever hostile a payment, as unreasonable evil, and a latter lets itself be talked into believing this. Nay, it really is such, for no more reason than this, that it still lets itself be talked into such belief. It has not yet come to itself, and to the consciousness of its dignity. Hence, it is still incomplete, still amenable to fine words, etc. Every state is a depotism, be the despot, one or many, or as one is likely to imagine about a republic, if all of the lords, i.e. despotise one over another, for this is the case when the law given at any time, the expressed violation of, it may be, a popular assembly, is thus forth to be law for the individual, to which obedience is due from him or toward which he has the duty of obedience. If one were even to conceive the case, that every individual in the people had expressed the same will, and hereby a complete collective will, had come into being, the matter would still remain the same. Would I not be bound to day, and henceforth, to my will of yesterday, my will would in this case be frozen. Wretched stability, my creature, to wit, the particular expression of will, would have become my commander. But I in my will, I the creator, should be hindered in my flow, and my dissolution. Because I was a fool yesterday, I must remain such my life long. So in the state life I am at best, I might just as well say at worst, aboundment of myself. Because I was a willer yesterday, I am today without will, yesterday involuntary, today involuntary. How change it? Only be recognising no duty, no binding myself nor letting myself be bound. If I have no duty, then I know no law either. But they will bind me, my will nobody can bind, and my disinclination remains free. Why everything must go topsy-turvy if everyone could do what he would? Well, who says that everyone can do everything? What are you there for? Trey, do you who do not need to put up with everything? Defend yourself, and no one will do anything to you. He who would break your will has to do with you, and is your enemy. Deal with him as such. If there stand behind you for your own protection, some millions more, then you are an imposing power, and will have an easy victory. But even if as a power you over all your attainment, still you are not on that account a hallowed authority to him, unless he be a simpleton. He does not owe you respect and regard, even though you will have to consider your might. We are accustomed to classify states according to the different ways in which the supreme being is distributed. If an individual has its monarchy, of all habit, democracy, etc., supreme might then. Might against whom? Against the individual and his self-will. The state practices violence. The individual must not do so. The state's behaviour is violence, and it calls its violence law. That of the individual crime. Crime then, so the individual's violence is called, and only by crime does he overcome the state's violence, when he thinks that the state is not above him, but he is above the state. Now, if I wanted to act ridiculously, I might, as a well-meaning person, admonish you not to make laws which impair my self-development, self-activity, self-creation. I do not give this advice, for if you should follow it, you would be unwise, and I should have been cheated of my entire pocket. I request nothing at all from you, for whatever I might demand, you would still be dictatorial law-givers, and must be so, because a raven cannot sing, nor a robber live without robbery. Rather, do I ask those who would be egoists, that they think they're more egoistic, to let laws be given them by you, and to respect those that are given, or to practice with factoriness? Yes, complete disobedience. Good-hearted people think the laws ought to prescribe only what is accepted in the people's feeling as right and proper. But what concern is it of mine? What is accepted in the nation and by the nation? The nation will perhaps be against the blasphemer, therefore a law against blasphemy. Am I not too to blaspheme on that account? Is this law to be more than an order to me? I put the question. Solely from the principle that all right and all authority belong to the collectively of the people, to all forms of government arise. For none of them lets this appeal to the collectivity and the despot, as well as the president, or any aristocracy, acts and commands in the name of the state. They are in possession of the authority of the state, and it is perfectly indifferent whether, were it possible that people of the collectivity, all individuals, exercise their state, authority, or whether it is only the representatives of this collectivity, be there many of them as a aristocassies, or one as a monarchies, always the collectivity is above the individual, and has a power which is called legitimate, i.e. which is law. Over against the sacredness of the state, the individual is only a vessel of dishonour, in which exuberance, malevolence, mania, foridicule and slander, frivolity, etc., are left as soon as he does not deem that object of veneration, the state, to be worthy of recognition. The spiritual haughtiness of the servants and subjects of the state has fine penalties against unspiritual exuberance. When the government designates as punishable all play of mind against the state, the moderate liberals turn and opine that fun, satire, wit, humour, must have free play anyhow, and genius must enjoy freedom, so not the individual man indeed, but still genius is to be free. Here the state, or in its name the government, says with perfect right, he who is not for me is against me. Fun, wit, etc., in short, the turning of the state affairs into a comedy, have undermined states of old, they are not innocent, and further what boundaries are to be drawn between guilty and innocent wit, etc. At this question the moderates fall into great complexity, and everything reduces itself to the prayer that the state, government, would please not be so sensitive, so ticklish, that it would not immediately sense malevolence in harmless things, and would in general be a little more tolerant. Exaggerated sensitiveness is certainly a weakness, its avoidance may be praiseworthy virtue, but in time of war one cannot be sparing, and what may be allowed under peaceable circumstances ceases to be permitted, as soon as a state of siege is declared. Because the well-meaning liberals feel this flingly, they hasten to declare that, considering the devotion of the people, there is assuredly no danger to be feared, but the government will be wiser and not let itself be talked into believing anything of that sort. It knows too well how people stuff one with fine words, and will not let itself be satisfied with the barma side dish, but they are bound to have their playground, for they are the children, you know, and cannot be so staid as old folks. Boys will be boys only for this playground, only for a few hours of jolly running about, they bargain. They ask only that the state should not, like a splenatic papa, be too cross. It should permit some possessions of the ass, and plays of balls, as the church allowed them in the middle ages, but the times when it could grant this without danger are passed. Children that now once come into the open, and live through an hour without the rod of discipline, are no longer willing to go into the cell, for the open is now no longer a supplement to the cell, no longer a refreshing recreation, but its opposite, and ought, in short, the state must either no longer put up with anything, or put up with everything, and perish. It must be either sensitive through and through, or like a dead man insensitive. Tolerance is done with. If the state but gives a finger, they take the whole hand at once. There can be no more jesting, and all jest, such as fun, wit, humour, becomes bitter earnest. The clamour of the liberals for freedom of the press runs counter to their own principle, their proper will. They will what they do not will, i.e. they wish they would like. Hence it is true that they fall away so easily, when once so-called freedom of the press appears, then they would like censorship. Quite naturally, the state is sacred even to them, likewise morals. They behave toward it only as ill-bred as tricky children who seek to utilise the weaknesses of their parents. Papa's state is to permit them to say many things that do not please him, but Papa has the right, by a stern look, to blue-pencil their impertinent gavel. If they recognise in him their Papa, they must in his presence put up with the censorship of speech, by every child. If you let yourself be made out in the right by another, you must no less let yourself be made out in the wrong by him. If justification and reward come to you from him, accept also his arraignment and punishment. Alongside right goes wrong, alongside legality, crime. What are you? You are a criminal. The criminal is in the utmost degree a state's own crime. Zepetina. One may let this sentiment pass, even if Petina herself does not understand it exactly so. For in the state of the unbridled, I, I as I belong to myself alone, cannot come to my fulfilment and realisation. Every ego is from birth a criminal to begin with against the people, the state. Hence it is, that it does really keep watch over all. It sees in each one an egoist, and it is afraid of the egoist. It presumes the worst about each other, and takes care, heli's care, that no harm happens to the state. Niqured, mispublica detrimental capoe. The unbridled ego and this we originally are, and in our secret inward parts we remain so always, is another ceasing criminal in the state. The man whom his boldness, his will, his inconsiderateness, and fearlessness lead, is surrounded with spies by the state, by the people. I say by the people. The people think it's something wonderful, you good-hearted folks, what you have in the people. The people is full of police sentiments through and through. Only he who renounces his ego, who practises self-relentiation, is acceptable to the people. In the book cited by Tina, is throughout good-natured enough to regard the state as only sick, and to hope for its recovery, a recovery which she would bring about through the demagogues. But it is not sick, rather it is in its full strength, when it hooks from the demagogues, who want to acquire something for the individual, for all, in its believers, is provided with the best demagogues, leaders of people. According to Bettina, the state is to develop mankind's germ of freedom, otherwise it is a raven mother, and caring for raven fodder. It cannot do otherwise, but in its very caring for mankind, which, besides, would have to be the humane or free state to begin with. The individual is raven fodder for it. How rightly speaks the burgomaster, on the other hand, what, the state has no other duty than to be merely the attendant of incurable invalids? That isn't to the point. From of old, the healthy state has relieved itself of the deceased matter, and not mixed itself with it. It does not need to be so economical with its juices, cut off the robber branches without hesitation, that the others may bloom, do not shiver at the state's harshness, its morality, its policy and religion point it to that. Accused of no want or feeling, its sympathy revolts against this, but its experience finds safety only in this severity. There are diseases in which only drastic remedies will help. The physician who recognises the deceased as such, but timidly turns to palliatives, will never remove the disease, but may well cause the patient to succumb after a shorter or longer sickness. Through Raq's question, if you apply death as a drastic remedy, how is the cure to be wrought then? Isn't to the point. Why the state does not apply death against itself, but against an offensive member? It tears at an eye that offends it, etc. For the individual state, the only way of salvation is to make man flourish in it, if one here, like Bettina, understands by man the concept man. She is right, the invalid state will recover by the flourishing of man, for the more infatuated the individuals are with man, the better it serves the state's turn. But if one referred it to the individuals to all, and the authorless half does this too because about man she is still involved with vagueness, then it would sound somewhat like the following. For an individual band of robbers, the only way of salvation is to make the lower citizen flourish in it. Why thereby the band of robbers would simply go to ruin as bad of robbers, and because it perceives this, it prefers to shoot everyone who has a leaning toward becoming a steady man. In this book Bettina is a patriot, or what is little more her philanthropist, a worker for human happiness. She is discontented with the existing order in quite the same way as is the title of ghost of her book, along with all who would like to bring back the good old faith and what goes with it. Only she thinks counter-wise that the politicians, placeholders and diplomats ruined the state, while those laid at the door of the now brilliant, the seducers of the people. And of section 22, recording by Elaine Webb Bristol, England. Section 23 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 Power, Part 3 What is the ordinary criminal but one who has committed the fatal mistake of endeavouring after? What is the people's instead of seeking for what is his? He has sought despicable alien goods, has done what believers do who seek after what is God's. What does the priest who admonishes the criminal do? He sets before him the great wrong of having desecrated by his act what was hallowed by the state its property, in which, of course, must be included even the life of those who belong to the state. Instead of this, he might rather hold up to him the fact that he has befellowed himself in not despising the alien thing, but thinking it worth stealing, if he could, if he were not a parton. Talk with a so-called criminal as with an egoist, and he will be ashamed, not that he transgressed against your laws and goods, but that he considered your laws worth evading, your goods worth desiring. He will be ashamed that he did not despise you and yours together, that he was too little an egoist, but you cannot talk egoistically with him, for you are not so great as a criminal, you commit no crime. You do not know that an ego who is his own cannot desist from being a criminal, that crime is his life. And yet, you should know it, since you believe that we are all miserable sinners, but you think so repitiously to get beyond sin. You do not comprehend, for you are devil-fearing, that guilt is the value of a man. Oh, if you were guilty, but now you are righteous. Well, just put everything nicely to rights, for your master. When the Christian consciousness, or the Christian man, draws up the criminal code, what can the concept of crime be there, but simply heartlessness? Each severing and wounding of a heart-relation, each heartless behaviour toward a sacred being is crime. The more heartfelt the relation is supposed to be, the more scandalous is the deriding of it, and the more worthy of punishment the crime. Everyone who is subject to the Lord should love him. To deny this love is a high-treason worthy of death. Adultery is a heartlessness, worthy of punishment. One has no heart, no enthusiasm, no pathetic feeling for the sacredness of marriage. So long as the heart or soul detects laws, only the heartful or soulful man enjoys the protection of the laws. That the man of soul makes laws means probably that the moral man makes them. What contradicts these men's moral feeling is they penalise. How, E.G., should this loyalty secession reach of oaths, in short, or radical breaking off, or tearing a sander of venerable ties, not be inflicted and terminal in their eyes, he who breaks with these demands of the soul has for enemies all the moral or the men of soul. Only Criminature and his mates are the right people to set up consciously a penal period of the heart, as a certain bill sufficiently proves. The consistent legislation of the Christian state must be placed wholly in the hands of the Parsons, and will not become pure and coherent as long as it is worked out, only by the Parsons ridden, who are always only half Parsons. Only then will every lack of soulfulness, every heartlessness be certified as an unpardonable crime. Only then will every agitation of the soul become condemnable, every objection of criticism, and doubt be amethyst. Only then is the only man, before the Christian consciousness, a convicted criminal to begin with. The men of the revolution often talk of the people's just revenge, as it's right. Revenge and right coincide here. Is this an attitude of an ego to an ego? The people cries that the opposite party has committed crimes against it. Can I assume that one commits a crime against me, without assuming that he has to act as I see fit? And this action I call the right, the good, etc., the divergent action, the crime. So I think that the others must aim at the same goal with me, i.e. I do not treat them as unique beings, who bear their law in themselves and live according to it, but as beings who are to obey some rational law, I set up what man is, and what action in a truly human way is, and I demand of everyone that this law become norm, and I deal to him. Otherwise, he will expose himself as a sinner and criminal. But upon the guilty falls the penalty of the law. One sees here how it is man against who sets on foot even the concept of crime, of sin, and therewith that of right. A man in whom I do not recognise man is a sinner, a guilty one. Only against a sacred thing are there criminals. You against me can be never a criminal, but only an opponent. But not to hate him who injures a sacred thing is in itself a crime. As saints just cries out against Danton, are you not a criminal and responsible for not having hated the enemies of the Fatherland? If, as in the revolution, what man is apprehended as good sister-son, then from this concept of man, we have the well-known political offenses and crimes. In all this, the individual, the individual man is regarded as refuse, and on the other hand, the general man, man, is honoured. Now, according to how this ghost is named, as Christian, Jew, Muslim, good citizen, loyal subject, freeman, patriarch, etc., just so do those who would like to carry through the diligent concept of man, as well as those who want to put themselves through full behind victorious man. And with what function, the butchery goes on here in the name of the law, of the sovereign people, of God, etc. Now, if the persecuted, trickily conceal and protect themselves from the stern, personical judges, he will stigmatize them as saint just. E.g., does not those whom he accuses in the speech against Danton, one is to be a fool and deliver himself up to their mollock. Crimes spring from fixed ideas. The sacredness of marriage is a fixed idea. From the sacredness, it follows, that infidelity is a crime, and therefore, a certain marriage law imposes upon it a shorter or longer penalty. But by those who proclaim freedom as sacred, this penalty must be regarded as a crime against freedom, and only in this sense has public opinion in fact branded the marriage law. Society would have everyone come to his right indeed, but yet only to that which is sanctioned by society, to their society right, not really to his right, but I give or take to myself the right out of my own plenitude of power, and against every superior power I am the most impenitent criminal, owner and creator of my right. I recognize no other source of right than me, neither God nor the state nor nature, nor even man himself, with his eternal rights of man, neither divine nor human right. Right in and for itself, without relation to me, therefore, absolute right, separated from me, therefore, a thing that exists in and for itself, an absolute and eternal right, like an eternal truth. According to the liberal way of thinking, right is to be obligatory for me because it is thus established by human reason, against which my reason is unreason. Formerly, people invade in the name of divine reason against weak human reasons, now in the name of a strong human reason against egoistic reason, which is rejected as unreason, and yet none is real because this very unreason, neither divine nor human reason, but only you and my reason existing at my given time is real, as and because you and I are real. The thought of right is originally my thought, or it has its origin in me, but when it has sprung from me, when the word is out, then it has become flesh, it is a fixed idea. Now I no longer get rid of the thought, however I turn, it stands before me. Thus men have not become masters again of the thought, right, which they themselves created, their creature is running away with them, this is absolute right, that which is absolved or unfastened from me. We revering it as absolute, cannot devour it again, and it takes from us the creative power. The creature is more than the creator, it is in and for itself. Once you no longer let right run around free, once you draw it back into its origin, into you, it is your right, and that is right which suits you. Right has had to suffer an attack within itself, i.e. from the standpoint of right war being declared on the part of liberalism against privilege. Privileged and endowed with equal rights on these two concepts turns a stubborn fight, excluded or admitted, would mean the same. But where should there be a power, be it in an imaginary one like God, law or real one like I, you of which it should not be true, that before it all are endowed with equal rights, I, no respect of personal holds. Everyone is equally dear to God if he adores him, equally agreeable to the law, if only he is a law-abiding person. Whether the lover of God and the law is humpbacked and lame, whether poor or rich, etc. That amounts to nothing for God and the law, just so when you are at the point of drowning, you, like a negro, as rescuer, as well as the most excellent occasion, yes, in this situation, you esteem a dog not less than a man, but to whom will not everyone be also, counter-wise, a preferred or disregarded person. God punishes the wicked with his wrath. The law chastises the lawless. You let one visit you every moment and show the other the door. The equality of right is a phantom, just because right is nothing more and nothing less than admission, a matter of grace, which be it said, one may also acquire by his dessert, for dessert and grace are not contradictory, since even grace wishes to be deserved, and our gracious smile calls only to him who knows how to force it from us. So people dream, all of citizens of the state, having to stand side by side with equal rights. As citizens of the state, they are certainly all equal for the state, but it will divide them, and advance them, or put them in the rear, according to its special ends, if on no other account and still more must it distinguish them from one another as good and bad citizens. Bruno Bier disposes of the due question, from the standpoint that privilege is not justified, because due and Christian have each some point of advantage over the other, and in having this point of advantage are exclusive. Therefore, before the critics gaze, they crumble into nothingness. With them the state lies under the like blame, since it justifies their having advantages, and slants it as a privilege or property, but thereby derogates from its calling to become a free state. But now everyone has something of advantage over another, it is, himself or his individuality, in this everybody remains exclusive, and again before a third party everyone makes his peculiarity count, but as much as possible, and if he wants to win him at all, tries to make it appear attractive before him. Now is the third party to be insensible to the differences of the one from the other? Do they ask that of the free state or of humanity? Then these would have to be absolutely without self-interest, and incapable of taking an interest in any one whatever, neither God who divides his own from the wicked, nor the state, which knows how to separate good citizens from bad, thus brought up as so indifferent. But they are looking for this very third party that bestows no more privilege, then it is called perhaps the free state, or humanity, or whatever else it may be. As Christian and Jew are ranked low by Brunebure, on account of their certain privileges, it must be that they could and should free themselves from the narrow standpoint of self-renunciation, or unsurphishness. If they threw off their egoism, the mutual wrong would cease, and with it Christian and Jewish religiousness in general, it would be necessarily only that either of them should any longer want to be anything peculiar. But if they gave up this exclusiveness, with that the ground on which their hostilities were waged, would in truth not yet be forsaken. In case of need, they would indeed find a third thing on which they could unite, a general religion, a religion of humanity, etc. In short, an equalization, which need not be better than that which would result if all Jews became Christians, by this likewise the privilege of one over the other would have an end. The tension would indeed be done away, but in this consisted not of the essence of the two, but only their neighbourhood. As being distinguished from each other, they must necessarily be mutually resistant, and their disparity will always remain. Truly it is not a failing in you that you stiffen yourselves against me, and assert your distinctness or peculiarity, you need not give away or renounce yourself. People have conceived the significance of the Opposition too formally and weekly, when they want only to dissolve it in order to make room for a third thing that shall unite. The Opposition deserves rather to be sharpened, as Jew and Christian, you are in too slight an Opposition, and are contending only about religion, as it were about the emphors beard, about a fiddlesticks end. Enemies in religion indeed, in the rest, you still remain good friends, and equal to each other, e.g. as men. Nevertheless, the rest too is unlike in each, and a time when you no longer merely disembowel your Opposition will be only when you entirely recognise it, and everybody asserts himself from top to toe as unique. Then the former Opposition will assuredly be dissolved, but only because a stronger has taken it up into itself. Our weakness consists not in this, that we are in opposition to others, but in this, that we are not completely so, that we are not an entirely severed from them, or that we seek a communion, a bond, that in communion we have an ideal, one faith, one God, one idea, one hat, for all. If all were brought under one hat, certainly no one would any longer need to take off his hat before another. The last and most decided Opposition, that of unique against unique, is at bottom beyond what is called Opposition, but without having slunk back into the unity and unison. As unique, you have nothing in common with the other any longer, and therefore nothing divisive or hostile either. You are not seeking to be in the right against him before a third party, and are standing with him neither on the ground of right, nor on any other common ground. The Opposition vanishes in complete severance or singleness. This might indeed be regarded as the new point in common, or a new parity. But here the parity consists precisely in a disparity, and it's itself nothing but a disparity, a part of disparity, and that only for him who institutes a comparison. The Polynic against Privilege forms a characteristic feature of Liberalism, which fumes against Privilege because it itself appeals to right, further than to fuming it cannot carry this. For privileges do not fall before right falls, as they are only forms of right. But right falls apart into its nothingness when it is swallowed up by might, i.e. when one understands what is meant by might goes before right. All right explains itself then as Privilege, and Privilege itself as power, as superior power. But must not the mighty combat against superior power show quite another face than the modest combat against Privilege, which is to be thought had before a first judge, right, according to the judge's mind? Now, in conclusion, I have still to take back the halfway form of expression, of which I was willing to make use only so long as I was still rooting among the entrails of right, and letting the word at least stand. But in fact, with the concept the word too uses its meaning, what I call my right is no longer a right at all, because right can be bestowed only by a spirit, be it the spirit of nature, or that of the species, of mankind, the spirit of God, or that of His Holiness, or His Highness, etc. What have I without an entitling spirit I have without right? I have it solely and alone through my power. I do not demand any right, therefore I need not recognize any evil. What I can get by force, I get by force. And what I do not get by force, I have no right to, nor do I give myself errors or consolation with my imperceptible right. With absolute right, right itself passes away. The dominion of the concept of right is cancelled at the same time, for it is not to be forgotten that hitherto concepts, ideas, or principles ruled us, and that among these rulers the concept of right, or of justice, played one of the most important parts. Entitled or unentitled, that does not concern me. If I am only powerful, I am of myself empowered, and need no other empowering or entitling. Right is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook. Power that am I myself, I am the powerful one, and owner of power. Right is above me, is absolute, and exists in one higher, as whose grace it flows to me. Right is a gift of grace from the judge. Power and might exists, only in me, the powerful and mighty. End of section 23, recording by Elaine Webb, Bristol, England. Section 24 of the Ego and his O. 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 O. By Max Sterner, my power, my intercourse, part one. In society, the human demand, at most, can be satisfied, while the egoistic must always come short. Because it can hardly escape anybody, that the present shows no such living interest in any question, as in a social, one has to direct his gaze especially to society. May, if the interests felt in it were less passionate and dazzled, people would not so much in looking at society, lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that a society cannot become new, so long as those who form and constitute it, remain the old ones. If, e.g., there was to arise in the Jewish people a society which should spread a new faith over the earth, these apostles could in no case remain Pharisees. As you are, so you present yourself, so you behave toward men, a hypocrite as a hypocrite, a Christian as a Christian. Therefore, the character of a society is determined by the character of its members. They are its creators, so much at least one must receive, even if one were not willing, to put to the test the concept society itself. Ever far from letting themselves come to their full development and consequence, men have hitherto not been able to found the societies on themselves, or rather they have been able only to found societies and to live in societies. The societies were always persons, powerful persons, so called moral persons, i.e., ghosts, before which the individual had the appropriate will in his head, the fear of ghosts. As such ghosts they may most suitably be designated by the respective names, people and peopleet, the people of the patriarchs, the people of Helene's, etc., at the last, the people of men, mankind. Anakara's clout was enthusiastic for the nation of mankind. Then every subdivision of this people which could and must have its special societies, the Spanish, French people, etc., within it again classes, such as in short all kinds of corporations, lastly tapering to the finest point, the little peopleet of the family. Hence, instead of saying that the person that walked as ghost in all societies hitherto has been the people, there might also have been named the two extremes, to it either mankind or the family, both the most natural born units. We choose the word people, because its devoration has been brought into connection with the Greek pelori. The many or the masses, but still more because national efforts are at present the order of the day, and because even the newest neutrinals have not yet shaken off its deceptive person. Although, on the other hand, the latter consideration must give the preference to the expression mankind, since on all sides they are going in for enthusiasm either mankind. The people then, mankind or the family, have hitherto, as it seems, played history. No egoistic interest was to come up in these societies, but solely general ones, national or popular interests, class interests, family interests, and general human interests. But who has brought to therefore the peoples who decline history relates? Who but the egoists? Who was seeking his satisfaction? If once an egoist interest pepped in, the society was corrupted and moved towards its dissolution, as Rome, e.g., proves with its highly developed system of private rights, or Christianity with the insensibly breaking in rational self-determination, self-consciousness, the autonomy of the spirit, etc. The Christian people has produced two societies whose duration will keep equal measures with the permanence of that people of these societies, state and church. Can they be called a union of egoists? Do we in them pursue an egoistic, personal, own interest? Or do we pursue a popular, i.e., an interest of the Christian people? To wit the state and church interest? Can I and may I be myself in them? May I think and act as I will? May I reveal myself, live myself out, busy myself? Must I not leave untouched the majesty of the state, the sensitivity of the church? Well, I may not do so as I will, but shall I find in any society such an unmeasured freedom of marrying? Certainly no. Accordingly, we might be content, not a bit. It is a different thing whether I rebound from an ego or form a people, a generalization. There, I am my opponent's opponent, born his equal. Here, I am a despised opponent, bound and under a guardian. There, I stand, man to man. Here, I am a strong boy, who can't accomplish nothing against his comrade, because the latter has called father and mother to aid, and has crept under the apron. While I am well scalded as an ill-bred brat, and I must not argue, there I fight against a bodily enemy, here against mankind. Against a generalization, against a majesty, against a spook. But to me, no majesty, nothing sacred, is a limit, nothing that I know how to overpower. Only that which I cannot overpower still limits my might, and I of limited might, and temporarily a limited I, not limited by the might outside me, but limited by my own still deficient might, by my own impotence. However, the guard dies, but does not surrender, above all, only a bodily opponent. I dare meet every foreman, whom I can see and measure with my eye, metal fires, my metal for the fight, etc. Many privileges have indeed been cancelled with time, but solely for the sake of the common will, of the state and state will, by no means for the strengthening of me. Vassalage, e.g., was abrogated. Only that a single liege lord, the lord of the people, the monarchial power, might be strengthened. Vassalage, under the one, became yet more vigorous thereby. Only in favor of the monarch, be he called prince or law, have privileges fallen. In France, the citizens are not indeed vassals of the king, but are instead vassals of the law, the charter. Subordination was retained. Only the Christian state recognized that man cannot serve two masters, the lord of the manor and the prince. Therefore, one obtained all the prerogatives. Now he can again place one above another. He can make men in high place. But of what concern to me is the common will. The common will, as such, is not my will, but only the furthest extremity of self-penantiation. The common will may cheer aloud, while I must down the state, may shine while I starve. In what lies the folly of the political liberals, but in their opposing the people to the government, and talking of people's rights? So there is the people going to be of age, etc. As if one who has no mouth could be wounded? Only the individual is able to be wounded. Thus, the whole question of the liberty of the press is turned upside down when it is made claim to as a right of the people. It is only a right, or better, the right of the individual. If a people has liberty of the press, then I, although in the midst of this people, have it not, a liberty of the people is not my liberty, and the liberty of the press, as a liberty of the people, must have at its side a press law directed against me. This must be insisted on all around against the present day efforts for liberty. Liberty of the people is not my liberty. Let us admit these categories. Liberty of the people and right of the people, e.g. the right of the people that everybody may their arms. Does one not forfeit such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but may well forfeit a right that belongs not to me, but to the people. I may be locked up for the sake of the liberty of the people. I may, under sentence, incur the loss of the right to their arms. Liberism appears as the last attempt at a creation of the liberty of the people, a liberty of the commune, of society, of the general, of mankind, the dream of a humanity, a people, a commune, a society that shall be of age. A people cannot be free otherwise than at the individual's expense, for it is not the individual that is the main point in this liberty, but the people. The three of the people, the more bound the individual. The Athenian people, precisely at its freest time, created ostracism, banished the atheists, poisoned the most honest thinker. How do they praise Socrates for his conscientiousness, which makes him resist the advice to get away from the dungeon? He is a fool that he concedes to the Athenians a right to condemn him. Therefore, it certainly serves him right. Why then does he remain standing on an equal footing with the Athenians? Why does he not break with them? Had he known, and been able to know, what he was, he would have conceded to such judges no claim, no right. That he did not escape was just his weakness, his delusion of still having something in common with the Athenians, or the opinion that he was a member, a mere member of those people. But he was rather this people itself in person, and could only be his own judge. There was no judge over him, as he himself had really pronounced a public sentence on himself, and made it himself worthy of the pritulum. He should have stuck to that, and as he had uttered no sentence of death against himself, should have despised that of Athenians to unscathed. But he subordinated himself, and recognised in the people his judge. He seemed little to himself before the majesty of the people, that he subjected himself to might, to which alone he could succumb, as to a right was treason against himself, it was virtue. To Christ who it is alleged, reframed from using the power over his heavenly legions, the same scrupleness is thereby ascribed by the narrators. Luther did very well and wisely to have the safety of his journey to worms warranted to him in black and white, and socrates should have known that the Athenians were his enemies, he alone his judge. The self-perception of a reign of law, etc., should have given way to the perception that the relation was a relation of might. It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why? Because the ordinary Greeks could still less attain that logical conclusion, but not even their hero of bought socrates was able to draw. What then is pettifoggery, but a way of utilising something established without doing away with it? I might add, for one's own advantage, but you see that lies in utilising. Such pettifoggers are the theologians who rest and force God's word. What would they have to rest if it were not for the established word of God? So those liberals who only shape and rest the established order, they all are pervertors, like those pervertors of the law. Socrates recognised law, right, the Greeks consistently retained the authority of right and law. If both those recognition they wanted, nevertheless, to assert their advantage, everyone his own, then they had to seek and it perversion of the law or intrigue. Elsipides, an intrigue of genius, introduces the period of Athean decay. The Spartan Lysander and others show that intrigue had become universally Greek. Greek law on which the Greek states rested had to be perverted and undermined by the egoists within these states and the states went down that the individuals might become free. The Greek people felt because the individuals cared less for this people than for themselves. In general, all states, prostitutions, churches have sunk by the succession of individuals. For the individual is the irreconceivable enemy of every generality, every tie, e.g. every fetter, which people fancy to this day that man needs safer ties, he the deadly enemy of every tie. The history of the world shows that no tie has yet remained unwent, shows that man tirelessly defends himself against ties of every sort, and yet, blinded, people think up new ties again and again, and think, e.g., that they have arrived at the right one if one puts upon them the tie of a so-called free constitution, a beautiful constitutional tie, decoration livens, the ties of confidence, do seem gradually to have become somewhat infirm, but people have made no further progress than from apron strings to garters and collars. Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter. Everything sacred is and must be perverted by the verters of the law. Therefore, our present time has multitudes of such perverters in all spheres. They are preparing the way for the breakup of law, for lawlessness. Poor Athenians, who are accused of pedigogry, and so history, poor Alcabes of intrigue. Why, that was just your first point, your first step in freedom. Your Atheists, Herotists, etc., only wanted to have a three Greek people. You were the first to surmise something of your freedom. A people repressed those who tower above its majesty, by ostracism against two powerful citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics of the church, by the Inquisition against traitors in the state. For the people is concerned only with its self-assertion. It demands patriotic self-sacrifice from everybody. To it, accordingly, everyone in himself is indifferent, and nothing, and it cannot do but even suffer what the individual and he alone must do. To wit, turn him to account. Every people, every state is unjust towards the egoist. As long as there still exists even one institution, which the individual may not dissolve, the illness and self-approachments of me is still very remote. How can I, e.g., be free, when I must find myself by oath to a constitution, a charter, a law, and vow body and soul to my people? How can I be my own when my faculties may develop only as far as they do not disturb the harmony of society? Waitling. The fall of peoples and mankind will invite me to my rise. Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, but they may jingle in for tomorrow the festival of the thousand years' existence of our dear Germany. Sound. Sound is how. You do sound solemn enough, as if your tongue was moved by the presentiments, that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand years. What a long life. O go to rest, never to rise again. Let all may become free whom you so long have held in fetters. The people is dead. Up with me. O thou my much tormented German people, what was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body. The torment of a walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every cock crow, and yet times for deliverance and fulfilment. In me too thou hast lived long, though dear thought, though dear spook. Already I almost fancied I had found the word of thy deliverance. The starved flesh and bones were the wandering sprint. Then I hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest. Then the last hope fades out. Then the notes of the last nerve thy away. Then I depart from the desolate house of those who now are dead, and enter at the door of the living one. For only he who is alive is in the right. Farewell, thou dream of so many millions. Farewell, thou who hast traniised over thy children for a thousand years. Tomorrow they carry thee to the grave. Soon, thy sister, the peoples will follow thee. But when they have all followed, then mankind is bettered, and I am my own. I am the laughing air. The word Gellishhaft, society, has its origin in the word Saal Hall. If one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these persons to be in a society. They are in society, and at most constitute a parlor society, by talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech. When it comes to real intercourse, this is to be regarded as independent of society. It may occur or be lacking without altering the nature of what is known society. Those who are in the hall are a society, even as mute persons, or when they put each other off solely with empty phrases of curtsy. Intercourse is mutually. It is the action. The commissium of individuals, society is only community of the hall, and even the statues of a museum hall are in society, they are grouped. People are accustomed to say, they have been I'm. This hall in common, but the case is rather than the hall has us in, or in it. So far the natural signification of the word society. In this it comes out that society is not generated by me and you, but by a third factor which makes associations out of us too. And that it is just this third factor that is the creative one, that which creates society, just so a prison society or a prison companionship, those who enjoy the same prison. Here we already hit upon a third factor, fuller of significance, that was the merely local one, the hall. Prison no longer means a space only, but a space with express reference to its inhabitants. For it is a prison only through being destined for prisoners, without whom it would be a mere building. What gives a common stamp to those who have gathered in it, evidently the prison, since it is only by means of the prison that they are prisoners. What then determines the manner of life of the prison society? The prison. What determines their intercourse? The prison too perhaps. Certainly they can enter upon intercourse only as prisoners, i.e. only so far as the prison laws allow it, that they themselves hold intercourse, I with you. This the prison cannot bring to pass. On the contrary, it must have an eye to garden against such egoistic, purely personal intercourse. And only as such is it really intercourse between me and you. That we jointly execute a job, run a machine, effectuate anything in general, for this a prison will indeed provide. But that I forget that I am a prisoner and engage in intercourse with you who likewise disregard it, brings danger to the prison, and not only cannot be caused by it, but must not even be permitted. For this reason, the saintly and moral minded French chamber decides to introduce solitary confinement, and other saints will do the like in order to cut off the moralizing intercourse. Imprisonment is the established and sacred condition to injure which no attempt must be made. A slightest push of that kind is punishable, as is every uprising against the sacred thing by which man is to be charmed and chained. Like the whore, the prison does form a society, a companionship, a communion, e.g. communion of labour, but no intercourse, no reciprocity, no union. On the contrary, every union in the prison bears within it the dangerous seed of a plot, which under favourable circumstances might spring up and bear fruit. Yet one does not usually enter the prison voluntarily, and seldom remains in it voluntarily either, but cherishes the egoistic desire for liberty. Here therefore, it sooner becomes manifest that personal intercourse is in hostile relations to the prison society, and turns to the dissolution of this very society, this joint incarnation.