 Section 32 of The Ego and His Own This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on the volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Ego and His Own by Max Sterner. My Intercourse Part 9 Intercourse Hippo 2 has rested on love with Godful behaviour, doing for each other, as one owed it to himself to make himself blessed, or owed himself the bliss of taking up into himself a supreme essence and bringing it to a purity, a truth and reality. So one owed it to others to help them realise their essence and their calling. In both cases, one owed it to the essence of man to contribute to its realisation. But one owes it neither to himself to make anything out of himself, nor to others to make anything out of them. For one owes nothing to his essence and that of others. Intercourse resting on essence is an intercourse with the spook, not with anything real. If I hold intercourse with the supreme essence, I am not holding intercourse with myself, and if I hold intercourse with the essence of man, I am not holding intercourse with men. The natural man's love becomes through culture a commandment, but as commandment it belongs to man as such not to me. It is my essence, about which much ado is made, not my property. Man, i.e. humanity, presents that demand to me. Love is the mandate, it is my duty. Instead therefore, of being really one for me, it has been one for the generality, man, as his property or peculiarity. It becomes man, every man to love. Love is the duty and calling of man, etc. Consequently, I must again vindicate love for myself and deliver it out of the power of man with the great M. What was originally mine, but accidentally mine, instinctively mine, I was infested with as the property of man, I became thief of, in loving. I became the retainer of mankind, only a specimen of their species, and acted, loving, not as I, but as man, as a specimen of man, the humanity. The whole condition of civilization is the feudal system, the property being man's or mankind's, not mine. The monstrous feudal state was founded, the individual robbed of everything, everything left to man. The individual had to appear at last as a sinner through and through. And I perchance to have no lively interest in the person of another, are his joy and his will not to lie at my heart, is the enjoyment that I furnish him not to be more to me than other enjoyment of my own. On the contrary, I can with joy sacrifice to him numberless enjoyments, I can deny myself numberless things for the enhancement of his pleasure, and I can hazard for him what without him was the dearest to me, my life, my welfare, my freedom. Why it constitutes my pleasure and my happiness to refresh myself with his happiness and his pleasure, but myself, my own self, I do not sacrifice to him, but remain an eagerness and enjoy him. If I sacrifice to him everything that but for my love to him I should keep. That is very simple and even more usual in life than it seems to be, but it proves nothing further than that this one passion is more powerful in me than all the rest. Christianity too teaches us to sacrifice all other passions to this, but if to one passion I sacrifice others I do not on that account go so far as to sacrifice myself or to sacrifice anything. Of that whereby I truly am myself, I do not sacrifice my peculiar value, my ownness, where this bad case occurs love cuts no better figure than any other passion that I obey blindly. The ambitious man who is carried away by ambition and remains there to every warning that a common moment he gets him has let this passion grow up into a deposit against whom he abandons all power of dissolution. I love men too, not merely individuals, but everyone, but I love them with the consciousness of egoism. I love them because love makes me happy. I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no commandment of love. I have a fellow feeling with every feeling being and their torment torments, their refreshments refreshes me too. I can kill them, not torture them. Her culture, the high-sold virtuous Philistine prince Rudolf in the mysteries of Paris, because the wicked public his indignation plans their torture, that fellow feeling proves only that the feeling of those who feel is mine too, my property, in opposition to which the pitiless dealing of the righteous man, e.g. against notary ferrant, is like the unfeelings of that robber Procrustes, who cut off or stretched his prisoner's legs to the measure of his bedstead. Rudolf's bedstead, which he cuts men to fit, is the concept of the good. The full right, virtue, etc., makes people heart-hearted and intolerant. Rudolf does not feel like the notary, but the reverse. He feels that it serves the rascal right. That is no fellow feeling. Till I have tried everything to comfort and cheer him. If I see him glad, I too become glad over his joy. From this it does not follow that suffering or joy is caused in me by the same thing that brings out this effect in him, as is sufficiently proved by every bodily pain, which I do not feel as he does. His took pains him, but his pain pains me. But because I cannot bear the troubled crease on the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore, for my sake, I kiss it away. If I did not love this person, he might go right on making creases. They would not trouble me. I am only driving away my trouble. How now has anybody or anything whom and which I do not love a right to be loved by me? Is my love first or is his right first? Parents, kids, folk, fatherland, nation, native town, etc. Finally fellow men in general, brothers, fraternity, assert that they have a right to my love and lay claim to it without further ceremony. They look upon it as their property, and upon me, if I do not respect this, as a robber who takes from them what pertains to them and is theirs. I should love. If love is a commandment and law, then I must be educated into it, cultivated up to it, and if I trespass against it, punished. Hence, people will exercise as strong a moral influence as possible on me to bring me to love, and there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce men to love as one can to any other passion. If you like to hate, hate runs through whole races merely because the ancestors of the one belong to the guilty, those of the other to the guilty means. But love is not a commandment, but like each of my feelings, my property, acquire, i.e. purchase my property, and then I will make it over to you. A church, a nation, a fatherland, a family, etc. that does not know how to acquire my love, I need not love, and I fix the purchase price of my love quite at my pleasure. Southish love is far distant from unselfish, mystical or romantic love. One can love everything possible, not merely men, but an object in general, wine, one's fatherland, etc. Love becomes blind and crazy by a must taking it out of my power, infatuation, romantic by a should entering into it, i.e. by the object becoming sacred for me, or might becoming bound to it by duty, conscience, oath. Now the object no longer exists for me, but I for it. Love is a possessiveness, not as my feeling, as such I rather keep it in my possession as property, but through the alienness of the object. For religious love consists in a commandment to love in the beloved a holy one, or to adhere to a holy one. For unselfish love there are objects absolutely lovable for which my heart is to beat, e.g. fellow men, or my wedded mate, Kimsfolk, etc. Holy love loves the holy in their beloved, and therefore exerts itself also to make of the beloved more and more a holy one, a man. The beloved is an object that should be loved by me. He is not an object of my love on account of, because of, or by my loving him, but is an object of love in and of himself. Not I make him an object of love, but he is such to begin with, for it is here in relevant that he has become so by my choice. If so it be, as with a fiance, a spouse, etc. Since even so he has in any case, as the person once chosen, obtained a right of his own to my love. And I, because I have loved him, am under obligation to love him forever. He is therefore not an object of my love, but of love in general, an object that should be loved. Love appertains to him, is due to him, or is his right, while I am under obligation to love him. My love, i.e. the toll of love that I pay him, is in truth his love, which he only collects from me as toll. Every love to which their clings, but the smallest speck of obligation, is an unselfish love, and so far as this speck reaches a possessiveness, he who believes that he owes the object of his love, anything loves romantically or religiously. Family love, e.g. as it is usually understood as priority, is a religious love, love of fatherland, preached as patriotism. Likewise, all our romantic loves move in the same pattern, everywhere the hypocrisy or rather self-deception of an unselfish love and interest in the object for the object's sake, not for my sake and mine alone. Religious or romantic love is distinguished from sensual love by the difference of the object indeed, but not by the dependence of the relation to it. In the latter regard, both are possessiveness, but in the former, the one object is profane, the other sacred. The dominion of the object over me is the same in both cases, only in fact it is one time a sensuous one, the other time a spiritual, ghostly one. My love is my own, only when it consists altogether in a selfish and egoistic interest, and when consequently the object of my love is really my object or my property. I owe my property nothing, and have no duty to it, as little as I might have a duty to my eye. If nevertheless I guard it with the greatest care, I do so on my account. Antiquity lacked love as little as due Christian times. The God of love is older than the God of love, but the mystical possessiveness belongs to the moderns. The possessiveness of love lies in the alienation of the object, or in my powerlessness, as against its alienness and superior power. To the egoist, nothing is high enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so independent that he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would sacrifice himself to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness again. Whether this can still be called love, if you know another word for it, go ahead and choose it, then the sweet word love may wither with the departed world. For the present I at least find none in our Christian language, and hence stick to the old sound and love my object, my property. Only as one of my feelings do I harbour love, but as a power above me, as a divine power, as few of us says, as a passion that I am not to cast off, as a religious and moral duty, I scorn it. As my feeling it is mine, as a principle to which I consecrate and vow my soul, it is a dominator and divine. Just as hatred as a principle is diabolical, one not better than the other. In short, egoistic love, i.e. my love, is neither holy or unholy, neither divine nor diabolical. A love that is limited by faith is an untrue love. The sole limitation that it does not contradict the essence of love is the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. Love that scorches the rigor, the law of intelligence, is theoretically a false love, practically a ruinous one. So love is in its essence rational. So thinks Feuerbach, the believer. On the contrary thinks, love is in its essence believing. The one invades against the rational, the other against unbelieving love. To both it can at most rank as a splendidium vitium. Do not both leave love standing, even in the form of unreason and unbelief. They do not dare to say irrational or unbelieving love is nonsense, is not love. As little as they are willing to say irrational or unbelieving tears are not tears. But if even irrational love, etc., must count as love, and if they are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, their follows simply this love is not the highest thing but reason or faith. Even the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love, but love has value only when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is an illusion when Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its self-limitation. The believer might with the same right call beliefs its self-limitation. Irrational love is neither false nor ruinous, it does its service as love. Toward the world especially toward men, I am to assume a particular feeling and meet them with love, with the feeling of love from the beginning. Certainly in this there is revealed far more free will and self-determination than when I let myself be stormed by way of the world, by all possible feelings and remain exposed to the most chequered, most accidental impressions. I go to the world rather with a preconceived feeling as if it were a prejudice and a preconceived opinion. I have prescribed to myself in advance my behaviour toward it and despite all its temptations, feel and think about it only as I have once determined to. Against the dominion of the world, I secure myself by the principle of love. For whatever may come, I love. The ugly, E.G., makes a repulsive impression on me, but determined to love, I master this impression as I do every empathy. But the feeling to which I have determined and condemned myself from the start is a narrow feeling because it is a predestined one, of which I myself am not able to get clear or to declare myself clear. Because preconceived it is a prejudice. I no longer show myself in face of the world, but my love shows itself. The world indeed does not rule me, but so much the more inevitably does the spirit of love rule this spirit. If I first said, I love the world, I now add likewise, I do not love it, for I annihilate it as I annihilate myself, I dissolve it. I do not limit myself to one feeling for men, but give free play to all that I am capable of. Why should I not dare speak it out in all its glaringness? Yes, I utilize the world and men. With this I can keep myself open to every impression, without being drawn away from myself by one of them. I can love, love with a full heart, and let the most consuming glow of passion burn in my heart, without taking the beloved one for anything else from the nourishment of my passion, on which it ever refreshes itself anew. All of my care for him applies only to the object of my love, only to him whom my love requires, only to him though warmly loved. How indifferent would he be to me without this, my love? I feed only my love with him, I utilize him for this only, I enjoy him. Let us choose another convenient example. I see how men are fettered in dark superstition by a swarm of ghosts. If, to the extent of my powers, I let a bit of daylight fall in on an eternal spookery, is it perchance because I love to you to inspire this in me? Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure from my thoughts as existence in the world, and even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought, I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You will perhaps have only trouble, combat and death from it, very few will draw joy from it. If you will lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in withholding the Bible from the laity or Christian governments, which make it a sacred duty for themselves to protect the common people from bad books. But not only for your sake, not even for truth's sake either, do I speak out what I think? No, I sing as the bird sings, that on the bow are lights, the song that from these springs is paid that well requires. I sing because I am a singer, that I use you for it becomes I, need ears. Where the world comes in my way and it comes in my way everywhere, I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of unusableness, of utility of use, we owe each other nothing. For what I seem to owe you, I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cherry air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheering us is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish, to a thousand others whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it. One has to be educated up to that love which founds itself on the essence of man, or in the ecclesiastical and moral period lies upon us as a commandment. In what fashion moral influence the chief ingredient of our education seeks to regulate the intercourse of men shall here be looked at with egotistic eyes in one example at least. Those who educate us make it their concern early to break us of lying and to inoculate the principle that one must always tell the truth. If selfishness were made the basis for this rule, everyone would easily understand how by lying he falls away that confidence in him, which he hopes to awaken in others, and how correct the maximum proves. Nobody believes a liar even when he tells the truth, yet at the same time he would also feel that he had to meet the truth, only him whom he authorized to hear the truth. If a spy walks in disguise through the hostile camp, and is asked who he is, the askers are assuredly entitled to inquire after his name, but the disguised man does not give them the right to learn the truth from him. He tells them what he likes, not only the fact, and yet morality demands thou shalt not lie. By morality those persons are vested with the right to expect the truth, but by me they are not vested with that right, and I recognise only the right that I impart. In a gathering of revolutionists, the police force their way in and ask the orator for his name. Everybody knows that the police have the right to do so, but they do not have it from the revolutionist, since he is their enemy, he tells them a false name and cheats them with a lie. The police do not act so foolishly either as to count on their enemy's love of truth. On the contrary, they do not believe without further ceremony, but have the questioned individual identified if they can. Nay, the state everywhere proceeds incredulously with individuals, because in their egoism it recognises its natural enemy, it invariably demands a voucher, and he, who cannot show vouchers, falls a prey to its investigating inquisition. The state does not believe nor trust the individual, and so of itself places itself within him in the convention of lying. It trusts me only when it has convinced itself of the truth of my statement, for which there often remains to it no other means than the oath. How clearly too, this, the oath, proves that the state does not count on our credibility and love of truth, but on our interest, our selfishness. It relies on our not wanting to fall foul of God by a purgery. Now, let one imagine a French revolutionist in the year 1788, who among friends let fall at the now well-known phrase, the world will have no rest till the last king is hanged with the guts of the last priests. The king then still had all power, and when the utterance is betrayed by an accident, yet without it being possible to produce witnesses, confession is demanded from the accused. Is he to confess or not? If he denies, he lies and remains unpunished. If he confesses, he is candid and is beheaded. If truth is more than everything else to him, alright, let him die. Only a palm-true poet could try to make the tragedy out of the end of his life. For what interest is there in seeing how a man succumbs from paradise? But if he had the courage not to be a slave of truth and sincerity, he would ask somewhat thus, Why need the judges know what I have spoken among friends? If I had wished them to know, I should have said it to them as I said it to my friends. I will not have them know it. They force themselves into my confidence without my having called them to it and made them my confidence. They will learn what I will keep secret. Come on then, you who wish to break my will by your will and try your arts. You can torture me by the rack. You can threaten me with hell and eternal damnation. You can make me so nevertheless, but I swear a false oath. But the truth you shall not press out on me. For I will lie to you because I have given you no claim and no right to my sincerity. Let God, who is truth, look down ever so threateningly on me. Let lying come ever so hard to me. I have nevertheless the courage of a lie. And even if I were weary of my lie, even if nothing appeared to me more welcome than your executioner's sword, you nevertheless should not have the joy of binding in me a slave of truth. Whom, by your priestly arts, you make a traitor to his will. When I spoke those reasonable words, I would not have had you know anything of them. I now retain the same will and do not let myself be frightened by the curse of the lie. End of section 32. Recording by Elaine Webb, Restore England Section 33 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 10 Sigur's Wound is not a miserable cateeth, because he broke his priestly word, but he broke the word because he was a cateeth. He might have kept his word, but I would still have been a cateeth, a pleased-bidden man. Lufa, driven by a higher power, became unfaithful to his monastic vow. He became so for God's sake. Both broke the oath as possessed persons. Sigur's Wound, because he wanted to appear as a sincere professor of the Divine Truth, i.e. of the true, genuinely Catholic faith. Lufa, in order to give testimony for the Gospel, sincerely and with entire truth. With body and soul, both became perjured in order to be sincere toward the higher truth. Only the priests absolved the one, the other absolved himself. What else did both observe that what is contained in those apostolic words, thou, has not lied to men, but to God? They lied to men, broke their oath before the world's eyes, in order not to lie to God, but to serve him. Thus they show us a way to deal with truth before men. For God's glory, and for God's sake, a breach of oath, a lie, a prince's word, broke him. How would it be? Now, if we've changed the thing a little and wrote, a perjury and lie for my sake, would not that be pleading for every baseness? It seems so, assuredly, only in this it is altogether like the for God's sake. For was not every baseness committed for God's sake, were not all of the scaffolds filled for his sake, and all that also defied, held for his sake? Was not all steeper faction introduced for his sake, and do they not today still for God's sake better than mind-intended children by religious education? Were not sacred vows broken for his sake, and do not missionaries and priests still go around every day to bring Jews, heathen, Protestants or Catholics to treason against the faith of their fathers for his sake? And that should be worse with the for my sake. What then does of my account mean? Their people immediately think of filthy looker, but he who acts from love of filthy looker does it on his own account indeed, as there is nothing anyhow that one does not do for his own sake, among other things, everything that is done for God's glory, yet he for whom he seeks the looker is a slave of looker, not raised above looker, he is one who belongs to looker, the money bag not to himself, he is not his own. Must not a man whom the passion of address rules for the commands of his master, and if a weak, good-maturedness once beguiles him, does this not appear as simply an exceptional case of precisely the same sort, as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by their lord's guidance, and ensnared by the arts of the devil, so an abatious man is not a self-owned man, but a servant, and he can do nothing for his own sake without at the same time doing it for his lord's sake, precisely like the godly man. Famous is the Breach of Oath, which Francis I committed against Emperor Charles V, not later when he rightly weighed his promise, but at once when he swore the oath, King Francis took it back in thought as well as by a secret prostitution, documentary subscribed, before his councillors. He uttered a purgery, after thought. Francis did not show himself disinclined to buy his release, but the price that Charles put on it seemed to him too high and unreasonable, even though Charles behaved himself in a sordid fashion, when he sought to extort as much as possible. It was yet Shaggy of Francis to want to purchase his freedom for a lower ransom, and his later dealings, among which there occurs yet a second breach of his word, proved sufficiently how the huckster spirit led him enthralled and made him a shaggy swindler. However, what shall we say to the reproach of purgery against him? In the first place, surely, this again, but not the purgery, but his sordidness, ashamed him, that he did not deserve contempt for his purgery, but made himself guilty of purgery, because he was a contentsable man. But Francis' purgery regarded in itself demands another judgement. One might say Francis did not respond to the confidence that Charles put in him in setting him free, but if Charles had really favoured him with confidence, he would have named to him the price that he considered the release worth, and would then have set him at liberty, and expected Francis to pay the redemption sum. Charles harboured no such trust, but only believed in Francis' impotence and fidelity, which would not allow him to act against his oath. But Francis deceived only this credulous calculation. When Charles believed he was assuring himself of his enemy by an oath, right there he was freeing him from every obligation. Charles had given the king credit for a piece of stupidity, a narrow conscience, and, without confidence in Francis, counted only on Francis' stupidity, e.g. consensuousness. He let him go from the madrid prison, only to hold him, the more securely in the prison of consensuousness. The great gel built about the mind of man by religion, he sent him back to France, locked fast in invisible chains. What wonder if Francis sought to escape and sought the chains apart? No man would have taken it a miss of him, if he had secretly fled from Madrid, for he was in an enemy's power, but every good Christian cries out upon him that he wanted to lose himself from God's bonds too. It was only later that the Pope absolved him from his oath. It is despicable to deceive the confidence that we voluntarily called for, but it is no shame to egoism to let everyone who wants to get us into his power by an oath believed to death by the failure of his untrustful craft. If you have wanted to bind me, then learn that I know how to burst your bonds. The point is whether I give the confider the right to confidence. If the pursuer of my friend asks me where he had fled to, I shall surely put him on a false trail. Why does he ask precisely me, the pursued man's friend? In order not to be a false treacherous friend, I prefer to be false to the enemy. I might certainly encourage his consensuousness. Answer, I will not tell. So fishty decides the case. By that I should solve my love of truth and do for my friend as much as nothing, for if I do not mislead the enemy, he may accidentally take the right street and my love of truth would have given up my friend as a prey, because it hindered me from the courage for a lie. He who has in the truth an idol, a sacred thing, must humble himself before it, must not defy its commands, not resist courageously. In short, he must renounce the heroism of the lie, for it to the lie belongs not less courage than to the truth. The courage that young men are most apt to be deficient in, who would rather confess the truth and mount the scaffold for it than confine the enemy's power by the impudence of a lie. To them the truth is sacred, and the sacred at all times demands blind reverence, submission and self-sacrifice. If you are not impudent, not mockers of the sacred, you are tame and its servants. Let one but lay a grid of truth in the trap for you. You peck at it to a certainty, and the fall is caught. You will not lie? Well then, fall as sacrifices to the truth and become martyrs. Martyrs, for what? For yourselves or self-ownership? No, for your goodness to truth. You know only two services, only two kinds of servants, servants of the truth and servants of the lie. Then in God's name serve the truth. Others, again, serve the truth also, but they serve it in moderation, and make, e.g., a great distinction between a simple lie and a lie sworn to, and yet the whole chapter of the oath coincides with that of the lie, since an oath, everybody knows, is only a strongly assured statement. You consider yourselves entitled to lie. If only you do not swear to it besides, one who is particular about it must judge and condemn a lie as sharply as a false oath, but now there has been picked up in morality an ancient point of controversy, which is customarily treated of under the name of the lie of necessity. No one who dares plead for this can consciously put it from an oath of necessity. If I justify my lie as a lie of necessity, I should not be so palimptimous as to rob the justified lie of the strongest pro-operation. Whatever I do, why should I not do it entirely and without reservations? Reservatio dimentalis? If I once lie, why then not lie completely, with entire consciousness and all my might? As a spy, I should have to swear to each of my forest statements at the enemy's demand. Determined to lie to him, should I suddenly become cowardly and undecided in face of an oath? Then I should have been ruined in advance for a liar and spy, for you see, I should be voluntarily putting into the enemy's hand a means to catch me. The state too fears the oath of necessity, and for this reason does not give the accused a chance to swear, but you do not justify the state's fear. You lie, but do not swear falsely. If, e.g., you show someone acquaintance, and he is not to know it, but he guesses it and tells you so to your face, you deny. If he insists, you say, honestly no. If it came to swearing, then you would refuse. For, from fear of the sacred, we always stop halfway. Against the sacred, you have no will of your own. You lie in moderation, as you are free in moderation, religious in moderation. The clergy are not to encroach, over this point the most rapid of controversies is now being carried on, on the part of the university against the church. Monarchally, disposed in moderation, you want a monarch limited by the constitution by a fundamental law of the state. Everything nicely tempered, lukewarm, half gods, half the devils. There was a university where the usage was that every word of honour that must be given to the university judge was looked upon by the students as null and void. For the students saw in their demanding it nothing but a snare, which they could not escape, otherwise than by taking away all its significance. He, who at that same university broke his word of honour to one of the fellows was infamous. He, who gave it to the university judge, divided in union with these very fellows, the duke who fancied that her word had the same value among friends and among foes. It was less a correct theory than the constraint of practice that had there taught the students to act so, as without that means of getting out, they would have been pitously driven to treachery against their comrades, but as the means approved itself in practice, so it has its theoretical probation too. A word of honour and oath is one only for him whom I entitled to receive it. He, who forces me to it, obtains only a forced, i.e., a hostile word, the word of a foe whom one has no right to trust, for the foe does not give us the right. Aside from this, the courts of the state do not even recognise the inviability of an oath, for if I had sworn to one who comes under examination that I would not declare anything against him, the court would demand my declaration in spite of the fact that an oath finds me, and in case of refusal would lock me up till I decided to become an oath breaker. The court absorbs me from my oath, how magnanimous. If any power can absorb me from the oath, I myself am surely the very first power that has a claim to. As a curiosity, and to remind us of customary oaths of all sorts, let place be given here to that which Emperor Paul commanded the captured Poles, Prosysco, Proto-Chicai, Nero-Rossi, and others, to take when he replaced them. We not merely swear fidelity and obedience to the Emperor, but also further promise to pull out our blood for his glory. We obligate ourselves to discover everything threatening to his person, or his empire, that we ever learn. We declare finally that in whatever part of the earth we may be, a single word of the Emperor shall suffice to make us leave everything, and repair to him at once. In one domain, the principle of love seems to have been long outsourced by egoism, and to be still in need only of sure consequence, as it were of victory, with a good conscience. This domain is speculation, in its double manifestation as thinking and as trade. One thinks with a will, whatever may come of it. One speculates, however many may suffer under our speculative undertakings. But when it finally becomes serious, when even the last remnant of religiousness, romance or humanity, is to be done away, then the pulse of religious conscience beats, and one at least professes humanity. The avaricious spectacular throws some coffers into the poor box, and does good. The bold thinker consults himself with the fact that he is working for the advancement of the human race, and that his devastation turns to the good of mankind, or, in another case, that he is serving the idea. Mankind, the idea is to him that something of which he must say, it is more to me than myself. To this day thinking and trading have been done for God's sake. Those who, for six days, were championed down everything by their selfish aims, sacrificed on the seventh to the Lord, and those who destroyed a hundred good causes, by their reckless thinking, still did this in the service of another good cause, and had yet to think of another, besides themselves, to whose good their self indulgence should turn. Of the people, mankind, etc. But this other thing is a being above them, a higher or supreme being, and therefore I say, they are toiling for God's sake. Hence, I can also say, that the ultimate basis of their actions is love. Not a boundary love, however, not their own, but a tributary love, or their higher being's own, God's whom himself is love. In short, not the egoistic, but the religious, a love that springs from their fancy, that they must discharge a tribute of love, i.e., that they must not be egoists. If we want to deliver the world from many kinds of unfreedom, we want this not on its account, but on ours. For, as we are not world liberators by profession, and out of love, we only want to win it away from others. We want to make it our own. It is not to be any longer owned as surf by God, the church, nor by the law, state, but to be our own. Therefore, we seek to win it, to captivate it, and by meeting it halfway, and devoting ourselves to it, as to ourselves, as soon as it belongs to us, to complete, and make superfluous, the force that it turns against us. If the world is ours, it no longer attempts any force against us, but only with us. My selfishness has an interest in the liberation of the world, that it may become my property, not isolation or being alone, but society is man's original state. Our existence begins with the most intimate conjunction, as we are already living with our mother before we breathe. When we see the light of the world, we at once lie on a human being's breast again. Her love cradles us in the lap, leads us in the go-kart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties. Society is our state of nature, and this is why the more we learn to feel ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser, and the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once again, for herself, the child that once lay under her heart, the motherhood must fetch it from the street, and from the midst of its playmates. The child prefers the intercourse that it enters into with its fellows, to the society that it has not entered into, but only been born in. But the dissolution of society is intercourse or union. A society does assuredly arise by union too, but only as a fixed idea arises by a thought, too whipped by the punishing of the energy of the thought, the thinking itself that less was taken back all sorts that made themselves cast. From the thought, if a union has crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coalition. For, coalition is an incessant self-uniting. It has become a unitedness. Come to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity. It is dead as a union. It is the corpse of the union or the coalition, i.e. it is society-community. A striking example of this kind is furnished by the party. That a society, e.g. the society of the state, diminishes my liberty, offends me little. Why, I have to let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers, and by everyone who is stronger, nay, by every fellow man, and were I the autocrat of all the are, I yet should not enjoy absolute liberty. But, onus, I will not have taken from me, and onus is precisely what every society has designs on, precisely what is to succumb to its power. The society which I join does indeed take from me many liberties, but in return it affords me other liberties. Neither does it matter if I myself deprive myself of this and that liberty, e.g. by any contract. On the other hand, I want to hold jealously to my onus. Every community has the propensity, stronger or weaker according to the fullness of its power, to become an authority to its members, and to set limits for them. It asks, and must ask, for a subject's limited understanding. It asks that those who belong to it be subjected to it, be its subjects. It exists only by subjection. In this, a certain tolerance, need by no means be excluded. On the contrary, the society will welcome improvements, corrections, and blame, so far as such are calculated for its gain. But the blame must be well-meaning. It may not be insolent and disrespectful. In other words, one must leave uninjured, and hold sacred, the substance of the society. The society demands that those who belong to it shall not go beyond it, and exalt themselves, but remain within the bounds of legality, e.g. allow themselves only so much as the society and its law allow them. There is a difference whether my liberty, or my onus, is limited by a society. If the former only is the case, it is a coalition, an agreement, a union. But, if ruin is threatened to onus, it is a power of itself, a power above me, a thing unattainable by me, which I can indeed admire, adore, reverence, respect, but cannot subdue and consume, and that for the reason that I am resigned, it exists by my resignation, my self-reunification, my spiritlessness, called humility. My humility makes it courage. My subjectiveness gives it dominion. But in reference to liberty, state and union are subject to no central difference. The latter can just as little come into existence, or continue in existence, without liberties being limited in all sorts of ways, as the state is compatible with unmeasured liberty. Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere, for one cannot get rid of everything, one cannot fly like a bird merely because one would like to fly. So, for one does not get free from his own weight, one cannot live underwater as long as he likes, like a fish, because one cannot do without air, and cannot get free from this indispensable necessity, etc. As religion, and most decidedly Christianity, tormented men with the demand to realise the unnatural and self-contradictory, so it is to be looked upon only as the true logical outcome of that religious overstraining and overraultness that finally liberty itself, absolute liberty, was exalted into an ideal, and thus the nonsense of the impossible to conglareingly into the light. The union will assuredly offer a greater measure of liberty, as well as, and especially because, by it, one escapes all the coercion peculiar to state and society life. Admit of being considered as a new liberty, but nevertheless it will still contain enough of unfreedom and involuntaryness, for its object is not this, liberty, which on the contrary, it sacrifices to own us, but only own us, referred to this, the difference between state and union is great enough. The former is an enemy, and murderer of own us, the latter a son and co-worker of it, the former a spirit that would be adored in spirit and in truth, the latter my work, my product. The state is the lord of my spirit, who demands faith, and prescribes to me articles of faith, the creed of legality. It exerts moral influence, dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself in its place as my true ego. In short, the state is sacred, and as against me, the individual man, it is the true man, the spirit, the ghost, but the union is my own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual power above my spirit, as little as any association of whatever sort. As I am not willing to be a slave of my maximals, but lay them bare to my continual criticism, without any warrant, and admit no peril at all for their persistence, so still lest do I obligate myself to the union for my future, and pledge my soul to it, as is said to be done with the devil, and is really the case with the state, and all its spiritual authority, but I am, and remain, more to myself than state, church, god etc. Consequently, infinitely, more than the union too. 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 11 That society which Communism wants to found seems to stand nearest to coalition, for it is to aim at the welfare of all. Oh yes, of all, cries Wightling, innumerable times, of all. That does really look as if in it no one needed to take a bad seat. But what then will this welfare be? Have all run and the same welfare, all are equally well off with one and the same thing? If that be so, the question is of the true welfare. Do we not with this come right to the point where religion begins, it's the minion of violence? Christianity says, look not on earthly toys, but seek your true welfare, become highest Christians. Being Christians is the true welfare. It is the true welfare of all, because it is the welfare of man as such this spook. Now, the welfare of all is surely to be your and my welfare too. But if you and I do not look upon that welfare as our welfare, will care then be taken for that in which we feel well? On the contrary, society has decreed a welfare as the true welfare. If this welfare will call with EG, enjoyment honestly worked for, but if you preferred enjoyable laziness, enjoyment without work, then society which cares for the welfare of all would wisely avoid caring for that in which you are well off. Communism in proclaiming the welfare of all and now is outright the well-being of those who hitherto lived on their income from investments and apparently felt better in that than in the prospect of whitelings stripped out of labour. Hence the latter asserts that with the welfare of thousands, the welfare of millions cannot exist, and the former must give up their special welfare for the sake of the general welfare. No, let people not be summoned to sacrifice their special welfare for the general for this Christian abolition will not carry you through. They will better understand the opposite abolition, not to let their own welfare be snatched from them by anybody, but to put it on a permanent foundation. Then they are of themselves led to the point that they care best for their welfare if they unite with others for this purpose, e.g. sacrifice a part of their liberty, yet not to the welfare of others, but to their own, and appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self renouncing love, or at least to have lost its seductive. Possibly when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the misery of today. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better time? Why not rather hope for them from usurpation? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the taker, the appropriator, usurper, the owner. Communism and consciously egoism revealing humanism still count on love. If community is once a need of man, and he finds himself furthered by it in his aims, then very soon, because it has become his principle, it prescribes to him its laws too, the laws of society. The principle of man exalts itself into a sovereign power over them, becomes their supreme essence, their God, and as such law giver. Communism gives this principle a strictest effect, and Christianity is the religion of society. For, as Feuerbach rightly says, although he does not mean it rightly, love is the essence of man, e.g. the essence of society, or of society, communistic man. All religion is a cult of society, this principle by which society cultivated, man is dominated, neither is any God and ego's exclusive God, but always are societies or communities. Be it of the society, family, larp and arts, or of the people, national God, or of all men, he is a father of all men. Consequently one has a prospect of exasperating religion down to the ground, only when one antiquates society and everything that blows from this principle. But it is precisely in Communism that this principle seeks to culminate, as in it everything is to become common for the establishment of equality. If this equality is one, liberty too is not lacking, but who's liberty? Societies? Society is then all in all, and men are only for each other. It would be the glory of their love state. But I would rather be referred to men's selfishness than to their kindnesses, their mercy, pity, etc. The former demands repostrity, as bad to me, so I to be. Does nothing gratis, and may be one and brought. But with what shall I obtain the kindness? It is a matter of chance whether I am, at the time, having to do with a loving person. The affectionate one's service can be had only by begging, be it by my lamentable appearance, by my need of help, my misery, my suffering. What can I offer him for his assistance? Nothing. I must accept it as a present. Love is unpayable, or rather, love can assuredly be paid for, but only by counter love. One good term deserves another. What paltriness and beggoliness does it not take to accept gifts year in and year out, without service in return? As they are regularly collected, e.g., from the poor day labourer, what can the receiver do for him and his donated pennies, in which his wealth consists? The day labourer would really have more enjoyment if the receiver, with his laws, his institutions, etc., all of which the day labourer has to pay for, did not exist at all. And yet, with it all, the poor rite loves his master. No community as the goal of history hitherto is impossible. Let us rather renounce every hypocrisy of community, and recognise that if we are equal as men, we are not equal for the very reason that we are not men. We are equal only in thoughts, only when we are thought, not as we really ungodly are. I am ego, and you are ego, but I am not the sport of ego. This ego in which we are all equal is only my thought. I am man, and you are man, but man is only a thought, a generality. Neither I nor you are speakable, we are unutterable, because only thoughts are speakable and consist in speaking. Let us therefore not aspire to community, but to one sidedness. Let us not seek the most comprehensive commune, human society, but let us seek in others only means and organs, which we may use as our property. As we do not see our equals in the tree, the beast sowed the preposition that others are our equals springs from a hypocrisy. No one is my equal, but I regard him equally with all other beings as my property. In opposition to this, I am told that I should be a man among fellow men. I should respect the fellow man in them. For me, no one is a person to be respected, not even the fellow man, but solely, like other beings, an object in which I take an interest or else do not. An interesting or uninteresting subject, a usable or unusable person. And if I can use him, I doubtless come to an understanding and make myself at one with him, in order, by the agreement, to strengthen my power, and by combined force to accomplish more than individual force could effect. In this combination, I see nothing but a multiplication of my force, and I retain it only so long as it is my multiplied force, but thus it is a union. Neither a natural ligature or a spiritual one holds the union together, and it is not a natural, not a spiritual league. It is not brought about by one blood, not by one faith spirit. In a natural league, like a family, a tribe, a nation, yes, mankind, the individuals have only the value of specimens of the same species or genius. In a spiritual league, like a commune, a church, the individual signifies only a member of the same spirit. What you are in both cases as a unique person must be suppressed. Only in the union can you assert yourself as unique, because the union does not possess you, but you possess it or make it of use to you. Poverty is recognized in the union, and only in the union, because one no longer holds what is his as a thief from any being. The communists are only constantly carrying further what had already been long-present during religious evolution, and especially in the state, to wit, propertylessness, the feudal system. The state exerts itself to tame the desirous man. In other words, it seeks to direct his desire to it alone, and to contend that desire with what it offers to state the desire for the desirous man's sake does not come into the mind. On the contrary, it stigmatizes as an egoistic man, the man who believes out unbridled desire, and the egoistic man is its enemy. He is this for it because the capacity to agree with him is wanting to the state. The egoist is precisely what it cannot comprehend, since the state, as nothing else is possible, has to do only for itself. It does not take care for my needs, but takes care only of how it makes a way with me, i.e. make out of me another ego, a good citizen. It takes measures for the improvement of morals, and with what does it win individuals for itself, with itself, i.e. with what is the state's, with state property. It will be, unregimentally, active in making all partnerships in its goods, providing all with the good things of culture. It presents them its education, opens to them the access to its institutions of culture, capacitates them to come to property, i.e. to a thief, in their way of industry, etc. For all of these thieves, it demands only the just rent of continuing your pranks, but the un-unfantful forget to pay these pranks. Now, either can society do essentially otherwise than the state? You bring into a union your whole power, your competence, and make yourself count. In a society you are employed with your working power. In the former, you live egoistically. In the latter, humanly, i.e. religiously, as a member in the body of this Lord. To a society you owe what you have, and are in duty bound to it, are possessed by social duties, a union you utilise and give it up unduitively and unfaithfully when you see no way to use it further. If society is more than you, then it is more to you than yourself. A union is only your instrument, or a sword with which you sharpen and increase your natural force. The union exists for you and through you. The society conversely lays claim to you, for itself, and exists, even without you. In short, the society is sacred, but a union your own consumes you. You consume the union. Nevertheless, people will not be backward with the objection that the agreement which has been concluded may again become Buddhism to us and limit our freedom. They will say, we too would at last come to this, that everyone must sacrifice a part of his freedom for the sake of the generality. But the sacrifice would not be made for the generality's sake a bit. As little as I concluded, the agreement for the generality, or even for any other man's sake, rather I came into it only for the sake of my own benefit, some selfishness. But as regards the sacrificing, surely I sacrifice, only that which does not stand in my power, i.e. I sacrifice nothing at all. To come back to the property, the lord is proprietor. Choose then whether you want to be lord or whether society shall be. On this depends whether you are to be an owner or a ragamuffin. The egoist is owner, the socialist and ragamuffin, but ragamuffinism, or proprietorlessness, is the sense of feudalism. Of the feudal system, which since the last century has only changed its overlord, putting man in the place of God, and accepting as a thief from man what had before been a thief from the grace of God, that the ragamuffinism of Communism is carried out by the humane principle into the absolute almost ragamuffinism has been shown above, but at the same time also how ragamuffinism can only thus swing around into oneness. The old feudal system was so thoroughly trampled into the ground in the revolution that since then all of the actuary craft has remained fruitless, and will always remain fruitless because the dead is dead. But the resurrection too have to prove itself a truth in Christian history, and it has so proved itself, for in another world feudalism is risen again with a glorified body, the new feudalism, under the sucellanity of man. Christianity is not annihilated, but the faithful are right in having hitherto trustfully assumed of every combat against it that this could serve only for the progression and confirmation of Christianity, for it has really only been glorified, and Christianity exposed is the human Christianity. We are still living entirely in the Christian age, and the very ones who feel worse about it are the most zealously contributing to complete it. The more human the dearer has feudalism become to us, for we the less believe that it still is feudalism, we take it the more confidently for oneness, and think we have found what is most absolutely our own when we discover the human. Liberalism wants to give me what is mine, but it thinks to procure it for me not under the title of man, but under that of human, as if it were attainable under this mask. The rights of man, the precious work of the revolution, have the meaning that the man in me entitles me to this and that. I, as individual, i.e. as this man, am not entitled, but man has the right and entitled me. Hence, as man, I may well be entitled, but as I am more than man to wit a special man, it may be refused to this very me, the special one. If, on the other hand, you insist on the value of your gifts, keep up their price, do not let yourselves be forced to sell out below price, do not let yourselves be talked into the idea that your wear is not worth its price. Do not make yourself ridiculous by a ridiculous price, but imitate the brave man who says, I will sell my life, property, dear, the enemy shall not have it at a cheap bargain. Then, you have recognised the reverse of Communism as the correct thing, and the word then is not give up your property, but get the value out of your property. Over the portal of our time stands not that know thyself of Apollo, but a get the value out of thyself. Fred Honn calls property robbery. But alien property, and he is talking of this alone, is not less existence by renunciation, session and humanity, it is a present. Price is sentimentally called for compassion as a poor victim of robbery, when one is just a foolish, cowardly giver of presence. Right, here again put the fault on others as if they were robbing us, while we ourselves do bear the fault in leaving the others unrobbed. The poor are too blame for their being rich men. Universally, no one grows indignant at his, but at alien property. They do not in truth attack property, but the alienation of property. They want to be able to call more, not less, bears. They want to call everything bears. They are fighting, therefore, against alienness, or to form a word similar to property against alienity. And how do they help themselves therein? Instead of transforming the alien into own, they play impartial and ask only that all property be left to a third party, e.g. human society. They even victory date the alien, not in their own name, but in a third party's. Now the egoistic colouring is wiped off, and everything is so clean and human. Propertylessness, or ragamothingism, this then is the essence of Christianity, as it is essence of all religiousness, i.e. godliness, morality, humanity, and only announced itself most clearly, and as glad tidings, became a gospel capable of development in the absolute religion. We have before us the most striking development in the present flight against property, a fight which is to bring man to victory, and make propertylessness complete. Victorious humanity is the victory of Christianity, but the Christianity exposed thus is feudalism completed. The most all embracing feudal system, i.e. perfect ragamothingism. Once more then, doubtless a revolution against the feudal system. Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition, or status. The state or society, and is accordingly a political or social act. The latter has indeed, for its unavoidable consequence, a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it, but from men's discontent with themselves. It is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals are getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The revolution aimed at new arrangements, insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on institutions. It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself. It is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay, now as my object is not the overthrow of an established order, but my elevation above it. My purpose and deed are not a political or social, but, as directed toward myself and my ownness alone, can egoistic purpose and deed. The revolution commands one to make arrangements, the insurrection demands that he rise or exalt himself. What constitution was to be chosen? This question visit the revolutionary heads on the whole political period, films of constitutional fights and constitutional questions, as the social talent too were uncommonly invited in society arrangements, philanthropies etc. The insurgent strived to become constitutionless. While to get greater clearness, I am thinking up a comparison. The finding of Christianity comes unexpectedly into my mind. On the liberal side it is noted as a bad point in the first Christians that they preached obedience to the established heathen civil order. Injoined recognition of the heathen authorities had confidently delivered a command. Give to the emperor that which is the emperors. Yet how much disturbance arose at the same time against the Roman supremacy. How mutinous did the Jews and even the Romans show themselves against their own temporal government. In short, how popular was political discontent. Those Christians would hear nothing of it, would not side with the liberal tendencies. The time was politically so agitated that as is said in the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the founder of Christianity more successfully than if they arranged him for political intrigue. And yet the same gospels report that he was precisely the one who took least part in these political doings. But why was he not a revolutionist, not a demagogue. As the Jews would gladly have seen him, why was he not a liberal. Because he expected no salvation from a change of conditions, and this whole business was indifferent to him. He was not a revolutionist, like E.G. Caesar, but an insurgent. Not a state overturner, but one who straightened himself up. This was why it was for him only a matter of being ye wise as serpents. Which expresses the same sense as in the special case that give to the emperor that which is the emperors. For he was not carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities, but wanted to walk his own way, untroubled about and undisturbed by these authorities. Not less indifferent to him than the government were its enemies, for neither understood what he wanted, and he had only to keep them off from him with the wisdom of the serpents. But even though not a ringleader of popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revolutionist, he and every one of the ancient Christians, was so much more an insurgent, who lifted himself above everything that seemed sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to, and who at the same time cut off the sources of life of the whole heathen world, with which the established state was withered away as a matter of course. Precisely because he put from him the upsetting of the established, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator, for he walked it in confidently and recklessly, carrying up the building of his temple over it, without heeding the pains of the immortal. Now as it happened to the heathen order of the world, with the Christian order fair likewise, a revolution certainly does not bring on the end of an insurrection, is not consummated first? My intercourse with the world, what does it aim at? I want to have the enjoyment of it, therefore it must be my property, and therefore I want to win it. I do not want the liberty of men, nor their equality. I want only my power over them. I want to make them my property, i.e. material for enjoyment. And if I do not succeed in that, well, then I call even the power over life and death, which church and state reserve to themselves, mine. Rand, that office's widow, who, in the flight in Russia, after her leg has been shot away, takes the garter from it, strangles her child therewith, and then bleeds to death alongside the corpse. Rand, the memory of the infacticide. Who knows, if this child had remained alive, how much it might have been to use of the world. The mother murdered it because she wanted to die satisfied, and at best. Perhaps this case still appeals to you sentimentally, and you do not know how to read out of it anything curver. Be it so, I, on my part, use it as an example for this, that my satisfaction decides about my relation to men, and that I do not renounce from my access of humility, even the power over life and death. As regards social duties in general, another does not give me my position toward others. Therefore, neither God nor humanity prescribes to me my relation to men, but I give myself this position. This is more strikingly said thus, I have no duty to others, as I have a duty even to myself, e.g. fact of self-preservation, and therefore not suicide, only so long as I distinguish myself from myself, my immortal soul from my earthly existence, etc. I no longer humble myself before any power, and I recognise that all powers are only my power, which I have to subject at once when they threaten to become a power against or above me. Each of them must be only one of my means to carry my point, as a hound is our power against gain, but is killed by us if it should fall upon us ourselves. All powers that dominate me, I then reduce to serving me. The idols exist through me, I need only frame from creating them anew, then they exist no longer. Higher powers exist only through my exulting them, and abasing myself. Consequently my relation to the world is this, I no longer do anything for it, for God's sake. I do nothing for man's sake, but what I do I do for my sake. Thus alone does the world satisfy me, while it is characteristic of the religious standpoint in which I include the moral and humane also, that from it everything remains a pious wish. Payam decideram, i.e. another world matter, something unattained. Thus the general salvation of men, the moral world of a general love, eternal peace, and the cessation of egoism, et cetera, nothing in this world is perfect. With this miserable phrase, good good part from it, and take flight into their closet to God, or into their proud self-consciousness, but we remain in this imperfect world because even so we can use it for our self-enjoyment. My intercourse with the world consists in my enjoying it, and so consuming it for my self-enjoyment. Intercourse is the enjoyment of the world and belongs to my self-enjoyment.