Latest / Logic Library / 11 - The Hierarchy - part 3 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner

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11 - The Hierarchy - part 3 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · Logic Library

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Chapter two, section a continuation of subdivision three. The hierarchy. Cognition has
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its object in life. German thought seeks more than that of others to reach
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the beginnings and fountain heads of life, and sees no life till it sees
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it in cognition itself descartes cogito ergossum has the meaning. One lives only when
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one thinks. Thinking life is called intellectual life. Only mind lives. Its
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life is the true life, then, just so in nature, only the
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eternal laws the mind or the reason of nature are its true life. In
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man, as in nature, only the thought lives. Everything else is dead.
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To this abstraction, to the life of generalities or of that which is
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lifeless, the history of mind had to come God, who is spirit alone
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lives. Nothing lives but the ghost. How can one try to assert of
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modern philosophy or modern times that they have reached freedom since they have not freed
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us from the power of objectivity? Or am I perhaps free from a despot
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when I am not afraid of the personal potentent, to be sure, but
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of every infraction of the loving reverence which I fancy I owe him. The
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case is the same with modern times. They only changed the existing eyes objects
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the real ruler, into conceived objects, into ideas, before which the old
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respect not only was not lost, but increased in intensity. Even if people
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snapped their fingers at God and the devil in their former crass reality, people
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devoted only the greater attention to their ideas. Quote they are rid of the
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evil, one evil is left. The decision having once been made not to
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let one's self be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable. Little
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scruple was felt about revolting against the existing state or overturning the existing laws,
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but to sin against the idea of the state, not to submit to the
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idea of law. Who would have dared that? So one remained a citizen
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and a law respecting loyal man. Yes, one seemed to himself to be
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only so much more law respecting the more Rationalistically, one abrogated the former defect
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of law in order to do homage to the spirit of the law. In
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all this, the objects had only suffered a change of form. They had
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remained in their preponderance and pre eminence. In short, one was still involved
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in obedience and possessedness, lived in reflection, and had an object on which
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one reflected, which one respected, and before which one felt reverence and fear.
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One had done nothing but transformed the things into conceptions of the things,
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into thoughts and ideas, whereby one's dependence became all the more intimate and indissoluble.
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Thus it is not hard to emancipate oneself from the commands of parents,
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or to set aside the admonitions of uncle and aunt, the entreaties of brother
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and sister. But the renounced obedience easily gets into one's conscience. And the
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less one does give way to the individual demands, because he rationistically, by
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his own reason, recognizes them to be unreasonable. So much the more conscientiously
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does he hold fast to filial piety and family love, And so much the
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harder is it for him to forgive himself a trespass against the conception which he
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has formed of family love and of filial duty. Released from dependence as regards
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the existing family, one falls into the more binding dependence on the idea of
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the family. One is ruled by the spirit of the family. The family
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consisting of John Maggie, et cetera, whose dominion has become powerless, is
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only internalized being left as family in general, to which one just applies the
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old saying, we must obey God rather than man, whose significance here is
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this. I cannot, to be sure, accommodate myself to your senseless requirements,
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but as my family, you still remain the object of my love and
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care. For the family is a sacred idea which the individual must never offend
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against. And this family, internalized and desensualized into a thought, a conception,
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now ranks as the sacred, whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it
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makes a racket in my conscience. This despotism is broken when the conception family
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also becomes a nothing to me. The Christian dicta woman, what have I
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to do with thee I am come to stir up? A man against his
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father, and a daughter against her mother, and others are accompanied by something
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that prefers us to the heavenly or true family, and me no more than
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the state's demand in case of a collision between it and the family, that
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we obey its commands. The case of morality is like that of the family.
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Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty. The conception morality.
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Morality is the idea of morals, their intellectual power, their power over
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the conscience, on the one hand, are too material to rule the mind,
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and do not fetter an intellectual man, a so called independent, a
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free thinker. The Protestant may put it as he will. The Holy Scripture,
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the Word of God still remains sacred for him. He for whom this
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is no longer holy, has ceased to be a Protestant. But herewith what
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is ordained in it, the public authorities appointed by God, etc. Also
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remain sacred for him. For him, these things remain indissoluble, unapproachable,
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raised above all doubt, And as doubt, which in practice becomes a buffeting,
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is what is most man's own. These things remain raised above himself he
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who cannot get away from them and will believe, for to believe in them
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is to be bound to them. Through the fact that in Protestantism the faith
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becomes a more inward faith, the servitude has also become a more inward servitude.
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One has taken those sanctities up into himself, entwined them with all his
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thoughts and endeavors, made them a matter of conscience, constructed out of them
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a sacred duty for himself. Therefore, what the Protestant's conscience cannot get away
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from is sacred to him, and conscientiousness most clearly designates his character. Protestantism
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has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police,
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the spy and the eavesdropper. Conscience watches over every motion of the mind,
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and all thought and action is for it a matter of conscience, that
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is police business. This tearing a part of man into natural impulse and conscience,
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inner populace, and inner police, is what constitutes the Protestant. The
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reason of the Bible in place of the Catholic reason of the Church, ranks
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as sacred. And this feeling and consciousness that the word of the Bible is
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sacred is called conscience. With this, then sacredness is laid upon one's conscience.
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If one does not free himself from conscience, the consciousness of the sacred,
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he may act unconsciously, indeed, but never conscience lesslie. The Catholic
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finds himself satisfied when fulfills the command. The Protestant acts according to his best
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judgment and conscience. For the Catholic is only a layman. The Protestant is
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himself a clergyman. Just this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the
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Middle Ages, and at the same time its curse that the spiritual becomes complete.
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What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of
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indulgences, only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now
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gained also an insight into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how really
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his sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case,
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casuists it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale
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of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible and silenced every movement of conscience.
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All sensuality might hold sway if it was only purchased from the church.
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This favoring of sensuality was continued by the Jesuits, while the strictly moral,
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dark, fanatical, repentant Contrite praying Protestants, as the true completers of Christianity,
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to be sure, acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism,
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especially the Jesuits, gave aid to egoism. In this way, found involuntary
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and unconscious adherence within Protestantism itself and saved us from the subversion and extinction of
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sensuality. Nevertheless, the Protestant spirit spreads its dominion farther and farther, and
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as beside the divine, the Jesuit spirit represents only the diabolical, which is
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in separable from everything divine. The latter can never assert itself alone, but
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must look on and see how. In France, for example, the philistinism
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of Protestantism wins at last and mind is on top. Protestantism is usually complimented
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on having brought the mundane into repute again, such as marriage, the state,
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et cetera. But the mundane itself as mundane, the secular is even
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more indifferent to it than to Catholicism, which lets the profane world stand yes
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and relishes its pleasures, while the rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the
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mundane altogether, and that simply by hollowing it. So marriage has been deprived
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of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament,
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where it only receives its consecration from the Church and so is unholy at
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bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself, to begin
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with a sacred relation. Just so the state also, Formerly the pope gave
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consecration and his blessing to it and its princess. Now the state is intrinsically
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sacred. Majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The order of nature
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or natural law was altogether hollowed as God's ordinance. Hence, it is said
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in the outbook Confession article two. So now we reasonably abide by the saying,
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as the juris consults have wisely and rightly said, that man and woman
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should be with each other is a natural law. Now, if it is
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a natural law, then it is God's ordinance, therefore implanted in nature,
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and therefore a divine law also. And is it anything more than Protestantism brought
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up to date when Feuerbach pronounces moral relations sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed,
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but instead for the sake of the spirit that dwells in them. But
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marriage, as a free alliance of love, of course, is sacred of
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itself by the nature of the union that is formed here. That marriage alone
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is a religious one, that is a true one, that corresponds to the
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essence of marriage love, And so it is with all moral relations. They
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are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind only where they rank as religious
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of themselves. True friendship is only where the limits of friendship are preserved with
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religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of
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his God. Friendship is and must be sacred for you and property, and
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marriage and the good of every man, but sacred in and of itself.
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That is a very essential consideration in Catholicism. The mundane can indeed be consecrated
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or hollowed, but it is not sacred without this priestly blessings. On the
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contrary, mundane relations are sacred of themselves, sacred by their mere existence.
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The Jesuit maxim the end hollows the means corresponds precisely to the consecration by which
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sanctity is bestowed. No means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their
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relation to the Church, their use for the Church hallows the means. Regicide
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was named as such. If it was committed for the church's behoof, it
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could be certain of being hollowed by the Church, even if the hallowing was
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not openly pronounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as sacred to the Catholic
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only that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such, and
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it does rank as such to him only because the Pope, even though it
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be without a special act, confers this sacredness on it once and for all.
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If he retracted his consecration, the king would be left only a man
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of the world or layman, an unconsecrated man to the Catholic. If the
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Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in the sensual itself, that he may then
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be linked only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to banish the
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sensual from himself, into a separate domain, where it, like the rest
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of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic Church eliminated mundane marriage
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from its consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its own from the mundane
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family. The Protestant Church declared marriage and family ties to be holy and therefore
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not unsuitable for its clergyman. A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic,
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hollow everything he needs only, for example, to say to himself, I,
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as a priest, am necessary to the church, But serve it more
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zealously when I appease my desires properly. Consequently, I will seduce this girl
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have mine enemy there poisoned, et cetera. My end is holy because it
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is a priest. Consequently, it hollows the means hump, for in the
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end it is still done for the benefit of the church. Why should the
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Catholic priest shrink from handing Emperor Henry the seventh the poor poisoned wafer for the
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Church's welfare. The genuinely churchly Protestants inveighed against every innocent pleasure, because only
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the sacred, the spiritual can be innocent. What they could not point out
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the Holy Spirit in the Protestants had to reject dancing, the theater, ostentation
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in the church, and the like. Compared with this Puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism
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is again more on the religious spiritual tract is more radical, for the former
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excludes at once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and purifies
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the church. Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring spirit into all
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things as far as possible, to recognize the Holy Spirit as an essence in
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everything, and so to hollow everything worldly. No one can forbid a kiss
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in honor, the spirit of honor hollows it. Hence it was that the
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Lutheran hegel, he declares himself such in some passage or other he quote wants
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to remain a Lutheran unquote, was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything.
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In everything there is reason, Holy Spirit, or the real is rational.
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For the real is in fact everything, as in each thing, for
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instance, each lie the truth he detected. There is no absolute lie,
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no absolute evil, and the like. Great works of mind were created almost
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solely by Protestants, as they alone with the true disciples and consummators of mind.
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How little man is able to control? He must let the sun run
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its course, the sea roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven.
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Thus he stands powerless before the uncontrollable. Can he keep off the impression that
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he is helpless against this gigantic world? It is a fixed law to which
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he must submit. It determines his fate. Now, what did pre Christian
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humanity work toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies? Not letting oneself
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be vexed by them. The Stoics attain this in apathy, declaring the attacks
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of nature indifferent and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace utters the
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famous nil admirari, by which he likewise announces the indifference of the other the
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world it is not to influence us, not to rouse our astonishment, and
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that in Paphidium Variante Ruinai expresses the very same imperturbability as Psalms Chapter forty six,
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verse three. We do not fear that the earth should perish. In
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all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty,
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for the Christian contempt of the world. The imperturbable spirit of the wise
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Man, with which the old world worked to prepare its end, now underwent
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an inner perturbation against which no autoroxia, no Stoic courage, was able to
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protect it. The spirit secured against all influence of the world, insensible to
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its shocks, and exalted above its attacks, admiring nothing not to be disconcerted
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by any downfall, of the world phoned over irrepressibly again, because gases spirits
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were evolved in its own interior, and after the mechanical shock that comes from
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without had become ineffective. Chemical tensions that agitate within began their wonderful play.
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In fact, ancient history ends with this, that I have struggled till I
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have won my ownership of the world. All things have been delivered to be
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by my father Matthew, chapter eleven, verse twenty seven. It has ceased
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to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred divine. For me, it is undeified.
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And now I treat it so entirely as I please, that if I
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cared, I could exert on it all miracle working power, that is power
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of mind. Remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves up and transplant
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themselves into the sea, Luke seventeen, verse six, And do everything possible
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thinkable. All things are possible to him who believes. Mark chapter seven,
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verse twenty three. I am the lord of the world. Mine is the
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glory. The world has become prosaic, for the divine has vanished from it.
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It is my property, which I dispose of as I to it.
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The mind choose. When I had exalted myself to be the owner of the
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world, egoism had won its first complete victory, had vanquished the world had
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become worldless, and put the acquisitions of a long age under Locke and Key.
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The first property, the first glory has been acquired. But the Lord
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of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his
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will. He is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the Spirit
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is still sacred, the Holy Spirit, and the worldless Christian is not able
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to become godless. If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the world,
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the medieval Christian struggle is a struggle against self, the mind, the former
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against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The medieval man
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is the man whose gaze is turned inward, the thinking, meditative man.
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All wisdom of the ancients is the science of the world. All wisdom of
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the moderns is the science of God. The Heathen Jews included got through with
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the world. But now the thing was to get through with self the spirit
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too, to become spiritless or godless. For almost two thousand years we have
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been working at subjecting the Holy Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we
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have torn off and trodden under foot many bits of sacredness. But the gigantic
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opponent is constantly right anew under a changed form and name. The Spirit has
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not yet lost its divinity, its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure,
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it has long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove. To
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be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but lets itself be
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caught by the laity too. But as spirit of humanity, as spirit of
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man, it remained still an alien spirit to me or you, still far
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from becoming our unrestricted property which we dispose of at our pleasure. However,
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one thing certainly happened. It visibly guided the progress of post Christian history.
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This one thing was the endeavour to make the Holy Spirit more human and bring
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it nearer to men or men to it. Through this it came about that
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at last it could be conceived as the spirit of humanity, and under different
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expressions like idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness, general philanthropy appeared more attractive,
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more familiar, and more accessible. Would not one think that now everybody
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could possess the Holy Spirit, take up into himself the idea of humanity,
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bring mankind to form and existence in himself. No, the Spirit is not
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stripped of its holiness and robbed of its Unapproachableness is not accessible to us,
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not our property. For the spirit of humanity is not my spirit, my
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ideal it may be, and as a thought I call it mine. The
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thought of humanity is my property. And I prove this sufficiently by propounding it
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quite according to my views, and shaping it to day so to morrow.
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Otherwise we represent it to ourselves in the most manifold ways. But it is
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at the same time an entail which I cannot alienate nor get rid of.
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Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the absolute idea, which
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again in manifold refractions, split into the different areas of philanthropy, reasonableness,
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civic virtue, and so on. But can I call the idea my property
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if it is the idea of humanity? And can I consider this spirit as
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vanquished if I am to serve it sacrifice myself to it. Antiquity, at
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its close had gained its ownership of the world only when it had broken the
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world's overpoweringness and divinity recognized the world's powerlessness and vanity. The case with regard
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to the spirit corresponds when I have degraded it to a spook and its control
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over me to a cranky notion that it is to be looked upon as having
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lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity. And then I use it
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as one uses nature at pleasure, without scruple the nature of the case.
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The concept of the relation is to guide me in dealing with the case,
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or in contracting the real as if a concept of the case existed on its
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own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms of the case,
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as if a relation which we enter into was not by the uniqueness of
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those who enter into it itself unique, as if it depended on how others
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stamp it. But as people separated the essence of man from the real man
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and judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from
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him and appraise it by human value. Concepts are to decide everywhere, Concepts
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to regulate life, Concepts to rule. This is the religious world to which
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Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual
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precepts into a rounded, firmly based dogmatic Everything is sung according to concepts,
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and the real man I am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws.
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Can there be a more grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess
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at the very beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter,
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not a letter of the law shall be lost. Liberalism simply brought other
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concepts on the carpet. Human instead of divine, political, instead of ecclesiastical,
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scientific, instead of doctrinal or more generally real concepts and eternal laws instead
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of crude dogmas and precepts. Now nothing but mind rules in the world.
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An innumerable multitude of concept buzz about in people's heads. And what are those
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doing who endeavor to get further? They are negating these concepts to put new
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ones in their place, that are saying, you form a false concept of
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right, of the state of man, of liberty, of truth, of
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marriage. The concept of right, et cetera is rather that one which we
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now set up. Thus the confusion of concepts moves forward. The history of
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the world has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has obtained an almighty
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power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could protect your
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naked foot, my salt by which your potatoes would become palatable, and my
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stage carriage, whose possession would relieve you of all need at once, You
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must not reach out after them. Man is to recognize the independence of all
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these and innumerable other things. There to rank his mind as something that cannot
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be seized or approached. There to be kept away from him. He must
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have regard for it respect. Woe to him if he stretches out his fingers
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desirously. We call that being light fingered. How beggarly little is left us?
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Yes, how really nothing, everything has been removed. He must not
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venture on anything unless it has given us We continue to live only by the
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grace of the giver. You must not pick up a pin unless you have
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got leave to do so, and got it from whom from respect. Only
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when this lets you have it as property, only when you can respect it
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as property. Only then may you take it. And again, you are
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not to conceive a thought, speak, a syllable, commit an action that
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should have their warrant in you alone, instead of receiving it from morality or
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reason or humanity. Happy unconstraint of the desirous man. How mercilessly people have
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tried to slay you on the altar of constraint, But around the altar rise
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the arches of a church, and its walls keep moving further and further out.
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What they enclose is sacred. You can no longer get to it,
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no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you wander
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around these walls in search of the little that is profane, and the circles
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of your course keep growing more and more extended. Soon that church will embrace
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the whole world, and you will be driven out to the extreme edge.
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Another step of the sacred has conquered you. Sink into the abyss. Therefore,
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take courage, while it is yet time. Wander about, no longer
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in the profane, where now it is dry, feeding bare the leap,
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and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you devour the
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sacred, you have made it your own. Digest the sacramental wafer, and
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you are rid of it. End of Section eleven.