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33 - My Intercourse - part 10 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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My Intercourse, Part ten. Cigasmund is not a miserable katif because he broke
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his princely word. But he broke the word because he was a Katif.
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He might have kept his word and would still have been a katif a priestbridden
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man Luther, driven by a higher power, became unfaithful to his monastic vow.
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He became so for God's sake. Both broke their oath as possessed persons.
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Cigasmund because he wanted to appear as a sincere professor of the divine truth,
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i e. Of the true, genuinely Catholic faith. Luther in order
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to give testimony for the Gospel sincerely and with entire truth, with body unsold.
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Both became perjured in order to be sincere toward the higher truth. Only
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the priests absolved the one. The other absolved himself. What else did both
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observe that what is contained in those apostolic words, thou hast not lied to
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men but to God. They lied to men, broke their oath before the
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world's eyes in order not to lie to God, but to serve him.
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Thus they show us a way to deal with truth before men. For God's
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glory and for God's sake, a breach of oath and lie a princess would
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broken. How would it be now if we changed the thing a little and
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wrote a perjury and lie for my sake? Would not that be pleading for
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every baseness? It seems so assuredly. Only in this it is altogether like
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the for God's sake? For was not every baseness committed for God's sake?
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Were not all of the scaffolds failed for his sake? And all the alsto
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de fey held for his sake? Was not all stuplefaction introduced for his sake?
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And do they not, to date still for God's sake? Better their
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mind? Intended children by religious education were not sacred vows broken for his sake?
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And do not missionaries and priests still go around every day to bring Jews,
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Heathen Protestants or Catholics to treason against the faith of their fathers for his
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sake? And that should be worse for my sake? What then, does
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on my account mean their people immediately think of filthy looker. But he who
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act from love of guilthy looker does it on his own account. Indeed,
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as there is nothing anyhow that one does not do for his own sake,
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among other things, everything that is done for God's glory. Yet he for
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whom he seeks the loquor is a slave of loquor, not raised above looker.
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He is one who belongs to liquor the money bag, not to himself.
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He is not his own must not a man whom the passion of address
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rules for other commands of his master. And if a weak good naturedness once
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beguiles him, does this not appear as simply an exceptional case of precisely the
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same sort as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by their lord's guidance and ensnared
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by the arts of the devil. So an evacious man is not a self
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owned man, but a servant, and he can do nothing for his own
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sake without at the same time doing it for his Lord's sake, precisely like
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the godly man. Famous is the breach of oath which Francis I committed against
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Emperor Charles the fifth, not later when he rightly weighed his promise, but
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at once, when he swore the oath. King Francis took it back in
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thought as well as by a secret protestation documentarily subscribed before his counselors, he
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uttered a perjury. After fought, Francis did not show himself disinclined to buy
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his release, but the price that Charles put on it seemed to him too
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high and unreasonable. Even though Charles behaved himself in a sordid fashion when he
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sought to extort as much as possible, it was yet shabby of Francis to
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want to purchase his freedom for a lower ransom. And his later dealings,
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among which there occurred yet a second breach of his word, proved sufficiently how
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the huckster's spirit led him and thrilled and made him a shabby swindler. However,
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what shall we say to the reproach of perjury against him in the first
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place. Surely this again, that not the perjury, but his sordidness assumed
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him. That he did not deserve contempt for his perjury, but made himself
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guilty of perjury because he was a contensible man. But France's perjury regarded in
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itself the man's Another judgment, One might say, Francis did not respond to
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the confidence that Charles put in him in setting him free. But if Charles
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had really favored him of confidence, he would have named to him the price
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that he considered the release worth, and would then have set him at liberty,
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and expected Francis to pay the redemption sum. Charles harbored no such trust,
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but only believed in Francis's impotence and frudelity, which would not allow him
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to act against his oath. But Francis deceived only this credulous calculation. When
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Charles believed he was assuring himself of his enemy by an oath, right there,
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he was freeing him from every obligation. Charles had given the king credit
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for a piece of stupidity, a narrow conscience, and without confidence in Francis,
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panted only on Francis's stupidity e g. Constenttuousness. He let him go
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from the Madrid prison, only to hold him the more securely in the prison
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of consentptuousness, for great jail built about the mind of man by religion.
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He sent him back to France, not fast in invisible chains. What wonder
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if Francis sought to escape and sort the chains apart, no man would have
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taken it a list of him. If he had secretly freed from Madrid for
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he was in an enemy's power, but every good Christian cries out upon him
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that he wanted to loose himself from God's bonds too. It was only later
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that the Pope absolved him from his oath. It is despicable to deceive the
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confidence that we voluntarily called for, But it is no shame to egoism to
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let everyone who wants to get us into his power by an oath bleed to
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death by the failure of his untrustful craft. If you had wanted to find
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me, then learn that I know how to burst your bonds. Is whether
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I give the confider the right to confidence. If the pursuer of my friend
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asks me where he had fled to, I shall surely put him on a
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false trail. Why does he ask precisely me the pursued man's friend, In
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order not to be a false treacherous friend, I prefer to be false to
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the enemy, I might certainly incourageous consptuousness answer. I will not tell.
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So Fishty decides the case by that I should sew my love of truth and
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do for my friend as much as nothing, For if I do not mislead
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the enemy, he may accidentally take the right street, and my love of
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truth would have given up my friend as a play, because it hindered me
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from the courage for a lie. He who has in the truth an idol
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a sacred thing, must humble him self before it, must not defy its
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commands, not resist courageously. In short, he must renounce the heroism of
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the lie, For to the lie belongs not less courage than to the truth,
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a courage that young men are most apt to be deficient in. Who
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would rather confess the truth and mount the scaffold for it than confine the enemy's
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power by the impudence of a lie to them? The truth is sacred,
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and the sacred at all times demands blind reverence, submission, and self sacrifice.
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If you are not impudent, not mockers of the sacred, you are
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tain and its servants. Let one but lay a grain of truth in the
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trap for you. You peck at it to a certainty, and the fall
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is caught. You will not lie well, then, all as sacrifices to
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the truth, and become martyrs. Martyrs for what for yourselves? For self
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ownership? No, for your goodness the truth. You know only two services,
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only two kinds of servants. Servants of the truth and servants of the
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lie, then, in God's name serve the truth. Others again serve the
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truth also, but they serve it in moderation, and make e g.
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A great distinction between a simple lie and a lie sworn to him. And
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yet the whole chapter of the oath coincides with that of the lie. Since
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an oath, everybody knows is only a strongly assured statement, you consider yourself
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entitled to lie, if only you do not swear to it. Besides,
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one who is particular about it must judge and condemn a lie as sharply as
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a false oath. But now there has been kept up in morality an ancient
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point of controversy, which is customarily treated of under the name of the lie
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of necessity. No one who dares plead for this can consciously put it from
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an oath of necessity. If I justify my lie as a lie of necessity,
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I should not be so polluptimous as to rob the justifying lie of the
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strongest cooperation. Whatever I do, Why should I not do it entirely and
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with add reservations? Reservacio dementalists. If I once lie, why they're not
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lie completely, with entire consciousness and all my might. As a spy,
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I should have to swear to each of my forest statements at the enemy's demand,
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determine to lie to him. Should I suddenly become cowardly and undecided in
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face of an oath, then I should have been ruined in advance for a
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liar and spy. For you see, I should be voluntarily putting into the
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enemy's hand a means to catch me. The state too fears the oath of
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necessity, and for this reason does not give the accused a chance to swear.
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But you do not justify the state's fear. You lie, but do
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not swear falsely. If e g. You show someone a kindness and he
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is not to know it, but he guesses it and tells you so to
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your face, you deny. If he insists, you say honestly no.
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If it came to swearing, then you would refuse, For from fear of
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the sacred we always stop halfway against the sacred. You have no will of
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your own. You lie in moderation as you are free in moderation religious in
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moderation. The clergy are not too encroach over this point. The most rapid
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of controversies is now being carried on on the part of the university against the
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Church monarchially disposed in moderation. You want a monarch limited by the constitution,
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by a fundamental law of the state. Everything nicely tempered, lukewarm, half
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God's half the devils. There was a university where the usage was that every
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word of honor that must be given to the university judge was looked upon by
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the students as null and voyd, for the students saw in their demanding it
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nothing but a snare which it could not escape otherwise than by taking away all
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its significance. He who, at that same university broke his word of honor
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to one of the fellows was infamous. He who gave it to the university
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judge divided in union with these very fellows. The duke who fancied that her
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word had the same value among friends and among those it was less a correct
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theory than the constraint of practice that had there taught the students to act,
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so as without that means of getting out, they would have been piteously driven
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to treachery against the comrades. But as the means approved itself in practice,
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so it has its theoretical probation too. A word of honor and oath is
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one only for him whom I entitled to receive it. He who forces me
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to it obtains only a forced I eate a hostile word, the word of
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a foe whom one has no right to trust, or the foe does not
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give us the right. Asides from this, the courts of the state do
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not even recognize the inviolability of an oath. For if I had sworn to
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one who comes under examination that I would not declare anything against him, the
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court would demand my declaration in spite of the fact that an oath binds me,
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and in case of refusal, would lock me up till I decided to
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become an oath breaker. The court absorbs me from my oath. How magnumbnus.
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If any power can absorb me from the oath, I myself am surely
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the very first power that had a claim to as a curiosity. And to
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remind us of customary oaths of all sorts, let place be given here to
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that which Emperor Paul commanded the captured polls Corsisco, Portigicai, Numazi and others
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to take when he replaced them, we not merely swear fidelity and obedience to
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the Emperor, but also further promise to pour out our blood for his glory.
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We obligate ourselves to discover everything threatening to his person or his empire that
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we ever learn. We declare finally that in whatever part of the earth we
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may be, a single word of the Emperor shall suffice to make us leave
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everything and prepare to him at once. In one domain, the principle of
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love seems to have been long outswed by egoism, and to be still in
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need only of sure consequence, as it were, of victory with a good
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conscience. This domain is speculation, in its double manifestation as thinking and as
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trade. Thinks with a will whatever may come of it. One speculates.
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However, many may suffer under our speculative undertakings. But when it finally becomes
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serious, or even the lad remnant of religiousness, romance, or humanity is
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to be done away, then the pulse of religious conscience beats, and one
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at least professes humanity. The voracious spectacular throws some coppers into the poor box
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and does good. The bold thinker consoles himself with the fact that he is
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working for the advancement of the human race, and that his devastation turns to
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the good of mankind, or in another case, that he is serving the
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idea mankind. The idea is to him that something of which he must say,
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it is more to me than myself. To this day, him and
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Traden have been done for God's sake. Those who for six days were championed
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down everything by the selfish aims, sacrificed on the severn to the Lord,
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and those who destroyed a hundred good causes by the ret was thinking still did
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this in the service of another good cause, and had yet to think of
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another besides themselves, to whose good their self indulgence should turn of the people,
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mankind, etc. But this other thing is a being above them,
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a higher or supreme being. And therefore I say they are toiling for God's
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sake. Hence I can also say that the ultimate basis of their actions is
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love. Not in voluntary love, however, not their own, but attributory
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love, or the higher being's own God, whom self is love. In
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short, not the egoistic but the religious, a love that springs from their
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fancy that they must discharge a tribute of love, i e. That they
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must not be egoists. If we want to deliver the world from many kinds
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of unfreedom, we want this not on its account but on ours. For
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as we are not world liberators by profession and out of love, we only
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want to win it away from others. We want to make it our own.
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It is not to be any longer owned as served by God, the
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Church, nor by their law state, but to be our own. Therefore
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we seek to win it, to captivate it, and by meeting it halfway
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and devoting ourselves to it as to ourselves, as soon as it belongs to
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us, to complete and make superfluous the force that it turns against us.
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If the world is ours, it no longer attempts any force against us,
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but only with us. My selfishness has an interest in the liberation of the
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world, that it may become my property. Not isolation or being alone,
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but society is man's original state. Our existence begins with the most intimate conjunction,
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as we are already living with our mother before we breathe. When we
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see the light of the world, we at once lie on a human beings
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bressed again. Her love cradles us in the lat meets us in the go
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kart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties. Society is
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our state of nature, and this is why, the more we learn to
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fill ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser, and
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the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once again for herself
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the child that once lay under her heart, the mother must fetch it from
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the street and from the midst of its playmates. The child prefers the intercourse
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that it enters into with its fellows to the society that it does not entered
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into, but only been born in. But the dissolution of society is intercourse
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or union. A society does assuredly arise by union iiO, but only as
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a fixed idea arises by a thought to wit. By the furnishing of the
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energy of the thought, the thinking itself is lesslers taken back, all sorts
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that make themselves passed from the thought. If a union has crystallized into a
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society, it has ceased to be a coalition, for coalition is an insisted
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self uniting it has become a unitedness come to a standstill, degenerated into efflixity.
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It is dead as a union. It is the corpse of the union
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or the coalition i e. It is society community. A striking example of
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this kind is furnished by the party that a society e g. The society
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of the state diminishes. My liberty offends me little. Why I have to
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let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers and by everyone who is
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stronger, nay, by every fellow man. And were I the autocrat or
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bore the r I yet should not enjoy absolute liberty. But onus I will
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not have taken from me. And onus is precisely what every society has designs
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on precisely what is to succumb to its power. A society which I join
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does indeed take from me many liberties, but in return it affords me other
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liberties. Miba does it matter if I myself depride myself of this and that
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liberty e g. By any contract. On the other hand, I want
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to hold jealously to my ownness. Every community has the propensity, stronger or
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weaker, according to the fullness of its power, to become an authority to
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its members and to set limits for them. It asks and must ask for
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a subject's limited understanding. It asks that those who belong to it be subjected
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to it, be its subjects. It exists only by subjection. In this
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certain tolerance need by no means be excluded. On the contrary, the society
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will welcome improvements, corrections, and blank so far as such are calculated for
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its gain. But the blame must be well meaning. It may not be
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insolent and disrespectful. In other words, one must lead uninjured and hold sacred
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the substance of the society. The society demands that those who belong to it
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should not go beyond it and exalt themselves, but remain within the balance of
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legality e g. Allow themselves only so much as the society and its law
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allow them. There is a difference whether my liberty or my ownness is limited
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by a society. If the former only is the case, it is a
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coalition, an agreement, a union. But if ruin is threatened to a
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it is a power of itself, a power above me, a thing unattainable
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by me, which I can indeed admire, adore, reverence, respect,
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but cannot subdue and consume. And that for the reason that I am resigned.
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It exists by my resignation, my self remunication, my spiritlessness called humility.
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My humility makes its courage, my subificiousness gives it dominion. But in
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reference to liberty, state and union are subject to no central difference. The
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latter can just as little come into existence or continue in existence without liberties being
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limited in all sorts of ways. As the state is compatible with unmeasured liberty.
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Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere. For one cannot get rid of everything.
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One cannot fly like a bird merely because one would like to fly,
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so for one does not get free from his own weight. One cannot live
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underwater as long as he likes like a fish, because one cannot do without
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air, and cannot get free from this indispensable necessity, etc. As religion,
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and most decidedly Christianity, tormented men with the demand to realize the unnatural
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and subcontradictory, so it is to be looked upon only as the true logical
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outcome of that religious overstraining and overwroughtness, that finally, liberty itself, absolute
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liberty was exalted into an ideal, and thus the nonsense of the impossible to
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come blaringly into the light. The Union will assuredly offer a great measure of
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liberty as well as and especially because by it one escapes or the coercion peculiar
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to state and society. Life admit of being considered as a new liberty,
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but nevertheless it will still contain enough of unfreedom and involuntariness, for its object
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is not this liberty, which, on the contrary, it sacrifices to ownness,
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but only illness. Refer to this, the difference between state and union
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is great enough. The former is an enemy and murderer of illness, the
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latter a son and coworker of it. The former a spirit that would be
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adored in spirit and in truth. The latter my work, my product.
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The state is the lord of my spirit, who demands faith and prescribes to
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me articles of faith, the creed of legality. It exerts moral influence,
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dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself in its place as
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my true ego. In short, the state is sacred, and as against
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me, the individual man, it is the true man, a spirit,
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the ghost. But the Union is my own creation, my creature, not
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sacred, not a spiritual power, above my spirit, as little as any
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association of whatever sort, as I am not willing to be a slave of
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my Maximus, but lay them bare to my continual criticism, without any warrant,
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and admit no bail at all for their persistence. So still less do
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I obligate myself to the Union for my future and pledge my soul to it,
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as is said to be done with the devil, and is really the
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case with the state and all spiritual authority. But I am and umane more
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to myself than State, Church, God, et cetera, consequently infinitely more
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than the Union too.