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20 - The Owner - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Section twenty. The owner I do I come to myself and mind through liberalism?
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Whom does the liberal look upon as is equal man, the only man,
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and that you are anyway, and the liberal calls you his brother.
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He asks very little about your private opinions and private follies, if only he
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can espy man in you. But as he takes little heed of what you
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are pivot him nay, in a strict following out of his principles, sets
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no value at all on it. He sees in you only what you are
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generatim. In other words, he sees in you, not you but the
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species, not Tom or Jim, but man, not the real or unique
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one, but your essence, your concept, not the bodily man, but
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the spirit. As Tom, you would not be his called because he is
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Gin. Therefore not Tom as man, you are the same that he is.
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And since as Tom, you virtually do not exist at all for him.
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So far to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an
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egoist, he has really made brother love very easy for him. He loves
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in you, not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to know
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nothing but man, to see you and me nothing. Further than men,
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that is, running the Christian way of looking at things, according to which
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one is for the other nothing but a concept e g. A man called
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to salvation, etc. Into the ground. Christianity, probably so called,
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gathers us under a less utterly general concept. There we are sons of God
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and led by the spirit of God. Yet not all can boast of being
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God's sons, but the same spirit which witnesses to our spirit that we are
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sons of God, with those also who are the sons of the devil.
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Consequently, to be a son of God, one must not be a son
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of the devil. The sonship of God excluded certain men to be sons of
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men I e. Men. On the contrary, we need nothing but to
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belong to the human species, need only to be specimens of the same species.
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What I am as this I is no concern of yours, as a
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good liberal, But it is my private affair alone enough that we are both
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sons of one and the same mother to wit the human species. As a
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son of Man, I am your equal. What am I know to you?
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Perhaps this bodily I, as I walk and stand anything but that is
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bodily I with its thoughts decisions and passions, is in your eyes a private
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affair which is no concern of yours. It is an affair by itself as
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an affair for you. There exists only my concept, my generic concept.
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Only the man, who, as he is called Tom, could just as
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well be Joe or Dick. You see in me, not me the bodily
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man, but an unreill thing be spook i e. A man. In
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the course of the Christian centuries we declared the most various persons to be are
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equals, but each time in the measure of that spirit which we expected from
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them, e g. Each one in whom the spirit of the need of
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redemption may be assumed. Then latter each one who has the spirit of integrity.
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Finally, each one who shows a human spirit and a human face.
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Thus the fundamental principle of equality varied equality being now conceived as equally of the
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human spirit. There has certainly been discovered an equality that includes all men.
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For who could deny that we men have a human spirit i e. No
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other than a human But are we on that account further on now than in
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the beginning of Christianity, then we were to have a divine spirit, now
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a human. But if the divine did not exhaust us, has should the
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human wholly express what we are? Fure bark e g thinks that if he
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humanizes the divine, he has found the truth. No, if God has
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given us pain, man is capable of us still more torturingly. The long
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and the short of it is this, that we are men is the slightest
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thing about us, and has significance only in so far as it is one
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of our equalities i e. Our property. I am, indeed, among
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other things, a man, as I am e g. A living being,
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therefore an animal, or a European a billinna, et cetera. But
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he who chose to have regard for me only as a man or as a
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berllinna, would pay me a regard that would be very unimportant to me.
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And wherefore, because he would have regarded only for one of my qualities,
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not for me. It is just so with the spirit too. A Christian
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spirit, an upright spirit, et cetera, may well be my acquired quality,
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my property, but I am not the spirit. It is mine,
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not I it. Hence we have in liberalism only the continuation of the old
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Christian depreciation of the eye the bodily tom Instead of taking me as I am,
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one looks solely at my property, my qualities, and enters into marriage
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bonds with me only for the sake of my possessions. One marries as it
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were what I have, not what I am. The Christian takes hold of
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my spirit, the liberal of my humanity. But if the spirit, which
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is not regarded as the property of the bodily ego, but as the proper
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ego itself, is a ghost, then the man, too, who is
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not recognized as my quality but as the proper eye, is nothing but a
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spook affought a concept. Therefore, the liberal to revolves in the same circle
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as the Christian. Because the spirit of mankind man dwells in you, you
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are a man, as when the spirit of Christ dwells in you, you
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are a Christian. But because it dwells in you only as a second ego,
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even though it be as your proper or better ego, it remains otherworldly
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to you, and you have to strive to become a holy man, striving
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just as fruitless as the Christians too became wholly a blessed spirit. One can,
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now, after the liberalism have proclaimed man, declare a believe that herewith
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was only completed the constant carrying out of Christianity, and that in truth Christianity
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stick itself, let other task on the start and to realize man, the
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true man. Hence, then the illusion that Christianity ascribes an infinite value to
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the ego, as e. G. In the doctrine of immortality in the
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Cure of Souls comes to light. No, it is signs this value to
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man alone. Only man is immortal, and only because I am Man,
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am I too immortal. In fact, Christianity how to teach that no one
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is lost, just as a liberalism to put on all equality as men,
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but that eternity like this equality applied only to the man in me, not
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to me. Only as the bearer and harborer of man. Do I not
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die as notoriously the king never dies. Louis dies, but the king remains.
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I die, but my spirit man remains. To identify me now entirely
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with man. The demand has been invented and stated that I must become a
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real generic being. The human religion is only the last metamorphis of the Christian
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religion. For liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and
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sets it above me, because it exalts man to the same extent as any
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other religion does its God or idle. Because it makes what is mine into
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something other worldly, because in general, it makes out of what is mine,
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out of my qualities and my property, something alien to wit, an
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essence. In short, because it sets me beneath man, and thereby creates
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for me a vocation. But liberalism declares itself a religion in Form two when
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it demands for this supreme being man a zeal of faith, a faith that
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someday will at last provide is priory zeal too, a zeal that will be
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invincible. But as liberalism is a human religion, it professor takes a tolerant
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attitude towards the professor of any other Catholic, Jewish, etc. As Frederick
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the Great did towards everyone who performed his duties as a subject, whatever fashion
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of becoming blessed he might be inclined towards. This religion is now to be
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raised to the rank of the generally customary one, and separated from the others
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as mere private follies, toward which, besides one takes a highly liberal attitude
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on account of their unessentialness. One may call it a state religion, the
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religion of the free state, not in the sense hitherto current that it is
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the one favored or privileged by the state, but as that religion which the
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free state not only has the right but is compelled to demand from each of
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those who belonged to it. Let him be pivoted, him a Jew,
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a Christian, or anything else, For it does the same service to the
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state as flinnial of piety to the family. If the family is to be
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recognized and maintained in its existing condition by each one of those who belonging to
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it, then to him the tie of blood must be sacred, and his
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feeling for it must be that of piety, of respect for the ties of
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blood by which every blood relation becomes to him a concentrated person. So also
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as to every member of the state community, this community must be sacred,
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and the concept which is the highest to the state must likewise be the highest
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to him. But what concept is the highest to the state, doubtless that
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of being a really human society, a society in which everyone who is really
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a man i e. Not an unman, can obtain admission as a man
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let a state's tolerance go ever so far toward an unman and toward what is
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inhuman, it ceases. And yet this unman is a man. Yet that
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inhuman itself is something human. Yes, possibly only to a man, not
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to any beast. It is in fact something possible to man. But although
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every unhuman is a man, yet the state excludes him, I locks him
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up or transforms him from a fellow of the state into a fellow of the
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prism, fellow of the lunatic asyland or hospital. According to Communism, to
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say, in blunt words, what an unman is not particularly hard. It
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is a man who does not correspond to their conceptance of man, as that
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inhuman is something human which is not conformed to the concept of the human logic
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caused this a self contradictory judgment. Would it be permissible for one to pronounce
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this judgment that one can be a man without being a man if he did
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not admit the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from the existence,
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the essence from the appearance. They say, he appears indeed as a
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man, but is not a man. Men have passed this self contradictory judgment
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through a long line of centuries. Nay, what is still more? In
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this long time there were only un men? What individual can have corresponded to
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his concept? Christianity knows only one man, and this one Christ is at
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once an unman. Again in the reverst sense to which a superhuman man a
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god. Only the unman is a real man. Men that are not men,
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what should they be but ghosts? Every real man, because he does
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not correspond to the concept of man, or because he is not a generic
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man, is a spook. But do I still remain an unman even if
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I bring man, who tarried above me and remains otherworldly to me only as
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my ideal, my task, my essence, or concepts, dying to be
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my quality, my own and inherent in me, so that man is nothing
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else than my humanity, my human existence. And everything that I do is
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human phycisely because I do it, but not because it corresponds to the concept
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man. I am really man and be unman in one for I am a
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man at the same time more than a man. I I am the ego
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of this my mere quality. It had to come to this at last,
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but it was no longer merely demanded of us to be Christians, but to
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become men. For though we could never really become even Christians, but always
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remained hoarsinners, for the Christian was an unattainable ideal too. Yet in this
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the quantidictionists did not come before our conscience, so and the illusion was easier
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than now. One of us, who are men, act humanely, yes,
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could not do otherwise that'd be such an actor. The demand is made
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that we are to men, real men. Our states of the day,
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because they still have all sorts of things sticking to them left from their churchly
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mother, do indeed load those who belong to them with various obligations e g.
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Churchly religiousness, which properly do not a bit concern them. The states,
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Yet on the whole they do not deny their signalsificants, since they want
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to be looked upon as human societies in which man as man can be a
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member, even if he is less privileged than other members. Most of them
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admit adherents of every religious sect and receive people without distinction of race or nation.
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Jews, Turks, Luws, etc. Can become French citizens in the
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act of reception. Therefore, the state looks only to see whether one is
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a man. The Church as a society of believers could not receive every man
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into her bosom. The state as a society of men can. But when
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the state has carried its principle clear through of presupposing in its constituents nothing but
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that they are men, even the North Americans still presuppose in theirs that they
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have religion, at least the religion or integrity of responsibility, then it has
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dug its grave. While it will fancy that those whom it possesses are with
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that exception men, These have meanwhile become, without exception egoists, each of
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whom utilizes it according to his egoistic powers, and ends. Against the egoists,
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human society is wrecked, for they no longer have to do with each
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other now as men, but appear egoistically as an eye against a you altogether
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different from me and in opposition to me. If the state must count on
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our humanity, it is the same if one says it must count on our
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morality. Seeing man in each other and acting as men toward each other is
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called moral behavior. This is every wit for spiritual life, love of Christianity.
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For if I see man in you as in myself, I see man
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and nothing but man. Then I care for you as I would care for
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myself. For we represent you C nothing but the mathematical proposition A equals C
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and B equals C. Consequently A equals B. I e. I nothing
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but man, and you nothing but man. Consequently, and I you the
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same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the former does not allow validity
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to me, but only to the man in me. But if the state
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is a society of men, not a union of egos, each of who
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has only himself before his eyes, then it cannot last with admorality and must
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insist on morality. For we two State and I are enemies. I,
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the egoist, have not had heart the welfare of this human society. I
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sacrifice nothing to it. I only utilize it. But to be able to
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utilize it completely, I transform it rather into my property and my creature,
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I e. I annihilate it and form in its place a union of egoists.
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So to the state betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be
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a man, which presupposes that I may also not be a man, but
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rank it, for as an unman, it imposes being a man upon me
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as a duty. Further, it desires me to do nothing along with which
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it cannot last, so its permanence is to be sacred. For me.
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Then I am not to be an egoist, but a respectable, upright i
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e. Moral man. Enough before it and it's permanence, I am to
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be important and respectful. This state, not a present one indeed, but
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still in need of being first created, is the ideal of advancing liberalism.
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There is to counter essence, a true society of men in which every man
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finds room. Liberalism means to realize man i e. Creates a world for
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him, and this should be the human world or the general communistic society of
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men. It was said the Church could regard only the spirit. The state
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is to regard the whole man, but is not man's spirit. The kernel
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of the state is simply man. This unreality and itself is only a society
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of men. The world which the believer, be leaving spirit creates is called
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church. The world which the man human or humane spirit creates is called state.
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But that is not my world. I never execute anything human in the
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abstract, but always my own things. My human act is diverse from every
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other human act, and only by this diversity is it a real act belonging
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to me. The human in it is an abstraction and as such spirit i
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e. Abstracted essence. Bruno Bural states e g. Juden Rage, page
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eighty four that the Church of criticism is the final truth, and in fact
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the truth sought for by Christianity itself. To wit man, he says,
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the history of the Christian world is the history of the supreme fight for truth.
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For in it and in it only, the thing at issue is the
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discovery of the final or the primal truth, Man and freedom. All right,
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let us accept this game, and let us take man as they ultimately
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found resort of Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man in
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general. Now who is Man? I am Man? The end and outcome
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of Christianity is as I the beginning and raw material of the new history.
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A history of enjoyment after the history of sacrifice, is a history not of
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man or humanity, but of me. Man ranks as the general. Now,
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then I and the egoistic are the really general. Since everyone is an
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egoist and of paramount importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely egoistic,
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because the Jews still divides himself to Jehovah. The Christian is not,
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because the Christian lives on the grace of God and subjects himself to Him as
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Jew and as Christian alike. A man satisfies only certain of his wants,
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only a certain need, not himself a half egoism, because the egoism of
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half a man who is half he, half Jew, or half his own
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proprietor half a slave. Therefore, too, Jew and Christian always half way
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exclude each other, are e as men. They recognize each other as slaves.
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They exclude each other because they are servants of two different masters. If
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they could be complete egoists, they would exclude each other wholy and hold together
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so much the more firmly. Their ignomine is not that they exclude each other,
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but that this is done only half way. Brunobuau on the Country thinks
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Jews and Christians cannot regard and treat each other as men till they give up
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a separate essence which parts them and obligates them to eternal separation. Recognize the
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general essence of man, and regard this as their true essence. According to
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his representations, the defect of the Jews and the Christians alike lies in their
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wanting to be and have something particular, instead of only being men and endeavoring
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after what is human, to wit the general rights of man. He thinks
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their fundamental error consists in the belief that they are privileged possesses prerogatives in general,
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in the belief of prerogative. In opposition to this, he holds up
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to them the general rights of man, the rights of man. Man is
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man in general, and in so far everyone who is a man. Now
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everyone is to have the eternal rights of man, and, according to the
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opinion of the communism, enjoy them in the complete democracy, or as it
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ought more correctly to be called anthvipicacy. But it is I alone who have
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everything that I procure for myself. As man, I have nothing. People
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would like to give every man an affluence of all good merely because he has
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the title man. But I put the accent on me, not on my
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being man. Man is something only as my quality property. Like masculinity or
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femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one's being male. In the false
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sense, their virtue is virtues anality. I e manliness. What is one
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to think of a woman who should want only to be a perfectly woman that
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is not given to all and many A one would bear then be fixing for
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herself an unattainable goal. Femininity, on the other hand, she is anyhow
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by nature. Femininity is her quality, and she does not need true femininity.
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I am a man, just as the earth is a star. As
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ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the task of being a thorough
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star, so ridiculous is it to burden me with the call to be a
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thorough man. When Fichet says the ego is all, this seems to harmonize
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perfectly with my pieces. But it is not that the ego is all,
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But the ego destroys all and only the self dissolving ego that never be an
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ego, that the night ego is really id. Shay speaks of the absolute
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ego, but I speak of me, the transitory ego. How natural is
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the supposition that man and ego mean the same, And yet one sees eg
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by Feuerbach that the expression in man is to designate the absolute ego a species,
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not the transitorially individual ego. Egoism and humanity humaneness ought to mean the
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same. But according to Fulbark, the individual can only lift himself above the
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limits of his individuality, but not above the laws, the positive ordinances of
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his species. But the species is nothing. And if the individual lifts himself
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above the limits of his individuality, this is rather his very self as an
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interfu. He exists only amazing himself. He exists only in not remaining what
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he is, Otherwise he would be done dead. Man with the great m
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is only an ideal, a species, only something thought of. To be
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a man is not to realize the ideal of man, but to present oneself
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the individual. It is not how I realize the generally human that needs to
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be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my species.
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I am without norm, without law, without model, et cetera. It
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is possible that I can make very little out of myself, But this little
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is everything, and it is better than what I allow to be made out
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of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion,
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the laws, the state. Better if the tool is to be of
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better at all, better an unmannerly child than an old head on young shoulders,
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better amulish man than a man compliant in everything. The unmannerly and molish
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fellow is still on the way to form himself according to his own will.
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The prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the species. The general demands.
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The species is lord to him. He is determined by it. For
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what else is the species to him? But his destiny is calling. Whether
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I look to humanity the species in order to strive toward this ideal, or
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to God and Christ with like endeavor, where is the essential dissimilarity? At
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most, the former is more washed out than the latter. As the individual
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is the whole of nature, so he is the whole of the species too.
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Everything that I do think. In short, my expression or manifestation is
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indeed conditioned by what I am. The jew e g Can will only thus
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or thus can present himself only thus, the Christian can present and manifest himself
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only christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew
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or Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian.
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But it is not possible. In the most rigorous conduct, you yet remain
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an egoist, a sinner against that concept. I e. You are not
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the precise equivalent of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through,
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people have inquired for a more perfect concept, which should really wholly express
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what you are, and which, because it is your true nature, should
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contain all the laws of your activity. The most perfect thing of the kind
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has been attained in Man. As a Jew, you are too little,
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and the Jewish is not your task. To be a Greek a German does
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not suffice, but be a man. When you have everything, look upon
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the human as you're calling. Now, I know what is expected of me.
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And the new Catechism handy written. The subject is again subjected to the
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predicate, the individual to sunk. In general, the dominion is again secured
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to an idea as the foundation made for a new religion. This is a
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step forward in the domain of religion, and in particular of Christianity, not
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a step out beyond it. To step out beyond it leads into the unspeakable.
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For me, paletry language has no word, and the word the logos
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is to me a mere word. My essence is sought for if not the
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Jew, the German, etc. Then at any rate it is the Man.
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Man is my essence. I am repulsive or repungent to myself. I
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have a horror and loathing of myself. I am a horror to myself.
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Or I am never enough for myself and never do enough to satisfy myself.
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From such feelings spring self dissolution or self criticism. Religiousness begins with self renunctuation
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ends with completed criticism. I am possessed and want to get rid of the
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evil spirit. How do I set about it? I fearlessly commit the sin
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that seems to the Christian the most dire, the sin and blasphemy against the
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Holy Spirit. He who blasphemes the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness for ever,
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but is liable to the eternal judgment. I want no forgiveness, and I
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am not afraid of the judgment. Man is the last evil spirit or spook,
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the most deceptive or most intimate, the craftiest liar with honest mien,
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the father of lies, the egoist, turning against the demands and concepts of
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the present, executes pitilessly the most measureless dessipation. Nothing is holy to him.
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It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine,
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only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of
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their religious age. I shall be the enemy of every high power, while
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religion teaches us to make it our friend and be humbled toward it. The
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desipator puts forth his strength against every fear of God, for fear of God
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will determine him in everything that he left standing as sacred, whether it is
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the God or the man that exercises the hallowing power in the God Man,
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Whether therefore anything is held sacred for God's sake or humanities, this does not
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change the fear of God, since Man is revered as supreme essence as much
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as on the specifically religious standpoint, of God as supreme essence, calls for
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our fear and reverence both overall us. The fear of God in the proper
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sense was shaken long ago, and a more or less conscious atheism, externally
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recognizable by a widespread unchurchfulness has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken
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from God has been superadded to man, and the power of humanity grew greater
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in just the degree that of priety lost weight. Man is the God of
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today, and fear of Man has taken the place of the old fear of
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God. But because man represents only another supreme being, nothing in fact has
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taken place, but a metamorphis in a supreme being, and the fear of
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man is merely an altered form of the fear of God. Are atheist of
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highus people. In the so called feudal times, we held everything as their
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fife from God. In the liberal period, the same feudal relation exists with
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man. God was the Lord, mag Man is the Lord. God was
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the mediator mag Man is God was the Spirit. No man is in this
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threefold met God. The feudal relation has experienced the transformation. For diversely we
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hold as a thief from all powerful Man, our power, which, because
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it comes from a higher it is not called power or might, but right
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the rights of man. We further hold as a thief from him opposition in
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the world, for he the mediator, mediates our intercourses with others, which
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therefore may not be otherwise than human. Finally, we hold as a thief
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from Him ourselves to wit our own value for all that we are worth,
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inasmuch as we are worth nothing when He does not dwell in us, and
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when or where we are not human. The power is man's. The world
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is man's. I am man's. But I am not still unrestrained from declaring
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myself the entitler, the mediator, and the own self. And it runs
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thus, my power is my property. My power gives me property. My
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power am I myself, and through it am I my property. End of Section twenty