Latest / Logic Library / 06 - The Possessed - part 1 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner

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06 - The Possessed - part 1 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · Logic Library

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The possessed. Have you ever seen a spirit? No? Not I,
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but my grandmother. Now you see, it's just so with me too.
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I myself haven't seen any, but my grandmother had them running between her feet
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all sorts of ways. And out of confidence in our grandmother's honesty, we
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believe in the existence of spirits. But had we know grandfathers then, and
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did they not shrug their shoulders every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts?
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Yes, these were unbelieving men who have harmed our good religion much, those
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rationalists. We shall feel that what else lies at the bottom of this warm
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faith and ghosts? If not the good faith in the existence of spiritual beings
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in general? And is not this latter itself disastrously unsettled if saucy men of
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the understanding may disturb the former. The Romanticists were quite conscious or to blow
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the very belief in God suffered by the laying aside of the belief in spirits
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or ghosts. And they tried to help us out of the baleful consequences,
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not only by their reawakened fairy world, but at lasts, and especially by
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the intrusion of a higher world, by the somnambulists of Pervorest, et cetera.
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The good believers and fathers of the church did not suspect that with the
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belief in ghosts, the foundation of religion was withdrawn, and that since then
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it had been floating in the air. He who no longer believes in any
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ghost need only to travel on consistently in his unbelief to see that there is
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no separate being at all concealed behind things. No ghost or what is naively
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reckoned it synonymous even in our use of words, no spirit spirits exist.
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Look about in the world and say for yourself whether a spirit does not gaze
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upon you. Out of everything, out of the lovely little flower, there
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speaks to you the spirit of the creator who has shaped it so wonderfully.
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The stars proclaim the spirit that established their order. From the mountain tops,
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a spirit of sublimity breathes down out of the waters. A spirit of yearning
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murmurs up. Not of men. Millions of spirits speak. The mountains may
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sink, the flowers fade, the world of stars fall in ruins, the
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men die. What matters the wreck of these visible bodies. The spirit,
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the invisible spirit abides eternally. Yes, the whole world is haunted. Only
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is haunted, Nay, it itself walks. It is uncanny through and through.
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It is the wandering, seeming body of a spirit. It is a
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spoof. What else should a ghost be then than an apparent body but real
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spirit? Well, the world is empty, is not is only glamorous semblance.
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Its truth is the spirit alone. It is the seeming body of a
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spirit. Look out nearer far. A ghostly world surrounds you. Everywhere.
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You are always having apparitions or visions. Everything that appears to you is only
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the phantom of an indwelling spirit, is a ghostly apparition. The world is
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to you only a world of appearances, behind which the spirit walks. You
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see spirits? Are you, perchance thinking of comparing yourself with the ancients who
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saw gods everywhere? Gods, my dear modern, are not spirits. Gods
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do not degrade the world to a semblance, and do not spiritualize it.
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But to you, the whole world is spiritualized, and have become an enigmatical
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ghost. Therefore, do not wonder if you likewise find in yourself nothing but
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a spook. Is not your body haunted by your spirit, and is not
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the latter alone the true and real, the former only the transitory, not
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or a semblance. Are we not all ghosts uncanny beings that wait for deliverance
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to wit spirits? Since the Spirit appeared in the world, since the Word
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became flesh, since then the world has been spiritualized, enchanted a spook.
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You have spirit, for you have thoughts? What are your thoughts? Spiritual
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entities? Not things that no, but the spirit of things, the main
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point in all things, the inmost in them, their idea. Consequently,
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what you think is not only your thought. On the contrary, it is
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that in the world which is most real, that which is properly to be
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called true. It is the truth itself. If only I think truly,
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I think the truth. I may to be sure err with regard to the
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truth and fail to recognize it. But if I recognize truly, the object
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of my cognition is the truth. So I suppose you strive at all times
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to recognize the truth. To me, the truth is sacred. It may
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well happen that I find a truth incomplete and replace it with a better,
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But the truth I cannot abrogate. I believe in the truth Therefore I search
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in it, nothing transcends it. It is eternal, sacred, eternal is
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the truth. It is the sacred, thee eternal. But you who let
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yourself be filled and led by this sacred thing, are yourself hollowed. Further,
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the sacred is not for your senses, and you never, as a
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sensual man, discover its trace, but for your faith, or more definitely
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still for your spirit, For it itself, you know, is a spiritual
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thing. A spirit is spirit. For the spirit, the sacred is by
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no means so easily to be set aside as many at present afferred who no
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longer take this unsuitable word into their mouths. If even in a single respect
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I am still upbraided as an egoist, there is left the thought of something
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else which I should serve more than myself, and which must be to me
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more important than everything. In short, somewhat in which I should have to
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seek my true welfare, Something sacred, however human, this sacred thing may
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look, though it be the human itself that does not take away its sacredness,
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but at most changes it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing,
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from a divine one to a human sacred things exist only for the egoist who
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does not acknowledge himself. The involuntary egoist for him who is always looking after
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his own and yet does not count himself as the highest being, who serves
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only himself, and at the same time always thinks he is serving a higher
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being, who knows nothing higher than himself, and is yet infatuated about something
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higher. In short, for the egoist who would not like to be an
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egoist and abases himself, combats his egoism, but at the same time abases
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himself only for the sake of being exalted, and therefore of gratifying his egoism.
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Because he would like to cease to be an egoist, he looks about
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in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself too. But
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however much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end, he does all
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for his own sake, and the disreputable egoism will not come off him.
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On this account, I call him the involuntary egoist. His toil and care
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to get away from himself is nothing but the misunderstood impulse to self dissolution.
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If you are bound to your past, hour. If you must babble today
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because you babbled yesterday, If you cannot transform yourself each instant, you feel
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yourself fettered to slavery and be numbed. Therefore, over each minute of your
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existence, a fresh minute of the future beckons to you, and developing yourself,
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you get away from yourself, that is, from the self that was
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at that moment. As you are at each instant, you are your own
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creature. And in this very creature you do not wish to lose yourself the
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creator. You are yourself a higher being than you are and surpass yourself.
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But that you are the one who is higher than you, that is that
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you are not only creature, but likewise your creator. Just this as an
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involuntary egoist you fail to recognize, and therefore the higher essence is to you
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an alien essence. Every higher essence, such as truth, mankind, and
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so on, is an essence over us alien. This is a criterion of
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the sacred. In everything sacred, there lies something uncanny, strange, such
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as we are not quite familiar and at home in what is sacred to me
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is not my own. And if, for instance, the property of others
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was not sacred to me, I should look on it as mine, which
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I should take to myself when occasion offered. Or on the other side,
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if I regard the face of the Chinese Emperor as sacred, it remains strange
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to my eye, which I close at its appearance. Why is an incontrovertible
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mathematical truth, which might even be called eternal according to the common understanding of
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words, not sacred because it is not revealed or not the revelation of a
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higher being. If by revealed we understand only the so called religious truths,
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we go far astray and entirely fail to recognize the breadth of the concept higher
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being. Atheists keep up their scoffing at the higher being, which was also
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honored under the name of the Highest or a tree Supreme, and trample in
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the dust one proof of his existence after another, without noticing that they themselves,
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out of need for a higher being, only annihilate the old to make
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room for a new is man, who chance not a higher essence than an
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individual man, and must not the truths, rights, and ideas which result
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from the concept of him be honored and counted sacred as revelations of this very
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concept. For even though we should abrogate again many a truth that seemed to
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be made manifest by this concept. Yet this would only evince a misunderstanding on
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our part, without in the least degree harming the sacred concept itself, or
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taking their sacredness from those truths that must rightly be looked upon as its revelations.
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Man reaches beyond every individual man. And yet though he be his essence,
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is not in fact his essence, which rather would be as single as
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he the individual himself, but a general and higher yes for atheist, the
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Highest Essence. And as the divine revelations were not written down by God with
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his own hand, but made public through the Lord's instruments, so also the
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new Highest Essence does not write out its revelations itself, but lets them come
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to our knowledge through true men only. The New Essence betrays in fact a
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more spiritual style of conception than the old God, because the latter was still
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represented in a sort of embodiedness or form, while the undimmed spirituality of the
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New is retained and no special material body is fancied for it. And withal
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it does not lack corporeety, which even takes on a yet more seductive appearance,
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because it looks more natural and mundane, and consists in nothing less than
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in every bodily man, yes or outright in humanity or all men. Thereby
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the spectfulness of the spirit in a seeming body has once again become really solid
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and popular. Sacred, then is the highest Essence and everything in which the
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Highest Essence reveals or will reveal itself. But hollowed are they who recognize this
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highest essence together with its own together with its revelations. The sacred hollows in
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turn its reverer, who by his worship becomes himself a saint, as likewise
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what he does is saintly, a saintly walk, saintly thoughts and saintly actions,
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imaginations and aspirations. It is easily understood that the conflict over what is
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revered as the highest Essence can be significant only so long as even the most
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embittered opponents concede to each other the main point that there is a highest essence
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to which worship or service is due. If one should smile compassionately at the
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whole struggle over a highest Essence, as a Christian might at the war of
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words between a Shia and a Sunni, or between a Brahmin and a Buddhist,
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then the hypothesis of a highest essence would be null in his eyes,
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and the conflict on this basis and idle play, whether then the one God
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or the three in one, whether the Lutheran God or the atrece of prem
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or not God at all. But man may represent the highest essence. That
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makes no difference at all for him who denies the highest Essence itself, For
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in his eyes those servants of a highest Essence are one and all pious people,
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the most raging Atheist, not less than the most faith filled Christian.
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In the foremost place of the sacred then stands the highest Essence and the faith
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in this essence, our holy faith. The spook with ghosts rearrived in the
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spirit realm, in the realm of essences, what haunts the universe and has
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its occult incomprehensible being, there is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest
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Essence. And to get to the bottom of this spook, to comprehend it,
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to discover reality in it, to prove the existence of God. This
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task men set to themselves for thousands of years, with the horrible impossibility,
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the endless denaid labor of transforming the spook into a non spook, the unreal
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into something real, the spirit into an entire and corporeal person. With this
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they tormented themselves to death. Behind the existing world, they saw the thing
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in itself, the essence behind the thing, they saw the un thing.
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When one looks to the bottom of anything searches out its essence, one often
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discovers something quite other than what it seems to be. Honeyed speech and a
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lying heart, pompous words and bearly thoughts, and so on. By bringing
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the essence into prominence, one degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare semblance,
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a deception. The essence of the world so attractive and splendid, is
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for him who looks to the bottom of it emptiness. Emptiness equals world's essence,
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world's doings. Now, he who is religious does not occupy himself with
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the deceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but looks upon the essence,
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and in the essence has the truth. The essences which are deduced from some
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appearances are the evil essences, and conversely from others, the good. The
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essence of human feeling, for instance, is love. The essence of human
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will is the good, that of one's thinking, the true, and so
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on. What at first passed for existence, such as the world and its
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like, appears now as bare semblance, and the truly existent is much rather
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the essence, whose realm is filled with God's spirits demons, with good or
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bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of essences, truly exists.
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Now. The human heart may be loveless, but its essence exists God,
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who is love. Human thought may wander an error, but its essence
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truth exists. God is truth like to none acknowledge essences alone, and nothing
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but essences. That is religion. Its realm is a realm of essences.
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Spooks and ghosts. The longing to make the spook comprehensible were to realize nonsense
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has brought about a corporeal ghost, a ghost or spirit with a real body,
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an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves
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to get a conception of this ghostly apparition. But there always remained the contradiction
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of two natures, the divine and the human, the ghostly and sensual.
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There remain the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing,
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never yet was a ghost more soul torturing. And no shaman who pricks himself
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to raving fury and nerve lacerating cramps to dr ghost can endure such soul torment
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as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost. But through Christ the truth of
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the matter had at the same time come to light that the veritable spirit or
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ghost is Man. The corporeal or embodied spirit is just Man. He himself
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is the ghostly being, and at the same time the being's appearance and existence.
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Henceforth, Man no longer in typical cases shudders at ghosts outside himself,
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but at himself. He is terrified at himself. In the depth of his
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breast dwells the spirit of sin, even the faintest thought. And this is
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itself a spirit you know, may be a devil, et cetera. The
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ghost has put on a body, God has become man. But now Man
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is himself the gruesome spook, which he seeks to get back of, to
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exercise, to fathom, to bring to reality into speech. Man is spirit.
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What matter? If the body whither? If only the spirit is saved.
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Everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or a soul's welfare becomes
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the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a ghost, an uncanny spook,
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to which there is even a signed, a distinct seat in the body,
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dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head, et
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cetera. You are not to me and I am not to you a higher
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essence. Nevertheless, a higher essence may be hidden in each of us,
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and call forth a mutual reverence to take at once the most general man lives
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in you and in me. If I did not see man in you,
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what occasion should I have to respect you? To be sure? You are
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not man in his true and adequate form, but only a mortal veil of
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his from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing. But yet, for the
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present, this general and higher essence is housed in you, and you present
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before me, because an imperishable spirit has in you assumed a perishable body,
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so that really your form is only an assumed one. A spirit that appears
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appears in you without being bound to your body, and to this particular mode
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of appearance. Therefore a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a
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higher escence, but only respect that higher escence which walks in you. I
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respect man in you. The ancients did not observe anything of this sort in
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their slaves, and the higher essence Man found as yet little response. To
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make up for this, they saw each other ghosts of another sort. The
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people is a higher essence than an individual, and like man or the spirit
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of man, a spirit haunting the individual the spirit of the people. For
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this reason they reviewed the spirit, and only so far as he served this
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or else a spirit related to it, as in the spirit of the family,
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could the individual appear significant. Only for the sake of the higher essence
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the people, was consideration allowed to the member of the people, as you
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are hollowed to us by man who haunts you. So at every time men
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have been hollowed by some higher essence or other, like people, family,
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and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has anyone been honored
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from of old only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of
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a hollowed a protected and recognized person. If I cherish you, because I
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hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction.
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Then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hollowed
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body. You are not on account of my beholding in you a ghost an
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appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure. You, yourself, with your essence,
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are valuable to me, for your essence is not a higher one,
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is not a higher and more general than you, is unique like yourself because
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it is you. But it is not only man that haunts, so does
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everything. The higher essence, the spirit that walks in everything, is at
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the same time bound to nothing, and only appears in it. Ghosts in
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every corner. Here would be the place to pass them haunting spirits in review,
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if they were not to come before us again further on, in order
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to vanish before egoism. Hence, let only a few of them be particularized
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by way of example, in order to bring us at once to our attitude
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toward them. Sacred above all is the Holy Spirit, sacred, the truth.
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Sacred, are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage,
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the common good order, fatherland, and so on. Wheels in the
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head Man, your head is haunted. You have wheels in your head.
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You imagine great things and to pick to yourself, a whole world of gods
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that has an existence for you, a spirit realm to which you suppose yourself
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to be called an ideal that beckons to you, you have a fixed idea.
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Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those
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persons who cling to the higher and because the vast majority belongs under this head,
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almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a
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madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a fixed idea,
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an idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize with regard
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to such a fixed idea that it is a folly, you shut its slave
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up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith say which we
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are not to doubt, the majesty of the people, which we are not
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to strike. Yet he who does is guilty of lay's majesty, virtue against
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which the censor is not to let a word pass that morality may be kept
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pure? Are these not fixed ideas? Is not the stupid chatter of most
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of our newspapers, the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of
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morality, legality, Christianity and so forth, and only seem to go about
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free, because the madhouse in which they walk takes inse have broad a space.
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Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once
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have to guard your back against the lunatics stealthy malice. For these great lunatics
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are like the little so called lunatics in this point too, that they assail
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by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon,
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steal free speech from him, and then they fall upon him with their nails.
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Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictivs of these maniacs, and
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the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One must read the journals of
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this pure and must hear the Philistines talk to get the horrible conviction that one
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is shut up in a house with fools. Thou shalt not call thy brother
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a fool, if thou dost, etc. But I do not fear the
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curse, and I say, my brothers are arch fools. Whether a poor
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fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is God,
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the Father, Emperor of Japan, a holy spirit, or whatnot? Or
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whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances conceives that it is his mission to be a
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good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man.
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Both these are one and the same fixed idea. He who has never tried
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and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous
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man, and the like, is possessed and prepossessed by faith, virtuousness,
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etc. Just as the schoolman philosop devised only inside the belief of the Church,
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as Pope Benedict the fourteenth wrote fat books inside the papist superstition without ever
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throwing a doubt upon this belief, as authors fill whole folios on the state
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without calling into question the fixed idea of the state itself, as our newspapers
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are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created
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to be a zun politicon, and so also subjects vegetate and subjection virtuous people
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in virtue, liberals and humanity, without ever putting to these fixed ideas of
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theirs the searching knife of criticism undislodgeable like a madman's delusion, Those thoughts stand
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on a firm footing, and he who doubts them lays hands on the sacred.
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Yes, the fixed idea, that is the truly sacred. Is it
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perchance only people possessed by the devil that meet us or do we as often
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come upon people possessed in the contrary way, possessed by the good, by
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virtue, morality, the law, or some principle or other. Possessions of
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the devil, are not the only ones. God works on us, and
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the devil does the former workings of grace, the latter workings of the devil.
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Possessed people are set in their opinions. If the word possession displeases you,
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then call it prepossession. Yes, since the spirit possesses you and all
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inspirations come from it, call it inspiration and enthusiasm. I add the complete
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enthusiasm, for we cannot stop with the sluggish half way kind is called fanaticism.
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It is precisely among cultured people that saticism is at home. For man
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is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things. An interest
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in spiritual things, when it is alive, is and must be fanaticism.
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It is a fanatical interest in the sacred, final observe our liberals look into
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the sexious and fatizlans. Butta hear what Shlosa says. Bolbach's company constituted a
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regular plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system, and its members were
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as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and priests, Jesuits and Pietists,
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Methodists, missionary and Bible societies commonly are for mechanical worship and orthodoxy.
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Take notice how a moral man behaves, who today often thinks he is through
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with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him
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whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest,
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that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty,
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then a moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one's being
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allowed to touch his sister as wife. Also, and whence this shudder because
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he believes in those moral commandments, This moral faith is deeply rooted in his
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breast. Much as he rages against the pious Christians, he himself has nevertheless
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as thoroughly remained a Christian. To wit, a moral Christian in the form
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of morality. Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under faith.
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Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is
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punished as a criminal. He who commits incests suffers as a criminal. Those
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who are always crying. The religion is not to be regarded in the state,
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and the jew is to be a citizen equally with the Christian show themselves
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in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a dogma of
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faith? Touch it and you will learn by experience how this moral man is
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a hero of faith. Also, not less than Krumacher, not less than
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Philip the second. These fight for the faith of the church, he for
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the faith of the state, or the moral law of the state, for
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articles of faith. Both condemn him who act otherwise than their faith will allow.
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The brand of crime is stamped upon him, and he may languish in
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reformatories in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith. They call
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that liberty of faith. Then when brother and sister, on account of a
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relation they should have settled with their conscience, are thrown into prison, but
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they set a pernicious example. Yes, indeed, others might have taken the
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notion that the state had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon
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purity of morals would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of faith
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are zealous for the sacred God, the moral ones for the sacred good.
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Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other.
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How the strictly orthodox or old style believers differ from the fighters for truth,
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light, and justice, from the philithes, the friends of light, the
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rationalists and others. And yet how utterly unessential is this difference. If one
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buffets single traditional truths, miracles, unlimited power of princes, then the rationalists
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buffet them too, and only the old style blos wail. But if one
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buffets truth itself, he immediately has both as believers for opponents. And so
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with moralities, the strict believers are relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant.
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But he who attacks morality itself gets both to deal with truth. Morality,
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justice, light, etc. Are to be and remain sacred. What
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anyone finds to censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be Unchristian. According to
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the view of these rationalists, but Christianity must remain a fixture to buffet.
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It is outrageous and outrage To be sure, the heretic against pure faith no
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longer exposes himself to the earlier theory of persecution. But so much the more
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does it now fall upon the heretic against pure morels wor else. End of section