Part 2

On the practical side of the question of egoism _versus_ self-surrender and for a trial of egoism in politics, this may be said: the belief that men not moved by a sense of duty will be unkind or unjust to others is but an indirect confession that those who hold that belief are greatly interested in having others live for them rather than for themselves. But I do not ask or expect so much. I am content if others individually live for themselves, and thus cease in so many ways to act in opposition to my living for myself,--to our living for ourselves.

If Christianity has failed to turn the world from evil, it is not to be dreamed that rationalism of a pious moral stamp will succeed in the same task. Christianity, or all philanthropic love, is tested in non-resistance. It is a dream that example will change the hearts of rulers, tyrants, mobs. If the extremest self-surrender fails, how can a mixture of Christian love and worldly caution succeed? This at least must be given up. The policy of Christ and Tolstoi can soon be tested, but Tolstoi's belief is not satisfied with a present test and failure. He has the infatuation of one who persists because this _ought_ to be. The egoist who thinks "I should like this to be" still has the sense to perceive that it is not accomplished by the fact of some believing and submitting, inasmuch as others are alert to prey upon the unresisting. The Pharaohs we have ever with us.

Several passages in this most remarkable book show the author as a man full of sympathy. When we reflect upon his deliberately expressed opinions and sentiments,--his spurning of the sense of moral obligation as the last form of superstition,--may we not be warranted in thinking that the total disappearance of the sentimental supposition of duty liberates a quantity of nervous energy for the purest generosity and clarifies the intellect for the more discriminating choice of objects of merit?

J. L. WALKER.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

If the style of this book is found unattractive, it will show that I have done my work ill and not represented the author truly; but, if it is found odd, I beg that I may not bear all the blame. I have simply tried to reproduce the author's own mixture of colloquialisms and technicalities, and his preference for the precise expression of his thought rather than the word conventionally expected.

One especial feature of the style, however, gives the reason why this preface should exist. It is characteristic of Stirner's writing that the thread of thought is carried on largely by the repetition of the same word in a modified form or sense. That connection of ideas which has guided popular instinct in the formation of words is made to suggest the line of thought which the writer wishes to follow. If this echoing of words is missed, the bearing of the statements on each other is in a measure lost; and, where the ideas are very new, one cannot afford to throw away any help in following their connection. Therefore, where a useful echo (and there are few useless ones in the book) could not be reproduced in English, I have generally called attention to it in a note. My notes are distinguished from the author's by being enclosed in brackets.

One or two of such coincidences of language, occurring in words which are prominent throughout the book, should be borne constantly in mind as a sort of _Keri perpetuum_: for instance, the identity in the original of the words "spirit" and "mind," and of the phrases "supreme being" and "highest essence." In such cases I have repeated the note where it seemed that such repetition might be absolutely necessary, but have trusted the reader to carry it in his head where a failure of his memory would not be ruinous or likely.

For the same reason,--that is, in order not to miss any indication of the drift of the thought,--I have followed the original in the very liberal use of italics, and in the occasional eccentric use of a punctuation mark, as I might not have done in translating a work of a different nature.

I have set my face as a flint against the temptation to add notes that were not part of the translation. There is no telling how much I might have enlarged the book if I had put a note at every sentence which deserved to have its truth brought out by fuller elucidation,--or even at every one which I thought needed correction. It might have been within my province, if I had been able, to explain all the allusions to contemporary events, but I doubt whether any one could do that properly without having access to the files of three or four well-chosen German newspapers of Stirner's time. The allusions are clear enough, without names and dates, to give a vivid picture of certain aspects of German life then. The tone of some of them is explained by the fact that the book was published under censorship.

I have usually preferred, for the sake of the connection, to translate Biblical quotations somewhat as they stand in the German, rather than conform them altogether to the English Bible. I am sometimes quite as near the original Greek as if I had followed the current translation.

Where German books are referred to, the pages cited are those of the German editions even when (usually because of some allusions in the text) the titles of the books are translated.

STEVEN T. BYINGTON.

THE EGO AND HIS OWN

All Things are Nothing to Me[1]

What is not supposed, to be my concern[2]! First and foremost, the Good Cause,[3] then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only _my_ cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!"

Let us look and see, then, how they manage _their_ concerns--they for whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.

You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years "searched the depths of the Godhead," and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to "God's cause," which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord's doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God's cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. "Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?" He cares only for _his_ cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is _his_ cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must "serve a higher cause."--Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him! He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is--a purely egoistic cause.

How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind's cause--a purely egoistic cause?

I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?

They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? Joy the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom!" The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and--has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.

But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of "his people."

And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.

God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for _myself_, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.[4]

If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that _I_ shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.

Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is _mine_, and it is not a general one, but is--_unique_,[5] as I am unique.

Nothing is more to me than myself!

Part First

Man

_Man is to man the supreme being_, says Feuerbach.

_Man has just been discovered_, says Burno Bauer.

Then let us take a more careful look at this supreme being and this new discovery.

I

A HUMAN LIFE

From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man seeks to find out _himself_ and get hold of _himself_ out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.

But everything that comes in contact with the child defends itself in turn against his attacks, and asserts its own persistence.

Accordingly, because each thing _cares for itself_ and at the same time comes into constant collision with other things, the _combat_ of self-assertion is unavoidable.

_Victory_ or _defeat_--between the two alternatives the fate of the combat wavers. The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the _subject_: the former exercises _supremacy_ and "rights of supremacy," the latter fulfils in awe and deference the "duties of a subject."

But both remain _enemies_, and always lie in wait: they watch for each other's _weaknesses_--children for those of their parents and parents for those of their children (_e. g._ their fear); either the stick conquers the man, or the man conquers the stick.

In childhood liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the bottom of things, to get at what is "back of" things; therefore we spy out the weak points of everybody, for which, it is well known, children have a sure instinct; therefore we like to smash things, like to rummage through hidden corners, pry after what is covered up or out of the way, and try what we can do with everything. When we once get at what is back of the things, we know we are safe; when, _e. g._, we have got at the fact that the rod is too weak against our obduracy, then we no longer fear it, "have outgrown it."

Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our--obduracy, our obdurate courage. By degrees we get at what is back of everything that was mysterious and uncanny to us, the mysteriously-dreaded might of the rod, the father's stern look, etc., and back of all we find our--ataraxy, _i. e._ imperturbability, intrepidity, our counter force, our odds of strength, our invincibility. Before that which formerly inspired in us fear and deference we no longer retreat shyly, but take _courage_. Back of everything we find our _courage_, our superiority; back of the sharp command of parents and authorities stands, after all, our courageous choice or our outwitting shrewdness. And the more we feel ourselves, the smaller appears that which before seemed invincible. And what is our trickery, shrewdness, courage, obduracy? What else but--_mind!_[6]

Through a considerable time we are spared a fight that is so exhausting later--the fight against _reason_. The fairest part of childhood passes without the necessity of coming to blows with reason. We care nothing at all about it, do not meddle with it, admit no reason. We are not to be persuaded to anything by _conviction_, and are deaf to good arguments, principles, etc.; on the other hand, coaxing, punishment, and the like are hard for us to resist.

This stern life-and-death combat with _reason_ enter later, and begins a new phase; in childhood we scamper about without racking our brains much.

_Mind_ is the name of the _first_ self-discovery, the first undeification of the divine, _i. e._ of the uncanny, the spooks, the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are _mind_.

Now for the first time we see that hitherto we have not looked at the world _intelligently_ at all, but only stared at it.

We exercise the beginnings of our strength on _natural powers_. We defer to parents as a natural power; later we say: Father and mother are to be forsaken, all natural power to be counted as riven. They are vanquished. For the rational, _i. e._ "intellectual" man there is no family as a natural power; a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its appearance. If these are "born again" as _intellectual, rational powers_, they are no longer at all what they were before.

And not only parents, but _men in general_, are conquered by the young man; they are no hindrance to him, and are no longer regarded; for now he says: One must obey God rather than men.

From this high standpoint everything "_earthly_" recedes into contemptible remoteness; for the standby point is--the _heavenly_.

The attitude is now altogether reversed; the youth takes up an _intellectual_ position, while the boy, who did not yet feel himself as mind, grew up in mindless learning. The former does not try to get hold of _things_ (_e. g._ to get into his head the _data_ of history), but of the _thoughts_ that lie hidden in things, and so, _e. g._, of the _spirit_ of history. On the other hand, the boy understands _connections_ no doubt, but not ideas, the spirit; therefore he strings together whatever can be learned, without proceeding _a priori_ and theoretically, _i. e._ without looking for ideas.

As in childhood one had to overcome the resistance of the _laws of the world_, so now in everything that he proposes he is met by an objection of the mind, of reason, of his _own conscience_. "That is unreasonable, unchristian, unpatriotic," and the like, cries conscience to us, and--frightens us away from it. Not the might of the avenging Eumenides, not Poseidon's wrath, not God, far as he sees the hidden, not the father's rod of punishment, do we fear, but--_conscience_.

We "run after our thoughts" now, and follow their commands just as before we followed parental, human ones. Our course of action is determined by our thoughts (ideas, conceptions, _faith_) as it is in childhood by the commands of our parents.

For all that, we were already thinking when we were children, only our thoughts were not fleshless, abstract, _absolute, i. e._ NOTHING BUT THOUGHTS, a heaven in themselves, a pure world of thought, _logical_ thoughts.

On the contrary, they had been only thoughts that we had about a _thing_; we thought of the thing so or so. Thus we may have thought "God made the world that we see there," but we did not think of ("search") the "depths of the Godhead itself"; we may have thought "that is the truth about the matter," but we did not think of Truth itself, nor unite into one sentence "God is truth." The "depths of the Godhead, who is truth," we did not touch. Over such purely logical, _i. e._ theological questions, "What is truth?" Pilate does not stop, though he does not therefore hesitate to ascertain in an individual case "what truth there is in the thing," _i. e._ whether the _thing_ is true.

Any thought bound to a _thing_ is not yet _nothing but a thought_, absolute thought.

To bring to light _the pure thought_, or to be of its party, is the delight of youth; and all the shapes of light in the world of thought, like truth, freedom, humanity, Man, etc., illumine and inspire the youthful soul.

But, when the spirit is recognized as the essential thing, it still makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore one seeks to become rich in spirit; the spirit wants to spread out so as to found its empire--an empire that is not of this world, the world just conquered. Thus, then, it longs to become all in all to itself; _i. e._, although I am spirit, I am not yet _perfected_ spirit, and must first seek the complete spirit.

But with that I, who had just now found myself as spirit, lose myself again at once, bowing before the complete spirit as one not my own but _supernal_, and feeling my emptiness.

Spirit is the essential point for everything, to be sure; but then is every spirit the "right" spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal of spirit, the "Holy Spirit." It is not my or your spirit, but just--an ideal, supernal one, it is "God." "God is spirit." And this supernal "Father in heaven gives it to those that pray to him."[7]

The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it, _i. e_. model it after his ideal; in him the view that one must deal with the world according to his _interest_, not according to his _ideals_, becomes confirmed.

So long as one knows himself only as _spirit_, and feels that all the value of his existence consists in being spirit (it becomes easy for the youth to give his life, the "bodily life," for a nothing, for the silliest point of honor), so long it is only _thoughts_ that one has, ideas that he hopes to be able to realize some day when he has found a sphere of action; thus one has meanwhile only _ideals_, unexecuted ideas or thoughts.

Not till one has fallen in love with his _corporeal_ self, and takes a pleasure in himself as a living flesh-and-blood person,--but it is in mature years, in the man, that we find it so,--not till then has one a personal or _egoistic_ interest, _i. e._ an interest not only of our spirit, for instance, but of total satisfaction, satisfaction of the whole chap, a _selfish_ interest. Just compare a man with a youth, and see if he will not appear to you harder, less magnanimous, more selfish. Is he therefore worse? No, you say; he has only become more definite, or, as you also call it, more "practical." But the main point is this, that he makes _himself_ more the centre than does the youth, who is infatuated about other things, _e. g._ God, fatherland, and so on.

Therefore the man shows a _second_ self-discovery. The youth found himself as _spirit_ and lost himself again in the _general_ spirit, the complete, holy spirit, Man, mankind,--in short, all ideals; the man finds himself as _embodied_ spirit.

Boys had only _unintellectual_ interests (_i. e._ interests devoid of thoughts and ideas), youths only _intellectual_ ones; the man has bodily, personal, egoistic interests.

If the child has not an _object_ that it can occupy itself with, it feels _ennui_; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with _itself_. The youth, on the contrary, throws the object aside, because for him _thoughts_ arose out of the object; he occupies himself with his _thoughts_, his dreams, occupies himself intellectually, or "his mind is occupied."

The young man includes everything not intellectual under the contemptuous name of "externalities." If he nevertheless sticks to the most trivial externalities (_e. g._ the customs of students' clubs and other formalities), it is because, and when, he discovers _mind_ in them, _i. e._ when they are _symbols_ to him.

As I find myself back of things, and that as mind, so I must later find _myself_ also back of _thoughts_,--to wit, as their creator and _owner_. In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies--an awful power. The thoughts had become _corporeal_ on their own account, were ghosts, such as God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as _mine_, as my property; I refer all to myself.

If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt, so as owner I thrust spirits or ideas away into their "vanity." They have no longer any power over me, as no "earthly might" has power over the spirit.

The child was realistic, taken up with the things of this world, till little by little he succeeded in getting at what was back of these very things; the youth was idealistic, inspired by thoughts, till he worked his way up to where he became the man, the egoistic man, who deals with things and thoughts according to his heart's pleasure, and sets his personal interest above everything. Finally, the old man? When I become one, there will still be time enough to speak of that.

II.

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW

How each of us developed himself, what he strove for, attained, or missed, what objects he formerly pursued and what plans and wishes his heart is now set on, what transformations his views have experienced, what perturbations his principles,--in short, how he has to-day become what yesterday or years ago he was not,--this he brings out again from his memory with more or less ease, and he feels with especial vividness what changes have taken place in himself when he has before his eyes the unrolling of another's life.

Let us therefore look into the activities our fore-fathers busied themselves with.

I.--THE ANCIENTS

Custom having once given the name of "the ancients" to our pre-Christian ancestors, we will not throw it up against them that, in comparison with us experienced people, they ought properly to be called children, but will rather continue to honor them as our good old fathers. But how have they come to be antiquated, and who could displace them through his pretended newness?

We know, of course, the revolutionary innovator and disrespectful heir, who even took away the sanctity of the fathers' sabbath to hallow his Sunday, and interrupted the course of time to begin at himself with a new chronology; we know him, and know that it is--the Christian. But does he remain forever young, and is he to-day still the new man, or will he too be superseded, as he has superseded the "ancients"?

The fathers must doubtless have themselves begotten the young one who entombed them. Let us then peep at this act of generation.