The Ego and His Own

by Max Stirner

In nature as such I no longer respect anything, but know myself to be entitled to everything against it; in the tree in that garden, on the other hand, I must respect alienness (they say in one-sided fashion "property"), I must keep my hand off it. This comes to an end only when I can indeed leave that tree to another as I leave my stick, etc., to another, but do not in advance regard it as alien to me, i. e. sacred. Rather, I make to myself no crime of felling it if I will, and it remains my property, however long I resign it to others: it is and remains mine. In the banker's fortune I as little see anything alien as Napoleon did in the territories of kings: we have no dread of "conquering" it, and we look about us also for the means thereto. We strip off from it, therefore, the spirit of alienness, of which we had been afraid.

Therefore it is necessary that I do not lay claim to anything more as man, but to everything as I, this I; and accordingly to nothing human, but to mine; i. e. nothing that pertains to me as man, but—what I will and because I will it.

Rightful, or legitimate, property of another will be only that which you are content to recognize as such. If your content ceases, then this property has lost legitimacy for you, and you will laugh at absolute right to it.

Besides the hitherto discussed property in the limited sense, there is held up to our reverent heart another property against which we are far less "to sin." This property consists in spiritual goods, in the "sanctuary of the inner nature." What a man holds sacred, no other is to gibe at; because, untrue as it may be, and zealously as one may "in loving and modest wise" seek to convince of a true sanctity the man who adheres to it and believes in it, yet the sacred itself is always to be honored in it: the mistaken man does believe in the sacred, even though in an incorrect essence of it, and so his belief in the sacred must at least be respected.

In ruder times than ours it was customary to demand a particular faith, and devotion to a particular sacred essence, and they did not take the gentlest way with those who believed otherwise; since, however, "freedom of belief" spread itself more and more abroad, the "jealous God and sole Lord" gradually melted into a pretty general "supreme being," and it satisfied humane tolerance if only every one revered "something sacred."

Reduces to the human expression, this sacred essence is "man himself" and "the human." With the deceptive semblance as if the human were altogether our own, and free from all the otherworldliness with which that divine is tainted,—yes, as if Man were as much as I or you,—there may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of a "sacred essence" and that we now feel ourselves everywhere at home and no longer in the uncanny,[195] i. e. in the sacred and in sacred awe: in the ecstasy over "Man discovered at last" the egoistic cry of pain passes unheard, and the spook that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego.

But "Humanus is the saint's name" (see Goethe), and the humane is only the most clarified sanctity.

The egoist makes the reverse declaration. For this precise reason, because you hold something sacred, I gibe at you; and, even if I respected everything in you, your sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect.

With these opposed views there must also be assumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the egoist insults them, the religious man (i. e. every one who puts his "essence" above himself) must consistently—protect them. But what kind of spiritual goods are to be protected, and what left unprotected, depends entirely on the concept that one forms of the "supreme being"; and he who fears God, e. g., has more to shelter than he (the liberal) who fears Man.

In spiritual goods we are (in distinction from the sensuous) injured in a spiritual way, and the sin against them consists in a direct desecration, while against the sensuous a purloining or alienation takes place; the goods themselves are robbed of value and of consecration, not merely taken away; the sacred is immediately compromised. With the word "irreverence" or "flippancy" is designated everything that can be committed as crime against spiritual goods, i. e. against everything that is sacred for us; and scoffing, reviling, contempt, doubt, and the like, are only different shades of criminal flippancy.