The Ego and His Own

by Max Stirner

According to the professionals' opinion, the thought is given to me; according to the freethinkers', I seek the thought. There the truth is already found and extant, only I must—receive it from its Giver by grace; here the truth is to be sought and is my goal, lying in the future, toward which I have to run.

In both cases the truth (the true thought) lies outside me, and I aspire to get it, be it by presentation (grace), be it by earning (merit of my own). Therefore, (1) The truth is a privilege, (2) No, the way to it is patent to all, and neither the Bible nor the holy fathers nor the church nor any one else is in possession of the truth; but one can come into possession of it by—speculating.

Both, one sees, are propertyless in relation to the truth: they have it either as a fief (for the "holy father," e. g., is not a unique person; as unique he is this Sixtus, Clement, etc., but he does not have the truth as Sixtus, Clement, etc., but as "holy father," i. e. as a spirit) or as an ideal. As a fief, it is only for a few (the privileged); as an ideal, for all (the patentees).

Freedom of thought, then, has the meaning that we do indeed all walk in the dark and in the paths of error, but every one can on this path approach the truth and is accordingly on the right path ("All roads lead to Rome, to the world's end, etc."). Hence freedom of thought means this much, that the true thought is not my own; for, if it were this, how should people want to shut me off from it?

Thinking has become entirely free, and has laid down a lot of truths which I must accommodate myself to. It seeks to complete itself into a system and to bring itself to an absolute "constitution." In the State e. g. it seeks for the idea, say, till it has brought out the "rational State," in which I am then obliged to be suited; in man (anthropology), till it "has found man."

The thinker is distinguished from the believer only by believing much more than the latter, who on his part thinks of much less as signified by his faith (creed). The thinker has a thousand tenets of faith where the believer gets along with few; but the former brings coherence into his tenets, and takes the coherence in turn for the scale to estimate their worth by. If one or the other does not fit into his budget, he throws it out.

The thinkers run parallel to the believers in their pronouncements. Instead of "If it is from God you will not root it out," the word is "If it is from the truth, is true, etc."; instead of "Give God the glory,"—"Give truth the glory." But it is very much the same to me whether God or the truth wins; first and foremost I want to win.

Aside from this, how is an "unlimited freedom" to be thinkable inside of the State or society? The State may well protect one against another, but yet it must not let itself be endangered by an unmeasured freedom, a so-called unbridledness. Thus in "freedom of instruction" the State declares only this,—that it is suited with every one who instructs as the State (or, speaking more comprehensibly, the political power) would have it. The point for the competitors is this "as the State would have it." If the clergy, e. g., does not will as the State does, then it itself excludes itself from competition (vid. France). The limit that is necessarily drawn in the State for any and all competition is called "the oversight and superintendence of the State." In bidding freedom of instruction keep within the due bounds, the State at the same time fixes the scope of freedom of thought; because, as a rule, people do not think farther than their teachers have thought.

Hear Minister Guizot: "The great difficulty of to-day is the guiding and dominating of the mind. Formerly the church fulfilled this mission; now it is not adequate to it. It is from the university that this great service must be expected, and the university will not fail to perform it. We, the government, have the duty of supporting it therein. The charter calls for the freedom of thought and that of conscience."[228] So, in favor of freedom of thought and conscience, the minister demands "the guiding and dominating of the mind."

Catholicism haled the examinee before the forum of ecclesiasticism, Protestantism before that of biblical Christianity. It would be but little bettered if one haled him before that of reason, as Ruge, e. g., wants to.[229] Whether the church, the Bible, or reason (to which, moreover, Luther and Huss already appealed) is the sacred authority makes no difference in essentials.