The Ego and His Own

by Max Stirner

But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred, the "Holy Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not able to become "godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the world, the mediæval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against self, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The mediæval man is the man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative man.

All wisdom of the ancients is the science of the world, all wisdom of the moderns is the science of God.

The heathen (Jews included) got through with the world; but now the thing was to get through with self, the spirit, too; i. e. to become spiritless or godless.

For almost two thousand years we have been working at subjecting the Holy Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we have torn off and trodden under foot many bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost its divinity, its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove; to be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but lets itself be caught by the laity too, etc.; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit of Man, it remains still an alien spirit to me or you, still far from becoming our unrestricted property, which we dispose of at our pleasure. However, one thing certainly happened, and visibly guided the progress of post-Christian history: this one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy Spirit more human, and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it came about that at last it could be conceived as the "spirit of humanity," and, under different expressions like "idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness, general philanthropy," etc., appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more accessible.

Would not one think that now everybody could possess the Holy Spirit, take up into himself the idea of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in himself?

No, the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its unapproachableness, is not accessible to us, not our property; for the spirit of humanity is not my spirit. My ideal it may be, and as a thought I call it mine; the thought of humanity is my property, and I prove this sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views, and shaping it to-day so, to-morrow otherwise; we represent it to ourselves in the most manifold ways. But it is at the same time an entail, which I cannot alienate nor get rid of.

Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the "absolute idea," which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc.

But can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity, and can I consider the Spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it, "sacrifice myself" to it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world only when it had broken the world's overpoweringness and "divinity," recognized the world's powerlessness and "vanity."

The case with regard to the spirit corresponds. When I have degraded it to a spook and its control over me to a cranky notion, then it is to be looked upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I use it, as one uses nature at pleasure without scruple.

The "nature of the case," the "concept of the relationship," is to guide me in dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms of the case! As if a relation which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness of those who enter into it, itself unique! As if it depended on how others stamp it! But, as people separated the "essence of Man" from the real man, and judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from him, and appraise it by "human value." Concepts are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts to rule. This is the religious world, to which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic. Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, i. e. I, am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. Can there be a more grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess at the very beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? ("Not a letter of the law shall be lost!")