The Ego and His Own

by Max Stirner

If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the people, if it is to be a subject[165] and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a head, its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in the "Trio," and Proudhon declares, "une société, pour ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut vivre."[166]

The vox populi is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule our princes. Certainly the vox populi is at the same time vox dei; but is either of any use, and is not the vox principis also vox dei?

At this point the "Nationals" may be brought to mind. To demand of the thirty-eight States of Germany that they shall act as one nation can only be put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of bees, led by thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into one swarm. Bees they all remain; but it is not the bees as bees that belong together and can join themselves together, it is only that the subject bees are connected with the ruling queens. Bees and peoples are destitute of will, and the instinct of their queens leads them.

If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, i. e. beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the "peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together, are destitute of will. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to unification.

Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something general, abstract, an empty, lifeless concept, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively particular from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a people, a nation, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just now the order of the day—to wit, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, etc., Lusatia, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality—coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, i. e. unite themselves, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other words, when they are more than—Germans: only then can they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in to himself. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German"! With that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," i. e. as long as they have a "family disposition." From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run,—from the family spirit,—the Nationals, who want to have a great family of Germans, cannot liberate themselves.

Aside from this, the so-called Nationals would only have to understand themselves rightly in order to lift themselves out of their juncture with the good-natured Teutomaniacs. For the uniting for material ends and interests, which they demand of the Germans, comes to nothing else than a voluntary union. Carriere, inspired, cries out,[167] "Railroads are to the more penetrating eye the way to a life of the people such as has not yet anywhere appeared in such significance." Quite right, it will be a life of the people that has nowhere appeared, because it is not a—life of the people.—So Carriere then combats himself (p. 10): "Pure humanity or manhood cannot be better represented than by a people fulfilling its mission." Why, by this nationality only is represented. "Washed-out generality is lower than the form complete in itself, which is itself a whole, and lives as a living member of the truly general, the organized." Why, the people is this very "washed-out generality," and it is only a man that is the "form complete in itself."

The impersonality of what they call "people, nation," is clear also from this: that a people which wants to bring its I into view to the best of its power puts at its head the ruler without will. It finds itself in the alternative either to be subjected to a prince who realizes only himself, his individual pleasure—then it does not recognize in the "absolute master" its own will, the so-called will of the people—, or to seat on the throne a prince who gives effect to no will of his own—then it has a prince without will, whose place some ingenious clockwork would perhaps fill just as well.—Therefore insight need go only a step farther; then it becomes clear of itself that the I of the people is an impersonal, "spiritual" power, the—law. The people's I, therefore, is a—spook, not an I. I am I only by this, that I make myself; i. e. that it is not another who makes me, but I must be my own work. But how is it with this I of the people? Chance plays it into the people's hand, chance gives it this or that born lord, accidents procure it the chosen one; he is not its (the "sovereign" people's) product, as I am my product. Conceive of one wanting to talk you into believing that you were not your I, but Tom or Jack was your I! But so it is with the people, and rightly. For the people has an I as little as the eleven planets counted together have an I, though they revolve around a common centre.

Bailly's utterance is representative of the slave-disposition that folks manifest before the sovereign people, as before the prince. "I have," says he, "no longer any extra reason when the general reason has pronounced itself. My first law was the nation's will; as soon as it had assembled I knew nothing beyond its sovereign will." He would have no "extra reason," and yet this extra reason alone accomplishes everything. Just so Mirabeau inveighs in the words, "No power on earth has the right to say to the nation's representatives, It is my will!"

As with the Greeks, there is now a wish to make man a zoon politicon, a citizen of the State or political man. So he ranked for a long time as a "citizen of heaven." But the Greek fell into ignominy along with his State, the citizen of heaven likewise falls with heaven; we, on the other hand, are not willing to go down along with the people, the nation and nationality, not willing to be merely political men or politicians. Since the Revolution they have striven to "make the people happy," and in making the people happy, great, and the like, they make Us unhappy: the people's good hap is—my mishap.

What empty talk the political liberals utter with emphatic decorum is well seen again in Nauwerk's "On Taking Part in the State." There complaint is made of those who are indifferent and do not take part, who are not in the full sense citizens, and the author speaks as if one could not be man at all if one did not take a lively part in State affairs, i. e. if one were not a politician. In this he is right; for, if the State ranks as the warder of everything "human," we can have nothing human without taking part in it. But what does this make out against the egoist? Nothing at all, because the egoist is to himself the warder of the human, and has nothing to say to the State except "Get out of my sunshine." Only when the State comes in contact with his ownness does the egoist take an active interest in it. If the condition of the State does not bear hard on the closet-philosopher, is he to occupy himself with it because it is his "most sacred duty"? So long as the State does according to his wish, what need has he to look up from his studies? Let those who from an interest of their own want to have conditions otherwise busy themselves with them. Not now, nor evermore, will "sacred duty" bring folks to reflect about the State,—as little as they become disciples of science, artists, etc., from "sacred duty." Egoism alone can impel them to it, and will as soon as things have become much worse. If you showed folks that their egoism demanded that they busy themselves with State affairs, you would not have to call on them long; if, on the other hand, you appeal to their love of fatherland and the like, you will long preach to deaf hearts in behalf of this "service of love." Certainly, in your sense the egoists will not participate in State affairs at all.