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 THE EGO AND HIS 
 OWN 
 
 BY 
 
 MAX STIRNER 
 
 TRANSLATED FHOJI THE GERMAN BY 
 STEVEN T. BYINGTON 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 J. L. WALKER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, PUBLISHES 
 1907
 
 Copyright. 1907, by 
 BENJAMIN R. TUCKER
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 m 
 
 (36- 
 
 TO MY SWEETHEART 
 
 MARIE DAHNHARDT
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE . . . vii 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . . xii 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE .... xix 
 
 ALL THINGS ARE NOTHING TO ME . . .3 
 
 PART FIRST: MAN. . . . .7 
 
 I. A HUMAN LIFE . . . .9 
 
 II. MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW . . 17 
 
 I. THE ANCIENTS . . . .17 
 
 II. THE MODERNS . . . .30 
 
 1. THE SPIRIT . . . .34 
 
 2. THE POSSESSED . . .42 
 
 3. THE HIERARCHY . . .85 
 
 III. THE FREE . . . .127 
 
 1. POLITICAL LIBERALISM . . 128 
 
 2. SOCIAL LIBERALISM . . .152 
 
 3. HUMANE LIBERALISM . . .163 
 
 PART SECOND: 1 . . . .201 
 
 I. OWNNKSS . . . . .203 
 
 II. THE OWNKH . . . .225 
 
 I. MY POWER . . . .242 
 
 II. MY INTERCOURSE . . . 275 
 
 III. MY SELF-ENJOYMENT . . .425 
 
 III. THE UNIQUE ONE . . . .484 
 
 INDEX . 491
 
 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 
 
 For more than twenty years I have entertained the design of 
 publishing an English translation of " Der Einzige und sein 
 Eigentum. 1 " When I formed this design, the number of 
 English-speaking persons who had ever heard of the book was 
 very limited. The memory of Max Stirner had been virtually 
 extinct for an entire generation. But in the last two decades 
 there has been a remarkable revival of interest both in the book 
 and in its author. It began in this country with a discussion in 
 the pages of the Anarchist periodical, " Liberty," in which 
 Stirner's thought was clearly expounded and vigorously cham- 
 pioned by Dr. James L. Walker, who adopted for this discussion 
 the pseudonym " Tak Kak." At that time Dr. Walker was the 
 chief editorial writer for the Galveston " News." Some years 
 later he became a practising physician in Mexico, where he died 
 in 1904. A series of essays which he began in an Anarchist 
 periodical, " Egoism," and which he lived to complete, was 
 published after his death in a small volume, " The Philosophy 
 of Egoism." It is a very able and convincing exposition of 
 Stirner's teachings, and almost the only one that exists in the 
 English language. But the chief instrument in the revival of 
 Stirnerism was and is the German poet, John Henry Mackay. 
 Very early in his career he met Stirner's name in Lange's " His- 
 tory of Materialism," and was moved thereby to read his book. 
 The work made such an impression on him that he resolved to 
 devote a portion of his life to the rediscovery and rehabilitation 
 of the lost and forgotten genius. Through years of toil and cor- 
 respondence and travel, and triumphing over tremendous ob-
 
 viii PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 
 
 stacles, he carried his task to completion, and his biography of 
 Stirner appeared in Berlin in 1898. It is a tribute to the thor- 
 oughness of Mackay's work that since its publication not one im- 
 portant fact about Stirner has been discovered by anybody. 
 During his years of investigation Mackay's advertising for infor- 
 mation had created a new interest in Stimer, which was enhanced 
 by the sudden fame of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, an 
 author whose intellectual kinship with Stirner has been a subject 
 of much controversy. " Der Einzige," previously obtainable only 
 in an expensive form, was included in Philipp Reclam's Uni- 
 versal-Bibliothek, and this cheap edition has enjoyed a wide and 
 ever-increasing circulation. During the last dozen years the 
 book has been translated twice into French, once into Italian, 
 once into Russian, and possibly into other languages. The 
 Scandinavian critic, Brandes, has written on Stirner. A large 
 and appreciative volume, entitled " L' ' Individnalisme Anar- 
 chiste: Max Stirner" from the pen of Prof. Victor Basch, of the 
 University of Rennes, has appeared in Paris. Another large 
 and sympathetic volume, " Max Stirner," written by Dr. 
 Anselm Ruest, has been published very recently in Berlin. Dr. 
 Paul Eltzbacher, in his work, " Der Anarchismus," gives a 
 chapter to Stirner, making him one of the seven typical 
 Anarchists, beginning with William Godwin and ending with 
 Tolstoi, of whom his book treats. There is hardly a notable 
 magazine or a review on the Continent that has not given at 
 least one leading article to the subject of Stirner. Upon the 
 initiative of Mackay and with the aid of other admirers a suit- 
 able stone has been placed above the philosopher's previously- 
 neglected grave, and a memorial tablet upon the house in 
 Berlin where he died in 1856 ; and this spring another is to 
 be placed upon the house in Bayreuth where he was bom 
 in 1806. As a result of these various efforts, and though but 
 little has been written about Stirner in the English language, 
 his name is now known at least to thousands in America and 
 England where formerly it was known only to hundreds.
 
 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE ix 
 
 Therefore conditions are now more favorable for the reception 
 of this volume than they were when I formed the design of 
 publishing it, more than twenty years ago. 
 
 The problem of securing a reasonably good translation (for in 
 the case of a work presenting difficulties so enormous it was idle 
 to hope for an adequate translation) was finally solved by en- 
 trusting the task to Steven T. Byington, a scholar of remark- 
 able attainments, whose specialty is philology, and who is 
 also one of the ablest workers in the propaganda of Anarch- 
 ism. But, for further security from error, it was agreed with 
 Mr. Byington that his translation should have the benefit of 
 revision by Dr. Walker, the most thorough American student of 
 Stirner, and by Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm, 
 who are not only sympathetic with Stirner, but familiar with the 
 history of his time, and who enjoy a knowledge of English and 
 German that makes it difficult to decide which is their native 
 tongue. It was also agreed that, upon any point of difference 
 between the translator and his revisers which consultation 
 might fail to solve, the publisher should decide. This method 
 has been followed, and in a considerable number of instances it 
 has fallen to me to make a decision. It is only fair to say, 
 therefore, that the responsibility for special errors and imperfec- 
 tions properly rests on my shoulders, whereas, on the other hand, 
 the credit for whatever general excellence the translation may 
 possess belongs with the same propriety to Mr. Byington and his 
 coadjutors. One thing is certain : its defects are due to no lack 
 of loving care and pains. And I think I may add with confi- 
 dence, while realizing fully how far short of perfection it neces- 
 sarily falls, that it may safely challenge comparison with the 
 translations that have been made into other languages. 
 
 In particular, I am responsible for the admittedly erroneous 
 rendering of the title. " The Ego and His Own " is not an exact 
 English equivalent of " Der Einzige und sein Eigenium." But 
 then, there is no exact English equivalent. Perhaps the nearest 
 U " The Unique One and His Property." But the unique one is
 
 x PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 
 
 not strictly the Einzige, for uniqueness connotes not only single- 
 ness but an admirable singleness, while Stirner's Einzigkeit is ad- 
 mirable in his eyes only as such, it being no part of the purpose 
 of his book to distinguish a particular Einzigkeit as more excel- 
 lent than another. Moreover, " The Unique One and His Prop- 
 erty " has no graces to compel our forgiveness of its slight inac- 
 curacy. It is clumsy and unattractive. And the same objections 
 may be urged with still greater force against all the other render- 
 ings that have been suggested, " The Single One and His 
 Property," " The Only One and His Property," " The Lone One 
 and His Property," " The Unit and His Property," and, last 
 and least and worst, " The Individual and His Prerogative." 
 " The Ego and His Own," on the other hand, if not a precise 
 rendering, is at least an excellent title in itself; excellent by its 
 euphony, its monosyllabic incisiveness, and its telling Einzigkeit. 
 Another strong argument in its favor is the emphatic correspond- 
 ence of the phrase "his own " with Mr. Byington's renderings 
 of the kindred words, Eigenheit and Signer. Moreover, no 
 reader will be led astray who bears in mind Stirner's distinction : 
 " I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego; 
 I am unique." And, to help the reader to bear this in mind, the 
 various renderings of the word Einzige that occur through the 
 volume a.re often accompanied by foot-notes showing that, in the 
 German, one and the same word does duty for all. 
 
 If the reader finds the first quarter of this book somewhat 
 forbidding and obscure, he is advised nevertheless not to 
 falter. Close attention will master almost every difficulty, 
 and, if he will but give it, he will find abundant reward in what 
 follows. For his guidance I may specify one defect in the 
 author's style. When controverting a view opposite to his own, 
 he seldom distinguishes with sufficient clearness his statement of 
 his own view from his re-statement of the antagonistic view. 
 As a result, the reader is plunged into deeper and deeper mystifi- 
 cation, until something suddenly reveals the cause of his mis- 
 understanding, after which he must go back and read again. I
 
 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE xi 
 
 therefore put him on his guard. The other difficulties lie, as a 
 rule, in the structure of the work. As to these I can hardly do 
 better than translate the following passage from Prof. Basch's 
 book, alluded to above: "There is nothing more disconcerting 
 than the first approach to this strange work. Stirner does not 
 condescend to inform us as to the architecture of his edifice, or 
 furnish us the slightest guiding thread. The apparent divisions 
 of the book are few and misleading. From the first page to the 
 last a unique thought circulates, but it divides itself among an 
 infinity of vessels and arteries in each of which runs a blood so 
 rich in ferments that one is tempted to describe them all. There 
 is no progress in the development, and the repetitions are in- 
 numerable The reader who is not de- 
 terred by this oddity, or rather absence, of composition gives 
 proof of genuine intellectual courage. At first one seems to be 
 confronted with a collection of essays strung together, with a 
 
 throng of aphorisms But, if you read this 
 
 book several times; if, after having penetrated the intimacy of 
 each of its parts, you then traverse it as a whole, gradually 
 the fragments weld themselves together, and Stirner's thought 
 is revealed in all its unity, in all its force, and in all its depth." 
 
 A word about the dedication. Mackay's investigations have 
 brought to light that Marie Daehnhardt had nothing whatever 
 in common with Stirner, and so was unworthy of the honor con- 
 ferred upon her. She was no Eigene. I therefore reproduce the 
 dedication merely in the interest of historical accuracy. 
 
 Happy as I am in the appearance of this book, my joy is not 
 unmixed with sorrow. The cherished project was as dear to the 
 heart of Dr. Walker as to mine, and I deeply grieve that he is 
 no longer with us to share our delight in the fruition. Nothing, 
 however, can rob us of the masterly introduction that he wrote 
 for this volume (in 1903, or perhaps earlier), from which I will 
 not longer keep the reader. This introduction, no more than 
 the book itself, shall that Elnzige, Death, make his Eigeiittim. 
 
 February, 1907. B. R. T.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Fifty years sooner or later can make little difference in the 
 case of a book so revolutionary as this. 
 
 It saw the light when a so-called revolutionary movement was 
 preparing in men's minds, which agitation was, however, only a 
 disturbance due to desires to participate in government, and to 
 govern and to be governed, in a manner different to that which 
 prevails. The " revolutionists " of 1848 were bewitched with an 
 idea. They were not at all the masters of ideas. Most of those 
 who since that time have prided themselves upon being revolu- 
 tionists have been and are likewise but the bondmen of an idea, 
 that of the different lodgment of authority. 
 
 The temptation is, of course, present to attempt an explana- 
 tion of the central thought of this work; but such an effort ap- 
 pears to be unnecessary to one who has the volume in his hand. 
 The author's care in illustrating his meaning shows that he real- 
 ized how prone the possessed man is to misunderstand whatever 
 is not moulded according to the fashions in thinking. The 
 author's learning was considerable, his command of words and 
 ideas may never be excelled by another, and he judged it needful 
 to develop his argument in manifold ways. So those who enter 
 into the spirit of it will scarcely hope to impress others with the 
 same conclusion in a more summary manner. Or, if one might 
 deem that possible after reading Stirner, still one cannot think 
 that it could be done so surely. The author has made certain 
 work of it, even though he has to wait for his public ; but still, 
 the reception of the book by its critics amply proves the truth of 
 the saying that one can give another arguments, but not under-
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 standing. The system-makers and system-believers thus far can- 
 not get it out of their heads that any discourse about the nature 
 of an ego must turn upon the common characteristics of egos, to 
 make a systematic scheme of what they share as a generality. 
 The critics inquire what kind of man the author is talking about. 
 They repeat the question : What does he believe in ? They fail 
 to grasp the purport of the recorded answer: " I believe in my- 
 self " ; which is attributed to a common soldier long before the 
 time of Stirner. They ask, What is the principle of the self- 
 conscious egoist, the Einzige ? To this perplexity Stirner says : 
 Change the question ; put " who ?" instead of " what ? " and an 
 answer can then be given by naming him ! 
 
 This, of course, is too simple for persons governed by ideas, 
 and for persons in quest of new governing ideas. They wish to 
 classify the man. Now, that in me which you can classify is not 
 my distinguishing self. " Man " is the horizon or zero of my 
 existence as an individual. Over that I rise as I can. At least 
 I am something more than "man in general." Pre-existing wor- 
 ship of ideals and disrespect for self had made of the ego at the 
 very most a Somebody, oftener an empty vessel to be filled with 
 the grace or the leavings of a tyrannous doctrine ; thus a No- 
 body. Stirner dispels the morbid subjection, and recognizes 
 each one who knows and feels himself as his own property to be 
 neither humble Nobody nor befogged Somebody, but henceforth 
 flat-footed and level-headed Mr. Thisbody, who has a character 
 and good pleasure of his own, just as he has a name of his own. 
 
 The critics who attacked this work and were answered in the 
 author's minor writings, rescued from oblivion by John Henry 
 Mackay, nearly all display the most astonishing triviality and 
 impotent malice. 
 
 We owe to Dr. Eduard von Hartmann the unquestionable 
 service which he rendered by directing attention to this book in 
 his " Philoaophie des Unbewussten ," the first edition of which 
 was published in 1869, and in other writings. I do not begrudge 
 Dr. von Hartmann the liberty of criticism which he used ; and I
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 think the admirers of Stirner's teaching must quite appreciate 
 one thing which Von Hartmann did at a much later date. In 
 " Der Eigene " of August 10, 1896, there appeared a letter writ- 
 ten by him and giving, among other things, certain data from 
 which to judge that, when Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his later 
 essays, Nietzsche was not ignorant of Stirner's book. 
 
 Von Hartmann wishes that Stirner had gone on and developed 
 his principle. Von Hartmann suggests that you and I are really 
 the same spirit, looking out through two pairs of eyes. Then, 
 one may reply, I need not concern myself about you, for in my- 
 self I have us ; and at that rate Von Hartmann is merely accus- 
 ing himself of inconsistency : for, when Stirner wrote this book, 
 Von Hartmann's spirit was writing it; and it is just the pity that 
 Von Hartmann in his present form does not indorse what he said 
 in' the form of Stirner, that Stirner was different from any other 
 man ; that his ego was not Fichte's transcendental generality, 
 but " this transitory ego of flesh and blood." It is not as a gen- 
 erality that you and I differ, but as a couple of facts which are 
 not to be reasoned into one. " I " is somewise Hartmann, and 
 thus Hartmann is " I " ; but I am not Hartmann, and Hartmann 
 is not I. Neither am I the " I " of Stirner; only Stirner him- 
 self was Stirner's "I." Note how comparatively indifferent a 
 matter it is with Stirner that one is an ego, but how all-impor- 
 tant it is that one be a self-conscious ego, a self-conscious, self- 
 willed person. 
 
 Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting 
 from self-interested motives, but clothing these in various garbs. 
 Watch those people closely in the light of Stirner's teaching, 
 and they seem to be hypocrites, they have so many good moral 
 and religious plans of which self-interest is at the end and bot- 
 tom ; but they, we may believe, do not know that this is more 
 than a coincidence. 
 
 In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political 
 liberty. His interest in the practical development of egoism to 
 the dissolution of the State and the union of free men is clear
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 and pronounced, and harmonizes perfectly with the economic 
 philosophy of Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of tem- 
 perament and language, there is a substantial agreement be- 
 tween Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free, and sees in 
 every increase of the number of free people and their intelli- 
 gence an auxiliary force against the oppressor. But, on the 
 other hand, will any one for a moment seriously contend that 
 Nietzsche and Proudhon march together in general aim and ten- 
 dency, that they have anything in common except the daring 
 to profane the shrine and sepulchre of superstition ? 
 
 Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of Stirner, 
 and, owing to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's writings, it 
 has occurred that one of his books has been supposed to contain 
 more sense than it really does so long as one had read only the 
 extracts. 
 
 Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read 
 everything, and not read Stirner ? 
 
 But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope performance 
 is unlike an algebraic equation. 
 
 Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all 
 men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. 
 Democracy to him was sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty. 
 
 Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon 
 democracy because it is not aristocratic. He is predatory to 
 the point of demanding that those who must succumb to feline 
 rapacity shall be taught to submit with resignation. When he 
 speaks of " Anarchistic dogs " scouring the streets of great civi- 
 lized cities, it is true, the context shows that he means the Com- 
 munists ; but his worship of Napoleon, his bathos of anxiety for 
 the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe for thousands of 
 years, his idea of treating women in the oriental fashion, show 
 that Nietzsche has struck out in a very old path doing the 
 apotheosis of tyranny. We individual egoistic Anarchists, how- 
 ever, may say to the Nietzsche school, so as not to be misunder- 
 tood : We do not ask of the Napoleons to have pity, nor of the
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 predatory barons to do justice. They will find it convenient for 
 their own welfare to make terms with men who have learned of 
 Stirner what a man can be who worships nothing, bears alle- 
 giance to nothing. To Nietzsche's rhodomontade of eagles in 
 baronial form, bom to prey on industrial lambs, we rather taunt 
 ingly oppose the ironical question : Where are your claws ? 
 What if the " eagles " are found to be plain barnyard fowls on 
 which more silly fowls have fastened steel spurs to hack the vic- 
 tims, who, however, have the power to disarm the sham 
 " eagles " between two suns ? 
 
 Stirner shows that men make their tyrants as they make theii 
 gods, and his purpose is to unmake tyrants. 
 
 Nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant. 
 
 In style Stirner's work offers the greatest possible contrast to 
 the puerile, padded phraseology of Nietzsche's " Zarathustra " 
 and its false imagery. Who ever imagined such an unnatural 
 conjuncture as an eagle " toting " a serpent in friendship ? which 
 performance is told of in bare words, but nothing comes of it. 
 In Stirner we are treated to an enlivening and earnest discussion 
 addressed to serious minds, and every reader feels that the word 
 i3 to him, for his instruction and benefit, so far as he has mental 
 independence and courage to take it and use it. The startling 
 intrepidity of this book is infused with a whole-hearted love for 
 all mankind, as evidenced by the fact that the author shows not 
 one iota of prejudice or any idea of division of men into ranks. 
 He would lay aside government, but would establish any regula- 
 tion deemed convenient, and for this only our convenience is 
 consulted. Thus there will be general liberty only when the dis- 
 position toward tyranny is met by intelligent opposition that will 
 po longer submit to such a rule. Beyond this the manly sym- 
 pathy and philosophical bent of Stirner are such that rulership 
 appears by contrast a vanity, an infatuation of perverted pride. 
 We know not whether we more admire our author or more love 
 him. 
 
 Stimer's attitude toward woman is not special. She is an in-
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 dividual if she can be, not handicapped by anything he says, 
 feels, thinks, or plans. This was more fully exemplified in his 
 life than even in this book ; but there is not a line in the book to 
 put or keep woman in an inferior position to man, neither is 
 there anything of caste or aristocracy in the book. 
 
 Likewise there is nothing of obscurantism or affected mystic- 
 ism about it. Everything in it is made as plain as the author 
 could make it. He who does not so is not Stirner's disciple nor 
 successor nor co-worker. 
 
 Some one may ask : How does plumb-line Anarchism train 
 with the unbridled egoism proclaimed by Stirner ? The plumb- 
 line is not a fetish, but an intellectual conviction, and egoism is 
 a universal fact of animal life. Nothing could seem clearer to 
 my mind than that the reality of egoism must first come into the 
 consciousness of men, before we can have the unbiased Einziye 
 in place of the prejudiced biped who lends himself to the sup- 
 port of tyrannies a million times stronger over me than the nat- 
 ural self-interest of any individual. When plumb-line doctrine 
 is misconceived as duty between unequal-minded men, as a reli- 
 gion of humanity, it is indeed the confusion of trying to read 
 without knowing the alphabet and of putting philanthropy in 
 place of contract. But, if the plumb-line be scientific, it is or 
 can be my possession, my property, and I choose it for its use 
 when circumstances admit of its use. I do not feel bmind to use 
 it because it is scientific, in building my house; but, as my will, 
 to be intelligent, is not to be merely wilful, the adoption of the 
 plumb-line follows the discarding of incantations. There is no 
 plumb-line without the unvarying lead at the end of the line ; 
 not a fluttering bird or a clawing cat. 
 
 On the practical side of the question of egoism versus self-sur- 
 render 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.
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 I am content if others individually live for themselves, and thus 
 cease in so many ways to act in opposition to my living for my- 
 self, 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 suc- 
 ceed 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-surren- 
 der fails, how can a mixture of Christian love and worldly cau- 
 tion 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 un- 
 resisting. The Pharaohs we have ever with us. 
 
 Several passages in this most remarkable book show the au- 
 thor as a man full of sympathy. When we reflect upon his de- 
 liberately 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 disappear- 
 ance of the sentimental supposition of duty liberates a quantity 
 of nervous energy for the purest generosity and clarifies the in- 
 tellect 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 mix- 
 ture of colloquialisms and technicalities, and his preference for 
 the precise expression of his thought rather than the word con- 
 ventionally 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 bok) 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 in- 
 stance, 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
 
 xx TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 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 indi- 
 cation 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 transla- 
 ting 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 ex- 
 plained 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 Ger- 
 man, rather than conform them altogether to the English Bible. 
 I am sometimes quite as near the original Greek as if I had fol- 
 lowed 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 * 
 
 What is not supposed to be my concern f! First 
 and foremost, the Good Cause,:}: 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 at- 
 tends 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, 
 
 *L"Ich hab' Mein' Sach' aufNichts gestellt," first line of Goethe's 
 poem, Vanitas ! Vanitatum Vanitas ! " Literal translation : " I have 
 my affair on nothing."] 
 
 t [Sache] t [Sache]
 
 4 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 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 
 
 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 ac- 
 complished 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
 
 ALL THINGS ARE NOTHING TO ME 5 
 
 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 ? By the manure of 
 their corpses the nation comes to " its bloom ! " The 
 individuals have died " for the great cause of the na- 
 tion," 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.* 
 
 * [dr Einzige]
 
 6 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance 
 enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, 
 then I feel that / 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 alto- 
 gether 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 nei- 
 ther 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,* as I am 
 unique. 
 
 Nothing is more to me than myself ! 
 
 * [einzip]
 
 Part First
 
 Man is to man the supreme beisui , says Feuerbach. 
 Man has just been discovered, says Bruno Bauer. 
 
 Then let us take a more careful look at this supreme being and 
 
 this new discovery.
 
 A HUMAN LIFE 
 
 From the moment when he catches sight of the light 
 of the world a man seeks to find out himself a,nd 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 un- 
 avoidable. 
 
 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 exer- 
 cises 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
 
 10 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 of" things; therefore we spy out the weak points ol 
 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 out- 
 grown it." 
 
 Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our ob- 
 duracy, 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 invinci- 
 bility. 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 courage- 
 ous 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!* 
 
 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 ne- 
 
 * [Geist. This word will be translated sometimes " mind " and sometimes 
 spirit" in the following pages. J
 
 A HUMAN LIFE 11 
 
 cessity 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, princi- 
 ples, 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. "intel- 
 lectual " man there is no family as a natural power; 
 a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its ap- 
 pearance. 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 "
 
 12 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 recedes into contemptible remoteness; for the stand- 
 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 theoretic- 
 ally, 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.
 
 A HUMAN LIFE 13 
 
 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 mat- 
 ter," 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 youth- 
 ful 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
 
 14 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 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." * 
 
 The man is distinguished from the youth by the 
 fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of every- 
 where 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 be- 
 ing 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, idaas 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, *. e. an interest not only 
 of our spirit, for instance, but of total satisfaction, 
 satisfaction of the whole chap, a selfish interest. Just 
 
 * Luke 11. 13.
 
 A HUMAN LIFE 15 
 
 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 be- 
 come more definite, or, as you also call it, more " prac- 
 tical." 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), youthj 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 con- 
 trary, 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 formali- 
 ties), 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
 
 16 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 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 ac- 
 count, 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 every- 
 thing. Finally, the old man ? When I become one, 
 there will still be time enough to speak of that.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 17 
 
 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 pur- 
 sued 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
 
 18 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 disrespectful heir, who even took away the sanctity of 
 the fathers' sabbath to hallow his Sunday, and inter- 
 rupted 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 super- 
 seded, 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. 
 
 " To the ancients the world was a truth," says 
 Feuerbach, but he forgets to make the important ad- 
 dition, " a truth whose untruth they tried to get back 
 of, and at last really did." What is meant by those 
 words of Feuerbach will be easily recognized if they 
 are put alongside the Christian thesis of the " vanity 
 and transitoriness of the world." For, as the Chris- 
 tian can never convince himself of the vanity of the 
 divine word, but believes in its eternal and unshake- 
 able truth, which, the more its depths are searched, 
 must all the more brilliantly come to light and 
 triumph, so the ancients on their side lived in the feel- 
 ing that the world and mundane relations (e. g. the 
 natural ties of blood) were the truth before which 
 their powerless " I " must bow. The very thing on 
 which the ancients set the highest value is spurned by 
 Christians as the valueless, and what they recognized 
 as truth these brand as idle lies; the high significance 
 of the. fatherland disappears, and the Christian must 
 regard himself as " a stranger on earth"; * the sanc- 
 
 Heb. 11. 18.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 19 
 
 tity of funeral rites, from which sprang a work of art 
 like the Antigone of Sophocles, is designated as a 
 paltry thing (" Let the dead bury their dead ") ; the 
 infrangible truth of family ties is represented as an 
 untruth which one cannot promptly enough get clear 
 of ; * and so in everything. 
 
 If we now see that to the two sides opposite things 
 appear as truth, to one the natural, to the other the 
 intellectual, to one earthly things and relations, to the 
 other heavenly (the heavenly fatherland, " Jerusalem 
 that is above," etc.), it still remains to be considered 
 how the new time and that undeniable reversal could 
 come out of antiquity. But the ancients themselves 
 worked toward making their truth a lie. 
 
 Let us plunge at once into the midst of the most 
 brilliant years of the ancients, into the Periclean cen- 
 tury. Then the Sophistic culture was spreading, and 
 Greece made a pastime of what had hitherto been to 
 her a monstrously serious matter. 
 
 The fathers had been enslaved by the undisturbed 
 power of existing things too long for the posterity not 
 to have to learn by bitter experience iojtel themselves. 
 Therefore the Sophists, with courageous sauciness, 
 pronounce the reassuring words, " Don't be bluffed! " 
 and diffuse the rationalistic doctrine, " Use your 
 understanding, your wit, your mind, against every- 
 thing; it is by having a good and well-drilled under- 
 standing that one gets through the world best, pro- 
 vides for himself the best lot, the pleasantest life." 
 Thus they recognize in mind man's true weapon 
 
 * Mark 10. 29.
 
 20 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 against the world. This is why they lay such stress on 
 dialectic skill, command of language, the art of dispu- 
 tation, etc. They announce that mind is to be used 
 against everything; but they are still far removed 
 from the holiness of the Spirit, for to them it is a 
 means, a weapon, as trickery and defiance serve chil- 
 dren for the same purpose; their mind is the unbriba- 
 ble understanding. 
 
 To-day we should call that a one-sided culture of 
 the understanding, and add the warning, " Cultivate 
 not only your understanding, but also, and especially, 
 your heart." Socrates did the same. For, if the 
 heart did not become free from its natural impulses, 
 but remained filled with the most fortuitous contents 
 and, as an uncriticised avidity, altogether in the 
 power of things, i. e. nothing but a vessel of the most 
 various appetites, then it was unavoidable that the 
 free understanding must serve the " bad heart " and 
 was ready to justify everything that the wicked heart 
 desired. 
 
 Therefore Socrates says that it is not enough for one 
 to use his understanding in all things, but it is a 
 question of what cause one exerts it for. We should 
 now say, one must serve the " good cause." But 
 serving the good cause is being moral. Hence 
 Socrates is the founder of ethics. 
 
 Certainly the principle of the Sophistic doctrine 
 must lead to the possibility that the blindest and most 
 dependent slave of his desires might yet be an excel- 
 lent sophist, and, with keen understanding, trim and 
 expound everything in favor of his coarse heart. 
 What could there be for which a " good reason "
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 21 
 
 might not be found, or which might not be defended 
 through thick and thin ? 
 
 Therefore Socrates says: " You must be ' pure- 
 hearted ' if your shrewdness is to be valued." At this 
 point begins the second period of Greek liberation of 
 the mind, the period of purity of heart. For the first 
 was brought to a close by the Sophists in their pro- 
 claiming the omnipotence of the understanding. But 
 the heart remained worldly-minded, remained a servant 
 of the world, always affected by worldly wishes. This 
 coarse heart was to be cultivated from now on the 
 era of culture of the heart. But how is the heart to 
 be cultivated ? What the understanding, this one side 
 of the mind, has reached, to wit, the capability of 
 playing freely with and over every concern, awaits 
 the heart also; everything worldly must come to grief 
 before it, so that at last family, commonwealth, father- 
 land, and the like, are given up for the sake of the 
 heart, i. e. of blessedness, the heart's blessedness. 
 
 Daily experience confirms the truth that the under- 
 standing may have renounced a thing many years 
 before the heart has ceased to beat for it. So the 
 Sophistic understanding too had so far become mas- 
 ter over the dominant, ancient powers that they now 
 needed only to be driven out of the heart, in which 
 they dwelt unmolested, to have at last no part at all 
 left in man. 
 
 This war is opened by Socrates, and not till the 
 dying day of the old world does it end in peace. 
 
 The examination of the heart takes its start with 
 Socrates, and all the contents of the heart are sifted. 
 In their last and extremest struggles the ancients
 
 22 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 threw all contents out of the heart and let it no 
 longer beat for anything; this was the deed of the 
 Skeptics. The same purgation of the heart was now 
 achieved in the Skeptical age, as the understanding 
 had succeeded in establishing in the Sophistic age. 
 
 The Sophistic culture has brought it to pass that 
 one's understanding no longer stands still before any- 
 thing, and the Skeptical, that his heart is no longer 
 moved by anything. 
 
 So long as man is entangled in the movements of 
 the world and embarrassed by relations to the world, 
 and he is so till the end of antiquity, because his 
 heart still has to struggle for independence from the 
 worldly, so long he is not yet spirit; for spirit is 
 without body, and has no relations to the world and 
 corporality; for it the world does not exist, nor 
 natural bonds, but only the spiritual, and spiritual 
 bonds. Therefore man must first become so com- 
 pletely unconcerned and reckless, so altogether without 
 relations, as the Skeptical culture presents him, so 
 altogether indifferent to the world that even its falling 
 in ruins would not move him, before he could feel 
 himself as worldless, i. e. as spirit. And this is the 
 result of the gigantic work of the ancients: that man 
 knows himself as a being without relations and without 
 a world, as spirit. 
 
 Only now, after all worldly care has left him, is he 
 all in all to himself, is he only for himself, i. e. he is 
 spirit for the spirit, or, in plainer language, he cares 
 only for the spiritual. 
 
 In the Christian wisdom of serpents and innocence 
 of doves the two sides understanding and heart of
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 2S 
 
 the ancient liberation of mind are so completed that 
 they appear young and new again, and neither the 
 one nor the other lets itself be bluffed any longer by 
 the worldly and natural. 
 
 Thus the ancients mounted to spirit, and strove to 
 become spiritual. But a man who wishes to be active 
 as spirit is drawn to quite other tasks than he was able 
 to set himself formerly : to tasks which really give 
 something to do to the spirit and not to mere sense 
 or acuteness,* which exerts itself only to become 
 master of things. The spirit busies itself solely about 
 the spiritual, and seeks out the " traces of mind " in 
 everything; to the believing- spirit "everything comes 
 from God," and interests him only to the extent that 
 it reveals this origin ; to the philosophic spirit every- 
 thing appears with the stamp of reason, and interests 
 him only so far as he is able to discover in it reason, 
 i. e. spiritual content. 
 
 Not the spirit, then, which has to do with absolutely 
 nothing unspiritual, with no thing, but only with the 
 essence which exists behind and above things, with 
 thoughts, not that did the ancients exert, for they 
 did not yet have it; no, they had only reached the 
 point of struggling and longing for it, and therefore 
 sharpened it against their too-powerful foe, -the world 
 of sense (but what would not have been sensuous for 
 them, since Jehovah or the gods of the heathen were 
 yet far removed from the conception " God is spirit," 
 since the " heavenly fatherland " had not yet stepped 
 into the place of the sensuous, etc.?) they sharpened 
 
 Italicized in the original for the sake of its etymology, Scharfsinn 
 " sharp-sense." Compare next paragraph.
 
 24 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 against the world of sense their sense, their acuteness. 
 To this day the Jews, those precocious children of an- 
 tiquity, have got no farther; and with all the subtlety 
 and strength of their prudence and understanding, 
 which easily becomes master of things and forces them 
 to obey it, they cannot discover spirit, which takes no 
 account whatever of things. 
 
 The Christian has spiritual interests, because he al- 
 lows himself to be a spiritual man ; the Jew does not 
 even understand these interests in their purity, because 
 he does not allow himself to assign no value to things. 
 He does not arrive at pure spirituality, a spirituality 
 such as is religiously expressed, e. g-., in the faith of 
 Christians, which alone (i. e. without works) justifies. 
 Their unspirituality sets Jews forever apart from 
 Christians; for the spiritual man is incomprehensible 
 to the unspiritual, as the unspiritual is contemptible to 
 the spiritual. But the Jews have only " the spirit of 
 this world." 
 
 The ancient acuteness and profundity lies as far 
 from the spirit and the spirituality of the Christian 
 world as earth from heaven. 
 
 He who feels himself as free spirit is not oppressed 
 and made anxious by the things of this world, because 
 he does not care for them ; if one is still to feel their 
 burden, he must be narrow enough to attach weight to 
 them, as is evidently the case, for instance, when one 
 is still concerned for his " dear life." He to whom 
 everything centres in knowing and conducting himself 
 as a free spirit gives little heed to how scantily he is 
 supplied meanwhile, and does not reflect at all on how 
 he must make his arrangements to have a thoroughly
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 25 
 
 free or enjoyable life. He is not disturbed by the in- 
 conveniences of the life that depends on things, because 
 he lives only spiritually and on spiritual food, while 
 aside from this he only gulps things down like a 
 beast, hardly knowing it, and dies bodily, to be sure, 
 when his fodder gives out, but knows himself immor- 
 tal as spirit, and closes his eyes with an adoration or a 
 thought. His life is occupation with the spiritual, is 
 thinking ; the rest does not bother him; let him 
 busy himself with the spiritual in any way that he can 
 and chooses, in devotion, in contemplation, or in 
 philosophic cognition, his doing is always thinking; 
 and therefipe Descartes, to whom this had at last be- 
 come quite clear, could lay down the proposition : " I 
 think, that is I am." This means, my thinking is 
 my being or my life ; only when I live spiritually do I 
 live; only as spirit am I really, or I am spirit 
 through and through and nothing but spirit. Un- 
 lucky Peter Schlemihl, who has lost his shadow, is the 
 portrait of this man become a spirit; for the spirit's 
 body is shadowless. Over against this, how different 
 among the ancients! Stoutly and manfully as they 
 might bear themselves against the might of things, 
 they must yet acknowledge the might itself, and got no 
 farther than to protect their life against it as well as 
 possible. Only at a late hour did they recognize that 
 their " true life " was not that which they led in the 
 fight against the things of the world, but the ft spiritual 
 life," "turned away" from these things; and, when 
 they saw this, they became Christians, i. e. the 
 moderns, and innovators upon the ancients. But the 
 life turned away from things, the spiritual life, no
 
 26 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 longer draws any nourishment from nature, but " lives 
 only on thoughts," and therefore is no longer *' life," 
 but thinking. 
 
 Yet it must not be supposed now that the ancients 
 were without thoughts, just as the most spiritual man 
 is not to be conceived of as if he could be without life. 
 Rather, they had their thoughts about everything, 
 about the world, man, the gods, etc., and showed them- 
 selves keenly active in bringing all this to their con- 
 sciousness. But they did not know thought, even 
 though they thought of all sorts of things and " wor- 
 ried themselves with their thoughts." Compare with 
 their position the Christian saying, " My thoughts are 
 not your thoughts; as the heaven is higher than the 
 earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts," 
 and remember what was said above about our child- 
 thoughts. 
 
 What is antiquity seeking, then ? The true enjoy- 
 ment of life! You will find that at bottom it is all 
 the same as " the true life." 
 
 The Greek poet Simonides sings: " Health is the 
 noblest good for mortal man, the next to this is beauty, 
 the third riches acquired without guile, the fourth the 
 enjoyment of social pleasures in the company of young 
 friends." These are all good things of life, pleasures 
 of life. What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for 
 than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in 
 having the least possible wants ? What else Aristip- 
 pus, who found it in a cheery temper under all circum- 
 stances ? They are seeking for cheery, unclouded life- 
 courage, for cheeriness ; they are seeking to " be of 
 good cheer"
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 27 
 
 The Stoics want to realize the wise man, the man 
 with practical philosophy, the man who knows how to 
 live, a wise life, therefore; they find him in contempt 
 for the world, in a life without development, without 
 spreading out, without friendly relations with the 
 world, i. e. in the isolated life, in life as life, not in life 
 with others; only the Stoic lives, all else is dead for 
 him. The Epicureans, on the contrary, demand a 
 moving life. 
 
 The ancients, as they want to be of good cheer, de- 
 sire good living (the Jews especially a long life, 
 blessed with children and goods), eudaemonia, well- 
 being in the most various forms. Democritus, e. g., 
 praises as such the " calm of the soul " in which one 
 " lives smoothly, without fear and without 
 excitement." 
 
 So what he thinks is that with this he gets on best, 
 provides for himself the best lot, and gets through the 
 world best. But as he cannot get rid of the world, 
 and in fact cannot for the very reason that his whole 
 activity is taken up in the effort to get rid of it, that 
 is, in repelling the world (for which it is yet necessary 
 that what can be and is repelled should remain exist- 
 ing, otherwise there would no longer be anything to 
 repel), he reaches at most an extreme degree of liber- 
 ation, and is distinguishable only in degree from the 
 less liberated. If he even got as far as the deadening 
 of the earthly sense, which at last admits only the 
 monotonous whisper of the word " Brahm," he never- 
 theless would not be essentially distinguishable from 
 the sensual man. 
 
 Even the Stoic attitude and manly virtue amounts
 
 28 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 only to this, that one must maintain and assert him- 
 self against the world; and the ethics of the Stoics 
 (their only science, since they could tell nothing about 
 the spirit but how it should behave toward the world, 
 and of nature [physics] only this, that the wise man 
 must assert himself against it) is not a doctrine of the 
 spirit, but only a doctrine of the repelling of the world 
 and of self-assertion against the world. And this con- 
 sists in " imperturbability and equanimity of life," and 
 so in the most explicit Roman virtue. 
 
 The Romans too (Horace, Cicero, etc.) went no 
 further than this practical philosophy. 
 
 The comfort (hedone) of the Epicureans is the same 
 practical philosophy the Stoics teach, only trickier, 
 more deceitful. They teach only another behavior to- 
 ward the world, exhort us only to take a shrewd atti- 
 tude toward the world; the world must be deceived, 
 for it is my enemy. 
 
 The break with the world is completely carried 
 through by the Skeptics. My entire relation to the 
 world is " worthless and truthless." Timon says, " The 
 feelings and thoughts which we draw from the world 
 contain no truth." " What is truth ? " cries Pilate. 
 According to Pyrrho's doctrine the world is neither 
 good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, etc., but 
 these are predicates which I give it. Timon says that 
 "in itself nothing is either good or bad, but man only 
 thinks of it thus or thus " ; to face the world only ata- 
 raxia (unmovednes.,) and aphasia (speech lessness or, 
 in other words, isolated inwardness} are left. There 
 is " no longer any truth to be recognized " in the 
 world; things contradict themselves; thoughts about
 
 MKN T OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 29 
 
 things are without distinction (good and bad are all 
 the same, so that what one calls good another finds 
 bad) ; here the recognition of " truth " is at an end, 
 and only the man without power of recognition, the 
 man who finds in the world nothing to recognize, is 
 left, and this man just leaves the truth-vacant world 
 where it is and takes no account of it. 
 
 So antiquity gets through with the world of things, 
 the order of the world, the world as a whole; but to 
 the order of the world, or the things of this world, be- 
 long not only nature, but all relations in which man 
 sees himself placed by nature, e. g. the family, the 
 community, in short, the so-called " natural bonds." 
 With the world of the spirit Christianity then begins. 
 The man who still faces the world armed is the an- 
 cient, the heatlien (to which class the Jew, too, as 
 non-Christian, belongs) ; the man who has come to be 
 led by nothing but his " heart's pleasure," the interest 
 he takes, his fellow-feeling, his spirit, is the modern, 
 the Christian. 
 
 As the ancients worked toward the conquest of the 
 world and strove to release man from the heavy tram- 
 mels of connection with other things, at last they came 
 also to the dissolution of the State and giving prefer- 
 
 L' to everything private. Of course community, 
 family, etc., as natural relations, are burdensome hin- 
 drances which diminish my spiritual freedom.
 
 30 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 II.-THE MODERNS 
 
 " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; the 
 old is passed away, behold, all is become new.' 1 ''* 
 
 As it was said above, "To the ancients the world 
 was a truth," we must say here, " To the moderns the 
 spirit was a truth " ; but here, as there, we must not 
 omit the supplement, " a truth whose untruth they 
 tried to get back of, and at last they really do." 
 
 A course similar to that which antiquity took may 
 be demonstrated in Christianity also, in that the un- 
 derstanding was held a prisoner under the dominion 
 of the Christian dogmas up to the time preparatory to 
 the Reformation, but in the pre- Reformation century 
 asserted itself sopliistically and played heretical pranks 
 with all tenets of the faith. And the talk then was, 
 especially in Italy and at the Roman court, " If only 
 the heart remains Christian-minded, the understanding 
 may go right on taking its pleasure." 
 
 Long before the Reformation people were so tho- 
 roughly accustomed to fine-spun " wranglings " that 
 the pope, and most others, looked on Luther's appear- 
 ance too as a mere " wrangling of monks " at first. 
 Humanism corresponds to Sophisticism, and, as in the 
 time of the Sophists Greek life stood in its fullest 
 bloom (the Periclean age), so the most brilliant things 
 happened in the time of Humanism, or, as one might 
 perhaps also say, of Machiavellianism (printing, the 
 New World, etc.). At this time the heart was still 
 far from wanting to relieve itself of its Christian 
 
 * 2 Cor. 5. 17. [The words " new " and " modern " are the same in Ger- 
 man.]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 31 
 
 contents. 
 
 But finally the Reformation, like Socrates, took 
 hold seriously of the heart itself, and since then hearts 
 have kept growing visibly more unchristian. As 
 with Luther people began to take the matter to heart, 
 the outcome of this step of the Reformation must be 
 that the heart also gets lightened of the heavy burden 
 of Christian faith. The heart, from day to day more 
 unchristian, loses the contents with which it had 
 busied itself, till at last nothing but empty warm- 
 heartedness is left it, the quite general love of men, the 
 love of Man, the consciousness of freedom, " self- 
 consciousness." 
 
 Only so is Christianity complete, because it has be- 
 come bald, withered, and void of contents. There 
 are now no contents whatever against which the heart 
 does not mutiny, unless indeed the heart unconsciously 
 or without "self-consciousness" lets them slip in. The 
 heart criticises to death with hard-hearted mercilessness 
 everything that wants to make its way in, and is ca- 
 pable (except, as before, unconsciously or taken by 
 surprise) of no friendship, no love. What could there 
 be in men to love, since they are all alike " egoists," 
 none of them man as such, i. e. none spirit only ? 
 The Christian loves only the spirit; but where could 
 one be found who should be really nothing but spirit ? 
 
 To have a liking for the corporeal man with hide 
 and hair, why, that would no longer be a " spirit- 
 ual " warm-heartedness, it would be treason against 
 " pure " warm-heartedness, the " theoretical regard." 
 For pure warm-heartedness is by no means to be con- 
 ceived as like that kindliness that gives everybody a
 
 32 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 friendly hand-shake; on the contrary, pure warm- 
 heartedness is warm-hearted toward nobody, it is only 
 a theoretical interest, concern for man as man, not as a 
 person. The person is repulsive to it because of being 
 " egoistic," because of not being that abstraction, Man. 
 But it is only for the abstraction that one can have a 
 theoretical regard. To pure warm-heartedness or pure 
 theory men exist only to be criticised, scoffed at, and 
 thoroughly despised; to it, no less than to the fanatical 
 parson, they are only " filth " and other such nice 
 things. 
 
 Pushed to this extremity of disinterested warm-heart- 
 edness, we must finally become conscious that the spirit, 
 which alone the Christian loves, is nothing ; in other 
 words, that the spirit is a lie. . 
 
 What has here been set down roughly, summarily, 
 and doubtless as yet incomprehensibly, will, it is to be 
 hoped, become clear as we go on. 
 
 Let us take up the inheritance left by the ancients, 
 and, as active workmen, do with it as much as can 
 be done with it! The world lies despised at our feet, 
 far beneath us and our heaven, into which its mighty 
 arms are no longer thrust and its stupefying breath 
 does not come. Seductively as it may pose, it can de- 
 lude nothing but our sense ; it cannot lead astray the 
 spirit and spirit alone, after all, we really are. Hav- 
 ing once got back of things, the spirit has also got 
 above them, and become free from their bonds, eman- 
 cipated, supernal, free. So speaks " spiritual 
 freedom." 
 
 To the spirit which, after long toil, has got rid of 
 the world, the worldless spirit, nothing is left after the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 33 
 
 loss of the world and the worldly but the spirit and 
 the spiritual. 
 
 Yet, as it has only moved away from the world and 
 made of itself a being free from the world, without 
 being able really to annihilate the world, this remains 
 to it a stumbling-block that cannot be cleared away, a 
 discredited existence; and, as, on the other hand, it 
 knows and recognizes nothing but the spirit and the 
 spiritual, it must perpetually carry about with it the 
 longing to spiritualize the world, i. e. to redeem it 
 from the " black list." Therefore, like a youth, it 
 goes about with plans for the redemption or improve- 
 ment of the world. 
 
 The ancients, we saw, served the natural, the 
 worldly, the natural order of the world, b'jt they in- 
 cessantly asked themselves whether they could not, 
 then, relieve themselves of this service; and, when they 
 had tired themselves to death in ever-renewed attempts" 
 at revolt, then, among their last sighs, was born to 
 them the God, the " conqueror of the world." All 
 their doing had been nothing but wisdom of the world, 
 an effort to get back of the world and above it. And 
 what is the wisdom of the many following centuries ? 
 What did the moderns try to get back of ? No 
 longer to get back of the world, for the ancients had 
 accomplished that ; but back of the God whom the 
 ancients bequeathed to them, back of the God who " is 
 spirit," back of everything that is the spirit's, the 
 spiritual. But the activity of the spirit, which 
 " searches even the depths of the Godhead," is 
 theology. If the ancients have nothing to show but 
 wisdom of the world, the moderns never did nor do
 
 34 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 make their way further than to theology. We shall 
 see later that even the newest revolts against God are 
 nothing but the extremest efforts of " theology," i. e. 
 theological insurrections. 
 
 1. THE SPIRIT 
 
 The realm of spirits is monstrously great, there is 
 an infinite deal of the spiritual ; yet let us look and see 
 what the spirit, this bequest of the ancients, properly 
 is. 
 
 Out of their birth-pangs it came forth, but they 
 themselves could not utter themselves as spirit; they 
 could give birth to it, it itself must speak. The 
 " born God, the Son of Man," is the first to utter the 
 word that the spirit, i. e. he, God, has to do with no- 
 thing earthly and no earthly relationship, but solely 
 with the spirit and spiritual relationships. 
 
 Is my courage, indestructible under all the world's 
 blows, my inflexibility and my obduracy, perchance 
 already spirit in the full sense, because the world can- 
 not touch it ? Why, then it would not yet be at en- 
 mity with the world, and all its action would consist 
 merely in not succumbing to the world ! No, so long 
 as it does not busy itself with itself alone, so long as it 
 does not have to do with its world, the spiritual, alone, 
 it is not free spirit, but only the " spirit of this world," 
 the spirit fettered to it. The spirit is free spirit, i. e. 
 really spirit, only in a world of its own; in "this," the 
 earthly world, it is a stranger. Only through a spirit- 
 ual world is the spirit really spirit, for " this " world 
 does not understand it and does not know how to keep
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 35 
 
 "the maiden from a foreign land"* from departing. 
 
 But where is it to get this spiritual world ? Where 
 but out of itself ? It must reveal itself; and the words 
 that it speaks, the revelations in which it unveils itself, 
 these are its world. As a visionary lives and has his 
 world only in the visionary pictures that he himself 
 creates, as a crazy man generates for himself his own 
 dream-world, without which he could not be crazy, so 
 the spirit must create for itself its spirit world, and is 
 not spirit till it creates it. 
 
 Thus its creations make it spirit, and by its crea- 
 tures we know it, the creator; in them it lives, they 
 are its world. 
 
 Now, what is the spirit ? It is the creator of a spi- 
 ritual world ! Even in you and me people do not re- 
 cognize spirit till they see that we have appropriated 
 to ourselves something spiritual, i. e., though 
 thoughts may have been set before us, we have at least 
 brought them to life in ourselves; for, as long as we 
 were children, the most edifying thoughts might have 
 been laid before us without our wishing, or being able 
 to reproduce them in ourselves. So the spirit also 
 exists only when it creates something spiritual; it is 
 real only together with the spiritual, its creature. 
 
 As, then, we know it by its works, the question is 
 what these works are. But the works or children of 
 the spirit are nothing else but spirits: 
 
 If I had before me Jews, Jews of the true metal, I 
 should have to stop here and leave them standing be- 
 fore this mystery as for almost two thousand years 
 
 * [Title of a poem by Schiller.]
 
 36 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 they have remained standing before it, unbelieving 
 and without knowledge. But, as you, my dear reader, 
 are at least not a full-blooded Jew, for such a one 
 will not go astray as far as this, we will still go 
 along a bit of road together, till perhaps you too turn 
 your back on me because I laugh in your face. 
 
 If somebody told you you were altogether spirit, 
 you would take hold of your body and not believe 
 him, but answer: " I have a spirit, no doubt, but do 
 not exist only as spirit, but am a man with a body." 
 You would still distinguish yourself from "your spi- 
 rit." " But," replies he, " it is your destiny, even 
 though now you are yet going about in the fetters of 
 the body, to be one day a ' blessed spirit,' and, how- 
 ever you may conceive of the future aspect of your 
 spirit, so much is yet certain, that in death you will 
 put off this body and yet keep yourself, i. e. your 
 spirit, for all eternity; accordingly your spirit is the 
 eternal and true in you, the body only a dwelling here 
 below, which you may leave and perhaps exchange for 
 another." 
 
 Now you believe him ! For the present, indeed, 
 you are not spirit only; but, when you emigrate from 
 the mortal body, as one day you must, then you will 
 have to help yourself without the body, and therefore 
 it is needful that you be prudent and care in time for 
 your proper self. '* What should it profit a man if he 
 gained the whole world and yet suffered damage in 
 his soul ?" 
 
 But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course 
 of time against the tenets of the Christian faith, have 
 long since robbed you of faith in the immortality of
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 37 
 
 your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenet un- 
 disturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one 
 truth, that the spirit is your better part, and that the 
 spiritual has greater claims on you than anything else. 
 Despite all your atheism, in zeal against egoism you 
 concur with the believers in immortality. 
 
 But whom do you think of under the name of ego- 
 ist ? A man who, instead of living to an idea, i. e. 
 a spiritual thing and sacrificing to it his personal 
 advantage, serves the latter. A good patriot, e. g., 
 brings his sacrifice to the altar of the fatherland ; but 
 it cannot be disputed that the fatherland is an idea, 
 since for beasts incapable of mind,* or children as yet 
 without mind, there is no fatherland and no patriot- 
 ism. Now, if any one does not approve himself as a 
 good patriot, he betrays his egoism with reference to 
 the fatherland. And so the matter stands in innumer- 
 able other cases: he who in human society takes the 
 benefit of a prerogative sins egoistically against the 
 idea of equality ; he who exercises dominion is blamed 
 as an egoist against the idea of liberty, etc. 
 
 You despise the egoist because he puts the spiritual 
 in the background as compared with the personal, and 
 has his eyes on himself where you would like to see 
 him act to favor an idea. The distinction between 
 you is that he makes himself the central point, but 
 you the spirit; or that you cut your identity in two 
 
 * [The reader will remember (it is to be hoped he has never forgotten) 
 that " mind " and " spirit " are one and the same word in German. For se- 
 veral pages back the connection of the discourse has seemed to require the 
 almost exclusive use of the translation "spirit," but to complete the sense 
 it has often been necessary that the reader recall the thought of its iden- 
 tity with " mind." as stated in a previous note.]
 
 38 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 and exalt your " proper self," the spirit, to be 
 ruler of the paltrier remainder, while he will hear 
 nothing of this cutting in two, and pursues spiritual 
 and material interests just a* he pleases. You think, 
 to be sure, that you are falling foul of those only who 
 enter into no spiritual interest at all, but in fact you 
 curse at everybody who does not look on the spiritual 
 interest as his '' true and highest " interest. You 
 carry your knightly service for this beauty so far that 
 you affirm her to be the only beauty of the world. 
 You live not to yourself, but to your spirit and to 
 what is the spirit's i. e. ideas. 
 
 As the spirit exists only in its creating of the spirit- 
 ual, let us take a look about us for its first creation. 
 If only it has accomplished this, there follows thence- 
 forth a natural propagation of creations, as according 
 to the myth only the first human beings needed to be 
 created, the rest of the race propagating of itself. 
 The first creation, on the other hand, must come forth 
 " out of nothing," 4. e., the spirit has toward its re- 
 alization nothing but itself, or rather it has not yet 
 even itself, but must create itself; hence its first cre- 
 ation is itself, the spirit. Mystical as this sounds, we 
 yet go through it as an every-day experience. Are 
 you a thinking being before you think ? In creating 
 the first thought you create yourself, the thinking 
 one; for you do not think before you think a thought, 
 i. e. have a thought. Is it not your singing that first 
 makes you a singer, your talking that makes you a 
 talker ? Now, so too it is the production of the spirit- 
 ual that first makes you a spirit. 
 
 Meantime, as you distinguish yourself from the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 39 
 
 thinker, singer, and talker, so you no less distinguish 
 yourself from the spirit, and feel very clearly that you 
 are something beside spirit. But, as in the thinking 
 ego hearing and sight easily vanish in the enthusiasm 
 of thought, so you also have been seized by the spirit- 
 enthusiasm, and you now long with all your might to 
 become wholly spirit and to be dissolved in spirit. 
 The spirit is your ideal, the unattained, the other- 
 worldly; spirit is the name of your god, " God is 
 spirit." 
 
 Against all that is not spirit you are a zealot, and 
 therefore you play the zealot against yourself who 
 cannot get rid of a remainder of the non-spiritual. 
 Instead of saying, " I am more than spirit," you say 
 with contrition, " I am less than spirit; and spirit, 
 pure spirit, or the spirit that is nothing but spirit, I 
 can only think of, but am not; and, since I am not it, 
 it is another, exists as another, whom I call ' God '." 
 
 It lies in the nature of the case that the spirit that 
 is to exist as pure spirit must be an otherworldly one, 
 for, since I am not it, it follows that it can only be 
 outside me; since in any case a human being is not 
 fully comprehended in the concept " spirit," it follows 
 that the pure spirit, the spirit as such, can only be 
 outside of men, beyond the human world, not 
 earthly, but heavenly. 
 
 Only from this disunion in which I and the spirit 
 lie; only because " I " and " spirit" are not names for 
 one and the same thing, but different names for com- 
 pletely different things; only because I am not spirit 
 and spirit not I, only from this do we get a quite 
 tautological explanation of the necessity that the spirit
 
 *0 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 dwells in the other world, i. e. is God. 
 
 But from this it also appears how thoroughly theo- 
 logical is the liberation that Feuerbach* is laboring to 
 give us. What he says is that we had only mistaken 
 our own essence, and therefore looked for it in the 
 other world, but that now, when we see that God was 
 only our human essence, we must recognize it again as 
 ours and move it back out of the other world into this. 
 To God, who is spirit, Feuerbach gives the name 
 *' Our Essence." Can we put up with this, that w Our 
 Essence " is brought into opposition to us, that we 
 are split into an essential and an unessential self ? 
 Do we not therewith go back into the dreary misery 
 of seeing ourselves banished out of ourselves ? 
 
 What have we gained, then, when for a variation 
 we have transferred into ourselves the divine outside 
 us ? Are we that which is in us ? As little as we are 
 that which is outside us. I am as little my heart as I 
 am my sweetheart, this "other self" of mine. Just 
 because we are not the spirit that dwells in us, just for 
 that reason we had to take it and set it outside us; it 
 was not we, did not coincide with us, and therefore we 
 could not think of it as existing otherwise than outside 
 us, on the other side from us, in the other world. 
 
 With the strength of despair Feuerbach clutches at 
 the total substance of Christianity, not to throw it 
 away, no, to drag it to himself, to draw it, the long- 
 yearned-for, ever-distant, out of its heaven with a last 
 effort, and keep it by him forever. Is not that a 
 clutch of the uttermost despair, a clutch for life or 
 
 * " Essence of Christianity."
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 41 
 
 death, and is it not at the same time the Christian 
 yearning and hungering for the other world ? The 
 hero wants not to go into the other world, but to draw 
 the other world to him, and compel it to become this 
 world ! And since then has not all the world, with 
 more or less consciousness, been crying that " this 
 world " is the vital point, and heaven must come down 
 on earth and be experienced even here ? 
 
 Let us, in brief, set Feuerbach's theological view 
 and our contradiction over against each other ! 
 "The essence of man is man's supreme being; * now 
 by religion, to be sure, the supreme being is called 
 God and regarded as an objective essence, but in truth 
 it is only man's own essence; and therefore the turn- 
 ing point of the world's history is that henceforth 
 no longer God, but man, is to appear to man as 
 God."f 
 
 To this we reply: The supreme being is indeed the 
 sence of man, but, just because it is his essence and 
 not he himself, it remains quite immaterial whether we 
 see it outside him and view it as " God," or find it in 
 him and call it " Essence of Man " or " Man." / am 
 neither God nor Man, $ neither the supreme essence 
 nor my essence, and therefore it is all one in the main 
 whether I think of the essence as in me or outside me. 
 Nay, we really do always think of the supreme being 
 as in both kinds of otherworldliness, the inward and 
 
 * [Or. " highest essence." The word Wesen, which means both " es- 
 ence " and " being," will be translated now one way and now the other in 
 the following pages. The reader must bear in mind that these two words 
 are identical in German: and so are " supreme " and " highest."] 
 
 tCf. . g. " Essence of Christianity," p. +02. 
 
 \ [That is, the abstract conception of man, as in the preceding sentence.)
 
 42 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 outward, at once; for the " Spirit of God " is, accord- 
 ing to the Christian view, also " our spirit," and 
 " dwells in us."* It dwells in heaven and dwells in 
 us; we poor things are just its " dwelling," and, if 
 Feuerbach goes on to destroy its heavenly dwelling 
 and force it to move to us bag and baggage, then we, 
 its earthly apartments, will be badly overcrowded. 
 
 But after this digression (which, if we were at all 
 proposing to work by line and level, we should have 
 had to save for later pages in order to avoid repeti- 
 tion) we return to the spirit's first creation, the spirit 
 itself. 
 
 The spirit is something other than myself. But 
 this other, what is it ? 
 
 2. THE POSSESSED. 
 
 Have you ever seen a spirit ? " No, not I, but my 
 grandmother." Now, you see, it's just so with me 
 too; I myself haven't seen any, but my grandmother 
 had them running between her feet all sorts of ways, 
 and out of confidence in our grandmothers' honesty 
 we believe in the existence of spirits. 
 
 But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not 
 shrug their shoulders every time our grandmothers 
 told about their ghosts ? Yes, those were unbelieving 
 men who have harmed our good religion much, those 
 rationalists ! We shall feel that ! What else lies 
 at the bottom of this warm faith in ghosts, if not the 
 faith in " the existence of spiritual beings in general," 
 and is not this latter itself disastrously unsettled if 
 
 * E. <?., Rom. 8. 9, 1 Cor. 3. 16, John 20. 22, and innumerable other passages.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 43 
 
 saucy men of the understanding may disturb the 
 former ? The Romanticists were quite conscious what 
 a blow the very belief in God suffered by the laying 
 aside of the belief in spirits or ghosts, and they tried 
 to help us out of the baleful consequences not only by 
 their reawakened fairy world, but at last, and 
 especially, by the " intrusion of a higher world," by 
 their somnambulists, prophetesses of Prevorst, etc. 
 The good believers and fathers of the church did not 
 suspect that with the belief in ghosts the foundation 
 of religion was withdrawn, and that since then it had 
 been floating in the air. He who no longer believes 
 in any ghost needs only to travel on consistently in 
 his unbelief to see that there is no separate being at 
 all concealed behind things, no ghost or what is 
 naively reckoned as synonymous even in our use of 
 words no "spirit." 
 
 '* Spirits exist ! " Look about in the world, and 
 say for yourself whether a spirit does not gaze upon 
 you out of everything. Out of the lovely little flower 
 there speaks to you the spirit of the Creator, who has 
 shaped it so wonderfully; the stars proclaim the spirit 
 that established their order; from the mountain-tops a 
 spirit of sublimity breathes down; out of the waters a 
 spirit of yearning murmurs up; and out of men mil- 
 lions of spirits speak'. The mountains may sink, the 
 flowers fade, the world of stars fall in ruins, the men 
 die what matters the wreck of these visible bodies ? 
 The spirit, the " invisible spirit," abides eternally ! 
 
 Yes, the whole world is haunted ! Only is 
 haunted ? Nay, it itself " walks," it is uncanny 
 through and through, it is the wandering seeming-
 
 44 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 body of a spirit, it is a spook. What else should a 
 ghost be, then, than an apparent body, but real 
 spirit ? Well, the world is " empty," is " naught," is 
 only glamorous " semblance " ; its truth is the spirit 
 alone ; it is the seeming-body of a spirit. 
 
 Look out near or far, a ghostly world surrounds 
 you everywhere; you are always having " appari- 
 tions " or visions. Everything that appears to you is 
 only the phantasm of an indwelling spirit, is a ghostly 
 " apparition " ; the world is to you only a " world of 
 appearances," behind which the spirit walks. You 
 " see spirits." 
 
 Are you perchance thinking of comparing yourself 
 with the ancients, who saw gods everywhere ? Gods, 
 my dear modern, are not spirits; gods do not degrade 
 the world to a semblance, and do not spiritualize it. 
 
 But to you the whole world is spiritualized, and has 
 become an enigmatical ghost; therefore do not wonder 
 if'you likewise find in yourself nothing but a spook. 
 Is not your body haunted by your spirit, and is not 
 the latter alone the true and real, the former only the 
 " transitory, naught " or a " semblance " ? Are we 
 not all ghosts, uncanny beings that wait for " deliver- 
 ance," to wit, "spirits"? 
 
 Since the spirit appeared in the world, since " the 
 Word became flesh," since then the world has been 
 spiritualized, enchanted, a spook. 
 
 You have spirit, for you have thoughts. What are 
 your thoughts ? " Spiritual entities." Not things, 
 then ? " No, but the spirit of things, the main point 
 in all things, the inmost in them, their idea." Con- 
 sequently what you think is not only your thought ?
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 45 
 
 " On the contrary, it is that in the world which is 
 most real, that which is properly to be called true; it 
 is the truth itself; if I only think truly, I think the 
 truth. I may, to be sure, err with regard to the truth, 
 a.ndfail to recognize it; but, if I recognize truly, 
 the object of my cognition is the truth." So, I sup- 
 pose, you strive at all times to recognize the truth ? 
 " To me the truth is sacred. It may well happen that 
 I find a truth incomplete and replace it with a better, 
 but the truth I cannot abrogate. I believe in the 
 truth, therefore I search in it; nothing transcends it, it 
 is eternal." 
 
 Sacred, eternal is the truth; it is the Sacred, the 
 Eternal. But you, who let yourself be filled and led 
 by this sacred thing, are yourself hallowed. Further, 
 the sacred is not for your senses, and you never as a 
 sensual man discover its trace, but for your faith, or, 
 more definitely still, for your spirit ; for it itself, you 
 know, is a spiritual thing, a spirit, is spirit for the 
 spirit. 
 
 The sacred is by no means so easily to be set aside 
 as many at present affirm, who no longer take this 
 " unsuitable " word into their mouths. If even in a 
 single respect I am still n pb raided as an " egoist," 
 there is left the thought of something else which I 
 should serve more than myself, and which must be to 
 me more important than everything; in short, some- 
 what in which I should have to seek my true welfare,* 
 something " sacred. "f However human this sacred 
 thing may look, though it be the Human itself, that 
 
 * [Heil] t [foiling]
 
 16 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 does not take away its sacredness, but at most changes 
 it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing, from 
 a divine one to a human. 
 
 Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not 
 acknowledge himself, the involuntary egoist, for him 
 who is always looking after his own and yet does not 
 count himself as the highest being, who serves only 
 himself and at the same time always thinks he is serv- 
 ing a higher being, who knows nothing higher than 
 himself and yet is infatuated about something higher; 
 in short, for the egoist who would like not to be an 
 egoist, and abases himself (z. e. combats his egoism), 
 but at the same time abases himself only for the sake 
 of " being exalted," and therefore of gratifying his 
 egoism. Because he would like to cease to be an 
 egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher 
 beings to serve and sacrifice himself to; but, however 
 much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end he 
 does all for his own sake, and the disreputable egoism 
 will not come off him. On this account I call him thi 
 involuntary egoist. 
 
 His toil and care to get away from himself is noth- 
 ing but the misunderstood impulse to self-dissolution. 
 If you are bound to your past hour, if you must bab- 
 ble to-day because you babbled yesterday,* if you can 
 not transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself 
 
 ' How the priests tinkle ! how important they 
 Would make it out, that men should come their way 
 And babble, just as yesterday, to-day ! 
 
 Oh ! blame them not ! They know man's need, I say; 
 For he takes all his happiness this way, 
 To babble just to-morrow as to-day. 
 
 Translated from Goethe's " Ywftwn Epigrams. '
 
 .MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 47 
 
 fettered in slavery and benumbed. Therefore over 
 each minute of jour existence a fresh minute of the 
 future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you 
 get away " from yourself," i. e. from the self that 
 was at that moment. As you are at each instant, you 
 are your own creature, and in this very " creature " 
 you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator. You 
 are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass 
 yourself. But that you are the one who is higher 
 than you, i. e. that you are not only creature, but 
 likewise your creator, just this, as an involuntary 
 egoist, you fail to recognize; and therefore the 
 " higher essence " is to you an alien* essence. Every 
 higher essence, such as truth, mankind, etc., is an 
 essence over us. 
 
 Alienness is a criterion of the " sacred." In every- 
 thing sacred there lies something " uncanny," i. e. 
 strange,! such as we are not quite familiar and at 
 home in. What is sacred to me is not my own ; and 
 if, e. g-. the property of others was not sacred to me, I 
 should look on it as mine, which I should take to my- 
 self when occasion offered. Or, on the other side, if I 
 regard the face of the Chinese emperor as sacred, it 
 remains strange to my eye, which I close at its 
 appearance. 
 
 Why is an incontrovertible mathematical truth, 
 which might even be called eternal according to the 
 common understanding of words, not sacred ? Be- 
 cause it is not revealed, or not the revelation of a 
 higher being. If by revealed we understand only the 
 
 * [fremd] t [frond]
 
 48 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 so-called religious truths, we go far astray, and en- 
 tirely fail to recognize the breadth of the concept 
 " higher being." Atheists keep up their scoffing at 
 the higher being, which was also honored under the 
 name of the " highest " or etre supreme, and trample 
 in the dust one " proof of his existence " after another 
 without noticing that they themselves, out of need for 
 a higher being, only annihilate the old to make room 
 for a new. Is " Man " perchance not a higher essenc< 
 than an individual man, and must not the truths, 
 rights, and ideas which result from the concept of him 
 be honored and counted sacred, as revelations of thii 
 very concept ? For, even though we should abrogate 
 again many a truth that seemed to be made manifest 
 by this concept, yet this would only evince a mis- 
 understanding on our part, without in the least de- 
 gree harming the sacred concept itself or taking their 
 sacredness from those truths that must " rightly " be 
 looked upon as its revelations. Man reaches beyond 
 every individual man, and yet though he be "his 
 essence " is not in fact his essence (which rather 
 would be as single* as he the individual himself), but 
 a general and '' higher," yes, for atheists " the highest 
 essence."! And, as the divine revelations were not 
 written down by God with his own hand, but made 
 public through " the Lord's instruments," so also the 
 new highest essence does not write out its revelations 
 itself, but lets them come to our knowledge through 
 "true men." Only the new essence betrays, in fact, a 
 more spiritual style of cqnception than the old God, 
 
 * [emziflr] t [" the supreme being."]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 49 
 
 because the latter was still represented in a sort of 
 em bod ied ness or form, while the undimmed spiritual- 
 ity of the new is retained, and no special material 
 body is fancied for it. And withal it does not lack 
 corporeity, which even takes on a yet more seductive 
 appearance because it looks more natural and mun- 
 dane and consists in nothing less than in every bodily 
 man, yes, or outright in " humanity " or " all men." 
 Thereby the spectralness of the spirit in a seeming- 
 body has once again become really solid and popular. 
 
 Sacred, then, is the highest essence and everything 
 in which this highest essence reveals or will reveal it- 
 self; but hallowed are they who recognize this highest 
 essence together with its own, i. e. together with its 
 revelations. The sacred hallows in turn its reverer, 
 who by his worship becomes himself a saint, as like- 
 wise what he does is saintly, a saintly walk, saintly 
 thoughts and actions, imaginations and aspirations, 
 etc. 
 
 It is easily understood that the conflict over what is 
 revered as the highest essence can be significant only 
 so long as even the most embittered opponents concede 
 to each other the main point, that there is a highest 
 essence to which worship or service is due. If one 
 should smile compassionately at the whole struggle 
 over a highest essence, as a Christian might at the war 
 of words between a Shiite and a Sunnite or between a 
 Brahman and a Buddhist, then the hypothesis of a 
 highest essence would be null in his eyes, and the con- 
 flict on this basis an idle play. Whether then the one 
 God or the three in one, whether the Lutheran God or 
 the etrc supreme or not God at all, but " Man," may
 
 50 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 represent the highest essence, that makes no difference 
 at all for him who denies the highest essence itself, for 
 in his eyes those servants of a highest essence are one 
 and all pious people, the most raging atheist not less 
 than the most faith-filled Christian. 
 
 In the foremost place of the sacred,* then, stands 
 the highest essence and the faith in this essence, our 
 " holyf faith." 
 
 THE SPOOK 
 
 With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the 
 realm of essences. 
 
 What haunts the universe, and has its occult, " in- 
 comprehensible " being there, is precisely the myste- 
 rious spook that we call highest essence. And to get 
 to the bottom of this spook, to comprehend it, to dis- 
 cover reality in it (to prove " the existence of God ") 
 this task men set to themselves for thousands of 
 years; with the horrible impossibility, the endless 
 Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into a non- 
 spook, the unreal into something real, the spirit into 
 an entire and corporeal person, with this they tor- 
 mented themselves to death. Behind the existing 
 world they sought the " thing in itself," the essence; 
 behind the thing- they sought the un-thing. 
 
 When one looks to the bottom of anything, i. e. 
 searches out its essence, one often discovers something 
 quite other than what it seems to be; honeyed speech 
 and a lying heart, pompous words and beggarly 
 thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into promi- 
 
 * Iheilig] t [heilig]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 51 
 
 nence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended ap- 
 pearance to a bare semblance, a deception. The 
 essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for 
 him who looks to the bottom of it emptiness; empti- 
 ness is = world's essence (world's doings). Now, he 
 who is religious does not occupy himself with the de- 
 ceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but 
 looks upon the essence, and in the essence has the 
 truth. 
 
 The essences which are deduced from some appear- 
 ances are the evil essences, and conversely from others 
 the good. The essence of human feeling, e. g., is 
 love; the essence of human will is the good; that of 
 one's thinking, the true; etc. 
 
 What at first passed for existence, such as the world 
 and its like, appears now as bare semblance, and the 
 truly eawtent is much rather the essence, whose realm 
 is filled with gods, spirits, demons, i. e. with good or 
 bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of 
 essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be 
 loveless, but its essence exists, God, " who is love "; 
 human thought may wander in error, but its essence, 
 truth, exists; "God is truth," etc. 
 
 To know and acknowledge essences alone and 
 nothing but essences, that is religion; its realm is a 
 realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts. 
 
 The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or 
 to realize non-xcmc, has brought about a corporeal 
 ghost, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an embodied 
 ghost. How the strongest and most talented Chris- 
 tians have tortured themselves to get a conception of 
 this ghostly apparition ! But there always remained
 
 52 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the contradiction of two natures, the divine and 
 human, i. e. the ghostly and sensual; there remained 
 the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a 
 thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul-torturing, 
 and no shaman, who pricks himself to raving fury and 
 nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure 
 such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most 
 incomprehensible ghost. 
 
 But through Christ the truth of the matter had at 
 the same time come to light, that the veritable spirit 
 or ghost is man. The corporeal or embodied spirit 
 is just man ; he himself is the ghastly being and at the 
 same time the being's appearance and existence. 
 Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases, shudders 
 at ghosts outside him, but at himself; he is terrified at 
 himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the spirit 
 of sin; even the faintest thought (and this is itself a 
 spirit, you know) may be a devil, etc. The ghost has 
 put on a body, God has become man, but now man is 
 himself the gruesome spook which he seeks to get back 
 of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to 
 speech; man is spirit. What matter if the body 
 wither, if only the spirit is saved ? everything rests on 
 the spirit, and the spirit's or " soul's " welfare becomes 
 the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a 
 ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even as- 
 signed a distinct seat in the body (dispute over the 
 seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.). 
 
 You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher 
 essence. Nevertheless a higher essence may be hidden 
 in each of us, and call forth a mutual reverence. To 
 take at once the most general, Man lives in you and
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 53 
 
 me. If I did not see Man in you, what occasion 
 should I have to respect you ? To be sure, you are 
 not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a 
 mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw with- 
 out himself ceasing; but yet for the present this gen- 
 eral and higher essence is housed in you, and you pre- 
 sent before me (because an imperishable spirit has in 
 you assumed a perishable body, so that really your 
 form is only an " assumed " one) a spirit that appears, 
 appears in you, without being bound to your body 
 and to this particular mode of appearance, therefore 
 a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher 
 essence, but only respect that higher essence which 
 " walks " in you; I " respect Man in you." The 
 ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their 
 slaves, and the higher essence " Man " found as yet 
 little response. To make up for this, they saw in each 
 other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher 
 essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit 
 of Man, a spirit haunting the individual, the Spirit 
 of the People. For this reason they revered this 
 spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit 
 related to it (e. g. the Spirit of the Family, etc.) 
 could the individual appear significant; only for the 
 sake of the higher essence, the People, was considera- 
 tion allowed to the " member of the people." As you 
 are hallowed to us by " Man " who haunts you, so at 
 every time men have been hallowed by some higher 
 essence or other, like People, Family, and such. 
 Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been 
 honored from of old, only as a ghost has he been re- 
 garded in the light of a hallowed, i. e., protected and
 
 Si THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 recognized person. If I cherish you because I hold 
 you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, 
 my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake 
 of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not 
 on account of my beholding in you a ghost, i. e. an 
 appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you 
 yourself with your essence are valuable to me, for your 
 essence is not a higher one, is not higher and more 
 general than you, is unique* like you yourself, be- 
 cause it is you. 
 
 But it is not only man that " haunts"; so does 
 everything. The higher essence, the spirit, that walks 
 in everything, is at the same time bound to nothing, 
 and only " appears" in it. Ghosts in every corner ! 
 
 Here would be the place to pass the haunting spirits 
 in review, if they were not to come before us again 
 further on in order to vanish before egoism. Hence 
 let only a few of them be particularized by way of ex- 
 ample, in order to bring us at once to our attitude 
 toward them. 
 
 Sacred above all, e. g., is the " holy Spirit," sacred 
 the truth, sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, 
 marriage, the common good, order, the fatherland, 
 etc. 
 
 WHEELS IN THE HEAD. 
 
 Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in 
 your head ! You imagine great things, and depict to 
 yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence 
 for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself 
 
 * leinzig]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 5i' 
 
 to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have 
 a fixed idea ! 
 
 Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figura- 
 tively when I regard those persons who cling to the 
 Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under 
 this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable 
 fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is 
 called a " fixed idea " ? An idea that has subjected 
 the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard 
 to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its 
 slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, 
 say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (e. g.) 
 the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does 
 is guilty of lese-majesty) ; virtue, against which the 
 censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be 
 kept pure; etc., are these not " fixed ideas"? Is 
 not all the stupid chatter of (e. g\) most of our news- 
 papers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed 
 idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only 
 seem to go about free because the madhouse in which 
 they walk takes in so broad a space ? Touch the 
 fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to 
 guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. 
 For these great lunatics are like the little so-called 
 lunatics in this point too, that they assail by stealth 
 him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his 
 weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall 
 upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare 
 the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and 
 the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. 
 One must read the journals of this period, and must 
 hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction
 
 56 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 that one is shut up in a house with fools. " Thou 
 shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost etc." 
 But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers 
 are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane 
 asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is God the 
 Father, Emperor of Japan, the Holy Spirit, etc., or 
 whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances con- 
 ceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a 
 faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man, 
 etc., both these are one and the same " fixed idea." 
 He who has never tried and dared not to be a good 
 Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., 
 is possessed and prepossessed* by faith, virtuousness, 
 etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside 
 the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote 
 fat books inside the papist superstition, without ever 
 throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill 
 whole folios on the State without calling in question 
 the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers 
 are crammed with politics because they are conjured 
 into the fancy that man was created to be a zoon 
 pdliticon, so also subjects vegetate in subjection, vir- 
 tuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., with- 
 out ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the 
 searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a 
 madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm 
 footing, and he who doubts them lays hands on the 
 sacred! Yes, the " fixed idea," that is the truly 
 sacred ! 
 
 Is it perchance only people possessed by the devil 
 
 * [gefangen und befangen, literally "imprisoned and prepossessed."]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 57 
 
 that meet us, or do we as often come upon people 
 possessed in the contrary way, possessed by " the 
 good," by virtue, morality, the law, or some " princi- 
 ple " or other ? Possessions of the devil are not the 
 only ones. God works on us, and the devil does; the 
 former " workings of grace," the latter " workings of 
 the devil." Possessed* people are sef\ in their 
 opinions. 
 
 If the word " possession " displeases you, then call it 
 prepossession; yes, since the spirit possesses you, and 
 all " inspirations " come from it, call it inspiration 
 and enthusiasm. I add that complete enthusiasm 
 for we cannot stop with the sluggish, half-way kind 
 is called fanaticism. 
 
 It is precisely among cultured people that fanaticism 
 is at home; for man is cultured so far as he takes an 
 interest in spiritual things, and interest in spiritual 
 things, when it is alive, is and must be fanaticism ; it 
 is a fanatical interest in the sacred (fanuni). Ob- 
 serve our liberals, look into the Saechsischen Vater- 
 lanchblaetter, hear what Schlosser says: J " Holbach's 
 company constituted a regular plot against the tradi- 
 tional doctrine and the existing system, and its mem- 
 bers were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as 
 monks and priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists, 
 missionary and Bible societies, commonly are for me- 
 chanical worship and orthodoxy." 
 
 Take notice how a " moral man " behaves, who to- 
 day often thinks he is through with God and throws 
 off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him 
 
 * [besessene] t iversessen] * "Achtzehntes Jahrhundert, " II, 518.
 
 58 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of 
 brother and sister is incest, that monogamy is the 
 truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, 
 etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at the 
 conception of one's being allowed to touch his sister as 
 wife also, etc. And whence this shudder ? Because 
 he believes in those moral commandments. This 
 moral faith is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as 
 he rages against the pious Christians, he himself has 
 nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian, to 
 wit, a moral Christian. In the form of morality 
 Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner 
 under faith. Monogamy is to be something sacred, 
 and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a crim- 
 inal; he who commits incest suffers as a criminal. 
 Those who are always crying that religion is not to be 
 regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen 
 equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord 
 with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a 
 dogma of faith ? Touch it, and you will learn by ex- 
 perience how this moral man is a hero of faith too, not 
 less than Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These 
 fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of 
 the State, or the moral laws of the State; for articles 
 of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than 
 their faith will allow. The brand of " crime " is 
 stamped upon him, and he may languish in reformato- 
 ries, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious 
 faith ! They call that " liberty of faith " then, when 
 brother and sister, on account of a relation that they 
 should have settled with their " conscience," are 
 thrown into prison, " But they set a pernicious exam-
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 59 
 
 pie." Yes, indeed: others might have taken the no- 
 tion that the State had no business to meddle with 
 their relation, and thereupon " purity of morals " 
 would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of 
 faith are zealous for the " sacred God," the moral ones 
 for the " sacred good." 
 
 Those who are zealous for something sacred often 
 look very little like each other. How the strictly or- 
 thodox, or old-style believers differ from the fighters 
 for " truth, light, and justice," from the Philalethes, 
 the Friends of Light, the Rationalists, etc. And yet, 
 how utterly unessential is this difference ! If one 
 buffets single traditional truths (e. g. miracles, un- 
 limited power of princes, etc.), then the rationalists 
 buffet them too, and only the old-style believers wail. 
 But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has 
 both, as believers, for opponents. So with moralities; 
 the strict believers are relentless, the clearer heads are 
 more tolerant. But he who attacks morality itself 
 gets both to deal with. " Truth, morality, justice, 
 light, etc.," are to be and remain " sacred." What 
 any one finds to censure in Christianity is simply sup- 
 posed to be " unchristian " according to the view of 
 these rationalists; but Christianity must remain a 
 " fixture," to buffet it is outrageous, " an outrage." 
 To be sure, the heretic against pure faith no longer 
 exposes himself to the earlier fury of persecution, but 
 so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic 
 against pure morals. 
 
 Piety has for a century received so many blows, and 
 had to hear its superhuman essence reviled as an " in-
 
 60 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 human " one so often, that one cannot feel tempted to 
 draw the sword against it again. And yet it has al- 
 most always been only moral opponents that have ap- 
 peared in the arena, to assail the supreme essence in 
 favor of another supreme essence. So Proudhon, un- 
 abashed, says: * " Man is destined to live without 
 religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. 
 Who would dare to-day to attack morality ?" Moral 
 people skimmed off the best fat from religion, ate it 
 themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid 
 of the resulting scrofula. If, therefore, we point out 
 that religion has not by any means been hurt in its 
 inmost part so long as people reproach it only with its 
 superhuman essence, and that it takes its final appeal 
 to the " spirit" alone (for God is spirit), then we 
 have sufficiently indicated its final accord with moral- 
 ity, and can leave its stubborn conflict with the latter 
 lying behind us. It is a question of a supreme essen 
 with both, and whether this is a superhuman or a 
 human one can make (since it is in any case an es- 
 sence over me, a super-mine one, so to speak) but little 
 difference to me. In the end the relation to the 
 human essence, or to " Man," as soon as ever it has 
 shed the snake-skin of the old religion, will yet wear a 
 religious snake-skin again. 
 
 So Feuerbach instructs us that, " if one only inverts 
 speculative philosophy, i. e. always makes the predi- 
 cate the subject, and so makes the subject the object 
 and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure and 
 clean."! Herewith, to be sure, we lose the narrow 
 
 *" De la Creation del'Ordre" etc., p. 36. t "Anekdota," II, 64. 
 
 : -
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 61 
 
 religious standpoint, lose the God, who from this 
 standpoint is subject; but we take in exchange for it 
 the other side of the religious standpoint, the moral 
 standpoint. E. g., we no longer say " God is love," 
 but " Love is divine." If we further put in place of 
 the predicate " divine " the equivalent " sacred," then, 
 as far as concerns the sense, all the old comes back 
 again. According to this, love is to be the good in 
 man, his divineness, that which does him honor, his 
 true humanity (it w makes him Man for the first 
 time," makes for the first time a man out of him). 
 So then it would be more accurately worded thus: 
 Love is what is human in man, and what is inhuman 
 is the loveless egoist. But precisely all that which 
 Christianity and with it speculative philosophy (i. e. 
 theology) offers as the good, the absolute, is to self- 
 ownership simply not the good (or, what means the 
 same, it is only the good). Consequently, by the 
 transformation of the predicate into the subject, the 
 Christian essence (and it is the predicate that contains 
 the essence, you know) would only be fixed yet more 
 oppressively. God and the divine would entwine 
 themselves all the more inextricably with me. To 
 expel God from his heaven and to rob him of his 
 " transcendence " cannot yet support a claim of com- 
 plete victory, if therein he is only chased into the hu- 
 man breast and gifted with indelible immanence. 
 Now they say, " The divine is the truly human ! " 
 
 The same people who oppose Christianity as the ba- 
 sis of the State, i. e. oppose the so-called Christian 
 State, do not tire of repeating that morality is " the 
 fundamental pillar of social life and of the State."
 
 62 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 As if the dominion of morality were not a complete 
 dominion of the sacred, a " hierarchy." 
 
 So we may here mention by the way that rationalist 
 movement which, after theologians had long insisted 
 that only faith was capable of grasping religious 
 truths, that only to believers did God reveal himself, 
 etc., and that therefore only the heart, the feelings, the 
 believing fancy was religious, broke out with the asser- 
 tion that the "" natural understanding," human reason, 
 was also capable of discerning God. What does that 
 mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same 
 visionary as the fancy ? * In this sense Reimarus 
 wrote his " Most Notable Truths of Natural Religion." 
 It had to come to this, that the whole man with all 
 his faculties was found to be religious ; heart and 
 affections, understanding and reason, feeling, know- 
 ledge, and will, in short, everything in man, 
 appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even phi- 
 losophy is religious. And what is not called religion 
 to-day ? The " religion of love," the " religion of 
 freedom," " political religion," in short, every enthu- 
 siasm. So it is, too, in fact. 
 
 To this day we use the Romance word " religion," 
 which expresses the concept of a condition of being 
 bound. To be sure, we remain bound, so far as reli- 
 gion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the 
 mind also bound ? On the contrary, that is free, is 
 sole lord, is not our mind, but absolute. Therefore 
 the correct affirmative translation of the word religion 
 would be "freedom of mind "/ In whomsoever the 
 
 * [difgeJb- 1'hanidstin vie die Phuntusie]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 63 
 
 mind is free, he is religious in just the same way as he 
 in whom the senses have free course is called a sensual 
 man. The mind binds the former, the desires the lat- 
 ter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or religio with 
 reference to me, I am bound ; it is freedom with re- 
 ference to the mind, the mind is free, or has freedom 
 of mind. Many know from experience how hard it 
 is on us when the desires run away with us, free and 
 unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellect- 
 uality, enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however 
 this jewel may in the most various phrase be named, 
 brings us into yet more grievous straits than even the 
 wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can 
 they perceive it without being consciously egoists. 
 
 Reimarus, and all who have shown that our reason, 
 our heart, etc., also lead to God, have therewithal 
 shown that we are possessed through and through. 
 To be sure, they vexed the theologians, from whom 
 they took away the prerogative of religious exaltation ; 
 but for religion, for freedom of mind, they thereby 
 only conquered yet more ground. For, when the 
 mind is no longer limited to feeling or faith, but also, 
 as understanding, reason, and thought in general, be- 
 longs to itself the mind, when, therefore, it may take 
 part in the spiritual* and heavenly truths in the form 
 of understanding, etc., as well as in its other forms, 
 then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual 
 things, i. e. with itself, and is therefore free. Now we 
 are so through-and-through religious that "jurors," 
 i. e. " sworn men," condemn us to death, and every 
 
 * inn-same word ;us " ititi-lKvlii^" as " mind;' and "spirit" arc tin-
 
 64 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 policeman, as a good Christian, takes us to the lock-u 
 by virtue of an " oath of office." 
 
 Morality could not come into opposition with piety 
 till after the time when in general the boisterous hate 
 of everything that looked like an " order " (decrees, 
 commandments, etc.) spoke out in revolt, and the per 
 sonal " absolute lord " was scoffed at and persecuted ; 
 consequently it could arrive at independence only 
 through liberalism, whose first form acquired signifi- 
 cance in the world's history as " citizenship," and 
 weakened the specifically religious powers (see " Lib- 
 eralism " below). For, when morality not merely 
 goes alongside of piety, but stands on feet of its own, 
 then its principle lies no longer in the divine com- 
 mandments, but in the law of reason, from which the 
 commandments, so far as they are still to remain 
 valid, must first await justification for their validity. 
 In the law of reason man determines himself out of 
 himself, for " Man " is rational, and out of the 
 " essence of Man " those laws follow of necessity. 
 Piety and morality part company in this, that the 
 former makes God the lawgiver, the latter Man. 
 
 From a certain standpoint of morality people reaso 
 about as follows: Either man is .led by his sensuality, 
 and is, following it, immoral, or he is led by the goo( 
 which, taken up into the will, is called moral senti- 
 ment (sentiment and prepossession in favor of the 
 good) ; then he shows himself moral. From this 
 point of view how, e. g., can Sand's act against 
 Kotzebue be called immoral ? What is commonly 
 understood by unselfish it certainly was, in the same 
 measure as (among other things) St. Crispin's thiev-
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 65 
 
 eries in favor of the poor. " He should not have 
 murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not mur- 
 der ! " Then to serve the good, the welfare of the 
 people, as Sand at least intended, or the welfare of 
 the poor, like Crispin, is moral; but murder and 
 theft are immoral; the purpose moral, the means im- 
 moral. Why ? " Because murder, assassination, is 
 something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas en- 
 ticed the enemies of the country into ravines and shot 
 them down unseen from the bushes, do you suppose 
 that was not assassination ? According to the prin- 
 ciple of morality, which commands us to serve the 
 good, you could really ask only whether murder could 
 never in any case be a realization of the good, and 
 would have to endorse that murder which realized the 
 good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at all; it 
 was moral, because in the service of the good, because 
 unselfish; it was an act of punishment, which the indi- 
 vidual inflicted, an execution inflicted at the risk of 
 the executioner's life. What else had his scheme 
 been, after all, but that he wanted to suppress writings 
 by brute force ? Are you not acquainted with the 
 same procedure as a " legal " and sanctioned one ? 
 And what can be objected against it from your prin- 
 ciple of morality ? "But it was an illegal execu- 
 tion." So the immoral thing in it was the illegality, 
 the disobedience to law ? Then you admit that the 
 good is nothing else than law, morality nothing else 
 than loyalty. And to this externality of " loyalty " 
 your morality must sink, to this righteousness of 
 works in the fulfilment of the law, only that the latter 
 is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than
 
 66 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the old-time righteousness of works. For in the latte 
 only the act is needed, but you require the disposition 
 too; one must carry in himself ihe law, the statute; 
 and he who is most legally disposed is the most moral 
 Even the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life 
 must perish in this Protestant legality. Here at last 
 the domination of the law is for the first time com- 
 plete. " Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus 
 I have really come so far as to be only the " vessel of 
 its glory." " Every Prussian carries his gendarme ir 
 his breast," says a high Prussian officer. 
 
 Why do certain opposition parties fail to flourish ? 
 Solely for the reason that they refuse to forsake the 
 path of morality or legality. Hence the measureless 
 hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc., from whose repulsiv< 
 ness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at 
 this rotten and hypocritical relation of a " lawful op- 
 position." In the moral relation of love and fidelity 
 divided or opposed will cannot have place; the beaut 
 ful relation is disturbed if the one wills this and the 
 other the reverse. But now, according to the practic 
 hitherto and the old prejudice of the opposition, the 
 moral relation is to be preserved above all. What is 
 then left to the opposition ? Perhaps the will to hav 
 a lioerty, if the beloved one sees fit to deny it ? Not 
 a bit ! It may not mil to have the freedom, it can 
 only wish for it, " petition " for it, lisp a " Please, 
 please ! " What would come of it, if the opposition 
 really willed, willed with the full energy of the will ? 
 No, it must renounce will in order to live to love, re- 
 nounce liberty for love of morality. It may never 
 " claim as a right " what it is permitted only to " beg
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 67 
 
 as a favor." Love, devotion, etc., demand with unde- 
 viating definiteness that there be only one will to 
 which the others devote themselves, which they serve, 
 follow, love. Whether this will is regarded as reason- 
 able or as unreasonable, in both cases one acts morally 
 when one follows it, and immorally when one breaks 
 away from it. The will that commands the censorship 
 seems to many unreasonable; but he who in a land of 
 censorship evades the censoring of his book acts im- 
 morally, and he who submits it to the censorship acts 
 morally. If some one let his moral judgment go, and 
 set up e. g. a secret press, one would have to call him 
 immoral, and imprudent into the bargain if he let 
 himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a 
 value in the eyes of the " moral " ? Perhaps ! That 
 is, if he fancied he was serving a " higher morality." 
 
 The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the 
 frontiers of two domains, between which our time 
 swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of 
 deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous 
 enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, 
 not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it 
 trembles now toward the one and now toward the 
 other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by 
 the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid 
 flies. If one has once dared to make a " free " mo- 
 tion, immediately one waters it again with assurances 
 of love, and shams resignation ; if, on the other side, 
 they have had the face to reject the free motion with 
 moral appeals to confidence, etc., immediately the 
 moral courage also sinks, and they assure one how 
 they hear the free words with special pleasure, etc.;
 
 68 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 they sham approval. In short, people would like to 
 have the one, but not go without the other; they 
 would like to have &jree will, but not for their lives 
 lack the moral will. Just come in contact with a ser- 
 vile loyalist, you Liberals. You will sweeten every 
 word of freedom with a look of the most loyal confi- 
 dence, and he will clothe his servilism in the most flat- 
 tering phrases of freedom. Then you go apart, and 
 he, like you, thinks " I know you, fox ! " He scents 
 the devil in you as much as you do the dark old Lord 
 God in him. 
 
 A Nero is a " bad " man only in the eyes of the 
 "good"; in mine he is nothing but a, possessed man, 
 as are the good too. The good see in him an arch- 
 villain, and relegate him to hell. Why did nothing 
 hinder him in his arbitrary course ? Why did people 
 put up with so much ? Do you suppose the tame 
 Romans, who let all their will be bound by such a 
 tyrant, were a hair the better ? In old Rome they 
 would have put him to death instantly, would never 
 have been his slaves. But the contemporary " good " 
 among the Romans opposed to him only moral de- 
 mands, not their will; they sighed that their emperor 
 did not do homage to morality, like them ; they them- 
 selves remained " moral subjects," till at last one 
 found courage to give up " moral, obedient subjec- 
 tion." And then the same " good Romans " who, as 
 " obedient subjects," had borne all the ignominy of 
 having no will, hurrahed over the nefarious, immoral 
 act of the rebel. Where then in the " good " was the 
 courage for the revolution, that courage which they 
 now praised, after another had mustered it up ? The
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 69 
 
 good could not have this courage, for a revolution, 
 and an insurrection into the bargain, is always some- 
 thing " immoral," which one can resolve upon only 
 when one ceases to be " good " and becomes either 
 " bad " or neither of the two. Nero was no viler 
 than his time, in which one could only be one of the 
 two, good or bad. The judgment of his time on him 
 had to be that he was bad, and this in the highest 
 degree: not a milksop, but an arch-scoundrel. All 
 moral people can pronounce only this judgment on 
 him. Rascals such as he was are still living here and 
 there to-day (see e. g. the Memoirs of Ritter von 
 Lang) in the midst of the moral. It is not convenient 
 to live among them certainly, as one is not sure of his 
 life for a moment; but can you say that it is more 
 convenient to live among the moral ? One is just as 
 little sure of his life there, only that one is hanged " in 
 the way of justice," but least of all is one sure of his 
 honor, and the national cockade is gone before you 
 can say Jack Robinson. The hard fist of morality 
 treats the noble nature of egoism altogether without 
 compassion. 
 
 " But surely one cannot put a rascal and an honest 
 man on the same level ! " Now, no human being does 
 that oftener than you judges of morals; yes, still more 
 than that, you imprison as a criminal an honest man 
 who speaks openly against the existing constitution, 
 against the hallowed institutions, etc., and you en- 
 trust portfolios and still more important things to a 
 crafty rascal. So in praxi you have nothing to re- 
 proach me with. " But in theory ! " Now there I do 
 put both on the same level, as two opposite poles, to
 
 70 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 wit, both on the level of the moral law. Both have 
 meaning only in the " moral " world, just as in the 
 pre-Christian time a Jew who kept the law and one 
 who broke it had meaning and significance only in re- 
 spect to the Jewish law; before Jesus Christ, on the 
 contrary, the Pharisee was no more than the " sinner 
 and publican." So before self-ownership the moral 
 Pharisee amounts to as much as the immoral sinner. 
 
 Nero became very inconvenient by his possessedness. 
 But a self-owning man would not sillily oppose to him 
 the " sacred," and whine if the tyrant does not regard 
 the sacred; he would oppose to him his will. How 
 often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man 
 has been held up to their foes, and some liberty or 
 other shown and demonstrated to be a " sacred right 
 of man " ! Those who do that deserve to be laughed 
 out of court--as they actually are, were it not that 
 in truth they do, even though unconsciously, take the 
 road that leads to the goal. They have a presenti- 
 ment that, if only the majority is once won for that 
 liberty, it will also will the liberty, and will then take 
 what it will have. The sacredness of the liberty, and 
 all possible proofs of this sacredness, will never pro- 
 cure it; lamenting and petitioning only shows beggars. 
 
 The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he 
 knows no other enemy than the " immoral " man. 
 " He who is not moral is immoral ! " and accordingly 
 reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore the moral man 
 can never comprehend the egoist. Is not unwedded 
 cohabitation an immorality ? The moral man may 
 turn as he pleases, he will have to stand by this ver- 
 dict; Emilia Galotti gave up her life for this moral
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 71 
 
 truth. And it is true, it is an immorality. A vir- 
 tuous girl may become an old maid; a virtuous man 
 may pass the time in fighting his natural impulses till 
 he has perhaps dulled them, he may castrate himself 
 for the sake of virtue as St. Origen did for the sake 
 of heaven : he thereby honors sacred wedlock, sacred 
 chastity, as inviolable ; he is moral. Unchastity can 
 never become a moral act. However indulgently the 
 moral man may judge and excuse him who committed 
 it, it remains a transgression, a sin against a moral 
 commandment; there clings to it an indelible stain. 
 As chastity once belonged to the monastic vow, so it 
 does to moral conduct. Chastity is a good. For 
 the egoist, on the contrary, even chastity is not a good 
 without which he could not get along; he cares noth- 
 ing at all about it. What now follows from this for 
 the judgment of the moral man ? This : that he 
 throws the egoist into the only class of men that he 
 knows besides moral men, into that of the immoral. 
 He cannot do otherwise; he must find the egoist im- 
 moral in everything in which the egoist disregards 
 morality. If he did not find him so, then he would 
 already have become an apostate from morality with- 
 out confessing it to himself, he would already no 
 longer be a truly moral man. One should not let 
 himself be led astray by such phenomena, which at the 
 present day are certainly no longer to be classed as 
 rare, but should reflect that he who yields any point of 
 morality can as little be counted among the truly 
 moral as Lessing was a pious Christian when, in the 
 Well-known parable, he compared the Christian re- 
 ligion, as well as the Mohammedan and Jewish, to a
 
 72 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 " counterfeit ring." Often people are already further 
 than they venture to confess to themselves. For 
 Socrates, because in culture he stood on the level of 
 morality, it would have been an immorality if he had 
 been willing to follow Crito's seductive incitement and 
 escape from the dungeon; to remain was the only 
 moral thing. But it was solely because Socrates was 
 a moral man. The " unprincipled, sacrilegious " 
 men of the Revolution, on the contrary, had sworn 
 fidelity to Louis XVI, and decreed his deposition, yes, 
 his death; but the act was an immoral one, at which 
 moral persons will be horrified to all eternity. 
 
 Yet all this applies, more or less, only to " civic 
 morality," on which the freer look down with con- 
 tempt. For it (like civism, its native ground, in gen- 
 eral) is still too little removed and free from the reli- 
 gious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws with- 
 out criticism or further consideration to its domain in- 
 stead of producing independent doctrines of its own. 
 Morality cuts a quite different figure when it arrives 
 at the consciousness of its dignity, and raises its prin- 
 ciple, the essence of man, or " Man," to be the only 
 regulative power. Those who have worked their way 
 through to such a decided consciousness break entirely 
 with religion, whose God no longer finds any place 
 alongside their " Man," and, as they (see below) 
 themselves scuttle the ship of State, so too they crum- 
 ble away that " morality " which flourishes only in 
 the State, and logically have no right to use even its 
 name any further. For what this " critical " party 
 calls morality is very positively distinguished from the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 73 
 
 so-called " civic or political morality," and must ap- 
 pear to the citizen like an " insensate and unbridled 
 liberty." But at bottom it has only the advantage ol 
 the " purity of the principle," which, freed from its d* 
 filement with the religious, has now reached universal 
 power in its clarified definiteness as " humanity." 
 Therefore one should not wonder that the name 
 " morality " is retained along with others, like free- 
 dom, benevolence, self-consciousness, etc., and is only 
 garnished now and then with the addition, a " free " 
 morality, just as, though the civic State is abused, 
 yet the State is to arise again as a " free State," or, if 
 not even so, yet as a " free society." 
 
 Because this morality completed into humanity has 
 fully settled its accounts with the religion out of which 
 it historically came forth, nothing hinders it from be- 
 coming a religion on its own account. For a distinc- 
 tion prevails between religion and morality only so 
 long as our dealings with the world of men are regu- 
 lated and hallowed by our relation to a superhuman 
 being, or so long as our doing is a doing " for God"s 
 sake." If, on the other hand, it comes to the point 
 that "man is to man the supreme being," then that 
 distinction vanishes, and morality, being removed from 
 its subordinate position, is completed into religion. 
 For then the higher being who had hitherto been sub- 
 ordinated to the highest, Man, has ascended to abso- 
 lute height, and we are related to him as one is related 
 to the highest being, i. e. religiously. Morality and 
 piety are now as synonymous as in the beginning of 
 Christianity, and it is only because the supreme being 
 has come to be a different one that a holy walk is no
 
 74 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 longer called a " holy " one, but a " human " one. If 
 morality has conquered, then a complete change of 
 masters has taken place. 
 
 After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to 
 put in to the supposedly safe harbor of love. " The 
 first and highest law must be the love of man to man. 
 Homo homini Deus est this is the supreme practical 
 maxim, this the turning point of the world's history."* 
 But, properly speaking, only the god is changed, 
 the deus ; love has remained: there love to the super- 
 human God, here love to the human God, to homo as 
 Deus. Therefore man is to me sacred. And every- 
 thing " truly human " is to me sacred! " Marriage 
 is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral rela- 
 tions. Friendship is and must be sacred for you, and 
 property, and marriage, and the good of every man, 
 but sacred In and of itself."^ Haven't we the priest 
 again there ? Who is his God ? Man with a great 
 M ! What is the divine ? The human ! Then the 
 predicate has indeed only been changed into the sub- 
 ject, and, instead of the sentence " God is love," they 
 say " love is divine "; instead of " God has become 
 man," " Man has become God," etc. It is nothing 
 more or less than a new religion. " All moral rela- 
 tions are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, 
 only where of themselves (without religious consecra- 
 tion by the priest's blessing) they are counted reli- 
 gious.'* Feuerbach's proposition, "Theology is an- 
 thropology," means only " religion must be ethics, 
 ethics alone is religion." 
 
 * " Essence of Christianity," second edition, p. 402. t P. 403.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 75 
 
 Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a trans- 
 position of subject and predicate, a giving of prefer- 
 ence to the latter. But, since he himself says, " Love 
 is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred 
 through being a predicate of God, but it is a predicate 
 of God because it is divine in and of itself," he might 
 judge that the fight against the predicates themselves, 
 against love and all sanctities, must be commenced. 
 How could he hope to turn men away from God when 
 he left them the divine ? And if, as Feuerbach says, 
 God himself has never been the main thing to them, 
 but only his predicates, then he might have gone on 
 leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the 
 real kernel, was left at any rate. He recognizes, too, 
 that with him it is " only a matter of annihilating an 
 illusion " ; * he thinks, however, that the effect of the 
 illusion on men is " downright ruinous, since even 
 love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, be- 
 comes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, 
 since religious love loves manf only for God's sake, 
 therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God 
 only." Is this different with moral love ? Does it 
 love the man, this man for this man's sake, or for mo- 
 rality's sake, for Mail's sake, and so for homo homini 
 Deus for God's sake ? 
 
 The wheels in the head have a number of other 
 formal aspects, some of which it may be useful to in- 
 dicate here. 
 
 Thus self-renunciation is common to the holy with 
 
 * P. 408. t [Literally " the man."]
 
 76 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the unholy, to the pure and the impure. The impure 
 man renounces all " better feelings," all shame, even 
 natural timidity, and follows only the appetite that 
 rules him. The pure man renounces his natural rela- 
 tion to the world (" renounces the world ") and follows 
 only the " desire " which rules him. Driven by the 
 thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all ad- 
 monitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all 
 gentleness and all compassion; he puts all considera- 
 tions out of sight ; the appetite drags him along. The 
 holy man beKaves similarly. He makes himself the 
 " laughing-stock of the world," is hard-hearted and 
 " strictly just " ; for the desire drags him along. As 
 the unholy man renounces himself before Mammon, so 
 the holy man renounces himself before God and the 
 divine laws. We are now living in a time when the 
 sliamelessness of the holy is every day more and more 
 felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same time 
 compelled to unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more 
 and more every day. Have not the shamelessness and 
 stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize 
 the " progress of the age " long surpassed all measure 
 and all expectation ? But it must be so. The self- 
 renouncers must, as holy men, take the same course 
 that they do as unholy men; as the latter little by 
 little sink to the fullest measure of self-renouncing vul- 
 garity and lowness, so the former must ascend to the 
 most dishonorable exaltation. The mammon of the 
 earth and the God of heaven both demand exactly the 
 same degree of self-renunciation. The low man, like 
 the exalted one, reaches out for a " good," the 
 former for the material good, the latter for the ideal,
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 77 
 
 the so-called " supreme good " ; and at last both com- 
 plete each other again too, as the " materially- 
 minded " man sacrifices everything to an ideal phan- 
 tasm, his vanity, and the " spiritually-minded " man 
 to a material gratification, the life of enjoyment. 
 
 Those who exhort men to " unselfishness "* think 
 they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they 
 understand by it ? Probably something like what 
 they understand by " self-renunciation." But who is 
 this self that is to be renounced and to have no bene- 
 fit ? It seems that you yourself are supposed to be it. 
 And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation 
 recommended to you ? Again for your benefit and 
 behoof, only that through unselfishness you are pro- 
 curing your " true benefit." 
 
 You are to benefit yourself, and yet you are not to 
 seek your benefit. 
 
 People regard as unselfish the benefactor of men, a 
 Franke who founded the orphan asylum, an O'Con- 
 nell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but also 
 the fanatic who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for 
 the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, 
 sacrifices everything to virtue, like Koerner, dies for 
 God, king, and fatherland. Hence, among others, 
 O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him 
 some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Con- 
 nell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if 
 they were successful in casting suspicion on his " un- 
 selfishness," they would easily separate him from his 
 adherents. 
 
 * [l.'ni.-ioi'nnucti.igkeit, literally " un-self-bencfltingness."]
 
 78 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Yet what could they show further than that O'Con- 
 nell was working for another end than the ostensible 
 one ? But, whether he may aim at making money or 
 at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one 
 case as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and 
 that his end; selfishness here as there, only that his 
 national self-interest would be beneficial to others too, 
 and so would be for the common interest. 
 
 Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and 
 nowhere extant ? On the contrary, nothing is more 
 ordinary ! One may even call it an article of fashion 
 in the civilized world, which is considered so indispen- 
 sable that, if it costs too much in solid material, pso- 
 ple at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit 
 and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin ? 
 Right where an end ceases to be our end and our 
 property, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleas- 
 ure; where it becomes a fixed end or a fixed idea: 
 where k begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in 
 short, where it passes into our stubbornness and be- 
 comes our master. One is not unselfish so long as 
 he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only 
 at that " Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," the 
 fundamental maxim of all the possessed ; one becomes 
 so in the case of a sacred end, through the correspond- 
 ing sacred zeal. 
 
 I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my 
 own, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the 
 blind means of its fulfilment, leave it always an open 
 question. My zeal need not on that account be 
 slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I 
 remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 79 
 
 most irreconcilable enemy; I remain \\sjudge, because 
 I am its owner. 
 
 Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness 
 reaches, as much on possessions of the devil as on those 
 of a good spirit : there vice, folly, etc. ; here humility, 
 devotion, etc. 
 
 Where could one look without meeting victims of 
 self-renunciation ? There sits a girl opposite me, who 
 perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul 
 for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a 
 deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow 
 bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often 
 the passions may have beaten ^,t your heart, and the 
 rich powers of youth have demanded their right ! 
 When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how 
 awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the 
 blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the 
 gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes ! Then ap- 
 peared the ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. 
 You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your 
 tormented eye turned its look upward, you prayed. 
 The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over 
 the ocean of your appetites. Slowly the weary eyelids 
 sank over the life extinguished under them, the ten- 
 sion crept out un perceived from the rounded limbs, 
 the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded 
 hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the un- 
 resisting bosom, one last faint " Oh dear ! " moaned it- 
 self away, and the soul was at rest. You fell asleep, 
 to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new 
 prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the 
 heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are
 
 80 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 growing pale in the chlorosis of your heavenliness. 
 The soul is saved, the body may perish ! O Lais, O 
 Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue ! 
 One free grisette against a thousand virgins grown 
 gray in virtue ! 
 
 The fixed idea may also be perceived as " maxim," 
 " principle," " standpoint," and the like. Archi- 
 medes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint out- 
 side it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, 
 and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. 
 This foreign standpoint is the world of mind, of ideas, 
 thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it is heaven. 
 Heaven is the " standpoint " from which the earth is 
 moved, earthly doings surveyed and despised; To 
 assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly 
 standpoint firmly and for ever, how painfully and 
 tirelessly humanity struggled for this ! 
 
 Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life de- 
 termined by nature, from the appetites as actuating 
 us, and so has meant that man should not let himself 
 be determined by his appetites. This does not in- 
 volve the idea that he was not to have appetites, but 
 that the appetites were not to have him, that they 
 were not to become Jixed, uncontrollable, indissoluble. 
 Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived 
 against the appetites be applied by us to its own pre- 
 cept that mind (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, 
 etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither 
 should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed 
 to determine us, to become fixed and inviolable or 
 " sacred " ? Then it would end in the dissolution of 
 mind, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all concep-
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 81 
 
 tions. As we there had to say " We are indeed to 
 have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us," 
 so we should now say " We are indeed to have mind, 
 but mind is not to have us." If the latter seems lack- 
 ing in sense, think e. g. of the fact that with so many 
 a man a thought becomes a " maxim," whereby he 
 himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that 
 has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with 
 the maxim he has a " permanent standpoint " again. 
 The doctrines of the catechism become our principles 
 before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection. 
 Their thought, or mind, has the sole power, and no 
 protest of the " flesh " is further listened to. Never- 
 theless it is only through the " flesh " that I can break 
 the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears 
 his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears him- 
 self wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears }nm- 
 w^that he is a hearing or rational* being. The 
 Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled 
 nature, but lives in " humility"; therefore he does not 
 grumble at the wrong which befalls his person ; he 
 thinks himself satisfied with the " freedom of the 
 spirit." But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its 
 tone is " passionate," " indecorous," " not well-dis- 
 posed," " spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be otherwise), 
 then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices against 
 the spirit (for decorum, passionlessness, kindly disposi- 
 tion, and the like, is spirit), and is justly zealous 
 against them. He could not be a Christian if he were 
 willing to endure them. He listens only to morality, 
 
 * [vernuenftig, derived from vernehmen, to hear.]
 
 82 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to 
 legality, and gags the lawless word. The spirit of 
 morality and legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, 
 unbending master. They call that the " mastery of 
 the spirit," it is at the same time the standpoint of 
 the spirit. 
 
 And now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen 
 mean to make free ? Whose freedom is it that they 
 cry out and thirst for ? The spirit's ! That of the 
 spirit of morality, legality, piety, the fear of God, etc. 
 That is what the anti-liberal gentlemen also want, and 
 the whole contention between the two turns on a mat- 
 ter of advantage, whether the latter are to be the 
 only speakers, or the former are to receive a " share in 
 the enjoyment of the same advantage." The spirit re- 
 mains the absolute lord for both, and their only quar- 
 rel is over who shall occupy the hierarchical throne 
 that pertains to the " Vicegerent of the Lord." The 
 best of it is that one can calmly look upon the stir 
 with the certainty that the wild beasts of history will 
 tear each other to pieces just like those of nature; 
 their putrefying corpses fertilize the ground for our 
 crops. 
 
 We shall come back later to many another wheel in 
 the head, for instance, those of vocation, truthful- 
 ness, love, etc. 
 
 When one's own is contrasted with what is imparted 
 to him, there is no use in objecting that we cannot 
 have anything isolated, but receive everything as a 
 part of the universal order, and therefore through the 
 impression of what is around us, and that consequently
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 83 
 
 we have it as something " imparted "; for there is a 
 great difference between the feelings and thoughts 
 which are aroused in me by other things and those 
 which are given to me. God, immortality, freedom, 
 humanity, etc., are drilled into us from childhood as 
 thoughts and feelings which move our inner being 
 more or less strongly, either ruling us without our 
 knowing it, or sometimes in richer natures manifesting 
 themselves in systems and works of art; but are al- 
 ways not aroused, but imparted, feelings, because we 
 must believe in them and cling to them. That an 
 Absolute existed, and that it must be taken in, felt, 
 and thought by us, was settled as a faith in the minds 
 of those who spent all the strength of their mind on 
 recognizing it and setting it forth. The feeling for 
 the Absolute exists there as an imparted one, and 
 thenceforth results only in the most manifold revela- 
 tions of its own self. So in Klopstock the religious 
 feeling was an imparted one, which iij the " Messiad " 
 simply found artistic expression. If, on the other 
 hand, the religion with which he was confronted had 
 been for him only an incitation to feeling and 
 thought, and if he had known how to take an attitude 
 completely hi? oicn toward it, then there would have 
 resulted, instead of religious inspiration, a dissolution 
 and consumption of the religion itself. Instead of 
 that, he only continued in mature years his childish 
 feelings received in childhood, and squandered the 
 powers of his manhood in decking out his childish 
 trifles. 
 
 The difference is, then, whether feelings are im- 
 parted to me or only aroused. Those which are
 
 84 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 aroused are my own, egoistic, because they are not as 
 feelings drilled into me, dictated to me, and pressed 
 upon me; but those which are imparted to me I re- 
 ceive, with open arms, I cherish them in me as a 
 heritage, cultivate them, and am possessed by them. 
 Who is there that has never, more or less consciously, 
 noticed that our whole education is calculated to pro- 
 duce feelings in us, i. e. impart them to us, instead of 
 leaving their production to ourselves however they 
 may turn out ? If we hear the name of God, we are 
 to feel veneration ; if we hear that of the prince's ma- 
 jesty, it is to be received with reverence, deference, 
 submission ; if we hear that of morality, we are to 
 think that we hear something inviolable; if we hear of 
 the Evil One or evil ones, we are to shudder; etc. 
 The intention is directed to these feelings, and he who 
 e. g. should hear with pleasure the deeds of the 
 " bad " would have to be " taught what's what " with 
 the rod of discipline. Thus stuffed with imparted feel- 
 ings, we appear before the bar of majority and are 
 " pronounced of age." Our equipment consists of 
 " elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims, 
 eternal principles," etc. The young are of age when 
 they twitter like the old; they are driven through 
 school to learn the old song, and, when they have this 
 by heart, they are declared of age. 
 
 We must not feel at every thing and every name 
 that comes before us what we could and would like to 
 feel thereat; e. g., at the name of God we must think 
 of nothing laughable, feel nothing disrespectful, it be- 
 ing prescribed and imparted to us what and how we 
 are to feel and think at mention of that name.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 85 
 
 That is the meaning of the care of souls, that my 
 soul or my mind be tuned as others think right, not as 
 I myself would like it. How much trouble does it not 
 cost one, finally to secure to oneself a feeling of one's 
 own at the mention of at least this or that name, and 
 to laugh in the face of many who expect from us a 
 holy face and a composed expression at their speeches. 
 What is imparted is alien to us, is not our own, and 
 therefore is " sacred," and it is hard work to lay aside 
 the " sacred dread of it." 
 
 To-day one again hears " seriousness " praised, 
 " seriousness in the presence of highly important sub- 
 jects and discussions," " German seriousness," etc. 
 This sort of seriousness proclaims clearly how old and 
 grave lunacy and possession have already become. 
 For there is nothing more serious than a lunatic when 
 he comes to the central point of his lunacy; then his 
 great earnestness incapacitates him for taking a joke. 
 (See madhouses.) 
 
 3. THE HIERARCHY 
 
 The historical reflections on our Mongolism which I 
 propose to insert episodically at this place are not 
 given with the claim of thoroughness, or even of ap- 
 proved soundness, but solely because it seems to me 
 that they may contribute toward making the rest 
 clear. 
 
 The history of the world, whose shaping properly 
 belongs altogether to the Caucasian race, seems till 
 now to have run through two Caucasian ages, in the 
 first of which we had to work out and work off our
 
 86 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 innate negroidity ; this was followed in the second by 
 Mongoloidity (Chineseness), which must likewise be 
 terribly made an end of. Negroidity represents 
 antiquity, the time of dependence on things (on cocks' 
 eating, birds' flight, on sneezing, on thunder and 
 lightning, on the rustling of sacred trees, etc.) ; Mon- 
 goloidity the time of dependence on thoughts, the 
 Christian time. Reserved for the future are the words 
 " I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner 
 of the world of mind." 
 
 In the negroid age fall the campaigns of Sesostris 
 and the importance of Egypt and of northern Africa 
 in general. To the Mongoloid age belong the in- 
 vasions of the Huns and Mongols, up to the Russians. 
 
 The value of me cannot possibly be rated high so 
 long as the hard diamond of the not-me bears so 
 enormous a price as was the case both with God and 
 with the world. The not-me is still too stony and 
 indomitable to be consumed and absorbed by me; 
 rather, men only creep about with extraordinary bustle 
 on this immovable entity, i. e. on this substance, like 
 parasitic animals on a body from whose juices they 
 draw nourishment, yet without consuming it. It is 
 the bustle of vermin, the assiduity of Mongolians. 
 Among the Chinese, we know, everything remains as 
 it used to be, and nothing " essential " or " substan- 
 tial" suffers a change; all the more actively do they 
 work away at that which remains, which bears the 
 name of the " old," " ancestors," etc. 
 
 Accordingly, in our Mongolian age all change has 
 been only reformatory or ameliorative, not destructive 
 or consuming and annihilating. The substance, the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 87 
 
 object, remain*. All our assiduity was only the 
 activity of ants and the hopping of fleas, jugglers' 
 tricks on the immovable tight-rope of the objective, 
 cort'ee-service under the lordship of the unchangeable 
 or " eternal." The Chinese are doubtless the most 
 jMtiitive nation, because totally buried in precepts; but 
 neither has the Christian age come out from the posi- 
 tive, i. e. from " limited freedom," freedom " within 
 certain limits." In the most advanced stage of civili- 
 zation this activity earns the name of scientific activ- 
 ity, of working on a motionless presupposition, a 
 hypothesis that is not to be upset. 
 
 In its first and most unintelligible form morality 
 shows itself as habit. To act according to the habit 
 and usage (inoreui) of one's country is to be moral 
 there. Therefore pure moral action, clear, unadulter- 
 ated morality, is most straightforwardly practised in 
 China; they keep to the old habit and usage, and hate 
 each innovation as a crime worthy of death. For 
 innovation is the deadly enemy of habit, of the old, of 
 permanence. In fact, too, it admits of no doubt that 
 through habit man secures himself against the ob- 
 trusiveness of tilings, of the world, and founds a world 
 of his own in which alone he is and feels at home, i. e. 
 builds himself a heaven. Why, heaven has no other 
 meaning than that it is man's proper home, in which 
 nothing alien regulates and rules him any longer, no 
 influence of the earthly any longer makes him himself 
 alien; in short, in which the dross of the earthly is 
 thrown off, and the combat against the world has 
 found an end, in which, therefore, nothing is any 
 longer denied him. Heaven is the end of abnegation,
 
 88 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 it \sfree enjoyment. There man no longer denies 
 himself anything, because nothing is any longer alien 
 and hostile to him. But now habit is a " second 
 nature," which detaches and frees man from his first 
 and original natural condition, in securing him 
 against every casualty of it. The fully elaborated 
 habit of the Chinese has provided for all emergencies, 
 and everything is " looked out for " ; whatever may 
 come, the Chinaman always knows how he has to be- 
 have, and does not need to decide first according to 
 the circumstances; no unforeseen case throws him 
 down from the heaven of his rest. The morally habit- 
 uated and inured Chinaman is not surprised and taken 
 off his guard; he behaves with equanimity (i. e. with 
 equal spirit or temper) toward everything, because his 
 temper, protected by the precaution of his traditional 
 usage, does not lose its balance. Hence, on the ladder 
 of culture or civilization humanity mounts the first 
 round through habit; and, as it conceives that, in 
 climbing to culture, it is at the same time climbing to 
 heaven, the realm of culture or second nature, it really 
 mounts the first round of the ladder to heaven. 
 
 If Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual 
 beings, if it has created a world of spirits, a heaven, 
 the Caucasians have wrestled for thousands of years 
 with these spiritual beings, to get to the bottom of 
 them. What were they doing, then, but building on 
 Mongolian ground ? They have not built on sand, 
 but in the air; they have wrestled with Mongolism, 
 stormed the Mongolian heaven, Tien. When will 
 they at last annihilate this heaven ? When will they 
 at last become really Caucasians, and find themselves?
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 89 
 
 When will the " immortality of the soul," which in 
 these latter days thought it was giving itself still more 
 security if it presented itself as " immortality of 
 mind," at last change to the mortality of mind? 
 It was when, in the industrious struggle of the 
 Mongolian race, men had built a heaven, that those of 
 the Caucasian race, since in their Mongolian com- 
 plexion they have to do with heaven, took upon them- 
 selves the opposite task, the task of storming that 
 heaven of custom, heaven-storming* activity. To dig 
 under all human ordinance, in order to set up a new 
 and better one on the cleared site, to wreck all 
 customs in order to put new and better customs in 
 their place, etc., their act is limited to this. But is 
 it thus already purely and really what it aspires to be, 
 and does it reach its final aim ? No, in this creation 
 of a " better " it is tainted with Mongolism. It storms 
 heaven only to make a heaven again, it overthrows an 
 old power only to legitimate a new power, it only 
 improves. Nevertheless the point aimed at, often as it 
 may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt, is the 
 real, complete downfall of heaven, customs, etc., in 
 short, of man secured only against the world, of the 
 isolation or inwardness of man. Through the heaven 
 of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the world, 
 to break its hostile power. But this isolation of 
 heaven must likewise be broken, and the true end of 
 heaven-storming is the downfall of heaven, the anni- 
 hilation of heaven. Improving and reforming is the 
 Mongolism of the Caucasian, because thereby he is al- 
 
 *[A German idiom for destructive radicalism.]
 
 90 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ways setting up again what already existed, to wit, a 
 precept, a generality, a heaven. He harbors the most 
 irreconcilable enmity to heaven, and yet builds new 
 heavens daily ; piling heaven on heaven, he only 
 crushes one by another; the Jews' heaven destroys the 
 Greeks', the Christians' the Jews', the Protestants' the 
 Catholics', etc. If the heaven-storming men of Cau- 
 casian blood throw off their Mongolian skin, they will 
 bury the emotional man under the ruins of the mon- 
 strous world of emotion, the isolated man under his 
 isolated world, Ikr paradisiacal man under his heaven. 
 And heaven is the realm of spirits, the realm of free- 
 dom of the spirit. 
 
 The realm of heaven, the realm of spirits and 
 ghosts, has found its right standing in the speculative 
 philosophy. Here it was stated as the realm of 
 thoughts, concepts, and ideas; heaven is peopled with 
 thoughts and ideas, and this " realm of spirits " is 
 then the true reality. 
 
 To want to win freedom for the spirit is Mon- 
 golism; freedom of the spirit is Mongolian freedom, 
 freedom of feeling, moral freedom, etc. 
 
 We may find the word " morality " taken as syn- 
 onymous with spontaneity, self-determination. But 
 'that is not involved in it; rather has the Caucasian 
 shown himself spontaneous only in spite of his Mon- 
 golian morality. The Mongolian heaven, or morals,* 
 remained the strong castle, and only by storming in- 
 cessantly at this castle did the Caucasian show him- 
 self moral; if he had not had to do with morals at all 
 
 * [The same word that has been translated " custom " several times in 
 this section.]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 91 
 
 any longer, if he had not had therein his indomitable, 
 continual enemy, the relation to morals would cease, 
 and consequently morality would cease. That his 
 spontaneity is still a moral spontaneity, therefore, is 
 just the Mongoloidity of it, is a sign that in it he has 
 not arrived at himself. " Moral spontaneity " cor- 
 responds entirely with " religious and orthodox phil- 
 osophy," " constitutional monarchy," " the Christian 
 State," " freedom within certain limits," " the limited 
 freedom of the press," or, in a figure, to the hero fet- 
 tered to a sick-bed. 
 
 Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its 
 spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not 
 only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the be- 
 lief in the spirit. 
 
 He who believes in a spook no more assumes the 
 " introduction of a higher world " than he who 
 believes in the spirit, and both seek behind the sensual 
 world a supersensual one; in short, they produce and 
 believe anotlier world, and this other world, the pro- 
 duct of their mind, is a spiritual world; for their 
 senses grasp and know nothing of another, a non- 
 sensual world, only their spirit lives in it. Going on 
 from this Mongolian belief in the existence of spiritual 
 beings to the point that the proper being of man too 
 is his spirit, and that all care must be directed to this 
 alone, to the " welfare of his soul," is not hard. In- 
 fluence on the spirit, so-called " moral influence," is 
 hereby assured. 
 
 Hence it is manifest that Mongolism represents 
 utter absence of any rights of the sensuous, represents ^ 
 non-sensuousness and unnature, and that sin and the
 
 92 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that 
 lasted thousands of years. 
 
 But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its noth- 
 ing ? He who by means of the spirit set forth nature 
 as the null, finite, transitory, he alone can bring down 
 the spirit too to like nullity. / can; each one among 
 you can, who does his will as an absolute I; in a 
 word, the egoist can. 
 
 Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and 
 all confidence; they occupy a. powerless and humble 
 attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of it- 
 self, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, 
 my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my 
 conscience. 
 
 Sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be 
 unapproachable, not to be touched, outside his power, 
 i. e. above him ; sacred, in a word, is every matter 
 of conscience, for " this is a matter of conscience to 
 me " means simply " I hold this sacred." 
 
 For little children, just as for animals, nothing 
 sacred exists, because, in order to make room for this 
 conception, one must already have progressed so far in 
 understanding that he can make distinctions like 
 " good and bad," " warranted and unwarranted," 
 etc. ; only at such a level of reflection or intelligence 
 the proper standpoint of religion can unnatural 
 (i. e. brought into existence by thinking) reverence, 
 " sacred dread," step into the place of naturaiy^ar. 
 To this sacred dread belongs holding something out- 
 side oneself for mightier, greater, better warranted, 
 better, etc.; i. e. the attitude in which one acknowl-
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 93 
 
 edges the might of something alien not merely feels 
 it, then, but expressly acknowledges it, i. e. admits it, 
 yields, surrenders, lets himself be tied (devotion, 
 humility, servility, submission, etc.) Here walks the 
 whole ghostly troop of the " Christian virtues." 
 
 Everything toward which you cherish any respect 
 or reverence deserves the name of sacred; you your- 
 selves, too, say that you would feel a " sacred dread " 
 of laying hands on it. And you give this tinge even 
 to the unholy (gallows, crime, etc.) You have a hor- 
 ror of touching it. There lies in it something un- 
 canny, i. e. unfamiliar or not your own. 
 
 " If something or other did not rank as sacred in a 
 man's mind, why, then all bars would be let down to 
 self-will, to unlimited subjectivity ! " Fear makes the 
 beginning, and one can make himself fearful to the 
 coarsest man ; already, therefore, a barrier against his 
 insolence. But in fear there always remains the at- 
 tempt to liberate oneself from what is feared, by guile, 
 deception, tricks, etc. In reverence,* on the contrary, 
 it is quite otherwise. Here something is not only 
 feared,! but also honored J: what is feared has become 
 an inward power which I can no longer get clear of; I 
 honor it, am captivated by it and devoted to it, be- 
 long to it; by the honor which I pay it I am com- 
 pletely in its power, and do not even attempt libera- 
 tion any longer. Now I am attached to it with all 
 the strength of faith ; I believe. I and what I fear 
 are one; " not I live, but the respected lives in me ! " 
 Because the spirit, the infinite, does not allow of com- 
 
 *[Ehrfnrrlit] ^[gefuercMet] t[oeehrt]
 
 94 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ing to any end, therefore it is stationary; it fears 
 dying, it cannot let go its dear Jesus, the greatness o 
 finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye; 
 the object of fear, now raised to veneration, may no 
 longer be handled; reverence is made eternal, the re- 
 spected is deified. The man is now no longer em- 
 ployed in creating, but in learning (knowing, investi 
 gating, etc.), i. e. occupied with a fixed object, losing 
 himself in its depths, without return to himself. Th< 
 relation to this object is that of knowing, fathoming, 
 basing, etc., not that of dissolution (abrogation, etc.) 
 " Man is to be religious," that is settled; therefore 
 people busy themselves only with the question how 
 this is to be attained, what is the right meaning of 
 religiousness, etc. Quite otherwise when one makes 
 the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in question, evei 
 though it should go to smash. Morality too is such 
 sacred conception; one must be moral, and must lool 
 only for the right " how." the right way to be so. 
 One dares not go at morality itself with the question 
 whether it is not itself an illusion; it remains exalted 
 above all doubt, unchangeable. And so we go on 
 with the sacred, grade after grade, from the " holy " 
 to the " holy of holies." 
 
 Men are sometimes divided into two classes, culture 
 and uncultured. The former, so far as they were 
 worthy of their name, occupied themselves with 
 thoughts, with mind, and (because in the time since 
 Christ, of which the very principle is thought, they 
 were the ruling ones) demanded a servile respect for 
 the thoughts recognized by them. State, emperor,
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 95 
 
 church, God, morality, order, etc., are such thoughts 
 or spirits, that exist only for the mind. A merely liv- 
 ing being, an animal, cares as little for them as a 
 child. But the uncultured are really nothing but 
 children, and he who attends only to the necessities of 
 his life is indifferent to those spirits; but, because he 
 is also weak before them, he succumbs to their power, 
 and is ruled by thoughts. This is the meaning of 
 hierarchy. 
 
 Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of 
 mind ! 
 
 We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those 
 who are supported by thoughts. Thoughts are the 
 sacred. 
 
 But the two are always clashing, now one and now 
 the other giving the offence; and this clash occurs, not 
 only in the collision of two men, but in one and the 
 same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not 
 to find enjoyment in things too, and so be uncultured; 
 and no uncultured man is totally without thoughts. 
 In Hegel it comes to light at last what a longing for 
 things even the most cultured man has, and what a 
 horror of every " hollow theory " he harbors. With 
 him reality, the world of things, is altogether to cor- 
 respond to the thought, and no concept to be without 
 reality. This caused Hegel's system to be known as 
 the most objective, as if in it thought and thing cele- 
 brated their union. But this was simply the extremest 
 case of violence on the part of thought, its highest 
 pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the triumph of 
 mind, and with it the triumph of philosophy. Philo- 
 sophy cannot hereafter achieve anything higher, for its
 
 96 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 highest is the omnipotence of mind, the almightiness ( 
 mind.* 
 
 Spiritual men have taken into their head something 
 that is to be realized. They have concepts of love, 
 goodness, and the like, which they would like to see 
 realized ; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of 
 love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from 
 selfishness, but each one " from love." Love is to 
 rule. What they have taken into their head, what 
 shall we call it toAftsed idea ? Why, " their head 
 is haunted. 1 " The most oppressive spook is Man. 
 Think of the proverb, " The road to ruin is paved 
 with good intentions." The intention to realize 
 humanity altogether in oneself, to become altogether 
 man, is of such ruinous kind ; here belong the inten- 
 tions to become good, noble, loving, etc. 
 
 In the sixth part of the " ' Denkiauerdigkeiten^ p. ' 
 Bruno Bauer says: "That middle class, which was t( 
 receive such a terrible importance for modern history 
 is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm 
 for an idea, no exaltation; it devotes itself to nothing 
 but the interests of its mediocrity ; i. e. it remains al- 
 ways limited to itself, and conquers at last only 
 through its bulk, with which it has succeeded in tirin 
 out the efforts of passion, enthusiasm, consistency, 
 through its surface, into which it absorbs a part of tl 
 new ideas." And (p. 6) " It has turned the revolu- 
 tionary ideas, for which not it, but unselfish or impas 
 sioned men sacrificed themselves, solely to its own prc 
 
 . * Rousseau, the Philanthropists, and others were hostile to culture and 
 intelligence, but they overlooked the fact that this is present in all men < 
 the Christian type, and assailed only learned and refined culture.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 97 
 
 fit, has turned spirit into money. That is, to be sure, 
 after it had taken away from those ideas their point, 
 their consistency, their destructive seriousness, fanatical 
 against all egoism." These people, then, are not self- 
 sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not idealistic, not consis- 
 tent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual sense, 
 selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober, 
 calculating, etc. 
 
 Who, then, is " self-sacrificing " ? * In the full 
 sense, surely, he who ventures everything else for one 
 thing, one object, one will, one passion, etc. Is not 
 the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and 
 mother, endures all dangers and privations, to reach 
 his goal ? Or the ambitious man, who offers up all 
 his desires, wishes, and satisfactions to the single 
 passion, or the avaricious man who denies himself 
 everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker, 
 etc.? He is ruled by a passion to which he brings 
 the rest as sacrifices. 
 
 And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not 
 selfish, not egoists ? As they have only one ruling 
 passion, so they provide for only one satisfaction, but 
 for this the more strenuously; they are wholly ab- 
 sorbed in it. Their entire activity is egoistic, but 
 it is a one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism; it is 
 possessedness. 
 
 " Why, those are petty passions, by which, on the 
 contrary, man must not let himself be enthralled. 
 Man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a great 
 cause ! " A " great idea," a " good cause," is, it may 
 
 * [Literally, " sacrificing "; the German word has not the prefix " self."]
 
 98 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 be, the honor of God, for which innumerable people 
 have met death; Christianity, which has found its 
 willing martyrs; the Holy Catholic Church, which 
 has greedily demanded sacrifices of heretics; liberty 
 and equality, which were waited on by bloody 
 guillotines. 
 
 He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doc- 
 trine, a system, a lofty calling, may not let any 
 worldly lusts, any self-seeking interest, spring up in 
 him. Here we have the concept of clericalism, or, as 
 it may also be called in its pedagogic activity, school- 
 masterliness; for the idealists play the schoolmaster 
 over us. The clergyman is especially called to live t< 
 the idea and to work for the idea, the truly good 
 cause. Therefore the people feel how little it befits 
 him to show worldly haughtiness, to desire good liv- 
 ing, to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming, 
 in short, to have any other than a " sacred inter- 
 est." Hence too, doubtless, is derived the scanty 
 salary of teachers, who are to feel themselves repaid b 
 the sacredness of their calling alone, and to " re- 
 nounce " other enjoyments. 
 
 Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more < 
 which man is to look upon as his calling, is not lack- 
 ing. Family, fatherland, science, etc., may find in rr 
 a servant faithful to his calling. 
 
 Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world 
 which has not yet learned to do without clericalism, - 
 that to live and workybr an idea is man's calling, 
 and according to the faithfulness of its fulfilment his 
 human worth is measured. 
 
 This is the dominion of the idea; in other words, i
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 99 
 
 is clericalism. E. g., Robespierre, St. Just, etc., were 
 priests through and through, inspired by the idea, en- 
 thusiasts, consistent instruments of this idea, idealistic 
 men. So St. Just exclaims in a speech, " There is 
 something terrible in the sacred love of country ; 
 it is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the 
 public interest without mercy, without fear, without 
 human consideration. It hurls Manlius down the 
 precipice; it sacrifices its private inclinations; it leads 
 Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman into the chasm, 
 and sets Marat, as a victim of his devotion, in the 
 Pantheon." 
 
 Now, over against these representatives of ideal or 
 sacred interests stands a world of innumerable " per- 
 sonal " profane interests. No idea, no system, no 
 sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and 
 modified by these personal interests. Even if they are 
 silent momentarily, and in times of rage and fanati- 
 cism, yet they soon come uppermost again through 
 " the sound sense of the people." Those ideas do not 
 completely conquer till they are no longer hostile to 
 personal interests, i. e. till they satisfy egoism. 
 
 The man who is just now crying herrings in front 
 of my window has a personal interest in good sales, 
 and, if his wife or anybody else wishes him the like, 
 this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on 
 the other hand, a thief deprived him of his basket, 
 then there would at ones arise an interest of many, of 
 the whole city, of the whole country, or, in a word, of 
 all who abhor theft; an interest in which the herring- 
 seller's person would become indifferent, and in its 
 place the category of the " robbed man " would come
 
 100 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 into the foreground. But even here all might yet re- 
 solve itself into a personal interest, each of the par- 
 takers reflecting that he must concur in the punish- 
 ment of the thief because unpunished stealing might 
 otherwise become general and cause him too to lose 
 his own. Such a calculation, however, can hardly be 
 assumed on the part of many, and we shall rather 
 hear the cry that the thief is a " criminal." Here we 
 have before us a judgment, the thief's action receiving 
 its expression in the concept " crime." Now the 
 matter stands thus : even if a crime did not cause the 
 slightest damage either to me or to any of those in 
 whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless de- 
 nounce it. Why ? Because I am enthusiastic for 
 morality, filled with the idea of morality ; what is 
 hostile to it I everywhere assail. Because in his mind 
 theft ranks as abominable without any question, 
 Proudhon, e. g., thinks that with the sentence 
 " Property is theft " he has at once put a brand on 
 property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always 
 a crime, or at least a misdeed. 
 
 Here the personal interest is at an end. This par- 
 ticular person who has stolen the basket is perfectly 
 indifferent to my person; it is only the thief, this con- 
 cept of which that person presents a specimen, that I 
 take an interest in. The thief and man are in my 
 mind irreconcilable opposites; for one is not truly 
 man when one is a thief; one degrades Man or 
 " humanity " in himself when one steals. Dropping 
 out of personal concern, one gets into philanthropism, 
 friendliness to man, which' is usually misunderstood as 
 if it was a love to men, to each individual, while it is
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 101 
 
 nothing but a love of Man, the unreal concept, the 
 spook. It is not TOU<; dcv0pwxou<;, men, but T&V 
 av6po)7:ov, Man, that the philanthropist carries in his 
 heart. To be sure, he cares for each individual, but 
 only because he wants to see his beloved ideal realized 
 everywhere. 
 
 So there is nothing said here of care for me, you, 
 us; that would be personal interest, and belongs under 
 the head of " worldly love." Philanthropism is a 
 heavenly, spiritual, a priestly love. Man must be 
 restored in us, even if thereby we poor devils should 
 come to grief. It is the same priestly principle as 
 that famous fiat justitia, pereat mundus ; man and 
 justice are ideas, ghosts, for love of which everything 
 is sacrificed; therefore the priestly spirits are the 
 " self-sacrificing " ones. 
 
 He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out 
 of account so far as that infatuation extends, and 
 floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is 
 not a person, but an ideal, a spook. 
 
 Now, things as different as possible can belong to 
 Man and be so regarded. If one finds Man's chief 
 requirement in piety, there arises religious clericalism ; 
 if one sees it in morality, then moral clericalism raises 
 its head. On this account the priestly spirits of our 
 day want to make a " religion " of everything, a " re- 
 ligion of liberty," " religion of equality," etc., and for 
 them every idea becomes a " sacred cause," e. g. even 
 citizenship, politics, publicity, freedom of the press, 
 trial by jury, etc. 
 
 Now, what does " unselfishness " mean in this 
 sense ? Having only an ideal interest, before which
 
 102 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 no respect of persons avails ! 
 
 The stiff head of the worldly man opposes this, but 
 for centuries has always been worsted at least so far as 
 to have to bend the unruly neck and " honor the 
 higher power " ; clericalism pressed it down. When 
 the worldly egoist had shaken off a higher power 
 (e. g. the Old Testament law, the Roman pope, etc.), 
 then at once a seven times higher one was over him 
 again, e. g. faith in the place of the law, the trans- 
 formation of all laymen into divines in place of the 
 limited body of clergy, etc. His experience was like 
 that of the possessed man into whom seven devils 
 passed when he thought he had freed himself from 
 one. 
 
 In the passage quoted above all ideality, etc., is 
 denied to the middle class. It certainly schemed 
 against the ideal consistency with which Robespierre 
 wanted to carry out the principle. The instinct of its 
 interest told it that this consistency harmonized too 
 little with what its mind was set on, and that it would 
 be acting against itself if it were willing to further the 
 enthusiasm for principle. Was it to behave so unself- 
 ishly as to abandon all its aims in order to bring a 
 harsh theory to its triumph ? It suits the priests ad- 
 mirably, to be sure, when people listen to their sum- 
 mons, " Cast away everything and follow me," or 
 " Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and 
 thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow 
 me." Some decided idealists obey this call; but most 
 act like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a 
 behavior half clerical or religious and half worldly, 
 serving God and Mammon.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 103 
 
 I do not blame the middle class for not wanting to 
 let its aims be frustrated by Robespierre, i. e. for in- 
 quiring of its egoism how far it might give the revo- 
 lutionary idea a chance. But one might blame (if 
 blame were in place here anyhow) those who let their 
 own interests be frustrated by the interests of the mid- 
 dle class. However, will not they likewise sooner or 
 later learn to understand what is to their advantage ? 
 August Becker says : * " To win the producers (pro- 
 letarians) a negation of the traditional conception of 
 right is by no means enough. Folks unfortunately 
 care little for the theoretical victory of the idea. One 
 must demonstrate to them ad oculos how this victory 
 can be practically utilized in life." And (p. 32) : 
 " You must get hold of folks by their real interests if 
 you want to work upon them." Immediately after 
 this he shows how a fine looseness of morals is already 
 spreading among our peasants, because they prefer to 
 follow their real interests rather than the commands 
 of morality. 
 
 Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters 
 served Man, they cut off the heads of men. The revo- 
 lutionary laymen, those outside the sacred circle, did 
 not feel any greater horror of cutting off heads, but 
 were less anxious about the rights of Man than about 
 their own. 
 
 How comes it, though, that the egoism of those who 
 affirm personal interest, and always inquire of it, is 
 nevertheless forever succumbing to a priestly or 
 schoolmasterly (i. e. an ideal) interest ? Their per- 
 
 * ' Volksphilosophie unserer Tage," p. 22.
 
 104 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 son seems to them too small, too insignificant, and is 
 so in fact, to lay claim to everything and be able to 
 put itself completely in force. There is a sure sign of 
 this in their dividing themselves into two persons, an 
 eternal and a temporal, and always caring either only 
 for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the 
 eternal, on the work -day for the temporal, in prayer 
 for the former, in work for the latter. They have the 
 priest in themselves, therefore they do not get rid of 
 him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly every 
 Sunday. 
 
 How men have struggled and calculated to get at a 
 solution regarding these dualistic essences ! Idea fol- 
 lowed upon idea, principle upon principle, system up- 
 on system, and none knew how to keep down perma- 
 nently the contradiction of the " worldly " man, the 
 so-called " egoist." Does not this prove that all those 
 ideas were too feeble to take up my whole will into 
 themselves and satisfy it ? They were and remained 
 hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for a 
 considerable time. Will it be the same with self- 
 ownership ? Is it too only an attempt at mediation ? 
 Whatever principle I turned to, it might be to that of 
 reason, I always had to turn away from it again. Or 
 can I always be rational, arrange my life according to 
 reason in everything ? I can, no doubt, strive after 
 rationality, I can love it, just as I can also love God 
 and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover 
 of wisdom, as I love God. But what I love, what I 
 strive for, is only in my idea, my conception, my 
 thoughts; it is in my heart, my head, it is in me like 
 the heart, but it is not I, I am not it.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 105 
 
 To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially 
 what one often hears called " moral influence" 
 
 Moral influence takes its start where humiliation be- 
 gins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation it- 
 self, the breaking and bending of the temper * down 
 to humility.^ If I call to some one to run away when 
 a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by 
 this demand; if I say to a child " You will go hungry 
 if you will not eat what is put on the table," this is 
 not moral influence. But, if I say to it " You will 
 pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak 
 the truth, etc., for this belongs to man and is man's 
 calling," or even " this is God's will," then moral in- 
 fluence is complete; then a man is to bend before the 
 calling of man, be tractable, become humble, give up 
 his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and 
 law ; he is to abase himself before something higher: 
 self-n basement. " He that abaseth himself shall be 
 exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be made to 
 practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of 
 good breeding is one into whom " good maxims " have 
 been instilled and impressed, poured in through a fun- 
 nel, thrashed in and preached in. 
 
 If one shrugs his shoulders at this, at once the good 
 wring their hands despairingly, and cry : " But, for 
 heaven's sake, if one is to give children no good in- 
 struction, why, then they will run straight into the 
 jaws of sin, and become good-for-nothing hoodlums ! " 
 Gently, you prophets of evil. Good-for-nothing in 
 your sense they certainly will become; but your sense 
 
 * [.VK//I] t iDemuth]
 
 106 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 happens to be a very good-for-nothing sense. The 
 impudent lads will no longer let anything be whined 
 and chattered into them by you, and will have no 
 sympathy for all the follies for which you have been 
 raving and driveling since the memory of man began ; 
 they will abolish the law of inheritance, i. e. they will 
 not be willing to inherit your stupidities as you in- 
 herited them from your fathers; they destroy inherited 
 sin.* If you command them, " Bend before the Most 
 High," they will answer : " If he wants to bend us, 
 let him come himself and do it; we, at least, will not 
 bend of our own accord." And, if you threaten them 
 with his wrath and his punishment, they will take it 
 like being threatened with the bogie-man. If you are 
 no longer successful in making them afraid of ghosts, 
 then the dominion of ghosts is at an end, and nurses' 
 tales find no faith. 
 
 And is it not precisely the liberals again that press 
 for good education and improvement of the educa- 
 tional system ? For how could their liberalism, their 
 " liberty within the bounds of law," come about with- 
 out discipline ? Even if they do not exactly educate 
 to the fear of God, yet they demand thejtear of Man 
 all the more strictly, and awaken " enthusiasm for 
 the truly human calling" by discipline. 
 
 A long time passed away, in which people were 
 satisfied with the fancy that they had the truth, with- 
 out thinking seriously whether perhaps they them- 
 selves must be true to possess the truth. This time 
 
 * [Called in English theology " original sin."]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 107 
 
 was the Middle Ages. With the common conscious- 
 ness i. e. the consciousness which deals with things, 
 that consciousness which has receptivity only for 
 things, or for what is sensuous and sense-moving 
 they thought to grasp what did not deal with things 
 and was not perceptible by the senses. As one does 
 indeed also exert his eye to see the remote, or labori- 
 ously exercise his hand till its fingers have become 
 dexterous enough to press the keys correctly, so they 
 chastened themselves in the most manifold ways, in 
 order to become capable of receiving the supersensual 
 wholly into themselves. But what they chastened 
 was, after all, only the sensual man, the common con- 
 sciousness, so-called finite or objective thought. Yet 
 as this thought, this understanding, which Luther de- 
 cries under the name of reason, is incapable of com- 
 prehending the divine, its chastening contributed just 
 as much to the understanding of the truth as if one 
 exercised the feet year in and year out in dancing, and 
 hoped that in this way they would finally learn to 
 play the flute. Luther, with whom the so-called Mid- 
 dle Ages end, was the first who understood that the 
 man Ktmself must become other than he was if he 
 wanted to comprehend truth, must become as true as 
 truth itself. Only he who already has truth in his 
 belief, only he who believes in it, can become a par- 
 taker of it; i. e., only the believer finds it accessible 
 and sounds its depths. Only that organ of man which 
 is able to blow can attain the further capacity of flute- 
 playing, and only that man can become a partaker of 
 truth who has the right organ for it. He who is 
 capable of thinking only what is sensuous, objective,
 
 108 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 pertaining to things, figures to himself in truth only 
 what pertains to things. But truth is spirit, stuff al- 
 together inappreciable by the senses, and therefore 
 only for the " higher consciousness," not for that which 
 is " earthly-minded." 
 
 With Luther, accordingly, dawns the perception 
 that truth, because it is a thought, is only for the 
 thinking man. And this is to say that man must 
 henceforth take an utterly different standpoint, 
 viz., the heavenly, believing, scientific standpoint, 
 or that of thought in relation to its object, the 
 thought, that of mind in relation to mind. Con- 
 sequently: only the like apprehend the like. " You 
 are like the spirit that you understand."* 
 
 Because Protestantism broke the mediaeval hier- 
 archy, the opinion could take root that hierarchy in 
 general had been shattered by it, and it could be 
 wholly overlooked that it was precisely a " reforma- 
 tion," and so a reinvigoration of the antiquated hier- 
 archy. That mediaeval hierarchy had been only a 
 weakly one, as it had to let all possible barbarism of 
 unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside it, and it 
 was the Reformation that first steeled the powe^of 
 hierarchy. If Bruno Bauer thinks: f " As the Re- 
 formation was mainly the abstract rending of the re- 
 ligious principle from art, State, and science, and so 
 its liberation from those powers with which it had 
 joined itself in the antiquity of the church and in the 
 hierarchy of the Middle Ages, so too the theological 
 and ecclesiastical movements which proceeded from the 
 
 * [Goethe, " Faust."] t " Anekdola," II, 152.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 109 
 
 Reformation are only the consistent carrying out of 
 this abstraction of the religious principle from the 
 other powers of humanity," I regard precisely the op- 
 posite as correct, and think that the dominion of 
 spirits, or freedom of mind (which comes to the same 
 thing), was never before so all-embracing and all- 
 powerful, because the present one, instead of rending 
 the religious principle from art, State, and science, 
 lifted the latter altogether out of secularity into the 
 " realm of spirit " and made them religious. 
 
 Luther and Descartes have been appropriately put 
 side by side in their " He who believes is a God " and 
 " I think, therefore I am " (cogito, ergo sum). Man's 
 heaven is thought, mind. Everything can be 
 wrested from him, except thought, except faith. 
 Particular faith, like faith in Zeus, Astarte, Jehovah, 
 Allah, etc., may be destroyed, but faith itself is in- 
 destructible. In thought is freedom. What I need 
 and what I hunger for is no longer granted to me by 
 any grace, by the Virgin Mary, by intercession of the 
 saints, or by the binding and loosing church, but I 
 procure it for myself. In short, my being (the sum) 
 is a livthg in the heaven of thought, of mind, a 
 cogitare. But I myself am nothing else than mind, 
 thinking mind (according to Descartes), believing 
 mind (according to Luther). My body I am not; 
 my flesh may suffer from appetites or pains. I am 
 not my flesh, but 7 am miiid, only mind. 
 
 This thought runs through the history of the Re- 
 formation till to-day. 
 
 Only by the more modern philosophy since 
 Descartes has a serious effort been made to bring
 
 110 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Christianity to complete efficacy, by exalting the 
 " scientific consciousness " to be the only true and 
 valid one. Hence it begins with absolute doubt, du- 
 bitare, with grinding common consciousness to atoms, 
 with turning away from everything that "mind," 
 " thought," does not legitimate. To it Nature counts 
 for nothing; the opinion of men, their " human pre- 
 cepts," for nothing: and it does not rest till it has 
 brought reason into everything, and can say " The 
 real is the rational, and only the rational is the real." 
 Thus it has at last brought mind, reason, to victory; 
 and everything is mind, because everything is rational, 
 because all nature, as well as even the perversest opin- 
 ions of men, contains reason; for " all must serve for 
 the best," i. e, lead to the victory of reason. 
 
 Descartes's dubitare contains the decided statement 
 that only cogitare, thought, mind, is. A complete 
 break with " common " consciousness, which ascribes 
 reality to irrational things ! Only the rational is, 
 only mind is ! This is the principle of modern phil- 
 osophy, the genuine Christian principle. Descartes in 
 his own time discriminated the body sharply from the 
 mind, and "the spirit 'tis that builds itself thedbody," 
 says Goethe. 
 
 But this philosophy itself, Christian philosophy, still 
 docs not get rid of the rational, and therefore inveighs 
 against the " merely subjective," against " fancies, 
 fortuities, arbitrariness," etc. What it wants is that 
 the diiine should become visible in everything, and all 
 consciousness become a knowing of the divine, and 
 man behold God everywhere; but God never is, with- 
 out the devil.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 111 
 
 For this very reason the name of philosopher is not 
 to be given to him who has indeed open eyes for the 
 things of the world, a clear and undazzled gaze, a cor- 
 rect judgment about the world, but who sees in the 
 world just the world, in objects only objects, and, in 
 short, everything prosaically as it is; but he alone is a 
 philosopher who sees, and points out or demonstrates, 
 heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly, the 
 divine in the mundane. The former may be ever so 
 wise, there is no getting away from this: 
 
 What wise men see not by their wisdom's art 
 Is practised simply by a childlike heart.* 
 
 It takes this childlike heart, this eye for the divine, to 
 make a philosopher. The first-named man has only a 
 " common " consciousness, but he who knows the 
 divine, and knows how to tell it, has a " scientific " 
 one. On this ground Bacon was turned out of the 
 realm of philosophers. And certainly what is called 
 English philosophy seems to have got no further than 
 to the discoveries of so-called " clear heads," such as 
 Bacon and Hume. The English did not know how to 
 exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to philo- 
 sophic significance, did not know how to make phil- 
 osophers out of childlike hearts. This is as much as 
 to say, their philosophy was not able to become theo- 
 logical or theology, and yet it is only as theology that 
 it can really live itself out, complete itself. The field 
 of its battle to the death is in theology. Bacon did 
 not trouble himself about theological questions and 
 cardinal points. 
 
 * [Schiller, " Die Worte des Cflaubens."]
 
 112 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Cognition has its object in life. German thought 
 seeks, more than that of others, to reach the begin- 
 nings and fountain-heads of life, and sees no life till it 
 sees it in cognition itself. Descartes's cogito, ergo 
 sum has the meaning " One lives only when one 
 thinks." Thinking life is called " intellectual life " ! 
 Only mind lives, its life is the true life. Then, just so 
 in nature only the " eternal laws," the mind or the 
 reason of nature, are its true life. In man, as in na- 
 ture, only the thought lives; everything else is dead ! 
 To this abstraction, to the life of generalities or of 
 that which is lifeless, the history of mind had to come. 
 God, who is spirit, alone lives. Nothing lives but the 
 ghost. 
 
 How can one try to assert of modern philosophy or 
 modern times that they have reached freedom, since 
 they have not freed us from the power of objectivity ? 
 Or am I perhaps free from a despot when I am not 
 afraid of the personal potentate, to be sure, but of 
 every infraction of the loving reverence which I fancy 
 I owe him ? The case is the same with modern times. 
 They only changed the existing objects, the real ruler 
 etc., into conceived objects, i. e. into ideas, before 
 which the old respect not only was not lost, but in- 
 creased in intensity. Even if people snapped their fin 
 gers at God and the devil in their former crass reality 
 people devoted only the greater attention to their 
 ideas. " They are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."* 
 The decision having once been made not to let oneself 
 be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable, 
 
 * I Parodied from the words of Mepliistopheles in the witch's kitchen in 
 Faust."]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 113 
 
 little scruple was felt about revolting against the exist- 
 ing State or overturning the existing laws; but to sin 
 against the idea of the State, not to submit to the idea 
 of law, who would have dared that ? So one re- 
 mained a " citizen " and a " law-respecting," loyal 
 man; yes, one seemed to himself to be only so much 
 more law-respecting, the more rationalistically one 
 abrogated the former defective law in order to do hom- 
 age to the " spirit of the law." In all this the objects 
 had only suffered a change of form ; they had re- 
 mained in their prepollence and pre-eminence; in 
 short, one was still involved in obedience and pos- 
 sessedness, lived in reflection, and had an object on 
 which one reflected, which one respected, and before 
 which one felt reverence and fear. One had done no- 
 thing but transform the things into conceptions of the 
 things, into thoughts and ideas, whereby one's depend- 
 ence became all the more intimate and indissoluble. 
 So, e. g., it is not hard to emancipate oneself from the 
 commands of parents, or to set aside the admonitions 
 of uncle and aunt, the entreaties of brother and sister; 
 but the renounced obedience easily gets into one's con- 
 science, and the less one does give way to the individ- 
 ual demands, because he rationalistically, by his own 
 reason, recognizes them to be unreasonable, so much 
 the more conscientiously does he hold fast to filial 
 piety and family love, and so much the harder is it for 
 him to forgive himself a trespass against the conception 
 which he has formed of family love and of filial duty. 
 Released from dependence as regards the existing 
 family, one falls into the more binding dependence on 
 the idea of the family; one is ruled by the spirit of
 
 114 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the family. The family consisting of John, Maggie, 
 etc., whose dominion has become powerless, is only 
 internalized, being left as " family" in general, to 
 which one just applies the old saying, " We must obey 
 God rather than man," whose significance here is 
 this : " I cannot, to be sure, accommodate myself to 
 your senseless requirements, but, as my ' family,' you 
 still remain the object of my love and care " ; for " the 
 family " is a sacred idea, which the individual must 
 never offend against. And this family internalized 
 and desensualized into a thought, a conception, now 
 ranks as the " sacred," whose despotism is tenfold more 
 grievous because it makes a racket in my conscience. 
 This despotism is broken only when the conception, 
 family, also becomes a nothing to me. The Christian 
 dicta, " Woman, what have I to do with thee ?"* " I 
 am come to stir up a man against his father, and a 
 daughter against her mother," f and others, are accom- 
 panied by something that refers us to the heavenly or 
 true family, and mean no more than the State's de- 
 mand, in case of a collision between it and the family, 
 that we obey its commands. 
 
 The case of morality is like that of the family. 
 Many a man renounces morals, but with great diffi- 
 culty the conception, " morality." Morality is the 
 " idea " of morals, their intellectual power, their power 
 over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are 
 too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an 
 " intellectual " man, a so-called independent, a 
 " freethinker." 
 
 t Matt. 10. 35.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 115 
 
 The Protestant may put it as he will, the " holy * 
 Scripture," the " Word of God," still remains sacredf 
 for him. He for whom this is no longer " holy " has 
 ceased to be a Protestant. But herewith what is 
 " ordained " in it, the public authorities appointed by 
 God, etc., also remain sacred for him. For him these 
 things remain indissoluble, unapproachable, " raised 
 above all doubt " ; and, as doubt, which in practice 
 becomes a buffeting, is what is most man's own, these 
 things remain " raised " above himself. He who can- 
 not get away from them will believe ; for to believe 
 in them is to be bound to them. Through the fact 
 that in Protestantism the faith became a more inward 
 faith, the servitude has also become a more inward 
 servitude; one has taken those sanctities up into him- 
 self, entwined them with all his thoughts and en- 
 deavors, made them a '* matter of conscience," con- 
 structed out of them a "sacred duty' 1 '' for himself. 
 Therefore what the Protestant's conscience cannot get 
 away from is sacred to him, and conscientiousness most 
 clearly designates his character. 
 
 Protestantism has actually put a man in the posi- 
 tion of a country governed by secret police. The spy 
 and eavesdropper, " conscience," watches over every 
 motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for 
 it a " matter of conscience," i. e. police business. 
 This tearing apart of man into " natural impulse " 
 and " conscience " (inner populace and inner police) 
 is what constitutes the Protestant. The reason of the 
 Bible (in place of the Catholic " reason of the 
 
 Iheiliff] \[heilig]
 
 116 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 church ") ranks as sacred, and this feeling and con- 
 sciousness that the word of the Bible is sacred is called 
 conscience. With this, then, sacredness is " laid 
 upon one's conscience." If one does not free himself 
 from conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he 
 may act unconscientiously indeed, but never 
 consciencelessly. 
 
 The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfils 
 the command ; the Protestant acts according to his 
 " best judgment and conscience." For the Catholic is 
 only a layman; the Protestant is himself a clergyman.* 
 Just this is the progress of the Reformation period 
 beyond the Middle Ages, and at the same time its 
 curse, that the spiritual became complete. 
 
 What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a 
 continuation of the sale of indulgences ? only that the 
 .man who was relieved of his burden of sin now gained 
 also an insight into the remission of sins, and con- 
 vinced himself how really his sin was taken from him, 
 since in this or that particular case (Casuists) it was 
 so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale 
 of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions 
 permissible, and silenced every movement of con- 
 science. All sensuality might hold sway, if it was 
 only purchased from the church. This favoring of 
 sensuality was continued by the Jesuits, while the 
 strictly moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite, 
 praying Protestants (as the true completers of Chris- 
 tianity, to be sure) acknowledged only the intellectual 
 and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially the 
 
 * [Geistlicher, literally " spiritual man."]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 117 
 
 Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involun- 
 tary and unconscious adherents within Protestantism 
 itself, and saved us from the subversion and extinction 
 of sensuality. Nevertheless the Protestant spirit 
 spreads its dominion farther and farther; and, as, 
 beside it the " divine," the Jesuit spirit represents 
 only the " diabolic " which is inseparable from every- 
 thing divine, the latter can never assert itself alone, 
 but must look on and see how in France, e. g., the 
 Philistinism of Protestantism wins at last, and mind is 
 on top. 
 
 Protestantism is usually complimented on having 
 brought the mundane into repute again, e. g. mar- 
 riage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mun- 
 dane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to 
 Catholicism, which lets the profane world stand, yes, 
 and relishes its pleasures, while the rational, consist- 
 ent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane 
 altogether, and that simply by hallowing it. So mar- 
 riage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming 
 sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament, 
 where it only receives its consecration from the church 
 and so is unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being 
 something sacred in itself to begin with, a sacred re- 
 lation. Just so the State, etc. Formerly the pope 
 gave consecration and his blessing to it and its prin- 
 ces; now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty is 
 sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The or- 
 der of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed 
 as " God's ordinance." Hence it is said e. g. in the 
 Augsburg Confession, Art. 11: "So now we reason- 
 ably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have
 
 118 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 wisely and rightly said : that man and woman should 
 be with each other is a natural law. Now, if it is a 
 natural law, then it is God's ordinance, therefore im- 
 planted in nature, and therefore a divine law also." 
 And is it anything more than Protestantism brought 
 up to date, when Feuerbach pronounces moral rela- 
 tions sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, in- 
 stead, for the sake of the spirit that dwells in them ? 
 " But marriage as a free alliance of love, of course 
 is sacred of itself, by the nature of the union that is 
 formed here. That marriage alone is a religious one 
 that is a true one, that corresponds to the essence of 
 marriage, love. And so it is with all moral relations. 
 They are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, 
 only where they rank as religious of themselves. 
 True friendship is only where the limits of friendship 
 are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the 
 same conscientiousness with which the believer guards 
 the dignity of his God. Friendship is and must be 
 sacred for you, and property, and marriage, and the 
 good of every man, but sacred in and of itself."* 
 
 That is a very essential consideration. In Cathol- 
 icism the mundane can indeed be consecrated or hal- 
 lowed, but it is not sacred without this priestly bless- 
 ing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane rela- 
 tions are sacred of themselves, sacred by their mere 
 existence. The Jesuit maxim, " the end hallows the 
 means," corresponds precisely to the consecration by 
 which sanctity is bestowed. No means are holy or un- 
 holy in themselves, but their relation to the church, 
 
 *" Essence of Christianity," p. 403.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 119 
 
 their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide 
 \v;is named as such; if it was committed for the 
 church's behoof, it could be certain of being hallowed 
 by the church, even if the hallowing was not openly 
 pronounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as 
 sacred; to the Catholic only that majesty which is 
 consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and it 
 does rank as such to him only because the pope, even 
 though it be without a special act, confers this sacred- 
 ness on it once for all. If he retracted his consecra- 
 tion, the king would be left only a " man of the world 
 or layman," an " unconsecrated " man, to the 
 Catholic. 
 
 If the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in 
 the sensual itself, that he may then be linked only to 
 what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to banish the 
 sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, 
 like the rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The 
 Catholic church eliminated mundane marriage from its 
 consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its 
 own from the mundane family; the Protestant church 
 declared marriage and family ties to be holy, and 
 therefore not unsuitable for its clergymen. 
 
 A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic, hallow every- 
 thing. He needs only e. g. to say to himself : " I as 
 a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it more 
 zealously when I appease my desires properly; conse- 
 quently I will seduce this girl, have my enemy there 
 poisoned, etc. ; my end is holy because it is a priest's, 
 consequently it hallows the means." For in the end 
 it is still done for the benefit of the church. Why 
 should the Catholic priest shrink from handing Em-
 
 120 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 peror Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the church's 
 welfare ? 
 
 The genuinely churchly Protestants inveighed 
 against every " innocent pleasure," because only the 
 sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent. What they 
 could not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants 
 had to reject, dancing, the theatre, ostentation (e. g. 
 in the church), and the like. 
 
 Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Luther- 
 anism is again more on the religious, i. e. spiritual, 
 track, is more radical. For the former excludes at 
 once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, 
 and purifies the church; Lutheranism, on the con- 
 trary, tries to bring spirit into all things as far as pos- 
 sible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in 
 everything, and so to hallow everything worldly. 
 (" No one can forbid a kiss in honor." The spirit of 
 honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran 
 Hegel (he declares himself such in some passage or 
 other : he " wants to remain a Lutheran ") was com- 
 pletely successful in carrying the idea through every- 
 thing. In everything there is reason, i. e. holy spirit, 
 or " the real is rational." For the real is in fact 
 everything, as in each thing, e. g. each lie, the truth 
 can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute 
 evil, and the like. 
 
 Great " works of mind " were created almost solely 
 by Protestants, as they alone were the true disciples 
 and consummators of mind. 
 
 How little man is able to control ! He must let 
 the sun run its course, the sea roll its waves, the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 121 
 
 mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless 
 before the uncontrollable. Can he keep off the im- 
 pression that he is helpless against this gigantic world? 
 It is a fixed law to which he must submit, it deter- 
 mines his fate. Now, what did pre-Christian human- 
 ity work toward ? Toward getting rid of the irrup- 
 tions of the destinies, not letting oneself be vexed by 
 them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring 
 the attacks of nature indifferent, and not letting them- 
 selves be affected by them. Horace utters the famous 
 Nil admirari, by which he likewise announces the in- 
 difference of the other, the world ; it is not to influence 
 us, not to arouse our astonishment. And that 
 impavidurnfericnt r ulnae expresses the very same im- 
 perturbability as Ps. 46. 3: " We do not fear, though 
 the earth should perish." In all this there is room 
 made for the Christian proposition that the world is 
 empty, for the Christian contempt of the world. 
 
 The imperturbable spirit of " the wise man," with 
 which the old world worked to prepare its end, now 
 underwent an inner perturbation against which no 
 ataraxy, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. 
 The spirit, secured against all influence of the world, 
 insensible to its shocks and exalted above its attacks, 
 admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any 
 downfall of the world, foamed over irrepressibly 
 again, because gases (spirits) were evolved in its own 
 interior, and, after the mechanical shock that comes 
 from without had become ineffective, chemical tensions, 
 that agitate within, began their wonderful play. 
 
 In fact, ancient history ends with this, that / have 
 struggled till I won my ownership of the world.
 
 122 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 " All things have been delivered to me by my 
 Father" (Matt. 11. 27). It has ceased to be over- 
 powering, unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc., for 
 me; it is undeified, and now I treat it so entirely as I 
 please that, if I cared, I could exert on it all miracle- 
 working power, L e. power of mind, remove moun- 
 tains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves up 
 and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17. 6), 
 and do everything possible, i. e. thinkable : "All 
 things are possible to him who believes."* I am the 
 lord of the world, mine is the " glory. ,"f The world 
 has become prosaic, for the divine has vanished from 
 it: it is my property, which I dispose of as I (to wit, 
 the mind) choose. 
 
 When I had exalted myself to be the owner of the 
 world, egoism had won its first complete victory, had 
 vanquished the world, had become worldless, and put 
 the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key. 
 
 The first property, the first " glory," has been 
 acquired ! 
 
 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 mediaeval 
 (Christian) struggle is a struggle against self, the 
 mind; the former against the outer world, the latter 
 against the inner world. The mediaeval man is the 
 
 * Mark 9. 23. 
 
 t [Herrlichkeit, which, according to its derivation, means "lordliness."]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 123 
 
 man "whose gaze is. turned inward," the thinking, 
 meditative man. 
 
 All wisdom of the ancients is the science of the 
 rc'orW, all wisdom of the moderns is the science of God. 
 
 The heathen (Jews included) got through with the 
 icorld ; 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 work- 
 ing 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 human- 
 ity, 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. How- 
 ever, 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 hu- 
 man, 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 dif- 
 ferent 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
 
 124 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 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 be- 
 came 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 van- 
 quished 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 overpower- 
 ingness and " divinity," recognized the world's power- 
 lessness 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 re- 
 lationship," is to guide me in dealing with the case or 
 in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 125 
 
 case existed on its own account, and was not rather 
 the concept that one forms of the case ! As if a rela- 
 tion which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness of 
 those who enter into it, itself unique ! As if it de- 
 pended on how others stamp it ! But, as people sep- 
 arated 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 dog- 
 matic. 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 Juda- 
 ism's dominion of law tighter ? (" Not a" letter of 
 the law shall be lost ! ") 
 
 Liberalism simply brought other concepts on the 
 carpet, tiz., human instead of divine, political in- 
 stead of ecclesiastical, " scientific " instead of doctrinal, 
 or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws in- 
 stead of " crude dogmas " and precepts. 
 
 Now nothing but mind rules in the world. An in- 
 numerable multitude of concepts buzz about in peo- 
 ple's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor to 
 get further ? They are negating these concepts to put 
 new ones in their place ! They are saying: " You 
 form a false concept of right, of the State, of man, of 
 liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc. ; the concept of
 
 126 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 right, etc., is rather that one which we now set up.*" 
 Thus the confusion of concepts moves forward. 
 
 The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us, 
 and the spirit has obtained an almighty power. You 
 must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could 
 protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your pota- 
 toes would become palatable, and my state-carriage, 
 whose possession would relieve you of all need at 
 once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to 
 recognize the independence of all these and innumer- 
 able other things : they are to rank in his mind as 
 something that cannot be seized or approached, are to 
 be kept away from him. He must have regard 
 for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches out his 
 fingers desirously; we call that "being light- 
 fingered!" 
 
 How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really 
 nothing ! Everything has been removed, we must 
 not venture on anything unless it is given us; we con- 
 tinue to live only by the grace of the giver. You 
 must not pick up a pin, unless indeed you have got 
 leave to do so. And got it from whom ? From 
 respect ! Only when this lets you have it as property, 
 only when you can respect it as property, only then 
 may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive 
 a thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that 
 should have their warrant in you alone, instead of re- 
 ceiving it from morality or reason or humanity. 
 Happy unconstraint of the desirous man, how merci- 
 lessly people have tried to slay you on the altar of 
 constraint ! 
 
 But around the altar rise the arches of a church,
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 127 
 
 and its walls keep moving further and further out. 
 What they enclose is sacred. You can no longer 
 get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hun- 
 ger that devours you, you wander round about these 
 walls in search of the little that is profane, and the 
 circles of your course keep growing more and more ex- 
 tended. Soon that church will embrace the whole 
 world, and you be driven out to the extreme edge; 
 another step, and the world of the sacred has con- 
 quered: you sink into the abyss. Therefore take 
 courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer 
 in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the 
 leap, and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary 
 itself. If you devour the sacred, you have made it 
 your own! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you 
 are rid of it ! 
 
 III. THE FREE 
 
 The ancients and the moderns having been pre- 
 sented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the 
 free were here to be described in a third division as in- 
 dependent and distinct. This is not so. The free are 
 only the more modern and most modern among the 
 " moderns," and are put in a separate division merely 
 because they belong to the present, and what is 
 present, above all, claims our attention here. I give 
 " the free " only as a translation of " the liberals," but 
 must with regard to the concept of freedom (as in 
 general with regard to so many other things whose 
 anticipatory introduction cannot be avoided) refer to 
 what comes later.
 
 128 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 1. POLITICAL LIBERALISM 
 
 After the chalice of so-called absolute monarchy had 
 been drained down to the dregs, in the eighteenth 
 century people became aware that their drink did not 
 taste human too clearly aware not to begin to crave 
 a different cup. Since our fathers were "human 
 beings" after all, they at last desired also to be 
 regarded as such. 
 
 Whoever sees in us something else than human 
 beings, in him we likewise will not see a human being, 
 but an inhuman being, and will meet him as an un- 
 human being; on the other hand, whoever recognizes 
 us as human beings and protects us against the danger 
 of being treated inhumanly, him we will honor as our 
 true protector and guardian. 
 
 Let us then hold together and protect the man in 
 each other; then we find the necessary protection in 
 our holding together, and in ourselves, those who hold 
 together, a fellowship of those who know their human 
 dignity and hold together as " human beings." Our 
 holding together is the State ; we who hold together 
 are the nation. 
 
 In our being together as nation or State we are 
 only human beings. How we deport ourselves in 
 other respects as individuals, and what self-seeking im- 
 pulses we may there succumb to, belongs solely 
 to our private life; our public or State life is a purely 
 human one. Everything un-human or " egoistic " 
 that clings to us is degraded to a " private matter " 
 and we distinguish the State definitely from " civil 
 society," which is the sphere of " egoism's " activity.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 129 
 
 The true man is the nation, but the individual is 
 always an egoist. Therefore strip off your individ- 
 uality or isolation wherein dwells discord and egoistic 
 inequality, and consecrate yourselves wholly to the 
 true man, the nation or the State. Then you will 
 rank as men, and have all that is man's; the State, 
 the true man, will entitle you to what belongs to it, 
 and give you the " rights of man " ; Man gives you 
 his rights ! 
 
 So runs the speech of the commonalty. 
 
 The commonalty* is nothing else than the thought 
 that the State is all in all, the true man, and that the 
 individual's human value consists in being a citizen of 
 the State. In being a good citizen he seeks his high- 
 est honor; beyond that he knows nothing higher 
 than at most the antiquated "being a good 
 Christian." 
 
 The commonalty developed itself in the struggle 
 against the privileged classes, by whom it was cav- 
 alierly treated as " third estate " and confounded with 
 the canaille. In other words, up to this time the State 
 had recognized caste.f The son of a nobleman was 
 selected for posts to which the most distinguished 
 commoners aspired in vain, etc. The civic feeling 
 revolted against this. No more distinction, no giving 
 preference to persons, no difference of classes ! Let 
 all be alike ! No separate interest is to be pursued 
 longer, but the general interest of all. The State is 
 
 * [Or "citizenhood." The word (das Bwrgertum) means either the con- 
 dition of being a citizen, or citizen-like principles, or the body of citizens or 
 of the middle or business class, the bourgeoisie.] 
 
 t [Man hatte im Staate " die ungleiche Person angesehen, " there had 
 been " respect of unequal persons " in the State.]
 
 130 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 to be a fellowship of free and equal men, and every 
 one is to devote himself to the " welfare of the whole," 
 to be dissolved in the State, to make the State his end 
 and ideal. State! State! so ran the general cry, 
 and thenceforth people sought for the " right form of 
 State," the best constitution, and so the State in its 
 best conception. The thought of the State passed 
 into all hearts and awakened enthusiasm; to serve it, 
 this mundane god, became the new divine service and 
 worship. The properly political epoch had dawned. 
 To serve the State or the nation became the highest 
 ideal, the State's interest the highest interest, State 
 service (for which one does not by any means need to 
 be an official) the highest honor. 
 
 So then the separate interests and personalities had 
 been scared away, and sacrifice for the State had be- 
 come the shibboleth. One must give up himself, and 
 live only for the State. One must act " disinterest- 
 edly," not want to benefit himself, but the State. 
 Hereby the latter has become the true person, before 
 whom the individual personality vanishes; not I live, 
 but it lives in me. Therefore, in comparison with the 
 former self-seeking, this was unselfishness and imper- 
 sonality itself. Before this god State all egoism 
 vanished, and before it all were equal; they were 
 without any other distinction men, nothing but men. 
 
 The Revolution took fire from the inflammable ma- 
 terial of property. The government needed money. 
 Now it must prove the proposition that it is absolute, 
 and so master of all property, sole proprietor; it must 
 take to itself its money, which was only in the posses- 
 sion of the subjects, not their property. Instead of
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 131 
 
 this, it calls States-general, to have this money 
 granted to it. The shrinking from strictly logical 
 action destroyed the illusion of an absolute govern- 
 ment; he who must have something " granted " to him 
 cannot be regarded as absolute. The subjects recog- 
 nized that they were real proprietors, and that it was 
 their money that was demanded. Those who had 
 hitherto been subjects attained the consciousness that 
 they were proprietors. Bailly depicts this in a few 
 words: " If you cannot dispose of my property without 
 my assent, how much less can you of my person, of all 
 that concerns my mental and social position? All 
 this is my property, like the piece of land that I till; 
 and I have a right, an interest, to make the laws my- 
 self." Bailly's words sound, certainly, as if every one 
 was a proprietor now. However, instead of the gov- 
 ernment, instead of the prince, the nation now be- 
 came proprietor and master. From this time on the 
 ideal is spoken of as " popular liberty " " a free 
 people," etc. 
 
 As early as July 8, 1789, the declaration of the 
 bishop of Autun and Barrere took away all semblance 
 of the importance of each and every individual in leg- 
 islation ; it showed the complete powerlessness of the 
 constituents; the majority of the representatives has 
 become matter. When on July 9 the plan for divi- 
 sion cf the work on the constitution is proposed, Mira- 
 beau remarks that " the government has only power, 
 no rights; only in the people is the source of all right 
 to be found." On July 16 this same Mirabeau ex- 
 claims: " Is not the people the source of all power? " 
 The source, therefore, of all right, and the source of
 
 132 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 all power ! * By the way, here the substance of 
 "right" becomes visible; it is power. " He who 
 has power has right." 
 
 The commonalty is the heir of the privileged classes. 
 In fact, the rights of the barons, which were taken 
 from them as " usurpations," only passed over to the 
 commonalty. For the commonalty was now called the 
 " nation." " Into the hands of the nation " all pre- 
 rogatives were given back. Thereby they ceased to 
 be " prerogatives " : f they became " rights. "J From 
 this time on the nation demands tithes, compulsory 
 services; it has inherited the lord's court, the rights 
 of vert and venison, the serfs. The night of August 
 4 was the death-night of privileges or " prerogatives " 
 (cities, communes, boards of magistrates, were also 
 privileged, furnished with prerogatives and seigniorial 
 rights), and ended with the new morning of " right," 
 the " rights of the State," the " fights of the nation." 
 
 The monarch in the person of the " royal master " 
 had been a paltry monarch compared with this new 
 monarch, the " sovereign nation." This monarchy 
 was a thousand times severer, stricter, and more con- 
 sistent. Against the new monarch there was no 
 longer any right, any privilege at all; how limited 
 the " absolute king " of the anden regime looks in 
 comparison! The Revolution effected the transforma- 
 tion of limited monarchy into absolute monarchy. 
 From this time on every right that is not conferred by 
 this monarch is an " assumption "; but every prerog- 
 
 * [Geicalt, a word which is also commonly used like the English " vio- 
 lence," denoting especially unlawful violence.] 
 
 HVorrechte] %[Rechte]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 133 
 
 ative that he bestows, a " right." The times de- . 
 manded absolute royalty, absolute monarchy; there- 
 fore down fell that so-called absolute royalty which 
 had so little understood how to become absolute that 
 it remained limited by a thousand little lords. 
 
 What was longed for and striven for through thou- 
 sands of years, to wit, to find that absolute lord be- 
 side whom no other lords and lordlings any longer ex- 
 ist to clip his power. the bourgeoisie has brought to 
 pass. It has revealed the Lord who alone confers 
 " rightful titles," and without whose warrant nothing 
 is justified. " So now, we know that an idol is noth- 
 ing in the world, and that there is no other god save 
 the one."* 
 
 Against right one can no longer, as against a right, 
 come forward with the assertion that it is "a wrong." 
 One can say now only that it is a piece of nonsense, an 
 illusion. If one called it wrong, one would have to 
 set up another right in opposition to it, and measure 
 it by this. If, on the contrary, one rejects right as 
 such, right in and of itself, altogether, then one also 
 rejects the concept of wrong, and dissolves the whole 
 concept of right (to which the concept of wrong be- 
 longs). 
 
 What is the meaning of the doctrine that we all en- 
 joy " equality of political rights " ? Only this, 
 that the State has no regard for my person, that to it 
 I, like every other, am only a man, without having 
 another significance that commands its deference. 
 I do not command its deference as an aristocrat, a 
 
 * 1 Corinthians 8. 4.
 
 134 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 nobleman's son, or even as heir of an official whose 
 office belongs to me by inheritance (as in the Middle 
 Ages countships, etc., and later under absolute royalty, 
 where hereditary offices occur). Now the State has an 
 innumerable multitude of rights to give away, e. g. 
 the right to lead a battalion, a company, etc.; the 
 right to lecture at a university; and so forth; it has 
 them to give away because they are its own, i. e. 
 State rights or " political " rights. Withal, it makes 
 no difference to it to whom it gives them, if the re- 
 ceiver only fulfils the duties that spring from the dele- 
 gated rights. To it we are all of us all right, and 
 equal, one worth no more and no less than another. 
 It is indifferent to me who receives the command of the 
 army, says the sovereign State, provided the grantee 
 understands the matter properly. " Equality of polit- 
 ical rights " has, consequently, the meaning that every 
 one may acquire every right that the State has to give 
 away, if only he fulfils the conditions annexed there- 
 to, conditions which are to be sought only in the na- 
 ture of the particular right, not in a predilection for 
 the person (persona grata) : the nature of the right to 
 become an officer brings with it, e. g-., the necessity 
 that one possess sound limbs and a suitable measure of 
 knowledge, but it does not have noble birth as a con- 
 dition; if, on the other hand, even the most deserving 
 commoner could not reach that station, then an in- 
 equality of political rights would exist. Among the 
 States of to-day one has carried out that maxim of 
 equality more, another less. 
 
 The monarchy of estates (so I will call absolute roy- 
 alty, the time of the kings before the revolution) kept
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 135 
 
 the individual in dependence on a lot of little mon- 
 archies. These were fellowships (societies) like the 
 guilds, the nobility, the priesthood, the burgher class, 
 cities, communes, etc; Everywhere the individual 
 must regard himself first as a member of this little so- 
 ciety, and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit, 
 the esprit tie corps, as his monarch. More, e. g., 
 than the individual nobleman himself must his family, 
 the honor of his race, be to him. Only by means of 
 his corporation, his estate, did the individual have re- 
 lation to the greater corporation, the State, as in 
 Catholicism the individual deals with God only 
 through the priest. To this the third estate now, 
 showing courage to negate itself as an estate, made an 
 end. It decided no longer to be and be called an es- 
 tate beside other estates, but to glorify and generalize 
 itself into the " nation." Hereby it created a much 
 more complete and absolute monarchy, and the entire 
 previously ruling principle of estates, the principle of 
 little monarchies inside the great, went down. There- 
 fore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a revo- 
 lution against the first two privileged estates: it was 
 against the little monarchies of estates in general. 
 But, if the estates and their despotism were broken (the 
 king too, we know, was only a king of estates, not a 
 citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality 
 of estate were left. Were they now really to be with- 
 out estate and " out of gear," no longer bound by any 
 estate, without a general bond of union ? No, for 
 the third estate had declared itself the nation 
 only in order not to remain an estate beside other es- 
 tates, but to become the sole estate. This sole estate
 
 136 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 is the nation, the "State" What had the indi- 
 vidual now become ? A political Protestant, for 
 he had come into immediate connection with his God, 
 the State. He was no longer, as an aristocrat, in the 
 monarchy of the nobility; as a mechanic, in the mon- 
 archy of the guild ; but he, like all, recognized and 
 acknowledged only one lord, the State, as whose ser- 
 vants they all received the equal title of honor, 
 " citizen." 
 
 The bourgeoisie is the aristocracy of DESERT; its 
 motto, " Let desert wear its crowns." It fought 
 against the " lazy " aristocracy, for according to it 
 (the industrious aristocracy acquired by industry and 
 desert) it is not the " born " who is free, nor yet I who 
 am free either, but the " deserving " man, the honest 
 servant (of his king; of the State; of the people in 
 constitutional States). Through service one acquires 
 freedom, i. e. acquires " deserts," even if one served 
 mammon. One must deserve well of the State, i. e. 
 of the principle of the State, of its moral spirit. He 
 who serves this spirit of the State is a good citizen, let 
 him live to whatever honest branch of industry he 
 will. In its eyes innovators practise a " breadless 
 art." Only the "shopkeeper" is "practical," and the 
 spirit that chases after public offices is as much the 
 shopkeeping spirit as is that which tries in trade to 
 feather its nest or otherwise to become useful to itself 
 and anybody else. 
 
 But, if the deserving count as the free (for what 
 does the comfortable commoner, the faithful office- 
 holder, lack of that freedom that his heart desires ?), 
 then the " servants " are the free. The obedient
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 137 
 
 servant is the free man ! What glaring nonsense ! 
 Yet this is the sense of the bourgeoisie, and its poet, 
 Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in 
 glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, 
 obedience to the objective world, etc. He who only 
 serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to it," has 
 the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was 
 reason, that which, like State and Church, gives 
 general laws, and puts the individual man in irons by 
 the thought of humanity. It determines what is 
 " true," according to which one must then act. No 
 more " rational " people than the honest servants, who 
 primarily are called good citizens as servants of the 
 State. 
 
 Be rich as Crcesus or poor as Job the State of the 
 commonalty leaves that to your option ; but only have 
 a " good disposition." This it demands of you, and 
 counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all. 
 Therefore it will keep you from " evil promptings," 
 holding the "ill-disposed " in check and silencing 
 their inflammatory discourses under censors' cancel- 
 ling-marks or press-penalties and behind dungeon 
 walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint people of 
 " good disposition " as censors, and in every way have 
 a moral influence exerted on you by " well-disposed 
 and well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf 
 to evil promptings, then it opens your ears again all 
 the more diligently to good promptings.- 
 
 With the time of the bourgeoisie begins that of lib- 
 eralism. People want to see what is "rational," 
 " suited to the times," etc., established everywhere. 
 The following definition of liberalism, which is sup-
 
 139 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 posed to be pronounced in its honor, characterizes it 
 completely: " Liberalism is nothing else than the 
 knowledge of reason, applied to our existing rela- 
 tions."* Its aim is a "rational order," a " moral be- 
 havior," a " limited freedom," not anarchy, lawless- 
 ness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then the person 
 succumbs. Art has for a long time not only acknowl- 
 edged the ugly, but considered the ugly as necessary 
 to its existence, and taken it up into itself; it needs 
 the villain, etc. In the religious domain, too, the ex- 
 tremest liberals go so far that they want to see the 
 most religious man regarded as a citizen i. e. the 
 religious villain ; they want to see no more of trials 
 for heresy. But against the " rational law " no one is 
 to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest 
 penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and 
 realization of the person or of me, but of reason, L e. 
 a dominion of reason, a dominion. The liberals are 
 zealots, not exactly for the faith, for God, etc., but 
 certainly for reason, their master. They brook no 
 lack of breeding, and therefore no self-development 
 and self-determination ; they play the guardian as 
 effectively as the most absolute rulers. 
 
 " Political liberty," what are we to understand by 
 that? Perhaps the individual's independence of the 
 State and its laws? No ; on the contrary, the individ- 
 ual's subjection in the State and to the State's laws. 
 But why " liberty "? Because one is no longer sep- 
 arated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in 
 direct and immediate relation to it; because one is 
 
 * " Ein und zwanzig Bogen," p. 12.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 139 . 
 
 a citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the 
 king as a person, but only in his quality as " su- 
 preme head of the State." Political liberty, this fun- 
 damental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a sec- 
 ond phase of Protestantism, and runs quite parallel 
 with " religious liberty."* Or would it perhaps be 
 right to understand by the latter an independence of 
 religion? Anything but that. Independence of 
 intermediaries is all that it is intended to express, in- 
 dependence of mediating priests, the abolition of the 
 " laity," and so direct and immediate relation to re- 
 ligion or to God. Only on the supposition that one 
 has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion ; free- 
 dom of religion does not mean being without religion, 
 but inwardness of faith, unmediated intercourse with 
 God. To him who is " religiously free" religion is an 
 affair of the heart, it is to him his own affair, it is to 
 him a "sacredly serious matter." So, too, to the 
 " politically free " man the State is a sacredly serious 
 matter; it is his heart's affair, his chief affair, his own 
 affair. 
 
 Political liberty means that the polls, the State, is 
 free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as free- 
 dom of conscience signifies that conscience is free ; 
 not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from reli- 
 gion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It 
 does not mean my liberty, but the liberty of a power 
 that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my 
 despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, 
 religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, 
 
 * Louis Blanc says ("Histoire des Dix Ans," I, p. 138) of the time of the 
 Restoration: " Le protcstantismc dvvint !< fond des idees ct des wceurs."
 
 140 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 and their liberty is my slavery. That in this they 
 necessarily follow the principle, " the end hallows the 
 means," is self-evident. If the welfare of the State is 
 the end, war is a hallowed means; if justice is the 
 State's end, homicide is a hallowed means, and is 
 called by its sacred name, " execution," etc. ; the 
 sacred State hallows everything that is serviceable 
 to it. 
 
 " Individual liberty," over which civic liberalism 
 keeps jealous watch, does not by any means signify a 
 completely free self-determination, by which actions be- 
 come altogether mine, but only independence of per- 
 sons. Individually free is he who is responsible to no 
 man. Taken in this sense, and we are not allowed 
 to understand it otherwise, not only the ruler is indi- 
 vidually free, i. e., irresponsible toward men (" before 
 God," we know, he acknowledges himself responsible), 
 but all who are " responsible only to the law." This 
 kind of liberty was won through the revolutionary 
 movement of the century, to wit, independence of 
 arbitrary will, of tel est notre plaisir. Hence the con- 
 stitutional prince must himself be stripped of all per- 
 sonality, deprived of all individual decision, that he 
 may not as a person, as an individual man, violate 
 the " individual liberty " of others. The personal will 
 of the ruler has disappeared in the constitutional 
 prince; it is with a right feeling, therefore, that ab- 
 solute princes resist this. Nevertheless these very ones 
 profess to be in the best sense " Christian princes." 
 For this, however, they must become a purely spiritual 
 power, as the Christian is subject only to spirit (" God 
 is spirit "). The purely spiritual power is consistently
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 141 
 
 represented only by the constitutional prince, he who, 
 without any personal significance, stands there spirit- 
 ualized to the degree that he can rank as a sheer, 
 uncanny " spirit," as an idea. The constitutional king 
 is the truly Christian king, the genuine, consistent 
 carrying-out of the Christian principle. In the consti- 
 tutional monarchy individual dominion, i. e., a real 
 ruler that wills has found its end; here, therefore, 
 individual liberty prevails, independence of every in- 
 dividual dictator, of every one who could dictate to 
 me with a tel est notre plaisir. It is the completed 
 Christian State-life, a spiritualized life. 
 
 The behavior of the commonalty is liberal through 
 and through. Every personal invasion of another's 
 sphere revolts the civic sense; if the citi/en sees that 
 one is dependent on the humor, the pleasure, the will 
 of a man as individual (i. e. as not authorized by a 
 " higher power "), at once he brings his liberalism to 
 the front and shrieks about " arbitrariness." In fine, 
 the citizen asserts his freedom from what is called 
 orders (ordonnance) : " No one has any business to 
 give me orders ! " Orders carries the idea that what 
 I am to do is another man's will, while law does not 
 express a personal authority of another. The liberty 
 of the commonalty is liberty or independence from the 
 will of another person, so-called personal or individual 
 liberty; for being personally free means being only 
 so free that no other person can dispose of mine, or 
 that what I may or may not do does not depend on 
 the personal decree of another. The liberty of the 
 press, for instance, is such a liberty of liberalism, lib- 
 eralism fighting only against the coercion of the cen-
 
 142 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 sorship as that of personal wilfulness, but otherwise 
 showing itself extremely inclined and willing to tyr- 
 annize over the press by " press laws "; i. e., the civic 
 liberals want liberty of writingjfor themselves ; for, 
 as they are law-abiding, their writings will not bring 
 them under the law. Only liberal matter, i. e. only 
 lawful matter, is to be allowed to be printed; oth- 
 erwise the " press laws " threaten " press-penalties." 
 If one sees personal liberty assured, one does not no- 
 tice at all how, if a new issue happens to arise, the 
 most glaring unfreedom becomes dominant. For one 
 is rid of orders indeed, and " no one has any business 
 to give us orders," but one has become s6 much the 
 more submissive to the law. One is enthralled now 
 in due legal form. 
 
 In the citizen-State there are only " free people," 
 who are compelled to thousands of things (e. g. to de- 
 ference, to a confession of faith, and the like). But 
 what does that amount to? Why, it is only the 
 State, the law, not any man, that compels them! 
 
 What does the commonalty mean by inveighing 
 against every personal order, i. e. every order not 
 founded on the " cause," on " reason," etc.? It is 
 simply fighting in the interest of the " cause "* 
 against the dominion of " persons " ! But the mind's 
 cause is the rational, good, lawful, etc. ; that is the 
 "good cause." The commonalty wants an impersonal 
 ruler. 
 
 Furthermore, if the principle is this, that only the 
 cause is to rule man to wit, the cause of morality, 
 
 * iSache, which commonly means thing.}
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 143 
 
 the cause of legality, etc., then no personal balking 
 of one by the other may be authorized either (as for- 
 merly, e. g., the commoner was balked of the aristo- 
 tocratic offices, the aristocrat of common mechanical 
 trades, etc.) ; i. e.free competition must exist. Only 
 through the thing* can one balk another (e. g. the 
 rich man balking the impecunious man by money, a 
 thing), not as a person. Henceforth only one lord- 
 ship, the lordship of the State, is admitted ; personally 
 no one is any longer lord of another. Even at birth 
 the children belong to the State, and to the parents 
 only in the name of the State, which, e. g., does not 
 allow infanticide, demands their baptism, etc. 
 
 But all the State's children, furthermore, are of 
 quite equal account in its eyes (" civic or political 
 equality "), and they may see to it themselves how 
 they get along with each other; they may compete. 
 
 Free competition means nothing else than that 
 every one can present himself, assert himself, fight, 
 against another. Of course the feudal party set itself 
 against this, as its existence depended on an absence 
 of competition. The contests in the time of the Res- 
 toration in France had no other substance than this, 
 that the bourgeoisie was struggling for free competi- 
 tion, and the feudalists were seeking to bring back the 
 guild system. 
 
 Now, free competition has won, and against the 
 guild system it had to win. (See below for the further 
 discussion.) 
 
 If the Revolution ended in a reaction, this only 
 
 * [Sache]
 
 144 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 showed what the Revolution really was. For every 
 effort arrives at reaction when it comes to discreet re- 
 flection, and storms forward in the original action only 
 so long as it is an intoxication, an " indiscretion." 
 " Discretion " will always be the cue of the reac- 
 tion, because discretion sets limits, and liberates what 
 was really wanted, i. e. the principle, from the initial 
 " unbridledness " and " unrestrainedness." Wild 
 young fellows, bumptious students, who set aside all 
 considerations, are really Philistines, since with them, 
 as with the latter, considerations form the substance 
 of their conduct; only that as swaggerers they are 
 mutinous against considerations and in negative rela- 
 tions to them, but as Philistines, later, they give them- 
 selves up to considerations and have positive relations 
 to them. In both cases all their doing and thinking 
 turns upon " considerations," but the Philistine is re- 
 actionary in relation to the student; he is the wild 
 fellow come to discreet reflection, as the latter is the 
 unreflecting Philistine. Daily experience confirms 
 the truth of this transformation, and shows how the 
 swaggerers turn to Philistines in turning gray. 
 
 So too the so-called reaction in Germany gives 
 proof that it was only the discreet continuation of the 
 warlike jubilation of liberty. 
 
 The Revolution was not directed against the estab- 
 lished, but against the establishment in question, 
 against a particular establishment. It did away with 
 this ruler, not with the ruler on the contrary, the 
 French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old 
 vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous 
 ones a securely established position, i. e. it simply set
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 145 
 
 virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, 
 are on their part distinguished from each other only 
 as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc. 
 
 To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no 
 farther than to assail only one or another particular 
 establishment, i. e. be reformatory. Much as may 
 be improved, strongly as " discreet progress " may 
 be adhered to, always there is only a new master 
 set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a 
 building up. We are still at the distinction of the 
 young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution 
 began in bourgeois fashion with the uprising of the 
 third estate, the middle class; in bourgeois fashion it 
 dries away. It was not the individual man and he 
 alone is Man that became free, but the citizen, the 
 citoyen, the political man, who for that very reason is 
 not Man but a specimen of the human species, and 
 more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a 
 free citizen. 
 
 In the Revolution it was not the individual who 
 acted so as to affect the world's history, but a people ; 
 the nation, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect 
 everything. A fancied /, an idea, such as the nation 
 is, appears acting ; i. e., the individuals contribute 
 themselves as tools of this idea, and act as " citizens." 
 
 The commonalty has its power, and at the same 
 time its limits, in the fundamental law of the State, 
 in a charter, in a legitimate* or "just"f prince who 
 himself is guided, and rules, according to " rational 
 laws " ; in short, in legality. The period of the 
 
 * [Or "righteous." German rechtlich.] t [gerecht]
 
 146 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 bourgeoisie is ruled by the British spirit of legality. 
 An assembly of provincial estates, e. g., is ever recall- 
 ing that its authorization goes only so and so far, and 
 that it is called at all only through favor and can be 
 thrown out again through disfavor. It is always re- 
 minding itself of its vocation. It is certainly not 
 to be denied that my father begot me; but, now that 
 I am once begotten, surely his purposes in begetting 
 do not concern me a bit and, whatever he may have 
 called me to, I do what I myself will. Therefore even 
 a called assembly of estates, the French assembly in 
 the beginning of the Revolution, recognized quite 
 rightly that it was independent of the caller. It ex- 
 isted, and would have been stupid if it did not avail 
 itself of the right of existence, but fancied itself de- 
 pendent as on a father. The called one no longer 
 has to ask " what did the caller want when he created 
 me ?" but " what do I want after I have once fol- 
 lowed the call ? " Not the caller, not the constituents, 
 not the charter according to which their meeting was 
 called out, nothing will be to him a sacred, inviolable 
 power. He is authorized for everything that is in his 
 power; he will know no restrictive " authorization," 
 will not want to be loyal. This, if any such thing 
 could be expected from chambers at all, would give a 
 completely egoistic chamber, severed from all navel- 
 string and without consideration. But chambers are 
 always devout, and therefore one cannot be surprised 
 if so much half-way or undecided, i. e. hypocritical, 
 " egoism " parades in them. 
 
 The members of the estates are to remain within the 
 limits that are traced for them by the charter, by the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 147 
 
 king's will, and the like. If they will not or can not 
 do that, then they are to " step out." What dutiful 
 man could act otherwise, could put himself, his con- 
 viction, and his will as the first thing? who could be 
 so immoral as to want to assert himself, even if the 
 body corporate and everything should go to ruin over 
 it? People keep carefully within the limits of their 
 authorization ; of course one must remain within the 
 limits of his power anyhow, because no one can do 
 more than he can. " My power, or, if it be so, pow- 
 erlessness, be my sole limit, but authorizations 
 only restraining precepts ? Should I profess this 
 all-subversive view ? No, I am a law-abiding 
 citizen ! " 
 
 The commonalty professes a morality which is most 
 closely connected with its essence. The first demand 
 of this morality is to the effect that one should carry 
 on a solid business, an honorable trade, lead a moral 
 life. Immoral, to it, is the sharper, the demirep, the 
 thief, robber, and murderer, the gamester, the penni- 
 less man without a situation, the frivolous man. The 
 doughty commoner designates the feeling against these 
 " immoral " people as his " deepest indignation." 
 All these lack settlement, the solid quality of business, 
 a solid, seemly life, a fixed income, etc. ; in short, they 
 belong, because their existence does not rest on a" 
 secure basis, to the dangerous " individuals or isolated 
 persons," to the dangerous proletariat ; they are " in- 
 dividual bawlers " who offer no " guarantee " and 
 have " nothing to lose," and so nothing to risk. The 
 forming of family ties, e. g., Innds a man: he who is 
 bound furnishes security, can be taken hold of; not
 
 148 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 so the street-walker. The gamester stakes everything 
 on the game, ruins himself and others; no guaran- 
 tee. All who appear to the commoner suspicious, 
 hostile, and dangerous might be comprised under the 
 name "vagabonds"; every vagabondish way of living 
 displeases him. For there are intellectual vagabonds 
 too, to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their 
 fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to 
 be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space 
 any more : instead of keeping within the limits of a 
 temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable 
 truth what furnishes comfort and tranquillity to thou- 
 sands, they overleap all bounds of the traditional and 
 run wild with their impudent criticism and untamed 
 mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds. 
 They form the class of the unstable, restless, change- 
 able, i. e. of the proletariat, and, if they give voice 
 to their unsettled nature, are called " unruly fellows." 
 Such a broad sense has the so-called proletariat, or 
 pauperism. How much one would err if one believed 
 the commonalty to be desirous of doing away with 
 poverty (pauperism) to the best of its ability ! On 
 the contrary, the good citizen helps himself with the 
 incomparably comforting conviction that " the fact is 
 that the good things of fortune are unequally divided 
 and will always remain so according to God's wise 
 decree." The poverty which surrounds him in every 
 alley does not disturb the true commoner further than 
 that at most he clears his account with it by throwing 
 an alms, or finds work and food for an " honest and 
 serviceable " fellow. But so much the more does he 
 feel his quiet enjoyment clouded by innovating and
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 149 
 
 discontented poverty, by those poor who no longer 
 behave quietly and endure, but begin to run wild and 
 become restless. Lock up the vagabond, thrust the 
 breeder of unrest into the darkest dungeon ! He 
 wants to " arouse dissatisfaction and incite people 
 against existing institutions " in the State stone 
 him, stone him! 
 
 But from these identical discontented ones comes a 
 reasoning somewhat as follows: It need not make 
 any difference to the " good citizens " who protects 
 them and their principles, whether an absolute king or 
 a constitutional one, a republic, etc., if only they are 
 protected. And what is their principle, whose pro- 
 tector they always " love "? Not that of labor; not 
 that of birth either. But that of mediocrity, of the 
 golden mean: a little birth and a little labor, i. e., an 
 interest-bearing- possession. Possession is here the 
 fixed, the given, inherited (birth) ; interest-drawing 
 is the exertion about it (labor) ; laboring- capital, 
 therefore. Only no immoderation, no ultra, no rad- 
 icalism ! Right of birth certainly, but only hereditary 
 possessions; labor certainly, yet little or none at all of 
 one's own, but labor of capital and of the subject 
 laborers. 
 
 If an age is imbued with an error, some always de- 
 rive advantage from the error, while the rest have to 
 suffer from it. In the Middle Ages the error was 
 general among Christians that the church must have 
 all power, or the supreme lordship on earth; the 
 hierarchs believed in this " truth " not less than the 
 laymen, and both were spellbound in the like error. 
 But by it the hierarchs had the advantage of power,
 
 150 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the laymen had to suffer subjection. However, as 
 the saying goes, " one learns wisdom by suffering " ; 
 and so the laymen at last learned wisdom and no 
 longer believed in the mediaeval " truth." A like re- 
 lation exists between the commonalty and the laboring 
 class. Commoner and laborer believe in the " truth " 
 of money ; they who do not possess it believe in it no 
 less than those who possess it: the laymen, therefore, 
 as well as the priests. 
 
 " Money governs the world " is the keynote of the 
 civic epoch. A destitute aristocrat and a destitute 
 laborer, as " starvelings," amount to nothing so far as 
 political consideration is concerned; birth and labor 
 do not do it, but money brings consideration.* The 
 possessors rule, but the State trains up from the desti- 
 tute its " servants," to whom, in proportion as they 
 are to rule (govern) in its name, it gives money 
 (a salary). 
 
 I receive everything from the State. Have I any- 
 thing without the State's assent ? What I have with- 
 out this it takes from me as soon as it discovers the 
 lack of a " legal title." Do I not, therefore, have 
 everything through its grace, its assent ? 
 
 On this alone, on the legal title, the commonalty 
 rests. The commoner is what he is through the pro- 
 tection of. the State, through the State's grace. He 
 would necessarily be afraid of losing everything if the 
 State's power were broken. 
 
 But how is it with him who has nothing to lose, 
 how with the proletarian? As he has nothing to lose, 
 
 * Idas Geld gibt Geltiing.]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 151 
 
 he does not need the protection of the State for his 
 " nothing." He may gain, on the contrary, if that 
 protection of the State is withdrawn from the protege. 
 
 Therefore the non-possessor will regard the State as 
 a power protecting the possessor, which privileges the 
 latter, but does nothing for him, the non-possessor, 
 but to suck his blood. The State is a commoners' 
 State, is the estate of the commonalty. It protects 
 man not according to his labor, but according to his 
 tractableness (" loyalty "), to wit, according to 
 whether the rights entrusted to him by the State are 
 enjoyed and managed in accordance with the will, 
 i. e. laws, of the State. 
 
 Under the regime of the commonalty the laborers 
 always fall into the hands of the possessors, i. e. of 
 those who have at their disposal some bit of the State 
 domains (and everything possessible is State domain, 
 belongs to the State, and is only a fief of the indi- 
 vidual), especially money and land; of the capitalists, 
 therefore. The laborer cannot realize on his labor to 
 the extent of the value that it has for the consumer. 
 " Labor is badly paid ! " The capitalist has the 
 greatest profit from it. Well paid, and more than 
 well paid, are only the labors of those who heighten 
 the splendor and dominion of the State, the labors of 
 high State servants. The State pays well that its 
 " good citizens," the possessors, may be able to pay 
 badly without danger; it secures to itself by good 
 payment its servants, out of whom it forms a protect- 
 ing power, a " police " (to the police belong soldiers, 
 officials of all kinds, e. g. those of justice, education, 
 etc., in short, the whole " machinery of the State ")
 
 152 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 for the " good citizens," and the " good citizens " 
 gladly pay high tax-rates to it in order to pay so 
 much lower rates to their laborers. 
 
 But the class of laborers, because unprotected in 
 what they essentially are (for they do not enjoy the 
 protection of the State as laborers, but as its subjects 
 they have a share in the enjoyment of the police, a so- 
 called protection of the law), remains a power hostile 
 to this State, this State of possessors, this " citizen 
 kingship." Its principle, labor, is not recognized as 
 to its value ; it is exploited,* a spoil f of the possess- 
 ors, the enemy. 
 
 The laborers have the most enormous power in their 
 hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious 
 of it and used it, nothing would withstand them ; they 
 would only have to stop labor, regard the product 
 of labor as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of 
 the labor disturbances which show themselves here and 
 there. 
 
 The State rests on the slavery of labor. If labor 
 becomesfree, the State is lost. 
 
 2. SOCIAL LIBERALISM 
 
 We are freeborn men, and wherever we look we see 
 ourselves made servants of egoists ! Are we therefore 
 to become egoists too? Heaven forbid! we want 
 rather to make egoists impossible! We want to 
 make them all " ragamuffins " ; all of us must have 
 nothing, that " all may have." 
 
 So say the Socialists. 
 
 * [ausgebeutet] t [Kriegsbeute]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 153 
 
 Who is this person that you call " All " ? It is 
 " society "! But is it corporeal, then? We are its 
 body! You? Why, you are not a body yourselves; 
 you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, 
 but you all together are only bodies, not a body. 
 Accordingly the united society may indeed have bodies 
 at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the 
 " nation " of the politicians, it will turn out to be 
 nothing but a " spirit," its body only semblance. 
 
 The freedom of man is, in political liberalism, free- 
 dom from persons, from personal dominion, from the 
 master; the securing of each individual person against 
 other persons, personal freedom. 
 
 No one has any orders to give; the law alone gives 
 orders. 
 
 But, even if the persons have become equal, yet 
 their possessions have not. And yet the poor man 
 needs the rich, the rich the poor, the former the rich 
 man's money, the latter the poor man's labor. So no 
 one needs another as a person, but needs him as a 
 giver, and thus as one who has something to give, as 
 holder or possessor. So what he has makes the man. 
 And in having, or in " possessions," people are un- 
 equal. 
 
 Consequently, social liberalism concludes, no one 
 must have, as according to political liberalism no one 
 was to give orders ; i. e., as in that case the State 
 alone obtained the command, so now society alone 
 obtains the possessions. 
 
 For the State, protecting each one's person and 
 property against the other, separates them from one 
 another; each one is his special part and has his
 
 154 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 special part. He who is satisfied with what he is and 
 has finds this state of things profitable ; but he who 
 would like to be and have more looks around for this 
 " more," and finds it in the power of other persons. 
 Here he comes upon a contradiction; as a person no 
 one is inferior to another, and yet one person has 
 what another has not but would like to have. So, he 
 concludes, the one person is more than the other, after 
 all, for the former has what he needs, the latter has 
 not; the former is a rich man, the latter a poor man. 
 He now asks himself further, are we to let what we 
 rightly buried come to life again? are we to let this 
 circuitously restored inequality of persons pass? No; 
 on the contrary, we must bring quite to an end what 
 was only half accomplished. Our freedom from 
 another's person still lacks the freedom from what the 
 other's person can command, from what he has in his 
 
 Crsonal power, in short, from " personal property." 
 t us then do away with personal property . Let no 
 one have anything any longer, let every one be a 
 ragamuffin. Let property be impersonal, let it belong 
 to society. 
 
 Before the supreme ruler, the sole commander, we 
 had all become equal, equal persons, i. c. nullities. 
 
 Before the supreme proprietor we all become equal 
 ragamuffins. For the present, one is still in an- 
 other's estimation a " ragamuffin," a " have-nothing " ; 
 but then this estimation ceases. We are all ragamuf- 
 fins together, and as the aggregate of Communistic 
 society we might call burselves a " ragamuffin crew." 
 
 When the proletarian shall really have founded his 
 purposed " society " in which the interval between rich
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 155 
 
 and poor is to be removed, then he will be a raga- 
 muffin, for then he will feel that it amounts to some- 
 thing to be a ragamuffin, and might lift "Ragamuf-. 
 fin " to be an honorable form of address, just as the 
 Revolution did with the word " Citizen." Ragamuf- 
 fin is his ideal; we are all to become ragamuffins. 
 
 This is the second robbery of the " personal " in 
 the interest of " humanity." Neither command nor 
 property is left to the individual; the State took the 
 former, society the latter. 
 
 Because in society the most oppressive evils make 
 themselves felt, therefore the oppressed especially, and 
 consequently the members in the lower regions of 
 society, think they find the fault in society, and make 
 it their task to discover the right society. This is 
 only the old phenomenon, that one looks for the 
 fault first in everything but_iim&^ and conse- 
 quently in the State, in the self-seeking of the rich, ^ - 
 etc., which yet have precisely our fault to thank for 
 their existence. 
 
 The reflections and conclusions of Communism look 
 very simple. As matters lie at this time, in the 
 present situation with regard to the State, therefore, 
 some, and they the majority, are at a disadvantage 
 compared to others, the minority. In this state of 
 things the former are in a state of prosperity, the lat- 
 ter in a state of need. Hence the present state of 
 things, i. e. the State, must be done away with. And 
 what in. its place? Instead of the isolated state of 
 prosperity a general state of prosperity, a prosperity 
 of all. 
 
 Through the Revolution the bourgeoisie became
 
 156 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 omnipotent, and all inequality was abolished by every 
 one's being raised or degraded to the dignity of a 
 citizen : the common man raised, the aristocrat 
 degraded; the third estate became sole estate, viz., 
 the estate of citizens of the State. Now Communism 
 responds: Our dignity and our essence consist not in 
 our being all the equal children of our mother, the 
 State, all born with equal claim to her love and her 
 protection, but in our all existing^br each other. 
 This is our equality, or herein we are equal, in that 
 we, I as well as you and you and all of you, are active 
 or "labor" each one for the rest; in that each of us is 
 a laborer, then. The point for us is not what we are 
 for the State (viz., citizens), not our citizenship 
 therefore, but what we are for each other, viz., that 
 each of us exists only through the other, who, caring 
 for my wants, at the same time sees his own satisfied 
 by me. He labors, e. g., for my clothing (tailor), I 
 for his need of amusement (comedy-writer, rope- 
 dancer, etc.), he for my food (farmer, etc.), I for his 
 instruction (scientist, etc.). It is labor that consti- 
 tutes our dignity and our equality. 
 
 What advantage does citizenship bring us ? Bur- 
 dens ! And how high is our labor appraised ? As 
 low as possible ! But labor is our sole value all the 
 same; that we are laborers is the best thing about us, 
 this is our significance in the world, and therefore it 
 must be our consideration too and must come to 
 receive consideration. What can you meet us with ? 
 Surely nothing but labor too. Only for labor or 
 services do we owe you a recompense, not for your 
 bare existence; not for what you are for yourselves
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 157 
 
 cither, but only for what you are for us. By what 
 have you claims on us ? Perhaps by your high birth, 
 etc. ? No, only by what you do for us that is desir- 
 able or useful. Be it thus then : we are willing to be 
 worth to you only so much as we do for you; but you 
 are to be held likewise by us. Services determine 
 value, i. e. those services that are worth something to 
 us, and consequently labors for each other, labors for 
 the common good. Let each one be in the other's eyes 
 a laborer. He who accomplishes something useful is 
 inferior to none, or all laborers (laborers, of course, 
 in the sense of laborers "for the common good," i. e. 
 communistic laborers) are equal. But, as the laborer 
 is worth his wages,* let the wages too be equal. 
 
 As long as faith sufficed for man's honor and dig- 
 nity, no labor, however harassing, could be objected to 
 if it only did not hinder a man in his faith. Now, on 
 the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself 
 into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor 
 amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory- 
 worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and 
 more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor 
 is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. 
 Therefore he must become a master in it too, i. e. be 
 able to perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-fac- 
 tory only puts on the heads, only draws the wire, etc., 
 works, as it were, mechanically, like a machine; he 
 remains half-trained, does not become a master: his 
 labor cannot satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. 
 His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in 
 
 * [In German an exact quotation of Luke 10.7.]
 
 158 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into 
 another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other. 
 For this laborer in another's service there is no enjoy- 
 ment of a cultivated mind, at most crude amusements: 
 culture, you see, is barred against him. To be a good 
 Christian one needs only to believe, and that can be 
 done under the most oppressive circumstances. Hence 
 the Christian-minded take care only of the oppressed 
 laborers' piety, their patience, submission, etc. Only 
 so long as the downtrodden classes were Christians 
 could they bear all their misery: for Christianity does 
 not let their murmurings and exasperation rise. Now 
 the hushing- of desires is no longer enough, but their 
 sating- is demanded. The bourgeoisie has proclaimed 
 the gospel of the enjoyment of the world, of material 
 enjoyment, and now wonders that this doctrine finds 
 adherents among us poor: it has shown that not faith 
 and poverty, but culture and possessions, make a man 
 blessed; we proletarians understand that too. 
 
 The commonalty freed us from the orders and arbi- 
 trariness of individuals. But that arbitrariness was 
 left which springs from the conjuncture of situations, 
 and may be called the fortuity of circumstances ; fa- 
 voring fortune, and those " favored by fortune," still 
 remain. 
 
 When e. g. a branch of industry is ruined and 
 thousands of laborers become breadless, people think 
 reasonably enough to acknowledge that it is not the 
 individual who must bear the blame, but that " the 
 evil lies in the situation." 
 
 Let us change the situation then, but let us change 
 }t thoroughly, and so that its fortuity becomes power-
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 159 
 
 less, and a law ! Let us no longer be slaves of chance ! 
 Let us create a new order that makes an end oi fluctu- 
 ations. Let this order then be sacred ! 
 
 Formerly one had to suit the lords to come to any- 
 thing; after the Revolution the word was " Grasp 
 fortune ! " Luck-hunting or hazard-playing, civil 
 life was absorbed in this. Then, alongside this, the 
 demand that he who has obtained something shall not 
 frivolously stake it again. 
 
 Strange and yet supremely natural contradiction. 
 Competition, in which alone civil or political life un- 
 rolls itself, is a game of luck through and through, 
 from the speculations of the exchange down to the so- 
 licitation of offices, the hunt for customers, looking for 
 work, aspiring to promotion and decorations, the 
 second-hand dealer's petty haggling, etc. If one suc- 
 ceeds in supplanting and outbidding his rivals, then 
 the " lucky throw " is made; for it must be taken as a 
 piece of luck to begin with that the victor sees himself 
 equipped with an ability (even though it has been de- 
 veloped by the most careful industry) against which 
 the others do not know how to rise, consequently that 
 no abler ones are found. And now those who ply 
 their daily lives in the midst of these changes of for- 
 tune without seeing any harm in it are seized with the 
 most virtuous indignation when their own principle 
 appears in naked form and " breeds misfortune " as 
 hazard-playing. Hazard-playing, you see, is too 
 clear, too barefaced a competition, and, like every de- 
 cided nakedness, offends honorable modesty. 
 
 The Socialists want to put a stop to this activity of 
 chance, and to form a society in which men are no
 
 160 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 longer dependent on fortune, but free. 
 
 In the most natural way in the world this endeavor 
 first utters itself as hatred of the " unfortunate " 
 against the "fortunate," i. e., of those for whom for- 
 tune has done little or nothing, against those for 
 whom it has done everything. 
 
 But properly the ill-feeling is not directed against 
 the fortunate, but againsifortune, this rotten spot of 
 the commonalty. 
 
 As the Communists first declare free activity to be 
 man's essence, they, like all work-day dispositions, 
 need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need 
 a God, an uplifting and edification alongside their 
 witless " labor." 
 
 That the Communist sees in you the man, the bro- 
 ther, is only the Sunday side of Communism. Accord- 
 ing to the work-day side he does not by any means 
 take you as man simply, but as human laborer or 
 laboring man. The first view has in it the liberal 
 principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed. If 
 you were a " lazybones," he would not indeed fail to 
 recognize the man in you, but would endeavor to 
 cleanse him as a " lazy man " from laziness and to 
 convert you to ihe faith that labor is man's " destiny 
 and calling." 
 
 Therefore he shows a double face : with the one he 
 takes heed that the spiritual man be satisfied, with the 
 other he looks about him for means for the material 
 or corporeal man. He gives man a twofold post, an 
 office of material acquisition and one of spiritual. 
 
 The commonalty had thrown open spiritual and 
 material goods, and left it with each one to reach out
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 161 
 
 for them if he liked. 
 
 Communism really procures them for each one, 
 presses them upon him, and compels him to acquire 
 them. It takes seriously the idea that, because only 
 spiritual and material goods make us men, we must 
 unquestionably acquire these goods in order to be 
 man. The commonalty made acquisition free; Com- 
 munism compels to acquisition, and recognizes only 
 the acquirer, him who practises a trade. It is not 
 enough that the trade is free, but you must take it 
 up. 
 
 So all that is left for criticism to do is to prove 
 that the acquisition of these goods does not yet by any 
 means make us men. 
 
 With the liberal commandment that every one is to 
 make a man of himself, or every one to make himself 
 man, there was posited the necessity that every one 
 must gain time for this labor of humanization, i. e. 
 that it should become possible for every one to labor 
 on himself. 
 
 The commonalty thought it had brought this about 
 if it handed over everything human to competition, 
 but gave the individual a right to every human 
 thing. " Each may strive after everything! " 
 
 Social liberalism finds that the matter is not settled 
 with the " may," because may means only " it is for- 
 bidden to none " but not " it is made possible to every 
 one." Hence it affirms that the commonalty is liberal 
 only with the mouth and in words, supremely illiberal 
 in act. It on its part wants to give all of us the 
 means to be able to labor on ourselves. 
 
 By the principle of labor that of fortune or compe-
 
 162 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 tition is certainly outdone. But at the same time the 
 laborer, in his consciousness that the essential thing in 
 him is " the laborer," holds himself aloof from egoism 
 and subjects himself to the supremacy of a society of 
 laborers, as the commoner clung with self-abandon- 
 ment to the competition-State. The beautiful dream 
 of a " social duty " still continues to be dreamed. 
 People think again that society gives what we need, 
 and we are under obligations to it on that account, 
 owe it everything.* They are still at the point of 
 wanting to serve a " supreme giver of all good." That 
 society is no ego at all, which could give, bestow, or 
 grant, but an instrument or means, from which we 
 may derive benefit; that we have no social duties, but 
 solely interests for the pursuance of which society must 
 serve us; that we owe society no sacrifice, but, if we 
 sacrifice anything, sacrifice it to ourselves, of this the 
 Socialists do not think, because they as liberals are 
 imprisoned in the religious principle, and zealously as- 
 pire after a sacred society, such as the State was 
 hitherto. 
 
 Society, from which we have everything, is a new 
 master, a new spook, a new " supreme being," which 
 " takes us into its service and allegiance " ! 
 
 The more precise appreciation of political as well as 
 social liberalism must wait to find its place further on. 
 For the present we pass this over, in order first to 
 summon them before the tribunal of humane or crit- 
 ical liberalism. 
 
 * Proudhon (" Creation de I'Ordre ") cries out, e. g., p. 414, " In industry, 
 as in science, the publication of an invention is the first and most sacred of 
 duties!"
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 163 
 
 3. HUMANE LIBERALISM 
 
 As liberalism is completed in self-criticising, " criti- 
 cal"* liberalism, in which the critic remains a lib- 
 eral and does not go beyond the principle of liberal- 
 ism, Man, this may distinctively be named after 
 Man and called the " humane." 
 
 The laborer is counted as the most material and 
 egoistical man. He does nothing at alljftr humanity, 
 does everything for himself, for his welfare. 
 
 The commonalty, because it proclaimed the freedom 
 of Man only as to his birth, had to leave him in the 
 claws of the un-human man (the egoist) for the rest of 
 life. Hence under the regime of political liberalism 
 egoism has an immense field for free utilization. 
 
 The laborer will utilize society for his egoistic 
 ends as the commoner does the State. You have only 
 an egoistic end after all, your welfare! is the humane 
 liberal's reproach to the Socialist; take up a purely 
 human interest, then I will be your companion. 
 " But to this there belongs a consciousness stronger, 
 more comprehensive, than a laborer-consciousness" 
 " The laborer makes nothing, therefore he has noth- 
 ing; but he makes nothing because his labor is always 
 a labor that remains individual, calculated strictly for 
 
 * [In his strictures on " criticism " Stirner refers to a special movement 
 known by that name in the early forties of the last century, of which Bruno 
 Bauer was the principal exponent. After his official separation from the 
 faculty of the university of Bonn on account of his views in regard to the 
 Bible, Bruno Bauer in 1843 settled near Berlin and founded the Allgemeine 
 Literatur-Zeitung, in which he and his friends, at war with their surround- 
 ings, championed the '" absolute emancipation " of the individual within 
 the limits of " pure humanity " and fought as their foe " the mass," com- 
 prehending in that term the radical aspirations of political liberalism and 
 the communistic demands of the rising Socialist movement of that time. 
 For a brief account of Bruno Bauer's movement of criticism, see John 
 Henry Mackay, " Max Stirner. Sein Leben und sein Werk"]
 
 16 4 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 his own want, a labor day by day."* In opposition 
 to this one might, for instance, consider the fact that 
 Gutenberg's labor did not remain individual, but be- 
 got innumerable children, and still lives to-day; it 
 was calculated for the want of humanity, and was an 
 eternal, imperishable labor. 
 
 The humane consciousness despises the commoner- 
 consciousness as well as the laborer-consciousness: for 
 the commoner is " indignant " only at vagabonds (at 
 all who have " no definite occupation ") and their 
 "immorality"; the laborer is "disgusted" by the 
 idler (" lazybones ") and his " immoral," because par- 
 asitic and unsocial, principles. To this the humane 
 liberal retorts: The unsettledness of many is only 
 your product, Philistine! But that you, proletarian, 
 demand the grind of all, and want to make drudgery 
 general, is a part, still clinging to you, of your pack- 
 mule life up to this time. Certainly you want to 
 lighten drudgery itself by all having to drudge equally 
 hard, yet only for this reason, that all may gain lei- 
 sure to an equal extent. But what are they to do 
 with their leisure? What does your " society " do, 
 that this leisure may be passed humanly ? It must 
 leave the gained leisure to egoistic preference again, 
 and the very gain that your society furthers falls to 
 the egoist, as the gain of the commonalty, the master- 
 lessness of man, could not be filled with a human ele- 
 ment by the State, and therefore was left to arbitrary 
 choice. 
 
 It is assuredly necessary that man be masterless: but 
 
 * Br. Bauer. " Lit. Ztg." V, 18.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 165 
 
 therefore the egoist is not to become master over man 
 again either, but man over the egoist. Man must as- 
 suredly find leisure: but, if the egoist makes use of it, 
 it will be lost for man; therefore you ought to have 
 given leisure a human significance. But you laborers 
 undertake even your labor from an egoistic impulse, 
 because you want to eat, drink, live; how should you 
 be less egoists in leisure? You labor only because 
 having your time to yourselves (idling) goes well after 
 work done, and what you are to while away your lei- 
 sure time with is left to chance. 
 
 But, if every door is to be bolted against egoism, it 
 would be necessary to strive after completely " disin- 
 terested " action, total disinterestedness. This alone 
 is human, because only Man is disinterested, the egoist 
 always interested. 
 
 If we let disinterestedness pass unchallenged for a 
 while, then we ask, do you mean not to take an inter- 
 est in anything, not to be enthusiastic for anything, 
 not for liberty, humanity, etc.? " Oh, yes, but that 
 is not an egoistic interest, not interestedness, but a hu- 
 man, i. e. a theoretical interest, to wit, an interest 
 not for an individual or individuals (' all '), but for 
 the idea, for Man! " 
 
 And you do not notice that you too are enthusiastic 
 only for your idea, your idea of liberty? 
 
 And, further, do you not notice that your disinter- 
 estedness is again, like religious disinterestedness, a 
 heavenly interestedness? Certainly benefit to the in- 
 dividual leaves you cold, and abstractly you could 
 cryjiat libertas, per eat mundus. You do not take
 
 166 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 thought for the coming day either, and take no serious 
 care for the individual's wants anyhow, not for your 
 own comfort nor for that of the rest; but you make 
 nothing of all this, because you are a dreamer. 
 
 Do you suppose the humane liberal will be so lib- 
 eral as to aver that everything possible to man is hu- 
 man ? On the contrary ! He does not, indeed, share 
 the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, 
 but " that this woman turns her body into a money- 
 getting machine "* makes her despicable to him as 
 "human being." His judgment is, The strumpet is not 
 a human being; or, So far as a woman is a strumpet, 
 so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further: The 
 Jew, the Christian, the privileged person, the theolo- 
 gian, etc., is not a human being; so far as you are a 
 Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again the im- 
 perious postulate: Cast from you everything peculiar, 
 criticise it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, etc., 
 but be a human being, nothing but a human being. 
 Assert your humanity against every restrictive specifi- 
 cation; make yourself, by means of it, a human being, 
 smdfree from those limits; make yourself a " free 
 man," i. e. recognize humanity as your all-determining 
 essence. 
 
 I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than 
 a Christian, etc., but you are also more than a human 
 being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal. Do 
 you suppose, then, that you can ever become " a hu- 
 man being as such"? Do you suppose our posterity 
 will find no prejudices and limits to clear away, for 
 
 * "Lit.Ztg."V,W.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 167 
 
 which our powers were not sufficient ? Or do you per- 
 haps think that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you 
 have come so far that the following days have nothing 
 more to dissipate in you, and that you are a human 
 being? The men of the future will yet fight their 
 way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. 
 What do you need that later liberty for? If you 
 meant to esteem yourself as nothing before you had be- 
 come a human being, you would have to wait till the 
 " last judgment," till the day when man, or humanity, 
 shall have attained perfection. But, as you will surely 
 die before that, what becomes of your prize of victory? 
 
 Rather, therefore, invert the case, and say to your- 
 self, / am a hitman being ! I do not need to begin by 
 producing the human being in myself, for he belongs 
 to me already, like all my qualities. 
 
 But, asks the critic, how can one be a Jew and a 
 man at once? In the first place, I answer, one cannot 
 be either a Jew or a man at all, if " one " and Jew 
 or man are to mean the same; "one " always reaches 
 beyond those specifications, and, let Isaacs be ever so 
 Jewish, a Jew, nothing but a Jew, he cannot be, just 
 because he is this Jew. In the second place, as a Jew 
 one assuredly cannot be a man, if being a man means 
 being nothing special. But in the third place and 
 this is the point I can, as a Jew, be entirely what I 
 can be. From Samuel or Moses, and others, you 
 hardly expect that they should have raised themselves 
 above Judaism, although you must say that they were 
 not yet " men." They simply were what they could 
 be. Is it otherwise with the Jews of to-day? Because 
 you have discovered the idea of humanity, does it fol-
 
 168 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 low from this that every Jew can become a convert to 
 it? If he can, he does not fail to, and, if he fails to, 
 he cannot. What does your demand concern him? 
 what the call to be a man, which you address to him? 
 
 As a universal principle, in the " human society " 
 which the humane liberal promises, nothing " special " 
 which one or another has is to find recognition, noth- 
 ing which bears the character of " private " is to have 
 value. In this way the circle of liberalism, which has 
 its good principle in man and human liberty, its bad 
 in the egoist and everything private, its God in the 
 former, its devil in the latter, rounds itself off com- 
 pletely; and, if the special or private person lost his 
 value in the State (no personal prerogative), if in the 
 " laborers' or ragamuffins' society " special (private) 
 property is no longer recognized, so in " human so- 
 ciety " everything special or private will be left out 
 of account; and, when "pure criticism" shall have 
 accomplished its arduous task, then it will be known 
 just what we must look upon as private, and what, 
 " penetrated with a sense of our nothingness," we 
 must let stand. 
 
 Because State and society do not suffice for humane 
 liberalism, it negates both, and at the same time re- 
 tains them. So at one time the cry is that the task of 
 the day is " not a political, but a social, one," and 
 then again the " free State" is promised for the future. 
 In truth, " human society " is both, the most general 
 State and the most general society. Only against the 
 limited State is it asserted that it makes too much stir 
 about spiritual private interests (e. g. people's religious 

 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 169 
 
 belief), and against limited society that it makes too 
 much of material private interests. Both are to leave 
 private interests to private people, and, as human so- 
 ciety, concern themselves solely about general human 
 interests. 
 
 The politicians, thinking to abolish personal zvill, 
 self-will or arbitrariness, did not observe that through 
 property * our self-will f gained a secure place of 
 refuge. 
 
 The Socialists, taking away property too, do not no- 
 tice that this secures itself a continued existence in 
 self-owner -ship. Is it only money and goods, then, 
 that are a property, or is every opinion something of 
 mine, something of my own? 
 
 So every opinion must be abolished or made im- 
 personal. The person is entitled to no opinion, but, 
 as self-will was transferred to the State, property to so- 
 ciety, so opinion too must be transferred to something 
 general, " Man," and thereby become a general hu- 
 man opinion. 
 
 If opinion persists, then I have my God (why, God 
 exists only as " my God," he is an opinion or my 
 "faith"), and consequently my faith, my religion, my 
 thoughts, my ideals. Therefore a general human faith 
 must come into existence, the "fanaticism of liberty" 
 For this would be a faith that agreed with the " es- 
 sence of man," and, because only " man " is reason- 
 able (you and I might be very unreasonable!), a rea- 
 sonable faith. 
 
 As self-will and property become powerless, so must 
 
 * [Eigenttim, "owndom,"] t [Eiyenirille, "own-will."]
 
 170 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 self-ownership or egoism in general. 
 
 In this supreme development of "free man " egoism, 
 self-ownership, is combated on principle, and such sub- 
 ordinate ends as the social " welfare" of the Social- 
 ists, etc., vanish before the lofty "idea of humanity.' 
 Everything that is not a "general human" entity is 
 something separate, satisfies only some or one; or, if it 
 satisfies all, it does this to them only as individuals, 
 not as men, and is therefore called " egoistic." 
 
 To the Socialists welfare is still the supreme aim, as 
 free rivalry was the approved thing to the political 
 liberals; now welfare is free too, and we are free to 
 achieve welfare, just as he who wanted to enter into 
 rivalry (competition) was free to do so. 
 
 But to take part in the rivalry you need only to be 
 commoners; to take part in the welfare, only to be 
 laborers. Neither reaches the point of being synony- 
 mous with "man." It is "truly well" with man only 
 when he is also " intellectually free"! For man is 
 mind: therefore all powers that are alien to him, the 
 mind, all superhuman, heavenly, unhuman powers, 
 must be overthrown, and the name " man " must be 
 above every name. 
 
 So in this end of the modern age (age of the mod- j 
 ems) there returns again, as the main point, what hadj 
 been the main point at its beginning: " intellectual 
 liberty." 
 
 To the Communist in particular the humane liberal 
 says: If society prescribes to you your activity, then 
 this is indeed free from the influence of the individual, 
 i. e. the egoist, but it still does not on that account 
 need to be a purely human activity, nor you to be a
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 171 
 
 complete organ of humanity. What kind of activity 
 society demands of you remains accidental, you know; 
 it might give you a place in building a temple or 
 something of that sort, or, even if not that, you might 
 yet on your own impulse be active for something fool- 
 ish, therefore unhuman; yes, more yet, you really 
 labor only to nourish yourself, in general to live, for 
 dear life's sake, not for the glorification of humanity. 
 Consequently free activity is not attained till you 
 make yourself free from all stupidities, from every- 
 thing non-human, i. e. egoistic (pertaining only to the 
 individual, not to the Man in the individual), dissi- 
 pate all untrue thoughts that obscure man or the idea 
 of humanity: in short, when you are not merely un- 
 hampered in your activity, but the substance too of 
 your activity is only what is human, and you live and 
 work only for humanity. But this is not the case so 
 long as the aim of your effort is only your welfare and 
 that of all ; what you do for the society of ragamuf- 
 fins is not yet anything done for "human society." 
 
 Laboring does not alone make you a man, because 
 it is something formal and its object accidental; the 
 question is who you that labor are. As far as labor- 
 ing goes, you might do it from an egoistic (material) 
 impulse, merely to procure nourishment and the like; 
 it must be a labor furthering humanity, calculated for 
 the good of humanity, serving historical (i. e. human) 
 evolution, in short, a humane labor. This implies 
 two things: one, that it be useful to humanity; next, 
 that it be the work of a " man." The first alone may 
 be the case with every labor, as even the labors of 
 nature, e. g. of animals, are utilized by humanity for
 
 172 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the furthering of science, etc. ; the second requires 
 that he who labors should know the human object of 
 his labor; and, as he can have this consciousness only 
 when he knows himself as man, the crucial condition 
 is self-consciousness. 
 
 Unquestionably much is already attained when you 
 cease to be a " fragment-laborer,"* yet therewith you 
 only get a view of the whole of your labor, and ac- 
 quire a consciousness about it, which is still far re- 
 moved from a self-consciousness, a consciousness about 
 your true "self" or "essence," Man. The laborer has 
 still remaining the desire for a "higher consciousness," 
 which, because the activity of labor is unable to quiet 
 it, he satisfies in a leisure hour. Hence leisure stands 
 by the side of his labor, and he sees himself compelled 
 to proclaim labor and idling human in one breath, 
 yes, to attribute the true elevation to the idler, the 
 leisure-enjoy er. He labors only to get rid of labor; 
 he wants to make labor free, only that he may be free 
 from labor. 
 
 In fine, his work has no satisfying substance, be- 
 cause it is only imposed by society, only a stint, a 
 task, a calling; and, conversely, his society does not 
 satisfy, because it gives only work. 
 
 His labor ought to satisfy him as a man; instead 
 of that, it satisfies society; society ought to treat him 
 as a man, and it treats him as a rag-tag laborer, or 
 a laboring ragamuffin. 
 
 Labor and society are of use to him not as he needs 
 them as a man, but only as he needs them as an 
 
 * [Referring to minute subdivision of labor, whereby the single workman 
 produces, not a whole, but a part.]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 173 
 
 "egoist." 
 
 Such is the attitude of criticism toward labor. It 
 points to " mind," wages the war " of mind with the 
 masses,"* and pronounces communistic labor unintel- 
 lectual mass-labor. Averse to labor as they are, the 
 masses love to make labor easy for themselves. In 
 literature, which is to-day furnished in mass, this aver- 
 sion to labor begets the universally-known superficial- 
 ity, which puts from it "the toil of research."! 
 
 Therefore humane liberalism says: You want labor; 
 all right, we want it likewise, but we want it in the 
 fullest measure. We want it, not that we may gain 
 spare time, but that we may find all satisfaction in it 
 itself. We want labor because it is our self- 
 development. 
 
 But then the labor too must be adapted to that 
 end! Man is honored only by human, self-conscious 
 labor, only by the labor that has for its end no " ego- 
 istic" purpose, but Man, and is Man's self-revelation ; 
 so that the saying should be laboro, ergo sum, I labor, 
 therefore I am a man. The humane liberal wants 
 that labor of the mind which works up all material ; 
 he wants the mind, that leaves no thing quiet or in its 
 existing condition, that acquiesces in nothing, analyzes 
 everything, criticises anew every result that has been 
 gained. This restless mind is the true laborer, it ob- 
 literates prejudices, shatters limits and narrownesses, 
 and raises man above everything that would like to 
 dominate over him, while the Communist labors only 
 for himself, and not even freely, but from necessity, 
 
 * " Lit Ztg." V, 24. t " Lit. Ztg." ibid.
 
 174 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 in short, represents a man condemned to hard labor. 
 
 The laborer of such a type is not " egoistic," be- 
 cause he does not labor for individuals, neither for 
 himself nor for other individuals, not for private men 
 therefore, but for humanity and its progress: he does 
 not ease individual pains, does not care for individual 
 wants, but removes limits within which humanity is 
 pressed, dispels prejudices which dominate an entire 
 time, vanquishes hindrances that obstruct the path of 
 all, clears away errors in which men entangle them- 
 selves, discovers truths which are found through him 
 for all and for all time; in short he lives and labors 
 for humanity. 
 
 Now, in the first place, the discoverer of a great 
 truth doubtless knows that it can be useful to the rest 
 of men, and, as a jealous withholding furnishes him no 
 enjoyment, he communicates it; but, even though he 
 has the consciousness that his communication is highly 
 valuable to the rest, yet he has in no wise sought and 
 found his truth for the sake of the rest, but for his 
 own sake, because he himself desired it, because dark- 
 ness and fancies left him no rest till he had procured 
 for himself light and enlightenment to the best of his 
 powers. 
 
 ( He labors, therefore, for his own sake and for the 
 satisfaction of his want. That along with this he was 
 also useful to others, yes, to posterity, does not take 
 from his labor the egoistic character. 
 
 In the next place, if he did labor only on his own 
 account, like the rest, why should his act be human, 
 those of the rest unhuman, i. e. egoistic? Perhaps, 
 because this book, painting, symphony, etc., is the
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 175 
 
 labor of his whole being, because he has done his best 
 in it, has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to 
 be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman 
 mirrors only the handicraftsman, i. e. the skill in 
 handicraft, not " the man"? In his poems we have 
 the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the 
 other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, 
 not " the man." 
 
 But does this mean more than " in the one work 
 you see me as completely as possible, in the other only 
 my skill"? Is it not me again that the act expresses? 
 And is it not more egoistic to offer oneself 'to the 
 world in a work, to work out and shape oneself, than 
 to remain concealed behind one's labor? You say, to 
 be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man 
 that you reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet 
 with this distinction from the handicraftsman, that 
 he does not understand how to compress himself into 
 one labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must 
 be searched out in his other relations of life, and that 
 your want, through whose satisfaction that work came 
 into being, was a theoretical want. 
 
 But you will reply that you reveal quite another 
 man, a worthier, higher, greater, a man that is more 
 man than that other. I will assume that you accom- 
 plish all that is possible to man, that you bring to 
 pass what no other succeeds in. Wherein, then, does 
 your greatness consist? Precisely in this, that you 
 are more than other men (the " masses"), more than 
 men ordinarily are, more than "ordinary men"; pre- 
 cisely in your elevation above men. You are distin- 
 guished beyond other men not by being man, but be-
 
 176 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 cause you are a " unique "* man. Doubtless you show 
 what a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, 
 this by no means shows that others, also men, are 
 able to do as much; you have executed it only as a 
 unique man, and are unique therein. 
 
 It is not man that makes up your greatness, but 
 you create it, because you are more than man, and 
 mightier than other men. 
 
 It is believed that one cannot be more than man. 
 Rather, one cannot be less! 
 
 It is believed further that whatever one attains is 
 good for Man. In so far as I remain at all times a 
 man or, like Schiller, a Swabian ; like Kant, a Prus- 
 sian; like Gustavus Adolphus, a near-sighted person 
 I certainly become by my superior qualities a not- 
 able man, Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted per- 
 son. But the case is not much better with that than 
 with Frederick the Great's cane, which became famous 
 for Frederick's sake. 
 
 To " Give God the glory " corresponds the modern 
 " Give Man the glory." But I mean to keep it for 
 myself. 
 
 Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be " hu- 
 man," enunciates the necessary condition of sociabil- 
 ity; for only as a man among men is one companion- 
 able. Herewith it makes known its social object, the 
 establishment of " human society." 
 
 Among social theories criticism is indisputably the 
 most complete, because it removes and deprives of 
 value everything that separates man from man : all
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 177 
 
 prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it 
 the love-principle of Christianity, the true social prin- 
 ciple, comes to the purest fulfilment, and the last pos- 
 sible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness 
 and repulsion from men : a fight against egoism in its 
 simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of 
 singleness,* exclusiveness, itself. 
 
 " How can you live a truly social life so long as 
 even one exclusiveness still exists between you?" 
 
 I ask conversely, How can you be truly single so 
 long as even one connection still exists between you? 
 If you are connected, you cannot leave each other; if 
 a " tie " clasps you, you are something only with 
 another, and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands 
 of you a people, millions of you humanity. 
 
 " Only when you are human can you keep company 
 with each other as men, just as you can understand 
 each other as patriots only when you are patriotic ! " 
 
 All right; then I answer, Only when you are single 
 can you have intercourse with each other as what you 
 are. 
 
 It is precisely the keenest critic who is hit hardest 
 by the curse of his principle. Putting from him one 
 exclusive thing after another, shaking off churchliness, 
 patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and 
 separates himself from the churchly man, from the 
 patriot, etc., till at last, when all ties are undone, he 
 stands alone. He, of all men, must exclude all that 
 have anything exclusive or private; and, when you 
 get to the bottom, what can be more exclusive than 
 
 * [Einzigkeit]
 
 178 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the exclusive, single person himself ! 
 
 Or does he perhaps think that the situation would 
 be better if all became " men " and gave up exclusive- 
 ness? Why, for the very reason that "all" means 
 " every individual " the most glaring contradiction is 
 still maintained, for the "individual" is exclusiveness 
 itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes to 
 the individual anything private or exclusive, any pri- 
 vate thought, any private folly; if he criticises every- 
 thing away from him before his face, since his hatred 
 of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred; if 
 he knows no tolerance toward what is private, because 
 everything private is unhuman, yet he cannot criti- 
 cise away the private person himself, since the hard- 
 ness of the individual person resists his criticism, and 
 he must be satisfied with declaring this person a " pri- 
 vate person " and really leaving everything private to 
 him again. 
 
 What will the society that no longer cares about 
 anything private do? Make the private impossible? 
 No, but " subordinate it to the interests of society, 
 and, e. g-., leave it to private will to institute holidays 
 as many as it chooses, if only it does not come in col- 
 lision with the general interest."* Everything pri- 
 vate is left free ; i. e. it has no interest for society. 
 
 " By their raising of barriers against science the 
 church and religiousness have declared that they are 
 what they always were, only that this was hidden 
 under another semblance when they were proclaimed 
 to be the basis and necessary foundation of the State 
 
 * Bruno Bauer, " Judenfrage, " p. 66.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 179 
 
 a matter of purely private concern. Even when 
 
 they were connected with the State and made it Chris- 
 tian, they were only the proof that the State had not 
 yet developed its general political idea, that it was 
 
 only instituting private rights they were only the 
 
 highest expression for the fact that the State was a 
 private affair and had to do only with private affairs. 
 When the State shall at last have the courage and 
 strength to fulfil its general destiny and to be free; 
 when, therefore, it is also able to give separate inter-, 
 ests and private concerns their true position, then 
 religion and the church will be free as they have never 
 been hitherto. As a matter of the most purely pri- 
 vate concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal 
 want, they will be left to themselves; and every indi- 
 vidual, every congregation and ecclesiastical commun- 
 ion, will be able to care for the blessedness of their 
 souls as they choose and as they think necessary. 
 Every one will care for his souPs blessedness so far 
 as it is to him a personal want, and will accept and 
 pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to him 
 to offer the best guarantee for the satisfaction of his 
 want. Science is at last left entirely out of the 
 game."* 
 
 What is to happen, though? Is social life to have 
 an end, and all companionableness, all fraternization, 
 everything that is created by the love or society prin- 
 ciple, to disappear? 
 
 As if one will not always seek the other because he 
 needs him ; as if one must not accommodate himself to 
 
 * Bruno Bauer, "Die pute Sache der Freiheit," pp. 62-63.
 
 180 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the other when he needs him. But the difference is 
 this, that then the individual really unites with the in- 
 dividual, while formerly they were bound tog-ether by 
 a tie ; son and father are bound together before 
 majority, after it they can come together indepen- 
 dently; before it they belonged together as members 
 of the family, after it they unite as egoists ; sonship 
 and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer 
 pin themselves down to these. 
 
 The last privilege, in truth, is "Man"; with it all 
 are privileged or invested. For, as Bruno Bauer him- 
 self says, " privilege remains even when it is extended 
 to all."* 
 
 Thus liberalism runs its course in the following 
 transformations: "First, the individual is not man, 
 therefore his individual personality is of no account: 
 no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or 
 mandates ! 
 
 " Second, the individual has nothing human, there- 
 fore no mine and thine, or property, is valid. 
 
 " Third, as the individual neither is man nor has 
 anything human, he shall not exist at all: he shall, as 
 an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated 
 by criticism to make room for Man, ' Man, just dis- 
 covered V 
 
 But, although the individual is not Man, Man is 
 yet present in the individual, and, like every spook 
 and everything divine, has its existence in him. 
 Hence political liberalism awards to the individual 
 everything that pertains to him as " a man by birth," 
 
 * Bruno Bauer, "Judenfrage," p. 60.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 181 
 
 as a born man, among which there are counted liberty 
 of conscience, the possession of goods, etc., in short, 
 the " rights of man " ; Socialism grants to the individ- 
 ual what pertains to him as an active man, as a 
 "laboring" man; finally, humane liberalism gives 
 the individual what he has as " a man," i. e. every- 
 thing that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the 
 single one* has nothing at all, humanity everything ; 
 and the necessity of the " regeneration " preached in 
 Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the 
 completest measure. Become a new creature, become 
 "man"! 
 
 One might even think himself reminded of the close 
 of the Lord's Prayer. To Man belongs the lordship 
 (the " power " or dynamis) ; therefore no individual 
 may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals ; 
 Man's is the kingdom, i. e. the world, consequently 
 the individual is not to be proprietor, but Man, " all," 
 commands the world as property ; to Man is due re- 
 nown, glorification or " glory " (doxa) from all, for 
 Man or humanity is the individual's end, for which he 
 labors, thinks, lives, and for whose glorification he 
 must become " man." 
 
 Hitherto men have always striven to find out a fel- 
 lowship in which their inequalities in other respects 
 should become " non-essential " ; they strove for equali- 
 zation, consequently for equality, and wanted to come 
 all under one hat, which means nothing less than that 
 they were seeking for one lord, one tie, one faith 
 (" 'Tis in one God we all believe"). There cannot be
 
 182 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 for men anything more fellowly or more equal than 
 Man himself, and in this fellowship the love-craving 
 has found its contentment: it did not rest till it had 
 brought on this last equalization, leveled all inequality, 
 laid man on the breast of man. But under this very 
 fellowship decay and ruin become most glaring. In 
 a more limited fellowship the Frenchman still stood 
 against the German, the Christian against the Moham- 
 medan, etc. Now, on the contrary, man stands against 
 men, or, as men are not man, man stands against the 
 un-man. 
 
 The sentence " God has become man " is now fol- 
 lowed by the other, " Man has become I." This is 
 the human I. But we invert it and say : I was not 
 able to find myself so long as I sought myself as 
 Man. But, now that it appears that Man is aspiring 
 to become I and to gain a corporeity in me, I note 
 that, after all, everything depends on me, and Man is 
 lost without me. But I do not care to give myself up 
 to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not 
 ask henceforward whether I am man or un-man in 
 what I set about; let this spirit keep off my neck! 
 
 Humane liberalism goes to work radically. If you 
 want to be or have anything especial even in one 
 point, if you want to retain for yourself even one pre- 
 rogative above others, to claim even one right that is 
 not a "general right of man," you are an egoist. 
 
 Very good! I do not want to have or be anything 
 especial above others, I do not want to claim any pre- 
 rogative against them, but I do not measure myself 
 by others either, and do not want to have any right 
 whatever. I want to be all and have all that I can be
 
 4 
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 183 
 
 and have. Whether others are and have anything 
 similar, what do I care? The equal, the same, they 
 can neither be nor have. I cause no detriment to 
 them, as I cause no detriment to the rock by being 
 
 ahead of it" in having motion. If they could have 
 it, they would have it. 
 
 To cause other men no detriment is the point of the 
 demand to possess no prerogative; to renounce all 
 " being ahead," the strictest theory of renunciation. 
 One is not to count himself as "anything especial," 
 such as e. g. a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not 
 count myself as anything especial, but as unique* 
 Doubtless I have similarity with others; yet that holds 
 good only for comparison or reflection; in fact I am 
 incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my 
 mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the 
 generalities " flesh, mind," those are your thoughts, 
 which have nothing to do with my flesh, my mind, and 
 can least of all issue a " call" to mine. 
 
 I do not want to recognize or respect in you any- 
 thing, neither the proprietor nor the ragamuffin, nor 
 even the man, but to use you. In salt I find that it 
 makes food pala,table to me, therefore I dissolve it; in 
 the fish I recognize an aliment, therefore I eat it; in 
 you I discover the gift of making my life agreeable, 
 therefore I choose you as a companion. Or, in salt I 
 study crystallization, in the fish animality, in you 
 men, etc. But to me you are only what you are for 
 me, to wit, my object; and, because my object, there- 
 fore my property. 
 
 * [etnzip]
 
 184 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood is completed. 
 We must first come down to the most ragamuffin-like, 
 most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive 
 at ownness, for we must strip off everything alien. 
 But nothing seems more ragamuffin-like than naked 
 Man. 
 
 It is more than ragamuffinhood, however, when 
 I throw away Man too because I feel that he too is 
 alien to me and that I can make no pretensions on 
 that basis. This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood : 
 because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands 
 real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The 
 ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself, and 
 therewith has ceased to be what he was, a ragamuffin. 
 
 I am no longer a ragamuffin, but have been one. 
 
 Up to this time the discord could not come to an 
 outbreak, because properly there is current only a con- 
 tention of modern liberals with antiquated liberals, a 
 contention of those who understand " freedom " in a 
 small measure and those who want the " full measure " 
 of freedom ; of the moderate and measureless, therefore. 
 Everything turns on the question, how free must man 
 be? That man must be free, in this all believe; there- 
 fore all are liberal too. But the un-man * who is 
 somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? 
 How can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free 
 at the same time with man ? 
 
 * [It should be remembered that to be an Unmensch (" un-man ") one 
 must be a man. The word means an inhuman or unhuman man, a man 
 who is not man. A tiger, an avalanche, a drought, a cabbage, is not an 
 un-man.]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 185 
 
 Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an in- 
 vincible opposite, as God has the devil: by the side of 
 man stands always the un-man, the individual, the 
 egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this 
 devil. 
 
 Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of show- 
 ng the other liberals that they still do not want 
 ' freedom." 
 
 If the other liberals had before their eyes only iso- 
 ated egoism and were for the most part blind, radical 
 iberalism has against it egoism " in mass," throws 
 among the masses all who do not make the cause of 
 Teedom their own as it does, so that now man and 
 un-man, rigorously separated, stand over against each 
 other as enemies, to wit, the " masses " and " criti- 
 cism"; * namely, "free, human criticism," as it is 
 called (" Judenfrage" p. 114), in opposition to crude, 
 ?. g. religious, criticism. 
 
 Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victor- 
 ious over all the masses and " give them a general 
 certificate of insolvency."! So it means finally to 
 make itself out in the right, and to represent all con- 
 tention of the " faint-hearted and timorous " as an 
 egoistic stubbornness, $ as pettiness, paltriness. All 
 wrangling loses significance, and petty dissensions are 
 given up, because in criticism a common enemy enters 
 the field. " You are egoists altogether, one no better 
 than another! " Now the egoists stand together 
 against criticism. 
 
 * " Lit. Ztg." V, 23 ; as comment, V, 12 ff. t " Lit. Ztg." V, 15. 
 
 $ [Rechthaberei, literally the character of always insisting on making 
 one's self out to be in the right]
 
 186 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Really the egoists? No, they fight against criti- 
 cism precisely because it accuses them of egoism ; they 
 do not plead guilty to egoism. Accordingly criticism 
 and the masses stand on the same basis: both fight 
 against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and 
 charge it to each other. 
 
 Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, free- 
 dom from egoism, and wrangle only over which of 
 them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains it. 
 
 The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men 
 of darkness and men of light, politicians, Commun- 
 ists, all, in short, hold the reproach of egoism far 
 from them ; and, as criticism brings against them this 
 reproach in plain terms and in the most extendad 
 sense, all justify themselves against the accusation 
 of egoism, and combat egoism, the same enemy with 
 whom criticism wages war. 
 
 Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, 
 and both seek to liberate themselves from egoism, as 
 well by clearing or whitewashing themselves as by as- 
 cribing it to the opposite party. 
 
 The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" 
 who gives them the "simple concept and the phrase" 
 of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph 
 is denied in "Lit. Ztg" V. 24 were only bunglers. 
 He is their prince and general in the war against ego- 
 ism for freedom ; what he fights against they fight 
 against. But at the same time he is their enemy too, 
 only not the enemy before them, but the friendly 
 enemy who wields the knout behind the timorous to 
 force courage into them. 
 
 Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses is
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 187 
 
 reduced to the following contradiction : " You are 
 egoists"! "No, we are not"! "I will prove it to 
 you " ! " You shall have our justification " ! 
 
 Let us then take both for what they give themselves 
 out for, non-egoists, and what they take each other 
 for, egoists. They are egoists and are not. 
 
 Properly criticism says: You must liberate your 
 ego from all limitedness so entirely that it becomes a 
 human ego. I say : Liberate yourself as far as you 
 can, and you have done your part; for it is not given 
 to every one to break through all limits, or, more ex- 
 pressively : not to every one is that a limit which is a 
 limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself 
 with toiling at the limits of others ; enough if you 
 tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing 
 down even one limitjfor all men ? Are not countless 
 persons to-day, as at all times, running about with all 
 the "limitations of humanity"? He who overturns 
 one of hh' limits may have shown others the way and 
 the means; the overturning of their limits remains 
 their affair. Nobody does anything else either. To 
 demand of people that they become wholly men is to 
 call on them to cast down all human limits. That is 
 impossible, because Man has no limits. I have some 
 indeed, but then it is only mine that concern me any, 
 and only they can be overcome by me. A human 
 ego I cannot become, just because I am I and not 
 merely man. 
 
 Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught 
 us something that we can lay to heart! I am not 
 free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not 
 disinterested? Well, even if it makes little difference
 
 188 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 to me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave 
 unused any occasion to realize myself or make myself 
 count. Criticism offers me this occasion by the teach- 
 ing that, if anything plants itself firmly in me, and 
 becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and ser- 
 vant, i. e. a possessed man. An interest, be it for 
 what it may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot 
 get away from it, and is no longer my property, but 
 I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson to 
 let no part of our property become stable, and to feel 
 comfortable only in dissolving- it. 
 
 So, if criticism says: You are man only when you 
 are restlessly criticising and dissolving! then we say: 
 Man I am without that, and I am I likewise; there- 
 fore I want only to be careful to secure my property 
 to myself; and, in order to secure it, I continually 
 take it back into myself, annihilate in it every move- 
 ment toward independence, and swallow it before it 
 can fix itself and become a " fixed idea " or a 
 " mania." 
 
 But I do that not for the sake of my " human 
 calling," but because I call myself to it. I do not 
 strut about dissolving everything that it is possible 
 for a man to dissolve, and, e. g., while not yet ten 
 years old I do not criticise the nonsense of the Com- 
 mandments, but I am man all the same, and act 
 humanly in just this, that I still leave them uncriti- 
 cised. In short, I have no calling, and follow none, 
 not even that to be a man. 
 
 Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its 
 various exertions? Far be the day that anything won 
 should be lost! Only, after "Man " has become free
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 189 
 
 :hrough liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself 
 and confess to myself openly: What Man seems to 
 lave gained, / alone have gained. 
 
 Man is free when " Man is to man the supreme 
 jeing." So it belongs to the completion of liberalism 
 ;hat every other supreme being be annulled, theology 
 overturned by anthropology, God and his grace 
 laughed down, " atheism " universal. 
 
 The egoism of property has given up the last that it 
 had to give when even the " My God " has become 
 senseless; for God exists only when he has at heart the 
 individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in 
 lim. 
 
 Political liberalism abolished the inequality of 
 masters and servants: it made people masterless, 
 anarchic. The master was now Removed from the 
 ndividual, the "egoist," to become a ghost, the law 
 or the State. Social liberalism abolishes the inequal- 
 ty of possession, of the poor and rich, and makes 
 people possessionkss or propertyless. Property is 
 withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to 
 ghostly society. Humane liberalism makes people 
 godless, atheistic. Therefore the individual's God, 
 'my God," must be put an end to. Now masterless- 
 ness is indeed at the same time freedom from service, 
 posscssionlessness at the same time freedom from care, 
 ind godlessness at the same time freedom from preju- 
 dice: for with the master the servant falls away; with 
 possession, the care about it; with the firmly-rooted 
 God, prejudice. But, since the master rises again as 
 State, the servant appears again as subject; since 
 possession becomes the property of society, care is be-
 
 190 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 gotten anew as labor ; and, since God as Man becomes 
 a prejudice, there arises a new faith, faith in humanity 
 or liberty. For the individual's God the God of all, 
 viz., "Man," is now exalted ; "for it is the highest 
 thing in us all to be man." But, as nobody can be- 
 come entirely what the idea "man" imports, Man re- 
 mains to the individual a lofty other world, an unat- 
 tained supreme being, a God. But at the same time 
 this is the " true God," because he is fully adequate to 
 us, to wit, our own "self"; we ourselves, but sepa- 
 rated from us and lifted above us. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 The foregoing review of " free human criticism " 
 was written by bits immediately after the appearance 
 of the books in question, as was also that which else- 
 where refers to writings of this tendency, and I did 
 little more than bring together the fragments. But 
 criticism is restlessly pressing forward, and thereby 
 makes it necessary for me to come back to it once 
 more, now that my book is finished, and insert this 
 concluding note. 
 
 I have before me the latest (eighth) number of the 
 " Allgemeine Liter atur-Zeitung" of Bruno Bauer. 
 
 There again " the general interests of society " 
 stand at the top. But criticism has reflected, and 
 " given this " society " a specification by which it is 
 discriminated from a form which previously had still 
 been confused with it: the "State," in former passages 
 still celebrated as "free State," is quite given up be- 
 cause it can in no wise fulfil the task of "human
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 191 
 
 society." Criticism only " saw itself compelled to 
 identify for a moment human and political affairs" in 
 1842; but now it has found that the State, even as 
 "free State," is not human society, or, as it could 
 likewise say, that the people is not " man." We saw 
 how it got through with theology and showed clearly 
 that God sinks into dust before Man; we see it now 
 come to a clearance with politics in the same way, 
 and show that before Man peoples and nationalities 
 fall : so we see how it has its explanation with Church 
 and State, declaring them both unhuman, and we shall 
 see for it betrays this to us already how it can also 
 give proof that before Man the " masses," which it 
 even calls a " spiritual being," appear worthless. And 
 how should the lesser " spiritual beings " be able to 
 maintain themselves before the supreme spirit? 
 " Man " casts down the false idols. 
 
 So what the critic has in view for the present is the 
 scrutiny of the " masses," which he will place before 
 " Man " in order to combat them from the standpoint 
 of Man. " What is now the object of criticism ? " 
 "The masses, a spiritual being! " These the critic 
 will "learn to know," and will find that they are in 
 contradiction with Man; he will demonstrate that 
 they are unhuman, and will succeed just as well in 
 this demonstration as in the former ones, that the 
 divine and the national, or the concerns of Church 
 and of State, were the unhuman. 
 
 The masses are defined as "the most significant 
 product of the Revolution, as the deceived multitude 
 which the illusions of political Illumination, and in 
 general the entire Illumination movement of the
 
 192 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 eighteenth century, have given over to boundless dis- 
 gruntlement." The Revolution satisfied some by its 
 result, and left others unsatisfied; the satisfied part 
 is the commonalty (bourgeoisie, etc.), the unsatisfied 
 is the masses. Does not the critic, so placed, himself 
 belong to the "masses"? 
 
 But the unsatisfied are still in great mistiness, and 
 their discontent utters itself only in a "boundless dis- 
 gruntlement." This the likewise unsatisfied critic now 
 wants to master: he cannot want and attain more 
 than to bring that "spiritual being," the masses, out 
 of its disgruntlement, and to "uplift" those who were 
 only disgruntled, i. e. to give them the right attitude 
 toward those results of the Revolution which are to be 
 overcome; he can become the head of the masses, 
 their decided spokesman. Therefore he wants also to 
 " abolish the deep chasm which parts him from the 
 multitude." From those who want to " uplift the 
 lower classes of the people " he is distinguished by 
 wanting to deliver from " disgruntlement," not merely 
 these, but himself too. 
 
 But assuredly his consciousness does not deceive 
 him either, when he takes the masses to be the 
 " natural opponents of theory," and foresees that, " the 
 more this theory shall develop itself, so much the more 
 will it make the masses compact." For the critic can- 
 not enlighten or satisfy the masses with his presupposi- 
 tion, Man. If over against the commonalty they are 
 only the " lower classes of the people," politically in- 
 significant masses, over against " Man " they must 
 still more be mere " masses," humanly insignificant 
 yes, unhuman masses, or a multitude of un-men.
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 193 
 
 The critic clears away everything human; and, 
 starting from the presupposition that the human is the 
 true, he works against himself, denying it wherever it 
 had been hitherto found. He proves only that the 
 human is to be found nowhere except in his head, but 
 the unhuman everywhere. The unhuman is the real, 
 the extant on all hands, and by the proof that it is 
 " not human " the critic only enunciates plainly the 
 tautological sentence that it is the unhuman. 
 
 But what if the unhuman, turning its back on itself 
 with resolute heart, should at the same time turn 
 away from the disturbing critic and leave him stand- 
 ing, untouched and unstung by his remonstrance? 
 " You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, 
 " and so I really am for you; but I am so only be- 
 cause you bring me into opposition to the human, and 
 I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be 
 hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible 
 because I sought my ' better self n outside me ; I was the 
 unhuman because I dreamed of the ' human ' ; I re- 
 sembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self and 
 always remain * poor sinners'; I thought of myself 
 only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all 
 in all, was not unique.* But now I cease to appear 
 to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself 
 and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize 
 anything above me: consequently adieu, humane 
 critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no 
 longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the 
 egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it -lets itself be mea-
 
 194 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 sured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the 
 egoistic as the unique." 
 
 We have to pay attention to still another sentence 
 of the same number. " Criticism sets up no dogmas, 
 and wants to learn to know nothing but things." 
 
 The critic is afraid of becoming " dogmatic " or 
 setting up dogmas. Of course : why, thereby he 
 would become the opposite of the critic, the dogmat- 
 ist; he would now become bad, as he is good as critic, 
 or would become from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. 
 " Of all things, no dogma! " this is his dogma. For 
 the critic remains on one and the same ground with 
 the dogmatist, that of thoughts. Like the latter he 
 always starts from a thought, but varies in this, that 
 he never ceases to keep the principle-thought in the 
 process of thinking, and so does not let it become 
 stable. He only asserts the thought-process against 
 the thought-faith, the progress of thinking against 
 stationariness in it. From criticism no thought is 
 safe, since criticism is thought or the thinking mind 
 itself. 
 
 Therefore I repeat that the religious world and 
 this is the world of thoughts reaches its completion 
 in criticism, where thinking extends its encroach- 
 ments over every thought, no one of which may 
 " egoistically " establish itself. Where would the 
 "purity of -criticism," the purity of thinking, be left if 
 even one thought escaped the process of thinking? 
 This explains the fact that the critic has even begun 
 already to gibe gently here and there at the thought 
 of Man, of humanity and humaneness, because he sus- 
 pects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 195 
 
 fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought 
 till he has found a " higher " in which it dissolves ; 
 for he moves only in thoughts. This higher thought 
 might be enunciated as that of the movement or pro- 
 cess of thinking itself, i. e. as the thought of thinking 
 or of criticism. 
 
 Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete 
 hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph : for 
 the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their 
 dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the 
 dogma of free thinking or of criticism. 
 
 Against everything that belongs to the world ol 
 thought, criticism is in the right, i. e. in might: it is 
 the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is " up to 
 date." From the standpoint of thought there is no 
 power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, 
 and it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively 
 this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. 
 Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it 
 in all its " turns." 
 
 I am no opponent of criticism, i. e. I am no dog- 
 matist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's 
 tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If 
 I were a " dogmatist," I should place at the head a 
 dogma, i. e. a thought, an idea, a principle, and 
 should complete this as a " systematist," spinning it 
 out to a system, i. e. a. structure of thought. Con- 
 versely, if I were a critic, viz., an opponent of the 
 dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking 
 against the enthralling thought, I should defend 
 thinking against what was thought. But I am neither 
 the champion of a thought nor the champion of think-
 
 196 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ing; for " I," from whom I start, am not a thought, 
 nor do I consist in thinking. Against me, the un- 
 nameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking, and mind 
 is shattered. 
 
 Criticism is the possessed man's fight against pos- 
 session as such, against all possession: a fight which is 
 founded in the consciousness that everywhere posses- 
 sion, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theologi- 
 cal attitude, is extant. He knows that people stand 
 in a religious or believing attitude not only toward 
 God, but toward other ideas as well, like right, the 
 State, law, etc.; i. e. he recognizes possession in all 
 places. So he wants to break up thoughts by think- 
 ing; but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me 
 from thoughts. It it not thinking, but my thought- 
 lessness, or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that 
 frees me from possession. 
 
 A jerk does me the service of the most anxious 
 thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the tor- 
 ment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast 
 the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoop- 
 la throws off year-long burdens. But the monstrous 
 significance of unthinking jubilation could not be 
 recognized in the long night of thinking and 
 believing. 
 
 " What clumsiness and frivolity, to want to solve 
 the most difficult problems, acquit yourself of the 
 most comprehensive tasks, by a breaking off!"" 
 
 But have you tasks if you do not set them to your- 
 self ? So long as you set them, you will not give 
 them up, and I certainly do not care if you think, 
 and, thinking, create a thousand thoughts. But you
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 197 
 
 who have set the tasks, are you not to be able to upset 
 them again? Must you be bound to these tasks, and 
 must they become absolute tasks? 
 
 To cite only one thing, the government has been 
 disparaged on account of its resorting to forcible 
 means against thoughts, interfering against the press 
 by means of the police power of the censorship, and 
 making a personal fight out of a literary one. As if 
 it were solely a matter of thoughts, and as if one's 
 attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish, self- 
 denying, and self-sacrificing! Do not those thoughts 
 attack the governing parties themselves, and so call 
 out egoism ? And do the thinkers not set before the 
 attacked ones the religious demand to reverence the 
 power of thought, of ideas? They are to succumb 
 voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine power 
 of thought, Minerva, fights on their enemies' side. 
 Why, that would be an act of possession, a religious 
 sacrifice. To be sure, the governing parties are them- 
 selves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the lead- 
 ing power of an idea or a faith; but they are at the 
 same time unconfessed egoists, and right here, against 
 the enemy, their pent-up egoism breaks loose: pos- 
 sessed in their faith, they are at the same time unpos- 
 sessed by their opponents' faith, i. e. they are egoists 
 toward this. If one wants to make them a reproach, 
 it could only be the converse, to wit, that they are 
 possessed by their ideas. 
 
 Against thoughts no egoistic power is to appear, no 
 police power and the like. So the believers in think- 
 ing believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not 
 sacred to me, and I defend my skin against them as
 
 198 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 against other things. That may be an unreasonable 
 defence; but, if I am in duty bound to reason, then I, 
 like Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest to it! 
 
 In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of 
 faith, is the kingdom of heaven, every one is assuredly 
 wrong who uses unthinking force, just as every one is 
 wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlov- 
 ingly, or, although he is a Christian and therefore 
 lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts unchristianly ; 
 in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself to be- 
 long though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he 
 is a "sinner" or "egoist." But it is only when he be- 
 comes a criminal against these kingdoms that he can 
 throw off their dominion. 
 
 Here too the result is this, that the fight of the 
 thinkers against the government is indeed in the right, 
 viz., in might, so far as it is carried on against 
 the government's thoughts (the government is dumb, 
 and does not succeed in making any literary rejoinder 
 to speak of), but is, on the other hand, in the wrong, 
 viz., in impotence, so far as it does not succeed in 
 bringing into the field anything but thoughts against 
 a personal power (the egoistic power stops the 
 mouths of the thinkers). The theoretical fight can- 
 not complete the victory, and the sacred power of 
 thought succumbs to the might of egoism. Only the 
 egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears 
 up everything. 
 
 This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic 
 option, an affair of the single person,* a mere pas- 
 
 * [des Einzigen]
 
 MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 199 
 
 time or hobby as it were, and to take from it the im- 
 portance of " being the last decisive power" ; this 
 degradation and desecration of thinking; this equali- 
 zation of the unthinking and thoughtful ego; this 
 clumsy but real "equality," criticism is not able to 
 produce, because it itself is only the priest of thinking, 
 and sees nothing beyond thinking but the deluge. 
 
 Criticism does indeed affirm, e. g., that free criti- 
 cism may overcome the State, but at the same time it 
 defends itself against the reproach which is laid upon 
 it by the State government, that it is " self-will and 
 impudence "; it thinks, then, that " self-will and im- 
 pudence " may not overcome, it alone may. The 
 truth is rather the reverse: the State can be really 
 overcome only by impudent self-will. 
 
 It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that 
 in the critic's new change of front he has not trans- 
 formed himself, but only " made good an oversight," 
 " disentangled a subject, " and is saying too much 
 when he speaks of " criticism criticising itself": it, or 
 rather he, has only criticised its "oversight" and 
 cleared it of its " inconsistencies." If he wanted to 
 criticise criticism, he would have to look and see if 
 there was anything in its presupposition. 
 
 I on my part start from a presupposition in presup- 
 posing my.telf; but my presupposition does not 
 struggle for its perfection like " Man struggling for 
 his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and 
 consume it. I consume my presupposition, and noth- 
 ing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that 
 presupposition is therefore not a presupposition at all: 
 for. as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the dual-
 
 200 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ity of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an " in- 
 complete " and a ' e complete " ego or man) ; but this, 
 that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do 
 not presuppose myself, because I am every moment 
 just positing or creating myself, and am I only by be- 
 ing not presupposed but posited, and, again, posited 
 only in the moment when I posit myself; i. e., I am 
 creator and creature in one. 
 
 If the presuppositions that have hitherto been cur- 
 rent are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must 
 not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again, 
 i. e. a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that 
 dissolution is to be for my good; otherwise it would 
 belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolu- | 
 tions which, in favor of others, (e. g. this very Man, 
 God, the State, pure morality, etc.), declared old 
 truths to be untruths and did away with long- 
 fostered presuppositions.
 
 Part Second
 
 At the entrance of the modern time stands the " God-man." 
 At its exit will only the God in the God-man evaporate ? and can 
 the God-man really die if only the God in him dies ? They did 
 not think of this question, and thought they were through when 
 in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the 
 Illumination, the vanquishing of God; they did not notice that 
 Man has killed God in order to become now " sole God on 
 high." The other world outside u$ is indeed brushed away, 
 and the great undertaking of the Illuminators completed ; but the 
 other world in us has become a new heaven and calls us forth to 
 renewed heaven-storming : God has had to give place, yet not to 
 us, but to Man. How can you believe that the God-man is 
 dead before the Man in him, besides the God, is dead?
 
 I 
 OWNNESS * 
 
 " Does not the spirit thirst for freedom?" Alas, 
 not my spirit alone, my body too thirsts for it hourly ! 
 When before the odorous castle-kitchen my nose tells 
 my palate of the savory dishes that are being prepared 
 therein, it feels a fearful pining at its dry bread; 
 when my eyes tell the hardened back about soft down 
 on which one may lie more delightfully than on its 
 compressed straw, a suppressed rage seizes it; when 
 but let us not follow the pains further. And you 
 call that a longing for freedom? What do you want 
 to become free from, then? From your hardtack and 
 your straw bed ? Then throw them away ! But 
 that seems not to serve you: you want rather to have 
 the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and downy beds. 
 Are men to give you this " freedom," are they to 
 permit it to you? You do not hope that from 
 their philanthropy, because you know they all think 
 
 * [This is a literal translation of the German word Eigenheit. which, with 
 its primitive eigen, " own," is used in this chapter in a way that the Ger- 
 man dictionaries do not quite recognize. The author's conception being 
 new, he had to make an innovation in the German language to express it. 
 The translator is under the like necessity. In most passages " self-owner- 
 ship." or else " personality," would translate the word, but there are some 
 where the thought is so eigen, that is, so peculiar or so thoroughly the 
 author's otrti, that no English word I can think of would express it. It will 
 explain itself to one who has rend Part First intelligently.]
 
 204 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 like you: each is the nearest to himself ! How, 
 therefore, do you mean to come to the enjoyment of 
 those foods and beds? Evidently not otherwise than 
 in making them your property! 
 
 If you think it over rightly, you do not want the 
 freedom to have all these fine things, for with this 
 freedom you still do not have them ; you want really 
 to have them, to call them yours and possess them as 
 your property. Of what use is a freedom to you, in- 
 deed, if it brings in nothing? And, if you became 
 free from everything, you would no longer have any- 
 thing; for freedom is empty of substance. Whoso 
 knows not how to make use of it, for him it has no 
 value this useless permission; but how I make use of 
 it depends on my personality.* 
 
 I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more 
 than freedom for you: you should not merely be rid 
 of what you do not want, you should also have what 
 you want; you should not only be a " freeman," you 
 should be an " owner " too. 
 
 Free from what? Oh! what is there that cannot 
 be shaken off ? The yoke of serfdom, of sovereignty, 
 of aristocracy and princes, the dominion of the desires 
 and passions; yes, even the dominion of one's own 
 will, of self-will, for the completest self-denial is 
 nothing but freedom freedom, to wit, from self- 
 determination, from one's own self. And the craving 
 for freedom as for something absolute, worthy of every 
 praise, deprived us of ownness: it created self-denial. 
 However, the freer I become, the more compulsion 
 
 * [EigenkeU]
 
 OWNNESS 205 
 
 piles up before my eyes; and the more impotent I feel 
 myself. The unfree son of the wilderness does not yet 
 feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilized 
 man : he seems to himself freer than this latter. In 
 the measure that I conquer freedom for myself I create 
 for myself new bounds and new tasks : if I have in- 
 vented railroads, I feel myself weak again because I 
 cannot yet sail through the skies like the bird ; and, if 
 I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed my 
 mind, at once there await me innumerable others, 
 whose perplexities impede my progress, dim my free 
 gaze, make the limits of my freedom painfully sensible 
 to me. " Now that you have become free from sin, 
 you have become servants of righteousness."* Repub- 
 licans in their broad freedom, do they not become 
 servants of the law? How true Christian hearts at all 
 times longed to " become free," how they pined to see 
 themselves delivered from the " bonds of this earth- 
 life"! they looked out toward the land of freedom. 
 ("The Jerusalem that is above is the freewoman ; she 
 is the mother of us all." Gal. 4. 26.) 
 
 Being free from anything -means only being clear 
 or rid. " He is free from headache" is equal to "he 
 is rid of it." " He is free from this prejudice" is 
 equal to " he has never conceived it" or "he has got 
 rid of it." In "less" we complete the freedom recom- 
 mended by Christianity, in sinless, godless, morality- 
 less, etc. 
 
 Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. " Ye, dear 
 brethren, are called to freedom. "f "So speak and so 
 
 * Rom. 6. 18. t 1 Pet. 2. 16.
 
 206 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 do, as those who are to be judged by the law of 
 freedom."* 
 
 Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a 
 Christian ideal, give it up? No, nothing is to be lost, 
 freedom no more than the rest ; but it is to become 
 our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot. 
 
 What a difference between freedom and ownness ! 
 One can get rid of a great many things, one yet does 
 not get rid of all ; one becomes free from much, not 
 from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite 
 of the condition of slavery, although, too, it is again 
 only from all sorts of things, not from everything ; 
 but from the whip, the domineering temper, etc., of 
 the master, one does not as slave becomeyra'. " Free- 
 dom lives only in the realm of dreams ! " Ownness, 
 on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is 
 I myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of 
 what I have in my power or what I control. My own 
 I am at all times and under all circumstances, if I 
 know how to have myself and do not throw myself 
 away on others. To be free is something that I can- 
 not truly will, because I cannot make it, cannot create 
 it: I can only wish it and aspire toward it, for it re- 
 mains an ideal, a spook. The fetters of reality cut 
 the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment. But my 
 own I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think 
 only of myself and my advantage ; his blows strike me 
 indeed, I am not free from them ; but I endure them 
 only for my benefit, perhaps in order to deceive him 
 and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or,
 
 OWNNESS 207 
 
 again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. 
 But, as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I 
 take by the forelock the first good opportunity to 
 trample the slaveholder into the dust. That I then 
 facomefree from him and his whip is only the conse- 
 quence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps 
 says I was " free " even in the condition of slavery, 
 to wit, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But "intrinsi- 
 cally free " is not " really free," and " inwardly " is 
 not "outwardly." I was own, on the other hand, my 
 own, altogether, inwardly and outwardly. Under the 
 dominion of a cruel master my body is not "free" 
 from torments and lashes ; but it is my bones that 
 moan under the torture, my fibres that quiver under 
 the blows, and / moan because my body moans. 
 That / sigh and shiver proves that I have not yet lost 
 myself , that I am still my own. My leg- is not "free" 
 from the master's stick, but it is my leg and is insepa- 
 rable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he 
 still has my leg! He retains in his hand nothing but 
 the corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a 
 dead dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a 
 so-called dead dog has none and is therefore no longer 
 a <!(><>;. 
 
 If one opines that a slave may yet be inwardly free, 
 he says in fact only the most indisputable and trivial 
 thing. For who is going to assert that any man is 
 wholly without freedom? If I am an eye-servant, can 
 I therefore not be free from innumerable things, e. g. 
 from faith in Zeus, from the desire for fame, and the 
 like? Why then should not a whipped slave also be 
 able to be inwardly free from unchristian sentiments,
 
 208 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 from hatred of his enemy, etc. ? He then has " Chris- 
 tian freedom," is rid of the unchristian ; but has he 
 absolute freedom, freedom from everything, e. g. from 
 the Christian delusion, or from bodily pain, etc.? 
 
 In the meantime, all this seems to be said more 
 against names than against the thing. But is the 
 name indifferent, and has not a word, a shibboleth, 
 always inspired and fooled men? Yet between 
 freedom and ownness there lies still a deeper chasm 
 than the mere difference of the words. 
 
 All the world desires freedom, all long for its reign 
 to come. O enchantingly beautiful dream of a 
 blooming " reign of freedom," a " free human race "! 
 who has not dreamed it? So men shall become 
 free, entirely free, free from all constraint! From all 
 constraint, really from all? Are they never to put 
 constraint on themselves any more? "Oh yes, that, 
 of course; don't you see, that is no constraint at all?" 
 Well, then at any rate they are to become free from 
 religious faith, from the strict duties of morality, 
 from the inexorability of the law, from " What a 
 fearful misunderstanding!" Well, what are they 
 to be free from then, and what not? 
 
 The lovely dream is dissipated; awakened, one rubs 
 his half-opened eyes and stares at the prosaic ques- 
 tioner. " What men are to be free from?" From 
 blind credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims an- 
 other, all faith is blind credulity; they must become 
 free from all faith. No, no, for God's sake, inveighs 
 the first again, do not cast all faith from you, else 
 the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the 
 republic, a third makes himself heard, and be-
 
 OWNNESS 209 
 
 come free from all commanding lords. There is no 
 help in that, says a fourth: we only get a new lord 
 then, a " dominant majority " ; let us rather free our- 
 selves from this dreadful inequality. O hapless 
 equality, already I hear your plebeian roar again! 
 How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a para- 
 dise of 'freedom, and what impudence and licentious- 
 ness now raises its wild clamor! Thus the first la- 
 ments, and gets on his feet to grasp the sword against 
 " unmeasured freedom." Soon we no longer hear any- 
 thing but the clashing of the swords of the disagreeing 
 dreamers of freedom. 
 
 What the craving for freedom has always come to 
 has been the desire for a particular freedom, e. g. 
 freedom of faith; i. e., the believing man wanted to be 
 free and independent; of what? of faith perhaps? no! 
 but of the inquisitors of faith. So now " political or 
 civil " freedom. The citizen wants to become free not 
 from citizenhood, but from bureaucracy, the arbitrari- 
 ness of princes, and the like. Prince Metternich once 
 said he had " found a way that was adapted to guide 
 men in the path of genuine freedom for all the 
 future." The Count of Provence ran away from 
 France precisely at the time when she was preparing 
 the " reign of freedom," and said: " My imprison- 
 ment had become intolerable to me; I had only one 
 passion, the desire for freedom ; I thought only of it." 
 
 The craving for a particular freedom always in- 
 cludes the purpose of a new dominion, as it was with 
 the Revolution, which indeed "could give its de- 
 fenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting 
 for freedom," but in truth only because they were
 
 910 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 after a particular freedom, therefore a new domtmon, 
 the " dominion of the law." 
 
 Freedom you all want, you want freedom. Why 
 then do you higgle over a more or less? Freedom can 
 only be the whole of freedom ; a piece of freedom is 
 notfreedom. You despair of the possibility of ob- 
 taining the whole of freedom, freedom from every- 
 thing, yes, you consider it insanity even to wish 
 this? Well, then leave off chasing after the phantom, 
 and spend your pains on something better than the 
 unattainable. 
 
 " Ah, but there is nothing better than freedom ! " 
 What have you then when you have freedom, viz., 
 for I will not speak here of your piecemeal bits of 
 freedom, complete freedom? Then you are rid of 
 everything that embarrasses you, everything, and 
 there is probably nothing that does not once in 
 your life embarrass you and cause you inconvenience. 
 And for whose sake, then, did you want to be rid of 
 it? Doubtlessybr your sake, because it is in your 
 way! But, if something were not inconvenient to 
 you; if, on the contrary, it were quite to your mind 
 (e. g. the gently but irresistibly commanding look of 
 your loved one), then you would not want to be rid 
 of it and free from it. Why not? For your sake 
 again ! So you take yourselves as measure and judge 
 over all. You gladly let freedom go when unfreedom, 
 the " sweet service of love, " suits you ; and you take 
 up your freedom again on occasion when it begins 
 to suit you better, that is, supposing, which is not 
 the point here, that you are not afraid of such a Re- 
 peal of the Union for other (perhaps religious) reasons.
 
 OWNNESS 211 
 
 Why will you not take courage now to really make 
 yourselves the central point and the main thing alto- 
 gether? Why grasp in the air at freedom, your 
 dream? Are you your dream? Do not begin by in- 
 quiring of your dreams, your notions, your thoughts, 
 for that is all "hollow theory." Ask yourselves and 
 ask after yourselves that is practical, and you know 
 you want very much to be " practical." But there the 
 one hearkens what his God (of course what he thinks 
 of at the name God is his God) may be going to say 
 to it, and another what his moral feelings, his con- 
 science, his feeling of duty, may determine about it, 
 and a third calculates what folks will think of it, 
 and, when each has thus asked his Lord God (folks 
 are a Lord God just as good as, nay, even more com- 
 pact than, the other-worldly and imaginary one: 
 vox populi, vox dei), then he accommodates himself to 
 his Lord's will and listens no more at all for what he 
 hhnwlf would like to say and decide. 
 
 Therefore turn to yourselves rather than to your 
 gods or idols. Bring out from yourselves what is in 
 you, bring it to the light, bring yourselves to 
 revelation. 
 
 How one acts only from himself, and asks after noth- 
 ing further, the Christians have realized in the notion 
 " God." He acts " as it pleases him." And foolish 
 man, who could do just so, is to act as it " pleases 
 God" instead. If it is said that even God proceeds 
 according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too 
 cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my 
 whole nature, i. e. in myself. 
 
 But one needs only admonish you of yourselves to
 
 212 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 bring you to despair at once. " What am I?" each 
 of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and unregu- 
 lated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos with- 
 out light or guiding star! How am I to obtain a 
 correct answer, if, without regard to God's command- 
 ments or to the duties which morality prescribes, with- 
 out regard to the voice of reason, which in the course 
 of history, after bitter experiences, has exalted the 
 best and most reasonable thing into law, I simply 
 appeal to myself? My passion would advise me to do 
 the most senseless thing possible. Thus each deems 
 himself the devil; for, if, so far as he is unconcerned 
 about religion, etc., he only deemed himself a beast, 
 he would easily find that the beast, which does follow 
 only its impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise 
 and impel itself to do the " most senseless " things, but 
 takes very correct steps. But the habit of the re- 
 ligious way of thinking has biased our mind so griev- 
 ously that we are terrified at ourselves in our naked- 
 ness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we 
 deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of 
 course it comes into your head at once that your 
 calling requires you to do the " good," the moral, 
 the right. Now, if you ask yourselves what is to be 
 done, how can the right voice sound forth from you, 
 the voice which points the way of the good, the right, 
 the true, etc.? What concord have God and Belial? 
 But what would you think if one answered you by 
 saying: "That one is to listen to God, conscience, 
 duties, laws, etc., is flim-flam with which people have 
 stuffed your head and heart and made you crazy "? 
 And if he asked you how it is that you know so surely
 
 OWNNESS 213 
 
 that the voice of nature is a seducer? And if he even 
 demanded of you to turn the thing about and actually 
 to deem the voice of God and conscience to be the 
 devil's work? There are such graceless men ; how 
 will you settle them? You cannot appeal to your 
 parsons, parents, and good men, for precisely these are 
 designated by them as your seducers, as the true se- 
 ducers and corrupters of youth, who busily sow broad- 
 cast the tares of self-contempt and reverence to God, 
 who fill young hearts with mud and young heads with 
 stupidity. 
 
 But now those people go on and ask: For whose 
 sake do you care about God's and the other command- 
 ments? You surely do not suppose that this is done 
 merely out of complaisance toward God ? No, you 
 are doing it -for your sake again. Here too, there- 
 fore, you are the main thing, and each must say to 
 himself, / am everything to myself and I do every- 
 thing on my account. If it ever became clear to you 
 that God, the commandments, etc., only harm you, 
 that they reduce and ruin you, to a certainty you 
 would throw them from you just as the Christians once 
 condemned Apollo or Minerva or heathen morality. 
 They did indeed put in the place of these Christ and 
 afterward Mary, as well as a Christian morality; but 
 they did this for the sake of their souls' welfare too, 
 therefore out of egoism or ownness. 
 
 And it was by this egoism, this ownness, that they 
 got rid of the old world of gods and became^m? 
 from it. Ownness created a new freedom; for ownness 
 is the creator of everything, as genius (a definite 
 ownness), which is always originality, has for a long
 
 2U THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 time already been looked upon as the creator of new 
 productions that have a place in the history of the 
 world. 
 
 If your efforts are ever to make " freedom " the 
 issue, then exhaust freedom's demands. Who is it 
 that is to become free? You, I, we. Free from what? 
 From everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, 
 therefore, am the kernel that is to be delivered from 
 all wrappings and freed from all cramping shells. 
 What is left when I have been freed from everything 
 that is not I? Only I; nothing but I. But freedom 
 has nothing to offer to this I himself. As to what is 
 now to happen further after I have become free, free- 
 dom is silent, as our governments, when the pris- 
 oner's time is up, merely let him go, thrusting him 
 into abandonment. 
 
 Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the 
 .1 after all, why not choose the I himself as beginning, 
 middle, and end? Am I not worth more than free- 
 dom? Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the 
 first? Even unfree, even laid in a thousand fetters, I 
 yet am; and I am not, like freedom, extant only in 
 the future and in hopes, but even as the most abject of 
 slaves I am present. 
 
 Think that over well, and decide whether you will 
 place on your banner the dream of " freedom" or the 
 resolution of " egoism," of " ownness." " Freedom " 
 awakens your rage against everything that is not 
 you; "egoism" calls you to joy over yourselves, to 
 self-enjoyment; "freedom " is and remains a longing, 
 a romantic plaint, a Christian hope for unearthliness 
 and futurity ; " ownness " is a reality, which of it. fe If
 
 OWNNESS 915 
 
 removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your 
 own way hinders you. What does not disturb you, 
 you will not want to renounce ; and, if it begins to 
 disturb you, why, you know that " you must obey 
 yourselves rather than men! " 
 
 Freedom teaches only: Get yourselves rid, relieve 
 yourselves, of everything burdensome ; it does not 
 teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid! so 
 rings its rallying-cry, and you, eagerly following its 
 call, get rid even of yourselves, " deny yourselves." 
 But ownness calls you back to yourselves, it says 
 " Come to yourself ! " Under the aegis of freedom 
 you get rid of many kinds of things, but something 
 new pinches you again: "you are rid of the Evil One; 
 evil is left."* As own you are really rid of everything, 
 and what clings to you you have accepted ; it is your 
 choice and your pleasure. The own man is the free- 
 born, the man free to begin with ; the free man, on 
 the contrary, is only the eleutheromaniac, the dreamer 
 and enthusiast. 
 
 The former is originally free, because he recognizes 
 nothing but himself; he does not need to free himself 
 first, because at the start he rejects everything outside 
 himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, 
 rates nothing higher, because, in short, he starts from 
 himself and " comes to himself." Constrained by 
 childish respect, he is nevertheless already working at 
 " freeing " himself from this constraint. Ownness 
 works in the little egoist, and procures him the de- 
 sired freedom . 
 
 * [See note, p. IK.]
 
 216 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to 
 you what you are, have made you believe you are not 
 egoists but are called to be idealists (" good men"). 
 Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which does 
 precisely deprive you of yourselves, in "self-denial"; 
 but seek for yourselves, become egoists, become each of 
 you an almighty ego. Or, more clearly : Just recog- 
 nize yourselves again, just recognize what you really 
 are, and let go your hypocritical endeavors, your 
 foolish mania to be something else than you are. 
 Hypocritical I call them because you have yet re- 
 mained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleep- 
 ing, self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heautontimoru- 
 menoses, you self-tormentors. Never yet has a religion 
 been able to dispense with " promises," whether they 
 referred us to the other world or to this ("long life," 
 etc.) ; for man is mercenary and does nothing 
 " gratis." But how about that " doing the good 
 for the good's sake" without prospect of reward? 
 As if here too the pay was not contained in the satis- 
 faction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, 
 is founded on our egoism and exploits it; calculated 
 for our desires, it stifles many others for the sake 
 of one. This then gives the phenomenon of cheated 
 egoism, where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my 
 desires, e. g. the impulse toward blessedness. Reli- 
 gion promises me the "supreme good" ; to gain this 
 I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do 
 not slake them. All your doings are unconfessed, 
 secret, covert, and concealed egoism. But because 
 they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to 
 yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves,
 
 OWNNESS 217 
 
 hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently 
 unconscious egoism, therefore they are not egoism, 
 but thraldom, service, self-renunciation ; you are ego- 
 ists, and you are not, since you renounce egoism. 
 Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn 
 upon the word "egoist" loathing and contempt. 
 
 I secure my freedom with regard to the world in the 
 degree that I make the world my own, i. e. " gain it 
 and take possession of it " for myself, by whatever 
 might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of categori- 
 cal demand, yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc.; 
 for the means that I use for it are determined by what 
 I am. If I am weak, I have only weak means, like 
 the aforesaid, which yet are good enough for a con- 
 siderable part of the world. Besides, cheating, hypoc- 
 risy, lying, look worse than they are. Who has not 
 cheated the police, the law? who has not quickly taken 
 on an air of honorable loyalty before the sheriff's 
 officer who meets him, in order to conceal an illegality 
 that may have been committed, etc.? He who has 
 not done it has simply let violence be done to him ; 
 he was a weakling from conscience. I know that my 
 freedom is diminished even by my not being able to 
 carry out my will on another object, be this other 
 something without will, like a rock, or something with 
 will, like a government, an individual, etc. ; I deny my 
 ownness when in presence of another I give myself 
 up, i. e. give way, desist, submit ; therefore by 
 loyalty, submission. For it is one thing when I give 
 up my previous course because it does not lead to the 
 goal, and therefore turn out of a wrong road ; it 
 is another when I yield myself a prisoner. I get
 
 218 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 around a rock that stands in my way, till I have 
 powder enough to blast it; I get around the laws of a 
 people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow 
 them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it there- 
 fore to be "sacred" to me, an Astarte? If I only 
 could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a 
 means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! 
 You inapprehensible one, you shall remain in- 
 apprehensible to me only till I have acquired the 
 might for apprehension and call you my own; I do 
 not give myself up before you, but only bide my time. 
 Even if for the present I put up with my inability to 
 touch you, I yet remember it against you. 
 
 Vigorous men have always done so. When the 
 " loyal " had exalted an unsubdued power to be their 
 master and had adored it, when they had demanded 
 adoration from all, then there came some such son of 
 nature who would not loyally submit, and drove the 
 adored power from its inaccessible Olympus. He 
 cried his " Stand still " to the rolling sun, and made 
 the earth go round; the loyal had to make the best of 
 it; he laid his axe to the sacred oaks, and the " loyal " 
 were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him; 
 he threw the pope off Peter's chair, and the " loyal " 
 had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the 
 divine-right business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, 
 and at last are silent. 
 
 My freedom becomes complete only when it is my 
 might ; but by this I cease to be a merely free man, 
 and become an own man. Why is the freedom of the 
 peoples a "hollow word "? Because the peoples 
 have no might! With a breath of the living ego I
 
 OWNNESS 219 
 
 blow peoples over, be it the breath of a Nero, a 
 Chinese emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that 
 
 the G * legislatures pine in vain for freedom, 
 
 and are lectured for it by the cabinet ministers? Be- 
 cause they are not of the " mighty " ! Might is a fine 
 thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes 
 further with a handful of might than with a bagful o f 
 right." You long for freedom? You fools! If you 
 took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he 
 who has might "stands above the law." How does 
 this prospect taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? 
 But you have no taste! 
 
 The cry for " freedom " rings loudly all around. 
 But is it felt and known what a donated or chartered 
 freedom must mean? It is not recognized in the full 
 amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially 
 self-liberation, i. e., that I can have only so much 
 freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. Of 
 what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their free- 
 dom of speech? They stick to bleating. Give one 
 who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Chris- 
 tian, permission to speak what he likes: he will yet 
 utter only narrow-minded stuff. If, on the contrary, 
 certain others rob you of the freedom of speaking and 
 hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their 
 temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able 
 to say and hear something whereby those " certain " 
 persons would lose their credit. 
 
 If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are 
 simply knaves who give more than they have. For 
 
 * [Meaning " German." Written in this form because of the censorship.]
 
 F 
 
 : 
 
 220 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 then they give you nothing of their own, but stolen 
 wares: they give you your own freedom, the freedom 
 that you must take for yourselves; and they give it to 
 you only that you may not take it and call the thieves 
 and cheats to an account to boot. In their slyness 
 they know well that given (chartered) freedom is no 
 freedom, since only the freedom one takes for him- 
 self, therefore the egoist's freedom, rides with full sai 
 Donated freedom strikes its sails as soon as there 
 comes a storm or calm; it requires always a gent 
 and moderate breeze. 
 
 Here lies the difference between self-liberation and 
 emancipation (manumission, setting free). Those who 
 to-day " stand in the opposition " are thirsting and 
 screaming to be " set free." The princes are to " de- 
 clare their peoples of age," i. e. emancipate them ! 
 Behave as if you were of age, and you are so without 
 any declaration of majority; if you do not behave ac- 
 cordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never 
 be of age even by a declaration of majority. When 
 the Greeks were of age, they drove out their tyrants, 
 and, when the son is of age, he makes himself inde- 
 pendent of his father. If the Greeks had waited till 
 their tyrants graciously allowed them their majority, 
 they might have waited long. A sensible father 
 throws out a son who will not come of age, and keeps 
 the house to himself; it serves the noodle right. 
 
 The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman, 
 a libertinus, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him : 
 he is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like 
 the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are 
 nothing bettered in themselves, but only relieved as
 
 OWNNESS 221 
 
 Jews, although he who relieves their condition is cer- 
 ;ainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter 
 cannot do this without inconsistency. But, emanci- 
 pated or not emancipated, Jew remains Jew; he who 
 
 not self-freed is merely an emancipated man. The 
 Protestant State can certainly set free (emancipate) 
 he Catholics; but, because they do not make them- 
 selves free, they remain simply Catholics. 
 
 Selfishness and unselfishness have already been 
 spoken of. The friends of freedom are exasperated 
 against selfishness because in their religious striving 
 after freedom they cannot free themselves from that 
 sublime thing, " self-renunciation." The liberal's 
 anger is directed against egoism, for the egoist, you 
 know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake 
 of the thing, but for his sake : the thing must serve 
 him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no thing a value of 
 its own, an " absolute " value, but to seek its value 
 in me. One often hears that pot-boiling study which 
 is so common counted among the most repulsive traits 
 of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most 
 shameful desecration of science; but what is science 
 for but to be consumed? If one does not know how 
 to use it for anything better than to keep the pot boil- 
 ing, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because 
 this egoist's power is a limited power; but the egoistic 
 element in it, and the desecration of science, only a 
 possessed man can blame. 
 
 Because Christianity, incapable of letting the indi- 
 vidual count as an ego, * thought of him only as a
 
 222 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 dependent, and was properly nothing but a social 
 theory, a doctrine of living together, and that of 
 man with God as well as of man with man, therefore 
 in it everything "own" must fall into most woful dis- 
 repute: selfishness, self-will, ownness, self-love, etc. 
 The Christian way of looking at things has on all 
 sides gradually re-stamped honorable words into dis- 
 honorable; why should they not be brought into 
 honor again? So Schimjof (contumely) is in its old 
 sense equivalent to jest, but for Christian seriousness 
 pastime became a dishonor,* for that seriousness can- 
 not take a joke; f reck (impudent) formerly meant 
 only bold, brave; Frevel (wanton outrage) was only 
 daring. It is well known how askance the word 
 " reason " was looked at for a long time. 
 
 Our language has settled itself pretty well to the 
 Christian standpoint, and the general consciousness is 
 still too Christian not to shrink in terror from every- 
 thing unchristian as from something incomplete or 
 evil. Therefore " selfishness " is in a bad way too. 
 
 Selfishness,! in the Christian sense, means some- 
 thing like this: I look only to see whether anything 
 is of use to me as a sensual man. But is sensuality 
 then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own 
 senses when I am given up to sensuality? Do I fol- 
 low myself, my own determination, when I follow 
 that? I am my own only when I am master of my- 
 self, instead of being mastered either by sensuality or 
 by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State, 
 
 * [I take Entbe.hnmg, " destitution," to be a misprint for Entehrung.] 
 t [Eigennutz, literally " own-use."!
 
 OWNNESS 223 
 
 Ihurch, etc.) ; what is of use to me, this self-owned or 
 self-appertaining one, my selfishness pursues. 
 
 Besides, one sees himself every moment compelled to 
 jelieve in that constantly-blasphemed selfishness as an 
 ,11-controlling power. In the session of February 10, 
 1844, Welcker argues a motion on the dependence of 
 ,he judges, and sets forth in a detailed speech that 
 removable, dismissable, transferable, and pensionable 
 udges in short, such members of a court of justice as 
 :an by mere administrative process be damaged and 
 endangered, are wholly without reliability, yes, lose 
 all respect and all confidence among the people. The 
 'hole bench, Welcker cries, is demoralized by this de- 
 >endence! In blunt words this means nothing else 
 ;han that the judges find it more to their advantage to 
 rive judgment as the ministers would have them than 
 jo give it as the law would have them. How is that 
 o be helped? Perhaps by bringing home to the 
 udges' hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, 
 and then cherishing the confidence that they will re- 
 >ent and henceforth prize justice more highly than 
 heir selfishness? No, the people does not soar to- this 
 romantic confidence, for it feels that selfishness is 
 mightier than any other motive. Therefore the same 
 arsons who have been judges hitherto may remain so, 
 however thoroughly one has convinced himself that 
 they behaved as egoists; only they must not any 
 longer find their selfishness favored by the venality of 
 justice, but must stand so independent of the govern- 
 ment that by a judgment in conformity with the facts 
 they do not throw into the shade their own cause, their 
 '* well-understood interest," but rather secure a com-
 
 224 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 fortable combination of a good salary with respect 
 among the citizens. 
 
 So Welcker and the commoners of Baden consider 
 themselves secured only when they can count on self- 
 ishness. What is one to think, then, of the countless 
 phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths over- 
 flow at other times? i ' 
 
 To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have an- 
 other relation than to one which I am serving unself- 
 ishly. The following criterion might be cited for it: 
 against the one I can sin or commit a sin, the other I 
 can only trifle away, push from me, deprive myself of. 
 i. e. commit an imprudence. Free trade is looked 
 at in both ways, being regarded partly as a freedom 
 which may under certain circumstances be granted or 
 withdrawn, partly as one which is to be held sacred 
 under all circumstances. 
 
 If I am not concerned about a thing in and for it- 
 self, and do not desire it for its own sake, then I de- 
 sire it solely as a means to an end, for its usefulness; 
 for the sake of another end; e. g., oysters for a pleas- 
 ant flavor. Now will not every thing whose final end 
 he himself is serve the egoist as means? and is he to 
 protect a thing that serves him for nothing, e. g., the 
 proletarian to protect the State? 
 
 Ownness includes in itself everything own, and 
 brings to honor again what Christian language dis- 
 honored. But ownness has not any alien standard 
 either, as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom, 
 morality, humanity, and the like: it is only a descrip- 
 tion of the owner.
 
 THE OWNElt 225 
 
 II 
 
 THE OWNER 
 
 I do I come to myself and mine through 
 liberalism ? 
 
 Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal? 
 Man! Be only man, and that you are anyway, 
 and the liberal calls you his brother. He asks very 
 ittle about your private opinions and private follies, 
 if only he can espy," Man " in you. 
 
 But, as he takes little heed of what you are priva- 
 tim, nay, in a strict following out of his principle 
 sets no value at all on it, he sees in you only what 
 are generatim. In other words, he sees in you, 
 not you, but the species ; not Tom or Jim, but Man; 
 lot the real or unique one,* but your essence or your 
 concept; not the bodily man, but the spirit. 
 
 As Tom you would not be his equal, because he is 
 Jim, therefore not Tom ; as man you are the same 
 ;hat he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not 
 exist at all for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal 
 and not unconsciously an egoist), he has really made 
 ' brother-love " very easy for himself: he loves in you 
 not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to 
 know nothing, but Man. 
 
 * [Einzigen]
 
 226 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 To see in you and me nothing further than " men,' 
 that is running the Christian way of looking at things! 
 according to which one is for the other nothing but a j 
 concept (e. g. a man called to salvation, etc.), into 
 the ground. 
 
 Christianity properly so called gathers us under a ] 
 less utterly general concept: there we are " sons of 
 God " and " led by the Spirit of God." ' Yet not all 
 can boast of being God's sons, but " the same Spirit 
 which witnesses to our spirit that we are sons of God 
 reveals also who are the sons of the devil." f Con- 
 sequently, to be a son of God one must not be a son 
 of the devil; the sonship of God excluded certain men. 
 To be sons of men, i. e. men, on the contrary, we 
 need nothing but to belong to the human species, need j 
 only to be specimens of the same species. What I 
 am as this I is no concern of yours as a good liberal, 
 but is my private affair alone ; enough that we are 
 both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the hu- 
 man species : as " a son of man " I am your equal. 
 
 What am I now to you? Perhaps this bodily I as I 
 walk and stand? Anything but that. This bodily 
 I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in your 
 eyes a " private affair" which is no concern of yours: 
 it is an " affair by itself." As an " affair for you " 
 there exists only my concept, my generic concept, only 
 the Man, who, as he is called Tom, could just as well 
 be Joe or Dick. You see in me not me, the bodily 
 man, but an unreal thing, the spook, i. e. a Man. 
 
 In the course of the Christian centuries we declared 
 
 * Rom. 8. 14. t Cf. 1 John 3. 10 with Rom. 8. 16.
 
 THE OWNER 297 
 
 the most various persons to be "our equals," but each 
 time in the measure of that spirit which we expected 
 from them, e. g. each one in whom the spirit of the 
 need of redemption may be assumed, then later each 
 one who has the spirit of integrity, finally each one 
 who shows a human spirit and a human face. Thus 
 the fundamental principle of " equality " varied. 
 
 Equality being now conceived as equality of the 
 human spirit, there has certainly been discovered an 
 equality that includes all men ; for who could deny 
 that we men have a human spirit, i. e. no other than a 
 human ! 
 
 But are we on that account further on now than in 
 the beginning of Christianity? Then we were to have 
 a dirine spirit, now a human; but, if the divine did 
 not exhaust us, how should the human wholly express 
 what we are? Feuerbach, e. g., thinks that, if he hu- 
 manizes the divine, he has found the truth. No, if 
 God has given us pain, " Man " is capable of pinching 
 us still more torturingly. The long and the short of it 
 is this : that we are men is the slightest thing about us, 
 and has significance only in so far as it is one of our 
 qualities,* i. e. our property.! I am indeed among 
 other things a man, as I am, e. g., a living being, 
 therefore an animal, or a European, a Berliner, and 
 the like; but he who chose to have regard for me only 
 as a man, or as a Berliner, would pay me a regard 
 that would be very unimportant to me. And where- 
 fore? Because he would have regard only for one of 
 my qualities, not for me. 
 
 * (Eigenxchaften\
 
 228 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 It is just so with the spirit too. A Christian spirit, 
 an upright spirit, and the like may well be my ac- 
 quired quality, i. e. my property, but I am not this 
 spirit: it is mine, not I its. 
 
 Hence we have in liberalism only the continuation 
 of the old Christian depreciation of the I, the bodily 
 Tom. Instead of taking me as I am, one looks 
 solely at my property, my qualities, and enters into 
 marriage bonds with me only for the sake of my pos- 
 sessions; one marries, as it were, what I have, not 
 what I am. The Christian takes hold of my spirit, 
 the liberal of my humanity. 
 
 But, if the spirit, which is not regarded as the prop- 
 erty of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a 
 ghost, then the Man too, who is not recognized as my 
 quality but as the proper I, is nothing but a spook, a 
 thought, a concept. 
 
 Therefore the liberal too revolves in the same circle 
 as the Christian. Because the spirit of mankind, i. e. 
 Man, dwells in you, you are a man, as when the spirit 
 of Christ dwells in you you are a Christian ; but, be- 
 cause it dwells in you only as a second ego, even 
 though it be as your proper or " better " ego, it re- 
 mains otherworldly to you, and you have to strive to 
 become wholly man. A striving just as fruitless as 
 the Christian's to become wholly a blessed spirit! 
 
 One can now, after liberalism has proclaimed Man, 
 declare openly that herewith was only completed the 
 consistent carrying out of Christianity, and that in 
 truth Christianity set itself no other task from the start 
 than to realize " man," the "true man." Hence, then, 
 the illusion that Christianity ascribes an infinite value
 
 THE OWNER 229 
 
 to the ego (as e. g. in the doctrine of immortality, in 
 the cure of souls, etc.) comes to light. No, it assigns 
 this value to Man alone. Only Man is immortal, and 
 only because I am man am I too immortal. In fact, 
 Christianity had to teach that no one is lost, just as 
 liberalism too puts all on an equality as men ; but that 
 eternity, like this equality, applied only to the Man in 
 me, not to me. Only as the bearer and harborer of 
 Man do I not die, as notoriously " the king never 
 dies." Louis dies, but the king remains; I die, but 
 my spirit, Man, remains. To identify me now en- 
 tirely with Man the demand has been invented, and 
 stated, that I must become a " real generic being." * 
 The HUMAN religion is only the last metamorphosis 
 of the Christian religion. For liberalism is a religion 
 because it separates my essence from me and sets it 
 above me, because it exalts " Man " to the same ex- 
 tent as any other religion does its God or idol, because 
 it makes what is mine into something otherworldly, 
 because in general it makes out of what is mine, out 
 of my qualities and my property, something alien, to 
 wit, an " essence "; in short, because it sets me be- 
 neath Man, and thereby creates for me a "vocation." 
 But liberalism declares itself a religion in form too 
 when it demands for this supreme being, Man, a zeal 
 of faith, " a faith that some day will at last prove its 
 fiery zeal too, a zeal that will be invincible." f But, 
 as liberalism is a human religion, its professor takes 
 a tolerant attitude toward the professor of any other 
 
 * E. a. Marx in the " Deutsch-franzoesische Jahrbuecter," p. 197. 
 t Br. Bauer, " Judenfrape," p. 61.
 
 230 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 (Catholic, Jewish, etc.), as Frederick the Great did to- 
 ward every one who performed his duties as a subject, 
 whatever fashion of becoming blest he might be in- 
 clined toward. This religion is now to be raised to 
 the rank of the generally customary one, and separated 
 from the others as mere " private follies," toward 
 which, besides, one takes a highly liberal attitude on 
 account of their unessentialness. 
 
 One may call it the State-religion, the religion of 
 the "free State," not in the sense hitherto current that 
 it is the one favored or privileged by the State, but as 
 that religion which the " free State " not only has the 
 right, but is compelled, to demand from each of those 
 who belong to it, let him be privatim a Jew, a Chris- 
 tian, or anything else. For it does the same service 
 to the State as filial piety to the family. If the fam- 
 ily is to be recognized and maintained, in its existing 
 condition, by each one of those who belong to it, then 
 to him the tie of blood must be sacred, and his feeling 
 for it must be that of piety, of respect for the ties of 
 blood, by which every blood T relation becomes to him a 
 consecrated person. So also to every member of the 
 State-community this community must be sacred, and 
 the concept which is the highest to the State must like- 
 wise be the highest to him. 
 
 But what concept is the highest to the State? 
 Doubtless that of being a really human society, a so- 
 ciety in which every one who is really a man, i. e. 
 not an un-man, can obtain admission as a member. 
 Let a State's tolerance go ever so far, toward an un- 
 man and toward what is inhuman it ceases. And yet 
 this " un-man " is a man, yet the " inhuman " itself is
 
 THE OWNER 231 
 
 something human, yes, possible only to a man, not to 
 any beast; it is, in fact, something " possible to man." 
 But, although every un-man is a man, yet the State 
 excludes him; i. e., it locks him up, or transforms him 
 from a fellow of the State into a fellow of the prison 
 (fellow of the lunatic asylum or hospital, according to 
 Communism). 
 
 To say in blunt words what an un-man is is not 
 particularly hard: it is a man who does not corre- 
 spond to the concept man, as the inhuman is something 
 human which is not conformed to the concept of the 
 human. Logic calls this a " self-contradictory judg- 
 ment." Would it be permissible for one to pronounce 
 this judgment, that one can be a man without being a 
 man, if he did not admit the hypothesis that the con- 
 cept of man can be separated from the existence, the 
 essence from the appearance? They say, he appears 
 indeed as a man, but is not a man. 
 
 Men have passed this " self-contradictory judgment" 
 through a long line of centuries! Nay, what is still 
 more, in this long time there were only un-men. 
 What individual can have corresponded to his con- 
 cept? Christianity knows only one Man, and this 
 one Christ is at once an un-man again in the re- 
 verse sense, to wit, a superhuman man, a " God." 
 Only the un-man is a real man. 
 
 Men that are not men, what should they be but 
 ghosts ? Every real man, because he does not cor- 
 respond to the concept " man," or because he is not 
 a " generic man," is a spook. But do I still remain 
 an un-man even if I bring Man (who towered above 
 me and remained otherworldly to me only as my
 
 232 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ideal, my task, my essence or concept) down to be my 
 quality, my own and inherent in me; so that Man is 
 nothing else than my humanity, my human existence, 
 and everything that I do is human precisely because 
 / do it, but not because it corresponds to the concept 
 " man "? / am really Man and the un-man in one; 
 for I am a man and at the same time more than a 
 man; i. e., I am the ego of this my mere quality. 
 
 It had to come to this at last, that it was no longer 
 merely demanded of us to be Christians, but to become 
 men; for, though we could never really become even 
 Christians, but always remained " poor sinners " (for 
 the Christian was an unattainable ideal too), yet in 
 this the contradictoriness did not come before our 
 consciousness so, and the illusion was easier than now 
 when of us, who are men and act humanly (yes, cannot 
 do otherwise than be such and act so), the demand is 
 made that we are to be men, " real men." 
 
 Our States of to-day, because they still have all sorts 
 of things sticking to them, left from their churchly 
 mother, do indeed load those who belong to them 
 with various obligations (e. g. churchly religiousness) 
 which properly do not a bit concern them, the States; 
 yet on the whole they do not deny their significance, 
 since they want to be looked upon as human societies, 
 in which man as man can be a member, even if he is 
 less privileged than other members; most of them ad- 
 mit adherents of every religious sect, and receive peo- 
 ple without distinction of race or nation : Jews, Turks, 
 Moors, etc., can become French citizens. In the act 
 of reception, therefore, the State looks only to see 
 whether one is a man. The Church, as a society of
 
 THE OWNER 233 
 
 believers, could not receive every man into her bosom; 
 the State, as a society of men, can. But, when the 
 State has carried its principle clear through, of presup- 
 posing in its constituents nothing but that they are 
 men (even the North Americans still presuppose in 
 theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of 
 integrity, of respectability), then it has dug its grave. 
 While it will fancy that those whom it possesses are 
 without exception men, these have meanwhile become 
 without exception egoists, each of whom utilizes it ac- 
 cording to his egoistic powers and ends. Against the 
 egoists " human society " is wrecked; for they no 
 longer have to do with each other as men, but appear 
 egoistically as an / against a You altogether different 
 from me and in opposition to me. 
 
 If the State must count on our humanity, it is the 
 same if one says it must count on our morality. See- ' 
 ing Man in each other, and acting as men toward each 
 other, is called moral behavior. This is every whit the 
 " spiritual love " of Christianity. For, if I see Man in 
 you, as in myself I see Man and nothing but Man, 
 then I care for you as I would care for myself; for we 
 represent, you see, nothing but the mathematical prop- 
 osition: A=C and B=C, consequently A=B, ., 
 i. e., I nothing but man and you nothing but man, 
 consequently I and you the same. Morality is incom- 
 patible with egoism, because the former does not allow 
 validity to me, but only to the Man in me. But, if 
 the State is a society of men, not a union of egos each 
 of whom has only himself before his eyes, then it can- 
 not last without morality, and must insist on morality. 
 
 Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I,
 
 234 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this " hu- 
 man society," I sacrifice nothing to- it, I only utilize 
 it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform 
 it rather into my property and my creature, i. e. I 
 annihilate it, and form in its place the Union of 
 Egoists. 
 
 So the State betrays its enmity to me by demanding 
 that I be a man, which presupposes that I may also 
 not be a man, but rank for it as an " un-man "; it 
 imposes being a man upon me as a duty. Further, 
 it desires me to do nothing along with which it cannot 
 last; so its permanence is to be sacred for me. Then 
 I am not to be an egoist, but a " respectable, up- 
 right," i. e. moral, man. Enough, before it and its 
 permanence I am to be impotent and respectful, etc. 
 
 This State, not a present one indeed, but still in 
 need of being first created, is the ideal of advancing 
 liberalism. There is to come into existence a true 
 " society of men," in which every " man " finds room. 
 Liberalism means to realize " Man," i. e. create a 
 world for him; and this should be the human world or 
 the general (Communistic) society of men. It was said, 
 " The Church could regard only the spirit, the State is 
 to regard the whole man." * But is not " Man " 
 " spirit "? The kernel of the State is simply " Man," 
 this unreality, and it itself is only a " society of men." 
 The world which the believer (believing spirit) creates 
 is called Church, the world which the man (human or 
 humane spirit) creates is called State. But that is not 
 my world. I never execute anything human in the 
 
 * Hess, " Triarchie," p. 76.
 
 THE OWNER 235 
 
 abstract, but always my own things; i. e., my human 
 act is diverse from every other human act, and only by 
 this diversity is it a real act belonging to me. The 
 human in it is an abstraction, and, as such, spirit, 
 i. e. abstracted essence. 
 
 Br. Bauer states (e. g. " Judenfrage," p. 84) that 
 the truth of criticism is the final truth, and in fact the 
 truth sought for by Christianity itself, to wit, 
 "Man." He says, " The history of the Christian world 
 is the history of the supreme fight for truth, for in it 
 and in it only ! the thing at issue is the discovery 
 of the final or the primal truth man and freedom." 
 
 All right, let us accept this gain, and let us take 
 wan as the ultimately found result of Christian 
 history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man in 
 general. Now, who is Man? /am! Man, the end 
 and outcome of Christianity, is, as 7, the beginning 
 and raw material of the new history, a history of en- 
 joyment after the history of sacrifices, a history not of 
 man or humanity, but of me. Man ranks as the 
 general. Now then, I nd the egoistic are the really 
 general, since every one is an egoist and of paramount 
 importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely 
 egoistic, because the Jew still devotes himself to 
 Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the Christian 
 lives on the grace of God and subjects himself to him. 
 As Jew and as Christian alike a man satisfies only 
 certain of his wants, only a certain need, not himself: 
 a Afl^egoism, because the egoism of a half-man, who 
 is half he, half Jew, or half his own proprietor, half a 
 slave. Therefore, too, Jew and Christian always half- 
 way exclude each other; i. e., as men they recognize
 
 236 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 each other, as slaves they exclude each other, because 
 they are servants of two different masters. If they 
 could be complete egoists, they would exclude each 
 other wholly and hold together so much the more 
 firmly. Their ignominy is not that they exclude each 
 other, but that this is done only half-way. Br. Bauer, 
 on the contrary, thinks Jews and Christians cannot re- 
 gard and treat each other as " men " till they give up 
 the separate essence which parts them and obligates 
 them to eternal separation, recognize the general 
 essence of " Man," and regard this as their " true 
 essence." 
 
 According to his representation the defect of the 
 Jews and the Christians alike lies in their wanting to 
 be and have something " particular " instead of only 
 being men and endeavoring after what is human, to 
 wit, the " general rights of man." He thinks their 
 fundamental error consists in the belief that they are 
 "privileged," possess " prerogatives"; in general, in 
 the belief in prerogative.* In opposition to this he 
 holds up to them the general rights of man. The 
 rights of man ! 
 
 Man is man in general, and in so far every one who 
 is a man. Now every one is to have the eternal rights 
 of man, and, according to the opinion of Communism, 
 enjoy them in the complete " democracy," or, as it 
 ought more correctly to be called, anthropocracy. 
 But it is I alone who have everything that I procure 
 for myself; as man I have nothing. People would 
 like to give every man an affluence of all good, merely 
 
 * [Vorrecht, literally " precedent right,"]
 
 THE OWNER 23? 
 
 because he has the title " man." But I put the accent 
 on me, not on my being man. 
 
 Man is something only as my quality* (property!), 
 like masculinity or femininity. The ancients found 
 the ideal in one's being male in the full sense; their 
 virtue is virtus and arete, i. e. manliness. What is 
 one to think of a woman who should want only to be 
 perfectly " woman "? That is not given to all, and 
 many a one would therein be fixing for herself an 
 unattainable goal. Feminine, on the other hand, she 
 is anyhow, by nature; femininity is her quality, and 
 she does not need " true femininity." I am a man 
 just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would 
 be to set the earth the task of being a " thorough 
 star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the call to 
 be a " thorough man." 
 
 When Fichte says, " The ego is all," this seems to 
 harmonize perfectly with my theses. But it is not that 
 the ego is all, but the ego destroys all, and only the 
 self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the -finite ego 
 is really I. Fichte speaks of the " absolute " ego, but 
 I speak of me, the transitory ego. 
 
 How natural is the supposition that man and ego 
 mean the same! and yet one sees, e. g., by Feuerbach, 
 that the expression " man " is to designate the abso- 
 lute ego, the species, not the transitory, individual ego. 
 Egoism and humanity (humaneness) ought to mean 
 the same, but according to Feuerbach the individual 
 can " only lift himself above the limits of his individu- 
 ality, but not above the laws, the positive ordinances, 
 
 * [Eigrnschaft] t [Eigentum]
 
 238 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 of his species." * But the species is nothing, and, if 
 the individual lifts himself above the limits of his in- 
 dividuality, this is rather his very self as an individ- 
 ual; he exists only in raising himself, he exists only in 
 not remaining what he is; otherwise he would be 
 done, dead. Man with the great M is only an ideal, 
 the species only something thought of. To be a man 
 is not to realize the ideal of Man, but to present one- 
 self, the individual. It is not how I realize the gen- 
 erally human that needs to be my task, but how I 
 satisfy myself. / am my species, am without norm, 
 without law, without model, and the like. It is pos- 
 sible that I can make very little out of myself; but 
 this little is everything, and is better than what I al- 
 low to be made out of me by the might of others, by 
 the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State, 
 etc. Better if the talk is to be of better at all 
 better an unmannerly child than an old head on 
 young shoulders, better a mulish man than a man com- 
 pliant in everything. The unmannerly and mulish 
 fellow is still on the way to form himself according to 
 his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant 
 one is determined by the " species," the general de- 
 mands, etc., the species is law to him. He is deter- 
 mined f by it; for what else is the species to him but 
 his " destiny," $ his " calling"? Whether I look to 
 " humanity," the species, in order to strive toward this, 
 ideal, or to God and Christ with like endeavor, where 
 is the essential dissimilarity? At most the former is 
 
 " Essence of Christianity," 2de<J., p. 401. 
 
 ' J [Bestimrmmg\
 
 THE OWNER 239 
 
 more washed-out than the latter. As the individual is 
 the whole of nature, so he is the whole of the species 
 too. 
 
 Everything that I do, think, etc., in short, my ex- 
 pression or manifestation is indeed conditioned by 
 what I am. The Jew, e. g., can will only thus or thus, 
 can " present himself" only thus; the Christian can 
 present and manifest himself only christianly, etc. If 
 it were possible that you could be a Jew or Christian, 
 you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or 
 Christian; but it is not possible; in the most rigorous 
 conduct you yet remain an egoist, a sinner against 
 that concept i. e., you are not the precise equivalent 
 of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps 
 peeping through, people have inquired for a more per- 
 fect concept which should really wholly express what 
 you are, and which, because it is your true nature, 
 should contain all the laws of your activity. The most 
 perfect thing of the kind has been attained in " Man." 
 As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not 
 your task; to be a Greek, a German, does not suffice. 
 But lie a man, then you have everything; look upon 
 the human as your calling. 
 
 Now I know what is expected of me, and the new 
 catechism can be written. The subject is again sub- 
 jected to the predicate, the individual to something 
 general; the dominion is again secured to an idea, and 
 the foundation laid for a new religion. This is a xtcp 
 forward in .the domain of religion, and in particular 
 of Christianity ; not a step out beyond it. 
 
 The step out beyond it leads into the unspeakable, 
 For me paltry language has. no word, and " the
 
 240 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Word," the Logos, is to me a " mere word." 
 
 My essence is sought for. If not the Jew, the Ger- 
 man, etc., then at any rate it is the man. " Man is 
 my essence." 
 
 I am repulsive or repugnant to myself; I have a 
 horror and loathing of myself, I am a horror to my- 
 self, or, I am never enough for myself and never do 
 enough to satisfy myself. From such feelings springs 
 self-dissolution or self-criticism. Religiousness begins 
 with self-renunciation, ends with completed criticism. 
 
 I am .possessed, and want to get rid of the " evil 
 spirit." How do I set about it? I fearlessly commit 
 the sin that seems to the Christian the direst, the sin 
 and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. " He who 
 blasphemes the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever, 
 but is liable to the eternal judgment ! " ' I want no 
 forgiveness, and am not afraid of the judgment. 
 
 Man is the last evil spirit or spook, the most decep- 
 tive or most intimate, the craftiest liar with honest 
 mien, the father of lies. 
 
 The egoist, turning against the demands and con- 
 cepts of the present, executes pitilessly the most mea- 
 sureless desecration. Nothing is holy to him ! 
 
 It would be foolish to assert that there is no power 
 above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it 
 will be quite another than that of the religious age : I 
 shall be the enemy of every higher power, while re- 
 ligion teaches us to make it our friend and be humble 
 toward it. 
 
 The desecrator puts forth his strength against every 
 
 * Mark 3. 29.
 
 THE OWNER 241 
 
 fear of God, for fear of God would determine him in 
 everything that he left standing as sacred. Whether 
 it is the God or the Man that exercises the hallowing 
 power in the God-man, whether, therefore, anything 
 is held sacred for God's sake or for Man's (Human- 
 ity's), this does not change the fear of God, since 
 Man is revered as " supreme essence," as much as on 
 the specifically religious standpoint God as " supreme 
 essence" calls for our fear and reverence; both over- 
 awe us. 
 
 The fear of God in the proper sense was shaken 
 long ago, and a more or less conscious " atheism," ex- 
 ternally recognizable by a wide-spread " unchurchli- 
 ness," has involuntarily become the mode. But what 
 was taken from God has been superadded to Man, and 
 the power of humanity grew greater in just the degree 
 that that of piety lost weight: " Man " is the God of 
 to-day, and fear of Man has taken the place of the old 
 fear of God. 
 
 But, because Man represents only another Supreme 
 Being, nothing has in fact taken place but a metamor- 
 phosis in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is 
 merely an altered form of the fear of God. 
 
 Our atheists are pious people. 
 
 If in the so-called feudal times we held everything 
 as a fief from God, in the liberal period the same 
 feudal relation exists with Man. God was the Lord, 
 now Man is the Lord; God was the Mediator, now 
 Man is; God was the Spirit, now Man is. In this 
 threefold regard the feudal relation has experienced a 
 transformation. For now, firstly, we hold as a fief 
 from all-powerful Man our power, which, because it
 
 242 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 comes from a higher, is not called power or might, but 
 " right," the " rights of man "; we further hold as a 
 fief from him our position in the world, for he, the 
 mediator, mediates our intercourse with others, which 
 therefore may not be otherwise than " human"; fin- 
 ally, we hold as a fief from him ourselves, to wit, our 
 own value, or all that we are worth, inasmuch as we 
 are worth nothing when he does not dwell in us, and 
 when or where we are not " human." The power is 
 Man's, the world is Man's, I am Man's. 
 
 But am I not still unrestrained from declaring my- 
 self 'the entitler, the mediator, and the own self? 
 Then it runs thus : 
 
 My power is my property. 
 
 My power gives me property. 
 
 My power am I myself, and through it am I my 
 property. 
 
 I. MY POWER 
 
 Right* is the spirit of society. If society has a 
 mil, this will is simply right: society exists only 
 through right. But, as it endures only by exercising 
 a sovereignty over individuals, right is its SOVEREIGN 
 WILL. Aristotle says justice is the advantage of society. 
 
 All existing right is -foreign law ; some one makes 
 me out to be in the right, " does right by me." But 
 should I therefore be in the right if all the world 
 made me out so? And yet what else is the right that 
 I obtain in the State, in society, but a right of those 
 
 * [This word has also, in German, the meaning of " common law," and 
 will sometimes be translated " law " in the following paragraphs.]
 
 THE OWNER 243 
 
 foreign to me? When a blockhead makes me out in 
 the right, I grow distrustful of my Tightness; I don't 
 like to receive it from him. But, even when a wise 
 man makes me out in the right, I nevertheless am not 
 in the right on that account. Whether 7 am in the 
 right is completely independent of the fool's making 
 out and of the wise man's. 
 
 All the same, we have coveted this right till now. 
 We seek for right, and turn to the court for that pur- 
 pose. To what? To a royal, a papal, a popular 
 court, etc. Can a sultanic court declare another 
 right than that which the sultan has ordained to be 
 right? Can it make me out in the right if I seek for 
 a right that does not agree with the sultan's law? 
 Can it, e. g,, concede to me high treason as a right, 
 since it is assuredly not a right according to the 
 sultan's mind? Can it as a court of censorship allow 
 me the free utterance of opinion as a right, since the 
 sultan will hear nothing of this my right? What am 
 I seeking for in this court, then? I am seeking for 
 sultanic right, not my right; I am seeking for 
 foreign right. As long as this foreign right harmon- 
 izes with mine, to be sure, I shall find in it the latter 
 too. 
 
 The State does not permit pitching into each other 
 man to man; it opposes the duel. Even every ordin- 
 ary appeal to blows, notwithstanding that neither of 
 the fighters calls the police to it, is punished; except 
 when it is not an I whacking away at a you, but, say, 
 the head of a family at the child. The family is en- 
 titled to this, and in its name the father; I as Ego 
 am not.
 
 244 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 The " Vossische Zeitung" presents to us the " com- 
 monwealth of right." There everything is to be de- 
 cided by the judge and a court. It ranks the supreme 
 court of censorship as a " court " where " right is de- 
 clared." What sort of a right? The right of the 
 censorship. To recognize the sentences of that court 
 as right one must regard the censorship as right. 
 But it is thought nevertheless that this court offers a 
 protection. Yes, protection against an individual 
 censor's error: it protects only the censorship-legislator 
 against false interpretation of his will, at the same 
 time making his statute, by the " sacred power of 
 right," all the firmer against writers. 
 
 Whether I am in the right or not there is no judge 
 but myself. Others can judge only whether they en- 
 dorse my right, and whether it exists as right for 
 them too. 
 
 In the meantime let us take the matter yet another 
 way. I am to reverence sultanic law in the sultanate, 
 popular law in republics, canon law in Catholic com- 
 munities, etc. To these laws I am to subordinate my- 
 self; I am to regard them as sacred. A " sense of 
 right " and " law-abiding mind " of such a sort is so 
 firmly planted in people's heads that the most revolu- 
 tionary persons of our days want to subject us to a 
 new " sacred law," the " law of society," the law of 
 mankind, the " right of all," and the like. The 
 right of " all " is to go before my right. As a right 
 of all it would indeed be my right among the rest, 
 since I, with the rest, am included in all; but that it 
 is at the same time a right of others, or even of all 
 others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a
 
 THE OWNER 246 
 
 right of ill will I defend it, but as my right; and 
 then every other may see to it how he shall likewise 
 maintain it for himself. The right of all (e. g. to 
 eat) is a right of every individual. Let each keep 
 this right unabridged for himself, then all exercise it 
 spontaneously; let him not take care for all though, 
 let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all. 
 
 But the social reformers preach to us a " law ofso- 
 dety." There the individual becomes society's slave, 
 and is in the right only when society makes him out in 
 the right, i. e. when he lives according to society's 
 statutes and so is loyal. Whether I am loyal under 
 a despotism or in a " society " a la Weitling, it is the 
 same absence of right in so far as in both cases I have 
 not my right butforeign right. 
 
 In considerations of right the question is always 
 asked, " What or who gives me the right to it?" An- 
 swer: God, love, reason, nature, humanity, etc. No, 
 only your might, your power gives you the right 
 (your reason, e. g.. may give it to you). 
 
 Communism, which assumes that men " have equal 
 rights by nature," contradicts its own proposition till 
 it comes to this, that men have no right at all by na- 
 ture. For it is not willing to recognize, e. g., that 
 parents have " by nature " rights as against their 
 children, or the children as against the parents: it 
 abolishes the family. Nature gives parents, brothers, 
 etc., no right at all. Altogether, this entire revolu- 
 tionary or Babouvist principle * rests on a religious, 
 i. e. false, view of things. Who can ask after "right" 
 
 *Cf. "/>!> Komitiitiiisti -ii hi tin- Nchin-iz," committee report, p. 3.
 
 246 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 if he does not occupy the religious standpoint himself ? 
 Is not "right" a religious concept, i. e. something 
 sacred? Why, "equality of rights," as the Revolu- 
 tion propounded it, is only another name for " Chris- 
 tian equality," the " equality of the brethren," " of 
 God's children," " of Christians," etc.: in short, 
 fraternite. Each and every inquiry after right 
 deserves to be lashed with Schiller's words: 
 
 Many a year I've used my nose 
 To smell the onion and the rose ; 
 Is there any proof which shows 
 That I've a right to that same nose? 
 
 When the Revolution stamped equality as a 
 "right," it took flight into the religious domain, 
 into the region of the sacred, of the ideal. Hence, 
 since then, the fight for the " sacred, inalienable 
 rights of man." Against the " eternal rights of man " 
 the " well-earned rights of the established order " are 
 quite naturally, and with equal right, brought to 
 bear: right against right, where of course one is de- 
 cried by the other as " wrong." This has been the 
 contest of rights* since the Revolution. 
 
 You want to be " in the right " as against the rest. 
 That you cannot; as against them you remain forever 
 " in the wrong " ; for they surely would not be your 
 opponents if they were not in "their right" too; 
 they will always make you out " in the wrong." But, 
 as against the right of the rest, yours is a higher, 
 greater, more powerful right, is it not? No such 
 thing! Your right is not more powerful if you are 
 
 * [Rechtsstreit, a word which usually means "lawsuit."]
 
 THE OWNER 24? 
 
 not more powerful. Have Chinese subjects a right to 
 freedom? Just bestow it on them, and then look how 
 far you have gone wrong in your attempt: because 
 they do not know how to use freedom they have no 
 right to it, or, in clearer terms, because they have 
 not freedom they have not the right to it. Children 
 have no right to the condition of majority because 
 they are not of age, i. e. because they are children. 
 Peoples that let themselves be kept in nonage have no 
 right to the condition of majority; if they ceased to be 
 in nonage, then only would they have the right to be 
 of age. This means nothing else than " What you 
 have the power to be you have the right to." I derive 
 all right and all warrant from me; I am entitled to 
 everything that I have in my power. I am entitled to 
 overthrow Zeus, Jehovah, God, etc., if I can ; if I can- 
 not, then these gods will always remain in the right 
 and in power as against me, and what I do will be to 
 fear their right and their power in impotent "god-fear- 
 ingness," to keep their commandments and believe that 
 I do right in everything that I do according to their 
 right, about as the Russian boundary-sentinels think 
 themselves rightfully entitled to shoot dead the suspic- 
 ious persons who are escaping, since they murder " by 
 superior authority," i. e. " with right." But I am en- 
 titled by myself to murder if I myself do not forbid 
 it to myself, if I myself do not fear murder as a 
 " wrong." This view of things lies at the foundation 
 of Chamisso's poem, " The Valley of Murder," where 
 the gray-haired Indian murderer compels reverence 
 from the white man whose brethren he has murdered. 
 The only thing I am not entitled to is what I do not
 
 248 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 do with a free cheer, i. e. what / do not entitle myself 
 to. 
 
 / decide whether it is the right thing- in me , there 
 is no right outside me. If it is right for me,* it is 
 right. Possibly this may not suffice to make it right 
 for the rest; that is their care, not mine: let them de- 
 fend themselves. And if for the whole world some- 
 thing were not right, but it were right for me, i. e. I 
 wanted it, then I would ask nothing about the whole 
 world. So every one does who knows how to value 
 himself, every one in the degree that he is an egoist; 
 for might goes before right,, and that with perfect 
 right. 
 
 Because I am " by nature " a man I have an equal 
 right to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. 
 Must he not also say: because I am " by nature " a 
 first-born prince I have a right to the throne? The 
 rights of man and the " well-earned rights " come to 
 the same thing in the end, to wit, to nature, which 
 gives me a right, i. e. to birth (and, further, inheri- 
 tance, etc.). " I am born as a man " is equal to " I am 
 born as a king's son." The natural man has only a 
 natural right (because he has only a natural power) 
 and natural claims: he has right of birth and claims 
 of birth. But nature cannot entitle me, i. e. give me 
 capacity or might, to that to which only my act 
 entitles me. That the king's child sets himself above 
 other children, even this is his act, which secures to 
 him the precedence; and that the other children ap- 
 prove and recognize this act is their act, which makes 
 
 * [A common German phrase for " it suits me."]
 
 THE OWNER 249 
 
 them worthy to be subjects. 
 
 Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, 
 the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same 
 foreign right, a right that / do not give or take to 
 myself. 
 
 Thus the Communists say, equal labor entitles man 
 to equal enjoyment. Formerly the question was 
 raised whether the " virtuous " man must not be 
 " happy " on earth. The Jews actually drew this in- 
 ference: "That it may go well with thee on earth." 
 No, equal labor does not entitle you to it, but equal 
 enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. 
 Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. But, it 
 you have labored and let the enjoyment be taken from 
 you, then " it serves you right." 
 
 If you take the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on 
 the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands 
 on it, it remains as before, a " well-earned right" of 
 those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their 
 right, as by laying hands on it it would become you r 
 right. 
 
 The conflict over the " right of property " wavers in 
 vehement commotion. The Communists affirm * that 
 " the earth belongs rightfully to him who tills it, and 
 its products to those who bring them out." I think it 
 belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does 
 not let it be taken from him, does not let himself be 
 deprived of it. If he appropriates it, then not only the 
 earth, but the right to it too, belongs to him. This 
 is egoistic right : i. e., it is right for me, therefore 
 
 * A. Becker, " Volksphilosophie," p. 22 f.
 
 250 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 it is right. 
 
 Aside from this, right does have "a wax nose." 
 The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who 
 strike him down am also in the right. I defend 
 against him not my right, but myself. 
 
 As human right is always something given, it 
 always in reality reduces to the right which men 
 give. i. e. " concede," to each other. If the right 
 to existence is conceded to new-born children, then 
 they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as 
 was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, 
 then they do not have it. For only society can give 
 or concede it to them ; they themselves cannot take it, 
 or give it to themselves. It will be objected, the 
 children had nevertheless " by nature " the right to 
 exist; only the Spartans refused recognition to this 
 right. But then they simply had no right to this 
 recognition, no more than they had to recognition 
 of their life by the wild beasts to which they were 
 thrown. 
 
 People talk so much about birthright, and com- 
 plain : 
 
 There is alas ! no mention of the rights 
 That were born with us . * 
 
 What sort of right, then, is there that was born with 
 me? The right to receive an entailed estate, to 
 inherit a throne, to enjoy a princely or noble edu- 
 cation; or, again, because poor parents begot me, to 
 get free schooling, be clothed out of contributions of 
 alms, and at last earn my bread and my herring in 
 
 * [ Mephistopheles in " Faust,"]
 
 THE OWNER 251 
 
 the coal-mines or at the loom? Are these not birth- 
 rights, rights that have come down to me from my 
 parents through birth? You think no; you think 
 these are only rights improperly so called, it is just 
 these rights that you aim to abolish through the real 
 birthright. To give a basis for this you go back to 
 the simplest thing and affirm that every one is by 
 birth equal to another, to wit, a man. I will grant 
 you that every one is born as man, hence the new-born 
 are therein equal to each other. Why are they? 
 Only because they do not yet show and exert them- 
 selves as anything but bare children of men, naked 
 little human beings. But thereby they are at once dif- 
 ferent from those who have already made something 
 out of themselves, who thus are no longer bare " chil- 
 dren of men," but children of their own creation. 
 The latter possess more than bare birthrights: they 
 have earned rights. What an antithesis, what a field 
 of combat! The old combat of the birthrights of man 
 and well-earned rights. Go right on appealing to 
 your birthrights; people will not fail to oppose to you 
 the well-earned. Both stand on the " ground of 
 right "; for each of the two has a " right" against 
 the other, the one the birthright or natural right, the 
 other the earned or " well-earned " right. 
 
 If you remain on the ground of right, you remain 
 in Rechthaberei.* The other cannot give you your 
 right; he cannot " mete out right" to you. He who 
 has might has right; if you have not the former, 
 
 * " I Ix-e you. spare my lungs ! He who insists on proving himself 
 right, if lie hut has one of these things called tongues, can hold his own in 
 all the world's despite ! " [Faust's words to Mephistopheles, slightly mis- 
 quoted. For Rcchthabtrti see note on p. 185.]
 
 259 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to 
 attain ? % Just look at the mighty and their doings ! 
 We are talking here only of China and Japan, of 
 course. Just try it once, you Chinese and Japanese, to 
 make them out in the wrong, and learn by experience 
 how they throw you into jail. (Only do not confuse 
 with this the " well-meaning counsels " which in 
 China and Japan are permitted, because they do not 
 hinder the mighty one, but possibly help him ort.) 
 For him who should want to make them out in the 
 wrong there would stand open only one way thereto, 
 that of might. If he deprives them of their might, 
 then he has really made them out in the wrong, de- 
 prived them of their right; in any other case he can do 
 nothing but clench his little fist in his pocket, or fall a 
 victim as an obtrusive fool. 
 
 In short, if you Chinese and Japanese did not ask 
 after right, and in particular if you did not ask after 
 the rights " that were born with you," then you would 
 not need to ask at all after the well-earned rights 
 either. 
 
 You start back in fright before others, because you 
 think you see beside them the ghost of right, which, 
 as in the Homeric combats, seems to fight as a 
 goddess at their side, helping them. What do you 
 do? Do you throw the spear? No, you creep 
 around to gain the spook over to yourselves, that it 
 may fight on your side: you woo for the ghost's favor 
 Another would simply ask thus: Do I will what my 
 opponent wills? "No!" Now then, there may 
 fight for him a thousand devils or gods, I go at him 
 all the same!
 
 THE OWNER 953 
 
 The "commonwealth of right," as the "Vossische 
 Zcitung" among others stands for it, asks that office- 
 holders be removable only by the judge, not by the 
 (Hhnini.vf ration. Vain illusion! If it were settled by 
 law that an office-holder who is once seen drunken 
 shall lose his office, then the judges would have to 
 condemn him on the word of the witnesses, etc. In 
 short, the lawgiver would only have to state precisely 
 all the possible grounds which entail the loss of office, 
 however laughable they might be (e. g. he who laughs 
 in his superiors' faces, who does not go to church 
 every Sunday, who does not take the communion every 
 four weeks, who runs in debt, who has disreputable 
 associates, who shows no determination, etc., shall be 
 removed. These things the lawgiver might take it 
 into his head to prescribe, e. g., for a court of honor) ; 
 then the judge would solely have to investigate 
 whether the accused had "become guilty " of those 
 " offences," and, on presentation of the proof, pro-- 
 nounce sentence of removal against him " in the name 
 of the law." 
 
 The judge is lost when he ceases to be mechanical, 
 when he " is forsaken by the rules of evidence." Then 
 he no longer has anything but an opinion like every- 
 body else; and, if he decides according to this opinion, 
 his action is no longer an official action. As judge he 
 must decide only according to the law. Commend 
 me rather to the old French parliaments, which 
 wanted to examine for themselves what was to be 
 matter of right, and to register it only after their own 
 approval. They at least judged according to a right 
 of their own, and were not willing to give themselves
 
 254 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 up to be machines of the lawgiver, although as judges 
 they must, to be sure, become their own machines. 
 
 It is said that punishment is the criminal's right. 
 But impunity is just as much his right. If his under- 
 taking succeeds, it serves him right, and, if it does 
 not succeed, it likewise serves him right. You make 
 your bed and lie in it. If some one goes foolhardily 
 into dangers and perishes in them, we are apt to say, 
 " It serves him right; he would have it so." But, if 
 he conquered the dangers, i. e. if his might was victor- 
 ious, then he would be in the right too. If a child 
 plays with the knife and gets cut, it is served right; 
 but, if it doesn't get cut, it is served right too. 
 Hence right befalls the criminal, doubtless, when he 
 suffers what he risked ; why, what did he risk it for, 
 since he knew the possible consequences? But the 
 punishment that we decree against him is only our 
 right, not his. Our right reacts against his, and he is 
 " in the wrong at last " because we get the upper 
 hand. 
 
 But what is right, what is matter of right in a so- 
 ciety, is voiced too in the law.* 
 
 Whatever the law may be, it must be respected by 
 the loyal citizen. Thus the law-abiding mind of 
 Old England is eulogized. To this that Euripidean 
 sentiment (Orestes, 418) entirely corresponds: " We 
 serve the gods, whatever the gods are." Law as such. 
 God as such, thus far we are to-day. 
 
 People are at pains to distinguish law from arbi- 
 
 * [Gesetz, statute ; no longer the same German word as " right."]
 
 THE OWNER 255 
 
 trary orders, from an ordinance: the former comes 
 from a duly entitled authority. But a law over hu- 
 man action (ethical law, State law, etc.) is always a 
 declaration afwiU, and so an order. Yes, even if I 
 myself gave myself the law, it would yet be only my 
 order, to which in the next moment I can refuse obedi- 
 ence. One may well enough declare what he will put 
 up with, and so deprecate the opposite by a law, mak- 
 ing known that in the contrary case he will treat the 
 transgressor as his enemy; but no one has any busi- 
 ness to command my actions, to say what course I 
 shall pursue and set up a code to govern it. I must 
 put up with it that he treats me as his enemy, but 
 never that he makes free with me as his creature, and 
 that he makes his reason, or even unreason, my 
 plumb-line. 
 
 States last only so long as there is a ruling will and 
 this ruling will is looked upon as tantamount to the 
 own will. The lord's will is law. What do your 
 laws amount to if no one obeys them? what your 
 orders, if nobody lets himself be ordered? The State 
 cannot forbear the claim to determine the individual's 
 will, to speculate and count on this. For the State 
 it is indispensable that nobody have an own will; if 
 one had, the State would have to exclude (lock up, 
 banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away 
 with the State. The State is not thinkable without 
 lordship and servitude (subjection); for the State 
 must will to be the lord of all that it embraces, and 
 this will is called the " will of the State." 
 
 He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence 
 of will in others is a thing made by these others, as
 
 256 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the master is a thing made by the servant. If submis- 
 siveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship. 
 
 The own will of Me is the State's destroyer; it is 
 therefore branded by the State as "self-will." Own 
 will and the State are powers in deadly hostility, be- 
 tween which no " eternal peace " is possible. As long 
 as the State asserts itself, it represents own will, its 
 ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable, evil, etc. ; and 
 the latter lets itself be talked into believing this, nay, 
 it really is such, for no more reason than this, that it 
 still^ lets itself be talked into such belief: it has not 
 yet co ire to itself and to the consciousness of its dig- 
 nity; hence it is still incomplete, still amenable to fine 
 words, etc. 
 
 Every State is a despotism, be the despot one or 
 many, or (as one is likely to imagine about a republic 
 if all be lords, i. e. despotize one over another. For 
 this is the case when the law given at any time, the ex 
 pressed volition of (it may be) a popular assembly, is 
 thenceforth to be law for the individual, to which 
 obedience is due from him, or toward which he has the 
 duty of obedience. If one were even to conceive the 
 case that every individual in the people had expressed 
 the same will, and hereby a complete " collective will ' 
 had come into being, the matter would still remain 
 the same. Would I not be bound to-day and hence- 
 forth to my will of yesterday? My will would in this 
 case be frozen. Wretched stability! My creature 
 to wit, a particular expression of will would have 
 become my commander. But I in my will, I the 
 creator, should be hindered in my flow and my disso- 
 lution, Because I was a fool yesterday I must remain
 
 THE OWNER 257
 
 258 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 individual, "crime." Crime,* then, so the individ- 
 ual's violence is called; and only by crime does he 
 overcome f the State's violence when he thinks that 
 the State is not above him, but he above the State. 
 
 Now, if I wanted to act ridiculously, I might, as a 
 well-meaning person, admonish you not to make laws 
 which impair my self-development, self- activity, self- 
 creation. I do not give this advice. For, if you 
 should follow it, you would be unwise, and I should 
 have been cheated of my entire profit. I request 
 nothing at all from you; for, whatever I might de- 
 mand, you would still be dictatorial lawgivers, and 
 must be so, because a raven cannot sing, nor a robber 
 live without robbery. Rather do I ask those who 
 would be egoists what they think the more egoistic, 
 to let laws be given them by you, and to respect those 
 that are given, or to practise refractoriness, yes, com- 
 plete disobedience. Good-hearted people think the 
 laws ought to prescribe only what is accepted in the 
 people's feeling as right and proper. But what con- 
 cern is it of mine what is accepted in the nation and 
 by the nation? The nation will perhaps be against 
 the blasphemer; therefore a law against blasphemy. 
 Am I not to blaspheme on that account? Is this law 
 to be more than an "order" to me? I put the 
 question. 
 
 Solely from the principle that all right and all 
 authority belong to the collectivity of tlie people do 
 all forms of government arise. For none of them 
 lacks this appeal to the collectivity, and the despot, as 
 
 * [Verbrechen] t [bnchen}
 
 THE OWNER 259 
 
 well as the president or any aristocracy, etc., acts and 
 commands " in the name of the State." They are in 
 possession of the " authority of the State," and it is 
 perfectly indifferent whether, were this possible, the 
 people as a collectivity (all individuals) exercise this 
 state-authority, or whether it is only the representa- 
 tives of this collectivity, be there many of them as in 
 aristocracies or one as in monarchies. Always the col- 
 lectivity is above the individual, and has a power 
 which is called legitimate, i. e. which is law. 
 
 Over against the sacredness of the State, the indi- 
 vidual is only a vessel of dishonor, in which "exuber- 
 ance, malevolence, mania for ridicule and slander, 
 frivolity," etc., are left as soon as he does not deem 
 that object of veneration, the State, to be worthy of 
 recognition. The spiritual haughtiness of the servants 
 and subjects of the State has fine penalties against 
 unspiritual " exuberance." 
 
 When the government designates as punishable all 
 play of mind against the State, the moderate liberals 
 come and opine that fun, satire, wit, humor, etc.. must 
 have free play anyhow, and genius must enjoy free- 
 dom. So not the individual man indeed, but still 
 genius, is to be free. Here the State, or in its name 
 the government, says with perfect right: He who is not 
 for me is against me. Fun, wit, etc., in short, the 
 turning of State affairs into a comedy, have under- 
 mined States from of old: they are not "innocent." 
 And, further, what boundaries are to be drawn between 
 guilty and innocent wit, etc.? At this question the 
 moderates fall into great perplexity, and everything 
 reduces itself to the prayer that the State (govern-
 
 260 tHE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 merit) would please not be so sensitive, so ticklish ; 
 that it would not immediately scent malevolence in 
 " harmless " things, and would in general be a little 
 " more tolerant." Exaggerated sensitiveness is cer- 
 tainly a weakness, its avoidance may be a praiseworthy 
 virtue; but in time of war one cannot be sparing, and 
 what may be allowed under peaceable circumstances 
 ceases to be permitted as soon as a state of siege is de- 
 clared. Because the well-meaning liberals feel this 
 plainly, they hasten to declare that, considering " the 
 devotion of the people," there is assuredly no danger 
 to be feared. But the government will be wiser, and 
 not let itself be talked into believing anything of that 
 sort. It knows too well how people stuff one with fine 
 words, and will not let itself be satisfied with this 
 Barmecide dish. 
 
 But they are bound to have their play-ground, for 
 they are children, you know, and cannot be so staid as 
 old folks; boys will be boys. 
 
 Only for this play-ground, only for a few hours of 
 jolly running about, they bargain. They ask only 
 that the State should not, like a splenetic papa, be too 
 cross. It should permit some Processions of the Ass 
 and plays of fools, as the church allowed them in the 
 Middle Ages. But the times when it could grant this 
 without danger are past. Children that now once 
 come into the open, and live through an hour without 
 the rod of discipline, are no longer willing to go into 
 the cell. For the open is now no longer a supplement 
 to the cell, no longer a refreshing recreation, but its 
 opposite, an aut aut. In short, the State must 
 either no longer put up with anything, or put up with
 
 THE OWNER 261 
 
 everything and perish; it must be either sensitive 
 through and through, or, like a dead man, insensitive. 
 Tolerance is done with. If the State but gives a 
 finger, they take the whole hand at once. There can 
 be no more "jesting," and all jest, such as fun, wit, 
 humor, etc., becomes bitter earnest. 
 
 The clamor of the Liberals for freedom of the press 
 runs counter to their own principle, their proper 
 will. They will what they do not will, i. e. they wish, 
 they would like. Hence it is too that they fall away 
 so easily when once so-called freedom of the press 
 appears; then they would like censorship. Quite 
 naturally. The State is sacred even to them; likewise 
 morals, etc. They behave toward it only as ill-bred 
 brats, as tricky children who seek to utilize the weak- 
 nesses of their parents. Papa State is to permit them 
 to say many things that do not please him, but papa 
 has the right, by a stern look, to blue-pencil their 
 impertinent gabble. If they recognize in him their 
 papa, they must in his presence put up with the cen- 
 sorship of speech, like every child. 
 
 If you let yourself be made out in the right by an- 
 other, you must no less let yourself be made out in 
 the wrong by him; if justification and reward come to 
 you from him, expect also his arraignment and punish- 
 ment. Alongside right goes wrong, alongside legality 
 crime. What are you ? You are a criminal! 
 
 " The criminal is in the utmost degree the State's 
 own crime! " says Bettina.* One may let this senti- 
 
 * "This Book Belongs to the King," p. 878.
 
 262 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ment pass, even if Bettina herself does not understand 
 it exactly so. For in the State the unbridled I 
 I, as I belong to myself alone cannot come to my ful- 
 filment and realization. Every ego is from birth a 
 criminal to begin with against the people, the State. 
 Hence it is that it does really keep watch over all; it 
 sees in each one an egoist, and it is afraid of the 
 egoist. It presumes the worst about each one, and 
 takes care, police-care, that " no harm happens to the 
 State," ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat. The 
 unbridled ego and this we originally are, and in 
 our secret inward parts we remain so always is the 
 never-ceasing criminal in the State. The man whom 
 his boldness, his will, his inconsiderateness and fear- 
 lessness lead is surrounded with spies by the State, by 
 the people. I say, by the people! The people (think 
 it something wonderful, you good-hearted folks, what 
 you have in the people) the people is full of police 
 sentiments through and through. Only he who re- 
 nounces his ego, who practises " self-renunciation," is 
 acceptable to the people. 
 
 In the book cited Bettina is throughout good- 
 natured enough to regard the State as only sick, and 
 to hope for its recovery, a recovery which she would 
 bring about through the "demagogues"; * but it is 
 not sick; rather is it in its full strength, when it puts 
 from it the demagogues who want to acquire some- 
 thing for the individuals, for " all." In its believers it 
 is provided with the best demagogues (leaders of the 
 people). According to Bettina, the State is to f 
 
 * P. 376. t P. 374,
 
 THE OWNER 263 
 
 "develop mankind's germ of freedom; otherwise it is a 
 raven-mother* and caring for raven-fodder!" It 
 cannot do otherwise, for in its very caring for " man- 
 kind " (which, besides, would have to be the " hu- 
 mane " or " free " State to begin with) the " indi- 
 vidual " is raven-fodder for it. How rightly speaks 
 the burgomaster, on the other hand: f " What? the 
 State has no other duty than to be merely the attend- 
 ant of incurable invalids? That isn't to the point. 
 From of old the healthy State has relieved itself of the 
 diseased matter, and not mixed itself with it. It does 
 not need to be so economical with its juices. Cut off 
 the robber-branches without hesitation, that the others 
 may bloom. Do not shiver at the State's harshness; 
 its morality, its policy and religion, point it to that. 
 Accuse it of no want of feeling; its sympathy revolts 
 against this, but its experience finds safety only in this 
 severity! There are diseases in which only drastic 
 remedies will help. The physician who recognizes the 
 disease as such, but timidly turns to palliatives, will 
 never remove the disease, but may well cause the 
 patient to succumb after a shorter or longer sickness! " 
 Frau Rat's question, " If you apply death as a 
 drastic remedy, how is the cure to be wrought then?" 
 isn't to the point. Why, the State does not apply 
 death against itself, but against an offensive member; 
 it tears out an eye that offends it, etc. 
 
 " For the invalid State the only way of salvation is 
 to make man flourish in it."J If one here, like 
 Bettina, understands by man the concept " Man," she 
 
 * [An unnatural mother] t P. 1. $ P. 885.
 
 264 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 is right; the " invalid " State will recover by the 
 flourishing of " Man," for, the more infatuated the 
 individuals are with " Man," the better it serves the 
 State's turn. But, if one referred it to the individ- 
 uals, to " all " (and the authoress half does this too, 
 because about " Man " she is still involved in vague- 
 ness), then it would sound somewhat like the follow- 
 ing: For an invalid band of robbers the only way of 
 salvation is to make the loyal citizen flourish in it! 
 Why, thereby the band of robbers would simply go to 
 ruin as a band of robbers; and, because it perceives . 
 this, it prefers to shoot every one who has a leaning 
 toward becoming a " steady man." 
 
 In this book Bettina is a patriot, or, what is little 
 more, a philanthropist, a worker for human happiness. 
 She is discontented with the existing order in quite the 
 same way as is the title-ghost of her book, along with 
 all who would like to bring back the good old faith 
 and what goes with it. Only she thinks, contrariwise, 
 that the politicians, place-holders, and diplomats 
 ruined the State, while those lay it at the door of the 
 malevolent, the " seducers of the people." 
 
 What is the ordinary criminal but one who has 
 committed the fatal mistake of endeavoring after what 
 is the people's instead of seeking for what is his? He 
 has sought despicable alien goods, has done what 
 believers do who seek after what is God's. What does 
 the priest who admonishes the criminal do? He sets 
 before him the great wrong of having desecrated by 
 his act what was hallowed by the State, its property 
 (in which, of course, must be included even the life 
 of those who belong to the State) ; instead of this,
 
 THE OWNER 965 
 
 he might rather hold up to him the fact that he has 
 befouled himself in not despising- the alien thing, but 
 thinking it worth stealing; he could, if he were not a 
 parson. Talk with the so-called criminal as with an 
 egoist, and he will be ashamed, not that he trans- 
 gressed against your laws and goods, but that he con- 
 sidered your laws worth evading, your goods worth 
 desiring; he will be ashamed that he did not despise 
 you and yours together, that he was too little an 
 egoist. But you cannot talk egoistically with him, 
 for you are not so great as a criminal, you commit 
 no crime! You do not know that an ego who is his 
 own cannot desist from being a criminal, that crime 
 is his life. And yet you should know it, since you 
 believe that " we are all miserable sinners " ; but you 
 think surreptitiously to get beyond sin, you do not 
 comprehend for you are devil-fearing that guilt is 
 the value of a man. Oh, if you were guilty! But 
 now you are "righteous."* Well, just put every 
 thing nicely to rights f for your master! 
 
 When the Christian consciousness, or the Christian 
 man, draws up a criminal code, what can the concept 
 of crime be there but simply heartlessness ? Each 
 severing and wounding of a heart relation, each heart- 
 less behavior toward a sacred being, is crime. The 
 more heartfelt the relation is supposed to be, the more 
 scandalous is the deriding of it, and the more worthy 
 of punishment the crime. Every one who is subject to 
 the lord should love him ; to deny this love is a high 
 treason worthy of death. Adultery is a heartlessness 
 
 * [GerecMe] t [niacht Alles huebsch gerechf]
 
 266 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 worthy of punishment; one has no heart, no enthusi- 
 asm, no pathetic feeling for the sacredness of marriage. 
 So long as the heart or soul dictates laws, only the 
 heartful or soulful man enjoys the protection of the 
 laws. That the man of soul makes laws means prop- 
 erly only that the moral man makes them : what con- 
 tradicts these men's " moral feeling," this they penal- 
 ize. How, e. g., should disloyalty, secession, breach of 
 oaths, in short, all radical breaking- off, all tearing 
 asunder of venerable ties, not be flagitious and crimi- 
 nal in their eyes? He who breaks with these demands 
 of the soul has for enemies all the moral, all the men 
 of soul. Only Krummacher and his mates are the 
 right people to set up consistently a penal code of the 
 heart, as a certain bill sufficiently proves. The con- 
 sistent legislation of the Christian State must be placed 
 wholly in the hands of the parsons, and will not 
 become pure and coherent so long as it is worked out 
 only by the parson-ridden, who are always only half- 
 parsons. Only then will every lack of soulfulness, 
 every heartlessness, be certified as an unpardonable 
 crime, only then will every agitation of the soul be- 
 come condemnable, every objection of criticism and 
 doubt be anathematized; only then is the own man, 
 before the Christian consciousness, a convicted 
 criminal to begin with. 
 
 The men of the Revolution often talked of the 
 people's "just revenge " as its " right." Revenge and 
 right coincide here. Is this an attitude of an ego to 
 an ego? The people cries that the opposite party has 
 committed " crimes " against it. Can I assume that 
 one commits a crime against me, without assuming
 
 THE OWNER 267 
 
 that he lias to act as I see fit? And this action I call 
 the right, the good, etc.; the divergent action, a 
 crime. So I think that the others must aim at the 
 same goal with me; i. e., I do not treat them as 
 unique beings * who bear their law in themselves and 
 live according to it, but as beings who are to obey 
 some " rational " law. I set up what " Man " is and 
 what acting in a " truly human " way is, and I de- 
 mand of every one that this law become norm and 
 ideal to him ; otherwise he will expose himself as a 
 " sinner and criminal." But upon the " guilty " falls 
 the " penalty of the law " ! 
 
 One sees here how it is " Man " again who sets on 
 foot even the concept of crime, of sin, and therewith 
 that of right. A man in whom I do not recognize 
 " Man " is " a sinner, a guilty one." 
 
 Only against a sacred thing are there criminals; 
 you against me can never be a criminal, but only an 
 opponent. But not to hate him who injures a sa- 
 cred thing is in itself a crime, as St. Just cries out 
 against Danton: "Are you not a criminal and re- 
 sponsible for not having hated the enemies of the 
 fatherland?" 
 
 If, as in the Revolution, what " Man " is is appre- 
 hended as " good citizen," then from this concept of 
 " Man " we have the well-known " political offences 
 and crimes." 
 
 In all this the individual, the individual man, is 
 regarded as refuse, and on the other hand the general 
 man, " Man," is honored. Now, according to how
 
 268 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 this ghost is named, as Christian, Jew, Mussulman, 
 good citizen, loyal subject, freeman, patriot, etc., 
 just so do those who would like to carry through a di- 
 vergent concept^ of man, as well as those who want to 
 put themselves through, fall before victorious " Man." 
 
 And with what unction the butchery goes on here 
 in the name of the law, of the sovereign people, of 
 God, etc. ! 
 
 Now, if the persecuted trickily conceal and protect 
 themselves from the stern parsonical judges, people 
 stigmatize them as " hypocrites," as St. Just, e. g., 
 does those whom he accuses in the speech against 
 Danton.* One is to be a fool, and deliver himself up 
 to their Moloch. 
 
 Crimes spring fromJLved ideas. The sacredness of 
 marriage is a fixed idea. From the sacredness it 
 follows that infidelity is a crime, and therefore a cer- 
 tain marriage law imposes upon it a shorter or longer 
 penalty. But by those who proclaim " freedom as 
 sacred " this penalty must be regarded as a crime 
 against freedom, and only in this sense has public 
 opinion in fact branded the marriage law. 
 
 Society would have every one come to his right 
 indeed, but yet only to that which is sanctioned by 
 society, to the society-right, not really to his right. 
 But 7 give or take to myself the right out of my own 
 plenitude of power, and against every superior power I 
 am the most impenitent criminal. Owner and creator 
 of my right, I recognize no other source of right than 
 me, neither God nor the State nor nature nor even 
 
 *See "Political Speeches," 10. p. 153.
 
 THE OWNER 269 
 
 man himself with his " eternal rights of man," neither 
 divine nor human right. 
 
 Right " in and for itself." Without relation to 
 me, therefore! " Absolute right." Separated from 
 me, therefore! A thing that exists in and for itself! 
 An absolute! An eternal right, like an eternal truth! 
 
 According to the liberal way of thinking, right is to 
 be obligatory for me because it is thus established 
 by human reason, against which my reason is " un- 
 reason." Formerly people inveighed in the name of 
 divine reason against weak human reason ; now, in the 
 name of strong human reason, against egoistic reason, 
 which is rejected as " unreason." And yet none is real 
 but this very " unreason." Neither divine nor human 
 reason, but only your and my reason existing at any 
 given time, is real, as and because you and I are real. 
 
 The thought of right is originally my thought; or, 
 it has its origin in me. But, when it has sprung from 
 me, when the " Word " is out, then it has " become 
 flesh," it is ajlred idea. Now^ I no longer get rid of 
 the thought; however I turn, it stands before me. 
 Thus men have not become masters again of the 
 thought "right," which they themselves created; their 
 creature is running away with them. This is absolute 
 right, that which is absolved or unfastened from me. 
 We, revering it as absolute, cannot devour it again, 
 and it takes from us the creative power; the creature 
 is more than the creator, it is " in a"nd for itself." 
 
 Once you no longer let right run around free, 
 once you draw it back into its origin, into you, it is 
 your right; and that is right which suits you.
 
 270 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Right has had to suffer an attack within itself, L e. 
 from the standpoint of right; war being declared on 
 the part of liberalism against "privilege."* 
 
 Privileged and endowed with equal rights on 
 these two concepts turns a stubborn fight. Excluded 
 or admitted would mean the same. But where 
 should there be a power be it an imaginary one like 
 God, law, or a real one like I, you of which it should 
 not be true that before it all are " endowed with equal 
 rights," i. e. no respect of persons holds? Every one 
 is equally dear to God if he adores him, equally agree- 
 able to the law if only he is a law-abiding person ; 
 whether the lover of God and the law is humpbacked 
 and lame, whether poor or rich, and the like, that 
 amounts to nothing for God and the law; just so, when 
 you are at the point of drowning, you like a negro as 
 rescuer as well as the most excellent Caucasian, yes, 
 in this situation you esteem a dog not less than a man. 
 But to whom will not every one be also, contrariwise, 
 a preferred or disregarded person? God punishes the 
 wicked with his wrath, the law chastises the lawless, 
 you let one visit you every moment and show the other 
 the door. 
 
 The " equality of right " is a phantom just because 
 right is nothing more and nothing less than admission, 
 i, e. a matter of grace, which, be it said, one may also 
 acquire by his desert; for desert and grace are not 
 contradictory, since even grace wishes to be " de- 
 served " and our gracious smile falls only to him who 
 knows how to force it from us. 
 
 * [Literally, " precedent right."]
 
 THE OWNER 271 
 
 So people dream of " all citizens of the State having 
 to stand side by side, with equal rights." As citizens 
 of the State they are certainly all equal for the State. 
 But it will divide them, and advance them or put them 
 in the rear, according to its special ends, if on no other 
 account; and still more must it distinguish them from 
 one another as good and bad citizens. 
 
 Bruno Bauer disposes of the Jew question from the 
 standpoint that " privilege " is not justified. Because 
 Jew and Christian have each some point of advantage 
 over the other, and in having this point of advantage 
 are exclusive, therefore before the critic's gaze they 
 crumble into nothingness. With them the State lies 
 under the like blame, since it justifies their having ad- 
 vantages and stamps it as a " privilege " or preroga- 
 tive, but thereby derogates from its calling to become 
 a " free State." 
 
 But now every one has something of advantage over 
 another, viz., himself or his individuality; in this 
 everybody remains exclusive. 
 
 And, again, before a third party every one makes 
 his peculiarity count for as much as possible, and (if 
 he wants to win him at all) tries to make it appear 
 attractive before him. 
 
 Now, is the third party to be insensible to the dif- 
 ference of the one from the other? Do they ask that 
 of the free State or of humanity? Then these would 
 have to be absolutely without self-interest, and in- 
 capable of taking an interest in any one whatever. 
 Neither God (who divides his own from the wicked) 
 nor the State (which knows how to separate good 
 citizens from bad) was thought of as so indifferent.
 
 279 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 But they are looking for this very third party that 
 bestows no more " privilege." Then it is called 
 perhaps the free State, or humanity, or whatever else 
 it may be. 
 
 As Christian and Jew are ranked low by Br. 
 Bauer on account of their asserting privileges, it musl 
 be that they could and should free themselves from 
 their narrow standpoint by self-renunciation or unself 
 ishness. If they threw off their "egoism," the 
 mutual wrong would cease, and with it Christian and 
 Jewish religiousness in general; it would be necessary 
 only that neither of them should any longer want to 
 be anything peculiar. 
 
 But, if they gave up this exclusiveness, with that th( 
 ground on which their hostilities were waged would in 
 truth not yet be forsaken. In case of need they woulc 
 indeed find a third thing on which they could unite, a 
 " general religion," a " religion of humanity," and 
 the like; in short, an equalization, which need not 
 be better than that which would result if all Jews 
 became Christians, by which likewise the " privilege " 
 of one over the other would have an end. The 
 tension * would indeed be done away, but in this con- 
 sisted not the essence of the two, but only their neigh- 
 borhood. As being distinguished from each other 
 they must necessarily be mutually resistant,! and the 
 disparity will always remain. Truly it is not a fail- 
 ing in you that you stiffen $ yourself against me and 
 assert your distinctness or peculiarity: you need not 
 give way or renounce yourself. 
 
 * [Spannung] t [gespannt] t [spannen]
 
 THE OWNER 273 
 
 People conceive the significance of the opposition 
 loo formally and weakly when they want only to " dis- 
 solve " it in order to make room for a third thing that 
 shall " unite." The opposition deserves rather to be 
 sharpened. As Jew and Christian you are in too 
 slight an opposition, and are contending only about 
 religion, as it were about the emperor's beard, about 
 a fiddlestick's end. Enemies in religion indeed, in the 
 rest you still remain good friends, and equal to each 
 other, e. g., as men. Nevertheless the rest too is un- 
 ike in each ; and the time when you no longer merely 
 dissemble your opposition will be only when you en- 
 irely recognize it, and everybody asserts himself from 
 p to toe as unique.* Then the former opposition 
 will assuredly be dissolved, but only because a stronger 
 las taken it up into itself. 
 
 Our weakness consists not in this, that we are in 
 opposition to others, but in this, that we are not com- 
 pletely so; i. e. that we are not entirely severed from 
 ;hem, or that we seek a " communion," a " bond," 
 that in communion we have an ideal. One faith, one 
 jod, one idea, one hat, for all! If all were brought 
 under one hat, certainly no one would any longer 
 need to take off his hat before another. 
 
 The last and most decided opposition, that of 
 unique against unique, is at bottom beyond what is 
 called opposition, but without having sunk* back into 
 'unity " and unison. As unique you have nothing 
 in common with the other any longer, and therefore 
 nothing divisive or hostile either; you are not seeking
 
 g74 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 to be in the right against him before a third party, 
 and are standing with him neither " on the ground of 
 right" nor on any other common ground. The oppo 
 sition vanishes in complete severance or singleness.* 
 This might indeed be regarded as the new point in 
 common or a new parity, but here the parity consists 
 precisely in the disparity, and is itself nothing but dis- 
 parity, a par of disparity, and that only for him who 
 institutes a " comparison." 
 
 The polemic against privilege forms a characteristic 
 feature of liberalism, which fumes against " privilege ' 
 because it itself appeals to " right." Further than 
 to fuming it cannot carry this; for privileges do not 
 fall before right falls, as they are only forms of right. 
 But right falls apart into its nothingness when it is 
 swallowed up by might, i. e. when one understands 
 what is meant by " Might goes before right." All 
 right explains itself then as privilege, and privilege 
 itself as power, as superior power. 
 
 But must not the mighty combat against superior 
 power show quite another face than the modest combai 
 against privilege, which is to be fought out before a 
 first judge, " Right," according to the judge's mind? 
 
 Now, in conclusion, I have still to take back the 
 half-way form of expression of which I was willing to 
 make use only so long as I was still rooting among 
 the entrails of right, and letting the word at least 
 stand. But, in fact, with the concept the word too 
 loses its meaning. What I called " my right *' is 
 
 * [EinzigTteit]
 
 THE OWNER 275 
 
 no longer " right " at all, because right can be be- 
 stowed only'by a spirit, be it the spirit of nature or 
 that of the species, of mankind, the Spirit of God or 
 that of His Holiness or His Highness, etc. What I 
 have without an entitling spirit I have without right; 
 I have it solely and alone through my power. 
 
 I do not demand any right, therefore I need not 
 recognize any either. What I can get by force I get 
 by force, and what I do not get by force I have no 
 right to, nor do I give myself airs, or consolation, 
 with my imprescriptible right. 
 
 With absolute right, right itself passes away; the 
 dominion of the " concept of right " is canceled at the 
 same time. For it is not to be forgotten that hitherto 
 concepts, ideas, or principles ruled us, and that among 
 these rulers the concept of right, or of justice, played 
 one of the most important parts. 
 
 Entitled or unentitled that does not concern me ; 
 if I am only powerful, I am of myself empowered, and 
 need no other empowering or entitling. 
 
 Right is a wheel in the head, put there by a 
 spook ; power that am I myself, I am the powerful 
 one and owner of power. Right is above me, is 
 absolute, and exists in one higher, as whose grace it 
 flows to me: right is a gift of grace from the judge; 
 power and might exist only in me the powerful and 
 mighty. 
 
 II, MY INTERCOURSE 
 
 In society the human demand at most can be 
 satisfied, while the egoistic must always come short.
 
 276 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Because it can hardly escape anybody that the 
 present shows no such living interest in any question 
 as in the " social," one has to direct his gaze especially 
 to society. Nay, if the interest felt in it were less pas- 
 sionate and dazzled, people would not so much, in 
 looking at society, lose sight of the individuals in it, 
 and would recognize that a society cannot become new 
 so long as those who form and constitute it remain the 
 old ones. If, e. g., there was to arise in the Jewish 
 people a society which should spread a new faith over 
 the earth, these apostles could in no case remain 
 Pharisees. 
 
 As you are, so you present yourself, so you behave 
 toward men : a hypocrite as- a hypocrite, a Christian 
 as a Christian. Therefore the character of a society 
 is determined by the character of its members : they 
 are its creators. So much at least one must perceive 
 even if one were not willing to put to the test the con- 
 cept " society " itself. 
 
 Ever far from letting themselves come to their full 
 development and consequence, men have hitherto not 
 been able to found their societies on themselves ; or 
 rather, they have been able only to found " societies " 
 and to live in societies. The societies were always 
 persons, powerful persons, so-called " moral persons," 
 i. e. ghosts, before which the individual had the 
 appropriate wheel in his head, the fear of ghosts. As 
 such ghosts they may most suitably be designated by 
 the respective names " people" and " peoplet": the 
 people of the patriarchs, the people of the Hellenes, 
 etc., at last the people of men, Mankind (Anacharsis 
 Clootz was enthusiastic for the " nation " of man-
 
 THE OWNER 277 
 
 kind); then every subdivision of this "people," which 
 could and must have its special societies, the Spanish, 
 French people, etc. ; within it again classes, cities, in 
 short all kinds of corporations; lastly, tapering to the 
 finest point, the little peoplet of the -family. Hence, 
 instead of saying that the person that walked as ghost 
 in all societies hitherto has been the people, there 
 might also have been named the two extremes, to wit, 
 either " mankind " or the " family," both the most 
 "natural-born units." We choose the word "peo- 
 ple " * because its derivation has been brought into 
 connection with the Greek polloi, the "many" or "the 
 masses," but still more because " national efforts" are 
 at present the order of the day, and because even the 
 newest mutineers have not yet shaken off this deceptive 
 person, although on the other hand the latter consider- 
 ation must give the preference to the expression " man- 
 kind," since on all sides they are going in for enthusi- 
 asm over " mankind." 
 
 The people, then, mankind or the family, have 
 hitherto, as it seems, played history : no egcnstic in- 
 terest was to come up in th'ese societies, but solely 
 general ones, national or popular interests, class inter- 
 ests, family interests, and "general human interests." 
 But who has brought to their fall the peoples whose . 
 decline history relates? Who but the egoist, who was 
 seeking hix satisfaction! If once an egoistic interest 
 crept in, the society was " corrupted " and moved 
 toward its dissolution, as Rome, e. g-., proves with its 
 
 [ r,,lk : hut the etymological remark following applies equally to the 
 English word " people.." See Liddell & Scott's Greek lexicon, under 
 pimp/em i.]
 
 278 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 highly developed system of private rights, or Christi- 
 anity with the incessantly-breaking-in " rational self- 
 determination, "self-consciousness," the "autonomy 
 of the spirit," etc. 
 
 The Christian people has produced two societies 
 whose duration will keep equal measure with the 
 permanence of that people: these are the societies 
 State and Church. Can they be called a union of 
 egoists? Do we in them pursue an egoistic, personal, 
 own interest, or do we pursue a popular (i. e. an inter- 
 est of the Christian people), to wit, a State and 
 Church interest? Can I and may I be myself in 
 them? May I think and act as I will, may I reveal 
 myself, live myself out, busy myself ? Must I not 
 leave untouched the majesty of the State, the sanctity 
 of the Church? 
 
 Well, I may not do as I will. But shall I find in 
 any society such an unmeasured freedom of maying? 
 Certainly no! Accordingly we might be content? 
 Not a bit! It is a different thing whether I rebound 
 from an ego or from a people, a generalization. 
 There I am my opponent's opponent, born his equal; 
 here I am a despised opponent, bound and under 
 a guardian : there I stand man to man ; here I am 
 a schoolboy who can accomplish nothing against his j 
 comrade because the latter has called father and 
 mother to aid and has crept under the apron, while I 
 am well scolded as an ill-bred brat, and I must not 
 " argue " : there I fight against a bodily enemy ; here 
 against mankind, against a generalization, against a 
 "majesty," against a spook. But to me no majesty, 
 nothing sacred, is a limit ; nothing that I know how 

 
 THE OWNER 279 
 
 to overpower. Only that which I cannot overpower 
 still limits my might ; and I of limited might am tem- 
 porarily a limited I, not limited by the might out- 
 side me, but limited by my own still deficient might, 
 by my own impotence. However, " the Guard dies, 
 but does not surrender! " Above all, only a bodily 
 opponent! 
 
 I dare meet every foeman 
 Whom I can see and measure with my eye, 
 Whose mettle fires my mettle for the fight, etc. 
 
 Many privileges have indeed been cancelled with 
 time, but solely for the sake of the common weal, of 
 the State and the State's weal, by no means for the 
 strengthening of me. Vassalage, e. g., was abrogated 
 only that a single liege lord, the lord of the people, 
 the monarchical power, might be strengthened : vassal- 
 age under the one became yet more rigorous thereby. 
 Only in favor of the monarch, be he called " prince " 
 or " law," have privileges fallen. In France the 
 citizens are not, indeed, vassals of the king, but are 
 instead vassals of the " law " (the Charter). Subordi- 
 nation was retained, only the Christian State recog- 
 nized that man cannot serve two masters (the lord of 
 the manor and the prince, etc.) ; therefore one obtained 
 all the prerogatives; now he can again place one 
 above another, he can make "men in high place." 
 
 But of what concern to me is the common weal? 
 The common weal as such is not my weal, but only 
 the furthest extremity of self-renundation. The com- 
 mon weal may cheer aloud while I must " down " ; * 
 
 * [kusclit'ii, a word whoso only use is in ordering dogs to keep quiet.]
 
 280 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the State may shine while I starve. In what lies the 
 folly of the political liberals but in their opposing 
 the people to the government and talking of people's 
 rights? So there is the people going to be of age, 
 etc. As if one who has no mouth could be muendigl* 
 Only the individual is able to be muendlg. Thus 
 the whole question of the liberty of the press is turned 
 upside down when it is laid claim to as a "right of 
 the people." It is only a right, or better the might, 
 of the individual. If a people has liberty of the press, 
 then /, although in the midst of this people, have it 
 not; a liberty of the people is not my liberty, and the 
 liberty of the press as a liberty of the people must 
 have at its side a press law directed against me. 
 
 This must be insisted on all around against the 
 present-day efforts for liberty: 
 
 Liberty of the people is not my liberty ! 
 
 Let us admit these categories, liberty of the people 
 and right of the people: e. g. the right of the people 
 that everybody may bear arms. Does one not forfeit 
 such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but 
 may well forfeit a right that belongs not to me but to 
 the people. I may be locked up for the sake of the 
 liberty of the people ; I may, under sentence, incur the 
 loss of the right to bear arms. 
 
 Liberalism appears as the last attempt at a creation 
 of the liberty of the people, a liberty of the commune, 
 of " society," of the general, of mankind; the dream 
 of a humanity, a people, a commune, a " society," 
 
 * [This is the word for " of age " ; but it is derived from Mund, " mouth," 
 and refers properly to the right of speaking through one's own -mouih, not 
 by a guardian.]
 
 THE OWNER 281 
 
 that shall be of age. 
 
 A people cannot be free otherwise than at the indi- 
 vidual's expense; for it is not the individual that is 
 the main point in this liberty, but the people. The 
 freer ihe people, the more -bound the individual; the 
 Athenian people, precisely at its freest time, created 
 ostracism, banished the atheists, poisoned the most 
 honest thinker. 
 
 How they do praise Socrates for his conscientious- 
 ness, which makes him resist the advice to get away 
 from the dungeon ! He is a fool that he concedes to 
 the Athenians a right to condemn him. Therefore it 
 certainly serves him right; why then does -he remain 
 standing on an equal footing with the Athenians? 
 Why does he not break with them? Had he known, 
 and been able to know, what he was, he would have 
 conceded to such judges no claim, no right. That he 
 did not escape was just his weakness, his delusion of 
 still having something in common with the Athenians, 
 or the opinion that he was a member, a mere member 
 of this people. But he was rather this people itself in 
 pe.rson, and could only be his own judge. There was 
 no judge orcr him, as he himself had really pro- 
 nounced a public sentence on himself and rated him- 
 self worthy of the Prytaneum. He should have stuck 
 to that, and, as he had uttered no sentence of death 
 against himself, should have despised that of the 
 Athenians too and escaped. But he subordinated 
 himself and recognized in the people \\isjudge ; he 
 seemed little to himself before the majesty of the 
 people. That he subjected himself to intglil (to 
 which alone he could succumb) as to a " right " was
 
 282 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 treason against himself: it was virtue. To Christ, 
 who, it is alleged, refrained from using the power over 
 his heavenly legions, the same scrupulousness is there- 
 by ascribed by the narrators. Luther did very well 
 and wisely to have the safety of his journey to Worms 
 warranted to him in black and white, and Socrates 
 should have known that the Athenians were his 
 enemies, he alone his judge. The self-deception of 
 a " reign of law," etc., should have given way to the 
 perception that the relation was a relation of might. 
 It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek 
 liberty ended. Why? Because the ordinary Greeks 
 could still less attain that logical conclusion which not 
 even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to draw. 
 What then is pettifoggery but a way of utilizing 
 something established without doing away with it? 
 I might add " for one's own advantage," but, you see, 
 that lies in " utilizing." Such pettifoggers are the 
 theologians who "wrest" and "force" God's word; 
 what would they have to wrest if it were not for the 
 " established " Word of God? So those liberals who 
 only shake and wrest the "established order." They 
 are all perverters, like those perverters of the law. 
 Socrates recognized law, right; the Greeks constantly 
 retained the authority of right and law. If with this 
 recognition they wanted nevertheless to assert their 
 advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek 
 it in perversion of the law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, 
 an intriguer of genius, introduces the period of Athen- 
 ian " decay "; the Spartan Lysander and others show 
 that intrigue had become universally Greek. Greek 
 law, on which the Greek States rested, had to be per-
 
 THE OWNER 283 
 
 erted and undermined by the egoists within these 
 States, and the States went down that the individuals 
 night become free, the Greek people fell because the 
 ndividuals cared less for this people than for them- 
 selves. In general, all States, constitutions, churches, 
 ?tc., have sunk by the secession of individuals; for the 
 ndividual is the irreconcilable enemy of every gener- 
 dity, every tie, i. e. every fetter. Yet people fancy to 
 ;his day that man needs " sacred ties": he, the deadly 
 memy of every " tie." The history of the world 
 >hows that no tie has yet remained unrent, shows that 
 Tian tirelessly defends himself against ties of every 
 ;ort; and yet, blinded, people think up new ties 
 igain and again, and think, e. g., that they have 
 irrived at the right one if one puts upon them the tie 
 rf a so-called free constitution, a beautiful, constitu- 
 :ional tie ; decoration ribbons, the ties of confidence 
 >etween " ," do seem gradually to have be- 
 come somewhat infirm, but people have made no 
 urther progress than from apron-strings to garters 
 ind collars. 
 
 Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter. 
 Everything sacred is and must be perverted by per- 
 verters of the law ; therefore our present time has 
 
 . multitudes of such perverters in all spheres. They 
 ire preparing the way for the break-up of law, for 
 awlessness. 
 Poor Athenians who are accused of pettifoggery and 
 
 i> sophistry ! poor Alcibiades, of intrigue ! Why, that 
 v as just your best point, your first step in freedom. 
 iiVour jEschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have 
 
 . x free Greek people ; you were the first to surmise
 
 284 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 something of your freedom. 
 
 A people represses those who tower above its 
 majesty, by ostracism against too-powerful citizens', 
 by the Inquisition against the heretics of the Church, 
 by the Inquisition against traitors in the State, etc. 
 
 For the people is concerned only with its self-asser- 
 tion ; it demands '* patriotic self-sacrifice " from every- 
 body. To it, accordingly, every one in himself 'is 
 indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even 
 suffer, what the individual and he alone must do, to 
 wit, turn him to account. Every people, every State, 
 is unjust toward the egoist. 
 
 As long as there still exists even one institution 
 which the individual may not dissolve, the ownness 
 and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote. How 
 can I, e. g., be free when I must bind myself by oath 
 to a constitution, a charter, a law, " vow body and 
 soul " to my people? How can I be my own when 
 my faculties may develop only so far as they " do not 
 disturb the harmony of society" (Weitling)? 
 
 The fall of peoples and mankind will invite me to 
 my rise. 
 
 Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to 
 sound, that they may jingle in for to-morrow the 
 festival of the thousand years' existence of our dear 
 Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound 
 solemn enough, as if your tongue was moved by the 
 presentiment that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The 
 German people and German peoples have behind them 
 a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, 
 go to rest, never to rise again, that all may become 
 free whom you so long have held in fetters. The
 
 THE OWNER 285 
 
 people is dead. Up with me! 
 
 O thou my much-tormented German people what 
 was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought 
 that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a 
 walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every 
 cock-crow and yet pines for deliverance and fulfilment. 
 In me too thou hast lived long, thou dear thought, 
 thou dear spook. Already I almost fancied I had 
 found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and 
 bones for the wandering spirit; then I hear them 
 sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest; then 
 the last hope fades out, then the notes of the last love 
 die away, then I depart from the desolate house of 
 those who now are dead and enter at the door of the 
 living one: 
 
 For only he who is alive is in the right. 
 
 Farewell, thou dream of so many millions ; farewell, 
 thou who hast tyrannized over thy children for a 
 thousand years! 
 
 To-morrow they carry thee to the grave ; soon thy 
 sisters, the peoples, will follow thee. But, when they 
 
 have all followed, then mankind is buried, and 
 
 I am my own, I am the laughing heir! 
 
 The word Gesellschqft (society) has its origin in the 
 word Sal (hall). If one hall encloses many persons, 
 then the hall causes these persons to be in society. 
 They are in society, and at most constitute a parlor- 
 society by talking in the traditional forms of parlor 
 speech. When it comes to real intercourse, this is to 
 be regarded as independent of society : it may occur
 
 286 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 or be lacking, without altering the nature of what is 
 named society. Those who are in the hall are a 
 society even as mute persons, or when they put each 
 other off solely with empty phrases of courtesy. In- 
 tercourse is mutuality, it is the action, the commer- 
 cium, of individuals; society is only community of the 
 hall, and even the statues of a museum-hall are in 
 society, they are " grouped." People are accustomed 
 to say " they haben inne * this hall in common," but 
 the case is rather that the hall has us inne or in it. 
 So far the natural signification of the word society. 
 In this it comes out that society is not generated by 
 me and you, but by a third factor which makes associ- 
 ates out of us two, and that it is just this third factor 
 that is the creative one, that which creates society. 
 
 Just so a prison society or prison companionship 
 (those who enjoy f the same prison). Here we already 
 hit upon a third factor fuller of significance than was 
 that merely local one, the hall. Prison no longer 
 means a space only, but a space with express refer- 
 ence to its inhabitants: for it is a prison only through 
 being destined for prisoners, without whom it would 
 be a mere building. What gives a common stamp to 
 those who are gathered in it? Evidently the prison, 
 since it is only by means of the prison that they are 
 prisoners. What, then, determines the manner of life 
 of the prison society? The prison! What deter- 
 mines their intercourse? The prison too, perhaps? 
 Certainly they can enter upon intercourse only as 
 
 "["occupy"; literally, " have within"] 
 
 + [The word Genosse, " companion," signifies originally a companion in 
 enjoymetvt.]
 
 THE OWNER 287 
 
 prisoners, i. e. only so far as the prison laws allow it; 
 but that they themselves hold intercourse, I with you, 
 this the prison cannot bring to pass; on the contrary, 
 it must have an eye to guarding against such egoistic, 
 purely personal intercourse (and only as such is it 
 really intercourse between me and you). That we 
 jointly execute a job, run a machine, effectuate any- 
 thing in general, for this a prison will indeed pro- 
 vide ; but that I forget that I am a prisoner, and 
 engage in intercourse with you who likewise disregard 
 it, brings danger to the prison, and not only cannot 
 be caused by it, but must not even be permitted. For 
 this reason the saintly and moral-minded French 
 chamber decides to introduce solitary confinement, 
 and other saints will do the like in order to cut off 
 " demoralizing intercourse." Imprisonment is the 
 established and sacred condition, to injure which no 
 attempt must be made. The slightest push of that . 
 kind is punishable, as is every uprising against a 
 sacred thing by which man is to be charmed and 
 chained. 
 
 Like the hall, the prison does form a society, a 
 companionship, a communion (e. g. communion of 
 labor), but no intercourse, no reciprocity, no union. 
 On the contrary, every union in the prison bears 
 within it the dangerous seed of a " plot," which under 
 favorable circumstances might spring up and bear 
 fruit. 
 
 Yet one does not usually enter the prison volun- 
 tarily, and seldom remains in it voluntarily either, but 
 cherishes the egoistic desire for liberty. Here, there- 
 fore, it sooner becomes manifest that personal inter-
 
 288 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 course is in hostile relations to the prison society and 
 tends to the dissolution of this very society, this joint 
 incarceration. 
 
 Let us therefore look about for such communions 
 as, it seems, we remain in gladly and voluntarily, with- 
 out wanting to endanger them by our egoistic 
 impulses. 
 
 As a communion of the required sort ihefamily 
 offers itself in the first place. Parents, husband and 
 wife, children, brothers and sisters, represent a whole 
 or form a family, for the further widening of which the 
 collateral relatives also may be made to serve if taken 
 into account. The family is a true communion only 
 when the law of the family, piety * or family love, is 
 observed by its members. A son to whom parents, 
 brothers, and sisters have become indifferent has been 
 a son; for, as the sonship no longer shows itself effica- 
 cious, it has no greater significance than the long-past 
 connection of mother and child by the navel-string. 
 That one has once lived in this bodily juncture cannot 
 as a fact be* undone ; and so far one remains irrevoc- 
 ably this mother's son and the brother of the rest of 
 her children; but it would come to a lasting connec- 
 tion only by lasting piety, this spirit of the family. 
 Individuals are members of a family in the full sense 
 only when they make the persistence of the family 
 their task ; only as conservative do they keep aloof 
 from doubting their basis, the family. To every 
 member of the family one thing must be fixed and 
 
 * [This word in German does not mean religion, but, as in Latin, faithful 
 ness to family ties as we speak of " filial piety." But the. word elsewhere 
 translated "pious" (fromni) means " religious," as usually in F.nclish.l
 
 THE OWNER 28< 
 
 sacred, z>iz., the family itself, or, more expressively, 
 piety. That the family is to persist remains to its 
 member, so long as he keeps himself free from that 
 egoism which is hostile to the family, an unassailable 
 truth. In a word: If the family is sacred, then no- 
 body who belongs to it may secede from it ; else he 
 becomes a " criminal " against the family: he may 
 never pursue an interest hostile to the family, e. g. 
 form a misalliance. He who does this has " dis- 
 honored the family," " put it to shame," etc. 
 
 Now, if in an individual the egoistic impulse has 
 not force enough, he complies and makes a marriage 
 which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank 
 which harmonizes with its position, and the like ; in 
 short, he " does honor to the family." 
 
 If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows fierily 
 enough in his veins, he prefers to become a " criminal " 
 against the family and to throw off its laws. 
 
 Which of the two lies nearer my heart, the good of 
 the family or my good? In innumerable cases both 
 go peacefully together; the advantage of the family 
 is at the same time mine, and vice versa. Then 
 it is hard to decide whether I am thinking fidfahly 
 or /or the common benefit, and perhaps I complacently 
 Hatter myself with my unselfishness. But there 
 comes the day when a necessity of choice makes 
 me tremble, when I have it in mind to dishonor my 
 family tree, to affront parents, brothers, and kindred. 
 What then? Now it will appear how I am disposed 
 at the bottom of my heart ; now it will be revealed 
 whether piety ever stood above egoism for me, now 
 the selfish one can no longer skulk behind the sem-
 
 290 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 blance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, 
 and, growing from hour to hour, becomes a pas- 
 sion. To whom does it occur at first blush that the 
 slightest thought which may result adversely to the 
 spirit of the family (piety) bears within it a transgres- 
 sion against this? nay, who at once, in the first 
 moment, becomes completely conscious of the matter? 
 It happens so with Juliet in " Romeo and Juliet." 
 The unruly passion can at last no longer be tamed, 
 and undermines the building of piety. You will say, 
 indeed, it is from self-will that the family casts out of 
 its bosom those wilful ones that grant more of a hear- 
 ing to their passion than to piety; the good Protest- 
 ants used the same excuse with much success against 
 the Catholics, and believed in it themselves. But it is 
 just a subterfuge to roll the fault off oneself, nothing 
 more. The Catholics had regard for the common 
 bond of the church, and thrust those heretics from 
 them only because these did not have so much regard 
 for the bond of the church as to sacrifice their convic- 
 tions to it ; the former, therefore, held the bond fast, 
 because the bond, the Catholic (i. e. common and 
 united) church, was sacred to them; the latter, on the 
 contrary, disregarded the bond. Just so those who 
 lack piety. They are not thrust out, but thrust them- 
 selves out, prizing their passion, their wilfulness, 
 higher than the bond of the family. 
 
 But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less pas- 
 sionate and wilful heart than Juliet's. The pliable 
 girl brings herself as a sacrifice to the peace of the 
 family. One might say that here too selfishness pre- 
 vailed, for the decision came from the feeling that the
 
 THE OWNER 291 
 
 pliable girl felt herself more satisfied by the unity of 
 the family than by the fulfilment of her wish. That 
 might be; but what if there remained a sure sign that 
 egoism had been sacrificed to piety? What if, even 
 after the wish that had been directed against the 
 peace of the family was sacrificed, it remained at least 
 as a recollection of a " sacrifice " brought to a sacred 
 tie? What if the pliable girl were conscious of hav- 
 ing left her self-will unsatisfied and humbly subjected 
 herself to a higher power? Subjected and sacrificed, 
 because the superstition of piety exercised its dominion 
 over her! 
 
 There egoism won, here piety wins and the egoistic 
 heart bleeds; there egoism was strong, here it was 
 weak. But the weak, as we have long known, are the 
 unselfish. For them, for these its weak members, 
 the family cares, because they belong to the family, 
 do not belong to themselves and care for themselves. 
 This weakness Hegel, e. g., praises when he wants to 
 have match-making left to the choice of the parents. 
 
 As a sacred communion to which, among the rest, 
 the individual owes obedience, the family has the 
 judicial function too vested in it ; such a " family 
 court " is described e . g. in the " Cabanis " of Wili- 
 bald Alexis. There the father, in the name of the 
 " family council," puts the intractable son among the 
 soldiers and thrusts him out of the family, in order 
 to cleanse the smirched family again by means of this 
 act of punishment. The most consistent development 
 of family responsibility is contained in Chinese law, 
 according to which the whole family has to expiate 
 the individual's fault.
 
 292 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 To-day, however, the arm of family power seldom 
 reaches far enough to take seriously in hand the 
 punishment of apostates (in most cases the State pro- 
 tects even against disinheritance). The criminal 
 against the family (family-criminal) flees into the 
 domain of the State and is free, as the State-criminal 
 who gets away to America is no longer reached by the 
 punishments of his State. He who has shamed his 
 family, the graceless son, is protected against the 
 family's punishment because the State, this protecting 
 lord, takes away from family punishment its " sacred- 
 ness " and profanes it, decreeing that it is only " re- 
 venge " : it restrains punishment, this sacred family 
 right, because before its, the State's, " sacredness " 
 the subordinate sacredness of the family always pales 
 and loses its sanctity as soon as it comes in conflict 
 with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict, 
 the State lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family; 
 but in the opposite case it even commands crime 
 against the family, charging, e. g., the son to refuse 
 obedience to his parents as soon as they want to be- 
 guile him to a crime against the State. 
 
 Well, the egoist has broken the ties of the family 
 and found in the State a lord to shelter him against 
 the grievously affronted spirit of the family. But 
 where has he run now? Straight into a new society, 
 in which his egoism is awaited by the same snares and 
 nets that it has just escaped. For the State is likewise 
 a society, not a union; it is the broadenedym/w/^ 
 (" Father of the Country Mother of the Country 
 children of the country ").
 
 THE OWNER , 993 
 
 What is called a State is a tissue and plexus of 
 dependence and adherence; it is a belonging together, 
 a holding together, in which those who are placed 
 together fit themselves to each other, or, in short, 
 mutually depend on each other: it is the order of this 
 dependence. Suppose the king, whose authority lends 
 authority to all down to the beadle, should vanish: 
 still all in whom the will for order was awake would 
 keep order erect against the disorders of bestiality. 
 If disorder were victorious, the State would be at an 
 end. 
 
 But is this thought of love, to fit ourselves to each 
 other, to adhere to each other and depend on each 
 other, really capable of winning us? According to 
 this the State would be love realized, the being for 
 each other and living for each other of all. Is not 
 self-will being lost while we attend to the will for 
 order? Will people not be satisfied when order is 
 cared for by authority, i. c. when authority sees to it 
 that no one " gets in the way of" another; when, 
 then, the herd is judiciously distributed or ordered? 
 Why, then everything is in " the best order," and it is 
 this best order that is called State! 
 
 Our societies and States are without our making 
 them, are united without our uniting, are predestined 
 and established, or have an independent standing * of 
 their own, are the indissolubly established against us 
 egoists. The fight of the world to-day is, as it is said, 
 directed against the " established." Yet people are 
 wont to misunderstand this as if it were only that 
 
 * [It should be remembered that the words " establish " and " State " are 
 both derived from the root "stand."]
 
 294 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 what is now established was to be exchanged for an- 
 other, a better, established system. But war might 
 rather be declared against establishment itself, i. e. 
 the State, not a particular State, not any such thing 
 as the mere condition of the State at the time ; it is 
 not -another State (such as a " people's State ") that 
 men aim at, but their union, uniting, this ever-fluid 
 uniting of everything standing. A State exists 
 even without my co-operation: I am born in it, 
 brought up in it, under obligations to it, and must 
 " do it homage."* It takes me up into its " favor,"f 
 and I live by its "grace." Thus the independent estab- 
 lishment of the State founds my lack of independence ; 
 its condition as a " natural growth," its organism, de- 
 mands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut 
 to fit it. That it may be able to unfold in natural 
 growth, it applies to me the shears of "civilization"; 
 it gives me an education and culture adapted to it, 
 not to me, and teaches me e. g. to respect the laws, to 
 refrain from injury to State property (i. e. private 
 property), to reverence divine and earthly highness, 
 etc.; in short, it teaches me to be unpunishable, 
 "sacrificing" my ownness to "sacredness" (everything 
 possible is sacred, e. g. property, others' life, etc.). 
 In this consists the sort of civilization and culture that 
 the State is able to give me: it brings me up to be a 
 " serviceable instrument," a " serviceable member of 
 society." 
 
 This every State must do, the people's State as well 
 as the absolute or constitutional one. It must do so 
 
 *[huldigen]
 
 THE OWNER 295 
 
 as long as we rest in the error that it is an /, as which 
 it then applies to itself the name of a " moral, mysti- 
 cal, or political person." I, who really am I, must 
 pull off this lion-skin of the I from the stalking 
 thistle-eater. What manifold robbery have I not put 
 up with in the history of the world! There I let sun, 
 moon, and stars, cats and crocodiles, receive the honor 
 of ranking as I ; there Jehovah, Allah, and Our 
 Father came and were invested with the I ; there 
 families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually mankind, 
 came and were honored as I's; there the Church, the 
 State, came with the pretension to be I, and I 
 gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then there was 
 always a real I too that joined the company and 
 affirmed in my face that it was not my you but my 
 real /. Why, the Son of Man par excellence had 
 done the like ; why should not a son of man do it 
 too? So I saw my I always above me and outside 
 me, and could never really come to myself. 
 
 I never believed in myself; I never believed in my 
 present, I saw myself only in the future. The boy 
 aelieves he will be a proper I, a proper fellow, only 
 when lie has become a man ; the man thinks, only in 
 the other world will he be something proper. And, to 
 enter more closely upon reality at once, even the best 
 are to-day still persuading each other that one must 
 lave received into himself the State, his people, man- 
 kind, and what not, in order to be a real I, a " free 
 burgher," a " citizen," a " free or true man "; they 
 too see the truth and reality of me in the reception of 
 an alien I and devotion to it. And what sort of an 
 I? An I that is neither an I nor a you, A fancied I,
 
 296 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 a spook. 
 
 While in the Middle Ages the church could well 
 brook many States living united in it, the States 
 learned after the Reformation, especially after the 
 Thirty Years' War, to tolerate many churches (con- 
 fessions) gathering under one crown. But all States 
 are religious and, as the case may be, " Christian 
 States," and make it their task to force the intract- 
 able, the " egoists," under the bond of the unnatural, 
 i. e. Christianize them. All arrangements of the Chris- 
 tian State have* the object of Christianizing- the people. 
 Thus the court has the object of forcing people to 
 justice, the school that of forcing them to mental cul- 
 ture, in short, the object of protecting those who act 
 Christianly against those who act unchristianly, of 
 bringing Christian action to dominion, of making it 
 powerful. Among these means of force the State 
 counted the Church too, it demanded a particular 
 religion from everybody. Dupin said lately against 
 the clergy, " Instruction and education belong to the 
 State." 
 
 Certainly everything that regards the principle of 
 morality is a State affair. Hence it is that the 
 Chinese State meddles so much in family concerns, 
 and one is nothing there if one is not first of all 
 a good child to his parents. Family concerns are 
 altogether State concerns with us too, only that our 
 State puts confidence in the families without painful 
 oversight; it holds the family bound by the marriage 
 tie, and this tie cannot be broken without it. 
 
 But that the State makes me responsible for my 
 principles, and demands certain ones from me, might
 
 THE OWNER 297 
 
 make me ask, what concern has it with the " wheel in 
 my head " (principle)? Very much, for the State 
 is the ruling- prinriple. It is supposed that in 
 divorce matters, in marriage law in general, the ques- 
 tion is of the proportion of rights between Church 
 and State. Rather, the question is of whether any- 
 thing sacred is to rule over man, be it called faith or 
 ethical law (morality). The State behaves as the 
 same ruler that the Church was. The latter rests on 
 godliness, the former on morality. 
 
 People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite 
 tendencies free, and the like, by which civilized States 
 are distinguished. Certainly some are strong enough 
 to look with complacency on even the most unre- 
 strained meetings, while others charge their catchpolls 
 to go hunting for tobacco-pipes. Yet for one State 
 as for another the play of individuals among them- 
 selves, their buzzing to and fro, their daily life, is an 
 incident which it must be content to leave to them- 
 selves because it can do nothing with this. Many, 
 indeed, still strain out gnats and swallow camels, while 
 others are shrewder. Individuals are " freer " in the 
 latter, because less pestered. But / am free in ho 
 State. The lauded tolerance of States is simply a 
 tolerating of the "harmless," the " not dangerous"; 
 it is only elevation above pettymindedness, only a 
 more estimable, grander, prouder despotism. A 
 certain State seemed for a while to mean to be pretty 
 
 ell elevated above literary combats, which might 
 be carried on with all heat ; England is elevated 
 above popular tuniunl and tobacco-smoking. But 
 \\o<- to the literature that deals blows at the State
 
 298 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 itself, woe to the mobs that " endanger " the State. 
 In that certain State they dream of a " free science," 
 in England of a " free popular life." 
 
 The State does let individuals play as freely as pos- 
 sible, only they must not be in earnest, must not for- 
 get it. Man must not carry on intercourse with man 
 unconcernedly, not without " superior oversight and 
 mediation." I must not execute all that I am able 
 to, but only so much as the State allows; I must not 
 turn to account my thoughts, nor my work, nor, in 
 general, anything of mine. 
 
 The State always has the sole purpose to limit, 
 tame, subordinate, the individual to make him sub- 
 ject to some generality or other; it lasts only so long 
 as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the 
 clearly-marked restriction of me, my limitation, my 
 slavery. Never does a State aim to bring in the free 
 activity of individuals, but always that which is bound 
 to the purpose of the State. Through the State noth- 
 ing in common comes to pass either, as little as one 
 can call a piece of cloth the common work of all the 
 individual parts of a machine; it is rather the work of 
 the whole machine as a unit, machine work. In the 
 same style everything is done by the State machine 
 too; for it moves the clockwork of the individual 
 minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The 
 State seeks to hinder every free activity by its censor- 
 ship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hinder- 
 ing to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of 
 self-preservation. The State wants to make something 
 out of man, therefore there live in it only made men; 
 every one who wants to be his own self is its opponent
 
 THE OWNER 299 
 
 and is nothing. " He is nothing" means as much as, 
 The State does not make use of him, grants him no 
 position, no office, no trade, and the like. 
 
 E. Bauer,* in the "Liberate Bestrebungen," II, 50, 
 is still dreaming of a " government which, proceeding 
 out of the people, can never stand in opposition to 
 it." He does indeed (p. 69) himself take back the 
 word " government " : " In the republic no govern- 
 ment at all obtains, but only an executive authority. 
 An authority which proceeds purely and alone out of 
 the people; which has not an independent power, in- 
 dependent principles, independent officers, over against 
 the people; but which has its foundation, the fountain 
 of its power and of its principles, in the sole, supreme 
 authority of the State, in the people. The concept 
 government, therefore, is not at all suitable in the 
 people's State." But the thing remains the same. 
 That which has " proceeded, been founded, sprung 
 from the fountain " becomes something " independent" 
 and, like a child delivered from the womb, enters 
 upon opposition at once. The government, if it were 
 nothing independent and opposing, would be nothing 
 at all. 
 
 " In the free State there is no government," etc. 
 (p. 94). This surely means that the people, when it 
 is the Mn.'crcig'n, does not let itself be conducted by a 
 sujK-rior authority. Is it perchance different in abso- 
 lute monarchy? Is there there for the sovereign, per- 
 chance, a government standing over him? Over the 
 
 * Wliat was said in the concluding remarks after Humane Liberalism 
 holds good of the following, t<> wit. that it was likewise written immedi- 
 ately after the appearance of the book cited.
 
 300 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never 
 stands a government: that is understood of itself. 
 But over me there will stand a government in every 
 " State," in the absolute as well as in the republican 
 or " free." / am as badly off in one as in the other. 
 
 The republic is nothing whatever but absolute 
 monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the 
 monarch is called prince or people, both being a 
 " majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that no- 
 body is able and willing to be only an instrument. 
 The ministers domineer over their master the prince, 
 the deputies over their master the people. Here, 
 then, the parties at least are already free, videlicet, 
 the office-holders' party (so-called people's party). 
 The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, 
 the people dance to the pipe of the chambers. Con- 
 stitutionalism is further than the republic, because it 
 is the State in incipient dissolution. 
 
 E. Bauer denies (p. 56) that the people is a " per- 
 sonality" in the constitutional State; per contra, then, 
 in the republic? Well, in the constitutional State 
 people is a, party, and a party is surely a "person- 
 ality " if one is once resolved to talk of a " political 
 (p. 76) moral person anyhow. The fact is that a 
 moral person, be it called people's party or people 
 even " the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook. 
 
 Further, E. Bauer goes on (p. 69) : " guardianship 
 is the characteristic of a government." Truly, still 
 more that of a people and " people's State "; it is 
 the characteristic of all dominion. A people's State, 
 which " unites in itself all completeness of power," the 
 " absolute master," cannot let me become powerful.
 
 THE OWNER 301 
 
 And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call 
 the " people's officials " " servants, instruments," be- 
 cause they " execute the free, rational law-will of the 
 people! " (p. 73). He thinks (p. 74) : " Only by all 
 official circles subordinating themselves to the govern- 
 ment's views can unity be brought into the State " ; 
 but his " people's State" is to have " unity " too; 
 how will a lack of subordination be allowable there? 
 subordination to the people's will. 
 
 " In the constitutional State it is the regent and his 
 disposition that the whole structure of government 
 rests on in the end." (Ibid., p. 130.) How would 
 that be otherwise in the "people's State "? Shall / not 
 there be governed by the people's disposition too, and 
 does it make a differences/or me whether I see myself 
 kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by 
 the people's disposition, so-called "public opinion"? 
 If dependence means as much as " religious relation," 
 as E. Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State 
 the people remains^r me the superior power, the 
 majesty " (for God and prince have their proper 
 essence in " majesty ") to which I stand in religious 
 relations. Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign 
 people too would be reached by no laiv. E. Bauer's 
 whole attempt comes to a change of masters. Instead 
 of wanting to make the people free, he should have 
 had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own. 
 In the constitutional State absolutism itself has at 
 last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shat- 
 tered into a duality; the government wants to be 
 absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These 
 two absolutes will wear out against each other.
 
 302 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 E. Bauer inveighs against the determination of the 
 regent by birth, by chance. But, when " the people " 
 have become " the sole power in the State" (p. 132), 
 have we not then in it a master from chance ? Why, 
 what is the people? The people has always been only 
 the body of the government: it is many under one hat 
 (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution. Ai 
 the constitution is the prince. Princes and peoples 
 will persist so long as both do not eo/lapse, i. e. fall 
 together. If under one constitution there are many 
 " peoples," e. g. in the ancient Persian monarchy 
 and to-day, then these " peoples " rank only as 
 " provinces." For me the people is in any case an 
 accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I 
 must overcome. 
 
 What is one to think of under the name of an 
 " organized " people (ibid., p. 132)? A people " that 
 no longer has a government," that governs itself. In 
 which, therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a 
 people organized by ostracism. The banishment of 
 egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat. 
 
 If you speak of the people, you must speak of the 
 prince ; for the people, if it is to be a subject* 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 societe, poui 
 ainsi dire acephak, ne pent vivre"^ 
 
 The vox populi is now always held up to us, and 
 " public opinion " is to rule our princes. Certainly 
 
 * [In the philosophical sense (a thinking and acting hcinfr), not in the 
 political sense,] 
 
 t [" Creation de I'Ordre," p. 485.]
 
 THE OWNER 303 
 
 the vo.r popidi is at the same time t>o.r del ; but is 
 either of any use, and is not the vox principis also 
 vox del? 
 
 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 re- 
 main; but it is not the bees as bees that belong to- 
 gether and can join themselves together, it is only that 
 the subject bees are connected with the riding queens. 
 Hees and ]>eoples 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 do- 
 ing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their 
 Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like bee- 
 hood 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
 
 304 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 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 reaction- 
 ary wishes, that they want to set up something 
 general, abstract, an empty, lifeless concept, in dis- 
 tinction 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 & 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, Bavari- 
 ans, 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 bee- 
 hives; 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
 
 THE OWNER 3Q5 
 
 "family disposition.' 1 ' 1 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, in- 
 spired, cries out,* " Railroads are to the more penetrat- 
 ing 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 hu- 
 manity or manhood cannot be better represented than 
 by a people fulfilling its mission." Why, by this 
 nationality only is represented. " Washed-out gener- 
 ality 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, na- 
 tion," 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 
 
 * ["Koelner Dom," p. 4.]
 
 306 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 who realizes only himself, his individual pleasure thei 
 it does not recognize in the " absolute master " its owi 
 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' 1 '' 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 /, 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 every- 
 thing. Just so Mirabeau inveighs in the words, " No 
 power on earth has the right to say to the nation's
 
 THE OWNER 307 
 
 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 national- 
 ity, not willing to be merely political men or politi- 
 cians. Since the Revolution they have striven to 
 " make the people happy," and in making the people 
 bappy, 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-philo- 
 sopher, is he to occupy himself with it because it is his 
 " most sacred duty "? So long as the State does
 
 308 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 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. 
 
 Nauwerk utters a genuine liberal phrase on p. 16: 
 " Man completely fulfils his calling only in feeling and 
 knowing himself as a member of humanity, and being 
 active as such. The individual cannot realize the idea 
 of manhood if he does not stay himself upon all hu- 
 manity, if he does not draw his powers from it like 
 Antaeus." 
 
 In the same place it is said: "Man's relation to the 
 res pubtica is degraded to a purely private matter by 
 the theological view; is, accordingly, made away with 
 by denial." As if the political view did otherwise 
 with religion! There religion is a " private matter." 
 
 If, instead of " sacred duty," " man's destiny," the 
 " calling to full manhood," and similar command- 
 ments, it were held up to people that their self-interest 
 was infringed on when they let everything in the State 
 go as it goes, then, without declamations, they would
 
 THE OWNER 309 
 
 be addressed as one will have to address them at the 
 decisive moment if he wants to attain his end. In- 
 stead of this, the theology-hating author says, " If 
 there has ever been a time when the State laid claim 
 to all that are hers, such a time is ours. The think- 
 ing man sees in participation in the theory and prac- 
 tice of the State a duty, one of the most sacred duties 
 that rest upon him " and then takes under closer 
 consideration the " unconditional necessity that every- 
 body participate in the State." 
 
 He in whose head or heart or both the State is 
 seated, he who is possessed by the State, or the believer 
 in the State, is a politician, and remains such to all 
 eternity. 
 
 "The State is the most necessary means for the com- 
 plete development of mankind." It assuredly has 
 been so as long as we wanted to develop mankind; 
 but, if we want to develop ourselves, it can be to us 
 only a means of hindrance. 
 
 Can State and people still be reformed and bettered 
 now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church, 
 etc.: they can be abrogated, annihilated, done away 
 with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense 
 into sense by reforming it, or must I drop it outright? 
 
 Henceforth what is to be done is no longer about 
 the State (the form of the State, etc.), but about me. 
 With this all questions about the prince's power, the 
 constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their 
 true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my 
 creations from myself.
 
 310 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 To the chapter of society belongs also " the party," 
 whose praise has of late been sung. 
 
 In the State the party is current. " Party, party, 
 who should not join one! " But the individual is 
 unique,* not a member of the party. He unites 
 freely, and separates freely again. The party is noth- 
 ing but a State in the State, and in this smaller bee- 
 State " peace " is also to rule just as in the greater. 
 The very people who cry loudest that there must be an 
 opposition in the State inveigh against every discord 
 in the party. A proof that they too want only a 
 State. All parties are shattered not against the State, 
 but against the ego.f 
 
 One hears nothing oftener now than the admonition 
 to remain true to his party; party men despise noth- 
 ing so much as a mugwump. One must run with his 
 party through thick and thin, and unconditionally ap- 
 prove and represent its chief principles. It does not 
 indeed go quite so badly here as with closed societies, 
 because these bind their members to fixed laws or 
 statutes (tf. g. the orders, the Society of Jesus, etc.) . 
 But yet the party ceases to be a union at the same 
 moment at which it makes certain principles binding 
 and wants to have them assured against attacks; but 
 this moment is the very birth-act of the party. As 
 party it is already a born society, a dead union, an 
 idea that has become fixed. As party of absolutism it 
 cannot will that its members should doubt the irre- 
 fragable truth of this principle; they could cherish this 
 doubt only if they were egoistic enough to want still 
 
 * [einzip] t [am Einzigen]
 
 THE OWNER 311 
 
 to be something outside their party, /. c. non-partis- 
 ans. Non-partisan they cannot be as party-men, but 
 only as egoists. If you are a Protestant and belong 
 to that party, you must only justify Protestantism, at 
 most "purge" it, not reject it; if you are a Christian 
 and belong among men to the Christian party, you 
 cannot go beyond this as a member of this party, but 
 only when your egoism, i. e. non-partisanship, impels 
 you to it. What exertions the Christians, down to 
 Hegel and the Communists, have put forth to make 
 their party strong! they stuck to it that Christianity 
 must contain the eternal truth, and that one needs 
 only to get at it, make sure of it, and justify it. 
 
 In short, the party cannot bear non-partisanship, 
 and it is in this that egoism appears. What matters 
 the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who 
 unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag. 
 
 He who passes over from one party to another is at 
 once abused as a " turncoat." Certainly morality de- 
 mands that one stand by his party, and to become 
 apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of 
 "faithlessness"; but ownness knows no commandment 
 of " faithfulness, adhesion, etc.," ownness permits 
 everything, even apostasy, defection. Unconsciously 
 even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this 
 principle when they have to judge one who passes over 
 to their party, nay, they are likely to be making 
 proselytes; they should only at the same time acquire 
 a consciousness of the fact that one must commit im- 
 moral actions in order to commit his own, i. e. here, 
 that one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order 
 to determine himself instead of being determined by
 
 312 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict 
 moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in equi- 
 vocal colors, and will not easily obtain their con- 
 fidence; for there sticks to him the taint of "faithless- 
 ness," i. e. of an immorality. In the lower man this 
 view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall 
 here too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilder- 
 ment, and the contradiction necessarily founded in the 
 principle of morality does not, on account of the con- 
 fusion of their concepts, come clearly to their con- 
 sciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate 
 immoral downright, because they themselves entice to 
 apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, 
 etc.; still, they cannot give up the standpoint of 
 morality either. And yet here the occasion was to be 
 seized to step outside of morality. 
 
 Are the Own or Unique* perchance a party? How 
 could they be own if they were such as belonged to a 
 party? 
 
 Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act 
 of joining them and entering their circle one forms a 
 union with them that lasts as long as party and I 
 pursue one and the same goal. But to-day I still 
 share the party's tendency, and by to-morrow I can d( 
 so no longer and I become " untrue " to it. The 
 party has nothing binding (obligatory) for me, and I 
 do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, 
 I become its foe. 
 
 In every party that cares for itself and its persist- 
 ence, the members are unfree (or better, unown) in 
 
 * [Einzigen]
 
 THE OWNER 313 
 
 that degree, they lack egoism in that degree, in which 
 they serve this desire of the party. The independence 
 of the party conditions the lack of independence in the 
 party-members. 
 
 A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never 
 do without a confession of faith. For those who be- 
 long to the party must believe in its principle, it must 
 not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, 
 it must be the certain, indubitable thing for the party- 
 member. That is: One must belong to a party body 
 and soul, else one is not truly a party-man, but more 
 or less an egoist. Harbor a doubt of Christianity, 
 and you are already no longer a true Christian, you 
 have lifted yourself to the " effrontery" of putting a 
 question beyond it and haling Christianity before your 
 egoistic judgment-seat. You have sinned against 
 Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not e. g. 
 a cause for the Jews, another party). But well for 
 you if you do not let yourself be affrighted : your ef- 
 frontery helps you to ownness. 
 
 So then an egoist* could never embrace a party or 
 take up with a party? Oh, yes, only he cannot let 
 himself be embraced and taken up by the party. For 
 him the party remains all the time nothing but a 
 gathering : he is one of the party, he takes part. 
 
 The best State will clearly be that which has the 
 most loyal citizens, and the more the devoted mind for 
 legality is lost, so much the more will the State, this 
 system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished 
 in force and quality. With the " good citizens " the 
 good State too perishes and dissolves into anarchy and
 
 314 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 
 lawlessness. " Respect for the law! " By this cement 
 the total of the State is held together. " The law is 
 sacred, and he who affronts it a criminal.''' 1 Without 
 crime no State: the moral world and this the State 
 is crammed full of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. 
 Since the State is the " lordship of law," its hierarchy, 
 it follows that the egoist, in all cases where his ad- 
 vantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself 
 only by crime. 
 
 The State cannot give up the claim that its laics and 
 ordinances are sacred.* At this the individual ranks 
 as the unholy^ (barbarian, natural man, "egoist") 
 over against the State, exactly as he was once regarded 
 by the Church; before the individual the State takes 
 on the nimbus of a saint. \ Thus it issues a law 
 against dueling. Two men who are both at one in 
 this, that they are willing to stake their life for a 
 cause (no matter what), are not to be allowed this, be- 
 cause the State will not have it: it imposes a penalty 
 on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? 
 It is at once quite another situation if, as e. g. in 
 North America, society determines to let the duelists 
 bear certain evil consequences of their act, e. g. with- 
 drawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse 
 credit is everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to 
 withdraw it for this or that reason, the man who is hit 
 cannot therefore complain of encroachment on his lib- 
 erty: the society is simply availing itself of its own 
 liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a 
 crime. The duel is no crime there, but only an act 
 
 * [heilig] t [unheilig] } [Heiliger]
 
 THE OWNER 315 
 
 against which the society adopts counter-measures, re- 
 solves on a defence. The State, on the contrary, 
 stamps the duel as a crime, i. e. as an injury to its 
 sacred law: it makes it a criminal case. The society 
 leaves it to the individual's decision whether he will 
 draw upon himself evil consequences and inconveni- 
 ences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes his 
 free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse 
 way, denying all right to the individual's decision 
 and, instead, ascribing the sole right to its own de- 
 cision, the law of the State, so that he who trans- 
 gresses the State's commandment is looked upon as if 
 he were acting against God's commandment, a view 
 which likewise was once maintained by the Church. 
 Here God is the Holy in and of himself, and the com- 
 mandments of the Church, as of the State, are the 
 commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to 
 the world through his anointed and Lords-by-the- 
 Grace-of-God. If the Church had deadly sins, the State 
 has capital crimes ; if the one had heretics, the other 
 has traitors; the one ecclesiastical penalties, the other 
 criminal penalties ; the one inquisitorial processes, the 
 other fiscal; in short, there sins, here crimes, there 
 sinners, here criminals, there inquisition and here 
 inquisition. Will the sanctity of the State not fall 
 like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence 
 for its highness, the humility of its " subjects," will 
 this remain? Will the " saint's " face not be stripped 
 of its adornment? 
 
 What a folly, to ask of the State's authority that it 
 should enter into an honorable fight with the indi- 
 vidual, and, as they express themselves in the matter
 
 316 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally ! 
 If the State, this thought, is to be a de facto power, it 
 simply must be a superior power against the individ- 
 ual. The State is " sacred " and must not expose 
 itself to the " impudent attacks " of individuals. If 
 the State is sacred, there must be censorship. The 
 political liberals admit the former and dispute the 
 inference. But in any case they concede repressive 
 measures to it, for they stick to this, that State is 
 more than the individual and exercises a justified 
 revenge, called punishment. 
 
 Punishment has a meaning only when it is to afford 
 expiation for the injuring of a sacred thing. If some- 
 thing is sacred to any one, he certainly deserves 
 punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who 
 lets a man's life continue in existence because to him 
 it is sacred and he has a dread of touching it is simply 
 a religious man. 
 
 Weitling lays crime at the door of " social dis- 
 order," and lives in the expectation that under Com- 
 munistic arrangements crimes will become impossible, 
 because the temptations to them, e. g. money, fall 
 away. As, however, his organized society is also ex- 
 alted into a sacred and inviolable one, he miscalcu- 
 lates in that good-hearted opinion. Such as with 
 their mouth professed allegiance to the Communistic 
 society, but worked underhand for its ruin, would not 
 be lacking. Besides, Weitling has to keep on with 
 " curative means against the natural remainder of hu- 
 man diseases and weaknesses," and " curative means " 
 always announce to begin with that individuals will be 
 looked upon as "called " to a particular "salvation"
 
 THE OWNER 317 
 
 and hence treated according to the requirements of 
 this " human calling." Curative means or healing is 
 only the reverse side of punishment, the theory of cure 
 runs parallel with the theory of punishment ; if the 
 latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former 
 takes it for a sin of the man against himself, as a de- 
 cadence from his health. But the correct thing is 
 that I re^a d it either as an action that suits me or as 
 one that does not suit me, as hostile or friendly to me, 
 i. e. that I treat it as my property, which I cherish or 
 demolish. " Crime " or " disease " are not either of 
 them an cg'oi.stic view of the matter, i. e. a judgment 
 starting from me, but starting from another, to 
 wit, whether it injures right, general right, or the 
 health partly of the individual (the sick one), partly 
 of the generality (society). " Crime" is treated inex- 
 orably, " disease " with " loving gentleness, compas- 
 sion," and the like. 
 
 Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because 
 the sacred vanishes, punishment must not less be 
 drawn into its fall; for it too has significance only 
 over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical punish- 
 ments have been abolished. Why? Because how 
 one behaves toward the "holy God " is his own affair. 
 But, as this one punishment, ecclesiastical punishment, 
 has fallen, so all punishments must fall. As sin 
 against the so-called God is a man's own affair, so 
 that against every kind of the so-called sacred. Ac- 
 cording to our theories of penal law, with whose " im- 
 provement in conformity to the times " people are 
 tormenting themselves in vain, they want to punish 
 men for this or that " inhumanity "; and therein they
 
 318 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 make the silliness of these theories especially plain by 
 their consistency, hanging the little thieves and letting 
 the big ones run. For injury to property they have 
 the house of correction, and for " violence to thought," 
 suppression of " natural rights of man," only repre- 
 sentations and petitions. 
 
 The criminal code has continued existence only 
 through the sacred, and perishes of itself if punish- 
 ment is given up. Now they want to create every- 
 where a new penal law, without indulging in a mis- 
 giving about punishment itself. But it is exactly 
 punishment that must make room for satisfaction, 
 which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, 
 but at procuring us a satisfactory outcome. If one 
 does to us what we will not put up with, we break his 
 power and bring our own to bear: we satisfy ourselves 
 on him, and do not fall into the folly of wanting to 
 satisfy right (the spook). It is not the sacred that 
 is to defend itself against man, but man against man; 
 as God too, you know, no longer defends himself 
 against man, God to whom formerly (and in part, in- 
 deed, even now) all the " servants of God " offered 
 their hands to punish the blasphemer, as they still at 
 this very day lend their hands to the sacred. This 
 devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also that, wit! 
 out lively participation of one's own, one only deliver 
 misdoers into the hands of the police and courts : a 
 non-participating making over to the authorities, 
 " who, of course, will best administer sacred matters. 
 The people is quite crazy for hounding the police on 
 against everything that seems to it to be immoral, 
 often only unseemly, and this popular rage for the
 
 THE OWNER 319 
 
 moral protects the police institution, more than the 
 government could in any way protect it. 
 
 In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself 
 and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, 
 or rather of the sacred, may become general. A 
 i revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, 
 shameless, conscienceless, proud crime, does it not 
 rumble in distant thunders, and do you not see how 
 the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy? 
 
 He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited 
 societies as family, party, nation, is still always long- 
 ing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found the 
 true object of love, perhaps, in " human society " or 
 " mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes 
 his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves 
 mankind.' 1 ' 1 
 
 People is the name of the body, State of the spirit, 
 of that riding person that has hitherto suppressed me. 
 Some have wanted to transfigure peoples and States by 
 broadening them out to " mankind " and " general 
 reason "; but servitude would only become still more 
 intense with this widening, and philanthropists and 
 humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians 
 and diplomats. 
 
 Modern critics inveigh against religion because it 
 sets God, the divine, moral, etc., outside of man, or 
 makes them something objective, in opposition to 
 which the critics rather transfer these very subjects 
 into man. But those critics none the less fall into 
 the proper error of religion, to give man a " destiny," 
 in that they too want to have him divine, human, and
 
 320 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are 
 his essence. And, like religion, politics too wanted 
 to " educate " man, to bring him to the realization of 
 his " essence," his " destiny," to make something out 
 of him, to wit, a " true man," the one in the form of 
 the " true believer," the other in that of the " true 
 citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same 
 whether one calls the destiny the divine or human. 
 
 Under religion and politics man finds himself at the 
 standpoint of should: he should become this and that, 
 should be so and so. With this postulate, this com- 
 mandment, every one steps not only in front of an- 
 other but also in front of himself. Those critics say : 
 You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too 
 stand in the temptation to proclaim a new religion, to 
 set up a new absolute, an ideal, to wit, freedom.' 
 Men should be free. Then there might even arise mis- 
 sionaries of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction 
 that all were properly destined to become Christians, 
 sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would 
 then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as 
 State) constitute itself as a new community and carry 
 on a like " propaganda " therefrom. Certainly no 
 objection can be raised against a getting together; 
 but so much the more must one oppose every renewal 
 of the old care for us, of culture directed toward an 
 end, in short, the principle of making something out 
 of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or free- 
 men and men. 
 
 One may well say with Feuerbach and others that 
 religion has displaced the human from man, and has 
 transferred it so into another world that,, unattainab 
 
 ut 
 
 .
 
 THE OWNER 321 
 
 it went on with its own existence there as something 
 personal in itself, as a " God ": but the error of reli- 
 gion is by no means exhausted with this. One might 
 very well let fall the personality of the displaced hu- 
 man, might transform God into the divine, and still 
 remain religious. For the religious consists in discon- 
 tent with the present man, i. e. in the setting up of a 
 "perfection " to be striven for, in " man wrestling for 
 his completion."* (" Ye therefore should be perfect 
 as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5. 48) : 
 it consists in the fixation of an ideal, an absolute. 
 Perfection is the " supreme good," thejinis bonorum ; 
 every one's ideal is the perfect man, the true, the free 
 man, etc. 
 
 The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal 
 of the " free man." If one could find it, there would 
 be a new religion, because a new ideal; there would 
 be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a 
 new deity, a new contrition. 
 
 With the ideal of " absolute liberty," the same tur- 
 moil is made as with everything absolute, and accord- 
 ing to Hess, e. g., it is said to " be realizable in abso- 
 lute human society."! Nay, this realization is 
 immediately afterward styled a " vocation " ; just so he 
 then defines liberty as " morality " : the kingdom of 
 "justice" (i. e. equality) and "morality" (i. e. 
 liberty) is to begin, etc. 
 
 Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, 
 family, nation, etc., rank high, is nothing but 
 " puffed up " over the merit of his fellows; but 
 
 * B. Bauer. " Lit. Ztg." 8. 22, t " E. w. Z. B.," p. 89 ff.
 
 322 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 blinded too is he who 'wants only to be " man." 
 Neither of them puts his worth in exclusiveness, but 
 in connectedness, or in the " tie " that conjoins him 
 with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of 
 humanity. 
 
 Through the " Nationals " of to-day the conflict has 
 again been stirred up between those who think them- 
 selves to have merely human blood and human ties of 
 blood, and the others who brag of their special blood 
 and the special ties of blood. 
 
 If we disregard the fact that pride may mean con- 
 ceit, and take it for consciousness alone, there is found 
 to be a vast difference between pride in " belonging 
 to " a nation and therefore being its property, and 
 that in calling a nationality one's property. Nation- 
 ality is my quality, but the nation my owner and 
 mistress. If you have bodily strength, you can apply 
 it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or 
 pride of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has 
 you, then it pricks you everywhere, and at the most 
 unsuitable place, to show its strength: you can give 
 nobody your hand without squeezing his. 
 
 The perception that one is more than a member of 
 the family, more than a fellow of the tribe, more than 
 an individual of the people, etc., has finally led to say 
 ing, one is more than all this because one is man, or, 
 the man is more than the Jew, German, etc. " There 
 fore be every one wholly and solely man ! " Could 
 one not rather say : Because we are more than what 
 has been stated, therefore we will be this, as well as 
 that " more " also? Man and German, then, man 
 and Guelph, etc.? The Nationals are in the right;
 
 THE OWNER 323 
 
 one cannot deny his nationality: and the humanitar- 
 ians are in the right; one must not remain in the 
 narrowness of the national. In uniqueness * the con- 
 tradiction is solved; the national is my quality. But 
 I am not swallowed up in my quality, as the human 
 too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first 
 through my uniqueness. 
 
 History seeks for Man : but he is I, you, we. 
 Sought as a mysterious essence, as the divine, first as 
 God, then as Man (humanity, humaneness, and 
 mankind), he is found as the 'individual, the finite, the 
 unique one. 
 
 I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do 
 nothing for the good of another humanity. Fool, you 
 who are a unique humanity, that you make a merit 
 of wanting to live for another than you are. 
 
 The hitherto-considered relation of me to the world 
 of men offers such a wealth of phenomena that it will 
 have to be taken up again and again on other occa- 
 sions, but here, where it was only to have its chief 
 outlines made clear to the eye, it must be broken off 
 to make place for an apprehension of two other sides 
 toward which it radiates. For, as I find myself in 
 relation not merely to men so far as they present in 
 themselves the concept " man " or are children of men 
 (children of Man, as children of God are spoken of), 
 but also to that which they have of man and call their 
 own, and as therefore I relate myself not only to that 
 which they are through man, but also to their human 
 possessions : so, besides the world of men, the world of 
 
 *[Einzigkeit]
 
 324 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the senses and of ideas will have to be included in our 
 survey, and somewhat said of what men call their own 
 of sensuous goods, and of spiritual as well. 
 
 According as one had developed and clearly 
 grasped the concept of man, he gave it to us to respect 
 as this or th&t person of respect, and from the broad- 
 est understanding of this concept there proceeded at 
 last the command " to respect Man in every one." 
 But, if I respect Man, my respect must likewise ex- 
 tend to the human, or what is Man's. 
 
 Men have somewhat of their own, and / am to 
 recognize this own and hold it sacred. Their own 
 consists partly in outward, partly in inward posses- 
 sions. The former are things, the latter spiritualities, 
 thoughts, convictions, noble feelings, etc. But I am 
 always to respect only rightful or human possessions; 
 the wrongful and unhuman I need not spare, for only 
 Man's own is men's real own. An inward possession 
 of this sort is, e. g., religion; because religion is free, 
 i. e. is Man's, / must not strike at it. Just so honor 
 is an inward possession; it is free and must not be 
 struck at by me. (Action for insult, caricatures, etc/ 
 Religion and honor are "spiritual property." In 
 tangible property the person stands foremost: my 
 person is my first property. Hence freedom of the 
 person; but only the rightful or human person is 
 free, the other is locked up. Your life is your prop- 
 erty ; but it is sacred for men only if it is not that of 
 an inhuman monster. 
 
 What a man as such cannot defend of bodily 
 goods, we may take from him : this is the meaning 
 of competition, of freedom of occupation. What he
 
 THE OWNER 325 
 
 cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us 
 likewise: so far goes the liberty of discussion, of 
 science, of criticism. 
 
 But consecrated goods are inviolable. Consecrated 
 and guaranteed by whom? Proximately by the 
 State, society, but properly by man or the "concept," 
 the " concept of the thing " : for the concept of con- 
 secrated goods is this, that they are truly human, or 
 rather that the holder possesses them as man and not 
 as un-man.* 
 
 On the spiritual side man's faith is such goods, his 
 honor, his moral feeling, yes, his feeling of decency, 
 modesty, etc. Actions (speeches, writings) that 
 touch honor are punishable ; attacks on " the founda- 
 tion of all religion"; attacks on political faith; in 
 short, attacks on everything that a man " rightly " 
 has. 
 
 How far critical liberalism would extend the sanc- 
 tity of goods, on this point it has not yet made any 
 pronouncement, and doubtless fancies itself to be 
 ill-disposed toward all sanctity; but, as it combats 
 egoism, it must set limits to it, and must not let the 
 un-man pounce on the human. To its theoretical 
 contempt for the " masses " there must correspond a 
 practical snub if it should get into power. 
 
 What extension the concept " man " receives, and 
 what comes to the individual man through it, what, 
 therefore, man and the human are, on this point the 
 various grades of liberalism differ, and the political, 
 the social, the humane man are each always claiming 
 
 * [See note on p. 184.]
 
 326 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 more than the other for " man." He who has best 
 grasped this concept knows best what is " man's." 
 The State still grasps this concept in political re- 
 striction, society in social; mankind, so it is said, is 
 the first to comprehend it entirely, or " the history of 
 mankind develops it." But, if " man is discovered," 
 then we know also what pertains to man as his own, 
 man's property, the human. 
 
 But let the individual man lay claim to ever so 
 many rights because Man or the concept man " en- 
 titles " him to them, i. e. because his being man does 
 it: what do / care for his right and his claim? If 
 he has his right only from Man and does not have it 
 from me, then for me he has no right. His life, e. g., 
 counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I re- 
 spect neither a so-called right of property (or his 
 claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the 
 " sanctuary of his inner nature" (or his right to have 
 the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain 
 unaggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the 
 spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as propri- 
 etor, in the measure of my might. 
 
 In the property question lies a broader meaning 
 than the limited statement of the question allows to 
 be brought out. Referred solely to what men call our 
 possessions, it is capable of no solution ; the decision 
 is to be found only in him " from whom we have 
 everything." Property depends on the owner. 
 
 The Revolution directed its weapons against every- 
 thing which came " from the grace of God," e . g. t 
 against divine right, in whose place the human was 
 confirmed. To that which is granted by the grace of
 
 THE OWNER 327 
 
 God, there is opposed that which is derived " from the 
 essence of man." 
 
 Now, as men's relation to each other, in opposition 
 to the religious dogma which commands a " Love one 
 another for God's sake," had to receive its human 
 position by a " Love each other for man's sake," so 
 the revolutionary teaching could not do otherwise 
 than, first as to what concerns the relation of men 
 to the things of this world, settle it that the world, 
 which hitherto was arranged according to God's ordi- 
 nance, henceforth belongs to " Man." 
 
 The world belongs to " Man," and is to be re- 
 spected by me as his property. 
 
 Property is what is mine! 
 
 Property in the civic sense means sacred property, 
 such that I must respect your property. " Respect 
 for property ! " Hence the politicians would like to 
 have every one possess his little bit of property, and 
 they have in part brought about an incredible par- 
 cellation by this effort. Each must have his bone on 
 which he may find something to bite. 
 
 The position of affairs is different in the egoistic 
 sense. I do not step shyly back from your property, 
 but look upon it always as my property, in which I 
 need to " respect " nothing. Pray do the like with 
 what you call my property! 
 
 With this view we shall most easily come to an un- 
 derstanding with each other. 
 
 The political liberals are anxious that, if possible, 
 all servitudes be dissolved, and every one be free lord 
 on his ground, even if this ground has only so much 
 area as can have its requirements adequately filled by
 
 328 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the manure of one person. (The farmer in the story 
 married even in his old age " that he might profit by 
 his wife's dung.") Be it ever so little, if one only 
 has somewhat of his own, to wit, a respected prop- 
 erty! The more such owners, such cotters,* the more 
 " free people and good patriots " has the State. 
 
 Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts 
 on respect, humaneness, the virtues of love. There- 
 fore does it live in incessant vexation. For in practice 
 people respect nothing, and every day the small 
 possessions are bought up again by greater propri- 
 etors, and the " free people " change into day-laborers. 
 
 If, on the contrary, the " small proprietors " had 
 reflected that the great property was also theirs, they 
 would not have respectfully shut themselves out from 
 it, and would not have been shut out. 
 
 Property as the civic liberals understand it de- 
 serves the attacks of the Communists and Proudhon : 
 it is untenable, because the civic proprietor is in truth 
 nothing but a propertyless man, one who is every- 
 where shut out. Instead of owning the world, as he 
 might, he does not own even the paltry point on 
 which he turns around. 
 
 Proudhon wants not the proprietaire but the pos- 
 sesseur or usufruitier.^ What does that mean? He 
 wants no one to own the land; but the benefit of it 
 even though one were allowed only the hundredth part 
 of this benefit, this fruit is at any rate one's prop- 
 erty, which he can dispose of at will. He who has 
 
 * [The words ''cot " and " dung^are alike in German.] 
 t E. g., " Qu'est-ce que la Proprlete ? p. 83.
 
 THE OWNER 329 
 
 only the benefit of a field is assuredly not the proprie- 
 tor of it; still less he who, as Proudhon would have it, 
 must give up so much of this benefit as is not required 
 for his wants; but he is the proprietor of the share 
 that is left him. Proudhon, therefore, denies only 
 such and such property, not property itself. If we 
 want no longer to leave the land to the landed propri- 
 etors, but to appropriate it to ourselves, we unite our- 
 selves to this end, form a union, a societe, that makes 
 itself proprietor; if we have good luck in this, then 
 those persons cease to be landed proprietors. And, as 
 from the land, so we can drive them out of many 
 another property yet, in order to make it our property, 
 the property of the conquerors. The conquerors 
 form a society which one may imagine so great that it 
 by degrees embraces all humanity; but so-called hu- 
 manity too is as such only a thought (spook) ; the indi- 
 viduals are its -reality. And these individuals as a col- 
 lective mass will treat land and earth not less arbitra- 
 rily than an isolated individual or so-called propri- 
 etairc. Even so, therefore, property remains stand- 
 ing, and that as " exclusive " too, in that humanity, 
 this great society, excludes the individual from its 
 property (perhaps only leases to him, gives him as a 
 fief, a piece of it) as it besides excludes everything that 
 is not humanity, e. g. does not allow animals to have 
 property. So too it will remain, and will grow to be. 
 That in which all want to have a share will be with- 
 drawn from that individual who wants to have it for 
 himself alone: it is made a common estate. As a 
 common estate every one has his share in it, and this 
 share is his property. Why, so in our old relations a
 
 330 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 house which belongs to five heirs is their common es- 
 tate; but the fifth part of the revenue .is each one's 
 property. Proudhon might spare his prolix pathos if 
 he said: "There are some things that belong only to 
 a few, and to which we others will from now on lay 
 claim or siege. Let us take them, because one 
 comes to property by taking, and the property of 
 which for the present we are still deprived came to the 
 proprietors likewise only by taking. It can be uti- 
 lized better if it is in the hands of us all than .if the 
 few control it. Let us therefore associate ourselves 
 for the purpose of this robbery (voT)" Instead of 
 this, he tries to get us to believe that society is the 
 original possessor and the sole proprietor, of impre- 
 scriptible right; against it the so-called proprietors 
 have become thieves (La propriete c'est le vol) ; if it 
 now deprives of his property the present proprietor, it 
 robs him of nothing, as it is only availing itself of its 
 imprescriptible right. So far one comes with the 
 spook of society as a moral person. On the contrary, 
 what man can obtain belongs to him : the world be- 
 longs to me. Do you say anything else by your oppo- 
 site proposition, " The world belongs to all " ? All 
 are I and again I, etc. But you make out of the 
 " all" a spook, and make it sacred, so that then the 
 " all " become the individual's fearful master. Then 
 the ghost of " right " places itself on their side. 
 
 Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against 
 egoism. Therefore they are continuations and consis- 
 tent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the prin- 
 ciple of love, of sacrifice for something general, some- 
 thing alien. They complete in property, e. g., only
 
 THE OWNER 331 
 
 what has long been extant as a matter of fact, viz., 
 the property lessness of the individual. When the law 
 says, Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos 
 proprietas ; omnia rex imperio possidet, singuli do- 
 minio, this means: The king is proprietor, for he alone 
 can control and dispose of "everything," he has potes- 
 tas and imperium over it. The Communists make this 
 clearer, transferring that imperium to the " society of 
 all." Therefore: Because enemies of egoism, they are 
 on that account Christians, or, more generally speak- 
 ing, religious men, believers in ghosts, dependents, ser- 
 vants of some generality (God, society, etc.). In this 
 too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he ascribes to 
 God that which he denies to men. He names him 
 (e.g., page 90) the Proprietaire of the earth. Here- 
 with he proves that he cannot think away the pro- 
 prietor as such ; he comes to a proprietor at last, but 
 removes him to the other world. 
 
 Neither God nor Man (" human society ") is pro- 
 prietor, but the individual. 
 
 Proudhon (Weitling too) thinks he is telling the 
 worst about property when he calls it theft (vol^). 
 Passing quite over the embarrassing question, what 
 well-founded objection could be made against theft, 
 we only ask: Is the concept "theft" at all possible 
 unless one allows validity to the concept " property"? 
 How can one steal if property is not already extant? 
 What belongs to no one cannot be stolen ; the water 
 that one draws out of the sea he does not steal. Ac- 
 cordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes 
 possible only through property. Weitling has to
 
 332 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 come to this too, as he does regard everything as the 
 property of all: if something is "the property of all," 
 then indeed the individual who appropriates it to 
 himself steals. 
 
 Private property lives by grace of the law. Only 
 in the law has it its warrant for possession is not yet 
 
 Eroperty, it becomes " mine " only by assent of the 
 iw ; it is not a fact, not unfait as Proudhon 
 thinks, but a fiction, a thought. This is legal prop- 
 erty, legitimate property, guaranteed property. It is 
 mine not through me but through the law. 
 
 Nevertheless, property is the expression for unlimited 
 dominion over somewhat (thing, beast, man) which " I 
 can judge and dispose of as seems good to me." Ac- 
 cording to Roman law, indeed,^* utcndi el aim tend) 
 re sua, quatenus juris ratio patitur, an exclusive and 
 unlimited right ; but property is conditioned by 
 might. What I have in my power, that is my own. 
 So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the propri- 
 etor of the thing; if it gets away from me again, no 
 matter by what power, e. g. through my recognition 
 of a title of others to the thing, then the property 
 is extinct. Thus property and possession coincide. 
 It is not a right lying outside my might that legiti- 
 mizes me, but solely my might: if I no longer have 
 this, the thing vanishes away from me. When the 
 Romans no longer had any might against the Ger- 
 mans, the world-empire of Rome belonged to the 
 latter, and it would sound ridiculous to insist that 
 the Romans had nevertheless remained properly the 
 proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to de- 
 fend the thing, to him it belongs till it is again taken
 
 THE OWNER 333 
 
 from him, as liberty belongs to him who takes it. 
 
 Only might decides about property, and, as the 
 State (no matter whether State of well-to-do citizens or 
 of ragamuffins or of men in the absolute) is the sole 
 mighty one, it alone is proprietor; I, the unique,* 
 have nothing, and am only enfeoffed, am vassal and, 
 as such, servitor. Under the dominion of the State 
 there is no property of mine. 
 
 I want to raise the value of myself, the value of 
 ownness, and should I cheapen property? No, as I 
 was not respected hitherto because people, mankind, 
 and a thousand other generalities were put higher, so 
 property too has to this day not yet been recognized 
 in its full value. Property too was only the property 
 of a ghost, e. g. the people's property; my whole ex- 
 istence " belonged to the fatherland ": / belonged to 
 the fatherland, the people, the State, and therefore 
 also everything that I called my own. It is demanded 
 of States that they make away with pauperism. It 
 seems to me this is asking that the State should cut 
 off its own head and lay it at its feet; for so long as 
 the State is the ego the individual ego must remain a 
 poor devil, a non-ego. The State has an interest 
 only in being itself rich ; whether Michael is rich and 
 Peter poor is alike to it; Peter might also be rich and 
 Michael poor. It looks on indifferently as one grows 
 poor and the other rich, unruffled by this alternation. 
 As individuals they are really equal before its face; 
 in this it is just : before it both of them are nothing, 
 as we " are altogether sinners before God " ; on the 
 
 * [Einzige]
 
 334 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 other hand, it has a very great interest in this, that 
 those individuals who make it their ego should have 
 a part in its wealth; it makes them partakers in its 
 property. Through property, with which it rewards 
 the individuals, it tames them ; but this remains its 
 property, and every one has the usufruct of it only so 
 long as he bears in himself the ego of the State, or is 
 a " loyal member of society " ; in the opposite case the 
 property is confiscated, or made to melt away by 
 vexatious lawsuits. The property, then, is and re- 
 mains State property, not property of the ego. That 
 the State does not arbitrarily deprive the individual o: 
 what he has from the State means simply that the 
 State does not rob itself. He who is a State-ego, i. e. 
 a good citizen or subject, holds his fief undisturbed as 
 such an ego, not as being an ego of his own. Accord 
 ing to the code, property is what I call mine " by vir- 
 tue of God and law." But it is mine by virtue of 
 God and law only so long as the State has nothing 
 against it. 
 
 In expropriations, disarmaments, and the like (as, 
 e. g., the exchequer confiscates inheritances if the heir* 
 do not put in an appearance early enough) how 
 plainly the else- veiled principle that only the people, 
 " the State," is proprietor, while the individual is 
 feoffee, strikes the eye! 
 
 The State, I mean to say, cannot intend that any- 
 body should for his own sake have property or act- 
 ually be rich, nay, even well-to-do; it can acknowledg 
 nothing, yield nothing, grant nothing to me as me. 
 The State cannot check pauperism, because the poverty 
 of possession is a poverty of me. He who is nothing
 
 THE OWNER 335 
 
 but what chance or another o> wit, the State makes 
 out of him also has quite rightly nothing but what 
 another gives him. And this other will give him only 
 what he deserves, i. e. what he is worth by service. It 
 is not he that realizes a value from himself; the State 
 realizes a value from him. 
 
 National economy busies itself much with this sub- 
 ject. It lies far out beyond the u national," however, 
 and goes beyond the concepts and horizon of the State, 
 which knows only State property and can distribute 
 nothing else. For this reason it binds the possession 
 of property to conditions, as it binds everything to 
 them, e. g. marriage, allowing validity only to the 
 marriage sanctioned by it, and wresting this out of my 
 power. But property is my property only when I 
 hold it unconditionally : only I, as unconditioned ego, 
 have property, enter a relation of love, carry on free 
 trade. 
 
 The State has no anxiety about me and mine, but 
 about itself and its: I count for something to it only 
 .as its child, as " a son of the country "; as ego I am 
 nothing at all for it. For the State's understanding, 
 what befalls me as ego is something accidental, my 
 wealth as well as my impoverishment. But, if I with 
 all that is mine am an accident in the State's eyes, 
 this proves that it cannot comprehend me : I go be- 
 yond its concepts, or, its understanding is too limited 
 to comprehend me. Therefore it cannot do anything 
 for me either. 
 
 Pauperism is the valuelessness of me, the phenome- 
 non that I cannot realize value from myself. For this 
 mason State and pauperism are one and the same.
 
 336 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 The State does not let me come to my value, and con- 
 tinues in existence only through my valuelessness : it 
 is forever intent on getting benefit from me, i. e. ex- 
 ploiting me, turning me to account, using me up, 
 even if the use it gets from me consists only in my 
 supplying a proles (proletariat) ; it wants me to be 
 " its creature." 
 
 Pauperism can be removed only when I as ego real- 
 ize value from myself, when I give my own self value, 
 and make my price myself. I must rise in revolt to 
 rise in the world. 
 
 What I produce, flour, linen, or iron and coal, 
 which I toilsomely win from the earth, etc., is my 
 work that I want to realize value from. But then I 
 may long complain that I am not paid for my work 
 according to its value : the payer will not listen to me, 
 and the State likewise will maintain an apathetic atti- 
 tude so long as it does not think it must " appease " 
 me that / may not break out with my dreaded might. 
 But this " appeasing " will be all, and, if it comes 
 into my head to ask for more, the State turns against 
 me with all the force of its lion-paws and eagle-claws: 
 for it is the king of beasts, it is lion and eagle. If 
 I refuse to be content with the price that it fixes for 
 my ware and labor, if I rather aspire to determine 
 the price of my ware myself, i. e. " to pay myself," 
 in the first place I come into a conflict with the 
 buyers of the ware. If this were stilled by a mutual 
 understanding, the State would not readily make ob- 
 jections; for how individuals get along with each other 
 troubles it little, so long as therein they do not get in 
 its way. Its damage and its danger begin only 

 
 THE OWNER 337 
 
 when they do not agree, but, in the absence of 
 a settlement, take each other by the hair. The State 
 cannot endure that man stand in a direct relation to 
 man; it must step between as mediator, must inter- 
 vene. ' What Christ was, what the saints, the Church 
 were, the State has become, to wit, " mediator." It 
 tears man from man to put itself between them as 
 " spirit." The laborers who ask for higher pay are 
 treated as criminals as soon as they want to compel it. 
 What are they to do? Without compulsion they 
 don't get it, and in compulsion the State sees a self- 
 help, a determination of price by the ego, a genuine, 
 free realization of value from his property, which it 
 cannot admit of. What then are the laborers to 
 do? Look to themselves and ask nothing about the 
 State? 
 
 But, as is the situation with regard to my material 
 work, so it is with my intellectual too. The State 
 allows me to realize value from all my thoughts and 
 to find customers for them (I do realize value from 
 them, e. g., in the very fact that they bring me honor 
 from the listeners, and the like) ; but only so long as 
 my thoughts are its thoughts. If, on the other 
 hand, I harbor thoughts that it cannot approve (i. e. 
 make its own), then it does not allow me at all to 
 realize value from them, to bring them into exchange, 
 into commerce. My thoughts are free only if they are 
 granted to me by the State's grace, i. e. if they are 
 the State's thoughts. It lets me philosophize freely 
 only so far as I approve myself a " philosopher of 
 State"; again.tt the State I must not philosophize, 
 gladly as it tolerates my helping it out of its " defi-
 
 338 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ciencies," " furthering " it. Therefore, as I may be- 
 have only as an ego most graciously permitted by the 
 State, provided with its testimonial of legitimacy and 
 police pass, so too it is not granted me to realize value 
 from what is mine, unless this proves to be its, which I 
 hold as fief from it. My ways must be its ways, else il 
 distrains me; my thoughts its thoughts, else it stops 
 my mouth. 
 
 The State has nothing to be more afraid of than the 
 value of me, and nothing must it more carefully guard 
 against than every occasion that offers itself to me 
 for realizing- value from myself. / am the deadly 
 enemy of the State, which always hovers between the 
 alternatives, it or I. Therefore it strictly insists not 
 only on not letting me have a standing, but also on 
 keeping down what is mine. In the State there is no 
 property, i. e. rto property of the individual, but 
 only State property. Only through the State have I 
 what I have, as I am only through it what I am. My 
 private property is only that which the State leaves to 
 me of its, cutting- off others from it (depriving them, 
 making it private) ; it is State property. 
 
 But, in opposition to the State, I feel more and more 
 clearly that there is still left me a great might, the 
 might over myself, i. e. over everything that pertains 
 only to me and that exists only in being my own. 
 
 What do I do if my ways are no longer its ways, 
 my thoughts no longer its thoughts? I look to my- 
 self, and ask nothing about it! In my thoughts, 
 which I get sanctioned by no assent, grant, or grace, I 
 have my real property, a property with which I can 
 trade. For as mine they are my creatures, and I am
 
 THE OWNER 339 
 
 in a position to give them away in return for other 
 thoughts: I give them up and take in exchange for 
 them others, which then are my new purchased 
 property. 
 
 What then is my property? Nothing but what is 
 in my power! To what property am I entitled? To 
 every property to which I empower myself.* I give 
 myself the right of property in taking property to my- 
 self, or giving myself the proprietor's power, full 
 power, empowerment. 
 
 Everything over which I have might that cannot be 
 torn from me remains my property; well, then let 
 might decide about property, and I will expect every- 
 thing from my might! Alien might, might that I 
 leave to another, makes me an owned slave: then let 
 my own might make me an owner. Let me then with- 
 draw the might that I have conceded to others out of 
 ignorance regarding the strength of my own might! 
 Let me say to myself, what my might reaches to is my 
 property; and let me claim as property everything 
 that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me 
 extend my actual property as far as / entitle, i. e. em- 
 power, myself to take. 
 
 Here egoism, selfishness, must decide; not the prin- 
 ciple of love, not love-motives like mercy, gentleness, 
 good-nature, or even justice and equity (forjustitia 
 too is a phenomenon of love, a product of love) : love 
 knows only sacrifices and demands "self-sacrifice." 
 
 Egoism does not think of sacrificing anything, giv- 
 ing away anything that it wants; it simply decides, 
 
 * [A German idiom for " take upon myself," " assume."]
 
 340 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 What I want I must have and will procure. 
 
 All attempts to enact rational laws about property 
 have put out from the bay of love into a desolate sea of 
 regulations. Even Socialism and Communism cannot 
 be excepted from this. Every one is to be provided 
 with adequate means, for which it is little to the point 
 whether one socialistically finds them still in a per- 
 sonal property, or communistically draws them from 
 the community of goods. The individual's mind in 
 this remains the same j it remains a mind of depend- 
 ence. The distributing board of equity lets me have 
 only what the sense of equity, its loving care for all, 
 prescribes. For me, the individual, there lies no less 
 of a check in collective wealth than in that of individ- 
 ual others ; neither that is mine, nor this: whether the 
 wealth belongs to the collectivity, which confers part 
 of it on me, or to individual possessors, is for me the 
 same constraint, as I cannot decide about either of the 
 two. On the contrary, Communism, by the abolition 
 of all personal property, only presses me back still 
 more into dependence on another, viz., on the gen- 
 erality or collectivity; and, loudly as it always attacks 
 the "State," what it intends is itself again a State, a 
 status, a condition hindering my free movement, a 
 sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts 
 against the pressure that I experience from individual 
 proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that 
 it puts in the hands of the collectivity. 
 
 Egoism takes another way to root out the non-pos- 
 sessing rabble. It does not say: Wait for what the 
 board of equity will bestow on you in the name of 
 the collectivity (for such bestowal took place in
 
 THE OWNER 341 
 
 " States " from the most ancient times, each receiving 
 " according to his desert," and therefore according to 
 the measure in which each was able to deserve it, to 
 acquire it by service), but: Take hold, and take what 
 you require ! With this the war of all against all is 
 declared. / alone decide what I will have. 
 
 " Now, that is truly no new wisdom, for self-seekers 
 have acted so at all times! " Not at all necessary 
 either that the thing be new, if only consciousness of 
 it is present. But this latter will not be able to claim 
 great age, unless perhaps one counts in the Egyptian 
 and Spartan law; for how little current it is appears 
 even from the stricture above, which speaks with con- 
 tempt of " self-seekers." One is to know just this, 
 that the procedure of taking hold is not contemptible, 
 but manifests the pure deed of the egoist at one with 
 himself. 
 
 Only when I expect neither from individuals nor 
 from a collectivity what I can give to myself, only 
 then do I slip out of the snares of love; the rabble 
 ceases to be rabble only when it takes hold. Only 
 the dread of taking hold, and the corresponding pun- 
 ishment thereof, makes it a rabble. Only that taking 
 hold is ffin, crime, only this dogma creates a rabble. 
 For the fact that the rabble remains what it is, 
 it (because it allows validity to that dogma) is to 
 blame as well as, more especially, those who " self- 
 seekingly " (to give them back their favorite word) 
 demand that the dogma be respected. In short, the 
 lack of consciousness of that "new wisdom," the old 
 consciousness of sin, alone bears the blame. 
 
 If men reach the point of losing respect for prop-
 
 342 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 erty, every one will have property, as all slaves be- 
 come free men as soon as they no longer respect the 
 master as master. Unions will then, in this matter 
 too, multiply the individual's means and secure his 
 assailed property. 
 
 According to the Communists' opinion the commui 
 should be proprietor. On the contrary, / am propri 
 tor, and I only come to an understanding with others 
 about my property. If the commune does not do 
 what suits me, I rise against it and defend my prop- 
 erty. I am proprietor, but property is not sacred. 
 I should be merely possessor? No, hitherto one was 
 only possessor, secured in the possession of a parcel b 
 leaving others also in possession of a parcel ; but now 
 everything belongs to me, I am proprietor of every- 
 thing that I require and can get possession of. If it 
 said socialistically, society gives me what I require, 
 then the egoist says, I take what I require. If the 
 Communists conduct themselves as ragamuffins, the 
 egoist behaves as proprietor. 
 
 All swan-fraternities,* and attempts at making the 
 rabble happy, that spring from the principle of love, 
 must miscarry. Only from egoism can the rabble ge 
 help, and this help it must give to itself and will 
 give to itself. If it does not let itself be coerced into 
 fear, it is a power. " People would lose all respect ii 
 one did not coerce them so into fear," says bugbear 
 Law in " Der gestiefelte Kater" 
 
 Property, therefore, should not and cannot be 
 abolished; it must rather be torn from ghostly hands 
 
 * [Apparently some benevolent scheme of the clay ; compare note on 
 p. 348.]
 
 THE OWNER 343 
 
 and become my property; then the erroneous con- 
 sciousness, that I cannot entitle myself to as much as I 
 require, will vanish. 
 
 " But what cannot man require! " Well, whoever 
 requires much, and understands how to get it, has at 
 all times helped himself to it, as Napoleon did with the 
 Continent and France with Algiers. Hence the exact 
 point is that the respectful " rabble " should learn at 
 last to help itself to what it requires. If it reaches 
 out too far for you, why, then defend yourselves. 
 You have no need at all to good-heartedly bestow 
 anything on it; and, when it learns to know itself, it 
 or rather: whoever of the rabble learns to know him- 
 self, he casts off the rabble-quality in refusing your 
 alms with thanks. But it remains ridiculous that you 
 declare the rabble " sinful and criminal " if it is not 
 pleased to live from your favors because it can do 
 something in its own favor. Your bestowals cheat 
 it and put it off. Defend your property, then you 
 will be strong; if, on the other hand, you want to re- 
 tain your ability to bestow, and perhaps actually have 
 the more political rights the more alms (poor-rates) 
 you can give, this .will work just as long as the recipi- 
 ents let you work it.* 
 
 In short, the property question cannot be solved so 
 amicably as the Socialists, yes, even the Communists, 
 dream. It is solved only by the war of all against all. 
 The poor become free and proprietors only when they 
 
 * In a registration bill for Ireland the government made the proposal to 
 let those be electors who pay 5 sterling of poor-rates. He who gives alms, 
 therefore, acquires oolitical rights, or elsewhere becomes a swan-knight. 
 [See p. 943.]
 
 344 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 rise. Bestow ever so much on them, they will still 
 always want more; for they want nothing less than 
 that at last nothing more be bestowed. 
 
 It will be asked, But how then will it be when the 
 have-nots- take heart? Of what sort is the settlement 
 to be? One might as well ask that I cast a child's 
 nativity. What a slave will do as soon as he has 
 broken his fetters, one must await. 
 
 In Kaiser's pamphlet, worthless for lack of form as 
 well as substance (" Die Persoenlichkeit des Eigen- 
 tuemers in Bezug auf den Socialismus und Commun- 
 ismus" etc.), he hopes from the State that it will 
 bring about a leveling of property. Always the State ! 
 Herr Papa! As the Church was proclaimed and 
 looked upon as the " mother " of believers, so the 
 State has altogether the face of the provident father. 
 
 Competition shows itself most strictly connected with 
 the principle of civism. Is it anything else than equal- 
 ity (egalite) ? And is not equality a product of that 
 same Revolution which was brought on by the com- 
 monalty, the middle classes? As no one is barred 
 from competing with all in the State (except the 
 prince, because he represents the State itself) and 
 working himself up to their height, yes, overthrowing 
 or exploiting them for his own advantage, soaring 
 above them and by stronger exertion depriving them 
 of their favorable circumstances, this serves as a clear 
 proof that before the State's judgment-seat every one 
 has only the value of a " simple individual " and may 
 not count on any favoritism. Outrun and outbid 
 each other as much as you like and can; that shall
 
 THE OWNER 346 
 
 not trouble me, the State ! Among yourselves you 
 are free in competing, you are competitors; that is 
 your social position. But before me, the State, you 
 are nothing but " simple individuals "! * 
 
 What in the form of principle or theory was pro- 
 pounded as the equality of all has found here in com- 
 petition its realization and practical carrying out; for 
 eg-alitt' is free competition. All are, before the 
 State, simple individuals; in society, or in relation 
 to each other, competitors. 
 
 I need be nothing further than a simple individual 
 to be able to compete with all others aside from the 
 prince and his family: a freedom which formerly was 
 made impossible by the fact that only by means of 
 one's corporation, and within it, did one enjoy any 
 freedom of effort. 
 
 In the guild and feudality the State is in an intol- 
 erant and fastidious attitude, granting privileges ; in 
 competition and liberalism it is in a tolerant and in- 
 dulgent attitude, granting only patents (letters assur- 
 ing the applicant that the business stands open [pa- 
 tent] to him) or " concessions." Now, as the State 
 has thus left everything to the applicants, it must 
 come in conflict with all, because each and all are 
 entitled to make application. It will be "stormed," 
 and will go down in this storm. 
 
 Is " free competition " then really " free "? nay, is it 
 
 * Minister Stein used this expression about Count von Reisach, when he 
 cold-bloodedly left the latter at the mercy of the Bavarian government be- 
 cause to him. as he said, " RVOVernment like Bavaria must be worth more 
 than a simple individual." Keisach had written against Montgelas at 
 Stein's bidding, and Stein later agreed to the giving up of Reisach, which 
 wwdemanded by Montg.-ia* on account of this very book. See Hinrichs, 
 " 1'olitiackf \',>rli'xnitgen," 1,280,
 
 346 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 really a " competition," to wit, one of persons, as it 
 gives itself out to be because on this title it bases its 
 right? It originated, you know, in persons becom- 
 ing free of all personal rule. Is a competition " free " 
 which the State, this ruler in the civic principle, hems 
 in by a thousand barriers? There is a rich manufac- 
 turer doing a brilliant business, and I should like to 
 compete with him. " Go ahead," says the State, " I 
 have no objection to make to your person as competi- 
 tor." Yes, I reply, but for that I need a space for 
 buildings, I need money! "That's bad; but, if you 
 have no money, you cannot compete. You must not 
 take anything from anybody, for I protect property 
 and grant it privileges." Free competition is not 
 " free," because I lack the THINGS for competition. 
 Against my person no objection can be made, but be- 
 cause I have not the things my person too must step 
 to the rear. And who has the necessary things? 
 Perhaps that manufacturer? Why, from him I could 
 take them away! No, the State has them as prop- 
 erty, the manufacturer only as fief, as possession. 
 
 But, since it is no use trying it with the manufac- 
 turer, I will compete with that professor of jurispru- 
 dence; the man is a booby, and I, who know a hun- 
 dred times more than he, shall make his class-room 
 empty. " Have you studied and graduated, friend?" 
 No, but what of that? I understand abundantly 
 what is necessary for instruction in that department. 
 " Sorry, but competition is not ' free ' here. Against 
 your person there is nothing to be said, but the thing, 
 the doctor's diploma, is lacking. And this diploma 
 I, the State, demand. Ask me for it respectfully
 
 THE OWNER 347 
 
 first; then we will see what is to be done." 
 
 This, therefore, is the " freedom " of competition. 
 The State, my lord, first qualifies me to compete. 
 
 But do persons really compete? No, again things 
 only! Moneys in the first place, etc. 
 
 In the rivalry one will always be left behind another 
 (e. g. a poetaster behind a poet). But it makes a 
 difference whether the means that the unlucky com- 
 petitor lacks are personal or material, and likewise 
 whether the material means can be won by personal 
 cncrg'i/ or are to be obtained only by grace, only as a 
 present; as when, c. g., the poorer man must leave, 
 i. c. present, to the rich man his riches. But, if I must 
 all along wait for the State's approval to obtain or to 
 use (c. g. in the case of graduation) the means, I have 
 the means by the grace of the State.* 
 
 Free competition, therefore, has only the following 
 meaning: To the State all rank as its equal chil- 
 dren, and every one can scud and run to earn the 
 Staters goods and largess. Therefore all do chase 
 after havings, holdings, possessions (be it of money or 
 offices, titles of honor, etc.), after the things. 
 
 In the mind of the commonalty every one is pos- 
 sessor or " owner." Now, whence comes it that the 
 most have in fact next to nothing? From this, 
 that the most are already joyful over being posses- 
 sors at all, even though it be of some rags, as children 
 
 * In colleges and universities, etc., poor men compete with rich. But 
 they are able to do so in most cases only through scholarships, which a 
 significant point almost all come down to us from a time when free com- 
 petition was still far from being a controlling principle. The principle of 
 competition founds no scholarship, but: says. Help yourself, /. <>. provide 
 yourself the means. What the State gives for such purposes it pays out 
 from interested motives, to educate " servants " for itself.
 
 348 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 are joyful in their first trousers or even the first penny 
 that is presented to them. More precisely, however, 
 the matter is to be taken as follows. Liberalism came 
 forward at once with the declaration that it belonged 
 to man's essence not to be property, but proprietor, 
 As the consideration here was about " man," not 
 about the individual, the how-much (which formed ex- 
 actly the point of the individual's special interest) was 
 left to him. Hence the individual's egoism retained 
 room for the freest play in this how-much, and carried 
 on an indefatigable competition. 
 
 However, the lucky egoism had to become a snag 
 in the way of the less fortunate, and the latter, still 
 keeping its feet planted on the principle of humanity 
 put forward the question as to the how-much of pos- 
 session, and answered it to the effect that " man musi 
 have as much as he requires." 
 
 Will it be possible for my egoism to let itself be 
 satisfied with that? What " man " requires furnishe 
 by no means a scale for measuring me and my needs 
 for I may have use for less or more. I must rather 
 have so much as I am competent to appropriate. 
 
 Competition suffers from the unfavorable circum- 
 stance that the means for competing are not at every 
 one's command, because they are not taken from per- 
 sonality, but from accident. Most are without meant 
 and for this reason without goods. 
 
 Hence the Socialists demand the means for all, and 
 aim at a society that shall offer means. Your mone}/ 
 value, say they, we no longer recognize as your " com 
 petence " ; you must show another competence, to 
 wit, your working force. In the possession of a prop
 
 THE OWNER 349 
 
 erty, or as " possessor," man does certainly show him- 
 self as man ; it was for this reason that we let the 
 possessor, whom we called " proprietor," keep his 
 standing so long. Yet you possess the things only 
 so long as you are not " put out of this property." 
 
 The possessor is competent, but only so far as the 
 others are incompetent. Since your ware forms your 
 competence only so long as you are competent to de- 
 fend it (i. e., as we are not competent to do anything 
 with it), look about you for another competence; 
 for we now, by our might, surpass your alleged 
 competence. 
 
 It was an extraordinarily large gain made, when 
 the point of being regarded as possessors was put 
 through. Therein bondservice was abolished, and 
 every one who till then had been bound to the lord's 
 service, and more or less had been his property, now 
 became a " lord." But henceforth your having, and 
 what you have, are no longer adequate and no longer 
 recognized; per contra, your working and your work 
 rise in value. We now respect your subduing 
 things, as we formerly did your possessing them. 
 Your work is your competence! You are lord or 
 possessor only of what comes by work, not by inher- 
 itance. But as at the time everything has come by 
 inheritance, and every copper that you possess bears 
 not a labor-stamp but an inheritance-stamp, every- 
 thing must be melted over. 
 
 But is my work then really, as the Communists 
 suppose, my sole competence? or does not this con- 
 sist rather in everything that I am competent for? 
 And does not the workers' society itself have to con-
 
 330 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 cede this, e. g. in supporting also the sick, children, 
 old men, in short, those who are incapable of work? 
 These are still competent for a good deal, e. g. to 
 preserve their life instead of taking it. If they are 
 competent to cause you to desire their continued exist- 
 ence, they have a power over you. To him who exer- 
 cised utterly no power over you, you would vouchsafe 
 nothing; he might perish. 
 
 Therefore, what you are competent for is your com- 
 petence ! If you are competent to furnish pleasure to 
 thousands, then thousands will pay you an honora- 
 rium for it; for it would stand in your power to for- 
 bear doing it, hence they must purchase your deed. 
 If you are not competent to captivate any one, you 
 may simply starve. 
 
 Now am I, who am competent for much, perchance 
 to have no advantage over the less competent? 
 
 We are all in the midst of abundance; now shall I 
 not help myself as well as I can, but only wait and sa 
 how much is left me in an equal division? 
 
 Against competition there rises up the principle of 
 ragamuffin society, partition. 
 
 To be looked upon as a mere part, part of society, 
 the individual cannot bear because he is more ; his 
 uniqueness puts from it this limited conception. 
 
 Hence he does not await his competence from the 
 sharing of others, and even in the workers' society 
 there arises the misgiving that in an equal partition 
 the strong will be exploited by the weak ; he awaits 
 his competence rather from himself, and says now, 
 What I am competent to have, that is my competence 
 What competence does not the child possess in its
 
 THE OWNER 351 
 
 smiling, its playing, its screaming! in short, in its 
 mere existence ! Are you capable of resisting its 
 desire? or do you not hold out to it, as mother, your 
 breast; as father, as much of your possessions as it 
 needs? It compels you, therefore it possesses what 
 you call yours. 
 
 If your person is of consequence to me, you pay me 
 with your very existence; if I am concerned only with 
 one of your qualities, then your compliance, perhaps, 
 or your aid, has a value (a money value) for me, and 
 I purchase it. 
 
 If you do not know how to give yourself any other 
 than a money value in my estimation, there may arise 
 the case of which history tells us, that Germans, sons 
 of the fatherland, were sold to America. Should 
 those who let themselves be traded in be worth more 
 to the seller? He preferred the cash to this living 
 ware that did not understand how to make itself pre- 
 cious to him. That he discovered nothing more val- 
 uable in it was assuredly a defect of hi's competence; 
 but it takes a rogue to give more than he has. How 
 should he show respect when he did not have it, nay, 
 hardly could have it for such a pack ! 
 
 You behave egoistically when you respect each 
 other neither as possessors nor as ragamuffins or work- 
 ers, but as a part of your competence, as " useful 
 bodies.' 1 '' Then you will neither give anything to the 
 possessor (" proprietor") for his possessions, nor to 
 lii in who works, but only to him whom you require. 
 The North Americans ask themselves, Do we require a 
 king? and answer, Not a farthing are he and his work 
 worth to us.
 
 352 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 If it is said that competition throws every thing open 
 to all, the expression is not accurate, and it is better 
 put thus: competition makes everything purchasable. 
 In abandoning * it to them, competition leaves it to 
 their appraisal f or their estimation, and demands a 
 price $ for it. 
 
 But the would-be buyers mostly lack the means to 
 make themselves buyers: they have no money. For 
 money, then, the purchasable things are indeed to be 
 had (" For money everything is to be had! "), but it is 
 exactly money that is lacking. Where is one to get 
 money, this current or circulating property? Know 
 then, you have as much money as you have might; 
 for you count || for as much as you make yourself 
 count for. 
 
 One pays not with money, of which there may come 
 a lack, but with his competence, by which alone we 
 are "competent";^! for one is proprietor only so far as 
 the arm of our power reaches. 
 
 Weitling has thought out a new means of payment, 
 work. But the true means of payment remains, as 
 always, competence. With what you have " within 
 your competence " you pay. Therefore think on the 
 enlargement of your competence. 
 
 This being admitted, they are nevertheless right 
 on hand again with the motto, " To each according 
 to his competence ! " Who is to give to me according 
 to my competence? Society? Then I should have to 
 put up with its estimation. Rather, I shall take 
 
 *[preisgeben] t [Frets] * [Preis] [Geld] II [gelien] 
 
 II [Equivalent in ordinary German use to our " possessed of a competence."]
 
 THE OWNER 353 
 
 according to my competence. 
 
 " All belongs to all! " This proposition springs 
 from the same unsubstantial theory. To each belongs 
 only what he is competent for. If I say, The world 
 belongs to me, properly that too is empty talk, which 
 has a meaning only in so far as I respect no alien 
 property. But to me belongs only as much as I am 
 competent for, or have within my competence. 
 
 One is not worthy to have what one, through weak- 
 ness, lets be taken from him ; one is not worthy of it 
 because one is not capable of it. 
 
 They raise a mighty uproar over the " wrong of a 
 thousand years " which is being committed by the 
 rich against the poor. As if the rich were to blame 
 for poverty, and the poor were not in like manner 
 responsible for riches! Is there another difference 
 between the two than that of competence and incom- 
 petence, of the competent and incompetent? Wherein, 
 pray, does the crime of the rich consist? " In their 
 hardheartedness." But who then have maintained 
 the poor? who have cared for their nourishment? who 
 have given alms, those alms that have even their name 
 from mercy (eleemosyne) ? Have not the rich been 
 " merciful" at all times? are they not to this day 
 " tender-hearted," as poor-taxes, hospitals, foundations 
 of all sorts, etc., prove? 
 
 But all this does not satisfy you ! Doubtless, then, 
 they are to share with the poor? Now you are de- 
 manding that they shall abolish poverty. Aside from 
 the point that there might be hardly one among you 
 who would act so, and that this one would be a fool 
 for it, do ask yourselves: why should the rich let go
 
 354 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 their fleeces and give up themselves, thereby pursuing 
 the advantage of the poor rather than their own ? 
 You, who have your thaler daily, are rich above 
 thousands who live on four groschen. Is it for your 
 interest to share with the thousands, or is it not rather 
 for theirs? 
 
 With competition is connected less the intention to 
 do the thing best than the intention to make it as 
 profitable, as productive, as possible. Hence people 
 study to get into the civil service (pot-boiling study), 
 study cringing and flattery, routine and " acquaint- 
 ance with business," work " for appearances." Hence, 
 while it is apparently a matter of doing "good ser- 
 vice," in truth only a " good business " and earning 
 of money are looked out for. The job is done only 
 ostensibly for the job's sake, but in fact on account of 
 the gain that it yields. One would indeed prefer not 
 to be censor, but one wants to be advanced; one 
 would like to judge, administer, etc., according to his 
 best convictions, but one is afraid of transference or 
 even dismissal; one must, above all things, live. 
 
 Thus these goings-on are a fight for dear life, and, 
 in gradation upward, for more or less of a " good 
 living." 
 
 And yet, withal, their whole round of toil and care 
 brings in for most only " bitter life " and " bitter 
 poverty." All the bitter painstaking for this! 
 
 Restless acquisition does not let us take breath, 
 take a calm enjoyment : we do not get the comfort of 
 our possessions. 
 
 But the organization of labor touches only such 
 labors as others can do for us, e. g: slaughtering, till-
 
 THE OWNER 355 
 
 age, etc.; the rest remain egoistic, because, e. g., no 
 one can in your stead elaborate your musical composi- 
 tions, carry out your projects of painting, etc. ; nobody 
 can replace Raphael's labors. The latter are labors 
 of a unique person,* which only he is competent to 
 achieve, while the former deserved to be called 
 "human," since what is anybody's own in them is of 
 slight account, and almost " any man " can be 
 trained to it. 
 
 Now, as society can regard only labors for the com- 
 mon benefit, hitman labors, he who does anything 
 unique remains without its care; nay, he may find 
 himself disturbed by its intervention. The unique 
 person will work himself forth out of society all right, 
 but society brings forth no unique person. 
 
 Hence it is at any rate helpful that we come to an 
 agreement about human labors, that they may not, as 
 under competition, claim all our time and toil. So 
 far Communism will bear its fruits. For before the 
 dominion of the commonalty even that for which all 
 men are qualified, or can be qualified, was tied up to 
 a few and withheld from the rest: it was a privilege. 
 To the commonalty it looked equitable to leave free 
 all that seemed to exist for every " man." But, be- 
 cause left f free, it was yet given to no one, but rather 
 left to each to be got hold of by his human power. 
 By this the mind was turned to the acquisition of the 
 human, which henceforth beckoned to every one; and 
 there arose a movement which one hears so loudly 
 bemoaned under the name of " materialism." 
 
 * [Einzige] t [Literally, " given."]
 
 356 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Communism seeks to check its course, spreading the 
 belief that the human is not worth so much discom- 
 fort, and, with sensible arrangements, could be gained 
 without the great expense of time and powers which 
 has hitherto seemed requisite. 
 
 But for whom is time to be gained? For what 
 does man require more time than is necessary to re- 
 fresh his wearied powers of labor? Here Communism 
 is silent. 
 
 For what? To' take comfort in himself as the 
 unique, after he has done his part as man ! 
 
 In the first joy over being allowed to stretch out their 
 hands toward everything human, people forgot to 
 want anything else; and they competed away vigor- 
 ously, as if the possession of the human were the 
 goal of all our wishes. 
 
 But they have run themselves tired, and are gradu 
 ally noticing that " possession does not give happi- 
 ness." Therefore they are thinking of obtaining the 
 necessary by an easier bargain, and spending on it . 
 only so much time and toil as its indispensableness 
 exacts. Riches fall in price, and contented poverty, 
 the care-free ragamuffin, becomes the seductive ideal. 
 
 Should such human activities, that every one is co 
 fident of his capacity for, be highly salaried, and 
 sought for with toil and expenditure of all life-forces 
 Even in the every-day form of speech, "If I were 
 
 minister, or even the , then it should go quite 
 
 otherwise," that confidence expresses itself, that one 
 holds himself capable of playing the part of such a 
 dignitary; one does get a perception that to things 
 of this sort there belongs not uniqueness, but only a
 
 THE OWNER 357 
 
 culture which is attainable, even if not exactly by all, 
 at any rate by many ; i. e. that for such a thing one 
 need only be an ordinary man. 
 
 If we assume that, as order belongs to the essence of 
 the State, so subordination too is founded in its na- 
 ture, then we see that the subordinates, or those who 
 have received preferment, disproportionately over- 
 charge and overreach those who are put in the lower 
 ranks. But the latter take heart (first from the 
 Socialist standpoint, but certainly with egoistic con- 
 sciousness later, of which we will therefore at once 
 give their speech some coloring) for the question, By 
 what then is your property secure, you creatures of 
 preferment? and give themselves the answer, By our 
 refraining from interference! And so by our protec- 
 tion! And what do you give us for it? Kicks and 
 disdain you give to the " common people " ; police 
 supervision, and a catechism with the chief sentence 
 " Respect what is not yours, what belongs to others ! 
 respect others, and especially your superiors ! " But 
 we reply, " If you want our respect, buy it for a price 
 agreeable to us. We will leave you your property, if 
 you give a due equivalent for this leaving." Really, 
 what equivalent does the general in time of peace 
 give for the many thousands of his yearly income? 
 another for the sheer hundred-thousands and millions 
 yearly? What equivalent do you give for our chew- 
 ing potatoes and looking calmly on while you swallow 
 oysters? Only buy the oysters of us as dear as we 
 have to buy the potatoes of you, then you may go on 
 eating them. Or do you suppose the oysters do not 
 belong to us as much as to you? You will make an
 
 358 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 outcry over violence if we reach out our hands and 
 help consume them, and you are right. Without 
 violence we do not get them, as you no less have them 
 by doing violence to us. 
 
 But take the oysters and have done with it, and let 
 us consider our nearer property, labor; for the 
 other is only possession. We distress ourselves twelve 
 hours in the sweat of our face, and you offer us a few 
 groschen for it. Then take the like for your labor 
 too. Are you not willing? You fancy that our 
 labor is richly repaid with that wage, while yours on 
 the other hand is worth a wage of many thousands. 
 But, if you did not rate yours so high, and gave us a 
 better chance to realize value from ours, then we 
 might well, if the case demanded it, bring \o pass still 
 more important things than you do for the many 
 thousand thalers; and, if you got only such wages as 
 we, you would soon grow more industrious in order to 
 receive more. But, if you render any service that 
 seems to us worth ten and a hundred times more than 
 our own labor, why, then you shall get a hundred 
 times more for it too; we, on the other hand, think 
 also to produce for you things for which you will re- 
 quite us more highly than with the ordinary day's 
 wages. We shall be willing to get along with each 
 other all right, if only we have first agreed on this, 
 that neither any longer needs to present anything to 
 the other. Then we may perhaps actually go so far as 
 to pay even the cripples and sick and old an appropri- 
 ate price for not parting from us by hunger and wan*; 
 for, if we want them to live, it is fitting also that we - 
 purchase the fulfilment of our will. I say "purchase,"
 
 THE OWNER 359 
 
 rind therefore do not mean a wretched " alms." For 
 heir life is the property even of those who cannot 
 [work ; if we (no matter for what reason) want them 
 if lot to withdraw this life from us, we can mean to 
 bring this to pass only by purchase; nay, we shall 
 perhaps (maybe because we like to have friendly faces 
 about us) even want a life of comfort for them. In 
 short, we want nothing presented by you, but neither 
 will we present you with anything. For centuries we 
 -have handed alms to you from good-hearted stupid- 
 ity, have doled out the mite of the poor and given to 
 the masters the things that are not the masters'; now 
 just open your wallet, for henceforth our ware rises in 
 price quite enormously. We do not want to take 
 from you anything, anything at all, only you are to 
 pay better for what you want to have. What then 
 ihave you? '' I have an estate of a thousand acres." 
 And I am your plowman, and will henceforth attend 
 to your fields only for one thaler a day wages. 
 " Then I'll take another." You won't find any, 
 for we- plowmen are no longer doing otherwise, and, 
 if one puts in an appearance who takes less, then let 
 him Ixjware of us. There is the housemaid, she too is 
 now demanding as much, and you will no longer find 
 one lx?low this price. " Why, ,then it is all over with 
 me." Not so fast! You will doubtless take in as 
 much as we; and, if it should not be so, we will take 
 off so much that you shall have wherewith to live like 
 us. " But I am accustomed to live better." We 
 have nothing against that, but it is not our lookout; 
 if you can clear more, go ahead. Are we to hire out 
 under rates, that you may have a good living? The
 
 360 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 rich man always puts off the poor with the words, 
 " What does your want concern me? See to it how 
 you make your way through the world ; that is your 
 affair, not mine." Well, let us let it be our affair, 
 then, and let us not let the means that we have to 
 realize value from ourselves be pilfered from us by the 
 rich. " But you uncultured people really do not need 
 so much." Well, we are taking somewhat more in 
 order that for it we may procure the culture that we 
 perhaps need. " But, if you thus bring down the 
 rich, who is then to support the arts and sciences 
 hereafter?" Oh, well, we must make it up by num- 
 bers; we club together, that gives a nice little sum, 
 besides, you rich men now buy only the most tasteless 
 books and the most lamentable Madonnas or a pair 
 of lively dancer's legs. " O ill-starred equality! " 
 No, my good old sir, nothing of equality. We only 
 want to count for what we are worth, and, if you are 
 worth more, you shall count for more right along. 
 We only want to be worth our price, and think to 
 show ourselves worth the price that you will pay. 
 
 Is the State likely to be able to awaken so secure 
 a temper and so forceful a self-consciousness in the 
 menial? Can it make man feel himself? nay, may 
 it even do so much as set this goal for itself ? Can it 
 want the individual to recognize his value and realize 
 this value from himself ? Let us keep the parts of the 
 double question separate, and see first whether the 
 State can bring about such a thing. As the unani- 
 mity of the plowmen is required, only this* unanimity 
 can bring it to pass, and a State law would be evaded 
 in a thousand ways by competition and in secret.
 
 THE OWNER 361 
 
 But can the State bear with it? The State cannot 
 possibly bear with people's suffering coercion from an- 
 other than it; it could not, therefore, admit the self- 
 help of the unanimous plowmen against those who 
 want to engage for lower wages. Suppose, however, 
 that the State made the law, and all the plowmen 
 were in accord with it: could the State bear with it 
 then? 
 
 In the isolated case yes; but the isolated case is 
 more than that, it is a case of principle. The ques- 
 tion therein is of the whole range of the ego's self- 
 realization of value from himself, and therefore also 
 of his self-consciousness against the State. So far the 
 Communists keep company; but, as self-realization of 
 value from self necessarily directs itself against the 
 State, so it does against society too, and therewith 
 reaches out beyond the commune and the communistic 
 out of egoism. 
 
 Communism makes the maxim of the commonalty, 
 that every one is a possessor (" proprietor"), into an 
 irrefragable truth, into a reality, since the anxiety 
 about obtaining now ceases and every one has from 
 the start what he requires. In his labor-force he has 
 his competence, and, if he makes no use of it, that is 
 his fault. The grasping and hounding is at an end, 
 and no competition is left (as so often now) without 
 fruit, because with every stroke of labor an adequate 
 supply of the needful is brought into the house. Now 
 for the first time one is a real possessor, because what 
 one has in his labor-force can no longer escape from 
 him as it was continually threatening to do under the 
 system of competition. One is a care-free and assured 

 
 362 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 possessor. And one is this precisely by seeking his 
 competence no longer in a ware, but in his own labor, 
 his competence for labor; and therefore by being a 
 ragamuffin, a man of only ideal wealth. /, how- 
 ever, cannot content myself with the little that I 
 scrape up by my competence for labor, because my 
 competence does not consist merely in my labor. 
 
 By labor I can perform the official functions of a 
 president, a minister, etc.; these offices demand only a 
 general culture, to wit, such a culture as is generally 
 attainable (for general culture is not merely that 
 which every one has attained, but broadly that which 
 every one can attain, and therefore every special cul- 
 ture, e. g. medical, military, philological, of which no 
 " cultivated man " believes that they surpass his 
 powers), or, broadly, only a skill possible to all. 
 
 But, even if these offices may vest in every one, yet 
 it is only the individual's unique force, peculiar to 
 him alone, that gives them, so to speak, life and sig- 
 nificance. That he does not nianage his office like an 
 " ordinary man," but puts in the competence of his 
 uniqueness, this he is not yet paid for when he is paid 
 only in general as an official or a minister. If he has 
 done it so as to earn your thanks, and you wish to re- 
 tain this thankworthy force of the unique one, you 
 must not pay him like a mere man who performed 
 only what was human, but as one who accomplishes 
 what is unique. Do the like with your labor, do! 
 
 There cannot be a general schedule-price fixed for 
 my uniqueness as there can for what I do as man. 
 Only for the latter can a schedule-price be set. 
 
 Go right on, then, setting up a general appraisal
 
 THE OWNER 363 
 
 for human labors, but do not deprive your uniqueness 
 of its desert. 
 
 Human or general needs can be satisfied through 
 society; for satisfaction of unique needs you must do 
 some seeking. A friend and a friendly service, or 
 even an individual's service, society cannot procure 
 you. And yet you will every moment be in need of 
 such a service, and on the slightest occasions require 
 somebody who is helpful to you. Therefore do not 
 rely on society, but see to it that you have the where- 
 withal to purchase the fulfilment of your wishes. 
 
 Whether money is to be retained among egoists? 
 To the old stamp an inherited possession adheres. If 
 you no longer let yourselves be paid with it, it is 
 ruined : if you do nothing for this money, it loses' all 
 power. Cancel the inheritance, and you have broken 
 off the executor's court-seal. For now everything is 
 an inheritance, whether it be already inherited or 
 await its heir. If it is yours, wherefore do you let it 
 be sealed up from you? why do you respect the seal? 
 
 But why should you not create a new money? Do 
 you then annihilate the ware in taking from it the 
 hereditary stamp? Now, money is a ware, and an es- 
 sential means or competence. For it protects against 
 the ossification of resources, keeps them in flux and 
 brings to pass their exchange. If you know a better 
 medium of exchange, go ahead; yet it will be a 
 " money" again. It is not the money that does you 
 damage, but your incompetence to take it. Let your 
 competence take effect, collect yourselves, and there 
 will IK> no lack of money of your money, the money 
 of your stamp. But working I do not call " letting
 
 364 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 your competence take effect." Those who are only 
 " looking for work " and " willing to work hard " are 
 preparing for their own selves the infallible upshot to 
 be out of work. 
 
 Good and bad luck depend on money. It is a 
 power in the bourgeois period for this reason, that it 
 is only wooed on all hands like a girl, indissolubly 
 wedded by nobody. All the romance and chivalry of 
 wooing for a dear object come to life again in com- 
 petition. Money, an object of longing, is carried off 
 by the bold " knights of industry."* 
 
 He who has luck takes home the bride. The raga- 
 muffin has luck; he takes her into his household, 
 " society," and destroys the virgin. In his house she 
 is no longer bride, but wife; and with her virginity 
 her family name is also lost. As housewife the 
 maiden Money is called " Labor," for " Labor " is her 
 husband's name. She is a possession of her husband's. 
 
 To bring this figure to an end, the child of Labor 
 and Money is again a girl, an unwedded one and 
 therefore Money, but with the certain descent from 
 Labor, her father. The form of the face, the " effigy," 
 bears another stamp. 
 
 Finally, as regards competition once more, it has 
 a continued existence by this very means, that all do 
 not attend to their affair and come to an understand- 
 ing with each other about it. Bread, e. g., is a need 
 of all the inhabitants of a city ; therefore they might 
 easily agree on setting up a public bakery. Instead 
 of this, they leave the furnishing of the needful to the 
 
 * [A German phrase for sharpers.]
 
 THE OWNER 365 
 
 competing bakers. Just so meat to the butchers, wine 
 to the wine-dealers, etc. 
 
 Abolishing competition is not equivalent to favor- 
 ing the guild. The difference is this: In the guild 
 baking, etc., is the affair of the guild-brothers; in 
 competition, the affair of chance competitors; in the 
 union, of those who require baked goods, and there- 
 fore my affair, yours, the affair of neither the guildic 
 nor the concessionary baker, but the affair of the 
 united. 
 
 If / do not trouble myself about my affair, I must 
 be content with what it pleases others to vouchsafe 
 me. To have bread is my affair, my wish and desire, 
 and yet people leave that to the bakers and hope at 
 most to obtain through their wrangling, their getting 
 ahead of each other, their rivalry, in short, their 
 competition, an advantage which one could not 
 count on in the case of the guild-brothers who were 
 lodged entirely and alone in the proprietorship of the 
 baking franchise. What every one requires, every 
 one should also take a hand in procuring and produc- 
 ing; it is his affair, his property, not the property of 
 the guildic or concessionary master. 
 
 Let us look back once more. The world belongs 
 to the children of this world, the children of men ; it 
 is no longer God's world, but man's. As much as 
 every man can procure of it, let him call his; only 
 the true man, the State, human society or mankind, 
 will look to it that each shall make nothing else his 
 own than what he appropriates as man, i. e. in human 
 fashion. Unhuman appropriation is that which is 
 not consented to by man, i. e. it is a " criminal " ap-
 
 
 366 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 propriation, as the human, vice versa, is a " rightful 
 one, one acquired in the " way of law." 
 
 So they talk since the Revolution. 
 
 But my property is not a thing, since this has an 
 existence independent of me ; only my might is my 
 own. Not this tree, but my might or control over it, 
 is what is mine. 
 
 Now, how is this might perversely expressed? They 
 say I have a right to this tree, or it is my rightful 
 property. So I have earned it by might. That the 
 might must last in order that the tree may also be 
 held, or better, that the might is hot a thing existing 
 of itself, but has existence solely in the mighty ego, in 
 me the mighty, is forgotten. Might, like other of my 
 qualities (e. g. humanity, majesty, etc.), is exalted 
 to something existing of itself, so that it still exists 
 long after it has ceased to be my might. Thus trans- 
 formed into a ghost, might is right. This eternal- 
 ized might is not extinguished even with my death, 
 but is transferred or "bequeathed." 
 
 Things now really belong not to me, but to right. 
 
 On the other side, this is nothing but a hallucin- 
 ation of vision. For the individual's might becomes 
 permanent and a right only by others joining their 
 might with his. The delusion consists in their believ- 
 ing that they cannot withdraw their might. The 
 same phenomenon over again; might is separated 
 from me. I cannot take back the might that I gave 
 to the possessor. One has " granted power of attor- 
 ney," has given away his power, has renounced coming 
 to a better mind. 
 
 The proprietor can give up his might and his right.
 
 THE OWNER 367 
 
 to a thing by giving the thing away, squandering it, 
 and the like. And we should not be able likewise to 
 let go the might that we lend to him? 
 
 The rightful man, the just, desires to call nothing 
 his own that he does not have " rightly " or have the 
 right to, and therefore only legitimate property. 
 
 Now, who is to be judge, and adjudge his right 
 to him ? At last, surely, Man, who imparts to him 
 the rights of man : then he can say, in an infinitely 
 broader sense than Terence, humani nihil a me 
 alienum puto, i. e. the human is my property. How- 
 ever he may go about it, so long as he occupies this 
 standpoint he cannot get clear of a judge; and in our 
 time the multifarious judges that had been selected 
 have set themselves against each other in two persons 
 at deadly enmity, to wit, in God and Man. The 
 one party appeal to divine right, the other to human 
 right or the rights of man. 
 
 So much is clear, that in neither case does the 
 individual do the entitling himself. 
 
 Just pick me out an action to-day that would not be 
 a violation of right! Every moment the rights of 
 man are trampled under foot by one side, while their 
 opponents cannot open their mouth without uttering a 
 blasphemy against divine right. Give an alms, you 
 mock at a right of man, because the relation of beggar 
 and benefactor is an inhuman relation; utter a doubt, 
 you sin against a divine right. Eat dry bread with 
 contentment, you violate the right of man by your 
 equanimity; eat it with discontent, you revile divine 
 right by your repining. There is not one among you 
 who does not commit a crime at every moment; your
 
 368 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 speeches are crimes, and every hindrance to your 
 freedom of speech is no less a crime. Ye are criminals 
 altogether! 
 
 Yet you are so only in that you all stand on the 
 ground of right; i. e., in that you do not even know, 
 and understand how to value, the fact that you are 
 criminals. 
 
 Inviolable or sacred property has grown on this 
 very ground: it is & juridical concept. 
 
 A dog sees the bone in another's power, and stands 
 off only if it feels itself too weak. But man respects 
 the other's right to his bone. The latter action, 
 therefore, ranks as human, the former as brutal or 
 " egoistic." 
 
 And as here, so in general, it is called " human " 
 when one sees in everything something spiritual (here 
 right), i. e. makes everything a ghost and takes his 
 attitude toward it as toward a ghost, which one can 
 indeed scare away at its appearance, but cannot kill. 
 It is human to look at what is individual not as 
 individual, but as a generality. 
 
 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 " prop- 
 erty "), 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 for-
 
 
 THE OWNER 369 
 
 tune I as little see anything alien as Napoleon did in 
 the territories of kings: we have no dread of " con- 
 quering " 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 sancthy 
 the man who adheres to it and believes in it, yet tie 
 sacred itself is always to be honored in it: the mis- 
 taken 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 de- 
 mand 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,
 
 370 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 " 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." 
 
 Reduced to the most human expression, this sacred 
 essence is "man himself" and "the human." With 
 the deceptive semblance as if the human were alto- 
 gether our own, and free from all the otherworldliness 
 with which the 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,* 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 as- 
 sumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the 
 egoist insults them, the religious man (i. e. every one 
 who puts his " essence " above himself) must con- 
 sistently protect them. But what kind of spiritual 
 
 * [Literally, "unhomely."]
 
 THE OWNER 371 
 
 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 " irrever- 
 ence " 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 differ- 
 ent shades of criminal flippancy. 
 
 That desecration can be practised in the most mani- 
 fold wise is here to be passed over, and only that dese- 
 cration is to be preferentially mentioned which threat- 
 ens the sacred with danger through an unrestricted 
 press. 
 
 As long as respect is demanded even for one spirit- 
 ual essence, speech and the press must be enthralled in 
 the name of this essence ; for just so long the egoist 
 might " trespass " against it by his utterances, from 
 which thing he must be hindered by " due punish- 
 ment " at least, if one does not prefer to take up the 
 more correct means against it, the preventive use of 
 police authority, e. g. censorship. 
 
 What a sighing for liberty of the press! What 
 then is the press to be liberated from ? Surely from a 
 dependence, a belonging, and a liability to service!
 
 372 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 But to liberate himself from that is every one's affair, 
 and it may with safety be assumed that, when you 
 have delivered yourself from liability to service, that 
 which you compose and write will also belong to you 
 as your own instead of having been thought and in- 
 dited in the service of some power. What can a be- 
 liever in Christ say and have printed, that should be 
 freer from that belief in Christ than he himself is? 
 If I cannot or may not write something, perhaps the 
 primary fault lies with me. Little as this seems to 
 hit the point, so near is the application nevertheless to 
 be found. By a press-law I draw a boundary for my 
 publications, or let one be drawn, beyond which wrong 
 and its punishment follows. I myself limit myself. 
 
 If the press was to be free, nothing would be so im- 
 portant as precisely its liberation from every coercion 
 that could be put on it in the name of a law. And, 
 that it might come to that, I my own self should have 
 to have absolved myself from obedience to the law. 
 
 Certainly, the absolute liberty of the press is like 
 every absolute liberty, a nonentity. The press can 
 become free from full many a thing, but always only 
 from what I too am free from. If we make ourselves 
 free from the sacred, if we have become graceless and 
 lawless, our words too will become so. 
 
 As little as we can be declared clear of every coer- 
 cion in the world, so little can our writing be with- 
 drawn from it. But as free as we are, so free we can 
 make it too. 
 
 It must therefore become our own, instead of, as 
 hitherto, serving a spook. 
 
 People do not yet know what they mean by their
 
 THE OWNER 373 
 
 cry for liberty of the press. What they ostensibly 
 ask is that the State shall set the press free; but what 
 they are really after, without knowing it themselves, is 
 that the press become free from the State, or clear of 
 the State. The former is & petition to the State, the 
 latter an insurrection against the State. As a 
 "petition for right," even as a serious demanding of 
 the right of liberty of the press, it presupposes the 
 State as the giver, and can hope only for a present, a 
 permission, a chartering. Possible, no doubt, that a 
 State acts so senselessly as to grant the demanded 
 present; but you may bet everything that those who 
 receive the present will not know how to use it so long 
 as they regard the State as a truth: they will not 
 trespass against this " sacred thing," and will call for 
 a penal press-law against every one who would be 
 willing to dare this. 
 
 In a word, the press does not become free from 
 what I am not free from. 
 
 Do I perhaps hereby show myself an opponent of 
 the liberty of the press? On the contrary, I only as- 
 sert that one will never get it if one wants only it, the 
 liberty of the press ; i. e. if one sets out only for an 
 unrestricted permission. Only beg right along for 
 this permission : you may wait forever for it, for there 
 is no one in the world who could give it to you. As 
 long as you want to have yourselves "entitled " to the 
 use of the press by a permission, i. e. liberty of the 
 press, you live in vain hope and complaint. 
 
 " Nonsense! Why, you yourself, who harbor such 
 thoughts as stand in your book, can unfortunately 
 bring them to publicity only through a lucky chance
 
 374 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 or by stealth ; nevertheless you will inveigh against 
 one's pressing and importuning his own State till it 
 gives the refused permission to print?" But an 
 author thus addressed would perhaps for the impu- 
 dence of such people goes far give the following 
 reply : " Consider well what you say ! What then 
 do I do to procure myself liberty of the press for my 
 book? Do I ask for permission, or do I not rather, 
 without any question of legality, seek a favorable oc- 
 casion and grasp it in complete recklessness of the 
 State and its wishes? I the terrifying word must be 
 uttered I cheat the State. You unconsciously do the 
 same. From your tribunes you talk it into the idea 
 that it must give up its sanctity and inviolability, it 
 must lay itself bare to the attacks of writers, without 
 needing on that account to fear danger. But you are 
 imposing on it; for its existence is done for as soon as 
 it loses its unapproachableness. To you indeed it 
 might well accord liberty of writing, as England has 
 done; you are believers in the State and incapable of 
 writing against the State, however much you would 
 like to reform it and * remedy its defects.' But 
 what if opponents of the State availed themselves of 
 free utterance, and stormed out against Church, State, 
 morals, and everything ' sacred ' with inexorable 
 reasons? You would then be the first, in terrible 
 agonies, to call into life the September laws. Too 
 late would you then rue the stupidity that earlier 
 made you so ready to fool and palaver into compli- 
 ance the State, or the government of the State. But 
 I prove by my act only two things. This for one, 
 that the liberty of the press is always bound to ' favor-
 
 THE OWNER 375 
 
 able opportunities,' and accordingly will never be an 
 absolute liberty; but secondly this, that he who would 
 enjoy lit must seek out and, if possible, create the 
 favorable opportunity, availing himself of his own 
 udrantage against the State, and counting himself 
 and his will more than the State and every ' superior ' 
 power. Not in the State, but only against it, can 
 the liberty of the press be carried through ; if it is 
 to be established, it is to be obtained not as the con- 
 sequence of a petition but as the work of an insur- 
 rection. Every petition and every motion for liberty 
 of the press is already an insurrection, be it conscious 
 or unconscious: a thing which Philistine halfness 
 alone will not and cannot confess to itself until, with a 
 shrinking shudder, it shall see it clearly and irrefut- 
 ably by the outcome. For the requested liberty of 
 the press has indeed a friendly and well-meaning face 
 at the beginning, as it is not in the least minded ever 
 to let the 'insolence of the press 1 come into vogue; but 
 little by little its heart grows more hardened, and the 
 inference flatters its way in that really a liberty is not 
 a liberty if it stands in the service of the State, of 
 morals, or of the law. A liberty indeed from the 
 coercion of censorship, it is yet not a liberty from the 
 coercion of law. The press, once seized by the lust 
 for liberty, always wants to grow freer, till at last the 
 writer says to himself, Really I am not wholly free 
 till I ask about nothing; and writing is free only 
 when it is my own, dictated to me by no power or 
 authority, by no faith, no dread; the press must not 
 be free that is too little it must be mine: ownness 
 of the press or property in the press, that is what I
 
 376 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 will take. 
 
 " Why, liberty of the press is only permission of the 
 press, and the State never will or can voluntarily per- 
 mit me to grind it to nothingness by the press. 
 
 " Let us now, in conclusion, bettering the above 
 language, which is still vague, owing to the phrase 
 ' liberty of the press,' rather put it thus: Liberty of 
 the press, the liberals' loud demand, is assuredly pos- 
 sible in the State; yes, it is possible only in the State, 
 because it is a permission, and consequently the per- 
 mitter (the State) must not be lacking. But as per- 
 mission it has its limit in this very State, which surely 
 should not in reason permit more than is compatible 
 with itself and its welfare: the State fixes for it this 
 limit as the law of its existence and of its extension. 
 That one State brooks more than another is only a 
 quantitative distinction, which alone, nevertheless, lies 
 at the heart of the political liberals : they want in Ger- 
 many, e. g., only a ' more extended, broader accordance 
 of free utterance/ The liberty of the press which is 
 sought for is an affair of the people's, and before the 
 people (the State) possesses it I may make no use of it. 
 From the standpoint of property in the press, the sit- 
 uation is different. Let my people, if they will, go 
 without liberty of the press, I will manage to print by 
 force or ruse ; I get my permission to print only from 
 myself and my strength. 
 
 " If the press is my own, I as little need a permis- 
 sion of the State for employing it as I seek that per- 
 mission in order to blow my nose. The press is my 
 property from the moment when nothing is more to 
 me than myself ; for from this moment State, Church,
 
 THE OWNER 377 
 
 people, society, and the like, cease, because they have 
 to thank for their existence only the disrespect that I 
 have for myself, and with the vanishing of this under- 
 valuation they themselves are extinguished: they ex- 
 ist only when they exist above me, exist only as 
 powers and power-holders. Or can you imagine a 
 State whose citizens one and all think nothing of it? 
 it would be as certainly a dream, an existence in seem- 
 ing, as * united Germany.' 
 
 " The press is my own as soon as I myself am my 
 own, a self-owned man : to the egoist belongs the 
 world, because he belongs to no power of the world. 
 
 " With this my press might still be very unfree, as 
 e. g., at this moment. But the world is large, and 
 one helps himself as well as he can. If I were willing 
 to abate from the property of my press, I could easily 
 attain the point where I might everywhere have as 
 much printed as my fingers produced. But, as I want 
 to assert my property, I must necessarily swindle my 
 enemies. ' Would you not accept their permission if it 
 were given you?' Certainly, with joy; for their per- 
 mission would be to me a proof that I had fooled 
 them and started them on the road to ruin. I am 
 not concerned for their permission, but so much the 
 more for their folly and their overthrow. I do not 
 sue for their permission as if I flattered myself (like 
 the political liberals) that we both, they and I, could 
 make out peaceably alongside and with each other, 
 yes, probably raise and prop each other; but I sue for 
 it in order to make them bleed to death by it, that 
 the permitters themselves may cease at last. I act as 
 a conscious enemy, overreaching them and utilizing
 
 378 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 their heedlessness. 
 
 "The press is mine when I recognize outside myself 
 no judge whatever over its utilization, i. e. when my 
 writing is no longer determined by morality or reli- 
 gion or respect for the State laws or the like, but by 
 me and my egoism ! " 
 
 Now, what have you to reply to him who gives you 
 so impudent an answer? We shall perhaps put the 
 question most strikingly by phrasing it as follows: 
 Whose is the press, the people's (State's) or mine? 
 The politicals on their side intend nothing further 
 than to liberate the press from personal and arbitrary 
 interferences of the possessors of power, without think- 
 ing of the point that to be really open for everybody 
 it would also have to be free from the laws, i. e. from 
 the people's (State's) will. They want to make a 
 " people's affair " of it. 
 
 But, having become the people's property, it is still 
 far from being mine; rather, it retains for me the 
 subordinate significance of a permission. The people 
 plays judge over my thoughts; it has the right of call- 
 ing me to account for them, or, I am responsible to it 
 for them. Jurors, when their fixed ideas are attacked, 
 have just as hard heads and hearts as the stiffest des- 
 pots and their servile officials. 
 
 In the "Liberate Bestrebung-en"* E. Bauer asserts 
 that liberty of the press is impossible in the absolutist 
 and the constitutional State, whereas in the " free 
 State" it finds its place. "Here," the statement is, "it 
 is recognized that the individual, because he is no 
 
 * II, p. 91 ff, (See my note above.)
 
 THE OWNER 379 
 
 longer an individual but a member of a true and ra- 
 tional generality, has the right to utter his mind." 
 So not the individual, but the " member," has liberty 
 of the press. But, if for the purpose of liberty of the 
 press the individual must first give proof of himself re- 
 garding his belief in the generality, the people ; if he 
 does not have this liberty through might of his own, 
 then it is a people's liberty, a liberty that he is in- 
 vested with for the sake of his faith, his " member- 
 ship." The reverse is the case: it is precisely as an in- 
 dividual that every one has open to him the liberty to 
 utter his mind. But he has not the " right " : that 
 liberty is assuredly not his " sacred right." He has 
 only the might ; but the might alone makes him 
 owner. I need no concession for the liberty of the 
 press, do not need the people's consent to it, do not 
 need the "right" to it, nor any "justification." The 
 liberty of the press too, like every liberty, I must 
 "take"; the people, "as being the sole judge," cannot 
 give it to me. It can put up with the liberty that I 
 take, or defend itself against it; give, bestow, grant it 
 it cannot. I exercise it despite the people, purely as 
 an individual; i. c. I get it by fighting the people, my 
 enemy, and obtain it only when I really get it by 
 such fighting, i. e. take it. But I take it because it is 
 my property. 
 
 Sander, against whom E. Bauer writes, lays claim 
 (page 99) to the liberty of the press " as the right and 
 the liberty of the citizen in the State" What else 
 does E. Bauer do? To him also it is only a right of 
 the free citizen. 
 
 The liberty of the press is also demanded under the
 
 380 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 name of a "general human right." Against this the 
 objection was well-founded that not every man knew 
 how to use it rightly, for not every individual was 
 truly man. Never did a government refuse it to Man 
 as such; but Man writes nothing, for the reason that 
 he is a ghost. It always refused it to individuals 
 only, and gave it to others, e. g. its organs. If then 
 one would have it for all, one must assert outright 
 that it is due to the individual, me, not to man or to 
 the individual so far as he is man. Besides, another 
 than a man (e. g. a beast) can make no use of it. 
 The French government, e. g-., does not dispute the 
 liberty of the press as a right of man, but demands 
 from the individual a security for his really being 
 man ; for it assigns liberty of the press not to the in- 
 dividual, but to man. 
 
 Under the exact pretence that it was not human, 
 what was mine was taken from me ! what was human 
 was left to me undiminished. 
 
 Liberty of the press can bring about only a re- 
 sponsible press ; the irresponsible proceeds solely from 
 property in the press. 
 
 For intercourse with men an express law (conform- 
 ity to which one may venture at times sinfully to for- 
 get, but the absolute value of which one at no time 
 ventures to deny) is placed foremost among all who 
 live religiously : this is the law of love, to which not 
 even those who seem to fight against its principle, and 
 who hate its name, have as yet become untrue; for 
 they also still have love, yes, they love with a deeper 
 and more sublimated love, they love " man and man-
 
 THE OWNER 381 
 
 kind." 
 
 If we formulate the sense of this law, it will be 
 about as follows: Every man must have a something 
 that is more to him than himself. You are to put 
 your " private interest " in the background when it is 
 a question of the welfare of others, the weal of the 
 fatherland, of society, the common weal, the weal of 
 mankind, the good cause, and the like! Father- 
 land, society, mankind, etc., must be more to you than 
 yourself, and as against their interest your " private 
 interest " must stand back; for you must not be an 
 egoist. 
 
 Love is a far-reaching religious demand, which is 
 not, as might be supposed, limited to love to God and 
 man, but stands foremost in every regard. Whatever 
 we do, think, will, the ground of it is always to be 
 love. Thus we may indeed judge, but only " with 
 love." The Bible may assuredly be criticised, and 
 that very thoroughly, but the critic must before all 
 things lore it and see in it the sacred book. Is this 
 anything else than to say he must not criticise it to 
 death, he must leave it standing, and that as a sacred 
 thing that cannot be upset? In our criticism on men 
 too, love must remain the unchanged key-note. Cer- 
 tainly judgments that hatred inspires are not at all oui 
 own judgments, but judgments of the hatred that rules 
 us, " rancorous judgments." But are judgments that 
 love inspires in us any more our own? They are judg- 
 ments of the love that rules us, they are " loving, leni- 
 ent " judgments, they are not our own, and accord- 
 ingly not real judgments at all. He who burns with 
 love for justice cries oui, Jiat justitia, per eat mundus!
 
 382 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 He can doubtless ask and investigate what justice 
 properly is or demands, and in what it consists, but 
 not whether it is anything. 
 
 ' It is very true, " He who abides in love abides in 
 God, and God in him." (I John 4. 16.) God abides 
 in him, he does not get rid of Gqd, does not become 
 godless; and he abides in God, does not come to him- 
 self and into his own home, abides in love to God and 
 does not become loveless. 
 
 " God is love! All times, and all races recognize 
 in this word the central point of Christianity." God, 
 who is love, is an officious God: he cannot leave the 
 world in peace, but wants to make it blest. " God be- 
 came man to make men divine."* He has his hand 
 in the game everywhere, and nothing happens without 
 it; everywhere he has his " best purposes," his " in- 
 comprehensible plans and., decrees." Reason, which 
 he himself is, is to be forwarded and realized in the 
 whole world. His fatherly care deprives us of all in- 
 dependence. We can do nothing sensible without its 
 being said, God did that! and can bring upon our- 
 selves no misfortune without hearing, God ordained 
 that; we have nothing that we have not from him, he 
 " gave " everything. But, as God does, so does Man. 
 God wants perforce to make the world blest, and Man 
 wants to make it happy, to make all men happy. 
 Hence every " man " wants to awaken in all men the 
 reason which he supposes his own self to have : every- 
 thing is to be rational throughout. God torments 
 himself with the devil, and the philosopher does it 
 
 * Athannsius.
 
 THE OWNER 383 
 
 with unreason and the accidental. God lets no being 
 go its own gait, and Man likewise wants to make us 
 walk only in human wise. 
 
 But whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, hu- 
 mane) love loves only the spook, the " true man," and 
 persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the 
 real man, under the phlegmatic legal title of measures 
 against the " un-man." He finds it praiseworthy and 
 indispensable to exercise pitilessness in the harshest 
 measure; for love to the spook or generality commands 
 him to hate him who is not ghostly, i. e. the egoist or 
 individual; such is the meaning of the renowned love- 
 phenomenon that is called "justice." 
 
 The criminally arraigned man can expect no for- 
 bearance, and no one spreads a friendly veil over his 
 unhappy nakedness. Without emotion the stern judge 
 tears the last rags of excuse from the body of the poor 
 accused ; without compassion the jailer drags him into 
 his damp abode ; without placability, when the time 
 of punishment has expired, he thrusts the branded 
 man again among men, his good, Christian, loyal 
 brethren ! who contemptuously spit on him. Yes, 
 without grace a criminal " deserving of death " is led 
 to the scaffold, and before the eyes of a jubilating 
 crowd the appeased moral law celebrates its sublime 
 revenge. For only one can live, the moral law or the 
 criminal. Where criminals live unpunished, the 
 moral law has fallen ; and, where this prevails, those 
 must go down. Their enmity is indestructible. 
 
 The Christian age is precisely that of mercy, love, 
 solicitude to have men receive what is due them, yes, 
 to bring them to fulfil their human (divine) calling.
 
 384 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Therefore the principle has been put foremost for 
 intercourse, that this and that is man's essence and 
 consequently his calling, to which either God has 
 called him or (according to the concepts of to-day) 
 his being man (the species) calls him. Hence the zeal 
 for conversion. That the Communists and the hu- 
 mane expect from man more than the Christians do 
 does not change the standpoint in the least. Man 
 shall get what is human! If it was enough for the 
 pious that what was divine became his part, the hu- 
 mane demand that he be not curtailed of what is 
 human. Both set themselves against what is egoistic. 
 Of course ; for what is egoistic cannot be accorded to 
 him or vested in him (a fief) ; he must procure it 
 for himself. Love imparts the former, the latter can 
 be given to me by myself alone. 
 
 Intercourse hitherto has rested on love, regardful 
 behavior, doing for each other. As one owed it to 
 himself to make himself blessed, or owed himself the 
 bliss of taking up into himself the supreme essence 
 and bringing it to a verite (a truth and reality), so 
 one owed it to others to help them realize their essence 
 and their calling: in both cases one owed it to the 
 essence of man to contribute to its realization. 
 
 But one owes it neither to himself to make anything 
 out of himself, nor to others to make anything out of 
 them ; for one owes nothing to his essence and that of 
 others. Intercourse resting on essence is an inter- 
 course with the spook, not with anything real. If I 
 hold intercourse with the supreme essence, I am not 
 holding intercourse with myself, and, if I hold inter- 
 course with the essence of man, I am not holding
 
 THE OWNER 385 
 
 intercourse with men. 
 
 The natural man's love becomes through culture a 
 commandment. But as commandment it belongs to 
 Man as such, not to me; it is my essence* about 
 which much ado f is made, not my property. Man, 
 i. e. humanity, presents that demand to me; love is 
 demanded, it is my duty. Instead, therefore, of being 
 really won for me, it has been won for the generality, 
 Man, as his property or peculiarity: " it becomes 
 man, i. e. every man, to love ; love is the duty and 
 calling of man," etc. 
 
 Consequently I must again vindicate love for my- 
 self, and deliver it out of the power of Man with the 
 great M. 
 
 What was originally mine, but accidentally mine, 
 instinctively mine, I was invested with as the property 
 of Man ; I became feoffee in loving, I became the re- 
 tainer of mankind, only a specimen of this species, and 
 acted, loving, not as /. but as man, as a specimen of 
 man, i. e. humanly. The whole condition of civiliza- 
 tion is the feudal system, the property being Man's or 
 mankind's, not mine. A monstrous feudal State was 
 founded, the individual robbed of everything, every- 
 thing left to " man." The individual had to appear 
 at last as a " sinner through and through." 
 
 Am I perchance to have no lively interest in the 
 person of another, are his joy and his weal not to lie 
 at my heart, is the enjoyment that I furnish him not 
 to be more to me than other enjoyments of my own? 
 On the contrary, I can with joy sacrifice to him num- 
 
 *[Wesen] t [Wesenl
 
 386 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 berless enjoyments, I can deny myself numberless 
 things for the enhancement of his pleasure, and I can 
 hazard for him what without him was the dearest to 
 me, my life, my welfare, my freedom. Why, it con- 
 stitutes my pleasure and my happiness to refresh my- 
 self with his happiness and his pleasure. But myself, 
 my own self, I do not sacrifice to him, but remain an 
 egoist and enjoy him. If I sacrifice to him every- 
 thing that but for my love to him I should keep, that 
 is very simple, and even more usual in life than it 
 seems to be; but it proves nothing further than that 
 this one passion is more powerful in me than all the 
 rest. Christianity too teaches us to sacrifice all other 
 passions to this. But, if to one passion I sacrifice 
 others, I do not on that account go so far as to sacri- 
 fice myself, nor sacrifice anything of that whereby I 
 truly am myself; I do not sacrifice my peculiar value, 
 my ownness. Where this bad case occurs, love cuts no 
 better figure than any other passion that I obey 
 blindly. The ambitious man, who is carried away by 
 ambition and remains deaf to every warning that a 
 calm moment begets in him, has let this passion grow 
 up into a despot against whom he abandons all power 
 of dissolution : he has given up himself, because he 
 cannot dissolve himself, and consequently cannot ab- 
 solve himself from the passion: he is possessed. 
 
 I love men too, not merely individuals, but every 
 one. But I love them with the consciousness of ego- 
 ism ; I love them because love makes me happy, I love 
 because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. 
 I know no " commandment of love." I have a fellow- 
 feeling with every feeling being, and their torment
 
 THE OWNER 38t 
 
 torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill 
 them, not torture them. Per contra, the high-souled, 
 virtuous Philistine prince Rudolph in "The Mysteries 
 of Paris," because the wicked provoke his " indigna- 
 tion," plans their torture. That fellow-feeling proves 
 only that the feeling of those who feel is mine too, my 
 property; in opposition to which the pitiless dealing 
 of the " righteous" man (e. g. against notary Ferrand) 
 is like the unfeelingness of that robber who cut off or 
 stretched his prisoners' legs to the measure of his bed- 
 stead: Rudolph's bedstead, which he cuts men to fit, 
 is the concept of the " good." The feeling for right, 
 virtue, etc., makes people hard-hearted and intolerant. 
 Rudolph does not feel like the notary, but the reverse; 
 he feels that " it serves the rascal right "; that is no 
 fellow-feeling. 
 
 You love man, therefore you torture the individual 
 man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men) is 
 the tormenting of men. 
 
 If I see the loved one suffer, I suffer with him, and I 
 know no rest till I have tried everything to comfort 
 and cheer him ; if I see him glad, I too become glad 
 over his joy. From this it does not follow that suffer- 
 ing or joy is caused in me by the same thing that 
 brings out this effect in him, as is sufficiently proved 
 by every bodily pain which I do not feel as he does ; 
 his tooth pains him, but his pain pains me. 
 
 But, because / cannot bear the troubled crease on 
 the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore 
 for my sake, I kiss it away. If I did not love this 
 person, he might go right on making creases, they 
 would not trouble me; I am only driving away my
 
 388 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 trouble. 
 
 How now, has anybody or anything, whom and 
 which I do not love, a right to be loved by me? Is 
 my love first, or is his right first? Parents, kinsfolk, 
 fatherland, nation, native town, etc., finally fellow- 
 men in general ("brothers, fraternity"), assert that 
 they have a right to my love, and lay claim to it with- 
 out further ceremony. They look upon it as their 
 property, and upon me, if I do not respect this, as a 
 robber who takes from them what pertains to them 
 and is theirs. I should love. If love is a command- 
 ment and law, then I must be educated into it, culti- 
 vated up to it, and, if I trespass against it, punished. 
 Hence people will exercise as strong a " moral influ- 
 ence " as possible on me to bring me to love. And 
 there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce 
 men to love as one can to other passions, e. g., if you 
 like, to hate. Hate runs through whole races merely 
 because the ancestors of the one belonged to the 
 Guelphs, those of the other to the Ghibellines. 
 
 But love is not a commandment, but, like each of 
 my feelings, my property. Acquire, i. e. purchase, my 
 property, and then I will make it over to you. A 
 church, a nation, a fatherland, a family, etc., that does 
 not know how to acquire my love, I need not love; 
 and I fix the purchase price of my love quite at my 
 pleasure. 
 
 Selfish love is far distant from unselfish, mystical, 
 or romantic love. One can love everything possible, 
 not merely men, but an " object " in general (wine, 
 one's fatherland, etc.). Love becomes blind and crazy 
 by a must taking it out of my power (infatuation),
 
 THE OWNER 389 
 
 romantic by a should entering into it, i. e. the 
 " object's " becoming sacred for me, or my becoming 
 bound to it by duty, conscience, oath. Now the 
 object no longer exists for me, but I for it. 
 
 Love is a possessedness, not as my feeling as such 
 I rather keep it in my possession as property , but 
 through the alienness of the object. For religious 
 love consists in the commandment to love in the be- 
 loved a " holy one," or to adhere to a holy one ; for 
 unselfish love there are objects absolutely lovable for 
 which my heart is to beat, e. g. fellow-men, or my 
 wedded mate, kinsfolk, etc. Holy love loves the 
 holy in the beloved, and therefore exerts itself also to 
 make of the beloved more and more a holy one (e. g. 
 a " man "). 
 
 The beloved is an object that should be loved by 
 me. He is not an object of my love on account of, 
 because of, or by, my loving him, but is an object of 
 love in and of himself. Not I make him an object of 
 love, but he is such to begin with ; for it is here irrele- 
 vant that he has become so by my choice, if so it be 
 (as with & fiancee, a spouse, and the like), since even 
 so he has in any case, as the person once chosen, ob- 
 tained a " right of his own to my love," and I, be- 
 cause I have loved him, am under obligation to love 
 him forever. He is therefore not an object of my 
 love, but of love in general : an object that should be 
 loved. Love appertains to him, is due to him, or is 
 his right, while I am under obligation to love him. 
 My love, i. e. the toll of love that I pay him, is in 
 truth his love, which he only collects from me as toll. 
 
 Every love to which there clings but the smallest
 
 390 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as 
 this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes 
 that he owes the object of his love anything loves ro- 
 mantically or religiously. 
 
 Family love, e. g\, as it is usually understood as 
 " piety,?' is a religious love ; love of fatherland, 
 preached as " patriotism," likewise. All our romantic 
 love moves in the same pattern : everywhere the hy- 
 pocrisy, or rather self-deception, of an "unselfish 
 love," an interest in the object for the object's sake, 
 not for my sake and mine alone. 
 
 Religious or romantic love is distinguished from 
 sensual love by the difference of the object indeed, bu1 
 not by the dependence of the relation to it. In the 
 latter regard both are possessedness ; but in the 
 former the one object is profane, the other sacred. 
 The dominion of the object over me is the same in 
 both cases, only that it is one time a sensuous one, 
 the other time a spiritual (ghostly) one. My love is 
 my own only when it consists altogether in a selfish 
 and egoistic interest, and when consequently the ob- 
 ject of my love is really my object or my property. I 
 owe my property nothing, and have no duty to it, as 
 little as I might have a duty to my eye; if neverthe- 
 less I guard it with the greatest care, I do so on my 
 account. 
 
 Antiquity lacked love as little as do Christian 
 times; the god of love is older than the God of Love. 
 But the mystical possessedness belongs to the moderns 
 
 The possessedness of love lies in the alienation of 
 the object, or in my powerlessness as against its alien- 
 ness and superior power. To the egoist nothing is
 
 THE OWNER 391 
 
 high enough for him to humble himself before it, 
 nothing so independent that he would live for love of 
 it, nothing so sacred that he would sacrifice himself to 
 it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the 
 bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness again. 
 
 Whether this can still be called love? If you 
 know another word for it, go ahead and choose it; 
 then the sweet word love may wither with the departed 
 world; for the present I at least find none in our 
 Christian language, and hence stick to the old sound 
 and " love " my object, my property. 
 
 Only as one of my feelings do I harbor love; but as 
 a power above me, as a divine power (Feuerbach), as 
 a passion that I am not to cast off, as a religious and 
 moral duty, I scorn it. As my feeling it is mine ; 
 as a principle to which I consecrate and " vow " my 
 soul it is a dominator and divine, just as hatred as a 
 principle is diabolical; one not better than the other. 
 In short, egoistic love, i. e., my love, is neither holy 
 nor unholy, neither divine nor diabolical. 
 
 " A love that is limited by faith is an untrue love. 
 The sole limitation that does not contradict the es- 
 sence of love is the self-limitation of love by reason, 
 intelligence. Love that scorns the rigor, the law, of 
 intelligence, is theoretically a false love, practically a 
 ruinous one."* So love is in its essence rational! 
 So thinks Feuerbach ; the believer, on the contrary, 
 thinks, Love is in its essence believing. The one in- 
 veighs against irrational, the other against unbeliev- 
 ing-, love. To both it can at most rank as a splen- 
 
 * Feuerbach, " Essence of Chr.," 394.
 
 392 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 didum vitium. Do not both leave love standing, even 
 in the form of unreason and unbelief ? They do not 
 dare to say, irrational or unbelieving love is nonsense, 
 is not love; as little as they are willing to say, irra- 
 tional or unbelieving tears are not tears. But, if even 
 irrational love, etc., must count as love, and if they 
 are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, there follows 
 simply this: love is not the highest thing, but reason 
 or faith ; even the unreasonable and the unbelieving 
 can love; but love has value only when it is that of a 
 rational or believing person. It is an illusion when 
 Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its " self-limita- 
 tion " ; the believer might with the same right call 
 belief its " self-limitation." Irrational love is neither 
 " false " nor " ruinous "; it does its service as love. 
 
 Toward the world, especially toward men, I am to 
 assume a particular feeling, and " meet them with 
 love," with the feeling of love, from the beginning. 
 Certainly, in this there is revealed far more free-will 
 and self-determination than when I let myself be 
 stormed, by way of the world, by all possible feelings, 
 and remain exposed to the most checkered, most acci- 
 dental impressions. I go to the world rather with a 
 preconceived feeling, as if it were a prejudice and a 
 preconceived opinion ; I have prescribed to myself in 
 advance my behavior toward it, and, despite all its 
 temptations, feel and think about it only as I have 
 once determined to. Against the dominion of the 
 world I secure myself by the principle of love; for, 
 whatever may come, I love. The ugly e.g. makes 
 a repulsive impression on me; but, determined to love, 
 I master this impression as I do every antipathy.
 
 THE OWNER 393 
 
 But the feeling to which I have determined and 
 condemned myself from the start is a narrow feeling, 
 because it is a predestined one, of which I myself am 
 not able to get clear or to declare myself clear. Be- 
 cause preconceived, it is a prejudice. I no longer 
 show myself in face of the world, but my love shows 
 itself. The world indeed does not rule me, but so 
 much the more inevitably does the spirit of love rule 
 me. I have overcome the world to become a slave of 
 this spirit. 
 
 If I first said, I love the world, I now add likewise: 
 I do not love it, for I annihilate it as I annihilate 
 myself; / dissolve it. I do not limit myself to one 
 feeling for men, but give free play to all that I am 
 capable of. Why should I not dare speak it out in 
 all its glaringness ? Yes, / utilize the world and 
 men ! With this I can keep myself open to every 
 impression without being torn away from myself by 
 one of them. I can love, love with a full heart, and 
 let the most consuming glow of passion burn in my 
 heart, without taking the beloved one for anything 
 else than the nourishment of my passion, on which it 
 ever refreshes itself anew. All my care for him ap- 
 plies only to the object of my love, only to him whom 
 my love requires, only to him, the " warmly loved." 
 How indifferent would he be to me without this my 
 love! I feed only my love with him, I utilize him for 
 this only: I enjoy him. 
 
 Let us choose another convenient example. I see 
 how men are fretted in dark superstition by a swarm 
 of ghosts. If to the extent of my powers I let a bit 
 of daylight fall in on the nocturnal spookery, is it per-
 
 394 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 chance because love to you inspires this in me? Do I 
 write out of love to men? No, I write because I want 
 to procure for my thoughts an existence in the world; 
 and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would de- 
 prive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw 
 the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations 
 springing up from this seed of thought, I would 
 nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and 
 can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You 
 will perhaps have only trouble, combat, and death 
 from it, very few will draw joy from it. If your weal 
 lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in 
 withholding the Bible from the laity, or Christian 
 governments, which make it a sacred duty for them- 
 selves to " protect the common people from bad 
 books." 
 
 But not only not for your sake, not even for truth's 
 sake either do I speak out what I think. No 
 
 I sing as the bird sings 
 
 That on the bough alights; 
 The song that from me springs 
 
 Is pay that well requites. 
 
 I sing because I am a singer. But I use * you 
 for it because I need f ears. 
 
 Where the world comes in my way and it comes 
 in my way everywhere I consume it to quiet the 
 hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but 
 my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use 
 by you. We have only one relation to each other, 
 that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each 
 
 * [ gebrauche] t [brauchf]
 
 THE OWNER 395 
 
 oilier nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at 
 most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to 
 cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of conse- 
 quence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thou- 
 sand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not 
 show it. 
 
 One has to be educated up to that love which 
 founds itself on the " essence of man," or, in the 
 ecclesiastical and moral period, lies upon us as a 
 " commandment." In what fashion moral influence, 
 the chief ingredient of our education, seeks to regulate 
 t-he intercourse of men shall here be looked at with 
 egoistic eyes in one example at least. 
 
 Those who educate us make it their concern early to 
 break us of lying and to inculcate the principle that 
 ene must always tell the truth. If selfishness were 
 made the basis for this rule, every one would easily 
 understand how by lying he fools away that confidence 
 in him which he hopes to awaken in others, and how 
 correct the maxim proves, Nobody believes a liar even 
 when he tells the truth. Yet, at the same time, he 
 would also feel that he had to meet with truth only 
 him whom he authorized to hear the truth. If a spy 
 walks in disguise through the hostile camp, and is 
 asked who he is, the askers are assuredly entitled to 
 inquire after his name, but the disguised man does not 
 give them the right to learn the truth from him ; he 
 tells them what he likes, only not the fact. And yet 
 morality demands, " Thou shalt not lie! " By moral- 
 ity those persons are vested with the right to expect 
 the truth; but by me they are not vested with that
 
 396 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 right, and I recognize only the right that / impart. 
 In a gathering of revolutionists the police force their 
 way in and ask the orator for his name; everybody 
 knows that the police have the right to do so, but they 
 do not have it from the revolutionist, since he is their 
 enemy; he tells them a false name and cheats them 
 with a lie. The police do not act so foolishly either 
 as to count on their enemies' love of truth; on the 
 contrary, they do not believe without further cere- 
 mony, but have the questioned individual " identi- 
 fied " if they can. Nay, the State everywhere pro- 
 ceeds incredulously with individuals, because in their 
 egoism it recognizes its natural enemy; it invariably 
 demands a " voucher," and he who cannot show 
 vouchers falls a prey to its investigating inquisition. 
 The State does not believe nor trust the individual, 
 and so of itself places itself with him in the convention 
 of lying ; it trusts me only when it has convinced itself 
 of the truth of my statement, for which there often re- 
 mains to it no other means than the oath. How 
 clearly, too, this (the oath) proves that the State does 
 not count on our credibility and love of truth, but on 
 our interest, our selfishness: it relies on our not want- 
 ing to fall foul of God by a perjury. 
 
 Now, let one imagine a French revolutionist in the 
 year 1788, who among friends let fall the now well- 
 known phrase, "the world will have no rest till the 
 last king is hanged with the guts of the last priest." 
 The king then still had all power, and, when the ut- 
 terance is betrayed by an accident, yet without its 
 ing possible to produce witnesses, confession is de- 
 manded from the accused. Is he to confess or not? 
 

 
 THE OWNER 397 
 
 If he denies, he lies and remains unpunished ; if he 
 confesses, he is candid and is beheaded. If truth is 
 more than everything else to him, all right, let him 
 die. Only a paltry poet could try to make a tragedy 
 out of the end of his life; for what interest is there in 
 seeing how a man succumbs from cowardice? But, 
 if he had the courage not to b*e a slave of truth and 
 sincerity, he would ask somewhat thus: Why need 
 the judges know what I have spoken among friends? 
 If I had wished them to know, I should have said it to 
 them as I said it to my friends. I will not have them 
 know it. They force themselves into my confidence 
 without my having called them to it and made them 
 my confidants; they will learn what I will keep secret. 
 Come on then, you who wish to break my will by 
 your will, and try your arts. You can torture me 
 by the rack, you can threaten me with hell and 
 eternal damnation, you can make me so nerveless 
 that I swear a false oath, but the truth you shall not 
 press out of me, for I will lie to you because I have 
 given you no claim and no right to my sincerity. 
 Let God, " who is truth," look down ever so threaten- 
 ingly on me, let lying come ever so hard to me, I have 
 nevertheless the courage of a lie; and, even if I were 
 weary of my life, even if nothing appeared to me more 
 welcome than your executioner's sword, you neverthe- 
 less should not have the joy of finding in me a slave 
 of truth, whom by your priestly arts you make a 
 traitor to his will When I spoke those treasonable 
 words, I would not have had you know anything of 
 them ; I now retain the same will, and do not let my- 
 self be frightened by the curse of the lie.
 
 398 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Sigismund is not a miserable caitiff because he 
 broke his princely word, but he broke the word be- 
 cause he was a caitiff; he might have kept his word 
 and would still have been a caitiff, a priest-ridden 
 man. Luther, driven by a higher power, became un- 
 faithful to his monastic vow: he became so for God's 
 sake. Both broke their oath as possessed persons: 
 Sigismund, because he wanted to appear as a sincere 
 professor of the divine truth, i. e. of the true, genuinely 
 Catholic faith; Luther, in order to give testimony for 
 the gospel sincerely and with entire truth, with body 
 and soul; both became perjured in order to be sincere 
 toward the " higher truth." Only, the priests ab- 
 solved the one, the other absolved himself. What else 
 did both observe than what is contained in those 
 apostolic words, " Thou hast not lied to men, but to 
 God "? They lied to men, broke their oath before 
 the world's eyes, in order not to lie to God, but to 
 serve him. Thus they show us a way to deal with 
 truth before men. For God's glory, and for God's 
 sake, a breach of oath, a lie, a prince's word broken ! 
 
 How would it be, now, if we changed the thing 
 a little and wrote, A perjury and lie for my sake ? 
 Would not that be pleading for every baseness? It 
 seems so assuredly, only in this it is altogether like the 
 " for God's sake." For was not every baseness com- 
 mitted for God's sake, were not all the scaffolds filled 
 for his sake and all the auto-da^fes held for his sake, 
 was not all stupefaction introduced for his sake? and 
 do they not to-day still for God's sake fetter the 
 mind in tender children by religious education? 
 Were not sacred vows broken for his sake, and do not
 
 THE OWNER 399 
 
 missionaries and priests still go around every day to 
 bring Jews, heathen, Protestants or Catholics, etc., to 
 treason against the faith of their fathers, for his 
 sake ? And that should be worse with theyor my 
 sake ? What then does on my account mean ? There 
 people immediately think of " filthy lucre." But he 
 who acts from love of filthy lucre does it on his own 
 account indeed, as there is nothing anyhow that one 
 does not do for his own sake, among other things, 
 everything that is done for God's glory; yet he, for 
 whom he seeks the lucre, is a slave of lucre, not raised 
 above lucre; he is one who belongs to lucre, the 
 money-bag, not to himself; he is not his own. Must 
 not a man whom the passion of avarice rules follow 
 the commands of this master? and, if a weak good- 
 naturedness once beguiles him, does this not appear as 
 simply an exceptional case of precisely the same sort 
 as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by 
 their Lord's guidance and ensnared by the arts of the 
 "devil"? So an avaricious man is not a self-owned 
 man, but a servant; and he can do nothing for his 
 own sake without at the same time doing it for his 
 lord's sake, precisely like the godly man. 
 
 Famous is the breach of oath which Francis II 
 committed against Emperor Charles V. Not later, 
 when he ripely weighed his promise, but at once, when 
 he swore the oath, King Francis took it back in 
 thought as well as by a secret protestation document- 
 arily subscribed before his councillors; he uttered a 
 perjury aforethought. Francis did not show himself 
 disinclined to buy his release, but the price that 
 Charles put on it seemed to him too high and unrea-
 
 400 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 sonable. Even though Charles behaved himself in a 
 sordid fashion when he sought to extort as much as 
 possible, it was yet shabby of Francis to want to pur- 
 chase his freedom for a lower ransom; and his later 
 dealings, among which there occurs yet a second 
 breach of his word, prove sufficiently how the huckster 
 spirit held him enthralled and made him a shabby 
 swindler. However, what shall we say to the re- 
 proach of perjury against him? In the first place, 
 surely, this again : that not the perjury, but his sor- 
 didness. shamed him; that he did not deserve con- 
 tempt for his perjury, but made himself guilty of 
 perjury because he was a contemptible man. But 
 Francis's perjury, regarded in itself, demands another 
 judgment. One might say Francis did not respond to 
 the confidence that Charles put in him in setting him 
 free. But, if Charles had really favored him with 
 confidence, he would have named to him the price thai 
 he considered the release worth, and would then have 
 set him at liberty and expected Francis to pay the 
 redemption-sum. Charles harbored no such trust, but 
 only believed in Francis's impotence and credulity, 
 which would not allow him to act against his oath; 
 but Francis deceived only this credulous calculation. 
 When Charles believed he was assuring himself of his 
 enemy by an oath, right there he was freeing him 
 from every obligation. Charles had given the king 
 credit for a piece of stupidity, a narrow conscience, 
 and, without confidence in Francis, counted only on 
 Francis's stupidity, i. e. conscientiousness: he let him 
 go from the Madrid prison only to hold him the more 
 securely in the prison of conscientiousness, the great
 
 THE OWNER 4O1 
 
 jail built about the mind of man by religion: he sent 
 him back to France locked fast in invisible chains, 
 what wonder if Francis sought to escape and sawed 
 the chains apart ? No man would have taken it amiss 
 of him if he had secretly fled from Madrid, for he was 
 in an enemy's power ; but every good Christian cries 
 out upon him, that he wanted to loose himself from 
 God's bonds too. (It was only later that the pope 
 absolved him from his oath.) 
 
 It is despicable to deceive a confidence that we vol- 
 untarily call forth; but it is no shame to egoism to 
 let every one who wants to get us into his power by an 
 oath bleed to death by the unsuccessfulness of his 
 untrustful craft. If you have wanted to bind me, 
 then learn that I know how to burst your bonds. 
 
 The point is whether / give the confider the right to 
 confidence. If the pursuer of my friend asks me 
 where he has fled to, I shall surely put him on a false 
 trail. Why does he ask precisely me, the pursued 
 man's friend? In order not to be a false, traitorous 
 friend, I prefer to be false to the enemy. I might cer- 
 tainly, in courageous conscientiousness, answer " I 
 will not tell " (so Fichte decides the case) ; by that I 
 should salve my love of truth and do for my friend as 
 much as nothing, for, if I do not mislead the enemy, 
 he may accidentally take the right street, and my love 
 of truth would have given up my friend as a prey, 
 because it hindered me from the courage for a lie. 
 He who has in the truth an idol, a sacred thing, must 
 humble himself before it, must not defy its demands, 
 not resist courageously ; in short, he must renounce 
 the heroism of the lie. For to the lie belongs not less
 
 402 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 courage than to the truth: a courage that young men 
 are most apt to be defective in, who would rather con- 
 fess the truth and mount the scaffold for it than con- 
 found the enemy's power by the impudence of a lie. 
 To them the truth is "sacred," and the sacred at all 
 times demands blind reverence, submission, and self- 
 sacrifice. If you are not impudent, not mockers of 
 the sacred, you are tame and its servants. Let one 
 but lay a grain of truth in the trap for you, you peck 
 at it to a certainty, and the fool is caught. You will 
 not lie? Well, then, fall as sacrifices to the truth 
 and become martyrs! Martyrs! for what? For 
 yourselves, for self-ownership? No, for your god- 
 dess, the truth. You know only two services, only 
 two kinds of servants : servants of the truth and ser- 
 vants of the lie. Then in God's name serve the truth ! 
 
 Others, again, serve the truth also; but they serve 
 it " in moderation," and make, e. g., a great distinc- 
 tion between a simple lie and a lie sworn to. And yet 
 the whole chapter of the oath coincides with that of 
 the lie, since an oath, everybody knows, is only a 
 strongly assured statement. You consider yourselves 
 entitled to lie, if only you dp not swear to it besides? 
 One who is particular about it must judge and con- 
 demn a lie as sharply as a false oath. But now there 
 has been kept up in morality an ancient point of con- 
 troversy, which is customarily treated of under the 
 name of the "lie of necessity." No one who dares 
 plead for this can consistently put from him an " oath 
 of necessity." If I justify my lie as a lie of necessity, 
 I should not be so pusillanimous as to rob the justified 
 lie of the strongest corroboration. Whatever I do,
 
 THE OWNER 403 
 
 why should I not do it entirely and without reserva- 
 tion (reservatio mentalis)? If I once lie, why then 
 not lie completely, with entire consciousness and all 
 my might? As a spy I should have to swear to each 
 of my false statements at the enemy's demand ; deter- 
 mined to lie to him, should I suddenly become cow- 
 ardly and undecided in face of an oath? Then I 
 should have been ruined in advance for a liar and 
 spy; for, you see, I should be voluntarily putting into 
 the enemy's hands a means to catch me. The State 
 too fears the oath of necessity, and for this reason does 
 not give the accused a chance to swear. But you do 
 not justify the State's fear; you lie, but do not swear 
 falsely. If, e. g., you show some one a kindness, and 
 he is not to know it, but he guesses it and tells you 
 so to your face, you deny; if he insists, you say "hon- 
 estly, no ! " If it came to swearing, then you would 
 refuse; for, from fear of the sacred, you always stop 
 half way. Against the sacred you have no will ()f 
 your own. You lie in moderation, as you are free 
 "in moderation," religious "in moderation" (the 
 clergy are not to " encroach " ; over this point the 
 most vapid of controversies is now being carried on, 
 on the part of the university against the church), mon- 
 archically disposed " in moderation " (you want a 
 monarch limited by the constitution, by a funda- 
 mental law of the State), everything nicely tempered, 
 lukewarm, half God's, half the devil's. 
 
 There was a university where the usage was that 
 every word of honor that must be given to the univer- 
 sity judge was looked upon by the students as null 
 and void. For the students saw in the demanding of
 
 404 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 it nothing but a snare, which they could not escape 
 otherwise than by taking away all its significance. 
 He who at that same university broke his word of 
 honor to one of the fellows was infamous; he who 
 gave it to the university judge derided, in union with 
 these very fellows, the dupe who fancied that a word 
 had the same value among friends and among foes. 
 It was less a correct theory than the constraint of 
 practice that had there taught the students to act so, 
 as, without that means of getting out, they would have 
 been pitilessly driven to treachery against their com- 
 rades. But, as the means approved itself in practice, 
 so it has its theoretical probation too. A word of 
 honor, an oath, is one only for him whom / entitle 
 to receive it; he who forces me to it obtains only a 
 forced, i. e. a hostile word, the word of a foe, whom 
 one has no right to trust; for the foe does not give us 
 the right. 
 
 Aside from this, the courts of the State do not even 
 recognize the inviolability of an oath. For, if I had 
 sworn to one who comes under examination that I 
 would not declare anything against him, the court 
 would demand my declaration in spite of the fact that 
 an oath binds me, and, in case of refusal, would lock 
 me up till I decided to become an oath-breaker. 
 The court "absolves me from my oath"; how mag- 
 nanimous! If any power can absolve me from the 
 oath, I myself am surely the very first power that has 
 a claim to. 
 
 As a curiosity, and to remind us of customary oaths 
 of all sorts, let place be given here to that which 
 Emperor Paul commanded the captured Poles (Kos-
 
 THE OWNER 405 
 
 ciusko, Potocki, Niemcewicz, etc.) to take when he 
 released them : " We not merely swear fidelity and 
 obedience to the emperor, but also further promise to 
 pour out our blood for his glory; we obligate our- 
 selves to discover everything threatening to his person 
 or his empire that we ever learn; we declare finally 
 that, in whatever part of the earth we may be, a single 
 word of the emperor shall suffice to make us leave 
 everything and repair to him at once." 
 
 In one domain the principle of love seems to have 
 been long outsoared by egoism, and to be still in need 
 only of sure consciousness, as it were of victory with a 
 good conscience. This domain is speculation, in its 
 double manifestation as thinking and as trade. One 
 thinks with a will, whatever may come of it; one 
 speculates, however many may suffer under our specu- 
 lative undertakings. But, when it finally becomes 
 serious, when even the last remnant of religiousness, 
 romance, or " humanity " is to be done away, then the 
 pulse of religious conscience beats, and one at least 
 professes humanity. The avaricious speculator throws 
 some coppers into the poor-box and " does good," the 
 bold thinker consoles himself with the fact that he is 
 working for the advancement of the human race and 
 that his devastation "turns to the good" of mankind, 
 or, in another case, that he is " serving the idea " ; 
 mankind, the idea, is to him that something of which 
 he must say, It is more to me than myself. 
 
 To this day thinking and trading have been done 
 for God's sake. Those who for six days were tramp- 
 ling down everything by their selfish aims sacrificed on
 
 406 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the seventh to the Lord; and those who destroyed 
 a hundred " good causes " by their reckless thinking 
 still did this in the service of another " good cause," 
 and had yet to think of another besides themselves 
 to whose good their self-indulgence should turn: of 
 the people, mankind, and the like. But this other 
 thing is a being above them, a higher or supreme 
 being; and therefore I say, they are toiling for God's 
 sake. 
 
 Hence I can also say that the ultimate basis of their 
 actions is love. Not a voluntary love however, not 
 their own, but a tributary love, or the higher being's 
 own (i. e. God's, who himself is love) ; in short, not the 
 egoistic, but the religious; a love that springs from 
 their fancy that they must discharge a tribute of love, 
 i. e. that they must not be " egoists." 
 
 If we want to deliver the world from many kinds of 
 unfreedom, we want this not on its account but on 
 ours ; for, as we are not world-liberators by profession 
 and out of " love," we only want to win it away from 
 others. We want to make it our own ; it is not to be 
 any longer owned as serf by God (the church) nor by 
 the law (State), but to be our own; therefore we seek 
 to " win " it, to " captivate " it, and, by meeting it 
 half-way and " devoting " ourselves to it as to our- 
 selves as soon as it belongs to us, to complete and 
 make superfluous the force that it turns against us. 
 If the world is ours, it no longer attempts any force 
 against us, but only with us. My selfishness has an 
 interest in the liberation of the world, that it may 
 become my property. 
 
 Not isolation or being alone, but society, is man's
 
 THE OWNER 407 
 
 original state. Our existence begins with the most 
 intimate conjunction, as we are already living with 
 our mother before we breathe; when we see the light 
 of the world, we at once lie on a human being's breast 
 again, her love cradles us in the lap, leads us in the 
 go-cart, and chains us to her person with a thousand 
 ties. Society is our state of nature. And this is why, 
 the more we learn to feel ourselves, the connection 
 that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser 
 and the dissolution of the original society more unmis- 
 takable. To have once again for herself the child 
 that once lay under her heart, the mother must fetch 
 it from the street and from the midst of its playmates. 
 The child prefers the intercourse that it enters into 
 with its fellows to the society that it has not entered 
 into, but only been born in. 
 
 But the dissolution of society is intercourse or union. 
 A society does assuredly arise by union too, but only 
 as a fixed idea arises by a thought, to wit, by the 
 vanishing of the energy of the thought (the thinking 
 itself, this restless taking back all thoughts that make 
 themselves fast) from the thought. If a union * has 
 crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coali- 
 tion; j- for coalition is an incessant self-uniting; it has 
 become a unitedness, come to a standstill, degenerated 
 into a fixity; it is dead as a union, it is the corpse of 
 the union or the coalition, i. e. it is society, com- 
 munity. A striking example of this kind is furnished 
 by the party. 
 
 That a society (e. g. the society of the State) di- 
 
 
 * [ Feretnl t [ Verein igung]
 
 408 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 minishes my liberty offends me little. Why, I have to 
 let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers and by 
 every one who is stronger; nay, by every fellow-man; 
 
 and, were I the autocrat of all the R , I yet 
 
 should not enjoy absolute liberty. But ownness I will 
 not have taken from me. And ownness is precisely 
 what every society has designs on, precisely what is to 
 succumb to its power. 
 
 A society which I join does indeed take from me 
 many liberties, but in return it affords me other liber- 
 ties ; neither does it matter if I myself deprive my- 
 self of this and that liberty (e. g. by any contract). 
 On the other hand, I want to hold, jealously to my 
 ownness. Every community has the propensity, 
 stronger or weaker according to the fulness of its 
 power, to become an authority to its members and to 
 set limits for them : it asks, and must ask, for a " sub- 
 ject's limited understanding "; it asks that those who 
 belong to it be subject to it, be its "subjects'"; it exists 
 only by subjection. In this a certain tolerance need 
 by no means be excluded ; on the contrary, the society 
 will welcome improvements, corrections, and blame, so 
 far as such are calculated for its gain: but the blame 
 must be " well-meaning," it may not be " insolent and 
 disrespectful," in other words, one must leave unin- 
 jured, and hold sacred, the substance of the society. 
 The society demands that those who belong to it shall 
 not go beyond it and exalt themselves, but remain 
 " within the bounds of legality," i. e. allow themselves 
 only so much as the society and its law allow them. 
 
 There is a difference whether my liberty or my own 
 ness is limited by a society. If the former only is the
 
 THE OWNER 409 
 
 case, it is a coalition, an agreement, a union ; but, if 
 ruin is threatened to ownness, it is a power of itself, a 
 power above me, a thing unattainable by me, which I 
 can indeed admire, adore, reverence, respect, but can- 
 not subdue and consume, and that for the reason that 
 I am resigned. It exists by my resignation, my self- 
 renunciation, my spiritlessness,* called HUMILITY.! 
 My humility makes its courage, : my submissiveness 
 gives it its dominion. 
 
 But in reference to liberty State and union are sub- 
 ject to no essential difference. The latter can just as 
 little come into existence, or continue in existence, 
 without liberty's being limited in all sorts of ways, as 
 the State is compatible with unmeasured liberty. 
 Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere, for one 
 cannot get rid of everything; one cannot fly like a 
 bird merely because one would like to fly so, for one 
 does not get free from his own weight; one cannot 
 live under water as long as he likes, like a fish, be- 
 cause one cannot do without air and cannot get free 
 from this indispensable necessity; and the like. As 
 religion, and most decidedly Christianity, tormented 
 man with the demand to realize the unnatural and 
 self-contradictory, so it is to be looked upon only as 
 the true logical outcome of that religious overstrain- 
 ing and overwroughtness that finally liberty itself, ab- 
 solute liberty, was exalted into an ideal, and thus the 
 nonsense of the impossible had to come glaringly to 
 the light. The union will assuredly offer a greater 
 measure of liberty, as well as (and especially because 
 
 *[Mnlhlosigkcit] t [Demuth] i[Muth]
 
 410 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 by it one escapes all the coercion peculiar to State and 
 society life) admit of being considered as " a new lib- 
 erty " ; but nevertheless it will still contain enough of 
 unfreedom and involuntariness. For its object is not 
 this liberty (which on the contrary it sacrifices to 
 ownness), but only ownness. Referred to this, the dif- 
 ference between State and union is great enough. 
 The former is an enemy and murderer of ownness, the 
 latter a son and co-worker of it; the former a spirit 
 that would be adored in spirit and in truth, the latter 
 my work, my product; the State is the lord of my 
 spirit, who demands faith and prescribes to me articles 
 of faith, the creed of legality ; it exerts moral influence, 
 dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself 
 in its place as " my true ego, " in short, the State is 
 sacred, and as against me, the individual man, it is the 
 true man, the spirit, the ghost; but the union is my 
 own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual 
 power above my spirit, as little as any association of 
 whatever sort. As I am not willing to be a slave 
 of my maxims, but lay them bare to my continual 
 criticism without any warrant, and admit no bail 
 at all for their persistence, so still less do I obligate 
 myself to the union for my future and pledge my soul 
 to it, as is said to be done with the devil and is really 
 the case with the State and all spiritual authority; but 
 I am and remain more to myself than State, Church, 
 God, and the like; consequently infinitely more than 
 the union too. 
 
 That society which Communism wants to found 
 seems to stand nearest to coalition. For it is to aim 
 at the " welfare of all," oh, yes, of all, cries Weitling
 
 THE OWNER 411 
 
 innumerable times, of all! That does really look as if 
 in it no one needed to take a back seat. But what 
 then will this welfare be? Have all one and the same 
 welfare, are all equally well off with one and the same 
 thing? If that be so, the question is of the " true 
 welfare." Do we not with this come right to the point 
 where religion begins its dominion of violence? 
 Christianity says, Look not on earthly toys, but seek 
 your true welfare, become pious Christians; being 
 Christians is the true welfare. It is the true welfare of 
 " all," because it is the welfare of Man as such (this 
 spook). Now, the welfare of all is surely to be your 
 and my welfare too? But, if you and I do not 
 look upon that welfare as our welfare, will care then 
 be taken for that in which we feel well? On the con- 
 trary, society has decreed a welfare as the " true 
 welfare " ; and, if this welfare were called e. g. " enjoy- 
 ment honestly worked for," but you preferred enjoy- 
 able laziness, enjoyment without work, then society, 
 which cares for the " welfare of all," would wisely 
 avoid caring for that in which you are well off. 
 Communism, in proclaiming the welfare of all, annuls 
 outright the well-being of those who hitherto lived on 
 their income from investments and apparently felt 
 better in that than in the prospect of Weitling's strict 
 hours of labor. Hence the latter asserts that with the 
 welfare of thousands the welfare of millions cannot 
 exist, and the former must give up their special welfare 
 " for the sake of the general welfare." No, let people 
 not be summoned to sacrifice their special welfare for 
 the general, for this Christian admonition will not 
 carry you through; they will better understand the
 
 412 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 opposite admonition, not to let their own welfare be 
 snatched from them by anybody, but to put it on a 
 permanent foundation. Then they are of themselves 
 led to the point that they care best for their welfare 
 if they unite with others for this purpose, i. e. " sacri- 
 fice a part of their liberty," yet not to the welfare 
 of others, but to their own. An appeal to men's 
 self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love 
 ought at last to have lost its seductive plausibility 
 when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has 
 left nothing behind but the misere of to-day. Why 
 then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us 
 better times? why not rather hope for them from 
 usurpation ? Salvation comes no longer from the 
 giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the taker, 
 the appropriator (usurper), the owner. Communism, 
 and, consciously or unconsciously, egoism-reviling 
 humanism, still count on love. 
 
 If community is once a need of man, and he finds 
 himself furthered by it in his aims, then very soon, 
 because it has become his principle, it prescribes to 
 him its laws too, the laws of society. The principle 
 of men exalts itself into a sovereign power over them, 
 becomes their supreme essence, their God, and, as 
 such, lawgiver. Communism gives this principle the 
 strictest effect, and Christianity is the religion of so- 
 ciety, for, as Feuerbach rightly says although he does 
 not mean it rightly, love is the essence of man; i. e. 
 the essence of society or of societary (Communistic) 
 man, All religion is a cult of society, this principle 
 by which societary (cultivated) man is dominated; 
 neither is any god an ego's exclusive god, but always a
 
 THE OWNER 413 
 
 society's or community's, be it of the society "family' 7 
 (Lar, Penates) or of a "people" ("national god") or 
 of " all men " ("he is a Father of all men "). 
 
 Consequently one has a prospect of extirpating re- 
 ligion down to the ground only when one antiquates 
 society and everything that flows from this principle. 
 But it is precisely in Communism that this principle 
 seeks to culminate, as in it everything is to become 
 common for the establishment of " equality." If this 
 "equality" is won, "liberty" too is not lacking. But 
 whose liberty? Society's! Society is then all in all, 
 and men are only " for each other." It would be 
 the glory of the love-State. 
 
 But I would rather be referred to men's selfishness 
 than to their " kindnesses,"* their mercy, pity, etc. 
 The former demands reciprocity (as thou to me, so I to 
 thee), does nothing "gratis," and may be won and 
 bought. But with what shall I obtain the kindness? 
 It is a matter of chance whether I am at the time hav- 
 ing to do with a " loving " person. The affectionate 
 one's service can be had only by begging, be it by 
 my lamentable appearance, by my need of help, my 
 misery, my suffering. What can I offer him for his 
 assistance? Nothing! I must accept it as a pres- 
 ent. Love is unpayable, or rather, love can assuredly 
 be paid for, but only by counter-love (" One good turn 
 deserves another "). What paltriness and beggarlinesS 
 does it not take to accept gifts year in and year out 
 without service in return, as they are regularly col- 
 lected e. g. from the poor day-laborer? What can 
 
 * [Literally, " love-sen-ices."]
 
 414 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the receiver do for him and his donated pennies, in 
 which his wealth consists? The day-laborer would 
 really have more enjoyment if the receiver with his 
 laws, his institutions, etc., all of which the day-laborer 
 has to pay for though, did not exist at all. And 
 yet, with it all, the poor wight loves his master. 
 
 No, community, as the " goal " of history hitherto, 
 is impossible. Let us rather renounce every hypocrisy 
 of community, and recognize that, if we are equal as 
 men, we are not equal for the very reason that we are 
 not men. We are equal only in thoughts, only when 
 " we " are thought, not as we really and bodily are. 
 I am ego, and you are ego: but I am not this thought- 
 of ego; this ego in which we are all equal is only my 
 thought. I am man, and you are man: but " man " 
 is only a thought, a generality; neither you nor I 
 are speakable, we are unutterable, because only 
 thoughts are speakable and consist in speaking. 
 
 Let us therefore not aspire to community, but to 
 one-sidedness. Let us not seek the most comprehen- 
 sive commune, "human society," but let us seek in 
 others only means and organs which we may use as 
 our property! As we do not see our equals in the 
 tree, the beast, so the presupposition that others are 
 our equals springs from a hypocrisy. No one is my 
 equal, but I regard him, equally with all other beings, 
 as my property. In opposition to this I am told that 
 I should be a man among "fellow-men " (" Juden- 
 frage" p. 60); I should "respect" the fellow-man 
 in them. For me no one is a person to be resf 
 not even the fellow-man, but solely, like other being 
 an object in which I take an interest or else do not,
 
 THE OWNER 415 
 
 an interesting or uninteresting object, a usable or 
 unusable person. 
 
 And, if I can use him, I doubtless come to an 
 understanding and make myself at one with him, in 
 order, by the agreement, to strengthen my power, and 
 by combined force to accomplish more than individual 
 force could effect. In this combination I see nothing 
 whatever but a multiplication of my force, and I re- 
 tain it only so long as it is my multiplied force. But 
 thus it is a union. 
 
 Neither a natural ligature nor a spiritual one holds 
 the union together, and it is not a natural, not a 
 spiritual league. It is not brought about by one 
 blood, not by one faith (spirit). In a natural league 
 like a family, a tribe, a nation, yes, mankind the in- 
 dividuals have only the value of specimens of the same 
 species or genus; in a spiritual league like a com- 
 mune, a church the individual signifies only a mem- 
 ber of the same spirit; what you are in both cases as a 
 unique person must be suppressed. Only in the 
 union can you assert yourself as unique, because the 
 union does not possess you, but you possess it or make 
 it of use to you. 
 
 Property is recognized in the union, and only in the 
 union, because one no longer holds what is his as a 
 fief from any being. The Communists are only con- 
 sistently carrying further what had already been long 
 present during religious evolution, and especially in 
 the State ; to wit, propertylessness, i. e. the feudal 
 system. 
 
 The State exerts itself to tame the desirous man ; in 
 other words, it seeks to direct his desire to it alone,
 
 416 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 and to content that desire with what it offers. To sate 
 the desire for the desirous man's sake does not come 
 into its mind: on the contrary, it stigmatizes as an 
 "egoistic man" the man who breathes out unbridled 
 desire, and the " egoistic man " is its enemy. He is 
 this for it because the capacity to agree with him is 
 wanting to the State; the egoist is precisely what it 
 cannot " comprehend." Since the State (as nothing 
 else is possible) has to do only for itself, it does not 
 take care for my needs, but takes care only of how it 
 shall make away with me, i. e. make out of me another 
 ego, a good citizen. It takes measures for the " im- 
 provement of morals." And with what does it win in- 
 dividuals for itself ? With itself, i. e. with what is the 
 State's, with State property. It will be unremittingly 
 active in making all participants in its "goods," pro- 
 viding all with the "good things of culture": it pre- 
 sents them its education, opens to them the access to 
 its institutions of culture, capacitates them to come to 
 property (i. e. to a fief) in the way of industry, etc. 
 For all these Jiefs it demands only the just rent of con- 
 tinual thanks. But the " unthankful " forget to 'pay 
 these thanks. Now, neither can "society" do essen- 
 tially otherwise than the State. 
 
 You bring into a union your whole power, your 
 competence, and make yourself count ; in a society you 
 are employed, with your working power; in the former 
 you live egoistically, in the latter humanly, i. e. re- 
 ligiously, as a " member in the body of this Lord"; 
 to a society you owe what you have, and are in duty 
 bound to it, are possessed by "social duties"; a 
 union you utilize, and give it up undutifully and un-
 
 THE OWNER 417 
 
 faithfully when you see no way to use it further. If a 
 society is more than you, then it is more to you than 
 yourself; a union is only your instrument, or the 
 sword with which you sharpen and increase your 
 natural force; the union exists for you and through 
 you, the society conversely lays claim to you for itself 
 and exists even without you; in short, the society is 
 sacred, the union your own; the society consumes you, 
 you consume the union. 
 
 Nevertheless people will not be backward with the 
 objection that the agreement which has been concluded 
 may again become burdensome to us and limit our 
 freedom ; they will say, we too would at last come to 
 this, that " every one must sacrifice a part of his free- 
 dom for the sake of the generality." But the sacrifice 
 would not be made for the "generality's" sake a bit, 
 as little as I concluded the agreement for the " gen- 
 erality's" or even, for any other man's sake; rather I 
 came into it only for the sake of my own benefit, from 
 selfishness.* But, as regards the sacrificing, surely 
 I " sacrifice " only that which does not stand in my 
 power, i. e. I " sacrifice " nothing at all. 
 
 To come back to property, the lord is proprietor. 
 Choose then whether you want to be lord, or whether 
 society shall be ! On this depends whether you are to 
 be an owner or a ragamuffin ! The egoist is owner, 
 the Socialist a ragamuffin. But ragamuffinism or 
 propertylessness is the sense of feudalism, of the feudal 
 system, which since the last century has only changed 
 its overlord, putting " Man " in the place of God, and 
 
 * [Literally, "own-benefit."]
 
 418 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 accepting as a fief from Man what had before been a 
 fief from the grace of God. That the ragamuffinism 
 of Communism is carried out by the humane principle 
 into the absolute or most ragamuffinly ragamuffinism 
 has been shown above; but at the same time also, how 
 ragamuffinism can only thus swing around into own- 
 ness. The old feudal system was so thoroughly 
 trampled into the ground in the Revolution that 
 since then all reactionary craft has remained fruitless, 
 and will always remain fruitless, because the dead is 
 dead; but the resurrection too had to prove itself a 
 truth in Christian history, and has so proved itself: 
 for in another world feudalism is risen again with a 
 glorified body, the new feudalism under the suzer- 
 ainty of " Man." 
 
 Christianity is not annihilated, but the faithful are 
 right in having hitherto trustfully assumed of every 
 combat against it that this could serve only for the 
 purgation and confirmation of Christianity ; for it has 
 really only been glorified, and " Christianity exposed " 
 is the human Christianity. We are still living 
 entirely in the Christian age, and the very ones who 
 feel worst about it are the most zealously contributing 
 to " complete " it. The more human, the dearer 
 has feudalism become to us; for we the less believe 
 that it still is feudalism, we take it the more con- 
 fidently for ownness and think we have found what is 
 " most absolutely our own " when we discover " the 
 human." 
 
 Liberalism wants to give me what is mine, but it 
 thinks to procure it for me not under the title of 
 mine, but under that of the " human." As if it were
 
 THE OWNER 419 
 
 attainable under this mask! The rights of man, the 
 precious work of the Revolution, have the meaning 
 that the Man in me entitles * me to this and that; I 
 as individual, i. e. as this man, am not entitled, but 
 Man has the right and entitles me. Hence as man I 
 may well be entitled; but, as I am more than man, to 
 wit, a special man, it may be refused to this very me, 
 the special one. If on the other hand you insist on 
 the value of your gifts, keep up their price, do not 
 let yourselves be forced to sell out below price, do not 
 let yourselves be talked into the idea that your ware is 
 not worth its price, do not make yourselves ridiculous 
 by a " ridiculous price," but imitate the brave man 
 who says, I will sell my life (property) dear, the 
 enemy shall not have it at a cheap bargain ; then you 
 have recognized the reverse of Communism as the cor- 
 rect thing, and the word then is not " Give up your 
 property! " but " Get the value out of your property! " 
 
 Over the portal of our time stands not that " Know 
 thyself" of Apollo, but a " Get the value out of 
 thyself!" 
 
 Proudhon calls property "robbery" (le vol}. 
 But alien property and he is talking of this alone 
 is not less existent by renunciation, cession, and hu- 
 mility; it is a present. Why so sentimentally call 
 for compassion as a poor victim of robbery, when one 
 is just a foolish, cowardly giver of presents? Why 
 here again put the fault on others as if they were 
 robbing us, while we ourselves do bear the fault in 
 leaving the others unrobbed ? The poor are to 
 
 * [Literally, furnishes me with a right.]
 
 420 
 
 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 blame for there being rich men. 
 
 Universally, no one grows indignant at his, but at 
 alien property. They do not in truth attack property 
 but the alienation of property. They want to be able 
 to call more, not less, theirs; they want to call every- 
 thing theirs. They are fighting, therefore, against 
 alienness, or, to form a word similar to property, 
 against alienty. And how do they help themselves 
 therein ? Instead of transforming the alien into 
 own, they play impartial and ask only that all prop- 
 erty be left to a third party (e. g. human society). 
 They revendicate the alien not in their own name but 
 in a third party's. Now the " egoistic " coloring is 
 wiped off, and everything is so clean and human! 
 
 Property lessness or ragamuffinism, this then is the 
 "essence of Christianity," as it is the essence of all 
 religiousness (i. e. godliness, morality, humanity), and 
 only announced itself most clearly, and, as glad tid- 
 ings, became a gospel capable of development, in the 
 " absolute religion." We have before us the most 
 striking development in the present fight against 
 property, a fight which is to bring " Man" to victory 
 and make propertylessness complete: victorious hu- 
 manity is the victory of Christianity. But the 
 " Christianity exposed " thus is feudalism completed, 
 the most all-embracing feudal system, i. e. perfect 
 ragamuffinism. 
 
 Once more then, doubtless, a " revolution " against 
 the feudal system? 
 
 Revolution and insurrection must not be looked 
 upon as synonymous. The former consists in an o\ 
 turning of conditions, of the established condition or
 
 THE OWNER 421 
 
 status, the State or society, and is accordingly a politi- 
 cal or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoid- 
 able consequence a transformation of circumstances, 
 yet does not start from it but from men's discontent 
 with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising 
 of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the 
 arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution 
 aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no 
 longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange 
 ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on " institu- 
 tions." It is not a fight against the established, 
 since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; 
 it is only a working forth of me out of the established. 
 If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into 
 decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an 
 established order but my elevation above it, my pur- 
 pose and deed are not a political or social but (as di- 
 rected toward myself and my ownness alone) an egois- 
 tic purpose and deed. 
 
 The revolution commands one to make arrange- 
 ments, the insurrection * demands that he rise or ex- 
 alt himself.^ What constitution was to be chosen, 
 this question busied the revolutionary heads, and the 
 whole political period foams with constitutional fights 
 and constitutional questions, as the social talents too 
 were uncommonly inventive in societary arrangement? 
 (phalansteries and the like). The insurgent $ strives 
 to become constitutionless. 
 
 * [Empoerung] t [sich auf- oder emporzurichlen ] 
 
 t To secure myself against a criminal charge I superfluously make the 
 express remark that I choose the word " insurrection " on account of its 
 etymological sense, and therefore am not using it in the limited sense which 
 is disallowed by the penal code.
 
 422 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 While, to get greater clearness, I am thinking up a 
 comparison, the founding of Christianity comes unex- 
 pectedly into my mind. On the liberal side it is 
 noted as a bad point in the first Christians that they 
 preached obedience to the established heathen civil 
 order, enjoined recognition of the heathen authorities, 
 and confidently delivered a command, " Give to the 
 emperor that which is the emperor's." Yet how much 
 disturbance arose at the same time against the Roman 
 supremacy, how mutinous did the Jews and even the 
 Romans show themselves against their own temporal 
 government! in short, how popular was "political 
 discontent"! Those Christians would hear nothing 
 of it; would not side with the " liberal tendencies." 
 The time was politically so agitated that, as is said in 
 the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the 
 founder of Christianity more successfully than if they 
 arraigned him for " political intrigue," and yet the 
 same gospels report that he was precisely the one who 
 took least part in these political doings. But why 
 was he not a revolutionist, not a demagogue, as the 
 Jews would gladly have seen him? why was he not a 
 liberal? Because he expected no salvation from a 
 change of conditions, and this whole business was in- 
 different to him. He was not a revolutionist like e. g. 
 Caesar, but an insurgent; not a State-overturner, 
 but one who straightened himself up. That was 
 why it was for him only a matter of " Be ye wise 
 as serpents," which expresses the same sense as, in the 
 special case, that " Give to the emperor that which is 
 the emperor's " ; for he was not carrying on any liberal 
 or political fight against the established authorities,
 
 THE OWNER 423 
 
 but wanted to walk his own way, untroubled about, 
 and undisturbed by, these authorities. Not less indif- 
 ferent to him than the government were its enemies, 
 for neither understood what he wanted, and he had 
 only to keep them off from him with the wisdom of 
 the serpent. But, even though not a ringleader of 
 popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revolutionist, he 
 (and every one of the ancient Christians) was so much 
 the more an insurgent, who lifted himself above every- 
 thing that seemed sublime to the government and its 
 opponents, and absolved himself from everything 
 that they remained bound to, and who at the same 
 time cut off the sources of life of the whole heathen 
 world, with which the established State must wither 
 away as a matter of course ; precisely because he put 
 from him the upsetting of the established, he was its 
 deadly enemy and real annihilator ; for he walled it 
 in, confidently and recklessly carrying up the building 
 of his temple over it, without heeding the pains of ijhe 
 immured. 
 
 Now, as it happened to the Jbethen order of the 
 world, will the Christian order fare likewise? A 
 revolution certainly does not bring on the end if an 
 insurrection is not consummated first! 
 
 My intercourse with the world, what does it aim at? 
 I want to have the enjoyment of it, therefore it must 
 be my property, and therefore I want to win it. I do 
 not want the liberty of men, nor their equality; I 
 want only my power over them, I want to make them 
 my property, i. e. material for enjoyment. And, if I 
 do not succeed in that, well, then I call even the 
 power over life and death, which Church and State
 
 424 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 reserved to themselves, mine. Brand that officer's 
 widow who, in the flight in Russia, after her leg has 
 been shot away, takes the garter from it, strangles h 
 child therewith, and then bleeds to death alongside th 
 corpse, brand the memory of the infanticide. 
 Who knows, if this child had remained alive, how 
 much it might have " been of use to the world " ! 
 The mother murdered it because she wanted to die 
 satisfied and at rest. Perhaps this case still appeals t 
 your sentimentality, and you do not know how to 
 read put of it anything further. Be it so; I on my 
 part use it as an example for this, that my satisfactior 
 decides about my relation to men, and that I do not 
 renounce, from any access of humility, even the powei 
 over life and death. 
 
 As regards "social duties " in general, another doe, 
 not give me my position toward others, therefore 
 neither God nor humanity prescribes to me my rela- 
 tion to men, but I give myself this position. This is 
 more strikingly said thus: I have no duty to others, 
 as I have a duty even to myself (e. g. that of self- 
 preservation, and therefore not suicide) only so long 
 as I distinguish myself from myself (my immortal 
 soul from my earthly existence, etc.). 
 
 I no longer humble myself before any power, and I 
 recognize that all powers are only my power, which I 
 have to subject at once when they threaten to become 
 a power against or above me; each of them must be 
 only one of my means to carry my point, as a hound 
 is our power against game, but is killed by us if it 
 should fall upon us ourselves. All powers that domi- 
 nate me I then reduce to serving me. The idols exisl
 
 THE OWNER 425 
 
 hrough me; I need only refrain from creating them 
 mew, then they exist no longer: "higher powers" 
 xist only through my exalting them and abasing 
 nyself. 
 
 Consequently my relation to the world is this: I no 
 onger do anything for it " for God's sake," I do noth- 
 ng " for man's sake," but what I do I do " for my 
 >ake." Thus alone does the world satisfy me, while it 
 s characteristic of the religious standpoint, in which 
 
 include the moral and humane also, that from it 
 everything remains a. pious wish (pium desiderium) , 
 . e. an other-world matter, something unattained." 
 fhus the general salvation of men, the moral world of 
 
 general love, eternal peace, the cessation of egoism, 
 itc. " Nothing in this world is perfect." With this 
 niserable phrase the good part from it, and take 
 light into their closet to God, or into their proud 
 
 self-consciousness." But we remain in this " imper- 
 ect " world, because even so we can use it for our 
 elf-enjoyment. 
 
 My intercourse with the world consists in my enjoy- 
 ng it, and so consuming it for my self-enjoyment. 
 Intercourse is the etijoyinent oftlie world, and belongs 
 o my self-enjoyment. 
 
 III. MY SELF-ENJOYMENT 
 
 We stand at the boundary of a period. The world 
 hitherto took thought for nothing but the gain of life, 
 took care for life. For whether all activity is put 
 on the stretch for the life of this world or of the other, 
 for the temporal or for the eternal, whether one hank-
 
 426 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ers for " daily bread " (" Give us our daily bread ") I 
 or for " holy bread " (" the true bread from heaven " ; 
 "the bread of God, that comes from heaven and gives 
 life to the world"; "the bread of life," John 6), 
 whether one takes care for " dear life " or for " life to 
 eternity," this does not change the object of the 
 strain and care, which in the one case as in the other 
 shows itself to be life. Do the modern tendencies an- 
 nounce themselves otherwise? People now want no- 
 body to be embarrassed for the most indispensable 
 necessaries of life, but want every one to feel secure as 
 to these; and on 'the other hand they teach that man 
 has this life to attend to and the real world to adapt 
 himself to, without vain care for another. 
 
 Let us take up the same thing from another side. ' 
 When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this so- 
 licitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only con- 
 cern is for life, and he thinks " if I only have my dear 
 life," he does not apply his full strength to using, 
 i. e. enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In 
 using it up, like the candle, which one uses in burn- 
 ing it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the 
 living one, in consuming it and himself. Enjoyment 
 of life is using life up. 
 
 Now we are in search of the enjoyment of life ! 
 And what did the religious world do? It went in 
 search of life. " Wherein consists the true life, the 
 blessed life, etc.? How is it to be attained? What 
 must man do and become in order to become a truly 
 living man? How does he fulfil this calling?" These 
 and similar questions indicate that the askers were 
 still seeking for themselves, to wit, themselves in the
 
 THE OWNER 427 
 
 true sense, in the sense of true living. " What I am is 
 foam and shadow; what I shall be is my true self." 
 To chase after this self, to produce it, to realize it, con- 
 stitutes the hard task of mortals, who die only to rise 
 again, live only to die, live only to find the true life. 
 
 Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seek- 
 ing for myself, am I really my property; I have my- 
 self, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On the other 
 hand, I can never take comfort in myself so long as I 
 think that I have still to find my true self and that it 
 must come to this, that not I but Christ or some other 
 spiritual, i. e. ghostly, self (e. g. the true man, the es- 
 sence of man, and the like) lives in me. 
 
 A vast interval separates the two views. In the old 
 I go toward myself, in the new I start from myself; in 
 the former I long for myself, in the latter I have my- 
 self and do with myself as one does with any other 
 property, I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no 
 longer afraid for my life, but " squander " it. 
 
 Henceforth the question runs, not how one can 
 acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it; or, 
 not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but 
 how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out. 
 
 What else should the ideal be but the sought-for, 
 ever-distant self ? One seeks for himself, consequently 
 one does not yet have himself; one aspires toward 
 what one ought to be, consequently one is not it. 
 One lives in longing and has lived thousands of years 
 in it, in hope. Living is quite another thing in 
 enjoyment ! 
 
 Does this perchance apply only to the so-called 
 pious? No, it applies to all who belong to the de-
 
 428 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 parting period of history, even to its men of pleasure. 
 For them too the work-days were followed by a Sun- 
 day, and the rush of the world by the dream of a 
 better world, of a general happiness of humanity ; in 
 short, by an ideal. But philosophers especially are 
 contrasted with the pious. Now, have they been 
 thinking of anything else than the ideal, been planning 
 for anything else than the absolute self ? Longing 
 and hope everywhere, and nothing but these. For me, 
 call it romanticism. 
 
 If the enjoyment of life is to triumph over the long- 
 ing for life or hope of life, it must vanquish this in 
 its double significance, which Schiller introduces in his 
 "Ideal and Life"; it must crush spiritual arid secular 
 poverty, exterminate the ideal and the want of daily 
 bread. He who must expend his life to prolong life 
 cannot enjoy it, and he who is still seeking for his life 
 does not have it and can as little enjoy it: both are 
 poor, but " blessed are the poor." 
 
 Those who are hungering for the true life have no 
 power over their present life, but must apply it for the 
 purpose of thereby gaining that true life, and must 
 sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and this task. 
 If in the case of those devotees who hope for a life in 
 the other world, and look upon that in this world as 
 merely a preparation for it, the tributariness of their 
 earthly existence, which they put solely into the service 
 of the hoped-for heavenly existence, is pretty distinctly 
 apparent; one would yet go far wrong if one wanted 
 to consider the most rationalistic and enlightened as 
 less self-sacrificing. Oh, there is to be found in the 
 " true life " a much more comprehensive significance
 
 THE OWNER 429 
 
 than the " heavenly " is competent to express. Now, 
 is not to introduce the liberal concept of it at once 
 the " human" and "truly human " life the true one? 
 And is every one already leading this truly human life 
 from the start, or must he first raise himself to it with 
 hard toil? Does he already have it as his present life, 
 or must he struggle for it as his future life, which will 
 become his part only when he "is no longer tainted 
 with any egoism "? In this view life exists only to 
 gain life, and one lives only to make the essence of 
 man alive in oneself, one lives for the sake of this es- 
 sence. One has his life only in order to procure by 
 means of it the " true" life cleansed of all egoism. 
 Hence one is afraid to make any use he likes of his 
 life: it is to serve only for the " right use." 
 
 In short, one has a calling' in life, a task in life; 
 one has something to realize and produce by his life, a 
 something for which our life is only means and imple- 
 ment, a something that is worth more than this life, a 
 something to which one owes his life. One has a God 
 who asks a living sacrifice. Only the rudeness of hu- 
 man sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice 
 itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall 
 sacrifices to justice, and we " poor sinners " slay our 
 own selves as sacrifices for " the human essence," the 
 " idea of mankind," "humanity," and whatever the 
 idols or gods are called besides. 
 
 But, because we owe our life to that something, 
 therefore this is the next point we have no right to 
 take it from us. 
 
 The conservative tendency of Christianity does not 
 permit thinking of death otherwise than with the pur-
 
 430 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 pose to take its sting from it and live on and pre- 
 serve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything 
 happen and come upon him if he the arch- Jew can 
 only haggle and smuggle himself into heaven ; he 
 must not kill himself, he must only preserve himself 
 and work at the " preparation of a future abode." 
 Conservatism or " conquest of death" lies at his heart; 
 " the last enemy that is abolished is death."* "Christ 
 has taken the power from death and brought life and 
 imperishable being to light by the gospel."f "Im- 
 perishableness," stability. -*,-- 
 
 The moral man wants the good, the right; and, if 
 he takes to the means that lead to this goal, really 
 lead to it, then these means are not his means, but 
 those of the good, right, etc., itself. These means are 
 never immoral, because the good end itself mediates it- 
 self through them : the end sanctifies the means. 
 They call this maxim Jesuitical, but it is "moral" 
 through and through. The moral man acts in the 
 service of an end or an idea: he makes himself the 
 tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts 
 it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To 
 await death is what the moral commandment postu- 
 lates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and 
 bad : suicide finds no excuse before the judgment-seat 
 of morality. If the religious man forbids it because 
 " you have not given yourself life, but God, who along 
 can also take it from you again " (as if, even talking . 
 in this conception, God did not take it from me just 
 as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the 
 
 * 1 Cor, 15. ?, t*Tim, J. \\
 
 THE OWNER 431 
 
 roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me ; for he would have 
 aroused the resolution of death in me too! ), the moral 
 man forbids it because I owe my life to the father- 
 land, etc., " because I do not know whether I may not 
 yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me 
 good loses a tool, as God does an instrument. If I am 
 immoral, the good is served in my amendment ; if I am 
 " ungodly," God has joy in my penitence. Suicide, 
 therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one 
 whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he 
 acts in forgetfulness of God ; but, if the suicide's 
 standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of 
 duty, immorally. People worried themselves much 
 with the question whether Emilia Galotti's death can 
 be justified before morality (they take it as if it were 
 suicide, which it is too in substance). That she is so 
 infatuated with chastity, this moral good, as to yield 
 up even her life for it is certainly moral; but, again, 
 that she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral.* 
 
 * [See the next to the last scene of the tragedy : 
 
 ODOARDO. Under the pretext of a judicial investigation he tears you out 
 of our arms and takes you to Grimaldi. ... 
 
 KMII.IA. Give me that dagger, father, me ! ... 
 
 ODOARDO. No, no ! Reflect You too have only one life to lose. 
 
 KMI.I IA. Ami only one innocence ! 
 
 ODOARDO. Which is above the reach of any violence. 
 
 KMII.IA. But not above the reach of any seduction. Violence ! violence '. 
 who cannot defy violence? What is called violence is nothing : seduction 
 is the true violence. I have blood, father; blood as youthful and warm as 
 anybody's. My senses are senses. I can warrant nothing, I am sure of 
 nothing. I know Grimaldi's house. It is the house of pleasure. An hour 
 there, under my mother's eyes and there arose in my soul so much tumult 
 as Uie strictest exercises of religion could hardly quiet in weeks. Religion ! 
 And what rel'gion ? To escape nothing worse, thousands sprang into the 
 water and are saints. Give me that dagger, father, give it to me. , . . 
 
 KMII.IA. Once indeed there was a father who, to save his daughter from 
 shame, drove into her heart whatever steel he could quickest find gave life 
 t;> her for the second time. But all such deeds arc of th.e past ', Of such 
 fathers there are no more ! 
 
 ODOARDO, Yes, daughter, yes ', (Stabs her.) ]
 
 4-32 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Such contradictions form the tragic conflict universally 
 in the moral drama; and one must think and feel 
 morally to be able to take an interest in it. 
 
 What holds good of piety and morality will neces- 
 sarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his 
 life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only 
 when I am under obligation to no being is the main- 
 taining of life my affair. " A leap from this bridge 
 makes me free ! " 
 
 But, if we owe the maintaining of our life to that 
 being that we are to make alive in ourselves, it is not 
 less our duty not to lead this life according to our 
 pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that being. 
 All my feeling, thinking, and willing, all my doing 
 and designing, belongs to him. 
 
 What is in conformity to that being is to be in- 
 ferred from his concept; and how differently has this 
 concept been conceived! or how differently has that 
 being been imagined! What demands the Supreme 
 Being makes on the Mohammedan; what different ones 
 the Christian, again, thinks he hears from him; how 
 divergent, therefore, must the shaping of the lives of 
 the two turn out! Only this do all hold fast, that the 
 Supreme Being is io judge * our life. 
 
 But the pious who have their judge in God, and in 
 his word a book of directions for their life, I every- 
 where pass by only reminiscently, because they be- 
 long to a period of development that has been lived 
 through, and as petrifactions they may remain in 
 their fixed place right along; in our time it is no 
 
 *[Or, "regulate" (richten)]
 
 THE OWNER 433 
 
 longer the pious, but the liberals, who have the floor, 
 and piety itself cannot keep from reddening its pale 
 face with liberal coloring. But the liberals do not 
 adore their judge in God, and do not unfold their life 
 by the directions of the divine word, but regulate * 
 themselves by man: they want to be not "divine" but 
 " human," and to live so. 
 
 Man is the liberal's supreme being, man the judge 
 of his life, humanity his directions, or catechism. 
 God is spirit, but man is the " most perfect spirit," the 
 final result of the long chase after the spirit or of the 
 " searching in the depths of the Godhead," i. e. in the 
 depths of the spirit: 
 
 Every one of your traits is to be human ; you your- 
 self are to be so from top to toe, in the inward as in 
 the outward; for humanity is your calling. 
 
 Calling destiny task ! 
 
 What one can become he does become. A born 
 poet may well be hindered by the disfavor of circum- 
 stances from standing on the high level of his time, 
 and, after the great studies that are indispensable for 
 this, producing consummate works of art ; but he will 
 make poetry, be he a plowman or so lucky as to live 
 at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make 
 music, no matter whether on all instruments or only 
 on an oaten pipe. A born philosophical head can 
 give proof of itself as university philosopher or as vil- 
 lage philosopher. Finally, a born dolt, who, as is very 
 well compatible with this, may at the same time be a 
 sly-boots, will (as probably every one who has visited 
 
 * Irichten]
 
 434 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 schools is in a position to exemplify to himself by 
 many instances of fellow-scholars) always remain a 
 blockhead, let him have been drilled and trained into 
 the chief of a bureau, or let him serve that same chief 
 as bootblack. Nay, the born shallow-pates indisput- 
 ably form the most numerous class of men. And why, 
 indeed, should not the same distinctions show them- 
 selves in the human species that are unmistakable in 
 every species of beasts? The more gifted and the less 
 gifted are to be found everywhere. 
 
 Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one could 
 not get ideas into them. Hence people usually con- 
 sider all men capable of having religion. In a cer- 
 tain degree they may be trained to other ideas too, 
 e. g: to some musical intelligence, even some phil- 
 osophy, etc. At this point then the priesthood of 
 religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc., takes 
 its start, and the Communists, e. g.. want to make 
 everything accessible to all by their " public school." 
 There is heard a common assertion that this " great 
 mass " cannot get along without religion ; the Com- 
 munists broaden it into the proposition that not only 
 the " great mass," but absolutely all, are called to 
 everything. 
 
 Not enough that the great mass has been trained to 
 religion, now it is actually to have to occupy itself 
 with " everything human." Training is growing 
 ever more general and more comprehensive. 
 
 You poor beings who could live so happily if you 
 might skip according to your mind, you are to dance 
 to the pipe of schoolmasters and bear-leaders, in ord 
 to perform tricks that you yourselves would never use 
 
 i 
 
 der 
 ase
 
 THE OWNER 43A 
 
 yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the 
 traces at last against being always taken otherwise 
 than you want to give yourselves. No, you mechani- 
 cally recite to yourselves the question that is recited to 
 you: " What am I called to? What ought I to do?" 
 You need only ask thus, to have yourselves told what 
 you ought to do and ordered to do it, to have your 
 willing marked out for you, or else to order yourselves 
 and impose it on yourselves according to the spirit's 
 prescription. Then in reference to the will the word 
 is, I will to do what I ought. 
 
 A man is " called " to nothing, and has no " call- 
 ing," no " destiny," as little as a plant or a beast has 
 a "calling." The flower does not follow the calling 
 to complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy 
 and consume the world as well as it can, I. e. it sucks 
 in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air of 
 the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and 
 lodge. The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its 
 forces as much as is practicable; it catches beetles and 
 sings to its heart's delight. But the forces of the 
 flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those 
 of a man, and a man who applies his forces will affect 
 the world much more powerfully than flower and 
 beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that 
 manifest themselves where they are because their being 
 consists solely in their manifestation, and are as little 
 able to abide inactive as life, which, if it " stood still " 
 only a second, would no longer be life. Now, one 
 might call out to the man, " use your force." Yet to 
 this imperative would be given the meaning that it 
 was man's task to use his force. It is not so. Rather,
 
 436 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 each one really uses his force without first looking 
 upon this as his calling: at all times every one uses as 
 much force as he possesses. One does say of a beaten 
 man that he ought to have exerted his force more; 
 but one forgets that, if in the moment of succumbing 
 he had had the force to exert his forces (e. g. bodily 
 forces), he would not have failed to do it: even if it 
 was only the discouragement of a minute, this was yet 
 a destitution of force, a minute long. Forces may 
 assuredly be sharpened and redoubled, especially by 
 hostile resistance or friendly assistance; but where one 
 misses their application one may be sure of their ab- 
 sence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but 
 without the blow none comes out; in like manner a 
 man too needs " impact." 
 
 Now, for this reason that forces always of themselves 
 show themselves operative, the command to use them 
 would be superfluous and senseless. To use his forces 
 is not man's calling- and task, but is his act, real and 
 extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for 
 manifestation of force. 
 
 Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this 
 nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for 
 the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live 
 up to my destiny, but I am a " true man " from the 
 start. My first babble is the token of the life of a 
 " true man," the struggles of my life are the outpour- 
 ings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation 
 of the force of the "man." 
 
 The true man does not lie in the future, an object 
 of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. 
 Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and suffering. 

 
 THE OWNER 437 
 
 a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in 
 sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man. 
 
 But, if I am Man, and have really found in myself 
 him whom religious humanity designated as the dis- 
 tant goal, then everything " truly human " is also my 
 own. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity be- 
 longs to me. That freedom of trade, e. g., which hu- 
 manity has yet to attain, and which, like an en- , 
 chanting dream, people remove to humanity's golden 
 future, I take by anticipation as my property, andy 
 carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. 
 There may indeed be but few smugglers who have 
 sufficient understanding to thus account to themselves 
 for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces 
 their consciousness. Above I have shown the same 
 thing about freedom of the press. 
 
 Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to 
 myself what wants to withdraw from me; but above all 
 I always bring myself back when I have slipped away 
 from myself to any tributariness. But this too is not 
 my calling, but my natural act. 
 
 Enough, there is a mighty difference whether I 
 make myself the starting-point or the goal. As the 
 latter I do not have myself, am consequently still 
 alien to myself, am my essence, my " true essence," 
 and this " true essence," alien to me, will mock me as 
 a spook of a thousand different names. Because I am 
 not yet I, another (like God, the true man, the truly 
 pious man, the rational man, the freeman, etc.) is I, 
 my ego. 
 
 Still far from myself, I separate myself into two 
 halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be ful-
 
 438 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 filled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be 
 brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. 
 The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, 
 the spirit. Then it is said, " The spirit is man's 
 proper essence,"" or, " man exists as man only spiritu- 
 ally." Now there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, 
 as if one would then have bagged himself; and so, in 
 chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom 
 he is. 
 
 And, as one stormily pursues his own self, the 
 never-attained, so one also despises shrewd people's 
 rule to take men as they are, and prefers to take them 
 as they should be; and, for this reason, hounds every 
 one on after his should-be self and " endeavors to make 
 all into equally entitled, equally respectable, equally 
 moral or rational men."* 
 
 Yes, " if men were what they should be, could be, if 
 all men were rational, all loved each other as broth- 
 ers," then it would be a paradisiacal life.f All right, 
 men are as they should be, can be. What should 
 they be? Surely not more than they can be! And 
 what can they be? Not more, again, than they can, 
 i. e. than they have the competence, the force, to be. 
 But this they really are, because what they are not 
 they are incapable of being; for to be capable means 
 really to be. One is not capable for anything that 
 one really is not; one is not capable of anything that 
 one does not really do. Could a man blinded by 
 cataract see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataract success- 
 fully removed. But now he cannot see because he does 
 
 * " Der Kommunismus in der Schtveiz," p. 24. t Ibid. p. 63.
 
 THE OWNER 439 
 
 not see. Possibility and reality always coincide. One 
 can do nothing that one does not, as one does nothing 
 that one cannot. 
 
 The singularity of this assertion vanishes when one 
 reflects that the words " it is possible that . . ." al- 
 most never contain another meaning than " I can 
 magine that . . .," e. g., It is possible for all men to 
 live rationally, i. e. I can imagine that all, etc. Now, 
 
 >ince my thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, 
 cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be 
 left to the men themselves, general reason is for me 
 only thinkable, a thinkableness, but as such in fact a 
 eality that is called a possibility only in reference to 
 what I can not bring to pass, to wit, the rationality of 
 others. So far as depends on you, all men might be 
 rational, for you have nothing against it; nay, so far 
 as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot dis- 
 cover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing 
 does stand in the way of the thing in your thinking; 
 it is thinkable to. you. 
 
 As men are not all rational, though, it is probable 
 that they cannot be so. 
 
 If something which one imagines to be easily pos- 
 sible is not, or does not happen, then one may be 
 assured that something stands in the way of the thing, 
 and that it is impossible. Our time has its art, 
 science, etc.; the art may be bad in all conscience; 
 but may one say that we deserved to have a better, 
 and " could " have it if we only would? We have 
 just as much art as we can have. Our art of to-day 
 is the only art possible, and therefore real, at the 
 time.
 
 440 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 Even in the sense to which one might at last still 
 reduce the word "possible," that it should mean 
 " future," it retains the full force of the " real." If 
 one says, e. g., " It is possible that the sun will rise 
 to-morrow," this means only, " for to-day to-morrow 
 is the real future "; for I suppose there is hardly need 
 of the suggestion that a future is real " future " only 
 when it has not yet appeared. 
 
 Yet wherefore this dignifying of a word? If the 
 most prolific misunderstanding of thousands of years . 
 were not in ambush behind it, if this single concept 
 of the little word " possible" were not haunted by 
 all the spooks of possessed men, its contemplation 
 should trouble us little here. 
 
 The thought, it was just now shown, rules the pos- 
 sessed world. Well, then, possibility is nothing but 
 thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have hitherto 
 been made to hideous thinkableness. It was thinkable 
 that men might become rational; thinkable, that 
 they might know Christ; thinkable, that they might 
 become moral and enthusiastic for the good ; think- 
 able, that they might all take refuge in the Church's 
 lap; thinkable, that they might meditate, speak, and 
 do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that 
 they might be obedient subjects; but, because it was 
 thinkable, it was so ran the inference possible, and 
 further, because it was possible to men (right here lies 
 the deceptive point: because it is thinkable to me, it 
 is possible to men), therefore they might to be so, it 
 was their calling; and finally one is to take men 
 only according to this calling, only as called men, 
 " not as they are, but as they ought to be."
 
 THE OWNER 441 
 
 And the further inference? Man is not the indi- 
 vidual, but man is a thought, an ideal, to which the 
 individual is related not even as the child to the man, 
 but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a 
 finite creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to 
 modern views, as the specimen to the species. Here 
 then comes to light the glorification of " humanity," 
 the " eternal, immortal," for whose glory (in majorem 
 humanitatis gloriam) the individual must devote him- 
 self and find his " immortal renown " in having done 
 something for the " spirit of humanity." 
 
 Thus the thinkers rule in the world as long as the 
 age of priests or of schoolmasters lasts, and what they 
 ;hink of is possible, but what is possible must be real- 
 ized. They think an ideal of man, which for the time 
 
 real only in their thoughts; but they also think the 
 possibility of carrying it out, and there is no chance 
 for dispute, the carrying out is really thinkable, it 
 is an idea. 
 
 But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom 
 a Krummacher can think that we might yet become 
 good Christians; if, however, he wanted to "labor 
 with " us, we should soon make it palpable to him 
 that our Christianity is only thinkable, but in other 
 respects impossible ; if he grinned on and on at us 
 with his obtrusive thoughts, his " good belief," he 
 would have to learn that we do not at all need to be- 
 come what we do not like to become. 
 
 And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the 
 pious. " If all men were rational, if all did right, 
 if all were guided by philanthropy, etc." ! Reason, 
 right, philanthropy, etc., are put before the eyes of
 
 442 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. 
 And what does being rational mean? Giving one- 
 self a hearing? * No, reason is a book full of laws, 
 which are all enacted against egoism. 
 
 History hitherto is the history of the intellectual '' 
 man. After the period of sensuality, history proper 
 begins; i, e., the period of intellectuality,! spiritual- 
 ity, J non-sensuality, super-sensuality, nonsensicality. 
 Man now begins to want to be and become something. 
 What? Good, beautiful, true; more precisely, moral, 
 pious, agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a 
 "proper man," "something proper." Man is his 
 goal, his ought, his destiny, calling, task, his ideal; 
 he is to himself a future, otherworldly he. And what 
 makes a " proper fellow " of him? Being true, being 
 good, being moral, and the like. Now he looks ask- 
 ance at every one who does not recognize the same 
 " what," seek the same morality, have the same faith; 
 he chases out " separatists, heretics, sects," etc. 
 
 No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a " proper 
 sheep, a proper dog"; no beast has its essence appear 
 to it as a task, i. e. as a concept that it has to real- 
 ize. It realizes itself in living itself out, i. e. dissolv 
 ing itself, passing away. It does not ask to be or tc 
 become anything other than it is. 
 
 Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts? 
 That you ought to become beasts is an exhortation 
 which I certainly cannot give you, as that would 
 again be a task, an ideal (" How doth the little busy 
 bee improve each shining hour ... In works of lab 
 
 * iCt, note p. 81,]
 
 THE OWNER 443 
 
 or of skill I would be busy too, for Satan finds some 
 mischief still for idle hands to do "). It would be the 
 same, too, as if one wished for the beasts that they 
 should become human beings. Your nature is, once 
 for all, a human one; you are human natures, i. e. hu- 
 man beings. But, just because you already are so, 
 you do not still need to become so. Beasts too are 
 "trained," and a trained beast executes many un- 
 natural things. But a trained dog is no better for it- 
 self than a natural one, and has no profit from it, even 
 if it is more companionable for us. 
 
 Exertions to " form " all men into moral, rational, 
 pious, human, etc., " beings " (i. e. training) were in 
 vogue from of yore. They are wrecked against the 
 indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against 
 egoism. Those who are trained never attain their 
 ideal, and only profess with their mouth the sublime 
 principles, or make a profession, a profession of faith. 
 In face of this profession they must in life " acknowl- 
 edge themselves sinners altogether," and they fall short 
 of their ideal, are " weak men," and bear with them 
 the consciousness of " human weakness." 
 
 It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as 
 your " destiny," but dissolve yourself as time dissolves 
 everything. The dissolution is not your " destiny," 
 because it is present time. 
 
 Yet the culture, the religiousness, of men has as- 
 suredly made them free, but only free from one lord, 
 to lead them to another. I have learned by religion 
 to tame my appetite, I break the world's resistance by 
 the cunning that is put in my hand by science ; I even 
 nerve no man: " I am rio man's lackey," Bui; then, it
 
 444 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 comes, You must obey God more than man. Just so 
 I am indeed free from irrational determination by my 
 impulses, but obedient to the master Reason. I have 
 gained " spiritual freedom," " freedom of the spirit." 
 But with that / have then become subject to that very 
 spirit. The spirit gives me orders, reason guides me, 
 they are my leaders and commanders. The " ra- 
 tional," the " servants of the spirit," rule. But, if / 
 am not flesh, I am in truth not spirit either. Free- 
 dom of the spirit is servitude of me, because I am 
 more than spirit or flesh. 
 
 Without doubt culture has made me powerful. It 
 has given me power over all motives, over the impulses 
 of my nature as well as over the exactions and vio- 
 lences of the world. I know, and have gained the 
 force for it by culture, that I need not let myself be 
 coerced by any of my appetites, pleasures, emotions, 
 etc.; I am their master; in like manner I become, 
 through the sciences and arts, the master of the refrac- 
 tory world, whom sea and earth obey, and to whom 
 even the stars must give an account of themselves. 
 The spirit has made me master. But I have no power 
 over the spirit itself. From religion (culture) I do 
 learn the means for the " vanquishing of the world,' 
 but not how I am to subdue God too and become 
 master of him ; for God " is the spirit." And this 
 same spirit, of which I am unable to become master, 
 may have the most manifold shapes: he may be call 
 God or National Spirit, State, Family, Reason, also 
 Liberty, Humanity, Man. 
 
 / receive with thanks what the centuries of culture 
 have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw 
 
 i 
 lied
 
 THE OWNER 445 
 
 away and give up anything of it: / have not lived in 
 vain. The experience that I have power over my 
 nature, and need not be the slave of my appetites, 
 shall not be lost to me; the experience that I can sub- 
 due the world by culture's means is too dear-bought 
 for me to be able to forget it. But I want still more. 
 
 People ask, what can man do? what can he accom- 
 plish? what goods procure? and put down the highest 
 of everything as a calling. As if everything were pos- 
 sible to me! 
 
 If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania, a 
 passion, etc. (e. g. in the huckster-spirit, in jealousy), 
 the desire is stirred to deliver him out of this posses- 
 sion and to help him to " self-conquest." " We want 
 to make a man of him ! " That would be very fine if 
 another possession were not immediately put in the 
 place of the earlier one. But one frees from the love 
 of money him who is a thrall to it, only to deliver him 
 over to piety, humanity, or some principle else, and to 
 transfer him to & fixed standpoint anew. 
 
 This transference from a narrow standpoint to a 
 sublime one is declared in the words that the sense 
 must not be directed to the perishable, but to the im- 
 perishable alone: not to the temporal, but to the 
 eternal, absolute, divine, purely human, etc., to the 
 spiritual. 
 
 People very soon discerned that it was not indiffer- 
 ent what one set his affections on, or what one occu- 
 pied himself with; they recognized the importance of 
 the object. An object exalted above the individuality 
 of things is the essence of things; yes, the essence is 
 alone the thinkable in them, it is for the thinking
 
 446 
 
 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 man. Therefore direct no longer your sense to the 
 things, but your thoughts to the essence. " Blessed 
 are they who see not, and yet believe"; i. e., blessed 
 are the thinkers, for they have to do with the invisit 
 and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, tl 
 constituted an essential point of contention centuries 
 long, comes at last to the point of being " no longer 
 worth speaking of." This was discerned, but never- 
 theless people always kept before their eyes again a 
 self-valid importance of the object, an absolute value 
 of it, as if the doll were not the most important thii 
 to the child, the Koran to the Turk. As long as I 
 am not the sole important thing to myself, it is indiJ 
 ferent of what object I " make much," and only my 
 greater or lesser delinquency against it is of value. 
 The degree of my attachment and devotion marks tl 
 standpoint of my liability to service, the degree of 
 sinning shows the measure of my ownness. 
 
 But finally, and in general, one must know how to 
 " put everything out of his mind," if only so as to 
 able to go to sleep. Nothing may occupy us with 
 which we do not occupy ourselves: the victim of ami 
 tion cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor 
 the God-fearing man from the thought of God ; in- 
 fatuation and possessedness coincide. 
 
 To want to realize his essence or live conformably 
 to his concept (which with believers in God signifies 
 as much as to be " pious," and with believers in hu- 
 manity means living " humanly ") is what only the 
 sensual and sinful man can propose to himself, the 
 h\an so long as he h|p the anxious choice between 
 happiness of sense and peace of soul, so long as he is
 
 THE OWNER 447 
 
 a " poor sinner." The Christian is nothing but a sen- 
 sual man who, knowing of the sacred and being con- 
 scious that he violates it, sees in himself a poor sinner: 
 sensualness, recognized as " sinfulness," is Christian 
 consciousness, is the Christian himself. And if " sin " 
 and " sinfulness " are now no longer taken into the 
 mouths of moderns, but, instead of that, "egoism," 
 " self-seeking," " selfishness," and the like, engage 
 them ; if the devil has been translated into the " mi- 
 man" or "egoistic man," is the Christian less pres- 
 ent then than before? Is not the old discord between 
 good and evil, is not a judge over us, man,- is not a 
 calling, the calling to make oneself man left? If 
 they no longer name it calling, but "task " or, very 
 likely, " duty,V the change of name is quite correct, 
 because " man " is not, like God, a personal being ' 
 that can " call"; but outside the name the thing 
 remains as of old. 
 
 Every one has a relation to objects, and more, every 
 one is differently related to them. Let us choose as 
 an example that book to which millions of men had a 
 relation for two thousand years, the Bible. What is 
 it, what was it, to each? Absolutely, only what he 
 made out of it! For him who makes to himself noth- 
 ing at all out of it, it is nothing at all; for him who 
 uses it as an amulet, it has solely the value, the signifi- 
 cance, of a means of sorcery ; for him who, like chil- 
 dren, plays with it, it is nothing but a plaything ; etc. 
 
 Now, Christianity asks that it shall be the same for 
 til/: suv, the sucred book or the "sacred Scriptures." 
 This means as much as that the Christian's view shall
 
 448 
 
 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 also be that of other men, and that no one may be 
 otherwise related to that object. And with this the 
 ownness of the relation is destroyed, and one mind, 
 one disposition, is fixed as the "true," the " only 
 true " one. In the limitation of the freedom to mak< 
 of the Bible what I will, the freedom of making in 
 general is limited; and the coercion of a view or a 
 judgment is put in its place. He who should pass tl 
 judgment that the Bible was a long error of mankind 
 would judge criminally. 
 
 In fact, the child who tears it to pieces or plays wit 
 it, the Inca Atahualpa who lays his ear to it and 
 throws it away contemptuously when it remains duml 
 judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest 
 who praises in it the " Word of God," or the critic 
 who calls it a job of men's hands. For how we toss 
 things about is the affair of our option, our free will : 
 we use them according to our heart's pleasure, or, 
 more clearly, we use them just as we can. Why, wh* 
 do the parsons scream about when they see how H( 
 and the speculative theologians make speculative 
 thoughts out of the contents of the Bible? Precisely 
 this, that they deal with it according to their heart's 
 pleasure, or " proceed arbitrarily with it." 
 
 But, because we all show ourselves arbitrary in the 
 handling of objects, i. e. do with them as we like 
 at our liking (the philosopher likes nothing so well 
 as when he can trace out an " idea" in everything, 
 as the God-fearing man likes to make God his 
 friend by everything, and so, e. g., by keeping the 
 Bible sacred), therefore we nowhere meet such griev- 
 ous arbitrarinsss, such a frightful tendency to vio-
 
 THE OWNER 449 
 
 lence, such stupid coercion, as in this very domain of 
 our orwn free will. If we proceed arbitrarily in 
 taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then 
 that we want to take it ill of the parson-spirits if they 
 take us just as arbitrarily in their fashion, and esteem 
 us worthy of the heretic's fire or of another punish- 
 ment, perhaps of the censorship? 
 
 What a man is, he makes out of things; " as you 
 look at the world, so it looks at you again." Then 
 the wise advice makes itself heard again at once, You 
 must only look at it " rightly, unbiasedly," etc. As 
 if the child did not look at the Bible " rightly and un- 
 biasedly " when it makes it a plaything. That shrewd 
 precept is given us, e. g., by Feuerbach. One does 
 look at things rightly when one makes of them what 
 one will (by things objects in general are here under- 
 stood, such as God, our fellow-men, a sweetheart, a 
 book, a beast, etc.). And therefore the things and the 
 looking at them are not first, but I am, my will is. 
 One will bring thoughts out of the things, will dis- 
 cover reason in the world, will have sacredness in it: 
 therefore one shall find them. " Seek and ye shall 
 find." What I will seek, / determine: J want, e. ., 
 to get edification from the Bible; it is to be found; I 
 want to read and test the Bible thoroughly; my out- 
 come will be a thorough instruction and criticism to 
 the extent of my powers. I elect for myself what I 
 have a fancy for, and in electing I show myself 
 arbitrary. 
 
 Connected with this is the discernment that every 
 judgment which I pass upon an object is the creature 
 of my will; and that discernment again leads me to
 
 450 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 not losing myself in the creature, the judgment, but 
 remaining the creator, the judger, who is ever creati 
 anew. All predicates of objects are my statements, 
 my judgments, my creatures. If they want to tear 
 themselves loose from me and be something for them- 
 selves, or actually overawe me, then I have nothing 
 more pressing to do than to take them back into their 
 nothing, i. e. into me the creator. God, Christ, 
 trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such creatures, of 
 which I must not merely allow myself to say that they 
 are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I 
 once willed and decreed their existence, so I want to 
 have license to will their non-existence too ; I must 
 not let them grow over my head, must not have the 
 weakness to let them become something " absolute," 
 whereby they would be eternalized and withdrawn from 
 my power and decision. With that I should fall a 
 prey to the principle of stability, the proper life-prin- 
 ciple of religion, which concerns itself with creating 
 " sanctuaries that must not be touched," " eternal 
 truths," in short, that which shall be " sacred,"- 
 and depriving you of what is yours. 
 
 The object makes us into possessed men in its 
 sacred form just as in its profane ; as a supersensuous 
 object, just as it does as a sensuous one. The appetite 
 or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing for 
 heaven stand on a level. When the rationalists 
 wanted to win people for the sensuous world, Lavater 
 preached the longing for the invisible. The one 
 party wanted to call forth emotion, the other motion, 
 activity. 
 
 The conception of objects is altogether diverse, even
 
 THE OWNER 451 
 
 as God, Christ, the world, etc., were and are conceived 
 of in the most manifold wise. In this every one is a 
 " dissenter," and after bloody combats so much has 
 at last been attained, that opposite views about one 
 and the same object are no longer condemned as here- 
 sies worthy of death. The "dissenters" reconcile 
 themselves to each other. But why should I only dis- 
 sent (think otherwise) about a thing? why not push 
 the thinking otherwise to its last extremity, viz., 
 that of no longer having any regard at all for the 
 thing, and therefore thinking its nothingness, crushing 
 it? Then the conception itself has an end, because 
 there is no longer anything to conceive of. Why am 
 I to say, let us suppose, " God is not Allah, not 
 Brahma, not Jehovah, but God"; but not, "God is 
 nothing but a deception"? Why do people brand 
 me if I am an " atheist"? Because they put the 
 creature above the creator ("They honor and serve the 
 creature more than the Creator"*) and require a rul- 
 ing- object, that the subject may be right submissive. 
 I am to bend beneath the absolute, I ought to. 
 
 By the " realm of thoughts " Christianity has com- 
 pleted itself; the thought is that inwardness in which 
 all the world's lights go out, all existence becomes ex- 
 istenceless, the inward man (the heart, the head) is all 
 in all. This realm of thoughts awaits its deliverance, 
 awaits, like the Sphinx, CEdipus's key-word to the 
 riddle, that it may enter in at last to its death. I am 
 the annihilator of its continuance, for in the creator's 
 realm it no longer forms a realm of its own, not a
 
 452 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 State in the State, but a creature of my creative 
 thoughtlessness. Only together and at the same time 
 with the benumbed thinking world can the world of 
 Christians, Christianity and religion itself, come to its 
 downfall; only when thoughts run out are there no 
 more believers. To the thinker his thinking is a 
 " sublime labor, a sacred activity," and it rests on 
 a firm faith, the faith in truth. At first praying is a 
 sacred activity, then this sacred " devotion " passes 
 over into a rational and reasoning " thinking," which 
 however, likewise retains in the " sacred truth " its un 
 derangeable basis of faith, and is only a marvelous 
 machine that the spirit of truth winds up for its ser- 
 vice. Free thinking and free science busy me for it 
 is not I that am free, not / that busy myself, but 
 thinking is free and busies me with heaven and the 
 heavenly or "divine"; that is, properly, with the 
 world and the worldly, not this world but " another " 
 world; it is only the reversing and deranging of 
 the world, a busying with the essence of the world, 
 therefore a derangement. The thinker is blind to the 
 immediateness of things, and incapable of master- 
 ing them : he does not eat, does not drink, does not 
 enjoy; for the eater and drinker is never the thinker, 
 nay, the latter forgets eating and drinking, his getthij 
 on in life, the cares of nourishment, etc., over his 
 thinking; he forgets it as the praying man too for- 
 gets it. This is why he appears to the forceful son of 
 nature as a queer Dick, a fool, even if he does look 
 upon him as holy, just as lunatics appeared so to the 
 ancients. Free thinking is lunacy, because it is pure 
 movement of the inwardness, of the merely inward
 
 THE OWNER 453 
 
 man, which guides and regulates the rest of the man. 
 The shaman and the speculative philosopher mark the 
 bottom and top rounds on the ladder of the inward 
 man, the Mongol. Shaman and philosopher fight 
 with ghosts, demons, spirits, gods. 
 
 Totally different from this free thinking is own 
 thinking, my thinking, a thinking which does not 
 guide me, but is guided, continued, or broken off, by 
 me at my pleasure. The distinction of this own 
 thinking from free thinking is similar to that of own 
 sensuality, which I satisfy at pleasure, from free, un- 
 ruly sensuality to which I succumb. 
 
 Feuerbach, in the " Principles of the Philosophy of 
 the Future," is always harping upon being. In this 
 he too, with all his antagonism to Hegel and the 
 absolute philosophy, is stuck fast in abstraction ; for 
 " being " is abstraction, as is even " the I." Only / 
 am not abstraction alone: / am all in all, conse- 
 quently even abstraction or nothing; I am all and 
 nothing; I am not a mere thought, but at the same 
 time I am full of thoughts, a thought- world. Hegel 
 condemns the own, mine,* "opinion."! " Absolute 
 thinking " is that thinking which forgets that it is my 
 thinking, that / think, and that it exists only through 
 me. But I, as I, swallow up again what is mine, am 
 its master; it is only my opinion, which I can at any 
 moment change, i. e. annihilate, take back into my- 
 self, and consume. Feuerbach wants to smite Hegel's 
 " absolute thinking " with nnconquered being. But 
 in me being is as much conquered as thinking is. It 
 
 
 [das Me inigv] t [die ' Meinun g
 
 454 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 is my being, as the other is my thinking. 
 
 With this, of course, Feuerbach does not get further 
 than to the proof, trivial in itself, that I require the 
 senses for everything, or that I cannot entirely do 
 without these organs. Certainly I cannot think if I 
 do not exist sensuously. But for thinking as well as 
 for feeling, and so for the abstract as well as for the 
 sensuous, I need above all things myself, this quite 
 particular myself, this unique myself. If I were not 
 this one, e. g. Hegel, I should not look at the world 
 as I do look at it, I should not pick out of it that 
 'philosophical system which just I as Hegel do, etc.' I 
 should indeed have senses, as do other people too, but 
 I should not utilize them as I do. 
 
 Thus the reproach is brought up against Hegel by 
 Feuerbach * that he misuses language, understanding 
 by many words something else than what natural con- 
 sciousness takes them for; and yet he too commits the 
 same fault when he gives the " sensuous " a sense of 
 unusual eminence. Thus it is said, p. 69, " the sensu- 
 ous is not the profane, the destitute of thought, the 
 obvious, that which is understood of itself." But, if 
 it is the sacred, the full of thought, the recondite, that 
 which can be understood only through mediation, 
 well, then it is no longer what people call the sensuous. 
 The sensuous is only that which exists for the senses; 
 what, on the other hand, is enjoyable only to those 
 who enjoy with more than the senses, who go beyond 
 sense-enjoyment or sense-reception, is at most mediated 
 or introduced by the senses, i. e. the senses constitute 
 
 * P. 47 ff.
 
 THE OWNER 455 
 
 a condition for obtaining it, but it is no longer any- 
 thing sensuous. The sensuous, whatever it may be, 
 when taken up into me becomes something non-sensu- 
 ous, which, however, may again have sensuous effects, 
 by the stirring of my emotions and my blood. 
 
 It is well that Feuerbach brings sensuousness to 
 honor, but the only thing he is able to do with it is to 
 clothe the materialism of his " new philosophy " with 
 what had hitherto been the property of idealism, the 
 " absolute philosophy." As little as people let it 
 be talked into them that one can live on the " spirit- 
 ual " alone without bread, so little will they believe 
 his word that as a sensuous being one is already every- 
 thing, and so spiritual, full of thoughts, etc. 
 
 Nothing at all is justified by being. What is 
 thought of is as well as what is not thought of; the 
 stone jn the street is, and my notion of it is too. 
 Both are only in different spaces, the former in airy 
 space, the latter in my head, in me; for I am space 
 like the street. 
 
 The professionals, the privileged, brook no freedom 
 of thought, i. e. no thoughts that do not come from 
 the " Giver of all good," be he called God, pope, 
 church, or whatever else. If anybody has such illegiti- 
 mate thoughts, he must whisper them into his confes- 
 sor's ear, and have himself chastised by him till the 
 slave-whip becomes unendurable to the free thoughts. 
 In other ways too the professional spirit takes care 
 that free thoughts shall not come at all: first and fore- 
 most, by a wise education. He on whom the prin- 
 ciples of morality have been duly inculcated never be- 
 comes free again from moralizing thoughts, and rob-
 
 
 456 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 bery, perjury, overreaching, and the like, remain to 
 him fixed ideas against which no freedom of thought 
 protects him. He has his thoughts "from above," 
 and gets no further. 
 
 It is different with the holders of concessions or 
 patents. Every one must be able to have and form 
 thoughts as he will. If he has the patent, or the con 
 cession, of a capacity to think, he needs no special 
 privilege. But, as "all men are rational," it is free 
 to every one to put into his head any thoughts what- 
 ever, and, to the extent of the patent of his natural en- 
 dowment, to have a greater or less wealth of thoughts. 
 Now one hears the admonitions that one "is to honor 
 all opinions and convictions," that " every conviction 
 is authorized," that one must be " tolerant to the 
 views of others," etc. 
 
 But "your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your 
 ways are not my ways." Or rather, I mean the re- 
 verse : Your thoughts are my thoughts, which I dispose 
 of as I will, and which I strike down unmercifully ; 
 they are my property, which I annihilate as I list. I 
 do not wait for authorization from you first, to decom- 
 pose and blow away your thoughts. It does not mat- 
 ter to me that you call these thoughts yours too, they 
 remain mine nevertheless, and how I will proceed with 
 them is my affair, not a usurpation. It may please 
 me to leave you in your thoughts; then I keep still. 
 Do you believe thoughts fly around free like birds, so 
 that every one may get himself some which he may 
 then make good against me as his inviolable property? 
 What is flying around is all mine. 
 
 Do you believe you have your thoughts for your-
 
 THE OWNER 457 
 
 selves and need answer to no one for them, or, as you 
 do also say, you have to give an account of them to 
 God only? No, your great and small thoughts belong 
 to me, and I handle them at my pleasure. 
 
 The thought is my own only when I have no mis- 
 giving about bringing it in danger of death every 
 moment, when I do not have to fear its loss as a loss 
 for me, a loss of me. The thought is my own only 
 when I can indeed subjugate it, but it never can sub- 
 jugate me, never fanaticizes me, makes me the tool of 
 its realization. 
 
 So freedom of thought exists when I can have all 
 }x>ssible thoughts; but the thoughts become property 
 only by not being able to become masters. In the 
 time of freedom of thought, thoughts (ideas) rule ; 
 but, if I attain to property in thought, they stand as 
 my creatures. 
 
 If the hierarchy had not so penetrated men to the 
 innermost as to take from them all courage to pursue 
 free thoughts, i. e. thoughts perhaps displeasing to 
 God, one would have to consider freedom of thought 
 just as empty a word as, say, a freedom of digestion. 
 
 According to the professionals' opinion, the 
 thought is given to me; according to the freethinkers', 
 / 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 out- 
 side me, and I aspire to get it, be it by presentation 
 (grace), be it by earning (merit of my own). There- 
 fore, (1) The truth is a privilege, (2) No, the way to
 
 458 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 it is patent to all, and neither the Bible nor the holy 
 fathers nor the church nor any one else is in possessi( 
 of the truth ; but one can come into possession of it 
 speculating. 
 
 Both, one sees, are propertyless in relation to the 
 truth: they have it either as & 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."). Hena 
 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 / must accommodate my- 
 self 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 brough 
 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
 
 THE OWNER 439 
 
 where the believer gets along with few; but the former 
 brings colierence into his tenets, and takes the coher- 
 ence 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 / 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 free- 
 dom, 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 superintend- 
 ence 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
 
 460 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 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."* 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 Huge, e. g., wants 
 to.f Whether the church, the Bible, or reason (to 
 which, moreover, Luther and Huss already appealed) 
 is the sacred authority makes no difference in 
 essentials. 
 
 The " question of our time " does not become solu- 
 ble even when one puts it thus: Is anything general 
 authorized, or only the individual? Is the generality 
 (such as State, law, custom, morality, etc.) authorized, 
 or individuality? It becomes soluble for the first time 
 when one no longer asks after an " authorization " at 
 all, and does not carry on a mere fight against " privi- 
 leges." A " rational " freedom of teaching, which 
 " recognizes only the conscience of reason," $ does not 
 bring us to the goal; we require an egoistic freedom 
 of teaching rather, a freedom of teaching for all own- 
 
 * Chamber of peers, Apr. 25, 1844. 
 
 t "Anecdota," 1. 120. t "Anecdota," 1. 127.
 
 THE OWNER 461 
 
 ness, wherein 7 become audible and can announce 
 myself unchecked. That I make myself " audible" * 
 this alone is "reason," f be I ever so irrational; in my 
 making myself heard, and so hearing myself, others as 
 well as I myself enjoy me, and at the same time con- 
 sume me. 
 
 What would be gained if, as formerly the orthodox 
 I, the loyal I, the moral I, etc., was free, now the 
 rational I should become free? Would this be the 
 freedom of me? 
 
 If I am free as " rational I," then the rational in 
 me, or reason, is free; and this freedom of reason, or 
 freedom of the thought, was the ideal of the Christian 
 world from of old. They wanted to make thinking 
 and, as aforesaid, faith is also thinking, as thinking is 
 faith free; the thinkers, i. e. the believers as well as 
 the rational, were to be free; for the rest freedom was 
 impossible. But the freedom of thinkers is the " free- 
 dom of the children of God," and at the same time the 
 most merciless hierarchy or dominion of the thought; 
 for / succumb to the thought. If thoughts are free, I 
 am their slave; I have no power over them, and am 
 dominated by them. But I want to have the thought, 
 want to be full of thoughts, but at the same time I 
 want to be thoughtless, and, instead of freedom of 
 thought, I preserve for myself thoughtlessness. 
 
 If the point is to have myself understood and to 
 make communications, then assuredly I can make use 
 only of human means, which are at my command 
 because I am at the same time man. And really I 
 
 * [rcrnchmltar] t [ Vernunft]
 
 462 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 have thoughts only as man ; as I, I am at the same 
 time thoughtless.* He who cannot get rid of a 
 thought is so far only man, is a thrall of language, 
 this human institution, this treasury of human 
 thoughts. Language or " the word " tyrannizes 
 hardest over us, because it brings up against us a 
 whole army oijixed ideas. Just observe yourself in 
 the act of reflection, right now, and you will find how 
 you make progress only by becoming thoughtless and 
 speechless every moment. You are not thoughtless 
 and speechless merely in (say) sleep, but even in the 
 deepest reflection ; yes, precisely then most so. And 
 only by this thoughtlessness, this unrecognized " free- 
 dom of thought " or freedom from the thought, are 
 you your own. Only from it do you arrive at putting 
 language to use as your property. 
 
 If thinking is not my thinking, it is merely a spun- 
 out thought ; it is slave work, or the work of a " ser- 
 vant obeying at the word." For not a thought, but I, 
 am the beginning for my thinking, arid therefore I am 
 its goal too, even as its whole course is only a course 
 of my self-enjoyment ; for absolute or free thinking, 
 on the other hand, thinking itself is the beginning, 
 and it plagues itself with propounding this beginning 
 as the extremest "abstraction" (e. g. as being). 
 This very abstraction, or this thought, is then spun 
 out further. 
 
 Absolute thinking is the affair of the human spirit, 
 and this is a holy spirit. Hence this thinking is an 
 affair of the parsons, who have " a sense for it," a sense 
 
 * [ Literally " thought-rid."]
 
 THE OWNER 463 
 
 for the "highest interests of mankind," for "the 
 spirit." 
 
 To the believer, truths are a settled thing, a fact; 
 to the freethinker, a thing that is still to be settled. 
 Be absolute thinking ever so unbelieving, its incred- 
 ulity has its limits, and there does remain a belief in 
 the truth, in the spirit, in the idea and its final vic- 
 tory: this thinking does not sin against the holy 
 spirit. But all thinking that does not sin against 
 the holy spirit is belief in spirits or ghosts. 
 
 I can as little renounce thinking as feeling, the 
 spirit's activity as little as the activity of the senses. 
 As feeling is our sense for things, so thinking is our 
 sense for essences (thoughts). Essences have their ex- 
 istence in everything sensuous, especially in the word. 
 The power of words follows that of things : first one is 
 coerced by the rod, afterward by conviction. The 
 might of things overcomes our courage, our spirit; 
 against the power of a conviction, and so of the word, 
 even the rack and the sword lose their overpowering- 
 ness and force. The men of conviction are the 
 priestly men, who resist every enticement of Satan. 
 
 Christianity took away from the things of this world 
 only their irresistibleness, made us independent of 
 them. In like manner I raise myself above truths and 
 their power: as I am supersensual, so I am super- 
 true. Before me truths are as common and as indiffer- 
 ent as things; they do not carry me away, and do not 
 inspire me with enthusiasm. There exists not even 
 one truth, not right, not freedom, humanity, etc., that 
 has stability before me, and to which I subject myself. 
 They are words, nothing but words, as all things are
 
 464 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 to the Christian nothing but " vain things." In 
 words and truths (every word is a truth, as Hegel as- 
 serts that one cannot tell a lie) there is no salvation 
 for me, as little as there is for the Christian in things 
 and vanities. As the riches of this world do not 
 make me happy, so neither do its truths. It is now no 
 longer Satan, but the spirit, that plays the story of 
 the temptation; and he does not seduce by the things 
 of this world, but by its thoughts, by the " glitter of 
 the idea." 
 
 Along with worldly goods, all sacred goods too must 
 be put away as no longer valuable. 
 
 Truths are phrases, ways of speaking, words 
 (Xoyos) ; brought into connection, or into an articu- 
 late series, they form logic, science, philosophy. 
 
 For thinking and speaking I need truths and words, 
 as I do foods for eating; without them I cannot think 
 nor speak. Truths are men's thoughts, set down in 
 words and therefore just as extant as other things, al- 
 though extant only for the mind or for thinking. 
 They are human institutions and human creatures, 
 and, even if they are given out for divine revelations, 
 there still remains in them the quality of alienness 
 for me ; yes, as my own creatures they are already 
 alienated from me after the act of creation. 
 
 The Christian man is the man with faith in think- 
 ing, wljo believes in the supreme dominion of thoughts 
 and wants to bring thoughts, so-called "principles," to 
 dominipn. Many a one does indeed test the thoughts, 
 and chooses none of them for his master without 
 criticism, but in this he is like the dog who sniffs at 
 people to smell out " his master " : he is always aim-
 
 THE OWNER 465 
 
 ing at the ruling thought. The Christian may re- 
 form and revolt an infinite deal, may demolish the 
 ruling concepts of centuries; he will always aspire 
 to a new " principle " or new master again, always 
 set up a higher or "deeper" truth again, always call 
 forth a cult again, always proclaim a spirit called to 
 dominion, lay down a law for all. 
 
 If there is even one truth only to which man has to 
 devote his life and his powers because he is man, then 
 he is subjected to a rule, dominion, law, etc. ; he is a 
 servingman. It is supposed that, e. \, man, human- 
 ity, liberty, etc., are such truths. 
 
 On the other hand, one can say thus: Whether you 
 will further occupy yourself with thinking depends on 
 you; only know that, if 'in your thinking you would 
 like to make out anything worthy of notice, many hard 
 problems are to be solved, without vanquishing which 
 you cannot get far. There exists, therefore, no duty 
 and no calling for you to meddle with thoughts (ideas, 
 truths) ; but, if you will do so, you will do well to 
 utilize what the forces of others have already achieved 
 toward clearing up these difficult subjects. 
 
 Thus, therefore, he who will think does assuredly 
 have a task, which he consciously or unconsciously sets 
 for himself in willing that; but no one has the task of 
 thinking or of believing. In the former case it may 
 be said, You do not go far enough, you have a narrow 
 and biased interest, you do not go to the bottom of the 
 thing; in short, you do not completely subdue it. But, 
 on the other hand, however far you may come at any 
 time, you are still always at the end, you have no call 
 to step farther, and you can have it as you will or as
 
 466 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 you are able. It stands with this as with any other 
 piece of work, which you can give up when the humor 
 for it wears off. Just so, if you can no longer believe a 
 thing, you do not have to force yourself into faith or 
 to busy yourself lastingly as if with a sacred truth of 
 the faith, as theologians or philosophers do, but you 
 can tranquilly draw back your interest from it and let 
 it run. Priestly spirits will indeed expound this your 
 lack of interest as " laziness, thoughtlessness, obdur- 
 acy, self-deception," and the like. But do you just let 
 the trumpery lie, notwithstanding. No thing,* no 
 so-called " highest interest of mankind," no " sacred 
 cause,"f * s wor th your serving it, and occupying your- 
 self with it for its sake; you may seek its worth in 
 this alone, whether it is worth anything to you for 
 your sake. Become like children, the biblical saying 
 admonishes us. But children have no sacred interest 
 and know nothing of a " good cause." They know 
 all the more accurately what they have a fancy for; 
 and they think over, to the best of their powers, how 
 they are to arrive at it. 
 
 Thinking will as little cease as feeling. But the 
 power of thoughts and ideas, the dominion of theories 
 and principles, the sovereignty of the spirit, in short 
 the hierarchy, lasts as long as the parsons, i. e. theo- 
 logians, philosophers, statesmen, philistines, liberals, 
 schoolmasters, servants, parents, children, married 
 couples, Proudhon, George Sand, Bluntschli, etc., etc., 
 have the floor; the hierarchy will endure as long as 
 people believe in, think of, or even criticise, principles; 
 
 [Sache] 

 
 THE OWNER 467 
 
 for even the most inexorable criticism, which under- 
 mines all current principles, still does finally believe in 
 the principle. 
 
 Every one criticises, but the criterion is different. 
 People run after the " right " criterion. The right 
 criterion is the first presupposition. The critic starts 
 from a proposition, a truth, a belief. This is not a 
 creation of the critic, but of the dogmatist; nay, com- 
 monly it is actually taken up out of the culture of the 
 time without further ceremony, like e. g. " liberty," 
 " humanity," etc. The critic has not " discovered 
 man," but this truth has been established as " man " 
 by the dogmatist, and the critic (who, besides, may be 
 the same person with him) believes in this truth, this 
 article of faith. In this faith, and possessed by this 
 faith, he criticises. 
 
 The secret of criticism is some " truth " or other: 
 this remains its energizing mystery. 
 
 But I distinguish between servile and own criticism. 
 If I criticise under the presupposition of a supreme 
 being, my criticism serves the being and is carried on 
 for its sake: if, e. g., I am possessed by the belief in a 
 "free State," then everything that has a bearing on 
 it I criticise from the standpoint of whether it is suit- 
 able to this State, for I love this State ; if I criticise 
 as a pious man, then for me everything falls into the 
 classes of divine and diabolical, and before my criti- 
 cism nature consists of traces of God or traces of the 
 devil (hence names like Godsgift, Godmount, the 
 Devil's Pulpit, etc.), men of believers and unbelievers, 
 etc.; if I criticise while believing in man as the "true 
 essence," then for me everything falls primarily into
 
 468 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 the classes of man and the un-man, etc. 
 
 Criticism has to this day remained a work of love : 
 for at all times we exercised it for the love of some 
 being. All servile criticism is a product of love, a 
 possessedness, and proceeds according to that New 
 Testament precept, " Test everything and hold fast the 
 good."* "The good" is the touchstone, the criterion. 
 The good, returning under a thousand names and 
 forms, remained always the presupposition, remained 
 the dogmatic fixed point for this criticism, remained 
 the fixed idea. 
 
 The critic, in setting to work, impartially presup- 
 poses the " truth," and seeks for the truth in the be- 
 lief that it is to be found. He wants to ascertain the 
 true, and has in it that very "good." 
 
 Presuppose means nothing else than put a thought 
 in front, or think something before everything else and 
 think the rest from the starting-point of this that has 
 been thought, i. e. measure and criticise it by this. 
 In other words, this is as much as to say that thinking 
 is to begin with something already thought. If think- 
 ing began at all, instead of being begun, if thinking 
 were a subject, an acting personality of its own, as 
 even the plant is such, then indeed there would be no 
 abandoning the principle that thinking must begin 
 with itself. But it is just the personification of think- 
 ing that brings to pass those innumerable errors. In 
 the Hegelian system they always talk as if thinking or 
 " the thinking spirit " ( i. e. personified thinking, 
 thinking as a ghost) thought and acted; in critical 
 
 * 1 Thess. 5. 21.
 
 THE OWNER 469 
 
 liberalism it is always said that "criticism " does this 
 and that, or else that " self-consciousness " finds this 
 and that. But, if thinking ranks as the personal 
 actor, thinking itself must be presupposed; if criticism 
 ranks as such, a thought must likewise stand in front. 
 Thinking and criticism could be active only starting 
 from themselves, would have to be themselves the pre- 
 supposition of their activity, as without being they 
 could not be active. But thinking, as a thing presup- 
 posed, is a fixed thought, a dog-ma ; thinking and 
 criticism, therefore, can start only from a dogma, i. e. 
 from a thought, a fixed idea, a presupposition. 
 
 With this we come back again to what was enunci- 
 ated above, that Christianity consists in the develop- 
 ment of a world of thoughts, or that it is the proper 
 " freedom of thought," the " free thought," the " free 
 spirit." The " true " criticism, which I called " ser- 
 vile," is therefore just as much " free " criticism, for it 
 is not my own. 
 
 The case stands otherwise when what is yours is not 
 made into something that is of itself, not personified, 
 not made independent at, a " spirit " to itself. Your 
 thinking has for a presupposition not " thinking," but 
 you. But thus you do presuppose yourself after all? 
 Yes, but not for myself, but for my thinking. Before 
 my thinking, there is I. From this it follows that 
 my thinking is not preceded by a thought, or that my 
 thinking is without a " presupposition." For the pre- 
 supposition which I am for my thinking is not one 
 made by thinking, not one thought of, but it is posited 
 thinking itself, it is the owner of the thought, and 
 proves only that thinking is nothing more than prop-
 
 470 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 erty, i. e. that an " independent " thinking, a " think- 
 ing spirit." does not exist at all. 
 
 This reversal of the usual way of regarding things 
 might so resemble an empty playing with abstractions 
 that even those against whom it is directed would ac- 
 quiesce in the harmless aspect I give it, if practical 
 consequences were not connected with it. 
 
 To bring these into a concise expression, the asser- i 
 tion now made is that man is not the measure of all J 
 things, but I am this measure. The servile critic has 
 before his eye another being, an idea, which he means 
 to serve; therefore he only slays the false idols for his 
 God. What is done for the love of this being, what 
 else should it be but a work of love? But I, when I 
 criticise, do not even have myself before my eyes, but 
 am only doing myself a pleasure, amusing myself ac- 
 cording to my taste; according to my several needs I 
 chew the thing up or only inhale its odor. 
 
 The distinction between the two attitudes will come 
 out still more strikingly if one reflects that the servile 
 critic, because love guides him, supposes he is serving 
 the thing [cause] itself. 
 
 The truth, or "truth in general," people are bound 
 not to give up, but to seek for. What else is it but 
 the etre supreme, the highest essence? Even "true 
 criticism " would have to despair if it lost faith in the 
 truth. And yet the truth is only a thought; but it 
 is not merely " a " thought, but the thought that is 
 above all thoughts, the irrefragable thought; it is the 
 thought itself, which gives the first hallowing to all 
 others; it is the consecration of thoughts, the "abso- 
 lute," the "sacred" thought. The truth wears longer
 
 THE OWNER 471 
 
 than all the gods; for it is only in the truth's service, 
 and for love of it, that people have overthrown the 
 gods and at last God himself. "The truth" outlasts 
 the downfall of the world of gods, for it is the immor- 
 tal soul of this transitory world of gods, it is Deity 
 itself. 
 
 I will answer Pilate's question, What is truth? 
 Truth is the free thought, the free idea, the free spirit ; 
 truth is what is free from you, what is not your own, 
 what is not in your power. But truth is also the 
 completely unindependent, impersonal, unreal, and in- 
 corporeal; truth cannot step forward as you do, can- 
 not move, change, develop; truth awaits and receives 
 everything from you, and itself is only through you ; 
 for it exists only in your head. You concede that 
 the truth is a thought, but say that not every thought 
 is a true one, or, as you are also likely to express it, not 
 every thought is truly and really a thought. And by 
 what do you measure and recognize the thought? 
 By your impotence, to wit, by your being no longer 
 able to make any successful assault on it! When it 
 overpowers you, inspires you, and carries you away, 
 then you hold it to be the true one. Its dominion 
 over you certifies to you its truth ; and, when it pos- 
 sesses you, and you are possessed by it, then you feel 
 well with it, for then you have found your lord and 
 master. When you were seeking the truth, what did 
 your heart then long for? For your master! You 
 did not aspire to your might, but to a Mighty One, 
 and wanted to exalt a Mighty One (" Exalt ye the 
 Lord our God! "). The truth, my dear Pilate, is 
 the Lord, and all who seek the truth are seeking and
 
 472 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 praising the Lord. Where does the Lord exist? 
 Where else but in your head? He is only spirit, and, 
 wherever you believe you really see him, there he is a 
 ghost; for the Lord is merely something that is 
 thought of, and it was only the Christian pains and 
 agony to make the invisible visible, the spiritual cor- 
 poreal, that generated the ghost and was the frightful 
 misery of the belief in ghosts. 
 
 As long as you believe in the truth, you do not be- 
 lieve in yourself, and you are a servant, a reli- 
 gious man. You alone are the truth, or rather, you 
 are more than the truth, which is nothing at all before 
 you. You too do assuredly ask about the truth, you 
 too do assuredly " criticise," but you do not ask about 
 a " higher truth," to wit, one that should be higher 
 than you, nor criticise according to the criterion 
 of such a truth. You address yourself to thoughts 
 and notions, as you do to the appearances of things, 
 only for the purpose of making them palatable to you, 
 enjoyable to you, and your own : you want only to 
 subdue them and become their owner, you want to 
 orient yourself and feel at home in them, and you find 
 them true, or see them in their true light, when they 
 can no longer slip away from you, no longer have 
 any unseized or uncomprehended place, or when they 
 are right for you, when they are your property. If 
 afterward they become heavier again, if they wriggle 
 themselves out of your power again, then that is just 
 their untruth, to wit, your impotence. Your impo- 
 tence is their power, your humility their exaltation. 
 Their truth, therefore, is you, or is the nothing which 
 you are for them and in which they dissolve : their
 
 THE OWNER 473 
 
 truth is their nothingness. - 
 
 Only as the property of me do the spirits, the 
 truths, get to rest ; and they then for the first time 
 really are, when they have been deprived of their 
 sorry existence and made a property of mine, when 
 it is no longer said " the truth develops itself, rules, 
 asserts itself ; history (also a concept) wins the vic- 
 tory," and the like. The truth never has won a vic- 
 tory, but was always my means to the victory, like the 
 sword ("the sword of truth"). The truth is dead, a 
 letter, a word, a material that I can use up. All 
 truth by itself is dead, a corpse ; it is alive only in the 
 same way as my lungs are alive, to wit, in the mea- 
 sure of my own vitality. Truths are material, like 
 vegetables and weeds; as to whether vegetable or 
 weed, the decision lies in me. 
 
 Objects are to me only material that I use up. 
 Wherever I put my hand I grasp a truth, which I 
 trim for myself. The truth is certain to me, and I do 
 not need to long after it. To do the truth a service 
 is in no case my intent; it is to me only a nourish- 
 ment for my thinking head, as potatoes are for my 
 digesting stomach, or as a friend is for my social heart. 
 As long as I have the humor and force for thinking, 
 every truth serves me only for me to work it up accord- 
 ing to my powers. As reality or worldliness is " vain 
 and a thing of naught " for Christians, so is the truth 
 for me. It exists, exactly as much as the things of this 
 world go on existing although the Christian has 
 proved their nothingness; but it is vain, because it 
 has its value not in itself bui in me. Of itself it is 
 valueless. The truth is a creature.
 
 474 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 As you produce innumerable things by your act- 
 ivity, yes, shape the earth's surface anew and set up 
 works of men everywhere, so too you may still ascer- 
 tain numberless truths by your thinking, and we will 
 gladly take delight in them. Nevertheless, as I do not 
 please to hand myself over to serve your newly dis- 
 covered machines mechanically, but only help to set 
 them running for my benefit, so too I will only use 
 your truths, without letting myself be used for their 
 demands. 
 
 All truths beneath me are to my liking; a truth 
 above me, a truth that I should have to direct myself 
 by, I am not acquainted with. For me there is no 
 truth, for nothing is more than I ! Not even my 
 essence, not even the essence of man, is more than I ! 
 than I, this " drop in the bucket," this " insig- 
 nificant man " ! 
 
 You believe that you have done the utmost when 
 you boldly assert that, because every time has its own 
 truth, there is no " absolute truth." Why, with this 
 you nevertheless still leave to each time its truth, and 
 thus you quite genuinely create an " absolute truth," 
 a truth that no time lacks, because every time, how- 
 ever its truth may be, still has a " truth." . 
 
 Is it meant only that people have been thinking in 
 every time, and so have had thoughts or truths, and 
 that in the subsequent time these were other than they 
 were in the earlier? No, the word is to be that every 
 time had its " truth of faith " ; and in fact none has 
 yet appeared in which a "higher truth" has not been 
 recognized, a truth that people believed they must 
 subject themselves to as " highness and majesty."
 
 THE OWNER 475 
 
 Every truth of a time is its fixed idea, and, if people 
 later found another truth, this always happened only 
 because they sought for another; they only reformed 
 the folly and put a modern dress on it. For they did 
 want who would dare doubt their justification for 
 this? they wanted to be " inspired by an idea." 
 They wanted to be dominated, possessed, by a 
 thought ! The most modern ruler of this kind is 
 "our essence," or "man." 
 
 For all free criticism a thought was the criterion; 
 for own criticism I am, I the unspeakable, and so not 
 the merely thought-of; for what is merely thought of 
 is always speakable, because word and thought coin- 
 cide. That is true which is mine, untrue that whose 
 own I am; true, e. g., the union; untrue, the State 
 and society. " Free and true " criticism takes care 
 for the consistent dominion of a thought, an idea, a 
 spirit; " own " criticism, for nothing but my self-en- 
 j<>//i/icnt. But in this the latter is in fact and we 
 will not spare it this " ignominy "! like the bestial 
 criticism of instinct. I, like the criticising beast, am 
 concerned only for myself, not "for the cause." / am 
 the criterion of truth, but I am not an idea, but more 
 than idea, i. e. unutterable. My criticism is not a 
 " free " criticism, not free from me, and not " servile," 
 not in the service of an idea, but an own criticism. 
 
 True or human criticism makes out only whether 
 something is suitable to man, to the true man; but by 
 own criticism you ascertain whether it is suitable to 
 you. 
 
 Free criticism busies itself with ideas, and therefore 
 is ahvavs theoretical. However it may rage against
 
 476 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 ideas, it still does not get clear of them. It pitches 
 into the ghosts, but it can do this only as it holds 
 them to be ghosts. The ideas it has to do with do 
 not fully disappear; the morning breeze of a new day 
 does not scare them away. 
 
 The critic may indeed come to ataraxy before ideas, 
 but he never gets rid of them, i. e. he will never com- 
 prehend that above the bodily man there does not exist 
 something higher, to wit, liberty, his humanity, etc. 
 He always has a " calling " of man still left, " human- 
 ity." And this idea of humanity remains unrealized, 
 just because it is an " idea " and is to remain such. 
 
 If, on the other hand, I grasp the idea as my idea, 
 then it is already realized, because / am its reality; its 
 reality consists in the fact that I, the bodily, have it. 
 
 They say. the idea of liberty realizes itself in the his- 
 tory of the world. The reverse is the case ; this idea 
 is real as a man thinks it, and it is real in the measure 
 in which it is idea, i. e. in which I think it or have 
 it. It is not the idea of liberty that develops itself, 
 but men develop themselves, and, of course, in this 
 self-development develop their thinking too. 
 
 In short, the critic is not yet owner, because he sti 
 fights with ideas as with powerful aliens, as the 
 Christian is not owner of his " bad desires " so long 
 as he has to combat them; for him who contends 
 against vice, vice exists. 
 
 Criticism remains stuck fast in the " freedom of 
 knowing," the freedom of the spirit, and the spirit 
 gains its proper freedom when it fills itself with the 
 pure, true idea ; this is the freedom of thinking, which 
 cannot be without thoughts. 

 
 THE OWNER 477 
 
 Criticism smites one idea only by another, e. g. 
 that of privilege by that of manhood, or that of ego- 
 ism by that of unselfishness. 
 
 In general, the beginning of Christianity comes on 
 the stage again in its critical end, egoism being com- 
 bated here as there. I am not to make myself (the 
 individual) count, but the idea, the general. 
 
 Why, warfare of the priesthood with egoism, of the 
 spiritually-minded with the worldly-minded, consti- 
 tutes the substance of all Christian history. In the 
 newest criticism this war only becomes all-embracing, 
 fanaticism complete. Indeed, neither can it pass 
 away till it passes thus, after it has had its life and its 
 rage out. 
 
 Whether what I think and do is Christian, what do 
 I care? Whether it is human, liberal, humane, 
 whether unhuman, illiberal, inhuman, what do I ask 
 about that? If only it accomplishes what I want, if 
 only I satisfy myself in it, then overlay it with predi- 
 cates as you will; it is all alike to me. 
 
 Perhaps I too, in the very next moment, defend my- 
 self against my former thoughts ; I too am likely to 
 change suddenly my mode of action ; but not on ac- 
 count of its not corresponding to Christianity, not on 
 account of its running counter to the etsrnal rights of 
 man, not on account of its affronting the idea of man- 
 kind, humanity, and humanitarianism, but because I 
 am no longer all in it, because it no longer furnishes 
 me any full enjoyment, because I doubt the earlier 
 thought or no longer please myself in the mode of 
 action just now practised.
 
 478 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 As the world as property has become a material 
 with which I undertake what I will, so the spirit too 
 as property must sink down into a material before 
 which I no longer entertain any sacred dread. Then, 
 firstly, I shall shudder no more before a thought, let it 
 appear as presumptuous and " devilish " as it will, be- 
 cause, if it threatens to become too inconvenient and 
 unsatisfactory for me, its end lies in my power; but 
 neither shall I recoil from any deed because there 
 dwells in it a spirit of godlessness, immorality, wrong- 
 fulness, as little as St. Boniface pleased to desist, 
 through religious scrupulousness, from cutting down 
 the sacred oak of the heathens. If the things of the 
 world have once become vain, the thoughts of the 
 spirit must also become vain. 
 
 No thought is sacred, for let no thought rank as 
 " devotions"; * no feeling is sacred (no sacred feeling 
 of friendship, mother's feelings, etc.), no belief is 
 sacred. They are all alienable, my alienable property, 
 and are annihilated, as they are created, by me. 
 
 The Christian can lose all things or objects, the 
 most loved persons, these " objects " of his love, with- 
 out giving up himself (i. e., in the Christian sense, his 
 spirit, his soul) as lost. The owner can cast from hir 
 all the thoughts that were dear to his heart and kin- 
 dled his zeal, and will likewise " gain a thousandfold 
 again," because he, their creator, remains. 
 
 Unconsciously and involuntarily we all strive to- 
 ward ownness, and there will hardly be one among us 
 who has not given up a sacred feeling, a sacred 
 
 * [Andacht, a compound form of the word '' thought."]
 
 THE OWNER 479 
 
 thought, a sacred belief; nay, we probably meet no 
 one who could not still deliver himself from one or 
 another of his sacred thoughts. All our contention 
 against convictions starts from the opinion that maybe 
 we are capable of driving our opponent out of his in- 
 trenchments of thought. But what I do unconsciously 
 I half do, and therefore after every victory over a faith 
 I become again the prisoner (possessed) of a faith 
 which then takes my whole self anew into its service, 
 and makes me an enthusiast for reason after I have 
 ceased to be enthusiastic for the Bible, or an enthu- 
 siast for the idea of humanity after I have fought long 
 enough for that of Christianity. 
 
 Doubtless, as owner of thoughts, I shall cover my 
 property with my shield, just as I do not, as owner 
 of things, willingly let everybody help himself to them ; 
 but at the same time I shall look forward smilingly to 
 the outcome of the battle, smilingly lay the shield on 
 the corpses of my thoughts and my faith, smilingly 
 triumph when I am beaten. That is the very humor 
 of the thing. Every one who has " sublimer feelings " 
 is able to vent his humor on the pettinesses of men; 
 but to let it play with all " great thoughts, sublime 
 feelings, noble inspiration, and sacred faith " presup- 
 poses that I am the owner of all. 
 
 If religion has set up the proposition that we are 
 sinners altogether, I set over against it the other: we 
 are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, 
 all that we can be; and we never need be more. 
 Since no defect cleaves to us, sin has no meaning 
 either. Show me a sinner in the world still, if no one 
 any longer needs to do what suits a superior! If I
 
 480 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 only need do what suits myself, I am no sinner if I 
 do not do what suits myself, as I do not injure in my- 
 self a " holy one " ; if, on the other hand, I am to be 
 pious, then I must do what suits God ; if I am to act 
 humanly, I must do what suits the essence of man, the 
 idea of mankind, etc. What religion calls the " sin- 
 ner," humanitarianism calls the " egoist." But, once 
 more: if I need not do what suits any other, is the 
 " egoist," in whom humanitarianism has borne to it- 
 self a new-fangled devil, anything more than a piece 
 of nonsense? The egoist, before whom the humane 
 shudder, is a spook as much as the devil is: he exists 
 only as a bogie and phantasm in their brain. If 
 they were not unsophisticatedly drifting back and 
 forth in the antediluvian opposition of good and evil, 
 to which they have given the modern names of " hu- 
 man " and " egoistic," they would not have freshened 
 up the hoary " sinner " into an " egoist " either, and 
 put a new patch on an old garment. But they could 
 not do otherwise, for they hold it for their task to be 
 "men." They are rid of the Good One; good is 
 left!* 
 
 We are perfect altogether, and on the whole earth 
 there is not one man who is a sinner! There are 
 crazy people who imagine that they are God the 
 Father, God the Son, or the man in the moon, and so 
 too the world swarms with fools who seem to them- 
 selves to be sinners; but, as the former are not the 
 man in the moon, so the latter are not sinners. 
 Their sin is imaginary. 
 
 * [See note on p. 112.]
 
 THE OWNER 481 
 
 Yet, it is insidiously objected, their craziness or 
 their possessedness is at least their sin. Their pos- 
 sessedness is nothing but what they could achieve, 
 the result of their development, just as Luther's faith 
 in the Bible was all that he was competent to make 
 out. The one brings himself into the madhouse with 
 his development, the other brings himself therewith 
 into the Pantheon and to the loss of Valhalla. 
 
 There is no sinner and no sinful egoism! 
 
 Get away from me with your " philanthropy"! 
 Creep in, you philanthropist, into the " dens of vice," 
 linger awhile in the throng of the great city: will you 
 not everywhere find sin, and sin, and again sin? 
 Will you not wail over corrupt humanity, not lament 
 at the monstrous egoism? Will you see a rich man 
 without finding him pitiless and "egoistic"? Per- 
 haps you already call yourself an atheist, but you 
 remain true to the Christian feeling that a camel will 
 sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man 
 not be an " un-man." How many do you see any- 
 how that you would not throw into the " egoistic 
 mass " ? What, therefore, has your philanthropy 
 [love of man] found ? Nothing but unlovable men ! 
 And where do they all come from ? From you, from 
 your philanthropy! You brought the sinner with 
 you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore 
 you inserted him everywhere. Do not call men sin- 
 ners, and they are not: you alone are the creator of 
 sinners; you, who fancy that you love men, are the 
 very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very 
 one to divide them into vicious and virtuous, into men 
 and un-men, the very one to befoul them with the
 
 482 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 slaver of your possessedness; for you love not men, but 
 man. But I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, 
 you have only dreamed of him. 
 
 Self-enjoyment is embittered to me by my thinking 
 I must serve another, by my fancying myself under 
 obligation to him, by my holding myself called to 
 "self-sacrifice," "resignation," "enthusiasm." All 
 right: if I no longer serve any idea, any " higher 
 essence," then it is clear of itself that I no longer serve 
 any man either, but under all circumstances myself. 
 But thus I am not merely in fact or in being, but also 
 for my consciousnesss, the unique.* 
 
 There pertains to you more than the divine, the 
 human, etc. ; yours pertains to you. 
 
 Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give 
 you out for, and you have more power; look upon 
 yourself as more, and you have more. 
 
 You are then not merely called to everything divine, 
 entitled to everything human, but owner of what is 
 yours, i. e. of all that you possess the force to make 
 your own ; f i. e. you are appropriate and capacitated 
 for everything that is yours. 
 
 People have always supposed that they must give 
 me a destiny lying outside myself, so that at last they 
 demanded that I should lay claim to the human be- 
 cause I am = man. This is the Christian magic 
 circle. Fichte's ego too is the same essence outside 
 me, for every one is ego ; and, if only this ego has 
 rights, then it is " the ego," it is not I. But I am not 
 an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego: I am 
 
 * [Einzigel ' t [eigen] t [geeignet]
 
 THE OWNER 483 
 
 unique. Hence my wants too are unique, and my 
 deeds; in short, everything about me is unique. And 
 it is only as this unique I that I take everything for 
 my own, as I set myself to work, and develop myself, 
 only as this. I do not develop man, nor as man, but, 
 as I, I develop myself. 
 
 This is the meaning of the unique one.
 
 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 III 
 THE UNIQUE ONE 
 
 Pre-Christian and Christian times pursue opposite 
 goals; the former wants to idealize the real, the latter 
 to realize the ideal; the former seeks the "holy spirit," 
 the latter the " glorified body." Hence the former 
 closes with insensitiveness to the real, with " con- 
 tempt for the world " ; the latter will end with the 
 casting off of the ideal, with " contempt for the spirit."" 
 
 The opposition of the real and the ideal \s an irrec- 
 oncilable one, and the one can never become the other : 
 if the ideal became the real, it would no longer 'be the 
 ideal ; and, if the real became the ideal, the ideal 
 alone would be, but not at all the real. The oppo- 
 sition of the two is not to be vanquished otherwise 
 than if some one annihilates both. Only in this " some 
 one," the third party, does the opposition find its end; 
 otherwise idea and reality will ever fail to coincide. 
 The idea cannot be so realized as to remain idea, but 
 is realized only when it dies as idea ; and it is the 
 same with the real. 
 
 But now we have before us in the ancients adherents 
 of the idea, in the moderns adherents of reality. 
 Neither can get clear of the opposition, and both pine 
 only, the one party for the spirit, and, when this crav-
 
 THE UNIQUE ONE 485 
 
 ing of the ancient world seemed to be satisfied and 
 this spirit to have come, the others immediately for the 
 secularization of this spirit again, which must forever 
 remain a " pious wish." 
 
 The pious wish of the ancients was sanctity, the 
 pious wish of the moderns is corporeity. But, as an- 
 tiquity had to go down if its longing was to be satisfied 
 (for it consisted only in the longing), so too corporeity 
 can never be attained within the ring of Christian- 
 ness. As the trait of sanctification or purification goes 
 through the old world (the washings, etc.), so that of 
 incorporation goes through the Christian world: God 
 plunges down into this world, becomes flesh, and 
 wants to redeem it, i. e. fill it with himself; but, since 
 he is "the idea" or "the spirit," people (e. g. Hegel) 
 in the end introduce the idea into everything, into the 
 world, and prove " that the idea is, that reason is, in 
 everything." " Man " corresponds in the culture of 
 to-day to what the heathen Stoics set up as " the wise 
 man"; the latter, like the former, a -Jleshless being. 
 The unreal " wise man," this bodiless " holy one " of 
 the Stoics, became a real person, a bodily " Holy 
 One," in God made flesh ; the unreal " man," the 
 bodiless ego, will become real in the corporeal ego, in 
 me. 
 
 There winds its way through Christianity the ques- 
 tion about the " existence of God," which, taken up 
 ever and ever again, gives testimony that the craving 
 for existence, corporeity, personality, reality, was 
 incessantly busying the heart because it never found a 
 satisfying solution. At last the question about the 
 existence of God fell, but only to rise up again in the
 
 486 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 proposition that the "divine" had existence (Feuer- 
 bach). But this too has no existence, and neither will 
 the last refuge, that the " purely human " is realiz- 
 able, afford shelter much longer. No idea has exist- 
 ence, for none is capable of corporeity. The scholastic 
 contentiorf of realism and nominalism has the same 
 content; in short, this spins itself out through all 
 Christian history, and cannot end in it. 
 
 The world of Christians is working at realizing 
 ideas in the individual relations of life, the institutions 
 and laws of the Church and the State; but they make 
 resistance, and always keep back something unem- 
 bodied (unrealizable). Nevertheless this embodiment 
 is restlessly rushed after, no matter in what degree 
 corporeity constantly fails to result. 
 
 For realities matter little to the realizer, but it mat- 
 ters everything that they be realizations of the idea. 
 Hence he is ever examining anew whether the realized 
 does in truth have the idea, its kernel, dwelling in it; 
 and in testing the real he at the same time tests the 
 idea, whether it is realizable as he thinks it, or is only 
 thought by him incorrectly, and for that reason 
 unfeasibly. 
 
 The Christian is no longer to care for family, State, 
 etc., as existences; Christians are not to sacrifice them- 
 selves for these " divine things " like the ancients, but 
 these are only to be utilized to make the spirit alive in 
 them. The real family has become indifferent, and 
 there is to arise out of it an ideal one which would 
 then be the " truly real," a sacred family, blessed by 
 God, or, according to the liberal way of thinking, a 
 " rational " family. With the ancients family, State,
 
 THE UNIQUE ONE 48? 
 
 fatherland, etc., is divine as a thing extant ; with the 
 moderns it is still awaiting divinity, as extant it is 
 only sinful, earthly, and has still to be " redeemed," 
 i. e. to become truly real. This has the following 
 meaning: The family, etc., is not the extant and real, 
 but the divine, the idea, is extant and real; whether 
 this family will make itself real by taking up the truly 
 real, the idea, is still unsettled. It is not the individ- 
 ual's task to serve the family as the divine, but, re- 
 versely, to serve the divine and to bring to it the still 
 undivine family, i. e. to subject everything in the 
 idea's name, to set up the idea's banner everywhere, to 
 bring the idea to real efficacy. 
 
 But, since the concern of Christianity, as of anti- 
 quity, is for the divine, they always come out at this 
 again on their opposite ways. At the end of heathen- 
 ism the divine becomes the extramundane, at the end 
 of Christianity the intramundane. Antiquity does 
 not succeed in putting it entirely outside the world, 
 and, when Christianity accomplishes this task, the 
 divine instantly longs to get back into the world and 
 wants to " redeem " the world. But within Christian- 
 ity it does not and cannot come to this, that the 
 divine as intramundane should really become the 
 mundane itself: there is enough left that does and 
 must maintain itself unpenetrated as the " bad," irra- 
 tional, accidental, " egoistic," the " mundane " in the 
 bad sense. Christianity begins with God's becoming 
 man, and carries on its work of conversion and re- 
 demption through all time in order to prepare for God 
 a reception in all men and in everything human, and 
 to penetrate everything with the spirit: it sticks to
 
 488 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 preparing a place for the " spirit." 
 
 When the accent was at last laid on Man or man- 
 kind, it was again the idea that they "pronounced 
 eternal." " Man does not die! " They thought they 
 had now found the reality of the idea: Man is the 
 I of history, of the world's history ; it is he, this 
 ideal, that really develops, i. e. realizes, himself. He 
 is the really real and corporeal one, for history is his 
 body, in which individuals are only members. Christ 
 is the I of the world's history, even of the pre-Chris- 
 tian; in modern apprehension it is man, the figure of 
 Christ has developed into the figure of man: man as 
 such, man absolutely, is the *' central point" of his- 
 tory. In " man " the imaginary beginning returns 
 again; for " man " is as imaginarv as Christ is. 
 " Man," as the I of the world's history, closes the 
 cycle of Christian apprehensions. 
 
 Christianity's magic circle would be broken if the 
 strained relation between existence and calling, i. e. 
 between me as I am and me as I should be, ceased; it 
 persists only as the longing of the idea for its bodili- 
 ness, and vanishes with the relaxing separation of the 
 two: only when the idea remains idea, as man or 
 mankind is indeed a bodiless idea, is Christianity still 
 extant. The corporeal idea, the corporeal or " com- 
 pleted " spirit, floats before the Christian as " the end 
 of the days " or as the " goal of history " ; it is not 
 present time to him. 
 
 The individual can only have a part in the found- 
 ing of the Kingdom of God, or, according to the 
 modern notion of the same thing, in the development 
 and history of humanity; and only so far as he has a
 
 THE UNIQUE ONE 489 
 
 part in it does a Christian, or according to the modern 
 expression human, value pertain to him; for the rest 
 he is dust and a worm-bag. 
 
 That the individual is of himself a world's history, 
 and possesses his property in the rest of the world's 
 history, goes beyond what is Christian. To the Chris- 
 tian the world's history is the higher thing, because it 
 is the history of Christ or " man "; to the egoist only 
 his history has value, because he wants to develop only 
 himself, not the mankind-idea, not God's plan, not the 
 purposes of Providence, not liberty, and the like. He 
 does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or a 
 vessel of God, he recognizes no calling, he does not 
 fancy that he exists for the further -development of 
 mankind and that he must contribute his mite to it, 
 but he lives himself out, careless of how well or ill hu- 
 manity may fare thereby. If it were not open to con- 
 fusion with the idea that a state of nature is to be 
 praised, one might recall Lenau's " Three Gypsies."- 
 What, am I in the world to realize ideas? To do my 
 part by my citizenship, say, toward the realization 
 of the idea " State," or by marriage, as husband and 
 father, to bring the idea of the family into an exist- 
 ence? What does such a calling concern me! I live 
 after a calling as little as the flower grows and gives 
 fragrance after a calling. 
 
 The ideal " Man " is realized when the Christian 
 apprehension turns about and becomes the proposition, 
 " I, this unique one, am man." The conceptual ques- 
 tion, " what is man ? " has then changed into the 
 personal question, " who is man ? " With " what " 
 the concept was sought for, in order to realize it; with
 
 490 THE EGO AND HIS OWN 
 
 " who " it is no longer any question at all, but the 
 answer is personally on hand at once in the asker: the 
 question answers itself. 
 
 They say of God, " Names name thee not." That 
 holds good of me: no concept expresses me, nothing 
 that is designated as my essence exhausts me; they are 
 only names. Likewise they say of God that he is per- 
 fect and has no calling to strive after perfection. 
 That too holds good of me alone. 
 
 I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know 
 myself as unique. In the unique one the owner himself 
 returns into his creative nothing, out of which he is 
 born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it 
 man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales 
 only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern 
 myself for myself,* the unique one, then my concern 
 rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes 
 himself, and I may say: 
 
 All things are nothing to me.^ 
 
 * \_Stell' Ich avj Mich meine Sache. Literally, " if I set my affair on 
 myself."] 
 
 t["7c7i liab' Mein' Sack' auf Nichts gestellt." Literally, " I have set my 
 affair on nothing." See note on p. 3.]
 
 INDEX 491 
 
 INDEX 
 
 The following index to this translation of " Der Einzige und sein 
 Eigentum " is intended to help one, after reading the book, to find 
 a passage which he remembers. It is not a concordance to aid in 
 analytical study. Hence the designations of the matter referred to 
 are in a form intended to be recognized by the person who remem- 
 l>ers the passage; I have generally preferred, so far as convenience 
 permitted, to use the words of the text itself, being confident that a 
 description of the subject-matter in words more appropriate to the 
 summary form of the index would never help any person to find 
 his passage. If the designations are recognizable, I have permitted 
 them to be rough. 
 
 Of necessity the index has been made hastily, and I hereby con- 
 fess it to be guilty of all the faults that an index can possess* 
 though I hope that the page numbers will prove to be accurate. 
 The faults that I am most ashamed of are the incompleteness 
 which usually omits the 'shorter occurrences of a given word or idea 
 and the indefiniteness of the "ff." which does not tell the reader 
 how far the reference extends. It has actually not been in my 
 power to avoid either of these faults, and I hope they will not pre- 
 vent the index from being of very considerable use to those who 
 pay continued attention to the book. These two faults will be 
 found least noticeable in the references to proper names and quo- 
 tations: therefore the reader who wants to find a passage will do 
 l>est to remember, if possible, a conspicuous proper name or a 
 quotation whose source is known perhaps oftenest from the Bible 
 and look up his passage by that. In the indexing of quotations, 
 however, I have omitted anonymous proverbs, lines of German 
 hymns, and quotations of whose authorship I was (whether par- 
 donably or unpardonably) ignorant. 
 
 The abbreviations are: ftn., "footnote"; f., "and next page"; 
 ff., "and following pages." 
 
 S. T. B.
 
 492 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Age: coming of age, 220. 
 
 Alcibiades: 282 f. 
 
 Alexis, Wilibald: "Cabanis," 
 
 291. 
 
 Algiers: 343. 
 Alien: the same in German as 
 
 "strange," 47 ftn. 
 America: 
 
 citizens presumed respectable, 
 233. 
 
 duelists how treated, 314. 
 
 Germans sold to, 351. 
 
 kings not valued in, 351. 
 Ananias and Sapphira: 102. 
 Anarchism: xv n. 
 Ancients: 17 ff. 
 
 conquered the world, 120 ff. 
 Aristippus: 26. 
 Aristotle: "zoon politicon," 56, 
 
 307. 
 
 Arnim: see Bettina. 
 Art: support of, 360. 
 Atahualpa: 448. 
 Athanasius: "God making men 
 
 divine," 382. 
 Athenians : age of their popular 
 
 freedom, 281 ff. 
 Augsburg Confession: Art. 11, 
 
 117 f. 
 
 Authorization: limits constitu- 
 tional legislatures, etc., 146 f. 
 Autun and Barrere, bishop of: 
 
 131. 
 
 Babeuf^Babouvism, 245, 248. 
 
 Bacon: "clear head," no phil- 
 osopher, 111. 
 
 Bailly: 
 
 "no extra reason," 306. 
 what is my property, 131. 
 
 Bauer, Bruno: 
 
 "Anekdota" 2.152: 108. 
 " Denkvmerdigkeiten " 6.6-7 : 
 96, 102. 
 
 "Die gute Sache der Freihtit" 
 
 pp. 62-63: 178 f. 
 "Judenjrage" p. 60: 180, 414. 
 61 : 229. 
 66: 178. 
 84: 235. 
 114: 185. 
 "Lii.Ztg." 5.18: 164. 
 
 No. 8: 190 ff. 
 
 8.22- 321. 
 " man just discovered, " 8, 
 
 180, 326, 467. 
 
 treats Jew question as relat- 
 ing to privilege, 271 ff. I 
 who he was, 163 ftn. 
 Bauer, E.: 
 
 "Liberate Bestrelnmgen" 
 2.50-94: 299 ff. 
 2.95 ff.: 378 f. 
 2.130: 301. 
 2.132: 302. 
 Bavaria: its government worth 
 
 more than a man, 345 ftn. 
 Beasts: how they live, 435, 442 
 
 Becker, A.: 
 
 " Vdksphilosophie unserer 
 Tage" p. 22 f.: 103, 249. 
 
 32: 103. 
 Bee: 
 
 in beehood, 303 ff. 
 little busy, 442. 
 Being: 
 
 in Feuerbach's philosophy, 
 
 453 ff. 
 same word in German as " es- ' 
 
 sence," 41 ftn. 
 see also Essence; also 
 
 Supreme. 
 
 Bettina: "This book belongs to 
 the King" pp. 374-385: 
 
 261 ff. 
 Bible: 
 
 Gen. 22.1-12: 198.
 
 INDEX 
 
 493 
 
 Ex. 20.13: 65. 
 Deut. 5.16: 216, 249. 
 
 32.3- 459. 
 
 Ps. 46.3: 121. 
 
 99.9: 471. 
 
 Prov. 3.2: 216. 
 
 Is. 55.8: 338, 456. 
 
 55.9: 26. 
 Jer. 13.16: 459. 
 Matt. 4.1-11: 464. 
 5.18: 125. 
 5.22: 56. 
 5.48: 321. 
 6.11: 426. 
 6.13: 181. 
 6.24: 279. 
 6.34: 166. 
 7.7: 449. 
 8.22: 19. 
 9.11: 70. 
 10.16: 22, 422. 
 10.35: 114. 
 11.27: 122. 
 12.30: 259. 
 12.45: 102. 
 13.25: 213. 
 16.24: 215. 
 16.26: 36. 
 18.3: 466. 
 19.21: 102. 
 19.24: 481. 
 22.21 : 359, 422. 
 23.24: 297. 
 26.53: 282. 
 Mark 2.21 : 480. 
 3.29: 240. 
 9.23: 122. 
 10.29: 11, 19. 
 Luke 5.11: 102. 
 6.20: 428. 
 10.7: 157. 
 11.13: 14. 
 14.11: 46, 105. 
 17.6: 122. 
 
 23.2: 422. 
 John 1.14: 269. 
 
 1.18 Revised Version 
 
 margin: 34. 
 2.4: 114. 
 3.4: 304. 
 3.6: 34, 35. 
 4.24a: 14, 23, 33, 
 
 39, 40, 60, 
 112, 140, 
 433, 444, 
 472. 
 
 4.24b: 410. 
 6.32-35: 426. 
 8.44: 240. 
 16.33: 33. 
 18.36: 13. 
 18.38: 13, 28, 471. 
 20.22: 42. 
 20.29: 446. 
 Acts 5.1-2: 102. 
 5.4: 398. 
 5.29: 11, 215, 444. 
 5.39: 459. 
 Rom. 1.25: 451 
 6.18: 205. 
 8.9: 42. 
 8.14, 16: 226. 
 8.21: 461. 
 9.21: 259. 
 12.1: 429. 
 
 1 Cor. 2.10: 3, 13, 33, 433. 
 
 3.16: 42. 
 8.4: 133. 
 15.26, 55: 430. 
 
 2 Cor. 5.17: 30. 
 
 6.15: 212. 
 Gal. 2.20: 66, 93, 427. 
 
 4.26: 19, 205. 
 Phil. 2.9: 170. 
 lThess.5.21: 468. 
 2 Tim. 1.10: 430. 
 Heb. 11.13: 18,34. 
 James 1.17: 455,
 
 494 
 
 INDEX 
 
 2.12: 206. 
 1 Pet. 2.16(?): 205. 
 
 5.2: 399. 
 1 John 3.10: 226. 
 
 4.8: 4, 51, 61, 74, 
 
 382. 
 
 4.16: 382. 
 different men's relation to, 
 
 447 ff. 
 
 quotations from, xx. 
 Birthright: 248 ff. 
 Blanc, Louis: "Histoire des Dix 
 
 Ans" I. 138: 139. 
 Bluntschli: 466. 
 Body recognized in manhood: 
 
 14 ff. 
 
 Boniface, St.: 
 cuts down sacred oak, 218, 
 
 478. 
 
 risks life as missionary, 77. 
 Bourgeoisie: see Commonalty. 
 Burns, Robert: 433. 
 
 Caitiff: 398. 
 Calling: 
 
 helping men to realize, 383 f . 
 
 no calling, one does what he 
 
 can, 433 ff . 
 
 Calvinism: puritanical, 120. 
 Capacities: 
 
 common to all, 434. 
 
 differ, 433 f., 438 f. 
 Carriere: 
 
 "Koelner Dom," 305. 
 Catholicism: lets the profane 
 
 world stand, 116 ff. 
 Catholics: had regard for 
 
 church, 290. 
 
 Cause: mine and others, 3 ff. 
 Censorship: more legal than 
 
 murder, 65. 
 Chamisso: "Valley of Murder," 
 
 247. 
 Charles V: 399 ff. 
 
 Children: 9 ff. 
 
 competent to get * living, 
 
 350 f. 
 Chinese: family respoasibility, 
 
 291. 
 
 Chinese ways: 86 ff. 
 Christ: 
 
 no revolutionist, 422. 
 
 would not call legions of 
 
 Christianity: 
 founding of, 422 f . 
 liberalism completes, 226 ff. 
 Christianizing: 25,6. 
 Christians : 
 asserting their distinctiveness, 
 
 271 ff. 
 trying to conquer the Spirit, 
 
 122 ff. 
 Cicero: 28. 
 Clericalism: 98 ff. 
 Clootz, Anacharsis: 276. 
 Commonalty: 
 
 holds that a man's a man, 
 
 129 ff. 
 
 magnifies desert, 136. 
 Communism : 
 see Proudhon, Socialism, 
 
 Weitling. 
 
 all for society, 412 f. 
 an advanced feudalism, 415 ff. 
 not advantageous to all, 410 
 
 ff. 
 
 runs to regulations, 340. 
 useful, 355 f. 
 Competence: 348 ff. 
 Competition: 
 characteristic of bourgeois: 
 
 society, 344. 
 how to abolish, 364 f. 
 produces poor work, 354. 
 restricted by control of op- 
 portunities, 345 ff. 
 Confidence: breach of, 400 ff,
 
 INDEX 
 
 495 
 
 Conscience in Protestantism, 
 115. 
 
 Consequences are not penal- 
 ties, 314 f. 
 
 Constitutional monarchy: 300 
 ff. 
 
 Corporeity the modern wish, 
 
 Cotters: 327 f. 
 Crime: 
 
 a man's own affair, 317. 
 
 results from the recognition 
 of Man and right, 266 ff. 
 
 the only way to beat the law, 
 258. 
 
 treatment as disease, 316 f. 
 Criminal : 
 
 how to make him ashamed, 
 265. 
 
 ill treated, 383. 
 
 made by the State, 261 ff. 
 Cripples: wages to, 358 f. 
 Crispin St.: 64 f. 
 Critical philosophy: its new 
 
 morality, 72 ff. 
 Criticism: 
 
 limited by love, 381 f. 
 
 makes progress, 190 ff. 
 
 of Bible, 163 ftn, 381, 448 f. 
 
 servile and own, 467 ff. 
 
 starts from presuppositions, 
 467 ff. 
 
 victorious, 195. 
 
 what it was, 163 ftn. 
 Crito: 72. 
 
 Culture: its results. 443 ff; 
 Cultured people: 94 ff. 
 Curative means against crime: 
 
 316 f. 
 
 Curtius leaps into chasm, 99. 
 Custom makes earth a heaven, 
 
 87 ff. 
 
 Dudmhardt, Marie: xi. 
 
 Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum, "I 
 
 think, therefore I am," 25, 
 
 109 f., 112, 173. 
 
 Despicable: 401. 
 
 Desert, watchword of bour- 
 geoisie, 136. 
 
 Devil, natural objects named 
 after, 467 
 
 Diogenes: 26. 
 
 " Get out of my sunshine, " 
 307. 
 
 Directions for life: 432 f. 
 
 Disgruntlement: 192. 
 
 Dissolving: the price of liberty, 
 188. 
 
 Divine: ancient and modern 
 times are concerned for the, 
 486 ff. 
 
 Dogma: 194 f. 
 
 Dueling: 
 
 boycotted in America, 314 f . 
 prohibited by State, 243. 
 
 Dupin: 296. 
 
 Education: 320 f. 
 Ego: in title of this book, ix f. 
 Egoism : 
 
 everybody repudiates, 185 ff. 
 exemplified in God, races, 
 
 States, etc., 3 ff. 
 hypocritical, 216 f. 
 remains under democracy and 
 
 Socialism, 163 ff. 
 the enemy of liberalism, 
 
 185 ff. 
 Egoists: 
 
 all bodies of men are unjust 
 
 to, 284. 
 have brought peoples to ruin, 
 
 277 ff. 
 
 involuntary, 46. 
 F.inzige (der) : translation of the 
 
 word, ix f. 
 Ends: 78 f.
 
 496 
 
 INDEX 
 
 England : 
 
 allows free press, 374. 
 
 disregards popular turmoil, 
 297 f. 
 
 law-abiding, 254. 
 Enjoyment: rather than life, as 
 
 object, 426 ff. 
 Epicureans: 27 f. 
 Equal: who are our equals? 
 
 225 ff. 
 Equality: 
 
 of political rights, 133 ff. 
 
 to result from Communism, 
 
 154 ff. 
 Essence: 
 
 essences are spooks, 50 ff. 
 
 higher and highest essences, 
 47 ff. See also Supreme 
 Being. 
 
 of man, as supreme, 40 f. 
 
 recognized in men, 52 ff. 
 
 same as "being," 41 ftn. 
 Established: 293 f. 
 Estates: previous to Revolution, 
 
 134 f. 
 
 Euripides: "Orestes," 418: 254. 
 Exclusiveness: 
 
 criticism excludes, 176 ff. 
 
 in Jew and Christian, 271 ff. 
 
 Faith: in morality. 57 ff. 
 Family: 
 
 as court judging son, 291 
 
 depends on piety, 288 ff. 
 
 respect for idea of, 113 f. 
 
 self must be sacrificed to, 
 
 Fellow-feeling: 386 f. 
 
 Feudalism: ended by Revolu- 
 tion, 132 ff. 
 
 Feuerbach : 
 
 "Anekdota" 2.64: 60. 
 "Essence of Christianity, 
 40 ff. 
 
 p. 394: 391 f. 
 401: 238. 
 402: 41. 
 402, 403: 
 
 74. 
 
 403: 118. 
 408: 75. 
 " Principles of the Philosophy 
 
 of the Future," 453 ff. 
 humanizing the divine, 227. 
 insists on "being," 453 ff. 
 look "rightly and 
 
 unbiasedly," 449. 
 love a divine power, 391. 
 love is the essence of man, 
 
 412. 
 " man the supreme being, " 
 
 8, 189. 
 
 opposes Hegel, 453 ff. 
 religion displaces the human, 
 
 320. 
 
 the "divine" exists, 486. 
 " theology is anthropology, " 
 
 74. 
 "the world a truth to the 
 
 ancients," 18, 30. 
 Fichte: 
 
 his ego is not I, 482. 
 on casuistry of lying, 401. 
 "The ego is all," 237. 
 Fixed idea: 55 ff. 
 Forces: man is to exert, 435 f. 
 Fortune: weak point of present 
 
 society, 158 ff. 
 France: laws about education, 
 
 459 f. 
 
 Francis II (of France): 399 f. 
 Franke: 77. 
 Frederick the Great: 
 his cane, 176. 
 tolerant, 230. 
 Freedom: 
 
 all want freedom, but not 
 the same freedom, 208 ff 

 
 INDEX 
 
 497 
 
 an ignoble cause, 214. 
 
 Guizot: 460. 
 
 if given, is a sham, 219 ff. 
 
 Gustavus Adolphus: 176. 
 
 is riddance, 203 ff., 214 f. 
 
 Gutenberg: served mankind, 
 
 of press, 259 ff. 
 
 164. 
 
 of thought, 455 ff. 
 
 
 thirsting for, 203 ff. 
 
 Habit: see Custom. 
 
 Fun prohibited, 259 ff. 
 
 Hah": see Hypocrisy-. 
 Hartmann, Eduard von: xiii f. 
 
 Galotti, Emilia: 70, 431. 
 
 Heart: 
 
 German unity: 303 ff. 
 
 cultivated by Socrates, 20 ff. 
 
 a dream, 377. 
 
 cultivated by the Reforma- 
 
 Germany: millennial anniver- 
 
 tion, 31. 
 
 sary, 284 f. 
 
 Heartlessness : is crime, 265 f. 
 
 God: 
 
 Heautontimorumenos : 216. 
 
 my God and the God of all, 
 
 Heaven-storming: 88 f. 
 
 189 f. 
 
 Hegel: 
 
 natural objects named after, 
 467. 
 
 "absolute philosophy," 453 ff. 
 condemns "opinion" and 
 
 God-man: 202, 241. 
 
 what is "mine," 453. 
 
 Goethe: 
 
 finds his oyvn speculations in 
 
 "Faust," 159: 108. 
 
 Bible, 448. 
 
 1624-5: 250, 252. 
 
 in Christian party, 311. 
 
 2154: 112, 215, 480. 
 
 insists on reality, "things," 
 
 "Vanitas! vantiaium vani- 
 
 95. 
 
 tas!" 
 
 it is impossible to tell a lie, 
 
 3, 196, 328, 330, 353, 
 
 464. 
 
 377, 490. 
 
 personifies thinking, 468. 
 
 "Venetian Epigrams," 46. 
 "Humanus the saint's name," 
 
 philosopher of bourgeoisie, 
 137. 
 
 370. 
 "The spirit 'tis that builds 
 
 proves philosophy religious, 
 62. 
 
 itself the body," 110. 
 
 puts the idea into everything, 
 
 poet of bourgeoisie, 137. 
 
 485. 
 
 in lucky circumstances, 433. 
 Good intentions: as pavement 
 
 systematizes religion, 125. 
 wants match-making left to 
 
 (proverbially), 96. 
 
 parents, 291. 
 
 Government: everybody feels 
 
 wants to remain Lutheran, 
 
 competent for, 356 f. 
 
 120. 
 
 Grandmother: saw spirits, 42. 
 
 Henry VII, Emperor: 120. 
 
 Greeks: 
 
 Hess: 
 
 intrigue ended their liberty, 
 
 "Ein und zwanzig Bogen," 
 
 282 f. 
 
 p. 12: 138. 
 
 their philosophy, 19 f. 
 Guerrillas in Spain: 65. 
 
 89 ff.: 321. 
 "Triarchit," p. 76: 234.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hierarchy: 95 ff. 
 
 Higher world: "introduction 
 
 of," 43, 91. 
 Highest: same as "supreme," 
 
 41 ftn. 
 Hinrichs: " Pditische Vorle- 
 
 mngen," 1.280: 345 ftn. 
 History: as dominant thought, 
 
 473, 488 f. 
 
 Holbach: head of "clot," 57. 
 Holy: the same in German as 
 
 "sacred," 50 ftn. 
 Holy Spirit: has to be con- 
 quered by Christians, 122 ff. 
 Horace: 
 
 "impavidum ierient ruinae" 
 121. 
 
 " nil admirari," 121. 
 
 his philosophy, 28. 
 Human: 
 
 exclusive regard for general 
 human interests, 168 ff . 
 
 you are more than human 
 being, 166 f. 
 
 human beings desire democ- 
 racy, 128. 
 Humanism: 30. 
 Humanity: 
 
 labor must relate to, 170 ff. 
 
 laborers must be allowed to 
 
 develop, 157 ff. 
 Hume: "clear head," 111. 
 Huss: 460. 
 Hvpocrisy: half moral and half 
 
 egoist, 66 ff. 
 
 Idea: 
 
 accepted as truth, and fixed, 
 474 ff. 
 
 as object of respect, 112 ff. 
 
 see Fixed. 
 Ideal: 
 
 constitutes religion, 321. 
 
 versus real, 484 ff. 
 
 Immoral: only class known to 
 
 moralists besides "moral," 
 
 69 ff. 
 
 Imparted feelings: 82 ff. 
 Inca: 448. 
 
 Individual: "simple," 344 f. 
 Inequality: see Equality. 
 Infanticide: 424. 
 Insurrection: 420 ff. 
 Intercourse: 
 
 not made by a hall, 285 ff. 
 
 preferred to society, 407. 
 Interests: ideal and personal, 
 
 98 ff. 
 Ireland: suffrage in, 343. 
 
 Jesuits: 
 
 substantially grant indul- 
 gences, 116 f 
 "the end hallows the means," 
 
 118 ff., 140, 430. 
 Jews: 
 
 asserting their distinctiveness, 
 
 271 ff. 
 
 emancipated, 220 f. 
 heathen, 29, 123. 
 not altogether egoistic or ex- 
 clusive, 235 f. 
 unspiritual, 24. 
 whether they are men, 166 ff. 
 will not read this book, 35 f. 
 Judge: 
 
 Supreme Being as, 432 f. 
 Judges: 
 
 mechanical: 253. 
 
 what makes them unreliable, 
 
 223 f. 
 Juliet: 290. 
 
 Justice: a hate commanded by 
 love, 383. 
 
 Kaiser : worthless pamphlet, 
 
 344. 
 Kant: 176.
 
 INDEX 
 
 499 
 
 Klopstock: 83. 
 Koerner: 77. 
 
 " Kommunisten in der Schweiz" : 
 report on, p. 3: 245. 
 pp. 24, 63: 438. 
 Kosciusko: 404. 
 Kotzebue: 64 f. 
 Krummacher: 58, 266, 441. 
 
 Labor: 
 
 fundamental in Communist 
 
 society, 156 ff. 
 human vs. unique, 354 ff. 
 lofty and petty, 174 if. 
 must be thoroughly human, 
 
 170 ff. 
 
 must not be drudgery, 157 ff. 
 of the right kind develops 
 
 man, 173 ff. 
 problem, 149 ff. 
 too narrow, 163 ff. 
 wanting higher pay, 336 f. 
 Lais: 80. 
 
 Lang, Hitter von: 69. 
 Lavater: 450. 
 Law: 
 
 common or general law, 
 
 same word in German as 
 "right," 242 ftn. 
 particular law, not same word 
 
 as "right," 254 ftn. 
 how to break, 258. 
 is a declaration of will, 255 f. 
 is impersonal, 141 f. 
 paralyzes will, 256 ff. 
 :sacred in the State, 313 ff. 
 to be respected as such, 254 
 
 ff. 
 Leisure: 
 
 to be enjoyed humanly, 164 
 
 f., 172. 
 
 to be enjoyed uniquely, 356. 
 Lenau: "Three Gypsies," 489. 
 Lessing: 
 
 " Emilia Galotti," 7d, 431. 
 
 "Nathan der Weise," 71. 
 Level: rascal and honest man 
 
 on same, 69 f . 
 Liberalism : 
 
 completes Christianity, 226 If. 
 
 has made valuable gains, 188 
 
 rational, 137 f. 
 
 sees only Man in me, 225 ff. 
 Liberals: the most modern 
 
 moderns, 127. 
 Liberty: 
 
 individual, does not mean 
 the individual is free, 
 140 ff. 
 
 political, means direct sub- 
 jection to State, 138 ff. 
 
 of the people, is not mine, 
 280ff 
 
 no objection to its diminu- 
 tion, 408 ff. 
 Lie: 395 ff. 
 Life: 
 
 caring for, 425 ff. 
 
 should conform to the Su- 
 preme Being, 432 ff. 
 
 true, 426 ff. 
 "Lit. Ztg.": 
 
 5.12 ff : 185. 
 
 5.15, 23: 185. 
 
 5.24: 173, 186. 
 
 5.26: 166. 
 
 No. 8: 190 ff. 
 
 see also Bauer. 
 Love: 
 
 as law of our intercourse, 
 380 ff. 
 
 how it goes wrong, 388 ff. 
 
 how originated, 388. 
 
 in egoism, 385 ff. 
 Lunatics: see Fixed Idea. 
 Lusatia: 304. 
 Luther:
 
 500 
 
 INDEX 
 
 appealed to reason, 460. 
 broke his vow, 398. 
 demanded safe conduct to 
 
 Worms, 282. 
 did his best, 481. 
 "Here I stand, I cannot do 
 
 otherwise," 78. 
 "He who believes is a God," 
 
 109. 
 
 not understood at first, 30. 
 shows the way to truth, 107 ff . 
 Lutheranism: goes beyond 
 Puritanism, 120. 
 
 Mackay, John Henry: vii f., 
 
 xi, xiii, 163 ftn. 
 Making something out of us: 
 
 320 f. 
 
 Man (adult male): 14 ff. 
 Man (with capital M): 
 
 by being man we are equal, 
 225 ff. 
 
 cared for to the disregard of 
 men, 100 ff. 
 
 criticism begins to gibe at, 
 194. 
 
 every laborer must be, 170 ff. 
 
 I am not, 41. 
 
 I am the real, 233 ff. 
 
 I am true man, 436 ff. 
 
 nothing else recognized in 
 me, 225 ff. 
 
 takes the place of God in 
 the new morality, 72 ff. 
 
 see also Human, Humanity. 
 Manlius: 99. 
 Marat: 99. 
 
 Marriage: against will of fam- 
 ily, 289 ff. 
 Marx: " t)eidsch-jranzoesische 
 
 J ahrbuecher'" p. 197: 229. 
 Masses : 
 
 attacked by criticism, 185 ff. 
 
 attacked as "a spiritual be- 
 
 ing" by criticism, 191 ff. 
 Maxim: as fixed idea, 80 f. 
 Metternich: "path of genuine 
 
 freedom," 209. 
 Middle class: not idealistic, 
 
 96 f., 99, 102. 
 Might: stereotyped into right, 
 
 366 f. 
 Mind: 
 
 in antiquity, 19 ff. 
 
 in youth, 11 ff. 
 
 same German word as 
 
 " spirit," 10 ftn. 
 Mirabeau: 131. 
 
 the people the source of right 
 
 and power, 131. 
 no power may command the 
 nation's representatives, 
 306. 
 
 Misalliance: 289 ff. 
 Moderation: 403. 
 Moderns: 30 ff. 
 Monarchy: Revolution pro- 
 duces an absolute, 132 ff. 
 Money: what we shall do about, 
 
 363 ff. 
 
 Mongolism: 85 ff. 
 Montgelas: 345 ftn. 
 Moral influence: 105 ff. 
 Morality: 
 
 a form of faith, and Chris- 
 tian, 57 ff. 
 
 becomes a religion when 
 critically completed, 
 73 ff. 
 
 in critical philosophy, 72 ff. 
 is religious, 59 ff. 
 Napoleon : 
 
 did not object to conquering, 
 
 369. 
 
 helped himself, 343. 
 Nationality: 322. 
 "Nationals" of Germany: 
 303 ff.
 
 INDEX 
 
 501 
 
 Nauwerk: 307 ff. 
 Negroid age of Caucasian 
 
 history: 86. 
 Nero: 68 ff. 
 Nietzsche: viii, xiv ff. 
 Ninon: 80. 
 
 Oath: 399 ff., 402 ff. 
 
 O'Connell: his motives, 77 f. 
 
 Old: wages to, 358 f. 
 
 Opposition ends when com- 
 pleted, 273 f. 
 
 Opposition party: 66 ff. 
 
 Order: in State, 293. 
 
 Orders: must not be given, 
 141 f. 
 
 Origen: 71. 
 
 Ownness: 
 
 inalienable, 20d ff. 
 meaning, 203 ftn. 
 must be defended against 
 
 society, 408 ff. 
 served by union, 410 ff. 
 
 Pages cited: xx. 
 
 Parcellation: 327 ff. 
 
 Party: 310 ff. 
 
 Paul, Emperor of Russia: 404. 
 
 Pauperism a consequence of 
 
 the State, 333 ff. 
 Penalty: product of right, 266 
 
 ff. 
 People: 
 
 general name for societies, 
 276 f. 
 
 German, its thousand years' 
 history, 284 f. 
 
 hound the police on, 318. 
 
 its liberty is not mine, 280 ff. 
 
 peoples have filled history, 
 
 276 ff. 
 
 Periclean age: 19 ff,, 281 ff. 
 Personification: 468 f. 
 Pettifoggery: 282 f. 
 
 Philanthropism: 100 f. 
 Philanthropy: hates men, 481 f. 
 Philosophy: 
 
 Greek, see Ancients. 
 
 modern, 109 ff. 
 Piety: 
 
 family depends on, 288 ff. 
 
 meaning of word, 288 ftn. 
 Pilate: 13, 28, 471 f. 
 Plowmen: wages for, 359 ff. 
 Plumb-line: xvii. 
 Poles: oath imposed upon, 
 
 404 f. 
 
 Poor-rates: voting by, 343. 
 Possession : the how much of, 
 
 347 f. 
 
 depend on the State, 150 ff. 
 fundamental in bourgeois 
 
 society, 147 ff. 
 inward or spiritual, 324 ff., 
 
 to be respected, 126 f., 323 ff. 
 Possibility: 
 
 coincides with reality, 438 ff. 
 
 means thinkableness, 439 ff. 
 Precepts: are Mongoloid, 87 ff. 
 Press: 
 
 why not left free, 259 ff. 
 
 liberty of, how to get, 371 ff. 
 Presupposition: 199 f., 467 ff. 
 Principle: as fixed idea, 80 f. 
 Prison society and intercourse: 
 
 286 ff. 
 Private: 
 
 criticism has to leave the 
 private free, 178 f. 
 
 the private not recognized by 
 
 liberalism, 168 ff. 
 Privilege: 270 ff. 
 Proletariat : 147 ff. 
 Propaganda: 320. 
 Property: 
 
 civic and egoistic, contrasted,
 
 502 
 
 INDEX 
 
 326 ff. 
 
 definitions in Roman law, 
 331 ff. 
 
 derived from man through 
 Right, 365 ff. 
 
 individual, opposed by Social- 
 ism, 154 ff . 
 
 is what men really want when 
 they say freedom, 204 ff. 
 
 mine is what I make my 
 might cover, 338 ff. 
 
 Proudhon on, 328 ff. 
 
 recognition of under egoism, 
 
 Proprietors, small: 327 ff. 
 Protestantism : 
 
 conscientious, 115 ff. 
 consecrates everything, 116 ff. 
 Proudhon: 
 
 "Creation de I'Ordre," 60. 
 
 p. 414: 162. 
 485: 302. 
 
 " Qu'est-ce que la Propriete? " 
 p. 83: 328. 
 90: 331. 
 as parson, 466. 
 property a fact, 332. 
 "property is robbery," 100, 
 
 330 ff., 419. 
 substantially agrees with Stir- 
 
 ner, xv. 
 
 Provence, Count of: 209. 
 Punishment: involves sacred- 
 ness, 315 ff. 
 Pyrrho: 28. 
 
 Rabble: 341 ff. 
 
 Ragamuffin:. 152 ff. 
 going beyond ragamuffinhood, 
 184. 
 
 Raphael: 355. 
 
 Rational: etymology of "ration- 
 al" in German, 81 ftn. 
 
 Reality: versus ideality, 484 ff. 
 Realizing value from self: 335 
 
 ff., 360 f. 
 
 Reason: as supreme, 460 f. 
 Reciprocity: 413 f. 
 References to pages: xx. 
 Reform is Mongoloid, 86 ff. 
 Reformation (the Protestant) : 
 
 takes hold of heart, 31. 
 
 alters hierarchy, 107 ff. 
 Regulus: 99. 
 Reimarus: "Most Notable 
 
 Truths of Natural Reli- 
 gion," 62 f. 
 
 Reisach, Count von: 345 ftn. 
 Relation: of different persons 
 
 to objects, 447 ff. 
 Religion : 
 
 is freedom of mind, 62 f. 
 
 morality is religious, 59 ff. 
 
 of humanity, 229 f. 
 
 tolerance in, 229 ff. 
 Republic: 299 f. 
 Revenge: 
 
 the people's just, 266 ff. 
 Reverence: 92 ff. 
 Revolution (the French) : 
 
 began over property, 130. 
 
 equality of rights, 246. 
 
 established absolute gov- 
 ernment, 132 ff. 
 
 immoral, 72. 
 
 its true nature, 143 ff. 
 
 made men citizens, 155 f. 
 Revolutionist: is to lie, 396 f. 
 Rid: freedom is being rid, 
 
 203 ff., 214 f. 
 Right: 
 
 absolute, 269. 
 
 as basis of property, 366 ff. 
 
 commonwealth of lltechts- 
 staat), 244, 253. 
 
 equality of, 270 ff. 
 
 is a law foreign to me, 242 ff
 
 INDEX 
 
 ios 
 
 ttiy right derived from my- 
 self, ?45 if. 
 
 rights by birth, 248 ff. 
 
 same word in German as 
 "law," 242 ftn. 
 
 serves him right, 254. 
 
 well-earned rights, 248 ff. 
 
 rights change hands at the 
 
 Revolution, 132 ff. 
 Robespierre: 77. 
 
 a priest, 99. 
 
 consistent, 102. 
 
 devoted to virtue, 77. 
 
 not serviceable to middle 
 
 class, 102 f. 
 Romans: 
 
 in philosophy, 28. 
 
 killed children, 250. 
 Romanticists : 
 
 rehabilitate the idea of 
 
 spirits, 43. 
 
 Rome: decline and fall of, 277 f. 
 Rousseau: hostile to culture, 
 
 96 ftn. 
 
 Rudolph (in Sue's story): 387. 
 Ruge: "Anelsdala" 1. 120, 127: 
 
 460. 
 Russia: 
 
 boundary sentinels, 247. 
 
 flight of army in, 424. 
 Russians: as Mongolian, 86. 
 
 Sacred: 
 
 gibing at, 369 ff. 
 
 the same in German as 
 
 "holy, '"'50 ftn. 
 things are sacred of them- 
 selves, 118ff. 
 wherein the sacred consists, 
 
 92 ff. 
 Sacred things: 
 
 their diagnosis and exten- 
 sion, 45 ff. 
 Sacrifice: when I sacrifice 
 
 body else's comfort to my 
 principles, etc., 97 f. 
 " Saechftinche Vaterlandsblaetter" : 
 
 57. 
 Saint- Just: 99. 
 
 "Political Speeches," 10, p. 
 
 153: 268. 
 "criminal for not hating," 
 
 267. 
 Sake: 
 
 acting for one's own sake, 
 
 210 ff. 
 immoralities for God's sake 
 
 and for mine, 398 f. 
 Sand, George: 466. 
 Sand (murderer of Kotzebue) : 
 
 64 f. 
 
 Sander: 379. 
 Schiller: 
 
 "Ideal and Life," 428. 
 "The Maiden from a Foreign 
 
 Land," 35. 
 
 "Warte des Glauben*," 111. 
 complete in his poems, 175. 
 have I a right to my nose? 
 
 246. 
 
 Swabian, 176. 
 Schlemihl, Peter: 25. 
 Schlosser: " Achtzehntes Jahr- 
 
 hundert," 57. 
 Scholarships at universities: 
 
 347 ftn. 
 Seducing young people to 
 
 morality, 212 f. 
 Self: 
 
 as starting-point or goal, 
 
 427 f., 437 f. 
 Self -discovery: first, 11, second, 
 
 15. 
 Selfishness: 
 
 groundlessly decried, 221 ff. 
 in "unselfish" acts, 77 f. 
 the only thing that is really 
 trusted, 223 f.
 
 504 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Self-renunciation: of holy and 
 
 unholy men, 75 ff. 
 Self-sacrificing: 
 
 discussion of the implications 
 of the German word, 
 96 ff. 
 
 literal force of the German 
 
 word, 97 ftn. 
 Self-seekers always acted so: 
 
 341. 
 Sensuality: in Protestantism and 
 
 Catholicism, 116 ff. 
 September laws: 374. 
 Seriousness: 85. 
 Settled life: necessary to re- 
 spectability, 147 f. 
 Shabbiness: 400. 
 Shakspere: "Romeo and 
 
 Juliet," 290. 
 Sick: wages to, 358 f. 
 Sigismund: 398. 
 Simonides: 26. 
 
 Sinner: does not exist, 479 ff. 
 Skeptics (Greek): 22, 28. 
 Small properties: 327 ff. 
 Socialism: 152 ff. 
 Society: 
 
 is to be sole owner, 153 ff. 
 
 its character depends on its 
 members, 276 f. 
 
 made by a hall, 285 ff. 
 
 man's state of nature, 406 ff. 
 
 may provide consequences 
 where State provides 
 penalties, 314 f. 
 Socrates: 
 
 in history of philosophy, 20 f. 
 
 should not have respected 
 the sentence of the 
 court, 281 f. 
 
 too moral to break jail, 72. 
 Sophists: 19 ff. 
 Sordidness: 400. 
 Spartans: killed children, 250. 
 
 Speculation: 405. 
 Sphinx- 451. 
 Spirit: 
 
 as the essential part of man, 
 
 36 ff. 
 
 free from the world, 32 ff. . 
 has to be conquered by 
 
 moderns, 122 ff. 
 same German word as 
 
 "mind," 10 ftn. 
 the seat of equality 226 ff. 
 Spirits: are all around us, 
 
 42 ff. 
 Spiritual goods: shall we hold 
 
 them sacred? 369 ff. 
 Spook: "essences" are spooks, 
 
 50 ff. 
 
 Spy: 395, 403. 
 
 Standpoint: as fixed idea, 80 ff. 
 State: 
 
 a fellowship of human beings, 
 
 128 ff. 
 cannot exist if I have a will 
 
 of my own, 255 ff. 
 cares not for me, but for it- 
 self, 333 ff. 
 
 Christianizes people, 296. 
 claims to be a person, 295 f. 
 criticism gives up, 190 f. 
 has to be harsh, 259 ff., 
 
 262 ff. 
 
 holds laws sacred, 313 ff. 
 is the established 293 f. 
 its relation to property, 
 
 333 ff. 
 
 means order, 293. 
 officials and plutocrats over- 
 charge us, 151 f., 357 f. 
 sick, 262. 
 
 taking part in, 307 ff. 
 Stein: his disloyalty to a 
 
 "simple. individual," 345 ftn. 
 Stirner: motives for writing, 
 393 f., 406.
 
 INDEX 
 
 505 
 
 Stoics: 27 f. 
 
 apathy, 121. 
 
 "wise man," 121, 485. 
 Strange; the same in German 
 
 as "alien," 47 ftn. 
 Strike: 359 ff. 
 Students: 
 
 are immature Philistines, 144. 
 
 custom of, as to word of 
 
 honor, 403 f. 
 
 Sue: "Mysteries of Paris," 387. 
 Suicide: 429 ff. 
 Suit: "it suits me" expressed 
 
 in German by "right," 
 
 248 ftn. 
 Supreme: same as "highest," 
 
 41 ftn. 
 Supreme Being: 
 
 according to Feuerbach, 
 40 ff. (See also Feuer- 
 bach.) 
 
 see also Essence (highest). 
 Swan-knights: 342 f. 
 
 Tak Kak: vii, xi ff. 
 Terence: 
 
 " Heautontimorumenos," 25, 
 216. 
 
 "humani nihil alienum pufo," 
 
 367. 
 Theft: 99 f. 
 
 depends on property, 331 f. 
 Tilings: essential in competi- 
 tion, 346 ff. 
 
 Third: end of opposition, 484. 
 Thinkable: real sense of 
 
 "possible," 122, 439 ff. 
 Thinker: characteristics of 
 
 452 ff. 
 Thought: 
 
 freedom of, 455 ff. 
 
 I do not respect your inde- 
 pendence of, 456 f. 
 
 necessary conditions of, 
 
 465 ff. 
 
 optional, 465 f. 
 
 realm of, 451 ff. 
 Thoughts: 
 
 as owned, 477 ff. 
 
 combated by disregard, 196 
 ff. 
 
 combated by force, 197 ff. 
 
 combated by thinking, 194 ff. 
 
 criticism moves only in, 
 ' 194 ff. 
 Tie: 
 
 everything sacred is, 283. 
 
 man the enemy of, 283. 
 Tieck: "Der gestiejelte Kater," 
 
 342. 
 
 Timon: 28. 
 
 Title of this book: ix f. 
 Tolerance: 229 ff. 
 Training: 434 f., 443 ff. 
 Truth: 
 
 telling, 395 ff. 
 
 to possess truth you must be 
 true, 106 ff. 
 
 what is, 471 ff. 
 
 I am above truths, 463 ff. 
 
 Understanding: in antiquity, 
 
 19 ff. 
 Unhuman: an artificial name 
 
 for the real, 193. 
 Union : 
 
 distinction from society, 407 
 ff., 415 ff. 
 
 everything is mine in 415 ff. 
 Uniqueness : constitutes greatness 
 
 175 f. 
 Un-man : 
 
 real man, 230 ff. 
 
 the "devil" of liberalism, 184 ff . 
 Unselfishness: 
 
 literal sense of the German 
 word, 77 ftn. 
 
 supposed, and real, 77 ff.
 
 506 INDEX 
 
 Vagabonds: 147 S. 
 Value: 
 
 of me, 86, 333 ff. 
 
 to be realized from self, 335 
 
 ff., 360 f. 
 
 Von Hartmann: xiii f. 
 " Vossische Zeitung" : 244, 253. 
 
 Wages: 
 
 instead of alms, 358 f. 
 
 of the upper classes and the 
 
 lower, 151 f., 357 ff. 
 Walker, James L.: vii, xi ff. 
 War of all against all: 341, 343. 
 Weitling: 
 
 "Trio," on head of people 
 
 302. 
 Communism seeks welfare 
 
 of all, 410. 
 
 "harmony of society," 284. 
 hours of labor, 411. 
 on crime and "curative 
 
 means," 316 f. 
 on property, 331 f. 
 preaches "society," 245. 
 substitutes work for money, 
 
 352. 
 
 Welcker: on dependence of 
 ' s, 223 f. 
 in the head: 
 
 formal aspects of, 75 ff. 
 
 what are such, 54 ff. 
 Will: 
 
 incompatible with the State, 
 255 ff. 
 
 law is a declaration of, 255 f. 
 
 law paralyzes, 255 ff. 
 
 morality commands submis- 
 sion of, 66 ff. 
 
 the only practical agency of 
 
 reform, 68 ff. 
 Words: 
 
 power of, 4P2 ff. 
 
 Stirner's style of using, xix f. 
 Work: 
 
 for pay's sake, 354. 
 
 is not the only competence, 
 
 349 ff. 
 World: 
 
 among ancients, 18 ff. 
 
 conquered by the ancients, 
 120 ff. 
 
 is haunte.l, and is itself a 
 ghost, 43 f. 
 
 spirit free from, 32 ff. 
 Writing; Stirner's motives for, 
 
 393 f., 406. 
 
 Youth: 11 ff.
 
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 about 600 pithy and epigrammatic quotations, of an 
 Anarchistic and Egoistic character, from some of the 
 works catalogued. 
 
 Benj. R. Tucker carries the most complete line of 
 advanced literature in the English language offered for 
 sale at any one place in the entire world. 
 
 All books listed in his catalogue are carried 
 constantly in stock, and may be seen at 
 
 Benj. R. Tucker's Bookstore 
 
 225 Fourth Avenue, Room 13 
 NEW YORK CITY
 
 LIBERTY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, Editor 
 An Anarchistic journal, expounding the doctrine 
 that in Equal Liberty is to be found the most satis- 
 factory solution of social questions, and that ma- 
 jority rule, or democracy, equally with monarchical 
 rule, is a denial of Equal Liberty. 
 
 APPRECIATIONS 
 
 G. BERNARD SHAW, author of "Man and Superman": 
 " Liberty is a lively paper, in which the usual pro- 
 portions of a half-pennyworth of discussion to an intoler- 
 able deal of balderdash are reversed." 
 ERNEST H. CROSBY, author of " Captain Jinks, Hero ": 
 
 " In these days of running after false gods, it is re- 
 freshing to find one American remaining unflinchingly 
 true to Liberty, and using in her defence not his emo- 
 tions, but a peculiarly keen and vigorous intellect and 
 style." 
 
 JOHN COTTON DANA, Librarian of the Free Public Library, 
 Newark, N.J.: 
 
 " Liberty is good for your intellectuals, being full of 
 plain, hard thinking." 
 
 HENRY BOOL, merchant, manufacturer, farmer, dairyman, 
 and florist, Ithaca, N. Y.: 
 
 " Pursuing its policy of equal liberty with consummate 
 ability and unswerving purpose, Liberty is the unrivaled 
 exponent of Absolute Free Trade." 
 SAMUEL W. COOPER, counsellor at law, Philadelphia: 
 
 "Liberty is a journal that Thomas Jefferson would 
 have loved." 
 
 EDWARD OSGOOD BROWN, Judge of the Illinois Cir 
 Court : 
 
 " I have seen much in Liberty that I agreed with, and 
 much that I disagreed with, but I never saw any cant, 
 hypocrisy, or insincerity in it, which makes it an almost 
 unique publication." 
 
 Published Bimonthly. Twelve Issues, $1.00 
 ADDRESS: Single Copies, 10 Cents 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK Cixr 
 
 
 
 Circuit
 
 MODERN MARRIAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 Emile Zola 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER 
 
 In this story Zola takes four typical marriages, one from the 
 nobility, one from the bourgeoisie, one from the petite bourgeoisie, 
 and one from the working people, and describes, with all the 
 power of his wondrous art, how each originates, by what motive 
 each is inspired, how each is consummated, and how each results. 
 
 A new edition from new plates, and at a reduced price. 
 
 Price, 10 cents 
 
 CARLOTTA CORTINA 
 
 BY 
 FRANCIS DU BOSQUE 
 
 A very remarkable story of New York's Italian quarter, in 
 ict, one of the best short stories ever written in America. 
 
 Price, 10 cents 
 
 MAILKD, POSTPAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITY.
 
 Here 's Luck to Lora 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM WALSTEIN GORDAK 
 
 JLr. Gordak comes entirely unannounced, but his 
 verse speaks well for him. He is a natural poet who 
 writes evenly and melodiously of the beauties of nature 
 and the daintier side of love. Nothing in his little book 
 is cheap. His muse has a lofty flight, and his teachings 
 uplift, Oregonian, Portland, Ore. 
 
 PRICE, ONE DOLLAR 
 
 MAILED, POSTPAID. BY 
 
 .BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. iox 1312, NEW YORK Crrj
 
 The Anarchists 
 
 A Picture of Civilization at the Close 
 of the Nineteenth Century 
 
 JOHN HENRY MACKAYi 
 
 Translated from the Oertfian by 
 GEORGE SCHUMM 
 
 PRESS COMMENTS 
 
 New York Morning Journal. " ' The Anarchists ' is one of 
 the very few books that have a right to live. For insight into 
 life and manners, for dramatic strength, for incisiveness of 
 phrase, and for cold, pitiless logic, no book of this generation 
 equals it." 
 
 St. Louis Republic. " The book is a prose poem." 
 
 Cloth, One Dollar; Paper, Fifty cents 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1319, NEW YOIK Crrr
 
 JOSIAH WARREN 
 
 The First American Anarchist 
 
 A Biography, with portrait 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BAILIE 
 
 The biography is preceded by an essay on " The 
 Anarchist Spirit," in which Mr. Bailie defines Anar- 
 chist belief in relation to other social forces. 
 
 Price, One Dollar 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 ' BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITY
 
 The Philosophy of Egoism 
 
 JAMES L. WALKER 
 
 (Tak Kak) 
 
 My nose I've used for smelling, and I've blown It ; 
 But how to prove the BIGHT by which I own it? 
 
 SCHILLER, freely translated 
 
 " No more concise exposition of the philosophy of Egoism 
 has ever been given to the world. In this book Duty, Con- 
 science, Moralism, Right, and all the fetiches and superstitions 
 which have infested the human intellect since man ceased to 
 walk on four feet, are annihilated, swept away, relegated to 
 the rubbish heap of the waste of human intelligence that has 
 gone on through the progress of the race from its infancy." 
 Liberty. 
 
 Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 35 cents 
 
 Slaves to Duty 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN BADCOCK, JR. 
 
 Assailing the morality superstition as the foundation of the 
 various schemes for the exploitation of mankind. Max Stirner 
 himself does not expound the doctrine of Egoism in bolder 
 fashion. 
 
 Price, 5 cents 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITT
 
 State Socialism 
 
 AND 
 
 Anarchism 
 
 How Far They Agree and Wherein They Differ 
 
 BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER 
 
 The opening chapter of " Instead of a Book," re- 
 printed separately. The best pamphlet with which 
 to meet the demand for a compact exposition of 
 Anarchism. 
 
 Price, 5 cents 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BT 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK Cm
 
 The Attitude of Anarchism 
 
 TOWARD 
 
 Industrial Combinations 
 
 BT 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER 
 
 An address delivered in Central Music Hall, Chicago, on 
 September 14, 1899, before the Conference on Trusts held under 
 the auspices of the Civic Federation. 
 
 Chicago Chronicle. " The speech which roused the most Intense 
 degree of enthusiasm and called forth the greatest applause at 
 yesterday's sessions of the trust conference fell In rounded periods 
 and with polished utterance from the lips of a professed Anarchist." 
 
 Prof. Edward W. Betnis in the New York Journal. " Benj. R. 
 Tucker, the famous Anarchist writer, gave the most brilliant literary 
 effort of the conference thus far." 
 
 Prof. John R. Commons in the Chicago Tribune. " The most 
 brilliant piece of pure logic that has yet been heard. It probably 
 cannot be equaled. It was a marvel of audacity and cogency. The 
 prolonged applause which followed was a magnificent tribute to pure 
 Intellect. That the undiluted doctrines of Anarchism should so 
 transport a great gathering of all classes here in Chicago would not 
 have been predicted." 
 
 'Price, 5 cents 
 
 POST-PAID, BT 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YOK Cirr
 
 MUTUAL BANKING 
 
 WILLIAM B. GREENE 
 
 Showing the radical deficiency of the existing 
 circulating medium, and the advantages of a free 
 currency ; a plan whereby to abolish interest, not by 
 State intervention, but by first abolishing State inter- 
 vention itself. 
 
 1 A new edition, from new plates, of one of the 
 most important works on finance in the English lan- 
 guage, and presenting, for the first time, a portrait 
 of the author. 
 
 Price, 10 cents 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, B* 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK Cirr
 
 CHARLES A. DANA'S 
 
 PLEA FOR ANARCHY 
 
 Proudhon 
 
 and 
 
 His "Bank of the People 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES A. DANA 
 
 A defence of the great French Anarchist; showing the evils 
 of a specie currency, and that interest on capital can and 
 ought to be abolished by a system of free and mutual banking. 
 
 The series of newspaper articles composing this pamphlet 
 appeared originally in the New York " Tribune," of which Mr. 
 Dana was then managing editor, and a little later in " The 
 Spirit of the Age," a weekly paper published in New York in 
 1849 by Fowlers & Wells and edited by Rev. William Henry 
 Channing. Editor Channing accompanied the publication of the 
 series by a foot-note, in which he stated that the articles had 
 already appeared in the "Tribune," but that "Mr. Dana, judg- 
 ing them worthy of being preserved in a form convenient for 
 binding, has consented to revise them for our paper." 
 
 Price, 5 cents; in leatherette, 10 cents 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW Yo Crrr
 
 The Ballad of Reading Gaol 
 
 BY C. 3. 3 
 
 [OSCAB WILDE] 
 
 " A poem of more than 600 lines, dedicated to the memory of a 
 trooper of the Horse Guards who was hanged in Reading Gaol 
 during the poet's confinement there. An English classic. 
 
 Cloth, One Dollar; Paper, Ten Cent? 
 
 The cloth edition has covers of blue and vellum, and is beaut- 
 ifully printed from large type on hand-made antique deckle-edge 
 paper. It is a sumptuous book of 96 pages, and should be in every 
 library. 
 
 PRESS COMMENTS 
 
 Albany Press. " Strong writing, almost too strong ; it is hor- 
 rible, gruesome, uncanny, and yet most fascinating and highly 
 ethical. . . . One of the greatest poems of the century, a per- 
 manent addition to English literature. . . . It is the best 
 Lenten and Easter sermon of the year." 
 
 Brooklyn Citizen. " Many of the stanzas are cries out of the 
 lowest hell. The poem, indeed, takes rank with the most extra- 
 ordinary psychological phenomena of this or any time." 
 
 Indianapolis Journal. " The work is one of singular power, 
 holding the reader fascinated to the last line. Nothing approaching 
 it in strength has been produced in recent years." 
 
 Philadelphia Conservator. " People who imagine themselves 
 superior to the prisoners in jails should read this poem. People 
 who love invasive laws should read this poem. People who think 
 existing governmental methods of meeting social Invasion civilized 
 should read this poem. People who do not know that laws may 
 make as well as punish crime should read this poem. In fact, 
 everybody should read this poem. For somewhere It touches every- 
 body, accuses everybody, appeals to everybody." 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITY
 
 God and the State 
 
 BT 
 
 MICHAEL BAKOUNINE 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER 
 
 "One of the most eloquent pleas for liberty ever 
 written. Paine's 'Age of Reason' and Rights of Man* 
 consolidated and improved. It stirg the pulse like a 
 trumpet-call." The Truth Seeker. 
 
 Price, 15 Cent* 
 
 JK AII.ED, POST-PAID, BT 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1319, NEW YOHK CITY
 
 Free Political Institutions 
 
 Their Nature^ Essence^ and Maintenance 
 
 AX ABRIDGMENT AXD RE ARRANGE ME XT OF 
 
 LYSANDER SPOONER'S "TRIAL BY JURY" 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 VICTOR YARROS 
 
 One of the most important works in the propaganda 
 
 of Anarchism 
 
 CHAPTERS 
 
 I. Legitimate Government and Majority Rule. II. Trial by 
 Jury as a Palladium of Liberty. III. Trial by Jury as Defined by 
 Magna Carta. IV. Objections Answered. V. The Criminal In- 
 tent. VI. Moral Considerations for Jurors. VII. Free Ad- 
 ministration of Justice. VIII. Juries of the Present Day Illegal. 
 
 Price, 15 cents 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 A Blow at Trial by Jury 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER 
 
 An examination of the special jury law passed by the New Tor 
 legislature in 1896. A speech delivered by the editor of Liberty a 
 a mass meeting held in Cooper Union, New York, June 25, 1897, 
 under the auspices of the Central Labor Union, Typographical 
 Union No. 6, and other labor organizations. Distribution of this 
 pamphlet among lawyers and legislators will tend indirectly to 
 interest them in Anarchism. 
 
 Price, 5 cents 
 
 ^TAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITY
 
 Instead of a Book 
 
 BY A MAN TOO BUSY TO WRITE ONE 
 
 A FRAGMENTARY EXPOSITION OF 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHISM 
 
 Culled from the writings of 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER 
 
 EDITOR OP LIBERTY 
 
 With a Full-Page Half. Tone Portrait of the Author 
 
 A large, well-printed, and excessively cheap volume of 524 
 pages, consisting of articles selected from Liberty and classi- 
 fied under the following headings: (1) State Socialism and 
 Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ; 
 (2) The Individual, Society, and the State; (3) Money and 
 Interest; (4) Land and Rent; (5) Socialism; (6) Communism; 
 (7) Methods; (8) Miscellaneous. The whole elaborately in- 
 dexed. 
 
 Cloth, One Dollar; Paper, Fifty cents 
 
 MAILED, POST-PAID, BY 
 
 BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITY
 
 
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