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 “contempt 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 is an irreconcilable 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 opposition 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 craving 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 antiquity 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 Christianness. 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—fleshless 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 question 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 proposition that the “divine” had existence (Feuerbach). But this too has no existence, and neither will the last refuge, that the “purely human” is realizable, afford shelter much longer. No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity. The scholastic contention 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 unembodied (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 matters 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 themselves 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, 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 individual’s task to serve the family as the divine, but, reversely, 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 antiquity, is for the divine, they always come out at this again on their opposite ways. At the end of heathenism 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 Christianity 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,” irrational, accidental, “egoistic,” the “mundane” in the bad sense. Christianity begins with God’s becoming man, and carries on its work of conversion and redemption 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 preparing a place for the “spirit.”
When the accent was at last laid on Man or mankind, 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-Christian; 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 history. In “man” the imaginary beginning returns again; for “man” is as imaginary 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 bodiliness, 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 “completed” 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 founding 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 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 Christian 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 humanity may fare thereby. If it were not open to confusion 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 existence? 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 question, “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 “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 perfect 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,242 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.243
The End
Footnotes
1 [“Ich hab’ Mein’ Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt,” first line of Goethe’s poem, “Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!” Literal translation: “I have set my affair on nothing.”]
2 [Sache]
3 [Sache]
4 [der Einzige]
5 [einzig]
6 [Geist. This word will be translated sometimes “mind” and sometimes “spirit” in the following pages.]
7 Luke 11. 13.
8 Heb. 11. 13.
9 Mark 10. 29.
10 Italicized in the original for the sake of its etymology, Scharfsinn—“sharp-sense.” Compare next paragraph.
11 2 Cor. 5. 17. [The words “new” and “modern” are the same in German.]
12 [Title of a poem by Schiller.]
13 [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 several 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 identity with “mind,” as stated in a previous note.]
14 “Essence of Christianity.”
15 [Or, “highest essence.” The word Wesen, which means both “essence” 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.”]
16 Cf. e. g. “Essence of Christianity,” p. 402.
17 [That is, the abstract conception of man, as in the preceding sentence.]
18 E. g., Rom. 8. 9, 1 Cor. 3. 16, John 20. 22, and innumerable other passages.
19 [Heil]
20 [heilig]
21 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 “Venetian Epigrams.”
22 [fremd]
23 [fremd]
24 [einzig]
25 [“the supreme being.”]
26 [heilig]
27 [heilig]
28 [einzig]
29 [gefangen und befangen, literally “imprisoned and prepossessed.”]
30 [besessene]
31 [versessen]
32 “Achtzehntes Jahrhundert,” II, 519.
33 “De la Création de l’Ordre” etc., p. 36.
34 “Anekdota,” II, 64.
35 [dieselbe Phantastin wie die Phantasie]
36 [The same word as “intellectual” as “mind” and “spirit” are the same.]
37 “Essence of Christianity,” second edition, p. 402.
38 P. 403.
39 P. 408.
40 [Literally “the man.”]
41 [Uneigennuetzigkeit, literally “un-self-benefitingness.”]
42 [vernuenftig, derived from vernehmen, to hear.]
43 [A German idiom for destructive radicalism.]
44 [The same word that has been translated “custom” several times in this section.]
45 [Ehrfurcht]
46 [gefuerchtet]
47 [geehrt]
48 Rousseau, the Philanthropists, and others were hostile to culture and intelligence, but they overlooked the fact that this is present in all men of the Christian type, and assailed only learned and refined culture.
49 [Literally, “sacrificing”; the German word has not the prefix “self.”]
50 “Volksphilosophie unserer Tage,” p. 22.
51 [Muth]
52 [Demuth]
53 [Called in English theology “original sin.”]
54 [Goethe, “Faust.”]
55 “Anekdota,” II, 152.
56 [Schiller, “Die Worte des Glaubens.”]
57 [Parodied from the words of Mephistopheles in the witch’s kitchen in “Faust.”]
58 John 2. 4.
59 Matt. 10. 35.
60 [heilig]
61 [heilig]
62 [Geistlicher, literally “spiritual man.”]
63 “Essence of Christianity,” p. 403.
64 Mark 9. 23.
65 [Herrlichkeit, which, according to its derivation, means “lordliness.”]
66 [Or “citizenhood.” The word (das Buergertum) means either the condition of being a citizen, or citizen-like principles, or the body of citizens or of the middle or business class, the bourgeoisie.]
67 [Man hatte im Staate “die ungleiche Person angesehen,” there had been “respect of unequal persons” in the State.]
68 [Gewalt, a word which is also commonly used like the English “violence,” denoting especially unlawful violence.]
69 [Vorrechte]
70 [Rechte]
71 1 Corinthians 8.4.
72 “Ein und zwanzig Bogen,” p. 12.
73 Louis Blanc says (“Histoire des Dix Ans,” I, p. 138) of the time of the Restoration: “Le protestantisme devint le fond des idées et des mœurs.”
74 [Sache, which commonly means thing.]
75 [Sache]
76 [Or “righteous.” German rechtlich.]
77 [gerecht]
78 [das Geld gibt Geltung.]
79 [ausgebeutet]
80 [Kriegsbeute]
81 [In German an exact quotation of Luke 10.7.]
82 Proudhon (“Création de l’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!”
83 [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 surroundings, championed the “absolute emancipation” of the individual within the limits of “pure humanity” and fought as their foe “the mass,” comprehending 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.”]
84 Br. Bauer. “Lit. Ztg.” V. 18.
85 “Lit. Ztg.” V. 26.
86 [Eigentum, “owndom.”]
87 [Eigenwille, “own-will.”]
88 [Referring to minute subdivision of labor, whereby the single workman produces, not a whole, but a part.]
89 “Lit. Ztg.” V. 24.
90 “Lit. Ztg.” ibid.
91 [“einziger”]
92 [Einzigkeit]
93 Bruno Bauer, “Judenfrage,” p. 66.
94 Bruno Bauer, “Die gute Sache der Freiheit,” pp. 62-63.
95 Bruno Bauer, “Judenfrage,” p. 60.
96 [Einzige]
97 [einzig]
98 [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.]
99 “Lit. Ztg.” V. 23; as comment, V. 12 ff.
100 “Lit. Ztg.” V. 15.
101 [Rechthaberei, literally the character of always insisting on making one’s self out to be in the right.]
102 [einzig]
103 [des Einzigen]
104 [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 German 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-ownership,” 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 own, that no English word I can think of would express it. It will explain itself to one who has read Part First intelligently.]
105 [Eigenheit]
106 Rom. 6. 18.
107 1 Pet. 2. 16.
108 James 2. 12.
109 [See note, p. 112.]
110 [Meaning “German.” Written in this form because of the censorship.]
111 [Einzige].
112 [I take Entbehrung, “destitution,” to be a misprint for Entehrung.]
113 [Eigennutz, literally “own-use.”]
114 [Einzigen]
115 Rom. 8. 14.
116 Cf. 1 John 3. 10 with Rom. 8. 16.
117 [Eigenschaften]
118 [Eigentum]
119 E. g. Marx in the “Deutsch-franzoesische Jahrbuecher,” p. 197.
120 Br. Bauer, “Judenfrage,” p. 61.
121 Hess, “Triarchie,” p. 76.
122 [Vorrecht, literally “precedent right.”]
123 [Eigenschaft]
124 [Eigentum]
125 “Essence of Christianity,” 2d ed., p. 401.
126 [bestimmt]
127 [Bestimmung]
128 Mark 3. 29.
129 [This word has also, in German, the meaning of “common law,” and will sometimes be translated “law” in the following paragraphs.]
130 Cf. “Die Kommunisten in der Schweiz,” committee report, p. 3.
131 [Rechtsstreit, a word which usually means “lawsuit.”]
132 [A common German phrase for “it suits me.”]
133 A. Becker, “Volksphilosophie,” p. 22 f.
134 [Mephistopheles in “Faust.”]
135 “I beg you, spare my lungs! He who insists on proving himself right, if he but has one of these things called tongues, can hold his own in all the world’s despite!” [Faust’s words to Mephistopheles, slightly misquoted.—For Rechthaberei see note on p. 185.]
136 [Gesetz, statute; no longer the same German word as “right.”]
137 [Verbrechen]
138 [brechen]
139 “This Book Belongs to the King,” p. 376.
140 P. 376.
141 P. 374.
142 [An unnatural mother]
143 P. 381.
144 P. 385.
145 [Gerechte]
146 [macht Alles huebsch gerecht]
147 [Einzige]
148 See “Political Speeches,” 10, p. 153.
149 [Literally, “precedent right.”]
150 [Spannung]
151 [gespannt]
152 [spannen]
153 [einzig]
154 [Einzigkeit]
155 [Volk; but the etymological remark following applies equally to the English word “people.” See Liddell & Scott’s Greek lexicon, under pimplemi.]
156 [kuschen, a word whose only use is in ordering dogs to keep quiet.]
157 [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 mouth, not by a guardian.]
158 [“occupy”; literally, “have within”]
159 [The word Genosse, “companion,” signifies originally a companion in enjoyment.]
160 [This word in German does not mean religion, but, as in Latin, faithfulness to family ties—as we speak of “filial piety.” But the word elsewhere translated “pious” (fromm) means “religious,” as usually in English.]
161 [It should be remembered that the words “establish” and “State” are both derived from the root “stand.”]
162 [huldigen]
163 [Huld]
164 What was said in the concluding remarks after Humane Liberalism holds good of the following,—to wit, that it was likewise written immediately after the appearance of the book cited.
165 [In the philosophical sense (a thinking and acting being), not in the political sense.]
166 [“Création de l’Ordre,” p. 485.]
167 [“Koelner Dom,” p. 4.]
168 [einzig]
169 [am Einzigen]
170 [Einzigen]
171 [heilig]
172 [unheilig]
173 [Heiliger]
174 B. Bauer. “Lit. Ztg.” 8.22.
175 “E. u. Z. B.,” p. 89 ff.
176 [Einzigkeit]
177 [See note on p. 184.]
178 [The words “cot” and “dung” are alike in German.]
179 E. g., “Qu’est-ce que la Propriété?” p. 83.
180 [Einzige]
181 [A German idiom for “take upon myself,” “assume.”]
182 [Apparently some benevolent scheme of the day; compare note on p. 343.]
183 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 political rights, or elsewhere becomes a swan-knight. [See p. 342.]
184 Minister Stein used this expression about Count von Reisach, when he cold-bloodedly left the latter at the mercy of the Bavarian government because to him, as he said, “a government like Bavaria must be worth more than a simple individual.” Reisach had written against Montgelas at Stein’s bidding, and Stein later agreed to the giving up of Reisach, which was demanded by Montgelas on account of this very book. See Hinrichs, “Politische Vorlesungen,” I, 280.
185 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 competition was still far from being a controlling principle. The principle of competition founds no scholarship, but says, Help yourself, i. e. provide yourself the means. What the State gives for such purposes it pays out from interested motives, to educate “servants” for itself.
186 [preisgeben]
187 [Preis]
188 [Preis]
189 [Geld]
190 [gelten]
191 [Equivalent in ordinary German use to our “possessed of a competence.”]
192 [Einzige]
193 [Literally, “given.”]
194 [A German phrase for sharpers.]
195 [Literally, “unhomely.”]
196 II, p. 91 ff. (See my note above.)
197 Athanasius.
198 [Wesen]
199 [Wesen]
200 Feuerbach, “Essence of Chr.,” 394.
201 [gebrauche]
202 [brauche]
203 [Verein]
204 [Vereinigung]
205 [Muthlosigkeit]
206 [Demuth]
207 [Muth]
208 [Literally, “love-services.”]
209 [Literally, “own-benefit.”]
210 [Literally, furnishes me with a right.]
211 [Empoerung]
212 [sich auf-oder emporzurichten]
213 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.
214 1 Cor. 15. 26.
215 2 Tim. 1. 10.
216 [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....
Emilia. Give me that dagger, father, me!...
Odoardo. No, no! Reflect—You too have only one life to lose.
Emilia. And only one innocence!
Odoardo. Which is above the reach of any violence.—
Emilia. 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 the strictest exercises of religion could hardly quiet in weeks.—Religion! And what religion?—To escape nothing worse, thousands sprang into the water and are saints.—Give me that dagger, father, give it to me....
Emilia. 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 to her for the second time. But all such deeds are of the past! Of such fathers there are no more!
Odoardo. Yes, daughter, yes! (Stabs her.)]
217 [Or, “regulate” (richten)]
218 [richten]
219 “Der Kommunismus in der Schweiz,” p. 24.
220 Ibid. p. 63.
221 [Cf. note p. 81.]
222 [Geistigkeit]
223 [Geistlichkeit]
224 Rom. 1. 25.
225 [das Meinige]
226 [die—“Meinung”]
227 P. 47 ff.
228 Chamber of peers, Apr. 25, 1844.
229 “Anecdota,” 1. 120.
230 “Anecdota,” 1. 127.
231 [vernehmbar]
232 [Vernunft]
233 [Literally “thought-rid.”]
234 [Sache]
235 [Sache]
236 1 Thess. 5. 21.
237 [Andacht, a compound form of the word “thought.”]
238 [See note on p. 112.]
239 [Einzige]
240 [eigen]
241 [geeignet]
242 [Stell’ Ich auf Mich meine Sache. Literally, “if I set my affair on myself.”]
243 [“Ich hab’ Mein’ Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt.” Literally, “I have set my affair on nothing.” See note on p. 3.]
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