The German Ideology - The Ancients

The German Ideology

3. The Ancients

Properly speaking we ought to begin here with the Negroes; but Saint Max, who undoubtedly sits in the “Council of Guardians”, in his unfathomable wisdom introduces the Negroes only later, and even then “without any claim to thoroughness and authenticity”. if, therefore, we make Greek philosophy precede the Negro era, i.e., the campaigns of Sesostris and Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt [48] it is because we are confident that our holy author has arranged everything wisely.

“Let us, therefore, take a look at the activities which tempt” Stirner’s ancients.

“'For the ancients, the world was a truth,’ says Feuerbach; but he forgets to make the important addition: a truth, the untruth of which they sought to penetrate and, finally, did indeed penetrate” (p. 22).

“For the ancients”, their “world” (not the world) “was a truth” — whereby, of course, no truth about the ancient world is stated, but only that the ancients did not have a Christian attitude to their world. As soon as untruth penetrated their world (i.e., as soon as this world itself disintegrated in consequence of practical conflicts — and to demonstrate this materialistic development empirically would be the only thing of interest), the ancient philosophers sought to penetrate the world of truth or the truth of their world and then, of course, they found that it had become untrue. Their very search was itself a symptom of the internal collapse of this world. Jacques le bonhomme transforms the idealist symptom into the material cause of the collapse and, as a German church father, makes antiquity itself seek its own negation, Christianity. For him this position of antiquity is inevitable because the ancients are “children” who seek to penetrate the “world of things”. “And that is fairly easy too": by transforming the ancient world into the later consciousness regarding the ancient world, Jacques le bonhomme can, of course, jump in a single leap from the materialistic ancient world to the world of religion, to Christianity. Now the “word of God” immediately emerges in opposition to the real world of antiquity; the Christian conceived as the modern sceptic emerges in opposition to the ancient man conceived as philosopher. His Christian “is never convinced of the vanity of the word of God” and, in consequence of this lack of conviction, he “believes” “in its eternal and invincible truth” (p. 22). Just as Stirner’s ancient is ancient because he is a non-Christian, not yet a Christian or a hidden Christian, so his primitive Christian is a Christian because he is a non-atheist, not yet an atheist or a hidden atheist. Stirner, therefore, causes Christianity to be negated by the ancients and modern atheism by the primitive Christians, instead of the reverse. Jacques le bonhomme, like all other speculative philosophers, seizes everything by its philosophical tail. A few more examples of this child-like gullibility immediately follow.

“The Christian must consider himself a ‘stranger on the earth’ (Epistle to the Hebrews 11 :13)” (p. 23).

On the contrary, the strangers on earth (arising from extremely natural causes e.g., the colossal concentration of wealth in the whole Roman world, etc., etc.) had to consider themselves Christians. It was not their Christianity that made them vagrants, but their vagrancy that made them Christians.

On the same page the holy father jumps straight from Sophocles’ Antigone and the sacredness of the burial ceremonial connected with it to the Gospel of Matthew, 8:22 (let the dead bury their dead), while Hegel, at any rate in the Phänomenologie, gradually passes from the Antigone, etc., to the Romans. With equal right Saint Max could have passed at once. to the Middle Ages and, together with Hegel, have advanced this biblical statement against the Crusaders or even, in order to be quite original, have contrasted the burial of Polynices by Antigone with the transfer of the ashes of Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. It is stated further:

“In Christianity the inviolable truth of family ties” (which on page 22 is noted as one of the “truths” of the ancients) “is depicted as an untruth which should be got rid of as quickly as possible (Mark, 10: 29) and so in everything” (p. 23).

This proposition, in which reality is again turned upside-down, should be put the right way up as follows: the actual untruth of family ties (concerning which, inter alia, the still existing documents of pre-Christian Roman legislation should be examined) is depicted in Christianity as an inviolable truth, “and so in everything”.

From these examples, therefore, it is superabundantly evident how Jacques le bonhomme, who strives to “get rid as quickly as possible” of empirical history, stands facts on their heads, causes material history to be produced by ideal history, “and so in everything”. At the outset we learn only the alleged attitude of the ancients to their world; as dogmatists they are put in opposition to the ancient world, their own world, instead of appearing as its creators; it is a question only of the relation of consciousness to the object, to truth; it is a question, therefore, only of the philosophical relation of the ancients to their world — ancient history is replaced by the history of ancient philosophy, and this only in the form in which Saint Max imagines it according to Hegel and Feuerbach.

Thus the history of Greece, from the time of Pericles inclusively, is reduced to a struggle of abstractions: reason, spirit, heart, worldliness, etc. These are the Greek parties. In this ghostly world, which is presented as the Greek world, allegorical persons such as Madame Purity of Heart “machinate” and mythical figures like Pilate (who must never be missing where there are children) find a place quite seriously side by side with Timon of Phlius.

After presenting us with some astounding revelations about the Sophists and Socrates, Saint Max immediately jumps to the Sceptics. He discovers that they completed the work which Socrates began. Hence the positive philosophy of the Greeks that followed immediately after the Sophists and Socrates, especially Aristotle’s encyclopaedic learning, does not exist at all for Jacques le bonhomme. He strives “to get rid as quickly as possible” of the past and hurries to the transition to the “moderns”, finding this transition in the Sceptics, Stoics and Epicureans. Let us see what our holy father has to reveal about them.

“The Stoics wish to realise the ideal of the wise man ... the man who knows how to live ... they find this ideal in contempt for the world, in a life without living development [...] without friendly intercourse with the world, i.e., in a life of isolation [... ] not in a life in common with others; the Stoic alone lives, for him everything else is dead. The Epicureans, on the other hand, demand an active life” (p. 30).

We refer Jacques le bonhomme — the man who wants to realise himself and who knows how to live — to, inter alia, Diogenes Laertius: there he will discover that the wise man, the sophos, is nothing but the idealised Stoic, not the Stoic the realised wise man; he will discover that the sophos is by no means Only a Stoic but is met with just as much among the Epicureans, the Neo-academists and the Sceptics. Incidentally, the sophos is the first form in which the Greek philosophos confronts us; he appears mythologically in the seven wise men, in practice in Socrates, and as an ideal among the Stoics, Epicureans, Neo-academists [49] and Sceptics. Each of these schools, of course, has its own sofos [wise man]Just as Saint Bruno has his own “unique sex”. Indeed, Saint Max can find “le sage” again in the eighteenth century in the philosophy of Enlightenment, and even in Jean Paul in the shape of the “wise men” like Emanuel [Jean Paul, Hesperus oder 45 Hundsposttage] etc. The Stoical wise man by no means has in mind “life without living development”, but an absolutely active life, as is evident even from his concept of nature, which is Heraclitean, dynamic, developing and living, while for the Epicureans the principle of the concept of nature is the mars immortalis [immortal death. Lucretius, De rerum natura libri sex, Book 3, Verse 882], as Lucretius says, the atom, and, in opposition to Aristotle’s divine energy, divine leisure is put forward as the ideal of life instead of “active life”.

“The ethics of the Stoics (their only science, for they were unable to say anything about the spirit except what its relation to the world should be; and about nature — physics — they could say only that the wise man has to assert himself against it) is not a doctrine of the spirit, but merely a doctrine of rejection of the world and of self-assertion against the world” (p. 31).

The Stoics were able to “say about nature” that physics is one of the most important sciences for the philosopher and consequently they even went to the trouble of further developing the physics of Heraclitus; they were “further able to say” that the wra, masculine beauty, is the highest that the individual could represent, and glorified life in tune with nature, although they fell into contradictions in so doing. According to the Stoics, philosophy is divided into three doctrines: “physics, ethics, logic”.

“They compare philosophy to the animal and to the egg, logic — to the bones and sinews of the animal, and to the. outer shell of the egg, ethics — to the flesh of the animal and to the albumen of the egg, and physics — to the soul of the animal and to the yolk of the egg” (Diogenes Laertius, Zeno).

From this alone it is evident how little true it is to say that “ethics is the only science of the Stoics”. It should be added also that, apart from Aristotle, they were the chief founders of formal logic and systematics in general.

That the “Stoics were unable to say anything about the spirit” is so little true that even seeing spirits originated from them, on account of which Epicurus opposes them, as an Enlightener, and ridicules them as “old women”, while precisely the Neo-Platonists borrowed part of their tales about spirits from the Stoics. This spirit-seeing of the Stoics arises, on the one hand, from the impossibility of achieving a dynamic concept of nature without the material furnished by empirical natural science, and, on the other hand, from their effort to interpret the ancient Greek world and even religion in a speculative manner and make them analogous to the thinking spirit.

The “ethics of the Stoics” is so much a “doctrine of world rejection and of self-assertion against the world” that, for example, it was counted a Stoical virtue to “have a sound fatherland, a worthy friend”, that “the beautiful alone” is declared to be “the good”, and that the Stoical wise man is allowed to mingle with the world in every way, for example, to commit incest, etc., etc. The Stoical wise man is to such an extent caught up “in a life of isolation and not in a life in common with others” that it is said of him in Zeno:

“Let not the wise man wonder at anything that seems wonderful — but nether will the worthy man live in solitude, for he is social by nature and active in practice” (Diogenes Laertius, Book VII, 1).

Incidentally, it would be asking too much to demand that, for the sake of refuting this school-boyish wisdom of Jacques le bonhomme, one should set forth the very complicated and contradictory ethics of the Stoics.

In connection with the Stoics, Jacques le bonhomme has to note the existence of the Romans also (p. 3 1), of whom, of course, he is unable to say anything, since they have no philosophy. The only thing we hear of them is that Horace (!) “did not go beyond the Stoics’ worldly wisdom” (p. 32). Integer vitae, scelerisque purus! [he of life without flaw, pure from sin. Horace, The Odes, Book I — Ode XXII. Verse 1]

In connection with the Stoics, Democritus is also mentioned in the following way: a muddled passage of Diogenes Laertius (Democritus, Book IX, 7, 45), which in addition has been inaccurately translated, is copied out from some textbook, and made the basis for a lengthy diatribe about Democritus. This diatribe has the distinguishing feature of being in direct contradiction to its basis, i.e., to the above-mentioned muddled and inaccurately translated passage, and converts “peace of mind” (Stirner’s translation of euqumia, in Low German Wellmuth) into “rejection of the world”. The fact is that Stirner imagines that Democritus was a Stoic, and indeed of the sort that the unique and the ordinary school-boyish consciousness conceive a Stoic to be. Stirner thinks that “his whole activity amounts to an endeavour to detach himself from the world”, “hence to a rejection of the world”, and that in the person of Democritus he can refute the Stoics. That the eventful life of Democritus, who had wandered through the world a great deal, flagrantly contradicts this notion of Saint Max’s; that the real source from which to learn about the philosophy of Democritus is Aristotle and not a couple of anecdotes from Diogenes Laertius; that Democritus, far from rejecting the world, was, on the contrary, an empirical natural scientist and the first encyclopaedic mind among the Greeks; that his almost unknown ethics was limited to a few remarks which he is alleged to have made when he was an old, much-travelled man; that his writings on natural science can be called philosophy only per abusum, [by abuse, i. e., improperly, wrongly] because for him, in contrast to Epicurus, the atom was only a physical hypothesis, an expedient for explaining facts, just as it is in the proportional combinations of modern chemistry (Dalton and others) — all this does not suit the purpose of Jacques le bonhomme. Democritus must be understood in the “unique” fashion, Democritus speaks of euthymia, hence of peace of mind, hence of withdrawal into oneself, hence of rejection of the world. Democritus is a Stoic, and he differs from the Indian fakir mumbling “Brahma” (the word should have been “Om”),[50] only as the comparative differs from the superlative, i.e., “only in degree”.

Of the Epicureans our friend knows exactly as much as he does of the Stoics, viz., the unavoidable schoolboy’s minimum. He contrasts the Epicurean “hedone”, [pleasure] with the “ataraxia” [equanimity, imperturbability, intrepidity] of the Stoics and Sceptics, not knowing that this “ataraxia” is also to he found in Epicurus and, moreover, as something placed higher than the “hedone” — in consequence of which his whole contrast falls to the ground. He tells us that the Epicureans “teach only a different attitude to the world” from that of the Stoics; but let him show us the (non-Stoic) philosopher of “ancient or modern times” who does not do “only” the same. Finally, Saint Max enriches us with a new dictum of the Epicureans: “the world must be deceived, for it is my enemy”. Hitherto it was only known that the Epicureans made statements in the sense that the world must be disillusioned and especially freed from fear of gods, for the world is my friend.

To give our saint some indication of the real base on which the philosophy of Epicurus rests, it is sufficient to mention that the idea that the state rests on the mutual agreement of people, on a contrat social (sunqhjh [contract]), is found for the first time in Epicurus.

The extent to which Saint Max’s disclosures about the Sceptics follow the same line is already evident from the fact that he considers their philosophy more radical than that of Epicurus. The Sceptics reduced the theoretical relation of people to things to appearance, and in practice they left everything as of old, being guided by this appearance just as much as others are guided by actuality; they merely gave it another name. Epicurus, on the other hand, was the true radical Enlightener of antiquity; he openly attacked the ancient religion, and it was from him, too, that the atheism of the Romans, insofar as it existed, was derived. For this reason, too, Lucretius praised Epicurus as the hero who was the first to overthrow the gods and trample religion underfoot; for this reason among all church fathers, from Plutarch to Luther, Epicurus has always had the reputation of being the atheist philosopher par excellence, and was called a swine; for which reason, too, Clement of Alexandria says that when Paul takes up arms against philosophy he has in mind Epicurean philosophy alone. (Stromatum, Book I [chap. XI], p. 295, Cologne edition, 1688.) Hence we see how “cunning, perfidious” and “clever” was the attitude of this open atheist to the world in directly attacking its religion, while the Stoics adapted the ancient religion in their own speculative fashion, and the Sceptics used their concept of “appearance” as the excuse for being able to accompany all their judgments with a reservatio mentalis.

Thus, according to Stirner, the Stoics finally arrive at “contempt for the world” (p. 30), the Epicureans at ‘,the same worldly wisdom as the Stoics” (p. 32), and the Sceptics at the point where they “let the world alone and do not worry about it. at all”. Hence, according to Stirner, all three end in an attitude of indifference to the world, of “contempt for the world” (p. 485). Long before him, Hegel expressed it in this way: Stoicism, Scepticism, Epicureanism “aimed at making the mind indifferent towards everything that actuality has to offer” (Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 327).

“The ancients,” writes Saint max, summing up his criticism of the ancient world of ideas, “it is true, had ideas, but they did not know the idea” (p. 30). In this connection, “one should recall what was said earlier about our childhood ideas” (ibid.).

The history of ancient philosophy has to conform to Stirner’s design. In order that the Greeks should retain their role of children, Aristotle ought not to have lived and his thought in and for itself (h nohsis h kaq authn), his self-thinking reason (auton de noeio nous) and his self-thinking intellect (h, nohsis ths nohsews) should never have occurred; and in general his Metaphysics and the third book of his Psychology [Aristoteles, De anima] ought not to have existed.

With just as much right as Saint Max here recalls “what was said earlier about our childhood”, when he discussed “our childhood” he could have said: let the reader look up what will be said below about the ancients and the Negroes and will not be said about Aristotle.

In order to appreciate the true meaning of the last ancient philosophies during the dissolution of the ancient world, Jacques le bonhomme had only to look at the real situation in life of their adherents under the world dominion of Rome. He could have found, inter alia, in Lucian a detailed description of how the people regarded them as public buffoons, and how the Roman capitalists, proconsuls, etc., hired them as court jesters for their entertainment, so that after squabbling at the table with slaves for a few bones and a crust of bread and after being given a special sour wine, they would amuse the master of the house and his guests with delightful words like “ataraxia”, “aphasia” [refusal to express any definite opinion] “hedone”, etc.

Incidentally, if our good man wanted to make the history of ancient philosophy into a history of antiquity, then as a matter of course he ought to have merged the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics in the Neo-Platonists, whose philosophy is nothing but a fantastic combination of the Stoic, Epicurean and Sceptical doctrine with the content of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Instead of that, he merges these doctrines directly in Christianity.

It is not “Stirner” that has left Greek philosophy “behind him”, but Greek philosophy that has “Stirner” behind it (cf. Wigand, p. 186 [Max Stirner, “Recensenten Stirners"]). Instead of telling us how “antiquity” arrives at a world of things and “copes” with it,. this ignorant school-master causes antiquity blissfully to vanish by means of a quotation from Timon; whereby antiquity the more naturally “arrives at its final goal” since, according to Saint Max, the ancients “found themselves placed by nature” in the ancient “communality”, which, “let us say in conclusion”, “can be understood” the more easily because this communality, the family, etc., are dubbed “the so-called natural ties” (p. 33). By means of nature the ancient “world of things” is created, and by means of Timon and Pilate (p. 32) it is destroyed. Instead of describing the “world of things” which provides the material basis of Christianity, he causes this “world of things” to be annihilated in the world of the spirit, in Christianity.

The German philosophers are accustomed to counterpose antiquity, as the epoch of realism, to Christianity and modern times, as the epoch of idealism, whereas the French and English economists, historians and scientists are accustomed to regard antiquity as the period of idealism in contrast to the materialism and empiricism of modern times. In the same way antiquity can be considered to be idealistic insofar as in history the ancients represent the “citoyen”, the idealist politician, while in the final analysis the moderns turn into the “bourgeois”, the realist ami du commerce — or again it can be considered to be realistic, because for the ancients the communality was a “truth”, whereas for the moderns it is an idealist “lie”. All these abstract counterposings and historical constructions are of very little use.

The “unique thing” we learn from this whole portrayal of the ancients is that, whereas Stirner “knows” very few “things” about the ancient world, he has all the “better seen through” them (cf. Wigand, p. 191).

Stirner is truly that same “man child” of whom it is prophesied in the Revelation of St. John, 12:5, that he “was to rule all nations with a rod of iron”. We have seen how he sets about the unfortunate heathen with the iron rod of his ignorance. The “moderns” will fare no better.

4. The Moderns

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17) (p. 33).

By means of this biblical saying the ancient world has now indeed passed away” or, as Saint Max really wanted to say, “all gone”, and with one leap [Satz, = leap, jump and also sentence or proposition] we have jumped over to the new, Christian, youthful, Mongoloid “world of the spirit”. We shall see that this, too, will have “all gone” in a very short space of time.

“Whereas it was stated above ‘for the ancients, the world was a truth’, we must say here ‘for the modems the spirit was a truth’, but in neither case should we forget the important addition: ‘a truth, the untruth of which they sought to penetrate and, finally, did indeed penetrate'” (p. 33).

While we do not wish to devise any Stirner-like constructions, “we must say here": for the moderns truth was a spirit, namely the holy spirit. Jacques le bonhomme again takes the moderns not in their actual historical connection with the “world of things” — which, despite being “all gone”, nevertheless continues to exist — but in their theoretical, and indeed religious, attitude. For him the history of the Middle Ages and modern times again exists only as the history of religion and philosophy; he devoutly believes all the illusions of these epochs and the philosophical illusions about these illusions. Thus, having given the history of the moderns the same turn as he gave that of the ancients, Saint Max can then easily “demonstrate” in it a ‘similar course to that taken by antiquity”, and pass from the Christian religion to modern German philosophy as rapidly as he passed from ancient philosophy to the Christian religion. On page 37 he himself gives a characterisation of his historical illusions, by making the discovery that “the ancients have nothing to offer but worldly wisdom” and that “the moderns have never gone, and do not go, beyond theology”, and he solemnly asks: “What did the moderns seek to penetrate?” The ancients and moderns alike do nothing else in history but “seek to penetrate something” — the ancients try to find out what is behind the world of things, the moderns behind the world of the spirit. In the end ‘ the ancients are left “without a world” and the moderns “without a spirit”; the ancients wanted to become idealists, the moderns to become realists (p. 485), but both of them were only occupied with the divine (p. 488) — “history up to now” is only the “history of the spiritual man” (what faith!) (p. 442) — in short we have again. the child and the youth, the Negro and the Mongol, and all the rest of the terminology of the “various transformations”.

At the same time we see a faithful imitation of the speculative manner, by which children beget their father, and what is earlier is brought about by what is later. From the very outset Christians must “seek to penetrate the untruthfulness of their truth”, they must immediately be hidden atheists and critics, as was already indicated concerning the ancients. But not satisfied with this, Saint Max gives one more brilliant example of his “virtuosity in” (speculative) “thought” (p. 230):

“Now, after liberalism has acclaimed man, one can state that thereby only the last consequence of Christianity has been drawn and that Christianity originally set itself no other task than that of ... realising man.”

Since allegedly the last consequence of Christianity has been drawn, “one” can state that it has been drawn. As soon as the later ones have transformed what was earlier “one can state” that the earlier ones “originally”, namely “in truth”, in essence, in heaven, as hidden Jews, “set themselves no other task” than that of being transformed by the later ones. Christianity, for Jacques le bonhomme, is a self-positing subject, the absolute spirit, which “originally” posits its end as its beginning. Cf. Hegel’s Encyclopädie, etc.

“Hence” (namely because one can attribute an imaginary task to Christianity) “there follows the delusion” (of course, before Feuerbach it was impossible to know what task Christianity “had originally set itself”) “that Christianity attaches infinite value to the ego, as revealed, for example, in the theory of immortality and pastoral work. No, it attaches this value to manalone, man alone is immortal, and only because I am a man, am I also immortal.”

if, then, from the whole of Stirner’s scheme and formulation of tasks it emerges, already sufficiently clearly, that Christian’ try can lend immortality only to Feuerbach’s “man”, we learn here in addition that this comes about also because Christianity does not ascribe this immortality — to animals as well.

Let us now also draw up a scheme à la Saint Max.

“Now, after” modern large-scale landownership, which has arisen from the process of parcellation, has actually “proclaimed” primogeniture, “one can state that thereby only the last consequence” of the parcellation of landed property “has been drawn” “ and that” parcellation “in truth originally set itself no other task than that of realising” primogeniture, true primogeniture. “Hence there follows the delusion” that parcellation “attaches infinite value” to equal rights of members of the family, “as revealed, for example”, in the laws of inheritance of the Code Napoléon. “No, it attaches this value solely” to the eldest son; “only” the eldest son, the future owner of the entailed estate, will become a large landowner, “and only because I am” the eldest son “I will also be” a large landowner.

In this way it is infinitely easy to give history “unique” turns, as one has only to describe its very latest result as the “task” which “in truth originally it set itself”. Thereby earlier times acquire a bizarre and hitherto unprecedented appearance. It produces a striking impression, and does not require great production costs. As, for instance, if one says that the real “task” which the institution of landed property “originally set itself” was to replace people by. sheep — a consequence which has recently, become manifest in Scotland, etc., or that the proclamation of the Capet dynasty [51] “originally in truth set itself the task” of sending Louis XVI to the guillotine and M. Guizot into the Government. The important thing is to do it in a solemn, pious, priestly way, to draw a deep breath, and then suddenly to burst out: “Now, at last, one can state it.”

What Saint Max says about the moderns in the above section (pp. 33-37) is only the prologue to the spirit history which is in store

for us. Here, too, we see how he tries “to rid himself as quickly as possible” of empirical facts and parades before us the same categories as in the case of the ancients — reason, heart, spirit, etc. — only they are given different names. The Sophists become sophistical scholastics, “humanists, Machiavellism (the art of printing, the New World”, etc.; cf. Hegel’s Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 128) who represent reason; Socrates is transformed into Luther, who extols the heart (Hegel, 1.c., p. 227), and of the post-Reformation period we learn that during that time it was a matter of “empty cordiality” (which in the section about the ancients was called “purity of heart”, cf. Hegel, 1.c., p. 241). All this on page 34. In this way Saint Max “proves” that “Christianity takes a course “similar to that of antiquity”. After Luther he no longer even troubles to provide names for his categories; he hurries in seven-league boots to modern German philosophy. Four oppositions (“until nothing remains but empty cordiality, all the universal love of mankind, love of man, consciousness of freedom, ‘self-consciousness"’, p. 34; Hegel, 1.c., pp. 228, 229), four words fill the gulf between Luther and Hegel and “only thus is Christianity completed”. This whole argument is achieved in one masterly sentence, with the help of such levers as “at last"-"and from that time” — “since one” — “also” — “from day to day” — “until finally”, etc., a sentence which the reader can verify for himself on the classic page 34 already mentioned.

Finally Saint Max gives us a few more examples of his faith, showing that he is so little ashamed of the Gospel that he asserts: “We really are nothing but spirit”, and maintains that at the end of the ancient world “after long efforts” the “spirit” has really “rid itself of the world”. And immediately afterwards he once more betrays the secret of his scheme, by declaring of the Christian spirit that “like a youth it entertains plans for improving or saving the world”. All this on page 36.

“So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy.... And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great ... and saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints”, etc. (Revelation of St. John, 17, Verses 3, 5, 6).

The apocalyptic prophet did not prophesy accurately this time. Now at last, after Stirner has acclaimed man, one can state that he ought to have said: So he carried me into the wilderness of the spirit. And I saw a man sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of blasphemy of names ... and upon his forehead was a name written, Mystery, the unique ... and I saw the man drunken with the blood of holy, etc. So we now enter the wilderness of the spirit.