The German Ideology - Old Testament

The Old Testament: Man 

1. The Book of Genesis, i.e., A Man’s Life

Saint Max pretends here that he is writing the biography of his mortal enemy, “man”, and not of a “unique” or “real individual”. This ties him up in delightful contradictions.

As becomes every normal genesis “a man’s life” begins ab ovo, with the “child”. As revealed to us on page 13, the child

“from the outset lives a life of struggle against the entire world, it resists everything and everything resists it”. “Both remain enemies” but “with awe and respect” and “are constantly on the watch, looking for each other’s weaknesses”.

This is further amplified, on page 14:

“we”, as children, “try to find out the basis of things or what lies behind them; therefore” (so no longer out of enmity) “we are trying to discover everybody’s weaknesses”. (Here the finger of Szeliga, the mystery-monger, is evident.)

Thus, the child immediately becomes a metaphysician, trying to find out the “basis of things”.

This speculating child, for whom “the nature of things” lies closer to his heart than his toys, “sometimes” in the long run, succeeds in coping with the “world of things”, conquers it and then enters a new phase, the age of youth, when he has to face a new “'arduous struggle of life”, the struggle against reason, for the “spirit means the first self-discovery” and: “We are above the world, we are spirit” (p. 15). The point of view of the youth is a “heavenly one”; the child merely “learned”, “he did not dwell on purely logical or theological problems” — just as (the child) “Pilate” hurriedly passed over the question: “What is truth?” (p. 17). The youth “tries to master thoughts”, he “understands ideas, the spirit” and “seeks ideas”; he “is engrossed in thought” (p. 16), he has “absolute thoughts, i.e., nothing but thoughts, logical thoughts”. The youth who thus “deports himself”, instead of chasing after young women and other earthly things, is no other than the young “Stirner”, the studious Berlin youth, busy with Hegel’s logic and gazing with amazement at the great Michelet. Of this youth it is rightly said on page 17:

“to bring to light pure thought, to devote oneself to it — in this is the joy of youth, and all the bright images of the world of thought — truth, freedom, mankind, Man, etc. — illumine and inspire the youthful soul.”

This youth then “throws aside” the “object” as well and “occupies himself” exclusively “with his thoughts”;

“he includes all that is not spiritual under the contemptuous name of external things, and if, all the same, he does cling to such external things as, for example, students’ customs, etc., it happens only when and because he discovers spirit in them, i.e., when they become symbols for him”. (Who will not “discover” “Szeliga” here?)

Virtuous Berlin youth! The beer-drinking ritual of the students’ association was for him only a “symbol” and only for the sake of the “symbol” was he after a drinking bout many a time found under the table, where he probably also wished to “discover spirit"! — How virtuous is this good youth, whom old Ewald, who wrote two volumes on the “virtuous youth”, [Johann Ludwig Ewald, Der gute Jüngling, gute Gatte und Vater, oder Mittel, um es zu werden.] could have taken as a model, is seen also from the fact that it was “made known” to him (p. 15): “Father and mother should be abandoned, all natural authority should be .considered broken.” For him, “the rational man, the family as a natural authority does not exist; there follows a renunciation of parents, brothers and sisters, etc.” — But they are all “re-born as spiritual, rationalauthority”, thanks to which the good Youth reconciles obedience and fear of one’s parents with his speculating conscience, and everything remains as before. Likewise “it is said” (p. 15): “We ought to obey God rather than men.” [The Acts of the Apostles 5: 29] Indeed, the good youth reaches the highest peak of morality on page 16, where “it is said": “One should obey one’s conscience rather than God.” This moral exultation raises him even above the “revengeful Eumenides” and even above the “anger of Poseidon” — he is afraid of nothing so much as his “conscience”.

Having discovered that “the spirit is the essential” he no longer even fears the following perilous conclusions:

“If, however, the spirit is recognised as the essential, nevertheless it makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore” (!) “one strives to become rich In spirit; the spirit wishes to expand, to establish its realm, a realm not of this world, which has just been overcome. In this way, the spirit strives to become all in all” [1 Corinthians 15:28] (what way is this?), “i.e., although I am spirit, nevertheless I am not perfect spirit and must” (?) “first seek the perfect spirit” (p. 1 7).

“Nevertheless it makes a difference.” — It”, what is this? What is the “It” that makes the differences We shall very often come across this mysterious “It” in our holy man, and it will then turn out that it is the unique from the standpoint of substance, the beginning of “unique” logic, and as such the true identity of Hegel’s “being” and “nothing”. Hence, for everything that this “It” does, says or performs, we shall lay the responsibility on our saint, whose relation to it is that of its creator. First of all, this “It”, as we have seen, makes a difference between poor and rich. And why? Because “the spirit is recognised as the essential”. Poor “It”, which without this recognition would never have arrived at the difference between poor and rich! “And therefore one strives”, etc. “One!” We have here the second impersonal person which, together with the “It”, is in Stirner’s service and must perform the heaviest menial work for him. How these two are accustomed to support each other is clearly seen here. Since “It” makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, lone” (could anyone but Stirner’s faithful servant [F. Szeliga] have had this idea!) — “one, therefore, strives to become rich in spirit”. “It” gives the signal and immediately “one” joins in at the top of its voice. The division of labour is classically carried out.

Since “one strives to become rich in spirit, the spirit wishes to expand, to establish its realm”, etc. “If however” a connection is present here “it still makes a difference” whether “one” wants to become “rich in spirit” or whether “the spirit wants to establish its realm”. Up to now “the spirit” has not wanted anything, “the spirit” has not yet figured as a person — it was only a matter of the spirit of the “youth”, and not of “the spirit” as such, of the spirit as subject. But our holy writer now needs a spirit different from that of the youth, in order to place it in opposition to the latter as a foreign, and in the last resort, as a holy spirit. Conjuring trick No. 1.

“In this way the spirit strives to become all in all”, a somewhat obscure statement, which is then explained as follows:

“Although I am spirit, nevertheless I am not perfect spirit and must first seek the perfect spirit.”

But if Saint Max is the “Imperfect spirit”, “nevertheless it makes a difference” whether he has to “perfect” his spirit or seek “the perfect spirit”. A few lines earlier he was in fact dealing only with the “poor” and “rich” spirit — a quantitative, profane distinction — and now there suddenly appears the “imperfect” and “perfect” spirit — a qualitative, mysterious distinction. The striving towards the development of one’s own spirit can now be transformed into the hunt of the “imperfect spirit” for “the perfect spirit”. The holy spirit wanders about like a ghost. Conjuring trick No. 2.

The holy author continues:

“But thereby” (i.e., by the transformation of the striving towards “perfection” my spirit into the search for “the perfect spirit”) “ I, who have only just found myself as spirit, at once lose myself again, in that I bow down before the perfect spirit, as a spirit which is not my own, but a spirit of the beyond, and I feel my emptiness “ (p. 18).

This is nothing but a further development of conjuring trick No. 2. After the “perfect spirit” has been assumed as an existing being and opposed to the “imperfect spirit”, it becomes obvious that the “imperfect spirit”, the youth, painfully feels his “emptiness” to the depths of his soul. Let us go on!

“True, it is all a matter of spirit, but is every spirit the right spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal of the spirit, the ‘holy spirit’. It is not my or your spirit but precisely” (!) — “an ideal spirit, a spirit of the beyond — ‘God’. ‘God is spirit” [John 4: 24] (p. 18).

Here the “perfect spirit” has been suddenly transformed into the “right” spirit, and immediately afterwards into the “right and true spirit”. The latter is more closely defined as the “Ideal of the spirit, the holy spirit” and this is proved by the fact that it is “not my or your spirit but precisely, a spirit of the beyond, an ideal spirit — God”. The true spirit is the ideal of the spirit, “precisely” because it is ideal! It is the holy spirit “precisely” because it is — God! What “virtuosity of thought"! We note also in passing that up to now nothing was said about “your” spirit. Conjuring trick No. 3.

Thus, if I seek to train myself as a mathematician, or, as Saint Max puts it, to “perfect” myself as a mathematician, then I am seeking the “perfect” mathematician, i.e., the “right and true” mathematician, the “ideal” of the mathematician, the “holy” mathematician, who is distinct from me and you (although in my eyes you may be a perfect mathematician, just as for the Berlin youth his professor of philosophy is the perfect spirit); but a mathematician who is “precisely ideal, of the beyond”, the mathematician in the heavens, “God”. God is a mathematician.

Saint Max arrives at all these great results because “it makes a difference whether the spirit is rich or poor”; i.e., in plain language, it makes a difference whether anyone is rich or poor in spirit, and because his “youth” has discovered this remarkable fact.

On page 18 Saint Max continues:

“It divides the man from the youth that the former takes the world as it is”, etc.

Consequently, we do not learn how the youth arrives at the point where he suddenly takes the world “as it is”, nor do we see our holy dialectician making the transition from youth to man, we merely learn that “It” has to perform this service and “divide” the youth from the man. But even this “It” by itself does not suffice to bring the cumbersome wagon-load of unique thoughts into motion. For after “It” has “divided the man from the youth”, the man all the same relapses again into the youth, begins to occupy himself afresh “exclusively with the spirit” and does not get going until “one” hurries to his assistance with a change of horses. “Only when one has grown fond of oneself corporeally, etc.” (p. 18), “only then” everything goes forward smoothly again, the man discovers that he has a personal interest, and arrives at “the second self-discovery”, in that he not only “finds himself as spirit”, like the youth, “and then at once loses himself again in the universal spirit”, but finds himself “as corporeal spirit” (p. 19). This “corporeal spirit” finally arrives at having an “interest not only in its own spirit” (like the youth), “but in total satisfaction, in the satisfaction of the whole fellow” (an interest in the satisfaction of the whole fellow!) — he arrives at the point where “he is pleased with himself exactly as he is”. Being a German, Stirner’s “man” arrives at everything very late. He could see, sauntering along the Paris boulevards or in London’s Regent Street, hundreds of “young men”, fops and dandies who have not yet found themselves as “corporeal spirits” and are nevertheless “pleased with themselves exactly as they are”, and whose main interest lies in the ‘,satisfaction of the whole fellow”

This second “self-discovery” fills our holy dialectician with such enthusiasm that he suddenly forgets his role and begins to speak not of the man, but of himself, and reveals that he himself, he the unique, is “the man”, and that “the man” = “the unique”. A new conjuring trick.

“How I find myself” (it should read: “how the youth finds himself”) “behind the things, and indeed as spirit, so subsequently, too, I must find myself” (it should read: “the man must find himself”) “behind the thoughts, i.e., as their creator and owner. In the period of spirits, thoughts outgrew me” (the youth), “although they were the offspring of my brain; like delirious fantasies they floated around me and agitated me greatly, a dreadful power. The thoughts became themselves corporeal, they were spectres like God, the Emperor, the Pope, the Fatherland, etc,; by destroying their corporeality, I take them back into my own corporeality and announce: I alone am corporeal. And now I take the world as it is for me, as my world, as my property: I relate everything to myself.”

Thus, the man, identified here with the “unique”, having first given thoughts corporeality, i.e., having transformed them into spectres, now destroys this corporeality again, by taking them back into his own body, which he thus makes into a body of spectres. The fact that he arrives at his own corporeality only through the negation of the spectres, shows the nature of this constructed corporeality of the man, which he has first to “announce” to “himself”, in order to believe in it. But what he “announces to himself” he does not even announce” correctly. The fact that apart from his “unique” body there are not also to be found in his head all kinds of independent bodies, spermatozoa, he transforms into the “fable": I alone am corporeal. Another conjuring trick.

Further, the man who, as a youth, stuffed his head with all kinds of nonsense about existing powers and relations such as the Emperor, the Fatherland, the State, etc., and knew them only as his own “delirious fantasies”, in the form of his conceptions — this man, according to Saint Max, actually destroys all these powers by getting out of his head his false opinion of them. On the contrary: now that he no longer looks at the world through the spectacles of his fantasy, he has to think of the practical interrelations of the world, to get to know them and to act in accordance with them. By destroying the fantastic corporeality which the world had for him, he finds its real corporeality outside his fantasy. With the disappearance of the spectral corporeality of the Emperor, what disappears for him is not the corporeality, but the spectral character of the Emperor, the actual power of whom he can now at last appreciate in all its scope. Conjuring trick No. 3[a].

The youth as a man does not even react critically towards ideas which are valid also for others and are current as categories, but is critical only of those ideas that are the “mere offspring of his brain”, i.e., general concepts about existing conditions reproduced in his brain. Thus, for example, he does not even resolve the category “Fatherland”, but only his personal opinion of this category, after which the generally valid category still remains, and even in the sphere of “philosophical thought” the work is only just beginning. He wants, however, to make us believe that he has destroyed the category itself because he has destroyed his emotional personal relation to it — exactly as he has wanted to make us believe that he has destroyed the power of the Emperor by giving up his fantastic conception of the Emperor. Conjuring trick No. 4.

“And now,” continues Saint Max, “I take the world as it is for me, as my world, as my property.”

He takes the world as it is for him, i.e., as he is compelled to take it. and thereby he has appropriated the world for himself, has made it his property — a mode of acquisition which, indeed, is not mentioned by any of the economists, but the method and success of which will be the more brilliantly disclosed in “the book”. Basically, however, he takes” not the “world”, but only his “delirious fantasy” about the world as his own, and makes it his property. He takes the world as his conception of the world, and the world as his conception is his imagined property, the property of his conception, his conception as property, his property as conception, his own peculiar conception, or his conception of property; and all this he expresses in the incomparable phrase: “I relate everything to myself.”

After the man has recognised, as the saint himself admits, that the world was only populated by spectres, because the youth saw spectres, after the illusory world of the youth has disappeared for the man, the latter finds himself in a realworld, independent of youthful fancies.

And so, it should therefore read, I take the world as it is independently of myself, in the form in which it belongs to itself (“the man takes” — see page 18 — “the world as it is”, and not as he would like it to be), in the first place as my non-property (hitherto it was my property only as a spectre); I relate myself to everything and only to that extent do I relate everything to I myself.

“If I as spirit rejected the world with the deepest contempt for it, then I as proprietor reject the spectres or ideas into their emptiness. They no longer have power over me, just as no ‘earthly force’ has power over the spirit” (p. 20).

We see here that the proprietor, Stirner’s man, at once enters into possession, sine beneficio deliberandi atque inventarii, [without the advantage of deliberation and inventory — the right of deliberation and inventory is an old principle of the law of inheritance, which grants the heir time to decide whether he wants to accept or to reject a legacy]of the inheritance of the youth which, according to his own statement, consists only of “delirious fantasies” and “spectres”. He believes that in the process of changing from a child into a youth he had truly coped with the world of things, and in the process of changing from a youth into a man he had truly coped with the world of the spirit, that now, as a man, he has the whole world in his pocket and has nothing more to trouble him. If, according to the words of the youth which he repeats, no earthly force outside him has any power over the spirit, and hence the spirit is the supreme power on earth — and he, the man, has forced this omnipotent spirit into subjection to himself — is he not then completely omnipotent? He forgets that he has only destroyed the fantastic and spectral form assumed by the idea of “Fatherland”, etc., in the brain of the “youth”, but that he has still not touched these ideas, insofar as they express actual relations. Far from having become the master of ideas — he is only now capable of arriving at “ideas”.

“Now, let us say in conclusion, it can be clearly seen” (p. 199) that the holy man has brought his interpretation of the different stages of life to the desired and predestined goal. He informs us of the result achieved in a thesis that is a spectral shade which we shall now confront with its lost body.

unique thesis, p. 20. “The child was realistic, in thrall to the things of this world, until little by little he succeeded in penetrating behind these very things. The youth was idealistic, inspired by thoughts, until he worked his way up to become a man, the egoistic man, who deals with things and thoughts as he pleases and puts his personal interest above everything. Finally, the old man? It will be time enough to speak of this when I become one.”

Owner of the accompanying liberated shade. The child was actually in thrall to the world of his things, until little by little (a borrowed conjuring trick standing for development) he succeeded in leaving these very things behind him. The youth was fanciful and was made thoughtless by his enthusiasm, until he was brought down by the man, the egoistic burgher, with whom things and thoughts deal as they please, because his personal interest puts everything above him. Finally, the old man? — “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” [John 2:4]

The entire history of “a man’s life” amounts, therefore, “let us say in conclusion”, to the following:

1. Stirner regards the various stages of life only as “self-discoveries” of the individual, and these “self-discoveries” are moreover always reduced to a definite relation of consciousness. Thus the variety of consciousness is here the life of the individual. The physical and social changes which take place in the individuals and produce an altered consciousness are, of course, of no concern to Stirner. In Stirner’s work, therefore, child, youth and man always find the world ready-made, just as they merely “find” “themselves”; absolutely nothing is done to ensure that there should be something which can in fact be found. But even the relation of consciousness is not correctly understood either, but only in its speculative distortion. Hence, too, all these figures have a philosophical attitude to the world — “the child is realistic”, “the youth is idealistic”, the man is the negative unity of the two, absolute negativity, as is evident from the above-quoted final proposition. Here the secret of “a man’s life” is revealed, here it becomes clear that the “child” was only a disguise of “realism”, the “youth” a disguise of “idealism”, the “man” of an attempted solution of this philosophical antithesis. This solution, this “absolute negativity”, is arrived at — it is now seen — only thanks to the man blindly taking on trust the illusions both of the child and of the youth, believing thus to have overcome the world of things and the world of the spirit.

2. Since Saint Max pays no attention to the physical and social “life” of the individual, and says nothing at all about “life”, he quite consistently abstracts from historical epochs, nationalities, classes, etc., or, which is the same thing, he inflates the consciousness predominant in the class nearest to him in his immediate environment into the normal consciousness of “a man’s life”. In order to rise above this local and pedantic narrow-mindedness he has only to confront “his” youth with the first young clerk he encounters, a young English factory worker or young Yankee, not to mention the young Kirghiz-Kazakhs.

3. Our saint’s enormous gullibility — the true spirit of his book — is not content with causing his youth to believe in his child, and his man to believe in his youth. The illusions which some youths”, “men”, etc., have or claim to have about themselves, are without any examination accepted by Stirner himself and confused with the “life”, with the reality, of these highly ambiguous youths and men.

4. The prototype of the entire structure of the stages of life has already been depicted in the third part of Hegel’s Encyclopädie and “in various transformations” in other passages in Hegel as well. Saint Max, pursuing “his own” purposes, had, of course, to undertake certain “transformations” here also. Whereas Hegel, for example, is still to such an extent guided by the empirical world that he portrays the German burgher as the servant of the world around him, Stirner has to make him the master of this world, which he is not even in imagination. Similarly, Saint Max pretends that he does not speak of the old man for empirical reasons; he wishes to wait until he becomes one himself (here, therefore, “a man’s life” = his unique life). Hegel briskly sets about constructing the four stages of the human life because, in the real world, the negation is posited twice, i.e., as moon and as comet (cf. Hegel’s Naturphilosophie , and therefore the quaternity here takes the place of the trinity. Stirner finds his own uniqueness in making moon and comet coincide and so abolishes the unfortunate old man from “a man’s life”. The reason for this conjuring trick becomes evident as soon as we examine the construction of the unique history of man.

2. The Economy of the Old Testament

We must here, for a moment, jump from the “Law” to the “Prophets”, since at this point already we reveal the secret of unique domestic economy in heaven and on earth. In the Old Testament, too — where the law, man, still is a school-master of the unique (Galatians 3:24) — the history of the kingdom of the unique follows a wise plan fixed from eternity. Everything has been foreseen and preordained in order that the unique could appear in the world, when the time had come [Galatians 4:4] to redeem holy people from their holiness.

The first book, “A Man’s Life”, is also called the “Book of Genesis”, because it contains in embryo the entire domestic economy of the unique, because it gives us a prototype of the whole subsequent development up to the moment when the time comes for the end of the world. The entire unique history revolves round three stages: child, youth and man, who return “in various transformations” and in ever widening circles until, finally, the entire history of the world of things and the world of the spirit is reduced to “child, youth and man”. Everywhere we shall find nothing but disguised 1I child, youth and man”, just as we already discovered in them three disguised categories.

We spoke above of the German philosophical conception of history. Here, in Saint Max, we find a brilliant example of it. The speculative idea, the abstract conception, is made the driving force of history, and history is thereby turned into the mere history of philosophy. But even the latter is not conceived as, according to existing sources, it actually took place — not to mention how it evolved under the influence of real historical relations — but as it was understood and described by recent German philosophers, in particular Hegel and Feuerbach. And from these descriptions again only that was selected which could be adapted to the given end, and which came into the hands of our saint by tradition. Thus, history becomes a mere history of illusory ideas, a history of spirits and ghosts, while the real, empirical history that forms the basis of this ghostly history is only utilised to provide bodies for these ghosts; from it are borrowed the names required to clothe these ghosts with the appearance of reality. In making this experiment our saint frequently forgets his role and writes an undisguised ghost-story.

In his case we find this method of making history in its most naive, most classic simplicity. Three simple categories — realism, idealism and absolute negativity (here named “egoism”) as the unity of the two — which we have already encountered in the shape of the child, youth and man, are made the basis of all history and are embellished with various historical signboards; together with their modest suite of auxiliary categories they form the content of all the allegedly historical phases which are trotted out. Saint Max once again reveals here his boundless faith by pushing to greater extremes than any of his predecessors faith in the speculative content of history dished up by German philosophers. In this solemn and tedious construction of history, therefore, all that matters is to find a pompous series of resounding names for three categories that are so hackneyed that they no longer dare to show themselves publicly under their own names. Our anointed author could perfectly well have passed from the “man” (p. 20) immediately to the “ego” (p. 201) or better still to the “unique” (p. 485); but that would have been too simple. Moreover, the strong competition among the German speculative philosophers makes it the duty of each new competitor to offer an ear-splitting historical advertisement for his commodity.

“The force of true development”, to use Dottore Graziano’s words, “proceeds most forcibly” in the following “transformations": Basis:

I. Realism.
II. Idealism.
III. The negative unity of the two. “One” (p. 485),

First nomenclature:

I.. Child, dependent on things (realism).
II. Youth, dependent on ideas (idealism).
III. Man — (as the negative unity)
   expressed positively:
        the owner of ideas and things       (egoism)
   expressed negatively:
   free from ideas and things

        Second, historical nomenclature:

I. Negro (realism, child).
II. Mongol (Idealism, youth).
III. Caucasian (negative unity of realism and idealism, man).

Third, most general nomenclature:

I. Realistic egoist (egoist in the ordinary sense) — child, Negro.
II. Idealist egoist (devotee) — youth, Mongol.
III. True egoist (the unique) — man, Caucasian.

Fourth, historical nomenclature. Repetition of the preceding stages
        within the category of the Caucasian.

I. The Ancients. Negroid Caucasians childish men — pagans dependent on things — realists — the world.

Transition (child penetrating behind the “things of this world”): Sophists, Sceptics, etc.

II. The Moderns. Mongoloid Caucasians — youthful men — Christians — dependent on ideas — idealists — spirit.

1. Pure history of spirits, [Geistergeschichte, or “ghost-story” Geister — ghosts or spirits; Geschichte — story or history; here rendered as “history of spirits"] Christianity as spirit. “The spirit.”

2. Impure history of spirits. Spirit in relation to others. “The Possessed”.

A. Purely impure history of spirits.

a) The apparition, the ghost, the spirit in the Negroid state, as thing-like spirit and spiritual thing — objective being for the Christian, spirit as child.
b) The whimsy, the fixed idea, the spirit in the Mongolian condition, as spiritual in the spirit, determination in consciousness, conceptual being in the Christian — spirit as youth.

B. Impurely impure (historical) history of spirits.

a) Catholicism — Middle Ages (the Negro, child, realism, etc.).
b) Protestantism — modern times in modern times (Mongol, youth, idealism, etc.).

Within Protestantism it is possible to make further subdivisions, for example:

[a] English philosophy — realism, child, Negro.
[b] German philosophy — idealism, youth, Mongol.

3. The Hierarchy — negative unity of the two within the Mongoloid-Caucasian point of view. Such unity appears where historical relations are changed into actually existing relations or where opposites are presented as existing side by side. Here, therefore, we have two coexisting stages:

A. The “uneducated”, (evil ones, bourgeois, egoists in the ordinary sense)=Negroes, children, Catholics, realists, etc.

B. The “educated” (good ones, citoyens, devotees, priests, etc.) = Mongols, youths, Protestants, idealists.

These two stages exist side by side and hence it follows easily” that the “educated” rule over the “uneducated” — this is the hierarchy. In the further course of historical development there arises then
    the non-Hegelian from the “uneducated”,
    the Hegelian from the “educated”,
["The shaman and the speculative philosopher denote the lowest and the highest point in the scale of the inner man, the Mongol” (p. 453).]

from which it follows that the Hegelians rule over the non-Hegelians. In this way Stirner converts the speculative notion of the domination of the speculative idea in history into the notion of the domination of the speculative philosophers themselves. The view of history hitherto held by him — the domination of the idea — becomes in the hierarchy a relation actually existing at present; it becomes the world domination of ideologists. This shows how deeply Stirner has plunged into speculation. This domination of the speculative philosophers and ideologists is finally developing, “for the time has come” for it, into the following, concluding nomenclature:

a) Political liberalism, dependent on things, independent of persons — realism, child, Negro, the ancient, apparition, Catholicism, the “uneducated”, masterless.

b) Social liberalism, independent of things, dependent on the spirit, without object — idealism, youth, Mongol, the modern, whimsy, Protestantism, the “educated”, propertyless.

c) Humane liberalism, masterless and propertyless, that is godless, for God is simultaneously the supreme master and the supreme possession, hierarchy — negative unity in the sphere of liberalism and, as such, domination over the world of things and thoughts; at the same time the perfect egoist in the abolition of egoism — the perfect hierarchy. At the same time, it forms the

Transition (youth penetrating behind the world of thoughts) to

III. the “ego” — i.e., the perfect Christian, the perfect man, the Caucasian Caucasian and true egoist, who — just as the Christian became spirit through the supersession of the ancient world — becomes a corporeal being [Leibhaftige] through the dissolution of the realm of spirits, by entering, sine beneficio deliberandi et inventarii, into the inheritance of idealism, the youth, the Mongol, the modern, the Christian, the possessed, the whimsical, the Protestant, the “educated”, the Hegelian and the humane liberal.

NB. 1. “At times” Feuerbachian and other categories, such as reason, the heart, etc., may be also “included episodically”, should a suitable occasion arise, to heighten the colour of the picture and to produce new effects. It goes without saying that these, too, are only new disguises of the ever present idealism and realism.

2. The very pious Saint Max, Jacques le bonhomme, has nothing real and mundane to say about real mundane history, except that under the name of “nature”, the “world of things”, the “world of the child”, etc., he always opposes it to consciousness, as an object of speculation of the latter, as a world which, in spite of its continual annihilation, continues to exist in a mystical darkness, in order to reappear on every convenient occasion — probably because children and Negroes continue to exist, and hence also their world, the so-called world of things, “easily,” continues to exist. Concerning such historical and non-historical constructions, good old Hegel wrote with regard to Schelling — the model for all constructors — that one can say the following in this context:

“It is no more difficult to handle the instrument of this monotonous formalism than a painter’s palette which has only two colours, say black” (realistic, childish, Negroid, etc.) “and yellow” [Hegel mentions red and green as examples] (idealist, youthful, Mongolian, etc.), “in order to use the former to paint a surface when something historical” (the “world of things”) “is required, and the latter when a landscape” (“heaven”, spirit, holiness, etc.) “is needed” (Phänomenologie, p. 39).

“Ordinary consciousness” has even more pointedly ridiculed constructions of this kind in the following song:

The master sent out John
And told him to cut the hay;
But John did not cut the hay
Nor did he come back home.

Then the master sent out the dog
And told him to bite John;
But the dog did not bite John,
John did not cut the hay
And they did not conic back home.

Then the master sent out the stick
And told it to beat the dog;
But the stick did not beat the dog,
The dog did not bite John,
John did not cut the hay
And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out fire
And told it to burn the stick;
But the fire did not burn the stick,
The stick did not beat the dog,
The dog did not bite John,
John did not cut the hay
And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out water
And told it to put out the fire;
But the water did not put out the fire,
The fire did not burn the stick,
The stick did not beat the dog,
The dog did not bite John,
John did not cut the hay
And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the ox
And told it to drink the water;
But the ox did not drink the water,
The water did not put out the fire,
The fire did not burn the stick,
The stick did not beat the dog,
The dog did not bite John,
John did not cut the hay
And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the butcher
And told him to slaughter the ox;
But the butcher did not slaughter the ox,
The ox did not drink the water,
The water did not put out the fire,
The fire did not burn the stick,
The stick did not beat the dog,
The dog did not bite John,
John did not cut the hay
And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the hangman
And told him to hang the butcher;
The hangman did hang the butcher,
The butcher slaughtered the ox,
The ox drank the water,
The water put out the fire,
The fire burnt the stick,
The stick beat the dog,
The dog bit John,
John cut the hay,
And they all came back home.
[A German nursery rhyme]

We shall now see with what “virtuosity of thought” and with what school-boyish material Jacques le bonhomme elaborates on this scheme.