With true prophetic insight Proudhon perceived the fact that even in human society revolution is everything; with a clearness of vision such as none before him, and only very few after him, have possessed, he always insisted upon the organic character of human society and the natural continuity between animal and human social life; and in this lies his greatness, which will never be diminished by any of his numerous errors. But while he thus with one foot for the first time trod upon the ground of a new discovery, with the other he stood on the standpoint of social philosophy of previous centuries. He could neither externally nor internally disa.s.sociate himself from its baseless a.s.sumptions of a social contract, the absolute rights of man, a moral order of the universe, and similar ethical views of politics; and herein lies the contradiction upon which his great mental talents were shipwrecked. If we once regard human society as Proudhon did, as something real, the product of nature which is moved and develops itself according to the laws of the rest of nature, then we have once for all given up the right to mark out for it a line of development determined merely by speculation, or to demand from it that it should move towards any particular goal, however well-intentioned it may be.
A breeder may produce in his pigeons or fowls a certain kind of feather or a certain form of pouting, but he cannot change the pigeon into a hen. The artificial selection of breeding is all that man can do (_pour corriger la nature_) against the free progress of natural development. This is not so insignificant as one may be inclined to believe at the first glance. The latter belongs to the category of Ovid"s _Metamorphoses_, and of that Utopian social philosophy which began with Plato, and in all human probability will not end for a long time. Proudhon wished to unite both, one with another,--to unite water with fire. Like all Utopians, he desired--he who all his life, in his numerous writings, so frequently confuted and sneered at them--that the human race might be metamorphosed in order to accept unanimously his ideas about society. For that the men of his day were not fit for a true democracy--that is, for anarchy--he was honest enough to admit.
"Nothing is in reality less democratic than the people," said he, occasionally, and he did not allow himself the least delusion as regards their slavish love for authority. For that very reason, he thought democracy must be changed into "demopaedy," and a complete revolution of a popular spirit must be caused by education. But to prove that, even with the help of democracy, people would not be ripe for pure democracy, or, rightly speaking, for anarchy, we can quote an authority which he never doubted, namely, himself. In an access of pessimism, he said once, "I have thought I have noticed (may philosophy pardon me for it!) that the more reason develops in us the more brutal becomes pa.s.sion when once it is let loose. It appears then that the angel and the biped brute which together compose our human nature in their intimate union, instead of mingling their attributes, only live side by side with one another. If progress leads us to that, of what use is it?" This is a bad look-out for the great moral revolution upon which Proudhon more and more based all his hopes.
Proudhon has had the most varied judgment pa.s.sed upon him. Some have treated him as an obscure pamphlet writer. Louis Blanc calls him a prizefighter; Laveleye, in a history of Socialism, only considers him worth mentioning in order to call his ideas "the dreams of a raving idiot"; Karl Marx denies him either talent or knowledge; many have considered him as a Jesuitical hypocrite; others, again, his followers and representatives, have called him the greatest man of the century. Ludwig Pfau called him the clearest thinker that France had produced since Descartes. But the spectacle is by no means new. In reality, but little courage and wit are to-day needed to acquire the applause of an ignorant mult.i.tude which has no idea of Proudhon"s train of thought by the condemnation of the father of Anarchism.
"Justice must be done to all, even to Louis Napoleon," exclaimed Proudhon, to the great astonishment _orbis et urbis_ after the _coup d"etat_; and not to take a lower standard than the father of Anarchism, we exclaim also, "Justice must be done to all, even to Proudhon."
The most usual reproach which is cast against Proudhon is that he is contradictory and confused. This reproof is generally made by people who know no more about Proudhon than the paradox "Property is Theft,"
and from this one expression call him confused and contradictory.
Proudhon saw very clearly the end before his eyes, strove to attain it unfalteringly and steadily, and amid all the variety of the developments in which he preached his ideas to the world for a quarter of a century, never betrayed one iota of its contents. The contradiction from which his work suffered lay deeper. It lay in the form of his thought, and partly in the period to which he belonged.
Placed on the boundary line between two epochs of social science and of social forms, one of which is marked by dogma and the other by induction, he had not the strength to break completely with one or give himself up completely to the other. His whole life and thought was a constant fight against dogma in every form. He fought against social Utopianism as against religious dogmatism, and fought against the dogmatism of property as against political authority; he sought to transform Socialism upon severely scientific and realistic lines, and to free it from all the fetters of dogmatic religion; and yet, just as Rousseau did, he placed at the head of his system a dogma: "Man is born free"; and at the conclusion of it the teleological phrase of a moral order of society--two propositions which can never be proved by experience, but rather contradict all experience.
In the same way this internal contradiction is shown in the princ.i.p.al work of his last period, the _Justice dans le Revolution et dans l"eglise_, in which Proudhon endeavours to show these two separate worlds in their marked difference one from another without suspecting that he himself fluctuated between both.
After he, as a logical idealist, had denied all external force and all authority, and nevertheless as a realist had supported society as the unalterable condition of human life and civilisation, he seeks at the same time to save anarchy and society by a new bond between individuals who have been set free and find this in some internal necessity and internal authority, in a principle which acts upon the will like a force, and determines it in the direction of the general interest independently of all consideration of self-interest.
And so the man, who had put away from himself everything of an absolute and _a priori_ nature because he declared a purely empirical foundation of social science to be the source of all immorality, arrived at the a.s.sumption of an innate, immanent justice as the first principle of society which he, with the arbitrariness of a catechism writer, declared to be "the first and most essential of our faculties; a sovereign faculty which, by that very fact, is the most difficult to know, the faculty of feeling and affirming our dignity, and consequently of wishing it and defending it as well in the person of others as in our own person."
As Proudhon, in spite of the fact that he was always opposing Utopianism, nevertheless fell into the chief error of the Utopians, so, too, finally he shared the destiny of Auguste Comte, upon whom during his life he had rather looked down. Both had started with a sworn antagonism to every speculative foundation of social philosophy, and both finally adopted a _deus ex machina_ in order to preserve the world that was falling into individual pieces before them from a complete atomisation. With Comte it is called "love," with Proudhon "justice." The distinction between the two is somewhat childish. Both perceived the standpoint of evolution, the mechanical conception which overcomes all deviations, without a.s.signing to it the part which it deserves. One may safely say that if Proudhon had been brought into connection with the doctrine of evolution, he would have been one of the leading sociologists. He had an infinitely keen sense of the most secret motions of the social soul, but he believed that he might not approach it lovingly in its nudity of nature, and therefore degraded it to a Platonic idea, after having affirmed its utmost reality. This was an action like that of Kronos, the curse of which never departed from his thought.
To this was added a very scanty and transitory acquaintance with political economy which allowed the practicability of his ideas to appear to him in the easiest light, but which, when he was opposed to one so thoroughly acquainted with it as Karl Marx, placed him in the most piteous position.
One of the commonest reproaches which is made against Proudhon, and which is partly a personal one, refers to his att.i.tude towards Napoleon III. In the little political catechism which is found in his _Justice_, Proudhon answered the question "Whether Anarchy can be united with the dynastic principle," in the following way: "It is clear that France till now was not of opinion that freedom and dynasty were incompatible ideas. When the old monarchy called together the States General it kindled the Revolution. The const.i.tution of 1791 and those of 1814 and 1830, proved the desire of the country to reconcile a monarchical principle with the democracy. The popularity of the First Empire was one argument more for the possibility of this supposition; the people believed they found in it all their preconceived ideas, and apparently surrender was reconciled with progress. Thus men satisfied their habits of subjection under a lordship, and their need for unity; they exercised the danger of a president dictator or an oligarchy. When in 1830 Lafayette defined the new order of affairs as "a monarchy surrounded by republican arrangements," he perceived the ident.i.ty of the political and economic order. While the true republic consists in the equilibrium of forces and efforts, people pleased themselves by seeing a new dynasty hold the balance and guaranteeing justice. And finally, this theory is confirmed by the example of England (although equality is unknown there), and by the new const.i.tutional states. No doubt the union of the dynastic principle with that of freedom and equality in France has not produced the fruits that were expected from it, but that was the fault of Governmental fatalism; the mistake was made just as much by the princes as by the people. Although dynastic parties since 1848 have shown themselves by no means friendly to revolution, the force of circ.u.mstances will again bring them to it, and as France at all stages of her fortunes has always liked to give herself a ruler and to manifest her unity by a symbol, so it would be exaggeration to deny even now the possibility of a restoration of the dynasty. We have heard Republicans say, "He will be my master who shall wear the purple robe of equality," and those who speak thus form neither the smallest nor the least intelligent portion; but it is also true that they did not wish for a dictatorship. At any rate, one must admit that there are no symptoms of a restoration in the near future. And what makes us suppose that the dynastic principle is, at least, under a cloud, is the fact that the pretenders and their advisers have no heart for the affair. "After you, gentlemen," they appear to say to the Democrats.
But after the democracy there will not remain much for a dynasty to pick up, or the economic equilibrium would be false. _Non datur regnum aut imperium in oeconomiae._"
This certainly reasonable and moderate point of view, which proceeds from the perception that in an organic society the caprice of one individual cannot possibly stop or disturb the course of the social function, and that king or emperor accordingly could at most be a symbol, is also at the bottom of the book on social revolution. In the _coup d"etat_ of the 2d of December, Proudhon only saw a stage of the great social revolution, the manifestation of the will of the people, striving in the direction of social equalisation; although perhaps mistakenly, and challenged Louis Napoleon, whose _coup d"etat_ he had prophesied, condemned, and sought to prevent, to show himself worthy of public opinion, and to use the mandate given him by destiny and by the French people in the sense that it was entrusted to him.[6]
Proudhon probably did not believe, when he was writing the _Sociale Revolution_, by any means too much in the willingness of Napoleon to take upon himself such a mission as he a.s.signed to him. The language of the book is in any case very reserved, and there is no trace of the apotheosis of the author of the _coup d"etat_.
[6] It must not be forgotten that the people expected in Louis Napoleon "the social emperor," and that he had in earlier times played upon this expectation. Compare his work on _The Abolition of Pauperism_, German translation by R. V.
Richard. Leipsic, 1857. Volume ii.
Nevertheless some have wished to represent this as Proudhon"s intention; his early release from the prison in which the little book was written as the immediate effect, and as being the thanks of the Emperor, thus representing Proudhon as a mercenary time-server. But this is not in accordance with the facts. Proudhon remained in his imprisonment almost till the very last day of his sentence, and the att.i.tude of the authorities towards his writings afterwards does not seem to show that any relationship, even a secret one, existed between Proudhon and Napoleon. Proudhon might write what he liked, it was confiscated; in vain he applied for permission to be allowed to issue his paper, _Justice_; a book which no longer showed the violence of his youth brought him three more years" imprisonment again, which he only escaped by a rapid flight to Belgium, and in the general amnesty of the year 1859 he was specially excepted from its conditions. When the Emperor in 1861, as a special favour, granted him permission to return home before the proper time, Proudhon proudly refused this favour, much as he wished to be in Paris, and only returned there at the expiration of the three years" period, at the end of 1863. These, at least, are no proofs that the author of _What is Property?_ allowed himself to be brought over by the man on the 2d December. But Proudhon was not to breathe the air of his native land much longer. Broken by the troubles of persecution, he died, after a long illness, on the 19th June, 1865, in the arms of his wife, who, like himself, belonged to the working cla.s.ses, and with whom he had led a life full of harmony and love.
CHAPTER III
MAX STIRNER AND THE GERMAN FOLLOWERS OF PROUDHON
Germany in 1830-40 and France -- Stirner and Proudhon -- Biography of Stirner -- _The Individual and his Property_ (_Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum_) -- The Union of Egoists -- The Philosophic Contradiction of the _Einziger_ -- Stirner"s Practical Error -- Julius Faucher -- Moses Hess -- Karl Grun -- Wilhelm Marr.
In the first half of the forties, almost about the same time, but completely independent one from another, there appeared, on each side of the Rhine, two men who preached a new revolution in a manner totally different from the ordinary revolutionist, and one from which at that time even the most courageous hearts and firmest minds shrank back. Both were followers of the "royal Prussian Court philosopher"
Hegel, and yet took an entirely different direction one from the other: but both met again at the end of their journey in their unanimous renunciation of all political and economic doctrines. .h.i.therto held; in their thorough opposition to every existing and imagined organisation of society upon whatever compulsion of right it might be founded; and in their desire for free organisation upon the simple foundation of rules made by convention or agreement--in their common desire for Anarchy.
The contemporaneous appearance of Proudhon and Stirner is of as much importance as their, in many ways, fundamental difference. The first circ.u.mstance shows their appearance was symptomatic, and raises it above any supposed or probable outcome of chance; Stirner and Proudhon support each other mutually with all their independence, and with all their difference one from another. As to this, it cannot be denied that it is to be traced, first and foremost, to the totally different environment in which the two authors grew up.
Ludwig Pfau, in a talented essay, has sought to derive the literary peculiarities of Proudhon from the Gallic character and from his French _milieu_. But even besides the purely literary aspect, Proudhon shows all the gifts and all the weaknesses of his people and of his time; he shares with all Frenchmen their small inclination to real criticism, but also their faculty of never separating themselves from the stream of practical life; and thus, before everything, we perceive in Proudhon"s earlier works a strong tendency towards the part of an agitator. L. Pfau a.s.serts that it is a specific peculiarity of the French nation, with all their notorious sentiment for freedom, "to discipline their own reluctant personality, and subject it to the common interest"; and therein lies, perhaps, the reason why Proudhon, although an enthusiastic advocate of personal freedom, never wished this to be driven to the point of the disintegration of collective unity and to the sacrifice of the idea of society.
Stirner is the German thinker who is carried away by the unchecked flow of his thoughts far from the path of the actual life into a misty region of "Cloud-cuckoo-land," where he actually remains as the "only individual," because no one can follow him. There is no trace in Stirner"s book of any intention of being an agitator. As far as political parties are mentioned in it, they do appear as such, but merely as corollaries of certain tendencies of philosophic thought.
Stirner keeps himself even anxiously apart from politics, and a certain dislike to them is unmistakable in him. All parties have in his eyes only this in common, that they all strive to actualise conceptions and ideas which lie beyond them, whether these be called G.o.d, State, or humanity. Stirner stands in the same relation to the philosophic tendencies of his own and earlier times. He sees them all run into the great ocean of generality the absolute, nothingness. The distinction between Saint Augustine and L. Feuerbach is for him purely a superficial and not an essential one; for the "man" of the latter is as foreign to him as the "G.o.d" of the former. And so Stirner carries his disinclination to politics, as being inimical to the philosophy of his time, almost to disgust, being herein a genuine son of his country and of his period.
Upon the philosophic exaltation and the speculative "foundation period" of the beginning of the century there had followed a severe depression; to the over-eager expectations which had been placed in philosophy there followed just as severe a disappointment; to the metaphysical orgy there followed a moral headache, which might be designated not inaptly by the motto which Schopenhauer gave in mockery to Feuerbach"s philosophy, so well suited to his time--
"Edite, bibite, collegiales!
Post multa saecula Pocula nulla."
The political att.i.tude of the forties was very much the same. The national enthusiasm, the wars of freedom, and the sanguine hopes which had attended the downfall of the Corsican, had, like the expectations aroused by the Revolutionists of the days of July, ended in miserable disaster. The touching confidence which a nation, all too nave in politics, had placed in its princes had been shamefully deceived and abused. All dreams of union and freedom seemed to be extinguished for a long time, and the flunkeyism which was unfortunately only too rampant in the nation, ran riot, while frank souls stood aside in disgust. The more eager the spiritual enthusiasm had been on the threshold of two centuries, the deeper now did apathy weigh upon men"s spirits in the period of the forties. The fuller men"s souls had been of surging and stormy ideals, and wishings and vague longings of all kinds, the emptier did they now become, and not only Stirner could with justice give to his "only individual" the motto, "I have placed my all on nothing," but it was the motto of all Germany at that time.
And yet in one thing Stirner is the type of his people as contrasted with Proudhon. He is the most complete example of the German who lacks that proud self-sacrificing view of the life of the community, that feeling of the inseparability of the individual from the ma.s.s of his people--which is the token of the French,--but who at all times has suffered from a separatism that destroys everything. He is the typical representative of that nation to whom its best sons have denied the capacity of being a nation, but which has therefore been able to produce more striking individualities than all other civilised nations of the time.
Caspar Schmidt--for this is Stirner"s real name[1]--was born at Baireuth on the 25th October, 1806, and, like Strauss, Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and other thinkers of the same kind, devoted his time to theological and philosophic studies. After completing these, he took the modest position of a teacher in a high school, and in a girls"
school in Berlin. In 1844 there appeared, under the pseudonym "Max Stirner," a book called _The Individual_ _and his Property_, with the dedication which, under these circ.u.mstances, is touching: "To my Darling, Marie Dohnhardt." The book appeared like a meteor; it caused for a short time a great deal of talk, and then sank into oblivion for ten years, till the growing stream of Anarchist thought again came back to it in more recent times. A _History of the Reaction_, written after the year 1848, is esteemed as a good piece of historical work; and, besides this, Caspar Schmidt also produced translations of Say, Adam Smith, and other English economists. On the 26th of June, 1856, he ended his life, poor in external circ.u.mstances, rich in want and bitterness. That is all that we know of the personality of the man who has raised the idea of personality to a t.i.tanic growth that has oppressed the world.
[1] Stirner"s chief work, _The Individual and his Property_ (_Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum_, Leipsic, 1845), has been reprinted by P. Reclam, at Leipsic, with a good introduction by Paul Lauterbach. The literature about Stirner is almost exclusively confined to a few scattered remarks in larger works, which are not always very appropriate. J. H. Mackay is said to be working at a biography of Stirner. The monograph by Robert Sch.e.l.lwien, _Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche_ (Leipsic, 1892), is quite worthless for our purpose.
Stirner proceeds from the fact, the validity of which we have placed in the right light at the beginning of this book, that the development of mankind and of human society has. .h.i.therto proceeded in a decidedly individualistic direction, and has consisted predominantly in the gradual emanc.i.p.ation of the individual from his subjection to general ideas and their corresponding correlatives in actual life, in the return of the Ego to itself. Starting from the school of Fichte and Hegel, he pursued this special individualistic tendency till close upon the limits of caricature; he formally founded a cultus of the Ego, all the while being anxious that it should not return again to the region of metaphysical soap-bubbles, and leave its psychological and practical sphere. On the contrary, Stirner appears to be rather inclined to Positivism, and to consider the details of life and of perception as real, and as the only ones whose existence is justified.
All that is comprehensible and general is secondary, a product of the individual, the subject turned into an object, a creation that is looked upon and honoured by the creator as the only actual reality, the highest end--indeed, as something sacred. In the origin of this generalisation, as well as in emanc.i.p.ation from it, Stirner perceives the course of progressive culture.
The ancients only got so far as generalisations of the lower order; they lived in the feeling that the world and worldly relationships (for example, the natural bond of blood) were the only true things before which their powerless self must bow down. Man, in the view of life taken by the ancient world, lived entirely in the region of perception, and therefore all his general ideas, even the highest type of them, not excluding Plato"s, retained a strongly sensuous character.
Christianity only went a step higher with its generalisations out of the region of the senses; ideas became more spiritual and less corporeal in proportion as they became more general. Antiquity sought the true pleasure of life, enjoyment of life; Christianity sought the true life; antiquity sought complete sensuousness, Christianity complete morality and spirituality; the first a happy life here, the latter a happy life hereafter; antiquity postulated as the highest moral basis, the State, the laws of the world; Christianity postulated G.o.d, imperishable, everlasting Law. The ancient world did not get beyond the rule of formal reason, the Sophists; Christianity put the heart in the place of reason, and cultivation of sentiment in that of one-sided cultivation of the intellect.
Nevertheless, this is, according to Stirner (as has already been mentioned), the same process, the objectivisation of the Self, which comes out of itself, and considers itself as some foreign body striving upwards--unconscious self-deification.
Even in the Reformation Stirner recognises nothing more than the continuation of the same process. Up to the time of the period preceding the Reformation, reason, that was condemned as heathenish, lay under the dominion of dogma; shortly before the Reformation, however, it was said, "If only the heart remains Christianly minded, reason may after all have its way." But the Reformation at last places the heart in a more serious position, and since then hearts have become visibly less Christian. When men began with Luther "to take the matter to heart," this step of the Reformation led to the heart being lightened from the heavy burden of Christianity. The heart becomes from day to day less Christian; it loses the contents with which it occupies itself, until at last nothing remains to it but empty "heartiness," general love of man, the love of humanity, the consciousness of freedom. It need hardly be mentioned that this view of history is quite arbitrary and distorted. Who requires to be told that the Reformation was, perhaps, the greatest historical act in favour of the individual, because it freed him from the most powerful of all authorities, from the omnipotence of the Roman dogma? With the Reformation the conscious movement for freedom received its first great impulse.
But Stirner places the reverence of the ancients for the State, the reverence of the Christian for G.o.d, and of modern times for humanity and freedom, all upon the same level,--they all seem to him ghosts, spectres, possession by spirits and hauntings,--and he seeks to establish the same conclusion as regards the ideas of truth, right, morality, property, and love,--the so-called sacred foundations of human society. They are all ghost-imaginations of our own mind, creations of our own Ego, before which the creator of them bows in the impotence of ignorance, considering them as something unalterable, eternal, and sacred, to which every activity of the creative idea is placed in contrast as Egoism.
"Men have got something into their heads which they think ought to be actualised. They have ideas of love, goodness, and so on, which they would like to see realised; and therefore they wish for a kingdom of love upon earth in which no one acts out of self-interest, but everyone from love. Love shall rule. But what they have placed in their heads, how can it be called other than "a fixed idea" (_idee fixe_)? Their heads are haunted by spectres. The most persistently haunting spectre is Man himself. Remember the proverb, "The way to ruin is paved with good intentions." The proposal to actualise humanity in itself, to become wholly human, is of just the same disastrous character, and to it belong the intentions of becoming good, n.o.ble, loving, and so forth."
The dominion of the idea, whether it is religious or humanitarian or moral, is for Stirner mere priest-craft; philanthropy is merely a heavenly, spiritual, but priest-imagined love. Man must be restored, and in doing so we poor wretches have ruined ourselves. It is the same ecclesiastic principle as that celebrated motto, _Fiat just.i.tia, pereat mundus_; humanity and justice are ideas and ghosts to which everything is sacrificed. The enthusiast for humanity leaves out of consideration persons as far as his enthusiasm extends, and walks in a vague ideal of sacred interest. Humanity is not a person but an ideal--an imagination.
All progress of public opinion or emanc.i.p.ation of the human mind, as. .h.i.therto proceeding, is accordingly for Stirner worthless labour, a mere scene-shifting. As Christianity not only did not free mankind from the power of ancient spectres, but rather strengthened and increased them, so too the Reformation did not remove the chains of mankind a hair"s-breadth. "Because Protestantism broke down the medieval hierarchy, the opinion gained ground that hierarchy in general had been broken down by it, while it was quite overlooked that the Reformation was even a restoration of a worn-out hierarchy. The hierarchy of the middle ages had been only a feeble one, since it had to allow all possible barbarity to persons to go on unchecked with it, and the Reformation first steeled the strength of the hierarchy. When Bruno Bauer said: "As the Reformation was princ.i.p.ally the abstract separation of the religious principle from art, government, and science, and thus was its liberation from those powers with which it had been connected in the antiquity of the Church and in the hierarchy of the middle ages, so also the theological and ecclesiastical movements that proceeded from the Reformation were only the logical carrying out of this abstraction or separation of the religious principle from other powers of humanity";--and so I see on the contrary that which is right, and think that rule of the mind or mental freedom (which comes to the same thing) has never been before so comprehensive and powerful as at the present time, because now, instead of separating the religious principle from art, government, and science, it is rather raised entirely from the kingdom of this world into the realm of the spirit and made religious."
From the same point of view he considers the whole of the mental att.i.tude introduced by the Reformation.
"How can one," he says, "maintain of modern philosophy and of the modern period that they have accomplished freedom when it has not freed us from the power of objectivity? Or am I free from despots when I no longer fear a personal tyrant, but am afraid of every outrage upon the loyalty which I owe to him?"
This is just the case in the modern period. It only changes existing objects, the actual ruler and so on, to an imagined one, that is, into ideas for which the old respect not only has not been lost but has increased in intensity. If a piece was taken off the idea of G.o.d and the devil in their former gross realism, nevertheless only so much the more attention has been devoted to our conceptions of them. "They are free from devils, but evil has remained." To revolutionise the existing State, to upset the existing laws, was once thought little of, when it had once been determined to allow oneself to be no longer imposed upon by what was tangible and existing; but to sin against the conception of the State and not to submit to the conception of law--who has ventured to do that? So men remained "citizens" and "law-abiding, loyal men"; indeed, men thought themselves all the more law-abiding in proportion as they more rationalistically did away with the previous faulty law in order to do homage to the spirit of law. In all this it is only the objects that have changed but which have remained in their supremacy and authority; in short, men still followed obedience, lived in reflection, and had an object upon which they reflected, which they respected, and for which they felt awe and fear. Men have done nothing else but changed things into ideas of things, into thoughts and conceptions, and thus their dependence became all the more innate and irrevocable. It is, for example, not difficult to emanc.i.p.ate oneself from the commands of one"s parents, or to pay no heed to the warnings of an uncle or an aunt, or to refuse the request of a brother or a sister; but the obedience thus given up lies easily upon one"s conscience, and the less one gives way to individual sentiments, because one recognises them from a rational point of view, and from our own reason to be unreasonable, the more firmly does one cleave conscientiously to piety and family love, and with greater difficulty does one forgive an offence against the idea which one has conceived of family love and the duty of piety. Released from our dependence upon the existing family life, we fall into the more binding submission to the idea of the family; we are governed by family spirit. And the family, thus raised up to an idea or conception, is now regarded as something "sacred," and its despotism is ten times worse, because its power lies in my conscience. This despotism is only broken when even the ideal conception of the family becomes nothing to me. And as it is with the family, so it is with morality. Many people free themselves from customs, but with difficulty do they get free from the idea of morality. Morality is the "idea" of custom, its spiritual power, its power over the conscience; on the other hand, custom is something too material to have power over the spirit, and does not fetter a man who is independent, a "free spirit."
Humanity strives for independence, and strives to overcome everything which is not a self, says Stirner; but how does this agree with the above-mentioned spread of the power of the mental conception and of the idea? To-day mankind is less free than before; so-called Liberalism only brings other conceptions forward; that is, instead of the divine, the human; instead of ecclesiastical ideas, those of the State; instead of those of faith, those of science; or general statements, instead of the rough phrases and dogmas, actual ideas and everlasting laws.
In the movement for emanc.i.p.ation in modern times Stirner distinguishes three different varieties, the political, social, and humanitarian Liberalism.
Political Liberalism, according to Stirner, culminates in the thought that the State is all in all, and is the true conception of humanity; and that the rights of man for the individual consist in being the citizen of the State. Political Liberalism did away with the inequality of rights of feudal times, and broke the chains of servitude which at that period one man had forced upon another, the privilege upon him who was less privileged. It did away with all special interests and privileges, but it by no means created freedom; it only made one independent of the other, but yet made all the most absolute slaves to the State. It gave all power of right to the State, the individual only becomes something as a citizen, and only has those rights which the State gives him. Political Liberalism, says Stirner, created a few people, but not one free individual. Absolute monarchy only changed its name, being known formerly as "king," now as "people," "State," or "nation."