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INTRODUCTION

think the admirers of Stirner's teaching must quite appreciate
one thing which Von Hartmann did at a much later date. In
'' Der Eigene '' of August 10, 1896, there appeared a letter writ-
ten by him and giving, among other things, certain data from
which to judge that, when Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his later
essays, Nietzsche was not ignorant of Stirner's book.

Von Hartmann wishes that Stirner had gone on and developed

his principle. Von Hartmann suggests that you and I are really
the same spirit, looking out through two pairs of eyes. Then,
one may reply, I need not concern myself about you, for in my-
self I have--us; and at that rate Von Hartmann is merely accus-
ing himself of inconsistency: for, when Stirner wrote this book,
Von Hartmann's spirit was writing it; and it is just the pity that
Von Hartmann in his present form does not indorse what he said
in the form of Stirner,--that Stirner was different from any other
man; that his ego was not Fichte's transcendental generality,
but " this transitory ego of flesh and blood." It is not as a gen-
erality that you and I differ, but as a couple of facts which are
not to be reasoned into one. " I " is somewise Hartmann, and
thus Hartmann is " I "; but I am not Hartmann, and Hartmann
is not--I. Neither am I the " I " of Stirner; only Stirner him-
self was Stirner's " I." Note how comparatively indifferent a
matter it is with Stirner that one is an ego, but how all-impor-
tant it is that one be a self-conscious ego,--a self-conscious, self-
willed person.

Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting

from self-interested motives, but clothing these in various garbs.
Watch those people closely in the light of Stirner's teaching,
and they seem to be hypocrites, they have so many good moral
and religious plans of which self-interest is at the end and bot-
tom ; but they, we may believe, do not know that this is more
than a coincidence.

In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political

liberty. His interest in the practical development of egoism to
the dissolution of the State and the union of free men is clear

INTRODUCTION

and pronounced, and harmonizes perfectly with the economic
philosophy of Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of tem-
perament and language, there is a substantial agreement be-
tween Stirner and Proudhon. Bach would be free, and sees in
every increase of the number of free people and their intelli-
gence an auxiliary force against the oppressor. But, on the
other hand, will any one for a moment seriously contend that
Nietzsche and Proudhon march together in general aim and ten-
dency,--that they have anything in common except the daring
to profane the shrine and sepulchre of superstition ?

Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of Stirner,

and, owing to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's writings, it
has occurred that one of his books has been supposed to contain
more sense than it really does--so long as one had read only the
extracts.

Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read

everything, and not read Stirner ?

But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope performance is

unlike an algebraic equation.

Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all men

and women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. Democracy
to him was sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty.

Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon

democracy because it is not aristocratic. He is predatory to
the point of demanding that those who must succumb to feline
rapacity shall be taught to submit with resignation. When he
speaks of " Anarchistic dogs " scouring the streets of great civi-
lized cities, it is true, the context shows that he means the Com-
munists; but his worship of Napoleon, his bathos of anxiety for
the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe for thousands of
years, his idea of treating women in the oriental fashion, show
that Nietzsche has struck out in a very old path--doing the
apotheosis of tyranny. We individual egoistic Anarchists, how-
ever, may say to the Nietzsche school, so as not to be misunder-
stood ; We do not ask of the Napoleons to have pity, nor of the