The Ego and Its Own by Johann Kaspar Schmidt

Author:Johann Kaspar Schmidt [Schmidt, Johann Kaspar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anarchism
Publisher: http://c3jemx2ube5v5zpg.onion
Published: 1844-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

II. My Intercourse

In society the human demand at most can be satisfied, while the egoistic must always come short.

Because it can hardly escape anybody that the present shows no such living interest in any question as in the “social,” one has to direct his gaze especially to society. Nay, if the interest felt in it were less passionate and dazzled, people would not so much, in looking at society, lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that a society cannot become new so long as those who form and constitute it remain the old ones. If, e.g., there was to arise in the Jewish people a society which should spread a new faith over the earth, these apostles could in no case remain Pharisees.

As you are, so you present yourself, so you behave toward men: a hypocrite as a hypocrite, a Christian as a Christian. Therefore the character of a society is determined by the character of its members: they are its creators. So much at least one must perceive even if one were not willing to put to the test the concept “society” itself.

Ever far from letting themselves come to their full development and consequence, men have hitherto not been able to found their societies on themselves; or rather, they have been able only to found “societies” and to live in societies. The societies were always persons, powerful persons, so-called “moral persons,” i.e. ghosts, before which the individual had the appropriate wheel in his head, the fear of ghosts. As such ghosts they may most suitably be designated by the respective names “people” and “peoplet”: the people of the patriarchs, the people of the Hellenes, etc., at last the – people of men, Mankind (Anacharsis Clootz was enthusiastic for the “nation” of mankind); then every subdivision of this “people,” which could and must have its special societies, the Spanish, French people, etc.; within it again classes, cities, in short all kinds of corporations; lastly, tapering to the finest point, the little peoplet of the –family. Hence, instead of saying that the person that walked as ghost in all societies hitherto has been the people, there might also have been named the two extremes – to wit, either “mankind” or the “family,” both the most “natural-born units.” We choose the word “people”[73] because its derivation has been brought into connection with the Greek polloi, the “many” or “the masses,” but still more because “national efforts” are at present the order of the day, and because even the newest mutineers have not yet shaken off this deceptive person, although on the other hand the latter consideration must give the preference to the expression “mankind,” since on all sides they are going in for enthusiasm over “mankind.”

The people, then – mankind or the family – have hitherto, as it seems, played history: no egoistic interest was to come up in these societies, but solely general ones, national or popular interests, class interests, family interests, and “general human interests.” But

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