object Stirner had in writing his book was to poke fun at this
philosophy. This supposition is absolutely gratuitous. Stirner in
expounding his theory was not joking. He is in deadly earnest about it,
though he now and again betrays a tendency, natural enough in the
restless times when he wrote, to outdo Feuerbach and the radical
character of his conclusions.

For Feuerbach, what men call Divinity, is only the product of their
phantasy, of a psychological aberration. It is not Divinity that has
created man, but man who creates Divinity in his own image. In God man
only adores his own being. God is only a fiction, but a very harmful
fiction. The Christian God is supposed to be all love, all pity for poor
suffering humanity. But in spite of this, or rather _because of it_,
every Christian really worthy the name, hates, and must hate, the
Atheists, who appear to him the living negation of all love and all
pity. Thus the god of love becomes the god of hate, the god of
persecution; the product of the phantasy of man becomes a real cause of
his suffering. So we must make an end of this phantasmagoria. Since in
Divinity man adores only his own being, we must once for all rend and
scatter to the winds the mystic veil beneath which this being has been
enveloped. The love of humanity must not extend beyond humanity. "Der
Mensch ist dem Menschen das hoechste Wesen" (Man is the highest being for
man).

Thus Feuerbach. Max Stirner is quite at one with him, but wishes to
deduce what he believes to be the final, the most radical consequences
of his theory. He reasons in this fashion. God is only the product of
phantasy, is only a _spook_. Agreed. But what is this humanity the love
of which you prescribe to me? Is not this also a spook, an abstract
thing, a creature of the imagination? Where is this humanity of yours?
Where does it exist but in the minds of men, in the minds of
individuals? The only reality, therefore, is the _individual_, with his
wants, his tendencies, his will. But since this is so, how can the
_individual_, the reality, sacrifice himself for the happiness of man,
an abstract being? It is all very well for you to revolt against the old
God; you still retain the religious point of view, and the emancipation
you are trying to help us to is absolutely theological, _i.e._,
"God-inspired." "The highest Being is certainly that of man, but because
it is his _Being_ and is not he himself, it is quite indifferent if we
see