do. I am entitled to overthrow Zeus, Jehovah or God, if I can; if I
can _not_, these gods will always retain their rights and power over
me; but I shall stand in awe of their rights and their power in
impotent reverence, and shall keep their commands and believe I am
doing right in everything that I do, according to their ideas of
right, just as a Russian frontier sentry considers himself justified
in shooting dead a suspicious person who runs away, because he relies
upon a 'higher authority,' in other words, commits murder legally. But
I am justified in committing a murder by myself, if I do not forbid it
to myself, if I am not afraid of murder in the abstract as of
'something wrong.' I am only not justified in what I do not do of my
own free will, that is, that which I do not give myself the right to
do. I decide whether the right resides in me; for there is some right
external to myself. If it is right to me, then it is right. It is
possible that others may not regard it as right, but that is their
affair, not mine, and they must take their own measures against it.
And if something was in the eyes of the whole world not right, and yet
seemed right to me, that is, if I wished it, even then I should ask
nothing from the world: thus does everyone who knows how to value
himself, and each does it to the extent that he is an egotist, for
might goes before right, and quite rightly too."

All existing right is external to the Ego; no one can give me my
right, neither God, nor reason, nor Nature, nor the State; as to
whether I am right or not there is only one judge and that is myself;
others at most can pass a judgment and decide whether they support my
right and whether it also exists as a right for them. Law is the will
of the dominating power in a community. Every State is a despotism,
whether the dominant power belongs to one, to many, or to all. A
despotism would remain then, if, for example, in the national assembly
the national will, that is to say, the individual wills of each
person, really had overwhelmingly expressed itself, including also my
own will; if then this wish becomes law I am bound to-morrow by what I
wished yesterday, and then I thus become a servant, even though it be
only the servant of myself. How can this be changed? "Only by my
recognising no duty, neither letting myself bind nor be bound. If I
have no duty then I also know no law." Wrong goes side by side with
right, crime with legality. The unf