I pledge myself to the union for my
future, or bind my soul to it; but I am and remain to myself more than
State or Church, and consequently infinitely more than the union."

Just as we again recognise in this loose and always breakable union
(although Stirner does not say so) that union whose mission he had
declared it to be "to render secure property gained by force," to
arrange the relations of production and consumption, and at the same
time to create a certain unity of the means of payment; so, too, we
have in this "union of egoists," as its author called it, all the
constructive thought that Stirner's book either can or does contain.
For a man who only acknowledges one dimension, and only operates with
one, considering everything not contained therein as non-existing,
cannot form any of the combinations of which life consists, without
coming into hopeless conflict with his principles. This Stirner has
done, in spite of the vague and imaginary nature of his "union of
egoists."

As Stirner had to acknowledge that this union or society cannot exist
without freedom being limited in every way, he declared--since after
all he requires union for some things--"absolute freedom" a creature
of the imagination, as the opposite to "individuality," which is the
main thing. But can it be believed that Stirner has set up an
"absolute freedom" all of his own making, to place it in contrast with
individuality. In other words, freedom is merely the possibility of
living one's individuality, of being an "individual" in Stirner's
sense. Freedom is the absence of every outside influence; it may be
understood in an exoteric or esoteric sense; and throughout his whole
book Stirner has done nothing but strip the "Ego" from every sign of
outside compulsion; he has made it the "only one" by freeing it with
relentless logic from everything external. He has depicted this act of
liberation as the goal of all culture; and it finally emerges that all
this story of the "only Ego" is a delusion, for "union" excludes
"absolute individuality" as well as "absolute freedom"--because the
two are identical.

Stirner, indeed, only spoke of an "absolute freedom" to represent it
as a fiction of the imagination, and on the other hand only of an
individuality. Now his union does not exclude individuality and
freedom, but only absolute individuality. But this last Stirner cannot
admit, because it also he regards merely as a "spectre," an
"obsession," a