"fixed idea." But whether he admits it or not, what is
Stirner's "individual" but an idea, something absolute? Stirner had
begun with the intention of slaying Feuerbach's idea of "man" as a
retrograde idealist fallacy, and of creating, like Prometheus, a new
man, the _Unmensch_, in the Ego completed into a microcosm, and, as
such, complete in itself, separate and independent. But that is, as a
matter of fact, not the "no-man" but the superhuman Prometheus
himself, the idea of Man which he attacked in Feuerbach. "Might," he
says in one part of his book, "goes before right, and rightly too."
This is exactly the logical scheme of the whole book. Away with
everything absolute! Individuality goes before every idea, just
because it is itself the absolute idea of the much-despised Hegel.

But suppose we do not take into consideration this fundamental
contradiction. Let us suppose there is none, and that all Stirner's
other assumptions are indisputable, that God, Humanity, Society,
Right, the State, the Family are all classed in one category, as were
abstractions and creations of my own "Ego," what follows? That these
ideas, now that they have lost their absolute character, are no longer
to be reckoned as factors in the organisation of life? It is so, if
one regards only that which is absolute as entitled to exist; but
Stirner would drive everything absolute from its very last positions.
And does it follow further from the circumstance that one of these
factors has lost its controlling influence over mankind that all the
others, because they too are not absolute, should be denied all
practical significance? Put in concrete form, the question stands
thus: (1) Has the idea of Deity lost its practical significance,
because it has been divested of its absolute character, and its purely
empiric origin has been recognised? and (2) If the idea of Right is no
more an absolute one than the idea of Deity, does it follow that the
influence of Right must be placed upon the same plane as the influence
of conscience?

As to the first point, I am relieved from any answer in view of the
thorough treatment of these questions by the light of modern
investigation. The second question I prefer to leave to some
professional jurist, who knows the nature of law, and at the same time
has every intention of doing justice to Stirner.

Dr. Rudolf Stammler says,[2] after showing that the necessity of the
influence of Law for human society cannot be pro