Selected Works of Georges Palante

Selected WorksGeorges Palante

Table of ContentsEsprit de Corps 2Respect 13Anarchism and Individualism 15The Secular Priestly Spirit 27Notes 38Individualism 40The Future of Pessimism and Individualism 42The Relationship Between Pessimism and

Individualism 43Misanthropic Pessimism 48Historical Pessimism 52

Esprit de Corps

Source: Combat pour l’individu. Paris, Alcan, 1904;originally appeared as an article in La RevuePhilosophique in 1899;Translated: by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

“Esprit de corps” is one of the most interesting ofphenomena for any observer of contemporary life. In themidst of the disintegration of so many moral and social

influences it has maintained a certain hold on people’sconsciousness and manifests itself in important ways. Wethought it useful to study esprit de corps in some of itsprincipal manifestations. This small psychological inquirywill then lead us to a few considerations on the moralvalue of esprit de corps.

For greater precision it would be appropriate todistinguish two meanings of this expression, “esprit decorps”: a broad and a narrow sense. In a narrow senseesprit de corps is a spirit of solidarity animating allmembers of a same professional group. In a broader sensethe expression esprit de corps designates the spirit ofsolidarity in general, not only in the professional group,but in all those social circles, whatever they might be(class, caste, sect, etc.), in which the individual feelshimself to be more or less subordinated to the interests ofthe collectivity. It is in this sense that there exists a classspirit; for example, the bourgeois spirit which thoughdifficult to precisely define nevertheless exists and showsitself to be no less combative whenever it’s a matter ofdefeating anti-bourgeois doctrines and tendencies. It isalso in this sense that Schopenhauer was able to speak ofwomen’s esprit de corps or the esprit de corps of marriedpeople, about which he made such interesting remarks inhis “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life.” In this broadsense we could also speak of the esprit de corps amongthe inhabitants of a city, who in certain cases find

themselves more or less the associates in a samecommercial enterprise. Ibsen showed this esprit de corpsin a masterly way in the small city in which he placed thescene in his “An Enemy of the People” where we see allthe inhabitants agreeing to remain silent about a secret (thecontamination of the waters) which if divulged would ruinthe city’s bathing establishments. The broad sense of theexpression esprit de corps is manifestly nothing but theextension of the narrow or purely professional sense.

Professional solidarity is one of the most powerfulsocial ties. But its action is most energetic in the so-calledliberal professions (clergy, army, magistracy, the bar,various administrations). Workers belonging to the sametrade, for example mechanics, carpenters, or foundryworkers, do not manifest an esprit de corps as developedas that of the officer, the priest, or the functionaries in thevarious government offices. This is not to say that theseworkers are lacking in all corporate solidarity, since weknow that in some countries the workers of a same craftare capable of uniting in trade unions and joining togetherto vigorously defend their interests against the bosses. Butamong workers this solidarity remains purely economic. Itlimits itself to defending the material interests of the tradeunion. Once this goal is achieved its action ceases: it isn’ttransformed into a coherent and systematic moral or socialdiscipline that dominates and invades individualconsciousnesses. Or if it acts in this sense it is solely in

order to develop in the worker his consciousness of hisrights as a “proletarian” in opposition to the antagonisticclass, the bourgeois or capitalist class. Properly speaking,this is not esprit de corps in the narrow sense of thatexpression; instead it is class spirit.

But in the liberal professions things are different.Here esprit de corps arrogates to itself a moral sway overindividual consciousness. Here the corporation imposeson and inculcates in its members, in a more or lessconscious fashion, an intellectual and moral conformismand marks them with an indelible stamp. This stamp iswell defined and varies from one group to another. Theways of thinking, feeling, and acting proper to a priest, anofficer, an administrator and a functionary are all different.Here each body has its self-conscious interests, its definedand precise slogans that are imposed on the members ofthese groups. This energy particular to esprit de corps inthe liberal professions can perhaps be explained in part bythe fact that the priest, the magistrate, the soldier, and thefunctionary are generally subject to a powerfulhierarchical organization whose effect is to singularlystrengthen esprit de corps. It is clear that the moreorganized and hierarchical a social group the more narrowand energetic is the moral and social discipline it imposeson its members.

What are the principal characteristics of esprit decorps?

A ‘corps’ is a defined social group with its owninterests, its own will to life and which seeks to defenditself against all exterior or interior causes of itsdestruction or diminution.

If we were to ask ourselves what are the goods forwhich a corps fights we would see that they are moraladvantages: the good name of the corps, influence,consideration, credit. These moral advantages aredoubtless nothing but the means for ensuring the materialprosperity of the corps and its members. But the corpstreats them as ends in themselves and in order to conquerand defend them deploys an energy, a fierceness, acombativeness that individual passions can only give afaint idea of.

A corps pursues these advantages by striving tosuggest to those who are not part of this corps a high ideaof its social utility and superiority. If need be it doesn’tfear to exaggerate this value and importance, and since itisn’t unaware of the power of the imagination over man’scredulity it willingly envelops itself in the decorum mostlikely to increase its respectability in the spirit of thecrowd. Max Nordau, in his book “The Conventional Liesof our Civilization,” studied the lies that the variousorganized social groups knowingly and deliberatelymaintain and that they consider among their conditions forexistence (religious lies, aristocratic, political, economiclies, etc.). Mr. Nordau could have added to these

corporate lies, which are often nothing but a combinationand a synthesis of others. It is in this great general law ofsocial insincerity that one must enter the special tactic bywhich a corps hides its defects, its weaknesses or itsfaults and strives to remain, in the eyes of the vulgar, in anattitude of uncontested superiority, of recognizedinfallibility and impeccability.

In order to maintain this attitude the corps demandsthat all its members “conduct themselves properly.” Itwants its members to be irreproachable externally and todecently play their role in the social theatre.

Competition is the great law that dominates theevolution of societies; it also dominates the life ofconstituted corps. Each corps has its caste pride and itsspecial point of honor vis-à-vis the others. It wants tomaintain its respectability intact and not fall from its rankin the greater organism that the various corps form inuniting. We can observe a muted rivalry among the variousconstituted corps, which is translated into public life andeven into private relations. M. Anatole France depicts thisrivalry humorously in the short story entitled “UnSubstitut,” which he attributes to M. Bergeret in “L’Ormedu Mail.”

This rivalry forces the corps to jealously watch overits caste honor and to exercise strict control over theconduct of its members. Woe on he who, through word oract, appears to compromise the honor of the corps. He

should expect neither pity not justice from his peers. He iscondemned without appeal.

When it’s possible, the scapegoat is sacrificed in anofficial execution. In the contrary case he is silentlyeliminated by more or less hypocritical proceedings thatdenote a Machiavellianism in the corps that is moreconscious than is commonly believed. In this the corpsobeys the vital instinct of all societies. M. Maurice Barrèssaid: “In the same way that a barnyard falls upon a sickchicken to kill or expel it, each group tends to reject itsweakest members.” The weak, those incapable of pushingthemselves ahead in the world, the evil extras of the socialcomedy constitute for the corps a dead weight that slows itdown and which it seeks to rid itself of: and so the corpsvilifies and humiliates them. It strives to create aroundthem what Guyau calls an atmosphere of intolerability.

The corps pursues this policy of elimination againstits weak members with a disdain of the individual and alack of scruples that often, it must be said, justifiesDaudet’s line that “constituted corps are cowards.”

In order to better ensure its policy of dominationesprit de corps tends as much as possible to expand itssphere of influence. Essentially, it is an invader. It doesn’tlimit itself to controlling the professional existence of itsmembers, but it often interferes in the domain of theirprivate life. A contemporary novelist, M. Verniolle, haswittily described this characteristic of the esprit de corps

in a very suggestive story called “Par la VoieHierarchique.” In this story the author shows us a highschool teacher (the true type of a personality invaded bythe corps) who appeals to the administrative hierarchy andcorporate influences to resolve his domestic difficulties.And in fact we see the esprit de corps, in the form of theheadmaster and his colleagues, intervene in a domesticsituation with a clumsiness only equalled by itsincompetence. M. Verniolle has also cleverly noted inanother story titled “Pasteurs d’Ames” this other trait ofthe esprit de corps: the hostility against the members of thecorps who in one way or another seem not to fit in with thecorporation. We should recall the hostility of the youngand dashing Professor Brissart – the true type of whatThackeray called the university snob – against an old andnot very decorative colleague who, because of hiscareless way of dressing, stands out from a corps of whichthe young snob considers himself the most beautifulornament.

In a general way, the corporation tends to take the lifeof the individual under its control. Let us recall the narrowmoral discipline to which the corporations of the MiddleAges submitted the private lives of their members.

This disposition brings to the entire corps a narrowand petty curiosity applied to all that individuals do. Acorporation resembles in this a gossipy small town. Lookat our administration and its functionaries. In this regard

they are like so many small towns spread across space anddisseminated across the entire extent of the Frenchterritory. If one of its even slightly well-known memberscommits some clumsy act or if something of interestoccurs then immediately, from Nancy to Bayonne and fromDunkirk to Nice, news is spread around the entire corps,in the exact same way that the gossip of the day goes fromsalon to salon among the good women of a small town.

These remarks on the actions of esprit de corpspermit us to see in it a particularly energetic manifestationof what Schopenhauer calls the will to life. Like allorganized societies a corps is the human will to lifecondensed and taken to a degree of intensity thatindividual egoism can never reach. Let us add that thiscollective will to life is very different from that whichacts on a crowd, which is an essentially unstable andtransitory group. The corps has all those things that arelacking in a crowd: its hierarchy, its point of honor, itsdefined prejudices, its accepted and imposed morality.Thus the corps, in its judgments of things and men, has astubbornness which the crowd, unstable and varying, isnot susceptible to to the same degree. Look at the crowd:led astray, momentarily criminal, it can change its mind aminute later and change its decision. A corps considersitself and wants to be seen as infallible. Anotherdifference between a crowd and a corps: in general acrowd is more impartial than a corps in its appreciation of

the merit of individuals. “In a corps of functionaries,’”says Simmel, “jealously often takes from talent theinfluence it should have, while a crowd, renouncing allpersonal judgment, easily follows a leader of genius.”

From the fact that a corps is essentially a collectivewill to life we can judge the qualities a corps demands ofits members: it is those that are useful to the corps, andthese alone. A corps doesn’t ask its members for eminentindividual qualities. It could care less about those rare andprecious qualities that are subtlety of intelligence, strengthand suppleness of the imagination, delicacy and tendernessof the soul. As we have said, what it demands of itsmembers is a certain conduct,’ a certain perseverance intheir docility towards the moral code of the corps. It isthis perseverance in docility which – through I don’t knowwhat misunderstanding – is sometimes decorated with thetitle of character. By this latter word a corps does not atall mean initiative in decision making or daring inexecution, nor any of the qualities of spontaneity andenergy that make up a strong personality, but solely andexclusively a certain constancy in obedience to the rule. Acorps has no particular esteem for what is called merit ortalent; rather it is suspicious of them. Esprit de corps is afriend of that mediocrity favorable to perfect conformism.We can say about all constituted bodies what Renan saysof the Seminary of Issy: “The first rule of the company isto abdicate all that can be called talent and originality in

order to bend before the discipline of a mediocrecommunity.” Nowhere better than in a corps does thecelebrated antithesis between talent and character appearwhich Heinrich Heine mocked with such exquisite irony inthe foreword to “Atta Troll.” We recall, and not without asmile, that good Swabian school of poetry – whichpossessed the esprit de corps to a high degree -whichasked of its members not that they have talent, but that theybe characters. It is the same in our constituted corps. Acorps wants its members to be characters, that is, perfectlydisciplined beings, wan and mediocre actors who playtheir social role in this social theatre which Schopenhauerspeaks of, where the police severely prohibit the actors toimprovise.

And so in the corps the great lever for “arriving” isnot merit, but mediocrity backed by family ties andcamaraderie. But those individuals in those bodies thatdispense advancement and sought after places don’talways practice nepotism for interested reasons: they areacting in good faith. They are sincerely persuaded, imbuedas they are with esprit de corps, that nepotism andcamaraderie are ties both respectable and useful to thecohesion of the corps. In rewarding merit alone theybelieve they are sacrificing to a dangerous individualism.

This disdain on the part of esprit de corps forpersonal qualities (intellectual or moral of the individual)are admirably explained in the final pages of a novel by

M. Ferdinand Fabre, “L’Abbe Tigrane,” in which CardinalMaffei explains to Abbe Ternisien the tactics of the Romancongregation.

It seems to us that these considerations sufficientlyconfirm the definition we gave above of esprit de corps.According to us esprit de corps is a collective egoism,uniquely concerned with collective ends and disdainful ofthe individual and individual qualities. Thus defined,esprit de corps presents an excellent illustration of whattends to be, according to the doctrine of Schopenhauer,pure will to life, separated from the intellect.

The preceding remarks also permit us to present afew considerations on the ethical value of the esprit decorps.

Certain contemporary sociologists and moralistshave favorably judged the moral influence of esprit decorps. Some have even thought of investing it with apolitical mission by substituting for universal suffrage as itis practiced in our country a system of vote bycorporations, each individual being obliged to vote for arepresentative chosen from among his peers orhierarchical chiefs from his corporation. We cite amongthe moralists who have recently insisted upon the value ofesprit de corps MM. Dorner and Durkheim, who took themoral point of view, and Messieurs Benoist and Walras,who have taken the political point of view.

M. Dorner sees in corporations a remedy for moral

and social discontent. He finds in the subordination of theindividual to the corporate group the pacifying of allinternal and external troubles. “Each person mustunderstand,” says M. Dormer, “that he can only occupy adetermined place in the whole and he can’t surpass thelimits imposed by his salary and his own faculties. Theindividual more easily acquires this conviction if hebelongs to a corporation that determines in advance thegeneral conditions of his economic and social life. Thecorporation holds before his eyes that alone which ispossible, and keeps from his imagination the castles in theair (Luftschlossern) that make him discontented with thepresent. On the other hand, thanks to his application theindividual learns the measure of his possible progress,and he participates in the collective intelligence of hisassociates (Berufsgenossen). Consequently, there resultsfrom all this a general tendency that aspires to establishingon the basis of what we already possess thoseimprovements that are profitable to the individual as wellas the whole, while allowing for progress within the limitsof professional activity.”

It is of the highest moral interest that the individualbe able to attach himself to a professional group, for thistie permits him to properly judge his personal faculties;and by its intermediary he can cultivate his intelligence,obtain a wider viewpoint on things, and can beencouraged by it to the great moral universal organism.

Corporations are nothing but organs of this organism, andso they must for once and for all have their respectiverights specified so that each can independently accomplishits tasks in its respective domains. Corporations must thenbe inspired by the interests of the organism of which theyare the organ, they must forgo their rivalries in the pursuitof privileges and advantages in keeping with theconsciousness their of their collaboration in a commontask.”

For his part M. Durkehim sees in a corps a usefulintermediary between the individual and the state. Thestate, he says, is a social entity, too abstract and too distantfrom the individual. The individual will attach himselfmore easily to an ideal nearer at hand and more practical.According to him this is the ideal that the professionalgroup presents. M. Durkheim sees in corporations thegreat remedy to what he calls social anomy: “Theprincipal role of corporations,” he says, “in the future asin the past, will be to regulate social functions andespecially economic functions, and consequently to extractthem from the state of disorganization in which they arecurrently found. Whenever envy will be excited to such anextent that it knows no limits it will be up to thecorporation to fix the portion which should equitablydevolve to each of the cooperators. Superior to itsmembers, it will have all the authority needed to demandfrom them those sacrifices and concessions that are

indispensable and to impose a rule on them. We don’t seein what other milieu this law of distributive justice, sourgent, can be elaborated, nor by what organ it could beapplied.”

MM. Benoist and Walras, for their part, develop theadvantages of a political organization by corporations. Wecan thus see that the system is complete: corporate politicsis connected to a professional morality.

We will not discuss here the question of corporativepolitics. We will content ourselves with presenting a fewobservations on corporative morality as they result fromour analysis of esprit de corps.

According to us the individual cannot ask from thecorporate group his law and his moral criteria. In our eyesthe value of the individual’s moral activity is in directrelationship with the freedom of which he disposes. Thecorporate group dominates the individual through intereststoo immediate and too material for this liberty not to behindered. It can, in fact, suppress the means of existencefor an individual refractory to its moral discipline. It holdshim by what we can call, borrowing an expression fromthe socialist vocabulary: “the belly question.”

Another question that is posed is that of knowingwhether or not affiliation with a corporate group would bea real remedy to “anomy” and if it would bring an end tosocial discontent. “Yes, perhaps,” we could say, if thekind of distributive justice which M. Durkheim speaks or

were exactly applied. But this is a utopian desideratum, atleast in those corporations where the labor furnishedcannot be precisely measured, as is the case with manuallabor. Stuart Mill said that from the top to the bottom ofthe social ladders remuneration is in inverse ratio to thelabor furnished. There is doubtless some exaggeration inthis way of seeing things, but it is confirmed in thoseprofessional groups where the nature of the servicesrendered prevents material measurement and permitsesprit de corps to deploy its oppressive influence onindividual merit.

This is not all. To seek the individual’s moralcriterion in the corporation would mean going against themarch of evolution, which increasingly multiplies socialcircles around the individual. This consequently permitshim to simultaneously take part in a greater number ofdiverse and independent societies that offer to hissensibility, his intelligence, and his activity an ever richerand more various nourishment. “History multiplies thenumber of social religious, intellectual, and commercialcircles to which individuals belong and raises theirpersonality only through the increasing implication ofthese circles. Consequently, their (the individual’s)obligation is no longer relatively simple, clear, andunilateral, as was the case when the individual was onewith society. The increasing differentiation of socialelements, the corresponding differentiation of

psychological elements in the consciousness, all the lawsof the parallel development of societies and individuals,seem to augment rather than to diminish the number andimportance of moral conflicts. At the same time thathistory increases the number of the objects of morality, itrenders the subjects more appreciable.” It results from thislaw of progressive differentiation that the freedom of theindividual – and consequently his value and moralcapacity – are in direct ratio with the number and extent ofthe social circles in which he participates. The moralideal is not to subordinate the individual to the moralconformism of a group, but to remove him from the herdspirit, to permit him to deploy himself in a multi-facetedactivity. The individual, while he is in a certain sense atissue of general properties, can be regarded as the pointof interference of a more or less considerable number ofsocial circles whose moral influences reverberate withinhim. The individual is a harmonious and living monadwhose vital and harmonious law is to maintain himself ina state of equilibrium in the midst of a system ofinterfering social forces. It is in this free and progressiveflourishing of individuality that the true moral idealresides. There is no other. For, whatever we say or do, theindividual remains the living source of energy and themeasure of the ideal.

We have arrived at the conclusion that corporativemorality, the very form of the herd spirit, is a regressive

form of morality. Many complain, following in thefootsteps of M.Barrès, that we are rootless. MM. Dornerand Durkheim invite us to take root in the soil of theprofessional corporation. We ask if this isn’t too narrow aterrain for plants that want free air, light, and the broadhorizons of a human morality to take root.

Respect

Source: Chroniques Complètes, Tome II. Edited byStéphane Beau. Paris, Coda, 2009;Source: Revue Philosophique, year 32, Vol 64 July-December 1907;Translated: by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2009.

Palante specialist Stéphane Beau notes that thispiece, which appeared in the December 1903 issue of theanarchist revue “L’Ennemi du people” was signed onlyGP. There is thus no guarantee that it is actually from thepen of Georges Palante, but the ideas expressed in it, andthe form of their expression, are so clearly Palantian, thatthere is no real question as to its attribution.

The contemptible sentiment par excellence. Mosaicof crystallized fears; mixture of herd stupidity and secularreligiosity.

I mean the respect of collective beings; of the

maleficent and deceptive metaphors that populate oursocial mythologies.

Stirner gives collective entities the characteristicname of “respectful personalities.” Moral idols, politicalidols, society idols, they float, like the specter of religionin Lucretius’ heavens; ghostly, vain, formidable.

Stendhal had already pointed out the respectfulmania, the mother of all hypocrisies, guardian of all bigshots and oligarchs.

The beatific social optimism of the crowd is only aform of that respectful mania. For the crowd, whateverkind of collectivity we might be dealing with – publicadministration, government body, the family – are alwaysright against the individual. It is right for the very reasonthat it is a collectivity. The label “collective” suffices.The dogma of infallibility is thus secularized andsocialized.

Oligarchs know this. They bank on the crowd’scapacity for respect, which gives an idea of the infinite, asdoes its stupidity.

The citizen is a respectful and irremediably religiousanimal; it now inclines to civic genuflection. It adoressocial fetishes just as the little dog Riquet in “MonsieurBergeret à Paris” venerated doors, the table, and thekitchen chair.

Reproductive animal, the citizen venerates the fetish“marriage.” An electoral animal, he venerates that other

fetish, the modern holy ampoule, the Civic Ballot Box.With respect to crowds we oppose irony, pensive

irony, of a cold smile and a clear eye.Anarchism and Individualism

Source: La Sensibilité individualiste. Paris, Alcan,1909;Translated: by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

The words anarchism and individualism arefrequently used as synonyms. Many thinkers vastlydifferent from each other are carelessly qualifiedsometimes as anarchists, sometimes as individualists. It isthus that we speak indifferently of Stirnerite anarchism orindividualism, of Nietzschean anarchism or individualism,of Barrésian anarchism or individualism, etc. In othercases, though, this identification of the two terms is notlooked upon as possible. We commonly say Proudhoniananarchism, Marxist anarchism, anarchist syndicalism. Butwe could not say Proudhonian, Marxist, or syndicalistindividualism. We can speak of a Christian or Tolstoyananarchism, but not of a Christian or Tolstoyanindividualism.

At other times the two terms have been meltedtogether in one name: anarchist individualism. Under this

rubric M. Hasch designates a social philosophy that itdifferentiates from anarchism properly so-called, andwhose great representative, according to him, are Goethe,Byron, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Carlyle, Emerson,Kierkegaard, Renan, Ibsen, Stirner and Nietzsche. Thisphilosophy can be summed up as the cult of great men andthe apotheosis of genius. It would seem to us to bearguable whether the expression individualist anarchismcan be used to designate such a doctrine. The qualificationof anarchist, in the etymological sense, can be appliedwith difficulty to thinkers of the race of Goethe, Carlyle,and Nietzsche, whose philosophy seems on the contrary tobe dominated by ideas of hierarchical organization and theharmonious placing of values in a series. What is more,the epithet of individualist can’t be applied with equaljustice to all the thinkers we have just named. If it isappropriate for designating the egotist, nihilist and anti-idealist revolt of Stirner, it can with difficulty be appliedto the Hegelian, optimist and idealist philosophy of aCarlyle, who clearly subordinates the individual to theidea.

There thus reigns a certain confusion concerning theuse of the two terms anarchism and individualism, as wellas the systems of ideas and sentiments that these termsdesignate. We would here like to attempt to clarify thenotion of individualism and determine its psychologicaland sociological content by distinguishing it from

anarchism…Individualism is the sentiment of a profound,

irreducible antinomy between the individual and society.The individualist is he who, by virtue of his temperament,is predisposed to feel in a particularly acute fashion theineluctable disharmonies between his intimate being andhis social milieu. At the same time, he is a man for whomlife has reserved some decisive occasion to remark thisdisharmony. Whether through brutality, or the continuity ofhis experiences, for him it has become clear that for theindividual society is a perpetual creator of constraints,humiliations and miseries, a kind of continuous generationof human pain. In the name of his own experience and hispersonal sensation of life the individualist feels he has theright to relegate to the rank of utopia any ideal of a futuresociety where the hoped-for harmony between theindividual and society will be established. Far from thedevelopment of society diminishing evil, it does nothingbut intensify it by rendering the life of the individual morecomplicated, more laborious and more difficult in themiddle of the thousand gears of an increasingly tyrannicalsocial mechanism. Science itself, by intensifying withinthe individual the consciousness of the vital conditionsmade for him by society, arrives only at darkening hisintellectual and moral horizons. Qui auget scientiamaugel et dolorem.

We see that individualism is essentially a social

pessimism. Under its most moderate form it admits that iflife in society is not an absolute evil and completelydestructive of individuality, for the individualist is at thevery least a restrictive and oppressive condition, anecessary evil and a last resort.

The individualists who respond to this descriptionform a small morose group whose rebellious, resigned orhopeless words contrast with the fanfares for the future ofoptimistic sociologists. It is Vigny saying: “The socialorder is always bad. From time to time it is bearable.Between bad and bearable the dispute isn’t worth a dropof blood.” It’s Schopenhauer seeing social life as thesupreme flowering of human pain and evil. It’s Stirnerwith his intellectual and moral solipsism perpetually onhis guard against the duperies of social idealism and theintellectual and moral crystallization with which everyorganized society threatens the individual. It is, at certainmoments, an Amiel with his painful stoicism thatperceives society as a limitation and a restriction of hisfree spiritual nature. It’s a David Thoreau, the extremistdisciple of Emerson, that “student of nature,” deciding tostray from the ordinary paths of human activity and tobecome a “wanderer,” worshipping independence anddreams. A “wanderer whose every minute will be filledwith more work than the entire lives of many men withoccupations.” It’s a Challemel-Lacour with his pessimisticconception of society and progress. It is perhaps, at

certain moments, a Tarde, with an individualism coloredwith misanthropy that he somewhere expresses: “It ispossible that the flux of imitation has its banks and that, bythe very effect of its excessive deployment, the need forsociability diminishes or rather alters and transforms itselfinto a kind of general misanthropy, very compatible,incidentally, with a moderate commercial circulation anda certain activity of industrial exchanges reduced to thestrict necessary, but above all appropriate to reinforcing ineach of us the distinctive traits of our inner individuality.”

Even among those who, like M. Maurice Barrès, bydilettantism and artistic posture, are averse to the accentsof sharp revolt or discouraged pessimism, individualismremains a sentiment of “the impossibility that exists ofharmonizing the private and the general I.” It’s adetermination to set free the first I, to cultivate it in what ithas of the most special, the most advanced, the mostrummaged through, both in detail and in depth. “Theindividualist,” says M. Barrès, “is he who, through pridein his true I, which he isn’t able to set free, ceaselesslywounds, soils, and denies what he has in common with themass of men…The dignity of the men of our race isexclusively attached to certain shivers that the worlddoesn’t know and cannot see and which we must multiplyin ourselves.”

In all of them individualism is an attitude ofsensibility that goes from hostility and distrust to

indifference and disdain vis-à-vis the organized society inwhich we are forced to live, vis-à-vis its uniformisingrules, its monotonous repetitions, and its enslavingconstraints. It’s a desire to escape from it and to withdrawinto oneself. Above all, it is the profound sentiment of the“uniqueness of the I,” of that which despite it all the Imaintains of unrepressible and impenetrable to socialinfluences. As M. Tarde says, it is the sentiment of the“profound and fleeting singularity of persons, of theirmanner of being, or thinking, of feeling, which is only onceand of an instant.”

Is there any need to demonstrate how much thisattitude differs from anarchism? There is no doubt that inone sense anarchism proceeds from individualism. It is, infact, the anti-social revolt of a minority that feels itselfoppressed or disadvantaged by the current order of things.But anarchism represents only the first moment ofindividualism, the moment of faith and hope, of actionscourageous and confident of success. At its secondmoment individualism converts, as we have seen, intosocial pessimism.

The passage from confidence to despair, fromoptimism to pessimism is here, in great part, an affair ofpsychological temperament. There are delicate souls thatare easily wounded on contact with social realities andconsequently quick to be disillusioned, a Vigny or aHeine, for example. We can say that these souls belong to

the psychological type that has been called “sensitive.”They feel that social determinism, insofar as it isrepressive of the individual, is particularly tormenting andoppressive. But there are other souls who resist multiplefailures, who disregard even experience’s toughestexamples and remain unshakeable in their faith. Thesesouls belong to the “active” type. Such are the souls of theanarchist apostles: Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus. Perhapstheir imperturbable confidence in their ideal depends on alesser intellectual and emotional acuity. Reasons for doubtand discouragement don’t strike them harshly enough totarnish the abstract ideal they’ve forged and to lead themto the final and logical step of individualism: socialpessimism.

Whatever the case, there can be no doubt concerningthe optimism of anarchist philosophy. That optimism isspread, often simplistically and with naivety, in thosevolumes with blood red covers that form the readingmatter of propagandists by the deed. The shadow of theoptimistic Rousseau floats over all this literature.

Anarchist optimism consists in believing that socialdisharmonies, that the antinomies that the current state ofaffairs present between the individual and society, are notessential, but rather accidental and provisional; that theywill one day be resolved and will give place to an era ofharmony.

Anarchism rests on two principles that seem to

complement each other, but actually contradict each other.One is the principle that is properly individualist orlibertarian, formulated by Wilhelm von Humboldt andchosen by Stuart Mill as the epigraph of his “Essay onLiberty”: “The great principle is the essential and absoluteimportance of human development in its richest diversity.”The other is the humanist or altruist principle which istranslated on the economic plane by communist anarchism.That the individualist and humanist principles negate eachother is proven by logic and fact. Either the individualistprinciple means nothing, or it is a demand in favor of thatwhich differs and is unequal in individuals, in favor ofthose traits that make them different, separates them and, ifneed be, opposes them. On the contrary, humanism aims atthe assimilation of humanity. Following the expression ofM. Gide, its ideal is to make a reality of the expression“our like.” In fact, at the current time we see theantagonism of the two principles assert itself among themost insightful theoreticians of anarchism, and that logicaland necessary antagonism cannot fail to bring about thebreakup of anarchism as a political and social doctrine.

Whatever the case and whatever difficulties might bemet by he who wants to reconcile the individualist andhumanist principles, these two rival and enemy principlesmeet at least at this one point: they are both clearlyoptimistic. Humboldt’s principle is optimistic insofar as itimplicitly affirms the original goodness of human nature

and the legitimacy of its free blossoming. It sets itself upin opposition to the Christian condemnation of our naturalinstincts, and we can understand the reservations of M.Dupont-White, the translator of the “Essay on Liberty,”had from the spiritualist and Christian point of view(condemnation of the flesh) as concerns this principle.

The humanist principle is no less optimistic.Humanism, in fact, is nothing but rendering divine of manin what he has of the general, of humanity, andconsequently of human society. As we see, anarchism,optimistic as concerns the individual, is even more so asconcerns society. Anarchism supposes that individualfreedoms, left to themselves, will naturally harmonize andspontaneously realize the anarchist ideal of free society.

In regard to these two opposing points of view, theChristian and anarchist, what is the attitude ofindividualism? Individualism, a realist philosophy, alllived life and immediate sensation, equally repudiatesthese two metaphysics: one, Christian metaphysics, whicha priori affirms original evil, the other the rationalist andRosseauist metaphysic, that no less a priori affirms theoriginal and essential goodness of our nature.Individualism places itself before the facts. And theselatter make visible in the human being a bundle of instinctsin struggle with each other and, in human society, agrouping of individuals also necessarily in struggle witheach other. By the very fact of his conditions of existence

the human being is subject to the law of struggle: internalstruggle among his own instincts, external struggle with hislike. If recognizing the permanent and universal characterof egoism and struggle in human existence means beingpessimistic, then we must say that individualism ispessimistic. But we must immediately add that thepessimism of individualism, a pessimism of fact, anexperimental pessimism, if you will, pessimism aposteriori, is totally different from the theologicalpessimism that a priori pronounces, in the name of dogma,the condemnation of human nature. What is more,individualism separates itself every bit as much fromanarchism. If, with anarchism, it admits Humboldt’sprinciple as the expression of a normal tendency necessaryto our nature for its full blossoming, at the same time itrecognizes that this tendency is condemned to never beingsatisfied because of the internal and external disharmoniesof our nature. In other words, it considers the harmoniousdevelopment of the individual and society as a utopia.Pessimistic as concerns the individual, individualism iseven more so as concerns society: man is by his verynature disharmonious because of the internal struggle ofhis instincts. But this disharmony is exacerbated by thestate of society which, through a painful paradox,represses our instincts at the same time as it exasperatesthem. In fact, from the rapprochement of individual wills-to-life is formed a collective will-to-life which becomes

immediately oppressive for the individual will-to-life andopposes its flourishing with all its force. The state ofsociety thus pushes to its ultimate degree the disharmoniesof our nature. It exaggerates them and puts them in thepoorest possible light. Following the idea ofSchopenhauer, society thus truly represents the humanwill-to-life at its highest degree: struggle, lack offulfillment, and suffering.

From this opposition between anarchism andindividualism flow others. Anarchism believes inprogress. Individualism is an attitude of thought that wecan call non-historical. It denies becoming, progress. Itsees the human will-to-life in an eternal present. LikeSchopenhauer, with whom he has more than one similarity,Stirner is a non-historical spirit. He too believes that it ischimerical to expect something new and great fromtomorrow. Every social form, by the very fact that itcrystallizes, crushes the individual. For Stirner, there areno utopian tomorrows, no “paradise at the end of ourdays.” There is nothing but the egoist today. Stirner’sattitude before society is the same as that of Schopenhauerbefore nature and life. With Schopenhauer the negation oflife remains metaphysical and, we might say, spiritual (weshould remember that Schopenhauer condemns suicidewhich, would be the material and tangible negation). in thesame way Stirner’s rebellion against society is an entirelyspiritual internal rebellion, all intention and inner will. It

is not, as is the case with Bakunin, an appeal to pan-destruction. Regarding society, it is a simple act of distrustand passive hostility, a mix of indifference and disdainfulresignation. It is not a question of the individual fightingagainst society, for society will always be the stronger. Itmust thus be obeyed, obeyed like a dog. But Stirner, whileobeying, as a form of consolation, maintains an immenseintellectual contempt. This is more or less the attitude ofVigny vis-a-vis nature and society. “A tranquil despair,without convulsions of anger and without reproaches forheaven, this is wisdom itself.” And again: “Silence wouldbe the best criticism of life.”

Anarchism is an exaggerated and mad idealism.Individualism is summed up in a trait common toSchopenhauer and Stirner: a pitiless realism. It arrives atwhat a German writer calls a complete “dis-idealization”(Entidealisierung) of life and society.

“An ideal is nothing but a pawn,” Stirner said. Fromthis point of view Stirner is the most authenticrepresentative of individualism. His icy word seizes soulswith a shiver entirely different from that, fiery and radiant,of a Nietzsche. Nietzsche remains an impenitent,imperious, violent idealist. He idealizes superiorhumanity. Stirner represents the most complete dis-idealization of nature and life, the most radical philosophyof disenchantment that has appeared since Ecclesiastes.Pessimist without measure or reservations, individualism

is absolutely anti-social, unlike anarchism, with which thisis only relatively the case (in relation to current society).Anarchism admits an antinomy between the individual andthe state, an antinomy it resolves by the suppression of thestate, but it does not see any inherent, irreducible antinomybetween the individual and society. This is because in itseyes society represents a spontaneous growth (Spencer),while the state is an artificial and authoritarianorganization. In the eyes of an individualist society is astyrannical, if not more so, than the state. Society, in fact, isnothing else but the mass of social ties of all kinds(opinions, mores, usages, conventions, mutualsurveillance, more or less discreet espionage of theconduct of others, moral approval and disapproval, etc.)Society thus understood constitutes a closely- knit fabricof petty and great tyrannies, exigent, inevitable, incessant,harassing, and pitiless, which penetrates into the details ofindividual life more profoundly and continuously thanstatist constraints can. What is more, if we look closely atthis, statist tyranny and the tyranny of mores proceed fromthe same root: the collective interest of a caste or classthat wishes to establish or to maintain its domination andprestige. Opinion and mores are in part the residue ofancient caste disciplines that are in the process ofdisappearing, in part the seed of new social disciplinesbrought with them by the new leading caste in the processof formation. This is why between state constraint and that

of opinion and mores there is only a difference in degree.Deep down they have the same goal: the maintenance of acertain moral conformism useful to the group, and thesame procedures: the vexation and elimination of theindependent and the recalcitrant. The only difference isthat diffuse sanctions (opinions and mores) are morehypocritical than the others. Proudhon was right to say thatthe state is nothing but a mirror of society. It is onlytyrannical because society is tyrannical. The government,following a remark of Tolstoy’s, is a gathering of men whoexploit others and that favors the wicked and the cheatersIf this is the practice of government, this is also that ofsociety. There is a conformity between the two terms: stateand society. The one is the same as the other. Thegregarious spirit, or the spirit of society, is no lessoppressive for the individual than the statist or priestlyspirit, which only maintain themselves thanks to andthrough it.

How strange! Stirner himself, on the question of therelations between society and the state, seems to share theerror of Spencer and Bakunin. He protests against theintervention of the state in the acts of the individual, butnot against that of society. “Before the individual the stategirds itself with an aureole of sanctity. For example, itmakes laws concerning duels. Two men who agree to risktheir lives in order to settle an affair (whatever it mightbe) cannot execute their agreement because the state

doesn’t want it. They would expose themselves to judicialpursuit and punishment. What becomes of the freedom ofself-determination? Things are completely different inthose places, like North America, where society decidesto make the duelists suffer certain disagreeableconsequences of their act and takes form them, forexample, the credit they had previously enjoyed. Therefusing of credit is everyone’s affair, and if it pleases asociety to deprive someone of it for one reason or another,he who is struck by it cannot complain of an attack on hisliberty: society has done nothing but exercise its own. Thesociety of which we spoke leaves the individual perfectlyfree to expose himself to the harmful or disagreeableconsequences that result from his way of acting, andleaves full and entire his freedom of will. The state doesexactly the contrary: it denies all legitimacy to the will ofthe individual and only recognizes as legitimate its ownwill, the will of the state.” Strange reasoning. The lawdoesn’t attack me. In what way am I freer if societyboycotts me? Such reasoning would legitimize all theattacks of a public opinion infected by moral bigotryagainst the individual. The legend of individual liberty inAnglo-Saxon countries is built on this reasoning. Stirnerhimself feels the vice of his reasoning, and a little furtheralong he arrives at his celebrated distinction betweensociety and association. In the one (society) the individualis taken as a means; in the other (association), he takes

himself as an end and treats the association as a means ofpersonal power and enjoyment: “You bring to theassociation all your might, all your riches and make yourpresence felt In society you and your activity are utilized.In the first you live as an egoist; in the second you live asa man, i.e., religiously; you work in the Lord’s vineyard.You owe society everything you have; you are its debtorand you are tormented with social obligations. You owenothing to the association. She serves you and you leave itwithout scruples as soon as you no longer have anyadvantages to draw from it…” “If society is more than youthen you will have it pass ahead of you and you will makeyourself its servant. The association is your tool, yourweapon; it sharpens and multiplies your natural strength.The association only exists for you and by you. Society, onthe contrary, claims you as its good and can exist withoutyou. In short, society is sacred and the association is yourproperty; society uses you and you use the association.

A vain distinction if ever there was one! Whereshould we fix the boundary between society andassociation? As Stirner himself admitted, doesn’t anassociation tend to crystallize into a society?

However we approach it, anarchism cannot reconcilethe two antinomic terms, society and individual liberty.The free society that it dreams of is a contradiction interms. It’s a piece of steel made of wood, a stick withoutan end. Speaking of anarchists Nietzsche wrote: “We can

already read on all the walls and all the tables their wordfor the future: Free society. Free society? To be sure. But Ithink you know, my dear sirs, what we will build it with:Wood made of iron…” Individualism is clearer and morehonest than anarchism. It places the state, society, andassociation on the same plane. It rejects them both and asfar as this is possible tosses them overboard. “Allassociations have the defects of convents,” Vigny said.

Antisocial, individualism is openly immoralist. Thisis not true in an absolute fashion. In a Vigny pessimisticindividualism is reconciled with a morally haughtystoicism, severe and pure. Even so, even in Vigny animmoralist element remains: a tendency to dis-idealizesociety, to separate and oppose the two terms society andmorality, and to regard society as a fatal generator ofcowardice, unintelligence, and hypocrisy. “Cinq mars,Stello, and Servitude et Grandeur militaires are the songsof a kind of epic poem on disillusionment. But it is onlysocial and false things that I will destroy and illusions Iwill trample on. I will raise on these ruins, on this dust,the sacred beauty of enthusiasm, of love, and of honor.” Itgoes without saying that in a Stirner or a Stendhalindividualism is immoralist without scruples orreservations. Anarchism is imbued with a crude moralism.Anarchist morality, even without obligations or sanctions,is no less a morality. At heart it is Christian morality,except for the pessimist element contained in the latter.

The anarchist supposes that those virtues necessary toharmony will flourish on their own. Enemy of coercion,the doctrine accords the faculty to take from the generalstores even to the lazy. But the anarchist is persuaded thatin the future city the lazy will be rare, or will not exist atall.

Optimistic and idealistic, imbued with humanism andmoralism, anarchism is a social dogmatism. It is a “cause”in the sense that Stirner gave this word. A “cause” is onething, “the simple attitude of an individual soul” isanother. A cause implies a common adherence to an idea,a shared belief and a devotion to that belief. Such is notindividualism. Individualism is anti-dogmatic and littleinclined to proselytism. It would gladly take as its mottoStirner’s phrase: “I have set my affair on nothing.” Thetrue individualist doesn’t seek to communicate to othershis own sensation of life and society. What would be thegood of this? Omne individuum inefabile. Convinced ofthe diversity of temperaments and the uselessness of asingle rule, he would gladly say with David Thoreau: “Iwould not have any one adopt my mode of living on anyaccount; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it Imay have found out another for myself, I desire that theremay be as many different persons in the world as possible;but I would have each one be very careful to find out andpursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s orhis neighbor’s instead.” The individualist knows that there

are temperaments that are refractory to individualism andthat it would be ridiculous to want to convince them. In theeyes of a thinker in love with solitude and independence, acontemplative, a pure adept of the inner life, like Vigny,social life and its agitations seem to be somethingartificial, rigged, excluding any true and strongly feltsentiments. And conversely, those who by theirtemperament feel an imperious need for life and socialaction, those who throw themselves into the melee, thosewho have political and social enthusiasm, those whobelieve in the virtues of leagues and groups, those whohave forever on their lips the words “The Idea,” “TheCause,” those who believe that tomorrow will bringsomething new and great, these people necessarilymisunderstand and disdain the contemplative, who lowersbefore the crowd the harrow of which Vigny spoke. Innerlife and social action are two things that are mutuallyexclusive. The two kinds of souls are not made tounderstand each other. As antitheses, we should readalongside each other Schopenhauer’s “Aphorisms on theWisdom of Life,” that bible of a reserved, mistrustful, andsad individualism, or the Journal Intime of Amiel. Or theJournal d’un Poète by Vigny. On the other side, weshould read a Benoit Malon, an Elisée Reclus or aKropotkin, and we will see the abyss that separates thetwo kinds of souls…

The Secular Priestly Spirit

Source: Mercure de France, September 1, 1909;Translated: by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

This is what I call the remnants of the priestly spiritwithin our modern spirit, which thinks itself a- or anti-religious. But is “remnants” really the proper word? Thisword implies the idea of a sentiment in retreat, when infact the priestly spirit is advancing. We would at leastthink this if we were to consider the expansion of thesurface occupied by the priestly spirit. The priestly spiritwas once the privilege of a caste; today it has spread,diffused, been diluted in our ruling classes, in thoseintellectual, political, administrative elites that form ourdemocratic aristocracy.

Examples of this spirit are easy to find in ourlanguage and mores. We can cite the rage to confer asacred character on one’s profession, to turn it into apriesthood. Whenever you hear a gentleman apply thisword to his profession or that of others you have beforeyou a man more or less imbued with the priestly spirit. Itis especially in regard to careers in education or themagistracy that priesthood is spoken of, but we can extendthis word to all of civil service, to all hierarchies, inconformity with the etymology of this last word [1]. In this

sense any functionary would be a priest or a semi-priest.We also speak of the priesthood of the lawyer or thedoctor. When it’s a question of a lawyer or doctor who isalso a politician the priesthood is doubled, and is carriedin a way to the second power.

Another remnant of the priestly spirit is thequalification of renegade that is used to insult the man whochanges his opinion. The epithet of renegade has areligious origin, which doesn’t prevent anti-clericals fromusing it like everyone else. We all know a gentleman whocalls himself a free-thinker, who loudly proclaims the rightfor all to change, to evolve, etc. If need be he’ll quote youthe well-known verse: “The absurd man is he who neverchanges.”

But if he were to learn of the about-face of one of hispolitical friends, then he gets indignant and calls hisformer fellow-believer the harsh and feared epithet of“renegade.” Why feared? Because we are imbued with thepriestly spirit, because we all tremble before anathemaand excommunication. And yet, if we admit freedom ofthought, we must admit it in its entirety. There is no suchthing as a renegade. Everyone is free at every instant toshake off yesterday’s belief. But most people don’t seethings in this way. A party is a church, and it claims tohold its people under its power; it wants to preventdefections and schisms, and terrifies the potentialrenegade with the gesture of anathema.

Another clerical expression is the very word ofsecular that is used on all occasions. Secular morality!Secular consciousness! Secular beliefs! These expressionstake us back to the times of the papal bull “ClericisLaicos,” where clerics were opposed to the laity. This is apure distillation of the Middle Ages. In a society whereclerics no longer exist or count – at least intellectually – itcan no longer be a question of secular ideas. A spiritindifferent to theological controversies will not attach anintellectually meaningful significance to this expression.One would have to be pontiff, to want to oppose onechurch to another.

Secular holidays are also spoken of. Recentlyfestivals of Love, Youth, Spring, Labor have beeninstituted, along with the appropriate program: reading ofapposite verses by gentlemen in black suits, processionsof young couples celebrating love, workers carrying theirtools and celebrating labor, etc. At the heart of thesesecular ceremonies can easily be found a religious, aclerical concern: that of having men commune with thesame idea, in a same faith. For anyone with a religiousspirit a sentiment, joy, memory, or hope only have valueon condition of being held in common, of beingsolemnized and consecrated by the group.

Another religious and evangelical expression is thatof “going to the people,” so fashionable a few years agoamong young Tolstoyans and adepts of PU’s.[2]

Of the same order is the expression social obligation,especially when it’s pronounced in a certain way and witha certain showy compunction. The group spirit in all itsforms, esprit de corps, esprit de chapelle all easily takeon a religious nuance. We heard a young engineer, freshlygraduated from the Ecole Polytechqnique speak withdevotion of the Polytechnicians’ esprit de corps as if itwere a religion of initiates, unintelligible to the profane.This same sentiment was often expressed by soldiers atthe time of the Dreyfus Affair.

If you will, none of this is either very serious or veryprofound. At the very most it’s capable of annoying thosehorrified by the “religious nuance,” as Stendhal called it.The priestly spirit is only skin deep; it has lost in depthwhat it has gained in extent. It no longer has the depth ofpsychology, the shadowy will to power, the implacableperseverance in ressentiment that conferred a sombermajesty on the sacerdotal soul of the past and thatNietzsche so potently describes in his “Genealogy ofMorals.” We are witnessing a bourgeoisification and ademocratization of the priestly spirit: we see nothing butpriests around us. But what humble, what modest pontiffscompared to those great ascetic figures who dedicatedthemselves to what Nietzsche called the “sacerdotalmedication of humanity,” and who pursued a centuries oldlabor of total spiritual and temporal domination. Thesecular priestly spirit is the heir and the pale imitator of

the other. It borrows from Catholicism its mise en scene,its impressive décor and even its sacred music, whichhave been widely used for Pantheonizations and otherreligio-secular ceremonies, such as the statufying ofsecular pontiffs, civil marriages decorated with secularand worldly pomp, etc. Let us see what it has retained ofits psychology.

It should first be noted that the priestly spirit must bedistinguished from the religious spirit. This is so true thatat all times there has been a flourishing of the religiousspirit that has nothing in common with the priestly spirit.This is mysticism, which is a kind of religiousindividualism.

The priestly spirit is the religious spirit socialized,clericalized. It’s the religious spirit in the hands of aclergy charged with officially representing it.Consequently, the priestly sprit is a caste spirit, or at thevery least an esprit de corps with all the sentiments thatare attached to it; a spirit of spiritual and temporaldomination, or at the very least pride and vanity of casteor corps, a sentiment of moral and social superiority, of anauthority to be exercised, of a certain decorum to bemaintained, of certain rites to be observed. Thesesentiments, which are at their height in a clergy, can existin a more or less diffused and attenuated state in thediverse corporations and social categories which, withwhatever right, aspire to represent a moral idea, to fulfill

an apostolate or a social mission, to posit themselves asmodels (honest men), to set the tone and the example, toimprint a moral direction on the rest of society: in short, toexercise a priesthood.

It should be added that the priestly spirit can be tiedto the religious sentiment or be separate from it. In itssuperior forms it is vivified by a religious, or at leastphilosophical or moral belief. But at its lowest andpoorest degree it tends to be emptied of all intellectual orideal content, to be reduced to a simple externalformalism, a pure phariseeism. The secular priestly spirit,like the other, in this regard presents many degrees andnuances.

At its highest degree, as it is encountered among ourintellectuals – philosophers, moralists, sociologists,professors of the spiritual life and of moral action – thesecular priestly spirit can be found tied to a certainconcept of philosophy understood as the servant of anethical finalism and a secular moral faith.

Believe and make people believe, says M. Jules deGaultier. This is the goal of the greatest number ofphilosophers, after and before “The Critique of PureReason.” Bacon stated that in his time they were taught inuniversities to believe, and this is still true in our time.

But it’s not only in universities that these teachingsare dispensed, it’s in any book able to find a public. Whatmen demand of philosophy is that it give them something

to believe in, to give them a first principle to which theycan affix their conduct, a goal which they can have theillusion of heading towards, since the number of spirits forwhom the joy of understanding on its own suffices canonly ever be insignificant and negligible. [3]

In this the secular priestly spirit makes itself theservant of an idea. Like the Catholic priestly spirit itpresupposes a doctrinal credo, an ideology of which it isthe guardian. The difference is that in one case the credo isrevealed by God, while in the other it is revealed byreason. But the resemblances between the two ideologiesare many. As was perfectly demonstrated by M. Jules deGaultier the rationalist ideology is nothing but theprolongation of Christian ideology: it is a veritablesecular religion. A Marxist writer, M. Edouard Berthbrings the two ideologies together under the same sign ofintellectual laziness and authoritarian routine, and opposesto them the fever of labor and innovation that agitatesindustrial circles. “Most men do not feel this need for thenew that is felt by the industrialist; they prefer a niceroutine where you can live peacefully, without cares,worries or effort. Intellectualist systems are appropriatefor the mass of the lazy that are man. They form a kind ofbureaucracy of the intellect where one is comfortablyinstalled for the rest of one’s life, where you arecomfortably seated so as to watch the immutable spectacleof things. The church is horrified by the thought of the new,

and thus of freedom. This is the case as well, I repeat, forall forms of intellectualism, and in the modern world thereare many varieties of this. Many people remain foreign tothe practices of industry: the world, bureaucracy, theuniversity, the so-called liberal professions constitute thesocial circles that industrial thought has as little penetratedas the Church [4]. The “countless varieties ofintellectualism” more or less imbued with the secularpriestly spirit hold the “factories where the ideal isproduced.” They monopolize the individuals of respect;they produce ideological and phraseological values whoseprices are established according to completely differentlaws than those of manufactured goods. It is thus notwithout reason that M. Berth compares the Catholic churchand the modern secular churches, and he opposes to thedogmatic and routine priestly spirit the living, active, andever new industrial spirit.

It is only fair to recognize that the secular priestlyspirit has evolved a bit in France in the last fifty years. Wecan distinguish two forms corresponding to two periods ofofficial philosophy on France. The secular church ofVictor Cousin, dominated by the Greco-Latin literarytradition and by the Roman Catholic religious tradition, isvery close to the Catholicism it wants to supplant. Like it,it is authoritarian and narrowly conservative concerningtraditional institutions: religion, family, and property,imbued like it with that ecclesiastical prudence that makes

social usefulness the criterion for all beliefs, that dividesdoctrines into harmful and healthy, and that refutes aphilosophy based on its moral and social consequences, atype of refutation that Taine ridiculed in so amusing afashion in his “Philosophes Classiques en France.” Thenew secular church, dominated by the Kantian Protestantand rationalist tradition, rejects the Catholic pragmatismof a Brunetière, extends its social ideal in the direction ofsocialism and humanitarianism, and tends towards areligion ever more intellectual, ever more abstract, andfinally universal and human; a religion of reason, ofscience, of justice and of universal consciousness. Amongits highest representatives it recalls the generous dreamsthat Renan symbolized in his “Pretre de Némi.”

Another transformation: the ancient Catholic andascetic ideal has evolved into a progressive ideal,optimistic, eudemonistic, and humanitarian, aspiring touniversal happiness and secular paradise (humanity’ssalvation through science, through reason.)

The two currents we find in all religions, therationalist and the mystical, can be found in this modernsecular religion: a Renan represents scientisticintellectualism; a Quinet, a Michelet, a Guyau, apostles oflove, represent democratic and revolutionary mysticism.

We should add that the rationalist, scientistic, andhumanitarian faith can be more or less dogmatic. It is at itsheight of dogmatism in Renan in his “L’Avenir de la

Science,” and in Guyau in his “L’Irreligion de l’Avenir.”In Renan’s latest books the rationalist and scientistic faithis diminished by uncertainties, is attenuated with questionmarks: will humanity succeed? Will it fail in its voyagetowards the divine? Whatever the case, despite allnuances in thought, it can be said that Renan has remainedfaithful to the end to his scientistic faith. In “L’Eau deJouvence” the old Prospero, dying like Faust, weigheddown with years and labor, symbolizes the ideal ofscience and strength that remain the culminating point ofRenanian thought.

Whatever the school or nuances in thought, there is asecond trait common to all the representatives of themodern secular religion: faith in the power of ideas. Everyreligious spirit is disposed to accord an enormousinfluence to transmitted faith, to a taught morality. Allpriests believe in the effectiveness of their preaching. Thefamous: “You are a goldsmith, Monsieur Josse,” finds hereits application here. A comic example of this naïve faithcan be found in Shaw’s play “Candida” in the person ofPastor Morrell. Unbeknownst to him, this pastor, ahandsome and well-spoken man, inspires passion amongmany of his listeners. All of them, even the young womanwho works as his typist, are in love with him. Because heis innocence itself Pastor Morell attributes to the virtue ofthe holy word the number of young women at his sermonsand is struck dumb when his wife reveals to him the ill

that has his fervent listeners in its grip:CANDIDA: They’re all in love with you. And

you are in love with preaching because you do it sobeautifully. And you think it’s all enthusiasm for thekingdom of Heaven on earth; and so do they. Youdear silly!

MORELL: Candida, what dreadful, what soul-destroying cynicism!Our pseudo-priests, philosophers, professors of the

spiritual life, moralists, sociologists, preachers of allkinds fall into the same illusion as Pastor Morel without,incidentally, always obtaining so flattering a success. Allare flagrantly Platonists, believers in the idea and in lovewith their preaching. For them it is blasphemy to place indoubt the virtue of the idea, as several hardly priestlygreat spirits have done, like Bayle or the Comte deGobineau. Their teacher Renan himself scandalized morethan one when he put in the mouth of his Prospero theseslightly skeptical words:

“When I say these things I feel that none of mylisteners will be so struck by my proofs that it willlead him to deprive himself of any sweet sensation.Without this I would have scruples about havingbeen the cause that brave men would havediminished the total of joys they could have tastedbecause they took my reasoning too seriously.”[5]This cult of the word is easily explained. As is

proved by the example of Shaw’s pastor, the priestly spiritis generally associated with the oratory spirit, I mean thefaculty to mouth philosophical commonplaces. Therepresentative types: Victor Cousin and today M. Jaurès.M. Jaurès is the Victor Cousin of the socialist church. Wecan apply to him the ingenious comparison of Taine àpropos of the Grand Pontiff of the eclectic school: “Like acolored powerful beacon which receives five or six lightsand transmits its splendor. It makes shine on thephilosophical horizon their slightly deviated rays.” [6]

The secular priestly spirit, like the Catholic priestlyspirit, hates doubters, skeptics, and dilettantes. VictorCousin cast his sacerdotal thunder against skepticism.Michelet doesn’t like Montaigne, casting him aside asunhealthy and debilitating. “As for me,” he says, “myprofound literary admiration for that exquisite writerdoesn’t prevent me from saying that I find in him, at everymoment, a certain nauseating taste, as in a sick room,where the stale air is heavy with the sad perfumes of thepharmacy. The delicate, the disgusted, the tired (and allwere) hold to Pindar’s phrase translated and commentedon by Montaigne: “Totus mundus exercet histrionem:” theworld is performing a play, the world is an actor.” [7]

The secular priestly spirit also hates precise spirits,like Stendhal, who aren’t fooled by the noble style and theeloquence of the pulpit.

Another trait common to the Catholic priestly spirit

and the secular priestly spirit is the hatred and contempt ofthe individual as such. The most insightful analyst of thesacerdotal soul, Stirner, noted this. In the eyes of the priestthe individual means egoism, means evil. The individualis that which is the most contemptible. It only becomes alittle clean, a little presentable and a little interesting fromthe moment it becomes the servant of the moral, i.e., thepriestly, idea. All our official and moralizing sociologistsare at this point. All are tiny Brunetières, for whomindividualism is the enemy. For them as well religion andsociology are synonymous. What sociology offers is, likereligion, to unite souls (religare) to compose a greatspiritual whole.

The secular priest considers himself a laborer in adisinterested task. Nothing selfish must be mixed in withhis mission. He works for the pure idea; at least he claimsso, and sometimes even believes it. Nietzsche noteddevotion to truth among our free-thinkers and atheists, thefinal incarnation of the ascetic ideal.

Modern secular faith is not a dead faith, it’s a faith inaction. Charles Péguy said: “The enrolling of youngpeople is the oldest, the dearest ambition, the most secretecclesiastical envy.” [8] It’s that of the secular priest. Heaspires to govern over consciences, to moral unity andworks to realize this through the dual paths of pedagogyand politics.

It’s a well known law that all spiritual powers tend

to be backed up by a temporal power, and that inverselyall temporal powers fell the need to crown themselveswith the halo of a moral idea, to set themselves up as therulers of reason and truth. This dual aspiration isincarnated in the pedantocratic party that Charles Péguycalled “the modern intellectual party,” and which he sovigorously and subtly described.

It is still incarnated (and in truth it’s all the samething) in the modern religion of the state.

This religion is not new. It is a legacy of the AncienRégime transmitted by the men of 1789, many of whom, aswas said by M. Georges Sorel, were former men of thelaw, who had remained fanatics for legality and the state.Today, the idea of the state maintains all its prestige inintellectual circles where the secular priestly spirit reigns,notably among adepts of parliamentary socialism a laJaurès. A few years ago the parliamentary debate on themonopoly over education set against each otherprofessorial politicians, pure adepts of the statistpedantocracy, like MM. Jaurès and Lintilhac and the lesssacerdotal politicians, more liberated from thepedantocratic ideology, like M. Clémenceau. [9]

The idea of the state is a demanding, jealous, andfearsome idol. Its high priests of 1793, Robespierre andSaint Just, believed themselves to be the executors of ametaphysical and moral mandate in service to which theydeployed a terrible zeal. Their example verifies Stirner’s

phrase: Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith. Thestatist priestly spirit is naturally inclined to cruelty. Whencircumstances demand it it takes satisfaction in a cold,theoretical, implacable violence.

M. Georges Sorel believes that proletarian violencewill not be as vindictive or cruel as Jacobin violencebecause it will be neither statist nor sacerdotal. “The moresyndicalism develops by abandoning the old superstitionsthat come from the Ancien Regime and the church –through the channel of men of letters, philosophyprofessors, and historians of the revolution – the moresocial conflicts will take on a character of pure struggleresembling that of armies on campaign. We cannotexecrate enough those men who teach the people that theymust execute I don’t know what superlatively idealistmandate of a justice on the march towards the future.These men work at maintaining ideas on the state thatprovoked all the bloody scenes of 1793, while the notionof class struggle tends to purify the notion of violence.”[10] This is not so certain. We fear that on this point M.Sorel is deluding himself. He takes examples from warstories to show that the morality of war exclude coldlycruel violence. This means forgetting that was has alsohad its fanatics and mystics. We should remember Moltkesaluting the fall of Paris in 1793, “receptacle of all thevices of the universe.” The proletarian movement willobviously have, like all the others, its prophets and its

fanatics.It remains for us to say a word about the most vulgar,

the worst, the crudest forms in which the secular priestlysprit garbs itself. These are those it wears among thosepeople whose social situation or whose own stupiditygive them the illusion of a superior dignity, respectability,and morality. We find here the tribe of honest meninfatuated with the oral pose, pontificating philistines,functionaries crystallized in their vocation. Here ofcourse, the secular priestly spirit is emptied of all itsintellectual or ideal content. It is reduced to a flatphariseeism, an idiotic fetishism and a tabooism. Here tooexamples abound. We know a functionary, a likable youngman and not given to posing when we meet him in a caféor at a club. But he visibly changes when he goes out tovisit in company with his wife and his daughters. He putson a special look, which he wears like a holy sacrament.We feel as if he were going to officiate as a priest of thereligion of the family and the religion of high society,those two religions sacrosanct in the eyes of certainpeople.

These two religions are tabooist. They render taboocertain things, certain rites, certain persons, certain ideas.Thus, in a civil service office marriage renders you taboo.A married functionary, if he is caught doing wrong, is lessseverely penalized than another; for example, he won’t betransferred. The observance of the rites of high society

also renders one taboo. The most important grade for afunctionary is a grade given by society. A functionarywhose dossier bears this note: “Excellent relations intown,” (which means he visits in the world of the civilservant) is taboo.

The follower of the religion of high society, like thatof the religion of the state, is generally intolerant andvindictive. Don’t lay a finger on his idols. Don’t attackhim, for through him you attack morality, society, and otherrespectable things. In all social categories we find these“pillars of society,” as Ibsen said, these moral Tartuffes:

“All the more dangerous, in their angerBecause they take up against you the arms werevereAnd their passion, for which we are grateful,Assassinate you with sacred steel.”The secular priestly spirit, in its different forms,

spreads across our era that seriousness and boredompredicted by Stendhal and pointed out by him as thecharacteristic of the future bourgeoisocracy. Usually thesecular priest has this “Geneva character” which Stendhalspoke of and which “calculates, and never laughs.”Stendhal consoled himself with the thought that if he hadarrived fifty years later he would have had to live in thecompany of secular priests, of churchwardens of thepuritan church.”

In summary, we see that the secular priestly spirit has

occupied a large place over the course of the nineteenthcentury, and that it still has great influence at the beginningof ours. Lammenais deplored the indifference of hiscontemporaries on questions of religion. He was wrong.The nineteenth century was a century of faith: scientificfaith, social faith, moral faith. There were cults for allkinds of things: cult of the people (Michelet, Quinet), cultof the hero (Carlyle), cult of the woman, cult of the family,cult of science, of progress, humanity, great principles,etc… – above all cult of the word, which remains themaster of the world.

It’s not that the spirit that it is antithesis of the priestlyspirit – the spirit of disbelief, of irony and disrespect, thesprit of skepticism and immoralism – has lacked forrepresentatives. It has given life to vigorous, profound,and subtle works. It was incarnated in the anti-sacerdotalverve of a Stirner, in the diatribes of a Nietzsche againstthe “traffickers of the ideal,” in the lucid and disdainfulimmoralism of a Stendhal, in the smiling irony of anAnatole France. But this spirit has no hold on thecredulous mass; it hasn’t penetrated the bourgeois soul orthe popular soul, over which the might of the respectfuland pontifical spirit have maintained all their power. Whatmakes for the force of the secular priestly spirit is that itescapes from ridicule. It escapes ridicule because it isgeneralized. What is more, it isn’t very apparent; thesecular priest goes unnoticed, having no special costume.

The raillery of Voltaire, so fearful to the priests of his timewould be disarmed against those of ours. The secularpriest is legion: this is what renders him intangible.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be regretted. Perhaps thepriestly spirit is tied to the most essential conditions ofhuman society. Perhaps man is a religious animal, just ashe is a social animal. In any event, the secular priestlyspirit gives no appearance of disappearing. It doesn’t lackfor believers to honor it, nor pontiffs to cultivate it.

NotesStirner remarks that the word hierarchy mans

sacerdotal or sacred organization.Popular UniversitiesJules de Gaultier, De Kant à Nietzsche, p.178Edouard berth, Anarchisme individualiste et

Marxisme orthodoxe. Mouvement Socialiste. May Day1905

L’Eau de Jouvence, act III.Hyppolite Taine, Les Philosophes Classiques en

France au XIXéme siècle.Michelet, Historie de France.Charles Péguy, De La Situation faite au Parti

intellectual dans le Monde moderne, p. 48.See Clemenceau, Discours pour la Liberté, Cahiers

de la Quinzaine.Georges Sorel, Réflexions sur la Violence, p. 81.

Individualism

Source: L’Anarchie no. 323, June 15, 1911;Translated: by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

As is the case elsewhere, the tendency tounderestimate the individual has made itself felt in theintellectual field. Solitary thought – invention – has beendepreciated to the profit of collective thought – imitation –preached under the eternal word of solidarity. The horrorof the previously untried, of intellectual and estheticoriginality, is a characteristic trait of Latin races. We loveregimented thought, conformist and decent meditations. AGerman writer, Laura Marholm, accurately analyzed thiscontemporary tendency: “Intellectual cowardice is auniversal trait. No one dares makes a decisive statementconcerning his milieu. No one any longer allows himselfan original thought. Original thought only dares presentitself when it is supported by a group: it has to havegathered together several adherents in order to dare showitself. You must be one of many before daring to speak.This is an indication of universal democratization, ademocratization that is still at its beginnings, and ischaracterized by a reaction against international capital,which until now has had at its disposal all the means of

military and legislative defense. No one dares to rely onhimself alone. An idea that contravenes received ideasalmost never manages to make itself known. Thepropagation of an antipathetic idea is circumscribed andhindered by a thousand anonymous censors, among whichthe official censorship of he state has only a minor role.”

The result of this tendency is that we no longer existand think for ourselves. We think according to hearsay andslogans.

It is especially from the moral point of view that thecrushing of personal egoism by group egoism isintolerable. We too well know the pettiness of the groupspirit, the gregarious coalitions engaged, more thananything, in fighting against superior individualities, thesolidarity in irresponsibility, all these forms of diminishedhumanity.

It is the same with perfect solidarity as it is withabsolute justice, absolute altruism, absolute monism.These are abstract principles untranslatable in real terms.Each man has his special conception of solidarity, justice,his way to interpret the fas and the nefas in keeping withhis coterie, class, etc. interests.

“As soon as an idea is set loose,” said Remy deGourmont, “ if we thus set it nakedly in circulation in itstrip across the world it joins all kinds of parasiticvegetation. Sometimes the original organism disappears,entirely devoured by the egoistic colonies that develop

there. An amusing example of these deviations in thoughtwas given by the corporation of house painters at theceremony called ‘The Triumph of the Republic.” Theworkers carried around a banner where their demands forjustice were summed up in this cry: ‘Down with ripolin!’You must know that ripolin is a prepared paint that anyonecan spread across woodwork. We can thus understand thesincerity of this wish and its ingenuity. Ripolin hererepresents injustice and oppression; it’s the enemy, thedevil. We all have our own ripolin and we coloraccording to our needs the abstract ideas that, without this,would be of no personal use to us.”

The ideal is soiled in contact with reality:Pearl before falling, and mire after.The Future of Pessimism and Individualism

Source: Pessimisme et Individualisme. 1914, Alcan,Paris;Translated: by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

Everything in current social evolution indicates anincreased reinforcement of society’s powers, anincreasingly marked tendency towards the encroachmentof the collective on the individual.

Everything equally indicates that on the part of most

individuals this encroachment will be less and less felt,and will provoke less and less resistance and rebellion.Social conformism and optimism will thus clearly havethe last word. Society will emerge victorious over theindividual. There will come a moment when social chainswill wound almost no one, lacking people sufficiently inlove with independence and sufficiently individualized tofeel these chains and suffer from them. Lackingcombatants, the combat will come to an end. The smallindependent minority will become increasingly small.

But however small it might be, it will suffer from theincreased social pressure. It will represent, in this time ofalmost perfect conformism and generalized socialcontentment, pessimism and individualism.

The Relationship Between Pessimism andIndividualism

Source: Pessimisme et Invidualisme. Paris, Alcan,1914;Translated: by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

The century that just passed is without a doubt that inwhich pessimism found its most numerous, its most varied,its most vigorous and its most systematic interpreters. Inaddition, individualism was expressed in that century with

exceptional intensity by representatives of high quality.It could be interesting to bring together these two

forms of thought, dominant in our era; to ask what is thelogical or sentimental connection that exists between them,and to what degree pessimism engenders individualismand individualism engenders pessimism.

But the question thus posed is too general. There aremany kinds of pessimism and many kinds of individualism.Among the latter there is one that in no way impliespessimism, and that is the doctrinaire individualism thatissues from the French Revolution and to which so manymoralists, jurists, and politicians of our century areattached. This individualism could take as its motto thephrase of Wilhelm von Humboldt that Stuart Mill chose asthe epigraph of his “Essay on Liberty”: “The grand,leading principle, towards which every argument unfoldedin these pages directly converges, is the absolute andessential importance of human development in its richestdiversity.” Individualists of this kind believe that allhuman individuals can harmonically develop in society,that their very diversity is a guarantee of the richness andbeauty of human civilization.

These individualists are rationalists. They have faithin reason, the principle of order, of unity, and of harmony.They are idealists: they have faith in an ideal of socialjustice. unitarian and egalitarian, they believe, despiteindividual differences and inequalities, in the profound

and real unity of human kind. These individualists are“humanists” in the sense that Stirner gives to this word:solidarists, socialists, if we take this latter term in itslargest sense. Their individualism is turned outwards,towards society. It’s a social individualism, in the sensethat it doesn’t separate the individual from society, whichthey don’t place in opposition to each other. On thecontrary, they always consider the individual as a socialelement that harmonizes with the all and that only exists infunction of the all. We will not insist upon thisindividualism, which obviously implies a more or lessfirm social optimism.

The individualism we have in mind here iscompletely different. This individualism is not a political,juridical and moral doctrine, but a psychological andmoral attitude, a form of sensibility, a personal sensationof life and a personal will to life.

It is impossible to fix in a definition all the traits, allthe degrees, all the nuances of this psychologicaldisposition. It affects a special tone in every soul in whichit makes itself known.

We can say that as a personal sensation of life,individualism is the sentiment of uniqueness, ofindividuality in what it has of the differential, the private,and the un-revealable. Individualism is an appeal to theinteriority of sentiment, to individual inspiration in theface of social conventions and ready-made ideas.

Individualism implies a sentiment of personal infallibility,an idea of intellectual and sentimental superiority, of innerartistocratism. Of irreducible difference between an egoand an other, the idea of uniqueness. Individualism is areturn to the self and a gravitation to the self.

As personal will to life individualism is a desire to“be oneself,” according to the wish of a character fromIbsen (Peer Gynt), a desire for independence andoriginality. The individualist wants to be his own maker,his own furnisher of truth and illusion; his own builder oftruth and illusion; his own builder of dreams; his ownbuilder and demolisher of ideals. This wish for originalitycan, incidentally, be more or less energetic, more or lessdemanding, more or less ambitious. More or less happy,too, according to the quality and the value of theindividuality in cause, according to the amplitude of thethought and according to the intensity of, the will to,individual might.

Be it as personal sensation of life or as personal willto life, individualism is or tends to be anti-social: if it isnot so from the start, it later and inevitably becomes so.Sentiment of the profound uniqueness of the ego, desire fororiginality and independence, individualism cannot helpbut provoke the sentiment of a silent struggle between theindividual self and society. In fact, the tendency of everysociety is to reduce the sentiment of individuality as muchas possible: to reduce uniqueness through conformism,

spontaneity through discipline, instantaneousness of theself through caution, sincerity of sentiment through the lackof sincerity inherent in any socially defined function,confidence and pride in the self through the humiliationinseparable from any kind of social training. This is whyindividualism necessarily has the sentiment of a conflictbetween its ego and the general ego. Individualismbecomes here a principle of passive or active innerresistance, of silent or declared opposition to society, arefusal to submit oneself to it; a distrust of it. In itsessence, individualism holds in contempt and negates thesocial bond. We can define it as a will to isolation, asentimental and intellectual, theoretical and practicalcommitment to withdraw from society, if not in fact -following the examples of the solitaries of the Thebeiadand the more modern one of Thoreau - at least in sprit andintention, by a kind of interior and voluntary retreat. Thisdistancing from society, this voluntary moral isolation thatwe can practice in the very heart of society can take on theform of indifference and resignation as well as that ofrevolt. It can also assume the attitude of the spectator, thecontemplative attitude of the thinker in an Ivory Tower.But there is always in this acquired indifference, in thisresignation or this spectatorial isolation, a remnant ofinterior revolt.

Sentiment of uniqueness and more or less energeticexpression of the will to personal power; will to

originality, will to independence, will to insubordinationand revolt, will to isolation and to withdrawal into theself. Sometimes also will to supremacy, to the deploymentof force on and against others, but always with a return tothe self, with a sentiment of personal infallibility, with anindestructible confidence in oneself, even in defeat, evenin the failure of hopes and ideals. Intransigence,inaccessibility of internal conviction, fidelity to oneself upto the bitter end. Fidelity to one’s misunderstood ideas, toone’s impregnable and unassailable will: individualism isall this, either globally or in detail, this element or that,this nuance or that predominating according to thecircumstances and the case.

Individualism, understood as we just expressed it,that is, as an internal disposition of the soul, individualismas sensation and will is no longer, like the individualismof which we spoke above, like political and juridicalindividualism, turned outwards and subordinated to sociallife, to its constraints, its demands and obligations. It isturned inwards. It places itself at the beginning or seeksrefuge in the end in the unbreakable and intangible interiorbeing.

To say that there is a close psychological relationshipbetween the individualist and pessimist sensibilitiesmeans almost stating the obvious. Pessimism supposes abasic individualism. It supposes that interiority ofsentiment, that return to the self (almost always painful)

that is the essence of individualism. While optimism isnothing but an abstract metaphysical thesis, the echo ofdoctrinal hearsay, pessimism is a sensation of lived life; itcomes from the inner, from an individual psychology. Itproceeds from what is most intimate in us: the ability tosuffer. It predominates among those of a solitary naturewho live withdrawn into themselves and see social life aspain. Thoroughbred pessimists, the great artists andtheoreticians of suffering, lived solitary and as strangers inthe midst of men, retrenched in their ego as if in a fortressfrom which they let fall an ironic and haughty gaze on thesociety of their kind. And so it is not by accident, but byvirtue of an intimate psychological correlation thatpessimism is accompanied by a tendency towardsegotistic isolation.

Inversely, the individualist spirit is almost fatedlyaccompanied by pessimism. Does not experience as old asthe world teach us that in nature the individual issacrificed to the species? That in society it is sacrificed tothe group? Individualism arrives at a resigned or hopelessnoting of the antinomies that arise between the individualand the species on one hand, and between the individualand society on the other.

Life doubtless perpetually triumphs over thisantinomy, and the fact that despite it all humanity continuesto live can appear to be an unarguable reply that refutesboth pessimism and individualism. But this is not certain.

For if humanity as a species and as a society pursues itsdestiny without worrying about individuals’ complaints orrevolts, individualism does not die for all that. Alwaysdefeated, never tamed, it is incarnated in souls of a specialcaliber, imbued with the sentiment of their uniqueness andstrong in their will to independence. Individualism suffersa defeat in every individual who dies after having servedends and surrendered to forces that are beyond him. But hesurvives himself through the generations, gaining in forceand clarity as the human will to life intensifies, diversifiesand becomes refined in individual consciousness. It is thusthat is affirmed the dual consistency of pessimism andindividualism, indissolubly united and interconnected.

Nevertheless, it is possible that this psychological tiethat we believe we have discovered between pessimismand individualism is nothing but an a priori view. Ifinstead of reasoning about psychological likelihoods weconsult the history of ideas of the 19th century we willperhaps see that the relationship of ideas that we have justindicated is neither as simple nor as consistent as at firstappears. We must penetrate in detail the different forms ofpessimism and individualism and more closely analyzetheir relationship if we want to arrive at precise ideas.

Misanthropic Pessimism

Source: Pessimisme et Individualisme. Paris, Alcan,1914;

Translated: by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

The pessimism we want to study now is that whichwe have called misanthropic pessimism. This pessimismdoesn’t proceed from an exasperated and sufferingsensibility, but from a lucid intelligence exercising itscritical clear-sightedness on the evil side of our species.Misanthropic pessimism appears in its grand lines as atheory of universal fraud and universal imbecility; ofuniversal nanality and universal turpitude. As the pitilesspainting of a world peopled with cretins and swindlers, ofninnies and fools.

The character of this pessimism appears as auniversal coldness, a willed impassibility, an absence ofsentimentalism that distinguishes it from romanticpessimism, ever inclined to despair or revolt. The mutedespair of Vigny is more pathetic than a cry of pain. InStirner we find frantic accents of revolt, while inSchopenhauer we find a tragic sentiment of the world’spain and a despairing appeal to the void. As for themisanthropic pessimist, he makes no complaints. Hedoesn’t take the human condition as tragic, he doesn’t riseup against destiny. He observes his contemporaries withcuriosity, pitilessly analyzes their sentiments and thoughtsand is amused by their presumption, their vanity, their

hypocrisy, or their unconscious villainy, by theirintellectual and moral weakness. It is no longer humanpain, it is no longer the sickness of living that forms thetheme of this pessimism, but rather human villainy andstupidity. One of the preferred leitmotivs of this pessimismcould be this well-known verse: “The most foolish animalis man.”

The foolishness that this pessimism particularly takesaim at is that presumptuous and pretentious foolishnessthat we can call dogmatic foolishness, that solemn anddespotic foolishness that spreads itself across socialdogmas and rites, across public opinion and mores, whichmakes itself divine and reveals in its views on eternity ahundred petty and ridiculous prejudices. While romanticpessimism proceeds from the ability to suffer and curse,misanthropic pessimism proceeds from the faculty tounderstand and to scorn. It is a pessimism of theintellectual, ironic, and disdainful observer. He prefers thetone of persiflage to the minor and tragic tone. A Swiftsymbolizing the vanity of human quarrels in the crusade ofthe Big-endians and the Little-endians, a Voltaire mockingthe metaphysical foolishness of Pangloss and the sillynaiveté of Candide; a Benjamin Constant consigning to theRed Notebook and the Journal Intime his epigrammaticremarks on humanity and society; a Stendhal, whoseJournal and Vie de Henri Brulard contain so manymisanthropic observations on his family, his relations, his

chiefs, his entourage; a Merimée, friend and emulator ofStendhal in the ironic observation of human nature; aFlaubert attacking the imbecility of his puppets FredericMoureau and Bouvard and of Pécuchet; a Taine in“Thomas Graindorge;” a Challemel-Lacour in hisReflexions d’un pessimiste can all be taken as therepresentative types of this haughty, smiling, andcontemptuous pessimistic wisdom.

In truth, this pessimism isn’t foreign to a few of thethinkers we have classed under the rubric of romanticpessimism, for the different types of pessimism havepoints of contact and penetration. A Schopenhauer, aStirner have also exercised their ironic verve on humanfoolishness, presumption and credulity. But in themmisanthropic pessimism can’t be found in its pure state. Itremains subordinated to the pessimism of suffering, ofdespair or of revolt, to the sentimental pathos that is thecharacteristic trait of romantic pessimism. Misanthropicpessimism could perhaps be called realistic pessimism: infact, in more than one of its representatives (Stendhal,Flaubert) it proceeds from that spirit of exact, detailed andpitiless observation, from the concern for objectivity andimpassivity that figure among the characteristic traits ofthe realist esthetic. Does misanthropic pessimism confirmthe thesis according to which pessimism tends to engenderindividualism? This is not certain. Among the thinkers wejust cited there are certainly some who neither conceived,

nor practiced, nor recommended the attitude of voluntaryisolation that is individualism. Though they had noillusions about men they did not flee their society. Theydidn’t hold them at a disdainful distance. They accepted tomix with them, to live their lives in their midst. Voltairewas sociability incarnate. Swift, a harsh man of ambitionhad nothing of the solitary nature of Obermann and Vigny.But there are several among the misanthropic pessimistswe just cited, particularly Flaubert and Taine, whopracticed, theorized, and recommended intellectualisolation, the retreat of thought into itself as the solepossible attitude for a man having any kind of refinementof thought and nobility of soul in this world of mediocrityand banality

Flaubert, haunted by the specter of “stupidity with athousand faces” finds it wherever he looks. He seeksrefuge against it in the pure joys of art and contemplation.He said: “I understood one great thing: it’s that for the menof our race happiness is in the idea and nowhere else.”“Where does your weakness come form?” he wrote to afriend. “Is it because you know man? What differencedoes it make? Can’t you, in thought, establish that superbline of interior defense that keeps you an ocean’s widthfrom your neighbor?”

To a correspondent who complains of worry anddisgust with all things: “There is a sentiment,” he writes,”or rather a habit that you seem to be lacking, to wit, the

love of contemplation. Take life, the passions, andyourself as subjects for intellectual exercises.” And again:“Skepticism will have nothing of the bitter, for it willseem that you are at humanity’s comedy and it will seem toyou that history crosses the world for you alone.”

Taine was led by his misanthropic vision of humanityto a stoic and ascetic conception of life, to looking on theintelligence as the supreme asylum in which to isolatehimself, to defend himself from universal wickedness,universal stupidity, and universal banality. A singularanalogy unites Taine to Flaubert. Taine asks of scientificanalysis what Flaubert asks of art and contemplation: anintellectual alibi, a means of escape from the realities ofthe social milieu.

This deduction is logical. Misanthropic pessimismsupposes or engenders contemplative isolation. In order tointellectually despise men one must separate oneself fromthem, see them from a distance. One must have left theherd, have arrived at Descartes’ attitude which “lives inthe midst of men like amidst the trees in a forest.” Whetherwe wish it or not, there is here a theoretical isolation, akind of intellectual solipsism, the indifference of anaristocrat and a dilettante who “detaches himself from allin order to roam everywhere.” (Taine)

Let us add that the clear-sightedness of themisanthropic intellectual has, in and of itself, somethingantisocial about it. To take as the theme for one’s irony the

common and average human stupidity means treatingwithout respect a social value of the first order. Stupidityis the stuff of the prejudices without which no social life ispossible. It is the cement of the social edifice. “Stupidity,”said Dr. Anatole France’s Trublet, “is the first good of anordered society.” Social conventions only survive thanksto a general stupidity that envelops, supports, guarantees,protects, and consecrates the stupidity of individuals. Thisis why critical, ironic, and pessimistic intelligence is asocial dissolvent. It is irreverent towards that which issocially respectable: mediocrity and stupidity. It attacksrespect and credulity, the conservative elements of society.

Historical Pessimism

Source: Pessimisme et Individualisme. Paris, Alcan,1914;Translated: by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org;CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)marxists.org 2006.

Historical pessimism is inspired by a retrospectiveideal, an historic or even prehistoric ideal whosenostalgia haunts the thinker disgusted with the present.Two names can be put forward in this regard: de Gobineauand Nietzsche.

Count de Gobineau judges current civilization in thelight of an ethnic type that is distant, almost prehistoric, or

at least so little historical that it would be disappointing towrite its history: the Aryan type. Nevertheless, Count deGobineau thinks he can follow it throughout its evolution,its transformations and its deviations. “I compared,” hesays, “ races among themselves. I chose one from amongthem that I saw as the best and I wrote ‘The History of thePersians’ in order to show, by the example of the Aryannation the most isolated from its relatives, how powerlessdifferences in climate, environment and circumstances arein changing or inhibiting the genius of a race.” His“Discourse on the Inequality of Races” traces the longvicissitudes and the irremediable degeneration of this typeof superior humanity as a result of the mixing of bloodsthat adulterated it. “Ottar Jarl” tells of the ancestry of aScandinavian hero of the ancient Nordic race from whichGobineau claimed to descend. The novel “The Pleiades”presents a few survivors of the noble Aryan race lost inthe midst of unworthy contemporaries, but who don’trenounce the fight in this degraded milieu, succeeding inmaking their presence felt.

What are the moral and intellectual traits thatconstitute the Gobinien superman? These traits can befound in “The History of the Persians,” the “Discourse onthe Inequality of Races,” in “Ottar Jarl” and “ThePleaides.” Gobineau places judgment in the first rank ofthe qualities that constitute the superior man. What hevalues in intelligence is not imagination, but judgment.

Judgment is the superior characteristic of the Aryan. TheAryan is above all a man of judgment and action. For deGobineau the true role of intelligence can only be that of aguide to action. The goal of intelligence is not to meditate,to build poems in the air, to withdraw into itself and tothink for thinking’s sake. The role of intelligence is to seeclearly and dictate actions. It should not be forgotten thatde Gobineau is the descendant of a line of warriors, ofpoliticians, of diplomats and a diplomat himself. Hisheredity, his traditions, his experience, his trade all ledhim to esteem above all else the qualities that constitute aman of action, a leader of men.

According to him the superior man is not the artist orthe speculative writer: the superior man is he who iscapable of commanding a people or an army, or theskillful diplomat. The qualities that constitute the Gobiniensuperman find themselves summed up in the portrait of theViking. “In the personality of Ottar we find three clearlypronounced traits, and it is essential to engrave them fromthe start, for we will recognize one or another, if not all ofthem, in most of his descendants. The activity ofintelligence, the ‘Vestfolding,’ carries it to all the points itcan reach and that circumstances place within its sight. Heis avid for knowledge, for he wants to know just how farhis country extends, but he also doesn’t want occasions forgain and profit to be neglected. He is also sensible, for hedoesn’t believe the speeches of the Bjarmes (priests)

without reservation… Along with the activity of theintelligence he has the passion for independence, and onthe day he has to submit to Erik’s domination he says noand goes into exile. He appreciates the advantages ofwealth, but he appreciates even more not having to yield,and yields little. In the third place he is stubborn in hisviews…Understanding, independent, patient, these arethree qualities from which as much good as evil result andare susceptible of diverse applications. In Ottar, issuedfrom a pure race, we find its essence in all sincerity, withthe maximum of energy, and exactly as the hero’s ancestorspossessed it, receiving it from their blood.” It is the purityof blood that makes for strong individuality. “His race waspure and so his individuality was very strong. In himindividuality was everything, agglomeration little ornothing. On the contrary, among more southern populationsthe blood had been noticeably altered: in the Francbecome half-Roman, in the Roman rotted by Semiticmixtures. Everyone counted on everyone else, and whilethe Scandinavian, jealous of his liberty, only acceptedtemporary associations, those they vanquished found itgood to hold a master or guide responsible for their will.It is this obedience, which then becomes a servility, that intruth constitutes not human culture – always ennobling –but civilization, vehicle of a contrary effect.” Anotherportrait of the Gobinien superman is that of the EnglishmanNore in “The Pleaides.” “I am fantastic? Why? Am I less a

man because I seem to you different from the model fromwhich my contemporaries are carved? What do they and Ihave in common? Fantastic? Because I don’t care abouttheir grandeur, their baseness, their distinctions, theirhumiliations, their elections, their means of making afortune; not their fortunes or their problems! I would be afantastic creature if, conceiving my desires in accordancewith puerile imitation, I mixed in with them the things ofcommon life, ever ready to abandon what are only dreamsfor banal reality from which I neither knew how to orwanted to detach myself. But thank god nothing like thisexists…It is possible that creation, which randomly castsabout disparate seeds, erred in my regard and havingprepared me for another milieu inadvertently let me fallinto this one. But for whatever reason, here I am! I ammyself and no other, feeling in my way, understandingthings with my own intelligence, and as incapable ofrenouncing what I once wanted, of abandoning the pursuitof what I desired, as incapable of demonstrating to myselfthat I was wrong as I am to renounce breathing for anhour!” Energy, independence, strong individualism, anintense sentiment of the personality: such are the traits ofthe Gobinien superman.

The humanity of today has badly degenerated fromthis superior type. Good brains and strong wills are rare,for they are in proportion with the excellence of the race.A character in “The Pleaides” says that there are still

perhaps 3,000 “sons of kings,” superior men of Aryanrace, three thousand well made brains and strongly beatinghearts. “The rest is a vile mass that makes up the tripletribe of imbeciles, brutes and scoundrels, the current formof European barbarism. Not youthful, brave, daring,picturesque, happy barbarism, but a suspicious, glum,bitter, ugly one that will kill all and create nothing.” Whatis horrible to think about is that these few superior brains,these few strongly beating hearts, lost in the mass, can donothing to raise up the ruins and bring decadence to a halt.This was seen once before, at the end of the RomanEmpire.

“It can be argued of the work of these great men that,despite the universal decomposition, there were yet firmand honest hearts in the Empire. Who denies this? I amspeaking of multitudes and not of individuals. Could thesenoble intelligences stop for one minute the rotting of thesocial body? No. The most noble intelligences didn’tconvert the crowd, didn’t give it heart.” The presence of afew of the Just couldn’t save Sodom. It is the same today.The few survivors of the ancient virtues of the race cannottoday stop European decomposition. When the mixing ofblood has degraded a race to a certain degree there isnothing to be done. All that is left is to dispassionatelywitness the death of the race. Such is Gobinen pessimism.A complete, definitive, and hopeless ethnic and socialpessimism. We find a strong expression of it in the pages

where de Gobineau combats the thesis of humanity’sindefinite progress, as well as in the final pages of the“Essay.” “The prediction that makes us sad is not death,it’s the certitude of arriving there degraded. And perhapsthat shame reserved to our descendants would leave usindifferent if we didn’t feel, by a secret horror, thatdestiny’s rapacious hands are already posed upon us.”

By virtue of the law we seek to establish, Gobinenpessimism turns into individualism. Stoic individualism,isolatedly ferocious, haughty and despairing. The Aryan isalways recognized by his indomitable individuality. In thepresence of a civilization he hates and holds in contempthe doesn’t resign himself. He stiffens in the haughtyattitude of a wounded aristocrat. “I don’t care what willresult from your changes,” a character of “The Pleaides”says, in whom it is believed Gobineau incarnated himself,“I don’t know future morals so that I can approve of them,future costumes so I can admire them, future institutions sothat I can respect them, and I maintain that what I approve,what I admire, what I love is gone! I have nothing to dowith what will succeed them. Consequently, you don’tconsole me by announcing the triumph of parvenus who Idon’t care to know.” The same character says elsewhere:“It doesn’t please me to see a once great people now laidlow, impotent, paralyzed, half-rotted, decomposing,surrendered to stupidities, miseries, evil, ferocity,cowardice, the weaknesses of a senile childhood, and

good for nothing except death, which I sincerely hope forso that it escape from the dishonor in which it wallows,laughing like imbeciles.” Someone asks of this despairingcharacter: “No religion, no fatherland, no skill, no love.The void has been installed. The tables have been sweptclean. Absolutely nothing is left. What do you conclude? Iconclude that man is left. And if he has the strength to lookhis own will in the face and to find it solid we have theright to say that he possesses something. And what, I askyou? Stoicism. Times like these have always producedthis severe authority.” This is also Gobineau’s response.This is the stoic individualism in which he takes refuge.Nevertheless, de Gobineau fights up to the bitter end. Eventhough isolated, even though his efforts are made sterilebecause of his isolation, he continues to work in thedirection of grandiose dream, whose vague andmagnificent perspective his imagination of the supermanhas allowed him to glimpse. Despite it all, he has enoughpride to create for himself an ideal he won’t betray, a goalhe will pursue. A table of human values, a scale whosesummit he will occupy in a sterile but splendid isolation.In a way he recalls the symbols of Leconte de Lisle in hisenergy, his disdain, and his despair.

The wounded wolf who stays silent so as to die,And who twists the knife in his bleeding mouthNietzsche at a certain time became enamored of an

ethnic ideal no less ancient and no less uncertain than the

Gobinist ideal. He was enamored of primitive Hellenism,the radiant and prestigious Hellenism of “The Origins ofTragedy,” i.e., the primitive Greek soul, at one and thesame time Dionysian and Apollonian. The Greek soul inwhich the apotheosis of the ardent, overabundant, joyous,exalted and triumphant life is summarized, as well as thebeauty, the purity of line, the nobility of attitude, themajesty of the face and the serenity of the gaze. It is withthis magical image that Nietzsche confronts currentcivilization, with its regulated and domesticated societies,with its tyrannical and servile democracy, with itsdepressing Christianity, with its narrow-minded morality,which weakens and makes ugly. And he too sounds thealarm issued by de Gobineau: Decadence! Decadence!

In truth, Nietzsche’s pessimism, like that ofGobineau, doesn’t lack for a secret relationship withromantic pessimism. There is much romanticism in thehistorical pessimism of Gobineau and Nietzsche. If thesetwo thinkers take refuge in the past it is because thepresent brings only vulgarity and ugliness, it’s that theysituate their grandiose dreams of impenitent romantics in avanished utopia and uchronia. Whatever the case, byvirtue of a law whose effects we are following, thepessimism of Nietzsche, like that of Gobineau, turns intoindividualism. It is true that the nuance in Nietzscheanindividualism is more difficult to determine than in that ofGobinien individualism. Gobineau’s individualism is a

despairing stoicism, an isolation of the defeated man ofaction, of a haughty thinker taking refuge in an ivory tower,from the heights of which he witnesses the slow agony of aworld without either force or beauty.

Nietzsche’s individualism is clearly an anti-socialindividualism. But is that anti-societism absolute orrelative, provisional or definitive? Does Nietzsche indictonly modern society or all societies? Nietzsche’s ideas onthis subject is somewhat unclear. “Modern societies,” saysM. Faguet, “are anti-Nietszchean in their nature, andNietzsche cannot prevent himself from being, andespecially appearing, anti-social. Certainly (and why notrecognize this?) he must have had moments of anti-societism and have said to himself: ‘It is possible that lifeas I conceive it was simply savage life and it can only befully and brilliantly realized in the state of nature or in thatprimitive state of little organized societies that wesometimes call the state of nature. At heart, it is socialinvention that is against me.’ He could have told himselfthis, though he didn’t write it anywhere, he who wroteeverything that he thought with so much bravura anddaring. He could have thought this on several occasionsand for my part I know him to be too intelligent to doubtthat he had this thought. But persuaded, perhapserroneously, that there was a race – that is the Greeks –that was organized in a society and that created the free,beautiful and strong life, he didn’t stop at anti-social

thought, leaving to a few of his disciples the task or thepleasure of deducing his premises. What of which hecarried out a penetrating, subtle and uncompromisingcriticism of was modern society.” It is difficult todetermine the exact place that anti-societism occupies inNietzschean philosophy and the scope that Nietzscheattributed to it. At certain moments this anti-societismattacks modern society, at others it seems to attack the veryconditions of social life. Is Nietzsche’s anti-societismradical, as radical as that of Stirner, when Nietzscheviolently protests against the conduct and the virtues thatevery society imposes on its members: the spirit ofconsistency and a spirit of adaptation and obedience to therules; when on the contrary he glorifies the faculties andenergies stifled by life in society; when along with Stirnerhe celebrates that happy freedom of the instincts, horror ofthe rule, love of the fortuitous, the uncertain, theunforeseen? Nietzsche’s social philosophy seems here tobe an absolute and definitive anti-societism, it seems tosummarize the common basis of social pessimism andindividualism: the perception of a natural, profound and –in a way – psychological antinomy between the individualand society, the individual having instincts that do notyield before social life, since man is not adapted to sociallife, which wounds him like a poorly made shoe. Seen inthis way Nietzschean individualism is profoundly anti-social and Strinerite; it is a revolt not only against our

society, but against any society, future or possible.But it is only fair to remark that in certain aspects of

his philosophy, which are perhaps not the least important,Nietzsche puts the lie to this rebellious attitude, or at leastplaces it in a secondary position and subordinates it to anideal of a human grandeur still possible and realizable inthe future.

An important difference separates Nietzsche fromGobineau in this regard. It’s the concept of the Superman,which is in opposition to the Gobinien law of thenecessary limitations on the resources of human aptitude.This law is formulated in the “Discourse on Inequality:”“Man,” says de Gobineau, “was able to learn certainthings; he has forgotten many others. He has not added asingle sense to his senses, a member to his members, afaculty to his soul. He has done nothing but turn to anotherside of the circle that is his lot.” De Gobineau closeshumanity into a narrow circle of capacities and works. Heassigns him unsurpassable limits within which he can, it istrue, regress, but which his physiology forbids him fromever surpassing. From this flows the theory ofirremediable decadence once human races are adulteratedthrough mixing, and Gobineau’s hopeless pessimism.Opposed to this is the concept of the Superman. While deGobineau looks on the superior human race as definitivelyfallen from its original purity and beauty, Nietzsche, he tootheoretician of decadence, performs a sudden about face.

At a certain moment in the development of his thought, andin what is perhaps an example of inconsistency, heintroduces into his philosophy the strange concept of theSuperman, that is, of a humanity called on to indefinitelysurpass itself, to make itself indefinitely superior to itself,incomparable to itself, incommensurable with itself.Through this unexpected change in front Nietzschedisplaces his human ideal. He transports it from the rear tothe front, from the past to the future. From historic andretrospective this ideal becomes futuristic. The humanideal is no longer the primitive Hellenism from which weare fallen, it is the Superman of tomorrow. In this wayNietzsche superimposes or rather substitutes for his theoryof decadence a theory of indefinite progress. Anddecadence itself takes on a new meaning. Nietzsche admitsthat the current decadence is a period of transition fromwhich will come a society containing the possibility ofnobility and beauty. He only rejects current society in thehope of finding a society hospitable to great souls, asociety where masters will reign and where great thingswill yet be done. At those moments Nietzsche is not ahopeless pessimist like the Count de Gobineau, nor is hean anti-social individualist , a theoretician of revolt forrevolt’s sake like Stirner. On the contrary, he is then, orwants to be, a creator of values, the founder of a society, aprophet, a priest.

And so Nietzsche’s attitude towards the problem of

the relations between the individual and society are notclear. But through its very lack of decisiveness it confirmsthe psychological law that we are attempting to establish:the correlation between individualism and pessimism. Atthose moments when Nietzsche is optimistic, when hebelieves in the Superman, he is not an anti-socialindividualist. He repudiates Stirnerite individualism as amanifestation of the “slave revolt,” as one of the symptomsof our modern decadence. On the other hand, at thosetimes when Nietzsche is pessimistic, at those times whenhe says that the Greek miracle was unique and we have nochance of reviving it, he shows himself to be anuncompromising enemy of society and hater of social ties.He expresses an anti-societism as radical, as absolute asthat of Stirner.