If the State must count on our humanity, it is the same if one says it must count on our morality. Seeing humanity in each other, and acting as human toward each other, is called moral behavior. This is every whit the “spiritual love” of Christianity. For, if I see human in you, as in myself I see human and nothing but human, then I care for you as I would care for myself; for we represent, you see, nothing but the mathematical proposition: A = C and B = C, consequently A = B — i.e. If am I nothing but human and you are nothing but human, consequently I and you are the same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the former does not allow validity to me, but only to the human in me. But, if the State is a society of humans, not a union of egos, each of whom has only himself before his eyes. It cannot last without morality, and must insist on morality.
Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I, the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this “human society,” I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my property and my creature; i. e., I annihilate it, and form in its place the Union of Egoists.
—The Ego and Its Own, Stirner
