Discover rare photographic glimpses of pioneering egoists such as Dora Marsden and Benjamin R. Tucker, and delve into the visionary project to produce a Braille edition of Max Stirner’s magnum opus for the indomitable Helen Keller. Unearth a plethora of fascinating artifacts pertaining to Malfew Seklew, and be riveted by the astonishing revelation of Ragnar Redbeard’s brief yet impactful foray as a Canadian Socialist Provocateur.

This sixth issue of Der Geist is sure to delight and offend, but most of all, serve as an essential philosophical reference work for centuries to come.

DER GEIST: The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945 | ISSUE 6 | Winter 2023
Paperback, 212 pages, $15
ISBN 978-1-944651-29-9, ISSN 2639-5339

Der Geist, (Trevor Blake, editor; Kevin I. Slaughter, co-editor) is an English-language journal for an international audience, publishing original scholarship on the philosophy of egoism. The journal is descriptive of the first century of egoism in print (from the 1845 publication of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum by Max Stirner to the end of 1945), not prescriptive in advocacy of egoism.

CONTENTS

Introduction by the Editor  2

1. Max Stirner   7

Max Stirner’s Anarchist Gospel | A Dutch Review of Stirner’s Work | Anarchist Black Dragon | Max Stirner vs. Wahrheit-Sucher | “Celine Adele Marillier” | Pity and the Future | Max Stirner and the Grisette | Steven T. Byington’s Triple Score

2. Malfew Seklew  29

On “Bérnard’s Tour” | Minister Mocks Malfew  | Stern Critique of Christian Socialist  | Seklew Asks: Nietzsche to Blame?  | Social Aristocrat Socialist Secretary | A Freak Among Reformers  | No Guide for Anybody | Proletarians in Purgatory | No Justice for Malfew Seklew  | “We’re All More or Less Nutty” | Not Seeking Work  | Seklew Scolds Simpoleons, Supplies Sample Shilling Sericine Silk Set | No Detail Too Small!

3. Ragnar Redbeard   51

Redbeard in Canada | Desmond Selling George  | Give the New Hand a Show! | A.D. in the O.E.D.  | A Bogus Book | Australian Socialist Drinking Club | Redbeard’s Rough Stuff |“We Understand the Redbeard Philosophy” | Voima On Oikeus | Etc.

4. Dora Marsden  95

Dora Marsden for the Prosecution | The Freewomen of New York | Dora Marsden, unser aller Mutter  | Dora Marsden Ephemera | Rare Portraits

5. Benjamin DeCasseres   107

Emmeline Pankhurst | Pyrrhonism and Acatalepsy | Balzac | The Borrowed Mirror

6. Friedrich Nietzsche   117

Nietzsche and a Braille Stirner for Hellen Keller | “Will Nietzsche Come Into Vogue…” | The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche | Alexander Tille Reads Egoism

7. Enzo Martucci   135

A Sketch of Martucci | An Excerpt from The Red Sect | Martucci on Stirner

8. Free Spirits  159

Peter Lamborn Wilson Has Passed  | Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal | Vox Populi Vox Dei | Thompson at Rudolf Steiner Hall | Speakers’ Corner Anthology | Among the Anarchists | The True Comarade | Is This What You Call “Living?” | The Thirteenth Paragraph | Greeves Fisher, A Sketch | Dominance vs. Egoism | More Individualism | Individualism and Property | Why I am a Right-Wing Anarchist | Opening and Closing the Dil Pickle | Christmas a Joke! | “I” a poem  | “I GO” a poem| A Letter to the Editors of Freedom | Enrico Arrigoni Bibliography | Photo of Benjamin R. Tucker | About the Editors

Nietzsche & Great Britain

To the Editor of T.P.’s WEEKLY.

Sir,—Is not the honour of being the first to bring Friedrich Nietzsche before British and American readers held by Dr. Alexander Tille, who when lecturer in the German language and literature at Glasgow University gave a lecture on the subject “ Friedrich Nietzsche, the Herald of Modern Germany,” on December 10th, 1894, to the Glasgow Goethe Society? Dr. Tille published at Leipzig in 1895 “Von Darwin bis Nietzsche, Ein Buch Entwicklungsethik.”

He was the editor of Messrs. H. Henry’s (J. T. Grein) edition, the translator of volume, “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” If my memory was right, Dr. Alex. Tille’s resignation was called for, on account of some pro-Boer expressions in a book, written in Ger man and published in Germany.

I have before me a curious publication. (The Zarathustra number of “Egoism,” Vol. III., No. 19, Oakland, California, November 28th, 1896. (Price five cents fortnightly, 50 cents a year.) The only number I have kept is devoted to the anonymous editor’s remarks and disagreements and extracts from Dr. Alex. Tille’s translation of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (New York: The Macmillan Company)—e.g., “I protest against any consecration of myself and mine to the more finished man, except as incident to my pleasure.—Therefore I shriek ‘fanatical devotion to Beyond-man’ at Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s introspective power is to such Indian skulled perception-chasers as myself a spell bound wonder—a grotto of home-driven discoveries, surprises and delights. Egoism’s’ purpose is to gain general recognition for a standard of Ethics and a Social Polity based on a logical extension of biological order into the social realm. Ethically, the Egoist knows nothing except the direct or ultimate satisfaction of the Ego. Politically the consistent Egoist can sanction no government of man by man save in the sense of defence. He is in short an anarchist—a Philosophic Anarchist.”

I wonder whether “Egoism ” is still published or went under before the Earthquake and Fire?

Messrs. Fisher Unwin, by taking over Tille’s edition, publishing works on Nietzsche by Mencken, Mügge, etc., have rendered service second only to the publishers of Dr. Oscar Levy’s edition. Prof. Andrew Seth (now Pringle-Pattison) had an article on Friedrich Nietzsche, his life and works in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” October, 1897.

— Yours, etc.,
HAROLD HILLER.
38, Jakeman Road, Birmingham.

Available from Amazon.com or Underworld Amusements.

DER GEIST, The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945
VOLUME 2 NUMBER 1, ISSUE 2
WINTER 2018 (Published 25 October 2018)
Paperback, 188 pages, fifteen dollars
isbn 978-1-944651-11-4
issn 2639-5339

Contents of this issue:

Introduction by Trevor Blake
1. Benjamin DeCasseres
Detroit Jewish Chronicle | Hate Everlasting | How I Interviewed Bacchus | The Fatal Smile
2. Max Stirner
The Worker and the Government | James Walker – What is Good? What is Evil? | Good Reading to Sharpen Mental Teeth | William Flygare – Vanitas | Max Stirner Bibliography Addendum | L’Unique et sa propriété | The Unique Individual | Malcolm Green – I’ve Based My Affairs on Nothing
3. Anthony Ludovici
Kevin I. Slaughter – Anthony M. Ludovici’s Egoism | The Choice of a Mate
4. Dora Marsden
Trevor Blake – Dora Marsden’s England | Casandra and the War | Trevor Blake – To the Great Name | Egoist Advertisement in The Little Review | Anent the Decalogue | N.C. Chritcher – …the Power of Thought
5. Malfew Seklew
The Rejection of Christianity | Mr. F. Wilkesbarre, Coster | Trevor Blake – Surfessor of Egoism, Introduction | MS – Surfessor of Egoism | A New Way to Earn a Living | … from the Labor Annual | Perfumed Pigs | Stars in the Talking Marathon | Trevor Blake – Victor Grayson M.P. – Introduction | Victor Grayson M.P. / A Rhapsody
6. Henry and Georgia Replogle & Egoism (1890)
Egoism’s Purpose and Whyfore | Minus the Communism | The “Selfish” Bauble
7. J. Wm. Lloyd
Personally Acquainted | Anarchist Socialism
8. Dill Pickle Club
John Nichols Beffel – Up an Alley to a Wild Place | Patricia Bronte – Dill Pickle Club | Trevor Blake – Angels of the Dill Pickle Club| Andrea Proudfoot – The Optimist’s Ego
9. The Eagle and The Serpent (1898)
C. L. Swartz – A Volcano Has Burst Forth in England | Tak Kak – A Difference of Words Only | Volcano – A Dream of Beyond | Volcano – A Unanimous Conviction | Advertisement from the Labor Annual | Marginalia
10. Friedrich Nietzsche
William Gordak – Nietzsche | Nietzsche In T.P.’s Weekly
11. Free Spirits
Kevin I. Slaughter – The Sidney E. Parker Archives | Émile Armand – Three Poems | Herbert Roseman – Laurance Labadie and His Critics | The Altruist Corner | Kevin I. Slaughter – From the Library | Photo of George Schumm | Patreon Thanks | Errata | About the Editors

GEORGIA REPLOGLE,
Anarchist, Atheist, Materialist, Freelover and Beautiful Soul.
DIED, DENVER, COLORADO, OCT. 22, 1904.
DEDICATED to HENRY REPLOGLE.

The doors have opened, they have shut,
And thro’ their valves our friend has gone;
A gentle woman, brave and straight,
A friend to be depended on.
Lite is a mystery to all,
The strangest part of lite is death,
But deem you thon that all is done
Because the lungs no more have breath?
But she was wise and she was sweet,
And, whether death be death or no,
She lived a lite worth while and great,
And that is why we loved her so.

IN MEMORIAM.
Georgia E. Replogle passed into the unknown Oct. 22. Her life was a beautiful one, and despite the years of illness she nover lost her beautiful character, her superb charity and patience. LUCIFER readers are numerous who knew her well; they will feel the loss as much as can be.
Her funeral was a beautiful one: her dear friends said the things they thought, read her favorite selections, sang her songs.
Now that it’s over, that Our Georgia sleeps forever in the cemetery—under a beloved elm tree—where the mountains keep a vigil—we who remain have nothing left but the memory of her who lived so well, so beautifully. She cherished her friends —she loved nature, her life was a poem—to emulate her would be farcical—to remember her as she was is our boon.
Many who see this will say, “Dear Georgia,” and, after all is said and done, can any better tribute be offered?

B. F. BRUKK.

It is with a feeling of sadness for myself and for all who loved and needed “Our George,” and yet with joy for her release from ber long agony, that I give to our readers the news of the death of Georgia Replogle. the was one of my earliest and dearest friends; one who had a very great Influence on my life. She was one to whom, as a young girl, I could talk of my hopes, ambitions, as I could to no one else—one with whom I could “think aloud.” Many years have passed we parted, but it has seemed good to know that she lived and that I had her sympathy and her love. And now—well, she is released from her suffering, and I know that if conscious existence continues, her true, loving spirit is the same.
Her enthusiasm for her work was so great that she ignored her physical needs, working long and steadily, with insufficient care for herself. The result was that she has been an invalid for many years, though continuing to work as long as was possible to do so. Everything that could be done by her friends for her relief was done, but without avail—so now the end has come. A biographical sketch will probably appear in Our next issue.

L. H.

You can pre-order now: https://www.underworldamusements.com/product/sa1088

During the research for the Underworld Amusements edition of The Gospel According to Malfew Seklew, Trevor Blake and I noticed an advertisement: “DO YOU KNOW WHAT A STUFFED CLUB IS“. No question mark, and wall of text endorsements including one from our man Malfew Seklew. I thought it was interesting enough to follow up on later, but low priority. The journal was part of the Little Journeys series published by Elbert Hubbard.

The journal stated “In these pages the reader will find medical advice on everything from dropsy to tuberculosis. This Club aims to train people into such good health they will be normal.” Tilden was a skeptic of pharmaceuticals and believed people would be healthy by lifestyle changes and “eliminating toxins.” All modern medical associations rank him as a “medical quack” and a “food crank”.

If you’ve read The Gospel According to Malfew Seklew  you will know that the Sirfessor definitely had his own ideas about how to live and eat for health. That, or he knew he had to fill up more pages than what he had to make a decent booklet to sell from a soap box! Since his book came out well after he was praising the work of Tilden, it is not a stretch to say that Tilden probably had some influence on the Sirfessor’s magnum opus.

The club in the illustration of the journals title appears to represent Hercules’ club (though a stuffed one). Hercules club was worn as an amulet 1,800+ years ago. Roman era Hercules’s Clubs appear from the 2nd to 3rd century, spread over the empire (including Roman Britain), mostly made of gold, shaped like wooden clubs.  Tacitus mentions a special affinity of the Germans for Hercules, stating

they say that Hercules, too, once visited them; and when going into battle, they sing of him first of all heroes.

During the Viking period, Hercules Club pendents were replaced by Thor’s Hammers, which were eventually replaced by Christian Crosses.

But what is a “stuffed club”?  Would you believe Dr. Tilden explains it very clearly in the back of a book titled The Etiology of Cholera Infantum: With the Hygienic and Dietetic Treatment (1909)?

Many find fault with the name, and it is not strange that they do, for it is meaningless until understood. The name, “A Stuffed Club,” within itself carries no suggestion. …No one besides myself can see exactly how “A Stuffed Club” fits every article that has ever been published in it…

Of all the colloquialisms or slang phrases that have ever come to my notice, nothing has carried such a clever, insinuating suggestiveness as “A Stuffed Club” and the meaning ascribed to it.

The expression was very popular in my boyhood, and was used in the following sense: If some one should act in a foolish manner, do something that was not in keeping with his usual custom, it would be said, “Someone should take a stuffed club to him,” or, “The fool! He should have known better; someone ought to take a stuffed club to him.”

When people failed to use good judgment — held to erroneous opinions — practiced fanaticism — allowed others to think for them — refused to progress — were inveigled into schemes and impossible dreams and were separated from their money — in fact, when unwise in any way, it was said of them, “They need a stuffed club— someone should take pity and use a stuffed club on them — a stuffed club would help the fools a little.”

A wink and the mention of a stuffed club was usually indicative of a foolish act or some form of incorrigibility on the part of the one referred to. Where people were especially dense or stupid it was necessary to take a stuffed club to them for the purpose of beating a little sense into them; if they needed correction they were said to be in need of a stuffed club.

Indeed, a “stuffed club” used to be a phrase people used, and no longer do. It is a club meant to startle and “WAKE UP!” its victim, rather than to do lasting harm. And regardless of how right or wrong or quirky Dr. Tilden’s opinions on medicine and health may have been, I really like his definition of a stuffed club. Where this knotted cudgel jumped from a signal of allegiance to a god, to a colloquialism, I do not know.

In the course of research, I obtained some letters and had no idea that it contained:

A 1902 letter on A Stuffed Club letterhead.

From Georgia Replogle, co-editor of the journal Egoism!!!  The Egoism journal is most notable for first serializing Walker’s The Philosophy of Egoism book, but it also contained writings from and about the anarchist and individualist discussion of the day. Walker’s book would later be reprinted as a single volume in 1905. It is in Egoism: The First Two Volumes 1890-1892 where I wrote the only known biographical sketch of Georgia and Henry Replogle.

I have absolutely no idea how long Georgia was associated with Tilden and his publication, or if there are more egoist connections, but that locked it in. It became a “must make” egoist object and the first Stand Alone t-shirt.

And so here it is! The front is just the logo, rendered with a white background to help it pop on the shirt a bit, and on the back I have reset some of the endorsements (including one by Elbert Hubbard‘s wife Alice!), and putting it on a super-soft gold t-shirt. Gold just seemed like the right color. I can’t wait to wear mine to the gym!

You can pre-order now to make sure you get your size: https://www.underworldamusements.com/product/sa1088
(only a small number of over-run shirts will be produced to sell after the pre-order.

A Unanimous Conviction.

The other day I passed by a large and apparently flourishing rock pile whereon many of my brothers were working with shameless lack of enthusiasm. One of these I recognized as belonging to a highly respectable family. To him I said, “does not your uncle have a most successful establishment at the sign of the three golden balls—surely he would give you a lift?” He turned on me a gaze of inexpressible anguish and replied: “He is my brother, but he will not help me. He said to me that my life was a damned failure, and that I was only fit for the rock pile.”

“Then the banker millionaire around the corner, he also is your brother; surely he will help you.” “No” he replied, “he calls me a—damned failure.” “But your brother in Italy who has grown fabulously rich in selling pieces of the true cross he will help you.”

“No, he too calls me a damned failure. Perhaps you do not know that Solomon is only an assumed name.”

“Pray who are you then?”

“I am Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Then I am compelled to say that your life has been a damned failure.”

“Thou almost persuadest me to cease being a Christian” he said.

“Go,” were his last words to me, “go into all the world and preach the salvation of Egoism to the children of men. Say to them that you saw Jesus of Nazareth on the rock (pile) of Mount Calvary and that by the unanimous opinion of all Altruists and Egoists he was adjudged a damned failure; that he does not wish to deceive the children of men any longer, but admits in the face of all the world that the greatest blunder and crime hitherto committed on earth has been my teaching, live for others. Tell them that on the rock pile, of my martyrdom I now meditate with tears of joy on Zarathustra’s new teaching which saith: Your love for your neighbor is your bad love for yourselves…. Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your ‘unselfishness.’ The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy but the I not yet. I counsel you not to love your neighbor but to love those who are the most remote…… One must learn how to love one’s self with a whole and healthy love, that one may find life with one’s self endurable and not go gadding about….. Such a gadding about baptizeth itself  ‘love unto one’s neighbor.’….. Verily it is no commandment for today and tomorrow to learn how to love one’s self. It is rather the finest, cunningest, last and most patient of arts….. The man of perception must not only be able to love his enemies but also to hate his friends….. Be sure to love your neighbor as your-selves,—but first of all be such as love themselves—as love themselves with great love, with great contempt….. My great love unto the most remote commandeth: ‘Spare not your neighbor.’ Man is a something that must be surpassed….. Your work is your neighbor. ‘This—is my way—where is yours?’……. In the end one experienceth nothing but one’s self….. I ask you to lose me and find yourselves…… Nobody telleth me new things so that I telleth mine own self unto myself….. He loveth his enemies but he taketh revenge for that on his friends.”

-VOLCANO.

The following review appeared in Reason magazine for Nov. 2017, and later online. It was written by Jesse Walker.

The most famous individualist anarchist journal of 19th century America was Liberty, edited by the fiery polemicist Benjamin Tucker. But Liberty wasn’t the movement’s only periodical, and anyone interested in that period of libertarian history should welcome any chance to examine the outlets edited by figures with different sensibilities. So it’s good to see Georgia and Henry Replogle’s journal Egoism reprinted in a hefty new book, Egoism: The First Two Volumes, 1890–1892 (Union of Egoists).

In some ways Tucker and the Replogles were peas in a pod: Each mixed the radical egoism of Max Stirner with the monetary schemes of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. But there are differences here too, with Egoism putting a stronger stress on feminism and free love. Neither Replogle was as talented a writer as Tucker, and the range of contributors here isn’t as large as Tucker’s stable. But if Egoism wasn’t ultimately as good a publication as Liberty, it’s still interesting in its own right.

Some introductory material provides historical context for the journal, including the entertaining tale of the editors’ brief stay in the town of Liberal, Missouri. Founded as an alleged haven for free thought by George Walser, a man who hoped to ban both churches and saloons from his city, Liberal attracted and then repelled the Replogles, who were driven out for espousing free love. Walser later converted to spiritualism, and in time the town would host vast conventions of people hoping to speak with the dead.

The “Selfish” Bauble.

Outside of posited plumb-line Anarchism and its venereal corollaries, we get no paper in exchange that does not propose saving society by some political magic, except “Progressive Thought,” of Olathe, Kansas, an official organ of the Labor Exchange. But it too has its besetting sin, in the shape of vociferous harp on selfishness, and of course the implied injunction to goodness, without conspicuous emphasis on bald justice and tempting expediency. If selfishness in any sense except that of inexpediency be a bad or unnecessary thing why does not “Progressive Thought” itself dispense with the practice of it as a consistent pose from which to chide the paper’s adversaries. If the editors are altogether unselfish why are they concerned about the greed and selfishness of others, or indeed, about anything. If some men wield the power to extort others’ production and service and can roll in voluptuous luxury while these others suffer and even die from need of that which they have themselves produced, the first cannot do so to the discomfiture of genuine unselfishness; that lauded and prated and canted attribute could not be selfish enough to begrudge anything to anybody, or even to bewail the fate of the exploited, for that would be choosing—thrusting in self and self’s preference decidedly contrary to that good unselfish interposition which belongs alone to dead people.

Now if in this view of it, the “Progressive Thought” people point out that selfishness is in this sense unescapable and necessary, but that there is still a difference between themselves, who struggle for equality of conditions, and those wealthy and powerful who struggle to grasp more and more wealth and power, which difference entitles their conduct to classification as comparative unselfishness; if this be the contention, then I point out that the “Progressive Thought ” people do not happen to be wealthy and powerful and haunted by that dread of dependence and comparative insignificance which equality of conditions would impose upon them if they were the wealthy on one side of the line as against the oppressed on the other side or they might see how it is the selfishness of the poorer that seeks equality of conditions for the advantage over worse ones, accounting for much of that equality credit, and thus how the poorer’s side of the line makes their choice of choice in the selfish sense, look quite as culpable as the other. It is dread of greater disadvantage and desire for at least equal advantage with their competitors that actuates the rich to grasp; and it is dread of greater disadvantage, and desire for equal advantage with our competitors of which the rich are the greatest, that actuates us who struggle for equal conditions. And, indeed, we go them one better in intensity of selfishness; their selfishness is satisfied with goods, but we not only fight for material conditions each the equal of the best, but besides are satisfied with nothing less than credit in the fight which compels the highest approval of mankind. We insist on the convenience of goods for ourselves and all that can be wrung from the broadest ethics, while they content themselves with goods and its cheap distinction alone. We are not satisfied as they are with possession-pride and material comfort for ourselves, but must have the psychological comfort of having all we look upon between others pander to our choice. So it happens that selfishness is not only the rational motive for conduct, but the most social for the community as a whole. It is only in its blind inexpediency that it can be objectionable, and certainly nothing could be a more striking example of such blindness than the crude manifestation of desiring others to be unselfish or the desire to be so considered ourselves.greater disadvantage and desire for at least equal advantage with their competitors that actuates the rich to grasp ; and it is dread of greater disadvantage, and desire for equal advantage with our competitors of which the rich are the greatest, that actuates us who struggle for equal conditions. And, indeed, we go them one better in intensity of selfishness; their selfishness is satisfied with goods, but we not only fight for material conditions each the equal of the best, but besides are satisfied with nothing less than credit in the fight which compels the highest approval of mankind. We insist on the convenience of goods for ourselves and all that can be wrung from the broadest ethics, while they content themselves with goods and its cheap distinction alone. We are not satisfied as they are with possession-pride and material comfort for ourselves, but must have the psychological comfort of having all we look upon between others pander to our choice. So it happens that selfishness is not only the rational motive for conduct, but the most social for the community as a whole. It is only in its blind inexpediency that it can be objectionable, and certainly nothing could be a more striking example of such blindness than the crude manifestation of desiring others to be unselfish or the desire to be so considered ourselves.

Then it turns out that selfishness is the basic principle of human action, of justice as well as of injustice; that justice is the competition of individual selfishness supplemented by intelligence. Hence there is in this line nothing to urge except intelligence, and nothing to chide except inexpediency. We can consistently appeal only to the interests of the oppressed by showing them where and how they are beaten, and to the interests of the oppressors by indicating why it won’t pay them to continue. This then leaves the epithet ” selfish” either a remissness of analysis to be corrected or a demagogic appeal to indiscriminating crudity, to be despised by just people.

Unfortunately the content of the letter is one of the business of journals right up until the last line, one assumes in response to an offer:

“We could make no use of the Anarchist-Communist literature, as our patrons are minus the Communism.”

Because of the mundane nature of the rest of the letter, we’ll leave it untranscribed, but still legible below: