The second-to-last chapter is titled “Other Libertarians” and this short bit from Walker is the last section in that chapter. It features two chapters culled from Walker’s book The Philosophy of Egoism that was serialized in the journal Egoism and wasn’t published in book form until 1915, two years after Liberty and the Great Libertarians was published.

While presented without distinction, the first paragraph is pulled from chapter 22 of The Philosophy of Egoism, but not the entirety, and the second paragraph is from chapter 5, but not the entirety. Even though the text is available in full elsewhere, they are god excerpts and I felt it was worth posting them here giving context that they were printed in the aformetioned book in 1913.

EGOISM
Dr. James L. Walker

What is good? What is evil? These words express only appreciations. A good fighter is a “good man” or a “bad man”! both words expressing the same idea of ability, but from different points of view. To the beggar a generous giver is a good man. To the master a servant is good when he cheerfully slaves for the master. A good subject is one obedient to his prince. A good citizen is one who gives no trouble to the State, but contributes to its revenues and stability. Evil is only what we do not find to our good, but what we have to combat. A horse is not good because strong and swift if he be “vicious” ; that is, if we find him hard to tame. A breed of dogs is good if readily susceptible of training to hunt all day or watch all night for the benefit of the owner. A wife is “good” if she will not be good to any man but her husband.

The love of money within reason is conspicuously an Egoistic manifestation, but when the passion gets the man, when money becomes his ideal, his god, we must class him as an Altruist. There is the characteristic of “devotion to another,” no matter that that other is neither a person nor the social welfare, nothing but the fascinating golden calf or a row of figures. We Egoists draw the line of distinction between the Egoist and the devotee. It is the same logically when a person becomes bewitched with another of the opposite sex so as to lose judgment and self-control, though this species of fascination is usually curable by experience, while the miser’s insanity cannot be reached. The love-sick man or woman has the illusion dispelled by contact with the particular person that caused it; but in certain cases absence or death prevents the remedy from being applied, and in some of these instances the mental malady is lifelong.

British Nietzschean elitist Anthony M. Ludovici (1882 – 1971) is not a name many modern readers would associate with egoism and Max Stirner, though I believe that is largely due to the narrowing of Stirner’s audience to the anarchist milieu. It is clear he is familiar with him along with the earliest Americans being exposed to the German’s works.

Recently in doing research relating to the School of Living and Ralph Borsodi, I noticed — was shocked, in fact — to see Ludovici was listed as part of an “Advisory Council” in a 1967 issue of their Journal The Way Out. Bersodi himself was influenced by Benjamin Tucker, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry George, Lysander Spooner, and Arthur Schopenhauer, among others. He rejected the “anarchist” label.

In Ludovici’s 1909 book Who is to be Master of This World? An Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, published just two years after the first English language edition of The Ego and His Own, he makes mention of Stirner in context of discussing Nietzsche:

From that time forward, Nietzsche began to regard our modern values “good” and “evil” with ever-increasing suspicion, and literally did not rest until he had formulated the theory expounded in his latter works.
Of course we had had moralists, or preferably immoralists, who, without offering a substitute, had attacked the Christian values. French books had been plentiful, and Stirner in modern times had presented us with a strikingly original and very deep work on the subject. * But the only favourable comment we find concerning any modern school of ethics, in Nietzsche’s works, relates to Herbert Spencer. The position Spencer assumes,, although not sanctioned by Nietzsche, is nevertheless declared to be “psychologically tenable.”

In the 1963 essay from The South African Observer titled The essentials of good government, Stirner is mentioned along-side other notable figures, though not in a flattering way:

This probably explains the frequency with which the advocates of Anarchism and newfangled policies like Socialism, Communism and other forms of State ownership of the means of production, together with all the grave errors in Psychology which these systems involve, emanate from middle-class minds; that is to say, the minds of men who have never experienced want and have in their family lines long enjoyed the safety of a well-regulated existence.
From the ancient Greek, Zeno (B.C. 342–267), who set his community, destitute of any government, against Plato’s ordered State, down to our William Godwin, the Frenchman, Proudhon, the German, Max Stirner, and men like Thoreau and Tolstoy, all these professed Anarchists have come from middle-class families, traditionally contented with their lot and belonging to a type which might be fancifully described as “Surfeited with Smugness”.

Certainly a great deal of time passed between the writing of those two items, over 50 years, in fact. It is wise to note that more time passed between these to mentions of Max Stirner than Max Stirner was even alive.

The following selection is from his book The Choice of a Mate (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1935). While one can discuss Ludovici’s other work and it’s compatibility or incompatibility with egoism, the following passage certainly cannot be disputed in its naked Stirnerite egoism. Not just vaguely egoistic, but explicit “enlightened egoism”.

The Choice of a Mate (excerpt)

From the very beginning it would be well for all young people to recognize that on this question of unselfishness and selfishness and the praise and blame commonly accorded to each, Christian teaching is psychologically false. Owing to its early appeal to the pariah and the outcast, this religion constantly reveals a psychology framed more on demagogic appeal than actual fact. The very command, “Love one another!” like the Mosaic command, “Honour thy father and thy mother”, is based on a misunderstanding of normal mental processes.
Love and honour are not voluntary; they are a natural, inevitable and quite involuntary reaction to the lovableness and honourableness of the object, whether neighbour or parent.
No command can make one love anyone who is not lovable. “Seek neighbours that are loveable so that you may inevitably love them”, would have been more sensible. “Love one another!” is shallow and reveals a poor, almost benighted grasp of human psychology.
You might just as well say, “Admire one another”, or “Esteem one another”. These reactions depend on certain qualities in the other, and cannot be auto-generated in response to a command even from a god.
The same remarks apply to the Mosaic “Honour thy father and thy mother!” The proper command would have been: “Parents, make yourselves honourable in the sight of your children!”
I take it that all intellectually honest persons know that in everything they do, they act either under compulsion, from inclination, or from self-interest. There is no such thing as a consistent course of so-called “unselfish” conduct that is not pursued for some kind of self-gratification. Charity is the most transparent of these.
Everybody, therefore, is consistently “selfish”. The wise, however, are “enlightened egoists”, i.e. they are “selfish” only up to the point when self ceases to be best served by “selfishness”, as, for instance, in their relationship to immediate dependents who can minister to their happiness, in their relationship to menials, retainers, and friends, all of whom may make life happy or the reverse, for a central figure. And the unwise are “unenlightened egoists”, i.e. they carry “selfishness” to a point which turns their environment against them, so that, in the end, “self” gets badly served and is made unhappy as the result of “selfishness”.
The mistake is to suppose that the “enlightened egoist” is “unselfish”, and that the “unenlightened egoist” is “selfish”. Both are “selfish” — if the word has any meaning at all, but whereas the former is so with intelligence, the latter is so as a dolt and dullard.

Some of the other people associated with/published in Invictus:
George H Smith (co-editor – author of Atheism: The case Against God)
Harry Elmer Barnes
Jeff Riggenbach (Listen to episode three of our podcast!)
Wendy McElroy (Index of Liberty, egoist feminism, and much more)
Michael Hoy (Loompanics Unlimited!)
Lysander Spooner
Murray N. Rothbard
John Zube
Pete McAlpine
Kerry Thornley

We are still raising funds to purchase an entire set of Libertarian Microfiche, to ensure that things like this don’t get lost forever.