Benjamin Constant: “Nearly all men are obsessed with demonstrating they are something more than they are; the obsession of writers is to show they are statesmen. As a result, every great extrajudicial process, every use of illegal measures in situations of danger, century after century, has been recounted respectfully and described with satisfaction. The author, sitting peacefully at his desk, hurls his arbitrary ideas in all directions and attempts to introduce into his own style the same urgency that he recommends for the measures to be adopted; he believes for a moment that he holds power, as he preaches against its abuse; and his life of speculation is fired with the same demonstrations and strength and power that adorn his sentences; and in this way he gives himself some of the pleasures of authority, he yells out great words about salvation of the people, supremacy of law, public interest; he is awed by his own intelligence and amazed by his own energy. Poor fool! He is talking to men who are very happy to listen, and who, at the first opportunity, will try his theory out on him.

“This vanity, which has warped the judgment of many writers, has led to more problems than we realize in our civil conflicts.⁸⁹ All second-rate spirits, having obtained a share of authority, were inflated with all these maxims that appealed all the more to their stupidity since they were useful for cutting through the knots that couldn’t be unraveled. They dreamed of nothing else than precautions for public safety, great measures, coups d’état.”

Constant gives solid support for an idea that might seem like a paradox when we find it in Talleyrand—the idea that vanity had some relevance as a motivation behind the great events of the revolution. There is, in fact, a complicity between an emerging democratic half-wittedness and the blustering of certain gens de lettres who perhaps find themselves in a wretched position in society and now suddenly imagine they can rule the world from their desks. All this reaches its culmination and is reversed with Max Stirner. His predecessors were timorous, they felt the need to hide Whim behind some form of Good, and the first people they deceived were themselves. Stirner goes much further: he goes as far as to establish the most radical antisociality (as applied to the egoist and to the aphasic gang of egoists) as a reaction to the stifling pretense of pointing out to society what is its Good, compelling it to adhere to it.

Dismal Glory

While Napoleon’s armies were advancing toward Russia, an acrimonious war broke out between the Rebbes. The Rebbe of Lublin much preferred the oppressive rule of Alexander I to the enlightened ideas that Napoleon was supposed to be exporting. It is said that Napoleon one day saw the face of the Rebbe of Lublin appear before him: he was on the Russian front line pondering the strategy to eliminate the invaders. The Rebbe Rimanover, on the other hand, saw Napoleon as heralding the final battle before the advent of the Messiah. His thoughts turned once more to a possible acceleration of time. And he wanted to aid Napoleon’s victory with kabbalistic practices: he equated the baking of unleavened bread with the destruction of the Russian troops, ignoring the pleas of many Jewish mothers whose sons had enlisted. It is said that Napoleon described the Rebbe Rimanover as his strategist and presented him with a cloth to cover the Torah. But the last sign of Napoleon’s impending defeat came during one Sabbath prayer, when the Rebbe of Kozhenits misread the words nafol tippol (“you will certainly fall”) in Esther 6:13 as Napol tippol (“Napoleon will fall”).