TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
If the style of this book is found unattractive, it will show that I have done my work ill and not represented the author truly; but, if it is found odd, I beg that I may not bear all the blame. I have simply tried to reproduce the author's own mixture of colloquialisms and technicalities, and his preference for the precise expression of his thought rather than the word conventionally expected.
One especial feature of the style, however, gives the reason why this preface should exist. It is characteristic of Stirner's writing that the thread of thought is carried on largely by the repetition of the same word in a modified form or sense. That connection if ideas which has guided popular instinct in the formation of words is made to suggest the line of thought which the writer wishes to follow. If this echoing of words is missed, the hearing of the statements on each other is in a measure lost; and, where the ideas are very new, one cannot afford to throw away any help in following connection. Therefore, where a useful echo (and there are few useless ones in the book) could not be reproduced in english, I have generally called attention to it in a note. My notes are distinguished from the author's by being enclosed in brackets.
One or two of such coincidences of language, occurring in words which are prominent throughout the book, should be borne constantly in mind as a sort of Keri perpetuum: for instance, the identity in the original words "spirit" and "mind," and of the phrases "supreme being" and "highest essence." In such cases I have repeated the note where it
