Individualist writing is found where it is found, not where we always expect to find it. Individualist writing can come from dairy merchants like Max Stirner, school teachers like Dora Marsden, booksellers like Ragnar Redbeard, mongers like Malfew Seklew – and members of the Industrial Workers of the World like Woodby Siantific. This essay was found in The Industrial Pioneer Vol. 2 No. 2 (June 1924). Even if this was written as a parody of egoism, it is an informed parody. Emphasis as in the original.

What is the I of Me and You and the other one billion, five hundred million nine hundred and ninety-nine specimens of the Homo Genus that happen to be moping around on this dust mote?

My Soul, Spirit, Will, Consciousness, Ego, Mentality and Mind are subordinate to I.

I boast of my strong Will, yet that Will never functions without Initiative from I.

I think of my Mind as a supreme property of the Man, but I frequently say I Will change my Mind.

Others ridicule my Mind; they may sneer at my mental capacity; my soul becomes rebellious when subjected to great agony; but I have never been humiliated. I will not submit.

There was no dawn of creation; there can be no twilight; but at another point in the cycle of Universal Activities, when protoplasmic cells first evolved out of rock, I was there.

I am the author of all Natural Law, but my feeble consciousness has not been able to comprehend these laws. The Human Body, possessed of splendid antennae and three stage set, receives all my messages, but foolishly disregards those designed to interfere with excessive indulgences.

I have many vices and more virtues. The latter have been largely suppressed. Sometimes they are reflected in You, so, if I like you it is the I of me that is admired. And when I hate You it is only the unwholesome part of Me that is hated.

My ascension to happiness is hardly begun. The several weak instrumentalities with which I have to express my great fulness, the beauty and love that urges from within, restrain my progress. My Mentality, associated with the grossly material things that it contacts, cannot vision possibilities. My Will cannot negotiate the high walls of Formality, Precedent, alleged Power, Dogma and Fear.

My greatest attribute is Imagination, but it is in still the foetal stage. When it is born and large enough to play and co-operate with my other child, WILL, the two of them will arouse the old nurse-maid, Consciousness, to a new conception of Life.

Old grandmother Consciousness will be amazed at the adeptness of these two youngsters. They will quickly explore the small domain in which she lives. They will perceive and comprehend things hitherto undiscovered by her. They will insistently demand greater scope for activity.

Brushing the webs from her eyes she will stare into cosmic depths and behold most wondrous truths. It is almost amusing to contemplate her perplexed expression as she discovers I in every nook and unchecked crevice of the Universe.

Then note the sweet, complaisant smile of satisfaction as she becomes aware, intuitively as it were, that I am firmly but gently guiding her destiny. It will be so, for in that day it will be known that I AM!