Stirner admits that union cannot exist without freedom, being limited in all manner of ways. But absolute freedom is merely an ideal, a spectre, and the object of the union is not freedom, which it, on the contrary, sacrifices to individualism, but its object is only individualism. "Union is my creation, my implement, sacred to me, but has no spiritual power over my mind, and does not make me bow down to it; but I make it bow down to me, and use it for my own purposes. As I may not be a slave of my maxims, but without any guarantee expose them to my own continual criticism, and give no guarantee of their continuance, so, still less, do I pledge myself to the union for my future, or bind my soul to it; but I am and remain to myself more than State or Church, and consequently infinitely more than the union." Just as we again recognise in this loose and always breakable union (although Stirner does not say so) that union whose mission he had declared it to be "to render secure property gained by force," to arrange the relations of production and consumption, and at the same time to create a certain unity of the means of payment; so, too, we have in this "union of egoists," as its author called it, all the constructive thought that Stirner's book either can or does contain. For a man who only acknowledges one dimension, and only operates with one, considering everything not contained therein as non-existing, cannot form any of the combinations of which life consists, without coming into hopeless conflict with his principles. This Stirner has done, in spite of the vague and imaginary nature of his "union of egoists." As Stirner had to acknowledge that this union or society cannot exist without freedom being limited in every way, he declared--since after all he requires union for some things--"absolute freedom" a creature of the imagination, as the opposite to "individuality," which is the main thing. But can it be believed that Stirner has set up an "absolute freedom" all of his own making, to place it in contrast with individuality. In other words, freedom is merely the possibility of living one's individuality, of being an "individual" in Stirner's sense. Freedom is the absence of every outside influence; it may be understood in an exoteric or esoteric sense; and throughout his whole book Stirner has done nothing but strip the "Ego" from every sign of outside compulsion; he has made it the "only one" by freeing it with relentless logic from everything external. He has depicted this act of liberation as the goal of all culture; and it finally emerges that all this story of the "only Ego" is a delusion, for "union" excludes "absolute individuality" as well as "absolute freedom"--because the two are identical.