The Egoist Is Necessarily a Sinner before What Is "Sacred"

If a European kills a crocodile, he acts as an egoist against crocodiles, but he has no scruples about doing this, and he is not accused of “sin” for it. If instead an ancient Egyptian, who considered the crocodile to be sacred, had nonetheless killed one in self-defense, he would have, indeed, defended his skin as an egoist, but at the same time, he would have committed a sin; his egoism would have been sin,—he, the egoist, a sinner.—From this, it should be obvious that the egoist is necessarily a sinner before what is “sacred,” before what is “higher”; if he asserts his egoism against the sacred, this is, as such, a sin.

The sacred crocodile marks the human egoist as the human sinner. The egoist can cast off the sinner and the sin from himself only if he desecrates the sacred, just as the European beats the crocodile to death without sin because His Holiness, the Crocodile, is for him a crocodile without holiness.

--Max Stirner, Stirner's Critics, trans. Wolfi Landstreicher (Berkeley, CA: LBC Books, 2012), 77-78.