Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  This is my medical diagnosis. It has not, I am sorry to say, given me much consolation, even if it is always necessary for me to make everything clear. If I had been consulted and if I had dared to say that this was the sufferer’s condition, my mind would be set at rest with regard to the onset of delirium. Since I am not the physician but the guilty party, this does not help me. The poison works on me myself: the poison of reflection that I have developed within myself in order if possible to absorb all reflection out of her. I remember that she once said to me that it must be dreadful to be able to explain everything this way. At this point she could have gained an idea of how little she understood my reflection, because she hardly grasped how welcome this remark was to me, or in what way it was welcome.

  But I have come to understand and to experience that it could be possible; my depression has also stamped this possibility on my mind. If the unfortunate person, ensnared by insanity in its infatuation, suffers nothing, to have to experience sympathetically the insanity of another, ceaselessly gazing at the dubious interpretation of an eternal responsibility—alas, the mere thought of it is enough to get the better of a person. And yet if it were to happen, I certainly would dare to seek her out, and it would be a relief to me, but then suppose she [VI 258] recovered, and my problem came back; then it probably would be my turn. I can watch and keep vigil beside her night and day, but I cannot sleep, and my agony is not overcome by “every night resting at my wife’s side”184 when it is not decided whether she can be my wife.

  Now I shall put out the lights—I feel best when everything is dark around me and I myself am silent. What is the use of talking—after all, everybody would say it is a lie. Be that as it may. It is not my intention to defend my case against opponents, neque thesin meam publico colloquio defendere conabor [and I shall not attempt to defend my thesis in a public debate].185 And what, then, is the case in which I dispute with God? Just suppose it were about nothing, suppose she had changed her mind, suppose she were delighted to take back every word 186that is working together with my depression to create this terrible thing—what then? The inevitable result would be that she would bring a nemesis upon her own head—it would be apparent that she had confused her person with an eternal relationship of duty and responsibility to God and that she thereby revealed herself in all her insignificance. The case has gone to a higher court. I have granted her every possible ideality; neither for her sake nor for my own could I wish ever again to have the comic so close to me.

  April 5. Morning.

  A year ago today. Sure enough, today I received the declaration and the last will and testament witnessed to and confirmed by—my little confirmand, for this is precisely the impression she makes on me, such a little miss. And yet she does not want to act; she seems rather to want to incite me so that I must become a worshiper. In anyone else, I would say that this is the beginning of a bit of coquetry; of her I dare not and shall not say that, not even think it. But this is one of the most ridiculous situations I have experienced. I am, as I have all too deeply felt, much too old for her, but by acting in this way she certainly makes me so disproportionately older that I involuntarily think of an old schoolmaster187 who ex cathedra [from the chair, with authority] said to a pupil, “If you do this [VI 259] again, you are really going to have your ears boxed . . . . . and I do believe you are going to get it right now.”

  This, then, is the result of my ideal conception of duty. If it could become clear to me that, literally speaking, I had a duty to all people, I would be the most troubled person in the whole country. I have an ideal conception of every relationship of duty, and since my independent position has resulted in my not assuming any, this conception still has a primitivity of childhood, an enthusiasm of youth, a concern of depression that makes the conception itself perhaps the best I have but also commits me to the most uncompromising effort.

  Why, then, should she introduce into this relationship what to me is ridiculous? If she really did not care for me, well, I am ready to travel. I have been religiously crushed and very likely will be so again as soon as I take on the responsibility, but I cannot be erotically crushed. If she is in earnest about this, then the thing to do is to say something like this straightforwardly, say it decorously, respect oneself in everything one does in this regard, but not become peevish and lash out, for that only makes everything ludicrous. 188Even in her behavior there may be an acknowledgment of me against her will, for it is a kind of obstinacy. She must know, of course, that she has just as much power as I, and a person who has the power does not act that way.

  April 5. Midnight.

  A Possibility189

  Langebro [Long Bridge]190 has its name from its length; that is, as a bridge it is long but is not much as a roadway, as one easily finds out by passing over it. Then when one is standing on the other side in Christianshavn, it in turn seems that the bridge must nevertheless be long, because one is far, very far away from Copenhagen. It is immediately evident that one is not in the capital and royal-residence city; in a certain sense one misses the noise and traffic in the streets; one seems to be out of one’s element by being outside the meeting and parting, the haste and hurry in which the most diverse matters equally assert themselves, outside the noisy community in which everyone contributes his share to the general racket. 191But in Christianshavn a quiet peacefulness reigns. People there do not seem to be acquainted with the aims and goals that prompt the inhabitants of the capital to such noisy and busy activity, do not seem to be aware of the heterogeneity [VI 260] that is at the root of the capital’s boisterous movement. Here it is not as if the earth moves—indeed, shakes—under one’s feet; one stands as securely as any stargazer or a submarine telescope gazer could wish for the sake of his observations. One looks about in vain for that social poscimur [we are summoned]192 of the capital, where it is so easy to go along, where at any moment one can get rid of oneself, at any hour find a seat in an omnibus, everywhere encompassed by diversions; here one feels abandoned and imprisoned in the stillness that isolates, where one cannot get rid of oneself, where one is encompassed on all sides by lack of diversion. In some sections the streets are so empty that one hears one’s own footsteps. The enormous warehouses contain nothing and bring in nothing, for echo is certainly a very quiet tenant, but when it comes to business and payment, it is no good to the owner. In the really populated sections, life is far from being extinct; nevertheless, far from being strident; it is like a quiet human noise that at least for me resembles the droning of summer, that by its droning suggests the stillness out in the country.

  How sad one becomes upon entering Christianshavn, for out there among the empty warehouses recollection is sad, and what one sees in the overpopulated streets is sad, there where the eye finds only a scene of poverty and misery. 193One has crossed the salt water to reach it, and now one is far, far away, off in another world where lives a butcher who deals in horsemeat, where in the only city square stands but one ruin from that great fire194 that did not, as superstition usually has it, burn everything and leave the church intact, but burned the church and left the reformatory standing. One is in a poor market town where only the haunts of suspicious characters and the special surveillance of the police are reminders of the nearness of the capital city. Otherwise it is just as in a market town: the quiet noise of people, that everyone knows everyone, that there is a poor wretch who at least every other day serves as a drunkard, and that there is a mentally disordered fellow, known to all, who shifts for himself.

  Some years ago at a specific hour of the day, a tall, slender man could be seen walking with measured steps back and forth on the flagstones in the southern section of Overgaden over Vandet.195 Hardly anyone failed to notice the peculiarity in his walks, for the distance he covered was so short that even [VI 261] the uninitiated were bound to become aware of him, that he did not enter shops and that he was not, like others, out for a stroll, either. Anyone who observed him frequently could see in his gait an image of th
e force of habit. A skipper who is accustomed on shipboard to stroll the length of the deck chooses on land a stretch of similar length and then mechanically walks back and forth: so also this wanderer or bookkeeper, as people called him. When he came to the end of the street, the tug of habit was apparent, the reverse of an electric shock: he came to a halt, almost in a military tempo, stood, lifted his head, swung around, dropped his eyes to the ground again, and thereupon walked back, and so on.

  He was, of course, well known in the whole neighborhood, but even though he was mentally disordered, he was never exposed to any insult; on the contrary, the neighbors treated him with a certain respect. Conducive to this were his wealth and also his charitableness and his attractive appearance. It is true that his countenance had the impassive expression characteristic of a certain kind of mental disorder, but his features were handsome, his figure erect and well formed, his attire very meticulous, even elegant. Moreover, his mental disorder manifested itself most clearly only in the forenoon between eleven and twelve o’clock, when he paced the flagstones between Børnehus [Orphanage] Bridge and the south end of the street. The rest of the day he presumably spent trailing after his unhappy concern, but it did not express itself in this way. He spoke with people, went on longer strolls, involved himself in many things, but between eleven and twelve o’clock no one for all the world could stop him from walking, make him walk farther, answer any question, or even respond to a greeting—he who otherwise was courtesy itself. Whether this hour had any special significance for him or there was a physical condition that occurred periodically—there are such cases—I never found out when he was alive, and after his death there was no one who could furnish me with more detailed information.

  Now, although the conduct of the nearby residents toward him was almost reminiscent of the conduct of the Indians toward a mentally disordered person, whom they venerated as a wise man, in private they possibly had many conjectures as to the cause of his misfortune. It happens not infrequently that by this kind of conjecturing the so-called sagacious people betray just as much disposition to lunacy or perhaps more foolishness than anyone mentally disordered. The so-called sagacious people are often so stupid as to believe everything a lunatic says, and not infrequently stupid enough to believe that everything he says is lunacy, although many a time no one is more cunning at hiding what he wants to hide than a [VI 262] mentally disordered person, and although many a word from him contains a wisdom of which the wisest need not be ashamed. This no doubt explains how the same view that thinks that in the governance of existence a grain of sand or an accident determines the outcome can hold also in psychology, for it is the same view if one sees no deeper cause for insanity but regards insanity as easily explained by nothing, just as mediocre actors believe that acting the role of an intoxicated person is the easiest of tasks, which is true only if one is sure of having a mediocre audience to see the acting.

  The bookkeeper, however, was spared because he was loved, and the conjectures were so well kept in private that I actually never heard more than one. Maybe they did not have more in private, either. That, too, I may assume and am not averse to it, lest my stubborn suspicion that they had many conjectures in private might betray in me a disposition to foolishness. The conjecture was that he had been in love with a queen of Spain, and this conjecture was an attempt doomed to failure because it did not even pay attention to a very noteworthy piece of evidence concerning him—a decided partiality for children. Along this line, he did a great deal of good, actually used his wealth for this, which explains why the poor people sincerely loved him; and many a poor woman impressed upon her child that, among other things, he should greet the bookkeeper respectfully. But between eleven and twelve o’clock in the morning he never responded to any greeting. I myself often witnessed how many a poor woman walked past him with her children and greeted him in such a friendly and respectful way, and the children likewise, but he did not look up. And after passing him, the poor woman shook her head. 196The situation was touching, for in a singular way and in a peculiar sense his charitableness was gratis. The pawnbroker takes six percent for a loan, and many a rich man and many a successful man and many a man in power and many a middleman between these people and the poor sometimes take usurious interest on a gift, but with regard to the bookkeeper the poor woman is not so ready to envy him or to be dejected by his misery or to be dismayed by the public-welfare tax [Fattigskat], which the poor [Fattige] do not pay in money but expiate with bent backs and humiliated souls, for she probably felt that her honorable and noble benefactor (this, of course, is the poor people’s expression) was more unfortunate than she—she who received from the bookkeeper the money she needed.

  197But it was not merely to have an opportunity to do good that children occupied him—no, it was the children themselves, and in a most singular way. Except for the hour between [VI 263] eleven and twelve o’clock, as soon as he saw a child, the flat look in his countenance became animated and all sorts of moods were reflected in it. He paused with the child, spoke with him, and during all this regarded the child as attentively as if he were an artist who painted nothing but children’s faces.

  This is what one saw on the street, but anyone who saw his apartment was bound to be even more astonished. Often we gain a completely different impression of a person when we see him in his home or apartment than when we see him elsewhere in life, and this is far from being the case only with alchemists and others who devote themselves to the secret arts and sciences or with astrologers like Dapsul von Zabelthau,198 who while sitting in his living room looks like any other man but when he is sitting in his observatory wears a high peaked cap on his head, a gray calamanco cape, has a long white beard, and talks in a dissembled voice so that his own daughter cannot recognize him but thinks he is a Christmas goat.199 Ah, we often discover an entirely different kind of transformation when we see a person in his home or apartment and then compare what appears there with how the same person appears in life. This was not the case with the bookkeeper, and one only saw with amazement how earnest he was in his concern for children. He had collected a not inconsiderable library, but all the books were of physiological content. He had the costliest copper engravings and, in addition to that, whole series of his own sketches. These included faces executed with portraitlike detail, and then a series of faces related to each portrait, with the resemblance gradually disappearing, although a trace of it always remained. There were faces executed according to mathematical proportionality and the transformation in the whole face, conditioned by a change in the proportions, made graphic in clear outline. There were faces modeled according to physiological observations, and these in turn were tested by other faces that were sketched on the basis of hypotheses. It was family likeness in particular and consistencies in the relation of generations that concerned him physiologically, physiognomically, and pathologically. It is perhaps lamentable that his works did not see the light of day, for it is true that he was mentally disordered, as I subsequently [VI 264] learned in more detail, but such a person is not the poorest observer if his fixed idea becomes an instinct for discovery. An inquisitively interested observer sees a great deal, a scientifically interested observer is worthy of respect, a concerned interested observer sees what others do not see, but a mentally disordered observer perhaps sees the most of all; his observations are sharper and more persevering, just as certain animals have sharper senses than do human beings. But, of course, his observations must be verified.