* Although one reads hundreds of times: Immediacy is annulled—one never sees a single statement about how a person manages to exist in this manner. One might conclude from this that the writers are poking fun at one and themselves privately exist by virtue of immediacy571 and in addition make their living by writing books about its being annulled. Perhaps the system is not even very difficult to understand, but what makes the appropriation very difficult is that all the middle terms have been skipped over—about how the individual suddenly becomes a metaphysical I-I, to what extent it is feasible, to what extent permissible, to what extent all the ethical has not been set aside, to what extent the system’s eternal truth, as presupposition (with respect to the existential, psychological, ethical, and religious) does not have a necessary little lie, for want of another introduction, and to what extent the system’s heavenly text in explanation does not offer rather shabby notes as well as an ambiguous tradition that exempts the initiates from thinking anything decisive even about what is most decisive. An immediate genius can become a poet, artist, mathematician, etc., but a thinking person must, after all, know his relationship to the human existence lest he, despite all the German [tydske] books, become a monstrosity [Utydske] (with the help of the pure being, which is an unthing). He must indeed know how far it is ethically and religiously defensible to close himself up metaphysically, to be unwilling to respect the claim life has—not upon his many blissfully transporting thoughts, not upon his fancied I-I, but upon his human you, whether life calls him to pleasure and happiness and enjoyment or to terror and trembling, because [VI 449] thoughtlessly to remain unaware of that is just as dubious. And if he is able thoughtlessly to disregard this, 572then try something with that kind of a thinker: place him in Greece—and he will be laughed to scorn in that chosen land, so fortunate in its beautiful location, so fortunate in its rich language, so fortunate in its unparalleled art, so fortunate in the happy temperament of its people, so fortunate in its beautiful girls, but first and last so fortunate in its thinkers, who sought and struggled to understand themselves and themselves in existence before they tried to explain all existence.
[VI 450] is different from an earlier one, what is lost and what is gained, what the first immediacy can do that the second one does not dare, what the first immediacy loves that the second does not dare, what certainty the first immediacy has that the second does not have, what is its joy that the second does not have, etc., for it is a very prolix matter. In another sense it is easily exhausted if one does not have the Socratic horror of being in error but has the modern foolhardiness to think that if one merely says it then one is that—just as in the fairy tale one becomes a bird by saying certain words.573
Although ordinarily I am not inclined to wish and am far from wanting to believe that I would be aided by the fulfilled wish, I nevertheless wish that a Socratically scrupulous man would have such an existing character come into existence before our eyes so that by hearing him we could see him. By no means do I think that if I read such a narrative one hundred times I would advance one single step if I, suffering, did not personally arrive at the same position. Praised be the righteous rule that in the world of spirit gives everyone his due and does not let someone in mortal danger and with utmost effort acquire in misery what someone else thoughtlessly and stupidly dozes into.
But the issue itself, the idea of forgiveness of sins, is extraneous to the task the imaginary construction has assigned itself, for Quidam is only a demonic figure oriented to the religious, and the issue is beyond both my understanding and my capacities. I shall not shirk it by saying that this is not the place, as if it were the place and perhaps the time and the space on paper that I lacked, since on the contrary I rather much believe that once I had understood it myself I would surely find the place and time and the space for exposition.
A Concluding Word
My dear reader—but to whom am I speaking? Perhaps no one at all is left. Probably the same thing has happened to me in reverse as happened to that noble king whom a sorrowful message taught to hurry, whose precipitous ride to his dying [VI 451] beloved has been made unforgettable by the unforgettable ballad574 in its celebration of the hundred young men who accompanied him from Skanderborg, the fifteen who rode with him over Randbøl Heath, but when he crossed the bridge at Ribe the noble lord was alone. The same, in reverse, to be sure, and for opposite reasons, happened to me, who, captivated by one idea, did not move from the spot—all have ridden away from me. In the beginning, no doubt, the favorably disposed reader reined in his swift steed and thought I was riding a pacer, but when I did not move from the spot, the horse (that is, the reader) or, if you please, the rider, became impatient, and I was left behind alone: a nonequestrian or a Sunday rider whom everybody outrides.
Inasmuch as there is nothing at all to hasten after, I have forever and a day for myself and can talk with myself about myself undisturbed and without inconveniencing anyone. In my view, the religious person is the wise. But the person who fancies himself to be that without being that is a fool, but the person who sees one side of the religious is a sophist. Of these sophists I am one, and even if I were capable of devouring the others I would still not become fatter—which is not inexplicable as in the case of the lean cows in Egypt,575 for with respect to the religious the sophists are not fat cows but skinny herring. I look at the religious position from all sides, and to that extent I continually have one more side than the sophist, who sees only one side, but what makes me a sophist is that I do not become a religious person. The very least one in the sphere of religiousness is infinitely greater than the greatest sophist.576 The gods have alleviated my pain over this by granting me many a beautiful observation and by equipping me with a certain amount of wittiness, which will be taken away from me if I use it against the religious.
Sophists can be grouped in three classes. (1) Those who from the esthetic reach an immediate relation to the religious. Here religion becomes poetry, history; the sophist himself is enthusiastic about the religious, but poetically enthusiastic; in his enthusiasm he is willing to make any sacrifice, even lose his life for it, but does not for that reason become a religious person. At the peak of his prestige, he becomes confused and lets himself be confused with a prophet and an apostle. (2) Those who from the immediate ethical enter into an [VI 452] immediate relation to the religious. For them religion becomes a positive doctrine of obligation, instead of repentance being the supreme task of the ethical and expressly negative. The sophist remains untested in infinite reflection, a paragon of positive epitomization. Here is the sphere of his enthusiasm, and without guile he has joy in inspiring others to the same. (3) Those who place the metaphysical in an immediate relation to the religious. Here religion becomes history, which is finished; the sophist is finished with religion and at most becomes an inventor of the system. —The masses admire the sophists because—in comparison with the poetic intuition in which the first category loses itself, in comparison with the positive striving toward a goal outside oneself that beckons the second category, in comparison with the enormous result that the third category acquires by putting together what is finished—they are magnanimously unconcerned about themselves. But the religious consists precisely in being religiously, infinitely concerned about oneself and not about visions, in being infinitely concerned about oneself and not about a positive goal, which is negative and finite because the infinitely negative is the only adequate form for the infinite, in being infinitely concerned about oneself and consequently not deeming oneself finished, which is negative and perdition. —This I do know, but I know it with a balance of spirit and therefore am a sophist like the others, for this balance is an offense against the holy passion of the religious. 577But this balance in the unity of the comic and the tragic, which is the infinite concern about oneself in the Greek sense (not the infinite religious concern about oneself), is not devoid of significance in illuminating the religious. Thus in a certain sense I am further from the religious
than the three classes of sophists, all of whom have made a beginning in it, but in another sense I am closer, because I see more clearly where the religious is and consequently do not make the mistake by grasping something particular but make the mistake of not grasping it.
This is how I understand myself. Satisfied with the lesser—hoping that the greater may some day be granted me, engaged in the pursuits of the spirit in which it seems to me every human being is bound to have abundance enough for the longest life, even if this were composed of nothing but the longest days—I am happy in life, happy in the little world that is my environment. Some of my countrymen no doubt think that Copenhagen is a boring town and small.578 To me, on the contrary, Copenhagen, refreshed by the sea on which it lies and without being able even in winter to surrender the recollection of beech forests, seems to be the most fortunate place of [VI 453] residence I could wish. It is large enough to be a fair-sized city, small enough so that there is no market price on people. The statistical consolation they have in Paris over so and so many suicides,579 the statistical joy they have in Paris over so and so many superlative people, cannot intrude disturbingly and churn the individual into a froth so that life has no meaning, his Sabbath no comfort, his festival day no joy, because everything slips away into emptiness or surfeit.
Some of my countrymen find people who live in this city not lively enough, not moved quickly enough. I do not think so. The speed with which thousands in Paris form a crowd around someone may well flatter the one around whom they gather, but I wonder if it pays for the loss of the more tranquil temperament that lets the single individual feel that he, too, still has some significance? Precisely because individuals have not entirely fallen in price, as if it took so and so many dozens to make one human being, precisely because the people fortunately are too slow to comprehend this half-hour erudition that only flatters the desperate and the hoodwinked, precisely for these reasons life in this metropolis is so entertaining for the person who knows how to delight in people, which is more entertaining and yields richer dividends than getting a thousand people to shout one’s acclaim for half an hour. The error here may rather be that one individual dreams about foreign places, a second individual is absorbed in himself, a third individual is prejudiced and separatistic, etc.—consequently that all these individuals prevent themselves from taking what is offered richly, from finding what is there in overabundance when it is sought. Someone who wants to do nothing at all could still, if he had his eyes open, lead a very enjoyable life merely by paying attention to others; and the person who also has his work does well to see to it that he does not become too trapped in it. But what a pity if there were many who missed out on what costs nothing, no entrance fee, no banquet expenses, no society dues, no trouble and worry, what costs the richest and poorest just as little and yet is the richest enjoyment, who missed out on an education that is not acquired from a particular teacher but from any passerby whatsoever, from a stranger in conversation, from any chance contact. Something on which one has in vain sought enlightenment in books suddenly dawns on one upon hearing a servant girl talking with another servant girl; a phrase that one has tried in [VI 454] vain to torture out of one’s own brain, sought in vain in dictionaries, even in the dictionary of the Academy of Sciences and Letters,580 is heard in passing—a soldier says it and does not dream what a rich man he is. And just as someone walking in the great forest, amazed at everything, sometimes breaks off a branch, sometimes a leaf, then bends down to a flower, now listens to the screeching of birds—so does one walk around among the populace, amazed at the wondrous gift of language, plucking this expression and that in passing, delighting in it and not being so ungrateful as to forget to whom he is indebted—so does one walk among the multitude of people, sees now a manifestation of a psychological state, then another, learns and learns and only becomes more eager to learn. One does not let oneself be deceived by books, as if human nature is so rarely found; one does not read about it in newspapers; the best part of the expression, the most endearing, the little psychological trait, is not often preserved.581
Some of my countrymen think that the mother tongue is not adequate to express difficult thoughts. To me this seems a strange and ungrateful opinion, just as it also seems strange and inordinate to champion it so ardently that one almost forgets to rejoice in it, to defend an independence so zealously that one’s zeal almost seems to suggest that one already feels dependent, and finally the polemical words become the excitement, not the delight of language the refreshment. I feel fortunate to be bound to my mother tongue, bound as perhaps only few are, bound as Adam was to Eve because there was no other woman, bound because it has been impossible for me to learn another language and thus impossible for me to be tempted to be supercilious and snobbish about my native language. But I am also happy to be bound to a mother tongue that is rich in intrinsic originality when it stretches the soul and with its sweet tones sounds voluptuously in the ear; a mother tongue that does not groan, obstructed by difficult thought, and perhaps the reason some believe it cannot express it is that it makes the difficulty easy by articulating it; a mother tongue that does not puff and sound strained when it stands before the unutterable but works at it in jest and in earnest until it is enunciated; a language that does not find far off what is close at hand or seek deep down what is readily available, because in its happy relation to the object it goes in and out like an elf, and like a child comes out with the felicitous [VI 455] comment without really knowing it; a language that is intense and emotional every time the right lover knows how to incite masculinely the language’s feminine passion, is self-assertive and triumphant in argument every time the right master knows how to guide it, adroit as a wrestler every time the right thinker does not let it go and does not let go of the thought; a language that even though it seems impoverished at a particular point really is not but is disdained like a humble, modest sweetheart who indeed has the highest worth and above all is not shabby; a language that is not without expressions for the great, the crucial, the eminent, yet has a lovely, a winsome, a genial partiality for intermediate thoughts and subordinate ideas and adjectives, and the small talk of moods and the humming of transitions and the cordiality of inflections and the secret exuberance of concealed well-being; a language that understands jest perhaps even better than earnestness—a mother tongue that captivates its children with a chain that “is easy to carry—yes, but hard to break.”582
Some of my countrymen think that Denmark is living on [tære paa] old memories. To me this seems to be a strange and ungrateful opinion that no one can approve who would rather be friendly and happy than sullen and grudging, for this only consumes [tære]. Others are of the opinion that Denmark faces a matchless future; some who feel misjudged and unappreciated also console themselves with the thought of a better posterity. But the person who is happy with the present and is adept at inventiveness when it comes to being satisfied with it does not really have much time for matchless expectations, and he does not let himself be disturbed by them any more than he reaches out for them. And the person who feels unappreciated by his contemporaries does indeed speak strangely in promising a better posterity. For even if it were so that he was not appreciated, and even if it were so that he would become well known in a posterity that esteemed him, it nevertheless is an injustice and a prejudice to say of this future generation that it is therefore better than the present one, that is, better because it thinks better of him. There is not that great a difference between one generation and the next; the very generation he is criticizing is in the situation of extolling what a former generation of contemporaries misjudged.
Some of my countrymen think that to be an author in [VI 456] Denmark is a poor way to make a living and wretched employment. They not only think that this is the case with such a dubious author as I am, one who does not have a single reader and only a few up to the middle of the book—whom they therefore do not even have in mind in their judgment—but they think this is also t
he case with distinguished authors. Well, after all, it is only a small country. But was it such a bad job to be a magistrate in Greece, even though it cost money to be one! Just suppose it were the case, suppose it came to be the case, that in Denmark it finally became an author’s lot that he had to pay a fixed sum every year for the work involved in being an author—well, what if it were then also the case that foreigners had to say, “In Denmark it is a costly matter to be an author; therefore there are not authors by the dozens, but then in turn they do not have what we foreigners call Stüber-fängere [catchpennies],583 something so unknown in Danish literature that the language does not even have a word for it.”
If it were conceivable (something I have not assumed) that there is a reader who has persevered and consequently has come to read this (something I have not imagined, for then I would not have written it), if he talked with others about what he read, some of my countrymen would perhaps say, “Pay no attention to such an author, do not listen to him—he is a seducer.”
And one of these “some” would perhaps go on to say, “Ordinarily one thinks of a seducer in connection with women, and even in this connection he is most often depicted in wild demonic passion, secretive and cunning. But this is not the dangerous kind of seducer even in connection with women. No, if I am to imagine such a person, then I shall imagine a young man rich in imagination and intellectually endowed. He does not crave the favor of any woman, and this indifference is not a cover for a secret passion, far from it; he is pursuing no girl, but he is an enthusiast. He does not go to dances with girls (in this respect he is far behind), but he seeks a place in a small sideroom off the ballroom and in a corner of the parlor. Then when the girls are somewhat tired from dancing, or when twilight falls and work stops and thoughts want to flap their wings, then he sits down; now it is his time. Then they listen to his talk, and with his imagination he lures them on into seductive ideals, and as he talks he stretches the expectancy of the aspiring soul and the claim of presentiment. [VI 457] He craves nothing for himself. And once again they seek the pleasure of the dance and the daily pursuits begin again, but secretly they ponder the lofty things he had talked about and they long to imbibe once again the spellbinding illusion. He himself remains unchanged, for his delight is only in the longing for the ideal in his words and thoughts. And when he is silent, it seems to him as if there were a deep sorrow in his soul; in his depression he feels like a blind old man whom talking, like a child, leads through life. So the little misses listen to him, and little by little they are seduced; they seek in vain for what he described, seek it in vain in him, seek it in vain in themselves, and yet they long for his conversation and grow old by hearing it. And when a little earlier the old aunt said to the girls, ‘Be careful, girls. Don’t listen to him! He is a seducer,’ they smiled and said, ‘He! He is the nicest man, and in his association with us is so careful, so reserved, as if he did not see us or as if he were afraid of us, and what he says is beautiful, oh, so beautiful!’ A poet can be a seducer of that sort. Well, this author surely does not have such powers, nor does he chase after women, but nevertheless in a different sphere he is a seducer. Essentially he has nothing to say, is far from being dangerous—it is not for this reason I warn against him, for as a deeply philosophical friend has said to me: Anyone who looks at him with a genuinely speculative eye sees with half a glance that he, himself defrauded by life by being merely an observer, has become not the deceiver but the deception, the objective deception, the pure negation. Only in an age when temperaments are so intensely agitated that the rule ‘He who is not with us is against us’584 is doubly in force, only in an age when individuals, raised to a higher power by the great crises and the great decisions confronting them, can easily be damaged even by the least little thing, only in such an age could one be tempted to waste a word on warning against him, if it is at all necessary. He is a seducer in a different sphere. Arrayed in mockery and thereby deceptive, at heart he is an enthusiast. He also continually sits close by where people are gathered, he also loves the quieter moment when the ears of the immature young eagerly drink his false teaching. Himself intoxicated in dreams and fortified in illusions, extinct as an observer, he wants to induce everyone to [VI 458] believe that the single individual has infinite significance and that this is the validity of life. Therefore do not listen to him, for what he wants, yet without having any evil intention that would make him dangerous, is to seduce you in a period of ferment to sit still in the undivided estate of quietism in the futile thought that everyone is supposed to attend to himself; he wants to persuade you to betray the great tasks that need united effort but also give rich reward to all. See, because he has not understood this, because he lacks earnestness and positivity, his existence is only an optical illusion, his words are indeed as weak and impotent as a ghost’s, and all his statements are only, as the poet says, like the pearl-gray color of an old gate, like snow in a summer rill.585 But you who are alive and children of the age, are you not aware that life is quaking? Do you not hear the martial music that is signaling, do you not sense the urgency of the moment, so that not even the hour hand can keep up! From whence this frothing unless it is boiling in the depths; from whence these terrible labor pains if the age is not pregnant! Therefore, do not believe him, do not listen to him, for in his mocking and drawn-out way, which is supposed to be Socratic, he probably would say that from the labor pains one cannot directly deduce the outcome of birth since labor pains are like nausea, which is worst when one has an empty stomach. Nor does it follow that everyone who has a distended belly is about to give birth—it could also be flatulence. Likewise, neither does it follow that everyone who has an obstructed abdomen is about to give birth, since it could be something completely different, as Suetonius reminds us when he says of one of the Roman emperors: vultus erat nitentis [the face was that of one who is straining].586 So do not be concerned about him at all, do not let yourselves be disturbed by him. He has not been able to legitimize himself as authorized in the age, he is not the man to come up with the least little thing the age could demand. He is unable to make a single proposal or to advance with positive earnestness in a posture of concern at the thought of the great task of the moment. But do not incite him, for then he could possibly become dangerous; let him go for what he is, a mocker and an enthusiast in uno [in one], a bourgeois-philistine in toto [throughout], a deceiver, pure negation.587 If you do that, then [VI 459] he is no seducer.”
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