To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection
TO NEED GOD IS A HUMAN BEING’S
HIGHEST PERFECTION227 [V 81]
“A person needs only a little in order to live and needs that little only a little while”—this is a high-minded proverb that is worthy of being received and understood as it wants to be understood; it is too earnest to want to be admired as a beautiful expression or an elegant locution. As such it is thoughtlessly used at times: one calls it out to the needy person, perhaps in order to console him in passing, perhaps also just to have something to say; one says it to oneself, even on a lucky day, since the human heart is very deceitful, is all too eager to take high-mindedness in vain and is proud of needing only a little—while using much. One says it to oneself on a day of need, and hurries ahead to welcome oneself admiringly at the goal—when one has accomplished something glorious—but one is as little served thereby as the proverb is.
“One needs it only a little while,” but just as it sometimes happens that when the days lengthen, winter also strengthens,228 so it is always the case that the winter of want and hardship makes the days long even if time and life are short.
How much, then, is the little that a person needs? This question cannot really be answered in general, and even someone who has had the experience—if not of needing little, at least of having to manage with little—even he will not be able to define in general what that little is. Just as time often brings new comfort to the sad, new buoyancy to the crushed, new compensation to the one who lost much, so it is solicitous about the sufferer, even when it continues to take. It seldom takes everything at once, but little by little, and in this way [IV 82] gradually makes him accustomed to doing without, until he himself perceives with amazement that he needs even less than what he once regarded as the least—in fact, so little that he would think with dismay of having to need so little (even though he would not express himself quite clearly, since the dismay really is not due only to needing little) and would almost be incensed by the contradictory idea of having to need it in order to be able to continue to need it, even though he would not quite understand himself, since the perfection definitely would not consist in coming to need more.
But how much, then, is the little that a person needs? Let life answer, and let the discourse do what the distress and hardship of life sometimes do—strip a person in order to see how little it is that he needs. And you, my listener, join in as you must or wish to join in according to your particular situation; the discourse will not arouse dismay if it really means to provide any comfort and does not aim to deceive you, as when the ice and snow of despair create the deceptive mountain torrent and accordingly the caravan shifts its course, proceeds into the desert, and perishes (Job 6:15-18). It cannot arouse your dismay if you yourself have experienced it and found comfort; and if you have not experienced it, then the discourse about it can dismay you only if your strength is in the observation that something like this happens only rarely. But who, then, is more wretched: the one who has experienced it, or the cowardly, weak fool who does not perceive that his comfort is a fraud, that it is of little benefit when calamity strikes, that this is the rare instance?
So take it away from him: wealth and power and dominion, the treacherous obligingness of false friends, the submissiveness of desires to the whims of wish, the triumphs of vanity over idolizing admiration, the flattering attention of the crowd, and all the envied grandeur of his appearance—he has lost all this and is content with less. Just as the world is unable to recognize him because of the drastic change, so he can scarcely recognize himself—so changed is he that he who needed so much now needs so much less. It is really far easier and far more gratifying to understand how this change can make him unrecognizable to himself than how that other change can make him unrecognizable to others. Is it not fatuous that clothes are what make a person unrecognizable, so that one does not know him without his clothes, and is it not dismal that clothes are the object of admiration, not the man! But a more devout observation readily sees that he is changing his clothes and is being dressed in festive apparel, because the earthly wedding garment and the heavenly are radically different. [V 83] But few possessions with contentment is already a great gain229—so take that away from him, not the contentment but his last possession. He does not suffer want, he does not go to bed hungry; but where he is going to obtain the necessities—that he does not know, not at night when he drops off to sleep from worry, not in the morning when he awakens to it, but he nevertheless obtains them: the little he needs in order to live. So, then, he is poor, and the word that is so hard to hear he must hear said of himself. He feels it doubly hard, because he himself did not choose this condition, as did the one who threw away his possessions in order to test himself and who is perhaps more easily reconciled to voluntary poverty but not therefore always better reconciled if he only renounced vanity by means of an even greater vanity.
“Needs only a little,” the proverb said, but to know that a person needs only a little without knowing for sure at any moment that he can obtain the little he needs—anyone who can bear this needs only a little; he does not even need (this does, after all, amount to something) to know that this little is secure. If, then, it is true that a person needs only a little—in order to live—then he needs no more, since he will indeed find a grave, and in the grave every human being needs equally little. Whether the dead man owns (alas, what a strange contradiction), perhaps for a hundred years, the grave in which he lies or he has had to elbow his way in among others,230 has had to fight his way ahead even in death in order to have a little place, they own equally much and need equally little and need that for only a little while. But the first little while that the proverb speaks about may become long, because even if the way to the grave was not long, if you perhaps not infrequently saw him wend his weary way out there in order to conquer with his eyes the little land he intended to occupy as a dead man, could not the way become very long in another sense? If he sometimes became despondent, if he did not always understand that a person needs only a little, did you have nothing else to say to him than a repetition of that proverb? Or did you probably say to him something that came quite naturally, so naturally that in your heart even you yourself perhaps did not have confidence in the comfort you were offering to another: Then be contented with the grace of God.231
Pause now a moment, lest everything be confused—thought, discourse, and language—lest everything be confused in the sense that the relation certainly remains the same but only by being reversed, so that that man is the one who has the comfort and you are the one who needs it, so that he is the rich man and you are the destitute one, although it was [V 84] completely turned around until you heard the little magic formula that transformed everything. Perhaps you did not even notice it yourself; one treats many a word this way, just as the child treats a momentous word, without discovering the thought’s sting in it that wounds unto death in order to save life.232 To be contented with the grace of God! The grace of God is indeed the most glorious of all. We certainly shall not dispute about that, since basically this is every human being’s deepest and most blessed conviction. But very seldom does he think about it and ultimately, if he really wants to be honest, yet without being quite clear himself about what he is doing, he applies to this idea that old proverb: Too little and too much spoil everything. If he were to think the thought in its eternal validity, it would promptly aim a fatal blow at all his worldly thinking, aspiring, and pursuing, turn everything upside down for him, and this he cannot long endure. Then he relapses to the low level of the worldly, to his ordinary conversation and way of thinking. In fact, the older a person becomes, the more difficult it is for him to learn a new language, especially one that is so very different. Once in a while he notices that there is something wrong with the way he uses these words mixed in with all his worldly conversation; he has a bad conscience about the words and derives no blessing from them. Yet the grace of God is indeed the most glorious of all.
But now if a person possessed something that surely is not so glorious, possessed all the treasures of the earth, and you then said to him: Be contented with it—he would no doubt smile at you. If he himself said to you: I shall be contented with it—you would probably be shocked, since what more could he demand, and what brashness to be willing to be contented with the most! What one is contented with must be the little, but to be contented with the most glorious of all seems an odd way to talk; and that this comfort is suggested by a person who himself does not comprehend it is still rather odd, as if someone (and not without sympathetic concern) gave the destitute person a penny, admonishing him to be contented with it, although this penny made its receiver the possessor of the whole world. Would it not be odd that the giver himself could think so poorly of the gift he offered that he accompanied it with the admonition to be contented! Or would it not be as if a man, on his way to a banquet to which he had been invited by a powerful personage, met a lowly person to whom he said (in order to offer him a kind of comfort): Be contented with sitting down to dinner in the kingdom of [V 85] heaven!233 Or if the lowly person himself was articulate and said: Alas, I was not invited by the powerful one and cannot accept his invitation, either, since I am invited elsewhere and must be contented with sitting down to dinner in the kingdom of heaven—would this not be an odd way to speak? The more one thinks about it, the stranger earthly life and human language become. Right in the middle of all the earthly and worldly difference, which is jealous enough of itself, the God-difference is thoughtlessly mixed—indeed, even in such a way that basically it is shut out. To come in the name of the king opens every door for a person, but to come in God’s name is the last thing he should try; and the person who must be contented with that must be contented with little. If he came to the door of the mighty one, if the servant did not even understand from whom he brought greetings, if the mighty one himself impatiently came out and saw the lowly person who was supposed to bring greetings from God in heaven—perhaps the door would be shut against him.
Yet the discourse does not want to take you by surprise, my listener, or to produce a sudden effect. When the words say: to be contented with the grace of God, the reason must be that the grace of God does not express itself in the way a person would like to understand it but speaks in a way that is more difficult to understand. In other words, as soon as the grace of God gives a person what he desires and requests, he not only is contented with grace but is happy over what he receives and in his way of thinking readily understands that God is gracious to him. That this is a misunderstanding (which no one should be in a hurry to denounce) is obvious enough, but one should not for that reason forget to practice at the seasonable time understanding the more difficult and true. If, namely, a person can be assured of the grace of God without needing temporal evidence as a middleman or as the dispensation advantageous to him (in his opinion) as interpreter, then it is indeed obvious to him that the grace of God is the most glorious of all. Then he will strive to be gladdened by it in such a way that he is not merely contented with it, to give thanks for it in such a way that he is not contented with grace: will not grieve over that which was denied, over the language difference between God’s eternal trustworthiness and his childish little faith, which, however, no longer exists since now “his heart is strengthened by grace and not by food” (Hebrews 13:9).
If a destitute person dared to enjoy the friendship of a powerful personage, but this powerful man could do nothing for him (that the grace of God allows the absence of earthly evidence corresponds to this), nevertheless, the fact that he had such a friendship was nevertheless already very much.234 But perhaps the difficulty lies here, because the destitute person could indeed be convinced that the powerful man actually was not able to do anything for him, but how could he be [V 86] definitively convinced that God cannot—he is, after all, almighty! This presumably accounts for the fact that the thought of impatience continually insists, as it were, that God can surely do it, and therefore, because people are so impatient, therefore the language says: to be contented with the grace of God. In the beginning, when impatience is most strident and vociferous, it can scarcely understand that this is a laudable contentment; as it is cooled and calmed down in the quiet incorruptibility of the inner being, it comprehends this better and better until the heart is stirred and sometimes, at least, sees the divine glory that had taken on a lowly form.235 And if this glory again vanishes for a person so that he is again destitute, as he still was also while he saw the glory, if it again seems to him that contentment still belongs to being contented with the grace of God, then he still at times shamefully admits that the grace of God is in itself worth being contented with—indeed, it alone is worth being desired; indeed, to possess it is the only blessedness.
Then in a beautiful sense the human heart will gradually (the grace of God is never taken by force) become more and more discontented—that is, it will desire more and more ardently, will long more and more intensely, to be assured of grace. See, now everything has become new,236 everything has been changed. With respect to the earthly, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is. A pagan who knew how to speak only of the earthly has said that the deity is blessed because he needs nothing, and next to him the wise man, because he needs little.237 In a human being’s relationship with God, it is inverted: the more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends that he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is. Therefore, the words “to be contented with the grace of God” will not only comfort a person, and then comfort him again every time earthly want and distress make him, to speak mundanely, needful of comfort, but when he really has become attentive to the words they will call him aside, where he no longer hears the secular mentality’s earthly mother tongue, the speech of human beings, the noise of the shopkeepers, but where the words explain themselves to him, confide to him the secret of perfection: that to need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself, and that it is the saddest thing of all if a human being goes through life without discovering that he needs God.
Let us, then, clarify for ourselves this upbuilding thought: [V 87]
To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection.
A circumstance that is familiar to all seems to suggest, at least as a fleeting reminder to everyone, that it is true that to need God is a perfection. In the churches of the various countries, after the sermon a prayer is offered for the king and the royal house. That prayers are offered for the sick and the sorrowful cannot demonstrate that to need God is a perfection, since these people, after all, are the sufferers. But the king, he is the powerful man, indeed, the most powerful, and yet he is prayed for very specifically, but the sick and the sorrowful are prayed for only in general, even though the Church hopes and trusts that God in heaven will understand it very specifically, that whereas the Church does not think about any specific person, he thinks about each specific person in particular. And if it is otherwise with God’s understanding, if his cares of governing allow him to be concerned about the single individual only in general—well, then God help us! Alas, but this is the last thing a person says in his misery; even when he cannot endure this last thought, that God would be solicitous about the single individual only in general, even then he says: God help me to endure this thought, and in this way he still brings God to concern himself about him in particular.
But why is a prayer offered for the king in particular? Is it because he has the earthly power and holds the fates of many in his hands; is it because his well-being determines the well-being of countless others; is it because every “shadow of adversity” that passes over the king’s house also passes over the whole nation; is it because his illness halts the functioning of the state and his death disturbs its life? A purely secular concern such as that can certainly occupy many people, and not in an unbeautiful way, but it nevertheless will scarcely motivate anyone to pray or to pray in any other way than with the restraint that is required when we pray for earthly goods, since in that case a king becomes a kind of earthly good. In this sense, then, the intercession would become more and more inward as the personal life of the one praying is linked more and more closely to him, until finally the prayer would no longer be an intercessory prayer any more than the wife’s prayer for her husband is an intercessory prayer. But precisely because it makes intercession, the Church cannot pray in this way, but it makes this intercession presumably because it is convinced that the higher a person stands, the more he needs God.
Yet even though prayer is offered in all the churches for a [V 88] king, it does not follow from this that the king for whom prayer is offered himself comprehends that to need God is a human being’s highest perfection. And even though the single individual in church silently gives his consent to the intercessory prayer, and, alas, even though the many who do not go to church still have no objection to the intercessory prayer, it does not follow from this that they understand it devoutly, that the higher one ascends in earthly power and dominion, the closer one comes only to intercessory prayer. It is all too easy for the mighty to take it in vain; it is all too easy for the one praying to say it in vain. On the other hand, we do not deny that wanting in all earnestness to understand what a person does not yet understand earnestly enough—if he wants to seek his own way to this consciousness and not leave it to God, who knows best how to alarm all self-confidence out of a person and keep him, when he is about to sink into his own nothingness, from maintaining by himself the diver’s connection with the earthly—we do not deny that wanting in all earnestness to understand this makes life difficult. Let us just admit it without thereby becoming so discouraged or cowardly that we want to sleep our way to what others have had to work for; let us not take it in vain when the believer enthusiastically declares that all his suffering is only brief and short,238 that the yoke of self-denial is so easy to bear. But neither let us doubt that the yoke of self-denial is beneficial, that the cross of sufferings ennobles a person more than anything else, and let us hope to God that someday we shall come so far that we, too, are able to speak enthusiastically. But let us not demand this too early, lest the believer’s zealous words discourage us because this does not occur immediately. It frequently happens that a person fixes in his memory some particular powerful words. When suffering comes to his house, he is reminded of the words and thinks he will be victorious immediately in the joy of those words. But not even an apostle uses powerful words at all times; he, too, is sometimes weak;239 he, too, is alarmed, and he thereby makes us understand that the powerful words are dearly bought and are never possessed in such a way that one does not again have an opportunity to assure oneself of how dearly they were bought.
But even though this understanding makes life more difficult not only for the light-mindedness of the fortunate one and for the many whose hankering is to be like him, but also for the unfortunate, since this understanding still does not act like magic, does not have any decisive external effect, should we [V 89] therefore praise it dubiously or crave it double-mindedly? And yet it certainly is a precarious matter that what is offered as comfort in life starts out by making life more difficult in order—yes, in order—to make it truly easier; so it is with every one of truth’s miracles, just as it was with that miracle at the wedding in Cana:240 truth serves the poor wine first and keeps the best until last, whereas the deceitful world serves the best wine first. Just because a person became unhappy, “excessively unhappy,” as he himself says, it by no means follows from this that the understanding that conditions the comfort, the understanding that he himself is capable of nothing at all, has yet matured in him. If he believes that he lacks only the means, then he still believes in himself; if he thinks that if he were given power or the admiration of men or the attainment of his wish, if he thinks that the complaint contains a legitimate demand for something temporal that becomes more legitimate the more vehement the complaint becomes—then, humanly speaking, he still has a bitter cup to drink before the comfort comes. Therefore it is always a difficult matter for one person to offer another such a comfort, because when the troubled one consults him and he then says, “I certainly do know where comfort is to be found, indescribable comfort; indeed, what is more, it transforms itself little by little in your soul into the highest joy”—then the troubled one will probably listen attentively. But when there is added, “Nevertheless, before this comfort can come, you must understand that you yourself are simply nothing; you must chop down the bridge of probability that wants to connect wish and impatience and desire and expectation with the object wished for, desired, and expected; you must renounce the worldly mentality’s association with the future; you must retreat into yourself, not as into a fortress that still defies the world while the self-inclosed person nevertheless has with him in the fortress his most dangerous enemy (indeed, it may even have been the enemy’s advice he followed when he closed himself up in this way), but into yourself, sinking down into your own nothingness and surrendering yourself to grace and disgrace”—then the troubled one would very likely go away distressed, like the rich young man who had much property,241 distressed even though he did not have much property but still resembled the rich young man so much that one could not tell them apart. Or if the troubled one had strayed and become bogged down in deliberation so that he was unable to act, because from both sides an equal case was made, and someone else said to him, [V 90] “I know a way out, and you will be the victor for sure. Give up wishing; act, act in the conviction that even when the opposite of what you are wishing happens you will still have been victorious,” then there probably would be someone who would turn away impatiently because a victory such as that would seem to him a defeat, and because he would consider such a way out even more burdensome than the complex disquietude of his doubting soul.
But what is a human being? Is he just one more ornament in the series of creation; or has he no power, is he himself capable of nothing? And what is his power, then; what is the utmost he is able to will? What kind of answer should be given to this question when the brashness of youth combines with the strength of adulthood to ask it, when this glorious combination is willing to sacrifice everything to accomplish great things, when burning with zeal it says, “Even if no one in the world has ever achieved it, I will nevertheless achieve it; even if millions degenerated and forgot the task, I will nevertheless keep on striving—but what is the highest?” Well, we do not want to defraud the highest of its price; we do not conceal the fact that it is rarely achieved in this world, because the highest is this: that a person is fully convinced that he himself is capable of nothing, nothing at all. What rare dominion—not rare in the sense that only one individual is born to be king, since everyone is born to it! What rare wisdom—not rare in the sense that it is offered to just a few, since it is offered to all! What wonderful rarity that is not depreciated by being offered to all, by being accessible to all! Indeed, if a person turns outward, it probably seems as if he were capable of doing something more amazing, something that would satisfy him in quite another way, something that would draw enthusiastic admiration, because that rare loftiness is not an appropriate object of admiration, does not tempt the sensate person since, on the contrary, it judges the admirer to be a fool who does not know what he is admiring and orders him to go home or judges him to be a fraudulent soul and orders him to repent. To external observation, man may well be the most glorious creation, but all his glory is still only in the external and for the external: does not the eye aim its arrow outward every time passion and desire tighten the bowstring, does not the hand grasp outward, is not his arm stretched out, and is not his ingenuity all-conquering!
But if he nevertheless is unwilling to be like an instrument of war in the service of inexplicable drives, indeed, in the service of the world, because the world itself, the object of his craving, stimulates the drives; if he nevertheless does not want to be like a stringed instrument in the hands of inexplicable [V 91] moods or, rather, in the hands of the world, because the movement of his soul is in accord with the way the world plucks its strings; if he does not want to be like a mirror in which he intercepts the world or, rather, the world reflects itself; if he does not want this, 242if he himself, even before the eye aims at something to make a conquest, wants to capture the eye so that it may belong to him and not he to the eye; if he grasps the hand before it grasps for the external, so that it may belong to him and not he to the hand; if he wants this so earnestly that he is not afraid of tearing out the eye, cutting off the hand,243 shutting the window of the senses if necessary—well, then everything is changed; the power is taken away from him, and the glory. He struggles not with the world but with himself.244 Observe him now; his powerful figure is held embraced by another figure, and they hold each other so firmly interlocked and are so equally matched in suppleness and strength that the wrestling cannot even begin, because in that moment that other figure would overwhelm him—but that other figure is he himself. Thus he is capable of nothing; even the weakest person who is not tried in this struggle is capable of far more than he.
This struggle is not only exhausting but also very terrible (if it is not he himself who has on his own initiative ventured into this, and if that is the case, he is not being tried in the struggle of which we speak) when life at God’s direction casts a person out to be strengthened in this annihilation that knows no delusion, permits no evasion, occasions no self-deception, as if he would be capable of more under other circumstances, since when he struggles with himself, circumstances cannot determine the result. This is the annihilation of a person, and the annihilation is his truth. He shall not escape this knowledge, for he is indeed his own witness, his plaintiff, his judge; he himself is the only one who is able to comfort, since he understands the distress of the annihilation, and the only one who cannot comfort, since he himself is indeed the instrument of the annihilation. To comprehend this annihilation is the highest thing of which a human being is capable; to brood over this understanding, because it is a God-given good entrusted to him as the secret of truth, is the highest and the most difficult thing of which a human being is capable, because the deception and the counterfeit are easily produced so that even at the cost of truth he becomes something. This is the highest and the most difficult thing of which a human being is capable—yet what am I saying—he is incapable even of this; at most he is capable of being willing to understand that this smoldering brand only consumes until the fire of God’s love ignites the blaze in what the smoldering brand could not consume. —Thus man is a helpless creature, because [V 92] all other understanding that makes him understand that he can help himself is but a misunderstanding, even though in the eyes of the world he is regarded as courageous—by having the courage to remain in a misunderstanding, that is, by not having the courage to understand the truth.
But in heaven, my listener, there lives the God who is capable of all things, or, more correctly, he lives everywhere, even if people do not perceive it. “Indeed, O Lord, if you were a weak, lifeless body like a flower that withers, if you were like a brook that flows by, if you were like a building that collapses in due time—then people would pay attention to you, then you would be an appropriate object for our low and brutish thoughts.”245 But this is not the way it is, and your very greatness makes you invisible, since in your wisdom you are much too far away from man’s thoughts for him to be able to see you, and in your omnipresence you are too close to him for him to see you; in your goodness you conceal yourself from him, and your omnipotence makes it impossible for him to see you, since in that case he himself would become nothing!246 But God in heaven is capable of all things, and man of nothing at all.
Is it not so, my listener, that these two correspond to each other: God and man? But if they correspond to each other, then, of course, there is only the question of whether you are going to be happy about this wonderful good fortune—that you two correspond to each other—or whether you prefer to be such a one who does not correspond to God at all, such a one who is capable of something himself and consequently does not correspond completely to God, for indeed you cannot change God, and indeed you do not want to change God so that he would not be capable of all things. To become nothing seems hard—oh, but we speak differently even about human matters. If misfortune taught two human beings that they corresponded to each other in friendship or in love, how negligible the distress caused by the misfortune would seem compared with the joy the misfortune also brought—that these two corresponded to each other! And if two human beings did not understand until the day of death that they corresponded to each other for all eternity—oh, how brief, though bitter, that moment of separation that is death would be compared with an eternal understanding!
Thus a human being is great and at his highest when he corresponds to God by being nothing at all himself, but let us not admire light-mindedly or take the admiration in vain. Did not Moses go as the Lord’s envoy to a wicked people in order to free them from themselves, from their servile mentality, and from their servile condition under a tyrant’s yoke? Compared with what are called the works of Moses, what is the deed of even the greatest hero; what are demolishing mountains [V 93] and filling rivers compared with having darkness fall upon all Egypt!247 But these were really only Moses’ so-called works, because he was capable of nothing at all and the work was the Lord’s. See the difference here. Moses—he is not making decisions and formulating plans while the council of the commonsensical listens attentively because the leader is the wisest—Moses is capable of nothing at all. If the people had said to him, “Go to Pharaoh, because your word is powerful, your voice is triumphant, your eloquence irresistible,” he probably would have answered, “Oh, you fools! I am capable of nothing at all, not even of giving my life for you if the Lord does not so will; I am capable only of submitting everything to the Lord.” Then he presents himself to Pharaoh, and what is his weapon? The weapon of the powerless—prayers, and even when the last word of his prayers has already reached heaven, he still does not know what is going to happen, even though he believes that whatever happens still happens for the best. Then he returns home to the people, but if they had praised him and thanked him, he probably would have answered, “I am capable of nothing at all.” Or when the people are thirsting in the desert and perhaps appeal to Moses,248 saying, “Take your staff and order the rock to give water,” Moses probably would answer, “What is my staff but a stick?” And if the people went on, saying, “But in your hand the staff is mighty,” Moses would have to say, “I am capable of nothing at all, but since the people are asking for it and since I myself cannot bear the sight of the misery of this languishing people, I will strike the rock, even though I myself do not believe that water will spring from it”—and the rock did not give water. Consequently, whether the staff he is holding in his hand is to be the finger of the Almighty or the stick of Moses, 249he does not know, not even in the moment the staff is already touching the rock; he does not know it until afterward, just as he never sees anything but the Lord’s back.250 Ah, humanly speaking, the weakest of the Israelites is capable of more than Moses, since that one still thinks he is capable of something, but Moses is capable of nothing at all. At one moment, to seem to be stronger than the strongest, stronger than all others, than the whole world, insofar as the miracle occurs by his hand; in the next moment, indeed, in the very same moment, to be weaker than the weakest, insofar as that one still thinks there is something he is capable of—this kind of greatness will be no temptation to the hankerings of conceit, insofar as it takes the time to understand what constitutes the [V 94] greatness; otherwise in its loathsome cowardliness it presumably would promptly be ready to wish to be in Moses’ place.
If, however, this view, that to need God is man’s highest perfection, makes life more difficult, it does this only because it wants to view man according to his perfection and bring him to view himself in this way, because in and through this view man learns to know himself. And for the person who does not know himself, his life is, in the deeper sense, indeed a delusion. But such a delusion is rarely due to a person’s not discovering the capabilities entrusted to him, to his not trying to develop them as much as possible in conformity with his given situation. He does really sink deep roots into existence and does not deal light-mindedly with himself like the very talented child who does not understand how much has been entrusted to it, like the light-minded rich youth who does not understand the significance of gold—and so it is that we speak of a person’s self in terms of monetary value, and he who knows himself knows down to the last penny what he is worth and knows how to exchange himself so that he obtains the full value. If he does not do this, then he does not know himself and is deluded, which the person of good sense will surely tell him and, as life proceeds, will tell him, step by step, that he is not delighting in life in the springtime of life, that he is not affirming himself for what he actually is, that he does not know that people take a person for what he himself claims to be, that he has not known how to make himself important and thereby to give life importance for himself. Alas, but even though a person also knew himself ever so well in this sense, even though he knew how to invest himself in life ever so advantageously and with interest, do you suppose he would therefore know himself? But if he did not know himself, then in a deeper sense his life would indeed be a delusion. Would it then be rare in these sagacious times for a person to be responsible for a delusion like that? What would that sagacious self-knowledge be other than this—that he knew himself in relation to something else 251but did not know himself in relation to himself; in other words, despite its apparent reliability, all his self-knowledge was altogether vague, since it involved only the relation between a dubious self and a dubious something else. This something else could be changed, so that someone else became the stronger, the more handsome, the richer; and this self could be changed, so that he himself became poor, ugly, powerless; and this change could come at any moment. Once this something else is taken away, he is indeed deceived, and if this something else is of such a nature [V 95] that it can be taken away, he is indeed deceived even if it is not taken away, since the whole meaning of his life was founded on this something else. In other words, there is no delusion if something that can deceive does so, but instead it is a delusion when it does not.
A self-knowledge of that kind is very imperfect and far from viewing man according to his perfection. Would it not be a strange perfection about which one must finally say, after perhaps having extolled it in the strongest terms: In addition, this is a delusion? Along this road, one never comes to view man according to his perfection, and in order to begin doing that, one must begin to tear oneself loose from any such view, which is just as difficult as tearing oneself out of a dream without making the mistake of continuing the dream: dreaming that one is awake. In a certain sense this is quite complicated, because a person’s real self seems to him to be so far distant that the whole world seems much closer to him, and quite terrible, because the more profound self-knowledge begins with what someone who is unwilling to understand it might call a shocking delusion: instead of gaining the whole world, to gain himself; instead of becoming the master, to become one in need; instead of being capable of all things, to be capable of nothing at all. Ah, how difficult it is at this point not to fall into dreams again and to dream that one is doing this by one’s own power.
252When a person turns and faces himself in order to understand himself, he steps, as it were, in the way of that first self, halts that which was turned outward in hankering for and seeking after the surrounding world that is its object, and summons it back from the external. In order to prompt the first self to this withdrawal, the deeper self lets the surrounding world remain what it is—remain dubious. This is indeed the way it is; the world around us is inconstant and can be changed into the opposite at any moment, and there is not one person who can force this change by his own might or by the conjuration of his wish. The deeper self now shapes the deceitful flexibility of the surrounding world in such a way that it is no longer attractive to that first self. Then the first self either must proceed to kill the deeper self, to render it forgotten, whereby the whole matter is given up; or it must admit that the deeper self is right, because to want to predicate constancy of something that continually changes is indeed a contradiction, and as soon as one confesses that it changes, it can, of course, change in that same moment. However much that first self shrinks from this, there is no wordsmith so ingenious or no thought-twister so wily that he can invalidate the deeper [V 96] self’s eternal claim. There is only one way out, and that is to silence the deeper self by letting the roar of inconstancy drown it out.
What has happened? The first self is halted; it cannot move at all. Alas, the surrounding world can actually be so favorable, so tangibly trustworthy, so apparently undeviating, that everyone will vouch for splendid progress if one just begins—it does not help. The person who witnesses that struggle in his inner being must concede that the deeper self is right: in that minute everything can be changed, and one who does not discover this continually runs aimlessly.253 Never in the world has there been so quick a tongue that it could beguile the deeper self if only it gains a chance to speak. Ah, it is a painful situation. The first self sits and looks at all the beckoning fruits, and it is indeed so clear that if one just makes a move everything will succeed, as everyone will admit—but the deeper self sits there as earnest and thoughtful as the physician at the bedside of the sick, yet also with transfigured gentleness, because it knows that this sickness is not unto death254 but unto life.
Now the first self has a specific craving; it is conscious of possessing the conditions; the surrounding world, as it understands it, is as favorable as possible; they are just waiting for each other, as it were: the happy self and the favors of fortune—oh, what a pleasant life! But the deeper self does not give ground, does not haggle, does not give its consent, does not compromise; it merely says: Even in this moment everything can be changed. Yet people come to the aid of that first self with the explanation. They call to him; they explain that this is the way it goes in life, that there are some people who are fortunate and are supposed to enjoy life and that he is one of them. Then the heart beats fast; he wants to be off . . . . .
That a child who has a strict father must stay at home is something one must submit to, because the father is indeed the stronger. But the first self is certainly no child, and that deeper self, after all, is himself, and yet it seems stricter than the strictest father, tolerating no wheedling, speaking candidly or not speaking at all. Then there is danger afoot—both of them, both the first self and the deeper self, notice it, and the latter sits there as concerned as the experienced pilot, while a secret council is held on whether it is best to throw the pilot overboard since he is creating a contrary wind. That, however, does not happen, but what is the outcome? The first self cannot move from the spot, and yet, yet it is clear that the moment of joy is in a hurry, that fortune is already in flight. Therefore people do indeed say that if one does not make use of the moment at once, it is soon too late. And who is to [V 97] blame? Who else but that deeper self? But even this scream does not help.
What kind of unnatural condition is this? What does it all mean? When such a thing occurs in a person’s soul, does it not mean that he is beginning to lose his mind? No, it means something altogether different; it means that the child must be weaned. One can be thirty years old and more, forty years old, and still be just a child—yes, one can die as an aged child. But to be a child is so delightful! So one snuggles at the breast of temporality in the cradle of finitude, and probability sits by the cradle and sings to the child. If the wish is not fulfilled and the child becomes restless, then probability calms him and says: Just lie still and sleep, and I shall go out and buy something for you, and next time it will be your turn. So the child goes to sleep again and the pain is forgotten, and the child glows again in the dream of new wishes, although he thought it would be impossible to forget the pain. Of course, if he had not been a child, he surely would not have forgotten the pain so easily, and it would have become apparent that it was not probability that had sat beside the cradle, but it was the deeper self that had sat beside him at the deathbed in self-denial’s hour of death, when it itself rose from the dead to an eternity.
When the first self submits to the deeper self, they are reconciled and walk on together. Then the deeper self probably says, “It is true that I had almost forgotten it in our great struggle—what was it now that you so fervently wished; at this moment I do not think there is anything to hinder the fulfillment of your wish if you will only not forget that little secret we two have between us. Now, you see, now you can be gratified.” The first self may answer, “Yes, but now I do not care as much about it; no, I shall never be as happy as before, as I was then when my soul craved it, and you do not really understand me.” “I do not think so, either, nor would it be desirable for me to understand you in such a way that I craved just as much as you. But have you lost anything by not caring about it in that way? Consider the other side. Suppose, on the other hand, that the surrounding world had deceived you—and you do realize that it could have done that. More I did not say; I merely said that it is possible, and by that I also said that what you regarded as certainty was actually only a possibility. What then? Then you would have despaired, and you would not have had me to rely on. You do recollect, do you not, that the ship’s council was almost of a mind to throw me overboard. Would you not be better off now by having lost some of that burning desire and having won the understanding that life cannot deceive you; is not that kind of losing a winning?”
That little secret we two have between us, as the deeper self [V 98] said. What, presumably, is this secret, my listener? What else but this, that with regard to the external a person is capable of nothing at all. If he wants to seize the external immediately, it can be changed in the same instant, and he can be deceived; on the other hand, he can take it with the consciousness that it could also be changed, and he is not deceived even though it is changed, because he has the deeper self’s consent. If he wants to act immediately in the external, to accomplish something, everything can come to nothing in that same moment; on the other hand, he can act with this consciousness, and even if it came to nothing, he is not deceived, because he has the deeper self’s consent.
But even if the first self and the deeper self have been reconciled in this way and the shared mind has been diverted away from the external, this is still only the condition for coming to know himself. But if he is actually to know himself, there are new struggles and new dangers. Let not the struggling one himself simply be terrified and frightened by the thought, as if being in need were an imperfection when the discourse is about needing God, as if being in need were a humiliating secret one would rather conceal when the discourse is about needing God, as if being in need were a dismal necessity one would seek to mitigate by enunciating it oneself when the discourse is about needing God. Through more profound self-knowledge, one learns precisely that one needs God, but at first glance the discouraging aspect of this would frighten a person away from beginning if in due time he were not aware of and inspired by the thought that precisely this is the perfection, inasmuch as not to need God is far more imperfect and only a misunderstanding. Even though someone had accomplished the most glorious exploits, if he still thought that it was all by his own power, if by overcoming his mind he became greater than someone who captured a city,255 if he still thought it had happened through his own power, then his perfection would be essentially just a misunderstanding; but a perfection such as that would indeed be scarcely commendable. But the person who perceived that he was not capable of the least thing without God, unable even to be happy about the most happy event—he is closer to perfection. And the person who understood this and found no pain [V 99] whatsoever in it but only the overabundance of bliss, who hid no secret desire that still preferred to be happy on its own account, felt no shame that people noticed that he himself was capable of nothing at all, laid down no conditions to God, not even that his weakness be kept concealed from others, but in whose heart joy constantly prevailed by his, so to speak, jubilantly throwing himself into God’s arms in unspeakable amazement at God, who is capable of all things—indeed, he would be the perfect one whom the Apostle Paul describes better and more briefly: he “boasts of his weakness”256 and has not even had experiences so numerous and ambiguous that he knows how to express himself more profusely. —People do say that not to know oneself is a deception and an imperfection, but often they are unwilling to understand that someone who actually knows himself perceives precisely that he is not capable of anything at all.
In the external world, he was capable of nothing; but in the internal world, is he not capable of anything there, either? If a capability is actually to be a capability, it must have opposition, because if it has no opposition, then it is either all-powerful or something imaginary. But if he is supposed to have opposition, from whence is it supposed to come? In the internal world, the opposition can come only from himself. Then he struggles with himself in the internal world, not as previously, where the deeper self struggled with the first self to prevent it from being occupied with the external. If a person does not discover this conflict, his understanding is faulty and consequently his life is imperfect; but if he does discover it, then he will once again understand that he himself is capable of nothing at all.
It seems odd that this is what a person is supposed to learn from himself. Then why praise self-knowledge? And yet this is the way it is, and from the whole world a person cannot learn that he is capable of nothing at all. Even if the whole world united to crush and annihilate the weakest, he nevertheless could still continually preserve a very faint idea that he himself was capable of something under other circumstances when the superior power was not as great. That he is capable of nothing at all, he can discover only by himself, and whether he is victorious over the whole world or trips over a straw, it is still the case that by himself he knows or can know that he himself is capable of nothing at all. If someone wants to explain it some other way, then he has indeed nothing to do with others but only with himself, and then every subterfuge is seen through. It is so hard, people think, to know oneself, especially if one is very talented and has a multitude of aptitudes [V 100] and capabilities and then is supposed to become informed about all these. Oh, the self-knowledge of which we are speaking is really not complicated, and every time a person properly comprehends this brief and pithy truth, that he himself is capable of nothing at all, then he knows himself.
But is one not able, then, to overcome oneself by oneself? This certainly is said at times, but do you suppose that the one who says it has tested and understood himself in what was said: How can I be stronger than myself? I can be stronger than the weakest, and perhaps there lives or has lived someone who might be said to be stronger than all others, but no one was ever stronger than himself. When we speak of overcoming oneself by oneself, by this expression we really mean something external, so that the struggle is unequal. When, for example, someone who has been tempted by worldly prestige conquers himself so that he no longer reaches out for it; when someone who feared life’s dangers drives out his fears to such an extent that he no longer flees the dangers; when someone who has lost his bold confidence overcomes himself to the point that he stands his ground and does not retreat from the place of decision—then we shall not depreciate this but praise him instead. But if he will take care not to save his soul in new vanity and drive out the devil with the devil’s help,257 then he will definitely admit that in his innermost being he is not able to overcome himself. But he by no means understands this as if evil had once and for all gained power over him—no, but he is able to do only so much, and this only by extreme effort, in resisting himself, but this, of course, is not overcoming himself. In other words, he creates in his innermost being temptations of glory and temptations of fear and temptations of despondency, of pride and of defiance and of sensuality greater than those he meets in the external world, and this is the very reason he struggles with himself. Otherwise, he struggles with a fortuitous degree of temptation, and the victory proves nothing with regard to what he would be able to do in a greater temptation. If he is victorious in the temptation with which the surrounding world confronts him, this does not prove that he would be victorious if the temptation were as terrible as he is able to imagine it, but not until it appears that immense does he actually learn to know himself. It now appears that immense to him in his inner being, and this is [V 101] why he knows in himself—something that he perhaps would not come to know in the world—that he is capable of nothing at all.
My listener, you certainly do not believe that these are the somber thoughts of a “thick-blooded” man; you do not thank God that you are not ravaged by depression [Tungsindighed] such as this, do you? If it were depression, is this the way one ought to love God and human beings? [You certainly do not believe] that one thanks God for preferential love, which is indeed to deceive him and give him to understand that if something more oppressive happened one could not believe in his love (because, with this confession, to thank God for not having been tried in the severest conflict becomes something altogether different). [You certainly do not believe] that one shuns the depressed person, as you call him, does not wish to know that he, too, is a human being, and you dare not say that he is a criminal, consequently that he is an unhappy human being, consequently a human being who particularly needs your sympathy, which you show to him by requesting him to roam like a leper out among the tombs,258 while you dare not acknowledge him as a fellow human being. But if speaking this way about understanding oneself is regarded by someone as the somber thoughts of a “thick-blooded” individual, then it surely must be regarded as foolishness inseparable from his depression for him to think that this view regarded man according to his perfection and even greater foolishness for him to rejoice in his perfection. But why should he not be happy, since one is always made happy by the perfect, and this joy of his would not rest in a light-minded understanding with God’s preferential love for one individual, and this joy of his would not shun the sight of the inconsolable one—on the contrary, he would love in him everyone who is inconsolable. 259And this is the way it really is, and you, my listener, surely will not call him depressed, since, on the contrary, he alone is happy, because someone who is happy in and over God rejoices, and again I say—he rejoices. Why, do you suppose, does the Apostle Paul, who has given us this beautiful admonition, “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice,”260 why, do you suppose, does he pause; why, do you suppose, does he stop before once again bidding the believer to be happy? Because in an interlude he took the time to listen, as it were, to everything terrible that may be uttered, the terrible thought that a person is capable of nothing at all, in order to allow joy to be totally victorious—“again I say, rejoice.”
This view, that to need God is a human being’s highest perfection, [V 102] does indeed make life more difficult, but it also views life according to its perfection, and in this view a person, through the piecemeal experience of [this need], which is the right understanding with God, comes to know God.
Insofar as a person does not know himself in such a way that he knows that he himself is capable of nothing at all, he does not actually become conscious in the deeper sense that God is [er til]. Even though a person mentions his name at times, calls upon him occasionally, perhaps in the more momentous decisions thinks he sees him and is moved (since it is impossible, after all, to catch even a glimpse of God without being moved), he is nevertheless somewhat piously deceived if he therefore believes it is manifest to him that God is or that the being [Tilværelse] of God would not have another manifestness in this earthly life, the meaning of which is continually confused if God is not implicitly understood. We say that it is a pious deception; we call it by as beautiful a name as possible; we have no intention of plunging into a tirade against it, even though we desire for everyone that it may become manifest with an otherwise decisive certitude that God is.
The person who himself is capable of nothing at all cannot undertake the least thing without God’s help, consequently without becoming conscious that there is a God. We sometimes speak of learning to know God from the history of past ages; we take out the chronicles and read and read. Well, that may be all right, but how much time it takes, and how dubious the outcome frequently is, how close at hand the misunderstanding that lies in the sensate person’s marveling over what is ingenious! But someone who is conscious that he is capable of nothing at all has every day and every moment the desired and irrefragable opportunity to experience that God lives. If he does not experience it often enough, he knows very well why that is. It is precisely because his understanding is faulty and he believes that he himself is capable of something. When he goes into the house of the Lord, he knows very well that God is not there, but he also knows that he himself is capable of nothing at all, not even of inducing a devotional mood, and consequently God must be present if he is actually moved. Alas, there are many who otherwise remain unconcerned about God but who still do not fail to enter the house of the Lord. What a strange contradiction—they gather together there and say to one another: God is not here, he does not dwell in a house built by human hands;261 then they go [V 103] home, but at home God is not there at all. But the person who knows himself in the way mentioned is well aware that God does not dwell in temples, but he also knows that God is with him at night when sleep refreshes and when he awakens in an alarming dream, is with him in the day of need when he is searching in vain for comfort, in the tumult of ideas when he listens in vain for a liberating word, in mortal danger when the world does not help, in his anxiety when he is afraid of himself, in the moment of despair when he is working out his soul’s salvation in fear and trembling.262 He knows that God is with him in the moment when anxiety rushes upon him with lightning speed, when it already seems too late and there is no time left to go to the house of the Lord; then he is with him, swifter than the light that pierces the darkness, swifter than the thought that chases away the fog—present—yes, present as swiftly as only one can be who was already present. If this were not so, where would the express messenger be found who would go fast enough for the anxious concern to fetch the Lord, and before he came, more time would again pass! But such is not the case; the only one who thinks that way is the one who thinks that he himself is capable of something.
It is certainly true that one can learn to know God in exactly the same way on the day of rejoicing, if one comprehends that one is capable of nothing at all, but to hold on to this on the day of rejoicing is very difficult.263 When a person is most happy, there is suddenly the tempting thought: Would it not be even more glorious if he himself were capable of all this? Then the rejoicing takes an improper turn, so that it does not rise up to God but swings away from him, and then, then it is a sign that one needs more practice. When everything is shaking again, when thought is confused, when memory wants to terminate its service, when past experience approaches one only alarmingly in the form of terror, when even the most honest intention becomes dishonesty to oneself through the treachery of anxiety—then a person again understands that he himself is capable of nothing at all. But in and with this understanding God is also present immediately, rules the confusion and remembers everything that has been confided to him, which, no doubt, the person being tried has done—in the maelstrom of spiritual trial, the outcome of which would seem to have to be more terrible than death, he has with the greatest haste confided to God what lay especially upon his mind, what would have destroyed him forever and changed the content of his life to a dreadful deception if he himself had forgotten it and God in heaven had also forgotten it. No doubt he has confided it to God, until with God he again fought his way through the terrors, had patience, and gained calmness through trust in God.
[V 104] If a person whose life has been tried in some crucial difficulty has a friend and sometime later he is unable to retain the past clearly, if anxiety creates confusion, and if accusing thoughts assail him with all their might as he works his way back, then he may go to his friend and say, “My soul is sick so that nothing will become clear to me, but I confided everything to you; you remember it, so please explain the past to me again.” But if a person has no friend, he presumably goes to God if under other circumstances he has confided something to him, if in the hour of decision he called God as witness264 when no one else understood him. And the one who went to his friend perhaps was not understood at times, perhaps was filled with self-loathing, which is even more oppressive, upon discovering that the one to whom he had confided his troubles had not understood him at all, even though he had listened, had not sensed what was making him anxious, but had only an inquisitive interest in his unusual encounter with life. 265But this would never happen with God; who would dare to venture to think this of God, even if (because he does not dare to think this of God) he is cowardly enough to prefer to forget God—until he stands face-to-face with the judge, who passes judgment on him but not on the one who truly has God as witness, because where God is the judge, there is indeed no judge if God is the witness.
It by no means follows, however, that a person’s life becomes easy because he learns to know God in this way. On the contrary, it can become very hard; it may, as stated before, become more difficult than the contemptible easiness of sensate human life, but in this difficulty his life also acquires ever deeper and deeper meaning. Should it mean nothing to him that he continually keeps his eyes on God, that he, although he himself is capable of nothing at all, with God is capable of ever more and more—that he is capable of overcoming himself, since with the help of God he is indeed capable of this! Should it have no meaning for him that he is learning ever more and more to die to the world,266 to esteem less and less the external, what life gives and takes, what he himself is permitted to achieve in the external world, but to be all the more concerned about the internal, about an understanding with God, about having to remain in it and in it to learn to know God as one who makes everything serve a person for good if he loves God?267 And should this not even have meaning for him in making the adversities of life lighter, since it is always true that the person who has something else to think about and thereby is kept from being occupied with grief finds it [V 105] lighter? Finally, should it not have meaning for him and be a blessed reward that he most vividly and confidently understood that God is love,268 that God’s goodness passes all understanding,269 and that he was not contented with the witness of others or with a view of the order of the world and the course of history, though this may well be far greater, but there is also the question of how one understands this so that one may truly benefit from it.
We are not saying that knowing God or almost sinking into a dreaming admiration and a visionary contemplation of God is the only glorious thing to do; God does not let himself be taken in vain in this way. Just as knowing oneself in one’s own nothingness is the condition for knowing God, so knowing God is the condition for the sanctification of a human being by God’s assistance and according to his intention. Wherever God is in truth, there he is always creating. He does not want a person to be spiritually soft and to bathe in the contemplation of his glory, but in becoming known by a person he wants to create in him a new human being.
Suppose, let us just assume this, that a person could be just as ennobled and developed by himself without knowing God. With this presupposition, then I ask you, my listener, would not knowing God in and by itself have the highest meaning, and if a choice is conceivable—that a person could go just as far by himself as by knowing God—what would you choose? Even in human affairs you would probably choose the latter, since if you could be developed just as much in your solitariness, if that were possible, as by learning to know someone to whom you were strongly attracted, your learning to know him would in and by itself indeed have the most beautiful meaning. —The most beautiful meaning? Alas, no, you know very well that it is quite otherwise, at least when we speak of God; to know God is crucial, and without this knowledge a human being would become nothing at all, yes, perhaps would scarcely be able to grasp the first mystery of truth, that he himself is nothing at all, and then even less that to need God is his highest perfection.