III. Anxiety as the Result of that Sin which is Sin-Consciousness’s Nonappearance

The two previous chapters held consistently that the human being is a synthesis of soul and body, constituted and sustained by spirit. Anxiety was—to use a new expression that says the same as in the foregoing and also points to what follows—the instant in the individual life.

There is a category in constant use in recent philosophy, no less in logical inquiries than in those devoted to the philosophy of history. It is “transition.” Yet no further clarification is ever forthcoming. The term is used without ceremony and while Hegel and the Hegelian school startled the world with that big thought, namely philosophy’s presuppositionless beginning, or the thought that nothing must precede philosophy except everything’s total presuppositionlessness, no embarrassment whatever is shown in using the terms “transition,” “negation,” “mediation,” that is, the principles of motion in Hegelian thought, in a way that these do not also find their place in the systematic advance. If this is not a presupposition I do not know what a presupposition is. To help oneself to something that is nowhere explained is indeed to presuppose it. The system is assumed to have such marvelous transparency and inner vision that it gazes with the omphalopsychite’s immovability at the central nothing long enough for everything to explain itself and its whole content to come into being of its own. This introverted publicity was indeed that of the system. Yet it proves not to be the case and, when it comes to its innermost agitations, the systematic thought seems to pay homage to secrecy. Negation, transition, mediation are three masked and sinister secret agents (agentia [mainsprings]) that effectuate all movement. Hegel would never call them hotheads, seeing that it is with his most gracious permission that they carry on their ploy, so unaffectedly that even logic uses terms and turns of phrase borrowed from the temporal nature of transition: “thereupon,” “when,” “as being it is this,” “as becoming it is that,” etc.

Be that as it may, logic must be allowed to take care of itself. The term “transition” in logic is and remains a conceit; it belongs to the sphere of historical freedom, for transition is a state and is actual.^* Plato fully recognized the difficulty of introducing transition into pure metaphysics, which is why the category of the instant^† cost him so much effort. Ignoring the difficulty is certainly not to “go further” than Plato; to ignore it, and to piously deceive thought in order to get speculation afloat and logic on the go, is to treat speculation as a somewhat finite affair. I remember, however, once hearing a speculator say that undue thought should not be spent on the difficulties that lie in the way, for then one will never come to speculate. If it is merely a matter of getting to the point of speculating, and not that one’s speculation might actually be speculation, then indeed it is properly resolute to say that the important thing is to come to the point of speculating, just as for someone lacking the means to ride to the Deer Park in his own carriage it is praiseworthy of him to say: One should not bother with such things because one can just as well ride a shandrydan. That is of course true. It is to be hoped that both riders arrive at the Deer Park. On the other hand, someone firmly resolved not to trouble himself over the means of conveyance just as long as he reaches the point of speculating will hardly come to speculate.

In the sphere of historical freedom, transition is a state. But to understand this properly one must not forget that what is new comes about through the leap. If one does not insist on this, the transition will acquire a quantifying preponderance over the elasticity of the leap.

The human being was, then, a synthesis of soul and body, but also is a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. That this has been said often enough I have no objection to, for it is not my wish to come upon novelties but rather my joy and dearest occupation to ponder over what appears quite simple.

As for this latter synthesis, what immediately strikes one is that it is formed otherwise than the first. The two factors there were soul and body, and then spirit the third, although in a way that one could properly speak of a synthesis only when spirit is posited. The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where here is the third? And if there is no third, then there is really no synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed as a synthesis without a third, since the fact that the synthesis is a contradiction says exactly that it is not [a synthesis]. What, then, is the temporal?

If time is defined correctly as infinite succession, it may seem obvious that it should also be defined as present, past, and future. This distinction is, however, incorrect if considered as implicit in time itself, because the distinction arises only through the relation of time to eternity, and through eternity’s reflection in time. If a foothold could be found in the infinite succession of time, that is, a present, which was the dividing point, then the division would be quite correct. However, precisely because every instant, as well as the sum of the instants, is a process (a passing by), no instant is a present, and in time there is accordingly neither a present nor a past nor a future. Thinking that this division can be upheld is due to an instant’s being spatialized, but this brings the infinite succession to a halt; it is through introducing representation, by allowing time to be represented instead of being thought. But also this is to go about it incorrectly, for the infinite succession of time is an infinitely contentless present (this is the parody of the eternal) even for our powers of representation. The Indians speak of a line of kings that has ruled for 70,000 years. Nothing is known of the kings, not even their names (as I assume). Taking this as an example of time, the 70,000 years are an infinite vanishing. Representing it to ourselves is to expand and spatialize it into the illusory view of an infinite, contentless nothing.^* On the other hand, once we let the one succeed the other, we are positing the present.

The present is not, however, a temporal concept except as something infinitely lacking content, which again is exactly the infinitely vanishing. Unless one watches out for this, no matter how quickly it disappears, the present will have been posited and having once posited it, one lets it find a place yet again in the categories: the past and the future.

The eternal is on the other hand the present. In thought, the eternal is the present in terms of an annulled succession (time was the succession that passes by). For what we can represent to ourselves, it is a going on that never moves from the spot, since for our powers of representation, the eternal is the infinitely contentful present. In the eternal there is again no division to be found into past and future, because the present is posited as the annulled succession.

Time, then, is the infinite succession; the life that is in time, and is only that of time, has no present. True, we are accustomed in defining the sensuous life to saying on occasion that it is in the instant and only in the instant. What is then understood by the instant is that abstraction from the eternal that, if it is to be the present, is its parody. The present is the eternal, or rather, the eternal is the present and the present is fullness. It was in this sense that the Latinist said of the deity that he is praesens (praesentes dii [the presence of the gods]), with which expression, applied to the deity, he also signified the deity’s powerful support.

The instant signifies the present as a something that has no past and no future, for it is just in this that the imperfection of the sensuous life lies. The eternal, too, signifies the present, which has no past and no future, and this is the perfection of the eternal.

If one then wants to use the instant to define time and let the instant signify the purely abstract exclusion of the past and the future and as such the present, then the instant is not the present, since the intermediary between the past and the future, conceived purely abstractly, is not at all. But from this it can be seen that the instant is not just an attribute of time, because what characterizes time is only that it “passes by”; for which reason time, if it is to be defined by any of the attributes revealed in time itself, is time past. If, on the contrary, time and eternity touch each other, then it must be in time, and now we are with the instant.

“The instant” is a metaphor and in that regard not so good to deal with. But it is a beautiful word to take heed of. Nothing is as swift as a twinkling of the eye, and yet it is commensurable with the content of the eternal. Thus when Ingeborg looks out over the sea after Frithiof, this is a picture of the figurative expression’s meaning. An outburst of her feelings, a sigh or a word, has already as a sound more of time’s definition, is present more in terms of vanishing and has in it less of the presence of the eternal; which is why a sigh, a word, etc., have the power to help the soul lighten itself of its burdensome weight, precisely because the burden, just by being expressed, begins already to belong in the past. A glance is therefore a designation of time, but mark well, of time in the fateful conflict when it is touched by eternity.^* What we call the instant [or moment], Plato calls το ἐξαίϕνηϛ [the sudden]. Whatever its etymological explanation, it is related to the category of the invisible, with time and eternity being conceived equally abstractly because they lacked the concept of temporality, this again being due to their not having the concept of spirit. The Latin term is momentum (from movere [to move]), which by derivation expresses the merely vanishing.^†

Understood in this way, the instant is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is eternity’s first reflection in time, its first attempt to as though bring time to a stop. This is why Greek culture did not understand the instant; for even if it understood the atom of eternity, it did not grasp that it was the instant, did not define it with a forward but with a backward direction, because for Greek culture the atom of eternity was essentially eternity, and so neither time nor eternity received what was properly its due.

The synthesis of the temporal and the eternal is not another synthesis but the expression for that first synthesis according to which man is a synthesis of soul and body sustained by spirit. Once spirit is posited, the instant is there. Which is why one may rightly say, reproachfully, of the human being that he lives only in the instant, since this occurs through an arbitrary abstraction. Nature does not lie in the instant.

As with sensuousness, so with temporality. For temporality seems still more imperfect, the instant less considerable than nature’s seemingly secure subsistence in time. And yet the contrary is the case, nature’s security has its ground in the fact that for nature time has no significance at all. Only in the instant does history begin. Through sin the human being’s sensuousness is posited as sinfulness and is therefore lower than that of the beast, and yet this is precisely because this is where that which is higher begins. For now begins spirit.

The instant is that ambiguity in which time and eternity touch each other, and with this the concept of temporality is posited, whereby time constantly intersects eternity and eternity constantly permeates time. Only now does the aforementioned division acquire its significance: the present time, the past time, the future time.

Attention is immediately drawn by this division to the fact that, in a sense, the future means more than the present and the past, because the future is in a sense the whole of which the past is a part, and the future can in a sense mean the whole. This is because the eternal means first the future, or because the future is the incognito in which the eternal, though incommensurable with time, wants nevertheless to preserve its commerce with time. Linguistic usage sometimes takes the future to be identical in this way with the eternal (the future life—life eternal). Since the Greeks did not have the concept of the eternal in any profound sense, neither did they have the concept of the future. Therefore one cannot reproach Greek life for being lost in the instant, or more correctly one cannot even say that Greek life was lost. For the Greeks conceived temporality just as naively as they did sensuousness, because the category of spirit was lacking.

The instant and the future in turn posit the past. If Greek life should in any way denote some temporal property, it is that of past time, not however defined in its relation to the present and the future, but as a property of time in general, as a passing by. This is where the meaning of the Platonic “recollection” comes to view. For the Greeks the eternal lies behind, as the past that can only be entered in reverse.^* It is an altogether abstract concept of the eternal nevertheless that thinks of it as the past, whether it is further defined philosophically (a philosophical dying away) or historically.

One can, quite generally, in defining the concepts of the past, the future, and the eternal, see how one has defined the instant. If there is no instant, then the eternal appears behind as the past. It is as when I imagine a man walking along a road but do not posit the pacing, and the road then appears behind him as the distance covered. If the instant is posited but merely as a discrimen [division], then the future is the eternal. If the instant is posited, so is the eternal, but also the future which reappears as the past. This is clearly to be seen in the Greek, the Jewish, and the Christian views. The concept on which everything turns in Christianity, that which made all things new,^* is the fullness of time,^† but the fullness of time is the instant as the eternal, and yet this eternal is also the future and the past. If one doesn’t watch out for this, not a single concept can be saved from a heretical and treasonable admixture that annihilates the concept. One then gets the past not by itself, but in a simple continuity with the future (the meaning of world history and the historical development of the individual thereby losing the concepts of conversion, atonement, and redemption). One gets the future not by itself, but in a simple continuity with the present (the concepts of resurrection and judgment being thereby laid in ruins).

Let us now imagine Adam and then remember that every later individual begins in the very same way but within the quantitative difference that results from the relations of generation and history. The instant is for Adam just as it is for every later individual. The synthesis of the psychic and the somatic is to be posited by spirit, but spirit is eternal and the synthesis is accordingly only when spirit posits the first synthesis as, additionally, the second synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. As long as the eternal is not posited, the instant is not, or is only a discrimen [boundary]. The eternal, since spirit is in innocence only in the character of dreaming spirit, appears thereby as the future, for this is, as has been said, the first expression of the eternal, its incognito. Just as (in the previous chapter) spirit, when it is about to be posited in the synthesis, or, more correctly, when it is about to posit the synthesis as spirit’s (freedom’s) possibility in the individuality, expresses itself as anxiety, so too here does the future, the eternal’s (freedom’s) possibility in the individuality. As freedom’s possibility manifests itself for freedom, freedom swoons and temporality now emerges in the same way as sensuousness in the sense of sinfulness. I repeat here, again, that this is only the final psychological expression for the final psychological approximation to the qualitative leap. The difference between Adam and the later individual is that the future is reflected more for the latter than for Adam. This more, psychologically speaking, may well mean something horrific, but in terms of the qualitative leap whatever it signifies is inessential. The highest maximum of difference in relation to Adam is that the future seems to be anticipated by the past, or the anxiety that the possibility be lost before it was there.

The possible corresponds in all ways to the future. What is possible for freedom is the future, and for time the future is the possible. To both there corresponds anxiety in the individual life. An accurate and correct linguistic usage therefore links anxiety to the future. If one does indeed talk of being anxious about the past, that seems to run counter to this usage. On more careful examination, however, it appears that it is only a way of saying that the future manifests itself in some way or other. The past about which I am supposed to be anxious must stand to me in a relation of possibility. If I am anxious about a past misfortune, then it is not insofar as it is past but insofar as it may be repeated, that is, become future. If I am anxious because of a past offense, it is because I have not placed it in an essential relation to myself as past, but in some or other deceitful manner prevent it from being past. If it is actually past, then I cannot be anxious but only repentant. If I do not repent, then I must first let myself make my relation to the offense dialectical, but then the offense itself has become a possibility and not something past. If I am anxious about the punishment, it is only because this has been put in a dialectical relation to the offense (otherwise I suffer my punishment), and then I am anxious for the possible and the future.

We are thus back where we were in Chapter I. Anxiety is the psychological state that precedes sin, that comes as close as possible to it, as anxiously as possible, yet without explaining sin, which breaks out only in the qualitative leap.

The instant that sin is posited, temporality is sinfulness.^* We do not say that temporality is sinfulness, any more than that sensuousness is sinfulness; but with the positing of sin, temporality signifies sinfulness. Therefore that person sins who lives only in the instant as abstracted from the eternal. But if, to allow myself to speak by way of accommodation and foolishly, Adam had not sinned, he would that very instant have passed over into eternity. On the other hand, as soon as sin is posited, it is no use wishing to abstract from the temporal, any more than from the sensuous.^*

A look at life will quickly convince one that, if what has been presented here is correct, namely that anxiety is the last psychological state from which sin breaks out in the qualitative leap, then the whole of paganism and its repetition within Christianity rests in a merely quantitative categorization from which the qualitative leap of sin does not break out. This state is not however that of innocence but is, when viewed from the standpoint of spirit, precisely that of sinfulness.

It is quite remarkable that Christian orthodoxy has always taught that paganism rested in sin, whereas it was Christianity that first posited sin. Orthodoxy is however correct when it explains itself more precisely. Paganism as it were stretches out time with quantifying attributes, never arriving at sin in the most profound sense, but this precisely is sin.

That this is true in the case of paganism is easy to demonstrate. With paganism within Christianity it is another matter. The life of Christian paganism is neither guilty nor not guilty; it recognizes no real distinction between present, past, future, the eternal. Its life and history proceed as writing went over the paper in those old days with no punctuation marks but with one word, one sentence, rubbing shoulders with the other. From an aesthetic point of view this is extremely comical, for while it is beautiful to listen to a running brook murmur through life, it is nevertheless comical that a sum of rational creatures be transformed into a perpetual and meaningless muttering. Whether philosophy can use this plebs [multitude] as a category by letting it be the substratum for something greater, just as a vegetative mess gradually becomes solid earth, first peat and then more, I do not know. From the standpoint of spirit such an existence is sin, and the least one can do for it is to say so and demand spirit of it.

What is said here does not, however, apply to paganism. Such an existence can only be found within Christianity. The reason is that the greater the height at which spirit is posited, the more profound the exclusion appears; and the higher their loss, the more wretched in their contentment are οἱ ἀπηλγηκότεϛ [those who are past feeling] (Eph. 4:19).^* If the bliss of this spiritlessness is compared with the state of slaves in paganism, then there is some sense after all in slavery, because it is nothing at all in itself. The perdition of spiritlessness is on the other hand the most terrible thing of all, because the misfortune is precisely this, that spiritlessness has a relation to spirit, which is nothing. Spiritlessness may therefore possess in some degree the whole content of spirit, though mark well, not as spirit but as hobgoblins, gibberish, empty phrases, etc.; it may possess the truth, though mark well, not as truth but as rumor and old wives’ tales. Looked at aesthetically, this is the deep comedy in spiritlessness, something not generally noticed since the presenter is himself more or less insecure in relation to spirit. So in staging spiritlessness one puts sheer prattle into the mouth of the actor, since one lacks the courage to put into the mouth of spiritlessness the same words one uses oneself. This is insecurity. Spiritlessness can say exactly the same as has been said by the most well-endowed spirit, but it does not say it in virtue of spirit. Qualified as spiritless, the human being has become a talking machine, and there is nothing to prevent him from learning to repeat by rote a philosophical rigmarole, a confession of faith, and a political recitative. Is it not remarkable that the only ironist and the greatest humorist had to join forces in saying what seems the simplest thing of all, namely, that a person must distinguish between what he does and does not understand? And what is to prevent the most spiritless human being from repeating the same thing verbatim? There is only one proof of spirit, and that is spirit’s proof within oneself;^* anyone demanding something else may chance on proofs in superabundance but is already to be defined as spiritless.

In spiritlessness there is no anxiety. It is too happy for that, too content, and too spiritless. But this is a very pitiable reason, and paganism differs from spiritlessness in the former being definable as directed toward spirit and the latter as directed from spirit. Paganism is, if you will, the absence of spirit and thus differs far from spiritlessness. Paganism is in this respect much to be preferred. Spiritlessness is spirit’s stagnation and ideality’s caricature. Spiritlessness is accordingly not literally dumb when it comes to repetition by rote, but it is dumb [has lost its sense] in the way in which it is said of salt that it has lost its flavor^† and when one asks then how it can be salted. The perdition of spiritlessness, as well as its security, consists exactly in its understanding nothing in a spiritual way, seeing nothing as a task, even if with its clammy exhaustion it manages to fumble around everything. If it should on occasion be touched by spirit and begin for a moment to twitch like a galvanized frog, we have a phenomenon corresponding perfectly to pagan fetishism. There is, for spiritlessness, no authority, for it does after all know that spirit lies under no authority; but since unfortunately it is not itself spirit, it is, despite this knowledge, a perfect idol-worshipper. It worships a dunce and a hero with the same veneration, but its real fetish is above all a charlatan.

Even if there is no anxiety in spiritlessness, because it is excluded just as is spirit, anxiety is still present except that it is waiting. Conceivably a debtor may be lucky enough to slip off from a creditor and hold him at bay with talk, but there is one creditor who never came off worst, namely, spirit. Seen from spirit’s standpoint, anxiety is therefore also present in spiritlessness but hidden and masked. Even the observer shudders at the sight of it, because just as the figure of anxiety—if we allow ourselves to imagine such a shape—is frightful to look upon, its figure would terrify even more when it found it necessary to take on disguise in order not to appear as what it is, though being it no less. When death appears in its true form as the gaunt, grim reaper, one beholds it not without fright. But when, to mock those who fancy they can mock it, death appears in disguise, when the observer sees that the unknown figure captivating everyone with his courtesy and causing all to exult in the wild gaiety of desires is death, then a profound terror seizes him.

It is commonly said of paganism that it rests in sin; it might be more correct to say that it rests in anxiety. Paganism is generally speaking sensuousness but a sensuousness that has a relation to spirit, although without spirit being in the most profound sense posited as spirit. But this possibility is precisely anxiety.

If we ask further what the object of anxiety is, then the answer must be that here as everywhere it is nothing. Anxiety and nothing always correspond to each other. As soon as the actuality of freedom and of spirit is posited, anxiety is canceled. But what is it then, more particularly, that the nothing of anxiety signifies in paganism? It is fate.

Fate is a relation to spirit as external to it; it is a relation between spirit and something other that is not spirit, and to which spirit nevertheless stands in a spiritual relation. Fate can mean just the opposite, since it is a unity of necessity and contingency. This is something not always remarked; there has been talk instead of the pagan fatum (with different modifications in the Oriental and Greek conceptions, respectively) as though it were necessity. A remnant of this necessity has been allowed to remain in the Christian view, in which it came to signify fate, that is, the contingent, that which is incommensurable in terms of providence. But that is not how it is. Fate is precisely the unity of necessity and contingency. This is cleverly expressed in the saying that fate is blind; for someone walking forward blindly does so as much by necessity as by accident. A necessity unaware of itself is, regarding the next instant, eo ipso [by that very fact] accidental. Fate, then, is anxiety’s nothing. It is nothing because once spirit is posited, anxiety is canceled, but so too is fate, since providence is thereby also posited. Concerning fate, one can therefore say what Paul says about an idol: “no idol in the world really exists.”^* And yet the idol is an object of the pagan’s religiousness.

In fate, then, the pagan’s anxiety has its object, its nothing. The pagan cannot come into a relation to fate, because the very instant that it is the necessary, in the next it is the accidental. And still he is in relation to it, and this relation is the anxiety. Nearer to fate than this the pagan cannot come. Paganism’s attempt to do so was profound enough to shed a new light on it. Whoever would explain fate must be just as ambiguous as fate itself. The oracle was that too. But then again, the oracle could mean just the opposite. So the pagan’s relation to the oracle is once more anxiety. Here lies the profound and inexplicable tragedy of paganism. The tragedy lies however not in the ambiguity of the oracle’s utterance, but in the pagan’s not daring to forbear consulting it. He is in a relation to it, he dare not refrain from consulting it; in the very instant of consultation he is in an ambiguous relation to it (sympathetic and antipathetic). And then it is from here that one is supposed to reflect on the oracle’s explanations!

The concept of guilt and sin in the most profound sense does not emerge in paganism. If it should emerge, paganism would have foundered upon the contradiction that one became guilty through fate. This is in fact the supreme contradiction, and it is in this contradiction that Christianity breaks forth. Paganism does not understand it, for that it is too frivolous in its definition of the concept of guilt.

The concept of sin and guilt posits the single individual precisely as the single individual. It is not a question of any relation to the world as a whole, to all of the past. It is a question only of the individual being guilty. And yet the individual is supposed to have become that through fate, that is to say, through all that of which there is no question, and is supposed thereby to have become something which precisely cancels the concept of fate, and it is through fate that the individual is supposed to become this.

This contradiction, if understood in the wrong way, provides the misunderstood concept of hereditary sin, while rightly understood it provides the true concept, that is to say, the sense in which every individual is both itself and the race, and the later individual not essentially different from the first. In the possibility of anxiety, freedom sinks down, overcome by fate; freedom’s actuality now stands up with the explanation that it became guilty. Anxiety at its most acute, where it is as though the individual became guilty, is not yet guilt. Sin comes, then, neither as a necessity nor as an accident, and that is why that which answers to the concept of sin is providence.

Within Christianity, one finds paganism’s anxiety with regard to fate wherever spirit, although present, is not essentially posited as spirit. The phenomenon is most evident when observing a genius. In its immediacy, the genius as such is predominantly subjectivity. Genius is not yet posited as spirit, for as spirit it can be posited only by spirit. As immediate, it can be spirit (this is what gives rise to the illusion that its extraordinary talent is spirit posited by spirit), but then it has something else outside itself that is not spirit and is itself in an external relation to spirit. That is why the genius continually discovers fate, and the more profound the genius, the more profound the discovery. To spiritlessness this is of course foolishness, but in actuality it is greatness; for no one is born with the idea of providence, and those who think that it is acquired successively through upbringing are much mistaken, even though I would not deny the importance of upbringing. It is through its discovery of fate that genius shows its primordial power, but then also in turn its impotence. To the immediate spirit, which is what the genius always is, except that it is an immediate spirit sensu eminentiori [in the eminent sense], fate is the limit. Only in sin is providence posited. That is why the genius has an enormous struggle in reaching it. If the genius does not reach it, then truly the genius becomes a subject for the study of fate.

Genius is an omnipotent An-sich [in-itself] which would, as such, shake the whole world. For the sake of order another figure therefore also appears, namely, fate. It is nothing. It is genius itself that discovers it, and the more profound the genius, the more profoundly discovered is the fate, since that figure is simply the anticipation of providence. If the genius continues to be merely a genius and turns outward, he will accomplish astonishing things, and yet he will always be subject to fate, if not outwardly and in a way tangible and visible to all, then inwardly. Therefore a genius-existence, when it does not turn to itself inwardly in the deepest sense, is always like an adventure story. The genius is capable of everything and yet dependent upon a triviality no one comprehends, a triviality upon which the genius through his own omnipotence bestows almighty meaning. That is why a second lieutenant, if a genius, is capable of becoming an emperor and changing the world, so that there becomes but one empire and one emperor. But for that reason, too, the army can be drawn up for battle, the conditions for battle be absolutely favorable, and yet in the next instant wasted; a kingdom of heroes may beg for the order for battle to be given—but no, he cannot: he must wait for the fourteenth of June. And why? Because that was the date of the battle of Marengo. That is why everything can be in readiness, himself standing before the legions and waiting only for the sun to rise so as to proclaim silence for the oration that will electrify the soldiers. And the sun may rise more gloriously than ever, an inspiring and inflaming sight for all, only not for him, because the sun did not rise as gloriously as this at Austerlitz, and only the sun of Austerlitz gives victory and inspires. Hence the inexplicable passion with which such a one may often rage against an entirely insignificant person, when otherwise he can show humanity and kindness even toward his enemies. Yes, woe unto that man, woe unto that woman, woe unto that innocent child, woe unto that beast of the field, woe unto that bird whose flight, woe unto the tree whose branch, comes in his way in that instant when he should take his warning.

Externals, as such, mean nothing to the genius, which is why no one can understand him. Everything depends upon how he understands them himself in the presence of his secret friend (fate). All may be lost; the simplest and the wisest unite in admonishing him not to undertake the fruitless venture. Yet the genius knows that he is stronger than the whole world provided that no doubtful commentary is found at this point in the invisible writing in which he reads the will of fate. If he reads it as he wishes, he says with his almighty voice to the captain of the ship, “Just sail on, you carry Caesar and his fortune.” All may be won, and that very instant he receives the intelligence, perhaps with a word the meaning of which no creature, not even God in heaven, understands (for, in a certain sense, God in heaven does not understand the genius), and with that the genius collapses in impotence.

Genius is thus placed outside the common run. It is great in its belief in fate whether it triumphs or falls, for it triumphs through itself and falls through itself, or rather, both are through fate. Commonly, its greatness is admired only when it conquers, and yet it is never greater than when falling by its own hand, fate here having to be understood as not proclaiming itself outwardly. When, however, in that very instant when humanly speaking all is won, he comes upon the doubtful reading and then collapses, one might well exclaim, “What a giant it would take to overthrow him.” But that is why no one was capable of doing so except himself. The belief that subdued the kingdoms and countries of the world under his mighty hand, while people believed they were witness to an adventure story, is the same belief that overthrew him, and his fall was an even more unfathomable tale of adventure.

Genius is therefore anxious at another time than are ordinary people. The latter first discover the danger in the moment of danger; until then they are secure, and when the danger has passed they are secure once again. In the moment of danger the genius is stronger than ever; his anxiety lies on the other hand in the moment before and the moment after, that moment of frisson when he must converse with the great unknown that is fate. His anxiety may be greatest precisely in the moment after, because the impatience of certitude always increases in inverse ratio to the brevity of distance, for there is ever more to lose the closer one comes to winning, and most of all in the moment of victory and because the consistency of fate is precisely inconsistency.

Genius as such cannot grasp itself religiously, comes therefore neither to sin nor to providence, and for that reason rests in the relation of anxiety to fate. No genius has ever existed without this anxiety unless he was also religious.

Genius, if it remains immediate in character and outwardly turned, will indeed become great and its exploits astounding; but it will never come to itself and never become great in its own eyes. All its activity is turned outward, and if I may so express it, the planetary nucleus from which everything radiates does not come about. The significance of genius for itself is none, or as questionably sorrowful as the sympathy with which the inhabitants of one of the Faroe Islands would rejoice if there lived on this island a native Faroese who astounded all of Europe through his writings in various European languages, and transformed the sciences through his immortal merits, but at the same time never wrote a single line in Faroese, and finally forgot how to speak it. To itself genius does not become significant in the most profound sense; its compass can extend no further than that of fate in relation to fortune, misfortune, esteem, honor, power, immortal fame, all of which are temporal terms. Every deeper dialectical characterization of anxiety is excluded. The ultimate would be to be considered guilty, so that anxiety is directed not toward guilt itself but toward its appearance, which is an attribute of honor. A state of the soul like this would lend itself nicely to poetic treatment. Such a state can happen to anyone, but the genius would straightaway grip it so deeply that he would be striving not with humanity but with the profoundest mysteries of human existence [Tilværelse].

It takes courage to understand that in spite of its splendor, glory, and significance, the existence of such a genius is sin, and one hardly comes to understand it before having learned to satisfy the hunger of the wishful soul. Yet that is how it is. That such an existence may be to some extent happy all the same proves nothing. One can certainly conceive one’s talent as a means of recreation and realize, in so doing, that not for a moment does it rise above the categories in which temporality rests. Only through a religious reflection can genius and talent be justified in the deepest sense. To take a genius like Talleyrand, there was in him the possibility of a much deeper reflection upon life. This he avoided. He pursued the defining trait in him that turned outward. His admired genius as an intriguer has been gloriously demonstrated; his resilience, the power of his genius to saturate (to use a term used by the chemists of corrosive acids) is admired, but he belongs to the temporal. If such a genius had scorned the temporal as being immediate, and had turned toward himself and toward the divine, what a religious genius would have come of it! But what agonies would he also have had to endure. To follow one’s immediate traits is a relief in life, whether one is great or small; but the reward is also proportionate, whether one is great or small, and that person who is insufficiently mature spiritually to grasp that even immortal honor throughout all generations is merely a temporal attribute, that person who does not grasp that this, the striving for which keeps people’s souls sleepless with desire and craving, is something very imperfect compared with the immortality that is for every person, and that would rightly arouse the justifiable envy of all the world if it were reserved for one person—that person will not come far in his explanation of spirit and immortality.

It is commonly said that Judaism is the standpoint of the law. This could also be put in the following way: Judaism rests in anxiety. But here the nothing of anxiety signifies something other than fate; it is in this sphere that the phrase “be anxious of nothing” seems most paradoxical, for guilt is after all something. And yet it is true that as long as it is the object of anxiety, it is nothing. The ambiguity lies in the relation, for once guilt is posited, anxiety is gone and repentance is there. The relation, as always with that of anxiety, is sympathetic and antipathetic. This in turn seems paradoxical, yet it is not so, because while anxiety fears, it keeps up a subtle communication with its object, cannot look away from it, indeed will not; for if the individual does that, then repentance comes in. If this should strike someone as a hard saying, I cannot help him. Anyone with the required fixity to be, if I dare so put it, a divine prosecutor, if not in relation to others, then in relation to himself, will not find it hard. Moreover life offers phenomena enough in which, in anxiety, the individual gazes at guilt with something close to desire and yet fears it. Like the glance of the serpent, guilt has the power to fascinate. Here we find the truth in the Carpocratian view that perfection is attained by way of sin. The truth in this lies in the instant of decision when the immediate spirit, yet through spirit, posits itself as spirit; it is blasphemy, on the other hand, to think it should be realized in concreto.

It is just here that Judaism is further advanced than Greek culture, and the sympathetic factor in its anxiety relation to guilt may also be recognized here by the fact that it would not at any price forgo this relation in order to acquire Greek culture’s more reckless expressions: fate, fortune, misfortune.

The anxiety found in Judaism is anxiety about guilt. Guilt is a power that spreads itself everywhere and which, nevertheless, no one can understand in a deeper sense while it broods over human existence [Tilværelse]. Whatever is to explain it must therefore have the same character, in the same way that the oracle corresponds to fate. To the oracle in paganism there corresponds in Judaism the sacrifice. But that is why the sacrifice is something no one can comprehend. The profound tragedy of Judaism is analogous in this way to paganism’s relation to the oracle. The Jew has recourse to the sacrifice but it does not help him, for what would really help is the canceling of the relation of anxiety to guilt and the positing of a relation that is actual. Since this does not happen, the sacrifice becomes ambiguous, which is expressed in its repetition, the further consequence of which would be a pure skepticism in terms of reflection upon the act of sacrifice itself.

So what applied in the foregoing, that it is only with sin that providence is there, holds good again here: only with sin is atonement posited, and its sacrifice is not repeated. The reason here is not in the, if I may so put it, outward perfection of the sacrifice; the perfection of the sacrifice corresponds to sin’s actual relation being posited. Once the actual relation of sin is not posited, the sacrifice has to be repeated. (Thus the sacrifice is repeated in Catholicism although the absolute perfection of the sacrifice is still recognized.)

What has been briefly indicated here in world-historical terms repeats itself within Christianity in the individualities. Here again genius displays most clearly what lives in those less original in a way that is not so easily categorized. Broadly speaking, the only way in which genius differs from anyone else is in consciously beginning within its historical presupposition just as primitively as did Adam. Every time a genius is born, it is as though existence is put to a test; for genius runs through and experiences all that is past until it catches up with itself. Therefore the knowledge that genius has of the past is quite another than that offered in world-historical surveys.

That genius may remain immediate in its character has already been suggested, and the explanation that this is sin also contains what is the true courtesy shown to genius. Every human life is religiously arranged. Wanting to deny this confuses everything and cancels the concepts of individuality, race, and immortality. One could wish that people employed their acuity at this point, for here lie very hard problems. To say that someone with a mind for intrigue ought to be a diplomat or a plain-clothes detective, that someone with a mimetic talent for the comical ought to be an actor, and that someone with no talent at all ought to be a stoker in the courthouse, is an extremely fatuous way of looking at life, or rather it is not a way of looking at it at all, for it merely states the obvious. But explaining how my religious existence comes into relation with, and expresses itself in, my outward existence, that is the task. But who in our time bothers to think of things like that, even though life has at present more than ever the appearance of a transitory and fleeting moment? But instead of learning from this how to grasp the eternal, in chasing the moment one learns only how to pester oneself, one’s neighbors, and the moment too, to death. If only one can join in, perform the moment’s waltz just once, then one has lived, then one becomes the envy of those unfortunates who, though they were not born but tumbled headfirst into life and remain hurtling headlong onward, never reach it. Then one has lived, for what is more valuable in human life than a young woman’s brief loveliness, which has indeed already held up uncommonly well if for just one night it has enchanted the dancers’ ranks and faded first in the morning? There is no time to reflect how a religious existence pervades outward existence and interweaves it. Even if one does not pester with the hurry of despair, one still grabs hold of what is closest to hand. One may even become something great in the world. If then, on top of that, one attends church once in a while, then everything goes exceedingly well.

This seems to suggest that for some individuals the religious is the absolute, for others not,^* and so “Goodnight!” to all meaning in life. The deliberation naturally becomes harder the more remote the outward task from the religious as such. What profound religious reflection would be required to stretch to such an outward task, for example, as that of becoming a comic actor? That it can be done I do not deny, for anyone with some understanding of the religious knows that this is more malleable than gold and absolutely commensurable. The fault of the Middle Ages was not religious reflection but that it came to a halt too soon. Here again we have the question of repetition: To what extent can an individuality, having once begun religious reflection, succeed in returning to itself whole, to the letter in every particular? In the Middle Ages they broke off. Thus when an individuality was to take hold of himself, having lighted once more upon the fact, for example, that he possessed wit, a sense of comedy, etc., he annihilated all of this as something imperfect. Today, this is all too readily considered foolish, since if someone has wit and a sense of comedy he is a fortune’s Pamphilius; what more could he wish? Such explanations contain, naturally, not the faintest presentiment of the problem, for as people nowadays are born more worldly wise than in older days, so too the greater number of them are born blind to the religious. We do nevertheless find examples also in the Middle Ages of this deliberation being carried further. Thus, for example, if a painter interpreted his talent religiously but it was not one that could express itself in achievements lying closest to the religious sphere, an artist like this could no doubt be seen concentrating his mind on painting a Venus, interpreting his artistic calling just as piously as an artist who came to the aid of the Church by captivating the congregation’s eyes with a vision of heavenly beauty. Nevertheless, with regard to all this, one has to wait for individuals to come forward who, despite outward gifts, do not choose the broad way^* but rather the pain, the distress, and the anxiety in which they reflect religiously upon, and as though for a time lose, what it is surely only seductive to possess. Such a struggle is no doubt very exhausting, because there will be moments when they come close to regretting having started, and, yes, sorrowfully, perhaps sometimes almost to the point of despair, recall the smiling life that would have awaited them if they had followed the immediate urge of their talent. Yet, unquestionably, in the extreme dismay of distress, when it is as though all was lost because the way along which he would now push forward is impassable, and it is he himself who has cut off the smiling way of talent, the attentive person will hear a voice saying: Well done, my son! Just keep on, for he who loses all, gains all.^†

We would now consider a religious genius, that is, one who does not remain in his immediacy. Whether he, at any time, turns himself outward remains for him a later question. The first thing he does is to turn toward himself. Just as the immediate genius has fate as the figure that follows him, so this one has guilt. In turning toward himself, he eo ipso turns toward God, and there is an established ceremonial rule that says that when the finite spirit would see God, then it must begin as guilty. In turning toward himself, he discovers guilt. The greater the genius, the more profoundly is guilt discovered. The fact that for the spiritless this should be folly is for me a delight and a joyful sign. The genius is not like most people, and is not content with being so. The reason is not that he disdains people; it is because primitively he has to do with himself, while other people and their explanations are of no help one way or the other.

That he discovers guilt so profoundly proves that this concept is present to him sensu eminentiori [in the eminent sense], just as is its opposite, innocence. That is how it was with the immediate genius’s relation to fate, since everyone has a little relation to fate, but then it stays there with the kind of empty talk that is impervious to what Talleyrand discovered (and Young had already said), that the purpose of language is to conceal thoughts, although not as effectively as empty talk does—which is to say, conceal the fact that one has none.

In turning inward he discovers freedom. Fate he does not fear, for he takes up no outward task and for him freedom is his bliss; not freedom to do this or that in the world, to become king and emperor or someone touting tickets for the age, but freedom to know with himself that he is freedom. Yet the higher the individual rises, the greater the price to be paid for everything, and for regularity’s sake another figure takes shape with freedom’s An-sich [in-itself], namely, guilt. It is, as fate was, the only thing he fears, and yet his fear is not what was its maximum in the former case, namely, fear of being thought guilty, but fear of being guilty.

The more he discovers freedom, the more sin’s anxiety is upon him in the state of possibility. Only guilt frightens him, for guilt alone can deprive him of freedom. That freedom here is not at all defiance is easy to see, nor is it selfish freedom in a finite sense. Attempts have frequently been made to explain the origin of sin by way of such an assumption. Such efforts are only wasted labor, since accepting such an assumption presents a greater difficulty than the explanation itself. When freedom is construed in this way, it has necessity as its opposite, which shows that freedom has been construed in terms of reflection. No, the opposite of freedom is guilt, and that which is highest in freedom is its always having to do only with itself, projecting guilt in its possibility, and positing it accordingly through itself, and if guilt is actually posited, positing it through itself. If this is not borne in mind, freedom is cleverly confused with something entirely different, with strength.

When freedom now fears guilt, its fear is not in recognizing itself as guilty, if it is that, but rather in becoming so, for which reason freedom, as soon as guilt is posited, returns as repentance. But for the time being freedom’s relation to guilt is a possibility. Genius manifests itself here again by not jumping aside from the primitive decision, not looking for the decision outside itself with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and not contenting itself with the usual haggling. Only through itself can freedom come to know whether freedom or guilt is posited. Therefore nothing is more ridiculous than assuming that the question of whether one is a sinner or guilty comes under the heading: lesson to be learned by heart.

The relation of freedom to guilt is anxiety, because freedom and guilt are still only possibility. However, as freedom with all its passion thus wishfully stares at itself and will hold guilt off so that not a speck of it might be found in freedom, it cannot refrain from staring at guilt, and this staring is anxiety’s ambiguity, just as renunciation even within possibility is itself a coveting.

Here is where it now becomes clearly apparent in what sense there is a “more” in the anxiety of the later individual in relation to Adam’s.^* Guilt is a more concrete conception, which in the relation of possibility to freedom becomes ever more possible. It is in the end as though the guilt of the whole world united to make him guilty, and, what is the same, as though in becoming guilty he became guilty of the guilt of the whole world. Guilt, that is, has the dialectical character that it does not let itself be transferred to another account; whoever becomes guilty also becomes guilty of that which occasioned the guilt. For guilt never has an external occasion, and whoever yields to temptation is himself guilty of the temptation.^†

In the situation of possibility this appears in the form of illusion; once repentance breaks forth with the actual sin, it has on the contrary the actual sin as its object. In freedom’s possibility it is a matter of the deeper the discovery of guilt, the greater the genius, because the greatness of a human being depends simply and solely on the energy of the God relation in him, even if this God relation finds an altogether wrong expression as fate.

Just as fate finally captures the immediate genius, and this is indeed his culminating moment, not the glittering outward realization that causes amazement and even calls the craftsman from his daily occupation to stop and take notice, but the moment when, through himself, he collapses before himself, through fate, so too guilt captures the religious genius, and this is the moment of culmination, the moment when he is greatest, not when the sight of his piety is like the festivity of a special holiday, but when, through himself, he sinks down before himself in the depth of sin-consciousness.

* In saying that the transition from possibility to actuality is a κίνησιϛ [movement] Aristotle is therefore not to be understood logically but in terms of historical freedom.

† Plato conceives of the instant purely abstractly. To orient oneself in its dialectic, one should keep in mind that the instant is nonbeing under the category of time. Nonbeing (το μὴ ὀν[that which is not], το κενον [the empty] of the Pythagoreans [followers of the sixth-century BC Ionian Greek philosopher famous for his wide application of mathematics and belief in the transmigration of souls]) occupied ancient as much as it does modern philosophers. Among the Eleatics [pre-Socratic fifth-century BC school founded by Parmenides in Elea] nonbeing was conceived ontologically in such a way that what was affirmed of it could be stated only in the contradiction that only being is. Pursuing this further one sees that it reappears in all spheres. In metaphysical propaedeutics the proposition was expressed as: He who expresses nonbeing says nothing at all (this misunderstanding is contested in the Sophist, and in a more mimetic manner already in an earlier dialogue, Gorgias). Finally, in the practical spheres, the Sophists used nonbeing as a means of canceling all moral concepts; nonbeing is not, ergo everything is true, ergo everything is good, ergo deceit and the rest simply do not occur. This position is contested by Socrates in several dialogues. Plato has dealt with it in the Sophist in particular, which like all his dialogues at the same time provides artistic illustration of what it teaches; for the Sophist, whose concept and definition the dialogue is looking for while dealing principally with nonbeing, is himself a nonbeing. Thus the concept and the example come into being at the same time in the war waged upon the Sophist, and which ends not with his annihilation but with his coming into being, which is all the worse for him, namely that here, despite his sophistry, which like the armor of Mars enables him to become invisible, he has to appear. Recent philosophy has come essentially no further at all in its conception of nonbeing, even though it presumes to be Christian. Greek philosophy and the modern alike maintain that everything turns on bringing nonbeing into being, since doing away with it or making it vanish seems so extremely easy. The Christian view has it that nonbeing is present everywhere as the nothing from which things were created as semblance and vanity [cf. Ecclesiastes 1:2], as sin, as sensuousness removed from spirit [cf. Romans 1:24, 28], as the temporal forgotten by the eternal [cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Matthew 7:23, 25:12; Luke 13:25–27; John 3:18:36]; the task, consequently, is to do away with it in order to bring forth being. Only with this orientation in mind can the concept of Atonement be properly understood historically, that is, in the sense in which Christianity brought it into the world. If the term is understood in the opposite sense (the movement proceeding from the assumption that nonbeing is not), the Atonement is evaporated and turned inside out. It is in the Parmenides that Plato presents “the instant.” This dialogue is occupied in pointing out contradictions within the concepts themselves, something that Socrates expressed so decisively that, while it reflects no discredit on the beautiful old Greek philosophy, it may well put a more recent and boastful philosophy to shame, one which, unlike the Greek, makes great demands not upon itself but upon people and their admiration. Socrates points out that there is nothing wonderful about being able to demonstrate the contradiction (το ἐναντίον) in a particular thing participating in diversity, but if anyone could demonstrate contradictions in the concepts themselves, that would be something to admire (ἀλλ᾽ εἰ ὁ ἐστιν ἓν, αὐτο τουτο πολλά ἀποδειξει και αὐ τα πολλά δη ἑν, τουτο ἤδη θαυμάσομαι, και περι τϖν ἀλλϖν ἁπαντϖν ὡσαύτϖϛ, § 129b. [But if anyone can prove that what is simply unity itself is many or that plurality itself is one, then I shall begin to be astonished]). The procedure is however that of a dialectical thought experiment. It assumes both that the one (το ἓν) is and that it is not, and then shows what follows from this for itself and for the rest. The instant now appears to be this strange entity (ἄτοπον [that which has no place], the Greek word is especially appropriate) lying between motion and rest without occupying any time, and into which and out of which that which is in motion goes over into rest and that which is at rest goes over into motion. Thus the instant becomes the category of transition (μεταβολή), for Plato shows that the instant is similarly related to the transition of the one to the many, of the many to the one, of likeness to unlikeness, etc., and that it is the instant in which there is neither ἕν[one] nor πολλά [many], neither differentiation nor combination (οὒτε διακρίνεται οὔτε ξυγκρίνεται †157a). Plato deserves credit for all this by making clear the difficulty, yet the moment remains a silent atomistic abstraction, which is not, however, explained by ignoring it. Now, if logic were willing to state that it does not have transition (and if it does possess this category, it must have its place within the system itself even if it also operates in the system), it would become clearer that the historical spheres and all the knowledge that rests on a historical presupposition do have the instant. This category is of great importance for blocking the way to pagan philosophy as well as an equally pagan speculation in Christianity. Another passage, in the Parmenides, points to the outcome of treating the instant as such an abstraction. Assuming the one to possess temporal attributes elicits the contradiction that the one (το ἓν) becomes older and younger than itself and even the many (τα πολλά), and then again neither younger nor older than itself or than the many (§151e). The one must nevertheless be, so it is said, and “to be” is then defined as follows: Participation in an essence or a nature in the present time (το δε εἴναι ἀλλο τι ἐοτι ἣ μεθεξιϛ οὔσιαϛ μέτα χρόνου του παρόντοϛ §151e). In explicating the contradiction further it then appears that the present (το νύν) wavers between meaning the present, the eternal, and the instant. This “now” (το νύν) lies between “was” and “will become,” and “the one” cannot of course, in passing from the past to the future, leap over this “now.” It comes to a halt in the now, does not become older but is older. In the most recent philosophy, the abstraction culminates in pure being, but pure being is the most abstract expression for eternity and is, in turn, as “nothing,” precisely the instant. Here again we see how important the “instant” is, because only with it can one succeed in giving eternity its proper significance. Eternity and the instant become the extreme opposites, while dialectical sorcery otherwise contrives to make eternity and the instant mean the same. It is only with Christianity that sensuousness, temporality, and the instant are to be understood, because only here does eternity become essential.

* This incidentally is space. The practiced will see precisely in this a proof of the correctness of my presentation, because time and space are entirely identical (nacheinander, nebeneinander) for abstract thinking, become so for representation, and are truly so in the definition of God as omnipresent [cf. Psalms 139:7–12; Jeremiah 23:23–24; Acts of the Apostles 17: 24–27].

* It is remarkable that Greek art culminates in the plastic, which of all things lacks the glance. This however is deeply grounded in the fact that the Greeks did not understand the concept of spirit in the most profound sense, and nor therefore, in the most profound sense, sensuousness and temporality. What a striking contrast to Christianity, where God is pictorially represented as an eye.

† The New Testament has a poetic paraphrase of the instant. Paul says that the world will perish ἐν ἀτόμώ και ἐν ριπη ὀϕθαλμοῡ [in a moment and the twinkling of an eye; 1 Corinthians 15:52, where it is “we” that will perish]. In doing so he expresses the commensurability of the instant with eternity, due, that is, to the instant of destruction expressing eternity in the same instant. Let me illustrate what I mean, and forgive me if anything offensive should be found in the picture. Once here in Copenhagen there were two actors who probably never thought that their effort could have a deeper meaning. They stepped out onto the stage, placed themselves opposite each other, and then began miming one or another passionate conflict. When the act was in full swing and the spectator’s eye followed the story in expectation of what would follow, they suddenly stopped and remained turned immovably to stone in their instantaneous mimical expression. The effect of this can be exceedingly comical, for the instant becomes accidentally commensurable with the eternal. The effect of the plasticity is due to the eternal expression being expressed eternally; the comic effect consists, on the other hand, in the eternalizing of something accidental.

* One calls to mind here the category that I hold by, repetition, whereby one comes into eternity forward.

* [2 Corinthians 5:17]

† [Galatians 4:4]

* From the definition of temporality as sinfulness it follows that death is in turn punishment [Romans 6:23; cf. 5:12]. This is an advancement whose analogue, si placet [if you please] may be found in the fact that, even regarding it as an external phenomenon, death announces itself the more terribly the greater the perfection of the organism. Thus while a plant’s death and decay spread a fragrance almost more pleasing than its seasonal breath, the decay of an animal poisons the air. In a deeper sense it is indeed true that the more highly the human being is rated, the more frightful is death. The beast does not really die, but when spirit is posited as spirit, death appears terrifying. Death’s anxiety therefore corresponds to the anxiety of birth, not that I would repeat on that account what has been said, partly truly and partly cleverly, partly enthusiastically and partly frivolously, about death being a metamorphosis. In the moment of death the human being finds itself at the extreme point of the synthesis; it is as though spirit cannot be present for it cannot die, and yet it must wait because the body has to die. The pagan view of death was milder and more attractive, just as its sensuousness was more naïve, its temporality more carefree, but it lacked what is highest. One reads [Gotthold Ephraim] Lessing’s beautiful treatise [“Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet. Eine Untersuchung” (1769)] on the representation of death in classical art, and cannot deny being moved with a sorrowful pleasure by the picture of this sleeping genius, or by seeing the beautiful solemnity with which the genius of death bows his head and extinguishes the torch. There is, if you will, something indescribably persuasive and alluring in trusting oneself to a guide like this, who is as conciliate as a memory in which nothing is remembered. But on the other hand there is also something sinister about following this silent guide, for he hides nothing, his form is no incognito. As he is, so is death, and with that everything is over. There is an unfathomable sorrow in this genius, with his friendly figure, bending down over the dying, and with the breath of his last kiss extinguishing the last spark of life, while little by little all that was experienced has already vanished, and death is left behind as the secret that, without being explained, explained that the whole of life was a game that ended with everything, great and small, going out like tapers, one by one, and last of all the soul itself, as the lighter. But then annihilation’s muteness also lies there, in that it was all mere child’s play and now the game is over.

* What has been explained here would also have been in place in Chapter I. I have nevertheless dealt with it here because it leads to what follows.

* [Ephesians 4:19; who “have lost all sensitivity”]

* [1 Corinthians 2:4]

† [Matthew 5:13:2: “if salt has lost its taste”]

* [1 Corinthians 8:4]

* With the Greeks the question of the religious could not arise in this way. It is however so wonderful to read what Plato tells in one place and makes use of. After Epimetheus [the brother of Prometheus] had furnished man with all sorts of gifts, he asked Zeus whether he should hand out the ability to choose between good and evil in the same way that he had distributed the other gifts, so that the one received this ability while another received the gift of eloquence, and another that of poetry, and a third that of art. But Zeus replied that this ability should be distributed equally among all, because it belongs just as essentially to everyone alike.

* [Matthew 7:13–14]

† [Matthew 10:39]

* Yet it must not be forgotten that the analogy here is incorrect inasmuch as we are not dealing with innocence in the later individual but with repressed sin-consciousness.

† [James 1:14]

↑ Back to top