Chapter III Governance’s Part in My Authorship
CHAPTER III
Governance’s Part in My Authorship
In a certain sense, it has not been my preference or inclination to write what I have written up to this point. There is something painful about having to speak so much about oneself. Would to God I had dared to be silent even longer,48 indeed, to die in silence about what has silently engaged me day and night as my work and my task. But, God be praised, now I breathe, now I really feel impelled to speak; now I have arrived at what is an indescribable bliss for me to think and speak about. This, my God-relationship, is in many ways the happy love of my unhappy and troubled life. And even though this love story (if I dare to call it that) has the essential mark of the true love story, that only one can completely understand it, and to only one does a person have absolute joy in telling it, to the beloved, therefore here the one by whom one is loved*—it nevertheless is enjoyable to speak of it to others also.
[XIII 557] That I have needed and how I have continuously needed God’s assistance day after day, year after year—in order to turn my mind to that, in order to be able to state it accurately, I do not need the help of memory or recollection, or of journals and diaries, or to compare these with one another—I am reliving it again so vividly, so presently, at this moment. When it was a [XIII 558] matter of boldness, enthusiasm, zeal, almost to the border of madness, what was this pen not able to present! And now when I am to speak about my relationship to God, about what is repeated every day in my prayer, which gives thanks for the indescribable things he has done for me, so infinitely more than I ever had expected; about what has taught me to marvel, to marvel over God, his love, and over what a human being’s weakness is capable of with his help; about what has taught me both to long for eternity and not to fear to find it tedious, since that is the very situation I need in order to do nothing other than to thank him—now when I am going to speak of this, a poet impatience awakens in my soul. More determined than that king who shouted, “My kingdom for a horse,”50 and blessedly determined as he was not, I would give everything, my life included, to find—something that is more blessed for thought to find than for the lover to find the beloved—the expression,51 in order then to die with this expression on my lips. See, it is offered, thoughts as enchanting as those fruits in that fabulous garden,52 so rich, so warm, so fervent, expressions so soothing to the feeling of gratitude in me, so cooling to the hot longing—it seems to me that if I had a winged pen, indeed, ten of them, I still would be unable to keep up with the abundance offered to me. But then when I pick up my pen, for a time I cannot—just as one speaks of not being able to move a foot—move my pen; in that state not a line about this relationship is put down on paper. I seem to hear a voice that says to me: Obtuse fellow, what does he think he is; does he not know that obedience is dearer to God than the fat of rams?53 Do the whole thing as a work assignment. Then I become completely calm; then there is time to write every letter, almost meticulously, with my slower pen. And if that poet passion awakens in me again for a moment, I seem to hear a voice speak to me as a teacher speaks to a boy: Now, just hold the pen properly and write each letter exactly. Then I can do it, then I dare not do anything else, then I write each word, each line, almost unaware of the next word and the next line. Then, when I read it through later, I find an entirely different satisfaction in it. Even though some glowing expressions perhaps did elude me, what has been [XIII 559] produced is something else—it is not the work of the poet passion or of the thinker passion, but of devotion to God, and for me a divine worship.
But what I at this moment am reliving or have relived has been continually experienced during all my work as an author. “The poet” is said to call upon the muse in order to get ideas. This has actually never been the case with me; my individuality debars me from even understanding it. But on the other hand, I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts. Indeed, give a person a creative talent like that, and then such frail health, and he surely will learn to pray. At every moment I have been and still am able to perform the feat of sitting down and writing incessantly day and night and yet another day and night, because there is wealth enough. But if I did that, I would collapse. Ah, just the slightest dietary indiscretion, and I am in mortal danger. Then when I learn obedience, do the work as a firm work assignment, hold the pen properly and write each letter carefully, then I can do it. Thus, time and time again, I have had more joy from my relationship of obedience to God than from the thoughts I produced. —This obviously signifies, as is easily seen, that I do not have an immediate God-relationship to appeal to, nor do I dare to say that it is God who directly contributes the thoughts to me, but that my relationship to God is a relationship of reflection, inwardness in reflection, since reflection is the predominant quality of my individuality; this is also why in praying my strength is in giving thanks.
Thus throughout all my work as an author I have incessantly needed God’s assistance in order to be able to do it as a simple work assignment for which specific hours are allotted each day, beyond which it was not permitted to work, and when this happened on rare occasions, I had to pay dearly for it. Nothing resembles my conduct less than that outburst of genius and then a tumultuous breaking off. I have basically lived like a scribe in his office. From the very beginning I have been as if under arrest and at every moment sensed that it was not I who played the master but that it was someone else who was the master, sensed it with fear and trembling when he let me perceive his omnipotence and my nothingness, sensed it with indescribable bliss when I related myself to him and the work in unconditional obedience. The dialectical consists in this, that as a precautionary measure whatever extraordinariness was granted to me was granted in such an [XIII 560] elasticity that if I would not obey it would slay me. It was like a father’s saying to his child, “You have permission to receive it all at once, it is yours, but if you refuse to obey and to use it as I want you to use it—well, I will not punish you by taking it away—no, take it, it will crush you.” Without God I am too strong for myself, and in perhaps the most agonizing way of all I am shattered. After becoming an author, I actually have never once experienced what I hear others lament over—the lack of thoughts or that they would not present themselves. If that were to happen to me, I very likely would almost be happy that I at last really had a day off. But I have frequently experienced and at all times have been horribly aware of a terrible torment that is akin to starving in the midst of abundance, to being overwhelmed by wealth—if I do not immediately learn obedience, let God help me, and produce in the same way, as calmly and unobtrusively as one does a work assignment.
But during my whole work as an author, I have continually, day after day over the years, needed God’s assistance in another sense also, because he has been my one and only confidant, and only in trust to his co-knowledge have I dared to venture what I have ventured and been able to endure what I have endured; and I have found blessedness in it: to become very literally alone in the enormous world, alone, since wherever I was, whether in public or in private, I was always in disguise, consequently alone, became no more alone in the solitude of the night, alone, not in the forests of America with their horrors and dangers but alone in what changes even the most frightful actuality into refreshment and alleviation, alone in the company of the most dreadful possibilities, alone, with human language practically against me, alone in torments that have taught me more than one new note to that text about the thorn in the flesh,54 alone in decisions where one could have needed friends, if possible a whole generation, to hold on to one, alone in dialectical tensions that—without God—would drive insane anyone with my imagination, alone in anxieties unto death, alone in a meaninglessness of existence without being able, even if I wanted it, to make myself understandable to a single person—what am I saying, “make myself understandable to a single person”—no, there were times when that was not lacking, so it could not be said “only that was lacking,” times when I could not even make myself understandable to myself. When I now consider that years went by in this manner, I shudder; if for one single moment my eyes see incorrectly, [XIII 561] I collapse. But if I see correctly, then I trustingly rest in confidence in God’s co-knowledge, then the blessedness is there again.
And now for the particulars, it would be futile if I were to try to tell how I have perceived God’s assistance in this. For example, it has been inexplicable to me (what has so often happened to me) that when I did something and could not possibly say why or it did not occur to me to ask why, when I as a very specific person followed the prompting of my natural impulses, that this, which for me had a purely personal meaning bordering on the accidental, that this then turned out to have a totally different, a purely ideal meaning when seen later within my work as an author; that much of what I had done purely personally was strangely enough precisely what I should do qua author. It has been inexplicable to me how very often seemingly quite accidental little circumstances in my life, which then in turn admittedly became something very considerable through my imagination, brought me into a specific state, and I did not understand myself, became depressed—and see—then out of this developed a mood, the very mood I should use in the work with which I was engaged at the time, and at just the right place. There has not been the slightest delay in the writing; what was to be used has always been at hand the very moment it was to be used. In one sense all the writing has had an unbroken evenness, as if I had done nothing other than to copy each day a specific part of a printed book.
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But in this accounting I must in an even more precise sense bring out Governance’s part in the authorship. If, for example, I were to go ahead and say that I had had an overview of the whole dialectical structure from the very beginning of the whole work as an author or that at every moment I had in advance exhausted in reflection, step by step, the possibilities in such a way that reflection did not teach me something later, at times something else, that what I had done was surely the right thing but that nevertheless only now did I myself properly understand it—if I were to do that, it would be a denial and an unfairness to God. No, in honesty I must say: I cannot understand the whole simply because I can understand the whole down to the slightest detail; [XIII 562] but what I cannot understand is that I can now understand it and yet by no means dare to say that I understood it so accurately at the beginning—and yet I certainly am the one who has done it and with reflection has taken every step. In garrulous talk this could be explained easily by saying, as some have also said about me without having any idea of the totality of my authorship, that I was a genius of reflection. But just because I acknowledge the correctness of attributing reflection to me—I truly am too reflective not to see that this compounding of reflection and genius explains nothing, because insofar as someone has genius, he does not have reflection, and vice versa, since reflection is the very negation of immediacy.
If I were now to state as categorically definitely as possible Governance’s part in the whole work as an author, I know of no expression more descriptive or more decisive than this: It is Governance that has brought me up, and the upbringing is reflected in the writing process. To that extent, then, what was developed earlier, that all the esthetic writing is a deception, proves to be in one sense not entirely true, since this expression concedes a little too much along the line of consciousness. Yet it is not entirely untrue, because I have been conscious during the upbringing, and from the beginning. The process is this: a poetic and philosophic nature is set aside in order to become a Christian. But the unusual thing is that the movement begins concurrently and therefore is a conscious process; one gets to see how it happens; the other does not commence after a separation of some years from the first. Thus the esthetic writing is surely a deception, yet in another sense a necessary emptying. The religious is decisively present already from the first moment, has decisive predominance, but for a little while waits patiently so that the poet is allowed to talk himself out, yet watching with Argus eyes lest the poet trick it and it all becomes a poet.*
[XIII 563] I think that the significance my work as an author has for the age appears best from this point of view. If in a word I were to express my judgment of the age, I would say: It lacks religious upbringing. To become and be a Christian has become a banality. The esthetic plainly has the upper hand. By going further than to be a Christian (which everyone supposedly is), we have reverted to or have passed into a sophisticated esthetic and intellectual paganism with an admixture of Christianity. The task that is to be assigned to most people in Christendom is—away from “the poet” or from relating oneself to or having one’s life in what the poet recites, away from speculative thought, from having one’s life imaginatively (which is also impossible) in speculating (instead of existing) to becoming a Christian. The first movement is the total significance of the esthetic writing in the totality of my work as an author; the second movement is that of Concluding Postscript, which, by drawing in or editing all the esthetic writing to its advantage in order to throw light on its issue, the issue of becoming a Christian, itself makes the same movement in another sphere: away from speculative thought, away from the system etc., to becoming a Christian. The movement is back, and even though it is all done without authority, there is still something in the tone that is reminiscent of a policeman when he says to a crowd: Move back! This is indeed why more than one of the pseudonymous writers calls himself a policeman, a street inspector.56
And now I, the author, in my judgment what relation then do I have to the age? Am I perhaps “the apostle”?57 Abominable! I have never given occasion for such an idea; I am a poor, lowly human being. Am I then the teacher, the one who does the upbringing? No, not that either. I am the one who himself has been brought up, or the one whose authorship describes what it [XIII 564] means to be brought up to become a Christian; just as the upbringing and accordingly as the upbringing puts pressure on me, I in turn put pressure on the age, but teacher I am not—only a fellow-pupil.
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In order to elucidate further the part of Governance in the authorship, it becomes necessary to explain, insofar as I have the explanation at my disposal, how I happened to become an author.
About my vita ante acta [earlier life] (that is, from childhood until I became an author), I cannot give details here, however remarkable it is for me how from my earliest childhood and step by step in my whole development I was predisposed to becoming precisely the kind of author I became. For the sake of what follows, I must, however, give a few lines, something I do with shyness, as an individual presumably always does when he must speak purely personally about himself.
From childhood on I have been in the grip of an enormous depression, the depth of which finds its only true manifestation in the equally enormous proficiency granted me to hide it under a seeming cheerfulness and zest for life. My only joy from almost as far back as I can remember was that no one could discover how unhappy I felt; this circumstance (the equally great magnitude of my depression and of my dissimulative art) does indeed signify that I was assigned to myself and the God-relationship. —As a child, I was rigorously and earnestly brought up in Christianity, insanely brought up, humanly speaking—already in earliest childhood I had overstrained myself under the impression that the depressed old man, who had laid it upon me, was himself sinking under—a child attired, how insane, as a depressed old man. Frightful!
No wonder, then, that there were times when Christianity seemed to me the most inhuman cruelty, although I never, even when I was furthest away from it, gave up my veneration for it and was firmly resolved, especially if I did not personally choose to become a Christian, never to initiate anyone into the difficulties that I knew and that I never either read or heard discussed. But I have never broken with Christianity or given it up; to attack it has never entered my mind. No, from the time it was possible to speak of the application of my powers, I had firmly [XIII 565] resolved to employ everything to defend it, or in any case to present it in its true form, because, through my upbringing, I very early was already able to ascertain how seldom Christianity is presented in its true form, how those who defend it most often betray it, and how rarely the attackers actually hit it, although they often, which is still my view, superbly hit established Christendom, which certainly might rather be called the caricature of true Christianity or an enormous quantity of misunderstanding, illusion, etc. sprinkled with a sparse little dash of true Christianity.
Thus I did in a way love Christianity—to me it was the venerable—to be sure, it had made me extremely unhappy, humanly speaking. It was closely linked to my relationship with my father, the person I have most deeply loved—and what does this mean? Part of it is precisely that this is the person who has made one unhappy—but out of love. His fault consisted not in a lack of love but in mistaking a child for an old man. To love the person who makes one happy is, in terms of reflection, a deficient definition of love; to love the person who out of malice made one unhappy is a virtue; but to love the person who out of love, accordingly through a misunderstanding but out of love, made one unhappy—as far as I know, this has hitherto never really been delineated but is indeed normative reflection’s formula for loving.
So I went out into life, favored in every way with regard to mental capacity and outward circumstances; everything was done and continued to be done to develop my mind and spirit as richly as possible. Confidently—yet with a decided sympathy and predilection for what it is to suffer or for what in one way or another is oppressed and suffering—I can in a certain sense say that I went forth into life with an almost rashly proud air. I have never at any moment in my life been deserted by the faith: one can do what one wills—except one thing, otherwise unconditionally everything—except one thing, lift the depression in whose power I was. It has never at any time occurred to me (to others this will probably seem a delusion, but for me it has truly been so, just as truly as what I say next, which to others will probably again seem a delusion) that someone was living who was or someone would be born a contemporary who would become my superior—in my innermost being I was myself the most wretched of all. It never occurred to me at any time that I would not be victorious, even if I would have attempted something utterly rash—except in one thing, otherwise unconditionally in everything, but not in one thing—to lift this depression, the suffering of which I have been completely free scarcely one [XIII 566] whole day. At the same time, however, together with this it must be understood that I was initiated very early into the thought that to be victorious is to be victorious in the infinite sense, which in the finite sense is to suffer. So this again is in agreement with depression’s understanding in my innermost being that I actually was good for nothing (in the finite sense).
What reconciled me to my fate and to my suffering was that I, alas, the so unhappy, so agonizing captive, had received this boundless freedom in being able to deceive, that I had and was given permission to be unconditionally alone with the pain—of course this was still enough to make all the rest of my capability not very pleasant for me. —When this is presupposed (such a pain and such a concealment), how the turn is made depends on an individuality’s difference, whether this solitary, inner anguish daimonically finds its expression and its satisfaction in hating humankind and cursing God, or just the opposite. The latter was the case with me. As far back as I can remember, I was convinced of one thing—that for me there was no comfort or help to be sought in others. Replete with the much that otherwise was granted me, as a human being longing for death, qua spirit desiring the longest possible life, I, who sadly loved people, wanted to be helpful to them, to find comfort for them, above all clarity in thought, in specie [in particular] about Christianity. Very far back in my recollection goes the thought that in each generation there are two or three who become sacrificed for the others, are used to find out in frightful sufferings what is beneficial for others. That is how I sadly understood myself, that I was designated for this.
So I went out into life—initiated into every possible enjoyment of life yet never actually enjoying it, but instead, and this was my pleasure related to the pain of my depression, striving to produce the appearance that I was enjoying it—in association with all possible people, but it never occurred to me that I had a confidant in any one of them, and it certainly never occurred to any one of them that he was my confidant. That is, I had to become and did become an observer, as an observer and as spirit was extraordinarily enriched with experiences by this life, came to see very close at hand that epitome of desires, passions, moods, feelings, etc., and had practice in entering into and coming out of a person and also in imitating him. My imagination and my dialectic continually had plenty of material to work on and plenty of time, free of all activity, to be idle. For long periods I [XIII 567] have done nothing but practice dialectical exercises with an admixture of imagination, testing my mind and spirit as one tunes an instrument—but/was not really living. I was tossed about in life, tested in very much and in almost the greatest variety of things, unfortunately also in mistakes—alas, and also on the road of perdition. Then in my twenty-fifth year, I—myself an enigmatically developed extraordinary possibility, the meaning and destiny of which, despite my superb reflection, which possibly understood everything, I did not understand—understood one thing, that my life was most properly used in doing penance. But I had not really lived, except in the category of mind and spirit; a human being I had not been, child and youth least of all.
Then my father died.58 In a mitigation of ideality, the powerful religious impression of childhood acquired a renewed power over me. Indeed, I had also grown so much older that I was better suited to my upbringing; the trouble with it was simply that it really would not be to my benefit until I became forty years old. My misfortune, more or less from birth and completed by my upbringing, was not to be fully human. But to be a child—and the other children laugh, tease, or do whatever they ordinarily do; and to be a young man—and the other young men fall in love, dance, or do whatever they ordinarily do—and then, although one is a child and youth, to be mind and spirit: what frightful torment, even more frightful if with the aid of the imagination one knows how to perform the feat of making it appear as if one were the youngest of all. But this misfortune is already eased when one is forty years old, and in eternity it does not exist.
I have had no immediacy, and therefore, understood in a purely and simply human sense, I have not lived. I began at once with reflection, did not accumulate a little reflection in later life, but I actually am reflection from first to last. In the two ages of immediacy (childhood and youth), I, deft (as reflection always is), aided myself, had to aid myself, with something rather counterfeited, and I, myself not yet clear about what had been granted to me, suffered the pain of not being like the others, something I at that time would of course have given everything to be able to be for just a brief time. A spirit can superbly tolerate not being like others; indeed, this is specifically the negative qualification of spirit. But childhood and youth relate to the qualifications of the species, the human race, and for that very reason it is the greatest agony at that time to be unlike the others, or as with me, strangely turned the wrong way, to happen to begin where few in each generation end. Most people, who only live out the elements of the psychical-physical synthesis, never arrive at the qualification: spirit. But, on the other hand, I now have my life [XIII 568] ahead of me in an altogether different sense. Nothing is more unfamiliar and foreign to me than this sad longing for childhood and youth. I thank my God that it is over and done with, and now I feel happier with each day I grow older, yet blessed only through the thought of eternity, because temporality is not and never will be the element of spirit but in one sense is its suffering.
An observer will see how everything was set dialectically in motion: I had a thorn in the flesh, intellectual endowments (especially imagination and dialectic), and education in abundance, an enormous development as an observer, a truly rare Christian upbringing, an altogether unique dialectical relation to Christianity. From childhood I was trained in obedience, absolute obedience, was equipped with an almost reckless faith in being capable of everything, except one thing—to become a free bird, even if it were for just one single whole day, or to slip out of the chains of depression in which another power held me—finally, I myself was a penitent. As I now see it, it seems as if from the very first moment another power had been watching this and said as the fisherman says of the fish: Just let it run; it is still too soon to pull it in. Strangely enough—and this goes far back in my recollection without my being able in any way to say when I began or how such a thing occurred to me—I continually, that is, every day, prayed to God to give me the zeal and patience for the work he himself would assign to me.
In this way I became an author.
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Prior to the real beginning of my work as an author, there was an event, or rather a fact59; an event most likely would not have been enough; it was a fact—I myself had to be an acting agent. I cannot give further particulars about that fact, its nature, how frightfully complex it was dialectically even though in another sense quite simple, and where the collision actually lay, but only ask the reader not to think of revelations and the like, since with me everything is dialectical. I will, however, present the result of the fact insofar as it serves to throw light on the authorship. It was a double fact. However much I have lived in another sense, I had really leaped over, humanly speaking, childhood and youth. This [XIII 569] presumably had to be retrieved (that no doubt was the view of Governance)—instead of having been young, I became a poet, which is youth a second time. I became a poet, but with my religiously oriented background, indeed, with my definite religiousness, the same fact became for me a religious awakening also. So in the most decisive sense I came to understand myself in the religious, in the religiousness to which I had, however, related myself as to a possibility. The fact made me a poet. If I had not been the one I was, and the event on the other hand the one it was, and I acted as I did act—that would have been the end of it; I would have remained a poet and then after many years perhaps would have come into a relation to the religious. But just because I was as religiously developed as I was, the fact gripped me far more deeply and in religious impatience annihilated in a certain sense what I had become, a poet—annihilated it, or in any case I began concurrently, at the very same time, in two places, yet in such a way that to be a poet was actually no concern of mine, was what I had become through something else; on the other hand, the religious awakening did not occur through myself but occurred in conformity with myself, that is, in a deeper sense I did not recognize myself in being a poet but did indeed recognize myself in the religious awakening.
Here the reader readily perceives the explanation for the duplexity of the whole authorship, except that this duplexity was also assimilated in the author’s consciousness. What was to be done? Well, the poetic element had to be emptied out—for me there was no other possibility. But the entire esthetic production was taken into custody by the religious; the religious put up with this emptying out of the poetic but continually pressed on, as if it would say, “Aren’t you soon finished with that?”* While the [XIII 570] poet-productions were being written, the author was living in decisive religious categories.*
In a certain sense, it was not at all my idea to become a religious author. My idea was to empty myself of the poetic as quickly as possible—and then out to a rural parish.62 By this chart I steered. I felt alien to the whole poet-production, but I could not do otherwise. As I stated, originally it was not my intention to become a religious author. What I had thought of as a way to express emphatically that I had been religious and that the pseudonymous was foreign to me was the sudden transition: promptly to take to the country as a rural pastor.
However, in me the need to write was so great that I could not do otherwise. I let Two Upbuilding Discourses63 be published, and I came to an understanding with Governance. Time for poet-production was granted, but continually in the custody of the religious, which kept its eye on me as if it would say, “Aren’t you [XIII 571] soon finished with that?” And I understood myself in satisfying the religious by becoming a religious author.
Now Governance really had me shackled; perhaps like a dubious character I have been kept on a very restricted regimen. I am accustomed to living in such a way that at most I believe I have only one year left and at times, not rarely, when things are tightened up, I live on a one-week, yes, a one-day prospect. Governance had curbed me in every respect. As for the esthetic production, I could not leave it understood in such a way that it ended with my having my life in the esthetic. Even if the religious had not been in the background, that “thorn in the flesh” would still have kept me from it. As for the religious authorship, Governance had shackled me so that I did not arrogate anything to myself, since I understood myself to be in a great debt.
And now I come to a term descriptive of me, the author, a term I am accustomed to use about myself when I am speaking with myself, a term that relates to the inverse movement of all the writing (that I did not begin by saying where I wanted to go), which is connected to my capacity as an observer, also to my awareness of being one who himself needs upbringing—that in the spheres of the intellectual and the religious, and with my sights on the concept to exist and then on the concept Christendom, I am like a spy in a higher service, the service of the idea. I have nothing new to proclaim, I am without authority; myself hidden in a deception, I do not proceed directly but indirectly-cunningly; I am no saint—in short, I am like a spy who in spying, in being informed about malpractices and illusions and suspicious matters, in exercising surveillance, is himself under the strictest surveillance. See, the police also use such people. For that purpose they do not choose only people whose lives have always been most upright; what is wanted is only experienced, sly, scheming, sagacious people who can sniff out everything, above all pick up the trail and expose. Thus the police have nothing against having such a person under their thumb by means of his vita ante acta [earlier life] in order precisely thereby to be able to force him unconditionally to put up with everything, to obey, and to make no fuss on his own behalf. It is the same with Governance, but there is this infinite difference between Governance and the municipal police—that Governance, who is compassionate love, precisely out of love uses such a person, rescues and brings him up, while he uses all his sagacity, which in this way is sanctified and consecrated. But in need of upbringing [XIII 572] himself, he realizes that he is duty-bound in the most unconditional obedience. It is entirely certain that God can unconditionally require everything from every human being, that he must unconditionally put up with everything; but it is also entirely certain that consciousness of earlier errors contributes significantly to speed and ability in this respect.*
[XIII 573] But it certainly is obvious that Christendom has gone astray in reflection and sagacity. Immediate pathos, yes, even if one were to sacrifice one’s life in immediate pathos, does not help. There is far too much reflection and sagacity available not to be able to wipe out his significance. In this age, even for a martyr to be of benefit, he must have reflection in order to implicate the age in such a way that it actually gets caught when it puts him to death—and that then the awakening can follow.
This is how I understand myself in my work as an author: it makes manifest the illusion of Christendom and provides a vision of what it is to become a Christian. Whether there is such a high level of religiousness that all the esthetic writing before it can be regarded not as a necessary emptying out, not as a holy deception, but as something that must be repented—that I do not know. I have never understood it in that way, and it will hardly occur to anyone before my saying it now. But since everything with me is reflection, this thought has of course not escaped me either. I can imagine the objection made out of a scrupulous and pusillanimous conception of duty to speak the truth, a conception that leads, consistently, to being totally silent for fear of saying something untrue and, since silence can also be an untruth, leads, consistently, to: Do it or don’t do it, be silent or speak—both are equally wrong.64 But anxiety bordering on madness is not to be regarded as a higher form of religiousness. The teleological [XIII 574] suspension related to the communication of truth (temporarily suppressing something precisely in order that the true can become more true) is a plain duty to the truth and is part and parcel of a person’s responsibility to God for the reflection granted to him.
Familiar as I was with the inner suffering involved in becoming a Christian and rigorously brought up in it, I almost missed the other side of the matter. Here Governance assisted and assisted in such a way that the outcome of what I did truly benefited me and my cause, so that, to compare intellectual endowment to a stringed instrument, I not only remained in tune but gained an extra string on my instrument—the fruit of being brought up more fully in what it is to be a Christian. Since at that decisive moment I altered my existence-relations on the occasion of Concluding Postscript, I have had the opportunity to experience what one can never really believe without having experienced it, this Christian scale: that love is hated.
Truly, I have always been anything but exclusive; myself of humble descent, I have loved the common man or what is called the simple class—this I know I have done. I sadly found my joy in that—and yet they are the very ones who were incited to attack me and made to think that I was exclusive. If I had actually been exclusive, this never would have happened to me. See, this is precisely the Christian scale, and sufficient to enable me to throw light on the essentially Christian from this side. The complaint that could be made about my mode of living, if the purely human and not Christianity is to be the judge, can be stated only as follows: that I have not asserted myself enough, have not been exclusive, that humanly speaking I have with levity (from the Christian point of view, God-fearingly) jested about worldly honor and esteem, that by impairing, if possible, all my worldly esteem I have also contributed to impairing worldly esteem in general. As stated before, I would find it quite all right if the exclusive and esteemed, in consideration thereof, would have been somewhat inimical to me, and I appreciate all the more that the exact opposite is and has been the case. But that I, because I have lived as I have lived, have been exposed to the common man’s hatred because I have not been exclusive enough—that I have therefore been attacked, not by the distinguished but by the common man—this is lunacy—and the Christian scale.
[XIII 575] Thus my entire work as an author revolves around: becoming a Christian in Christendom. And the expression for Governance’s part in the authorship is this: that the author is himself the one who in this way has been brought up, but with a consciousness of it from the very beginning.