No. 1 For the Dedication to “That Single Individual”
No. 178 [XIII 591]
For the Dedication to “That Single Individual”*
1846
Dear Reader! Please accept this dedication. It is offered, as it were, blindly, but therefore in all honesty, untroubled by any other consideration. I do not know who you are; I do not know where you are; I do not know your name. Yet you are my hope, my joy, my pride, and covertly my honor.
It comforts me that you now have this opportunity, that which I have honestly aimed at during my work and in my work. If it were feasible that reading what I write came to be common worldly practice or at least pretending to have read it in hopes thereby of getting ahead in the world, this would not be the opportune time, because then on the contrary misunderstanding would have triumphed, and it would also have beguiled me if I had not striven to prevent anything like that from happening.
__________
This is in me partly a possible change, which I myself desire, attributed to mood of soul and mind, which does not make a claim to be more and consequently makes anything but a claim, [XIII 592] rather an admission; it is partly a thoroughly- and well-considered view of the Life, of the Truth, of the Way.79
There is a view of life that holds that truth is where the crowd is, that truth itself needs to have the crowd on its side.* There is another view of life that holds that wherever the crowd is, untruth is, so that even if—to carry the matter to its ultimate for a moment—all individuals who, separately, secretly possessed the truth were to come together in a crowd (in such a way, however, that “the crowd” acquired any deciding, voting, noisy, loud significance), untruth would promptly be present there.**
“The crowd” is untruth. What Paul says is eternally, divinely, Christianly valid: “Only one reaches the goal,”80 not by way of comparison, since in a comparison “the others” are of course included. This means that everyone can be this one; God will [XIII 593] help him in that—but only one reaches the goal. This in turn means that everyone should be careful about becoming involved with “the others,” essentially should speak only with God and with himself—since only one reaches the goal. This in turn means that humankind has kinship with or that to be a human being is to have kinship with the divine.
The worldly, temporal, busy, sociable-friendly version is: “How unreasonable that only one would reach the goal. After all, it is much more probable that several jointly reach the goal; and if we become many, then it becomes much more certain and also easier for each one individually.” To be sure, it is much more probable, and it is also true with regard to all earthly and material goals; and it becomes the one and only truth if it is allowed to dominate, because then this view abolishes both God and eternity and humankind’s kinship with the divine, abolishes it or changes it into fable and substitutes the modern view (incidentally the old paganism)—namely, that to be a human being is to belong as a specimen to a race endowed with understanding. Then the race, the species, is higher than the individual or then there are only specimens, not individuals.
But eternity, which, quiet as the nocturnal sky, arches high over temporality, and God in heaven, who from the blessedness of this sublime serenity, without the least tremor of dizziness, surveys these countless millions and recognizes each and every individual—and he, the great examiner, says, “Only one reaches the goal.” This means that everyone can and everyone should become this one, but only one reaches the goal.
Thus where there is a crowd or where decisive importance is attributed to the fact that there is a crowd, there is no working there, no living there, no striving there for the highest goal but only for some earthly goal, because there can be working for the eternal, decisively, only where there is one, and to become this one, which all can be, is to be willing to let God help—“the crowd” is untruth.
A crowd—not this crowd or that, the contemporary crowd or a deceased crowd, a crowd of commoners or of the elite, of rich or poor, etc., but a crowd understood in the concept*—is untruth, since a crowd either makes for impenitence and irresponsibility [XIII 594] altogether, or for the single individual it at least weakens responsibility by reducing the responsibility to a fraction. See, there was no individual soldier who dared to lay hands on Caius Marius;81 that was the truth. But just three or four women conscious of or with the idea of being a crowd and hoping that no one could definitely say who it was or who it was who started—they had the courage to do it—what untruth! In the first place, the untruth is this, that it is “the crowd” that does what either only the single individual in the crowd does or in any case each individual does. A crowd is an abstraction, which does not have hands; but every individual ordinarily has two hands; so when he, an individual, lays his two hands on Caius Marius, then they are that individual’s two hands, certainly not those of his neighbors, even less of the crowd, which has no hands. In the second place, the untruth is that the crowd had the “courage” to do it, since not even the most cowardly of all the individuals was ever as cowardly as the crowd always is. Each individual who escapes [flygte] into the crowd and thus cowardly avoids [flye] being the single individual (who either has the courage to lay hands upon Caius Marius or at least has the courage to admit that he does not have it) contributes his portion of cowardliness to the “cowardliness” that is: a crowd.
Take the supreme example, think of Christ—and the whole human race, all the people who were born and ever will be born. But the situation is one of particularity—as an individual alone with him in a solitary place, as an individual to go up to him and to spit on him—the human being never was born and never will be who would have the courage or brazenness to do it; that is the truth. But then they became a crowd; then they had the courage for it—frightful untruth!
The crowd is untruth. Therefore no one basically has more contempt for what it is to be a human being than those who make a profession of standing at the head of a crowd. Suppose that someone, a single human being, comes up to such a person; well, what does he care about him? That is much too little; he haughtily sends him away—there must be hundreds at least. If there are thousands, then he bows and scrapes to the crowd—what untruth! No, if it is a single human being, then one is to [XIII 595] express the truth by respecting what it is to be a human being; and if it perhaps is, as we cruelly say, a wretched indigent, then this is what one should do—one should invite him into the best room and, if one has several voices, use the kindest and friendliest—that is the truth. On the other hand, if it is a gathering of thousands or more and truth is to be a matter of voting, then this is what one should do: one should devoutly—if one does not prefer to pray silently the petition in the Lord’s Prayer: Deliver us from evil—one should devoutly declare that ethically and religiously the crowd as the authority is untruth, whereas it is eternally true that everyone can be the one. That is the truth.
The crowd is untruth. Therefore Christ was crucified, because he, even though he directed his words to all, would not have anything to do with the crowd, because he in no way wanted a crowd for support, because in that regard he unconditionally thrust away, would not form a party, did not allow balloting, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which relates itself to the single individual.
This is why everyone who in truth wants to serve the truth is eo ipso in some way a martyr. If it were possible that an individual in the womb could resolve in truth to will to serve the truth, then that individual, whatever the martyrdom turns out to be, is eo ipso a martyr even in the womb. To win a crowd is not such a great art; all that is needed for that is some talent, a certain dose of untruth, and a little familiarity with human passions. But no truth-witness—alas, and every person, you and I, should be that—dares to become involved with a crowd. The devout work of the truth-witness—who of course has nothing to do with politics and does his utmost to see to it that he is not confused with a politician—is to become involved with everyone if possible, but always individually, is to speak with each one individually, on the highways and byways—in order to split up a crowd or to speak to a crowd, not in order to form a crowd but in order that one or two individuals might go home from the gathering and become the single individual. But when “the crowd” is treated as the authority in relation to the truth and its judgment as the judgment, the truth-witness shuns the crowd more than the young virtuous girl shuns a low dance hall. And those who address “the crowd” as the authority, he regards as tools of untruth. To repeat again, whatever may at times have complete, at times partial, legitimacy in politics and similar areas becomes untruth when it is carried over into the realms of the intellectual, the spiritual, and the religious. For the sake of what is perhaps [XIII 596] excessive circumspection, just one more thing: by truth I always understand eternal truth. But politics etc. has nothing to do with eternal truth. A politics that in the sense of eternal truth was in earnest about carrying eternal truth into actuality would to the highest degree immediately show itself to be the most “unpolitical” that can be imagined.
The crowd is untruth. And I could weep; in any case I can learn to long for eternity when I think of the wretchedness of our age, even merely in comparison with the worst of antiquity, when I think that the daily press and anonymity make it even more deranged with the help of “the public,” which then is actually the abstraction that claims to be the authority with regard to truth, since assemblies that make this claim presumably do not take place. That with the help of the press an anonym can say what he pleases day after day (also with regard to the intellectual, the ethical, and the religious), the slightest part of which he perhaps would not in the remotest way have the courage to say personally in a situation of individuality, can instantaneously address thousands upon thousands, can get thousands upon thousands to repeat what was said every time he opens his, well, it can hardly be called a mouth, opens his craw—and nobody has responsibility; that it is not, as in ancient times, even the relatively unrepentant crowd that is the all-powerful, but the absolutely unrepentant crowd—nobody, an anonym the author, an anonym the public, at times even anonymous subscribers—consequently, nobody! Nobody! Good heavens, and then nations even call themselves Christian nations!
Do not say that truth, again by means of the press, can then run down the lies and the errors. O you who talk that way, ask yourself: Do you dare to maintain that people taken in a crowd are just as quick to grasp for truth, which is not always palatable—as for untruth, which is always delectably prepared—to say nothing of when, to boot, the truth is bound up with a confession that one has let oneself be deceived! Or do you dare simply to assert that truth can just as quickly be understood as untruth, which requires no previous acquaintance, no schooling, no discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest self-concern, no tedious hard work! No, truth, which indeed abhors this untruth that has but one aim and aspiration, to disseminate, is not so quick and agile. In the first place it cannot work by means of the fantastical, which is untruth; its communicator is only an individual. In the second place, its communication relates itself to the single individual, since this view of life, the single individual, is precisely [XIII 597] the truth. The truth can neither be communicated nor be received without being, as it were, under the eyes of God, without the help of God, without God’s being a participant, the middle term, since God is the truth. Therefore it can be communicated by and received only by the single individual, who as a matter of fact could be every person who is living. The only category is that of truth in contrast to the abstract, the fantastical, the impersonal, “the crowd”—“the public”—which excludes God as the middle term (because the personal God cannot be the middle term in an impersonal relationship), thereby also excludes the truth, because God is the truth and its middle term.
To honor every individual human being, unconditionally every human being, this is the truth and is to fear God and to love the neighbor, but ethically-religiously to recognize “the crowd” as the authority with regard to the truth is to deny God and cannot possibly be loving the neighbor. The neighbor is the absolutely true expression for human equality. If everyone in truth loved the neighbor as himself, then perfect human equality would be achieved unconditionally. Everyone who in truth loves the neighbor expresses human equality unconditionally; everyone who, even if he confesses, as I do, that his striving is weak and imperfect, is still aware that the task is to love the neighbor; he is also aware of what human equality is. But I have never read in Holy Scripture this commandment: You shall love the crowd, to say nothing of: ethically-religiously you are to recognize the crowd as the authority with regard to the truth. But to love the neighbor is, of course, self-denial; to love the crowd or pretend to love it, to make it the authority for the truth, is the way to acquire tangible power, the way to all kinds of temporal and worldly advantage—it is also untruth, since the crowd is untruth.82
__________
But the person who acknowledges this view, which is rarely enunciated (because it more frequently happens that a man believes the crowd is in untruth, but if it, the crowd, will only en masse accept his opinion, then everything is all right), himself confesses that he is the weak and powerless one; moreover, how [XIII 598] would one individual be able to stand against the many, who have the power! And he could not wish to get the crowd on his side in order to push through the view that the crowd as the authority, ethically-religiously, is untruth; that would surely be ridiculing himself. But if this view is from the beginning an admission of weakness and powerlessness and thus perhaps seems rather uninviting and is therefore perhaps seldom heard, it then has the good point of being equable—it insults no one, not one single person; it makes no distinction, not of one single person.
To be sure, a crowd is formed of individuals; consequently each one has the power to remain what he is—an individual. No one, no one, is excluded from being an individual, except the one who excludes himself by becoming many. On the contrary, to become a crowd, to collect a crowd around oneself, is the differentiation of life. Even the most well-intentioned person who speaks about this can easily insult an individual. But then once again the crowd has power, influence, status, and domination—it is indeed the differentiation of life that, dominating, disregards the single individual as the weak and powerless, temporally and in a worldly way disregards the eternal truth: the single individual.
Note: The reader will recall that this piece (the beginning of which is marked by a mood from that moment when I voluntarily exposed myself to the crudity of literary rabble-barbarism) was originally written in 1846, although later reworked and considerably expanded. Since that time existence, almighty as it is, has shed a light also upon the thesis that the crowd as the authority, ethically-religiously, is untruth. Truly, this serves me well. Just as I myself have been aided thereby to understand myself more confidently, I also no doubt will already be understood in quite another way than at that time when my weak and solitary voice was heard as a ludicrous exaggeration, whereas now it is scarcely heard because of the loud voice of existence that is speaking about the same thing.