“The Individual” - A hint
1847
If I refuse to deify the established order à la Mynster (and therein lies Mynster’s heresy) and out of zeal for morality end by confusing it with the bourgeois spirit,—if I do not wish to do away entirely with the category of the extraordinarius and again a la Mynster, only understand that they have existed, only understand them after the event: I cannot myself scorn a task which has been so clearly imposed upon me.
Although Mynster is to a certain degree well disposed towards me, and at the bottom of his heart perhaps more so than he would admit, it is evident that he looks upon me as a suspicious and dangerous person.
He therefore wants to have me out in the country. He thinks that up to now all has gone well, but that one must expect anything from a person of character, particularly when the whole system of strings in which he wishes to imprison life is in question. His advice is therefore most consistent from his point of view, and from his point of view it is meant kindly in so far as he does not trouble too much whether a man’s deepest traits are harmed somewhat so long as he succeeds, as he considers, in the world.
Mynster has never been out on 70,000 fathoms in order to learn out there, he has always clung to the established order of things and has now quite grown into it. That is what is so glorious about him. I shall never forget him, always honour him, always think of my father when I think of him, and anything further is unnecessary. But Mynster does not understand me; when he was thirty-six years old he would not have understood me; he would have hardened in order not to understand me, so as not to ruin his career; and now he cannot understand me.
But to God all things are possible. From now on, humanly speaking, I must not only be said to be running into uncertainty but to be going to certain destruction—and, in confidence in God, that is victory. That is how I understood life when I was ten years old, hence the terrible polemic which filled my soul; that is how I understood it when I was twenty-five, and now that I am thirty-four. That is why Poul Møller called me the most completely polemical of men.
The difference between a Christian Address and a Sermon.
A Christian Address deals to a certain extent with doubt —A Sermon operates absolutely and entirely through authority, that of Holy Writ and of Christ’s apostles. It is therefore neither more nor less than heresy to entertain doubt in a sermon, however well one might be able to handle it.
The preface to my Christian Discourses, therefore, contains the phrase: If a sufferer who has also run wild in many thoughts.
A Sermon presupposes a priest (ordination);26 a Christian Address can be by a layman.
I am accused of leading young men to rest satisfied in their own subjectivity. Perhaps, for a moment. But how is it possible to get rid of all the illusions of objectivity such as the public etc. without drawing forth the category of the individual? Under the guise of objectivity people have wished to sacrifice individualities completely. That is the whole question.
The whole development of the world tends to the importance of the individual; that, and nothing else, is the principle of Christianity. Yet we have not got very far in practice, although that is recognised in theory. That explains why people still consider it proud and haughty and presumptuous to talk about the individual when it is of course the really human attitude, namely, that everyone is an individual.
Sometimes misunderstandings are expressed piously. When the late Bishop Møller says (in the introduction to his Instructions) that it would be sad if truth (in specie Christianity) were only accessible to a few individuals and not to everyone, he certainly said something true, but at the same time false. For Christianity is certainly accessible to all but—be it carefully noted—only provided everyone becomes an individual, becomes “the individual.” But people have neither the moral nor the religious courage. The majority is quite terrified of becoming each one of them, an individual. This is how the question oscillates: At one moment it is pride to preach that opinion of the individual and then, when the individual tries it out, he finds the thought is too great for him, in fact overwhelming.
There is only one mistake in Kant’s theory of radical evil. He does not make it clear that the inexplicable, the paradox, is a category of its own. Everything depends upon that. Until now, people have always expressed themselves in the following way: the knowledge that one cannot understand this or the other thing does not satisfy science, the aim of which is to understand. Here is the mistake; people ought to say the very opposite: if human science refuses to understand that there is something which it cannot understand, or better still, that there is something about which it clearly understands that it cannot understand it—then all is confusion. For it is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox. The paradox is not a concession but a category, an ontological definition which expresses the relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth.
Properly understood, every man who truthfully desires a relation to God and to live in his sight has only one task: always to be joyful. Even the best of men, in whom one could place entire confidence, upon whom one could rely entirely, may need advice, or need to be reminded of this and that; I may really be cleverer than he is, really be in the right etc. But none of this is necessary in relation to God—and to begin with such things is in fact to busy oneself with ungodly things, or is rather childish.
“The masses” : that is really the aim of my polemic; and I learnt that from Socrates. I wish to make people aware, so that they do not squander and dissipate their lives. The aristocrats assume that there is always a mass of men lost. But they hide the fact, they live withdrawn and behave as though these many, many men did not exist. That is what is godless in the superiority of the aristocrats ; in order to have things their own way they do not even make people aware.
But I do not want that. I wish to make men aware of their own ruin. And if they will not listen to good then I will compel them through evil. Understand me, or at least do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that I am going to strike them (alas, one cannot strike the masses); I mean to make them strike me. And in that way I all the same compel them through evil. For if they once strike me they will be made aware; and if they put me to death—then they will certainly become aware of their position, and I shall have won an absolute victory. In that respect I am completely dialectical. There are already many who say “why bother about Mag. Kierkegaard, I’ll teach him.” Alas, but all that about showing me that they do not bother about me, or bothering that I should know that they do not bother about me, only proves their dependence. That is perfectly true if one is indifferent enough. But people show their respect for me by the very fact of showing me that they do not respect me.
People are not so completely depraved as really to desire evil, but they are blinded and do not really know what they are doing. Everything depends upon luring a decision from them. A child may be rebellious against his father in small things for a long time, but if once its father can drive it to a real revolt it is far nearer salvation. That is why the rebellion of the masses is victorious if one goes out of its path, so that it never notices what it is doing. The masses have no real opinions and so if they happen to put a man to death they are eo ipso brought to a standstill, are called to their senses and are made to think,
The reformer who, as it is said, fights against a powerful man (a pope, an emperor, any individual man) must aim at bringing about the fall of the powerful; but the man who, with more justice, takes arms against the masses, from whom comes all corruption, must see to it that he himself falls.
Andersen can tell the story of The Shoes of Fortune27—but I can tell the story of the shoes that pinch, or rather I could tell it, but just because I will not tell it but treasure it in silence, I can tell a very different tale.
The most thankless life of all is to be an author who writes for authors. One can divide authors into two classes, those who write for readers, and the real authors, those who write for authors. These latter are unintelligible to the reading public, are looked upon as mad and are almost despised—and in the meanwhile authors of the second class plunder their works and have a tremendous success with what they have stolen and spoilt. And thus the authors of the second class become the worst enemies of the others—it is a matter of some importance to them that no one should discover the real position.
What the age needs is pathos (in the same way that scurvy needs greens); but not even the work of drilling an artesian well is more subtle than the calculated dialectics of humour, emotion, and passion, with which I have tried to produce a beneficial gust of feeling. The misfortune of the age is understanding and reflection. No one, however immediately enthusiastic, can any longer help us, because they are consumed by the reflection of the age. That is why it requires a man who could reflect the renunciation of all reflection; a man of thought who could conceal an enthusiasm of the first water under the guise of intelligence, heartlessness, mockery, and wit. In order to defend marriage nowadays one must be able to enchant its licentious inclinations with The Seducer’s Diary, and the same thing applies everywhere.
Objections to the living become the praise of the dead.
May, 1847.
Nytorv 2, Copenhagen.
Dear Peter,
The birthday upon which you write to congratulate me, and which you say “has, contrary to usual, been in your thoughts several times during these days,” has lately also been in my thoughts frequently. I am now thirty-four years old. In a certain sense that happened quite unexpectedly. It astonished me greatly at the time—yes, now I can say so without being afraid of upsetting myself—that you reached the age of thirty-four. Both father and I were of the opinion that no one in our family would live beyond thirty-four. However little I may otherwise have been at one with father we had, in certain particular ideas, a real meeting point, and in conversations such as those father was always quite enthusiastic about the way I could describe the idea with a vivid imagination, and follow it with rigid consequence. It was an altogether peculiar thing about him that he had most markedly what one least expected, imagination, a really melancholy imagination. The thirty-fourth year was then to be the limit and father was to outlive us all. And now it has not happened—I enter upon my thirty-fifth year. . . . (There follow a detailed proposition for the sale of the house and the mortgages). . . .
May 14. There is another respect in which conditions are certain to change, and in the future every effort at reformation, if the man concerned is a true reformer, will be directed against the “masses,” not against the government. Government (royal power) is really representation, and to that extent Christian (Monarchy), the dialectic of monarchy is historically both tried and settled. Now we are going to begin at another point, namely upon the intensive development of the state itself. In that way there arises the category : “the individual,” the category which is so wedded to my name that I wish that on my grave might be put “the individual.”
In this respect I attribute great importance to the troubles which are making the round of Europe this year, they show that the European constitution (just as a doctor talks of a man’s constitution) has changed entirely; in the future we shall have internal troubles, secessio in montem sacrum etc.
It all fits perfectly into my theory, and one day it will be seen how precisely I understood the times—Oh, that is the greatest fault a man can commit; for what the times want is nonsense and half-truths—and then that the truth should be despised.
The difference between men is simply a question of how they say stupid things, the universally human is to say them.
. . . “Mary chose the better part.”
What is the better part? It is God, and consequently everything. The better part is everything, but it is called the better part because it must be chosen; one does not receive everything as everything; that is not how one begins, one begins by choosing the better part, which is, nevertheless, everything.
The thing that grips me more and more is my original, my first, my deepest, unaltered opinion that I have honestly not chosen this life because it would be brilliant, but as a penitential consolation in all my wretchedness. I have often enough explained the dialectics of the paradox: it is not higher than the universal but beneath it, and only then again a little higher. But the first, the pressure is so great that the joy which comes from the last cannot be taken in vain. That is the thorn in the flesh.
I have lately begun preparing some lectures on the dialectics of the communication of ethics and religion. In the meanwhile I have convinced myself that I am not fit to give lectures. I am spoilt by working things out in detail; the vegetative luxuriance of my style and my method of presentation and the habit of thinking out every line are much too essential to me. If I were to give lectures I should have to take care that they were thoroughly prepared like everything else, and so read them out: which I cannot be bothered to do. In no other way can I satisfy myself.
The thing that makes my position in public life most difficult of all is that people simply cannot grasp what I am fighting. To make a stand against the masses is, in the opinion of the majority, complete nonsense; for the masses, the numbers, the public, are themselves the powers of salvation, that association of lovers of liberty of whom salvation is to come—from the Kings, Popes, and officials who tyrannise over us. Ach, du lieber Augustin. That is the result of having fought for centuries against Kings, Popes, and the powerful, and of having looked upon the people and the masses as something holy. It does not occur to people that historical categories change, that now the masses are the only tyrant and at the bottom of all corruption. —To the masses of course that is absolutely incomprehensible. —The masses are domineering and think themselves secure against retribution, for how is one to catch hold of the masses.—What we, at home, call the opposition still lives on the old rubbish about fighting the tyranny of the government. If a police inspector makes the slightest mistake, for which he is punished by his superiors into the bargain, there is a terrible outcry; but when year after year the public, the masses, the plebs etc. are the occasion of the most disgusting horrors and abuse of power, the opposition dares not mention the fact. Either they are incapable of perceiving that something is horrible because it is done by the idol of the opposition, or they see it and dare not discuss it, because they are cowards.—Nowadays when a man is censured for some trifling wrong but, be it noted, by the King, by someone in authority, he has the sympathy of everyone, he is a martyr. But when a man is intellectually speaking persecuted, ill-treated, insulted day in and day out by the stupidity, inquisitiveness and impertinence of the plebs, then it is nothing at all and everything is as it should be.
There can therefore be no doubt that a sacrifice is necessary at this point. We are so far behind that a lot of victims must be sacrificed in order to make people aware that the situation is quite different from the revolt against the Popes and Kings.
Moreover it shows an incredible narrow-mindedness on the part of the reformers’ judicium and does them no honour to imagine that a reformation could turn upon overthrowing a single man—for then the world would be a fine world indeed.
No, the ancients understood the problem better, understood that the masses are a dangerous power. And it is to the ancient conditions that history is turning back once again. Europe will not have war; but continual internal disorders (Plebeians—Patricians).
If mankind had not embedded itself, with the momentum of centuries and the passion of habit, in the idée fixe that a tyrant is one man, they would easily understand that to be persecuted by the masses is the most grievous of all, because the masses are the sum of the individuals, so that each individual makes his little contribution, while he does not realise how great it becomes when all of them do it.
The philosophers have surely been teaching us long enough that the world has entered upon the period of reflection. That is true and for that very reason no individual (King or Pope) can ever be a tyrant. Tyranny must necessarily become a reflective relationship. And so here once again we come up against the category: the masses, public opinion.
But as I have already said, it will be a long time before the man who opposes the masses can win sympathy over to his side, i.e. before anyone will understand the reality of the struggle.
Socrates, in my opinion, is and remains the only reformer I know. The others I have read about may have been enthusiastic and well-meaning but they were at the same time decidedly narrow-minded.
When a man, particularly in adversity, proves himself to have been beautifully constructed, like some fine old instrument, so that with each new adversity not only are the strings unharmed but a new string added, that is a sign that the grace of God is upon him.
God looked upon me in my conscience, and now it is impossible for me to forget that he sees me. And because God looked upon me I had and have to look towards God.
From birth (or from one’s earliest years) to be thus marked out as a sacrifice, to be thus painfully placed outside the universal, so that absolutely everyone would have compassion on one (for whilst other men are busy complaining of men’s lack of compassion, such a man is only too certain of it) : is the beginning of the demoniacal in a man. Now all depends upon whether such a man is bad—or good. If he is bad he becomes a Gloucester,28 hating and cursing life, raising himself above the universally human. If he is good then he will do everything for other men, his life as a sacrifice will bring him melancholy satisfaction, yet his life, too, has a condition which he makes, or even if he makes no conditions with God he nevertheless thanks God if he is successful: to be able to hide his wretchedness, to avoid becoming the object of compassion. Of all sufferings none is perhaps so great as to be marked out as the object of compassion, none which tempts man so strongly to rebel against God. It is commonly thought that such a man is dull and of limited intellect, but it would not be difficult to show that this is the secret which lies behind the lives of some of the greatest minds in history. But it is kept hidden, and that can be done, for it is as though God were to say to such a man, so long as he makes use of his outstanding gifts in the service of the good : I do not wish you to be thus humbled before men, to be abandoned in your unmerited misery, but where I am concerned it will help you to be conscious of your nothingness.
The majority of men are subjective towards themselves and objective towards all others, terribly objective sometimes—but the real task is in fact to be objective towards oneself and subjective towards all others.
If you wish to be and to remain enthusiastic, then draw the silk curtains of facetiousness (irony’s), and so hide your enthusiasm.
June 9. In a certain sense my whole misfortune lies in this: had I not had means it would never have been possible for me to preserve the terrible secret of my melancholy. (Merciful God, my father too was terribly unjust to me in his melancholy—an old man who put the whole weight of his melancholy upon a child, not to speak of something even more frightful, and yet for all that he was the best of fathers.) But then I should never have become the man I have become. I should have been compelled either to go mad or to break through. As it is I have succeeded in making a salto mortale into a purely spiritual existence. But then again in that way I have become completely heterogeneous from mankind in general. What I really lack is the physical side and all the assumptions that go with it.
Had St. Paul an official position? No. Had he any means of livelihood? No. Did he make a lot of money? No. Did he marry and have children? No. But in that case St. Paul cannot have been a serious man !
Aug. 14. Curiously enough the journey to Berlin is still in my thoughts. But I cannot go. A man has applied to me regarding the sale of my house. He came so opportunely, really so inexplicably opportunely that I cannot appreciate it enough. In such circumstances I dare not go away. If he were to come in my absence it would distress me indescribably.
Aug. 16. And so the decision is taken; I remain at home. To-morrow the manuscript29 goes to the printer.—In order to reassure myself that it was not in any way a possible dislike for all the pother connected with going on a journey which prevented me I have, with my habitual suspiciousness of myself, begun a course of baths which I knew to be very distasteful to me. . . .
I now feel the need of approaching nearer to myself in a deeper sense, by approaching nearer to God in the understanding of myself. I must remain on the spot and be renewed inwardly. It is quite a different thing from the possibility of setting forth upon a journey abroad of some length, perhaps at the end of the autumn. But it must not bear the impress of emotion or the concentrated excitement of a little expedition to Berlin.
I must come to closer grips with my melancholy. It has until now lain deep down and the tremendous intellectual strain has helped to keep it down. That my work has profited others, that God has approved it and helped me in every way is sure enough. Again and again I thank him for having done infinitely more for me than I ever expected. My consolation is that although no man has any merit before God yet he has nevertheless looked with approval upon my efforts, and that with his assistance I have borne my terrible suffering to the very end. I know within myself before God that my work as an author, my willingness to obey his sign, to sacrifice every earthly and worldly consideration, will soften for me the impression of what I have personally done wrong. Just because I began my literary activity with a heavy conscience I have taken the greatest care to make it so pure that it might be a small repayment of my debt. That purity, that integrity, that industry is what seems to be madness in the eyes of the world. I know that God looks upon it otherwise, and that it does not follow that my work is so pure in his eyes that I can praise myself for it before him.
But now God wishes things otherwise. Something is stirring within me which points to a metamorphosis. For that very reason I dare not go to Berlin, for that would be to procure an abortion. I shall therefore remain quiet, in no way working too strenuously, hardly even strenuously, not begin on a new book, but try to understand myself, and really think out the idea of my melancholy together with God here and now. That is how I must get rid of my melancholy and bring Christianity closer to me. Hitherto I have defended myself against my melancholy with intellectual work, which keeps it away—now, in the faith that God has forgotten in forgiveness what guilt there may be, I must try to forget it myself, but not in distraction, not at a distance from it but in God, I must see to it that in thinking of God I learn to think that he has forgotten it, and thus myself learn to dare to forget it in forgiveness.
Everyone would like to have lived at the same time as great men and great events: God knows how many really live at the same time as themselves. To do that (and so neither in hope or fear of the future, nor in the past) is to understand oneself and be at peace, and that is only possible through one’s relation to God, or it is one’s relation to God.
Christianity is certainly not melancholy, it is, on the contrary, glad tidings—for the melancholy; to the frivolous it is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.
A word about myself
I am the ultimate phase of the poetic temper on the way to becoming a sort of reformer on a small scale. I have much more imagination than such a man would have, but then again less of a certain personal power which is necessary in order to appear in that way. With the help of my imagination, which be it noted comes after the dialectical, I can catch all the Christian qualifications at their most accurate and most living. Our times clearly require that. There are certain things which must continually be called to mind or otherwise the standard is lost. It is like the flight of wild birds above the heads of tame ones when those qualifications of the Christian life are recalled which demand the utmost.—But just because I am a poet in that sense, one whose task is to raise the price and if possible to whisper to every individual what the demands could be, I must take particular care not to acquire any followers.
Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions upon millions. That fear is kept away by looking upon all those about one who are bound to one as friends or family; but the dread is nevertheless there and one hardly dares think of what would happen to one if all the rest were taken away.
If Christ had been merely a man then Peter would clearly not have denied him; Peter was too deep and honest for that. But whereas in general the parsons talk nonsense in the opposite sense and say that it was doubly irresponsible of Peter because Christ was God; one ought to say : no, that is precisely what explains Peter. Had he simply looked upon Christ as a man then he could well have endured the thought that he should be treated thus, and Peter would not have forgotten himself but would have been true to him. But the seeming madness that Christ was God, that he had it in his power to call legions of angels at any moment he wished : that is what utterly overwhelmed Peter. Just as one can lose the power of speech from fright, in the same way all Peter’s ideas left him and in that, as it were, apoplectic condition he denied him.
I was brought up on Mynster’s Sermons—by my father. There’s the rub; for naturally it never occurred to my father to take the sermons other than literally. Brought up on Mynster’s Sermons—by Mynster; that’s a problem.
Nov. There is no doubt that the present time, and Protestantism always, needs the monastery again, or that it should exist. “The Monastery” is an essential dialectical fact in Christianity, and we need to have it there like a light-house, in order to gauge where we are—even though I myself should not exactly go into one. But if there is to be true Christianity in every generation there must be individuals with that need. What would Luther say if he were to look around him now and see that at the present time there were not many whom religion had overwhelmed —that we had all grown so strong—or so weak in religion! That the few who resembled such men were nowadays directed to a mad-house. What would Luther say to the fact that the class which alone and decisively (si placet) represents Christianity, the priests, have become so worldly-minded in the service of the state (not to speak of their inner state) that they have more to do with counting sheep and pigs or à la Augustus with counting men, with attending to the awakening of the apparently dead—rather than with tearing Christendom out of its seeming death, or what is worse still out of its appearance of life. For a seeming death is not so dangerous simply because it has the seeming danger of death; but a seeming life is the most dangerous of all—and without apparent danger.
With the strange freemasonry of poets I can use these words as the motto for part of my life’s suffering. Infandum me jubes Regina renovare dolorem.
The girl has given me trouble enough. And now she is —not dead—but happily and comfortably married. I said that on the same day (6 years ago)—and was called the lowest of lowest cads. Extraordinary!
Alas, yes, I admit it, I have been deeply and inwardly concerned to recognise all of the poor men who knew me, to greet every servant with whom I had even the slightest acquaintance, to remember the last time I saw him, whether he had been ill, and to enquire after him. I have never in my life, not even when I was most preoccupied with an idea, been so busy that I did not find time to stop for a moment if a poor man spoke to me. Is that a crime? I should have been ashamed before God, and my soul would have been troubled, if I had become so self-important that I behaved as though “other men” did not exist. Do these other men not exist for God, and does he not demand that I should not become conceited and self-important but rather that I should acknowledge by my actions that obedience is dearer to God than the fat of rams!
When in regard to communicating something it is self-evident what to communicate means, when it is simply a matter of course and not a moment need be wasted discussing the question, when it is the kind of assumption which does not even need to be mentioned: then, if one has something to communicate, it is as easy as shelling peas. But when an author has an individual conception of what communication is, when perhaps the distinctive characteristic, the reality of his historical importance is concentrated in precisely that; well, then it will be a long affair—O school of patience. Before there can be any mention of understanding anything which he has communicated one must first of all understand him from the point of view of his particular dialectic of communication, and understand everything from that point of view. For that particular dialectic of communication cannot be communicated in the traditional dialectical form. The age will of course require this of him. Oh, how long it will take to be understood, O school of patience. And the more a man understands himself through what he understands, the more easily he will discover that he is not understood—only those who themselves understand nothing can delude themselves into believing that everyone understands them. Oh, the sadness of having understood something true—and then of only seeing oneself misunderstood. Oh, sadness—for what is irony in the mystery of the heart but sadness. Sadness means to be alone in having understood something true and as soon as one is in company with others, with those who misunderstand, that sadness becomes irony.
“The Individual”
A hint30
“The individual” is the category through which, from a religious point of view, our age, our race and its history must pass. And the man who stood and fell at Thermopylæ was not as convinced as I am, who stand at the narrow pass “the individual.” It was his duty to prevent the hordes from forcing their way through that narrow pass; if they got through he was lost. My duty is, at any rate at first sight, much easier and seems to place me in far less danger of being trodden down; as though I were an unimportant servant who, if possible, was to help the masses trying to go through the narrow pass, “the individual,” through which, be it noted, no one can ever go without first becoming “the individual.” Yet had I to crave an inscription on my grave I would ask for none other than “the individual”—and even if it is not understood now, then in truth it will be. It was with that category that I worked at a time when everything in Denmark was directed towards the system; now it is no longer so much as mentioned.31 My possible importance is undoubtedly linked to that category. My writings may soon be forgotten, like those of many another writer. But if that was the right category, and everything in order with that category, if in this I saw aright, if I understood aright that such was my task, neither pleasurable nor thankful, whether vouchsafed to me in inward suffering such as has certainly rarely been experienced, or whether in outward sacrifices such as not every man is willing to make—in that case I shall endure and my writings with me.
“The individual”; now that the world has gone so far along the road of reflection Christianity stands and falls with that category. But for that category Pantheism would have triumphed. There will therefore certainly arise men who will know how to distort its meaning in a very different sense (they will not have had to work to bring it to light); but “the individual” is and remains the anchor in the confusion of Pantheism, the hellebore which can sober people and the weight upon which stress can be laid, only that as the confusion grows greater and greater those who are to work with it (at the capstan—or where the weights are put on) must have an increasingly dialectical relation to it. I bind myself to make every man whom I can include in the category “the individual” into a Christian or rather, since no man can do that for another, I vouch for his becoming one. As “that individual” he is alone, alone in the whole world, alone—before God : then it will be easy to obey. Ultimately all doubt has its stronghold in the illusions of temporal existence, such as that one is several people or all mankind, who can in the end thus overawe God (just as the “people” overawe the King or the “public” overawe the alderman) and oneself become Christ. Pantheism is an optical illusion, one of the various notions formed at random by temporal existence, or one of those atmospheric phenomena which it produces and which are supposed to be eternity. The point is however, that this category cannot be taught; the use of it is an art, a moral task, and an art the exercise of which is always dangerous and at times might even require the life of the artist. For that which divinely understood is the highest of all things will be looked-upon by a self-opinionated race and the confused crowd as lèse majesté against the “race,” the “masses,” the “public” etc.
“The individual”; that category has only been used once before and then by Socrates, in a dialectical and decisive way, to disintegrate paganism. In Christianity it will be used once again—in order to make men (the Christians) into Christians. It is not the category which missionaries can use in dealing with heathens when they preach the Gospel, but the category of a missionary in Christendom itself, so as to make the change, which lies in being and becoming a Christian, a more inward change. When he comes the missionary will use that category. For if the age is waiting for a hero it waits in vain. It is far more probable that a man will come who will teach them obedience in divine weakness—by making them rebel against God by putting to death the one who was obedient to God.