Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  Zu Bett, zu Bett wer einen Liebsten hätt

  Wer keinen hätt musz auch zu Bett

  [To bed, to bed who a beloved has

  Who has none must also to bed].75

  February 1. Morning.

  A year ago today. Erotically speaking, I surely am not harming her; I am as shy in my association with her as if she were not my fiancée but merely entrusted to my care. But surely this would not have a disturbing effect on her; surely this would not act as an indirect incitement? Faithless reflection, 76you faithless one, when a person keeps his eyes fixed on you, you look trustworthy enough and like a seasoned fighter who guarantees victory, but the instant he turns his head he sees what you are: a deserter, a deserter by profession, a deserter for whom it is impossible to be true to anyone. That she is encircled by reflection such as this, she scarcely notices at all.

  She is quiet and reserved with respect to every religious impression; if I approach her somewhat poetically and lightly in conversation, she seems to find pleasure in it.

  If only she is not proud; in that case she is bound to misunderstand me completely. I do not deny that once in a while there is something that seems to suggest it; in the company of [VI 217] others even I myself have been the subject of comments that could very well be so explained.

  February 2. Midnight.

  77God created man in his image,78 and in return man creates God in his, declares Lichtenberg,79 and it is true that the kind of person one is personally has an essential influence on one’s conception of God. For example, I think of God as one who sanctions solicitude’s calculation if a person does not have his own welfare in mind but someone else’s; I believe that he sanctions intrigues, and what I have read in the sacred books of the Old Testament does not seem to discourage me. I cannot think of God without this poetic vigil over the honest invention of a troubled passion. If it were otherwise, I would be bound to become anxious and afraid for myself. The Bible lies on my table at all times and is the book in which I read the most; my second book of guidance is a rigorous devotional book80 from an earlier Lutheranism—81and nevertheless I have found nothing at all to prevent acting as sagaciously as possible toward her and devising as sagacious a plan as possible for me—provided I have not my welfare in mind but hers.

  This collision between sagacity and purely ethical-religious obligations, abstractly understood, is difficult enough. From great theorists and admired poets, whose remarks dropped at a luncheon are picked up and published, objects of veneration just as the evacuations of the Dalai Lama, we learn that the devil never totally reveals himself and that consequently an inclosing reserve is demonic. No attention, then, is paid to the contrast—that the whole Old Testament gives plenty of examples of a sagacity that is regarded as acceptable to God; that in a later age Christ says to his disciples: I did not say these things to you from the beginning; that he has more to say to them, but as yet they cannot bear it82 (consequently a teleolog-ical suspension of the ethical83 principle of speaking the whole truth). If it so happens that an individuality who was great by [VI 218] virtue of his inclosing reserve offers himself as a subject for poetic treatment,84 or such a person is encountered in the course of world history, which, of course, speculation is supposed to reconstruct, then we sneak up to admire, assured by the outcome that we shall be able to understand him very well. What consolation for the person who in his need seeks guidance! Inclosing reserve, silence (the teleological suspension of the duty to speak the truth), is a strictly formal qualification and therefore can just as well be the form for good as for evil. To resolve the collision by nullifying sagacity actually means not even to think of the collision, for there is indeed also a duty that orders the use of one’s sagacity. But as soon as one acknowledges this, one has eo ipso won God for intrigue (in the good sense). Thereby subjectivity is in turn maintained in its rights, just as every individuality who has acted and not limited himself to talking about others, to poetizing or speculating with the help of the outcome, must understand it. Most people never come as far as these spheres at all, for there always are only a few who act in the eminent sense of the word. Now, if we want to separate by designation those who experience what is permitted every human being to experience—to act—if we separate them, then we can use the demonic as the main rubric and divide as follows: every individuality who solely by himself has a relation to the idea without any middle term (here is the silence toward all others) is demonic; if the idea is God, then the individual is religious; if the idea is that of evil, then he is in the stricter sense demonic. This is how I have understood it and have found it helpful. Basically, it is easy enough except for someone who has ever been lent the helping hand of the privateer-wealth of the system and thereby in turn the beggar’s staff. Only if one is so circumspect as to want to construct a system without including ethics does it work; then one obtains a system in which one has everything, everything else, and has omitted the one thing needful.

  Perhaps I have not loved her at all; perhaps on the whole I am too reflective to be able to love? Now I shall proceed as follows. Should I not have loved her at all? But, my God, why all these sufferings, then? Is it not love that I think of her night and day, that I am spending my life solely to save her, that I in no way ever consider whether life will become terrible for me because I am thinking only of her? And yet I have language, I have her, I have the human race, I have every external evidence against me, I have nothing to plead in self-defense, nothing to support me. I do not love her? Is this what it is to love, she and the language and the race reply—to forsake her? See, I could not have carried on that conversation; I cannot [VI 219] bear it. This is why I turn to you, you all-knowing one—if I am guilty in this way, then crush me. Alas, no! Who dares to pray thus? Then illuminate my understanding so that I may see my error and my depravity! Do not believe that I want to evade sufferings; that is not my prayer. Destroy me, erase me from the number of the living; recall me as a miscarried idea, a wicked venture, but let me never be healed in such a way that I prematurely cease to grieve. Do not dampen my fervor, do not put out its fire; it is still something good even if it must be purified. Let me never learn to bargain; I still must win, even if the method is vastly different from anything I can imagine.

  What a comfort to have language on one’s side, to be able to say as she can: I have loved him! But if my first premise is wrong, then there is nothing to be concluded from it. But here it is not a matter of a few paltry premises one wishes to draw to a conclusion but 85of the most dreadful thing of all, an eternal torment: a personal existence that cannot coalesce in a conclusion.

  Now I want to go to sleep. For a lover it is quite possible that he cannot sleep because of the restlessness of love; perhaps I am sleepless because I cannot know for sure whether I love or do not love.

  February 5. Midnight.

  A Leper’s Self-Contemplation86

  (The scene is among the graves at dawn. Simon leprosus [the leper]87 is sitting on a stone, has dozed off, wakes up, and shouts:)

  Simon! —Yes! —Simon! —Yes, who is calling? —Where are you, Simon? —Here; with whom are you speaking? —With myself. Is it with yourself; how loathsome you are with your leprous skin, a plague upon all the living. Get away from me, you abomination, flee out among the graves. —Why am I the only one who may not speak this way, may not do accordingly? Everyone else, if I do not run away from him, runs away from me and leaves me alone. Does not an artist hide in order to be a secret witness to how his work of art is admired; why cannot I part company with this loathsome shape and [VI 220] only secretly witness people’s abhorrence? Why must I be condemned to carry it around and display it, as if I were a vain artist who insisted on hearing the admiration in person? Why must I fill the desert with my shrieking and keep company with wild animals and while away the time for them with my howling? This is no exclamation, this is a question; I ask the one who himself said that it is not good for a person to be without companionship.88 Are these, then, my co
mpanions, are these the equals I am supposed to seek: the hungry monsters, or the dead, who are not afraid of being infected?

  (Sits down again, looks around, and says to himself:)

  89Where has Manasse gone? (With raised voice) Manasse!—(Is silent for a moment.) So he has gone off to the city, after all. Yes, I know. 90I concocted a salve by which all the mutilation turns inward so that no one can see it, and the priest must pronounce us healthy. I taught him to use it; I told him that the disease did not thereby terminate, that it turned it inward, and that one’s breath could infect another so that he would become visibly leprous. That made him jubilant. He hates life; he curses men; he wants to have revenge. He runs off to the city; he is breathing poison on all of them. Manasse, Manasse, why did you give the devil a place in your soul—was it not enough that your body was leprous?

  I will throw away the rest of the salve so that I may never be tempted. God of Father Abraham, let me forget how it is prepared! Father Abraham, when I die, I shall awaken in your bosom;91 then I shall eat with the purest of the pure—you, after all, are not afraid of lepers. Isaac and Jacob, you are not afraid to sit at table92 with someone who was leprous and loathed by men. You dead who are sleeping here around me, wake up, just for a moment; listen to a word, just one word: Greet Abraham from me so that he has a place prepared among the blessed for the one who was not permitted to have a place among men.

  What is human compassion anyhow! Who is entitled to it if not the unfortunate one, and how is it paid to him? The poverty-stricken man falls into the hands of the moneylender, who ultimately helps him into captivity as a slave—the fortunate practice usury in the same way and regard the unfortunate as a sacrifice and expect to purchase the Lord’s friendship at a bargain price, indeed, in an unlawful manner. A contribution, a mite, when they themselves have overabundance, a [VI 221] visit if there is no danger, a little sympathy that by its contrast can season their wastefulness—see, that is the sacrifice that compassion makes. But if there is danger, they drive the unfortunate one out into the desert in order not to hear his screaming, which could disturb the music and dancing and opulence and pass judgment on compassion—the human compassion that wants to deceive God and the unfortunate one.

  So look in vain for compassion in the city and among the fortunate, look for it out here in the desert. I thank you, God of Abraham, that you allowed me to concoct this salve; I thank you that you helped me to renounce the use of it. I still understand your mercifulness, that I voluntarily bear my fate, freely suffer necessity. If no one has compassion on me, no wonder, then, that compassion has fled as I have out among the graves, where I sit comforted as one who offers his life to save others, as one who freely chooses exile to save others, comforted as one who has compassion on the fortunate. God of Father Abraham, give them new wine and grain in overabundance, and happy times; build their barns bigger and give them surplus bigger than their barns; give wisdom to the fathers, fertility to the mothers, and blessing to the children; give victory in the struggle that they may be a people of your own.93 Hear the prayer of him whose body is infected and unclean, an abomination to the priests, a horror to the people, a trap for the happy; hear him if his heart is still not infected.94

  Simon leprosus was a Jew; if he had lived in Christianity, he would have found an utterly different kind of sympathy. Whenever in the course of the year there is a sermon about the ten lepers,95 the pastor affirms that he, too, has felt like a leper—but when it comes to typhoid . . . . .

  February 7. Morning.

  A year ago today. She has seen me overwhelmed by the power of the religious, but she does not have an eye for the [VI 222] religious. She knew me long before our engagement, has often enough been witness to my usual conduct as a cool, hardheaded man, almost a scoffer; 96she believes that I scoff at everything, only not at her. Now if she were proud—I shudder to think of it; it certainly would be seductive food for pride to be adored (and thus she could perhaps misunderstand the religious emotion) by someone who scoffs at everything else.

  In the presence of others, her pride emerges more clearly; perhaps it was present from the beginning, but I did not have time to discover it. Even I am a victim of it; the other day it happened in such an unbecoming way that the people present were startled by it. Of itself it is a trifle. A young girl is allowed much leeway—such a thing may only be playfulness. If only I were reassured myself, but I am afraid of worse conflicts. And if it were something other than playfulness, then I sense a colossal misunderstanding. If only she does not believe that what in her eyes is probably odd symptoms is merely erotic impressions, that this is an adoring lover who worships a goddess. Then in an erotic way she would be taking my religiousness in vain. One does indeed humble oneself under God and the ethical relationship, but not under a human being. It is true, my outer being is entirely different from my inner being, but I have never religiously scoffed at anyone. The religious is my principle of equality, and 97my soul is not exactly suited to erotic bickering about which of us was somewhat extraordinary.

  Far from asking any extravagant tenderness of amorous affection on her part, I merely want her to express herself a little more so that I can see what is taking place within her. Despite all my endeavors, I really do believe that she regards me as a very sharp critic, and this stifles her freedom of expression.

  February 7. Midnight.

  When the whale is wounded, it plunges to the bottom of the ocean and spouts jets of blood; in its dying it is most terrible. The herring dies at once, and once it is dead is as dead as a doornail. But sometimes, even though the whale is not dead, it lies perfectly still. If at times I spout blood in the moment of passion, and it seems to me as if I have broken a blood vessel when the words pour out, then I, too, can be absolutely still, but that does not mean that I am dead. What a mysterious [VI 233] power is pathos! In one sense the whole thing can be wrapped up in a package and carried in a vest pocket, but when passion lights the fire, then this little insignificant thing is seen to be a flaming sea.

  Now I want to begin in another way; I want to reflect on the relationship as if I were only an observer who has to file his report. I am fully aware that this objectivity does not help me, nor is it supposed to; I simply feel a need to drain off the almost comic aspect of the affair. Having done that, having shaken the foolishness from me, I shall again feel disposed to drag and lift tragically the same affair as a burden.

  Here is the report. It is a young girl who, in other respects fortunately endowed with feminine charms, lacks one thing: religious presuppositions. Religiously she is just about at the following level (a level that presumably is seldom recorded by the pastor in the official record, for she certainly can recite her catechism)—for her God is very much like what one pictures as a kind elderly uncle who for a sweet word does everything the child wants, just as the child wants it. That is why one is so very fond of this uncle. One also has a certain unexplainable awe of God that does not become anything more. When one is sitting devoutly in church, it makes a lovely sight, viewed purely esthetically. But resignation, infinite resignation, the relationship of spirit, the absolute relationship of spirit with spirit—there is no thought of that. This girl takes up the religious and talks away about it nonchalantly. And just as the youthful temperament as a rule presumptuously says the first thing that comes to mind, which is precisely a feminine charm, she does this with religion as well. She loves a person more than she loves God. 98She swears by God, she beseeches in God’s name, and yet with regard to the religious she is only romantic in the little multiplication table,99 and with regard to the religious she is, valore intrinseco [according to intrinsic value], only an ordinary dollar.100

  Now if the opponent with whom she is matched were a thoroughly commonsensical person, he would probably respond to this rhetoric by recalling the schoolchildren who say to each other, “Do you dare to say ‘by God’?” But he is just the opposite, he is religiously constructed; his romanticism has the magnitude of inf
inity, in which God is a powerful God, and seventy years a stroke of the pen, and a whole life on earth a period of probation, and the loss of his one and only desire is something for which one must be prepared if one wishes to be involved with him, because as the eternal he has a round concept of time and says to the one who seeks him, [VI 224] “No, the moment hasn’t come yet—wait just a bit.” “How long?” “Well—seventy years.” “My God, meanwhile a person could die ten times!” “That must certainly be left up to me, without whose will not one sparrow falls to the ground,101 so then—tomorrow, tomorrow very early.” In other words, in seventy years, for since a thousand years for him is as one day,102 so seventy years is precisely one hour, forty-six minutes, and three seconds. This is how the opponent is constituted. He thinks the task in relation to this is not to be angry with God because he is great but is to bear in mind that he himself is of low degree, is not to wrangle with God because he is eternal, for this, after all, was never a fault, but is to bear in mind that he, admittedly a miserable entity in the temporal, is nothing, that the task is to endure, not to disturb for himself the only love that is happy,103 not to forfeit the only admiration that is blessed, not to lose out on the only expectation that endures, since the task, after all, is to endure. Now, when he is so constructed, it follows that if a person is capable of bringing her relationship with him under a relationship with God, then the schoolchild’s “by God” becomes absolute—he is bound both in time and in eternity. He has, of course, enough circumspection not to respect this word in the mouth of every passerby, but he is bound to that girl, and she has no compunctions about using the oath. It is no help to him at all to know that in her mouth the word is an interjection to which she does not want to feel religiously bound at all, because, on the whole, her dialectic is the dialectic of the desire, of the pleasant and the unpleasant: by virtue of his relationship with God he must honor the claim down to the last farthing.