Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  April 13. Morning.

  A year ago today. It went splendidly; I can thank her guardian spirit for that, which I have privately done. Yesterday afternoon in my fencing lesson, my mask fell off while I was making a pass; the one who was countering could not stop his lunge and I took it on the head. The whole thing was a minor incident—some bleeding, the application of a bit of bandage, and I went home. But what happens? Fairly late last night she heard an exaggerated story about it, and when I did not come as I had promised she became anxious. The bloodshed, the tension between us or our thrust and counterthrust, and then perhaps a little love combined to keep her sleepless. As I have always said, in one sleepless night one can be unbelievably changed. Today she hurried over to me with 241her father. She was agonizing in a way that had to move the most callous person. —So everything went well. We escaped without my being victorious, and mortal danger helped us understand each other.

  So much lovableness, such a girl, and then such a little miss! But I will gladly give a hundred rix-dollars to the poor because we so happily bypassed the precariousness of a capitulation. She looked at me now and then in such a way that I understood she had something to tell me, but then I talked about the dangerous wound and about the oddity that it was a mask that had fallen off. Then she laughed, even though [VI 281] there was a tear in her eye. Then I said, “Yes, you may well laugh at me for being unmasked that way.” Then she said, “Oh, that’s silly—you know very well what I mean.” “Yes, that I should challenge him again and say: The whole thing doesn’t count if the mask falls off.” And then we talked of other things.

  After that she goes home, and I watch her as I did when she returned from her singing lesson, and yet she walks in a different way; there is a brash happiness in her walk.

  O death, I believe we do you an injustice; what meaning you are able to give life when even such a little reminder has such an effect.

  April 14. Midnight.

  242The method must be changed. When an interrogator wants to examine searchingly, he creates a setting as inquisitorial for the accused as possible. He seats the murderer beside the one who was murdered; he awakens at cockcrow the one who is apprehensive at night. For me there is a setting in which my interrogator is able to bring me to the brink of a confession, as near as I think it possible to bring me: it is in a church.243 Today, contrary to my custom, I went to Trinitatis Church.244 She is farsighted like a bird and unfortunately has a very good idea of my powers of observation. She caught me with her eyes and could see very well that I saw her. I was standing in the narrow aisle to the right; she came down from the church door, crossed in front of the chancel, and was about to be shut in a pew on the opposite side. She looked at me, then nodded. I quickly dropped my eyes and leafed through the hymnbook as though I had lost the hymn and by this movement managed to shake my head. 245Alas, I was afraid that in this greeting a hope was hidden. When I looked up, another glance was exchanged; she seemed to have understood the meaning of the movement of my head, and then she nodded again. Alas! Her expression was altogether different; it seemed to me as if she, giving up hope, were asking only for an admission. I had found the hymn and lustily joined the singing, and, as the parish cantor sometimes does, I lifted my head together with my voice and let it sink down again, a movement resembling that of one who is bidding at an auction and says “Yes.” Then the pastor entered and separated us. I did not see where she went, and I went the way I had come, not a foot off the path. A Pythagorean could not step [VI 282] on the earth more anxiously than I in fear of, as they say, taking any step.246

  So, then, I have spoken! No, spoken I have not; I have not even done anything that I could not deny doing. It should not have been in a church; she should not have diverted me from what I still must regard as my duty. But in a church I am so easily tempted to regard the matter eternally, and in an eternal sense I can certainly speak the truth, but not in time, or not yet. She perhaps can be saved for life; she must not say farewell to it because I do. I do not believe she is religiously mature enough really to grasp what it means to break with life in this way, which for a woman is even more decisive than for a man. To want to proceed jointly along this path will produce again that dreadful misrelation that I already feared in that dreadful two-month period: that we would jointly sorrow over an unhappy love affair. It cannot be. What similarity is there between her sorrow and mine, what solidarity is there between guilt and innocence, what kinship is there between repentance and an esthetic sorrow over life, when that which awakens repentance is that which awakens her sorrow? I can sorrow in my way; if she must sorrow, she must also do it on her own account. A girl may submit to a man in many things, but not in the ethical; and it is unethical for her and for me to sorrow jointly in this way. Taking this path, how will she ever come to sorrow religiously when she must leave undecided an ethical issue such as my behavior toward her, when it is indeed over its result that she wishes to sorrow. Would that I might be a woman for half a year so that I could learn how she is dissimilar to man. I fully realize that there are examples of women who have conducted themselves in this way. Psychologically I have them right at hand, but in my opinion they are all wasted individualities. My view of life is meaningless if I must personally experience that one individual is being squandered upon another, and squandered she is if it goes this way.

  As soon as she begins to venture along the narrow way to a religious movement, she is lost to me. A woman can have passion as strong as or perhaps stronger than a man, but contradiction in passion is not a task for her, such as the task of simultaneously giving up and preserving the wish. If she [VI 283] works purely religiously to give up the wish, she is transformed; if the moment for its fulfillment ever did come, she would no longer understand it.247

  And yet I perhaps am talking quite foolishly; my conception of her may be laid out on too large a scale. The religious movement of infinity248 may not be natural to her individuality. Her pride may not be sufficiently energetic to save her in an intensification of temporality. If she had been thoroughly proud, this would have happened, humanly speaking. This, too, may be why the religious does not take effect with the turning of the infinite. The religious eternity very likely does not become the eternal decision but a spacing out of the temporal. So eternity has paused at her side, consoled her, just as in Homer the god or the goddess hurries to the aid of the hero. She believed it was the decision of eternity, she believed it was her death, she believed all was lost, but see, because she was not so much awakened to this eternal decision as weary from futile wishing and weary of the futile act of renunciation, she gently slumbered on into eternity; then time passed, and she woke up and belonged to life once again. Thus there was even a possibility of a new alliance, a new falling in love.

  This was indeed what I wanted; then she is really free. I have imagined three possibilities: that through pride she would gain an intensification in temporal existence, that through an illusory resignation she would gain a new love, that she would become mine. I have not wanted to think of any unlovely possibility in which she certainly would become free but in such a way that she would go down in my estimation. The first possibility must be relinquished. If she still, if after having received my confidential communication she has progressed no further, then she is not proud in the way needed to construct something exceptional upon this foundation. The last possibility is only a wish, which has also the difficulty that she would only have remained at this point if she had not entered into the religious at all but had continued in her feminine naïveté. Only when she has begun to sorrow religiously does the wish vanish like the setting sun when the moon’s brilliance begins to shine or like the light of the moon before the break of day. A woman cannot involve herself in double-illumination and double-reflection;249 her reflection is only single. If she wants to give up the wish, then reflection is the conflict between the life of the wish and the death of the resignation, but to will both at the same time is for her impossible—indeed, p
erhaps even impossible for her to understand.

  So the middle possibility remains: an illusory resignation’s slumbering on into an eternity, a relaxation, while time passes by, until she once again opens her eyes and is awakened to [VI 284] new life. If this happens, then no human life has been squandered on me. The girl, who in the illusion of sorrow may once have felt, alas, like a superfluous flower in life and have felt, alas, like the poor little bird that could not be considered when it was a question of a larger one, seems in this manner actually to receive consideration. So let the natural scientists teach us that life squanders on an enormous scale, let whoever wishes talk of love that demands sacrifices; if the state of affairs is as I think it is, then the girl becomes a capitalist to my eyes, and providence makes a very economical conversion. Denmark is said to be the only country that possesses a private fortune, because it has the toll from the Øresund;250 to me it seems that she, in the smaller proportions in the world of individuality, likewise becomes an exception among wives. Marriage becomes, as it were, the national revenue, but then she has in addition the interest that my life brings to her. But it is good that she nevertheless did not do this for my sake or because I requested it of her. —This looks really inviting to me. Her existence comes to have more meaning than mine. I cannot have meant very much to her, for then one of the incidents laid out en gros [on a large scale] would have occurred, and it would have been costly for me.

  But even when I think about it purely theoretically in this way, there is still something dubious. What is it precisely that she should do; what should happen? Yes, I am fully aware that she should do what is preached about in perhaps more than one church. The religiousness of infinity is perhaps not proclaimed if one is exacting about the categories. Christianity is not always proclaimed, either, just because without a trace of hypocrisy the holy names and the biblical terms are used, for at times the train of thought might be altogether pagan. That in which she will find consolation is not genuine religiousness. Seen from that point of view, I would in her eyes vanish like an atom, as an occasion, like the sale of Joseph,251 for her gaining of the eternal; but then neither would there be any question of a new love affair. No, what she will be healed by is a life-wisdom permeated with a certain religiousness, a not exactly unbeautiful compound of something of the esthetic, of the religious, and of a life-philosophy. My view of life is a different one, and I force myself to the best of my ability to hold my life to the category. I know that one can die; I know [VI 285] that one can be slowly tortured—but one can hold to the category and hold it firmly. This is what I will; this is what I ask of anyone I am to admire, of anyone I am really to approve—that during the day he think only of the category of his life and dream about it at night. I judge no one; anyone busily engaged in judging others in concreto rarely remains true to the category. It is the same as with the person who seeks in someone else’s testimony a proof that he is earnest; he is eo ipso not in earnest, for earnestness is first and foremost positive confidence in oneself. But every existence that wills something thereby indirectly judges, 252and the person who wills the category indirectly judges him who does not will. I also know that even if a person has only one step left to take he may stumble and relinquish his category; but I do not believe that I would therefore escape from it and be rescued by nonsense; I believe that it would hold on to me and judge me, and in this judgment there would in turn be the category.

  What power she still has over me. To humor her every wish, to spend the day on delight for her, if I were allowed to do that. Yes, that is a pleasure, but my thought is my life, and its loss would be my intellectual death if it were taken away from me. Long ago I crossed out differences, but that which sustains life for me is that in willing there is an equality of all human beings,253 that on this point one dares to require the same of everybody. And yet how she has prevailed, just by a slight suggestion, upon me to be—as a third person presumably would say—decent about that dubious resignation. And why? Because I, in turn, am unable to exist intellectually unless she must be able to exist in the same thing. From this it is clear how dangerous it is for a thinker to be in love, to say nothing of being married and having daily arguing from a woman. Should he perhaps be neither the one nor the other, or should he perhaps be both? —Yes, it would be a male who would come up with such a life-view, who relinquishes to a certain degree, and then in turn comforts himself to a certain degree. But no! Be quiet, you passion that wants to provoke my mind to rebellion, even if it may have its reasons, for what I demand of myself to the point of despair, not as something extraordinary but as the right thing—this I cannot bear to see confused with something else, I cannot haggle.

  But have not I myself provided the occasion so that something like this could happen? Indeed, the goal of my efforts is that she can become free. Correct, but I have submitted the matter for her decision so dialectically that she can do what she wishes. I believed that I owed it to myself to take all the [VI 286] responsibility upon myself. Perhaps it was still possible in the reign of terror to arrange a more amicable settlement, but if I had done something along that line I would have thought of my own welfare and not hers. She perhaps would not have grasped how she thereby would become dependent on me and far from being respected would be squandered. So the matter was put in such a way that she had the power and the sovereignty to act in the power of the religious infinity. I would thereby be bound forever and would never have gained myself again. If she chooses the other, I have not prevailed.254

  What consoles me is that infinite reflection is not essential for woman. Therefore that more dubious kind of resignation can keep a woman just as beautiful. If she can fall in love, I am helped as much as I can be, but whatever she does I still cannot refrain from making something beautiful of it. Ah, what a bitter consolation for me if I were helped and she, too, but I secretly had to say of her: This existence has renounced the idea.

  And what is the point of all my concerns and plans and efforts? What am I achieving? Nothing. But I am not going to stop for that reason. Precisely for that reason I am not going to stop, for when a person does everything and it is of no help, then he can be sure that he is acting with enthusiasm. Therefore I do not disdain this nothing, just as the widow did not disdain putting three pennies into the temple treasury,255 this nothing in connection with achieving, which in connection with suffering is very much—something a solitary will understand. For when agony convulses the innermost being and the body trembles, if the sufferer is a man there is still a friendly hand that supports his head until that fury has abated; or when the sigh alarms and pain crushes the heart to the breaking point, if the sufferer is a woman, there is still a compassionate woman to loosen the stays until she can breathe again; but the solitary does not even dare to abandon himself to the sensate relief that passion finds in nausea.

  But as yet there is no time to sorrow on my own behalf, for this, too, manifests the dialectical difficulty of my position, that it means two entirely different things if I sorrow on my own and on the family’s behalf. But I must see about finding what to my eyes is the most beautiful form for a new alliance. The most beautiful would be that she had been in love with someone else before she pledged herself to me and that this love could reawaken now, perhaps supported by the self-reproach [VI 287] she must feel at having preferred me. Then her relationship with me would become an episode, she would not be falling in love anew but only returning to her first love, and the relationship with me perhaps would have taught her to find it more beautiful than ever. Bravo, bravo! That will do! If my pen were a living thing—but it is, of course, only a steel pen—but if it were a bird that came bearing this leaf in its beak,256 if it could have any joy from my gratitude, how I would thank it! —But the trouble is that I do not know anything about all this. And yet a more intimate confidant to whom I could turn is unthinkable. But why be silent about it, and why so eager to hold on to me? The answer to this would show her a responsibility to that unknown person
and to me. Have I taken her by surprise, then? Far from it—I once made that matter unmistakably clear to myself. 257If I have taken her by surprise, then it must have happened through the very circumspection with which I tried to prevent it. If I assume it, then it can continue. So she has nevertheless feared me more than she loved me. When the debates over the separation began, what she had forgotten resurfaced, and this painfulness has been the spur to her despair. —So that is how it is. If this happens, she will be helped—that is, she will have helped herself; and I shall be helped since she is free, and helped since she has not become less beautiful. She does not owe me anything, for she has not followed any advice of mine, since I have given none and along this line could give none. If she does owe me something, a little compensation for all the suffering, then it is that I have had nothing to do with trying to counsel her. I do not owe her anything directly, for I have not asked her to do anything for my sake, nor can she be assumed to be doing anything for my sake. Indirectly I owe her a great deal; yet this debt is essentially founded on my personality, which precisely on the basis of the assumed presupposition wishes to acknowledge it.

  258All this is splendid—if only it were not a hypothesis; it is a splendid hypothesis, if only, regarded as a hypothesis, it were not so weak.

  It is five minutes to two; my working time is over. I shall think about her passionately from midnight on, but not a minute after this stroke of the clock. It is a matter of perseverance, and after two o’clock every thought about her is a spiritual trial, a deceit against her, for there must be some sleep to sustain passion all the way, which I want to do. —The difference between weak beer and the strongest beer brewed in [VI 288] England is not that the latter foams, for the weakest beer can foam, and foam just as much, but its foam vanishes instantly; the foam of the strong beer, however, lasts.