In immediate feeling one man never understands another. As soon as something happens to himself, all things seem different to him. When he himself suffers he does not understand the suffering of another and neither is his own happiness the key to understand the happiness of another. The immediate feeling selfishly understands all in relation to itself, and is therefore in the discord of double-mindedness with all others. For only in the well-understood equality of sincerity can there be unity, and in selfish shortsightedness his conviction is continually being altered. If it is not altered it is an accident, since the cause of its exemption is only that by sheer chance his life was not touched by any change. But the stability of such a conviction is mere fantasy on the part of the one whom fate has pampered. Because a conviction is not firmly fixed when all press upon it equally and hold it firm. Rather, its true stability is revealed when everything is changed. It is rare indeed that a man’s life is able to escape all changes, and in the changes the conviction based on immediate feeling is a fantasy, the momentary impression simply inflated into a consideration of the whole life.
Perhaps the double-minded one had a knowledge of the Good. In the moment of contemplation it stood out so distinctly before him, so clearly, that the Good, in truth, has all the advantage on its side, that the Good, in truth, is a gain both for this and for the future life. Yes, it lay on his heart, as though he must be able to convince the whole world of it. Perhaps it was not demanded of him that he should go out with his acquired conviction in order to convince others, but the testing that should try this newly won conviction nevertheless was not left out. Alas, contemplation and the moment of contemplation, in spite of all their clarity, readily conceal a deception; because the moment of contemplation has something in common with the falsified eternity. It is a foreshortening that is necessary in order that the contemplation may take place. It must foreshorten time a good deal. Indeed it must actually call the senses and thoughts away from time in order that they may complete themselves in a spurious eternal well-roundedness. It is here as when an artist sketches a country. The sketch cannot be as big as the country, it must be infinitely smaller; but on that account it also becomes all the easier for the observer to scan the outlines of that country. And yet it may well happen to the observer, if suddenly he were actually set down in that country where the many, many miles really exist and are valid, that he would be unable to recognize the country, or to make any sense of it, or as a traveler, to find his way about in it. So it will be with the double-minded person. His knowledge has indeed been a sense-deception. What was there, in air-tight fashion pressed together in the completeness of contemplation, shall now be stretched out at its full length. It is now no longer rounded off but is in motion. For life is like a poet, and on that account is different from the observer who always seeks to bring things to a conclusion. The poet pulls us into the very complex center of life.
Now the double-minded person stands there with contemplation’s sketch. Time, that was ignored by contemplation, begins to assert its validity. And it is obvious that in all eternity, time has no right to deny that the Good has all the advantage on its side. But it has permission to stretch time out, and thereby to make somewhat more difficult what in contemplation is apparently so plainly understood. So the understanding does not, in this way, simply become less plain because it has become crooked and awry, but rather it has become less plain—to go by. Now instead of keeping his contemplation to himself and holding himself to the contemplation in order to penetrate time with it in a direct but gradual manner, the double-minded person lets time cut him off from contemplation. Is this not double-mindedness: to be in time without any contemplation, without any distinct thoughts, or to put it more exactly, to be within time deceived over and over again about having or having had an experience of contemplation! The moment of contemplation he had recklessly misunderstood as being earnest, and then as this earnestness really approached, he threw off contemplation, and misunderstood the moment of contemplation as a delusion, until he again becomes earnest in the moment of contemplation. Or perhaps the double-minded one himself admitted that he had done wrong, had acted badly, had gotten upon a false road. But then after reflection it became so evident, so attractive, that punishment really is like a medicine. It seemed to him that no physician had ever made his medicine so agreeable or inviting, as this reflection upon punishment had succeeded in rendering it. However, when the punishment came, momentarily, as a physician knows, it made the condition worse, in order that real health might break through. Then he became impatient. In reflection he had thought himself healed; thought how good it was, when it was all over—when it was all over. In this fashion the lazy man always has a disproportionate power of imagination. He thinks immediately how he will establish himself, and how fine it will be for him when now this and now that is done: he is less given to thinking—that he should do this and that. And in reflection this looks very inviting, but when he must step out upon the road (for reflection is up above the road) then all is changed. Now instead of keeping the reflection and the estimate to himself, and conforming to them, he throws off reflection. He has lightly taken the reflection in vain, as if it were the healing quality of the medicine, and as the healing is about to begin, he light-mindedly misunderstands the reflection as a delusion. Is this not double-mindedness: to be ill, to put oneself under the physician’s treatment, and yet not be willing to trust the physician, but arbitrarily to break off the treatment! Is this not double-mindedness, when the sick person is perhaps getting into the bath, where the heat increases, but now finding it suddenly too warm he springs out, regardless of all danger! Is it not double-mindedness, when he still has a remnant of deliberation left and with it an intimation that actually he is ill and so he begins to go through his cure all over again—in the same fashion!
In the recognition, that contemplation and reflection are the distance of eternity away from time and actuality, there is indeed a truth: the knower can understand that truth, but he cannot understand himself. It is certain that without this recognition a man’s life is more or less thoughtless. But it is also certain, that this recognition, because it is in a spurious eternity before the imagination, develops double-mindedness, if it is not slowly and honestly earned by the will’s purity.
So the double-minded person may have had a will to the Good, for the one who is betrayed into double-mindedness by feeling, or by that distant recognition, he too has a will; but it received no power, and the germ of double-mindedness lay in the inner psychical disagreement. He also has a will to the Good. He is not without intentions or purposes, and resolutions and plans for himself, and not without plans of participation for others. But he has left something out: namely, he does not believe that the will in itself is, or indeed should be, the most solid of all, that it should be as hard as the sword that could hew stone, and yet be so soft that it could be wrapped around the body. He does not believe that it is the will by which a man should steady himself, yes, that when all fails, that it is the will that a man must hold to. He does not believe that the will is itself the mover, but rather that it should itself be mover, that in itself it is fluctuating and on that account should be supported, held firm, that it should be moved and supported by causes, considerations, advice of others, experiences, rules of life. If we, quite properly, should compare the will in man with the headway impetus of a ship in which he (the man) is carried forward: then he believes, on the contrary, that the will, instead of its propelling all, is itself something that should be tugged forward, that there are grounds, considerations, advice of others, experiences, rules of life, that go alongside of and push or pull the will forward as if the will could be compared to a barge—yes, to a freight barge. But in the same stroke the will is made impotent, “up to a certain degree” discounted in relation to causes, considerations and advice, and in relation to how these react upon one another. He has turned everything around. What for each one, who with the impetus of eternity steers for a better w
orld, would be a hindrance in life, he takes for an advantage in hastening forward, and what should be an advantage in hastening forward, he makes into a delay, or at least into something that is in itself neutral. Such a person must certainly remain in double-mindedness, upon the inland lake of double-mindedness, busy with trivialities, if, instead of charting a course out of all this delaying by means of the will to the Good, he only sails with the speed of the hindrance.
A man enters upon his life, hoping that all will go well for him and with good wishes for others. He steps out into the world’s multiplicity, like one that comes from the country into the great noisy city, into the multiplicity where men engrossed in affairs hurry past one another, where each looks out for what belongs to him in the vast “back and forth,” where everything is in passing, where it is as though at each instant one saw what he had learned borne out in practice, and in the same instant saw it refuted, without any cessation in the unrest of work, in multiplicity—that all too vast a school of experience. For here one can experience everything possible, or that everything is possible, even what the inexperienced man would least believe, that the Good sits highest at the dinner table and crime next highest, or crime highest and the Good next highest—in good company with each other. So this man stands there. He has in himself a susceptibility for the disease of double-mindedness. His feeling is purely immediate, his knowledge only strengthened through contemplation, his will not mature. Swiftly, alas, swiftly he is infected—one more victim. This is nothing new, but an old story. As it has happened to him, so it has happened with the double-minded ones who have gone before him—this in passing he now gives as his own excuse, for he has received the consecration of excuses.
Perhaps at this point a speaker, who was just as double-minded as that double-minded one, and therefore really only wishes to deceive, will describe the willing of the Good for us in an alluring fashion, yet, in an alluring fashion with the prospect of becoming something in the world. Perhaps he will close his description by saying that that double-minded person came to nothing in the world—just to terrify us. But we do not wish to deceive. Still less do we wish to stir up terror, to frighten by a fraud, which is much like commending a falsehood. We wish only to say that, eternally understood, the double-minded one came to nothing. On the other hand, in the time order, in keeping with his ability and his indefatigable industry, he probably became a well-to-do man, a respected man—or to a certain degree, a respected man, or at least what a man can become within the circumference of “to a certain degree.” And by this it is not denied, that he could readily become the richest man in the world. For that, too, the condition of being the richest man, is only something “to a certain degree.” Only the determinations of eternity are above “a certain degree.” Like its truths, the time order with all that belongs to it is to a “certain degree”; only eternity and its truth is eternal. Therefore let us not deceive and say that in an earthly sense a man advances furthest in the time order by willing the Good in truth. Do not let the talk be as double-minded as the world is. No, in the time order a man advances furthest, in an earthly sense, by means of double-mindedness, and, it must be admitted, mainly by that double-mindedness that has about it a spurious gloss of unity and of inner coherence.
Behold! Honesty is the most enduring of all. It endures, too, at the time when the rich man becomes poor by his honesty. It still endures when the once rich but later poor man is dead and gone, and when the world has been destroyed and forgotten, and when there is neither poverty nor wealth nor money; or further still, when the once rich, but later poor man has long since forgotten the suffering of poverty, yet his honesty still endures. And yet suppose a man should believe that honesty is only related to money and to money values, that the same thing happens to it as to dishonesty, that it ends with the end of the order of money values. Yes, to be sure, honesty stands related to wealth, and poverty and money, but it also stands related to the Eternal. And it does not stand related in a double-minded fashion to money and to the Eternal, so as to aim at joining itself in a financial relationship—to the Eternal. Because of this it endures. It does not “to a certain degree” endure the longest of all. It endures. That assertion is, therefore, no mere proverb. It is an eternal truth. It is the invention of eternity.
On the other hand, there is a proverb that says: One needs a little more than honesty to get through this world. But the questions to which these assertions are a reply differ most widely. It is asked, what is it that endures; and it is asked, how may I pass through? He that merely asks, how may I pass through, has no desire for real knowledge. But he that asks what it is that endures has already passed through; he has already gone over from the time order to eternity, although he is still alive. The one inquires of things only in comparatives. The other questions eternally and if in the hour of temptation, when his honesty is tested, he asks properly, he will receive now, and in the next world he will again receive eternity’s answer: Yes, it endures! Yes, it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, 21 for there one can learn, that after a hundred years, all is forgotten. Yes, to be sure, long ago the feast and the gallant brothers were forgotten, but truly the Eternal is not forgotten, not after a thousand years.
8. The Price of Willing One Thing:
Commitment, Loyalty. Readiness to Suffer All
B. if a man shall will the good in truth, then he must be willing to do all for the good or be willing to suffer all for the good.
MY LISTENER, before going further, if it seems right to you, we shall look at the course our talk has taken up to this point. For the talk, too, has its laborious development, and it is only when this is completed in the necessary slowness that we may come to an understanding with each other about what the talk presupposes. Only at that point can the talk, being then secure, make use of the agreeable speed that is properly the very life of conversation. Thus, purity of heart is to will one thing, but to will one thing could not mean to will the world’s pleasure and what belongs to it, even if a person only named one thing as his choice, since this one thing was one only by a deception. Nor could willing one thing mean willing it in the vain sense of mere bigness which only to a man in a state of giddiness appears to be one. FOR IN TRUTH TO WILL ONE THING, A MAN MUST WILL THE GOOD. This was the first, the possibility of being able to will one thing. But in order GENUINELY TO WILL ONE THING, A MAN MUST IN TRUTH WILL THE GOOD. On the other hand, as for each act of willing the Good which does not will it in truth, it must be declared to be double-mindedness. Then there was a type of double-mindedness that in a more powerful and active sort of inner coherence seemed to will the Good, but deceptively willed something else. It willed the Good for the sake of reward, out of fear of punishment, or as a form of self-assertion. But there was another kind of double-mindedness born of weakness, that is commonest of all among men, that versatile double-mindedness that wills the Good in a kind of sincerity, but only wills it “to a certain degree.”
Now the talk may continue. If, then, a man in truth wills the Good, then HE MUST BE WILLING TO DO ALL FOR IT or HE MUST BE WILLING TO SUFFER ALL FOR IT. Once more we understand that this classification divides mankind, or rather reminds us of a division that exists in reality: a division into the active ones and the sufferers, so that when the talk is about willing to do all, we may think about the suffering which this act may entail without calling such a man a sufferer, since he actually is an active person. But by the sufferers, we think of those to whom life itself seems to have assigned the speechless, and if you will, the useless sufferings, useless because the sufferings are not benefitting others, are helping nothing at all, but rather are a burden both to others and to the sufferers themselves.
I. If a man shall will the good in truth, then he must be willing to do all for the Good.
Let us first consider: the willingness to do all for the Good. All—yet will not this talk easily exceed all bounds, if all is named? Will it not become an impossibility to master all
the differences included under the term “all,” and as a result will the talk not become vague, since the Good can demand the most different things of different people? It can sometimes demand that a man leave his esteemed calling and put on lowliness, that he give away all his possessions to the poor, that he shall not even dare to bury his father. 22 Again it can demand of others that they shall assume the power and the dignity that are offered them, that they shall take over the working power of wealth, that they shall bury the father, and that perhaps a large part of their lives shall be consecrated to faithfulness which is to be faithful over the little to this extent, that their own life has no claims of its own, but rather is faithful to the memory of a departed one. Now let us not multiply confusion and distraction in a host of individual details. For these also remind us of the struggle of pettiness for preference, where one person thinks that by doing one thing he is doing more for the Good than another who does something else. For if both in relation to the demand do all, then they do equally much. And if neither of them does all, then they do equally little. Instead of multiplying details, let us simplify this all into its essential unity and likeness by saying that to will to do all is: in the commitment to will to be and to remain loyal to the Good. Because the commitment is just the committing of all, just as it is also that which is essentially one thing. In this way no tempting occasion for the mistaken quarrel of pettiness about preference need arise. Then, too, the talk can be briefer, for it is unnecessary to enumerate variety’s many names and yet be in keeping with strict accuracy, since this essential brevity answers to that rich brevity which is present in life, in the act of commitment to will to be and to remain loyal to the Good. No one believes that this is a long-drawn-out affair. On the contrary, from the standpoint of eternity, if I dare say so, it is this abbreviating of all of life’s fractions (for eternity’s length is the true abbreviation) that frees life of all its difficulties, and it is through deciding to will to be and to remain loyal to the Good that so much time is gained. For that which absorbs men’s time when they complain about the lack of time is irresoluteness, distraction, half thoughts, half resolutions, indecisiveness, great moments—great moments. It was because of these that we said: to be and to remain loyal to, so that the commitment should not be confused with the extravagance of an expansive moment. The person, who in decisiveness wills to be and to remain loyal to the Good, can find time for all possible things. No, he cannot do that. But neither does he need to do that, for he wills only one thing, and just on that account he will not have to do all possible things, and so he finds ample time for the Good.
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