What has now happened? The first self has been brought to a standstill; it cannot move. The environ- ment may actually be quite favorable, ah, so favorable; it may seem so palpably reliable, so evidently steadfast, that almost anyone would be willing to forecast a favor- able outcome, provided only a beginning be made: it boots nothing. Whoever witnesses this struggle in his own soul, must acknowledge that the deeper self is in the right; this very minute everything may be changed, and whoever does not discover this truth is always en- gaged in basing his life upon what is uncertain. Never in all the world has there been so nimble a tongue that it could beguile the deeper self, provided the deeper self is permitted to give itself expression. This is indeed a painful state: the first self sits there and gazes at the alluring fruits displayed all about it, and it is so clear that it needs only to grasp the means at hand to achieve a complete success, as everyone must admit. But the deep- er self sits there thoughtful and serious, like a physician at the bedside of the sick. But it also wears an air of trans- lucent gentleness, because it knows that this sickness is not unto death but unto life.
The first self has, let us say, a specific wish. It knows that it is in possession of the conditions necessary for the realization of its ambition; the surrounding world, as it understands it, is as favorable as possible. It is as if these 162 two, the fortunate self and the favors of fortune, were merely waiting for one another— oh, what a merry life! But the deeper self refuses to retreat; it does not bargain, it makes no compact, it withholds its assent. It merely says that even in this moment everything may be changed. Other men come to the assistance of the first self with suggested explanations. They call upon him to seize the means. They explain to him that such is the law of life, that some men are the favorites of fortune, that they ought to enjoy life, and that he is one of them. Then his heart beats fast within him, and he longs to make a start.
That a child whose father is strict must remain at home, is something that cannot be helped, since the father is the stronger. But he is no child, and the deeper self is merely his own self, and yet it seems stricter than the strictest fa- ther. It is quite impossible to ingratiate oneself with the deeper self; it either speaks quite unreservedly or not at all. Then there is danger in the offing; they are both aware of it, both the first self and the deeper one. The latter sits there anxiously concerned, like the experienced pilot, while a secret council is being held to determine whether it were not better to throw the pilot overboard, since he brings contrary winds. But this does not yet happen; what follows? It follows that the first self cannot move a single step forward. And yet, yet it is clear that the moment of happiness hastens to depart, that fortune is already in flight. For so men say, namely, that if one does not seize the moment while it is there it will soon be too late. And whose fault will that be, if not the fault of the deeper self? But this cry again is of no avail.
What sort of unnatural state is this, what does it all mean? When something of this kind takes place in a man's soul, does it not mean that this mind is beginning man's need of god 163 to give way? Ah no, it means something quite different, it means that the child is about to be weaned. For it is quite possible for a man to be thirty years old and more, fully forty years, and still be only a child; aye, it is even possible to die as a child of advanced years. But it is so enchanting, so beautiful, to be a child! And so the child lies at the breast of time in the cradle of the finite, and a figure called probability sits at the side of the cradle and sings a lullaby to the child. If the wish fails of fulfill- ment, and the child becomes restless, probability hushes it and says: Now just lie still and sleep, while I go out to buy something for you; next time you may be sure that it will be your turn. So the child falls asleep, and the pain is forgotten, and its cheeks redden again with the glow of new wishes, though it once seemed as if it would be impossible ever to forget the pain. To be sure, had he not been a child the man could not have forgotten the pain so easily; and it would have appeared that it was not probability that sat at the side of the cradle, but the deeper self sitting at his deathbed, in the death hour of self-denial, when this self arose to an eternal life.
When the first self thus yields to the deeper self they are reconciled, and become companions on the way. Then perhaps the deeper self will say: "Let me see, I had almost forgotten it over our long struggle, what it was namely that you wished so intensely. At the present mo- ment I believe that there is nothing to prevent the fulfill- ment of your desire, provided you do not forget the lit- tle secret that we two share with one another. So now you can be well content." Perhaps the first self will then reply: "But now I do not care so much about it; I feel that I shall never be as happy as I was before, oh, as I was when my soul was filled with yearning. To tell the 164 164 truth, I do not believe that you understand me." "Nei- ther do I believe so: do you really think it would be desir- able if I understood you in such fashion that I desired this thing as much as you? But have you lost anything by no longer caring so much about it? Consider on the oth- er hand what might have happened if the world had de- ceived you, and you know it might have done so. This was what I impressed upon you; I said only that it was possible, and thereby implied indeed that what you re- garded as a certainty was really only a possibility— what then? In that case would you not have been the prey of despair? And then you would not have had me to rely upon, for you will recollect that the ship's council was almost on the point of deciding to throw me overboard. Are you not better off through having lost something of your burning desire, and through having gained in- stead the assurance that life cannot deceive you? To lose in that manner, is it not to gain?"
"The little secret that we two share with one another." Thus spoke the deeper self. What is this secret, my hear- er? What else than the truth, that in relation to external things a man can do absolutely nothing? If he moves im- mediately to grasp the external it may change in that very instant, leaving him deceived. He may on the other hand accept it, with the consciousness that it is subject to altera- tion, and he will not be deceived even if it changes, for he has the consent of the deeper self. If he proposes to act im- mediately in relation to outer things, and in this fashion to accomplish something, everything may in an instant come to naught. But if he acts, not immediately but in the light of this consciousness, he will not be deceived even if it all comes to naught, for he has the consent of the deeper self.
man's need of god 165 Nevertheless, when the first self and the deeper self thus become reconciled, and their common mind is turned away from outer things, there has as yet been realized only the first condition necessary for self-knowledge. In order that a man may really know himself, new dangers must be met and new conflicts must be won. Only let not the aspiring soul be deterred or terrified, as if it were an imperfection to be in need, when the need in question is a need of God. Let it not entertain the thought that its need is a shameful secret it were better to hide, when the need is a need of God; nor let it consider it a sad neces- sity which one seeks to put a better face upon by avowal, when the need is a need of God. A more profound self- knowledge teaches one precisely that one needs God. But the first and superficial sense of depression evoked by this thought would deter a man from beginning, unless his attention was directed in time to the thought that this need constitutes his perfection, and unless his en- thusiasm was stirred by meditation upon it. For it is a far more imperfect thing not to need God; and when it seems to a man that he does not need God, he is in truth merely mistaken.
Even if a man had realized the greatest and most glor- ious of feats, if he still thought it had all been done in his own strength; if by curbing his spirit he had become greater than one that conquers a city, and yet believed that he had done this in his own strength, then his perfec- tion would virtually be merely a misunderstanding. But such a perfection would be little praiseworthy. On the other hand, whoever perceives that he cannot do even the least thing without God, that he cannot even rejoice in the happiest eventuality without God, is nearer to per- fection. And whoever understands himself thus, and finds i66 i66 nothing at all painful in the awareness, but only a super- abundance of happiness; whose heart hides no secret wish or preference for a happiness which should be a happiness on its own responsibility; whose mind feels no shame in letting other people see that he can do nothing of himself; who seeks no special compact with God, not even stipulating that his impotence should be concealed from the eyes of men; but in whose heart joy always con- quers because he jubilantly, as it were, throws himself into the arms of God in unspeakable wonder over God who can do all things— aye, such a man is indeed the perfect man, whom the apostle Paul describes better and more briefly as one who "glories in his weakness," and who has not even had so many and so dubious experi- ences that he has learned to express himself more vo- luminously.
Men say indeed that not to know oneself is to be deluded and imperfect; but they often refuse to under- stand that he who truly knows himself, knows precisely that he can do nothing of himself.
Thus in relation to outward things, man can do noth- ing. But inwardly, can he do nothing here? In order that a power should really be a power it must have oppo- sition; if it has no opposition it is either omnipotence or an illusion. But if a man is to have opposition, from whence is it to come? Inwardly, the opposition can come only from himself. So then a man strives with himself in inward conflict, but not now as before, when the deeper self strove with the first self to prevent it from concerning itself overmuch with outward things. The man who fails to discover the existence of this inward struggle is involved in a misunderstanding, and his life is consequently imperfect. But if he does discover this man's need of god 167 struggle, he will here again be made to understand that he can do nothing of himself.
It may seem strange that this is what a man must learn from a study of himself; why then praise self-knowledge? And yet it is so; and if the entire outer world conspired to teach him, he cannot learn from the world that he can do absolutely nothing. Even if the entire world united to crush and annihilate the weakest of human beings, he could still preserve in his mind a feeble notion that he might have been able to do something under other circumstances, when the power opposed to him was not so overwhelmingly superior. That he can do nothing at all is something he can discover only by himself. Whether he conquers the world, or stumbles over a wisp of straw, he can in either case know in himself that he can do absolutely nothing. If someone wishes to propose a differ- ent explanation, let him remember that he has to do sole- ly with himself and not with others; then every evasion will at once be detected. Men think it a difficult thing to learn to know oneself, especially when one has many talents and is equipped with a multitude of capacities and dispositions, and must acquire an adequate under- standing of all this. The self-knowledge of which we speak is not so complicated; every time a man grasps this brief and pithy truth, that he can of himself do nothing, he understands himself.
But can a man not overcome himself in his own strength? This is indeed sometimes asserted. But has one who says this proved himself or understood himself in what he asserts? For how can I be stronger than myself? I may be stronger than the weakest; and perhaps there lives or has lived a man of whom one might say that he surpasses all others in strength; but no man was ever i68 stronger than himself. When we speak of a man's over- coming himself by himself we usually think of some- thing different, of something merely external, where the combatants are not equal. Thus when it happens that a man who was once tempted by the lure of the world's honors overcomes himself, so that he no longer stretches out his hand to seize them; when a man who feared the dangers of life, so far drives out his fears that he no long- er flees the dangers; when a man who had lost his cour- age and confidence overcomes himself to the extent of standing fast, not absenting himself from the arena of decision: then we do not speak in depreciation of such a man, but rather praise him. But if he wishes to save his soul from a new form of vanity, and to safeguard himself against driving out devils with the help of the devil, he will promptly confess than he cannot over- come himself inwardly. By this he does not mean that evil has once for all achieved a power over him. No, but inwardly he can only reach the point, and that by his utmost endeavor, of withstanding himself; and this is not the same thing as overcoming himself. Inwardly he creates in his mind the temptations of glory and fear and despondency, and those of pride and pleasure and defiance, greater than the temptations that meet him out- wardly. It is because he thus creates his temptations for himself, that he is engaged in a struggle with himself. If he does not strive in this manner, then he merely strives with an accidental degree of temptation, and his victory proves nothing with respect to what he could do in a greater temptation. If he conquers the temptation which his environment presents to him, this does not prove that he would conquer if the temptation came in the most ter- rible form that his mind can conceive. But only when it man's need of god 169 presents itself to him in this magnitude does he really learn to know himself. In this manner it is present to his inner self; and hence he knows in himself, what he has perhaps failed to learn from the world, that he can do ab- solutely nothing.
My hearer, surely you are not one of those who think that these are merely the dark and somber thoughts of a melancholy temperament, and you surely do not wish to thank God because you have never been visited by such melancholy? If it really were the case that such thoughts are a symptom of melancholy, is this the fashion in which we ought love God and men? To offer God thanks for an imagined preferential love is to deceive Him, and to give Him to understand that if the heavier burden had been laid upon your shoulders, you might not have been able to believe in His love; for when this is admitted it becomes a very different matter to thank God that one has escaped being tried in the more difficult struggle. To flee from the sight and consciousness of the individual you are pleased to call melancholy, is to wish to ignore the fact that he too is a human being. And since you dare not call him an evil-doer you must admit that he is an unfortunate being, as such precisely needing your sympathy, which you show him by asking him to take up his habitation among the tombs like a leper, while you dare not acknowledge him as a fellow human being— is this to love God and man? But if it is regarded as an evidence of melancholy to speak as we have done about understanding oneself, then it must also be re- garded as a folly inseparable from such melancholy to consider this view of life as one that conceives man from the standpoint of his perfection; and it must be deemed a still greater folly to rejoice in this perfection. And yet, 170 why should not such a man be glad? The perfect is always a source of joy. And this joy of which we here speak is not based upon God's imaginary preference for some par- ticular person, nor does it flee from the sight of the sor- rowing. On the contrary, in this joy a human being loves everyone who is beset by sorrow. And so it is in very truth. You will not wish to stamp such a person as mel- ancholy, my hearer, when the truth is that he is the only one who is really glad. For whoever is happy in God, and over God, rejoices, and again I say, he rejoices. Why does the apostle Paul, when he gives us this beautiful admonition: "Rejoice, and again I say unto you, rejoice," why does he pause a moment and cease to speak, before again for the second time he bids the believer rejoice? Because he has in the intervening moment, as it were, taken time to listen to all the terrible things that may be said in contradiction. That is to say, he summons the terrifying thought that a man can do absolutely nothing, in order to allow his joy to gain a perfect victory: "and again I say unto you, rejoice!"
The view of life which holds that man's need of God constitutes his highest perfection, does indeed make life more difficult. But at the same time it views human life according to its perfection; and in this understanding, through that gradual joining of experience to experience which constitutes a good understanding with God, man learns to know God.
In so far as a man does not know himself, nor under- stand that he can of himself do nothing, he does not really become aware, in any deeper sense, that God ex- ists. Though he may at times use the name of God, and occasionally invoke Him, in the great crises of his life MAN S NEED OF GOD 171 perhaps thinking to see Him, and be moved by the vision, as it is impossible to catch even a glimpse of God without being moved— nevertheless, he is in a manner piously de- ceived if he deems himself on this account clearly con- scious of God's existence, or thinks that God's existence ought not to make itself manifest in this earthly life with a very different emphasis— in this life whose meaning is always confused unless God's presence is continually im- plied. We call such self-deception well-meaning, we use as beautiful a name for it as possible, we do not intend to break out into heated condemnation. But neverthe- less we wish for every man that God's existence may be- come clear to him with a certainty of a very different or- der, and with a decisiveness that leaves no room for vagueness.
Whoever can do nothing of himself, cannot undertake the least enterprise without God's help, or without com- ing to notice that there is a God. We sometimes speak of learning to know God from history; we bring out the chronicles, and read and read. This method may perhaps succeed; but how much time is not required, and how precarious often is not the result, how near to the mis- understanding which is the sensuous man's wonder over what is ingenious! But whoever knows in himself that he can do nothing, has each day and each moment the desired and indubitable occasion to experience the living God. And if he does not have this experience often enough, he knows very well the reason. The reason is that he has become involved in a misunderstanding, and thinks that he can do something of himself.
When he goes to the house of the Lord, he knows that God is not there. But he also knows that he can of him- self do nothing, that he cannot even put himself in a I72 spirit of devotion; so that God must be there if he is really moved to devotion. Alas, there are many who live in all other respects without a concern for God, but who nevertheless do not omit to go to church. What a strange contradiction! They gather in the house of prayer, they say to one another: "God is not here, He does not live in a house built with hands." Then they go home; but at home God does not exist for them at all. But whoever knows himself in the manner described above, knows indeed that God does not dwell in temples made with hands. But he also knows that God is with him in the night, when he is refreshed by sleep, and when he wakes in anxious dreams; in the day of need, when he vainly looks about him for comfort; in the tumultuous chaos of his thoughts, when he listens in vain for a word that might save him; when in danger of his life, and without help from the world; in anxiety when he fears himself; in the crisis of his despair, when he works out his salva- tion with fear and trembling. He knows that God is with him when anxiety seeks to overwhelm him, its sudden- ness like a flash of lightning, when it is as if it were already too late, and there is no time to go to the house of the Lord. Then God is with him, coming more quickly than the light that penetrates the darkness, swifter than the thought that dispels the fog; present as promptly as only He can be, who was already there. And if it were not so, where could be found the messenger who could move quickly enough to fetch the Lord for the troubled mind! And before He could come, some time must still elapse! But this is not the case; only he believes it who thinks that he can do something of himself.
It is possible indeed to come to know God in precisely the same way on the day of gladness, provided we also un- MAN S NEED OF GOD 173 derstand that we can do absolutely nothing. But it is just as difficult to hold fast to this thought on the day of glad- ness as it is to hold fast to it in the hour of sorrow. When a man is at the height of his happiness the thought sud- denly tempts him: would it not be still more glorious if he could do it all himself? Then his joy acquires a false bias; it does not swing upward to God but swerves away from Him; and this is a sign that new exercises are need- ed. When everything again becomes uncertain, when the thoughts seethe in a welter of confusion, when memory threatens to give notice and refuses any longer to serve, when the past comes before the mind only in the form of fearful anguish, when even the most sincere purpose is through the treason of anxiety transformed into insincer- ity toward oneself— then one understands again that a man can do absolutely nothing of himself. But in and with this understanding God is immediately present, commands the confusion, and remembers everything that has been confided to Him. For the tried individual has doubtless confided in God. In the chaos of his anguish and temptation, when the outcome threatened to be more terrible than death, he hastily entrusted to God what lay upon his mind, things which, if he himself forgot them, and God in His heaven also forgot them, would annihilate him forever, and transform the entire con- tent of his life into a terrible delusion. These things he has entrusted to God, until with God's help he again fights his way through the terrors in his breast, achieving patience and winning peace of mind through trust in God.
If a man whose life had been involved in some critical difficulty has a friend, and if in some later moment he finds that he cannot hold fast the meaning of his past, 174