Life presents examples of this abundantly in all possible spheres and in all possible degrees. A hardened criminal will not go to confession (the demoniacal consists precisely in this, that the man is not willing to communicate with the good through the chastisement of suffering). There is a method applicable to such a case which perhaps is rarely used: it is silence and the power of the eye. If an inquisitor has the requisite physical strength and spiritual elasticity to hold out, though it were for sixteen hours, he will at last be rewarded by the admission breaking out involuntarily. No man who has a bad conscience can endure silence. Put him in solitary confinement, and he will become apathetic. But this silence, while the judge is present, and the clerk waiting to inscribe the confession in the record, is the most searching interrogation and the most terrible torture, and yet lawful; but it is by no means so easy to bring this about as one may suppose. The only power which can compel shut- upness to speak is either a higher demon (for every devil has his turn to reign) or the good which is absolutely able to be silent. And if here in this examination by silence any artfulness would put the man in embarrassment, the inquisitor himself will become ashamed, and it will prove that he at last becomes afraid of himself and must break the silence. Confronted with a subordinate demon, or with subordinate human beings whose God-consciousness is not strongly developed, shut- upthere follows the second suite of formations, and as I have represented the matter this distinction can be carried out. If anyone has a better division to offer, let it be preferred. But it is not a bad thing to be a little cautious in these domains, for otherwise everything coagulate!
112 CHAPTER IV DREAD OF THE GOOD 1 13 ness triumphs absolutely, because the former is not able to hold out, and the latter, in all innocence, are accustomed to live from hand to mouth and keep the heart on the tongue. It is incredible what power resolute reserve is capable of exercising over such men, how they end by begging and imploring for merely one word to break the stillness, but it is also shocking to crush the weak under foot in this fashion. It may be thought perhaps that such things occur only among princes and Jesuits, that to get a clear notion of it one must think of Domitian, Cromwell, the Duke of Alba, or a general of the Jesuit Order, which is almost an appellative term for this. Not at all, it occurs much more frequently. However, one must be cautious in passing judgment upon the phenomenon; for, although the phenomenon is the same, the reason for it may be exactly the opposite, since the individual who subjects others to the despotism and torture of shut- upness might himself wish to speak, might himself be waiting for a higher demon who could bring the revelation forth. But the torturer may also be selfishly related to his shut-upness. But about this I could write a whole book, in spite of the fact that I have not (after the custom and established convention of observers in our age) been either in Paris or London — as if there was such a lot to be learned there besides talk and the wisdom of traveling salesmen. If only one pays attention to oneself, an observer will with five men, five women, and ten children have enough for the discovery of all possible states of the human soul. What I should have to say in such a book would have some importance, especially for everyone who has to deal with children or has any relation with them. It is of infinite importance that a child be brought up with a conception of the lofty shut-upness [reserve], and be saved from the mistaken kind. In an external respect it is easy to perceive when the moment has arrived that one ought to let the child walk alone; in a spiritual respect it is not so easy. In a spiritual respect the problem is very difficult, and one cannot exempt oneself from responsibility by keeping a nursemaid and buying a gocart. The art is to be constantly present and yet not to be present, to let the child be allowed to develop itself, while nevertheless one has constantly a survey clearly before one. The art is to leave the child to itself in the very highest measure and on the greatest possible scale, and to express this apparent abandonment in such a way that, unobserved, one at the same time knows everything.
One can quite well find time for this even if one is a royal functionary. If only one will, one can do everything. And the father who educates or does everything for the child entrusted to him, but has not prevented him from becoming shut-up, has incurred a great accountability.
The demoniacal is the shut-up, the demoniacal is dread of the good. We will now let the shut-up be X, an unknown quantity, and let its content too be X, which may denote the most terrible thing or the most 114 CHAPTER I insignificant, the most appalling thing, the presence of which in life is perhaps not dreamt of by many, or the bagatelle to which nobody pays any attention.* What then may be the significance of the good regarded as an X? It signifies revelation, f Revelation may in turn signify the sublimest thing (redemption in the most eminent sense) and the most insignificant (the utterance of a casual remark) — this must not disturb us, the category remains the same. The phenomena have this in common, that they are demoniacal, even though the differences are dizzy ones. "Revelation" in this context is the good, for revelation is the first utterance of salvation. Here applies the old saying, that if one dare utter the word, the enchantment of the magic spell is broken, and hence it is that the somnambulist wakes when his name is called.
The collisions of shut-upness in connection with revelation may in turn be infinitely various, with countless nuances, for the vegetative luxuriance of the spiritual life does not fall short of that in nature, and the spiritual states are more countless in their diversity than are the flowers. Shut-upness may wish for revelation, wish that it might be effected from without, that this might happen to it. (This is a misunderstanding, since it is a womanish relation to the freedom posited in revelation and to the freedom which posits revelation. Unfreedom may very well remain even though the state of the shut-up becomes happier.) It may will revelation *To be able to use its category is a conditio sine qua non if observation is in a deeper sense to have significance. When the phenomenon is present to a certain degree most men notice it but are not able to explain it because they lack the category, whereas it they had it, they would have a key which opens the door wherever there is a trace of the phenomenon; for when they are under the category the phenomena are obedient to it just as the spirit of the ring obeys the ring.
11 have used the word "revelation" deliberately. Here I might have called the good "transparency." If I had reason to fear that anyone could misunderstand the word "revelation" and the exposition of its relation to the demoniacal, as though I were constantly speaking of something external, a tangible confession made public, which in so far as it is external is not apt for our purpose — then I would have chosen another word.
to a certain degree, but keep back a little vestige, only to begin all over again with shut-upness. (This is the case with subordinate natures which can do nothing en gros.) It may will revelation, but incognito. (This is the most subtle contradiction of shut-upness. Nevertheless, examples of it are to be found in poetic existences. 18 ) Revelation may have already conquered, shut-upness ventures to employ its last expedient and is cunning enough to- transform revelation itself into a mystification, and But I dare not continue. How could I ever finish if I were merely to DREAD OF THE GOOD 1 15 indicate these states algebraically, not to speak of describing them, or if I would break the silence of shut-upness in order to let its monologues become audible? For its talk is precisely monologue, and hence when we would characterize a shut-up we say that he talks to himself. But here I essay only to give everything "an understanding but no tongue," as said the shut-up Hamlet warningly to his two friends. 17 However, I will indicate one collision, the contradiction of which is as terrible as is shut-upness itself. What the shut-up keeps hidden in his close reserve may be so terrible that he dare not utter it even in his own hearing, because it seems to him as though by this very utterance he were committing a new sin, or as though it would tempt him again. In order that this phenomenon may occur the individual must be such a blending of purity and impurity as seldom is encountered. It is therefore most likely to occur when the individual at the time of accomplishing the terrible act was not master of himself. For example, a man in a state of intoxication may have done what he remembers only obscurely, yet knows that it was so wild a thing that it is almost impossible for him to recognize himself. The same may also be the case with a man who once was insane and has retained a memory of that previous state. What decides whether the phenomenon is demoniacal is the attitude of the individual towards revelation, whether he is willing to permeate that fact with freedom, assume the responsibility of it in freedom. If he is not willing to do that, then the phenomenon is demoniacal. This distinction must be held sharply, for even the *It is easy to see that shut-upness eo ipso signifies a lie, or, if you prefer, untruth. But untruth is precisely unfreedom, it is dread of revelation. Hence the devil is called the father of lies. That there is a great difference between a lie and an untruth, between lies and lies, and between untruth and untruth, I have always conceded, but the category is the same.
man who merely wishes revelation is nevertheless essentially demoniacal. He has in fact two wills, one of them subordinate, impotent, which wills revelation, and a stronger will which wills to be shut up; but the fact that this is the stronger shows that essentially he is demoniacal. Close reserve is involuntary revelation. The weaker the individuality originally is, or in proportion as the elasticity of freedom is consumed in the service of close reserve, the more certainly will the secret break out at last. The most trivial contact, a glance in passing, etc., is sufficient to start that terrible monologue; or it may be comical, depending upon the content of the close reserve. The ventriloquism may be plainly declarative, or it may be indirect, as when an insane man points to another person and says, "He is very objectionable to me, he's probably insane." Revelation may declare 116 CHAPTER I itself in words when the unfortunate man ends by intruding upon everyone his hidden secret. It may declare itself by a look, by a glance; for there is a glance of the eye by which a man involuntarily reveals what is hidden. There is an accusing glance which reveals what one almost dreads to understand; a contrite, imploring glance which hardly tempts curiosity to peer into this involuntary telegraphy. Depending upon the content of close reserve, all this in turn may be almost comical, when what dread reveals against its will are ludicrous incidents, pettiness, vanity, pranks, petty envy, little crotchets about medicine and health, etc. The demoniacal is the sudden. The sudden is a new expression for close reserve seen in another aspect. The demoniacal is characterized as the shut-up when one reflects upon the content, it is characterized as the sudden when one reflects upon time. Close reserve was the effect of the negating retrenchment of the ego in the individuality. Reservedness closed itself constantly more and more against communication. But communication is in turn the expression for continuity, and the negation of continuity is the sudden. One might suppose that close reserve would have an extraordinary continuity. But exactly the opposite is the case, al- though in comparison with the soft and vapid dispersion of oneself which ends with the sense impression, this has an appearance of continuity. The continuity which close reserve may have can be compared with the vertigo we may suppose a top must feel as it revolves perpetually upon its pivot. In case this close reserve does not carry the thing so far as to become completely insane, insanity being the pitiful perpetuum mobile of monotonous indifference, the individuality will still retain a certain continuity with the rest of human life. Against the foil of this continuity, that apparent continuity of close reserve will display itself as the sudden. One instant it is there, the next it is gone, and no sooner is it gone than it is there again as large as life. It cannot be embroidered upon any continuity, nor woven into it, but what expresses itself thus is precisely the sudden.
In case the demoniacal were something somatic, there never would be the sudden. When a fever, insanity, etc., comes back again, one discovers at last a law, and this law in some degree annuls the sudden. But the sudden recognizes no law. It does not properly belong among natural phenomena but is psychic, is the expression of unfreedom.
Like the demoniacal, the sudden is dread of the good. The good in this context means continuity, for the first expression of salvation is continuity. While the life of the individual goes on in a certain degree in continuity with the rest of human life, close reserve maintains itself in him as continuity's abracadabra which communicates only with itself and DREAD OF THE GOOD 1 17 therefore does not cease to be the sudden.
Depending upon the content of close reserve, the sudden may signify the terrible, but also, for the observer, the effect may appear comic. In this connection we must note that every individual has a little of this suddenness, just as every individual has a little bit of I'ideefixe.
I will not follow this out further, but to uphold my category I will recall the fact that the sudden is always due to dread of the good, because there is something which freedom is not willing to permeate. Among the formations which lie in dread of the evil it is weakness which corresponds to what we here call "the sudden."
If in a different way we would make clear to ourselves how it is the demoniacal is the sudden, we may from a purely aesthetic point of view consider the question how the demoniacal can best be represented on the stage. If one would present Mephistopheles, it is well enough to give him lines to recite, if one wishes to use him as an efficient force in the dramatic action, rather than depict his character properly. In that case Mephistopheles is not really represented but is vaguely indicated as a malicious, witty, intriguing pate. This is a volatilization which a popular legend has already improved upon. It recounts that the devil sat and speculated for 3000 years how to overthrow man — then finally he found it out. Here the accent is placed upon the 3000 years, and the picture this produces in the mind is precisely that of the brooding shut- upness of the demoniacal. If one would not volatilize Mephistophe- les in the way above indicated, one may choose another mode of representation. In this it will appear that Mephistopheles is essentially mimic* Even the terrible words which rise out of the abyss of malice are incapable of producing such an effect as does the suddenness of the leap which lies within the compass of mimic art. Even were the word more terrible, even though it were a Shakespeare, a Byron, a Shelley, that breaks the silence, the word always conserves its saving power; for even all despair and all the horror of evil expressed in one word is not so horrible as silence. Mimic art is able to express the sudden, though this does not imply that this art as such is the sudden. In this respect Bournonville as Master of the Ballet deserves great credit for his representation of Mephistopheles. The horror which seizes one on seeing Mephistopheles leap in through the window and remain stationary in the attitude of the leap! This bound within the leap, recalling the plunge of the bird of prey and the bound of the wild beast, which are doubly terrifying because commonly they break forth from complete immobility, produces therefore an infinite impression. Hence Mephistopheles must walk as little as possible, for the walk itself is in a way a transition to the leap, suggests a presentiment of its possibility. This 118 CHAPTER I first appearance of Mephistopheles in the ballet of Faust is not a coup de theatre but a very profound thought. Words and speech, short as they may be, have yet always, if we regard the thing abstractly, a certain continuity, because it is in time they are heard. But the sudden is completely detached from continuity, whether it be with the past or with the future. So it is with Mephistopheles. No one has yet seen him — when there he stands, wholly himself from head to feet, and speed cannot be expressed more strongly than by the fact that he stands * The author of Either/Or has called attention to the fact that Don Juan is essentially musical. Precisely in the same sense it is true of Mephistopheles that he is essentially mimic. Theatrical art has suffered the same fate as music: it has been supposed that everything could become theatrical and everything musical. We have a ballet, it is called Faust. If the composer had really understood what is implied by interpreting Faust mimically, it never would have occurred to him to turn Faust into a ballet.
there with one leap. If this passes into a walk, the effect is weakened. By the fact that Mephistopheles is represented in this fashion, his appearance upon the scene produces the effect of the demoniacal, which comes more suddenly than the thief in the night, for one commonly thinks of the thief as moving stealthily. By this then Mephistopheles reveals his nature, which, like the demoniacal nature, is the sudden. Thus in its forward movement the demoniacal is the sudden, thus it springs into existence in a man, and thus man himself is sudden in so far as he is demoniacal, whether it be that this power has possessed him wholly or that only a little part of it is present in him. Thus the demoniacal always is, and thus suddenly does unfreedom become dread, and such too is the movement of its dread. Hence the aptness of the demoniacal for the mimic art, not in the sense of the beautiful but of the sudden, the abrupt, something which life often gives us opportunity to observe.
The demoniacal is the vacuous, the tedious. Having called attention, apropos of the sudden, to the aesthetic problem of how to represent the demoniacal on the stage, I will raise the same question again in order to throw light upon the affirmation I have made here. When a demon is allowed to speak, and there is someone then who would impersonate him, the actor who has such a problem to solve must be clear about the categories. He knows that the demoniacal is essentially mimic; the sudden, however, is not attainable because that would interrupt the lines. So he will not botch the thing, with the notion that by blurting out the words, etc., he might be capable of producing any genuine effect. Therefore he rightly chooses exactly the opposite, namely, the tedious. The continuity which corresponds to the sudden is what one might call "extinction." Tediousness, the impression of being extinct, is in fact a continuity in nothingness. Now we can interpret a little differently the DREAD OF THE GOOD 1 19 figure stated in the popular legend. The 3000 years are not now stressed in order to emphasize the sudden, but this prodigious space of time calls forth an apprehension of the horrible emptiness and vacuity of the evil. Freedom is quietness in continuity; the opposite of this is the sudden, but it may also be the quiet which invariably comes to mind when we see a man who looks as if he had been long dead and buried. An actor who understands this will also see that in finding out how the demoniacal can be impersonated he has found at the same time an expression for the comical. The comical effect can be produced in exactly the same way. In fact, when all ethical determinants are put to one side and one employs only the metaphysical determinants of emptiness, we have the trivial, from which one can easily derive a comical effect.* The vacuous or the tedious characterize in turn shut-upness. When I dwelt upon the significance of the sudden, the category of shut-upness reflected upon the content. Now when I take into account the vacuous, the tedious, this in turn reflects upon the content, and shut-upness indicates the form which corresponds to this content. Thus the whole definition of this concept is rounded out, for the form of vacuity is precisely shut-upness. It must be constantly remembered that according to my terminology one cannot be shut up in God or in the good, for this kind of reserve is precisely the utmost expansion. The more definitely conscience is in this way developed in a man, the more he is expanded, even though in other respects he shuts himself off from the whole world.
If I were now disposed to call to mind the new philosophical terminology, I might say that the demoniacal is "the negative" or "nothing," like the fairies, which are empty silhouettes. However, I am not inclined to do so. This terminology has become so amiable and pliable by moving much in society that it can signify whatever you will. "The negative," if I were to use this term, would signify the form of "nothing," just as the vacuous corresponds to shut-upness. But "the negative" has the defect of being defined rather from the outside, by reference to the other thing which is negated, whereas the category shut- up exactly defines the state.
If "the negative" is conceived in this way, I have no objection to its being used to denote the demoniacal, provided "the negative" will be able to rid itself of all the crochets modern philosophy has put into its head. "The negative" has gradually become a figure *Little WinslOv's 18 impersonation of Klister in The Inseparables was so profound because he had rightly comprehended the tedious as the comical. That a loving attachment, which when it exists in truth possesses the content of continuity, is exactly the opposite, viz. an infinite emptiness, not because Klister is a bad man, unfaithful, etc., since on the contrary he is sincerely in love, but because here 120 CHAPTER I 120 CHAPTER I again he is a supernumerary volunteer just as in the custom house — such an attachment, I say, has a highly comic effect, if one puts the accent precisely upon the tedious. Klister's position in the custom house can only in an unjustifiable way be conceived as comic; for, good Lord, can Klister help it that there was no promotion to be had? — but in relation to his love, after all, he is his own master. for vaudeville, and this word always makes me smile, just as one smiles when in real life or in the songs of Bellmann, 19 for example, one comes across one of those droll characters who first was a trumpeter, later became commissary officer, then innkeeper, then in turn letter-carrier, etc. Thus irony has been explained as the negative. The first discoverer of this explanation was Hegel, 20 who, strangely enough, had no great sense for irony. That it was Socrates who introduced irony into the world and gave the baby its name, that his irony was precisely the close reserve which began by shutting himself off from men, by shutting himself in with himself in order to be expanded in the Deity, began by shutting his door against men and making jest of those who stood out- side, in order to talk in secret — who troubles himself about that?
Apropos of one or another casual phenomenon somebody comes out with this word — and so it must be irony. Then come the "parrots," who, in spite of their broad survey of universal history, which unfortunately is totally lacking in contemplation, know just as much about concepts as that egregious youth knew about raisins, who when he appeared as candidate for the position of grocer's clerk and was asked where raisins came from, replied ingenuously, "We get ours from Pedersen's grocery in Cross Street."
We now return again to the definition that the demoniacal is dread of the good. In case unfreedom were, on the one hand, capable of completely shutting itself off and hypostatizing itself, and, on the other hand, in case it did not constantly will to do so* (herein is the contradiction that unfreedom wills something when precisely it has lost will), then the demoniacal would not be dread of the good. For this cause also dread manifests itself clearly at the instant of contact with the good. Whether the demoniacal in the particular individual signifies the terrible, or whether evil is present only like a spot on the sun or like the little white dot in little white dot in *This we must constantly hold fast, in spite of demoniacal and linguistic illusions which to describe this state use such expressions that one is almost tempted to forget that unfreedom is a phenomenon of freedom and is not to be explained by naturalistic categories. Even when unfreedom affirms in the strong- est terms that it does not will itself, this is an untruth, for in unfreedom there is constantly a will which is stronger than the wish. The situation may be ex- ceedingly deceptive, but one can bring such a man to despair by holding out and keeping one's categories pure in opposition to his sophisms. One ought not to be apprehensive for oneself in this situation, but neither should youthful ex- DREAD OF THE GOOD 121 perimenters try their hand in these spheres.
the corn, the total demoniacal and the partial demoniacal have the same characteristics, and the tiny little bit is dread of the good in the same sense as is that which is totally beset by evil. The bondage of sin is also of course unfreedom; but, as was expounded above, its direction is a different one, it is dread of the evil. If we do not hold fast to this, it will not be possible to explain anything.
Unfreedom, the demoniacal, is therefore a state. Thus it is psychology regards it. Ethics, on the other hand, sees how out of it there constantly springs the new sin; for only the good is unity of state and movement.
Freedom, however, may be lost in various ways, and so also may the demoniacal be of various sorts. This variety I will now consider under the following rubrics: freedom lost somatic-psychi- cally; freedom lost pneumatically. From the foregoing the reader must be familiar with the fact that I use the term "demoniacal" in a very wide sense, yet without stretching it further, be it noted, than the concept will reach. It doesn't do much good to make the demoniacal a great horned owl at which one shudders horribly and thereupon puts it out of mind with the reflection that it is many centuries since it was seen in the world. This assumption is a great piece of foolishness, for it has perhaps never been so widespread as in our times, only that nowadays it shows itself especially in spiritual or intellectual spheres.
A. FREEDOM LOST SOMATIC-PSYCI IICALLY It is not my purpose here to make a pompous display of philosophical deliberations about the relation subsisting between soul and body, to discuss in what sense the soul itself produces its body (whether this be understood in the Greek or in the German way), in what sense freedom itself (to recall an expression of Schel- ling's 21 ) by an act of "corporization" posits its own body. Nothing of that sort is needed here; it is enough for my purpose if to the best of my poor ability I express myself by saying that the body is an organ of the soul, and thus in turn of the spirit. So soon as the subordinate relationship comes to an end, so soon as the body revolts, so soon as freedom enters into a conspiracy with it against itself, there unfreedom is present as the demoniacal. Inasmuch as there may be someone who has not yet apprehended sharply the difference between what is set forth in this section and what was explained earlier, I will here state it again. In case freedom does not go over to the camp of rebellion, there will be present the dread of revolution, but as dread of the evil, not as dread of the good.
It will now be easily seen what a countless multiplicity of nuances is 122 CHAPTER I comprehended by the demoniacal in these spheres, some of them so infinitesimal that they are visible only to microscopic observation, and some so dialectic that one must have great flexibility in the use of one's category to see that these nuances belong under it: an exaggerated sensibility, an exaggerated irritability, nervous affections, hysteria, hypochondria, etc., are all of them nuances of it, or may be. This makes it so difficult to talk of the subject in abstracto, since the talk becomes algebraical. However, I can do no more here.
The utmost extreme in this sphere is, as also it commonly is called, bestial perdition. In this state the demoniacal evinces itself in the fact that, like that demoniac in the New Testament, it says Tt ifiol Kal aoi. 22 It shuns therefore every contact with the good, whether this actually threatens it by wanting to help it to freedom, or merely touches it quite casually. Even this is enough, for dread is extraordinarily quick. Hence one hears quite commonly from such a demoniac a rejoinder which contains in it all the horror of this state: "Let me be the miserable man I am," or when one hears such a man say, when he is speaking of a definite moment in his past life, "At that time perhaps I might have been saved," which is the most terrible line that could be put in a man's mouth. It is not punishment, not thunderous words of reproof, which put him in dread; on the contrary, it is every word which would put itself in relation to the freedom scuttled and sunk in unfreedom. In this phenomenon dread expresses itself also in another way. Among such demoniacs one finds a cohesion in which they cling together with so much dread and so indissolubly that no friendship matches it in heartiness. The French physician Ducha- telet adduces examples of this in his treatise. And this sociability of dread will show itself everywhere in this sphere. The sociability by itself furnishes assurance that the demoniacal is present, for