♦It was in this sense that Constantine Constantius said in Repetition (p. 6), "Repetition is the seriousness of existence," and that it is not life's seriousness to be a royal equerry, even if such a man every time he mounted his horse were to do it with ail possible seriousness.
spines at seeing this man make jest of that which makes them dreadfully serious. But with regard to the truly serious he will know how to tolerate no pleasantries, and if he forgets this, it will happen to him as it did to Albertus Magnus when he presumptuously plumed himself over against the Deity* and suddenly became stupid, it will happen to him as it did to Bellerophon, who sat tranquilly upon his Pegasus in the service of the idea, but fell when he wished to misuse Pegasus by riding to a rendezvous with an earthly woman.
Inwardness, certitude, is seriousness. This makes a pretty poor showing. If I had gone on to say that it is subjectivity, the pure subjectivity, the iibergreifende subjectivity — that would have been saying something, something which would have made many people serious. However, I can also express what seriousness is in another way. If inwardness is lacking, the spirit is finitized. Inwardness is therefor e eter nity, or the d eterminant of the ete rnal in a man.
If then one would study the demomaSTto A good purpose, one needs only to see how the eternal is conceived in the individuality, and at once one is thoroughly informed. In this respect our age offers a wide field for the observer. The eternal is frequently talked about, some rejecting it, others accepting it, and, considering the way it is done, the latter as well as the former evinces lack of in *Cf. Marbach, Geschichte der Philosophie, 2nd ed., p. 302, note: Albertus repente ex asino /actus philosophus et ex philosopho asinus. Cf. Tennemann, Vol. 8, 2nd ed., p. 485, note. We have a still more definite account of another scholastic, Simon Tornacensis, who thought that God must feel obliged to him because he had furnished proof of the Trinity; for if he wanted to do so, he would be able to demolish that argument by stronger proofs to the contrary: profecto si malignando et adversando vellem, fortioribus argumentis scirem Warn infirmare et deprimendo improbare. In reward for his pains the good man became a fool who had to spend two years learning his letters. Cf. Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. 8, p. 314, note. Be that as it may, whether he actually said this or uttered the famous blasphemy of the Middle Ages about the three great deceivers [Moses, Christ and Mohammed] which also was ascribed to him, what he lacked was certainly not rigorous seriousness in the use of dialectics and speculation, but he surely lacked understanding of himself. This story has analogies enough, and in our age speculative philosophy has arrogated to itself such authority that it has almost tempted God to feel uncertain about Himself, like a king who waits anxiously to learn whether the Constitutional Assembly will make him an absolute or a limited monarch.
[The Latin sayings in this note may be translated thus: "Albertus was suddenly transformed from an ass into a philosopher, and from a philosopher into an ass." Simon, after demonstrating the truth of the Trinity, was presumptuous enough to boast: "If I were spiteful and contentious enough to wish to do so, I could demolish this proof by stronger arguments, and disprove it by surpassing it - ] wardness. But the man who has not rightly understood the eternal, understood it quite concretely,* lacks inwardness and seriousness.
I do not wish to go into details here, yet I will indicate several points.
(a). Some deny the eternal in man. That very instant "the wine of life is drawn," and every such individuality is demoniacal. If one posits the eternal, the present becomes a different thing from what one would have it be. One fears this, and thus one is in dread of the good. A man may keep on denying as long as he will, he does not by this succeed in killing the eternal entirely. And even if one is willing to a certain degree and in a certain sense to admit the eternal, one is then afraid of the other sense and the other degree; but however one may deny it, one does not get rid of it altogether. In our age men fear the eternal only too much, even when they recognize it in abstract terms and use phrases which are flattering to the eternal. While nowadays the various govern-: ments are living in fear of restless leaders, there are only too many individualities which are in fear of one restless leader which nevertheless is the true rest — eternity. Then they preach the instant, and just as the path of perdition is paved with good intentions, so is eternity most easily disposed of by living merely in instants. But why are they in such terrible haste? If there is no eternity, the instant is in fact just as long as if there were. But dread of eternity makes the instant an abstraction. — Moreover, this denial of DREAD OF THE GOOD 135 eternity may be expressed directly and indirectly in various ways, as mockery, as prosaic intoxication with common sense, as bustle, as enthusiasm for the temporal, etc.
(b). The eternal is conceived in a perfectly abstract way. Like the blue mountains the eternal is the confine of the temporal, but he who lives energetically in the temporal never gets to the confine. The particular individual who reconnoiters it is the frontier soldier who stands outside of time.
(c). Some people bend eternity back into time to please the im- agination. 88 Conceived in this way it produces an enchanting effect, one does not know whether it is dream or reality; eternity peeps sadly, dreamily, roguishly, into the instant, as the beams of the moon peep tremblingly into a lighted grove or into a hall. Thought of the eternal becomes a fantastic occupation, and the mood is •It was doubtless in this sense Constantine Constantius said that eternity is the true repetition. 84 constantly this: "Am I dreaming, or is it eternity that is dreaming of me?"
Or it is conceived purely for the imagination, unmixed with this coquettish ambiguity. This conception has found a definite expression in the maxim that art is an anticipation of eternal life. 36 For poetry and art are no more than the atonement which imagination offers and may have the Sinnigkeit of intuition but by no manner of means the Innigkeit of seriousness. — Eternity is gilded with the tinsel of imagination, and one longs for it. — One gazes apocalyptically at eternity, playing at being a Dante, whereas Dante, 36 after all, however much he conceded to visions of the imagination, did not suspend the effect of the ethical verdict.
(d). Eternity is conceived metaphysically. One keeps on saying "Ich — 7c/?" 37 until one becomes this most ludicrous of all things: the pure ego, the eternal self-consciousness. One talks about immortality till one becomes oneself — not immortal, but an immortality. In spite of all this one suddenly discovers that one has not included immortality in the System, and now one is intent upon finding a place for it in an appendix. Apropos of this ludicrous device, it was a true word Poul Mjzfller uttered 38 when he said that immortality must be present everywhere. But if this be so, then the temporal becomes something quite different from what one would wish it to be. — Or eternity is metaphysically conceived in such a way that the temporal is comically preserved in it. 39 As seen from a purely aesthetic-metaphysical standpoint the temporal is always comic, for it is contradiction, and the comical always comes under this category. If one conceives eternity in a purely metaphysical way, and in spite of that would for some reason or another like to get the temporal included in it, it then becomes comical enough that an immortal spirit 136 CHAPTER I Hike Mephistophelesl conserves a remembrance that several time s he was in pecuniary embarrassment, etc. But all the trouble one takes in this instance to uphold immortality is labor lost and a false alarm, for no man becomes immortal, and no man becomes convinced of his immortality, in a purely metaphysical way. But if a man becomes convinced of it in quite another way, the comical will not intrude itself upon him. Even though Christianity teaches that at the Day of Judgment a man must give account of every idle word he has spoken, which we understand simply as a total recollection, of which unmistakable symptoms are occasionally to be found already in this life, and even though the doctrine of Christianity cannot be more DREAD OF THE GOOD A *> ' sharply illuminated by any contrast than it is by the Greek conception that the immortal souls first drank of Lethe in order to forget, 4 " yet it does not by any means follow that recollection must either directly or indirectly become comic, directly by the fact that one remembers ludicrous incidents, indirectly by transforming ludicrous incidents into essential decisions. Precisely because the accounting and the judgment are the essential concern, this essential will have the effect of the water of Lethe so far as concerns the unessential, while it also is true that many things will prove to be essential which one hardly thought to be such. In the drolleries of life, its chance happenings, its folderols, the soul has not been essentially present, and hence all this vanishes, except for the soul which was essentially in this, yet for that soul it will hardly have comic significance. When one has reflected thoroughly upon the comical, has studied it with determination, constantly keeping its category clear, one will easily understand that the comical belongs precisely to the temporal, for it is there we find contradiction. Metaphysically and aesthetically one cannot stop it and prevent it from devouring the whole of the temporal, which will happen to one who is developed enough to use the comical but not mature enough to distinguish inter et inter. In eternity, on the other hand, all contradiction is eliminated, the temporal is permeated by and conserved in the eternal; but here there is no trace of the comical.
But men are not willing to think eternity seriously, they dread it, and dread discovers a hundred ways of escape. But this precisely is the demoniacal.
CHAPTER V Dread as a Saving Experience by Means of Faith n one of Grimm's Fairy Tales 1 there is the story of a youth who went I out in search of adventures for the sake of learning what it is to fear or be in dread. We will let that adventurer go his way without troubling ourselves to learn whether in the course of it he encountered the dreadful. On the other hand I would say that learning to know dread is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known dread or by sinking under it. He therefore who has learned rightly to be in dread has learned the most important thing.
If a man were a beast or an angel, he would not be able to be in dread. Since he is a synthesis he can be in dread, and the greater the dread, the greater the man. This, however, is not affirmed in the sense in which men commonly understand dread, as related to something outside a man, but in the sense that man himself produces dread. Only in this sense can we interpret the passage where it is said of Christ that he was in dread [angstes] even unto death, and the place also where he says to Judas, "What thou doest, do quickly." Not even the terrible word upon which even Luther dreaded to preach, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — not even this expresses suffering so strongly. For this word indicates a situation in which Christ actually is; the former sayings indicate a relation to a situation which is not yet actual.
Dread is the possibility of freedom. Only this dread is by the aid of faith absolutely educative, consuming as it does all finite aims and discovering all their deceptions. And no Grand Inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has dread, and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest, nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared, as dread knows how, and no sharp- witted judge knows how- to interrogate, to examine the accused, as dread does, which never lets him escape, neither by diversion nor by noise, neither at work nor at play, neither by day nor by night.
He who is educated by dread is educated by possibility, and only 140 CHAPTER III the man who is educated by possibility is educated in accordance with his infinity. Possibility is therefore the heaviest of all categories. One often hears, it is true, the opposite affirmed, that possibility is so light but reality is heavy. But from whom does one hear such talk? From a lot of miserable men who never have known what possibility is, and who, since reality showed them that they were not fit for anything and never would be, mendaciously bedizened a possibility which was so beautiful, so enchanting; and the only foundation of this possibility was a little youthful tomfoolery of which they might rather have been ashamed. Therefore by this possibility which is said to be light one commonly understands the possibility of luck, good fortune, etc. But this is not possibility, it is a mendacious invention which human depravity falsely embellishes in order to have reason to complain of life, of providence, and as a pretext for being self-important. No, in possibility everything is possible, and he who truly was brought up by possibility has comprehended the dreadful as well as the smiling. When such a person, therefore, goes out from the school of possibility, and knows more thoroughly than a child knows the alphabet that he can demand of life absolutely nothing, and that terror, perdition, annihilation, dwell next door to every man, and has learned the profitable lesson that every dread which alarms [angste] may the next instant become a fact, he will then interpret reality differently, he will extol reality, and even when it rests upon him heavily he will remember that after all it is far, far lighter than the possibility was. Only thus can possibility educate; for finiteness and the finite relationships in which the individual is assigned a place, whether it be small and commonplace or world-historical, educate only finitely, and one can always talk them around, always make something a little different out of them, always chaffer, always escape a little way from them, always keep a little apart, always prevent oneself from learning absolutely from them; and if one is to learn absolutely, the individual must in turn have the possibility in himself and himself fashion that from which he is to learn, even though the next instant it does not recognize that it was fashioned by him, but absolutely takes the power from him.
But in order that the individual may thus absolutely and infinitely be educated by possibility, he must be honest towards possibility and must have faith. By faith I mean what Hegel in his fashion calls very rightly "the inward certainty which anticipates infinity." When the discoveries of possibility are honestly administered, possibility will then disclose all fmitudes but idealize them in the form of infinity, and by dread overwhelm the individual, until he in turn conquers them by the DREAD AND SALVATION 141 anticipation of faith.
What I say here appears perhaps to many an obscure and foolish saying, since they even boast of never having been in.dread. To this I would reply that doubtless one should not be in dread of men, of finite things, but that only the man who has gone through the dread of possibility is educated to have no dread — not because he avoids the dreadful things of life, but because they always are weak in comparison with those of possibility. If on the other hand the speaker means that the great thing about him is that he has never been in dread, then I shall gladly initiate him into my explanation, that this comes from the fact that he is spirit-less.
If the individual cheats the possibility by which he is to be educated, he never reaches faith; his faith remains the shrewdness of finitude, as his school was that of finitude. But men cheat possibility in every way — if they did not, one has only to stick one's head out of the window, and one would see enough for possibility to begin its exercises forthwith. There is an engraving by Chodo- wiecki 2 which represents the surrender of Calais as viewed by the four temperaments, and the theme of the artist was to let the various impressions appear mirrored in the faces which express the various temperaments. The most commonplace life has events enough, no doubt, but the question is about possibility in the individual who is honest with himself. It is recounted of an Indian hermit who for two years had lived upon dew, that he came once to the city, tasted wine, and then became addicted to drink. This story, like every other of the sort, can be understood in many ways, one can make it comic, one can make it tragic; but the man who is educated by possibility has more than enough to occupy him in such a story. Instantly he is absolutely identified with that unfortunate man, he knows no finite evasion by which he might escape. Now the dread of possibility holds him as its prey, until it can deliver him saved into the hands of faith. In no other place does he find repose, for every other point of rest is mere nonsense, even though in men's eyes it is shrewdness. This is the reason why possibility is so absolutely educative. No man has ever become so unfortunate in reality that there was not some little residue left to him, and, as common sense observes quite truly, if a man is canny, he will find a way. But he who went through the curriculum of misfortune offered by possibility lost everything, absolutely everything, in a way that no one has lost it in reality. If in this situation he did not behave falsely towards possibility, if he did not attempt to talk around the dread which would save him, then he received everything back again, as in reality no one ever did 142 CHAPTER III even if he received everything tenfold, for the pupil of possibility received infinity, whereas the soul of the other expired in the finite. No one ever sank so deep in reality that he could not sink deeper, or that there might not be one or another sunk deeper than he. But he who sank in the possibility has an eye too dizzy to see the measuring rod which Tom, Dick, and Harry hold out as a straw to the drowning man; his ear is closed so that he cannot hear what the market price for men is in his day, cannot hear that he is just as good as most of them. He sank absolutely, but then in turn he floated up from the depth of the abyss, lighter now than all that is oppressive and dreadful in life. Only I do not deny that he who is educated by possibility is exposed — not to the danger of bad company and dissoluteness of various sorts, as are those who are educated by the finite, but — to one danger of downfall, and that is self-slaughter. If at the beginning of his education he misunder- stands the anguish of dread, so that it does not lead him to faith but away from faith, then he is lost. On the other hand, he who is educated by possibility remains with dread, does not allow himself to be deceived by its countless counterfeits, he recalls the past precisely; then at last the attacks of dread, though they are fearful, are not such that he flees from them. For him dread becomes a serviceable spirit which against its will leads him whither he would go. Then when it announces itself, when it craftily insinuates that it has invented a new instrument of torture far more terrible than anything employed before, he does not recoil, still less does he attempt to hold it off with clamor and noise, but he bids it welcome, he hails it solemnly, as Socrates solemnly flourished the poisoned goblet, he shuts himself up with it, he says, as a patient says to the surgeon when a painful operation is about to begin, "Now I am ready." Then dread enters into his soul and searches it thoroughly, constraining out of him all the finite and the petty, and leading him hence whither he would go. When one or another extraordinary event occurs in life, when a world- historical hero gathers heroes about him and accomplishes heroic feats, when a crisis occurs and everything becomes significant, then men wish to be in it, for these are things which educate. Quite possibly. But there is a much simpler way of being educated much more fundamentally. Take the pupil of possibility, set him in the midst of the Jutland heath where nothing happens, where the greatest event is that a partridge flies up noisily, and he experiences everything more perfectly, more precisely, more profoundly, than the man who was applauded upon the stage of universal history, in case he was not educated by possibility.
DREAD AND SALVATION 143 Then when the individual is by possibility educated up to faith, dread will eradicate what it has itself produced. Dread discovers fate, but when the individual would put his confidence in fate, dread turns about and takes fate away; for fate is like dread, and dread is like possibility...a witch's letter. 3 If the individuality is not by itself transformed with relation to fate, it will always retain a dialectical remnant, which no fmitude can eradicate, any more than a man will lose faith in the lottery who does not lose it by his own act but is supposed to lose it for the fact that he constantly loses what he gambles. Even in relation to the most trifling things dread is promptly at hand so soon as the individual would sneak away from something, would expect something by chance. In itself it is a trifle, and externally, the individual can learn nothing about it from the finite, but to cut the process short dread instantly plays the trump of infinity, that of the category, and the individuality cannot take the trick. Such an individual cannot possibly fear fate in an outward sense, its changeableness and its rebuffs, for in him dread has already fashioned fate and taken away from him everything that any fate could take away. Socrates says in the dialogue of Cratylus 4 that it is dreadful to be deceived by oneself, because one always has the deceiver with one. So one can say that it is good fortune to have with one such a deceiver as dread, which deceives piously and weans the child before finiteness begins to bungle it. Even if in our time an individuality is not thus educated by possibility, our age has after all a characteristic which is notably helpful to one who has a deeper nature and desires to learn the good. The more peaceful and quiet an age is, the more precisely everything follows its regular course, so that the good has its reward, all the more easily can an individual be deceived with regard to the question whether the goal of its striving, though it be a beautiful one, may not be a finite goal. In these times, on the contrary, one need not be more than sixteen years of age to perceive that he who now has to tread the stage of life is pretty much in the same fix as the man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves. He then who does not wish to sink in the wretchedness of the finite is constrained, in the deepest sense, to assault the infinite. Such a preliminary orientation is analogous to education in possibility, and such an orientation cannot possibly come about except by the help of possibility. So when shrewdness has marshalled its innumerable calculations, upon the assumption of winning the game — then comes dread, even before the game was in reality lost or won, and against the devil dread makes the sign of the cross, then there is nothing shrewdness can do, and all its most sagacious combinations vanish like a ghost before that figure which 144 CHAPTER III dread fashions by the omnipotence of possibility. Even in relation to the most trifling matters, so soon as the individuality would make an artful turn which is only artful, would steal away from something, and there is every probability that it will succeed, for reality is not so sharp an examiner as dread — then dread is at hand. If it is sent away on the plea that this is a trifle, then dread makes this trifle as notable as the village of Marengo became in the history of Europe, because there the great Battle of Marengo was fought. In case an individuality is not thus weaned away from shrewdness by its own act, then this is never thoroughly accomplished, for fmitude explains only piecemeal, never totally, and the man whose shrewdness was always at fault (and even this is inconceivable in reality) may seek the reason for his failure in a lack of shrewdness and strive to become all the shrewder. With the help of faith dread trains the individual to find repose in providence. So also it is with regard to guilt, which is the second thing dread discovers. The man who merely by finiteness learns to recognize his guilt is lost in fmiteness, and in the end the question whether one is guilty or not cannot be decided except in an external, juridical, exceedingly imperfect way. He therefore who only learns to recognize his guilt by analogy with the decisions of the police justice or the supreme court never really comprehends that he is guilty; for if a man is guilty, he is infinitely guilty. Therefore if such an individual who is educated only by finiteness does not get a verdict from the police or a verdict of public opinion that he is guilty, he becomes about the most ludicrous and pitiable of all men, a paragon of virtue who is a little better than people generally are, but not quite so good as the parson. What help does such a man need in life? Why, even before he is dead he can almost take his place in a gallery of wax figures. From finiteness one can learn much, but one cannot learn dread, except in a very mediocre and depraved sense. On the other hand, he who truly has learned to be in dread will tread as in a dance when the dreads of finiteness strike up their tune, and the disciples of finiteness lose their wits and their courage. Thus it is life often deceives. The hypochondriac is in dread of every unimportant symptom, but when the important test comes he begins to draw a full breath. And why is this? Because the important reality is not so dreadful as the possibility he himself had fashioned and employed his whole strength in fashioning, whereas now he can employ all his