evil is the negative, das Aufzu- hebende [what has to be annulled]; but the fact that God does not know of it, cannot and will not know of it, is the absolute punishment of the evil. In this sense the preposition is used in the New Testament to indicate remoteness 100 CHAPTER I has lost its dialectical ambiguity. This applies to Adam as it does to every later individual, for with respect to the qualitative leap they are completely alike.
When sin is posited in the particular individual by the qualitative leap, the distinction is then posited between good and evil. We have nowhere been chargeable with the foolishness of thinking that man must sin; on the contrary, we have everywhere protested against every sort of merely experimental knowledge, and have said, what we here again repeat, that sin presupposes itself, just as freedom does, and cannot be explained, any more than freedom can, by any antecedent. To let freedom commence as a liberum arbitriam (which nowhere is to be found, as Leibnitz says 1 ), which is quite as free to choose the good as the evil, is to make every explanation radically impossible. To talk about good and evil as the objects of freedom is to finitize both freedom and the concepts of good and evil. Freedom is infinite and does not arise out of anything. Therefore to want to say that man sins necessarily is to want to construe the curve of the leap as a straight line. That such a procedure appears to many very plausible is due to the fact that lack of thought seems to many men the most natural thing in the world, and that at all times the number of those men is legion who regard as praiseworthy a way of thinking which throughout the centuries has in vain been branded as X070? apyos (Chrysippus), ignava ratio (Cicero), sophisma pigrum, la raison paresseuse (Leibnitz). 2 Now again psychology has dread as the object of its study, but it must be cautious. The history of the individual life goes forward in a movement from state to state. Every state is posited by a leap. In this way sin came into the world, and so does it continue to come, unless it is stopped. Yet every repetition of it is not a simple consequence but a new leap. Every such leap is preceded by a state, which is the closest approximation to the leap psychology can attain. This state is the object of psychological study. In every state there is a possibility present, and to that extent there is a from God, God's ignoring of evil, if I dare say so. When God is conceived finitely, it is convenient enough for the evil to have God ignore it: but since God is the infinite, His ignoring it is the most vivid expression of annihilation; for the evil cannot dispense with God, even if it were merely in order to be the evil. I will quote a passage from Scripture. In 2 Thessalonians 1:g it is said of them that know not God and Obey not the Gospel oiriver dUtjv rlaovaiv 6Wt6pov aiuviov airb xpofluirou rod Kvplov Kal dtrbrijt 661 -rh TTWt taxvos avrod.
dread. Such is the case after sin is posited, for only in the good is there a unity of the given situation, and transition.
DREAD OF THE EVIL 101 §i Dread of the evil (a). The posited sin is, to be sure, a possibility annulled (auf- gehoben), but at the same time it is an unwarranted reality. That being the case, dread can be related to it. Since it is an unwarranted reality, it ought in turn to be negated. This labor remorse is ready to undertake. Here is the field for the cunning sophistry of dread. While the reality of sin holds one hand of freedom in its icy grasp, as the Commandant held Don Juan, 3 with the other hand it gesticulates with illusion, deceit, and the eloquence of hallucination.* (b). The posited sin is at the same time in itself a consequence, even though it is a consequence foreign to freedom. This consequence announces itself, and dread is related to the future of this consequence, which is the possibility of a new state. However deep the individual has sunk, he may sink still deeper, and this "may" is the object of dread. The more relaxed dread becomes, the more clearly it indicates that the consequence of sin has filled the individual in succum et sanguinem, and that sin has acquired the right of naturalization in the individuality.
Sin here of course means the concrete, for one never sins generally or abstractly. Even the sinf of wishing to return and find oneself back before the reality of sin is not a sin in general, and indeed such an abstract sin has never been met with. He who has some knowledge of men knows very well that sophistry has a way of perpetually picking up a particular point and perpetually varying it. Dread would have the reality of sin removed, but only to a certain degree; or rather it would have the reality continue, but, nora bene, only to a certain degree. Therefore it even is not disinclined to flirt with quantitative determinants. Indeed, the more developed dread is, the further it ventures to carry this flirtation; * In view of the form of this investigation I can indicate the particular situations only very briefly, almost algebraically. There is no room here for a thorough description of them.
t This is said from the point of view of ethics; for ethics does not see the state, but it sees how the state is at the same instant a new sin.
but so soon as the jest and diversion of the quantitative determinants is about to catch the individual in the qualitative leap, which lies in wait like the ant-lion in the funnel of loose sand, dread cautiously retires, then it has a little point which must be saved and which is without sin, and the next instant another point. A consciousness of sin profoundly and seriously carried out in the expression of remorse is a great rarity. Nevertheless, I shall take care for my own sake, for the sake of sound thinking, and for the neighbor's sake, not to express the situation as 102 CHAPTER I Schelling 4 presumably would, who somewhere speaks of "genius for work" in the same sense as he would speak of genius for music, etc. Thus it is that sometimes, without being aware of it, a person may by the use of one illustrative word bring everything to naught. If every man does not essentially participate in the absolute, then the whole game's up. In the sphere of religion, therefore, one should not talk of genius as a special gift, for here the "gift" is simply to will, and the man who does not will we ought to hold at least in sufficient respect not to pity him [for his lack of gifts].
Ethically speaking, sin is not a state or condition. The state, however, is the closest psychological approximation to the next state. Dread is now constantly present as the possibility of the new state. In the state first described, under (a), dread is more observable, whereas in (b) it disappears more and more. But nevertheless it is lurking outside such an individual, and seen from the standpoint of spirit it is then greater than at any time. In (a) it is dread in view of the reality of sin, out of which sophistry produces possibility, whereas ethically viewed it sins in doing so. Here the movement of dread is the opposite of that in the state of innocence, where out of the possibility of sin, psychologically speaking, it produces reality, whereas ethically viewed this comes with the qualitative leap. In (b) it is dread in view of the future possibility of sin. If at this point dread decreases, we explain this by the fact that the consequence of sin triumphs.
(c). The posited sin is an unwarranted reality; it is reality, and by the individual it is posited as reality in remorse, but remorse does not become the freedom of the individual. Remorse is reduced to a possibility in relation to sin; in other words, remorse cannot annul sin, it can only sorrow over it. Sin goes forward in its consequence, remorse follows it step by step, but always an instant too late. It compels itself to look at the horror, but it is like mad King Lear ("O thou ruined masterpiece of nature!" 5 ). It has lost the reins of government and has strength left only to repine. Here dread is at its highest pitch. Remorse has lost its senses, and dread is potentiated to remorse. The consequence of sin goes on, it drags the individual with it as a woman is dragged by the hangman with his hand in her hair, while she shrieks in desperation. Remorse is in advance, it discovers the consequence before it comes, as we may have a presentiment of an approaching storm; the consequence comes nearer, the individual trembles, like a horse which balks and neighs at the spot where once it took fright. Sin conquers. Dread throws itself despairingly into the arms of remorse. Remorse ventures its utmost. It interprets the consequence of DREAD OF THE EVIL 103 sin as penal suffering, and perdition as a consequence of sin. It is lost, its doom is pronounced, its condemnation is certain, and the aggravation of the sentence is that the individual shall throughout his life be dragged to the place of execution. In other words, remorse has become insane.
What here, is indicated, life may furnish occasions to observe. Such a state is rarely found among natures wholly depraved, but generally only among the deeper sort of men; for it requires a great deal of primitiveness and persistence in the mad energy of will not to come under the categories (a) or (b). The sophistry which insane remorse is every instant capable of producing, no dialectic is able to overcome. Such a remorse has a contrition which is more powerful in its dialectic and in its expression of passion than the true remorse. In another sense, of course, it is more im- potent; yet it is remarkable, as anyone who has observed such cases has certainly remarked, what persuasiveness and what eloquence such a remorse possesses to disarm every objection, to convince all who come near it — only to despair of itself again when this diversion is over. To try to put a stop to this horror by words and phrases is labor lost, and he who dreams of doing such a thing may count upon it that his preachifying will be like infantile babble in comparison with the elemental eloquence which is at the service of such remorse. This phenomenon may show itself quite as well in relation to sensual vices (addiction to drink, to opium, to debauchery, etc.) as in relation to the higher vices (pride, vanity, wrath, hatred, defiance, craftiness, etc.). The individual may rue his wrath, and the more profound he is, the more profound is remorse. But remorse cannot make him free, in that expectation he 104 CHAPTER I is mistaken. The occasion comes, dread has already discovered it, every thought trembles, dread sucks like a vampire the strength of remorse and shakes its head; it is as though wrath had already conquered, dread already has a presentiment of freedom's contrition which is reserved for the next instant. The instant comes, wrath conquers.
Whatever the consequence of sin may be, the fact that the phenomenon is exhibited on a considerable scale is always an indication of a deeper nature. The fact that one sees it rather rarely in life, or in other words that one must be a trained observer in order to see it more frequently, is due to the fact that it is a phenomenon which can be concealed, and that also it is often suppressed by an abortion, men having several prudential devices for suppressing this embryo of the highest life. No more is needed than to take counsel with Tom, Dick, and Harry — with that one becomes at once what "people mostly are," and can always be as- sured of the testimony of several reliable men that one is all of that. The most efficacious means of liberation from the assaults of the spirit is to become spirit-less, the sooner the better. If only one takes care of that betimes, everything goes of itself, and as for the assaults of the spirit, one can explain that they simply do not exist, or regard them at the most as a piquant poetical fiction. The path to perfection was in old days narrow and lonesome, the pilgrimage disturbed by thoughts of despair, exposed to the robber assaults of sin, a target for the arrows of them that passed by, as dangerous as the shafts of the Scythian hordes — now one travels to perfection by railway, 6 in cheerful company, and before a word is heard of all this, one has arrived.
The one and only thing which is able to disarm the sophistry of remorse is faith, courage to believe that the state of sin is itself a new sin, courage to renounce dread without any dread, which only faith is capable of — not that it annihilates dread, but remaining ever young, it is continually developing itself out of the death throe of dread. Only faith is capable of doing this, for only in faith is the synthesis eternally and every instant possible A It is not difficult to perceive that everything that has here been expounded belongs to the sphere of psychology. Ethically considered, everything depends upon getting the individual in the right position with regard to sin. So soon as he stands there, he stands remorseful in sin. The same instant, ideally regarded, he has recourse to dogmatics. Remorse is the utmost ethical contradiction, partly because ethics, requiring as it does ideality, must be content to accept remorse, partly because remorse remains dialectically ambiguous with regard to what it has to remove, DREAD OF THE GOOD 105 which ambiguity dogmatics removes by the Atonement, in which the category of original sin becomes clear. Moreover, remorse delays action, and it is action that ethics specifically requires. At last remorse must become its own object, being remorseful for the fact that its movement becomes a deficit of action. It was therefore a genuine ethical outburst, full of energy and courage, when Fichte as an old man said that there was no time for remorse. 7 In saying this, however, he did not carry the word "remorse" to its dialectical apex, where in posing itself it will annul itself by a new remorse [repentance] and then collapse.
What has been expounded in this section, as indeed everywhere in this book, is what psychologically might be called the psychological attitudes which freedom assumes towards sin, or the psychological states approximating sin. It does not pretend to explain sin ethically.
§2 Dread of the good (The demoniacal) In our time there is seldom any question raised about the demoniacal. The particular examples of it found in the New Testament are commonly treated as doubtful. In so far as the theologians make an effort to explain them, they generally lose themselves in observations about this or another unnatural sin, in which they find also examples of the brutish nature gaining such an ascendancy over a man that it makes itself known by inarticulate animal sounds, or by mimicry of animal ways and a brutish look, whether it be that brutishness acquires in man a pronounced form (the physiognomic expression to which Lavater refers 8 ), or in a flash like a disappearing express it suggests a presentiment of what dwells within, as the glance or gesture of a madman, in the space of an instant which is shorter than a blink of the eye, parodies, mocks, caricatures the sensible, discreet, intelligent man with whom one is talking. What the theologians say with regard to this may be quite true — but is it to the point? Generally the phenomenon is described in such a way that one sees clearly that it is a question of bondage to sin, a state which I cannot describe better than by recalling a game men play where two are concealed under a cloak, appearing to be one person, and while one speaks the other gesticulates without any pertinence to what is being said. For it is thus the beast has clothed itself in the form of the man and then caricatures him by gestures and byplay. But the bondage of sin is not yet the demoniacal. So soon as sin is posited and the individual remains in sin there are two formations, one of which we have described 106 CHAPTER I in the foregoing section. If one does not pay heed at this point, it will not be possible to define the demoniacal. The individual is in sin, and he is in dread of the evil. This formation, viewed from a higher standpoint, is in the good, and for this reason the individual is in dread of the evil. The other formation is the demoniacal. The individual is in the evil and is in dread of the good. The bondage of sin is an unfree relation to the evil, but the demoniacal is an unfree relation to the good.
The demoniacal becomes thoroughly evident only when it is touched by the good, which now comes to its confines from the outside. It is noteworthy therefore that in the New Testament the demoniacal shows itself only with Christ's coming in contact with it. Whether the demon is legion (cf. Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 5:120) Luke 8:26-39) or i s dumb (cf. Luke 11 34) the phenomenon is the same, it is dread of the good; for dread can quite as well express itself by muteness as by loud cries. The good of course signifies to it the reintegration of freedom, redemption, salvation, or whatever name one would give it.
In earlier times there often was question about the demoniacal. It is of no importance here to make studies, or to have made studies, 9 which would enable, one to patter or quote from learned and curious books. One can easily sketch the various views which are possible and at various times have also been actual. This may have some importance, since the diversity of the views may lead to a definition of the concept.
One can regard the demoniacal from the aesthetico-metaphysi- cal point of view. The phenomenon then falls under the categories of misfortune, fate, etc., can be regarded as analogous with congenital lunacy, etc. One is then related to the phenomenon compassionately. But just as the wish is the most paltry solo art, so to be compassionate in this sense is the most paltry of all social virtuosities and dexterities. Compassion is so far from being an advantage to the sufferer that rather by it one is only protecting one's own egoism. One dare not in a deeper sense think of such troubles, and so one spares oneself by compassion. Only when the compassionate person is so related by his compassion to the sufferer that in the strictest sense he comprehends that it is his own cause which is here in question, only when he knows how to identify himself in such a way with the sufferer that when he is fighting for an explanation he is fighting for himself, renouncing all thoughtlessness, softness, and cowardice, only then does compassion acquire significance, and only then does it perhaps find a meaning, since the compassionate man differs from the sufferer for the fact that he suffers in a higher form. When compassion is related in this way to the demoniacal, it is not a question of the comforting word, or of the contribution of a mite, or of a DREAD OF THE GOOD 107 shrug of the shoulder; for then if one groans, one has something to groan for. In case the demoniacal is fate, it can befall everyone. This is undeniable, even though in our cowardly age one does everything possible by way of diversions and the Janizary music of loud-voiced enterprises to keep lonely thoughts away, just as in the forests of America they keep away wild beasts by torches, by yells, by the sound of cymbals. Hence it is that in our age one learns to know so little about the highest spiritual temptations, but all the more about the coquettish conflicts between men, and between man and woman, which the refined life of society and the soiree brings in its train. If the genuine humane compassion assumes responsibility for suffering as surety and bondsman, it must first make clear to what extent it is fate and to what extent guilt. And this distinction must be drawn by the troubled but yet resolute passion of freedom, that one may dare to hold fast to it though the whole world were to come to ruin, even though it might seem that by one's own firmness one might cause irreparable harm.
The demoniacal has been ethically regarded with severe condemnation. It is well enough known with what terrible severity it has been pursued, discovered, punished. In our age one shudders at the accounts of this, one becomes sentimental, emotional, at the thought that in our age people do not act that way. This may quite well be so — but is this sentimental compassion so very much more commendable? It is not my part to judge or to condemn that conduct, but only to observe it. The fact that it was so ethically severe shows precisely that its compassion was of a better quality. By identifying itself in thought with the phenomenon it found no further explanation than that it was guilt. It was therefore convinced that after all in the last resort the demoniac himself, in accordance with his better possibility, must wish that every cruelty and severity might be employed against him.* Was it not — to take an example from a similar sphere — was it not Augustine who recommended punishment, yea, the punishment of death,™ for heretics? Was it because he lacked compassion? Surely the difference between his conduct and that of our age was due rather to the fact that his compassion had not made him cowardly, so that with regard to himself he would have said, "If things were to come to such a pass with me, please God there might be a Church which would not abandon me but would employ all its force." But in our age people are afraid, as Socrates somewhere says, 11 of letting themselves be cut and cauterized for their healing.
The demoniacal has been regarded therapeutically. As a matter of course: "Mir Pidver und mit Pillen" [Take my powder and my pills] — and then clysters! Then the apothecary and the doctor put their heads 108 CHAPTER I together. The patient has been isolated so that the others might not be afraid. In our courageous age one does not say to a patient that he will die, one does not dare to call the priest for fear the patient may die of fright, one does not dare to say to the patient that the same day a man died of the same illness. The patient was isolated, compassion made inquiries about him, the physician promised to issue as soon as possible a tabulated statistical statement in order to determine the average. And when one has the average, everything is explained. The therapeutic way of viewing the case regards the phenomenon as purely physical and somatic, and it does as physicians often do, especially in Hoffmann's novels — it takes its pinch of snuff and says, "This is a serious case."
♦The man who is not so ethically developed that he would find comfort and assuagement if, even when he was suffering most, one had the courage to say to him, "This is not fate, it is guilt," would not find comfort and assuagement when this was said to him honestly and earnestly, then that man is not in a great sense ethically developed; for the ethical individual fears nothing so much as fate and aesthetic folderol which under the cloak of compassion would trick him out of his treasure, viz. freedom.
The fact that such various ways of regarding it are possible shows how ambiguous is this phenomenon, and that in a way it belongs to all spheres, the somatic, the psychic, the pneumatic. This indicates that the demoniacal covers a far greater field than is commonly supposed, and this can be explained by the fact that man is a synthesis of soul and body supported by spirit, wherefore a disorganization in one shows itself in the others. But so soon as it is observed how large a field it covers, it will perhaps appear that even divers of those men who want to deal with this phenomenon come themselves under the same category, and that a trace of this is to be found in every man, as sure as every man is a sinner.
But since the demoniacal has in the course of time denoted all sorts of things, and has at last been promoted to mean anything you please, it would be well to define the concept a little. It must be noted that already we have assigned it to its proper place. In innocence there can be no question of the demoniacal. On the other hand, we must give up every fantastic notion of a pact with the devil, etc., whereby a man became absolutely evil. To this was due the contradiction in the behavior of the earlier time. People assumed this fantastic notion, and yet they would punish. Yet the punishment itself was not merely self-defense but was inflicted in order that at the same time the persons concerned might be saved, either by a milder punishment or by the penalty of death. But if there could be any question of salvation, the individual was after all not entirely in the power of evil; and if he were entirely in the power of evil, it would be a contradiction to chastise him. If the question were to arise, to DREAD OF THE GOOD 109 what extent the demoniacal is a psychological problem, I must reply that the demoniacal is a state. Out of this state the particular sinful act can break forth perpetually. But the state is a possibility, although again in relation to freedom it is a reality posited by the qualitative leap.
The demoniacal is dread of the good. In the state of innocence freedom was not posited as freedom, its possibility appears in the dread of the individuality. In the demoniacal the situation is reversed. Freedom is posited as unfreedom, for freedom is lost. The possibility of freedom is in turn dread. The difference is absolute; for the possibility of freedom manifests itself here in relation to unfreedom, which is exactly the opposite of innocence, which is a determinant oriented towards freedom.
The demoniacal is unfreedom which would shut itself off. This, however, is an impossibility; it always maintains a relationship, and even when this has apparently disappeared it is nevertheless there, and dread manifests itself at once in the instant of contact with the good (cf. what was said above about the accounts in the New Testament).
The demoniacal is shut-upness [det Indesluttede, or Indeslut- tedhed] unfreely revealed. These two traits denote, as they should, the same thing; for the shut-up is precisely the mute, and if it has to express itself, this must come about against its will when the freedom lying prone in unfreedom revolts upon coming into communication with freedom outside and now betrays unfreedom in such a way that it is the individual who betrays himself against his will in dread. The word "shut-up" must therefore be taken here in a perfectly definite sense, for in the sense of reserve, in which it is commonly used, 12 it may denote the highest freedom. Brutus, Henry V of England as Prince of Wales, etc., were in this sense shut-up until the time came when it was evident that their shut- upness was a pact with the good. Such a shut-upness was therefore identical with expansion, and never is there an individuality which in the finer and nobler sense of the word is more expanded than he who is shut- up within the womb of a great idea. Freedom is precisely the expansive. It is in opposition to this I would employ the word "shut-up," /car ei;oxn v > f° r "unfreedom." Commonly a more metaphysical term is used for the evil. It is called "negating." The ethical term precisely corresponding to that, when one contemplates the effect thereof upon the individual, is shut- upness. The demoniacal does not shut itself up with something, but shuts itself up; and in this lies the mystery of existence, the fact that unfreedom makes a prisoner precisely of itself. Freedom is constantly communicating (it will do no harm to take into account even the religious significance of this word 13 ); unfreedom becomes more and more shut-up and wants no communication. This can be observed in all spheres. It shows itself in 110 CHAPTER I hypochondriacs, in crotcheteers, it shows itself in the highest passions when by a profound misunderstanding they introduce silence as a system.* When freedom then comes in contact with ♦Already it has been said, and it is affirmed here again, that the demoniacal has a much greater amplitude than one commonly believes. In the preceding section the formations were indicated which point in another direction, and here shut-upness it becomes afraid [angest]. In common speech we have an expression which is exceedingly suggestive. We say of a person that he will not come out with it. The shut-up is precisely the mute; the spoken word is precisely the saving thing, that which delivers from the mute abstraction of the shut-up. Let the demoniacal here mean x; freedom's relation to it from without, x: the law for the revelation of the demoniacal is that against its will it comes out with it. For by speech is implied a communi- cation. A demoniac in the New Testament says therefore to Christ, rt ifxol KCU croi 14; he goes on to say that Christ has come to destroy him (dread of the good). Or a demoniac beseeches Christ to go another way. 15 (When dread is dread of the evil, cf. §i, the individual seeks refuge in salvation.)