Worldliness

- Soren Kierkegaard -

 

Most people are really only sample copies. Of them it may be said: They derive benefit out of living, but the world has no benefit out of their having lived.

 

If one would describe the confusion of the modern age, I know of no more descriptive word than: it is dishonest. Young people, even children, are aware of how fraudulent everything is and how everything depends on clinging to their generation, following the inconstant demands of the age. Thus the life of each generation hisses and fizzes uninterruptedly. Although everything is a whirlwind, a signal-shot is heard, the ringing of the bells, signifying to the individual that now, this very second, hurry, throw everything away reflection, quiet meditation, reassuring thoughts of the eternal because if you come too late you will not get to go along on the generation s next whirling expedition, which is just pulling out and then, then, how terrible!

Ah, yes, how terrible! Everything, absolutely everything is calculated to nourish this confusion, the unholy taste of this wild hunt. The means of communication become more and more excellent, but the communications become more and more hurried and more and more confusing. And if anyone dares, either in the name of originality or of God, to resist it woe unto him! Just as the individual is seized by the whirlwind of impatience to be understood immediately, so this generation domineeringly craves to understand the individual at once.

 

God punishes the ungodly simply by ignoring them. This is why they have success in the world the most frightful punishment, because in God s view this world is immersed in evil. But God sends suffering to those whom he loves, as assistance to enable them to become happy by loving him.

 

Every life that is preoccupied with being like others is a wasted life, a lost life. A sparrow, a fly, a poisonous insect is an object of God s concern. It is not a wasted or lost life. But masses of mimickers, a crowd of copycats are wasted lives.

By forming a party, by melting into some group, we avoid not only conscience, but martyrdom. This is why fear of others dominates this world. No one dares to be a genuine self; everyone is hiding in some kind of "togetherness." Sensitive organs are shielded and not in immediate contact with objects, so us ordinary people are afraid to come into personal, immediate contact with the eternal. Instead, we rely on traditions and the voice of others. We are content to be a specimen or a copy, living a life shielded against individual responsibility before the Truth.

 

True individuality is measured by this: how long or how far one can endure being alone without the understanding of others. The person who can endure being alone is poles apart from the social mixer. He is miles apart from the man-pleaser, the one who manages successfully with everyone he who possesses no sharp edges. God never uses such people.  The true individual, anyone who is going to be directly involved with God, will not and cannot avoid the human bite. He will be thoroughly misunderstood. God is no friend of cosy human gathering.

 

It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke.

 

Imagine a group of people who have come together to socialize. The conversation is in full swing, lively, almost out of control. One person can hardly wait to have his say till the other is through with his, and everybody takes part more or less actively as in a debate.

Then enters a stranger, who arrives in the midst of it all. Judging by the behaviour of the group and the loudness of the talk, the stranger infers that the topic of conversation is one of great concern and importance. As it so often happens, however, the conversation is about a mere trifle. With perfect calmness, since he has not been in the heart of the conversation, he inquires about the subject of their conversation. The stranger, of course, cannot in the least be blamed for the effect his inquiry produces. He only assumed that what was being discussed was something of significance. But what a surprising effect, to become suddenly aware that what had so passionately absorbed the attention of the group was so unimportant that it can hardly be put into words. It turns out to be a mere nothing, and everyone gets annoyed.

Stranger still is the effect produced by God s word when it is heard in the midst of the world s talk. Think about it. In the world there is lots of talk about this or that strife. There is talk about this person who is in conflict with that person, about that man and that woman, although united in marriage, living in strife with one another, about the disagreement that has begun between this one and that, about this one challenging another to a fight, about there being unrest in the city, about a war that is impending, about the conflict of nature s elements that rage fearfully. Behold, it is this that is talked about everywhere, day in and day out. If there is a conflict to report, then there is always a listening audience. But if one should bring up or mention the strife and unrest that resides within every person with God what an astonishing effect! To most people such talk is but nonsense, a mere trifle. There are too many other important things to talk about.

Travel the world over, get to know the most various cultures, go about and enter into conversation with all the different peoples, visit them in their houses, follow them to their meetings, and listen attentively to what they talk about. Now tell me if you ever hear anything said about the eternal strife, the war between God and man, the war within a person s soul.   And yet this strife is the affair of every single person.

In fact, there is no other strife that it is absolutely the affair of every person.   The strife between human beings well, after all, there are many that live their lives rather peaceably without being in conflict with anybody. The strife between married people well, after all, there are many happy marriages that go along without much tension. And after all it is a rare occurrence for a man to be challenged to a fight. And even during a war, yes, even if it was the most terrible war, there are still many who live in peace. But this strife, this fight with God is absolutely the affair of every single person, whether people recognize it or not. But beware lest you make the slightest mention of it!

Perhaps this strife is regarded as so sacred and so solemn that it is felt it should never be talked about. Perhaps it is like how God is manifested in creation. God is not directly visible so as to be noticed in the world. In fact, the beauty of creation attracts attention to itself, almost as if God did not exist at all. So maybe this strife is a kind of secret every person has, and because it is not directly visible, it never gets talked about. Everything else instead gets talked about, attracts attention to itself, as if this sacred strife did not exist. Perhaps so, perhaps. But it is certain that every person, every sufferer has opportunity, in one way or another, to become aware of this strife. And it is this strife that underlies all others. Oh, whoever you are, pay heed to this sacred strife. This alone is the strife of eternity.

 

Why is it that people prefer to be addressed in groups rather than individually? Is it because conscience is one of life s greatest inconveniences, a knife that cuts too deeply? We prefer to "be part of a group," and to "form a party," for if we are part of a group it means goodnight to conscience. We cannot be two or three, a "Miller Brothers and Company" around a conscience.  No, no. The only thing the group secures is the abolition of conscience.

 

The majority of people are not only afraid of holding a wrong opinion, they are afraid of holding an opinion alone. In the physical world water puts out fire. So too in the spiritual world. The "many", the mass of people, put out the inner fire beware of men!

 

The deep fault of the human race is that there are no individuals any more. We have become split in two. When a book has become old and shabby, the binding separates and the pages fall out. Similarly, in our time we are disintegrated. Our understanding, our imaginations do not bind us in character. We are spineless wimps who only flirt with the highest.

 

Wanting to hide in the crowd, to be a little fraction of the group instead of being an individual, is the most corrupt of all escapes. Granted, it will make life easier, but it will do so by making it more thoughtless.

 

We warn young people against going to dens of iniquity, even out of curiosity, because no one knows what might happen. Still more terrible, however, is the danger of going along with the crowd. In truth, there is no place, not even one most disgustingly dedicated to lust and vice, where a human being is more easily corrupted than in the crowd.

Even though every individual possesses the truth, when he gets together in a crowd, untruth will be present at once, for the crowd is untruth. It either produces impenitence and irresponsibility or it weakens the individual s sense of responsibility by placing it in a fractional category.

 

The crowd is indeed untruth. Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr.

 

To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.  His work is to be involved with all people, if possible, but always individually, speaking with each and every person on the sidewalk and on the streets in order to split apart.  He avoids the crowd, especially when it is treated as authoritative in matters of the truth or when its applause, or hissing, or balloting are regarded as judges.  

 

Those who speak to the crowd, coveting its approval, those who deferentially bow and scrape before it must be regarded as being worse than prostitutes. They are instruments of untruth. 

 

The world does not want to eliminate Christianity, it is not that straightforward, nor does it have that much character. No, it wants it proclaimed falsely, using eternity to give a flavour to the enjoyment of life.

 

God is as infinitely concerned with one person of intensity, yes, as he is infinitely indifferent to the millions and trillions. We humans believe numbers mean something. For God, it is precisely numbers that mean nothing, nothing at all.

 

The specimen-man tranquilizes himself with human numbers. If something is true, he needs no higher proof than that such and such a number have regarded it as true.

 

There are insects that protect themselves against attackers by raising a cloud of dust. Likewise man instinctively protects himself against truth and spirit by raising a cloud of numbers. If you want to be insured against having to deal with truth, with spirit, simply get together battalions, legions, millions who strive, perhaps with united powers then spirit vanishes and you achieve what you really want: a life lived on the animal side of human nature.

 

Animal-man has the courage to do the most frightening things as long as he simply has human numbers with him. Christ points to the very opposite. To suffer courageously means precisely to fear God in contrast to fearing the crowd, in contrast to what we as animal-creatures fear most of all human numbers.

 

No one dares to be himself; everyone is hiding in "togetherness."

 

There are people who have the fortunate gift of managing successfully with everyone they have no sharp edge. Such people God never uses. God is no friend of the cosy human crowd no, the one he wants to use is promptly blocked off.

 

The single individual is decisive in forming community. He can at any moment become higher than community, specifically, as soon as "the others" fall away from the eternal. The cohesiveness of community comes from each one s being a single individual before the eternal. The connectedness of a public, however, or rather its disconnectedness, consists of the numerical character of everything.

Only the single individual guarantees community; the public is a chimera. In community the single individual is a microcosm who qualitatively reproduces the cosmos. Community is certainly more than a sum, but yet it is truly a sum of ones. The public, on the other hand, is nonsense a sum of negative ones, of ones who are not ones.

 

To be like the others is humankind s degeneration, the degradation to copies.

 

If it is true that human beings alone have received speech in order to conceal their thoughts or, as I put it, in order to conceal the absence of thoughts, then something like this can truthfully be said about the crowd: The crowd is used in order to conceal how empty all existence is. The "many" transfer us into an exalted state just as opium does, and we are tranquilized by the tremendous trustworthiness of millions.

 

The crowd is like an envelope. One receives a large package, thinks it is something important, but look, it is a package of envelopes.

 

Everything that needs numbers in order to become significant is by that very fact insignificant. Everything that can be arranged, executed, completed only with the help of numbers, the sum of which startles people in amazement, as if this were something important precisely this is unimportant. The truly important is inversely related, needs a progressively smaller and smaller number to implement its completion. And for the most important of all, that which sets heaven and earth in motion, only one person is needed. And what is most important of all? What interests angels and demons most is that a person is actually involved with God for this one single human being is enough.

 

It occurs to me that we would be quite happy if we managed to find a way for everyone to be a virtuoso in ventriloquism how satisfied we would be with anonymity!

 

When it has come to the point where the majority decides what constitutes truth, it will not be long before they take to deciding it with their fists.

 

Every future effort at reformation, if it is genuine, will be directed against the crowd, not against the government.

 

Instinctively "man" has a tactic he uses against "spirit": Let us form a crowd! This is our tactic, our mode of defence. It is done cunningly this way: Let us join together in order to strive toward the ideals. But to form a crowd is precisely the way to get rid of the ideals. Just as the ostrich sticks its head into the ground and thinks it is invisible, so we form a crowd and think no one can see us.   We speak of not being able to see the woods for the trees, and by this tactic we hope that one cannot see the trees for the woods. Just like the person who says he is not at home to visitors, we are not at home whenever we lose ourselves in the crowd instead of being an I.

 

If Christ lived today, attention would surely make the most desperate effort. Every day every paper would have an article on him. Every insignificant detail about him would be spread all over the country in thousands of copies. Everything possible would be dug up to make the situation demented, and harmless! Everything possible would be done to dismiss him.

 

Of all the tyrannies, fear is the most dangerous. The communists fight for human rights. Good, so do I. Precisely for that reason I fight with all my might against the tyranny of the fear of man.

 

Something to chatter about! The crowd demands only something to chatter about, and this is understood to mean finding something about each other to chatter about, something about our meaningless lives, particularly the trivialities in our lives. Anything else nauseates the public, which knows only one lust the desire for self-pollution by talking, a lust in which it indulges with the help of the journalist.

Journalists are animal-keepers who provide something for the public to talk about. In ancient days people were cast to the wild animals. Now the public devours the people those tastefully prepared by the journalists.

 

If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd.

 

The objections to Christianity may be dismissed with one single comment: Do these objections come from someone who has carried out the commands of Christ? If not, all his objections are nonsense. Christ continually declares that we must do what he says and then we will know that it is truth.

 

Most people think, speak, and write the way they sleep, eat, and drink, without any question ever arising as to their relationship to the eternal.

 

Becoming nothing in this world is the condition for becoming something in the other world.

 

If there is no eternal consciousness in a human being, if at the bottom of everything there is only a wild ferment, a power that, twisting in dark passions, produces everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lies hidden beneath everything, what would life be then but despair?

 

In the temporal world, the main thing is to be able to talk, to have a regular devil s gift of gab. This is the case all down the line, right from the merchant talking up his wares and someone buttering up the women and the agitator soft-soaping the public, right up to the poet, speaker, and scholar. It s a matter of talk, not character-transformation.

If eternity were allowed to rule, there would be no verbosity, which is just what temporality loves it loves appearance, procrastination, and most of all, talk. But eternity has an eye for action, character-transformation. Every change along the line of talk is of no assistance whatsoever when it comes to eternity.

 

Several families can join together for a box at the theatre, and three single gentlemen can join together for a riding horse so that each one rides every third day. But this is not the way it is with immortality. The consciousness of my immortality belongs simply and solely to me.

 

The lives of most people are like the grass only the trees catch the storm, and they experience a great deal, but the grass experiences practically nothing.

 

There are many people who arrive at conclusions in life much the way schoolboys do; they cheat their teachers by copying the answer book without having worked the problem themselves.

 

The one who remains in the world to suffer for the truth is always in the right over against the hermit s flight from the world. But the sociable, happy-go-lucky person who remains in the world to enjoy himself in the completely ordinary human sense has absolutely no right to castigate the monastic. Let us not deceive ourselves.

 

When children are together all day long, they naturally play with each other. But what happens suddenly there comes a message that little Peter, Christian, Soren, Hans, or whatever the child is called, must go home. It is the same with us adults. We go and talk with the each other about what we want to be in the world, that we want to be this and that, and it seems that we are earnest, almost as earnest as anybody else. But what happens suddenly there comes a message that we must go home. That is, God calls to us.

This, you see, is why the truly religious individual can never engage in the strange sort of earnestness which is so common in the world, the kind that leaves God out. The child cannot be allowed to get stuck in the illusion that his relationship with the other children is the whole thing for then comes the message that he must go home.

 

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale.

 

A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity.

 

To love God is the only happy love, but on the other hand it is also something terrible. Face to face with God we are without standards and without comparisons; we cannot compare ourselves with God, for here we become nothing, and directly before God, in the presence of God, we dare not compare ourselves with others. Therefore in every person there is a prudent fear of having anything to do with God, because by becoming involved with God he becomes nothing. And so, we desire this relationship at a distance and spend our lives in temporal distractions. All this busyness in life is but a distraction.

 

This is how human nature is related to the divine: the disciples sleep while Christ suffers.

 

There are altogether too many individuals who live in fear of the one restless disturber that is nevertheless the true rest eternity.

 

The result of human progress is that everything becomes thinner and thinner. The result of divine providence is to make everything deeper and more inward.

 

Some birds take off quietly and neatly from the branch on which they are perching and ascend heavenward in their flight, proudly, boldly. Others, like crows, for example, make a big fuss when they are about to fly. They lift one foot and then promptly grab on again, and no flight takes place.

 

Every call from God is always addressed to one person, the single individual. Precisely in this lies the difficulty and the examination, that the one who is called must stand alone, walk alone, alone with God. Hence, everything that makes its appearance statistically is not from above. If anyone construes this as a call, you can be sure it is from below.

 

People despair about being lonely and therefore get married. But is this love? I should say it is self-love.

 

When the individual relates himself to God through the race, through an abstraction, through a third party, Christianity is abolished. And when this happens, the God-man becomes a phantom instead of our example.

 

It is impossible to be involved with God without enduring the weight of the pressure of being I. Yet thousands live on without having to become I, or they live on as truncated I's, truncated to the third person. They fill their lives with all sorts of things, imagine that they are really involved with God, flatter themselves that they have not ventured farther out because they are so humble. What confusion! The first condition for getting straightened out is to see that this notion about humility is complete rubbish, that one is dragging his feet only because of weakness, thin skin, and cowardice.

 

Every person shrinks from becoming personality, from standing face to face with the others as a personality. We shrink from this because we know that others will take aim at us. We shrink from being revealed. Therefore we live, if not in utter darkness then in the twilight, in hoaxes, in the impersonal. But Christianity, which knows the truth, knows that life means: revelation.

 

A person s salvation lies precisely in his becoming a person. Why? Because he is so illuminated that he cannot hide from himself yes, illuminated as if he were transparent. The municipality is already of the opinion that gas-illumination at night helps to prevent crime because light frightens crime away. Consider, then, the piercing illumination of being personality light everywhere!

 

Nowadays, one does not become an author through his originality, but by reading. Similarly, one now becomes a human being by aping others. We no longer seem to know, within ourselves, what it means to be human. Rather, through an inference we conclude: we are like the others therefore we are human.

 

Christianity wants to grant the single individual eternal happiness, a good that is not distributed in bulk but only to one, and to one at a time.

 

There are people who handle the ideas they pick up from others so frivolously and disgracefully that they ought to be prosecuted for illegal exchange in lost and found property.

 

When it comes to doing what we know to be God s will, we do not dare to say: I will not! So we say: I cannot. Is this any less rebellious? If it is God s will that you do it, how is it possible that you cannot?

 

It is a great question whether those whom God cannot make mad have ever really existed for God.

 

Our age is without passion. Everyone knows a great deal, we all know which way we ought to go and all the different ways we can go, but nobody is really willing to move.

 

The ludicrous aspect of a zealot is that his infinite passion thrusts itself upon the wrong object. The divine aspect of him, however, is that he dares with passion.

 

If I could only have the experience of meeting a passionate thinker, that is, someone who honestly and honourably expressed in his life what he has understood!

 

Existing, if this is not to be understood as just any sort of existing, cannot be done without passion. I have often thought about how one might bring a person into passion. So I have considered the possibility of getting him astride a horse and then frightening the horse into the wildest gallop. I think this would be successful. And this is what existing is like if one is to be truly conscious of it and is, if existing is not to be what  people usually call existing. Merely existing is like a drunken peasant who lies in the wagon and sleeps and lets the horses shift for themselves. But true existence has to do with the one who drives.

 

Life s earnestness does not consist in the pressure of busyness, but in the will to be, the will to express the eternal in the dailyness of actuality, to will it so that one does not busily abandon it or conceitedly take it in vain as a dream.

 

That which distinguishes the Christian way from the common way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty no, he chose poverty.

 

No matter how much all the earth s gold hidden in covetousness may amount to, it is infinitely less than the smallest mite hidden in the contentment of the poor!

 

That the goal of the state is to improve its citizens is obviously nonsense. The state is of the evil rather than of the good, a necessary evil, in a certain sense a useful, expedient evil, but not good. The state is actually human egotism in great dimensions. Just as we speak of a calculation of infinitesimals, so also the state is a calculation of egotisms, but always in such a way that it egotistically appears to be the most prudent thing to enter into and to be in this higher egotism. But this, after all, is anything but the moral abandoning of egotism.

 

To be improved by living in the state is just as doubtful as being improved in a prison. Perhaps one becomes much shrewder about his egotism, his enlightened egotism, that is, his egotism in relation to other egotisms, but less egotistic he does not become, and what is worse, one is spoiled by regarding this official, civic, authorized egotism as virtue this, in fact, is how demoralizing civic life is, because it reassures one in being a shrewd egotist.

 

The state is continually subject to the same sophistry that engrossed the Greek Sophists namely, that injustice on a vast scale is justice. Yes, politics is nothing but egotism dressed up as justice.

 

A person is a slave of what he is unfreely dependent upon. But our freedom-loving age thinks otherwise; it thinks that if one is not dependent, then one is not a slave either. If there is no ruler, then there is no slave either. One is scarcely aware that precisely here a bondage is being created. This bondage is not that one person wants to subjugate many, but that individuals, when they forget their relation to God, become mutually afraid of one another.

 

When a book has become old and shabby, the binding separates and the pages fall out. Similarly in our time people are disintegrated; their understanding, their imaginations do not bind them in character.

 

To be busy, to be divided and scattered, to occupy yourself is far from love. Christian love is whole and collected in its every expression, and yet it is sheer action. Consequently it is just as far from inaction as it is from busyness. It never becomes engrossed in anything beforehand and never gives a promise in place of action. It never draws satisfaction from imagining that it has finished, nor does it ever loiter delighting in itself. It is no secret, private mysterious feeling behind the lattice of the inexplicable, which the poet wants to lure to the window, nor a soul-mood which fondly knows no laws, wants to know none, or wants to have its own law and hearkens only to singing. It is pure action and its every deed is holy, for it is the fulfilling of the law.

 

There is a preying creature, known for its cunning that slyly falls upon the sleeping. While sucking blood from its sleeping prey, it fans and cools him, making his sleep still more pleasant. This is how it is with habit or maybe it is even worse! For the vampire seeks its prey among the sleeping, but it has no means to lull to sleep those who are awake. Habit, however, is quite adept at doing this. It slinks, sleep-lulling, upon a person, and then drains his blood while it coolingly fans him and makes his sleep all the more pleasant.

 

To what is said of eternal life, that there is no sighing and no tears, one can add: there is no habit.

 

Since God himself has created and sustains this world, one ought to guard against the ascetic fanaticism which hates it and annihilates it. This said, God still wants us to make, once and for all, such a clean break with this world that the spirit really comes into existence. He wants us, even now, to wean ourselves away.

 

To be nothing is precisely the burr under the saddle of zealousness. To be nothing is precisely what makes delusions impossible; only when a person is nothing can he in truth serve an idea. The point is this. When a person is something, when he possesses the world s advantages he is no longer a burr under the saddle of worldliness. But is this not what it means to sacrifice oneself for the truth?

 

It is terrifying when God takes out the instruments for the surgery for which no human being has the strength: to take away a person s human zest for life, to slay him in order that he can live as one who has died to the world and to the flesh. It cannot  be otherwise, for in no other way can a human being love God.  He must be in such a state of agony that if he were an unbeliever he would at no time hesitate to commit suicide. But in this state he must live. Only in this state can he love God.

 

A person rarely amounts to anything, either good or evil, who has never lived in solitude. In solitude there is the Absolute, but also the absolute danger.

 

It is true that a mirror has the quality of enabling a person to see his image in it, but for this he must stand still.

 

It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.

 

Ah, everything is noisy. Just as a strong drink is said to stir the blood, so everything in our day, even the most insignificant project, even the most empty communication, is designed merely to jolt the senses or to stir up the masses, the crowd, the public, noise! And we humans, we clever fellows, seem to have become sleepless in order to invent ever new means to increase noise, to spread noise and insignificance with the greatest possible ease and on the greatest possible scale. Yes, everything has been turned upside down. The means of communication have been perfected, but what is publicized with such hot haste is rubbish! Oh, create silence!

 

What is talkativeness? It is the result of doing away with the vital distinction between talking and keeping silent. Only someone who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk and truly act. Silence is the essence of inwardness, of the inner life. Mere gossip mocks real talk, and to express what is yet in thought weakens action by forestalling it. Where mere scope is concerned, talkativeness wins the day, it jabbers on incessantly about everything and nothing. But someone who can really talk, because he knows how to remain silent, will not talk about a variety of things but about one thing only, and he will know when to talk and when to remain silent.

When people s attention is no longer turned inwards, when they are no longer at ease with their own inner lives, but turn to others and think outside themselves, in search of that satisfaction, when nothing important ever happens to gather the threads of life together with the finality of a catastrophe: that is the time for talkativeness. In a passionate age great events give people something to talk about. Talkativeness, on the contrary, also has plenty to talk about, but in quite another sense. In a passionate age, when the event is over, and silence follows, there is still something to remember and to think about while one remains silent. But talkativeness is afraid of silence, for silence always reveals its emptiness.

 

Imagine a heavenly body, in the process of constituting itself. It would not first of all determine how great its surface was to be and which other body it was to move. It would first allow the centripetal and centrifugal forces to harmonize its existence, and then let the rest take its course. Similarly, it is useless for a person to constitute himself by first determining the outside and afterwards the fundamentals. One must know oneself before knowing anything else. It is only after a person has thus understood himself inwardly, and has thus seen his way, that life acquires peace and significance.

 

The greatest danger for a child, where religion is concerned, is not that his father or teacher should be an unbeliever, not even his being a hypocrite. No, the danger lies in their being pious and God-fearing, and in the child being convinced thereof, but that he should nevertheless notice that deep within there lies hidden a terrible unrest. The danger is that the child is provoked to draw a conclusion about God, that God is not infinite love.

 

Talk takes the name of enthusiasm in vain by proclaiming loudly from the housetop what it should work out in silence.

 

Pausing is not a sluggish repose. Pausing is also movement. It is the inward movement of the heart. To pause is to deepen oneself in inwardness. But to go on and on is to go straight into the abyss of superficiality.

 

Rarely do we ever really try to understand why Christ collided with those around him or why he was crucified. Perhaps we fear getting to know anything of the proof of the existence of evil in the world.

 

What is sin? It is the pact of an evil conscience with darkness.

 

What else has a memory like that of a bad conscience?

 

To be a mere observer is actually sin.

 

Everyone, even the most industrious, is in imagination, feelings, thought and speech, a good bit in front of himself, beyond what he is in action and reality. The majority of us are like a train from which the locomotive has run away we are so far ahead of ourselves, we are so far behind.

 

People want to eliminate injunctions and constraints in order to play the game of being independent. In the old days people believed that it was the conscience that gave freedom of conscience, that if one had conscience, freedom was sure to come along. But to eliminate every constraint, to loosen every bond, meant at best to make it as free and as convenient as possible for everyone to have no conscience while imagining that he had one. All this talk about eliminating constraint comes either from the coddled or from those who perhaps once felt the power to fight but are now exhausted and find it nicer to have all constraints taken away.

 

When someone is sick or indisposed, the first thing he does is to see a physician. It is medication he wants. Spiritually it is just the opposite when a person has sinned, the last thing he wants is the physician and medicine.

 

The danger with sickness of the spirit is just that a certain amount of health is required in order to become aware and acknowledge that one is sick.

 

How strange that the most coveted good in the world is independence, yet almost no one covets the only way that truly leads to it: suffering.

 

The consequence of having seen God is madness, not in the sense that one becomes mentally ill, no, but that a kind of madness is set between you and others: people cannot nor will not understand you.

 

It is no good for you to say that the world is immersed in evil, and then slip through it easily. If you do this, your life expresses that it is really a very good world and simply cannot be done without your also being an accomplice in one way or another.

 

Preserve me, Lord, from the deceit of thinking that by being prudent and looking after my own interests I am necessarily using my talents aright. He who takes risks for your sake may appear to lose, but he is accepted by you. He who risks nothing appears to gain by his prudence, but he is rejected by you. But let me not think that by avoiding risk I am better than the other. Grant me to see that this is an illusion, and save me from such a snare.

 

Anyone who knows even a little bit about bird-life knows that there is a kind of understanding between wild geese and tame geese, regardless of how different they are. When the flight of the wild geese is heard in the air and there are tame geese down on the ground, the tame geese are instantly aware of it and to a certain degree they understand what it means. This is why they also start up, beat their wings, cry out and fly along the ground a bit in awkward, confused disorder and then it is over.

There was once a wild goose. In the autumn, about the time for migration, it became aware of some tame geese. It became enamoured by them, thought it a shame to fly away from them, and hoped to win them over so that they would decide to go along with it on the flight. To that end it became involved with them in every possible way. It tried to entice them to rise a little higher and then again a little higher in their flight, that they might, if possible, accompany it in the flight, saved from the wretched, mediocre life of waddling around on the earth as respectable, tame geese.

At first, the tame geese thought it very entertaining and liked the wild goose. But soon they became very tired of it, drove it away with sharp words, censured it as a visionary fool devoid of experience and wisdom. Alas, unfortunately the wild goose had become so involved with the tame geese that they had gradually gained power over it, their opinion meant something to it and gradually the wild goose became a tame goose.

In a certain sense there was something admirable about what the wild goose wanted. Nevertheless, it was a mistake, for this is the law a tame goose never becomes a wild goose, but a wild goose can certainly become a tame goose. If what the wild goose tried to do is to be commended in any way, then it must above all watch out for one thing that it hold on to itself. As soon as it notices that the tame geese have any kind of power over it, then away, away in migratory flight.

Christianity is not exactly like this. True, a Christian who is under the Spirit is as different from the ordinary man as the wild goose is from the tame goose. But Christianity teaches conversion and what a person can become in life. Consequently, there is always hope that a tame goose might become a wild goose. Therefore, Christians must remain with them, these tame geese, but only with one thing in mind wanting to win them for the transformation. But for heaven s sake watch out for one thing. As soon as you see that the tame geese begin to have power over you, away, away in migratory flight, so that it does not all end with your becoming like a tame goose, blissfully sunk in wretched mediocrity.

 

If a person of talent is actually to become spirit, he must first of all acquire a distaste for all the satisfactions the talent has to offer. He should be like the apprentice in the pastry trade who has permission from the start to eat as many cakes and cookies as he wants in order to acquire a distaste for cakes and cookies.

 

In eternity you will not be asked how large a fortune you are leaving behind the survivors ask about that. Nor will you be asked about how many battles you won, about how sagacious you were, how powerful your influence that, after all, becomes your reputation for posterity. No, eternity will not ask about what worldly goods remain behind you, but about what riches you have gathered in heaven. It will ask you about how often you have conquered your own thought, about what control you have exercised over yourself or whether you have been a slave, about how often you have mastered yourself in self-denial or whether you have never done so .......

 

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