And what is true of love is also true of friendship, insofar as this too is a consequence of partiality: of loving this one man above all others, of loving him as distinct from all others. Therefore the objects of both love and friendship bear the nomenclature of this partiality, “the beloved,” “the friend,” who is loved above all the rest of the world. On the contrary, the Christian teaching is to love the neighbor, to love the whole race, all men, even one’s enemy, and to make no exception, either of partiality or of dislike.

There is only One whom a man may with the truth of the eternal love better than himself, that is God. Therefore it does not say, “Thou shalt love God as thyself,” but it says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.” A man must love God in unconditional obedience and love Him in adoration. It would be ungodliness if any man dared to love himself in this way, or dared to love another man in this way, or dared to permit another man to love him in this way. If your beloved or your friend begged you for something which you, because you honestly loved him, had anxiously considered would be injurious to him: then a responsibility would rest upon you if you showed your love by acquiescing in his wish, instead of showing it by denying him its fulfillment. But God you must love in unconditional obedience even if that which He demands of you may seem injurious to you, moreover injurious to His own interests. For God’s wisdom is incomparable with respect to your own, and God’s guidance is not obliged to be responsible for your cleverness. You have only to obey in love. A man, on the contrary, you must only —yet, no, that is the highest—consequently you must love a man as yourself; if you can better perceive his best than he can, then you will not be able to excuse yourself by the fact that the harmful thing was his own wish, was what he himself asked for. If this were not the case, then there might quite rightly be something said about loving another man better than yourself; for this love would consist in: in spite of your own conviction that it would be harmful to him, obediently doing it because he asked it, or adoringly, because he wished it. But this you simply have no right to do; you are responsible if you do it, just as the other is responsible if he should misuse his relationship to you in this way.

Consequently—‘“as thyself.” If the most cunning deceiver who has ever lived (or we may invent one even more cunning than has ever lived) in order if possible to have the right to use many words and to become long-winded, for then the deceiver would soon triumph, were to persist year out and year in inquiring “temptingly” of the “royal law,” “How shall I love my neighbor?”’—then will the laconic commandment unchanged continue to repeat the brief phrase, “as thyself.” And if any deceiver—deceived himself all his life by all sorts of difficulties concerning this matter, then will eternity only reprove him with the brief words of the commandment, “as thyself.” Verily, no one will be able to escape the commandment; if its “as thyself” presses as hard on life as possible, so again “neighbor” is a category which in its offensiveness is as perilous to self-love as possible. That it is impossible to escape from these two categories, self-love itself readily perceives. The only escape is the one the Pharisee in his time attempted in order to justify himself: to make it doubtful who his neighbor was—in order to get him out of the way.

Who then is one’s neighbor? The word is evidently derived from “nearest,” so the neighbor is the one who is nearer you than all others, although not in the preferential sense; for to love the one who is preferentially nearer one than all others, is self-love—““Do not even the heathen the same?” The neighbor, then, is nearer to you than all others. But is he also nearer to you than you are to yourself? No, not so; but he is, or should be, equally near. The concept “neighbor” is really a reduplication of your own self; the “neighbor” is what philosophers would call the “other,” the touchstone for testing what is selfish in selflove. Insofar, for the sake of the thought, it is not even necessary that the neighbor should exist. If a man lived on a desert island, if he developed his mind in harmony with the commandment, then by renouncing self-love he could be said to love his neighbor.

“Neighbor” is itself a multitude, for “neighbor” implies “all men,” and yet in another sense one man is enough to enable you to obey the commandment. In a selfish sense it is an impossibility consciously to be two in being a self; self-love demands that it be one. Nor are three needed, for if there are two, that is, if there is one other human being whom, in the Christian sense, you love “as yourself,” or in whom you love the “neighbor,” then you love all men. But what the selfish definitely cannot tolerate is: duplication, and the words of the commandment, “as thyself,” are exactly a duplication. One who is burning with love can never because of or by virtue of this burning, endure the reduplication which here would mean the relinquishing of love, if the object of the love required it. Consequently the lover does not love the beloved “as himself,” for he is a claimant, but this “as thyself” precisely implies a claim upon him—and yet, alas, the lover still believes that he loves the other man better than himself.

“Neighbor” presses as closely as possible upon the selfishness in life, If there are only two men, the other man is the neighbor; if there are millions, each one of these is the neighbor, who is again closer to one than “the friend” and “the beloved,” insofar as those, as being the objects of preferential love, gradually become analogous to the self-love in one. We are ordinarily conscious that the neighbor exists and that he is close at hand when we believe that we have rights with regard to him, that we may claim something from him. If someone with this idea asks: Who is my neighbor? then will Christ’s answer to the Pharisee be a reply only in a very peculiar sense, for in the answer the question is first really transformed into its opposite, whereby it is intimated how a man ought to ask. After having related the parable of the good Samaritan, Christ says to the Pharisees, “Which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among thieves?’ And the Pharisees answer “rightly,” “The one who showed mercy to him.” That is, by recognizing your duty to him, you readily discover who your neighbor is. The answer of the Pharisees is implicit in Christ’s question, which by its form compelled the Pharisee to answer as he did. He to whom I have an obligation is my neighbor, and when I fulfill my obligation I show that I am his neighbor. Christ does not talk about knowing one’s neighbor, but about one’s self being a neighbor, about proving one’s self a neighbor, as the Samaritan proved himself one by his compassion. For by his compassion he did not prove that the man attacked was his neighbor, but that he was the neighbor of the one who was assaulted. The Levite and the priest were in a closer sense the neighbors of the victim, but these refused to recognize that fact; the Samaritan, on the contrary, who through prejudice might have misunderstood, still rightly understood that he was the neighbor of the man who had fallen among thieves. To choose a beloved, to find a friend, those are indeed complicated tasks, but a neighbor is easy to know, easy to find, if we will only —recognize our duty.

This was the commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” but when the commandment is rightly understood, it also says the converse, “Thou shalt love thyself in the right way.” If anyone, therefore, will not learn from Christianity to love himself in the right way, then neither can he love his neighbor; he may perhaps, as we say, “for life and death”—<ling to one or several other human beings, but this is by no means loving one’s neighbor. To love one’s self in the right way and to love one’s neighbor are absolutely analogous concepts, are at bottom one and the same. When the “as thyself” of the commandment has taken from you the selfishness which Christianity, sad to say, must presuppose as existing in every human being, then you have rightly learned to love yourself. Hence the law is: “You shall love yourself as you love your neighbor when you love him as yourself.” Whoever has some knowledge of men will certainly admit that as he has often wished to be able to influence men to give up their self-love, so he has also often wished that it were possible to teach them to love themselves. When the busy man wastes his time and energy on vain and unimportant projects, is this not because he has not rightly learned to love himself? When the frivolous man abandons himself, almost as a mere nothing, to the folly of the moment, is not this because he does not rightly understand how to love himself?

When the melancholy man wishes to be done with life, aye, with himself, is this not because he will not learn strictly and earnestly to love himself? When a man, because the world or another man faithlessly betrayed him, yields himself up to despair, how was he to blame (for we are not here speaking of his innocent suffering), except for not having loved himself in the right way? When a man in self-torment thinks to do God a service by torturing himself, what is his sin except this, of not willing to love himself in the right way? Ah, and when a man presumptuously lays his hand upon himself, does not his sin precisely consist in not loving himself in the way in which a man ought to love himself? Oh, there is so much said in the world about treachery and faithlessness, and, God help us! this is unfortunately only too true, but let us still never forget that the most dangerous traitor of all is the one every man has in his own breast. This treachery, whether it consists in a man’s selfishly loving himself, or in the fact that he selfishly does not wish to love himself in the right way, this treachery is certainly a mystery because there is no outcry about it, as is usual in cases of treachery and faithlessness. But is it not therefore all the more important that we should repeatedly be reminded about the Christian teaching: that a man should love his neighbor as himself, that is, as he ought to love himself?

The commandment about love to one’s neighbor uses one and the same word, “as thyself,” about this love and about the love for one’s self—and now the introduction to this discourse pauses at that which it desires to make the subject of our consideration. That by which the commandment about love to one’s neighbor and about love to one’s self become synonymous is not only this “as thyself,” but even more that word, “Thou shalt.” It is about this that we wish to speak:

Thou Shalt Love

for this is precisely the criterion of the Christian love and its characteristic, that it contains the apparent contradiction: that loving is a duty. Thou shalt love, this is consequently the word of the “royal law.” And, truly, my hearer, if you are able to form any conception of the world as it was before these words were uttered, or if you strive to understand yourself, and pay some attention to the lives and state of mind of those who, although they call themselves Christian, still really live under the categories of paganism: you will then humbly admit, with the wonder of faith, that with respect to this Christian word, as with all Christian expressions, such a commandment has not originated in any human heart. But now since this commandment has been in force through eighteen hundred years of Christianity, and before that time in Judaism; now since everyone has been brought up in it, and from the spiritual point of view is like a child brought up in the home of well-to-do parents, who quite naturally forgets that his daily bread is a gift; now since the Christian religion has many times been rejected by those who were brought up in it, because they preferred all kinds of novelties, just as wholesome food is refused by a person who has never been hungry, in favor of sweets; now since the Christian religion is everywhere presupposed, presupposed as known, as given, as indicated—in order to go on: now it is certainly asserted as a matter of course by everyone; and yet, alas, how seldom is it considered, how seldom perhaps does a Christian earnestly and with a thankful heart dwell upon the idea of what his condition might have been if Christianity had not come into the world! What courage was not needed in order to say for the first time, “Thou shalt love,” or rather, what divine authority was not needed in order by this word to reverse the ideas and concepts of the natural man! For there at the border line where human language pauses and courage weakens, there the revelation breaks forth with divine primitiveness and proclaims what is not difficult to understand in the sense of requiring depth of understanding or human parallels, but which nevertheless does not originate in any human heart. It is not really difficult to understand when it has been said, and it wishes only to be understood in order to be obeyed; but it does not originate in any human heart.

Let us consider a pagan who has not been spoiled by having thoughtlessly learned to repeat the Christian commandments by rote, or spoiled by imagining that he is a Christian—and this commandment, “Thou shalt love,” will not only astonish him, but it will shock him, it will offend him. Just because of this that commandment of love, which is the Christian recognition that “all things are become new,” applies again here. The commandment is not in an accidental sense something new, or in the understanding of curiosity a piece of news; nor in the sense of the temporal existence something new. Love also existed in heathendom; but the idea that love is a duty is an everlasting innovation—and everything has become new. What a difference between the play of the emotions and impulses and inclinations and passions, in short, that play of the forces of immediacy, that glory celebrated in poetry in smiles or in tears, in wishing or in need; what a difference between that and that of eternity, the earnestness of the commandment in spirit and in truth, in sincerity and self-denial!

But human ingratitude! Oh, what a short memory it has! Because the supreme good is offered to everyone, one regards it as nothing, perceives nothing in it, to say nothing of really evaluating its precious quality, as if the highest really lost something through the fact that everyone has or may have the same. If a family possesses one or another costly treasure which is closely associated with a definite event, then the parents tell their children about it from generation to generation, and their children in turn tell their children how this came about. But because Christianity has for so many centuries been the possession of the whole race, must therefore all talk about what an eternal change took place in the world because of its coming, cease? Is not every generation equally near to this, that is, equally bound to make it explicit? Is the change less remarkable because it happened eighteen hundred years ago? Has it, too, become less noteworthy that a God exists, because for several thousand years generations of people have lived who believed in Him? Does it therefore become less wonderful to me—if otherwise I believe this? And is it less wonderful for one who lives in our time, eighteen hundred years later, that he became a Christian, because it is eighteen hundred years since Christianity came into the world? And even if it is not quite so long ago, then he must surely be able to remember how he was before he became a Christian, and consequently know what change took place in him—if this change consisted in his becoming a Christian. Consequently no world-historic descriptions of heathendom are needed, as if it were eighteen hundred years since the overthrow of heathendom; for it is surely not quite so long since both you, my reader, and 1 were heathen, were that, of course —if we now have become Christian.

For this is surely the most distressing and the most impious kind of deception, to allow one’s self through ingratitude to be defrauded of the highest good which one believes one possesses, and, alas, to find that one does not possess it. For what, indeed, is the highest possession, what is the possession of everything, if I never get the right impression of my possession of it, and of what it is that I possess! Because, according to the Scriptures, he who has worldly goods should be as one who does not have them, I wonder if this is also right with respect to the supreme good: to have it and still be as one who does not have it. I wonder if that is right, yet, no, let us not be deceived by the question, as if it would be possible to have the supreme good in this way. Let us realize that this is truly an impossibility. The earthly goods are of no consequence, and therefore the Scriptures teach that when they are possessed they should be possessed as the unimportant; but the supreme good cannot and must not be possessed as the unimportant. Earthly goods are in an external sense a reality, therefore one can own them even while being as one who does not own them; but spiritual goods exist only inwardly, exist only in being possessed, and therefore one cannot, if one really possesses them, be as one who does not possess them; on the contrary, if one is such, then one simply does not possess them. If someone believes that he has faith and yet is indifferent to his possession, neither cold nor warm, then he can be sure that he does not have faith. If someone believes that he is a Christian and yet is indifferent to the fact that he is, then he truly is not a Christian. Or what would we think about a man who protested that he was in love, and also stated that it was a matter of indifference to him?

So therefore let us not forget, as little now as on some other occasion when we speak about Christianity, let us not forget its beginning, that is, that it did not originate in any human heart; let us not forget to mention it along with the origin of faith, which never, when it is present in a man, believes because others have believed, but because his man, too, has been gripped by that which has gripped countless multitudes before him, but certainly not therefore less primitively. For a tool that a handworker uses becomes blunted through years of use, a spring loses its elasticity and is weakened; but that which has the elasticity of eternity retains it through the ages absolutely unchanged. When a dynamometer has been used a long time, at last even a weak man can pass the test; but the dynamometer of eternity, on which every man must be tested as to whether he has faith or not, remains through all the ages absolutely unchanged.

When Christ said: “Beware of men,” I wonder if that warning did not also imply this: “Beware lest through men, that is, through perpetual comparison with other men, through habit and externalities, you allow yourself to be defrauded of the supreme good.” For the artfulness of a deceiver is not so dangerous, besides one more easily perceives it; but to hold the supreme good in a sort of common fellowship, in the indolence of habit, moreover in the indolence of a habit which even wishes to posit the race instead of the individual, wishes to make the race the receiver, and the individual a participant as a matter of course by virtue of his belonging to the race: this is truly the terrible thing. Certainly the highest must not be mere plunder; you must not have it for yourself in a selfish sense, for what you merely have for yourself alone is never the highest good; but even if you, in the most profound sense of the word, have the highest in common with everyone else (and this is precisely what makes it the highest, that you can have it in common with all others), you must still have it for yourself in such a way that you keep it, not only when everyone else has it, but so that you retain it even if all others renounce it. Beware in this respect also of men, “be as wise as serpents”—in order to preserve the secret of faith for yourself, although you hope and wish and labor to make everyone in this respect like yourself. “Be innocent as doves,” for faith is exactly this simplicity. You must not use your ingenuity for the purpose of making faith into something else, but you must use it ingeniously toward men to defend the secret of faith within yourself, guarding yourself against men. Is a password not a secret because everyone knows it individually, because it is confided to everyone and kept secret by everyone? However, the secret password is one thing today and another tomorrow. But the essence of faith consists in its being a secret, in being for the individual. If each individual does not preserve it as a secret, even when he professes it, he does not have faith. Could it be because there is something lacking in faith that it thus is and remains and must be preserved as a secret? Is this not also true of love, or is it just one of those fugitive emotions which manifest themselves immediately, and as quickly disappear, while the profound impression always preserves its secrecy? If that is so, then we are still right in saying that the love which does not make a man secretive is not really love. That secretive love can be a symbol of faith; but the incorruptible inwardness of faith in the hidden man is life. He who wise as a serpent is on guard against men, so that harmless as a dove he may “preserve the secret of faith,” has also, as the Scriptures say, ‘“the savor in himself”; but if he is not on guard against men, then the salt loses its virtue, and how then can it be salt? And even if it happened that a secret love became the cause of a man’s downfall, still faith is eternally and always the saving mystery! Behold that woman with the issue of blood; she did not press forward in order to happen to touch Christ’s garment; she did not tell others what her intention was and what she believed: she said quite softly to herself: “If I only touch the hem of His garment, then am I healed.” She kept the secret to herself, it was the secret of faith, which saved her both for time and eternity. This secret you may also have for yourself if you fearlessly profess faith; and when you lie helpless on a sickbed and cannot even move a limb, when you cannot even speak, you can still keep this secret with you. But the primitiveness of faith is related to the beginning of Christianity. Extravagant descriptions of heathendom, its errors, its characteristics, are by no means needed; the signs of the Christlike are contained in Christianity itself. Make an experiment; forget for a moment Christian love, consider what you know about other love, recall what you read in the poets, what you yourself can discover, and then say whether it ever occurred to you to conceive this: Thou shalt love. Be honest, or, that this may not embarrass you, I shall honestly confess that many, many times in my life it has awakened all my astonishment of wonder, that it has sometimes seemed to me as if love lost everything by this comparison, although it gains everything. Be honest, cdnfess that this is perhaps the case with many people, that when they read the poets’ glowing descriptions of love or friendship, these seem to them something far higher than the humble: “Thou shalt love.”

“Thou shalt love.” Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love everlastingly secure against every change; everlastingly emancipated in blessed independence; everlastingly happy, assured against despair.

However glad, however happy, however indescribably confident the love of impulse and inclination, the immediate love as such can be, it still feels, even in its most beautiful moment, a need to bind itself if possible even more closely. Therefore the two take an oath; they take an oath of loyalty or friendship to each other; and when we speak most solemnly, we do not say about the two, “They love one another,” we say, “They swore fidelity to each other,” or, “They took an oath of friendship to each other.” But by what does this love swear? We do not wish to distract the attention and divert it by recalling the great distinction which the spokesmen of this love, the “poets,” through their consecration know best about—for in respect to this love it is the poet who exacts a promise from the two, the poet who unites the two, the poet who dictates an oath to the two and lets them take it, in short, it is the poet who is the priest. Does this love then swear by something that is higher than itself? No, it does not. This is what exactly constitutes the beautiful, the moving, the mysterious, the poetical misunderstanding, that the two do not themselves discover it; and precisely because of this, the poet is their only, their beloved confidant, because neither does he discover it.

When this love takes an oath, it really gives itself that significance by which it swears; it is the love itself which casts a glamor over that by which it swears, so it consequently not only does not swear by anything higher but it really swears by something lower than itself. So indescribably rich is this love in its loving misunderstanding; for just because it is itself an infinite wealth, a limitless trustworthiness, it happens that when it wishes to take an oath it swears by something lower, but it does not even discover this. That is why it again happens that this oath which certainly should be and which also honestly believes itself to be supremely serious, is still the most charming jest. And neither does the mysterious friend, the poet whose perfect confidence is this love’s supreme understanding, understand it. Still it is certainly easy to understand, that if one will swear in truth then one must swear by something higher; only God in heaven is truly in a position to swear by Himself. However, the poet cannot understand this, that is, the individual who is a poet can understand it, but he cannot understand it insofar as he is poet, since “the poet” cannot understand it; for the poet can understand everything—in riddles, and can wonderfully explain everything—in riddles, but he cannot understand himself, or understand that he himself is a riddle. Should he be forced to understand that, then would he, if he did not become enraged and resentful, say sadly: “Would that no one had forced this comprehension upon me, which disturbs that which is most beautiful, which confuses my life, while I can make no use of it.” And so far the poet is right, for the true understanding solves the vital question of his existence. There are in this way two riddles, the first is the love of the two, the second is the poet’s explanation of it, or that the poet’s explanation of it is also a riddle.

So this love takes an oath, and then the two add to the oath that they will love each other “forever.” If this is not added, then the poet does not unite the two; he turns indifferently away from such a temporal love, or he turns mockingly against it, whereas he forever belongs to that eternal love. There are then really two unions, first, the two who will love each other forever, and then the poet who will forever belong to those two. And in that the poet is right, that if two men will not love each other forever, then their love is not worth talking about, and certainly not worth celebrating in verse. On the other hand, the poet does not notice the misunderstanding that the two swear by their love to love each other forever, instead of swearing their love to each other by eternity. Eternity is the higher; if one wishes to take an oath, then must one swear by the higher, but if one will swear by the eternal, then one swears by the duty of loving. Alas, but that favorite of lovers, the poet! Even more seldom than the two true lovers is he himself the lover for whom he longs, he who is a marvel of lovableness. He is like the affectionate child, he cannot endure hearing this “shalt”; as soon as it is said to him, he either becomes impatient, or he bursts into tears.

Hence, this immediate love contains the eternal in the form of a beautiful fantasy, but it is not consciously grounded on the eternal, and therefore it can be changed. Even if it does not change, it still retains the possibility of change, for it depends on good fortune. But if what is true of fortune is true about happiness, which if we think of the eternal cannot be considered without sadness, it is like saying with a shudder: “Happiness is, when it has been.” That is, as long as it existed, or was existing, a change was possible; only when it is past can one say that it existed. “Call no man happy as long as he is living”; as long as he is living his fortune may change; only when he is dead, and happiness had not forsaken him while he lived, can one know that he—had been happy. What merely exists, what has suffered no change, always has the possibility of change outside itself. Change is always possible; even at the last moment it may come, and not until life is finished can one say:

“The change did not come”—or perhaps it did come. That which has suffered no change certainly has continuance, but it does not have immutability. Insofar as it has continuance it exists, but insofar as it has gained immutability through change, it cannot become contemporaneous with itself, and then it is either happily unconscious of this disproportion, or it is inclined to sadness. For the eternal is the only thing which can be and become and continue contemporaneously with every age. On the other hand, temporal existence is divisive in itself, and the present cannot be contemporaneous with the future, or the future with the past, or the past with the present. As to that which by undergoing change gained immutability, one cannot merely say, when it has existed, “It existed,” but one can say, “It has existed while it existed.” Just this is what affords the security, and it is an entirely different relation from that of happiness. When love has undergone the change of eternity through having become duty, then it has gained immutability, and it follows as a matter of course that it exists. It is not a matter of course that what exists at this moment also exists the next moment, but it is a matter of course that the immutable exists.

We say that something has stood the test, and we praise it when it has met the test. But we are still talking about the imperfect, for the immutability of the immutable will not and can not become apparent by undergoing a test—for it is immutable, and only the perishable can give itself the appearance of immutability by meeting a test. That is why it would never occur to anyone to say about sterling silver that it will stand the test of years, because it is sterling silver. So too with love. The love which merely has continuance, however happy, however blissful, however confident, however poetic it is, must still stand the testing of the years; but the love which underwent the change of eternity through becoming duty, won immutability; it is sterling.

Is this love which underwent the change of eternity therefore less practicable, less useful in life? Is sterling silver less useful? Surely not; but language involuntarily and thought consciously honors sterling silver in a characteristic way, for one merely says of this that “one uses it.” There is simply nothing said about testing it; one does not insult it by wishing to test it, for one knows already that sterling silver stands the test. Therefore if one uses a less reliable product, then one is compelled to be more tactless and to speak less simply; one is compelled to speak almost ambiguously, to say two things, that “one uses it and while he uses it, he is also testing it,” for it is always possible that it might change.

Consequently, only when love is a duty, only then is love eternally secure. This security of eternity drives out all anxiety and makes love perfect, perfectly secure. For in that love which only has continuance, however confident it is, there is still an anxiety, an anxiety about the possibility of change. It does not itself understand, as little as does the poet, that it is anxiety; for the anxiety is hidden, and there is only the burning desire for the expression of love, which is just the admission that anxiety lies at the bottom. How otherwise does it happen that the immediate love is so inclined to, moreover, so enamored with the idea of putting love to the test? This is just because love has not, through becoming duty, in the deepest sense undergone the “test.” Hence this, which the poet would call sweet unrest, wishes more and more rashly to make the test. The lover would test the beloved, friend would test the friend; the testing no doubt is based on love, but this violently burning desire to test, this wishful craving to put love to the test, nevertheless testifies that the love itself is unconsciously insecure. Here again is a mysterious misunderstanding in the immediate love and in the explanations of the poet. The lover and the poet think that this desire to test love is simply an expression for how certain it is. But is this really true? It is absolutely true that one does not care to test what is unimportant; but from that it does not follow that wishing to test the beloved expresses confidence. The two love each other, they love each other forever, they are so certain of this that they—put it to the test. Is this the highest certainty? Is not the relation here precisely what it is when love takes an oath and yet swears by what is lower than love? So here the highest expression of the lovers for the constancy of their love is an expression of the fact that it merely has existence, for one tests that which merely has existence, one puts it to the test.

But when it is a duty to love, there no test is needed and the insulting stupidity of wishing to test is superfluous; since love is higher than any oroof, it has already more than met the test, in the same sense as faith more than conquers.” The very fact of testing always conditions a possibility; it is still always possible that that which is tested may not meet the test. Hence if someone wished to test whether he has faith, or tried to get faith, then this would really mean that he will hinder himself in acquiring faith; he will become a victim of the restless cravng where faith is never won, for “thou shalt believe.” If a believer were to implore God to put his faith to the test, then this is not an inlication of the believer’s having faith to an extraordinary degree (to hink that is a poetic misunderstanding, as it is also a misunderstandng to have faith to an “extraordinary” degree, since the ordinary deyree of faith is the highest), but it indicates that he does not quite have faith, for “thou shalt believe.” There is no higher assurance, and the ‘epose of eternity is never found anywhere but in this “shalt.” How-ver attractive it may be, “testing” is a disquieting thought, and it is inxiety which would make you imagine that the testing constitutes a higher assurance; for the idea of testing is in itself ingenious and inexhaustible, just as human wisdom has never been able to reckon all the chances, while, on the contrary, as earnestness so excellently says, “Faith has taken all chances into account.” And if one must, then it is eternally decided; and if you are willing to understand that you must love, then is your love eternally secure.

And love is also through this “shalt” eternally secure against every change. For the love which merely has continuance can be changed, it can be changed in itself, and it can be changed from itself.

The immediate love can be changed in itself, it can be changed into its opposite, into hate. Hate is a love which has become its opposite, a love which has perished. At bottom love burns constantly, but the flame is that of hate; only when the love is burnt out is the flame of hate also quenched. As it is said about the tongue, that “out of the same mouth proceedeth both blessing and cursing,” so we must also say that it is the same love which loves and hates; but just because it is the same love, precisely therefore, it is not in the eternal sense the true love, which remains the same and unchanged, while that immediate love, if it is changed, at bottom is still the same. The true love which underwent the change of the eternal by becoming duty, is never changed; it is simple, it loves—and never hates, never hates—the beloved. It might seem as if the immediate love were the stronger because it can do two things, because it can both love and hate; it might seem as if it had a quite different power over its object when it says, “If you will not love me, then I will hate you”: still this is only an illusion. For is the changed really a stronger power than the unchangeable? And who is the stronger, the one who says, “If you will not love me, then I will hate you,” or the one who says, “Even if you hate me I shall continue to love you’? Moreover, it is certainly terrifying and terrible that love should be changed into hate; but I wonder for whom it is really terrible; is it not for the one to whom it happened that his love was changed to hate?

The immediate love can undergo a change; it can spontaneously become jealousy, can change from the greatest happiness into the greatest agony. So dangerous is the heat of this immediate love, however great its desire is, so dangerous, that this heat can easily become a sickness. The immediate love is like fermentation, which is so-called just because it has still undergone no change, and therefore has not yet separated out from itself the poison which at the same time furnishes the heat of the fermentation. If love sets itself on fire through this poison, instead of separating it out, then comes jealousy; and, alas! the word itself indicates a desire to become sick, a sickness of desire [Iver —desire, Sygdom—sickness; hence Iversyge, desire-sickness, or jealousy]. The jealous person does not hate the object of love, far from it, but he tortures himself with the fire of reciprocated love, which sanctifyingly ought to purify his love. The jealous lover intercepts, almost imploringly, every ray of love from the beloved, but he focuses all these rays upon his own love through the burning glass of his jealousy, and he is slowly consumed. On the other hand, the love which underwent the change of eternity through becoming duty, knows no jealousy; it loves, not only as it is loved, but it loves. Jealousy loves as it is loved; in jealous agony about whether it is loved, it is as equally jealous for its own love, whether it may not be disproportionate to the other’s indifference, as it is jealous for the expression of the other’s love; anxiously tortured in its self-occupation, it neither dares to believe the beloved absolutely nor to resign itself absolutely, lest it give too much, and therefore it is always burning itself, as one burns himself on that which is not hot—except to the alarmed touch. It is comparable to spontaneous combustion. It might seem as if there would be quite a different kind of fire in the immediate love, since it can become jealousy; but, alas, this fire is just the appalling thing about it. It might seem as if jealousy held its object fast in quite a different way when it watches over it with a hundred eyes, while simple love has, as it were, but a single eye for its love. But I wonder if dispersion is stronger than unity. I wonder if a heart wrenched asunder is stronger than one perfect and undivided. I wonder if a perpetually grasping anxiety holds its object closer than the united forces of simplicity! And how does that simple love assure itself against jealousy? I wonder if it is not by virtue of the fact that it does not love in a comparative way. It does not begin by immediately loving preferentially, it loves; therefore it can never love morbidly in a comparative way—it loves.

The immediate love can be changed from itself, it can be changed by the years, as is so often seen. Then love loses its ardor, its gladness, its desire, its primitiveness, the freshness of its life; like the river which sprang out of the rock when it later on spreads out in the sluggishness of stagnant water, so love is weakened by the lukewarmness and indifference of habit. Alas, perhaps of all enemies force of habit is the most crafty, and above all it is crafty enough never to let itself be seen, for one who sees the habit is saved from habit. Habit is not like other enemies which one sees and against which one strives to defend himself; the struggle is really with one’s self in getting to see it. In its cunning it is like that familiar beast of prey, the vampire bat, which stealthily falls upon its sleeping victim; while it sucks his blood, its gently moving wings waft the coolness over him, and make his slumber even more refreshing. Such is habit—or it is even worse; for that animal seeks its prey among the sleeping, but it has no means of soothing the waking to sleep. Habit, on the contrary, has this power; it creeps soporifically upon a man, and when he has fallen asleep, then it sucks his blood, whilst it wafts the coolness over him and makes his sleep even more delicious.

So the immediate love can be changed from itself and become unrecognizable—for hate and jealousy are still perceptible in the love. So a man himself sometimes notices, as when a dream floats by and is forgotten, that habit has changed him; then he wishes to make good again, but he does not know where he can go to buy new oil to enkindle his love. Then he becomes despondent, irritated, bored by himself, bored by his love, bored by the wretchedness of things as they are, bored by the fact that he cannot change them; alas, for he had not paid attention in time to the change of eternity, and now he has even lost the power to endure the healing.

Oh, we sometimes see with sorrow the impoverishment of a man who once lived in affluence, and yet how much more distressing than this change it is to see love changed into something almost abhorrent! —If, on the contrary, love has undergone the change of eternity by becoming duty, then it does not know the force of habit, then habit can never get power over it. As it is said of the eternal life, that there is neither sighing nor weeping, so we might add that there is also no habit; and thereby we truly are not saying anything less excellent. If you wish to save your soul or your love from the perfidy of habit—moreover men believe that there are many ways of keeping themselves awake and safe, but truly there is but one: eternity’s “shalt.” Let the thunder of a hundred cannon three times a day remind you to resist the thraldom of habit; keep, as did that mighty Eastern emperor, a slave who daily reminds you, keep a hundred; have a friend who reminds you every time he sees you, have a wife who reminds you early and late in love: but watch yourself lest this too becomes a habit! For you can become accustomed to the thunder of a hundred cannon, so that you can sit at table and hear the most insignificant remark more clearly than the roar of the hundred cannon you are—in the habit of hearing. And you can become accustomed to having a hundred slaves remind you every day, so that you no longer listen, because through habit you have developed an ear wherewith you hear and yet do not hear. No, only the “thou shalt” of eternity—and the listening ear which will hear this “thou shalt,” can save you from the thraldom of habit. Habit is the most distressing change, and, on the other hand, one can accustom one’s self to every change; only the eternal, and consequently that which underwent the change of eternity through becoming duty, are the unchangeable, but the unchangeable can never become habit. However firmly a habit is fixed, it never becomes unchangeable, even if a man remains incorrigible; for habit is constantly that which should be changed; the unchangeable, on the contrary, is that which neither can nor should be changed. But the eternal never becomes old and never becomes habit.

Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love everlastingly free in blessed independence. But is, then, that immediate love not free; does not the lover enjoy freedom in his love? And, on the other hand, could it be the intention of the discourse to recommend the desolate independence of self-love, which became independent because it did not have the courage to bind itself, and hence became dependent on its cowardice; the desolate independence which vacillates because it found no place of refuge, and is like “the one who wanders hither and thither, an armed brigand, who puts up wherever evening finds him”; the desolate independence which independently will not endure fetters—at least not visible ones? Oh, far from it; on the contrary, we have in the preceding discourse reminded you that the expression for the greatest wealth is to have a need; and this is also the true expression of freedom, that it is a need in the free. He in whom love is a necessity certainly feels free in his love; and just the one who feels himself so dependent on his love that he would lose everything in losing the beloved, just he is independent. Yet on one condition, that he does not confuse love with the possession of the beloved. If one were to say, “Either love or die,” and thereby meant that a life without love was not worth living, then we should admit that he was absolutely right. But if by this he meant possessing the beloved, and consequently meant, either possess the beloved or die, either gain this friend or die, then we must say that such a love is dependent in a false sense. When love does not make the same demands upon itself as it makes on the object of its love, while it is still dependent on that love, then it is dependent in a false sense; the law of its existence lies outside itself, and hence it is dependent in the corruptible, earthly, temporal sense. But the love which underwent the change of eternity by becoming duty, and loves because it must love, it is independent; it has the law of its existence in the relation of love itself to the eternal. This love can never become in a false sense dependent, for the only one it is dependent upon is duty, and duty is the only emancipating power. Immediate love makes a man free one moment, and in the next moment dependent. It is like a man’s coming into existence; by existing, by becoming a “self,” he becomes free, but in the next moment he is dependent on this self. Duty, on the other hand, makes a man dependent and at the same time eternally independent. “Only the law can give freedom.” Alas, we often think that freedom exists, and that it is the law which restricts freedom. However, it is just the other way; without law freedom simply does not exist, and it is the law which gives freedom. We think, too, that it is the law which makes distinctions, because where there is no law there are no distinctions. Still it is the other way; when it is the law which makes the distinction, then it is exactly the law which makes everyone equal before the law.

Thus this “shalt” sets love free in blessed independence; such a love stands and falls not by some accidental circumstance of its object, it stands and falls by the law of eternity—but then it never falls; such a love does not depend upon this or that, it depends only on—the one liberating force, consequently it is eternally independent. There is nothing comparable to this independence. Sometimes the world praises the proud independence which believes it feels no need of being loved, although it also thinks that it “needs other men, not to be loved by them, but in order to love, in order to have someone to love.” Oh, how false is not this independence! It feels no need to be loved, and yet it needs someone to love; consequently it needs another man—in order to be able to satisfy its proud self-esteem. Is not this as when vanity believes that it can dispense with the world, and yet needs the world, that is, it needs that the world should become conscious of the fact that its vanity does not need the world! But the love which underwent the change of eternity by becoming duty, certainly feels a need of being loved, and this need together with this “shalt” is therefore an eternally harmonious concord; but it can do without this love, if so it must be, while it still continues to love: is this not independence? This independence is dependent only on love itself through the “shalt” of eternity; it is not dependent on anything else, and therefore it is not dependent on love’s object as soon as this appears to be something else. However, this does not indicate that the independent love then ceased, transformed itself into a proud self-satisfaction; that is dependence. No, love abides, it is independence. The unchangeableness is the true independence; every change, be it the swoon of weakness or the arrogance of pride, the sighing or the self-satisfied, is dependence. If one man, when another man says to him, “I can no longer love you,” proudly answers, “Then I can also stop loving you”: is this independence? Alas, it is only dependence, for the fact as to whether he will continue to love or not depends on whether the other will love. But the one who answers, “Then I wnll still continue to love you,” his love is everlastingly free in blessed independence. He does not say it proudly—dependent on his pride; no, he says it humbly, humbling himself under the “shalt” of eternity, and just for that reason he is independent.

Only when tt is a duty to love, only then is love everlastingly secured against despair. Immediate love can become unhappy, can come to despair. Again, it might seem an expression for the strength of love, that it has the energy of despair, but this is only an appearance; for the energy of despair, however much it is recommended, is still impotence, its highest possibility is just its own destruction. Still, the fact that the immediate love can reach despair, shows that it is despairing, that even when it is happy, it loves with the energy of despair—Iloves another man “better than himself, better than God.” About despair it must be said: only he can despair who is desperate. When immediate love despairs over unhappiness, then it merely becomes evident that it wasdesperate, that in its happiness it had also been desperate. Despair consists in laying hold on an individual with infinite passion; for unless one is desperate, one can lay hold only on the eternal with infinite passion. Immediate love is thus desperate; but when it becomes happy, as we say, it is hidden from it that it is desperate, when it becomes unhappy it becomes evident that it—was desperate. On the other hand, the love which underwent the change of eternity by becoming duty, can never despair, just because it is not desperate. Despair is, namely, not something which may happen to a man, an event like fortune and misfortune. Despair is a disproportion in his inmost being—so far down, so deep, that neither fate nor events can encroach upon it, but can only reveal the fact that the disproportion—was there. Therefore there is only one assurance against despair: to undergo the change of eternity by the “shalt” of duty; anyone who has not understood this change is desperate; fortune and prosperity may conceal it; misfortune and adversity, on the contrary, do not, as he thinks, make him desperate, but they reveal the fact that he—was desperate. Insofar as we speak otherwise, it is because we frivolously confuse the highest concepts. That which really makes a man despair is not misfortune, but it is the fact that he lacks the eternal; despair is to lack the eternal; despair consists in not having undergone the change of eternity by duty’s “shalt.” Consequently despair is not the loss of the beloved, that is misfortune, pain, suffering; but despair is the lack of the eternal.

How then is the love enjoined by the commandment assured against despair? Quite simply, through the commandment, through this, “Thou shalt love.” It consists first and foremost in the fact that you must not love in such a way that the loss of the beloved would reveal the fact that you were desperate, that is, that you simply must not love despairingly. Does this mean that it is forbidden to love? By no means; that would indeed be a strange speech if the commandment which says “Thou shalt love,” should by its command forbid one to love. Hence the commandment merely forbids loving in a way which is not commanded; essentially the commandment does not forbid but commands that thou shalt love. Hence the commandment of love does not assure against despair by means of weak, lukewarm grounds of comfort, that one must not take things too seriously, and all that. And truly is such a wretched wisdom, which “has ceased to sorrow,” any less despairing than the despair of the lover, is it not rather an even worse form of despair! No, the commandment of love forbids despair—by commanding one to love. Who would have the courage to say this except eternity? Who is prepared to speak this “shalt” except eternity who, at the very moment when love would despair over its unhappiness, commands it to love? Where can this commandment arise except in eternity? For when it becomes impossible to possess the beloved in the temporal existence, then eternity says, “Thou shalt love,” that is, eternity saves love from despairing just by making it eternal. Suppose it is death which separates the two—when the one left would sink in despair: where then can he find help? Temporal consolation is an even more distressing kind of despair; but then eternity helps. When it says, “Thou shalt love,” then in saying that it says, “Thy love hath an everlasting validity.” But it does not say this consolingly, for that would not help; it says it commandingly, just because there is something wrong. And when eternity says, “Thou shalt love,” then it assumes the responsibility for guaranteeing that it can be done. Oh, what is all other consolation compared with that of eternity, what is all other deep-felt sorrow against that of eternity! If one would speak more gently and say, “Take comfort,” then the sorrowing would have objections ready; but—moreover, it is not because the eternal will proudly brook no objection—out of solici- “tude for the sorrowful, it commands, “Thou shalt love.”

Wonderful consolation! Wonderful compassion! For, humanly speaking, it is indeed the strangest thing, almost like mockery, to say to the despairing that he ought to do that which would be his sole wish, but the impossibility of which reduces him to despair. Is there any other proof needed that the commandment of love is of divine origin? If you have tried it, or if you do try it, go to such a sorrowing one at the very moment when the loss of the beloved threatens to overwhelm him, and see then what you can find to say; confess that you wish to console him; the only thing it will not occur to you to say is, “Thou shalt love.” And, on the other hand, see if this does not, as soon as it is said, almost embitter the sorrowing, because it seems the most unsuitable thing to say on this occasion. Oh, but you who had the bitter experience, you who at the hard moment found human consolation empty and annoyingwithout consolation; you who with terror discovered that not even the admonition of the eternal could keep you from sinking down: you learned to love this “shalt” which saves from despair! What you perhaps have often verified in minor situations, that true edification is, strictly speaking, that which taught you in the most profound sense: that only this “shalt” forever happily saves from despair. Eternally happy—aye, for only that one is saved from despair who is eternally saved from despair. The love which underwent the change of eternity by becoming duty, is not exempt from unhappiness, but it is saved from despair, in fortune and misfortune, equally saved from despair.

Lo, passion excites, earthly wisdom cools, but neither this heat nor this coolness, nor the blending of the heat and coolness is the pure air of the eternal. There is in this heat something ardent, and in this coolness something sharp, and in the blending of the two something indefinite, or an unconscious deceitfulness, as in the hazardous season of spring. But this “Thou shalt love” takes away all the unsoundness and preserves the soundness for eternity. Thus it is everywhere; this “shalt” of eternity is the saving, the purifying, the ennobling. Sit with one who is in deep sorrow; you may soothe for a moment if you have the ability to give expression to the passion of despair as not even the sorrowing is able to do; but it is still false comfort. It may for a moment tempt refreshingly, if you have the wisdom and the experience to afford a temporary outlook where the sorrowing sees none; but it is still false comfort. On the other hand, this “Thou shalt sorrow” is both true and beautiful. I have no right to harden my heart against the pain of life, for I must sorrow; but neither have I the right to despair, for I must sorrow; and yet neither have I the right to cease to sorrow, for I must sorrow. So also with love. You have no right to harden yourself against this emotion, for thou shalt love; but neither have you the right to love despairingly for thou shalt love; and just as little have you the right to corrupt this feeling in you, for thou shalt love.-You must preserve the love and you must preserve yourself, and in preserving yourself preserve your love. There where the purely human would rush forth, the commandment retards; there where the purely human would lose courage, the commandment strengthens; there where the purely human would become weary and prudent, the commandment enkindles and gives wisdom. The commandment consumes and burns up the unsoundness in your love, but through the commandment you will again be able to enkindle it, when humanly speaking it would cease. There where you think yourself easily able to advise, there you must take the commandment for counsel; there where you despairingly would direct yourself, there you must take the commandment for your counselor; but there where you do not know how to advise, there will the commandment give counsel, so that all is well.

---

← Volume I. I. The Hidden Life of Love and Its Recognition by Its Fruits · Contents · Volume I. II B. Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor →