“Go thou and do likewise”’—does this sound like a poetic appeal, inviting him to sing?

Hence with the religious poet it is an individual matter, but of the worldly poet it holds good that insofar as he is poet, he is not Christian. And yet it is the worldly poets of whom we think when we speak of the poet in general. That the poet lives in Christendom makes no difference. Whether he is a Christian is not incumbent on us to decide, but insofar as he is poet he is not Christian. It might certainly seem that since Christianity has now existed so long, it must by now have penetrated every relationship—and all of us. But this is an illusion. And because Christianity has existed so long, that is certainly not saying that we have lived as long, or have so long been Christian. The poet’s existence in Christendom and the position which is conceded him (for rudeness and envious assaults upon him are certainly not Christian objections or arguments against his existence) are an earnest reminder about how much was received earlier, and about how easily we are tempted to imagine ourselves to be far in advance of ourselves. Alas! for while the Christian preaching is sometimes scarcely listened to, all listen to the poet, admire him, learn from him, are charmed by him. Alas! while one swiftly forgets what the preacher has said, how accurately and for how long a time does not one remember what the poet has said, especially when he has enlisted the aid of an actor! These remarks in no way suggest that the poet should be done away with, perhaps by force; for thereby we should only gain a new illusion. What would it avail to have no poets, if there were still so many in Christendom who were satisfied with the understanding of existence which the poet commands; so many who long for the poet! Nor is it asked of the Christian that in blind and doubtful zeal he should carry it to the point that he could no longer bear to read a poet—any more than it is required of the Christian that he should not eat the food customary for others, or that he should live apart from other men in a separate enclosure. No, but the Christian must understand everything in a different way from the non-Christian; he must understand himself in knowing how to make distinctions. A man would no more be able to live exclusively according to the highest Christian concepts all the time than he would be able to live by eating only at the Lord’s table. Therefore, let the poet exist, let the individual poet be admired as he deserves, if he really is a poet, but also let the individual in Christendom prove his Christian conviction by means of this test: how he regards the poet, what he thinks about him, how he reads him, how he admires him. However, there is rarely anything said about such matters in these times.

To many, unfortunately, these reflections will perhaps seem neither sufficiently Christian nor sufficiently earnest, just because they deal with those things which, it is well to note, occupy men so much six days of the week, and even on the seventh day absorb more hours than do godly matters. However, we trust—both because we have been instructed and trained in Christianity from childhood, and also because in our mature years we dedicated our days and our best efforts to this service, although, as we have repeatedly said, our speech is “without authority” —we trust that we know what should be said in these times and how to say it. We have all been baptized and instructed in Christianity, consequently there is nothing to say about disseminating it. Far be it from us, on the other hand, to judge that anyone who says he is a Christianis not; hence there is nothing to say about the professing Christian in contradistinction to the non-Christian, On the contrary, it is very profitable and necessary that the individual should carefully and conscientiously give heed to himself, and if possible help others (insofar as one man can help another, for God is the true helper) to a more and more profound understanding of what it means to become a Christian. The word “Christendom” as a general appellation for an entire people is a superscription which may easily say too much, and therefore may easily cause the individual to believe too much about himself. It is customary, at least in other places, to place signposts on the highway to indicate where the road leads. Perhaps at the very moment a man sets out on a journey he sees a signpost that says that this road leads to that distant place which is his own destination: has he therefore reached that place? So is it, too, with this guidepost, Christianity. It indicates the direction, but has one therefore reached the goal, or is one always merely—on the way? Or is it really progressing on the road if, for a single hour once a week, a man walks along this way, while the other six days he lives in absolutely different conceptions, and meanwhile makes no effort himself to understand how this can be consistent?

And is this really earnestness: to keep silent about the true state of the case and the conditions, in order to speak with extreme earnestness about the more earnest matters, which nevertheless might well be omitted in the confusion, whose relation to this earnestness one—from sheer earnestness—does not explain? Who then has the more difficult task, the teacher who lectures on earnestness as something at a meteoric distance from daily affairs, or the disciple who wishes to make an application of this explanation? Is only that a deception: the keeping silent about what is earnest? Is it not an equally dangerous deception to mention it—but under circumstances, and to present it—but in a light totally different from the daily life of actuality? If it is true that the entire worldly life, its splendors, its diversions, its enchantments, can captivate and ensnare a man in so many ways, which then is earnestness: either, out ofsheer earnestness to keep silent in church about worldly matters, or to speak seriously about them in order, if possible, to strengthen men against worldly dangers? Would it really be impossible to speak about worldly matters in a solemn and truly serious manner? And if it were impossible, does it therefore follow that the godly address should keep silent about them? Ah, no, it would only follow that it should be prohibited in the godly address on the more solemn occasions.

Consequently we shall test the Christian conviction of the poet. What does the poet teach about earthly love and friendship? Here it is not a question about this or that particular poet, but only about the poet, that is, only about him insofar as he, as poet, is true to himself and his task. Thus, if a so-called poet has lost faith in the poetic validity of love and friendship, and in its conceptions, and has posited something else in its place, then he is not a poet, and, perhaps that other thing that he posits instead, is also not Christian, but sheer bungling. Earthly love is based on an impulse which, explained as affection, has its highest, its unqualified, its poetically unqualified, exclusive expression in the fact that there is but one single object of love in the whole world, and that only the first time of falling in love is love, is everything, the second falling in love nothing. It is customary to say, speaking proverbially, that once is nothing; here, on the contrary, once is unconditionally everything, a second time the unconditional destruction of everything.

This is poetry, and the emphasis lies unconditionally upon the highest expression of passion: to be or not to be. To love a second time too is not loving, but is abhorrent to poetry. If a so-called poet would have us imagine that earthly love can repeat itself in the same man, if a socalled poet wishes to occupy himself with clever foolishness which presumably would exhaust the mysteriousness of passion in the “why” of cleverness, then he is not a poet. Nor is that which he posits in place of poetic love, Christian love. Christian love teaches love to all men, unconditionally all. Just as unconditionally and strongly as earthly love tends toward the idea of there being but one single object of love, equally unconditionally and strongly Christian love tends in the opposite direction. If a man with respect to Christian love wishes to make an exception in the case of one man whom he does not wish to love, then such love is not “also Christian love,” but it is unconditionally not Christian love.

And yet there is much the same confusion in our so-called Christendom: the poets have given up passionate love, they yield, they relax the tension of passion, they knock off (by adding to) and believe that a man, in the sense of falling in love, can love many times, so that there are consequently several objects of love; the [so-cailed] Christian love also yields, relaxes the tension of eternity, lessens its demands and thinks that when one loves a great deal, then it is Christian love. So both the poetic and the Christian love become confused; and that which takes their place is neither poetic nor Christian. Passion always has this unconditional characteristic, that it excludes the third party, that is, the third party makes for confusion. To love without passion is an impossibility; but the distinction between earthly and Christian love lies therefore in the one possible eternal difference of passion. Any other difference between earthly and Christian love cannot well be imagined. If a man, therefore, were to think that he could at one and the same time understand his life by the aid of the poet and by the help of Christian explanations, were to believe that he could understand these two explanations jointly—and in such a way that they gave meaning to his life—then he is in error. The poetic and the Christian explanations are exact opposites; the poet idolizes earthly affection, and therefore he is absolutely right in saying, since he constantly thinks only of earthly love, that to command one to love is the greatest of follies and the most absurd saying; as Christianity is always thinking only of the Christian love, it is also absolutely right when it pushes earthly love from the throne and sets this “shalt” in its place.

The poet and Christianity present exactly opposing explanations, or more exactly expressed, the poet really explains nothing, for he explains earthly love and friendship—in riddles; he explains earthly love and friendship as riddles, but Christianity explains love eternally. From this again we see that it is an impossibility to live at one time according to both explanations, for the greatest possible contradiction between two explanations is certainly that the one is no explanation, and the other is an explanation. Earthly love and friendship, therefore, as the poet understands them, involve no moral problem. Love and friendship are a matter of chance; it is fortunate, poetically understood (and certainly the poet has an excellent understanding of good fortune), the highest good fortune, to fall in love, to find the one and only beloved; it is good fortune, almost equally as great a good fortune, to find the one and only friend. At most, the moral task lies only in being duly thankful for one’s good fortune. On the other hand, the task is never that one must find the beloved, or find this friend; this cannot be done, as the poet very well understands. The problem consequently depends on whether fortune will furnish one with a task; but this is precisely the same as saying that morally understood there is no task.

If, on the other hand, one must love his neighbor, then the task is the moral task, which is again the source of all tasks. Just because Christian morality is the true morality, it knows how to cut short extensive reflections, to cut off the voluminous preambles, to do away with temporary delays, and to prevent wasting time. The Christian is immediately close to his task because he has it in himself. There is a great dispute in the world as to what is to be called the highest. But whatever is called so, whatever the demarcation is: it is incredible that there should be so many complications connected with apprehending it. On the other hand, Christianity at once teaches a man the shortest way to find the supreme good: “Shut thy door and pray to God”—for God is certainly the highest. And if 2 man will go out into the world, then he may perhaps go far—and go in vain, travel around the worldand in vain, in order to find the beloved or the friend. But Christianity never suffers a man to take even a single step in vain; for the door you closed in order to pray to God, when you open it again and go out, then the first man you meet is your neighbor whom you must love. Wonderful!

Perhaps a maiden tries curiously and superstitiously to learn her future fate, to see her future lover; and a fraudulent wisdom makes her imagine that when she has done something so and so, then she will know him because he will be the first one she will meet on such and such a day. I wonder if it would also be so difficult to get to see one’s neighbor—if one did not prevent himself from seeing him; for Christianity has made it eternally, impossible to be mistaken about him; there is not in the whole world any single man who is so certainly and so easily recognizable as the neighbor. You can never confuse him with any other man, for all men are the neighbor. If you confuse another man with your neighbor, then in the last analysis there is no mistake, for the other man is also your neighbor. It is your fault if you will not understand who your neighbor is. If under cover of darkness you save a man’s life, believing that you are saving your friend’s life—but instead it turned out to be your neighbor, then this is not a fault; alas, on the other hand, it becomes precisely a fault if you were only willing to save your friend. If your friend complains over the fact that you, as he believes, through an error did for your neighbor what he thought you would do only for him, then rest assured it is your friend who is wrong.

The point at issue between the poet and Christianity can be quite accurately defined in this way: Earthly love and friendship are partiality and the passion of partiality; Christian love is self-denying love, therefore it vouches for this “shalt.” To exhaust these passions is bewildering. But the extreme passionate limits of partiality lie in exclusiveness, in loving only one; the extreme limits of self-denial lie in self-sacrifice, in not excluding a single one.

In other times when a man had made an earnest effort to understand Christianity, he believed that Christianity had something against earthly love because it is based on impulse; he believed that Christianity which, as spirit, has set dissension between flesh and spirit, hated earthly love as being sensual. But this was a misunderstanding, an overstraining of the spiritual. In addition, it can easily be shown that Christianity is very far from irrationally wishing to excite the sensual in a man by teaching him eccentricity; does not Paul say that it is better to marry than to burn! No, just because Christianity is in truth spirit, therefore it understands by the sensual something different from what one naturally calls the sensual; and just as little as it has wished to forbid men to eat and drink, just so little has it taken offense at a natural impulse, which a man certainly did not give himself. By the sensual Christianity means the carnal, the selfish; there can be no imaginable dispute between spirit and flesh unless there is a rebellious spirit on the part of the flesh, with which the spirit then strives; thus there can be no imaginable conflict between the spirit and a stone, or between the spirit and a tree, Consequently the sensual is selfishness. And it is just because of this that Christianity harbors a suspicion about earthly love and friendship, because partiality in passion, or passionate partiality, is really another form of selfishness.

Lo, this too is something paganism never dreamed of. Because paganism has never had any idea of self-denying love for the neighbor whom one “must” love, therefore it classified it thus: selfishness is abominable because it is selfishness; but love and friendship, which are passionate partiality, are love. But Christianity, which has made manifest what love is, classifies it in a different way: selfishness and passionate partiality are essentially one; but love to the neighbor is love. “To love the beloved,” says Christianity, “is that to love?’ And it adds, “Do not even the heathen the same?’ “To love one’s friend, is that to love?” says Christianity. “Do not even the heathen the same?” If therefore someone were to believe that the distinction between heathendom and Christianity lies in the fact that the beloved and the friend in Christianity are loved with a wholly different loyalty and tenderness than in heathendom, then this is a misunderstanding. Does not paganism also show examples of love and friendship so perfect that the apprentice poet goes back to them? But no one in heathendom loved his neighbor. No one suspected that he existed. What heathendom, then, called love, as distinguished from selfishness, was partiality. But a passionate partiality is essentially another form of selfishness; so here again one sees the truth of the saying of the venerable Fathers: “that the virtues of heathendom are shining vices.”

That passionate partiality is another form of selfishness will now be demonstrated, together with its converse, that self-denying love loves the neighbor as one should love. As selfishly as self-love closes about this only “self,” whereby it becomes selfishness, equally selfishly the passionate partiality of love closes about this only beloved, and the passionate partiality of friendship about this one friend. The beloved and the friend are therefore called, remarkably and profoundly enough, the other self, the other I—for the neighbor is the other you, or, to be quite accurate, the third person in the equilateral. The other self, the other I. But wherein lies the selfishness? It lies in the I, in the self. Would not then selfishness also stick at loving the other I, the other self? Truly one does not need to be any great judge of character in order, by the help of this clue, to make discoveries serious for others and humiliating to one’s self, about earthly love and friendship. The fire which exists in selfishness is spontaneous, the I ignites itself by itself; but in earthly love and friendship, poetically understood, there is also spontaneous ignition. True enough, as we say, it is only at times, and then morbidly, that jealousy shows itself; but from that it by no means follows that it is not at bottom always present in earthly love and friendship. Test it: introduce between the lover and the beloved the neighbor as the intermediate person one must love: interpose the neighbor between friend and friend as the intermediate person that one must love: and you will instantly see the jealousy. But nevertheless the concept of neighbor is precisely the middle term of self-abnegation, which enters between the I and I of selfishness, but also between the I and the other I of earthly love and friendship. That it is selfishness when a faithless lover wishes to get rid of the beloved, wishes to leave a friend in the lurch, paganism also realized, and the poet sees it. But only Christianity sees that the devotion with which the lover gives himself up to this one, with which, moreover, he clings to him, is selfishness. But can devotion and limitless submission still be selfishness? Surely yes, when the devotion is to the other I, the other self.

Let a poet describe how earthly love must exist in a man so that he can call it love; he will mention much which we do not stop for here, but then he will add: “and then there must be admiration, the lover must admire the beloved.” The neighbor, on the contrary, is never mentioned as an object of admiration; Christianity has never taught that one should admire the neighbor—but one must love him. Hence there must be admiration in earthly love, and the stronger, the more intense the admiration is, the better, says the poet. Now to admire another man is certainly not selfishness. But to be loved by the only one admired, would not this relationship selfishly come back to the I who loves—his other I? And so too with friendship. To admire another man is certainly not selfishness, but to be the only friend of this only admired friend—would not this relationship in a serious way revert to the I from which it started? Is this not plainly the danger of selfishness, that when one has but a single object of admiration, that then the one admired reciprocally makes the admirer the sole object of his love or of his friendship?

To love the neighbor, on the contrary, is self-denying love and drives out all partiality, just as it drives out all selfishness—otherwise the selfabnegation would also make distinctions and feel partiality for partiality. Even if passionate partiality had no other selfishness in it, it still has this, that there is, consciously or unconsciously, willfulness in it, unconsciously insofar as it is subject to natural laws, consciously insofar as it unrestrainedly abandons itself to and assents to the power of this law. However secret, however unconscious the self-will is in its passionate devotion to its “sole object,” this arbitrariness is everywhere manifest. That sole object was not found through obedience to that royal law, “Thou shalt love,” but through choosing, moreover by unconditionally choosing, that one single individual—for Christian love, too, has but one single object, the neighbor, but the concept of neighbor is as far as possible removed from being one single man, infinitely far from that, for the neighbor is all men. When the lover or the friend, as the poet delights to hear, can love only this one man in the whole world, then there is in this prodigious devotion a prodigious willfulness, and in this impetuous, boundless devotion, which is really devotion to himself, the lover is really selfish. Self-abnegation wishes to root out this selfishness, this willfulness, through the “thou shalt” of eternity. And the self-abnegation which in judgment enters in to test the selfishness is two-edged, so that it cuts equally both ways. We know very well that there is a selfishness which one may call faithless selfishness, but we know too equally well that there is a selfishness which may be called devoted selfishness. The task of self-abnegation is therefore twofold: to distinguish between these two forms. As regards the faithless selfishness which wishes to evade, the task is: sacrifice yourself; with respect to the devoted selfishness, the task is: renounce this sacrifice. And that which pleases the poet immeasurably, that the lover should say: “I cannot love anyone else, I cannot get along without love, I cannot give up this love, it would be my death, I should die of love,” does not please the selfabnegation at all; it simply cannot bear to have such devotion honored by the name of love, since it is selfishness. Self-abnegation first passes its judgment, and then sets the task: love thy neighbor, him thou shalt love. Everywhere where Christianity exists there is also self-abnegation, which is Christianity’s essential form. In order to live as a Christian, one must first and foremost become sober; but self-abnegation is exactly the transition through which a man, in the meaning of the eternal, becomes sober. On the other hand, wherever Christianity does not exist, the intoxication of self-esteem reaches its maximum, and this intoxicated exaltation is what is admired. But earthly love and friendship are the highest expression of self-esteem; they are the I intoxicated in the other I. The more closely the two I’s cling together to form one I, the more this united self selfishly excludes all others. At the supreme apex of earthly love and friendship the two actually become one self, one I. This is explicable only because partiality contains a natural force (impulse—inclination) and a selfishness which can selfishly unite the two in a new selfish self.

Spiritual love, on the contrary, takes away from myself all natural impulses and all selfishness, and therefore love for my neighbor cannot make me into one with my neighbor in a united self. Love for the neighbor is love between two beings, each eternally determined as spirit. Love to the neighbor is spiritual love, but two spirits can never become one self in a selfish sense. In earthly love and friendship the two love each other by virtue of their dissimilarities, or by virtue of their similarities which underlie the differences (as when two friends love each other because of a similarity in morals, character, occupations, training and so on, consequently because of the similarity by which they differ from other men, or by which they resemble each other in being different from other men), therefore the two can in a selfich sense become one self; neither of them is yet himself the spiritual determination of “self,” neither of them has as yet learned to love himself in the Christian sense of the word. In earthly love the ego is sensually-psychically-spiritually determined, the beloved a sensual-psychicalspiritual determination; in friendship the ego is psycho-spiritually defined, the friend a psycho-spiritual determination. Only in love to one’s neighbor is the self which loves, purely spiritually defined as spirit, and the neighbor a purely spiritual qualification. Therefore what we said at the beginning of this discourse by no means applies to earthly love and friendship, that only one man is needed who is recognized as neighbor, in order to cure a man of selfishness, if in this one man he loves his neighbor. For in the beloved and the friend the neighbor is not loved, but the other I, or the first I, once more, even better. It is frequently as if a man, although selfishness is predominant, does not have the strength to be selfish alone, so that his selfishness does not really appear until his other ego is found, and the two egos in this union find strength for the selfish self-esteem.

If anyone thinks that a man by falling in love or by having found a friend, has learned to know the Christian love, then he is seriously mistaken. No, if anyone is in love and in such a way that the poet would say about him that “he really is in love,” then the commandment of love may be changed a little when it is said to him, and yet say the same thing. The commandment of love may say to him: “Love your neighbor as you love your sweetheart.” And yet, since he does not love his sweetheart “as himself,” what does the commandment which speaks about the neighbor command? Certainly he loves, but the beloved he loves “as himself” is not the neighbor, the beloved is the other I. Whether we are speaking about the first I or about the other I, we do not thereby come a step nearer to the neighbor; for the neighbor is the first you. In its strictest sense selfishness at bottom loves the other I, for the other I is himself. And yet this is certainly selfishness. But in the same sense it is selfishness to love the other I, who is the beloved or the friend. And as selfishness in the strictest sense has been described as self-worship, so earthly love and friendship (as the poet understands them, and on his understanding this love stands or falls) are idolatry. For ultimately love to God is the decisive thing; from it stems love to the neighbor, but paganism never suspected this. They left God out; they made earthly love and friendship into love, and abominated selfishness. But the Christian commandment of love commands men to love God above all else, and next to love the neighbor. In earthly love and friendship partiality is the middle term. In love to the neighbor, God is the middle term; if you love God above all else, then you also love your neighbor and in your neighbor every man. Only by loving God above all else can one love his neighbor in the other man. The other man, this is the neighbor who is the other man in the sense that the other man is every other man, Consequently, thus understood, the discourse was right when in the beginning it said that if a man loves his neighbor in one single other man, then he loves all men.

Love to the neighbor is therefore the eternal equality in loving, but the eternal equality is the opposite of partiality. This needs no extensive discussion. Equality precisely consists in not making distinctions, and eternal equality is unconditionally not to make the least distinction, unqualifiedly not to make the least distinction; partiality, on the other hand, consists in making a distinction, a passionate distinction, in making an unlimited distinction.

But has not Christianity then, when by its “Thou shalt love” it pushed earthly love and friendship from the throne, set something far higher in their place? Something far higher—however, let us speak with caution, the caution of orthodoxy. People have confused Christianity in many ways, but among others also, in that by calling it the highest, the most profound, they made it appear that the purely human is related to the Christian as the high or the higher is to the most high and to the supreme. Alas, but this is a deceptive way of speaking which falsely and indecently allows Christianity officiously to wish to ingratiate itself with human inquisitiveness or curiosity. Is there really anything of which humanity as such, anything of which the natural man is more desirous than of the highest! If but a newsmonger trumpets that his most recent news is of the highest importance, then he succeeds famously in attracting those worldly followers who from time immemorial have had an indescribable predilection for and have felt a deep need of—being deceived. No, the Christian is certainly the highest and the supreme category, but it is well to note too that to the natural man it is an offense. He who in qualifying the Christian as the highest category, omits the intermediate qualification of offense, sins against it; he perpetrates an audacity more abominable even than if a modest wife were to array herself like a ballet dancer; even more terrible than if that austere judge, John the Baptist, were to dress like a dandy. The Christian category is in itself too heavy, too serious in its movements to whisk about like a dancer in the triviality of such easygoing speeches about the higher, the highest, the all-highest. The Christian Way is the way of offense. This is not to say that the approach to the Christian Way should be by giving offense: this would certainly hinder one self in another way from apprehending Christianity; but offense guards the approach to the Christian way. Blessed is he who is not offended by it. Now also as to this command about loving the neighbor. Only admit, or if it is embarrassing to you to speak in this way, then I shall admit, that many times it has offended me, and that I am still very far from imagining that I have fulfilled this commandment, which to flesh and blood is an offense, and to wisdom foolishness. If you, my hearer, are perhaps what we call an educated man, well, I too am educated. But if I think by the help of “education” to come nearer this highest, then I am greatly in error. And the error lies just here; for we all wish for education, and education constantly has “the highest” on its lips; moreover, no bird that has learned one single word repeats this word more incessantly, and no crow repeats its own name more uninterruptedly, than the educated constantly harp on “the highest.” But the Christian “highest” is by no means the “highest” of the educated, and the Christian “highest” disciplines precisely through the repulsion of offense. You will readily see this; for truly, has your education, or do you believe that any man’s enthusiasm for an education, has taught him to love his neighbor? Alas, has not education and the zeal for acquiring it rather developed a new kind of difference, the difference between the educated and the uneducated? Only listen to what is said among the educated about earthly love and friendship, what equality in education a friend must have, how a girl must be educated and just in what way. Read the poets who scarcely know how to preserve their independence as over against the powerful dominance of the educated classes; scarcely dare to believe in the power of love to break the chain of distinctionsdoes it seem to you that this speech, this poem, or that a life which is consistent with this speech and this poem, bring a man any nearer to loving his neighbor? Lo, here again the signs of the offense stand out.

For consider the most cultured man you know, about whom we all admiringly say, “He is so cultured,” and then consider Christianity which says to him, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor “Moreover, a certain urbanity in all relations, a courtesy toward all men, a friendly condescension toward inferiors, a confident bearing toward the influential, an admirably controlled freedom of spirit: truly that is culture—do you believe that it is also loving your neighbor?

The neighbor is your equal. The neighbor is not your beloved for whom you have a passionate partiality, not your friend for whom you have a passionate partiality. Nor, if you are an educated man, is your neighbor the one who is educated, with whom you are equal in education—for with your neighbor you have human equality before God. Nor is the neighbor the one who is more distinguished than yourself, that is, he is not your neighbor just because he is more distinguished than yourself, for loving him because he is more distinguished can then easily become partiality, and insofar selfishness. Nor is your neighbor one who is inferior to you, that is, insofar as he is humbler than yourself he is not your neighbor, for to love one because he is inferior to yourself can readily become the condescension of partiality, and insofar selfishness. No, loving your neighbor is a matter of equality. It is encouraging in your relation to a distinguished man, that in him you must love your neighbor; it is humbling in relation to the inferior, that you do not have to love the inferior in him, but must love your neighbor; it is a saving grace if you do it, for you must do it. The neighbor is every man; for he is not your neighbor through the difference, or through the equality with you as in your difference from other men. He is your neighbor through equality with you before God, but every man unconditionally has this equality, and has it unconditionally.

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