To hope all things, or what amounts to the same thing, always to hope. It certainly seems at first glance as if hoping all things were something which might be done once for all, since “all things” gathers all the many into one, and insofar into what one might call an eternal moment, as if hope were at rest, in tranquillity. However, this is not so. For hoping means the synthesis of the eternal and the temporal; the consequence is that the expression for the task of hope in the form of eternity is to hope all things: for the task of hope in the form of the temporal existence always to hope. One expression is no truer than the other; on the contrary, each of the expressions becomes untrue if it is set in opposition to the other, instead of being united in expressing the same thing: at every moment always to hope all things. Hoping lays hold upon the future, on the possibility, which again, as distinguished from reality, is always a duality—the possibility of progress or retrogression, of building up or tearing down, of good or of evil. The eternal “is,” but when the eternal touches on the temporal, or is in the temporal, they do not meet each other in the “present,” for then the present would itself be the eternal. The present, the moment, is so swiftly past that it does not really exist except as a dividing line, and it is consequently past while the past is what had been the present. Hence when the eternal is in the temporal, then it is in-the future (for the present cannot lay hold on it, and the past is past) or in the possibility. The past is the actual, the future the possible; the eternal is everlastingly the eternal; in time the eternal is the possible, the future. We therefore call the day tomorrow the future, but we also call the eternal life the future. The possible, as such, is always a duality, and the eternal is equally proportional in the possibility to its duality. On the other hand, if a man who is concerned with the possible, lays hold equally on the duality of the possible, then we say: he is expectant. Expecting contains in itself the same duality as does the possible, and to expect is to relate oneself to the possible clearly and only as such. On that the relationship divides, inasmuch as the expectant man makes a choice. To lay hold expectantly on the possibility of the good is to hope, which just for this reason cannot be any temporal expectation, but is an eternal hope. To lay hold expectantly on the possibility of evil is to fear. But the one who hopes as well as the one who fears is expectant. Yet as soon as the choice is made, the possible is changed, for the possibility of the good is the eternal. It is only in the moment of contact that the doubleness of the possible is equal. By the decision to choose hope one decides, therefore, infinitely more than it seems, for it is an eternal decision. Only in the mere possibility, hence for the merely or indifferently expectant, are the possibilities of good and of evil equal; in the making of a distinction (and choice is the making of a distinction) is the possibility of the good more than possibility, for it is the eternal. Hence it happens that he who hopes can never be deceived; for to hope is to expect the possibility of the good, but the possibility of good is the eternal.

So we must define more exactly what it means to hope; in ordinary speech we often call that hope which is by no means hope, but is a wish, a longing, a yearning expectation, now for one thing, now another, in short, it is the laying hold by the expectant on the multitude of possibilities. Thus understood (when hope really merely indicates expectation) the youth and the child find it easy enough to hope, because the youth and the child are themselves still a possibility. And, on the other hand, it is again quite proper, when one sees how with the years the possible, or the sense for the possible, and the hope very frequently diminish in men. This may explain why experienced people speak in such a disparaging way about hope, as if it belonged only to youth (as the hope of the youth and of the child certainly do), as if hoping, like dancing, were something youthful, something which older people neither enjoyed nor had the facility for. Oh, well, it is easy to hope and also to do by the aid of the eternal, that is, by the aid of the possibility of good. And even if the eternal is far from being youthfulness, it still has far more in common with youthfulness than with the sullenness which is frequently honored by the name of earnestness; than with the slowing down of the years which under fairly fortunate conditions are as such fairly satisfied and calm, but after all have nothing to hope for, and which under unfortunate conditions are more disposed to grumble peevishly than to hope. In youth a man has expectation and possibility enough; it develops of itself in the young, like the precious myrrh which drips from the trees in Arabia. But then when a man has become older, then his life becomes more often than not an indolent repetition and paraphrase of the same thing. No possibility frightens it awake, no possibility animates it rejuvenatingly; hope becomes something which is neither here nor there, and possibility something as rare as greens in winter.

One gets along without the eternal by the aid of habit, shrewdness, imitation, experience, custom and use. And truly, take all this, bring it together prepared by the smoldering or merely earthly-blazing fire of passion, and you will see you can get all kinds of things out of it, a variously prepared tough slime, which one calls judicious living. But no one ever gets any possibility from it, the possibility, that wonderful possibility, which is so infinitely fine (not the most delicate spring shoot is so delicate!), so infinitely fragile (not the finest of woven linen is so fragile!), and yet precisely brought about, created, by the help of the eternal, and so stronger than everything, if it is the possibility of the good.

One thinks to speak empirically by dividing a man’s life into certain periods and years, and then calling the first period that of hope or of possibility. What nonsense! In that way one absolutely leaves out the eternal in speaking about hope, and yet one talks about hope. But how is that possible, since hope lays hold on the possibility of the good, and thereby on the eternal! On the other hand, how is it possible to speak about hope in such a way that one must assume that it belongs exclusively to a certain age? The eternal certainly extends over the whole life, so there is and consequently must be hope until the last, so there is consequently no exclusive age which is hope’s, but the whole of one’s life must be the time of hope! One also thinks to speak empirically about hope—by discarding the eternal. As in the theater by shortening the time and by condensing the incidents one gets to see the events of many years in the course of a few hours: so one wishes theatrically to arrange matters in the temporal existence. One rejects God’s plan of existence: the temporal existence is safe and sound development, the complication—the dissolution of eternity. One arranges everything within the temporal existence, expends a score of years on the development, then ten years on the complications of existence; then some year one draws the knot too tight, and then dissolution follows. Undeniably, death is also a dissolution, and then it is past; one is buried—yet not before the dissolution of corruption has set in. But truly everyone who does not wish to understand that one’s whole life must be a time of hope, he is in despair, regardless of, completely regardless of whether he knows it or not; whether he deems himself lucky in his supposed well-being, or he spends a toilsome life in boredom and trouble. Everyone who dismisses the possibility of his existence being forfeited the next moment—if he does not dismiss this possibility because he hopes for the possibility of the good, hence everyone who lives without possibility, he is in despair; he breaks with the eternal, he arbitrarily ends the possibility, he makes an end, where there is no end, without the assent of eternity; instead of being like the one who writes according to another’s dictation, who constantly has the pen ready for the next word, so that he does not presume irrelevantly to place a period before the meaning is complete, or rebelliously to throw the pen aside.

If someone wishes to help a child with a very hard task, what does he do? Certainly he does not set the whole task all at once before the child, so that the child becomes discouraged and gives up all hope of accomplishing it. He assigns a small portion at a time, but always enough so the child does not stop as if it were finished, and yet not so much that the child cannot manage it. This is the gentle deception of education; it really holds something back. If the child is deceived, does it happen because the teacher is a man who cannot answer for the next step? But now eternity; that is still the greatest task that is set for a man, and, on the other hand, it can still vouch for what comes next; and the child of the temporal existence (the man) still acts like a little child regarding the infinite task! If eternity were sometime and in its own language to set man the task without regard for his apprehension and his limited ability: the man would be in despair. But then it is truly wonderful that this, the greatest power, eternity, can make itself so small, that it is so divisible, that that which is everlastingly one, by putting on the form of the future, of the possible, by the help of hope, educates the child of the temporal existence (the man), teaches him to hope (for hoping is itself an education, is the laying hold on the eternal), if he does not then voluntarily austerely choose to be dispirited through fear, or if he does not impudently choose to despair, that is, to evade the education of the possibility. Rightly understood, the eternal assigns only a little portion at a time in the possibility. Eternity is through the possible always near enough at hand, and yet far enough away to keep a man moving forward, progressing, toward the eternal. Thus eternity draws and lures man by the possibility from the cradle to the grave, if he will but choose to hope. For the possibility is, as was said, twofold, and just because of this it is the true education. The possibility is equally as severe, or can be equally as severe, as it can be gentle. Hope does not lie as a matter of course in the possibility, for fear may also lie in it. But the one who chooses hope, him the possibility, by the aid of hope, teaches to hope. Still the possibility of fear, the severity, remains, secretly present as a possibility, if it should be needed for the sake of the education, for the purpose of arousing; but it remains hidden, while the eternal allures by the aid of hope. For the alluring always consists in being equally as near as far away, whereby the hopeful one is always kept hoping, hoping everything, preserved in hope for the eternal, which in the temporal existence is the possible.

So it is with hoping all things. But lovingly to hope everything indicates the relation of the lover to other men, so that in his relation to them, in hoping for them, he always keeps the door of possibility open with infinite preference for the possibility of the good. Hence, he lovingly hopes that at every moment there is the possibility, the possibility of the good for the other man; this, the possibility of the good, indicates the increasingly glorious progress in the good from perfection unto perfection, or the rising again after the fall, or salvation from perdition, and so on.

That the lover is right, that at every moment the possibility exists, is easily perceived. Alas, but perhaps many would far more easily understand it, were we to allow despair to say the same thing—for in a certain sense despair does say the same thing. The despairing one knows, too, what lies in the possibility, and yet he gives up the possibility (for renouncing the possibility is just what despair means), or, even more correctly, he ventures impudently to assume the impossibility of the good. Again it appears here that the possibility of the good is more than possibility; for when one ventures to assume the impossibility of the good, then all possibility has ceased for him. The apprehensive one does not assume the impossibility of the good; he fears the possibility of evil, but he does not infer, he does not venture to assume the impossibility of the good.

“It is possible,” says despair, “it is possible that even the most honest enthusiast might sometime become weary, renounce his striving, and sink down in the service of wretchedness. It is possible that even the most fervent believer might sometime let go of faith and choose disbelief. It is possible that even the most ardent love might become chilled, become cold. It is possible that even the most upright man might still go astray and be lost. It is possible that even one’s best friend might be changed into an enemy, even the most loyal wife be changed to a wanton: all this is possible, therefore despair, relinquish hope, above all, do not hope in any man or for any man!” Yes, all these things are certainly possible, but then, too, the converse is also possible. “Therefore never unlovingly give up any man or your hope for him, for it might be possible that even the most prodigal son might still be saved; that the most bitter enemy, alas, he who was your friend, it is possible that he might again become your friend; it is possible that he who sank lowest, just because he had stood so high, it is still possible that he might again be lifted up; it is still possible that the love which grew cold, might again be fanned into flame: therefore never give up any man, not even at the last moment; do not despair, rather hope all things!” Hence, “it is possible,” insofar as the despairing and the lover agree on the same thing; but then they are eternally separated, for despair hopes nothing at all for others, love hopes everything. Despair loses courage, and now sometimes makes use of the possibility as a delightful means of stimulation, if one can sometimes be amused by the unstable, vainglorious, weird blazing of the possibility. It is noticeable enough, and it shows how deeply hope is entrenched in mankind, that one finds among men who were chilled in despair, a dominant inclination to toy and trifle with the possibility, a sensuous misuse of the imagination. Coldly and defiantly the despairing man will not hope for the other man, even less work for the possibility of the good in him; but the despairing one delights in letting the other man’s fate play the buffoon in the possibility; indifferent to hope or fear, he delights to play with the other man’s fate, to consider now one, now another possibility, to seesaw in the air, while he himself proudly and unkindly despises it all.

Still, by what right do we call a man despairing who gives up another man? It is one thing to despair yourself; it is something else to despair about another man. Oh, well, but if that is still true which the lover understands, and if it is true that one, if one is the lover, understands what the lover understands, that at every moment there is the possibility of the good for the other man: then the giving up of another man as hopelessly lost, as if there were no hope for him, is a proof that one is not one’s self the lover; and hence the one who gives up the possibility is the despairing man. No one can hope unless he also is loving; he cannot hope for himself without also being loving, for the good qualities hang infinitely together; but if he is loving, he also has hope for others. And to the same degree as he hopes for himself, absolutely to the same degree he hopes for others; and to the same degree as he hopes for himself, absolutely to that same degree he is the lover. And to the same degree as he hopes for others, absolutely to that same degree, he hopes for himself; for this is the infinitely precise, eternal like for like, which is in everything eternal.

Oh, everywhere where love is, there is something so infinitely profound! The true lover says: “Hope everything, give up no man, for to give him up is to give up your love for him—for if you do not give that up, then you have hope. But if you give up your love for him, then you cease to be the lover.” But we generally talk in another way, in an imperious and unkind fashion of our relation to the love in us, as if one were himself the master and autocrat of his love in the same way that a man is of his money. If someone says, “I have stopped loving that man,” then he thinks that it is “that man who loses, the man who had been the object of his love. The speaker even believes that he controls his own love in the same way as when one who has assisted another man with money says, “I have stopped giving him this assistance,” so that the giver now keeps the money himself which the other had formerly received, the one who is now the loser. For when it is a matter of money, the giver is far from losing it through this change of policy with regard to giving. But it is not so with love; perhaps the one who had been the object of love loses, but the one who “has given up his love for this man,” he is the loser. Perhaps he does not notice it, perhaps he does not notice that his very words mock him when he says, “I have given up my love.” But if he has given up his love, then he has ceased to be loving. To be sure he adds “my love for this man,” but this does not help in the same way that it does about money, for it cannot be that way with love. The adjective “loving” does not apply to me when I have given up “this man,” although, alas! I may even have imagined that he was the one who lost.

And so, too, with regard to the fact of despairing of another manthat is one’s self to be in despair. Moreover, it loses little time, this reflection! One grows worse so easily and so readily by despairing over another man—and presumably being certain of one’s self, full of hope for one’s self; and the very men who self-complacent feel safest personally, are the quickest of all to despair over others. But however easy it is, it still cannot really be done—except in thoughtlessness, which certainly is the easiest for many men. No, here again is the eternal like for like, to despair over another man is to be one’s self in despair.

For the lover hopes all things. And that is true which the lover says, that, according to his understanding, even at the last moment there is the possibility of the good, even for the most disheartened, hence, there is also hope. It is true, and it will be true for everyone in his relations to other men, if he will hold his imagination in check, undisturbed and unobscured by unkind passions, with the eternal view of the reflection of the eternal in the possibility. If therefore a man cannot understand what the lover understands, then it must be because he is not the lover; it must be because there is something which prevents him from keeping the possibility clear (for if the possibility is kept clear, everything is possible), while he lovingly chooses the possibility of the good, or hopes for the other man. It must be because there is something which oppresses a man and gives him a tendency to expect faintheartedness, destruction and perdition for the other man. This sense of oppressiveness is the worldliness and thus the earthly passions of the unloving mind. For worldliness is in itself heavy, hard, supine, slow, out of harmony, and cannot admit the possibility, least of all the possibility of good, either for its own sake or for the sake of another.

There is a shrewdness which, almost proud of this shrewdness, believes that it has a particularly profound knowledge of the shabby side of existence, the knowledge that everything ends in wretchedness: how could one with this viewpoint even at the last moment be able in love to hope for another man, who already early in the day begins to expect and to be prepared for his destruction!—There is wrath and indignation; even if one does not have murder on his conscience, he still hopelessly gives up the hated, hence he takes the possibility away from him; but is not this to slay him spiritually, spiritually to thrust him down into the abyss—insofar as that depends on wrath and indignation!

There is an evil eye. How could an evil eye be able lovingly to catch sight of the possibility of the good! There is envy. It is swift to give a man up, and yet it does not really so much give him up as it lets him go; not only that, it is early ready to help along his destruction. And when this has been made certain, then envy hastens to its spiteful retreat and calls together its even more abominable kinsfolk, who are called spitefulness, so that they may rejoice together—to their own detriment.

There is a cowardly, timorous pettiness, which does not have the courage to hope anything for itself! How then could it hope the possibility of the good for others? For that it is too petty, and has too much kinship with envy! There is a worldly, vainglorious mind which would die of shame and disgrace if it should happen to make a mistake, to be made a fool of, to become a laughingstock (the most terrible of all horrors!) through having hoped for another man something which did not come to pass. So this vainglorious and worldly mind insures itself by hoping nothing, and it finds the idea of lovingly hoping all things so infinitely foolish and so infinitely laughable. But in that the vanity of the world is wrong, for what is foolish is never infinite; that would be exactly the consolation of one who while he lived must endure much of the world’s foolishness, so that he might always be able to say: “It does not last forever, no, God be praised! it has an end.” Nor is experience right in saying that the wisest thing is not to hope everything for another man—yet, of course, experience is right, otherwise it must learn and teach how foolish it is for a man to love others for the sake of his own advantage; and only insofar as a man does that is he unwise in hoping everything.

When then all this, this shrewdness, this wrath and indignation, this envy, this spitefulness, this cowardly, timorous pettiness, this worldly, vainglorious mind, when all this, or at least some of it, is in a man, and in the same degree as it is present in him: then there is no love, and in the same degree as all this is present in him, the love is correspondingly less. But if there is less of love in him, there is also less of the eternal; but if there is less of the eternal in him there is also less possibility, less sense of the possibility (for the possibility arises from the fact that the eternal touches in time the eternal in man; if there is nothing eternal in this man, the contact with the eternal is in vain, and there is no possibility); but if there is less possibility there is also less hope, just because and as there is less love, which might lovingly hope the possibility of the good. The lover, on the other hand, hopes everything; no indolence of habit, no pettiness of understanding, no sophistry of prudence, no amount of experience, no slackness of the years, no bitterness of evil passions corrupt his hope for him or falsify the possibility. Every morning, aye, every moment, he renews his hope and recreates the possibility, while love abides and he in it.

Even if the lover is not able to do anything else for others, even if he is not able to bring any other gift: he still brings the best gift, he brings hope. There, where everything seems so hopeful and is so rich in expectation for the promising youth, there love still brings the best gift, hope; but also there where men already for a long time have believed they had held out to the uttermost, there too love hopes to the last, moreover to the “last day,” for not until then is hope past. If you have ever seen a physician going about among the sick, then you have certainly noticed that the best gift he brings, better than all medicine, and better even than his care, is the hope he brings, when it is said, “The doctor hopes.” Still a doctor has only to do with temporal conditions, therefore it must happen again and again that the moment comes when it would be false for him to deny that he had given up the sick, that the sickness was unto death. But the lover—what joy for the lover that he always dares to hope; what joy to him that eternity always vouches to him that there is always hope. For the lover, the true lover, does not hope because eternity vouches to him for it, but he hopes because he is the lover and he thanks eternity that he dares hope. And so he always brings the best gift, better than congratulations on the greatest happiness, better than all human sympathy for the greatest unhappiness; for hope, the possibility of good, is the support of eternity. When all the calamities befell the race, hope still remained behind On that paganism and Christianity are agreed; the difference is, and it is an infinite one, that Christianity has an infinitely lower conception of all these calamities, and an infinitely more blessed conception of hope But the hope which remained, remained only with the lover. If there were no love, then neither would there be hope; it would be like a letter which lies uncalled for. If there were no love, it would be with hope as with a letter whose contents would be so very welcome, but where there was no one to deliver the letter. Then love, although greater than hope, would assume it as its duty and its task, to bring hope

However, is there not something dark, something obscure in all this reflection, so that one cannot rightly decide what it is all about? For

“Love hopeth all things” may indicate that the lover hopes everything for himself, and it may indicate that the lover lovingly hopes everything for others. But this is after all one and the same; and this obscurity is simply the clarity of the eternal, if one understands that it is absolutely one and the same. If it is love alone which hopes everything (and Paul does not say that hope hopes everything, but that love hopes everything, just because, as he says, love is greater than hope), then it follows as a matter of course (because it is love and because of what love is) that the lover hopes everything for others, since his love is the condition of his hope for himself. Only earthly understanding (and its clarity is not to be recommended), only earthly understanding, which understands neither love nor hope, believes that hoping for one’s self and hoping for others are two entirely different things, as well as that love is a third thing in itself. Earthly understanding thinks that a man can just as well hope for himself without hoping for others; and that he does not need love in order to hope for himself, whereas he certainly needs love in order to hope for others, for the beloved; and why should one hope for any others than these? Earthly understanding does not notice that love is by no means a third thing in itself, but it is the middle term: without love no hope for one’s self, with love hope for all others; to the same degree as one has hope for one’s self, to the same degree one hopes for others, for to that same degree one is loving.

Blessed be the lover, he hopes all things; even in the last moment he hopes the possibility of good for the most perverted. He learned it from eternity; but only because he was the lover could he learn from eternity, and only because he was the lover could he learn this from eternity. Woe to him who with respect to another man gave up hope and possibility, woe to him, for thereby he himself lost love!

Love hopes all things and—is never put to shame. We speak in relation to hope and expectation, about being put to shame; we believe that one is put to shame when his hope or expectation is not fulfilled. In what does the disgrace consist? Certainly it must lie in the fact that one’s calculating cleverness has not reckoned correctly, that (to one’s shame) it becomes apparent that one has irrationally miscalculated himself. But, good heavens! the disgrace would not be so dangerous; it is after all really so only in the eyes of the world, whose ideas of honor and shame one would still not take pride in appropriating for one’s self. For that which the world most admires and alone honors, is shrewdness, or acting cleverly. But to act cleverly is certainly the most contemptible thing of all. If a man is clever, he is in a certain sense not responsible for that; that he develops his cleverness is nothing to be ashamed of; it is rather the more clever. And it is certain (something which particularly needs to be said in these clever times, where cleverness has really become that which must be overcome by the help of Christianity, as were once ferocity and savagery), if men do not learn to despise acting cleverly as profoundly as they despise stealing or bearing false witness: then one completely does away with the eternal, and along with it everything which is sacred and worthy of honor—for acting cleverly simply consists in employing one’s whole life in bearing false witness against the eternal, in stealing existence from God. Acting cleverly is, namely, incompleteness, whereby one undeniably gets farthest in the world, gains worldly goods and advantages, and the world’s honor, because the world and worldly advantages are, everlastingly understood, incompleteness. But neither eternity nor the Holy Scriptures have ever taught any man to strive to come far or farthest in the world; on the contrary they warn him not to come too far in the world, in order, if possible, to keep himself pure from the world’s pollution. Still, if this is the condition, then it does not seem to be something to recommend to anyone who aspires to getting farthest or far in the world.

If anything can be truly said about being put to shame as regards hope and expectation, the source of the disgrace must lie deeper, must lie in what one hopes, so that one is essentially put to shame equally whether one’s hope is fulfilled or not; the difference will only be that when the hope is not fulfilled, perhaps in one’s resentment and despair it then becomes evident how firmly one had adhered to that for which it was shameful for him to hope. If hope were fulfilled, this would not perhaps have become apparent, but the disgrace would essentially have been the same,

Still, if one hopes for something for which it is a disgrace to hope, regardless of whether the hope is fulfilled or not, one does not really hope. It is a misuse of the noble word “hope” to juxtapose it with anything like that; for the fact of hoping lays hold essentially and eternally on the good—so one can never be disgraced by hoping.

One may (in order for a moment to use the wrong word) be put to shame through hoping for one or another earthly advantage—if it does not materialize. But the disgrace does not really lie in the fact that it does not happen, that one’s hope was unfulfilled, the disgrace consists in its now becoming evident, through one’s being disappointed, how important such a worldly advantage would be to one. This is, therefore, not hoping, it is wishing, desiring, expecting; and so one can be made to feel ashamed.—One can be put to shame through giving up hope for another man—if it now appears that he is nevertheless, saved, or perhaps even that his destruction lay in our imagination. In this case one is really put to shame because it is a disgrace to one to give up another man, whatever the outcome is.—One can be put to shame through hoping something evil for a man—if it appears that everything turns out for the good for him. The vindictive man says sometimes that he hopes to God that vengeance will overtake the one he hates. But truly this is not hoping, but hating; and it is shameless to call it hoping; blasphemous to wish to make God a partner in hating! The vindictive man is not put to shame because things do not turn out as he expected, but he is and would be put to shame regardless of what happens.

The lover, on the contrary, hopes everything, and is never put to shame. The Scriptures speak about a hope which will not be ashamed. Thereby one thinks immediately of the hope which concerns the one who hopes, his hope for the forgiveness of sins, and sometime of becoming eternally happy; his hope for a blessed reunion with those from whom death or life had separated him. And only in relation to this hope, which is hope, could there be any question of being put to shame; for truly it would not be a disgrace to one to have had this hope, but on the contrary, an honor, and hence it might seem that the shame would be in the nonfulfillment of the hope. So consistent is the Scripture usage, it does not call all kinds of expectation, the expectation of the manifold, hope; it knows only one hope, the hope, the possibility of the good and of this hope, the only one which might be put to shame, because the fact of having it, say the Scriptures, is an honor which shall not be put to shame.

Yet, if the lover’s hope is for another man, might it not be possible that the lover would be put to shame—if his hope were not fulfilled? Is it not possible that a man might be eternally lost? But now if the lover had hoped everything, had hoped the possibility of the good for this man, then would he be put to shame through having had this hope?

How! If the prodigal son had died in his sins, and had consequently been laid in his grave with shame—and the father who even in this last moment had hoped all things, stood near: did he stand there disgraced? I thought it was the son who was disgraced, the son who brought shame to the father—but then the father must have honor, for it is impossible to put to shame one who is shamed. Alas, this troubled father was least concerned about the honor; but truly he stood there in honor! If there were on that side of the grave no salvation for the prodigal son, if he were eternally lost—and the father who, as long as he lived, had persisted in hoping all things, even still at the hour of death had hoped all things: would he in eternity be put to shame? In eternity! No, eternity has the conception of eternity about honor and shame; eternity does not even understand, it separates from itself as the dishonored, the clever who will only talk about how far now one’s expectation had achieved fulfillment, but who do not consider at all what that expectation was. In eternity everyone will be forced to understand that it is not the outcome which conditions the honor or the shame, but the expectation itself. In eternity, therefore, it will precisely be the unloving one, who still perhaps was right in what he pettily, enviously, hatefully expected for another man, he will be put to shame although his expectation was fulfilled. But the honor belongs to the lover. And in eternity there will be no busy gossip heard about his having made a mistake—perhaps it would also be a mistake to become eternally happy; no, in eternity there is but one mistake: to be, together with his fulfilled, petty, envious, hateful expectations, excluded from eternal happiness! And in eternity no mockery will wound the lover because he was foolish enough to make himself a laughing-stock through hoping everything; for in eternity the cry of the mocker is not heard, even less than in the grave, because in eternity naught is heard but the voices of the blessed! And in eternity no envy will touch the wreath of honor which the lover bears with honor; no, envy does not reach so far. However far it reaches, it does not reach from hell to Paradise!

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