IF a man for one reason or another fears that he will not be able to keep in mind a general survey of some long and complicated matter, then he tries to secure or obtain a brief epitomization of it as a summary. So death is the briefest epitome of life, or it is life carried back to its shortest form. That is why it has always been so important to those who truly reflect on the meaning of human life, to test very frequently by means of the brief epitome what they have understood about life, For no thinker has such a grasp on life as has death, that powerful thinker, who cannot merely think through every illusion, but can think it in part and as a whole, can think it to nothingness. If then all the manifold ways of life, as you survey them, create a confusion of mind, then go out to the dead, “where all ways meet’’—there the survey becomes easy. If your head swims from constantly looking at and hearing about the diversities of life, then go out to the dead; there you have power over the differences: between the “‘kinships of clay” there are no diversities, but only the close kinship. For the fact that all men are blood-relations, hence of one blood, this kinship is frequently denied in life; but that they are of one clay, this kinship of death, no one can deny.
Moreover, go out once more to the dead, in order there to get a view of life. That is the way a sharpshooter behaves; he looks for a place where the enemy cannot hit him, but from which he can hit the enemy, and where he can have a perfect position for taking aim. Do not choose the evening hour for your visit, for the tranquillity created by the evening and by an evening spent among the dead, is frequently not far removed from a certain exaltation of mood which strains and “fills one with unrest,” and submits new riddles, instead of explaining those already given. No, go out there in the early morning, when the morning sun peeps hetween the green leaves with changing lights and shadows, when the beauty and friendliness of the sea, when the whistling of the birds and the multitudinous life everywhere almost enable you to forget that you are among the dead. It will be to you as if you had come into a foreign land, which had remained unfamiliar with the confusions and separations of life; in the state of childhood, consisting for the most part of small families. Out here, namely, we may attain that to which we aspire in vain in life: the equal share. Each family has a little plot of earth for itself, of about equal size. The prospect is about the same for all. The sun may happen to shine equally over all; no building rises so high that it cuts off the rays of the sun or the refreshment of the rain or the fresh gusts of wind or the echo of singing birds, from neighbor or neighbor. No, here the shares are equal. For in life it may certainly happen that at times a family, which has lived in a prosperous abundance, must restrict itself; but in death they are all restricted. A little difference there may be, perhaps the difference of a cubit in the size of the lot, or one family may own a tree, which the other earthly lodger does not have upon his lot. Why do you think this difference is there? Its purpose is, by means of a profound jest, to remind you through its littleness of how great the difference was. So loving is death! For it is precisely love on the part of death, that by the aid of this little difference it reminds you in an elevating jest of how great the difference had been. Death does not say: “There is simply no difference”; it says, “There you can see how great the difference was: a half cubit.” If there were not this little difference, then neither would the concept of death be completely reliable. Thus in death life reverts to childishness. In the age of childhood it also made a great difference that one owned a tree, a flower, a stone. And this difference was an anticipation of the differences that would appear in life on quite a different scale. Now life is past, and between the dead a little hint of the difference remains behind which, as in jest, softens the memory of what had been.
Lo, out here is the place to meditate on life; by the aid of the brief epitome, which abbreviates all the complicated extensiveness of the relationship, to get a survey. How then could I, in writing about love, let the opportunity pass to make a test of what love really is? Truly, if you wish to ascertain what love is in yourself or another man, then must you notice how he behaves with respect to the dead. In order to make observations of a man, it is very important, for the sake of the observation, to see him in proportion, to see him by himself. But if a relationship exists between two actual men, so that the two are always seen together, the relationship becomes complicated, and makes the observation of the one alone difficult. This second man, namely, conceals something of the first man, and, furthermore, the second man may have so much influence over the first, that the first man seems to be different from what he actually is. Consequently a twofold appraisal is here necessary; the observer must take into account what influence the second man exercises through his personality, his characteristics, his virtues and his vices, upon the man who is the object of observation. If you should happen to see a man shadow-boxing in earnest, or if you should see a man dancing solo the dance he usually dances with someone else: then you would be able to observe his movements better than if he boxed with another actual man, or if he danced with another actual man. And if in conversation you understand the art of making yourself a cipher, you best get to know what is in the other man.