Oh, but when a man is related to the dead, then in this relationship there is only one, for the dead man is not a reality. No one, no one can so well make himself into “no one” as the dead, for he is “no one.” Hence there can here be no question of any irregularity in the observation; here the living becomes manifest, here he must appear as he absolutely is; for a dead man, aye, he is a subtle man, he has completely withdrawn himself; he has not the slightest influence, either disturbing or abetting, on the living who is related to him. A dead man is no actual object, he is only the occasion which constantly reveals what the living is who is related to him, or which helps to reveal how the living is, who is not related to him.

For we also certainly have duties toward the dead. If we ought to love the men we see, then, too, those we have seen, but see no longer, because death has taken them from us. We should not disturb the dead by lamentations and weeping; we should behave toward the dead as we behave toward one who is sleeping, whom we do not have the heart to awaken, because we hope that he will soon awaken of himself. “Weep then softly over the dead, for he has attained repose,” says Sirach; and I know no better way of signifying true remembrance than by this gentle weeping, which does not begin to sob immediately—and soon ceases. No, one should remember the dead, weeping softly, but weeping long. How long cannot be determined in advance, since no one in remembering knows definitely how long he will be separated from the dead. But the one who affectionately remembers the dead, may use some words from David’s psalm, where, too, there is talk about remembering, in his “If I forget thee, let my right hand forget its cunning; my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember thee; if I prefer not thee above my chief joy.”—Let him only remember that the task does not consist in saying this at once on the first day, but in continuing faithful to himself and to the dead in this mood, even if one is silent about it, which is usually preferable both for the sake of a certain sense of decency and of assurance.

It is a task; and one need not have seen much of life to have seen enough to assure him that it might well be emphasized that there is a task, a duty to be performed, in remembering the dead: the irresponsibility of supercharged human feelings, taken by itself, perhaps never appears greater than in just this relationship. And yet neither this feeling nor its violent expression is therefore false, that is to say, one believes what one says in the moment of speaking, but one satisfies one’s self and the passion of his undisciplined emotions by using expressions which bind him in a peculiar way; that is, there is perhaps seldom one who does not by his later expressions make his first expressions, although they were once true, untrue,

Oh, we speak so often about what a different view of human life we should have if everything was made manifest which life concealsah, if death would come out with what it knows about the living: what a terrible contribution to the sum of human knowledge, which at least human love simply does not encourage!

So let us then among the works of love not forget this one, not forget to observe

The work of love in remembering the dead is a work of the most disinterested love.

If we wish to assure ourselves that love is entirely disinterested, we must remove every possibility of requital. But this is exactly what happens with respect to the dead. If love persists notwithstanding this, then it is in truth disinterested.

Requitals, as regards love, may be very diversified. One may for that matter make it simply a matter of advantage and profit. It is certainly a very general practice, this “heathenish” “loving those who can make requital.” A requital in this significance is somewhat different from love itself, it is the heterogeneous. But there is also a requital homogeneous with love: love reciprocated. And there is still so much of good in the great majority of men that they would as a rule regard this requital of gratitude, discernment, renunciation, in short, the requital of love reciprocated, as the most significant one, even if, in another sense, they would not perhaps admit that it is a requital; therefore they would think that one could not call love self-interested because it aspires to this requital—But the dead make no requital in any sense.

There is in this respect a resemblance between lovingly remembering the dead and the love of parents for their children. The parents love the children almost before they are born, and long before they themselves develop consciousness, hence as non-beings. But a dead man is also a non-being. And these are the two greatest benefactions: to give a human being life, and to remember the dead; however, for the first there is a reciprocity of love, a requital. If the parents simply had no hope, no prospect at all, of sometime having joy in their children and reward for their loving solicitude—still there would certainly be many fathers and mothers who would always lovingly do everything for their children. Oh, but it is also certain that there would be many fathers and mothers whose love would become cold. It is not our intention thereby at once to pronounce such a father or mother as too unloving. No, but the love in them would still be so weak or the selfishness so strong, that there would be needed this joyous hope, this encouraging prospect. And with this hope and this prospect, everything would be all right. The parents can say to each other, “Certainly our little child has many years of life ahead of him; but during all these years we shall be enjoying him, and we hope that he will sometime reward our love, will, if he does nothing else, make our old age happy, as a requital for our care.”

The dead, on the contrary, make no requital. The one who lovingly remembers may perhaps also say: “I have a long time before me dedicated to remembering, but the prospect is first and last the same; there is in a certain sense nothing to hinder the prospect, for there is no prospect at all.” Oh, it is so hopeless in a certain sense, so ungrateful a task in the sense in which the countryman says it, so disheartening an occupation, to remember the dead! For a dead man does not thrive and grow as the child does, to meet the future: a dead man only molders more and more in certain corruption. A dead man does not gladden the one who remembers, as the child gladdens the mother; does not gladden him as the child gladdens her, when in answer to the question whom it loves best, it answers, “Mother.” The dead man loves no one best, he seems to love no one at all. Oh, it is so discouraging that he thus remains quiet down in the grave, while the yearning for him increases; so dispiriting that there can be no thought of any change except that of dissolution, more and more rapid! It is certainly true that he is not difficult as a child may sometimes be; he does not cause sleepless nights, at least not through his difficult behavior—(for strangely enough, the good child does not occasion sleepless nights, while, on the contrary, the better the dead man was, the more sleepless nights he occasions. Oh, but even with respect to the difficult child, there is still hope of and a prospect of requital through reciprocated love. But the dead makes no requital at all; whether you are sleepless and expectant on his account, or you absolutely forget him, it seems to be a matter of complete indifference to him.

If you therefore wish to prove whether you love disinterestedly, then sometime pay attention to how you behave toward the dead. Much love, unquestionably the most, if subjected to a sharper testing, would appear to be selfishness. But the fact of the matter is, that in a loverelationship between the living, there is always a hope and a prospect of requital, at least of a reciprocated love; and generally speaking, this is what happens. But this hope, this prospect, together with the requital, produces such an effect that one cannot definitely see what is love and what is selfishness, because one cannot see quite definitely whether requital is expected or not, and in what way. As regards the dead, the observation is so easy. Oh, if men were accustomed to love truly disinterestedly, one would certainly also remember the dead in a different way from what one ordinarily does, after the first, sometimes a fairly short, interval is past, in which one loves the dead with an extravagant wailing and lamentation.

The work of love in remembering the dead is a work of the freest love.

In order really to prove whether love is entirely free, one may remove all that which in any way might force from one the work of love. But this is precisely absent in relation to the dead. If then love, nevertheless, abides, then it is the freest love.

The things which can force the work of love from a man may be very different, and thus cannot be enumerated. The child cries, the poor begs, the widow importunes, regard compels, the wretched brings pressure, and so on. But none of the love in the work which is thus constrained is quite free.

The more insistent the needy are, the less free is the love. We generally take this into consideration concerning the parents’ love for the child. If one really desires to describe helplessness, and describe it in its most urgent form, one usually thinks about a tiny babe who lies in all its helplessness, by which 2, as it were, compels the love of the parents —seems to compel, for actually it compels only the love of the parents who are not what they ought to be. Hence, the tiny babe in all its helplessness! And yet, when a man first lies in the grave with three cubits of earth above him, then he is more helpless than that child!

But the child cries! If the child could not cry—ryes, there are still many fathers and mothers who would nevertheless tend it with loving care! Oh, but there would also be many who would at least many times forget the child. It is not our intention just on that account to call such a father or mother unloving; but the love in them is so weak, so selfish, that they need to be reminded of the child’s need.

The dead, on the contrary, does not cry like the child; he does not call himself to memory like the needy; he does not importune like the beggar; he does not compel regard; he does not force you by his evident wretchedness; he does not importune you as the widow did the judge: the dead is silent and says not a single word; he remains quite still, he does not move from his place—and perhaps he does not suffer evil! There is no one who troubles a living man less than the dead, and no one easier for the living to avoid than the dead. You can place your child out among strangers in order not to hear its crying; you can say you are not at home to avoid the beggar’s plea; you can disguise yourself so that no one will know you: in short, as regards the living, you may adopt many precautionary expedients, which still perhaps will not be completely able to reassure you; but with respect to the dead you do not need to use the least caution, and yet you are completely certain.

If that is anyone’s purpose, if it seems best to him to be quit of the dead, the sooner the better, then he may without any criticism and without being made the object of any lawsuit, become cold almost as soon as the dead man is cold. If it is only from a sense of shame (and then it is not on account of the dead) that he remembers to weep a little in the newspaper on the day of the burial, if he only takes care to show the dead the last honors—for the sake of appearances: then he might as well laugh at the dead in his—no, not before his eyes, for they are now closed. A dead man naturally has no rights at all in life; there is no magistrate who has anything to say about your remembering the dead; no magistrate who mixes into this relationship, as happens sometimes in the relationship between parents and children—and the dead himself certainly takes no step for the purpose of importuning or compelling. — If you therefore wish to prove whether your love is free, then pay attention occasionally as to how, in the course of time, you behave toward the dead.

If it did not seem so much like jesting (which it certainly is not, except for the one who does not know what earnestness is), then I should say we might place as an inscription over the gate to the burial place of the dead, “Here is no compulsion,” or “With us is no compulsion.” And yet I may well say it, I may well also have said it, and I may well maintain having said it; for I have reflected too much over death not to know that he who does not know before the resurrection from the dead, please note, how to make use of all the subtlety, all the profound playfulness that resides in death, simply cannot speak earnestly about it. Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal is. To the earnestness of death belongs exactly that strange awakening, that consonance of a profound mockery, which torn away from the thought of the eternal, is an empty often an impudent jest, but which in conjunction with the thought of the eternal, is precisely what it ought to be, and very different from the vapid earnestness which least of all lays hold on any thought involving such suspense as does the thought of death.

Oh, there is so much said in the world about the fact that love must be free; that one cannot love where there is the least coercion; that with respect to love, there simply must be nothing forced: oh, well, let us see then, when it comes to the point, how it stands with free lovehow the dead is remembered in love! for a dead man plainly does not compel. Moreover, at the moment of separation, when one cannot do without the dead, then there is lamentation. Is this the much discussed free love? Is this love for the dead? And then little by little, gradually as the dead molders away, so too the memory crumbles away between the fingers; one does not know what became of it; little by little one becomes free of this—difficult remembering. But to become free in this way, is this the free love, is this love for the dead? The proverb says, “Out of sight, out of mind.” And one can always be certain that a proverb is right about worldly matters. It is another thing that from the Christian standpoint, every proverb is untrue.

If it were true, all this which is said about free love, that is, if it happened, if it were carried into effect, if men were accustomed to love in this way, then men would also love the dead differently from the way they do. But the fact is that with respect to other human love, there is so frequently some compulsion, if no other, then the daily sight and habit, and therefore one cannot definitely see how far it is the love that freely holds its object fast, or how far it is the object which in one way or another, compels assistance. But with respect to the dead, everything is manifest. Here there is nothing, no compulsion at all. On the contrary, the loving memory of the dead has to defend itself against the actuality about one, so that it does not through ever new impressions, get complete power to erase the memory; and it has to defend itself against time: in short, it has to defend its own freedom in remembering against that which wishes to compel one to forget. And the power of time is great. Perhaps one does not notice it in time, for time cunningly steals from one a little at a time; one will not perhaps really realize this before eternity, when one wishes to look around and back to see what one has got together with the help of time and his forty years. Yes, time is a dangerous power; it makes it so easy to begin again from the beginning in time, and so to forget where one left off. When therefore one even merely begins to read a very large book and does not really trust his memory, he places a mark in it: oh, but how often a man forgets throughout his whole life, to place markers so that he will really be able to find his place! And now in the course of years, to be obliged to remember the dead—alas, while he does nothing at all to help one; rather, if he does anything, or by simply doing nothing, he does everything to show one how completely indifferent he is about it! In the meantime the manifold demands of life beckon to one; the living beckon to one and say: “Come to us, we will love you.” The dead, on the contrary, cannot beckon; even if he wished to, he cannot beckon, he can do nothing at all to attract our attention, he cannot move a finger; he lies and molders—how easy for the power of life and of the moment to win over such impotence! Oh, there is no one so helpless as a dead man, while in his helplessness he also has not the slightest compulsion! And therefore there is no other love so free as the work of love which remembers a dead man—for remembering him is somewhat different from at first not being able to forget him.

The work of love in remembering the dead is a work of the most faithful love.

In order really to test whether a man’s love is steadfast, one must remove everything whereby the object might in anyway help him to be steadfast. But all this simply does not apply with respect to the dead where there is no actual object. If then love persists, this is the most faithful love.

There is so much said about the lack of faithfulness in the love between men. So then the one places the fault on the other and says: “It was not I who changed, it was he who changed.” Well! And what then? Did you then remain unchanged? “No, I naturally resented it, so then I changed.” We shall not pause here to explain how meaningless this presumable resentment is, by which it follows as a matter of course that I change because another changes. No, we are speaking about the relation to the dead, and here we cannot say that it was the dead who was changed. If a change enters into this relationship, it must be I who changed. If you therefore wish to prove whether you love faithfully, then give heed to how you behave toward the dead.

But this is how it is: it is truly a difficult task to maintain one’s self unchanged in time. And also the truth is that men love to deceive themselves with all kinds of illusions more than they love either the living or the dead. Oh, how many are not firmly convinced, so firmly they are willing to die for it, that if the othér had not changed, they too would have remained unchanged. But if that is true, then is anyone living absolutely unchanged as regards the dead? Oh, there is perhaps no relation in which the change is so noticeable, so great, as the one between the living and the dead—while it still continues to be true that the dead man is not the one who changes.

When two persons are united in love, then the one lays hold on the other, and the union lays hold on both. But with the dead man no union is possible. In the first moment following death, he may perhaps be said to lay hold on one, a consequence of the union, and therefore it is most frequently the case that he is generally remembered at this time. In the course of time, on the contrary, he has no hold upon the living; and the relation ceases unless the living holds to him. But what is faithfulness? Is it steadfastness that another clings to me?

When then death separates the two, the survivor—faithful in the first moment, swears that “he will never forget the dead.” Oh, how reckless! For truly, a dead man is a cunning man to talk with, except that his cunning is not like that of the one about whom we say: “One can’t always find him where one left him”; for the cunning of the dead consists precisely in the fact that we cannot get him away from the place where we left him. We are often tempted to believe that men have the idea that one can say almost anything one wishes to a dead man, because he is dead, hears nothing and answers nothing. And yet, yet, be most cautious of all in what you say to the dead. You may perhaps say quite calmly to a living man, “I shall never forget you.” And then when some years have passed, then it is to be hoped that you have both fortunately forgotten the whole affair—at least it will be more seldom that you will be unlucky enough to meet a less forgetful man. But be cautious about the dead! For the dead is a man finished and decided; he is not like the rest of us, still in search of adventures, in which we may experience many exciting events, and seventeen times forget what we have said. When you say to a dead man, “I shall never forget you,” then it is as if he answered, “Good! Rest assured that I shall never forget that you have said this.” And even if all your contemporaries were to assure you that he has forgotten it, you will never hear that from the mouth of the dead. No, he goes to his own place—but he is not changed. You cannot say to a dead man that it was he who had become older, and that this explains your changed relation to him—for a dead man does not become older. Nor can you say to a dead man that it was he who in the course of time became cold—for he is not colder than he was when you were so warm; nor that it was because he had become more ill-favored that you could no longer love him—for he has not essentially become more ill-favored than when he was a handsome corpse, which yet is not regarded as an object of love; nor that it was he who had become interested in others—for a dead man does not associate with others. No, whether you are willing to begin again where you left off or not, a dead man begins with the most punctilious exactness just there where you left off. For a dead man is, although one does not notice it, a strong man: he has the strength of unchangeableness. And a dead man is a proud man. Have you not noticed that a proud man, precisely in relation to the man he despises most, takes the most pains not to betray anything, to appear entirely unchanged, to pretend to be unconscious of everything, in order to allow the despised to sink lower and lower—for the proud man only benevolently calls the attention of the one he loves to his error, in order by so doing to help him to the right! Oh, but a dead man—who is so proudly able as he to betray nothing at all, even if he despises the living who forgets him and the parting words dead man even does everything to bring about his own oblivion. The dead does not come to you and remind you; he does not look at you in passing; you never meet him; and if you met him and looked at him, there is no involuntary expression in his face which against his will might betray what he thinks and judges about you; for a dead man has his countenance under control. Truly we should guard against conjuring forth the dead in a poetic way in order to call him to remembrance: the most fearful thing of all is that the dead betrays nothing at all. Fear therefore the dead, fear his shrewdness, fear his determination, fear his strength, fear his pride! But if you love him, then remember him affectionately, and you will have no reason to fear; you will learn from the dead, and precisely from him as the dead, the shrewdness of thought, the definiteness of expression, the strength of unchangeableness, the pride of life, as you could learn it from no man, not even the most richly endowed.

The dead man does not change; there is no thought of any possible excuse through shoving the guilt onto him. Hence he is steadfast. Yes, that is true; but he has no actuality, and he therefore does nothing, simply nothing, to retain his hold on you, except that he does not change. If, then, any change enters into the relation between the living and the dead, then it must be clear that it is the living who has changed. If, on the contrary, no change enters, then it is the living who has truly been faithful, faithful in lovingly remembering him—alas, while he could do nothing to hold you; alas, while he was doing everything as if to pretend that he had entirely forgotten you, and what you said to him. For no one who has actually forgotten what has been said to him, can express more definitely that he has forgotten it, that its entire relation to him, that the whole matter, is forgotten, than the dead man can.

The work of love in remembering the dead is thus a work of the most disinterested, the freest, the most faithful love. So go out, then, and do this; remember the dead, and just by so doing learn to love the living, disinterestedly, freely, faithfully. In your relation to the dead you have a standard by which you can test yourself. The one who employs this standard will easily reduce the extensiveness of the most complicated relationship, and will learn to be repelled by all the mass of excuses actuality usually has immediately at hand for the purpose of showing that it is the other who is selfish, the other who is himself guilty of being forgotten, because he did not call himself to mind, the other who is faithless. Remember the dead; then you have a foretaste of the blessing which is inseparable from this work of love, also the best guidance in rightly understanding life: that it is a duty to love the men we do not see, but likewise those we do see. Our duty to love the men we see cannot cease because death separates them from us, for the duty is eternal; but hence the duty toward the dead cannot so separate our contemporaries from us that these do not become the object of our love.

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