Oh, I do not know to whom I may be speaking concerning this matter, how far there is anyone who is concerned about such things; but this I do know, that such people have lived, and I know this, that just those who have effectually recommended love have been people welltrained and able-bodied in these, for the most part, unfamiliar waters. And to them I can write, comforting myself with the beautiful word

“Write!” “For whom?” “For the dead, for those whom you have loved in the past!”—and in loving them I shall also meet together with the dearest among my contemporaries.

If one concentrates upon but one thought, one must in relation to it consider discovering self-denial, and it is the self-denial which discovers that God exists. Just this becomes the contradiction in blessedness and in terror: to have an all-powerful one as one’s collaborator. For an all-powerful one cannot be your collaborator, the collaborator of a man, without this signifying that you can do nothing at all. And, on the other hand, if He is your assistant, then you can do everything. The exhaustive thing is that there is at once a contradiction, so that you do not experience the one today, the other tomorrow; and it is exhausting that this contradiction is not something you can be conscious of at intervals, but it is something you must be conscious of at every moment. It is at the very moment when you are able to do everything—and a selfish thought creeps in, as if it were you who had been able to do all this—at that very moment you may lose everything; and at the very moment the selfish thought is surrendered, you may again have everything. But God is not seen; and consequently when God uses this instrument, into which man made himself by his self-denial, then it looks as if it were the instrument which could do everything, and even the instrument is tempted to understand it in this way—until he can again do nothing, It is always difficult to collaborate with another man. Oh, but to collaborate with the Almighty! Moreover, it is easy enough to understand in a certain sense; for what [I] cannot do, I can leave to Him. Consequently the difficulty is just that I must collaborate, if not with another, then through constantly understanding that I can do nothing at all, which is not something which can be understood once for all.

And this is difficult to understand, not difficult to understand at the moment when one can really do nothing, when one is sick or indisposed, but to understand just at the moment when one can apparently do everything. However, there is nothing so swift as thought, and nothing which strikes one with such force as a thought when it comes upon one. And now, out on the sea of thought, on the “70,000 fathoms deep”’—before one learns when night comes to be able to sleep tranquilly away from the thoughts, confident that God who is love, has them in abundance, and to be able to awake in full confidence to the thoughts, assured that God has not slept! A mighty oriental emperor had a servant whose duty it was daily to remind him of a certain definite undertaking: but that a humble man should be able to reverse the relation and say to God the Almighty, “Remind me finally of this or that”; and that then God should do it! Is not this enough to make one lose one’s reason, that a man should have the right to sleep safely and sweetly if he only says to God, like the emperor to his servant, “Be sure to remind me of this or that!” But then again this Almighty is so jealous for Himself that merely a selfish word in this foolhardy freedom which He allows, and everything is lost; so that God does not only not remember this and that, but it is as if He would never forget the this and that which is deserved. No, then it is far safer to be able to do a little less, and so in a common human wisdom imagine that one is certain one can do it; it is far safer than this exhausting: absolutely and to the letter being able to do nothing, and, on the coutrary, in a certain figurative sense, being able to do everything.

Still only in self-denial can a man completely recommend love; for God is love, and only in self-abnegation can a man hold God fast. What a man learns from himself about love is very superficial; he must learn from God to know it more profoundly, that is, he must in his selfabnegation become what every man may become (for self-denial is related to the universal, and thus different from being specially called and chosen), an instrument of God. So every man can get to know everything about love, just as every man can get to know that he, like every other man, is loved by God. The difference is merely that some (which does not seem so surprising to me) find this thought more than sufficient for the longest life, so that even in their seventieth year they do not think they have wondered enough over it; and others, on the contrary (which seems to me very strange and deplorable), find this thought so insignificant, since being loved by God is nothing more than is true of every man—as if it were therefore less important.

Only in self-abnegation can a man completely recommend love. No poet can do it. The poet can sing about love and friendship, which is indeed a rare gift, but “the poet” cannot recommend love. For to the poet his relation to the spirit of inspiration is like a jest, the evocation of its assistance is like a jest (and this might well correspond to the self-denial and the prayer). His natural endowment, on the other hand, is the decisive thing, and the outcome of his relation to the spirit of inspiration is to him the principal thing, it is the poem, the poetical production, which determines the outcome. But for the one who will recommend love (which, since everyone may do this, indicates no superiority), the relation of the self-abnegation to God or the laying hold on God in self-abnegation, ought to be everything, ought to be the earnest thing; the fact of whether the production is finished or not, ought to be a jest, that is, the God-relationship itself ought to be more important to him than the outcome. And in his self-abnegation it is his absolutely earnest conviction that it is God who helps him.

Oh, if a man in his self-abnegation could really put away all the sensual illusion of being able himself to do anything; if he could really understand that of himself he can do nothing at all; that is, if a man could really win the victory of self-denial, and then to that victory add the triumph of self-denial, in sincerity and truth finding his entire happiness in this self being able to do nothing at all: what a wonderful speech such a man would be able to make about love! For in the extreme exertion of self-denial, in all this swooning and fainting of its own strength in being happy, in feeling itself happy, what is this other than loving God in truth? But God is love. Who then is better able to recommend love than the one who truly loves God?—for he lays hold on his object in the only right way: he lays hold on God and on loving Him in truth.

This is the inward condition or way in which love must be recommended. To perform this has naturally its own reward in itself, even if, in addition, it also has as its object the winning of men to it by recommending love as far as it is possible; to make men really attentive to what in reconciliation is granted every man, namely, the Highest. For one who recommends art and science still sows the dissension of endowment and non-endowment between men. But he who recommends love, reconciles all, not in a common poverty, nor in a common mediocrity, but in the loftiest fellowship.

The work of recommending love must be done outwardly in devoted disinterestedness.

Through self-abnegation a man gains the power to become the instrument when he inwardly makes himself into nothing before God; through devoted disinterestedness he makes himself outwardly into nothing, into an unprofitable servant: inwardly he does not become selfimportant, for he is nothing; nor outwardly does he become self-important, for he is nothing; he is nothing before God—and he does not forget that he is before God, wherever he is. Oh, it may happen that a man fails at the last moment, in that he, truly humble before God, when he approaches men, becomes proud of what he can do. It is then a temptation of comparison which causes his fall. He understood that he could not compare himself with God, before whom he was conscious of being nothing; but in comparison with men he still seems to be something. That is to say, he forgets the self-abnegation, he is ensnared in a delusion, as if he were only at certain hours in the presence of God, just as one at a particular hour has audience with the royal majesty. What a distressing confusion! For with respect to a man it is certainly feasible to speak with him in one way in his presence, and in a quite different way about him in his absence. But could one speak about God—in His absence? This correctly understood is, then, devoted disinterestedness, one and the same thing as the self-abnegation.

RECOMMENDING LOVE 2954 It would also be the most terrible contradiction if anyone wished to dominate another—through recommending love.—So the devoted disinterestedness is in a certain sense, that is, inwardly understood, a natural consequence of the self-abnegation, or it is one with the selfabnegation.

But outwardly the devoted disinterestedness is necessary if love is to be truly recommended; and this is truly a work of love to wish to recommend love in the love of truth. One can easily enough secure his earthly advantage, and what is most distressing of all, gain the support of men in proclaiming all kinds of deception. But truly this is not loving. For the opposite is loving: in love for the truth and for men to be willing to make every sacrifice in order to proclaim the truth, and conversely not to be willing to make the least sacrifice of the truth.

The true must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good, that the majority will desire the truth, or have the true conception of it in such a way that its proclamation must consequently immediately gain the support of everyone. No, he who will proclaim some truth in truth, must prepare himself in some other way than by the help of such a foolish expectation; he must be willing essentially to relinquish the immediate. Even an apostle may well say that he strives “to persuade men,” but still with the added phrase, “but before God are we all made manifest.” So there is then least of all in these words any thought of the selfish or cowardly, timorous craving to gain the assistance of men —as if it would be the assistance of men which should decide whether something was true or not. No, before God the apostle is made manifest when he seeks to persuade men; consequently he does not wish to win them for himself, but for the truth. As soon as he sees that he can win them in such a way that they become attached to him, but misunderstand him, misrepresent his teachings, then he wishes immediately to repel them—in order to win them. Consequently he does not wish to have any advantage for himself in winning them, but he wishes at all costs, hence even at the sacrifice of their assistance, to win them to the truth—if he succeeds; it is this he wishes. Therefore the same apostle says in another place, “So we speak, not as wishing to please men, but God. Neither did we use flattering words, nor a cloak of covetousness; nor did we seek honor of men, neither of you nor of others, when we might have been burdensome to you, as apostles of Christ.” How much devotion do not these words conceal! He had not sought any advantage, had not allowed himself to be paid, not even so much as he might rightly have demanded, as an apostle of Christ; he had renounced their respect, their assistance, their devotion. Impoverished he had exposed himself to their misjudgment, their ridicule: and all this he had done—in order to win them. Moreover, it is certainly permissible to do everything in this way, even if it were to be executed, for the sake of winning men; for it is precisely in self-sacrifice and disinterestedness to abandon all immediate means, through which one gains the immediate—and loses the truth, The apostle stands on the solid foundation of the eternal; it is he who will gain men by the forces of the eternal in self-sacrifice. It is not the apostle, who in order himself to endure, needs them, and therefore pounces upon the first that offers the cleverest method, in order to win them—not in order to win them to the truth, for such methods cannot be used for this purpose.

And now in these times; how greatly do we need this disinterestedness; in these times when everything is done to make everything immediate, and the immediate everything! For is not everything done to make the immediate as predominant as possible, predominant over the eternal, over the true? Is not everything done to make the immediate so self-satisfied in an almost superior unconsciousness of God and the eternal; so conceited in a presumed possession of all truth; so arrogant in the idea of being the inventor of truth! How many better men have not submitted to the power of the immediate and thereby made the immediate even worse. For just the one who would be a better man, when he weakly or selfishly gives way, must then in the tumult of the immediate seek oblivion for his failure; he must now work with all his might to make the immediate even more conceited.

Alas, the age of thinkers seems to be past! The quiet patience, the humble and obedient longing, the exalted relinquishment of immediate results, the remoteness of infinity from the immediate, his thought and his God-devoted love, which are needed in order to think one thought alone: these seem to have disappeared, they have become almost a laughingstock to men. “Man is” has again become “the measure of all things,” and entirely in the sense of the immediate. All communication must be planned to appear conveniently in a trivial pamphlet, or to be supported by untruth in untruth. Moreover, it is as if finally all communication must be so planned that it may be delivered in an hour at most, to an audience which also wastes half an hour in its expressions of approval or disapproval, and during the other half hour is too excited to concentrate its thoughts. And yet we aim at this as the highest. Children are trained to regard this as best: to be catechized and congratulated in the space of an hour. Thus the standard of what a man ought to be is degraded. There is no more said about the highest, about being acceptable unto God, as the apostle says, or about pleasing those glorious ones who have lived in the past, or about pleasing the few eminent ones who are your contemporaries: no, to satisfy in a single hour a mixed assembly of the outstanding, the best men brought together, who too have not had time or opportunity to reflect on the truth, and who consequently demand superficial half-truths if they are to reward with their assistance: this is their aspiration. That is to say, in order to make it fairly worth while aspiring to, we help with a little falsehood; we delude ourselves into thinking that those assembled are truly wise, that every assembly is composed only of the wise. It is exactly as it was in the time of Socrates, according to the accusation brought against him: “Everyone understood how to instruct the young men; there was but one single individual who did not understand it—that was Socrates.” So in our time, “all” are wise, there is only a single individual here and there, who is a fool. So near is the world to having achieved perfection that now “all” are wise; if it were not for the individual cranks and fools the world would be absolutely perfect.

Through all this, God sits and waits in heaven. No one longs to be away from the noise and clamor of the moment in order to find the stillness in which God dwells. While man admires man, and admires himbecause he is just like everyone else, no one longs for the solitude wherein one worships God. No one disdains this cheap intermission from aiming at the highest, by longing for the standard of the eternal! So important has the immediate itself become. It is for this reason that sacrificial disinterestedness is needed. Oh, that I might in truth present such a disinterested figure! But here is not the place for this, where the speech is really about the task of recommending love—and therefore here is another wish: would that the immediate, if such a figure should be forthcoming, might have time to contemplate him!

But what applies to all love of the truth in relation to the immediate, also applies to what concerns it, the recommending of love in truth Before one attempts to secure the assistance of the immediate for his recommendation of love, one must first ascertain how far the immediate has a true understanding of love. Has the immediate, as it is now, or can the immediate ever have a true conception of what love is? No, it js impossible. Love in the understanding of the moment, or of the immediate is neither more nor less than selfishness. Consequently it is selfish to speak thus about love, and selfish to gain this assistance. True love is the self-denying love. But what is self-denial? It consists precisely in renouncing the immediate and immediacy. But then is it entirely impossible to gain the assistance of the immediate—through a true discussion of the love, which is precisely the true love, by renouncing the immediate? It is impossible, it is so impossible that the speaker, that is, if the truth is more important to him than the assistance of the immediate, owes it to himself to point out the misunderstanding; insofar he might chance to gain the assistance of the immediate. From this discussion it is also easy to see that the conclusion is by no means correct, which without further ceremony concludes: He who recommends love, must himself be or come to be loved—in a world which crucified the One who was love, in a world which has persecuted and exterminated so many witnesses of love.

And have the circumstances even changed in this respect, even if it is no longer carried to the extreme and decisive limits whereby witnesses of the truth must sacrifice their lives and blood? Essentially the world has not become better, it is only a little less passionate and more petty. Therefore that which the world generally calls being kind, eternity will naturally regard as something reprehensible and culpable. What the world calls a kind man is a man who above all takes care not to take the demand of eternity or of God for an essential and essentially strenuous existence, too literally. The kind man knows all about all possible excuses and evasions and doctrines of prudence; about bargaining and haggling and throwing off; and so he is kind enough to spare a little of his shrewdness to others, by whose help he thereupon arranges his life to his own advantage, easily and comfortably. In the company of the kind man everything is so safe, so pleasing; no occasion ever leads him to consider that anything eternal exists, or what claim this eternal has on the life of every man, or that the eternal lies so near that the claim might concern this very day. This is the kind man. But that man is unkind who, without demanding anything of another, but by seriously and strictly demanding much of himself, nevertheless draws attention to the fact that such a demand exists. In his company the excuses and evasions do not look so good; everything which one lives for is seen in an objectionable light; one cannot really be comfortable in his company; even less does he by means of the worldly or even the comfortablyreligious indulgence, help one to adjust his comfortable pillow.

But what really is this kindness? It is treachery toward the eternal. That is why the temporal existence likes it so well. And this is why the world is always scandalized by the statement that “love to God is hatred of the world.” If, namely, the claim of eternity is really valid, then it looks as if such a man hated everything which the majority of men live for. How disturbing therefore, how strange, how disagreeable! How agreeable, on the other hand, and how lovable to confirm and assist men in their cherished errors. But is it, then, love to deceive men? Is it therefore certain that it is love because the deceived regard it as love, because they thank the deceiver as if he were their greatest benefactor? Is it love to love in a deception, and to be loved in return in a deception? I thought that love was: being willing to make every personal sacrifice in communicating the truth, but being unwilling to sacrifice the least fragment of the truth. However, even if we wished to forget actuality, to forget how the world is and poetically transfer the whole relationship into the realm of the imagination: it lies in the very nature of the case that in the relation between man and man, disinterestedness is needed in order truly to recommend love. Let us venture on such a poetic attempt where we have nothing at all to do with the real world, but where merely in the remoteness of thought we survey the thought of recommending love. If, poetically understood, a man should speak quite truly about the true love, then is a reduplication necessary: the speaker must transform himself into the selfish, and the content of the speech must be about loving the unlovable object. But if this is done, it is impossible to have any advantage from recommending love; for one can only gain an advantage when either the speaker is regarded as the lover, or the content of the speech is the ingratiating speech about loving the lovable object. And when there is no advantage to be gained through recommending love, then it is disinterested to do it.

Consider that simple wise man of antiquity who knew best of anyone how to speak of the love that loves the beautiful and the good. He was in fact the ugliest man in the whole country, the ugliest man among the most beautiful people. One would think that this fact might have deterred him from talking about the love which loves the beautifulone certainly avoids speaking of the noose in the hangman’s house, and even the beautiful avoid speaking about beauty in the presence of the exceptionally ugly, to say nothing of the ugly himself talking about it. But, no, Socrates was odd and peculiar enough to find this amusing and inspiring, consequently odd and peculiar enough to put himself in the most disadvantageous position possible. For when he spoke about the beautiful, when in his longing for the beautiful his speech and thought completely carried his hearer away—and then this person happened accidentally to look at him: then he at once became as ugly as he already was, he who was already the ugliest man of all his people. The more he talked, the more beautifully he talked about beauty, the uglier he himself became by contrast. He must have been an eccentric, this wise man; he must not only have been the ugliest but also the most peculiar man among his people. Or what could have determined him to do this? I think if he had had a beautiful nose (which he did not have, strikingly conspicuous among the Greeks who all had beautiful noses), then he would not have wished to say even a single word about loving the beautiful; it would have been impossible for him for fear lest someone might believe that he was speaking about himself, or at least about his beautiful nose. That would have grieved his soul, as if he were defrauding the subject of his speech, beauty, of which he was speaking, by calling some attention to his own beauty. But in his assurance of being the ugliest man, he believed that he could with a good conscience say everything, everything, everything in praise of beauty, without the least advantage to himself from so doing, he who merely became uglier and uglier by contrast.

Still the love which loves the beautiful is not the true love, which is selfdenying love. With this in mind the speaker must now, if everything is to be in order and poetically perfected, make himself into the selfish, the self-lover. To recommend the self-denying love and then even to wish to be the lover is, yes, it is a lack of self-abnegation. If the speaker is not selfish, then he easily becomes uncertain or false; he will either be tempted to take advantage of the recommendation, which thus defeats the purpose of the speech, or he will suffer from a kind of embarrassment, so that he will not dare to say everything about how glorious this love is, for fear that someone might believe that he was speaking about himself. But if the speaker is selfish, or, in order to perfect the poetic thought, if he is the most selfish among a people which admiring speakers call a people of love, then, certainly then, he can speak freely about the self-denying love, more happy in having made himself into the most selfish man than that simple wise man was in being the ugliest. Under actual conditions a long preparation would certainly be needed to enable one to speak of the self-denying love. But the preparation would not consist in reading many books, or in being honored and respected by everyone for his celebrated self-denial (if it is ordinarily possible for one to show self-denial by doing that which everyone understands as being self-denial on his part), but conversely, in changing himself into the selfish, to accomplish it by coming to be regarded as the most selfish. And this would still not be very easy to accomplish. The fact of being distinguished through a test and the fact of acquiring the lowest character, absolutely the lowest, are about equally difficult, so there is really an equally large number of both. This, concerning the speaker. But the content of the speech should be: about loving the unlovable. Behold that simple wise man of antiquity, who knew how to speak so beautifully about loving the beautiful; he sometimes made a different kind of speech when he talked about loving the ugly. He did not deny that love consists in loving the beautiful, but yet he spoke, in fact it was a kind of joke, about loving the ugly. What then are we to understand by “the beautiful”? “The beautiful” is the immediate and direct object of the immediate love, the choice of inclination and passion One certainly does not need to command one to love the beautiful. But the ugly! That is not something to offer inclination and passion, which turn away and say, “Is that anything to love!” And then again, what, according to our conception of love, is “the beautiful”? It is the beloved and the friend. For the beloved and the friend are the immediate and simple objects of the immediate love, the choice of inclination and passion. And what is “the ugly”? It is “the neighbor,” whom one must love. One must love him; this is something that simple wise man knew nothing about; he did not know that the neighbor existed, and that one ought to love him. The fact that he talked about loving the ugly was merely jesting. The neighbor is the unlovable object, is not something to invite inclination or passion, which turn away from him and say, “Is that anything to love!” But therefore there is no advantage to be gained by speaking about the duty of loving the unlovable. And yet true love is exactly love for the neighbor, or, it is not the fact of finding the lovable object, but the fact of finding the unlovable object lovable. If, then, in order that something absolutely true may be said about the true love, the speaker must have transformed himself into the selfish, and the content of his speech must be about loving the unlovable object: then no advantage or benefit is possible. The speaker does not even have love as a reward, for his selfishness only becomes more manifest by the contrast; and the content of the speech is not adapted to ingratiating itself with men, who really wish to hear about what inclination and passion so easily and readily understand, but who are not willing to listen to that which is in no way acceptable to inclination and passion,

However, this poetic experiment is quite proper, and among other results may perhaps serve to throw light on a deception or misunderstanding which has certainly appeared repeatedly throughout Christendom. A man takes the Christian humility and self-denial in vain because, although no doubt he denies himself in one respect, he does not have the courage to do it decisively, for which reason he takes care to have his humility and self-denial recognized; consequently he becomes respected and honored for his humility and self-denial—which, after all, is not self-abnegation.

Consequently, in order to be able to recommend love, inward selfabnegation and outward sacrificing disinterestedness are both required. Therefore if one undertakes to recommend love, and the question is asked whether he really does it from love, then the answer must be; that “this is something that no one can definitely decide; it is possible that it is vanity, pride, in short, evil, but it is also possible that it is love.”

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