Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/21

 teacher. In conscious opposition to the Sophists who sold their boasted wisdom for money, Socrates not only made no charges for his instruction but even warned people of his ignorance, insisting that, like a midwife, he only helped people to give birth to their own thoughts. And owing to his irony Socrates' relation to his disciples was not in any positive sense a personal one. Least of all did he wish to found a new "school" or erect a philosophic "system."

Kierkegaard, with Christianity as his goal, adopted thb same tactics. By an attractive aesthetic beginning people were to be "lured" into envisaging the difficulties to be unfolded presently, to think for themselves, to form their own conclusions, whether for or against. The individual was to be appealed to, first and last—the individual, no matter how humble, who would take the trouble to follow him and be his reader, "my only reader, the single individual."

"So the religious author must make it his first business to put himself in touch with men. That is to say, he must begin aesthetically. The more brilliant his performance, the better." And then, when he has got them to follow him "he must produce the religious categories so that these same men with all the impetus of their devotion to aesthetic things are suddenly brought up sharp against the religious aspect." The writer's own personality was to be entirely eliminated by a system of pseudonyms; for the effect of his teaching was not to be jeopardized by a distracting knowledge of his personality. Accordingly, in conscious imitation of Socrates, Kierkegaard at first kept up a semblance of his previous student life, posing as a frivolous idler on the streets of Copenhagen, a witty dog incapable of prolonged serious activity; thus anxiously guarding the secret of his feverish activity during the lonely hours of the night.

His campaign of the "indirect communication" was thus fully determined upon; but there was still lacking the impetus of an elemental passion to start it and give it driving