Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/23

 with a rather maudlin devotion, which, to be sure, only in- creased his determination. He finally hit on the desperate device of pretending frivolous indifference to her affections, and acted this sad comedy with all the dialectic subtleness of his genius, until she eventually released him. Then, after braving for a while the philistine indignation of public opinion and the disapproval of his friends, in order to con- firm her in her bad opinion of him, he fled to Berlin with shattered nerves and a bleeding heart.

He had deprived himself of what was dearest to him in life. For all that, he knew that the foundations of his character remained unshaken. The voluntary renuncia- tion of a worldly happiness which was his for the taking intensifies his idea of being one of the "few in each genera- tion selected to be a sacrifice." Thereafter, "his thought is all to him," and all his gifts are devoted to the service of God.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, more than at any other time, Denmark was an intellectual dependency of Germany. It was but natural that Kierkegaard, in search for the ultimate verities, should resort to Berlin where Schelling was just then beginning his famous course of lectures. In many respects it may be held deplorable that, at a still formative stage, Kierkegaard should have remained in the prosaic capital of Prussia and have been influenced by bloodless abstractions; instead of journeying to France, or still better, to England whose empiricism would, no doubt, have been an excellent corrective of his excessive tendency to speculation. In fact he was quickly disappointed with Schelling and after four months returned to his beloved Copenhagen (which he was not to leave thereafter except for short periods), with his mind still busy on the problems which were peculiarly his own. The tremendous impulse given by his unfortunate engagement was sufficient to stimulate his sensitive mind to a produc- tivity without equal in Danish literature, to create a "lit- erature within a literature." The fearful inner collision