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Updated: May 10, 2025
It is not necessary to suppose that he had done so. The peculiar aspect of the Ego as the principal and ultimately sole guide to truth was revealed anew to the Norwegian poet, and references to Kant, or to Fichte, or to Kierkegaard, seem, therefore, to be beside the mark.
It can only be understood from the contemporary movement in the intellectual life of Europe, which is now asserting the universal validity of morality, as it formerly did the right of passion. Its defence of Protestantism corresponds to Octave Feuillet's defence of Catholicism, only that Feuillet is conciliatory, Kierkegaard vehement.
But the internal policy of Denmark had little attraction for me. As soon as I entered the University I felt myself influenced by the spirit of such men as Poul Moeller, J.L. Heiberg, Soeren Kierkegaard, and distinctly removed from the belief in the power of the people which was being preached everywhere at that time.
I doubt, however, whether our brother Kierkegaard is altogether in the right, for this same abstract thinker, or thinker of abstractions, thinks in order that he may exist, that he may not cease to exist, or thinks perhaps in order to forget that he will have to cease to exist. This is the root of the passion for abstract thought.
But we will return to this in the next chapter. The vital consequence of rationalism would be suicide. Kierkegaard puts it very well: "The consequence for existence of pure thought is suicide.... We do not praise suicide but passion. As the thinker, in spite of all, does not cease to be a man, he employs reason in the interests of life, whether he knows it or not.
I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau, René, Obermann, Thomson, Leopardi, Vigny, Lenau, Kleist, Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard men burdened with wisdom rather than with knowledge. And there are, I believe, peoples who possess this tragic sense of life also. It is to this that we must now turn our attention, beginning with this matter of health and disease.
He thought many of the leading men among the Liberals superficial and devoid of character, and accused them, with the pitilessness of youth, of mere verbiage. Influenced as he was by Kierkegaard, such a man as Bille was naturally his aversion. He considered not altogether justly that Bille cloaked himself in false earnestness.
The next thought was this: It is only in the writings of Kierkegaard, in his teachings concerning paradox, that Christianity appears so definite that it cannot be confused with any other spiritual trend whatever.
This conception involves us in contradictions and absurdities, and it may be that we shall arrive with Kierkegaard at the conclusion that if the mortality of the soul is terrible, not less terrible is its immortality.
I did not like Goldschmidt. He had dared to profane the great Soeren Kierkegaard, had pilloried him for the benefit of a second-rate public. I disliked him on Kierkegaard's account. But I disliked him much more actively on my master, Professor Broechner's account.
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