This frame of mind, however, was crossed by another. The religious
transformation in my mind could not remain clear and unmuddied, placed
as I was in a society furrowed through and through by different
religious currents, issued as I was from the European races that for
thousands of years had been ploughed by religious ideas. All the
atavism, all the spectral repetition of the thoughts and ideas of the
past that can lie dormant in the mind of the individual, leaped to the
reinforcement of the harrowing religious impressions which came to me
from without.
It was not the attitude of my friends that impressed me. All my more
intimate friends were orthodox Christians, but the attempts which
various ones, amongst them Julius Lange, and Jens Paludan-Müller, had
made to convert me had glanced off from my much more advanced thought
without making any impression. I was made of much harder metal than
they, and their attempts to alter my way of thinking did not penetrate
beyond my hide. To set my mind in vibration, there was needed a brain
that I felt superior to my own; and I did not find it in them. I found
it in the philosophical and religious writings of Sören Kierkegaard, in
such works, for instance, as _Sickness unto Death_.
The struggle within me began, faintly, as I approached my nineteenth
year. My point of departure was this: one thing seemed to me requisite,
to live in and for _The Idea_, as the expression for the highest at
that time was. All that rose up inimical to _The Idea_ or Ideal merited
to be lashed with scorn or felled with indignation. And one day I
penned this outburst: "Heine wept over _Don Quixote_. Yes, he was
right. I could weep tears of blood when I think of the book." But the
first thing needed was to acquire a clear conception of what must be
understood by the Ideal. Heiberg had regarded the uneducated as those
devoid of ideals. But I was quite sure myself that education afforded
no criterion. And I could find no other criterion of devotion to the
Ideal than a willingness to make sacrifices. If, I said, I prove myself
less self-sacrificing than any one of the wretches I am fighting, I
shall myself incur well-merited scorn. But if self-sacrifice were the
criterion, then Jesus, according to the teachings of tradition, was the
Ideal, for who as self-sacrificing as He?
This was an inclined plane leading to the Christian spiritual life, and
a year later, when I was nearly twenty, I had proceeded so far on this
plane that I felt myself in all essentials in agreement with the
Christian mode of feeling, inasmuch as my life was ascetic, and my
searching, striving, incessantly working mind, not only found repose,
but rapture, in prayer, and was elated and fired at the idea of being
protected and helped by "God."
But just as I was about to complete my twentieth year, the storm broke
out over again, and during the whole of the ensuing six months raged
with unintermittent violence. Was I, at this stage of my development, a
Christian or not? And if not, was it my duty to become a Christian?
The first thought that arose was this: It is a great effort, a constant
effort, sometimes a minutely recurring effort, to attain moral mastery
over one's self, and though this certainly need not bring with it a
feeling of self-satisfaction, much less _ought_ to do so, it does bring
with it a recognition of the value of this self-mastery. How strange,
then, that Christianity, which commands its attainment, at the same
time declares it to be a matter of indifference to the revealed God
whether a man has lived morally or not, since Faith or lack of Faith is
the one condition upon which so-called Salvation depends!
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. But when one has to make one's choice between Pantheism and
Christianity, then the question arises, Are Kierkegaard's teachings
really historic Christianity, and not rather a rational adaptation? And
this question must be answered in the negative, since it is possible to
assimilate it without touching upon the question of the revelation of
the Holy Ghost in the shape of a dove, to the Voice from the clouds,
and the whole string of miracles and dogmas.
The next thought again was this: Pantheism does not place any one
unconditional goal in front of man. The unbeliever passes his life
interested in the many aims that man, as man, has. The Pantheist will
therefore have difficulty in living a perfect ethical life. There are
many cases in which, by deviating from the strictly ethic code, you do
not harm anyone, you only injure your own soul. The Non-Believer will
in this case only hardly, for the sake of impersonal Truth, make up his
mind to the step which the God-fearing man will take actuated by his
passionate fear of offending God.
Thus was I tossed backwards and forwards in my reflections.