About "This has to be said" — or how is a decisive effect to be produced?
The protest I have made against the Established Church is decisive. If now some one would say, as I am prepared to hear even my most kindly critic say, "But the protest is so frightfully decisive!" I might say in reply, "It cannot be otherwise"; or I might answer with a word of one of my pseudonyms:2 "When the castle door of inwardness has long been shut and finally is opened, it does not move noiselessly like an apartment door which swings on hinges."
However, I can explain myself also more precisely. To produce a decisive effect — and this is the task now — is not a thing that can be done like everything else; and now especially when the misfortune of our age is precisely this motto, "to a certain degree," going in for things to a certain degree, when precisely this is the disease which has to be cured, one must above all take care if possible that it does not come to pass that only to a certain degree one goes into this matter — for with that all is lost. No, a decisive effect is produced in a different way from other things. Like the spring of a wild beast upon its prey, like the blow of the eagle in its swoop — so it is that the decisive effect is produced: suddenly, concentrated upon one point (intensive). And as the beast of prey unites shrewdness and strength: first it remains perfectly quiet, quiet as no tame beast can be, and then collects itself wholly in one spring or blow, as no tame beast can collect itself or can raise itself for a spring — so is the decisive effect produced. First quietness, so quiet as it never is on a still day, quiet as it is only before the thunder — and then the storm breaks loose.
Thus it is the decisive effect is produced. And believe me, I know only too well the defect of this age, that it is characterlessness, everything to a certain degree. But as "a mirrorbright shield of polished steel,"3 so bright that "when the sun's rays fall upon it they are reflected with a double splendor," as such a shield fears most of all even the very least touch of stain, since even with the least stain it is not itself, so does the decisive purpose fear every contact of or with this thing of "to a certain degree." That I understand. Should not I understand it who am known to all, even to the children in the street, by the name of "Either/Or"?
For what is either/or, if I am to say it, who surely must know? Either/or is the word before which the folding doors fly open and the ideals appear — O blissful sight! Either/or is the token which insures entrance into the unconditional — God be praised! Yea, either/or is the key to heaven! On the other hand, what is, was, and continues to be man's misfortune? It is this "to a certain degree," the invention of Satan or of paltriness or of cowardly shrewdness, which being applied to Christianity (by a preposterous miracle, or with miraculous preposterousness) transforms it into twaddle! No: Either/or! And as it is on the stage, that however tenderly the actor and actress embrace one another and caress one another, this remains nevertheless only a theatrical union, a theater-marriage; so also in relation to the unconditional all this thing of "to a certain degree" is theatrical, it grasps an illusion; only either/or is the embrace which grasps the unconditional. And to speak about something it never could occur to me to talk about except in contrast to what follows, to speak about life's vain pleasantries, I remark that just as every officer who belongs to the King's personal entourage bears a sign (a mark of distinction) whereby he is recognized4, so were all those who truly have served Christianity marked by either/or, an impression of majesty, or an expression of the fact that they stand in relation to the Divine Majesty. Everything which is only to a certain degree has not served Christianity, but perhaps itself, and can never honestly demand any other mark of distinction than at the most (as on a letter to frank it) "In the King's Service5"; for what is in God's service is either/or.
Translator's Footnote
2Frater Taciturnus in the Stages, p. 200.
3Oelenschlager's Palmatoke, act v, scene 2.
4At that time a special distinction was worn (not only in gala uniform) by officers who served as adjutants to the King.
5This served at that time to frank a letter.