hear in the second part the stern demands of the ethical

life. Its spokesman, Judge William, rises in defense of the social institutes, and of marriage in particular, against the slurs cast on them by his young friend A. He makes it clear that the only possible outcome of the aesthetic life, with its aimlessness, its superciliousness, its vague possi- bilities, is a feeling of vanity and vexation of spirit, and a hatred of life itself: despair. One floundering in this in- evitable slough of despond, who earnestly wishes to escape from it and to save himself from the ultimate destruction of his personality, must choose and determine to rise into the ethical sphere. That is, he must elect a definite calling, no matter how humdrum, marry, if possible, and thus sub- ject himself to the "general law." In a word, instead of a world of vague possibilities, however attractive, he must choose the definite circumscription of the individual who is a member of society. Only thus will he obtain a balance in his life between the demands of his personality on the one hand, and of the demands of society on him. When thus reconciled to his environment — his "lot"-;— all the pleasures of the aesthetic sphere which he resigned will be his again in rich measure, but in a transfigured sense.

Though nobly eloquent in places, and instinct with warm feeling, this panegyric on marriage and the fixed duties of life is somewhat unconvincing, and its style undeniably tame and unctious — at least when contrasted with the Satanic verve of most of A's papers. The fact is that Kierkegaard, when considering the ethical sphere, in order to carry out his plan of contrasting it with the aesthetic sphere, was al- ready envisaging the higher sphere of religion, to which the ethical sphere is but a transition, and which is the only true alternative to the aesthetic life. At the very end of the book Kierkegaard, flying his true colors, places a ser- mon as an "ultimatum," purporting to have been written by a pastor on the Jutish Heath. Its text is that "as against God we are always in the wrong," and the tenor of it, "only that truth which edifies is truth for you." It is not that you must choose either the aesthetic o r the ethical view of life; but that neither the one nor the other is the full

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