in every single instance, due to a definite act of the will,

a "leap" — which seems a patent contradiction.

To the modern reader, this is the least palatable of Kierke- gaard's works, conceived as it is with a sovereign and al- most medieval disregard of the predisposing undeniable factors of environment and heredity (which, to be sure, poorly fit his notion of the absolute responsibility of the individual). Its sombreness is redeemed, to a certain de- gree, by a series of marvellous observations, drawn from history and literature, on the various phases and manifes- tations of Dread in human life.

On the same day as the book just discussed there ap- peared, as a "counter-irritant," the hilariously exuberant Forord "Forewords," a collection of some eight playful but vicious attacks, in the form of prefaces, on various foolish manifestations of Hegelianism in Denmark. They are aimed chiefly at the high-priest of the "system," the poet Johan Ludvig Heiberg who, as the arbiter elegantiarum of the times had presumed to review, with a plentiful lack of insight, Kierkegaard's activity. But some of the most telling shots are fired at a number of the individualist Kierkegaard's pet aversions.

His next great work, Stadier paa Livets Vei "Stages on Life's Road," forms a sort of resume of the results so far gained. The three "spheres" are more clearly elaborated.

The aesthetic sphere is represented existentially by the in- comparable In Vino Veritas, generally called "The Ban- quet," from a purely literary point of view the most per- fect of Kierkegaard's works, which, if written in one of the great languages of Europe, would have procured him world fame. Composed in direct emulation of Plato's immortal Symposion, it bears comparison with it as well as any mod- ern composition can.° Indeed, it excels Plato's work in subtlety, richness, and refined humor. To be sure, Kierke- gaard has charged his creation with such romantic super- abundance of delicate observations and rococo ornament that the whole comes dangerously near being improbable;

��"Cf. Brandes, S. K. p. 157.

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