Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard 95
holds true of him who wishes to experiment with her.
If I were to imagine any possible relation with woman it would be one so saturated with reflecton that it would, for that very reason, no longer be any relation with her at all. To be an excellent husband and yet on the sly seduce every girl ; to seem a seducer and yet harbor within one all the ardor of romanticism — there would be something to that, for the concession in the first instance were then annihilated in the second. Certain it is that man finds his true ideality only in such a reduplication. All merely unconscious ex- istence must be obliterated, and its obliteration ever cun- ningly guarded by some sham expression. Such a redupli- cation is incomprehensible to woman, for it removes from her the possibility of expressing man's true nature in one term. If it were possible for woman to exist in such a re- duplication, no erotic relation with her were thinkable. But, her nature being such as we all know it to be, any disturb- ance of the erotic relation is brought about by man's true nature which ever consists precisely in the annihilation of that in which she has her being.
Am I then preaching the monastic life and rightly called Eremita? By no means. You may as well eliminate the cloister, for after all it is only a direct expression of spirit- uality and as such but a vain endeavor to express it in direct terms. It makes small difference whether you use gold, or silver, or paper money ; but he who does not spend a farthing but is counterfeit, he will comprehend me. He to whom every direct expression is but a fraud, he and he only, is safeguarded better than if he lived in a cloister-cell — he will be a hermit even if he travelled in an omnibus day and night.
Scarcely had Victor finished when the Dressmaker jumped to his feet and threw over a bottle of wine standing before him ; then he spoke as follows :
(The Dressmaker's Speech) Well spoken, dear fellow-banqueters, well spoken! The
