Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard 69
of the ridiculous — witness children's testimony which can always be relied on in this regard. Now as a rule children will laugh at lovers, and if one makes them tell what they have seen, surely no one can help laughing. This is, per- haps, due to the fact that children omit the point. Very strange! When the Jew omitted the point no one cared to laugh. Here, on the contrarj, every one laughs because the point is omitted ; since, however, no one can explain what the point is — why, then there is no point at all.
So the lovers explain nothing; and those who praise love explain nothing but are merely intent on — as one is bidden in the Royal Laws of Denmark — on saying anent it all which may be pleasant and of good report. But a man who thinks, desires to have his logical categories in good order ; and he who thinks about love wishes to be sure about his categories also in this matter. The fact is, though, that people do not think about love, and a "pastoral science" is still lacking ; for even if a poet in a pastoral poem makes an attempt to show how love is born, everji;hing is smuggled in again by help of another person who teaches the lovers how to love!
As we saw, the comical element in love arose from the face-about whereby the highest quality of one sphere does not find expression in that sphere but in the exactly opposite quality of another sphere. It is comical that the soaring flight of love — the desire to belong to each other for all time — lands ever, like Saft,^° in the pantry; but still more comical is it that this conclusion is said to constitute love's highest expression.
Wherever there is a contradiction, there the comical ele- ment is present also. I am ever following that track. If it be disconcerting to you, dear fellow banqueters, to follow me in what I shall have to say now, then follow me with averted countenances. I myself am speaking as if with veiled eyes ; for as I see only the mystery in these matters, why, I cannot see, or I see nothing.
What is a consequence? If it cannot, in some way or
= *The glutton in Oehlenschloeger's vaudeville of "Sovedrikken.
