Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling

A Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart

An old adage drawn from the external and visible world says: “Only the one who works gets the bread.” Oddly enough, the adage does not apply in the world where it is most at home, for the external world is subject to the law of imperfection, and here it happens again and again that the one who does not work also gets the bread, and the one who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the one who works. In the external world everything belongs to the possessor; it toils slavishly under the law of indifference, and the genie of the ring obeys whoever has the ring, whether he is a Noureddin or an Aladdin, and whoever has the world's treasures has them no matter how he got them. In the world of spirit it is otherwise. Here an eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain on both the just and the unjust, here the sun does not shine on both good and evil, here it holds true that only the one who works gets the bread, only the one who was in anxiety finds rest, only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved, only the one who draws the knife gets Isaac. The one who will not work does not get the bread but is deceived, just as the gods deceived Orpheus with an airy apparition instead of the beloved, deceived him because he was sentimental, not courageous, deceived him because he was a lute player, not a man.