(One of a few essays not unlike Mark Twain's posthumous musings? which include such sub-titles as The Whole Damn Human Race.. and like that.)


When I began as an author of Either/Or, I no doubt had a far more profound impression of the terror of Christianity than any clergyman in the country. I had a fear and trembling such as perhaps no one else had. Not that I therefore wanted to relinquish Christianity. No, I had another interpretation of it. For one thing I had in fact learned very early that there are men who seem to be selected for suffering, and, for another thing, I was conscious of having sinned much and therefore supposed that Christianity had to appear to me in the form of this terror. But how cruel and false of you, I thought, if you use it to terrify others, perhaps upset every so many happy, loving lives that may very well be truly Christian.
It was as alien as it could possibly be to my nature to want to terrify others, and therefore I both sadly and perhaps also a bit proudly found my joy in comforting others and in being gentleness itself to them-hiding the terror in my own interior being.
So my idea was to give my contemporaries (whether or not they themselves would want to understand) a hint in humorous form (in order to achieve a lighter tone) that a much greater pressure was needed-but then no more; I aimed to keep my heavy burden to myself, as my cross. I have often taken exception to anyone who was a sinner in the strictest sense and then promptly got busy terrifying others. Here is where Concluding Postscript comes in.

Soren Kierkegaard, *Journal and Papers, VI 6444 (Pap. X1 A541) (1849) (Either/Or Part II, Hong, p. 451-452)
[* Source for this quote; but not a precís of CUP, which contains various gems to discombobulate the Pedants-of-Xianity all Hell-infused.. that ~ hateful doggerel which led the proles directly to --> The Orange Menace du jour not-to-mention his predecessor, Adolf Schikelgrüber (though he was FUBAR sans any line-by-line Xian-speak.)]


WIki take, decent litmus for any who might want to trade koans with people-who-do-that-stuff.. while.. just lookin fer loopholes in the fabric of †Cant (it's evryWhare now..)
† (not Kant, who keeps things ~linear.)