In the briefest possible outline his argument is as follows: Socrates had taught that in reality every one had the truth in him and needed but to be reminded of it by the teacher who thus is necessary' only in helping the disciple to discover it himself. That is the indirect communication of the truth. But now suppose that the truth is not innate in man, suppose he has merely the ability to grasp it when presented to him. And suppose the teacher to be of absolute, infinite importance — the Godhead himself, directly communicating with man, revealing the truth in the shape of man; in fact, as the lowliest of men, yet insisting on implicit belief in Him! This, according to Kierkegaard, constitutes the paradox of faith par excellence. But this paradox, he shows, existed for the generation contemporaneous with Christ in the same manner as it does for those living now. To think that faith was an easier matter for those who saw the Lord and walked in His blessed company is but a sentimental, and fatal, delusion. On the other hand, to found one's faith on the glorious results, now evident, of Christ's appearance in the world is sheer thoughtlessness and blasphemy. With ineluctable cogency it follows that "there can be no disciple at second hand." Now, as well as "1800 years ago," whether in Heathendom or in Christendom, faith is born of the same conditions: the resolute acceptance by the individual of the absolute paradox.
In previous works Kierkegaard had already intimated that what furnished man the impetus to rise into the highest sphere and to assail passionately and incessantly the barrier of the paradox, or else caused him to lapse into "demonic despair," was the consciousness of sin. In the book Begrebet Angest "The Concept of Sin," he now attempts with an infinite and laborious subtlety to explain the nature of sin. Its origin is found in the "sympathetic antipathy" of Dread — that force which at one and the same time attracts and repels from the suspected danger of a fall and is present even in the state of innocence, in children. It finally results in a kind of "dizziness" which is fatal. Yet, so Kierkegaard contends, the "fall" of man is,
