But who, then, am I? Let no one ask! If it hasn't occurred to you before to ask about it I am over the difficulty; for now the worst is behind me. For that matter, I am not worth asking about, for I am the least of all things, people would put me in utter confusion by asking about me. I am pure existence, and therefore smaller, almost, than nothing. I am "pure existence" which is present everywhere but still is never noticed; for I am ever vanishing. I am like the line above which stands the summa summarum--who cares about the line? By my own strength I can accomplish nothing, for even the idea to steal the manuscript from Victor was not my own idea; for this very idea which, as a thief would say, induced me to "borrow" the manuscript, was borrowed from him. And now, when editing this manuscript, I am, again, nothing at all; for it rightly belongs to the judge. And as editor, I am in my nothingness only a kind of nemesis on Victor, who imagined that he had the prescriptive right to do so. [Footnote 1: _Cf._ Luke XIV, 19-20.] [Footnote 2: Words used in the banns.] [Footnote 3: Which in Latin means both "from the temple" and "at once."] [Footnote 4: The omission of the negative particle in the original is no doubt unintentional.] [Footnote 5: Pious wish.] [Footnote 6: Kings 20, 1; Isaiah 38, 1.] [Footnote 7: An allusion to the plight of Aristophanes in Plato's _Symposion._] [Footnote 8: Haggai 1, 6 (inexact).] [Footnote 9: May it be fortunate and favorable.] [Footnote 10: _Symposion_, ch. 9.] [Footnote 11: This ironic sally refers, not to Descartes' principle of skepsis, but to the numerous Danish followers of Hegel and his "method"; _cf._ Fear and Trembling.] [Footnote 12: _Symposion_, ch. 24.] [Footnote 13: _Ibid._, ch. 15-16.] [Footnote 14: _Cf._ Matthew 13, 31 etc.] [Footnote 15: A quotation from Musæus, _Volksmärchen der Deutschen_, III, 219.] [Footnote 16: The reference is to a situation in Richard Cumberland's (1732-1811) play of "The Jew," known to Copenhagen playgoers in an adaptation.] [Footnote 17: I relate what I have been told.] [Footnote 18: A character in the Danish playwright Overskou's vaudeville of "Capriciosa" (Comedies III, 184).] [Footnote 19: The glutton in Oehlenschlœger's vaudeville of "Sovedrikken."] [Footnote 20: Supplied by the translator to complete the sense.] [Footnote 21: Dejection. _Cf._ the maxim: _omne animal post coïtun triste._] [Footnote 22: This statement is to be found, rather, in Aristotle's Ethics II, 6.] [Footnote 23: There is a pun here in the original.] [Footnote 24: In Holberg's comedy of "Erasmus Montanus," III, 6.] [Footnote 25: _Cf._ "The Banquet."] [Footnote 26: "Eccles, 3, 7."] [Footnote 27: "Comical power."] [Footnote 28: "In uncertain battle."] [Footnote 29: According to the development of these terms in Kierkegaard's previous works, the "absolute" belongs to the ethic, the "relative" to the æsthetic sphere.] [Footnote 30: Heroine of Mozart's "Don Juan."]