Kierkegaard On Passion.
Below is an excerpt from, "The Soul of Kierkegaard: Selections from His Journals." Edited by Alexander Dru. Dover Publications, Inc: Mineola, New York. 2003. Pg. 229-30.
There is one thought which has been in my soul and occupied it from my earliest years, inexplicably deeply rooted, a thought which has to do with Socrates as a model, the man to whom I have been inexplicably related from my earliest years, long before I really began to read Plato---the thought: how is it that all those who have in truth served the truth have always come out of it badly in this life, as long as they lived, and as soon as they are dead, then they are deified?
The explanation is quite simple: the mass of mankind can only relate itself to ideas, the good, the true, through the imagination. But a dead man is at a distance, in the imagination. But on the other hand they cannot endure the living who give them reality, they are scandalised by them, put them to death, tread them down. . . .
