Aphoristic Writings, Notebook, and Letters to a Friend, by Otto ...

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Of all the problems that may in principle be solved, the most difficult is the
relationship of the will to worth, or, which is the same, of man to God. Does the will
create worth, or worth the will? Does God create man, or does man first actualise
God? Does the will grasp the Good, or does the Good seize upon the will? This is the
problem of grace, the supreme and final problem within dualism, while original sin is
the problem of dualism itself.
It is, I believe, to be solved this way:
Worth itself becomes will, when it enters into relation with time; for the I (God) as
time is the will. Creation of the will or of worth is therefore completely out of the
question; here the problem shows a proximity to original sin. Will however is worth
(man is God), when it becomes completely timeless; worth is a boundary prescence to
will, and will is a boundary prescence to worth. When God becomes time, then he
becomes will, i.e., as soon as being has entered into a relationship with non-being. All
will only wills to go back to being (says original sin), and is something between nonbeing
and being. We cannot speak of creation. As the eye is related to the sun, so is
man to God. The sun does not exist because of the eye alone, nor the eye because of
the sun.
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Idiocy: crudeness’ intellectual equivalent.
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Epilepsy is total helplessness, falling sickness, because the criminal has become
the plaything of gravitation. The criminal does not come forth. The epileptic feels as
though the light goes out and absolutely every external support fails. Ringing in the
ears with the seizure: perhaps, when light fails, sound enters. The epileptic
hallucinates the colour red: hell, fire.
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Perhaps no memory of our state prior to birth is possible because we have sunk so
low through being born: we have lost consciousness, and demand entirely
instinctively to be born, without rational decision and without knowledge, and that is
why we know nothing at all of this past.
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