As Kierkegaard remarked elsewhere, ‘no man, none, dares to say I’; instead, a species of ‘ventriloquism’ had become de rigueur – the ordinary person had become a mouthpiece of public opinion, the professor a mouthpiece of theoretical speculation, the pastor a mouthpiece of religious meditation. All were in different ways submissive to abstractions to which they attributed an independent reality. Rather than confront the fact that everyone is finally accountable to himself for his life, character, and outlook, they took refuge in a depersonalized realm of reified ideas and doctrines.
