War as Inner Experience: Part Three

by Ernst Jünger

This is the third part of a new translation of Ernst Jünger’s profound treatise War as Inner Experience, which will be published here in installments.

Also read parts one and two.

Horror

Horror, too, belongs to the ring of emotions that have long lain dormant in our depths, ready to burst forth with primal force during massive upheavals. Its dark wings seldom flutter around the lofty brow of the modern man. To primeval man, it was a constant, invisible companion on his wanderings through the vastness of desolate steppes. It appeared to him in the night, in thunder and lightning, and threw him to his knees with a choking grip, him, our ancestor, who, with his pitiful pebble in his fist, stood against all the powers of the earth. And yet it was precisely this moment of his greatest weakness that lifted him above the animal. For an animal can feel terror when suddenly confronted with danger; it can feel fear when pursued and cornered, but horror is foreign to it. It is the first flicker of reason.