Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/157

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

★ 147 ★

love. They all offer the friends of knowledge flowers and souvenirs for one's beloved.

5. But where does the earnest, mystico-political philosophical proposition come from? The spiritually sensitive person expresses his higher life in all of his functions; and so he also philosophizes much more vividly than normal, more poetically. This deep sounding belongs to the symphony of his sinews and organs. But does not the universal gain through individual relationships, the individual through universal relationships?

     6. Let the dragonflies fly; they are innocent strangers,
         Following the double star joyously, with gifts, hither.


1. A flourishing land is more of a royal artwork than a park. A tasteful park is an English invention. A country that satisfies heart and mind should be a German invention; and the inventor would also be the king of all inventors.

2. The best of the former French monarchs had proposed to make his subjects so well off that everyone would have chicken and rice on their table every Sunday. Would not the preferable government be one under which each farmer would rather eat a crust of moldy bread than meat under some other, thanking God sincerely for the fortune of being born in this land?

3. If I became prince tomorrow, I would first ask the king for a eudiometer. No instrument is more necessary to a prince. If I were him, I would also seek to draw life-giving air more from flourishing plantations than from saltpeter.

4. Gold and silver are the blood of the nation state. Accumulations of blood in both the heart and head reveal weaknesses