Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/121

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1. We look for the unconditioned everywhere and only ever find things.

2. Expression by tones and strokes is a marvelous abstraction. Three letters express God to me; a few strokes a million things. How easy the operation of the universe becomes here, how intelligible the concentricity of the spirit world! Grammar is the dynamic of the spirit realm. A word of command moves armies; the word freedom, nations.

3. The political world is the body, which is animated by the beautiful world, the social world. It is its essential voice.

4. Apprenticeship years are for the poetic novice, academic years for the philosophical. The academy should be a completely philosophical institution: only one faculty; the whole establishment organized for the stimulation and practical exercise of the power of thought.

5. Apprenticeship years in their preeminent sense are the years of apprenticeship in the art of living. Through systematically arranged experiments, one learns its principles and obtains the proficiency to act on them at will.

6. We will never fully comprehend ourselves, but we will and can do much more than comprehend ourselves.