Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/122

★ 112 ★ 7. Certain restraints resemble the fingerings of a flute player who, in order to produce different tones, presently closes one opening and then almost immediately afterwards another, appearing to make arbitrary sequences of silent and sonorous expression.

8. The difference between delusion and truth lies in the difference of their functions for life. Delusion lives away from the truth; truth has its life within itself. One eradicates delusion as one eradicates diseases, and the delusion is therefore nothing but logical inflammation or decay, enthusiasm or philistinism. The former usually leaves behind an apparent deficiency in the power of thought, which is not improved through anything except a diminishing series of incitations, or compulsory treatments. This often results in a misleading volatility, those grave symptoms of revolution that can only be dispelled by an increasing series of drastic methods. Both dispositions will only be changed through chronic, strictly followed cures.

9. The entirety of our perception is like the eye. The objects must pass through opposing media to appear correctly on the pupil.

10. Experience is the test of the rational and also the other way around. The inadequacy of mere theory in application, about which the practical person often comments, is found reciprocally in the rational application of mere experience, and will be clearly enough noticed by the true philosopher, though with a self-restraint due to the inevitability of the outcome. The practical person therefore rejects mere theory entirely without considering how problematic the answer to the question might be: "Whether the theory exists for the sake of application or the application for theory?"