Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/124

★ 114 ★ 16. Imagination situates the future world for us either into the heights, or into the depths, or into metempsychosis. We dream of traveling through the universe: isn't that because the universe is in us? We do not know the depths of our minds.—The secret path goes within. Eternity, with its worlds, the future and the past, is in us or nowhere. The outside world is the shadow world, throwing its shadow into the realm of light. At this time it admittedly appears so dark, lonely, formless less inside, but how completely different it will appear to us when this eclipse has passed and the shadow of the body has passed away. We will savor it more than ever because our spirit has hungered.

17. Darwin makes the observation that we are less blinded by the light upon awakening when we have dreamed of visible objects. Therefore, blessed are those who have dreamed of sight here! They will be able to bear the glory of that yonder world sooner.

18. How can a person have a sense of something if he does not have the seed of it in him? What I am meant to understand must develop organically in me; and what I seem to learn is only nourishment, the incitation of the organism.

19. The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Wherever they interpenetrate, it is at every point of intersection.

21. Genius is the ability to talk about imaginary objects as if they were real, and to act upon them as if they are.