Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/127

★ 117 ★

27. One notices a remarkable trait of Goethe in his interconnection of small, insignificant incidents with important events. He seems to have no other intention than to occupy the imagination in a poetic way with a mysterious game. Here as well, this unique genius of nature has come upon its trail and has noticed a nice trick. That ordinary life is full of related coincidences. They make up a game that, like all games, come down to surprise and deception.

Many of the expressions of everyday life are observations on these inverted relationships. So, for example, bad dreams mean good fortune; the announcement of death a long life; a hare that runs across the path, misfortune. Almost all of the common folk's superstitions are based on interpretations of this game.

28. The highest task of education is to take control of one's transcendental self to be at the same time the "I" of one's ego. The lack of appreciation and understanding for others is less strange. Without a perfect self-understanding one will never learn to truly understand others.

29. Humor is an arbitrarily assumed style. The arbitrariness is its piquancy: Humor is the result of a free mixing of the conditioned and the unconditioned. Through humor, that which is peculiarly conditioned