Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/136

★ 126 ★ 69. In the greatest pain there sometimes comes a paralysis of sensitivity. The soul dissolves. Hence the deathly chill, the unconstrained thoughts, and the blaring, unending wit of this kind of despair. There is no longer any inclination; a person stands alone like a pernicious power. Unconnected with the rest of the world, he gradually consumes himself and his principle is misanthropy and misotheism.

70. Our language is either mechanical, atomistic or dynamic. The genuinely poetic language should, however, be organic and lively. How often does one feel the poverty of words to hit on several ideas in a single stroke.

71. Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and only they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet. And shouldn't the future restore the old state of things?

72. Writings are the thoughts of the state, the archives its memory.

73. The more our senses are refined, the more capable they become of distinguishing between individuals. The ultimate sense would be the highest receptivity to an individual nature. The talent of fixating on the individual is in accordance with one's relative skill and energy. When the will expresses itself in relation to this sense, the passions for or against individualities arise: love and hate. One owes the mastery of acting out one's own role for oneself to the orienting of these senses through prevailing reason.

74. Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than an intermediary link that connects us with the divinity.