Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/145

★ 135 ★ to external, the other too much internal sense. Nature has seldom achieved a balance between the two, a complete, genius-like constitution. By chance a ideal proportion often arose, but this could never be permanent because it was not grasped and fixed by the mind: it remained a result of fortuitous moments. The first genius to penetrate itself found here the archetypal seed of an immeasurable world; it made a discovery that must have been the strangest in world history, for a whole new epoch of mankind begins with it, and only at this stage does true history of all kinds becomes possible: for the path that has been covered up to this point now becomes a unique, perfectly explicable whole. That place beyond the world is revealed, and Archimedes can have his promise fulfilled.

95. Before abstraction, everything is one, but a one like chaos; after abstraction, everything is united again, but this union is a free association of independent, self-determined beings. A heap has become a society, the chaos has been transformed into a diverse world.

96. If the world is, so to speak, a precipitate from human nature, then the world of gods is a sublimation of it. Both happen uno actu. No precipitation without sublimation. What agility is lost over there, is gained over here.

97. Where there are children, there is a golden age.

98. Security in oneself and the unseen powers was the basis of spiritual countries in the past.

99. The course of approximation is composed of increasing progressions and regressions. Both retard,