Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/156

★ 146 ★

2

1. If you wish to secretly discuss something with a few others in a large, mixed company, and you do not sit next to one another, then you must speak in a special language. This special language, through either its intonation or its imagery, can become a foreign language. This latter will be a language of tropes and riddles.

2. Many have suggested that for delicate, easily misunderstood topics you should use a learned language, e.g., writing of such things in Latin. It is worth testing whether you could not so speak in ordinary language that the only one who can understand is the one who should understand. Every true secret must exclude itself from the profane. Anyone who understands it is, through ones own accord, legitimately a person in the know.

3. The mysterious expression entices more thought. All truth is ancient. The enticement of novelty lies only in its expressive variations. The greater the contrast in outward appearance, the greater the joy of recognition.

4. What you love, you will find everywhere, and see likenesses everywhere. The greater the love, the wider and more varied this world of likeness. My love is the abbreviation of the universe, the universe is the extension of my