Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/159

★ 149 ★ only be interested in a constitution for itself as one is interested in a letter. If the sign is not a beautiful image or song, then being faithful to images is the most inappropriate of all affections.—What is a principle, if it is not the expression of the will of a beloved, admirable person? Like every idea, doesn't the mystical sovereign require a symbol, and which symbol is more worthy and fitting than a lovable, magnificent person? Brevity of the expression is certainly worth something, and isn't a person a more brief, more beautiful expression of spirit than an assembly? Do not obstruct a person who has a lot of spirit with boundaries and distinctions; they will incite him even more. Only the spiritless feel burden and obstruction. By the way, a king born is better than one made. The best person will not be able to endure such an elevation without changing. Those who are born to it do not falter nor are they overwhelmed by such a position. And in the end, isn't birth the fundamental choice? Those who have not been obliged to have felt this vividly for themselves would doubt the freedom of this choice, its full selfsame unamity.

He who comes puffed up in his historical knowledge really does not know what I'm speaking about or the perspective I'm speaking from; to him I speak Arabic, and he would do best to go on his way and not mix with listeners whose idiom and customs are quite alien to him.

10. From my view, it may be that the letter is a thing of the past. There is no great praise for this time which it is so removed from nature, so senseless for family life, so opposed to to the most beautiful, poetic form of society. How astonished would our cosmopolitans be if the time of perpetual peace appeared and they beheld the highest, most cultivated humanity in