Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/168

★ 158 ★ As necessary as such a mechanistic administration may be for the physical health, strengthening, and agility of the state, the state when it is handled just in this way, will essentially perish. The principle of the old famous system is to bind everyone to the state through self interest. The clever politicians had this ideal of state before themselves, where the interest of the state, as self centered as the interest of the state's subjects, were so artificially linked that the two mutually support one another.

A great deal of effort has been put into this political squaring of the circle: but the crude self-interest appears to be immeasurable and non-systematic. It did not allow itself to be limited, which is the requirement of every state institution. Through this formal acceptance of common egoism as principle a tremendous shame has occurred and the seed of revolution in our day lies nowhere but here.

With the growth of culture, desires became more diverse and the cost of satisfying them had to increase even more. Beneath all these luxuries and all these refinements of life and culture, the moral ethos was left behind.

Sensuality had too quickly won an enormous place. Even in these conditions, as people of this time developed their nature and lost themselves in the most diverse activities and most comfortable self-esteem, the other side must have seemed to them unimpressive, narrow and distant. Here they believed that they had arrived at the right path of their destiny, that here they had to use all their strength. As a result of their greatest understanding, it became the crude passion for self-interest