Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/123

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★ 113 ★

11. The highest is the most comprehensible, the next, the most indispensable.[1]

12. Miracles are in a reciprocal relationship with the effects of natural law: they constrain one another and together form a whole. They are united, and they transmute one another. No miracles without natural law and vice versa.

13. Nature is the enemy of everlasting possessions. With inexorable laws, it destroys all signs of property; obliterates all characteristics of social arrangements. The earth belongs to all generations; everyone is entitled to all of it. Those who came earlier through this accident of primogeniture do not deserve preference.—Property rights come to an end at a fixed time. Amelioration and deterioration are subject to immutable conditions. But if the body is an asset solely by which I acquire my rights as a active citizen of the earth, then I cannot lose myself through the forfeiture of this asset. I lose nothing but my place in this school of princes, and step into a higher corporate body, where my beloved classmates follow me.

14. Life is the beginning of death. Life is for death's sake. Death is the end and beginning at the same time, separation and closer interconnection to the self at the same time. The reduction is completed through death.

[2]15. Philosophy also has its blossomings. These are thoughts that one doesn't always know whether they should be called beautiful or witty.

  1. These handwritten words follow: Only through the defamiliarization of ourselves, weaning ourselves from ourselves, something incomprehensible arises here, which is unfathomable to the self.
  2. The fragments in fine print come from Friedrich Schlegel.