As long as I had Walpurga with me in the palace, I could speak to her freely on various subjects. When I came to her, it was a change, a stepping out of the sphere in which my thoughts were accustomed to move. But here, where I have her and nothing else, it is different. It is not pride--for what have I to do with pride? Is it alienation, or is it sullen listlessness?
Naïveté pleases us only for a short time. Wisdom always remains attractive--such wisdom as mother Beate's or Gunther's. Yes, I long for him most of all.
Wisdom is cultured naïveté or, to speak more correctly, the naïveté of genius. It is the rosy apple; naïveté the blossom from which it sprang, still dwells in the fruit, as its core.
Night and day, the various elemental influences, clear perception and the mysterious forces of nature:--all these help to perfect the finest fruit.
I cannot look upon work as the noblest thing in life. The perfect man is he who does nothing, who cherishes himself--; such is the life of the gods, and what is man but the god of creation?
My heresy thus expresses itself. I have confessed and repented of it. But in the confessor's chair sits one who is in the right when he says: "Very well, my child! And so the noblest and most exalted life is simply existence, void of effort. But, since no one can live unless some other being labors for him, it follows that all must do something. Nothing can be had without pay. The one class has not been sent into the world merely to exist, nor the other merely to labor."
How happy I might become if there were no past. A life hereafter, filled with memories--how sad the thought! And yet without memories, would it be a second life?