artifice from the bones of her own children and lightened such decay with blinding tinsel.
She is an indecent monster who has been a thousand times warmed up from her own death, who fattens herself, patches together her rags and makes them well into new fabric, carries it to the market and again, makes them into nasty rags! Young man, do you know very well in what society you are maybe, now, walking!? Did you ever think, indeed, that Nature's endless circle is your forefathers' tomb, that the winds which bring you the scents of the lime trees, maybe blow to your nose the dispersed force of Arminius, that in the refreshing source you maybe tasting the crushing bones of our great Henry!?
Pfff! Pfff! Should maybe the Roman conquerors who divided the majestic world into three parts, just the same way young boys share a bouquet among them and put them afterwards on their hats, extort from the throat of their weakened descent a moaning opera aria!? The atom which gave divine thoughts to Plato’s mind, which made Titus' heart tremble with pity, shudders maybe, now, with the ardour of an animal in Sardanapale's veins, or will be dispersed by the ravens in the carrion of a recently hanged local thief. Disgraceful! Disgraceful!
We have made our Harlequin masks from the sanctified ashes of our fathers; we have fed our bell hood with the wisdom of the ancient times. You seem to find that amusing, Erwin?
Edwin
Forgive me! Your observations remind me of comical scenes. How? Picture our bodies wandering away from our spirits, as people affirm in these laws! Imagine the same bodies, after the death of the machine, still keeping the administration under the command of the soul; the same way as the spirits of the deceased repeat the tasks of their previous life, quae cura fuit vivis, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.
Wollmar
Hence, Lycurgus' ashes may still lie, until now and for eternity, in the ocean!?
Edwin
Do you hear, there, the voice of the tender Philomele complaining? As if she were the urn keeping Tibullus’s ashes, which could sing so tenderly as she does?
Maybe the sublime Pindar is ascending with every eagle into the blue firmament? Maybe is vibrating in every courting Zephyr an atom of Anacreon? Who can tell if it is not the bodies of their former seducers which fly in tender little flocks of powder into their mistresses' hairlocks? If it is not the usurer's remains which are captured within the hundred year old rust on the buried coins?
If it is not the Polygraphs' bodies which are damned to be melted into letters, or turned into paper; to groan, now, eternally under the pressure of the printing machine and to help eternalize the nonsense of their colleagues? Who can prove to me that our neighbour's painful kidney stone is not the rest of an unskilled doctor who, as punishment, now guards like an uninvited doorman the formerly mistreated bladder, condemned to this dishonourable jail, until a doctor's consecrated hand frees the cursed Prince? Do you see, Wollmar!? From precisely the cup which created bitter angers in you, my mood creates merry jokes!
Wollmar
Edwin! Edwin! How you diffuse earnestness again with a laughing joke! People say such things about our Princes who believe they can provoke some destructive effect with just a wink of an eye. People say that about our beauties who want to fool our wisdom with some colours painted on their faces. People say that about the sweet little gentlemen who make of a handful of blond hair into an object of worship of their God! Do they only care how roughly the shovels of the grave diggers stroke Yorik's skull!? What good is a woman with all her beauty, if the great Caesar is reduced to repair a fissuring wall to protect himself from the wind?
Edwin
But what is the meaning of all this?
Wollmar
Miserable catastrophe of a miserable farce! Do you not see it, Edwin? The destiny of the soul is written in the matter. Now, make for yourself the happy conclusion.
Edwin
Calm down, Wollmar! You are getting all excited. Do you know how careless you were, there!
Wollmar
Let me go on! Good things have nothing to shy away from inspection.
Edwin
Wollmar should only indulge in inspection when he is in a happier mood!
Wollmar
Oh, come on! There you are opening again, the most dangerous wounds. According to you, wisdom is like a talkative laundress who goes cleaning in every house and adapts with dexterity her talk to any possible mood: denying even grace to unfortunate people, approving even malevolence in the fortunate ones. A stomachache can make people take the planets for hell; a glass of wine can make people idolize a devil. If our moods are the models of our philosophies, you say, to me, Edwin, in which one will truth be found? I am afraid, Edwin, that you are only wise, when you are gloomy!
Edwin
I do not want to be gloomy to be wise!
Wollmar
You have used the word „fortunate“. How do people become fortunate, Edwin? Work is the condition of life, the goal is wisdom: and felicity, you say, is the price. Thousand and again thousand wide open sails leave the port to look for the happy island in the immense sea and to rob the Golden Fleece. Tell me now, you wise man, how many of them will find it? I see, in one instance, a flotilla whirled around in the eternal ring of needs, leaving eternally this shore to land eternally again on it, eternally landing on it to leave it again. It hurries into the entrance hall of its determination, cruises fearfully along the shore to pick provisions and to do some repair works, but never charts onto the high sea. These are the people who, today, tire themselves on what can tire them again tomorrow. If I put them aside, then the number of candidates is already reduced by approximately its half.
The whirlpool of sensibility pulls again other sails into an inglorious tomb. These are the ones who waste the whole force of their existence to enjoy the labor of previous existences. When people disregard them, then only a little quarter of the whole candidates still remains on course.
Anxious and shy, the remaining candidates sail further without any compass, escorted by the corresponding stars, on the fearsome ocean; the happy coast already scintillates like white clouds in the horizon, “Land!” shouts the steersman and then what!? A miserable little plank breaks somewhere on board, and the leaking ship sinks heavily along the shore. Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. Almost unconscious, the most skilled swimmer fights his way to the land, like a foreigner in the ethereal zone, he wanders in loneliness and seeks with crying eyes to return to his Nordic homeland. In this way, I remove from the great number in your generous system one million people after the other. The children rejoice over the protection of adult men, and these men weep that they are not any more children. The stream of our knowledge meanders backwards from its delta to find maturity, the evening is dawning like the morning; in the namely night where Aurora and Hesperus are embracing, the wise man who would like to break the walls of mortality, sinks downwards and becomes again a loving boy. Now, Edwin, do you prove the potter's skill in the pot, please answer, Edwin!?
Edwin
The potter's skill is already proven, when he can prove that the pot is his work, no matter how beautiful it may be!
Wollmar
Please answer!
Edwin
