“Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings.”

—  Novalis , book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 95
Blüthenstaub (1798)
Context: Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.

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Novalis 102
German poet and writer 1772–1801

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