Hyacinth followed their advice, asked and asked, and finally reached that long-sought dwelling concealed behind palms and other choice plants. His heart beat with infinite longing and the most delicious yearning thrilled him in this abode of the eternal seasons. Amid heavenly fragrance he fell into slumber, since naught but dreams might lead him to the most sacred place. To the tune of charming melodies and in changing harmonies did his dream guide him mysteriously through endless apartments filled with curious things. Everything seemed so familiar to him and yet amid a splendor that he had never seen; then even the last tinge of earthliness vanished as though dissipated in the air, and he stood before the celestial virgin. He lifted the filmy, shimmering veil and Roseblossom fell into his arms. From afar a strain of music accompanied the mystery of the loving reunion, the outpourings of their longing, and excluded all that was alien from this delightful spot. After that Hyacinth lived many years with Roseblossom near his happy parents and comrades, and innumerable grandchildren thanked the mysterious old woman for her advice and her fire; for at that time people got as many children as they wanted. APHORISMS[33] By NOVALIS TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE Where no gods are, spectres rule. The best thing that the French achieved by their Revolution, was a portion of Germanity. Germanity is genuine popularity, and therefore an ideal. Where children are, there is the golden age. Spirit is now active here and there: when will Spirit be active in the whole? When will mankind, in the mass, begin to consider? Nature is pure Past, foregone freedom; and therefore, throughout, the soil of history. The antithesis of body and spirit is one of the most remarkable and dangerous of all antitheses. It has played an important part in history. Only by comparing ourselves, as men, with other rational beings, could we know what we truly are, what position we occupy. The history of Christ is as surely poetry as it is history. And, in general, only that history is history which might also be fable. The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible. Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion. The more sinful man feels himself, the more Christian he is. Christianity is opposed to science, to art, to enjoyment in the proper sense. It goes forth from the common man. It inspires the great majority of the limited on earth. It is the germ of all democracy, the highest fact in the domain of the popular.