If the characters do not negate the moral idea, what does it matter that the piece affirms it? The negation of the individual factors must be so very decided, precisely in order to give emphasis to the affirmation of the whole. Human institutions require a man to be a man like other men; but man, whoever and whatever he may be, wishes to be an individual, indeed is, as such, individualized. Hence the rupture. Let the understanding question in a work of art, but do not let it answer. (1848) The understanding no more makes poetry than salt makes food, but it is necessary to poetry as salt is to food. (1849) One does not sit down to play on the piano in order to verify mathematical laws. Just as little does one write poetry in order to demonstrate something. Oh, if people would only learn to comprehend that! Indeed the beauty of all the higher activity of man is precisely the fact, that ends which the individual never even thinks of are attained thereby. (1853) The process of dramatic individualization is perhaps best illustrated by comparison to water. Everywhere water is water and man is man, but as the former acquires a mysterious flavor from every stratum of earth that it flows or trickles through, so man acquires a peculiarity from his time, his nation, history, and fate. (1857) Man would perhaps still have as acute senses as animals, if thinking did not divert him from the outer world. (1859) Ideas are the same thing in the drama that counterpoint is in music; nothing in themselves but the primary condition for everything. (1861) (Concerning my _Nibelungen_.)