Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/95

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THE POLICY OF NATIONS.

and which generally serves both him and his family
even for dinner, the gentlemen had in their rapid dis-
course already flown over the earth, run through the
intricate paths of politics, touched the lofty heights of
speculation, and were now diving into the depths of
science. But they nowhere agreed upon any thing ;
neither could contrive to form a harmony for the key
note struck by the other. If Oswald wished to dispose
lightly of a question, Mander and Hold showed him its
serious side, and the decisive influence of a proper an-
swer upon the happiness or misery of mankind. If
Mander praised the acuteness of mind which men had
already shown in solving the great questions of life,
Hold brought experience to prove how little these solu-
tions had profited.
  But politics is now what theology was formerly, the
province where mind loves to wrestle with mind, the
common ground to which scarce any one is a stranger,
which assembles with equal rights of speech around its
council fires those most differing in rank and race, and
at the same time is for the keen observer a Diet, where
men's hearts reveal themselves, and betray mutual sym-
pathies, that reach beyond the brawls of journals and
of parties ; and therefore our friends were constantly
brought back again to this general starting-point.
  Hold said, as he perceived this :
  "It is a miserable age which furnishes no common
material for conversation beyond circumscribed individ-
ual interests. It breeds a narrowness of spirit, a trivial
meum and tuum life, a wretched prosaic utilitarian-
ism. Above our every day occupations, above our dig-
ging and delving, each in his own little sphere, a realm