HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA
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absorbing question, How is that same exploded Past ever to settle
down again? Not lost forever, it would appear: the New Era has not
annihilated the old eras: New Era could by no means manage that;--
never meant that, had it known its own mind (which it did not):
its meaning was and is, to get its own well out of them;
to readapt, in a purified shape, the old eras, and appropriate
whatever was true and NOT combustible in them: that was the poor
New Era's meaning, in the frightful explosion it made of itself
and its possessions, to begin with!

And the question of questions now is: What part of that exploded
Past, the ruins and dust of which still darken all the air,
will continually gravitate back to us; be reshaped, transformed,
readapted, that so, in new figures, under new conditions, it may
enrich and nourish us again? What part of it, not being
incombustible, has actually gone to flame and gas in the huge
world-conflagration, and is now GASEOUS, mounting aloft; and will
know no beneficence of gravitation, but mount, and roam upon the
waste winds forever,--Nature so ordering it, in spite of any
industry of Art? This is the universal question of afflicted
mankind at present; and sure enough it will be long to settle.

On one point we can answer: Only what of the Past was TRUE will
come back to us. That is the one ASBESTOS which survives all fire,
and comes out purified; that is still ours, blessed be Heaven,
and only that. By the law of Nature nothing more than that;
and also, by the same law, nothing less than that. Let Art,
struggle how it may, for or against,--as foolish Art is seen
extensively doing in our time,--there is where the limits of it
will be. In which point of view, may not Friedrich, if he was a
true man and King, justly excite some curiosity again; nay some
quite peculiar curiosity, as the lost Crowned Reality there was
antecedent to that general outbreak and abolition? To many it
appears certain there are to be no Kings of any sort, no
Government more; less and less need of them henceforth, New Era
having come. Which is a very wonderful notion; important if true;
perhaps still more important, just at present, if untrue! My hopes