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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: themselves, and thus, as it were, conspire with the enemy. Far better is it
to circumscribe their power, to control and guide them for their good, as
children are controlled and guided. Trust me, a people grows neither old
nor wise, a people remains always in its infancy.
Egmont. How rarely does a king attain wisdom! And is it not fit that the
many should confide their interests to the many rather than to the one?
And not even to the one, but to the few servants of the one, men who have
grown old under the eyes of their master. To grow wise, it seems, is the
exclusive privilege of these favoured individuals.
Alva. Perhaps for the very reason that they are not left to themselves.
Egmont. And therefore they would fain leave no one else to his own
Egmont |
