THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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in this sense of simplicity and at the same time fulfilment is a social utopian category; that it belongs to society precisely because it contrasts with the latter and its
artificiality, even emptiness. As this category it had been varyingly — in the older wishes for free space — played off by Diogenes against the polis, by Rousseau
against the fortress of feudalism, by Ruskin against mechanical capitalism. With ever­varying content, simply according to the character of each society and its
civilization from which the Robinsonade pushed off. And yet it must be emphasized, simply to understand the peculiar unquestionableness of all dreams of free space, in
contrast to the so often embarrassed elaborations of dreams of free time: there is a common matter­of­fact element in the Arcadian contrasting wishes which almost has
as much staying power as the nature sought by them. And despite the vast preponderance of the merely social utopian element, of the social assurances and the
contrast in the pastoral picture: the landscape before the gates, this objective factor, nevertheless constantly presented itself for such a picture. Arcadia was located
from the first beneath trees, beside springs and other elements of paradise, not in the city, however shimmering. A trace of this very old utopia of free space still shines
in every harmony with nature and that which the city­dweller expects and receives from it. Like the public festival in Romance and Slavonic countries, the joy in nature
may well have been most ardently developed and preserved in Germany. But dopo lavoro demands everywhere, in its dreams of space, a portion of the great Pan; and
he certainly provides a hall for leisure.
Live hidden away, this piece of advice is just as dangerously isolating as it is harmlessly quiet. It refers first to the settler's smallholding for which the lonely countryside
gives room, but then also to rural repose. Freud's theory of sleep makes a certain contribution to the particular dopo lavoro of this quietness, as that of the country. For
according to this, the wish for sleep aims at turning away from the outside world, the libido­occupation of objects, the object­occupation of the libido decreases, libido
and ego­interest are again united, in full narcissism. This produces the strongest possible recuperation, namely that of the psychological return to the womb, to
objectless isolation. And in fact this sheds light on the peculiar security which the person who has escaped from the city may find in nature. He does not feel disturbed
by existing objects; there thus arises in the quietness founded by this a particular protective space, in fact a maternal space of leisure. Similarly, writing at night and
writing in the country also have this seclusion in their favour: quietness and darkness, the two grave sisters, or rather: narcissism coats even natural objects themselves,
so that they