|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: have I not predicted this terrible history? Have I not foreseen it all?
Regent. I too foresee many things, without being able to avert them.
Machiavel. In one word, then:---you will not be able to suppress the new
faith. Let it be recognized, separate its votaries from the true believers,
give them churches of their own, include them within the pale of social
order, subject them to the restraints of law,--do this, and you will at once
tranquillize the insurgents. All other measures will prove abortive, and you
will depopulate the country.
Regent. Have you forgotten with what aversion the mere suggestion of
toleration was rejected by my brother? Know you not, how in every letter
he urgently recommends to me the maintenance of the true faith? That he
Egmont |
