Dear Marion,

More about the acrobat and her pole.  Why didn't this
occur to me sooner? If I contemplate her holding the
pole firmly at any elevation, her hands grasping it
symmetrically about its central point (section) which
now serves as a pivot, its weight concentrated equally
at the ends, then assuming her strength corresponding
to her bravado to increase, and assuming likewise the
weights to increase, and the strength of the cable
supporting the mathematical fantasy correspondingly to
increase, then, going to the limit, rotational inertia
in all three dimensions, x, y and z, will make the pole
as immovable as a bar securely mounted on the walls of an
invisible heavenly castle, a bar which a ballet dancer
might confidently grasp while displaying the glories of
her body to the Creator, the Lord of Hosts. What a scene! 

And an addendum to my account of pre-World War II Germany.
Sitting in the front seat of my father's modest little gray
Ford sedan on the way to home visits in various parts of
Braunschweig, I have a chance to see many new construction
sites, buildings going up,  workmen clambering up and down
ladders - Himmelsleitern perhaps? - finally having regained
that position in the social universe of which they were
deprived during the austere decade and a half of the Republic,
with banners buffetted by the summer breezes praising God and
saying: "Dass wir hier bauen, verdanken wir dem Fuehrer."
(A slogan sardonically echoed by my mother when this house,
where I am sitting now, was going up.) Of all these circumstances
I'm reminded by the current political scene. If he could
guarantee jobs, jobs, jobs, he would be elected or re-elected
no matter how many horns or how long a tail he sported.
So, as Margrit would have said to our father's dismay:
"What's the diff'?"

I'll forego the debate about big government vs. small
government except to note that small government is more 
accessible to analysis, if one wishes to study the effect of
government on the individual and the relationship of the
individual to government. I begin by focussing on the
individual, not from prejudice, but because offhand, intuitively,
I know more about how _I_ think, how _I_ feel, what _I_ am,
than I know about government, which initially at least is only
a vague hypothesis, a dry concept which must be fleshed out with
experience and intuition.

To begin with, I'll equate government and society, and study the
formation of society as the aggregation of individuals.  It is
of course well established that the combination (Verbindung,
union) of two individuals, - cf. monogamy - is qualitatively 
different from the aggregate of three or more individuals. 
There's little experience with polygamy in our culture, but
much opportunity to observe the dynamics in families with one
two, four, six, eight or more children, the dynamics in artificial
communities, kibbutzim, children's homes, old people's homes.
In the process of aggregation, the individual's intuition,
perception, judgment and action are merged and become fused with,
become integrated into that of the group.

The benefits and advantages are obvious and compelling. Only groups
of individuals can invent sciences such as mathematics, biology,
chemistry, physics, or build cities, airplanes, rockets, computers ...
But impressive as they are, these achievements are not the most
consequential. The most fundamental result of association is the
development of mind; for except in the exchange and interchange
of intuition and experience, girls and boys do not learn to speak,
they do not learn to think. In the absence of stimuli, their minds
remain as blank as their retinas remain amblyopic.

The obstacles, the costs, the disadvantages of society are also
real, if not so obvious. It's a tautology to point out that
society is incompatible with privacy. Taken to the limit, the
individual surrenders himself to society which preempts him body
and soul. Yet neither the person nor society can dispense with
individuality. Society relies on the spontaneity, responsibility
and conscience of the individual. I see in the relation of individual
and society a dialectic, which it seems to me, leaves many issues
unresolved, and comes to a focus in the phenomenon of government. 
It is in this perspective particularly, as the locus of compromise 
and conflict between the individual and the group, that government
requires to be understood and needs to be explained.

This is the paragraph that I had completed yesterday, before your
letter arrived. You say "Our Day of Atonement is beginning.  I can
seek pardon for all the occasions when I wrote or said something
that made you feel you had to defend yourself." That's not necessary.
I keep so busy charging myself and defending myself against myself
that criticism from you would not sway the balance. What's wrong with
me is my pessimism.  I'm reminded of Goethe's unquenchable optimism
which he puts in the mouth of the poet seeking admission to the
Moslem paradise:

"Und doch sang ich gläubger Weise,
Daß mir die Geliebte treu,
Daß die Welt, wie sie auch kreise,
Liebevoll und dankbar sei."

Correspondingly he stigmatizes the devil
as the eternal negativist.
 
"MEPHISTOPHELES:
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,
Ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht;
Drum besser wär's, daß nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz, das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element."

It is interesting that Goethe should equate the arguably
realistic recognition of evil with the perpetration of it.
To acknowledge evil is to do evil, hence to be evil.
The author of Genesis would surely have agreed, inasmuch
as we are told, - and why should we doubt it, - that God
created the world by means of a series of affirmative
pronouncements, protocoll statements no less: "Let there
be light, and there was light." und so weiter. If the world
was created by affirmative statements, why shouldn't the
converse be true that it can be and will be destroyed by 
edict, i.e. by denial. Faith is of the essence, and the
refusal to believe, doubt, is the ultimate sin.

Alternatively one might argue that Goethe's Pollyanna streak
clouded his literary judgment, and made him blind and deaf
to the two authors, Kleist and Hoelderlin, whose intuition was
arguably more profound than his own, and which, notwithstanding
his incomparable poetic gifts, made it impossible for Goethe to
write Hamlet or King Lear. I construe my dim view of the world
as the pole that keeps me from falling off the highwire.

Edg. [aside] And worse I may be yet. The worst is not
_    So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'
_                              King Lear IV, i

I infer that Goethe's happy view fulfilled for him an analogous
function.  So, as Margrit would have said: "What's the diff'?"
Jochen