5 1 
something else. Only in our own epoch have painting and sculpture been liber 
ated from the aspect of a mandolin, a president in a Prince Albert, a battle, a 
landscape. I love nature, but not its substitutes. Naturalist, illusionist art is a 
substitute for nature. 
I remember a discussion with Mondrian in which he distinguished between 
art and nature, saying that art is artificial and nature natural. I do not share 
his opinion. I believe that nature is not in opposition to art. Art is of natural 
origin and is sublimated and spiritualized through the sublimation of man. 
[illustrations 9, 10, 14] 
A few lines of Plotinus 
For those among men whose souls have gone beyond that of centipedes, spi 
ders, snails, flies, leeches, bankers, politicians, and who wish to approach 
beauty and light, I quote these few lines of Plotinus: “It is first of all necessary 
to make the organ of vision analogous and similar to the object to be con 
templated. Never would the eye have perceived the sun if it had not first taken 
the form of the sun; likewise, the soul cannot see beauty unless it first becomes 
beautiful itself, and every man must make himself beautiful and divine in 
order to attain the sight of beauty and divinity.” 
Some old friends 
Some old friends from the days of the Dada campaign, who always fought for 
dreams and freedom, are now disgustingly preoccupied with class aims and 
busy making over the Hegelian dialectic into a hurdygurdy tune. Conscien 
tiously they mix poetry and the Five Year Plan in one pot; but this attempt to 
lie down while standing up will not succeed. Man will not allow himself to 
be turned into a scrubbed, hygienic numeral, which, in its enthusiasm over 
a certain portrait, shouts yes like a hypnotized donkey. Man will not permit 
himself to be standardized. It is hard to explain how the greatest individual 
ists can come out for a termite state. I cannot imagine my old friends in a col 
lective Russian ballet. 
A magic treasure 
Only spirit, dream, art lead to a true collectivity. They are the games that 
lead man into real life. Hugo Ball’s dream resurrects man to reality from his