Novalis' fragment Die Lehrlinge zu Sais displays in its composition a degree of purpose and coherence with which it has never been credited. A close examination of the text reveals a carefully constructed schema that unites the seemingly disparate elements of speculation and poetry into a meaningful and uniform statement on the relationship between man and nature. In the first section, entitled “Der Lehrling,” Novalis defines the ego's binary direction into an outer realm and an inner realm as the dual approach to the reality of nature; he outlines these dialectically opposed paths according to a pattern of alternate juxtaposition that reflects their opposite trends while it allows, at the same time, for their fundamental unity by linking one alternative to the other. The initial object of Novalis' exposition in the second section, called “Die Natur,” is the range of man's power of knowledge; he employs its various aspects as points of perspective from which nature may be examined, a fact that becomes fully obvious only after the underlying pattern of composition has been recognized as one that follows Kant's systematization of the human intellect, in particular his system for the categories of understanding.