The Magic Mountain Part 27

"Who? The little man? Not very much. Though he said some things I liked. That about courts of arbitration-they are are nothing but canting hypocrisy, of course. But I did not care much for the man himself-a person may say as many good things as he likes, it doesn't matter to me, if he himself is a queer fish. And queer he is, you can't deny it. That stuff about the 'place of intercourse' was distinctly shady, not to mention anything else. And did you see the big Jewish nose he had? n.o.body but Jews have such puny figures. Are you really thinking of visiting the man?" nothing but canting hypocrisy, of course. But I did not care much for the man himself-a person may say as many good things as he likes, it doesn't matter to me, if he himself is a queer fish. And queer he is, you can't deny it. That stuff about the 'place of intercourse' was distinctly shady, not to mention anything else. And did you see the big Jewish nose he had? n.o.body but Jews have such puny figures. Are you really thinking of visiting the man?"

"Visit him-of course we'll visit him," declared Hans Castorp. "When you talk about his being puny, that's only the military in you speaking. And as for his nose, the Chaldeans had the same kind, and they knew devilish well what they were about, on more subjects than alchemy. Naphta has something of the mystagogue about him, he interests me a good deal. I won't say that I make him out altogether, yet, but if we meet him often perhaps we shall; I don't think it at all unlikely we may learn something from the acquaintance with him."

"Oh, you, with your learning! Getting wiser all the time, with your biology, and your botany, and your continual changing from one idea to another! You began philosophizing about time the first day you came. But we didn't come up here to acquire wisdom. We came to acquire health, to get healthier and healthier until we are entirely well, and are free to quit, and go down below where we belong!"

" 'Of old sat Freedom on the heights,' " quoted Hans Castorp airily. "Tell me first what freedom is," he went on. "Naphta and Settembrini disputed over it a good deal without coming to any conclusion. Settembrini says it is the law of love of one's kind; that sounds like his ancestor, the Carbonaro. But however valiant he was, and however valiant our Settembrini himself is-" "Yes, he got uncomfortable when we talked about physical courage."

"I can't help thinking he would be afraid of things little Naphta wouldn't be, and that his freedom and his bravery are more or less folderol. Do you think he wouldhave the courage 'de se perdre ou meme se laisser deperir'?" "Why do you suddenly begin talking French?" "Why do you suddenly begin talking French?"

"Oh, I don't know. The atmosphere up here is so international. I don't know which would find more pleasure in it-Settembrini for the sake of his bourgeois worldrepublic, or Naphta for his hierarchical cosmopolis. As you see, I kept my ears open; but even so I found it far from clear. On the contrary, the result was more confusion than anything else."

"It always is. You will find that when people discuss and express their views nothing ever comes of it but confusion worse confounded. I tell you, it doesn't matter in the least what a man's views are, so long as he is a decent chap. The best thing is to have no opinions, and just do one's duty."

"Yes, you can say that because you are a soldier, and your existence is purely formal. But it's different with me, I am a civilian, and more or less responsible. And I must say it's rather upsetting to have on the one hand a man preaching an international world-republic, and absolutely barring war, and yet so patriotic that he is for ever demanding the rectification of the Brenner frontier, to the point of fighting a war for civilization over it; and then on the other a little chap contending that every national state is an invention of the devil, and hurrahing for some universal unification he sees on the far horizon-yet in the next minute justifying our national instincts and making awful fun of peace conferences. What a mix-up! By all means we must go visit him, and try to understand what it is all about. You say we did not come up here to get wiser, but healthier, and that is true. But all this confusion must be reconciled; and if you don't think so, why then you are dividing the world up into two hostile camps, which, I may tell you, is a grievous error, most reprehensible."

Of the City of G.o.d, and Deliverance by Evil and Deliverance by Evil

HANS CASTORP was in his loggia, studying a plant which, now that the astronomical summer had begun, and the days were shortening, flourished luxuriantly in many places: the columbine or aquilegia, of the ranunculus family, which grew in clumps, with long stalks bearing the blue, violet, or reddish-brown blossoms, and spreading herbaceous foliage. They grew everywhere, but most profusely in that quiet bottom where, nearly a year ago, he had first seen them: that remote and wooded ravine, filled with the sound of rushing water, where on the bench above the footbridge, that ill-risked, ill-timed, ill-fated walk of his had ended. He revisited it now and again.

It was, if one began it a little less rashly than he had, no great distance thither. If you mounted the slope from the end of the sledge-run in the village, you could reach in some twenty minutes the picturesque spot where the wooden bridge of the path through the forest crossed above the run as it came down from the Schatzalp, provided you kept to the shortest route, did not loiter about, nor pause too long to get your breath. Hans Castorp, when Joachim was detained at home in the service of the cure, for some examination, blood-test, x-ray photography, weighing, or injection, would stroll thither in good weather, after second breakfast, or even after first; or he would employ the hours between tea and dinner in a visit to his favourite spot, to sit on the bench where once the violent nose-bleeding had overtaken him, to listen with bent head to the sound of the torrent and gaze at the secluded scene, with the hosts of blue aquilegias blooming in its depths.

Was it only for this he came? No, he sat there to be alone: to recall and go over in his mind the events and impressions of the past months. They were many, varied, and hard to cla.s.sify; so interwoven and mingled they seemed, as almost to obscure any clear distinction between the concrete fact and the dreamed or imagined. But one and all, they had in their essence something fantastic, something which made his heart, unreliable as it had been from his first day up here, stand still when he thought of them, and then wildly flutter. Or could its flutterings be sufficiently accounted for by the reflection that a round year had gone by since first he sat here, that on this very spot whither once he had come in a condition of lowered vitality and seen the apparition of Pribislav Hippe, the aquilegias were blossoming anew?

Now, at least, on his bench by the rushing water, he had no more nose-bleeding- that was a thing of the past. Joachim had said from the very first that it was not easy to get acclimatized, and at the time of that earlier visit he was still finding it difficult. But he had made progress; and now, after eleven months, the process must be regarded as finished. More, in that direction, could not be expected. The chemistry of his digestion had adjusted itself, Maria had her ancient relish, his parched mucous membranes having sufficiently recovered to let him savour again the bouquet of that estimable brand of cigars. He still loyally ordered them from Bremen whenever his stock ran low, although the shop-windows of the international resort displayed attractive wares. Maria, he felt, made a sort of bond between him, the exile, and his home in the "flat-land"-a bond more effectual than the postcards he now and then sent to his uncle, the intervals between which grew longer in proportion as he imbibed the more s.p.a.cious time conceptions prevalent "up here." He mostly sent picture postcards, as being pleasanter to receive, with charming views of the valley in winter and in summer dress. They gave precisely the room he needed to tell his kinsmen the latest news of his state, whatever had been let fall by the doctors after the monthly or general examination: such as that, both to sight and hearing, he had unmistakably improved, but was still not entirely free from infection; that his continued slight excess of temperature came from small infected areas which were certain to disappear without a trace if he had patience, and then he would never need to return hither. He well knew that long letters were neither asked nor expected, it being no humanistic or literary circle to which he addressed himself down there, and the replies he received were equally lacking in expansiveness. They merely accompanied the means of subsistence which came to him from home, the income from his paternal inheritance. Turned into Swiss currency, this was so advantageous that he had never spent one instalment when the next arrived, enclosed in a letter of a few typed lines signed "James Tienappel," conveying his greetings and best wishes for recovery, together with the same from Grand-uncle Tienappel and sometimes from the seafaring Peter as well.

The Hofrat, so Hans Castorp told his people, had latterly given up the injections: they did not suit the young patient. They gave him headache and fatigue, caused loss of appet.i.te, reduced his weight, and, while making his temperature go up at first, had not succeeded in reducing it in the long run. His face glowed rosy-red with dry, internal heat, a sign that for this child of the lowland, bred in an atmosphere that rejoiced in a high degree of humidity, acclimatization could only consist in "getting used to not getting used to it"-which, in fact, Rhadamanthus himself never did, being perpetually purple-cheeked. "Some people can't get used to it," Joachim had said; and this seemed to be Hans Castorp's case. For even that trembling of the neck, which had come upon him soon after his arrival here, had never quite pa.s.sed off, but would attack him as he walked or talked-yes, even up here in his blue-blossoming retreat, while he sat pondering the whole complex of his adventures; so that the dignified chin-support of Hans Lorenz Castorp had become almost fixed habit with him. He himself would all at once be conscious of using it and have a swift memory of the old man's choker collar, the provisional form of the ruff; the pale gold round of the christening basin; the ineffably solemn sound of the "great-great-great." These and suchlike a.s.sociations would gradually in their turn lead him back to reflect upon the whole ma.s.s of his adventures in life.

Pribislav Hippe never again appeared to him in bodily form, as once eleven months before. The progress of acclimatization was over, there were no more visions. No more did his body lie supine while his ego roved back to a far-off present. No more of such incidents. The vividness and clarity of that memory-picture, if it returned to hover before his eyes, yet kept within sane and normal bounds-but might move Hans Castorp to draw out of his breast pocket the gla.s.s plate which he had received as a gift, and kept there in an envelope enclosed in a letter-case. It was a small negative. Held in the same plane with the ground, it was black and opaque; but lifted against the light, it revealed matter for a humanistic eye: the transparent reproduction of the human form, the bony framework of the ribs, the outline of the heart, the arch of the diaphragm, the bellows that were the lungs; together with the shoulder and upper-armbones, all shrouded in a dim and vaporous envelope of flesh-that flesh which once, in Carnival week, Hans Castorp had so madly tasted. What wonder his unstable heart stood still or wildly throbbed when he gazed at it, and then, to the sound of the rushing waters, leaning with crossed arms against the smooth back of his bench, his head inclined upon one shoulder, among the blossoming aquilegias, began to turn over everything in his mind!

It hovered before his eyes-the image of the human form divine, the masterpiece of organic life-as once upon that frosty, starry night when he had plunged so profoundly into the study of it. His contemplation of its inner aspect was bound up in the young man's mind with a host of problems and discriminations, not of a kind the good Joachim had need to concern himself with, but for which Hans Castorp had come to feel as a civilian responsible. True, down in the plain he had never been aware of them, nor probably ever would have been. It was up here that the thing came about, where one sat piously withdrawn, looking down from a height of five thousand feet or so upon the earth and all that therein was-and it might be, also, by virtue of one's physical condition, with one's body brought, as it were, into higher relief by the toxins that were released by the localized inner infection to burn, a dry heat, in the face. His musings brought him upon Settembrini, organ-grinder and pedagogue, whose father had seen the light of day in h.e.l.las, who chose to define love of the image as comprehending politics, eloquence, and rebellion, and who would consecrate the burgher's pike upon the altar of humanity. He thought of Comrade Krokowski, and the traffic they two had been having in the twilighted room below stairs. He thought of the twofold nature of a.n.a.lysis, and questioned how far it was applicable to realities and conducive to progress, how far related to the grave and its noisome anatomy. He called up the figures of the two grandfathers, the rebel and the loyalist, both, for reasons diametrically opposed, black-clad; confronted them with each other, and tried their worth. He went further, and took counsel with himself over such vast problems as form and freedom, body and spirit, honour and shame, time and eternity-and succ.u.mbed to a brief but violent spell of giddiness, on a sudden thought that all about him the columbines were in blossom once more, and his year here rounding to its close.

He had an odd name for the serious mental preoccupations which absorbed him in his picturesque retreat; he called them "taking stock"; the expression, crude as it was, defined for him an employment which he loved, even though it was bound up in his mind with the phenomena of fear and giddiness and palpitation, and made his face burn even more than its wont. Yet there seemed a peculiar fitness in the fact that the mental strain involved obliged him to make use of the ancestral chin-support; that way of holding his head lent him an outward dignity in keeping with thoughts which pa.s.sed through his brain as he contemplated the image.

"h.o.m.o dei"-that was what the ugly Naphta had called the image, when he was defending it against the English doctrine of an economic society. And, by a natural a.s.sociation, Hans Castorp decided that in the interest of these mental activities of his, and his responsible position as a civilian member of society, he must really-and Joachim must too-pay that little man the honour of a visit. Settembrini did not like the idea, as Hans Castorp was shrewd and thin-skinned enough to know. Even the first meeting had displeased the humanist, who had obviously tried to prevent it and protect his pupils from intercourse with Naphta, notwithstanding that he personally a.s.sociated and discussed with him. His "pupils"-thus life's delicate child disingenuously put it, knowing all the time that it was himself alone who was the object of Settembrini's solicitude. So it is with schoolmasters. They permit themselves relaxations, saying that they are "grown up," and refuse the same to their pupils, saying that they are not "grown up." It was a good thing, then, that the hand-organ man was not actually in a position to deny young Hans Castorp anything-nor had even tried to do so. It was only necessary that the delicate child should conceal his thin-skinned perceptions and a.s.sume an air of unconsciousness; when there was nothing to prevent his taking friendly advantage of Naphta's invitation. Which, accordingly, he did, Joachim going along with him, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, on a Sunday afternoon after the main rest-cure, not many days later than their first meeting.

It was but a few minutes' walk from the Berghof down to the vine-wreathed cottage door. They went in, pa.s.sing on their right the entrance to the little shop, and climbed the narrow brown stairs to the door of the first storey. Near the bell was a small plate, with the name of Lukacek, Ladies' Tailor. The door was opened by a half-grown boy, in a sort of livery of gaiters and striped jacket, a little page, with shaven poll and rosy cheeks. Him they asked for Professor Naphta, impressing their names on his mind, as they had brought no cards; he said he would go and deliver them to Herr Naphta- whom he named without a t.i.tle. The door opposite the entrance stood open, and gave a view of the shop, where, regardless of the holiday, Lukacek the tailor sat crosslegged on a table and st.i.tched. He was sallow and bald-headed, with a large, drooping nose, beneath which his black moustaches hung down on both sides his mouth and gave him a surly look. "Good-afternoon," Hans Castorp greeted him.

"Grutsi," answered the tailor, in the Swiss dialect, which fitted neither his name nor his looks and sounded queer and unsuitable. answered the tailor, in the Swiss dialect, which fitted neither his name nor his looks and sounded queer and unsuitable.

"Working hard?" went on Hans Castorp, motioning with his head. "Isn't todaySunday?"

"Something pressing," the tailor said curtly, st.i.tching.

"Is it pretty? Are you making it in a hurry for a party?" Hans Castorp guessed.

The tailor let this question hang, for a little; bit off his cotton and threaded his needle afresh. After a while he nodded. "Will it be pretty?" persisted Hans Castorp. "Will it have sleeves?"

"Yes, sleeves; it's for an old 'un," answered Lukacek, with a strong Bohemian accent. The return of the lad interrupted this parley, which had been carried on through the doorway. Herr Naphta begged the gentlemen to come in, he announced, and opened a door a few steps further on in the pa.s.sage, lifting the portiere that hung over it to let them enter. Herr Naphta, in slippers, stood on a mossy green carpet just

within, and received his guests.

Both cousins were surprised by the luxury of the two-windowed study. They were even astonished; for the poverty of the cottage, the mean stair and wretched corridor, led one to expect nothing of the kind. The contrast lent to Naphta's elegant furnishings a note of the fabulous, which of themselves they scarcely possessed, and would not otherwise have had in the eyes of Hans Castorp and Joachim Ziemssen. Yet they were elegant too, even strikingly so; indeed, despite writing-table and bookshelves the room hardly had a masculine look. There was too much silk about- wine-coloured, purplish silk; silken window-hangings, silken portieres, and silken coverings to the furniture arranged on the narrow side of the room in front of a wall almost entirely covered with a Gobelin tapestry. Baroque easy-chairs with little pads on the arms were, grouped about a small metal-bound table, and behind it stood a baroque sofa with velvet cushions. Bookcases lined the entrance wall on both sides of the door. They and the writing-table or, rather, roll-top desk, which stood between the windows, were of carved mahogany; the gla.s.s doors of the bookcases were lined with green silk. But in the corner to the left of the sofa-group stood a work of art, a large painted wood-carving, mounted on a red-covered dais: a pieta pieta, profoundly startling, artlessly effective to the point of being grotesque. The Madonna, in a cap, with gathered brows and wry, wailing mouth, with the Man of Sorrows on her lap- considered as a work of art it was primitive and faulty, with crudely emphasized and ignorant anatomy, the hanging head bristling with thorns, face and limbs bloodbesprinkled, great blobs of blood welling from the wound in the side and from the nail-prints in hands and feet. This show-piece did indeed give a singular tone to the silken chamber. The wall-paper, on the window wall and above the bookcases, had obviously been supplied by the tenant: the green stripe in it matched the soft velvet carpet spread over the red drugget. The windows had cream-coloured blinds down to the floor. Only the ceiling had been impossible to treat: it was bare and full of cracks; but a small Venetian l.u.s.tre hung down from it.

"We've come for a little visit," said Hans Castorp, with his eyes more on the pious horror in the corner than on the owner of the surprising room, who was expressing his gratification that the cousins had kept their word. With a hospitable motion of his small right hand he would have ushered them to the satin chairs. But Hans Castorp went as if spellbound straight up to the wooden group, and stood before it, arms akimbo and head on one side.

"What is this you have here?" he asked, in a low voice. "It's frightfully good. What depiction of suffering! It's old, of course?"

"Fourteenth century," answered Naphta. "Probably comes from the Rhine. Does it impress you?"

"Enormously," said Hans Castorp. "It would impress anybody-couldn't help it. I should never have thought there could be anything in the world at once so-forgive me-so ugly, and so beautiful."

"All works of art whose function it is to express the soul and the emotions," Naphta responded, "are always so ugly as to be beautiful, and so beautiful as to be ugly. That is a law. Their beauty is not fleshly beauty, which is merely insipid-but the beauty of the spirit. Moreover, physical beauty is an abstraction," he added; "only the inner beauty, the beauty of religious expression, has any actuality."

"We are most grateful to you for making these distinctions clear," Hans Castorp said. "Fourteenth century?" he inquired of himself; "that means thirteen hundred soand-so? Yes, that is the Middle Ages, the way the books say; and I can more or less recognize in this thing the conception I have been getting of them lately. I never knew anything about the Middle Ages before, myself, being on the technical side. But up here they have been brought home to me in various ways. There was no economic doctrine of society then, that's plain enough. What is the name of the artist?" Naphta shrugged his shoulders.

"What does it matter?" he said. "We should not ask-for in the time when it was made they never did. It was not created by some wonderful and well-advertised single genius. It is an anonymous product, anonymous and communal. Moreover, it is very advanced Middle Ages-Gothic, signum mortificationis. signum mortificationis. No more of the palliating and beautifying that the Roman epoch thought proper to a depiction of the Crucifixion: here you have no royal crown, no majestic triumph over martyrdom and the world. It is the most utter and radical declaration of submission to suffering and the weakness of the flesh. Pessimistic and ascetic-it is Gothic art alone which is truly that. You are probably not familiar with the work of Innocent III, No more of the palliating and beautifying that the Roman epoch thought proper to a depiction of the Crucifixion: here you have no royal crown, no majestic triumph over martyrdom and the world. It is the most utter and radical declaration of submission to suffering and the weakness of the flesh. Pessimistic and ascetic-it is Gothic art alone which is truly that. You are probably not familiar with the work of Innocent III, De miseria humanae De miseria humanae conditionis conditionis: an exceedingly witty piece of writing-it was written at the end of the twelfth century, but this was the earliest art to furnish an ill.u.s.tration to it."

Hans Castorp heaved a deep sigh. "Herr Naphta," he said, "every word you say interests me enormously. 'Signum mortificationis'-is that right? I'll remember it. 'Anonymous and communal'-and that will take some thinking about too. You are quite right in a.s.suming I don't know the work of that pope-I take it Innocent III was was a pope? Did I understand you to say it is witty and ascetic? I must confess I should never have thought the two things went hand in hand; but when I put my mind to it, of course it is obvious that a discourse on human misery gives one a good chance to poke fun at the things of the flesh. Is the work obtainable? Perhaps if I got up my Latin I could read it." a pope? Did I understand you to say it is witty and ascetic? I must confess I should never have thought the two things went hand in hand; but when I put my mind to it, of course it is obvious that a discourse on human misery gives one a good chance to poke fun at the things of the flesh. Is the work obtainable? Perhaps if I got up my Latin I could read it."

"I have it here," Naphta said, motioning with his head toward one of the bookcases. "It is at your service. But, shall we not sit down? You can look at the pieta pieta from the sofa. Tea is just coming in." from the sofa. Tea is just coming in."

The little servant was fetching the tea, also a charming silver-bound basket containing slices of layer cake. And behind him, on the threshold, who should stand, on winged feet, wreathed in his subtle smile, and exclaiming: "Sapperlot!" and " and "Accidente"-who, indeed, but the lodger from upstairs, Herr Settembrini, dropped in to keep them company? From his little window, he said, he had seen the cousins enter, and made haste to finish the page of the encyclopaedia which he had at the moment in hand, in order to beg an invitation. Nothing more natural than his coming: it was justified by his old acquaintance with the Berghof guests, no less than by his relations with Naphta, which, despite deep-seated divergences of opinion, were lively on both sides, the host accepting his presence as a thing of course. All this did not prevent Hans Castorp from getting two impressions from his advent, one as clearly as the other: first, that Herr Settembrini had come to prevent them-or rather him-from being alone with little Naphta, and to establish, as it were, a pedagogic equilibrium; second, that Herr Settembrini did not object the least in the world, but rather the contrary, to exchanging his room in the loft for a sojourn in Naphta's fine and silken chamber, nor to taking a good and proper tea. He rubbed together his small yellow hands, with their line of hair running down the back from the little finger, before he fell to, with unmistakable and outspoken relish upon the layer cake, which had a chocolate filling.

The conversation continued on the subject of the pieta pieta, Hans Castorp holding it to the point with look and word, and turning to the humanist as though to put him in critical rapport with the work of art. Herr Settembrini's aversion was obvious in the very air with which he turned towards it-for he had originally sat down with his back to that corner of the room. He was too polite to express all he felt, and confined himself to pointing out certain defects in the physical proportions of the work, offences against nature, which were far from working upon his emotions, because they did not spring from archaic inept.i.tude, but from deliberate bad intent-a fundamentally opposed principle.-In which latter statement Naphta maliciously concurred. Certainly, there was no question of technical lack of skill. What we had here was conscious emanc.i.p.ation from the natural, a contempt for nature manifested by a pious refusal to pay her any homage whatever. Whereupon Settembrini declared that disregard of nature and neglect of her study only led men into error. He characterized as absurd the formlessness to which the Middle Ages and all periods like them had been a prey, and began, in sounding words, to exalt the Graeco-Roman heritage, cla.s.sicism, form, and beauty, reason, the pagan joy of life. To these things and these alone, he said, was it given to ameliorate man's lot on earth. Hans Castorp broke in here. What, he asked, about Plotinus, then, who was known to have said that he was ashamed of having a body? Or Voltaire, who, in the name of reason, protested against the scandalous Lisbon earthquake? Were they absurd? Perhaps. Yet it seemed to him, as he thought about it, that what one characterized as absurd might also be thought of as intellectually honourable; from which it would follow that the absurd hostility to nature evinced by Gothic art, when all was said and done, was as fine in its way as the gestures of Plotinus or Voltaire, since it testified to the selfsame emanc.i.p.ation, the same indomitable pride, which refused to abdicate in favour of blind natural forces- Naphta burst out laughing. He sounded more than ever like a cracked plate and ended in a fit of coughing.

Settembrini said floridly to Hans Castorp: "Your brilliance is almost a discourtesy to our host, since it makes you appear ungrateful for this delicious cake. But I don't know that grat.i.tude is your strong point. The kind I mean consists in making a good use of favours received."

As Hans Castorp looked rather mortified, he added in his most charming manner: "We all know you for a wag, Engineer: but your sly quips at the expense of the true, the good, and the beautiful will never make me doubt your fundamental love of them. You are aware, of course, that there is only one sort of revolt against nature which may be called honourable; that which revolts in the name of human beauty and human dignity. All others bring debas.e.m.e.nt and degradation in their train, even when not directed to that end. And you know, too, what inhuman atrocities, what murderous intolerance were displayed by the century to which the production behind me owes its birth. Look at that monstrous type, the inquisitor-for instance, the sanguinary figure of Conrad von Marburg-and his infamous zeal in the persecution of everything that stood in the way of supernatural domination! You are in no danger of acclaiming the sword and the stake as instruments of human benevolence!"

"Yet in its service," countered Naphta, "laboured the whole machinery by means of which the Holy Office freed the world of undesirable citizens. All the pains of the Church, even the stake, even excommunication, were inflicted to save the soul from everlasting d.a.m.nation-which cannot be said of the mania for destruction displayed by the Jacobins. Permit me to remark that any system of pains and penalties which is not based upon belief in a hereafter is simply a b.e.s.t.i.a.l stupidity. And as for the degradation of humanity, the history of its course is precisely synchronous with the growth of the bourgeois spirit. Renaissance, age of enlightenment, the natural sciences and economics of the nineteenth century, have left nothing undone or untaught which could forward this degradation. Modern astronomy, for example, has converted the earth, the centre of the All, the lofty theatre of the struggle between G.o.d and the Devil for the possession of a creature burningly coveted by each, into an indifferent little planet, and thus-at least for the present-put an end to the majestic cosmic position of man-upon which, moreover, all astrology bases itself."

"For the present?" Herr Settembrini asked, threateningly. His own manner of speaking had something in it of the inquisitor waiting to pounce upon the witness so soon as he shall have involved himself in an admission of guilt.

"Certainly. For a few hundred years, that is," a.s.sented Naphta, coldly. "A vindication, in this respect, of scholasticism is on the way, is even well under way, unless all signs fail. Copernicus will go down before Ptolemy. The heliocentric thesis is meeting by degrees with an intellectual opposition which will end by achieving its purpose. Science will see itself philosophically enforced to put back the earth in the position of supremacy in which she was installed by the dogma of the Church." "What? What? Intellectual opposition? Science philosophically enforced? What sort of voluntarism is this you are giving vent to? And what about pure knowledge, what about science? What about the unfettered quest for truth? Truth, my dear sir, so indissolubly bound up with freedom, the martyrs in whose cause you would like us to regard as criminals upon this planet but who are rather the brightest jewels in her crown?"

Herr Settembrini's question, and its delivery, were prodigious. He sat very erect, his righteous words rolled down upon little Naphta, and he let his voice swell out at the end, so that one could tell how sure he was his opponent could only reply with shamefaced silence. He had been holding a piece of layer cake between his fingers, but now he laid it back on his plate, as if loath to bite into it after launching his question. Naphta responded, with disagreeable composure: "My good sir, there is no such thing as pure knowledge. The validity of the Church's teaching on the subject of science, which can be summed up in the phrase of Saint Augustine: Credo Credo, ut ut intellegam: intellegam: I believe, in order that I may understand, is absolutely incontrovertible. Faith is the vehicle of knowledge, intellect secondary. Your pure science is a myth. A belief, a given conception of the universe, an idea-in short, a will, is always in existence; which it is the task of the intellect to expound and demonstrate. It comes down every time to the I believe, in order that I may understand, is absolutely incontrovertible. Faith is the vehicle of knowledge, intellect secondary. Your pure science is a myth. A belief, a given conception of the universe, an idea-in short, a will, is always in existence; which it is the task of the intellect to expound and demonstrate. It comes down every time to the quod erat demonstrandum quod erat demonstrandum. Even the conception of evidence itself, psychologically speaking, contains a strong element of voluntarism. The great schoolmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were agreed that what is false in theology cannot be true in philosophy. We can, if you like, leave theology out of the argument; but a humanity, a cultural conception, which refuses to recognize that what is philosophically false cannot be scientifically true, is not worthy the name. The accusation of the Holy Office against Galileo stated that his thesis was philosophically absurd. A more crushing arraignment could not well be."

"Aha! The reasoning of our great genius turned out in the long run to have the greater validity! No, let us be serious, Professore! Professore! Answer me this, answer me in the presence of these two young listeners: Do you believe in truth, in objective, scientific truth, to strive after the attainment of which is the highest law of all morality, and whose triumphs over authority form the most glorious page in the history of the human spirit?" Answer me this, answer me in the presence of these two young listeners: Do you believe in truth, in objective, scientific truth, to strive after the attainment of which is the highest law of all morality, and whose triumphs over authority form the most glorious page in the history of the human spirit?"

Hans Castorp and Joachim-the first faster than the second-turned their heads from Settembrini to Naphta.

Naphta replied: "There can be no such triumphs as those you speak of; for theauthority is man himself-his interests, his worth, his salvation-and thus between itand truth no conflict is possible. They coincide."

"Then truth, according to you-"

"Whatever profits man, that is the truth. In him all nature is comprehended, in all nature only he is created, and all nature only for him. He is the measure of all things, and his welfare is the sole and single criterion of truth. Any theoretic science which is without practical application to man's salvation is as such without significance, we are commanded to reject it. Throughout the Christian centuries it was accepted fact that the natural sciences afforded man no edification. Lactantius, who was chosen by Constantine the Great as tutor to his son, put the position very clearly when he asked in so many words what heavenly bliss he could attain by knowing the sources of the Nile, or the twaddle of the physicists anent the heavenly bodies. Answer him if you can! Why have we given the Platonic philosophy the preference over every other, if not because it has to do with knowledge of G.o.d, and not knowledge of nature? Let me a.s.sure you that mankind is about to find its way back to this point of view. Mankind will soon perceive that it is not the task of true science to run after G.o.dless understanding; but to reject utterly all that is harmful, yes, even all that ideally speaking is without significance, in favour of instinct, measure, choice. It is childish to accuse the Church of having defended darkness rather than light. She did well, and thrice well, to chastise as unlawful all unconditioned striving after the 'pure' knowledge of things-such striving, that is, as is without reference to the spiritual, without bearing on man's salvation; for it is this unconditioned, this a-philosophical natural science that always has led and ever will lead men into darkness."

"Your pragmatism," Settembrini responded, "needs only to be translated into terms of politics for it to display its pernicious character in full force. The good, the true, and the just, is that which advantages the State: its safety, its honour, its power form the sole criterion of morality. Well and good. But mark that herewith you fling open the door for every sort of crime to enter; while as for human truth, individual justice, democracy, you can see what will become of them-"

"If I might be permitted," Naphta interpolated, "to introduce a little logic into the premisses, I should state the question thus: either Ptolemy and the schoolmen were right, and the world is finite in time and s.p.a.ce, the deity is transcendent, the ant.i.thesis between G.o.d and man is sustained, and man's being is dual; from which it follows that the problem of his soul consists in the conflict between the spiritual and the material, to which all social problems are entirely secondary-and this is the only sort of individualism I can recognize as consistent-or else, on the other hand, your Renaissance astronomers. .h.i.t upon the truth, and the cosmos is infinite. Then there exists no suprasensible world, no dualism; the Beyond is absorbed into the Here, the ant.i.thesis between G.o.d and nature falls; man ceases to be the theatre of a struggle between two hostile principles, and becomes harmonious and unitary, the conflict subsists merely between his individual and his collective interest; and the will of the State becomes, in good pagan wise, the law of morality. Either one thing or the other." "I protest!" cried Settembrini, holding his tea-cup outstretched at arm's length toward his host. "I protest against the imputation that the modern State means the subjugation of the individual to evil ends! I protest against the dilemma in which you seek to place us, between Prussianism and Gothic reaction! Democracy has no meaning whatever if not that of an individualistic corrective to State absolutism of every kind. Truth and justice are the immediate jewels of personal morality. If, at times, they may appear to stand counter, even to be hostile, to the interests of the State, they may do so while all the time holding before their eyes her higher, yes, let us boldly say, her spiritual weal. To find in the Renaissance the origin of Stateworship-what b.a.s.t.a.r.d logic! The achievements wrung from the past-I use the word literally, my dear sir-wrung from the past by the Renaissance and the intellectual