The Magic Mountain (73 page)
The topic of conversation continued to be the pietà, for Hans Castorp kept both one eye and his remarks fixed on it as he turned now to Herr Settembrini, trying to bring him into critical contact, as it were, with the work of art, even though the humanist’s aversion to this bit of decor could very easily be read from the expression on his face when he twisted around to look at it—he had taken a seat with his back to that particular corner. Too polite to say what he thought, he confined himself to remarks concerning errors in proportion and anatomical defects in the figures; such offenses against the truth of nature did not come close to moving him, he said, since they were based not on any primitive lack of skill but arose out of willful malice, out of an antagonistic principle. And Naphta maliciously agreed, saying that it certainly was not a question of any lack of technical skill. It was, rather, a matter of the emancipation of the Spirit from the bonds of nature, indeed, the work proclaimed a religious contempt for nature by refusing’ to submit to it. But when Settembrini declared that such a neglect of nature and a refusal to study her led humankind down a false path and then began in taut words to contrast an absurd formlessness—to which the Middle Ages and epochs that imitated it were addicted—with classicism, with the Greco-Roman heritage of form, beauty, reason, and serenity born of natural piety, for classicism alone was destined to further the human enterprise, Hans Castorp interrupted him and asked how all that fitted in with Plotinus, who, as was well known, was ashamed of his own body, and with Voltaire, who in the name of reason had rebelled against the scandalous earthquake in Lisbon? Absurd? Yes, this work, too, was absurd, but when one stopped and considered the matter, one could, in his opinion, call absurdity an intellectually honorable position, and so the absurd enmity toward nature in Gothic art was ultimately as honorable as the gesture of a Plotinus or a Voltaire, for it expressed the same emancipation from facts and givens, the same proud unwillingness to be enslaved, the same refusal to submit to dumb powers, that is, to nature.
Naphta broke into that laugh of his that sounded like a porcelain plate and ended in a cough.
Settembrini said loftily, “You wrong our host with your display of wit, for it is equally a display of ingratitude for this delicious cake. But I wonder if gratitude is one of your concerns—that is, presuming one shows gratitude by making good use of gifts received.”
But when Hans Castorp blushed at this, he went on charmingly, “You are known to be a wag, my good engineer. Despite your amiable scoffing at the Good, I do not doubt in the least that you also love it. You know yourself, of course, that the only intellectual protest against nature that can be called honorable is one that keeps in mind the dignity and beauty of man and never one that, even if it does not aim at man’s degradation and debasement, nevertheless accomplishes just that. You are also aware what inhuman abominations, what bloodthirsty intolerance—without which the artifact behind me would not exist—that epoch brought forth. I need only remind you of those who persecuted heretics, dreadful inquisitors like the bloody Konrad of Marburg with his foul priestly rage against everything that resisted his heavenly rule. You, I am sure, would never approve of the sword or the stake as an instrument of brotherly love.”
“All the same, it was in love’s service,” Naphta declared, “that machinery was set in motion by which the cloister cleansed the world of its wicked citizens. All ecclesiastical punishments, even death at the stake, even excommunication, were imposed to save souls from eternal damnation, which cannot be said of the mad exterminations of the Jacobins. Allow me to remark, that every sort of torture, every bit of bloody justice, that does not arise from a belief in the next world is bestial nonsense. And as for the degradation of man, its history coincides exactly with the rise of the bourgeois spirit. The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the teachings of nineteenth-century science and economics have omitted nothing, absolutely nothing, that seemed even vaguely useful for furthering such degradation, beginning with modern astronomy—which turned the focal point of the universe, that sublime arena where God and Satan struggled to possess the creature whom they both ardently coveted, into an unimportant little planet, and, for now at least, has put an end to man’s grand position in the cosmos, upon which astrology was likewise based.”
“For now?” And as Herr Settembrini asked his sly question, his expression was much like that of an inquisitor who is waiting for his victim to stumble and confess incontestable crimes.
“Why, of course—for a couple of centuries,” Naphta affirmed coldly. “The honor of the scholastics will be vindicated in this regard as well, if I am not mistaken. Indeed the process is well under way. Copernicus will be routed by Ptolemy. The theory of heliocentrism is now being opposed by intellectual forces whose efforts will presumably attain their desired goal. Science will find itself philosophically constrained once again to grant earth all the honors that Church dogma wished to preserve for it.”
“What? What? Intellectual opposition? Philosophically constrained? Attain their desired goal? What sort of voluntarism are you spouting now? And what about unbiased research? What about pure knowledge? What about the truth, my dear sir, which is so intimately bound up with freedom, and its martyrs—whom you claim have slandered the earth, but who are instead the planet’s most beautiful and everlasting ornaments?”
Herr Settembrini had a forceful way of posing questions. He sat up straight and pelted little Herr Naphta with righteous words, his voice swelling so powerfully toward the end that you could hear just how certain he was that his opponent’s answer could take only one form—embarrassed silence. He had been holding a piece of cake between his fingers as he spoke, but now he laid it back on his plate, unwilling to take a bite after such questions.
“My good friend,” Naphta replied with sour composure, “there is no such thing as pure knowledge. The validity of ecclesiastical science—which can be summarized in Saint Augustine’s statement: ‘I believe, that I may understand’—is absolutely incontrovertible. Faith is the vehicle of understanding, the intellect is secondary. Your unbiased science is a myth. Faith, a world view, an idea—in short, the will—is always present, and it is then reason’s task to examine and prove it. In the end we always come down to ‘
quod erat demonstrandum.
’ The very notion of proof contains, psychologically speaking, a strong voluntaristic element. The great scholastics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were unanimous in their conviction that nothing could be true in philosophy that was theologically false. Let us set theology aside, if you like. A human race, however, that refuses to accept the proposition that nothing can be true in science that is false in philosophy, is not human. The argumentation of the Holy Office against Galileo stated that his theses were philosophically absurd. There can be no more cogent argument than that.”
“
Eh, eh!
Our poor, great Galileo’s arguments proved to be the more valid ones. No, let’s be serious,
professore
. Here in the presence of these two attentive young people, answer one question for me, please: Do you believe in truth, in objective, scientific truth? That to strive for it is the highest law of morality? That its triumphs over authority are the most glorious page in the history of the human spirit?”
Heads turned from Settembrini to Naphta—Hans Castorp’s more quickly than Joachim’s. “Such a triumph is an impossibility,” Naphta replied, “because the authority is man himself—his interests, his dignity, his salvation—and there can be no contradiction between man and truth. They coincide.”
“Which means that truth is—”
“Whatever profits man is true. Nature herself is summarized in him; in all of nature, only he is created, and nature is solely for him. He is the measure of all things and his salvation is the criterion of truth. Theoretical knowledge with no practical application in the realm of man’s salvation is so totally uninteresting that we must deny it any value as truth and exclude it entirely. The Christian centuries were united in their view that the natural sciences were of no significance to man. Lactantius, whom Constantine the Great chose to be his son’s tutor, put the question quite directly: how would it help him gain his salvation if he knew the sources of the Nile or the ravings of physicists about the heavens? Try to answer that one sometime! And if Platonic philosophy was preferred above all others, it was because it did not concern itself with the study of nature, but with the study of God. I can assure you that mankind is about to find its way back to this point of view, to recognize that the task of true science is not the pursuit of worthless information, but rather the elimination on principle of what is pernicious, even of what is merely without significance as an idea, and, in a word, to proclaim instinct, moderation, choice. It is childish to believe that the Church defended darkness against the light. Rather, she did what was right, right three times over, in declaring criminal any ‘unbiased’ striving for a knowledge of things, that is to say, any striving that casts aside those spiritual concerns aimed solely at winning salvation. What has led man into darkness, and will continue to lead him ever deeper is ‘unbiased’—that is, a philosophical—natural science.”
“What you are preaching is pragmatism,” Settembrini responded, “and you need only transfer it to the political realm to perceive how totally destructive it is. Whatever profits the state is good, true, and just. Its salvation, its dignity, its power is the criterion of morality. Fine—and with that you have opened the door wide for every sort of crime. And as for human truth, justice for the individual, democracy—well, you’ll see what becomes of them.”
“I move we apply a little logic here,” Naphta retorted. “Either Ptolemy and the scholastics are right, and the world is finite in time and space, which means that God is transcendent and the polarity of God and world is maintained, so that man, too, leads a dualistic existence, and the problem of his soul rests in the conflict between what his senses register and what transcends his senses, making all social issues entirely secondary—this is indeed the only form of individualism that I recognize as logically consistent. Or, conversely, your Renaissance astronomers discovered the truth, and the cosmos is infinite, which means there is no world that transcends the senses, no dualism; the world beyond is absorbed into this world, the polarity of God and nature is annulled, and since the human personality is no longer the battlefield of two hostile principles, but rather harmonious and unified, all human conflict stems from the clash between the interests of the individual and of society as a whole, and so the purposes of the state become the law of morality, just as in good old heathen days. It’s either one or the other.”
“I protest,” Settembrini cried, holding his teacup out at arm’s length toward his host. “I protest your insinuation that the modern state dooms the individual to the hell of slavery. And I protest yet a third time, against the harrowing alternative you have presented us with: Prussianism or Gothic reaction. The sole purpose of democracy is to provide an individualistic corrective to the absolutism of the state. Truth and justice are the crown jewels of individual morality; and should a conflict arise with the interests of the state, they may very well appear to be hostile to it, but in fact are directed toward the state’s higher—one may even say, transcendent—good. The Renaissance as the origin of the deification of the state? What sham logic! The achievements that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment wrested from the past—and may I emphasize, my dear sir, the struggles contained in that verb—were individual human personality, human rights, and human freedom.”
His listeners, who had held their breath during Herr Settembrini’s grand rejoinder, breathed out again now. Hans Castorp could not help slamming his hand, though with restraint, on the edge of the table. “Brilliant!” he said with clenched teeth. And even Joachim seemed deeply satisfied, despite what had been said about Prussianism. But then they both turned back to the other disputant, who had just been rebuffed—Hans Castorp, in fact, with such eagerness that he placed both elbows on the table and propped his chin in one hand, much as he had when drawing his pig, so that he was staring from close up directly into Herr Naphta’s face.
He sat silent, his skinny hands in his lap, a caustic look on his face. “I was attempting to introduce logic into our conversation,” he said, “and you have replied with high-mindedness. I am more or less aware that the Renaissance gave birth to what is known as liberalism, individualism, humanistic citizenship, and all that. But your emphasis on that verb leaves me cold, inasmuch as the heroic age that ‘wrested’ your ideals came to an end long ago—those ideals are dead, or at best lie twitching in their death throes, and those whom they had hoped to finish off have got their foot in the door again. You call yourself, if I am not mistaken, a revolutionary. But you are badly mistaken if you think that future revolutions will end in freedom. After five hundred years, the principle of freedom has outlived its usefulness. A pedagogic method that regards itself as a daughter of the Enlightenment and employs educational methods based on criticism, on the liberation and nursing of the ego, on the breaking down of ordained living patterns—such a pedagogy may still achieve moments of rhetorical success, but for those who know and understand, it is, beyond all doubt, sublimely backward. All institutions dedicated to genuine education have always known that there can be only one central truth in any pedagogy, and that is: absolute authority and an ironclad bond—discipline and sacrifice, renunciation of the ego and coercion of the personality. It is ultimately a cruel misunderstanding of youth to believe it will find its heart’s desire in freedom. Its deepest desire is to obey.”
Joachim sat up straight. Hans Castorp blushed. Herr Settembrini twirled his handsome moustache excitedly.
“No!” Naphta continued. “The mystery and precept of our age is not liberation and development of the ego. What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is—terror.”