“Phooey! Andate, andate!” the Italian demurred, almost in a whimper. Everyone laughed. But then Settembrini continued with dignity, “Ah, no, I am a European, an Occidental. Your ladder is pure Orient. The East despises action. Lao-tzu teaches that doing nothing is more beneficial than anything between heaven and earth, that if humankind were to stop all activity, perfect peace and happiness would reign on earth. There’s cohabitation for you.”
“You don’t say. And Western mysticism? And quietism? Among whose adherents one may include Fenelon, who taught that every act is flawed, since the will to act is an affront to God, who alone can will to act. I need only mention Molinos’s propositions. It seems to me that the spiritual possibility of finding salvation in repose is widespread throughout all mankind.”
At this point Hans Castorp spoke up, breaking into their conversation with the courage of simple souls. He stared into space and declared, “Contemplation, retreat—there’s something to it, sounds quite plausible. One could say that we live at a rather high level of retreat from the world up here. At five thousand feet, we recline in our lounge chairs—and remarkably comfortable they are—and look down on the world and its creatures and think things over. To tell the truth, now that I stop and think about it, my bed—and by that I mean my lounge chair, you understand—has proved very beneficial over the last ten months, made me think more about things than I ever did in all my years down in the flatlands, I can’t deny that.”
Settembrini gazed at him with mournful, flashing black eyes. “My good engineer,” he said in a choked voice, “my good engineer. “ And he grabbed Hans Castorp by the arm and pulled him back a little from the others, as if he had some private advice to give him behind their backs. “How often have I told you that a man must know who he is and think thoughts befitting him. A man of the West, despite all other propositions, has only one concern: reason, analysis, deeds, progress—not the idle couch of a monk!” Naphta had been listening. He looked back and said, “Monks! We have monks to thank for what culture there is on European soil. We have them to thank that Germany, France, and Italy aren’t covered with primeval forests and swamps, but provide us with grain, fruit, and wine. Monks, my dear sir, certainly performed hard work.”
“Ebbè—so you see!”
“Please hear me out. The work of the religious orders was not an end in itself, that is, a narcotic. Nor was its purpose to improve the world or achieve commercial advantage. It was a purely ascetic exercise, a part of the discipline of penitence, a means of salvation. It afforded protection against the flesh, served to mortify the senses. Such work—permit me to point out—was of a totally asocial nature. It was pure, unadulterated religious egoism.”
“I’m much obliged to you for the explanation and am happy to see that the blessings of labor can stand the test, even against the will of man.”
“Against his intention, yes indeed. What we observe here is nothing less than the difference between what is utilitarian and what is humane.”
“What I observe, with some annoyance, is that you are once again dividing the world in two.”
“I regret having aroused your displeasure, but one must differentiate and systematize things in order that the idea of the homo Dei may be kept free of all impurities. You Italians invented money changing and banking—may God forgive you. But the English invented economic social theory, and humanity’s guardian angel will never forgive them that.”
“Ah, but that same guardian angel was alive and working among the great economists of that island. You wanted to say something, my good engineer?”
Hans Castorp denied that he did, but then said something after all—and both Naphta and Settembrini listened in some suspense. “You must look favorably, then, on my cousin’s profession, Herr Naphta, and sympathize with his impatience to take it up. I am a thorough civilian myself, my cousin often reproaches me for it. I’ve never even done military service, am an out-and-out child of peace, and sometimes I’ve even thought that I might very easily have become a clergyman—as I’ve mentioned on various occasions, just ask my cousin. But disregarding my own personal preferences—though perhaps, strictly speaking, I needn’t disregard them so entirely—I have a great deal of sympathy and affinity for the military life. There is something devilishly earnest about it all, something ‘ascetic,’ if you will—that was, I believe, the term you were kind enough to use just now—and one must always reckon that one will have to deal with death, just as, ultimately, the clergy must deal with it as well—with what else, really? That is where soldiers get their bienséance, and their idea of rank and obedience to authority and Spanish sense of honor, if I may put it that way. And it really doesn’t matter much whether one is wearing a stiff uniform collar or a starched ruff, the end result is the same, an ‘ascetic’ result, as you put it so splendidly just now. I don’t know whether I’ve succeeded in making my train of thought . . .”
“Oh, yes indeed,” Naphta said, with a glance at Settembrini, who was twirling his cane and gazing at the sky.
“And that’s why, I presume,” Hans Castorp went on, “you must feel some sympathy for my cousin Ziemssen’s inclinations, given what you just said yourself. I’m not thinking here of ‘church and king’ or whatever other phrases people—perfectly well-meaning people, who simply like their world kept in good order—may sometimes come up with to justify the association between the two. No, what I mean is that the work of the professional soldier, that is, his military service—and it is called service—is done for no commercial advantage whatever and has no relation to any ‘economic social theory,’ as you call it, which is why the English have so few soldiers, a couple for India and a couple for parades at home—”
“There is no point in your going on, my good engineer,” Settembrini interrupted. “From an intellectual standpoint, the soldier’s life is simply not worth discussing—and I say this without wanting to do the lieutenant any disservice—because it is a life of pure form, without any content whatever. Your standard soldier is the mercenary who can be hired for one cause or another. In brief, soldiers fought for the Spanish Counter-Reformation, for Napoleon, for Garibaldi—and now we have Prussian soldiers. I shall be quite willing to talk about soldiers when I find out what it is they’re fighting for.”
“The simple fact that they do fight,” Naphta retorted, “remains an obvious characteristic of the profession, on that much we can agree. Possibly that does not suffice to make it ‘worth discussing from an intellectual standpoint,’ but it does remove them to a sphere beyond the ken of any bourgeois affirmation of life.”
“What you like to call the ‘bourgeois affirmation of life,’ ” Herr Settembrini replied—setting the corners of his mouth in a taut line under the sweep of his moustache, so that only the front of his lips moved, and screwing his neck up out of his collar at an odd backward slant—“will always be found ready to advocate ideals of reason and morality and to impress them on young, wavering minds by whatever means available.”
Silence ensued. The young men stared straight ahead in embarrassment. After they had walked a few more steps, Settembrini returned his neck to a more natural position and said, “You should not be amazed that this gentleman and I argue frequently—it is done in a spirit of friendship and on the basis of previous understandings.”
That helped—it was chivalrous and humane of Herr Settembrini. But Joachim, likewise harboring the best of intentions and hoping to move their conversation harmlessly along, spoke up now—yet it sounded almost as if he did so under some pressure or duress, against his will, as it were. “It so happens my cousin and I were talking about war just now as we came up behind you.”
“I heard,” Naphta said. “I caught a bit of it and looked around. Were you talking politics? Discussing the situation in the world?”
“Oh, no,” Hans Castorp said with a laugh. “That’s hardly a topic for us. My cousin’s profession makes it quite inappropriate for him to concern himself with politics, and I voluntarily forg
o the pleasure—don’t understand a thing about it. I’ve never once glanced at a newspaper since I’ve been here.”
As on a previous occasion, Settembrini found this reprehensible; he at once proved to be very well informed about major current events—and approved of what was happening, since things were taking a course favorable to civilization. The general European atmosphere was imbued with ideas of peace and plans for disarmament. Democratic ideals were on the march. He claimed to have confidential information that the Young Turks had just completed preparations for their revolutionary uprising. Turkey as a constitutional nation-state—what a triumph for humanity!
“The liberalization of Islam,” Naphta scoffed. “Excellent. Enlightened fanaticism—how fine. The matter is of some concern to you, by the way,” he said, turning to Joachim. “If Abdul Hamid falls, that’s the end of your influence in Turkey, and England will set itself up as protector. You should take our Settembrini’s contacts and information very seriously,” he said to both cousins; and this, too, sounded impertinent, as if he thought them uninclined to do so. “He knows what’s what when it comes to national revolutions. His friends at home have good ties to the English Balkan Committee. But what becomes of the ‘Reval program,’ Lodovico, if your progressives meet with success? Edward the Seventh will no longer be able to allow the Russians an exit through the Dardanelles; and if Austria manages somehow to pull herself together for a more active policy in the Balkans, then . . .”
“You and your visions of catastrophe!” Settembrini parried. “Nicholas loves peace. We have him to thank for the Hague Conventions, superior moral realities that will abide.”
“Correct—Russia needed to catch her breath after that little mishap in the Far East.”
“Shame, shame, my dear sir. You should not mock humankind’s longing for social perfection. Any nation that thwarts such endeavors will undoubtedly find itself the object of moral ostracism.”
“What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.”
“You are an advocate of Pan-Germanism, then, are you?”
Naphta shrugged shoulders that stood unevenly. He was not only ugly, he was also slightly hunchbacked. He disdained to answer.
Settembrini rendered his opinion: “What you’ve said is, in any case, cynical. You are determined to interpret democracy’s noble endeavors to assert itself internationally as mere political cunning.”
“You want me to see such efforts as idealism or even some sort of religiosity, is that it? They are nothing but the last, feeble twitches of what little instinct for self-preservation a doomed international system still has. The catastrophe will, indeed must, follow—is coming toward us from all directions, in all guises. Take British policy. England’s need to secure buffer states around India is legitimate. But with what results? Edward knows as well as you or I that the potentates in Saint Petersburg have to make good their losses in Manchuria and desperately need to distract their own revolutionaries. But all the same, he can’t help steering Russian expansionism toward Europe, reawakening sleeping rivalries between Saint Petersburg and Vienna.”
“Oh, Vienna! You are worried about that universal impediment because you recognize the rotten imperium of which it is the capital, as a mummified version of the Holy Roman Empire.”
“And I find you are a Russophile, presumably out of humanistic sympathies for caesaropapism.”
“Democracy, my dear sir, has more to hope for from the Kremlin than from the Hofburg, and it is a disgrace that the land of Luther and Gutenberg—”
“Not only a disgrace, but probably also an act of stupidity. But such stupidity is the instrument of fate.”
“Oh, I’ll have none of your fate! Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and it is fate.”
“Man can only will what already is his fate. And capitalist Europe wills its own, as well.”
“One believes war is inevitable, if one does not loathe it sufficiently.”
“Such loathing is a leap in logic if it does not begin with the nation-state.”
“The nation-state is the principle that guides this world’s affairs—though you wish to ascribe that to the Devil. But once you make nations free and equal, defend the small and weak from oppression, establish justice, fix national borders—”
“The Brenner Pass as the border, I know. The liquidation of Austria. If only I knew how you intend to accomplish all that without war.”
“And I would be only too glad to know when you ever heard me condemn a war of national liberation.”
“But didn’t I just hear—”
“No, I must confirm what Herr Settembrini says,” Hans Castorp remarked, breaking into the argument, which he had followed as they walked along, tilting his head to one side or the other, depending on the speaker. “My cousin and I have often had the privilege of conversing with him about these and similar matters—what I mean is, of course, that we listened to him develop and spell out his opinions. And I can confirm, as I’m sure my cousin also recalls, that Herr Settembrini has more than once waxed enthusiastic for the principle of motion and rebellion, of improvement in the world—hardly a principle of peace, I don’t suppose—and has noted that great efforts still lie ahead before such a principle will have triumphed everywhere and the universal, happy Republic of the World is established. I am more or less quoting him, although his words, of course, were much more graphic and literary than mine, but that’s obvious. One thing that has remained exactly in my memory, and I can quote it verbatim—because as a seasoned civilian I was somewhat appalled by it—was his saying that such a day would come, if not on the feet of doves, then on the pinions of eagles (it was the eagle pinions that appalled me, as I recall) and that the fatal blow must be struck against Vienna, if we wish to bring about universal happiness. So that one cannot say that Herr Settembrini has repudiated war. Am I not correct, Herr Settembrini?”
“More or less,” the Italian said curtly, turning his head away and swinging his cane.
“Worse luck,” Naphta said with an ugly smile. “Now you’ve been convicted by your own pupil of harboring warlike tendencies. Assument pennas ut aquilae . . .”
“Voltaire himself affirmed wars that spread civilization, even advised Frederick the Second to go to war against the Turks.”
“And instead, he allied himself with them—hee hee. And then there’s the Republic of the World. I shall refrain from inquiring what becomes of the principle of motion and rebellion once happiness and confederation have been established. For in that moment, rebellion becomes a crime.”
“You know very well, as do these young gentlemen, that the human progress of which I speak is conceived as infinite.”
“All motion, however, is circular,” Hans Castorp said. “In both space and time, as we learn from the laws of periodicity and the conservation of mass. My cousin and I were speaking about that earlier. Can one speak of progress when motion is a closed system without any direction? When I am lying there of an evening and observing the zodiac—the half of it that we see, that is—and think back to those ancient wise peoples—”
“You should not brood and dream, my good engineer,” Settembrini interrupted, “but steadfastly trust those instincts of your years and race that compel you to action. You also need to pair your scientific learning with the idea of progress. In the immeasurable expanses of time, you see how life moves onward and upward from infusoria to man, and you cannot deny that infinite possibilities for further perfection still await humankind. But if you are determined to stick with mathematics, it, too, will lead you in a spiral from perfection to perfection; and you can take solace in the precepts of our eighteenth century, which taught that man was originally good, happy, and perfect, that it is only through social errors that he has been perverted and ruined, and that by working critically to rebuild society he shall become good, happy, and perfect again.”
“What Herr Settembrini neglects to add,” Naphta broke i
n, “is that the Rousseauian idyll is merely a rationalist’s bastardization of the Church’s doctrine of man’s original sinless, stateless condition, of his primal direct relationship to God as a child of God, to which condition he shall return. Once earthly forms have dissolved, the reestablishment of the City of God will take place where earth and heaven, the natural and the supernatural, meet—salvation is transcendent. As for your capitalist world republic, dear doctor, it is quite curious to hear you speak of ‘instinct’ in that context. Instinct is certainly on the side of the nation-state, for God has implanted in man natural instincts that have caused the world’s peoples to separate into various nations. War—”
“War,” Settembrini exclaimed, “even war, my dear sir, has on occasion been forced to serve progress—as you yourself must grant me, if you will recall certain events from your own favorite epoch, by which I mean the Crusades. Those wars on behalf of civilization served mightily to enhance economic and commercial relations between peoples and united Western man under the banner of a single idea.”
“You are suddenly very tolerant of that idea. And so, might I courteously remind you that, although the Crusades did stimulate international commerce, they did anything but bring about international reconciliation. On the contrary, they taught peoples to differentiate themselves one from the other and fostered the growth of the concept of the nation-state.”
“Quite true, at least in regard to a given people’s relation to their clergy. Yes, it was during that period when a sense of national honor began to solidify against hierarchical pretension.”
“And yet, what you call hierarchical pretension is actually nothing less than the idea of unifying mankind under the banner of the Spirit.”
“We know that spirit—thanks, but no thanks.”
“It is clear that your nationalist mania loathes the world-conquering cosmopolitanism of the Church. If only I knew how you reconcile that with your loathing of war. Your repristination of antiquity’s cult of the state surely makes you a champion of a positive interpretation of law, and as such—”