The Magic Mountain Part 31

Settembrini made as though he would vomit. It was not so much, he said, the physically disgusting element in these tales that turned his stomach as the monstrous lunacy which betrayed itself in such a conception of the love of humanity. Then, recovering his poise and good humour, he drew himself up and held forth upon the recent progress of humanitarian ideals, the triumphant forcing back of epidemic disease, upon hygiene and social reform; he contrasted the horrors of pestilence with the feats of modern medical science.

All these, Naphta responded, were very honest bourgeois achievements; but they would have done more harm than good in the centuries under discussion. They would have profited neither one side nor the other; the ailing and wretched as little as the strong and prosperous, these latter not having been piteous for pity's sake, but for the salvation of their own souls. Successful social reform would have robbed them of their necessary justification, as it would the wretched of their sanctified state. The persistence of poverty and sickness had been in the interest of both parties, and the position could be sustained just so long as it was possible to hold to the purely religious point of view.

"A filthy point of view," Settembrini declared. A position the stupidity of which hefelt himself above combating. This talk of the sanctified lot of the poor and wretched-yes, and what the Engineer, in his simplicity, had said about the Christian reverence due to suffering-was simply gammon, resting as it did on a misconception, on mistaken sympathy, on erroneous psychology. The pity the well person felt for the sick-a pity that almost amounted to awe, because the well person could not imagine how he himself could possibly bear such suffering-was very greatly exaggerated. The sick person had no real right to it. It was, in fact, the result of an error in thinking, a sort of hallucination; in that the well man attributed to the sick his own emotional equipment, and imagined that the sick man was, as it were, a well man who had to bear the agonies of a sick one-than which nothing was further from the truth. For the sick man was-precisely that, a sick man: with the nature and modified reactions of his state. Illness so adjusted its man that it and he could come to terms; there were sensory appeas.e.m.e.nts, short circuits, a merciful narcosis; nature came to the rescue with measures of spiritual and moral adaptation and relief, which the sound person naively failed to take into account. There could be no better ill.u.s.tration than the case of all this tuberculous crew up here, with their reckless folly, light-headedness and loose morals, and their total lack of desire for health. In short, let the sound man with all his respect for illness once fall ill himself, and he would soon see that being ill is a state of being in itself-no very honourable one either-and that he had been taking it a good deal too seriously.

At this point Anton Karlowitsch Ferge girded his loins to remonstrate-he defended the pleura-shock against sneers and contumely. So Herr Settembrini thought you could take the pleura-shock too seriously, did he? With all due respect and grat.i.tude and all that, he, Ferge, must really beg Herr Settembrini's pardon! His great Adam's apple and his good-natured moustaches worked up and down as he repudiated any lack of respect for the sufferings he had undergone. He was just a plain man, an insurance agent, with no high-falutin ideas; even the present conversation soared far above his head. But if Herr Settembrini meant to suggest that the pleura-shock was a good example of what he was talking about-that torture by tickling, with its stench of sulphur and its three-coloured fainting fit-well, really he was very much obliged to Herr Settembrini, he really must thank him very kindly indeed; but there had been nothing of the sort about the pleura-shock-not it! Talk about adjustments and "merciful narcosis"-why, it had been the most sickening piece of business under the s.h.i.+ning sun, and n.o.body who had not been through it could have the least idea- "Yes, yes," Herr Settembrini said. Herr Ferge's collapse got more and more remarkable as time went on, and he would presently be wearing it like a halo round his head. He, Settembrini, had no great respect for sick folk who laid claim to consideration on the score of their illness. He was ill himself, and seriously; but in all sincerity he felt inclined to be ashamed of the fact. However, his present remarks were purely abstract and impersonal; and the distinction he made between the nature and reactions of a well and a sick man was based on common sense, as the gentlemen would see if they would think about insanity-take, for instance, hallucinations. Suppose one of his companions, the Engineer, say, or Herr Wehsal, should enter his room to-night at dusk and see his deceased father sitting there in a corner, who should look at and speak to him-that would be absolutely monstrous, wouldn't it? A shattering experience, which would confound both sense and reason, and make him get out of the room as fast as he could and put himself in the care of a specialist in nervous ailments. Or wouldn't it? The joke of the thing was that such an experience would not be possible for any of the gentlemen present, since they were all in enjoyment of full mental health. If it did happen to any of them, it would be a sure sign that they were not not sound, but diseased, and they would not react to the appearance with emotions of horror and by taking to their heels, but treat it as though it were entirely in order, and begin a conversation with it-this being, in fact, the reaction of a person suffering from a hallucination. To suppose that such hallucinations affected the person subject to them with the same horror as would be felt by a sound mind was a defect of the imagination to which normal persons were often p.r.o.ne. sound, but diseased, and they would not react to the appearance with emotions of horror and by taking to their heels, but treat it as though it were entirely in order, and begin a conversation with it-this being, in fact, the reaction of a person suffering from a hallucination. To suppose that such hallucinations affected the person subject to them with the same horror as would be felt by a sound mind was a defect of the imagination to which normal persons were often p.r.o.ne.

Herr Settembrini spoke with droll and plastic effect. His picture of the father in the corner made them all laugh, even Ferge, put out though he was by the slight to his pleura-shock. Herr Settembrini took advantage of their hilarity to expatiate further on the contemptibleness of people who were subject to hallucinations, and of pazzi pazzi in general. It was his opinion that these people gave way a great deal more than they need, and often had it in their power to control their own freakishness. He had made this observation when he had visited asylums for the insane. For in the presence of the doctor, or of a stranger, the patients would mostly intermit their jabbering, grimaces, and weaving to and fro, and behave quite sensibly, as long as they felt themselves under scrutiny, only to let themselves go again afterwards. For lunacy undoubtedly in many cases meant the kind of self-abandonment which was the refuge of a weak nature against extreme distress, a defence against such overwhelming blows of destiny as it felt itself, when in its right mind, unable to cope with. But almost anybody might get in that state; and he, Settembrini, had held more than one lunatic to temporary self-control, simply by opposing to his humb.u.g.g.e.ry an air of inexorable reason. in general. It was his opinion that these people gave way a great deal more than they need, and often had it in their power to control their own freakishness. He had made this observation when he had visited asylums for the insane. For in the presence of the doctor, or of a stranger, the patients would mostly intermit their jabbering, grimaces, and weaving to and fro, and behave quite sensibly, as long as they felt themselves under scrutiny, only to let themselves go again afterwards. For lunacy undoubtedly in many cases meant the kind of self-abandonment which was the refuge of a weak nature against extreme distress, a defence against such overwhelming blows of destiny as it felt itself, when in its right mind, unable to cope with. But almost anybody might get in that state; and he, Settembrini, had held more than one lunatic to temporary self-control, simply by opposing to his humb.u.g.g.e.ry an air of inexorable reason.

Naphta laughed derisively; Hans Castorp protested his readiness to believe Herr Settembrini's statement. Indeed, as he pictured him smiling beneath his moustaches and fixing the feeble-minded with the eye of remorseless reason, he could well understand how the poor fellow had had to pull himself together and behave with "temporary self-control," though probably finding Herr Settembrini's presence a most unwelcome incident.-But Naphta too had had experience of asylums for the insane. He recalled a visit to the violent ward, where he had seen such sights as-my G.o.d, such sights as would have been a bit too much even for Herr Settembrini's intelligent eye or disciplinary powers: Dantesque scenes, monstrous tableaux of horror and agony: naked madmen squatting in the continuous bath, in every posture of mental anguish or in the stupor of despair; some shrieking aloud, others with uplifted arms and gaping mouths whence issued laughter that mingled all the elements of h.e.l.l- "Aha," cried Herr Ferge, and took leave to remind them of the laughter which had escaped him when they went over his pleura. In short, Herr Settembrini's inexorable pedantry would have had to confess itself beaten before these sights in the violent ward; in the face of which, the shudder of religious awe would surely have been a more human reaction than this condescending twaddle about reason, which our Wors.h.i.+pful Brother and Eminent Preceptor saw fit to put forward as a treatment for insanity.

Hans Castorp was too preoccupied to question the new t.i.tles Naphta was conferring on Herr Settembrini. Hastily he made a resolve to look them up the first chance he got; for the moment, he had his hands full with the present conversation. Naphta was acrimoniously debating the general tendency which led the humanist to exalt health and cry down and belittle illness. Herr Settembrini's att.i.tude was, he thought, a remarkable, even admirable example of self-abnegation, considering he was ill himself. But the position, no matter how strikingly meritorious, was as mistaken as it could well be: resting as it did upon a respect and reverence for the human body which could only be justified if that body had remained in original sinlessness, instead of sinking to its present fallen state (statu degradationis) (statu degradationis). For it had been created immortal, and by the original sins of depravity and abomination, by the degeneration of its nature, it had become mortal and corruptible, and was thus to be regarded as the prison-house and torture-chamber of the soul, or as the fit instrument for rousing the conscience to a sense of shame and confusion (pudoris et confusionis sensum) (pudoris et confusionis sensum), as Saint Ignatius had it.

The humanist Plotinus, exclaimed Hans Castorp, was also known to have given expression to the same idea. But Herr Settembrini flung up his hands and ordered the young man not to confuse two different points of view-and, for the rest, to be advised and maintain an att.i.tude of receptivity.

Naphta, continuing, derived the reverence which the Christian Middle Ages paid to physical suffering from the fact that it acquiesced on religious grounds in the sight of the anguish of the flesh. For the wounds of the body not only emphasized its sunken state, they also corresponded in the most edifying manner to the envenomed corruption of the soul, and thereby gave rise to emotions of true spiritual satisfaction: whereas blooming health was a misleading phenomenon, insulting to the conscience of man and requiring to be counteracted by an att.i.tude of debas.e.m.e.nt and humility before physical infirmity, which was infinitely beneficial to the soul. Quis me Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius? liberabit de corpore mortis huius? Who will deliver me from the body of this death? There spoke the voice of the spirit, which was eternally the voice of true humanity. On the contrary-according to Herr Settembrini's view, presented with no little heat-it was a voice from the darkness, a voice from a world upon which the sun of reason and humanity was not yet risen. Truly, in his own physical person he was contaminate; yet what mattered that, since his mind was untainted and sound-and quite competent to bring confusion to his priestly opponent in any discussion touching the body, or to laugh him to scorn over the soul? He took too high a flight in celebrating the human body as the true temple of the G.o.dhead; for Naphta straightway declared that this mortal fabric was nothing more than a veil between us and eternity; whereupon Settembrini definitely forbade him the use of the word humanity-and so it went on. Bare-headed, their faces stiff in the cold, they trod in their rubber galoshes the crisp, creaking, cinder-strewn snow, or ploughed through porous ma.s.ses in the gutter: Settembrini in a winter jacket with beaver collar and cuffs-the fur was worn to the pelt, and looked fairly mangy, but he knew how to carry it off with an air; Naphta in a long black overcoat that came down to his heels and up to his ears, and showed none of the fur with which it was lined throughout. Both speakers treated their theme as of the utmost personal concern; and both often turned, not to each other but to Hans Castorp, with argument and exposition, referring to their opponents with a jerk of the head or thumb. They had him between them, and he turned his head to a.s.sent first to one and then to the other; now and again he stood stock-still on the path, tipping his body back from the waist and gesturing with his fur-lined glove as he made some quite inadequate contribution to the talk. Ferge and Wehsal circled about, now in front and now behind, now in a single row until they had to break up their line again to let people pa.s.s. Who will deliver me from the body of this death? There spoke the voice of the spirit, which was eternally the voice of true humanity. On the contrary-according to Herr Settembrini's view, presented with no little heat-it was a voice from the darkness, a voice from a world upon which the sun of reason and humanity was not yet risen. Truly, in his own physical person he was contaminate; yet what mattered that, since his mind was untainted and sound-and quite competent to bring confusion to his priestly opponent in any discussion touching the body, or to laugh him to scorn over the soul? He took too high a flight in celebrating the human body as the true temple of the G.o.dhead; for Naphta straightway declared that this mortal fabric was nothing more than a veil between us and eternity; whereupon Settembrini definitely forbade him the use of the word humanity-and so it went on. Bare-headed, their faces stiff in the cold, they trod in their rubber galoshes the crisp, creaking, cinder-strewn snow, or ploughed through porous ma.s.ses in the gutter: Settembrini in a winter jacket with beaver collar and cuffs-the fur was worn to the pelt, and looked fairly mangy, but he knew how to carry it off with an air; Naphta in a long black overcoat that came down to his heels and up to his ears, and showed none of the fur with which it was lined throughout. Both speakers treated their theme as of the utmost personal concern; and both often turned, not to each other but to Hans Castorp, with argument and exposition, referring to their opponents with a jerk of the head or thumb. They had him between them, and he turned his head to a.s.sent first to one and then to the other; now and again he stood stock-still on the path, tipping his body back from the waist and gesturing with his fur-lined glove as he made some quite inadequate contribution to the talk. Ferge and Wehsal circled about, now in front and now behind, now in a single row until they had to break up their line again to let people pa.s.s.

It was due to some remark of theirs that the debate took on a less abstract tone, and all the company joined in a discussion of torture, cremation and punishment-both capital and corporal. It was Ferdinand Wehsal who introduced the last-named; with obvious relish, Hans Castorp observed. As was to be expected, Herr Settembrini, in high-sounding words, invoked the dignity of the human race against a procedure whose results were as devastating in education as in penology. And equally to be ex pected, though rendered startling by a certain kind of gloomy ferocity, was Naphta's approval of the bastinado. According to him, it was absurd to prate about human dignity, since true dignity indwelt not in the flesh but in the spirit. The soul of man was for ever p.r.o.ne to suck the joys of this earthly life from the flesh instead of the spirit; thus pain, by rendering bitter to him the things of the senses, was highly efficacious, driving him back to the spirit and giving the latter the mastery over the flesh. It was shallow to contend that the discipline of the whipping-post had anything particularly shameful about it. Saint Elizabeth had been flogged by her confessor, Conrad von Marburg, until the blood came, and by such means her soul was rapt "to the third choir of angels." She herself, moreover, had beaten with rods an old woman who was too sleepy to make her confession. The members of a certain sect, and even other persons of devout and serious character, submitted to flagellation in order that the spiritual impulse might be strengthened. Would anyone seriously contend that such a procedure was barbarous and inhuman? It was true that corporal punishment was on the decline in certain countries which considered themselves in the van of progress: but the belief that such a decline was a sign of enlightenment became only the more comic the longer it persisted.

Well, anyhow, Hans Castorp considered, so much was granted: that in the ant.i.thesis between body and soul it was undoubtedly the body which embodied-the body embodied, that wasn't so bad, was it?-the evil principle; in so far as the body was naturally nature-pretty good, too, that!-and nature, being diametrically opposed to the spirit and reason, was by that fact intrinsically evil-mystically evil, one might say, if it didn't sound like showing off! But it followed from this that the body should be treated accordingly, and made to profit from disciplinary methods, which might also be called mystically evil. Herr Settembrini, for instance, that time when the weakness of the flesh had prevented him from attending the Congress for the Advancement of Civilization at Barcelona, ought to have had a Saint Elizabeth at his side-!

Everybody laughed; but while the humanist was bringing up his guns, Hans Castorp hastily began to talk about a beating he had once received, when he was in one of the lower forms in the gymnasium, where this form of punishment still survived to some extent, and there were always switches on hand. His, Hans Castorp's social position had been too good for the masters to venture to lay hands on him; but he had once been whipped by a stronger pupil, a big lout of a fellow who had laid on with the flexible switch across Hans Castorp's thin-stockinged calves. It had hurt so confoundedly-so "mystically"-that he had fairly sobbed for rage, and the tears had ignominiously flowed down. And he recalled having read that in the penitentiaries, when men are flogged, the most hardened reprobates will blubber like little children. Herr Settembrini hid his face in his hands, that were clad in very shabby leather gloves; and Naphta, with statesmanlike calm, asked how else they would expect to reduce refractory criminals-unless by putting in the stocks, which were quite the suitable furnis.h.i.+ng for a prison. A humane penitentiary would be neither one thing nor the other, an aesthetic compromise: if Herr Settembrini did not think so, then it was clear that, though an aesthete, he had very little sense of the fitness of things. And in the field of education, a conception of human dignity which would bar corporal punishment from the schools had its roots, according to Naphta, in the liberalindividualism of our bourgeois, humanitarian age, in an enlightened absolutism of the ego, which was, indeed, now dying off, to give place to social conceptions made of sterner stuff: ideas of discipline and conformity, of coercion and compliance, to the realization of which an element of G.o.dly severity would be needful, and which, when realized, would make us alter all our ideas on the subject of the chastis.e.m.e.nt of the human carca.s.s.

"Hence the phrase perinde ac si cadaver," scoffed Settembrini. Naphta suggested that since G.o.d, in punishment of our sins, had visited us with the shameful and horrible sentence of bodily corruption, after all it was not such a frightful insult to that same body that it should now and then get a flogging. And then, somehow, all at once, they came upon the subject of cremation.

Settembrini paid it homage. That indignity of corruption, he said, of which Naphta spoke, could by its means be redressed. On practical as well as on ideal grounds, mankind was now about to redress it. He explained that he was helping prepare for an international congress for the promotion of cremation, the scene of whose labours would probably be Sweden. A model crematorium would be exhibited, planned in accordance with the latest researches and experiments, with a hall of urns; they hoped to rouse widespread interest and enthusiasm. What an effete and obsolete procedure burial was, under our modern conditions-the price of land, the expansion of our cities and consequent shoving of the graveyards out on to the periphery! And the chop-fallen funeral processions, with their dignity curtailed by present-day traffic conditions! Herr Settembrini had plenty of disillusioning facts at his command. He made a droll picture of a grief-stricken widower on his daily pilgrimage to the graveside, to hold communion with the beloved departed; and said that the man must have a superfluity of that most precious of human commodities, time; and further, that the rush of business in a large modern burying-ground must surely dash his atavistic bliss. The destruction of the body by fire-what a cleanly, sanitary, dignified, yes, heroic conception that was, compared with abandoning it to the miserable processes of decay and a.s.similation by the lower forms of life! Yes, the newer method was more satisfying emotionally too, and kinder to the human longing after immortality. For what the fire destroyed was the more perishable part of the body, the elements which even during one's life were got rid of by metabolism; whereas those which accompanied man through life, taking least share in the process of change, those became the ashes, and with them the survivors possessed the deceased's imperishable part.

"Oh, charming," Naphta said. "Oh, really, very very good! Man's imperishable part, his ashes!" good! Man's imperishable part, his ashes!"

Naphta evidently meant to hold humanity fast to its old, irrational position in the face of established biological fact; meant to force it to remain at the stage of primitive religion, where death was a spectre surrounded by such mysterious terrors that the gaze of reason could not be focused upon it. What barbarism! The fear of death went back to a very low cultural stage, when violent death was the rule, and its horrors thus became a.s.sociated with the idea of death in general. But now, thanks to the development of hygiene and the increase in personal security, a natural death was the rule, a violent one the exception; modern man had come to think of repose, after exhaustion of his powers, as not at all dreadful, but normal and even desirable. No, death was neither spectre nor mystery. It was a simple, acceptable, and physiologically necessary phenomenon; to dwell upon it longer than decency required was to rob life of its due. Accordingly, the Hall of Death (as the modern crematory and vault for the urns was to be called) would be supplemented by a Hall of Life, where architecture, painting, sculpture, music, and poetry would combine to draw the thoughts of the survivors from the contemplation of death, from weak and unavailing grief, and fix them upon the joys of life.

"On with the dance!" Naphta mocked. "Don't let them make too much of thefuneral rites, don't let them pay too much respect to such a simple fact as death-butwithout that simple fact, there would never have been either architecture nor painting,sculpture nor music, poetry nor any other art."

"He deserts to the colours," murmured Hans Castorp dreamily.

"Your remark is incomprehensible," Settembrini answered him, "which doesn't prevent it from being at the same time silly. Either the experience of death must be the last experience of life, or else it must be a bugaboo, pure and simple."

"Will there be obscene symbols employed in the Hall of Life, like those on the ancient sarcophagi?" Hans Castorp asked with a serious air.

"By all accounts," Naphta chimed in, "there will be a fine fat feeding for the senses." In oils and in marbles, a humanistic taste would celebrate the glories of the senses-of the sinful body whose flesh it had saved from putrefaction. There was nothing surprising about that-it was of a piece with its fastidiousness in the matter of corporal punishment.

Thus they came upon the subject of torture-introduced by Wehsal, to whom, it seemed, it made a particular appeal. "The question," now-what were the gentlemen's views about it? He, Ferdinand, when he was "on the road," liked to visit those quiet retreats in the centres of ancient culture, where such research into the conscience of man used to be carried on. He had seen the torture-chambers of Nuremberg and Regensburg, he had made a study of them, and been edified. They had certainly devised a number of ingenious ways of man-handling the body for the good of the soul. There had never been any outcry-they rammed the famous choke-pear, itself such a very tasty morsel, into the victim's mouth, and after that silence reigned. "Porcheria!" Settembrini muttered. Settembrini muttered.

Ferge professed his respect for the choke-pear, and the whole silent activity. Butanything worse than the pinning back of his pleura he was sure had never beendevised, not even in those times.

That had been done for his good!

The obdurate soul, offended justice, these warranted a temporary lack of mercy. But in fact, the torture was an invention of the human reason. Settembrini presumed that the speaker was not quite in his senses.

Oh, yes, he was pretty well in possession of them. It was Herr Settembrini, the professed aesthete, who was probably not altogether familiar with the history of the development of mediaeval jurisprudence. There had been, in fact, a process of continuous rationalization, in the course of which reason had taken the place of G.o.d, who had been shoved out of the department of justice. In other words, trial by battle had fallen into disuse, because it had been observed that the stronger man conquered even when he was in the wrong. It had been people of Herr Settembrini's kidney, the doubters and critics, who had made the observation, and brought about the Inquisition, which superseded the old naive procedure. Justice no longer relied on the intervention of G.o.d in favour of the truth, but aimed to get it out of the accused by confession. No sentence without confession-you could hear that still among the people, for the instinct lodged deep with them; the chain of evidence might be as strong as it liked, but if there had been no confession, there would remain a lurking feeling that the sentence was illegitimate. But how get at the confession? How procure the truth, out of the ma.s.s of circ.u.mstance and suspicion? How look into the heart, the brain, of a man who denied and concealed? If the spirit was recalcitrant, there remained the body, which could be got at. The torture was recommended to reason, as a means to an end, the end of bringing out the indispensable confession. But it was Herr Settembrini who had demanded and introduced confession, and he, accordingly, whowas responsible for torture.

The humanist implored the others not to believe a word of all this. Herr Naphta was indulging in a diabolical joke. If the position had really been what he said, if it were true that the horrible thing was actually an invention of the human reason, that only showed how grievously she always needed sustaining and enlightening, and how little ground the instinct-wors.h.i.+ppers had for their fear that things could ever be too much directed by reason on this earth! But the speaker was of course in error. The judicial abomination they were discussing could not be laid at the door of the human reason, because it went back to an original belief in h.e.l.l. The rack, the pincers, the screws and tongs you saw in these chambers of torment and martyrdom represented the effort of a childish and deluded fancy to emulate what it piously believed to be the sufferings of the eternally d.a.m.ned. But that was not all. They thought to a.s.sist the evil-doer, whose spirit they a.s.sumed to be wrestling after confession, while his flesh, the evil principle, set itself against the soul's desire: they had it in mind to do him a service of love, in breaking his body by torture. It was a madness of asceticism-

"How about the ancient Romans-did they harbour the same delusion?"

"The Romans? Ma che!" Ma che!"

"But they employed the torture as a judicial instrument."

Logical impa.s.se. Hans Castorp tried to help out-as if it were his metier metier to guide such a conversation! Of his own accord, he flung into the arena the question of capital punishment. Torture, he said, was abolished-though examining magistrates still had ways of making an accused person pliable. But the death penalty persisted, it seemed impossible to do without it. It was practised by the most civilized nations. The French system of deportation had worked very badly. There was nothing feasible to do with certain half-human beings, except to make them a head shorter! to guide such a conversation! Of his own accord, he flung into the arena the question of capital punishment. Torture, he said, was abolished-though examining magistrates still had ways of making an accused person pliable. But the death penalty persisted, it seemed impossible to do without it. It was practised by the most civilized nations. The French system of deportation had worked very badly. There was nothing feasible to do with certain half-human beings, except to make them a head shorter!

They were not not "certain half-human beings" Settembrini corrected him. They were men, like the Engineer, like himself, Settembrini-only weak-willed victims of a defective social system. He cited the case of an abandoned criminal, the kind always referred to by the prosecuting attorneys as a "beast in human form," who had covered the walls of his cell with verse, and not at all bad verse either, much better than most prosecuting attorneys ever managed to write. "certain half-human beings" Settembrini corrected him. They were men, like the Engineer, like himself, Settembrini-only weak-willed victims of a defective social system. He cited the case of an abandoned criminal, the kind always referred to by the prosecuting attorneys as a "beast in human form," who had covered the walls of his cell with verse, and not at all bad verse either, much better than most prosecuting attorneys ever managed to write.

That cast a somewhat singular light on the art of verse-writing, Naphta retorted, but was not otherwise worth answering.

Hans Castorp said he was not surpiseed to hear that Naphta favoured the death penalty. To his mind, Naphta was as revolutionary as Settembrini, only in a conservative direction-a reactionary revolutionist.

Herr Settembrini, with a confident smile, a.s.sured them that the world, after pa.s.sing through a period of inhuman reaction, would always return to the normal order of things. But Herr Naphta preferred to discredit art sooner than admit that it might have a humanizing effect upon a sunken wretch. He need not expect, by such fanatical talk, to make much headway with light-seeking youth. He, Settembrini, had the honour to belong to a newly-formed league, the scope of which was the abolition of capital punishment in all civilized countries. It was not yet settled where the first congress should meet; but one thing was sure, that those who addressed it would have plenty of arguments at hand. He submitted some of them forthwith: the ever-present possibility that justice might err and judicial murder be committed; the hope of reformation, which it was never possible to disregard; the biblical injunction "Vengeance is mine." Then he referred to the theory that the State, in its function not as the wielder of force, but as the instrument of human betterment, may not repay evil with evil; he attacked the conception of guilt, on the ground of scientific determinism; and lastly, herepudiated the whole theory of punishment.

On top of which "light-seeking youth" had to stand by while Naphta neatly wrung the neck of all these arguments, one after the other. He derided the humanist's reluctance to shed blood, and his reverence for human life. He said that the latter was characteristic of our intensely bourgeois age, our policy of molly-coddle. Even so, its inconsistency was apparent. For let an idea arise that went beyond considerations of personal safety and well-being-and such ideas were the only ones worthy of human beings, and thus in a higher sense were the normal field of human activity-and the individual would, even under average emotional stress, be sacrificed without scruple to the higher claim. Nay, more: the individual, of his own free will, would expose himself without a thought. The philanthropy of his honoured opponent would eliminate from life all its stern and mortal traits; it would castrate life, as would the determinism of its so-called science. But determinism would never succeed in doing away with the conception of guilt. It could only add to its authority and its awfulness. Oh, so he demanded that the unhappy victim of social maladjustment be convinced of his own sinfulness, and tread in full conviction the path to the scaffold?

"Quite. The evil-doer is filled with his guilt as with himself. For he is as he is, and can and will not be otherwise-and therein lies his guilt."

Naphta s.h.i.+fted the ground of the discussion from the empiric to the metaphysical. He went on to say that in behaviour, in action, determinism did indeed rule; there was no freedom of choice. But in being, the man is as he has wished to be, and as, until his last breath, he has never ceased to wish to be. He has revelled in slaying, and does not pay too dear in being slain. Let him die, then, for he has gratified his heart's deepest desire. "Deepest desire?" "Deepest desire."

They all gritted their teeth. Hans Castorp gave a little cough, Wehsal set his jaw awry. Herr Ferge breathed a sigh, Settembrini shrewdly remarked: "There is a kind of generalization that has a distinctly personal cast. Have you ever had a desire to commit murder?"

"That is no concern of yours. But if I had, I should laugh in the face of any ignorant humanitarianism that tried to feed me on skilly till I died a natural death. It is absurd for the murderer to outlive the murdered. They two, alone together, as two beings are together in only one other human relations.h.i.+p, have, like them, the one acting, the other suffering him, shared a secret that binds them for ever together. They belong to each other."

Settembrini said frigidly that he lacked the brains necessary to the understanding of this death-and-murder mysticism-and he really didn't miss them. No offence intended; Herr Naphta's religious gift did undoubtedly far surpa.s.s his own, but he protested that he was not envious. His own nature had an unconquerable craving for fresh air; it kept him somewhat aloof from a sphere where reverence-and not merely the unthinking reverence of youth-was paid to suffering, and that in a spiritual as well as a physical sense. In that sphere, it was plain, virtue, reason, and healthiness counted for nothing, vice and disease were honoured in a wondrous way.

Naphta concurred. He said that being virtuous and healthy did not, in fact, const.i.tute being in a state of religion at all. It would clear the air to have it plainly stated that religion had nothing to do with reason and morality.

"For," he added, "it has nothing to do with life. Life is based on conditions and built up on foundations which are partly the result of experience, and partly belong to the domain of ethics. We call the first kind time, s.p.a.ce, and causality; the second, morality and reason. But one and all of these are not only foreign to, utterly a matter of indifference to the nature of religion; they are even hostile to it. For they are precisely what make up life-the so-called normal life, which is to say, arch Philistinism, ultra-bourgeoisiedom, the absolute ant.i.thesis of which, the very genius of ant.i.thesis to which, is the life of religion."

Naphta went on to say that he would not deny to the other sphere the possibility of genius. There was much to admire in the monumental respectability, the majestic Philistinism of the middle-cla.s.s consciousness. But one must never forget that as it stood, straddle-legged, firmly planted on earth, hands behind the back, chest well out, it was the embodiment of irreligion.

Hans Castorp, like a schoolboy, put up his hand. He wished, he said, not to offend either side. But since they were talking about progress, and thus, to a certain extent also, about politics, and the republic of eloquence and the civilization of the educated Occident, he might say that it seemed to him the difference-or, if Herr Naphta insisted, the ant.i.thesis-between life and religion went back to that between time and eternity. Only in time was there progress; in eternity there was none, nor any politics or eloquence either. There, so to speak, one laid one's head back in G.o.d, and closed one's eyes. And that was the difference between religion and morality-he was aware that he had put it very badly.

The way he put it, Settembrini remarked, naive as it was, was less objectionable than his fear of giving offence, his inclination to give ground to the Devil.

Oh, as far as the Devil was concerned, they two had talked about him aforetime, hadn't they? "O Satana Satana, O ribellione." O ribellione." But which devil was it he had been giving ground to just now? Was it Carducci's one-rebellion, activity, critical spirit-or was it the other? It was pretty dangerous having a devil on either hand, like this; how in the Devil's name should we get out of it? But which devil was it he had been giving ground to just now? Was it Carducci's one-rebellion, activity, critical spirit-or was it the other? It was pretty dangerous having a devil on either hand, like this; how in the Devil's name should we get out of it?

That, Naphta said, was no proper description of the state of affairs as Herr Settembrini looked at them. For the distinctive feature of his cosmos was that he made G.o.d and the Devil two distinct persons or principles, with "life" as a bone of contention between them-which, by the by, was just the way the Middle Ages had envisaged them. But in reality, G.o.d and the Devil were at one in being opposed to life, to bourgeoisiedom, reason and virtue, since they together represented the religious principle.

"What a disgusting hodge-podge-che guazzabuglio proprio stomachevole!" Good and evil, sanctification and criminal conduct, all mixed up together! Without judgment! Without direction! Without the possibility of repudiating what was vile! Did Herr Naphta realize what it was he denied and disavowed in the presence of youth, when he flung G.o.d and the Devil together and in the name of this mad two-inoneness refused to admit the existence of an ethical principle? He denied every standard of values, he denied goodness! Horrible!-Very well, then there existed neither good nor evil, nothing but a morally chaotic All! There was not even the individual in possession of a critical faculty-there was only the all-consuming, the all-levelling universal communalty, and mystic immersion in her! Good and evil, sanctification and criminal conduct, all mixed up together! Without judgment! Without direction! Without the possibility of repudiating what was vile! Did Herr Naphta realize what it was he denied and disavowed in the presence of youth, when he flung G.o.d and the Devil together and in the name of this mad two-inoneness refused to admit the existence of an ethical principle? He denied every standard of values, he denied goodness! Horrible!-Very well, then there existed neither good nor evil, nothing but a morally chaotic All! There was not even the individual in possession of a critical faculty-there was only the all-consuming, the all-levelling universal communalty, and mystic immersion in her!

It was delicious, Herr Settembrini's thinking of himself as an individualist! For to be that, one had at least to recognize the difference between morality and blessedness, which our honoured illuminant and monist most certainly did not! A society in which life was stupidly conceived as an end in itself, with no questions asked about its ulterior meaning and purpose, was governed by a tribal and social ethic, indeed, a vertebrate morality, if you liked, but certainly not by individualism. For individualism belonged, singly and solely, in the realm of the religious and mystical, in the so-called "morally chaotic All." And this morality of Herr Settembrini's, what was it, what did it want? It was life-bound, and thus entirely utilitarian; it was pathetically unheroic. Its end and aim was to make men grow old and happy, rich and comfortable-and that was all there was to it. And this Philistine philosophy, this gospel of work and reason, served Herr Settembrini as an ethical system. As far as he, Naphta, was concerned, he would continue to deny that it was anything but the sheerest and shabbiest bourgeoisiedom.

Settembrini enjoined him to be calm-his own voice shaking with pa.s.sion. He found Herr Naphta's talk about bourgeoisiedom simply insufferable-and G.o.d knew why he should put on that contemptuous, aristocratic air! As if the opposite of life- and we all knew what that was-was likely to be more refined than life itself! New cries, new catchwords! Now it was the "aristocratic principle." Hans Castorp, all flushed and depleted from taxing his brains in the cold, shaky as to his capacity for clear expression, hot and cold with his own audacity, heard himself babble that always since a child he had pictured death to himself as wearing a starched ruff, or at least a sort of half-uniform, with a stand-up collar, while life, on the other hand, wore an ordinary collar. His words sounded, even to himself, like a drunken impropriety; he hastened to a.s.sure the company that that was not at all what he had meant to say. And yet-wasn't it a fact that one couldn't imagine certain people dead, simply because they were so very ordinary? That must mean they were very fit for life, but could not die, because unfit for the consecration of death.

Herr Settembrini said he was confident Hans Castorp uttered such stuff merely for the sake of being contradicted. The young man would find him ever ready to lend a hand in the intellectual warfare, against attacks like the present. The Engineer had used the expression "fit for life"; had he intended it in a derogatory sense? To him it was synonymous with "worthy of life," the two conceptions being perfectly harmonious, and suggesting by a natural process of a.s.sociation another equally beautiful, "worthy of love." One might with truth say that he who was worthy of the one was fully worthy of the other. And both together, loveworthy and life-worthy, made up the true n.o.bility.