the purity of all sources of knowledge. In trade, in politics, and what have you, turning an X into a Y may occasionally prove to be a stroke of genius; but never with us.
In former ages, during the wars and upheavals of so-called periods of “grandeur,” intellectuals were sometimes urged to throw themselves into politics. This was particularly the case during the late Feuilletonistic Age. That age went even further in its demands, for it insisted that Mind itself must serve politics or the military. Just as the church bells were being melted down for cannon, as hapless schoolboys were drawn on to fill the ranks of the decimated troops, so Mind itself was to be harnessed and consumed as one of the materials of war.
Naturally we could not accept this demand. In emergencies a scholar might be called from his lectern or his desk and made into a soldier. In some circumstances he might volunteer for such service. In a country exhausted by war the scholar must restrict himself in all material things, even to the point of sheer starvation. Surely all this is taken for granted. The higher a person’s cultivation, the greater the privileges he has enjoyed, the greater must be his sacrifices in case of need. We hope that every Castalian would recognize this as a matter of course, if the time should come. But although we are prepared to sacrifice our well-being, our comfort, and our lives to the people, when danger threatens, that does not mean that we are ready to sacrifice Mind itself, the tradition and morality of our spiritual life, to the demands of the hour, of the people, or of the generals. He would be a coward who withdrew from the challenges, sacrifices, and dangers his people had to endure. But he would be no less a coward and traitor who betrayed the principles of the life of the mind to material interests — who, for example, left the decision on the product of two times two to the rulers. It is treason to sacrifice love of truth, intellectual honesty, loyalty to the laws and methods of the mind, to any other interests, including those of one’s country. Whenever propaganda and the conflict of interests threatens to devalue, distort, and do violence to truth as it has already done to individuals, to language, to the arts, and to everything else that is organic and highly cultivated, then it is our duty to resist and save the truth, or rather the striving for truth, since that is the supreme article in our creed. The scholar who knowingly speaks, writes, or teaches falsehood, who knowingly supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the given moment, does his people a grave disservice. He corrupts its air and soil, its food and drink; he poisons its thinking and its laws, and he gives aid and comfort to all the hostile, evil forces that threaten the nation with annihilation.
The Castalian, therefore, should not become a politician. If need be, he must sacrifice his person, but never his fealty to the life of the mind. The mind of man is beneficent and noble only when it obeys truth. As soon as it betrays truth, as soon as it ceases to revere truth, as soon as it sells out, it becomes intensely diabolical. Then it becomes far worse than instinctual bestiality, which always retains something of the innocence of nature.
I leave it to each of you, my esteemed colleagues, to reflect upon the duties of the Order when the country and the Order itself are imperiled. Certainly there will be a variety of opinions. I have my own, and after much consideration of all the questions I have posed here, I have for my part come to a clear conception of what seems to me desirable, of what my duty is. This leads me to a personal petition to the honorable Board, with which I shall conclude my memorandum.
Of all the Masters composing our Board, I as Magister Ludi am probably most remote from the outside world, by virtue of my office. The mathematician, the philologist, the physicist, the pedagogue, and all the other Masters labor in fields which they share with the profane world. In the ordinary, non-Castalian schools of our country, mathematics and linguistics are part of the normal curriculum. Astronomy and physics have a place in the secular universities. Even the completely untutored make music. All these disciplines are age-old, much older than our Order; they existed long before it and will outlive it. Only the Glass Bead Game is our own invention, our speciality, our favorite, our toy. It is the ultimate, subtlest expression of our Castalian type of intellectuality. It is both the most precious and the most nonutilitarian, the most beloved and the most fragile jewel in our treasury. It is the first precious stone that will be destroyed if the continuance of Castalia is imperiled, not only because it is the frailest of our possessions, but also because to laymen it is undoubtedly the most dispensable aspect of Castalia. Therefore when the time comes to save the country every needless expenditure, the elite schools will be contracted, the funds for the maintenance and expansion of the libraries and collections will be trimmed and ultimately eliminated, our meals will be cut down, our clothing allowance withdrawn, but all the principal subjects in our
In case of political upheavals, therefore, especially if they involve war, I regard the Glass Bead Game as a lost cause. It will deteriorate rapidly, however many individuals cling to it, and it will never be restored. The atmosphere which will follow a new era of wars will not condone it. It will vanish just as surely as did certain highly cultivated customs in musical history, such as the choruses of professional singers of the period around 1600, or the Sunday concerts of figurate music in churches around 1700. In those days men’s ears heard sounds whose angelic purity cannot be conjured up again by any amount of science or magic. In the same way the Glass Bead Game will not be forgotten, but it will be irrecoverable, and those who study its history, its rise, flourishing, and doom, will sigh and envy us for having been allowed to live in so peaceful, cultivated, and harmonious a world of the mind.
Although I am now Magister Ludi, I do not at all consider it my (or our) mission to prevent or postpone the ultimate end of our Game. Beauty, even surpassing beauty, is perishable like all other things, as soon as it has become a historical phenomenon upon this earth. We know that and can grieve that it is so, but cannot seriously try to change it, for it is unalterable law. When the Glass Bead Game is destroyed, Castalia and the world will suffer a loss, but they will scarcely be aware of it at the moment, for at the time of great crisis they will be absorbed in saving whatever can still be saved. A Castalia without the Game is conceivable, but not a Castalia without reverence for truth, without fidelity to the life of the mind. A Board of Educators can function without a Magister Ludi. But although we have almost forgotten it, “Magister Ludi” of course originally meant not the office we have in mind when we use the word, but simply schoolmaster. And the more endangered Castalia is, the more its treasures stale and crumble away, the more our country will need its schoolmasters, its brave and good schoolmasters. Teachers are more essential than anything else, men who can give the young the ability to judge and distinguish, who serve them as examples of the honoring of truth, obedience to the things of the spirit, respect for language. That holds not only for our elite schools, which will be closed down sooner or later, but also and primarily for the secular schools on the outside where burghers and peasants, artisans and soldiers, politicians, military officers, and rulers are educated and shaped while they are still malleable children. That is where the basis for the cultural life of the country is to be found, not in the seminars or in the Glass Bead Game. We have always furnished the country with teachers and educators, and they are, as I have said, the best among us. But we must do far more than we have done hitherto. We must no longer rely on a constant influx of the best from the schools outside to help maintain our Castalia. More and more we must recognize the humble, highly responsible service to the secular schools as the chief and most honorable part of our mission. That is what we must seek to extend.
Which brings me to my personal petition to the esteemed Board. I herewith request the Board to relieve me of my office as Magister Ludi and entrust to me an ordinary school, large or small, outside in the country; to let me staff it with a group of youthful members of our Order. I would recruit as teachers those whom I could confidently expect to help instil our principles into young people out in the world.
I hope that the esteemed Board will deign to examine my petition and its reasoning with due benevolence and let me know its decisions.
The Master of the Glass Bead Game.
Permit me to cite a remark of the Reverend Father Jacobus, which I noted down in the course of one of his private lessons:
“Times of terror and deepest misery may be in the offing. But if any happiness at all is to be extracted from that misery, it can be only a spiritual happiness, looking backward toward the conservation of the culture of earlier times, looking forward toward serene and stalwart defense of the things of the spirit in an age which otherwise might succumb wholly to material things.”
