“And you, who put such large words to such empty uses, don’t forget that you sometimes reproach me for being rhetorical.”
“You will stick to it that Spirit implies frivolity. But it cannot help being what it is: dualistic. Dualism, antithesis, is the moving, the passionate, the dialectic principle of all Spirit. To see the world as cleft into two opposing poles—that is Spirit. All monism is tedious. Solet Aristoteles quaerere pugnam.”
“Aristotle? Didn’t Aristotle place in the individual the reality of universal ideas? That is pantheism.”
“Wrong. When you postulate independent being for individuals, when you transfer the essence of things from the universal to the particular phenomenon, which Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, as good Aristotelians, did, then you destroy all unity between the world and the Highest Idea; you place the world outside of God and make God transcendent. That, my dear sir, is classic medievalism.”
“Classic medievalism! What a phrase!”
“Pardon me, I merely apply the concept of the classic where it is in place: that is to say, wherever an idea reaches its culmination. Antiquity was not always classic. And I note in you a general repugnance to the Absolute; to the broader application of categories. You don’t even want absolute Spirit. You only want to have Spirit synonymous with democratic progress.”
“I should hope we are at one in the conviction that Spirit, however absolute, ought never to become the advocate of reaction.”
“Yet you are always claiming it as the advocate of freedom!”
“Why do you say ‘yet’? Is it freedom that is the law of love of one’s kind, or is it nihilism and all uncharitableness?”
“At any rate, it is the last two of which you are so obviously afraid.”
Settembrini flung up his arm. The skirmish broke off. Joachim looked bewildered from one to the other, and Hans Castorp with lifted brows stared at the path before him. Naphta had spoken sharply and apodictically; yet he had been the one to defend the broader conception of freedom. He had a way of saying “Wrong!” with a ringing nasal sound, and then clipping his lips tightly together over it—the effect was not ingratiating. Settembrini had countered for the most part lightly, yet with a fine warmth in his tone, as when he urged their essential agreement upon certain fundamental points. He now began, as Naphta did not speak again, to gratify the natural curiosity of the young people about the newcomer—some sort of explanation being obviously their due after the dialogue just ended. Naphta passively let him go on, without heeding. He was, so Settembrini said, professor of ancient languages in the Fridericianum—bringing out the title with pompous emphasis, as Italians do. His lot was the same as the speaker’s own: that is, he had been driven to the conclusion that his stay would be a long one, and had left the sanatorium for private quarters under the roof of Lukaçek the ladies’ tailor. The high school of the resort had cannily secured the services of this distinguished Latinist—the pupil of a religious house, as Settembrini father vaguely expressed it—and it went without saying that he was an adornment to his position. In short, Settembrini extolled the ugly Naphta not a little, regardless of the abstract disputation they had just had, which now, it seemed, was to be resumed.
Settembrini went on to explain the cousins to Herr Naphta, whereby it came out that he had already spoken of them. Here, he said, was the young engineer who had come up on three weeks’ leave, only to have Herr Hofrat Behrens find a moist place in his lung; and here was that hope of the Prussian army organization, Lieutenant Ziemssen. He spoke of Joachim’s revolt and intended departure, and added that one must not insult the Engineer by imputing to him any less zealous desire to return to his interrupted labours.
Naphta made a wry face.
“The gentlemen have an eloquent advocate. Far be it from me to question the accuracy of his interpretation of your thoughts and wishes. Work, work—why, he would call me nothing less than an enemy of mankind—inimicus humanae naturae—if I dared suggest that there have been times when talk in that vein would utterly fail to produce the desired effect: times when the precise opposite to his ideal was held in incomparably higher esteem. Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, preached an order of progress towards perfection quite different from any Signor Ludovico ever dreamed of. Would you like to hear what it was? His lowest stage was in the ‘mill,’ the second on the ‘ploughed field,’ the third, and most commendable—don’t listen, Settembrini!—was upon ‘the bed of repose.’ The mill was the symbol of earthly life—not a bad figure. The ploughed field represented the soul of the layman, the scene of the labours of priest and teacher. This was a stage higher than the mill. But the bed—”
“That will do, we understand,” cried Settembrini. “Sirs, is he going to expatiate now upon the purpose and uses of the ‘lewd daybed’?”
“I did not know, Ludovico, that you were a prude. To see you looking at the girls … What has become of your pagan single-mindedness? I continue: the bed is the place of intercourse between the wooing and the wooed: symbolically, it typifies devotional retirement from the world for the purpose of contact with God.”
“Fie! Andate, andate!” the Italian fended him off, in a voice almost tearful. They all laughed. But Settembrini went on, with dignity: “No, no, I am a European, an Occidental, whereas the order of progress you describe is purely Eastern. The Orient abhors activity. Lao-Tse taught that inaction is more profitable than anything else between heaven and earth. When all mankind shall have ceased to do anything whatever, then only will perfect repose and bliss reign upon this earth. There you have your intercourse with God.”
“Oh, indeed! And what about Western mysticism—and what about quietism, a religion that numbers Fénelon among its disciples? Fénelon taught that every
