“Courts of arbitration! The very name is idiotic! In a civil court, to pronounce upon matters of life and death, communicate the will of God to man, and decide the course of history!—Well, so much for the ‘wings of doves.’ Now for the ‘eagles’ pinions’—what about them?”
“Civilian society—”
“Oh, society doesn’t know what it wants. It shouts for a campaign against the fall in the birthrate, it demands a reduction in the cost of bringing up children and training them to a profession—and meanwhile men are herded like cattle, and all the trades and professions are so overcrowded that the fight round the feeding-trough puts in the shade the horrors of past wars. Open spaces, garden cities! Strengthening the stock! But why strengthen it, if civilization and progress have decided there shall be no more war? Whereas war would cure everything—it would ‘strengthen the stock’ and at the same time stop the decline in the birthrate.”
“You are joking, of course—you can’t mean what you say. And our discussion comes to an end at the right moment, for here we are,” Settembrini said, and pointed out to the cousins with his stick the cottage before whose gate they had paused. It stood near the beginning of the village: a modest structure, separated from the street by a narrow front garden. A wild grapevine, springing from bare roots at the door, flung an arm along the ground-floor wall towards the display window of a tiny shop. The ground-floor, Settembrini explained, belonged to the chandler; Naphta was domiciled a floor higher up, with the tailor’s shop, and his own quarters were in the roof, where he had a peaceful little study.
Naphta, with unexpectedly spontaneous cordiality, expressed the hope that he might have the pleasure of meeting them again. “Come and see us,” he said. “I would say: ‘Come and see me,’ if Dr. Settembrini here had not prior claims upon your friendship. Come, however, as often as you like, whenever you feel you would like a talk. I prize highly an interchange of ideas with youth, and am perhaps not entirely without pedagogic tradition. Our Master of the Lodge here”—he nodded toward Settembrini—“would have it that the bourgeois humanism of the day has a monopoly of the pedagogic gift; but we must take issue with him. Until another time, then!”
Settembrini made difficulties—there were difficulties, he said. The days of the Lieutenant’s sojourn up here were numbered; and as for the Engineer, he would doubtless redouble his zeal in the service of the cure, in order to follow his cousin down to the valley with all the speed he might.
Both young men assented in turn. They had bowed their acceptance of Herr Naphta’s invitation, and next minute they also bowed their acknowledgment of the justice of Herr Settembrini’s remarks. So everything was left open.
“What did he call him?” asked Joachim, as they climbed the winding path to the Berghof.
“I understood him to say ‘Master of the Lodge,’ ” answered Hans Castorp. “I was just wondering about it. It was probably some joke or other, they have such odd names for each other. Settembrini called Naphta ‘princeps scholasticorum’—not so bad, either. The schoolmen were the theologians of the Middle Ages, the dogmatic philosophers, if you like. They spoke several times of the Middle Ages; it reminded me of the first day I came, when Settembrini said there was a good deal up here that was medieval—it was Adriatica von Mylendonk, her name, I mean, made him say so.—How did you like him?”
“Who? The little man? Not very much. Though he said some things I liked. That about courts of arbitration—they are nothing but canting hypocrisy, of course. But I did not care much for the man himself—a person may say as many good things as he likes, it doesn’t matter to me, if he himself is a queer fish. And queer he is, you can’t deny it. That stuff about the ‘place of intercourse’ was distinctly shady, not to mention anything else. And did you see the big Jewish nose he had? Nobody but Jews have such puny figures. Are you really thinking of visiting the man?”
“Visit him—of course we’ll visit him,” declared Hans Castorp. “When you talk about his being puny, that’s only the military in you speaking. And as for his nose, the Chaldeans had the same kind, and they knew devilish well what they were about, on more subjects than alchemy. Naphta has something of the mystagogue about him, he interests me a good deal. I won’t say that I make him out altogether, yet, but if we meet him often perhaps we shall; I don’t think it at all unlikely we may learn something from the acquaintance with him.”
“Oh, you, with your learning! Getting wiser all the time, with your biology, and your botany, and your continual changing from one idea to another! You began philosophizing about time the first day you came. But we didn’t come up here to acquire wisdom. We came to acquire health, to get healthier and healthier until we are entirely well, and are free to quit, and go down below where we belong!”
“ ‘Of old sat Freedom on the heights,’ ” quoted Hans Castorp airily. “Tell me first what freedom is,” he went on. “Naphta and Settembrini disputed over it a good deal without coming to any conclusion. Settembrini says it is the law of love of one’s kind; that sounds like his ancestor, the Carbonaro. But however valiant he was, and however valiant our Settembrini himself is—”
“Yes, he got uncomfortable when we talked about physical courage.”
“I can’t help thinking he would be afraid of things little Naphta wouldn’t be, and that his freedom and his
