Naphta responded, with disagreeable composure: “My good sir, there is no such thing as pure knowledge. The validity of the Church’s teaching on the subject of science, which can be summed up in the phrase of Saint Augustine: Credo, ut intellegam: I believe, in order that I may understand, is absolutely incontrovertible. Faith is the vehicle of knowledge, intellect secondary. Your pure science is a myth. A belief, a given conception of the universe, an idea—in short, a will, is always in existence; which it is the task of the intellect to expound and demonstrate. It comes down every time to the quod erat demonstrandum. Even the conception of evidence itself, psychologically speaking, contains a strong element of voluntarism. The great schoolmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were agreed that what is false in theology cannot be true in philosophy. We can, if you like, leave theology out of the argument; but a humanity, a cultural conception, which refuses to recognize that what is philosophically false cannot be scientifically true, is not worthy the name. The accusation of the Holy Office against Galileo stated that his thesis was philosophically absurd. A more crushing arraignment could not well be.”
“Aha! The reasoning of our great genius turned out in the long run to have the greater validity! No, let us be serious, Professore! Answer me this, answer me in the presence of these two young listeners: Do you believe in truth, in objective, scientific truth, to strive after the attainment of which is the highest law of all morality, and whose triumphs over authority form the most glorious page in the history of the human spirit?”
Hans Castorp and Joachim—the first faster than the second—turned their heads from Settembrini to Naphta.
Naphta replied: “There can be no such triumphs as those you speak of; for the authority is man himself—his interests, his worth, his salvation—and thus between it and truth no conflict is possible. They coincide.”
“Then truth, according to you—”
“Whatever profits man, that is the truth. In him all nature is comprehended, in all nature only he is created, and all nature only for him. He is the measure of all things, and his welfare is the sole and single criterion of truth. Any theoretic science which is without practical application to man’s salvation is as such without significance, we are commanded to reject it. Throughout the Christian centuries it was accepted fact that the natural sciences afforded man no edification. Lactantius, who was chosen by Constantine the Great as tutor to his son, put the position very clearly when he asked in so many words what heavenly bliss he could attain by knowing the sources of the Nile, or the twaddle of the physicists anent the heavenly bodies. Answer him if you can! Why have we given the Platonic philosophy the preference over every other, if not because it has to do with knowledge of God, and not knowledge of nature? Let me assure you that mankind is about to find its way back to this point of view. Mankind will soon perceive that it is not the task of true science to run after godless understanding; but to reject utterly all that is harmful, yes, even all that ideally speaking is without significance, in favour of instinct, measure, choice. It is childish to accuse the Church of having defended darkness rather than light. She did well, and thrice well, to chastise as unlawful all unconditioned striving after the ‘pure’ knowledge of things—such striving, that is, as is without reference to the spiritual, without bearing on man’s salvation; for it is this unconditioned, this a-philosophical natural science that always has led and ever will lead men into darkness.”
“Your pragmatism,” Settembrini responded, “needs only to be translated into terms of politics for it to display its pernicious character in full force. The good, the true, and the just, is that which advantages the State: its safety, its honour, its power form the sole criterion of morality. Well and good. But mark that herewith you fling open the door for every sort of crime to enter; while as for human truth, individual justice, democracy, you can see what will become of them—”
“If I might be permitted,” Naphta interpolated, “to introduce a little logic into the premises, I should state the question thus: either Ptolemy and the schoolmen were right, and the world is finite in time and space, the deity is transcendent, the antithesis between God and man is sustained, and man’s being is dual; from which it follows that the problem of his soul consists in the conflict between the spiritual and the material, to which all social problems are entirely secondary—and this is the only sort of individualism I can recognize as consistent—or else, on the other hand, your Renaissance astronomers hit upon the truth, and the cosmos is infinite. Then there exists no supra-sensible world, no dualism; the Beyond is absorbed into the Here, the antithesis between God and nature falls; man ceases to be the theatre of a struggle between two hostile principles, and becomes harmonious and unitary, the conflict subsists merely between his individual and his collective interest; and the will of the State becomes, in good pagan wise, the law of morality. Either one thing or the other.”
“I protest!” cried Settembrini, holding his teacup outstretched at arm’s length toward his host. “I protest against the imputation that the modern State means the subjugation of the individual to evil ends! I protest against the dilemma in which you seek to place us, between Prussianism and Gothic reaction! Democracy has no meaning whatever if not that of an individualistic corrective to State absolutism of every kind. Truth and justice are the immediate jewels of personal morality. If, at times, they may appear to stand
