Thus Naphta. The little group was silent. The young men looked to Herr Settembrini. It was, they felt, his affair.
He said: “Astounding. I am staggered—I admit it. I had not expected this. Roma locuta. Rome has spoken, and how—how has she spoken! Herr Naphta has before our eyes performed a hieratic salto mortale—if the epithet is inconsistent, the inconsistency has been ‘temporarily abrogated’—oh, yes! I repeat, it is astounding. Could you conceive, Professor, of any possible criticism, if only on the score of consistency? A few minutes ago you were at pains to make comprehensible to us a Christian individualism based on the dualism of God and the world, and to prove its preeminence over all politically determined morality. And now you profess a socialism pushed to the point of dictatorship and terrorism. How do you reconcile the two things?”
“Opposites,” said Naphta, “may be consistent with each other. It is the middling, the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other that is preposterous. Your individualism, as I have already taken the liberty of remarking, is defective. It is a confession of weakness. It corrects its pagan State morality by the admixture of a little Christianity, a little ‘rights of man,’ a little so-called liberty—but that is all. An individualism that springs from the cosmic, the astrological importance of the individual soul, an individualism not social but religious, that conceives of humanity not as a conflict between the ego and society, but as a conflict between the ego and God, between the flesh and the spirit—a genuine individualism like that sorts very well with the most binding communism.”
“Anonymous and communal,” said Hans Castorp.
Settembrini glared at him. “Be quiet, Engineer,” he said, with a severity probably due to nervous irritation. “Inform yourself, but don’t try to express your views. That is an answer, at least,” he said, turning to Naphta again. “It gives me cold comfort, but it is an answer. Let us examine all the consequences flowing from it. Along with industry, your Christian communism would reject machinery, technique, material progress. Along with what you call trade—money and finance, which in antiquity ranked higher than agriculture and manual labour—you reject freedom. For it is clear, so clear as to be evident to the meanest intelligence, that all social relations, public and private, would be attached to the soil, as in the Middle Ages; even—I feel some reluctance to say it—even the person of the individual. If only the soil can maintain life, then only the possession of it can confer freedom. Manual labourers and peasants, however honourable their position, if they possess no real property, can only be the property of those who do. As a matter of fact, until well on in the Middle Ages the great mass of the population, even the town-dwellers, were serfs. In the course of our discussion you have let fall various allusions to the dignity of the human being. Yet you are defending the morality of an economic system which deprives the individual of liberty and self-respect.”
“About self-respect and the lack of it,” responded Naphta, “there is a good deal to be said. For the moment, I should be glad if the association were to make you conceive of liberty less as a beautiful gesture and more as a serious problem. You assert that Christian morality, with all its beauty and benignity, makes for servitude. And I, on the other hand, assert that the question of freedom—the question of cities, to put it more concretely—has always been a highly ethical question, and is historically bound up with the inhuman degeneration of commercial morality, with all the horrors of modern industrialism and speculation, and with the devilish domination of money and finance.”
“I must insist that you do not take refuge behind scruples and antinomies, but come out squarely where you belong, in favour of the blackest sort of reaction.”
“It would be the first step toward true liberty and love of humanity to free one’s mind of the flabby fear engendered by the very mention of the word ‘reaction.’ ”
“Well, that is enough,” declared Herr Settembrini, in a voice that trembled slightly, pushing away his cup and plate—they were empty by now—and rising from the satin sofa. “Enough for today, enough for a whole day, I should think. Our thanks, Professor, for the delicious entertainment, and for the very spirituel discourse. My young friends here from the Berghof are summoned by the service of the cure, and I should like, before they go, to show them my cell up above. Come, gentlemen. Addio, Padre!”
Hans Castorp marked the appellation with lifted brows. So now it was padre! They submitted to Herr Settembrini’s breaking up the little party and disposing of themselves without giving Naphta the chance to come along supposing he had been inclined. The young men in their turn thanked their host and took their leave, urged by Naphta to come again. They went with Herr Settembrini, Hans Castorp bearing with him the crumbling pasteboard volume containing “De miseria humanae conditionis,” which his host put into his hands. The surly Lukaçek still sat on his table and sewed at the sleeved garment for the old woman. They had to pass his open door to mount the ladderlike stair to the top storey. It was, properly speaking, scarcely a storey at all, being simply a loft with naked rafters and beams inside the roof; it had the close air of a garret and smelt of warm shingles. But it was divided into two rooms,
