All these, Naphta responded, were very honest bourgeois achievements; but they would have done more harm than good in the centuries under discussion. They would have profited neither one side nor the other; the ailing and wretched as little as the strong and prosperous, these latter not having been piteous for pity’s sake, but for the salvation of their own souls. Successful social reform would have robbed them of their necessary justification, as it would the wretched of their sanctified state. The persistence of poverty and sickness had been in the interest of both parties, and the position could be sustained just so long as it was possible to hold to the purely religious point of view.
“A filthy point of view,” Settembrini declared. A position the stupidity of which he felt himself above combating. This talk of the sanctified lot of the poor and wretched—yes, and what the Engineer, in his simplicity, had said about the Christian reverence due to suffering—was simply gammon, resting as it did on a misconception, on mistaken sympathy, on erroneous psychology. The pity the well person felt for the sick—a pity that almost amounted to awe, because the well person could not imagine how he himself could possibly bear such suffering—was very greatly exaggerated. The sick person had no real right to it. It was, in fact, the result of an error in thinking, a sort of hallucination; in that the well man attributed to the sick his own emotional equipment, and imagined that the sick man was, as it were, a well man who had to bear the agonies of a sick one—than which nothing was further from the truth. For the sick man was—precisely that, a sick man: with the nature and modified reactions of his state. Illness so adjusted its man that it and he could come to terms; there were sensory appeasements, short circuits, a merciful narcosis; nature came to the rescue with measures of spiritual and moral adaptation and relief, which the sound person naively failed to take into account. There could be no better illustration than the case of all this tuberculous crew up here, with their reckless folly, lightheadedness and loose morals, and their total lack of desire for health. In short, let the sound man with all his respect for illness once fall ill himself, and he would soon see that being ill is a state of being in itself—no very honourable one either—and that he had been taking it a good deal too seriously.
At this point Anton Karlowitsch Ferge girded his loins to remonstrate—he defended the pleura-shock against sneers and contumely. So Herr Settembrini thought you could take the pleura-shock too seriously, did he? With all due respect and gratitude and all that, he, Ferge, must really beg Herr Settembrini’s pardon! His great Adam’s apple and his good-natured moustaches worked up and down as he repudiated any lack of respect for the sufferings he had undergone. He was just a plain man, an insurance agent, with no highfalutin ideas; even the present conversation soared far above his head. But if Herr Settembrini meant to suggest that the pleura-shock was a good example of what he was talking about—that torture by tickling, with its stench of sulphur and its three-coloured fainting fit—well, really he was very much obliged to Herr Settembrini, he really must thank him very kindly indeed; but there had been nothing of the sort about the pleura-shock—not it! Talk about adjustments and “merciful narcosis”—why, it had been the most sickening piece of business under the shining sun, and nobody who had not been through it could have the least idea—
“Yes, yes,” Herr Settembrini said. Herr Ferge’s collapse got more and more remarkable as time went on, and he would presently be wearing it like a halo round his head. He, Settembrini, had no great respect for sick folk who laid claim to consideration on the score of their illness. He was ill himself, and seriously; but in all sincerity he felt inclined to be ashamed of the fact. However, his present remarks were purely abstract and impersonal; and the distinction he made between the nature and reactions of a well and a sick man was based on common sense, as the gentlemen would see if they would think about insanity—take, for instance, hallucinations. Suppose one of his companions, the Engineer, say, or Herr Wehsal, should enter his room tonight at dusk and see his deceased father sitting there in a corner, who should look at and speak to him—that would be absolutely monstrous, wouldn’t it? A shattering experience, which would confound both sense and reason, and make him get out of the room as fast as he could and put himself in the care of a specialist in nervous ailments. Or wouldn’t it? The joke of the thing was that such an experience would not be possible for any of the gentlemen present, since they were all in enjoyment of full mental health. If it did happen to any of them, it would be a sure sign that they were not sound, but diseased, and they would not react to the appearance with emotions of horror and by taking to their heels, but treat it as though it were entirely in order, and begin a conversation with it—this being, in fact, the reaction of a person suffering from a hallucination. To suppose that such hallucinations affected the person subject to them with the same horror as would be felt by a sound mind was a defect of the imagination to which normal persons were often prone.
Herr Settembrini spoke with droll and plastic effect. His picture of the father in the corner made them all laugh, even Ferge, put out
