“Art of—”
“That Illuminist Freemasonry had the regent degree—”
“That is fine, Herr Settembrini: art of government, degree of regent—I like all that very much. But tell me something: are you Christians, you Masons?”
“Perché?”
“I beg your pardon, I will ask another question; I’ll put it more simply and generally. Do you believe in God?”
“I will reply to you. But why do you ask?”
“I was not trying to draw you, just now. But there is a story in the Bible of the Pharisees testing our Lord with a Roman coin, and he tells them to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s. It seemed to me this distinction is the distinction between the political and the nonpolitical. If there is a God, then there is also this distinction. Do Freemasons believe in God?”
“I bound myself to answer. You are speaking of a unity which we seek to bring about, but which today, alas, does not exist. If it comes to exist—and I repeat that we labour with silent assiduity upon this great task—then indeed the religious creed of the Freemason will be unanimous, and it will be ‘Écrasez l’infame!’ ”
“Will that be obligatory? It would hardly be tolerant.”
“The problem of tolerance, my dear Engineer, is rather too large for you to tackle. Do not forget that tolerance becomes crime, if extended to evil.”
“God would be the evil?”
“Metaphysics is the evil. It is for no purpose but to put to sleep the energy which we should apply to the building of the temple of society. An example is afforded by the action of the Grand Orient of France a generation ago. He struck the name of God out of his writings. We Italians followed him.”
“How Catholic!”
“In what sense do you—”
“I mean I find it enormously Catholic, to strike out God.”
“What you wish to express is—”
“Nothing worth listening to, Herr Settembrini. Don’t pay too much attention to my prattle. It just struck me that atheism may be enormously Catholic, and as though one might strike out God merely the better to be Catholic.”
Herr Settembrini allowed a pause to ensue; but it was clear that he only did so out of pedagogic deliberation. He answered, after a measured silence: “Engineer, I am far from wishing to wound or mortify you in your adhesion to Protestantism. We were speaking of tolerance; it is surely superfluous for me to emphasize that far from mere toleration, I feel for Protestantism, as the historical opponent of the enslavement of knowledge, the most profound admiration. The invention of printing and the Reformation are and remain the two outstanding services of central Europe to the cause of humanity. Without question. But after what you have just said I do not doubt you will understand me when I reply that after all it is only one side of the question, and there is another. Protestantism conceals elements—the very personality of your reformer concealed elements.—I am thinking of elements of quiescent beatitude, hypnotic abstraction, which are not European, but foreign to the laws of life that govern our busy continent. Look at him, this Luther! Observe the portraits we have, in early and later life. What sort of cranial formation is that, what cheekbones, what a singular emplacement of the eye! My friend, that is Asia! I should be surprised, I should be greatly surprised, if there were not Wendish, Slavic, Sarmatic elements in play there. And if the mighty apparition of this man—for who would deny that it was mighty?—had not flung a fatal preponderance into one of the two scales which in your country hang so dangerously even, into the scale of the East, so that the other even today is still outweighed and flies up in the air—”
Herr Settembrini walked from the humanistic folding-desk in the little window, where he had been standing, up to the table, nearer his pupil, who was sitting on the cot against the wall, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
“Caro!” Herr Settembrini said. “Caro amico! There will be decisions to make, decisions of unspeakable importance for the happiness and the future of Europe; it will fall to your country to decide, in her soul the decision will be consummated. Placed as she is between East and West, she will have to choose, she will have to decide finally and consciously between the two spheres. You are young, you will have a share in this decision, it is your duty to influence it. And therefore let us thank the fates that brought you up here to this horrible region, thus giving me opportunity to work upon your plastic youth with my not unpractised, not wholly flagging eloquence, and make you feel the responsibility which—which your country has in the face of civilization—”
Hans Castorp sat, his chin in his hand. He looked out of the mansard window, and in his simple blue eyes there was a certain obstinacy. He was silent.
“You are silent,” Herr Settembrini said, moved. “You and your native land, you preserve a silence which seems to cover a reservation—and which gives one no hint of what goes on in your depths. You do not love the Word, or you have it not, or you are chary with it to unfriendliness. The articulate world does not know where it is with you. My friend, that is perilous. Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictious word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates. The suspicion lies to hand that you will seek to break your silence with deeds. You will ask Cousin Giacomo” (Settembrini had taken to calling Joachim Giacomo, for convenience sake) “to step out in front of your silence,
“ ‘And thrice he smites, and thrice his blows
Deal death, before him fly his foes …’ ”
Hans Castorp began to laugh, and Herr Settembrini smiled too, satisfied for the moment with the effect of his plastic words.
“Good,” he said. “Very good, let
