The Magic Mountain

it crudely, perhaps⁠—but, so far as I can see, you can’t deny it. He puts us all in his pocket; somehow or other, he has the right to laugh at us all⁠—but where does he get it? Where does it come from? How does he do it? Certainly it’s not that he’s so clever. I admit that you can’t talk about his cleverness. He’s inarticulate⁠—it’s more feeling with him, feeling is just his mark, if you’ll excuse my language. No, as I say, it’s not out of cleverness, not on intellectual grounds at all, that he can do as he likes with us. You would be right to deny it. It isn’t the point. But not on physical either. It’s not the massive shoulders, or the strength of his biceps; not because he could knock us down if he liked. He isn’t conscious of his power; if he does take a notion, he can easily be put off it with a couple of civilized words.⁠—So it is not physical. And yet the physical has something to do with it; not in a muscular sense⁠—it’s something quite different, mystical; because so soon as the physical has anything to do with it, it becomes mystical, the physical goes over into the spiritual, and the other way on, and you can’t tell them apart, nor can you cleverness and stupidity. But the result is what we see, the dynamic effect⁠—he puts us in his pocket. We’ve only one word for that⁠—personality. We use it in another, more regular sense too, in which we are all personalities⁠—morally, legally, and otherwise. But that is not the sense in which I am using it now. I am speaking of the mystery of personality, something above either cleverness or stupidity, and something we all have to take into account: partly to try to understand it; but partly, where that is not possible, to be edified by it. You are all for values; but isn’t personality a value too? It seems so to me, more so than either cleverness or stupidity, it seems positive and absolute, like life⁠—in short, something quite worth while, and calculated to make us trouble about it. That’s what I wanted to say in answer to what you said about stupidity.”

Nowadays, when Hans Castorp relieved his mind, he did not hem and haw, become involved and stick in the middle. He said his say to the end like a man, rounded off his period, let his voice drop and went his way; though he still got red, and at heart was still afraid of the silence he knew would follow when he had done, to give him time to feel mortified at what he had expressed.

Herr Settembrini let it have full sway before he said: “You deny that you are hunting paradoxes; but at the same time you well know that I love them as much as I do mysteries. In making a mystery of the personality, you run a risk of idol-worship. You do reverence to a hollow mask. You see mystery in mystification, in one of those counterfeits with which a malicious demon of physical form loves sometimes to mock us. Have you ever frequented theatrical circles? You know those physiognomies in which the features of Julius Caesar, Beethoven, and Goethe unite⁠—the happy possessor of which has only to open his mouth to prove himself the most pitiable fool on God’s earth?”

“Very good, a freak of nature,” said Hans Castorp. “But not alone a freak of nature, not simply a hoax. For since these people are actors, they must have a gift, and the gift itself is beyond cleverness and stupidity, it is after all a value. Mynheer Peeperkom has a gift, say what you like; and thus it is he can stick us all in his pocket. Put Herr Naphta in one corner of the room, and let him deliver a discourse on Gregory the Great and the City of God⁠—it would be highly worth listening to⁠—and put Mynheer Peeperkorn in the other, with his extraordinary mouth and the wrinkles on his forehead, and let him not say a word except ‘By all means⁠—capital⁠—settled, ladies and gentlemen!’ You will see everybody gather round Peeperkorn, and Herr Naphta will be sitting there alone with his cleverness and his City of God, though he may be uttering such penetrating wisdom that it pierces through marrow and cucumber, as Behrens says⁠—”

“Take shame to yourself for bowing down to success,” Herr Settembrini adjured him. “Mundus vult decipi. I do not claim that people ought to flock about Herr Naphta. He is too full of guile for my taste. But I am inclined to range myself on his side, in the imaginary scene you have conjured up with such relish. Will you despise logic, precision, discrimination? Will you contemn them, in favour of some suggestion⁠—hocus-pocus and emotional charlatanry? If you will, then the devil has you in his⁠—”

“But he can often talk as coherently as you please,” said Hans Castorp, “when he gets interested. The other day he was telling me about dynamic drugs and Asiatic poison-trees; it was so interesting it was almost uncanny⁠—interesting things are always a bit uncanny⁠—but the interest was not so much in what he was saying as it was taken in connection with his personality, which made it interesting and uncanny at once.”

“Ah, yes, your weakness for Asia is well known to me. True, I cannot oblige with marvels such as those,” the Italian said, so bitterly that Hans Castorp hastened to assure him how much he valued his conversation and instruction from quite another angle, and that it had not occurred to him to make comparisons which would be unjust to both sides. Herr Settembrini paid no heed, he spurned the politeness, and went on: “In any case, Engineer, you must permit me to admire your serene objectivity. It approaches the fantastic, you will admit. The way things stand: this zany has taken away your Beatrice from