“Poor chap! So frightfully keen on work as he seems to be! Enormously chatty, goes from one thing to another so easily. Rather objectionable, though, it seemed to me, with that girl. I was quite put off, for the moment. But when he talked about human dignity, afterwards, I thought it was great—sounded like an address. Do you see much of him?”
Mental Gymnastic
Joachim’s reply came impeded and incoherent. He had taken a small thermometer from a red leather, velvet-lined case on his table, and put the mercury-filled end under his tongue on the left side, so that the glass instrument stuck slantingly upwards out of his mouth. Then he changed into indoor clothes, put on shoes and a braided jacket, took a printed form and pencil from his table, also a book, a Russian grammar—for he was studying Russian with the idea that it would be of advantage to him in the service—and, thus equipped, took his place in the reclining-chair on his balcony, throwing his camel’s-hair rug lightly across his feet.
It was scarcely needed. During the last quarter-hour the layer of cloud had grown steadily thinner, and now the sun broke through in summerlike warmth, so dazzlingly that Joachim protected his head with a white linen shade which was fastened to the arm of his chair, and furnished with a device by means of which it could be adjusted to the position of the sun. Hans Castorp praised this contrivance. He wished to await the result of Joachim’s measurement, and meanwhile looked about to see how everything was done: observed the fur-lined sleeping-sack that stood against the wall in a corner of the loggia, for Joachim to use on cold days; and gazed down into the garden, with his elbows on the balustrade. The general rest-hall was populated by reclining patients, reading, writing, or conversing. He could see only a part of the interior, some four or five chairs.
“How long does that go on?” he asked, turning round.
Joachim raised seven fingers.
“Seven minutes! But they must be up!”
Joachim shook his head. A little later he took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it, and said: “Yes, when you watch it, the time, it goes very slowly. I quite like the measuring, four times a day; for then you know what a minute—or seven of them actually amounts to, up here in this place, where the seven days of the week whisk by the way they do!”
“You say ‘actually,’ ” Hans Castorp answered. He sat with one leg flung over the balustrade, and his eyes looked bloodshot. “But after all, time isn’t ‘actual.’ When it seems long to you, then it is long; when it seems short, why, then it is short. But how long, or how short, it actually is, that nobody knows.” He was unaccustomed to philosophize, yet somehow felt an impulse to do so.
Joachim gainsaid him. “How so?—we do measure it. We have watches and calendars for the purpose; and when a month is up, why, then up it is, for you, and for me, and for all of us.”
“Wait,” said Hans Castorp. He held up his forefinger, close to his tired eyes. “A minute, then, is as long as it seems to you when you measure yourself?”
“A minute is as long—it lasts as long—as it takes the second hand of my watch to complete a circuit.”
“But it takes such a varied length of time—to our senses! And as a matter of fact—I say taking it just as a matter of fact,” he repeated, pressing his forefinger so hard against his nose that he bent the end of it quite round, “it is motion, isn’t it, motion in space? Wait a minute! That means that we measure time by space. But that is no better than measuring space by time, a thing only very unscientific people do. From Hamburg to Davos is twenty hours—that is, by train. But on foot how long is it? And in the mind, how long? Not a second!”
“I say,” Joachim said, “what’s the matter with you? Seems to me it goes to your head to be up here with us!”
“Keep quiet! I’m very clearheaded today. Well, then, what is time?” asked Hans Castorp, and bent the tip of his nose so far round that it became white and bloodless. “Can you answer me that? Space we perceive with our organs, with our senses of sight and touch. Good. But which is our organ of time—tell me that if you can. You see, that’s where you stick. But how can we possibly measure anything about which we actually know nothing, not even a single one of its properties? We say of time that it passes. Very good, let it pass. But to be able to measure it—wait a minute: to be susceptible of being measured, time must flow evenly, but who ever said it did that? As far as our consciousness is concerned it doesn’t, we only assume that it does, for the sake of convenience; and our units of measurement are purely arbitrary, sheer conventions—”
“Good,” Joachim said. “Then perhaps it is pure convention that I have five points too much here on my thermometer. But on account of those lines I have to drool about here instead of joining up, which is a disgusting fact.”
“Have you 99.3°?”
“It’s going down already,” and Joachim made the entry on his chart. “Last night it was almost 100°—that was your arrival. A visit always makes it go up. But it is a good thing, notwithstanding.”
“I’ll go now,” said Hans Castorp. “I’ve still a great many ideas in my head about the time—a whole complex, if I may say so. But I won’t excite you with them now, you’ve too many degrees as it is. I’ll keep them all and return to them later, perhaps after breakfast. You will call me when it
