Hans Castorp and Joachim were in silent agreement about this talk of Settembrini’s: they found it querulous and seditious in tone, if also highly entertaining and “plastic” in its verbal pungency and animus. Hans Castorp laughed good-humouredly over the “bundle of hay,” likewise over the “beautiful characters”—or, rather, the drolly despairing way Settembrini spoke of them.
Then he said: “Good Lord, yes, the society is always mixed in a place like this, I suppose. One’s not allowed to choose one’s tablemates—that would lead to goodness knows what! At our table there is a woman of the same sort, a Frau Stöhr—I think you know her? Ghastly ignorant, I must say—sometimes when she rattles on, one doesn’t know where to look. But she complains a lot about her temperature, and how relaxed she feels, and I’m afraid she is by no means a light case. That seems so strange to me: diseased and stupid both—I don’t exactly know how to express it, but it gives me a most peculiar feeling, when somebody is so stupid, and then ill into the bargain. It must be the most melancholy thing in life. One doesn’t know what to make of it; one wants to feel a proper respect for illness, of course—after all there is a certain dignity about it, if you like. But when such asininity comes on top of it—‘cosmic’ for ‘cosmetic,’ and other howlers like that—one doesn’t know whether to laugh or to weep. It is a regular dilemma for the human feelings—I find it more deplorable than I can say. What I mean is, it’s not consistent, it doesn’t hang together; I can’t get used to the idea. One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual. At least as a rule—or I don’t know, perhaps I am saying more than I could stand for,” he finished. “It was only because we happened to speak of it”—He stopped in confusion.
Joachim too looked rather uncomfortable, and Settembrini lifted his eyebrows and said not a word, with an air of waiting politely for the end of his speech. He was, in fact, holding off until Hans Castorp should break down entirely before he answered. But now he said: “Sapristi, Engineer! You are displaying a most unexpected gift of philosophy! By your own theory, you must be yourself more ailing than you look, you are so obviously possessed of esprit. But, if you will permit me to say so, I can hardly subscribe to your deductions; I must deny them; my position is one of absolute dissent. I am, as you see, rather intolerant than otherwise in things of the intellect; I would rather be reproached as a pedant than suffer to pass unchallenged a point of view which seemed to me so untenable as this of yours.”
“But, Herr Settembrini, I—”
“Per‑mit me. I know what you would say: that the views you represent are not, of necessity, your own; that you have only chanced upon that one of all the possible ones there are, as it were, in the air, and you try it on, without personal responsibility. It befits your time of life, thus to avoid the settled convictions of the mature man, and to make experiments with a variety of points of view. Placet experiri,” he quoted, giving the Italian pronunciation to the c. “That is a good saying. But what troubles me is that your experiment should lead you in just this direction. I doubt if it is a question of sheer chance. I fear the presence of a general tendency, which threatens to crystallize into a trait of character, unless one makes head against it. I feel it my duty, therefore, to correct you. You said that the sight of dullness and disease going hand in hand must be the most melancholy in life. I grant you, I grant you that. I too prefer an intelligent ailing person to a consumptive idiot. But I take issue where you regard the combination of disease with dullness as a sort of aesthetic inconsistency, an error in taste on the part of nature, a ‘dilemma for the human feelings,’ as you were pleased to express yourself. When you professed to regard disease as something so refined, so—what did you call it?—possessing a ‘certain dignity’—that it doesn’t ‘go with’ stupidity. That was the expression you used. Well, I say no! Disease has nothing refined about it, nothing dignified. Such a conception is in itself pathological, or at least tends in that direction. Perhaps I may best arouse your mistrust of it if I tell you how ancient and ugly this conception is. It comes down to us from a past seething with superstition, in which the idea of humanity had degenerated and deteriorated into sheer caricature; a past full of fears, in which well-being and harmony were regarded as suspect and emanating from the devil, whereas infirmity was equivalent to a free pass to heaven. Reason and enlightenment have banished the darkest of these shadows that tenanted the soul of man—not entirely, for even yet the conflict is in progress. But this conflict, my dear sirs, means work, earthly labour, labour for the earth, for the honour and the interests of mankind; and by that conflict daily steeled anew, the powers of reason and enlightenment will in the end set humanity wholly free and lead it in the path of progress and civilization toward an even brighter, milder, and purer light.”
“Lord bless us,” thought Hans Castorp, in shamefaced consternation. “What a homily! How, I wonder, did I call all that down on my head? I must
