The Magic Mountain: Chapter 3 (Part Two)

Clarity of Mind

As the cousins return to Joachim’s room, where the latter will begin to demonstrate for Hans the chief ritual of the sanatoriums’s daily routine. He stretches out on his specially designed balcony chair to begin the first of several formal "rest-cure" sessions that occur throughout the day and basically fill the life of each patient. First, however, he must take and record his temperature. (Significantly, the thermometer must be held in the mouth for seven minutes. Metaphorically speaking, this is how long it will take the mountain’s "magic" to work.)


The ritual prods the cousins into the first of many conversations about time which will occur throughout the novel. "Time" is one of the major themes of The Magic Mountain. In many ways, it is not only a motif in the book, but part of its primary subject matter. The mystery of time, considered from scientific, psychological, philosophical and aesthetic points of view reoccur constantly in the book. Hans Castorp, beginning in this scene, will become increasingly obsessed with the concept of time, and in a way it can be seen that this particular discussion is the beginning of his true initiation on his quest to discover the meaning and purpose of life.

The conversation begins casually enough, with Joachim observing that time seems to go more slowly when he is taking his temperature, just because he is paying attention to it. He dismisses this as an illusion, however, since time always proceeds at the same rate.

Suddenly, something is triggered within Hans Castorp, and he immediately reacts skeptically to the conventional notion of the uniformity of time. I do not think that it is any accident that Hans begins this questioning immediately after his first encounter with Herr Settembrini, who has chided Hans for accepting things at face value and exhorted him to engage in critical analysis. Indeed, this may be the first time in Hans Castorp’s life that he has ever challenged "traditional" or "conventional" wisdom on any serious level.

With a spark of inspiration that smacks of the true opening of consciousness to the world around him, Hans suddenly declares, "There’s nothing ‘actual’ about time. If it seems long to you, then it is long, and if it seems to pass quickly, then it’s short. But how long or how short it is in actuality, no one knows."

Joachim is puzzled by this notion of time’s relativity and subjectivity. To him, time is an absolute: "A minute is as long as . . . it takes a second hand to complete a circle." But this pat answer is no longer sufficient for Hans:


"But how long that takes can vary greatly - according to how we feel it! And in point of fact . . . I repeat, in point of fact . . . that’s a matter of motion, of motion in space correct? Wait, here me out! And so we measure time with space. But that is the same thing as trying to measure space with time - the way uneducated people do."

Hans has just crossed over a line that will permanently separate him from the "flatlanders" down below. By looking beyond simple convention, he has grasped his first fundamental insight into the grand mystery of being. He has also, without knowing it, joined the grand tradition of the German philosophic tradition. As he becomes more excited with every thought, he soon comes very close to Kantian territory:

"So then, what is time? . . . We perceive space with our senses, with vision and touch. But what is our organ for our sense of time? Would you please tell me that? You see, you’re stuck. But how are we ever going to measure something about which, precisely speaking, we know nothing at all - cannot list a single one of its properties. We say time passes. Fine, let it pass for all I care. But in order to measure it . . . no, wait! In order to be measurable, it would have to flow evenly, but where is it written that it does that? It doesn’t do that for our conscious minds, we simply assume it does, just for the sake of convenience. And so all our measurements are merely conventions, if you please."

This is, unquestionably, an enormous conceptual leap on Hans’ part. The questions he are asking are some of the very ones that have bedeviled great the great philosophical minds of Germany throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, persisting up to the contemporary moment. Hans has hit very nearly on the radical disconnect between the subjectively apprehended "phenomenal world" and the never-accessible "thing-in-itself" of the "noumenal world." Moreover, he has correctly discerned that "time" is not observable through the senses, and is very nearly close to concluding that the medium of time itself can only be understood as "a category of thought" - a medium through which the mind experiences phenomenal sensations.

Joachim is shocked by his cousin’s sudden philosophizing. He himself is a simple, practical man of action, and he does not see what all this intellectual indulgence is leading to. This is a key distinction between Hans and Joachim that will remain throughout the book. The cousins are, in essence, two sides of the German character: the abstract and the practical. Mann clearly sees the conflict between the two modes of thought and attitude towards life and quietly highlights their apparent incompatibility. It is a great question whether the author ever commits himself to one side or the other without ambiguity.

If Hans can see deeper into reality, what does it matter, if he fails to act? And if Joachim is pure act, that is, he behaves conventionally without question, could not his actions simply lead to pure disaster? This will be one of ongoing dichotomies or "active dialectics" at work in this very philosophical novel, and we cannot begin to give an answer here, so very soon into the narrative. For Hans, the process of his transformation is only just beginning.

If we go back to what Dr. Behrens has observed, Hans has more "talent" for being a patient than does Joachim. One way this judgment can be interpreted is that Hans’ open and inquisitive nature leads him to use the time given to him on the mountain to grow both mentally and spiritually. Joachim, on the other hand, considers all his time up here merely a waste and wants to get back as soon as possible. The ironic question will persist for some time: which of the cousins has the healthier and most beneficial perspective and attitude? We shall see that there may not be such a simple answer.

As for Hans, he immediately displays his newly discovered "talent," and after leaving his cousin in peace, he moves to his own balcony to discover that one of the sanatorium’s specially designed "lounging chairs" has been deposited there for his own use. Hans is absolutely delighted with the "heavenly" chair with its stylish frame, thick cushions, neck support and the wooden arms. This chair will become an absolute fetish for Hans Castorp, and he is already wondering if he can purchase one and take it back to Hamburg with him.

We recall that Hans does not care for work, and he spends his hour in the chair feeling "marvelous." While he has brought a book called Ocean Steamships along, he is not even tempted to crack it open, but luxuriates for the entire time simply staring quietly staring at the landscape around him, as if it were a painting. We can see that, given Hans’ rather lazy character, how easily he could be seduced into spending his life simply sitting around and allowing time to pass. What we cannot say, unambiguously, is whether this would be a good thing for him. For better or for worse, however, Hans Castorp’s first "rest-cure" is unquestionably another step on his "initiation" into the life on the magic mountain.

As Hans sits, staring pleasantly at the scenery, and completely without warning, Mann inserts one of the funniest lines of the chapter: "Suddenly it came to him - and he said aloud into the silence, "That was a dwarf who served us at breakfast."

Yes, it was. Mann’s comical use of such a figure is obviously designed to reinforce the fairy-tale nature of his story. What makes it funny is the incongruity of Hans’ realization of it just now. It is just one more odd thing about the Berghof - though Joachim doesn’t find it odd, as he answers from his adjacent balcony, "So what?" Once again we see that Hans does indeed have more "talent" than his cousin. He notices things that others simply ignore or take for granted.

Joachim, along with the other patients at the sanatorium are more internalized than Hans. They are more under the "spell" of the mountain, and tend to be almost completely self-absorbed. Hans, on the other hand, being new to the place, is curious and fascinated by every strange thing that he sees. As long as he is awake and alert to his surroundings, he will advance and learn.

This is brought home almost immediately after the hour of the rest-cure, when the two cousins go to attend "second breakfast." Hans, whose very initial meeting with Settembrini has so sharpened his wits that he has turned into a budding philosopher, has difficulty eating, and is repulsed by the white sight of all the milk being served. He wants his morning glass of porter.

The dwarf, however, tells him they have no porter, but offers to bring him a Kulmbach beer, a very dark German brew. Hans gladly accepts the substitute and finds it delicious. Instead of putting him into his normal, pleasant stupor, however, he finds that the beer "had completely stupefied and lamed him." The full flush from the night before returns to his cheeks, and he is suddenly unable to speak clearly or follow conversations. He does not even react when the offending door rudely slams shut again.

It appears that Hans has not adjusted to the altitude yet - which does increase the effects of alcohol. But there is perhaps more to it than that. Settembrini had denounced tobacco smoke, but alcohol seems to have a much worse effect on Hans. All the "clarity" he had experienced in his mind is gone now after drinking a beer. It appears that the soothing effects of the joys of the flatlands are amplified up here to the point of distortion. Perhaps, more importantly, their effects may be signs to Hans Castorp to stay alert.

We shall see that all these strange bodily reactions are not only manifestations of a gradual acclimatization, but they are in fact symptoms of a greater transformation within Hans himself.

 

One Word Too Many

In this short section, we see just how extremely Hans Castorp’s body is beginning to react to his environment, as the cousins take a walk down to the little village of Dorf. Hans tries once again to smoke a cigar, and while this time, he is able to recognize the pleasant aroma occasionally, it still tastes "leathery. He finally gives up trying and throws it away.

Hans complains to Joachim that his heart is pounding away, "of its own accord," which is very disconcerting to him. "It’s as if the body were going off on its own and no longer had any connection to your soul." What precisely is Hans experiencing? While Dr. Behrens, no doubt, would attempt to define it in medical terms, metaphorically, we can see that the disassociation Hans is feeling from himself is the result of his falling under the "spell" of the mountain.

He continues to try to describe his strange feelings, and comes up with a way to describe it. He says he feels like a dead body that is still walking around "all of its own accord." He goes on to say that it is like it is still acting chemically and physically, "a regular hustle and bustle there inside."

Joachim takes offense to this phrase, and presumably, to Hans’ entire line of description here. The subheading of this section, "One Word Too Many" seems to pertain directly to this last statement, though "hustle and bustle" is three words in English. At any rate, it seems quite likely that Joachim takes Hans’ words personally, as he feels worthless sitting up here, wasting his time at the Berghof. Metaphorically, Joachim may view himself as something of a "dead man," still functioning physically, but doing nothing of value. He may even see in Hans’ phrase a vision of his own inevitable physical death. However, as before, Hans remains perfectly blind to the possible effects his words may have on his cousin. As opposed to the "man of action," Hans Castorp remains a person who is almost completely self-absorbed.

The two continue wandering about the little town, which has turned into a vacation spot for tourists, and discuss some of the other patients. Hans bungles the name of a pretty, large-breasted girl who sits at their table, a Russian named Marusya, whom he calls "Mazurka." Joachim’s face turns blotchy at the mention of her, so Hans changes the subject. We will see quite clearly that Joachim is quite smitten with this Russian girl, though he shyly refrains from talking to her. This is another example of Hans showing a lack of sensitivity for his cousin’s feelings.

The pair watch the tourists from all over Europe, including healthy people playing tennis. Joachim tells Hans that the patients are forbidden to play, although some of them do on the sly. He contrasts the patients with the tourists, telling Hans that Settembrini refers to them as "horizontals," as they live most of their lives in that position. Still, some of them sneak into the town in the evening to do "forbidden" things, such as gambling.

Taking the town and the patients metaphorically, we can perhaps see pre-war Europe as a thoughtless playground for the rich, who pursue their pleasures oblivious to the dangers and sufferings around them. The patients, the "horizontals," who exist in what Settembrini has referred to as the land of the dead, seem to fight against the notion that they are ill (or even figuratively dead) simply by pretending or ignoring the fact of their real situation.

All this time, Hans is suffering from his stupor, wandering about the town barely speaking and having trouble breathing. While he sees himself as one of the "tourists," his growing symptoms reveal that he is actually transforming into one of the "horizontals" without realizing it. After returning with difficulty to the sanatorium, Hans collapses immediately back onto his lounge chair in a daze.

 

But of Course - a Female!

After rest cure, Hans and Joachim return to the dining hall for supper. This is the chief meal of the day, a full six courses with extraordinary portions, and Mann notes how voraciously all of the patients eat, even those who seem the most sickly and despondent. As Hans sits in the same configuration of tables and people for the third time that day, he gets the odd impression that he has never left the dining hall, that there had only been one continuous, meal. This illusion is significant in that it demonstrates how the repetitiveness of routine can make time seem irrelevant, or even non-existent at the Berghof. Hans has already speculated about the subjective nature of time once today, and here he is directly experiencing it in a distorted fashion, as if to prove his own earlier premise true.

Hans sits at the table, still not feeling right, and he listens to the other diners - especially Frau Stöhr - gossiping about patients’ sexual scandals. It seems that the sanitorium residents, despite their illness, still engage in petty affairs as if they were quite well, the same way they sneak down to the town to gamble and carouse. Once again, this is a display of the willing ignorance that European society displays in its frivolous behavior and sense of denial in the years leading up to the war.

As Hans is observing everything around him with muddle-headed difficulty, he hears the door suddenly slam for the third time that day. Irritated again, he determines that he must finally discover who is performing the rude action, and when he looks around, he sees a young woman "slinking" toward the "Good Russian table," absent-mindedly fooling with her hair with one of her hands. "But of course - a female!" is his mental response. Apparently, in Hans Castorp’s mind, women are seen as less fastidiously conscious of their actions, and presumably, less polite. They are not held to the same standard of respectability as men, but we get no inkling of whether Hans Castorp is more tolerant of their behavior on that account.

His tablemates inform him that the lady in question is one Madame Chauchat, a Russian, who is married, though her husband never visits her at the sanatorium. Hans notices her "Oriental" features: "broad cheekbones and narrow eyes." In Hans’ view (and quite possibly in Mann’s), Easterners - including East Europeans - show a marked cultural distinction from the more self-controlled and properly dignified Westerners. (We have already seen his indignation with the boisterous sexual carryings-on of his Russian neighbors.) Settembrini, we shall also see, disdains Easterners for their lack of cultural refinement.

Whether these ethnic distinctions are meant in earnest or as a parody, it is difficult to tell from the novel’s text. Like so many other elements of The Magic Mountain, the irony of both the characters’ observations as well as the narrator’s comment often make it difficult to impossible to determine whether or how serious to take a given perspective. In either case, Madame Chauchat, with her "Eastern" features, manners and morals is going to have a definite effect on Hans Castorp all throughout the first part of the book. Her loud, thoughtless door-slamming (and Hans’ exaggerated response to it) is a fitting introduction of this more exotic, less rational element into his world on the mountain, and these are qualities that Hans associates with "femininity."

Over the course of the chapters to come, Hans will become increasingly fascinated, and finally driven to a kind of mesmerized seduction by, the "exotic" feminine qualities that Madame Chauchat embodies for him. She will also become an opposing compass pole for the the rationalist Settembrini, and will compete (probably unknowingly) with the Italian for the sympathy and attraction of Hans Castorp’s character (and hence, his soul.)

This somewhat bizarre polarity between the two extremes of character has a political resonance in the book on a metaphorical level as well. Just as Hans Castorp represents the as-yet undeveloped nature of the young German democratic republic, both Settembrini and Madame Chauchat can be seen as cultural tendencies towards which the nation may be drawn. Throughout the book, and especially in the sections immediately to come, the lure of the East, with its softness and sensuality, combined with its capacity to be led by superstition and hierarchical power structures will be contrasted with the strong-willed and rationalistic self-determinism of Western values.

It is strongly implied that Hans’ growing illness makes him increasingly susceptible to the enchanting charms of the East, while the feminizing effects of this fascination in turn makes him more susceptible to illness. Plus, we have already seen a pronounced tendency in Hans Castorp’s character to be attracted to the lure of Oriental-style indulgence. He dislikes work, for one thing, and is only really happy when he is doing nothing. Now, the sight of Madame Chauchat triggers a hazy recognition of something buried deep within him: "A vague memory of something or somebody brushed over him." This memory, we shall see, will grow into something quite tangible and strange.

As Hans gratefully returns to his "splendid lounge chair" on the balcony for the day’s major rest cure, he discovers traces of red blood on his handkerchief after using it, a definite sign that he is indeed becoming ill, but he does not even have the energy to worry about it. This shows that the entire complex of the forces at work upon his mind and body on the magic mountain are already having their strange effect upon him, but like the other patients, he is too self-absorbed and wrapped up in denial to even recognize what is happening to him. Soon it will be too late.

 

Herr Albin

As Hans sits on his balcony, he becomes aware of a commotion in the pavilion in the garden below where several guests are gathered for a communal rest cure. Among several frightened ladies there is "a blond young man" with a cigarette dangling from his lips intentionally frightening them by showing off a particularly sharp knife. Hans hears them call his name as they beg him to stop: Herr Albin.

Not satisfied with the sadistic response he is getting from his knife, he goes to his room and returns, carrying a revolver. As the ladies shriek, Herr Albin informs them that it is fully loaded, and what’s more, he is planning to use it do himself in once he becomes too bored with being up here. He points the gun to his temple to achieve even more hysterical responses.

The ladies beg the young man to be more considerate of himself and his "young life," arguing that he will get well. They also chide him for not wearing a jacket in the chilly air and for smoking, even though he has just recovered from a bout of pneumonia. Herr Albin merely laughs at them, however, announcing that he is "incurable." The fact that he will never get any better grants him a unique license, he explains. He is free to do whatever he likes.


"It’s just the same as in high school when you know you’ll be held back . . . I don’t need to do anything anymore . . . and I can laugh at the whole thing."

Hans Castorp, listening up above with his muddled head and pounding heart notes that he begins to feel a little "envious" of Herr Albin. He remembers his sophomore year at school, when he was held back, and the enormous freedom that was granted to him by not having to worry about anything.


On the whole, however, it seemed to him that although honor had its advantages, so, too, did disgrace, and that indeed the advantages of the latter were almost boundless.

In short, Hans Castorp is being shown a potential version of himself, especially if he succumbs to the tempting illness of life at the Berghof. We have already noted his inherent laziness and his lack of motivation and ambition. An incurable illness would spare him the bother of having to work hard all his life at a career. The fact that he has already experienced with pleasure the situation that Herr Albin uses as a metaphor makes it plain that this wild young man below is Hans’ doppelganger, as is the fact that he is young and blonde and enjoys smoking. In a sense, the mountain is showing Hans a vision of what he could become.

It is very significant that Hans views Herr Albin with "envy," rather than with alarm or disgust. In the shape that he is in - the ongoing "spell" of the mountain which distorts reality, he is not thinking clearly, and in his addled state, he is allowing its effects to seduce him. The fact that Hans Castorp is able to look upon Herr Albin with a sense of positive association tells us just how far he could go up here. Hans, the more "talented" patient would succumb much more quickly to the Berghof’s effects than his cousin Joachim, who prides himself so much on "honor" that he continually thinks of nothing but leaving. Hans, on the other hand, is reaching a point where "disgrace" would be quite acceptable, if only he could have the boon of unlimited freedom from responsibility.

We are find ourselves more and more caught within the boundaries of a traditional fairy-tale structure, as the "magical spell" of some temptation is leading him to his doom. This is a very precarious time for young Hans, and we must pay close attention to see how he will respond. We must realize, however, that he is now reaching the height of danger.

Herr Albin’s knife and gun bring home the seriousness of this danger in the form of a very physical manifestation. The image of this young man holding a gun to his temple should give us pause. Herr Albin’s fate is the far end of what Hans Castorp could ultimately reach.

Yet there is something very inauthentic about Herr Albin. If had really arrived at such an extreme state, would he not have already shot himself? Why play with and tease the ladies with his weapons, his threats, his excesses if he has truly passed the point of no return. It is clear that Herr Albin is not ready to die, and deploys his "games" simply to postpone the ultimate act of self-annihilation.

In a sense, then, Herr Albin is not really taking illness and death seriously. He uses them as an excuse to keep up his pretenses and not have to come to grips with the facts. It would not be too far a stretch to see in Herr Albin the same tendency in pre-war Europe not to take the real warnings of catastrophe seriously before it becomes too late to prevent the inevitable conflagration. Politically, society is in denial of the real dangers surrounding it, just as Herr Albin’s nihilism is really a sham of a philosophy that keeps him from dealing with the inevitable.

We are getting closer and closer to the key question, however: which path with Hans Castorp take?

 

Satana Makes Shameful Suggestions

Hans Castorp awakes from dozing during the late afternoon rest cure and hears the sound of Dr. Krokowski moving along the balconies, checking on the patients. Hans is somewhat miffed that the doctor does not visit his room, but goes around it, through the hall, directly to Joachim’s. Of course, he reminds himself that he is only a visitor, but his feeling slighted in this regard is yet another indicator of his inner desire to remain at the Berghof.

On their way down to the "snack" - the fourth meal of the day - Hans brings up the subject of Herr Albin and his gun. He asks his cousin if he thought it possible that the young man might actually shoot himself, and Joachim nonchalantly replies in the affirmative. "That sort of thing happens up here." He goes on to tell Hans of a patient who hanged himself in the woods after a checkup.

Disturbed and still feeling dizzy and unwell, Hans suddenly suggests to his cousin that it might be wise for him to go ahead and return home. Joachim reacts with surprise, saying he has just arrived. How can he judge after only one day?

"Good Lord, is this still just my first day?" is Hans’ reply. "It seems to me as if I’d been up here with you all for a long, long time." And indeed, the reader might be shocked to discover that this is the case himself. This day has contained so much in the detail of narrative, some 40 pages or so of events, observations and conversations that it almost feels as though all the action involved has approached real time. In addition, there has been so much repetition of action, all surrounding the meals and the rest cures that this day’s activity could easily seem like a week or more. Plus, Mann has artfully reinforced this sensibility through his repeated use of leitmotifs, a technique he will maintain throughout the novel, though for different effects.

Hence, the reader, along with Hans Castorp, actually experiences the sense of the subjective relativity of time that Hans was discussing with his cousin earlier in the day. As noted before, "time" is one of the great subjects - and mysteries - of The Magic Mountain. The strangeness of time, its elasticity and its elusive nature are not only major themes in the book, but sometimes seem to rise to become the absolute nature of the narrative itself. Time will not only be dissected in countless ways throughout the course of the novel, but Mann will use it as an experiential tool of his story-telling, making both his characters and his readers experience it in strange and baffling ways, and forcing them both to confront the questions that it suggests.

The repetition of the day continues: the cousins eat in the same dining hall with the same configuration of patients, they take the same walk that they took after first breakfast, they take another rest cure, then find themselves back in the dining hall once again, this time for supper, the final meal of the day. Hans orders another Kulmbach beer, but barely makes it halfway through the glass before he realizes that he is overwhelmed with fatigue and ready for bed. His head is muddled, sitting at the table and he listens to Frau Stöhr babble away incessantly. He overhears - or believes he overhears - the silly woman declaring that she knows how to make twenty-eight different kinds of fish sauces.

This statement strikes Hans as so bizarre and absurd that, in his confused state, he begins to doubt whether she has actually said it or whether he, Hans himself, somehow imagined that this is what she has said. This confused blurring of reality with internal perception is clearly an indication that Hans is beginning to merge his consciousness with the environment of the sanitorium. At the beginning of his arrival, he was clearly an "outsider" and made sharp and clear demarcations between his own "normal" reality and the seemingly bizarre reality of the Berghof. Now, by the end of just one day in the institution, this distinction is blurring, and Hans’ consciousness is beginning to merge with his surroundings to the point where he cannot be sure of what is actually "real." In fairy tale terms, the mountain’s "spell" over him is reaching a critical peak.

After supper, all of the guests move into an adjoining lobby for a social hour before retiring. There, Hans discovers a small array of "optical gadgets" for the amusement of the guests. Examining each one individually, Hans does not seem conscious of the irony of the fact that each one of these toys is designed to distort the appearance of reality. In the same way, the entire ritualized, artificial life of the Berghof distorts reality, indeed actually "replaces" reality with a new construction all of its own. These "gadgets" should be warning signs for Hans as to the predicament in which he is finding himself increasingly engulfed, but his brain is so addled that he cannot think clearly.

Madame Chauchat removes herself to a separate, adjoining lobby, along with other members of the "Good Russian table," who apparently form a clique apart from the other patients. This removal, this distance, accentuates the fact that Madame Chauchat - and thus all the "Oriental" factors of the world - occupy a place apart from Hans and his world, that is, the world of Western Europe, and more specifically, Germany itself. As he stares into this other room, he looks at Madame Chauchat’s unique, foreign features, he once again feels a strange sign of recognition: "She reminds me of something, but I can’t really say what." This is a mystery yet to be solved, but it is important to note that Hans is already being emotionally and psychologically "pulled" in her direction.

Immediately, as if an antidote to the lure of the Russian woman, Herr Settembrini appears and confronts Hans, referring to him as, "my good engineer." Just his appearance and the rational sound of his voice momentarily "sobers’ Hans. This is the effect that the rationalist will have on him throughout the book, and we are already confronted with the polarity between Settembrini and Madame Chauchat, representing opposing forces between which Hans will be increasingly drawn.

Settembrini begins by asking how Hans is feeling, which suggests that his internal confusion is somehow being manifested in his bearing or behavior. Amazingly, displaying just how disoriented he is, Hans confesses that when he had first met Settembrini earlier in the day that he thought the Italian was an organ-grinder. Settembrini makes no response to this bizarre personal and racist insult and continues conversing with Hans, who babbles some more inanities. Suddenly Settembrini asks him precisely how old he is - and to his great astonishment and embarrassment, Hans cannot remember!

After a little further examination of Hans’ condition, Herr Settembrini strongly suggests that Hans should ready himself immediately and leave the mountain resort on the first train in the morning. The Italian is quite aware, therefore, that Hans is in danger of succumbing to the negative effects of his environment, and he quite rationally, and for Hans’ own good, believes that he should leave before it is too late.

Hans once again spots Madame Chauchat in the adjoining room. He them protests to Settembrini that leaving after only one day would be ridiculous. He admits to having some difficulty in becoming "acclimatized up here," but he does not think it is anything serious. Moreover: "If I were to throw in the towel so soon, simply because I’ll be a little confused and flushed for a few days - why I’d be ashamed of myself, I’d feel like a coward.

We should note that the title of this final section of Chapter 3 is Satana Makes Shameful Suggestions, and of course, keeping Mann’s irony in mind, we must take careful consideration of what the author is implying here. First of all, as narrator, the author is specifically identifying Settembrini with Satan once again. And in making the "shameful suggestion" that Hans should depart, he should be seen as the Devil "tempting" the hero to leave. This requires very careful interpretation.

Let us remember that by Settembrini’s own words that there are two "Devils." The first, the one that Carducci wrote about, is a symbol of rebellion, the "avenging force of human reason." This is the Devil that Settembrini represents. The second, "other Devil," who "considers labor an abomination because he fears it," will turn out to be none other that Director Behrens, who will do everything he can to keep Hans (and Joachim) to remain at the Berghof, thus tempting him to a life of idleness. (In the Walpurgis Night section at the climax of Chapter 5, Mann will use all his descriptive powers to associate Behrens with the figure of Satan, urging all the patients deeper into their "enchanted" state by serving them punch and challenging them to draw a pig with their eyes closed.)

If Hans interprets Settembrini’s suggestions as "shameful," which he does, it is because of his distorted perspective of what his own duty is at this particular junction. Hans may believe that his leaving at this point would be an abandonment of his cousin, but we must remember that he has just recently asked Joachim if it would be all right if he went ahead and left. Joachim’s objection is probably what made Hans feel like going away now would be a "cowardly" thing to do. He is really looking at his own ego rather than truly caring for his cousin, for whom "duty" is everything. Hans does not want to look like a coward. But of course, he does not realize at this point quite the degree of danger he is in, both in terms of his health and his soul.

This metaphorical pull between the two Satans is interesting, but it cannot help bring up a very obvious question. If there are two "Devils" at work, warring for control of Hans’ destiny, where is God?

Indeed, where in the entire novel is God? He does not seem to be present at all, either in the minds or lives of the characters or in any mythological representation in the novel. Looking back to the first chapter, in the scene at the restaurant, Hans rubs his hands together before he eats. The narrator explains he does this "perhaps because his forbears had prayed before every meal." Hans, then, does not pray, and presumably no one else does back at his home either. God is conspicuously absent from any discussion at the Berghof, an odd thing considering it is filled with sick and dying people whom one would assume, would take comfort from religion. Nor is there any ecclesiastical authority figure at the resort - a priest or a pastor for counselling. Everything up here seems purely secular.

Joachim, we remember, accidently ran into a priest in the hallway, but he was merely a messenger of death, being sent to deliver the last rites to "the little Hujus girl" who reacted by hiding, kicking and screaming in fear beneath her blanket. And we might recall that Settembrini had said this morning that "the humanist" had taken over the role of the educator of youth "from the priest." So who does represent God on the magic mountain.

In the latter portions of the book, of course, we shall see the Jesuit priest Leo Naphta emerge as Settembrini’s primary antagonist and opposite, but even then, the two men will not argue about the existence or non-existence of God. While it is certainly too early in the book to begin discussing the essence of the conflict between these two characters (and points of view), it is obvious now - just as it will be obvious later - that even the hint of the presence of God is conspicuously absent in the novel.

There is someone, however, whose presence is never mentioned explicitly, but whose thoughts and writings permeate almost every page:


God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

As it was with his entire nation, Thomas Mann’s questioning world view was shaped to a very sharp degree by the great traditions of modern German philosophy. And we will find, throughout The Magic Mountain, implications of thoughts and judgements put forward by Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhaur. But most of all, Mann’s great novel will be shot through with the challenging postulates of Germany’s most extreme modernist prophet of ideas: Friedrich Nietzsche.

While one cannot state without a great deal of qualification that Thomas Mann was a "follower" of the radical philosopher, it is unquestionable that Nietzsche’s ideas had a great influence on the writer’s thinking, and we will find implications of many of Nietzsche’s themes and writings throughout The Magic Mountain. To be able to recognize them, however, is not the same as being able to interpret them, however, and both the complexity and the densely layered irony of the novel is such that it is very difficult (if not impossible) to determine with certainty exactly where Mann’s philosophical sympathies lie at any given point.

Perhaps the best way for a reader to approach the question of the ideas of Nietzsche (or any other philosophical thinker) on Mann’s narrative, especially in the early stages of encountering his work, is to be acutely aware of the philosopher’s presence, both in the mind and text of the author, as well as in the cultural heritage of the Germany with which he concerns himself. For what we can be certain of is that Thomas Mann considered the implications of the thought and writings of these thinkers to be considerably important for the fate not only of fiction, but of culture (especially his own particular culture) as a whole, and finally, ultimately, for the definition of the condition of mankind.

The proper (if there are any) interpretations of Mann’s attitude toward any philosophical stance are contentious and problematic, and it is certainly beyond the proposed scope of this project to reach anything approaching what might be called a "final conclusion" about them. It is sufficient for our purposes to realize not only that such philosophical implications are present throughout the book, and that such questions do definitely cause problems - both for the characters themselves and for the readers and interpreters of the text.

For example, in this case, the seeming absence of the notion or concept of God in The Magic Mountain may very well be a reflection of the implication of Nietzche’s "death of God" pronouncement. If we have reason to believe that such is the case - and I believe that we can safely assume that such an implication is indeed present - we may not be able to make an interpretation of that notion as either an affirmation or a critique of the philosopher’s position without more evidence that I believe we can gather from the text itself. Perhaps the most we can do is to suppose that Mann is "positing" the implications of Nietzche’s premise in order to examine its possible effects upon the characters, and by extension, the cultural and existential position of human beings if such a premise is accepted.

In other words, Mann’s book may function as a kind of laboratory where one might say something to this effect: Nietzsche has declared the death of God. If we truly do live in a post-God society, how will people think and behave? What will their philosophies and values look like? Will things be radically different, and if so, how?

This, I believe, is as far as we can take such questions, especially in an introductory examination of the work as this is intended to be. Throughout The Magic Mountain, we will come across problems that we know were initiated by such important figures as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and others: questions of time, the nature of life and matter, i.e., metaphysical questions. Those metaphysics will necessarily entail epistemological quandaries, moral dilemmas and crises of meaning. Their appearance is important for a thorough understanding of the basic text of the novel. But once again, that does not either mean or imply that there are basically determined answers to such questions in the book, much less that the reader will necessarily be able to correctly interpret the answers, given that they indeed exist.

For in the final analysis, especially in a fictional work of this sort, ambiguity reigns supreme. In great fiction, we will generally find more questions than answers, and we will also often find ourselves in the midst of dilemmas in which we as readers have to make the final choices and determinations of meaning. This is especially true of a work that is shot so thoroughly through with the spirit of irony as The Magic Mountain. Like most great literature, its greatest questions will permanently go unanswered - or at least the highest conclusions it inspires will have to stand with the strongest of qualifications.

Settembrini goes on to tell Hans the tale of a patient named Fräulein Kneifer, who even after she was completely cured, refused to leave the sanitorium. When Behrens insisted that she must go so that they could have her room, she began cheating on her fever chart, a ruse that Behrens shatters by employing a "silent sister": a thermometer without markings that the doctor measures himself. Finally, in desperation, she tried to make herself ill by swimming in near-freezing water, but failed. When finally forced to leave the Berghof, she had cried and moaned: "What is left for me down below? . . . This is my home!"

Herr Settembrini is obviously concerned that Hans may be succumbing to such an unhealthy attachment to the place, and his warnings are clearly meant to prevent the young man from "acclimatizing" too much, to the point of dependency. His symptoms of illness are all too familiar to the rationalist, who recognizes in them a tendency in Hans’ nature and constitution to submit to the mountain’s "spell" and become lost to the real world.

Joachim soon joins his cousin, however, and at Settembrini’s suggestion, takes Hans upstairs to go to bed. When they arrive in Joachim’s room, the cousin readies himself for his evening rest cure on the balcony, wrapping himself up in two blankets so deftly that Hans is quite impressed. Joachim replies that it is all a matter of practice, and that they will have to get Hans blankets as well. While Hans does not object, he does announce that he will not lie on the balcony at night: "Everything has its limits. And there has to be some way for me to tell that I’m only a visitor up here among you all."

As he sits in Joachim’s room, shivering and forcing himself to smoke his foul-tasting cigar, we can see that Hans has not quite succumbed to the spell of the Berghof, and he is consciously fighting what is apparently a strong bodily and psychological urge to undergo a full transformation to an "ill" patient. Still, he sits there feeling miserable, feeling chilled and flushed at the same time.

Suddenly, without any warning however, Hans is overcome by "a curiously extravagant sense of joy and hope" within him, but it quickly disappears. After waiting awhile in vain for it to return, he says goodnight and goes off to his own room, meaning to go to bed.

As he lies quietly in the bed, Hans cannot fall asleep, despite his great fatigue. He fancies that he hears someone beating a rug outside, only to finally realize that he is hearing the pounding of his own heart. The strange sensation of his body reacting to an invisible stimulus, which had bothered him so earlier in the day, is continuing, disrupting his ability to rest. All these physical symptoms are obviously signs of his body’s struggle to adjust to the altitude of the mountain resort, but metaphorically, they are much more than that. As Settembrini has foreseen, Hans is waging a war against falling ill both physically and spiritually. The mountain is fighting to claim him even as he lies in bed.

Hans remember’s that Joachim had blushed when he had mentioned Marusya to him, and he immediately realizes that his cousin has a strong infatuation for the lovely young Russian girl at their table. Once he understands this, he feels the return of "that sense of extravagant joy and hope" suddenly return to him. Mann is slowly building up to an obvious revelation that the "sickness" that he is feeling from his acclimatization is also being accompanied by a seductive "pull" - one that has a feminine, Oriental lure of profound indolence.

As Hans finally drifts off to sleep, he has many vivid and disturbing dreams - visions of people, things and experiences that he has encountered during his first day at the Berghof. As is common with dreams, many different images are merged together in strange combinations. Dr. Behrens appears and pulls down his eyelid and says "Won’t be about a few little years, a few spiffing years of service with us up here," thus predicting Hans’ fate to remain at the sanatorium. He also dreams of running away from Dr. Krokowski, who is attempting to dissect his psyche. Hans’ internal resistance to the rationalism of Settembrini is demonstrated by a vain attempt to force the Italian to move and shouting, "Go away, you’re only an organ grinder, and you are in my way here."

Most significant, however, is a dream he has of being back in his old schoolyard, where he borrows a pencil from Madame Chauchat. She gives him one but tells him he must give it back after class. This is both a remembrance and a prediction of actual incidents that will become fraught with meaning later in the book. Madame Chauchat returns in his final dream, entering the dining hall after slamming the door and moving toward him. She extends the palm of her hand - her girlish hand that Hans had been studying earlier in the day - and presents it to Hans for him to kiss it. He does, and is then overcome again by that same sensation of "dissolute sweetness" that he had felt earlier. It is plain that Hans is powerfully drawn to the feminine, erotic power power that Madame Chauchat represents, and in kissing her palm, he is, in effect, surrendering his will not only to her, but the entire seductive power of the mountain-world which she represents. On a psychological and emotional level, we can plainly see that Hans Castorp’s fate is sealed.

　

Philosophy: Can Science Answer All Our Questions?

The last time I got to talking about philosophy, I posed the question whether that particular practice could really give us any answers about anything. Now, I didn’t really find an answer to that question there, but I did stumble upon some observations by earlier philosophers that seemed to put a real challenge out there.

First of all, I wanted to make clear the distinction between the kind of questions that "science," or the process we call "the empirical method" answers and the kinds that "philosophy is supposed to answer. And I got a lot of help from the Elizabethan philosopher Francis Bacon. I think that Bacon did a pretty good job in distinguishing what "the sciences" can seek to discover and what "philosophy" or "metaphysics" is supposed to investigate. And while Francis never did get too specific about the subject matter of metaphysics, he owned up that it looked into broad and "eternal" questions through the use of pure reason. "Science" on the other hand, looked only at what Aristotle had referred to as "material causes" and "efficient causes." That is: what is stuff made of and how does it work?

I also noted that the spectacular success of the various physical sciences had led a number of so-called "philosophers" to argue that any other kind of knowledge was simply hogwash, or even worse, completely meaningless.

But is there really no room for philosophical enquiry where we can hope to advance to a point to "know" something? Well, we really didn’t get that far.

As opposed to those guys called "positivists" - the big nay-sayers where philosophy is concerned - I indicated that at least there were some good solid voices who had set themselves up against the notion that "empirical science" was the only way that we could get "knowledge" and objected to the idea that "efficient causes" were the only ones worth looking for.

A couple of years ago, I came across this essay written by a really smart fellow by the name of Aldous Huxley (1894-1963). Huxley was a British writer and philosopher and the grandson of the noted scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, who fought so hard to get people to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution. Aldous is probably best known for writing the sci-fi novel Brave New World. But what I found interesting about this essay which was written as the powers of Europe were heading towards the great conflagration of World War II, is that this was a strong dissenting voice from the "science-only crowd" coming directly from someone who had definitely been brought up with a hard-core British empiricist education.

I’m not certain that I agree with everything he says, especially when he starts tending toward mysticism, but I think he makes some very good points about the limitations of science and the possibilities of different kinds of knowledge, and I thought that it might be nice to share it with anyone out there who just might be interested.

So listen up! This guy’s a lot smarter than I am, and he brings out some ideas that I think are well worth mulling over.

And of course, if anybody should happen to find anything interesting here that they would like to comment on, I of course, would be delighted to hear it!

"Beliefs"

An essay by Aldous Huxley

 No account of the scientific picture of the world would be complete unless it contained a reminder of the fact, frequently forgotten by scientists themselves, that his picture does not even claim to be comprehensive. From the world we actually live in, the world that is given us by our senses, our intuitions of beauty and goodness, our emotions and impulses, our moods and sentiments, the man of science abstracts a simplified private universe of things possessing only those qualities that used to be called "primary." Arbitrarily, because it happens to be convenient, because his methods do not allow him to deal with the immense complexity of reality, he selects from the whole of experience only those elements which can be weighed, measured, numbered, or which lend themselves in any other way to mathematical treatment. By using this technique of simplification and abstraction, the scientist has succeeded to an astonishing degree in understanding and dominating the physical environment. The success was intoxicating and, with an illogicality which, in the circumstances, was doubtless pardonable, many scientists and philosophers came to imagine that this useful abstraction from reality was reality itself. Reality as actually experienced contains intuitions of value and significance, contains love, beauty, mystical ecstasy, intimations of godhead. Science did not and still does not possess intellectual instruments with which to deal with these aspects of reality. Consequently it ignored them and concentrated attention upon such aspects of the world as it could deal with by means of arithmetic, geometry and the various branches of higher mathematics. Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact that the philosophy of meaninglessness lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of erotic or political passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning and value has been deliberately excluded, with ultimate reality. It is worthwhile to quote in this context the words with which Hume closes his Enquiry. "If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Hume mentions only divinity and school metaphysics; but his argument would apply just as cogently to poetry, music, painting, sculpture and all ethical and religious teaching. Hamlet contains no abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number and no experimental reasoning concerning evidence; nor does the Hammerklavier Sonata, not Donatello’s Davis, nor the Tao Te Ching, nor the Following of Christ. Commit them therefore to the flames: for they can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.


We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but rather in a very grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends. In this condition of apprehensive sobriety we are able to see that the contents of literature, art, music - even in some measure of divinity and school metaphysics - are not sophistry and illusion, but simply those elements of experience which scientists chose to leave out of account, for the good reason that they had no intellectual methods for dealing with them. In the arts, in philosophy, in religion. men are trying - doubtless, without complete success - to describe and explain the non-measurable, purely qualitative aspects of reality. As a matter of historical fact, however, this claim has constantly been made. The successive steps in the process of identifying an arbitrary abstraction from reality with reality itself have been described, very fully and lucidly, in Burtt’s excellent "Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science"; and it is therefore unnecessary for me to develop the theme any further. All that I need add is the fact that, in recent years, many men of science have come to realize that the scientific picture of the world is a partial one - the product of their special competence in mathematics and their special incompetence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral values, religious experiences and intuitions of significance. Unhappily, novel ideas become acceptable to the less intelligent members of society only with a very considerable time-lag. Sixty or seventy years ago the majority of scientists believed - and the belief often caused them considerable distress - that the product of their special incompetence was identical with reality as a whole. Today this belief has begun to give way, in scientific circles, to a different and obviously truer conception of the relation between science and total experience. The masses, on the contrary, have just reached the point where the ancestor’s of today’s scientists were standing two generations back. They are convinced that the scientific picture of an arbitrary abstraction from reality is a picture of reality as a whole and that therefore the world is without meaning or value. But nobody likes living in such a world. To satisfy their hunger for meaning or value, they turn to such doctrines as nationalism, fascism and revolutionary communism. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.

These last considerations raise an important question, which must now be considered in some detail. Does the world as a whole possess the value and meaning that we constantly attribute to certain parts of it (such as human beings and their works); and if so, what is the nature of that value and meaning? This is a question which, a few years ago, I should not even have posed. For, like so many of my contemporaries, I took it for granted that there was no meaning. This was partly due to the the fact that I shared the common belief that the scientific picture of an abstraction from reality was a true picture of reality as a whole; partly also to other, non-intellectual reasons. I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence. Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless.

The behavior of the insane is merely sane behavior, a bit exaggerated and distorted. The abnormal casts a revealing light upon the normal. Hence the interest attaching, among other madmen, to the extravagant figure of the Marquis de Sade. The Marquis prided himself upon being a thinker. His books, indeed, contain more philosophy than pornography. The hungry smut-hound must plow through long chapters of abstract speculation in order to find the cruelties and obscenities for which he hungers. DeSade’s philosophy was the philosophy of meaninglessness carried to its logical conclusion. Life was without significance. Values were illusory and ideals merely the inventions of cunning priests and kings. Sensations and animal pleasures alone possessed reality and were alone worth living for. There was no reason why anyone should have the slightest consideration for anyone else. For those who found rape and murder amusing, rape and murder were fully legitimate activities. And so on.

 Why was the Marquis unable to find any value or significance in the world? Was his intellect more piercing than that of other men? Was he forced by the acuity of his vision to look through the veils of prejudice and superstition to the hideous reality behind them? We may doubt it. The real reason why the Marquis could see no meaning or value in the world is to be found in those descriptions of fornications, sodomies and tortures which alternate with the philosophizings of Justine and Juliette. In the ordinary circumstances of life, the Marquis was not particularly cruel; indeed, he is said to have gotten into serious trouble during the Terror for his leniency toward those suspected of anti-revolutionary sentiments. His was a strictly sexual perversion. It was for flogging actresses, sticking pen-knives into shop girls, feeding prostitutes on sugar-plums impregnated with cantharides, that he got into trouble with police. His philosophical disquisitions, which, like the pornographic day-dreams, were mostly written in prisons and asylums, were the theoretical justifications of his erotic practices. Similarly, his politics were dictated by the desire to avenge himself upon those members of his family and his class who had, as he thought, unjustly persecuted him. He was enthusiastically a revolutionary - at any rate in theory; for, as we have seen, we was too gentle in practice to satisfy his fellow Jacobins. His books are of permanent interest and value because they contain a kind of reductio ad absurdum of revolutionary theory. Sade is not afraid to be a revolutionary to the bitter end. Not content with denying the particular system of values embodied in the ancien regime, he proceeds to deny the existence of any values, any idealism, any binding moral imperatives whatsoever. He preaches violent revolution not only in the field of politics and economics, but (logical, with the appalling logicality of the maniac) also on that of personal relations, including the most intimate of all, the relations between lovers. And, after all, why not? If it is legitimate to torment and kill in one set of circumstances, it must be equally legitimate to torment and kill in all other circumstances. De Sade is the one completely consistent and thorough-going revolutionary of history.

If I have lingered so long over a maniac, it is because his madness illuminates the dark places of normal behavior. No philosophy is completely disinterested. The pure love of truth is always mingled to some extent with the need, consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form of personal or social behavior, to rationalize the traditional prejudices of a given class or community. The philosopher who finds meaning in the world is concerned, not only to elucidate that meaning, but also to prove that it is most clearly expressed in some established religion, some accepted code of morals. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do what he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern by the way they find most advantageous to themselves. The voluntary, as opposed to the intellectual, reasons for holding the doctrines of materialism, for example, may be predominantly erotic, as they were in the case of Lamettrie (see his lyrical account of the pleasures of the bed in La Valupte and in the end of L’Homme Machine), or predominantly political, as they were in the case of Karl Marx. The desire to justify a particular form of political organization and, in some cases, of a personal will to power has played an equally large part in the formulation of philosophies postulating the existence of a meaning in the world. Christian philosophers have found no difficulty in justifying imperialism, war, the capitalistic system, the use of torture, the censorship of the press, and ecclesiastical tyrannies of every sort from the tyranny of Rome to the tyrannies of Geneva and New England. In all these cases they have shown that the meaning of the world was such as to be compatible with, or actually most completely expressed by, the iniquities I have mentioned above - iniquities which happened, of course, to serve the personal or sectarian interests of the philosophers concerned. In due course, there arose philosophers who denied not only the right of these Christian special pleaders to justify iniquity by an appeal to the meaning of the world, but even their right to find any such meaning whatsoever. In the circumstances, the fact was not surprising. One unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions. Passions may be satisfied in the process; but the disinterested love of knowledge suffers eclipse.


For myself, as no doubt, for the most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and a liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple way of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever. Similar tactics had been adopted during the eighteenth century and for the same reasons. From the popular novelists of the period, such as Crebillon and Andrea de Nerciat, we learn that the chief reason for being "philosophical" was that one might be free from prejudices - above all prejudices of a sexual nature. More serious writers associated political with sexual prejudice and recommended philosophy (in practice, the philosophy of meaninglessness) as a preparation for social reform or revolution. The early nineteenth century witnessed a reaction toward meaningful philosophy of a kind that could, unhappily, be used to justify political reaction. The men of the new Enlightenment, which occurred in the middle years of the nineteenth century, once again used meaninglessness as a weapon against the reactionaries. The Victorian passion for respectability was, however, so great that, during the period when they were formulated, neither Positivism or Darwinism was used as a justification for sexual indulgence. After the War the philosophy of meaninglessness came once more triumphantly into fashion. As in the days of Lamettrie and his successors to justify a certain sexual looseness played a part in the popularization of meaninglessness as least as important as that played by the desire for a liberation from an unjust and inefficient form of social organization. By the end of the twenties a reaction had begun to set in - away from the easy-going philosophy of general meaninglessness toward the hard, ferocious theologies of nationalistic and revolutionary idolatry. Meaning was reintroduced into the world, but only in patches. The universe as a whole still remained meaningless, but certain of its parts, such as the nation, the state, the class, the party, were endowed with significance and the highest value. The general acceptance of a doctrine which denies meaning and value to the world as a whole, while assigning them in a supreme degree to certain arbitrarily selected parts of the totality, can only have evil and disastrous results. "All that we are (and consequently all that we do) is the result of what we have thought." We have thought of ourselves as member of supremely meaningful and valuable communities - deified nations, deified classes, and whatnot - existing within a meaningless universe. And because we have thought like this, rearmament is in full swing, economic nationalism becomes ever more intense, the battles of rival propagandas grows ever fiercer, and general war becomes increasingly more probable.

It was the manifestly poisonous nature of the fruits to force me to reconsider the philosophical tree on which they had grown. It is certainly hard, perhaps impossible, to demonstrate any necessary connection between truth and practical goodness. Indeed it was fashionable during the Enlightenment of the middle of the nineteenth century to speak of the need for supplying the masses with "vital lies" calculated to make those who accepted them not only happy, but well behaved. The truth - which was that there was no meaning or value in the world - should be revealed only to the few who were strong enough to stomach it. Now, it may be, of course, that the nature of things has fixed a great gulf between truth about the world on one hand and practical goodness on the other.

Meanwhile, however, the nature of things seems to have so constituted the human mind that it is extremely reluctant to accept such a conclusion, except under the pressure of desire or self-interest. Furthermore, those who, to be liberated from political or sexual restraint, accept the doctrine of absolute meaninglessness tend in a short time to become so much dissatisfied with their philosophy (in spite of the services it renders) that they will exchange it for any dogma, however manifestly nonsensical, which restores meaning to if only a part of the universe. Some people, it is true, can live contentedly with a philosophy of meaninglessness for a very long time. But in most cases it will be found that these people possess some talent or accomplishment that permits them to live a life which, to a limited extent, profoundly meaningful and valuable. Thus an artist, or a man of science can profess a philosophy of general meaninglessness and yet lead a perfectly contented life. The meaning for this must be sought in the fact that artistic creation and scientific research are absorbingly delightful occupations, possessing, moreover, a certain special significance in virtue of their relation to truth and beauty. Nevertheless, artistic creation and scientific research may be, and constantly are, used as devices for escaping from the responsibilities of life. They are proclaimed to be ends absolutely good in themselves - ends so admirable that those who pursue them are excused from bothering about anything else. This is particularly true of contemporary science. The mass of accumulated knowledge is so great that it is now impossible for any individual to have a thorough grasp of more than one small field of study. Meanwhile, no attempt is made to make a comprehensive synthesis of the general results of scientific research. Our universities possess no chairs of synthesis. All endowments, moreover, go to special subjects - and almost always to subjects which have no need of further endowments, such as physics, chemistry and mechanics. In our institutions of higher learning about ten times as much is spent on the natural sciences as on the sciences of man. All our efforts are directed, as usual, to producing improved means to unimproved ends. Meanwhile intensive specialization tends to reduce each branch of science to a condition almost approaching meaninglessness. There are many men of science who are actually proud of this state of things. Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hall mark of true science. Those who attempt to relate the small particular results of specialization with human life as a whole and its relation to the universe at large are accused of being bad scientists, charlatans, self-advertisers. The people who make such accusations do so, of course, because they do not wish to take any responsibility for anything, but merely to retire to their cloistered laboratories, and there amuse themselves by performing delightfully interesting researches. Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with good conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is leading the "higher life." Up to a point, of course, this is true. The life of the scientist or the artist is a higher life. Unfortunately, when led in an irresponsible, one-sided way, the higher life is probably more harmful for the individual than the lower life of the average sensual man and certainly, in the case of the scientist, much worse for society at large . . .

We are now at the point at which we discover that an obviously untrue philosophy of life leads in practice to disastrous results; the point where we realize the necessity of seeking an alternative philosophy that shall be true and therefore fruitful of good. A critical consideration of the classical arguments in favor of theism would reveal that some carry no conviction whatever, while the rest can only raise a presumption in favor of the theory that the world possesses some integrating principle that gives it some significance and value. There is probably no argument by which the case for theism, or for deism, or for pantheism in either its pancosmic or acosmic form, can be convincingly proved. The most "abstract reasoning" (to use Hume’s phrase) is to create a presumption in favor of one or other hypothesis; and this presumption can be increased by means of "experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact or evidence." Final conviction can only come to those who make an act of faith. The idea is one which most of us find very distressing. But it may be doubted whether this particular act of faith is intrinsically more difficult than those which we have to make, for example, every time we frame a scientific hypothesis, every time that, from the consideration of a few phenomena, we draw inference concerning all phenomena, past, present and future. On very little evidence, but with no qualms or intellectual conscience, we assume that our craving for explanation has a real object in an inexplicable universe, that the aesthetic satisfaction we derive from certain arguments is a sign that they are true, that the laws of thought are also laws of things. There seems to be no reason why, having swallowed this camel, we should swallow another, no larger really than the first. Once recognized, the reasons why we strain at the second camel cease to exist and we become free to consider on their merits the evidence of arguments that would reasonably justify us in making the final act of faith and assuming the truth of a hypothesis that we are unable fully to demonstrate.

"Abstract reasoning" must now give place to "experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact or evidence." Natural science, as we have seen, deals only with those aspects of reality that are amenable to mathematical treatment. The rest it merely ignores. But some of the experiences thus ignored by natural science - aesthetic experiences, for example, and religious experiences - throw much light upon the present problem. It is with the fact of such experiences and the evidence they furnish concerning the nature of the world that we have now to concern ourselves.
To discuss the nature and significance of aesthetic experience would take too long. It is enough, in this place, merely to suggest that the best works of literary, plastic and musical art gives us more than mere pleasure; they furnish us with information about the nature of the world. The Sanctus in Beethoven’s Mass in D, Seraut’s Grande Jatte, Macbeth - works such as these tell us, by strange but certain implication, something significant behind the ultimate nature behind appearances. Even from the perfection of minor masterpieces - certain sonnets of Mallarme, for instance, certain Chinese ceramics - we can derive illuminating hints about the "something far more deeply interfused," about the "peace of God that passeth all understanding." But the subject of art is enormous and obscure, and [since] my space is limited, I shall therefore confine myself to a discussion of certain religious experiences which bear more directly upon the present problem than do our experiences as creators and appreciators of art.

Meditation, in Babbtit’s words, is a device for producing a "super-rational concentration of the will." But meditation is more than a method of self-education; it has also been used, in every part of the world and from the remotest periods, as a method for acquiring knowledge about the essential nature of things, a method for establishing communion between the soul and the integrating principle of the universe. Meditation, in other words, is the technique of mysticism. Properly practiced, with due preparation, physical, mental and moral, meditation may result in a state of what has been called "transcendental consciousness" - the direct intuition of, and union with, an ultimate spiritual reality that is perceived as simultaneously beyond the self, and in some way within it. ("God in the depths of us," says Ruysbroeck, "receives God who comes to us; it is God contemplating God.") Non-mystics have denied the validity of the mystical experience, describing it as merely subjective and illusory. But it should be remembered that to those who have never had it, any direct intuition must seem subjective and illusory. It is impossible for the deaf to form any idea of the nature or significance of music. Nor is physical disability the only object in the way of musical understanding. An Indian, for example, finds European orchestral music intolerably noisy, complicated, over-intellectual, inhuman. It seems incredible to him that anyone should be able to perceive beauty and meaning, to recognize an expression of the deepest and subtlest emotions in this elaborate cacophony. And yet, if he has patience and listens to enough of it, he will come at last to recognize, not only theoretically, but also by direct, immediate intuition, that this music possesses all the qualities which Europeans claim for it. Of the significant and pleasurable experiences of life only the simplest are open discriminately to all. The rest cannot be had except by those who have undergone a suitable training. One must be trained even the pleasures of alcohol and tobacco: first whiskies seem revolting, first pipes turn even the strongest of boyish stomachs. Similarly first Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem, an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. It is the same in the moral world. A man who has trained himself in goodness comes to have certain direct intuitions about character, about the relations between human beings, about his own position in the world - intuitions that are quite different from the intuitions of the average sensual man. Knowledge is always a function of being. What we perceive and understand depends upon what we are; and what we are depends partly on circumstances, partly and more profoundly, on the nature of the efforts we have made to realize our ideal and the nature of the ideal we have tried to realize. The fact that knowing depends on being leads, of course, to an immense amount of misunderstanding. The meaning of words, for example, changes profoundly according to the character and experiences of the user. Thus, to the saint, words like "love," "charity," "compassion" mean something quite different from what they mean to the ordinary man. Again, to the ordinary man, Spinoza’s statement that "blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself" seems simply untrue. Being virtuous is, for him, a most tedious and distressing process. But it is clear to some one who has trained himself in goodness, virtue really is blessedness, while the life of the ordinary man, with its petty vices and its long spells of animal thoughtlessness and insentience, seems a real torture. In view of the fact that knowing is conditioned by being and that being can be profoundly modified by training, we are justified in ignoring most of the arguments by which non-mystics have sought to discredit the experience of mystics. The being of a color-blind man is such that he is not competent to pass judgment on a painting. The color-blind man cannot be educated into seeing colors, and in this respect he is different from the Indian musician, who begins by finding European symphonies merely deafening and bewildering, but can be trained, if he so desires, to perceive the beauties of this kind of music. Similarly, the being of a non-mystical person is such that he cannot understand the nature of the mystic’s intuitions. Like the Indian musician, however, he is at liberty, if he so chooses, to have some kind of direct experience of what at present he does not understand. This training is one which he will find extremely tedious; for it involves, at first, the leading of a life of constant awareness and unremitting moral effort; second, steady practice in the technique of meditation, which is probably about as difficult as the technique of violin playing. But, however tedious, the training can be undertaken by any one who wishes to do so. Those who have not undertaken the training can have no knowledge of the kind of experiences open to those who have undertaken it and are as little justified in denying the validity of those direct intuitions of an ultimate spiritual reality, at once transcendent and immanent, as were the Pisan professors who denied on a priori grounds, the validity of Galileo’s direct intuition (made possible by the telescope) of the fact that Jupiter has several moons . . .


Systematic training in recollection and meditation makes possible the mystical experience, which is a direct intuition of ultimate reality. At all times and at every part of the world, mystics of the first order have always agreed that this ultimate reality, apprehended in the process of meditation, is essentially impersonal. This direct intuition of an ultimate spiritual reality, underlying all being, is in accord with the findings of the majority of the world’s philosophers.

 "There is," writes Professor Whitehead, in Religion in the Making, "a large concurrence in the negative doctrine that the religious experience does not include any direct intuition of a definite person, or individual . . . The evidence for the assertion of a general, though not universal, concurrence in the doctrine of no direct vision of a personal God, can only be found by the consideration of the religious thought of the civilized world . . . Throughout India and China, religious thought, so far as it has been interpreted in precise form, disclaims the intuition of ultimate personality substantial to the universe. This is true of Confucian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy and Hindu philosophy. There may be personal embodiments, but the substratum is impersonal. Christian theology also has, in the main, adopted the position that there is no direct intuition of such a personal substratum for the world. It maintains the doctrine of a personal God as a truth, but holds that our belief in it is based upon inference." There seems, however, to be no cogent reason why, from the existing evidence, we should draw such an inference. Moreover, the practical results of drawing such an inference are good only up to a point; beyond that point they are often extremely bad.

We are now in a position to draw a few tentative and fragmentary conclusions about the nature of the world and our relation to it and to one another. To the casual observer, the world seems to be made up of great numbers of independent existents, some of which possess life and some consciousness. From the very early times philosophers suspected that this common-sense view was in part at least, illusory. More recently investigators trained in the discipline of mathematical physics and equipped with instruments of precision, have made observations from which it can be inferred that all the apparently independent existents in the world were built up of a limited number of patterns of identical units of energy. An ultimate physical identity underlies the apparent physical diversity of the world. Moreover, all apparently independent existents are in fact interdependent. Meanwhile the mystics had shown that investigators, trained in the discipline of recollection and meditation, could obtain direct experience of a spiritual unity underlying the apparent diversity of independent consciousness. They made it clear that what seemed to be the ultimate fact of personality was in reality not an ultimate fact and that it was possible for individuals to transcend the limitations of personality and to merge their consciousness into a greater, impersonal consciousness underlying the personal mind . . .

The physical world of our daily experience is a private universe quarried out of a total reality which the physicists infer to be far greater than it. This private universe is different, not only from the real world, whose existence we are able to infer, even though we cannot directly apprehend it, but also from the private universe inhabited by other animals - universes which we can never penetrate, but concerning whose nature we can, as Von Uexkull has done, make interesting speculative guesses. Each type of living creature inhabits a universe whose nature is determined and whose boundaries are imposed by the special inadequacies of its sense organs and its intelligence. In man, intelligence has been so far developed that he is able to infer the existence and even, to some extent, the nature of the real world outside his private universe. The nature of the sense organs and the intelligence of living beings is imposed by biological necessity or convenience. The instruments of knowledge are good enough to enable their owners to survive. Less inadequate instruments of knowledge might not only lead to no biological advantage but might actually constitute a biological handicap. Individual human beings have been able to transcend the limitations of man’s private universe only to the extent that they are relieved from biological pressure in two ways: from without, thanks to the effort of others, and from within, thanks to his own efforts. If he is to transcend the limits of man’s private universe he must be a member of a community which gives him protection against the inclemencies of the environment and makes it easy for him to supply his physical wants. But this is not enough. He must also train himself in the art of being dispassionate and disinterested, must cultivate intellectual curiosity for its own sake and not for what he, as an animal, can get out of it.

The modern conception of man’s intellectual relationship to the universe was anticipated by the Buddhist doctrine that desire is the source of illusion. To the extent that it has overcome desire, a mind is free from illusion. This is true not only of the man of science, but also of the artist and the philosopher. Only the disinterested mind can overcome commonsense and pass beyond the boundaries of animal or average-sensual human life. The mystic exhibits disinterestedness in the highest degree possible to human beings and is therefore able to transcend ordinary limitations more completely than the man of science, the artist or the philosopher. That which he discovers beyond the frontiers of the average sensual man’s universe is a spiritual reality underlying and uniting all apparently separate existents - a reality with which he can merge himself and from which he can draw moral and even physical powers which, by ordinary standards, can only be described as super-normal.

The ultimate reality discoverable to those who choose to modify their being, so that they can have direct knowledge of it, is not, as we have seen, a personality. Since it is not personal, it is illegitimate to attribute to it ethical qualities. "God is not good," said Eckhart. "I am good." Goodness is the means by which men and women can overcome the illusion of being completely independent existents and can raise themselves to a level of being upon which it becomes possible, by recollection and meditation, to realize the fact of their oneness with ultimate reality, to know and in some measure to actually associate themselves with it. The ultimate reality is "the peace of God which passeth all understanding;" goodness is the way by which it can be approached. "Finite things," in the words of Royce, "are always such as they are by virtue of an inattention which at present blinds them to their actual relations to God and to one another." That inattention is, in Buddhist language, of desire. We fail to attend to our true relations with ultimate reality, and through ultimate reality, with our fellow beings, because we prefer to attend to our animal nature and to the business of getting on in the world. That we can never completely ignore the animal in us and our biological needs is obvious. Our separateness is not wholly an illusion. The element of specificity in things is a brute fact of experience. Diversity cannot be reduced to complete identity even in scientific and philosophical theory, still less with life that is lived in bodies, that is to say, with particular patternings of the ultimately identical units of energy. It is impossible in the nature of things, that no attention should be given to the animal in us; but in the circumstances of civilized life, it is certainly unnecessary to give all or most of our attention to it. Goodness is the method by which we divert our attention from this singularly wearisome topic of our animality and our individual separateness. Recollection and meditation assist goodness in two ways: by producing, in Babbit’s words, "a supra-rational concentration of will," and by making it possible for the mind to realize, not only theoretically, but also by direct intuition, that the private universe of the average sensual man is not identical with the universe as a whole. Conversely, of course, goodness aids meditation by giving detachment from animality and so making it possible for the mind to pay attention to its actual relationship with ultimate reality and to other individuals. Goodness, meditation, the mystical experience and the ultimate impersonal reality discovered in mystical experience are organically related. This fact disposes of the fears expressed by Dr. Albert Schweitzer in his recent book on Indian thought. Mysticism, he contends, is the correct world view; but, though correct, it is unsatisfactory in ethical content. The ultimate reality of the world is not moral ("God is not good") and the mystic who unites himself with ultimate reality is uniting himself with a non-moral being, therefore is not himself moral. But this is mere verbalism and ignores the actual fact of experience. It is impossible for the mystic to pay attention to his real relation to God and his fellows, unless he has previously detached his attention from his animal nature and the business of being socially successful. But he cannot detach his attention from these things except by the consistent and constant practice of the highest morality. God is not good; but if I want to have even the smallest of God, I must be good at least in some slight measure; and if I want as full a knowledge of God as it is possible for human beings to have, I must be as good as it is possible for human beings to be. Virtue is the essential preliminary to the mystical experience. And this is not all. There is not even any theoretical incompatibility between an ultimate reality, which is impersonal and therefore not moral, and the existence of a moral order on the human level. Scientific investigation has shown that the world is a diversity underlain by an identity of physical substance; the mystical experience testifies to the existence of a spiritual unity underlying the diversity of separate consciousnesses. Concerning the relation between the underlying physical unity and the underlying spiritual unity it is hard to express an opinion. Nor is it necessary, in the present context, that we should express one. For our present purposes the important fact is that it is possible to detect a physical and spiritual unity underlying the independent existents (to some extent, merely apparent, to some extent real, at any rate for beings on our plane of existence), of which our commonsense universe is composed. Now, it is a fact of experience that we can either emphasize our separateness from other beings and the ultimate reality of the world or emphasize our oneness with them and it. To some extent at least, our will is free in this matter. Human beings are creatures who, in so far as they are animals and persons tend to regard themselves as independent existents, connected at most by purely biological ties, but who, in so far as they rise above animality and personality, are able to perceive that they are interrelated parts of physical and spiritual wholes incomparably greater than themselves. For such beings the fundamental moral commandment is: You shall realize your unity with all being. But men cannot realize their unity with others and with ultimate reality unless they practice the virtue of love and understanding. Love, compassion and understanding or intelligence - these are the primary virtues in the ethical system, the virtues organically correlated with what may be called the scientific-mystic conception of the world. Ultimate reality is impersonal and non-ethical; but if we would recognize our ultimate relations with true reality and our fellow beings, we must practice morality and (since no personality can learn to transcend itself unless it is reasonably free from external compulsion) respect the personality of others. Belief in a personal moral, God has led only too frequently to theoretical dogmatism and practical intolerance - to a consistent refusal to respect personality and to the commission in the name of the divinely moral person of every kind of iniquity.

"The fact of the instability of evil," in Professor Whitehead’s words,"is the moral order of the world." Evil is that which makes for separateness; and that which makes for separateness is self-destructive. This self-destruction of evil may be sudden and violent, as when murderous hatred results in a conflict that leads to the death of the hater; it may be gradual, as when a degenerative process results in impotence or extinction; or it may be reformative, as when a long course of evil-doing results in all concerned becoming so sick of destruction and degeneration that they decide to change their ways, thus transforming evil into good.

The evolutionary history of life clearly illustrates the instability of evil in the sense in which it has been defined above. Biological specialization may be regarded as a tendency on the part of a species to insist on its separateness; and the result of specialization, as we have seen is either negatively disastrous, in the sense that it precludes the possibility of further biological progress, or positively disastrous, in the sense that it leads to the extinction of the species. In the same way intra-specific competition may be regarded as the expression of a tendency on the part of individuals to insist on their separateness and independence; the effects of intra-specific competition are, as we have seen, almost wholly bad. Conversely, the qualities which have led to biological progress are the qualities which make it possible for individual beings to escape from their separateness - intelligence and the tendency to cooperate. Love and understanding are valuable even on the biological level. Hatred, unawareness, stupidity and all that makes for increase of separateness are the qualities that, as a matter of historical fact, have led either to the extinction of a species, or to its becoming a living fossil, incapable of making further biological progress.


   

So what do you think?

- petey