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THE STARGATE CONSPIRACY

Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince

1

999

Page1(omitted)

Prologue:
The Nine Gods


"In the beginning were the Nine gods of ancient Egypt, the Great Ennead, in whom all beauty, magic and power were personified. But although many, they were only ever truly One - each an aspect of the great creator god, Atum. The Pyramid Texts, hiero-glyphic inscriptions found on the inside walls of seven pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, implore them both as Nine and as One:

O you, Great Ennead which is at On [Heliopolis] (namely) Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osris, Isis, Set, and Nepthys; O you children of Atum extend his goodwill to his child. . .1"

ATUM 1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 MUTA

 

 

THE BULL OF MINOS

Leonard Cottrell 1953

Chapter VII

Page

90

THE QUEST CONTINUES

"OUT IN THE DARK BLUE SEA THERE LIES A LAND CALLED CRETE, A RICH AND LOVELY LAND, WASHED BY THE WAVES ON EVERY SIDE, DENSELY PEOPLED AND BOASTING NINETY CITIES. . . 

ONE OF THE NINETY TOWNS IS A GREAT CITY CALLED KNOSSOS, AND THERE FOR NINE YEARS, KING MINOS RULED AND ENJOYED THE FRIENDSHIP OF ALMIGHTY ZEUS

ZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZA

AZAZAZAZAZAZAZ

ZAZAZA

ME

I

Evokation

 

JUST CATS
Fernand Mery

Souvenir Press. London 1957

Page 24

"In the year 999, in the tenth day of the Fifth Moon, at the Imperial Palace of Kyoto, a cat gave birth for the first time recorded here, and to five little kittens. The emperor so marvelled at this that he charged his ministers with the care of them; they were to bring the kittens up exactly the same way as they had been nursed as children. When the kittens were grown, he made it known at Court that he wished the breeding to continue."

 

Evokation

http://www.museumca.org/exhibit/exhib_forbiddencity.html

page 1, 2

Secret World of the
Forbidden City
Splendors from
China's Imperial Palace
Great Hall


HISTORY AND IMPORTANCE OF THE FORBIDDEN CITY


"In the heart of Beijing, the Imperial Palace remained the residence of the emperors for nearly five hundred years, from the 15th century to the early 20th century, and was the actual and symbolic seat of imperial power. Popularly known as the Forbidden City, it was built in the Ming Dynasty between the 4th and the 18th years of the Yongle period (1406 - 1420 AD). Many of the buildings of the Palace have been repaired and rebuilt, but their basic form and layout remain in their original state.

This magnificent, palatial architectural complex covers an area of over 2,350,000 square feet and contains 9,999 rooms. The largest complex of its kind in the world, it is surrounded by ten-foot-high walls that are crowned by four observation towers and flanked by a deep moat. The walls are pierced by four large gates, each with three openings and a broad crowning pavilion."

and contains 9,999 rooms.

ZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZA

AZAZAZAZAZAZAZ

ZAZAZA

ME

I

Evokation

THE ALMOST FORGOTTEN DAY

Mark A. Finlay 1988

The first law actually commanding Sunday rest was issued by the Emperor Constantine in March. 321 A.D. His decree declared. "On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing' in cities rest. and let all workshops be closed. In the country. however. persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits." SDA Source Book. p. 999. But church historian Philip Schaff makes this significant point: " . . . the Sunday law of Constantine must not be overrated. . . There is no reference whatever in his law either to the fourth commandment or to the resurrection of Christ. Besides he expressly exempted the countty districts. . . Christians
and pagans had been accustomed to festival rests; Constantine made these rests to synchronize. and gave the preference to Sunday." - Ibid.. pp 999. 1000.

 

 

MARIO AND THE MAGICIAN AND OTHER STORIES

Thomas Mann

1936

Page 336

" Abraham, was likewise so old and stricken in years, already ninety-nine. And what woman could not but laugh at the thought of indulging in lust with a ninety-nine year old man "

 

 

ATLANTIS

FROM LEGEND TO DISCOVERY

Andrew Thomas 1973

Plato indirectly received the original story of Atlantis from Solon. the great statesman and the richest man in ancient Greece. According to Solon. Atlantis perished 9.000 years before his trip to Egypt. or in 9560 B.C.
However. Professor Galanopoulos thinks that Solon, the ,Onassis of antiquity, could not even count properly. ",It was not 9,000 years, but 900 years," he claims, adding 900 to 560 B.C., the date of Solon's voyage to Egypt,"

 

 

OF TIME AND STARS

Arthur C. Clarke

Into the Comet

Page 67

"Sometime after the Second World War, there was a con-test between an American with an electric desk calculator and a Japanese using an abacus like this. The abacus won / Page / 68 / 'Then it must have been a poor desk machine, or an incom-petent operator.'
'They used the best in the U.S. Army. But let's stop argu-ing. Give me a test - say a couple of three-figure numbers to multiply.'
'Oh - 856 times 437"
Pickett's fingers danced over the beads, sliding them up and down the wires with lightning speed. There were twelve wires in all, so that the abacus could handle numbers up to 999,999,999,999 - or could be divided into separate sections
where several independent calculations could be carried out simultaneously."

 

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
=
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
=
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
1+0 1+1
1+2
1+3
1+4
1+5
1+6
1+7
1+8
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
=
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
=
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
I
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
9
1+9 2+0 2+1 2+2 2+3 2+4 2+5 2+6
ME
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
=
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
 =
=
I
ME
I
ME
I
ME
I
ME
I
9
18
9
18
9
18
9
18
9
=
1+8
=
1+8
=
1+8
=
1+8
=
=
9
=
9
=
9
=
9
=
I
ME
I
ME
I
ME
I
ME
I
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
I
ME
I
ME
I
ME
I
ME
1

 

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
                  1+0 1+1 1+2 1+3 1+4 1+5 1+6 1+7 1+8 1+9 2+0 2+1 2+2 2+3 2+4 2+5 2+6
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
                                                   
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

 

LIGHT AND LIFE

Lars Olof Bjorn 1976

Page 197

"BY WRITING THE 26 LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET IN A CERTAIN ORDER ONE MAY PUT DOWN ALMOST ANY MESSAGE

 

THE

ROMEO ERROR

Lyall Watson 1974

Page 58

"IN BACKSTER'S LATER WORK WE FIND MORE EVIDENCE OF OF THE SOPHISTICATION OF THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE AND BEGIN TO GET SOME IDEA OF ITS SCOPE."

 

 

10
PRECESSION
 123 51 6
2
OF
 21 12 3
3
THE
 33 15 6
9
EQUINOXES
 129 48 3
24
Add to Reduce
 306 126 18
2+4
Reduce to Deduce
3+0+6
1+2+6

1+8
6
Essence of Number
 9 9 9

 

 

1

-

 7

MERCURY

 103 40 4
2

-

 5

VENUS

 81 18 9
3

-

 4

MARS

 51 15 6
4

-

 7

JUPITER

 99 36 9
5

-

 6

SATURN

 93 21 3
6

-

 3

SUN

 54 9 9
7

-

 4

MOON

 57 21 3
8 - 5

EARTH

 52 25 7
9 - 6

URANUS

 94 22 4
10 - 7

NEPTUNE

 95 32 5
11 - 5

PLUTO

 84 21 3
66 - 59 First Total 863 260 62

6+6

-

5+9

 Add to Reduce 8+6+3 2+6+0

6+2
12

-

 14 Second Total 17 8 8
1+2

-

1+4

 Reduce to Deduce 1+7

-

-
3

-

 5 Final Total 8 8 8

 

 

THE ELEMENTS OF THE GODDESS

Caitlin Matthews 1989

Page38

"This ennead of aspects is endlessly adaptable for it is made up of nine, the most adjustable and yet essentially unchanging number. However one chooses to add up multiples of nine, for example 54, 72, 108, they always add up to nine"

 

4
ZERO
0
-
8
5
9
6
-
=
28
2+8
=
10
1+0
1
3
ONE
1
-
6
5
5
-
-
=
16
1+6
=
7
-
7
3
TWO
2
-
2
5
6
-
-
=
13
1+3
=
4
-
4
5
THREE
3
-
2
8
9
5
5
=
29
2+9
=
11
1+1
2
4
FOUR
4
-
6
6
3
9
-
=
24
2+4
=
6
-
6
4
FIVE
5
-
6
9
4
5
-
=
24
2+4
=
6
-
6
3
SIX
6
-
1
9
6
-
-
=
16
1+6
=
7
-
7
5
SEVEN
7
-
1
5
4
5
5
=
20
2+0
=
2
-
2
5
EIGHT
8
-
5
9
7
8
2
=
31
3+1
=
4
-
4
4
NINE
9
-
5
9
5
5
-
=
24
2+4
=
6
-
6
40
-
45
-
42
70
58
43
12
-
225
-
-
63
-
45
4+0
-
4+5
-
4+2
7+0
5+8
4+3
1+2
-
2+2+5
-
-
6+3
-
4+5
-
-
9
-
6
7
13
7
3
-
9
-
-
9
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1+3
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
4
-
9
-
6
7
4
7
3
-
9
-
-
9
-
9

NUMBER

9

THE SEARCH FOR THE SIGMA CODE

Cecil Balmond 1998

Nine Fixed Points in the Wind
The Elders had never seen it coming.
The young Master was elated as the crowd cheered, each one of them understanding how simple it was. They saw for the first time the basic nature of the numbers themselves, their shapes, the stars and the triangles, the crossing polygons and the spinning discs. Underneath the clutter of the arithmetic was the simple nine number code, which seemed to rotate all around their heads as the young master drew fantastic circles on the blackboard with radiating arms.
But when the boy master had worked out his thesis and drafted those lovely circles of nine, he was not content. He saw the completeness of it but something was not quite right. There was too much balance. It was not satisfying how the nines bordered the figure yet the reflection and the reversals did not catch the spirit of what was in his head.
Enjil wanted a deeper clarity - to match the swirling movements he had first seen - so that the diagram would show better what adually was going on, if that was at all possible.
Like the Elders and wise Masters who had come before him, everyone believed in the perfection of the
clrcle. The world was created round, the sun was / Page 127 / round, the stars wrapped around the vast bowl of the sky in a great orbit. Mathematicians knew that numbers had a perfection not corrupted by daily affairs and that the concept of a number was abstract, unchanging. What better shape then, than the perfection of a set of circles?
But to Enjil nine was the number through which everything else flowed. It was also the number that must give reversal and the more he thought of the pattern, of circle upon circle, the more dissatisfied he became. It was too static, too stationary. It did not move. Number nine was full of vigour, it did things to other numbers - it was a catalyst. And yet it had to be stationary to allow other things through it - this was still the problem to solve. But how?
In the afternoon before the day of the examina­tion he saw the breeze gust up and whip up trails of dust in the compound. Minor sand storms that eddied and whirled and zigzagged. He saw spirals and the vortices, as the force in the wind moved his mind into action.
He felt then that number nine was an even greater concept than he had first imagined; it must be like the secret, unseen force of the wind itself, , and this would be the force that moved the other numbers. The pattern he sought then must have only one point of reference - number nine itself! Not a circle of numbers, but a condensation of the nature of that first innermost circle. It summed to nine, it had nine parts, it had three hundred and sixty degrees which in turn compressed to nine as three plus six plus zero."

HAMLETS MILL

Giorgio Santillana & Hertha Von Dechend

Chapter XVII

The Frame of the Cosmos

Page 230 (Number omitted)

"IN GREEK MYTH, the basic frame of the world is described in the famous Vision of Er in the 10th Book of the Republic. In it we find Er the Armenian, who was resurrected from the funeral pyre just before it was kindled, and who describes his travel through the other world (10.615ff.). He and the group of souls bound for re­birth whom he accompanies travel through the other world. They come to "a straight shaft of light, like a pillar, stretching from above throughout heaven and earth-and there, at the middle of the light, they saw stretching from heaven the extremities of its chains; for this light binds the heavens, holding together all the revolving firmament like the undergirths ,of a ship of war. And from the extremities stretched the Spindle of Necessity, by means of which all the circles revolve."

Corn ford adds in a note: . "It is disputed whether the bond hold­ing the Universe together is simply the straight axial shaft or a circular band of light, suggested by the Milky Way, 1 girdling the heaven of fixed stars.:'2 Eisler understood it: as the zodiac, strange to say.3 Since those "undergirths" of the trireme did not go around the ship horizontally, but were meant to secure the mast (the / Page 231 / tree" of the ship) which points upwards, we stand, on princi­ple, for the Galaxy, which, however, had to be "replaced" by in­visible colures in later times.4 But Er also talks of the adventures of the souls between incarnations, and in this context we might rely on the Milky Way. Surely the "model" is far from clear, even, on Cornford's concession, obviously intentionally so. And indeed, a few paragraphs later, there comes the complete planetarium with its "whorls," the "Spindle of Necessity" held by the goddess, by which sit the Fates as they unwind the threads of men's lives. The souls can listen to the Song of Lachesis, if they are still in the "meadow," but the chains and shaft or band are no longer in the picture. Plato refuses'to be a correct geometrician of the Other World, just as he would not be sensible about the hydraulics of it. But previously in the Phaedo, Socrates had been ironic about the "truths" of science, and insisted that the truths of myth are of another order, and rebellious to ordinary consistency. It is here as if Plato had juxtapos,ed a number of revered mythical traditions (in­cluding the planetary harmony) without pretending to fit them into a proper order. And so his image of the "framework" of the cosmos is left inconclusive. But somehow the axis and the band and the chains stand together, and this, one concludes, was the original idea. The rotation of the polar axis must not be disjointed from the great circles which shift along with it in heaven. The framework is thought of as all one with the axis. This leads back to a Pythago­rean authority whom Plato was supposed to have followed (Timon even viciously said: plagiarized) and whom Socrates often quotes with unfeigned respect. It is Philolaos, surely a creative astronomer of high rank, from whom there are only a few surviving fragments, and the authenticity of these has been rashly challenged by many modern philologists.5 In fragment 12 of Philolaos, there is a brief definition of the cosmos, very much in the spirit of Plato's dode­/ Page 232 / cahedron quoted in chapter XII. "In the sphere there are five ele-ments, Those inside the sphere, fire, and water and earth and air, and what is the hull of the sphere, the fifth."6 Notwithstanding Philolaos' graceless Doric, the statement is perfectly clear. The "hull," (olkas) was the common name for freighters, built for bulk cargo, broad in the beam. It is really more adequate than Plato's slim triremej and it is closer in shape to what both men meant apparently: the dodecahedron, the "hull," i.e., the sphere, the actual containing frame. It is clear from Plato that the "fifth" is the sphere that he calls ether which contains the four earthly elements but is wholly removed from them. Aristotle was to change it to the crystalline heavenly "matter" that he needed for his system, but it remained for him a "fifth essence." There has thus been twice repeated the original "hull," the frame that has been sought. What happened, and was noted in chapter VII, was that the etymology of Sampo was discovered to be in the Sanskrit skambha.

The abstract idea of a simple earth axis, so natural today, was by no means so logical to the ancients, who always thought of the whole machinery of heaven moving around the earth, stable at the center. One line always implied many others in a structure. So, apparently one must accept the idea of the world frame as an implex

(as used here and later this word involves the necessary attributes that are associated with a concept: e.g., the center and circumfer­ence of a circle, the parallels and meridians implied by a sphere), of which Grotte and Sampo were the rude models with their pon­derous moving parts."

 

- CIRCLE - - -
5 C+I+R+C+L 45 27 9
1 E 5 5 5
6 CIRCLE 50 32 14
- - 5+0 3+2 1+4
5 CIRCLE 5 5 5

 

 

6 CIRCLE -- -- -- -- --
- C 3 3 - - 3
- I 9 - - 9 9
- R 18 - - 9 9
- C 3 3 - - 3
- L 12 3 - - 3
- E 5 - 5 - 5
6 CIRCLE 50 9 5 18 32
    5+0 - - 1+8 3+2
6 CIRCLE 5 9 5 9 5

 

 

6 CIRCLE - - - -
- I+R 27 = 9 9
- C+C+L 18 = 9 9
- E   5   5
6 CIRCLE 45 5 18 23
    4+5 - 1+8 2+3
6 CIRCLE 9 5 9 5

 

 

6
CIRCLE
 50 32 5
6
CLERIC
 50 32 5
-
-
-
-
-
7
CIRCLES
 69 33 6
7
CLERICS
 69 33 6

 

Page 232 (continues)

"Like the axle of the mill, the tree, the skambha, also represents the world axis. This instinctively suggests a straight, upright post, but the word axis is a simplification of the real concept. There is the invisible axis, of course, which is crowned by the North Nail, but this image needs to be enriched by two more dimensions. The term world axis is an abbreviation of language comparable to the visual abbreviation achieved by projecting the reaches of the sky onto a flat star map. It is best not to think of the axis in straight analytical terms, one line at a time, but to consider it, and the frame to which / Page 233 / it is connected, as one whole. This involves the use of multivalent terms and the recognition of a convergent involution of unusual meamngs.

As radius automatically calls circle to mind, so axis must invoke the two determining great circles on the surface of the sphere, the equinoctial and solstitial colures. Pictured this way, the axis resem­bles a complete armillary sphere. It stands for the system of coor­dinates of the sphere and represents the frame of a world-age. Actually the frame defines a world-age. Because the polar axis and the colures form an indivisible whole, the entire frame is thrown out of kilter if one part is moved. When that happens, a new Pole star with appropriate colures of its own must replace the obsolete apparatus.

 

6 RADIUS - - -
- R 18 9 9
- A 1 1 1
- D 4 4 4
- I 9 9 9
- U 21 3 3
- S 19 10 1
6 RADIUS 72 36 27
- - 7+2 3+6 2+7
6 RADIUS 9 9 9
- - - - -
- - - - -
4 LINE 40 22 4
4 NILE 40 22 4

 

 

"Thus the Sanskrit skambha, the world pillar, ancestor of the Finnish Sampo, is shown to be an integral element in the ~cheme of things. The hymn 10.7 of the Atharva Veda is dedicated to the skambha, and Whitney, its translator and commentator7 sounds puzzled in his footnote to 10.7.2: "Skambha, lit. 'prop, support, pillar,' strangely used in this hymn as frame of the universe or held personified as its soul." Here are two verses of it:

1 2. In whom earth, atmosphere, in whom sky is set, where fire, moon, sun, wind stand fixed, that Skambha tell. . .

35. The Skambha sustains both heaven-and-earth here; the skambha sustains the wide atmosphere, the skambha sustains the six wide directions; .into the skambha entered this whole existence.

The good old Sampo sounds less pretentious, but it does have its three "roots," "one in heaven, one in the earth, one in the water­eddy."8 To make a drawing of a pillar like tree (let alone a mill), with its roots distributed in the manner indicated, would be quite a task. Notably it takes the "enormous bull of Pohja"-obviously a cosmic bull-to plow up these strange roots: the Finnish heroes by themselves had not been able to uproot the Sampo.

In the case of Yggdrasil, the World Ash, Rydberg tried his hard­est to localize the three roots, to imagine and to draw them. Since he / Page / 234 / looked with steadfast determination into the interior of our globe, the result was not overly convincing. One of the roots is said to belong to the Asa in heaven, and beneath it is the most sacred foun­tain of Urd. The second is to be found in the quarters of the frost­giants "where Ginnungagap formerly was," and where the well of Mimir now is. The third root belongs to Niflheim, the realm of the dead, and under this root is Hvergelmer, the Whirlpool (Gy If. 15).9

This precludes any terrestrial diagram. It looks as though the "axis," implicating the equinoctial and solstitial colures, runs through the "three worlds" which are, to state it roughly and most inaccurately, the following:

a) the sky north of the Tropic of Cancer, Le., the sky proper, do­main of the gods

Cb) the "inhabited world" of the zodiac between the Tropics, the domain of the "living"

Cc) the sky south from the Tropic of Capricorn, alias the Sweet­Water Ocean, the realm of the dead.

 

The demarcation plane between solid earth and sea is represented by the celestial equator; hence half of the zodiac is under "water," the southern ecliptic, bordered by the equinoctial points. There are more refined subdivisions, to be sure, "zones" or "belts" or "climates," dividing the sphere from north to south and, most im­portant, the "sky" as well as the waters of the south have a share in the "inhabited world" allotted to them.lo This summary is an almost frivolous simplification, but for the time being it may be sufficient / Page 235 / Meanwhile, it is necessary to explain again what this "earth" is that modern interpreters like to take for a pancake. The mythical earth is, in fact, a plane, but this plane is not our "earth" at all, neither our globe, nor a presupposed homocentrical earth. "Earth" is the implied plane through the four points of the year, marked by the equinoxes and solstices, in other words the ecliptic. And this is why this earth is very frequently said to be quadrangular. The four "corners," that is, the zodiacal constellations rising heliacally at both the equinoxes and solstices, parts of the "frame" skambha, are the points which determine an "earth." Every world-age has its own "earth." It is for this very reason that "ends of the world" are said to take place. A new "earth" arises, when another set of zodiacal constellations brought in by the Precession determines the year points.

Once the reader has made the adjustment needed to think of the frame instead of the "pillar" he will understand easily many queer scenes which would be strictly against nature-ideas aboUt planets performing feats at places which are out of their range, as both the poles are. He will understand why a force planning to uproot (or to chop down) a tree, or to unhinge a mill, or merely pull out a

plug, or a pin, does not have to go "up "-or "down"-all the way to the pole to do it. The force causes the same effect when it pulls out the nearest available part of the "frame" within the inhabited world.

Here are some examples of the manipulation of the frame, begin­ning with a most insignificant survival. Actually this is a useful approach, because the less meaningful the example, the more aston­ishing is the fact of its surviving. T urkmen tribes of southern Turkestan tell aboUt a copper pillar marking the "navel of the earth," and they state that "only the nine-year-old hero Kara Par is able to lift and to extract" it.ll As goes without saying, nobody comments on the strange idea that someone should be eager to "extract the navel of the earth." When Young Arthur does it with Excalibur, the events have already been fitted into a more familiar frame and they provoke no questions.

Page 236

In its grandiose style, the Mahabharata presents a similar prodigy as follows:
It was Vishvamitra who in anger created a second world and numer­ous stars beginning with Sravana . . . He can burn the three worlds by his splendour, can, by stamping (his foot), cause the Earth to quake. He can sever the great Meru from the Earth and hurl it to any distance. He can go round the 10 points of the Earth in a momentP
Vishvamitra is one of the seven stars of the Big Dipper, this at
least has been found out. But each planet is represented by a star of the Wain, and vice versa, so this case does not look particularly helpful. 13
A cosmic event of the first order can be easily overlooked when it hides modestly in a fairy tale. The following, taken from the Indian "Ocean of Stories," tells of Shiva: "When he drove his tri­dent into the heart of Andhaka, the king of the Asuras, though he was only one, the dart which that monarch had infixed into the heart of the three worlds was, strange to say, extracted."14
A plot can also shrink to unrecognizable insignificance when it / Page 237 / The Frame of the Cosmos comes disguised as history, but this next story at least has been pinned down to the proper historical character, and even has been checked by a serious military historian like Arrianus, who tells us the following:
Alexander, then, reached Gordium, and was seized with an ardent desire to ascend to the acropolis, where was the palace of Gordius and his son Midas, and to look at Gordius' wagon and the knot of the chariot's yoke. There was a widespread tradition about this chariot around the countryside; Gordius, they said, was a poor man of the Phrygians of old, who tilled a scanty parcel of earth and had but two yoke of oxen: with one he ploughed, with the other he drove his wagon. Once, as he was ploughing, an eagle settled on the yoke and stayed, perched there, till it was time to loose the oxen; Gordius was astonished at the portent, and went off to consult the Telmissian prophets, who were skilled in the interpretation of prodigies, inherit­ing-women and children too-the prophetic gift. Approaching a Telmissian village, he met a girl drawing water and told her the story of the eagle: she, being also of the prophetic line, bade him return to the spot and sacrifice to Zeus the King. So then Gordius begged her to come along with him and assist in the sacrifice; and at the spot duly sacrificed as she directed, married the girl, and had a son called Midas.
Midas was already a grown man, handsome and noble, when the Phrygians were in trouble with civil war; they received an oracle that a chariot would bring them a king and he would stop the war. True enough, while they were discussing this, there arrived Midas, with his parents, and drove, chariot and all, into the assembly. The Phrygians, interpreting the oracle, decided that he was the man whom the gods had told them would come in a chariot; they there­ upon made him king, and he put an end to the civil war. The chariot. of his father he set up in the acropolis as a thank-offering to Zeus the king for sending the eagle.
Over and above this there was a story about the wagon, that anyone who should untie the knot of the yoke should be lord of Asia. This knot was of cornel bark, and you could see neither beginning nor end of it. Alexander, unable to find how to untie the knot, and not brooking to leave it tied, lest this might cause some disturbance in the vulgar, smote it with his sword, cut the knot, and exclaimed, "I have loosed it!"-so at least say some, but Aristobulus puts it that he took out the pole pin, a dowel driven right through the pole, hold­ing the knot together, and so removed the yoke from the pole. 1 do not attempt to be precise how Alexander actually dealt with this knot. Anyway, he and his suite left the wagon with the impression / Page 238 / that the oracle about the loosed knot had been duly fulfilled. It is certain that there were that night thunderings and lightnings, which indicated this; so Alexander in thanksgiving offered sac-rifice next day to whatever gods had sent the signs and certified the undoing of the knot. 15
Without going now into the relevant comparative material it
should be stressed that in those cases where "kings" are sitting in a wagon (Greek hamaxa), i.e., a four-wheeled truck, it is most of the time Charles' Wain.
Alexander was a true myth builder, or rather, a true myth­attracting magnet. He had a gift for attracting to his fabulous per­sonality the manifold tradition that, once, had been coined for Gilgamesh.
But the time is not yet ripe either for Alexander or for Gilga­mesh, nor for further statements about deities or heroes who could pull ou:t pins, plugs and pillars. The next concern is with the deci­sive features of the mythical landscape and their possible localiza­tion, or their fixation in time. It is essential to know where and when the first whirlpool came into being once Grotte, Amlodhi's Mill, had been destroyed. This is, however, a misleading expression because our terminology is still much too imprecise. It would be better to say the first exit from, or entrance to, the whirlpool. It appears advisable to recapitulate the bits of information that have been gathered on the whirlpool as a whole:

The maelstrom, result of a broken mill, a chopped-down tree, and the like, "goes through the whole globe," according to the Finns. So does T artaros, according to Socrates. To repeat it in Guthrie's words: "The earth in this myth of Socrates is spherical, and Tartaros, the bottomless pit, is represented in this mythical geography by a chasm which pierces the sphere right through from
side to side."16
It is source and mouth of all waters.
It is the way, or one among others, to the realm of the dead. Medieval geographers call it "Umbilicus Maris," Navel of the
Sea, or "Euripus."

Page 239

Antiochus the astrologer calls Eridanus proper, or some abstract topos not far from Sirius, "zalos," i.e., whirlpool.
M. W. Makemson looks for the Polynesian whirlpool, said to be "at the end of the sky," "at the edge of the Galaxy," in Sagittarius.
A Dyak hero, climbing a tree in "Whirlpool-Island," lands him­self in the Pleiades.
But generally, one looks for "it" in the more or less northwest­north-northwest direction, a direction where, equally vaguely, Kronos-Saturn is supposed to sleep in his golden cave notwithstand­ing the blunt statements (by Homer) that Kronos was hurled down into deepest Tartaros.
And from those "infernal" quarters, particularly from the (Ogy­gian) Stygian landscape, "one"-who else but the souls?-sees the celestial South Pole, invisible to us.
The reader might agree that this summary shows clearly the insufficiency of the general terminology accepted by the majority. The verbal confusion provokes sympathy for Numenius (see above, p. r88), and the Third Vatican Mythographer who took the rivers for planets, their planetary orbs respectively. We think that the whirlpool stands for the "ecliptical world" marked by the whirling planets, embracing everything which circles obliquely with respect to the polar axis and the equator-oblique by 2 3 Yz degrees, more or less, each planet having its own obliquity with respect to the others and to the sun's path, that is, the ecliptic proper. It has been mentioned earlier (p. 206, n. 5) that in the axis of the Roman circus wa~ a Euripus, and altars of the three outer planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars), and the three inner planets (Venus, Mercury, Moon) on both sides of the pyramid of the sun, and that there were not more than seven circuits because the "planets are seven only."
The ecliptic as a whirl is only one aspect of the famous "implex." It must be kept in mind that bei~g the seat of all planetary powers, it represented, so to speak, the "Establishment" itself. There is no better symbol of the thinking of those planet-struck Mesopotamian civilizations than the arrogant plan of the royal cities themselves, as it has been patiently reconstructed by generations of Orientalists and archaeologists. Nineveh proclaimed itself as the seat of stable / Page 240 / order and power by its seven-times crenellated circle of walls, col­ored with the seven planetary colors, and so thick that chariots could run along the top. The planetary symbolism spread to India, as was seen in chapter VIII, and culminated in that prodigious cosmological diagram that is the temple of Barabudur in JavaY It is still evident in the innumerable stupas which dot the Indian country­side, whose superimposed crowns stand for the planetary heavens. And here we have the Establishment seen as a Way Up and Be­yond, as Numenius would have seen immediately, the succession of spheres of transition for the soul, a quiet promise of transcen­dence which marks the Gnostic and Hinduistic scheme. The skele­ton map will always lack one or the other dimension. The Whirl is then a way up or a way down? Heraclitus would say both ways are one and the same. You cannot pUt into a scheme everything at once.
This general conception of the whirlpool as the "ecliptical world" does not, of course, help to understand any single detail. Starting from the idea of the whirlpool as a way to the other world, one must look at the situation through the eyes of a soul meaning to go there. It has to move from the interior outwards, to "ascend" from the geocentric earth through the planetary spheres "up" to the fixed sphere, that is, right through the whole whirlpool, the eclip­tical world. But in order to leave the ecliptical frame, there must be a station for changing trains at the equator. One would expect this station to be at the crossroads of ecliptical and equatorial coor­dinates at the equinoxes. But evidently, this was not the arrange­ment. A far older route was followed. It is true that it sometimes looks as though the transfer point were at the equinoxes. The astro­logical tradition that followed Teukros,18 for example, provided a rich offering of celestial locations for Hades, the Acherusian lake, Charon the ferryman, etc., all of them under the chapter Libra. But this is a trap and one can only hope that many hapless souls have not been deceived. For these astrological texts mean the sign / Page 241 / Libra, not the constellation. All "change stations" are found in­variably in two regions: one in the South between Scorpius and Sagittarius, the other in the North between Gemini and Taurus; and this is valid through time and space, from Babylon to Nica­ragua.19 Why was it ever done in the first place? Because of the Galaxy, which has its crossroads with the ecliptic between Sagit­tarius and Scorpius in the South, and between Gemini and Taurus in the North.
19 The notion is not even foreign to the cheering adventures of Sun, the Chinese Monkey (Wou Tch'eng Ngen, French trans. by Louis Avenol [1957]). One day, two "harponneurs des morts" get hold of him, claiming that he has arrived at the term of his destiny, and is ripe for the underworld. He escapes, of course. The translator remarks (vol. " p. iii) that it is the constellation Nan Teou, the Southern Dipper, that decides everybody's death, and the orders are executed by these "harponneurs des mom." The Southern Dipper consists of the stars mu lambda phi sigma tau zeta Sagittarii (cL G. Schlegel, L'Uranographie Chinoise [1875], pp. 17zff.; L. de Saussure, Les Origines de l'Astronomie Chinoise [1930], pp. 4SZf.).

 

NOTES

Page 230

Page 232 6 See H. Oiels, Die Fragmente der V orsokratiker (1951), VO!. I, pp. 4I2f.

1 Cf. O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte (19<>6), p.1036, n. I: "probably the Milky Way."

2 Plato's Republic (Cornford trans.), p. 353.

3 Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt (1910), pp. 97ff.

 

Notes to page 234

9 We are aware that either Grotte "should" have three roots, or that Y ggdrasil should be uprooted, and that the Finns do not tell how the maelstrom came into being. All of which can be explained; we wish, however, to avoid dragging more and more material into the case. Several ages of the world have passed away, and they do not perish all in the same manner; e.g., the Finns know of the destruction of Sampo and of the felling of the huge Oak.

10 To clear up the exact range of the three worlds, it would be necessary to work out the whole history of the Babylonian "Ways of Anu, Enlil, and Ea" (cf. pp. 43If.), and how these "Ways" were adapted, changed, and defined anew by the many heirs of ancient oriental astronomy. And then we would not yet be wise to the precise whereabouts of Air, Saltwater, and other ambiguous items.

Page 235 (Notes)

11 Radloff, quoted by W. E. Roscher, Der Omphalosgedanke (1918), pp. If.

Page 241

17 P. Mus, Barabudur (1935).
18 F. Boll, Sphaera (19°3), pp. 19, 28,47, 246-51. Antiochus does not mention any of these star groups.

 

 

THE MARS MYSTERY

Graham Hancock Robert Bauval & John Grigsby

1998

Photographic caption opposite Page 278

Circumscribed tetrahedron: if a tetrahedron,the simplest of the platonic solids, is placed within a rotating sphere with one apex at the north or south pole, the other  three apexes will lie at exactly 19.5 degrees from the equator. This tetrahedral angle of 19.5 degrees occurs with unnatural frequency in the measurements of the Cydonian anomolies. Evidence of a lost mathe-matical message?

 

13 CIRCUMSCRIBED 127 55 1
11 TETRAHEDRON 128  56 2
24
-
 255 111 3
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
5 TETRA 64 19 1
6 HEDRON 64 37 1
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
4
 FIVE 42 24 6
8
 PLATONIC 90 36 9
6
 SOLIDS 78 24 6
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
5 NORTH 75 30 3
5 SOUTH 83 20 2
4 EAST 45 9 9
4 WEST 67 13 4
18
Add
 270 72 18
1+8
Reduce
 2+7+0 7+2 1+8
9
Deduce
 9 9 9

 

I

M+E

SUN 9 9 SUN

EARTH 7 7 EARTH

MOON 3 3 MOON

 

1984:SPRING

A CHOICE OF FUTURES

Arthur C. Clarke 1984

The Poetry of Space .

Page 175 

Here are the skies, the planets seven,

And all the starry train:

Content you with the mimic heaven,

And on the earth remain.

Additional Poems V

"...The planets seven? Of course, the only planets known to the ancients, were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - a mere five. The extra two were presumably the Sun and Moon, which we would no longer include - though we would add the Earth, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto to make a grand total of nine."

 

 

PLATO

THE REPUBLIC

Translated with an introduction by

Desmond Lee

1953

Page 462

APPENDIX II
THE SPINDLE OF NECESSITY

"THIS passage has been much discussed, but the following points are generally agreed:
(1) The' Spindle of Necessity' is intended, however imper-fectly, to give a picture of the working of the Universe.
(2) Plato thought that the universe was geocentric, with the fixed stars on a sphere or band at the outside, the earth at ,the centre, and the orbits of the sun, moon, and planets between earth and stars.
(3) The rims of the whorl are intended to represent these orbits, and have the following equivalences:
1. The fixed stars 

2. Saturn

3. Jupiter

4. Mars

5. Mercury

6. Venus

7. Sun

8. Moon"

 

6 SATURN 93 21 3
7 JUPITER 99 36 9
4 MARS 51 15 6
7 MERCURY 103 40 4
5 VENUS 81 18 9
3 SUN 111 3 3
4 MOON 57 21 3
36 First Total
595
154
37
3+6 Add to Reduce

5+9+5

1+5+4

3+7
9 Second Total

19

 10 10
- Reduce to Deduce

1+9

 1+0 1+0
- Third Total
10
 1 1
- Finally
1+0
 - -
9 Essence of Number

1

 1 1

 

 

"Thus, for example, we are told that 'the fourth (Mars)was reddish' and 'the eighth (Moon) was illuminated by the seventh (Sun)'.
(4) The breadth and relative motion of the rims represent the distances and relative speeds of the planets, though it is difficult to be certain about details (cf. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, p.88).
(5) The singing sirens are Plato's version of the Pythagorean doctrine of the' harmony of the spheres', which Aristotle de-scribes as follows:
'It seems to some thinkers that bodies so great must inevitably produce a sound by their movement: even bodies on the earth do so, although they are neither so great in bulk nor movng at so high a speed, and as for the sun and the moon, and the stars, so many in number and enormous in size, all moving at a tremendous speed, it is incredible that they should fail to produce a noise of surpassing loudness. Taking this as their hypothesis, and also that the speeds of the stars, judged by their distances, are in the ratios of the musical consonances, they affirm that the sound of the stars as they revolve is concordant. To meet the difficulty that none of us is aware of this sound, they account for it by saying that the sound is with us right from birth and has thus no contrasting silence to show it up; for voice and silence are perceived by / Page 463 / contrast with each other, and so all mankind is undergoing an experience like that of a coppersmith, who becomes by long habit indifferent to the din around him' (De Caela, II, 9, trans. Guthrie, Loeb edition).
In the more detailed interpretation of the passage there is much uncertainty, and the Greek itself is far from unambiguous. There are those (e.g. J. S. Morrison,1 JHS, 1955, p. 59f.; Parmenides and Er) who prefer to translate the word here rendered' through' by 'across', and to suppose that the phrase refers to a straight band of light running across the heavens. This makes it more difficult to understand what is meant by 'from above'; but in any case it is not easy to see quite where the souls are and what it is they see 'in the middle of the light' (or 'down the middle of the light').
The 'pillar' and 'rainbow' do not help much. Though the natural meaning of 'pillar' is something standing upright, it could be used to illustrate a straight band of light; the reference to the rainbow appears to be to its colour, but the rainbow is also a band of light running across the sky. We are left with the two other illustrations, the swifter and the spindle.
Morrison and Williams, Greek Oared Ships, pp. 294-8, have shown pretty conclusively what a 'swifter' (Greek hypozoma) is. It is a rope running longitudinally round a ship, from stem to stern, whose purpose was' to subject the outside skin to a constricting tension which would keep the structure from work-ing loose under the stress of navigation under oar and sail' (p. 298). There is a clear parallel with the light which 'holds the circumference together'. In addition the ends of the swifter were brought inboard at the stern where there was a device for tighten-ing them. Similarly the ends of the' bands of heaven' are brought in, though exactly where or how is not clear. But the illustration certainly seems, so far, to indicate that there is a band of light running round the heaven, whose ends are brought in and some-how fastened, and which holds the whole heaven together.
But Plato proceeds at once to the second illustration of the spindle. Fig. 1(Figure omitted) shows a spindle. Essentially it consists of shaft and weight or whorl. The function of the weight is to keep the thread spinning: the shaft is needed not only as an axis of revolu-tion but also for winding the thread when it has become too long. To hold the thread while the next length is spun there must be something to which to fasten it, the function of the hook in this / Page 464 / passage. The primary purpose of the comparison is to illustrate, from a familiar object, a system in which the heavenly bodies go round the earth in rings. The description of the whorl makes this fairly clear, and the main weakness of the comparison is that it makes no provision for the inclination of the axis of the ecliptic, in which sun, moon and planets move, to that of the fixed stars. The armillary sphere in the Timaeus (Plato: Timaeus and Critias (Penguin)) is a more satisfactory illustration. But there are further problems. Nothing is said about the position or shape of the earth. It must be at the centre of the system, with the heavenly bodies revolving round it. Once the heavenly bodies have been thought of as three dimensional, it is a fairly obvious step to think of them as spheres: if the moon is not a disc it must be a ball. And it is plausible therefore to suppose the earth to be spherical, as it undoubtedly is in the Timaeus and as it is commonly supposed to be in the Phaedo (though Mr Morrison has challenged the sup-position and holds that the earth is a hemisphere with flat surface in both Phaedo and The Republic: Phronesis IV, 1959, pp. 101-9; Classical Quarterly lxii, 1964, pp. 46 ff.). Granted a central earth of spherical or other shape there remains the problem of the spindle shaft. Does it correspond to anything in the physical universe? If the spindle of. Necessity 'hangs from the ends of the band of heaven' one would suppose that it does. It is true that the spindle is only a model; but a good model reproduces the main features of its original, and in the Timaeus there is an axis' stretched through the whole' (40 B.C.). Though this in turn may be a reflection of the more sophisticated model in that dialogue, it is none the less a not unreasonable inference that Plato thought of the universe as turning on some sort of axis.
We are left therefore with a rather unsatisfactory inconsistency between the two illustrations. The swifter suggests a band of light running round the heavens, the spindle an axis round which they pivot. If the ends of the band when brought in could form a pillar of light that was also an axis it would reconcile the two illustrations, but the evidence hardly allows one to speak with certainty. In any event there are still obscurities. If the band (or pillar) of light is a feature of the physical universe, why do we not see it? Or can it be the Milky Way, as some have suggested? Where are the souls when they see and then reach the light, whether it be band or column? There is nothing to suggest that they are ever anywhere but on the surface of the earth. The de-scription of the meadow, with the chasms leading up into heaven / Page 465 / and down into earth, beneath which the unjust soul's journey takes place, leaves no doubt that it is on the earth's surface, though at some remote point on it (like the grove of Persephone and the Elysian plain, where incidentally Rhadamanthus is, in the Odyssey). If the earth were spherical then they might well be at a point from which they could see features of the universe which we cannot. But even so, just where and how are the' ends' of the bands brought inboard (to use the nautical metaphor) and tied to the spindle? At a later point we are suddenly told, after a descrip-tion which appears to relate to the physical universe, that the spindle is on the 'lap of Necessity' (617b). But this is an incon-sistency that follows the introduction of the Fates and their traditional occupation of spinning; it is good symbolism to put the universe on the lap of Necessity, and so the inconsistency of making her sit within the system on her lap is overlooked. It is, indeed, well to remember that this passage occurs in a myth, that in his myths Plato often gives symbolic meaning precedence over precision of detail, and that there are therefore likely in the detail to be features that are strictly speaking irreconcilable.
Hilda Richardson's article The Myth of Er, C.Q. xx, 1926, p. 119, is perhaps still as good a treatment as any of the whole section (Part XI, Section 3). Further references are given in the Bibliography.

Note page 463 1. I am grateful to Mr Morrison for several discussions on this passage, in which we could never reach an agreed solution.

 

PLATO

Born: 427 BC in Athens, Greece

Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece

Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Plato.html

Plato left Athens after Socrates had been executed and travelled in Egypt, Sicily and Italy. In Egypt he learnt of a water clock and later introduced it into Greece. In Italy he learned of the work of Pythagoras and came to appreciate the value of mathematics. This was an event of great importance since from the ideas Plato gained from the disciples of Pythagoras, he formed his idea [6]:-

... that the reality which scientific thought is seeking must be expressible in mathematical terms, mathematics being the most precise and definite kind of thinking of which we are capable. The significance of this idea for the development of science from the first beginnings to the present day has been immense.

 

Plato returned to Athens and founded his Academy in Athens, in about 387 BC. It was on land which had belonged to a man called Academos, and this is where the name "Academy" came from. The Academy was an institution devoted to research and instruction in philosophy and the sciences, and Plato presided over it from 387 BC until his death in 347 BC. .

Plato's Academy flourished until 529 AD when it was closed down by the Christian Emperor Justinian who claimed it was a pagan establishment. Having survived for 900 years it is the longest surviving university known

 

7 SPHERES 90 36 9
4 ORBS 54 18 9
7 BUBBLES 63 18 9
5 ROUND 72 27 9
4 BALL 27 9 9
4 HOOP 54 27 9
3 SUN 54 9 9
7 JUPITER 99 36 9
5 WORLD 72 27 9
11 SAGITTARIUS 144 45 9
4 GAIA 18 9 9
3 TAO 36 9 9
4 REAL 36 18 9
7 REALITY 90 36 9
1 I 9 9 9
2 ME 18 9 9
3 IVE 36 18 9
3 EGO 27 18 9
10 CONSCIENCE 90 45 9
6 DIVINE 63 36 9
7 THOUGHT 99 36 9
6 SORROW 108 36 9
4 LOVE 54 18 9
9 FIFTYFOUR 126 54 9
12
 HIEROGLYPHIC 135 81 9
8
 GLYPHICS 99 45 9

 

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Page 465 / 466

They talked of "humanity," of nobility - but it was / the spirit alone that distinguished man,, as a creature largely divorced from nature, largely opposed to her in feeling, from all other forms of organic life. In man's spirit, then, resided his true nobility and his merit - in his state of disease, as it were; in a word, the more ailing he was, by so much was he the more man. The genius of disease was more human than the genius of health. How, then, could one who posed as the. friend of man shut his eyes to these fundamental truths concernIng man's humanIty? Herr Settembrini had progress ever on his lips: was he aware that all progress, in so far as there was such a thing, was due to illness, and to illness alone? In other words, to genius, which was the same thing? Had not the normal, since time was, lived on the achievements of the abnormal? Men consciously and voluntarily descended into disease and madness, in search of knowledge which, acquired by fanaticism, would lead back to health; after the possession and use of it had ceased to be conditioned by that heroic and abnormal act of sacrifice. That was the true death on the cross, the true Atone-ment."

THE

TRUE

AT ONE MENT MENTAL AT ONE MENT

 

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Page 3

CHAPTER ONE
Arrival


"AN UNASSUMING young man was travelling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks: visit.
From Hamburg to Davos is a long journey - too long, indeed, for so brief a stay. It crosses all sorts of country; goes up hill and down dale, descends from the plateau of Southern Germany to the shore of Lake Constance, over its bounding waves and on across marshes once thought to be bottomless

At this point the route, which has been.so far over trunk-lines, gets cut up. There are stops and formalities. At Rorschach, in Swiss territory, you take train again, but only as far as Landquart, a small Alpine station, where you have to change. Here, after a long and windy wait in a spot devoid of charm, you mount a nar-row-gauge train; and as the small but very powerful engine gets under way, there begins the thrilling part of the journey, a steep and steady climb that seems never to come to an end. For the sta-tion of Landquart lies at a relatively low altitude, but now the wild and rocky route pushes grimly onward into the Alps themselves.
Hans Castorp -such was the young man's name - sat alone in his little grey-upholstered. compartment with his alligator-skin hand-bag, a present from his uncle and guardian, Consul Tienappel - let us get the introductions over with at once - his travelling- rug, and his winter overcoat swinging on its hook. The window was down, the afternoon grew cool, and he, a tender product of the sheltered life, had turned up the collar of his fashionably cut, silk-lined summer overcoat. Near him on the seat lay a paper-bound volume entitled Ocean Steamships; earlier in the journey he had studied it off and on, but now it lay neglected, and the breath of the panting engine, streaming in, defiled its cover with particles of soot.
Two days' travel separated the youth - he was still too young to have thrust his roots down firmly into life from his own / Page 4 / world, from all that he thought of as his own duties, interests, cares and prospects; far more than he had dreamed it would when he sat in the carriage on the way to the station. Space, rolling and re-volving between him and his native heath, possessed and wielded the powers we generally ascribe to time. From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a way even more striking. Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly it does so more quickly.
Such was the experience of young Hans Castorp. He had not meant to take the journey seriously or commit himself deeply to it; but to get it over quickly, .since it had to be made, to return as he had gone, and to take up his life at the pomt where, for the mo-ment, he had had to lay it down. Only yesterday he had been en-compassed in the wonted circle of his thoughts, and entirely taken up by two matters: the examination he had just passed, and his approaching entrance into the firm of Tunder and Wilms, ship-builders, smelters; and machinists. With as much impatience as lay in his temperament to feel, he had discounted the next three weeks; but now it began to seem as though present circumstances required his entire attention, that it would not be at all the thing to take them too lightly.
This being carried upward into regions where he had never be-fore drawn breath, and where he knew that unusual living condi-tions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty - it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern. Home and regular livmg lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was going to fare. Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in be-tween. He wished he were at the end of his journey; for once there he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be re-minded by this continual climbing of the incongruous situation he found himself in. He looked out. The train wound in curves along the narrow pass; he could see the front carriages and the labouring engine vomiting great masses of brown, black, and greenish smoke, that floated away.Water roared in the abysses on the right; on the / Page 5 / left, among rocks, dark fir-trees aspired toward a stone grey sky. The train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight came again it showed wide chasms, with villages nestled in their depths: Then the pass closed in again; they wound along narrow defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade-trees, also probably of song-birds; whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train rolled smoothly along the level valley floor.
It was about eight o'clock, and still daylight. A lake was visible in the distant landscape, its waters grey, its shores covered with black fir-forests that climbed the surrounding heights, thinned out, and gave place to bare, mist-wreathed rock. They stopped at a small station. Hans Castorp heard the name called out: it was "Davos-Dorf." Soon he would be at his journey's end. And sud-denly, close to him, he heard a voice, the comfortable Hamburg voice of his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, saying "Hullo, there you! Here's where you get out! "and peering through the window saw his cousin himself, standing below on the platform, in a brown ulster, bare-headed, and looking more robust than ever in his life before. He laughed and said again: "Come along out, it's all right! "
"But I'm not there yet!" said Hans Castorp, taken aback, and still seated.
Oh, yes, you are. This is the village. It is nearer to the sana-torium from here. I have a carriage. Just give us your things."
And laughing, confused, in the excitement of arrival and meet-ing, Hans Castorp reached bag, overcoat, the roll with stick and umbrella, and finally Ocean Steamships out of the window. Then he ran down the narrow corridor and sprang out upon the plat- form to greet his cousin properly. The meeting took place With-out exuberance, as between people of traditional coolness and re- serve. Strange to say, the cousins had always avoided calling each other by their first names, simply because they were afraid of / Page 6 / showing too much feeling. And, as they could not well address each other by their last names, they confined themselves, by estab-lished custom, to the thou.
A man in livery with a braided cap looked on while they shook hands, quickly, not without embarrassment, young Ziemssen in military position, heels together. Then he came forward to ask for Hans Castorp's luggage ticket; he was the concierge of the Inter-national Sanatorium Berghof, and would fetch the guest's large trunk from the other station while the gentlemen drove directly up to supper. This man limped noticeably; and so, curiously enough, the first thing Hans Castorp said to his cousin was: "Is that a war veteran? What makes him limp like that? "
"War veteran,! No fear! " said Joachiin; with some bitterness. " He's got it in his knee - or, rather, he had it - the knee-pan has been removed."
Hans Castorp bethought himself hastily.
"So that's it? " he said, and as he walked on turned his head and gave a quick glance back. "But you can't make me believe you've still got anything like that the matter with you! Why, you look as if you had just come from manoeuvres! " And he looked sidelong at his cousin.
Joachim was taller and broader than he, a picture of' youthful vigour, and made for a uniform. He was of the very dark type which his blond-peopled country not seldom produces, and his ulready nut-brown skin was tanned almost to bronze. With his large, black eyes and small, dark moustache over the full, well-shaped mouth, he would have been distinctly handsome if his ears had not stood out. Up to a certain period they had been his only trouble in life. Now, however, he had others.
Hans Castorp went on; "You're coming back down with me, aren't you? I see no reason why not."
"Back down with you? " asked his cousin, and turned his large eyes full upon him. They had always been gentle, but in these five
months they had taken on a tired, almost sad expression.

"When?

Why, in three weeks"
"Oh, yes, you are already on the way back home in your thoughts;" answered Joachim. "Wait a bit. You've only Just come. Three weeks are nothing at all, to us up here.- they look like a lot of time to you, because you are only up here on a visit, and three weeks is all you have. Get acclimatized first - it isn't so easy, you'll see. And the climate isn't the only queer thing about us. You're going to see some things you've never dreamed of - just / Page 7 / wait. About me - it isn't such smooth sailing as you think, you with your' going home in three weeks.' That's the class of ideas you have down below. Yes, I am brown, I know, but it is mostly snow-burning. It doesn't mean much, as Behrens always says; he told me at the last regular examination it would take another half year, pretty certainly."
"Half a year? Are you crazy? " shouted Hans Castorp. They had climbed into the yellow cabriolet that stood in the stone-paved square in front of the shed-like station, and as the pair of brown horses started up, he flounced indignantly on the hard cushions. "Half a year! You've been up here half a year already! Who's got so much time to spend -'
"Oh, time:-!' said Joachim, and nodded repeatedly, straight In front of him, payIng his cousin's honest indignation no heed. "They make pretty free with a human being's idea of time, up here. You wouldn't believe it. Three weeks are just like a day to them. You'll learn all about it," he said, and added: "One's ideas get changed."
Hans Castorp regarded him earnestly as they drove. " But seems to me you've made a splendid recovery," he said, shaking his head.
"You really think so, don't you? "answered Joachim;" I think I have too." He drew himself up straighter against the cushions, but immediately relaxed again. ' Yes, I am better," he explained, " but I am not cured yet. In the left lobe, where there were rales, it only sounds harsh now, and that is not so bad; but lower down it is still very harsh, and there are rhonchi in the second intercostal space."
" How learned you've got," said Hans Castorp-
"Fine sort of learning! God knows I wish I'd had it sweated out of my system in the service," responded Joachim. " But I still have sputum," he said, with a shoulder-shrug that was somehow indif-ferent and vehement both at once, and became him but ill. He half pulled out and showed to his cousin something he carried in the side pocket of his overcoat, next to Hans Castorp. It was a flat, curving bome of bluish glass, with a metal cap.
"Most of us up here carry it," he said, shoving it back. " It even has a nickname; they make quite a joke of it. You are looking at the landscape? "
Hans Castorp was. " Magnificent! "he said.
"Think so? 'asked Joachim.
They had driven for a space straight up the axis. of the valley along an irregularly built street that followed the line of the rail-way; then, turning to the left, they crossed the narrow tracks and / Page 8 / a watercourse, and now trotted up a high-road that mounted gently toward the wooded slopes. Before them rose a low, pro-jecting, meadow-like plateau, on which, facing south-west, stood a long building, with a cupola and so many balconies that from a distance it looked porous, like a sponge. In this building lights were beginning to show. It was rapidly growing dusk. The faint rose-colour that had briefly enlivened the overcast heavens was faded now, and there reigned the colourless, soulless, melancholy transi-tion-period that comes just before the onset of night. The popu-lous valley, extended and rather winding, now began to show lights everywhere, not only in the middle, but here and there on the slopes at either hand, particularly on the projecting right side, upon which buildings mounted in terrace formation. Paths ran up the sloping meadows to the left and lost themselves in the vague blackness of the pine forest. Behind them, where the valley nar-rowed to its entrance, the more distant ranges showed a cold. slaty blue. A wind had sprung up, and made perceptible the chill of evenmg.
"No, to speak frankly, I don't find it so overpowering," said Hans Castorp. "Where are the glaciers, and the snow peaks and the gigantic heights you hear about? These things aren't very high, it seems to me."
" Oh, yes, they are," answered Joachim. " You can see: the tree line almost everywhere, it is very sharply defined; the fir-trees leave
off, and after that there are absolutely nothing but bare rock. And up there to the right of the Schwarzhorn, that tooth-shaped peak, there is a glacier - can't you see the blue? It is not very large, but it is a glacier right enough, the Skaletta. Piz Michel and Tinzen- horn, in the notch - you can't see. them from here - have snow all the year round." .
"Eternal snow," said Hans Castorp.
"Eternal snow,if you like. Yes, that's all very high. But we are frightfully high ourselves: sixteen hundred metres above sea-level. That's why the peaks don't seem any higher."
"Yes, what a climb that was! I was scared to death, I can tell you. Sixteen hundred metres - that is over five thousand feet, as I reckon it. I've never been so high up in my life." And Hans Ca-storp took in a deep, experimental breath of the strange air. It was fresh, and that was all. It had no perfume, no content, no humidity; it breathed in easily; and held for him no associations.

" Wonderful air," he remarked, politely.
Yes, the atmosphere is famous. But the place doesn't look its best to-night. Sometimes it makes a much better impression-es / Page 9 / pecially when there is snow. But you can get sick of looking at it. All of us up here are frightfully fed up, you can imagine," said Joachim, and twisted his mouth into an expression of disgust that was as unlike him as the shoulder-shrug. It looked irritable, dis- proportionate.
You have such a queer way of talking." said Hans Castorp. Have I? " said Joachim, concerned, and turned to look at his
cousin.
"Oh, no, of course I don't mean you really have - I suppose it just seemed so to me for the moment," Hans Castorp hastened to assure him. It was the expression all of us up here, ' which Joa-chim had used several tlmes, that had somehow-struck him as strange and given him an uneasy feeling.
Our sanatorium is higher up than the village, as you see," went on Joachim. "Fifty metres higher. In the prospectus it says a hun-dred, but it is really only fifty. The highest of the sanatoriums is the Schatzalp - you can't see it from here. They have to bring their bodies down on bob-sleds in the winter, because the roads are blocked."
"Their bodies? Oh, I see. Imagine! " said Hans Castorp. And suddenly he burst out laughing, a violent, irrepressible laugh, which shook him all over and distorted his face, that was stiff with the cold wind, until it almost hurt."On bob-sleds! And you can tell it me just like that, in cold blood! You've certainly got pretty cynical in these five months."
"Not at all," answered Joachim, shrugging again. "Why not? It's all the same to them, isn't it? But maybe we do get cynical up here Behrens is a cynic himself - but he's a great old bird after all, an old corps-student. He is a brilliant operator, they say. You will like him. Krokowski is the assistant - devilishly clever article. They mention his activities specially, in the prospectus. He psy-cho-analyses the patients."
"He what? Psycho-analyses - how disgusting! " cried Hans Castorp; and now his hilarity altogether got the better of him. He could not stop. The psycho-analysis had been the finishing touch. He laughed so hard that the tears ran down his cheeks; he put up his hands to his face and rocked with laughter. Joachim laughed just as heartily - it seemed to do him good; and thus, in great good spirits, the young people climbed out of the wagon, which had slowly mounted the steep, winding drive and deposited them be..
fore the portal of the International Sanatorium Berghof."

Page 439

"Thus ended the campaign of the flat-land to recover its lost Hans Castorp"


8

 FLATLAND

70

25

7

Page 56

Satana
 

"HIS age would have been hard to say, probably between thirty and forty; for though he gave an impression of youthfulness, yet the hair on his temples was sprinkled a with silver and gone quite thin on his head. Two bald bays ran along the narrow scanty parting, and added to the height of his forehead. His clothing, loose trousers in light yellowish checks, and too long, double- breasted pilot coat, with very wide lapels, made no slightest claim to elegance; and his stand-up collar, with rounding comers, was rough on the edges from frequent washing. His black cravat showed wear, and he wore no cuffs, as Hans Castorp saw at once from the lax way the sleeve hung round the wrist. But despite all that, he knew he had a gentleman before him: the stranger easy, even charming pose and cultured expression left no doubt of that. Yet by this mingling of shabbiness and grace, by the black eyes and softly waving moustaches, Hans Castorp was irresistibly re-minded of certain foreign musicians who used to come to Ham-burg at Christmas to play in the streets before people's doors. He could see them rolling up their velvet eyes and holding out their soft hats for the coins tossed from the windows. "A hand-organ man," he thought. Thus he was not suprised at the name he heard, as Joachim rose from the bench and in some em-barrassment presented him: "My cousin Castorp, Herr Settem-brini."
Hans Castorp had got up at the same time, the traces of his burst of hilarity still on his face. But the Italian courteously bade them both not to disturb themsdves. and made them sit down / Page 57 / again, while he maintained his easy pose before them. He smiled,  standing there and looking at the cousins, in particular at Hans Castorp; a smile that was a fine, almost mocking deepening and crisping of one comer of the mouth, just at the point where the full moustache made its beautiful upward curve. It had upon the cousins a singular effect: it somehow constrained them to mental alertness and clarity; it sobered the reeling Hans Castorp in a
twinkling, and made him ashamed.
Settembrini said: "You are in good spirits - and with reason too, with excellent.reason. What a splendid morning! A blue sky,
- a smiling sun " - with an easy, adequate motion of the arm he raised a small, yellowish-skinned hand to the heavens, and sent a lively glance upward after it - " one could almost forget where one is."
He spoke without accent, only the precise enunciation be- trayed the foreigner. His lips seemed to take a certain pleasure in forming the words. It was most agreeable to hear him.
You had a pleasant journey hither, I hope? " he turned to Hans Castorp. "And do you already know your fate - I mean has the mournful ceremony of the first examination taken place? " Here, if he had really been expecting a reply he should have paused; he had put his question, and Hans Castorp prepared to answer. But he went on: Did you get off easily? One might put - " here he paused a second, and the crisping at the comer of his mouth grew crisper - "more than one interpretation upon your laughter. How many months have our Minos and Rhada-manthus knocked you down for? " The slang phrase sounded droll on his lips."Shall I guess? Six? Nine? You know we are free with the time up here - "
Hans Castorp laughed, astonished, at the same time racking his brains to remember who Minos and Rhadamanthus were. He answered: Not at all- no, really, you are under a misappre- hension, Herr Septem - " .
"Settembrini," corrected the Italian, clearly and with empha-sis, making as he spoke a mocking bow.
"Herr Settembrini - beg your pardon. No; you are mistaken. Really I am not ill. I have only come on a visit to my cousin Ziemssen for a few weeks, and shall take advantage of the oppor-tunity to get a good rest - "
"Zounds! You don't say? Then you are not one of us? You are well, you are but a guest here, like Odysseus in the kingdom of the shades? You are bold indeed, thus to descend into these depths peopled by the vacant and idle dead - "

Page 58

"Descend, Herr Settembrini? I protest. Here I have climbed up some five thousand feet to get here - "
That was only seeming. Upon my honour, it was an illusion," the Italian said, with a decisive wave of the hand. We are sunk enough here, aren't we, Lieutenant? " he said to Joachim, who, no little gratified at this method of address, sought to hide his satisfaction, and answered reflectively:
I suppose we do get rather one-sided. But we can pull our-selves together, afterwards, if we try."
"At least, you can, I'm sure - you are an upright man," Set-tembrini said. ,. Yes, yes, yes," he said, repeating the word three times, with a sharp s, turning to Hans Castorp again as he spoke, and then, in the same measured way, clucking three times with his tongue against his palate. ., I see, I see, I see," he said again, giving the s the same sharp sound as before. He looked the new- comer so steadfastly in the face that his eyes grew fixed in a stare; then, becoming lively again, he went on: "So you come up quite of your own free will to us sunken ones, and mean to bestow upon us the pleasure of your company for some little while? That is delightful. And what term had you thought of putting to your stay? I don't mean precisely. I am merely inter-ested to know what the length of a man's sojourn would be when it is himself and not Rhadamanthus who prescribes the limit."
"Three weeks," Hans Castorp said, rather pridefully, as he saw himself the object of envy.
O dio! Three weeks! Do you hear, Lieutenant? Does it not sound to you impertinent to hear a person say 'I am stopping for three weeks and then I am going away again ? We up here are not acquainted with such an unit of time as the week - if I may be permitted to instruct you, my dear sir. Our smallest unit is the month. We reckon in the grand style - that is a privilege we shadows have. We possess other such; they are all of the same quality. May I ask what profession you practise down below? Or, more probably, for what profession are you preparing your-self? You see we set no bounds to our thirst for information-curiosity is another of the prescriptive rights of shadows." "Pray don't mention it,' said Hans Castorp. And told him.
" A ship-builder! Magnificent! " cried Settembrini. "I assure you, I find that magnificent - though my own talents lie in quite another direction."
"Herr Settembrini is a literary man," Joachim explained, rather self-consciously. He wrote the obituary notices of Car-ducci for the German papers-Carducci, you know." He got / Page 59 / more self-conscious still, for his cousin looked at him in amaze-ment, as though to say: "Carducci? What do you know about him? Not any more than I do, I'll wager."
" Yes," the Italian said, nodding. "I had the honour of telling your countrymen the story of our great poet and free-thinker, when his life had drawn to a close. I knew him, I can count myself among his pupils. I sat at his feet in Bologna. I may thank him for what culture I can call my own- and for what joyousness of life as well. But we were speaking of you. A ship-builder! Do you know you have sensibly risen in my estimation? You represent now, in my eyes, the world of labour and practi-cal genius."
"Herr Settembrini, I am only a student as yet, I am just beginning." .
" Certainly. It is the beginning that is hard. But all work is hard, isn't it, that deserves the name? "
"That's true enough, God knows - or the Devil does," Hans Castorp said, and the words came from his heart.
Settembrini's eyebrows went up.
" Oh," he said, " so you call on the Devil to witness that senti- ment - the Devil incarnate, Satan himself? Did you know that my great master wrote a hymn to him? "
"I beg your pardon," Hans Castorp said, "a hymn to the Devil? "
"The very Devil himself, and no other. It is sometimes sung, in my native land, on festal occasions. 'O salute, O Santana, O
ribellione, Oforza vindice della ragione! . . .' It is a magnificent
song. But it was hardly Carducci's Devil you had in mind when you spoke; for he is on the very best of terms with hard work; whereas yours, who is afraid of work and hates it like poison, is probably the same of whom we are told that we may not hold out even the little finger to him."
All this was making the very oddest impression on our good Hans Castorp. He knew no Italian, and the rest of it sounded no less uncomfortable, and reminded him of Sunday sermons, though delivered quite casually, in a light, even jesting tone. He looked
at his cousin, who kept his eyes cast down; then he said: ' You take my words far two literally, Herr Settembrini. When I spoke of the Devil, It was Just a manner of speaking, I assure you.'
".Somebody must have some esprit," Settembrini said, looking straight ahead, with a melancholy air. Then recovering himself, he skilfully got back to their former subject, and went on blithely: " At all events, I am probably right in concluding from / Page 60 / your words that the calling you have embraced is as strenuous as It is honourable. As for myself, I am a humanist, a homo humanus. I have no mechanical ingenuity however sincere my respect for it. But I can well understand that the theory of your craft re-quires a clear and keen mind, and its practice not less than the entire man. Am I right? " ,
"You certainly are, I can go all the way with you there," Hans Castorp answered. Unconsciously he made an effort to reply with eloquence. " The demands made to-day on a man in my profession are simply enormous. It is better not to have too clear an idea of their magnitude, it might take away one's courage: no, it's no joke. And if one isn't the strongest in the world - It is true that I am here only on a visit; but I am not very robust, and I cannot with truth assert that my work agrees with me so wonderfully well. It would be a great deal truer to say that it rather takes It out of me. I only feel really fit when I am doing nothing at all."
" As now, for example? "
"Now? Oh, now I am so new up here, I am still rather bewildered - you can imagine."
" Ah - bewildered."
" Yes, and I did not sleep so very well, and the early breakfast was really too solid. - I am accustomed to a fair breakfast, but
this was a little too rich for my blood, as the saying goes. In short, I feel a sense of oppression - and for some reason or other, my cigar this morning hasn't the right taste, something that as good as never happens to me, or only when I am seriously upset- and to-day it is like leather. I had to throw it away, there was no use forcing it. Are you a smoker, may: I ask? No? Then you cannot imagine the annoyance and disappointment it is lor anyone like me, who have smoked from my youth up, and taken such pleasure in it."
"I am without experience in the field," Settembrini answered, "but I find that my lack of it is in no poor company. So many fine, self-denying spirits have refrained. Carducci had no use for the practice. But you will find our Rhadamanthus a kindred spirit.
He is a devotee of your vice." "Vice, Herr Settembrini? "
"Why not? One must call things by their right names; life is enriched and ennobled thereby. I too have my vices..."

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Excursus on the Sense of Time

Page 102
"WHEN they came upstairs after the meal, the parcel containing the blankets lay on a chair in Hans Castorp's room; and that after. noon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced Joachim instructed him in the art of wrapping himself up, as practised in the sanatorium; they all did it, and each new-comer had to learn. First the covers were spread, one after the other; over the chair, so that a sizable piece hung down at the foot. Then you sat down and began to put the inner one about you: first lengthwise, on both sides, up to the shoulders, and then from the feet up, stooping over as you sat and grasping the folded-over end, first from one side and then from the other, taking care to fit it neatly into the length, in order to ensure the greatest pos-sible smoothness and evenness. Then you did precisely the same thing with the outer blanket - it was somewhat more difficult to handle, and our neophyte groaned not a little as he stooped and stretched out his arrns to practise the grips his cousin,showed .him. Only a few old hands, Joachim said, could wield both blankets at once, flinging them into position with three self assured motions. This was a rare and enviable facility, to which belonged not only long years of practice, but a certain knack as well. Hans Castorp had to laugh at this, lying back in his chair with aching muscles; Joachim did not at once see anything funny in what he had said, and looked at him dubiously, but finally laughed too. "

Page 103

"There," he said, when Hans Castorp lay at last limbless and cylindrical in his chair, with the yielding roll at the back of his neck, quite worn out with all these gymnastic exercises; "there, nothing can touch you now, not even if we were to have ten below zero." He withdrew behind the partition, to do himself up in his turn.
That about the ten below zero Hans Castorp doubted; he was even now distinctly cold. He shivered repeatealy as he lay look-ing out through the wooden arch at the reeking, dripping damp outside, which seemed on the point of passing over into snow. It was strange that with all that humidity his cheeks still burned with a dry heat, as though he were sitting in an over-heated room. He felt absurdly tired from the practice of putting on his rugs; actually, as he held up Ocean Steamships to read it, the book shook
in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not - and totally anaemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were out-weighed by the great comfort of his position, the unanalysable, the almost mysterious properties of his. reclining-chair, which he had applauded even on his first experence of it, and which re-asserted themselves in the happiest way whenever he resorted to it anew. Whether due to the character of the upholstering, the inclination of the chair-back, the exactly proper width and height of the arms, or only to the appropriate consistency of the neck roll, the result was that no more comfortable provision for re-laxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this ex-cellent chair. The heart of Hans Castorp rejoiced in the blessed fact that two vacant and securely tranquil hours lay before him, dedicated by the rules of the house to the principal cure of the day; he felt it - though himself but a guest up here - to be a most suitable arrangement. For he was by nature and temperament passive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know to see time spacious before him, and not to have the sense of its passing banished, wiped out or eaten up by prosaic activity. At four o'clock he partook of afternoon tea, with cake and jam. Followed a little movement in the open air, then rest again, then supper - which, like all the other mea times, afforded a certain stimulus for eye and brain, and a certain sense of strain; after that a peep into one or other of the optical toys, the stereo-scope, the kaleidoscope, the cinematograph. It might .be still too much to say that Hans Castorp had grown used to the life up here; but at least he did have the daily routine at his fingers' ends.
There is, after all, something peculiar about the process of habit- / Page104 / uating oneself in a new place, the often laborious fitting in and getting used, which one undertakes for its own sake, and of set purpose to break it all off as soon as it is complete, or not long thereafter, and to return to one's former state. It is an interval, an interlude, inserted, with the object of recreation, into the tenor of life's main concerns; its purpose the relief of the organism, which is perpetually busy at its task of self-renewal, and which was in danger, almost in process, of being vitiated, slowed down, relaxed, by the bald, unjointed monotony of its daily course. But what then is the cause of this relaxation, this slowing-down that takes place when one does the same thing for too long at a time? It is not so much physical or mental fatigue or exhaustion, for if that were the case, then complete rest would be the best restorative. It is rather something psychical; it means that the perception of time tends, through periods of unbroken uniformity, to fall away; the percep-tion of time, so closely bound up with the consciousness of life that the one may not be weakened without the other suffering a sensible impairment. Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interesting-ness and novelty of the time-content are what "make the time pass "; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. This is only true with reservations. Vacuity, monotony, have, indeed, the property of lingering out the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large time-units, to the point of reducing them to nothing at all. And conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the hour and the day; yet it will lend to the general passage of time a weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventful years to flow far more slowly than those poor, bare, empty ones over which the wind passes and they are gone. Thus what we call te-dium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uni-formity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares. Habitu-ation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which ex-plains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon Its course. We are aware that the intertercala-tion of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, retard, and rejuve-nate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is / Page 105 / the purpose of our changes of air and scene, of all our sojourns at cures and bathing resorts; it is the secret of the healing power of change and incident. Our first days in a new place, time has a youthful, that is to say, a broad and sweeping, flow, persisting for some six or eight days. Then, as one " gets used to the place," a gradual shrinkage makes itself felt. He who clings or, better ex- pressed, wishes to cling to life, will shudder to see how the days grow light and lighter, how they scurry by like dead leaves, until the last week, of some four, perhaps, is uncannily fugitive and fleet. On the other hand, the quickening of the sense of time will flow out beyond the interval and reassert itself after the return to ordinary existence: the first days at home after the holiday will be lived with a broader flow, freshly and youthfully- but only the first few, for one adjusts oneself more quickly to the rule than to the exception; and if the sense of time be already weakened by age, or - and this is a sign of low vitality - it was never very well developed, one drowses quickly back into the old life, and after four-and-twenty hours it is as though one had never been away, and the journey had been but a watch in the night.
We have introduced these remarks here only because our young Hans Castorp had something like them in mind when, a few days later, he said to his cousin, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes: " I shall never cease to find it strange that the time seems to go so slowly in a new place. I mean - of course it isn't a question of my I being bored; on the contrary, I might say that I am royally enter-tained. But when I look back - in retrospect, that is, you under-stand - it seems to me I've been up here goodness only knows how long; it seems an eternity back to the time when I arrived, and did not quite understand that I was there, and you said: Just get out  here - don't you remember? - That has nothing whatever to do with reason, or with the ordinary ways of measuring time; it is purely a matter of feeling. Certainly it would be nonsense for me to say: 'I feel I have been up here two months' - it would be silly. All I can say is "very long.' "
"Yes," Joachim answered, thermometer in mouth, I profit by it too; while you are here, I can sort of hang on by you, as it were." Hans Castorp laughed, to hear his cousin speak thus, quite simply, without explanation."

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Page 145

MOUNTING MISGIVINGS 

"He had never seen Frau Chauchat's face so close, so clear in all its details. He could have counted the tiny / Page 146 / hairs that stood up from the braid she wore wreathed round her head - they were reddish-blond, with a metallic sheen. No more than a hands-breadth or so of space had been between his face and hers, whose outline and features, peculiar though they were, had been familiar to him as long as he could remember, and spoke to his very soul as nothing else could in all the world. It was an un-usual face, and full of character (for only the unusual seems to us to have character); its mystery and strangeness spoke of the un- known north, and it teased the curiosity because its proportions and characteristics were somehow not very easy to determine. Its keynote, probably, was the high, bony structure of the prominent cheek-bones; they seemed to compress the eyes - which were un-usually far apart and unusually level with the face - and squeeze them into a slightly oblique position; while at the same time they appeared responsible for the soft concavity of the cheek, and this, in turn, to result in the full curve of the slightly pouting lips. Then there were the eyes themselves: the narrow" Kirghiz" eyes, whose shape was yet to Hans Castorp a simple enchantment and whose colour was the grey-blue or blue-grey of distant moun-tains; they had the trick of sidewise, unseeing glance, which could sometimes melt them into the very hue of mystery and darkness - these eyes of Clavdia, which had gazed so forbiddingly into his very face, and which so awfully resembled Pribislav Hippe's in shape, expression, and colour that they fairly frightened him. Resembled was not the word: they were the same eyes. The breadth, too, of the upper part of the face, the flattened nose, everything, even to the flush in the white skin, the healthy colour of the cheek - which in Frau Chauchat's case, as in so many others, merely counterfeited health and was a superficial,effect of the open-air cure - everything was precisely Pribislav, and no differently would he have looked at Hans Castorp were they to meet again as of old in the school court-yard.
It had been staggering in the extreme. Hans Castorp thrilled at the encounter, yet experienced a mounting uneasiness like that he felt when he realized how narrow was the proximity that en-closed him and the fair Russian. That the long-forgotten Pribislav Hippe should appear to him in the guise of Frau Chauchat and look at him with those " Kirghiz " eyes - this was to be immured, not with opportunity, but with the inevitable, the unescapable, to such an extent as to fill him with conflicting emotions. It was a situation rich in hope, yet heavy with dread - it gave our young friend a feeling of helplessness, and set motion a vague instinct to cast about, to grope and feel for help or counsel. One after an /  Page 147 / other he mentally summoned up various people, the thought of whom might serve him as some sort of mental support.
There was the good, the upright Joachim, firm as a rock - yet whose eyes in these past months had come to hold such a tragic shadow, and who had never used to shrug his shoulders, as he did so often now. Joachim, with the "Blue Peter" in his pocket, as Frau Stohr called the receptacle. When Hans Castorp thought of her hard, crabbed face it made him shiver. Yes, there was Joa-chim - who kept constantly at Hofrat Behrens to let him get away and go down to the longed-for service in the " plain " - the " flat. land," as the healthy, normal world was called up here, with a faint yet perceptible nuance of contempt. Joachim served the cure single-mindedly, to the end that he might arrive sooner at his goal and save some of the time which "those up here" so wantonly flung away; served it unquestioningly for the sake of speedy recovery - but also, Hans Castorp detected, for the sake of the cure itself, which, after all, was a service, like another; and was not duty duty, wherever performed? Joachim invariably went upstairs after only a quarter-hour in the drawing-rooms; and this mlitary precision of his was a prop to the civilian laxity of his cousin, who would otherwise be likely to loiter unprofitably below, with his eye on the company in the small salon. But Hans Castorp was con-vinced there was another and private reason why Joachim with-drew so early; he had known it since the time he saw his cousin's face take on the mottled pallor, and his mouth assume the pathetic twist. He perfectly understood. For Marusja was almost always there in the evening -laughter-loving Marusja, with the little ruby on her charming hand, the handkerchief with the orange
scent, and the swelling bosom, tainted within - Hans Castorp com-prehended that it was her presence which drove Joachim away, precisely because it so strongly, so fearfully drew him toward her.
Was Joachim too "immured" - and even worse off than him-self, in that he had five times a day to sit at the same table with Marusja and her orange-scented handkerchief? However that might be, it was clear that Joachim was preoccupied with his own troubles; the thought of him could afford his cousin no mental support. That he took refuge in daily flight was a credit to him; .but that he had to flee was anything but reassuring to Hans Ca-storp, who even began to feel that Joachim's good example of faithful service of the cure and the initiation which he owed to his cousin's experience might have also their bad side.
Hans Castorp had not been up here three weeks. But it seemed 'longer; and the daily routine which Joachim so piously observed /Page 148 / had begun to take on, in his eyes, a character of sanctity. When from the point of view of " those up here," he considered life lived down in the flat-land, it seemed somehow queer and un-natural. He had grown skilled in the handling of his rugs and the art of making a proper bundle, a sort of mummy, of himself, when lying on his balcony on cold days. He was almost as skilful as Joa-chim - and yet, down below, there was no soul who knew aught of such an art or the practice of it! How strange, he thought; yet at the same moment wondered at himself for finding it strange- and there surged up again that uneasy sensation of groping for support.
He thought of Hofrat Behrens and his professional advice, be-stowed " sine pecunia," that he should, while he was up here, or his life like the other patients, even to the taking of his temper-ature. He thought of Settembrini, and of how he had laughed .that same advice, and quoted something out of The Magic Flute. Did thinking of either of these two afford him any moral support Hofrat Behrens was a white-haired man, old enough to be Hans Castorp's father. He was the head of the establishment, the high authority And it was of fatherly authority that the young now felt an uneasy need. But no, it would not do: he could not think with childlike confidingness of the Hofrat. The physician had buried his wife up here, and been brought so low by grief. almost to lose his mind; then he had stopped on, to be near her grave and because he himself was somewhat infected. Was he sound again? Was he single-mindedly bent on making his patients whole, so they could go back to service in the world below? His cheeks had a purple hue, he looked fevered. That might be only the effect of the air up here; Hans Castorp, without fever, so far as he could judge without a thermometer, felt the same dry heat in his face, day in, day out. Of course, when one heard the Hofrat talk, one might easily conclude he had fever. There was some thing not quite right about it; it all sounded very jovial and lively but on the whole forced, particularly when one thought of purple cheeks and the watery eyes, which seemed to be still weeping for his wife. Hans Castorp recalled what Settembrini had about the Hofrat's vices and chronic depression - that might have been malicious; it might have been sheer windiness. But he did find it sustained or fortified him to think of Hofrat Behrens.
Then there was Settembrini himself, of course - the chronic oppositionist, the windbag, the "homo humanus," as he styled himself. Hans Castorp thought him well over, with his gift of the gab, his florid harangue on the combination of dullness and dis / Page 149 / and how he, Hans Castorp, had been taken to task for calling a "dilemma for the human intelligence." What about him?
would the thought of him be anyway efficacious? Hans Castorp recalled how several times, in the extraordinarily vivid dreams visited his sleep in this place, he had taken umbrage at the dry subtle smile curling the Italian's lip beneath the flowing mous-e; how he had railed at him for a hand-organ man, and tried to shove him away because he was a disturbing influence. But that in his dreams - the waking Hans Castorp was no such matter, but a much less untrammelled person; not disinclined, either, on the whole, to try out the influence upon himself of this novel type, with its critical animus and acumen, despite the fact that he found the Italian, both carping and garrulous. After all, Settembrini had called himself a pedagogue; obviously he was anxious to exercise influence; and Hans Castorp, for his part, fairly yearned to be influenced-though of course, not to an extent which should cause him to pack his trunk and leave before his time, as Settembrini had in all seriousness proposed.
" Placet experiri," he thought to himself; wIth a smile. So much Latin he had, without calling himself a homo humanus. The up-shot was that he kept his eye on Settembrini, listened keenly and critically to what he had to say when they met on their prescribed walks to the bench on the mountam-slde, or down to the Platz, or wherever and whenever opportunity offered. Other occasions
there were, too: for instance, at the end of a meal Settembrini would rise from table before anyone else and saunter across among the seven tables, in his check trousers, a toothpick between his lips to where the cousins sat. He did this in defiance of law and custom, standing there in a graceful attitude, with his legs crossed, talking and gesticulating with the toothpick. Or he would draw up a chair and sit down at the corner of the table, between Hans Castorp and the schoolmistress, or between Hans Castorp and Miss Robinson, and look on while they ate their pudding. which he seemed to have forgone.
" May I beg for admission into this charmed circle? " he would say, shaking hands with the cousins, and comprehending the rest
 of the table in a sweeping bow. "My brewer over there - not to mention the despairing gaze of the breweress! - But, really, this Herr Magnus! Just now he has been delivering a discourse on folk.psychology. Shall I tell you what he said? . The Fatherland, it is true, is one enormous barracks. But all the same it's got a lot of solid capacity, it's genuine. I wouldn't change it for the fine manners of the rest of them. What good are fine manners to me if / Page 150 /  I'm cheated right and left? ' And more of the same kind. I am at the: , end of my patience. And opposite me I have a poor creature, with churchyard roses blooming in her cheeks, an old maid from Sieben-burgen, who never stops talking about her brother-in-law, a man we none of us either know or wish to know. I could stand it no longer, I shook their dust from my feet, I bolted."
"You raised your flag and took to your heels," Frau Stohr stated.
" Pre - cisely," shouted Settembrini. "I fled with my flag. All, what an apt phrase! I see I have come to the right place; nobody else here knows how to coin phrases like that. - May I be per- mitted to inquire after the state of your health, Frau Stohr?
It was frightful to see Frau Stohr preen herself.
" Good land! "she said. " It is always the same, you know your-self: two steps forward and three back. When you have been sit-ting here five months, along comes the old man and tucks on an-other six. It is like the torment of Tantalus: you shove and shove, and think you are getting to the top - "
   " Ah, how deligntful of you, to give poor old Tantalus a new job, and let him roll the stone uphill for a change! I call that true
 benevolence. - But what are these mysterious reports I have been hearing of you, Frau Stohr? There are tales going about - tales about doubles, astral bodies, and the like. Up to now I have lent them no credence - but this latest story puzzles me, I confess."
" I know you are poking fun at me."
" Not for an instant. I beg you to set my mind at rest about this dark side of your life; after that it will be time to jest. Last night, between half past nine and ten, I was taking a little exercise in the garden; I looked up at the row of balconies; there was your light gleaming through the dark; you were performing your cure, led by the dictates of duty and reason. ' Ah,' thought I, , there lies our charming invalid, obeying the rules of the house, for the sake of an early return to the arms of her waiting husband.'-And now what do I hear? That you were seen at that very hour at the Kurhaus, in the cinematografo " (Herr Settembrini gave the word the Italian pronunciation, with the accent on the fourth syllable) " and afterwards in the cafe, enjoying punch and kisses, and -" 
Frau Stohr wriggled and giggled into her serviette, nudged Joa-chim and the silent Dr. Blumenkohl in the ribs, winked with coy confidingness, and altogether gave a perfect exhibition of fatuous complacency. She was in the habit of leaving the light burning on her balcony and stealing off to seek distraction in the quarter be-low. Her husband, meanwhile, in Cannstadt, awaited her return.

Page 151

"She was not the only patient. who practised this duplicity.
And," went on Settembrini, that you were enjoying those kisses m the company of - whom, do you think? In the company
of Captain Miklosich from Bucharest. They say he wears a corset -but that is little to the point. I conjure you, madame, to tell me! Have you a double? Was it your earthly part which lay there alone on your balcony, while your spirit revelled below with Captain Miklosich and his kisses? " '
Frau Stohr wreathed and bridled as though she were being ticked..
" One asks oneself, had it not.be:n better the other way about, " Settembrini went on; 'you enjoying the kisses by yourself, and the rest-cure with Captain MikIosich - "
"Tehee! " tittered Frau Stohr..."

WHIMS OF MERCURIUS

Page 232

"...But to return, by way of example, to some of those strains and stresses to which Hans Castorp's state was prone. Our young man was sitting on a painted garden chair, with his back against the wall talking with his cousin, whom he had forced, against his will, to come outside; in front of him; by the balustrade, Frau Chauchat stood smoking with her table-mates. He talked for her benefit; she turned her back. His thirst for conversation was not satisfied by Joachim; he must needs make an acquaint- ance - and whose? No other than Hermine Kleefeld's. He di-rected a casual word toward that young lady, then presented, himself and his cousin by name, and drew up another chair, in order to carry on the game. Did she know, he asked, what a deuce of a fright she had put him in, at their first encounter, when she had whistled him such an inspiriting welcome? He did not mind owning that she had accomplished her purpose; he had felt as though someone had hit him on the head - she / Page 233 / might ask his cousin! He called it an outrage, frightening harm-less strangers like that, piping at them with her pneumothorax! And so forth and so on. Joachim, quite aware of the role that was being forced upon him, sat with his eyes on the ground; even Fraulein Kleefeld gradually perceIved, from Hans Ca- storp's distraught and wandering eye, that she was being made a tool of, and felt piqued accordingly. And still the poor youth went on smirking and turning phrases and modulating his voice, until at last he actually succeeded in making Frau Chauchat turn round and look him in the face. But only for a moment. Her Pribislav eyes glided rapidly down his figure, as he sat there one knee over the other, with a deliberate insouciance which had all the effect of scorn; they paused for a space upon his yellow boots, and then carelessly, with perhaps a smiile in their depths, withdrew.
It was a bitter, bitter blow. Hans Castorp. talked on awhile, feverishly. Then, inwardly smitten by the power of that gaze
upon his boots, he fell silent almost in the middle of a word, and lapsed into deep dejection. Fraulein Kleefeld, bored and of-fended, went her way. Joachim remarked, not without irrita-tion, that perhaps they might go up to the rest-cure now. And a broken spirit answered feebly that they might.
Hans Castorp anguished piteously for two days. Nothing oc-curred in that time to be balsam for his smarting wound. What had she meant by her look? Why, in the name of reason, had she visited him with her scorn? Did she regard him merely as a healthy young noodle from down in the flat-land, whose rece-ptivity was sure to be of the harmless sort; as a guileless, ordi-nary chap, who went about laughing and earning his daily bread and filling his belly full; as a model pupil in the school of life, with no comprehension of anything but the tedious ad-vantages of a respectable career? Was he, he asked himself, a mere freckless tourist and three-weeks' guest, or was he a man who had made his profession on the score of a moist spot, a member of the order, one of those up here, with a good two months to his credit-and had not Mercurius only yesterday evening climbed up to 100o? Ah, here, even here, lay me bitter drop that overflowed his cup: Mercurius had ceased to mount! The fearful depression of these days had a chilling, sobering,
relaxing effect upon Hans CastofF's system, which, to his pro-found chagrin, aisplayed itself in a reduced degree of fever, scarcely higher than normal. He had the cruel experience of / Page 234 / proving to himself that all his anguish, all his dejection, had no other result than to separate him still further from Clavdia, and from that which was significant in her existence.
The third day brought the blessed releif. It was early upon a magnificent October morning, sunny and fresh. The meadows were covered with silvery-grey webs. The sun and the waning moon both hung high up in a lucent heaven. The cousins were abroad earlier than usual, meaning to honour the fine weather, by extending their morning walk a little further than the pre-scribed limits, and continuing the forest path beyond the bench by the watercourse. Joachim's curve, too, had lately shown a gratifying decrease; he had accordingly suggested this refreshing irregularity, and Hans Castorp had not said no.
"We seem to be cured," he said, "no fever, free of infection, as good as ripe for the world again. Why shouldn't we have our fling? " They set out with walking-sticks, and hatless - for since his "profession" Hans Castorp had resigned himself to the pre-vailing custom, despite the original assertion of his own contrary- minded conventions. But they had not yet covered the initial ascent of the reddish path, had arrived only at about that point where the novice had once encountered the pneumatic crew, when they saw at some distance ahead of them, slowly mount-ing, Frau Chauchat; Frau Chauchat in white, a white sweater and white flannel skirt, even white shoes. Her red-blond hair gleamed in the morning sun. To be precise, Hans Castorp saw her; Joa-chim was made aware of her presence by an' unpleasant sensa-tion of being dragged and pulled along by his cousin, who had started up at a great pace, after having suddenly checked and almost stood still on the path. Joachim found the compulsion exceedingly annoying. His breath came shorter, he began to cough, Hans Castorp, with his eyes on his goal, and his breath-ing apparatus apparently in splendid trim, gave little heed; and Joachim, having recognized the situation for what it was, drew his brows together and kept step for step, feeling it out of the question to let his cousin go on alone.
The lovely morning made Hans Castorp sprightly. And his soul, in that period of black depression, had secretly assembled its powers. He felt a sure intuition that the moment was come to break the ban. He strode on, dragging the panting and re- luctant  Joachim in his train, and they had as good as overtaken Frau Chauchat, at the point where the path grew level and turned to the right along the wooded hillock. Here the young man slackened his pace, not to be breathless with exertion in the / Page 235 / moment of carrying out his purpose. And just beyond the bend in the path, between mountain and precipice, where the sunlight
slipped athwart the boughs of the rust-coloured firs, it actually fell out, the wonder came to pass, that Hans Castorp, on Joa-chim's left, overtook the fragile fair one, he went by her with a manly stride, and then, at the moment when he was beside her, on her .right, greeted her with a profoundly respectful! hatless inclinatlon of the head, and a murmured "good-mornmg," to which she answered by a friendly bow, that showed no trace of surprise, and a good-morning in her turn. She said it in Hans Castorp's mother-tongue, and smiled with her eyes. And all that was something different, something fundamentally and blessedly other than that look she had bent upon his boots - it was a gift of fortune, an unexampled turn in affairs, a joy well-nigh beyond comprehending, it was the blessed release.
Transported by that word, look, and smile, half blinded by his senseless joy, Hans Castorp trod oil winged feet, hurrying the misused Joachim with him, who uttered not a word, and gazed away down the steep. It had been a manoeuvre of a rather unscrupulous sort; in Joachim's eyes, as Hans Castorp well knew, it looked very like treachery. Yet it was not the same thing as borrowing a lead-pencil of a perfect stranger; one might even say it would have been ill-bred to pass by a lady with whom one had been for months under the same roof and not salute her. They had even been in conversation with her, that time in the waiting-room. That was why Joachim could say nothing; but Hans Castorp well knew another reason that made his honour-loving cousin walk on in silence with averted head, while he himself was so supremely happy, so glad all over, at the suc-cess of his manreuvre. Never a man down in the flat-land who had "given his heart" to some healthy, commonplace little goose, been successful in his suit, and experienced all the ortho-dox and anticipatory gratifications proper to his state, never could such a man be blissfuller, no, not half so blissful, as Hans Castorp
now over this momentary joy which he had snatched. - And so, after a while, he clarped his cousin heartily on the shoulder and said: "Hullo, what's the matter with you? Isn't it magnificent to-day? Let's go down to the Kurhaus afterwards, there will  probably be music. Perhaps they'll play that thing from Carmen. -
What's the matter? Has anything got under your skin? "
 "No," Joachim answered. "But you look so hot, I'm afraid your curve has gone up again."
It had. The greeting he had exchanged with Clavdia Chau- / Page 236 / chat had overcome the mortifying depression; it was at bottom the consciousness of this which had lay at the root of Hans Castorp's gratification. Yes, yes, Joachim was right, Mercurius was mounting again: when Hans Castorp consulted him, on their return from their walk, he had climbed up to 104�..."

 

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Page 236

ENCYCLOPAEDIC 


"IF certain insinuations on Herr Settembrini's part had angered Hans Castorp, the annoyance was quite unjustified, as also his feeling that the schoolmaster had been spying on him. A blind man must have seen how it stood with the youth; he himself did nothing to conceal his state, being prevented by a certain native and lofty simplicity. He inclined rather to wear his heart upon his sleeve, in contrast - if you like, favourable contrast - to the devotee from Mannheim, with his thin hair and furtive mien. But in general we would emphasize the fact that people in Hans Castorp's state regularly feel a craving for self-revelation, an impulse to confess themselves, a blind preoccupation with self, and a thirst to possess the world of their own emotions, which is the more offensive to the sober onlooker, the less sense, reason-ableness, or hope there lies in the whole affair.
How people in this state go about to betray themselves is hard to define; but it seems they can neither do nor leave undone anything which would not have that effect - doubly so, then, in a society like that of the Berghof, where, as the critically minded Herr Settembrini once expressed it, people were pos-sessed of two ideas, and only two temperature - and then again temperature. By the second temperature he meant preoccupa- tion with such questions as, for instance, with whom Frau Consul-General Wurmbrandt from Vienna consoled herself for the de-fection of Captain Miklosich - whether with the Swedish minion, or Lawyer Paravant from Dortmund, or both. Everybody knew that the bond between the lawyer and Frau Salomon from Am-sterdam, after subsisting for several months, had been broken by common consent, and that Frau Salomon had followed the lean-ings of her time of life and taken up with callow youth. The thick-lipped Ganser from Hermine Kleefeld's table was for the present under her wing; she had taken him " to have and to hold," as Frau Stohr, in legal parlance, yet not without perspicuity, had put it-and thus Lawyer Paravant was free either to quarrel or to compound with the Swede over the favours of the Frau Consul- General, as seemed to him advisable.

Page237

"These affairs then - in which, of - course, the passage along the balconies, at the end of the glass partitions, played a considerable role -were rife in Berghof society, particularly among the fevered youth. They occupied people's minds, they were a salient
feature of life up here - and even in saying thus much we are far from having precisely defined the position with regard to them. Hans Castorp, on this subject, received a singular impression: it was that a certain fundamental fact of life, which is conceded the world over to be of great importance, and is the fertile theme of constant allusion, both in jest and earnest, that this fundamental fact of life bore up here an entirely altered emphasis. It was weighty with a new weight; it had an accent, a value, and a sig-nificance which were utterly novel- and which set the fact itself in a light to make it look much more alarming than it bad been before. Tbus far, whenever we have referred to any questionable performances at the Berghof, we have done so in what may have a seemed a light and jesting tone; this without prejudice to our a real opinion as to the levity, or otherwise, of the performances, and solely for the usual obscure reasons which prompt other peo-ple to adopt the same, But as a matter of fact, that tone was far less usual in our present sphere than it is elsewhere in the world.
Hans Castorp had considered himself pretty well-informed on the subject of the above-named " fact of life " which has always and everywhere been such a favourite target for shafts of wit. And he may have been right in so considering. But now he found that the
knowledge be bad bad down in the flat-land had been most inade-quate, that be had actually been in a state of simple ignorance. For his personal emotions in the time of his stay up here - upon the nature of which we have been at some pains to enlighten the reader, and which bad been at moments so acute as to wring from the young man that cry of "Oh, my God! " - had opened his eyes, had made him capable of hearing and comprehending the wild, the overstrained, the namelessly extravagant key in which all the " affairs " up here were set. Not that, even up here, they did not make jests on the subject. But up here, far more than down below jests seemed out of place.They made one's teeth to chat-ter, an took away one's breath, they betrayed themselves too plainly for what they were, a thin and obvious disguise for a hid-den extremity - or rather, an extremity impossible to hide. Hans
Castorp well remembered the mottled pallor of Joachim's skin when, for the first and only time, he had innocently alluded to Marusja's physical charms in the light tone he might have assumed at home. He remembered the chill withdrawal of the blood from / Page 238 / his own face, the time he had drawn the curtain to shield Madame Chauchat from the sun; he knew that he had seen the same look on other faces up here, both before and since - he usually marked it in pairs, as, for example, on the faces of Frau Salomon and young Ganser, in the beginning of that relation between them so happily described by Frau Stohr. Hans Castorp, we say, re-called all this, and realized that under such circumstances it would not only have been very hard for him not to " betray himself," but that the effort would not have been worth his pains. In othe words, not alone the noble simplicity which did him honour, but also a certain sympathetic something in the air urged him not to do violence to his feelings or make any secret of his condition.
Joachim had, as we know, early spoken of the difficulty of forming acquaintances up here. In reality this arose chiefly from the fact that the cousins formed a miniature group by themselves in the society of the cure; but also because the soldierly Joachim was bent on nothing else but speedy recovery, and hence objected on principle to any closer contact or more social relations with fellow sufferers. It was a good deal this attitude of his that pre-vented his cousin from exposing his feelings more freely to th world at large. Even so, there came an evening when Joachim might behold his cousin the centre of a group composed of Her-mine Kleefeld, Ganser, Rasmussen, and the youth of the monocle and the finger-nail, making an impromptu speech on the subject of Frau Chauchat's peculiar and exotic facial structure, and be-traying himself by his unsteady voice and the excited glitter of' " eyes, until his listeners exchanged glances, nudged each other, and tittered.
This was painful for Joachim; but the object of their mirth seemed insensible to his own self-betrayal; perhaps he felt that his state, if concealed and unregarded, would never come to any proof. He might count, however, on a general understanding ot it, and as for the inevitable malice that went with it, he took that for granted. People, not only at his own table, but at neighbour-ing ones as well, enjoyed seeing him flush and pale when the glass door slammed. And even this gratified him; it was like an outward confirmation and assertion of his inner frenzy, which seemed to any him calculated to forward his affair, and encourage his vague an
senseless hopes. And so it too made him happy. It came to this: that people actually stood about in groups to observe the infatu-ated youth - after dinner, on the terrace, or on a Sunday after-noon before the porter's lodge, when the letters were distributed, for on that day they were not carried to the patients' rooms. He / Page 239 / was quite generally known to be very far gone, drunk as a lord and not caring who knew it. Frau Stonr, Fraulein Engelhart, Her-mine Kleefeld and her friend the tapir-faced girl, Herr Albin, the young man with the finger-nail, and perhaps others among the guests - would stand together and watch him, with the comers of their mouths drawn down, fairly chortling, whilst he, poor wight, his face aglow with the heat that from the first had never left him, with the glittering eye the gentleman rider's cough had kindled, would gaze, forlornly and frantically smiling, in one certain direc-tion.
It was really splendid of Herr Settembrini, under these circum-stances, to go up to Hans Castorp, engage him in conversation, and ask him how he did. But it is doubtful whether the young man knew how to value and to be grateful for such benevolence and freedom from prejudice. One Sunday afternoon the guests were thronging about the porter's lodge, sttetching out their hands for letters. Joachim was among the foremost; but Hans Castorp had stopped in the rear, angling, in the fashion we have described, for a look from Clavdia Chauchat. She was 'standing near by, among a group of her table-mates, waiting until the press about the lodge should be lightened. It was an hour when all the patients mingled, an hour rich in opportunity, and for that reason beloved of our young man. The week before, he had stood at the window so close to Madame Chauchat that she had in fact jostled him, and then, with a litde bow, had said: "Pardon." Whereat he, with a feverish presence of mind for which he thanked his stars, had re- sponded: " Pas de quoi, madame."
What a blessed dispensation of providence, he thought, that there should be a regular Sunday afternoon distribution of letters! One might say that he spent the week in waiting for the next week's delivery. And waiting means hurrying on ahead, it means regarding time and the present moment not as a boon, but an ob-struction; it means making their actual content null and void, by mentally overleaping them. Waiting, we say, is long. We might just as well - or more accurately - say it is short, since it con-sumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making any use of them as such. We may compare him who lives on expectation to a greedy man, whose digestive apparatus works through quantities of food without converting it into anything of value or nourishment to his system. We might almost go so far as to say that, as undigested food makes man no stronger, so time spent in waiting makes him no older. But in practice, of course, there is hardly such a thing as pure and unadulterated waiting."

 

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"Well, the week had been somehow devoured, and the hour for the Sunday afternoon post came round again, so like the other it seemed never to have changed. Like to that other, what thrilling opportunities it offered, what prospects lay concealed within it of coming into social relations with Frau Chauchat! Prospects that made the heart of young Hans Castorp leap and contract, yet without actually issuing in action; for against their doing so lay certain obstacles of a nature partly military, partly civil. In other words, they were in part the fruit of Joachim's presence, in part the result of Hans Castorp's own moral compunctions; but also, in part, they rested upon his sure intuition that social relations with Frau Chauchat, conventional relations, in which one made bows and addressed her as madame, and spoke French as far as possible, were not the thing at all, were neither necessary nor desirable. He stood and watched her laugh as she spoke, precisely as Pribislav Hippe had laughed as he spoke, that time In the school yard: she opened her mouth rather wide, and her slanting, grey-green eyes narrowed themselves to slits above the cheek~bones. That was, to be sure, not "beautiful "; but when one is in love, the aesthetic judgment counts for as little as the moral.
" You are expecting dispatches, Engineer? "
Only one person could talk like that - and he a disturber of Hans Castorp's peace. The young man started and turned toward Herr Settembrini, who stood there smiling the same fine, human-istic smile that had sat upon his features when he greeted the new-comer, at the bench by the watercourse. Now, as then, it mortified Hans Castorp. We know how often, in his dreams, he had sought . to drive away the organ-grinder as an element offensive to his peace; but the waking man is more moral than the sleeping, and, as before, the sight of that smile not only had a sobering effect upon Hans Castorp, but gave him a sense of gratitude, as though it
had responded to his need.

"Dispatches, Herr Settembrini? Good Lord; I'm no ambassa-dor! There might be a postcard there for one of us. My cousin is
just asking." . .
" That devil on two sticks in there has handed mine out to me already," Herr Settembrini said, and carried his hand to the side pocket of the inevitable pilot coat. "Interesting matter, I must confess, of literary and social import. It is about an encyclopaedic publication, to which a philanthropic institution has considered me worthy to contribute. Beautiful work, in short - ". Herr Set-tembrini interrupted hiimself. "But how about you? " he asked. "How are your affairs going? For: instance, how far has the / Page 241/ process of acclimatization  gone? You have .not been so long among us but that one may still put the question."
"Thanks, Herr Settembrini. It still has its difficulties it seems. It very likely will have, up to the last day.. My cousin told me when I came that many people never got used to it. But one gets used in time to not getting used."
"A complicate4 process," laughed the Italian. " An odd way of settling down in a place. But of course youth is capable of any-thing. It doesn't. get used to things, but it stikes roots."
" And after all, this in't a Siberian penal settlement."
No ah, you have a fancy for oriental simile. Natural enough. Asia surrounds us - wherever one's glance rests, a Tartar physiog- nomy." Herr Settembrini gave a discreet glance over his shoulder. " Genghis Khan," he said. " Wolves of the steppes, snow, vodka, the knout, Schlusselburg, Holy Russia. They ought to set up an altar to Pallas Athene, here in the vestibule - to ward off the evil spell. Look yonder - there is a species of Ivan Ivanovitch without a shirt-front, having a disagreement with Lawyer Paravant. Botn of them want to be in the front rank to receive their letters. I can't tell which of them is in the right, but, for my part, Lawyer Para-vant fights under the aegis of the goddess. He is an ass, of course; but at least he knows some Latin."
Hans Castorp laughed - a thing Herr Settembrini never did. One could not imagine him laughing heartily; he never got fur-ther than ,the fine, dry crisping of the comer of his mouth. He looked at the laughing young man, and presently asked: "Have you received your diapositive? "
"I have received it," Hans Castorp weightily affirmed. "Just the other day. Here it is," and he felt for it in his inner breast pocket.
"Ah, you carry it in a case. Like a certificate, as it were - a sort of membership card. Very good. let me see it." And Herr Settem- brini held it against the light, betweeh the thumb and forefinger of his left hand; a little glass plate framed in strips of black paper. The gesture was a common one up here, one often saw it. His face, with the black almond-shaped eyes, displayed a slight grimace as he did so, but whether this happened in the effort to see more clearly or for other causes, he did not permit it to appear.
"Yes, yes," he said, after a while. "Here is your identity card. Thanks very much," and he handed the plate back to Hans Castorp over his shoulder, without looking.
"Did you see the strands? " asked Hans Castorp. "And the nodules?"

Page 242 

" You know," Herr Settembrini answered him very deliber-ately, " my opinion of these productions. You know too that those spots and shadows there are very largely of physiological origin. I have seen a hundred such pictures, looking very like this of yours; the decision as to whether they offered definite proof or not was left more or less to the discretion of the person looking at them I speak as a layman, but a layman of a good many years' experience."
" Does your own look much worse than this one? "
" Rather worse. I am aware, however, that our lords and mas-ters do not base any diagnosis on the evidence of these toys alone. Then you purpose stopping the winter up here with us? "
" Yes - Lord knows - I am beginning to get used to the idea of not going back until my cousin does." .
" Getting used, that is, to not getting used - you put that very wittily. I hope you have received supplies from home - winter clothing, stout foot-gear? " .
" Everything - all in the proper order. I informed my relatives,' jand our housekeeper sent me everything by express delivery. I shall do nicely now."
" I am relieved. But hold - you need a bag, a fur sack! What are we thinking of? This late summer is treacherous - it can turn to winter inside an hour. You will be spending the coldest months up here."
" Yes, the sleeping-sack," Hans Castorp said. "That is a requi-site, I suppose. It had crossed my mind that we must be going down to the Platz one of these days soon to buy one. One never needs the thing again, of course - but even for the five or six months it is worth while."
" It is, it is. - Engineer," said Herr Settembrini in a low voice, coming close to the young man as he addressed him, " don't you know there is something frightful in the war you fling the months about? Frightful because unnatural, inconsistent with your char-acter; it is due solely to the facility of your time of life. Ah, the fatal facility of youth! It is the despair of the teacher, for its proneness to display itself in the wrong direction. I beg you, my young friend, not to adopt the phrases current up here, but to speak the language of the European culture native to you. Up here there is too much Asia. It is not without significance that the place is full of Muscovite and Mongolian types. These people - " Herr Settembrini motioned with his chin over his shoulder - "do not put yourself in tune with them, do not be infected with their ideas; rather set yourself against them, oppose your nature, your higher / Page 243 / nature against them; cling to everything which to you is by nature and tradition holy, as a son of the godlike West, a son of civiliza-tion: and, for example, time. This barbaric lavishness with time is in the Asiatic style; it may be a reason why the children of the East feel so much at home up here. Have you never remarked that when a Russian says four hours, he means what we do when we say one? It is easy to see that the recklessness of these people where time is concerned may have to do with the space concep-tions proper to people of such endless territory. Great space, much time - they say, in fact, that they are the nation that has time and can wait.We Europeans, we cannot; We have as little time as our great and finely articulated continent has space, we must be as economical of the one as of the other, we must husband them, En-gineer! Take our great cities, the centres and foci of civilization, the crucibles of thought! Just as the soil there increases in value, and space becomes more and more precious, so, in the same meas-ure, does time. Carpe diem! That was the song of a dweller in a great city. Time'is a gift of God, given to man that he might use it - use it, Engineer, to serve the advancement of humanity."
Whatever difficulty, if any, his phrases offered Herr Settem-brini's Mediterranean palate, he brought them out with a clarity, a euphony, one might almost say a plasticity; that was truly re-freshing. Hans Castorp made no answer save the short, stiff, em- barrassed bow of a pupil receiving a reprimand. What could he have said? Herr Settembrini had delivered a private lecture, almost whispered it into his ear, with his back to the rest of the people in the room; it had been so pointed, so unsocial, so little conversable in its nature, "that merely to commend its eloquence seemed lack- ing in tact. One does not tell a schoolmaster that he has expressed himself well. HansCastorp, indeed, had done so once or twice in the early days of their aquaintance, probably from an instinct to preserve the social equilibrium; but the humanist's utterances had never before reached quite such a didactic pitch. There was noth- ing for it but to pocket the admonition, feeling as embarrassed as a schoolboy at so much moral,izing. Moreover, one could see by Herr Settembrini's expression that he had not finished his train of thought. He still stood so close to Hans Castorp that the young man was constrained to bend a little backwards; and his black eyes gazed fixedly into the other's face.
"You suffer, Engineer," he went on. "You are like one dis-traught - who could help seeing it? But your attitude toward suf-fering can be a European attitude; it should not be the oriental, which in its soft abandonment inclines so readily to seek this spot./ Page 244/ 
The oriental attitude toward suffering is one of pity and a bound- less patience - that cannot, it ought not to be ours, to be yours! - Look - we were speaking of what the post had brought us, look at these! Or better, come with me, it is impossible here -let us withdraw, and I will disclose to you certain matters. Come with me! "And turning, he drew Hans Castorp away, and they entered one of the small reception-rooms, the first on the right next the vestibule, which stood empty. It was furnished as a reading- and writing-room, with oak panelling and a light, vaulted ceiling, book- cases, a centre table covered with newspapers in holders and sur- rounded with seats, and writing appurtenances arranged in the bay-windows. Herr Settembrini advanced as far as the neighbour- hood of one of the windows, Hans Castorp followed. The door remained open.
The Italian sought the baggy side pocket of his pilot coat, and drew thence with impetuous hand a bundle of papers in a large, already opened envelope. Its contents - various printed matter, and a sheet of writing - he ran through his fingers under Hans Castorp's eye.
"These papers," he said, "bear the stamp, in French, of the International League for the Organization of Progress. I have them from Lugano, where there is an office of a branch of the League. You inquire after its principles, its scope? I will define them for you, in two words. The League, for the Organization of Progress deduces from Darwinian theory the-philosophic concept that man's profoundest natural impulse is in the direction of self-realization. From this it follows that all those who seek satisfaction of this impulse must become co-labourers in the cause of human progress. Many are those who have responded to the call; there is a considerable membership, in France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and in Germany itself, I myself have the honour of having my name inscribed on the roll. A comprehensive and scientifically executed programme has been drawn up, embracing all the projects for human improvement conceivable at the moment. We are study-ing the problem of our health as a race, and the means for com-bating the degeneration which is a regrettable accompanying phenomenon of our increasing industrialization. The League envis-ages the founding of universities for the people, the resolution of the class conflict by means of all the social ameliorations which recommend themselves for the purpose, and finally the doing away with national conflicts, the abolition of war through the de-velopment of international law. You perceive that the objects toward which the League directs its efforts are ambitious and / Page 245 / broad in their scope, Several international periodicals are evidence of its activities - monthly reviews, which contain articles in three or four languages on the subject of the progressive evolution of civilized humanity. Numerous local groups have been established in the various countries; it is expected that they will exert an edify-ing and enlightening influence by means of discussion evenings and appropriate Sunday observances, Above all, the League will strive its utmost to aid with the material at its disposal the political party of progress in every country, You follow me, Engineer?"
"Absolutely," Hans Castorp replied, with precipitation. He had, as he spoke, the feeling of a man who finds himself slipping, but for the moment contrives to keep his feet.
Herr Set:tembrini appeared satisfied. " I assume that these are new and surprising ideas to you? "
"Yes, I confess this is the first time I have heard of these - these
endeavours."
" Ah;" Settembrini murmured, "ah, if you had only heard of them earlier! But perhaps it is not yet too late. These circulars - you would like to know what they say? Listen. Last spring a formal meeting of the League was called, at Barcelona. You are aware that that city can boast of a quite special affinity with pro-gressive political ideas. The congress sat for a week, with ban-quets and festivities. I wanted to go - good God, I yearned to be there and take pa:rt in the deliberations. But that scurvy rascal of a Hofrat forbade me on pam of death, so - well, I was afraid I should die, and I didn't go. I was in despair, as you may imagine, over the trick my unreliable health had played me. Nothing is more painful than to be prevented by our physical our animal nature from being of service to reason. My sansfaction, therefore, over this communication from Lugano is the more lively. You are curious to know what it says? I can imagine. But first, a few brief explanations: the League for the Organization of Progress, mind-ful of its task of furthering human happiness - in other words, of combating human suffering by the available social methods; to the end of finally eliminatmg it altogether; mindful also of the fact that this lofty task can only be accomplished by the aid of so-ciology, the end and aim of which is the perfect State, the League, in session at Barcelona, determined upon the publication of a series of volumes bearing the general title: The Sociology of Suffering. It should be the aim of the series to classify human suffering ac-cording to classes and categories, and to treat it systematically and exhaustively. You ask what is the use of classification, arrange-ment, systematization? I answer you: order and simplification are / Page 246 / the first steps toward the mastery of a subject - the actual enemy is the unknown. We must lead the human race up out of the primi-tive stages of fear and patient stupidity, and set its feet on the path of conscious activity. We must enlighten it upon two points: first, that given effects become void when one first recognizes and then removes their causes; and second, that almost all individual suffer-ing is due to disease of the social organism. Very well; this is the object of the Sociological Pathology. It will be issued in some twenty folio volumes, treating every species of human suffering, from the most personal and intimate to the great collective strug-gles arising from the conflicting interests of classes and nations; it will, in short, exhibit the chemical elements whose combination in various proportions results in all the ills to which our human flesh.is heir. The publication will in every case take as its norm the dignity and happiness of mankind, and seek to indicate the meas-ures and remedies calculated to remove the cause of each devia-tion. Famous European specialists, physicians, psychologists, and economists will share in the compostion of this encyclopaedia of suffering, and the general editorial bureau at Lugano will act as the reservoir to collect all the articles which shall flow into it. I can read in your eyes the questions to what my share is to be in all these activities. Hear me to the end. This great work will not neglect the belletrist in so far as he deals with human suffering: a volume is projected which shall contain a compilation and brief analysis of such masterpieces of the world's literature as come into question by depicting one or other kind of conflict - for the con-solation and instruction of the suffering. This, then, is the task entrusted to your humble servant, in the letter you see here."
"You don t say, Herr Settembrini! Allow me to offer you my heartiest congratulations! That is a magnificent commissIon, just in your line, I should think. No wonder the League thought of you! And what joy you must feel to aid in the elimination of human suffering! "
"It is a work very broad in its scope," Herr Settembrini said thoughtfully," and will require much consideration and wide reading. Especially," .he added and.his gaze seemed to lose itself in the immensity of his task, " since literature has regularly chosen to depict suffering, and even second - and third rate masterpieces treat of it in one form or another. But what of that? So much the better! However comprehensive the work may be, it is at least of a nature that will permit me to carry it on, if needs must, even in this accursed place - though I hope I need not be here long enough to bring it to a conclusion. That is something." he said, / Page 247 / moving closer to Hans Castorp, and subduing his voice nearly to a whisper, "that is something which can hardly be said of the duties nature lays upon you, Engineer! This is what I wanted to bring out, this is the word of warning I have been trying to utter. You know what admiration I feel for your profession. But as it is a practical, not an intellectual calling, you are differently situated from myself, in that you can only pursue it down in the world - only there can you be a true European, only there can you actively fight suffering, improve the time, further progress, with your own weapons and in your own way. If I have told you of the task that has fallen to my lot, it was only to remind you, only to recall you to yourself, only to clarify certain conceptions of yours which the atmospheric conditions up here were obviously beginning to becloud. I would urge it upon you: hold yourself upright, preserve your self-respect, do not give ground to the un-known. Flee from this sink of iniquity, this island of Circe, whereon you are not Odysseus enough to dwell in safety. You will be going on all fours - already you are glancing toward your forward extremities, and presently you will begin to grunt - have a care! "
The humanist had uttered these admonitions in the same low voice, shaking his head impressively. He finished with drawn brows and eyes directed toward the ground. To answer him slightly or jestingly, as Hans Castorp would once have done, was out of the question.The young man weighed that possibility for a second, standing with lowered lids. Then he lifted his shoulders and spoke, no louder than Herr Settembrini: "What shall I do? "
"What I told you."
"You mean-go away? "
Herr Settembrini was silent.
"What you mean to say is that I should leave for home? "
"It was the advice I gave you on the first evening, Engineer."
" Yes - and then I was free to do so, though it seemed to me silly to throw up the sponge just because the air up here put me about a bit. But now it is a rather different state of affairs: I have been examined, and Hofrat Behrens told me in so many words that it would be no good my going home, I should only have to come back again; and that if I stopped down there, the whole lobe would be at the devil before you could say Jack Robinson."
"I know; and now you have the evidence in your pocket."
"You say that so ironically - with the right kind of irony, of course, that cannot for a moment be misunderstood, the direct and classic device of oratory - you see, I remember the things you say. But do you mean that after you have seen this photograph, / Page 248 / after the x-ray and Behrens's diagnosis, you take it upon your-self to advise me to go home?"
Settembrini hesitated for a second. Then he drew himself up and directed the gaze of his black eyes full upon Hans Castorp's
face. He answered, with an emphasis not quite without theatrical effect: "Yes, Engineer, I take it upon myself."
But Hans Castorp's bearing too had stiffened. He stood with his heels together, and looked straight at Herr Settembrini in his turn. This time it was a duel, Hans Castorp stood his ground, Influences from not far off gave him strength. Here was a school-master - but yonder was a woman with narrow eyes He made no apologies for his words, he did not beg Herr Settembrini not to take offence; he answered: "Then you are more prudent for your self than for others. You did not go to Barcelona in the face of the doctor's orders. You were afraid of death, and you stopped up here."
To a certain point Herr Settembrini's pose was undeniably shaken; his smile, as he answered, was slightly forced.
"I know how to value a ready answer - even though your logic smacks of sophistry. It would disgust me to enter the lists in the sort of rivalry that is too current up here; otherwise I might reply that my case is far more serious than yours - so much more, in fact, that it is only by artificial means, almost by deliberate self deception, that I can keep alive the hope of leaving this place and having sight of the world below before I die. In the moment when that hope can no longer be decently sustained, in that moment I shall turn my back on this establishment, and take private lodgings somewhere in the valley. That will be sad; but as the sphere of my labours is the freest, the least material in the world, the change cannot prevent me from resisting the forces of disease and serving the cause of humanity, up to my latest breath. The difference between us, in this respect, I have already pointed out to you.. Engineer, you are not the man to assert your better self in these surroundings. I saw it at our first meeting. You reproach me with not having gone to Barcelona. I submitted to the prohibition, not to destroy myself untimely. But I did so with the most stringent reservations; my spirit protested in pride and anguish against the dictates of my wretched body, Whether that protest survives in you, as you comply with the behests of our powers that be - whether it is not rather the body, the body and its evil propensities, to which you lend a ready ear - "
"What have you against the body? " interrupted Hans Castorp suddenly, and looked at him with wide blue eyes, the whites of / Page 249 /  which" were veined with blood. He was giddy with his own temerity and showed as much. - Whatever am I saying? he thought. I'm getting out of my depth. But I won't give way; now I have begun, I won't give him the lastword if I can help it. Of course he will have it anyhow, but never mind, I will make"the most of it while I can. - He enlarged upon his objection: "But you are a humanist, are you not? What can you have to say against the body? " -
Settembrini's smile this time was unforced and confident. " 'What have you against analysis? ' " he quoted, with his head on one side. "Are you down on analysis? You will always find me ready to answer you, Engineer," he said, with a bow and a sweeping downward motion of the hand, "particularly when your opposition is spirited; and you parry not without elegance. Human-ist-yes, certainly, I am a humanist. You could never convict me of ascetic inclinations. I affirm, honour, and love the body, as I protest I affirm, honour, and love form, beauty, freedom, gaiety, the enjoyment of life. I represent the world, the interest of this life, against a sentimental withdrawal and negation, classicism against romanticism. I think my position is unequivocal. But there is one power, one principle, which commands my deepest assent, my highest and fullest allegiance and love; and this power, this principle, is the intellect. However much I "dislike hearing that conception of moonshine and cobwebs people call 'the soul' played off against the body, yet, within the antithesis of body and mind, the body is the evil, the devilish principle, for the body is nature, and nature - within the sphere, I repeat, of her antagonism to the mind, and to reason - is evil, mystical and evil. ' You are a humanist? ' By all means I am a humanist, because I am a friend of mankind, like Prometheus, a lover of humanity and human no-bility. That nobility is comprehended in the mind, in the reason, and therefore you will level against me in vain the reproach of Christian obscurantism -"
Hans Castorp demurred.
"You will," Herr Settembrini persisted, "level this reproach in vain, if humanistic pride one day learns to feel as a debasement and disgrace the fact that the intellect is bound up with the body and with nature. Did you know that the great Plotinus is said to have made the remark that he was ashamed to have a body? "asked Settembrini. He seemed eager for a reply, and Hans Castorp was - constrained to confess that this was the first he had heard of it.
"We have it from Porphyrius. An absurd remark, if you like. But the absurd is the intellectually honourable; and nothing can / Page 250 / be more pitiable than the reproach of absurdity, levelled against the mind as it asserts its dignity against nature, and refuses to abdicate before her. - Have you heard of the Lisbon earthquake, Engineer? "
"An earthquake? No - I see no newspapers up here -"
"You misunderstand me. En passant, let me say it is a pity, and very indicative of the spirit of this place, that you neglect to read the papers. But you misunderstand me, the convulsion of nature to which I refer is not modern. It took place some hundred and fifty years ago."
"I see. Oh, wait - I have it. I have read that Goethe said to his servant, that night in his bedchamber - "
"No, it was not of that I was speaking," Settembrini interrupted him, closing his eyes, and shaking his small sallow hand in the air. " Besides, you are confusing two catastrophes. You are think-ing of the earthquake of Messina. I have in mind the one that visited Lisbon in the year 1755."
"Pardon. "
"Well, Voltaire was outraged by it."
"Outraged? That is - how do you mean? "
"He rebelled. Yes. He declined to accept that brutal fatum et factum. His spirit refused to abdicate before it. He protested in the name of reason and the intellect against that scandalous dere-liction of nature, to which were sacrificed thousands of human lives, and three-quarters of a flourishing city. You are astonished? You smile? You may well be astonished; but as for smiling, give me leave to tell you it is out of place. Voltaire's attitude was that of a worthy descendant of those old Gauls that shot their arrows against the heavens. There, Engineer, you have the hostility the intellect feels against nature, its proud mistrust, its high-hearted in- sistence upon the right to criticize her and her evil, reason-denying power. Nature is force; and it is slavish to suffer force, to abdicate before it - to abdicate, that is,inwardly. And there too you have the humanistic position which runs not the slightest risk of in-volving itself in contradictions, or of relapsing into churchly hy-pocrisy, when it sees in the body the antagonist, the representative of the evil principle. The contradiction you imagine you see is at bottom always the same. ' What have you against analysis? 'Noth-ing - when it serves the cause of enlightenment, freedom, prog-ress. Everything when it is pervaded by the horrible haut gout of the grave. And thus too wIth the body. We are to honour and uphold the body when it is a question of emancipation, of beauty, of freedom of thought, of joy, of desire. We must despise it in so / Page 251 / far as it sets itself up as the principle of gravity and inertia, when it obstructs .the movement towards light; we must despise it in so far as it represents the principle of disease and death, in so far as its specific essence is the essence of perversity, of decay; sensuality, and shame."
These last words Settembrini had uttered standing close to Hans Castorp, very rapidly and tonelessly, as though to make an end of the subject. Succour was nigh for the youth: Joachim entered the reading-room, with two postcards in his hand. The Italian broke off; and the dexterity with which he altered his tone for one in a lighter and fitting social key was not lost upon his pupil- if so Hans Castorp may be called.
"There you are, Lieutenant! Have you been looking for your cousin? I must apologize; we had fallen into conversation - if I am not mistaken, we have even had a slight disagreement He is not a bad reasoner, your cousin, a by no means contemptible an-tagonist in an argument - when he takes the notion."..."

 

4

 TIME

47

20

2

4

 EMIT 47 2 2
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
 TIME - - -
-
 T 20 2 2
-
 I 9 9 9
-
ME
 18 9 9
  EMIT      
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

7
PRESENT
 97 34 7

4
PAST
 56 11 2

11
-
 153 45

9

1+1
-

1+5+3

4+5

NINE

2
-
 9 9 9

 

 

 

I

TIME EMIT

Evokation

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Page 344 Number omitted

CHAPTER 6

Changes

"WHAT is time? A mystery, a figment-and all-powerful. It con-ditions the exterior world, it is motion married to and mingled with the existence of bodies in space! and with the motion of these. Would there then be no time if there were no motion?
No motion if no time? We fondly ask. Is time a function of space? Or space of time? Or are they identical? Echo answers. Time is functional, it can be referred to as action; we say a thing' is " brought about " by time. What sort of thing? Change! Now
is not then, here not there, for between them lies motion. But the motion by which one measures time is circular, is in a closed circle; and might almost equally well be described as rest, as cessation of movement - for the there repeats itself constantly
in the here, the past in the present. Furthemore, as our utmost effort cannot conceive a final limit either to time or in space, we have settled to think of them as eternal and infinite - apparently in the hope that if this is not very successful, at least it will be more so than the other. But is not this affirmation of the eternal and the infinite the logical-mathematical destruction of every  and any limit in time or space, and the reduction of them, more or less, to zero? Is it possibe, in eternity, to conceive of a sequence of events, or in the infinite of a succession of space-occupying bodies? Conceptions of distance, movement, change, even of the existence of finite bodies in the universe - how do these fare? Are they consistent with the hypothesis of eternity and infinity we have been driven to adopt? Again we ask, and again echo answers.
Hans-Castorp revolved these queries and their like in his brain.
We know that from the very first day of his arrival up here his mind had been much. disposed to such sleeveless speculation. Later, perhaps, a certain sinister but strong desire of his, since gratified, had sharpened it the more and confirmed it in its gen-eral tendency to question and to carp. He put these queries to / Page 345 / himself, he put them.to good cousin Joachim, he put them to the valley at large, lymg there, as it had these months on end, deep in snow; though from none of these quarters could he ex-pect anything like an answer, from which the least would be hard to say. For himself; it was precisely because he did not know the answers that he put the questions. For Joachim, it was hardly possible to get him even to consider them, he having, as Hans Castory had said, in French, on a certain evening, nothing else in his head but the idea of being a soldier down below. Joachim wrestled with these hopes of his, that now seemed al-most within his grasp, now receded into the distance and mocked him there; the struggle grew daily more embittered, he even, threatened to end it once for all by a single bold bid for liberty. Yes, the good, the patient,' the upright Joachim, so affected to discipline and the service, had been attacked by fits of rebel-lion, he even questione.d the authority of the "Gaffky scale ": the method employed in the laboratory - the lab, as one called it - to ascertam the degree of a patient's infection. Whether only a few isolated bacilli, or a whole host of them, were found in the sputum analysed, determined his "Gaffky number," upon which everything depended. It infallibly reflected the chances of recovery with which the patient had to reckon; the number of months or years he must still remain could with ease be deduced from it, beginning with the six months that Hofrat Behrens called a "week-end," and ending with the" life sentence," which. taken literally, often enough meant very little indeed. Joachim, then, inveighed against the Gaffky scale, openly giving notice that he questioned its authority - or perhaps not quite openly, he did not say so to the authorities, but expressed his views to his cousin, and even in the dining-room. "I'm fed up with it, I won't be made a fool of any longer," he said, the blood mounting to his bronzed face. " Two weeks ago I had Gaffky two, a mere nothing, my prospects were the best. And to-day I am regularly infested- number nine, if you please. No talk of getting away. How the devil can a man know where he is? Up on the Schatzalp thereis a man, a Greek peasant, an agent had him sent here from Arcadia, he has galloping consumption, there isn't the dimmest hope for him. He may die any day - and yet they've never found even the ghost of a bacillus in his sputum. On the other hand, that Belgian captain that was discharged cured the other day, he, was simply alive with them, Gaffky ten - and only the very tiniest cavity. The devil flyaway with Gaffky! I'm done, I'm going home, if it kills me!"

 

6 GAFFKY 56 29

2
6 NUMBER 73 28

1
5 SCALE 40 13 4

 

Page 523

"...Hans Castorp had been only half listening to the dialogue, be-ing preoccupied by the fundamental nobility of the soldierly rep- resentative then present - or rather by the strange new expres-sion in his eyes. He started slightly as he felt himself challenged by Herr Settembrin's last words, and made such a face as he had the time the humanist would have solemnly constrained him to a choice between East and West: a face full of reserve and ob-stinacy. He said nothing. They forced everything to an issue, these two - as perhaps one must when one differed -, and wrangled bitterly over extremes, whereas it seemed to him, Hans Castorp, as though somewhere between two intolerable posi-tions, between bombastic humanism and analphabetic barbarism, must lie something which one might personally call the human. He did not express his thought, for fear of irritating one or other of them; but, wrapped in his reserve, listened to one goading the other on, each leading the other from hundredthly to thousandthly, and all because of Herr Settembrini's original little joke about; Virgil.
The Italian would not give over; he brandished the word, he / Page524 / made it prevail. He threw himself into the fray as the defender of literary genius, celebrated the history of the written word, from the moment when man, yearning to give permanency to his knowledge or emotions, engraved word-symbols upon stone. He spoke of the Egyptian god Thoth, identical with the thrice-renowned Hermes of Hellenism; who was honoured as the in-ventor of writing, protector of libraries, and inciter to all literary efforts. He bent the knee metaphorically before that Trismegistus, the humanistic Hermes, master of the palaestra, to whom humanity owed the great gift of the literary word and agonistic rhetoric- which incited Hans Castorp to the remark that this Egyptian per-son had apparently been a politician, playing in the grand style the same role as that Herr Brunetto Latini who had sharpened the wits of the Florentines, taught them the art of language and how to guide their State according to the rules of politics. Naphta put in that Herr Settembrini was slightly disingenuous: his picture of Thoth-Trismegistus had a good deal of the reality smoothed away. He had been, in fact, an ape, moon and soul deity, a pea-cock with a crescent moon on his head, and in his Hermes as-pect, a god of death and of the dead, a soul-compeller and tutelary soul-guide, of whom late antiquity made an arch-enchanter, and the cabalistic; Middle Ages the Father of hermetic alchemy.
"Hans Castorp's brain reeled. Here was blue-mantled death masquerading as a humanistic orator; and when one sought to gaze at closer range upon this pedagogic and literary god, benev-olent to man, one discovered a squatting ape-faced figure, with the sign of night and magic on its brow. He waved it away with one hand, which he laid over his eyes. But upon that darkness wherein he sought refuge from complete bewilderment, there broke the voice of Herr Settembrini, continuing to chant the praises of literature. All greatness, both contemplative and active, he said, had been bound up with it from all tIme; and men-tioned Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, named the Prussian Fred-erick and other heroes, even Lasalle and Moltke. It disturbed him not a whit that Naphta referred him to China, where such a witless idolatry of the alphabet obtained as had never been the case in any other land, and where one might become a field-marshal if one could draw the forty thousand word-symbols of the language - a standard, one would think, directly after a humanistic heart! - Ah, Naphta well knew - pitiable scoffer though he was! - that it was a matter not of drawing symbols but of literature as a human impulse, of its spirit, which was Spirit itself, the miraculous conjunction of analysis and form. This it / Page 525 / was that it was a matter not of drawing symbols but of literature as a human impulse, of its spirit, which was spirit itself, the miraculous conjunction of analysis and form. This it was that awakened the understanding of all things human, that operated to weaken and dissolve silly prejudices and convictions, that brought about the civilizing, elevating, and betterment of the human race. While it developed extreme ethical sensitiveness and refinement, far from being fanatical, it preached honest doubt, fairness, tolerance. The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint - in this high key was Herr Settembrini's apologetic pitched. But alas, his antagonist was not struck dumb - on the contrary, he straightway set about with malicious, brilliant criti-cism to undermine the humanist's panegyric. He declared him-self to the party of conservation and of life, and struck out against the decadent spirit which hid itself behind all that seraphic cant. The marvellous conjunction to which Herr Settembrinl referred, in a voice all quavering with emotion, was nothing but a deception and juggling, for the form which the literary spirit prided itself on uniting with the principle of examination and division was only an apparent, a lying form, no true, adequate, natural, living form. These so-called reformers of humanity did indeed take the words purification and sanctification in their mouths, but what they really meant and intended was the emasculation, the phlebotomy of life. Yes, their theory and moving spirit were in violation of life; and he who would destroy passion; that man desired nothing less than pure nothingness - pure, at least, in the sense that pure was the oiily adjective which could be applied to nothingness. It was just here that Herr Settembrini showed him-self for that which he was: namely, the man of progress, lib-eralism, and middle-class revolution. For the progress was pure nihilism, the liberal citizen was quite precisely the advocate of nothingness and the Devil; yes, he denied God, the conserva-tively and positively Absolute, by swearing to the devilish anti-Absolute. And yet with his deadly pacificism thought himself monstrously pious. But he was anything else than pious, he was a traitor to life, before whose stern inquisition and Vehmgericht he deserved to be put to the question - and so forth.
Thus did Naphra astutely go about to turn Herr Settembrini's paean the wrong way and represent himself as the incarnation of the cherishing severity of love - so that it was again impossible to distinguish which side was in the right, where God stood and where the Devil, where death and where life. "

 

3
GOD
 26 17 8
5
SATAN
 55 10 1
8
GOD+SATAN
 81 27 9
-
-
 8+1 2+7 NINE
8
GOD+SATAN
 9 9 9
-
-
 - - -
-
-
 - - -
5
DEVIL
 52 25 7
4
MASS
 52 7 7
-
-
 - - -
-
-
 - - -
5
BLACK
 29 11 2
4
MASS
 52 7 7
9
BLACK+MASS
 81 18 NINE
-
-
 8+1 1+8
-
9 BLACK+MASS 9 9 9

 

 

THE SATANIC BIBLE

Anton Szandor LaVey 1969

 THE BLACK MASS

Page

99

"NO other single device has been associated with Satanism as much as the black mass. To say that the most blasphemous of all religious ceremonies is nothing more than a literary invention is certainly a statement which needs qualifying-but nothing could be truer.
The popular concept of the black mass is d1us: a defrocked priest stands before an altar consisting of a nude woman, her legs spread-eagled and vagina thrust open, each of her outstretched fists grasping a black candle made from the fat of unbaptized babies, and a chalice containing the urine of a prostitute (or blood) reposing on her belly. An in-verted cross hangs above the altar, and triangular hosts of ergot- laden bread or black-stained turnip are methodically blessed as the priest dutifully slips them in and out of the altar-lady's labia. Then, we are told, an invocation to Satan and various demons is followed by an array of prayers and psalms chanted backwards or interspersed with obscenities. . . all performed within the confines of a "protective" pentagram drawn on the floor. If the Devil appears he is invariably in the form of a rather eager man wearing the head of a black goat upon his shoulders. Then follows a potpourri of flagellation, prayer-book burning, cunnilingus, fellatio, and general hindquarters kissing -all done to a background of ribald recitations from the Holy Bible, and audible expectorations on the cross! If a baby can be slaughtered during the ritual, so much the better; for as every-one knows, this is the favorite sport of the Satanist!"

 

4
HOLY
60
24
6
5
BIBLE
30
21
3
9
-
90
45
 NINE
 
-
9+0
4+5
  
9
-
9
9
9
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
4
GOOD

41
23
5
6
FRIDAY

63
36
9

 

 

10 MIND + MATTER 117 45 9
16 POSITIVE + NEGATIVE

198

 81 9

9

 LIGHT + DARK 90 45 9

8

 GOD + SATAN 81 27 9

 

I

IS

THAT WHAT I AM AM I THAT

 IS

THAT WHAT YOU ARE ARE YOU THAT

IS

THAT US ARE WE THAT

?

YES

 

DEVILLIVEDDEVILLIVEDDEVILLIVED

GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN FOR THOU SAVOUREST NOT THE THINGS OF GOD

EVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVE

DIVINELOVEEVOLVEEVOLVELOVELOVEEVOLVEEVOLVELOVELOVEEVOLVEEVOLVELOVEDIVINE

 

THE

JOURNEYMAN

Evokation

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875-1955

Page 225

"WHIMS OF MERCURIUS"

Page 235 / 236

WHIMS OF MERCURIUS

" But you look so hot, I'm afraid your curve has gone up again." It had. The greeting he had exchanged with Clavdia Chau-/chat had overcome the mortifying depression; it was at bottom the consciousness of this which had lay at the root of Hans Castorp's gratification. Yes, yes, Joachim was right, Mercurius was mounting again: when Hans Castorp consulted him, on their return from their walk, he had climbed up to 104�."


Evokation

THE DAILY MIRROR

Jonathan Cainer

Page 49

"MERCURY IS RISING"

Article Bernard Fitzwalter March 26

 

Evokation

 


MATHEMATICS AND THE IMAGINATION

Edward Kasner and James Newman

1940

Assorted Geometries-Plane and Fancy 

Page 124

"Analytical four-dimensional Eu-clidean geometry is the system formed by theorems de-rived from these definitions.
Note that nothing has been said in either of these defini-tions about space; neither the space of our sense percep-tions, nor the space of the physicist, nor that of the philos-opher. All that we have done is to define two systems of mathematics which are logical and self-consistent, which may be played like checkers, or charades, according to stated rules. Anyone who finds a resemblance between his game of checkers or charades and the physical reality of his experience is privileged to point morals and to make capital of his suggestion.
But having established that we are in the realm of pure conception, beyond the most elastic bounds of imagina-tion, who is satisfied? Even the mathematician would like / Page 125 / to nibble the forbidden fruit, to glimpse what it would be like if he could slip for a moment into a fourth dimension. It's hard to grub along like moles down here below, to hear someone tell of a fourth dimension, to make careful note of it, and then to plow along, giving it no further thought. To make matters worse, books on popular sci-ence have made everything so ridiculously simple-rela-tivity, quanta, and what not-that we are shamed by our inability to picture a fourth dimension as something more concrete than time.
Graphic representations of four-dimensional figures have been attempted: it cannot be said these efforts have been crowned with any great success. Fig. 31(diagram omitted) illustrates" the four-dimensional analogue of the three-dimensional cube, a hypercube or tesseract: Our difficulties in drawing this figure are in no way diminished by the fact that a three-dimensional figure can only be drawn in perspective on a two-dimensional surface-such as this page-, while the four-dimensional object on a two dimensional page is only a perspective of a "perspective."
Yet since a2 equals the area of a square, a3 the volume / Page 126 / of a cube, we feel certain that a4 describes something, whatever that something may be. Only by analogy can we reason that that "something" is the hypervolume (or content) of a tesseract. Reasoning further, we infer that the tesseract is bounded by 8 cubes (or cells), has 16 vertices, 24 faces and 32 edges. But visualization of the tesseract is another story.
Fortunately, without having to rely on distorted dia-grams, we may use other means, using familiar objects to help our limping imagination to depict a fourth dimen-sion.
The two triangles A and B in Fig. 32 are exactly alike. Fig 32 ( triangles diagram omitted).
Geometrically, it is said they are congruent, * meaning that by a suitable motion, one may be perfectly super-posed on the other. Evidently, that motion can be carried out in a plane, i.e., in two dimensions, simply by sliding triangle A on top of triangle B.** But what about the two triangles C and D in Fig. 33?
One is the mirror image of the other. There seems to be no reason why by sliding or turning in the plane, C / Page Page 127 / cannot be superimposed on D. Strangely enough, this cannot be done. C or D must be lifted out of the plane, from two dimensions into a third, to effect superposition. Lift C up, turn it over, put it back in the plane, and then it can be slid over D.
Now, if a third dimension is essential for the solution of certain two-dimensional problems, a fourth dimension would make possible the solution of otherwise unsolvable problems of three dimensions. To be sure, we are in the Fig.33.(triangles diagram omitted) realm of fancy, and it need hardly be pointed out that a fourth dimension is not at hand to make Houdinis of us all. Yet, in theoretical inquiries, a fourth dimension / Page  128 / is of signal importance, and part of the warp and woof of modern theoretical physics and mathematics. Ex-amples chosen from these subjects are quite difficult and would be out of place, but some simpler ones in the lower dimensions may prove amusing.
If we lived in a two-dimensional world, so graphically described by Abbott in his famous romance, Flatland, our house would be a plane figure, as in Fig. 34.(Figure omitted) Entering through the door at A, we would be safe from our friends and enemies once the door was closed, even though there were no roof over our head, and the walls and windows were merely lines. To climb over these lines would mean getting out of the plane into a third dimension, and of course, no one in the two-dimensional world would have
any better idea of how to do that than we know how to escape from a locked safe..deposit vault by means of a fourth dimension. A three-dimensional cat might peek at a two-dimensional king, but he would never be the wiser.
When winter comes to Flatland, its inhabitants wear gloves. Three-dimensional hands look like this: ( Page 129 diagrams omitted )

Page 130

Modern science has as yet devised no relief for the man who finds himself with two right gloves instead of a right and a left. In Flatland, the same problem would exist. But there, Gulliver, looking down at its inhabitants from the eminence of a third dimensionl would see at once that, just as in the case of the two triangles on page 127, all that is necessary to turn a right glove into a left
one is to lift it up and turn it over. Of course, no one in Flatland would or could lift a finger to do that, since it involves an extra dimension.
If then, we could be transported into a fourth dimen-sion, there is no end to the miracles we could perform-starting with the rehabilitation of all ill-assorted pairs of gloves. Lift the right glove from three-dimensional space into a fourth dimension, turn it around, bring it back and it becomes a left glove. No prison cell could hold the four-dimensional Gulliver-far more of a men-ace than a mere invisible man. Gulliver could take a knot and untie it without touching the ends or breaking it, merely by transporting it into a fourth dimension and slipping the solid cord through the extra loophole.
Or he might take two links of a chain apart without breaking them. All, this and much' more would seem absurdly simple to him, and he would regard our help lessness with the same amusement and pity as we look upon the miserable creatures of Flatland.
                                    
Our romance must end. If it has aided some readers in making a fourth dimension more real and has satisfied a common anthropomorphic thirst, it has served its pur-pose. For our own part, we confess that the fables have never made the facts any clearer.
An idea originally associated with ghosts and spirits / Page 131 / needs, if it is to serve science, to be as far removed as possible from fuzzy thinking. It must be clearly and courageously faced if its true essence is to be discovered. But it is even more stupid to reject and deride than to glorify and enshrine it. No concept that has come out of our heads or pens marked a greater forward step in our thinking, no idea of religion, philosophy, or science broke. more sharply with tradition and commonly accepted knowledge, than the idea of a fourth dimension.
Eddington has put it very well: 6
However successful the theory of a four-dimensional world may be, it is difficult to ignore a voice inside us which whispers: "At the back of your mind, you know that a fourth dimension is all nonsense." I fancy that voice must often have had a busy time in the past history of physics. What nonsense to say that this solid table on which I am writing is a collection of electrons moving with prodigious speed in empty spaces, which relatively to electronic dimensions are as wide as the spaces between the planets in the solar system! What nonsense to say that the thin air is trying to crush my body with a load of 14lbs. to the square inch! What nonsense that the star cluster which I see through the telescope, obviously there now, is a glimpse into a past age 50,000 years ago! Let us not be beguiled by this voice. It is discredited. . . .
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the un- known. We have devised profound theories, one after another to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in recon-structing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.

 

7
 PHYSICS 99 36 9

Page 127

( Fig 34.- This is no blueprint but an actual house in Flatland.diagram omitted) 

Notes page 126 *See the chapter on paradoxes for an exact definition.
**Actually, "sliding on top or' would be impossible in a physical two-dimensional world.

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Page 10

"Number 34"

 

 

A RANDOM WALK IN SCIENCE

An Anthology compiled by RL Weber 1973

Flatland: a romance of many dimensions

"From Nature [An anonymous letter entitled 'Euclid, Newton, and Einstein,' published in Nature on February12, 1920, called attention to a little book by Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838-1926), best known for his scholarly Shakespearian Grammar, his life of Francis Bacon and a number of theological discussions.]
Some thirty or more years ago, a little jeu d'esprit was written by Dr Edwin Abbott, entitled 'Flatland.' At the time of its pulication it did not attract as much attention as it deserved. Dr Abbott pictures intelligent beings whose whole experience is confined to a plane, or other space of two dimensions, who have no faculties by which they can become conscious of anything outside that space and no means of moving off the surface on which they live. He then asks the reader, who has the consciousness of the third dimension, to imagine a sphere descending upon the plane of Flatland and passing through it. How will the inhabitants regard this phenomenon? They will not see the approaching sphere and will have no conception of its solidity. They will only be conscious of the circle in which it cuts their plane. This circle, at first a point, will gradually increase in diameter, driving the inhabitants of Flatland outwards from its circumference, and this will go on until half the sphere has passed through the plane, when the circle will gradually contract to a point and then vanish, leaving the Flatlanders in undisturbed possession of their country.
Their experience will be that of a circular obstacle gradually expanding or growing, and then contracting, and they will attribute to growth in time what the external observer in three dimensions assigns to motion in the third dimension, through three-dimensional space. Assume the past and future of the universe to be all depicted in four-dimensional space and visible to any being who has consci-ousness of the fourth dimension. If there is motion of our three- dimensional space relative to the fourth dimension, all the changes we experience and assign to the flow of time will be due simply to this movement, the whole of the future as well as the past always existing in the fourth dimension.

From Edwin A Abbott Flatland A Romance of Many Dimensions (New York: Barnes and Noble) 1963 

 

[In a vision the narrator, a native of Flatland, has been indoctrinated by Abbott, Flatland. Sphere to cany the Gospel of Three Dimensions to his blind benighted countrymen in Flatland.]
I. 'Pardon me, 0 Thou Whom I must no longer address as the Perfection of all Beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy
servant a sight of thine interior.'
Sphere. 'My what?' Page 94

I. 'Thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines.'
Sphere. 'Whence this ill-timed impertinent request? . . .'
 I. 'But my Lord has shewn me the intestines of all my countrymen in the Land of Two Dimensions by taking me with him into the Land of Three. What therefore more easy than now to take his servant on a second journey into the blessed region of the Fourth Dimension, where I shall look down with him once more upon this land of Three Dimensions, and see the inside of every three- dimensional house, the secrets of the solid earth, the treasures of the mines in Spaceland, and the intestines of every solid living creature, even of the noble and adorable Spheres'.
Sphere. 'But where is this land of Four Dimensions?'

I. 'I know not: but doubtless my Teacher knows'.
Sphere. 'Not I. There is no such land. The very idea of it is utterly inconceivable. . . . Men are divided in opinion as to the facts. And even granting the facts, they explain them in different ways. And in any case, however great may be the number of different explanations, no one has adopted or suggested the theory of a Fourth Dimension. Therefore, pray have done with this trifling, and let us return to business.' "

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann 1875 - 1955

Page 711

"These were the moments when the "Seven-Sleeper," not knowing what had happened, was slowly stirring himself in the grass, before he sat up, rubbed his eyes - yes, let us carry the figure to the end, in order to do justice to the movement of our hero's mind: he drew up his legs, stood up, looked about him. He saw himself released, freed from enchantment-not of his own motion; he was fain to confess, but by the operation of exterior powers, of whose activities his own liberation was a minor incident Indeed! Yet though his tiny destiny fainted to nothing in the face of the general, was there not some hint of a personal mercy and grace for him, a manifestation of divine goodness and justice? Would Life receive again her erring and " delicate " child-not by a cheap and easy slipping back to her arms, but sternly, solemnly, peni-entially - perhaps not even among the living, but only with three salvoes fired over the grave of him a sinner? Thus might he return. He sank on his knees, raising face and hands to a heaven that howsoever dark and sulphurous was no longer the gloomy grotto of his state of sin."

 

PLATO

THE REPUBLIC

Translated with an introduction by

Desmond Lee

1953

Page 316

PART SEVEN [BOOK SIX] .
� 7. THE SIMILE OF THE CAVE

"This is a more graphic presentation of the truths presented in the analogy of the Line,' in particular, it tells us more about the two states of mind called in the Line analogy Belief and Illusion. We are shown the ascent of the mind from illusion to pure philosophy, and the difficulties which accompany its progress. And the philosopher, when he has achieved the supreme vision, is required to return to the cave and serve his fellowls, his very unwillingness to do so being his chief qualification.

As Cornford pointed out, the best llIay to understand the simile is to replace' the clumsier apparatus' of the cave by the cinema, though today television is an even better comparison. It is the moral and intellectual condition of the average man from llIhich Plato starts; and though clearlY the ordinary man knollls the difference between substance and ShadO1ll in the physical llIorld, the simile suggests that his moral and intellectual opinions often bear as little relation to the tntth as the average film or television programme does to real life.

1 The words used for 'belief' and 'illusion' do not (with the possible exception of a use of pistis in Book X; see p. 430) occur elsewhere in Plato in the sense in which they are used here. Pistis, 'belief', conveys overtones of assurance and trustworthiness: 'commonsense assurance' (Cross and WoozIey,p. 226). Eikasia, 'illusion', is a rare word whose few occurrences elsewhere in Greek literature give us little guidance. It can mean 'conjecture', 'guesswork', and some prefer so to translate it here.
But 'illusion' is perhaps more appropriate for a 'state of mind '.

Page 317

THE PHILOSOPHER RULER

'I want you to go on to picture the enlightenment or ignorance of our human condition somewhat as follows.

Imagine an underground chamber like a cave, with a long entrance open to the daylight and as wide as the cave. In this chamber are men who have been prisoners there since they were children, their legs and necks being so fastened that they can only look straight ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Some way off, behind and higher up, a fire is burn-ing, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them runs a road, in front of which a curtain-wall has been built, like the screen at puppet shows between the operators and their audience, above which they show their puppets.'
'I see.'
'Imagine further that there are men carrying all sorts of gear along behind the curtain-wall, projecting above it and including figures of men and animals made of wood and, stone and all sorts of other materials, and that some of these  men, as you would expect, are talking and some not.'
An odd picture and an odd sort of prisoner.'
'They are drawn from life,'1 I replied.' For, tell me, do you think our prisoners could see anything of themselves or their fellows except the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave opposite them?'
'How could they see anything else if they were prevented from moving their heads all their lives?' 
'And would they see anything more of the objects carried along the road?'
'Of course not.'
'Then if they were able to talk to each other, would they not assume that the shadows they saw were the real things?' 'Inevitably.'
And if the wall of their prison opposite them reflected / Page 318 /  sound, don't you think that they would suppose, whenever one of the passers-by on the road spoke, that the voice be- longed to the shadow passing before them?'
'They would be bound to think so.'
' And so in every way they would believe that the shadows of the objects we mentioned were the whole truth.'1
'Yes, inevitably.'
'Then think what would naturally happen to them if they were released from their bonds and cured of their delusions. Suppose one of them were let loose, and suddenly compelled to stand up and turn his head and look and walk towards the fire; all these actions would be painful and he would be too dazzled to see properly the objects of which he used to see the shadows. What do you think he would say if he was told that what he used to see was so much empty nonsense and that he was now nearer reality and seeing more correctly, because he was turned towards objects that were more real, and if on top of that he were compelled to say what each of the passing objects was when it was pointed out to him? Don't you think he would be at a loss, and think that what he used to see was far truer2 than the objects now being pointed out to him?'
'Yes, far truer.'
' And if he were made to look directly at the light of the fire, it would hurt his eyes and he would turn back and retreat to the things which he could see properly, which he would think really clearer than the things being shown him.
'Yes.'
'And if,' I went on, 'he were forcibly dragged up the steep and rugged ascent and not let go till he had been dragged out into the sunlight, the process would be a painful one, to which he would much object, and when he emerged into the light his eyes would be so dazzled by the glare of it that he wouldn't be able to see a single one of the things he was now told were real.'3
Page 319

'Certainly not at first,' he agreed.
'Because, of course, he wo'uld need to grow accustomed to the light before he could see things in the upper world outside the cave. First he would find it easiest to look at shadows, next at the reflections of men and other objects in water, and later on at the objects themselves. After that he would find it easier to observe the heavenly bodies and the
sky itself at night, and to look at the light of the moon and b stars rather than at the sun and its light by day.'
'Of course.'
'The thing he would be able to do last would be to look directly at the sun itself, and gaze at it without using reflec- tions in water or any other medium, but as it is in itself.'
'That must come last.'
'Later on he would come to the conclusion that it is the sun that produces the changing seasons and years and con-trols everything in the visible world, and is in a sense, responsible for everything that he and his fellow-prisoners used to see.'
'That is the conclusion which he would obviously reach.' , And when he thought of his first home and what passed for wisdom there, and of his fellow-prisoners, don't you think he would congratulate himself on his good fortune and be sorry for them?'
'Very much so.'
'There was probably a certain amount of. honour and glory to be won among the prisoners, and prizes for keen- sightedness for those best able to remember the order of sequence among the passing shadows and so be best able to divine their future appearances. Will our released prisoner hanker after these prizes or envy this power or honour? Won't he be more likely to feel, as Homer says, that he would far rather be "a serf in the house of some landless man ",l or indeed anything else in the world, than hold the opinions and live the life that they do? '
'Yes,' he replied, 'he would prefer anything to a life like, theirs.'
'Then what do you think would happen,' I asked, 'if he / Page 320 / went back to sit in his old seat in the cave? Wouldn't his eyes be blinded by the darkness, because he had come in suddenly out of the sunlight?'
'Certainly.'
'And if he had to discriminate between the shadows, in competition with the other prisoners, while he was still blinded and before his eyes got used to the darkness - a process that would take some time - wouldn't he be likely to make a fool of himself? And they would say that his visit to the upper world had ruined his sight, and that the ascent was not worth even attempting. And if anyone tried to release them and lead them up, they would kill him if they could lay hands on him.'
'They certainly would.'
'Now, my dear Glaucon,' I went on, 'this simile must be connected throughout with what preceded it.l The realm revealed by sight corresponds to the prison, and the light of the fire in the prison to the power of the sun. And you won't go wrong if you connect the ascent into the upper world / Page 321 / and the sight of the objects there with the upward progress of the mind into the intelligible region. That at any rate is my interpretation, which is what you are anxious to hear; the truth of the matter is, after all, known only to god.1 But in my opinion, for what it is worth, the final thing to be perceived in the intelligible region, and perceived only with difficulty, is the form of the good; once seen, it is inferred to be responsible for whatever is right and valuable in anything, producing in the visible region light and the source of light, and being in the intelligible region itself controlling source of truth and intelligence. And anyone who is going to act rationally either in public or private life must have sight of it.'
'I agree,' he said, 'so far as I am able to understand you.' 'Then you will perhaps also agree with me that it won't be surprising if those who get so far are unwilling to involve themselves in human affairs, and if their minds long to remain in the realm above. That's what we should expect if our simile holds good again.'
'Yes, that's to be expected.'
'Nor will you think it strange that anyone who descends from contemplation of the divine to human life and its ills should blunder and make a fool of himself, if, while still blinded and unaccustomed to the surrounding darkness, he's forcibly put on trial in the law-courts or elsewhere about the shadows of justice or the figures2 of which they are shadows and made to dispute about the notions of them held by men, who have never seen justice itself.'
'There's nothing strange in that.' 'But anyone with any sense,' I said, 'will remember that the eyes may be unsighted in two ways, by a transition either from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and will recognize that the same thing applies to the mind. So when he sees a mind confused and unable to see clearly he will not laugh without thinking, but will ask himself whether it has come from a clearer world and is confused by the unaccus-tomed darkness, or whether it is dazzled by the stronger light of the clearer world to which it has escaped from its / Page 322 / previous ignorance, The first condition of life is a reason for congratulation, the second for sympathy, though if one wants to laugh at it one can do so with less absurdity than at the mind that has descended from the daylight of the upper world,'
'You put it very reasonably,'
'If this is true,' I continued, 'we must reject the concep-tion of education professed by those who say that they can put into the mind knowledge that was not there before - rather as if they could put sight into blind eyes..
'It is a claim that is certainly made,' he said,
'But our argument indicates that the capacity for know-ledge is innate in each man's mind, and that the organ by which he learns is like an eye which cannot be turned from darkness to light unless the whole body is turned; in the same way the mind as a whole must be turned away from the world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and at the brightest of all realities which is what we call the good. Isn't that so?'
'Yes,'
'Then this turning around of the mind itself might be made a subject of professional skill,' which would effect the conversion as easily and effectively as possible, It would not be concerned to implant sight, but to ensure that someone who had it already was not either turned in the wrong direction or looking the wrong way.'
'That may well be so,'
'The rest, therefore, of what are commonly called excel-lences2 of the mind perhaps resemble those of the body, in that they are not in fact innate, but are implanted by sub-sequent training and practice; but knowledge, it seems, must surely have a diviner quality, something which never loses its power, but whose effects are useful and salutary or again useless and harmful according to the direction in which it is turned, Have you never noticed how shrewd is the glance of the type of men commonly called bad but clever? They have small minds. but their sight is sharp and piercing enough in / Page 323 / matters that concern them; it's not that their sight is weak, but that they are forced to serve evil, so that the keener their sight the more effective that evil is,'
'That's true.'
'But suppose,' I said, 'that such natures were cut loose, when they were still children, from all the dead weights natural to this world of change and fastened on them by sensual indulgences like gluttony, which twist their minds' vision to lower things, and suppose that when so freed they were turned towards the truth, then this same part of these same individuals would have as keen a vision of truth as it has of the objects on which it is at present turned,'
'Very likely,'
'And is it not also likely, and indeed a necessary conse- quence of what we have said, that society will never be properly governed either by the uneducated, who have no knowledge of the truth, or by those who are allowed to t spend all their lives in purely intellectual pursuits? The un-educated have no single aim in life to which all their actions, public and private, are to be directed; the intellectuals will take no practical action of their own accord, fancying them-selves to be out of this world in some kind of 'eartWy paradise,'
'True.'
'Then our job as lawgivers is to compel the best minds to attain what we have called the highest form of knowledge, and to ascend to the vision of the good as we have described, and when they have achieved this and see well enough, a' prevent them behaving as they are now allowed to,'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Remaining in the upper world, and refusing to return again to the prisoners in the cave below and share their labours and rewards, whether trivial or serious.'
'But surely,' he protested, 'that will not be fair, We shall be compelling them to live a poorer life than they might live,'
'The object of our legislation,' I reminded him again, 'is, not the special welfare of any particular class in our society, / Page 324 / but of the society as a whole;I and it uses persuasion or compulsion to unite all citizens and make them share together the benefits which each individually can confer on the community; and its purpose in fostering this attitude is not to leave everyone to please himself, but to make each man a link in the unity of the whole.'
'You are right; I had forgotten,' he said.
'You see, then, Glaucon,' I went on, 'we shan't be unfair to our philosophers, but shall be quite fair in what we say when we compel them to have some care and responsibility for others. We shall tell them that philosophers born in other states can reasonably refuse to take part in the hard work of politics; for society produces them quite involun-tarily and unintentionally, and it is only just that anything that grows up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes to no one. "But," we shall say, "we have bred you both for your own sake and that of the whole community to act as leaders and king-bees in a hive; you are better and more fully educated than the rest and better qualified to combine the practice of philosophy and politics. You must therefore each descend in turn and live with your fellows in the cave and get used to seeing in the dark; once you get used to it you will see a thousand times better than they do and will distinguish the various shadows, and know what they are shadows of, because you have seen the truth about things admirable and just and good. And so our state and yours will be really awake, and not merely dreaming like most societies today, with their shadow battles and their struggles for political power, which they treat as some great prize. The truth is quite different: the state whose prospective rulers come to their duties with least enthusiasm is bound to have the best and most tranquil government, and the state whose rulers are eager to rule the worst." '2
'I quite agree.'

Page325 (number omitted)

'Then will our pupils, when they hear what we say, dissent and refuse to take their share of the hard work of government, even though spending the greater part of their time together in the pure air above?'
They cannot refuse, for we are making a just demand of  just men. But of course, unlike present rulers, they will approach the business of government as an unavoidable necessity.'
'Yes, of course,' I agreed. 'The truth is that if you want a well-governed state to be possible, you must find for your future rulers some way of life they like better than govern-ment; for only then will you have government by the truly rich, those, that is, whose riches consist not of gold, but of the true happiness of a good and rational life. If you get, in public affairs, men whose life is impoverished and desti-tute of personal satisfactions, but who hope to snatch some compensation for their own inadequacy from a political career, there can never be good government. They start fighting for power, and the consequent internal and domestic conflicts ruin both them and society.'
'True indeed.'
'Is there any life except that of true philosophy which looks down on positions of political power?'
'None whatever.'
'But what we need is that the only men to get power should be men who do not love it, otherwise we shall have rivals' quarrels.'
'That is certain.'
Who else, then, will you compel to undertake the responsibilities of Guardians of our state, if it is not to be those who know most about the principles of good govern- ment and who have other rewards and a better life than the politician's ?'
'There is no one else.'..."

Note 1 page 317

I. Lit: 'like us'. How 'like' has been a matter of controversy. Plato can hardly have meant that the ordinary man cannot distinguish between shadows and real things. But he does seem to be saying, with a touch of caricature (we must not take him too solemnly), that the ordinary man is often very uncritical in his beliefs, which are little more than a 'careless acceptance of appearances , (Crombie).

Notes page 318

1. Lit: 'regard nothing else as true but the shadows'. The Greek word alethes (true) carries an implication of genuinenes, and some
translators render it here as 'real'.
2. Or 'more real'. 3. Or 'true', 'genuine'.

Note page 319 Odyssey, XI, 489.

Note Page 320

1. I.e. the similes of the Sun and the Line (though pp. 267-76 must surely also be referred to). The detailed relations between the three similes have been much disputed, as has the meaning of the word here translated 'connected'. Some interpret it to mean a detailed corre-spondence ('every feature. . . is meant to fit' - Cornford), others to mean, more loosely, 'attached' or 'linked to'. That Plato intended some degree of 'connection' between the three similes cannot be in doubt in view of the sentences which follow. But we should remember that they are similes, not scientific descriptions, and it would be a mistake to try to find too much detailed precision. Plato has just spoken of the prisoners 'getting their hands' on their returned fellow and killing him. How could they do that if fettered as described at the opening Of the simile (p. 317)? But Socrates was executed, so of course they must.
This translation assumes the following main correspondences:
Tied prisoner in the cave' illusion
Freed prisoner in the cave Belief
Looking at shadows and reflections in the world outside the cave and the ascent thereto Reason
Looking at real things in the world outside the cave Intelligence
Looking at the sun Vision of the form of the good.

Note 1 page 321 1. a. footnote 4, p.133 

Note 1 page 322 1. Techne., Arete,

Note 1 page 324 1. cr. 420b and 4660 above, pp. 18fand 252.
2. Socrates takes up here a point made to Thrasymachus at 347b, p.89."

 

 

THE PLATO PAPERS
Peter Ackroyd
1999

Page 87
"There was a cave, and the ground sloped downwards. I sensed the smell of that which was neither living nor dead. I believed that I could hear voices and I began walking towards the mouth of the cave. I admit to a slight sense of fear, but I submit that all of us share some horror of darkness. You tell me that I was dreaming? This was no dream. I was as wakeful and as watchful as I have ever been.
When I entered the cave the air seemed so heavy that, for a moment, I believed I could go no further. But the ground still sloped downwards and instinctively I bowed my head as I walked into the darkness. I do not know how far I travelled. It is possible that I did not move at all. Perhaps 1 stood still. Surely you understand? It had grown to such a pitch of blackness that I could not see my own body, or feel aware of any movement. I realised later, of course, what had happened. I was changing dimensions in order to enter the world of Mouldwarp. Who cried out that 'Plato is impious'? I am not impious! I am simply telling you the truth. The darkness began to lift, very slowly, and I noticed that a sombre radiance seemed to emanate from the stone around me. It was ther-colour of fire or blood. I was still walking down. Forgive me. I can only express it as 'up' and 'down'. Perhaps I have become like them.
But I knew that I was following a circular path. It was / Page88­ / growing warmer and I noticed that in the glowing light my body cast a strange shape upon the ground. It was called a shadow, or a wraith created by the false light of their sun. Theirs was a world of shadows. Then I found myself before a flight of broad stone stairs. I had no choice. I stepped upon the first stair. I began to descend, but once more it was as if I were not moving at all; I might have remained in the" same place, except that various layers of dark and light passed over my head. I experienced the strangest sensations of stupor, and of anxious restlessness, until I recognised that I was experiencing night and day as they once were in antiquity. The intervals between them grew longer, until I was able to glimpse points oflight in the darkness. I looked up. I looked up and saw the bright objects once called stars. There was a firmament stretching above me, and the position of the night
sky was very like that which I had studied in the old charts of Mouldwarp. These were the ancient fixed stars, shining below the level of our world!
Then the noise began. At first it was the merest whispering, but it grew steadily louder until it filled my ears with chiming, and tapping, and rhythmic thudding. There we"re more violent indistinct sounds, but the path had become so steep that there was no chance of turning back. But why should I wish to return, when I could run towards my vision? I had come into a great cavern extending in every direction. It was impossible to gauge its depth, or its height, although I could see the fixed stars still turning overhead. And there, stretching below me, was London! It was no longer night but broad day and I could see great towers of glass, domes, roofs and houses. I saw the Thames itself, gleaming in the distance, with wide thoroughfares running / Page 89 / beside it. The avenues and buildings were more elaborate and extensive that anything we had ever surmised; yet, somehow, this was the city of which I had always dreamed.
How can I describe to you all the strangeness of my journey among the people of Mouldwarp? They were short, little more than half your height, and even I had to walk carefully among them. You ask if they were alarmed by my appearance, but the truth is that they could not see me. It was as if! were a ghost or spirit. Why do you laugh? I believe that I was not visible to them because I existed in dimensions other than their own. That is why they were so compact, so densely formed, and why all their activity was curiously restrained. They moved in preordained patterns - sometimes it seemed that they did not know in which direction they were travelling. Their eyes were focused ahead and yet they seemed to see nothing; they might have been wrapped in intense thought, but of what were they thinking?
I bent over to listen to them; I tried to speak, but of course they could not hear me. I travelled down Old Street and saw that it had once been a track in the wilderness. I came into Smithfield and flinched at the anger of those who lived beside it. In Cheapside the city itself had established intricate patterns of
movement, and all the activity of the citizens was for its own sake. In Clapham I listened to them talking - have you got the time please he obviously wants the best price but he wants to sell as well I shall be off then shall I he never wants to hear the truth can you possibly tell me the time. And so their lives continued. They had no way of knowing that their earth was in a great cavern beneath the surface of our world. Their sky was the roof of a cave, but for them it was the threshold of the universe. I was walking among / Page 90 / the blind. Yet when at night I looked up at the glittering face of the Mouldwarp heaven I, too, was entranced by it.
I had thought that, when each night followed day, there would be silence and stillness; instead there was continual sound. When I walked in any direction, trying to find its source, it retreated from me with every step. It was then I heard it; this was the whispering and groaning of London itself. Neither was there any true darkness, since the horizons of the city glowed beneath the darker levels of the air. Beside the streets there were vessels of glass, or frozen water, which contained the radiance of the stars. Could I have invented such a place? The citizens wore close­fitting garments of many colours. I had expected them to be uniform in appearance, but instead they seemed to mock and parody each other. They seemed to delight in difference and to believe that there was no distinction between outward and inward. Does this surprise you? Only then did I begin to understand the nature of the Mouldwarp era. Of course they could not escape the tyranny of their dimensions, or the restrictions of their life within the cave, but this afforded them extra delight in contrast and discontinuity. Within the precincts of government and of business, of living and of working, they derived great pleasure from reversals and oppositions. The air was tainted by the inhuman smell of numbers and machines, but the city itself was in a state of perpetual change. No. Do not laugh. Listen to me. I soon discovered that they always wished to communicate in the shortest possible time; the most simple piece of information seemed to amuse them, as long as it could be gathered instantaneously. There was one other aspect of their lives which, I admit, I ought to have anticipated: the faster an / Page 91 / action could be reported, the more significance it acquired. Events themselves were not of any consequence, only the fact that they could be known quickly. Now you are silent. Again I ask you: how could I have invented such a reality?
When the citizens were young they tried to leap into the air; when they were old they stooped downwards to the earth, which they believed to be their final home. They did not know that they lived in confinement, and many were content. Perhaps they were happy simply because they fulfilled their form, but I also saw those who were tired and careworn. They were continually building and rebuilding their city. They took pleasure in destruction, I believe, because it allowed them a kind of forgetfulness. So the city continued to spread, encroaching upon new ground. It was continually going forward, forever seeking some harmonious outline without ever finding it. I tell you this: Mouldwarp London had no boundaries; it had no beginning and no end. That is why its citizens also seemed so restless. They were consumed by the need for activity, but it was activity for its own sake. There may be a further explanation. It is possible that they continued at their fevered pace in the belief that if the pattern was interrupted they, as well as the city itself, might be destroyed. So there was a time for eating, a time for sleeping, a time for working. There was even a band of time strapped to their wrists, like a manacle binding them to life in the cave. They lived in small divisions or fragments of time, continually anticipating the conclusion of each fragment as if the whole point of activity lay in its end.
Their time was everywhere. It forced them to go forward. When I saw them walking in great lines, it was time itself that / Page 92 / was moving. But it was not uniform. I had expected it to be forever racing, never ceasing, but in fact it proceeded at different speeds according to the variable nature of the city. There were certain areas where it moved quickly, and others where it went forward reluctantly or fitfully - and there were places where it no longer moved at all. There were narrow streets in the city where I could still hear the voices of those who had passed through many years before. Then I made another wonderful discovery. There were some citizens of Mould warp who seemed to live in a different time. There were ragged people who wandered with dogs; they were not on the same journey as those whom they passed on the crowded thoroughfares. There were children who chanted songs from an earlier age and there were old people who already had the look of eternity upon their faces. You laugh at me. But I, Plato, have seen and heard these things. May I continue? They could sometimes glimpse images or ghosts of the spirit, but they would look away in disbelief or consternation. On occasions I noticed that one of them would intercept a brief look from some unknown citizen - both would glance at each other, and pass on, as if nothing mysterious had occurred. I knew then that their souls were trying to communi­cate, even through the fog and darkness of Mouldwarp. The ancient forms of speech and prayer were still in existence, but barely able to stir beneath the burden of this reality. So I heard words which the citizens could not hear, and observed moments of recognition or glances of longing which they never saw.
But their souls felt my presence, and some of them rose up in their cells to greet me. I welcomed them in turn and began to converse with them. We were not heard, of course, by those / Page 93 / whom we sought to understand. I first asked these tiny chattering spirits about their own beliefs, but they possessed none - or otherwise they were so confused and uncertain that it would have been better if they had none. They were ashamed of their own uncertainty but, as they told me, they had been. held in the dark so long that they scarcely recognised one another.
I tried to learn more about the history of this city, but no one seemed to know it. They had heard of giants in the past, the original inhabitants of London - 'Now we believe,' they said, 'that they were prophecies of you and your race'! I had so many questions. Did these trees collect the shadows of the people who passed beneath? They had no answer. They did not even know the names of the trees. I asked them if the areas of grass were sacred places. I asked them why the buildings aspired to the sky. The birds that clustered on the roofs and in the squares - were they the guardians of London? Do sundials control the sun? They did not understand my questions. Instead they complained to me that they were imprisoned within beings who had little concept of divinity or truth, but who instead worshipped order and control. They told me that the people of Mouldwarp professed to care for their world, but they killed their unborn children and treated their animal companions with great savagery. Yet still they wanted to make copies of themselves by means of their science. I am telling you these things without wishing to disturb you. I intend to hide nothing of the truth from you, revealing both good and evil so that you can decide for yourselves whether I have visited a real city.
I conversed once more with these little spirits, and they told me that their charges suffered from forgetfulness and fear. The / Page 94 / citizens were often bewildered; they lived within fantasies and ambitions which the city itself had created, and they felt obliged to act according to the roles allotted to them. They had no understanding of themselves. They had no use for the present except as an avenue to the future, and yet many experienced a great horror of death. They desired to go faster and faster, but towards some unknown destination. No wonder their souls shivered in the darkness. I spoke to some who simply wished to be dissolved and to disappear. When I heard people arguing, I saw their perturbed spirits Buttering above them.
I remember walking by the sacred Thames, where the outcasts slept, when a young man passed by me sighing. His soul recognised my presence and she spoke to me softly. 'Do you see this river? I have stared into its depths and I have come to the conclusion that it is never the same. It exists for a moment, but then it is changed by water from other rivers and other seas. How can this be so? How can it always be the same and always different? Ever fresh and ever renewed?' I had no answer but, after they had gone, I gazed upon its surface. And there for the first time I saw the outline of my own face, rippling upon the water. I saw myself ebbing and flowing in time. I looked up and gazed at their sun; the disc shone hot and bright, but I could see through it to the other side and to the roof of the cave. It was then I decided to return and tell you of my discoveries."

 

THE KORAN

Everyman

Translated from the Arabic by

J. M. Rodwell

1909

INTRODUCTION

Page xxiii

"In addition Sura 18 includes two stories from the Christian periphery to the north of Arabia; the so-called legend of the

Seven Sleepers"

NOTES

Page 460

2 The valley, or mountain, in which the Cave of the Seven Sleepers was situated. See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xxxiii., especially the concluding sentences.
3 Because they slept with their eyes open. Beidh.
4 Muslims believe that this dog will be admitted into Paradise. One of its traditional names is Katmir, a word whose letters, it should be observed, are with one exception identical with Rakim.

 

Page 189 (number omitted)

SURA 18 - THE CAVE
MECCA - 110 VERSES


In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful


"Praise be to God, who hath sent down the Book to his servant, and hath not made it tortuous1
But direct; that it may warn of a grievous woe from him, and announce to the faithful who do the things that are right, that a goodly reward, wherein they shall abide for ever, awaiteth them;
And that it may warn those who say, 'God hath begotten a  Son.'
No knowledge of this have either they or their fathers! A grievous saying to come out of their mouths! They speak no other than a lie!
And haply, if they believe not in this new revelation, thou wilt slay thyself, on their very footsteps, out of vexation.
Verily, we have made all that is on earth as its adornment, that we might make trial who among mankind would excel in works:
But we are surely about to reduce all that is thereon to dust! Hast thou reflected that the Inmates of THE CAVE and of Al
Rakim2 were one of our wondrous signs?
When the youths betook them to the cave they said, 'O our Lord! grant us mercy from before thee, and order for us our affair aright.'
10 Then struck we upon their ears with deafness in the cave for many a year:
Then we awaked them that we might know which of the two parties could best reckon the space of their abiding.
We will relate to thee their tale with truth. They were youths who had believed in their Lord, and in guidance had we increased them;
And we had made them stout of heart, when they stood up and said, 'Our Lord is Lord of the Heavens and of the Earth: we will call on no other God than him; for in that case we had said a thing outrageous.
These our people have taken other gods beside Him, though / Page 190 / they bring no clear proof for them; but, who more iniquitous than he who forgeth a lie of God?
So when ye shall have separated you from them and from that which they worship beside God, then betake you to the cave: Your Lord will unfold his mercy to you, and will order your affairs for you for the best.'
And thou mightest have seen the sun when it arose, pass on the right of their cave, and when it set, leave them on the left, while they were in its spacious chamber. This is one of the signs of God. Guided indeed is he whom God guideth; but for him whom He misleadeth, thou shalt by no means find a patron, director.
And thou wouldst have deemed them awake,3 though they were sleeping: and we turned them to the right and to the left. And in the entry lay their dog with paws outstretched.4 Hadst thou come suddenly upon them, thou wouldst surely have turned thy back on them in flight, and have been filled with fear at them.
So we awaked them that they might question one another. Said one of them, 'How long have ye tarried here?' They said, 'We have tarried a day or part of a day.' They said, 'Your Lord knoweth best how long ye have tarried: Send now one of you with this your coin into the city, and let his mark who therein hath purest food, and from him let him bring you a supply: and let him be courteous, and not discover you to anyone.
For they, if they find you out, will stone you or turn you back to their faith, and in that case it will fare ill with you for ever.'
20 And thus made we their adventure known to their fellow citizens, that they might learn that the promise of God is true, and that as to 'the Hour' there is no doubt of its coming. When they disputed among themselves concerning what had befallen them, some said, 'Build a building over them; their Lord knoweth best about them.' Those who prevailed in the matter said, 'A place of worship will we surely raise over them.'
Some say, 'They were three; their dog the fourth:' others say, 'Five; their dog the sixth,' guessing at the secret: others say, 'Seven; and their dog the eighth.' SAY: My Lord best knoweth the number: none, save a few, shall know them.
Therefore be clear in thy discussions about them,5 and ask not any Christian concerning them.
Say not thou of a thing, 'I will surely do it to-morrow;' / Page 191 / without, 'If God will.,6 And when thou hast forgotten, call thy Lord to mind; and say, 'Haply my Lord will guide me, that I may come near to the truth of this story with correctness.'
And they tarried in their cave 300 years, and 9 years over.7

 

 

3 SAY 45 9 9
9 SUSTAINER 126 36 9

 

 

5
 THREE
56
29
2
6
 FOURTH
88
34
7
4
 FIVE
42
24
6
5
 SIXTH
80
26
8
5
 SEVEN
65
20
2
6
 EIGHTH
57
39
3
31
 First Total
388
172
28
3+1
 Add to Deduce
3+8+8
1+7+2
2+8
4
 Second Total
19
10
10
-
 Add to Deduce
1+9
1+0
1+0
-
 Third Total
10
1
1
-
 Reduce to Deduce
1+0
-
-
4
 Essence of Number
1
1
1

 

 

3
DOG
26
17
8
3
GOD
26
17
8

 

 

5
 THREE
56
29
2
6
 FOURTH
88
34
7
4
 FIVE
42
24
6
5
 SIXTH
80
26
8
5
 SEVEN
65
20
2
6
 EIGHTH
57
39
3
3
 GOD
26
17
8
34
 First Total
414
189
36
3+4
 Add to Deduce 4+1+4 1+8+9 3+6
7
 Second Total
9
18
9
-
 Reduce to Deduce
-
1+8
-
7
 Essence of Number
9
9
9

 

 

8
 MOHAMMED
72
36
9
5
 ISLAM
54
18
9
4
 IMAM
36
18
9
6
 MOSQUE
90
27
9

 

 

10
 NAMES OF GOD
99
45
9
7
 THOUGHT
99
36
9
6
 DIVINE
63
36
9
4
 LOVE
54
18
9

 

 

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thomas Mann

1875 1955

Page 711

CHAPTER VII

THE THUNDERBOLT

"These were the mo­ments when the "Seven-Sleeper," not knowing. what had hap­pened, was slowly stirring himself in the grass, before he sat up, rubbed his eyes - yes, let us carry the figure to.the.end, in order to do justice to the movement of our hero's mind: he drew up his legs, stood up, looked about him. He saw himself released, freed from enchantment - not of his own motion; he was fain to confess,- but by the operation of exterior powers, of whose activities his own liberation was. a, minor .incident indeed! Yet
though his tiny: destiny fainted to nothing. in the face off the gen­eral, was there not some hint of a personal mercy and grace for him, a manifestation of divine goodness and justice? Would Life receive again her erring and. " delicate" child- not by a cheap and easy slipping back to her arms, but sternly, solemnly, peni­tentially - perhaps not even among the living, but only with three salvoes fired over the grave of him a sinner? Thus might he return. He sank on his knees, raising face and hands to a heaven that howsoever dark and sulphurous was no longer the gloomy grotto of his state of sin."

 

 

THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER POEMS

T. S, Eliot 1940


THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

 

"I AM LAZARUS, COME FROM THE DEAD, COME BACK TO TELL YOU ALL, I SHALL TELL YOU ALL"


 

 

 

I AM THE OPPOSITE OF THE OPPOSITE I AM

THE

OPPOSITE OF OPPOSITE

IS

THE

AM

I

ALWAYS

AM

 
 
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