Settembrini looked at him, a melancholy gleam in his dark eye. “Engineer!” he said, restrainingly. He took Hans Castorp’s arm and drew him a little aside, as though to speak to him in private “How often have I told you that one must realize what one is and think accordingly! Never mind the propositions. Our Western heritage is reason⁠—reason, analysis, action, progress: these, and not the slothful bed of monkish tradition!”

Naphta had been listening. He turned his head to say, “Monkish tradition! As if we did not owe to the monks the culture of the soil of all Europe! As if it were not due to them that Germany, France and Italy yield us corn and wine and fruit today, instead of being covered with primeval forest and swamp! The monks, my dear sir were hard workers⁠—”

“ Ebbè! Well, then!”