“No,” Naphta went on. “Liberation and development of the individual are not the key to our age, they are not what our age demands. What it needs, what it wrestles after, what it will create⁠—is Terror.”

He uttered the last word lower than the rest; without a motion of his body. Only his eyeglasses suddenly flashed. All three of them, as they heard it, jumped, even Herr Settembrini, who, however, promptly collected himself and smiled.

“And may one ask,” he queried, “whom, or what⁠—you see I am all question, I ask even how to ask⁠—whom, or what you envisage as the bringer of this⁠—this⁠—I repeat the word with some unwillingness⁠—this Terror?”