The humanist Plotinus, exclaimed Hans Castorp, was also known to have given expression to the same idea. But Herr Settembrini flung up his hands and ordered the young man not to confuse two different points of view⁠—and, for the rest, to be advised and maintain an attitude of receptivity.

Naphta, continuing, derived the reverence which the Christian Middle Ages paid to physical suffering from the fact that it acquiesced on religious grounds in the sight of the anguish of the flesh. For the wounds of the body not only emphasized its sunken state, they also corresponded in the most edifying manner to the envenomed corruption of the soul, and thereby gave rise to emotions of true spiritual satisfaction: whereas blooming health was a misleading phenomenon, insulting to the conscience of man and requiring to be counteracted by an attitude of debasement and humility before physical infirmity, which was infinitely beneficial to the soul. Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius? Who will deliver me from the body of this death? There spoke the voice of the spirit, which was eternally the voice of true humanity.