It was due to some remark of theirs that the debate took on a less abstract tone, and all the company joined in a discussion of torture, cremation and punishment⁠—both capital and corporal. It was Ferdinand Wehsal who introduced the last-named; with obvious relish, Hans Castorp observed. As was to be expected, Herr Settembrini, in high-sounding words, invoked the dignity of the human race against a procedure whose results were as devastating in education as in penology. And equally to be expected, though rendered startling by a certain kind of gloomy ferocity, was Naphta’s approval of the bastinado. According to him, it was absurd to prate about human dignity, since true dignity indwelt not in the flesh but in the spirit. The soul of man was forever prone to suck the joys of this earthly life from the flesh instead of the spirit; thus pain, by rendering bitter to him the things of the senses, was highly efficacious, driving him back to the spirit and giving the latter the mastery over the flesh. It was shallow to contend that the discipline of the whipping-post had anything particularly shameful about it.