ELEVEN
THE
CIRCULAR LETTER
WE
ARE APPROACHING the end of our tale. As
we have already indicated, our knowledge of this end is fragmentary, rather
more in the nature of a legend than of a historical narrative. We shall have to be content with that. We therefore take all the more pleasure in
being able to fill out this next-to-last chapter of Knecht's
life with an authentic document, namely with that voluminous memorandum in
which the Glass Bead Game Master himself presents the authorities with the
reasons for his decision and asks them to release him from his office.
As we have repeatedly stated, Joseph Knecht no longer believed in the success of this memorandum
which he had had so conscientiously prepared.
We must admit, moreover, that when the time came he wished he had
neither written nor handed in this "petition". He suffered the fate of all who exercise a
natural and initially unconscious power over other men: this power is not
exercised without a certain cost to its possessor. Although the Magister
had been glad to win his friend Tegularius's support
for his plans, and to have made him a promoter and associate of them, the
consequences went far beyond what he had conceived or wished. He had coaxed or misled Fritz into
undertaking a task whose value he himself, as its author, no longer believed
in; but when his friend at last presented him with the fruits of his labours,
he could no longer undo the work. Nor,
since the purpose of the assignment had been to make Fritz better able to bear
their separation, could he lay the data aside and leave them unused without
thoroughly offending and disappointing his friend. At the time, we are convinced, Knecht would much rather have brusquely resigned his office
and declared his withdrawal from the Order instead of choosing the roundabout
mode of the "petition", which in his eyes had become virtually a
farce. But consideration for Tegularius caused him to restrain his impatience for a
while longer.
It would no doubt be interesting if we
had his industrious friend's manuscript at our disposal. It consisted mainly of historical material
meant to serve as proof or illustration; but we may safely assume that it
contained a good many sharp and witty epigrams on the hierarchy, as well as on
the world and world history. But even if
this document, composed as it was in months of tenacious labour, were still in
existence - as it quite possibly may be - we would have to forbear from
publishing it here, since this book of ours would not be the proper place for
it.
Our concern is only with the use the Magister Ludi made of his
friend's work. When Tegularius
solemnly presented this document to him, he accepted it with cordial words of
gratitude and appreciation, and knowing what pleasure this would give, asked
Fritz to read it aloud. For several
days, therefore, Tegularius spent half an hour in the
Magister's garden, for it was summertime, and read
with gusto the many pages of his manuscript.
Often the reading was interrupted by peals of laughter on the part of
both. These were good days for Tegularius.
Afterwards, however, Knecht went into
seclusion in order to compose his letter to the Board. We present here its exact text. No further commentary on it is necessary.
The Magister Ludi's Letter to the
Board of Educators
Various considerations have prompted me,
the Magister Ludi, to present
to the Board a special request in this separate and somewhat more private
memorandum, instead of including it in my official report. Although I am appending this memorandum to
the official accounting that is now due, and await an official reply, I regard
it rather as a circular letter to my colleagues in office.
Every Magister
is required to inform the Board of any hindrances or danger to his conducting
his office in keeping with the Rule.
Although I have endeavoured to serve with all my strength, the conduct
of my office is (or seems to me to be) threatened by a danger which resides in
my own person, although that is probably not its sole origin. At any rate, I see my suitability to serve as
Magister Ludi as
imperilled, and this by circumstances beyond my control. To put it briefly: I have begun to doubt my
ability to officiate satisfactorily because I consider the Glass Bead Game
itself in a state of crisis. The purpose
of this memorandum is to convince the Board that the crisis exists, and that my
awareness of it demands that I seek a position other from the one I now hold.
Permit me to clarify the situation by a
metaphor. A man sits in an attic room
engaged in a subtle work of scholarship.
Suddenly he becomes aware that fire has broken out in the house
below. He will not consider whether it
is his function to see to it, or whether he had not better finish his
tabulations. He will run downstairs and
attempt to save the house. Here I am
sitting in the top storey of our Castalian edifice,
occupied with the Glass Bead Game, working with delicate, sensitive
instruments, and instinct tells me, my nose tells me, that down below something
is burning, our whole structure is imperilled, and that my business now is not
to analyze music or define rules of the Game, but to rush to where the smoke
is.
Most of us brothers of the Order take
Castalia, our Order, our system of scholarship and schooling, together with the
Game and everything associated with it, as much for granted as most men take
the air they breathe and the ground they stand on. Hardly anyone ever thinks that this air and
this ground could sometime not be there, that we might some day lack air or
find the ground vanishing from under us.
We have the good fortune of living well protected in a small, neat, and
cheerful world, and the great majority of us, strange as it may seem, hold to
the fiction that this world has always existed and that we were born into
it. I myself spent my younger years in
this extremely pleasant delusion, although I was perfectly well aware of the
reality that I was not born in Castalia, but only sent here by the educational
authorities and raised here. I knew also
that Castalia, the Order, the Board, the colleges, the Archives, and the Glass
Bead Game have not always existed, are by no means a product of nature, but a
belated and noble creation of man's will, and transitory like all such
things. I knew all this, but it had no
reality for me; I simply did not think of it, ignored it, and I knew that more
than three-quarters of us will live and die in this strange and pleasant
illusion.
But just as there have been centuries
and millennia without the Order and without Castalia, there will again be such
eras in the future. And if today I
remind my colleagues and the honourable Board of this platitude, and call upon
them to turn their eyes for once to the dangers that threaten us, if I assume
for a moment the unenviable and often ludicrous role of prophet, warner, and sermonizer, I do so fully prepared to accept
mocking laughter; but I hope nevertheless that the majority of you will read my
memorandum to the end and that some of you may even agree with me on a few of
its points. That in itself
would be a good deal.
An institution such as our Castalia, a
small Province dedicated to the things of the mind, is prone to internal and
external perils. The internal perils, or
at least a good many of them, are known to us; we keep watch for them and take
the necessary measures. Every so often
we send individual pupils back, after having admitted them to the elite
schools, because we discover in them ineradicable
traits and impulses which would make them unfitted for our community and
dangerous to it. Most of them, we trust,
are not lesser human beings on that score, but merely unsuited to Castalian life, and after their return to the world are
able to find conditions more appropriate to them, and develop into capable
men. Our practice in this respect has
proved its value, and on the whole our community can be said to sustain its
dignity and self-discipline and to fulfil its task of being and constantly
recruiting a nobility of the mind.
Presumably we have no more than a noble and tolerable quota of the
unworthy and slothful among us.
The conceit that can be observed among
the members of our Order is rather more objectionable. I am referring to that class arrogance to
which every aristocracy inclines, and with which every privileged group is
charged, with or without justification.
The history of societies shows a constant tendency towards the formation
of a nobility as the apex and crown of any given
society. It would seem that all efforts
at socialization have as their ideal some kind of aristocracy, of rule of the
best, even though this goal may not be admitted. The holders of power, whether they have been
kings or an anonymous group, have always been willing to further the rise of a nobility by protection and the granting of
privileges. This has been so no matter
what the nature of the nobility: political, by birth, by selection and
education. The favoured nobility has
always basked in the sunlight; but from a certain stage of development on, its
place in the sun, its privileged state, has always constituted a temptation and
led to its corruption. If, now, we
regard our Order as a nobility and try to examine ourselves to see to what
extent we earn our special position by our conduct towards the whole of the
people and towards the world, to what extent we have already been infected by
the characteristic disease of nobility - hubris, conceit, class
arrogance, self-righteousness, exploitativeness - if
we conduct such a self-examination, we may be seized by a good many
doubts. The present-day Castalian may not be lacking in obedience to the rules of
the Order, in industry, in cultivated intelligence; but does he not often
suffer from a severe lack of insight into his place in the structure of the
nation, his place in the world and world history? Is he aware of the foundation of his existence;
does he know himself to be a leaf, a blossom, a twig or root of a living
organism? Does he have any notion of the
sacrifices the nation makes for his sake, by feeding and clothing him, by
underwriting his schooling and his manifold studies? And does he care very much about the meaning
of our special position? Does he have
any real conception of the purpose of our Order and life?
There are exceptions, granted, many and
praiseworthy exceptions. Nevertheless I
am inclined to answer all these questions with a No. The average Castalian
may regard the man of the outside world, the man who is not a scholar, without
contempt, envy, or malice, but he does not regard him as a brother, does not
see him as his employer, does not in the least feel that he shares
responsibility for what is going on outside in the world. The purpose of his life seems to him to be
cultivation of the scholarly disciplines for their own sake, or perhaps even to
be taking pleasurable strolls in the garden of a culture that pretends to be a
universal culture without ever being quite that. In brief, this Castalian
culture of ours, sublime and aristocratic though it certainly is, and to which
I am profoundly grateful, is for most of those associated with it not an
instrument they play on like a great organ, not active and directed towards
goals, not consciously serving something greater or profounder than
itself. Rather, it tends somewhat
towards smugness and self-praise, towards the cultivation and elaboration of
intellectual specialism. I know there are a large number of Castalians who are men of integrity and worth, who really
desire only to serve. I mean the
teachers who are the products of our system, who then go out into the country
to engage in unselfish and incalculably important service far from the pleasant
climate and the intellectual luxuries of our Province. These fine teachers out there are, strictly
speaking, the only ones among us who are really carrying out the purpose of
Castalia. Through their work alone we
are repaying the nation for the many benefits we receive from it. Granted that every one of
us brothers of the Order knows that our supreme and most sacred task consists
in preserving the intellectual foundation of our country and our world. That foundation has proved to be a moral
element of the highest efficacy, for it is nothing less than the sense of truth
- on which justice is based, as well as so much else. But if we examine our real feelings, most of
us would have to admit that we don't regard the welfare of the world, the
preservation of intellectual honesty and purity outside as well as inside our
tidy Province, as the chief thing. In
fact, it is not at all important to us.
We are only too glad to leave it to those brave teachers out there to
pay our debt to the world by their self-sacrificing work, and so more or less
justify the privileges we enjoy, we Glass Bead Game players, astronomers,
musicians, and mathematicians. It is
part of the above-mentioned arrogance and caste spirit that we do not much care
whether we earn our privileges by accomplishments. Even though our abstemious way of life is
prescribed by the Order, a good many of us plume ourselves on it, as if it were
a virtue we were practising purely for its own sake instead of its being the
least that we owe to the country that makes our Castalian
existence possible.
I shall content myself with merely
referring to these internal defects and dangers. They are not insignificant, although in
peaceful times they would not come anywhere near imperilling our existence. But as it happens, we Castalians
are dependent not only on our own morality and rationality. We depend vitally on the condition of the
country and the will of the people. We
eat our bread, use our libraries, expand our schools and archives - but if the
nation no longer wants to authorize this, or if it should be struck by
impoverishment, war, and so on, then our life and studying would be over in a
minute. Some day our country might
decide that its Castalia and our culture are a luxury it can no longer
afford. Instead of being genially proud
of us, it may come round to regarding us as noxious parasites, tricksters, and
enemies. Those are the external dangers
that threaten us.
To portray these dangers in any graphic
form, I would probably have to draw upon examples from history. And if I were talking to the average Castalian, I would surely encounter a measure of passive
resistance, an almost childish ignorance and indifference. As you know, among Castalians
interest in world history is extremely weak.
Most of us, in fact, not only lack interest but also respect for
history. We fail to do it justice, I
might say. Over the years I have done
considerable searching into the sources of this feeling - this mixture of
indifference and arrogance towards world history - and I have found that it
derives from two causes. First, the
content of history strikes us as rather inferior - I am not speaking of
intellectual and cultural history, which is of course within our purview. Insofar as we have any notion at all about
world history, we see it as consisting in brutal struggle for power, goods,
lands, raw materials, money - in short, for those material and quantitative
things which we regard as far from the realm of Mind and rather contemptible. For us the seventeenth century is the age of
Descartes, Pascal, Froberger,
not of Cromwell or Louis XIV.
The second reason we fight shy of
history is our traditional and I would say valid distrust of a certain kind of
history writing which was very popular in the age of decadence before the
founding of our Order. A priori we have
not the slightest confidence in that so-called philosophy of history of which
Hegel is the most brilliant and also most dangerous representative. In the following century it led to the most
repulsive distortion of history and destruction of all feeling for truth. To us, a bias for this sham philosophy of
history is one of the principal features of that era of intellectual debasement
and vast political power struggles which we occasionally call the Century of
Wars, but more often the Age of the Feuilleton.
Our present culture, the Order and Castalia, arose out of the ruins of
that age, out of the struggle with and eventual defeat of its mentality - or
insanity.
But it is part of our intellectual arrogance
that we confront world history, especially in modern times, in much the same
spirit that the hermits and ascetics of early Christianity confronted the theatrum mundi, the
great theatre of the world. History
seems to us an arena of instincts and fashions, of appetite, avarice, and
craving for power, of blood lust, violence, destruction, and wars, of ambitious
ministers, venal generals, bombarded cities, and we too easily forget that this
is only one of its many aspects. Above
all we forget that we ourselves are a part of history, that we are the product
of growth and are condemned to perish if we lose the capacity for further
growth and change. We are ourselves
history and share the responsibility for world history and our position in
it. But we gravely lack awareness of
this responsibility.
Let us glance at our own history, at the
periods in which the present pegagogic provinces
arose, in our own country and in so many others. Let us glance at the origins of the various
Orders and hierarchies of which our Order is one. We see immediately that our hierarchy and our
homeland, our beloved Castalia, was certainly not founded by people who held so
proudly detached an attitude towards world history as we do. Our predecessors and founders began their
work in a shattered world at the end of the Age of Wars. Our official explanation of that age, which
began approximately with the so-called First World War, is all too
one-sided. The trouble was, we say, that
the things of the mind did not count in those days; that the powerful rulers
considered intellect itself merely a weapon of inferior quality,
and meant only for occasional use. This
attitude, we say, was a consequence of "feuilletonistic"
corruption.
Very well - the anti-intellectuality and
brutality of that period are all too visible to us. When I call it anti-intellectual, I do not
mean to deny its imposing achievements in intelligence and methodology. But we in Castalia are taught to consider
intellect primarily in terms of striving for truth, and the kind of intellect
manifested in those days seems to have had nothing in common with striving for
truth. It was the misfortune of that age
that there was no firm moral order to counter the restiveness and upheaval
engendered by the tremendously rapid increase in the human population. What remnants there were of such a moral
order were suppressed by the contemporary sloganizing. And those struggles produced their own
strange and terrible conflicts. Much
like the era of Church schism introduced by Luther four centuries earlier, the
entire world was gripped by an immense unrest.
Everywhere lines of battle formed; everywhere bitter enmity sprang up
between old and young, between fatherland and humanity, between Red and
White. We in our day can no longer
reconstruct, let along comprehend and sympathize with the impetus and power of
such labels as Red and White, let alone the real meanings of all those battle
cries. Much as in Luther's time, we find
all over
Among us, that savage age of high
enthusiasms, fierce hatreds, and altogether unspeakable sufferings has fallen
into a kind of oblivion. That is hard to
understand, since it was so closely linked with the origin of all our
institutions, was the basis and cause of those institutions. A satirist might compare this loss of memory
with the kind of forgetfulness that parvenu adventurers who have at last
obtained a patent of nobility have for their birth and parentage.
Let us continue to dwell a little longer
on those warlike times. I have read a
good many of their documents, taking less interest in the subjected nations and
destroyed cities than in the attitude of the intellectuals of the day. They had a hard time of it, and most of them
did not endure. There were martyrs among
the scholars as well as among the clergy, and the example of their martyrdom
was not entirely without some effect, even in those times so accustomed to
atrocities. Still and all, most men of
mind did not stand up under the pressures of that violent age. Some capitulated and placed their talents, knowledge,
and techniques at the disposal of the rulers - let us recall the well-known
statement of a university professor in the Republic of the Massagetes:
"Not the faculty but His Excellency the General can properly determine the
sum of two and two." Others put up
a struggle as long as it was possible to do so in a reasonably safe fashion,
and published protests. A world-famous
author of the time - so we read in Ziegenhalss - in a
single year signed more than two hundred such protests, warnings, appeals to
reason, and so on - probably more than he had actually read. But most learned the art of silence; they
also learned to go hungry and cold, to beg and hide from the police. They died before their time and were envied
for this by the survivors. Countless
numbers took their own lives. There was
truly no pleasure and no honour in being a scholar or a writer. Those who entered the service of the rulers
and devised slogans for them had jobs and livelihoods, but they suffered the
contempt of the best among their fellows, and most of them surely suffered
pangs of conscience also. Those who
refused such service had to go hungry, live as outlaws, and die in misery or
exile. A cruel, an incredibly harsh
weeding out took place. Scientific
research that did not directly serve the needs of power and warfare rapidly
sank into decadence. The same was true
for the whole educational system.
History, which each of the leading nations of any given period referred
exclusively to itself, underwent revision and
fantastic simplification. Historical
philosophy and feuilletonism dominated the field.
So much for details. Those were wild and violent times, chaotic
and Babylonian times in which peoples and parties, old and young, Red and
White, no longer understood each other.
After sufficient bloodletting and
debasement, it came to its end; there arose a more and more powerful longing
for rationality, for the rediscovery of a common language, for order, morality,
valid standards, for an alphabet and multiplication table no longer decreed by
power blocs and alterable at any moment.
A tremendous craving for truth and justice arose, for reason, for
overcoming chaos. This vacuum at the end
of a violent era concerned only with superficial things, this sharp universal
hunger for a new beginning and the restoration of order, gave rise to our
Castalia. The insignificantly small,
courageous, half-starved but unbowed band of true thinkers began to be aware of
their potentialities. With heroic
asceticism and self-discipline they set about establishing a constitution for
themselves. Everywhere, even in the
tiniest groups, they began working once more, clearing away the rubble of
propaganda. Starting from the very
bottom, they reconstructed intellectual life, education, research, culture.
Their labours were fruitful. Out of those intrepid and impoverished
beginnings they slowly erected a magnificent edifice. In the course of generations they created the
Order, the Board of Educators, the elite schools, the Archives and collections,
the technical schools and seminaries, and the Glass Bead Game. Today we live as their heirs in a building
almost too splendid. And let it be said
once again, we live in it like rather vapid and complicated guests. We no longer want to know anything about the
enormous human sacrifices our foundation walls were laid on, nor anything about
the ordeals of which we are the beneficiaries, nor anything about history which
favoured or at least tolerated the building of our mansion, which sustains and
tolerates us today and possibly will go on doing so for a good many Castalians and Magisters after
our day, but which sooner or later will overthrow and devour our edifice as it
overthrows and devours everything it has allowed to grow.
Let me return from history and draw my
conclusion. What all this means to us at
the present time is this: Our system has already passed its flowering. Some time ago it reached that summit of
blessedness which the mysterious game of world history sometimes allows to
things beautiful and desirable in themselves. We are on the downward slope. Our course may possibly stretch out for a
very long time, but in any case nothing finer, more beautiful, and more
desirable than what we have already had can henceforth be expected. The road leads downhill. Historically we are, I believe, ripe for
dismantling. And there is no doubt that
such will be our fate, not today or tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. I do not draw this conclusion from any
excessively moralistic estimate of our accomplishments and our abilities; I
draw it far more from the movements which I see already on the way in the
outside world. Critical times are
approaching; the omens can be sensed everywhere; the world is once again about
to shift its centre of gravity. Displacements
of power are in the offing. They will
not take place without war and violence.
From the
The wave is already gathering; one day
it will wash us away. Perhaps that will
be as it should be. But for the present,
my revered colleagues, we still possess that limited freedom of decision and
action which is the human prerogative and which makes world history the history
of mankind. We may still choose, in
proportion to our understanding of events, in proportion to our alertness and
our courage. We can, if we will, close
our eyes, for the danger is still fairly far away. Probably we who are Magisters
today will be able to complete our terms of office in peace and lie down to die
in peace before the danger comes so close that it is visible to all. But for me, and no doubt for others like me,
such peace could not be had with a clear conscience. I would rather not continue to administer my
office in peace and play Glass Bead Games, contented that the coming upheavals
will probably find me no longer alive.
Rather, it seems to me urgent to recollect that we too, nonpolitical though we are, belong to world history and
help to make it. Therefore I said at the
beginning of this memorandum that my competence as Magister
Ludi is compromised, since I cannot keep my mind from
dwelling anxiously upon the future danger.
I do not allow myself to imagine what form the disaster might assume for
us and for me. But I cannot close my
mind to the question: What have we and what have I to do in order to meet the
danger? Permit me to say a few words
more about this.
I am not inclined to urge Plato's thesis
that the scholar, or rather the sage, ought to rule the state. The world was younger in his time. And Plato, although the founder of a sort of
Castalia, was by no means a Castalian. He was a born aristocrat, of royal
descent. Granted, we too are aristocrats
and form a nobility, but one of the mind, not the
blood. I do not believe that man will
ever succeed in breeding a hereditary nobility that is
at the same time an intellectual nobility.
That would be the ideal aristocracy, but it remains a dream. We Castalians are
not suited for ruling, for all that we are civilized
and highly intelligent people. If we had
to govern we would not do it with the force and naďveté that the genuine ruler
needs. Moreover, our proper field and
real concern, cultivation of an exemplary cultural life, would be quickly
neglected. Ruling does not require qualities
of stupidity and coarseness, as conceited intellectuals sometimes think. But it does require wholehearted delight in
extroverted activity, a bent for identifying oneself with outward goals, and of
course also a certain swiftness and lack of scruple
about the choice of ways to attain success.
And these are traits that a scholar - for we do not wish to call
ourselves sages - may not have and does not have, because for us contemplation
is more important than action, and in the choice of ways to attain our goals we
have learned to be as scrupulous and wary as is humanly possible.
Therefore it is not our business to rule
and not our business to engage in politics.
We are specialists in examining, analysing, and measuring. We are the guardians and constant verifiers
of all alphabets, multiplication tables, and methods. We are the bureaus of standards for cultural
weights and measures. Granted we are
many other things also. In some
circumstances we can also be innovators, discoverers, adventurers, conquerors,
and reinterpreters. But our first and most important function, the
reason the people need us and keep us, is to preserve the purity of all sources
of knowledge. In trade, in politics, and
what have you, turning an X into a Y may occasionally prove to be a stroke of
genius; but never with us.
In former age, during the wars and
upheavals of so-called periods of "grandeur", intellectuals were
sometimes urged to throw themselves into politics. This was particularly the case during the
late Feuilletonistic Age. That age went even further in its demands,
for it insisted that Mind itself must serve politics or the military. Just as the church bells were being melted
down for cannon, as hapless schoolboys were drawn on to fill the ranks of the
decimated troops, so Mind itself was to be harnessed and consumed as one of the
materials of war.
Naturally, we could not accept this
demand. In emergencies a scholar might
be called from his lectern or his desk and made into a soldier. In some circumstances he might volunteer for
such service. In a country exhausted by
war the scholar must restrict himself in all material things, even to the point
of sheer starvation. Surely all this is
taken for granted. The higher a person's
cultivation, the greater the privileges he has enjoyed, the greater must be his
sacrifices in case of need. We hope that
every Castalian would recognize this as a matter of
course, if the time should come. But
although we are prepared to sacrifice our well-being, our comfort, and our
lives to the people, when danger threatens, that does not mean that we are
ready to sacrifice Mind itself, the tradition and morality of our spiritual
life, to the demands of the hour, of the people, or of the generals. He would be a coward who withdrew from the
challenges, sacrifices, and dangers his people had to endure. But he would be no less a coward and traitor
who betrayed the principles of the life of the mind to material interests -
who, for example, left the decision on the product of two times two to the
rulers. It is treason to sacrifice love
of truth, intellectual honesty, loyalty to the laws and methods of the mind, to
any other interests, including those of one's country. Whenever propaganda and the conflict of
interests threatens to devalue, distort, and do violence to truth as it has
already done to individuals, to language, to the arts, and to everything else
that is organic and highly cultivated, then it is our duty to resist and save
the truth, or rather the striving for truth, since that is the supreme article
in our creed. The scholar who knowingly
speaks, writes, or teaches falsehood, who knowingly
supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the
given moment, does his people a grave disservice. He corrupts its air and soil, its food and
drink; he poisons its thinking and its laws, and he gives aid and comfort to
all the hostile, evil forces that threaten the nation with annihilation.
The Castalian,
therefore, should not become a politician.
If need be, he must sacrifice his person, but never his fealty to the
life of the mind. The mind of man is
beneficent an noble only when it obeys truth. As soon as it betrays truth, as soon as it
ceases to revere truth, as soon as it sells out, it becomes intensely
diabolical. Then it becomes far worse
than instinctual bestiality, which always retains something of the innocence of
nature.
I leave it to each of you, my esteemed
colleagues, to reflect upon the duties of the Order when the country and the Order
itself are imperilled. Certainly there
will be a variety of opinions. I have my
own, and after much consideration of all the questions I have posed here, I
have for my part come to a clear conception of what seems to me desirable, of
what my duty is. This leads me to a
personal petition to the honourable Board, with which I shall conclude my
memorandum.
Of all the Masters composing our Board,
I as Magister Ludi am
probably most remote from the outside world, by virtue of my office. The mathematician, the philologist, the
physicist, the pedagogue, and all the other Masters labour in fields which they
share with the profane world. In the
ordinary, non-Castalian schools of our country,
mathematics and linguistics are part of the normal curriculum. Astronomy and physics have a place in the
secular universities. Even the
completely untutored make music. All
these disciplines are age-old, much older than our Order; they existed long
before it and will outlive it. Only the
Glass Bead Game is our invention, our speciality, our favourite, our toy. It is the ultimate, subtlest expression of
our Castalian type of intellectuality. It is both the most
precious and the most nonutilitarian, the most
beloved and the most fragile jewel in our treasury. It is the first precious stone that will be
destroyed if the continuance of Castalia is imperilled, not only because it is
the frailest of our possessions, but also because to laymen it is undoubtedly
the most dispensable aspect of Castalia.
Therefore when the time comes to save the country every needless
expenditure, the elite schools will be contracted, the funds for the
maintenance and expansion of the libraries and collections will be trimmed and
ultimately eliminated, our meals will be cut down, our clothing allowance
withdrawn, but all the principal subjects in our Universitas
Litterarum will be allowed to continue except for
the Glass Bead Game. Mathematics is
needed, after all, to devise new firearms, but no-one will believe - least of
all the military - that closing the Vicus Lusorum and abolishing our Game will cause the country and
people the slightest loss. The Glass
Bead Game is the most outlying and most vulnerable part of our structure. Perhaps this explains why the Magister Ludi, head of our unworldliest discipline, should be the first to sense the
coming calamity, or at any rate the first to express this feeling to our Board.
In case of political upheavals,
therefore, especially if they involve war, I regard the Glass Bead Game as a
lost cause. It will deteriorate rapidly,
however many individuals cling to it, and it will never be restored. The atmosphere which will follow a new era of
wars will not condone it. It will vanish
just as surely as did certain highly cultivated customs in musical history,
such as the choruses of professional singers of the period around 1600, or the
Sunday concerts of figurate music in churches around 1700. In those days men's ears heard sounds whose
angelic purity cannot be conjured up again by any amount of science or
magic. In the same way the Glass Bead
Game will not be forgotten, but it will be irrecoverable, and those who study
its history, its rise, flourishing, and doom, will sigh and envy us for having
been allowed to live in so peaceful, cultivated, and harmonious a world of the
mind.
Although I am now Magister
Ludi, I do not at all consider it my (or our) mission
to prevent or postpone the ultimate end of our Game. Beauty, even surpassing beauty, is perishable
like all other things, as soon as it has become a historical phenomenon upon
this earth. We know that and can grieve
that it is so, but cannot seriously try to change it, for it is unalterable
law. When the Glass Bead Game is
destroyed, Castalia and the world will suffer a loss, but they will scarcely be
aware of it at the moment, for at the time of great crisis they will be
absorbed in saving whatever can still be saved.
A Castalia without the Game is conceivable, but not a Castalia without
reverence for truth, without fidelity to the life of the mind. A Board of Educators can function without a Magister Ludi. But although we have almost forgotten it,
"Magister Ludi"
of course originally meant not the office we have in mind when we use the word,
but simply schoolmaster. And the more
endangered Castalia is, the more its treasures stale and crumble away, the more
our country will need its schoolmasters, its brave and good schoolmasters. Teachers are more essential than anything
else, men who can give the young the ability to judge and distinguish, who
serve them as examples of the honouring of truth, obedience to the things of
the spirit, respect for language. That
holds not only for our elite schools, which will be closed down sooner or
later, but also and primarily for the secular schools on the outside where
burghers and peasants, artisans and soldiers, politicians, military officers,
and rulers are educated and shaped while they are still malleable
children. That is where the basis for
the cultural life of the country is to be found, not in the seminars or in the
Glass Bead Game. We have always
furnished the country with teachers and educators, and they are, as I have
said, the best among us. But we must do
far more than we have done hitherto. We
must no longer rely on a constant influx of the best from the schools outside
to help maintain our Castalia. More and
more we must recognize the humble, highly responsible service to the secular
schools as the chief and most honourable part of our mission. That is what we must seek to extend.
Which brings me to my
personal petition to the esteemed Board.
I herewith request the Board to relieve me of my office as Magister Ludi and entrust to me
an ordinary school, large or small, outside in the country; to let me staff it
with a group of youthful members of our Order.
I would recruit as teachers those whom I could confidently expect to
help instil our principles into young people out in the world.
I hope that the esteemed Board will
deign to examine my petition and its reasoning with due benevolence and let me
know its decisions.
THE MASTER OF THE GLASS BEAD GAME.
Postscript:
Permit me to cite
a remark of the Reverend Father Jacobus, which I
noted down in the course of one of his private lessons:
"Times of terror and deepest misery
may be in the offing. But if any
happiness at all is to be extracted from that misery, it can only be a
spiritual happiness, looking backward towards the conservation of the culture
of earlier times, looking forward towards serene and stalwart defence of the
things of the spirit in an age which otherwise might succumb wholly to material
things."
Tegularius did
not know how little of his work was present in this memorandum; he was not
shown the final version, although Knecht did let him
read two earlier, much more detailed drafts.
The Magister Ludi
dispatched the memorandum and awaited the Board's answer with far less
impatience than his friend. He had come
to the decision not to involve Fritz in his further actions. He therefore forbade him to discuss the
matter any more, merely indicating that it would surely be a long time before
the Board reacted to the memorandum.
When in fact the reply arrived sooner
than he had expected, Tegularius heard nothing about
it. The letter from Hirsland
read:
To His Excellency the Magister Ludi in Waldzell.
Esteemed
Colleague:
The Directorate of the Order and the
Assembly of Masters have taken note of your warm-hearted and perspicacious
circular letter with more than ordinary interest. We have found your historical observations no
less absorbing than your ominous picture of the future, and some of us will
undoubtedly long continue to ponder and to draw profit from your reflections, which
surely are not groundless. We
have all recognized, with gladness and deep appreciation, the principles that
inspire you, the truly Christian principles of altruism. We see that you are motivated by a profound
and by now almost instinctive love for our Province, for its life and its
customs, a concerned and at the moment somewhat overanxious love. With equal gladness and appreciation we
observe the personal overtones of that love, its spirit and sacrifice, its
active impulse, its earnestness and zeal, and its heroic element. In all this we recognize the character of our
Glass Bead Game Master as we know it; we see his energy and ardour, his
daring. How characteristic of the famous
Benedictine's disciple that he does not study history as a mere scholarly end
in itself, an aesthetic game to be regarded without emotion, but rather applies
his historical knowledge directly to current needs; that his perceptions impel
him to take certain measures. And,
revered colleague, how perfectly it corresponds with your character that you
should feel drawn not to political missions, not to posts of influence and
honour, but to the role of simple Ludi Magister, that of a schoolmaster.
Such are some of the impressions, some
of the thoughts that are awakened by the very first reading of your circular
letter. Most of your colleagues
responded in much the same way. The
Board has not, however, been able to take a stand on your warnings and
requests. We have met and held a lively
discussion of your view that our very existence is threatened. Much was said about the nature, extent, and
possible imminence of the dangers. The
majority of our members obviously took these questions most seriously indeed,
and grew quite heated in discussing them.
But we are compelled to inform you that on none of these questions did a
majority favour your view. The
imaginative power and farsightedness of your historico-political
observations was acknowledged; but none of your specific conjectures, or shall
we say prophecies, was fully approved.
None was accepted as wholly convincing.
Only a few of us agreed with you (and then with reservations) even on
the question of the degree to which the Order and our Castalian
system had shared the responsibility for the unusually long era of peace, or
whether the Order can even be held a factor in political history. In the view of the majority, the calm that
has descended upon our Continent must be ascribed partly to the general
prostration following the bloodlettings of the terrible wars, but far more to
the fact that the Occident has ceased to be the focal point of world history
and the arena in which claims to hegemony are fought out. Certainly we would not wish to cast doubt
upon the true achievements of our Order.
Nevertheless, we cannot grant that the Castalian
ideal, the ideal of high culture under the aegis of disciplined meditation, has
any powers to shape history, any vital influence upon world political
conditions. Urges or ambitions of this
sort are totally alien to our Castalian
mentality. Several serious disquisitions
on the subject have stressed the point that Castalia seeks neither political
sway nor influence on peace or war.
Indeed, there could be no question of Castalia's having any such
purpose, so the argument has gone, because everything Castalian
is related to reason and operates within the framework of rationality - which
certainly could not be said of world history, or said only by someone willing
to revert to the theological and poetic sentimentalities of romantic historical
philosophy. From that vantage point, of
course, the whole murderous, destructive course of political history could be
explained as merely the method of cosmic Reason. Moreover, even the most casual survey of the
history of thought shows that the great ages of culture have never been
adequately explained by political conditions.
Rather, culture, or mind, or soul, has its own independent history - a
second, secret, bloodless, and sanctified history - running parallel to what is
generally called world history, by which we mean incessant struggles for
material power. Our Order deals only
with this sanctified and secret history, not with "real", brutal
world history. It can never be our task
to be continually taking soundings in political history, let alone to help to
shape it.
It therefore does not matter whether or
not the political constellation is really as your circular letter
suggests. In any case, our Order has no
right to do anything about it. Our only
position must be one of patient waiting to see what comes. And therefore your argument that this
constellation requires us to take an active position was decisively rejected by
the majority, with only a few votes in its favour.
Your views of the present world
situation and your suggestions regarding the immediate future obviously impressed
most of our colleagues. In fact, some of
them were thunderstruck. But here too,
although most of the speakers manifested respect for your knowledge and acuity,
there was no evidence that the majority agreed with you. On the contrary, the consensus was that your
comments on this matter were remarkable and extremely interesting, but
excessively pessimistic. One colleague
raised his voice to ask whether it might not be described as dangerous, if not
outrageous - but surely frivolous - for a Magister to
alarm his Board by such sinister images of allegedly imminent perils and
tribulations. Certainly an occasional
reminder of the perishability of all things was
permissible; every man, and especially everyone holding a high position of
responsibility, must occasionally cry out to himself the momento
mori. But
to announce in such sweeping terms the impending doom of the entire body of
Masters, the entire Order, and the entire hierarchy was a tasteless assault
upon the tranquillity and the imagination of his colleagues, and threatened the
efficiency of the Board itself. The work
of a Magister surely could not profit by his going to
his office every day with the thought that his position itself, his labours,
his pupils, his responsibility to the Order, his life for and in Castalia -
that all this might be wiped out by tomorrow or the day after.... Although the
majority did not support the colleague who raised this objection, he received
considerable applause.
We shall keep our present communication
brief, but are you at your disposal for a discussion in person. From our brief summary you can already see
that your circular letter has not had the effect you may have hoped for. In large part its failure no doubt is based on
objective grounds, the incompatibility of your opinions with those of the
majority. But there are also purely
formal reasons. At any rate it seems to
us that a direct personal discussion between yourself and your colleagues would
have taken a significantly more harmonious and positive course. We would moreover suggest that it was not
only your couching of the matter in the form of a written memorandum that
affected the Board adversely. Far more
striking was your combining, in a way highly unusual among us, a professional
communication with a personal request, a petition. Most of your colleagues consider this fusion
an unfortunate attempt at innovation; some bluntly called it impermissible.
This brings us to the most delicate
point of all, your request for release from your office and transfer to some
secular school system. The petitioner
should have realized from the outset that the Board could not possibly approve
so sudden and curiously argued a request.
Of course the Board's reply is, "No".
What would become of our hierarchy if
the Order no longer assigned each man to his place? What would become of Castalia if everyone
wished to assess his own gifts and aptitudes and choose his position for
himself? We suggest that the Master of
the Glass Bead Game reflect upon this subject for a few minutes, and bid him to
continue administering the honourable office he has been entrusted with.
In saying this we have met your request
for a reply to your letter. We have been
unable to give the answer you may have hoped for. But we should also like to express our
appreciation for the stimulating and admonitory value of your document. We trust we will be able to discuss its
content with you orally, and in the near future. For although the directorate of the Order
believes that it can rely on you, that point in your memorandum in which you
speak of an incapacity to conduct the affairs of your
office naturally gives us grounds for concern.
Knecht read
the letter without any great expectations, but with the closest attention. He had expected that the Board would have
"grounds for concern", and moreover had had signs that it was truly
worried. A guest from Hirsland had recently come to the Players' Village,
provided with a regular pass and a recommendation from the directorate of the
Order. He had requested hospitality for
a few days, supposedly for work in the Archives and library, and had also asked
permission to audit a few of Knecht's lectures. An elderly man, silent and attentive, he had
turned up in almost all the departments and buildings of the Village, had
inquired after Tegularius, and had several times
called on the director of the Waldzell elite school,
who lived in the vicinity. There could
scarcely be any doubt that the man had been sent as an observer to determine
whether there were any traces of negligence in the Players' Village, whether
the Magister was in good health and at his post, the
officials diligent, the students stimulated.
He had stayed for a full week and missed none of Knecht's
lectures. Two of the officials had even
commented on his quiet ubiquitousness. Evidently the directorate of the Order had
waited for the report from this investigation before dispatching its reply to
the Magister.
What was he to think of this answer, and
who had probably been its author? The
style betrayed nothing; it was the conventional, impersonal officialese
the occasion demanded. But on subtler
analysis the letter revealed more individuality than he had thought at first
reading. The basis of the entire
document was the hierarchic spirit, a sense of justice and love of order. It was plain to see how unwelcome,
inconvenient, not to say troublesome and annoying Knecht's
petition had been. Its rejection had
undoubtedly been decided at once by the author of this reply, without regard to
the opinion of others. On the other
hand, the vexation was leavened by another emotion, for there was a clear note
of sympathy present in the letter, with its mention of all the more lenient and
friendly comments Knecht's petition had received
during the meeting of the Board. Knecht had no doubt that Alexander, the President of the
Order, was the author of this reply.
We have now reached the end of our
journey, and hope that we have reported all the essentials of Joseph Knecht's life. A
later biographer will no doubt be in a position to ascertain and impart a good
many additional details about that life.
We forbear to present our own account of
the Magister's last days, for we know no more about
them than every Waldzell student and could not tell
the story any better than the Legend of the Magister
Ludi, many copies of which are in
circulation. Presumably it was written
by some of the departed Magister's favourite
students. With this legend we wish to
conclude our book.