THOMAS MANN
5
banner of "revolution," which has set so many feet in motion, raised
the stature of man?
As
compared with most of the incitements to action, the program
of Thomas Mann is static in its nobility.
It
seeks to restore to the Eu–
ropean mind those qualities which made possible its creative glories,
which made possible the selection, out of the free exchange of the
most diverse intelligences, its permanent treasures. These qualities
Mann calls
measure
and
value.
Let Mann himself define them: "These words,
measure
and
value,
are above all conceptions and symbols from the domain of the
arts. Measure: that
is
order, that is light, the music of creation and
the creative world.
It
means also what is achieved, what is wrested
from chaos: it is the anti-barbaric, the triumph of the human. It does
not mean the average, the mediocre-art is altogether the sphere of
boldness and hazards, it always goes to extremes, it never lacks the
'trace of audacity' without which, according to Goethe, 'no talent is
thinkable.' It abhors the mediocre, as it abhors the trivial, the taste–
less, and the low, the despicable cliche; for it is pure quality, it stands
for the unsatisfied, insatiable demand. And its
measure,
which it bears
within itself, is also the measure which is applied: the test, the judg–
ment, the scale upon which it is dangerous to be weighed, for it soon
becomes more than simply a test in matters of taste and pronounces
upon values far beyond esthetic ones, antecedent and fundamental to
these. It
is,
in short, value itself, in the most basic sense of the word."
Against the forces of barbarism, Thomas Mann pits the artist,
the archtype
of
European man, the carrier of the highest traditions
and achievements of European civilization. Mann calls himself a
humanist and a Christian, too; but to him the artist, the humanist,
and the Christian arc really one. Representing somewhat different
historical and institutional forces, all three, nevertheless, have con–
tributed to our ideals of truth, moral discipline, and creativity. "Chris–
tianity," says Mann, "has always made so high and austere a demand
upon the spirit of man that scarcely anybody can realize it here on
earth save as a guide and corrective and spur to the conscience. But
just for that reason we need it more than ever as a means of moral
discipline in these times of confusion and demoralization.... For
whenever we are concerned with values and their defense, with the
preservation of a universally applicable human standard, then we
must stand, firmly and in freedom, upon the human culture of occi–
dental Christianity." And Mann has defined his humanism as "spirit,
