MYTH AND HISTORY
35
and myths of mankind in order to formulate a Principle of Change
that will apply in all countries and at all times. Here is revealed
perhaps most clearly the essentially religious and idealistic nature of
most analogical thinking.
In general, the idea of the new eternally emerging from the "ex–
panded elements" of the old, which Mann takes from Goethe, is not
contrary to scientific findings; in fact, Goethe himself stands as un–
official poet laureate of modern science for his insistence upon this
conception. But in taking hold of evolutionary thought, Mann at once
abstracts it from reality and converts it into a set of eternal relations
without content. Judging German history, he does not seek to define
concretely the expanding elements which result there in new phe–
nomena; if he did so, he could not assert with assurance that change
is
always "conservative," in the political sense. For at certain mo–
ments in its development tbe expansion might produce a radical up–
heaval; and in order to bring out the new in a manner which accords
with
hum~n
desires, radical actions might be necessary. Playing on
words, Mann transforms a general law of nature into a moral com–
mandment which both Nazis and revolutionaries have wickedly vio–
lated. And having rejected historical understanding, he attempts to
deduce Germany's condition and her future from his philosophy of
man's inner nature and his position in the universe.
The problem of change has always been with Mann a meta–
physical rather than a scientific question; and it is typical of his
thought that he conceives change as endless circular motion without
litnit or direction. In the chapter "Changes" in
The Magic Mountain,
he presents the metaphysical substructure of conservative revolution:
"We say a thing is 'brought about' by time. What sort of thing?
Change! Now is not then, here not there, for between them lies mo–
tion. But the motion by which one measures time is circular, is in a
closed circle ; and might almost equally well be described as rest, as
cessation of movement- for the there repeats itself constantly in the
here, the past in the present. Furthermore, as our utmost effort can–
not conceive a final limit either to time or in space, we have settled
to think of them as eternal and infinite- apparently in the hope that
if
this
is
not very successful, at least it will be more so than the other.
But
is
not this affirmation of the eternal and the infinite the logical
mathematical destruction of every and any limit in time or space,
and the reduction of them, more or less, to zero?"
If'
all limits can undergo .a "logico-mathematical destruction,"
speculative philosophy can take the place of materialist analysis.
Change in Mann's novels is noticeably deficient in dramatic
quality and the tension of struggle; it is gradual, working through
accumulation and repetition--the key to his rhetoric- never reach-
