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 naïveté 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, analyzing, 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 ages, 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.
