PRINCIPLE in THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

80 uses

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Definition

a basic rule or belief

The exact meaning of principle can depend upon its context. For example:

"our guiding principles" — basic moral beliefs that guide decisions and behavior
"electromagnetic principles" — rules describing how the world works
"She lacks principles." — lacks moral guidelines
"We agree in principle." — about important basic beliefs

Schools based on humanistic education—you may call me backward if you like, sir, but on principle and in abstracto, do understand me correctly, I beg you—I remain their firm supporter.
3.4 - Satana (95% in)

As things stood, work had to be regarded as unconditionally the most estimable thing in the world—ultimately there was nothing one could esteem more, it was the principle by which one stood or fell, the absolute of the age, the answer, so to speak, to its own question.
2.2 - At the Tienappels' / Hans Castorp's Moral State (67% in)
If he had been able to believe at the foundations of his soul (there where he himself did not know what was what) that work has unconditional value, is a principle that answers its own question, might not both body and mind—first his mind, and through it, his body—have been more amenable to work and exhibited more stamina?
2.2 - At the Tienappels' / Hans Castorp's Moral State (71% in)
But since in the life of the mind all things cohere and one idea emanates from another, since one cannot give the Devil an inch but that he takes a mile, and you along with it—and since, on the other hand, a sound principle can give rise only to sound results, no matter with which sound principle one may begin—for all such reasons, then, imprint this on your minds: illness is very far from being something so elegant, so venerable that it may not be associated with stupidity, even in...
4.1 - A Necessary Purchase (68% in)
...in the life of the mind all things cohere and one idea emanates from another, since one cannot give the Devil an inch but that he takes a mile, and you along with it—and since, on the other hand, a sound principle can give rise only to sound results, no matter with which sound principle one may begin—for all such reasons, then, imprint this on your minds: illness is very far from being something so elegant, so venerable that it may not be associated with stupidity, even in passing.
4.1 - A Necessary Purchase (69% in)
But the universal principle of the law had inspired him from infancy on, or so his grandson would have them believe; and although Hans Castorp was not feeling all that clearheaded as his organism strained to deal with one of the Berghof's six-course meals, he struggled to understand what Settembrini might mean by calling this principle "the source of freedom and progress.
4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (71% in)
But the universal principle of the law had inspired him from infancy on, or so his grandson would have them believe; and although Hans Castorp was not feeling all that clearheaded as his organism strained to deal with one of the Berghof's six-course meals, he struggled to understand what Settembrini might mean by calling this principle "the source of freedom and progress.
4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (71% in)
And then he actually spoke about the Savior of the Christians, who had first revealed the principle of equality and brotherhood; the propagation of that same principle had been considerably advanced by the printing press, and finally the great French Revolution had raised it to the status of law.
4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (76% in)
And then he actually spoke about the Savior of the Christians, who had first revealed the principle of equality and brotherhood; the propagation of that same principle had been considerably advanced by the printing press, and finally the great French Revolution had raised it to the status of law.
4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (76% in)
According to the outline Settembrini presented, two principles were locked in combat for the world: might and right, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge, the law of obduracy and the law of ferment, change, and progress.
4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (80% in)
One could call the first the Asiatic principle, the other the European, for Europe was the continent of rebellion, critique, and transforming action, whereas the continent to the east embodied inertia and inactivity.
4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (81% in)
But to achieve this goal, it was necessary above all to strike at the Asiatic principle of bondage and obduracy at its vital center point, at the very nerve of resistance—in Vienna.
4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (83% in)
You ask me: What are its principles, its goals?
5.5 - Encyclopedia (55% in)
But there is one force, one principle that is the object of my highest affirmation, my highest and ultimate respect and love, and that force, that principle, is the mind.
5.5 - Encyclopedia (88% in)
But there is one force, one principle that is the object of my highest affirmation, my highest and ultimate respect and love, and that force, that principle, is the mind.
5.5 - Encyclopedia (88% in)
However much I detest seeing that dubious construct of moonshine and cobwebs that goes by the name of 'soul' played off against the body, within the antithesis of body and mind, it is the body that is the evil, devilish principle, because the body is nature, and nature—as an opposing force, I repeat, to mind, to reason—is evil, mystical and evil.
5.5 - Encyclopedia (88% in)
One must despise it insofar as it is the principle of gravity and inertia opposing the flow toward the light, insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death, insofar as its quintessence is a matter of perversity, of corruption, of lust and disgrace.
5.5 - Encyclopedia (98% in)
One must despise it insofar as it is the principle of gravity and inertia opposing the flow toward the light, insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death, insofar as its quintessence is a matter of perversity, of corruption, of lust and disgrace.
5.5 - Encyclopedia (98% in)
The principle of the hollow cylinder dominated the structure of tubular bones to such an extent that static requirements were satisfied with the precise minimum of solid material.
5.7 - Research (69% in)
And even Frau Stohr, who as a woman of principle had likewise held her ground and met head-on every temptation to make her own wild departure, had remarked to her tablemates that Krokowski had really been rather "obscure" today with his classical mushroom.
6.1 - Changes (87% in)
Antithesis, dualism—that is the motivating, passionate, dialectical, spiritual principle.
6.2 - Someone Else (36% in)
The nation-state is the principle that guides this world's affairs— though you wish to ascribe that to the Devil.
6.2 - Someone Else (72% in)
And I can confirm, as I'm sure my cousin also recalls, that Herr Settembrini has more than once waxed enthusiastic for the principle of motion and rebellion, of improvement in the world—hardly a principle of peace, I don't suppose— and has noted that great efforts still lie ahead before such a principle will . have triumphed everywhere and the universal, happy Republic of the World is established.
6.2 - Someone Else (74% in)
And I can confirm, as I'm sure my cousin also recalls, that Herr Settembrini has more than once waxed enthusiastic for the principle of motion and rebellion, of improvement in the world—hardly a principle of peace, I don't suppose— and has noted that great efforts still lie ahead before such a principle will . have triumphed everywhere and the universal, happy Republic of the World is established.
6.2 - Someone Else (74% in)
And I can confirm, as I'm sure my cousin also recalls, that Herr Settembrini has more than once waxed enthusiastic for the principle of motion and rebellion, of improvement in the world—hardly a principle of peace, I don't suppose— and has noted that great efforts still lie ahead before such a principle will . have triumphed everywhere and the universal, happy Republic of the World is established.
6.2 - Someone Else (74% in)
I shall refrain from inquiring what becomes of the principle of motion and rebellion once happiness and confederation have been established.
6.2 - Someone Else (77% in)
But it upsets me to see such confusion—-what with the one preaching about an international world republic and loathing war on principle, but at the same time so patriotic that the Brenner Pass is the only possible border and he's willing to fight a civilizing war over it; and the other claiming the nation-state is the Devil's own work and gushing about the unification of all mankind, only to turn around and defend the law of natural instincts and make fun of peace conferences.
6.2 - Someone Else (99% in)
Too polite to say what he thought, he confined himself to remarks concerning errors in proportion and anatomical defects in the figures; such offenses against the truth of nature did not come close to moving him, he said, since they were based not on any primitive lack of skill but arose out of willful malice, out of an antagonistic principle.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (33% in)
I can assure you that mankind is about to find its way back to this point of view, to recognize that the task of true science is not the pursuit of worthless information, but rather the elimination on principle of what is pernicious, even of what is merely without significance as an idea, and, in a word, to proclaim instinct, moderation, choice.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (45% in)
...which means there is no world that transcends the senses, no dualism; the world beyond is absorbed into this world, the polarity of God and nature is annulled, and since the human personality is no longer the battlefield of two hostile principles, but rather harmonious and unified, all human conflict stems from the clash between the interests of the individual and of society as a whole, and so the purpose of the state become the law of morality, just as in good old heathen days.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (48% in)
After five hundred years, the principle of freedom has outlived its usefulness.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (52% in)
Your goal is a democratic empire, the world-state, the apotheosis of the principle of the nation-state on a universal plane.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (59% in)
But if the kingdom is to come, the dualism between good and evil, between this world and the next, between power and the Spirit, must be temporarily abrogated and transformed in a principle that unites asceticism and dominion.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (61% in)
Can it be your Manchester eyes have failed to notice the existence of a social theory that promises the victory of man over economics, a social theory whose principles and goals coincide exactly with those of the Christian City of God?
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (62% in)
With all their hearts they despised the economic principle that declares price is the result of the workings of supply and demand, and they damned those who lived by the fluctuations of the market as exploiters of their neighbors.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (63% in)
Well, then—after having been buried for centuries, all these economic principles and standards have been resurrected in the modern movement of communism.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (65% in)
I believe, in fact, we spoke about life and death, about the dignity of death, to the extent that it is a constituent and prerequisite of life, and about how it can degenerate into something grotesque if we commit the abominable error of isolating it as an intellectual principle.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (97% in)
It becomes a force of its own opposed to life, an antagonistic principle, the great seduction— and its kingdom is lust.
6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (98% in)
He was told to please be patient for a few days—since, man alive, the director was busy; Christian principles demanded that operations, checkups, and suffering humankind take precedence.
6.5 - An Attack Repulsed (72% in)
At the moment, however, their current discussion consumed his total attention, because Naphta now went on to discuss in caustic fashion the general biases that induced humanists to honor health on principle and dishonor and belittle sickness whenever possible—a position, however, that revealed a remarkable and almost praiseworthy self-abnegation on Herr Settembrini's part, since he was himself ill.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (47% in)
And as they moved along, they argued their principles with great personal urgency, although frequently they did not speak to one another, but instead each would turn to Hans Castorp to deliver his views, lecturing him, while pointing a head or thumb at the real opponent.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (51% in)
Would anyone venture in all earnestness to declare as barbaric and inhumane the self-flagellation practiced among members of certain orders and sects, and in general by people of more profound capacities, in order that they might strengthen their own spiritual principles?
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (54% in)
Well, in any case, Hans Castorp remarked, it was absolutely certain that within the polarity of body and mind, the body doubtless embodied— ha ha—embodied the evil, devilish principle, because the body was part of nature, naturally—naturally part of nature, that wasn't bad, either— and nature, in contradistinction to the mind, to reason, was doubtless evil—mystically evil, one might say, if one dared employ a little of one's education and knowledge.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (55% in)
They had assumed his poor soul was struggling to confess and that the flesh, as the principle of evil, stood opposed to its better intentions.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (69% in)
Life was based on conditions and principles that belonged in part to epistemology and in part to ethics—the former being time, space, and causality; the latter, morality and reason.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (78% in)
The decisive factor in the humanist's view of the world was that God and the Devil were two different persons or principles and that "life" was the bone of contention between them— very much after the medieval model, by the way.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (81% in)
In reality, however, they were one, were united in their opposition to life, to the bourgeoisiosity of life, to ethics, reason, virtue; they were the single religious principle that they represented together.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (81% in)
He wondered if Herr Naphta knew just what he was repudiating— and with young people listening—by jumbling up God and the Devil and denying the ethical principle in the name of his depraved Holy Duality.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (82% in)
Settembrini had frequently sung the oratorical praises of "criticism," but now it was its opposite—which he called "an"— that he claimed was the more noble principle.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (91% in)
Herr Settembrini was certainly a zealous pedagogue, zealous to the point of being a tiresome bother; but his principles could not approach Naphta's when it came to ascetic, self-mortifying objectivity.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (94% in)
Ah, principles and viewpoints were constantly at loggerheads, there was no lack of inner contradictions, making it all extraordinarily difficult for a civilian to exercise responsibility, not merely to decide between opposites, but also to keep them apart as neat, separate specimens—until a civilian was sorely tempted to plunge headlong into Naphta's "morally chaotic void.
6.6 - Operationes Spirituales (98% in)
The lapis philosophorum, which is the male-female product of sulfur and mercury—the res bina, the bisexual prima materia—was nothing more and nothing less than the principle of that enhancement, the application of external influences to force matter upward: magical pedagogy if you will.
6.8 - A Good Soldier (30% in)
The good of all is the fundamental principle of our brotherhood.
6.8 - A Good Soldier (40% in)
The miraculous unification that Herr Settembrini had warbled on about, so he declared, was a sham, a sleight-of-hand trick, because form, which the literary spirit was so proud of uniting with principles of inquiry and discrimination, was merely a form of illusion and lies, not a genuine, natural form growing out of life.
6.8 - A Good Soldier (63% in)
How can we help principled flatlanders understand the changes taking place in our young adventurer's interior economy?
7.1 - A Stroll by the Shore (67% in)
...like Herr Settembrini for characterizing metaphysics as "evil" as he once did when speaking, with his usual pedagogic decisiveness, to the young man with whose fate we are concerned and whom on one occasion he very aptly called a "problem child of life " And we can best honor the memory of a young man, who though departed is still dear to us, by saying that the critical principle can and must have only one meaning, purpose, and goal: the idea of duty, the command given by life itself.
7.1 - A Stroll by the Shore (97% in)
Holding to our principle of not making him any better or worse than he was, we can state that he simply refused—not consciously, not expressly, but quite naively refused—to let ideas out of novels undermine his sense of justice when dealing with his own sex or limit the experiences he needed for growth in this arena of life.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (4% in)
...Herr Settembrini, who asserted that her sole historical purpose had been to serve as the patron of the dark forces of inertia and reaction and then went on to claim that the affirmation of life and a future open to revolution and renewal was bound up with the opposing principles of enlightenment, science, and progress, which had arisen in the glorious epoch that witnessed the rebirth of classical education—and drove home this profession of faith with gestures and a burst of eloquence.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (33% in)
For the ascetic Spirit—if he might be permitted a tautology—the Spirit that denied and destroyed the world, was nobility itself, the aristocratic principle in its purest form; it could never be popular, and indeed the Church had been essentially unpopular throughout the ages.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (36% in)
Herr Settembrini's attention was called to the implacable principle of aristocracy that lay behind the idea that shame can be inherited: the transference of major guilt to—democratically speaking—innocent offspring; the lifelong blemish attached to natural children, for example, including their lack of legal standing.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (38% in)
Naphta was told to be silent on that account—first, because it was an outrage to humane feelings, and second, because he, Settembrini, had heard enough evasions and could see through the tricks of his opponent's apologetics to the thoroughly infamous and devilish cult of nihilism, which desired to be called Spirit and managed to perceive something legitimizing and sanctifying in the acknowledged unpopularity of the ascetic principle.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (38% in)
Could it be that Herr Settembrini had never been touched by that breath of humane irony with which the Church continually made concessions to the world, to the flesh, cleverly acquiescing in order to disguise the ultimate consequences of the ascetic principle and letting the influence of the Spirit establish order by not opposing nature all too sternly?
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (39% in)
And so he had never heard of the refined priestly concept of indulgence, under which even a sacrament was included—marriage, to be precise, which unlike the other sacraments was not a positive good, but a defense against sin, conferred solely to limit sensual desire and to instill moderation, so that the ascetic principle, the ideal of chastity, might be affirmed without defying the flesh with unpolitic severity?
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (39% in)
...was reminded of that humanist's spare garret with its lectern and rush-bottom chairs and water carafe; whereas Naphta, after first claiming that lust could never be without guilt and that nature should, if you please, have a bad conscience in the presence of the Spirit, went on to refute the nihilism of the ascetic principle by defining the Church's policy of spiritual indulgence as "love"—and Hans Castorp found the word "love" sounded very odd coming from caustic, gaunt little Naphta.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (40% in)
But irrational love is a mark of genius, because death, you see, is the principle of genius, the res bina, the lapis philosophorum, and it is also the pedagogic principle.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (59% in)
But irrational love is a mark of genius, because death, you see, is the principle of genius, the res bina, the lapis philosophorum, and it is also the pedagogic principle.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (59% in)
With him, one can speak only of prejudices on a grand and therefore impersonal scale, of general pedagogic principles, upon which, I admit, given my status as a 'problem child of life,' Herr Settembrini has often insisted—but that would lead us too far afield.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (77% in)
And yet it would doubtless be— should I ascribe it to the influence, shall we say, to the pedagogic principles of Signor Settembrini that in regard to your own chivalrous impulses, you have—I beg you, please understand me when I say ...
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (78% in)
For the sake of her love and in spite of Herr Settembrini, I subordinated myself to the principle of irrationality, to the principle behind the genius of illness, to which, admittedly, I had long since, perhaps from the very start, submitted myself and to which I have remained true up here—for how long now, I no longer know, I have forgotten everything, broken off with everything, with my relatives and my profession in the flatlands, with all my prospects.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (95% in)
For the sake of her love and in spite of Herr Settembrini, I subordinated myself to the principle of irrationality, to the principle behind the genius of illness, to which, admittedly, I had long since, perhaps from the very start, submitted myself and to which I have remained true up here—for how long now, I no longer know, I have forgotten everything, broken off with everything, with my relatives and my profession in the flatlands, with all my prospects.
7.4 - Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) (95% in)
Does not want to—for without a doubt, her rage, her scorn, is not just for the moment, not merely personal, it is hatred, an ancient hostility to the principle behind those French bugles—or Spanish horns—that call her beloved little soldier back; and her highest ambition, both instinctive and impersonal, is to triumph over that principle.
7.7 - Fullness of Harmony (69% in)
Does not want to—for without a doubt, her rage, her scorn, is not just for the moment, not merely personal, it is hatred, an ancient hostility to the principle behind those French bugles—or Spanish horns—that call her beloved little soldier back; and her highest ambition, both instinctive and impersonal, is to triumph over that principle.
7.7 - Fullness of Harmony (70% in)
The materialist, as the son of a philosophy of pure robust health, can never be argued out of his belief that the mind is a phosphorescent product of matter; whereas the idealist, who proceeds from the principle of creative hysteria, will tend to answer, indeed will very soon definitively answer the question of primacy in exactly opposite terms.
7.8 - Highly Questionable (4% in)
...check how it sounded when you had it fixed in black and white and could read it as a whole; for the moment, however, and before Holger returned to the serenity of his hastening while, it would be much better, or in any event extraordinarily kind of him, if he would be willing perhaps to answer one or two practical questions the group still had for him— not that they had anything definite in mind, but, just on principle, would he be prepared in that case to do them this special favor?
7.8 - Highly Questionable (39% in)
The man was an anti-Semite, on principle and as a matter of sport.
7.9 - The Great Petulance (8% in)
But the moment Herr Settembrini introduced the word "justice" into the conversation, recommending that high principle as the means by which to prevent catastrophes, both domestic and foreign, Naphta—who only a moment before had declared the spiritual as too good ever to find earthly expression worthy of it—endeavored to cast doubt on the very notion of the spiritual and to revile it.
7.9 - The Great Petulance (35% in)
I hope your civilian principles do not preclude your knowing what it is you owe me, because otherwise I would be forced to find means to test those principles in a way that—
7.9 - The Great Petulance (63% in)
I hope your civilian principles do not preclude your knowing what it is you owe me, because otherwise I would be forced to find means to test those principles in a way that—
7.9 - The Great Petulance (63% in)
...from his grandfather, which had then blended with the humanistic inheritance of his father to create beautiful literature within him, Lodovico, just as humanity and politics were blended in the lofty idea of civilization, to which he raised a toast, an idea full of the mildness of the dove and the boldness of the eagle and awaiting its day, the dawn of the Day of Nations, when the principle of obduracy would be defeated and a path opened for the Holy Alliance of bourgeois democracy.
7.10 - The Thunderbolt (40% in)
Recently—a year and a half or two years before—the diplomatic cooperation of his own country and Austria in Albania had troubled his discourse, a cooperation that both inspired him, since it was directed against demi-Asia with its lack of Latin, against knouts and Schlusselburg prison, and tormented him as a misalliance with his country's sworn enemy, with the principle of obduracy and the bondage of nations.
7.10 - The Thunderbolt (45% in)

There are no more uses of "principle" in The Magic Mountain.

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principle used in The Magic Mountain

principle
used in The Magic Mountain