75-76 The Poem and the Master

Chapter 75 describes another visit General Stumm pays Diotima.  The subject, quite naturally, is the role the military plays in peacetime. According to Stumm, "the military strength displayed in peacetime wards off war."

Diotima couldn't disagree more:

"General," she said quivering with indignation, "all of life depends upon the forces of peace; even the life of business, rightly regarded, is a form of poetry."

The "little General" has trouble following her logic, but he gamely continues to make his case for the need for "order."

"There are so many people, after all, who don't realize how little order there is in the world of the mind. . . . most people suppose they are seeing some progress in the order of things every day. . . . the modern spirit rest precisely on such a greater order, and . . . the great empires of Ninevah and Rome fell only because somehow they let things slide. . . .  It's why, unfortunately, we can't do without power and the soldier's profession."

But Diotima will have none of that argument:

We will never reach our goal through order, by a sober weighing of pros and cons, comparisons and tests. Our solution must come as a flash of lightening, a fire, an intuition, a synthesis! Looking at the history of mankind, we see no logical development; what it does suggest, with its sudden flashes of inspiration, the meaning of which emerges only later on, is a great poem!"

In the next chapter we learn that Diotima believes her "fear" of the little General has more to do with her uneasiness about Leinsdorf than about the general himself.  As she puts it to herself: "Liensdorf did not seem favorably inclined to the Council."

That is why, every time Diotima wanted to speak with him seriously about something she had gleaned from her Great Minds, Count Leinsdorf was usually holding in his hand,  or pulling out of his pocket, some petition from a club of five simpletons, saying that this paper weighed more in the world of real problems than the bright ideas of some genius. 

She is even more taken aback when she learns that Arnheim agrees with Leinsdorf.

"His Grace believes that we must take our direction from the land and the times," he explained gravely. "Believe me, it comes naturally from owning land. The soil complicates life, just as it purifies water. Even I feel its effect every time I stay on my own very modest country estate."

But isn't all of that "surely part of a vanishing chapter of History?" she asks.

"And so it is," Arnheim replied, "but the simple virtues of courage, chivalry, and self-discipline, which his caste developed to such an exemplary degree, will always keep their value. In a word, the ideal of the Master! I have learned to value the principle of the Master more and more in my business life as well."

At that point, Diotima makes one of her intuitive leaps of thought: "Then the ideal of the Master would, in the end, amount to almost the same thing as that of the Poem?"

Instead of being puzzled, as the Stumm would have been, Arnheim instantly agrees: "That's a wonderful way of putting it! . . . It's the secret of a vigorous life. Reason alone is not enough for a moral or a political life.

But the chapter ends with Arnheim coming back to a point he has been trying to make: that Ulrich's "influence on His Grace [Leinsdorf] was not a wholesome one." Arheim declares that Ulrich has a "mixture of freedom and mental rigidity that may account for his special charm" but also makes him "a dangerous man."