They had sat discussing astrology, a forbidden science, and not pursued in the cloister. Narziss had said… — Hermann Hesse
They had sat discussing astrology, a forbidden science, and not pursued in the cloister. Narziss had said that it was a striving to order and arrange after their kinds the many diverse sorts of human beings, their predestined character and their fates,
Here Goldmund broke into his words. ‘You speak of nothing but differences! I have slowly begun to see that they form your own particular whimsey. When you speak of this great difference between us I always feel that it lies in nothing, save in your own strange hankering to find differences.’
Narziss: ‘Right. You have hit the nail on the head. That is what I mean - that to you differences mean little, while to me they are the most important things. Mine is the nature of a scholar, and my branch of scholarship is science. And science, to quote your own words, is nothing else than a “strange hankering after differences”. Her essence could not be better defined. For men of science nothing is so important, as the clear definition of differences. To find, for instance, on every man, those signs which mark him off from all other men: that is to know him.’
Goldmund : ‘But how? One has peasant’s shoes and is a peasant; another a crown on his head, and is a king. There are your differences! But these are seen by children, without, any science.’
Narziss; ‘Yet when peasant and king are clad alike children can no longer distinguish between them.’ Ch. IV
Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
When it came about that a new face appeared in the cloister, which had seen so many faces come and go, and that this new face was not among those that pass unnoticed, and when they are gone, are soon forgotten. It was a little boy, long since announced by his father, who brought him, on a day in spring, to put him to school in the cloister. Under the chestnut tree they tethered their horses, and the porter had come out through the gate to meet them. The boy looked up at the still bare branches of the tree. ‘I have never seen such a tree as that till now,’ he said, ‘a rare, beautiful tree, and I wish I knew what they call it.’ The father, an elderly man, with a peaked, care-lined face, did not heed the words of his little son. But the porter, pleased already with the boy, told him the name of the tree. The little boy thanked him graciously, gave him his hand, and said to him: ‘My name is Goldmimd, and I am to go to school here.’ The porter smiled and led the newcomers through the gates and on up the broad stone steps. Goldmund entered the cloister without dismay, feeling that here he had met two beings, the tree and the porter, with whom he could easily be friends. Ch. I
Books were written and annotated, systems evolved, the writings of the ancients collected, missals illuminated, the people’s belief fostered, the people’s credulity smiled upon. Here there was all, and room for everything, belief and learning, depths and simplicity, the wisdom of the Greeks and the Evangelists, black magic and white - all had their uses.
