We had indeed occasionally agreed —or more accurately, we had seconded the commonly expressed opinion— that philosophy is the queen of the sciences. For us, we concluded, it assumed among the sciences about the same place as the organ did among instruments. It took all fields of research within its purview, summarized them intellectually, ordered and refined their conclusions into a worldview, into a preeminent and authoritative synthesis that revealed the meaning of life, into an observant determination of man's place in the cosmos. My musings about my friend's nature, about a "profession" for him, had always led me to similar notions. Those diverse pursuits that had made me fear for his health, his thirst for experience, always accompanied by critical commentary, justified such dreams. The most universal life, that of a sovereign polythistor and philosopher, seemed to me the right one for him and... but my powers of imagination had taken me no farther than that. Now I had to learn that he had quietly gone farther tall on his own, that in secret and, to be sure, without any visible sign of it —and he announced his decision in very calm, commonplace words— he had outbit and confounded my own friendly ambitions for him.
Indeed there is, if you like, a discipline in which Queen Philosophy herself becomes a handmaiden, an auxiliary science, or, in academic terms, a "minor subject" — and that discipline is theology. Where love of wisdom rises to a contemplation of the highest of beings, the fountainhead of existence, to the study of God and things divine —there, one might say, the peak of scientific values, the highest and loftiest sphere of knowledge, the summit of thought, is achieved, supplying the inspired intellect with its most sublime goal. Most sublime, because here the profane sciences (my own, for example, philology, along with history and the rest) become mere weaponry in the service of the comprehension of sacred matters — and likewise a goal to be pursued in deepest humility, because, as Scripture says, "it passeth all understanding", and the human mind enters here into a commitment more devout, more trusting than any required of it by other fields of learning.
All this passed through my mind as Adrian shared his decision with me. if he had made it out of a certain urge for spiritual self-discipline, that is, out of a desire to place his cool and ubiquitous intelelct —which in grasping everything so easily was spoiled buy its own supeerioty— within the confines of religion and submit to it, I would have approved. It would not only have calmed my constant, silently vigilant, indefinite worries about him, but it would also have touched me deeply; for the sacrificium intellectus, which contemplative knowledge of the next world necessarily brings with it, must be all the more respected the greater the intellect that must make it. But I basically did not believe in my friend's humility. I believe in his pride, of which I for my part was also proud, and had no real doubt that pride had been the source of his decision.
Thomas Mann. Doctor Faustus. John E. Woods (trad). Vintage International: Nova Yorque (1999)
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