It appeared that he intended to continue in the same vein; but though the conversation—which had arisen from a dream of nature, the peculiarly uneventful procession of blossoms still drifting through the space of awareness—did not for a moment leave any doubt as to the siblings’ crucial question, but rather, from the first to the last word, stood under the influence of that emblem, was dominated by the enigmatic conception of “a happening without anything happening,” and was taking place in a mood of gentle affliction: even though this was how it was, in the end the conversation had led to the opposite of such an ideal and its emotional tenor when Ulrich found himself constrained to emphasize the constructive activity of strong drives along with the disruption they caused. Such a clear vindication of the drives, and implicitly of the instinctual nature of man, and of active humanity altogether—for that too was implied—might of course have been part of a “Western, Occidental, Faustian sense of life,” as it is called in the language of books in contrast to any sensibility that, according to the same self-fertilizing language, is supposed to be “Oriental” or “Asian.” He remembered these pretentious vogue words. But it was not his or his sister’s intention, nor would it have been consistent with their habits, to give a specious meaning to an experience that moved them deeply by employing such fly-by-night, poorly rooted notions; rather, everything they talked about was meant as true and real, though its source might be as remote and improbable as a walk in the clouds. That was why Ulrich had taken pleasure in subtending the fine haze of feeling with an explanation on the model of the natural sciences—even if that did seem to abet the “Faustian” idea—simply because the spirit of fidelity to nature promised to exclude everything that is excessively fanciful. At least he had sketched out an approach to such an explanation. It was of course all the stranger that he had done so only for what he called the appetitive aspect of emotion, while completely ignoring the question of how he might apply an analogous idea to the nonappetitive aspect, even though originally he had certainly not given it any less importance. It was not without reason that it happened this way. Whether the psychological and biological dissection of this aspect of feeling seemed more difficult to him, or whether he merely considered such analysis a cumbersome instrument altogether—both might have been the case—what influenced him primarily was something else, of which he had already given several indications since the moment when Agathe’s deep sigh had betrayed the painful and elating contrast between the past, restless passions of life and the seemingly undying passion that was at home in the timeless stillness beneath the stream of blossoms. For—to repeat what he had already repeated in various ways—not only are two dispositions discernible in every individual emotion, through which, and in accord with their nature, that emotion can be developed to the point of passion; but there are also two kinds of people, or in every person periods of his or her destiny, that differ in that one or the other disposition predominates.