G. did not say anything and the conversation stopped at that.
But in G. himself I at once felt something uncommon; and in the course of the evening this impression only strengthened. When I was taking leave of him the thought Hashed into my mind that I must at once, without delay, arrange to meet him again, and that if I did not do so I might lose all connection with him. I asked him if I could not see him once more before my departure to Petersburg. He told me that he would be at the same cafe the following day, at the same time.
I came out with one of the young men. I felt myself very strange—a long reading which I very little understood, people who did not answer my questions, G. himself with his unusual manners and his influence on his people, which I all the time felt produced in me an unexpected desire to laugh, to shout, to sing, as though I had escaped from school or from some strange detention.
I wanted to tell my impressions to this young man, make some jokes about G., and about the rather tedious and pretentious story. I at once imagined myself telling all this to some of my friends. Happily I stopped myself in time. —"But he will go and telephone them at once. They are all friends."
So I tried to keep myself in hand, and quite silently we came to the tram and rode towards the center of Moscow. After rather a long journey we arrived at Okhotny Nad, near which place I stayed, and silently said good-by to one another, and parted.
I was at the same cafe where I had met G. the next day, and the day following, and every day afterwards. During the week I spent in Moscow I saw G. every day. It very soon became clear to me that he knew very much of what I wanted to know. Among other things he explained to me certain phenomena I had come across in India which no one had been able to explain to me either there, on the spot, or afterwards. In his explanations I felt the assurance of a specialist, a very fine analysis of facts, and a system which I could not grasp, but the presence of which I already felt because G.'s explanations made me think not only of the facts under discussion, but also of many other things I had observed or conjectured.
I did not meet G.'s group again. About himself G. spoke but little. Once or twice he mentioned his travels in the East. I was interested to know where he had been but this I was unable to make out exactly.
In regard to his work in Moscow G. said that he had two groups unconnected with one another and occupied in different work, "according to the state of their preparation and their powers," as he expressed it. Each member of these groups paid a thousand roubles a year, and was able to work with him while pursuing his ordinary activities in life.
I said that in my opinion a thousand roubles a year might be too large a payment for many people without private means.
G. replied that no other arrangement was possible, because, owing to the very nature of the work, he could not have many pupils. At the same time, he did not desire and ought not—he emphasized this—to spend his own money on the organization of the work. His work was not, and could not be, of a charitable nature and his pupils themselves ought to find the means for the hire of apartments where they could meet; for carrying out experiments; and so on. Besides this, he added that observation showed that people who were weak in life proved themselves weak in the work.
"There are several aspects of this idea," said G. "The work of each person may involve expenses, traveling, and so on. If his life is so badly organized that a thousand roubles embarrasses him it would be better for him not to undertake this work. Suppose that, in the course of the year, his work requires him to go to Cairo or some other place. He must have the means to do so. Through our demand we find out whether he is able to work with us or not.
"Besides," G. continued, "I have far too little spare time to be able to sacrifice it on others without being certain even that it will do them good. I value my time very much because I need it for my own work and because I cannot and, as I said before, do not want to spend it unproductively. There is also another side to this," said G. "People do not value a thing if they do not pay for it."
I listened to this with a strange feeling. On the one hand I was pleased with everything that G. said. I was attracted by the absence of any element of sentimentality, of conventional talk about "altruism," of words about "working for the good of humanity" and so forth. On the other hand I was surprised at G.'s apparent desire to convince me of something in connection with the question of money when I needed no convincing.
If there was anything I did not agree with it was simply that G. would be able to collect enough money in the way he described. I realized that none of those pupils whom I had seen would be able to pay a thousand roubles a year. If he had really found in the East visible and tangible traces of hidden knowledge and was continuing investigations in this direction, then it was clear that this work needed funds, like any other scientific enterprise, like an expedition into some unknown part of the world, the excavation of an ancient city, or an investigation requiring elaborate and numerous physical or chemical experiments. It was quite unnecessary to convince me of this. On the contrary, the thought was already in my mind that if G. gave me the possibility of a closer acquaintance with his activities, I should probably be able to find the funds necessary for him to place his work on a proper footing and also bring him more prepared people. But, of course, I still had only a very vague idea in what this work might consist.
Without saying it plainly, G. gave me to understand that he would accept me as one of his pupils if I expressed the wish. I told him that the chief obstacle on my side was that, at the moment, I could not stay in Moscow because I had made an arrangement with a publisher in Petersburg and was preparing several books for publication. G. told me that he sometimes went to Petersburg and he promised to come there soon and let me know of his arrival.
"But if I Joined your group," I said to G., "I should be faced with a very difficult problem. I do not know whether you exact a promise from your pupils to keep secret what they learn from you, but I could give no such promise. There have been two occasions in my life when I had the possibility of joining groups engaged in work which appears to be similar to yours, at any rate by description, and which interested me very much at the time. But in both cases to join would have meant consenting or promising to keep secret everything that I might learn there. And I refused in both cases, because, before everything else, I am a writer, and I desire to be absolutely free and to decide for myself what I shall write and what I shall not write. If I promise to keep secret something I am told, it would be very difficult afterwards to separate what had been told me from what came to my own mind either in connection with it or even with no connection. For instance, I know very little about your ideas yet, but I do know that when we begin to talk we shall very soon come to questions of time and space, of higher dimensions, and so on. These are questions on which I have already been working for many
years. I have no doubt whatever that they roust occupy a large place in your system." G. nodded. "Well, you see, if we were now to talk under a pledge of secrecy, then, after the first conversation I should not know what I could write and what I could not write."
"But what are your own ideas on the subject?" said G. "One must not talk too much. There are things which are said only for disciples."
"I could accept such a condition only temporarily," I said. "Of course it would be ludicrous if I began at once to write about what I learn from you. But if, in principle, you do not wish to make a secret of your ideas and care only that they should not be transmitted in a distorted form, then I could accept such a condition and wait until I had a better understanding of your teaching. I once came across a group of people who were engaged in various scientific experiments on a very wide scale. They made no secret of their work. But they made it a condition that no one would have the right to speak of or describe any experiment unless he was able to carry it out himself. Until he was able to repeat the experiment himself he had to keep silent."