In Search of the Miraculous

people and how he can produce a desirable or an undesirable impression.

Those around him see a man's chief feature however hidden it may be. Of course

they cannot always define it. But their definitions are often very good and very near.

Take nicknames. Nicknames sometimes define chief features very well.

The talk about impressions brought us once more to "inner" and "outward

considering."

"There cannot be proper outward considering while a man is seated in his chief

feature," said G. "For instance So-and-So" (he named one of our party). "His feature is that he is never at home. How can he consider anything or anybody?"

I was astonished at the artistic finish of the feature that was represented by G. It was

not psychology even, it was art.

"And psychology ought to be art," G. replied, "psychology can never be simply a science."

To another of our party he said on the question of feature that his feature was that

he did not exist at all.

"You understand, I do not see you," said G. "It does not mean that you are always like that. But when you are like you are now, you do not exist at all."

He said to another that his chief feature was a tendency always to argue with

everybody about everything.

"But then I never argue," the man very heatedly at once replied.

Nobody could help laughing.

G. told another of our party—it was the middle-aged man on whom he had carried

out the experiment of dividing personality from essence and who asked for raspberry

jam—that his feature was that he had no conscience.

The following day the man came and said that he had been in the public library and

had looked through the encyclopedic dictionaries of four languages for the meaning of

the word "conscience."

G. merely waved his hand.

To the other man, his companion in the experiment, G. said that he had no shame,

and he at once cracked a rather amusing joke against himself.

On this occasion G. stopped in quarters on the Liteiny near the Nevsky. He had

caught a severe chill and we met at his place in small groups.

He said once that there was no sense in our going on any further in this way and

that we ought to make a definite decision whether we wanted to go on with him,

wanted to work, or whether it was better to abandon all attempts in this direction,

because a half-serious attitude could give no results whatever. He added that he would

continue the work only with those who would make a definite and serious decision to

struggle with mechanicalness in themselves and with sleep.

"You already know by this time," he said, "that nothing terrible is demanded of you.

But there is no sense in sitting between two stools. Whoever does not want to wake

up, at any rate let him sleep well."

He said that he would talk to each of us separately and that each of us must show

him sufficient reason why he, that is, G., should trouble about him.

"You think perhaps that this affords me a great deal of satisfaction," he said. "Or perhaps you think that there is nothing else that I could do. If so you are very gravely

mistaken in both cases. There are very many other things that I could do. And if I give

my time to this it is only because I have a definite aim. By now you ought better to understand in what my aim consists and by now you ought to see whether you are on

the same road as I am or not. I will say nothing more. But in the future I shall work

only with those who can be useful to me in attaining my aim. And only those people

can be useful to me who have firmly decided to struggle with themselves, that is, to

struggle with mechanicalness."

With this the talk ended. G.'s talks with members of the group lasted

about a week. With some he spoke for a very long time, with others not so long.

Finally almost everybody stayed on.

P., the middle-aged man whom I have mentioned in connection with experiments in

dividing personality from essence, came out of the situation with honor and quickly

became a very active member of our group, only on occasions going astray into a

formal attitude or in "literal understanding."

Only two people dropped off who, exactly as though through some kind of magic as

it seemed to us, suddenly ceased to understand anything and saw in everything that G.

said misunderstanding on his part, and, on the part of the rest, a lack of, sympathy and feeling.

This attitude, at first mistrustful and suspicious and then openly hostile to almost all

of us, coming from nobody knew where and full of strange and quite unexpected

accusations, astonished us very much.

"We made everything a secret"; we failed to tell them what G. had spoken of in

their absence. We told tales about them to G., trying to make him distrust them. We

recounted to him all talks with them, leading him constantly into error by distorting all the facts and striving to present everything in a false light. We had given G. wrong