In Search of the Miraculous

part in it. How do you reconcile this with the idea of self-study?" I asked.

"They will not play and dance in order to study themselves."

"All this is far from being decided," said G. "And the author of the notice you read was not fully informed. All this may be quite different. Although,

on the other hand, those taking part in the ballet will see themselves whether

they like it or not."

"And Who is writing the music?" I asked.

"That also is not decided," said G. He did not say anything more, and I

only came across the "ballet" again five years later.

Once I was talking with G. in Moscow. I was speaking about London,

where I had been staying a short while before, about the terrifying

mechanization that was being developed in the big European cities and

without which it was probably impossible to live and work in those immense whirling "mechanical toys."

"People are turning into machines," I said. "And no doubt sometimes they

become perfect machines. But I do not believe they can think. If they tried to

think, they could not have been such fine machines."

"Yes," said G., "that is true, but only partly true. It depends first of all on the question which mind they use for their work. If they use the proper mind

they will be able to think even better in the midst of all their work with

machines. But, again, only if they think with the proper mind."

I did not understand what G. meant by "proper mind" and understood it

only much later.

"And secondly," he continued, "the mechanization you speak of is not at

all dangerous. A man may be a man" (he emphasized this word), "while

working with machines. There is another kind of mechanization which is

much more dangerous: being a machine oneself. Have you ever thought

about the fact that all peoples themselves are machines?"

"Yes," I said, "from the strictly scientific point of view all people are

machines governed by external influences. But the question is, can the

scientific point of view be wholly accepted?"

"Scientific or not scientific is all the same to me," said G. "I want you to understand what I am saying. Look, all those people you see," he pointed

along the street, "are simply machines—nothing more."

"I think I understand what you mean," I said. "And I have often thought

how little there is in the world that can stand against this form of

mechanization and choose its own path."

"This is just where you make your greatest mistake," said G. "You think

there is something that chooses its own path, something that can stand

against mechanization; you think that not everything is equally mechanical."

"Why, of course not!" I said. "Art, poetry, thought, are phenomena of

quite a different order."

"Of exactly the same order," said G. "These activities are just as

mechanical as everything else. Men are machines and nothing but

mechanical actions can be expected of machines."

"Very well," I said. "But are there no people who are not machines?"

"It may be that there are," said G., "only not those people you see. And

you do not know them. That is what I want you to understand."

I thought it rather strange that he should be so insistent on this point. What

he said seemed to me obvious and incontestable. At the same time, I had

never liked such short and all-embracing metaphors. They always omitted

points of difference. I, on the other hand, had always maintained differences

were the most important thing and that in order to understand things it was

first necessary to see the points in which they differed. So I felt that it was

odd that G. insisted on an idea which seemed

to be obvious provided it were not made too absolute and exceptions were admitted.

"People are so unlike one another," I said. "I do not think it would be possible to bring them all under the same heading. There are savages, there are mechanized

people, there are intellectual people, there are geniuses."

"Quite right," said G., "people are very unlike one another, but the real difference between people you do not know and cannot see. The difference of which you speak

simply does not exist. This must be understood. All the people you see, all the people

you know, all the people you may get to know, are machines, actual machines working solely under the power of external influences, as you yourself said. Machines they are

born and machines they die. How do savages and intellectuals come into this? Even

now, at this very moment, while we are talking, several millions of machines are

trying to annihilate one another. What is the difference between them? Where are the

savages and where are the intellectuals? They are all alike . . .

"But there is a possibility of ceasing to be a machine. It is of this we must think and not about the different kinds of machines that exist. Of course there are different

machines; a motorcar is a machine, a gramophone is a machine, and a gun is a

machine. But what of it? It is the same thing—they are all machines."

In connection with this conversation I remember another.