I understood from what he said subsequently that this would not be a ballet in the strict meaning of the word, but a series of dramatic and mimic scenes held together by a common plot, accompanied by music and intermixed with songs and dances. The most appropriate name for these scenes would be "revue," but without any comic element. The "ballet" or "revue" was to be called "The Struggle of the Magicians." The important scenes represented the schools of a "Black Magician" and a "White Magician," with exercises by pupils of both schools and a struggle between the two schools. The action was to take place against the background of the life of an Eastern city, intermixed with sacred dances. Dervish dances, and various national Eastern dances, all this interwoven with a love story which itself would have an allegorical meaning.
I was particularly interested when G. said that the same performers would have to act and dance in the "White Magician" scene and in the "Black Magician" scene; and that they themselves and their movements had to be attractive and beautiful in the first scene and ugly and discordant in the second.
"You understand that in this way they will see and study all sides of themselves; consequently the ballet will be of immense importance for self- study," said G.
I understood this far from clearly at the time, but I was struck by a certain discrepancy.
"In the notice I saw in the paper it was said that your 'ballet' would be staged in Moscow and that certain well-known ballet dancers would take 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.
"What is your opinion of modem psychology?" I once asked G. with the intention of introducing the subject of psychoanalysis which I had mistrusted from the time when it had first appeared. But G. did not let me get as far as that.
"Before speaking of psychology we must be clear to whom it refers and to whom it does not refer," he said. "Psychology refers to people, to men, to human beings. What psychology" (he emphasized the word) "can there be in relation to machines? Mechanics, not psychology, is necessary for the study of machines. That is why we begin with mechanics. It is a very long way yet to psychology."
"Can one stop being a machine?" I asked.
"Ah! That is the question," said G. "If you had asked such questions more often we might, perhaps, have got somewhere in our talks. It is possible to stop being a machine, but for that it is necessary first of all to know the machine. A machine, a real machine, does not know itself and cannot know itself. When a machine knows itself it is then no longer a machine, at least, not such a machine as it was before. It already begins to be responsible for its actions."