Am I to record the list of pleasures and hobbies that are foreign to him? The list would be very long, and I should arrive at my goal more quickly by setting his sporting tendencies equal to zero. I once suspected him of being given to aquatic sport, as I learned that he had taken part in several yachting excursions. But I was mistaken. He sails in the same way as he walks on his tours, without a set purpose, dreaming, and uninterested in what is regarded by members of sailing clubs as a "feat." In the negative list of his games we see even chess, that usually exerts a strong attraction on natures with a mathematical tendency. The particular types of combination offered by this game have never tempted him, and the world of chess has remained terra incognita for him. He is just as little interested in every kind of collection, even that of books. I have seldom or never met a savant who attaches so little value to the personal possession of numerous and valuable books. This statement may be extended as far as saying that he experiences no pleasure at all in possession as such: he says so himself, and his whole manner of life proves it. There seems to me to be an element of resignation in his amiable hedonism, a kind of monkish asceticism. He never rids himself of the feeling that he is only paying a visit in this world.
I do not know whether Einstein considers that his life-work can be completed within the span of this visit. At any rate he makes no attempt to extract more out of the day by following a rigid programme of work than the day voluntarily offers. He does not compel himself to cover a definitely circumscribed piece of ground with chronological exactitude. There are brain-workers, especially artists, who actually never shake off the fetters of the twenty-four hours day of work inasmuch as they spin on the threads of daily effort into the nightly fabric of dreams. Einstein can make a pause, interrupt his work, or divert himself into side-channels at leisure and according to the demands of the hour, but dreams offer him no inspiration and do not waylay him with problems.
On the other hand, however, he is waylaid so much the more during the day by things and persons that make an assault on him. This starts as soon as the first post arrives, to see through which requires a special bureau. In addition to the communications of a professional or official nature there appear innumerable letters from everywhere and anywhere asking him to grant a little of his time. Whatever each individual writer has thought about the principle of relativity, all his thoughts and doubts, additions, and, above all, that which he has not been able to understand, all this is to be answered by Einstein. Has he, the child of fame, even a quarter of an hour for himself? There they wait in the hall, the painter, the photographer, the sculptor, and the interviewer; with whatever powers of persuasion and argumentative subtlety his attentive wife may seek to defend his hours of rest, some of these visitors will yet succeed in gaining the upper hand, and will produce something in oil-colours, in plaster of Paris, in black and white, in water-colours, or in print. Fame, too, demands her sacrifices, and if we talk of a hunt after fame, then Einstein is certainly not the hunter, but the hunted.
He sighs under the burden of his correspondence, not only as the recipient, but also with the sender, whose letter has to remain unanswered. Yet he is never roused to anger by the intruder on his time. If this were not so, the aphorism of Cyrus that patience is the panacea of all ills would not hold for him, and how would I myself otherwise have dared to claim so many hours of him? A sense of guilt falls on me!
But even Einstein's patience can come to an end, and this is at the point where "society" begins: I mean the congregation of persons in a salon, society entertainments to which one is invited to be seen, and so that one may claim to have been there. A solemn representation in which he is to be made the cynosure of all eyes is a torture to him. If in a very exceptional case he is compelled to participate in such a gathering, the joy of his hosts will not be entirely unmixed, for it does not require a thought-reader to recognize the longing for solitude imprinted on his countenance: "Could I but escape!"
So much the happier does he feel himself in the narrow circle of his friends, who offer what means to him much more than admiration, namely, affection, and an appreciation of his human self. He is what one wishes him to be. He is happy when he can forget the doctor profundus, and can yield himself up to the atmosphere of stimulating and unconstrained converse. He is a master in the art of listening, and is not averse to contradiction; when possible, he even emphasizes the arguments of his opponent. Audiatur et altera pars! This is a further manifestation of his altruistic personality, which rejoices when he extracts the true kernel from the husk of the opposing opinion. Here he also displays a characteristic which one does not usually expect to find among abstract thinkers, a sense of humour that runs through the whole gamut from a gentle smile to hearty laughter, and that is the happy source of many a striking sally. It may happen that the subject of conversation excites his anger, especially in political debates when he calls to mind militaristic or feudal misgovernment. He then becomes roused, and, as a cynical philosopher, sarcastically attacks personalities and points out the primary source of perennial hate, immediately afterwards soaring up to happy speculations of the future.
It is a matter for regret that the subjects that he has discoursed on lightly have not been fixed phonographically. Such records would form an interesting supplement to the conversations outlined in this book. It would never occur to him to set down in permanent literary form the inspiration of the moment. What he writes emanates from other regions, and is, to use his own expression, a precipitate of "thick ink." This is obvious, for what he has to proclaim as a scientist cannot be presented in a "thin" form. But many a so-called writer would have reason to congratulate himself, if so much thinly flowing matter occurred to him in writing as to Einstein in speaking.
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The record of these conversations was begun in the summer of 1919, and completed in the autumn of 1920.