During my stay with Mikhail the thought about the place of God among people sank and lost its strength and dropped its former boldness and was supplanted by a quantity of other thoughts, and instead of the question, "Where is God?" stood other questions: "Who am I, and why? Wherefore do I seek God?"
I understood that it was senseless.
In the evenings workingmen came to Mikhail and interesting conversations took place. The teacher spoke to them about life and explained to them the laws which were bad. He knew them remarkably well and explained them clearly. The workingmen were mostly young men, dried up by the heat of the factory. Their skins were eaten by soot, their faces were dark, their eyes sorrowful. They listened with serious eagerness, silent and frowning, and at first they seemed to me morose and servile. But later I understood their life better and saw that they could sing and dance and joke with the young girls.
The conversations of Mikhail and his uncle were always on the same subjects—the power of money, the abasement of the workingmen, the greed of the masters and the absolute necessity of destroying divisions of men into classes.
But I was no workingman and no master. I was not in search of money, and they laid too much stress on capital, and thereby lowered themselves. At first I argued with Mikhail, pointing out that man's first duty was to find his spiritual birthplace and that then he would see his own place on earth, and he would find his freedom.
I spoke briefly, but with heat. The workingmen listened to my speech good-naturedly and attentively, like honest judges, and some of the elder ones even agreed with me. But when I finished Mikhail began with his quiet smile and annihilated my words.
"You are right, Matvei, when you say that man lives in mystery and does not know whether God, that is, his spirit, is his enemy or his friend. But you are not right when you say that we, who are arbitrarily bound in the chains of the terrible misery of our daily toil, can free ourselves from the yoke of greed without destroying the actual prison which surrounds us. First of all we must learn the strength of our next-door enemy and learn his cunning. For this we must find each other and discover in each other the one thing which unites each with all. And this one thing is our unconquerable, I can say miraculous, strength. Slaves never had a God. They raised human laws which were forced on them without, to Godhood, nor can there ever be a God for slaves, for He is created from the flames of the sweet consciousness of the spiritual relationship of each toward all. Temples are not created from gravel and debris, but from strong whole stones. Isolation is the breaking away from the parental whole. It is a sign of the weakness and the blindness of the soul, for in the whole is immortality and in isolation inevitable slavery and darkness and inconsolable yearning and death."
When we spoke this way it seemed to me that his eyes saw a great light in the distance. He drew me into his circle and every one forgot about me, but looked at him with happiness. At first this offended me. I thought that they misunderstood my thoughts and that no one was willing to accept any one's thoughts but Mikhail's. Unnoticed I would go away from them, sit down in a corner and quietly hold council with my pride.
I made friends with the pupils. On holidays they surrounded Uncle Peter and me like ravens around sheaves of corn. He would make some toy for them while I was bombarded with questions about Kiev, Moscow and everything I had seen. Often one of them would ask me a question which would make my eyes bulge out in astonishment. There was a young boy there called Fedia Sachkof, a quiet, serious child. Once when I was going with him through the wood, speaking to him about Christ, he suddenly said in a firm tone:
"Christ did not think of remaining a small boy all his life—for instance, a boy of my age. If He had done so, He could have lived and still have accused the rich and aided the poor, and He would not have been crucified. He would have been a small boy, and they would have been sorry for Him. But the way He did it, it is as if He had never been here."