"You should begin wandering again," he said, "to look upon the life of the people with new eyes. Do not take books along with you. Reading will give you nothing. You do not yet believe that it is not human intelligence which is found in books, but the infinite diversity of the striving of the soul of the people toward freedom. Books do not seek to master you, but give you the weapon for emancipation; you do not yet understand how to hold this weapon in your hand."
He spoke truly. Books were strangers to me at this time. I was used to church writings, but I could not grasp worldly thought except with great difficulty. The spoken word gave me much more than the written. The thoughts which I gathered from books lay on the surface of my soul and were quickly effaced and melted away by my fire. They did not answer my principal question: What was the law which governed God, and why, if man was made in His image, did He degrade him against His will? And, moreover, whose was this will?
Side by side with this question, not antagonizing it, lived another. Was God brought down from heaven on this earth, or was He raised from earth up to heaven by the strength of the people? And here arose the burning thought that the creation of God was the eternal work of the whole people.
My heart was cut in two. I wanted to remain with these people, yet something pulled me to go away and prove my new thought and to search for this unknown something which robbed me of my liberty and confused my spirit.
Uncle Peter urged me also: "You ought to go away for some time, Matvei. There has been some dangerous talk about your speech."
And soon things decided themselves without my control. One night a messenger came on horseback from a neighboring factory with the announcement that gendarmes were making house searches in their place and that undoubtedly they would soon be here.
"Ah, it is too soon," said Mikhail with anger.
There was a hurrying and scurrying to and fro and Uncle Peter cried to me:
"Go, Matvei, go! You have nothing to do here. You did not make the soup and you needn't eat it."
Mikhail insisted, looking straight into my face.