A STORY

A man as a whole, with all his distinct and separately functioning localizations, that is to say, his independently formed and educated “personalities,” is almost exactly comparable to that equipage for transporting a passenger which consists of a carriage, a horse, and a coachman. It must be remarked, to begin with, that the difference between a real man and a pseudo man, that is, between a man who has his own “I” and one who has not, is indicated in this analogy by the passenger sitting in the carriage In the first case, that of the real man, the passenger is the owner of the carriage, and in the second case, he is merely the first chance passer-by who, like the fare in a “hackney carriage,” is continually changing. 

The body of a man, with all its motor-reflex manifestations, corresponds simply to the carriage itself, all the functionings and manifestations of feeling of a man correspond to the horse harnessed to the carriage and drawing it, the coachman sitting on the box and directing the horse corresponds to what in a man people usually call “consciousness” or “thought”, and finally, the passenger sitting in the carriage and giving orders to the coachman is what is called “I .” 

The fundamental evil among contemporary people is that, owing to the rooted and widespread abnormal methods of education of the rising generation, this fourth personality, which should be present in everybody on reaching responsible age, is entirely lacking in them, and almost all of them consist only of three of the enumerated parts, which, moreover, are formed arbitrarily of themselves and anyhow In other words, almost every contemporary man of responsible age consists of neither more nor less than a “hackney carriage,” and what is more, a broken-down carriage that has long ago seen its day, a crock of a horse, and on the box, a tatterdemalion, half-asleep, half-drunk coachman, whose time designated by Mother Nature for self-perfection passes in fantastic daydreams while he waits on a corner for any old chance passenger. The first one who happens along hires him and dismisses him just as he pleases, and not only him but also all the parts subordinate to him. Pursuing this analogy between a typical contemporary man with his thoughts, feelings, and body, and a hackney carriage with its horse and coachman, we can clearly see that in each of the parts composing these two organizations there must have been formed and must exist its own separate needs, habits, tastes, and so on, proper to it alone because, according to the different nature of their origin and the diverse conditions of their formation, and also the varying possibilities put into them, there must inevitably have been formed in each of these parts its own psyche, its own notions, its own subjective supports, its own viewpoints, and so on. The whole sum of the manifestations of human thought, with all the inherencies proper to its functioning and with all its specific characteristics, corresponds in almost every respect to the essence and manifestations of a typical hired coachman. Like all hired coachmen in general, he is a certain type called “cabby” He is not entirely illiterate because, owing to the laws existing in his country for the “general compulsory teaching” of the three Rs, he was obliged in his childhood to put in an occasional appearance at what is called the “parish school.” Although he himself is a country boy and has remained as ignorant as his fellow rustics, yet rubbing shoulders, thanks to his profession, with people of various positions and education and picking up from them, a bit here and a bit there, a lot of expressions for various notions, he has now come to look down with contempt upon everything smacking of the country, indignantly dismissing it all as “ignorance.” In short, this is a type to whom one could apply perfectly the adage: “Too good for the crows, but the peacocks won’t have him. “ He considers himself competent even in questions of religion, politics, and sociology, with his equals he likes to argue, those whom he regards as his inferiors he likes to teach, with his superiors he is a servile flatterer, he stands before them, as is said, “cap in hand.” One of his greatest weaknesses is dangling after the neighborhood cooks and housemaids, but best of all he likes to put away a good square meal and to gulp down another glass or two, and then, fully satiated, drowsily to daydream. To gratify these weaknesses of his he regularly steals part of the money his employer gives him to buy fodder for the horse. Like every “cabby” he works only “under the lash,” and if occasionally he does a job without being made to, it is always in the hope of a tip. The desire for tips has gradually taught him to detect certain weaknesses in the people he deals with and to take advantage of them, he has automatically learned to be cunning, to flatter, “to stroke people the right way,” as they say, and in general, to lie. On every convenient occasion when he has a free moment, he slips into a saloon or a bar where, over a glass of beer, he daydreams for hours at a time, or talks with a type like himself, or just reads the paper. He tries to look imposing, wears a beard, and if he is thin, pads himself out to appear more important. As regards the feeling-localization in a man, the totality of its manifestations and the whole system of its functioning correspond perfectly to the horse of the “hackney carriage” in our analogy. 

Incidentally, this comparison of the horse with the composition of human feeling will help to show particularly clearly the error and one-sidedness of the contemporary education inflicted on the rising generation. The horse, owing to the negligence of those around it during its early years, and to its constant solitude, is as if locked up within itself, in other words, its “inner life” is driven inside and for external manifestations it has nothing but inertia. Thanks to the abnormal conditions around it, the horse has never received any special education but has been molded solely under the influence of constant thrashings and vile abuse. It has always been kept tied up, and for food, instead of oats and hay it has only been given straw, which is utterly worthless for its real needs. Never having seen in any of the manifestations toward it the least love or friendliness, the horse is now ready to surrender itself completely to anybody who gives it the slightest caress. In consequence of all this, the inclinations of the horse, thus deprived of all interests and aspirations, must inevitably concentrate on food, drink, and the automatic yearning for the opposite sex, hence it invariably veers in the direction where it can get any of these and if, for example, it catches sight of a place where even once or twice it gratified one of these needs, it waits for the chance to run off in that direction. 

It must be added that although the coachman has a very feeble understanding of his duties, he can nevertheless, even though only a little, think logically, and, remembering tomorrow, he does occasionally—either from the fear of losing his job or the desire of receiving a reward—show an interest in doing something or other for his employer without being forced to. But the horse, in the absence of a special education adapted to its nature, has not received at the proper time any data at all for manifesting the aspirations requisite for responsible existence, and of course it fails to understand— indeed it cannot be expected to understand—why it should do anything It therefore carries out its obligations with complete indifference and only from fear of further beatings. 

As for the carriage, which in our analogy stands for the body considered separately from the other independently formed parts of the common presence of a man, its situation is even worse. This carriage, like most other carriages, is made out of various materials and, furthermore, is of a very complicated construction. It was designed, as is evident to any sane-thinking man, to carry all kinds of loads, and not for the purpose for which it is used by contemporary people, that is, only to carry passengers. The chief cause of the many misunderstandings connected with it springs from the fact that those who invented the system of this carriage intended it for travel on byroads, and therefore certain inner details of its general construction were designed with this in view. For example, the principle of its greasing, which is one of the chief needs of an equipage made of such different materials, was so devised that the grease should spread over all the metal parts from the jolting inevitable on such roads, whereas now, this carriage, designed for traveling on byroads, is usually stationed on a rank in the city and travels on smooth, level, paved streets. In the absence of any shocks whatsoever while rolling along such roads, the greasing of all its parts does not take place uniformly, and consequently some of them are bound to rust and cease to perform the functions intended for them. A carriage goes easily, as a rule, if its moving parts are properly greased With too little grease, these parts get overheated and finally red-hot, and thus the other parts get spoiled, however, if there is too much grease on some part, the general functioning of the carriage is impaired, and in either case it becomes more difficult for the horse to pull it. The contemporary coachman, our cabby, has no inkling of the need for greasing the carriage, and even if he does grease it, he does so without proper knowledge, only on hearsay, blindly following the directions of the first comer. So, when this carriage, now more or less adapted for travel on smooth roads, has for some reason or other to go along a byroad, something always happens to it either a nut gives way, or a bolt gets bent, or something or other gets loose, and so these expeditions rarely end without more or less considerable repairs. In any case, it has become more and more risky to use this carriage for its intended purpose And once repairs are begun, you have to take the carriage all to pieces, examine all its parts one by one and, as is always done in such cases, “kerosene” them, clean them, and then put them together again, and frequently it becomes obvious that you have to change a part immediately and without fail This is all very well if the part happens to be inexpensive, but it may turn out that the repair is more costly than a new carriage. 

And so, all that has been said about the separate parts of that vehicle which, taken as a whole, constitutes a “hackney carriage” is fully applicable to the general organization of the common presence of a man. In view of the lack among contemporary people of any knowledge or ability to prepare the rising generation for responsible existence in an appropriate way, by educating all the separate parts composing their common presence, every person of today is a confused and extremely ludicrous “something” which, again using our analogy, presents the following picture. A carriage of the latest model, just out of the factory, varnished by genuine German craftsmen from the town of Barmen, and harnessed to the kind of horse which in the region of Transcaucasia is called a “dglozidzi ” “Dzi” is a horse, “dgloz” was the name of a certain Armenian expert in the art of buying and skinning utterly worthless horses. On the box of this stylish carriage sits an unshaven, unkempt, sleepy coachman, dressed in a shabby frock coat, which he has retrieved from the rubbish bin where it had been thrown out as useless by Maggie, the kitchenmaid On his head reposes a brand-new top hat, an exact replica of Rockefeller’s, and in his buttonhole is displayed a giant chrysanthemum. Contemporary man inevitably presents such a ludicrous picture, because from the day of his arising these three parts formed in him—which though of diverse origin and having properties of diverse quality should nevertheless, for pursuing a single aim during his responsible existence, represent together his “entire whole”—begin, so to say, to “live” and to become fixed in their specific manifestations separately from one another, never having been trained to give the required automatic reciprocal support and help or to understand one another even approximately Thus later, when there is a need for concerted manifestations, these concerted manifestations do not appear. To be sure, thanks to what is called the “system of education of the rising generation,” completely fixed at the present time in the life of man, and which consists simply and solely in drumming into the pupils, by means of constant repetition to the point of stupefaction, numerous almost empty words and expressions, and in training them to recognize merely by the difference in their sounds the reality these words and expressions are supposed to signify, the coachman is still able to explain after a fashion the various desires he feels (though only to types like himself), and he is sometimes even able, at least approximately, to understand others. This coachman-cabby of ours, gossiping with other coachmen while waiting for a fare, and sometimes, as is said, “flirting” in the doorways with the local maids, even picks up various forms of what is called “civility. “ In accordance with the external conditions of the life of coachmen in general, he also gradually automatizes himself to distinguish one street from another and, for instance, to calculate how, when a street is closed for repairs, to get to the required destination from another direction. But as for the horse, even though the maleficent contemporary invention called “education” does not extend to its formation, and in consequence its inherited possibilities are not atrophied, yet because of the fact that it has been formed under the abnormal conditions of the established process of ordinary existence, and that it grows up ignored by everybody, like an orphan, and moreover an ill-treated orphan, it neither acquires anything corresponding to the psyche of the coachman nor learns anything of what he knows, and hence it remains ignorant of the forms of reciprocal relationship which have become habitual for the coachman, and no contact is made between them for understanding each other. It may happen, however, that in its locked-in life the horse comes to learn some form of relationship with the coachman and even, perhaps, is not unfamiliar with some sort of “language”, but the trouble is that the coachman does not know this or even suspect that such a thing is possible. Apart from the fact that, in these abnormal conditions, no data have been formed between the horse and the coachman to allow them to understand each other automatically, even a little, there are many other outer causes, independent of them, which deprive them of the possibility of fulfilling together that single purpose for which they were both destined. Just as the separate independent parts of a “hackney carnage” are connected, namely, the carriage to the horse by the shafts and the horse to the coachman by the reins, so also are the separate parts of the general organization of a man connected with each other: the body is connected to the feeling-organization by the blood, and the feeling-organization with that of the thought or consciousness by what is called “hanbledzoïn,” namely, by that substance which arises in the common presence of a man from all intentionally made being-efforts. The deplorable system of education existing at the present time has led to the coachman’s ceasing to have any effect whatever on his horse, at best he can arouse in its consciousness by means of the reins just three ideas—right, left, and stop. Strictly speaking, he cannot always do even this, because the reins are generally made of materials that react to atmospheric phenomena for example, in a pouring rain they swell and lengthen, and in heat, the contrary, thus having a varying effect upon the horse’s automatized sensitivity of perception. The same thing proceeds in the general organization of the ordinary man whenever from some impression or other the “density and tempo of the hanbledzoïn” change in him so that his thinking loses all possibility of affecting his feeling-organization. 

And so, to sum up everything that has been said, we must willy-nilly acknowledge that every man should strive to have his own “I,” otherwise he will never represent anything more than a “hackney carriage” which any passing fare can sit in and dispose of just as he pleases. Here it will not be superfluous to point out that the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man has among its fundamental tasks the aim, on the one hand, of educating in its pupils each of the independent personalities I spoke of, first separately and then in their reciprocal relationships, according to the needs of their subjective life in the future, and on the other hand, of begetting and fostering in each of its pupils what every bearer of the name of “man without quotation marks” should have—his own “I. “ For a more exact, and so to speak scientific, definition of the difference between a real man, that is, a man as he ought to be, and a “man in quotation marks,” such as almost all contemporary people have become, it is appropriate to quote here what was said about this by Gurdjieff himself in one of his lectures.