For instance, he told me which of the fellows interested him; and in what manner he studied them. He judged many of them with accuracy. He used to say to me before the lesson: “When I signal to you with my thumb, so-and-so will look round at us, or will scratch his neck, etc.” Then during the lesson, when I scarcely gave a thought to what he had told me, Max would attract my attention by suddenly bending his thumb. I would look up quickly at the boy already designated, and every time, as if attached to a wire, the fellow would make the gesture required of him. I bothered Max to try this on the master, but he did not want to do it. But once, when I came into class and told him I had not done my preparation, and that I hoped the clergyman would not question me that day, he helped me. The master looked round for a boy to recite a portion of the catechism, and his roving eye rested on me. He approached me slowly, stretched out his finger in my direction, and already had my name on his lips—when suddenly he became absentminded or uneasy, put his hand to his collar, stepped up to Demian who looked fixedly into his face. He seemed to want to ask him something but he turned away, to our surprise, coughed a little, and put his question to another boy.
These jokes amused me very much, but only gradually did I notice that my friend frequently played the same game with me. It would happen that on my way home from school I had suddenly the feeling Demian was a little way behind me, and when I turned round, there he was, sure enough.
“Can you really make another person think what you want him to?” I asked him.
He gave me information on the subject readily enough, quietly and pertinently, in his grown-up manner.
“No,” he said, “that can’t be done. That is to say, one hasn’t a free will, even if the person acts that way. Neither can the other person think as he will, nor can I make him think what I want him to. But you can observe someone well, and then you can say fairly exactly what he thinks or feels; in this way you can generally predict what he will do the moment after. It’s quite simple, but people merely do not know it. Naturally it requires practice. To take an example from the butterfly world, there is a certain species of moth, of which the female is much rarer than the male. The moths reproduce like other animals, the male impregnates the female, who then lays the egg. Suppose you have in your possession a female of this type of moth—naturalists have often made the experiment—then the male moths fly in the night to this female, they even make a flight of several hours’ duration! Think of it! For many miles around all the males are conscious of the whereabouts of the only female moth in the district. People have tried to explain that, but it is not easy. Moths must have a sense of smell, or something like it, which allows them to pick up and follow an almost imperceptible scent, like a good hound. You understand? There are such things, nature is full of them, and no one can explain them. Now I draw the conclusion that if among this class of moths the females were as abundant as the males, then these latter would not have such a refined sense of smell! They have it simply because they have been trained like that. If an animal or a man concentrates his whole attention and his whole willpower on a certain thing then he attains it. That’s all. And it is just the same with what you have asked me. Observe a man sufficiently well, and you will know more about him than he does himself.”
It lay on the tip of my tongue to mention the word “mind-reading,” and so to remind him of the scene with Kromer, now relegated to such a distant past. But the odd thing between us both was that neither he nor I ever made the slightest reference to the fact that several years ago he had intervened so decisively in my life. It was as if formerly there had been nothing between us, or as if each of us reckoned that the other had forgotten the affair. It even happened once or twice when we were together that we met Frank Kromer in the street, but we exchanged no look, neither did we speak of him.
“But what has that got to do with willpower?” I asked. “You said there was no such thing as free will. And then you said one only had to concentrate one’s will on something to be able to attain one’s ends. That doesn’t agree! If I am not master of my will, then I can’t direct it here or there as I wish.”
“A good question!” he said, laughing. “You should always ask questions, you must always doubt. But the explanation is very simple. If a moth for instance wants to concentrate his willpower on a star or something like that, he can’t do it. Only—he doesn’t try. He seeks only what has sense and value for him, satisfies his needs, he gets what he absolutely must have. And it is just there that the unbelievable succeeds—he develops a marvelous sixth sense, that no other animal besides him has! People in our position have
