The ill-defined thread that binds me to inaction born of pity, in contrast to my own clear conviction, but also a second one which runs to my soul, to innermost knowledge, and binds me to the cosmos. People like Basini, as I said to you before, mean nothing - they’re an empty, accidental form. The only true human beings are those who can penetrate within themselves, cosmic human beings, capable of losing themselves until they connect with the great universal process. They work miracles with their eyes closed, because they are able to use the whole power of the universe, which is within them just as much as it is outside them. But in the past anyone who has pursued the second thread to that point has first had to break the first one. I have read of terrible penances performed by enlightened monks, and you must know something of the methods of the Indian holy men. The sole purpose of all the cruel things that happen is to kill off miserable, outward-directed desires which, whether they be pride or hunger, joy or pity, only pull us away from the fire that each one of us has the potential to start within him.

‘Reiting only knows the external, I follow the second thread. Now he has the advantage in most people’s eyes, because my journey is slower and more uncertain. But all of a sudden I can overtake him as if he was a worm. You see, it is asserted that the world consists of unshakeable mechanical laws. That is quite false, it’s just what it says in schoolbooks! The outside world is stubborn, and up to a certain point its so-called laws cannot be influenced, but some people have succeeded in doing just that. That is written in the holy books that have stood the test of time, and of which most people know nothing at all. From those books I know that there have been people who have been able to move stones and air and water simply by activating their will, and whose prayers were a match for any earthly power. But they too are only the outward triumphs of the spirit. For whoever manages to behold his soul entirely, his physical life, which is merely accidental, dissolves; it says in the books that those people have directly entered a higher realm of the soul.’

Beineberg was speaking entirely seriously, with restrained excitement. Törless still kept his eyes almost uninterruptedly closed; he felt Beineberg’s breath reaching across to him, and absorbed it like an oppressive anaesthetic. Meanwhile Beineberg was concluding his speech:

‘So you can see what it is that concerns me. That which persuades me to let Basini go is of base, external origin. You may pursue it. For me it is a prejudice of which I must rid myself, as I must of everything that distracts me from the journey into my innermost depths.

‘The very fact that it is difficult for me to torment Basini - I mean, to humiliate him, to oppress him, to drive him from me - is a good thing. It requires a sacrifice. It will be purifying. I owe it to myself to learn daily from him that merely to be human means nothing at all — a merely aping, outward likeness.’

Törless didn’t understand everything. He just had the idea, once again, that an invisible noose had suddenly contracted into a tangible, fatal knot. Beineberg’s last words echoed within him. ‘A merely aping, outward likeness,’ he repeated to himself. The same thing also seemed to apply to his relationship with Basini. Did the strange attraction that Basini exerted upon him not lie in visions of that kind? Simply in the fact that he could not enter Basini’s thoughts, and therefore always sensed him as though in vague images? When he had previously imagined Basini, had there not been a second, blurred face behind the first, one that bore a tangible likeness, although one could not have said to what?

Thus it happened that Törless, rather than reflecting upon Beineberg’s very curious intentions, half dazed by his new and unfamiliar impressions, tried to have a clear understanding of himself. He remembered the afternoon before he had learned of Basini’s offence. Those visions had actually been there then.