In order to add to his equipment and the better to fulfill his honorable task of lecturing de rebus castaliensibus to his pupil, Father Jacobus, Knecht had brought with him from Waldzell literature on the constitution and history of the Province, on the system of the elite schools, and on the evolution of the Glass Bead Game. Some of these books had served him twenty years before during his struggle with Plinio Designori — and he had not looked at them since. Others, meant specially for the officials of Castalia, had been barred to him as a student. Now he read them for the first time. The result was that at the very time his areas of study were so notably expanding, he was also forced once again to contemplate, understand, and reinforce his own intellectual and historical base. In his efforts to present the nature of the Order and of the Castalian system to Father Jacobus with maximum simplicity and clarity, he inevitably stumbled over the weakest point in his own and all Castalian education. He found that he himself had only a pale and rigidly schematic notion of the historical conditions which had led to the foundation of the Order and everything that followed from it. His picture of the conditions which had furthered the growth of the new system lacked all vividness and orderliness. Since Father Jacobus was anything but a passive pupil, the result was an intensified collaboration, an extremely animated exchange of views. While Joseph tried to present the history of his Castalian Order, Jacobus helped him to see many aspects of this history in the proper light for the first time, and to discern its roots in the general history of nations. Because of the Benedictine’s temperament, these discussions often turned into passionate disputes, and as we shall see they continued to bear fruit years later and remained a vital influence down to the end of Knecht’s life. On the other hand, the close attention Father Jacobus had given Knecht’s exposition, and the thoroughness with which he came to know and appreciate Castalia, was evidenced by his subsequent conduct. Due to the work of these two men, there arose between Rome and Castalia a benevolent neutrality and occasional scholarly exchange which now and then developed into actual co-operation and alliance and ultimately produced the concord which continues to this day. In time Father Jacobus asked to be introduced to the theory of the Glass Bead Game — which he had originally pooh-poohed — for he sensed that here lay the secret of the Order and what might be called its faith or religion. Once he had consented to penetrate into this world he had hitherto known only from hearsay, and for which he had felt little liking, he resolutely proceeded in his shrewd and energetic way straight toward its center. And although he did not become a Glass Bead Game player — he was in any case far too old for that — the devotees of the Game and the Order outside the borders of Castalia had hardly a friend as earnest and as influential as the great Benedictine.
