Just back from seeing my benefactor and hasten to write down all that transpired between us. Osip lives in poverty and for the last three years he has been suffering from a painful bladder condition. Not a moan or a word of complaint has been heard from him. From morning till late at night, except when he takes his frugal meals, he goes on with his academic work. He received me graciously and had me sit down on the bed where he was lying. I gave him the sign of the Knights of the East and Jerusalem and he did the same to me, and then he asked me with a gentle smile what I had learnt and acquired in the lodges of Prussia and Scotland. I told him the whole story as best I could, and I set out the principles for action that I had proposed in our Petersburg lodge, and told him about the hostile reception and the break between me and the brothers. At first he thought things over for quite some time and said nothing, then he gave me his own view of the whole matter, which enabled me to see things in a new light – everything that has happened and my way forward in the future. I was taken aback when he asked whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order: (1) the preservation and study of the mystery; (2) self-purification and self-improvement for its assimilation; and (3) the improvement of the human race through constant striving towards such purification. Which, he asked, is the first and greatest of these three aims? Obviously, self-improvement and self-purification. This is the only aim that we can always strive towards under any circumstances. But at the same time this is the aim that calls for the greatest effort, and it follows that if we allow ourselves to be led astray by pride and lose sight of this aim we shall either strive towards a mystery we are not worthy to receive because of our impurity, or seek to reform the human race while setting an example of depravity and dissipation. Illuminism is a tarnished doctrine precisely because it has been seduced into social activity and has puffed itself up with pride. On this basis Osip condemned my speech and everything I have been doing. I agreed with him to the bottom of my heart. On the subject of my domestic affairs, he said to me, ‘A mason’s first duty, as I have told you, consists in self-perfection. But we often imagine that the best way to achieve this aim is to remove all the difficulties from our lives. Sir, it is the other way round,’ he said. ‘Only amidst the cares of this world can we achieve the three great aims of (1) self-knowledge, for a man can know himself only through comparison; (2) greater perfection, and this can be achieved only through struggle; and (3) the attainment of the greatest virtue – the love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us all its vanity and promote our innate love of death, or rather rebirth into new life.’ These words were particularly poignant coming from Osip, who never wearies of life in all his grievous physical pain. Yet he loves death, though he does not, for all the sublime purity of his inner self, feel properly prepared for it just yet. Then my benefactor explained to me the full meaning of the Great Square of Creation, and vouchsafed to me that the third and the seventh numbers are the basis of everything. He advised me not to withdraw from the society of the Petersburg brethren, to undertake only second-degree duties in the lodge and to do my best to distract the brothers from the seductions of pride and turn them towards the true path of self-knowledge and self-perfection. After this, for my own benefit, he advised me as a matter of first priority to watch myself carefully, and for this purpose he gave me a note-book, which I am now writing in with every intention of recording in it all my future actions.
