[In the following essay, Walker provides an appreciation of Gurdjieff.]

What constitutes a great man? In the past I have often asked my friends this question and none of them have ever been able to give me a satisfactory answer. It is a searching question because actually we know far less about the nature of man than about anything else. It is easy to describe the good points of a horse, but we can only define the qualities of a great man if we know the direction in which it is possible for man to evolve, and there is no agreement on this subject.

Because they have no clear ideas about it, novelists come badly to grief whenever they attempt to describe the superman or the more highly evolved human being. After James Hilton, in Lost Horizon, had deposited his party of Europeans at the doors of the monastery in a remote valley of the Himalayas, he was quite unable to describe the more highly evolved monks who inhabited it. All that he could say about them was that they were learned and very polite and that they contrived to live far longer man other men. Even Bernard Shaw is unable to paint a satisfactory picture of the superman. Nietzsche was more successful, but his Thus Spake Zarathustra has been so grossly misinterpreted and his ideals so badly misused that it would perhaps have been better if this book had never been written.

It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that my friends have never been able to tell me the hallmark of a great man. I recall a conversation with the late H. G. Wells on this subject. 'You have met a number of important people in your lifetime,' I said. 'Tell me whether amongst them you ever met a man who could be called truly great?' After a moment or two's thought he replied, 'Lenin.' On being pressed to name the qualities that rendered Lenin great he answered, 'Well, look at all he managed to do'—but this, of course, was no answer. There is a difference between doing and being, and it was with the latter alone that I was concerned. Men may be borne aloft on the forward surge of great events and may appear to be in control of them, whereas they are actually only men who happen to have been born at the right historical moment. Hitler was one of these mascots of history, and to my way of thinking Lenin, though a far greater man than Hitler, was another.

And now the Editor of The Saturday Book has neatly turned the tables on me. With a disarming smile—a perquisite of all successful editors—he has invited me to contribute again to his well-known annual volume, and having received my enthusiastic assent, he has sprung his mine. 'Answer your own question' he said, quietly, 'and write about "A Great Man".' I had been hoist with my own petard. But I enjoy the great advantage of having met a man whose greatness lay in what he was rather than in what he managed to achieve. I refer to the late Mr G. Gurdjieff, a man known only to a comparative few. It is he who will serve me as a model of human greatness, but as he was not well known something must first be said of his life.

He was born in 1877 in the Caucasus and was of Ionian Greek lineage. His father made his living as a carpenter but also practised the profession of bard, for at that time there still survived in Asia men who travelled from village to village reciting by heart the ancient Asiatic legends that had been handed down by word of mouth from an incredibly distant past.

These old myths and stories fascinated his young son, and when he grew older the young Gurdjieff became convinced that these old allegories were fraught with meanings which had now been lost. He came to the opinion that they were fragments of some ancient system of knowledge which had all but disappeared from the world, but which might still survive in some remote spot in Asia. The determination to search for this ancient wisdom grew in him and a few years later we find the young Gurdjieff acting as the leader of a group of like-minded companions who called themselves 'Seekers of the Truth.' He and his companions made more and more ambitious journeys into the neighbouring countries, penetrating into the lesser known regions of Persia, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Turkestan, China, and Tibet. They talked to wandering dervishes and religious hermits, stayed in old monasteries, were admitted to ancient world brotherhoods and followed up every clue that seemed to lead them towards the object of their search. Later they were joined by older men with greater experience and better endowed with worldly goods. Gurdjieff would only talk in general terms of these difficult and often perilous journeys that he had formerly made and he would never reveal to anyone the exact source of the knowledge which he taught. His answers suggested that it had come from various sources and had later been put together.

He brought back from his travels not only the knowledge he had long been looking for, but also some very ancient music, a number of temple dances, and a set of very complicated movements. These last-named exercises enabled those who practised them to gain greater and greater control over their bodily movements, and they took a very important place in the system of development he taught in his later years.

By 1910 'The Seekers of the Truth' had completed their work and Gurdjieff returned to Russia to teach what he had learnt; in 1915 he founded in Moscow what he called the 'Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.' But the first World War prevented the carrying out of his plans and in 1917 he and his followers were forced to flee from Russia and to seek refuge in Constantinople. This period of Gurdjieff's life history has been fully described by Ouspensky in his recently published book, A Search for the Miraculous. In 1921 Gurdjieff purchased a chateau at Fontainebleau and opened there the institute which he had formerly planned to develop in Moscow. The principle on which everything was based was that the further evolution of man could only be brought about by man's own individual efforts. He could no longer rely on Nature to give him all that at present he lacked, namely, inner unity, a permanent controlling self, and a higher level of consciousness. These could never be developed mechanically but must be evolved by man's own struggles, guided by the special knowledge which Gurdjieff believed himself to possess. But before these new qualities could be evolved in man much that was wrong in his thinking and in his mode of living must first be destroyed. Gurdjieff taught that man is controlled by his 'ego,' or 'personality,' that is to say, by his many and often conflicting desires, and by his imagination about himself.

Although his 'Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man' had been closed down for many years when I first met him, Gurdjieff had numerous followers, not only in Europe, but also in America. A constant stream of visitors arrived from all over the world in Paris for the purpose of visiting him in his small flat in the rue des Colonels Rénard. There he would entertain as many as forty guests to lunch or dinner in a dining-room which had been designed for the accommodation of a small family only. He not only entertained them but he often cooked the meals himself in a still smaller kitchen. He was a generous host, yet it was not for the sake of his excellent lunches and dinners, but to talk to him, that people made their way down the avenue Carnot towards his flat. They had been struggling to live in accordance with the principles he had taught them and they had come to Paris for further instructions and more help.

This they always received provided that Gurdjieff believed them to be sincere and felt that they were making real efforts. It was sincerity that Gurdjieff demanded above everything else; he was utterly ruthless whenever he discovered in his followers any form of pretence. He had an uncanny gift for detecting everything that was fraudulent or artificial, however carefully it was covered up. 'You may be a very clever person,' he would say, 'but you are also a very big fool. I have no time to waste on stupid and worthless people.' It was useless to attempt to deceive him or to pretend that things were different from what they were, for he could see the character of his pupils far more clearly than they could see it themselves. A visit to Gurdjieff was therefore not to be lightly undertaken, for at any moment one might have one's inner weaknesses revealed, not comfortably in a private talk, but to all the assembled company.

And what a varied company it was that sat down to a meal at his table: the widow of a world-famous tenor, a wealthy supporter from America, a sprinkling of British and French doctors, a British peer, typists from London offices, business men, lawyers and scientists, Americans, British, French, Germans, and Russians, people of many different types, of different classes, of different upbringing and education, all held together in a single group by the immense respect they shared for this wise and truly remarkable man. Although he was in the late seventies when I first knew him, he seemed to radiate force from his person, so much so that one felt that strength had been gained by coming into contact with him even when no words had been interchanged.

But it may still be asked: 'What were the qualities in him that entitle him to be used as an example of greatness?' This question can best be answered by saying that he exemplified in his own person the truth of his teaching. He taught that by the adoption of certain measures a man can become other than he has been born; he can achieve inner unity; he can become more conscious; he can develop new powers. Here in Gurdjieff one saw a man who by ceaseless struggle with the mechanical parts of his nature had brought about this change. It is true that consciousness admits of no objective measurement, but consciousness confers on its possessor both greater knowledge and more control and these results of consciousness can be seen. I have never met anyone who possessed more of that knowledge which cannot be found in books but can only come from experience than did Gurdjieff. There are men with encyclopaedic minds, so well furnished with facts that they are able to talk on almost any subject, but far from being wise, such men are often fools. They possess a mass of information, but little understanding of it, and are singularly lacking in wisdom. The knowledge of Gurdjieff was of an utterly different kind; it was knowledge that conferred on its possessor understanding and power. His ability to control himself and others was as obvious as was his knowledge. Gurdjieff never fumbled; everything he did, he did with the strictest economy of effort.

What was true of his movements seemed to be equally true of his emotions. When he displayed anger, as he not infrequently did, the anger served some definite purpose, and when this purpose had been achieved it was immediately laid on one side. It was ended as abruptly as it has begun and the talk that had been suddenly interrupted was quietly resumed. And Gurdjieff had conquered man's two worst enemies, anxiety and fear. He appeared to be fearless.

No man can act so differently from his fellows as did Gurdjieff without arousing suspicion, and it is not surprising that he excited enmity as well as devotion. It was said by some that he was a black magician who cast a spell over his followers, so that they were quite unable to tear themselves away from him. Others stated that he gained his power over people by means of hypnotism, and yet others that he was a completely amoral, irreligious, and in every way a dangerous man. He cared far less about these accusations than his followers did and snapped his fingers at public opinion. What did it matter what people thought of him? His whole attention was concentrated on his work and on what he had planned to do ever since he had returned from the East with his system of knowledge.

Yet there is always some fire where one sees smoke and undoubtedly there was some reason for the hostility he often evoked. He was utterly ruthless in the carrying out of his mission to attack what stood in the way of human development. As has previously been said, he had to destroy before he could build and in his opinion there was much to be destroyed in modern civilization if men were ever to evolve. During the last ten years of his life he was forced, much against his personal inclinations, to make some change in the character of his activities. He had no desire for authorship, but he saw clearly that it was essential that he should leave behind him when he died some record of all that he taught.

With characteristic energy he set about this new task and wrote not one but three whole series of books. The first of these All and Everything has now been published. His object in writing it is clearly set out on the fly-leaf; 'To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromise whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views by centuries rooted in him about everything existing in the world.' It is not to be wondered at that a man with such an extensive programme of destruction as this, a man moreover who refused any compromise with what he regarded as being false, should have excited opposition. It was his function to disturb and to destroy complacency wherever he found it, and disturb he did, in no mean fashion. Nobody ever came into contact with him without being in some way ruffled. Sometimes the upheaval he produced was too strong even for his followers and they left him, disgruntled by what he had done to them. And judged by ordinary standards his behaviour was often callous in the extreme, as unkind as the treatment meted out by surgeons must often have seemed to their patients in pre-anaesthetic days. The explanation in both cases was the same. False ideas had to be destroyed in a man before he could develop, and few things can be more painful than the rooting out of fond illusions about oneself. Yet ruthless though he often was, I personally have never met a man who showed more clearly than did Gurdjieff a deep compassion and love for humanity. He was a mixture of devil and angel but the angel was paramount in him.

He died in the American Hospital in Paris in October 1949, and was buried in accordance with the rites of the Orthodox Greek Church. He carried on his work right up to the end, compelling his body, as he had always compelled it, to carry out his will. He was never an ascetic but lived life to its fullest, looking upon his body as his servant, and never allowing it to be his master. In teaching, he often made use of the ancient allegory of man which likened him to a carriage, horse, and driver. The body was the carriage, the emotions the horse which drew the carriage, and the mind the driver who controlled the horse. But, he said, in ordinary men it was the body and the body's desires which really took charge of everything. Only in the more fully developed man was the driver in control of his horse, and seated by his side was an entirely new figure. This was the master who gave orders where the driver was to go, and the driver understood and obeyed him. Gurdjieff was such a man as this, a man who had developed qualities which others do not possess.