“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 will-power 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 more elbow-room, certainly, and more interests than an animal. But even we are confined to a comparatively small space, beyond which we cannot go. To be sure, I can imagine this or that, or make myself believe that I absolutely want to get to the North Pole or somewhere, but I can only carry that out and wish it strongly enough when the desire lies right in myself, when my whole being is really filled with it. As soon as that is the case, as soon as you try to carry out an inward command, then you succeed, then you can harness your will as you would a good nag. If for instance I resolved that our good Mr. Parson shall not wear his spectacles for the future, then that wouldn’t work. That is merely play. But when last autumn I had the fixed intention of getting myself moved to another desk, I succeeded. Someone suddenly arrived who came before me in the alphabet and who up to then had been ill. Because someone had to make room for him, it was naturally I who did it, because my willing it had made me ready to seize the opportunity.” “Yes,” I said, “that seemed to me very strange at the time. From the moment we began to get interested in one another, you managed to get nearer and nearer to me. But how was that? You did not immediately take a place next to me; for a few lessons at first you were sitting in the row of desks in front of me, weren’t you? How did that come about?” “It was like this. I wasn’t quite certain where I wanted to go when I wished to move from my first place. I only knew that I wanted to sit further back. It was my wish to move towards you, but I was not conscious of this at the time. Simultaneously your own will was working with mine and helped me. It was only when I sat in front of you that I realized my wish was only half fulfilled--I noticed that really I had desired nothing else than to sit next to you.” “But on that occasion no newcomer arrived.”