Chapter VIII: The School (1)

Yásno-Polyána School. Freedom in class. Natural laws. A fight. Theft and punishment. A walk and talk on art. Peasants' opinion of the school. Gymnastics. Reading. The Bible. Penmanship. Grammar. History. Geography. Drawing. Singing. Composition. A literary genius. Art: exclusive or universal? Reading useless for lack of what to read. The value of freedom in education. A contrast.

AS already mentioned, Tolstoy's magazine, besides its theoretical articles, contained others describing the work done at the Yásno-Polyána school, and from these we learn in his own words, how Tolstoy and his pupils, and the masters (including the young German, Keller, whom he had brought back with him from abroad) were occupied in November and December 1861. The following passages are part of his description of the school:

No one brings anything with him, neither books nor copy-books.
No homework is set them. Not only do they carry nothing in their
hands, they have nothing to carry even in their heads. They are
not obliged to remember any lesson, nor any of yesterday's work.
They are not tormented by the thought of the impending lesson. They
bring only themselves, their receptive nature, and an assurance
that it will be as jolly in school to-day as it was yesterday.
They do not think of their classes till they have begun. No one
is ever scolded for being late, and they never are late, except
perhaps some of the older boys whose fathers occasionally keep them
at home to do some work. In such cases the boy comes to school
running fast and panting. Until the teacher arrives, some gather
at the porch, pushing one another off the steps or sliding on the
ice-covered path, and some go into the rooms. When it is cold,
while waiting for the master, they read, write, or play about. The
girls do not mix with the boys. When the boys take any notice of
the girls, they never address any one of them in particular, but
always speak to them collectively: 'Hey, girls, why don't you come
and slide?' or, 'Look how frozen the girls are,' or, 'Now girls,
all of you against me!'

Suppose that by the time-table the lesson for the youngest class
is elementary reading; for the second, advanced reading; and for
the third, mathematics. The teacher enters the room, on the floor
of which the boys are lying in a heap, shouting, 'The heap is too
small!' or, 'Boys, you're choking me!' or, 'Don't pull my hair!'
etc.

'Peter Miháylovitch!' cries a voice from the bottom of the heap,
to the teacher as he enters: 'Tell them to stop!'--'Good morning,
Peter Miháylovitch!' cry others, continuing their scrimmage. The
teacher takes the books and gives them to those who have followed
him to the cupboard, while from the heap of boys on the floor,
those on top, still sprawling, demand books. The heap gradually
diminishes. As soon as most of the boys have taken books, the rest
run to the cupboard crying, 'Me too! Me too!'--'Give me yesterday's
book!'--'Give me Kóltsof!' and so forth. If a couple of boys
excited by their struggle still remain on the floor, those who have
taken books and settled down, shout at them, 'What are you up to?
We can't hear anything! Stop it!' The excited ones submit, and,
panting, take to their books; and only just at first swing their
legs with unspent excitement as they sit reading. The spirit of
war flies away and the spirit of reading reigns in the room. With
the same ardour with which he pulled Mítka's hair, he now reads
Kóltsof's works: with almost clenched teeth, with sparkling eyes,
and oblivious of all around him but his book. To tear him from his
reading now would need as much effort as formerly to tear him from
his wrestling.

They sit where they like: on the benches, tables, window-sills,
floor, or in the arm-chair. The girls always sit together. Friends
from the same village, especially the little ones (among whom
there is most comradeship) always sit together. As soon as one of
them decides that he will sit in a certain corner, all his chums,
pushing and diving under the forms, get there too, and sit together
looking about them with faces that express as much happiness and
satisfaction as though, having settled in that place, they would
certainly be happy for the rest of their lives. The large arm-chair
(which somehow found its way into the room) is an object coveted
by the more independent personalities.... As soon as one of them
decides to sit in it, another discerns his intention from his
looks, and they collide and squeeze in. One dislodges the other,
and curling up, sprawls with his head far below the back, but reads
like the rest, quite absorbed in his work. During lessons I have
never seen them whispering, pinching, giggling, laughing behind
their hands, or complaining of one another to the teacher.

The two lower classes sort themselves in one room, the upper
class in another. The teacher appears, and in the first class all
surround him at the blackboard, or lie on the forms, or sit on
the table, near him or near one of the boys who reads. If it is a
writing lesson, they place themselves in a more orderly way, but
keep getting up to look at one another's exercise books, and to
show their own to the teacher. According to the time-table there
should be four lessons before dinner; but sometimes in practice
these become three or two, and may be on quite other subjects.
The teacher may begin with arithmetic and pass on to geometry; or
may begin with Sacred History and end up with grammar. Sometimes
teacher and pupils are so carried away, that a lesson lasts three
hours instead of one. Sometimes the pupils themselves cry: 'Go on,
go on!' and shout contemptuously to any who are tired: 'If you're
tired, go to the little ones!'

In my opinion this external disorder is useful and necessary,
however strange and inconvenient it may seem to the teacher. Of
its advantages I shall have frequent occasion to speak; but of its
apparent disadvantages I will say:

First, this disorder, or free order, only frightens us because we
ourselves were educated in, and are accustomed to, something quite
different. Secondly, in this as in many similar cases, coercion is
used only from hastiness or from lack of respect for human nature.
We think the disorder is growing greater and greater, and that
it has no limit. We think there is no way of stopping it except
by force; but one need only wait a little, and the disorder (or
animation) calms down of itself, and calms down into a far better
and more durable order than any we could devise.

In another place he says:

Our school evolved freely from the principles brought into it by
the teachers and pupils. In spite of the predominant influence of
the teacher, the pupil always had the right not to go to school;
and even when in school, not to listen to the teacher. The teacher
had the right not to admit a pupil....

Submitting naturally only to laws derived from their own nature,
children revolt and rebel when subjected to your premature
interference. They do not believe in the validity of your bells and
time-tables and rules. How often have I seen children fighting. The
teacher rushes to separate them, and the separated enemies look
at one another askance, and even in the stern teacher's presence
cannot refrain from giving one another a parting blow, yet more
painful than its predecessors. How often, any day, do I see some
Kirúshka, clenching his teeth, fly at Taráska, seize his hair,
and throw him to the ground, apparently--though it costs him his
life--determined to maim his foe; yet not a minute passes before
Taráska is already laughing under Kirúshka. One, and then the
other, moderates his blows, and before five minutes have passed
they have made friends, and off they go to sit together.

The other day, between lessons, two boys were struggling in a
corner. The one, a remarkable mathematician about ten years old,
is in the second class; the other, a close-cropped lad, the son
of a servant, is a clever but vindictive, tiny, black-eyed lad,
nicknamed Pussy. Pussy seized the mathematician's long hair and
jammed his head against the wall; the mathematician vainly clutched
at Pussy's close-cropped bristles. Pussy's black eyes gleamed
triumphantly. The mathematician, hardly refraining from tears, kept
saying: 'Well, well, what of it?' But though he tried to keep
up appearances, it was plain he was faring badly. This went on
for some time, and I was in doubt what to do. 'A fight, a fight!'
shouted the boys, and crowded towards the corner. The little ones
laughed; but the bigger ones, though they did not interfere,
exchanged serious glances, and their silence and these glances did
not escape Pussy's observation. He understood that he was doing
something wrong, and began to smile shamefacedly, and by degrees
let go of the mathematician's hair. The mathematician shook himself
free, and giving Pussy a push that banged the back of the latter's
head against the wall, went off satisfied. Pussy began to cry, and
rushed after his enemy, hitting him as hard as he could on his
sheepskin coat, but without hurting him. The mathematician wished
to pay him back, but at that moment several disapproving voices
were raised. 'There now; he's fighting a little fellow!' cried the
onlookers, 'get away, Pussy!'--and therewith the affair ended as
though it had never occurred, except, I think, that both combatants
retained a dim consciousness that fighting is unpleasant, because
both get hurt.

In this case I seemed to detect a feeling of fairness influencing
the crowd; but how often such affairs are settled so that one
does not know what law has decided them, and yet both sides are
satisfied! How arbitrary and unjust by comparison are all School
methods of dealing with such cases. 'You are both to blame: kneel
down!' says the teacher; and the teacher is wrong, because one boy
is in the wrong, and that one triumphs while on his knees, and
chews the cud of his unexpended anger, while the innocent one is
doubly punished....

I am convinced that the School should not interfere with that part
of education which belongs to the family. The School should not,
and has no right to, reward or punish; and the best police and
administration of a School consist in giving full freedom to the
pupils to learn and get on among themselves as they like. I am
convinced of this; and yet the customary School habits are still so
strong in us that in the Yásno-Polyána school we frequently break
this rule....

During last summer, while the school-house was being repaired,
a Leyden jar disappeared from the physical cabinet; pencils
disappeared repeatedly, as well as books--and this at a time when
neither the carpenters nor the painters were at work. We questioned
the boys. The best pupils, those who had been with us longest,
old friends of ours, blushed and were so uneasy that any Public
Prosecutor would have thought their confusion a sure proof of their
guilt. But I knew them, and could answer for them as for myself.
I understood that the very idea of being suspected offended them
deeply and painfully. A gifted and tender-hearted boy, whom I will
call Theodore, turned quite pale, trembled and wept. They promised
to tell me, if they found out; but they declined to undertake a
search. A few days later the thief was discovered. He was the son
of a servant from a distant village. He had led astray, and made an
accomplice of, a peasant boy from the same village; and together
they had hidden the stolen articles in a box. This discovery
produced a strange feeling in the other pupils: a kind of relief
and even joy, accompanied by contempt and pity for the thief. We
proposed that they should allot the punishment themselves. Some
demanded that the thief should be flogged, but stipulated that they
should do the flogging; others said: 'Sew a card on him, with the
word _thief_.' This latter punishment, to our shame be it said,
had been used by us before, and it was the very boy who a year
ago had himself been labelled _liar_, who now most insistently
demanded a card for the thief. We consented, and when one of the
girls was sewing the card on, all the pupils watched and teased
the punished boys with malicious joy. They wanted the punishment
increased: 'Let them be led through the village; and let them wear
cards till the holidays,' said they. The victims cried. The peasant
boy who had been led astray by his comrade, a gifted narrator and
jester, a plump, white, chubby little chap, wept without restraint
and with all his childish might. The other, the chief offender, a
hump-nosed boy with a thin-featured, clever face, became pale, his
lips quivered, his eyes looked wildly and angrily at his joyous
comrades, and occasionally his face was unnaturally distorted by a
sob. His cap, with a torn peak, was stuck on the very back of his
head; his hair was ruffled, his clothes soiled with chalk. All this
now struck me and everybody else as though we saw it for the first
time. The unkindly attention of all was directed to him, and he
felt it painfully. When, with bent head and without looking round,
he started homeward with (as it seemed to me) a peculiar, criminal
gait, and when the boys ran after him in a crowd, teasing him in an
unnatural and strangely cruel way as though, against their will,
they were moved by some evil spirit, something told me that we were
not doing right. But things took their course, and the thief wore
the card that whole day. From this time he began, as it seemed to
me, to learn worse, and one did not see him playing and talking
with his fellows out of class.

One day I came to a lesson, and the pupils informed me, with
a kind of horror, that the boy had again stolen. He had taken
twenty copecks (seven pence) in coppers from the teacher's room,
and had been caught hiding them under the stairs. We again hung
a card on him; and again the same revolting scene recommenced. I
began to admonish him, as all masters admonish; and a big boy,
fond of talking, who was present, also admonished him--probably
repeating words he had heard his father, an innkeeper, use: 'You
steal once, and you do it again,' said he distinctly, glibly, and
with dignity; 'it becomes a habit, and leads to no good.' I began
to get vexed. I glanced at the face of the punished boy, which
had become yet paler, more suffering and harder than before; and
somehow I thought of convicts, and suddenly I felt so ashamed and
disgusted that I tore the stupid card off him, told him to go where
he liked, and became convinced--and convinced not by reason, but by
my whole nature--that I had no right to torment that unfortunate
boy, and that it was not in my power to make of him what I and the
innkeeper's son wanted to make of him. I became convinced that
there are secrets of the soul, hidden from us, on which life may
act, but which precepts and punishments do not reach.

It may be said that any department of life could be treated in this way: we have merely to invert an established order founded on the experience of men, and a topsy-turvy millennium is born. It may also be said that in the foregoing pages Tolstoy appears as the evangelist of an educational system founded on the free play of youthful instincts which, speaking merely the language of natural animal life, call for sympathetic discipline. But in his _Confession_ Tolstoy has treated his educational writings with such scant respect that criticism is disarmed; more especially as the actual working of his school was extremely interesting and much more successful than might have been expected.

N. V. Ouspénsky, the writer, narrates that he visited Yásnaya Polyána in 1862, and Tolstoy, having to leave him alone for awhile, asked him to glance at some of the compositions the boys had written in school. Taking up one of these, Ouspénsky read:

One day, Lyóf Nikoláyevitch (Tolstoy) called Savóskin up to the
blackboard and ordered him to solve a problem in arithmetic. 'If I
give you five rolls, and you eat one of them, how many rolls will
you have left?'... Savóskin could nohow solve this problem, and the
Count pulled his hair for it....

When Tolstoy returned Ouspénsky pointed out to him this essay, and Tolstoy, sighing heavily, crossed his hands before him and merely said: 'Life in this world is a hard task.'

Ouspénsky considered that he had unearthed an extraordinary contradiction between theory and practice; but no one who realises the difficulty and novelty of Tolstoy's attempt, and how far he is from claiming perfection for himself or for his achievements, should agree with Ouspénsky. On the contrary, the essay proves a freedom of relation between teacher and pupil, which would certainly not have existed had the hair-pulling been other than impulsive and exceptional.

The school was closed, or nearly so, during the summer, as most of the pupils then helped their parents with field work; obtaining, Tolstoy considers, more mental development that way than they could have done in any school. To make up for this, the hours of study in winter were long.

The classes generally finish about eight or nine o'clock (unless
carpentering keeps the elder boys somewhat later), and the whole
band run shouting into the yard, and there, calling to one another,
begin to separate, making for different parts of the village.
Occasionally they arrange to coast down-hill to the village in a
large sledge that stands outside the gate. They tie up the shafts,
throw themselves into it, and squealing, disappear from sight in a
cloud of snow, leaving here and there on their path black patches
of children who have tumbled out. In the open air, out of school
(for all its freedom) new relations are formed between pupil and
teacher: freer, simpler and more trustful--those very relations
which seem to us the ideal which School should aim at.

Not long ago we read Gógol's story _Viy_ [an Earth-Spirit] in the
highest class. The final scenes affected them strongly, and excited
their imagination. Some of them played the witch, and kept alluding
to the last chapters....

Out of doors it was a moonless, winter night, with clouds in the
sky, not cold. We stopped at the crossroads. The elder boys, in
their third year, stopped near me, asking me to accompany them
further. The younger ones looked at us, and rushed off down-hill.
They had begun to learn with a new master, and between them and
me there is not the same confidence as between the older boys and
myself.

'Well, let us go to the wood' (a small wood about 120 yards from
the house), said one of them. The most insistent was Fédka, a boy
of ten, with a tender, receptive, poetic yet daring nature. Danger
seems to form the chief condition of pleasure for him. In summer it
always frightened me to see how he, with two other boys, would swim
out into the very middle of the pond, which is nearly 120 yards
wide, and would now and then disappear in the hot reflection of the
summer sun, and swim under water; and how he would then turn on
his back, causing fountains of water to rise, and calling with his
high-pitched voice to his comrades on the bank to see what a fine
fellow he was.

He now knew there were wolves in the wood, and so he wanted to go
there. All agreed; and the four of us went to the wood. Another
boy, a lad of twelve, physically and morally strong, whom I will
call Syómka, went on in front and kept calling and 'ah-ou-ing' with
his ringing voice, to some one at a distance. Prónka, a sickly,
mild and very gifted lad, from a poor family (sickly probably
chiefly from lack of food), walked by my side. Fédka walked between
me and Syómka, talking all the time in a particularly gentle voice:
now relating how he had herded horses in summer, now saying there
was nothing to be afraid of, and now asking, 'Suppose one should
jump out?' and insisting on my giving some reply. We did not go
into the wood: that would have been too dreadful; but even where
we were, near the wood, it was darker, and the road was scarcely
visible, and the lights of the village were hidden from view.
Syómka stopped and listened: 'Stop, lads! What is that?' said he
suddenly.

We were silent, and though we heard nothing, things seemed to grow
more gruesome.

'What shall we do if it leaps out ... and comes at us?' asked Fédka.

We began to talk about Caucasian robbers. They remembered a
Caucasian tale I had told them long ago, and I again told them of
'braves,' of Cossacks, and of Hádji Mourát.[46] Syómka went on in
front, treading boldly in his big boots, his broad back swaying
regularly. Prónka tried to walk by my side, but Fédka pushed him
off the path, and Prónka--who, probably on account of his poverty,
always submitted--only ran up alongside at the most interesting
passages, sinking in the snow up to his knees.

[46] The daring Caucasian leader mentioned by Tolstoy in a
letter quoted in Chapter III.

Every one who knows anything of Russian peasant children knows
that they are not accustomed to, and cannot bear, any caresses,
affectionate words, kisses, hand touchings, and so forth. I have
seen a lady in a peasant school, wishing to pet a boy, say: 'Come,
I will give you a kiss, dear!' and actually kiss him; and the boy
was ashamed and offended, and could not understand why he had been
so treated. Boys of five are already above such caresses--they are
no longer babies. I was therefore particularly struck when Fédka,
walking beside me, at the most terrible part of the story suddenly
touched me lightly with his sleeve, and then clasped two of my
fingers in his hand, and kept hold of them. As soon as I stopped
speaking, Fédka demanded that I should go on, and did this in such
a beseeching and agitated voice that it was impossible not to
comply with his wish.

'Now then, don't get in the way!' said he once angrily to Prónka,
who had run in front of us. He was so carried away as even to be
cruel; so agitated yet happy was he, holding on to my fingers, that
he could let no one dare to interrupt his pleasure.

'Some more! Some more! It is fine!' said he.

We had passed the wood and were approaching the village from the
other end.

'Let's go on,' said all the boys when the lights became visible.
'Let us take another turn!'

We went on in silence, sinking here and there in the rotten snow,
not hardened by much traffic. A white darkness seemed to sway
before our eyes; the clouds hung low, as though something had
heaped them upon us. There was no end to that whiteness, amid which
we alone crunched along the snow. The wind sounded through the bare
tops of the aspens, but where we were, behind the woods, it was
calm.

I finished my story by telling how a 'brave,' surrounded by his
enemies, sang his death-song and threw himself on his dagger. All
were silent.

'Why did he sing a song when he was surrounded?' asked Syómka.

'Weren't you told?--He was preparing for death!' replied Fédka,
aggrieved.

'I think he sang a prayer,' added Prónka.

All agreed. Fédka suddenly stopped.

'How was it, you told us, your Aunt had her throat cut?' asked he.
(He had not yet had enough horrors.) 'Tell us! Tell us!'

I again told them that terrible story of the murder of the Countess
Tolstoy,[47] and they stood silently about me, watching my face.

[47] Some details of this crime are given in 'Why do Men
Stupefy Themselves?' in _Essays and letters_, published in the
_World's Classics_.

'The fellow got caught!' said Syómka.

'He was afraid to go away in the night, while she was lying with
her throat cut!' said Fédka; 'I should have run away!' and he
gathered my two fingers yet more closely in his hand.

We stopped in the thicket, beyond the threshing-floor at the very
end of the village. Syómka picked up a dry stick from the snow and
began striking it against the frosty trunk of a lime tree. Hoar
frost fell from the branches on to one's cap, and the noise of the
blows resounded in the stillness of the wood.

'Lyóf Nikoláyevitch,' said Fédka to me (I thought he was going
again to speak about the Countess), 'why does one learn singing? I
often think, why, really, does one?'

What made him jump from the terror of the murder to this question,
heaven only knows; yet by the tone of his voice, the seriousness
with which he demanded an answer, and the attentive silence of
the other two, one felt that there was some vital and legitimate
connection between this question and our preceding talk. Whether
the connection lay in some response to my suggestion that crime
might be explained by lack of education (I had spoken of that) or
whether he was testing himself--transferring himself into the mind
of the murderer and remembering his own favourite occupation (he
has a wonderful voice and immense musical talent) or whether the
connection lay in the fact that he felt that now was the time for
sincere conversation, and all the problems demanding solution rose
in his mind--at any rate his question surprised none of us.

'And what is drawing for? And why write well?' said I, not knowing
at all how to explain to him what art is for.

'What is drawing for?' repeated he thoughtfully. He really was
asking, What is Art for? And I neither dared nor could explain.

'What is drawing for?' said Syómka. 'Why, you draw anything, and
can then make it from the drawing.'

'No, that is designing,' said Fédka. 'But why draw figures?'

Syómka's matter-of-fact mind was not perplexed.

'What is a stick for, and what is a lime tree for?' said he, still
striking the tree.

'Yes, what is a lime tree for?' said I.

'To make rafters of,' replied Syómka.

'But what is it for in summer, when not yet cut down?'

'Then, it's no use.'

'No, really,' insisted Fédka; 'why does a lime tree grow?'

And we began to speak of the fact that not everything exists for
use, but that there is also beauty, and that Art is beauty; and we
understood one another, and Fédka quite understood why the lime
tree grows and what singing is for.

Prónka agreed with us, but he thought rather of moral beauty:
goodness.

Syómka understood with his big brain, but did not acknowledge
beauty apart from usefulness. He was in doubt (as often happens to
men with great reasoning power): feeling Art to be a force, but not
feeling in his soul the need of that force. He, like them, wished
to get at Art by his reason, and tried to kindle that fire in
himself.

'We'll sing _Who hath_ to-morrow. I remember my part,' said he. (He
has a correct ear, but no taste or refinement in singing.) Fédka,
however, fully understood that the lime tree is good when in leaf:
good to look at in summer; and that that is enough.

Prónka understood that it is a pity to cut it down, because it,
too, has life:

'Why, when we take the sap of a lime, it's like taking blood.'

Syómka, though he did not say so, evidently thought that there was
little use in a lime when it was sappy.

It feels strange to repeat what we then said, but it seems to me
that we said all that can be said about utility, and plastic and
moral beauty.

We went on to the village. Fédka still clung to my hand; now, it
seemed to me, from gratitude. We all were nearer one another that
night than we had been for a long time. Prónka walked beside us
along the broad village street.

'See, there is still a light in Mazánof's house,' said he. 'As I
was going to school this morning, Gavrúka was coming from the pub,
as dru-u-nk as could be! His horse all in a lather and he beating
it! I am always sorry for such things. Really, why should it be
beaten?'

'And the other day, coming from Toúla, my daddy gave his horse the
reins,' said Syómka; 'and it took him into a snow-drift and there
he slept--quite drunk.'

'And Gavrúka kept on beating his horse over the eyes, and I felt so
sorry,' repeated Prónka again. 'Why should he beat it? He got down
and just flogged it.'

Syómka suddenly stopped.

'Our folk are already asleep,' said he, looking in at the window of
his crooked, dirty hut. 'Won't you walk a little longer?'

'No.'

'Go-o-od-bye, Lyóf Nikoláyevitch!' shouted he suddenly, and tearing
himself away from us, as it were with an effort, he ran to the
house, lifted the latch and disappeared.

'So you will take each of us home? First one and then the other?'
said Fédka.

We went on. There was a light in Prónka's hut, and we looked in at
the window. His mother, a tall and handsome but toil-worn woman,
with black eyebrows and eyes, sat at the table, peeling potatoes.
In the middle of the hut hung a cradle. Prónka's brother, the
mathematician from our second class, was standing at the table,
eating potatoes with salt. It was a black, tiny, and dirty hut.

'What a plague you are!' shouted the mother at Prónka. 'Where have
you been?'

Prónka glanced at the window with a meek, sickly smile. His mother
guessed that he had not come alone, and her face immediately
assumed a feigned expression that was not nice.

Only Fédka was left.

'The travelling tailors are at our house, that is why there's a
light there,' said he in the softened voice that had come to him
that evening. 'Good-bye, Lyóf Nikoláyevitch!' added he, softly
and tenderly, and he began to knock with the ring attached to the
closed door. 'Let me in!' his high-pitched voice rang out amid the
winter stillness of the village. It was long before they opened the
door for him. I looked in at the window. The hut was a large one.
The father was playing cards with a tailor, and some copper coins
lay on the table. The wife, Fédka's stepmother, was sitting near
the torch-stand, looking eagerly at the money. The young tailor,
a cunning drunkard, was holding his cards on the table, bending
them, and looking triumphantly at his opponent. Fédka's father,
the collar of his shirt unbuttoned, his brow wrinkled with mental
exertion and vexation, changed one card for another, and waved his
horny hand in perplexity above them.

'Let me in!'

The woman rose and went to the door.

'Good-bye!' repeated Fédka, once again. 'Let us always have such
walks!'

Thus Tolstoy for the second time found himself faced by the question: What is Art? which had arisen when he spoke to the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. This time it was put to him by a ten-year-old peasant boy, and it seemed to him that: 'We said all that can be said about utility, and plastic and moral beauty.' Twenty years later, after achieving the highest fame as a literary artist, he returned to the subject and tried to write an essay on the connection between life and Art, thinking that he would be able to accomplish it at a single effort. It proved, however, as he tells us, 'that my views on the matter were so far from clear, that I could not arrange them in a way that satisfied me. From that time I did not cease to think of the subject, and I recommenced writing on it six or seven times; but each time, after writing a considerable part of it, I found myself unable to bring the work to a satisfactory conclusion, and had to put it aside.' Only after another fifteen years' study and reflection did he succeed, in 1898, in producing _What is Art?_ which raised such a storm in the esthetic dovecots, and induced the editor of _Literature_ to declare that 'There was never any reason for inferring that Count Tolstoy's opinions on the philosophy of art would be worth the paper on which they were written'; while A. B. Walkley was asserting that 'this calmly and cogently reasoned effort to put art on a new basis is a literary event of the first importance.'

We have, however, as yet only reached the year 1862, and must not anticipate.

At first the peasants were rather afraid of the school, but before long they gained confidence and the report became current among them that: 'At Yásno-Polyána school they learn everything, including all the sciences, and there are such clever masters that it is dreadful; it is said that they even imitate thunder and lightning. Anyway, the lads understand well, and have begun to read and write.' Another very general opinion was that: 'They teach the boys everything (like gentlemen's sons) much of it is no use, but still, as they quickly learn to read, it is worth sending the children there.'

Naturally Tolstoy, himself in those days an ardent gymnast, had parallel and horizontal bars put up, and gave the children physical training. To the effects of this on the stomach, the village mothers did not fail to attribute any digestive troubles that befell their children from time to time; especially when the long Lenten fast was succeeded by a return to more appetising food, or when, after such luxuries had long been lacking, fresh vegetables again came into use in summer.

In his account of the Yásno-Polyána school, Tolstoy tells us there were about forty pupils enrolled, but more than thirty were rarely present at a time; among them were four or five girls, and sometimes three or four male adults who came either for a month or for a whole winter. Most of the boys were from seven to ten years old. (Tolstoy says that children learn to read most rapidly, easily and well, between the ages of six and eight.)

There were four teachers, and generally from five to seven lessons a day. The teachers kept diaries of their work, and discussed matters together on Sundays, when they drew up plans for the coming week. These plans were, however, not strictly adhered to, but were constantly modified to meet the demands of the pupils.

Tolstoy's sister told me of another Sunday occupation at Yásnaya Polyána in those days. Tolstoy used to invite all the boys from the neighbouring schools within reach, and used to play games with them; the favourite game being _Barre_, which I assume to be a form of 'Storm the Castle.'

Tolstoy came to the conclusion that teachers involuntarily strive to find a method of teaching convenient for themselves, and that the more convenient a method is for the teacher, the less convenient it is for the pupil; and only _that_ method is good which satisfies the pupils.

His theory of freedom as the basis of success in instruction, was put to a rude test by the fact that for a considerable time his pupils made little or no headway in learning to read. He says:

The simple thought that the time had not yet come for good reading
and that there was at present no need of it, but that the pupils
would themselves find the best method when the need arose, only
recently entered my head.

After telling how the boys first met the difficulty of mastering the mechanical process of reading, Tolstoy goes on to tell how in the upper class progress was suddenly made owing to what seemed an accident.

In the class of advanced reading some one book is used, each boy
reading in turn, and then all telling its contents together. They
had been joined that autumn by an extremely talented lad, T., who
had studied for two years with a sacristan, and was therefore ahead
of them all in reading. He reads as we do, and so the pupils only
understand anything of the advanced reading (and then not very much
of it) when he reads; and yet each of them wishes to read. But as
soon as a bad reader begins, the others express dissatisfaction,
especially when the story is interesting. They laugh, and get
cross, and the bad reader feels ashamed, and endless disputes
arise. Last month one of the boys announced that at any cost he
would manage, within a week, to read as well as T.; others made the
same announcement, and suddenly mechanical reading became their
favourite occupation. For an hour or an hour-and-a-half at a time,
they would sit without tearing themselves away from the books,
which they did not understand; and they began taking books home
with them; and really, within three weeks, they made such progress
as could not have been expected.

In their case the reverse had happened of what usually occurs with
those who learn the rudiments. Generally a man learns to read, and
finds nothing he cares to read or understand. In this case the
pupils were convinced that there is something worth reading and
understanding, but felt that they lacked the capacity; and so they
set to work to become proficient readers.

A difficulty of enormous importance was the absence of books really suitable for simple folk to read.

The insoluble problem was that for the education of the people an
ability and a desire to read good books is essential. Good books
are, however, written in a literary language the people don't
understand. In order to learn to understand it, one would have to
read a great deal; and people won't read willingly unless they
understand what they read.

Connected with this difficulty of finding books suited to the understanding of peasants and of peasant children, was the parallel difficulty of finding literary subjects that interested them. This was first met by reading the Old Testament stories to them:

A knowledge of Sacred History was demanded both by the pupils
themselves and by their parents. Of all the oral subjects I tried
during three years, nothing so suited the understanding and mental
condition of the boys as the Old Testament. The same was the case
in all the schools that came under my observation. I tried the
New Testament, I tried Russian History and Geography, I tried
explanations of natural phenomena (so much advocated to-day), but
it was all listened to unwillingly and quickly forgotten. But the
Old Testament was remembered and narrated eagerly both in class and
at home, and so well remembered that after two months the children
wrote Scripture tales from memory with very slight omissions.

It seems to me that the book of the childhood of the race will
always be the best book for the childhood of each man. It seems to
me impossible to replace that book. To alter or to abbreviate the
Bible, as is done in Sonntag's and other school primers, appears
to me bad. All--every word--in it is right, both as revelation and
as art. Read about the creation of the world in the Bible, and
then read it in an abbreviated Sacred History, and the alteration
of the Bible into the Sacred History will appear to you quite
unintelligible. The latter can only be learnt by heart; while the
Bible presents the child with a vivid and majestic picture he will
never forget. The omissions made in the Sacred History are quite
unintelligible, and only impair the character and beauty of the
Scriptures. Why, for instance, is the statement omitted in all the
Sacred Histories, that when there was nothing, the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters, and that after having created,
God looked at His creation and saw that it was good, and that then
it was the morning and evening of such and such a day? Why do they
omit that God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and
that having taken one of his ribs He with the flesh closed up the
place thereof, and so forth? One must read the Bible to unperverted
children, to understand how necessary and true it all is. Perhaps
one ought not to give the Bible to perverted young ladies; but
when reading it to peasant children I did not alter or omit a
single word. None of them giggled behind another's back; but all
listened eagerly and with natural reverence. The story of Lot and
his daughters, and the story of Judah's son, evoked horror but not
laughter....

How intelligible and clear it all is, especially for a child, and
yet how stern and serious! I cannot imagine what instruction would
be possible, without that book. Yet when one has learnt these
stories only in childhood, and has afterwards partly forgotten
them, one thinks: What good do they do us? Would it not be all
the same if one did not know them at all? So it seems till, on
beginning to teach, you test on other children the elements that
helped to develop you. It seems as if one could teach children
to write and read and calculate, and could give them an idea of
history, geography, and natural phenomena, without the Bible, and
before the Bible; yet nowhere is this done: everywhere the child
first of all gets to know the Bible, its stories, or extracts from
it. The first relations of the learner to the teacher are founded
on that book. Such a general fact is not an accident. My very free
relations with my pupils at the commencement of the Yásno-Polyána
school helped me to find the explanation of this phenomenon.

A child or a man on entering school (I make no distinction between
a ten-, thirty-, or seventy-year-old man) brings with him the
special view of things he has deduced from life and to which he is
attached. In order that a man of any age should begin to learn,
it is necessary that he should love learning. That he should love
learning, he must recognise the falseness and insufficiency of
his own view of things, and must scent afar off that new view of
life which learning is to reveal to him. No man or boy would have
the strength to learn, if the result of learning presented itself
to him merely as a capacity to write, to read, and to reckon.
No master could teach if he did not command an outlook on life
higher than his pupils possess. That a pupil may surrender himself
whole-heartedly to his teacher, one corner must be lifted of the
veil which hides from him all the delight of that world of thought,
knowledge, and poetry to which learning will admit him. Only by
being constantly under the spell of that bright light shining ahead
of him, will the pupil be able to use his powers in the way we
require of him.

What means have we of lifting this corner of the veil?... As I
have said, I thought as many think, that being myself in the world
to which I had to introduce my pupils, it would be easy for me to
do this; and I taught the rudiments, explained natural phenomena,
and told them, as the primers do, that the fruits of learning are
sweet; but the scholars did not believe me, and kept aloof. Then I
tried reading the Bible to them, and quite took possession of them.
The corner of the veil was lifted, and they yielded themselves to
me completely. They fell in love with the book, and with learning,
and with me. It only remained for me to guide them on....

To reveal to the pupil a new world, and to make him, without
possessing knowledge, love knowledge, there is no book but the
Bible. I speak even for those who do not regard the Bible as a
revelation. There are no other works--at least I know none--which
in so compressed and poetic a form contain all those sides of
human thought which the Bible unites in itself. All the questions
raised by natural phenomena are there dealt with. Of all the
primitive relations of men with one another: the family, the State,
and religion, we first become conscious through that book. The
generalisations of thought and wisdom, with the charm given by
their childlike simplicity of form, seize the pupil's mind for the
first time. Not only does the lyricism of David's psalms act on the
minds of the elder pupils; but more than that, from this book every
one becomes conscious for the first time of the whole beauty of
the epos in its incomparable simplicity and strength. Who has not
wept over the story of Joseph and his meeting with his brethren?
Who has not, with bated breath, told the story of the bound and
shorn Samson, revenging himself on his enemies and perishing under
the ruins of the palace he destroys, or received a hundred other
impressions on which we were reared as on our mothers' milk?

Let those who deny the educative value of the Bible and say it is
out of date, invent a book and stories explaining the phenomena of
Nature, either from general history or from the imagination, which
will be accepted as the Bible stories are; and then we will admit
that the Bible is obsolete....

Drawn though it may be from a one-sided experience, I repeat my
conviction. The development of a child or a man in our society
without the Bible, is as inconceivable as that of an ancient Greek
would have been without Homer. The Bible is the only book to begin
with, for a child's reading. The Bible, both in its form and in its
contents, should serve as a model for all children's primers and
all reading books. A translation of the Bible into the language of
the common folk, would be the best book for the people.

When pupils came from other schools where they had had to learn Scripture by heart, or had been inoculated with the abbreviated school-primer versions, Tolstoy found that the Bible had nothing like as strong an effect as it had on boys who came fresh to it.

Such pupils do not experience what is felt by fresh pupils, who
listen to the Bible with beating heart, seizing every word,
thinking that now, now at last, all the wisdom of the world is
about to be revealed to them.

In reading the above passages, it should be borne in mind that in Russian usage 'The Bible' means the Old Testament only.

Besides the Bible, the only books the people understand and like, says Tolstoy, are those written not for the people but by the people; such as folk-tales and collections of songs, legends, proverbs, verses, and riddles. There was much in his experience which fits in with what Mr. Cecil Sharp and Miss Neal of the Espérance Club, have lately been demonstrating by their revivals of English Folk Songs and Dances: namely, that there is an excellent literature and art which children and common folk appreciate and assimilate as eagerly and excellently as any one, and which it is the height of folly for cultured people to despise; and his keen perception of the gap that separates the art and literature accessible to the people from the art that by its artificiality is beyond their reach, led him subsequently to undertake, first a series of school primers, and then the re-telling of a number of folk-tales and legends, which have reached more readers, and perhaps benefited the world more, than anything else he has written.

With penmanship it happened at Yásno-Polyána school, as with reading:

The pupils wrote very badly, and a new master introduced writing
from copies (another exercise very sedate and easy for the
master). The pupils became dull, and we were obliged to abandon
calligraphy, and did not know how to devise any way of improving
their handwriting. The eldest class discovered the way for itself.
Having finished writing the Bible stories, the elder pupils began
to ask for their exercise-books to take home [probably to read to
their parents]. These were dirty, crumpled, and badly written. The
precise mathematician P. asked for some paper, and set to work
to rewrite his stories. This idea pleased the others. 'Give me,
too, some paper!'-- 'Give me an exercise-book!' and a fashion for
calligraphy set in, which still prevails in the upper class. They
took an exercise-book, put before them a written alphabet copy from
which they imitated each letter, boasting to one another of their
performance, and in two weeks' time they had made great progress.

Grammar turned out to be an unsatisfactory subject, and to have hardly any connection with correct writing or speaking.

In our youngest--the third--class, they write what they like.
Besides that, the youngest write out in the evening, one at a
time, sentences they have composed all together. One writes, and
the others whisper among themselves, noting his mistakes, and only
waiting till he has finished, in order to denounce his misplaced
e or his wrongly detached prefix, or sometimes to perpetrate a
blunder of their own. To write correctly and to correct mistakes
made by others, gives them great pleasure. The elder boys seize
every letter they can get hold of, exercising themselves in
the correction of mistakes, and trying with all their might to
write correctly; but they cannot bear grammar or the analysis of
sentences, and in spite of a bias we had for analysis, they only
tolerate it to a very limited extent, falling asleep or evading the
classes.

History on the whole went badly, except such bits of Russian history as, when told poetically, aroused patriotic feelings. On one memorable occasion the whole class went wild with excitement and eager interest. That was when Tolstoy, with a poet's licence, told of the defeat of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812.

Except in this legendary way, the teaching of history to children is, in Tolstoy's opinion, useless. The historic sense develops later than the artistic sense:

In my experience and practice the first germ of interest in
history arises out of contemporary events, sometimes as a result
of participation in them, through political interest, political
opinions, debates, and the reading of newspapers. Consequently the
idea of beginning the teaching of history from present times should
suggest itself to every intelligent teacher.

Of geography as a subject for the education of children, Tolstoy has an even lower opinion:

In Von Vizin's comedy _The Minor_, when Mitrofánoushka was being
persuaded to learn geography, his mother said: 'Why teach him
all the countries? The coachman will drive him where he may have
to go to.' Nothing more to the point has ever been said against
geography, and all the learned men in the world put together cannot
rebut such an irrefragable argument. I am speaking quite seriously.
What need was there for me to know where the river and town of
Barcelona are situated, when for thirty-three years I have not once
had occasion to use the knowledge? Not even the most picturesque
description of Barcelona and its inhabitants could, I imagine,
conduce to the development of my mental faculties.

In fact, the sweeping conclusion at which Tolstoy arrives is that:

I not only see no use, but I see great harm, in teaching history or
geography before the University is reached.

And he leaves it an open question whether even the University should concern itself with such subjects.

Drawing was a favourite lesson with the boys; but I must confine myself to a single extract on that subject:

We drew figures from the blackboard in the following way: I first
drew a horizontal or a vertical line, dividing it into parts by
dots, and the pupils copied this line. Then I drew another or
several perpendicular or sloping lines, standing in a certain
relation to the first, and similarly divided up. Then we joined
the dots of these different lines by others (straight or curved),
and formed some symmetrical figure which, as it was gradually
evolved, was copied by the boys. It seemed to me that this was a
good plan: first, because the boy clearly saw the whole process of
the formation of the figure, and secondly, because his perception
of the co-relation of lines was developed by this drawing from the
board, much better than by copying drawings or designs....