Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1862
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
I see honorable, worthy, liberal men, members of charitable societies, who are ready to give and do give a part of their substance to the poor, who have founded and are founding schools, and who on reading this will shake their heads and say:
"It is not good! Why spend so much energy in developing them? Why cultivate in them sensibilities and capacities which will place them in a false and dangerous position toward their own class? Why educate them out of their sphere?"
I am not speaking now of those who betray themselves by saying:
"It will be a fine state of affairs when all want to be thinkers and artists, and no one will be willing to labor."
These men say up and down that they don't like to work, and therefore it is necessary that there be people unfitted for any form of employment, and that they work like slaves for others. Who knows whether it is good or bad or necessary to educate them out of their sphere? And who can take them out of their sphere? That is precisely like a mechanical action. Is it good or is it bad to add sugar to flour, or put pepper into beer?
Fedka is not constrained by his torn caftan, but he is tormented by moral questions and doubts, and you want to give him three rubles, the catechism, and a little story of how labor and humility, which you yourself cannot endure, are useful for a man. He does not need the three rubles, he will get them and have them as soon as he does need them, and he will learn to work without you just as he learned to breathe. He needs what you have been brought to by your life and that of ten generations of your ancestors, uncrushed by work. You have leisure to investigate, to think, to suffer give to him the results of your sufferings that is the only thing he needs.
And you, like the Egyptian priest, hide from him under a mantle of mystery, you bury in the earth, the talent given you by history. Do not be afraid! nothing human is injurious to man. Do you doubt it? Give way to your feeling, and it will not disappoint you. Trust your lad to nature, and you may be sure that he will take only what history commanded you to give him, what has grown in you through sufferings.