Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/30

 theories of the reasonableness of everything existing and of progress could justify that deed, and that if all men on earth, beginning with the creation, had some theory which made this necessary,—I knew that it was not necessary, that it was bad, and that, therefore, not what people said and did, and not progress, but I with my heart was the judge of what was good and necessary. Another occasion which made me conscious of the insufficiency for life of the superstition of progress was the death of my brother. An intelligent, good, serious man, he grew sick when he was young, suffered for more than a year, and died an agonizing death, without comprehending what he had lived for, and still less why he should die. No theories could give any answers either to me or to him, during his slow and painful death. But those were only rare cases of doubt; in reality I continued to live professing the faith of progress. “Everything develops, and I, too, am developing; why I am developing with the rest, will appear later.” That is the way I ought to have then formulated my faith.

When I returned from abroad, I settled in the country and hit upon busying myself with the peasant schools. That occupation was particularly to my liking, because in it there was not that apparent lie which had appalled me in the activity of my literary teachership. Here also I worked in the name of progress, but this time I assumed a critical attitude toward progress. I said to myself that progress in some of its manifestations took place irregularly, and that it was necessary to treat the primitive men, the peasant children, in a free way, by letting them choose the path of progress which they wished. In reality, I was still gyrating around one and the same insoluble problem, which was that I should teach not knowing what. In the higher spheres of my literary activity I saw that it was not possible to teach not knowing what