Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/109

Rh His teachers were few in number: he taught most of the subjects himself, and it must be said that without any of the pedantic terminology and sweeping theories which young professors pride themselves upon, he could in few words convey the very essence of his subject, so that it was evident even to the youngest why he needed to understand it. He used to declare that what a man needed most of all was the science of life, that in understanding that he would understand himself and know to what he ought principally to devote himself.

This science of life he made into a separate course of study to which only the most promising of his pupils were admitted. The less gifted boys he allowed to enter the government service straight from the first class, saying it was no use to worry them too much: it was enough for them if they learnt to be patient and diligent workers free from conceit and ulterior motives. 'But the clever boys, the gifted boys, keep me busy a long time,' he used to say, and in this last course Alexandr Petrovitch became a different man, and from the first informed them that he had hitherto expected only simple intelligence, but that now he would expect from them a higher intelligence, not the intelligence that can jeer and mock at fools, but that which can bear every insult, and suffer fools without irritation. At this stage he required from them what others require from children. That he called the highest stage of intelligence. To preserve