Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/186

172 very foundation this rule was found true. At first it was impossible to classify either recitations or the subjects or the recreations or their tasks; everything was in confusion, and all attempts at classification were in vain. At the present time there are students in the first class who themselves insist on following a regular order of exercises, and are indignant when you call them from their lessons, and these scholars are all the time driving away the little ones who disturb them.

In my opinion this external disorder is useful and indispensable, strange as it may seem and inconvenient to the teacher. I shall frequently have occasion to speak of the advantages of this condition of things; of the imaginary inconveniences I will say this: In the first place, this disorder or free order is trying to us, simply because we are accustomed to something entirely different, in which we were educated. In the second place, in this, as in many similar circumstances, the employment of force is due to haste and lack of reverence for human nature. It seems to us that disorder is increasing, becoming more and more violent each instant, that there are no limits to it; it seems to us that there is no other way of putting an end to it than by employing main force,—but really all it requires is to wait a little, and the disorder, or flow of animal spirits, would naturally diminish of itself, and would grow into a far better and more stable order than that which we imagine.

The scholars—though they are little folk—are nevertheless human beings, having the same requirements as we ourselves, and their thoughts run in the same groove. They all want to learn, and that is the only reason they go to school, and therefore it is perfectly easy for them to reach the conclusion that it is necessary to submit to certain conditions if they would learn anything.

Besides being human beings, they form a society of human beings united by one impulse. And where two or three are gathered together in My name there will I be also.