Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/189

Rh Or, "Forgive him as God commands you, and be better than he," says the disciplinarian. You say to him, "Be better than he!" but all that he wants is to be stronger, and he does not comprehend, and cannot comprehend, the idea of being better.

Or, "You both are to blame; ask each other's pardon and kiss each other, children."

This is worse than anything, both on account of the insincerity of the kiss, and because the evil passion once calmed in this way is sure to burst forth again. But leave them alone, unless you are either father or mother, who would feel some pitiful sympathy with your children, and therefore have a certain right always, leave them alone, I say, and watch how everything explains itself and comes out all right as simply and naturally, and at the same time with just as much variety and complication as all the unconscious relations of life.

But perhaps the teachers who have not had experience of such disorder or free order, will think that without disciplinary interference this disorder may take on physically injurious consequences; that they will break each other's limbs or kill each other.

In the Yasnaya Polyana school last spring, there were only two cases of serious damage being done. One boy was pushed down from the steps, and cut his leg to the bone, the wound was healed in two weeks; the other had his cheek burned with blazing pitch, and he carried a scar for a fortnight.

Nothing ever happened, unless perhaps once a week some one cried, and that not from pain, but from vexation or shame. Of blows, bruises, bumps, except in the case of the two boys just mentioned, we cannot recall a single one during all the summer among thirty or forty pupils, though they were left entirely to their own guidance.