Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/230

216 be possible by means of compulsory explanations, lessons, and repetitions to teach the people the literary language against their will as they are taught French. We must confess that more than once we have attempted this in the course of the last two months, and we have always encountered insuperable repugnance, which showed the falsity of the course adopted.

In these experiments I merely convinced myself that the explanations of the meaning of a word or of a paragraph are perfectly out of the question even for a talented teacher,—to say nothing of the explanations which teachers of mediocre abilities like altogether too well, as that "an assembly is a certain small synedrion," and the like. In explaining any word whatever—as, for example, the word vpechatleniye, "impression"—you substitute, in place of the word explained, another just as incomprehensible, or a whole list of words the connection of which is just as incomprehensible as the word itself. Almost always the word itself is not incomprehensible, but the pupil has no comprehension of what is expressed by the word. The word is always at his service when the idea is there. Moreover, the relation of the word to the thought and the formation of new ideas is such a complicated, mysterious, and delicate process of the mind, that all interference with it seems like a brutal incoherent force arresting the process of development.

It is easy to say understand. Why can't all comprehend, and yet how many different things may be understood by different persons reading from the same book? The pupil, though he fail to understand two or three words in a sentence, may comprehend the delicate shades of thought or its relation to what went before. You, the teacher, insist on one side of the concept, but the pupil does not require what you wish to explain to him. Sometimes he has understood, only he cannot make it plain to you that he has, while at the same time he vaguely surmises and absorbs something entirely different, and yet something quite useful and valuable for him. You insist on his explaining himself, but since