Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/290

276 and place on the map relating to the event described; for the most part, only the events remain. This class, however, belongs to a section of colloquies of which we shall speak in another place. Of late, notwithstanding all the skill with which the teaching of unnecessary names is disguised, notwithstanding all the circumspection with which we resorted to it, the children had a presentiment that they were only being tricked into reading history and they conceived a genuine disgust for this class.

I came at last to the conclusion that, as regards history, not only was there no necessity of knowing the stupid part of Russian history, but that Cyrus, Alexander of Macedon, Cæsar, and Luther are likewise unnecessary for the development of any child. All these personages and events are interesting to the student, not in proportion to their significance in history, but in proportion to the artistic reason for their being at all, in proportion to the artistic skill shown by their historian, and generally not by their historian, but by popular tradition.

The history of Romulus and Remus is interesting, not because these brothers founded the mightiest empire in the world, but because it is entertaining, marvelous, and beautiful how the she-wolf suckled them, etc. The history of the Gracchi is interesting, because it is artistic, like the history of Gregory VII. and the humiliated emperor, and there is a possibility of getting interested in it; but the history of the migration of nations will be stupid and aimless, because its subject is not artistic, just exactly like the history of the invention of printing, however we strive to impress it on the pupil that this was a period in history, and that Gutenberg was a great man. If you relate cleverly how friction matches were invented, the pupil will never agree that the inventor of friction matches was not as great a man as Gutenberg: in a word, for the child, and in general for the learner, and for any one who has not yet learned to live, the interest in the historic, that is, apart from the universally human, does not exist. There is only the artistic interest.