Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/292

278 of my spiritual powers. What good is it for Semka and Fedka to know about the Marinsky canal and aquatic communication, if they, as in all probability will be the case, will never go there? And even if Semka should happen to go there, it is a matter of indifference whether he learns about it or not, since he will know about this kind of aquatic communication, and will know it thoroughly, by experience. For the development of spiritual powers, what help will come from knowing that hemp goes down and tar goes up the Volga, that there is a harbor Dubovka, and that a subterranean stratum extends to such and such a point, and that the Samoyeds travel by reindeer, and so on—I cannot imagine!

I have in me a whole world of lore—mathematical, natural, linguistic, and poetic—which I have not time to transmit; there is an endless collection of questions regarding the phenomena of life around me; and the pupil demands an answer to them, and I must answer them before drawing maps of the polar floes, the tropical lands, the mountains of Australia, and the rivers of America.

In history and geography experience tells the same story and everywhere confirms our ideas. Everywhere the teaching of geography and history goes badly, in expectation of examinations, the names of mountains, cities and rivers, kings and tsars; the only possible manuals are Arsenyef and Obodovsky, Kaïdanof, Smaragdof, and Berté; and everywhere complaint is made of the teaching of these subjects ; they are searching for something new, and never find it.

It is very amusing that all recognize the incongruity of the study of geography with the spirit of the pupils of the whole world, and consequently invent thousands of ingenious means—like Sidof's method—to compel the children to remember the names ; the simplest of all notions, that this kind of geography is entirely unnecessary, that it is entirely unnecessary to know these names, has never once entered any one's head.

All attempts to combine geography with geology, botany, ethnography, and I know not what else, history