Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/345

Rh This contains the eternal mistake of all pedagogical theories. We see our ideal before us when it is really behind us. The inevitable development of a man is not only not the means for the attainment of this ideal of harmony which we carry in ourselves, but is an impediment set by the Creator against the attainment of a lofty ideal of harmony. In this inevitable law of the forward motion is included the idea of that fruit of the tree of good and evil which our first parents tasted.

The healthy child is born into the world, perfectly satisfying those demands of absolute harmony in the relations of truth, beauty, and goodness which we bear within us; he is like the inanimated existences,—to the plant, to the animal, to nature,—which constantly present to us that truth, beauty, and goodness we are seeking for and desire. In all ages and among all people the child represents the model of innocence, sinlessness, goodness, truth, and beauty.

Man is born perfect;—that is a great dictum that is enunciated by Rousseau, and that dictum stands like a rock, firm and true. Having been born, man sets up before himself his prototype of harmony, truth, beauty, and goodness. But every hour in his life, every minute of time, increases the distance, the size, and the time of those relations which at his birth were found in perfect harmony, and every step and every hour threatens the violation of this harmony, and every succeeding step threatens a new violation, and gives no hope of restoring the violated harmony. The majority of educators lose from sight the fact that childhood is the prototype of harmony, and they take as an end the child's development, which goes on according to unchangeable laws. Development is mistakenly taken as an end, because with educators happens what takes place with poor sculptors.

Instead of trying to establish a local exaggerated development, or to establish a general development, in order to wait the new opportunity which puts an end to the previous irregularity, like the poor sculptor, instead of scratching off the superfluity, they keep sticking on