Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/210

 194 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

Concerning the special question with which you are preoccupied^ I think that in place of tlie Literature Committee which has been prohibited, a number of other Literature Associations to pursue the same objects should be formed without consulting the Government, and without asking permission from any censor. Let Government, if it likes, prosecute these Literature Associations, punish the members, banish them, etc. If the Government does that, it will merely cause people to attach special importance to good books and to libraries, and it will strengthen the trend towards enlightenment.

It seems to me that it is now specially important to do wh.at is right quietly and persistently, not only without asking permission from Government, but con- sciously avoiding its participation. The strength of the Government lies in the people's ignorance, and the Government knows this, and will therefore always oppose true enlightenment. It is time we realized that fact. And it is most undesirable to let the Government, while it is spreading darkness, pretend to be busy with the enlightenment of the people. It is doing this now by means of all sorts of pseudo-educa- tional establishments which it controls : schools, high- schools, universities, academies, and all kinds of committees and congresses. But good is good, and enlightenment is enlightenment, only when it is quite good and quite enlightened, and not when it is toned down to meet the requirements of Delyanof s* or Dour- novo^s circulars. And I am extremely sorry when I see valuable, disinterested, and self-sacrificing efforts spent unprofitably. It is strange to see good, wise people spending their strength in a struggle against the Govern- ment, but carrying on that struggle on the basis of whatever laws the Government itself likes to make.

This is how the matter appears to me :

There are people (we ourselves are such) who realize

Minister of the Interior when the Committee was sup- pressed.
 * Delyanof was Minister of Education and Dournovo was