Talks with Tolstoi

by Aleksandr Borisovich Golʹdenveĭzer

Tolstoi described with horror how a priest marched with his cross in his hand in front of the soldiers.

June 26th. Last week I reached Yasnaya in the evening. The Sukhotins were there. During tea Misha Sukhotin began to tell Tolstoi that on completing his studies at the School of Jurisprudence he would like to go to Paris to continue his studies; and he began to argue with Tolstoi. I did not hear the beginning of the argument. I came in when Tolstoi was saying:

“ ... Every man is a perfectly individual being, who has never existed before and will never happen again. It is just the individuality, the singularity of him, which is valuable; but school tries to efface all this and to make man after its own pattern. The pupils of the Tula secondary school came to me lately and asked what they should do. I said to them: above all, try to forget everything you have been taught.”

Tolstoi thinks the Russian University in Paris perfectly useless and good-for-nothing. He said:

“The best educational institution that I know is the Kensington Museum in London. There is a large public library where many people work, and they have professors of various special subjects. Every one who works, if he has a question to ask, gives notice of it, and, when several such questions have accumulated, the professor issues a notice to say that he will lecture on such and such subjects, and those who wish may come and hear him. Such an arrangement is most in keeping with the true object of teaching—to answer the questions which arise in the minds of the students. But in every other institution, lectures which are of no use to the student are read by professors who are for the most part entirely without gift. None of these lecturers would dare to publish their lectures. Goethe said:

“‘When I speak it turns out better than when I think; I write better than I speak; and what I publish is better than what I write.’ He meant by this that what a man publishes is usually the cream of his thought, the thing he most believes in. Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn. One ought not to talk about oneself, but I must say this: when I was at the University in Kazan I did practically nothing the first year. The second year I began to work. There was a Professor Mayer who took an interest in me and gave me, as a subject, to compare the code of Catherine the Great with Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois. And, I remember, I became infatuated with the work. I went into the country and began to read Montesquieu; this reading opened up endless horizons; I began reading Rousseau, and left the University for the simple reason that I wanted to work; for at the University I should have to occupy myself with subjects that did not interest me and were of no use to me.”

Sergey Lvovich asked Tolstoi why he did not go in for his examinations at Petersburg University.

Tolstoi said:

“I began to work hard, passed two examinations, was awarded two marks of distinction, but then it was spring; it drew me to the country; well, I gave it up and went away.” ... Speaking of the good effects upon men of having received no education, Tolstoi said:

“I know two musicians who never went to school, and yet they are very well-educated men, who, whatever subject you talk about, know it thoroughly,—G. and Sergey Ivanovich Taneev.”