Speech on the Most Important Subjects of Education

N.I. Lobachevsky. Speech at the solemn assembly of Kazan University, 5 July 1828.
Russian original (scanned PDF)

Translation of the scanned appendix. A few passages missing from the available Russian text are marked [...].

A year has now passed, my dear colleagues, since, by your election, I have borne the office whose honours, importance and difficulties are proof of the flattering confidence you place in me. I dare not complain that you wished to call me away from the studies I loved, to which I had long devoted myself by inclination. You have laid upon me new labours and cares hitherto foreign to me; but I dare not murmur, because you have also given me new means of being useful. I accepted your summons because I respected your opinion; because I did not wish to oppose the common desire; because I myself could not have justified anyone who, in my place, had thought of refusing. Finally, your choice was confirmed by the Emperor, and the duties of the new rank became sacred to me. Let me justly complain of the weakness of my powers and abilities; but can shortcomings excuse me when zeal for the service must make up for them? And so, at last, all that one could wish for has been granted. The question is: have we all fulfilled what was required of us? How hard it is for me to set my conscience at rest when I turn my thoughts to the first year of my administration of the University's affairs. How hard it is for me, in this first term, to give an account of myself and of the whole University; to hope for the approval of my colleagues, of the parents whose children are educated in this institution, and of all the visitors who have come as judges in a common cause and might justly be severe judges. I beg your indulgence, gentlemen, if I am compelled to pass over in silence what I do not consider worthy of your attention.

I now compare myself to a helmsman who, distrusting his experience, has kept close to the shore and at last resolves to put out into the open sea; he must not tell of his timid voyage, but ask for advice. In the education of youth - that important matter in which, by my office, I take part more than other members of the University - in the discharge of this important duty, I ask your advice. I venture to submit my thoughts to your judgement, believing that they contain the first principles of morality and may indicate the rules which teachers are obliged to follow. I too intend to be guided by them, as a traveller, to avoid losing his way, watches the signs set up along the road.

In what state, I imagine, must a man be who is cut off from human society and abandoned to wild nature alone! I then turn my thoughts to the man who, amid the organized, educated citizenship of the last centuries of enlightenment, by his high knowledge constitutes the honour and glory of his fatherland. What a difference! What an immeasurable distance separates the one from the other. This difference is produced by education. It begins at the cradle; at first it is acquired by imitation alone; gradually the mind, memory, imagination and taste for the beautiful unfold; love of self and love of neighbour awaken, love of glory, a sense of honour, the desire to enjoy life. All the powers of the mind, all gifts, all passions - education shapes all this and harmonizes it into a single well-ordered whole, and man, as if born again, appears a creation in perfection.

His outward appearance, his lofty brow, his gaze that ranges everywhere and contemplates all things above and around him, the features of his face, in which sensuality is depicted as subject to the mind - all show that he was born to be lord, ruler and king of nature. But the wisdom with which he must reign from his hereditary throne is not given him at birth: it is acquired by learning.

In what, then, must this wisdom consist? What must we learn in order to attain our destiny? Which faculties must be unfolded and perfected, which must undergo change; what must be added, what cut away as superfluous or harmful?

My opinion is: destroy nothing and perfect everything. Are the gifts of nature then in vain? How dare we condemn them? Whom shall we accuse for them? Let us recognize one Author of all that exists; let us confess Him and bow before His infinite wisdom. [...]

What, then, is to be said of intellectual gifts, of innate impulses, of the desires proper to man? All must remain with him: otherwise we shall distort his nature, do violence to it and damage his well-being.

Let us turn first to the chief faculty, the mind, by which men wish to distinguish man from the other animals, opposing to the latter instinct. I am not of the opinion that man is deprived of instinct, which appears in many actions of the mind and which, united with the mind, constitutes Genius. I shall remark only in passing that instinct is not acquired; one cannot be a Genius unless born one. Herein lies the art of educators: to discover Genius, enrich it with knowledge and give it freedom to follow its promptings. The mind, if one wishes to compose it of imagination and memory, hardly distinguishes us from the animals. But reason undoubtedly belongs exclusively to man; reason means certain principles of judgement in which the first active causes of the universe seem to be imprinted, and which thus reconcile all our conclusions with the phenomena of nature, where contradictions cannot exist.

Be that as it may, it must be admitted that it is not so much to our mind as to the gift of speech that we owe all our superiority over the other animals. Even those closest to us in bodily structure, as anatomists assure us, lack the organs by which they could utter complex sounds. They are forbidden to convey concepts to one another. To man alone is this right granted; he alone on earth enjoys this gift; to him alone is it given to learn, to sharpen his mind, to seek truth with combined forces. Words, as it were rays of his mind, transmit and spread the light of learning. The language of a people is evidence of its culture, a sure proof of the degree of its enlightenment.

To what, I ask, do the mathematical and physical sciences owe their brilliant successes in recent times - the glory of our age, the triumph of the human mind? Without doubt, to their artificial language; for what else can all these signs of various calculations be called but a special, very concise language which, without needlessly wearying our attention, expresses vast concepts in a single stroke. Such successes of the mathematical sciences, eclipsing every other branch of learning, justly astonish us; they compel us to admit that to the human mind is granted exclusively the knowledge of truths of this kind, and that it perhaps pursues others in vain; one must also agree that mathematicians have discovered direct means of acquiring knowledge. It is not long since we began to enjoy these means. They were pointed out to us by the famous Bacon. "Cease," he said, "to labour in vain, trying to extract all wisdom from reason alone; question nature - she keeps all truths and will answer your questions unfailingly and satisfactorily." At last the genius of Descartes brought about this happy change, and thanks to his gifts we already live in times when hardly the shadow of ancient scholasticism wanders through the universities. Here, having entered this institution, young people will not hear empty words without any thought, mere sounds without any meaning. Here they teach what actually exists, and not what has been invented by an idle mind. Here the exact and natural sciences are taught, with the aid of languages and historical knowledge. Here the teachers divide among themselves the subjects to which they have devoted their whole lives, having felt from their youth an inclination and some aptitude for them.

How pitiful that the vain advantages of home education are preferred to true enlightenment. Whoever wishes to educate his children for the State must resort to the means which the State alone can provide; he must teach his children in public institutions.

Intellectual education alone does not yet complete upbringing. A man, enriching his mind with knowledge, must also learn to enjoy life. I wish to speak of the cultivation of taste.

To live means to feel, to enjoy life, to feel continually something new that would remind us that we live. Thus our poet Derzhavin says of men:

Inconstancy is the lot of mortals,
In changes of taste lies their happiness.
Amid their countless pleasures
We desire other pleasures.

Uniform motion is dead. Rest is pleasant after labour and soon turns to boredom. Enjoyment consists in the agitation of the feelings, on condition that it be kept within certain limits. Moreover, it is all the same whether our attention is turned to the cheerful or the sad. Even returns to melancholy are pleasant; and touching pictures of human misfortune attract us. We listen with pleasure to Oedipus on the stage of the theatre when he tells of his unparalleled misfortunes. The cheerful and the sad, like two opposing forces, stir our life within that wave in which are contained all the pleasures proper to human nature. Or, like a river, life flows in winding banks: now it spreads over the meadows of joy, now it washes the steep cliffs of sorrowful reflection. Nothing so constrains this stream as ignorance: it leads life along a dead straight road from the cradle to the grave. Even in a lowly station the exhausting labours of necessity, mingled with rest, sweeten the life of the farmer and the craftsman; but you whose existence an unjust chance has turned into a heavy burden for others; you whose mind has grown dull and whose feeling has died - you do not enjoy life. For you nature is dead, the beauties of poetry are alien, architecture is deprived of charm and splendour, the history of the ages is uninteresting. I console myself with the thought that from our University no such products of the vegetable world will come; they will not even enter here if, to misfortune, they have already been born with such a destiny. They will not come out, I repeat, because here love of glory, a sense of honour and inner dignity continue to live. [...]

It seems that nature, having endowed man so generously at his birth, was not yet satisfied. She breathed into each a desire to surpass others, to be known, to be an object of wonder, to become famous; and thus placed on man himself the care of his own perfection. The mind, in incessant activity, strives to acquire honours, to rise higher, and passes from perfection to perfection - and where will it stop?

Other duties call away and cool the striving for glory. Man is entrusted with the brief time in which to keep the fire of life; to keep it in order to pass it on to others. He lives to leave offspring behind him. Love of life, that powerful impulse in all creatures, you fulfil the high purpose of nature. I have passed the summit of my life; at the first step I already feel the weight that draws me down the slope of the second half of my path. I have always been attentive to the phenomena of the organism; now I cannot observe them, cannot speak of them with indifference. [...]

Life rests in the seed of a plant under the protection of [...] its activity; at last time improves it, and the carefree plant suddenly awakens from sleep. Then, with the superiority of still fresh strength, it builds its organs. Soon, feeling an unequal struggle, it thinks of escape and hides in a new seed. Such is a brief description of the phenomenon of life in a plant, an animal and a man. How is this striving of changing life to escape to be restrained? How early it awakens, and how accurately the time is calculated. Look at this graft: it flowers already in its first spring. The organic force in it forefeels that, cut off from its native tree, it is not long-lived, and that it must hasten with its fruits. Look at the garden vegetables when cold nights threaten them with early frost [...] and the seeds ripen in them.

An apple touched by a worm ripens before the others and falls to the ground. Thus vice shortens life; thus a youth ripens prematurely, satisfying his early desires, and lies down in the grave when he ought to have been in flower. We all live a third or a fourth of the time appointed by nature. This is proved by examples: a certain Eccleston lived 143 years, Henry Jenkins 169 years. Naturalists, comparing the time of growth of man and animals, come to the same conclusion: we ought, they say, to live about 200 years. But alas, in vain does the vital force collect nourishing juices; they are consumed by the fire of passions, devoured by cares and destroyed by ignorance. The ardour of our imagination, our knowledge, our ever-ready memories awaken the passions and summon desires that ought not to be. Let the teacher of youth turn his attention here and try to forestall the thoughtlessness of youth, which does not yet know the value of its health. [...]

Let us then treasure life while it does not lose its dignity. Let examples from history, a true notion of honour, and love of the fatherland awakened in early years give beforehand to the passions that noble direction and that strength which will allow us to triumph over the horror of death. With a bandage over our eyes, as Rochefoucauld says, we shall not see it.

To be ready at any hour to make this great sacrifice requires of us the wisdom of the Creator, who has implanted in the human heart, together with love of self, love of neighbour. From this flow all the principles of morality - the subject of education, to which, as the most important, I come last, and of which I do not wish to speak as of a science. Duclos, Rochefoucauld and Knigge explained how self-love is the hidden spring of all the actions of man in society. Who, I ask, has been able to set forth in full what duties flow from love of neighbour? There have been men, such as Hobbes and Helvetius, who would not believe that man was born for society. Fortunately, their error is not dangerous: such men may appear from time to time, but they will find no followers. How can one doubt that the Creator of the universe, whom we acknowledge as a good being, allowed the knowledge most necessary for human well-being to be attained only by the last effort of the mind? We can still do without written laws when they are inscribed in our hearts. We are born with virtues, and conscience is given them for a guardian. Examples teach better than interpretations and books.

You, the pupils of this institution, you have profited by these examples. I am sure that you will carry away from here love and virtue, and will preserve it together with gratitude to your teachers. You will learn, and the experience of the world will convince you still more, that one feeling of love of neighbour - disinterested, impartial love, the true desire for good - laid upon us the care to enlighten your mind with knowledge, to establish you in the rules of faith, to accustom you to industry, to order, to the fulfilment of your duties, to preserve the innocence of your morals, to safeguard and strengthen your health, to instruct you in virtues, to breathe into you the desire for glory, a sense of nobility, justice and honour - that strict, inviolable honesty which would withstand the seductive examples of abuse beyond the reach of punishment.

You are not yet able to give their true value to my words, and experience cannot enlighten you all at once. Now you are entering the world; the novelty and multiplicity of impressions leave no room for reflection. But the time will come when, upon the brilliance of the present, the past will suddenly appear with the enchanting charm of its hue, like delicate misty carving on bright gold, like objects reflected in the weak mirror of waters; then the years of education, the years of carefree youth with all their innocent pleasures, will present themselves in your memory as the image of perfect happiness, irrevocably lost. Then you will meet your fellow student as a kinsman; then, in speaking of your youth, you will pronounce with gratitude the names of your teachers, you will admit how much they wished you well, and with triumph you will promise one another to follow the examples you have heard from us.

Parting with you, what shall I say that is most instructive? You are happier than I, having been born later. From the history of peoples you have seen that every state passes through the ages of infancy, maturity and old age. The same will be with our beloved fatherland. Preserved by fate, it rises slowly in its greatness and reaches a height to which no human tribe on earth has yet ascended. The ages of Peter, Catherine and Alexander were famous; but the happiest days of Russia are still ahead. We have seen the dawn, their herald, in the east; after it the sun has appeared... I have said everything by this.

N.I. Lobachevsky's speech at the solemn assembly of Kazan University, 5 July 1828.