"To Be and to Appear" Nikolai Pirogov. 29 March 1858

Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov's article "To Be and to Appear", first published in the newspaper "Odessa Herald" on 29 March 1858, was written in connection with the request of pupils of the Second Odessa Gymnasium to allow them to play in a public theatre.

N. I. Pirogov raises in the article the problems of moral education of children, warns against the threat of development in children pretence, vanity and insincerity, when they begin to play a role in front of themselves and others. In this regard, N. I. Pirogov emphasises an important and difficult issue in education - the ability not to miss the moment when a child begins to cunning, deceive themselves and the mentor.

The article was highly appreciated by K. D. Ushinsky, supporting N. I. Pirogov in the fact that the only lasting guarantee of real, not phantom success of education is the complete sincerity of the soul not only in the pupil, but also in the educator (Ushinsky K. D. Ped. op. by N. I. Pirogov. - Ushinsky K. D.).

Pupils of the Second Odessa Gymnasium approached me with a request to allow them to play at a public theatre, following the example of the students of the Lyceum, in order to help some of their comrades. Having learnt that the pupils of gymnasiums brought up in an orphanage had been allowed to act on the stage before, I also allowed it.

But my conscience was not appeased.

I had a moral and pedagogical question: Is it possible to allow young people to go on stage right from school and present themselves as actors before the public?

It is known that wherever there is a university or a lyceum together with a gymnasium, the gymnasium students try to imitate the students in everything. It is also known that such imitation usually does not lead to good. But I look at this question from another, more general, point of view. It is asked: does sound moral pedagogy generally allow children and young people to be exposed to the public in a more or less distorted and, therefore, not in their present form? Does the end in this case justify the means?

Are not true moral teachers obliged to look upon the spiritual side of the young man and child as a holy temple, of which it is said, "My temple, the temple of prayer shall be called. Is not the moral teacher obliged to cast out from it all that is sold and bought? Is an exhibition that excites vanity and vanity compatible with this view of the spiritual side of youth? Does not a parent or tutor, by allowing himself to expose the youth in a distorted form to public contemplation, introduce into the receptive soul the beginning of falsehood and pretence? Is not playing a good part, adopting a prepared pose by the way, being able to make a successful gesture and vividly express a fake feeling with a mime, is not - I say - all this a school of lies and pretence? And the noisy praise given to that very pretence which has become natural, does it not awaken a desire to improve, and in what soul? - not yet briefly acquainted with the science of being and appearing.

But the end? Yes, there is one school in the world which illuminates the means by the end. And we all - it is a sin to say - using the name of this school as an epithet of perfidy and deceit, sometimes allow ourselves to take advantage of the elasticity of its dogmas. But, you must agree, we cannot, without denying ourselves consistency, openly defend its doctrine by asserting that a good end justifies the choice of a morally unreliable means.

If this means were not only unworthy of the importance and sanctity of the intended end, but innocent in itself, why not so? We shall certainly not fix the light; it will remain, in spite of all the cries of the moralists, as it was and is. So why not, in a practical life known for its inconsistency, take advantage of human weaknesses towards a common good end, if those weaknesses are innocent and not reprehensible? But it is a different matter if for this purpose we think of developing in a young soul such inclinations, which consequences can neither be foreseen nor calculated. Here, it seems to me, the end cannot justify the means.

Children's balls, children's theatres and all kinds of spectacles in which children are actors, thank God, are not our invention, but someone else's, and therefore it is apologetic not to know by whom they were first introduced and why they were fashioned. But, judging by probability, such an idea may have occurred either to parents who wished to boast of their children's sweet art under the pretext of giving them pleasure, or to a tutor who wished, no doubt, for some pedagogical purpose, to excite competition in his pupils.

I think the parents were frivolous, and the tutor short-sighted. More than once, both before and since, parents have consoled their vanity under the plausible pretext of comforting their children. More than once educators have erred in their choice of means, blinded by fortune, or in trying to adapt themselves to the taste of society. I confess that not long ago I myself allowed the children in the Lyceum boarding house to act out a little play; but the theatre was purely domestic, the spectators were comrades and tutors; I saw in the play only a means of learning the language.

I noticed here, however, that despite all the artlessness and simplicity of the setting, in some of the actors, there was such a technique of vanity, which it would be dangerous to increase even more. Therefore, both at home and in educational institutions can only and even should allow children from 12 to 14 years to learn selected roles from various plays, but without any furnishings and only for the sole purpose of exercise in language and the way to express clearly thoughts. Let the tutor explain to these pupils what the author wanted to express with this or that turn of speech. Let him show them together what techniques are peculiar to this or that character of the actor, but without any surroundings, without publicity, without outside spectators.

The tutor and his pupils should be both the audience and the actors, the schoolroom the stage. Let imagination complete and decorate everything else. But more dangerous scene for boys of 15 years and more. At this age, especially in the South, children, by all means, do not want to be children. Imagination in these summers is already beginning to lose its kaleidoscopic mobility. It is no longer with the same speed transforms one object into another and does not so easily replace the ghost of the actual. Nevertheless, the young man still does not clearly distinguish between the two properties of his self: to be and to seem.

Should we prematurely give the young soul an excuse to discover its duality? Let being and seeming remain one and the same in a young man's life for the time being. Soon, too soon and without any motive, his actions will manifest what Apostle Paul said: "What I do I do not understand: not what I want to do I do: but what I hate I do" (Rom. VII, 15).

And without going on the theatre stage - already on the one stage of life - he soon learns it is better to seem than to be.

Wait, give time for spiritual analysis to develop. Give time to begin the struggle with oneself and become stronger in it. Then, who will feel a vocation in himself, perhaps, let him be an actor: he will not cease to be a man after all. And if both Talma and Karatygin were only seeming heroes, then at least your son or pupil will not be only one seeming actor.

But no better than exhibitions of children on the parquet and theatre stage and public exhibitions on the school stage. This too is theatre in its own way. And at the theatre, at least, what should be exhibited is exhibited: the art of pretending and the great gift of making oneself feel at one's own will. And in public examinations, knowledge is flaunted, whose truth and importance are not valued by anything so much as modesty.

All these artificial and strained attempts at the so-called development of the mind and heart develop only prematurely the duality of the human soul, which has not yet grown strong in the struggle with itself. They only complete what society, school and - alas! - the parental home itself.

Let each of us recall when he began to appear to be something other than what he is. And true, in answering this question, few of us would boast of our memory. And when we entered into the struggle with ourselves, believing that we had all already entered into it, we must have seemed long ago not what we were. Would we really want to inherit the same thing to our children? Is all the attempts at moral pedagogy, all the successes, all the human endeavour for perfection, one empty play on words, one seductive fiction?

No! We have no right not to believe in the truth. If we were to embrace it together, we would correct many things in our children that our fathers did not have time or did not know how to correct in us. True, we can only give what we ourselves have. But whoever wants to go forward, not only through dirty and dusty streets, will find enough strength in his soul to fight with himself and to watch out for the first manifestations of mental ambivalence in his children.

Its first manifestation is pretence and lying. It is difficult to determine the time of life at which they are first detected in a child. I knew a six-year-old girl who was already such a virtuoso of lying that it was difficult to distinguish long stories of her own invention from the truth, so coherent and distinct was everything in them. I also knew a boy of four years old, who, when asked if he had seen a humming-bird, not wishing to say simply that he did not know out of boastfulness, described in as much detail as possible the humming-bird he had seen, which, however, turned out to be a mere crow; and when it was pointed out to him that humming-birds were not found in the places where he lived, but in China, he, not at all embarrassed, assured me that the Chinese emperor had sent the big black bird as a present to his mother.

I never heard anything about the girl afterwards, but I know about the boy, I guess: he's stopped bragging so ungracefully now.

Can we not conclude from these and many other facts that already with the first babble of a child the duality of our spiritual side begins to be revealed? Yes and no. I have no doubt that the child has its own world, different from ours. The imagination has created this world for the child, and he lives and acts in it in his own way. An adult who acts like a child is in our eyes either a liar or a madman. And if a child seems to us neither of these, it is because it is a child. So, if we, having reached a certain age, do not stop living in the world created by our childish imagination, we become necessarily either liars or adult children, i.e. weirdos, lunatics, or call it whatever you like, but not ordinary people.

We are accustomed to call a person insane only if we notice apparent incongruity and inconsistency in his actions. But this apparent incongruity of words with actions, and of one act with another, is sometimes only a sign of insanity, and sometimes not. Whoever still doubts this uncertainty and confusion of our notions, let him ask the forensic physicians whether it is always and in every given case easy for them to decide the question of insanity.

It is not easy to decide whether he is mistaken or lying. It is known that he who is accustomed to lie finally does it unconsciously.

But if it is so difficult for an adult in practical life to draw precise boundaries between sanity and insanity, between conviction and falsehood, then we must be even more careful in assessing the actions of a child.

In a child, the seeming inconsistency of actions and thoughts, conscious lies and unconscious ones so imperceptibly pass from one to another that almost every child can be called a fool and a liar, applying to him words and concepts taken from the life of adults. But this is exactly the mistake of both parents and mentors, that they, not in time outdated, have forgotten about the world in which they themselves once lived.

And in the lies and incongruities of actions, the child still does not cease to seem exactly what he is, because he lives in his own world, created by his spirit, and acts, following the laws of this world. In order to judge a child fairly and correctly, we need not transfer him from his sphere to ours, but to move into his spiritual world ourselves. Then, but only then, we will understand the deep meaning of the Saviour's words: "Amen I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

If all human society consisted of only children, the duality of the soul in the child would never be detected and he would always appear to be what he is. He would transfer all the surrounding nature into his spiritual world and would act in it more consistently than we do.

But we, we adults, are constantly disturbing the harmony of the child's world. We, forcibly entering it, bring the child, at every step, to ourselves, to our light. We rush to indoctrinate him with our views, our notions, our information, acquired by the age-old efforts of a mature man. We heartily admire our successes, believing that the child understands us, and we do not want to realise that he understands us in his own way.

We do not want to "diminish ourselves" or "turn and be like children" and yet be their tutors and even consider ourselves entitled to enjoy the title of tutor without fulfilling this first and most important condition.

Now who is to blame that we notice so early in our children the unmistakable signs of the duality of the soul? Is it not we ourselves who mercilessly double it?

Indeed, our efforts are crowned with success. But how? By continually removing the child from his own spiritual being, by bringing him more and more into our sphere, by forcing him to look and understand in our way, we finally achieve one thing: he begins to seem to us not what he is. And this is the crown of our pedagogy!

What have we not invented to achieve this result? And children's balls, and theatres, and live pictures, and costumes, and even school settings. And to better ascertain whether a child really seems different to us, we have invented urgent tests.

Not only that: there were such pedagogues who invented the idea of making of children themselves an instrument of observation of children, so that both of them could better double their Spiritual life and distinguish as accurately as possible between being and seeming. It is known what brilliant results the Jesuit Fathers achieved on this ground.

If we, with our public method of education, contribute much - though unconsciously and acting according to extreme judgement - to the development of falsehood and pretence in the child, the Jesuits, not content with this, already consciously bring duplicity to the point of slander.

To a firm believer in mankind's striving for progress, for improvement, it seems indecent to say that children and people in general were better in the old days, i.e. once upon a time. Nevertheless, there is some truth in this well-known saying of the old and discontented.

Firstly, for any old man this is indeed a relative truth. He, taking less part in the actions of the transition from the old to the new, sees more clearly the worse things that always accompany each transition, which the fresh generation of today does not notice, being itself the conductor of the new. Secondly, there are indeed periods for mankind in which the old has not yet grown old enough, and the new, flowing in in torrents, has not yet had time to mature or amalgamate with the old.

These periods are as bad for morality as early thaws in the north are for sowing: the seeds are carried away by the melting snow. And this is no longer just a relative truth for old people.

We almost live in one of these periods ourselves.

If so, then it is not surprising that at a time when the old was still in full force, i.e. was not yet old, education was carried out with greater consistency, precisely because it was more one-sided. It is true that before, just as now, and even more so, adults measured children by their own yardstick, the special world of children existed as little for adults before as it does now. But the means they used to communicate their concepts and views to children were cruder and therefore better than ours. Our fathers and forefathers, following the literal rule of King Solomon: "He who spares his rod hates his son: but he who loves punishes diligently", transferred the child forcibly from his inner world into their own, but they were quicker to let him go back.

If one must choose between the two, it is surely better to invade the spiritual and childish world with a rod in one's hand than with a theatre playbill and a ball costume. Poison and gilded poison are more dangerous than sticks and bruises.

A child's imagination both develops and acts as the external senses and concept develop. In him thought never outstrips imagination. The surrounding nature, still new to him, gives him so much nourishment that it is constantly at work. It is a kaleidoscope in ceaseless rotation, through which the child looks at everything around it. Beware of disturbing this fantastic play by your actions.

Your artificial furnishings, however charming they may be, will not replace the marvellous images that the child's imagination creates. You will only in vain entertain its activities and early awaken a sense of discontent. The child, dissatisfied with his own, will ask to enter your world and will appear in it is not what he was in his sphere. Duality and satiety must follow.

So, it is not surprising that in the olden days, under less artificial conditions of upbringing, high and enduring characters were more clearly marked. He who came out of the school of the rod unharmed, bore a spirit as well tempered as the body of the wild and nomads who bathe new-born children in cold water.

But our modern educational environment is still too new to accurately discuss its results. The judgement of history has already been pronounced on the Jesuit way of education alone, which has not entirely lost its modernity. Wherever it prevailed, the duality of the soul still prevails. Being and seeming, forcibly separated by Jesuitism, has given rise to pretence, perfidy, slander, tattling and denunciation.

If all that I have said contains even a shadow of truth, tell me: is it not better, before God and mankind, to replace all the artificial endeavours of our own imagination by an education based on the laws of the virgin-fantastic world of the child?

In our time, when profound minds have devoted themselves to the study of the spiritual side even of the insane; when it is beginning to be discovered that even these outcasts of our society have their own logic, their own consistency of action, when science, having penetrated into their special world, seeks in it connections with ours, should we - I say - just now remain cold-blooded to the spiritual world of our children and not study it in every possible direction?

Tell me, what can be more instructive, what is higher, what is holier than a spiritual rapprochement with this divine, marvellous world of children? Who is not amused to follow all its discoveries, all its manifestations in time and space? Who does not have fun to rejuvenate his soul? Oh! if all parents and teachers would enter this mysteriously sacred temple of the still virgin human soul! How many new and undiscovered things they would learn! How they would have been renewed, how they would have become wiser! One glance at it by a poor Swiss, who loved children with a heart, produced a whole system of teaching, the fruits of which we are now just beginning to enjoy.

My advice applies mainly to you, mothers of families! Instead of sending your children to the theatre and ballroom stage, go behind the scenes yourself! Observe from here their first babbling and their first movements of the soul; observe them here and when they return to you, tired of playing and always ready to begin them again.

I would give you more advice, but I do not know how you will accept it. You may have thought of something better without me, as you are driven by your soul's desire for good and truth. I myself will now ask for advice, always respecting it if it is given from the heart, if it shows sense and love for truth and goodness. Tell me, fathers and teachers, do you all accept with me this children's world with its special laws? If so, tell me frankly: how do you enter it? And then advise me whether I should continue to allow children and young men to play on the public stage? Your advice may be purely theoretical, but I will accept it with gratitude.

Nikolai Pirogov. 29 March 1858

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