Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists — Part 5, Section 1 : The Apple-Tree

By Leo Tolstoy (1904)

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Untitled Anarchism Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists Part 5, Section 1

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(1828 - 1910)

Father of Christian Anarchism

: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "...the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence." (From: "A Letter to a Hindu: The Subjection of India- Its....)
• "Only by recognizing the land as just such an article of common possession as the sun and air will you be able, without bias and justly, to establish the ownership of land among all men, according to any of the existing projects or according to some new project composed or chosen by you in common." (From: "To the Working People," by Leo Tolstoy, Yasnaya P....)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)


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Part 5, Section 1

I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three years I dug around them in the spring and the fall, and in winter wrapped them with straw against the hares. On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I went to take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter during the winter: the bark was glossy and filled with sap; all the branches were sound, and at all the tips and axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds. Here and there the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the flower-leaves could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be blossoms and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the apple-trees. But when I took off the wrapping from the first tree, I saw that down at the ground the bark was nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood. The mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the same had happened there. Of the two hundred trees not one was unharmed. I smeared pitch and wax on the nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in bloom, the blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves, and they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled and black. Out of the two hundred apple-trees only nine were left. On these nine trees the bark had not been gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were left on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held together, there grew out knots, and, although the trees suffered, they lived. All the rest were ruined; below the rings there came out shoots, but they were all wild.

The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes along the tree and reaches the branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole inside of a tree may be taken out, as is often the case with old willows, and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive; but when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's arteries are cut through, he will die, in the first place, because the blood will flow out, and in the second, because the blood will not be distributed through the body.

Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a hole into it, in order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows out of it.

Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice gnawed the bark all around, and the sap could not rise from the roots to the branches, leaves, and flowers.

From : Gutenberg.org

(1828 - 1910)

Father of Christian Anarchism

: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
• "There are people (we ourselves are such) who realize that our Government is very bad, and who struggle against it." (From: "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)
• "...for no social system can be durable or stable, under which the majority does not enjoy equal rights but is kept in a servile position, and is bound by exceptional laws. Only when the laboring majority have the same rights as other citizens, and are freed from shameful disabilities, is a firm order of society possible." (From: "To the Czar and His Assistants," by Leo Tolstoy, ....)

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1904
Part 5, Section 1 — Publication.

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May 13, 2021; 5:52:06 PM (UTC)
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January 14, 2022; 4:01:21 PM (UTC)
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