If history be closely examined, it will be found that every advance in pedagogics has consisted merely in a diminution of compulsion, a facilitation of study, and a greater and greater approach to naturalness in the relations between teacher and pupil. People have asked, How can we find the degree of freedom to be allowed in school? To which I reply that the limit of that freedom is naturally defined by the teacher, by his knowledge, and by his capacity to manage the school. Such freedom cannot be dictated; its measure is merely the result of the greater or lesser knowledge and talent possessed by the master. Freedom is not a rule, but it serves as a gauge when comparing one school with another, or when judging of new methods. The school in which there is less compulsion, is better than the one in which there is more. That method is good which, when introduced into a school, does not necessitate any increase of discipline; while that is certainly bad which necessitates greater severity. From his main subject of Education, Tolstoy digresses in these articles into a discussion of other problems, in a way which reminds one of those wonderful essays he began to pour forth a quarter of a century later. That he had been somewhat influenced by the Slavophils is indicated by his readiness to assume that Russia may advance along a line of her own, entirely different to that the Western nations have travelled. 'Progress,' in which like almost all his contemporaries he had believed, he now questions; and he indulges in a sharp attack on Macaulay for the third chapter of his _History_, which he says contains no proof that any real progress has been achieved. Buckle, similarly, is roughly handled for the assumption of progress that underlies his _History of Civilisation_; but most scathing of all is his onslaught upon Hegel, who (till Darwin appeared) was the rock on which many of the intellectual Liberals took their stand.