Russia's Contribution to Science. 215 



walls. The teachers themselves were subject to this supervision 

 and dreaded the never-closing Argus eye of the inspector. The 

 duties imposed on them, the general atmosphere of life amidst 

 poverty, suspicion, bribery, and Simonism, prevented the teachers 

 of secondary schools from doing original work of any character. 

 Such work, not uncommon in Germany, is of the rarest occur- 

 rence in Russia and only teachers of quite remarkable ability 

 managed to step out of the high-school routine and drudgery 

 into the broader field of an academic career. The Russian 

 "Gymnasia," the Russian "Realnoje Utchilishtche" were pat- 

 terned after the German "Gymnasium" and "Realschule" but 

 the spirit of reactionary orthodox Russian autocracy was added 

 to the German worship of authority and discipline of mind and 

 will, and coupled with corruption, pervaded everything and cor- 

 rupted and perverted the growing mind. It is a wonder under 

 the circumstances that the mind, the spirit of Russian youth 

 was not completely crushed in its instinctive upward struggling 

 for light and knowledge and free expression of self. 



The entrance into the sacred precincts of the highest educa- 

 tion was purposely made difficult to prevent an undesirable 

 growth of knowledge in wider circles. Only pupils who had 

 studied in a gymnasium and had therefore had seven years of 

 Latin and six years of Greek and who passed the examinations 

 at the end of their studies extending altogether over eight years, 

 had the right to study at a university. Yet it may not be quite 

 out of place to mention here that a boy entering the university 

 in Russia knows no more of mathematics than a high-school 

 boy in America and knows even less of physics and chemistry, 

 while biology was not on the program of studies at all. 



One was allowed to postpone military training until after the 

 studies at the university had been finished, and in the cases of 

 men preparing for an academic career military training was alto- 

 gether waived. This exemption applied both to those who became 

 teachers at schools and professors at universities. But the re- 

 quirements for professorial positions were so high, as we shall 

 see later, that the exemption from military training was in no 

 sense an inducement. 



On entering the university the student had to follow a pre-" 

 scribed course of studies through all four years, but could and 

 was expected to take also other courses, provided they did not 



