BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK. 189 



aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope 

 that if they have the patience to read the following pages, 

 they will see that we require nothing beyond what can 

 be easily attained. In fact, it has been attained ; and 

 what has been done on a small scale could be done on a 

 wider scale, were it not for the economical and social 

 causes which prevent any serious reform from being 

 .accomplished in our miserably organised society. 



The experiment has been made at the Moscow Tech- 

 nical School for twenty consecutive years with many 

 hundreds of boys ; and, according to the testimonies of 

 the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, 

 Philadelphia, Vienna, and Paris, the experiment has been a 

 success. The Moscow school admits boys not older than 

 fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing 

 but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, 

 together with the usual knowledge of their mother 

 tongue ; younger pupils are received in the preparatory 

 classes. The school is divided into two sections the 

 mechanical and the chemical ; but as I personally know 

 better the former, and as it is also the more important 

 with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit 

 my remarks to the education given in the mechanical 

 section. After a five or six years' stay at the school, the 

 students .leave it with a. thorough knowledge of higher 

 mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences 

 so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that ac- 

 quired in the best mathematical faculties of the most 

 eminent European universities. When myself a student 

 of the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg Uni- 

 versity, I had the opportunity of comparing the know- 

 ledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School 

 with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry 

 some of them had compiled for the use of their com- 

 rades ; I admired the facility with which they applied the 

 integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to 

 the conclusion that while we, University students, had 



