A secret official inquiry showed that the revolutionary agitation proceeded in all cases from young men who were studying, or had recently studied, in the universities, the seminaries, or the technical schools, such as the Medical Academy and the Agricultural Institute.  Plainly, therefore, the system of education was at fault.  The semi-military system of the time of Nicholas had been supplanted by one in which discipline was reduced to a minimum and the study of natural science formed a prominent element.  Here it was thought, lay the chief root of the evil.  Englishmen may have some difficulty in imagining a possible connection between natural science and revolutionary agitation.  To them the two things must seem wide as the poles asunder.  Surely mathematics, chemistry, physiology, and similar subjects have nothing to do with politics.  When a young Englishman takes to studying any branch of natural science he gets up his subject by means of lectures, text-books, and museums or laboratories, and when he has mastered it he probably puts his knowledge to some practical use.  In Russia it is otherwise.  Few students confine themselves to their speciality.  The majority of them dislike the laborious work of mastering dry details, and, with the presumption which is often found in conjunction with youth and a smattering of knowledge, they aspire to become social reformers and imagine themselves specially qualified for such activity.

But what, it may be asked, has social reform to do with natural science?  I have already indicated the connection in the Russian mind.  Though very few of the students of that time had ever read the voluminous works of Auguste Comte, they were all more or less imbued with the spirit of the Positive Philosophy, in which all the sciences are subsidiary to sociology, and social reorganisation is the ultimate object of scientific research.  The imaginative Positivist can see with prophetic eye humanity reorganised on strictly scientific principles.  Cool-headed people who have had a little experience of the world, if they ever indulge in such delightful dreams, recognise clearly that this ultimate goal of human intellectual activity, if it is ever to be reached, is still a long way off in the misty distance of the future; but the would-be social reformers among the Russian students of the sixties were too young, too inexperienced, and too presumptuously self-confident to recognise this plain, simple truth.  They felt that too much valuable time had been already lost, and they were madly impatient to begin the great work without further delay.  As soon as they had acquired a smattering of chemistry, physiology, and biology they imagined themselves capable of reorganising human society from top to bottom, and when they had acquired this conviction they were of course unfitted for the patient, plodding study of details.