Note 17 — Chapter IX · EDUCATION.

University education is the education in Russia. It has a traditional pretension to be superior to all other (specialized) education, owing to its encyclopædic and philosophical character. The Russian characteristic of knowing something about everything and having vast aperçus is fostered by it. The university is to the Russian student what Paris is to the Frenchman, what Athens was to the ancient world. The student often misses the lectures of his own course and attends the lectures of other faculties, and this is encouraged by the professors, who did the same when they were young. In Russia, erratic and sporadic information is preferred to systematic and narrow knowledge.