A New Model of the Universe

There exist moments in life, separated by long intervals of time, but linked together by their inner content and by a certain singular sensation peculiar to them. Several such moments always recur to my mind together, and I feel then that it is these that have determined the chief trend of my life.

The year 1890 or 1891. An evening preparation class in the Second Moscow “Gymnasium “.1 A large class-room lit by kerosene lamps with large shades. Yellow cupboards along the walls. Boarders in holland blouses, stained with ink, are bending over their desks. Some are immersed in their lessons, some are reading under their desks a forbidden novel by Dumas or Gaboriau, some are whispering to their neighbours. But outwardly they all look alike. At the master’s desk sits the master on duty, a tall lanky German, ” Giant Stride “, in his uniform—a blue tailcoat with gold buttons. Through an open door, another such preparation class is seen in the adjoining class-room.

I am a schoolboy in the second or third ” class “. But instead of Zeifert’s Latin grammar, entirely consisting of exceptions which I sometimes see in my dreams to this day, or Evtushevsky’s ” Problems “, with the peasant who went to town to sell hay, and the cistern to which three pipes lead, I have before me Malinin and Bourenin’s ” Physics “. I have borrowed this book from one of the older boys and am reading it greedily and enthusiastically, overcome now by rapture, now by terror, at the mysteries which are opening before me. All round me walls are crumbling, and horizons infinitely remote and incredibly beautiful stand revealed. It is as though threads, previously unknown and unsuspected, begin to reach out and bind things together. For the first time in my life my world emerges from chaos. Everything becomes connected, forming an orderly and harmonious whole. I understand, I link together, a series of phenomena which were disconnected and appeared to have nothing in common.

” Gymnasiums ” were government ” classical ” schools containing eight classes, i.e., forms, for boys from ten to eighteen.

But what am I reading?

I am reading the chapter on levers. And all at once a multitude of simple things, which I knew as independent and having nothing in common, become connected and united into a great whole. A stick pushed under a stone, a penknife, a shovel, a seesaw, all these things are one and the same, they are all ” levers “. In this idea there is something both terrifying and alluring. How is it that I did not know it? Why has nobody spoken to me about it? Why am I made to learn a thousand useless things and am not told about this? All that I am discovering is so wonderful and so miraculous that I become more and more enraptured, and am gripped by a certain presentiment of further revelations awaiting me. It is as though I already feel the unity of all and am overcome with awe at the sensation.

I can no longer keep to myself all the emotions which thrill me. I want to try to share them with my neighbour at the desk, a great friend of mine with whom I often have breathless talks. In a whisper I begin to tell him of my discoveries. But I feel that my words do not convey anything to him and that I cannot express what I feel.

My friend listens to me absent-mindedly, evidently not hearing half of what I say. I see this and feel hurt and want to stop talking to him. But the tall German at the master’s desk has already noticed that we are ” talking ” and that I am showing something to my friend under the desk. He hurries over to us and the next moment my beloved ” Physics ” is in his stupid and unsympathetic hands.