human
The Russian Empire in the second half of the Seventeenth Century, denounced researches in physical science as
gpt
; [1559] and it is on record that scholars were obliged to study in secret and by night for fear of the hostility of the common people. [1560] Half-a-century later the orthodox majority seems to have remained convinced of the atheistic tendency of all science; [1561] and the friends of the new light doubtless included deists from the first. Not till the reforms of Peter had begun to bear fruit, however, could freethought raise its head. The great Czar, who promoted printing and literature as he did every other new activity of a practical kind, took the singular step of actually withdrawing writing materials from the monks, whose influence he held to be wholly reactionary. [1562] In 1703 appeared the first Russian journal; and in 1724 Peter founded the first Academy of Sciences, enjoining upon it the study of languages and the production of translations. Now began the era of foreign culture and translations from the French. [1563] Prince Kantemir, the satirist, who was with the Russian embassy in London in 1733, pronounced England, then at the height of the deistic tide,