“In the middle of 1859, I completed a course at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. With each year of my study at the academy, I became more and more convinced that the theological specialty and spiritual service were not at all to my liking, and my attention was directed more to philosophy and generally to secular sciences than to theological sciences. Before completing the course, I finally decided to leave my clerical title and devote myself to activities not in the spiritual, but in some other field. First of all, I took the risk of trying to break into the literary field and, as a test, write something that could end up in the secular press...”