Strict was the school discipline; the usual words of encouragement which the poor scholars then wrote in one another's albums were--"Patience! joyfully onward!" But strictness was necessary, for in the under classes grown-up youths sat beside the children, and the bad tricks of two generations were in constant conflict. Through a great part of Germany there existed a custom which has been retained up to the present day, that the boys who were on the foundation must, under the lead of a teacher, sing as choristers. If they did not walk in funeral processions behind the cross, in their blue mantles, it was a grievous neglect, which much disturbed the discipline of the school, and as early as 1750 was complained of as an irregularity. The followers of Wolf were to be found everywhere among the gentry, as the scholars of the new "enlightenment," the watchmen of toleration, and the friends of scientific progress. In the course of this year they were in anxious discussion on some old controversial points, for the Leipziger, Crusius, had just published his "Introduction to the Rational Contemplation of Natural Occurrences;" and, with this work, and a cosmos of the year 1749, in their hands, they were once more taking into consideration whether they were to assume that space was a plenum or a vacuum, and whether the final cause of movement was to be sought in the active force of elastic bodies. Indignantly did these men of progress regard the theological faculty at Rostock, who had, just at this period, compelled a young Herr Kosegarten to make a recantation, because he had dared to maintain that the human nature of the Redeemer on earth had only been to a certain degree supported by his Divine nature; that he had learnt like others, and had not in all things a perfect foreknowledge. On the other hand, they accorded a benignant smile to the physico-theological contemplations of those who proved the possibility of the resurrection, in spite of the continual change of matter--or, to use the language of the time, in spite of the change of particles of the body--or took pains to show wisdom and foresight in the white fur of the hare in Livonia.