Orest Danilovich Khvolson (1852-1934) can rightfully be considered the godfather of modern Russian physics, since practically the entire brilliant galaxy of Russian and Soviet physicists of the first half of our century grew up and studied on his five-volume "Course of Physics", which was published and republished for almost forty years beginning in 1897. We are publishing here a copy of one of the many lectures given by Khvolson at the St. Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad) University, where he taught for almost 60 years. Judging by the conclusions that follow from the lecture, one can only be glad that by that time "Materialism and Empiriocriticism" had already been written, and Vladimir Ilyich's attention was distracted by the world war that had begun; otherwise, the development of Russian physics could have taken a completely different path...