i74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the absolute, was not favorable to science. Yet it enjoyed the con- 

 fidence of the government and in many circles was accepted as true. 

 But to Schleiermacher and not a few others its theories seemed fanci- 

 ful and uncertain. Perhaps it was on account of their unwillingness 

 to receive him into the academy that in 1826 he and a few others 

 founded a society for scientific criticism with the three departments 

 of philology, philosophy and history. This society, to which some dis- 

 tinguished men attached themselves who might otherwise have been in 

 the academy, till some time after the death of Hegel was influential in 

 Berlin. Eegular sessions were held, and year books, two volumes each 

 year, from 1827 to 1840, were published. 



It was in this last 3 r ear that the philosophical class, now reduced 

 to two members, was given up, and its work transferred to the his- 

 torical class, of which, since Buttmann had become too old to discharge 

 its duties, Schleiermacher became secretary. During the first third of 

 the century the philosophy of the absolute had the field. It was in the 

 second third of the century that natural history and religion entered 

 the lists against it and won the victory. And yet the reign of science 

 in Berlin began with the return to that city in 1827 of Alexander von 

 Humboldt, who had lived twenty years in Paris in close association 

 with Liebig, Arago, Gay Lussac, Bonpland and Valenciennes, to all 

 of whom he was warmly attached. At that time the academies of 

 Paris were at the height of their fame, as eminent in their different 

 fields as the university of Paris had been in the middle ages among 

 the other universities of Europe. Humboldt had rare skill in gather- 

 ing and grouping facts, and the publication of his 'Cosmos' was a 

 great event in the scientific world. Yet its leaves were hardly dry 

 from the press before its conclusions were outgrown. But the spirit 

 and method of the book, writers like Harnack say, will survive. 



The winter of Humboldt 's return was full of excitement for learned 

 circles in Berlin. In the university he lectured on the 'Cosmos,' and 

 sixteen times he spoke on the physics of the world to an audience which 

 filled the Singakademie and represented every class of society from the 

 king to a stone mason. 



Between 1830 and 1840 many of the more prominent and useful 

 members of the academy passed away — Niebuhr, Seebeck, Eudolph, 

 Schleiermacher, William von Humboldt, — and new men were added — 

 Dirrichlet, Eanke the historian, Eichorn the critic, Hoffman the states- 

 man, Graff, Stein, Johannes Miiller, G. Rose, Gerhard, Dove the 

 meteorologist, Poggendorf, Neander the church historian, and Magnus 

 — every one of whom contributed not a little to the increase of knowl- 

 edge and to the fame of the academy. 



For some reason the physical class was now growing more rapidly 

 than the historical class, for there had in reality ceased to be more 

 than these two classes, and efforts were made in the early thirties to 



