SUPPORT FROM PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY 



the power to do so had some sort of an obligation to contribute 

 to the sum total of man's creativeness. 



Indeed, it appears that a good part of the early support for 

 basic science was based on this same spontaneous love of creativ- 

 ity for its own sake. Science and art often walked side by side 

 or appeared incorporated in the same person as in the celebrated 

 case of Leonardo da Vinci. The dissecting rooms of the middle 

 Renaissance were as much studio as laboratory. The anatomist 

 in Michelangelo contributed to the realistic power of the bodies 

 which decorate the Sistine Chapel while the artist in Vesalius 

 contrived to make the "Fabric of the Human Body" a delight to 

 the eye as well as a guide to the hand of the skilled surgeon. 



The philanthropic spirit which supported such men either 

 by private donation or official appointment was a curious mix- 

 ture — a love of man combining joy over his creativeness with 

 a very human pride in what he created. Philanthropy as charity 

 is not a marked characteristic of most Renaissance nobles, and 

 the practical application of scientific discoveries was regarded 

 as incidental. For example, one may feel sure that Leonardo 

 would have had no difficulty finding a job even if he had not 

 spent some of his time drawing up plans for fortifications. 

 Galileo was valued as a mathematician and philosopher and 

 only secondarily as an expert on the strength of materials. 



Pride is a bad word to us who learned our Christianity 

 from Puritan teachers, and as the most conspicuous consumers 

 in the world, we feel the need of paying La Rochefoucauld's 

 tribute to the virtue of humility. But as Herbert J. Muller — to 

 be described in a group of scientists as "the other Muller" — 

 tells us, one of the uses of the past is to learn from the irony 

 of history. And it is ironical that the million or so Americans 

 who go to Europe each year do so in large part to view the 

 monuments erected to feed the personal pride of the temporal 

 and spiritual leaders of an earlier day. It is difficult to overlook 



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