4i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



all the world, an asylum for all students of science and art, and to be 

 undisturbed even by war. 



Leibniz (1646-1716), though unwilling to break with the old learn- 

 ing which the universities cherished, had breathed the breath of the 

 new learning which came in with the Eenaissance and the Eeforma- 

 tion. Holding fast to all that was valuable in the traditions of the 

 past, he early became an ardent advocate of the new methods of study 

 which science, even in its beginnings, introduced, and through the 

 founding of academies in the great capitals of Europe sought to unite 

 the tendencies of the time with the protestant spirit of research and 

 criticism. A many-sided man, philosopher, theologian, jurist, poli- 

 tician, philologist, physicist, an acute observer, fond of experiment, 

 with a constructive mind, restless in his eagerness for knowledge, he 

 did more than any man of his era to forward the study of nature and 

 to emphasize its unity. Through the establishment of an academy in 

 Germany under royal patronage he thought he could demonstrate the 

 harmony of the world in study and research and realize the unity of 

 human society. His first proposal for a society for the study of science 

 was made in 1667 when he was but twenty-one years old, his last only 

 seventeen days before his death. He suggested and furthered, so far 

 ar. he could, the union of all the learned societies of Europe, a plan 

 which has been partially realized in our own time. He lived in Hann- 

 over, where he made himself useful to the Brunswick princes as a 

 historian, although he did not possess their complete confidence as a 

 politician. Having observed the working of the French Academy 

 when on a visit to Paris in 1675, the following year he proposed a 

 German academy somewhat on its model, and even named the forty- 

 eight men who were to compose it. He proposed later, as protestants 

 seemed indifferent to his project, that the Pope divide the fields of 

 learning among the catholic orders, assigning the study of nature to 

 the Benedictines and Cistercians, that of law to the Dominicans and 

 the Jesuits, that of language to other orders, and to the Franciscans 

 the care of souls. If the princes of the House of Brunswick failed to 

 give him their entire confidence, he had an unfailing friend in the 

 Princess Sophie (1630-1714), daughter of Frederick V. of the Pala- 

 tinate, and mother of George I. of England. It was through her 

 daughter, Sophie Charlotte, who married the elector of Brandenburg 

 September 28, 1684, and who had been educated under the eye of 

 Leibniz, that he realized at last his hope of founding an academy in 

 Berlin. Of this woman Frederick the Great said she had both 'the 

 spirit of society and of true culture,' and that 'she brought the love 

 of science and the arts into Prussia.' She was a gifted, charming 

 woman, and so eager for knowledge that even Leibniz was wont to say 

 of her that she was never satisfied with reasons which were sufficient 

 for others, she 'must know the why of the why.' Although Leibniz 



