SCIENCE AND FINE ART. 751 



SCIENCE AND FINE ART.* 



By EMIL DU BOIS-EEYMOND. 



WHEN we represent to ourselves the mental stature of the 

 extraordinary man in whose honor we meet every year on 

 this day, we are ever anew astonished at the boundless breadth of 

 his view and the almost endless diversity of the subjects in which 

 he was interested. It appears hardly comprehensible that the 

 state paper which adjudged the principality of Neufchatel to the 

 King of Prussia came from the same pen as the Protogea, the 

 Analysis of the Infinite, and the true measure of force from 

 the same head as the pre-established harmony and the Theodicy. 

 Yet on closer examination a gap is revealed in this picture 

 which at first sight appeared all-inclusive. Aside from tlie Latin 

 poem in which Leibnitz extravagantly glorifies Brand's discovery 

 of phosphorus, we seek in vain for any relation of our hero to art. 

 That his Ars comblnaforia had nothing to do with fine art does 

 not need to be said. Only occasionally and rarely do we meet in 

 his writings and letters remarks on art and the beautiful. Once 

 he permits himself to be heard at length on the pleasure we re- 

 ceive from music, the causes of which he seeks in a uniform 

 though invisible order in the movements of the trembling strings 

 "which . . . produces in us ... a harmonious resonance, by 

 which our vital spirits are also moved. "f But the world of feel- 

 ing was only dimly visible to Leibnitz. He saw the Alps and the 

 Italian art treasures with his eyes, but was, as we now say, soul- 

 blind. The same lack of appreciation of fine art is seen in Vol- 

 taire, who was comparable for his various learning with Leibnitz ; 

 and we have to come down to a third generation, to Diderot in 

 France, and Winckelmann and Lessing in Germany, to find de- 

 cisive interest in fine art and appreciation of its position in the 

 culture-life of the people. 



The period thus defined was, aside from a few phenomenal ex- 

 amples, one of decline in art, while it was one of the most famous 

 in science. When we regard the historical development of these 

 two lines of human activity, we find no conformity in their courses. 

 During the highest bloom of Grecian plastic art there was hardly 

 any science. At the beginning of the art period which we are 

 accustomed to call the cinque-cento stands out the giant figure of 



* Address on Leibnitz Commemoration-day in the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, July 

 3, 1890. 



f Die philosopliischen Schriftcn von G. W. Leibnitz. Published by C. J. Gerhardt. Vol. 

 ii, p. 87. Berlin, 1890. 



