ON THE RELATION OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO ART.* 
By Dr. E. Du Bots-REYMonND, F. BR. S. 
i. 
We are assembled to-day in annual commemoration of a man whose 
marvellous breadth of view and extraordinary variety of interests are 
each time a fresh surprise to us. It seems incredible that the same 
hand could have penned the “ Protogea” and the state paper adjudging 
the Principality of Neufchatel to the King of Prussia, or that the same 
mind could have conceived the infinitesimal calculus and the true meas- 
ure of forces, as well as the pre-established harmony and the ‘Theo- 
dicea.” A closer examination however reveals a blank in the uni- 
versality of his genius. We seek in vain for any connection with art, 
if we except the Latin poem composed by Leibnitz in praise of Brand’s 
discovery of phosphorus. We need hardly mention that his “Ars 
Combinatoria” has nothing to do with the fine arts. In his letters and 
works observations on the beautiful are few and far between; once he 
discusses more at length the pleasure excited by music, the cause ot 
which he attributes to an equable, though invisible, order in the chordal 
vibrations, which “raiseth a sympathetic echoin ourminds.” However, 
the world of the senses had little reality for Leibnitz. With his bodily 
eye he saw the Alps and the treasures of Italian art, but they conveyed 
nothing to his soul. He was indifferent to beauty; in short, we never 
surprise this Hercules at Omphale’s distaff. 
The same neglect, at least of sculpture and painting, strikes us in 
Voltaire, who as polyhistorian can insome measure compare with Leib- 
nitz. Weare obliged to descend as far as the third generation—that 
is, to Diderot in France, to Wineckelmann and Lessing in Germany— 
before we meet with a decided interest in the fine arts and an appreci- 
ation of the part they play in the progress. of civilization. - 
Berlin in commemoration of Leibnitz, on July 3, 1890. Translated by his daughter. 
This address was first printed in the weekly reports (Sitzungsberichte) of the Berlin 
Academy, then in Dr. Rodenberg’s Deutsche Rundschau, and lastly it was published 
as a separate pamphlet by Veit & Co., at Leipzig, 1891. (From Nature, December 
31, 1891, and January 7, 1892; vol. xLv, pp. 200-204, and 224-227.) ae 
