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XVII. 



OX THE OEIGIXS OF LEAEXED ACADEMIES IX MODERN 



EUEOPE. 



Ax ADDEESS DELm:KED TO THE ACADEMA", XOVEMBEE 30, 1912. 



By EEV. J. P. MAHAFFY, D.C.L., C.Y.O., President. 



The Academy originated by Plato, without charter or opening ceremony, by 

 the mere practice of walking and talking with his pupils in the only tree- 

 shaded suburb of Athens, must be the first word in any history of this 

 subject, and cannot but command our profound respect. For every such 

 society that has since attained to fame has arisen from a like origin, save 

 that the meetings in northern climates were indoors. The hero Hekademus, 

 after whom Plato's garden was called, was not even a Greek hero, but a 

 survival from some bygone race — in fact, an Attic Eirbolg. If he was ever 

 a real person and capable of resurrection, how astonished he would be at 

 finding his name familiar over all the world, not merely including societies of 

 learned intercourse such as the Platonic circle, but iised as the ordinary 

 Latin for all kinds of Universities, nay, even for the private rooms of very 

 small people, who teach still smaller the rudiments of singing and dancing. 

 Very similar is the extension of the word 'Museum' (the shrine of the Muses), 

 from a meaning almost the same as Academy, and by the same people, 

 to the Eoyal Academy of Alexandria, endowed with a great library, and with 

 equipment for observations, but ultimately to any collection of stuffed 

 beasts and birds and fossils — broadly speaking, any exhibition, to the curiosity 

 of the Living, of what is soulless or gone by, or dead.' 



The term 'Academy,' in its highest sense, arose with the Renascence, and 

 was adopted for any society that pursued and promoted learning. As such 

 the word is commonly iised in its Latin form for universities, whose chief 

 object is the education of the young and the care of the learned professions; 

 this use has given considerable trouble to those who were founding 

 Academies in a far higher sense — Academies devoted, not to teaching, but to 

 research, and in many respects distinctly opposed to the Uni-\-ersities. It 



^ It is still used, I m\ist add, in its proper seuse, of a literary club in some German universitv 

 towns. 



E.I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXX, SECT C. [61] 



