Mahaffy — The Origins of Learned Academies in 3Iodern Europe. 431 



There was another fundamental contrast between the early notion of an 

 Academy and that of an university. While the latter taught the traditional 

 knowledge — in science and philosophy, the system of Aristotle; in literature, 

 the classical languages, and those of the Holy Scriptures — the new Academies 

 were distinctly in opposition to Aristotle, who, in their opinion, limited and 

 shackled research. Languages or polite literature were with most of them 

 only a secondary matter, which they rather tolerated than promoted, 

 especially as regards what have ever since, with some truth, been called 

 dead languages. But in one direction they a,dniitted that much good could 

 be done — in the purifying and ennobling of the local languages of their 

 respective countries, and the substitution of them as the language of modern 

 science for the traditional Latin. More than one of them laboured at 

 constructing an universal language and character which would save all the 

 millions of hours spent in acquiring the mere tools to prosecute science. Here 

 they encouraged a large and practical purpose. They desired men of research 

 not to be hampered with a learned and artificial speech, but to express what 

 they had to say in their own tongue, without any linguistic hindrance. 



Some of them went much further, and the Vocabulario of the Accademia 

 della Crusca in Florence, a work in five folio volumes, published about 1600, 

 was, I suppose, the earliest great Dictionary of the Italian tongue. A century 

 later Leibnitz, a great founder of Academies, carried out the same idea, and 

 the purifying and humanizing of the German language, which even Luther's 

 great Bible had not raised to the adequate level, was one of the most serious 

 objects which he proposed to the Academy of Berlin. He was led, as all 

 great men are, by precedent, and this he found in the older Italian Academies. 

 The Royal Society of London, founded only a generation earlier, was that 

 which he most of all desired to take as his model, but he was much exercised 

 by that body's adoption of the term Society, instead of Academy ; so much so 

 that he suggested its adoption for the new foundation, seeing that the other 

 term was so frequently used as to be almost vulgar. But in a great centre 

 like London, where the members were not far asunder, there is much to be 

 said for the term Society, especially as it makes the term Fellow suitable for 

 its members. An Academy, which may be worldwide, has Members, not like 

 the Fellows of a College or a Society. These considerations of the proper use of 

 language have been violated by a recently founded body, which, instead of 

 becoming a department of the great and famous Royal Society, founded a 

 distinct British Academy, and called its members Fellows — a novelty not to 

 be commended. We have, however, no right to criticize our neighbours, 

 seeing that the solecism "Fellow of this University" has even crept into the 

 Chapel of Trinity College. All these improprieties, however, were left in the 



[61*] 



