MahaI'TY — The Origins of Learned Academies in Modern Europe. 439 



here lie down together, and a little child — the Elector of Brandenburg — 

 might lead them. 



The family likeness to the pronouncement of Lynxes, nay, to the vision 

 of Bacon in his New Atlantis, is very striking; and yet I have found no 

 evidence that the Great Elector knew either of them. Whether Bacon 

 had not heard of the Italian visions is a question which 1 cannot answer 

 without further investigation. At all events the patent issued by the Elector 

 was the jhodomontade, not of a philosophical speculator, but of a famous 

 ruler with sound practical sense, and the founder of the political greatness of 

 North Germany. Those who have studied the hopes and anticipations of the 

 whole epoch of the Kenascence will find that its young men everywhere felt 

 a similar wild enthusiasm, though they were not kings, and expressed it in 

 less fanciful ways. The German enthusiasm was just as great as the rest 

 though perhaps a little clumsy, and the hopes of that age very different from 

 those of our specialized and prosaic scientists. 



It was a happy coincidence, indeed, that these hopes and aspirations 

 accompanied the rise into eminence of Leibnitz, not only one of the greatest 

 philosophers but one of the greatest organizers of learning that ever lived, 

 who showed his vast genius in no respect more brilliantly than in his 

 promotion of Academies. He urged, indeed, that the foundation of such 

 international institutions should be coupled with the re-union of creeds, and 

 that Catholic and Protestant should find some common ground of dogma 

 which might remove some of the most deplorable obstacles to the development 

 of a higher civilization. But on this point the age was not with him. People 

 had, indeed, become sick of theological disputes, and had come to consider this 

 cause of desolating wars with weariness and with disgust. But they were 

 quite willing to pursue secular learning without any regard to creed ; and so 

 Leibnitz found no serious hindrance here to his other great plans. The material 

 obstacle which had always stood in the way was the impossibility even to 

 imagine any Academy as self-supporting. The Italians had depended on the 

 splendid but sporadic liberality of enthusiastic noblemen. Leibnitz knew 

 that a State endowment afforded a more reasonable hope, and his insistence 

 upon this condition was of great service. But he sought it not so much in 

 direct subsidies as in obtaining grants of State monopolies of such things as 

 only learned men produce. Chief of these was a proper reformed Calendar 

 for the use of all the nation, at a time when astronomy was still new and 

 marvellous, and things now obvious were wonders to the ordinary public. 



He knew very well that this one monopoly would not suffice, and proposed 

 many other fanciful sources of income, such as a tax on travelling abroad, but 

 in none of them was he successful. On the other hund, he found at Berlin 



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