Athenian, who came to laugh at Xenocrates, and remained to listen (Horace, Sat., ii. 3, 253); Crates, and Crantor, the latter of whom wrote a treatise, π ε ρί π έ vθovς, praised by Cicero. Speusippus, like the Pythagoreans, with whom Aristotle compares him, denied that the Platonic Good could be the first principle of things, for (he said) the Good is not like the germ which gives birth to plants and animals, but is only to be found in already existing things. He therefore derived the universe from a primeval indeterminate unit, distinct from the Good; from this unit he deduced three principles—one for numbers, one for magnitude, and one for the soul. The Deity he conceived as that living force which rules all and resides everywhere. Xenocrates, though like Speusippus infected with Pytha-goreanism, was the most faithful of Plato’s successors. He distinguished three essences: the sensible, the intelligible, and a third, compounded of the other two. The sphere of the first is all below the heavens, of the second all beyond the heavens, of the third heaven itself. To each of these three spheres one of our faculties corresponds. To the sensible, sense; to the intelligible, intellect or reason; to the mixed sphere, opinion (δ όξα ). So far he closely follows the psychology and cosmogeny of his master; but Cicero notes as the characteristic of both Speusippus and Xenocrates, the abandonment of the Socratic principle of hesitancy.

Of the remaining three, the same writer (who is our principal authority for the history of the Academic school) tells us that they preserved the Platonic doctrine, but emphasised the moral part. On the old Academy he pronounces the following eulogium (De Fin. v. 3); “Their writings and method contain all liberal learning, all history, all polite discourse; and besides, they embrace such a variety of arts, that no one can undertake any noble career without their aid In a word, the Academy is, as it were, the workshop of every artist.” Modern criticism has not endorsed this high estimate. They preserved, it is true, and elaborated many details of the Platonic teaching, which we could ill have spared; but of Plato’s originality and speculative power, of his poetry and enthusiasm, they inherited nothing; “nor amid all the learning which has been profusely lavished upon investigating their tenets, is there a single deduction calculated to elucidate distinctly the character of their progress or regression.” There is a saying of Polemo’s, which will illustrate their virtual abandonment of philosophy proper: “We should exercise ourselves in business, not in dialectical speculation.”

Arcesilaus, the successor of Crates, the disciple of Theophrastus and Polemo, was the founder of the second or middle Academy. He professed himself the strict follower of Plato, and seems to have been sincerely of opinion that his was nothing but a legitimate development of the true Platonic system. He followed the Socratic method of teaching in dialogues; and, like Socrates, left no writings,—at least the ancients were not acquainted with any. But we have no evidence that he maintained the ideal theory of Plato, and from the general tendency of his teaching it is probable that he overlooked it. He affirmed that neither our senses nor our mind can attain to any certainty; in all we must suspend our judgment; probability is the guide of life. Cicero tells us that he was more occupied in disputing the opinions of others than in advancing any of his own. Arcesilaus is, in fact, the founder of that academic scepticism which was developed and systematised by Carneades, the founder of the third or new Academy. He was the chief opponent of the Stoics and their doctrine of certitude. This is attested by a well-known saying of his: “If there had been no Chrysippus, there would have been no Carneades.” To the Stoical theory of perception, the φαντασία καταληπτική, by which they expressed a conviction of certainty arising from impressions so strong as to amount to science, he opposed the doctrine of ακαταληψία, which denied any necessary correspondence between perceptions and the objects perceived. But while denying the possibility of any knowledge of things in themselves, he saved himself from absolute scepticism by the doctrine of probability or verisimilitude, which may serve as a practical guide in life. Thus he announced as his criterion of truth an imagination or impression (φαντασία) at once credible, irrefragable, and attested by comparison with other impressions. The wise man might be permitted to hold an opinion, though he allowed that that opinion might be false. In ethics, however, he appeared as the pure sceptic. On his visit to Rome as an ambassador from Athens, he alternately maintained and denied in his public disputations the existence of justice, to the great scandal of Cato and all honest citizens.

On the fourth and fifth Academies, we need not dwell long. Philo and Antiochus both taught Cicero, and without doubt communicated to him that mild scepticism, that eclecticism compounded of almost equal sympathy with Plato and Zeno, which is the characteristic of his philosophical writings. The Academy exactly corresponded to the moral and political wants of Rome. With no genius for speculation, the better Romans of that day were content to embrace a system which, though resting on no philosophical basis, and compounded of heterogeneous dogmas, offered notwithstanding a secure retreat from religious scepticism and political troubles. “My words,” says Cicero, speaking as a true Academician, “do not proclaim the truth, like a Pythian priestess; but I conjecture what is probable, like a plain man; and where, I ask, am I to search for anything more than verisimilitude ?” And again: “The characteristic of the Academy is never to interpose one’s judgment, to approve what seems most probable, to compare together different opinions, to see what may be advanced on either side, aud to leave one's listeners free to judge without pretending to dogmatise.”

Academy, in its modern acceptation, signifies a society or corporate body of learned men, established for the advancement of science, literature, or the arts.

The first institution of this sort we read of in history was that founded at Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter, which he named the Museum, μ oυσε ί ov . After completing his conquest of Egypt, he turned his attention to the cultivation of letters and science, and gathered about him a large body of literary men, whom he employed in collecting books and treasures of art. This was the origin of the library of Alexandria, the most famous of the ancient world. Passing by the academies which were founded by the Moors at Grenada, Corduba, and as far east as Samarcand, the next instance of an academy is that founded by Charlemagne at the instigation of the celebrated Alcuin, for promoting the study of grammar, orthography, rhetoric, poetry, history, and mathematics. In order to equalise all ranks, each member took the pseudonym of some ancient author or celebrated person of antiquity. For instance, Charlemagne himself was David, Alcuin became Flaccus Albinus. Though none of the labours of this academy have come down to us, it undoubtedly exerted considerable influence in modelling the language and reducing it to rules.

In the following century Alfred founded an academy at Oxford. This was rather a grammar school than a society of learned men, and from it the University of Oxford originated.

But the academy which may be more justly considered as the mother of modern European academies is that of Floral Games, founded at Toulouse in the year 1325, by Clemens Isaurus. Its object was to distribute prizes and rewards to the troubadours. The prizes consisted of flowers of gold and silver. It was first recognised by the state in 1694, and confirmed by letters-patent from the king, and its numbers limited to thirty-six. It has, except during a few years of the republic, continued to the present day, and distributes annually the following prizes :—An amaranth of gold for the best ode, a silver violet for a poem of sixty to one hundred Alexandrine lines, a silver eglantine for the best prose composition, a silver marigold for an elegy, and a silver lily presented in the last century by Μ. de Malpeyre for a hymn to the Virgin.

It was the Renaissance which was par excellence the era of academies, and as the Italians may be said to have discovered anew the buried world of literature, so it was in Italy that the first and by far the most numerous academies arose. The earliest of these was the Platonic Academy, founded at Florence by Cosmo de Medici for the study of the works of Plato, though subsequently they added the explanation of Dante and other Italian authors.

Marsilius Ficinus, its principal ornament, in his Theologica Platonica, developed a system, chiefly borrowed from the later Platonists of the Alexandrian school, which, as it seemed to coincide with some of the leading doctrines of Christianity, was allowed by the church. His Latin translation of Plato is at once literal, perspicuous, and correct; and as he had access to MSS. of Plato now lost, it has in several places enabled us to recover the original reading. After the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, the Platonic Academy was dissolved.

In giving some account of the principal academies of Europe, which is all that this article professes to do, we shall, as far as possible, arrange them under different heads, according to—1 st, The object which they were designed to promote; 2 d , The countries to which they belong. This classification, though, perhaps, the best available, is necessarily imperfect, inasmuch as several of those we shall mention were at once literary and scientific, and many associations for similar objects were known by some other name. Thus, with the doubtful exception of the Royal Academy of Arts, England has no academies in the proper sense of the word. For those institutions in England which answer to Italian academies, we must refer the reader to the article Society.

I. Scientific Academies.— Italy.— The first society for the prosecution of physical science was that established at Naples, 1560, under the presidency of Baptista Porta. It was called Academia Secretorum Naturae or de Secreti. It arose from a meeting of some scientific friends, who assembled at Porta’s house, and called themselves the Otiosi. No member was admitted who had not made some useful discovery in medicine or natural philosophy. The name suggested to an ignorant public the prosecution of magic and the black arts. Porta went to Rome to justify himself before Paul III. He was acquitted by the Pope, but the academy was dissolved, and he was ordered to abstain for the future from the practice of all illicit arts.

At Rome he was admitted to the Lincei, an academy founded by Federigo Cesi, the Marcese di Monticelli. The device of the Lincei was a lynx with its eyes turned towards heaven tearing a Cerberus with its claws, intimating that they were prepared to do battle with error and falsehood. Their motto was the verse of Lucretius describing rain dropping from a cloud—“Redit agmine dulci.” Besides Porta, Galileo and Colonna were enrolled among its members. The society devoted itself exclusively to physical science. Porta, under its auspices, published his great work, Magiae Naturalis libri xx., 1589, in fol.; his Phytogno-monica, or, the occult virtue of plants; his De Humana Physiognomia, from which Lavater largely borrowed; also various works on optics and pneumatics, in which he approached the true theory of vision. He is even said by some to have anticipated Galileo in the invention of the telescope.

But the principal monument still remaining of the zeal and industry of Cesi and his academy is the Phytobasanos, a compendium of the natural history of Mexico, written by a Spaniard, Hernendez. During fifty years the MS. had been neglected, when Cesi discovered it, and employed Terentio, Fabro, and Colonna, all Lynceans, to edit it and enrich it with notes and emendations. Cesi’s own great work, Theatrum Naturae, was never published. The MS. still exists in the Albani Library at Rome. After Cesi’s death, 1630, the academy languished for some years under the patronage of Urban VIII. An academy of the same name was inaugurated at Rome 1784, and still flourishes. It numbers among its members some of our English philosophers. But the fame of the Lincei was far outstripped by that of the Accademia del Cimento , established in Florence 1657, under the patronage of the Grand Duke Ferdinand II., at the instigation of his brother Leopold, acting under the advice of Viviani, one of the greatest geometers of Europe. The object of this academy was (as the name implies) to make experiments and relate them, abjuring all preconceived notions. Unfortunately for science, it flourished for only ten years. Leopold in 1667 was made a cardinal, and the society languished without its head. It has, however, left a record of its labours in a volume containing an account of the experiments, published by the secretary in 1667. It is in the form of a beautifully printed folio, with numerous full print pages of illustrations. It contains, among others, those on the supposed incompressibility of water, on the pressure of the air, and on the universal gravity of bodies. Torricelli, the inventor of the barometer, was one of its members.

Passing by numerous other Italian Academies of Science, we come to those of modern times.

The Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin originated in 1757 as a private society; in 1759 it published a volume of Miscellanea Philosophico-Mathematica Societatis privatae Taurinensis; shortly after it was constituted a Royal Society by Charles Emanuel III., and in 1783 Victor Amadeus III. made it a Royal Academy of Sciences. It consists of 40 members, residents of Turin, 20 nonresident, and 20 foreign members. It publishes each year a quarto volume of proceedings, and has crowned and awarded prizes to many learned works.

France.— The Old Academy of Sciences originated in much the same way as the French Academy. A private society of scientific men had for some thirty years been accustomed to meet first at the house of Montmort, the mâitre des requêtes, afterwards at that of Thevenot, a great traveller and man of universal genius, in order to converse on their studies, and communicate their discoveries. To this society belonged, among others, Descartes, Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, and his father. Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury, was presented to it during his visit to Paris in 1640. Colbert, just as Richelieu in the case of the French Academy, conceived the idea of giving an official status to this body of learned men. Seven eminent mathematicians, among whom were Huyghens and De Bessy, the author of a famous treatise on magic squares, were chosen to form the nucleus of the new society. A certain number of chemists, physicians, and anatomists were subsequently added. Pensions were granted by Louis XIV. to each of the members, and a fund for instruments and experimentations placed at their disposal. They commenced their session the 22d December 1666 in the Royal Library. They met twice a week—the mathematicians on the Wednesdays, the physicists (as the naturalists and physiologists were then called) on the Saturdays. Duhamel was appointed secretary by the king. This post he owed more to his polished Latinity than to his scientific attainments, all the proceedings of the society being recorded in Latin. A treasurer was also nominated, who, notwithstanding his pretentious title, was nothing more than conservator of the scientific instruments, &c. At first the academy was rather a laboratory and observatory than an academy proper. Experiments were undertaken in common and results discussed. Several foreign savants, in particular the Danish astronomer Roemer, joined the society, attracted by the liberality of the Grand Monarque; and the German physician and geometer Tschirnhausen and Sir Isaac Newton were made foreign associates. The death of Colbert, who was succeeded by Louvois, exercised a disastrous effect on the fortunes of the academy. The labours of the academicians were diverted from the pursuit of pure science to such works as the construction of fountains and cascades at Versailles, and the mathematicians were employed to calculate the odds of the games of lansquenet and bassett. In 1699 the academy was reconstituted by Μ. de Pontchartrain, under whose department as secretary of state the academies came. By its new constitution it consisted of ten honorary members, men of high rank, who interested themselves in science, fifteen pensionaries, who were the working members, viz., three geometricians, and the same number of astronomers, mechanicians, anatomists, and chemists. Each section of three had two associates attached to it, and besides, each pensionary had the power of naming a pupil. There were eight foreign and four free associates. The officers were, a president and a vice-president, named by the king from among the honorary members, and a secretary and treasurer chosen from the pensionaries, who held their offices for life. Fontenelle, a man of wit, and rather a populariser of sciences than an original investigator, succeeded Duhamel as secretary. The constitution, as is evident, was purely aristocratical, and unlike that of the French Academy, in which the principle of equality among the members was never violated. Science was not yet strong enough to dispense with the patronage of the great. The two leading spirits of the academy at this period were Clairaut and Reaumur. Clairaut was the first to explain capillary attraction, and predicted within a few days of the correct time the return of Halley’s comet. His theory on the figure of the earth was only superseded by Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste. Reaumur was principally distinguished by his practical discoveries, and a thermometer in common use at the present day bears his name.

To trace the subsequent fortunes of this academy would far exceed our limits, being equivalent to writing the history of the rise and progress of science in France. It has reckoned among its members Laplace, Buffon, Lagrange, D’Alembert, Lavoisier, and Jussieu, the father of modern botany. Those of our readers who wish for further information we would refer to Μ. Alfred Maury’s excellent history.

On 21st December 1792, the old Academy of Sciences met for the last time. Many of the members fell by the guillotine, many were imprisoned, more reduced to indigence. The aristocracy of talent was almost as much detested and persecuted by the Revolution as that of rank.

In 1795 the Convention decided on founding an Institute, which was to replace all the academies. The first class of the Institute corresponded closely to the old academy. See Institute.

In 1816 the Academy was reconstituted as a branch of the Institute. The new academy has reckoned among its members, besides many other brilliant names, Carnot the engineer, the physicians Fresnel, Ampère, Arago, Biot, the chemists Gay-Lussac and Thénard, the zoologists G. Cuvier and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires.

The French had also considerable academies in most of their large towns. Montpellier, for example, had a Royal Academy of Sciences, founded in 1706 by Louis XIV., on nearly the same footing as that at Paris, of which, indeed, it was in some measure the counterpart. It was reconstituted in 1847, and organised under three sections— medicine,...