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."[1] 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 (
Greek characters), by which they expressed a conviction of certainty arising from impressions so strong as to amount to science, he opposed the doctrine of (Greek characters), 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 ((Greek characters)) 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, how ever, 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 with out 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 con tent 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 aide, aid 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, (Greek characters). 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 M. 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 dis covered 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—1st, The object which they were designed to promote; 2d, The countries to which they belong. This classification, though, perhaps, the best available, is
- ↑ Archer Butler, Lect. on Anc. Phil. ii. 315.
