ose spirit is characterized by
energy may well be eminent in poetry;--and we have Shakespeare. Again,
the highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a
faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry;
therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be
eminent in science;--and we have Newton. Shakespeare and Newton: in the
intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy,
which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon,
is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription, and
routine,--the fullest room to expand as it will. Therefore a nation
whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy will not be very apt to
set up, in intellectual matters, a fixed standard, an authority, like an
academy. By this it certainly escapes certain real inconveniences and
dangers; and it can at the same time, as we have seen, reach undeniably
splendid heights in poetry and science.

On the other hand, some of the requisites of intellectual work are
specially the affair of quickness of mind and flexibility of
intelligence. The form, the method of evolution, the precision, the
proportions, the relations of the parts to the whole, in an intellectual
work, depend mainly upon them. And these are the elements of an
intellectual work which are really most communicable from it, which can
most be learned and adopted from it, which have therefore the greatest
effect upon the intellectual performance of others. Even in poetry these
requisites are very important; and the poetry of a nation not eminent
for the gifts on which they depend, will more or less suffer by this
shortcoming. In poetry, however, they are after all secondary, and
energy is the first thing; but in prose they are of first-rate
importance. In its prose literature, therefore, and in the routine of
intellectual work generally, a nation with no particular gifts for these
will not be so successful. These are what, as I have said, can to a
certain degree be learned and appropriated, while the free activity of
genius cannot. Academies consecrate and maintain them, and therefore a
nation with an eminent turn for them naturally establishes academies. So
far as routine and authority tend to embarrass energy and inventive
genius, academies may be said to be obstructive to energy and inventive
genius, and to this extent to the human spirit's general advance. But
then this evil is s