I am reading Isaiah Berlin and was thrilled to read the following, regarding the power of ideas and the individual, from my own perspective due to the ability of an individual to create or transform.

The German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas; ‘Philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilisation'

Isaiah Berlin writing in Two Concepts of Liberty 1958

I don’t understand why he used the words ‘professor's study’.

In a democracy, it could be the idea or ideas of any resourceful citizen which could destroy a civilisation, and sometimes do.