Chapter XXX: Section D: RELIGIOUS WORK. (Hall 1, September 24, 3 p. m.) (3)

The three divisions which still lie before us represent Practical Knowledge. Have we a logical right to put them on an equal level with the four large divisions which we have considered so far? Might it not rather be said that all that is knowledge in those practical sciences must find its place somewhere in the theoretical field, and that everything outside of it is not knowledge, but art? It cannot be denied indeed that the logical position of the practical sciences presents serious problems. That the function of the engineer or of the physician, of the lawyer or of the minister, of the diplomat or of the teacher, contains elements of an art cannot be doubted. They all need not only knowledge, but a certain instinct and power and skill, and their schooling thus demands a training and discipline through imitation which cannot be substituted by mere learning. Yet when it comes to the classification of sciences, it seems very doubtful whether practical sciences have to be acknowledged as special divisions, inasmuch as the factor of art must have been eliminated at the moment they are presented as sciences. The auscultation of the physician certainly demands skill and training, yet this practical activity itself does not enter into the science of medicine as presented in medical writings. As soon as the physician begins to deal with it scientifically, he needs, as does any scholar, not the stethoscope, but the pen. He must formulate judgments; and as soon as he simply describes and analyzes and explains and interprets his stethoscopic experiences, his statements become a system of theoretical ideas.

We can say in general that the science of medicine or of engineering, of jurisprudence or of education, contains, as science, no element of art, but merely theoretical judgments which, as such, can find their place somewhere in the complete systems of the theoretical sciences. If the physician describes a disease, its symptoms, the means of examining them, the remedies, their therapeutical effects, and the prophylaxis, in short, everything which the physician needs for his art, he does not record anything which would not belong to an ideally complete description and explanation of the processes in the human body. In the same way it can be said that if the engineer characterizes the conditions under which an iron bridge will be safe, it is evident that he cannot introduce any facts which would not find their logical place in an ideally complete description of the properties of inorganic nature; and finally, the same is true for the statements of the politician, the jurist, the pedagogue, or the minister. Whatever is said about their art is a theoretical judgment which connects facts of the ideally complete system of theoretical science; in their case the facts of course belong in first line to the realm of the psychological, historical, and normative sciences. There never has been or can be practical advice in the form of words, which is not in principle a statement of facts which belong to the absolute totality of theoretical knowledge. Seen from this point of view, it is evident that all our knowledge is fundamentally theoretical, and that the conception of practical knowledge is logically unprecise.

But the opposite point of view might also be taken. It might be said that after all every kind of knowledge is practical, and our own deduction of the meaning of science might be said to suggest such interpretation. We acknowledged at the outset that the so-called theoretical knowledge is by no means a passive mirror picture of an independent outside world; but that in every judgment real experience is remoulded and reshaped in the service of certain purposes of will. Here lies the true core of that growing popular philosophy of to-day which, under the name of pragmatism, or under other titles, mingles the purposive character of our knowledge and the evolutionary theories of modern biology in the vague notion that men created knowledge because the biological struggle for existence led to such views of the world; and that we call true that correlation of our experiences which has approved itself through its harmony with the phylogenetic development. Certainly we must reject such circle philosophies. We must see clearly that the whole conception of a biological development and of a struggle of organisms is itself only a part of our construction of causal knowledge. We must have knowledge to conceive ourselves as products of a phylogenetic history, and thus cannot deduce from it the fact, and, still less, the justification of knowledge. Yet one element of this theory remains valuable: knowledge is indeed a purposive activity, a reconstruction of the world in the service of ideals of the will. We have thus from one side the suggestion that all knowledge is merely theoretical, from the other side the claim that all knowledge is practical activity. It seems as if both sides might agree that it is superfluous and unjustified to make a demarcation line through the field of knowledge and to separate two sorts of knowledge, theoretical and practical. For both theories demand that all knowledge be of one kind, and they disagree only as to whether we ought to call it all theoretical or all practical.

Yet the true situation is not characterized by such an antithesis. If we say that all knowledge is ultimately practical, we are speaking from an epistemological point of view, inasmuch as we take it then as a reconstruction of the world through the purposive activity of the over-individual subject. On the other hand it is an empirical point of view from which ultimately all knowledge, that of the physician and engineer and lawyer, as well as that of the astronomer, appears theoretical. But this antithesis can, therefore, not decide the further empirical question, whether or not in the midst of theoretical knowledge two kinds of sciences may be discriminated, of which the one refers to empirical practical purposes and the other not. Such an inquiry would have nothing to do with the epistemological problem of pragmatism; it would be strictly non-philosophical, just as the separation of chemistry into organic and inorganic chemistry. This empirical question is indeed to be answered in the affirmative. If we ask what causes bring about a certain effect, for the sake of a practical purpose of ours,--for instance, the curing a patient of disease,--no one can state facts which are not in principle to be included in the complete system of physical causes and effects and thus in the system of physical sciences. And yet it may well be that the physical sciences, as such, have not the slightest reason to mention the effect of that special drug on that special pathological alteration of the tissues of the organism. The descriptions and explanations of science are not a mere heaping up of material, but a steady selection in the interest of the special aim of the science. No physical science describes every special pebble on the beach; no historical science deals with the chance happenings in the daily life of any member of the crowd. And we already well know the point of view from which the selection is to be performed. We want to know in the physical and psychical sciences whatever is involved in the object of our experience, and in the historical and normative sciences whatever is involved in the demands which reach our will. But whether we have to do with the objects or with the demands, in both cases we have systems before us which are determined only by the objects or demands themselves, without any relation to our individual will and our own practical activity. Theoretically, of course, our will, our activity, our organism, our personality is included in the complete system; and if we knew absolutely everything of the empirical effects of the object or of the consequences of these demands, we should find among them their relation to our individual interests; but that relation would be but one chance case among innumerable others, and the sciences would not have the slightest interest in giving any attention to that particular case. Thus if our knowledge of chemical substances were complete, we should certainly have to know theoretically that a few grains of antipyrine introduced into the organism have an influence on those brain centres which regulate the temperature of the human body. Yet if the chemist does not share the interest of the physician who wants to fight a fever, he would have hardly any reason for examining this particular relation, as it hardly throws light on the chemical constitution as such. In this way we might say in general that the relation of the world to us as acting individuals is in principle contained in the total system of the relations of our world of experience, but has a strictly accidental place there and can never be in itself a centre around which the scientific data are clustered, and science will hardly have an interest in giving any attention to its details.

This relation of the world, the physical, the psychical, the historical, and the normative world, to our individual, practical purposes can, however, indeed become the centre of scientific interest, and it is evident that the whole inquiry receives thereupon a perfectly new direction which demands not only a completely new grouping of facts and relations, but also a very different shading in elaboration. As long as the purpose was to understand the world without relation to our individual aims, science had to gather endless details which are for us now quite indifferent, as they do not touch our aims; and in other respects science was satisfied with broad generalizations and abstractions where we have now to examine the most minute details. In short, the shifting of the centre of gravity creates perfectly new sciences which must be distinguished; and if we call them again theoretical and practical sciences, it is clear that this difference has then no longer anything to do with the philosophical problems from which we started.

The term practical may be preferable to the other term which is sometimes used: Applied Science. If we construct the antithesis of theoretical and applied science, the underlying idea is clearly that we have to do on the practical side with a discipline which teaches how to apply a science which logically exists as such beforehand. Engineering, for instance, is an applied science because it applies the science of physics; but this is not really our deepest meaning here. Our practical sciences are not meant as mere applications of theoretical sciences. They are logically somewhat degraded if they are treated in such a way. Their real logical meaning comes out only if they are acknowledged as self-dependent sciences whose material is differentiated from that of the theoretical sciences by the different point of view and purpose. They are methodologically perfectly independent, and the fact that a large part or theoretically even everything of their teaching overlaps the teaching of certain theoretical sciences ought not to have any influence on their logical standing. The practical sciences could be conceived as completely self-dependent, without the existence of any so-called theoretical sciences; that is, the relations of the world of experience to our individual aims might be brought into complete systems without working out in principle the system of independent experience. We might have a science of engineering without acknowledging an independent science of theoretical physics besides it. To be sure, such a science of engineering would finally develop itself into a system which would contain very much that might just as well be called theoretical physics; yet all would be held together by the point of view of the engineer, and that part of theoretical physics which the engineer applies might just as well be considered as depracticalized engineering. If this logical self-dependence of the practical science holds true even for such technological disciplines, it is still more evident that it would cripple the meaning and independent character of jurisprudence and social science, or of pedagogy and theology, to treat them simply as applied sciences, that is, as applications of theoretical science.

This point of view determines, also, of course, the classification of the Practical Sciences. If they were really merely applied sciences it would be most natural to group them according to the classification of the theoretical sciences which are to be applied. We should then have applied physical sciences, applied psychological sciences, applied historical sciences, and applied normative sciences. Yet even from the standpoint of practice, we should come at once into difficulties, and indeed much of the superficiality of practical sciences to-day results from the hasty tendency to consider them as applied sciences only, and thus to be determined by the points of view of the theoretical discipline which is to be applied. Then, for instance, pedagogy becomes simply applied psychology, and the psychological point of view is substituted for the educational one. Pedagogy then becomes simply a selection of those chapters in psychology which deal with the mental functions of the child. Yet as soon as we really take the teachers' point of view, we understand at once that it is utterly artificial to substitute the categories of the psychologist for those of immediate practical will-relations and to consider the child in the class-room as a causal system of psycho-physical elements instead of a personality which is teleologically to be interpreted, and whose aims are not to be connected with causal effects but with over-individual attitudes. In this way the historical relation and the normative relation have to play at least as important a rôle in the pedagogical system as the psycho-physical relation, and we might quite as well call education applied history and applied ethics.

Almost every practical science can be shown in this way to apply a number of theoretical sciences; it synthesizes them to a new unity. But better, we ought to say, that it is a unity in itself from the start, and that it only overlaps with a number of theoretical sciences. If we want to classify the practical sciences, we have thus only the one logical principle at our disposal: we must classify them in accordance with the group of human individual aims which control those different disciplines. If all practical sciences deal with the relation of the world of experience to our individual practical ends, the classes of those ends are the classes of our practical sciences, whatever combinations of applied theoretical sciences may enter into the group. Of course a special classification of these aims must remain somewhat arbitrary; yet it may seem most natural to separate three large divisions. We called them the Utilitarian Sciences, the Sciences of Social Regulation, and the Sciences of Social Culture. Utilitarian we may call those sciences in which our practical aim refers to the world of things; it may be the technical mastery of nature or the treatment of the body, or the production, distribution, and consumption of the means of support. The second division contains everything in which our aim does not refer to the thing, but to the other subjects; here naturally belong the sciences which deal with the political, legal, and social purposes. And finally the sciences of culture refer to those aims in which not the individual relations to things or to other subjects are in the foreground, but the purposes of the teleological development of the subject himself; education, art, and religion here find their place. It is, of course, evident that the material of these sciences frequently allows the emphasis of different aspects. For instance, education, which aims primarily at self-development, might quite well be considered also from the point of view of social regulation; and still more naturally could the utilitarian sciences of the economic distribution of the means of support be considered from this point of view. Yet a classification of sciences nowhere suggests by its boundary lines that there are no relations and connections between the different parts; on the contrary, it is just the manifoldness of these given connections which makes it so desirable to become conscious of the principles involved, and thus to emphasize logical demarcation lines, which of course must be obliterated as soon as any material is to be treated from every possible point of view. It may thus well be that, for instance, a certain industrial problem could be treated in the Normative Sciences from the point of view of ethics; in the Historical Sciences, from the point of view of the history of economic institutions; in the Physical Sciences, from the point of view of physics or chemistry; in the Mental Sciences, from the point of view of sociology; in the Utilitarian Sciences, from the point of view of medicine or of engineering, or of commerce and transportation; and finally in the Regulative Sciences, from the point of view of political administration, or in the Social Sciences, from the standpoint of the urban community, and so on. The more complex the relations are, the more necessary is it to make clean distinctions between the different logical purposes with which the scientific inquiries start. Practical life may demand a combination of historical, sociological, psychological, economical, social, and ethical considerations; but not one of these sciences can contribute its best if the consciousness of these differences is lost and the deliberate combination is replaced by a vague mixture of the problems.

6. _The Subdivisions_

We have now before us the ground-plan of the scheme, the four theoretical divisions, and the three practical divisions; every additional comment on the classification must be of secondary importance, as it has to refer to the smaller subdivisions, which cannot change the principles of the plan, and which have not seldom, indeed, been a result of practical considerations. If, for instance, our Division of Cultural Sciences shows in the final plan merely the departments of Education and of Religion, while the originally planned Department of Art is left out, there was no logical reason for it, but merely the practical ground that it seemed difficult to bring such a practical art section to a desirable scientific level; we confine art, therefore, to the normative æsthetic and historical points of view. Or, to choose another illustration, if it happened that the normative sciences were finally organized without a section for the philosophy of law, this resulted from the fact that the American jurists, in contrast with their Continental European colleagues, showed a general lack of appreciation for such a section. A few sections had to be left out even for the chance reason that the leading speakers were obliged to withdraw at a time when it was too late to ask substitutes to work up addresses. And almost everywhere there had to be something arbitrary in the limitation of the special sections. Though Otology and Laryngology were brought together into one section, they might just as well have been placed in two; and Rhinology, which was left out, might have been added as a third in that company. As to this subtler ramification, the plan has been changed several times during the period of the practical preparation of the plan, and much is the result of adjustment to questions of personalities. No one claims, thus, any special logical value for the final formulation of the sectional details, for which our chief aim was not to go beyond eight times sixteen, that is 128, sections, inasmuch as it was planned to have the meetings at eight different time-periods in sixteen different halls. If we had fulfilled all the wishes which were expressed by specialists, the number would have been quickly doubled.

Yet a few remarks may be devoted to the branching off within the seven divisions, as a short discussion of some of these details may throw additional light on the general principles of the whole plan. If we thus begin with the Normative Sciences, we stand at once before one feature of the plan which has been in an especially high degree a matter of both approval and criticism: the fact that Mathematics is grouped with Philosophy. The Division was to contain, as we have seen, the systems of logically connected will-acts of the over-individual subject. That Ethics or Logic or Æsthetics or Philosophy of Religion deals with such over-individual attitudes cannot be doubted; but have we a right to coördinate the mathematical sciences with these philosophical sciences? Has Mathematics not a more natural place among the physical sciences coördinated with and introductory to Mechanics, Physics, and Astronomy? The mathematicians themselves would often be inclined to accept without hesitation this neighborhood of the physical sciences. They would say that the mathematical objects are independent realities whose properties we study like those of nature, whose relations we "observe," whose existence we "discover," and in which we are interested because they belong to the real world. All this is true, and yet the objects of the mathematician are objects made by the logical will only, and thus different from all phenomena into which sensation enters. The mathematician, of course, does not reflect on the purely logical origin of the objects which he studies, but the system of knowledge must give to the study of the mathematical objects its place in the group where the functions and products of the over-individual attitudes are classified. The mathematical object is a free creation, and a creation not only as to the combination of elements--that would be the case with many laboratory substances of the chemist too--but a creation as to the elements themselves, and the value of that creation, its "mathematical interest," is to be judged by ideals of thought; that is, by logical purposes. No doubt this logical purpose is its application in the world of objects and the mathematical concepts must thus fit the objective world so absolutely that mathematics can be conceived as a description of the world after abstracting not only from the will-relations, as physics does, but also from the content. Mathematics would, then, be the phenomenalistic science of the form and order of the world. In this way, mathematics has indeed a claim to places in both divisions: among the physical sciences if we emphasize its applicability to the world, and among the teleological sciences if we emphasize the free creation of the objects by the logical will. But if we really go back to epistemological principles, our system has to prefer the latter emphasis; that is, we must coördinate mathematics with logic and not with physics.

As to the subdivision of philosophy, it is most essential for us to point to the negative fact that of course psychology cannot have a place in the philosophical department, as part of the Normative Division. There is perhaps no science whose position in the system of knowledge offers so many methodological difficulties as psychology. Historical tradition of course links it with philosophy; throughout a great part of its present endeavors it is, on the other hand, linked with physiology. Thus we find it sometimes coördinated with logic and ethics, and sometimes, especially in the classical positivistic systems, coördinated with the sciences of the organic functions. We have seen why a really logical treatment has to disregard those historical and practical relations and has to separate the psychological sciences from the philosophical and the biological sciences. Yet even this does not complete the list of problems which must be settled, inasmuch as modern thinkers have frequently insisted that psychology itself allows a twofold aspect. We can have a psychology which describes and explains the mental life by analyzing it into its elements and by connecting these elements through causality. But there may be another psychology which treats inner life in that immediate unity in which we experience it and seeks to interpret it as the free function of personality. This latter kind of psychology has been called voluntaristic psychology as against the phenomenalistic psychology which seeks description and explanation. Such voluntaristic psychology would clearly belong again to a different division. It would be a theory of individual life as a function of will, and would thus be introductory to the historical sciences and to the normative sciences too. Yet we left out this teleological psychology from our programme, as such a science is as yet a programme only. Wherever an effort is made to realize it, it becomes an odd mixture of an inconsistent phenomenalistic psychology on the one side, and philosophy of history, logic, ethics, and æsthetics on the other side. The only science which really has a right to call itself psychology is the one which seeks to describe and to explain inner life and treats it therefore as a system of psychical objects, that is, as contents of consciousness, that is, as phenomena. Psychology belongs, then, in the general division of psychical sciences as over against physical sciences, and both deal with objects as over against philosophy and history, which deal with subjects of will.

The subdivision of the Historical Sciences offers no methodological difficulty as soon as those epistemological arguments are acknowledged by which we sharply distinguish history from the Physical and Mental Sciences. If history is a system of will-relations which is in teleological connection with the will-demands that surround us, then political history loses its predominant rôle, and the history of law and of literature, of language and of economy, of art and religion, become coördinated with political development, while the mere anthropological aspect of man is relegated to the physical sciences. The more complete original scheme was here again finally condensed for practical reasons; for instance, the planned departments on the History of Education, on the History of Science, and on the History of Philosophy were sacrificed, and the department of Economic History was joined to that of Political History. In the same way we felt obliged to omit in the end many important sections in the departments; we had, for instance, in the History of Language at first a section on Slavic Languages; yet the number of scholars interested was too small to justify its existence beside a section on Slavic Literature. Also the History of Music was omitted from the History of Art; and the History of Law was planned at first with a fuller ramification.

The division of Physical Sciences naturally suggested that kind of subdivision which the positivistic classification presents as a complete system of sciences. Considering physics and chemistry as the two fundamental sciences of general laws, we turn first to astronomy, then from the science of the whole universe to the one planet, to the sciences of the earth; thence to the living organisms on the earth; and from biology to the still narrower circle of anthropology. The special classification of physics offers a certain difficulty. To divide it in text-book fashion into sound, light, electricity, etc., seems hardly in harmony with the effort to seek logical principles in the other parts of the classification. The three groups which we finally formed, Physics of Matter, Physics of Ether, and Physics of Electron, may appear somewhat too much influenced by the latest theories of to-day, yet it seemed preferable to other principles. In the biological department, criticism seems justified in view of the fact that we constructed a special section, Human Anatomy. A strictly logical scheme might have acknowledged that human anatomy is to-day not a separate science, and that it has resolved itself into comparative anatomy. Sections of Invertebrate and Vertebrate Anatomy might have been more satisfactory. The final arrangement was a concession to the practical interests of the physicians, who have naturally to emphasize the anatomy of the human organism.

In the division of Mental Sciences, we have the Department of Sociology. We were, of course, aware that the sociological interest includes not only the psychological, but also the physiological life of society, and that it thus has relations to the physical sciences too. Yet these relations are logically not more fundamental than those of the individual mental life to the functions of the individual organism. Much of the physiological side was further to be handed over to the Department of Anthropology, and thus we felt justified in grouping sociology with psychology under the Mental Sciences, as the psychology of the social organism. Here, too, a larger number of sections was intended and only the two most essential ones, Social Structure and Social Psychology, were finally admitted.

The ramifications of the practical sciences had to follow the general principle that their character is determined by purpose and not by material. The difficulty was here merely in the extreme specialization of the practical disciplines, which suggests on the whole the forming of very small units, while our plan was to provide for fifty practical sections only. It seemed, therefore, incongruous to have the whole of Internal Medicine or the whole of Private Law condensed into one section. Yet as the purpose of the scheme was a theoretical and not a practical one, even where the theory of practical sciences was in question, we felt justified in constructing coördinated sections, even where the practical importance was very unequal. On the other hand, some glaring defects just here are due merely to chance circumstances. That there were, for instance, no sections on Criminal Law or Ecclesiastical Law in the Department of Jurisprudence, nor on Legal Procedure, resulted from the unfortunate accident that in these cases the speakers who were to come from Europe were withheld by illness or public duties. The absence of the Department of Art in the Division of Social Culture, and thus of the Sections on the theory and practice of the different arts, has been explained before. It is evident that also in the Economical Department the practical development has interfered with the original symmetrical arrangement of the sections. This is not true of the Religious Department, whose six sections express the tendencies of the original plan. The frequently expressed criticism that the different religions and their denominations ought to have found place there shows a misconception of our purpose; a Parliament of Religion did not belong to this plan.

III

THE RESULTS OF THE CONGRESS

The programme of the Congress, as outlined in the previous pages, was in this case somewhat more than a mere programme. It not only invited to do a piece of work, but it sought to contribute to the work itself. Yet the chief work had to be done by others, and their part needed careful preparation. Yet very little of the preparation showed itself to the eyes of the larger public, and few were fully aware what a complex organization was growing up and how many persons of mark were coöperating.

It was essential to find for every address the best man. Specialists only could suggest to the committees where to find him. It has been told before how our invitations were brought to the foreigners first till the desired number of foreign participants was secured, and how the Americans followed. As could not be otherwise expected, interferences of all kinds disturbed the ideal configuration of the first list of acceptances; substitutes had sometimes to be relied on; and yet, when on the nineteenth of September President Francis welcomed the Congress of Arts and Science in the gigantic Festival Hall of the St. Louis Exposition, the Committee knew that almost four hundred speakers had completed their manuscripts, and that it was a galaxy which far surpassed in importance that of any previous international congress. And the list of those who stood for the success of the work was not confined to the official speakers. Each Department and each Section had its own honorary President, who was also chosen by the consent of leading specialists and whose introductory remarks were to give additional importance to the gathering. At their side stood the hundred and thirty Secretaries, carefully chosen from among the productive scholars of the younger generation. And a large number of informal, yet officially invited contributors, had announced valuable discussions and addresses for almost every Section. Invitations to membership finally had been sent to the universities and scholarly societies of all countries.

That the turmoil of a world's fair is out of harmony with the scholar's longing for repose and quietude is a natural presupposition, which has not been disproved by the experience of St. Louis. When Professor Newcomb, our President, spoke to the opening assembly on the dignity of scholarship, the scholar's peaceful address was accentuated by the thunder of the cannons with which Boer and British forces were playing at war near by. The roaring of the Pike overpowered many a quiet session, and the patient speaker had not seldom to fight heroically with a brass band on the next lawn. The trains were delayed, trunks were mixed up, and the sultry St. Louis weather stirred much secret longing for the seashore and the mountains, which most had to leave too early for that pilgrimage to the Mississippi Valley. Yet all this could have been easily foreseen, and every one knew that all this would soon be forgotten. These slight discomforts were many times made up for by the overwhelming beauty of that ivory city in which the civilization of the world was focused by the united energy of the nations, and it seemed well worth while to cross the ocean for the delight of that enchantment which came with every evening's myriad illumination. And every day brought interesting festivities. No one will forget the receptions of the foreign commissioners, or the charming hospitality of the leading citizens of St. Louis, or the enthusiastic banquet which brought one thousand speakers and presidents and official members of the Congress together as guests of the master mind of the Exposition, President Francis.

While the discomfort of external shortcomings was thus easily balanced, it is more doubtful whether the internal shortcomings of the work can be considered as fully compensated for. It would be impossible to overlook these defects in the realization of our plans, even if it may be acknowledged that they were unavoidable under the given conditions. The principal difficulty has been that many speakers have not really treated the topic for the discussion of which they were invited. This deviation from the plan took various forms. There was in some cases a fundamental attitude taken which did not harmonize with those logical principles which had led to the classification; for instance, we had sharply separated, for reasons fully stated above, the Division of History from the Division of Mental Sciences, including sociology; yet some papers for the Division of History clearly indicated sympathy with the traditional positivistic view, according to which history becomes simply a part of sociology. And similar variations of the general plan occur in almost every division. But there cannot be any objection to this secondary variety as long as the whole framework gives the primary uniformity. Certainly no one of the contributors is to be blamed for it; no one was pledged to the philosophy of the general plan, and probably few would have agreed if any one had had the idea of demanding from every contributor an identical background of general convictions. Such monotony would have been even harmful, as the work would have become inexpressive of the richness of tendencies in the scholarly life of our time. This was not an occasion where educated clerks were to work up in a secondhand way a report whose general trend was determined beforehand; the work demanded original thinkers, with whom every word grows out of a rich individual view of the totality. If every paper had been meant merely as a detailed amplification of the logical principles on which the whole plan was based, it would have been wiser to set young Doctor candidates to work, who might have elaborated the hint of the general scheme. To invite the leaders of knowledge meant to give them complete freedom and to confine the demands of the plan to a most general direction.

The same freedom, which every one was to have as to the general standpoint, was intended also for all with regard to the arrangement and limitation of the topic. All the sectional addresses were supposed to deal either with relations or with fundamental problems of to-day. It would have been absurd to demand that in every case the totality of relations or of problems should be covered or even touched. The result would have become perfunctory and insignificant. No one intended to produce a cyclopedia. It was essential everywhere to select that which was most characteristic of the tendencies of the age and most promising for the science of the twentieth century. Those problems were to be emphasized whose solution is most demanded for the immediate progress of knowledge, and those relations had to be selected through which new connections, new synthetic thoughts prepare themselves to-day. That this selection had to be left to the speaker was a matter of course.

Yet it may be said that in all these directions, with reference to the general standpoint and with reference to problems and relations, the Organizing Committee had somewhat prepared the choice through the selection of the speakers themselves. As the standpoints of the leading speakers were well known, it was not difficult to invite as far as possible for every place a scholar whose general views would be least out of harmony with the principles of the plan. For instance, when we had the task before us of selecting the divisional speakers for the Normative and for the Mental Sciences, it was only natural to invite for the first a philosopher of idealistic type and for the latter a philosopher of positivistic stamp, inasmuch as the whole scheme gave to the mental sciences the same place which they would have had in a positivistic scheme, while the normative sciences would have lost the meaning which they had in our plan if a positivist had simply psychologized them. In the same way we gave preference as far as possible, for the addresses on relations, to those scholars whose previous work was concerned with new synthetic movements, and as speakers on problems those were invited who were in any case engaged in the solution of those problems which seemed central in the present state of science. Thus it was that on the whole the expectation was justified that the most characteristic relations and the most characteristic problems would be selected if every invited speaker spoke essentially on those relations and on those problems with which his own special work was engaged.

Yet there is no doubt that this expectation was sometimes fulfilled beyond our anticipation, in an amount of specialization which was no longer entirely in harmony with the general character of the undertaking. The general problem has become sometimes only the starting-point or almost the pretext for speaking on some relation or problem so detailed that it can hardly stand as a representative symbol of the whole movement in that sectional field. Especially in the practical sciences more room was sometimes taken for particular hobbies and chance aspects than in the eyes of the originators the occasion may have called for. Yet on the whole this was the exception. The overwhelming majority of the addresses fulfilled nobly the high hopes of the Boards, and even in those exceptional cases where the speaker went his own way, it was usually such an original and stimulating expression of a strong personality that no one would care to miss this tone in the symphony of science.

Even now of course, though the Congress days have passed, and only typewritten manuscripts are left from all those September meetings, it would be easy to provide, by editorial efforts, for a greater uniformity and a smoother harmonization. Most of the authors would have been quite willing to retouch their addresses in the interest of greater objective uniformity and to accept the hint of an editorial committee in elaborating more fully some points and in condensing or eliminating others. Much was written in the desire to bring a certain thought for discussion before such an eminent audience, while the speaker would be ready to substitute other features of the subject for the permanent form of the printed volume. Yet such editorial supervision and transformation would be not only immodest but dangerous. We might risk gaining some external uniformity, but only to lose much of the freshness and immediacy and brilliancy of the first presentation. And who would dare to play the critical judge when the international contributors are the leaders of thought? There was therefore not the slightest effort made to suggest revision of the manuscripts, for which the whole responsibility must thus fall to the particular author. The reduction to a uniform language seemed, on the other hand, most natural, and those who had delivered their addresses in French, German, or Italian themselves welcomed the idea that their papers should be translated into English by competent specialists. The short bibliographies, selected mostly through the chairman of the departments, and the very full index with references may add to the general usefulness of the eight volumes in which the work is to be presented.

But the significance of the Congress of Arts and Science ought not to be measured and valued only by reference to this printed result. Its less visible side-effects seem in no way less important for scholarship, and they are fourfold. There was, first, the personal contact between the scholarly public and the leaders of thought; there was, secondly, the first academic alliance between the United States and Europe; there was, thirdly, the first demonstration of a world congress crystallized about one problem; there was, fourthly, the unique accentuation of the thought of unity in all human science; and each of these four movements will be continued and reinforced by the publication of these proceedings.

The first of these four features, the contact of the scholarly public with the best thinkers of our time, had, to be sure, its limitations. It was not sought to create a really popular congress. Neither the level of the addresses, nor the size of the halls, nor the number of invitations sent out, nor the general conditions of a world's fair at which the expense of living is high and the distractions thousandfold, favored the attendance of crowds. It was planned from the first that on the whole scholars and specialists should attend and that the army should be made up essentially of officers. If in an astronomical section perhaps thirty men were present, among whom practically every one was among the best known directors of observatories or professors of mathematics, astronomy, or physics, from all countries of the globe, much more was gained than if three thousand had been in the audience, brought together by an interest of curiosity in moon and stars. For the most part there must have been between a hundred and two hundred in each of the 128 sectional meetings, and that was more than the organizers expected. This direct influence on the interested public is now to be expanded a thousandfold by the mission work of these volumes. The concentration of these hundreds of addresses into a few days made it in any case impossible to listen to more than to a small fraction; these volumes will bring at last all speakers to coördinated effectiveness; and while one hall suffered from bad acoustics, another from bad ventilation, and a third from the passing of the intermural trains, here at least is an audience in which nothing will disturb the sensitive nerves of the willing follower.

But much more emphasis is due to the second feature. The Congress was an epoch-making event for the international world of scholarship from the fact that it was the first great undertaking in which the Old and the New Worlds stood on equal levels and in which Europe really became acquainted with the scientific life of these United States. The contact of scholarship between America and Europe has, indeed, grown in importance through many decades. Many American students had studied in European and especially in German universities and had come back to fill the professorial chairs of the leading academic institutions. The spirit of the Graduate School and the work towards the Doctor's degree, yes, the whole productive scholarship of recent decades had been influenced by European ideals, and the results were no longer ignored at the seats of learning throughout the whole world. European scholars had here and there come as visiting lecturers or as assimilated instructors, and a few American scholars belonged to the leading European Academies. Yet, whoever knew the real development of American post-graduate university life, the rapid advance of genuine American scholarship, the incomparable progress of the scientific institutions of the New World, of their libraries and laboratories, museums and associations, was well aware that Europe had hardly noticed and certainly not fully understood the gigantic strides of the country which seemed a rival only on commercial and industrial ground. Europe was satisfied with the traditional ideas of America's scientific standing which reflected the situation of thirty years ago, and did not understand that the changes of a few lustres mean in the New World more than under the firmer traditions of Europe. American scientific literature was still neglected; American universities treated in a condescending and patronizing spirit and with hardly any awareness of the fundamental differences in the institutions of the two sides. Those European scholars who crossed the ocean did it with missionary, or perhaps with less unselfish, intentions, and the Americans who attended European congresses were mostly treated with the friendliness which the self-satisfied teacher shows to a promising pupil. The time had really come when the contrast between the real situation and the traditional construction became a danger for the scientific life of the time. Both sides had to suffer from it. The Americans felt that their serious and important achievements did not come to their fullest effectiveness through the insistent neglect of those who by the tradition of centuries had become the habitual guardians of scientific thought. A kind of feeling of dependency as it usually develops in weak colonies too often depressed the conscientious scholarship on American soil as the result of this undue condescension. Yet the greater harm was to the other side. Once before Europe had had the experience of surprise when American successes presented themselves where nothing of that kind was anticipated in the Old World. It was in the field of economic life that Europe looked down patronizingly on America's industrial efforts, and yet before she was fully aware how the change resulted, suddenly the warning signal of the "American danger" was heard everywhere. The surprise in the intellectual field will not be less. The unpreparedness was certainly the same. Of course, there cannot be any danger of rivalry in the scientific field, inasmuch as science knows no competition but only coöperation. And yet it cannot be without danger for European science if it willfully neglects and recklessly ignores this eager working of the modern America. For both sides a change in the situation was thus not only desirable, but necessary; and to prepare this change, to substitute knowledge for ignorance, nothing could have been more effective than this Congress of Arts and Science.

Even if we abstract from the not inconsiderable number of those European scholars who followed naturally in the path of the invited guests, and if we consider merely the function of these invited participants, the importance of the procedure is evident. More than a hundred leading scholars from all European countries came under conditions where academic fellowship on an equal footing was a necessary part of the work. There was not the slightest premium held out which might have attracted them had not real inter-academic interest brought them over the ocean, and no missionary spirit was appealed to, as everything was equally divided between American and foreign contributors. It was a real feast of international scholarship, in which the importance and the number of foreigners stamped it as the first significant alliance of the spirit of learning in the New and the Old Worlds. And it was essentially for this purpose that the week of personal intermingling in St. Louis itself was preceded and followed by happy weeks of visits to leading universities. Almost every one of those one hundred European scholars visited Harvard and Yale, Chicago and Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Pennsylvania, saw the treasures of Washington and examined the exhibitions of American scholarship in the World's Fair itself. The change of opinion, the disappearance of prejudice, the growth of confidence, the personal intercollegiate ties which resulted from all that, have been evident since those days all over Europe. And it is not surprising that it is just the most famous and most important of the visitors, famous and important through their width and depth of view, whose expression of appreciation and admiration for the new achievements has been loudest.

We insisted that the effectiveness of the Congress showed itself in two other directions still: on the one side, there was at last a congress with a unified programme, a congress which stood for a definite thought, and which brought all its efforts to bear on the solution of one problem. There seemed a far-reaching agreement of opinion that this new principle of congress administration had successfully withstood the test of practical realization. Mere conglomerations of unconnected meetings with casual programmes and unrelated papers cannot claim any longer to represent the only possible form of international gatherings of scholars. More than that, their superfluous and disheartening character will be felt in future more strongly than before. No congress will appear fully justified whose printed proceedings do not show a real plan in its programme. And the consciousness of this mission of the Congress will certainly be again reinforced by the publication of these volumes, inasmuch as it is evident that they represent a substantial contribution to the knowledge of our time which would not have been made without the special stimulating occasion of the Congress.

And, finally, whether such a congress is held again or not, the impulse of this one cannot be lost on account of the special end to which all its efforts have been directed: the unity of scientific knowledge. We had emphasized from the first that here was the centre of our purposes in a time whose scientific specialization necessarily involves a scattering of scholarly work and which yet in its deepest meaning strives for a new synthesis, for a new unity, which is to give to all this scattered labor a real dignity and significance; truly nothing was more needed than an intense accentuation of the internal harmony of all human knowledge. But for that it is not enough that the masses feel instinctively the deep need of such unifying movements, nor is it enough that the philosophers point with logical arguments towards the new synthesis. The philosopher can only stand by and point the way; the specialists themselves must go the way. And here at last they have done so. Leaders of thought have interrupted their specialistic work and have left their detailed inquiries to seek the fundamental conceptions and methods and principles which bind all knowledge together, and thus to work towards that unity from which all special work derives its meaning. Whether or not their coöperation has produced anything which is final is a question almost insignificant compared with the fundamental fact that they coöperated at all for this ideal synthetic purpose. This fact can never lose its influence on the scholarly effort of our age, and will certainly find its strongest reinforcement in this unified publication. It has fulfilled its noblest purpose if it adds strength to the deepest movement of our time, the movement towards unity of meaning in the scattered manifoldness of scientific endeavor with which the twentieth century has opened.

Dr. Newcomb, the famous Astronomer, is conceded to be the Dean of American scientists. His eminent services to the Government of the United States, and his recognized position in foreign and domestic scientific circles, made him peculiarly fitted to deliver the introductory address, and to officiate as President of an International Congress of the leading scientists of the world.

He has been the recipient of honorary degrees from six American and ten European Universities, and he is a member of almost every important Academy of Science in Europe and America. He is an officer of the Legion of Honour, and is the only native American besides Benjamin Franklin who has been elected an Associate of the Institute de France. From 1861 to 1897 he was Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy. He also lectured on Mathematics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins, and is now a Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Arts of that university. Dr. Newcomb is the author of numerous works on Astronomy and other scientific subjects.]

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONGRESS

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS

DELIVERED AT THE OPENING EXERCISES AT FESTIVAL HALL BY PROFESSOR SIMON NEWCOMB, PRESIDENT OF THE CONGRESS

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR

As we look at the assemblage gathered in this hall, comprising so many names of widest renown in every branch of learning,--we might almost say in every field of human endeavor,--the first inquiry suggested must be after the object of our meeting. The answer is, that our purpose corresponds to the eminence of the assemblage. We aim at nothing less than a survey of the realm of knowledge, as comprehensive as is permitted by the limitations of time and space. The organizers of our Congress have honored me with the charge of presenting such preliminary view of its field as may make clear the spirit of our undertaking.