94 THE SCIENTIFIC PLAN OF THE CONGRESS 



towards the correlation of knowledge meant, of course, first of all, to 

 work out a detailed programme, and to select the best authorities 

 for every special part of the whole scheme. Nothing could be left to 

 chance methods and to casual contributions. The preparation needed 

 the same administrative strictness which would be demanded for an 

 encyclopedia, and the same scholarly thoroughness which would be 

 demanded for the most scientific research. A plan was to be devised 

 in which every possible striving for truth would find its place, and 

 in which every section would have its definite position in the system. 

 And such a ground-plan given, topics were to be assigned to every 

 department and sub-department, the treatment of which would bring 

 out the fundamental principles and the inner relations in such a way 

 that the papers would finally form a close-woven intellectual fabric. 

 There would be plenty of room for a retrospective glance at the his- 

 torical development of the sciences and plenty of room for emphasis 

 on their practical achievements; but the central place would always 

 belong to the effort towards unity and internal harmonization. 



We thus divided human knowledge into large parts, and the parts 

 into divisions, and the divisions into departments, and the depart- 

 ments into sections. As the topic of the general divisions we pro- 

 posed seven of them - - it was decided to discuss the Unity of the 

 whole field. As topic for the departments - - we had twenty-four of 

 them - - the addresses were to discuss the fundamental Conceptions 

 and Methods and the Progress during the last century; and in the 

 sections, finally - - our plan provided for one hundred and twenty- 

 eight of them the topics were in every one the Relation of the 

 special branch to other branches, and those most important Present 

 Problems which are essential for the deeper principles of the special 

 field. In this way the ground-plan itself suggested the unity of the 

 practically separated sciences; and, moreover, our plan provided 

 from the first that this logical relation should express itself externally 

 in the time order of the work. We were to begin with the meetings of 

 the large divisions, the meetings of the departments were to follow, 

 and the meetings of the sections and their ramifications would follow 

 the departmental gatherings. 



3. The Objections to the Plan 



It was evident that even the most modest success of that gigantic 

 undertaking depended upon the right choice of speakers, upon the 

 value of the ground-plan, and upon many external conditions; thus 

 no one was in doubt as to the difficulty in realizing such a scheme. 

 Yet there were from the scholarly side itself objections to the prin- 

 ciples involved, objections which might hold even if those other 

 conditions were successfully met. The most immediate reason for 



