THE SUBDIVISIONS 123 



finally organized without a section for the philosophy of law, this re- 

 sulted from the fact that the American jurists, in contrast with their 

 Continental European colleagues, showed a general lack of appre- 

 ciation for such a section. A few sections had to be left out even for 

 the chance reason that the leading speakers were obliged to with- 

 draw at a time when it was too late to ask substitutes to work up 

 addresses. And almost everywhere there had to be something arbi- 

 trary 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 sub- 

 tler 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-individ- 

 ual subject. That Ethics or Logic or Esthetics or Philosophy of 

 Religion deals with such over-individual attitudes cannot be doubted; 

 but have we a right to coordinate the mathematical sciences with 

 these philosophical sciences? Has Mathematics not a more natural 

 place among the physical sciences coordinated with and introductory 

 to Mechanics, Physics, and Astronomy? The mathematicians them- 

 selves would often be inclined to accept without hesitation this neigh- 

 borhood of the physical sciences. They would say that the mathe- 

 matical 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 mathema- 

 tician are objects made by the logical will only, and thus different 

 from all phenomena into which sensation enters. The mathema- 

 tician, 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 



