128 THE SCIENTIFIC PLAN OF THE CONGRESS 



ated by the thunder of the cannons with which Boer and British 

 forces were playing at war near by. The roaring of the Pike over- 

 powered 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 w r as 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 commis- 

 sioners, 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 bal- 

 anced, it is more doubtful whether the internal shortcomings of the 

 work can be considered as fully compensated for. It would be impos- 

 sible 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, includ- 

 ing 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 second- 

 hand way a report whose general trend was determined beforehand; 



