THE OBJECTIONS TO THE PLAN 97 



acknowledged as a self-dependent discipline. If a biologist were to 

 work out the scheme, he might decide that the whole of philosophy 

 was just one science; while the philosopher might claim a large num- 

 ber of sections for logic and ethics and philosophy of religion, and so 

 on. And the philosopher, on the other hand, might treat the whole of 

 medicine as one part in itself, while the physician might hold that even 

 otology has to be separated from rhinology. A certain subjectivity of 

 standpoint is unavoidable, and we know very well that instead of the 

 one hundred and twenty-eight sections of our programme we might 

 have been satisfied with half that number or might have indulged in 

 double that number. And yet there was no possible plan which would 

 have allowed us to invite the speakers without defining beforehand 

 the sectional field which each was to represent. A certain courage of 

 opinion was then necessary, and sometimes also a certain adjustment 

 to external conditions. 



Quite similar was the question of classification. Just as we had to 

 take the responsibility for the staking-out of every section, we had 

 also to decide in favor of a certain grouping, if we desired to organ- 

 ize the Congress and not simply to bring out haphazard results. The 

 principles which are sufficient for a mere directory would never allow 

 the shaping of a programme which can be the basis for synthetic work. 

 Even a university catalogue begins with a certain classification, and 

 yet no one fancies that such catalogue grouping inhibits the freedom 

 of the university lecturer. It is easy to say, as has been said, that the 

 essential trait of the scientific life of to-day is its live-and-let-live 

 character. Certainly it is. In the regular work in our libraries and 

 laboratories the year round, everything depends upon this demo- 

 cratic freedom in which every one goes his own way, hardly asking 

 what his neighbor is doing. It is that which has made the specialistic 

 sciences of our day as strong as they are. But it has brought about at 

 the same time this extreme tendency to unrelated specialization with 

 its discouraging lack of unity; this heaping up of information without 

 an outer harmonious view of the world; and if we were really at least 

 once to satisfy the desire for unity, then we had not the right to yield 

 fully to this live-and-let-live tendency. Therefore some principle of 

 grouping had to be accepted, and whatever principle had been chosen, 

 it would certainly have been open to the criticism that it was a pro- 

 duct of arbitrary decision, inasmuch as other principles might have 

 been possible. 



A classification which in itself expresses all the practical relations in 

 which sciences stand to each other is, of course, absolutely impossible. 

 A programme which should try to arrange the place of a special disci- 

 pline in such a way that it would become the neighbor of all those other 

 sciences with which it has internal relation is unthinkable. On the 

 other hand, only if we had tried to construct a scheme of such exagger- 



