THE RESULTS OF THE CONGRESS 133 



sary; and to prepare this change, to substitute knowledge for ignor- 

 ance, 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 par- 

 ticipants, 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 neces- 

 sary part of the work. There was not the slightest premium held out 

 which might have attracted them had not real interacademic 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 dis- 

 appearance of prejudice, the growth of confidence, the personal inter- 

 collegiate 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 im- 

 portant 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 with- 

 stood the test of practical realization. Mere conglomerations of un- 

 connected meetings with casual programmes and unrelated papers 

 cannot claim any longer to represent the only possible form of inter- 

 national 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 



