134 THE SCIENTIFIC PLAN OF THE CONGRESS 



evident that they represent a substantial contribution to the know- 

 ledge of our time which would not have been made without the 

 special stimulating occasion of the Congress. 



And, finally, whether such a congress is held again or not, the 

 impulse of this one cannot be lost on account of the special end to 

 which all its efforts have been directed: the unity of scientific know- 

 ledge. We had emphasized from the first that here was the centre 

 of our purposes in a time whose scientific specialization necessarily 

 involves a scattering of scholarly work and which yet in its deepest 

 meaning strives for a new synthesis, for a new unity, which is to give 

 to all this scattered labor a real dignity and significance; truly 

 nothing was more needed than an intense accentuation of the internal 

 harmony of all human knowledge. But for that it is not enough that 

 the masses feel instinctively the deep need of such unifying move- 

 ments, nor is it enough that the philosophers point with logical argu- 

 ments towards the new synthesis. The philosopher can only stand by 

 and point the way; the specialists themselves must go the way. And 

 here at last they have done so. Leaders of thought have interrupted 

 their specialistic work and have left their detailed inquiries to seek 

 the fundamental conceptions and methods and principles which bind 

 all knowledge together, and thus to work towards that unity from 

 which all special work derives its meaning. Whether or not their 

 cooperation has produced anything which is final is a question almost 

 insignificant compared with the fundamental fact that they cooper- 

 ated at all for this ideal synthetic purpose. This fact can never lose 

 its influence on the scholarly effort of our age, and will certainly find 

 its strongest reinforcement in this unified publication. It has ful- 

 filled its noblest purpose if it adds strength to the deepest movement 

 of our time, the movement towards unity of meaning in the scattered 

 manifoldness of scientific endeavor with which the twentieth century 

 has opened. 



