8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ants were six doctors of philosophy engaged in university teaching, 

 who also served as secretaries for their special sectional meetings. 



This was a congress of scholars, conceived, administered and con- 

 ducted by scholars. Under the general supervision of Dr. Howard J. 

 Rogers, deputy superintendent of education for the state of New York, 

 who was the official director of congresses for the exposition, it was 

 arranged by an administrative board consisting of Presidents Harper 

 of Chicago, Jesse of Missouri, Pritchett of the Massachusetts Institute 

 of Technology, Librarian of Congress Putnam and Director Skiff of the 

 Field Columbian Museum, under the chairmanship of President Butler 

 of Columbia University, a professor of philosophy and a distinguished 

 expert in education. 



The congress was presided over by Simon Newcomb, retired pro- 

 fessor in the United States Navy, a profoundly original, accomplished 

 and productive astronomer and mathematician, perhaps of all Amer- 

 icans the most honored throughout the world among the peers of the 

 realm of science. Hugo Miinsterberg, Harvard's brilliant psycholo- 

 gist, philosopher and man of letters, author of the original plan of the 

 congress, to whom is also due the largest share of credit for the splendid 

 achievement, divided the vice-presidency with Albion W. Small, pro- 

 fessor of sociology in the University of Chicago, whose wide grasp of 

 the multifarious activities of organized social regulation and culture is 

 largely responsible for their elaborate representation in the final scheme. 



Thanks to the wisdom, enthusiasm and devotion of these learned 

 officers of the congress, and the intelligent enterprise of the manage- 

 ment of the exposition under its president, the Hon. David R. Francis, 

 it was possible to carry out a program without a parallel in history. 

 Other meetings of men, including some more eminent than any of 

 those who came to St. Louis, may have accomplished more for science 

 and civilization, but never before has there been a gathering of so 

 large and representative a body of the world's leading scholars and 

 thinkers. It will lie sufficient to remind our readers in passing that 

 the unique purpose of this congress was to see science whole. It was 

 a deliberate attempt to exhibit the totality of intellectual achievement, 

 to formulate the interrelations of the several branches of knowledge, 

 and in some measure to realize the potential unity of the several 

 sciences ami their applications by harmonizing the confused mass of 

 knowledge scattered through a bewildering multiplicity of specialties. 



The program was designed to exhibit a certain dramatic unity in 

 the order of the proceedings, which represented a progressive differen- 

 tiation from the most general treatment of knowledge in the opening 

 session through the several divisional and departmental addresses to 

 the more specialists sectional discussions, with a view to effecting an 

 ultimate integration within each group, from the particular sections 

 up to the all-inclusive whole of knowledge. The manner of the actual 

 acting out of this ambitious plot during that memorable week in Sep- 



