CONGRESS OF ARTS AND SCIENCE. 21 



representing somewhat different standpoints: Dr. Otto Pfleiderer, the 

 distinguished Berlin professor, a comparative historian and specu- 

 lative thinker of the neo-Kantian persuasion, in the domain of 

 religion, conceived as a logical development of ideas in history, and 

 Professor Ernst Troeltsch, of Heidelberg, a philosopher to be sure, but 

 eminent primarily as scientific student and critic of literary docu- 

 ments and historical sources in religion. Pfleiderer read in English, 

 Troeltsch in German. 



Two Americans spoke for logic, Professor Wm. A. Hammond, of 

 Cornell, esteemed as a careful student of logic, metaphysics and psy- 

 chology, especially in their historical aspects, and one of the few 

 trained American scholars who has given serious attention to Greek 

 philosophy, and Professor Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, of Columbia, 

 who has made a marked impression as a scholarly teacher of philosophy, 

 alike for originality and independence in the interpretation of philo- 

 sophical systems and for the freshness which he has infused into meta- 

 physical problems, while insisting on their intimate correlation with 

 the problems of logic, in terms of which he has boldly denned them. 



The session for the methodology of science was one of the most 

 characteristic features of the whole congress. The subject itself is 

 both new and fundamental, and perfectly typical of the class of prob- 

 lems for the consideration of which the congress was planned. It 

 has to do with the determination and mutual adjustment of the con- 

 cepts which underlie the special sciences and the methods peculiar to 

 each, and is thus in the closest relation to logic and to the sciences 

 themselves. A science of method must both conform to the laws of our 

 minds and apply to the subject matter of experience which the sciences 

 severally study. It was therefore essential that both speakers should 

 be at the same time philosophers and men of science. And it was 

 no less fitting than interesting that they should approach their subject 

 by different roads. One is primarily a physical scientist, the other 

 primarily a philosopher; both are preeminent. The first was Wil- 

 helm Ostwald, of Leipzig, one of the most interesting personalities 

 among living men of science. A brilliant investigator in the field of 

 physical chemistry, where his name is linked with those of van't Hoff, 

 Arrhenius and jSTernst; a great teacher of chemistry and author of a 

 monumental systematic treatise therein, conceived in a spirit original 

 and unicme; an ingenious expositor of the new doctrine of energetics 

 in physical science; an enthusiastic student of philosophy, who has 

 played up and down the whole gamut of the sciences; recently the 

 founder of a new journal of natural philosophy, which is the acknowl- 

 edged organ of a nourishing school : — such a man is Ostwald — a kind 

 of 'modern Siegfried,' as an eminent colleague put it. The second 

 speaker, also a German — 



'He of the twice illustrious name,' 



