122 THE SCIENTIFIC PLAN OF THE CONGRESS 



allows the emphasis of different aspects. For instance, education, 

 which aims primarily at self-development, might quite well be con- 

 sidered also from the point of view of social regulation; and still 

 more naturally could the utilitarian sciences of the economic distri- 

 bution of the means of support be considered from this point of 

 view. Yet a classification of sciences nowhere suggests by its 

 boundary lines that there are no relations and connections between 

 the different parts; on the contrary, it is just the manifoldness of 

 these given connections which makes it so desirable to become con- 

 scious of the principles involved, and thus to emphasize logical 

 demarcation lines, which of course must be obliterated as soon as 

 any material is to be treated from every possible point of view. It may 

 thus well be that, for instance, a certain industrial problem could be 

 treated in the Normative Sciences from the point of view of ethics; in 

 the Historical Sciences, from the point of view of the history of 

 economic institutions; in the Physical Sciences, from the point of 

 view of physics or chemistry; in the Mental Sciences, from the point 

 of view of sociology; in the Utilitarian Sciences, from the point of 

 view of medicine or of engineering, or of commerce and transporta- 

 tion; and finally in the Regulative Sciences, from the point of view of 

 political administration, or in the-Social Sciences, from the standpoint 

 of the urban community, and so on. The more complex the relations 

 are, the more necessary is it to make clean distinctions between the 

 different logical purposes with which the scientific inquiries start. 

 Practical life may demand a combination of historical, sociological, 

 psychological, economical, social, and ethical considerations; but not 

 one of these sciences can contribute its best if the consciousness of 

 these differences is lost and the deliberate combination is replaced by 

 a vague mixture of the problems. 



6. The Subdivisions 



We have now before us the ground-plan of the scheme, the four 

 theoretical divisions, and the three practical divisions; every addi- 

 tional comment on the classification must be of secondary importance, 

 as it has to refer to the smaller subdivisions, which cannot change the 

 principles of the plan, and which have not seldom, indeed, been a re- 

 sult of practical considerations. If, for instance, our Division of Cul- 

 tural Sciences shows in the final plan merely the departments of 

 Education and of Religion, while the originally planned Department 

 of Art is left out, there was no logical reason for it, but merely the 

 practical ground that it seemed difficult to bring such a practical art 

 section to a desirable scientific level; we confine art, therefore, to 

 the normative aesthetic and historical points of view. Or, to choose 

 another illustration, if it happened that the normative sciences were 



