THE RESULTS OF THE CONGRESS 129 



the work demanded original thinkers, with whom every word grows 

 out of a rich individual view of the totality. If every paper had been 

 meant merely as a detailed amplification of the logical principles 

 on which the whole plan was based, it would have been wiser to set 

 young Doctor candidates to work, who might have elaborated the 

 hint of the general scheme. To invite the leaders of knowledge meant 

 to give them complete freedom and to confine the demands of the plan 

 to a most general direction. 



The same freedom, which every one was to have as to the general 

 standpoint, was intended also for all with regard to the arrangement 

 and limitation of the topic. All the sectional addresses were supposed 

 to deal either with relations or with fundamental problems of to-day. 

 It would have been absurd to demand that in every case the totality 

 of relations or of problems should be covered or even touched. The 

 result would have become perfunctory and insignificant. No one 

 intended to produce a cyclopedia. It was essential everywhere to 

 select that which was most characteristic of the tendencies of the age 

 and most promising for the science of the twentieth century. Those 

 problems were to be emphasized whose solution is most demanded for 

 the immediate progress of knowledge, and those relations had to be 

 selected through which new connections, new synthetic thoughts 

 prepare themselves to-day. That this selection had to be left to the 

 speaker was a matter of course. 



Yet it may be said that in all these directions, with reference to the 

 general standpoint and with reference to problems and relations, 

 the Organizing Committee had somewhat prepared the choice through 

 the selection of the speakers themselves. As the standpoints of the 

 leading speakers were well known, it was not difficult to invite as far 

 as possible for every place a scholar whose general views would be 

 least out of harmony with the principles of the plan. For instance, 

 when we had the task before us of selecting the divisional speakers for 

 the Normative and for the Mental Sciences, it was only natural to 

 invite for the first a philosopher of idealistic type and for the latter a 

 philosopher of positivistic stamp, inasmuch as the whole scheme gave 

 to the mental sciences the same place which they would have had in 

 a positivistic scheme, while the normative sciences would have lost 

 the meaning which they had in our plan if a positivist had simply 

 psychologized them. In the same way we gave preference as far as 

 possible, for the addresses on relations, to those scholars whose pre- 

 vious work was concerned with new synthetic movements, and as 

 speakers on problems those were invited who were in any case 

 engaged in the solution of those problems which seemed central in 

 the present state of science. Thus it was that on the whole the ex- 

 pectation was justified that the most characteristic relations and the 

 most characteristic problems would be selected if every invited 



