276 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 452. 



the Arts and Sciences. The fact that a 

 litei-ary rather than a scientific journal has 

 been selected as a means of communication to 

 the public, and that the plan itself as there 

 set forth is philosophical rather than scien- 

 tific, affords my justification for writing on a 

 matter which my own technical scientific qual- 

 ifications would under ordinary circumstances 

 hardly entitle me to discuss, excepting pos- 

 sibly as respects one group of the sciences. 



That the article bases the working plans 

 of the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences 

 upon a particular methodology emanating 

 from a particular school of metaphysics, not as 

 yet numbering among its adherents any great 

 number of either scientific men or philoso- 

 phers, naturally arouses certain apprehen- 

 sions. I write chiefly in the hope that some 

 explanation may be forthcoming which will 

 allay these apprehensions, which I find I am 

 far from alone in feeling. Even after the 

 explicit statements of the article, one can 

 hardly believe one's own eyes, and is sceptical 

 of one's right to attribute to the distin- 

 guished committee the notion of basing the 

 Congress upon a particular scheme of meta- 

 physical logic. One is sure the plan must be 

 capable of construction in some other way. 

 Accordingly I beg in advance the pardon of 

 the committee if I should attribute to it in 

 my following remarts a plan which as a mat- 

 ter of fact it has not fathered. 



1. The article begins by setting forth an 

 idea which is rational and feasible, and which 

 would probably command general if not unan- 

 imous assent: the idea that the Congress 

 should concern itself with the general aspects 

 and bearings of the sciences, their relations 

 to each other and to the unity of human 

 knowledge and endeavor, rather than with 

 purely specialized, questions and researches. 



2. Apprehension begins when we read: 

 " The natural condition would be a plan in 

 which every possible striving for truth, every 

 theoretical and practical science would find 

 its exact place. * * * It must be really a 

 plan which brings the inner relation of all 

 branches of knowledge to light * * * a 

 ground plan which would give to every sec- 



tion its definite position in the whole system '' 

 (p. 674 of the Atlantic Monthly for May, 

 1903). It is repeatedly stated that the chief 

 feature of the plan is that the arrangement 

 of the sciences chosen is not one of practical 

 convenience or effectiveness, but is one 

 based upon a logical theory of knowledge. It 

 is hardly necessary to point out the radical 

 difference between a Congress which should 

 work along the lines of the generalized as- 

 pects and interests of the sciences, and a Con- 

 gress based upon a previously formulated and 

 predetermined scheme of the unity of knowl- 

 edge, or to dwell upon the nonsequitur from 

 the first notion to the second. It is not thq 

 Congress of scientific and philosophical work- 

 ers which is to bring to light (or bring nearer 

 to the light) the unity and interrelation of 

 the various movements of contemporary intel- 

 lectual life. No, a necessary precondition of 

 the work of the Congress is that it follow 

 the lines of a predetermination of what the 

 unity really is, a notion foreordained by a 

 committee in charge of the Congress ! One 

 naturally asks the pardon of the committee 

 for attributing to it even the passing fancy 

 of a scheme at once so presumptuous and so 

 futile. 



3. As we read further we learn that this 

 precondition of a ' ground plan ' has been met, 

 the committee having ofScially adopted a 

 ' ground plan.' From the historical point of 

 view, we learn from the article that contem- 

 porary intellectual life is officially decreed by 

 the committee to have got beyond materialism, 

 positivism, psychologism, indeed beyond any 

 scheme in which the mental and physical 

 sciences are coordinated with each other. The 

 practical bearing of this appears when we 

 are told that each department is to have an 

 address on the historical development of its 

 own line of work in the last century. It will 

 certainly tend to decrease intellectual labor 

 that each speaker know in advance the ' ground 

 plan ' of development which his own group of 

 sciences has followed in the last century. 

 There are still those, however (of whom I con- 

 fess myself one), who would prefer to gather 

 their ideas of what the actual historical move- 



