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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 461. 



aggerated ambitions, should we Hkve been 

 really guilty of anticipating a part of that 

 which our speakers are to tell us. We leave 

 it to the invited scholar to discuss the totality 

 of relations which practically must exist be- 

 tween psychology and other departments of 

 knowledge. We confine ourselves to that 

 minimum of classification which indicates the 

 pure logical relation of the science in the 

 sense of subordination and coordination, that 

 minimum which every editor of an encyclo- 

 psedic work would be asked to indicate vsdth- 

 out awakening suspicion of interference with 

 the ideas of his contributors. 



The only justified demand which could be 

 made was that we choose a system of division 

 and classification which should give fair play 

 to every existing scientific tendency. And 

 here alone came in the claim which I made 

 for that scheme which has been accepted for 

 the congress. I believed that our classification, 

 more fully than any other, would leave room 

 for every wholesome tendency of our times. 

 I showed that a materialistic system would 

 give fair opportunity to the natural sciences 

 but not to the mental sciences; that a 

 positivistic system would offer room for both 

 mental and natural sciences; but that only 

 an idealistic system has room for all; for the 

 naturalistic and mental sciences, and also for 

 those tendencies which are aiming at an in- 

 terpretative as well as a descriptive account 

 of civilization. Arid while we are trying to 

 get, as I said, an organization with a mini- 

 mum of classification, we were thus trying 

 to provide at the same time for a maximum 

 of freedom. Whatever other principles of 

 classification we might have chosen would 

 have led to an arbitrary suppression of some 

 existing tendencies in modern thought. To 

 use Professor Dewey's illustration: Those 

 students of art, history, politics and education 

 who treat them as systems of phenomena and 

 those who treat them as systems of purposes, 

 alike find in different sections their full op- 

 portunity. I have a slight impression that 

 Professor Dewey would have preferred a 

 classification which would have room only for 

 one of the two groups. Our congress will 



be less partial than our critics. We shall 

 have place and freedom for all. 



But there is no reason, to speak to-day, as 

 I had to do in May, of a plan for the 

 future. Our undertaking has already a 

 little history. The program has been tried. 

 Then was the moment for the appearance of 

 those destructive effects which Professor 

 Dewey feared. Professor Neweomb, Pro- 

 fessor Small and I, who have been honored 

 by the invitation to work as an organizing 

 committee, have just returned from Europe, 

 where we were to bring personal invitations 

 to those who had been selected for the chief 

 addresses. Professors Newcomb and Small 

 visited France, England, Austria, Italy and 

 Russia. I had to see the scholars of Ger- 

 many and Switzerland. As the Germans 

 have the reputation of being the most ob- 

 stinate in their scientific ideas, their attitude 

 towards the presented program may be con- 

 sidered as the severest test of it. I had to 

 approach 98 scholars in Germany. Every one 

 saw the full program with the ominous classi- 

 fication of science before he made his decision. 

 Only one third of those whom I invited felt 

 obliged to decline, and among them was not 

 a single one who refused to come on account 

 of the objections foreshadowed by Profesor 

 Dewey. Some can not come because of ill 

 health, some because of public engagements, 

 some on account of the expense, and some be- 

 cause they are afraid of sea-sickness, but not 

 a single one gave the slightest hint that he 

 was disturbed by the limitations which the 

 program might put on him. On the other 

 hand, among those two thirds whom we hope 

 to see here next September, very many ex- 

 pressed their deep sympathy with the plans 

 and the program, and not a few insisted that 

 it was just this which tempted them to risk 

 the cumbersome voyage, while they would have 

 disliked to participate in a routine congress 

 without connected plan and program. 



Of course that would not count for much 

 in the minds of my critics, if those who have 

 promised to come and deliver addresses under 

 the conditions of our program were merely 

 ' literary folk who indulge in such extrav- 

 agances.' I may pick out some of the German 



