International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Philosophy
International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Conference proceedings; Medicine -- Congresses; Science and the humanities -- Congresses; Technology -- Congresses
successes presented themselves where nothing of that kind was
anticipated in the Old World. It was in the field of economic life that
Europe looked down patronizingly on America's industrial efforts, and
yet before she was fully aware how the change resulted, suddenly the
warning signal of the "American danger" was heard everywhere. The
surprise in the intellectual field will not be less. The unpreparedness
was certainly the same. Of course, there cannot be any danger of rivalry
in the scientific field, inasmuch as science knows no competition but
only coöperation. And yet it cannot be without danger for European
science if it willfully neglects and recklessly ignores this eager
working of the modern America. For both sides a change in the situation
was thus not only desirable, but necessary; and to prepare this change,
to substitute knowledge for ignorance, nothing could have been more
effective than this Congress of Arts and Science.
Even if we abstract from the not inconsiderable number of those European
scholars who followed naturally in the path of the invited guests, and
if we consider merely the function of these invited participants, the
importance of the procedure is evident. More than a hundred leading
scholars from all European countries came under conditions where
academic fellowship on an equal footing was a necessary part of the
work. There was not the slightest premium held out which might have
attracted them had not real inter-academic interest brought them over
the ocean, and no missionary spirit was appealed to, as everything was
equally divided between American and foreign contributors. It was a real
feast of international scholarship, in which the importance and the
number of foreigners stamped it as the first significant alliance of the
spirit of learning in the New and the Old Worlds. And it was essentially
for this purpose that the week of personal intermingling in St. Louis
itself was preceded and followed by happy weeks of visits to leading
universities. Almost every one of those one hundred European scholars
visited Harvard and Yale, Chicago and Johns Hopkins, Columbia and
Pennsylvania, saw the treasures of Washington and examined the
exhibitions of American scholarship in the World's Fair itself. The
change of opinion, the disappearance of prejudice, the growth of
confidence, the personal intercollegiate ties which resulted from all
that, have been evident since those days all over Europe. And it is not
surprising that it is just the most famous and most important of the
visitors, famous and important through their width and depth of view,
whose expression of appreciation and admiration for the new achievements
has been loudest.
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