The material therefore is ready at hand with which to construct the framework of a conference of parts, or a congress of the whole of any subject. It was a natural and logical step to accompany the study of the exhibits with a debate on their excellence, an analysis of their growth, and an argument for their future. Hence the congress. The exposition and the congress are correlative terms. The former concentres the visible products of the brain and hand of man; the congress is the literary embodiment of its activities. Yet it was not till the Paris Exposition of 1889 that the idea of a series of congresses, international in membership and universal in scope, was fully developed. The three preceding expositions, Paris, 1878, Philadelphia, 1876, and Vienna, 1873, had held under their auspices many conferences and congresses, and indeed the germ of the congress idea may be said to have been the establishment of the International Scientific Commission in connection with the Paris Exposition of 1867; but all of these meetings were unrelated and sometimes almost accidental in their organization, although many were of great scientific interest and value. The success of the series of seventy congresses in Paris in 1889 led the authorities of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 to establish the World's Congress Auxiliary designed "to supplement the exhibit of material progress by the Exposition, by a portrayal of the wonderful achievements of the new age in science, literature, education, government, jurisprudence, morals, charity, religion, and other departments of human activity, as the most effective means of increasing the fraternity, progress, prosperity, and peace of mankind." The widespread interest in this series of meetings is a matter easily within recollection, but they were in no wise interrelated to each other, nor more than ordinarily comprehensive in their scope.