Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/22

18 the department at Yale University, where he early founded a psychological laboratory which has taken high rank among like establishments throughout the world. The other paper for philosophy, read in the author's absence by Professor Charles M. Gayley, of the University of California, had been prepared by Professor George H. Howison, of that university, a man beloved and revered as an inspiring teacher of philosophy by a large and able body of students scattered over a continent, uniting intense moral fervor with a highly developed metaphysical imagination, and acknowledged as the most consistent defender of 'spiritual idealism' in academic circles.

Since it is impossible to. mention by name all of the departmental speakers, let us glance at the list for the physical and mental sciences, sometimes called 'descriptive.' Nichols and Barus, Nef and Clarke, Pickering and Boss, Davis and Chamberlin, Loeb and Coulter, McGee and Boas, Baldwin and Cattell, Vincent and Giddings—of such names we need not be ashamed.

The important work of the 128 sections began on Wednesday and lasted through Saturday, the two sections in religious influence postponing their sessions till Sunday. Each sectional meeting occupied the greater part of a morning or an afternoon.

The offices of chairman and secretary for each of the sections were filled by Americans, chairmen being for the most part specialists of eminence, while the secretaries usually, although by no means invariably, represented a younger generation of scholars, conspicuous for promise.

To take the first group of sections, under philosophy, the chairmen were Professors Armstrong, of Wesleyan, for metaphysics; Thomas Hall, of Union Theological Seminary, for philosophy of religion; Duncan, of Yale, for logic; Creighton, of Cornell, for methodology of science; Palmer, of Harvard, for ethics, and Tufts, of Chicago, for esthetics. The secretaries, named in the same order, were Professor A. L. Lovejoy, of Washington University; Dr. W. P. Montague, of Columbia; Dr. W. H. Sheldon, of Columbia; Dr. Ralph Barton Perry, of Harvard; Professor F. C. Sharp, of Wisconsin; and Professor Max Meyer, of Missouri. The two principal speakers were supposed to treat one of the relations of their special science to neighboring sciences, in the interests of orientation and adjustment, the other of present problems demanding investigation in the immediate future. Many of the sections listened in addition to one or more ten-minute papers, which showed a tendency toward a general treatment of these topics harmonious with the principal addresses, although some were very special, in no sense intended to complete or supplement the main discussion. Thus one interesting paper made use of a lantern to illustrate the morphology and development of the kidney tubule. Impromptu discussion was opened in the section after the delivery of the formal communications. The principal addresses were made in