Page:Philosophical Review Volume 18.djvu/70

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56
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. XVIII.

Troeltsch (Heidelberg) and Schwarz (Halle). Some one-hundred-fifty papers were on the various sectional programmes, a few of which, however, were not presented. Of this mass the largest number fell to Section IV., Logic and Epistemology, which also, at least when the debate over pragmatism was on, enjoyed the largest attendance. Section VII., Philosophy of Religion, on the other hand, held but few sessions, while Section III., Psychology, showed by the number of the papers and the interest evoked the prevailing attention to psychological subjects on the part even of students of philosophy proper. Strenuous endeavors were made by the officers of the Congress to facilitate the work of the Sections and to prevent confusion amid the number of meetings going on at one and the same time in different rooms of the university building. In spite of this care, however, it was not possible to escape a sense of distraction and strain as one sought to hear at least the principal papers in his own field of study and neighboring fields.

No subject of discussion aroused so much interest as pragmatism. At the first general session, September 1, the argument was begun by Professor Royce. On the afternoon of the same day the matter came up at the first meeting of the Section of Psychology. The next morning the programme of Section IV., Logic and Epistemology, included a group of papers dealing with it, among which Schiller's "Der rationalistische Wahrheitsbegriff," read in German, at once occasioned an earnest, at times even vehement debate. The intensity of feeling, indeed, which marked the controversy, and some of the other discussions of the Congress, came as a surprise to the American members. The pragmatists themselves, however, were not in the first instance, nor chiefly, responsible for this feature. Schiller's paper was more than usually moderate. The discussion to which it led was marred by a bitterness of thought and of expression which did not wholly disappear in the two extra meetings to which the debate was adjourned.

In part, this intensity was motived by the concern of the different speakers over the principle under discussion. To the English or American visitor it was a matter of interest to note