Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/66

5'2 FERDINAND TONNIES : inventions, of new methods ; they live by the exchange of thoughts. Psychology, especially in its important parts, will quickly develop by experiments and statistical methods to an international science. What is called statistics, i.e., a mass of sociological observations and investigations which are advanced by statistical methods, has been recognised as an international science. As for universal sociology, it is hardly yet constituted and little esteemed in the national university management ; but already an international insti- tute, an international journal, has been called into being for it. But if the problem of philosophy to-day is to unite in one focus psychologico-biological and sociological knowledge and thought, then it is clearly no longer reasonable that the accident of the national language and race should continue to be a decisive factor for the knowledge of modern systems of thought. The claim of reason to have universal validity is essential to it. 88. Now understanding and co-operation are already powerfully stirred by the conditions and means through which the intercourse of the world is carried on to-day. The United States of America, whose own scientific tradition is still young, are indeed limited by language, but not by national prejudices, and they take to themselves from all lands and without reserve the accumulators of the power of thought. Nor is it very different with the colonies of the British empire. In proportion as in the new world an inward concentration is gained for serious thought, Europe may expect a reflux of new results. Students from all parts of the world gather together in the chief towns of science, the scholars of most countries enter again into active rela- tions by travelling and corresponding. I say again, for even in the seventeenth century, because of the cosmopolitan nature of the Church and the Latin language, and in spite of the great difficulties of intercourse, this was the normal state. The modern form of meeting-place is constituted partly as periodical publications, partly as personal congresses ; both must tend increasingly towards a levelling of distinctions. It is inevitable that we shall become more and more conscious of the hindrances of a different terminology, especially in so far as they have been conditioned by those national "limita- tions ; but also that we should feel more and more strongly the need of a common language. 89. We have spoken in an earlier connexion of the con- stantly renewed attempts to construct a universal language. We indicated also that they received their impulse chiefly from the needs of commerce. But it is not out of place here