his ambitions to the foundation of an institute for scientific research,
for in his view science is in its essence more international than art
and letters. He writes:

"In art and literature we may, in case of need, discuss the advantages
and disadvantages resulting from the isolation of one nation from the
rest, or from the antagonism of human groups. In science, such a
discussion is absurd. The kingdom of science is the whole world.... The
atmosphere indispensable to science has nothing whatever to do with
national conflicts."

I think that this distinction is not so well founded as it may seem. No
domain of mental activity has been more disastrously involved in the war
than the domain of science. Whereas art and letters have only too often
been accessory stimulants of the crime, science furnished the war with
its weapons, did its utmost to render them more atrocious, to widen the
bounds of suffering and cruelty. I may add that even in time of peace I
have always been struck by the bitterness of national sentiment
displayed by men of science. Those of every nation are fond of accusing
their foreign colleagues of stealing their best discoveries and
forgetting to acknowledge the source. In a word, science shares in the
evil passions which corrode art and letters.

On the other hand, if science needs the collaboration of all the
nations, to art and letters to-day it is no less advantageous that they
should abandon a position of "splendid isolation." Without speaking of
the technical advances which, in painting and music, have during the
course of the nineteenth century and of the one which has begun so badly
brought such sudden and enormous enrichment to the aesthetics of sight
and hearing--apart from such considerations--the influence of one
philosopher, one thinker, one writer, can modify the whole literature of
an epoch, switching the mind on to a new road in psychological, moral,
aesthetic, or social research. If any one wish to be isolated, isolated
let him be! But the republic of the mind tends to enlarge its frontiers
day by day. The greatest men are those who know how to embrace and fuse
in a single vigorous personality the wealth that is dispersed or latent
in the soul of all mankind.

Let us refrain, therefore, from limiting the idea of internationalism to
the field of science. Let us give the fullest possible amplitude to the
scheme. Let us form a world-wide Institute of Art, Letters and Science.