l6 HUGO MÜNSTERBERG 
III. Emerson as Philosopher 
[The following address was delivered at Harvard University, May, 1903, as 
part of the Emerson Celebration:] 
At the hundredth anniversary of Emerson’s birthday, Harvard 
University is to take a noble share in the celebration. For years it has 
been one of the deepest desires of the Harvard community to erect 
in the college yard a building devoted to philosophy only. To-day 
this building is secured. To be sure, the good-will of the community 
must still do much before the funds allow the erection of a building 
spacious enough to fulfil our hopes; but whether the hall shall be 
small or large, we know to-day that it will soon stand under the 
Harvard elms and that over its door will be inscribed the name: 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. No worthier memorial could have been 
selected. Orations may be helpful, but the living word flows away; 
a statue may be lasting, but it does not awaken new thought. We 
shall have orations and we shall have a statue, but we shall have 
now, above all, a memorial which will last longer than a monument 
and speak louder than an oration: Emerson Hall will be a fountain 
of inspiration forever. The philosophical work of Harvard has been 
too long scattered in scores of places; there was no unity, philosophy 
had no real home. But Emerson Hall will be not only the workshop 
of the professional students of philosophy, will be not only the back¬ 
ground for all that manifold activity in ethics and psychology, in 
logic and metaphysics, in æsthetics and sociology, it will become a 
new centre for the whole University, embodying in outer form the 
mission of philosophy to connect the scattered specialistic knowledge 
of the sciences. Harvard could not have offered a more glorious 
gift to Emerson’s memorial. 
But the spirit of such a memorial hour demands, more than all, 
sincerity. Can we sincerely say that the choice was wise, when we 
look at it from the point of view of the philosophical interests? It 
was beautiful to devote the building to Emerson. Was it wise, yes, 
was it morally right to devote Emerson’s name to the Philosophy 
Building? Again and again has such a doubt found expression. Your 
building, we have heard from some of the best, belongs to scientific 
philosophy; the men who are to teach under its roof are known in 
the world as serious scholars, who have no sympathy with the vague 
pseudo-philosophy of popular sentimentalists; between the walls of 
your hall you will have the apparatus of experimental psychology, 
and you will be expected to do there the most critical and most con-