Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I beg the favor of your permission to give you a hearty welcome and to express my great satisfaction with the work of these conferences and of the International Society for Significs in general. And especially so in two respects: firstly the growing international cooperation of different workers in the field of the analysis of concepts and secondly the predominating r61e assigned in this cooperation to the investigating methods, replacing more and more the speculative and subjective methods of a former period. In this strain of thought and action I see the fulfilment of the aims and hopes that were fostered in the earlier days of the significal movement here in Holland, when we made an attempt to found an International Institute for Philosophy at Amsterdam.
In my opening address of the 21-st of September 1917") I pointed out the aims of the Institute as follows:
"what we ask, is to find out, to compare and to investigate "the elements of the concepts, most system-builders of these "and former days are using as their keystones. And we are well "aware, that by asking such an investigation, we ask a great "deal more than we could accomplish by ourselves. We ask an "investigation that leaves no corner of the realm of human "knowledge unexplored and no foundation of human con-"viction unexamined. We ask for purification of language, for "unification of scientific terminology, for careful analysis "of the phenomenon of transmission of thoughts, but we ask "more than etymology, semasiology and methodology can af-"ford: we ask for enrichment of our mental apparatus. We "ask from those, whom we hope to find ready to this task