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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/13205-0.txt b/13205-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..776f8b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/13205-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4269 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13205 *** + +_Civics: as Applied Sociology_ + +by Patrick Geddes + + + + +Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, +F.R.S., in the Chair. + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as far as +possible, concrete in treatment. If it is to appeal to practical men and +civic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for the +systematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be not +merely the product of the study, but rather be those which may be +acquired in course of local observation and practical effort. My problem +is thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise from +the experience of any moderately-travelled observer of varied interests; +so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic and +impressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards an +orderly Regional Survey. This point of view has next to be correlated +with the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquired +through some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise toward a +larger and more orderly conception of civic action--as Regional Service. +In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or [Page: 104] Civics, as +one of its main departments, may be defined as the application of Social +Survey to Social Service. + +In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, our +everyday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually become +more systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; while +our activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarly +approximate towards art. Thus there is emerging more and more clearly +for sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields of +application in city after city, the conception of a scientific centre of +observation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centre of +experimental endeavour on the other--in short of Sociological +Observatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasingly +co-ordinated. Indeed, is not such association of observations and +experiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here and +elsewhere? I need not multiply instances of the correlation of science +and art, as of chemistry with agriculture, or biology with medicine. +Yet, on the strictly sociological plane and in civic application they +are as yet less generally evident, though such obvious connections as +that of vital statistics with hygienic administration, that of +commercial statistics with politics, are becoming recognised by all. In +the paper with which this Society's work lately opened, the intimate +connection between a scientific demography and a practical eugenics has +been clearly set forth. But this study of the community in the aggregate +finds its natural parallel and complement in the study of the community +as an integrate, with material and immaterial structures and functions, +which we call the City. Correspondingly, the improvement of the +individuals of the community, which is the aim of eugenics, involves a +corresponding civic progress. Using (for the moment at least) a parallel +nomenclature, we see that the sociologist is concerned not only with +"demography" but with "politography," and that "eugenics" is inseparable +from "politogenics." For the struggle for existence, though observed +mainly from the side of its individuals by the demographer, is not only +an intra-civic but an inter-civic process; and if so, ameliorative +selection, now clearly sought for the individuals in detail as eugenics, +is inseparable from a corresponding civic art--a literal +"Eupolitogenics." + + + +A--THE GEOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF CITIES + +Coming to concrete Civic Survey, where shall we begin? Not only in +variety and magnitude of civic activities, but, thanks especially to the +work of Mr. Charles Booth and his collaborators in actual social survey +also, London may naturally claim pre-eminence. Yet even at best, does +not this vastest of world cities remain a less or more foggy labyrinth, +from which surrounding [Page: 105] regions with their smaller cities can +be but dimly descried, even with the best intentions of avoiding the +cheap generalisation of "the provinces"? For our more general and +comparative study, then, simpler beginnings are preferable. More +suitable, therefore, to our fundamental thesis--that no less definite +than the study of races and usages or languages, is that of the +groupings of men--is the clearer outlook, the more panoramic view of a +definite geographic region, such, for instance, as lies beneath us upon +a mountain holiday. Beneath vast hunting desolations lie the pastoral +hillsides, below these again scattered arable crofts and sparsely dotted +hamlets lead us to the small upland village of the main glen: from this +again one descends to the large and prosperous village of the foothills +and its railway terminus, where lowland and highland meet. East or west, +each mountain valley has its analogous terminal and initial village, +upon its fertile fan-shaped slope, and with its corresponding minor +market; while, central to the broad agricultural strath with its slow +meandering river, stands the prosperous market town, the road and +railway junction upon which all the various glen-villages converge. A +day's march further down, and at the convergence of several such +valleys, stands the larger county-town--in the region before me as I +write, one of added importance, since not only well nigh central to +Scotland, but as the tidal limit of a till lately navigable river. +Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great +manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river +system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the essential +unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple +geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental to +any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By +descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation +from its simple origins to its complex resultants; nor can any element +of this be omitted. Were we to begin with the peasant hamlet as our +initial unit, and forget the hinterlands of pasture, forest, and chase +(an error to which the writer on cities is naturally prone), the +anthropologist would soon remind us that in forgetting the hunter, we +had omitted the essential germ of active militarism, and hence very +largely of aristocratic rule. Similarly, [Page: 106] in ignoring the +pastoral life, we should be losing sight of a main fount of spiritual +power, and this not only as regards the historic religions, but all +later culture elements also, from the poetic to the educational. In +short, then, it takes the whole region to make the city. As the river +carries down contributions from its whole course, so each complex +community, as we descend, is modified by its predecessors. The converse +is no doubt true also, but commonly in less degree. + +In this way with the geographer we may rapidly review and extend our +knowledge of the grouping of cities. Such a survey of a series of our +own river-basins, say from Dee to Thames, and of a few leading +Continental ones, say the Rhine and Meuse, the Seine and Loire, the +Rhone, the Po, the Danube--and, if possible, in America also, at least +the Hudson and Mississippi--will be found the soundest of introductions +to the study of cities. The comparison of corresponding types at once +yields the conviction of broad general unity of development, structure, +and function. Thus, with Metschnikoff we recognise the succession of +potamic, thalassic, and oceanic civilisations; with Reclus we see the +regular distribution of minor and major towns to have been largely +influenced not only by geographical position but by convenient journey +distances. Again, we note how the exigencies of defence and of +government, the developments of religion, despite all historic +diversities, have been fundamentally the same. It is not, of course, to +be forgotten how government, commerce, communications, have +concentrated, altered or at least disguised the fundamental geographical +simplicity of this descending hierarchy from mountain-hamlet to +ocean-metropolis; but it is useful for the student constantly to recover +the elemental and naturalist-like point of view even in the greatest +cities. At times we all see London as still fundamentally an +agglomeration of villages, with their surviving patches of common, +around a mediaeval seaport; or we discern even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say its Place de l'Etoile, with its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest-rides, each literally arrow-straight. So the narrow +rectangular network of an American city is explicable only by the +unthinking persistence of the peasant thrift, which grudges good land to +[Page: 107] road-way, and is jealous of oblique short cuts. In short, +then, in what seems our most studied city planning, we are still +building from our inherited instincts like the bees. Our Civics is thus +still far from an Applied Sociology. + + + +B--THE HISTORIC SURVEY OF CITIES + +But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time. Though +the claim of geography be fundamental our interest in the history of the +city is supremely greater; it is obviously no mere geographic +circumstances which developed one hill-fort in Judea, and another in +Attica, into world centres, to this day more deeply influential and +significant than are the vastest modern capitals. This very wealth of +historical interests and resources, the corresponding multiplicity of +specialisms, more than ever proves the need of some means by which to +group and classify them. Some panoramic simplification of our ideas of +history comparable to that of our geography, and if possible congruent +with this, is plainly what we want. Again the answer comes through +geography, though no longer in mere map or relief, but now in vertical +section--in the order of strata ascending from past to present, whether +we study rock-formations with the geologist, excavate more recent +accumulations with the archaeologist, or interpret ruins or monuments +with the historian. Though the primitive conditions we have above noted +with the physiographer remain apparent, indeed usually permanent, cities +have none the less their characteristic phases of historic development +decipherably superposed. Thus below even the characteristically +patriarchal civilisations, an earlier matriarchal order is often +becoming disclosed. Our interest in exploring some stately modern or +Renaissance city is constantly varied by finding some picturesque +mediaeval remnant; below this some fragment of Roman ruin; below this it +may be some barbarian fort or mound. Hence the fascinating interest of +travel, which compels us ever to begin our survey anew. Starting with +the same river-basin as before, the geographic panorama now gains a new +and deeper interest. Primitive centres long forgotten start into life; +pre-historic tumuli give up their dead; to the stone circles the [Page: +108] worshippers return; the British and the Roman camps again fill with +armed men, and beside the prosaic market town arises a shadowy Arthurian +capital. Next, some moment-centuries later, a usurper's tower rises and +falls; the mediaeval abbey, the great castles, have their day; with the +Reformation and the Renaissance the towns again are transformed; and +yet more thoroughly than ever by the Industrial Revolution, with its +factories, railways, steamships, and all that they bring with them. +Thus, for instance, almost more important than the internal +transformation and concentration wrought by railway and telegraph, is +the selection, amidst the almost innumerable seaports of the older +order, of the very few adapted to the deep draught of modern ships. In a +word, not only does the main series of active cities display traces of +all the past phases of evolution, but beside this lie fossils, or linger +survivals, of almost every preceding phase. + +Hence, after many years of experiment and practice in teaching sociology +I still find no better method available than that of regional survey, +historical as well as geographical. Beginning with some popular +excursion of obvious beauty and romantic interest like that to Melrose, +we see with every tourist how naturally and fully the atmosphere and +tradition of the Border found its expression and world influence in Sir +Walter Scott. Thence, passing by way of contrast through the long +isolated peninsula of Fife, say to representative towns like Kirkcaldy +and Largo, we still see the conditions of that individualism of which +Adam Smith and Alexander Selkirk ("Robinson Crusoe") have each in his +way become the very prototypes. In such ways the connection of regional +geography, history, and social psychology becomes increasingly clear. +Again, we explore the other old Fife seaports, a series of survivals +like those of the Zuyder Zee, or again work out in the field the +significance of Stirling, so often the strategic centre of Scotland. +Again, Dunfermline, as early mediaeval capital and abbey, furnishes a +convenient object lesson preparatory to the study of the larger +Edinburgh. Here, again, its triple centre, in the port of Leith, the +Royal Castle, the Abbey of Holyrood, are the respective analogues of the +port of London, the Tower, and Westminster; while each city-group has +its outlying circle of minor burghs, tardily and imperfectly +incorporated into a civic whole. Again, such a marked contrast of civic +origins and developments as those of Glasgow and Edinburgh has to be +accounted for; and thus through such progessively complexer surveys we +reach the plane of modern civic problems and policies. Understanding the +present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to +understand the future as the development of the present? + +The impressiveness of the aspect of Edinburgh to its visitors is thus +not [Page: 109] merely pictorial. Be the spectator conscious of this or +no, it turns primarily upon the contrast of the mediaeval hill-city with +its castle ramparts, its fretted cathedral crown, with park and +boulevard, with shops, hotels and railway stations. But the historic +panorama is unusually complete. See the hill-fort defended by lake and +forest, becoming "_castrum puellarum_," becoming a Roman and an +Arthurian citadel, a mediaeval stronghold of innumerable sieges, a +centre of autocratic and military dictatures, oligarchic governments, at +length a museum of the past. So in the city itself. Here the narrow +ridge crowded into a single street all the essential organs of a +capital, and still presents with the rarest completeness of +concentration a conspectus of modern civic life and development; and +this alike as regards both spiritual and temporal powers, using these +terms in their broadest senses as the respective expressions of the +material order and its immaterial counterparts. Thus the royal and noble +castles of the Middle Age become with the Renaissance here as everywhere +something of palaces, while with the industrial revolution they have +become replaced by factories or transformed into breweries. So the +guidance of speculative thought, once concentrated in the mediaeval +abbey, becomes transferred to the Reformation assembly of divines, to +the Renaissance college; and again at the Revolution, is largely taken +over by the speculative encyclopædists, of whom Hume and Smith were but +the most eminent. Nor are later developments less obvious. Of the +following generation, we have the neo-classic architecture which +everywhere dominated Europe after the French Revolution and during the +First Empire, while of the next generation's reaction against all this +in the romantic movement, the neo-Gothic monument of Scott is the most +characteristic possible representative. Again, just as in the Oxford +movement we had the (appropriately regional) renascence of the idealism +of the Cavaliers, so in Edinburgh we have naturally the simultaneous +renascence of the Puritan ideal, e.g., in the Free Church, whose +monument accordingly rises to dominate the city in its turn. The later +period of prosperous Liberalism, the heroic enthusiasms of Empire, have +each left their mark; and now in the dominant phase of social evolution, +that of Finance, the banks, the financial companies, the press are +having their turn as monument builders. Our Old Edinburgh is thus the +most condensed example, the visible microcosm of the social evolution +which is manifest everywhere; so that as a teaching model of +sociological development it may renew its educational attractiveness +when its improving hygiene has lessened its medical advantages. + +Setting down now these phases of historical development in tabular form, +we have a diagram such as the following:-- + + + ANCIENT | RECENT | CONTEMPORARY | INCIPIENT +---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +Primitive | Matri- | Patri- | Greek | Mediaeval | Renaissance | Revolution | Empire | Finance | ? ? ? + | archal | archal | and | | | | | | + | | | Roman | | | | | | + + +which, were it placed erect, we might now compare to the increasing +[Page: 110] nodes of a growing stem, or rather say the layers of a coral +reef, in which each generation constructs its characteristic stony +skeleton as a contribution to the growing yet dying and wearying whole. +I have elaborated this example of the panoramic aspect of Old Edinburgh +as a widely familiar instance of the method of literal survey with which +social and civic studies may so conveniently begin; and I press the +value of extending these even to the utmost elaborateness of +photographic survey: in my view, indeed, a sociological society has at +least as much use for a collection of maps, plans and photographs as of +statistics, indeed scarcely less than one of books. Of course, in all +this I am but recalling what every tourist in some measure knows; yet +his impressions and recollections can become an orderly politography, +only as he sees each city in terms of its characteristic social +formations, and as he utilises the best examples from each phase towards +building up a complete picture of the greatest products of civic +evolution, temporal and spiritual, of all places and times up to the +present. Such a parallel of the historic survey of the city to that of +its underlying geological area is thus in no wise a metaphoric one, but +one which may be worked out upon maps sections and diagrams almost +completely in the same way--in fact, with little change save that of +colours and vertical scale. The attempt to express the characteristic +and essential life and thought of a given region in each period upon a +series of maps is in fact the best method of understanding the everyday +map at which we commonly look so unthinkingly. + +Much of the preceding, I am assured, must be most unsatisfactory to +those who look at cities only from the standpoint of so many committees +dealing with police, water, finance, and so on; or to those who are +content to view the magnitude, the wealth and the population, the +industries and the manufactures of a great city without considering +whence these have come and whither they are leading; equally +unsatisfactory also, I fear, to those to whom civic dignities and +precedence, or the alternations of winning political colours, appear of +prime importance. I can only hope that some of these may, on +consideration, admit that the points of view I have endeavoured to +outline above may be worth some thought and study as elementary +preliminaries to their own more special and developed interests; and if +the society permit. I hope to approach these more closely in a later +paper. + +[Page: 111] The abstract economist or legalist, the moral or political +philosopher may also resent the proposed mode of treatment as an attempt +to materialise sociology by reducing it to concrete terms alone. But I +would reply that observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is +just the very means of preparing for it. It is the observant naturalist, +the travelled zoologist and botanist, who later becomes the productive +writer on evolution. It is the historian who may best venture on into +the philosophy of history;--to think the reverse is to remain in the +pre-scientific order altogether: hence the construction of systems of +abstract and deductive economics, politics or morals, has really been +the last surviving effort of scholasticism. Viewed as Science, Civics is +that branch of Sociology which deals with Cities--their origin and +distribution; their development and structure; their functioning, +internal and external, material and psychological; their evolution, +individual and associated. Viewed again from the practical side, that of +applied science, Civics must develop through experimental endeavour into +the more and more effective Art of enhancing the life of the city and of +advancing its evolution. With the first of these lines of study, the +concretely scientific, our philosophical outlook will not fail to widen; +with the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to +deepen also. + +As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have naturally +approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic survey, +its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these +to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, even +of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice +co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more +concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger +than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the +needed practical division of labour in the city's service. When the +first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly +diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who +at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated: the +evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link +between them. + + +C--THE CITIZEN IN PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT + +Leaving now the external survey of the city by help of its material +framework, its characteristic buildings and predominant styles, for the +deeper psychological survey of the citizens themselves, we may +conveniently begin with these also in their process of development--in +fact, our method compels us to this course. We enter then a school; and +if we bring fresh eyes we may soon be agreed that the extraordinary +babel of studies its time-table and curriculum reveal, is intelligible +from no single one of the various [Page: 112] geographic or historic +points of view we have traversed from mountain to sea, or from past to +present. But this unprecedented conflict of studies becomes at once +intelligible when viewed apart from any and every definite theory of +education yet promulgated by educationists, and even acquires a fresh +theory of its own--that of the attempted recapitulation of the survivals +of each and all preceding periods in their practical or speculative +aspects, particularly the later legends and literatures, their rituals +and codes. Thus, the inordinate specialisation upon arithmetic, the +exaggeration of all three R's, is plainly the survival of the demand for +cheap yet efficient clerks, characteristic of the recent and +contemporary financial period. + +The ritual of examinations with its correlation of memorising and +muscular drill is similarly a development of the imperial order, +historically borrowed from the Napoleonic one; the chaotic "general +knowledge" is similarly a survival of the encyclopædic period; that is, +of the French Revolution and the Liberal Movement generally; the Latin +grammar and verses are of course the survivals of the Renaissance, as +the precise fidelity to absurd spelling is the imitation of its proof +readers; the essay is the abridged form of the mediaeval disputation; +and only such genuine sympathy with Virgil or Tacitus, with Homer or +Plato as one in a thousand acquires, is truly Roman or Greek at all. +The religious instruction, however, re-interpreted by the mediaeval +Church or the Reformation, has still its strength in some of the best +elements of patriarchal literature; while the fairy tale, by which all +this superincumbent weight of learning is sometimes alleviated, is the +child's inheritance from the matriarchal order. Finally, the apple and +the ball, at the bottom of this whole burden of books, complete the +recapitulation; as the one, the raw fruit; the other, the ready missile, +of primeval man. Our child then is heir of all the ages more fully than +he or his teachers commonly realise. The struggle for mastery of the +schools is thus no temporary feud, but an unending battle; one destined +to increase rather than diminish; for in this there is the perpetual +clash of all the forces of good heredity and evil atavism, of all the +new variations also, healthy or diseases. + + + +[Page: 113] D--THE APPLIED SOCIOLOGY OF THE PRESENT + +The city and its children thus historically present a thoroughly +parallel accumulation of survivals or recapitulations of the past in the +present. Few types nowadays are pure, that is, keep strictly to their +period; we are all more or less mixed and modernised. Still, whether by +temporal or spiritual compulsion, whether for the sake of bread or +honour, each mainly and practically stands by his order, and acts with +the social formation he belongs to. Thus now the question of the +practical civics, that is, of the applied sociology, of each individual, +each body or interests may be broadly defined; it is to emphasise his +particular historic type, his social formation and influence in the +civic whole, if not indeed to dominate this as far as may be. We are all +for progress, but we each define it in his own way. Hence one man of +industrial energy builds more factories or slums, another as naturally +more breweries to supply them; and in municipal or national council his +line of action, conscious or unconscious, remains congruent with these. +Representative government fails to yield all that its inventors hoped of +it, simply because it is so tolerably representative of its majorities; +and there is thus great truth in the common consolation that our +municipal governments, like larger ones, are seldom much worse than we +deserve. Each social formation, through each of its material activities, +exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and +ideals wins also its place and power. At one time the legal and +punitive point of view, directing itself mainly to individual cases, or +the philanthropic, palliating sufferings, dispute the foremost places; +and now in their turn hygienic or educational endeavours arise, towards +treating causes instead of waiting for consequences. Such endeavours are +still undeniably too vague in thought, too crude in practice, and the +enthusiast of hygiene or education or temperance may have much to answer +for. But so, also, has he who stands outside of the actual civic field, +whether as philistine or aesthete, utopist or cynic, party politician or +"mug-wump." Between all these extremes it is for the united forces of +civic survey and civic service to find the middle course. [Page: 114] We +observe then in the actual city, as among its future citizens, that our +action is generally the attempt to mould both alike to some past or +passing social formation, and, therefore, usually towards the type to +which our interest and our survey incline, be this in our own city or +more probably in some earlier one. Even in the actual passing detail of +party politics we are often reminded how directly continuous are the +rivals with puritan London, with royalist Oxford; but still more is this +the case throughout the history of thought and action, and the intenser +the more plainly; for it is in his highest moments of conviction and +decision that the Puritan feels most in sympathy with the law or the +prophets of Jerusalem, the scholar with Athens; or that the man of +action--be he the first French republican or the latest +imperialist--most frankly draws his inspiration from the corresponding +developments of Paris. It is a commonplace of psychology that our +thought is and must be anthropomorphic; a commonplace of history that it +has been Hebraomorphic, Hellenomorphic, Latinomorphic, and so on by +turns. + +This view has often been well worked out by the historian of inventions +and discoveries, of customs or laws, of policies or religions, as by the +historian of language or the fine arts. What we still commonly need, +however, is to carry this view clearly into our own city and its +institutions, its streets and schools and homes, until either in the +private spending or public voting of the smallest sum we know exactly +whether we are so far determining expenditure and influence towards +enlarging, say, the influence and example of renascent Florence in one +generation or of decadent Versailles in another. There is no danger of +awaking this consciousness too fully; for since we have ceased +consciously to cite and utilise the high examples of history we have +been the more faithfully, because sub-consciously and automatically, +continuing and extending later and lower developments. + + +E--CITIES, PRESENT AND FUTURE + +Hence, after a Liberal and an Imperial generation, each happy in their +respective visions of wealth and expanding greatness [Page: 115], the +current renewal of civic interests naturally takes the form of an +awakening survey of our actual environment. First, a literal mapping of +its regional elements, and then an historic interpretation of +these--not, alas, merely or mainly in terms of the cities of sacred or +classic tradition, nor of the Mediaeval or Renaissance cities which +followed these, but as stupendous extensions of the mediaeval Ghetto, of +the Wapping Stairs, of the Lancashire factories and of the Black +Country, relieved by the coarse jollities of Restoration London, and +adorned for the most part, with debased survivals from the Italian and +the French Renaissance. There is thus no more question in our civic +discussions of "bringing in" or "leaving out" geography or history; we +have been too long unconscious of them, as was M. Jourdain of his +speaking in prose. + +But what of the opening Future? May its coming social developments not +be discerned by the careful observer in germs and buds already formed or +forming, or deduced by the thinker from sociological principles? I +believe in large measure both; yet cannot within these limits attempt to +justify either. Enough for the present, if it be admitted that the +practical man in his thought and action in the present is mainly the as +yet too unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still +working within the grasp of natural conditions. + +To realise the geographic and historic factors of our city's life is +thus the first step to comprehension of the present, one indispensable +to any attempt at the scientific forecast of the future, which must +avoid as far as it can the dangers of mere utopianism. + + +F--LITERATURE OF CIVICS + +No discussion of the preliminaries and fundamentals of Civics can omit +some consideration of the vast and ever growing literature of cities. +But how are we to utilise this? How continue it? How co-ordinate it with +the needed independent and first-hand survey of city by city? And how +apply this whole knowledge of past and present towards civic action? + +The answer must plainly be a concrete one. Every city [Page: 116] +however small, has already a copious literature of its topography and +history in the past; one, in fact, so ample that its mere bibliography +may readily fill a goodly volume,[1] to which the specialist will long +be adding fresh entries. This mass of literature may next be viewed as +the material for a comprehensive monograph, well enriched with maps and +illustrations, such as many cities can boast; and this again may be +condensed into a guide-book. Guide-books have long been excellent in +their descriptive and historical detail, and are becoming increasingly +interpretative also, especially since Mr. Grant Allen transferred his +evolutionary insight and his expository clearness from natural to civic +history. + +[1] e.g., Erskine Beveridge, LL.D., Bibliography of +Dunfermline.--_Dunfermline, 1902._ 8vo. + +After this general and preliminary survey of geographic environment and +historic development, there nowadays begins to appear the material of a +complementary and contemporary volume, the Social Survey proper. Towards +this, statistical materials are partly to be found amid parliamentary +and municipal reports and returns, economic journals and the like, but a +fresh and first-hand survey in detail is obviously necessary. In this +class of literature, Mr. Booth's monumental Survey of London, followed +by others, such as Mr. Rowntree's of York, have already been so widely +stimulating and suggestive that it may safely be predicted that before +many years the Social Survey of any given city will be as easily and +naturally obtainable as is at present its guide-book; and the +rationalised census of the present condition of its people, their +occupation and real wages, their family budget and culture-level, should +be as readily ascertainable from the one, as their antecedents +understood or their monuments visited by help of the other. + +But these two volumes--"The City: Past and Present,"--are not enough. Is +not a third volume imaginable and possible, that of the opening Civic +Future? Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of things +as they have come about, and of people as they are--of their +occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals--may we +not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly +suggest, something of [Page: 117] their actual or potential development? +And may not, must not, such discernment, such planning, while primarily, +of course, for the immediate future, also take account of the remoter +and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and +correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve? Such a +volume would thus differ widely from the traditional and contemporary +"literature of Utopias" in being regional instead of non-regional, +indeed ir-regional and so realisable, instead of being unrealisable and +unattainable altogether. The theme of such a volume would thus be to +indicate the practicable alternatives, and to select and to define from +these the lines of development of the legitimate _Eu-topia_ possible in +the given city, and characteristic of it; obviously, therefore, a very +different thing from a vague _Ou-topia_, concretely realisable nowhere. +Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal +city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris, +have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is +one thing, a plan for our city improvement is another. + +Some concrete, if still fragmentary, materials towards such a volume +are, of course, to be found in all municipal offices, though scattered +between the offices of the city engineer and health officer, the +architect and park superintendent; while the private architect and +landscape gardener, the artist, sometimes even the municipal voters and +their representatives, may all have ideas of their own. But though our +cities are still as a whole planless, their growth as yet little better +than a mere casual accretion and agglomeration, if not a spreading +blight, American and German cities are now increasingly affording +examples of comprehensive design of extension and of internal +improvement. As a specific example of such an attempt towards the +improvement of a British city, one not indeed comprehending all aspects +of its life, but detailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and expressing +that continuity of past and present into future which has been above +argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline +Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent +study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for +consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a +moderate and readily intelligible [Page: 118] scale a very marked +combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing +activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook. + +That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has been +above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology is +thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet +it is one not lacking in generality of application. For what we have +reached is really the conception of an _Encyclopædia Civica_, to which +each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and +its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet +more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the +awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the +production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire--life ever +producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature +reacting upon the ennoblement of life. + +Apart altogether from what may be the quality and defects of particular +volumes, such as those cited as examples of each part of such a proposed +civic trilogy, one as yet nowhere complete, the very conception of such +a possible threefold series may be of some service. For this would +present a continuous whole, at once sociological and civic--the views +and the resources of the scholar and the educationist with their +treasures of historic culture, of the man of action with his mastery of +immediate affairs, of the thinker with his vision of the opening future, +now all co-ordinated by help of the design of the artist, and thence to +be gradually realised in the growing heritage of the city, the enlarging +life of the citizen. + +NOTE--As an example of the concrete application to a particular city, of +the sociological methods and principles indicated in the above paper, +Prof. Geddes exhibited an illustrated volume embodying the results of +his studies and designs towards the improvement of Dunfermline, under +the Trust recently established by Mr. Carnegie. This has since been +published: + +P. GEDDES. City Development. Park Gardens and Culture Institutes; a +Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. With 138 illustrations. +Edinburgh, etc.. 1904. + + + + +[Page: 119] DISCUSSION + + +The Chairman (MR. CHARLES BOOTH) in opening the discussion said: + +The paper we have just heard read is one of the most complete and +charming papers on a great and interesting subject I have ever heard. I +think you will all agree in this, and I hope the discussion which +follows will emphasise and, if that is possible, add to the wealth of +ideas that this paper contains. + + + +MR EBENEZER HOWARD (Founder of the Garden City Association) said: + +I have read and re-read--in the proof forwarded to me--Professor Geddes' +wonderfully luminous and picturesque paper with much interest. He has +given us a graphic description of the geographic process which leads to +the development of the city. We see vividly the gradual stages by which +the city grows and swells, with the descent of the population from the +hillsides into the valleys, even as the river which flows through the +city is fed continually by the streams which flow down to it. But is +there not this essential difference between the gathering waters of +heaven, as they pour into the great city, and the gathering tide of +population, which follows the path of the waters? The waters flow +through the city on, on toward the mighty ocean, and are then gradually +gathered upward into the soft embraces of the clouds and wafted back +again to the hills, whence they flow down once more to the valleys. But +the living stream of men, women, and children flows from the +country-side and leaves it more and more bare of active, vigorous, +healthy life: it does not, like the waters, "return again to cover the +earth," but moves ever on to the great city, and from thence, at least +for the great majority, there is no chance of more than, at best, a very +short stay in the country. No: the tide flows resistlessly [Page: 120] +onward to make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our +overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge +more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie +near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and +the task of the social reformer more and yet more difficult. + +But surely there must be a way, could we but discover it, of imitating +the skill and bountifulness of Nature, by creating channels through +which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so +that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into +the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the +twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown +city. + +This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the +historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation +lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks. +"Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not +preparing also to understand the future as the development of the +present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that +while the age in which we live is the age of the great, +closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those +who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that the +twentieth century will be known as the period of the great exodus, the +return to the land, the period when by a great and conscious effort a +new fabric of civilisation shall be reared by those who knew how to +apply the knowledge gained by "Social Survey to Social Service." What +are the signs? What words can we place under the head of "Incipient" in +Prof. Geddes' diagram? I would suggest, for one of Prof. Geddes' +interrogation marks might be substituted "Decentralisation of +Industry"--as a great, but yet incipient movement, represented by Port +Sunlight, Bournville, Garden City. For there are now many agencies at +work making for industrial decentralisation. Industries are being driven +out of the great towns by the excessive rents and rates which have to be +paid there--by the difficulty of obtaining adequate space for the modern +factory, a one-storey building; and for the homes of our workers, which +must be vastly different to what they now are if England is to maintain +her place among the nations. And while factories are being driven from +the city, they are also being attracted to the country by its +newly-discovered potentialities. Thus Messrs. Lever Brothers, crowded +out of Warrington, established an entirely new town on a new site at +Port Sunlight; and, because the site was new and raw, it was therefore +possible for Mr. Lever to plan his little town with a single eye to the +best and most desirable conditions, alike from an industrial and a +health and housing point of view. And the same is true of Bournville. +Bournville is one of the most beautiful villages in the world, largely +again because of the potentialities of a new site acquired for the +definite purpose of building thereon a village in which overcrowding +shall be deliberately and permanently prevented, [Page: 121] and in +which work inside the factory may be varied by work in the garden. Now +that these successful experiments have been carried out in this country, +is it not time that the idea of establishing new industries on new +sites, and of surrounding those industries with healthy homes, should be +carried forward on a larger scale, with wider and more concerted +aims--carried forward, too, in such a manner as to make it possible for +the small manufacturer to take part in a movement which has proved to be +so beneficial alike to employer and employed? It is out of this thought +that the Garden City idea has grown, an idea now in course of being +fulfilled. Three thousand eight hundred acres of land, or nearly ten +times the area of Bournville or Port Sunlight, have been acquired in +Hertfordshire, two miles west of the town of Hitchin, and on the branch +line of railway between that town and Cambridge. State aid has not been +sought; that would indeed be weary work. But a company has been formed, +through the untiring efforts of the Garden City Association; plans for +the town have been carefully prepared, plans which, of course, have +regard to the contours of the land (which were first taken, showing +every change of level of five feet), to the preservation of its natural +beauties--its trees and the picturesque villages of Norton and Willian; +to the necessity for railway sidings and railway station, now, thanks to +the Great Northern Railway, already provided; to the making of roads of +easy gradient and of suitable width, affording access to different parts +of the estate, actual work on which is progressing; the careful guarding +from contamination of our water supply, already proved to be abundant; +the provision of a reservoir of suitable elevation, now in course of +construction; a system of drainage, about to be started with; the +provision of parks and playgrounds within the town, as well as a wide +belt of agricultural land around it; sites for homes for 30,000 persons, +with good sized gardens. About six cottages have already been built, not +by the Company but by private enterprise, while many others are just +about to be started upon; the setting apart of sites for schools, +churches, and other public buildings, while plans are in preparation for +lighting the town, as well as for providing it with motive power. + +The programme which I have sketched out is certainly not too bold or +comprehensive for the British race. If a hundredth part of the +organising skill which the Japanese and the Russians are showing in the +great war now in progress were shown by ourselves as citizens in our +great civil war against disease and dirt, poverty and overcrowding, we +could not only build many new cities on the best models, but could also +bring our old towns into line with the new and better order. Prof. +Geddes wishes well, I know, to the Garden City Association, a +propagandist body, and to its first child, the Garden City Company; and +I am sure you will all unite with me in the hope that the best and most +lasting success may crown the generous gift of Mr. Carnegie of £500,000 +to the City of Dunfermline, and reward the efforts of the Trustees and +of Prof. Geddes to make, by the application of modern [Page: 122] skill, +science and art, the ancient city of Dunfermline a centre of sweetness +and light, stimulating us all to higher and yet higher efforts to secure +civic, national and imperial well-being. + +MR. C.H. GRINLING said: + +Like most of the audience, doubtless, he came not to speak but to draw +ever fresh inspiration from Prof. Geddes. But there was one aspect of +the subject he would like to bring out and emphasise. He referred to the +sociological institute, which, under the name of the Outlook Tower, had +grown up in connection with the School of Sociology which Prof. Geddes +had founded and developed in Edinburgh. That institute was at once an +organisation for teaching and for research, for social education, and +for civic action. It was, in fact, a concrete and working application of +the principle indicated in the paper as the very foundation of +Civics--"social survey for social service." And, seeing that the Outlook +Tower was an institution designed in every respect for application to +any given locality, he urged the Sociological Society to advocate its +general extension, so that no region should be without its own +sociological institute or Outlook Tower. + +If one individual could accomplish so much, what could not be +accomplished by the sociologists of our day who would concentrate +themselves, each on his own locality, not necessarily to do the work, +but to give the inspiration which would call out the work of collecting +just that material which Prof. Geddes suggested all through his paper +was one of the great needs of our time? And so one hoped that papers of +this kind would not merely lead to discussion, but to workers +accumulating results of this kind, giving the inspiration to others, and +thus laying up treasures for the sociologists of the future for their +interpretation. Thus, the Sociological Society should be not only the +one scientific society in constant touch with all the leading brains +over the country, but it should be an inspiration, as Prof. Geddes has +himself been, to groups of workers everywhere for just the kind of work +which the Sociological Society has been founded to develop. + + +MR. J.M. ROBERTSON said: + +I would first add my tribute to this extremely interesting and +stimulating paper. It recalled confabulations I had with Prof. Geddes, +many years ago, when he was first formulating in Edinburgh those ideas +which have since become so widely known. I would like, however, to +suggest a few criticisms. The paper is, broadly speaking, an application +of the view of a biologist to Sociology. It is not so much an +application of Darwin's view as that of Von Baer. Prof. Geddes has +characterised his paper as one of elementary preliminaries, but he has +really contributed a paper that [Page: 123] would form part of a +preliminary study in a series of studies in Sociology. The paper does +not quite bear out its title: "Civics: as Applied Sociology." The +application has not begun. The somewhat disparaging remarks on +encyclopædias of general knowledge, further, might well be applied to +the scheme of an encyclopædia of the natural history of every city and +every village as an original centre. This atomism will not help +Sociology. Had he to master all that, the sociologist's life would be a +burden not to be borne, and we would never get to applied sociology at +all. There is a danger, too, in following this line, of fastening +attention on one stage of evolution and leaving it there. The true +principle is that evolution is eternal and continuous; and I think harm +may be done, possibly, when you take, say, the phenomenon of the +communication of general knowledge in schools and call it a derivation +from the French _Encyclopedie_. Why leave it there? Where did that come +from? If you are going to trace the simple evolution of civic forms, if +you are to trace how they have come about, it will not do to stick at a +given point. This is a survival of that. That is a survival of something +else. The French _Encyclopedie_ will have to be traced back to the +encyclopædia of the mediaeval period; and even to the still earlier +period of Isidore of Seville. Then again, there is a danger, I think, +analogous to the danger met with in early botany--the danger of +confusing a resemblance with a relationship. It is extremely interesting +to speculate that the Place de l'Etoile is an evolution from the plan of +the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but +it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection. +The thing is not proved. + +Of course, the vital question is not this tracing of evolution. The +question is: Is "Civics" to be only the study of forms? If so, Sociology +is a dead science, and will effect little practical good until it is +vivified by such suggestions as Mr. Crane has put in his paper. Mr. +Walter Crane brought in a vital question when he said: "How are you +going to modify the values of your civic life unless you grapple with +political problems?" I am not forgetting that Prof. Geddes promises to +deal in another paper with the civics of the future; but I insist that +it will have to grapple with political questions. As he says, a city is +not a place, but "a drama in time." The question for the sociological +student of history is: How has this inequality of wealth and of service +arisen, and how is it to be prevented in the future? That is the problem +we have to study if we wish to make sociology a vital interest. A +definition of progress is really the first step in sociology. Prof. +Geddes' next paper should give us a definition of progress, and it is +better that we begin to fight over a definition of progress, in order to +get a dynamic agreement, than that we should multiply the archaeological +study of many towns. I admit that it is very interesting. In travelling +in South Africa, I often tried to gather how communities began; what, +for example, was the nucleus of this or that village. It was surprising +how very few had an idea of any nucleus at all. I deprecate the idea, +however, that [Page: 124] we are all to amass an enormous accumulation +of such researches. Mr. Booth's single compilation for London is a study +for years; but Mr. Booth's admirable investigation of the difficulties +of life among the poor of London does not of itself give any new impulse +to the solution of the problem of London. It merely gives exact +knowledge in place of general knowledge. The problem of sociology arose +on the general knowledge. I fear lest the work of sociology should run +to an extension of this admirable study instead of to the stimulation of +action taken on that particular knowledge, or on more general knowledge. +We all knew there was plenty of poverty, and how it was caused. We all +had Ideals as to how it was to be got rid of in the future; but the +question is: Is the collection of detail or the prescription of social +method the kind of activity that the Sociological Society is to take up? + +SIR THOMAS BARCLAY said: + +I am not sure that I agree with Mr. Robertson that it is desirable to +define either "progress" or "civilisation." On the whole, their chances +lie rather in the great variety of ideas of what constitutes them than +in any hard-and-fast notion of their meaning. They are generalisations +of what is, rather than an object towards which effort should tend. But +neither do I agree with Prof. Geddes' restriction of "civics" to the +mere outward part of municipal effort. In America the word "civics" is +applied to the rights and duties of citizens, and I should like to see +Prof. Geddes include in Civics the connection between citizen life and +the outward improvement of cities. I am sure, however, Professor Geddes, +as a practical man, will deal rather with realities than theoretical +views on the subject for which he has done so much himself. Edinburgh +owes more than many are willing to admit to Prof. Geddes. I think Ramsay +Lodge one of the greatest embellishments of the Castle Hill in +Edinburgh. I hope he will now be successful in doing something still +more admirable for my native town of Dunfermline. My friend Mr. +Carnegie, whose native town it also is, I believe intends to show by an +object lesson what can be done for all cities. Prof. Geddes is helping +him in this work with his suggestions. I hope they will be carried out. +In America there are several very beautiful cities. No one can ever +forget Washington, which is truly a garden city. No money is spared in +America to beautify and healthify (excuse the barbarism) the habitations +of the thousands. A beautiful city is an investment for health, +intellect, imagination. Genius all the world over is associated, +wherever it has been connected with cities, with beautiful cities. To +grow up among things of beauty ennobles the population. But I should +like to see Prof. Geddes extend his projects for Dunfermline to the +population itself. Most of you know what Mr. Henderson did to utilise +the Edinburgh [Page: 125] police in the care of children. The future of +the country depends upon them. The subject is too serious to continue to +be left to the haphazard mercies of indifferent parents. Every child +born is an agent for good or for evil among the community, and the +community cannot afford to neglect how it is brought up, the +circumstances in which it has its being, the environment from which it +derives its character and tendencies. Necessity may be the mother of +invention, but need of food and insufficient clothing develop in the +child an inventiveness that is not for the good of the community. It +seems a matter of too great an importance to be left even to private +initiative, as was done under Mr. Henderson's regime in Edinburgh; but +everywhere else, or nearly so, very little is done by even private +initiative for the protection of the children against their vicious +environment. In short, I do not think that civics, in the sense in which +my friend Prof. Geddes treats it, is a complete subject at all. Civics, +to my mind, includes everything that relates to the citizen. Everywhere +something is being done in one direction or another to make them +capable, prosperous, and happy. In America happiness is taught in the +schools. Every schoolmaster's and schoolmistress's first duty is to set +an example of a happy frame of mind; smiling and laughing are +encouraged, and it is not thought that the glum face is at all necessary +for the serious business of life. In fact, the glum face is a +disqualification; is associated with failure, and bad luck and +ill-nature. In Germany the schoolmaster is in the first place a trainer +of the body. One of his chief duties is to watch and prevent the +deterioration of the eyesight, to promote the development of the lungs, +to prevent spinal deviation. The second part of his business is to watch +over the character of the child, and only the third part is to ram +knowledge into the poor little mind. And wherever you go over the world +you will find something in the course of being done in civics, as I +understand the subject. I thank Prof. Geddes for what he is doing for +Dunfermline, and hope he will understand "progress" without requiring to +define it. + + +DR. J. LIONEL TAYLER + +(Author of "_Aspects of Social Evolution_") said: + +While agreeing with Prof. Geddes in his belief in the importance of +institutional and geographical studies as a basis for the investigation +of the development of cities, it yet seems to me that these studies +cannot prove of supreme value to society unless they are accompanied by +a detailed examination of the _natural_ characteristics of all +individuals who have been born into and existed in, or merely dwelt in, +these surroundings. It is not enough to trace out, however accurately, +the various stages of a town's growth from its commencement to the +present time, because _the cause_ of [Page: 126] the evolution of any +city aggregate lies deeper, is in large part animate, and not inanimate, +in character. The value of the surroundings depends at least as much +upon the capacity of the individual citizen, singly and collectively, to +utilise what he or she is brought in contact with as upon the +peculiarities of these surroundings themselves. Place, tradition, social +organisation, individual development, education, are factors in town +evolution that cannot safely be overlooked, and they all vary from age +to age and in place and place. + +If it were possible to completely exchange the inhabitants of a large +town in England with those of an equally large town in France two groups +of changes would become more or less rapidly observable: (1) the French +and English citizens would adapt themselves, as far as they desired and +were able, to their altered conditions; (2) the characteristics of both +towns would gradually change, in spite of geographical position, in +response to the altered human needs. Similarly, a town composed of +individuals who are naturally uncultured and unprogressive will tend to +preserve its uncultured and unprogressive characters more than another +that has alert citizens to carry on its activities. Every profession and +every trade tends to foster its own social atmosphere; and towns will +vary with their industrial life, and individuals favourably disposed to +this atmosphere will come to the town, and those unfavourably inclined +to it will leave. _These changing citizens, as they act upon and react +to their surroundings and vary in their powers age by age, are the real +evolvers of the conditions in which they dwell_; hence the citizen must +not be omitted from our study if we are to understand city growth. + +In other words, I think that every investigation of civic, and for that +matter country life should be studied from two aspects: (1) to note the +peculiarities, growth and development of the material, non-living and +non-thinking elements in the problem--the buildings, their geographical +position, their age, their fitness for past and present life, and the +distinctive local features that are evolving or retrogressing with the +multiplication of some trades and industries and the decline of others +in each area that is studied; (2) the change in the quality of the +citizens themselves through racial, educational, and other factors, +noting how far ideals are altering, not only in the mass of individuals +taken as a whole, but also by examining the changing outlook in every +trade and profession. With these two parallel lines of investigation to +study, we could then determine how far environment--social and +climatic--how far racial and individual characteristics have been +powerful in the moulding of the fabric around us. + +With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the +vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social +life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, +knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds +us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, knowing +the [Page: 127] intensity of the different national desires for progress +_and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires_, we could +realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in our +civic life. + +PROFESSOR EARL BARNES (in moving a vote of thanks) said: + +For years I have been accumulating a debt of obligation to Prof. Geddes +for ideas, suggestions, and large synthesis of life, and it gives me +special pleasure to voice the feeling of this meeting concerning the +paper read to us this afternoon. To me, as an American, it is especially +interesting to hear this presentation of life as an organic whole. Life +is but a period of education, and if there is nothing behind this +present moment of life it is all extremely insignificant. To an +American, who has lived at No. 1067 in 63rd Street, Philadelphia, and +at No. 1718 in G Street, in Washington, it is profoundly interesting to +think of the possibility of a man's so living that his whole existence +shall be significant, so that the realities of his world, geographical, +geological, and material, and all that long development of humanity +through the historic past--that all these things will be really and +truly significant to him. Prof. Geddes has himself shown us that is +possible. Any man who has gone to Edinburgh and seen the restoration of +the old life that has been carried out there under his hand knows it can +be done. I suppose we all came here to hear Professor Geddes speak on +practical affairs because his name is now connected with the plans for +making a city that shall be really expressive of all its potentialities +to all of its people. I am personally profoundly grateful to him for his +paper; and I move you that he be given a very hearty vote of thanks. + +The Chairman. (MR. CHARLES BOOTH), in closing the discussion, said: I +myself entirely agree with what Mr Robertson has said as to the extreme +difficulty of bringing investigations of the kind referred to, to +practical conclusions--practical points. Practical work at present needs +the most attention. I perhaps am too old to do it, but I feel the +attraction of that kind of work, and that was one reason I was sorry Mr +Loch had to leave before we could hear what he might have to say. The +description I have given of London does seem to be a foggy labyrinth I +agree, but nevertheless I cannot but think that we do require a complete +conception if we are to do the definite work of putting different people +in their proper places in an organic whole, such as a city is. I do not +think we can do without it, and I regard the paper of this evening as an +important contribution [Page: 128] to that complete conception which I +feel we need. I should like each worker and thinker to have and to know +his place in the scheme of civic improvement; and I think it perfectly +possible for every man to know what it is that he is trying to do, what +contribution it is that he ought to give to that joint life which is +called here civics, which is the life of a city and the life in the +city. One man cannot possibly concentrate it all in himself. Within a +society such as the Sociological Society a general scheme is possible in +which each individual and each society shall play its acknowledged and +recognised part. It does not follow that the work done in one city can +apply as an example to another. Individuality has too strong a hold; +but each town may work out something for itself. I have been very much +interested in the work which Mr. Rowntree has done in York, on which he +was kind enough to consult me. He entered upon it on quite other grounds +from mine, but so far as the ground was common between him and me we +tried to have a common basis. Those of you who have not read Mr. +Horsfall's volumes on Manchester would do well to do so. Prof. Geddes +gave us a vivid picture of a larger regional unit which culminates +geographically in the city as industrial climax. In his particular +instance he referred, I take, to Dundee. In Dundee there is at this +moment an inquiry being started, and I am in communication with those +who are doing it, and I hope it will add something to the completeness +of the picture we have of that city. In Dundee they have excessive +difficulties in respect to crowding and female labour. What I suggested +was, that they should make a special study of such circumstances as are +special to Dundee. Labour there is very largely sack-making and jute +manufacture, and there is a great deal of girl labour; and that is one +of the special subjects that will be considered in that inquiry. + +Then, with regard to the preservation of such of the natural beauties +that do remain even quite near to busy town centres, surely it is of the +greatest importance that they should be watched and protected and +preserved. Prof. Geddes has contributed a portion of his practical work +to that practical question at Dunfermline. His charming volume on +Dunfermline ("A Study in City Development") shows what beautiful +features there are near Dunfermline, and how much may be done to +preserve and improve them in ways that are most interesting to study. +His use of photography in this matter is extraordinarily successful. +Prof. Geddes has photographed a scene as it now is, with its background +and distance and its squalid foreground, already ruined by the debris of +the city--old tin pots and every [Page: 129] kind of rubbish--thrown +down by the side of the stream, which is naturally beautiful. By +manipulating the photographic plates he wipes out that which he does not +want and introduces other features, including a little waterfall; and +you have, instead of a miserable suburb, a dignified park. Well now, +that is practical work. It has in it that element which he has described +by a question-mark in his diagram, the element of forecast. You have the +same idea in Manchester, in Mr. Horsfall's work. They have laid out +their map of Manchester and shown in what way it may develop, so as not +to spoil the beauty that remains on two sides of Manchester. There is +really exquisitely beautiful natural scenery close to Manchester, which +may be entirely spoiled or preserved, according as a forecast is made +and forethought taken. This is not a question on which there is reason +to think that people will disagree. The difficulties are always supposed +to be financial. It is a sad thing that we should be so hampered by our +methods of finance that we throw away opportunities to retain these +actual beauties which undoubtedly add to the actual money value of a +district. I cannot suppose that the way in which cities are laid out +with narrow streets really results in an increase of value. The +surroundings of our cities are undeveloped estates, which we have only +to agree amongst ourselves how to lay out, and everybody would benefit +by such joint action. There is an excellent illustration in regard to +that in Mr. Horsfall's work in connection with Germany. It must be said +that from Germany there is a great deal to learn in civic matters. In +one of its towns the properties lie in extraordinarily long strips. It +is the final result of properties having been measured by the length of +the plough's run. When that method is applied to town sites, it is not +convenient for streets; and there are some quarters in this German town +ruined in this way, and the people have agreed together to improve +matters. Every owner is to be given credit for his share in the total +value of the improvement that is found to accrue from the re-arrangement +of these undesirable divisions, and any difference of opinion as to the +just share and proportion is to be referred to an impartial arbitrator. +All the owners will gain, though some a little more than others. That is +an example that we may do well to try and follow, and in some way or +other improve the money value, and social value, and hygienic value of +towns, and if necessary compel the carrying out of improvements when +some few might be disposed to hold out against them. + + + + +[Page: 130] WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS + +From PROF. BALDWIN BROWN (Professor of Fine Art in the University of +Edinburgh) + + +I am glad of this opportunity of saying how cordially I agree with the +method adopted by my friend Professor Geddes in dealing with the life of +cities. He treats the modern community and its material shell as things +of organic growth, with a past and a future as well as a present, +whereas we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour of +some exigency of the moment. A historic British town has recently +furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection. The town +possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at a +time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great +Britain. Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall +and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing a site +for a new elementary school. No doubt, in that school, books "approved +by the Department" will instruct scholars in the past history of the +burgh, but the living witness of that history must first of all be +carefully obliterated. All the rest of this ancient and historic +enceinte was condemned a few weeks ago to complete destruction, merely +on the plea that the site would be convenient for workmen's dwellings. +The monument has now been saved, but it has taken the whole country to +do it! + +Here were chosen officials, governors of no mean city, absolutely +oblivious of these important interests committed to their care, and all +for want of having drilled into them these broader views which Professor +Geddes puts forward so well. + +He has himself done practical work in Edinburgh on the lines he lays +down, and I have lately had occasion to note, and call attention to the +advantage to the city of much wise conservatism in regard to our older +buildings which he and his associates have shown. + +In Edinburgh we have the advantage that our older monuments, [Page: +131] in which so much of the past life of the city is enshrined, are +firm and solid; and it takes some trouble to knock them down. Hence for +some time to come we shall preserve here object-lessons in civic +development that will be of interest to the country at large. + + +From MR. WALTER CRANE (President of Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society) + +Professor Geddes' very interesting "Study in City Development" is highly +suggestive, and shows how great a difference thoughtful and tasteful +treatment might make in dealing with such problems. It is sad to think +of the opportunities wasted, and of the more ignorant and often too +hasty clearances for traffic which have often been apparently the sole +motives in city improvement. The conservation of historic buildings, +whenever possible, the planting of trees along our streets, the laying +out of gardens, the insistence upon a proportional amount of air and +open space to new buildings would go a long way towards making our +bricks-and-mortar joyless wildernesses into something human and +habitable. + +Whether, under favourable circumstances and the rare public spirit of +private owners, much can be done, or to any wide extent, so long as +absolute individual ownership in land and ground values is allowed, +seems to me very doubtful. We cannot hope to see great social +improvements without great economic changes, but every effort in the +direction of improving the beauty of our cities is welcome to all who +have the well-being of the community at heart; and such work as Prof. +Geddes is doing should arouse the keenest interest and the earnest +attention of all who realise its immense social importance. + + +From MR. J.H. HARLEY, M.A. + +If sociology is ever to vindicate itself as an art, it must be able to +analyse and explain the present, and to some extent at least to cast the +horoscope of the future. It must feel its way through all the tangled +labyrinths of city life, and show us where we have arrived and whither +we are going. But this is exactly the part of Professor Geddes' Applied +Sociology where he becomes most vague and unsatisfactory. "Enough for +the present," we are told, "if it be admitted that the practical man in +his thought and action in the present is mainly as yet the too +unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still working +within the grasp of natural conditions." Now we must all be willing to +admit that the present is the child of the past, and that we cannot +adequately understand [Page: 132] the present until we have led up to +the present by the study of its antecedents more and less remote. But +what Professor Geddes fails to bring out is that it is only in the +present or the more immediate past that the City has really become a +City in the modern sense of the word. The City as City is a product of +the Industrial Revolution. Its huge and casual assemblages of human +life, its overcrowding, its poverty line, its East End and its West End, +its infantile mortality, its trades massed in their own particular +districts, it aliens, its criminals and its vices--all these problems of +social pathology arise from the fact that the conditions of modern +industry have brought people together who have few interests in common, +and who were compelled to arrange themselves in some kind of decent +order within a limited area, without sufficient time being given to +evolve a suitable environment, or to prepare themselves for the +environment which they actually found on every side of them. London in +the past, therefore, cannot help us so very much to solve the riddles of +London in the present, because London in the past had not developed +these social growths or offered a mature ground to those social +parasites which make us sometimes despair of being able to get much +insight into the London of the present. + +The fact seems to be that Prof. Geddes conceives sociology too much as a +primary and too little as a secondary science. He defines applied +sociology as the application of social survey to social science, when +social ratiocination or social philosophy are needed before one can be +said to have gauged the extent of the influence which this comprehensive +science may have in our actual practice or on our Budget of the future. +No doubt, "observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is just +the very means of preparing for it," but this preparation must be made +in the various specialisms which make up the complete or encyclopædic +science of sociology. To me it seems an unwarrantable narrowing of the +scope or significance of sociology to say that there is no better method +available of teaching it "than that of regional survey, historical as +well as geographical." Surely "regional survey" Is the appropriate +method in the very simplest and most concrete parts of the complete +science of sociology, and even when we come to history proper we must do +very much more than make a regional survey. It is very interesting, no +doubt, to "survey" history in the course of a summer ramble to the ruins +of some old monastery, but unless the monks had kept records of what had +been done there in bygone days, the mere outward survey will not carry +us further than Prof. Geddes is carried in the very general map which he +makes of the whole field of history. In other words, history, in any +proper sense, demands more than "survey" in Prof. Geddes' sense of the +word. It calls to its aid linguistics, criticism, archaeology, +jurisprudence, and politics--there must be comparison and criticism as +well as "survey." History is the laboratory in which the sociologist +sees his social experiments working out their [Page: 133] results, and +history is to the sociologist what experiment is to the physician, or +the comparative method to the biologist. + +This being so, the scope of "civics" as "applied sociology" is immensely +widened. The present is the child of the past, but we see that it is +only in the present that such ancient groups as the colony of Hanseatic +merchants in Old London have shown us what has been the ultimate +significance of their embryological life. The modern city bristles with +sociological problems which demand a knowledge of most of the +specialisms included in the complete science of sociology, and almost +invite us to cast the horoscope of the future. We see, as Booth and +Rowntree saw before us, the poverty line like a fiery portent at every +point of our study, and we are led finally to ask ourselves whether M. +Arthur Bauer was not right in choosing the title "Les Classes Sociales" +as the most characteristic title he could give to his recent and most +suggestive analysis of the general characteristics of social life. + + +From MR. T.C. HORSFALL + +(President, Manchester Citizen's Association, &c.) + +The teaching of the paper seems to me to be most sound and helpful. The +town of the future--I trust of the near future--must by means of its +schools, its museums, and galleries, its playgrounds, parks and +gymnasia, its baths, its wide tree-planted streets and the belt of +unspoilt country which must surround it, bring all its inhabitants in +some degree under the _best_ influences of all the regions and all the +stages of civilisation, the influences of which, but not the best +influences, contribute, and have contributed, to make our towns what +they are. + + +From H. OSMAN NEWLAND + +(Author of "_A Short History of Citizenship_") + +The failures of democratic governments in the past have been +attributable, in part, to the lack of intelligence and +self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in the +government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to +grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as +an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much +less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta +citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it +scarcely rose above Municipalism. In more modern times, civic education +has had to encounter the same difficulty as in America, where the young +citizen's first duty is to salute his flag, and as in London, where +"Civics" is distributed in doles of local [Page: 134] history in which +the municipality plays a part altogether out of proportion to its +relation to the country, the age, and the world. Civics, as the applied +sociology of each individual and each body of interests, has but begun +to be dreamed of; and before it can be properly developed it is +desirable, if not necessary, that the general public should know +something more than at present both of the historic development of the +"civic" idea, and of the psychology of aggregations as differentiated +from the psychology of the individual. Not until we can make "the man in +the street" a conscious citizen, instead of a political automaton, shall +we be able to enlist his sympathies with "Civics"; and without those +sympathies the sociologist's "Civics" will, I fear, be but partial and +inaccurate. + + +From MR. G. BISSET SMITH + +(H.M. Registration Examiner for East of Scotland). + +There is an elusiveness here and there in this paper which has helped to +confirm me in the opinion that it is well to emphasise the fact that +Prof. Geddes is not only a dreamer of lofty dreams but a doer and a +practical initiator. He has expressed himself not only in words but in +art and in architecture, and in educational organisation; and he has in +many ways, sometimes indirectly, influenced scholastic and civic +activities. + +If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has +only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?" +"_Circumspice!_" There stand the settlements he initiated, the houses +beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of +his ideas, an encyclopædia in stone and in storeys. + +We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts +towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is +"concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with +ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society. +And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of +its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the +necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied +Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we +have to ask is:--(1) What actually are the generalisations of the +present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable sociological +testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the +touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer to +these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion. +But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to +clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose +occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the +reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present condition +of the people." + +[Page: 135] No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of +"The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of +_population_; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. Charles +Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all +readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely +suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population +must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of the +characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential material +of a study of its whole civilisation." + +Accepting Mr. Branford's definition of _occupation_ as "any and every +form of human endeavour, past, present, and future," we see that +occupation must have a large place in the description, explanation, and +forecasting of the evolution of cities--such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, +Dundee--in the scheme of survey outlined so sweepingly in "Civics." + +"Life and Labour of the People in London" contains several general +observations almost equally applicable to our largest Scottish cities, +with the demographic conditions of which my official duties give me +special opportunities for becoming familiar and for regional survey. + +In the concluding volume of that great contribution to sociology Mr. +Booth (page 23) remarks:-- + +"Many influences conspire to cause the poor to multiply almost in +proportion to their poverty, and operate in the other direction in the +case of the better off, almost in proportion to their wealth. But," says +Mr. Booth, "when we bring the death-rate into account this law no longer +holds." + +With the poor living under bad conditions in crowded homes the net +increase is diminished. To those of us who are hopeful of improvement by +eugenics it is pleasing to note that Mr. Booth--somewhat unlike Mr. Kidd +in his well-known "Social Evolution"--is optimistic in his conclusion +that "on the whole it may fairly be expected that concurrently with a +rising standard of health we may see a fall in birth-rate as well as +death-rate, and thus have no cause to fear, as the result of better +sanitation, that the largest natural increase in population will ever be +contributed by the lowest class." So the heritage of the city may grow +not only in quantity but also in quality. + +From PROFESSOR W.I. THOMAS +(Professor in the University of Chicago, U.S.A.) + +From the standpoint of its applicability to new countries like America, +Professor Geddes' programme is inadequate because of its failure to +recognise that a city under these conditions is formed by a rapid and +contemporaneous movement of population, and not by the lapse of time. +[Page: 136] The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely +one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of about +two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic +development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a +population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological +standpoint therefore becomes of more importance than the historical. + +PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply + +I am sincerely glad to be able to express myself in substantial +agreement with the majority of my critics, only asking them in turn to +recognise that this is but the first half of my subject--an outline of +civics as in the first place a matter of science, a geographic and +historic survey of past conditions, a corresponding census of present +ones--here discussed and insisted on as affording the needful base for +their demands upon civics as an art, that of effective social service. + +In this respect various critics have in fact anticipated large elements +of this future portion of my paper, so that in general views, at least, +critics and writer are not so far apart as would appear were the +preceding pages submitted as a comprehensive outline of the subject, +instead of as its scientific introduction merely. + +Of criticisms strictly applicable to this paper as it stands, there are +really very few. I am confident that the chairman must be quite alone in +too modestly applying to his great work that description of London +itself, with which the paper (Section A, pp. 104-107) opens, since his +volumes offer really our first effective clue to the labyrinth, and his +method of intensive and specialised regional survey, the intensest +searchlight yet brought to bear upon it. + +Taking, however, a concrete point of criticism, such as that of the +monumental planning of modern Paris as derived from forest rides, the +critic need only walk through any French forest, or even to consult a +Baedeker, or other guide-book, with its maps of any historic dwelling +and its surroundings, from Chantilly or Fontainebleau to minor ones, to +see that this plan, originally devised for the pleasure, success and +safety [Page: 137] of the hunt, and later adapted to domination and +defence, became next appreciated as affording the finest possible +perspectives of the palatially rebuilt chateau. So that it is not at all +a fantastic hypothesis, but an obvious and inevitable conclusion that +Napoleon's and Haussman's plans were not at all invented by them for +Paris, but were directly imitated from the familiar landscape +architecture of the preceding century, which again was but the simplest +development from the spacious forest rides of older hunting nobles, laid +out without any thought of the architectural and city developments they +were destined in later centuries to determine. + +The citizen of Washington had till lately often forgotten that the +magnificent perspectives of his city are due to the French +landscape-architect (Major L'Enfant) whom Washington imported for the +express purpose of laying out his capital; yet it is no less clear that +this most magnificent of the New World city plans is derived from Old +World forest rides, than that its monumental edifices descend from +Renaissance and classic exemplars. + +I plead indeed for such studies of the plans of any and every city from +the point of view of its natural development. The too purely abstract +and subjective sociology of the dwellers of great cities like London +would in this way be helped by the facts of their own topographic +history, already well known and clearly explained by geographer and +historian, towards again feeling with the naturalist that even the +modern city is but the most complex evolutionary expression and +development of the life of Nature. + +This view I take to be indeed a commonplace in France; but I account for +its apparent unfamiliarity to English readers from the fact of our +scanty forests in this island being left practically wild, our nobles +not inhabiting them, but the cultivated pasture and arable regions +below--planting trees indeed, "plantations," but seldom woods, and +practically never forests at all. This again brings out the fact that +the French nobles, despite our urban associations with regard to them +have belonged far more than ours to the social formation and tradition +of the hunter--while ours, despite their love of sports, are yet +fundamentally squires, i.e., essentially and historically approximating +to the peasants of their villages. The bearing of all this upon their +respective history will be obvious. Here again we have the origins of +the vivid contrast of the English or so-called naturalistic style of +landscape-gardening with the more formal French tradition. Yet in a very +true sense we see the former to be even more highly artificial than the +latter. [Page: 138] The English citizen who may even admit this way of +looking at the contrasted city plans of London and Paris may fail, +unless he has appreciated the principle here involved, to see why London +and Paris houses are so different--the one separate and self-contained, +with its door undefended and open upon the street, while the normal +Parisian house is a populous, high-piled tenement around a central +court, with high _porte cochère_ closed by massive oaken doors and +guarded by an always vigilant and often surly _concierge_. + +A moment of historical reflection suffices to see that the former is the +architecture of a long-settled agricultural place, with its spreading +undefended villages, in which each household had its separate dwelling, +the other a persistence of the Continental fortified city crowded within +its walls. + +But beyond this we must see the earlier historic, the simpler geographic +origins of the French courtyard house as a defensible farmyard, of which +the ample space was needed nightly for defence against wild beasts, if +not also wilder men, against whom the _concierge_ is not only the +antique porter but the primitive sentinel. + +I may seem unduly to labour such points, yet do so advisedly, in order +to emphasise and make clearer the essential thesis of this portion of my +paper--that every scientific survey involves a geographic and historic +exploration of origins, but that of the still unwritten chapter, that +the far-reaching forelook, idealistic yet also critical, which is +needful to any true and enduring contribution to social service, is +prepared for by habitually imaging the course of evolution in the past. + +Speaking personally, as one whose leisure and practical life have alike +been largely spent in the study and the preservation of ancient +buildings, I may say that this has not been solely, or even essentially, +from an antiquarian interest in the historic past, but still more on +behalf of a practical interest--that of the idealistic, yet economic, +utilitarian, because educational and evolutionary, transformation of our +old cities--old Edinburgh, old Dunfermline, and the like--from their +present sordid unhygienic failure; and therefore industrial and +commercial insufficiency, towards a future equalling if not transcending +the recorded greatness of the civic past. + +It has, therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of +evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would +otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as +Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon +Civics as Applied Social Science. + + + + +[Page: 139] PRESS COMMENTS + +_The Times_ (July 20, 1904) in a leading article, said: + +In the paper read on Monday at a meeting of the Sociological Society by +Professor GEDDES--an abstract of which we print--are contained ideas of +practical value to be recommended to the study of ambitious +municipalities. This is the age of cities, and all the world is +city-building. Almost everywhere is a flow from the country town-ward. +China and India may be still, in the main, lands of villages. But the +West, Russia perhaps excepted, is more and more peopled by dwellers in +cities. In a dim sort of way many persons understand that the time has +come when art and skill and foresight should control what so far has +been left to chance to work out; that there should be a more orderly +conception of civic action; that there is a real art of city-making, and +that it behoves this generation to master and practise it. Professor +Geddes truly said the land is already full of preparation as to this +matter; the beginnings of a concrete art of city-making are visible at +various points. But our city rulers are often among the blindest to +these considerations; and nowhere probably is to be seen a municipality +fully and consistently alive to its duties in this respect. London may +be left out of the question. Still a province rather than a city in the +strict sense, wanting what, in the view of the early master of political +science, was an essential of the true city, that it could "easily be +overseen," with a vast floating population, it will be some time before +it can be dealt with as an organic whole. But the rulers of such +communities as Manchester and Newcastle and York ought long ago to have +realised, much more than has been done, that they are not so much brick +and mortar, so much rateable area, so many thousands of people +fortuitously brought together. They have all a regional environment of +their own which determined their origin and growth. They have all a rich +past, the monuments of which, generally to be found in abundance by +careful, reverent inquirers, ought to be preserved; a past which ought +to be known more or less to all the dwellers therein, and the knowledge +of which will make the present more interesting. Even when old buildings +have disappeared, ancient roads, pathways, and streets can be traced; +place names keep alive much history; and the natural features reveal to +the practised eye what must have been the look and condition of a town +in past ages. Professor Geddes gives a sketch of what he conceives the +vast and ever-growing literature of cities will one day be. Even if the +comprehensive monographs which he foreshadows are never [Page: 140] +written, it is not surely fanciful to expect that, with education +universal, almost every dweller in our old towns will acquire some sort +of that feeling with which a member of an ancient family looks upon its +ancestral house or lands--will, even without much reading, have some +sort of notion of his predecessors and a certain pride in his membership +of an ancient community. If he has not the good fortune to be a De Vere, +a De Bohun, a Howard, Mowbray or Cavendish, he may perhaps be a citizen +of a town which flourished when some of these families were unknown. + +Such pride, or, as the lecturer preferred to term it, such "growth of +civic consciousness and conscience, the awakening of citizenship towards +civic renascence," will be the best security for a worthy city of the +future.... + +Professor Geddes glanced at the opening civic future, "the remoter and +higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly +needed foresight and statesmanship involve," the possibilities which may +be easily realised if only there be true civic pride, foresight, and +unflagging pursuit of a reasonable ideal.... It remains to be seen what +our cities will become when for some generations the same spirit of +pride and reverence shown by old families as to their possessions has +presided over all civic changes and developments.... Ruskin somewhere +points out the mediaeval love of cities, unwholesome, dirty, and +forbidding though they were. He did not teach his generation that that +affection might with more reason attach to the modern city if its people +knew what it had been and steadily strove to make it better, if there +was in every large community patriotism and a polity. + +DR. J.H. BRIDGES in _The Positivist Review_ (Sept., 1904), said: Under +the title, "Civics, as applied Sociology," Prof. Geddes read on July +18th a very interesting paper before the Sociological Society. The +importance of the subject will be contested by none. The method adopted +in handling it, being in many ways original, invites remark ... + +What is wanted is first a survey of the facts to be dealt with--a +regional survey. This point of view has next to be correlated with +corresponding practical experience acquired by practical civic life, but +"aiming at a larger and more orderly conception of civic action.".... +Students of Comte will not forget his well-known maxim, _Savoir pour +prévoir, afin de pourvoir_. + +What is to be the area of survey? Prof. Geddes decides that the City may +be taken "as the integrate of study." Whether any modern towns, and, if +so, what, may be taken as integrates in the sense which would +undoubtedly apply to ancient Athens or to mediaeval Florence, may be +questioned; but it is too soon to interrupt our author.... Every one who +heard the lecturer must have been fascinated by his picture of a river +system which he takes for his unit of study; the high mountain tracts, +the pastoral hillsides, the hamlets and villages in the valleys, the +market town where the valleys meet, the convergence of the larger +valleys into a county town, finally, the great city where the river +meets the sea. The lecturer went on to advocate the systematic study of +some of the principal river-basins of the world for the purpose of +examining the laws which govern the grouping of cities. All would agree +that much instruction might be derived from such [Page: 141] a survey, +provided two dangers be avoided. One is the exaggeration of the +influence of the environment on the social organism, an error into which +the Le Play school have sometimes fallen; as when, for instance, it was +sought to explain Chinese civilisation by the rice-plant. The other +danger, which needs much care and thought to avoid, is the accumulation +of such a mass of irrelevant detail as renders (perhaps sometimes it is +intended to render) all generalisation impossible. Thinking men are at +last beginning to regard the accumulation of memoirs as one of the +principal obstacles to scientific progress. On the pretext of "more +evidence," conclusions are adjourned, not merely _sine die_, but _sine +spe diei_. Yet so long as man is man, he must, and will, have +conclusions; be they final or otherwise. + +From the physiography of the city we pass to its history ... + +In this part of his subject he has, as we all know, many precursors and +fellow-workers. The remarkable series, entitled "Historic Towns," +instituted by Prof. Freeman, is known to most. The study of towns was +the life and soul of Mr. Green's historic labours. Eloquent and powerful +pictures of the great cities of the world fill the greater part of Mr. +Harrison's well-known volume, "The Meaning of History"; and the student +of universal history (a few of these, it may be hoped, are still left) +finds them very stimulating and helpful. The special note of Prof. +Geddes' method is that he does not limit himself to the greater cities, +but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with +their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely +to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of +his observation. In biology, the study of any single organism, however +minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of +structure or function. As for instance, many forms of heart must be +examined before the laws governing blood-circulation could be revealed; +so here. Countless, indeed, are the forms of cities; even limiting our +field of observation to those that have grown up in the last century +they are numerous enough. Their differences and analogies would +doubtless repay analysis, always supposing that we are clear how far the +modern town, as contrasted with the mediaeval or Graeco-Roman city, can +usefully be treated as "an integrate." This raises large questions of +nation, of groups of nations, finally of Humanity, which cannot here be +touched. + +Meantime, from the teacher's standpoint, there can be no question at +all, among those who look upon education as something more than a +commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with +the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there +perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the +history of our race. Historic memories survive in our villages far more +widely than is thought. The descendants of the man who found the body of +Rufus in the New Forest still live hard by. The builder whom the first +William set to build Corfe Castle was Stephen Mowlem; and the +Dorsetshire firm of Mowlem still pave London causeways. A poor woman in +a remote hamlet, untouched by tourist or guide-book, has shown me the +ash-tree under which Monmouth was seized after Sedgemoor; a Suffolk +peasant, equally innocent of book-knowledge, has pointed Out "Bloody +Mary's lane," through which that bugbear of Protestants passed three +hundred years before on her way to Framlingham. The abbey immortalised +in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern +England, is surrounded now by the same villages that Jocelyn tells us +of. The town named after St. Alban, with its memories of Cassivellaun +and Julius Caesar, of an old Roman city, of the Diocletian persecution, +of the great King Offa, founder of the abbey that was to become [Page: +142] at once a school of historical research, and our best epitome of +mediaeval architecture--all this, with the monument of the author of the +"Novum Organum" crowning the whole--sums up for us sixteen centuries of +history. + +Professor Geddes for more than twenty years has adopted this method of +teaching sociology in the open air; "in the field," as geologists would +say.... + +This is much more than the study and the description of buildings and +places of historical interest. His aim is first to study the way in +which a city grows, always having due regard to its physical +environment; secondly, by comparing like with like, as a naturalist +compares the individuals of a species, or the species of a genus, to +throw light on the laws which govern civic development, and thus to help +forward and direct civic action. + +All this is set forth with greater fulness in the Report which Professor +Geddes has been asked to write for the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. The +purpose of the Report (printed, but not yet published) was to suggest +the way in which the revenue of the Trust, amounting to £25,000, should +be spent for the benefit of this ancient and historic town. The scheme, +with its many pictures, real and ideal, of workshops, parks, +culture-institutes--physical, artistic, and historical--will deeply +interest even those who reject much of it as Utopian. But it is at least +a Utopia specially adapted to a given place and time, one in which every +feature of landscape and history is made the most of, one in which a +beginning can be made at once, leaving room for further developments as +occasion may serve. Moreover, it is penetrated through and through with +the Republican ideal of bringing the highest truth within the reach of +all. + +Comte has pointed out, in the fifth chapter of his "General View of +Positivism," and elsewhere, that it is not enough to enunciate sound +principles of social renovation unless they can be rendered visible and +palpable. "The principal function of art," he says, "is to construct +types on the basis furnished by Science.... However perfectly the first +principles of social renovation may be elaborated by thinkers, they will +still not be sufficiently definite for the practical results.... But, at +the point where Philosophy must always leave a void, Art steps in, and +stimulates to practical action.... Hence, in the future, systematic +formation of Utopias will become habitual; on the distinct understanding +that as in every other branch of art, the ideal shall be kept in +subordination to the real." + +Now, the Dunfermline Report is an admirable example of art thus allied +with science for social service. It is an ideal picture, strictly +adherent to local colour and conditions, of an ancient city prolonging +its vitality into the present and future by providing a very high form +of training for its citizens, a training not of intellect only, but of +the senses, of manual dexterity, of imagination, of Republican +sympathy--a training in which "laborious inacquaintance with dead +languages," infusing into the few touched by it a tincture of caste and +militarism, gives way to comprehensive study of the evolution of Man, +preparing the whole, and not a section merely, of the new generation for +social service. + +Such a Utopia as this may be looked upon as fulfilling the true social +function of Art; standing midway between theory and practice; inspired +by thought, and stimulating action. Only the social artist has to look +to it that his thoughts be not merely true but adequate, lest he +degenerate into a mere decorator. How far will a series of "regional +surveys," like those of [Page: 143] Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree +in York, carry us! Not so far, I fear, as Professor Geddes seems to +hope. Cities in our modern life are organs inseparable from a larger +whole, the nation; and before the life of cities can be much changed, we +have to ask ourselves, What is the national life? What is its ethical +and religious standard? What is its practice as to the acquisition and +distribution of wealth? And, again, What is to be the intercourse of +nations? Is it to be war or peace? + +Mr. Carnegie has given half a million for the benefit of a town of +30,000 inhabitants. Magnificent as the donation is, it is not too much; +not nearly enough, indeed, for the full realisation of Professor Geddes' +scheme. Still, wisely used, it might accomplish great results. What we +have recently sunk in the work of suppressing two free States in South +Africa would have made it possible to do for three hundred towns what +has been done for Dunfermline. Half of what we are now spending on our +army and navy would enable us to endow thirty more of such towns +annually. + +Mr. ISRAEL ZANGWILL in _To-day_ (Aug. 10, 1904), said: The Sociological +Society is forging ahead at American speed; the professors jostle one +another, and Geddes treads on the heels of Galton. After "Eugenics," or +the Science of Good Births, comes "Civics," or the Science of Cities. In +the former Mr. Galton was developing an idea which was in the air, and +in Wells. In the latter Professor Geddes has struck out a more novel +line, and a still more novel nomenclature. Politography, Politogenics, +and Eu-Politogenics, likewise Hebraomorphic and Latinomorphic and +Eutopia--quite an opposite idea from Utopia--such are some of the +additions to the dictionary which the science of Civics carries in its +train. They are all excellent words--with the double-barrelled +exception--and still more excellent concepts. But I fancy the general +idea of them all could be conveyed to the man in the street under the +covering of "the human shell." This shell of ours is the city. It is the +protective crust we have built round ourselves. In a smaller sense our +house is our shell, but in a larger sense each house is only a lobe of +the complex and contorted whole. Geography shapes our shells from +without, and the spirit of our particular community shapes it from +within. History tells us how it has been shaped in the past, Art tells +us how it should be shaped in the future. Professor Geddes, in fact, +envisages our civic shell as becomes a brilliant biologist, who also +happens to be a man of historic imagination, ethical impulses, and +aesthetic perceptions. For the human shell is not merely geometrical and +architectural, like those of apian or beaverish communities; it holds +and expresses all those differences by which we are exalted above the +bee or the beaver. It is coloured with our emotions and ideals, and +contorted with all the spirals of our history. And all these +manifestations of humanity may be studied as systematically as those of +the lower orders of creation, which have till recently monopolised the +privilege of pin and label. The old lady who admired the benevolence of +Providence in always placing rivers by the side of large towns was only +expressing in an exaggerated way the general failure to think of Civics +scientifically. The geographers, in whom may be found the bases of the +science, have always pointed out that the river system is the essential +unit for investigation. From source to sea goes the line of evolution. +And yet even the peasant hamlet at the source depends, as [Page: 144] +Professor Geddes reminds us, on the hinterland of pasture, forest, and +chase; and the hunter is the germ of the soldier and the aristocrat. The +whole region contributes to the ultimate city, as the whole river to the +ultimate sea. The Professor says, justly enough, that we should try to +recover the elemental or naturalist point of view, even for the greatest +cities. He sees London as "fundamentally an agglomeration of villages +with their surviving patches of common around a mediaeval seaport." This +is accurate vision; but when he discerns "even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say, its Place de l'Etoile, its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest rides, each literally straight," I cannot help +suspecting the over-ingenuity of a prolific intellect. The view of +London as a growth from embryos, and the view of Paris as the outcome of +atavistic instinct, belong to different planes of scientific thinking. +That Haussmann in reconstructing Paris was merely an unconscious hunter +and woodlander, building as automatically as a bee, is a fantastic +hypothesis; since cities, if they are to be built on a plan at all, +cannot avoid some unifying geometrical pattern; and there are not very +many possibilities.... In the department of Eu-Politogenics we shall be +confronted with the problem of consciously overriding what evolution has +unconsciously evolved, and building towards a fairer future. No doubt +much of our creation will be imitation, and Professor Geddes is +particularly suggestive in bidding us, at least, to be aware which of +the tangled strands of influence we desire to follow; but a measure of +artistic free-will remains. With the development of a corporate +conscience we should be able to turn out far more satisfactory shells +than many that have blundered into being. "Garden City" is only a +particular application of the science of Civics.... + +Eu-Politogenics concerns itself, however, with more than the mere +configuration of our human shell. Its colour and the music it holds are +considerations no less important. But they are too important to touch at +the fag-end of an article. Professor Geddes must, however, be +congratulated on a stimulating paper, and upon his discovery of Eutopia. +For Eutopia (unlike Utopia, which is really Ou-topia, or no place) is +merely your own place perfected. And the duty of working towards its +perfection lies directly upon _you_. "Civics--as applied sociology" +comes to show you the way. + + + + +CIVICS: AS CONCRETE AND APPLIED SOCIOLOGY, PART II + +BY PROFESSOR GEDDES + +Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., on Monday, January 23rd, 1905, the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, F.R.S., +in the Chair. + + +A--INTRODUCTION: THE NEED OF CIVIC SURVEYS + +To the previous discussion of this subject[2] the first portion of this +present title, "Civics as Concrete Sociology," would have been more +suitable than the second, (that of "Civics as Applied Sociology") +actually used. For its aim was essentially to plead for the concrete +survey and study of cities, their observation and interpretation on +lines essentially similar to those of the natural sciences. Since +Comte's demonstration of the necessity of the preliminary sciences to +social studies, and Spencer's development of this, still more since the +evolution theory has become generally recognised, no one disputes the +applicability of biology to [Page: 58] sociology. Many are, indeed, +vigorously applying the conceptions of life in evolution, in +geographical distribution and environment, in health and disease, to the +interpretations of the problems of the times; while with the +contemporary rise of eugenics to the first plane of interest, both +social and scientific, these lines of thought, bio-social and +bio-geographic, must needs be increasingly utilised and developed. + +[2] "Sociological Papers," Vol 1., pp. 103-118. + +But Comte and Spencer, with most other biologically-minded sociologists +have been more at home among biological generalisations and theories +than among the facts they arise from, and hence it is ever needful to +maintain and extend a first-hand contact with these. I seek, therefore, +to press home the idea that just as the biologist must earn his +generalisations through direct and first-hand acquaintance with nature, +so now must the sociologist work for his generalisations through a +period of kindred observation and analysis, both geographic and +historical; his "general laws" thus appearing anew as the abstract of +regional facts, after due comparison of these as between region and +region. + +May not much of the comparative sterility of post-Comtean (or at any +rate post-Spencerian) sociology, which is so commonly reproached to us, +and to which the difficult formation and slow growth of sociological +societies and schools is largely due, be thus explained? Is it not the +case that many able and persuasive writers, not only knowing the +results, but logically using the generalisations of Comte or Spencer, as +of old of Smith or now-a-days of List in the economic field, are yet +comparatively sterile of fresh contributions to thought, and still more +to action? In fact, must we not apply to much of the literature of +recent sociology, just as to traditional economics, the criticism of +Comte's well-known law of three states, and inquire if such writers, +while apparently upon the plane of generalised science, are not really +in large measure at least arrested upon Comte's "metaphysical stage," +Mill's "abstractional" one? + +Conversely, the revival of sociological interest in this country at +present is obviously very largely derived from fresh and freshening work +like that of Mr Francis Galton and of the Right Hon. Charles Booth +especially. For here in Mr. Galton's biometrics and eugenics is a return +to nature, a keen scrutiny of human beings, which is really an orderly +fruition of that of the same author's "Art of Travel." Similarly, Mr. +Booth's "Survey of London" is as truly a return to nature as was +Darwin's Voyage, or his yet more far-reaching studies in his garden and +farmyard at home. [Page: 59] Is it not the main support of the subtle +theorisings and far-stretched polemic of Prof. Weismann that he can +plague his adversaries with the small but literal and concrete mice and +hydroids and water fleas with which his theories began? And is it not +for a certain lack of such concrete matter of observation that the vast +systematisations of M. de Greef, or M. de Roberty, or the original and +ingenious readings of Prof. Simon Patten leave us too often unconvinced, +even if not sometimes without sufficiently definite understanding of +their meaning? The simplest of naturalists must feel that Comte or +Spencer, despite the frequently able use of the generalisations of +biology, themselves somewhat lacked the first-hand observation of the +city and community around them, and suffered thereby; this part of their +work obviously not being on a level with the historic interpretations of +the one or the psychological productivity of the other. And if, without +warlike intent, I may yet strike a conspicuous shield or two within +these friendly lists, is it not this one element of concrete observation +and illustration which is sometimes lacking to give its full effect to +the encyclopædic learning and the sympathetic insight of one of our +recent papers, to the historic and poetic interpretations of another, or +to the masterly logic of a third? + +Before the polemics of our educationists, the voluminous argumentation +and casuistic subtlety of our professors of economics and ethics, yet +more before the profound speculations of the epistemologists, the mere +naturalist observer can but feel abashed like the truant before his +schoolmasters; yet he is also not without a certain deep inward +conviction, born of experience, that his outdoor world is yet more real, +more vast, and more instructive than is theirs. And this impression +becomes strengthened, nay verified and established, when he sees that +the initiative thinkers from whom these claim to descend, have had in +each and every case no merely academic record, but also a first-hand +experience, an impulse and message from life and nature. Hence the +contributions of Locke, of Comenius, and of Rousseau. Hence the +Physiocrats found economics in peasant life; and thus too Adam Smith +renewed their science, with due academic logic, doubtless, but from his +experience of Glasgow and Kirkcaldy manufactures and trade. Even the +idealist Berkeley owed much of his theory to his iridescent tar-water; +while surely the greater ethicists are those who have not only been +dialecticians, but moral forces in the world of men. + +In such ways, then, I would justify the thesis that civics is no +abstract study, but fundamentally a matter of concrete and descriptive +sociology--perhaps the greatest field of this. Next, that such orderly +study is in line with the preliminary sciences, and with the general +doctrine of evolution from simple to complex; and finally with the +general inquiry into the influence of geographical conditions on social +development. [Page: 60] In short, the student of civics must be first of +all an observer of cities; and, if so, of their origins and +developments, from the small and simple beginnings of which the tiniest +hamlet is but an arrested germ. The productive sociologist should thus +be of all investigators a wandering student _par excellence_; in the +first place, as far as possible, a literal tourist and traveller--and +this although like the homely Gilbert White or the world voyaging +Darwin, he may do his best work around his own home. + + +B--INITIAL METHODS OF CONCRETE SURVEY + +Hence our civic studies began (vol. 1, p. 105) with the survey of a +valley region inhabited by its characteristic types--hunter and +shepherd, peasant and fisher--each on his own level, each evolving or +degenerating within his own region. Hence the concrete picture of such a +typical valley section with its types of occupation cannot be brought +too clearly before our minds.[3] + +[3] Fig. 1. + +What now of the causes of progress or decay? Are not these first of all +the qualities and defects inherent in that particular social +formation?--though we must also consider how these different types act +and react, how they combine with, transform, subjugate, ruin or replace +each other in region after region. We thus re-interpret the vicissitudes +of history in more general terms, those of the differentiation, progress +or degeneracy of each occupational and social type, and the ascending +and descending oscillations of these types. In short, these occupational +struggles underlie and largely interpret even the conflict of races, +upon which Mr. Stuart-Glennie and other sociologists have so ably +insisted. The fundamental importance of these initial factors of region +and occupation to all studies of races and types, of communities and +institutions, of customs and laws, indeed of language and literature, of +religion and art, even of ideals and individualities, must be my excuse +if I seem to insist, in season and out of season, upon [Page: 61] the +services of Le Play as one of the main founders of sociology; and this +not only _(a)_ on account of his monographic surveys of modern +industrial life--those "Monographies Sociales" from which our current +economic studies of the condition of the worker, of the family budget, +etc., descend--but _(b)_ yet more on account of his vital reconstruction +of anthropology (albeit still far from adequately realised by most +anthropologists) through his renewed insistence upon the elemental +rustic origins of industry, family types, and social organisation alike, +from these simplest reactions of man in his struggle for existence in +varied and varying environment. + +It does not suffice to recognise, with many economists, hunting, +pastoral and agricultural formations, as states _preliminary_ to our +present industrial and commercial, imperial, and financial order of +civilisation. This view, still too commonly surviving, is rather of +hindrance than help; what we need is to see our existing civilisation as +the complex struggle and resultant of all these types and their +developments to-day. So far, therefore, from leaving, as at present, +these simple occupational types to the anthropologist, or at best giving +him some scant hospitality within our city museum, we are learning to +see how it is at one time the eager miner, or the conservative shepherd, +or at another the adventurous fisher or hunter who comes concretely upon +the first plane of national, imperial or international politics, and who +awakens new strife among these. We not only begin to see, but the +soldier frankly tells us, how the current sports of youth, and the +unprecedented militarism of the past century, are alike profoundly +connected with the hunting world. Hence the hope of peace lies not only, +as most at present think in the civilised and civilising development of +international law, or of culture intercourse, excellent though these +are, but also in a fuller and complete return to nature than has been +this recent and persistent obsession of our governing classes with the +hunter world almost alone; in short, in adding the gentler, yet wider, +experiences of the naturalist, the sterner experiences of other +occupations also. Nor does such elementary recognition of these main +social formations content us; their local differentiations must be noted +and compared--a comprehensive regional survey, therefore, which does +justice to each local variety of these great types; speaking henceforth +of no mere abstract "hunter," but of the specific hunting types of each +climate, and distinguishing these as clearly as do our own milder +sportsmen of deer-forest and the turnip field from themselves and from +each other. After such needed surveys in detail, we may, indeed must, +compare and generalise them. + +Similarly for the pasture, the forest. Every tourist in this country is +struck by the contrast of Swiss towns and cities with our own, and notes +[Page: 62] too that on the Swiss pasture he finds a horde of cattle, +while in Scotland or Yorkshire he left a flock of sheep. And not only +the tourist, but the historian or the economist too often fail to see +how Galashiels or Bradford are developments of the wool hamlet, now +familiar to many in R.L. Stevenson's native Swanston. Again, not only +Swiss wealth, but Swiss character and institutions, go back essentially +to the high pasture and the well-filled byre. That this rich Swiss +cow-pasture rests on limestone, and the poor Scottish sheep-grazing upon +comparatively unmouldering and impermeable gneiss, is no mere matter of +geologist's detail; it affords in each case the literal and concrete +foundation-stone of the subsequent evolution of each region and +population, and this not only in material and economic development, but +even in higher and subtler outcomes, aesthetic, intellectual and +moral.[4] It is for such reasons that one must labour and re-labour this +geographic and determinist aspect of sociology, and this for no merely +scientific reason, but also for practical ones. Nowhere perhaps have +more good and generous souls considered how to better the condition of +their people than in Swiss, or Irish, or Scottish valleys; yet it is one +main reason of the continual failure of all such movements, and of such +minds in the wider world as well, that they do not first acquaint +themselves with the realities of nature and labour sufficiently to +appreciate that the fundamental--I do not say the supreme--question is: +what can be got out of limestone, and what can be got out of gneiss? +Hence the rare educative value of such a concrete sociological diagram +and model as was the Swiss Village at the Paris Exposition of 1900, for +here geographic and economic knowledge and insight were expressed with +artistic skill and sympathy as perhaps never before. Only as similar +object-lessons are worked out for other countries, can we adequately +learn, much less popularly teach, how from nature comes "rustics," and +from this comes civics. But civics and rustics make up the field of +politics; they are the concrete of which politics become the +abstract--commonly the too remotely abstract. + +[4] For a fuller justification of this thesis as regards Switzerland, +see the writer's "International Exhibitions," in _International +Monthly_, October, 1900. + +For final illustration, let us descend to the sea-level. There again, +taking the fisher, each regional type must be traced in his contribution +to his town. Take for instance the salmon fisher of Norway, the whaler +of Dundee, the herring-fisher of Yarmouth, the cod-fisher of +Newfoundland, the coral fisher of the Ægean; each is a definite varietal +type, one developing or at least tending to develop characteristic +normal family relations, and corresponding social outcomes in +institutions; in which again the appropriate qualities and defects must +be expressed, even as is the quality and twist of the hemp in the +strength of the cable, or as is the chemistry and the microscopic +structure of the alloy in the efficiency of the great gun. [Page: 63] +Our neighbouring learned societies and museums geographical, geological +and the rest, are thus avowedly and consciously so many winter shelters +in which respective groups of regional surveyors tell their tales and +compare their observations, in which they meet to compare their +generalisations from their own observations made in the field with those +made by others. So it must increasingly be for this youngest of +societies. We may, we should, know best our Thames valley, our London +basin, our London survey; but the progress of our science implies as +increasingly varied and thorough an inquiry into rustic and civic +regions and occupations and resultants throughout the whole world +present and past, as does the corresponding world survey with our +geologic neighbours. + +I plead then for a sociological survey, rustic and civic, region by +region, and insist in the first place upon the same itinerant field +methods of notebook and camera, even for museum collections and the +rest, as those of the natural sciences. The dreary manuals which have +too long discredited those sciences in our schools, are now giving place +to a new and fascinating literature of first-hand nature study. +Similarly, those too abstract manuals of civics which are at present +employed in schools[5] must be replaced by concrete and regional ones, +their abstract counsels of political or personal perfection thus also +giving place to a corresponding regional idealism which may then be +supplemented from other regions as far as needs demand and circumstances +allow. + +[5] For a fuller review of these, compare the writer's "City +Development," in _Contemporary Review_, October, 1904. + +C--GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINISM AND ITS DIFFICULTIES + +To interpret then our tangle of ideas, both of the city and its +citizens, let us now bring more fully to our transverse valley sections, +and to each occupation separately, the geographical view-point which we +have found of service to elucidate the development of towns and cities +upon its longitudinal [Page: 64] slope. But this is neither more nor +less than the method of Montesquieu, whose classic "Esprit des Lois" +anticipates and initiates so much of that of later writers--Ritter, +Buckle, Taine, or Le Play. Once more then let their common, or rather +their resultant, doctrine be stated in terms expressing the latest of +these more fully than the first. Given the region, its character +determines the nature of the fundamental occupation, and this in turn +essentially determines the type of family. The nature and method of the +occupation must normally determine the mode of its organisation, e.g., +the rise and character of a specialised directive class, and the nature +of these occupational chiefs as contrasted with the people and with each +other. Similarly, the types of family tend to develop their appropriate +types of institutions, e.g., for justice, guidance, and of course +notably in response to social environment as regards defence or attack. + +Thus at this point in fact we seem to be pressing upon the student of +sociology the essential argument of geographical and evolutionary +determinism, in fact inviting him to adopt a view, indeed to commit +himself to a method, which may be not only foreign to his habits, but +repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy of +this determinist view of society for at least the past five generations +has not carried general conviction, why raise so controversial a +suggestion, in the guise too of a method professing to harmonise all +comers? Yet this is advisedly done; and as no one will deny some civil +importance to geographical factors, let patience be granted to examine +this aspect of the city's map and shield, and to get from it what it can +teach, under the present assurance to the philosophic and idealist +critic that his view of other factors, higher and deeper, as supreme in +human life, and therefore in city making, will not be forgotten, nor +excluded from consideration when we come to them. All that is really +insisted upon here is that if anything of naturalistic method of +evolutionary conception is to be permitted at all, we must obviously +proceed from this simple towards the more complex, and so begin with it +here and now. + +It is the appropriate slope or steppe, the needful rainfall, that +conditions the growth of grass, this which conditions the presence of +herds or flocks, and these again which determine the very existence of +shepherds. These granted then, not only do the pastoral arts and crafts +arise, but the patriarchal type and family develop, and this not only +with their hospitality and other virtues, with their nomadic tendencies, +at any rate, their unfixed land-tenure, very different from the +peasant's, but their slow and skilful [Page: 65] diplomacy (till the +pasture is bared or grown again, as the negotiator's interests incline). +The patriarch in his venerable age, the caravaneer in his nomadic and +exploring youth, his disciplined maturity, thus naturally develop as +different types of chief and leader; and it is therefore not until this +stage, when all is ready for the entry of Abraham or Job, of Mohammed +the camel-driver, or Paul the tent-maker, that any real controversy can +arise between the determinist and his opponent, between the democratic +and the great-man theories of history, towards which these respectively +incline.[6] And at that stage, may not the controversy stimulate a +fruitful analysis? After all, what is the claim of free-will but to +select among the factors afforded by a given set of circumstances? And +the utmost stretch of determinism to which geography and civics may lead +us obviously cannot prove the negative of this. But whether the +psychologic origins of new ideals be internal to the mind of genius, or +imparted by some external source, is a matter obviously beyond the scope +of either the geographer or the historian of civics to settle. Enough +surely for both controversialists if we use such a means of tabulating +facts as to beg the question for neither view; and still better if we +can present the case of each without injustice to either, nay, to each +with its clearness increased by the sharp edge of contrast. If the +geographical determinist thesis on one hand, and its ethical and +psychological antithesis on the other, can thus clearly be defined and +balanced, their working equilibrium is at hand, even should their +complete synthesis remain beyond us. + +[6] A fuller study, upon this method, of the essential origins of +pastoral evolution, and of its characteristic modern developments, will +be found in the writer's "Flower of the Grass," in _The Evergreen_, +Edinburgh and Westminster, 1896. See also "La Science Sociale," +_passim_, especially in its earlier vols. or its number for Jan. 1905. + + +D--NEED OF ABSTRACT METHOD FOR NOTATION AND FOR INTERPRETATION + +Not only such general geographical studies, but such social +interpretations as those above indicated have long been in progress: +witness the labours of whole schools of historians and critics, among +whom Montsquieu and his immediate following, or in more recent times +Buckle and Taine, are but the most prominent; witness the works of +geographers like Humboldt, Ritter, Reclus, or of developmental +technologists like Boucher de Perthes and regional economists like Le +Play. The main lines of a concrete and evolutionary sociology (or at +[Page: 66] least _sociography_) have thus been laid down for us; but the +task now before us, in our time, in such a society as this--and indeed +in such a paper as the present one--its that of extracting from all this +general teaching its essential scientific method, one everywhere latent +and implicit, but nowhere fully explicit, or at least adequately +systematised. + +It is in fact only as we can agree upon some definite and orderly method +of description that our existing literature of social surveys can be +adequately compared or new ones co-operatively undertaken. Hence the +importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have so +largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means of +escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static) +presentments of the general methodology of social science into which +sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely +ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this +would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, as +indeed also the comparative unattractiveness of our studies to the body +of specialist scientific workers, not even excepting those within what +we consider sociological fields. + +The history of each science, be it mathematics or astronomy, botany, +zoology or geology, shows us that it is not enough to have the +intelligent observer, or even the interpretative thinker with his +personally expressed doctrine. This must be clearly crystallised into a +definite statement, method, proposition, "law" or theory, stated in +colourless impersonal form before it is capable of acceptance and +incorporation into the general body of science. But while astronomer and +geologist and naturalist can and do describe both the observational +results and their general conceptions in literary form, requiring from +the ordinary reader but the patience to master a few unfamiliar terms +and ideas, they also carry on their work by help of definite and orderly +technical methods, descriptive and comparative, analytic and synthetic. +These, as far as possible, have to be crystallised beyond their mere +verbal statement into formulae, into tabular and graphic presentments, +and thus not only acquire greater clearness of statement, but become +more and more active agencies of inquiry--in fact, become literal +_thinking-machines_. But while the mathematician has his notations and +his calculus, the geographer and geologist their maps, reliefs and +sections, the naturalist his orderly classificatory methods, it has been +the misfortune and delay of political economy, and no small cause of +that "notorious discord and sterility" with which Comte reproached it, +that [Page: 67] its cultivators have so commonly sought to dispense with +the employment of any definite scientific notations; while even its +avowed statisticians, in this country especially, have long resisted the +consistent use of graphic methods. + +I submit, therefore, for discussion, as even more urgent and pressing +than that of the general and abstract methodology of the social +sciences, the problem of elaborating a concrete descriptive method +readily applicable to the study and comparison of human societies, to +cities therefore especially. To do justice to this subject, not only the +descriptive labours of anthropologists, but much of the literature of +sociology would have to be gone through from the "Tableau Economique" of +the Physiocratic School to the "Sociological Tables" of Mr. Spencer, and +still more fruitfully to more recent writers. Among these, besides here +recognising specially the work of Mr. Booth and its stimulus to younger +investigators, I would acknowledge the helpful and suggestive impulse +from the group of social geographers which has arisen from the +initiative of Le Play[7], and whose classification, especially in its +later forms[8], cannot but be of interest and value to everyone whose +thought on social questions is not afloat upon the ocean of the abstract +without chart or bearings. + +[7] La Nomenclature Sociale (Extrait de La Revue, "La Science Sociale," +Dec. 1886) Paris, Firmin-Diact, 1887. + +[8] Demoulins, La Science Sociale d'apres F. Le Play 1882-1905; +Classification Sociale, "La Science Sociale," Jan. 1905. + +Yet with all respect to each and all these classifications and methods, +indeed with cordially acknowledge personal obligation and indebtedness +to them from first to last, no one of these seems fully satisfactory for +the present purpose; and it is therefore needful to go into the matter +afresh for ourselves, though utilising these as fully as we can. + + +E--THE CITY-COMPLEX AND ITS USUAL ANALYSIS + +In the everyday world, in the city as we find it, what is the working +classification of ideas, the method of thought of its citizens? That +the citizens no more think of themselves as using any particular +sociological method than did M. Jourdain of talking prose does not +really matter, save that it makes our observation, both of them and it, +easier and more trustworthy. + +They are speaking and thinking for the most part of [Page: 68] People +and of Affairs; much less of places. In the category of People, we +observe that individuals, self and others, and this in interest, perhaps +even more than in interests, commonly take precedence of groups. +Institutions and Government are, however, of general interest, the state +being much more prominent than is the church; the press, for many, +acting as the modern substitute for the latter. In the world of Affairs, +commerce takes precedence of industry, while sport runs hard upon both. +War, largely viewed by its distant spectators as the most vivid form of +sport, also bulks largely. Peace is not viewed as a positive ideal, but +essentially as a passive state, at best, of non-war, more generally of +latent war. Central among places are the bank, the market (in its +financial forms before the material ones). Second to these stand the +mines then the factories, etc.; and around these the fixed or floating +fortresses of defence. Of homes, that of the individual alone is +seriously considered, at most those of his friends, his "set," his +peers, but too rarely even of the street, much less the neighbourhood, +at least for their own sake, as distinguished from their reaction upon +individual and family status or comfort. + +This set of views is obviously not easy of precise analysis of exact +classification. In broad outline, however, a summary may be made, and +even tabulated as follows:-- + +THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES. + +PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES +(a) INDIVIDUALS (a) COMMERCE (a) MARKET, BANK, etc. +(Self and others). INDUSTRY, etc. FACTORY, MINE, etc. + SPORT. + +(b) GOVERNMENT(S) (b) WAR (b) FORT, FIELD, etc. +Temporal and Spiritual and Peace +(State and Church). (Latent War). + +Next note how from the everyday world of action, there arises a +corresponding thought-world also. This has, +[Page: 69] of course, no less numerous +and varied elements, with its resultantly complex local colour; But a +selection will suffice, of which the headings may be printed below those +of the preceding scheme, to denote how to the objective elements there +are subjective elements corresponding--literal reflections upon the +pools of memory--the slowly flowing stream of tradition. Thus the +extended diagram, its objective elements expressed in yet more general +terms, may now be read anew (noting that mirror images are fully +reversed). + + + PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES + +"TOWN" (a) INDIVIDUALS (a) OCCUPATIONS (a) WORK-PLACES + (b) INSTITUTIONS (b) WAR (b) WAR-PLACES + +"SCHOOLS" (b) HISTORY (b) STATISTICS AND (b) GEOGRAPHY + ("Constitutional") HISTORY + ("Military") + (a) BIOGRAPHY (a) ECONOMICS (a) TOPOGRAPHY + + +Here then we have that general relation of the town life and its +"schools," alike of thought and of education, which must now be fully +investigated. + +Such diagrammatic presentments, while of course primarily for the +purpose of clear expression and comparison, are also frequently +suggestive--by "inspection," as geometers say--of relations not +previously noticed. In both ways, we may see more clearly how prevalent +ideas and doctrines have arisen as "reflections upon" the life of +action, and even account for their qualities and their defects--their +partial truth or their corresponding inadequacy, according to our own +appreciative or depreciative standpoint. Thus as regards "People," in +the first column we see expressed briefly how to (a) the individual +life, with the corresponding vivid interest in biography, corresponds +the "great man theory" of history. Conversely with _(b)_ alone is +associated the insistance upon institutional developments as the main +factor. Passing to the middle column, that of "Affairs," we may note in +connection with _(b)_ say the rise of statistics in association with +the needs of war, a point connected with its too empiric character; or +note again, a too common converse weakness of economic theory, its +inadequate inductive [Page: 70] verification. Or finally, in the column +of "Place," the long weakness of geography as an educational subject, +yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated. We might in +fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of +ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less than +those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly +unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent +oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring +elements of the manifold "Town" life from which they derive and survive. +Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate +problem--that of understanding "Town" and its "School" in their origins +and simplest relations. + + +F--PROPOSED METHODICAL ANALYSIS + +(1) THE TOWN + +More fully to understand this two-fold development of Town and School we +have first of all apparently to run counter to the preceding popular +view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that +reached from the side of science. This, as we have already so fully +insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally _replacing_ People +and Affairs in our scheme above. + +Starting then once more with the simple biological formula: + + + ENVIRONMENT ... CONDITIONS ... ORGANISM + +this has but to be applied and defined by the social geographer to +become + + + REGION ... OCCUPATION ... FAMILY-type and Developments + +which summarises precisely that doctrine of Montesquieu and his +successors already insisted on. Again, in but slight variation from Le +Play's simplest phrasing _("Lieu, travail, famille")_ we have + + + PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK + +It is from this simple and initial social formula that we have now to +work our way to a fuller understanding of Town and School. [Page: 71] +Immediately, therefore, this must be traced upward towards its +complexities. For Place, it is plain, is no mere topographic site. Work, +conditioned as it primarily is by natural advantages, is thus really +first of all _place-work_. Arises the field or garden, the port, the +mine, the workshop, in fact the _work-place_, as we may simply +generalise it; while, further, beside this arise the dwellings, the +_folk-place_. + +Nor are these by any means all the elements we are accustomed to lump +together into Town. As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold +complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must +carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of +this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use. +Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ +and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their +inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our +common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists +have alternately done--too literally losing or shirking essentials of +Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk and +Place also. + +Tabular and schematic presentments, however, such as those to which we +are proceeding, are apt to be less simple and satisfactory to reader +than to writer; and this even when in oral exposition the very same +diagram has been not only welcomed as clear, but seen and felt to be +convincing. The reason of this difficulty is that with the spoken +exposition the audience sees the diagram grow upon the blackboard; +whereas to produce anything of the same effect upon the page, it must be +printed at several successive stages of development. Thus our initial +formula, + + + PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK + +readily develops into + + FOLK + + PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK +(Natural advantages) (Occupation) + + PLACE + +This again naturally develops into a regular table, of which the [Page: +72] filling up of some of the squares has been already suggested above, +and that of the remaining ones will be intelligible on inspection:-- + + PLACE FOLK WORK-FOLK FOLK + ("Natives") ("Producers") + + PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK + + PLACE WORK-PLACE FOLK-PLACE + +So complex is the idea of even the simplest Town--even in such a rustic +germ as the "farm-town" of modern Scottish parlance, the _ton_ of +place-names without number. + +The varying development of the Folk into social classes or castes night +next be traced, and the influence and interaction of all the various +factors of Place, Work, and Family tabulated. Suffice it here, however, +for the present to note that such differentiation does take place, +without entering into the classification and comparison of the protean +types of patrician and plebeian throughout geography and history. + + +G--ANALYSIS CONTINUED.--(2) THE SCHOOL + +Once and again we have noted how from the everyday life of action--the +Town proper of our terminology--there arises the corresponding +subjective world--the _Schools_ of thought, which may express itself +sooner or later in schools of education. The types of people, their +kinds and styles of work, their whole environment, all become +represented in the mind of the community, and these react upon the +individuals, their activities, their place itself. Thus (the more +plainly the more the community is a simple and an isolated one, but in +appreciable measure everywhere and continually) there have obviously +arisen local turns of thought and modes of speech, ranging from shades +of accept and idiom to distinctive dialect or language. Similarly, there +is a characteristic variety of occupational activity, a style of +workmanship, a way of doing business. There are distinctive [Page: 73] +manners and customs--there is, in short, a certain recognisable +likeness, it may be an indefinably subtle or an unmistakably broad and +general one, which may be traced in faces and costumes, in tongue and +literature, in courtesy and in conflict, in business and in policy, in +street and in house, from hovel to palace, from prison to cathedral. +Thus it is that every folk comes to have its own ways, and every town +its own school. + +While the complex social medium has thus been acquiring its +characteristic form and composition, a younger generation has been +arising. In all ways and senses, Heredity is commonly more marked than +variation--especially when, as in most places at most times, such great +racial, occupational, environmental transformations occur as those of +modern cities. In other words, the young folk present not only an +individual continuity with their organic predecessors which is heredity +proper, but with their social predecessors also. The elements of organic +continuity, which we usually think of first of all as organic though of +course psychic also, are conveniently distinguished as the +_inheritance_--a term in fact which the biologist seeks to deprive of +its common economic and social senses altogether, leaving for these the +term _heritage_, material or immaterial alike. This necessary +distinction between the inheritance, bodily and mental, and the +heritage, economic and social, obviously next requires further +elaboration, and with this further precision of language also. For the +present, let us leave the term heritage to the economist for the +material wealth with which he is primarily concerned, and employ the +term _tradition_ for these immaterial and distinctively social elements +we are here specially considering. This in fact is no new proposal, but +really little more than an acceptance of ordinary usage. Broadly +speaking, tradition is in the life of the community what memory is for +its individual units. The younger generation, then, not only inherits an +organic and a psychic diathesis; not only has transmitted to it the +accumulations, instruments and land of its predecessors, but grows up in +their tradition also. The importance of imitation in this process, a +matter of common experience, has been given the fullest sociological +prominence, by M. Tarde especially.[9] Thanks to these and other +convergent lines of thought, we no longer consent to look at the +acquirement of the social tradition as a matter requiring to be imposed +upon reluctant youth almost entirely from without, and are learning anew +as of old, with the simplest and the most developed peoples, the +barbarians and the Greeks, to recognise and respect, and, if it may be, +to nourish the process of self-instruction, viewed as normal +accompaniment of each developing being throughout the phases of its +[Page: 74] organic life, the stages of its social life. Upon the many +intermediate degrees of advance and decline, however, between these two +extremes of civilisation, specific institutions for the instruction of +youth arise, each in some way an artificial substitute, or at least a +would-be accelerant, for the apprenticeship of imitation in the school +of experience and the community's tradition, which we term a school in +the restricted and pedagogic sense. This whole discussion, however, has +been in order to explain and to justify the present use of the term +"School" in that wide sense in which the historian of art or +thought--the sociologist in fact--has ever used the term, while yet +covering the specialised pedagogic schools of all kinds also. + +[9] Tarde, "L'imitation Sociale," and other works. + +Once more, then, and in the fullest sense, every folk has its own +tradition, every town its school. + +We need not here discriminate these unique and characteristic elements +to which the art-historians--say of Venice and of Florence, of Barbizon +or Glasgow--specially attend from those most widely distributed ones, in +which the traditions and schools of all towns within the same +civilisation broadly agree. Indeed, even the most widely distributed of +these--say from Roman law to modern antiseptic surgery--arose as local +schools before they became general ones. + +Similarly for the general social tradition. The fundamental occupations +and their division of labour, their differentiation in detail and their +various interactions up to our own day, at first separately considered, +are now seen to be closely correlated with the status of woman; while +all these factors determine not only the mode of union of the parents, +but their relation to the children, the constitution of the family, with +which the mode of transmission of property is again thoroughly +interwoven. + + +H--TOWN AND SCHOOL COMPARED + + +"TOWN" FOLK + + + + WORK + +PLACE + +SURVEY + + CRAFT-KNOWLEDGE + +"SCHOOL" CUSTOM + +We may now summarise and tabulate our comparison of Town and +School,[10] and on the schema (p.75) it will be seen [Page: 76] +that each element of the second is printed in the position of a +mirror-reflection of the first. This gives but the merest outline, which +is ready, however, to be applied in various ways and filled up +accordingly. A step towards this is made in the next and fuller version +of the scheme (p. 77). It will be noted in this that the lower +portion of the diagram, that of School, is more fully filled up than is +the upper. This is partly for clearness, but partly also to suggest that +main elements in the origins of natural sciences and geography, of +economics and social science, are not always so clearly realised as they +might be. The preceding diagram, elaborating that of Place, Work, Folk +(p. 75), however, at once suggests these. Other features of the +scheme will appear on inspection; and the reader will find it of +interest and suggestiveness to prepare a blank schedule and fill it up +for himself. + +[10] For the sake of brevity, an entire chapter has been omitted, +discussing the manifold origins of distinct governing classes, whether +arising from the Folk, or superimposed upon them from without, in short, +of the contrast of what we may broadly call patricians and plebeians, +which so constantly appears through history, and in the present also. +These modes of origin are all in association respectively with Place, +Work, and Family, or some of the various interactions of these. Origin +and situation, migration, individual or general, with its conflict of +races, may be indicated among the first group of factors; technical +efficiency and its organising power among the second; individual +qualities and family stocks among the third, as also military and +administrative aptitude, and the institutional privileges which so +readily arise from them. Nor need we here discuss the rise of +institutions, so fully dealt with by sociological writers. Enough for +the present then, if institutions and social classes be taken as we find +them. + +These two forms of the same diagram, the simple and the more developed, +thus suggest comparison with the scheme previously outlined, that of +People, Affairs, Places (p. 68), and is now more easily reconciled +with this; the greater prominence popularly given to People and Affairs +being expressed upon the present geographic and evolutionary scheme by +the ascending position and more emphatic printing (or by viewing the +diagram as a transparency from the opposite side of the leaf). + +In the column of People, the deepening of custom into morals is +indicated. Emphasis is also placed upon the development of law in +connection with the rise of governing classes, and its tendency to +dominate the standards previously taken as morals--in fact, that +tendency of moral law to become static law, a process of which history +is full. + + GOVERNING + ========= + ========= + CLASSES + ======= + ======= + ^ + | + FAMILY TYPES + ============ +---------------------------------------------- + INDUSTRIES + ========== + ---------- +---------------------------------------------- + (FOLK-PLACE) +REGION (WORK PLACE) ------------ +====== ------------ (TOWN) + | ====== + | + V +-------------------------------------------- + | + V +SURVEY ("SCHOOL") +====== ========== +!--LANDSCAPE (CRAFT-TRADITION) + ----------------- + (FOLK-LORE) +?--TERRITORY ----------- + | + | + V +--------------------------------------------- + | + V +[NATURAL [APPLIED [SOCIAL +-------- ======== ======= +SCIENCES] SCIENCES] SCIENCES] +--------- ========= ========= + | + | + V +------------------------------------------- + | CUSTOMS + V ------- + MORALS + ====== +GEOGRAPHY ECONOMICS ------ +--------- ========= & + LAWS + ==== + ==== + +In the present as in the past, we may also note upon the scheme the +different lines of Place, Work and Folk on which respectively develop +the natural sciences, the applied or [Page: 78] technical sciences, and +finally the social sciences, and the generalising of these respectively. + +Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its literal +and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that +aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural +sciences--but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they +really are, each a _geolysis_--so these sciences or geolyses, again, are +tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of +the evolution of the cosmos. + +Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the +evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic +process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt +to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we cannot +really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant; or +Lister and his antiseptic surgery better than as the shepherd, with his +tar-box by his side; or Kelvin or any other electrician, as the thinking +smith, and so on. The old story of geometry, as "_ars metrike_," and of +its origin from land-surveying, for which the Egyptian hieroglyph is +said to be that of "rope stretching," in fact, applies far more fully +than most realise, and the history of every science, of course already +thus partially written, will bear a far fuller application of this +principle. In short, the self-taught man, who is ever the most fertile +discoverer, is made in the true and fundamental school--that of +experience. + +The need of abbreviating the recapitulation of this, however, sooner or +later develops the school in the pedagogic sense, and its many +achievements, its many failures in accomplishing this, might here be +more fully analysed. + +Still more evident is this process in the column of Folk. From the +mother's knee and the dame's school of the smallest folk-place, the +townlet or hamlet, _ton_ or home, up to the royal and priestly school of +the law of ancient capitals, or from the "humanities" of a mediaeval +university to the "Ecole de Droit" of a modern metropolis, the series of +essential evolutionary stages may be set down. Or in our everyday +present, [Page: 79] the rise of schools of all kinds, primary, +secondary, higher up to the current movement towards university +colleges, and from these to civic and regional universities, might again +be traced. The municipalisation of education is thus in fact expressed, +and so on. + +Leaving the schools in the main to speak for themselves of their +advancing and incipient uses, a word may be said upon the present lines. + +As a first and obvious application of this mode of geographic study of +cities appears the criticism, and; when possible, the amendment of the +city's plan, the monotonous rectangularity of the American city, and the +petty irregularity more common in our own, being alike uneconomic and +inartistic because ungeographic, irrational because irregional. With the +improvement of communications, the physicist's point of view thus +introduced--that of the economy of the energies of the community--is +only beginning; the economy of fuel, the limitation of smoke and fogs +being symptoms of this and pointing to a more economic organisation of +industrial activities generally. But this next carries with it the +improved efficiency of the producers themselves, with whom, however, the +standpoint changes from the mere economisation of physical energies to +the higher economy of organic evolution. The convention of traditional +economics, that the productive capacity of the actual labourer is the +sole concern of his science, thus gives place to what is at once the +original conception of economics and the evolutionist one, viz., that +the success of industry is ultimately measured neither by its return in +wealth of the capitalist nor in money wages of the labourer, nor even by +both put together, but in the results of industry upon the concrete +environment, the family budget, the home, and the corresponding state of +development of the family--its deterioration or progress. The +organisation of industrial groups or of representative institutions +found conducive to the well-being and progress of these prime civic +units, the families, may now be traced into its highest outcome in city +government. The method of analysis and graphic statement thus outlined +may be shown to be even capable of useful application towards the +statement of the best [Page: 80] arguments of both progressive and +moderate parties in city politics. + +Passing from Politics to Culture. Culture, the needs of this also become +clearer; each community developing a similar general series of culture +institutions, from the simplest presentation of its geography, +landscape and architecture, to the complex development of industrial, +technical and scientific instruction; and for provision also for the +institutions of custom and ethic in school, law, and church. Just as +place, occupation, and family are intimately connected in the practical +world, so their respective culture institutions must more and more be +viewed as a whole. Civic improvers will find their ideals more +realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social +development of which all the departments of action and thought are in +organic relation, be it of health or disease. The view of theoretic +civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied +sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social +survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed +in many cities being begun. + + +I--DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL, AND ITS REACTION UPON TOWN + +The reactions of the School upon the Town are observed in practice to be +of very different values;--how are these differences to be explained? + +From the very first the school is essentially one of memory, the impress +of the town-life, even at its best and highest individual quality and +impressiveness, as in the work of a great master, the observation and +memory of which may long give his stamp to the work of his followers. +The fading of this into dullness, yet the fixing of it as a convention, +is familiar to all in arts and crafts, but is no less real in the +general lapse of appreciation of environment. Most serious of all is the +fixation of habit and custom, so that at length "custom lies upon us +with a weight heavy as death, and deep [Page 81] almost as life." This +continual fixation of fashionable standards as moral ones is thus a +prime explanation of each reformer's difficulty in making his moral +standard the fashionable one, and also, when his doctrine has succeeded, +of the loss of life and mummification of form which it so speedily +undergoes. + +Of conventional "education," considered as the memorisation of past +records, however authoritative and classic, the decay is thus +intelligible and plain, and the repetition of criticisms already +adequately made need not therefore detain us here. + +For this process is there no remedy? Science here offers herself--with +senses open to observe, and intellect awake to interpret. Starting with +Place, she explores and surveys it, from descriptive travel books at +very various levels of accuracy, she works on to atlas and gazetteer, +and beyond these to world-globe and "Geographie Universelle." With her +charts and descriptions we are now more ready for a journey; with her +maps and plans we may know our own place as never before; nay, rectify +it, making the rough places plain and the crooked straight; even +restoration may come within our powers. + +Similarly as regards Work. Though mere empiric craft-mastery dies with +the individual, and fails with his successors, may we not perpetuate the +best of this? A museum of art treasures, a collection of the choicest +examples of all times and lands, will surely raise us from our low level +of mechanical toil; nay, with these carefully observed, copied, +memorised, and duly examined upon, we shall be able to imitate them, to +reproduce their excellencies, even to adapt them to our everyday work. +To the art museum we have thus but to add a "School of Design," to have +an output of more and less skilled copyists. The smooth and polished +successes of this new dual institution, responding as they do to the +mechanical elements of modern work and of the mechanical worker-mind, +admitting also of ready multiplications as patterns, ensure the wide +extension of the prevalent style of imitating past styles, designing +patchwork of these; and even admit of its scientific reduction to a +definite series of grades, which imitative youth may easily pass onwards +from the age of rudest innocence to that of art-knowledge and +certificated art-mastery. Our School of Design thus becomes a School of +Art, a length a College, dominating the instruction of the nation, to +the satisfaction not only of its promoters, but of the general public +and their representatives, so that annual votes justly increase. Lurking +discontent may now and then express itself, but is for practical +purposes negligible. + +[Page: 82] The example of art accumulation and art instruction is thus +naturally followed in other respects. For the commercial information of +the public, varied representative exhibitions--primarily, therefore, +international ones--naturally suggest themselves; while so soon as +expansion of imperial and colonial interests comes upon the first plane, +a corresponding permanent Exhibition is naturally instituted. But when +thus advancing commercial instruction, we must also recognise the claims +of industry in all its crafts and guilds, and in fact the technical +instruction of the community generally. Hence the past, present, and +promised rise of technical institutes upon increasing scales of +completeness. + +In the rise of such a truly encylopædic system of schools, the +university cannot permanently be forgotten. Since from the outset we +have recognised the prime elements of the school in observation and +memory, the testing of these by examinations--written, oral, and +practical--however improvable in detail, must be fairly recognised, and +the examining body or university has therefore to be adopted as the +normal crown of our comprehensive educational system. Teaching, however +is found to be increasingly necessary, especially to examination, and +for this the main field left open is in our last column, that of People. +Their lore of the past, whether of sacred or classical learning, their +history, literature, and criticism, are already actively promoted, or at +any rate adequately endowed at older seats of learning; while the +materials, resources, conditions and atmosphere are here of other kinds. +Hence the accessibility of the new University of London to the study of +sociology, as yet alone among its peers. + +Hence, beside the great London, maritime, commercial and industrial, +residential and governmental, there has been growing up, tardily indeed, +as compared with smaller cities, yet now all the more massively and +completely, a correspondingly comprehensive system of schools; so that +the historic development of South Kensington within the last half +century, from International Exhibitions of Work, Natural History Museums +of Place onwards to its present and its contemplated magnitude, affords +a striking exemplification of the present view and its classification, +which is all the more satisfactory since this development has been a +gradual accretion. + +Enough then has been said to show that the rise of schools, their +qualities and their defects, are all capable of treatment upon the +present lines; but if so, may we not go farther, and ask by what means +does thought and life cope with their defects, especially that fixation +of memory, even at its best, that evil side of examination and the like, +which we often call Chinese in the bad sense, but which we see arises so +naturally everywhere? + + +[Page: 83] J--FROM "SCHOOL" TO "CLOISTER" + +The preceding view is, as yet, too purely determinist. The due place of +ideals, individual and corporate, in their reaction upon the function +and the structure of the city, and even upon its material environment, +has next to be recognised. For where the town merely makes and fixes its +industry and makes its corresponding schools, where its habits and +customs become its laws, even its morality, the community, as we have +just seen, sinks into routine, and therefore decay. To prevent this a +twofold process of thought is ever necessary, critical and constructive. +What are these? On the one hand, a continual and critical selection +among the ideas derived from experience, and the formulation of these as +Ideals: and further, the organisation of these into a larger and larger +whole of thought; in fact, a Synthesis of a new kind. This critical +spirit it is which produced the prophets of Israel, the questioning of +Socrates, and so on, to the journalistic and other criticism of life +to-day. The corresponding constructive endeavour is now no mere School +of traditional learning or of useful information. It is one of science +in a new and reorganised sense; one of philosophy also, one of ideals +above all. + +As from the Schools of the Law, as over against these, arise the +prophets, so from the technical and applied sciences, the descriptive +natural sciences, should arise the scientific thinkers, reinterpreting +each his field of knowledge and giving us the pure sciences--pure +geometry henceforth contrasted with mere land surveying, morphology with +mere anatomy, and so on; while instead of the mere concrete encyclopædia +from Pliny or Gesner to Diderot or Chambers, vast subjective +reorganisations of knowledge, philosophic systems, now appear. +Similarly, the mere observations of the senses and their records in +memory become transformed into the images of the poet, the imagery too +of the artist, for art proper is only thus born. That mere imitation of +nature, which so commonly in the graphic arts (though happily but rarely +in music) has been mistaken for [Page: 84] art, thus modestly returns to +its proper place--that of the iconography of descriptive science. + +Thus from the Schools of all kinds of knowledge, past and present, we +pass into the no less varied Cloisters of contemplation, meditation, +imagination. With the historian we might explore the Cloisters of the +past, built at one time from the current ideals of the Good, at another +of the True, at another of the Beautiful; indeed, in widely varying +measures and proportions from all of these. How far each of these now +expresses the present, how far it may yet serve the future, is +obviously a question of questions, yet for that very reason one +exceeding our present limits. Enough if in city life the historic place +of what is here generalised under this antique name of Cloister be here +recognised; and in some measure the actual need, the potential place be +recognised also. Here is the need and use, beyond the fundamental claims +of the material life of the Town, and the everyday sanity of the +Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense +and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and +their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can +afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has +been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an +imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the senses. In +our age of the multiplication and expansion of towns, of their +enrichment and their impoverishment, of the multiplication and +enrichment of schools also, it is well for the sociologist to read from +history, as he then may more fully see also around him that it is ever +some fresh combination of these threefold products of the +Cloister--ideal theory, and imagery--emotional, intellectual, +sensuous--which transforms the thought-world of its time. + +The philosopher of old in his academic grove, his porch, the mediaeval +monk within his studious cloister's pale, are thus more akin to the +modern scientific thinker than he commonly realises--perhaps because he +is still, for the most part, of the solitary individualism of the hermit +of the Thebaid, of Diogenes in his tub. Assuredly, they are less removed +in essential psychology than their derived fraternities, their [Page: +85] respective novices and scholars, have often thought. It is thus no +mere play of language which hands on from the one to the other the +"travail de Bénédictin," though even here the phrase is inadequate +savouring too much of the school, into which each cloister of every sort +declines sooner or later, unless even worse befall. + +The decay of the cloister, though thus on the one hand into and with the +school, may also take place within itself, since imagination and ideal +may be evil, and theory false. That examples of all these decays abound +in the history of religion, of philosophy, of art also, is a commonplace +needing no illustration. Nor should the modern investigator think his +science or himself immune to the same or kindred germs in turn. + + +K--THE CITY PROPER + +Now, "at long last," we are ready to enter the city proper. This is not +merely the Town of place and work and folk, even were this at their +economic best. It is not enough to add the School, even at its +completest; nor the cloister, though with this a yet greater step +towards the city proper is made. For though this is not itself the City, +its ideals of human relations, its theory of the universe and man, its +artistic expression and portrayal of all these, ever sooner or later +react upon the general view and conduct of life. Hence the Academe of +Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, the mediaeval cloister and the modern +Research Institute, have been so fertile, so creative in their influence +upon the city's life, from which they seemed to be retired. Hence it is +ever some new combination of the threefold product of the +cloister--ideal, idea, and image--which transforms the world, which +opens each new epoch. Each new revelation and vision, each system of +thought, each new outburst of poetry and song, has moved the men of its +age by no mere mechanical pressure of economic need or external force, +by no mere scholastic instruction, but in a far subtler way, and into +new and unexpected groupings, as the [Page: 86] sand upon Chladon's +vibrating plate leaps into a new figure with each thrill of the +violinist's bow. + +Instead of simply developing our morals from custom, and therefore +codifying them into law as in the school they are now boldly criticised, +as in part if not in whole, hindrances to a better state of things. As +this becomes more and more clearly formulated as an ideal, its ethic +transcendence of convention and law not only becomes clear, but the +desire for its realisation becomes expressed. This may be with all +degrees of clearness of reason and vividness of imagery, yet may remain +long or altogether in the plane of literature, as has Plato's Republic +or More's Utopia--standard and characteristic types of the cloister +library as we may call it, one of inestimable value to the world in the +past, and perhaps in our time needed as much as ever to help us to see +somewhat beyond the output of the busy presses of town and school. Yet +our ideal, our "Civitas Dei," "Civitas Solis," need not remain +unrealised: it may be not only seriously planned towards realisation, as +was Platonopolis of old, but bravely founded, as has been done in cases +without number, from the ancient world to modern communities, by no +means wholly unsuccessful. Though in our great industrial towns, our +long settled regions, such new departures seem less easy, the +principle remains valid--that it is in our ideal of polity and +citizenship, and in our power of realising this, that the city proper +has its conception and its birth. Again, instead of simply deriving our +thought from experience we now project our clarified thought into action +and into education; so that from cloister of philosophy, and from its +long novitiate of silence, there grows up the brotherhood of culture, +the culture city itself. Similarly in art, we no longer imitate nature, +nor copy traditional designs. Art proper appears, shaping bronze and +marble into images of the gods, and on a burnt and ruined hill-fort +renewing the Parthenon. In general terms, instead of simply adjusting, +as in the school, our mental picture to the outward facts, we reverse +the process; and with a new art conception, be it good or bad, we +transform the outward world, like wax under the seal. Thus from the +[Page: 88] cloister and chapel of the musician, the studio-cell of the +artist, the scriptorium of the poet, comes forth the architect, +remodelling the city around his supreme material expression and home of +its moral and material reorganisation, its renewed temporal and +spiritual powers. Of this, the city proper, the Acropolis of Athens, the +Temple of Jerusalem, the Capitol and Forum of Rome are classic and +central examples, and in the mediaeval city, pre-eminently the +cathedral; though beside this we must not forget the town house and its +belfry, the guild houses, the colleges, the great place, the fountains, +the city cross, and if last, still best if good at all, the streets and +courts and homes. Returning once more to the history of educational +development, we have here a means of unravelling the apparently +perplexing history of universities. For the university past or present +has but its foundations in the school, with its local and its general +tradition, whatever may be the accordance of these with well-ascertained +fact, its true novitiate can only be afforded in the cloister of +reflection and research, of interpretation and synthesis; while for its +full development it needs the perpetual renewal of that generous social +life--that inspiring intercourse "of picked adolescents and picked +senescents"--which has marked the vital periods of every university +worthy of the name. + + Realisation in + ACROPOLIS } + CATHEDRAL } CITY + UNIVERSITY } +(EU)-POLITY + ^ + | CULTURE + | ^ +Rise towards | +Formulation | ART +and Realisation, Rise through ^ +through | + { Politics { Action Rise to + { Church Militant { Education expression + ^ ^ ^ + | | | + | | | + | | | + | | "IMAGERY" + | | AESTHETICS + | | (Beautiful) +SOCIAL. ECON. POL. "IDEAS" + ^ SYNTHETICS + | (True) +"IDEALS" + ETHICS + (Good) Criticism, Selection, + Re-synthesis, in + HERMITAGE + ACADEME + CLOISTER, etc. + +In summary then, to the town has been added the school, with its +advantages, its increasingly obvious limitations also, which it is for +the cloister to remedy--even the advantages of the barrack finding a +main element of its claim in this no less than in its professed training +as regards citizenship. But here also it is for few to remain, albeit +free for each to return at will. Ideals, to survive, must surely live, +that is, be realised; hence for full life one needs "to meditate with +the free solitary; yet to live secular, and serve mankind." + + TOWN | CITY + FOLK | POLITY + | + WORK | CULTURE + | +PLACE | ART +-----------------------------+-------------------------------- +SURVEY | IMAGERY + | + KNOWLEDGE | IDEAS + | + MORALS | SOC. ECON. + | IDEALS + LAW | ETHICS + SCHOOL | CLOISTER + + +L--THE CITY COMPLIED: TOWN, SCHOOL, CLOISTER, AND CITY PROPER + +In course of this fourfold analysis, it is plain that we have reached +the very converse--or at all events the [Page: 90] complement--of that +geographical determinism with which we started, and that we have +returned to a view corresponding to the popular one (of "People, +Affairs, Places," p. 69), which we then set aside for the reasons given. +The "great man theory" of history, at best less crudely stated, thus +reappears; in short, to the initial thesis we have now the distinct +antithesis. It is time, therefore, to bring these together towards the +needed synthesis. Hence to the page (p. 77) on which was summarised the +determinist view of Town and School, we now require the complemental +statement upon page (p. 87) of Cloister and City proper. Nor must we be +content, with too many controversialists hitherto, to keep in view only +one at a time; but by folding back the pages of print between these two +half-schemes, as the book lies open, to take in both together. + +We may thus finally compress the essentials of this whole paper into a +simple formula-- + +TOWN | CITY + | + FOLK | POLITY + | + WORK | CULTURE + | | ^ +PLACE | | | ART +-----------------|----|----|---------------------- +LORE | | | IMAGERY + v | | + LEAR | IDEA + | + LOVE | IDEAL + | +SCHOOL | CLOISTER + +or most briefly-- + +| TOWN | CITY ^ +| -------+--------- | +v SCHOOL | CLOISTER | + +[Page: 91]--noting in every case the opposite direction of the arrows. +The application of this formula to different types of town, such as +those already indicated in the former instalment of this paper (Vol. I., +p. 107) or in the present one, will not be found to present any +insuperable difficulty. It must, however, be kept clearly in view that +the city of each day and generation subsides or decays more or less +completely into the mere town anew, as the cloister into the schools. +The towns and cities of the world are thus classifiable in terms of +their past development and present condition. + + +Summary + +Condensing now this lengthy, yet compressed and abbreviated series of +analyses into a single page of summary, we may briefly define the main +aspects and departments of civics from the present point of view. First +then, comes the study of civics as fundamentally (and ever anew) an +orderly development--at once geographic, economic, and anthropologic in +its nature--a survey of place, work, and folk--and these not merely or +mainly as broken up into the fine dust of censuses and statistics, nor +even of the three too separate sciences above named, but as a living +unity, the human hive, the Town. + +Corresponding to this objective and organic life we reorganise its +fundamental subjective life. This is fundamentally, and ever partially, +the record and reflex of the life of the hive, the Town: of all its +general and particular environment and function, its family type and +development; and however overlaid by imported culture or by decayed +ideals, it is fundamentally expressed in local knowledge, in craft +tradition, in kinship and its associated kindness, in habits and +customs, and their developments up to morals and laws. Simple terms +corresponding to place, work, and folk, are hard to find; say, however, +till better be suggested, that in close relation to the maternal arms in +which general social thought and its utmost pedagogic developments +alike begin, it is place-lore, work-lear, and folk-love, which are the +essentials of every [Page: 92] School.[11] That existing educational +machineries may not adequately recognise these is not of course the +question here. + +[11] The use of _lore_ as primarily empirical, and derived from the +senses, it is traditional; it is well therefore to restrict it to this, +and to revive the old word _lear_, still understood in Scotland in these +precise senses--intellectual, rational, yet traditional, occupational +also. + +These three terms, lore, lear, and love are thus well related to their +respectively deepening levels of sense, intelligence and feeling; and +their respective relation is thus more plain to the imagery, the theory, +and the idealism above defined as the essentials of the Cloister. The +psychology of the processes of poetic, philosophic and spiritual +awakening and renewal is in these days being approached anew, both from +the individual and social side, but cannot here be entered upon. + +Finally and supremely arises the City proper--its individuality +dependent upon the measure and form in which ideals are expressed and +harmonised in social life and polity, ideas synthetised in culture, and +beauty carried outwards from the study or chamber of the recluse into +the world of art. + + + +Practical conclusion + + +The investigation of the City thus tends towards the practice of +citizenship. Thus social survey prepares for social service, as +diagnosis towards treatment and hygiene; and these react fruitfully upon +our knowledge and understanding anew. Beyond social observations, and +the needed observatories for making them more adequately, we need social +activities and the laboratories for preparing them, or at least the +leavens of them; or, again, in happier phrase, at once simple and more +synthetic, we need some shelter[12] into which to gather the best +[Page: 93] seed of past flowerings and in which to raise and tend the +seedlings of coming summers. We need definitely to acquire such a centre +of survey and service in each and every city--in a word, a Civicentre +for sociologist and citizen. + +[12] Without forgetting the many institutions and workers in almost all +departments of the field of civics, the rise of definite surveys and of +scientific groupings like this Society, without ignoring also the many +admirable workers and institutions of social endeavour, and their +progressive integration into Social Unions, Institutes of Service, and +the like, I may be permitted to press for the need of uniting both +types, the scientific and the practical, into a single one--a civic +museum and active centre in one. Of this type, my own Outlook Tower at +Edinburgh is, so far as I am aware, the earliest beginning; and, despite +its rudimentary condition, may thus serve to suggest a type of +institution which will be found of service alike to the sociologist and +the citizen. + + +M--THE HISTORIC CITY-COMPLEX + +The criticism may have already arisen in the reader's mind that the +"Town" and "School" of our analysis are by no means so simple as we have +assumed them. Our surveys of antique towns ever disclose the material +survivals, at least the vestiges, of the cloister or the acropolis of +the past, of its cathedral or its forum. The processes of our +industries, in what is now their daily artisan routine, include, repeat, +condense, what were yesterday or longer ago living inventions, each +instinct with Promethean fire. The hackneyed ornament of our homes was +once glowing with beauty, radiant or dark with symbolism. So it is for +our everyday customs and institutions, and so for living languages; our +own, perhaps, most of all. These, of course, are facts made familiar by +investigators of all orders, from the scholar and antiquary of old, the +historian and philologist of yesterday, to the geographer or the +sociologist of our own time: witness Mr. Spencer's masterly treatment of +their main results. How, then, shall we correlate this process of all +things growing old with the analysis of cities above attempted? In other +words, how shall we interpret the course of their historic evolution, +their renewed growth and decay, progress and degeneracy, their present +condition, crowded with residues of the past, with those potentialities +which our outline discloses? This is the more necessary since this +fourfold analysis applies in principle to all human groupings from the +simplest village to the Eternal City. To this, indeed, we have in +principle already traced it, onwards from our primitive valley section +with its humble hamlets, its fundamental occupations. Returning then to +our main diagram, with its four-fold analysis of the City so soon as we +have completed this, and [Page: 94] carried its progress up to the level +of city life proper, we must next turn over the leaf and begin a new +page, with place and work and folk once more. This simplest of acts +expresses with graphic significance the very process of history; for in +closing our diagram page its "Cloister" has been folded down on the +"School," our cathedral and forum, our "City" proper upon the "Town." +Thus it is that the ideals and the achievements of one day and +generation and city are ever melting away, and passing out of sight of +the next; so that to the joy or sorrow of the successors the new page +seems well nigh bare, though ever there comes faintly through some image +or at least blurred suggestion of the fading past. Hence each page of +history is a palimpsest. Hence our modern town, even when yesterday but +prairie, was no mere vacant site, but was at once enriched and +encumbered by the surviving traditions of the past; so that even its new +buildings are for the most part but vacant shells of past art, of which +now only the student cares to trace the objective annals, much less +penetrate to the inner history. So for the decayed Renaissance learning +of our schools, for the most part so literally dead since the +"Grammarian's Funeral"; and so, too, for the unthinking routines, the +dead customs and conventions, and largely too the laws and rituals of +our urban lives. Hence, then, it is that for the arrest and the decay of +cities we have no need to go for our examples to the ancient East. These +processes, like those of individual senility and death, are going on +everywhere day by day. + +Upon the new page, then, it is but a complexer "Town" and "School" anew: +we have no continuing City. This too commonly has existed at its best +but for the rare generation which created it, or little longer; though +its historic glories, like those of sunset and of after-glow, may long +shed radiance and glamour upon its town, and linger in the world's +memory long after not only these have faded, but their very folk have +vanished, their walls fallen, nay their very site been buried or +forgotten. Upon all these degrees of dying, all these faint and fading +steps between immortality and oblivion, we may arrange what we call our +historic cities. Obviously in the [Page: 95] deeper and more living +sense the city exists only in actualising itself; and thus to us it is +that the ideal city lies ever in the future. Yet it is the very essence +of this whole argument that an ideal city is latent in every town. Where +shall we in these days find our cloistered retreats to think out such +ideals as may be applicable in our time and circumstances: the needed +kinetic ethics, the needed synthetic philosophy and science, the needed +vision and imagery and expression of them all? + + +N--THE EVILS OF THE CITY + +Disease, defect, vice and crime + +I have spoken little of town evils, and much of town ideals, primarily +for the reason that even to recognise, much less treat, the abnormal, we +must know something of the normal course of evolution. Hence, the old +and useful phrase by which physiology used to be known, that of "the +institutes of medicine." Sociology has thus to become "the institutes of +citizenship." + +Often though philanthropists forget this, diagnosis should precede +treatment. The evils of the city, by the very nature of our hypothesis, +demand special survey, and this no less thoroughly than do the normal +place and work and industry. It is only our most permanent intellectual +impulse, that of seeking for unity, which excuses the cheap unitary +explanations so often current; as, for instance, that social evils are +mainly to be explained by intemperance, as for one school of reformers; +by poverty or luxury, for a second and third; by Tammany or other form +of party government, by socialism or by individualism for yet others; +that they are due to dissent or to church, to ignorance or to the spread +of science, and so on almost indefinitely--doubtless not without +elements of truth in each! + +Yet let me offer as yet another explanation of civic evils, this more +general one--distinguished from the preceding by including them all and +more--that not only is our "Town" in itself imperfect, but the other +three elements we have been characterising as school, cloister and city, +are yet more imperfect, since disordered, decayed, or undeveloped anew. +It is because of each and all of these imperfect realisations of our +civic life, that the evils of life sink down, or flame out, into these +complex eruptions of social evils with which our human aggregations are +as yet cursed. + +Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with ignorance +and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too +separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of +being viewed together, and largely even treated together. They are not +unrelated, but correspond each as the negative to that fourfold +presentment of ideals we have hitherto been raising. To this ideal unity +of healthy town, with its practical and scientific schools of all kinds, +with its meditative cloister of ethical and social idealism, of unified +science and philosophy, of imagination and drama, all culminating in +the polity, culture, and art which make a city proper, we have here the +corresponding defects in detail. + +The evils of existing city life are thus largely reinterpreted; and if +so more efficiently combated; since the poverty, squalor and ugliness of +our cities, their disease and their intemperance, their ignorance, +dulness and mental defect, their vice and crime are thus capable not +only of separate treatment but of an increasingly unified civic hygiene, +and this in the widest sense, material and moral, economic and idealist, +utilitarian and artistic. Even the most earnest and capable workers +towards civic betterment in these many fields may gain at once in hope +and in efficiency as they see their special interests and tasks +converging into the conception of the city as an organic unity, and this +not fixed and settled, nor even in process of progress or degeneration +from causes beyond our ken, but as an orderly development which we may +aid towards higher perfection, geographic and cultural alike. + +Our modern town is thus in a very real sense, one not hopeless, but as +hopeful as may be, a veritable purgatory; that is a struggle of lower +and higher idealisms, amid the respective expressions and outcomes of +these. Indeed, in our own present [Page: 97] cities, as they have come +to be, is not each of us ever finding his own Inferno, or it may be his +Paradise? Does he not see the dark fate of some, the striving and rising +hope of others, the redemption also? + +The supreme poetic utterance of the mediaeval world is thus in great +measure, as each thoughtful reader sees, an expression of impassioned +citizenship and this at one of the golden moments of the long history of +city life. This expression--this exiled citizen's autobiographic +thought-stream--is resumed at every level, from youthful home and local +colour, from boyish love and hopes, from active citizenship and party +struggle, to the transfiguration of all these. Hence these mystic +visions, and these world ambitions, temporal and spiritual; hence this +rise from cloistered faith and philosophy into many-sided culture; hence +the transformation of all these through intensest symbol-visions into +enduring song. + +Am I thus suggesting the _Divina Comedia_ as a guide-book to cities? +Without doubt, though not necessarily for beginners. Yet who can see +Florence without this, though we may pack below it Baedeker and Murray? +Or who, that can really read, can open a volume of Mr. Booth's severely +statistical Survey of London, with all its studious reserve, its +scientific repression, without seeing between its lines the Dantean +circles; happy if he can sometimes read them upward as well as down? + + +O--A CIVIC SYMBOL AND ITS MEANING + +But such books of the city, whether of the new and observant type, from +Baedeker to Booth, or of the old and interpretative Dantean one, are too +vast and varied to keep open before us. Even the preceding open page of +diagram is complex enough with its twofold, indeed four-fold city; and +we are called back to our daily work in the first of these divisions, +that of the everyday town. Since its subjective aspects of school and +cloister may fade from memory, its higher aspect also, that of city +proper, how can we retain this fourfold [Page: 98] analysis, and how +test if it be true? Take then one final illustration; this time no mere +logical skeleton, however simple or graphic, but an image more easily +retained, because a concrete and artistic one, and moreover in terms of +that form of life-labour and thought-notation--that of current +coin--which, in our day especially, dominates this vastest of cities; +and hence inherits for the region of its home and centre--"the Bank" +which has so thoroughly taken precedence of the town-house and +cathedral, of the fortress and palace--the honoured name of "City." The +coinages of each time and place combine concrete and social use with +statements of historic facts; and they add to both of these a wealth of +emblematic suggestions: but that is to say, they express not only their +town, and something of its _school_, but much of its thought also, its +_cloister_ in my present terminology. + +So before me lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side +stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild, +"_Non marte sed arte_." Here then the industrial "Town" and its "School" +express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been above +defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since +Perth _(Bertha aurea)_ had been the northmost of all Rome's provincial +capitals, her re-named "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald +must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the +Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic +dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On +the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard, +since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of +1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the +banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, and +one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual +strife with the feudal nobles, "_Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege_." Here then, +plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty +provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only of +the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find +clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole [Page:99] four-fold +analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been above labouring for. +For what makes the industrial Town, what can better keep it than +strenuous industry at its anvil? How better express its craft school, +its local style and skill, its reaction too upon the town's life in +peace and war, than by this Hal o' the Wynd by his forge? Nay, what +better symbol than this hammer, this primitive tool and ever typical +one, of the peaceful education of experience, form Prometheus to Kelvin, +of the warlike, from Thor to modern cannon-forge? Turning now from Town +and School to Cloister, to the life of secluded peace and +meditation--from which, however, the practical issues of life are ever +renewed--what plainer symbol, yet what more historic or more mystic one +can we ask than this of the lamb with the banner? While of the +contrasted yet complemental civic life of fullest, broadest action, what +expression like the Roman eagle--the very eyes of keenness, and the +spreading wings of power? + +So rarely perfect then is this civic symbol, that I must not omit to +mention that it has only come to my notice since the body of this paper, +with its four-fold analysis of cities as above outlined, was essentially +finished. Since it thus has not in any particular suggested the +treatment of cities here advocated, it is the more interesting and +encouraging as a confirmation of it. It is also to my mind plain that in +this, as in many other of our apparent "advances in science," and +doubtless those in social studies particularly, we are but learning to +think things anew, long after our forefathers have lived them, even +expressed them--and these in their ways no less clear and popular than +can ever be ours. That we may also again live them is once more +curiously expressed by the same symbol; for its re-appearance is due to +its having been appropriately revived, in a fitting art form, that of +the commemorative and prize medal of the local arts and crafts +exhibition, held in the new Public Library, under civic auspices. Little +scrutiny of this last sentence will be needed to see the four-fold +completeness of the civic event which it describes. + +For just as we have seen on the old coin the hammerman [Page: 100] and +his motto answer to the town and school; so now on its reissue to the +renascent local arts and crafts, with their commemoration in this +library. And as the greater motto, that of widest policy, corresponds to +the cloister of reflection and resolve, so we note that this new impulse +to civic betterment is associated with the new library--no mere +school-house of memory, but also the open cloister of our day. Finally, +note that this impulse is no longer merely one of aesthetic purpose, of +"art for art's sake," nor its execution that of a cultured minority +merely; it announces a re-union of this culture and art with the civic +polity. What fitter occasion, then, for the striking of a medal, than +this renewal of civic life, with municipal organisation and polity, art +and culture, renascent in unison. That such events are nowadays far from +exceptional is so true that we are in danger of losing sight of their +significance. Yet it is amid such city developments that the future +Pericles must arise. + +We thus see that our analysis is no mere structural one, made +post-mortem from civic history; but that it applies to the modern +functioning of everyday life in an everyday city, so soon as this +becomes touched anew towards cultural issues. Furthermore, it is thus +plain that civic life not only has long ago anticipated and embodied our +theories of it, but once more outruns them, expressing them far better +than in words--in life and practice. In this way the reader who may most +resent these unfamiliar methods of exposition, alternately by abstract +diagram or concrete illustration--which may seem to him too remote from +ordinary life and experience, perhaps too trivial--may now test the +present theory of the city, or amend it, by means of the ample +illustrations of the processes and results of social life which are +provided by his daily newspaper, and these on well-nigh all its fields +and levels. + +Note finally that it is the eagle and lamb of temporal and spiritual +idealism that form the "head" of this coin, the craftsman and anvil but +the modest "tail." The application is obvious. + +Thus even numismatics revives from amid the fossil [Page: 100] sciences. +For from this to our own common coinage, or notably to that of France, +America, Switzerland, etc., the transition is easy, and still better to +that of the noblest civic past, both classic and mediaeval. Without +pursuing this further here my present point is gained, if we see, even +in the everyday local details of work and people, the enduring stamp, +the inextinguishable promise, of the flowering of our everyday +industries and schools into worthier ideals than they at present +express, and of the fruition of these in turn upon nobler heights of +life and practice. It expresses the essential truth of the popular view +of the city; that in terms of the formula--People ... Affairs ... +Places--above referred to (page 69). It also explains the persistent +vitality of this view, despite its frequent crudity, and lack of order +in detail, in face of the more scientific treatment here at first +employed, that in the elementary geographic order--Place ... Work ... +People. For though this objective order be fundamental, it is the +complementary subjective evolution which throughout history has ever +become supreme; so that our scheme must combine the outward geographic +presentment with the inward psychological one. This may be graphically +expressed by changing the order of presentment from that used +hitherto:-- + +Town | City City | Town +-------------------- to ---------------------- +School | Cloister Cloister | School + + +P--FORECAST OF CITY DEVELOPMENT. SPECIAL AND GENERAL + +The dual and four-fold development of the city, as above sketched, is by +no means far advanced in most of our present towns or cities, which have +obviously but scanty expression of the ideas shadowed forth for the +modern equivalents of cloister and cathedral, of academe and acropolis. +But this is to say that such towns, however large, populous and rich +according to conventional economic standards, are to that extent small +and poor, indeed too often little better than cities by courtesy. Yet +their further development, upon this [Page: 102] four-fold view of civic +evolution, though in principle the same for each and all, has always +been, and let us hope may always be, in large measure an individual +(because regional) one. For if each human individuality be unique, how +much more must that of every city? + +In one concrete case, that of Dunfermline, I have already submitted +definite suggestions towards the realisation of the civic Utopia, and +even architectural designs towards its execution,[13] so that these may +at any rate suffice to show how local study and adaptive design are +needed for each individual city, indeed for every point of it. It is +thus, and thus only, that we can hope to have a city development truly +evolutionary, that is, one utilising the local features, advantages, and +possibilities of place, occupation, and people. Of course, it is needful +to supplement these by the example of other cities; but it is no less +needful to avoid weighting down the local life with replicas of +institutions, however excellent elsewhere, if really irregional here. +With the re-awakening of regional life in our various centres, and of +some comprehension of its conditions among our rulers, they will cease +to establish, say, a school of mines in Piccadilly, or again one of +engineering and the like in South Kensington. The magistrates of +Edinburgh have long abandoned their old attempt to plant mulberries and +naturalise silk culture upon their wind-swept Calton Hill; albeit this +was a comparatively rational endeavour, since a population of Huguenot +refugee silk weavers had actually come upon their hands. + +[13] Cf. the writer's "City Development," Edinburgh and Westminster, +1904. + +Similarly, it is plain that we must develop Oxford as Oxford, Edinburgh +as Edinburgh, and so on with all other cities, great or small--York or +Winchester, Westminster or London. And so with Chelsea or Hampstead, +with Woolwich or Battersea. Has not the last of these grown from a mere +outlying vestry, like so many others, into a centre of genuine vitality +and interior progress, indeed of ever-widening interest and example; and +all this in half a generation, apparently through the sagacious +leadership--say, rather the devoted, the [Page: 103] impassioned +citizenship--of a single man? And does not his popular park at times +come near giving us a vital indication of the needed modern analogue of +cathedral and forum? Civic development is thus no mere external matter, +either of "Haussmannising" its streets, or of machine-educating its +people; the true progress of the city and its citizenship must alike +grow and flower from within albeit alive and open to every truly +fertilising impulse from without. + +Yet since national interests, international industry, commerce, +science, and therefore progress are nowadays and increasingly so +largely one, may we not in conclusion foresee something at least of the +great lines of development which are common to cities, and generalise +these as we are accustomed to do in history? Witness the Classical, +Mediaeval, and Renaissance types to which historic cities +preponderatingly belong, and within which we group their varied +individualities, as after all of comparative detail. + +Here then it is time to recall the presentment of ancient, recent and +contemporary evolution already outlined in the part of this paper +previously read (Vol. I, p. 109), dealing with the historic survey of +cities. We have now to face the question, then postponed, indeed left in +interrogation-marks--that of seeking not indeed sharply to define the +future order of things, yet in some measure to discern such elements of +progress as may be already incipient in the existing order, if not yet +largely manifest there. Such elements may be reasonably expected to grow +in the near future, perhaps increasingly, and whatever be their rate of +growth are surely worthy of our attention. + +Contemporary science, with its retrospective inquiries into origins in +the past, its everyday observation of the present, is apt practically to +overlook that the highest criterion and achievement of science is not to +decipher the past, nor record the present, not even to interpret both. +It is to foresee: only thus can it subserve action, of which the present +task ever lies towards the future, since it is for this that we have to +provide. Why then should not Comte's famous aphorism--"_Voir pour +prévoir, prévoir pour pourvoir_," become applicable in our civic studies +no less than in the general social and political fields to [Page: 104] +which he applied it? In navigation or engineering, in agriculture or +hygiene, prevision and provision alike are ever increasing; yet these +are no mere combinations of the preliminary sciences and the fundamental +occupations, but obviously contain very large social elements. + +It is proverbially safe to prophesy when one knows; and it is but this +safe prediction which we make every day of child or bud, where we can +hardly fail to see the growing man, the coming flower. Yet do not most +people practically forget that even now, in mid-winter, next summer's +leaves are already waiting, nay, that they were conceived nine months +ago? That they thus grow in small, commonly unnoticed beginnings, and +lie in bud for a period twice as long as the summer of their adult and +manifest life, is yet a fact, and one to which the social analogies are +many and worth considering. + +While recognising, then, the immense importance of the historic element +of our heritage, renaissance and mediaeval, classic and earlier; +recognising also the predominance of contemporary forces and ideas, +industrial and liberal, imperial and bureaucratic, financial and +journalistic, can we not seek also, hidden under all these leaves, for +those of the still-but-developing bud, which next season must be so much +more important than they are to day? It is a commonplace, yet mainly of +educational meetings, to note that the next generation is now at school; +but how seldom do we recognise its pioneers, albeit already among our +own contemporaries? At any rate we may see here and there that their +leaven is already at work. + +In this respect, cities greatly differ--one is far more initiative than +another. In the previous paper (vol. I, p. 109), we saw how individuals, +edifices, institutions, might represent all past phases; these, +therefore, often predominate in different cities sufficiently to give +its essential stamp. Why then should we not make a further survey and +seek to see something of the cities of the future; though we may have to +look for these in quarters where at first sight there may seem as yet +scanty promise of flower? + +[Page: 105] To recall an instance employed above, probably every member +of this Society is old enough to remember incredulous questionings of +whether any good thing could come out of Battersea. Again, how few, even +in America, much less than in Europe, a few years ago, forsaw the rapid +growth of those culture-elements in St. Louis, of which the recent +World-Exposition will not have been the only outcome? + +Only a few years earlier, it was Chicago which, for New England no less +than for the Old World, seemed but the byword of a hopelessly +materialised community. So Birmingham or Glasgow has won its present +high position among cities in comparatively recent times; so it may now +be the turn of older cities, once far more eminent, like Newcastle or +Dundee, to overtake and in turn, perhaps, outstrip them. But all this is +still too general and needs further definition; let us attempt this, +therefore, somewhat more fully, in the concrete case of Glasgow. + + +Q--GLASGOW AS TYPICAL OF CIVIC TRANSITION--FROM "PALEOTECHNIC" TO +"NEOTECHNIC" + +My own appreciation of the significance of Glasgow was first really +awakened over twenty years ago by William Morris, who in his vivid way +pointed out to me how, despite the traditional culture--superiority of +Edinburgh, Glasgow was not only the Scottish capital, but, in his view, +in real progressiveness the leading and initiative city of the whole +United Kingdom. And this for him was not merely or mainly in its +municipal enterprise, then merely in its infancy--although he expressed +this development in the phrase "In London, people talked socialism +without living it; but in Glasgow, they were socialists without knowing +it!" Despite all the ugliness which had so repelled Ruskin, the squalor +which moved Matthew Arnold to the fiercest scorn in all his writings, +Morris's appreciation arose from his craftsman's knowledge and respect +for supreme craftsmanship. The great ships building upon the Clyde were +for him "the greatest achievement of [Page: 106] humanity since the days +of the cathedral-builders," nay, for him actually surpassing these, +since calling forth an even more complex combination and "co-operation +of all the material arts and sciences" into a mighty and organic whole; +and correspondingly of all their respective workers also, this being for +him of the very essence of his social ideal. + +For these reasons he insisted, to my then surprise that the social +reorganisation he then so ardently hoped for "was coming faster upon the +Clyde than upon the Thames": he explained as for him the one main reason +for his then discouragement as to the progress of London that there East +and West, North and South, are not only too remote each from the other, +but in their occupations all much too specialised--there to finance, +there to manufactures, or here to leisure, and so on; while on the Clyde +industrial organisation and social progress could not but develop +together, through the very nature of the essential and working unity of +the ship. + +Since Morris's day, a local art movement, of which he knew little, has +risen to eminence, a foreign critic would say to pre-eminence, in this +country at least. Since Ruskin's savage response to a Glasgow invitation +to lecture--"first burn your city, and cleanse your river,"--a new +generation of architects and hygienists have not a little transformed +the one, and vigorous measures have been taken towards the purification +of the other. That the city and university pre-eminently associated +with the invention of the steam-engine, and consequently with the advent +of the industrial revolution throughout the world, should, a century +later, have produced a scarcely less pre-eminent leader of applied +science towards the command of electricity is thus no isolated +coincidence. And as political economy, which is ever the theory +corresponding to our phase of industrial practice, and there some of +its foremost pioneers, and later its classical exponent, Adam Smith +himself, so once more there are signs at least of a corresponding wave +of theoretic progress. Students of primitive civilisation and industry +have now long familiarised us with their reinterpretation of what was +long known as the stone age, into two very distinct [Page: 107] periods, +the earlier characterised by few and rough implements, roughly used by a +rude people, the second by more varied tools, of better shape, and finer +edge, often of exquisite material and polish. We know that these were +wielded more skilfully, by a people of higher type, better bred and +better nourished; and that these, albeit of less hunting and militant +life, but of pacific agricultural skill, prevailed in every way in the +struggle for existence; thanks thus not only to more advanced arts, but +probably above all to the higher status of woman. This distinction of +Paleolithic and Neolithic ages and men, has long passed into the +terminology of sociological science, and even into current speech: is it +too much then, similarly, to focus the largely analogous progress which +is so observable in what we have been wont to generalise too crudely as +the modern Industrial Age? All are agreed that the discoveries and +inventions of this extraordinary period of history constitute an epoch +of material advance only paralleled, if at all, in magnitude and +significance by those of prehistory with its shadowy Promethean figures. +Our own advance from a lower industrial civilisation towards a higher +thus no less demands definite characterisation, and this may be broadly +expressed as from an earlier or _Paleotechnic_ phase, towards a later or +more advanced _Neotechnic_ one. If definition be needed, this may be +broadly given as from a comparatively crude and wasteful technic age, +characterised by coal, steam, and cheap machine products, and a +corresponding _quantitative_ ideal of "progress of wealth and +population"--towards a finer civilisation, characterised by the wider +command, yet greater economy of natural energies, by the predominance of +electricity, and by the increasing victory of an ideal of qualitative +progress, expressed in terms of skill and art, of hygiene and education, +of social polity, etc. + +The Neotechnic phase, though itself as yet far from completely replacing +the paleotechnic order which is still quantitatively predominant in most +of our cities, begins itself to show signs of a higher stage of +progress, as in the co-ordination of the many industries required for +the building of a ship, or in the yet more recent developments which +begin to renew for us the conception of the worthy construction of a +city. As [Page: 108] the former period may be characterised by the +predominance of the relatively unskilled workman and of the skilled, so +this next incipient age by the development of the chief workman proper, +the literal _architectos_ or architect; and by his companion the rustic +improver, gardener and forester, farmer, irrigator, and their +correspondingly evolving types of civil engineer. + +To this phase then the term _Geotechnic_ may fairly be applied. Into its +corresponding theoretic and ideal developments we need not here enter, +beyond noting that these are similarly of synthetic character; on the +concrete side the sciences unifying as geography, and on their more +abstract side as the classification and philosophy of the +sciences,--while both abstract and concrete movements of thought are +becoming more and more thoroughly evolutionary in character. + +But evolutionary theories, especially as they rise towards +comprehensiveness, cannot permanently content themselves with origins, +or with classifications merely, nor with concentrating on nature rather +than on man. Nature furnishes after all but the stage for evolution in +its highest terms; of this man himself is the hero; so that thus our +Geotechnic phase, Synthetic age (call it what we will) in its turn gives +birth to a further advance--that concerned with human evolution, above +all subordinating all things to him; whereas in all these preceding +industrial phases, even if decreasingly, "things are in the saddle and +ride mankind." This age, now definitely evolutionist in policy, as the +geotechnic was in theory and in environment we may term the _Eugenic_. +For its theory, still less advanced, the term _Eupsychic_ may complete +our proposed nomenclature. + +Thus then our conception of the opening future may be increasingly +defined, since all these apparently predicted phases are already +incipient among us, and are thus really matters of observed fact, of +social embryology let us say; in short, of city development. + +In summary, then, the diagram of the former instalment of this paper +(vol. 1, p. 109) + + ANCIENT || +Primitive | Matriarchal | Patriarchal || + + RECENT || +Greek and Roman | Mediaeval | Renaissance || + + CONTEMPORARY || +Revolution | Empire | Finance || + + INCIPIENT + ? ? ? + +[Page: 109] has thus its interrogations filled up. Omitting the +left-hand half, that generalised as Ancient and Recent in the above +diagram, so as to give more space to the Contemporary and Incipient +phases, these now stand as follows:-- + + CONTEMPORARY || INCIPIENT +Revolution | Revolution | Empire ||Neotechnic | Geotechnic | Eugenic + +To elaborate this farther would, of course, exceed my present limits; +but I may be permitted to say that long use of this schematic outline, +especially of course in more developed forms, has satisfied me of its +usefulness alike in the study of current events and in the practical +work of education and city betterment. I venture then to recommend it to +others as worth trial. + + +R--A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL--A CIVIC EXHIBITION + +How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our +observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and +our practical policy--i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be +selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these +applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if +this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, +how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? +At this stage therefore, I venture to submit to the Society a practical +proposal for its consideration and discussion; and if approved, I would +fain hope for its recommendation to towns and cities, to organisations +and to the public likely to be interested. + +Here then is my proposal. Is not the time ripe for bringing together the +movements of Civics and Eugenics, now here and indeed everywhere plainly +nascent, and of setting these before the public of this country in some +such large and concrete ways, as indeed, in the latter subject at +least, have been so strongly desiderated by Mr. Galton? As regards +Civics, such have been afforded to America during the summer of 1904 by +the Municipal Section of the St. Louis Exhibition; in [Page: 110] +Dresden also, at the recent Towns Exhibition; and by kindred Exhibitions +and Congresses in Paris and elsewhere. + +All these have taken form since the Paris Exposition of 1900, with its +important section of social economy and its many relevant special +congresses. Among these may be specially mentioned here as of popular +interest, and civic stimulus, the _Congres de L'Art Public_; the more +since this also held an important Exhibition, to which many Continental +cities sent instructive exhibits. + +Other exhibitions might be mentioned; so that the fact appears that in +well-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the +great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly +brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with +their associated congresses. + +With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon +Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among us; +with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a +real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic +education and action? + +Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important +exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits +have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the +picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of +their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present +conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering +them. + +Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" might +readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the +excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions +in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an +exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they +may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely +abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the +discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to +raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in freshening +lights. + +[Page: 111] At this time of social transition, when we all more or less +feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of +sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual +appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic +Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, of +the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic +Exhibition.[14] + +[14] Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to note the +practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition, +appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to +civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall. The Cottages Exhibition initiated +by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that +admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in +the directions of progress and propaganda advocated above. + +Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that +_Encyclopædia Civica_, into which, in the previous instalment of this +paper (vol. I, p. 118) I have sought to group the literature of civics. +We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in +universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the +mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of +these. We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future, +and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already +struggling towards birth. + + + + +DISCUSSION + + +The Chairman (THE RT. HON. CHARLES BOOTH) said: + +I feel always the inspiring character of Professor Geddes' addresses. He +seems to widen and deepen the point of view, and to widen and deepen +one's own ideas, and enables us to hold them more firmly and better than +one can do without the aid of the kind of insight Professor Geddes has +given into the methods of his own mind. I believe that we all hold our +conceptions by some sort of tenure. I am afraid I hold mine by columns +and statistics much underlined--a horrible prosaic sort of arrangement +on ruled paper. I remember a lady of my acquaintance who had a place for +everything. The discovery of America was in the left-hand corner; the +Papacy was in the middle; and for everything she had some local +habitation in an imaginary world. Professor Geddes is far more ingenious +than that, and it is most interesting and instructive and helpful to +follow these charming diagrams which spring evidently from the method he +himself uses in holding and forming his conceptions. That it is of the +utmost value to have large conceptions there can be no doubt--large +conceptions both in time and place, large conceptions of all those +various ideas to which he has called our attention. By some means or +other we have to have them; and having got them, every individual, +single fact has redoubled value. We put it in its place. So I hope that +in our discussion, while we may develop each in his own way, the mental +methods we pursue, we may bring forward anything that strikes us as +germane, as a practical point of application to the life of the world, +and especially anything having an application to the life of London. I +would make my contribution to that with regard to a scheme that has been +explained to me by its originator, Mrs. Barnett, the wife of Canon +Barnett of Toynbee Hall. The idea concerns an open [Page: 113] space +which has recently been secured in Hampstead. It is known to you all +that a certain piece of ground belonging to the trustees of Eton College +has been secured, which extends the open space of Hampstead Heath in +such a way as to protect a great amount of beauty. The further proposal +is to acquire an estate surrounding that open space which has now been +secured for ever to the people, and to use this extension to make what +is called a "garden suburb." It is a following out of the "garden-city" +idea which is seizing hold of all our minds, and it seems to me an +exceedingly practical adaptation of that idea. Where it comes in, in +connection with the address we have just heard, is that the root idea is +that it shall bring together all the good elements of civic life. It is +not to be for one class, or one idea, but for all classes, and all +ideas--a mixed population with all its needs thought for and provided +for; and above everything, the beauty of those fields and those hills is +not to be sacrificed, but to be used for the good of the suburb and the +good of London. I hope that out of it will come an example that will be +followed. That is a little contribution I wish to make to the discussion +to-day, and if I can interest any one here in forwarding it, I shall be +exceedingly glad. + + +MR. SWINNY said: + +Towards the close of his lecture, Professor Geddes remarked that the +cities of America inherited a great part of their civilisation from +Greece and Rome and the Europe of the Middle Age. I believe that thought +will lead us to consider the point whether this geographical survey +should precede or follow a general historical survey. Now, if we +consider that a river valley in England, with the towns in that valley, +are part of the English nation, and that the English nation has shared +in the general historical evolution of Western Europe, it would seem +that the first simplification the question allows of is: What is there +in the historical development of that city that is common to the whole +of Western Europe, and what is peculiar to its position as an English +city? And the second simplification that the problem allows of is to +consider what part of the evolution of a particular city is due to its +peculiar position in that river valley? So that it seems necessary first +to get a general idea of the historical evolution of England and the +West; and then you can proceed to consider what is due to the part +played by the city in that evolution. Thus you have to consider not so +much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect +of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as it +affected that city. + + +DR. J.L. TAYLER, + +[Page: 114] referring to Professor Geddes' remarks on the working +craftsman and the thinking craftsman, said he believed that in a country +like England, where the prevailing tendencies of thought and action were +of an essentially practical nature, many people who now felt contempt +for higher mental ideals would alter their views, if this idea of the +_causal_ relationship between thinkers and workers could be driven home. +If business men and women could be made to realise that in the higher +regions of pure science there were always to be found some thinkers who +belonged to the same craft or trade as they themselves, they would +naturally tend to rely on these thinkers when dealing with problems that +necessitate a wide mental outlook. + +Moreover, the thought that students of great mental powers studied the +objects with which working craftsmen were in daily contact, could not +fail to deepen, refine and purify their more practical and, in some +respects, grosser aims; while the knowledge that every science-study had +an industrial as well as a scientific aspect would make the thinking +craftsmen more alive to the needs of everyday existence. + +Such conceptions, if spread through all classes of our community, would +inevitably change the feeling of distrust of learning into one of +healthful enthusiasm, and give in addition a unity and direction to our +various life pursuits which might in time generate a true modern +national spirit; for it is precisely this divorce of mental and +physical, of theoretical and practical, class and individual +effort--which such a thinking and working craft theory would +rectify--that destroys our efficiency by creating an unreal chasm +between refined and unrefined, learned and unlearned, where there should +be only a progressive evolution from the lower to the higher, from the +immediate practical to the ultimate ideal. + + +THE REV. DR. AVELING said: + +There was one point that the lecturer made which, I think, might be a +fit and fruitful subject for discussion. He said that we were the +product of the city. To a great extent that is undoubtedly true; but on +the other hand, he advocated an improvement in the conditions of +environment, to be brought about by our own endeavours. Therefore, the +city can be shaped and made by us. What, then, is the exact value to be +given to the seemingly contradictory doctrines that the individual is +the product of the city and also that the city is the product of the +citizen? The establishing of some fixed relation between--or the +adjusting of the relations of--these two causes of social progress would +be, I think, interesting to the philosopher, and useful to the +economist. The problem is [Page: 115] without doubt a difficult one, but +its solution would be of great value. I do not venture to offer any +answer to the question I raise--I merely state it. + + +MR. A.W. STILL said: + +We have been passing through a period in which the city has created a +type of man so wholly absorbed in the promotion of his own individual +interests that he tends almost entirely to forget the social obligations +which ought to make the greatest appeal to him. We may take some hope +from what Professor Geddes has said, that the time is coming when we +shall bring the force of our own characters to bear on our environment, +and endeavour to break away from conditions which have made us the +slaves of environment. I know the lovely little garden city of +Bourneville intimately, and some of the experiments in other quarters. +But in the common expansion of cities, I have seen that as the people +get away from one set of slums, they are creating new areas which will +become as degraded and abominable as those which are left behind. It has +always seemed to me that there is room for good work by some committee, +or some body of men, who would be voluntary guardians of the city's +well-being, who would make it their business to acquire all that +knowledge which Professor Geddes has just put before us in terms so +enchanting, and would use all the ability that they possess in order to +lead the minds of the community towards the cultivation of the best and +highest ideals in civic life. I do not think it need be regarded as +impossible that, from an association of this kind, such a movement as I +have mentioned should spring. I conceive the possibility of each group +developing into a trust, capable of acting in the interests of the city +in years to come, exercising a mighty influence, being relied upon for +guidance, and administering great funds for the common good. If we could +get in each of our populous centres a dozen thoroughly intelligent +broad-minded men, capable of watching all the streams of tendency--all +the developments of civic life, bringing their judgment to bear on its +progress, and urging the public to move in the right direction, a great +service might be rendered. At least once a year, these little groups of +men might meet together at some general conference, and, by the exchange +of their opinions and by the mutual helpfulness of intellectual +intercourse, raise up and perfect civic ideals which would be a boon to +this country. We suffer at present, I think, from the too great +particularisation of our efforts. We get one man devoting himself +exclusively to a blind asylum, another seeming to take no interest in +anything but a deaf-and-dumb institute or the like, and yet another +devoting himself to charity organisation. It is all excellent work, but +the difficulty is to get broad, comprehensive views taken of the common +good. To reduce poverty and to check physical degeneracy, there must be +an effort continuously made to [Page: 116] raise the tone of the +environment in which we live. The home and the city need to be made +wholesome and beautiful, and the people need to be encouraged to enlarge +their minds by contact with nature, and by the study of all that is +elevating and that increases the sum of social responsibility. + + +MR. E.S. WEYMOUTH said: + +He found it somewhat difficult to see what was to be the practical +outcome of civics if studied in the way proposed. Would Professor Geddes +consider it the duty of any Londoner, who wished to study sociology +practically, to map out London, and also the surrounding districts, with +special reference to the Thames River Basin, as appeared to be suggested +in both Professor Geddes' papers? Looking at civics in its practical or +ethical aspect, he was bound to confess that, though he had acquired a +tolerable knowledge of the geography of the Thames Basin, he did not +feel it helped him materially towards becoming a better citizen of +London. Would Professor Geddes wish them to study, first, London with +its wealth side by side with its squalor and filth, and then proceed to +study another large town, where the same phenomena presented themselves? +What gain would there be in that proportionate to the labour entailed? +In his own case, so disheartened had he felt by observing that all their +efforts, public and private, for the improvement of their civic +conditions seemed to end in raising considerably the rents of the ground +landlords of London, while leaving the bulk of the population engaged in +a hard struggle for their existence, that he had for years past found it +difficult to take much interest in municipal affairs, so long as the +rates and taxes were--as it seemed to him--put upon the wrong shoulders. +And for the study of civics, he had preferred to turn to those cities +where efforts were being made to establish communal life on what seemed +to him juster conditions. In 1897, he was struck with the title of an +article in the "Daily Telegraph." It was headed, "The Land of Beauty, +Society without Poverty, Life without Care." He found the article was a +description of Durban in Natal. The writer attributed the prosperity of +this town to the fact that the suburbs were kept in the hands of the +community, instead of being handed over to private owners who would +absorb all the unearned increment. Even if this eulogium betrayed +exaggeration still a student of civics might feel that the economic +conditions of that town were worth studying. Similarly, in New Zealand, +the adoption in 1891 of the tax on land values brought prosperity to the +towns, and changed the tide of emigration from New Zealand into +immigration. Again, at home they had Bourneville, Port Sunlight, and +that most interesting of all present-day experiments in this country, +the Garden City, all of these being founded by men with ideals. He could +not help feeling [Page: 117] that a student of civics, possessed of such +a fair working knowledge of the city he lived in as most of them might +reasonably lay claim to, would make more real progress by studying the +success or failure of social experiments, than by entering on the very +formidable task that seemed to be set before them by Professor Geddes. +However, when they left abstract civics, as they had it portrayed to +them in these papers, and turned to the architectural or the historical +side of concrete civics, there should be no better guide than Professor +Geddes, whose labours in Edinburgh, and whose projected schemes for the +improvement of Dunfermline, were becoming widely known. + + +MR. TOMKINS (_of the London Trades Council_) said: + +If before any person was allowed to serve on our different public +bodies, he should be required to attend a course of lectures such as +those given by Professor Geddes on civics, that would surely be a means +of developing his social interests, and would tend to eliminate that +self-interest which too often actuated public men. There was nothing +more difficult than for workmen to-day to be able to take larger views. +The workman's whole business was now so different from what is was in +the days of the arts and crafts guilds of the Middle Ages; they now +found him ground down into some little division of industry, and it was +quite impossible for him to work in his own way. Thus he got +narrow-minded, because concentrated on some minor process. He was kept +at work with his nose to the mill the whole time, and it became too +exhausting for him to try and take these larger views of life. He often +thought of the amount of talent and energy and practical beauty which +was wasted in our workshops to-day. Referring to the Garden Cities of +this country and the United States, Mr. Tomkins said the idea of getting +great Trusts to use their money in a social spirit, and not merely to +get the workers tied to their mills, was really something which opened +out a vista of grand possibilities in the future; but if any movement +was to be successful it would be necessary to teach the great masses of +workers, and to create a real sound social public opinion amongst them. + + +PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply + +Professor Geddes, in replying to the discussion, said he entirely agreed +with the point made by Mr. Swinny, and he should just like to correct +what he had said in his lecture by reference to what he meant by a civic +museum. In Edinburgh, he had in his museum a large room, with a +geographical model [Page: 118] of the old town with its hill-fort, and +so on; and he hung round this maps and diagrams of historical and +geographical details. On the opposite side of the room, he had a symbol +of the market-cross, which stood for the centre of its municipal life, +of its ideals and independence of environment. Around it was grouped +what represented the other side of the city; and here he might answer +another point, and say that they could never settle the great +philosophical controversy of determinism and free-will. They would +always incline when young to the novel of circumstance, and later, to +the novel of character, but they should always feel that life was a game +of individual skill with interfering circumstances. These diagrams of +his were only the page split. On the one side, he meant to push to the +extreme the idea that the place makes us, and on the other side, that we +make the place. By what process do men struggle towards the selection of +their ideals? They find themselves within the grasp of their +environment, their whole heritage of culture, of good and ill, the whole +tradition of the past; but they must select certain elements of +these--the elements that seem to them good, and so they might escape +from the manner of the city. Pointing to a drawing of the old Scotch +bawbee, Professor Geddes said it was not a very dignified symbol of the +coinage of the world, but let them mark how it had on the one side the +hammerman at his work, with his motto "_Beat deus artem_," and, on the +other side, a larger legend, with the eagle of the empire and the lamb +of Saint John. + +To return to his civic museum: the room below the one he had described +was the larger museum for Scotland, and in the room below that, again, +the museum for England, Ireland and America, the whole English-speaking +world--not the Empire only. And the whole stood on a museum and library +representing that larger evolution of the occidental civilisation which +showed them they were merely children of the past. Professor Geddes +pleaded for museums in which every city displayed its own past and +present, but related itself to the whole of Europe and the whole +occident. + +One or two practical questions of great importance had [Page: 119] been +raised; but, with all respect, he submitted that they could consider +what was practical and practicable without requiring to go into the +question of taxing land. That was a matter of political opinion. It was +as if they were discussing the geology of coal, which they could do, +without reference to coal royalties. Mr. Weymouth was with them on the +subject of preserving old buildings; and he thought there was a great +deal to be learned, if Mr. Weymouth would descend the valley of the +Thames once more. It was of great importance if he found a great city at +the tidal limit. Going down the Thames and the Tay, they would find, at +the last ford of one, the old Abbey of Westminster, and at the last ford +of the other, the old Abbey of Scoon. The kings of England and Scotland +were crowned there because these were the most important places--a point +of great historic interest. As a matter of practical interest, he might +mention that Scoon and Westminster alike passed out of supreme +importance when bridges were built across the river below; and he would +next point out how just as Perth became of subordinate importance when +the great Tay Bridge was built, so it became a tremendously important +question to London, as it might in turn be much affected by the making +of a great and a new bridge much further down the stream. This study of +the descending river had real and practical, as well as historical +importance. He had been about considerably in the great cities of the +United States, and had been struck by the amount of good endeavour +there. It was not, however, by denouncing Tammany that they could beat +it, but by understanding it. They must understand the mechanism by which +the Celtic chieftain ruled his clan, and they must deal with these +methods by still other methods; and they might often find it more +satisfactory to re-moralise the chieftain than to destroy him. + +Professor Geddes concluded by saying that he appreciated the admirable +suggestion of Mr. Still towards the evolution of civic unions. He was +sure Mr. Still had there an idea of great significance which might be +developed. + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Civics: as Applied Sociology, by Patrick Geddes + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13205 *** diff --git a/13205-h/13205-h.htm b/13205-h/13205-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..293a84a --- /dev/null +++ b/13205-h/13205-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4948 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" + content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/> + <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Civics: As Applied Sociology, +by Patrick Geddes.</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + a {text-decoration: none;} + + P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + text-indent: 1em; + } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + } + HR { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 1%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem .caesura {vertical-align: -200%;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13205 ***</div> + +<br /> +<h1><i>Civics: as Applied Sociology</i></h1> +<h2>by Patrick Geddes</h2> +<br /> +<hr style="width: 35%; height: 2px;" /><br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">Read before the Sociological Society at a +Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt. Hon. CHARLES +BOOTH, +F.R.S., in the Chair.</p> +<br /> +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> +<br /> +<p>This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as far +as +possible, concrete in treatment. If it is to appeal to practical men +and +civic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for the +systematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be not +merely the product of the study, but rather be those which may be +acquired in course of local observation and practical effort. My +problem +is thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise from +the experience of any moderately-travelled observer of varied +interests; +so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic and +impressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards an +orderly Regional Survey. This point of view has next to be correlated +with the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquired +through some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise toward +a +larger and more orderly conception of civic action—as Regional Service. +In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or <span class="pagenum">p. 104</span> Civics, as +one of its main departments, may be defined as the application of +Social +Survey to Social Service.</p> +<p>In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, our +everyday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually become +more systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; while +our activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarly +approximate towards art. Thus there is emerging more and more clearly +for sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields of +application in city after city, the conception of a scientific centre +of +observation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centre +of +experimental endeavour on the other—in short of Sociological +Observatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasingly +co-ordinated. Indeed, is not such association of observations and +experiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here and +elsewhere? I need not multiply instances of the correlation of science +and art, as of chemistry with agriculture, or biology with medicine. +Yet, on the strictly sociological plane and in civic application they +are as yet less generally evident, though such obvious connections as +that of vital statistics with hygienic administration, that of +commercial statistics with politics, are becoming recognised by all. In +the paper with which this Society's work lately opened, the intimate +connection between a scientific demography and a practical eugenics has +been clearly set forth. But this study of the community in the +aggregate +finds its natural parallel and complement in the study of the community +as an integrate, with material and immaterial structures and functions, +which we call the City. Correspondingly, the improvement of the +individuals of the community, which is the aim of eugenics, involves a +corresponding civic progress. Using (for the moment at least) a +parallel +nomenclature, we see that the sociologist is concerned not only with +"demography" but with "politography," and that "eugenics" is +inseparable +from "politogenics." For the struggle for existence, though observed +mainly from the side of its individuals by the demographer, is not only +an intra-civic but an inter-civic process; and if so, ameliorative +selection, now clearly sought for the individuals in detail as +eugenics, +is inseparable from a corresponding civic art—a literal +"Eupolitogenics."</p> +<br /> +<h3>A—THE GEOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF CITIES</h3> +<p>Coming to concrete Civic Survey, where shall we begin? Not only in +variety and magnitude of civic activities, but, thanks especially to +the +work of Mr. Charles Booth and his collaborators in actual social survey +also, London may naturally claim pre-eminence. Yet even at best, does +not this vastest of world cities remain a less or more foggy labyrinth, +from which surrounding <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_105'></a>p. 105</span> regions with their smaller cities can +be but dimly descried, even with the best intentions of avoiding the +cheap generalisation of "the provinces"? For our more general and +comparative study, then, simpler beginnings are preferable. More +suitable, therefore, to our fundamental thesis—that no less definite +than the study of races and usages or languages, is that of the +groupings of men—is the clearer outlook, the more panoramic view of a +definite geographic region, such, for instance, as lies beneath us upon +a mountain holiday. Beneath vast hunting desolations lie the pastoral +hillsides, below these again scattered arable crofts and sparsely +dotted +hamlets lead us to the small upland village of the main glen: from this +again one descends to the large and prosperous village of the foothills +and its railway terminus, where lowland and highland meet. East or +west, +each mountain valley has its analogous terminal and initial village, +upon its fertile fan-shaped slope, and with its corresponding minor +market; while, central to the broad agricultural strath with its slow +meandering river, stands the prosperous market town, the road and +railway junction upon which all the various glen-villages converge. A +day's march further down, and at the convergence of several such +valleys, stands the larger county-town—in the region before me as I +write, one of added importance, since not only well nigh central to +Scotland, but as the tidal limit of a till lately navigable river. +Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great +manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river +system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the +essential +unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple +geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental +to +any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By +descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation +from its simple origins to its complex resultants; nor can any element +of this be omitted. Were we to begin with the peasant hamlet as our +initial unit, and forget the hinterlands of pasture, forest, and chase +(an error to which the writer on cities is naturally prone), the +anthropologist would soon remind us that in forgetting the hunter, we +had omitted the essential germ of active militarism, and hence very +largely of aristocratic rule. Similarly, <span class="pagenum">p. 106</span> in ignoring the +pastoral life, we should be losing sight of a main fount of spiritual +power, and this not only as regards the historic religions, but all +later culture elements also, from the poetic to the educational. In +short, then, it takes the whole region to make the city. As the river +carries down contributions from its whole course, so each complex +community, as we descend, is modified by its predecessors. The converse +is no doubt true also, but commonly in less degree.</p> +<p>In this way with the geographer we may rapidly review and extend our +knowledge of the grouping of cities. Such a survey of a series of our +own river-basins, say from Dee to Thames, and of a few leading +Continental ones, say the Rhine and Meuse, the Seine and Loire, the +Rhone, the Po, the Danube—and, if possible, in America also, at least +the Hudson and Mississippi—will be found the soundest of introductions +to the study of cities. The comparison of corresponding types at once +yields the conviction of broad general unity of development, structure, +and function. Thus, with Metschnikoff we recognise the succession of +potamic, thalassic, and oceanic civilisations; with Reclus we see the +regular distribution of minor and major towns to have been largely +influenced not only by geographical position but by convenient journey +distances. Again, we note how the exigencies of defence and of +government, the developments of religion, despite all historic +diversities, have been fundamentally the same. It is not, of course, to +be forgotten how government, commerce, communications, have +concentrated, altered or at least disguised the fundamental +geographical +simplicity of this descending hierarchy from mountain-hamlet to +ocean-metropolis; but it is useful for the student constantly to +recover +the elemental and naturalist-like point of view even in the greatest +cities. At times we all see London as still fundamentally an +agglomeration of villages, with their surviving patches of common, +around a mediaeval seaport; or we discern even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say its Place de l'Etoile, with its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest-rides, each literally arrow-straight. So the narrow +rectangular network of an American city is explicable only by the +unthinking persistence of the peasant thrift, which grudges good land +to +<span class="pagenum"><a name='p_107'></a>p. 107</span> +road-way, and is jealous of oblique short cuts. In short, +then, in what seems our most studied city planning, we are still +building from our inherited instincts like the bees. Our Civics is thus +still far from an Applied Sociology.</p> +<br /> +<h3>B—THE HISTORIC SURVEY OF CITIES</h3> +<p>But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time. +Though +the claim of geography be fundamental our interest in the history of +the +city is supremely greater; it is obviously no mere geographic +circumstances which developed one hill-fort in Judea, and another in +Attica, into world centres, to this day more deeply influential and +significant than are the vastest modern capitals. This very wealth of +historical interests and resources, the corresponding multiplicity of +specialisms, more than ever proves the need of some means by which to +group and classify them. Some panoramic simplification of our ideas of +history comparable to that of our geography, and if possible congruent +with this, is plainly what we want. Again the answer comes through +geography, though no longer in mere map or relief, but now in vertical +section—in the order of strata ascending from past to present, whether +we study rock-formations with the geologist, excavate more recent +accumulations with the archaeologist, or interpret ruins or monuments +with the historian. Though the primitive conditions we have above noted +with the physiographer remain apparent, indeed usually permanent, +cities +have none the less their characteristic phases of historic development +decipherably superposed. Thus below even the characteristically +patriarchal civilisations, an earlier matriarchal order is often +becoming disclosed. Our interest in exploring some stately modern or +Renaissance city is constantly varied by finding some picturesque +mediaeval remnant; below this some fragment of Roman ruin; below this +it +may be some barbarian fort or mound. Hence the fascinating interest of +travel, which compels us ever to begin our survey anew. Starting with +the same river-basin as before, the geographic panorama now gains a new +and deeper interest. Primitive centres long forgotten start into life; +pre-historic tumuli give up their dead; to the stone circles the <span class="pagenum">p. 108</span> +worshippers return; the British and the Roman camps again fill +with +armed men, and beside the prosaic market town arises a shadowy +Arthurian +capital. Next, some moment-centuries later, a usurper's tower rises and +falls; the mediaeval abbey, the great castles, have their day; with the +Reformation and the Renaissance the towns again are transformed; and +yet more thoroughly than ever by the Industrial Revolution, with its +factories, railways, steamships, and all that they bring with them. +Thus, for instance, almost more important than the internal +transformation and concentration wrought by railway and telegraph, is +the selection, amidst the almost innumerable seaports of the older +order, of the very few adapted to the deep draught of modern ships. In +a +word, not only does the main series of active cities display traces of +all the past phases of evolution, but beside this lie fossils, or +linger +survivals, of almost every preceding phase.</p> +<p>Hence, after many years of experiment and practice in teaching +sociology +I still find no better method available than that of regional survey, +historical as well as geographical. Beginning with some popular +excursion of obvious beauty and romantic interest like that to Melrose, +we see with every tourist how naturally and fully the atmosphere and +tradition of the Border found its expression and world influence in Sir +Walter Scott. Thence, passing by way of contrast through the long +isolated peninsula of Fife, say to representative towns like Kirkcaldy +and Largo, we still see the conditions of that individualism of which +Adam Smith and Alexander Selkirk ("Robinson Crusoe") have each in his +way become the very prototypes. In such ways the connection of regional +geography, history, and social psychology becomes increasingly clear. +Again, we explore the other old Fife seaports, a series of survivals +like those of the Zuyder Zee, or again work out in the field the +significance of Stirling, so often the strategic centre of Scotland. +Again, Dunfermline, as early mediaeval capital and abbey, furnishes a +convenient object lesson preparatory to the study of the larger +Edinburgh. Here, again, its triple centre, in the port of Leith, the +Royal Castle, the Abbey of Holyrood, are the respective analogues of +the +port of London, the Tower, and Westminster; while each city-group has +its outlying circle of minor burghs, tardily and imperfectly +incorporated into a civic whole. Again, such a marked contrast of civic +origins and developments as those of Glasgow and Edinburgh has to be +accounted for; and thus through such progessively complexer surveys we +reach the plane of modern civic problems and policies. Understanding +the +present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to +understand the future as the development of the present?</p> +<p>The impressiveness of the aspect of Edinburgh to its visitors is +thus +not <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_109'></a>p. 109</span> +merely pictorial. Be the spectator conscious of this or +no, it turns primarily upon the contrast of the mediaeval hill-city +with +its castle ramparts, its fretted cathedral crown, with park and +boulevard, with shops, hotels and railway stations. But the historic +panorama is unusually complete. See the hill-fort defended by lake and +forest, becoming "<i>castrum puellarum</i>," becoming a Roman and an +Arthurian citadel, a mediaeval stronghold of innumerable sieges, a +centre of autocratic and military dictatures, oligarchic governments, +at +length a museum of the past. So in the city itself. Here the narrow +ridge crowded into a single street all the essential organs of a +capital, and still presents with the rarest completeness of +concentration a conspectus of modern civic life and development; and +this alike as regards both spiritual and temporal powers, using these +terms in their broadest senses as the respective expressions of the +material order and its immaterial counterparts. Thus the royal and +noble +castles of the Middle Age become with the Renaissance here as +everywhere +something of palaces, while with the industrial revolution they have +become replaced by factories or transformed into breweries. So the +guidance of speculative thought, once concentrated in the mediaeval +abbey, becomes transferred to the Reformation assembly of divines, to +the Renaissance college; and again at the Revolution, is largely taken +over by the speculative encyclopædists, of whom Hume and Smith +were but +the most eminent. Nor are later developments less obvious. Of the +following generation, we have the neo-classic architecture which +everywhere dominated Europe after the French Revolution and during the +First Empire, while of the next generation's reaction against all this +in the romantic movement, the neo-Gothic monument of Scott is the most +characteristic possible representative. Again, just as in the Oxford +movement we had the (appropriately regional) renascence of the idealism +of the Cavaliers, so in Edinburgh we have naturally the simultaneous +renascence of the Puritan ideal, e.g., in the Free Church, whose +monument accordingly rises to dominate the city in its turn. The later +period of prosperous Liberalism, the heroic enthusiasms of Empire, have +each left their mark; and now in the dominant phase of social +evolution, +that of Finance, the banks, the financial companies, the press are +having their turn as monument builders. Our Old Edinburgh is thus the +most condensed example, the visible microcosm of the social evolution +which is manifest everywhere; so that as a teaching model of +sociological development it may renew its educational attractiveness +when its improving hygiene has lessened its medical advantages.</p> +<p>Setting down now these phases of historical development in tabular +form, +we have a diagram such as the following:—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Ancient, recent, contemporary societies" + style="width: 100%;" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="3" rowspan="1">ANCIENT <br /> + </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">RECENT </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"> CONTEMPORARY </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> INCIPIENT</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">Primitive </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Matriarchal </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Patriarchal </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;"> Greek +and Roman </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Mediaeval </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Renaissance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Revolution </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Empire </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Finance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> ? ? ?</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>which, were it placed erect, we might now compare to the increasing +<span class="pagenum">p. 110</span> +nodes of a growing stem, or rather say the layers of a coral +reef, in which each generation constructs its characteristic stony +skeleton as a contribution to the growing yet dying and wearying whole. +I have elaborated this example of the panoramic aspect of Old Edinburgh +as a widely familiar instance of the method of literal survey with +which +social and civic studies may so conveniently begin; and I press the +value of extending these even to the utmost elaborateness of +photographic survey: in my view, indeed, a sociological society has at +least as much use for a collection of maps, plans and photographs as of +statistics, indeed scarcely less than one of books. Of course, in all +this I am but recalling what every tourist in some measure knows; yet +his impressions and recollections can become an orderly politography, +only as he sees each city in terms of its characteristic social +formations, and as he utilises the best examples from each phase +towards +building up a complete picture of the greatest products of civic +evolution, temporal and spiritual, of all places and times up to the +present. Such a parallel of the historic survey of the city to that of +its underlying geological area is thus in no wise a metaphoric one, but +one which may be worked out upon maps sections and diagrams almost +completely in the same way—in fact, with little change save that of +colours and vertical scale. The attempt to express the characteristic +and essential life and thought of a given region in each period upon a +series of maps is in fact the best method of understanding the everyday +map at which we commonly look so unthinkingly.</p> +<p>Much of the preceding, I am assured, must be most unsatisfactory to +those who look at cities only from the standpoint of so many committees +dealing with police, water, finance, and so on; or to those who are +content to view the magnitude, the wealth and the population, the +industries and the manufactures of a great city without considering +whence these have come and whither they are leading; equally +unsatisfactory also, I fear, to those to whom civic dignities and +precedence, or the alternations of winning political colours, appear of +prime importance. I can only hope that some of these may, on +consideration, admit that the points of view I have endeavoured to +outline above may be worth some thought and study as elementary +preliminaries to their own more special and developed interests; and if +the society permit. I hope to approach these more closely in a later +paper.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span> +The abstract economist or legalist, the moral or political +philosopher may also resent the proposed mode of treatment as an +attempt +to materialise sociology by reducing it to concrete terms alone. But I +would reply that observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is +just the very means of preparing for it. It is the observant +naturalist, +the travelled zoologist and botanist, who later becomes the productive +writer on evolution. It is the historian who may best venture on into +the philosophy of history;—to think the reverse is to remain in the +pre-scientific order altogether: hence the construction of systems of +abstract and deductive economics, politics or morals, has really been +the last surviving effort of scholasticism. Viewed as Science, Civics +is +that branch of Sociology which deals with Cities—their origin and +distribution; their development and structure; their functioning, +internal and external, material and psychological; their evolution, +individual and associated. Viewed again from the practical side, that +of +applied science, Civics must develop through experimental endeavour +into +the more and more effective Art of enhancing the life of the city and +of +advancing its evolution. With the first of these lines of study, the +concretely scientific, our philosophical outlook will not fail to +widen; +with the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to +deepen also.</p> +<p>As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have +naturally +approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic +survey, +its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these +to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, +even +of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice +co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more +concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger +than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the +needed practical division of labour in the city's service. When the +first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly +diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who +at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated: the +evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link +between them.</p> +<br /> +<h3>C—THE CITIZEN IN PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT</h3> +<p>Leaving now the external survey of the city by help of its material +framework, its characteristic buildings and predominant styles, for the +deeper psychological survey of the citizens themselves, we may +conveniently begin with these also in their process of development—in +fact, our method compels us to this course. We enter then a school; and +if we bring fresh eyes we may soon be agreed that the extraordinary +babel of studies its time-table and curriculum reveal, is intelligible +from no single one of the various <span class="pagenum">p. 112</span> geographic or historic +points of view we have traversed from mountain to sea, or from past to +present. But this unprecedented conflict of studies becomes at once +intelligible when viewed apart from any and every definite theory of +education yet promulgated by educationists, and even acquires a fresh +theory of its own—that of the attempted recapitulation of the survivals +of each and all preceding periods in their practical or speculative +aspects, particularly the later legends and literatures, their rituals +and codes. Thus, the inordinate specialisation upon arithmetic, the +exaggeration of all three R's, is plainly the survival of the demand +for +cheap yet efficient clerks, characteristic of the recent and +contemporary financial period.</p> +<p>The ritual of examinations with its correlation of memorising and +muscular drill is similarly a development of the imperial order, +historically borrowed from the Napoleonic one; the chaotic "general +knowledge" is similarly a survival of the encyclopædic period; +that is, +of the French Revolution and the Liberal Movement generally; the Latin +grammar and verses are of course the survivals of the Renaissance, as +the precise fidelity to absurd spelling is the imitation of its proof +readers; the essay is the abridged form of the mediaeval disputation; +and only such genuine sympathy with Virgil or Tacitus, with Homer or +Plato as one in a thousand acquires, is truly Roman or Greek at all. +The religious instruction, however, re-interpreted by the mediaeval +Church or the Reformation, has still its strength in some of the best +elements of patriarchal literature; while the fairy tale, by which all +this superincumbent weight of learning is sometimes alleviated, is the +child's inheritance from the matriarchal order. Finally, the apple and +the ball, at the bottom of this whole burden of books, complete the +recapitulation; as the one, the raw fruit; the other, the ready +missile, +of primeval man. Our child then is heir of all the ages more fully than +he or his teachers commonly realise. The struggle for mastery of the +schools is thus no temporary feud, but an unending battle; one destined +to increase rather than diminish; for in this there is the perpetual +clash of all the forces of good heredity and evil atavism, of all the +new variations also, healthy or diseases.</p> +<span class="pagenum">p. 113</span><br /> +<h3> D—THE APPLIED SOCIOLOGY OF THE PRESENT</h3> +<p>The city and its children thus historically present a thoroughly +parallel accumulation of survivals or recapitulations of the past in +the +present. Few types nowadays are pure, that is, keep strictly to their +period; we are all more or less mixed and modernised. Still, whether by +temporal or spiritual compulsion, whether for the sake of bread or +honour, each mainly and practically stands by his order, and acts with +the social formation he belongs to. Thus now the question of the +practical civics, that is, of the applied sociology, of each +individual, +each body or interests may be broadly defined; it is to emphasise his +particular historic type, his social formation and influence in the +civic whole, if not indeed to dominate this as far as may be. We are +all +for progress, but we each define it in his own way. Hence one man of +industrial energy builds more factories or slums, another as naturally +more breweries to supply them; and in municipal or national council his +line of action, conscious or unconscious, remains congruent with these. +Representative government fails to yield all that its inventors hoped +of +it, simply because it is so tolerably representative of its majorities; +and there is thus great truth in the common consolation that our +municipal governments, like larger ones, are seldom much worse than we +deserve. Each social formation, through each of its material +activities, +exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and +ideals wins also its place and power. At one time the legal and +punitive point of view, directing itself mainly to individual cases, or +the philanthropic, palliating sufferings, dispute the foremost places; +and now in their turn hygienic or educational endeavours arise, towards +treating causes instead of waiting for consequences. Such endeavours +are +still undeniably too vague in thought, too crude in practice, and the +enthusiast of hygiene or education or temperance may have much to +answer +for. But so, also, has he who stands outside of the actual civic field, +whether as philistine or aesthete, utopist or cynic, party politician +or +"mug-wump." Between all these extremes it is for the united forces of +civic survey and civic service to find the middle course. <span class="pagenum">p. 114</span> We +observe then in the actual city, as among its future citizens, that our +action is generally the attempt to mould both alike to some past or +passing social formation, and, therefore, usually towards the type to +which our interest and our survey incline, be this in our own city or +more probably in some earlier one. Even in the actual passing detail of +party politics we are often reminded how directly continuous are the +rivals with puritan London, with royalist Oxford; but still more is +this +the case throughout the history of thought and action, and the intenser +the more plainly; for it is in his highest moments of conviction and +decision that the Puritan feels most in sympathy with the law or the +prophets of Jerusalem, the scholar with Athens; or that the man of +action—be he the first French republican or the latest +imperialist—most frankly draws his inspiration from the corresponding +developments of Paris. It is a commonplace of psychology that our +thought is and must be anthropomorphic; a commonplace of history that +it +has been Hebraomorphic, Hellenomorphic, Latinomorphic, and so on by +turns.</p> +<p>This view has often been well worked out by the historian of +inventions +and discoveries, of customs or laws, of policies or religions, as by +the +historian of language or the fine arts. What we still commonly need, +however, is to carry this view clearly into our own city and its +institutions, its streets and schools and homes, until either in the +private spending or public voting of the smallest sum we know exactly +whether we are so far determining expenditure and influence towards +enlarging, say, the influence and example of renascent Florence in one +generation or of decadent Versailles in another. There is no danger of +awaking this consciousness too fully; for since we have ceased +consciously to cite and utilise the high examples of history we have +been the more faithfully, because sub-consciously and automatically, +continuing and extending later and lower developments.</p> +<br /> +<h3>E—CITIES, PRESENT AND FUTURE</h3> +<p>Hence, after a Liberal and an Imperial generation, each happy in +their +respective visions of wealth and expanding greatness <span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>, the +current renewal of civic interests naturally takes the form of an +awakening survey of our actual environment. First, a literal mapping of +its regional elements, and then an historic interpretation of +these—not, alas, merely or mainly in terms of the cities of sacred or +classic tradition, nor of the Mediaeval or Renaissance cities which +followed these, but as stupendous extensions of the mediaeval Ghetto, +of +the Wapping Stairs, of the Lancashire factories and of the Black +Country, relieved by the coarse jollities of Restoration London, and +adorned for the most part, with debased survivals from the Italian and +the French Renaissance. There is thus no more question in our civic +discussions of "bringing in" or "leaving out" geography or history; we +have been too long unconscious of them, as was M. Jourdain of his +speaking in prose.</p> +<p>But what of the opening Future? May its coming social developments +not +be discerned by the careful observer in germs and buds already formed +or +forming, or deduced by the thinker from sociological principles? I +believe in large measure both; yet cannot within these limits attempt +to +justify either. Enough for the present, if it be admitted that the +practical man in his thought and action in the present is mainly the as +yet too unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still +working within the grasp of natural conditions.</p> +<p>To realise the geographic and historic factors of our city's life is +thus the first step to comprehension of the present, one indispensable +to any attempt at the scientific forecast of the future, which must +avoid as far as it can the dangers of mere utopianism.</p> +<br /> +<h3>F—LITERATURE OF CIVICS</h3> +<p>No discussion of the preliminaries and fundamentals of Civics can +omit +some consideration of the vast and ever growing literature of cities. +But how are we to utilise this? How continue it? How co-ordinate it +with +the needed independent and first-hand survey of city by city? And how +apply this whole knowledge of past and present towards civic action?</p> +<p>The answer must plainly be a concrete one. Every city <span class="pagenum">p. 116</span> +however small, has already a copious literature of its topography and +history in the past; one, in fact, so ample that its mere bibliography +may readily fill a goodly volume,<a name="FNanchor_1"></a><a + href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> to which the specialist will +long +be adding fresh entries. This mass of literature may next be viewed as +the material for a comprehensive monograph, well enriched with maps and +illustrations, such as many cities can boast; and this again may be +condensed into a guide-book. Guide-books have long been excellent in +their descriptive and historical detail, and are becoming increasingly +interpretative also, especially since Mr. Grant Allen transferred his +evolutionary insight and his expository clearness from natural to civic +history.</p> +<p>After this general and preliminary survey of geographic environment +and +historic development, there nowadays begins to appear the material of a +complementary and contemporary volume, the Social Survey proper. +Towards +this, statistical materials are partly to be found amid parliamentary +and municipal reports and returns, economic journals and the like, but +a +fresh and first-hand survey in detail is obviously necessary. In this +class of literature, Mr. Booth's monumental Survey of London, followed +by others, such as Mr. Rowntree's of York, have already been so widely +stimulating and suggestive that it may safely be predicted that before +many years the Social Survey of any given city will be as easily and +naturally obtainable as is at present its guide-book; and the +rationalised census of the present condition of its people, their +occupation and real wages, their family budget and culture-level, +should +be as readily ascertainable from the one, as their antecedents +understood or their monuments visited by help of the other.</p> +<p>But these two volumes—"The City: Past and Present,"—are not enough. +Is +not a third volume imaginable and possible, that of the opening Civic +Future? Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of +things +as they have come about, and of people as they are—of their +occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals—may we +not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly +suggest, something of <span class="pagenum">p. 117</span> their actual or potential development? +And may not, must not, such discernment, such planning, while +primarily, +of course, for the immediate future, also take account of the remoter +and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and +correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve? Such a +volume would thus differ widely from the traditional and contemporary +"literature of Utopias" in being regional instead of non-regional, +indeed ir-regional and so realisable, instead of being unrealisable and +unattainable altogether. The theme of such a volume would thus be to +indicate the practicable alternatives, and to select and to define from +these the lines of development of the legitimate <i>Eu-topia</i> +possible in +the given city, and characteristic of it; obviously, therefore, a very +different thing from a vague <i>Ou-topia</i>, concretely realisable +nowhere. +Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal +city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris, +have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is +one thing, a plan for our city improvement is another.</p> +<p>Some concrete, if still fragmentary, materials towards such a volume +are, of course, to be found in all municipal offices, though scattered +between the offices of the city engineer and health officer, the +architect and park superintendent; while the private architect and +landscape gardener, the artist, sometimes even the municipal voters and +their representatives, may all have ideas of their own. But though our +cities are still as a whole planless, their growth as yet little better +than a mere casual accretion and agglomeration, if not a spreading +blight, American and German cities are now increasingly affording +examples of comprehensive design of extension and of internal +improvement. As a specific example of such an attempt towards the +improvement of a British city, one not indeed comprehending all aspects +of its life, but detailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and +expressing +that continuity of past and present into future which has been above +argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline +Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent +study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for +consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a +moderate and readily intelligible <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_118'></a>p. 118</span> scale a very marked +combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing +activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook.</p> +<p>That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has +been +above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology +is +thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet +it is one not lacking in generality of application. For what we have +reached is really the conception of an <i>Encyclopædia Civica</i>, +to which +each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and +its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet +more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the +awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the +production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire—life ever +producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature +reacting upon the ennoblement of life.</p> +<p>Apart altogether from what may be the quality and defects of +particular +volumes, such as those cited as examples of each part of such a +proposed +civic trilogy, one as yet nowhere complete, the very conception of such +a possible threefold series may be of some service. For this would +present a continuous whole, at once sociological and civic—the views +and the resources of the scholar and the educationist with their +treasures of historic culture, of the man of action with his mastery of +immediate affairs, of the thinker with his vision of the opening +future, +now all co-ordinated by help of the design of the artist, and thence to +be gradually realised in the growing heritage of the city, the +enlarging +life of the citizen.</p> +<p>NOTE—As an example of the concrete application to a particular city, +of +the sociological methods and principles indicated in the above paper, +Prof. Geddes exhibited an illustrated volume embodying the results of +his studies and designs towards the improvement of Dunfermline, under +the Trust recently established by Mr. Carnegie. This has since been +published:</p> +<p>P. GEDDES. City Development. Park Gardens and Culture Institutes; a +Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. With 138 illustrations. +Edinburgh, etc.. 1904.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 119</span><br /> +<h3> DISCUSSION</h3> +<br /> +<p>The Chairman (MR. CHARLES BOOTH) in opening the discussion said:</p> +<p>The paper we have just heard read is one of the most complete and +charming papers on a great and interesting subject I have ever heard. I +think you will all agree in this, and I hope the discussion which +follows will emphasise and, if that is possible, add to the wealth of +ideas that this paper contains.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR EBENEZER HOWARD (Founder of the +Garden City Association) said:</p> +<p>I have read and re-read—in the proof forwarded to me—Professor +Geddes' +wonderfully luminous and picturesque paper with much interest. He has +given us a graphic description of the geographic process which leads to +the development of the city. We see vividly the gradual stages by which +the city grows and swells, with the descent of the population from the +hillsides into the valleys, even as the river which flows through the +city is fed continually by the streams which flow down to it. But is +there not this essential difference between the gathering waters of +heaven, as they pour into the great city, and the gathering tide of +population, which follows the path of the waters? The waters flow +through the city on, on toward the mighty ocean, and are then gradually +gathered upward into the soft embraces of the clouds and wafted back +again to the hills, whence they flow down once more to the valleys. But +the living stream of men, women, and children flows from the +country-side and leaves it more and more bare of active, vigorous, +healthy life: it does not, like the waters, "return again to cover the +earth," but moves ever on to the great city, and from thence, at least +for the great majority, there is no chance of more than, at best, a +very +short stay in the country. No: the tide flows resistlessly <span class="pagenum">p. 120</span> +onward to make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our +overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge +more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie +near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and +the task of the social reformer more and yet more difficult.</p> +<p>But surely there must be a way, could we but discover it, of +imitating +the skill and bountifulness of Nature, by creating channels through +which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so +that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into +the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the +twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown +city.</p> +<p>This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the +historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation +lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks. +"Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not +preparing also to understand the future as the development of the +present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that +while the age in which we live is the age of the great, +closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those +who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that +the +twentieth century will be known as the period of the great exodus, the +return to the land, the period when by a great and conscious effort a +new fabric of civilisation shall be reared by those who knew how to +apply the knowledge gained by "Social Survey to Social Service." What +are the signs? What words can we place under the head of "Incipient" in +Prof. Geddes' diagram? I would suggest, for one of Prof. Geddes' +interrogation marks might be substituted "Decentralisation of +Industry"—as a great, but yet incipient movement, represented by Port +Sunlight, Bournville, Garden City. For there are now many agencies at +work making for industrial decentralisation. Industries are being +driven +out of the great towns by the excessive rents and rates which have to +be +paid there—by the difficulty of obtaining adequate space for the modern +factory, a one-storey building; and for the homes of our workers, which +must be vastly different to what they now are if England is to maintain +her place among the nations. And while factories are being driven from +the city, they are also being attracted to the country by its +newly-discovered potentialities. Thus Messrs. Lever Brothers, crowded +out of Warrington, established an entirely new town on a new site at +Port Sunlight; and, because the site was new and raw, it was therefore +possible for Mr. Lever to plan his little town with a single eye to the +best and most desirable conditions, alike from an industrial and a +health and housing point of view. And the same is true of Bournville. +Bournville is one of the most beautiful villages in the world, largely +again because of the potentialities of a new site acquired for the +definite purpose of building thereon a village in which overcrowding +shall be deliberately and permanently prevented, <span class="pagenum">p. 121</span> and in +which work inside the factory may be varied by work in the garden. Now +that these successful experiments have been carried out in this +country, +is it not time that the idea of establishing new industries on new +sites, and of surrounding those industries with healthy homes, should +be +carried forward on a larger scale, with wider and more concerted +aims—carried forward, too, in such a manner as to make it possible for +the small manufacturer to take part in a movement which has proved to +be +so beneficial alike to employer and employed? It is out of this thought +that the Garden City idea has grown, an idea now in course of being +fulfilled. Three thousand eight hundred acres of land, or nearly ten +times the area of Bournville or Port Sunlight, have been acquired in +Hertfordshire, two miles west of the town of Hitchin, and on the branch +line of railway between that town and Cambridge. State aid has not been +sought; that would indeed be weary work. But a company has been formed, +through the untiring efforts of the Garden City Association; plans for +the town have been carefully prepared, plans which, of course, have +regard to the contours of the land (which were first taken, showing +every change of level of five feet), to the preservation of its natural +beauties—its trees and the picturesque villages of Norton and Willian; +to the necessity for railway sidings and railway station, now, thanks +to +the Great Northern Railway, already provided; to the making of roads of +easy gradient and of suitable width, affording access to different +parts +of the estate, actual work on which is progressing; the careful +guarding +from contamination of our water supply, already proved to be abundant; +the provision of a reservoir of suitable elevation, now in course of +construction; a system of drainage, about to be started with; the +provision of parks and playgrounds within the town, as well as a wide +belt of agricultural land around it; sites for homes for 30,000 +persons, +with good sized gardens. About six cottages have already been built, +not +by the Company but by private enterprise, while many others are just +about to be started upon; the setting apart of sites for schools, +churches, and other public buildings, while plans are in preparation +for +lighting the town, as well as for providing it with motive power.</p> +<p>The programme which I have sketched out is certainly not too bold or +comprehensive for the British race. If a hundredth part of the +organising skill which the Japanese and the Russians are showing in the +great war now in progress were shown by ourselves as citizens in our +great civil war against disease and dirt, poverty and overcrowding, we +could not only build many new cities on the best models, but could also +bring our old towns into line with the new and better order. Prof. +Geddes wishes well, I know, to the Garden City Association, a +propagandist body, and to its first child, the Garden City Company; and +I am sure you will all unite with me in the hope that the best and most +lasting success may crown the generous gift of Mr. Carnegie of +£500,000 +to the City of Dunfermline, and reward the efforts of the Trustees and +of Prof. Geddes to make, by the application of modern <span class="pagenum">p. 122</span> +skill, +science and art, the ancient city of Dunfermline a centre of sweetness +and light, stimulating us all to higher and yet higher efforts to +secure +civic, national and imperial well-being.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. C.H. GRINLING said:</p> +<p>Like most of the audience, doubtless, he came not to speak but to +draw +ever fresh inspiration from Prof. Geddes. But there was one aspect of +the subject he would like to bring out and emphasise. He referred to +the +sociological institute, which, under the name of the Outlook Tower, had +grown up in connection with the School of Sociology which Prof. Geddes +had founded and developed in Edinburgh. That institute was at once an +organisation for teaching and for research, for social education, and +for civic action. It was, in fact, a concrete and working application +of +the principle indicated in the paper as the very foundation of +Civics—"social survey for social service." And, seeing that the Outlook +Tower was an institution designed in every respect for application to +any given locality, he urged the Sociological Society to advocate its +general extension, so that no region should be without its own +sociological institute or Outlook Tower.</p> +<p>If one individual could accomplish so much, what could not be +accomplished by the sociologists of our day who would concentrate +themselves, each on his own locality, not necessarily to do the work, +but to give the inspiration which would call out the work of collecting +just that material which Prof. Geddes suggested all through his paper +was one of the great needs of our time? And so one hoped that papers of +this kind would not merely lead to discussion, but to workers +accumulating results of this kind, giving the inspiration to others, +and +thus laying up treasures for the sociologists of the future for their +interpretation. Thus, the Sociological Society should be not only the +one scientific society in constant touch with all the leading brains +over the country, but it should be an inspiration, as Prof. Geddes has +himself been, to groups of workers everywhere for just the kind of work +which the Sociological Society has been founded to develop.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. J.M. ROBERTSON said:</p> +<p>I would first add my tribute to this extremely interesting and +stimulating paper. It recalled confabulations I had with Prof. Geddes, +many years ago, when he was first formulating in Edinburgh those ideas +which have since become so widely known. I would like, however, to +suggest a few criticisms. The paper is, broadly speaking, an +application +of the view of a biologist to Sociology. It is not so much an +application of Darwin's view as that of Von Baer. Prof. Geddes has +characterised his paper as one of elementary preliminaries, but he has +really contributed a paper that <span class="pagenum">p. 123</span> would form part of a +preliminary study in a series of studies in Sociology. The paper does +not quite bear out its title: "Civics: as Applied Sociology." The +application has not begun. The somewhat disparaging remarks on +encyclopædias of general knowledge, further, might well be +applied to +the scheme of an encyclopædia of the natural history of every +city and +every village as an original centre. This atomism will not help +Sociology. Had he to master all that, the sociologist's life would be a +burden not to be borne, and we would never get to applied sociology at +all. There is a danger, too, in following this line, of fastening +attention on one stage of evolution and leaving it there. The true +principle is that evolution is eternal and continuous; and I think harm +may be done, possibly, when you take, say, the phenomenon of the +communication of general knowledge in schools and call it a derivation +from the French <i>Encyclopedie</i>. Why leave it there? Where did +that come +from? If you are going to trace the simple evolution of civic forms, if +you are to trace how they have come about, it will not do to stick at a +given point. This is a survival of that. That is a survival of +something +else. The French <i>Encyclopedie</i> will have to be traced back to +the +encyclopædia of the mediaeval period; and even to the still +earlier +period of Isidore of Seville. Then again, there is a danger, I think, +analogous to the danger met with in early botany—the danger of +confusing a resemblance with a relationship. It is extremely +interesting +to speculate that the Place de l'Etoile is an evolution from the plan +of +the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but +it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection. +The thing is not proved.</p> +<p>Of course, the vital question is not this tracing of evolution. The +question is: Is "Civics" to be only the study of forms? If so, +Sociology +is a dead science, and will effect little practical good until it is +vivified by such suggestions as Mr. Crane has put in his paper. Mr. +Walter Crane brought in a vital question when he said: "How are you +going to modify the values of your civic life unless you grapple with +political problems?" I am not forgetting that Prof. Geddes promises to +deal in another paper with the civics of the future; but I insist that +it will have to grapple with political questions. As he says, a city is +not a place, but "a drama in time." The question for the sociological +student of history is: How has this inequality of wealth and of service +arisen, and how is it to be prevented in the future? That is the +problem +we have to study if we wish to make sociology a vital interest. A +definition of progress is really the first step in sociology. Prof. +Geddes' next paper should give us a definition of progress, and it is +better that we begin to fight over a definition of progress, in order +to +get a dynamic agreement, than that we should multiply the +archaeological +study of many towns. I admit that it is very interesting. In travelling +in South Africa, I often tried to gather how communities began; what, +for example, was the nucleus of this or that village. It was surprising +how very few had an idea of any nucleus at all. I deprecate the idea, +however, that <span class="pagenum">p. 124</span> we are all to amass an enormous accumulation +of such researches. Mr. Booth's single compilation for London is a +study +for years; but Mr. Booth's admirable investigation of the difficulties +of life among the poor of London does not of itself give any new +impulse +to the solution of the problem of London. It merely gives exact +knowledge in place of general knowledge. The problem of sociology arose +on the general knowledge. I fear lest the work of sociology should run +to an extension of this admirable study instead of to the stimulation +of +action taken on that particular knowledge, or on more general +knowledge. +We all knew there was plenty of poverty, and how it was caused. We all +had Ideals as to how it was to be got rid of in the future; but the +question is: Is the collection of detail or the prescription of social +method the kind of activity that the Sociological Society is to take up?</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">SIR THOMAS BARCLAY said:</p> +<p>I am not sure that I agree with Mr. Robertson that it is desirable +to +define either "progress" or "civilisation." On the whole, their chances +lie rather in the great variety of ideas of what constitutes them than +in any hard-and-fast notion of their meaning. They are generalisations +of what is, rather than an object towards which effort should tend. But +neither do I agree with Prof. Geddes' restriction of "civics" to the +mere outward part of municipal effort. In America the word "civics" is +applied to the rights and duties of citizens, and I should like to see +Prof. Geddes include in Civics the connection between citizen life and +the outward improvement of cities. I am sure, however, Professor +Geddes, +as a practical man, will deal rather with realities than theoretical +views on the subject for which he has done so much himself. Edinburgh +owes more than many are willing to admit to Prof. Geddes. I think +Ramsay +Lodge one of the greatest embellishments of the Castle Hill in +Edinburgh. I hope he will now be successful in doing something still +more admirable for my native town of Dunfermline. My friend Mr. +Carnegie, whose native town it also is, I believe intends to show by an +object lesson what can be done for all cities. Prof. Geddes is helping +him in this work with his suggestions. I hope they will be carried out. +In America there are several very beautiful cities. No one can ever +forget Washington, which is truly a garden city. No money is spared in +America to beautify and healthify (excuse the barbarism) the +habitations +of the thousands. A beautiful city is an investment for health, +intellect, imagination. Genius all the world over is associated, +wherever it has been connected with cities, with beautiful cities. To +grow up among things of beauty ennobles the population. But I should +like to see Prof. Geddes extend his projects for Dunfermline to the +population itself. Most of you know what Mr. Henderson did to utilise +the Edinburgh<span class="pagenum">p. 125</span> police in the care of children. The future of +the country depends upon them. The subject is too serious to continue +to +be left to the haphazard mercies of indifferent parents. Every child +born is an agent for good or for evil among the community, and the +community cannot afford to neglect how it is brought up, the +circumstances in which it has its being, the environment from which it +derives its character and tendencies. Necessity may be the mother of +invention, but need of food and insufficient clothing develop in the +child an inventiveness that is not for the good of the community. It +seems a matter of too great an importance to be left even to private +initiative, as was done under Mr. Henderson's regime in Edinburgh; but +everywhere else, or nearly so, very little is done by even private +initiative for the protection of the children against their vicious +environment. In short, I do not think that civics, in the sense in +which +my friend Prof. Geddes treats it, is a complete subject at all. Civics, +to my mind, includes everything that relates to the citizen. Everywhere +something is being done in one direction or another to make them +capable, prosperous, and happy. In America happiness is taught in the +schools. Every schoolmaster's and schoolmistress's first duty is to set +an example of a happy frame of mind; smiling and laughing are +encouraged, and it is not thought that the glum face is at all +necessary +for the serious business of life. In fact, the glum face is a +disqualification; is associated with failure, and bad luck and +ill-nature. In Germany the schoolmaster is in the first place a trainer +of the body. One of his chief duties is to watch and prevent the +deterioration of the eyesight, to promote the development of the lungs, +to prevent spinal deviation. The second part of his business is to +watch +over the character of the child, and only the third part is to ram +knowledge into the poor little mind. And wherever you go over the world +you will find something in the course of being done in civics, as I +understand the subject. I thank Prof. Geddes for what he is doing for +Dunfermline, and hope he will understand "progress" without requiring +to +define it.</p> +<br /> +<div style="text-align: center;">DR. J. LIONEL TAYLER<br /> +(Author of "<i>Aspects of Social Evolution</i>") said:</div> +<p>While agreeing with Prof. Geddes in his belief in the importance of +institutional and geographical studies as a basis for the investigation +of the development of cities, it yet seems to me that these studies +cannot prove of supreme value to society unless they are accompanied by +a detailed examination of the <i>natural</i> characteristics of all +individuals who have been born into and existed in, or merely dwelt in, +these surroundings. It is not enough to trace out, however accurately, +the various stages of a town's growth from its commencement to the +present time, because <i>the cause</i> of <span class="pagenum">p. 126</span> the evolution of +any +city aggregate lies deeper, is in large part animate, and not +inanimate, +in character. The value of the surroundings depends at least as much +upon the capacity of the individual citizen, singly and collectively, +to +utilise what he or she is brought in contact with as upon the +peculiarities of these surroundings themselves. Place, tradition, +social +organisation, individual development, education, are factors in town +evolution that cannot safely be overlooked, and they all vary from age +to age and in place and place.</p> +<p>If it were possible to completely exchange the inhabitants of a +large +town in England with those of an equally large town in France two +groups +of changes would become more or less rapidly observable: (1) the French +and English citizens would adapt themselves, as far as they desired and +were able, to their altered conditions; (2) the characteristics of both +towns would gradually change, in spite of geographical position, in +response to the altered human needs. Similarly, a town composed of +individuals who are naturally uncultured and unprogressive will tend to +preserve its uncultured and unprogressive characters more than another +that has alert citizens to carry on its activities. Every profession +and +every trade tends to foster its own social atmosphere; and towns will +vary with their industrial life, and individuals favourably disposed to +this atmosphere will come to the town, and those unfavourably inclined +to it will leave. <i>These changing citizens, as they act upon and +react +to their surroundings and vary in their powers age by age, are the real +evolvers of the conditions in which they dwell</i>; hence the citizen +must +not be omitted from our study if we are to understand city growth.</p> +<p>In other words, I think that every investigation of civic, and for +that +matter country life should be studied from two aspects: (1) to note the +peculiarities, growth and development of the material, non-living and +non-thinking elements in the problem—the buildings, their geographical +position, their age, their fitness for past and present life, and the +distinctive local features that are evolving or retrogressing with the +multiplication of some trades and industries and the decline of others +in each area that is studied; (2) the change in the quality of the +citizens themselves through racial, educational, and other factors, +noting how far ideals are altering, not only in the mass of individuals +taken as a whole, but also by examining the changing outlook in every +trade and profession. With these two parallel lines of investigation to +study, we could then determine how far environment—social and +climatic—how far racial and individual characteristics have been +powerful in the moulding of the fabric around us.</p> +<p>With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the +vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social +life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, +knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds +us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, +knowing +the <span class="pagenum">p. 127</span> +intensity of the different national desires for progress +<i>and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires</i>, we could +realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in +our +civic life.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">PROFESSOR EARL BARNES (in moving a vote +of thanks) said:</p> +<p>For years I have been accumulating a debt of obligation to Prof. +Geddes +for ideas, suggestions, and large synthesis of life, and it gives me +special pleasure to voice the feeling of this meeting concerning the +paper read to us this afternoon. To me, as an American, it is +especially +interesting to hear this presentation of life as an organic whole. Life +is but a period of education, and if there is nothing behind this +present moment of life it is all extremely insignificant. To an +American, who has lived at No. 1067 in 63rd Street, Philadelphia, and +at No. 1718 in G Street, in Washington, it is profoundly interesting to +think of the possibility of a man's so living that his whole existence +shall be significant, so that the realities of his world, geographical, +geological, and material, and all that long development of humanity +through the historic past—that all these things will be really and +truly significant to him. Prof. Geddes has himself shown us that is +possible. Any man who has gone to Edinburgh and seen the restoration of +the old life that has been carried out there under his hand knows it +can +be done. I suppose we all came here to hear Professor Geddes speak on +practical affairs because his name is now connected with the plans for +making a city that shall be really expressive of all its potentialities +to all of its people. I am personally profoundly grateful to him for +his +paper; and I move you that he be given a very hearty vote of thanks.</p> +<p>The Chairman. (MR. CHARLES BOOTH), in closing the discussion, said: +I +myself entirely agree with what Mr Robertson has said as to the extreme +difficulty of bringing investigations of the kind referred to, to +practical conclusions—practical points. Practical work at present needs +the most attention. I perhaps am too old to do it, but I feel the +attraction of that kind of work, and that was one reason I was sorry Mr +Loch had to leave before we could hear what he might have to say. The +description I have given of London does seem to be a foggy labyrinth I +agree, but nevertheless I cannot but think that we do require a +complete +conception if we are to do the definite work of putting different +people +in their proper places in an organic whole, such as a city is. I do not +think we can do without it, and I regard the paper of this evening as +an +important contribution <span class="pagenum">p. 128</span> to that complete conception which I +feel we need. I should like each worker and thinker to have and to know +his place in the scheme of civic improvement; and I think it perfectly +possible for every man to know what it is that he is trying to do, what +contribution it is that he ought to give to that joint life which is +called here civics, which is the life of a city and the life in the +city. One man cannot possibly concentrate it all in himself. Within a +society such as the Sociological Society a general scheme is possible +in +which each individual and each society shall play its acknowledged and +recognised part. It does not follow that the work done in one city can +apply as an example to another. Individuality has too strong a hold; +but each town may work out something for itself. I have been very much +interested in the work which Mr. Rowntree has done in York, on which he +was kind enough to consult me. He entered upon it on quite other +grounds +from mine, but so far as the ground was common between him and me we +tried to have a common basis. Those of you who have not read Mr. +Horsfall's volumes on Manchester would do well to do so. Prof. Geddes +gave us a vivid picture of a larger regional unit which culminates +geographically in the city as industrial climax. In his particular +instance he referred, I take, to Dundee. In Dundee there is at this +moment an inquiry being started, and I am in communication with those +who are doing it, and I hope it will add something to the completeness +of the picture we have of that city. In Dundee they have excessive +difficulties in respect to crowding and female labour. What I suggested +was, that they should make a special study of such circumstances as are +special to Dundee. Labour there is very largely sack-making and jute +manufacture, and there is a great deal of girl labour; and that is one +of the special subjects that will be considered in that inquiry.</p> +<p>Then, with regard to the preservation of such of the natural +beauties +that do remain even quite near to busy town centres, surely it is of +the +greatest importance that they should be watched and protected and +preserved. Prof. Geddes has contributed a portion of his practical work +to that practical question at Dunfermline. His charming volume on +Dunfermline ("A Study in City Development") shows what beautiful +features there are near Dunfermline, and how much may be done to +preserve and improve them in ways that are most interesting to study. +His use of photography in this matter is extraordinarily successful. +Prof. Geddes has photographed a scene as it now is, with its background +and distance and its squalid foreground, already ruined by the debris +of +the city—old tin pots and every <span class="pagenum">p. 129</span> kind of rubbish—thrown +down by the side of the stream, which is naturally beautiful. By +manipulating the photographic plates he wipes out that which he does +not +want and introduces other features, including a little waterfall; and +you have, instead of a miserable suburb, a dignified park. Well now, +that is practical work. It has in it that element which he has +described +by a question-mark in his diagram, the element of forecast. You have +the +same idea in Manchester, in Mr. Horsfall's work. They have laid out +their map of Manchester and shown in what way it may develop, so as not +to spoil the beauty that remains on two sides of Manchester. There is +really exquisitely beautiful natural scenery close to Manchester, which +may be entirely spoiled or preserved, according as a forecast is made +and forethought taken. This is not a question on which there is reason +to think that people will disagree. The difficulties are always +supposed +to be financial. It is a sad thing that we should be so hampered by our +methods of finance that we throw away opportunities to retain these +actual beauties which undoubtedly add to the actual money value of a +district. I cannot suppose that the way in which cities are laid out +with narrow streets really results in an increase of value. The +surroundings of our cities are undeveloped estates, which we have only +to agree amongst ourselves how to lay out, and everybody would benefit +by such joint action. There is an excellent illustration in regard to +that in Mr. Horsfall's work in connection with Germany. It must be said +that from Germany there is a great deal to learn in civic matters. In +one of its towns the properties lie in extraordinarily long strips. It +is the final result of properties having been measured by the length of +the plough's run. When that method is applied to town sites, it is not +convenient for streets; and there are some quarters in this German town +ruined in this way, and the people have agreed together to improve +matters. Every owner is to be given credit for his share in the total +value of the improvement that is found to accrue from the +re-arrangement +of these undesirable divisions, and any difference of opinion as to the +just share and proportion is to be referred to an impartial arbitrator. +All the owners will gain, though some a little more than others. That +is +an example that we may do well to try and follow, and in some way or +other improve the money value, and social value, and hygienic value of +towns, and if necessary compel the carrying out of improvements when +some few might be disposed to hold out against them.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 130</span><br /> +<h3> WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS</h3> +<p style="text-align: center;">From PROF. BALDWIN BROWN (Professor of +Fine Art in the University of +Edinburgh)</p> +I am glad of this opportunity of saying how cordially I agree with the +method adopted by my friend Professor Geddes in dealing with the life +of +cities. He treats the modern community and its material shell as things +of organic growth, with a past and a future as well as a present, +whereas we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour +of +some exigency of the moment. A historic British town has recently +furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection. The town +possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at +a +time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great +Britain. Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall +and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing a site +for a new elementary school. No doubt, in that school, books "approved +by the Department" will instruct scholars in the past history of the +burgh, but the living witness of that history must first of all be +carefully obliterated. All the rest of this ancient and historic +enceinte was condemned a few weeks ago to complete destruction, merely +on the plea that the site would be convenient for workmen's dwellings. +The monument has now been saved, but it has taken the whole country to +do it! +<p>Here were chosen officials, governors of no mean city, absolutely +oblivious of these important interests committed to their care, and all +for want of having drilled into them these broader views which +Professor +Geddes puts forward so well.</p> +<p>He has himself done practical work in Edinburgh on the lines he lays +down, and I have lately had occasion to note, and call attention to the +advantage to the city of much wise conservatism in regard to our older +buildings which he and his associates have shown.</p> +<p>In Edinburgh we have the advantage that our older monuments, <span class="pagenum">p. 131</span> in +which so much of the past life of the city is enshrined, are +firm and solid; and it takes some trouble to knock them down. Hence for +some time to come we shall preserve here object-lessons in civic +development that will be of interest to the country at large.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">From MR. WALTER CRANE (President of Arts +and Crafts Exhibition Society)</p> +<p>Professor Geddes' very interesting "Study in City Development" is +highly +suggestive, and shows how great a difference thoughtful and tasteful +treatment might make in dealing with such problems. It is sad to think +of the opportunities wasted, and of the more ignorant and often too +hasty clearances for traffic which have often been apparently the sole +motives in city improvement. The conservation of historic buildings, +whenever possible, the planting of trees along our streets, the laying +out of gardens, the insistence upon a proportional amount of air and +open space to new buildings would go a long way towards making our +bricks-and-mortar joyless wildernesses into something human and +habitable.</p> +<p>Whether, under favourable circumstances and the rare public spirit +of +private owners, much can be done, or to any wide extent, so long as +absolute individual ownership in land and ground values is allowed, +seems to me very doubtful. We cannot hope to see great social +improvements without great economic changes, but every effort in the +direction of improving the beauty of our cities is welcome to all who +have the well-being of the community at heart; and such work as Prof. +Geddes is doing should arouse the keenest interest and the earnest +attention of all who realise its immense social importance.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">From MR. J.H. HARLEY, M.A.</p> +<p>If sociology is ever to vindicate itself as an art, it must be able +to +analyse and explain the present, and to some extent at least to cast +the +horoscope of the future. It must feel its way through all the tangled +labyrinths of city life, and show us where we have arrived and whither +we are going. But this is exactly the part of Professor Geddes' Applied +Sociology where he becomes most vague and unsatisfactory. "Enough for +the present," we are told, "if it be admitted that the practical man in +his thought and action in the present is mainly as yet the too +unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still working +within the grasp of natural conditions." Now we must all be willing to +admit that the present is the child of the past, and that we cannot +adequately understand <span class="pagenum">p. 132</span> the present until we have led up to +the present by the study of its antecedents more and less remote. But +what Professor Geddes fails to bring out is that it is only in the +present or the more immediate past that the City has really become a +City in the modern sense of the word. The City as City is a product of +the Industrial Revolution. Its huge and casual assemblages of human +life, its overcrowding, its poverty line, its East End and its West +End, +its infantile mortality, its trades massed in their own particular +districts, it aliens, its criminals and its vices—all these problems of +social pathology arise from the fact that the conditions of modern +industry have brought people together who have few interests in common, +and who were compelled to arrange themselves in some kind of decent +order within a limited area, without sufficient time being given to +evolve a suitable environment, or to prepare themselves for the +environment which they actually found on every side of them. London in +the past, therefore, cannot help us so very much to solve the riddles +of +London in the present, because London in the past had not developed +these social growths or offered a mature ground to those social +parasites which make us sometimes despair of being able to get much +insight into the London of the present.</p> +<p>The fact seems to be that Prof. Geddes conceives sociology too much +as a +primary and too little as a secondary science. He defines applied +sociology as the application of social survey to social science, when +social ratiocination or social philosophy are needed before one can be +said to have gauged the extent of the influence which this +comprehensive +science may have in our actual practice or on our Budget of the future. +No doubt, "observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is just +the very means of preparing for it," but this preparation must be made +in the various specialisms which make up the complete or +encyclopædic +science of sociology. To me it seems an unwarrantable narrowing of the +scope or significance of sociology to say that there is no better +method +available of teaching it "than that of regional survey, historical as +well as geographical." Surely "regional survey" Is the appropriate +method in the very simplest and most concrete parts of the complete +science of sociology, and even when we come to history proper we must +do +very much more than make a regional survey. It is very interesting, no +doubt, to "survey" history in the course of a summer ramble to the +ruins +of some old monastery, but unless the monks had kept records of what +had +been done there in bygone days, the mere outward survey will not carry +us further than Prof. Geddes is carried in the very general map which +he +makes of the whole field of history. In other words, history, in any +proper sense, demands more than "survey" in Prof. Geddes' sense of the +word. It calls to its aid linguistics, criticism, archaeology, +jurisprudence, and politics—there must be comparison and criticism as +well as "survey." History is the laboratory in which the sociologist +sees his social experiments working out their <span class="pagenum">p. 133</span> results, and +history is to the sociologist what experiment is to the physician, or +the comparative method to the biologist.</p> +<p>This being so, the scope of "civics" as "applied sociology" is +immensely +widened. The present is the child of the past, but we see that it is +only in the present that such ancient groups as the colony of Hanseatic +merchants in Old London have shown us what has been the ultimate +significance of their embryological life. The modern city bristles with +sociological problems which demand a knowledge of most of the +specialisms included in the complete science of sociology, and almost +invite us to cast the horoscope of the future. We see, as Booth and +Rowntree saw before us, the poverty line like a fiery portent at every +point of our study, and we are led finally to ask ourselves whether M. +Arthur Bauer was not right in choosing the title "Les Classes Sociales" +as the most characteristic title he could give to his recent and most +suggestive analysis of the general characteristics of social life.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><br /> +From MR. T.C. HORSFALL<br /> +</div> +<div style="text-align: center;">(President, Manchester Citizen's +Association, &c.)</div> +<p>The teaching of the paper seems to me to be most sound and helpful. +The +town of the future—I trust of the near future—must by means of its +schools, its museums, and galleries, its playgrounds, parks and +gymnasia, its baths, its wide tree-planted streets and the belt of +unspoilt country which must surround it, bring all its inhabitants in +some degree under the <i>best</i> influences of all the regions and +all the +stages of civilisation, the influences of which, but not the best +influences, contribute, and have contributed, to make our towns what +they are.</p> +<br /> +<div style="text-align: center;">From H. OSMAN NEWLAND<br /> +(Author of "<i>A Short History of Citizenship</i>")</div> +<p>The failures of democratic governments in the past have been +attributable, in part, to the lack of intelligence and +self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in +the +government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to +grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as +an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much +less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta +citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it +scarcely rose above Municipalism. In more modern times, civic education +has had to encounter the same difficulty as in America, where the young +citizen's first duty is to salute his flag, and as in London, where +"Civics" is distributed in doles of local <span class="pagenum">p. 134</span> history in which +the municipality plays a part altogether out of proportion to its +relation to the country, the age, and the world. Civics, as the applied +sociology of each individual and each body of interests, has but begun +to be dreamed of; and before it can be properly developed it is +desirable, if not necessary, that the general public should know +something more than at present both of the historic development of the +"civic" idea, and of the psychology of aggregations as differentiated +from the psychology of the individual. Not until we can make "the man +in +the street" a conscious citizen, instead of a political automaton, +shall +we be able to enlist his sympathies with "Civics"; and without those +sympathies the sociologist's "Civics" will, I fear, be but partial and +inaccurate.</p> +<br /> + +<div style="text-align: center;">From MR. G. BISSET SMITH<br /> +(H.M. Registration Examiner for East of Scotland).</div> +<p>There is an elusiveness here and there in this paper which has +helped to +confirm me in the opinion that it is well to emphasise the fact that +Prof. Geddes is not only a dreamer of lofty dreams but a doer and a +practical initiator. He has expressed himself not only in words but in +art and in architecture, and in educational organisation; and he has in +many ways, sometimes indirectly, influenced scholastic and civic +activities.</p> +<p>If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has +only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?" +"<i>Circumspice!</i>" There stand the settlements he initiated, the +houses +beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of +his ideas, an encyclopædia in stone and in storeys.</p> +<p>We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts +towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is +"concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with +ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society. +And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of +its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the +necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied +Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we +have to ask is:—(1) What actually are the generalisations of the +present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable +sociological +testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the +touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer +to +these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion. +But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to +clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose +occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the +reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present +condition +of the people."</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span> +No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of +"The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of +<i>population</i>; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. +Charles +Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all +readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely +suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population +must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of +the +characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential +material +of a study of its whole civilisation."</p> +<p>Accepting Mr. Branford's definition of <i>occupation</i> as "any +and every +form of human endeavour, past, present, and future," we see that +occupation must have a large place in the description, explanation, and +forecasting of the evolution of cities—such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, +Dundee—in the scheme of survey outlined so sweepingly in "Civics."</p> +<p>"Life and Labour of the People in London" contains several general +observations almost equally applicable to our largest Scottish cities, +with the demographic conditions of which my official duties give me +special opportunities for becoming familiar and for regional survey.</p> +<p>In the concluding volume of that great contribution to sociology Mr. +Booth (page 23) remarks:—</p> +<p>"Many influences conspire to cause the poor to multiply almost in +proportion to their poverty, and operate in the other direction in the +case of the better off, almost in proportion to their wealth. But," +says +Mr. Booth, "when we bring the death-rate into account this law no +longer +holds."</p> +<p>With the poor living under bad conditions in crowded homes the net +increase is diminished. To those of us who are hopeful of improvement +by +eugenics it is pleasing to note that Mr. Booth—somewhat unlike Mr. Kidd +in his well-known "Social Evolution"—is optimistic in his conclusion +that "on the whole it may fairly be expected that concurrently with a +rising standard of health we may see a fall in birth-rate as well as +death-rate, and thus have no cause to fear, as the result of better +sanitation, that the largest natural increase in population will ever +be +contributed by the lowest class." So the heritage of the city may grow +not only in quantity but also in quality.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;">From PROFESSOR W.I. THOMAS<br /> +(Professor in the University of Chicago, U.S.A.)<br /> +</div> +<p>From the standpoint of its applicability to new countries like +America, +Professor Geddes' programme is inadequate because of its failure to +recognise that a city under these conditions is formed by a rapid and +contemporaneous movement of population, and not by the lapse of time. +<span class="pagenum">p. 136</span> +The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely +one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of +about +two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic +development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a +population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological +standpoint therefore becomes of more importance than the historical.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply</p> +<p>I am sincerely glad to be able to express myself in substantial +agreement with the majority of my critics, only asking them in turn to +recognise that this is but the first half of my subject—an outline of +civics as in the first place a matter of science, a geographic and +historic survey of past conditions, a corresponding census of present +ones—here discussed and insisted on as affording the needful base for +their demands upon civics as an art, that of effective social service.</p> +<p>In this respect various critics have in fact anticipated large +elements +of this future portion of my paper, so that in general views, at least, +critics and writer are not so far apart as would appear were the +preceding pages submitted as a comprehensive outline of the subject, +instead of as its scientific introduction merely.</p> +<p>Of criticisms strictly applicable to this paper as it stands, there +are +really very few. I am confident that the chairman must be quite alone +in +too modestly applying to his great work that description of London +itself, with which the paper (Section A, pp. 104-107) opens, since his +volumes offer really our first effective clue to the labyrinth, and his +method of intensive and specialised regional survey, the intensest +searchlight yet brought to bear upon it.</p> +<p>Taking, however, a concrete point of criticism, such as that of the +monumental planning of modern Paris as derived from forest rides, the +critic need only walk through any French forest, or even to consult a +Baedeker, or other guide-book, with its maps of any historic dwelling +and its surroundings, from Chantilly or Fontainebleau to minor ones, to +see that this plan, originally devised for the pleasure, success and +safety <span class="pagenum">p. +137</span> of the hunt, and later adapted to domination and +defence, became next appreciated as affording the finest possible +perspectives of the palatially rebuilt chateau. So that it is not at +all +a fantastic hypothesis, but an obvious and inevitable conclusion that +Napoleon's and Haussman's plans were not at all invented by them for +Paris, but were directly imitated from the familiar landscape +architecture of the preceding century, which again was but the simplest +development from the spacious forest rides of older hunting nobles, +laid +out without any thought of the architectural and city developments they +were destined in later centuries to determine.</p> +<p>The citizen of Washington had till lately often forgotten that the +magnificent perspectives of his city are due to the French +landscape-architect (Major L'Enfant) whom Washington imported for the +express purpose of laying out his capital; yet it is no less clear that +this most magnificent of the New World city plans is derived from Old +World forest rides, than that its monumental edifices descend from +Renaissance and classic exemplars.</p> +<p>I plead indeed for such studies of the plans of any and every city +from +the point of view of its natural development. The too purely abstract +and subjective sociology of the dwellers of great cities like London +would in this way be helped by the facts of their own topographic +history, already well known and clearly explained by geographer and +historian, towards again feeling with the naturalist that even the +modern city is but the most complex evolutionary expression and +development of the life of Nature.</p> +<p>This view I take to be indeed a commonplace in France; but I account +for +its apparent unfamiliarity to English readers from the fact of our +scanty forests in this island being left practically wild, our nobles +not inhabiting them, but the cultivated pasture and arable regions +below—planting trees indeed, "plantations," but seldom woods, and +practically never forests at all. This again brings out the fact that +the French nobles, despite our urban associations with regard to them +have belonged far more than ours to the social formation and tradition +of the hunter—while ours, despite their love of sports, are yet +fundamentally squires, i.e., essentially and historically approximating +to the peasants of their villages. The bearing of all this upon their +respective history will be obvious. Here again we have the origins of +the vivid contrast of the English or so-called naturalistic style of +landscape-gardening with the more formal French tradition. Yet in a +very +true sense we see the former to be even more highly artificial than the +latter. <span class="pagenum">p. +138</span> The English citizen who may even admit this way of +looking at the contrasted city plans of London and Paris may fail, +unless he has appreciated the principle here involved, to see why +London +and Paris houses are so different—the one separate and self-contained, +with its door undefended and open upon the street, while the normal +Parisian house is a populous, high-piled tenement around a central +court, with high <i>porte cochère</i> closed by massive oaken +doors and +guarded by an always vigilant and often surly <i>concierge</i>.</p> +<p>A moment of historical reflection suffices to see that the former is +the +architecture of a long-settled agricultural place, with its spreading +undefended villages, in which each household had its separate dwelling, +the other a persistence of the Continental fortified city crowded +within +its walls.</p> +<p>But beyond this we must see the earlier historic, the simpler +geographic +origins of the French courtyard house as a defensible farmyard, of +which +the ample space was needed nightly for defence against wild beasts, if +not also wilder men, against whom the <i>concierge</i> is not only the +antique porter but the primitive sentinel.</p> +<p>I may seem unduly to labour such points, yet do so advisedly, in +order +to emphasise and make clearer the essential thesis of this portion of +my +paper—that every scientific survey involves a geographic and historic +exploration of origins, but that of the still unwritten chapter, that +the far-reaching forelook, idealistic yet also critical, which is +needful to any true and enduring contribution to social service, is +prepared for by habitually imaging the course of evolution in the past.</p> +<p>Speaking personally, as one whose leisure and practical life have +alike +been largely spent in the study and the preservation of ancient +buildings, I may say that this has not been solely, or even +essentially, +from an antiquarian interest in the historic past, but still more on +behalf of a practical interest—that of the idealistic, yet economic, +utilitarian, because educational and evolutionary, transformation of +our +old cities—old Edinburgh, old Dunfermline, and the like—from their +present sordid unhygienic failure; and therefore industrial and +commercial insufficiency, towards a future equalling if not +transcending +the recorded greatness of the civic past.</p> +<p>It has, therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of +evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would +otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as +Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon +Civics as Applied Social Science.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 139</span><br /> +<h3> PRESS COMMENTS</h3> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i>The Times</i> (July 20, 1904)<br /> +in a leading article, said:</p> +<p>In the paper read on Monday at a meeting of the Sociological Society +by +Professor GEDDES—an abstract of which we print—are contained ideas of +practical value to be recommended to the study of ambitious +municipalities. This is the age of cities, and all the world is +city-building. Almost everywhere is a flow from the country town-ward. +China and India may be still, in the main, lands of villages. But the +West, Russia perhaps excepted, is more and more peopled by dwellers in +cities. In a dim sort of way many persons understand that the time has +come when art and skill and foresight should control what so far has +been left to chance to work out; that there should be a more orderly +conception of civic action; that there is a real art of city-making, +and +that it behoves this generation to master and practise it. Professor +Geddes truly said the land is already full of preparation as to this +matter; the beginnings of a concrete art of city-making are visible at +various points. But our city rulers are often among the blindest to +these considerations; and nowhere probably is to be seen a municipality +fully and consistently alive to its duties in this respect. London may +be left out of the question. Still a province rather than a city in the +strict sense, wanting what, in the view of the early master of +political +science, was an essential of the true city, that it could "easily be +overseen," with a vast floating population, it will be some time before +it can be dealt with as an organic whole. But the rulers of such +communities as Manchester and Newcastle and York ought long ago to have +realised, much more than has been done, that they are not so much brick +and mortar, so much rateable area, so many thousands of people +fortuitously brought together. They have all a regional environment of +their own which determined their origin and growth. They have all a +rich +past, the monuments of which, generally to be found in abundance by +careful, reverent inquirers, ought to be preserved; a past which ought +to be known more or less to all the dwellers therein, and the knowledge +of which will make the present more interesting. Even when old +buildings +have disappeared, ancient roads, pathways, and streets can be traced; +place names keep alive much history; and the natural features reveal to +the practised eye what must have been the look and condition of a town +in past ages. Professor Geddes gives a sketch of what he conceives the +vast and ever-growing literature of cities will one day be. Even if the +comprehensive monographs which he foreshadows are never <span class="pagenum">p. 140</span> +written, it is not surely fanciful to expect that, with education +universal, almost every dweller in our old towns will acquire some sort +of that feeling with which a member of an ancient family looks upon its +ancestral house or lands—will, even without much reading, have some +sort of notion of his predecessors and a certain pride in his +membership +of an ancient community. If he has not the good fortune to be a De +Vere, +a De Bohun, a Howard, Mowbray or Cavendish, he may perhaps be a citizen +of a town which flourished when some of these families were unknown.</p> +<p>Such pride, or, as the lecturer preferred to term it, such "growth +of +civic consciousness and conscience, the awakening of citizenship +towards +civic renascence," will be the best security for a worthy city of the +future....</p> +<p>Professor Geddes glanced at the opening civic future, "the remoter +and +higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly +needed foresight and statesmanship involve," the possibilities which +may +be easily realised if only there be true civic pride, foresight, and +unflagging pursuit of a reasonable ideal.... It remains to be seen what +our cities will become when for some generations the same spirit of +pride and reverence shown by old families as to their possessions has +presided over all civic changes and developments.... Ruskin somewhere +points out the mediaeval love of cities, unwholesome, dirty, and +forbidding though they were. He did not teach his generation that that +affection might with more reason attach to the modern city if its +people +knew what it had been and steadily strove to make it better, if there +was in every large community patriotism and a polity.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;">DR. J.H. BRIDGES in <i>The Positivist +Review</i> (Sept., 1904), said: <br /> +</div> +<p>Under +the title, "Civics, as applied Sociology," Prof. Geddes read on July +18th a very interesting paper before the Sociological Society. The +importance of the subject will be contested by none. The method adopted +in handling it, being in many ways original, invites remark ...</p> +<p>What is wanted is first a survey of the facts to be dealt with—a +regional survey. This point of view has next to be correlated with +corresponding practical experience acquired by practical civic life, +but +"aiming at a larger and more orderly conception of civic action.".... +Students of Comte will not forget his well-known maxim, <i>Savoir pour +prévoir, afin de pourvoir</i>.</p> +<p>What is to be the area of survey? Prof. Geddes decides that the City +may +be taken "as the integrate of study." Whether any modern towns, and, if +so, what, may be taken as integrates in the sense which would +undoubtedly apply to ancient Athens or to mediaeval Florence, may be +questioned; but it is too soon to interrupt our author.... Every one +who +heard the lecturer must have been fascinated by his picture of a river +system which he takes for his unit of study; the high mountain tracts, +the pastoral hillsides, the hamlets and villages in the valleys, the +market town where the valleys meet, the convergence of the larger +valleys into a county town, finally, the great city where the river +meets the sea. The lecturer went on to advocate the systematic study of +some of the principal river-basins of the world for the purpose of +examining the laws which govern the grouping of cities. All would agree +that much instruction might be derived from such <span class="pagenum">p. 141</span> a survey, +provided two dangers be avoided. One is the exaggeration of the +influence of the environment on the social organism, an error into +which +the Le Play school have sometimes fallen; as when, for instance, it was +sought to explain Chinese civilisation by the rice-plant. The other +danger, which needs much care and thought to avoid, is the accumulation +of such a mass of irrelevant detail as renders (perhaps sometimes it is +intended to render) all generalisation impossible. Thinking men are at +last beginning to regard the accumulation of memoirs as one of the +principal obstacles to scientific progress. On the pretext of "more +evidence," conclusions are adjourned, not merely <i>sine die</i>, but <i>sine +spe diei</i>. Yet so long as man is man, he must, and will, have +conclusions; be they final or otherwise.</p> +<p>From the physiography of the city we pass to its history ...</p> +<p>In this part of his subject he has, as we all know, many precursors +and +fellow-workers. The remarkable series, entitled "Historic Towns," +instituted by Prof. Freeman, is known to most. The study of towns was +the life and soul of Mr. Green's historic labours. Eloquent and +powerful +pictures of the great cities of the world fill the greater part of Mr. +Harrison's well-known volume, "The Meaning of History"; and the student +of universal history (a few of these, it may be hoped, are still left) +finds them very stimulating and helpful. The special note of Prof. +Geddes' method is that he does not limit himself to the greater cities, +but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with +their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely +to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of +his observation. In biology, the study of any single organism, however +minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of +structure or function. As for instance, many forms of heart must be +examined before the laws governing blood-circulation could be revealed; +so here. Countless, indeed, are the forms of cities; even limiting our +field of observation to those that have grown up in the last century +they are numerous enough. Their differences and analogies would +doubtless repay analysis, always supposing that we are clear how far +the +modern town, as contrasted with the mediaeval or Graeco-Roman city, can +usefully be treated as "an integrate." This raises large questions of +nation, of groups of nations, finally of Humanity, which cannot here be +touched.</p> +<p>Meantime, from the teacher's standpoint, there can be no question at +all, among those who look upon education as something more than a +commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with +the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there +perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the +history of our race. Historic memories survive in our villages far more +widely than is thought. The descendants of the man who found the body +of +Rufus in the New Forest still live hard by. The builder whom the first +William set to build Corfe Castle was Stephen Mowlem; and the +Dorsetshire firm of Mowlem still pave London causeways. A poor woman in +a remote hamlet, untouched by tourist or guide-book, has shown me the +ash-tree under which Monmouth was seized after Sedgemoor; a Suffolk +peasant, equally innocent of book-knowledge, has pointed Out "Bloody +Mary's lane," through which that bugbear of Protestants passed three +hundred years before on her way to Framlingham. The abbey immortalised +in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern +England, is surrounded now by the same villages that Jocelyn tells us +of. The town named after St. Alban, with its memories of Cassivellaun +and Julius Caesar, of an old Roman city, of the Diocletian persecution, +of the great King Offa, founder of the abbey that was to become <span class="pagenum">p. 142</span> at +once a school of historical research, and our best epitome of +mediaeval architecture—all this, with the monument of the author of the +"Novum Organum" crowning the whole—sums up for us sixteen centuries of +history.</p> +<p>Professor Geddes for more than twenty years has adopted this method +of +teaching sociology in the open air; "in the field," as geologists would +say....</p> +<p>This is much more than the study and the description of buildings +and +places of historical interest. His aim is first to study the way in +which a city grows, always having due regard to its physical +environment; secondly, by comparing like with like, as a naturalist +compares the individuals of a species, or the species of a genus, to +throw light on the laws which govern civic development, and thus to +help +forward and direct civic action.</p> +<p>All this is set forth with greater fulness in the Report which +Professor +Geddes has been asked to write for the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. The +purpose of the Report (printed, but not yet published) was to suggest +the way in which the revenue of the Trust, amounting to £25,000, +should +be spent for the benefit of this ancient and historic town. The scheme, +with its many pictures, real and ideal, of workshops, parks, +culture-institutes—physical, artistic, and historical—will deeply +interest even those who reject much of it as Utopian. But it is at +least +a Utopia specially adapted to a given place and time, one in which +every +feature of landscape and history is made the most of, one in which a +beginning can be made at once, leaving room for further developments as +occasion may serve. Moreover, it is penetrated through and through with +the Republican ideal of bringing the highest truth within the reach of +all.</p> +<p>Comte has pointed out, in the fifth chapter of his "General View of +Positivism," and elsewhere, that it is not enough to enunciate sound +principles of social renovation unless they can be rendered visible and +palpable. "The principal function of art," he says, "is to construct +types on the basis furnished by Science.... However perfectly the first +principles of social renovation may be elaborated by thinkers, they +will +still not be sufficiently definite for the practical results.... But, +at +the point where Philosophy must always leave a void, Art steps in, and +stimulates to practical action.... Hence, in the future, systematic +formation of Utopias will become habitual; on the distinct +understanding +that as in every other branch of art, the ideal shall be kept in +subordination to the real."</p> +<p>Now, the Dunfermline Report is an admirable example of art thus +allied +with science for social service. It is an ideal picture, strictly +adherent to local colour and conditions, of an ancient city prolonging +its vitality into the present and future by providing a very high form +of training for its citizens, a training not of intellect only, but of +the senses, of manual dexterity, of imagination, of Republican +sympathy—a training in which "laborious inacquaintance with dead +languages," infusing into the few touched by it a tincture of caste and +militarism, gives way to comprehensive study of the evolution of Man, +preparing the whole, and not a section merely, of the new generation +for +social service.</p> +<p>Such a Utopia as this may be looked upon as fulfilling the true +social +function of Art; standing midway between theory and practice; inspired +by thought, and stimulating action. Only the social artist has to look +to it that his thoughts be not merely true but adequate, lest he +degenerate into a mere decorator. How far will a series of "regional +surveys," like those of <span class="pagenum">p. 143</span> Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree +in York, carry us! Not so far, I fear, as Professor Geddes seems to +hope. Cities in our modern life are organs inseparable from a larger +whole, the nation; and before the life of cities can be much changed, +we +have to ask ourselves, What is the national life? What is its ethical +and religious standard? What is its practice as to the acquisition and +distribution of wealth? And, again, What is to be the intercourse of +nations? Is it to be war or peace?</p> +<p>Mr. Carnegie has given half a million for the benefit of a town of +30,000 inhabitants. Magnificent as the donation is, it is not too much; +not nearly enough, indeed, for the full realisation of Professor +Geddes' +scheme. Still, wisely used, it might accomplish great results. What we +have recently sunk in the work of suppressing two free States in South +Africa would have made it possible to do for three hundred towns what +has been done for Dunfermline. Half of what we are now spending on our +army and navy would enable us to endow thirty more of such towns +annually.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;">Mr. ISRAEL ZANGWILL in <i>To-day</i> +(Aug. 10, 1904), said: <br /> +</div> +<p>The Sociological +Society is forging ahead at American speed; the professors jostle one +another, and Geddes treads on the heels of Galton. After "Eugenics," or +the Science of Good Births, comes "Civics," or the Science of Cities. +In +the former Mr. Galton was developing an idea which was in the air, and +in Wells. In the latter Professor Geddes has struck out a more novel +line, and a still more novel nomenclature. Politography, Politogenics, +and Eu-Politogenics, likewise Hebraomorphic and Latinomorphic and +Eutopia—quite an opposite idea from Utopia—such are some of the +additions to the dictionary which the science of Civics carries in its +train. They are all excellent words—with the double-barrelled +exception—and still more excellent concepts. But I fancy the general +idea of them all could be conveyed to the man in the street under the +covering of "the human shell." This shell of ours is the city. It is +the +protective crust we have built round ourselves. In a smaller sense our +house is our shell, but in a larger sense each house is only a lobe of +the complex and contorted whole. Geography shapes our shells from +without, and the spirit of our particular community shapes it from +within. History tells us how it has been shaped in the past, Art tells +us how it should be shaped in the future. Professor Geddes, in fact, +envisages our civic shell as becomes a brilliant biologist, who also +happens to be a man of historic imagination, ethical impulses, and +aesthetic perceptions. For the human shell is not merely geometrical +and +architectural, like those of apian or beaverish communities; it holds +and expresses all those differences by which we are exalted above the +bee or the beaver. It is coloured with our emotions and ideals, and +contorted with all the spirals of our history. And all these +manifestations of humanity may be studied as systematically as those of +the lower orders of creation, which have till recently monopolised the +privilege of pin and label. The old lady who admired the benevolence of +Providence in always placing rivers by the side of large towns was only +expressing in an exaggerated way the general failure to think of Civics +scientifically. The geographers, in whom may be found the bases of the +science, have always pointed out that the river system is the essential +unit for investigation. From source to sea goes the line of evolution. +And yet even the peasant hamlet at the source depends, as <span class="pagenum">p. 144</span> +Professor Geddes reminds us, on the hinterland of pasture, forest, and +chase; and the hunter is the germ of the soldier and the aristocrat. +The +whole region contributes to the ultimate city, as the whole river to +the +ultimate sea. The Professor says, justly enough, that we should try to +recover the elemental or naturalist point of view, even for the +greatest +cities. He sees London as "fundamentally an agglomeration of villages +with their surviving patches of common around a mediaeval seaport." +This +is accurate vision; but when he discerns "even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say, its Place de l'Etoile, its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest rides, each literally straight," I cannot help +suspecting the over-ingenuity of a prolific intellect. The view of +London as a growth from embryos, and the view of Paris as the outcome +of +atavistic instinct, belong to different planes of scientific thinking. +That Haussmann in reconstructing Paris was merely an unconscious hunter +and woodlander, building as automatically as a bee, is a fantastic +hypothesis; since cities, if they are to be built on a plan at all, +cannot avoid some unifying geometrical pattern; and there are not very +many possibilities.... In the department of Eu-Politogenics we shall be +confronted with the problem of consciously overriding what evolution +has +unconsciously evolved, and building towards a fairer future. No doubt +much of our creation will be imitation, and Professor Geddes is +particularly suggestive in bidding us, at least, to be aware which of +the tangled strands of influence we desire to follow; but a measure of +artistic free-will remains. With the development of a corporate +conscience we should be able to turn out far more satisfactory shells +than many that have blundered into being. "Garden City" is only a +particular application of the science of Civics....</p> +<p>Eu-Politogenics concerns itself, however, with more than the mere +configuration of our human shell. Its colour and the music it holds are +considerations no less important. But they are too important to touch +at +the fag-end of an article. Professor Geddes must, however, be +congratulated on a stimulating paper, and upon his discovery of +Eutopia. +For Eutopia (unlike Utopia, which is really Ou-topia, or no place) is +merely your own place perfected. And the duty of working towards its +perfection lies directly upon <i>you</i>. "Civics—as applied +sociology" +comes to show you the way.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CIVICS: AS CONCRETE AND APPLIED SOCIOLOGY, PART II</h2> +<h2>BY PROFESSOR GEDDES</h2> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">Read before the Sociological Society at a +Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., on Monday, January 23rd, 1905, the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, +F.R.S., +in the Chair.</p> +<br /> +<h3>A—INTRODUCTION: THE NEED OF CIVIC SURVEYS</h3> +<p>To the previous discussion of this subject<a name="FNanchor_2"></a><a + href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> the first portion of this +present title, "Civics as Concrete Sociology," would have been more +suitable than the second, (that of "Civics as Applied Sociology") +actually used. For its aim was essentially to plead for the concrete +survey and study of cities, their observation and interpretation on +lines essentially similar to those of the natural sciences. Since +Comte's demonstration of the necessity of the preliminary sciences to +social studies, and Spencer's development of this, still more since the +evolution theory has become generally recognised, no one disputes the +applicability of biology to <span class="pagenum">p. 58</span> sociology. Many are, indeed, +vigorously applying the conceptions of life in evolution, in +geographical distribution and environment, in health and disease, to +the +interpretations of the problems of the times; while with the +contemporary rise of eugenics to the first plane of interest, both +social and scientific, these lines of thought, bio-social and +bio-geographic, must needs be increasingly utilised and developed.</p> +<p>But Comte and Spencer, with most other biologically-minded +sociologists +have been more at home among biological generalisations and theories +than among the facts they arise from, and hence it is ever needful to +maintain and extend a first-hand contact with these. I seek, therefore, +to press home the idea that just as the biologist must earn his +generalisations through direct and first-hand acquaintance with nature, +so now must the sociologist work for his generalisations through a +period of kindred observation and analysis, both geographic and +historical; his "general laws" thus appearing anew as the abstract of +regional facts, after due comparison of these as between region and +region.</p> +<p>May not much of the comparative sterility of post-Comtean (or at any +rate post-Spencerian) sociology, which is so commonly reproached to us, +and to which the difficult formation and slow growth of sociological +societies and schools is largely due, be thus explained? Is it not the +case that many able and persuasive writers, not only knowing the +results, but logically using the generalisations of Comte or Spencer, +as +of old of Smith or now-a-days of List in the economic field, are yet +comparatively sterile of fresh contributions to thought, and still more +to action? In fact, must we not apply to much of the literature of +recent sociology, just as to traditional economics, the criticism of +Comte's well-known law of three states, and inquire if such writers, +while apparently upon the plane of generalised science, are not really +in large measure at least arrested upon Comte's "metaphysical stage," +Mill's "abstractional" one?</p> +<p>Conversely, the revival of sociological interest in this country at +present is obviously very largely derived from fresh and freshening +work +like that of Mr Francis Galton and of the Right Hon. Charles Booth +especially. For here in Mr. Galton's biometrics and eugenics is a +return +to nature, a keen scrutiny of human beings, which is really an orderly +fruition of that of the same author's "Art of Travel." Similarly, Mr. +Booth's "Survey of London" is as truly a return to nature as was +Darwin's Voyage, or his yet more far-reaching studies in his garden and +farmyard at home. <span class="pagenum">p. 59</span> Is it not the main support of the subtle +theorisings and far-stretched polemic of Prof. Weismann that he can +plague his adversaries with the small but literal and concrete mice and +hydroids and water fleas with which his theories began? And is it not +for a certain lack of such concrete matter of observation that the vast +systematisations of M. de Greef, or M. de Roberty, or the original and +ingenious readings of Prof. Simon Patten leave us too often +unconvinced, +even if not sometimes without sufficiently definite understanding of +their meaning? The simplest of naturalists must feel that Comte or +Spencer, despite the frequently able use of the generalisations of +biology, themselves somewhat lacked the first-hand observation of the +city and community around them, and suffered thereby; this part of +their +work obviously not being on a level with the historic interpretations +of +the one or the psychological productivity of the other. And if, without +warlike intent, I may yet strike a conspicuous shield or two within +these friendly lists, is it not this one element of concrete +observation +and illustration which is sometimes lacking to give its full effect to +the encyclopædic learning and the sympathetic insight of one of +our +recent papers, to the historic and poetic interpretations of another, +or +to the masterly logic of a third?</p> +<p>Before the polemics of our educationists, the voluminous +argumentation +and casuistic subtlety of our professors of economics and ethics, yet +more before the profound speculations of the epistemologists, the mere +naturalist observer can but feel abashed like the truant before his +schoolmasters; yet he is also not without a certain deep inward +conviction, born of experience, that his outdoor world is yet more +real, +more vast, and more instructive than is theirs. And this impression +becomes strengthened, nay verified and established, when he sees that +the initiative thinkers from whom these claim to descend, have had in +each and every case no merely academic record, but also a first-hand +experience, an impulse and message from life and nature. Hence the +contributions of Locke, of Comenius, and of Rousseau. Hence the +Physiocrats found economics in peasant life; and thus too Adam Smith +renewed their science, with due academic logic, doubtless, but from his +experience of Glasgow and Kirkcaldy manufactures and trade. Even the +idealist Berkeley owed much of his theory to his iridescent tar-water; +while surely the greater ethicists are those who have not only been +dialecticians, but moral forces in the world of men.</p> +<p>In such ways, then, I would justify the thesis that civics is no +abstract study, but fundamentally a matter of concrete and descriptive +sociology—perhaps the greatest field of this. Next, that such orderly +study is in line with the preliminary sciences, and with the general +doctrine of evolution from simple to complex; and finally with the +general inquiry into the influence of geographical conditions on social +development. <span class="pagenum">p. +60</span> In short, the student of civics must be first of +all an observer of cities; and, if so, of their origins and +developments, from the small and simple beginnings of which the tiniest +hamlet is but an arrested germ. The productive sociologist should thus +be of all investigators a wandering student <i>par excellence</i>; in +the +first place, as far as possible, a literal tourist and traveller—and +this although like the homely Gilbert White or the world voyaging +Darwin, he may do his best work around his own home.</p> +<br /> +<h3>B—INITIAL METHODS OF CONCRETE SURVEY</h3> +<p>Hence our civic studies began (vol. 1, <a href='#p_105'>p. 105</a>) +with the survey of a +valley region inhabited by its characteristic types—hunter and +shepherd, peasant and fisher—each on his own level, each evolving or +degenerating within his own region. Hence the concrete picture of such +a +typical valley section with its types of occupation cannot be brought +too clearly before our minds.<a name="FNanchor_3"></a><a + href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></p> +<p>What now of the causes of progress or decay? Are not these first of +all +the qualities and defects inherent in that particular social +formation?—though we must also consider how these different types act +and react, how they combine with, transform, subjugate, ruin or replace +each other in region after region. We thus re-interpret the +vicissitudes +of history in more general terms, those of the differentiation, +progress +or degeneracy of each occupational and social type, and the ascending +and descending oscillations of these types. In short, these +occupational +struggles underlie and largely interpret even the conflict of races, +upon which Mr. Stuart-Glennie and other sociologists have so ably +insisted. The fundamental importance of these initial factors of region +and occupation to all studies of races and types, of communities and +institutions, of customs and laws, indeed of language and literature, +of +religion and art, even of ideals and individualities, must be my excuse +if I seem to insist, in season and out of season, upon <span class="pagenum">p. 61</span> the +services of Le Play as one of the main founders of sociology; and this +not only <i>(a)</i> on account of his monographic surveys of modern +industrial life—those "Monographies Sociales" from which our current +economic studies of the condition of the worker, of the family budget, +etc., descend—but <i>(b)</i> yet more on account of his vital +reconstruction +of anthropology (albeit still far from adequately realised by most +anthropologists) through his renewed insistence upon the elemental +rustic origins of industry, family types, and social organisation +alike, +from these simplest reactions of man in his struggle for existence in +varied and varying environment.</p> +<p>It does not suffice to recognise, with many economists, hunting, +pastoral and agricultural formations, as states <i>preliminary</i> to +our +present industrial and commercial, imperial, and financial order of +civilisation. This view, still too commonly surviving, is rather of +hindrance than help; what we need is to see our existing civilisation +as +the complex struggle and resultant of all these types and their +developments to-day. So far, therefore, from leaving, as at present, +these simple occupational types to the anthropologist, or at best +giving +him some scant hospitality within our city museum, we are learning to +see how it is at one time the eager miner, or the conservative +shepherd, +or at another the adventurous fisher or hunter who comes concretely +upon +the first plane of national, imperial or international politics, and +who +awakens new strife among these. We not only begin to see, but the +soldier frankly tells us, how the current sports of youth, and the +unprecedented militarism of the past century, are alike profoundly +connected with the hunting world. Hence the hope of peace lies not +only, +as most at present think in the civilised and civilising development of +international law, or of culture intercourse, excellent though these +are, but also in a fuller and complete return to nature than has been +this recent and persistent obsession of our governing classes with the +hunter world almost alone; in short, in adding the gentler, yet wider, +experiences of the naturalist, the sterner experiences of other +occupations also. Nor does such elementary recognition of these main +social formations content us; their local differentiations must be +noted +and compared—a comprehensive regional survey, therefore, which does +justice to each local variety of these great types; speaking henceforth +of no mere abstract "hunter," but of the specific hunting types of each +climate, and distinguishing these as clearly as do our own milder +sportsmen of deer-forest and the turnip field from themselves and from +each other. After such needed surveys in detail, we may, indeed must, +compare and generalise them.</p> +<p>Similarly for the pasture, the forest. Every tourist in this country +is +struck by the contrast of Swiss towns and cities with our own, and +notes +<span class="pagenum">p. 62</span> too +that on the Swiss pasture he finds a horde of cattle, +while in Scotland or Yorkshire he left a flock of sheep. And not only +the tourist, but the historian or the economist too often fail to see +how Galashiels or Bradford are developments of the wool hamlet, now +familiar to many in R.L. Stevenson's native Swanston. Again, not only +Swiss wealth, but Swiss character and institutions, go back essentially +to the high pasture and the well-filled byre. That this rich Swiss +cow-pasture rests on limestone, and the poor Scottish sheep-grazing +upon +comparatively unmouldering and impermeable gneiss, is no mere matter of +geologist's detail; it affords in each case the literal and concrete +foundation-stone of the subsequent evolution of each region and +population, and this not only in material and economic development, but +even in higher and subtler outcomes, aesthetic, intellectual and +moral.<a name="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> +It is for such reasons that one must labour and re-labour this +geographic and determinist aspect of sociology, and this for no merely +scientific reason, but also for practical ones. Nowhere perhaps have +more good and generous souls considered how to better the condition of +their people than in Swiss, or Irish, or Scottish valleys; yet it is +one +main reason of the continual failure of all such movements, and of such +minds in the wider world as well, that they do not first acquaint +themselves with the realities of nature and labour sufficiently to +appreciate that the fundamental—I do not say the supreme—question is: +what can be got out of limestone, and what can be got out of gneiss? +Hence the rare educative value of such a concrete sociological diagram +and model as was the Swiss Village at the Paris Exposition of 1900, for +here geographic and economic knowledge and insight were expressed with +artistic skill and sympathy as perhaps never before. Only as similar +object-lessons are worked out for other countries, can we adequately +learn, much less popularly teach, how from nature comes "rustics," and +from this comes civics. But civics and rustics make up the field of +politics; they are the concrete of which politics become the +abstract—commonly the too remotely abstract.</p> +<p>For final illustration, let us descend to the sea-level. There +again, +taking the fisher, each regional type must be traced in his +contribution +to his town. Take for instance the salmon fisher of Norway, the whaler +of Dundee, the herring-fisher of Yarmouth, the cod-fisher of +Newfoundland, the coral fisher of the Ægean; each is a definite +varietal +type, one developing or at least tending to develop characteristic +normal family relations, and corresponding social outcomes in +institutions; in which again the appropriate qualities and defects must +be expressed, even as is the quality and twist of the hemp in the +strength of the cable, or as is the chemistry and the microscopic +structure of the alloy in the efficiency of the great gun.<span class="pagenum">p. 63</span> +Our neighbouring learned societies and museums geographical, geological +and the rest, are thus avowedly and consciously so many winter shelters +in which respective groups of regional surveyors tell their tales and +compare their observations, in which they meet to compare their +generalisations from their own observations made in the field with +those +made by others. So it must increasingly be for this youngest of +societies. We may, we should, know best our Thames valley, our London +basin, our London survey; but the progress of our science implies as +increasingly varied and thorough an inquiry into rustic and civic +regions and occupations and resultants throughout the whole world +present and past, as does the corresponding world survey with our +geologic neighbours.</p> +<p>I plead then for a sociological survey, rustic and civic, region by +region, and insist in the first place upon the same itinerant field +methods of notebook and camera, even for museum collections and the +rest, as those of the natural sciences. The dreary manuals which have +too long discredited those sciences in our schools, are now giving +place +to a new and fascinating literature of first-hand nature study. +Similarly, those too abstract manuals of civics which are at present +employed in schools<a name="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> +must be replaced by concrete and regional ones, +their abstract counsels of political or personal perfection thus also +giving place to a corresponding regional idealism which may then be +supplemented from other regions as far as needs demand and +circumstances +allow.</p> +<h3><br /> +</h3> +<h3>C—GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINISM AND ITS DIFFICULTIES</h3> +<p>To interpret then our tangle of ideas, both of the city and its +citizens, let us now bring more fully to our transverse valley +sections, +and to each occupation separately, the geographical view-point which we +have found of service to elucidate the development of towns and cities +upon its longitudinal <span class="pagenum">p. 64</span> slope. But this is neither more nor +less than the method of Montesquieu, whose classic "Esprit des Lois" +anticipates and initiates so much of that of later writers—Ritter, +Buckle, Taine, or Le Play. Once more then let their common, or rather +their resultant, doctrine be stated in terms expressing the latest of +these more fully than the first. Given the region, its character +determines the nature of the fundamental occupation, and this in turn +essentially determines the type of family. The nature and method of the +occupation must normally determine the mode of its organisation, e.g., +the rise and character of a specialised directive class, and the nature +of these occupational chiefs as contrasted with the people and with +each +other. Similarly, the types of family tend to develop their appropriate +types of institutions, e.g., for justice, guidance, and of course +notably in response to social environment as regards defence or attack.</p> +<p>Thus at this point in fact we seem to be pressing upon the student +of +sociology the essential argument of geographical and evolutionary +determinism, in fact inviting him to adopt a view, indeed to commit +himself to a method, which may be not only foreign to his habits, but +repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy +of +this determinist view of society for at least the past five generations +has not carried general conviction, why raise so controversial a +suggestion, in the guise too of a method professing to harmonise all +comers? Yet this is advisedly done; and as no one will deny some civil +importance to geographical factors, let patience be granted to examine +this aspect of the city's map and shield, and to get from it what it +can +teach, under the present assurance to the philosophic and idealist +critic that his view of other factors, higher and deeper, as supreme in +human life, and therefore in city making, will not be forgotten, nor +excluded from consideration when we come to them. All that is really +insisted upon here is that if anything of naturalistic method of +evolutionary conception is to be permitted at all, we must obviously +proceed from this simple towards the more complex, and so begin with it +here and now.</p> +<p>It is the appropriate slope or steppe, the needful rainfall, that +conditions the growth of grass, this which conditions the presence of +herds or flocks, and these again which determine the very existence of +shepherds. These granted then, not only do the pastoral arts and crafts +arise, but the patriarchal type and family develop, and this not only +with their hospitality and other virtues, with their nomadic +tendencies, +at any rate, their unfixed land-tenure, very different from the +peasant's, but their slow and skilful <span class="pagenum">p. 65</span> diplomacy (till the +pasture is bared or grown again, as the negotiator's interests +incline). +The patriarch in his venerable age, the caravaneer in his nomadic and +exploring youth, his disciplined maturity, thus naturally develop as +different types of chief and leader; and it is therefore not until this +stage, when all is ready for the entry of Abraham or Job, of Mohammed +the camel-driver, or Paul the tent-maker, that any real controversy can +arise between the determinist and his opponent, between the democratic +and the great-man theories of history, towards which these respectively +incline.<a name="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> +And at that stage, may not the controversy stimulate a +fruitful analysis? After all, what is the claim of free-will but to +select among the factors afforded by a given set of circumstances? And +the utmost stretch of determinism to which geography and civics may +lead +us obviously cannot prove the negative of this. But whether the +psychologic origins of new ideals be internal to the mind of genius, or +imparted by some external source, is a matter obviously beyond the +scope +of either the geographer or the historian of civics to settle. Enough +surely for both controversialists if we use such a means of tabulating +facts as to beg the question for neither view; and still better if we +can present the case of each without injustice to either, nay, to each +with its clearness increased by the sharp edge of contrast. If the +geographical determinist thesis on one hand, and its ethical and +psychological antithesis on the other, can thus clearly be defined and +balanced, their working equilibrium is at hand, even should their +complete synthesis remain beyond us.</p> +<br /> +<h3>D—NEED OF ABSTRACT METHOD FOR NOTATION AND FOR INTERPRETATION</h3> +<p>Not only such general geographical studies, but such social +interpretations as those above indicated have long been in progress: +witness the labours of whole schools of historians and critics, among +whom Montsquieu and his immediate following, or in more recent times +Buckle and Taine, are but the most prominent; witness the works of +geographers like Humboldt, Ritter, Reclus, or of developmental +technologists like Boucher de Perthes and regional economists like Le +Play. The main lines of a concrete and evolutionary sociology (or at +<span class="pagenum">p. 66</span> least +<i>sociography</i>) have thus been laid down for us; but the +task now before us, in our time, in such a society as this—and indeed +in such a paper as the present one—its that of extracting from all this +general teaching its essential scientific method, one everywhere latent +and implicit, but nowhere fully explicit, or at least adequately +systematised.</p> +<p>It is in fact only as we can agree upon some definite and orderly +method +of description that our existing literature of social surveys can be +adequately compared or new ones co-operatively undertaken. Hence the +importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have +so +largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means +of +escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static) +presentments of the general methodology of social science into which +sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely +ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this +would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, as +indeed also the comparative unattractiveness of our studies to the body +of specialist scientific workers, not even excepting those within what +we consider sociological fields.</p> +<p>The history of each science, be it mathematics or astronomy, botany, +zoology or geology, shows us that it is not enough to have the +intelligent observer, or even the interpretative thinker with his +personally expressed doctrine. This must be clearly crystallised into a +definite statement, method, proposition, "law" or theory, stated in +colourless impersonal form before it is capable of acceptance and +incorporation into the general body of science. But while astronomer +and +geologist and naturalist can and do describe both the observational +results and their general conceptions in literary form, requiring from +the ordinary reader but the patience to master a few unfamiliar terms +and ideas, they also carry on their work by help of definite and +orderly +technical methods, descriptive and comparative, analytic and synthetic. +These, as far as possible, have to be crystallised beyond their mere +verbal statement into formulae, into tabular and graphic presentments, +and thus not only acquire greater clearness of statement, but become +more and more active agencies of inquiry—in fact, become literal +<i>thinking-machines</i>. But while the mathematician has his notations +and +his calculus, the geographer and geologist their maps, reliefs and +sections, the naturalist his orderly classificatory methods, it has +been +the misfortune and delay of political economy, and no small cause of +that "notorious discord and sterility" with which Comte reproached it, +that <span class="pagenum">p. 67</span> +its cultivators have so commonly sought to dispense with +the employment of any definite scientific notations; while even its +avowed statisticians, in this country especially, have long resisted +the +consistent use of graphic methods.</p> +<p>I submit, therefore, for discussion, as even more urgent and +pressing +than that of the general and abstract methodology of the social +sciences, the problem of elaborating a concrete descriptive method +readily applicable to the study and comparison of human societies, to +cities therefore especially. To do justice to this subject, not only +the +descriptive labours of anthropologists, but much of the literature of +sociology would have to be gone through from the "Tableau Economique" +of +the Physiocratic School to the "Sociological Tables" of Mr. Spencer, +and +still more fruitfully to more recent writers. Among these, besides here +recognising specially the work of Mr. Booth and its stimulus to younger +investigators, I would acknowledge the helpful and suggestive impulse +from the group of social geographers which has arisen from the +initiative of Le Play<a name="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a>, +and whose classification, especially in its +later forms<a name="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a>, +cannot but be of interest and value to everyone whose +thought on social questions is not afloat upon the ocean of the +abstract +without chart or bearings.</p> +<p>Yet with all respect to each and all these classifications and +methods, +indeed with cordially acknowledge personal obligation and indebtedness +to them from first to last, no one of these seems fully satisfactory +for +the present purpose; and it is therefore needful to go into the matter +afresh for ourselves, though utilising these as fully as we can.</p> +<br /> +<h3>E—THE CITY-COMPLEX AND ITS USUAL ANALYSIS</h3> +<p>In the everyday world, in the city as we find it, what is the +working +classification of ideas, the method of thought of its citizens? That +the citizens no more think of themselves as using any particular +sociological method than did M. Jourdain of talking prose does not +really matter, save that it makes our observation, both of them and it, +easier and more trustworthy.</p> +<p>They are speaking and thinking for the most part of <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_68'></a>p. 68</span> People +and of Affairs; much less of places. In the category of People, we +observe that individuals, self and others, and this in interest, +perhaps +even more than in interests, commonly take precedence of groups. +Institutions and Government are, however, of general interest, the +state +being much more prominent than is the church; the press, for many, +acting as the modern substitute for the latter. In the world of +Affairs, +commerce takes precedence of industry, while sport runs hard upon both. +War, largely viewed by its distant spectators as the most vivid form of +sport, also bulks largely. Peace is not viewed as a positive ideal, but +essentially as a passive state, at best, of non-war, more generally of +latent war. Central among places are the bank, the market (in its +financial forms before the material ones). Second to these stand the +mines then the factories, etc.; and around these the fixed or floating +fortresses of defence. Of homes, that of the individual alone is +seriously considered, at most those of his friends, his "set," his +peers, but too rarely even of the street, much less the neighbourhood, +at least for their own sake, as distinguished from their reaction upon +individual and family status or comfort.</p> +<p>This set of views is obviously not easy of precise analysis of exact +classification. In broad outline, however, a summary may be made, and +even tabulated as follows:—</p> +<h4>THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES.</h4> +<table summary="THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 707px; height: 218px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">PEOPLE</td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">AFFAIRS</td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">PLACES</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(a) +INDIVIDUALS (Self and others).</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(a)COMMERCE +INDUSTRY, etc.<br /> +SPORT.</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(a) +MARKET, BANK, etc.FACTORY, MINE, etc.</td> + + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(b) +GOVERNMENT(S)<br /> +Temporal and Spiritual<br /> +(State and Church).</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(b) WAR +and Peace<br /> +(Latent War).</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(b) FORT, +FIELD, etc.</td> + </tr> + + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>Next note how from the everyday world of action, there arises a +corresponding thought-world also. This has, <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_69'></a>p. 69</span>of course, no less +numerous +and varied elements, with its resultantly complex local colour; But a +selection will suffice, of which the headings may be printed below +those +of the preceding scheme, to denote how to the objective elements there +are subjective elements corresponding—literal reflections upon the +pools of memory—the slowly flowing stream of tradition. Thus the +extended diagram, its objective elements expressed in yet more general +terms, may now be read anew (noting that mirror images are fully +reversed).</p> +<br /> +<table + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 490px; height: 288px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="Town and schools"> + <tbody> + <tr align="center"> + <td><br /> + </td> + <td>PEOPLE </td> + <td> AFFAIRS</td> + <td>PLACES<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr align="center"> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2">"TOWN" </td> + <td>(a) INDIVIDUALS </td> + <td>(a) OCCUPATIONS</td> + <td>(a) WORK-PLACES<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr align="center"> + <td>(b) INSTITUTIONS </td> + <td> (b) WAR</td> + <td>(b) WAR-PLACES<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" + style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">"SCHOOLS"</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(b) +HISTORY ("Constitutional")</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(b) +STATISTICS AND HISTORY<br /> +("Military")</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(b) +GEOGRAPHY</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(a) +BIOGRAPHY</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(a) +ECONOMICS</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(a) +TOPOGRAPHY</td> + </tr> + + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>Here then we have that general relation of the town life and its +"schools," alike of thought and of education, which must now be fully +investigated.</p> +<p>Such diagrammatic presentments, while of course primarily for the +purpose of clear expression and comparison, are also frequently +suggestive—by "inspection," as geometers say—of relations not +previously noticed. In both ways, we may see more clearly how prevalent +ideas and doctrines have arisen as "reflections upon" the life of +action, and even account for their qualities and their defects—their +partial truth or their corresponding inadequacy, according to our own +appreciative or depreciative standpoint. Thus as regards "People," in +the first column we see expressed briefly how to (a) the individual +life, with the corresponding vivid interest in biography, corresponds +the "great man theory" of history. Conversely with <i>(b)</i> alone is +associated the insistance upon institutional developments as the main +factor. Passing to the middle column, that of "Affairs," we may note in +connection with <i>(b)</i> say the rise of statistics in association +with +the needs of war, a point connected with its too empiric character; or +note again, a too common converse weakness of economic theory, its +inadequate inductive <span class="pagenum">p. 70</span> verification. Or finally, in the column +of "Place," the long weakness of geography as an educational subject, +yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated. We might +in +fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of +ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less +than +those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly +unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent +oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring +elements of the manifold "Town" life from which they derive and +survive. +Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate +problem—that of understanding "Town" and its "School" in their origins +and simplest relations.</p> +<br /> +<h3>F—PROPOSED METHODICAL ANALYSIS</h3> +<h4>(1) THE TOWN</h4> +<p>More fully to understand this two-fold development of Town and +School we +have first of all apparently to run counter to the preceding popular +view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that +reached from the side of science. This, as we have already so fully +insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally <i>replacing</i> +People +and Affairs in our scheme above.</p> +<p>Starting then once more with the simple biological formula:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>ENVIRONMENT ... CONDITIONS ... ORGANISM</p> +</div> +<p>this has but to be applied and defined by the social geographer to +become</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>REGION ... OCCUPATION ... FAMILY-type and Developments</p> +</div> +<p>which summarises precisely that doctrine of Montesquieu and his +successors already insisted on. Again, in but slight variation from Le +Play's simplest phrasing <i>("Lieu, travail, famille")</i> we have</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK</p> +</div> +<p>It is from this simple and initial social formula that we have now +to +work our way to a fuller understanding of Town and School. <span class="pagenum">p. 71</span> +Immediately, therefore, this must be traced upward towards its +complexities. For Place, it is plain, is no mere topographic site. +Work, +conditioned as it primarily is by natural advantages, is thus really +first of all <i>place-work</i>. Arises the field or garden, the port, +the +mine, the workshop, in fact the <i>work-place</i>, as we may simply +generalise it; while, further, beside this arise the dwellings, the +<i>folk-place</i>.</p> +<p>Nor are these by any means all the elements we are accustomed to +lump +together into Town. As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold +complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must +carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of +this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use. +Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ +and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their +inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our +common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as +economists +have alternately done—too literally losing or shirking essentials of +Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk +and +Place also.</p> +<p>Tabular and schematic presentments, however, such as those to which +we +are proceeding, are apt to be less simple and satisfactory to reader +than to writer; and this even when in oral exposition the very same +diagram has been not only welcomed as clear, but seen and felt to be +convincing. The reason of this difficulty is that with the spoken +exposition the audience sees the diagram grow upon the blackboard; +whereas to produce anything of the same effect upon the page, it must +be +printed at several successive stages of development. Thus our initial +formula,</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK</p> +</div> +<p>readily develops into</p> +<span style="margin-left: 26em;">FOLK</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">PLACE-WORK + WORK + FOLK-WORK</span><br /> + (Natural +advantages) +(Occupation)<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">PLACE</span><br /> +<p>This again naturally develops into a regular table, of which the <span class="pagenum">p. 72</span> filling +up of some of the squares has been already suggested above, +and that of the remaining ones will be intelligible on inspection:—</p> +<br /> +<table + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 644px; height: 108px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="place work folk"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="1" rowspan="1"><span + style="margin-left: 1.5em;">PLACE FOLK <br /> + </span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">("Natives") </span></td> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="1" rowspan="1"> WORK-FOLK<br /> +("Producers")</td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"> FOLK</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">PLACE-WORK + </span></td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">WORK</span> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> FOLK-WORK</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">PLACE</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> WORK-PLACE </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> FOLK-PLACE</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p>So complex is the idea of even the simplest Town—even in such a +rustic +germ as the "farm-town" of modern Scottish parlance, the <i>ton</i> of +place-names without number.</p> +<p>The varying development of the Folk into social classes or castes +night +next be traced, and the influence and interaction of all the various +factors of Place, Work, and Family tabulated. Suffice it here, however, +for the present to note that such differentiation does take place, +without entering into the classification and comparison of the protean +types of patrician and plebeian throughout geography and history.</p> +<br /> +<h3>G—ANALYSIS CONTINUED.—(2) THE SCHOOL</h3> +<p>Once and again we have noted how from the everyday life of +action—the +Town proper of our terminology—there arises the corresponding +subjective world—the <i>Schools</i> of thought, which may express +itself +sooner or later in schools of education. The types of people, their +kinds and styles of work, their whole environment, all become +represented in the mind of the community, and these react upon the +individuals, their activities, their place itself. Thus (the more +plainly the more the community is a simple and an isolated one, but in +appreciable measure everywhere and continually) there have obviously +arisen local turns of thought and modes of speech, ranging from shades +of accept and idiom to distinctive dialect or language. Similarly, +there +is a characteristic variety of occupational activity, a style of +workmanship, a way of doing business. There are distinctive <span class="pagenum">p. 73</span> +manners and customs—there is, in short, a certain recognisable +likeness, it may be an indefinably subtle or an unmistakably broad and +general one, which may be traced in faces and costumes, in tongue and +literature, in courtesy and in conflict, in business and in policy, in +street and in house, from hovel to palace, from prison to cathedral. +Thus it is that every folk comes to have its own ways, and every town +its own school.</p> +<p>While the complex social medium has thus been acquiring its +characteristic form and composition, a younger generation has been +arising. In all ways and senses, Heredity is commonly more marked than +variation—especially when, as in most places at most times, such great +racial, occupational, environmental transformations occur as those of +modern cities. In other words, the young folk present not only an +individual continuity with their organic predecessors which is heredity +proper, but with their social predecessors also. The elements of +organic +continuity, which we usually think of first of all as organic though of +course psychic also, are conveniently distinguished as the +<i>inheritance</i>—a term in fact which the biologist seeks to deprive +of +its common economic and social senses altogether, leaving for these the +term <i>heritage</i>, material or immaterial alike. This necessary +distinction between the inheritance, bodily and mental, and the +heritage, economic and social, obviously next requires further +elaboration, and with this further precision of language also. For the +present, let us leave the term heritage to the economist for the +material wealth with which he is primarily concerned, and employ the +term <i>tradition</i> for these immaterial and distinctively social +elements +we are here specially considering. This in fact is no new proposal, but +really little more than an acceptance of ordinary usage. Broadly +speaking, tradition is in the life of the community what memory is for +its individual units. The younger generation, then, not only inherits +an +organic and a psychic diathesis; not only has transmitted to it the +accumulations, instruments and land of its predecessors, but grows up +in +their tradition also. The importance of imitation in this process, a +matter of common experience, has been given the fullest sociological +prominence, by M. Tarde especially.<a name="FNanchor_9"></a><a + href="#Footnote_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> Thanks to these and other +convergent lines of thought, we no longer consent to look at the +acquirement of the social tradition as a matter requiring to be imposed +upon reluctant youth almost entirely from without, and are learning +anew +as of old, with the simplest and the most developed peoples, the +barbarians and the Greeks, to recognise and respect, and, if it may be, +to nourish the process of self-instruction, viewed as normal +accompaniment of each developing being throughout the phases of its +<span class="pagenum">p. 74</span> +organic life, the stages of its social life. Upon the many +intermediate degrees of advance and decline, however, between these two +extremes of civilisation, specific institutions for the instruction of +youth arise, each in some way an artificial substitute, or at least a +would-be accelerant, for the apprenticeship of imitation in the school +of experience and the community's tradition, which we term a school in +the restricted and pedagogic sense. This whole discussion, however, has +been in order to explain and to justify the present use of the term +"School" in that wide sense in which the historian of art or +thought—the sociologist in fact—has ever used the term, while yet +covering the specialised pedagogic schools of all kinds also.</p> +<p>Once more, then, and in the fullest sense, every folk has its own +tradition, every town its school.</p> +<p>We need not here discriminate these unique and characteristic +elements +to which the art-historians—say of Venice and of Florence, of Barbizon +or Glasgow—specially attend from those most widely distributed ones, in +which the traditions and schools of all towns within the same +civilisation broadly agree. Indeed, even the most widely distributed of +these—say from Roman law to modern antiseptic surgery—arose as local +schools before they became general ones.</p> +<p>Similarly for the general social tradition. The fundamental +occupations +and their division of labour, their differentiation in detail and their +various interactions up to our own day, at first separately considered, +are now seen to be closely correlated with the status of woman; while +all these factors determine not only the mode of union of the parents, +but their relation to the children, the constitution of the family, +with +which the mode of transmission of property is again thoroughly +interwoven.</p> +<br /> +<h3>H—TOWN AND SCHOOL COMPARED</h3> +<br /><span class="pagenum"><a name='p_75'></a>p. 75</span> +<table summary="Town and school compared" + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 380px; height: 89px;" + border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td + style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><big>"TOWN"</big></td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td + style="text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">FOLK + <br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"> +WORK <br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">PLACE</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> + +<hr style="width: 35%; height: 2px;" /><br /> +<table summary="School comparison" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 374px; height: 88px;" + border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">SURVEY</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">CRAFT-KNOWLEDGE</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><big>"SCHOOL"</big></td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">CUSTOM</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p>We may now summarise and tabulate our comparison of Town and +School,<a name="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> +and on the schema (<a href='#p_75'>p. 75</a>) it will be seen <span class="pagenum">p. 76</span> +that each element of the second is printed in the position of a +mirror-reflection of the first. This gives but the merest outline, +which +is ready, however, to be applied in various ways and filled up +accordingly. A step towards this is made in the next and fuller version +of the scheme (<a href='#p_77'>p. 77</a>). It will be noted in this +that the lower +portion of the diagram, that of School, is more fully filled up than is +the upper. This is partly for clearness, but partly also to suggest +that +main elements in the origins of natural sciences and geography, of +economics and social science, are not always so clearly realised as +they +might be. The preceding diagram, elaborating that of Place, Work, Folk +(<a href='#p_75'>p. 75</a>), +however, at once suggests these. Other features of the +scheme will appear on inspection; and the reader will find it of +interest and suggestiveness to prepare a blank schedule and fill it up +for himself.</p> +<p>These two forms of the same diagram, the simple and the more +developed, +thus suggest comparison with the scheme previously outlined, that of +People, Affairs, Places (<a href='#p_68'>p. 68</a>), and is now more +easily reconciled +with this; the greater prominence popularly given to People and Affairs +being expressed upon the present geographic and evolutionary scheme by +the ascending position and more emphatic printing (or by viewing the +diagram as a transparency from the opposite side of the leaf).</p> +<p>In the column of People, the deepening of custom into morals is +indicated. Emphasis is also placed upon the development of law in +connection with the rise of governing classes, and its tendency to +dominate the standards previously taken as morals—in fact, that +tendency of moral law to become static law, a process of which history +is full.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name='p_77'></a>p. 77</span> +<table summary="Governing classes" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 536px; height: 354px;" + border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">GOVERNING +CLASSES</span><br /> +/\<br /> +|<br /> + <span style="font-weight: bold;">Family types</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">INDUSTRIES</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">REGION<br /> +|<br /> + </span></td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="text-decoration: underline;">(WORK-PLACE)</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">FOLK-PLACE<br /> + <span style="font-weight: bold;">(TOWN)</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">\/<br /> + <span style="font-weight: bold;">SURVEY</span><br /> +! - LANDSCAPE<br /> +? - TERRITORY<br /> +|<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(<span + style="text-decoration: underline;">CRAFT-TRADITION</span>)<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">("SCHOOL")</span><br /> +(FOLK-LORE)<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">\/<br /> +[NATURAL SCIENCES]<br /> +|<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">[</span><span + style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">APPLIED SCIENCES</span><span + style="font-weight: bold;">]</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">[SOCIAL SCIENCES]</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">\/<br /> +GEOGRAPHY<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">ECONOMICS</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">CUSTOM MORALS +& LAWS</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<br /> +><br /> +><br /> +<p>In the present as in the past, we may also note upon the scheme the +different lines of Place, Work and Folk on which respectively develop +the natural sciences, the applied or <span class="pagenum">p. 78</span> technical sciences, and +finally the social sciences, and the generalising of these respectively.</p> +<p>Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its +literal +and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that +aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural +sciences—but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they +really are, each a <i>geolysis</i>—so these sciences or geolyses, +again, are +tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of +the evolution of the cosmos.</p> +<p>Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the +evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic +process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt +to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we +cannot +really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant; +or +Lister and his antiseptic surgery better than as the shepherd, with his +tar-box by his side; or Kelvin or any other electrician, as the +thinking +smith, and so on. The old story of geometry, as "<i>ars metrike</i>," +and of +its origin from land-surveying, for which the Egyptian hieroglyph is +said to be that of "rope stretching," in fact, applies far more fully +than most realise, and the history of every science, of course already +thus partially written, will bear a far fuller application of this +principle. In short, the self-taught man, who is ever the most fertile +discoverer, is made in the true and fundamental school—that of +experience.</p> +<p>The need of abbreviating the recapitulation of this, however, sooner +or +later develops the school in the pedagogic sense, and its many +achievements, its many failures in accomplishing this, might here be +more fully analysed.</p> +<p>Still more evident is this process in the column of Folk. From the +mother's knee and the dame's school of the smallest folk-place, the +townlet or hamlet, <i>ton</i> or home, up to the royal and priestly +school of +the law of ancient capitals, or from the "humanities" of a mediaeval +university to the "Ecole de Droit" of a modern metropolis, the series +of +essential evolutionary stages may be set down. Or in our everyday +present, <span class="pagenum">p. 79</span> +the rise of schools of all kinds, primary, +secondary, higher up to the current movement towards university +colleges, and from these to civic and regional universities, might +again +be traced. The municipalisation of education is thus in fact expressed, +and so on.</p> +<p>Leaving the schools in the main to speak for themselves of their +advancing and incipient uses, a word may be said upon the present lines.</p> +<p>As a first and obvious application of this mode of geographic study +of +cities appears the criticism, and; when possible, the amendment of the +city's plan, the monotonous rectangularity of the American city, and +the +petty irregularity more common in our own, being alike uneconomic and +inartistic because ungeographic, irrational because irregional. With +the +improvement of communications, the physicist's point of view thus +introduced—that of the economy of the energies of the community—is +only beginning; the economy of fuel, the limitation of smoke and fogs +being symptoms of this and pointing to a more economic organisation of +industrial activities generally. But this next carries with it the +improved efficiency of the producers themselves, with whom, however, +the +standpoint changes from the mere economisation of physical energies to +the higher economy of organic evolution. The convention of traditional +economics, that the productive capacity of the actual labourer is the +sole concern of his science, thus gives place to what is at once the +original conception of economics and the evolutionist one, viz., that +the success of industry is ultimately measured neither by its return in +wealth of the capitalist nor in money wages of the labourer, nor even +by +both put together, but in the results of industry upon the concrete +environment, the family budget, the home, and the corresponding state +of +development of the family—its deterioration or progress. The +organisation of industrial groups or of representative institutions +found conducive to the well-being and progress of these prime civic +units, the families, may now be traced into its highest outcome in city +government. The method of analysis and graphic statement thus outlined +may be shown to be even capable of useful application towards the +statement of the best<span class="pagenum">p. 80</span> arguments of both progressive and +moderate parties in city politics.</p> +<p>Passing from Politics to Culture. Culture, the needs of this also +become +clearer; each community developing a similar general series of culture +institutions, from the simplest presentation of its geography, +landscape and architecture, to the complex development of industrial, +technical and scientific instruction; and for provision also for the +institutions of custom and ethic in school, law, and church. Just as +place, occupation, and family are intimately connected in the practical +world, so their respective culture institutions must more and more be +viewed as a whole. Civic improvers will find their ideals more +realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social +development of which all the departments of action and thought are in +organic relation, be it of health or disease. The view of theoretic +civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied +sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social +survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed +in many cities being begun.</p> +<br /> +<h3>I—DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL, AND ITS REACTION UPON TOWN</h3> +<p>The reactions of the School upon the Town are observed in practice +to be +of very different values;—how are these differences to be explained?</p> +<p>From the very first the school is essentially one of memory, the +impress +of the town-life, even at its best and highest individual quality and +impressiveness, as in the work of a great master, the observation and +memory of which may long give his stamp to the work of his followers. +The fading of this into dullness, yet the fixing of it as a convention, +is familiar to all in arts and crafts, but is no less real in the +general lapse of appreciation of environment. Most serious of all is +the +fixation of habit and custom, so that at length "custom lies upon us +with a weight heavy as death, and deep <span class="pagenum">p. 81</span> almost as life." This +continual fixation of fashionable standards as moral ones is thus a +prime explanation of each reformer's difficulty in making his moral +standard the fashionable one, and also, when his doctrine has +succeeded, +of the loss of life and mummification of form which it so speedily +undergoes.</p> +<p>Of conventional "education," considered as the memorisation of past +records, however authoritative and classic, the decay is thus +intelligible and plain, and the repetition of criticisms already +adequately made need not therefore detain us here.</p> +<p>For this process is there no remedy? Science here offers +herself—with +senses open to observe, and intellect awake to interpret. Starting with +Place, she explores and surveys it, from descriptive travel books at +very various levels of accuracy, she works on to atlas and gazetteer, +and beyond these to world-globe and "Geographie Universelle." With her +charts and descriptions we are now more ready for a journey; with her +maps and plans we may know our own place as never before; nay, rectify +it, making the rough places plain and the crooked straight; even +restoration may come within our powers.</p> +<p>Similarly as regards Work. Though mere empiric craft-mastery dies +with +the individual, and fails with his successors, may we not perpetuate +the +best of this? A museum of art treasures, a collection of the choicest +examples of all times and lands, will surely raise us from our low +level +of mechanical toil; nay, with these carefully observed, copied, +memorised, and duly examined upon, we shall be able to imitate them, to +reproduce their excellencies, even to adapt them to our everyday work. +To the art museum we have thus but to add a "School of Design," to have +an output of more and less skilled copyists. The smooth and polished +successes of this new dual institution, responding as they do to the +mechanical elements of modern work and of the mechanical worker-mind, +admitting also of ready multiplications as patterns, ensure the wide +extension of the prevalent style of imitating past styles, designing +patchwork of these; and even admit of its scientific reduction to a +definite series of grades, which imitative youth may easily pass +onwards +from the age of rudest innocence to that of art-knowledge and +certificated art-mastery. Our School of Design thus becomes a School of +Art, a length a College, dominating the instruction of the nation, to +the satisfaction not only of its promoters, but of the general public +and their representatives, so that annual votes justly increase. +Lurking +discontent may now and then express itself, but is for practical +purposes negligible.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span> +The example of art accumulation and art instruction is thus +naturally followed in other respects. For the commercial information of +the public, varied representative exhibitions—primarily, therefore, +international ones—naturally suggest themselves; while so soon as +expansion of imperial and colonial interests comes upon the first +plane, +a corresponding permanent Exhibition is naturally instituted. But when +thus advancing commercial instruction, we must also recognise the +claims +of industry in all its crafts and guilds, and in fact the technical +instruction of the community generally. Hence the past, present, and +promised rise of technical institutes upon increasing scales of +completeness.</p> +<p>In the rise of such a truly encylopædic system of schools, the +university cannot permanently be forgotten. Since from the outset we +have recognised the prime elements of the school in observation and +memory, the testing of these by examinations—written, oral, and +practical—however improvable in detail, must be fairly recognised, and +the examining body or university has therefore to be adopted as the +normal crown of our comprehensive educational system. Teaching, however +is found to be increasingly necessary, especially to examination, and +for this the main field left open is in our last column, that of +People. +Their lore of the past, whether of sacred or classical learning, their +history, literature, and criticism, are already actively promoted, or +at +any rate adequately endowed at older seats of learning; while the +materials, resources, conditions and atmosphere are here of other +kinds. +Hence the accessibility of the new University of London to the study of +sociology, as yet alone among its peers.</p> +<p>Hence, beside the great London, maritime, commercial and industrial, +residential and governmental, there has been growing up, tardily +indeed, +as compared with smaller cities, yet now all the more massively and +completely, a correspondingly comprehensive system of schools; so that +the historic development of South Kensington within the last half +century, from International Exhibitions of Work, Natural History +Museums +of Place onwards to its present and its contemplated magnitude, affords +a striking exemplification of the present view and its classification, +which is all the more satisfactory since this development has been a +gradual accretion.</p> +<p>Enough then has been said to show that the rise of schools, their +qualities and their defects, are all capable of treatment upon the +present lines; but if so, may we not go farther, and ask by what means +does thought and life cope with their defects, especially that fixation +of memory, even at its best, that evil side of examination and the +like, +which we often call Chinese in the bad sense, but which we see arises +so +naturally everywhere?</p> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 83</span> +<h3> J—FROM "SCHOOL" TO "CLOISTER"</h3> +<p>The preceding view is, as yet, too purely determinist. The due place +of +ideals, individual and corporate, in their reaction upon the function +and the structure of the city, and even upon its material environment, +has next to be recognised. For where the town merely makes and fixes +its +industry and makes its corresponding schools, where its habits and +customs become its laws, even its morality, the community, as we have +just seen, sinks into routine, and therefore decay. To prevent this a +twofold process of thought is ever necessary, critical and +constructive. +What are these? On the one hand, a continual and critical selection +among the ideas derived from experience, and the formulation of these +as +Ideals: and further, the organisation of these into a larger and larger +whole of thought; in fact, a Synthesis of a new kind. This critical +spirit it is which produced the prophets of Israel, the questioning of +Socrates, and so on, to the journalistic and other criticism of life +to-day. The corresponding constructive endeavour is now no mere School +of traditional learning or of useful information. It is one of science +in a new and reorganised sense; one of philosophy also, one of ideals +above all.</p> +<p>As from the Schools of the Law, as over against these, arise the +prophets, so from the technical and applied sciences, the descriptive +natural sciences, should arise the scientific thinkers, reinterpreting +each his field of knowledge and giving us the pure sciences—pure +geometry henceforth contrasted with mere land surveying, morphology +with +mere anatomy, and so on; while instead of the mere concrete +encyclopædia +from Pliny or Gesner to Diderot or Chambers, vast subjective +reorganisations of knowledge, philosophic systems, now appear. +Similarly, the mere observations of the senses and their records in +memory become transformed into the images of the poet, the imagery too +of the artist, for art proper is only thus born. That mere imitation of +nature, which so commonly in the graphic arts (though happily but +rarely +in music) has been mistaken for <span class="pagenum">p. 84</span> art, thus modestly returns to +its proper place—that of the iconography of descriptive science.</p> +<p>Thus from the Schools of all kinds of knowledge, past and present, +we +pass into the no less varied Cloisters of contemplation, meditation, +imagination. With the historian we might explore the Cloisters of the +past, built at one time from the current ideals of the Good, at another +of the True, at another of the Beautiful; indeed, in widely varying +measures and proportions from all of these. How far each of these now +expresses the present, how far it may yet serve the future, is +obviously a question of questions, yet for that very reason one +exceeding our present limits. Enough if in city life the historic place +of what is here generalised under this antique name of Cloister be here +recognised; and in some measure the actual need, the potential place be +recognised also. Here is the need and use, beyond the fundamental +claims +of the material life of the Town, and the everyday sanity of the +Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense +and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and +their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can +afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has +been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an +imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the senses. In +our age of the multiplication and expansion of towns, of their +enrichment and their impoverishment, of the multiplication and +enrichment of schools also, it is well for the sociologist to read from +history, as he then may more fully see also around him that it is ever +some fresh combination of these threefold products of the +Cloister—ideal theory, and imagery—emotional, intellectual, +sensuous—which transforms the thought-world of its time.</p> +<p>The philosopher of old in his academic grove, his porch, the +mediaeval +monk within his studious cloister's pale, are thus more akin to the +modern scientific thinker than he commonly realises—perhaps because he +is still, for the most part, of the solitary individualism of the +hermit +of the Thebaid, of Diogenes in his tub. Assuredly, they are less +removed +in essential psychology than their derived fraternities, their <span class="pagenum">p. 85</span> +respective novices and scholars, have often thought. It is thus no +mere play of language which hands on from the one to the other the +"travail de Bénédictin," though even here the phrase is +inadequate +savouring too much of the school, into which each cloister of every +sort +declines sooner or later, unless even worse befall.</p> +<p>The decay of the cloister, though thus on the one hand into and with +the +school, may also take place within itself, since imagination and ideal +may be evil, and theory false. That examples of all these decays abound +in the history of religion, of philosophy, of art also, is a +commonplace +needing no illustration. Nor should the modern investigator think his +science or himself immune to the same or kindred germs in turn.</p> +<br /> +<h3>K—THE CITY PROPER</h3> +<p>Now, "at long last," we are ready to enter the city proper. This is +not +merely the Town of place and work and folk, even were this at their +economic best. It is not enough to add the School, even at its +completest; nor the cloister, though with this a yet greater step +towards the city proper is made. For though this is not itself the +City, +its ideals of human relations, its theory of the universe and man, its +artistic expression and portrayal of all these, ever sooner or later +react upon the general view and conduct of life. Hence the Academe of +Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, the mediaeval cloister and the +modern +Research Institute, have been so fertile, so creative in their +influence +upon the city's life, from which they seemed to be retired. Hence it is +ever some new combination of the threefold product of the +cloister—ideal, idea, and image—which transforms the world, which +opens each new epoch. Each new revelation and vision, each system of +thought, each new outburst of poetry and song, has moved the men of its +age by no mere mechanical pressure of economic need or external force, +by no mere scholastic instruction, but in a far subtler way, and into +new and unexpected groupings, as the <span class="pagenum">p. 86</span> sand upon Chladon's +vibrating plate leaps into a new figure with each thrill of the +violinist's bow.</p> +<p>Instead of simply developing our morals from custom, and therefore +codifying them into law as in the school they are now boldly +criticised, +as in part if not in whole, hindrances to a better state of things. As +this becomes more and more clearly formulated as an ideal, its ethic +transcendence of convention and law not only becomes clear, but the +desire for its realisation becomes expressed. This may be with all +degrees of clearness of reason and vividness of imagery, yet may remain +long or altogether in the plane of literature, as has Plato's Republic +or More's Utopia—standard and characteristic types of the cloister +library as we may call it, one of inestimable value to the world in the +past, and perhaps in our time needed as much as ever to help us to see +somewhat beyond the output of the busy presses of town and school. Yet +our ideal, our "Civitas Dei," "Civitas Solis," need not remain +unrealised: it may be not only seriously planned towards realisation, +as +was Platonopolis of old, but bravely founded, as has been done in cases +without number, from the ancient world to modern communities, by no +means wholly unsuccessful. Though in our great industrial towns, our +long settled regions, such new departures seem less easy, the +principle remains valid—that it is in our ideal of polity and +citizenship, and in our power of realising this, that the city proper +has its conception and its birth. Again, instead of simply deriving our +thought from experience we now project our clarified thought into +action +and into education; so that from cloister of philosophy, and from its +long novitiate of silence, there grows up the brotherhood of culture, +the culture city itself. Similarly in art, we no longer imitate nature, +nor copy traditional designs. Art proper appears, shaping bronze and +marble into images of the gods, and on a burnt and ruined hill-fort +renewing the Parthenon. In general terms, instead of simply adjusting, +as in the school, our mental picture to the outward facts, we reverse +the process; and with a new art conception, be it good or bad, we +transform the outward world, like wax under the seal. Thus from the +<span class="pagenum">p. 88</span> +cloister and chapel of the musician, the studio-cell of the +artist, the scriptorium of the poet, comes forth the architect, +remodelling the city around his supreme material expression and home of +its moral and material reorganisation, its renewed temporal and +spiritual powers. Of this, the city proper, the Acropolis of Athens, +the +Temple of Jerusalem, the Capitol and Forum of Rome are classic and +central examples, and in the mediaeval city, pre-eminently the +cathedral; though beside this we must not forget the town house and its +belfry, the guild houses, the colleges, the great place, the fountains, +the city cross, and if last, still best if good at all, the streets and +courts and homes. Returning once more to the history of educational +development, we have here a means of unravelling the apparently +perplexing history of universities. For the university past or present +has but its foundations in the school, with its local and its general +tradition, whatever may be the accordance of these with +well-ascertained +fact, its true novitiate can only be afforded in the cloister of +reflection and research, of interpretation and synthesis; while for its +full development it needs the perpetual renewal of that generous social +life—that inspiring intercourse "of picked adolescents and picked +senescents"—which has marked the vital periods of every university +worthy of the name.<br /> +</p><a name='p_87'></a> +<p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="(EU)-POLITY" + title="(EU)-POLITY" src="images/img001.jpg" + style="width: 512px; height: 780px;" /><br /> +</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<p>In summary then, to the town has been added the school, with its +advantages, its increasingly obvious limitations also, which it is for +the cloister to remedy—even the advantages of the barrack finding a +main element of its claim in this no less than in its professed +training +as regards citizenship. But here also it is for few to remain, albeit +free for each to return at will. Ideals, to survive, must surely live, +that is, be realised; hence for full life one needs "to meditate with +the free solitary; yet to live secular, and serve mankind."</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><img + alt="Town, school, cloister and city." + title="Town, school, cloister and city." src="images/img002.jpg" + style="width: 400px; height: 260px;" /></span><br /> +</div> +<br /> +<h3>L—THE CITY COMPLIED: TOWN, SCHOOL, CLOISTER, AND CITY PROPER</h3> +<p>In course of this fourfold analysis, it is plain that we have +reached +the very converse—or at all events the <span class="pagenum">p. 90</span> complement—of that +geographical determinism with which we started, and that we have +returned to a view corresponding to the popular one (of "People, +Affairs, Places," <a href='#p_69'>p. 69</a>), which we then set +aside for the reasons +given. +The "great man theory" of history, at best less crudely stated, thus +reappears; in short, to the initial thesis we have now the distinct +antithesis. It is time, therefore, to bring these together towards the +needed synthesis. Hence to the page (<a href='#p_77'>p. 77</a>) on +which was summarised the +determinist view of Town and School, we now require the complemental +statement upon page (<a href='#p_87'>p. 87</a>) of Cloister and City +proper. Nor must we be +content, with too many controversialists hitherto, to keep in view only +one at a time; but by folding back the pages of print between these two +half-schemes, as the book lies open, to take in both together.</p> +<p>We may thus finally compress the essentials of this whole paper into +a +simple formula—</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><img + alt="Town, school, cloister and city." + title="Town, school, cloister and city." src="images/img003.jpg" + style="width: 512px; height: 336px;" /><br /> +</div> +<p>or most briefly—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Town, city, cloister, school" + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 254px; height: 102px;"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" style="text-align: center;">|<br /> +|<br /> +|<br /> +\/<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> TOWN </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> CITY<br /> + </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">/\<br /> +|<br /> +|<br /> +|<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"> SCHOOL</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> CLOISTER</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>—noting +in every case the opposite direction of the arrows. +The application of this formula to different types of town, such as +those already indicated in the former instalment of this paper (Vol. +I., +<a href='#p_107'>p. 107</a>) or in the present one, will not be found +to present any +insuperable difficulty. It must, however, be kept clearly in view that +the city of each day and generation subsides or decays more or less +completely into the mere town anew, as the cloister into the schools. +The towns and cities of the world are thus classifiable in terms of +their past development and present condition.</p> +<br /> +<h4>SUMMARY</h4> +<p>Condensing now this lengthy, yet compressed and abbreviated series +of +analyses into a single page of summary, we may briefly define the main +aspects and departments of civics from the present point of view. First +then, comes the study of civics as fundamentally (and ever anew) an +orderly development—at once geographic, economic, and anthropologic in +its nature—a survey of place, work, and folk—and these not merely or +mainly as broken up into the fine dust of censuses and statistics, nor +even of the three too separate sciences above named, but as a living +unity, the human hive, the Town.</p> +<p>Corresponding to this objective and organic life we reorganise its +fundamental subjective life. This is fundamentally, and ever partially, +the record and reflex of the life of the hive, the Town: of all its +general and particular environment and function, its family type and +development; and however overlaid by imported culture or by decayed +ideals, it is fundamentally expressed in local knowledge, in craft +tradition, in kinship and its associated kindness, in habits and +customs, and their developments up to morals and laws. Simple terms +corresponding to place, work, and folk, are hard to find; say, however, +till better be suggested, that in close relation to the maternal arms +in +which general social thought and its utmost pedagogic developments +alike begin, it is place-lore, work-lear, and folk-love, which are the +essentials of every <span class="pagenum">p. 92</span> School.<a name="FNanchor_11"></a><a + href="#Footnote_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> That existing educational +machineries may not adequately recognise these is not of course the +question here.</p> +<p>These three terms, lore, lear, and love are thus well related to +their +respectively deepening levels of sense, intelligence and feeling; and +their respective relation is thus more plain to the imagery, the +theory, +and the idealism above defined as the essentials of the Cloister. The +psychology of the processes of poetic, philosophic and spiritual +awakening and renewal is in these days being approached anew, both from +the individual and social side, but cannot here be entered upon.</p> +<p>Finally and supremely arises the City proper—its individuality +dependent upon the measure and form in which ideals are expressed and +harmonised in social life and polity, ideas synthetised in culture, and +beauty carried outwards from the study or chamber of the recluse into +the world of art.</p> +<br /> +<h4>Practical conclusion</h4> +The investigation of the City thus tends towards the practice of +citizenship. Thus social survey prepares for social service, as +diagnosis towards treatment and hygiene; and these react fruitfully +upon +our knowledge and understanding anew. Beyond social observations, and +the needed observatories for making them more adequately, we need +social +activities and the laboratories for preparing them, or at least the +leavens of them; or, again, in happier phrase, at once simple and more +synthetic, we need some shelter<a name="FNanchor_12"></a><a + href="#Footnote_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> into which to gather the best +<span class="pagenum">p. 93</span> seed +of past flowerings and in which to raise and tend the +seedlings of coming summers. We need definitely to acquire such a +centre +of survey and service in each and every city—in a word, a Civicentre +for sociologist and citizen. +<br /> +<p><br /> +</p> +<h3>M—THE HISTORIC CITY-COMPLEX</h3> +<p>The criticism may have already arisen in the reader's mind that the +"Town" and "School" of our analysis are by no means so simple as we +have +assumed them. Our surveys of antique towns ever disclose the material +survivals, at least the vestiges, of the cloister or the acropolis of +the past, of its cathedral or its forum. The processes of our +industries, in what is now their daily artisan routine, include, +repeat, +condense, what were yesterday or longer ago living inventions, each +instinct with Promethean fire. The hackneyed ornament of our homes was +once glowing with beauty, radiant or dark with symbolism. So it is for +our everyday customs and institutions, and so for living languages; our +own, perhaps, most of all. These, of course, are facts made familiar by +investigators of all orders, from the scholar and antiquary of old, the +historian and philologist of yesterday, to the geographer or the +sociologist of our own time: witness Mr. Spencer's masterly treatment +of +their main results. How, then, shall we correlate this process of all +things growing old with the analysis of cities above attempted? In +other +words, how shall we interpret the course of their historic evolution, +their renewed growth and decay, progress and degeneracy, their present +condition, crowded with residues of the past, with those potentialities +which our outline discloses? This is the more necessary since this +fourfold analysis applies in principle to all human groupings from the +simplest village to the Eternal City. To this, indeed, we have in +principle already traced it, onwards from our primitive valley section +with its humble hamlets, its fundamental occupations. Returning then to +our main diagram, with its four-fold analysis of the City so soon as we +have completed this, and <span class="pagenum">p. 94</span> carried its progress up to the level +of city life proper, we must next turn over the leaf and begin a new +page, with place and work and folk once more. This simplest of acts +expresses with graphic significance the very process of history; for in +closing our diagram page its "Cloister" has been folded down on the +"School," our cathedral and forum, our "City" proper upon the "Town." +Thus it is that the ideals and the achievements of one day and +generation and city are ever melting away, and passing out of sight of +the next; so that to the joy or sorrow of the successors the new page +seems well nigh bare, though ever there comes faintly through some +image +or at least blurred suggestion of the fading past. Hence each page of +history is a palimpsest. Hence our modern town, even when yesterday but +prairie, was no mere vacant site, but was at once enriched and +encumbered by the surviving traditions of the past; so that even its +new +buildings are for the most part but vacant shells of past art, of which +now only the student cares to trace the objective annals, much less +penetrate to the inner history. So for the decayed Renaissance learning +of our schools, for the most part so literally dead since the +"Grammarian's Funeral"; and so, too, for the unthinking routines, the +dead customs and conventions, and largely too the laws and rituals of +our urban lives. Hence, then, it is that for the arrest and the decay +of +cities we have no need to go for our examples to the ancient East. +These +processes, like those of individual senility and death, are going on +everywhere day by day.</p> +<p>Upon the new page, then, it is but a complexer "Town" and "School" +anew: +we have no continuing City. This too commonly has existed at its best +but for the rare generation which created it, or little longer; though +its historic glories, like those of sunset and of after-glow, may long +shed radiance and glamour upon its town, and linger in the world's +memory long after not only these have faded, but their very folk have +vanished, their walls fallen, nay their very site been buried or +forgotten. Upon all these degrees of dying, all these faint and fading +steps between immortality and oblivion, we may arrange what we call our +historic cities. Obviously in the <span class="pagenum">p. 95</span> deeper and more living +sense the city exists only in actualising itself; and thus to us it is +that the ideal city lies ever in the future. Yet it is the very essence +of this whole argument that an ideal city is latent in every town. +Where +shall we in these days find our cloistered retreats to think out such +ideals as may be applicable in our time and circumstances: the needed +kinetic ethics, the needed synthetic philosophy and science, the needed +vision and imagery and expression of them all?</p> +<br /> +<h3>N—THE EVILS OF THE CITY</h3> +<h3>Disease, defect, vice and crime</h3> +<p>I have spoken little of town evils, and much of town ideals, +primarily +for the reason that even to recognise, much less treat, the abnormal, +we +must know something of the normal course of evolution. Hence, the old +and useful phrase by which physiology used to be known, that of "the +institutes of medicine." Sociology has thus to become "the institutes +of +citizenship."</p> +<p>Often though philanthropists forget this, diagnosis should precede +treatment. The evils of the city, by the very nature of our hypothesis, +demand special survey, and this no less thoroughly than do the normal +place and work and industry. It is only our most permanent intellectual +impulse, that of seeking for unity, which excuses the cheap unitary +explanations so often current; as, for instance, that social evils are +mainly to be explained by intemperance, as for one school of reformers; +by poverty or luxury, for a second and third; by Tammany or other form +of party government, by socialism or by individualism for yet others; +that they are due to dissent or to church, to ignorance or to the +spread +of science, and so on almost indefinitely—doubtless not without +elements of truth in each!</p> +<p>Yet let me offer as yet another explanation of civic evils, this +more +general one—distinguished from the preceding by including them all and +more—that not only is our "Town" in itself imperfect, but the other +three elements we have been characterising as school, cloister and +city, +are yet more imperfect, since disordered, decayed, or undeveloped anew. +It is because of each and all of these imperfect realisations of our +civic life, that the evils of life sink down, or flame out, into these +complex eruptions of social evils with which our human aggregations are +as yet cursed.</p> +<p>Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with +ignorance +and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too +separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of +being viewed together, and largely even treated together. They are not +unrelated, but correspond each as the negative to that fourfold +presentment of ideals we have hitherto been raising. To this ideal +unity +of healthy town, with its practical and scientific schools of all +kinds, +with its meditative cloister of ethical and social idealism, of unified +science and philosophy, of imagination and drama, all culminating in +the polity, culture, and art which make a city proper, we have here the +corresponding defects in detail.</p> +<p>The evils of existing city life are thus largely reinterpreted; and +if +so more efficiently combated; since the poverty, squalor and ugliness +of +our cities, their disease and their intemperance, their ignorance, +dulness and mental defect, their vice and crime are thus capable not +only of separate treatment but of an increasingly unified civic +hygiene, +and this in the widest sense, material and moral, economic and +idealist, +utilitarian and artistic. Even the most earnest and capable workers +towards civic betterment in these many fields may gain at once in hope +and in efficiency as they see their special interests and tasks +converging into the conception of the city as an organic unity, and +this +not fixed and settled, nor even in process of progress or degeneration +from causes beyond our ken, but as an orderly development which we may +aid towards higher perfection, geographic and cultural alike.</p> +<p>Our modern town is thus in a very real sense, one not hopeless, but +as +hopeful as may be, a veritable purgatory; that is a struggle of lower +and higher idealisms, amid the respective expressions and outcomes of +these. Indeed, in our own present <span class="pagenum">p. 97</span> cities, as they have come +to be, is not each of us ever finding his own Inferno, or it may be his +Paradise? Does he not see the dark fate of some, the striving and +rising +hope of others, the redemption also?</p> +<p>The supreme poetic utterance of the mediaeval world is thus in great +measure, as each thoughtful reader sees, an expression of impassioned +citizenship and this at one of the golden moments of the long history +of +city life. This expression—this exiled citizen's autobiographic +thought-stream—is resumed at every level, from youthful home and local +colour, from boyish love and hopes, from active citizenship and party +struggle, to the transfiguration of all these. Hence these mystic +visions, and these world ambitions, temporal and spiritual; hence this +rise from cloistered faith and philosophy into many-sided culture; +hence +the transformation of all these through intensest symbol-visions into +enduring song.</p> +<p>Am I thus suggesting the <i>Divina Comedia</i> as a guide-book to +cities? +Without doubt, though not necessarily for beginners. Yet who can see +Florence without this, though we may pack below it Baedeker and Murray? +Or who, that can really read, can open a volume of Mr. Booth's severely +statistical Survey of London, with all its studious reserve, its +scientific repression, without seeing between its lines the Dantean +circles; happy if he can sometimes read them upward as well as down?</p> +<br /> +<h3>O—A CIVIC SYMBOL AND ITS MEANING</h3> +<p>But such books of the city, whether of the new and observant type, +from +Baedeker to Booth, or of the old and interpretative Dantean one, are +too +vast and varied to keep open before us. Even the preceding open page of +diagram is complex enough with its twofold, indeed four-fold city; and +we are called back to our daily work in the first of these divisions, +that of the everyday town. Since its subjective aspects of school and +cloister may fade from memory, its higher aspect also, that of city +proper, how can we retain this fourfold <span class="pagenum">p. 98</span> analysis, and how +test if it be true? Take then one final illustration; this time no mere +logical skeleton, however simple or graphic, but an image more easily +retained, because a concrete and artistic one, and moreover in terms of +that form of life-labour and thought-notation—that of current +coin—which, in our day especially, dominates this vastest of cities; +and hence inherits for the region of its home and centre—"the Bank" +which has so thoroughly taken precedence of the town-house and +cathedral, of the fortress and palace—the honoured name of "City." The +coinages of each time and place combine concrete and social use with +statements of historic facts; and they add to both of these a wealth of +emblematic suggestions: but that is to say, they express not only their +town, and something of its <i>school</i>, but much of its thought +also, its +<i>cloister</i> in my present terminology.</p> +<p>So before me lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side +stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild, +"<i>Non marte sed arte</i>." Here then the industrial "Town" and its +"School" +express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been +above +defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since +Perth <i>(Bertha aurea)</i> had been the northmost of all Rome's +provincial +capitals, her re-named "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald +must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the +Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic +dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On +the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard, +since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of +1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the +banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, +and +one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual +strife with the feudal nobles, "<i>Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege</i>." Here +then, +plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty +provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only +of +the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find +clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole <span class="pagenum">p. 99</span> four-fold +analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been above labouring for. +For what makes the industrial Town, what can better keep it than +strenuous industry at its anvil? How better express its craft school, +its local style and skill, its reaction too upon the town's life in +peace and war, than by this Hal o' the Wynd by his forge? Nay, what +better symbol than this hammer, this primitive tool and ever typical +one, of the peaceful education of experience, form Prometheus to +Kelvin, +of the warlike, from Thor to modern cannon-forge? Turning now from Town +and School to Cloister, to the life of secluded peace and +meditation—from which, however, the practical issues of life are ever +renewed—what plainer symbol, yet what more historic or more mystic one +can we ask than this of the lamb with the banner? While of the +contrasted yet complemental civic life of fullest, broadest action, +what +expression like the Roman eagle—the very eyes of keenness, and the +spreading wings of power?</p> +<p>So rarely perfect then is this civic symbol, that I must not omit to +mention that it has only come to my notice since the body of this +paper, +with its four-fold analysis of cities as above outlined, was +essentially +finished. Since it thus has not in any particular suggested the +treatment of cities here advocated, it is the more interesting and +encouraging as a confirmation of it. It is also to my mind plain that +in +this, as in many other of our apparent "advances in science," and +doubtless those in social studies particularly, we are but learning to +think things anew, long after our forefathers have lived them, even +expressed them—and these in their ways no less clear and popular than +can ever be ours. That we may also again live them is once more +curiously expressed by the same symbol; for its re-appearance is due to +its having been appropriately revived, in a fitting art form, that of +the commemorative and prize medal of the local arts and crafts +exhibition, held in the new Public Library, under civic auspices. +Little +scrutiny of this last sentence will be needed to see the four-fold +completeness of the civic event which it describes.</p> +<p>For just as we have seen on the old coin the hammerman <span class="pagenum">p. 100</span> and +his motto answer to the town and school; so now on its reissue to the +renascent local arts and crafts, with their commemoration in this +library. And as the greater motto, that of widest policy, corresponds +to +the cloister of reflection and resolve, so we note that this new +impulse +to civic betterment is associated with the new library—no mere +school-house of memory, but also the open cloister of our day. Finally, +note that this impulse is no longer merely one of aesthetic purpose, of +"art for art's sake," nor its execution that of a cultured minority +merely; it announces a re-union of this culture and art with the civic +polity. What fitter occasion, then, for the striking of a medal, than +this renewal of civic life, with municipal organisation and polity, art +and culture, renascent in unison. That such events are nowadays far +from +exceptional is so true that we are in danger of losing sight of their +significance. Yet it is amid such city developments that the future +Pericles must arise.</p> +<p>We thus see that our analysis is no mere structural one, made +post-mortem from civic history; but that it applies to the modern +functioning of everyday life in an everyday city, so soon as this +becomes touched anew towards cultural issues. Furthermore, it is thus +plain that civic life not only has long ago anticipated and embodied +our +theories of it, but once more outruns them, expressing them far better +than in words—in life and practice. In this way the reader who may most +resent these unfamiliar methods of exposition, alternately by abstract +diagram or concrete illustration—which may seem to him too remote from +ordinary life and experience, perhaps too trivial—may now test the +present theory of the city, or amend it, by means of the ample +illustrations of the processes and results of social life which are +provided by his daily newspaper, and these on well-nigh all its fields +and levels.</p> +<p>Note finally that it is the eagle and lamb of temporal and spiritual +idealism that form the "head" of this coin, the craftsman and anvil but +the modest "tail." The application is obvious.</p> +<p>Thus even numismatics revives from amid the fossil <span + class="pagenum">p. 100</span> +sciences. +For from this to our own common coinage, or notably to that of France, +America, Switzerland, etc., the transition is easy, and still better to +that of the noblest civic past, both classic and mediaeval. Without +pursuing this further here my present point is gained, if we see, even +in the everyday local details of work and people, the enduring stamp, +the inextinguishable promise, of the flowering of our everyday +industries and schools into worthier ideals than they at present +express, and of the fruition of these in turn upon nobler heights of +life and practice. It expresses the essential truth of the popular view +of the city; that in terms of the formula—People ... Affairs ... +Places—above referred to (<a href='#p_69'>page 69</a>). It also +explains the persistent +vitality of this view, despite its frequent crudity, and lack of order +in detail, in face of the more scientific treatment here at first +employed, that in the elementary geographic order—Place ... Work ... +People. For though this objective order be fundamental, it is the +complementary subjective evolution which throughout history has ever +become supreme; so that our scheme must combine the outward geographic +presentment with the inward psychological one. This may be graphically +expressed by changing the order of presentment from that used +hitherto:—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Town, city, cloister, school" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 210px; height: 60px;" + border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">TOWN<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CITY<br /> + </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"> +TO<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CITY<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">TOWN<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">SCHOOL<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CLOISTER<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CLOISTER<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">SCHOOL<br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>P—FORECAST OF CITY DEVELOPMENT. SPECIAL AND GENERAL</p> +<p>The dual and four-fold development of the city, as above sketched, +is by +no means far advanced in most of our present towns or cities, which +have +obviously but scanty expression of the ideas shadowed forth for the +modern equivalents of cloister and cathedral, of academe and acropolis. +But this is to say that such towns, however large, populous and rich +according to conventional economic standards, are to that extent small +and poor, indeed too often little better than cities by courtesy. Yet +their further development, upon this <span class="pagenum">p. 102</span> four-fold view of civic +evolution, though in principle the same for each and all, has always +been, and let us hope may always be, in large measure an individual +(because regional) one. For if each human individuality be unique, how +much more must that of every city?</p> +<p>In one concrete case, that of Dunfermline, I have already submitted +definite suggestions towards the realisation of the civic Utopia, and +even architectural designs towards its execution,<a name="FNanchor_13"></a><a + href="#Footnote_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> so that these may +at any rate suffice to show how local study and adaptive design are +needed for each individual city, indeed for every point of it. It is +thus, and thus only, that we can hope to have a city development truly +evolutionary, that is, one utilising the local features, advantages, +and +possibilities of place, occupation, and people. Of course, it is +needful +to supplement these by the example of other cities; but it is no less +needful to avoid weighting down the local life with replicas of +institutions, however excellent elsewhere, if really irregional here. +With the re-awakening of regional life in our various centres, and of +some comprehension of its conditions among our rulers, they will cease +to establish, say, a school of mines in Piccadilly, or again one of +engineering and the like in South Kensington. The magistrates of +Edinburgh have long abandoned their old attempt to plant mulberries and +naturalise silk culture upon their wind-swept Calton Hill; albeit this +was a comparatively rational endeavour, since a population of Huguenot +refugee silk weavers had actually come upon their hands.</p> +<p>Similarly, it is plain that we must develop Oxford as Oxford, +Edinburgh +as Edinburgh, and so on with all other cities, great or small—York or +Winchester, Westminster or London. And so with Chelsea or Hampstead, +with Woolwich or Battersea. Has not the last of these grown from a mere +outlying vestry, like so many others, into a centre of genuine vitality +and interior progress, indeed of ever-widening interest and example; +and +all this in half a generation, apparently through the sagacious +leadership—say, rather the devoted, the <span class="pagenum">p. 103</span> impassioned +citizenship—of a single man? And does not his popular park at times +come near giving us a vital indication of the needed modern analogue of +cathedral and forum? Civic development is thus no mere external matter, +either of "Haussmannising" its streets, or of machine-educating its +people; the true progress of the city and its citizenship must alike +grow and flower from within albeit alive and open to every truly +fertilising impulse from without.</p> +<p>Yet since national interests, international industry, commerce, +science, and therefore progress are nowadays and increasingly so +largely one, may we not in conclusion foresee something at least of the +great lines of development which are common to cities, and generalise +these as we are accustomed to do in history? Witness the Classical, +Mediaeval, and Renaissance types to which historic cities +preponderatingly belong, and within which we group their varied +individualities, as after all of comparative detail.</p> +<p>Here then it is time to recall the presentment of ancient, recent +and +contemporary evolution already outlined in the part of this paper +previously read (Vol. I, <a href='#p_109'>p. 109</a>), dealing with +the historic survey of +cities. We have now to face the question, then postponed, indeed left +in +interrogation-marks—that of seeking not indeed sharply to define the +future order of things, yet in some measure to discern such elements of +progress as may be already incipient in the existing order, if not yet +largely manifest there. Such elements may be reasonably expected to +grow +in the near future, perhaps increasingly, and whatever be their rate of +growth are surely worthy of our attention.</p> +<p>Contemporary science, with its retrospective inquiries into origins +in +the past, its everyday observation of the present, is apt practically +to +overlook that the highest criterion and achievement of science is not +to +decipher the past, nor record the present, not even to interpret both. +It is to foresee: only thus can it subserve action, of which the +present +task ever lies towards the future, since it is for this that we have to +provide. Why then should not Comte's famous aphorism—"<i>Voir pour +prévoir, prévoir pour pourvoir</i>," become applicable in +our civic studies +no less than in the general social and political fields to <span class="pagenum">p. 104</span> +which he applied it? In navigation or engineering, in agriculture or +hygiene, prevision and provision alike are ever increasing; yet these +are no mere combinations of the preliminary sciences and the +fundamental +occupations, but obviously contain very large social elements.</p> +<p>It is proverbially safe to prophesy when one knows; and it is but +this +safe prediction which we make every day of child or bud, where we can +hardly fail to see the growing man, the coming flower. Yet do not most +people practically forget that even now, in mid-winter, next summer's +leaves are already waiting, nay, that they were conceived nine months +ago? That they thus grow in small, commonly unnoticed beginnings, and +lie in bud for a period twice as long as the summer of their adult and +manifest life, is yet a fact, and one to which the social analogies are +many and worth considering.</p> +<p>While recognising, then, the immense importance of the historic +element +of our heritage, renaissance and mediaeval, classic and earlier; +recognising also the predominance of contemporary forces and ideas, +industrial and liberal, imperial and bureaucratic, financial and +journalistic, can we not seek also, hidden under all these leaves, for +those of the still-but-developing bud, which next season must be so +much +more important than they are to day? It is a commonplace, yet mainly of +educational meetings, to note that the next generation is now at +school; +but how seldom do we recognise its pioneers, albeit already among our +own contemporaries? At any rate we may see here and there that their +leaven is already at work.</p> +<p>In this respect, cities greatly differ—one is far more initiative +than +another. In the previous paper (vol. I, <a href='#p_109'>p. 109</a>), +we saw how +individuals, +edifices, institutions, might represent all past phases; these, +therefore, often predominate in different cities sufficiently to give +its essential stamp. Why then should we not make a further survey and +seek to see something of the cities of the future; though we may have +to +look for these in quarters where at first sight there may seem as yet +scanty promise of flower?</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span> +To recall an instance employed above, probably every member +of this Society is old enough to remember incredulous questionings of +whether any good thing could come out of Battersea. Again, how few, +even +in America, much less than in Europe, a few years ago, forsaw the rapid +growth of those culture-elements in St. Louis, of which the recent +World-Exposition will not have been the only outcome?</p> +<p>Only a few years earlier, it was Chicago which, for New England no +less +than for the Old World, seemed but the byword of a hopelessly +materialised community. So Birmingham or Glasgow has won its present +high position among cities in comparatively recent times; so it may now +be the turn of older cities, once far more eminent, like Newcastle or +Dundee, to overtake and in turn, perhaps, outstrip them. But all this +is +still too general and needs further definition; let us attempt this, +therefore, somewhat more fully, in the concrete case of Glasgow.</p> +<br /> +<h3>Q—GLASGOW AS TYPICAL OF CIVIC TRANSITION—FROM "PALEOTECHNIC" TO +"NEOTECHNIC"</h3> +<p>My own appreciation of the significance of Glasgow was first really +awakened over twenty years ago by William Morris, who in his vivid way +pointed out to me how, despite the traditional culture—superiority of +Edinburgh, Glasgow was not only the Scottish capital, but, in his view, +in real progressiveness the leading and initiative city of the whole +United Kingdom. And this for him was not merely or mainly in its +municipal enterprise, then merely in its infancy—although he expressed +this development in the phrase "In London, people talked socialism +without living it; but in Glasgow, they were socialists without knowing +it!" Despite all the ugliness which had so repelled Ruskin, the squalor +which moved Matthew Arnold to the fiercest scorn in all his writings, +Morris's appreciation arose from his craftsman's knowledge and respect +for supreme craftsmanship. The great ships building upon the Clyde were +for him "the greatest achievement of <span class="pagenum">p. 106</span> humanity since the days +of the cathedral-builders," nay, for him actually surpassing these, +since calling forth an even more complex combination and "co-operation +of all the material arts and sciences" into a mighty and organic whole; +and correspondingly of all their respective workers also, this being +for +him of the very essence of his social ideal.</p> +<p>For these reasons he insisted, to my then surprise that the social +reorganisation he then so ardently hoped for "was coming faster upon +the +Clyde than upon the Thames": he explained as for him the one main +reason +for his then discouragement as to the progress of London that there +East +and West, North and South, are not only too remote each from the other, +but in their occupations all much too specialised—there to finance, +there to manufactures, or here to leisure, and so on; while on the +Clyde +industrial organisation and social progress could not but develop +together, through the very nature of the essential and working unity of +the ship.</p> +<p>Since Morris's day, a local art movement, of which he knew little, +has +risen to eminence, a foreign critic would say to pre-eminence, in this +country at least. Since Ruskin's savage response to a Glasgow +invitation +to lecture—"first burn your city, and cleanse your river,"—a new +generation of architects and hygienists have not a little transformed +the one, and vigorous measures have been taken towards the purification +of the other. That the city and university pre-eminently associated +with the invention of the steam-engine, and consequently with the +advent +of the industrial revolution throughout the world, should, a century +later, have produced a scarcely less pre-eminent leader of applied +science towards the command of electricity is thus no isolated +coincidence. And as political economy, which is ever the theory +corresponding to our phase of industrial practice, and there some of +its foremost pioneers, and later its classical exponent, Adam Smith +himself, so once more there are signs at least of a corresponding wave +of theoretic progress. Students of primitive civilisation and industry +have now long familiarised us with their reinterpretation of what was +long known as the stone age, into two very distinct <span class="pagenum">p. 107</span> periods, +the earlier characterised by few and rough implements, roughly used by +a +rude people, the second by more varied tools, of better shape, and +finer +edge, often of exquisite material and polish. We know that these were +wielded more skilfully, by a people of higher type, better bred and +better nourished; and that these, albeit of less hunting and militant +life, but of pacific agricultural skill, prevailed in every way in the +struggle for existence; thanks thus not only to more advanced arts, but +probably above all to the higher status of woman. This distinction of +Paleolithic and Neolithic ages and men, has long passed into the +terminology of sociological science, and even into current speech: is +it +too much then, similarly, to focus the largely analogous progress which +is so observable in what we have been wont to generalise too crudely as +the modern Industrial Age? All are agreed that the discoveries and +inventions of this extraordinary period of history constitute an epoch +of material advance only paralleled, if at all, in magnitude and +significance by those of prehistory with its shadowy Promethean +figures. +Our own advance from a lower industrial civilisation towards a higher +thus no less demands definite characterisation, and this may be broadly +expressed as from an earlier or <i>Paleotechnic</i> phase, towards a +later or +more advanced <i>Neotechnic</i> one. If definition be needed, this may +be +broadly given as from a comparatively crude and wasteful technic age, +characterised by coal, steam, and cheap machine products, and a +corresponding <i>quantitative</i> ideal of "progress of wealth and +population"—towards a finer civilisation, characterised by the wider +command, yet greater economy of natural energies, by the predominance +of +electricity, and by the increasing victory of an ideal of qualitative +progress, expressed in terms of skill and art, of hygiene and +education, +of social polity, etc.</p> +<p>The Neotechnic phase, though itself as yet far from completely +replacing +the paleotechnic order which is still quantitatively predominant in +most +of our cities, begins itself to show signs of a higher stage of +progress, as in the co-ordination of the many industries required for +the building of a ship, or in the yet more recent developments which +begin to renew for us the conception of the worthy construction of a +city. As <span class="pagenum">p. +108</span> the former period may be characterised by the +predominance of the relatively unskilled workman and of the skilled, so +this next incipient age by the development of the chief workman proper, +the literal <i>architectos</i> or architect; and by his companion the +rustic +improver, gardener and forester, farmer, irrigator, and their +correspondingly evolving types of civil engineer.</p> +<p>To this phase then the term <i>Geotechnic</i> may fairly be +applied. Into its +corresponding theoretic and ideal developments we need not here enter, +beyond noting that these are similarly of synthetic character; on the +concrete side the sciences unifying as geography, and on their more +abstract side as the classification and philosophy of the +sciences,—while both abstract and concrete movements of thought are +becoming more and more thoroughly evolutionary in character.</p> +<p>But evolutionary theories, especially as they rise towards +comprehensiveness, cannot permanently content themselves with origins, +or with classifications merely, nor with concentrating on nature rather +than on man. Nature furnishes after all but the stage for evolution in +its highest terms; of this man himself is the hero; so that thus our +Geotechnic phase, Synthetic age (call it what we will) in its turn +gives +birth to a further advance—that concerned with human evolution, above +all subordinating all things to him; whereas in all these preceding +industrial phases, even if decreasingly, "things are in the saddle and +ride mankind." This age, now definitely evolutionist in policy, as the +geotechnic was in theory and in environment we may term the <i>Eugenic</i>. +For its theory, still less advanced, the term <i>Eupsychic</i> may +complete +our proposed nomenclature.</p> +<p>Thus then our conception of the opening future may be increasingly +defined, since all these apparently predicted phases are already +incipient among us, and are thus really matters of observed fact, of +social embryology let us say; in short, of city development.</p> +<p>In summary, then, the diagram of the former instalment of this paper +(vol. 1, <a href='#p_109'>p. 109</a>)</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Ancient, recent, contemporary societies" + style="width: 100%;" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="3" rowspan="1">ANCIENT <br /> + </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">RECENT </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"> CONTEMPORARY </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> INCIPIENT</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">Primitive </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Matriarchal </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Patriarchal </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;"> Greek +and Roman </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Mediaeval </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Renaissance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Revolution </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Empire </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Finance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> ? ? ?</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span> +has thus its interrogations filled up. Omitting the +left-hand half, that generalised as Ancient and Recent in the above +diagram, so as to give more space to the Contemporary and Incipient +phases, these now stand as follows:—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="contemporary societies" + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 669px; height: 80px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: middle; text-align: center;"> CONTEMPORARY</td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"> INCIPIENT</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Revolution </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Empire </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Finance </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">Neotechnic<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">Geotechnic<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">Eugenic<br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p>To elaborate this farther would, of course, exceed my present +limits; +but I may be permitted to say that long use of this schematic outline, +especially of course in more developed forms, has satisfied me of its +usefulness alike in the study of current events and in the practical +work of education and city betterment. I venture then to recommend it +to +others as worth trial.</p> +<br /> +<h3>R—A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL—A CIVIC EXHIBITION</h3> +<p>How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our +observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and +our practical policy—i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be +selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these +applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if +this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, +how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? +At this stage therefore, I venture to submit to the Society a practical +proposal for its consideration and discussion; and if approved, I would +fain hope for its recommendation to towns and cities, to organisations +and to the public likely to be interested.</p> +<p>Here then is my proposal. Is not the time ripe for bringing together +the +movements of Civics and Eugenics, now here and indeed everywhere +plainly +nascent, and of setting these before the public of this country in some +such large and concrete ways, as indeed, in the latter subject at +least, have been so strongly desiderated by Mr. Galton? As regards +Civics, such have been afforded to America during the summer of 1904 by +the Municipal Section of the St. Louis Exhibition; in <span class="pagenum">p. 110</span> +Dresden also, at the recent Towns Exhibition; and by kindred +Exhibitions +and Congresses in Paris and elsewhere.</p> +<p>All these have taken form since the Paris Exposition of 1900, with +its +important section of social economy and its many relevant special +congresses. Among these may be specially mentioned here as of popular +interest, and civic stimulus, the <i>Congres de L'Art Public</i>; the +more +since this also held an important Exhibition, to which many Continental +cities sent instructive exhibits.</p> +<p>Other exhibitions might be mentioned; so that the fact appears that +in +well-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the +great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly +brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with +their associated congresses.</p> +<p>With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon +Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among +us; +with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a +real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic +education and action?</p> +<p>Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every +important +exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits +have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the +picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of +their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present +conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering +them.</p> +<p>Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" +might +readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, +the +excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions +in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an +exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they +may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely +abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the +discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to +raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in +freshening +lights.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span> +At this time of social transition, when we all more or less +feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of +sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the +continual +appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic +Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, +of +the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic +Exhibition.<a name="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a></p> +<p>Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that +<i>Encyclopædia Civica</i>, into which, in the previous +instalment of this +paper (vol. I, <a href='#p_118'>p. 118</a>) I have sought to group +the literature of civics. +We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in +universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the +mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of +these. We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future, +and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already +struggling towards birth.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<h3>DISCUSSION</h3> +<br /> +<p>The Chairman (THE RT. HON. CHARLES BOOTH) said:</p> +<p>I feel always the inspiring character of Professor Geddes' +addresses. He +seems to widen and deepen the point of view, and to widen and deepen +one's own ideas, and enables us to hold them more firmly and better +than +one can do without the aid of the kind of insight Professor Geddes has +given into the methods of his own mind. I believe that we all hold our +conceptions by some sort of tenure. I am afraid I hold mine by columns +and statistics much underlined—a horrible prosaic sort of arrangement +on ruled paper. I remember a lady of my acquaintance who had a place +for +everything. The discovery of America was in the left-hand corner; the +Papacy was in the middle; and for everything she had some local +habitation in an imaginary world. Professor Geddes is far more +ingenious +than that, and it is most interesting and instructive and helpful to +follow these charming diagrams which spring evidently from the method +he +himself uses in holding and forming his conceptions. That it is of the +utmost value to have large conceptions there can be no doubt—large +conceptions both in time and place, large conceptions of all those +various ideas to which he has called our attention. By some means or +other we have to have them; and having got them, every individual, +single fact has redoubled value. We put it in its place. So I hope that +in our discussion, while we may develop each in his own way, the mental +methods we pursue, we may bring forward anything that strikes us as +germane, as a practical point of application to the life of the world, +and especially anything having an application to the life of London. I +would make my contribution to that with regard to a scheme that has +been +explained to me by its originator, Mrs. Barnett, the wife of Canon +Barnett of Toynbee Hall. The idea concerns an open <span class="pagenum">p. 113</span> space +which has recently been secured in Hampstead. It is known to you all +that a certain piece of ground belonging to the trustees of Eton +College +has been secured, which extends the open space of Hampstead Heath in +such a way as to protect a great amount of beauty. The further proposal +is to acquire an estate surrounding that open space which has now been +secured for ever to the people, and to use this extension to make what +is called a "garden suburb." It is a following out of the "garden-city" +idea which is seizing hold of all our minds, and it seems to me an +exceedingly practical adaptation of that idea. Where it comes in, in +connection with the address we have just heard, is that the root idea +is +that it shall bring together all the good elements of civic life. It is +not to be for one class, or one idea, but for all classes, and all +ideas—a mixed population with all its needs thought for and provided +for; and above everything, the beauty of those fields and those hills +is +not to be sacrificed, but to be used for the good of the suburb and the +good of London. I hope that out of it will come an example that will be +followed. That is a little contribution I wish to make to the +discussion +to-day, and if I can interest any one here in forwarding it, I shall be +exceedingly glad.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><br /> +</div> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. SWINNY said:</p> +<p>Towards the close of his lecture, Professor Geddes remarked that the +cities of America inherited a great part of their civilisation from +Greece and Rome and the Europe of the Middle Age. I believe that +thought +will lead us to consider the point whether this geographical survey +should precede or follow a general historical survey. Now, if we +consider that a river valley in England, with the towns in that valley, +are part of the English nation, and that the English nation has shared +in the general historical evolution of Western Europe, it would seem +that the first simplification the question allows of is: What is there +in the historical development of that city that is common to the whole +of Western Europe, and what is peculiar to its position as an English +city? And the second simplification that the problem allows of is to +consider what part of the evolution of a particular city is due to its +peculiar position in that river valley? So that it seems necessary +first +to get a general idea of the historical evolution of England and the +West; and then you can proceed to consider what is due to the part +played by the city in that evolution. Thus you have to consider not so +much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect +of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as +it +affected that city.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">DR. J.L. TAYLER,</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span> +referring to Professor Geddes' remarks on the working +craftsman and the thinking craftsman, said he believed that in a +country +like England, where the prevailing tendencies of thought and action +were +of an essentially practical nature, many people who now felt contempt +for higher mental ideals would alter their views, if this idea of the +<i>causal</i> relationship between thinkers and workers could be driven +home. +If business men and women could be made to realise that in the higher +regions of pure science there were always to be found some thinkers who +belonged to the same craft or trade as they themselves, they would +naturally tend to rely on these thinkers when dealing with problems +that +necessitate a wide mental outlook.</p> +<p>Moreover, the thought that students of great mental powers studied +the +objects with which working craftsmen were in daily contact, could not +fail to deepen, refine and purify their more practical and, in some +respects, grosser aims; while the knowledge that every science-study +had +an industrial as well as a scientific aspect would make the thinking +craftsmen more alive to the needs of everyday existence.</p> +<p>Such conceptions, if spread through all classes of our community, +would +inevitably change the feeling of distrust of learning into one of +healthful enthusiasm, and give in addition a unity and direction to our +various life pursuits which might in time generate a true modern +national spirit; for it is precisely this divorce of mental and +physical, of theoretical and practical, class and individual +effort—which such a thinking and working craft theory would +rectify—that destroys our efficiency by creating an unreal chasm +between refined and unrefined, learned and unlearned, where there +should +be only a progressive evolution from the lower to the higher, from the +immediate practical to the ultimate ideal.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">THE REV. DR. AVELING said:</p> +<p>There was one point that the lecturer made which, I think, might be +a +fit and fruitful subject for discussion. He said that we were the +product of the city. To a great extent that is undoubtedly true; but on +the other hand, he advocated an improvement in the conditions of +environment, to be brought about by our own endeavours. Therefore, the +city can be shaped and made by us. What, then, is the exact value to be +given to the seemingly contradictory doctrines that the individual is +the product of the city and also that the city is the product of the +citizen? The establishing of some fixed relation between—or the +adjusting of the relations of—these two causes of social progress would +be, I think, interesting to the philosopher, and useful to the +economist. The problem is <span class="pagenum">p. 115</span> without doubt a difficult one, but +its solution would be of great value. I do not venture to offer any +answer to the question I raise—I merely state it.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. A.W. STILL said:</p> +<p>We have been passing through a period in which the city has created +a +type of man so wholly absorbed in the promotion of his own individual +interests that he tends almost entirely to forget the social +obligations +which ought to make the greatest appeal to him. We may take some hope +from what Professor Geddes has said, that the time is coming when we +shall bring the force of our own characters to bear on our environment, +and endeavour to break away from conditions which have made us the +slaves of environment. I know the lovely little garden city of +Bourneville intimately, and some of the experiments in other quarters. +But in the common expansion of cities, I have seen that as the people +get away from one set of slums, they are creating new areas which will +become as degraded and abominable as those which are left behind. It +has +always seemed to me that there is room for good work by some committee, +or some body of men, who would be voluntary guardians of the city's +well-being, who would make it their business to acquire all that +knowledge which Professor Geddes has just put before us in terms so +enchanting, and would use all the ability that they possess in order to +lead the minds of the community towards the cultivation of the best and +highest ideals in civic life. I do not think it need be regarded as +impossible that, from an association of this kind, such a movement as I +have mentioned should spring. I conceive the possibility of each group +developing into a trust, capable of acting in the interests of the city +in years to come, exercising a mighty influence, being relied upon for +guidance, and administering great funds for the common good. If we +could +get in each of our populous centres a dozen thoroughly intelligent +broad-minded men, capable of watching all the streams of tendency—all +the developments of civic life, bringing their judgment to bear on its +progress, and urging the public to move in the right direction, a great +service might be rendered. At least once a year, these little groups of +men might meet together at some general conference, and, by the +exchange +of their opinions and by the mutual helpfulness of intellectual +intercourse, raise up and perfect civic ideals which would be a boon to +this country. We suffer at present, I think, from the too great +particularisation of our efforts. We get one man devoting himself +exclusively to a blind asylum, another seeming to take no interest in +anything but a deaf-and-dumb institute or the like, and yet another +devoting himself to charity organisation. It is all excellent work, but +the difficulty is to get broad, comprehensive views taken of the common +good. To reduce poverty and to check physical degeneracy, there must be +an effort continuously made to <span class="pagenum">p. 116</span> raise the tone of the +environment in which we live. The home and the city need to be made +wholesome and beautiful, and the people need to be encouraged to +enlarge +their minds by contact with nature, and by the study of all that is +elevating and that increases the sum of social responsibility.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. E.S. WEYMOUTH said:</p> +<p>He found it somewhat difficult to see what was to be the practical +outcome of civics if studied in the way proposed. Would Professor +Geddes +consider it the duty of any Londoner, who wished to study sociology +practically, to map out London, and also the surrounding districts, +with +special reference to the Thames River Basin, as appeared to be +suggested +in both Professor Geddes' papers? Looking at civics in its practical or +ethical aspect, he was bound to confess that, though he had acquired a +tolerable knowledge of the geography of the Thames Basin, he did not +feel it helped him materially towards becoming a better citizen of +London. Would Professor Geddes wish them to study, first, London with +its wealth side by side with its squalor and filth, and then proceed to +study another large town, where the same phenomena presented +themselves? +What gain would there be in that proportionate to the labour entailed? +In his own case, so disheartened had he felt by observing that all +their +efforts, public and private, for the improvement of their civic +conditions seemed to end in raising considerably the rents of the +ground +landlords of London, while leaving the bulk of the population engaged +in +a hard struggle for their existence, that he had for years past found +it +difficult to take much interest in municipal affairs, so long as the +rates and taxes were—as it seemed to him—put upon the wrong shoulders. +And for the study of civics, he had preferred to turn to those cities +where efforts were being made to establish communal life on what seemed +to him juster conditions. In 1897, he was struck with the title of an +article in the "Daily Telegraph." It was headed, "The Land of Beauty, +Society without Poverty, Life without Care." He found the article was a +description of Durban in Natal. The writer attributed the prosperity of +this town to the fact that the suburbs were kept in the hands of the +community, instead of being handed over to private owners who would +absorb all the unearned increment. Even if this eulogium betrayed +exaggeration still a student of civics might feel that the economic +conditions of that town were worth studying. Similarly, in New Zealand, +the adoption in 1891 of the tax on land values brought prosperity to +the +towns, and changed the tide of emigration from New Zealand into +immigration. Again, at home they had Bourneville, Port Sunlight, and +that most interesting of all present-day experiments in this country, +the Garden City, all of these being founded by men with ideals. He +could +not help feeling <span class="pagenum">p. 117</span> that a student of civics, possessed of such +a fair working knowledge of the city he lived in as most of them might +reasonably lay claim to, would make more real progress by studying the +success or failure of social experiments, than by entering on the very +formidable task that seemed to be set before them by Professor Geddes. +However, when they left abstract civics, as they had it portrayed to +them in these papers, and turned to the architectural or the historical +side of concrete civics, there should be no better guide than Professor +Geddes, whose labours in Edinburgh, and whose projected schemes for the +improvement of Dunfermline, were becoming widely known.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. TOMKINS (<i>of the London Trades +Council</i>) said:</p> +<p>If before any person was allowed to serve on our different public +bodies, he should be required to attend a course of lectures such as +those given by Professor Geddes on civics, that would surely be a means +of developing his social interests, and would tend to eliminate that +self-interest which too often actuated public men. There was nothing +more difficult than for workmen to-day to be able to take larger views. +The workman's whole business was now so different from what is was in +the days of the arts and crafts guilds of the Middle Ages; they now +found him ground down into some little division of industry, and it was +quite impossible for him to work in his own way. Thus he got +narrow-minded, because concentrated on some minor process. He was kept +at work with his nose to the mill the whole time, and it became too +exhausting for him to try and take these larger views of life. He often +thought of the amount of talent and energy and practical beauty which +was wasted in our workshops to-day. Referring to the Garden Cities of +this country and the United States, Mr. Tomkins said the idea of +getting +great Trusts to use their money in a social spirit, and not merely to +get the workers tied to their mills, was really something which opened +out a vista of grand possibilities in the future; but if any movement +was to be successful it would be necessary to teach the great masses of +workers, and to create a real sound social public opinion amongst them.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply</p> +<p>Professor Geddes, in replying to the discussion, said he entirely +agreed +with the point made by Mr. Swinny, and he should just like to correct +what he had said in his lecture by reference to what he meant by a +civic +museum. In Edinburgh, he had in his museum a large room, with a +geographical model <span class="pagenum">p. 118</span> of the old town +with its hill-fort, and +so on; and he hung round this maps and diagrams of historical and +geographical details. On the opposite side of the room, he had a symbol +of the market-cross, which stood for the centre of its municipal life, +of its ideals and independence of environment. Around it was grouped +what represented the other side of the city; and here he might answer +another point, and say that they could never settle the great +philosophical controversy of determinism and free-will. They would +always incline when young to the novel of circumstance, and later, to +the novel of character, but they should always feel that life was a +game +of individual skill with interfering circumstances. These diagrams of +his were only the page split. On the one side, he meant to push to the +extreme the idea that the place makes us, and on the other side, that +we +make the place. By what process do men struggle towards the selection +of +their ideals? They find themselves within the grasp of their +environment, their whole heritage of culture, of good and ill, the +whole +tradition of the past; but they must select certain elements of +these—the elements that seem to them good, and so they might escape +from the manner of the city. Pointing to a drawing of the old Scotch +bawbee, Professor Geddes said it was not a very dignified symbol of the +coinage of the world, but let them mark how it had on the one side the +hammerman at his work, with his motto "<i>Beat deus artem</i>," and, on +the +other side, a larger legend, with the eagle of the empire and the lamb +of Saint John.</p> +<p>To return to his civic museum: the room below the one he had +described +was the larger museum for Scotland, and in the room below that, again, +the museum for England, Ireland and America, the whole English-speaking +world—not the Empire only. And the whole stood on a museum and library +representing that larger evolution of the occidental civilisation which +showed them they were merely children of the past. Professor Geddes +pleaded for museums in which every city displayed its own past and +present, but related itself to the whole of Europe and the whole +occident.</p> +<p>One or two practical questions of great importance had <span class="pagenum">p. 119</span> +been +raised; but, with all respect, he submitted that they could consider +what was practical and practicable without requiring to go into the +question of taxing land. That was a matter of political opinion. It was +as if they were discussing the geology of coal, which they could do, +without reference to coal royalties. Mr. Weymouth was with them on the +subject of preserving old buildings; and he thought there was a great +deal to be learned, if Mr. Weymouth would descend the valley of the +Thames once more. It was of great importance if he found a great city +at +the tidal limit. Going down the Thames and the Tay, they would find, at +the last ford of one, the old Abbey of Westminster, and at the last +ford +of the other, the old Abbey of Scoon. The kings of England and Scotland +were crowned there because these were the most important places—a point +of great historic interest. As a matter of practical interest, he might +mention that Scoon and Westminster alike passed out of supreme +importance when bridges were built across the river below; and he would +next point out how just as Perth became of subordinate importance when +the great Tay Bridge was built, so it became a tremendously important +question to London, as it might in turn be much affected by the making +of a great and a new bridge much further down the stream. This study of +the descending river had real and practical, as well as historical +importance. He had been about considerably in the great cities of the +United States, and had been struck by the amount of good endeavour +there. It was not, however, by denouncing Tammany that they could beat +it, but by understanding it. They must understand the mechanism by +which +the Celtic chieftain ruled his clan, and they must deal with these +methods by still other methods; and they might often find it more +satisfactory to re-moralise the chieftain than to destroy him.</p> +<p>Professor Geddes concluded by saying that he appreciated the +admirable +suggestion of Mr. Still towards the evolution of civic unions. He was +sure Mr. Still had there an idea of great significance which might be +developed.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<span style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:<br /> +<br /> +</span><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1">[1]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> e.g., Erskine Beveridge, LL.D., Bibliography of +Dunfermline.—<i>Dunfermline, 1902.</i> 8vo.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2">[2]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Sociological Papers," Vol 1., pp. 103-118.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3">[3]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Fig. 1.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4">[4]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> For a fuller justification of this thesis as regards +Switzerland, see the writer's "International Exhibitions," in +<i>International Monthly</i>, October, 1900.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5">[5]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> For a fuller review of these, compare the writer's "City +Development," in <i>Contemporary Review</i>, October, 1904.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6">[6]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> A fuller study, upon this method, of the essential origins +of pastoral evolution, and of its characteristic modern developments, +will be found in the writer's "Flower of the Grass," in <i>The +Evergreen</i>, +Edinburgh and Westminster, 1896. See also "La Science Sociale," +<i>passim</i>, especially in its earlier vols. or its number for Jan. +1905.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7">[7]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> La Nomenclature Sociale (Extrait de La Revue, "La Science +Sociale," Dec. 1886) Paris, Firmin-Diact, 1887.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8">[8]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Demoulins, La Science Sociale d'apres F. Le Play 1882-1905; +Classification Sociale, "La Science Sociale," Jan. 1905.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9">[9]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Tarde, "L'imitation Sociale," and other works.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10">[10]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> For the sake of brevity, an entire chapter has been +omitted, discussing the manifold origins of distinct governing classes, +whether arising from the Folk, or superimposed upon them from without, +in short, of the contrast of what we may broadly call patricians and +plebeians, which so constantly appears through history, and in the +present also. These modes of origin are all in association respectively +with Place, Work, and Family, or some of the various interactions of +these. Origin and situation, migration, individual or general, with its +conflict of races, may be indicated among the first group of factors; +technical efficiency and its organising power among the second; +individual qualities and family stocks among the third, as also +military +and administrative aptitude, and the institutional privileges which so +readily arise from them. Nor need we here discuss the rise of +institutions, so fully dealt with by sociological writers. Enough for +the present then, if institutions and social classes be taken as we +find +them.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11">[11]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> The use of <i>lore</i> as primarily empirical, and derived from +the senses, it is traditional; it is well therefore to restrict it to +this, and to revive the old word <i>lear</i>, still understood in +Scotland in +these precise senses—intellectual, rational, yet traditional, +occupational also.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12">[12]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Without forgetting the many institutions and workers in +almost all departments of the field of civics, the rise of definite +surveys and of scientific groupings like this Society, without ignoring +also the many admirable workers and institutions of social endeavour, +and their progressive integration into Social Unions, Institutes of +Service, and the like, I may be permitted to press for the need of +uniting both types, the scientific and the practical, into a single +one—a civic museum and active centre in one. Of this type, my own +Outlook Tower at Edinburgh is, so far as I am aware, the earliest +beginning; and, despite its rudimentary condition, may thus serve to +suggest a type of institution which will be found of service alike to +the sociologist and the citizen.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13">[13]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Cf. the writer's "City Development," Edinburgh and +Westminster, 1904.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14">[14]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to +note the practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition, +appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to +civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall. The Cottages Exhibition initiated +by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that +admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in +the directions of progress and propaganda advocated above.</p> +</div> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13205 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + + + + diff --git a/13205-h/images/img001.jpg b/13205-h/images/img001.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..543a59f --- /dev/null +++ b/13205-h/images/img001.jpg diff --git a/13205-h/images/img002.jpg b/13205-h/images/img002.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..20dd8a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/13205-h/images/img002.jpg diff --git a/13205-h/images/img003.jpg b/13205-h/images/img003.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ab21294 --- /dev/null +++ b/13205-h/images/img003.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3764dcf --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #13205 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13205) diff --git a/old/13205-8.txt b/old/13205-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cf17d39 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13205-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4657 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Civics: as Applied Sociology, by Patrick Geddes + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Civics: as Applied Sociology + +Author: Patrick Geddes + +Release Date: August 17, 2004 [EBook #13205] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVICS: AS APPLIED SOCIOLOGY *** + + + + +Produced by Jon Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and Distributed +Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. + + + + + + + +_Civics: as Applied Sociology_ + +by Patrick Geddes + + + + +Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, +F.R.S., in the Chair. + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as far as +possible, concrete in treatment. If it is to appeal to practical men and +civic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for the +systematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be not +merely the product of the study, but rather be those which may be +acquired in course of local observation and practical effort. My problem +is thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise from +the experience of any moderately-travelled observer of varied interests; +so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic and +impressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards an +orderly Regional Survey. This point of view has next to be correlated +with the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquired +through some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise toward a +larger and more orderly conception of civic action--as Regional Service. +In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or [Page: 104] Civics, as +one of its main departments, may be defined as the application of Social +Survey to Social Service. + +In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, our +everyday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually become +more systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; while +our activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarly +approximate towards art. Thus there is emerging more and more clearly +for sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields of +application in city after city, the conception of a scientific centre of +observation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centre of +experimental endeavour on the other--in short of Sociological +Observatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasingly +co-ordinated. Indeed, is not such association of observations and +experiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here and +elsewhere? I need not multiply instances of the correlation of science +and art, as of chemistry with agriculture, or biology with medicine. +Yet, on the strictly sociological plane and in civic application they +are as yet less generally evident, though such obvious connections as +that of vital statistics with hygienic administration, that of +commercial statistics with politics, are becoming recognised by all. In +the paper with which this Society's work lately opened, the intimate +connection between a scientific demography and a practical eugenics has +been clearly set forth. But this study of the community in the aggregate +finds its natural parallel and complement in the study of the community +as an integrate, with material and immaterial structures and functions, +which we call the City. Correspondingly, the improvement of the +individuals of the community, which is the aim of eugenics, involves a +corresponding civic progress. Using (for the moment at least) a parallel +nomenclature, we see that the sociologist is concerned not only with +"demography" but with "politography," and that "eugenics" is inseparable +from "politogenics." For the struggle for existence, though observed +mainly from the side of its individuals by the demographer, is not only +an intra-civic but an inter-civic process; and if so, ameliorative +selection, now clearly sought for the individuals in detail as eugenics, +is inseparable from a corresponding civic art--a literal +"Eupolitogenics." + + + +A--THE GEOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF CITIES + +Coming to concrete Civic Survey, where shall we begin? Not only in +variety and magnitude of civic activities, but, thanks especially to the +work of Mr. Charles Booth and his collaborators in actual social survey +also, London may naturally claim pre-eminence. Yet even at best, does +not this vastest of world cities remain a less or more foggy labyrinth, +from which surrounding [Page: 105] regions with their smaller cities can +be but dimly descried, even with the best intentions of avoiding the +cheap generalisation of "the provinces"? For our more general and +comparative study, then, simpler beginnings are preferable. More +suitable, therefore, to our fundamental thesis--that no less definite +than the study of races and usages or languages, is that of the +groupings of men--is the clearer outlook, the more panoramic view of a +definite geographic region, such, for instance, as lies beneath us upon +a mountain holiday. Beneath vast hunting desolations lie the pastoral +hillsides, below these again scattered arable crofts and sparsely dotted +hamlets lead us to the small upland village of the main glen: from this +again one descends to the large and prosperous village of the foothills +and its railway terminus, where lowland and highland meet. East or west, +each mountain valley has its analogous terminal and initial village, +upon its fertile fan-shaped slope, and with its corresponding minor +market; while, central to the broad agricultural strath with its slow +meandering river, stands the prosperous market town, the road and +railway junction upon which all the various glen-villages converge. A +day's march further down, and at the convergence of several such +valleys, stands the larger county-town--in the region before me as I +write, one of added importance, since not only well nigh central to +Scotland, but as the tidal limit of a till lately navigable river. +Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great +manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river +system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the essential +unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple +geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental to +any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By +descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation +from its simple origins to its complex resultants; nor can any element +of this be omitted. Were we to begin with the peasant hamlet as our +initial unit, and forget the hinterlands of pasture, forest, and chase +(an error to which the writer on cities is naturally prone), the +anthropologist would soon remind us that in forgetting the hunter, we +had omitted the essential germ of active militarism, and hence very +largely of aristocratic rule. Similarly, [Page: 106] in ignoring the +pastoral life, we should be losing sight of a main fount of spiritual +power, and this not only as regards the historic religions, but all +later culture elements also, from the poetic to the educational. In +short, then, it takes the whole region to make the city. As the river +carries down contributions from its whole course, so each complex +community, as we descend, is modified by its predecessors. The converse +is no doubt true also, but commonly in less degree. + +In this way with the geographer we may rapidly review and extend our +knowledge of the grouping of cities. Such a survey of a series of our +own river-basins, say from Dee to Thames, and of a few leading +Continental ones, say the Rhine and Meuse, the Seine and Loire, the +Rhone, the Po, the Danube--and, if possible, in America also, at least +the Hudson and Mississippi--will be found the soundest of introductions +to the study of cities. The comparison of corresponding types at once +yields the conviction of broad general unity of development, structure, +and function. Thus, with Metschnikoff we recognise the succession of +potamic, thalassic, and oceanic civilisations; with Reclus we see the +regular distribution of minor and major towns to have been largely +influenced not only by geographical position but by convenient journey +distances. Again, we note how the exigencies of defence and of +government, the developments of religion, despite all historic +diversities, have been fundamentally the same. It is not, of course, to +be forgotten how government, commerce, communications, have +concentrated, altered or at least disguised the fundamental geographical +simplicity of this descending hierarchy from mountain-hamlet to +ocean-metropolis; but it is useful for the student constantly to recover +the elemental and naturalist-like point of view even in the greatest +cities. At times we all see London as still fundamentally an +agglomeration of villages, with their surviving patches of common, +around a mediaeval seaport; or we discern even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say its Place de l'Etoile, with its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest-rides, each literally arrow-straight. So the narrow +rectangular network of an American city is explicable only by the +unthinking persistence of the peasant thrift, which grudges good land to +[Page: 107] road-way, and is jealous of oblique short cuts. In short, +then, in what seems our most studied city planning, we are still +building from our inherited instincts like the bees. Our Civics is thus +still far from an Applied Sociology. + + + +B--THE HISTORIC SURVEY OF CITIES + +But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time. Though +the claim of geography be fundamental our interest in the history of the +city is supremely greater; it is obviously no mere geographic +circumstances which developed one hill-fort in Judea, and another in +Attica, into world centres, to this day more deeply influential and +significant than are the vastest modern capitals. This very wealth of +historical interests and resources, the corresponding multiplicity of +specialisms, more than ever proves the need of some means by which to +group and classify them. Some panoramic simplification of our ideas of +history comparable to that of our geography, and if possible congruent +with this, is plainly what we want. Again the answer comes through +geography, though no longer in mere map or relief, but now in vertical +section--in the order of strata ascending from past to present, whether +we study rock-formations with the geologist, excavate more recent +accumulations with the archaeologist, or interpret ruins or monuments +with the historian. Though the primitive conditions we have above noted +with the physiographer remain apparent, indeed usually permanent, cities +have none the less their characteristic phases of historic development +decipherably superposed. Thus below even the characteristically +patriarchal civilisations, an earlier matriarchal order is often +becoming disclosed. Our interest in exploring some stately modern or +Renaissance city is constantly varied by finding some picturesque +mediaeval remnant; below this some fragment of Roman ruin; below this it +may be some barbarian fort or mound. Hence the fascinating interest of +travel, which compels us ever to begin our survey anew. Starting with +the same river-basin as before, the geographic panorama now gains a new +and deeper interest. Primitive centres long forgotten start into life; +pre-historic tumuli give up their dead; to the stone circles the [Page: +108] worshippers return; the British and the Roman camps again fill with +armed men, and beside the prosaic market town arises a shadowy Arthurian +capital. Next, some moment-centuries later, a usurper's tower rises and +falls; the mediaeval abbey, the great castles, have their day; with the +Reformation and the Renaissance the towns again are transformed; and +yet more thoroughly than ever by the Industrial Revolution, with its +factories, railways, steamships, and all that they bring with them. +Thus, for instance, almost more important than the internal +transformation and concentration wrought by railway and telegraph, is +the selection, amidst the almost innumerable seaports of the older +order, of the very few adapted to the deep draught of modern ships. In a +word, not only does the main series of active cities display traces of +all the past phases of evolution, but beside this lie fossils, or linger +survivals, of almost every preceding phase. + +Hence, after many years of experiment and practice in teaching sociology +I still find no better method available than that of regional survey, +historical as well as geographical. Beginning with some popular +excursion of obvious beauty and romantic interest like that to Melrose, +we see with every tourist how naturally and fully the atmosphere and +tradition of the Border found its expression and world influence in Sir +Walter Scott. Thence, passing by way of contrast through the long +isolated peninsula of Fife, say to representative towns like Kirkcaldy +and Largo, we still see the conditions of that individualism of which +Adam Smith and Alexander Selkirk ("Robinson Crusoe") have each in his +way become the very prototypes. In such ways the connection of regional +geography, history, and social psychology becomes increasingly clear. +Again, we explore the other old Fife seaports, a series of survivals +like those of the Zuyder Zee, or again work out in the field the +significance of Stirling, so often the strategic centre of Scotland. +Again, Dunfermline, as early mediaeval capital and abbey, furnishes a +convenient object lesson preparatory to the study of the larger +Edinburgh. Here, again, its triple centre, in the port of Leith, the +Royal Castle, the Abbey of Holyrood, are the respective analogues of the +port of London, the Tower, and Westminster; while each city-group has +its outlying circle of minor burghs, tardily and imperfectly +incorporated into a civic whole. Again, such a marked contrast of civic +origins and developments as those of Glasgow and Edinburgh has to be +accounted for; and thus through such progessively complexer surveys we +reach the plane of modern civic problems and policies. Understanding the +present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to +understand the future as the development of the present? + +The impressiveness of the aspect of Edinburgh to its visitors is thus +not [Page: 109] merely pictorial. Be the spectator conscious of this or +no, it turns primarily upon the contrast of the mediaeval hill-city with +its castle ramparts, its fretted cathedral crown, with park and +boulevard, with shops, hotels and railway stations. But the historic +panorama is unusually complete. See the hill-fort defended by lake and +forest, becoming "_castrum puellarum_," becoming a Roman and an +Arthurian citadel, a mediaeval stronghold of innumerable sieges, a +centre of autocratic and military dictatures, oligarchic governments, at +length a museum of the past. So in the city itself. Here the narrow +ridge crowded into a single street all the essential organs of a +capital, and still presents with the rarest completeness of +concentration a conspectus of modern civic life and development; and +this alike as regards both spiritual and temporal powers, using these +terms in their broadest senses as the respective expressions of the +material order and its immaterial counterparts. Thus the royal and noble +castles of the Middle Age become with the Renaissance here as everywhere +something of palaces, while with the industrial revolution they have +become replaced by factories or transformed into breweries. So the +guidance of speculative thought, once concentrated in the mediaeval +abbey, becomes transferred to the Reformation assembly of divines, to +the Renaissance college; and again at the Revolution, is largely taken +over by the speculative encyclopædists, of whom Hume and Smith were but +the most eminent. Nor are later developments less obvious. Of the +following generation, we have the neo-classic architecture which +everywhere dominated Europe after the French Revolution and during the +First Empire, while of the next generation's reaction against all this +in the romantic movement, the neo-Gothic monument of Scott is the most +characteristic possible representative. Again, just as in the Oxford +movement we had the (appropriately regional) renascence of the idealism +of the Cavaliers, so in Edinburgh we have naturally the simultaneous +renascence of the Puritan ideal, e.g., in the Free Church, whose +monument accordingly rises to dominate the city in its turn. The later +period of prosperous Liberalism, the heroic enthusiasms of Empire, have +each left their mark; and now in the dominant phase of social evolution, +that of Finance, the banks, the financial companies, the press are +having their turn as monument builders. Our Old Edinburgh is thus the +most condensed example, the visible microcosm of the social evolution +which is manifest everywhere; so that as a teaching model of +sociological development it may renew its educational attractiveness +when its improving hygiene has lessened its medical advantages. + +Setting down now these phases of historical development in tabular form, +we have a diagram such as the following:-- + + + ANCIENT | RECENT | CONTEMPORARY | INCIPIENT +---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +Primitive | Matri- | Patri- | Greek | Mediaeval | Renaissance | Revolution | Empire | Finance | ? ? ? + | archal | archal | and | | | | | | + | | | Roman | | | | | | + + +which, were it placed erect, we might now compare to the increasing +[Page: 110] nodes of a growing stem, or rather say the layers of a coral +reef, in which each generation constructs its characteristic stony +skeleton as a contribution to the growing yet dying and wearying whole. +I have elaborated this example of the panoramic aspect of Old Edinburgh +as a widely familiar instance of the method of literal survey with which +social and civic studies may so conveniently begin; and I press the +value of extending these even to the utmost elaborateness of +photographic survey: in my view, indeed, a sociological society has at +least as much use for a collection of maps, plans and photographs as of +statistics, indeed scarcely less than one of books. Of course, in all +this I am but recalling what every tourist in some measure knows; yet +his impressions and recollections can become an orderly politography, +only as he sees each city in terms of its characteristic social +formations, and as he utilises the best examples from each phase towards +building up a complete picture of the greatest products of civic +evolution, temporal and spiritual, of all places and times up to the +present. Such a parallel of the historic survey of the city to that of +its underlying geological area is thus in no wise a metaphoric one, but +one which may be worked out upon maps sections and diagrams almost +completely in the same way--in fact, with little change save that of +colours and vertical scale. The attempt to express the characteristic +and essential life and thought of a given region in each period upon a +series of maps is in fact the best method of understanding the everyday +map at which we commonly look so unthinkingly. + +Much of the preceding, I am assured, must be most unsatisfactory to +those who look at cities only from the standpoint of so many committees +dealing with police, water, finance, and so on; or to those who are +content to view the magnitude, the wealth and the population, the +industries and the manufactures of a great city without considering +whence these have come and whither they are leading; equally +unsatisfactory also, I fear, to those to whom civic dignities and +precedence, or the alternations of winning political colours, appear of +prime importance. I can only hope that some of these may, on +consideration, admit that the points of view I have endeavoured to +outline above may be worth some thought and study as elementary +preliminaries to their own more special and developed interests; and if +the society permit. I hope to approach these more closely in a later +paper. + +[Page: 111] The abstract economist or legalist, the moral or political +philosopher may also resent the proposed mode of treatment as an attempt +to materialise sociology by reducing it to concrete terms alone. But I +would reply that observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is +just the very means of preparing for it. It is the observant naturalist, +the travelled zoologist and botanist, who later becomes the productive +writer on evolution. It is the historian who may best venture on into +the philosophy of history;--to think the reverse is to remain in the +pre-scientific order altogether: hence the construction of systems of +abstract and deductive economics, politics or morals, has really been +the last surviving effort of scholasticism. Viewed as Science, Civics is +that branch of Sociology which deals with Cities--their origin and +distribution; their development and structure; their functioning, +internal and external, material and psychological; their evolution, +individual and associated. Viewed again from the practical side, that of +applied science, Civics must develop through experimental endeavour into +the more and more effective Art of enhancing the life of the city and of +advancing its evolution. With the first of these lines of study, the +concretely scientific, our philosophical outlook will not fail to widen; +with the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to +deepen also. + +As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have naturally +approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic survey, +its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these +to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, even +of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice +co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more +concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger +than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the +needed practical division of labour in the city's service. When the +first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly +diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who +at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated: the +evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link +between them. + + +C--THE CITIZEN IN PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT + +Leaving now the external survey of the city by help of its material +framework, its characteristic buildings and predominant styles, for the +deeper psychological survey of the citizens themselves, we may +conveniently begin with these also in their process of development--in +fact, our method compels us to this course. We enter then a school; and +if we bring fresh eyes we may soon be agreed that the extraordinary +babel of studies its time-table and curriculum reveal, is intelligible +from no single one of the various [Page: 112] geographic or historic +points of view we have traversed from mountain to sea, or from past to +present. But this unprecedented conflict of studies becomes at once +intelligible when viewed apart from any and every definite theory of +education yet promulgated by educationists, and even acquires a fresh +theory of its own--that of the attempted recapitulation of the survivals +of each and all preceding periods in their practical or speculative +aspects, particularly the later legends and literatures, their rituals +and codes. Thus, the inordinate specialisation upon arithmetic, the +exaggeration of all three R's, is plainly the survival of the demand for +cheap yet efficient clerks, characteristic of the recent and +contemporary financial period. + +The ritual of examinations with its correlation of memorising and +muscular drill is similarly a development of the imperial order, +historically borrowed from the Napoleonic one; the chaotic "general +knowledge" is similarly a survival of the encyclopædic period; that is, +of the French Revolution and the Liberal Movement generally; the Latin +grammar and verses are of course the survivals of the Renaissance, as +the precise fidelity to absurd spelling is the imitation of its proof +readers; the essay is the abridged form of the mediaeval disputation; +and only such genuine sympathy with Virgil or Tacitus, with Homer or +Plato as one in a thousand acquires, is truly Roman or Greek at all. +The religious instruction, however, re-interpreted by the mediaeval +Church or the Reformation, has still its strength in some of the best +elements of patriarchal literature; while the fairy tale, by which all +this superincumbent weight of learning is sometimes alleviated, is the +child's inheritance from the matriarchal order. Finally, the apple and +the ball, at the bottom of this whole burden of books, complete the +recapitulation; as the one, the raw fruit; the other, the ready missile, +of primeval man. Our child then is heir of all the ages more fully than +he or his teachers commonly realise. The struggle for mastery of the +schools is thus no temporary feud, but an unending battle; one destined +to increase rather than diminish; for in this there is the perpetual +clash of all the forces of good heredity and evil atavism, of all the +new variations also, healthy or diseases. + + + +[Page: 113] D--THE APPLIED SOCIOLOGY OF THE PRESENT + +The city and its children thus historically present a thoroughly +parallel accumulation of survivals or recapitulations of the past in the +present. Few types nowadays are pure, that is, keep strictly to their +period; we are all more or less mixed and modernised. Still, whether by +temporal or spiritual compulsion, whether for the sake of bread or +honour, each mainly and practically stands by his order, and acts with +the social formation he belongs to. Thus now the question of the +practical civics, that is, of the applied sociology, of each individual, +each body or interests may be broadly defined; it is to emphasise his +particular historic type, his social formation and influence in the +civic whole, if not indeed to dominate this as far as may be. We are all +for progress, but we each define it in his own way. Hence one man of +industrial energy builds more factories or slums, another as naturally +more breweries to supply them; and in municipal or national council his +line of action, conscious or unconscious, remains congruent with these. +Representative government fails to yield all that its inventors hoped of +it, simply because it is so tolerably representative of its majorities; +and there is thus great truth in the common consolation that our +municipal governments, like larger ones, are seldom much worse than we +deserve. Each social formation, through each of its material activities, +exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and +ideals wins also its place and power. At one time the legal and +punitive point of view, directing itself mainly to individual cases, or +the philanthropic, palliating sufferings, dispute the foremost places; +and now in their turn hygienic or educational endeavours arise, towards +treating causes instead of waiting for consequences. Such endeavours are +still undeniably too vague in thought, too crude in practice, and the +enthusiast of hygiene or education or temperance may have much to answer +for. But so, also, has he who stands outside of the actual civic field, +whether as philistine or aesthete, utopist or cynic, party politician or +"mug-wump." Between all these extremes it is for the united forces of +civic survey and civic service to find the middle course. [Page: 114] We +observe then in the actual city, as among its future citizens, that our +action is generally the attempt to mould both alike to some past or +passing social formation, and, therefore, usually towards the type to +which our interest and our survey incline, be this in our own city or +more probably in some earlier one. Even in the actual passing detail of +party politics we are often reminded how directly continuous are the +rivals with puritan London, with royalist Oxford; but still more is this +the case throughout the history of thought and action, and the intenser +the more plainly; for it is in his highest moments of conviction and +decision that the Puritan feels most in sympathy with the law or the +prophets of Jerusalem, the scholar with Athens; or that the man of +action--be he the first French republican or the latest +imperialist--most frankly draws his inspiration from the corresponding +developments of Paris. It is a commonplace of psychology that our +thought is and must be anthropomorphic; a commonplace of history that it +has been Hebraomorphic, Hellenomorphic, Latinomorphic, and so on by +turns. + +This view has often been well worked out by the historian of inventions +and discoveries, of customs or laws, of policies or religions, as by the +historian of language or the fine arts. What we still commonly need, +however, is to carry this view clearly into our own city and its +institutions, its streets and schools and homes, until either in the +private spending or public voting of the smallest sum we know exactly +whether we are so far determining expenditure and influence towards +enlarging, say, the influence and example of renascent Florence in one +generation or of decadent Versailles in another. There is no danger of +awaking this consciousness too fully; for since we have ceased +consciously to cite and utilise the high examples of history we have +been the more faithfully, because sub-consciously and automatically, +continuing and extending later and lower developments. + + +E--CITIES, PRESENT AND FUTURE + +Hence, after a Liberal and an Imperial generation, each happy in their +respective visions of wealth and expanding greatness [Page: 115], the +current renewal of civic interests naturally takes the form of an +awakening survey of our actual environment. First, a literal mapping of +its regional elements, and then an historic interpretation of +these--not, alas, merely or mainly in terms of the cities of sacred or +classic tradition, nor of the Mediaeval or Renaissance cities which +followed these, but as stupendous extensions of the mediaeval Ghetto, of +the Wapping Stairs, of the Lancashire factories and of the Black +Country, relieved by the coarse jollities of Restoration London, and +adorned for the most part, with debased survivals from the Italian and +the French Renaissance. There is thus no more question in our civic +discussions of "bringing in" or "leaving out" geography or history; we +have been too long unconscious of them, as was M. Jourdain of his +speaking in prose. + +But what of the opening Future? May its coming social developments not +be discerned by the careful observer in germs and buds already formed or +forming, or deduced by the thinker from sociological principles? I +believe in large measure both; yet cannot within these limits attempt to +justify either. Enough for the present, if it be admitted that the +practical man in his thought and action in the present is mainly the as +yet too unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still +working within the grasp of natural conditions. + +To realise the geographic and historic factors of our city's life is +thus the first step to comprehension of the present, one indispensable +to any attempt at the scientific forecast of the future, which must +avoid as far as it can the dangers of mere utopianism. + + +F--LITERATURE OF CIVICS + +No discussion of the preliminaries and fundamentals of Civics can omit +some consideration of the vast and ever growing literature of cities. +But how are we to utilise this? How continue it? How co-ordinate it with +the needed independent and first-hand survey of city by city? And how +apply this whole knowledge of past and present towards civic action? + +The answer must plainly be a concrete one. Every city [Page: 116] +however small, has already a copious literature of its topography and +history in the past; one, in fact, so ample that its mere bibliography +may readily fill a goodly volume,[1] to which the specialist will long +be adding fresh entries. This mass of literature may next be viewed as +the material for a comprehensive monograph, well enriched with maps and +illustrations, such as many cities can boast; and this again may be +condensed into a guide-book. Guide-books have long been excellent in +their descriptive and historical detail, and are becoming increasingly +interpretative also, especially since Mr. Grant Allen transferred his +evolutionary insight and his expository clearness from natural to civic +history. + +[1] e.g., Erskine Beveridge, LL.D., Bibliography of +Dunfermline.--_Dunfermline, 1902._ 8vo. + +After this general and preliminary survey of geographic environment and +historic development, there nowadays begins to appear the material of a +complementary and contemporary volume, the Social Survey proper. Towards +this, statistical materials are partly to be found amid parliamentary +and municipal reports and returns, economic journals and the like, but a +fresh and first-hand survey in detail is obviously necessary. In this +class of literature, Mr. Booth's monumental Survey of London, followed +by others, such as Mr. Rowntree's of York, have already been so widely +stimulating and suggestive that it may safely be predicted that before +many years the Social Survey of any given city will be as easily and +naturally obtainable as is at present its guide-book; and the +rationalised census of the present condition of its people, their +occupation and real wages, their family budget and culture-level, should +be as readily ascertainable from the one, as their antecedents +understood or their monuments visited by help of the other. + +But these two volumes--"The City: Past and Present,"--are not enough. Is +not a third volume imaginable and possible, that of the opening Civic +Future? Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of things +as they have come about, and of people as they are--of their +occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals--may we +not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly +suggest, something of [Page: 117] their actual or potential development? +And may not, must not, such discernment, such planning, while primarily, +of course, for the immediate future, also take account of the remoter +and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and +correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve? Such a +volume would thus differ widely from the traditional and contemporary +"literature of Utopias" in being regional instead of non-regional, +indeed ir-regional and so realisable, instead of being unrealisable and +unattainable altogether. The theme of such a volume would thus be to +indicate the practicable alternatives, and to select and to define from +these the lines of development of the legitimate _Eu-topia_ possible in +the given city, and characteristic of it; obviously, therefore, a very +different thing from a vague _Ou-topia_, concretely realisable nowhere. +Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal +city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris, +have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is +one thing, a plan for our city improvement is another. + +Some concrete, if still fragmentary, materials towards such a volume +are, of course, to be found in all municipal offices, though scattered +between the offices of the city engineer and health officer, the +architect and park superintendent; while the private architect and +landscape gardener, the artist, sometimes even the municipal voters and +their representatives, may all have ideas of their own. But though our +cities are still as a whole planless, their growth as yet little better +than a mere casual accretion and agglomeration, if not a spreading +blight, American and German cities are now increasingly affording +examples of comprehensive design of extension and of internal +improvement. As a specific example of such an attempt towards the +improvement of a British city, one not indeed comprehending all aspects +of its life, but detailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and expressing +that continuity of past and present into future which has been above +argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline +Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent +study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for +consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a +moderate and readily intelligible [Page: 118] scale a very marked +combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing +activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook. + +That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has been +above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology is +thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet +it is one not lacking in generality of application. For what we have +reached is really the conception of an _Encyclopædia Civica_, to which +each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and +its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet +more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the +awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the +production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire--life ever +producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature +reacting upon the ennoblement of life. + +Apart altogether from what may be the quality and defects of particular +volumes, such as those cited as examples of each part of such a proposed +civic trilogy, one as yet nowhere complete, the very conception of such +a possible threefold series may be of some service. For this would +present a continuous whole, at once sociological and civic--the views +and the resources of the scholar and the educationist with their +treasures of historic culture, of the man of action with his mastery of +immediate affairs, of the thinker with his vision of the opening future, +now all co-ordinated by help of the design of the artist, and thence to +be gradually realised in the growing heritage of the city, the enlarging +life of the citizen. + +NOTE--As an example of the concrete application to a particular city, of +the sociological methods and principles indicated in the above paper, +Prof. Geddes exhibited an illustrated volume embodying the results of +his studies and designs towards the improvement of Dunfermline, under +the Trust recently established by Mr. Carnegie. This has since been +published: + +P. GEDDES. City Development. Park Gardens and Culture Institutes; a +Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. With 138 illustrations. +Edinburgh, etc.. 1904. + + + + +[Page: 119] DISCUSSION + + +The Chairman (MR. CHARLES BOOTH) in opening the discussion said: + +The paper we have just heard read is one of the most complete and +charming papers on a great and interesting subject I have ever heard. I +think you will all agree in this, and I hope the discussion which +follows will emphasise and, if that is possible, add to the wealth of +ideas that this paper contains. + + + +MR EBENEZER HOWARD (Founder of the Garden City Association) said: + +I have read and re-read--in the proof forwarded to me--Professor Geddes' +wonderfully luminous and picturesque paper with much interest. He has +given us a graphic description of the geographic process which leads to +the development of the city. We see vividly the gradual stages by which +the city grows and swells, with the descent of the population from the +hillsides into the valleys, even as the river which flows through the +city is fed continually by the streams which flow down to it. But is +there not this essential difference between the gathering waters of +heaven, as they pour into the great city, and the gathering tide of +population, which follows the path of the waters? The waters flow +through the city on, on toward the mighty ocean, and are then gradually +gathered upward into the soft embraces of the clouds and wafted back +again to the hills, whence they flow down once more to the valleys. But +the living stream of men, women, and children flows from the +country-side and leaves it more and more bare of active, vigorous, +healthy life: it does not, like the waters, "return again to cover the +earth," but moves ever on to the great city, and from thence, at least +for the great majority, there is no chance of more than, at best, a very +short stay in the country. No: the tide flows resistlessly [Page: 120] +onward to make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our +overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge +more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie +near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and +the task of the social reformer more and yet more difficult. + +But surely there must be a way, could we but discover it, of imitating +the skill and bountifulness of Nature, by creating channels through +which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so +that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into +the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the +twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown +city. + +This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the +historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation +lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks. +"Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not +preparing also to understand the future as the development of the +present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that +while the age in which we live is the age of the great, +closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those +who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that the +twentieth century will be known as the period of the great exodus, the +return to the land, the period when by a great and conscious effort a +new fabric of civilisation shall be reared by those who knew how to +apply the knowledge gained by "Social Survey to Social Service." What +are the signs? What words can we place under the head of "Incipient" in +Prof. Geddes' diagram? I would suggest, for one of Prof. Geddes' +interrogation marks might be substituted "Decentralisation of +Industry"--as a great, but yet incipient movement, represented by Port +Sunlight, Bournville, Garden City. For there are now many agencies at +work making for industrial decentralisation. Industries are being driven +out of the great towns by the excessive rents and rates which have to be +paid there--by the difficulty of obtaining adequate space for the modern +factory, a one-storey building; and for the homes of our workers, which +must be vastly different to what they now are if England is to maintain +her place among the nations. And while factories are being driven from +the city, they are also being attracted to the country by its +newly-discovered potentialities. Thus Messrs. Lever Brothers, crowded +out of Warrington, established an entirely new town on a new site at +Port Sunlight; and, because the site was new and raw, it was therefore +possible for Mr. Lever to plan his little town with a single eye to the +best and most desirable conditions, alike from an industrial and a +health and housing point of view. And the same is true of Bournville. +Bournville is one of the most beautiful villages in the world, largely +again because of the potentialities of a new site acquired for the +definite purpose of building thereon a village in which overcrowding +shall be deliberately and permanently prevented, [Page: 121] and in +which work inside the factory may be varied by work in the garden. Now +that these successful experiments have been carried out in this country, +is it not time that the idea of establishing new industries on new +sites, and of surrounding those industries with healthy homes, should be +carried forward on a larger scale, with wider and more concerted +aims--carried forward, too, in such a manner as to make it possible for +the small manufacturer to take part in a movement which has proved to be +so beneficial alike to employer and employed? It is out of this thought +that the Garden City idea has grown, an idea now in course of being +fulfilled. Three thousand eight hundred acres of land, or nearly ten +times the area of Bournville or Port Sunlight, have been acquired in +Hertfordshire, two miles west of the town of Hitchin, and on the branch +line of railway between that town and Cambridge. State aid has not been +sought; that would indeed be weary work. But a company has been formed, +through the untiring efforts of the Garden City Association; plans for +the town have been carefully prepared, plans which, of course, have +regard to the contours of the land (which were first taken, showing +every change of level of five feet), to the preservation of its natural +beauties--its trees and the picturesque villages of Norton and Willian; +to the necessity for railway sidings and railway station, now, thanks to +the Great Northern Railway, already provided; to the making of roads of +easy gradient and of suitable width, affording access to different parts +of the estate, actual work on which is progressing; the careful guarding +from contamination of our water supply, already proved to be abundant; +the provision of a reservoir of suitable elevation, now in course of +construction; a system of drainage, about to be started with; the +provision of parks and playgrounds within the town, as well as a wide +belt of agricultural land around it; sites for homes for 30,000 persons, +with good sized gardens. About six cottages have already been built, not +by the Company but by private enterprise, while many others are just +about to be started upon; the setting apart of sites for schools, +churches, and other public buildings, while plans are in preparation for +lighting the town, as well as for providing it with motive power. + +The programme which I have sketched out is certainly not too bold or +comprehensive for the British race. If a hundredth part of the +organising skill which the Japanese and the Russians are showing in the +great war now in progress were shown by ourselves as citizens in our +great civil war against disease and dirt, poverty and overcrowding, we +could not only build many new cities on the best models, but could also +bring our old towns into line with the new and better order. Prof. +Geddes wishes well, I know, to the Garden City Association, a +propagandist body, and to its first child, the Garden City Company; and +I am sure you will all unite with me in the hope that the best and most +lasting success may crown the generous gift of Mr. Carnegie of £500,000 +to the City of Dunfermline, and reward the efforts of the Trustees and +of Prof. Geddes to make, by the application of modern [Page: 122] skill, +science and art, the ancient city of Dunfermline a centre of sweetness +and light, stimulating us all to higher and yet higher efforts to secure +civic, national and imperial well-being. + +MR. C.H. GRINLING said: + +Like most of the audience, doubtless, he came not to speak but to draw +ever fresh inspiration from Prof. Geddes. But there was one aspect of +the subject he would like to bring out and emphasise. He referred to the +sociological institute, which, under the name of the Outlook Tower, had +grown up in connection with the School of Sociology which Prof. Geddes +had founded and developed in Edinburgh. That institute was at once an +organisation for teaching and for research, for social education, and +for civic action. It was, in fact, a concrete and working application of +the principle indicated in the paper as the very foundation of +Civics--"social survey for social service." And, seeing that the Outlook +Tower was an institution designed in every respect for application to +any given locality, he urged the Sociological Society to advocate its +general extension, so that no region should be without its own +sociological institute or Outlook Tower. + +If one individual could accomplish so much, what could not be +accomplished by the sociologists of our day who would concentrate +themselves, each on his own locality, not necessarily to do the work, +but to give the inspiration which would call out the work of collecting +just that material which Prof. Geddes suggested all through his paper +was one of the great needs of our time? And so one hoped that papers of +this kind would not merely lead to discussion, but to workers +accumulating results of this kind, giving the inspiration to others, and +thus laying up treasures for the sociologists of the future for their +interpretation. Thus, the Sociological Society should be not only the +one scientific society in constant touch with all the leading brains +over the country, but it should be an inspiration, as Prof. Geddes has +himself been, to groups of workers everywhere for just the kind of work +which the Sociological Society has been founded to develop. + + +MR. J.M. ROBERTSON said: + +I would first add my tribute to this extremely interesting and +stimulating paper. It recalled confabulations I had with Prof. Geddes, +many years ago, when he was first formulating in Edinburgh those ideas +which have since become so widely known. I would like, however, to +suggest a few criticisms. The paper is, broadly speaking, an application +of the view of a biologist to Sociology. It is not so much an +application of Darwin's view as that of Von Baer. Prof. Geddes has +characterised his paper as one of elementary preliminaries, but he has +really contributed a paper that [Page: 123] would form part of a +preliminary study in a series of studies in Sociology. The paper does +not quite bear out its title: "Civics: as Applied Sociology." The +application has not begun. The somewhat disparaging remarks on +encyclopædias of general knowledge, further, might well be applied to +the scheme of an encyclopædia of the natural history of every city and +every village as an original centre. This atomism will not help +Sociology. Had he to master all that, the sociologist's life would be a +burden not to be borne, and we would never get to applied sociology at +all. There is a danger, too, in following this line, of fastening +attention on one stage of evolution and leaving it there. The true +principle is that evolution is eternal and continuous; and I think harm +may be done, possibly, when you take, say, the phenomenon of the +communication of general knowledge in schools and call it a derivation +from the French _Encyclopedie_. Why leave it there? Where did that come +from? If you are going to trace the simple evolution of civic forms, if +you are to trace how they have come about, it will not do to stick at a +given point. This is a survival of that. That is a survival of something +else. The French _Encyclopedie_ will have to be traced back to the +encyclopædia of the mediaeval period; and even to the still earlier +period of Isidore of Seville. Then again, there is a danger, I think, +analogous to the danger met with in early botany--the danger of +confusing a resemblance with a relationship. It is extremely interesting +to speculate that the Place de l'Etoile is an evolution from the plan of +the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but +it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection. +The thing is not proved. + +Of course, the vital question is not this tracing of evolution. The +question is: Is "Civics" to be only the study of forms? If so, Sociology +is a dead science, and will effect little practical good until it is +vivified by such suggestions as Mr. Crane has put in his paper. Mr. +Walter Crane brought in a vital question when he said: "How are you +going to modify the values of your civic life unless you grapple with +political problems?" I am not forgetting that Prof. Geddes promises to +deal in another paper with the civics of the future; but I insist that +it will have to grapple with political questions. As he says, a city is +not a place, but "a drama in time." The question for the sociological +student of history is: How has this inequality of wealth and of service +arisen, and how is it to be prevented in the future? That is the problem +we have to study if we wish to make sociology a vital interest. A +definition of progress is really the first step in sociology. Prof. +Geddes' next paper should give us a definition of progress, and it is +better that we begin to fight over a definition of progress, in order to +get a dynamic agreement, than that we should multiply the archaeological +study of many towns. I admit that it is very interesting. In travelling +in South Africa, I often tried to gather how communities began; what, +for example, was the nucleus of this or that village. It was surprising +how very few had an idea of any nucleus at all. I deprecate the idea, +however, that [Page: 124] we are all to amass an enormous accumulation +of such researches. Mr. Booth's single compilation for London is a study +for years; but Mr. Booth's admirable investigation of the difficulties +of life among the poor of London does not of itself give any new impulse +to the solution of the problem of London. It merely gives exact +knowledge in place of general knowledge. The problem of sociology arose +on the general knowledge. I fear lest the work of sociology should run +to an extension of this admirable study instead of to the stimulation of +action taken on that particular knowledge, or on more general knowledge. +We all knew there was plenty of poverty, and how it was caused. We all +had Ideals as to how it was to be got rid of in the future; but the +question is: Is the collection of detail or the prescription of social +method the kind of activity that the Sociological Society is to take up? + +SIR THOMAS BARCLAY said: + +I am not sure that I agree with Mr. Robertson that it is desirable to +define either "progress" or "civilisation." On the whole, their chances +lie rather in the great variety of ideas of what constitutes them than +in any hard-and-fast notion of their meaning. They are generalisations +of what is, rather than an object towards which effort should tend. But +neither do I agree with Prof. Geddes' restriction of "civics" to the +mere outward part of municipal effort. In America the word "civics" is +applied to the rights and duties of citizens, and I should like to see +Prof. Geddes include in Civics the connection between citizen life and +the outward improvement of cities. I am sure, however, Professor Geddes, +as a practical man, will deal rather with realities than theoretical +views on the subject for which he has done so much himself. Edinburgh +owes more than many are willing to admit to Prof. Geddes. I think Ramsay +Lodge one of the greatest embellishments of the Castle Hill in +Edinburgh. I hope he will now be successful in doing something still +more admirable for my native town of Dunfermline. My friend Mr. +Carnegie, whose native town it also is, I believe intends to show by an +object lesson what can be done for all cities. Prof. Geddes is helping +him in this work with his suggestions. I hope they will be carried out. +In America there are several very beautiful cities. No one can ever +forget Washington, which is truly a garden city. No money is spared in +America to beautify and healthify (excuse the barbarism) the habitations +of the thousands. A beautiful city is an investment for health, +intellect, imagination. Genius all the world over is associated, +wherever it has been connected with cities, with beautiful cities. To +grow up among things of beauty ennobles the population. But I should +like to see Prof. Geddes extend his projects for Dunfermline to the +population itself. Most of you know what Mr. Henderson did to utilise +the Edinburgh [Page: 125] police in the care of children. The future of +the country depends upon them. The subject is too serious to continue to +be left to the haphazard mercies of indifferent parents. Every child +born is an agent for good or for evil among the community, and the +community cannot afford to neglect how it is brought up, the +circumstances in which it has its being, the environment from which it +derives its character and tendencies. Necessity may be the mother of +invention, but need of food and insufficient clothing develop in the +child an inventiveness that is not for the good of the community. It +seems a matter of too great an importance to be left even to private +initiative, as was done under Mr. Henderson's regime in Edinburgh; but +everywhere else, or nearly so, very little is done by even private +initiative for the protection of the children against their vicious +environment. In short, I do not think that civics, in the sense in which +my friend Prof. Geddes treats it, is a complete subject at all. Civics, +to my mind, includes everything that relates to the citizen. Everywhere +something is being done in one direction or another to make them +capable, prosperous, and happy. In America happiness is taught in the +schools. Every schoolmaster's and schoolmistress's first duty is to set +an example of a happy frame of mind; smiling and laughing are +encouraged, and it is not thought that the glum face is at all necessary +for the serious business of life. In fact, the glum face is a +disqualification; is associated with failure, and bad luck and +ill-nature. In Germany the schoolmaster is in the first place a trainer +of the body. One of his chief duties is to watch and prevent the +deterioration of the eyesight, to promote the development of the lungs, +to prevent spinal deviation. The second part of his business is to watch +over the character of the child, and only the third part is to ram +knowledge into the poor little mind. And wherever you go over the world +you will find something in the course of being done in civics, as I +understand the subject. I thank Prof. Geddes for what he is doing for +Dunfermline, and hope he will understand "progress" without requiring to +define it. + + +DR. J. LIONEL TAYLER + +(Author of "_Aspects of Social Evolution_") said: + +While agreeing with Prof. Geddes in his belief in the importance of +institutional and geographical studies as a basis for the investigation +of the development of cities, it yet seems to me that these studies +cannot prove of supreme value to society unless they are accompanied by +a detailed examination of the _natural_ characteristics of all +individuals who have been born into and existed in, or merely dwelt in, +these surroundings. It is not enough to trace out, however accurately, +the various stages of a town's growth from its commencement to the +present time, because _the cause_ of [Page: 126] the evolution of any +city aggregate lies deeper, is in large part animate, and not inanimate, +in character. The value of the surroundings depends at least as much +upon the capacity of the individual citizen, singly and collectively, to +utilise what he or she is brought in contact with as upon the +peculiarities of these surroundings themselves. Place, tradition, social +organisation, individual development, education, are factors in town +evolution that cannot safely be overlooked, and they all vary from age +to age and in place and place. + +If it were possible to completely exchange the inhabitants of a large +town in England with those of an equally large town in France two groups +of changes would become more or less rapidly observable: (1) the French +and English citizens would adapt themselves, as far as they desired and +were able, to their altered conditions; (2) the characteristics of both +towns would gradually change, in spite of geographical position, in +response to the altered human needs. Similarly, a town composed of +individuals who are naturally uncultured and unprogressive will tend to +preserve its uncultured and unprogressive characters more than another +that has alert citizens to carry on its activities. Every profession and +every trade tends to foster its own social atmosphere; and towns will +vary with their industrial life, and individuals favourably disposed to +this atmosphere will come to the town, and those unfavourably inclined +to it will leave. _These changing citizens, as they act upon and react +to their surroundings and vary in their powers age by age, are the real +evolvers of the conditions in which they dwell_; hence the citizen must +not be omitted from our study if we are to understand city growth. + +In other words, I think that every investigation of civic, and for that +matter country life should be studied from two aspects: (1) to note the +peculiarities, growth and development of the material, non-living and +non-thinking elements in the problem--the buildings, their geographical +position, their age, their fitness for past and present life, and the +distinctive local features that are evolving or retrogressing with the +multiplication of some trades and industries and the decline of others +in each area that is studied; (2) the change in the quality of the +citizens themselves through racial, educational, and other factors, +noting how far ideals are altering, not only in the mass of individuals +taken as a whole, but also by examining the changing outlook in every +trade and profession. With these two parallel lines of investigation to +study, we could then determine how far environment--social and +climatic--how far racial and individual characteristics have been +powerful in the moulding of the fabric around us. + +With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the +vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social +life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, +knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds +us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, knowing +the [Page: 127] intensity of the different national desires for progress +_and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires_, we could +realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in our +civic life. + +PROFESSOR EARL BARNES (in moving a vote of thanks) said: + +For years I have been accumulating a debt of obligation to Prof. Geddes +for ideas, suggestions, and large synthesis of life, and it gives me +special pleasure to voice the feeling of this meeting concerning the +paper read to us this afternoon. To me, as an American, it is especially +interesting to hear this presentation of life as an organic whole. Life +is but a period of education, and if there is nothing behind this +present moment of life it is all extremely insignificant. To an +American, who has lived at No. 1067 in 63rd Street, Philadelphia, and +at No. 1718 in G Street, in Washington, it is profoundly interesting to +think of the possibility of a man's so living that his whole existence +shall be significant, so that the realities of his world, geographical, +geological, and material, and all that long development of humanity +through the historic past--that all these things will be really and +truly significant to him. Prof. Geddes has himself shown us that is +possible. Any man who has gone to Edinburgh and seen the restoration of +the old life that has been carried out there under his hand knows it can +be done. I suppose we all came here to hear Professor Geddes speak on +practical affairs because his name is now connected with the plans for +making a city that shall be really expressive of all its potentialities +to all of its people. I am personally profoundly grateful to him for his +paper; and I move you that he be given a very hearty vote of thanks. + +The Chairman. (MR. CHARLES BOOTH), in closing the discussion, said: I +myself entirely agree with what Mr Robertson has said as to the extreme +difficulty of bringing investigations of the kind referred to, to +practical conclusions--practical points. Practical work at present needs +the most attention. I perhaps am too old to do it, but I feel the +attraction of that kind of work, and that was one reason I was sorry Mr +Loch had to leave before we could hear what he might have to say. The +description I have given of London does seem to be a foggy labyrinth I +agree, but nevertheless I cannot but think that we do require a complete +conception if we are to do the definite work of putting different people +in their proper places in an organic whole, such as a city is. I do not +think we can do without it, and I regard the paper of this evening as an +important contribution [Page: 128] to that complete conception which I +feel we need. I should like each worker and thinker to have and to know +his place in the scheme of civic improvement; and I think it perfectly +possible for every man to know what it is that he is trying to do, what +contribution it is that he ought to give to that joint life which is +called here civics, which is the life of a city and the life in the +city. One man cannot possibly concentrate it all in himself. Within a +society such as the Sociological Society a general scheme is possible in +which each individual and each society shall play its acknowledged and +recognised part. It does not follow that the work done in one city can +apply as an example to another. Individuality has too strong a hold; +but each town may work out something for itself. I have been very much +interested in the work which Mr. Rowntree has done in York, on which he +was kind enough to consult me. He entered upon it on quite other grounds +from mine, but so far as the ground was common between him and me we +tried to have a common basis. Those of you who have not read Mr. +Horsfall's volumes on Manchester would do well to do so. Prof. Geddes +gave us a vivid picture of a larger regional unit which culminates +geographically in the city as industrial climax. In his particular +instance he referred, I take, to Dundee. In Dundee there is at this +moment an inquiry being started, and I am in communication with those +who are doing it, and I hope it will add something to the completeness +of the picture we have of that city. In Dundee they have excessive +difficulties in respect to crowding and female labour. What I suggested +was, that they should make a special study of such circumstances as are +special to Dundee. Labour there is very largely sack-making and jute +manufacture, and there is a great deal of girl labour; and that is one +of the special subjects that will be considered in that inquiry. + +Then, with regard to the preservation of such of the natural beauties +that do remain even quite near to busy town centres, surely it is of the +greatest importance that they should be watched and protected and +preserved. Prof. Geddes has contributed a portion of his practical work +to that practical question at Dunfermline. His charming volume on +Dunfermline ("A Study in City Development") shows what beautiful +features there are near Dunfermline, and how much may be done to +preserve and improve them in ways that are most interesting to study. +His use of photography in this matter is extraordinarily successful. +Prof. Geddes has photographed a scene as it now is, with its background +and distance and its squalid foreground, already ruined by the debris of +the city--old tin pots and every [Page: 129] kind of rubbish--thrown +down by the side of the stream, which is naturally beautiful. By +manipulating the photographic plates he wipes out that which he does not +want and introduces other features, including a little waterfall; and +you have, instead of a miserable suburb, a dignified park. Well now, +that is practical work. It has in it that element which he has described +by a question-mark in his diagram, the element of forecast. You have the +same idea in Manchester, in Mr. Horsfall's work. They have laid out +their map of Manchester and shown in what way it may develop, so as not +to spoil the beauty that remains on two sides of Manchester. There is +really exquisitely beautiful natural scenery close to Manchester, which +may be entirely spoiled or preserved, according as a forecast is made +and forethought taken. This is not a question on which there is reason +to think that people will disagree. The difficulties are always supposed +to be financial. It is a sad thing that we should be so hampered by our +methods of finance that we throw away opportunities to retain these +actual beauties which undoubtedly add to the actual money value of a +district. I cannot suppose that the way in which cities are laid out +with narrow streets really results in an increase of value. The +surroundings of our cities are undeveloped estates, which we have only +to agree amongst ourselves how to lay out, and everybody would benefit +by such joint action. There is an excellent illustration in regard to +that in Mr. Horsfall's work in connection with Germany. It must be said +that from Germany there is a great deal to learn in civic matters. In +one of its towns the properties lie in extraordinarily long strips. It +is the final result of properties having been measured by the length of +the plough's run. When that method is applied to town sites, it is not +convenient for streets; and there are some quarters in this German town +ruined in this way, and the people have agreed together to improve +matters. Every owner is to be given credit for his share in the total +value of the improvement that is found to accrue from the re-arrangement +of these undesirable divisions, and any difference of opinion as to the +just share and proportion is to be referred to an impartial arbitrator. +All the owners will gain, though some a little more than others. That is +an example that we may do well to try and follow, and in some way or +other improve the money value, and social value, and hygienic value of +towns, and if necessary compel the carrying out of improvements when +some few might be disposed to hold out against them. + + + + +[Page: 130] WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS + +From PROF. BALDWIN BROWN (Professor of Fine Art in the University of +Edinburgh) + + +I am glad of this opportunity of saying how cordially I agree with the +method adopted by my friend Professor Geddes in dealing with the life of +cities. He treats the modern community and its material shell as things +of organic growth, with a past and a future as well as a present, +whereas we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour of +some exigency of the moment. A historic British town has recently +furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection. The town +possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at a +time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great +Britain. Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall +and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing a site +for a new elementary school. No doubt, in that school, books "approved +by the Department" will instruct scholars in the past history of the +burgh, but the living witness of that history must first of all be +carefully obliterated. All the rest of this ancient and historic +enceinte was condemned a few weeks ago to complete destruction, merely +on the plea that the site would be convenient for workmen's dwellings. +The monument has now been saved, but it has taken the whole country to +do it! + +Here were chosen officials, governors of no mean city, absolutely +oblivious of these important interests committed to their care, and all +for want of having drilled into them these broader views which Professor +Geddes puts forward so well. + +He has himself done practical work in Edinburgh on the lines he lays +down, and I have lately had occasion to note, and call attention to the +advantage to the city of much wise conservatism in regard to our older +buildings which he and his associates have shown. + +In Edinburgh we have the advantage that our older monuments, [Page: +131] in which so much of the past life of the city is enshrined, are +firm and solid; and it takes some trouble to knock them down. Hence for +some time to come we shall preserve here object-lessons in civic +development that will be of interest to the country at large. + + +From MR. WALTER CRANE (President of Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society) + +Professor Geddes' very interesting "Study in City Development" is highly +suggestive, and shows how great a difference thoughtful and tasteful +treatment might make in dealing with such problems. It is sad to think +of the opportunities wasted, and of the more ignorant and often too +hasty clearances for traffic which have often been apparently the sole +motives in city improvement. The conservation of historic buildings, +whenever possible, the planting of trees along our streets, the laying +out of gardens, the insistence upon a proportional amount of air and +open space to new buildings would go a long way towards making our +bricks-and-mortar joyless wildernesses into something human and +habitable. + +Whether, under favourable circumstances and the rare public spirit of +private owners, much can be done, or to any wide extent, so long as +absolute individual ownership in land and ground values is allowed, +seems to me very doubtful. We cannot hope to see great social +improvements without great economic changes, but every effort in the +direction of improving the beauty of our cities is welcome to all who +have the well-being of the community at heart; and such work as Prof. +Geddes is doing should arouse the keenest interest and the earnest +attention of all who realise its immense social importance. + + +From MR. J.H. HARLEY, M.A. + +If sociology is ever to vindicate itself as an art, it must be able to +analyse and explain the present, and to some extent at least to cast the +horoscope of the future. It must feel its way through all the tangled +labyrinths of city life, and show us where we have arrived and whither +we are going. But this is exactly the part of Professor Geddes' Applied +Sociology where he becomes most vague and unsatisfactory. "Enough for +the present," we are told, "if it be admitted that the practical man in +his thought and action in the present is mainly as yet the too +unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still working +within the grasp of natural conditions." Now we must all be willing to +admit that the present is the child of the past, and that we cannot +adequately understand [Page: 132] the present until we have led up to +the present by the study of its antecedents more and less remote. But +what Professor Geddes fails to bring out is that it is only in the +present or the more immediate past that the City has really become a +City in the modern sense of the word. The City as City is a product of +the Industrial Revolution. Its huge and casual assemblages of human +life, its overcrowding, its poverty line, its East End and its West End, +its infantile mortality, its trades massed in their own particular +districts, it aliens, its criminals and its vices--all these problems of +social pathology arise from the fact that the conditions of modern +industry have brought people together who have few interests in common, +and who were compelled to arrange themselves in some kind of decent +order within a limited area, without sufficient time being given to +evolve a suitable environment, or to prepare themselves for the +environment which they actually found on every side of them. London in +the past, therefore, cannot help us so very much to solve the riddles of +London in the present, because London in the past had not developed +these social growths or offered a mature ground to those social +parasites which make us sometimes despair of being able to get much +insight into the London of the present. + +The fact seems to be that Prof. Geddes conceives sociology too much as a +primary and too little as a secondary science. He defines applied +sociology as the application of social survey to social science, when +social ratiocination or social philosophy are needed before one can be +said to have gauged the extent of the influence which this comprehensive +science may have in our actual practice or on our Budget of the future. +No doubt, "observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is just +the very means of preparing for it," but this preparation must be made +in the various specialisms which make up the complete or encyclopædic +science of sociology. To me it seems an unwarrantable narrowing of the +scope or significance of sociology to say that there is no better method +available of teaching it "than that of regional survey, historical as +well as geographical." Surely "regional survey" Is the appropriate +method in the very simplest and most concrete parts of the complete +science of sociology, and even when we come to history proper we must do +very much more than make a regional survey. It is very interesting, no +doubt, to "survey" history in the course of a summer ramble to the ruins +of some old monastery, but unless the monks had kept records of what had +been done there in bygone days, the mere outward survey will not carry +us further than Prof. Geddes is carried in the very general map which he +makes of the whole field of history. In other words, history, in any +proper sense, demands more than "survey" in Prof. Geddes' sense of the +word. It calls to its aid linguistics, criticism, archaeology, +jurisprudence, and politics--there must be comparison and criticism as +well as "survey." History is the laboratory in which the sociologist +sees his social experiments working out their [Page: 133] results, and +history is to the sociologist what experiment is to the physician, or +the comparative method to the biologist. + +This being so, the scope of "civics" as "applied sociology" is immensely +widened. The present is the child of the past, but we see that it is +only in the present that such ancient groups as the colony of Hanseatic +merchants in Old London have shown us what has been the ultimate +significance of their embryological life. The modern city bristles with +sociological problems which demand a knowledge of most of the +specialisms included in the complete science of sociology, and almost +invite us to cast the horoscope of the future. We see, as Booth and +Rowntree saw before us, the poverty line like a fiery portent at every +point of our study, and we are led finally to ask ourselves whether M. +Arthur Bauer was not right in choosing the title "Les Classes Sociales" +as the most characteristic title he could give to his recent and most +suggestive analysis of the general characteristics of social life. + + +From MR. T.C. HORSFALL + +(President, Manchester Citizen's Association, &c.) + +The teaching of the paper seems to me to be most sound and helpful. The +town of the future--I trust of the near future--must by means of its +schools, its museums, and galleries, its playgrounds, parks and +gymnasia, its baths, its wide tree-planted streets and the belt of +unspoilt country which must surround it, bring all its inhabitants in +some degree under the _best_ influences of all the regions and all the +stages of civilisation, the influences of which, but not the best +influences, contribute, and have contributed, to make our towns what +they are. + + +From H. OSMAN NEWLAND + +(Author of "_A Short History of Citizenship_") + +The failures of democratic governments in the past have been +attributable, in part, to the lack of intelligence and +self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in the +government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to +grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as +an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much +less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta +citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it +scarcely rose above Municipalism. In more modern times, civic education +has had to encounter the same difficulty as in America, where the young +citizen's first duty is to salute his flag, and as in London, where +"Civics" is distributed in doles of local [Page: 134] history in which +the municipality plays a part altogether out of proportion to its +relation to the country, the age, and the world. Civics, as the applied +sociology of each individual and each body of interests, has but begun +to be dreamed of; and before it can be properly developed it is +desirable, if not necessary, that the general public should know +something more than at present both of the historic development of the +"civic" idea, and of the psychology of aggregations as differentiated +from the psychology of the individual. Not until we can make "the man in +the street" a conscious citizen, instead of a political automaton, shall +we be able to enlist his sympathies with "Civics"; and without those +sympathies the sociologist's "Civics" will, I fear, be but partial and +inaccurate. + + +From MR. G. BISSET SMITH + +(H.M. Registration Examiner for East of Scotland). + +There is an elusiveness here and there in this paper which has helped to +confirm me in the opinion that it is well to emphasise the fact that +Prof. Geddes is not only a dreamer of lofty dreams but a doer and a +practical initiator. He has expressed himself not only in words but in +art and in architecture, and in educational organisation; and he has in +many ways, sometimes indirectly, influenced scholastic and civic +activities. + +If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has +only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?" +"_Circumspice!_" There stand the settlements he initiated, the houses +beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of +his ideas, an encyclopædia in stone and in storeys. + +We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts +towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is +"concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with +ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society. +And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of +its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the +necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied +Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we +have to ask is:--(1) What actually are the generalisations of the +present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable sociological +testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the +touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer to +these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion. +But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to +clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose +occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the +reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present condition +of the people." + +[Page: 135] No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of +"The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of +_population_; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. Charles +Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all +readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely +suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population +must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of the +characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential material +of a study of its whole civilisation." + +Accepting Mr. Branford's definition of _occupation_ as "any and every +form of human endeavour, past, present, and future," we see that +occupation must have a large place in the description, explanation, and +forecasting of the evolution of cities--such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, +Dundee--in the scheme of survey outlined so sweepingly in "Civics." + +"Life and Labour of the People in London" contains several general +observations almost equally applicable to our largest Scottish cities, +with the demographic conditions of which my official duties give me +special opportunities for becoming familiar and for regional survey. + +In the concluding volume of that great contribution to sociology Mr. +Booth (page 23) remarks:-- + +"Many influences conspire to cause the poor to multiply almost in +proportion to their poverty, and operate in the other direction in the +case of the better off, almost in proportion to their wealth. But," says +Mr. Booth, "when we bring the death-rate into account this law no longer +holds." + +With the poor living under bad conditions in crowded homes the net +increase is diminished. To those of us who are hopeful of improvement by +eugenics it is pleasing to note that Mr. Booth--somewhat unlike Mr. Kidd +in his well-known "Social Evolution"--is optimistic in his conclusion +that "on the whole it may fairly be expected that concurrently with a +rising standard of health we may see a fall in birth-rate as well as +death-rate, and thus have no cause to fear, as the result of better +sanitation, that the largest natural increase in population will ever be +contributed by the lowest class." So the heritage of the city may grow +not only in quantity but also in quality. + +From PROFESSOR W.I. THOMAS +(Professor in the University of Chicago, U.S.A.) + +From the standpoint of its applicability to new countries like America, +Professor Geddes' programme is inadequate because of its failure to +recognise that a city under these conditions is formed by a rapid and +contemporaneous movement of population, and not by the lapse of time. +[Page: 136] The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely +one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of about +two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic +development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a +population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological +standpoint therefore becomes of more importance than the historical. + +PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply + +I am sincerely glad to be able to express myself in substantial +agreement with the majority of my critics, only asking them in turn to +recognise that this is but the first half of my subject--an outline of +civics as in the first place a matter of science, a geographic and +historic survey of past conditions, a corresponding census of present +ones--here discussed and insisted on as affording the needful base for +their demands upon civics as an art, that of effective social service. + +In this respect various critics have in fact anticipated large elements +of this future portion of my paper, so that in general views, at least, +critics and writer are not so far apart as would appear were the +preceding pages submitted as a comprehensive outline of the subject, +instead of as its scientific introduction merely. + +Of criticisms strictly applicable to this paper as it stands, there are +really very few. I am confident that the chairman must be quite alone in +too modestly applying to his great work that description of London +itself, with which the paper (Section A, pp. 104-107) opens, since his +volumes offer really our first effective clue to the labyrinth, and his +method of intensive and specialised regional survey, the intensest +searchlight yet brought to bear upon it. + +Taking, however, a concrete point of criticism, such as that of the +monumental planning of modern Paris as derived from forest rides, the +critic need only walk through any French forest, or even to consult a +Baedeker, or other guide-book, with its maps of any historic dwelling +and its surroundings, from Chantilly or Fontainebleau to minor ones, to +see that this plan, originally devised for the pleasure, success and +safety [Page: 137] of the hunt, and later adapted to domination and +defence, became next appreciated as affording the finest possible +perspectives of the palatially rebuilt chateau. So that it is not at all +a fantastic hypothesis, but an obvious and inevitable conclusion that +Napoleon's and Haussman's plans were not at all invented by them for +Paris, but were directly imitated from the familiar landscape +architecture of the preceding century, which again was but the simplest +development from the spacious forest rides of older hunting nobles, laid +out without any thought of the architectural and city developments they +were destined in later centuries to determine. + +The citizen of Washington had till lately often forgotten that the +magnificent perspectives of his city are due to the French +landscape-architect (Major L'Enfant) whom Washington imported for the +express purpose of laying out his capital; yet it is no less clear that +this most magnificent of the New World city plans is derived from Old +World forest rides, than that its monumental edifices descend from +Renaissance and classic exemplars. + +I plead indeed for such studies of the plans of any and every city from +the point of view of its natural development. The too purely abstract +and subjective sociology of the dwellers of great cities like London +would in this way be helped by the facts of their own topographic +history, already well known and clearly explained by geographer and +historian, towards again feeling with the naturalist that even the +modern city is but the most complex evolutionary expression and +development of the life of Nature. + +This view I take to be indeed a commonplace in France; but I account for +its apparent unfamiliarity to English readers from the fact of our +scanty forests in this island being left practically wild, our nobles +not inhabiting them, but the cultivated pasture and arable regions +below--planting trees indeed, "plantations," but seldom woods, and +practically never forests at all. This again brings out the fact that +the French nobles, despite our urban associations with regard to them +have belonged far more than ours to the social formation and tradition +of the hunter--while ours, despite their love of sports, are yet +fundamentally squires, i.e., essentially and historically approximating +to the peasants of their villages. The bearing of all this upon their +respective history will be obvious. Here again we have the origins of +the vivid contrast of the English or so-called naturalistic style of +landscape-gardening with the more formal French tradition. Yet in a very +true sense we see the former to be even more highly artificial than the +latter. [Page: 138] The English citizen who may even admit this way of +looking at the contrasted city plans of London and Paris may fail, +unless he has appreciated the principle here involved, to see why London +and Paris houses are so different--the one separate and self-contained, +with its door undefended and open upon the street, while the normal +Parisian house is a populous, high-piled tenement around a central +court, with high _porte cochère_ closed by massive oaken doors and +guarded by an always vigilant and often surly _concierge_. + +A moment of historical reflection suffices to see that the former is the +architecture of a long-settled agricultural place, with its spreading +undefended villages, in which each household had its separate dwelling, +the other a persistence of the Continental fortified city crowded within +its walls. + +But beyond this we must see the earlier historic, the simpler geographic +origins of the French courtyard house as a defensible farmyard, of which +the ample space was needed nightly for defence against wild beasts, if +not also wilder men, against whom the _concierge_ is not only the +antique porter but the primitive sentinel. + +I may seem unduly to labour such points, yet do so advisedly, in order +to emphasise and make clearer the essential thesis of this portion of my +paper--that every scientific survey involves a geographic and historic +exploration of origins, but that of the still unwritten chapter, that +the far-reaching forelook, idealistic yet also critical, which is +needful to any true and enduring contribution to social service, is +prepared for by habitually imaging the course of evolution in the past. + +Speaking personally, as one whose leisure and practical life have alike +been largely spent in the study and the preservation of ancient +buildings, I may say that this has not been solely, or even essentially, +from an antiquarian interest in the historic past, but still more on +behalf of a practical interest--that of the idealistic, yet economic, +utilitarian, because educational and evolutionary, transformation of our +old cities--old Edinburgh, old Dunfermline, and the like--from their +present sordid unhygienic failure; and therefore industrial and +commercial insufficiency, towards a future equalling if not transcending +the recorded greatness of the civic past. + +It has, therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of +evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would +otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as +Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon +Civics as Applied Social Science. + + + + +[Page: 139] PRESS COMMENTS + +_The Times_ (July 20, 1904) in a leading article, said: + +In the paper read on Monday at a meeting of the Sociological Society by +Professor GEDDES--an abstract of which we print--are contained ideas of +practical value to be recommended to the study of ambitious +municipalities. This is the age of cities, and all the world is +city-building. Almost everywhere is a flow from the country town-ward. +China and India may be still, in the main, lands of villages. But the +West, Russia perhaps excepted, is more and more peopled by dwellers in +cities. In a dim sort of way many persons understand that the time has +come when art and skill and foresight should control what so far has +been left to chance to work out; that there should be a more orderly +conception of civic action; that there is a real art of city-making, and +that it behoves this generation to master and practise it. Professor +Geddes truly said the land is already full of preparation as to this +matter; the beginnings of a concrete art of city-making are visible at +various points. But our city rulers are often among the blindest to +these considerations; and nowhere probably is to be seen a municipality +fully and consistently alive to its duties in this respect. London may +be left out of the question. Still a province rather than a city in the +strict sense, wanting what, in the view of the early master of political +science, was an essential of the true city, that it could "easily be +overseen," with a vast floating population, it will be some time before +it can be dealt with as an organic whole. But the rulers of such +communities as Manchester and Newcastle and York ought long ago to have +realised, much more than has been done, that they are not so much brick +and mortar, so much rateable area, so many thousands of people +fortuitously brought together. They have all a regional environment of +their own which determined their origin and growth. They have all a rich +past, the monuments of which, generally to be found in abundance by +careful, reverent inquirers, ought to be preserved; a past which ought +to be known more or less to all the dwellers therein, and the knowledge +of which will make the present more interesting. Even when old buildings +have disappeared, ancient roads, pathways, and streets can be traced; +place names keep alive much history; and the natural features reveal to +the practised eye what must have been the look and condition of a town +in past ages. Professor Geddes gives a sketch of what he conceives the +vast and ever-growing literature of cities will one day be. Even if the +comprehensive monographs which he foreshadows are never [Page: 140] +written, it is not surely fanciful to expect that, with education +universal, almost every dweller in our old towns will acquire some sort +of that feeling with which a member of an ancient family looks upon its +ancestral house or lands--will, even without much reading, have some +sort of notion of his predecessors and a certain pride in his membership +of an ancient community. If he has not the good fortune to be a De Vere, +a De Bohun, a Howard, Mowbray or Cavendish, he may perhaps be a citizen +of a town which flourished when some of these families were unknown. + +Such pride, or, as the lecturer preferred to term it, such "growth of +civic consciousness and conscience, the awakening of citizenship towards +civic renascence," will be the best security for a worthy city of the +future.... + +Professor Geddes glanced at the opening civic future, "the remoter and +higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly +needed foresight and statesmanship involve," the possibilities which may +be easily realised if only there be true civic pride, foresight, and +unflagging pursuit of a reasonable ideal.... It remains to be seen what +our cities will become when for some generations the same spirit of +pride and reverence shown by old families as to their possessions has +presided over all civic changes and developments.... Ruskin somewhere +points out the mediaeval love of cities, unwholesome, dirty, and +forbidding though they were. He did not teach his generation that that +affection might with more reason attach to the modern city if its people +knew what it had been and steadily strove to make it better, if there +was in every large community patriotism and a polity. + +DR. J.H. BRIDGES in _The Positivist Review_ (Sept., 1904), said: Under +the title, "Civics, as applied Sociology," Prof. Geddes read on July +18th a very interesting paper before the Sociological Society. The +importance of the subject will be contested by none. The method adopted +in handling it, being in many ways original, invites remark ... + +What is wanted is first a survey of the facts to be dealt with--a +regional survey. This point of view has next to be correlated with +corresponding practical experience acquired by practical civic life, but +"aiming at a larger and more orderly conception of civic action.".... +Students of Comte will not forget his well-known maxim, _Savoir pour +prévoir, afin de pourvoir_. + +What is to be the area of survey? Prof. Geddes decides that the City may +be taken "as the integrate of study." Whether any modern towns, and, if +so, what, may be taken as integrates in the sense which would +undoubtedly apply to ancient Athens or to mediaeval Florence, may be +questioned; but it is too soon to interrupt our author.... Every one who +heard the lecturer must have been fascinated by his picture of a river +system which he takes for his unit of study; the high mountain tracts, +the pastoral hillsides, the hamlets and villages in the valleys, the +market town where the valleys meet, the convergence of the larger +valleys into a county town, finally, the great city where the river +meets the sea. The lecturer went on to advocate the systematic study of +some of the principal river-basins of the world for the purpose of +examining the laws which govern the grouping of cities. All would agree +that much instruction might be derived from such [Page: 141] a survey, +provided two dangers be avoided. One is the exaggeration of the +influence of the environment on the social organism, an error into which +the Le Play school have sometimes fallen; as when, for instance, it was +sought to explain Chinese civilisation by the rice-plant. The other +danger, which needs much care and thought to avoid, is the accumulation +of such a mass of irrelevant detail as renders (perhaps sometimes it is +intended to render) all generalisation impossible. Thinking men are at +last beginning to regard the accumulation of memoirs as one of the +principal obstacles to scientific progress. On the pretext of "more +evidence," conclusions are adjourned, not merely _sine die_, but _sine +spe diei_. Yet so long as man is man, he must, and will, have +conclusions; be they final or otherwise. + +From the physiography of the city we pass to its history ... + +In this part of his subject he has, as we all know, many precursors and +fellow-workers. The remarkable series, entitled "Historic Towns," +instituted by Prof. Freeman, is known to most. The study of towns was +the life and soul of Mr. Green's historic labours. Eloquent and powerful +pictures of the great cities of the world fill the greater part of Mr. +Harrison's well-known volume, "The Meaning of History"; and the student +of universal history (a few of these, it may be hoped, are still left) +finds them very stimulating and helpful. The special note of Prof. +Geddes' method is that he does not limit himself to the greater cities, +but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with +their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely +to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of +his observation. In biology, the study of any single organism, however +minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of +structure or function. As for instance, many forms of heart must be +examined before the laws governing blood-circulation could be revealed; +so here. Countless, indeed, are the forms of cities; even limiting our +field of observation to those that have grown up in the last century +they are numerous enough. Their differences and analogies would +doubtless repay analysis, always supposing that we are clear how far the +modern town, as contrasted with the mediaeval or Graeco-Roman city, can +usefully be treated as "an integrate." This raises large questions of +nation, of groups of nations, finally of Humanity, which cannot here be +touched. + +Meantime, from the teacher's standpoint, there can be no question at +all, among those who look upon education as something more than a +commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with +the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there +perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the +history of our race. Historic memories survive in our villages far more +widely than is thought. The descendants of the man who found the body of +Rufus in the New Forest still live hard by. The builder whom the first +William set to build Corfe Castle was Stephen Mowlem; and the +Dorsetshire firm of Mowlem still pave London causeways. A poor woman in +a remote hamlet, untouched by tourist or guide-book, has shown me the +ash-tree under which Monmouth was seized after Sedgemoor; a Suffolk +peasant, equally innocent of book-knowledge, has pointed Out "Bloody +Mary's lane," through which that bugbear of Protestants passed three +hundred years before on her way to Framlingham. The abbey immortalised +in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern +England, is surrounded now by the same villages that Jocelyn tells us +of. The town named after St. Alban, with its memories of Cassivellaun +and Julius Caesar, of an old Roman city, of the Diocletian persecution, +of the great King Offa, founder of the abbey that was to become [Page: +142] at once a school of historical research, and our best epitome of +mediaeval architecture--all this, with the monument of the author of the +"Novum Organum" crowning the whole--sums up for us sixteen centuries of +history. + +Professor Geddes for more than twenty years has adopted this method of +teaching sociology in the open air; "in the field," as geologists would +say.... + +This is much more than the study and the description of buildings and +places of historical interest. His aim is first to study the way in +which a city grows, always having due regard to its physical +environment; secondly, by comparing like with like, as a naturalist +compares the individuals of a species, or the species of a genus, to +throw light on the laws which govern civic development, and thus to help +forward and direct civic action. + +All this is set forth with greater fulness in the Report which Professor +Geddes has been asked to write for the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. The +purpose of the Report (printed, but not yet published) was to suggest +the way in which the revenue of the Trust, amounting to £25,000, should +be spent for the benefit of this ancient and historic town. The scheme, +with its many pictures, real and ideal, of workshops, parks, +culture-institutes--physical, artistic, and historical--will deeply +interest even those who reject much of it as Utopian. But it is at least +a Utopia specially adapted to a given place and time, one in which every +feature of landscape and history is made the most of, one in which a +beginning can be made at once, leaving room for further developments as +occasion may serve. Moreover, it is penetrated through and through with +the Republican ideal of bringing the highest truth within the reach of +all. + +Comte has pointed out, in the fifth chapter of his "General View of +Positivism," and elsewhere, that it is not enough to enunciate sound +principles of social renovation unless they can be rendered visible and +palpable. "The principal function of art," he says, "is to construct +types on the basis furnished by Science.... However perfectly the first +principles of social renovation may be elaborated by thinkers, they will +still not be sufficiently definite for the practical results.... But, at +the point where Philosophy must always leave a void, Art steps in, and +stimulates to practical action.... Hence, in the future, systematic +formation of Utopias will become habitual; on the distinct understanding +that as in every other branch of art, the ideal shall be kept in +subordination to the real." + +Now, the Dunfermline Report is an admirable example of art thus allied +with science for social service. It is an ideal picture, strictly +adherent to local colour and conditions, of an ancient city prolonging +its vitality into the present and future by providing a very high form +of training for its citizens, a training not of intellect only, but of +the senses, of manual dexterity, of imagination, of Republican +sympathy--a training in which "laborious inacquaintance with dead +languages," infusing into the few touched by it a tincture of caste and +militarism, gives way to comprehensive study of the evolution of Man, +preparing the whole, and not a section merely, of the new generation for +social service. + +Such a Utopia as this may be looked upon as fulfilling the true social +function of Art; standing midway between theory and practice; inspired +by thought, and stimulating action. Only the social artist has to look +to it that his thoughts be not merely true but adequate, lest he +degenerate into a mere decorator. How far will a series of "regional +surveys," like those of [Page: 143] Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree +in York, carry us! Not so far, I fear, as Professor Geddes seems to +hope. Cities in our modern life are organs inseparable from a larger +whole, the nation; and before the life of cities can be much changed, we +have to ask ourselves, What is the national life? What is its ethical +and religious standard? What is its practice as to the acquisition and +distribution of wealth? And, again, What is to be the intercourse of +nations? Is it to be war or peace? + +Mr. Carnegie has given half a million for the benefit of a town of +30,000 inhabitants. Magnificent as the donation is, it is not too much; +not nearly enough, indeed, for the full realisation of Professor Geddes' +scheme. Still, wisely used, it might accomplish great results. What we +have recently sunk in the work of suppressing two free States in South +Africa would have made it possible to do for three hundred towns what +has been done for Dunfermline. Half of what we are now spending on our +army and navy would enable us to endow thirty more of such towns +annually. + +Mr. ISRAEL ZANGWILL in _To-day_ (Aug. 10, 1904), said: The Sociological +Society is forging ahead at American speed; the professors jostle one +another, and Geddes treads on the heels of Galton. After "Eugenics," or +the Science of Good Births, comes "Civics," or the Science of Cities. In +the former Mr. Galton was developing an idea which was in the air, and +in Wells. In the latter Professor Geddes has struck out a more novel +line, and a still more novel nomenclature. Politography, Politogenics, +and Eu-Politogenics, likewise Hebraomorphic and Latinomorphic and +Eutopia--quite an opposite idea from Utopia--such are some of the +additions to the dictionary which the science of Civics carries in its +train. They are all excellent words--with the double-barrelled +exception--and still more excellent concepts. But I fancy the general +idea of them all could be conveyed to the man in the street under the +covering of "the human shell." This shell of ours is the city. It is the +protective crust we have built round ourselves. In a smaller sense our +house is our shell, but in a larger sense each house is only a lobe of +the complex and contorted whole. Geography shapes our shells from +without, and the spirit of our particular community shapes it from +within. History tells us how it has been shaped in the past, Art tells +us how it should be shaped in the future. Professor Geddes, in fact, +envisages our civic shell as becomes a brilliant biologist, who also +happens to be a man of historic imagination, ethical impulses, and +aesthetic perceptions. For the human shell is not merely geometrical and +architectural, like those of apian or beaverish communities; it holds +and expresses all those differences by which we are exalted above the +bee or the beaver. It is coloured with our emotions and ideals, and +contorted with all the spirals of our history. And all these +manifestations of humanity may be studied as systematically as those of +the lower orders of creation, which have till recently monopolised the +privilege of pin and label. The old lady who admired the benevolence of +Providence in always placing rivers by the side of large towns was only +expressing in an exaggerated way the general failure to think of Civics +scientifically. The geographers, in whom may be found the bases of the +science, have always pointed out that the river system is the essential +unit for investigation. From source to sea goes the line of evolution. +And yet even the peasant hamlet at the source depends, as [Page: 144] +Professor Geddes reminds us, on the hinterland of pasture, forest, and +chase; and the hunter is the germ of the soldier and the aristocrat. The +whole region contributes to the ultimate city, as the whole river to the +ultimate sea. The Professor says, justly enough, that we should try to +recover the elemental or naturalist point of view, even for the greatest +cities. He sees London as "fundamentally an agglomeration of villages +with their surviving patches of common around a mediaeval seaport." This +is accurate vision; but when he discerns "even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say, its Place de l'Etoile, its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest rides, each literally straight," I cannot help +suspecting the over-ingenuity of a prolific intellect. The view of +London as a growth from embryos, and the view of Paris as the outcome of +atavistic instinct, belong to different planes of scientific thinking. +That Haussmann in reconstructing Paris was merely an unconscious hunter +and woodlander, building as automatically as a bee, is a fantastic +hypothesis; since cities, if they are to be built on a plan at all, +cannot avoid some unifying geometrical pattern; and there are not very +many possibilities.... In the department of Eu-Politogenics we shall be +confronted with the problem of consciously overriding what evolution has +unconsciously evolved, and building towards a fairer future. No doubt +much of our creation will be imitation, and Professor Geddes is +particularly suggestive in bidding us, at least, to be aware which of +the tangled strands of influence we desire to follow; but a measure of +artistic free-will remains. With the development of a corporate +conscience we should be able to turn out far more satisfactory shells +than many that have blundered into being. "Garden City" is only a +particular application of the science of Civics.... + +Eu-Politogenics concerns itself, however, with more than the mere +configuration of our human shell. Its colour and the music it holds are +considerations no less important. But they are too important to touch at +the fag-end of an article. Professor Geddes must, however, be +congratulated on a stimulating paper, and upon his discovery of Eutopia. +For Eutopia (unlike Utopia, which is really Ou-topia, or no place) is +merely your own place perfected. And the duty of working towards its +perfection lies directly upon _you_. "Civics--as applied sociology" +comes to show you the way. + + + + +CIVICS: AS CONCRETE AND APPLIED SOCIOLOGY, PART II + +BY PROFESSOR GEDDES + +Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., on Monday, January 23rd, 1905, the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, F.R.S., +in the Chair. + + +A--INTRODUCTION: THE NEED OF CIVIC SURVEYS + +To the previous discussion of this subject[2] the first portion of this +present title, "Civics as Concrete Sociology," would have been more +suitable than the second, (that of "Civics as Applied Sociology") +actually used. For its aim was essentially to plead for the concrete +survey and study of cities, their observation and interpretation on +lines essentially similar to those of the natural sciences. Since +Comte's demonstration of the necessity of the preliminary sciences to +social studies, and Spencer's development of this, still more since the +evolution theory has become generally recognised, no one disputes the +applicability of biology to [Page: 58] sociology. Many are, indeed, +vigorously applying the conceptions of life in evolution, in +geographical distribution and environment, in health and disease, to the +interpretations of the problems of the times; while with the +contemporary rise of eugenics to the first plane of interest, both +social and scientific, these lines of thought, bio-social and +bio-geographic, must needs be increasingly utilised and developed. + +[2] "Sociological Papers," Vol 1., pp. 103-118. + +But Comte and Spencer, with most other biologically-minded sociologists +have been more at home among biological generalisations and theories +than among the facts they arise from, and hence it is ever needful to +maintain and extend a first-hand contact with these. I seek, therefore, +to press home the idea that just as the biologist must earn his +generalisations through direct and first-hand acquaintance with nature, +so now must the sociologist work for his generalisations through a +period of kindred observation and analysis, both geographic and +historical; his "general laws" thus appearing anew as the abstract of +regional facts, after due comparison of these as between region and +region. + +May not much of the comparative sterility of post-Comtean (or at any +rate post-Spencerian) sociology, which is so commonly reproached to us, +and to which the difficult formation and slow growth of sociological +societies and schools is largely due, be thus explained? Is it not the +case that many able and persuasive writers, not only knowing the +results, but logically using the generalisations of Comte or Spencer, as +of old of Smith or now-a-days of List in the economic field, are yet +comparatively sterile of fresh contributions to thought, and still more +to action? In fact, must we not apply to much of the literature of +recent sociology, just as to traditional economics, the criticism of +Comte's well-known law of three states, and inquire if such writers, +while apparently upon the plane of generalised science, are not really +in large measure at least arrested upon Comte's "metaphysical stage," +Mill's "abstractional" one? + +Conversely, the revival of sociological interest in this country at +present is obviously very largely derived from fresh and freshening work +like that of Mr Francis Galton and of the Right Hon. Charles Booth +especially. For here in Mr. Galton's biometrics and eugenics is a return +to nature, a keen scrutiny of human beings, which is really an orderly +fruition of that of the same author's "Art of Travel." Similarly, Mr. +Booth's "Survey of London" is as truly a return to nature as was +Darwin's Voyage, or his yet more far-reaching studies in his garden and +farmyard at home. [Page: 59] Is it not the main support of the subtle +theorisings and far-stretched polemic of Prof. Weismann that he can +plague his adversaries with the small but literal and concrete mice and +hydroids and water fleas with which his theories began? And is it not +for a certain lack of such concrete matter of observation that the vast +systematisations of M. de Greef, or M. de Roberty, or the original and +ingenious readings of Prof. Simon Patten leave us too often unconvinced, +even if not sometimes without sufficiently definite understanding of +their meaning? The simplest of naturalists must feel that Comte or +Spencer, despite the frequently able use of the generalisations of +biology, themselves somewhat lacked the first-hand observation of the +city and community around them, and suffered thereby; this part of their +work obviously not being on a level with the historic interpretations of +the one or the psychological productivity of the other. And if, without +warlike intent, I may yet strike a conspicuous shield or two within +these friendly lists, is it not this one element of concrete observation +and illustration which is sometimes lacking to give its full effect to +the encyclopædic learning and the sympathetic insight of one of our +recent papers, to the historic and poetic interpretations of another, or +to the masterly logic of a third? + +Before the polemics of our educationists, the voluminous argumentation +and casuistic subtlety of our professors of economics and ethics, yet +more before the profound speculations of the epistemologists, the mere +naturalist observer can but feel abashed like the truant before his +schoolmasters; yet he is also not without a certain deep inward +conviction, born of experience, that his outdoor world is yet more real, +more vast, and more instructive than is theirs. And this impression +becomes strengthened, nay verified and established, when he sees that +the initiative thinkers from whom these claim to descend, have had in +each and every case no merely academic record, but also a first-hand +experience, an impulse and message from life and nature. Hence the +contributions of Locke, of Comenius, and of Rousseau. Hence the +Physiocrats found economics in peasant life; and thus too Adam Smith +renewed their science, with due academic logic, doubtless, but from his +experience of Glasgow and Kirkcaldy manufactures and trade. Even the +idealist Berkeley owed much of his theory to his iridescent tar-water; +while surely the greater ethicists are those who have not only been +dialecticians, but moral forces in the world of men. + +In such ways, then, I would justify the thesis that civics is no +abstract study, but fundamentally a matter of concrete and descriptive +sociology--perhaps the greatest field of this. Next, that such orderly +study is in line with the preliminary sciences, and with the general +doctrine of evolution from simple to complex; and finally with the +general inquiry into the influence of geographical conditions on social +development. [Page: 60] In short, the student of civics must be first of +all an observer of cities; and, if so, of their origins and +developments, from the small and simple beginnings of which the tiniest +hamlet is but an arrested germ. The productive sociologist should thus +be of all investigators a wandering student _par excellence_; in the +first place, as far as possible, a literal tourist and traveller--and +this although like the homely Gilbert White or the world voyaging +Darwin, he may do his best work around his own home. + + +B--INITIAL METHODS OF CONCRETE SURVEY + +Hence our civic studies began (vol. 1, p. 105) with the survey of a +valley region inhabited by its characteristic types--hunter and +shepherd, peasant and fisher--each on his own level, each evolving or +degenerating within his own region. Hence the concrete picture of such a +typical valley section with its types of occupation cannot be brought +too clearly before our minds.[3] + +[3] Fig. 1. + +What now of the causes of progress or decay? Are not these first of all +the qualities and defects inherent in that particular social +formation?--though we must also consider how these different types act +and react, how they combine with, transform, subjugate, ruin or replace +each other in region after region. We thus re-interpret the vicissitudes +of history in more general terms, those of the differentiation, progress +or degeneracy of each occupational and social type, and the ascending +and descending oscillations of these types. In short, these occupational +struggles underlie and largely interpret even the conflict of races, +upon which Mr. Stuart-Glennie and other sociologists have so ably +insisted. The fundamental importance of these initial factors of region +and occupation to all studies of races and types, of communities and +institutions, of customs and laws, indeed of language and literature, of +religion and art, even of ideals and individualities, must be my excuse +if I seem to insist, in season and out of season, upon [Page: 61] the +services of Le Play as one of the main founders of sociology; and this +not only _(a)_ on account of his monographic surveys of modern +industrial life--those "Monographies Sociales" from which our current +economic studies of the condition of the worker, of the family budget, +etc., descend--but _(b)_ yet more on account of his vital reconstruction +of anthropology (albeit still far from adequately realised by most +anthropologists) through his renewed insistence upon the elemental +rustic origins of industry, family types, and social organisation alike, +from these simplest reactions of man in his struggle for existence in +varied and varying environment. + +It does not suffice to recognise, with many economists, hunting, +pastoral and agricultural formations, as states _preliminary_ to our +present industrial and commercial, imperial, and financial order of +civilisation. This view, still too commonly surviving, is rather of +hindrance than help; what we need is to see our existing civilisation as +the complex struggle and resultant of all these types and their +developments to-day. So far, therefore, from leaving, as at present, +these simple occupational types to the anthropologist, or at best giving +him some scant hospitality within our city museum, we are learning to +see how it is at one time the eager miner, or the conservative shepherd, +or at another the adventurous fisher or hunter who comes concretely upon +the first plane of national, imperial or international politics, and who +awakens new strife among these. We not only begin to see, but the +soldier frankly tells us, how the current sports of youth, and the +unprecedented militarism of the past century, are alike profoundly +connected with the hunting world. Hence the hope of peace lies not only, +as most at present think in the civilised and civilising development of +international law, or of culture intercourse, excellent though these +are, but also in a fuller and complete return to nature than has been +this recent and persistent obsession of our governing classes with the +hunter world almost alone; in short, in adding the gentler, yet wider, +experiences of the naturalist, the sterner experiences of other +occupations also. Nor does such elementary recognition of these main +social formations content us; their local differentiations must be noted +and compared--a comprehensive regional survey, therefore, which does +justice to each local variety of these great types; speaking henceforth +of no mere abstract "hunter," but of the specific hunting types of each +climate, and distinguishing these as clearly as do our own milder +sportsmen of deer-forest and the turnip field from themselves and from +each other. After such needed surveys in detail, we may, indeed must, +compare and generalise them. + +Similarly for the pasture, the forest. Every tourist in this country is +struck by the contrast of Swiss towns and cities with our own, and notes +[Page: 62] too that on the Swiss pasture he finds a horde of cattle, +while in Scotland or Yorkshire he left a flock of sheep. And not only +the tourist, but the historian or the economist too often fail to see +how Galashiels or Bradford are developments of the wool hamlet, now +familiar to many in R.L. Stevenson's native Swanston. Again, not only +Swiss wealth, but Swiss character and institutions, go back essentially +to the high pasture and the well-filled byre. That this rich Swiss +cow-pasture rests on limestone, and the poor Scottish sheep-grazing upon +comparatively unmouldering and impermeable gneiss, is no mere matter of +geologist's detail; it affords in each case the literal and concrete +foundation-stone of the subsequent evolution of each region and +population, and this not only in material and economic development, but +even in higher and subtler outcomes, aesthetic, intellectual and +moral.[4] It is for such reasons that one must labour and re-labour this +geographic and determinist aspect of sociology, and this for no merely +scientific reason, but also for practical ones. Nowhere perhaps have +more good and generous souls considered how to better the condition of +their people than in Swiss, or Irish, or Scottish valleys; yet it is one +main reason of the continual failure of all such movements, and of such +minds in the wider world as well, that they do not first acquaint +themselves with the realities of nature and labour sufficiently to +appreciate that the fundamental--I do not say the supreme--question is: +what can be got out of limestone, and what can be got out of gneiss? +Hence the rare educative value of such a concrete sociological diagram +and model as was the Swiss Village at the Paris Exposition of 1900, for +here geographic and economic knowledge and insight were expressed with +artistic skill and sympathy as perhaps never before. Only as similar +object-lessons are worked out for other countries, can we adequately +learn, much less popularly teach, how from nature comes "rustics," and +from this comes civics. But civics and rustics make up the field of +politics; they are the concrete of which politics become the +abstract--commonly the too remotely abstract. + +[4] For a fuller justification of this thesis as regards Switzerland, +see the writer's "International Exhibitions," in _International +Monthly_, October, 1900. + +For final illustration, let us descend to the sea-level. There again, +taking the fisher, each regional type must be traced in his contribution +to his town. Take for instance the salmon fisher of Norway, the whaler +of Dundee, the herring-fisher of Yarmouth, the cod-fisher of +Newfoundland, the coral fisher of the Ægean; each is a definite varietal +type, one developing or at least tending to develop characteristic +normal family relations, and corresponding social outcomes in +institutions; in which again the appropriate qualities and defects must +be expressed, even as is the quality and twist of the hemp in the +strength of the cable, or as is the chemistry and the microscopic +structure of the alloy in the efficiency of the great gun. [Page: 63] +Our neighbouring learned societies and museums geographical, geological +and the rest, are thus avowedly and consciously so many winter shelters +in which respective groups of regional surveyors tell their tales and +compare their observations, in which they meet to compare their +generalisations from their own observations made in the field with those +made by others. So it must increasingly be for this youngest of +societies. We may, we should, know best our Thames valley, our London +basin, our London survey; but the progress of our science implies as +increasingly varied and thorough an inquiry into rustic and civic +regions and occupations and resultants throughout the whole world +present and past, as does the corresponding world survey with our +geologic neighbours. + +I plead then for a sociological survey, rustic and civic, region by +region, and insist in the first place upon the same itinerant field +methods of notebook and camera, even for museum collections and the +rest, as those of the natural sciences. The dreary manuals which have +too long discredited those sciences in our schools, are now giving place +to a new and fascinating literature of first-hand nature study. +Similarly, those too abstract manuals of civics which are at present +employed in schools[5] must be replaced by concrete and regional ones, +their abstract counsels of political or personal perfection thus also +giving place to a corresponding regional idealism which may then be +supplemented from other regions as far as needs demand and circumstances +allow. + +[5] For a fuller review of these, compare the writer's "City +Development," in _Contemporary Review_, October, 1904. + +C--GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINISM AND ITS DIFFICULTIES + +To interpret then our tangle of ideas, both of the city and its +citizens, let us now bring more fully to our transverse valley sections, +and to each occupation separately, the geographical view-point which we +have found of service to elucidate the development of towns and cities +upon its longitudinal [Page: 64] slope. But this is neither more nor +less than the method of Montesquieu, whose classic "Esprit des Lois" +anticipates and initiates so much of that of later writers--Ritter, +Buckle, Taine, or Le Play. Once more then let their common, or rather +their resultant, doctrine be stated in terms expressing the latest of +these more fully than the first. Given the region, its character +determines the nature of the fundamental occupation, and this in turn +essentially determines the type of family. The nature and method of the +occupation must normally determine the mode of its organisation, e.g., +the rise and character of a specialised directive class, and the nature +of these occupational chiefs as contrasted with the people and with each +other. Similarly, the types of family tend to develop their appropriate +types of institutions, e.g., for justice, guidance, and of course +notably in response to social environment as regards defence or attack. + +Thus at this point in fact we seem to be pressing upon the student of +sociology the essential argument of geographical and evolutionary +determinism, in fact inviting him to adopt a view, indeed to commit +himself to a method, which may be not only foreign to his habits, but +repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy of +this determinist view of society for at least the past five generations +has not carried general conviction, why raise so controversial a +suggestion, in the guise too of a method professing to harmonise all +comers? Yet this is advisedly done; and as no one will deny some civil +importance to geographical factors, let patience be granted to examine +this aspect of the city's map and shield, and to get from it what it can +teach, under the present assurance to the philosophic and idealist +critic that his view of other factors, higher and deeper, as supreme in +human life, and therefore in city making, will not be forgotten, nor +excluded from consideration when we come to them. All that is really +insisted upon here is that if anything of naturalistic method of +evolutionary conception is to be permitted at all, we must obviously +proceed from this simple towards the more complex, and so begin with it +here and now. + +It is the appropriate slope or steppe, the needful rainfall, that +conditions the growth of grass, this which conditions the presence of +herds or flocks, and these again which determine the very existence of +shepherds. These granted then, not only do the pastoral arts and crafts +arise, but the patriarchal type and family develop, and this not only +with their hospitality and other virtues, with their nomadic tendencies, +at any rate, their unfixed land-tenure, very different from the +peasant's, but their slow and skilful [Page: 65] diplomacy (till the +pasture is bared or grown again, as the negotiator's interests incline). +The patriarch in his venerable age, the caravaneer in his nomadic and +exploring youth, his disciplined maturity, thus naturally develop as +different types of chief and leader; and it is therefore not until this +stage, when all is ready for the entry of Abraham or Job, of Mohammed +the camel-driver, or Paul the tent-maker, that any real controversy can +arise between the determinist and his opponent, between the democratic +and the great-man theories of history, towards which these respectively +incline.[6] And at that stage, may not the controversy stimulate a +fruitful analysis? After all, what is the claim of free-will but to +select among the factors afforded by a given set of circumstances? And +the utmost stretch of determinism to which geography and civics may lead +us obviously cannot prove the negative of this. But whether the +psychologic origins of new ideals be internal to the mind of genius, or +imparted by some external source, is a matter obviously beyond the scope +of either the geographer or the historian of civics to settle. Enough +surely for both controversialists if we use such a means of tabulating +facts as to beg the question for neither view; and still better if we +can present the case of each without injustice to either, nay, to each +with its clearness increased by the sharp edge of contrast. If the +geographical determinist thesis on one hand, and its ethical and +psychological antithesis on the other, can thus clearly be defined and +balanced, their working equilibrium is at hand, even should their +complete synthesis remain beyond us. + +[6] A fuller study, upon this method, of the essential origins of +pastoral evolution, and of its characteristic modern developments, will +be found in the writer's "Flower of the Grass," in _The Evergreen_, +Edinburgh and Westminster, 1896. See also "La Science Sociale," +_passim_, especially in its earlier vols. or its number for Jan. 1905. + + +D--NEED OF ABSTRACT METHOD FOR NOTATION AND FOR INTERPRETATION + +Not only such general geographical studies, but such social +interpretations as those above indicated have long been in progress: +witness the labours of whole schools of historians and critics, among +whom Montsquieu and his immediate following, or in more recent times +Buckle and Taine, are but the most prominent; witness the works of +geographers like Humboldt, Ritter, Reclus, or of developmental +technologists like Boucher de Perthes and regional economists like Le +Play. The main lines of a concrete and evolutionary sociology (or at +[Page: 66] least _sociography_) have thus been laid down for us; but the +task now before us, in our time, in such a society as this--and indeed +in such a paper as the present one--its that of extracting from all this +general teaching its essential scientific method, one everywhere latent +and implicit, but nowhere fully explicit, or at least adequately +systematised. + +It is in fact only as we can agree upon some definite and orderly method +of description that our existing literature of social surveys can be +adequately compared or new ones co-operatively undertaken. Hence the +importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have so +largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means of +escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static) +presentments of the general methodology of social science into which +sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely +ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this +would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, as +indeed also the comparative unattractiveness of our studies to the body +of specialist scientific workers, not even excepting those within what +we consider sociological fields. + +The history of each science, be it mathematics or astronomy, botany, +zoology or geology, shows us that it is not enough to have the +intelligent observer, or even the interpretative thinker with his +personally expressed doctrine. This must be clearly crystallised into a +definite statement, method, proposition, "law" or theory, stated in +colourless impersonal form before it is capable of acceptance and +incorporation into the general body of science. But while astronomer and +geologist and naturalist can and do describe both the observational +results and their general conceptions in literary form, requiring from +the ordinary reader but the patience to master a few unfamiliar terms +and ideas, they also carry on their work by help of definite and orderly +technical methods, descriptive and comparative, analytic and synthetic. +These, as far as possible, have to be crystallised beyond their mere +verbal statement into formulae, into tabular and graphic presentments, +and thus not only acquire greater clearness of statement, but become +more and more active agencies of inquiry--in fact, become literal +_thinking-machines_. But while the mathematician has his notations and +his calculus, the geographer and geologist their maps, reliefs and +sections, the naturalist his orderly classificatory methods, it has been +the misfortune and delay of political economy, and no small cause of +that "notorious discord and sterility" with which Comte reproached it, +that [Page: 67] its cultivators have so commonly sought to dispense with +the employment of any definite scientific notations; while even its +avowed statisticians, in this country especially, have long resisted the +consistent use of graphic methods. + +I submit, therefore, for discussion, as even more urgent and pressing +than that of the general and abstract methodology of the social +sciences, the problem of elaborating a concrete descriptive method +readily applicable to the study and comparison of human societies, to +cities therefore especially. To do justice to this subject, not only the +descriptive labours of anthropologists, but much of the literature of +sociology would have to be gone through from the "Tableau Economique" of +the Physiocratic School to the "Sociological Tables" of Mr. Spencer, and +still more fruitfully to more recent writers. Among these, besides here +recognising specially the work of Mr. Booth and its stimulus to younger +investigators, I would acknowledge the helpful and suggestive impulse +from the group of social geographers which has arisen from the +initiative of Le Play[7], and whose classification, especially in its +later forms[8], cannot but be of interest and value to everyone whose +thought on social questions is not afloat upon the ocean of the abstract +without chart or bearings. + +[7] La Nomenclature Sociale (Extrait de La Revue, "La Science Sociale," +Dec. 1886) Paris, Firmin-Diact, 1887. + +[8] Demoulins, La Science Sociale d'apres F. Le Play 1882-1905; +Classification Sociale, "La Science Sociale," Jan. 1905. + +Yet with all respect to each and all these classifications and methods, +indeed with cordially acknowledge personal obligation and indebtedness +to them from first to last, no one of these seems fully satisfactory for +the present purpose; and it is therefore needful to go into the matter +afresh for ourselves, though utilising these as fully as we can. + + +E--THE CITY-COMPLEX AND ITS USUAL ANALYSIS + +In the everyday world, in the city as we find it, what is the working +classification of ideas, the method of thought of its citizens? That +the citizens no more think of themselves as using any particular +sociological method than did M. Jourdain of talking prose does not +really matter, save that it makes our observation, both of them and it, +easier and more trustworthy. + +They are speaking and thinking for the most part of [Page: 68] People +and of Affairs; much less of places. In the category of People, we +observe that individuals, self and others, and this in interest, perhaps +even more than in interests, commonly take precedence of groups. +Institutions and Government are, however, of general interest, the state +being much more prominent than is the church; the press, for many, +acting as the modern substitute for the latter. In the world of Affairs, +commerce takes precedence of industry, while sport runs hard upon both. +War, largely viewed by its distant spectators as the most vivid form of +sport, also bulks largely. Peace is not viewed as a positive ideal, but +essentially as a passive state, at best, of non-war, more generally of +latent war. Central among places are the bank, the market (in its +financial forms before the material ones). Second to these stand the +mines then the factories, etc.; and around these the fixed or floating +fortresses of defence. Of homes, that of the individual alone is +seriously considered, at most those of his friends, his "set," his +peers, but too rarely even of the street, much less the neighbourhood, +at least for their own sake, as distinguished from their reaction upon +individual and family status or comfort. + +This set of views is obviously not easy of precise analysis of exact +classification. In broad outline, however, a summary may be made, and +even tabulated as follows:-- + +THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES. + +PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES +(a) INDIVIDUALS (a) COMMERCE (a) MARKET, BANK, etc. +(Self and others). INDUSTRY, etc. FACTORY, MINE, etc. + SPORT. + +(b) GOVERNMENT(S) (b) WAR (b) FORT, FIELD, etc. +Temporal and Spiritual and Peace +(State and Church). (Latent War). + +Next note how from the everyday world of action, there arises a +corresponding thought-world also. This has, +[Page: 69] of course, no less numerous +and varied elements, with its resultantly complex local colour; But a +selection will suffice, of which the headings may be printed below those +of the preceding scheme, to denote how to the objective elements there +are subjective elements corresponding--literal reflections upon the +pools of memory--the slowly flowing stream of tradition. Thus the +extended diagram, its objective elements expressed in yet more general +terms, may now be read anew (noting that mirror images are fully +reversed). + + + PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES + +"TOWN" (a) INDIVIDUALS (a) OCCUPATIONS (a) WORK-PLACES + (b) INSTITUTIONS (b) WAR (b) WAR-PLACES + +"SCHOOLS" (b) HISTORY (b) STATISTICS AND (b) GEOGRAPHY + ("Constitutional") HISTORY + ("Military") + (a) BIOGRAPHY (a) ECONOMICS (a) TOPOGRAPHY + + +Here then we have that general relation of the town life and its +"schools," alike of thought and of education, which must now be fully +investigated. + +Such diagrammatic presentments, while of course primarily for the +purpose of clear expression and comparison, are also frequently +suggestive--by "inspection," as geometers say--of relations not +previously noticed. In both ways, we may see more clearly how prevalent +ideas and doctrines have arisen as "reflections upon" the life of +action, and even account for their qualities and their defects--their +partial truth or their corresponding inadequacy, according to our own +appreciative or depreciative standpoint. Thus as regards "People," in +the first column we see expressed briefly how to (a) the individual +life, with the corresponding vivid interest in biography, corresponds +the "great man theory" of history. Conversely with _(b)_ alone is +associated the insistance upon institutional developments as the main +factor. Passing to the middle column, that of "Affairs," we may note in +connection with _(b)_ say the rise of statistics in association with +the needs of war, a point connected with its too empiric character; or +note again, a too common converse weakness of economic theory, its +inadequate inductive [Page: 70] verification. Or finally, in the column +of "Place," the long weakness of geography as an educational subject, +yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated. We might in +fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of +ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less than +those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly +unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent +oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring +elements of the manifold "Town" life from which they derive and survive. +Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate +problem--that of understanding "Town" and its "School" in their origins +and simplest relations. + + +F--PROPOSED METHODICAL ANALYSIS + +(1) THE TOWN + +More fully to understand this two-fold development of Town and School we +have first of all apparently to run counter to the preceding popular +view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that +reached from the side of science. This, as we have already so fully +insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally _replacing_ People +and Affairs in our scheme above. + +Starting then once more with the simple biological formula: + + + ENVIRONMENT ... CONDITIONS ... ORGANISM + +this has but to be applied and defined by the social geographer to +become + + + REGION ... OCCUPATION ... FAMILY-type and Developments + +which summarises precisely that doctrine of Montesquieu and his +successors already insisted on. Again, in but slight variation from Le +Play's simplest phrasing _("Lieu, travail, famille")_ we have + + + PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK + +It is from this simple and initial social formula that we have now to +work our way to a fuller understanding of Town and School. [Page: 71] +Immediately, therefore, this must be traced upward towards its +complexities. For Place, it is plain, is no mere topographic site. Work, +conditioned as it primarily is by natural advantages, is thus really +first of all _place-work_. Arises the field or garden, the port, the +mine, the workshop, in fact the _work-place_, as we may simply +generalise it; while, further, beside this arise the dwellings, the +_folk-place_. + +Nor are these by any means all the elements we are accustomed to lump +together into Town. As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold +complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must +carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of +this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use. +Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ +and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their +inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our +common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists +have alternately done--too literally losing or shirking essentials of +Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk and +Place also. + +Tabular and schematic presentments, however, such as those to which we +are proceeding, are apt to be less simple and satisfactory to reader +than to writer; and this even when in oral exposition the very same +diagram has been not only welcomed as clear, but seen and felt to be +convincing. The reason of this difficulty is that with the spoken +exposition the audience sees the diagram grow upon the blackboard; +whereas to produce anything of the same effect upon the page, it must be +printed at several successive stages of development. Thus our initial +formula, + + + PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK + +readily develops into + + FOLK + + PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK +(Natural advantages) (Occupation) + + PLACE + +This again naturally develops into a regular table, of which the [Page: +72] filling up of some of the squares has been already suggested above, +and that of the remaining ones will be intelligible on inspection:-- + + PLACE FOLK WORK-FOLK FOLK + ("Natives") ("Producers") + + PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK + + PLACE WORK-PLACE FOLK-PLACE + +So complex is the idea of even the simplest Town--even in such a rustic +germ as the "farm-town" of modern Scottish parlance, the _ton_ of +place-names without number. + +The varying development of the Folk into social classes or castes night +next be traced, and the influence and interaction of all the various +factors of Place, Work, and Family tabulated. Suffice it here, however, +for the present to note that such differentiation does take place, +without entering into the classification and comparison of the protean +types of patrician and plebeian throughout geography and history. + + +G--ANALYSIS CONTINUED.--(2) THE SCHOOL + +Once and again we have noted how from the everyday life of action--the +Town proper of our terminology--there arises the corresponding +subjective world--the _Schools_ of thought, which may express itself +sooner or later in schools of education. The types of people, their +kinds and styles of work, their whole environment, all become +represented in the mind of the community, and these react upon the +individuals, their activities, their place itself. Thus (the more +plainly the more the community is a simple and an isolated one, but in +appreciable measure everywhere and continually) there have obviously +arisen local turns of thought and modes of speech, ranging from shades +of accept and idiom to distinctive dialect or language. Similarly, there +is a characteristic variety of occupational activity, a style of +workmanship, a way of doing business. There are distinctive [Page: 73] +manners and customs--there is, in short, a certain recognisable +likeness, it may be an indefinably subtle or an unmistakably broad and +general one, which may be traced in faces and costumes, in tongue and +literature, in courtesy and in conflict, in business and in policy, in +street and in house, from hovel to palace, from prison to cathedral. +Thus it is that every folk comes to have its own ways, and every town +its own school. + +While the complex social medium has thus been acquiring its +characteristic form and composition, a younger generation has been +arising. In all ways and senses, Heredity is commonly more marked than +variation--especially when, as in most places at most times, such great +racial, occupational, environmental transformations occur as those of +modern cities. In other words, the young folk present not only an +individual continuity with their organic predecessors which is heredity +proper, but with their social predecessors also. The elements of organic +continuity, which we usually think of first of all as organic though of +course psychic also, are conveniently distinguished as the +_inheritance_--a term in fact which the biologist seeks to deprive of +its common economic and social senses altogether, leaving for these the +term _heritage_, material or immaterial alike. This necessary +distinction between the inheritance, bodily and mental, and the +heritage, economic and social, obviously next requires further +elaboration, and with this further precision of language also. For the +present, let us leave the term heritage to the economist for the +material wealth with which he is primarily concerned, and employ the +term _tradition_ for these immaterial and distinctively social elements +we are here specially considering. This in fact is no new proposal, but +really little more than an acceptance of ordinary usage. Broadly +speaking, tradition is in the life of the community what memory is for +its individual units. The younger generation, then, not only inherits an +organic and a psychic diathesis; not only has transmitted to it the +accumulations, instruments and land of its predecessors, but grows up in +their tradition also. The importance of imitation in this process, a +matter of common experience, has been given the fullest sociological +prominence, by M. Tarde especially.[9] Thanks to these and other +convergent lines of thought, we no longer consent to look at the +acquirement of the social tradition as a matter requiring to be imposed +upon reluctant youth almost entirely from without, and are learning anew +as of old, with the simplest and the most developed peoples, the +barbarians and the Greeks, to recognise and respect, and, if it may be, +to nourish the process of self-instruction, viewed as normal +accompaniment of each developing being throughout the phases of its +[Page: 74] organic life, the stages of its social life. Upon the many +intermediate degrees of advance and decline, however, between these two +extremes of civilisation, specific institutions for the instruction of +youth arise, each in some way an artificial substitute, or at least a +would-be accelerant, for the apprenticeship of imitation in the school +of experience and the community's tradition, which we term a school in +the restricted and pedagogic sense. This whole discussion, however, has +been in order to explain and to justify the present use of the term +"School" in that wide sense in which the historian of art or +thought--the sociologist in fact--has ever used the term, while yet +covering the specialised pedagogic schools of all kinds also. + +[9] Tarde, "L'imitation Sociale," and other works. + +Once more, then, and in the fullest sense, every folk has its own +tradition, every town its school. + +We need not here discriminate these unique and characteristic elements +to which the art-historians--say of Venice and of Florence, of Barbizon +or Glasgow--specially attend from those most widely distributed ones, in +which the traditions and schools of all towns within the same +civilisation broadly agree. Indeed, even the most widely distributed of +these--say from Roman law to modern antiseptic surgery--arose as local +schools before they became general ones. + +Similarly for the general social tradition. The fundamental occupations +and their division of labour, their differentiation in detail and their +various interactions up to our own day, at first separately considered, +are now seen to be closely correlated with the status of woman; while +all these factors determine not only the mode of union of the parents, +but their relation to the children, the constitution of the family, with +which the mode of transmission of property is again thoroughly +interwoven. + + +H--TOWN AND SCHOOL COMPARED + + +"TOWN" FOLK + + + + WORK + +PLACE + +SURVEY + + CRAFT-KNOWLEDGE + +"SCHOOL" CUSTOM + +We may now summarise and tabulate our comparison of Town and +School,[10] and on the schema (p.75) it will be seen [Page: 76] +that each element of the second is printed in the position of a +mirror-reflection of the first. This gives but the merest outline, which +is ready, however, to be applied in various ways and filled up +accordingly. A step towards this is made in the next and fuller version +of the scheme (p. 77). It will be noted in this that the lower +portion of the diagram, that of School, is more fully filled up than is +the upper. This is partly for clearness, but partly also to suggest that +main elements in the origins of natural sciences and geography, of +economics and social science, are not always so clearly realised as they +might be. The preceding diagram, elaborating that of Place, Work, Folk +(p. 75), however, at once suggests these. Other features of the +scheme will appear on inspection; and the reader will find it of +interest and suggestiveness to prepare a blank schedule and fill it up +for himself. + +[10] For the sake of brevity, an entire chapter has been omitted, +discussing the manifold origins of distinct governing classes, whether +arising from the Folk, or superimposed upon them from without, in short, +of the contrast of what we may broadly call patricians and plebeians, +which so constantly appears through history, and in the present also. +These modes of origin are all in association respectively with Place, +Work, and Family, or some of the various interactions of these. Origin +and situation, migration, individual or general, with its conflict of +races, may be indicated among the first group of factors; technical +efficiency and its organising power among the second; individual +qualities and family stocks among the third, as also military and +administrative aptitude, and the institutional privileges which so +readily arise from them. Nor need we here discuss the rise of +institutions, so fully dealt with by sociological writers. Enough for +the present then, if institutions and social classes be taken as we find +them. + +These two forms of the same diagram, the simple and the more developed, +thus suggest comparison with the scheme previously outlined, that of +People, Affairs, Places (p. 68), and is now more easily reconciled +with this; the greater prominence popularly given to People and Affairs +being expressed upon the present geographic and evolutionary scheme by +the ascending position and more emphatic printing (or by viewing the +diagram as a transparency from the opposite side of the leaf). + +In the column of People, the deepening of custom into morals is +indicated. Emphasis is also placed upon the development of law in +connection with the rise of governing classes, and its tendency to +dominate the standards previously taken as morals--in fact, that +tendency of moral law to become static law, a process of which history +is full. + + GOVERNING + ========= + ========= + CLASSES + ======= + ======= + ^ + | + FAMILY TYPES + ============ +---------------------------------------------- + INDUSTRIES + ========== + ---------- +---------------------------------------------- + (FOLK-PLACE) +REGION (WORK PLACE) ------------ +====== ------------ (TOWN) + | ====== + | + V +-------------------------------------------- + | + V +SURVEY ("SCHOOL") +====== ========== +!--LANDSCAPE (CRAFT-TRADITION) + ----------------- + (FOLK-LORE) +?--TERRITORY ----------- + | + | + V +--------------------------------------------- + | + V +[NATURAL [APPLIED [SOCIAL +-------- ======== ======= +SCIENCES] SCIENCES] SCIENCES] +--------- ========= ========= + | + | + V +------------------------------------------- + | CUSTOMS + V ------- + MORALS + ====== +GEOGRAPHY ECONOMICS ------ +--------- ========= & + LAWS + ==== + ==== + +In the present as in the past, we may also note upon the scheme the +different lines of Place, Work and Folk on which respectively develop +the natural sciences, the applied or [Page: 78] technical sciences, and +finally the social sciences, and the generalising of these respectively. + +Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its literal +and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that +aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural +sciences--but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they +really are, each a _geolysis_--so these sciences or geolyses, again, are +tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of +the evolution of the cosmos. + +Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the +evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic +process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt +to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we cannot +really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant; or +Lister and his antiseptic surgery better than as the shepherd, with his +tar-box by his side; or Kelvin or any other electrician, as the thinking +smith, and so on. The old story of geometry, as "_ars metrike_," and of +its origin from land-surveying, for which the Egyptian hieroglyph is +said to be that of "rope stretching," in fact, applies far more fully +than most realise, and the history of every science, of course already +thus partially written, will bear a far fuller application of this +principle. In short, the self-taught man, who is ever the most fertile +discoverer, is made in the true and fundamental school--that of +experience. + +The need of abbreviating the recapitulation of this, however, sooner or +later develops the school in the pedagogic sense, and its many +achievements, its many failures in accomplishing this, might here be +more fully analysed. + +Still more evident is this process in the column of Folk. From the +mother's knee and the dame's school of the smallest folk-place, the +townlet or hamlet, _ton_ or home, up to the royal and priestly school of +the law of ancient capitals, or from the "humanities" of a mediaeval +university to the "Ecole de Droit" of a modern metropolis, the series of +essential evolutionary stages may be set down. Or in our everyday +present, [Page: 79] the rise of schools of all kinds, primary, +secondary, higher up to the current movement towards university +colleges, and from these to civic and regional universities, might again +be traced. The municipalisation of education is thus in fact expressed, +and so on. + +Leaving the schools in the main to speak for themselves of their +advancing and incipient uses, a word may be said upon the present lines. + +As a first and obvious application of this mode of geographic study of +cities appears the criticism, and; when possible, the amendment of the +city's plan, the monotonous rectangularity of the American city, and the +petty irregularity more common in our own, being alike uneconomic and +inartistic because ungeographic, irrational because irregional. With the +improvement of communications, the physicist's point of view thus +introduced--that of the economy of the energies of the community--is +only beginning; the economy of fuel, the limitation of smoke and fogs +being symptoms of this and pointing to a more economic organisation of +industrial activities generally. But this next carries with it the +improved efficiency of the producers themselves, with whom, however, the +standpoint changes from the mere economisation of physical energies to +the higher economy of organic evolution. The convention of traditional +economics, that the productive capacity of the actual labourer is the +sole concern of his science, thus gives place to what is at once the +original conception of economics and the evolutionist one, viz., that +the success of industry is ultimately measured neither by its return in +wealth of the capitalist nor in money wages of the labourer, nor even by +both put together, but in the results of industry upon the concrete +environment, the family budget, the home, and the corresponding state of +development of the family--its deterioration or progress. The +organisation of industrial groups or of representative institutions +found conducive to the well-being and progress of these prime civic +units, the families, may now be traced into its highest outcome in city +government. The method of analysis and graphic statement thus outlined +may be shown to be even capable of useful application towards the +statement of the best [Page: 80] arguments of both progressive and +moderate parties in city politics. + +Passing from Politics to Culture. Culture, the needs of this also become +clearer; each community developing a similar general series of culture +institutions, from the simplest presentation of its geography, +landscape and architecture, to the complex development of industrial, +technical and scientific instruction; and for provision also for the +institutions of custom and ethic in school, law, and church. Just as +place, occupation, and family are intimately connected in the practical +world, so their respective culture institutions must more and more be +viewed as a whole. Civic improvers will find their ideals more +realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social +development of which all the departments of action and thought are in +organic relation, be it of health or disease. The view of theoretic +civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied +sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social +survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed +in many cities being begun. + + +I--DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL, AND ITS REACTION UPON TOWN + +The reactions of the School upon the Town are observed in practice to be +of very different values;--how are these differences to be explained? + +From the very first the school is essentially one of memory, the impress +of the town-life, even at its best and highest individual quality and +impressiveness, as in the work of a great master, the observation and +memory of which may long give his stamp to the work of his followers. +The fading of this into dullness, yet the fixing of it as a convention, +is familiar to all in arts and crafts, but is no less real in the +general lapse of appreciation of environment. Most serious of all is the +fixation of habit and custom, so that at length "custom lies upon us +with a weight heavy as death, and deep [Page 81] almost as life." This +continual fixation of fashionable standards as moral ones is thus a +prime explanation of each reformer's difficulty in making his moral +standard the fashionable one, and also, when his doctrine has succeeded, +of the loss of life and mummification of form which it so speedily +undergoes. + +Of conventional "education," considered as the memorisation of past +records, however authoritative and classic, the decay is thus +intelligible and plain, and the repetition of criticisms already +adequately made need not therefore detain us here. + +For this process is there no remedy? Science here offers herself--with +senses open to observe, and intellect awake to interpret. Starting with +Place, she explores and surveys it, from descriptive travel books at +very various levels of accuracy, she works on to atlas and gazetteer, +and beyond these to world-globe and "Geographie Universelle." With her +charts and descriptions we are now more ready for a journey; with her +maps and plans we may know our own place as never before; nay, rectify +it, making the rough places plain and the crooked straight; even +restoration may come within our powers. + +Similarly as regards Work. Though mere empiric craft-mastery dies with +the individual, and fails with his successors, may we not perpetuate the +best of this? A museum of art treasures, a collection of the choicest +examples of all times and lands, will surely raise us from our low level +of mechanical toil; nay, with these carefully observed, copied, +memorised, and duly examined upon, we shall be able to imitate them, to +reproduce their excellencies, even to adapt them to our everyday work. +To the art museum we have thus but to add a "School of Design," to have +an output of more and less skilled copyists. The smooth and polished +successes of this new dual institution, responding as they do to the +mechanical elements of modern work and of the mechanical worker-mind, +admitting also of ready multiplications as patterns, ensure the wide +extension of the prevalent style of imitating past styles, designing +patchwork of these; and even admit of its scientific reduction to a +definite series of grades, which imitative youth may easily pass onwards +from the age of rudest innocence to that of art-knowledge and +certificated art-mastery. Our School of Design thus becomes a School of +Art, a length a College, dominating the instruction of the nation, to +the satisfaction not only of its promoters, but of the general public +and their representatives, so that annual votes justly increase. Lurking +discontent may now and then express itself, but is for practical +purposes negligible. + +[Page: 82] The example of art accumulation and art instruction is thus +naturally followed in other respects. For the commercial information of +the public, varied representative exhibitions--primarily, therefore, +international ones--naturally suggest themselves; while so soon as +expansion of imperial and colonial interests comes upon the first plane, +a corresponding permanent Exhibition is naturally instituted. But when +thus advancing commercial instruction, we must also recognise the claims +of industry in all its crafts and guilds, and in fact the technical +instruction of the community generally. Hence the past, present, and +promised rise of technical institutes upon increasing scales of +completeness. + +In the rise of such a truly encylopædic system of schools, the +university cannot permanently be forgotten. Since from the outset we +have recognised the prime elements of the school in observation and +memory, the testing of these by examinations--written, oral, and +practical--however improvable in detail, must be fairly recognised, and +the examining body or university has therefore to be adopted as the +normal crown of our comprehensive educational system. Teaching, however +is found to be increasingly necessary, especially to examination, and +for this the main field left open is in our last column, that of People. +Their lore of the past, whether of sacred or classical learning, their +history, literature, and criticism, are already actively promoted, or at +any rate adequately endowed at older seats of learning; while the +materials, resources, conditions and atmosphere are here of other kinds. +Hence the accessibility of the new University of London to the study of +sociology, as yet alone among its peers. + +Hence, beside the great London, maritime, commercial and industrial, +residential and governmental, there has been growing up, tardily indeed, +as compared with smaller cities, yet now all the more massively and +completely, a correspondingly comprehensive system of schools; so that +the historic development of South Kensington within the last half +century, from International Exhibitions of Work, Natural History Museums +of Place onwards to its present and its contemplated magnitude, affords +a striking exemplification of the present view and its classification, +which is all the more satisfactory since this development has been a +gradual accretion. + +Enough then has been said to show that the rise of schools, their +qualities and their defects, are all capable of treatment upon the +present lines; but if so, may we not go farther, and ask by what means +does thought and life cope with their defects, especially that fixation +of memory, even at its best, that evil side of examination and the like, +which we often call Chinese in the bad sense, but which we see arises so +naturally everywhere? + + +[Page: 83] J--FROM "SCHOOL" TO "CLOISTER" + +The preceding view is, as yet, too purely determinist. The due place of +ideals, individual and corporate, in their reaction upon the function +and the structure of the city, and even upon its material environment, +has next to be recognised. For where the town merely makes and fixes its +industry and makes its corresponding schools, where its habits and +customs become its laws, even its morality, the community, as we have +just seen, sinks into routine, and therefore decay. To prevent this a +twofold process of thought is ever necessary, critical and constructive. +What are these? On the one hand, a continual and critical selection +among the ideas derived from experience, and the formulation of these as +Ideals: and further, the organisation of these into a larger and larger +whole of thought; in fact, a Synthesis of a new kind. This critical +spirit it is which produced the prophets of Israel, the questioning of +Socrates, and so on, to the journalistic and other criticism of life +to-day. The corresponding constructive endeavour is now no mere School +of traditional learning or of useful information. It is one of science +in a new and reorganised sense; one of philosophy also, one of ideals +above all. + +As from the Schools of the Law, as over against these, arise the +prophets, so from the technical and applied sciences, the descriptive +natural sciences, should arise the scientific thinkers, reinterpreting +each his field of knowledge and giving us the pure sciences--pure +geometry henceforth contrasted with mere land surveying, morphology with +mere anatomy, and so on; while instead of the mere concrete encyclopædia +from Pliny or Gesner to Diderot or Chambers, vast subjective +reorganisations of knowledge, philosophic systems, now appear. +Similarly, the mere observations of the senses and their records in +memory become transformed into the images of the poet, the imagery too +of the artist, for art proper is only thus born. That mere imitation of +nature, which so commonly in the graphic arts (though happily but rarely +in music) has been mistaken for [Page: 84] art, thus modestly returns to +its proper place--that of the iconography of descriptive science. + +Thus from the Schools of all kinds of knowledge, past and present, we +pass into the no less varied Cloisters of contemplation, meditation, +imagination. With the historian we might explore the Cloisters of the +past, built at one time from the current ideals of the Good, at another +of the True, at another of the Beautiful; indeed, in widely varying +measures and proportions from all of these. How far each of these now +expresses the present, how far it may yet serve the future, is +obviously a question of questions, yet for that very reason one +exceeding our present limits. Enough if in city life the historic place +of what is here generalised under this antique name of Cloister be here +recognised; and in some measure the actual need, the potential place be +recognised also. Here is the need and use, beyond the fundamental claims +of the material life of the Town, and the everyday sanity of the +Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense +and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and +their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can +afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has +been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an +imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the senses. In +our age of the multiplication and expansion of towns, of their +enrichment and their impoverishment, of the multiplication and +enrichment of schools also, it is well for the sociologist to read from +history, as he then may more fully see also around him that it is ever +some fresh combination of these threefold products of the +Cloister--ideal theory, and imagery--emotional, intellectual, +sensuous--which transforms the thought-world of its time. + +The philosopher of old in his academic grove, his porch, the mediaeval +monk within his studious cloister's pale, are thus more akin to the +modern scientific thinker than he commonly realises--perhaps because he +is still, for the most part, of the solitary individualism of the hermit +of the Thebaid, of Diogenes in his tub. Assuredly, they are less removed +in essential psychology than their derived fraternities, their [Page: +85] respective novices and scholars, have often thought. It is thus no +mere play of language which hands on from the one to the other the +"travail de Bénédictin," though even here the phrase is inadequate +savouring too much of the school, into which each cloister of every sort +declines sooner or later, unless even worse befall. + +The decay of the cloister, though thus on the one hand into and with the +school, may also take place within itself, since imagination and ideal +may be evil, and theory false. That examples of all these decays abound +in the history of religion, of philosophy, of art also, is a commonplace +needing no illustration. Nor should the modern investigator think his +science or himself immune to the same or kindred germs in turn. + + +K--THE CITY PROPER + +Now, "at long last," we are ready to enter the city proper. This is not +merely the Town of place and work and folk, even were this at their +economic best. It is not enough to add the School, even at its +completest; nor the cloister, though with this a yet greater step +towards the city proper is made. For though this is not itself the City, +its ideals of human relations, its theory of the universe and man, its +artistic expression and portrayal of all these, ever sooner or later +react upon the general view and conduct of life. Hence the Academe of +Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, the mediaeval cloister and the modern +Research Institute, have been so fertile, so creative in their influence +upon the city's life, from which they seemed to be retired. Hence it is +ever some new combination of the threefold product of the +cloister--ideal, idea, and image--which transforms the world, which +opens each new epoch. Each new revelation and vision, each system of +thought, each new outburst of poetry and song, has moved the men of its +age by no mere mechanical pressure of economic need or external force, +by no mere scholastic instruction, but in a far subtler way, and into +new and unexpected groupings, as the [Page: 86] sand upon Chladon's +vibrating plate leaps into a new figure with each thrill of the +violinist's bow. + +Instead of simply developing our morals from custom, and therefore +codifying them into law as in the school they are now boldly criticised, +as in part if not in whole, hindrances to a better state of things. As +this becomes more and more clearly formulated as an ideal, its ethic +transcendence of convention and law not only becomes clear, but the +desire for its realisation becomes expressed. This may be with all +degrees of clearness of reason and vividness of imagery, yet may remain +long or altogether in the plane of literature, as has Plato's Republic +or More's Utopia--standard and characteristic types of the cloister +library as we may call it, one of inestimable value to the world in the +past, and perhaps in our time needed as much as ever to help us to see +somewhat beyond the output of the busy presses of town and school. Yet +our ideal, our "Civitas Dei," "Civitas Solis," need not remain +unrealised: it may be not only seriously planned towards realisation, as +was Platonopolis of old, but bravely founded, as has been done in cases +without number, from the ancient world to modern communities, by no +means wholly unsuccessful. Though in our great industrial towns, our +long settled regions, such new departures seem less easy, the +principle remains valid--that it is in our ideal of polity and +citizenship, and in our power of realising this, that the city proper +has its conception and its birth. Again, instead of simply deriving our +thought from experience we now project our clarified thought into action +and into education; so that from cloister of philosophy, and from its +long novitiate of silence, there grows up the brotherhood of culture, +the culture city itself. Similarly in art, we no longer imitate nature, +nor copy traditional designs. Art proper appears, shaping bronze and +marble into images of the gods, and on a burnt and ruined hill-fort +renewing the Parthenon. In general terms, instead of simply adjusting, +as in the school, our mental picture to the outward facts, we reverse +the process; and with a new art conception, be it good or bad, we +transform the outward world, like wax under the seal. Thus from the +[Page: 88] cloister and chapel of the musician, the studio-cell of the +artist, the scriptorium of the poet, comes forth the architect, +remodelling the city around his supreme material expression and home of +its moral and material reorganisation, its renewed temporal and +spiritual powers. Of this, the city proper, the Acropolis of Athens, the +Temple of Jerusalem, the Capitol and Forum of Rome are classic and +central examples, and in the mediaeval city, pre-eminently the +cathedral; though beside this we must not forget the town house and its +belfry, the guild houses, the colleges, the great place, the fountains, +the city cross, and if last, still best if good at all, the streets and +courts and homes. Returning once more to the history of educational +development, we have here a means of unravelling the apparently +perplexing history of universities. For the university past or present +has but its foundations in the school, with its local and its general +tradition, whatever may be the accordance of these with well-ascertained +fact, its true novitiate can only be afforded in the cloister of +reflection and research, of interpretation and synthesis; while for its +full development it needs the perpetual renewal of that generous social +life--that inspiring intercourse "of picked adolescents and picked +senescents"--which has marked the vital periods of every university +worthy of the name. + + Realisation in + ACROPOLIS } + CATHEDRAL } CITY + UNIVERSITY } +(EU)-POLITY + ^ + | CULTURE + | ^ +Rise towards | +Formulation | ART +and Realisation, Rise through ^ +through | + { Politics { Action Rise to + { Church Militant { Education expression + ^ ^ ^ + | | | + | | | + | | | + | | "IMAGERY" + | | AESTHETICS + | | (Beautiful) +SOCIAL. ECON. POL. "IDEAS" + ^ SYNTHETICS + | (True) +"IDEALS" + ETHICS + (Good) Criticism, Selection, + Re-synthesis, in + HERMITAGE + ACADEME + CLOISTER, etc. + +In summary then, to the town has been added the school, with its +advantages, its increasingly obvious limitations also, which it is for +the cloister to remedy--even the advantages of the barrack finding a +main element of its claim in this no less than in its professed training +as regards citizenship. But here also it is for few to remain, albeit +free for each to return at will. Ideals, to survive, must surely live, +that is, be realised; hence for full life one needs "to meditate with +the free solitary; yet to live secular, and serve mankind." + + TOWN | CITY + FOLK | POLITY + | + WORK | CULTURE + | +PLACE | ART +-----------------------------+-------------------------------- +SURVEY | IMAGERY + | + KNOWLEDGE | IDEAS + | + MORALS | SOC. ECON. + | IDEALS + LAW | ETHICS + SCHOOL | CLOISTER + + +L--THE CITY COMPLIED: TOWN, SCHOOL, CLOISTER, AND CITY PROPER + +In course of this fourfold analysis, it is plain that we have reached +the very converse--or at all events the [Page: 90] complement--of that +geographical determinism with which we started, and that we have +returned to a view corresponding to the popular one (of "People, +Affairs, Places," p. 69), which we then set aside for the reasons given. +The "great man theory" of history, at best less crudely stated, thus +reappears; in short, to the initial thesis we have now the distinct +antithesis. It is time, therefore, to bring these together towards the +needed synthesis. Hence to the page (p. 77) on which was summarised the +determinist view of Town and School, we now require the complemental +statement upon page (p. 87) of Cloister and City proper. Nor must we be +content, with too many controversialists hitherto, to keep in view only +one at a time; but by folding back the pages of print between these two +half-schemes, as the book lies open, to take in both together. + +We may thus finally compress the essentials of this whole paper into a +simple formula-- + +TOWN | CITY + | + FOLK | POLITY + | + WORK | CULTURE + | | ^ +PLACE | | | ART +-----------------|----|----|---------------------- +LORE | | | IMAGERY + v | | + LEAR | IDEA + | + LOVE | IDEAL + | +SCHOOL | CLOISTER + +or most briefly-- + +| TOWN | CITY ^ +| -------+--------- | +v SCHOOL | CLOISTER | + +[Page: 91]--noting in every case the opposite direction of the arrows. +The application of this formula to different types of town, such as +those already indicated in the former instalment of this paper (Vol. I., +p. 107) or in the present one, will not be found to present any +insuperable difficulty. It must, however, be kept clearly in view that +the city of each day and generation subsides or decays more or less +completely into the mere town anew, as the cloister into the schools. +The towns and cities of the world are thus classifiable in terms of +their past development and present condition. + + +Summary + +Condensing now this lengthy, yet compressed and abbreviated series of +analyses into a single page of summary, we may briefly define the main +aspects and departments of civics from the present point of view. First +then, comes the study of civics as fundamentally (and ever anew) an +orderly development--at once geographic, economic, and anthropologic in +its nature--a survey of place, work, and folk--and these not merely or +mainly as broken up into the fine dust of censuses and statistics, nor +even of the three too separate sciences above named, but as a living +unity, the human hive, the Town. + +Corresponding to this objective and organic life we reorganise its +fundamental subjective life. This is fundamentally, and ever partially, +the record and reflex of the life of the hive, the Town: of all its +general and particular environment and function, its family type and +development; and however overlaid by imported culture or by decayed +ideals, it is fundamentally expressed in local knowledge, in craft +tradition, in kinship and its associated kindness, in habits and +customs, and their developments up to morals and laws. Simple terms +corresponding to place, work, and folk, are hard to find; say, however, +till better be suggested, that in close relation to the maternal arms in +which general social thought and its utmost pedagogic developments +alike begin, it is place-lore, work-lear, and folk-love, which are the +essentials of every [Page: 92] School.[11] That existing educational +machineries may not adequately recognise these is not of course the +question here. + +[11] The use of _lore_ as primarily empirical, and derived from the +senses, it is traditional; it is well therefore to restrict it to this, +and to revive the old word _lear_, still understood in Scotland in these +precise senses--intellectual, rational, yet traditional, occupational +also. + +These three terms, lore, lear, and love are thus well related to their +respectively deepening levels of sense, intelligence and feeling; and +their respective relation is thus more plain to the imagery, the theory, +and the idealism above defined as the essentials of the Cloister. The +psychology of the processes of poetic, philosophic and spiritual +awakening and renewal is in these days being approached anew, both from +the individual and social side, but cannot here be entered upon. + +Finally and supremely arises the City proper--its individuality +dependent upon the measure and form in which ideals are expressed and +harmonised in social life and polity, ideas synthetised in culture, and +beauty carried outwards from the study or chamber of the recluse into +the world of art. + + + +Practical conclusion + + +The investigation of the City thus tends towards the practice of +citizenship. Thus social survey prepares for social service, as +diagnosis towards treatment and hygiene; and these react fruitfully upon +our knowledge and understanding anew. Beyond social observations, and +the needed observatories for making them more adequately, we need social +activities and the laboratories for preparing them, or at least the +leavens of them; or, again, in happier phrase, at once simple and more +synthetic, we need some shelter[12] into which to gather the best +[Page: 93] seed of past flowerings and in which to raise and tend the +seedlings of coming summers. We need definitely to acquire such a centre +of survey and service in each and every city--in a word, a Civicentre +for sociologist and citizen. + +[12] Without forgetting the many institutions and workers in almost all +departments of the field of civics, the rise of definite surveys and of +scientific groupings like this Society, without ignoring also the many +admirable workers and institutions of social endeavour, and their +progressive integration into Social Unions, Institutes of Service, and +the like, I may be permitted to press for the need of uniting both +types, the scientific and the practical, into a single one--a civic +museum and active centre in one. Of this type, my own Outlook Tower at +Edinburgh is, so far as I am aware, the earliest beginning; and, despite +its rudimentary condition, may thus serve to suggest a type of +institution which will be found of service alike to the sociologist and +the citizen. + + +M--THE HISTORIC CITY-COMPLEX + +The criticism may have already arisen in the reader's mind that the +"Town" and "School" of our analysis are by no means so simple as we have +assumed them. Our surveys of antique towns ever disclose the material +survivals, at least the vestiges, of the cloister or the acropolis of +the past, of its cathedral or its forum. The processes of our +industries, in what is now their daily artisan routine, include, repeat, +condense, what were yesterday or longer ago living inventions, each +instinct with Promethean fire. The hackneyed ornament of our homes was +once glowing with beauty, radiant or dark with symbolism. So it is for +our everyday customs and institutions, and so for living languages; our +own, perhaps, most of all. These, of course, are facts made familiar by +investigators of all orders, from the scholar and antiquary of old, the +historian and philologist of yesterday, to the geographer or the +sociologist of our own time: witness Mr. Spencer's masterly treatment of +their main results. How, then, shall we correlate this process of all +things growing old with the analysis of cities above attempted? In other +words, how shall we interpret the course of their historic evolution, +their renewed growth and decay, progress and degeneracy, their present +condition, crowded with residues of the past, with those potentialities +which our outline discloses? This is the more necessary since this +fourfold analysis applies in principle to all human groupings from the +simplest village to the Eternal City. To this, indeed, we have in +principle already traced it, onwards from our primitive valley section +with its humble hamlets, its fundamental occupations. Returning then to +our main diagram, with its four-fold analysis of the City so soon as we +have completed this, and [Page: 94] carried its progress up to the level +of city life proper, we must next turn over the leaf and begin a new +page, with place and work and folk once more. This simplest of acts +expresses with graphic significance the very process of history; for in +closing our diagram page its "Cloister" has been folded down on the +"School," our cathedral and forum, our "City" proper upon the "Town." +Thus it is that the ideals and the achievements of one day and +generation and city are ever melting away, and passing out of sight of +the next; so that to the joy or sorrow of the successors the new page +seems well nigh bare, though ever there comes faintly through some image +or at least blurred suggestion of the fading past. Hence each page of +history is a palimpsest. Hence our modern town, even when yesterday but +prairie, was no mere vacant site, but was at once enriched and +encumbered by the surviving traditions of the past; so that even its new +buildings are for the most part but vacant shells of past art, of which +now only the student cares to trace the objective annals, much less +penetrate to the inner history. So for the decayed Renaissance learning +of our schools, for the most part so literally dead since the +"Grammarian's Funeral"; and so, too, for the unthinking routines, the +dead customs and conventions, and largely too the laws and rituals of +our urban lives. Hence, then, it is that for the arrest and the decay of +cities we have no need to go for our examples to the ancient East. These +processes, like those of individual senility and death, are going on +everywhere day by day. + +Upon the new page, then, it is but a complexer "Town" and "School" anew: +we have no continuing City. This too commonly has existed at its best +but for the rare generation which created it, or little longer; though +its historic glories, like those of sunset and of after-glow, may long +shed radiance and glamour upon its town, and linger in the world's +memory long after not only these have faded, but their very folk have +vanished, their walls fallen, nay their very site been buried or +forgotten. Upon all these degrees of dying, all these faint and fading +steps between immortality and oblivion, we may arrange what we call our +historic cities. Obviously in the [Page: 95] deeper and more living +sense the city exists only in actualising itself; and thus to us it is +that the ideal city lies ever in the future. Yet it is the very essence +of this whole argument that an ideal city is latent in every town. Where +shall we in these days find our cloistered retreats to think out such +ideals as may be applicable in our time and circumstances: the needed +kinetic ethics, the needed synthetic philosophy and science, the needed +vision and imagery and expression of them all? + + +N--THE EVILS OF THE CITY + +Disease, defect, vice and crime + +I have spoken little of town evils, and much of town ideals, primarily +for the reason that even to recognise, much less treat, the abnormal, we +must know something of the normal course of evolution. Hence, the old +and useful phrase by which physiology used to be known, that of "the +institutes of medicine." Sociology has thus to become "the institutes of +citizenship." + +Often though philanthropists forget this, diagnosis should precede +treatment. The evils of the city, by the very nature of our hypothesis, +demand special survey, and this no less thoroughly than do the normal +place and work and industry. It is only our most permanent intellectual +impulse, that of seeking for unity, which excuses the cheap unitary +explanations so often current; as, for instance, that social evils are +mainly to be explained by intemperance, as for one school of reformers; +by poverty or luxury, for a second and third; by Tammany or other form +of party government, by socialism or by individualism for yet others; +that they are due to dissent or to church, to ignorance or to the spread +of science, and so on almost indefinitely--doubtless not without +elements of truth in each! + +Yet let me offer as yet another explanation of civic evils, this more +general one--distinguished from the preceding by including them all and +more--that not only is our "Town" in itself imperfect, but the other +three elements we have been characterising as school, cloister and city, +are yet more imperfect, since disordered, decayed, or undeveloped anew. +It is because of each and all of these imperfect realisations of our +civic life, that the evils of life sink down, or flame out, into these +complex eruptions of social evils with which our human aggregations are +as yet cursed. + +Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with ignorance +and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too +separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of +being viewed together, and largely even treated together. They are not +unrelated, but correspond each as the negative to that fourfold +presentment of ideals we have hitherto been raising. To this ideal unity +of healthy town, with its practical and scientific schools of all kinds, +with its meditative cloister of ethical and social idealism, of unified +science and philosophy, of imagination and drama, all culminating in +the polity, culture, and art which make a city proper, we have here the +corresponding defects in detail. + +The evils of existing city life are thus largely reinterpreted; and if +so more efficiently combated; since the poverty, squalor and ugliness of +our cities, their disease and their intemperance, their ignorance, +dulness and mental defect, their vice and crime are thus capable not +only of separate treatment but of an increasingly unified civic hygiene, +and this in the widest sense, material and moral, economic and idealist, +utilitarian and artistic. Even the most earnest and capable workers +towards civic betterment in these many fields may gain at once in hope +and in efficiency as they see their special interests and tasks +converging into the conception of the city as an organic unity, and this +not fixed and settled, nor even in process of progress or degeneration +from causes beyond our ken, but as an orderly development which we may +aid towards higher perfection, geographic and cultural alike. + +Our modern town is thus in a very real sense, one not hopeless, but as +hopeful as may be, a veritable purgatory; that is a struggle of lower +and higher idealisms, amid the respective expressions and outcomes of +these. Indeed, in our own present [Page: 97] cities, as they have come +to be, is not each of us ever finding his own Inferno, or it may be his +Paradise? Does he not see the dark fate of some, the striving and rising +hope of others, the redemption also? + +The supreme poetic utterance of the mediaeval world is thus in great +measure, as each thoughtful reader sees, an expression of impassioned +citizenship and this at one of the golden moments of the long history of +city life. This expression--this exiled citizen's autobiographic +thought-stream--is resumed at every level, from youthful home and local +colour, from boyish love and hopes, from active citizenship and party +struggle, to the transfiguration of all these. Hence these mystic +visions, and these world ambitions, temporal and spiritual; hence this +rise from cloistered faith and philosophy into many-sided culture; hence +the transformation of all these through intensest symbol-visions into +enduring song. + +Am I thus suggesting the _Divina Comedia_ as a guide-book to cities? +Without doubt, though not necessarily for beginners. Yet who can see +Florence without this, though we may pack below it Baedeker and Murray? +Or who, that can really read, can open a volume of Mr. Booth's severely +statistical Survey of London, with all its studious reserve, its +scientific repression, without seeing between its lines the Dantean +circles; happy if he can sometimes read them upward as well as down? + + +O--A CIVIC SYMBOL AND ITS MEANING + +But such books of the city, whether of the new and observant type, from +Baedeker to Booth, or of the old and interpretative Dantean one, are too +vast and varied to keep open before us. Even the preceding open page of +diagram is complex enough with its twofold, indeed four-fold city; and +we are called back to our daily work in the first of these divisions, +that of the everyday town. Since its subjective aspects of school and +cloister may fade from memory, its higher aspect also, that of city +proper, how can we retain this fourfold [Page: 98] analysis, and how +test if it be true? Take then one final illustration; this time no mere +logical skeleton, however simple or graphic, but an image more easily +retained, because a concrete and artistic one, and moreover in terms of +that form of life-labour and thought-notation--that of current +coin--which, in our day especially, dominates this vastest of cities; +and hence inherits for the region of its home and centre--"the Bank" +which has so thoroughly taken precedence of the town-house and +cathedral, of the fortress and palace--the honoured name of "City." The +coinages of each time and place combine concrete and social use with +statements of historic facts; and they add to both of these a wealth of +emblematic suggestions: but that is to say, they express not only their +town, and something of its _school_, but much of its thought also, its +_cloister_ in my present terminology. + +So before me lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side +stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild, +"_Non marte sed arte_." Here then the industrial "Town" and its "School" +express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been above +defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since +Perth _(Bertha aurea)_ had been the northmost of all Rome's provincial +capitals, her re-named "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald +must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the +Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic +dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On +the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard, +since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of +1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the +banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, and +one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual +strife with the feudal nobles, "_Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege_." Here then, +plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty +provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only of +the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find +clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole [Page:99] four-fold +analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been above labouring for. +For what makes the industrial Town, what can better keep it than +strenuous industry at its anvil? How better express its craft school, +its local style and skill, its reaction too upon the town's life in +peace and war, than by this Hal o' the Wynd by his forge? Nay, what +better symbol than this hammer, this primitive tool and ever typical +one, of the peaceful education of experience, form Prometheus to Kelvin, +of the warlike, from Thor to modern cannon-forge? Turning now from Town +and School to Cloister, to the life of secluded peace and +meditation--from which, however, the practical issues of life are ever +renewed--what plainer symbol, yet what more historic or more mystic one +can we ask than this of the lamb with the banner? While of the +contrasted yet complemental civic life of fullest, broadest action, what +expression like the Roman eagle--the very eyes of keenness, and the +spreading wings of power? + +So rarely perfect then is this civic symbol, that I must not omit to +mention that it has only come to my notice since the body of this paper, +with its four-fold analysis of cities as above outlined, was essentially +finished. Since it thus has not in any particular suggested the +treatment of cities here advocated, it is the more interesting and +encouraging as a confirmation of it. It is also to my mind plain that in +this, as in many other of our apparent "advances in science," and +doubtless those in social studies particularly, we are but learning to +think things anew, long after our forefathers have lived them, even +expressed them--and these in their ways no less clear and popular than +can ever be ours. That we may also again live them is once more +curiously expressed by the same symbol; for its re-appearance is due to +its having been appropriately revived, in a fitting art form, that of +the commemorative and prize medal of the local arts and crafts +exhibition, held in the new Public Library, under civic auspices. Little +scrutiny of this last sentence will be needed to see the four-fold +completeness of the civic event which it describes. + +For just as we have seen on the old coin the hammerman [Page: 100] and +his motto answer to the town and school; so now on its reissue to the +renascent local arts and crafts, with their commemoration in this +library. And as the greater motto, that of widest policy, corresponds to +the cloister of reflection and resolve, so we note that this new impulse +to civic betterment is associated with the new library--no mere +school-house of memory, but also the open cloister of our day. Finally, +note that this impulse is no longer merely one of aesthetic purpose, of +"art for art's sake," nor its execution that of a cultured minority +merely; it announces a re-union of this culture and art with the civic +polity. What fitter occasion, then, for the striking of a medal, than +this renewal of civic life, with municipal organisation and polity, art +and culture, renascent in unison. That such events are nowadays far from +exceptional is so true that we are in danger of losing sight of their +significance. Yet it is amid such city developments that the future +Pericles must arise. + +We thus see that our analysis is no mere structural one, made +post-mortem from civic history; but that it applies to the modern +functioning of everyday life in an everyday city, so soon as this +becomes touched anew towards cultural issues. Furthermore, it is thus +plain that civic life not only has long ago anticipated and embodied our +theories of it, but once more outruns them, expressing them far better +than in words--in life and practice. In this way the reader who may most +resent these unfamiliar methods of exposition, alternately by abstract +diagram or concrete illustration--which may seem to him too remote from +ordinary life and experience, perhaps too trivial--may now test the +present theory of the city, or amend it, by means of the ample +illustrations of the processes and results of social life which are +provided by his daily newspaper, and these on well-nigh all its fields +and levels. + +Note finally that it is the eagle and lamb of temporal and spiritual +idealism that form the "head" of this coin, the craftsman and anvil but +the modest "tail." The application is obvious. + +Thus even numismatics revives from amid the fossil [Page: 100] sciences. +For from this to our own common coinage, or notably to that of France, +America, Switzerland, etc., the transition is easy, and still better to +that of the noblest civic past, both classic and mediaeval. Without +pursuing this further here my present point is gained, if we see, even +in the everyday local details of work and people, the enduring stamp, +the inextinguishable promise, of the flowering of our everyday +industries and schools into worthier ideals than they at present +express, and of the fruition of these in turn upon nobler heights of +life and practice. It expresses the essential truth of the popular view +of the city; that in terms of the formula--People ... Affairs ... +Places--above referred to (page 69). It also explains the persistent +vitality of this view, despite its frequent crudity, and lack of order +in detail, in face of the more scientific treatment here at first +employed, that in the elementary geographic order--Place ... Work ... +People. For though this objective order be fundamental, it is the +complementary subjective evolution which throughout history has ever +become supreme; so that our scheme must combine the outward geographic +presentment with the inward psychological one. This may be graphically +expressed by changing the order of presentment from that used +hitherto:-- + +Town | City City | Town +-------------------- to ---------------------- +School | Cloister Cloister | School + + +P--FORECAST OF CITY DEVELOPMENT. SPECIAL AND GENERAL + +The dual and four-fold development of the city, as above sketched, is by +no means far advanced in most of our present towns or cities, which have +obviously but scanty expression of the ideas shadowed forth for the +modern equivalents of cloister and cathedral, of academe and acropolis. +But this is to say that such towns, however large, populous and rich +according to conventional economic standards, are to that extent small +and poor, indeed too often little better than cities by courtesy. Yet +their further development, upon this [Page: 102] four-fold view of civic +evolution, though in principle the same for each and all, has always +been, and let us hope may always be, in large measure an individual +(because regional) one. For if each human individuality be unique, how +much more must that of every city? + +In one concrete case, that of Dunfermline, I have already submitted +definite suggestions towards the realisation of the civic Utopia, and +even architectural designs towards its execution,[13] so that these may +at any rate suffice to show how local study and adaptive design are +needed for each individual city, indeed for every point of it. It is +thus, and thus only, that we can hope to have a city development truly +evolutionary, that is, one utilising the local features, advantages, and +possibilities of place, occupation, and people. Of course, it is needful +to supplement these by the example of other cities; but it is no less +needful to avoid weighting down the local life with replicas of +institutions, however excellent elsewhere, if really irregional here. +With the re-awakening of regional life in our various centres, and of +some comprehension of its conditions among our rulers, they will cease +to establish, say, a school of mines in Piccadilly, or again one of +engineering and the like in South Kensington. The magistrates of +Edinburgh have long abandoned their old attempt to plant mulberries and +naturalise silk culture upon their wind-swept Calton Hill; albeit this +was a comparatively rational endeavour, since a population of Huguenot +refugee silk weavers had actually come upon their hands. + +[13] Cf. the writer's "City Development," Edinburgh and Westminster, +1904. + +Similarly, it is plain that we must develop Oxford as Oxford, Edinburgh +as Edinburgh, and so on with all other cities, great or small--York or +Winchester, Westminster or London. And so with Chelsea or Hampstead, +with Woolwich or Battersea. Has not the last of these grown from a mere +outlying vestry, like so many others, into a centre of genuine vitality +and interior progress, indeed of ever-widening interest and example; and +all this in half a generation, apparently through the sagacious +leadership--say, rather the devoted, the [Page: 103] impassioned +citizenship--of a single man? And does not his popular park at times +come near giving us a vital indication of the needed modern analogue of +cathedral and forum? Civic development is thus no mere external matter, +either of "Haussmannising" its streets, or of machine-educating its +people; the true progress of the city and its citizenship must alike +grow and flower from within albeit alive and open to every truly +fertilising impulse from without. + +Yet since national interests, international industry, commerce, +science, and therefore progress are nowadays and increasingly so +largely one, may we not in conclusion foresee something at least of the +great lines of development which are common to cities, and generalise +these as we are accustomed to do in history? Witness the Classical, +Mediaeval, and Renaissance types to which historic cities +preponderatingly belong, and within which we group their varied +individualities, as after all of comparative detail. + +Here then it is time to recall the presentment of ancient, recent and +contemporary evolution already outlined in the part of this paper +previously read (Vol. I, p. 109), dealing with the historic survey of +cities. We have now to face the question, then postponed, indeed left in +interrogation-marks--that of seeking not indeed sharply to define the +future order of things, yet in some measure to discern such elements of +progress as may be already incipient in the existing order, if not yet +largely manifest there. Such elements may be reasonably expected to grow +in the near future, perhaps increasingly, and whatever be their rate of +growth are surely worthy of our attention. + +Contemporary science, with its retrospective inquiries into origins in +the past, its everyday observation of the present, is apt practically to +overlook that the highest criterion and achievement of science is not to +decipher the past, nor record the present, not even to interpret both. +It is to foresee: only thus can it subserve action, of which the present +task ever lies towards the future, since it is for this that we have to +provide. Why then should not Comte's famous aphorism--"_Voir pour +prévoir, prévoir pour pourvoir_," become applicable in our civic studies +no less than in the general social and political fields to [Page: 104] +which he applied it? In navigation or engineering, in agriculture or +hygiene, prevision and provision alike are ever increasing; yet these +are no mere combinations of the preliminary sciences and the fundamental +occupations, but obviously contain very large social elements. + +It is proverbially safe to prophesy when one knows; and it is but this +safe prediction which we make every day of child or bud, where we can +hardly fail to see the growing man, the coming flower. Yet do not most +people practically forget that even now, in mid-winter, next summer's +leaves are already waiting, nay, that they were conceived nine months +ago? That they thus grow in small, commonly unnoticed beginnings, and +lie in bud for a period twice as long as the summer of their adult and +manifest life, is yet a fact, and one to which the social analogies are +many and worth considering. + +While recognising, then, the immense importance of the historic element +of our heritage, renaissance and mediaeval, classic and earlier; +recognising also the predominance of contemporary forces and ideas, +industrial and liberal, imperial and bureaucratic, financial and +journalistic, can we not seek also, hidden under all these leaves, for +those of the still-but-developing bud, which next season must be so much +more important than they are to day? It is a commonplace, yet mainly of +educational meetings, to note that the next generation is now at school; +but how seldom do we recognise its pioneers, albeit already among our +own contemporaries? At any rate we may see here and there that their +leaven is already at work. + +In this respect, cities greatly differ--one is far more initiative than +another. In the previous paper (vol. I, p. 109), we saw how individuals, +edifices, institutions, might represent all past phases; these, +therefore, often predominate in different cities sufficiently to give +its essential stamp. Why then should we not make a further survey and +seek to see something of the cities of the future; though we may have to +look for these in quarters where at first sight there may seem as yet +scanty promise of flower? + +[Page: 105] To recall an instance employed above, probably every member +of this Society is old enough to remember incredulous questionings of +whether any good thing could come out of Battersea. Again, how few, even +in America, much less than in Europe, a few years ago, forsaw the rapid +growth of those culture-elements in St. Louis, of which the recent +World-Exposition will not have been the only outcome? + +Only a few years earlier, it was Chicago which, for New England no less +than for the Old World, seemed but the byword of a hopelessly +materialised community. So Birmingham or Glasgow has won its present +high position among cities in comparatively recent times; so it may now +be the turn of older cities, once far more eminent, like Newcastle or +Dundee, to overtake and in turn, perhaps, outstrip them. But all this is +still too general and needs further definition; let us attempt this, +therefore, somewhat more fully, in the concrete case of Glasgow. + + +Q--GLASGOW AS TYPICAL OF CIVIC TRANSITION--FROM "PALEOTECHNIC" TO +"NEOTECHNIC" + +My own appreciation of the significance of Glasgow was first really +awakened over twenty years ago by William Morris, who in his vivid way +pointed out to me how, despite the traditional culture--superiority of +Edinburgh, Glasgow was not only the Scottish capital, but, in his view, +in real progressiveness the leading and initiative city of the whole +United Kingdom. And this for him was not merely or mainly in its +municipal enterprise, then merely in its infancy--although he expressed +this development in the phrase "In London, people talked socialism +without living it; but in Glasgow, they were socialists without knowing +it!" Despite all the ugliness which had so repelled Ruskin, the squalor +which moved Matthew Arnold to the fiercest scorn in all his writings, +Morris's appreciation arose from his craftsman's knowledge and respect +for supreme craftsmanship. The great ships building upon the Clyde were +for him "the greatest achievement of [Page: 106] humanity since the days +of the cathedral-builders," nay, for him actually surpassing these, +since calling forth an even more complex combination and "co-operation +of all the material arts and sciences" into a mighty and organic whole; +and correspondingly of all their respective workers also, this being for +him of the very essence of his social ideal. + +For these reasons he insisted, to my then surprise that the social +reorganisation he then so ardently hoped for "was coming faster upon the +Clyde than upon the Thames": he explained as for him the one main reason +for his then discouragement as to the progress of London that there East +and West, North and South, are not only too remote each from the other, +but in their occupations all much too specialised--there to finance, +there to manufactures, or here to leisure, and so on; while on the Clyde +industrial organisation and social progress could not but develop +together, through the very nature of the essential and working unity of +the ship. + +Since Morris's day, a local art movement, of which he knew little, has +risen to eminence, a foreign critic would say to pre-eminence, in this +country at least. Since Ruskin's savage response to a Glasgow invitation +to lecture--"first burn your city, and cleanse your river,"--a new +generation of architects and hygienists have not a little transformed +the one, and vigorous measures have been taken towards the purification +of the other. That the city and university pre-eminently associated +with the invention of the steam-engine, and consequently with the advent +of the industrial revolution throughout the world, should, a century +later, have produced a scarcely less pre-eminent leader of applied +science towards the command of electricity is thus no isolated +coincidence. And as political economy, which is ever the theory +corresponding to our phase of industrial practice, and there some of +its foremost pioneers, and later its classical exponent, Adam Smith +himself, so once more there are signs at least of a corresponding wave +of theoretic progress. Students of primitive civilisation and industry +have now long familiarised us with their reinterpretation of what was +long known as the stone age, into two very distinct [Page: 107] periods, +the earlier characterised by few and rough implements, roughly used by a +rude people, the second by more varied tools, of better shape, and finer +edge, often of exquisite material and polish. We know that these were +wielded more skilfully, by a people of higher type, better bred and +better nourished; and that these, albeit of less hunting and militant +life, but of pacific agricultural skill, prevailed in every way in the +struggle for existence; thanks thus not only to more advanced arts, but +probably above all to the higher status of woman. This distinction of +Paleolithic and Neolithic ages and men, has long passed into the +terminology of sociological science, and even into current speech: is it +too much then, similarly, to focus the largely analogous progress which +is so observable in what we have been wont to generalise too crudely as +the modern Industrial Age? All are agreed that the discoveries and +inventions of this extraordinary period of history constitute an epoch +of material advance only paralleled, if at all, in magnitude and +significance by those of prehistory with its shadowy Promethean figures. +Our own advance from a lower industrial civilisation towards a higher +thus no less demands definite characterisation, and this may be broadly +expressed as from an earlier or _Paleotechnic_ phase, towards a later or +more advanced _Neotechnic_ one. If definition be needed, this may be +broadly given as from a comparatively crude and wasteful technic age, +characterised by coal, steam, and cheap machine products, and a +corresponding _quantitative_ ideal of "progress of wealth and +population"--towards a finer civilisation, characterised by the wider +command, yet greater economy of natural energies, by the predominance of +electricity, and by the increasing victory of an ideal of qualitative +progress, expressed in terms of skill and art, of hygiene and education, +of social polity, etc. + +The Neotechnic phase, though itself as yet far from completely replacing +the paleotechnic order which is still quantitatively predominant in most +of our cities, begins itself to show signs of a higher stage of +progress, as in the co-ordination of the many industries required for +the building of a ship, or in the yet more recent developments which +begin to renew for us the conception of the worthy construction of a +city. As [Page: 108] the former period may be characterised by the +predominance of the relatively unskilled workman and of the skilled, so +this next incipient age by the development of the chief workman proper, +the literal _architectos_ or architect; and by his companion the rustic +improver, gardener and forester, farmer, irrigator, and their +correspondingly evolving types of civil engineer. + +To this phase then the term _Geotechnic_ may fairly be applied. Into its +corresponding theoretic and ideal developments we need not here enter, +beyond noting that these are similarly of synthetic character; on the +concrete side the sciences unifying as geography, and on their more +abstract side as the classification and philosophy of the +sciences,--while both abstract and concrete movements of thought are +becoming more and more thoroughly evolutionary in character. + +But evolutionary theories, especially as they rise towards +comprehensiveness, cannot permanently content themselves with origins, +or with classifications merely, nor with concentrating on nature rather +than on man. Nature furnishes after all but the stage for evolution in +its highest terms; of this man himself is the hero; so that thus our +Geotechnic phase, Synthetic age (call it what we will) in its turn gives +birth to a further advance--that concerned with human evolution, above +all subordinating all things to him; whereas in all these preceding +industrial phases, even if decreasingly, "things are in the saddle and +ride mankind." This age, now definitely evolutionist in policy, as the +geotechnic was in theory and in environment we may term the _Eugenic_. +For its theory, still less advanced, the term _Eupsychic_ may complete +our proposed nomenclature. + +Thus then our conception of the opening future may be increasingly +defined, since all these apparently predicted phases are already +incipient among us, and are thus really matters of observed fact, of +social embryology let us say; in short, of city development. + +In summary, then, the diagram of the former instalment of this paper +(vol. 1, p. 109) + + ANCIENT || +Primitive | Matriarchal | Patriarchal || + + RECENT || +Greek and Roman | Mediaeval | Renaissance || + + CONTEMPORARY || +Revolution | Empire | Finance || + + INCIPIENT + ? ? ? + +[Page: 109] has thus its interrogations filled up. Omitting the +left-hand half, that generalised as Ancient and Recent in the above +diagram, so as to give more space to the Contemporary and Incipient +phases, these now stand as follows:-- + + CONTEMPORARY || INCIPIENT +Revolution | Revolution | Empire ||Neotechnic | Geotechnic | Eugenic + +To elaborate this farther would, of course, exceed my present limits; +but I may be permitted to say that long use of this schematic outline, +especially of course in more developed forms, has satisfied me of its +usefulness alike in the study of current events and in the practical +work of education and city betterment. I venture then to recommend it to +others as worth trial. + + +R--A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL--A CIVIC EXHIBITION + +How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our +observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and +our practical policy--i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be +selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these +applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if +this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, +how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? +At this stage therefore, I venture to submit to the Society a practical +proposal for its consideration and discussion; and if approved, I would +fain hope for its recommendation to towns and cities, to organisations +and to the public likely to be interested. + +Here then is my proposal. Is not the time ripe for bringing together the +movements of Civics and Eugenics, now here and indeed everywhere plainly +nascent, and of setting these before the public of this country in some +such large and concrete ways, as indeed, in the latter subject at +least, have been so strongly desiderated by Mr. Galton? As regards +Civics, such have been afforded to America during the summer of 1904 by +the Municipal Section of the St. Louis Exhibition; in [Page: 110] +Dresden also, at the recent Towns Exhibition; and by kindred Exhibitions +and Congresses in Paris and elsewhere. + +All these have taken form since the Paris Exposition of 1900, with its +important section of social economy and its many relevant special +congresses. Among these may be specially mentioned here as of popular +interest, and civic stimulus, the _Congres de L'Art Public_; the more +since this also held an important Exhibition, to which many Continental +cities sent instructive exhibits. + +Other exhibitions might be mentioned; so that the fact appears that in +well-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the +great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly +brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with +their associated congresses. + +With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon +Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among us; +with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a +real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic +education and action? + +Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important +exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits +have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the +picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of +their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present +conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering +them. + +Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" might +readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the +excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions +in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an +exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they +may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely +abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the +discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to +raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in freshening +lights. + +[Page: 111] At this time of social transition, when we all more or less +feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of +sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual +appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic +Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, of +the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic +Exhibition.[14] + +[14] Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to note the +practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition, +appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to +civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall. The Cottages Exhibition initiated +by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that +admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in +the directions of progress and propaganda advocated above. + +Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that +_Encyclopædia Civica_, into which, in the previous instalment of this +paper (vol. I, p. 118) I have sought to group the literature of civics. +We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in +universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the +mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of +these. We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future, +and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already +struggling towards birth. + + + + +DISCUSSION + + +The Chairman (THE RT. HON. CHARLES BOOTH) said: + +I feel always the inspiring character of Professor Geddes' addresses. He +seems to widen and deepen the point of view, and to widen and deepen +one's own ideas, and enables us to hold them more firmly and better than +one can do without the aid of the kind of insight Professor Geddes has +given into the methods of his own mind. I believe that we all hold our +conceptions by some sort of tenure. I am afraid I hold mine by columns +and statistics much underlined--a horrible prosaic sort of arrangement +on ruled paper. I remember a lady of my acquaintance who had a place for +everything. The discovery of America was in the left-hand corner; the +Papacy was in the middle; and for everything she had some local +habitation in an imaginary world. Professor Geddes is far more ingenious +than that, and it is most interesting and instructive and helpful to +follow these charming diagrams which spring evidently from the method he +himself uses in holding and forming his conceptions. That it is of the +utmost value to have large conceptions there can be no doubt--large +conceptions both in time and place, large conceptions of all those +various ideas to which he has called our attention. By some means or +other we have to have them; and having got them, every individual, +single fact has redoubled value. We put it in its place. So I hope that +in our discussion, while we may develop each in his own way, the mental +methods we pursue, we may bring forward anything that strikes us as +germane, as a practical point of application to the life of the world, +and especially anything having an application to the life of London. I +would make my contribution to that with regard to a scheme that has been +explained to me by its originator, Mrs. Barnett, the wife of Canon +Barnett of Toynbee Hall. The idea concerns an open [Page: 113] space +which has recently been secured in Hampstead. It is known to you all +that a certain piece of ground belonging to the trustees of Eton College +has been secured, which extends the open space of Hampstead Heath in +such a way as to protect a great amount of beauty. The further proposal +is to acquire an estate surrounding that open space which has now been +secured for ever to the people, and to use this extension to make what +is called a "garden suburb." It is a following out of the "garden-city" +idea which is seizing hold of all our minds, and it seems to me an +exceedingly practical adaptation of that idea. Where it comes in, in +connection with the address we have just heard, is that the root idea is +that it shall bring together all the good elements of civic life. It is +not to be for one class, or one idea, but for all classes, and all +ideas--a mixed population with all its needs thought for and provided +for; and above everything, the beauty of those fields and those hills is +not to be sacrificed, but to be used for the good of the suburb and the +good of London. I hope that out of it will come an example that will be +followed. That is a little contribution I wish to make to the discussion +to-day, and if I can interest any one here in forwarding it, I shall be +exceedingly glad. + + +MR. SWINNY said: + +Towards the close of his lecture, Professor Geddes remarked that the +cities of America inherited a great part of their civilisation from +Greece and Rome and the Europe of the Middle Age. I believe that thought +will lead us to consider the point whether this geographical survey +should precede or follow a general historical survey. Now, if we +consider that a river valley in England, with the towns in that valley, +are part of the English nation, and that the English nation has shared +in the general historical evolution of Western Europe, it would seem +that the first simplification the question allows of is: What is there +in the historical development of that city that is common to the whole +of Western Europe, and what is peculiar to its position as an English +city? And the second simplification that the problem allows of is to +consider what part of the evolution of a particular city is due to its +peculiar position in that river valley? So that it seems necessary first +to get a general idea of the historical evolution of England and the +West; and then you can proceed to consider what is due to the part +played by the city in that evolution. Thus you have to consider not so +much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect +of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as it +affected that city. + + +DR. J.L. TAYLER, + +[Page: 114] referring to Professor Geddes' remarks on the working +craftsman and the thinking craftsman, said he believed that in a country +like England, where the prevailing tendencies of thought and action were +of an essentially practical nature, many people who now felt contempt +for higher mental ideals would alter their views, if this idea of the +_causal_ relationship between thinkers and workers could be driven home. +If business men and women could be made to realise that in the higher +regions of pure science there were always to be found some thinkers who +belonged to the same craft or trade as they themselves, they would +naturally tend to rely on these thinkers when dealing with problems that +necessitate a wide mental outlook. + +Moreover, the thought that students of great mental powers studied the +objects with which working craftsmen were in daily contact, could not +fail to deepen, refine and purify their more practical and, in some +respects, grosser aims; while the knowledge that every science-study had +an industrial as well as a scientific aspect would make the thinking +craftsmen more alive to the needs of everyday existence. + +Such conceptions, if spread through all classes of our community, would +inevitably change the feeling of distrust of learning into one of +healthful enthusiasm, and give in addition a unity and direction to our +various life pursuits which might in time generate a true modern +national spirit; for it is precisely this divorce of mental and +physical, of theoretical and practical, class and individual +effort--which such a thinking and working craft theory would +rectify--that destroys our efficiency by creating an unreal chasm +between refined and unrefined, learned and unlearned, where there should +be only a progressive evolution from the lower to the higher, from the +immediate practical to the ultimate ideal. + + +THE REV. DR. AVELING said: + +There was one point that the lecturer made which, I think, might be a +fit and fruitful subject for discussion. He said that we were the +product of the city. To a great extent that is undoubtedly true; but on +the other hand, he advocated an improvement in the conditions of +environment, to be brought about by our own endeavours. Therefore, the +city can be shaped and made by us. What, then, is the exact value to be +given to the seemingly contradictory doctrines that the individual is +the product of the city and also that the city is the product of the +citizen? The establishing of some fixed relation between--or the +adjusting of the relations of--these two causes of social progress would +be, I think, interesting to the philosopher, and useful to the +economist. The problem is [Page: 115] without doubt a difficult one, but +its solution would be of great value. I do not venture to offer any +answer to the question I raise--I merely state it. + + +MR. A.W. STILL said: + +We have been passing through a period in which the city has created a +type of man so wholly absorbed in the promotion of his own individual +interests that he tends almost entirely to forget the social obligations +which ought to make the greatest appeal to him. We may take some hope +from what Professor Geddes has said, that the time is coming when we +shall bring the force of our own characters to bear on our environment, +and endeavour to break away from conditions which have made us the +slaves of environment. I know the lovely little garden city of +Bourneville intimately, and some of the experiments in other quarters. +But in the common expansion of cities, I have seen that as the people +get away from one set of slums, they are creating new areas which will +become as degraded and abominable as those which are left behind. It has +always seemed to me that there is room for good work by some committee, +or some body of men, who would be voluntary guardians of the city's +well-being, who would make it their business to acquire all that +knowledge which Professor Geddes has just put before us in terms so +enchanting, and would use all the ability that they possess in order to +lead the minds of the community towards the cultivation of the best and +highest ideals in civic life. I do not think it need be regarded as +impossible that, from an association of this kind, such a movement as I +have mentioned should spring. I conceive the possibility of each group +developing into a trust, capable of acting in the interests of the city +in years to come, exercising a mighty influence, being relied upon for +guidance, and administering great funds for the common good. If we could +get in each of our populous centres a dozen thoroughly intelligent +broad-minded men, capable of watching all the streams of tendency--all +the developments of civic life, bringing their judgment to bear on its +progress, and urging the public to move in the right direction, a great +service might be rendered. At least once a year, these little groups of +men might meet together at some general conference, and, by the exchange +of their opinions and by the mutual helpfulness of intellectual +intercourse, raise up and perfect civic ideals which would be a boon to +this country. We suffer at present, I think, from the too great +particularisation of our efforts. We get one man devoting himself +exclusively to a blind asylum, another seeming to take no interest in +anything but a deaf-and-dumb institute or the like, and yet another +devoting himself to charity organisation. It is all excellent work, but +the difficulty is to get broad, comprehensive views taken of the common +good. To reduce poverty and to check physical degeneracy, there must be +an effort continuously made to [Page: 116] raise the tone of the +environment in which we live. The home and the city need to be made +wholesome and beautiful, and the people need to be encouraged to enlarge +their minds by contact with nature, and by the study of all that is +elevating and that increases the sum of social responsibility. + + +MR. E.S. WEYMOUTH said: + +He found it somewhat difficult to see what was to be the practical +outcome of civics if studied in the way proposed. Would Professor Geddes +consider it the duty of any Londoner, who wished to study sociology +practically, to map out London, and also the surrounding districts, with +special reference to the Thames River Basin, as appeared to be suggested +in both Professor Geddes' papers? Looking at civics in its practical or +ethical aspect, he was bound to confess that, though he had acquired a +tolerable knowledge of the geography of the Thames Basin, he did not +feel it helped him materially towards becoming a better citizen of +London. Would Professor Geddes wish them to study, first, London with +its wealth side by side with its squalor and filth, and then proceed to +study another large town, where the same phenomena presented themselves? +What gain would there be in that proportionate to the labour entailed? +In his own case, so disheartened had he felt by observing that all their +efforts, public and private, for the improvement of their civic +conditions seemed to end in raising considerably the rents of the ground +landlords of London, while leaving the bulk of the population engaged in +a hard struggle for their existence, that he had for years past found it +difficult to take much interest in municipal affairs, so long as the +rates and taxes were--as it seemed to him--put upon the wrong shoulders. +And for the study of civics, he had preferred to turn to those cities +where efforts were being made to establish communal life on what seemed +to him juster conditions. In 1897, he was struck with the title of an +article in the "Daily Telegraph." It was headed, "The Land of Beauty, +Society without Poverty, Life without Care." He found the article was a +description of Durban in Natal. The writer attributed the prosperity of +this town to the fact that the suburbs were kept in the hands of the +community, instead of being handed over to private owners who would +absorb all the unearned increment. Even if this eulogium betrayed +exaggeration still a student of civics might feel that the economic +conditions of that town were worth studying. Similarly, in New Zealand, +the adoption in 1891 of the tax on land values brought prosperity to the +towns, and changed the tide of emigration from New Zealand into +immigration. Again, at home they had Bourneville, Port Sunlight, and +that most interesting of all present-day experiments in this country, +the Garden City, all of these being founded by men with ideals. He could +not help feeling [Page: 117] that a student of civics, possessed of such +a fair working knowledge of the city he lived in as most of them might +reasonably lay claim to, would make more real progress by studying the +success or failure of social experiments, than by entering on the very +formidable task that seemed to be set before them by Professor Geddes. +However, when they left abstract civics, as they had it portrayed to +them in these papers, and turned to the architectural or the historical +side of concrete civics, there should be no better guide than Professor +Geddes, whose labours in Edinburgh, and whose projected schemes for the +improvement of Dunfermline, were becoming widely known. + + +MR. TOMKINS (_of the London Trades Council_) said: + +If before any person was allowed to serve on our different public +bodies, he should be required to attend a course of lectures such as +those given by Professor Geddes on civics, that would surely be a means +of developing his social interests, and would tend to eliminate that +self-interest which too often actuated public men. There was nothing +more difficult than for workmen to-day to be able to take larger views. +The workman's whole business was now so different from what is was in +the days of the arts and crafts guilds of the Middle Ages; they now +found him ground down into some little division of industry, and it was +quite impossible for him to work in his own way. Thus he got +narrow-minded, because concentrated on some minor process. He was kept +at work with his nose to the mill the whole time, and it became too +exhausting for him to try and take these larger views of life. He often +thought of the amount of talent and energy and practical beauty which +was wasted in our workshops to-day. Referring to the Garden Cities of +this country and the United States, Mr. Tomkins said the idea of getting +great Trusts to use their money in a social spirit, and not merely to +get the workers tied to their mills, was really something which opened +out a vista of grand possibilities in the future; but if any movement +was to be successful it would be necessary to teach the great masses of +workers, and to create a real sound social public opinion amongst them. + + +PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply + +Professor Geddes, in replying to the discussion, said he entirely agreed +with the point made by Mr. Swinny, and he should just like to correct +what he had said in his lecture by reference to what he meant by a civic +museum. In Edinburgh, he had in his museum a large room, with a +geographical model [Page: 118] of the old town with its hill-fort, and +so on; and he hung round this maps and diagrams of historical and +geographical details. On the opposite side of the room, he had a symbol +of the market-cross, which stood for the centre of its municipal life, +of its ideals and independence of environment. Around it was grouped +what represented the other side of the city; and here he might answer +another point, and say that they could never settle the great +philosophical controversy of determinism and free-will. They would +always incline when young to the novel of circumstance, and later, to +the novel of character, but they should always feel that life was a game +of individual skill with interfering circumstances. These diagrams of +his were only the page split. On the one side, he meant to push to the +extreme the idea that the place makes us, and on the other side, that we +make the place. By what process do men struggle towards the selection of +their ideals? They find themselves within the grasp of their +environment, their whole heritage of culture, of good and ill, the whole +tradition of the past; but they must select certain elements of +these--the elements that seem to them good, and so they might escape +from the manner of the city. Pointing to a drawing of the old Scotch +bawbee, Professor Geddes said it was not a very dignified symbol of the +coinage of the world, but let them mark how it had on the one side the +hammerman at his work, with his motto "_Beat deus artem_," and, on the +other side, a larger legend, with the eagle of the empire and the lamb +of Saint John. + +To return to his civic museum: the room below the one he had described +was the larger museum for Scotland, and in the room below that, again, +the museum for England, Ireland and America, the whole English-speaking +world--not the Empire only. And the whole stood on a museum and library +representing that larger evolution of the occidental civilisation which +showed them they were merely children of the past. Professor Geddes +pleaded for museums in which every city displayed its own past and +present, but related itself to the whole of Europe and the whole +occident. + +One or two practical questions of great importance had [Page: 119] been +raised; but, with all respect, he submitted that they could consider +what was practical and practicable without requiring to go into the +question of taxing land. That was a matter of political opinion. It was +as if they were discussing the geology of coal, which they could do, +without reference to coal royalties. Mr. Weymouth was with them on the +subject of preserving old buildings; and he thought there was a great +deal to be learned, if Mr. Weymouth would descend the valley of the +Thames once more. It was of great importance if he found a great city at +the tidal limit. Going down the Thames and the Tay, they would find, at +the last ford of one, the old Abbey of Westminster, and at the last ford +of the other, the old Abbey of Scoon. The kings of England and Scotland +were crowned there because these were the most important places--a point +of great historic interest. As a matter of practical interest, he might +mention that Scoon and Westminster alike passed out of supreme +importance when bridges were built across the river below; and he would +next point out how just as Perth became of subordinate importance when +the great Tay Bridge was built, so it became a tremendously important +question to London, as it might in turn be much affected by the making +of a great and a new bridge much further down the stream. This study of +the descending river had real and practical, as well as historical +importance. He had been about considerably in the great cities of the +United States, and had been struck by the amount of good endeavour +there. It was not, however, by denouncing Tammany that they could beat +it, but by understanding it. They must understand the mechanism by which +the Celtic chieftain ruled his clan, and they must deal with these +methods by still other methods; and they might often find it more +satisfactory to re-moralise the chieftain than to destroy him. + +Professor Geddes concluded by saying that he appreciated the admirable +suggestion of Mr. Still towards the evolution of civic unions. He was +sure Mr. Still had there an idea of great significance which might be +developed. + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Civics: as Applied Sociology, by Patrick Geddes + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVICS: AS APPLIED SOCIOLOGY *** + +***** This file should be named 13205-8.txt or 13205-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/0/13205/ + +Produced by Jon Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and Distributed +Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Civics: as Applied Sociology + +Author: Patrick Geddes + +Release Date: August 17, 2004 [EBook #13205] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVICS: AS APPLIED SOCIOLOGY *** + + + + +Produced by Jon Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and Distributed +Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<br /> +<h1><i>Civics: as Applied Sociology</i></h1> +<h2>by Patrick Geddes</h2> +<br /> +<hr style="width: 35%; height: 2px;" /><br /> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">Read before the Sociological Society at a +Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt. Hon. CHARLES +BOOTH, +F.R.S., in the Chair.</p> +<br /> +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> +<br /> +<p>This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as far +as +possible, concrete in treatment. If it is to appeal to practical men +and +civic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for the +systematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be not +merely the product of the study, but rather be those which may be +acquired in course of local observation and practical effort. My +problem +is thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise from +the experience of any moderately-travelled observer of varied +interests; +so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic and +impressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards an +orderly Regional Survey. This point of view has next to be correlated +with the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquired +through some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise toward +a +larger and more orderly conception of civic action—as Regional Service. +In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or <span class="pagenum">p. 104</span> Civics, as +one of its main departments, may be defined as the application of +Social +Survey to Social Service.</p> +<p>In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, our +everyday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually become +more systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; while +our activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarly +approximate towards art. Thus there is emerging more and more clearly +for sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields of +application in city after city, the conception of a scientific centre +of +observation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centre +of +experimental endeavour on the other—in short of Sociological +Observatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasingly +co-ordinated. Indeed, is not such association of observations and +experiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here and +elsewhere? I need not multiply instances of the correlation of science +and art, as of chemistry with agriculture, or biology with medicine. +Yet, on the strictly sociological plane and in civic application they +are as yet less generally evident, though such obvious connections as +that of vital statistics with hygienic administration, that of +commercial statistics with politics, are becoming recognised by all. In +the paper with which this Society's work lately opened, the intimate +connection between a scientific demography and a practical eugenics has +been clearly set forth. But this study of the community in the +aggregate +finds its natural parallel and complement in the study of the community +as an integrate, with material and immaterial structures and functions, +which we call the City. Correspondingly, the improvement of the +individuals of the community, which is the aim of eugenics, involves a +corresponding civic progress. Using (for the moment at least) a +parallel +nomenclature, we see that the sociologist is concerned not only with +"demography" but with "politography," and that "eugenics" is +inseparable +from "politogenics." For the struggle for existence, though observed +mainly from the side of its individuals by the demographer, is not only +an intra-civic but an inter-civic process; and if so, ameliorative +selection, now clearly sought for the individuals in detail as +eugenics, +is inseparable from a corresponding civic art—a literal +"Eupolitogenics."</p> +<br /> +<h3>A—THE GEOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF CITIES</h3> +<p>Coming to concrete Civic Survey, where shall we begin? Not only in +variety and magnitude of civic activities, but, thanks especially to +the +work of Mr. Charles Booth and his collaborators in actual social survey +also, London may naturally claim pre-eminence. Yet even at best, does +not this vastest of world cities remain a less or more foggy labyrinth, +from which surrounding <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_105'></a>p. 105</span> regions with their smaller cities can +be but dimly descried, even with the best intentions of avoiding the +cheap generalisation of "the provinces"? For our more general and +comparative study, then, simpler beginnings are preferable. More +suitable, therefore, to our fundamental thesis—that no less definite +than the study of races and usages or languages, is that of the +groupings of men—is the clearer outlook, the more panoramic view of a +definite geographic region, such, for instance, as lies beneath us upon +a mountain holiday. Beneath vast hunting desolations lie the pastoral +hillsides, below these again scattered arable crofts and sparsely +dotted +hamlets lead us to the small upland village of the main glen: from this +again one descends to the large and prosperous village of the foothills +and its railway terminus, where lowland and highland meet. East or +west, +each mountain valley has its analogous terminal and initial village, +upon its fertile fan-shaped slope, and with its corresponding minor +market; while, central to the broad agricultural strath with its slow +meandering river, stands the prosperous market town, the road and +railway junction upon which all the various glen-villages converge. A +day's march further down, and at the convergence of several such +valleys, stands the larger county-town—in the region before me as I +write, one of added importance, since not only well nigh central to +Scotland, but as the tidal limit of a till lately navigable river. +Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great +manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river +system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the +essential +unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple +geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental +to +any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By +descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation +from its simple origins to its complex resultants; nor can any element +of this be omitted. Were we to begin with the peasant hamlet as our +initial unit, and forget the hinterlands of pasture, forest, and chase +(an error to which the writer on cities is naturally prone), the +anthropologist would soon remind us that in forgetting the hunter, we +had omitted the essential germ of active militarism, and hence very +largely of aristocratic rule. Similarly, <span class="pagenum">p. 106</span> in ignoring the +pastoral life, we should be losing sight of a main fount of spiritual +power, and this not only as regards the historic religions, but all +later culture elements also, from the poetic to the educational. In +short, then, it takes the whole region to make the city. As the river +carries down contributions from its whole course, so each complex +community, as we descend, is modified by its predecessors. The converse +is no doubt true also, but commonly in less degree.</p> +<p>In this way with the geographer we may rapidly review and extend our +knowledge of the grouping of cities. Such a survey of a series of our +own river-basins, say from Dee to Thames, and of a few leading +Continental ones, say the Rhine and Meuse, the Seine and Loire, the +Rhone, the Po, the Danube—and, if possible, in America also, at least +the Hudson and Mississippi—will be found the soundest of introductions +to the study of cities. The comparison of corresponding types at once +yields the conviction of broad general unity of development, structure, +and function. Thus, with Metschnikoff we recognise the succession of +potamic, thalassic, and oceanic civilisations; with Reclus we see the +regular distribution of minor and major towns to have been largely +influenced not only by geographical position but by convenient journey +distances. Again, we note how the exigencies of defence and of +government, the developments of religion, despite all historic +diversities, have been fundamentally the same. It is not, of course, to +be forgotten how government, commerce, communications, have +concentrated, altered or at least disguised the fundamental +geographical +simplicity of this descending hierarchy from mountain-hamlet to +ocean-metropolis; but it is useful for the student constantly to +recover +the elemental and naturalist-like point of view even in the greatest +cities. At times we all see London as still fundamentally an +agglomeration of villages, with their surviving patches of common, +around a mediaeval seaport; or we discern even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say its Place de l'Etoile, with its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest-rides, each literally arrow-straight. So the narrow +rectangular network of an American city is explicable only by the +unthinking persistence of the peasant thrift, which grudges good land +to +<span class="pagenum"><a name='p_107'></a>p. 107</span> +road-way, and is jealous of oblique short cuts. In short, +then, in what seems our most studied city planning, we are still +building from our inherited instincts like the bees. Our Civics is thus +still far from an Applied Sociology.</p> +<br /> +<h3>B—THE HISTORIC SURVEY OF CITIES</h3> +<p>But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time. +Though +the claim of geography be fundamental our interest in the history of +the +city is supremely greater; it is obviously no mere geographic +circumstances which developed one hill-fort in Judea, and another in +Attica, into world centres, to this day more deeply influential and +significant than are the vastest modern capitals. This very wealth of +historical interests and resources, the corresponding multiplicity of +specialisms, more than ever proves the need of some means by which to +group and classify them. Some panoramic simplification of our ideas of +history comparable to that of our geography, and if possible congruent +with this, is plainly what we want. Again the answer comes through +geography, though no longer in mere map or relief, but now in vertical +section—in the order of strata ascending from past to present, whether +we study rock-formations with the geologist, excavate more recent +accumulations with the archaeologist, or interpret ruins or monuments +with the historian. Though the primitive conditions we have above noted +with the physiographer remain apparent, indeed usually permanent, +cities +have none the less their characteristic phases of historic development +decipherably superposed. Thus below even the characteristically +patriarchal civilisations, an earlier matriarchal order is often +becoming disclosed. Our interest in exploring some stately modern or +Renaissance city is constantly varied by finding some picturesque +mediaeval remnant; below this some fragment of Roman ruin; below this +it +may be some barbarian fort or mound. Hence the fascinating interest of +travel, which compels us ever to begin our survey anew. Starting with +the same river-basin as before, the geographic panorama now gains a new +and deeper interest. Primitive centres long forgotten start into life; +pre-historic tumuli give up their dead; to the stone circles the <span class="pagenum">p. 108</span> +worshippers return; the British and the Roman camps again fill +with +armed men, and beside the prosaic market town arises a shadowy +Arthurian +capital. Next, some moment-centuries later, a usurper's tower rises and +falls; the mediaeval abbey, the great castles, have their day; with the +Reformation and the Renaissance the towns again are transformed; and +yet more thoroughly than ever by the Industrial Revolution, with its +factories, railways, steamships, and all that they bring with them. +Thus, for instance, almost more important than the internal +transformation and concentration wrought by railway and telegraph, is +the selection, amidst the almost innumerable seaports of the older +order, of the very few adapted to the deep draught of modern ships. In +a +word, not only does the main series of active cities display traces of +all the past phases of evolution, but beside this lie fossils, or +linger +survivals, of almost every preceding phase.</p> +<p>Hence, after many years of experiment and practice in teaching +sociology +I still find no better method available than that of regional survey, +historical as well as geographical. Beginning with some popular +excursion of obvious beauty and romantic interest like that to Melrose, +we see with every tourist how naturally and fully the atmosphere and +tradition of the Border found its expression and world influence in Sir +Walter Scott. Thence, passing by way of contrast through the long +isolated peninsula of Fife, say to representative towns like Kirkcaldy +and Largo, we still see the conditions of that individualism of which +Adam Smith and Alexander Selkirk ("Robinson Crusoe") have each in his +way become the very prototypes. In such ways the connection of regional +geography, history, and social psychology becomes increasingly clear. +Again, we explore the other old Fife seaports, a series of survivals +like those of the Zuyder Zee, or again work out in the field the +significance of Stirling, so often the strategic centre of Scotland. +Again, Dunfermline, as early mediaeval capital and abbey, furnishes a +convenient object lesson preparatory to the study of the larger +Edinburgh. Here, again, its triple centre, in the port of Leith, the +Royal Castle, the Abbey of Holyrood, are the respective analogues of +the +port of London, the Tower, and Westminster; while each city-group has +its outlying circle of minor burghs, tardily and imperfectly +incorporated into a civic whole. Again, such a marked contrast of civic +origins and developments as those of Glasgow and Edinburgh has to be +accounted for; and thus through such progessively complexer surveys we +reach the plane of modern civic problems and policies. Understanding +the +present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to +understand the future as the development of the present?</p> +<p>The impressiveness of the aspect of Edinburgh to its visitors is +thus +not <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_109'></a>p. 109</span> +merely pictorial. Be the spectator conscious of this or +no, it turns primarily upon the contrast of the mediaeval hill-city +with +its castle ramparts, its fretted cathedral crown, with park and +boulevard, with shops, hotels and railway stations. But the historic +panorama is unusually complete. See the hill-fort defended by lake and +forest, becoming "<i>castrum puellarum</i>," becoming a Roman and an +Arthurian citadel, a mediaeval stronghold of innumerable sieges, a +centre of autocratic and military dictatures, oligarchic governments, +at +length a museum of the past. So in the city itself. Here the narrow +ridge crowded into a single street all the essential organs of a +capital, and still presents with the rarest completeness of +concentration a conspectus of modern civic life and development; and +this alike as regards both spiritual and temporal powers, using these +terms in their broadest senses as the respective expressions of the +material order and its immaterial counterparts. Thus the royal and +noble +castles of the Middle Age become with the Renaissance here as +everywhere +something of palaces, while with the industrial revolution they have +become replaced by factories or transformed into breweries. So the +guidance of speculative thought, once concentrated in the mediaeval +abbey, becomes transferred to the Reformation assembly of divines, to +the Renaissance college; and again at the Revolution, is largely taken +over by the speculative encyclopædists, of whom Hume and Smith +were but +the most eminent. Nor are later developments less obvious. Of the +following generation, we have the neo-classic architecture which +everywhere dominated Europe after the French Revolution and during the +First Empire, while of the next generation's reaction against all this +in the romantic movement, the neo-Gothic monument of Scott is the most +characteristic possible representative. Again, just as in the Oxford +movement we had the (appropriately regional) renascence of the idealism +of the Cavaliers, so in Edinburgh we have naturally the simultaneous +renascence of the Puritan ideal, e.g., in the Free Church, whose +monument accordingly rises to dominate the city in its turn. The later +period of prosperous Liberalism, the heroic enthusiasms of Empire, have +each left their mark; and now in the dominant phase of social +evolution, +that of Finance, the banks, the financial companies, the press are +having their turn as monument builders. Our Old Edinburgh is thus the +most condensed example, the visible microcosm of the social evolution +which is manifest everywhere; so that as a teaching model of +sociological development it may renew its educational attractiveness +when its improving hygiene has lessened its medical advantages.</p> +<p>Setting down now these phases of historical development in tabular +form, +we have a diagram such as the following:—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Ancient, recent, contemporary societies" + style="width: 100%;" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="3" rowspan="1">ANCIENT <br /> + </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">RECENT </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"> CONTEMPORARY </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> INCIPIENT</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">Primitive </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Matriarchal </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Patriarchal </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;"> Greek +and Roman </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Mediaeval </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Renaissance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Revolution </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Empire </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Finance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> ? ? ?</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>which, were it placed erect, we might now compare to the increasing +<span class="pagenum">p. 110</span> +nodes of a growing stem, or rather say the layers of a coral +reef, in which each generation constructs its characteristic stony +skeleton as a contribution to the growing yet dying and wearying whole. +I have elaborated this example of the panoramic aspect of Old Edinburgh +as a widely familiar instance of the method of literal survey with +which +social and civic studies may so conveniently begin; and I press the +value of extending these even to the utmost elaborateness of +photographic survey: in my view, indeed, a sociological society has at +least as much use for a collection of maps, plans and photographs as of +statistics, indeed scarcely less than one of books. Of course, in all +this I am but recalling what every tourist in some measure knows; yet +his impressions and recollections can become an orderly politography, +only as he sees each city in terms of its characteristic social +formations, and as he utilises the best examples from each phase +towards +building up a complete picture of the greatest products of civic +evolution, temporal and spiritual, of all places and times up to the +present. Such a parallel of the historic survey of the city to that of +its underlying geological area is thus in no wise a metaphoric one, but +one which may be worked out upon maps sections and diagrams almost +completely in the same way—in fact, with little change save that of +colours and vertical scale. The attempt to express the characteristic +and essential life and thought of a given region in each period upon a +series of maps is in fact the best method of understanding the everyday +map at which we commonly look so unthinkingly.</p> +<p>Much of the preceding, I am assured, must be most unsatisfactory to +those who look at cities only from the standpoint of so many committees +dealing with police, water, finance, and so on; or to those who are +content to view the magnitude, the wealth and the population, the +industries and the manufactures of a great city without considering +whence these have come and whither they are leading; equally +unsatisfactory also, I fear, to those to whom civic dignities and +precedence, or the alternations of winning political colours, appear of +prime importance. I can only hope that some of these may, on +consideration, admit that the points of view I have endeavoured to +outline above may be worth some thought and study as elementary +preliminaries to their own more special and developed interests; and if +the society permit. I hope to approach these more closely in a later +paper.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span> +The abstract economist or legalist, the moral or political +philosopher may also resent the proposed mode of treatment as an +attempt +to materialise sociology by reducing it to concrete terms alone. But I +would reply that observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is +just the very means of preparing for it. It is the observant +naturalist, +the travelled zoologist and botanist, who later becomes the productive +writer on evolution. It is the historian who may best venture on into +the philosophy of history;—to think the reverse is to remain in the +pre-scientific order altogether: hence the construction of systems of +abstract and deductive economics, politics or morals, has really been +the last surviving effort of scholasticism. Viewed as Science, Civics +is +that branch of Sociology which deals with Cities—their origin and +distribution; their development and structure; their functioning, +internal and external, material and psychological; their evolution, +individual and associated. Viewed again from the practical side, that +of +applied science, Civics must develop through experimental endeavour +into +the more and more effective Art of enhancing the life of the city and +of +advancing its evolution. With the first of these lines of study, the +concretely scientific, our philosophical outlook will not fail to +widen; +with the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to +deepen also.</p> +<p>As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have +naturally +approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic +survey, +its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these +to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, +even +of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice +co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more +concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger +than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the +needed practical division of labour in the city's service. When the +first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly +diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who +at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated: the +evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link +between them.</p> +<br /> +<h3>C—THE CITIZEN IN PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT</h3> +<p>Leaving now the external survey of the city by help of its material +framework, its characteristic buildings and predominant styles, for the +deeper psychological survey of the citizens themselves, we may +conveniently begin with these also in their process of development—in +fact, our method compels us to this course. We enter then a school; and +if we bring fresh eyes we may soon be agreed that the extraordinary +babel of studies its time-table and curriculum reveal, is intelligible +from no single one of the various <span class="pagenum">p. 112</span> geographic or historic +points of view we have traversed from mountain to sea, or from past to +present. But this unprecedented conflict of studies becomes at once +intelligible when viewed apart from any and every definite theory of +education yet promulgated by educationists, and even acquires a fresh +theory of its own—that of the attempted recapitulation of the survivals +of each and all preceding periods in their practical or speculative +aspects, particularly the later legends and literatures, their rituals +and codes. Thus, the inordinate specialisation upon arithmetic, the +exaggeration of all three R's, is plainly the survival of the demand +for +cheap yet efficient clerks, characteristic of the recent and +contemporary financial period.</p> +<p>The ritual of examinations with its correlation of memorising and +muscular drill is similarly a development of the imperial order, +historically borrowed from the Napoleonic one; the chaotic "general +knowledge" is similarly a survival of the encyclopædic period; +that is, +of the French Revolution and the Liberal Movement generally; the Latin +grammar and verses are of course the survivals of the Renaissance, as +the precise fidelity to absurd spelling is the imitation of its proof +readers; the essay is the abridged form of the mediaeval disputation; +and only such genuine sympathy with Virgil or Tacitus, with Homer or +Plato as one in a thousand acquires, is truly Roman or Greek at all. +The religious instruction, however, re-interpreted by the mediaeval +Church or the Reformation, has still its strength in some of the best +elements of patriarchal literature; while the fairy tale, by which all +this superincumbent weight of learning is sometimes alleviated, is the +child's inheritance from the matriarchal order. Finally, the apple and +the ball, at the bottom of this whole burden of books, complete the +recapitulation; as the one, the raw fruit; the other, the ready +missile, +of primeval man. Our child then is heir of all the ages more fully than +he or his teachers commonly realise. The struggle for mastery of the +schools is thus no temporary feud, but an unending battle; one destined +to increase rather than diminish; for in this there is the perpetual +clash of all the forces of good heredity and evil atavism, of all the +new variations also, healthy or diseases.</p> +<span class="pagenum">p. 113</span><br /> +<h3> D—THE APPLIED SOCIOLOGY OF THE PRESENT</h3> +<p>The city and its children thus historically present a thoroughly +parallel accumulation of survivals or recapitulations of the past in +the +present. Few types nowadays are pure, that is, keep strictly to their +period; we are all more or less mixed and modernised. Still, whether by +temporal or spiritual compulsion, whether for the sake of bread or +honour, each mainly and practically stands by his order, and acts with +the social formation he belongs to. Thus now the question of the +practical civics, that is, of the applied sociology, of each +individual, +each body or interests may be broadly defined; it is to emphasise his +particular historic type, his social formation and influence in the +civic whole, if not indeed to dominate this as far as may be. We are +all +for progress, but we each define it in his own way. Hence one man of +industrial energy builds more factories or slums, another as naturally +more breweries to supply them; and in municipal or national council his +line of action, conscious or unconscious, remains congruent with these. +Representative government fails to yield all that its inventors hoped +of +it, simply because it is so tolerably representative of its majorities; +and there is thus great truth in the common consolation that our +municipal governments, like larger ones, are seldom much worse than we +deserve. Each social formation, through each of its material +activities, +exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and +ideals wins also its place and power. At one time the legal and +punitive point of view, directing itself mainly to individual cases, or +the philanthropic, palliating sufferings, dispute the foremost places; +and now in their turn hygienic or educational endeavours arise, towards +treating causes instead of waiting for consequences. Such endeavours +are +still undeniably too vague in thought, too crude in practice, and the +enthusiast of hygiene or education or temperance may have much to +answer +for. But so, also, has he who stands outside of the actual civic field, +whether as philistine or aesthete, utopist or cynic, party politician +or +"mug-wump." Between all these extremes it is for the united forces of +civic survey and civic service to find the middle course. <span class="pagenum">p. 114</span> We +observe then in the actual city, as among its future citizens, that our +action is generally the attempt to mould both alike to some past or +passing social formation, and, therefore, usually towards the type to +which our interest and our survey incline, be this in our own city or +more probably in some earlier one. Even in the actual passing detail of +party politics we are often reminded how directly continuous are the +rivals with puritan London, with royalist Oxford; but still more is +this +the case throughout the history of thought and action, and the intenser +the more plainly; for it is in his highest moments of conviction and +decision that the Puritan feels most in sympathy with the law or the +prophets of Jerusalem, the scholar with Athens; or that the man of +action—be he the first French republican or the latest +imperialist—most frankly draws his inspiration from the corresponding +developments of Paris. It is a commonplace of psychology that our +thought is and must be anthropomorphic; a commonplace of history that +it +has been Hebraomorphic, Hellenomorphic, Latinomorphic, and so on by +turns.</p> +<p>This view has often been well worked out by the historian of +inventions +and discoveries, of customs or laws, of policies or religions, as by +the +historian of language or the fine arts. What we still commonly need, +however, is to carry this view clearly into our own city and its +institutions, its streets and schools and homes, until either in the +private spending or public voting of the smallest sum we know exactly +whether we are so far determining expenditure and influence towards +enlarging, say, the influence and example of renascent Florence in one +generation or of decadent Versailles in another. There is no danger of +awaking this consciousness too fully; for since we have ceased +consciously to cite and utilise the high examples of history we have +been the more faithfully, because sub-consciously and automatically, +continuing and extending later and lower developments.</p> +<br /> +<h3>E—CITIES, PRESENT AND FUTURE</h3> +<p>Hence, after a Liberal and an Imperial generation, each happy in +their +respective visions of wealth and expanding greatness <span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>, the +current renewal of civic interests naturally takes the form of an +awakening survey of our actual environment. First, a literal mapping of +its regional elements, and then an historic interpretation of +these—not, alas, merely or mainly in terms of the cities of sacred or +classic tradition, nor of the Mediaeval or Renaissance cities which +followed these, but as stupendous extensions of the mediaeval Ghetto, +of +the Wapping Stairs, of the Lancashire factories and of the Black +Country, relieved by the coarse jollities of Restoration London, and +adorned for the most part, with debased survivals from the Italian and +the French Renaissance. There is thus no more question in our civic +discussions of "bringing in" or "leaving out" geography or history; we +have been too long unconscious of them, as was M. Jourdain of his +speaking in prose.</p> +<p>But what of the opening Future? May its coming social developments +not +be discerned by the careful observer in germs and buds already formed +or +forming, or deduced by the thinker from sociological principles? I +believe in large measure both; yet cannot within these limits attempt +to +justify either. Enough for the present, if it be admitted that the +practical man in his thought and action in the present is mainly the as +yet too unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still +working within the grasp of natural conditions.</p> +<p>To realise the geographic and historic factors of our city's life is +thus the first step to comprehension of the present, one indispensable +to any attempt at the scientific forecast of the future, which must +avoid as far as it can the dangers of mere utopianism.</p> +<br /> +<h3>F—LITERATURE OF CIVICS</h3> +<p>No discussion of the preliminaries and fundamentals of Civics can +omit +some consideration of the vast and ever growing literature of cities. +But how are we to utilise this? How continue it? How co-ordinate it +with +the needed independent and first-hand survey of city by city? And how +apply this whole knowledge of past and present towards civic action?</p> +<p>The answer must plainly be a concrete one. Every city <span class="pagenum">p. 116</span> +however small, has already a copious literature of its topography and +history in the past; one, in fact, so ample that its mere bibliography +may readily fill a goodly volume,<a name="FNanchor_1"></a><a + href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> to which the specialist will +long +be adding fresh entries. This mass of literature may next be viewed as +the material for a comprehensive monograph, well enriched with maps and +illustrations, such as many cities can boast; and this again may be +condensed into a guide-book. Guide-books have long been excellent in +their descriptive and historical detail, and are becoming increasingly +interpretative also, especially since Mr. Grant Allen transferred his +evolutionary insight and his expository clearness from natural to civic +history.</p> +<p>After this general and preliminary survey of geographic environment +and +historic development, there nowadays begins to appear the material of a +complementary and contemporary volume, the Social Survey proper. +Towards +this, statistical materials are partly to be found amid parliamentary +and municipal reports and returns, economic journals and the like, but +a +fresh and first-hand survey in detail is obviously necessary. In this +class of literature, Mr. Booth's monumental Survey of London, followed +by others, such as Mr. Rowntree's of York, have already been so widely +stimulating and suggestive that it may safely be predicted that before +many years the Social Survey of any given city will be as easily and +naturally obtainable as is at present its guide-book; and the +rationalised census of the present condition of its people, their +occupation and real wages, their family budget and culture-level, +should +be as readily ascertainable from the one, as their antecedents +understood or their monuments visited by help of the other.</p> +<p>But these two volumes—"The City: Past and Present,"—are not enough. +Is +not a third volume imaginable and possible, that of the opening Civic +Future? Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of +things +as they have come about, and of people as they are—of their +occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals—may we +not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly +suggest, something of <span class="pagenum">p. 117</span> their actual or potential development? +And may not, must not, such discernment, such planning, while +primarily, +of course, for the immediate future, also take account of the remoter +and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and +correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve? Such a +volume would thus differ widely from the traditional and contemporary +"literature of Utopias" in being regional instead of non-regional, +indeed ir-regional and so realisable, instead of being unrealisable and +unattainable altogether. The theme of such a volume would thus be to +indicate the practicable alternatives, and to select and to define from +these the lines of development of the legitimate <i>Eu-topia</i> +possible in +the given city, and characteristic of it; obviously, therefore, a very +different thing from a vague <i>Ou-topia</i>, concretely realisable +nowhere. +Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal +city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris, +have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is +one thing, a plan for our city improvement is another.</p> +<p>Some concrete, if still fragmentary, materials towards such a volume +are, of course, to be found in all municipal offices, though scattered +between the offices of the city engineer and health officer, the +architect and park superintendent; while the private architect and +landscape gardener, the artist, sometimes even the municipal voters and +their representatives, may all have ideas of their own. But though our +cities are still as a whole planless, their growth as yet little better +than a mere casual accretion and agglomeration, if not a spreading +blight, American and German cities are now increasingly affording +examples of comprehensive design of extension and of internal +improvement. As a specific example of such an attempt towards the +improvement of a British city, one not indeed comprehending all aspects +of its life, but detailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and +expressing +that continuity of past and present into future which has been above +argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline +Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent +study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for +consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a +moderate and readily intelligible <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_118'></a>p. 118</span> scale a very marked +combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing +activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook.</p> +<p>That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has +been +above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology +is +thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet +it is one not lacking in generality of application. For what we have +reached is really the conception of an <i>Encyclopædia Civica</i>, +to which +each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and +its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet +more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the +awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the +production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire—life ever +producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature +reacting upon the ennoblement of life.</p> +<p>Apart altogether from what may be the quality and defects of +particular +volumes, such as those cited as examples of each part of such a +proposed +civic trilogy, one as yet nowhere complete, the very conception of such +a possible threefold series may be of some service. For this would +present a continuous whole, at once sociological and civic—the views +and the resources of the scholar and the educationist with their +treasures of historic culture, of the man of action with his mastery of +immediate affairs, of the thinker with his vision of the opening +future, +now all co-ordinated by help of the design of the artist, and thence to +be gradually realised in the growing heritage of the city, the +enlarging +life of the citizen.</p> +<p>NOTE—As an example of the concrete application to a particular city, +of +the sociological methods and principles indicated in the above paper, +Prof. Geddes exhibited an illustrated volume embodying the results of +his studies and designs towards the improvement of Dunfermline, under +the Trust recently established by Mr. Carnegie. This has since been +published:</p> +<p>P. GEDDES. City Development. Park Gardens and Culture Institutes; a +Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. With 138 illustrations. +Edinburgh, etc.. 1904.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 119</span><br /> +<h3> DISCUSSION</h3> +<br /> +<p>The Chairman (MR. CHARLES BOOTH) in opening the discussion said:</p> +<p>The paper we have just heard read is one of the most complete and +charming papers on a great and interesting subject I have ever heard. I +think you will all agree in this, and I hope the discussion which +follows will emphasise and, if that is possible, add to the wealth of +ideas that this paper contains.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR EBENEZER HOWARD (Founder of the +Garden City Association) said:</p> +<p>I have read and re-read—in the proof forwarded to me—Professor +Geddes' +wonderfully luminous and picturesque paper with much interest. He has +given us a graphic description of the geographic process which leads to +the development of the city. We see vividly the gradual stages by which +the city grows and swells, with the descent of the population from the +hillsides into the valleys, even as the river which flows through the +city is fed continually by the streams which flow down to it. But is +there not this essential difference between the gathering waters of +heaven, as they pour into the great city, and the gathering tide of +population, which follows the path of the waters? The waters flow +through the city on, on toward the mighty ocean, and are then gradually +gathered upward into the soft embraces of the clouds and wafted back +again to the hills, whence they flow down once more to the valleys. But +the living stream of men, women, and children flows from the +country-side and leaves it more and more bare of active, vigorous, +healthy life: it does not, like the waters, "return again to cover the +earth," but moves ever on to the great city, and from thence, at least +for the great majority, there is no chance of more than, at best, a +very +short stay in the country. No: the tide flows resistlessly <span class="pagenum">p. 120</span> +onward to make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our +overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge +more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie +near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and +the task of the social reformer more and yet more difficult.</p> +<p>But surely there must be a way, could we but discover it, of +imitating +the skill and bountifulness of Nature, by creating channels through +which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so +that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into +the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the +twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown +city.</p> +<p>This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the +historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation +lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks. +"Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not +preparing also to understand the future as the development of the +present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that +while the age in which we live is the age of the great, +closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those +who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that +the +twentieth century will be known as the period of the great exodus, the +return to the land, the period when by a great and conscious effort a +new fabric of civilisation shall be reared by those who knew how to +apply the knowledge gained by "Social Survey to Social Service." What +are the signs? What words can we place under the head of "Incipient" in +Prof. Geddes' diagram? I would suggest, for one of Prof. Geddes' +interrogation marks might be substituted "Decentralisation of +Industry"—as a great, but yet incipient movement, represented by Port +Sunlight, Bournville, Garden City. For there are now many agencies at +work making for industrial decentralisation. Industries are being +driven +out of the great towns by the excessive rents and rates which have to +be +paid there—by the difficulty of obtaining adequate space for the modern +factory, a one-storey building; and for the homes of our workers, which +must be vastly different to what they now are if England is to maintain +her place among the nations. And while factories are being driven from +the city, they are also being attracted to the country by its +newly-discovered potentialities. Thus Messrs. Lever Brothers, crowded +out of Warrington, established an entirely new town on a new site at +Port Sunlight; and, because the site was new and raw, it was therefore +possible for Mr. Lever to plan his little town with a single eye to the +best and most desirable conditions, alike from an industrial and a +health and housing point of view. And the same is true of Bournville. +Bournville is one of the most beautiful villages in the world, largely +again because of the potentialities of a new site acquired for the +definite purpose of building thereon a village in which overcrowding +shall be deliberately and permanently prevented, <span class="pagenum">p. 121</span> and in +which work inside the factory may be varied by work in the garden. Now +that these successful experiments have been carried out in this +country, +is it not time that the idea of establishing new industries on new +sites, and of surrounding those industries with healthy homes, should +be +carried forward on a larger scale, with wider and more concerted +aims—carried forward, too, in such a manner as to make it possible for +the small manufacturer to take part in a movement which has proved to +be +so beneficial alike to employer and employed? It is out of this thought +that the Garden City idea has grown, an idea now in course of being +fulfilled. Three thousand eight hundred acres of land, or nearly ten +times the area of Bournville or Port Sunlight, have been acquired in +Hertfordshire, two miles west of the town of Hitchin, and on the branch +line of railway between that town and Cambridge. State aid has not been +sought; that would indeed be weary work. But a company has been formed, +through the untiring efforts of the Garden City Association; plans for +the town have been carefully prepared, plans which, of course, have +regard to the contours of the land (which were first taken, showing +every change of level of five feet), to the preservation of its natural +beauties—its trees and the picturesque villages of Norton and Willian; +to the necessity for railway sidings and railway station, now, thanks +to +the Great Northern Railway, already provided; to the making of roads of +easy gradient and of suitable width, affording access to different +parts +of the estate, actual work on which is progressing; the careful +guarding +from contamination of our water supply, already proved to be abundant; +the provision of a reservoir of suitable elevation, now in course of +construction; a system of drainage, about to be started with; the +provision of parks and playgrounds within the town, as well as a wide +belt of agricultural land around it; sites for homes for 30,000 +persons, +with good sized gardens. About six cottages have already been built, +not +by the Company but by private enterprise, while many others are just +about to be started upon; the setting apart of sites for schools, +churches, and other public buildings, while plans are in preparation +for +lighting the town, as well as for providing it with motive power.</p> +<p>The programme which I have sketched out is certainly not too bold or +comprehensive for the British race. If a hundredth part of the +organising skill which the Japanese and the Russians are showing in the +great war now in progress were shown by ourselves as citizens in our +great civil war against disease and dirt, poverty and overcrowding, we +could not only build many new cities on the best models, but could also +bring our old towns into line with the new and better order. Prof. +Geddes wishes well, I know, to the Garden City Association, a +propagandist body, and to its first child, the Garden City Company; and +I am sure you will all unite with me in the hope that the best and most +lasting success may crown the generous gift of Mr. Carnegie of +£500,000 +to the City of Dunfermline, and reward the efforts of the Trustees and +of Prof. Geddes to make, by the application of modern <span class="pagenum">p. 122</span> +skill, +science and art, the ancient city of Dunfermline a centre of sweetness +and light, stimulating us all to higher and yet higher efforts to +secure +civic, national and imperial well-being.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. C.H. GRINLING said:</p> +<p>Like most of the audience, doubtless, he came not to speak but to +draw +ever fresh inspiration from Prof. Geddes. But there was one aspect of +the subject he would like to bring out and emphasise. He referred to +the +sociological institute, which, under the name of the Outlook Tower, had +grown up in connection with the School of Sociology which Prof. Geddes +had founded and developed in Edinburgh. That institute was at once an +organisation for teaching and for research, for social education, and +for civic action. It was, in fact, a concrete and working application +of +the principle indicated in the paper as the very foundation of +Civics—"social survey for social service." And, seeing that the Outlook +Tower was an institution designed in every respect for application to +any given locality, he urged the Sociological Society to advocate its +general extension, so that no region should be without its own +sociological institute or Outlook Tower.</p> +<p>If one individual could accomplish so much, what could not be +accomplished by the sociologists of our day who would concentrate +themselves, each on his own locality, not necessarily to do the work, +but to give the inspiration which would call out the work of collecting +just that material which Prof. Geddes suggested all through his paper +was one of the great needs of our time? And so one hoped that papers of +this kind would not merely lead to discussion, but to workers +accumulating results of this kind, giving the inspiration to others, +and +thus laying up treasures for the sociologists of the future for their +interpretation. Thus, the Sociological Society should be not only the +one scientific society in constant touch with all the leading brains +over the country, but it should be an inspiration, as Prof. Geddes has +himself been, to groups of workers everywhere for just the kind of work +which the Sociological Society has been founded to develop.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. J.M. ROBERTSON said:</p> +<p>I would first add my tribute to this extremely interesting and +stimulating paper. It recalled confabulations I had with Prof. Geddes, +many years ago, when he was first formulating in Edinburgh those ideas +which have since become so widely known. I would like, however, to +suggest a few criticisms. The paper is, broadly speaking, an +application +of the view of a biologist to Sociology. It is not so much an +application of Darwin's view as that of Von Baer. Prof. Geddes has +characterised his paper as one of elementary preliminaries, but he has +really contributed a paper that <span class="pagenum">p. 123</span> would form part of a +preliminary study in a series of studies in Sociology. The paper does +not quite bear out its title: "Civics: as Applied Sociology." The +application has not begun. The somewhat disparaging remarks on +encyclopædias of general knowledge, further, might well be +applied to +the scheme of an encyclopædia of the natural history of every +city and +every village as an original centre. This atomism will not help +Sociology. Had he to master all that, the sociologist's life would be a +burden not to be borne, and we would never get to applied sociology at +all. There is a danger, too, in following this line, of fastening +attention on one stage of evolution and leaving it there. The true +principle is that evolution is eternal and continuous; and I think harm +may be done, possibly, when you take, say, the phenomenon of the +communication of general knowledge in schools and call it a derivation +from the French <i>Encyclopedie</i>. Why leave it there? Where did +that come +from? If you are going to trace the simple evolution of civic forms, if +you are to trace how they have come about, it will not do to stick at a +given point. This is a survival of that. That is a survival of +something +else. The French <i>Encyclopedie</i> will have to be traced back to +the +encyclopædia of the mediaeval period; and even to the still +earlier +period of Isidore of Seville. Then again, there is a danger, I think, +analogous to the danger met with in early botany—the danger of +confusing a resemblance with a relationship. It is extremely +interesting +to speculate that the Place de l'Etoile is an evolution from the plan +of +the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but +it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection. +The thing is not proved.</p> +<p>Of course, the vital question is not this tracing of evolution. The +question is: Is "Civics" to be only the study of forms? If so, +Sociology +is a dead science, and will effect little practical good until it is +vivified by such suggestions as Mr. Crane has put in his paper. Mr. +Walter Crane brought in a vital question when he said: "How are you +going to modify the values of your civic life unless you grapple with +political problems?" I am not forgetting that Prof. Geddes promises to +deal in another paper with the civics of the future; but I insist that +it will have to grapple with political questions. As he says, a city is +not a place, but "a drama in time." The question for the sociological +student of history is: How has this inequality of wealth and of service +arisen, and how is it to be prevented in the future? That is the +problem +we have to study if we wish to make sociology a vital interest. A +definition of progress is really the first step in sociology. Prof. +Geddes' next paper should give us a definition of progress, and it is +better that we begin to fight over a definition of progress, in order +to +get a dynamic agreement, than that we should multiply the +archaeological +study of many towns. I admit that it is very interesting. In travelling +in South Africa, I often tried to gather how communities began; what, +for example, was the nucleus of this or that village. It was surprising +how very few had an idea of any nucleus at all. I deprecate the idea, +however, that <span class="pagenum">p. 124</span> we are all to amass an enormous accumulation +of such researches. Mr. Booth's single compilation for London is a +study +for years; but Mr. Booth's admirable investigation of the difficulties +of life among the poor of London does not of itself give any new +impulse +to the solution of the problem of London. It merely gives exact +knowledge in place of general knowledge. The problem of sociology arose +on the general knowledge. I fear lest the work of sociology should run +to an extension of this admirable study instead of to the stimulation +of +action taken on that particular knowledge, or on more general +knowledge. +We all knew there was plenty of poverty, and how it was caused. We all +had Ideals as to how it was to be got rid of in the future; but the +question is: Is the collection of detail or the prescription of social +method the kind of activity that the Sociological Society is to take up?</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">SIR THOMAS BARCLAY said:</p> +<p>I am not sure that I agree with Mr. Robertson that it is desirable +to +define either "progress" or "civilisation." On the whole, their chances +lie rather in the great variety of ideas of what constitutes them than +in any hard-and-fast notion of their meaning. They are generalisations +of what is, rather than an object towards which effort should tend. But +neither do I agree with Prof. Geddes' restriction of "civics" to the +mere outward part of municipal effort. In America the word "civics" is +applied to the rights and duties of citizens, and I should like to see +Prof. Geddes include in Civics the connection between citizen life and +the outward improvement of cities. I am sure, however, Professor +Geddes, +as a practical man, will deal rather with realities than theoretical +views on the subject for which he has done so much himself. Edinburgh +owes more than many are willing to admit to Prof. Geddes. I think +Ramsay +Lodge one of the greatest embellishments of the Castle Hill in +Edinburgh. I hope he will now be successful in doing something still +more admirable for my native town of Dunfermline. My friend Mr. +Carnegie, whose native town it also is, I believe intends to show by an +object lesson what can be done for all cities. Prof. Geddes is helping +him in this work with his suggestions. I hope they will be carried out. +In America there are several very beautiful cities. No one can ever +forget Washington, which is truly a garden city. No money is spared in +America to beautify and healthify (excuse the barbarism) the +habitations +of the thousands. A beautiful city is an investment for health, +intellect, imagination. Genius all the world over is associated, +wherever it has been connected with cities, with beautiful cities. To +grow up among things of beauty ennobles the population. But I should +like to see Prof. Geddes extend his projects for Dunfermline to the +population itself. Most of you know what Mr. Henderson did to utilise +the Edinburgh<span class="pagenum">p. 125</span> police in the care of children. The future of +the country depends upon them. The subject is too serious to continue +to +be left to the haphazard mercies of indifferent parents. Every child +born is an agent for good or for evil among the community, and the +community cannot afford to neglect how it is brought up, the +circumstances in which it has its being, the environment from which it +derives its character and tendencies. Necessity may be the mother of +invention, but need of food and insufficient clothing develop in the +child an inventiveness that is not for the good of the community. It +seems a matter of too great an importance to be left even to private +initiative, as was done under Mr. Henderson's regime in Edinburgh; but +everywhere else, or nearly so, very little is done by even private +initiative for the protection of the children against their vicious +environment. In short, I do not think that civics, in the sense in +which +my friend Prof. Geddes treats it, is a complete subject at all. Civics, +to my mind, includes everything that relates to the citizen. Everywhere +something is being done in one direction or another to make them +capable, prosperous, and happy. In America happiness is taught in the +schools. Every schoolmaster's and schoolmistress's first duty is to set +an example of a happy frame of mind; smiling and laughing are +encouraged, and it is not thought that the glum face is at all +necessary +for the serious business of life. In fact, the glum face is a +disqualification; is associated with failure, and bad luck and +ill-nature. In Germany the schoolmaster is in the first place a trainer +of the body. One of his chief duties is to watch and prevent the +deterioration of the eyesight, to promote the development of the lungs, +to prevent spinal deviation. The second part of his business is to +watch +over the character of the child, and only the third part is to ram +knowledge into the poor little mind. And wherever you go over the world +you will find something in the course of being done in civics, as I +understand the subject. I thank Prof. Geddes for what he is doing for +Dunfermline, and hope he will understand "progress" without requiring +to +define it.</p> +<br /> +<div style="text-align: center;">DR. J. LIONEL TAYLER<br /> +(Author of "<i>Aspects of Social Evolution</i>") said:</div> +<p>While agreeing with Prof. Geddes in his belief in the importance of +institutional and geographical studies as a basis for the investigation +of the development of cities, it yet seems to me that these studies +cannot prove of supreme value to society unless they are accompanied by +a detailed examination of the <i>natural</i> characteristics of all +individuals who have been born into and existed in, or merely dwelt in, +these surroundings. It is not enough to trace out, however accurately, +the various stages of a town's growth from its commencement to the +present time, because <i>the cause</i> of <span class="pagenum">p. 126</span> the evolution of +any +city aggregate lies deeper, is in large part animate, and not +inanimate, +in character. The value of the surroundings depends at least as much +upon the capacity of the individual citizen, singly and collectively, +to +utilise what he or she is brought in contact with as upon the +peculiarities of these surroundings themselves. Place, tradition, +social +organisation, individual development, education, are factors in town +evolution that cannot safely be overlooked, and they all vary from age +to age and in place and place.</p> +<p>If it were possible to completely exchange the inhabitants of a +large +town in England with those of an equally large town in France two +groups +of changes would become more or less rapidly observable: (1) the French +and English citizens would adapt themselves, as far as they desired and +were able, to their altered conditions; (2) the characteristics of both +towns would gradually change, in spite of geographical position, in +response to the altered human needs. Similarly, a town composed of +individuals who are naturally uncultured and unprogressive will tend to +preserve its uncultured and unprogressive characters more than another +that has alert citizens to carry on its activities. Every profession +and +every trade tends to foster its own social atmosphere; and towns will +vary with their industrial life, and individuals favourably disposed to +this atmosphere will come to the town, and those unfavourably inclined +to it will leave. <i>These changing citizens, as they act upon and +react +to their surroundings and vary in their powers age by age, are the real +evolvers of the conditions in which they dwell</i>; hence the citizen +must +not be omitted from our study if we are to understand city growth.</p> +<p>In other words, I think that every investigation of civic, and for +that +matter country life should be studied from two aspects: (1) to note the +peculiarities, growth and development of the material, non-living and +non-thinking elements in the problem—the buildings, their geographical +position, their age, their fitness for past and present life, and the +distinctive local features that are evolving or retrogressing with the +multiplication of some trades and industries and the decline of others +in each area that is studied; (2) the change in the quality of the +citizens themselves through racial, educational, and other factors, +noting how far ideals are altering, not only in the mass of individuals +taken as a whole, but also by examining the changing outlook in every +trade and profession. With these two parallel lines of investigation to +study, we could then determine how far environment—social and +climatic—how far racial and individual characteristics have been +powerful in the moulding of the fabric around us.</p> +<p>With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the +vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social +life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, +knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds +us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, +knowing +the <span class="pagenum">p. 127</span> +intensity of the different national desires for progress +<i>and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires</i>, we could +realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in +our +civic life.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">PROFESSOR EARL BARNES (in moving a vote +of thanks) said:</p> +<p>For years I have been accumulating a debt of obligation to Prof. +Geddes +for ideas, suggestions, and large synthesis of life, and it gives me +special pleasure to voice the feeling of this meeting concerning the +paper read to us this afternoon. To me, as an American, it is +especially +interesting to hear this presentation of life as an organic whole. Life +is but a period of education, and if there is nothing behind this +present moment of life it is all extremely insignificant. To an +American, who has lived at No. 1067 in 63rd Street, Philadelphia, and +at No. 1718 in G Street, in Washington, it is profoundly interesting to +think of the possibility of a man's so living that his whole existence +shall be significant, so that the realities of his world, geographical, +geological, and material, and all that long development of humanity +through the historic past—that all these things will be really and +truly significant to him. Prof. Geddes has himself shown us that is +possible. Any man who has gone to Edinburgh and seen the restoration of +the old life that has been carried out there under his hand knows it +can +be done. I suppose we all came here to hear Professor Geddes speak on +practical affairs because his name is now connected with the plans for +making a city that shall be really expressive of all its potentialities +to all of its people. I am personally profoundly grateful to him for +his +paper; and I move you that he be given a very hearty vote of thanks.</p> +<p>The Chairman. (MR. CHARLES BOOTH), in closing the discussion, said: +I +myself entirely agree with what Mr Robertson has said as to the extreme +difficulty of bringing investigations of the kind referred to, to +practical conclusions—practical points. Practical work at present needs +the most attention. I perhaps am too old to do it, but I feel the +attraction of that kind of work, and that was one reason I was sorry Mr +Loch had to leave before we could hear what he might have to say. The +description I have given of London does seem to be a foggy labyrinth I +agree, but nevertheless I cannot but think that we do require a +complete +conception if we are to do the definite work of putting different +people +in their proper places in an organic whole, such as a city is. I do not +think we can do without it, and I regard the paper of this evening as +an +important contribution <span class="pagenum">p. 128</span> to that complete conception which I +feel we need. I should like each worker and thinker to have and to know +his place in the scheme of civic improvement; and I think it perfectly +possible for every man to know what it is that he is trying to do, what +contribution it is that he ought to give to that joint life which is +called here civics, which is the life of a city and the life in the +city. One man cannot possibly concentrate it all in himself. Within a +society such as the Sociological Society a general scheme is possible +in +which each individual and each society shall play its acknowledged and +recognised part. It does not follow that the work done in one city can +apply as an example to another. Individuality has too strong a hold; +but each town may work out something for itself. I have been very much +interested in the work which Mr. Rowntree has done in York, on which he +was kind enough to consult me. He entered upon it on quite other +grounds +from mine, but so far as the ground was common between him and me we +tried to have a common basis. Those of you who have not read Mr. +Horsfall's volumes on Manchester would do well to do so. Prof. Geddes +gave us a vivid picture of a larger regional unit which culminates +geographically in the city as industrial climax. In his particular +instance he referred, I take, to Dundee. In Dundee there is at this +moment an inquiry being started, and I am in communication with those +who are doing it, and I hope it will add something to the completeness +of the picture we have of that city. In Dundee they have excessive +difficulties in respect to crowding and female labour. What I suggested +was, that they should make a special study of such circumstances as are +special to Dundee. Labour there is very largely sack-making and jute +manufacture, and there is a great deal of girl labour; and that is one +of the special subjects that will be considered in that inquiry.</p> +<p>Then, with regard to the preservation of such of the natural +beauties +that do remain even quite near to busy town centres, surely it is of +the +greatest importance that they should be watched and protected and +preserved. Prof. Geddes has contributed a portion of his practical work +to that practical question at Dunfermline. His charming volume on +Dunfermline ("A Study in City Development") shows what beautiful +features there are near Dunfermline, and how much may be done to +preserve and improve them in ways that are most interesting to study. +His use of photography in this matter is extraordinarily successful. +Prof. Geddes has photographed a scene as it now is, with its background +and distance and its squalid foreground, already ruined by the debris +of +the city—old tin pots and every <span class="pagenum">p. 129</span> kind of rubbish—thrown +down by the side of the stream, which is naturally beautiful. By +manipulating the photographic plates he wipes out that which he does +not +want and introduces other features, including a little waterfall; and +you have, instead of a miserable suburb, a dignified park. Well now, +that is practical work. It has in it that element which he has +described +by a question-mark in his diagram, the element of forecast. You have +the +same idea in Manchester, in Mr. Horsfall's work. They have laid out +their map of Manchester and shown in what way it may develop, so as not +to spoil the beauty that remains on two sides of Manchester. There is +really exquisitely beautiful natural scenery close to Manchester, which +may be entirely spoiled or preserved, according as a forecast is made +and forethought taken. This is not a question on which there is reason +to think that people will disagree. The difficulties are always +supposed +to be financial. It is a sad thing that we should be so hampered by our +methods of finance that we throw away opportunities to retain these +actual beauties which undoubtedly add to the actual money value of a +district. I cannot suppose that the way in which cities are laid out +with narrow streets really results in an increase of value. The +surroundings of our cities are undeveloped estates, which we have only +to agree amongst ourselves how to lay out, and everybody would benefit +by such joint action. There is an excellent illustration in regard to +that in Mr. Horsfall's work in connection with Germany. It must be said +that from Germany there is a great deal to learn in civic matters. In +one of its towns the properties lie in extraordinarily long strips. It +is the final result of properties having been measured by the length of +the plough's run. When that method is applied to town sites, it is not +convenient for streets; and there are some quarters in this German town +ruined in this way, and the people have agreed together to improve +matters. Every owner is to be given credit for his share in the total +value of the improvement that is found to accrue from the +re-arrangement +of these undesirable divisions, and any difference of opinion as to the +just share and proportion is to be referred to an impartial arbitrator. +All the owners will gain, though some a little more than others. That +is +an example that we may do well to try and follow, and in some way or +other improve the money value, and social value, and hygienic value of +towns, and if necessary compel the carrying out of improvements when +some few might be disposed to hold out against them.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 130</span><br /> +<h3> WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS</h3> +<p style="text-align: center;">From PROF. BALDWIN BROWN (Professor of +Fine Art in the University of +Edinburgh)</p> +I am glad of this opportunity of saying how cordially I agree with the +method adopted by my friend Professor Geddes in dealing with the life +of +cities. He treats the modern community and its material shell as things +of organic growth, with a past and a future as well as a present, +whereas we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour +of +some exigency of the moment. A historic British town has recently +furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection. The town +possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at +a +time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great +Britain. Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall +and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing a site +for a new elementary school. No doubt, in that school, books "approved +by the Department" will instruct scholars in the past history of the +burgh, but the living witness of that history must first of all be +carefully obliterated. All the rest of this ancient and historic +enceinte was condemned a few weeks ago to complete destruction, merely +on the plea that the site would be convenient for workmen's dwellings. +The monument has now been saved, but it has taken the whole country to +do it! +<p>Here were chosen officials, governors of no mean city, absolutely +oblivious of these important interests committed to their care, and all +for want of having drilled into them these broader views which +Professor +Geddes puts forward so well.</p> +<p>He has himself done practical work in Edinburgh on the lines he lays +down, and I have lately had occasion to note, and call attention to the +advantage to the city of much wise conservatism in regard to our older +buildings which he and his associates have shown.</p> +<p>In Edinburgh we have the advantage that our older monuments, <span class="pagenum">p. 131</span> in +which so much of the past life of the city is enshrined, are +firm and solid; and it takes some trouble to knock them down. Hence for +some time to come we shall preserve here object-lessons in civic +development that will be of interest to the country at large.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">From MR. WALTER CRANE (President of Arts +and Crafts Exhibition Society)</p> +<p>Professor Geddes' very interesting "Study in City Development" is +highly +suggestive, and shows how great a difference thoughtful and tasteful +treatment might make in dealing with such problems. It is sad to think +of the opportunities wasted, and of the more ignorant and often too +hasty clearances for traffic which have often been apparently the sole +motives in city improvement. The conservation of historic buildings, +whenever possible, the planting of trees along our streets, the laying +out of gardens, the insistence upon a proportional amount of air and +open space to new buildings would go a long way towards making our +bricks-and-mortar joyless wildernesses into something human and +habitable.</p> +<p>Whether, under favourable circumstances and the rare public spirit +of +private owners, much can be done, or to any wide extent, so long as +absolute individual ownership in land and ground values is allowed, +seems to me very doubtful. We cannot hope to see great social +improvements without great economic changes, but every effort in the +direction of improving the beauty of our cities is welcome to all who +have the well-being of the community at heart; and such work as Prof. +Geddes is doing should arouse the keenest interest and the earnest +attention of all who realise its immense social importance.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">From MR. J.H. HARLEY, M.A.</p> +<p>If sociology is ever to vindicate itself as an art, it must be able +to +analyse and explain the present, and to some extent at least to cast +the +horoscope of the future. It must feel its way through all the tangled +labyrinths of city life, and show us where we have arrived and whither +we are going. But this is exactly the part of Professor Geddes' Applied +Sociology where he becomes most vague and unsatisfactory. "Enough for +the present," we are told, "if it be admitted that the practical man in +his thought and action in the present is mainly as yet the too +unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still working +within the grasp of natural conditions." Now we must all be willing to +admit that the present is the child of the past, and that we cannot +adequately understand <span class="pagenum">p. 132</span> the present until we have led up to +the present by the study of its antecedents more and less remote. But +what Professor Geddes fails to bring out is that it is only in the +present or the more immediate past that the City has really become a +City in the modern sense of the word. The City as City is a product of +the Industrial Revolution. Its huge and casual assemblages of human +life, its overcrowding, its poverty line, its East End and its West +End, +its infantile mortality, its trades massed in their own particular +districts, it aliens, its criminals and its vices—all these problems of +social pathology arise from the fact that the conditions of modern +industry have brought people together who have few interests in common, +and who were compelled to arrange themselves in some kind of decent +order within a limited area, without sufficient time being given to +evolve a suitable environment, or to prepare themselves for the +environment which they actually found on every side of them. London in +the past, therefore, cannot help us so very much to solve the riddles +of +London in the present, because London in the past had not developed +these social growths or offered a mature ground to those social +parasites which make us sometimes despair of being able to get much +insight into the London of the present.</p> +<p>The fact seems to be that Prof. Geddes conceives sociology too much +as a +primary and too little as a secondary science. He defines applied +sociology as the application of social survey to social science, when +social ratiocination or social philosophy are needed before one can be +said to have gauged the extent of the influence which this +comprehensive +science may have in our actual practice or on our Budget of the future. +No doubt, "observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is just +the very means of preparing for it," but this preparation must be made +in the various specialisms which make up the complete or +encyclopædic +science of sociology. To me it seems an unwarrantable narrowing of the +scope or significance of sociology to say that there is no better +method +available of teaching it "than that of regional survey, historical as +well as geographical." Surely "regional survey" Is the appropriate +method in the very simplest and most concrete parts of the complete +science of sociology, and even when we come to history proper we must +do +very much more than make a regional survey. It is very interesting, no +doubt, to "survey" history in the course of a summer ramble to the +ruins +of some old monastery, but unless the monks had kept records of what +had +been done there in bygone days, the mere outward survey will not carry +us further than Prof. Geddes is carried in the very general map which +he +makes of the whole field of history. In other words, history, in any +proper sense, demands more than "survey" in Prof. Geddes' sense of the +word. It calls to its aid linguistics, criticism, archaeology, +jurisprudence, and politics—there must be comparison and criticism as +well as "survey." History is the laboratory in which the sociologist +sees his social experiments working out their <span class="pagenum">p. 133</span> results, and +history is to the sociologist what experiment is to the physician, or +the comparative method to the biologist.</p> +<p>This being so, the scope of "civics" as "applied sociology" is +immensely +widened. The present is the child of the past, but we see that it is +only in the present that such ancient groups as the colony of Hanseatic +merchants in Old London have shown us what has been the ultimate +significance of their embryological life. The modern city bristles with +sociological problems which demand a knowledge of most of the +specialisms included in the complete science of sociology, and almost +invite us to cast the horoscope of the future. We see, as Booth and +Rowntree saw before us, the poverty line like a fiery portent at every +point of our study, and we are led finally to ask ourselves whether M. +Arthur Bauer was not right in choosing the title "Les Classes Sociales" +as the most characteristic title he could give to his recent and most +suggestive analysis of the general characteristics of social life.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><br /> +From MR. T.C. HORSFALL<br /> +</div> +<div style="text-align: center;">(President, Manchester Citizen's +Association, &c.)</div> +<p>The teaching of the paper seems to me to be most sound and helpful. +The +town of the future—I trust of the near future—must by means of its +schools, its museums, and galleries, its playgrounds, parks and +gymnasia, its baths, its wide tree-planted streets and the belt of +unspoilt country which must surround it, bring all its inhabitants in +some degree under the <i>best</i> influences of all the regions and +all the +stages of civilisation, the influences of which, but not the best +influences, contribute, and have contributed, to make our towns what +they are.</p> +<br /> +<div style="text-align: center;">From H. OSMAN NEWLAND<br /> +(Author of "<i>A Short History of Citizenship</i>")</div> +<p>The failures of democratic governments in the past have been +attributable, in part, to the lack of intelligence and +self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in +the +government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to +grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as +an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much +less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta +citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it +scarcely rose above Municipalism. In more modern times, civic education +has had to encounter the same difficulty as in America, where the young +citizen's first duty is to salute his flag, and as in London, where +"Civics" is distributed in doles of local <span class="pagenum">p. 134</span> history in which +the municipality plays a part altogether out of proportion to its +relation to the country, the age, and the world. Civics, as the applied +sociology of each individual and each body of interests, has but begun +to be dreamed of; and before it can be properly developed it is +desirable, if not necessary, that the general public should know +something more than at present both of the historic development of the +"civic" idea, and of the psychology of aggregations as differentiated +from the psychology of the individual. Not until we can make "the man +in +the street" a conscious citizen, instead of a political automaton, +shall +we be able to enlist his sympathies with "Civics"; and without those +sympathies the sociologist's "Civics" will, I fear, be but partial and +inaccurate.</p> +<br /> + +<div style="text-align: center;">From MR. G. BISSET SMITH<br /> +(H.M. Registration Examiner for East of Scotland).</div> +<p>There is an elusiveness here and there in this paper which has +helped to +confirm me in the opinion that it is well to emphasise the fact that +Prof. Geddes is not only a dreamer of lofty dreams but a doer and a +practical initiator. He has expressed himself not only in words but in +art and in architecture, and in educational organisation; and he has in +many ways, sometimes indirectly, influenced scholastic and civic +activities.</p> +<p>If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has +only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?" +"<i>Circumspice!</i>" There stand the settlements he initiated, the +houses +beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of +his ideas, an encyclopædia in stone and in storeys.</p> +<p>We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts +towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is +"concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with +ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society. +And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of +its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the +necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied +Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we +have to ask is:—(1) What actually are the generalisations of the +present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable +sociological +testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the +touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer +to +these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion. +But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to +clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose +occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the +reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present +condition +of the people."</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span> +No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of +"The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of +<i>population</i>; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. +Charles +Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all +readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely +suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population +must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of +the +characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential +material +of a study of its whole civilisation."</p> +<p>Accepting Mr. Branford's definition of <i>occupation</i> as "any +and every +form of human endeavour, past, present, and future," we see that +occupation must have a large place in the description, explanation, and +forecasting of the evolution of cities—such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, +Dundee—in the scheme of survey outlined so sweepingly in "Civics."</p> +<p>"Life and Labour of the People in London" contains several general +observations almost equally applicable to our largest Scottish cities, +with the demographic conditions of which my official duties give me +special opportunities for becoming familiar and for regional survey.</p> +<p>In the concluding volume of that great contribution to sociology Mr. +Booth (page 23) remarks:—</p> +<p>"Many influences conspire to cause the poor to multiply almost in +proportion to their poverty, and operate in the other direction in the +case of the better off, almost in proportion to their wealth. But," +says +Mr. Booth, "when we bring the death-rate into account this law no +longer +holds."</p> +<p>With the poor living under bad conditions in crowded homes the net +increase is diminished. To those of us who are hopeful of improvement +by +eugenics it is pleasing to note that Mr. Booth—somewhat unlike Mr. Kidd +in his well-known "Social Evolution"—is optimistic in his conclusion +that "on the whole it may fairly be expected that concurrently with a +rising standard of health we may see a fall in birth-rate as well as +death-rate, and thus have no cause to fear, as the result of better +sanitation, that the largest natural increase in population will ever +be +contributed by the lowest class." So the heritage of the city may grow +not only in quantity but also in quality.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;">From PROFESSOR W.I. THOMAS<br /> +(Professor in the University of Chicago, U.S.A.)<br /> +</div> +<p>From the standpoint of its applicability to new countries like +America, +Professor Geddes' programme is inadequate because of its failure to +recognise that a city under these conditions is formed by a rapid and +contemporaneous movement of population, and not by the lapse of time. +<span class="pagenum">p. 136</span> +The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely +one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of +about +two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic +development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a +population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological +standpoint therefore becomes of more importance than the historical.</p> +<p style="text-align: center;">PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply</p> +<p>I am sincerely glad to be able to express myself in substantial +agreement with the majority of my critics, only asking them in turn to +recognise that this is but the first half of my subject—an outline of +civics as in the first place a matter of science, a geographic and +historic survey of past conditions, a corresponding census of present +ones—here discussed and insisted on as affording the needful base for +their demands upon civics as an art, that of effective social service.</p> +<p>In this respect various critics have in fact anticipated large +elements +of this future portion of my paper, so that in general views, at least, +critics and writer are not so far apart as would appear were the +preceding pages submitted as a comprehensive outline of the subject, +instead of as its scientific introduction merely.</p> +<p>Of criticisms strictly applicable to this paper as it stands, there +are +really very few. I am confident that the chairman must be quite alone +in +too modestly applying to his great work that description of London +itself, with which the paper (Section A, pp. 104-107) opens, since his +volumes offer really our first effective clue to the labyrinth, and his +method of intensive and specialised regional survey, the intensest +searchlight yet brought to bear upon it.</p> +<p>Taking, however, a concrete point of criticism, such as that of the +monumental planning of modern Paris as derived from forest rides, the +critic need only walk through any French forest, or even to consult a +Baedeker, or other guide-book, with its maps of any historic dwelling +and its surroundings, from Chantilly or Fontainebleau to minor ones, to +see that this plan, originally devised for the pleasure, success and +safety <span class="pagenum">p. +137</span> of the hunt, and later adapted to domination and +defence, became next appreciated as affording the finest possible +perspectives of the palatially rebuilt chateau. So that it is not at +all +a fantastic hypothesis, but an obvious and inevitable conclusion that +Napoleon's and Haussman's plans were not at all invented by them for +Paris, but were directly imitated from the familiar landscape +architecture of the preceding century, which again was but the simplest +development from the spacious forest rides of older hunting nobles, +laid +out without any thought of the architectural and city developments they +were destined in later centuries to determine.</p> +<p>The citizen of Washington had till lately often forgotten that the +magnificent perspectives of his city are due to the French +landscape-architect (Major L'Enfant) whom Washington imported for the +express purpose of laying out his capital; yet it is no less clear that +this most magnificent of the New World city plans is derived from Old +World forest rides, than that its monumental edifices descend from +Renaissance and classic exemplars.</p> +<p>I plead indeed for such studies of the plans of any and every city +from +the point of view of its natural development. The too purely abstract +and subjective sociology of the dwellers of great cities like London +would in this way be helped by the facts of their own topographic +history, already well known and clearly explained by geographer and +historian, towards again feeling with the naturalist that even the +modern city is but the most complex evolutionary expression and +development of the life of Nature.</p> +<p>This view I take to be indeed a commonplace in France; but I account +for +its apparent unfamiliarity to English readers from the fact of our +scanty forests in this island being left practically wild, our nobles +not inhabiting them, but the cultivated pasture and arable regions +below—planting trees indeed, "plantations," but seldom woods, and +practically never forests at all. This again brings out the fact that +the French nobles, despite our urban associations with regard to them +have belonged far more than ours to the social formation and tradition +of the hunter—while ours, despite their love of sports, are yet +fundamentally squires, i.e., essentially and historically approximating +to the peasants of their villages. The bearing of all this upon their +respective history will be obvious. Here again we have the origins of +the vivid contrast of the English or so-called naturalistic style of +landscape-gardening with the more formal French tradition. Yet in a +very +true sense we see the former to be even more highly artificial than the +latter. <span class="pagenum">p. +138</span> The English citizen who may even admit this way of +looking at the contrasted city plans of London and Paris may fail, +unless he has appreciated the principle here involved, to see why +London +and Paris houses are so different—the one separate and self-contained, +with its door undefended and open upon the street, while the normal +Parisian house is a populous, high-piled tenement around a central +court, with high <i>porte cochère</i> closed by massive oaken +doors and +guarded by an always vigilant and often surly <i>concierge</i>.</p> +<p>A moment of historical reflection suffices to see that the former is +the +architecture of a long-settled agricultural place, with its spreading +undefended villages, in which each household had its separate dwelling, +the other a persistence of the Continental fortified city crowded +within +its walls.</p> +<p>But beyond this we must see the earlier historic, the simpler +geographic +origins of the French courtyard house as a defensible farmyard, of +which +the ample space was needed nightly for defence against wild beasts, if +not also wilder men, against whom the <i>concierge</i> is not only the +antique porter but the primitive sentinel.</p> +<p>I may seem unduly to labour such points, yet do so advisedly, in +order +to emphasise and make clearer the essential thesis of this portion of +my +paper—that every scientific survey involves a geographic and historic +exploration of origins, but that of the still unwritten chapter, that +the far-reaching forelook, idealistic yet also critical, which is +needful to any true and enduring contribution to social service, is +prepared for by habitually imaging the course of evolution in the past.</p> +<p>Speaking personally, as one whose leisure and practical life have +alike +been largely spent in the study and the preservation of ancient +buildings, I may say that this has not been solely, or even +essentially, +from an antiquarian interest in the historic past, but still more on +behalf of a practical interest—that of the idealistic, yet economic, +utilitarian, because educational and evolutionary, transformation of +our +old cities—old Edinburgh, old Dunfermline, and the like—from their +present sordid unhygienic failure; and therefore industrial and +commercial insufficiency, towards a future equalling if not +transcending +the recorded greatness of the civic past.</p> +<p>It has, therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of +evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would +otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as +Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon +Civics as Applied Social Science.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 139</span><br /> +<h3> PRESS COMMENTS</h3> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i>The Times</i> (July 20, 1904)<br /> +in a leading article, said:</p> +<p>In the paper read on Monday at a meeting of the Sociological Society +by +Professor GEDDES—an abstract of which we print—are contained ideas of +practical value to be recommended to the study of ambitious +municipalities. This is the age of cities, and all the world is +city-building. Almost everywhere is a flow from the country town-ward. +China and India may be still, in the main, lands of villages. But the +West, Russia perhaps excepted, is more and more peopled by dwellers in +cities. In a dim sort of way many persons understand that the time has +come when art and skill and foresight should control what so far has +been left to chance to work out; that there should be a more orderly +conception of civic action; that there is a real art of city-making, +and +that it behoves this generation to master and practise it. Professor +Geddes truly said the land is already full of preparation as to this +matter; the beginnings of a concrete art of city-making are visible at +various points. But our city rulers are often among the blindest to +these considerations; and nowhere probably is to be seen a municipality +fully and consistently alive to its duties in this respect. London may +be left out of the question. Still a province rather than a city in the +strict sense, wanting what, in the view of the early master of +political +science, was an essential of the true city, that it could "easily be +overseen," with a vast floating population, it will be some time before +it can be dealt with as an organic whole. But the rulers of such +communities as Manchester and Newcastle and York ought long ago to have +realised, much more than has been done, that they are not so much brick +and mortar, so much rateable area, so many thousands of people +fortuitously brought together. They have all a regional environment of +their own which determined their origin and growth. They have all a +rich +past, the monuments of which, generally to be found in abundance by +careful, reverent inquirers, ought to be preserved; a past which ought +to be known more or less to all the dwellers therein, and the knowledge +of which will make the present more interesting. Even when old +buildings +have disappeared, ancient roads, pathways, and streets can be traced; +place names keep alive much history; and the natural features reveal to +the practised eye what must have been the look and condition of a town +in past ages. Professor Geddes gives a sketch of what he conceives the +vast and ever-growing literature of cities will one day be. Even if the +comprehensive monographs which he foreshadows are never <span class="pagenum">p. 140</span> +written, it is not surely fanciful to expect that, with education +universal, almost every dweller in our old towns will acquire some sort +of that feeling with which a member of an ancient family looks upon its +ancestral house or lands—will, even without much reading, have some +sort of notion of his predecessors and a certain pride in his +membership +of an ancient community. If he has not the good fortune to be a De +Vere, +a De Bohun, a Howard, Mowbray or Cavendish, he may perhaps be a citizen +of a town which flourished when some of these families were unknown.</p> +<p>Such pride, or, as the lecturer preferred to term it, such "growth +of +civic consciousness and conscience, the awakening of citizenship +towards +civic renascence," will be the best security for a worthy city of the +future....</p> +<p>Professor Geddes glanced at the opening civic future, "the remoter +and +higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly +needed foresight and statesmanship involve," the possibilities which +may +be easily realised if only there be true civic pride, foresight, and +unflagging pursuit of a reasonable ideal.... It remains to be seen what +our cities will become when for some generations the same spirit of +pride and reverence shown by old families as to their possessions has +presided over all civic changes and developments.... Ruskin somewhere +points out the mediaeval love of cities, unwholesome, dirty, and +forbidding though they were. He did not teach his generation that that +affection might with more reason attach to the modern city if its +people +knew what it had been and steadily strove to make it better, if there +was in every large community patriotism and a polity.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;">DR. J.H. BRIDGES in <i>The Positivist +Review</i> (Sept., 1904), said: <br /> +</div> +<p>Under +the title, "Civics, as applied Sociology," Prof. Geddes read on July +18th a very interesting paper before the Sociological Society. The +importance of the subject will be contested by none. The method adopted +in handling it, being in many ways original, invites remark ...</p> +<p>What is wanted is first a survey of the facts to be dealt with—a +regional survey. This point of view has next to be correlated with +corresponding practical experience acquired by practical civic life, +but +"aiming at a larger and more orderly conception of civic action.".... +Students of Comte will not forget his well-known maxim, <i>Savoir pour +prévoir, afin de pourvoir</i>.</p> +<p>What is to be the area of survey? Prof. Geddes decides that the City +may +be taken "as the integrate of study." Whether any modern towns, and, if +so, what, may be taken as integrates in the sense which would +undoubtedly apply to ancient Athens or to mediaeval Florence, may be +questioned; but it is too soon to interrupt our author.... Every one +who +heard the lecturer must have been fascinated by his picture of a river +system which he takes for his unit of study; the high mountain tracts, +the pastoral hillsides, the hamlets and villages in the valleys, the +market town where the valleys meet, the convergence of the larger +valleys into a county town, finally, the great city where the river +meets the sea. The lecturer went on to advocate the systematic study of +some of the principal river-basins of the world for the purpose of +examining the laws which govern the grouping of cities. All would agree +that much instruction might be derived from such <span class="pagenum">p. 141</span> a survey, +provided two dangers be avoided. One is the exaggeration of the +influence of the environment on the social organism, an error into +which +the Le Play school have sometimes fallen; as when, for instance, it was +sought to explain Chinese civilisation by the rice-plant. The other +danger, which needs much care and thought to avoid, is the accumulation +of such a mass of irrelevant detail as renders (perhaps sometimes it is +intended to render) all generalisation impossible. Thinking men are at +last beginning to regard the accumulation of memoirs as one of the +principal obstacles to scientific progress. On the pretext of "more +evidence," conclusions are adjourned, not merely <i>sine die</i>, but <i>sine +spe diei</i>. Yet so long as man is man, he must, and will, have +conclusions; be they final or otherwise.</p> +<p>From the physiography of the city we pass to its history ...</p> +<p>In this part of his subject he has, as we all know, many precursors +and +fellow-workers. The remarkable series, entitled "Historic Towns," +instituted by Prof. Freeman, is known to most. The study of towns was +the life and soul of Mr. Green's historic labours. Eloquent and +powerful +pictures of the great cities of the world fill the greater part of Mr. +Harrison's well-known volume, "The Meaning of History"; and the student +of universal history (a few of these, it may be hoped, are still left) +finds them very stimulating and helpful. The special note of Prof. +Geddes' method is that he does not limit himself to the greater cities, +but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with +their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely +to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of +his observation. In biology, the study of any single organism, however +minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of +structure or function. As for instance, many forms of heart must be +examined before the laws governing blood-circulation could be revealed; +so here. Countless, indeed, are the forms of cities; even limiting our +field of observation to those that have grown up in the last century +they are numerous enough. Their differences and analogies would +doubtless repay analysis, always supposing that we are clear how far +the +modern town, as contrasted with the mediaeval or Graeco-Roman city, can +usefully be treated as "an integrate." This raises large questions of +nation, of groups of nations, finally of Humanity, which cannot here be +touched.</p> +<p>Meantime, from the teacher's standpoint, there can be no question at +all, among those who look upon education as something more than a +commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with +the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there +perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the +history of our race. Historic memories survive in our villages far more +widely than is thought. The descendants of the man who found the body +of +Rufus in the New Forest still live hard by. The builder whom the first +William set to build Corfe Castle was Stephen Mowlem; and the +Dorsetshire firm of Mowlem still pave London causeways. A poor woman in +a remote hamlet, untouched by tourist or guide-book, has shown me the +ash-tree under which Monmouth was seized after Sedgemoor; a Suffolk +peasant, equally innocent of book-knowledge, has pointed Out "Bloody +Mary's lane," through which that bugbear of Protestants passed three +hundred years before on her way to Framlingham. The abbey immortalised +in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern +England, is surrounded now by the same villages that Jocelyn tells us +of. The town named after St. Alban, with its memories of Cassivellaun +and Julius Caesar, of an old Roman city, of the Diocletian persecution, +of the great King Offa, founder of the abbey that was to become <span class="pagenum">p. 142</span> at +once a school of historical research, and our best epitome of +mediaeval architecture—all this, with the monument of the author of the +"Novum Organum" crowning the whole—sums up for us sixteen centuries of +history.</p> +<p>Professor Geddes for more than twenty years has adopted this method +of +teaching sociology in the open air; "in the field," as geologists would +say....</p> +<p>This is much more than the study and the description of buildings +and +places of historical interest. His aim is first to study the way in +which a city grows, always having due regard to its physical +environment; secondly, by comparing like with like, as a naturalist +compares the individuals of a species, or the species of a genus, to +throw light on the laws which govern civic development, and thus to +help +forward and direct civic action.</p> +<p>All this is set forth with greater fulness in the Report which +Professor +Geddes has been asked to write for the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. The +purpose of the Report (printed, but not yet published) was to suggest +the way in which the revenue of the Trust, amounting to £25,000, +should +be spent for the benefit of this ancient and historic town. The scheme, +with its many pictures, real and ideal, of workshops, parks, +culture-institutes—physical, artistic, and historical—will deeply +interest even those who reject much of it as Utopian. But it is at +least +a Utopia specially adapted to a given place and time, one in which +every +feature of landscape and history is made the most of, one in which a +beginning can be made at once, leaving room for further developments as +occasion may serve. Moreover, it is penetrated through and through with +the Republican ideal of bringing the highest truth within the reach of +all.</p> +<p>Comte has pointed out, in the fifth chapter of his "General View of +Positivism," and elsewhere, that it is not enough to enunciate sound +principles of social renovation unless they can be rendered visible and +palpable. "The principal function of art," he says, "is to construct +types on the basis furnished by Science.... However perfectly the first +principles of social renovation may be elaborated by thinkers, they +will +still not be sufficiently definite for the practical results.... But, +at +the point where Philosophy must always leave a void, Art steps in, and +stimulates to practical action.... Hence, in the future, systematic +formation of Utopias will become habitual; on the distinct +understanding +that as in every other branch of art, the ideal shall be kept in +subordination to the real."</p> +<p>Now, the Dunfermline Report is an admirable example of art thus +allied +with science for social service. It is an ideal picture, strictly +adherent to local colour and conditions, of an ancient city prolonging +its vitality into the present and future by providing a very high form +of training for its citizens, a training not of intellect only, but of +the senses, of manual dexterity, of imagination, of Republican +sympathy—a training in which "laborious inacquaintance with dead +languages," infusing into the few touched by it a tincture of caste and +militarism, gives way to comprehensive study of the evolution of Man, +preparing the whole, and not a section merely, of the new generation +for +social service.</p> +<p>Such a Utopia as this may be looked upon as fulfilling the true +social +function of Art; standing midway between theory and practice; inspired +by thought, and stimulating action. Only the social artist has to look +to it that his thoughts be not merely true but adequate, lest he +degenerate into a mere decorator. How far will a series of "regional +surveys," like those of <span class="pagenum">p. 143</span> Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree +in York, carry us! Not so far, I fear, as Professor Geddes seems to +hope. Cities in our modern life are organs inseparable from a larger +whole, the nation; and before the life of cities can be much changed, +we +have to ask ourselves, What is the national life? What is its ethical +and religious standard? What is its practice as to the acquisition and +distribution of wealth? And, again, What is to be the intercourse of +nations? Is it to be war or peace?</p> +<p>Mr. Carnegie has given half a million for the benefit of a town of +30,000 inhabitants. Magnificent as the donation is, it is not too much; +not nearly enough, indeed, for the full realisation of Professor +Geddes' +scheme. Still, wisely used, it might accomplish great results. What we +have recently sunk in the work of suppressing two free States in South +Africa would have made it possible to do for three hundred towns what +has been done for Dunfermline. Half of what we are now spending on our +army and navy would enable us to endow thirty more of such towns +annually.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;">Mr. ISRAEL ZANGWILL in <i>To-day</i> +(Aug. 10, 1904), said: <br /> +</div> +<p>The Sociological +Society is forging ahead at American speed; the professors jostle one +another, and Geddes treads on the heels of Galton. After "Eugenics," or +the Science of Good Births, comes "Civics," or the Science of Cities. +In +the former Mr. Galton was developing an idea which was in the air, and +in Wells. In the latter Professor Geddes has struck out a more novel +line, and a still more novel nomenclature. Politography, Politogenics, +and Eu-Politogenics, likewise Hebraomorphic and Latinomorphic and +Eutopia—quite an opposite idea from Utopia—such are some of the +additions to the dictionary which the science of Civics carries in its +train. They are all excellent words—with the double-barrelled +exception—and still more excellent concepts. But I fancy the general +idea of them all could be conveyed to the man in the street under the +covering of "the human shell." This shell of ours is the city. It is +the +protective crust we have built round ourselves. In a smaller sense our +house is our shell, but in a larger sense each house is only a lobe of +the complex and contorted whole. Geography shapes our shells from +without, and the spirit of our particular community shapes it from +within. History tells us how it has been shaped in the past, Art tells +us how it should be shaped in the future. Professor Geddes, in fact, +envisages our civic shell as becomes a brilliant biologist, who also +happens to be a man of historic imagination, ethical impulses, and +aesthetic perceptions. For the human shell is not merely geometrical +and +architectural, like those of apian or beaverish communities; it holds +and expresses all those differences by which we are exalted above the +bee or the beaver. It is coloured with our emotions and ideals, and +contorted with all the spirals of our history. And all these +manifestations of humanity may be studied as systematically as those of +the lower orders of creation, which have till recently monopolised the +privilege of pin and label. The old lady who admired the benevolence of +Providence in always placing rivers by the side of large towns was only +expressing in an exaggerated way the general failure to think of Civics +scientifically. The geographers, in whom may be found the bases of the +science, have always pointed out that the river system is the essential +unit for investigation. From source to sea goes the line of evolution. +And yet even the peasant hamlet at the source depends, as <span class="pagenum">p. 144</span> +Professor Geddes reminds us, on the hinterland of pasture, forest, and +chase; and the hunter is the germ of the soldier and the aristocrat. +The +whole region contributes to the ultimate city, as the whole river to +the +ultimate sea. The Professor says, justly enough, that we should try to +recover the elemental or naturalist point of view, even for the +greatest +cities. He sees London as "fundamentally an agglomeration of villages +with their surviving patches of common around a mediaeval seaport." +This +is accurate vision; but when he discerns "even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say, its Place de l'Etoile, its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest rides, each literally straight," I cannot help +suspecting the over-ingenuity of a prolific intellect. The view of +London as a growth from embryos, and the view of Paris as the outcome +of +atavistic instinct, belong to different planes of scientific thinking. +That Haussmann in reconstructing Paris was merely an unconscious hunter +and woodlander, building as automatically as a bee, is a fantastic +hypothesis; since cities, if they are to be built on a plan at all, +cannot avoid some unifying geometrical pattern; and there are not very +many possibilities.... In the department of Eu-Politogenics we shall be +confronted with the problem of consciously overriding what evolution +has +unconsciously evolved, and building towards a fairer future. No doubt +much of our creation will be imitation, and Professor Geddes is +particularly suggestive in bidding us, at least, to be aware which of +the tangled strands of influence we desire to follow; but a measure of +artistic free-will remains. With the development of a corporate +conscience we should be able to turn out far more satisfactory shells +than many that have blundered into being. "Garden City" is only a +particular application of the science of Civics....</p> +<p>Eu-Politogenics concerns itself, however, with more than the mere +configuration of our human shell. Its colour and the music it holds are +considerations no less important. But they are too important to touch +at +the fag-end of an article. Professor Geddes must, however, be +congratulated on a stimulating paper, and upon his discovery of +Eutopia. +For Eutopia (unlike Utopia, which is really Ou-topia, or no place) is +merely your own place perfected. And the duty of working towards its +perfection lies directly upon <i>you</i>. "Civics—as applied +sociology" +comes to show you the way.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CIVICS: AS CONCRETE AND APPLIED SOCIOLOGY, PART II</h2> +<h2>BY PROFESSOR GEDDES</h2> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">Read before the Sociological Society at a +Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., on Monday, January 23rd, 1905, the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, +F.R.S., +in the Chair.</p> +<br /> +<h3>A—INTRODUCTION: THE NEED OF CIVIC SURVEYS</h3> +<p>To the previous discussion of this subject<a name="FNanchor_2"></a><a + href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> the first portion of this +present title, "Civics as Concrete Sociology," would have been more +suitable than the second, (that of "Civics as Applied Sociology") +actually used. For its aim was essentially to plead for the concrete +survey and study of cities, their observation and interpretation on +lines essentially similar to those of the natural sciences. Since +Comte's demonstration of the necessity of the preliminary sciences to +social studies, and Spencer's development of this, still more since the +evolution theory has become generally recognised, no one disputes the +applicability of biology to <span class="pagenum">p. 58</span> sociology. Many are, indeed, +vigorously applying the conceptions of life in evolution, in +geographical distribution and environment, in health and disease, to +the +interpretations of the problems of the times; while with the +contemporary rise of eugenics to the first plane of interest, both +social and scientific, these lines of thought, bio-social and +bio-geographic, must needs be increasingly utilised and developed.</p> +<p>But Comte and Spencer, with most other biologically-minded +sociologists +have been more at home among biological generalisations and theories +than among the facts they arise from, and hence it is ever needful to +maintain and extend a first-hand contact with these. I seek, therefore, +to press home the idea that just as the biologist must earn his +generalisations through direct and first-hand acquaintance with nature, +so now must the sociologist work for his generalisations through a +period of kindred observation and analysis, both geographic and +historical; his "general laws" thus appearing anew as the abstract of +regional facts, after due comparison of these as between region and +region.</p> +<p>May not much of the comparative sterility of post-Comtean (or at any +rate post-Spencerian) sociology, which is so commonly reproached to us, +and to which the difficult formation and slow growth of sociological +societies and schools is largely due, be thus explained? Is it not the +case that many able and persuasive writers, not only knowing the +results, but logically using the generalisations of Comte or Spencer, +as +of old of Smith or now-a-days of List in the economic field, are yet +comparatively sterile of fresh contributions to thought, and still more +to action? In fact, must we not apply to much of the literature of +recent sociology, just as to traditional economics, the criticism of +Comte's well-known law of three states, and inquire if such writers, +while apparently upon the plane of generalised science, are not really +in large measure at least arrested upon Comte's "metaphysical stage," +Mill's "abstractional" one?</p> +<p>Conversely, the revival of sociological interest in this country at +present is obviously very largely derived from fresh and freshening +work +like that of Mr Francis Galton and of the Right Hon. Charles Booth +especially. For here in Mr. Galton's biometrics and eugenics is a +return +to nature, a keen scrutiny of human beings, which is really an orderly +fruition of that of the same author's "Art of Travel." Similarly, Mr. +Booth's "Survey of London" is as truly a return to nature as was +Darwin's Voyage, or his yet more far-reaching studies in his garden and +farmyard at home. <span class="pagenum">p. 59</span> Is it not the main support of the subtle +theorisings and far-stretched polemic of Prof. Weismann that he can +plague his adversaries with the small but literal and concrete mice and +hydroids and water fleas with which his theories began? And is it not +for a certain lack of such concrete matter of observation that the vast +systematisations of M. de Greef, or M. de Roberty, or the original and +ingenious readings of Prof. Simon Patten leave us too often +unconvinced, +even if not sometimes without sufficiently definite understanding of +their meaning? The simplest of naturalists must feel that Comte or +Spencer, despite the frequently able use of the generalisations of +biology, themselves somewhat lacked the first-hand observation of the +city and community around them, and suffered thereby; this part of +their +work obviously not being on a level with the historic interpretations +of +the one or the psychological productivity of the other. And if, without +warlike intent, I may yet strike a conspicuous shield or two within +these friendly lists, is it not this one element of concrete +observation +and illustration which is sometimes lacking to give its full effect to +the encyclopædic learning and the sympathetic insight of one of +our +recent papers, to the historic and poetic interpretations of another, +or +to the masterly logic of a third?</p> +<p>Before the polemics of our educationists, the voluminous +argumentation +and casuistic subtlety of our professors of economics and ethics, yet +more before the profound speculations of the epistemologists, the mere +naturalist observer can but feel abashed like the truant before his +schoolmasters; yet he is also not without a certain deep inward +conviction, born of experience, that his outdoor world is yet more +real, +more vast, and more instructive than is theirs. And this impression +becomes strengthened, nay verified and established, when he sees that +the initiative thinkers from whom these claim to descend, have had in +each and every case no merely academic record, but also a first-hand +experience, an impulse and message from life and nature. Hence the +contributions of Locke, of Comenius, and of Rousseau. Hence the +Physiocrats found economics in peasant life; and thus too Adam Smith +renewed their science, with due academic logic, doubtless, but from his +experience of Glasgow and Kirkcaldy manufactures and trade. Even the +idealist Berkeley owed much of his theory to his iridescent tar-water; +while surely the greater ethicists are those who have not only been +dialecticians, but moral forces in the world of men.</p> +<p>In such ways, then, I would justify the thesis that civics is no +abstract study, but fundamentally a matter of concrete and descriptive +sociology—perhaps the greatest field of this. Next, that such orderly +study is in line with the preliminary sciences, and with the general +doctrine of evolution from simple to complex; and finally with the +general inquiry into the influence of geographical conditions on social +development. <span class="pagenum">p. +60</span> In short, the student of civics must be first of +all an observer of cities; and, if so, of their origins and +developments, from the small and simple beginnings of which the tiniest +hamlet is but an arrested germ. The productive sociologist should thus +be of all investigators a wandering student <i>par excellence</i>; in +the +first place, as far as possible, a literal tourist and traveller—and +this although like the homely Gilbert White or the world voyaging +Darwin, he may do his best work around his own home.</p> +<br /> +<h3>B—INITIAL METHODS OF CONCRETE SURVEY</h3> +<p>Hence our civic studies began (vol. 1, <a href='#p_105'>p. 105</a>) +with the survey of a +valley region inhabited by its characteristic types—hunter and +shepherd, peasant and fisher—each on his own level, each evolving or +degenerating within his own region. Hence the concrete picture of such +a +typical valley section with its types of occupation cannot be brought +too clearly before our minds.<a name="FNanchor_3"></a><a + href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></p> +<p>What now of the causes of progress or decay? Are not these first of +all +the qualities and defects inherent in that particular social +formation?—though we must also consider how these different types act +and react, how they combine with, transform, subjugate, ruin or replace +each other in region after region. We thus re-interpret the +vicissitudes +of history in more general terms, those of the differentiation, +progress +or degeneracy of each occupational and social type, and the ascending +and descending oscillations of these types. In short, these +occupational +struggles underlie and largely interpret even the conflict of races, +upon which Mr. Stuart-Glennie and other sociologists have so ably +insisted. The fundamental importance of these initial factors of region +and occupation to all studies of races and types, of communities and +institutions, of customs and laws, indeed of language and literature, +of +religion and art, even of ideals and individualities, must be my excuse +if I seem to insist, in season and out of season, upon <span class="pagenum">p. 61</span> the +services of Le Play as one of the main founders of sociology; and this +not only <i>(a)</i> on account of his monographic surveys of modern +industrial life—those "Monographies Sociales" from which our current +economic studies of the condition of the worker, of the family budget, +etc., descend—but <i>(b)</i> yet more on account of his vital +reconstruction +of anthropology (albeit still far from adequately realised by most +anthropologists) through his renewed insistence upon the elemental +rustic origins of industry, family types, and social organisation +alike, +from these simplest reactions of man in his struggle for existence in +varied and varying environment.</p> +<p>It does not suffice to recognise, with many economists, hunting, +pastoral and agricultural formations, as states <i>preliminary</i> to +our +present industrial and commercial, imperial, and financial order of +civilisation. This view, still too commonly surviving, is rather of +hindrance than help; what we need is to see our existing civilisation +as +the complex struggle and resultant of all these types and their +developments to-day. So far, therefore, from leaving, as at present, +these simple occupational types to the anthropologist, or at best +giving +him some scant hospitality within our city museum, we are learning to +see how it is at one time the eager miner, or the conservative +shepherd, +or at another the adventurous fisher or hunter who comes concretely +upon +the first plane of national, imperial or international politics, and +who +awakens new strife among these. We not only begin to see, but the +soldier frankly tells us, how the current sports of youth, and the +unprecedented militarism of the past century, are alike profoundly +connected with the hunting world. Hence the hope of peace lies not +only, +as most at present think in the civilised and civilising development of +international law, or of culture intercourse, excellent though these +are, but also in a fuller and complete return to nature than has been +this recent and persistent obsession of our governing classes with the +hunter world almost alone; in short, in adding the gentler, yet wider, +experiences of the naturalist, the sterner experiences of other +occupations also. Nor does such elementary recognition of these main +social formations content us; their local differentiations must be +noted +and compared—a comprehensive regional survey, therefore, which does +justice to each local variety of these great types; speaking henceforth +of no mere abstract "hunter," but of the specific hunting types of each +climate, and distinguishing these as clearly as do our own milder +sportsmen of deer-forest and the turnip field from themselves and from +each other. After such needed surveys in detail, we may, indeed must, +compare and generalise them.</p> +<p>Similarly for the pasture, the forest. Every tourist in this country +is +struck by the contrast of Swiss towns and cities with our own, and +notes +<span class="pagenum">p. 62</span> too +that on the Swiss pasture he finds a horde of cattle, +while in Scotland or Yorkshire he left a flock of sheep. And not only +the tourist, but the historian or the economist too often fail to see +how Galashiels or Bradford are developments of the wool hamlet, now +familiar to many in R.L. Stevenson's native Swanston. Again, not only +Swiss wealth, but Swiss character and institutions, go back essentially +to the high pasture and the well-filled byre. That this rich Swiss +cow-pasture rests on limestone, and the poor Scottish sheep-grazing +upon +comparatively unmouldering and impermeable gneiss, is no mere matter of +geologist's detail; it affords in each case the literal and concrete +foundation-stone of the subsequent evolution of each region and +population, and this not only in material and economic development, but +even in higher and subtler outcomes, aesthetic, intellectual and +moral.<a name="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> +It is for such reasons that one must labour and re-labour this +geographic and determinist aspect of sociology, and this for no merely +scientific reason, but also for practical ones. Nowhere perhaps have +more good and generous souls considered how to better the condition of +their people than in Swiss, or Irish, or Scottish valleys; yet it is +one +main reason of the continual failure of all such movements, and of such +minds in the wider world as well, that they do not first acquaint +themselves with the realities of nature and labour sufficiently to +appreciate that the fundamental—I do not say the supreme—question is: +what can be got out of limestone, and what can be got out of gneiss? +Hence the rare educative value of such a concrete sociological diagram +and model as was the Swiss Village at the Paris Exposition of 1900, for +here geographic and economic knowledge and insight were expressed with +artistic skill and sympathy as perhaps never before. Only as similar +object-lessons are worked out for other countries, can we adequately +learn, much less popularly teach, how from nature comes "rustics," and +from this comes civics. But civics and rustics make up the field of +politics; they are the concrete of which politics become the +abstract—commonly the too remotely abstract.</p> +<p>For final illustration, let us descend to the sea-level. There +again, +taking the fisher, each regional type must be traced in his +contribution +to his town. Take for instance the salmon fisher of Norway, the whaler +of Dundee, the herring-fisher of Yarmouth, the cod-fisher of +Newfoundland, the coral fisher of the Ægean; each is a definite +varietal +type, one developing or at least tending to develop characteristic +normal family relations, and corresponding social outcomes in +institutions; in which again the appropriate qualities and defects must +be expressed, even as is the quality and twist of the hemp in the +strength of the cable, or as is the chemistry and the microscopic +structure of the alloy in the efficiency of the great gun.<span class="pagenum">p. 63</span> +Our neighbouring learned societies and museums geographical, geological +and the rest, are thus avowedly and consciously so many winter shelters +in which respective groups of regional surveyors tell their tales and +compare their observations, in which they meet to compare their +generalisations from their own observations made in the field with +those +made by others. So it must increasingly be for this youngest of +societies. We may, we should, know best our Thames valley, our London +basin, our London survey; but the progress of our science implies as +increasingly varied and thorough an inquiry into rustic and civic +regions and occupations and resultants throughout the whole world +present and past, as does the corresponding world survey with our +geologic neighbours.</p> +<p>I plead then for a sociological survey, rustic and civic, region by +region, and insist in the first place upon the same itinerant field +methods of notebook and camera, even for museum collections and the +rest, as those of the natural sciences. The dreary manuals which have +too long discredited those sciences in our schools, are now giving +place +to a new and fascinating literature of first-hand nature study. +Similarly, those too abstract manuals of civics which are at present +employed in schools<a name="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> +must be replaced by concrete and regional ones, +their abstract counsels of political or personal perfection thus also +giving place to a corresponding regional idealism which may then be +supplemented from other regions as far as needs demand and +circumstances +allow.</p> +<h3><br /> +</h3> +<h3>C—GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINISM AND ITS DIFFICULTIES</h3> +<p>To interpret then our tangle of ideas, both of the city and its +citizens, let us now bring more fully to our transverse valley +sections, +and to each occupation separately, the geographical view-point which we +have found of service to elucidate the development of towns and cities +upon its longitudinal <span class="pagenum">p. 64</span> slope. But this is neither more nor +less than the method of Montesquieu, whose classic "Esprit des Lois" +anticipates and initiates so much of that of later writers—Ritter, +Buckle, Taine, or Le Play. Once more then let their common, or rather +their resultant, doctrine be stated in terms expressing the latest of +these more fully than the first. Given the region, its character +determines the nature of the fundamental occupation, and this in turn +essentially determines the type of family. The nature and method of the +occupation must normally determine the mode of its organisation, e.g., +the rise and character of a specialised directive class, and the nature +of these occupational chiefs as contrasted with the people and with +each +other. Similarly, the types of family tend to develop their appropriate +types of institutions, e.g., for justice, guidance, and of course +notably in response to social environment as regards defence or attack.</p> +<p>Thus at this point in fact we seem to be pressing upon the student +of +sociology the essential argument of geographical and evolutionary +determinism, in fact inviting him to adopt a view, indeed to commit +himself to a method, which may be not only foreign to his habits, but +repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy +of +this determinist view of society for at least the past five generations +has not carried general conviction, why raise so controversial a +suggestion, in the guise too of a method professing to harmonise all +comers? Yet this is advisedly done; and as no one will deny some civil +importance to geographical factors, let patience be granted to examine +this aspect of the city's map and shield, and to get from it what it +can +teach, under the present assurance to the philosophic and idealist +critic that his view of other factors, higher and deeper, as supreme in +human life, and therefore in city making, will not be forgotten, nor +excluded from consideration when we come to them. All that is really +insisted upon here is that if anything of naturalistic method of +evolutionary conception is to be permitted at all, we must obviously +proceed from this simple towards the more complex, and so begin with it +here and now.</p> +<p>It is the appropriate slope or steppe, the needful rainfall, that +conditions the growth of grass, this which conditions the presence of +herds or flocks, and these again which determine the very existence of +shepherds. These granted then, not only do the pastoral arts and crafts +arise, but the patriarchal type and family develop, and this not only +with their hospitality and other virtues, with their nomadic +tendencies, +at any rate, their unfixed land-tenure, very different from the +peasant's, but their slow and skilful <span class="pagenum">p. 65</span> diplomacy (till the +pasture is bared or grown again, as the negotiator's interests +incline). +The patriarch in his venerable age, the caravaneer in his nomadic and +exploring youth, his disciplined maturity, thus naturally develop as +different types of chief and leader; and it is therefore not until this +stage, when all is ready for the entry of Abraham or Job, of Mohammed +the camel-driver, or Paul the tent-maker, that any real controversy can +arise between the determinist and his opponent, between the democratic +and the great-man theories of history, towards which these respectively +incline.<a name="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> +And at that stage, may not the controversy stimulate a +fruitful analysis? After all, what is the claim of free-will but to +select among the factors afforded by a given set of circumstances? And +the utmost stretch of determinism to which geography and civics may +lead +us obviously cannot prove the negative of this. But whether the +psychologic origins of new ideals be internal to the mind of genius, or +imparted by some external source, is a matter obviously beyond the +scope +of either the geographer or the historian of civics to settle. Enough +surely for both controversialists if we use such a means of tabulating +facts as to beg the question for neither view; and still better if we +can present the case of each without injustice to either, nay, to each +with its clearness increased by the sharp edge of contrast. If the +geographical determinist thesis on one hand, and its ethical and +psychological antithesis on the other, can thus clearly be defined and +balanced, their working equilibrium is at hand, even should their +complete synthesis remain beyond us.</p> +<br /> +<h3>D—NEED OF ABSTRACT METHOD FOR NOTATION AND FOR INTERPRETATION</h3> +<p>Not only such general geographical studies, but such social +interpretations as those above indicated have long been in progress: +witness the labours of whole schools of historians and critics, among +whom Montsquieu and his immediate following, or in more recent times +Buckle and Taine, are but the most prominent; witness the works of +geographers like Humboldt, Ritter, Reclus, or of developmental +technologists like Boucher de Perthes and regional economists like Le +Play. The main lines of a concrete and evolutionary sociology (or at +<span class="pagenum">p. 66</span> least +<i>sociography</i>) have thus been laid down for us; but the +task now before us, in our time, in such a society as this—and indeed +in such a paper as the present one—its that of extracting from all this +general teaching its essential scientific method, one everywhere latent +and implicit, but nowhere fully explicit, or at least adequately +systematised.</p> +<p>It is in fact only as we can agree upon some definite and orderly +method +of description that our existing literature of social surveys can be +adequately compared or new ones co-operatively undertaken. Hence the +importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have +so +largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means +of +escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static) +presentments of the general methodology of social science into which +sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely +ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this +would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, as +indeed also the comparative unattractiveness of our studies to the body +of specialist scientific workers, not even excepting those within what +we consider sociological fields.</p> +<p>The history of each science, be it mathematics or astronomy, botany, +zoology or geology, shows us that it is not enough to have the +intelligent observer, or even the interpretative thinker with his +personally expressed doctrine. This must be clearly crystallised into a +definite statement, method, proposition, "law" or theory, stated in +colourless impersonal form before it is capable of acceptance and +incorporation into the general body of science. But while astronomer +and +geologist and naturalist can and do describe both the observational +results and their general conceptions in literary form, requiring from +the ordinary reader but the patience to master a few unfamiliar terms +and ideas, they also carry on their work by help of definite and +orderly +technical methods, descriptive and comparative, analytic and synthetic. +These, as far as possible, have to be crystallised beyond their mere +verbal statement into formulae, into tabular and graphic presentments, +and thus not only acquire greater clearness of statement, but become +more and more active agencies of inquiry—in fact, become literal +<i>thinking-machines</i>. But while the mathematician has his notations +and +his calculus, the geographer and geologist their maps, reliefs and +sections, the naturalist his orderly classificatory methods, it has +been +the misfortune and delay of political economy, and no small cause of +that "notorious discord and sterility" with which Comte reproached it, +that <span class="pagenum">p. 67</span> +its cultivators have so commonly sought to dispense with +the employment of any definite scientific notations; while even its +avowed statisticians, in this country especially, have long resisted +the +consistent use of graphic methods.</p> +<p>I submit, therefore, for discussion, as even more urgent and +pressing +than that of the general and abstract methodology of the social +sciences, the problem of elaborating a concrete descriptive method +readily applicable to the study and comparison of human societies, to +cities therefore especially. To do justice to this subject, not only +the +descriptive labours of anthropologists, but much of the literature of +sociology would have to be gone through from the "Tableau Economique" +of +the Physiocratic School to the "Sociological Tables" of Mr. Spencer, +and +still more fruitfully to more recent writers. Among these, besides here +recognising specially the work of Mr. Booth and its stimulus to younger +investigators, I would acknowledge the helpful and suggestive impulse +from the group of social geographers which has arisen from the +initiative of Le Play<a name="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a>, +and whose classification, especially in its +later forms<a name="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a>, +cannot but be of interest and value to everyone whose +thought on social questions is not afloat upon the ocean of the +abstract +without chart or bearings.</p> +<p>Yet with all respect to each and all these classifications and +methods, +indeed with cordially acknowledge personal obligation and indebtedness +to them from first to last, no one of these seems fully satisfactory +for +the present purpose; and it is therefore needful to go into the matter +afresh for ourselves, though utilising these as fully as we can.</p> +<br /> +<h3>E—THE CITY-COMPLEX AND ITS USUAL ANALYSIS</h3> +<p>In the everyday world, in the city as we find it, what is the +working +classification of ideas, the method of thought of its citizens? That +the citizens no more think of themselves as using any particular +sociological method than did M. Jourdain of talking prose does not +really matter, save that it makes our observation, both of them and it, +easier and more trustworthy.</p> +<p>They are speaking and thinking for the most part of <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_68'></a>p. 68</span> People +and of Affairs; much less of places. In the category of People, we +observe that individuals, self and others, and this in interest, +perhaps +even more than in interests, commonly take precedence of groups. +Institutions and Government are, however, of general interest, the +state +being much more prominent than is the church; the press, for many, +acting as the modern substitute for the latter. In the world of +Affairs, +commerce takes precedence of industry, while sport runs hard upon both. +War, largely viewed by its distant spectators as the most vivid form of +sport, also bulks largely. Peace is not viewed as a positive ideal, but +essentially as a passive state, at best, of non-war, more generally of +latent war. Central among places are the bank, the market (in its +financial forms before the material ones). Second to these stand the +mines then the factories, etc.; and around these the fixed or floating +fortresses of defence. Of homes, that of the individual alone is +seriously considered, at most those of his friends, his "set," his +peers, but too rarely even of the street, much less the neighbourhood, +at least for their own sake, as distinguished from their reaction upon +individual and family status or comfort.</p> +<p>This set of views is obviously not easy of precise analysis of exact +classification. In broad outline, however, a summary may be made, and +even tabulated as follows:—</p> +<h4>THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES.</h4> +<table summary="THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 707px; height: 218px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">PEOPLE</td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">AFFAIRS</td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">PLACES</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(a) +INDIVIDUALS (Self and others).</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(a)COMMERCE +INDUSTRY, etc.<br /> +SPORT.</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(a) +MARKET, BANK, etc.FACTORY, MINE, etc.</td> + + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(b) +GOVERNMENT(S)<br /> +Temporal and Spiritual<br /> +(State and Church).</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(b) WAR +and Peace<br /> +(Latent War).</td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;">(b) FORT, +FIELD, etc.</td> + </tr> + + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>Next note how from the everyday world of action, there arises a +corresponding thought-world also. This has, <span class="pagenum"><a name='p_69'></a>p. 69</span>of course, no less +numerous +and varied elements, with its resultantly complex local colour; But a +selection will suffice, of which the headings may be printed below +those +of the preceding scheme, to denote how to the objective elements there +are subjective elements corresponding—literal reflections upon the +pools of memory—the slowly flowing stream of tradition. Thus the +extended diagram, its objective elements expressed in yet more general +terms, may now be read anew (noting that mirror images are fully +reversed).</p> +<br /> +<table + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 490px; height: 288px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="Town and schools"> + <tbody> + <tr align="center"> + <td><br /> + </td> + <td>PEOPLE </td> + <td> AFFAIRS</td> + <td>PLACES<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr align="center"> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2">"TOWN" </td> + <td>(a) INDIVIDUALS </td> + <td>(a) OCCUPATIONS</td> + <td>(a) WORK-PLACES<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr align="center"> + <td>(b) INSTITUTIONS </td> + <td> (b) WAR</td> + <td>(b) WAR-PLACES<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" + style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">"SCHOOLS"</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(b) +HISTORY ("Constitutional")</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(b) +STATISTICS AND HISTORY<br /> +("Military")</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(b) +GEOGRAPHY</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(a) +BIOGRAPHY</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(a) +ECONOMICS</td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(a) +TOPOGRAPHY</td> + </tr> + + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>Here then we have that general relation of the town life and its +"schools," alike of thought and of education, which must now be fully +investigated.</p> +<p>Such diagrammatic presentments, while of course primarily for the +purpose of clear expression and comparison, are also frequently +suggestive—by "inspection," as geometers say—of relations not +previously noticed. In both ways, we may see more clearly how prevalent +ideas and doctrines have arisen as "reflections upon" the life of +action, and even account for their qualities and their defects—their +partial truth or their corresponding inadequacy, according to our own +appreciative or depreciative standpoint. Thus as regards "People," in +the first column we see expressed briefly how to (a) the individual +life, with the corresponding vivid interest in biography, corresponds +the "great man theory" of history. Conversely with <i>(b)</i> alone is +associated the insistance upon institutional developments as the main +factor. Passing to the middle column, that of "Affairs," we may note in +connection with <i>(b)</i> say the rise of statistics in association +with +the needs of war, a point connected with its too empiric character; or +note again, a too common converse weakness of economic theory, its +inadequate inductive <span class="pagenum">p. 70</span> verification. Or finally, in the column +of "Place," the long weakness of geography as an educational subject, +yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated. We might +in +fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of +ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less +than +those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly +unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent +oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring +elements of the manifold "Town" life from which they derive and +survive. +Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate +problem—that of understanding "Town" and its "School" in their origins +and simplest relations.</p> +<br /> +<h3>F—PROPOSED METHODICAL ANALYSIS</h3> +<h4>(1) THE TOWN</h4> +<p>More fully to understand this two-fold development of Town and +School we +have first of all apparently to run counter to the preceding popular +view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that +reached from the side of science. This, as we have already so fully +insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally <i>replacing</i> +People +and Affairs in our scheme above.</p> +<p>Starting then once more with the simple biological formula:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>ENVIRONMENT ... CONDITIONS ... ORGANISM</p> +</div> +<p>this has but to be applied and defined by the social geographer to +become</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>REGION ... OCCUPATION ... FAMILY-type and Developments</p> +</div> +<p>which summarises precisely that doctrine of Montesquieu and his +successors already insisted on. Again, in but slight variation from Le +Play's simplest phrasing <i>("Lieu, travail, famille")</i> we have</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK</p> +</div> +<p>It is from this simple and initial social formula that we have now +to +work our way to a fuller understanding of Town and School. <span class="pagenum">p. 71</span> +Immediately, therefore, this must be traced upward towards its +complexities. For Place, it is plain, is no mere topographic site. +Work, +conditioned as it primarily is by natural advantages, is thus really +first of all <i>place-work</i>. Arises the field or garden, the port, +the +mine, the workshop, in fact the <i>work-place</i>, as we may simply +generalise it; while, further, beside this arise the dwellings, the +<i>folk-place</i>.</p> +<p>Nor are these by any means all the elements we are accustomed to +lump +together into Town. As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold +complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must +carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of +this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use. +Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ +and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their +inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our +common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as +economists +have alternately done—too literally losing or shirking essentials of +Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk +and +Place also.</p> +<p>Tabular and schematic presentments, however, such as those to which +we +are proceeding, are apt to be less simple and satisfactory to reader +than to writer; and this even when in oral exposition the very same +diagram has been not only welcomed as clear, but seen and felt to be +convincing. The reason of this difficulty is that with the spoken +exposition the audience sees the diagram grow upon the blackboard; +whereas to produce anything of the same effect upon the page, it must +be +printed at several successive stages of development. Thus our initial +formula,</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK</p> +</div> +<p>readily develops into</p> +<span style="margin-left: 26em;">FOLK</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">PLACE-WORK + WORK + FOLK-WORK</span><br /> + (Natural +advantages) +(Occupation)<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">PLACE</span><br /> +<p>This again naturally develops into a regular table, of which the <span class="pagenum">p. 72</span> filling +up of some of the squares has been already suggested above, +and that of the remaining ones will be intelligible on inspection:—</p> +<br /> +<table + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 644px; height: 108px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="place work folk"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="1" rowspan="1"><span + style="margin-left: 1.5em;">PLACE FOLK <br /> + </span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">("Natives") </span></td> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="1" rowspan="1"> WORK-FOLK<br /> +("Producers")</td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"> FOLK</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">PLACE-WORK + </span></td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">WORK</span> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> FOLK-WORK</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">PLACE</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> WORK-PLACE </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> FOLK-PLACE</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p>So complex is the idea of even the simplest Town—even in such a +rustic +germ as the "farm-town" of modern Scottish parlance, the <i>ton</i> of +place-names without number.</p> +<p>The varying development of the Folk into social classes or castes +night +next be traced, and the influence and interaction of all the various +factors of Place, Work, and Family tabulated. Suffice it here, however, +for the present to note that such differentiation does take place, +without entering into the classification and comparison of the protean +types of patrician and plebeian throughout geography and history.</p> +<br /> +<h3>G—ANALYSIS CONTINUED.—(2) THE SCHOOL</h3> +<p>Once and again we have noted how from the everyday life of +action—the +Town proper of our terminology—there arises the corresponding +subjective world—the <i>Schools</i> of thought, which may express +itself +sooner or later in schools of education. The types of people, their +kinds and styles of work, their whole environment, all become +represented in the mind of the community, and these react upon the +individuals, their activities, their place itself. Thus (the more +plainly the more the community is a simple and an isolated one, but in +appreciable measure everywhere and continually) there have obviously +arisen local turns of thought and modes of speech, ranging from shades +of accept and idiom to distinctive dialect or language. Similarly, +there +is a characteristic variety of occupational activity, a style of +workmanship, a way of doing business. There are distinctive <span class="pagenum">p. 73</span> +manners and customs—there is, in short, a certain recognisable +likeness, it may be an indefinably subtle or an unmistakably broad and +general one, which may be traced in faces and costumes, in tongue and +literature, in courtesy and in conflict, in business and in policy, in +street and in house, from hovel to palace, from prison to cathedral. +Thus it is that every folk comes to have its own ways, and every town +its own school.</p> +<p>While the complex social medium has thus been acquiring its +characteristic form and composition, a younger generation has been +arising. In all ways and senses, Heredity is commonly more marked than +variation—especially when, as in most places at most times, such great +racial, occupational, environmental transformations occur as those of +modern cities. In other words, the young folk present not only an +individual continuity with their organic predecessors which is heredity +proper, but with their social predecessors also. The elements of +organic +continuity, which we usually think of first of all as organic though of +course psychic also, are conveniently distinguished as the +<i>inheritance</i>—a term in fact which the biologist seeks to deprive +of +its common economic and social senses altogether, leaving for these the +term <i>heritage</i>, material or immaterial alike. This necessary +distinction between the inheritance, bodily and mental, and the +heritage, economic and social, obviously next requires further +elaboration, and with this further precision of language also. For the +present, let us leave the term heritage to the economist for the +material wealth with which he is primarily concerned, and employ the +term <i>tradition</i> for these immaterial and distinctively social +elements +we are here specially considering. This in fact is no new proposal, but +really little more than an acceptance of ordinary usage. Broadly +speaking, tradition is in the life of the community what memory is for +its individual units. The younger generation, then, not only inherits +an +organic and a psychic diathesis; not only has transmitted to it the +accumulations, instruments and land of its predecessors, but grows up +in +their tradition also. The importance of imitation in this process, a +matter of common experience, has been given the fullest sociological +prominence, by M. Tarde especially.<a name="FNanchor_9"></a><a + href="#Footnote_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> Thanks to these and other +convergent lines of thought, we no longer consent to look at the +acquirement of the social tradition as a matter requiring to be imposed +upon reluctant youth almost entirely from without, and are learning +anew +as of old, with the simplest and the most developed peoples, the +barbarians and the Greeks, to recognise and respect, and, if it may be, +to nourish the process of self-instruction, viewed as normal +accompaniment of each developing being throughout the phases of its +<span class="pagenum">p. 74</span> +organic life, the stages of its social life. Upon the many +intermediate degrees of advance and decline, however, between these two +extremes of civilisation, specific institutions for the instruction of +youth arise, each in some way an artificial substitute, or at least a +would-be accelerant, for the apprenticeship of imitation in the school +of experience and the community's tradition, which we term a school in +the restricted and pedagogic sense. This whole discussion, however, has +been in order to explain and to justify the present use of the term +"School" in that wide sense in which the historian of art or +thought—the sociologist in fact—has ever used the term, while yet +covering the specialised pedagogic schools of all kinds also.</p> +<p>Once more, then, and in the fullest sense, every folk has its own +tradition, every town its school.</p> +<p>We need not here discriminate these unique and characteristic +elements +to which the art-historians—say of Venice and of Florence, of Barbizon +or Glasgow—specially attend from those most widely distributed ones, in +which the traditions and schools of all towns within the same +civilisation broadly agree. Indeed, even the most widely distributed of +these—say from Roman law to modern antiseptic surgery—arose as local +schools before they became general ones.</p> +<p>Similarly for the general social tradition. The fundamental +occupations +and their division of labour, their differentiation in detail and their +various interactions up to our own day, at first separately considered, +are now seen to be closely correlated with the status of woman; while +all these factors determine not only the mode of union of the parents, +but their relation to the children, the constitution of the family, +with +which the mode of transmission of property is again thoroughly +interwoven.</p> +<br /> +<h3>H—TOWN AND SCHOOL COMPARED</h3> +<br /><span class="pagenum"><a name='p_75'></a>p. 75</span> +<table summary="Town and school compared" + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 380px; height: 89px;" + border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td + style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><big>"TOWN"</big></td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td + style="text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">FOLK + <br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"> +WORK <br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">PLACE</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> + +<hr style="width: 35%; height: 2px;" /><br /> +<table summary="School comparison" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 374px; height: 88px;" + border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">SURVEY</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">CRAFT-KNOWLEDGE</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><big>"SCHOOL"</big></td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"><br /> + </td> + <td + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">CUSTOM</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p>We may now summarise and tabulate our comparison of Town and +School,<a name="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> +and on the schema (<a href='#p_75'>p. 75</a>) it will be seen <span class="pagenum">p. 76</span> +that each element of the second is printed in the position of a +mirror-reflection of the first. This gives but the merest outline, +which +is ready, however, to be applied in various ways and filled up +accordingly. A step towards this is made in the next and fuller version +of the scheme (<a href='#p_77'>p. 77</a>). It will be noted in this +that the lower +portion of the diagram, that of School, is more fully filled up than is +the upper. This is partly for clearness, but partly also to suggest +that +main elements in the origins of natural sciences and geography, of +economics and social science, are not always so clearly realised as +they +might be. The preceding diagram, elaborating that of Place, Work, Folk +(<a href='#p_75'>p. 75</a>), +however, at once suggests these. Other features of the +scheme will appear on inspection; and the reader will find it of +interest and suggestiveness to prepare a blank schedule and fill it up +for himself.</p> +<p>These two forms of the same diagram, the simple and the more +developed, +thus suggest comparison with the scheme previously outlined, that of +People, Affairs, Places (<a href='#p_68'>p. 68</a>), and is now more +easily reconciled +with this; the greater prominence popularly given to People and Affairs +being expressed upon the present geographic and evolutionary scheme by +the ascending position and more emphatic printing (or by viewing the +diagram as a transparency from the opposite side of the leaf).</p> +<p>In the column of People, the deepening of custom into morals is +indicated. Emphasis is also placed upon the development of law in +connection with the rise of governing classes, and its tendency to +dominate the standards previously taken as morals—in fact, that +tendency of moral law to become static law, a process of which history +is full.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name='p_77'></a>p. 77</span> +<table summary="Governing classes" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 536px; height: 354px;" + border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">GOVERNING +CLASSES</span><br /> +/\<br /> +|<br /> + <span style="font-weight: bold;">Family types</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">INDUSTRIES</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">REGION<br /> +|<br /> + </span></td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="text-decoration: underline;">(WORK-PLACE)</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">FOLK-PLACE<br /> + <span style="font-weight: bold;">(TOWN)</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">\/<br /> + <span style="font-weight: bold;">SURVEY</span><br /> +! - LANDSCAPE<br /> +? - TERRITORY<br /> +|<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">(<span + style="text-decoration: underline;">CRAFT-TRADITION</span>)<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">("SCHOOL")</span><br /> +(FOLK-LORE)<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">\/<br /> +[NATURAL SCIENCES]<br /> +|<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">[</span><span + style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;">APPLIED SCIENCES</span><span + style="font-weight: bold;">]</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">[SOCIAL SCIENCES]</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">\/<br /> +GEOGRAPHY<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold;">ECONOMICS</span><br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"><span + style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">CUSTOM MORALS +& LAWS</span><br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<br /> +><br /> +><br /> +<p>In the present as in the past, we may also note upon the scheme the +different lines of Place, Work and Folk on which respectively develop +the natural sciences, the applied or <span class="pagenum">p. 78</span> technical sciences, and +finally the social sciences, and the generalising of these respectively.</p> +<p>Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its +literal +and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that +aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural +sciences—but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they +really are, each a <i>geolysis</i>—so these sciences or geolyses, +again, are +tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of +the evolution of the cosmos.</p> +<p>Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the +evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic +process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt +to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we +cannot +really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant; +or +Lister and his antiseptic surgery better than as the shepherd, with his +tar-box by his side; or Kelvin or any other electrician, as the +thinking +smith, and so on. The old story of geometry, as "<i>ars metrike</i>," +and of +its origin from land-surveying, for which the Egyptian hieroglyph is +said to be that of "rope stretching," in fact, applies far more fully +than most realise, and the history of every science, of course already +thus partially written, will bear a far fuller application of this +principle. In short, the self-taught man, who is ever the most fertile +discoverer, is made in the true and fundamental school—that of +experience.</p> +<p>The need of abbreviating the recapitulation of this, however, sooner +or +later develops the school in the pedagogic sense, and its many +achievements, its many failures in accomplishing this, might here be +more fully analysed.</p> +<p>Still more evident is this process in the column of Folk. From the +mother's knee and the dame's school of the smallest folk-place, the +townlet or hamlet, <i>ton</i> or home, up to the royal and priestly +school of +the law of ancient capitals, or from the "humanities" of a mediaeval +university to the "Ecole de Droit" of a modern metropolis, the series +of +essential evolutionary stages may be set down. Or in our everyday +present, <span class="pagenum">p. 79</span> +the rise of schools of all kinds, primary, +secondary, higher up to the current movement towards university +colleges, and from these to civic and regional universities, might +again +be traced. The municipalisation of education is thus in fact expressed, +and so on.</p> +<p>Leaving the schools in the main to speak for themselves of their +advancing and incipient uses, a word may be said upon the present lines.</p> +<p>As a first and obvious application of this mode of geographic study +of +cities appears the criticism, and; when possible, the amendment of the +city's plan, the monotonous rectangularity of the American city, and +the +petty irregularity more common in our own, being alike uneconomic and +inartistic because ungeographic, irrational because irregional. With +the +improvement of communications, the physicist's point of view thus +introduced—that of the economy of the energies of the community—is +only beginning; the economy of fuel, the limitation of smoke and fogs +being symptoms of this and pointing to a more economic organisation of +industrial activities generally. But this next carries with it the +improved efficiency of the producers themselves, with whom, however, +the +standpoint changes from the mere economisation of physical energies to +the higher economy of organic evolution. The convention of traditional +economics, that the productive capacity of the actual labourer is the +sole concern of his science, thus gives place to what is at once the +original conception of economics and the evolutionist one, viz., that +the success of industry is ultimately measured neither by its return in +wealth of the capitalist nor in money wages of the labourer, nor even +by +both put together, but in the results of industry upon the concrete +environment, the family budget, the home, and the corresponding state +of +development of the family—its deterioration or progress. The +organisation of industrial groups or of representative institutions +found conducive to the well-being and progress of these prime civic +units, the families, may now be traced into its highest outcome in city +government. The method of analysis and graphic statement thus outlined +may be shown to be even capable of useful application towards the +statement of the best<span class="pagenum">p. 80</span> arguments of both progressive and +moderate parties in city politics.</p> +<p>Passing from Politics to Culture. Culture, the needs of this also +become +clearer; each community developing a similar general series of culture +institutions, from the simplest presentation of its geography, +landscape and architecture, to the complex development of industrial, +technical and scientific instruction; and for provision also for the +institutions of custom and ethic in school, law, and church. Just as +place, occupation, and family are intimately connected in the practical +world, so their respective culture institutions must more and more be +viewed as a whole. Civic improvers will find their ideals more +realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social +development of which all the departments of action and thought are in +organic relation, be it of health or disease. The view of theoretic +civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied +sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social +survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed +in many cities being begun.</p> +<br /> +<h3>I—DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL, AND ITS REACTION UPON TOWN</h3> +<p>The reactions of the School upon the Town are observed in practice +to be +of very different values;—how are these differences to be explained?</p> +<p>From the very first the school is essentially one of memory, the +impress +of the town-life, even at its best and highest individual quality and +impressiveness, as in the work of a great master, the observation and +memory of which may long give his stamp to the work of his followers. +The fading of this into dullness, yet the fixing of it as a convention, +is familiar to all in arts and crafts, but is no less real in the +general lapse of appreciation of environment. Most serious of all is +the +fixation of habit and custom, so that at length "custom lies upon us +with a weight heavy as death, and deep <span class="pagenum">p. 81</span> almost as life." This +continual fixation of fashionable standards as moral ones is thus a +prime explanation of each reformer's difficulty in making his moral +standard the fashionable one, and also, when his doctrine has +succeeded, +of the loss of life and mummification of form which it so speedily +undergoes.</p> +<p>Of conventional "education," considered as the memorisation of past +records, however authoritative and classic, the decay is thus +intelligible and plain, and the repetition of criticisms already +adequately made need not therefore detain us here.</p> +<p>For this process is there no remedy? Science here offers +herself—with +senses open to observe, and intellect awake to interpret. Starting with +Place, she explores and surveys it, from descriptive travel books at +very various levels of accuracy, she works on to atlas and gazetteer, +and beyond these to world-globe and "Geographie Universelle." With her +charts and descriptions we are now more ready for a journey; with her +maps and plans we may know our own place as never before; nay, rectify +it, making the rough places plain and the crooked straight; even +restoration may come within our powers.</p> +<p>Similarly as regards Work. Though mere empiric craft-mastery dies +with +the individual, and fails with his successors, may we not perpetuate +the +best of this? A museum of art treasures, a collection of the choicest +examples of all times and lands, will surely raise us from our low +level +of mechanical toil; nay, with these carefully observed, copied, +memorised, and duly examined upon, we shall be able to imitate them, to +reproduce their excellencies, even to adapt them to our everyday work. +To the art museum we have thus but to add a "School of Design," to have +an output of more and less skilled copyists. The smooth and polished +successes of this new dual institution, responding as they do to the +mechanical elements of modern work and of the mechanical worker-mind, +admitting also of ready multiplications as patterns, ensure the wide +extension of the prevalent style of imitating past styles, designing +patchwork of these; and even admit of its scientific reduction to a +definite series of grades, which imitative youth may easily pass +onwards +from the age of rudest innocence to that of art-knowledge and +certificated art-mastery. Our School of Design thus becomes a School of +Art, a length a College, dominating the instruction of the nation, to +the satisfaction not only of its promoters, but of the general public +and their representatives, so that annual votes justly increase. +Lurking +discontent may now and then express itself, but is for practical +purposes negligible.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span> +The example of art accumulation and art instruction is thus +naturally followed in other respects. For the commercial information of +the public, varied representative exhibitions—primarily, therefore, +international ones—naturally suggest themselves; while so soon as +expansion of imperial and colonial interests comes upon the first +plane, +a corresponding permanent Exhibition is naturally instituted. But when +thus advancing commercial instruction, we must also recognise the +claims +of industry in all its crafts and guilds, and in fact the technical +instruction of the community generally. Hence the past, present, and +promised rise of technical institutes upon increasing scales of +completeness.</p> +<p>In the rise of such a truly encylopædic system of schools, the +university cannot permanently be forgotten. Since from the outset we +have recognised the prime elements of the school in observation and +memory, the testing of these by examinations—written, oral, and +practical—however improvable in detail, must be fairly recognised, and +the examining body or university has therefore to be adopted as the +normal crown of our comprehensive educational system. Teaching, however +is found to be increasingly necessary, especially to examination, and +for this the main field left open is in our last column, that of +People. +Their lore of the past, whether of sacred or classical learning, their +history, literature, and criticism, are already actively promoted, or +at +any rate adequately endowed at older seats of learning; while the +materials, resources, conditions and atmosphere are here of other +kinds. +Hence the accessibility of the new University of London to the study of +sociology, as yet alone among its peers.</p> +<p>Hence, beside the great London, maritime, commercial and industrial, +residential and governmental, there has been growing up, tardily +indeed, +as compared with smaller cities, yet now all the more massively and +completely, a correspondingly comprehensive system of schools; so that +the historic development of South Kensington within the last half +century, from International Exhibitions of Work, Natural History +Museums +of Place onwards to its present and its contemplated magnitude, affords +a striking exemplification of the present view and its classification, +which is all the more satisfactory since this development has been a +gradual accretion.</p> +<p>Enough then has been said to show that the rise of schools, their +qualities and their defects, are all capable of treatment upon the +present lines; but if so, may we not go farther, and ask by what means +does thought and life cope with their defects, especially that fixation +of memory, even at its best, that evil side of examination and the +like, +which we often call Chinese in the bad sense, but which we see arises +so +naturally everywhere?</p> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum">p. 83</span> +<h3> J—FROM "SCHOOL" TO "CLOISTER"</h3> +<p>The preceding view is, as yet, too purely determinist. The due place +of +ideals, individual and corporate, in their reaction upon the function +and the structure of the city, and even upon its material environment, +has next to be recognised. For where the town merely makes and fixes +its +industry and makes its corresponding schools, where its habits and +customs become its laws, even its morality, the community, as we have +just seen, sinks into routine, and therefore decay. To prevent this a +twofold process of thought is ever necessary, critical and +constructive. +What are these? On the one hand, a continual and critical selection +among the ideas derived from experience, and the formulation of these +as +Ideals: and further, the organisation of these into a larger and larger +whole of thought; in fact, a Synthesis of a new kind. This critical +spirit it is which produced the prophets of Israel, the questioning of +Socrates, and so on, to the journalistic and other criticism of life +to-day. The corresponding constructive endeavour is now no mere School +of traditional learning or of useful information. It is one of science +in a new and reorganised sense; one of philosophy also, one of ideals +above all.</p> +<p>As from the Schools of the Law, as over against these, arise the +prophets, so from the technical and applied sciences, the descriptive +natural sciences, should arise the scientific thinkers, reinterpreting +each his field of knowledge and giving us the pure sciences—pure +geometry henceforth contrasted with mere land surveying, morphology +with +mere anatomy, and so on; while instead of the mere concrete +encyclopædia +from Pliny or Gesner to Diderot or Chambers, vast subjective +reorganisations of knowledge, philosophic systems, now appear. +Similarly, the mere observations of the senses and their records in +memory become transformed into the images of the poet, the imagery too +of the artist, for art proper is only thus born. That mere imitation of +nature, which so commonly in the graphic arts (though happily but +rarely +in music) has been mistaken for <span class="pagenum">p. 84</span> art, thus modestly returns to +its proper place—that of the iconography of descriptive science.</p> +<p>Thus from the Schools of all kinds of knowledge, past and present, +we +pass into the no less varied Cloisters of contemplation, meditation, +imagination. With the historian we might explore the Cloisters of the +past, built at one time from the current ideals of the Good, at another +of the True, at another of the Beautiful; indeed, in widely varying +measures and proportions from all of these. How far each of these now +expresses the present, how far it may yet serve the future, is +obviously a question of questions, yet for that very reason one +exceeding our present limits. Enough if in city life the historic place +of what is here generalised under this antique name of Cloister be here +recognised; and in some measure the actual need, the potential place be +recognised also. Here is the need and use, beyond the fundamental +claims +of the material life of the Town, and the everyday sanity of the +Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense +and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and +their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can +afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has +been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an +imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the senses. In +our age of the multiplication and expansion of towns, of their +enrichment and their impoverishment, of the multiplication and +enrichment of schools also, it is well for the sociologist to read from +history, as he then may more fully see also around him that it is ever +some fresh combination of these threefold products of the +Cloister—ideal theory, and imagery—emotional, intellectual, +sensuous—which transforms the thought-world of its time.</p> +<p>The philosopher of old in his academic grove, his porch, the +mediaeval +monk within his studious cloister's pale, are thus more akin to the +modern scientific thinker than he commonly realises—perhaps because he +is still, for the most part, of the solitary individualism of the +hermit +of the Thebaid, of Diogenes in his tub. Assuredly, they are less +removed +in essential psychology than their derived fraternities, their <span class="pagenum">p. 85</span> +respective novices and scholars, have often thought. It is thus no +mere play of language which hands on from the one to the other the +"travail de Bénédictin," though even here the phrase is +inadequate +savouring too much of the school, into which each cloister of every +sort +declines sooner or later, unless even worse befall.</p> +<p>The decay of the cloister, though thus on the one hand into and with +the +school, may also take place within itself, since imagination and ideal +may be evil, and theory false. That examples of all these decays abound +in the history of religion, of philosophy, of art also, is a +commonplace +needing no illustration. Nor should the modern investigator think his +science or himself immune to the same or kindred germs in turn.</p> +<br /> +<h3>K—THE CITY PROPER</h3> +<p>Now, "at long last," we are ready to enter the city proper. This is +not +merely the Town of place and work and folk, even were this at their +economic best. It is not enough to add the School, even at its +completest; nor the cloister, though with this a yet greater step +towards the city proper is made. For though this is not itself the +City, +its ideals of human relations, its theory of the universe and man, its +artistic expression and portrayal of all these, ever sooner or later +react upon the general view and conduct of life. Hence the Academe of +Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, the mediaeval cloister and the +modern +Research Institute, have been so fertile, so creative in their +influence +upon the city's life, from which they seemed to be retired. Hence it is +ever some new combination of the threefold product of the +cloister—ideal, idea, and image—which transforms the world, which +opens each new epoch. Each new revelation and vision, each system of +thought, each new outburst of poetry and song, has moved the men of its +age by no mere mechanical pressure of economic need or external force, +by no mere scholastic instruction, but in a far subtler way, and into +new and unexpected groupings, as the <span class="pagenum">p. 86</span> sand upon Chladon's +vibrating plate leaps into a new figure with each thrill of the +violinist's bow.</p> +<p>Instead of simply developing our morals from custom, and therefore +codifying them into law as in the school they are now boldly +criticised, +as in part if not in whole, hindrances to a better state of things. As +this becomes more and more clearly formulated as an ideal, its ethic +transcendence of convention and law not only becomes clear, but the +desire for its realisation becomes expressed. This may be with all +degrees of clearness of reason and vividness of imagery, yet may remain +long or altogether in the plane of literature, as has Plato's Republic +or More's Utopia—standard and characteristic types of the cloister +library as we may call it, one of inestimable value to the world in the +past, and perhaps in our time needed as much as ever to help us to see +somewhat beyond the output of the busy presses of town and school. Yet +our ideal, our "Civitas Dei," "Civitas Solis," need not remain +unrealised: it may be not only seriously planned towards realisation, +as +was Platonopolis of old, but bravely founded, as has been done in cases +without number, from the ancient world to modern communities, by no +means wholly unsuccessful. Though in our great industrial towns, our +long settled regions, such new departures seem less easy, the +principle remains valid—that it is in our ideal of polity and +citizenship, and in our power of realising this, that the city proper +has its conception and its birth. Again, instead of simply deriving our +thought from experience we now project our clarified thought into +action +and into education; so that from cloister of philosophy, and from its +long novitiate of silence, there grows up the brotherhood of culture, +the culture city itself. Similarly in art, we no longer imitate nature, +nor copy traditional designs. Art proper appears, shaping bronze and +marble into images of the gods, and on a burnt and ruined hill-fort +renewing the Parthenon. In general terms, instead of simply adjusting, +as in the school, our mental picture to the outward facts, we reverse +the process; and with a new art conception, be it good or bad, we +transform the outward world, like wax under the seal. Thus from the +<span class="pagenum">p. 88</span> +cloister and chapel of the musician, the studio-cell of the +artist, the scriptorium of the poet, comes forth the architect, +remodelling the city around his supreme material expression and home of +its moral and material reorganisation, its renewed temporal and +spiritual powers. Of this, the city proper, the Acropolis of Athens, +the +Temple of Jerusalem, the Capitol and Forum of Rome are classic and +central examples, and in the mediaeval city, pre-eminently the +cathedral; though beside this we must not forget the town house and its +belfry, the guild houses, the colleges, the great place, the fountains, +the city cross, and if last, still best if good at all, the streets and +courts and homes. Returning once more to the history of educational +development, we have here a means of unravelling the apparently +perplexing history of universities. For the university past or present +has but its foundations in the school, with its local and its general +tradition, whatever may be the accordance of these with +well-ascertained +fact, its true novitiate can only be afforded in the cloister of +reflection and research, of interpretation and synthesis; while for its +full development it needs the perpetual renewal of that generous social +life—that inspiring intercourse "of picked adolescents and picked +senescents"—which has marked the vital periods of every university +worthy of the name.<br /> +</p><a name='p_87'></a> +<p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="(EU)-POLITY" + title="(EU)-POLITY" src="images/img001.jpg" + style="width: 512px; height: 780px;" /><br /> +</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<p>In summary then, to the town has been added the school, with its +advantages, its increasingly obvious limitations also, which it is for +the cloister to remedy—even the advantages of the barrack finding a +main element of its claim in this no less than in its professed +training +as regards citizenship. But here also it is for few to remain, albeit +free for each to return at will. Ideals, to survive, must surely live, +that is, be realised; hence for full life one needs "to meditate with +the free solitary; yet to live secular, and serve mankind."</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><img + alt="Town, school, cloister and city." + title="Town, school, cloister and city." src="images/img002.jpg" + style="width: 400px; height: 260px;" /></span><br /> +</div> +<br /> +<h3>L—THE CITY COMPLIED: TOWN, SCHOOL, CLOISTER, AND CITY PROPER</h3> +<p>In course of this fourfold analysis, it is plain that we have +reached +the very converse—or at all events the <span class="pagenum">p. 90</span> complement—of that +geographical determinism with which we started, and that we have +returned to a view corresponding to the popular one (of "People, +Affairs, Places," <a href='#p_69'>p. 69</a>), which we then set +aside for the reasons +given. +The "great man theory" of history, at best less crudely stated, thus +reappears; in short, to the initial thesis we have now the distinct +antithesis. It is time, therefore, to bring these together towards the +needed synthesis. Hence to the page (<a href='#p_77'>p. 77</a>) on +which was summarised the +determinist view of Town and School, we now require the complemental +statement upon page (<a href='#p_87'>p. 87</a>) of Cloister and City +proper. Nor must we be +content, with too many controversialists hitherto, to keep in view only +one at a time; but by folding back the pages of print between these two +half-schemes, as the book lies open, to take in both together.</p> +<p>We may thus finally compress the essentials of this whole paper into +a +simple formula—</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><img + alt="Town, school, cloister and city." + title="Town, school, cloister and city." src="images/img003.jpg" + style="width: 512px; height: 336px;" /><br /> +</div> +<p>or most briefly—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Town, city, cloister, school" + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 254px; height: 102px;"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" style="text-align: center;">|<br /> +|<br /> +|<br /> +\/<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> TOWN </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> CITY<br /> + </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">/\<br /> +|<br /> +|<br /> +|<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"> SCHOOL</td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> CLOISTER</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>—noting +in every case the opposite direction of the arrows. +The application of this formula to different types of town, such as +those already indicated in the former instalment of this paper (Vol. +I., +<a href='#p_107'>p. 107</a>) or in the present one, will not be found +to present any +insuperable difficulty. It must, however, be kept clearly in view that +the city of each day and generation subsides or decays more or less +completely into the mere town anew, as the cloister into the schools. +The towns and cities of the world are thus classifiable in terms of +their past development and present condition.</p> +<br /> +<h4>SUMMARY</h4> +<p>Condensing now this lengthy, yet compressed and abbreviated series +of +analyses into a single page of summary, we may briefly define the main +aspects and departments of civics from the present point of view. First +then, comes the study of civics as fundamentally (and ever anew) an +orderly development—at once geographic, economic, and anthropologic in +its nature—a survey of place, work, and folk—and these not merely or +mainly as broken up into the fine dust of censuses and statistics, nor +even of the three too separate sciences above named, but as a living +unity, the human hive, the Town.</p> +<p>Corresponding to this objective and organic life we reorganise its +fundamental subjective life. This is fundamentally, and ever partially, +the record and reflex of the life of the hive, the Town: of all its +general and particular environment and function, its family type and +development; and however overlaid by imported culture or by decayed +ideals, it is fundamentally expressed in local knowledge, in craft +tradition, in kinship and its associated kindness, in habits and +customs, and their developments up to morals and laws. Simple terms +corresponding to place, work, and folk, are hard to find; say, however, +till better be suggested, that in close relation to the maternal arms +in +which general social thought and its utmost pedagogic developments +alike begin, it is place-lore, work-lear, and folk-love, which are the +essentials of every <span class="pagenum">p. 92</span> School.<a name="FNanchor_11"></a><a + href="#Footnote_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> That existing educational +machineries may not adequately recognise these is not of course the +question here.</p> +<p>These three terms, lore, lear, and love are thus well related to +their +respectively deepening levels of sense, intelligence and feeling; and +their respective relation is thus more plain to the imagery, the +theory, +and the idealism above defined as the essentials of the Cloister. The +psychology of the processes of poetic, philosophic and spiritual +awakening and renewal is in these days being approached anew, both from +the individual and social side, but cannot here be entered upon.</p> +<p>Finally and supremely arises the City proper—its individuality +dependent upon the measure and form in which ideals are expressed and +harmonised in social life and polity, ideas synthetised in culture, and +beauty carried outwards from the study or chamber of the recluse into +the world of art.</p> +<br /> +<h4>Practical conclusion</h4> +The investigation of the City thus tends towards the practice of +citizenship. Thus social survey prepares for social service, as +diagnosis towards treatment and hygiene; and these react fruitfully +upon +our knowledge and understanding anew. Beyond social observations, and +the needed observatories for making them more adequately, we need +social +activities and the laboratories for preparing them, or at least the +leavens of them; or, again, in happier phrase, at once simple and more +synthetic, we need some shelter<a name="FNanchor_12"></a><a + href="#Footnote_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> into which to gather the best +<span class="pagenum">p. 93</span> seed +of past flowerings and in which to raise and tend the +seedlings of coming summers. We need definitely to acquire such a +centre +of survey and service in each and every city—in a word, a Civicentre +for sociologist and citizen. +<br /> +<p><br /> +</p> +<h3>M—THE HISTORIC CITY-COMPLEX</h3> +<p>The criticism may have already arisen in the reader's mind that the +"Town" and "School" of our analysis are by no means so simple as we +have +assumed them. Our surveys of antique towns ever disclose the material +survivals, at least the vestiges, of the cloister or the acropolis of +the past, of its cathedral or its forum. The processes of our +industries, in what is now their daily artisan routine, include, +repeat, +condense, what were yesterday or longer ago living inventions, each +instinct with Promethean fire. The hackneyed ornament of our homes was +once glowing with beauty, radiant or dark with symbolism. So it is for +our everyday customs and institutions, and so for living languages; our +own, perhaps, most of all. These, of course, are facts made familiar by +investigators of all orders, from the scholar and antiquary of old, the +historian and philologist of yesterday, to the geographer or the +sociologist of our own time: witness Mr. Spencer's masterly treatment +of +their main results. How, then, shall we correlate this process of all +things growing old with the analysis of cities above attempted? In +other +words, how shall we interpret the course of their historic evolution, +their renewed growth and decay, progress and degeneracy, their present +condition, crowded with residues of the past, with those potentialities +which our outline discloses? This is the more necessary since this +fourfold analysis applies in principle to all human groupings from the +simplest village to the Eternal City. To this, indeed, we have in +principle already traced it, onwards from our primitive valley section +with its humble hamlets, its fundamental occupations. Returning then to +our main diagram, with its four-fold analysis of the City so soon as we +have completed this, and <span class="pagenum">p. 94</span> carried its progress up to the level +of city life proper, we must next turn over the leaf and begin a new +page, with place and work and folk once more. This simplest of acts +expresses with graphic significance the very process of history; for in +closing our diagram page its "Cloister" has been folded down on the +"School," our cathedral and forum, our "City" proper upon the "Town." +Thus it is that the ideals and the achievements of one day and +generation and city are ever melting away, and passing out of sight of +the next; so that to the joy or sorrow of the successors the new page +seems well nigh bare, though ever there comes faintly through some +image +or at least blurred suggestion of the fading past. Hence each page of +history is a palimpsest. Hence our modern town, even when yesterday but +prairie, was no mere vacant site, but was at once enriched and +encumbered by the surviving traditions of the past; so that even its +new +buildings are for the most part but vacant shells of past art, of which +now only the student cares to trace the objective annals, much less +penetrate to the inner history. So for the decayed Renaissance learning +of our schools, for the most part so literally dead since the +"Grammarian's Funeral"; and so, too, for the unthinking routines, the +dead customs and conventions, and largely too the laws and rituals of +our urban lives. Hence, then, it is that for the arrest and the decay +of +cities we have no need to go for our examples to the ancient East. +These +processes, like those of individual senility and death, are going on +everywhere day by day.</p> +<p>Upon the new page, then, it is but a complexer "Town" and "School" +anew: +we have no continuing City. This too commonly has existed at its best +but for the rare generation which created it, or little longer; though +its historic glories, like those of sunset and of after-glow, may long +shed radiance and glamour upon its town, and linger in the world's +memory long after not only these have faded, but their very folk have +vanished, their walls fallen, nay their very site been buried or +forgotten. Upon all these degrees of dying, all these faint and fading +steps between immortality and oblivion, we may arrange what we call our +historic cities. Obviously in the <span class="pagenum">p. 95</span> deeper and more living +sense the city exists only in actualising itself; and thus to us it is +that the ideal city lies ever in the future. Yet it is the very essence +of this whole argument that an ideal city is latent in every town. +Where +shall we in these days find our cloistered retreats to think out such +ideals as may be applicable in our time and circumstances: the needed +kinetic ethics, the needed synthetic philosophy and science, the needed +vision and imagery and expression of them all?</p> +<br /> +<h3>N—THE EVILS OF THE CITY</h3> +<h3>Disease, defect, vice and crime</h3> +<p>I have spoken little of town evils, and much of town ideals, +primarily +for the reason that even to recognise, much less treat, the abnormal, +we +must know something of the normal course of evolution. Hence, the old +and useful phrase by which physiology used to be known, that of "the +institutes of medicine." Sociology has thus to become "the institutes +of +citizenship."</p> +<p>Often though philanthropists forget this, diagnosis should precede +treatment. The evils of the city, by the very nature of our hypothesis, +demand special survey, and this no less thoroughly than do the normal +place and work and industry. It is only our most permanent intellectual +impulse, that of seeking for unity, which excuses the cheap unitary +explanations so often current; as, for instance, that social evils are +mainly to be explained by intemperance, as for one school of reformers; +by poverty or luxury, for a second and third; by Tammany or other form +of party government, by socialism or by individualism for yet others; +that they are due to dissent or to church, to ignorance or to the +spread +of science, and so on almost indefinitely—doubtless not without +elements of truth in each!</p> +<p>Yet let me offer as yet another explanation of civic evils, this +more +general one—distinguished from the preceding by including them all and +more—that not only is our "Town" in itself imperfect, but the other +three elements we have been characterising as school, cloister and +city, +are yet more imperfect, since disordered, decayed, or undeveloped anew. +It is because of each and all of these imperfect realisations of our +civic life, that the evils of life sink down, or flame out, into these +complex eruptions of social evils with which our human aggregations are +as yet cursed.</p> +<p>Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with +ignorance +and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too +separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of +being viewed together, and largely even treated together. They are not +unrelated, but correspond each as the negative to that fourfold +presentment of ideals we have hitherto been raising. To this ideal +unity +of healthy town, with its practical and scientific schools of all +kinds, +with its meditative cloister of ethical and social idealism, of unified +science and philosophy, of imagination and drama, all culminating in +the polity, culture, and art which make a city proper, we have here the +corresponding defects in detail.</p> +<p>The evils of existing city life are thus largely reinterpreted; and +if +so more efficiently combated; since the poverty, squalor and ugliness +of +our cities, their disease and their intemperance, their ignorance, +dulness and mental defect, their vice and crime are thus capable not +only of separate treatment but of an increasingly unified civic +hygiene, +and this in the widest sense, material and moral, economic and +idealist, +utilitarian and artistic. Even the most earnest and capable workers +towards civic betterment in these many fields may gain at once in hope +and in efficiency as they see their special interests and tasks +converging into the conception of the city as an organic unity, and +this +not fixed and settled, nor even in process of progress or degeneration +from causes beyond our ken, but as an orderly development which we may +aid towards higher perfection, geographic and cultural alike.</p> +<p>Our modern town is thus in a very real sense, one not hopeless, but +as +hopeful as may be, a veritable purgatory; that is a struggle of lower +and higher idealisms, amid the respective expressions and outcomes of +these. Indeed, in our own present <span class="pagenum">p. 97</span> cities, as they have come +to be, is not each of us ever finding his own Inferno, or it may be his +Paradise? Does he not see the dark fate of some, the striving and +rising +hope of others, the redemption also?</p> +<p>The supreme poetic utterance of the mediaeval world is thus in great +measure, as each thoughtful reader sees, an expression of impassioned +citizenship and this at one of the golden moments of the long history +of +city life. This expression—this exiled citizen's autobiographic +thought-stream—is resumed at every level, from youthful home and local +colour, from boyish love and hopes, from active citizenship and party +struggle, to the transfiguration of all these. Hence these mystic +visions, and these world ambitions, temporal and spiritual; hence this +rise from cloistered faith and philosophy into many-sided culture; +hence +the transformation of all these through intensest symbol-visions into +enduring song.</p> +<p>Am I thus suggesting the <i>Divina Comedia</i> as a guide-book to +cities? +Without doubt, though not necessarily for beginners. Yet who can see +Florence without this, though we may pack below it Baedeker and Murray? +Or who, that can really read, can open a volume of Mr. Booth's severely +statistical Survey of London, with all its studious reserve, its +scientific repression, without seeing between its lines the Dantean +circles; happy if he can sometimes read them upward as well as down?</p> +<br /> +<h3>O—A CIVIC SYMBOL AND ITS MEANING</h3> +<p>But such books of the city, whether of the new and observant type, +from +Baedeker to Booth, or of the old and interpretative Dantean one, are +too +vast and varied to keep open before us. Even the preceding open page of +diagram is complex enough with its twofold, indeed four-fold city; and +we are called back to our daily work in the first of these divisions, +that of the everyday town. Since its subjective aspects of school and +cloister may fade from memory, its higher aspect also, that of city +proper, how can we retain this fourfold <span class="pagenum">p. 98</span> analysis, and how +test if it be true? Take then one final illustration; this time no mere +logical skeleton, however simple or graphic, but an image more easily +retained, because a concrete and artistic one, and moreover in terms of +that form of life-labour and thought-notation—that of current +coin—which, in our day especially, dominates this vastest of cities; +and hence inherits for the region of its home and centre—"the Bank" +which has so thoroughly taken precedence of the town-house and +cathedral, of the fortress and palace—the honoured name of "City." The +coinages of each time and place combine concrete and social use with +statements of historic facts; and they add to both of these a wealth of +emblematic suggestions: but that is to say, they express not only their +town, and something of its <i>school</i>, but much of its thought +also, its +<i>cloister</i> in my present terminology.</p> +<p>So before me lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side +stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild, +"<i>Non marte sed arte</i>." Here then the industrial "Town" and its +"School" +express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been +above +defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since +Perth <i>(Bertha aurea)</i> had been the northmost of all Rome's +provincial +capitals, her re-named "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald +must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the +Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic +dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On +the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard, +since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of +1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the +banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, +and +one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual +strife with the feudal nobles, "<i>Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege</i>." Here +then, +plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty +provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only +of +the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find +clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole <span class="pagenum">p. 99</span> four-fold +analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been above labouring for. +For what makes the industrial Town, what can better keep it than +strenuous industry at its anvil? How better express its craft school, +its local style and skill, its reaction too upon the town's life in +peace and war, than by this Hal o' the Wynd by his forge? Nay, what +better symbol than this hammer, this primitive tool and ever typical +one, of the peaceful education of experience, form Prometheus to +Kelvin, +of the warlike, from Thor to modern cannon-forge? Turning now from Town +and School to Cloister, to the life of secluded peace and +meditation—from which, however, the practical issues of life are ever +renewed—what plainer symbol, yet what more historic or more mystic one +can we ask than this of the lamb with the banner? While of the +contrasted yet complemental civic life of fullest, broadest action, +what +expression like the Roman eagle—the very eyes of keenness, and the +spreading wings of power?</p> +<p>So rarely perfect then is this civic symbol, that I must not omit to +mention that it has only come to my notice since the body of this +paper, +with its four-fold analysis of cities as above outlined, was +essentially +finished. Since it thus has not in any particular suggested the +treatment of cities here advocated, it is the more interesting and +encouraging as a confirmation of it. It is also to my mind plain that +in +this, as in many other of our apparent "advances in science," and +doubtless those in social studies particularly, we are but learning to +think things anew, long after our forefathers have lived them, even +expressed them—and these in their ways no less clear and popular than +can ever be ours. That we may also again live them is once more +curiously expressed by the same symbol; for its re-appearance is due to +its having been appropriately revived, in a fitting art form, that of +the commemorative and prize medal of the local arts and crafts +exhibition, held in the new Public Library, under civic auspices. +Little +scrutiny of this last sentence will be needed to see the four-fold +completeness of the civic event which it describes.</p> +<p>For just as we have seen on the old coin the hammerman <span class="pagenum">p. 100</span> and +his motto answer to the town and school; so now on its reissue to the +renascent local arts and crafts, with their commemoration in this +library. And as the greater motto, that of widest policy, corresponds +to +the cloister of reflection and resolve, so we note that this new +impulse +to civic betterment is associated with the new library—no mere +school-house of memory, but also the open cloister of our day. Finally, +note that this impulse is no longer merely one of aesthetic purpose, of +"art for art's sake," nor its execution that of a cultured minority +merely; it announces a re-union of this culture and art with the civic +polity. What fitter occasion, then, for the striking of a medal, than +this renewal of civic life, with municipal organisation and polity, art +and culture, renascent in unison. That such events are nowadays far +from +exceptional is so true that we are in danger of losing sight of their +significance. Yet it is amid such city developments that the future +Pericles must arise.</p> +<p>We thus see that our analysis is no mere structural one, made +post-mortem from civic history; but that it applies to the modern +functioning of everyday life in an everyday city, so soon as this +becomes touched anew towards cultural issues. Furthermore, it is thus +plain that civic life not only has long ago anticipated and embodied +our +theories of it, but once more outruns them, expressing them far better +than in words—in life and practice. In this way the reader who may most +resent these unfamiliar methods of exposition, alternately by abstract +diagram or concrete illustration—which may seem to him too remote from +ordinary life and experience, perhaps too trivial—may now test the +present theory of the city, or amend it, by means of the ample +illustrations of the processes and results of social life which are +provided by his daily newspaper, and these on well-nigh all its fields +and levels.</p> +<p>Note finally that it is the eagle and lamb of temporal and spiritual +idealism that form the "head" of this coin, the craftsman and anvil but +the modest "tail." The application is obvious.</p> +<p>Thus even numismatics revives from amid the fossil <span + class="pagenum">p. 100</span> +sciences. +For from this to our own common coinage, or notably to that of France, +America, Switzerland, etc., the transition is easy, and still better to +that of the noblest civic past, both classic and mediaeval. Without +pursuing this further here my present point is gained, if we see, even +in the everyday local details of work and people, the enduring stamp, +the inextinguishable promise, of the flowering of our everyday +industries and schools into worthier ideals than they at present +express, and of the fruition of these in turn upon nobler heights of +life and practice. It expresses the essential truth of the popular view +of the city; that in terms of the formula—People ... Affairs ... +Places—above referred to (<a href='#p_69'>page 69</a>). It also +explains the persistent +vitality of this view, despite its frequent crudity, and lack of order +in detail, in face of the more scientific treatment here at first +employed, that in the elementary geographic order—Place ... Work ... +People. For though this objective order be fundamental, it is the +complementary subjective evolution which throughout history has ever +become supreme; so that our scheme must combine the outward geographic +presentment with the inward psychological one. This may be graphically +expressed by changing the order of presentment from that used +hitherto:—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Town, city, cloister, school" + style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left; width: 210px; height: 60px;" + border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">TOWN<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CITY<br /> + </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="2" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"> +TO<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CITY<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">TOWN<br /> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">SCHOOL<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CLOISTER<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">CLOISTER<br /> + </td> + <td style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">SCHOOL<br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<br /> +<p>P—FORECAST OF CITY DEVELOPMENT. SPECIAL AND GENERAL</p> +<p>The dual and four-fold development of the city, as above sketched, +is by +no means far advanced in most of our present towns or cities, which +have +obviously but scanty expression of the ideas shadowed forth for the +modern equivalents of cloister and cathedral, of academe and acropolis. +But this is to say that such towns, however large, populous and rich +according to conventional economic standards, are to that extent small +and poor, indeed too often little better than cities by courtesy. Yet +their further development, upon this <span class="pagenum">p. 102</span> four-fold view of civic +evolution, though in principle the same for each and all, has always +been, and let us hope may always be, in large measure an individual +(because regional) one. For if each human individuality be unique, how +much more must that of every city?</p> +<p>In one concrete case, that of Dunfermline, I have already submitted +definite suggestions towards the realisation of the civic Utopia, and +even architectural designs towards its execution,<a name="FNanchor_13"></a><a + href="#Footnote_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> so that these may +at any rate suffice to show how local study and adaptive design are +needed for each individual city, indeed for every point of it. It is +thus, and thus only, that we can hope to have a city development truly +evolutionary, that is, one utilising the local features, advantages, +and +possibilities of place, occupation, and people. Of course, it is +needful +to supplement these by the example of other cities; but it is no less +needful to avoid weighting down the local life with replicas of +institutions, however excellent elsewhere, if really irregional here. +With the re-awakening of regional life in our various centres, and of +some comprehension of its conditions among our rulers, they will cease +to establish, say, a school of mines in Piccadilly, or again one of +engineering and the like in South Kensington. The magistrates of +Edinburgh have long abandoned their old attempt to plant mulberries and +naturalise silk culture upon their wind-swept Calton Hill; albeit this +was a comparatively rational endeavour, since a population of Huguenot +refugee silk weavers had actually come upon their hands.</p> +<p>Similarly, it is plain that we must develop Oxford as Oxford, +Edinburgh +as Edinburgh, and so on with all other cities, great or small—York or +Winchester, Westminster or London. And so with Chelsea or Hampstead, +with Woolwich or Battersea. Has not the last of these grown from a mere +outlying vestry, like so many others, into a centre of genuine vitality +and interior progress, indeed of ever-widening interest and example; +and +all this in half a generation, apparently through the sagacious +leadership—say, rather the devoted, the <span class="pagenum">p. 103</span> impassioned +citizenship—of a single man? And does not his popular park at times +come near giving us a vital indication of the needed modern analogue of +cathedral and forum? Civic development is thus no mere external matter, +either of "Haussmannising" its streets, or of machine-educating its +people; the true progress of the city and its citizenship must alike +grow and flower from within albeit alive and open to every truly +fertilising impulse from without.</p> +<p>Yet since national interests, international industry, commerce, +science, and therefore progress are nowadays and increasingly so +largely one, may we not in conclusion foresee something at least of the +great lines of development which are common to cities, and generalise +these as we are accustomed to do in history? Witness the Classical, +Mediaeval, and Renaissance types to which historic cities +preponderatingly belong, and within which we group their varied +individualities, as after all of comparative detail.</p> +<p>Here then it is time to recall the presentment of ancient, recent +and +contemporary evolution already outlined in the part of this paper +previously read (Vol. I, <a href='#p_109'>p. 109</a>), dealing with +the historic survey of +cities. We have now to face the question, then postponed, indeed left +in +interrogation-marks—that of seeking not indeed sharply to define the +future order of things, yet in some measure to discern such elements of +progress as may be already incipient in the existing order, if not yet +largely manifest there. Such elements may be reasonably expected to +grow +in the near future, perhaps increasingly, and whatever be their rate of +growth are surely worthy of our attention.</p> +<p>Contemporary science, with its retrospective inquiries into origins +in +the past, its everyday observation of the present, is apt practically +to +overlook that the highest criterion and achievement of science is not +to +decipher the past, nor record the present, not even to interpret both. +It is to foresee: only thus can it subserve action, of which the +present +task ever lies towards the future, since it is for this that we have to +provide. Why then should not Comte's famous aphorism—"<i>Voir pour +prévoir, prévoir pour pourvoir</i>," become applicable in +our civic studies +no less than in the general social and political fields to <span class="pagenum">p. 104</span> +which he applied it? In navigation or engineering, in agriculture or +hygiene, prevision and provision alike are ever increasing; yet these +are no mere combinations of the preliminary sciences and the +fundamental +occupations, but obviously contain very large social elements.</p> +<p>It is proverbially safe to prophesy when one knows; and it is but +this +safe prediction which we make every day of child or bud, where we can +hardly fail to see the growing man, the coming flower. Yet do not most +people practically forget that even now, in mid-winter, next summer's +leaves are already waiting, nay, that they were conceived nine months +ago? That they thus grow in small, commonly unnoticed beginnings, and +lie in bud for a period twice as long as the summer of their adult and +manifest life, is yet a fact, and one to which the social analogies are +many and worth considering.</p> +<p>While recognising, then, the immense importance of the historic +element +of our heritage, renaissance and mediaeval, classic and earlier; +recognising also the predominance of contemporary forces and ideas, +industrial and liberal, imperial and bureaucratic, financial and +journalistic, can we not seek also, hidden under all these leaves, for +those of the still-but-developing bud, which next season must be so +much +more important than they are to day? It is a commonplace, yet mainly of +educational meetings, to note that the next generation is now at +school; +but how seldom do we recognise its pioneers, albeit already among our +own contemporaries? At any rate we may see here and there that their +leaven is already at work.</p> +<p>In this respect, cities greatly differ—one is far more initiative +than +another. In the previous paper (vol. I, <a href='#p_109'>p. 109</a>), +we saw how +individuals, +edifices, institutions, might represent all past phases; these, +therefore, often predominate in different cities sufficiently to give +its essential stamp. Why then should we not make a further survey and +seek to see something of the cities of the future; though we may have +to +look for these in quarters where at first sight there may seem as yet +scanty promise of flower?</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span> +To recall an instance employed above, probably every member +of this Society is old enough to remember incredulous questionings of +whether any good thing could come out of Battersea. Again, how few, +even +in America, much less than in Europe, a few years ago, forsaw the rapid +growth of those culture-elements in St. Louis, of which the recent +World-Exposition will not have been the only outcome?</p> +<p>Only a few years earlier, it was Chicago which, for New England no +less +than for the Old World, seemed but the byword of a hopelessly +materialised community. So Birmingham or Glasgow has won its present +high position among cities in comparatively recent times; so it may now +be the turn of older cities, once far more eminent, like Newcastle or +Dundee, to overtake and in turn, perhaps, outstrip them. But all this +is +still too general and needs further definition; let us attempt this, +therefore, somewhat more fully, in the concrete case of Glasgow.</p> +<br /> +<h3>Q—GLASGOW AS TYPICAL OF CIVIC TRANSITION—FROM "PALEOTECHNIC" TO +"NEOTECHNIC"</h3> +<p>My own appreciation of the significance of Glasgow was first really +awakened over twenty years ago by William Morris, who in his vivid way +pointed out to me how, despite the traditional culture—superiority of +Edinburgh, Glasgow was not only the Scottish capital, but, in his view, +in real progressiveness the leading and initiative city of the whole +United Kingdom. And this for him was not merely or mainly in its +municipal enterprise, then merely in its infancy—although he expressed +this development in the phrase "In London, people talked socialism +without living it; but in Glasgow, they were socialists without knowing +it!" Despite all the ugliness which had so repelled Ruskin, the squalor +which moved Matthew Arnold to the fiercest scorn in all his writings, +Morris's appreciation arose from his craftsman's knowledge and respect +for supreme craftsmanship. The great ships building upon the Clyde were +for him "the greatest achievement of <span class="pagenum">p. 106</span> humanity since the days +of the cathedral-builders," nay, for him actually surpassing these, +since calling forth an even more complex combination and "co-operation +of all the material arts and sciences" into a mighty and organic whole; +and correspondingly of all their respective workers also, this being +for +him of the very essence of his social ideal.</p> +<p>For these reasons he insisted, to my then surprise that the social +reorganisation he then so ardently hoped for "was coming faster upon +the +Clyde than upon the Thames": he explained as for him the one main +reason +for his then discouragement as to the progress of London that there +East +and West, North and South, are not only too remote each from the other, +but in their occupations all much too specialised—there to finance, +there to manufactures, or here to leisure, and so on; while on the +Clyde +industrial organisation and social progress could not but develop +together, through the very nature of the essential and working unity of +the ship.</p> +<p>Since Morris's day, a local art movement, of which he knew little, +has +risen to eminence, a foreign critic would say to pre-eminence, in this +country at least. Since Ruskin's savage response to a Glasgow +invitation +to lecture—"first burn your city, and cleanse your river,"—a new +generation of architects and hygienists have not a little transformed +the one, and vigorous measures have been taken towards the purification +of the other. That the city and university pre-eminently associated +with the invention of the steam-engine, and consequently with the +advent +of the industrial revolution throughout the world, should, a century +later, have produced a scarcely less pre-eminent leader of applied +science towards the command of electricity is thus no isolated +coincidence. And as political economy, which is ever the theory +corresponding to our phase of industrial practice, and there some of +its foremost pioneers, and later its classical exponent, Adam Smith +himself, so once more there are signs at least of a corresponding wave +of theoretic progress. Students of primitive civilisation and industry +have now long familiarised us with their reinterpretation of what was +long known as the stone age, into two very distinct <span class="pagenum">p. 107</span> periods, +the earlier characterised by few and rough implements, roughly used by +a +rude people, the second by more varied tools, of better shape, and +finer +edge, often of exquisite material and polish. We know that these were +wielded more skilfully, by a people of higher type, better bred and +better nourished; and that these, albeit of less hunting and militant +life, but of pacific agricultural skill, prevailed in every way in the +struggle for existence; thanks thus not only to more advanced arts, but +probably above all to the higher status of woman. This distinction of +Paleolithic and Neolithic ages and men, has long passed into the +terminology of sociological science, and even into current speech: is +it +too much then, similarly, to focus the largely analogous progress which +is so observable in what we have been wont to generalise too crudely as +the modern Industrial Age? All are agreed that the discoveries and +inventions of this extraordinary period of history constitute an epoch +of material advance only paralleled, if at all, in magnitude and +significance by those of prehistory with its shadowy Promethean +figures. +Our own advance from a lower industrial civilisation towards a higher +thus no less demands definite characterisation, and this may be broadly +expressed as from an earlier or <i>Paleotechnic</i> phase, towards a +later or +more advanced <i>Neotechnic</i> one. If definition be needed, this may +be +broadly given as from a comparatively crude and wasteful technic age, +characterised by coal, steam, and cheap machine products, and a +corresponding <i>quantitative</i> ideal of "progress of wealth and +population"—towards a finer civilisation, characterised by the wider +command, yet greater economy of natural energies, by the predominance +of +electricity, and by the increasing victory of an ideal of qualitative +progress, expressed in terms of skill and art, of hygiene and +education, +of social polity, etc.</p> +<p>The Neotechnic phase, though itself as yet far from completely +replacing +the paleotechnic order which is still quantitatively predominant in +most +of our cities, begins itself to show signs of a higher stage of +progress, as in the co-ordination of the many industries required for +the building of a ship, or in the yet more recent developments which +begin to renew for us the conception of the worthy construction of a +city. As <span class="pagenum">p. +108</span> the former period may be characterised by the +predominance of the relatively unskilled workman and of the skilled, so +this next incipient age by the development of the chief workman proper, +the literal <i>architectos</i> or architect; and by his companion the +rustic +improver, gardener and forester, farmer, irrigator, and their +correspondingly evolving types of civil engineer.</p> +<p>To this phase then the term <i>Geotechnic</i> may fairly be +applied. Into its +corresponding theoretic and ideal developments we need not here enter, +beyond noting that these are similarly of synthetic character; on the +concrete side the sciences unifying as geography, and on their more +abstract side as the classification and philosophy of the +sciences,—while both abstract and concrete movements of thought are +becoming more and more thoroughly evolutionary in character.</p> +<p>But evolutionary theories, especially as they rise towards +comprehensiveness, cannot permanently content themselves with origins, +or with classifications merely, nor with concentrating on nature rather +than on man. Nature furnishes after all but the stage for evolution in +its highest terms; of this man himself is the hero; so that thus our +Geotechnic phase, Synthetic age (call it what we will) in its turn +gives +birth to a further advance—that concerned with human evolution, above +all subordinating all things to him; whereas in all these preceding +industrial phases, even if decreasingly, "things are in the saddle and +ride mankind." This age, now definitely evolutionist in policy, as the +geotechnic was in theory and in environment we may term the <i>Eugenic</i>. +For its theory, still less advanced, the term <i>Eupsychic</i> may +complete +our proposed nomenclature.</p> +<p>Thus then our conception of the opening future may be increasingly +defined, since all these apparently predicted phases are already +incipient among us, and are thus really matters of observed fact, of +social embryology let us say; in short, of city development.</p> +<p>In summary, then, the diagram of the former instalment of this paper +(vol. 1, <a href='#p_109'>p. 109</a>)</p> +<br /> +<table summary="Ancient, recent, contemporary societies" + style="width: 100%;" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;" colspan="3" rowspan="1">ANCIENT <br /> + </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;">RECENT </td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"> CONTEMPORARY </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> INCIPIENT</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;">Primitive </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Matriarchal </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Patriarchal </td> + <td colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="text-align: center;"> Greek +and Roman </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Mediaeval </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Renaissance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Revolution </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Empire </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Finance </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> ? ? ?</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span> +has thus its interrogations filled up. Omitting the +left-hand half, that generalised as Ancient and Recent in the above +diagram, so as to give more space to the Contemporary and Incipient +phases, these now stand as follows:—</p> +<br /> +<table summary="contemporary societies" + style="text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 669px; height: 80px;" + border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="vertical-align: middle; text-align: center;"> CONTEMPORARY</td> + <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" + style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"> INCIPIENT</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Revolution </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Empire </td> + <td style="text-align: center;"> Finance </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">Neotechnic<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">Geotechnic<br /> + </td> + <td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;">Eugenic<br /> + </td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> +<p>To elaborate this farther would, of course, exceed my present +limits; +but I may be permitted to say that long use of this schematic outline, +especially of course in more developed forms, has satisfied me of its +usefulness alike in the study of current events and in the practical +work of education and city betterment. I venture then to recommend it +to +others as worth trial.</p> +<br /> +<h3>R—A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL—A CIVIC EXHIBITION</h3> +<p>How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our +observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and +our practical policy—i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be +selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these +applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if +this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, +how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? +At this stage therefore, I venture to submit to the Society a practical +proposal for its consideration and discussion; and if approved, I would +fain hope for its recommendation to towns and cities, to organisations +and to the public likely to be interested.</p> +<p>Here then is my proposal. Is not the time ripe for bringing together +the +movements of Civics and Eugenics, now here and indeed everywhere +plainly +nascent, and of setting these before the public of this country in some +such large and concrete ways, as indeed, in the latter subject at +least, have been so strongly desiderated by Mr. Galton? As regards +Civics, such have been afforded to America during the summer of 1904 by +the Municipal Section of the St. Louis Exhibition; in <span class="pagenum">p. 110</span> +Dresden also, at the recent Towns Exhibition; and by kindred +Exhibitions +and Congresses in Paris and elsewhere.</p> +<p>All these have taken form since the Paris Exposition of 1900, with +its +important section of social economy and its many relevant special +congresses. Among these may be specially mentioned here as of popular +interest, and civic stimulus, the <i>Congres de L'Art Public</i>; the +more +since this also held an important Exhibition, to which many Continental +cities sent instructive exhibits.</p> +<p>Other exhibitions might be mentioned; so that the fact appears that +in +well-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the +great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly +brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with +their associated congresses.</p> +<p>With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon +Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among +us; +with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a +real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic +education and action?</p> +<p>Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every +important +exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits +have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the +picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of +their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present +conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering +them.</p> +<p>Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" +might +readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, +the +excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions +in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an +exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they +may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely +abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the +discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to +raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in +freshening +lights.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span> +At this time of social transition, when we all more or less +feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of +sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the +continual +appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic +Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, +of +the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic +Exhibition.<a name="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a></p> +<p>Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that +<i>Encyclopædia Civica</i>, into which, in the previous +instalment of this +paper (vol. I, <a href='#p_118'>p. 118</a>) I have sought to group +the literature of civics. +We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in +universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the +mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of +these. We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future, +and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already +struggling towards birth.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<h3>DISCUSSION</h3> +<br /> +<p>The Chairman (THE RT. HON. CHARLES BOOTH) said:</p> +<p>I feel always the inspiring character of Professor Geddes' +addresses. He +seems to widen and deepen the point of view, and to widen and deepen +one's own ideas, and enables us to hold them more firmly and better +than +one can do without the aid of the kind of insight Professor Geddes has +given into the methods of his own mind. I believe that we all hold our +conceptions by some sort of tenure. I am afraid I hold mine by columns +and statistics much underlined—a horrible prosaic sort of arrangement +on ruled paper. I remember a lady of my acquaintance who had a place +for +everything. The discovery of America was in the left-hand corner; the +Papacy was in the middle; and for everything she had some local +habitation in an imaginary world. Professor Geddes is far more +ingenious +than that, and it is most interesting and instructive and helpful to +follow these charming diagrams which spring evidently from the method +he +himself uses in holding and forming his conceptions. That it is of the +utmost value to have large conceptions there can be no doubt—large +conceptions both in time and place, large conceptions of all those +various ideas to which he has called our attention. By some means or +other we have to have them; and having got them, every individual, +single fact has redoubled value. We put it in its place. So I hope that +in our discussion, while we may develop each in his own way, the mental +methods we pursue, we may bring forward anything that strikes us as +germane, as a practical point of application to the life of the world, +and especially anything having an application to the life of London. I +would make my contribution to that with regard to a scheme that has +been +explained to me by its originator, Mrs. Barnett, the wife of Canon +Barnett of Toynbee Hall. The idea concerns an open <span class="pagenum">p. 113</span> space +which has recently been secured in Hampstead. It is known to you all +that a certain piece of ground belonging to the trustees of Eton +College +has been secured, which extends the open space of Hampstead Heath in +such a way as to protect a great amount of beauty. The further proposal +is to acquire an estate surrounding that open space which has now been +secured for ever to the people, and to use this extension to make what +is called a "garden suburb." It is a following out of the "garden-city" +idea which is seizing hold of all our minds, and it seems to me an +exceedingly practical adaptation of that idea. Where it comes in, in +connection with the address we have just heard, is that the root idea +is +that it shall bring together all the good elements of civic life. It is +not to be for one class, or one idea, but for all classes, and all +ideas—a mixed population with all its needs thought for and provided +for; and above everything, the beauty of those fields and those hills +is +not to be sacrificed, but to be used for the good of the suburb and the +good of London. I hope that out of it will come an example that will be +followed. That is a little contribution I wish to make to the +discussion +to-day, and if I can interest any one here in forwarding it, I shall be +exceedingly glad.</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"><br /> +</div> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. SWINNY said:</p> +<p>Towards the close of his lecture, Professor Geddes remarked that the +cities of America inherited a great part of their civilisation from +Greece and Rome and the Europe of the Middle Age. I believe that +thought +will lead us to consider the point whether this geographical survey +should precede or follow a general historical survey. Now, if we +consider that a river valley in England, with the towns in that valley, +are part of the English nation, and that the English nation has shared +in the general historical evolution of Western Europe, it would seem +that the first simplification the question allows of is: What is there +in the historical development of that city that is common to the whole +of Western Europe, and what is peculiar to its position as an English +city? And the second simplification that the problem allows of is to +consider what part of the evolution of a particular city is due to its +peculiar position in that river valley? So that it seems necessary +first +to get a general idea of the historical evolution of England and the +West; and then you can proceed to consider what is due to the part +played by the city in that evolution. Thus you have to consider not so +much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect +of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as +it +affected that city.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">DR. J.L. TAYLER,</p> +<p><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span> +referring to Professor Geddes' remarks on the working +craftsman and the thinking craftsman, said he believed that in a +country +like England, where the prevailing tendencies of thought and action +were +of an essentially practical nature, many people who now felt contempt +for higher mental ideals would alter their views, if this idea of the +<i>causal</i> relationship between thinkers and workers could be driven +home. +If business men and women could be made to realise that in the higher +regions of pure science there were always to be found some thinkers who +belonged to the same craft or trade as they themselves, they would +naturally tend to rely on these thinkers when dealing with problems +that +necessitate a wide mental outlook.</p> +<p>Moreover, the thought that students of great mental powers studied +the +objects with which working craftsmen were in daily contact, could not +fail to deepen, refine and purify their more practical and, in some +respects, grosser aims; while the knowledge that every science-study +had +an industrial as well as a scientific aspect would make the thinking +craftsmen more alive to the needs of everyday existence.</p> +<p>Such conceptions, if spread through all classes of our community, +would +inevitably change the feeling of distrust of learning into one of +healthful enthusiasm, and give in addition a unity and direction to our +various life pursuits which might in time generate a true modern +national spirit; for it is precisely this divorce of mental and +physical, of theoretical and practical, class and individual +effort—which such a thinking and working craft theory would +rectify—that destroys our efficiency by creating an unreal chasm +between refined and unrefined, learned and unlearned, where there +should +be only a progressive evolution from the lower to the higher, from the +immediate practical to the ultimate ideal.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">THE REV. DR. AVELING said:</p> +<p>There was one point that the lecturer made which, I think, might be +a +fit and fruitful subject for discussion. He said that we were the +product of the city. To a great extent that is undoubtedly true; but on +the other hand, he advocated an improvement in the conditions of +environment, to be brought about by our own endeavours. Therefore, the +city can be shaped and made by us. What, then, is the exact value to be +given to the seemingly contradictory doctrines that the individual is +the product of the city and also that the city is the product of the +citizen? The establishing of some fixed relation between—or the +adjusting of the relations of—these two causes of social progress would +be, I think, interesting to the philosopher, and useful to the +economist. The problem is <span class="pagenum">p. 115</span> without doubt a difficult one, but +its solution would be of great value. I do not venture to offer any +answer to the question I raise—I merely state it.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. A.W. STILL said:</p> +<p>We have been passing through a period in which the city has created +a +type of man so wholly absorbed in the promotion of his own individual +interests that he tends almost entirely to forget the social +obligations +which ought to make the greatest appeal to him. We may take some hope +from what Professor Geddes has said, that the time is coming when we +shall bring the force of our own characters to bear on our environment, +and endeavour to break away from conditions which have made us the +slaves of environment. I know the lovely little garden city of +Bourneville intimately, and some of the experiments in other quarters. +But in the common expansion of cities, I have seen that as the people +get away from one set of slums, they are creating new areas which will +become as degraded and abominable as those which are left behind. It +has +always seemed to me that there is room for good work by some committee, +or some body of men, who would be voluntary guardians of the city's +well-being, who would make it their business to acquire all that +knowledge which Professor Geddes has just put before us in terms so +enchanting, and would use all the ability that they possess in order to +lead the minds of the community towards the cultivation of the best and +highest ideals in civic life. I do not think it need be regarded as +impossible that, from an association of this kind, such a movement as I +have mentioned should spring. I conceive the possibility of each group +developing into a trust, capable of acting in the interests of the city +in years to come, exercising a mighty influence, being relied upon for +guidance, and administering great funds for the common good. If we +could +get in each of our populous centres a dozen thoroughly intelligent +broad-minded men, capable of watching all the streams of tendency—all +the developments of civic life, bringing their judgment to bear on its +progress, and urging the public to move in the right direction, a great +service might be rendered. At least once a year, these little groups of +men might meet together at some general conference, and, by the +exchange +of their opinions and by the mutual helpfulness of intellectual +intercourse, raise up and perfect civic ideals which would be a boon to +this country. We suffer at present, I think, from the too great +particularisation of our efforts. We get one man devoting himself +exclusively to a blind asylum, another seeming to take no interest in +anything but a deaf-and-dumb institute or the like, and yet another +devoting himself to charity organisation. It is all excellent work, but +the difficulty is to get broad, comprehensive views taken of the common +good. To reduce poverty and to check physical degeneracy, there must be +an effort continuously made to <span class="pagenum">p. 116</span> raise the tone of the +environment in which we live. The home and the city need to be made +wholesome and beautiful, and the people need to be encouraged to +enlarge +their minds by contact with nature, and by the study of all that is +elevating and that increases the sum of social responsibility.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. E.S. WEYMOUTH said:</p> +<p>He found it somewhat difficult to see what was to be the practical +outcome of civics if studied in the way proposed. Would Professor +Geddes +consider it the duty of any Londoner, who wished to study sociology +practically, to map out London, and also the surrounding districts, +with +special reference to the Thames River Basin, as appeared to be +suggested +in both Professor Geddes' papers? Looking at civics in its practical or +ethical aspect, he was bound to confess that, though he had acquired a +tolerable knowledge of the geography of the Thames Basin, he did not +feel it helped him materially towards becoming a better citizen of +London. Would Professor Geddes wish them to study, first, London with +its wealth side by side with its squalor and filth, and then proceed to +study another large town, where the same phenomena presented +themselves? +What gain would there be in that proportionate to the labour entailed? +In his own case, so disheartened had he felt by observing that all +their +efforts, public and private, for the improvement of their civic +conditions seemed to end in raising considerably the rents of the +ground +landlords of London, while leaving the bulk of the population engaged +in +a hard struggle for their existence, that he had for years past found +it +difficult to take much interest in municipal affairs, so long as the +rates and taxes were—as it seemed to him—put upon the wrong shoulders. +And for the study of civics, he had preferred to turn to those cities +where efforts were being made to establish communal life on what seemed +to him juster conditions. In 1897, he was struck with the title of an +article in the "Daily Telegraph." It was headed, "The Land of Beauty, +Society without Poverty, Life without Care." He found the article was a +description of Durban in Natal. The writer attributed the prosperity of +this town to the fact that the suburbs were kept in the hands of the +community, instead of being handed over to private owners who would +absorb all the unearned increment. Even if this eulogium betrayed +exaggeration still a student of civics might feel that the economic +conditions of that town were worth studying. Similarly, in New Zealand, +the adoption in 1891 of the tax on land values brought prosperity to +the +towns, and changed the tide of emigration from New Zealand into +immigration. Again, at home they had Bourneville, Port Sunlight, and +that most interesting of all present-day experiments in this country, +the Garden City, all of these being founded by men with ideals. He +could +not help feeling <span class="pagenum">p. 117</span> that a student of civics, possessed of such +a fair working knowledge of the city he lived in as most of them might +reasonably lay claim to, would make more real progress by studying the +success or failure of social experiments, than by entering on the very +formidable task that seemed to be set before them by Professor Geddes. +However, when they left abstract civics, as they had it portrayed to +them in these papers, and turned to the architectural or the historical +side of concrete civics, there should be no better guide than Professor +Geddes, whose labours in Edinburgh, and whose projected schemes for the +improvement of Dunfermline, were becoming widely known.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">MR. TOMKINS (<i>of the London Trades +Council</i>) said:</p> +<p>If before any person was allowed to serve on our different public +bodies, he should be required to attend a course of lectures such as +those given by Professor Geddes on civics, that would surely be a means +of developing his social interests, and would tend to eliminate that +self-interest which too often actuated public men. There was nothing +more difficult than for workmen to-day to be able to take larger views. +The workman's whole business was now so different from what is was in +the days of the arts and crafts guilds of the Middle Ages; they now +found him ground down into some little division of industry, and it was +quite impossible for him to work in his own way. Thus he got +narrow-minded, because concentrated on some minor process. He was kept +at work with his nose to the mill the whole time, and it became too +exhausting for him to try and take these larger views of life. He often +thought of the amount of talent and energy and practical beauty which +was wasted in our workshops to-day. Referring to the Garden Cities of +this country and the United States, Mr. Tomkins said the idea of +getting +great Trusts to use their money in a social spirit, and not merely to +get the workers tied to their mills, was really something which opened +out a vista of grand possibilities in the future; but if any movement +was to be successful it would be necessary to teach the great masses of +workers, and to create a real sound social public opinion amongst them.</p> +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center;">PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply</p> +<p>Professor Geddes, in replying to the discussion, said he entirely +agreed +with the point made by Mr. Swinny, and he should just like to correct +what he had said in his lecture by reference to what he meant by a +civic +museum. In Edinburgh, he had in his museum a large room, with a +geographical model <span class="pagenum">p. 118</span> of the old town +with its hill-fort, and +so on; and he hung round this maps and diagrams of historical and +geographical details. On the opposite side of the room, he had a symbol +of the market-cross, which stood for the centre of its municipal life, +of its ideals and independence of environment. Around it was grouped +what represented the other side of the city; and here he might answer +another point, and say that they could never settle the great +philosophical controversy of determinism and free-will. They would +always incline when young to the novel of circumstance, and later, to +the novel of character, but they should always feel that life was a +game +of individual skill with interfering circumstances. These diagrams of +his were only the page split. On the one side, he meant to push to the +extreme the idea that the place makes us, and on the other side, that +we +make the place. By what process do men struggle towards the selection +of +their ideals? They find themselves within the grasp of their +environment, their whole heritage of culture, of good and ill, the +whole +tradition of the past; but they must select certain elements of +these—the elements that seem to them good, and so they might escape +from the manner of the city. Pointing to a drawing of the old Scotch +bawbee, Professor Geddes said it was not a very dignified symbol of the +coinage of the world, but let them mark how it had on the one side the +hammerman at his work, with his motto "<i>Beat deus artem</i>," and, on +the +other side, a larger legend, with the eagle of the empire and the lamb +of Saint John.</p> +<p>To return to his civic museum: the room below the one he had +described +was the larger museum for Scotland, and in the room below that, again, +the museum for England, Ireland and America, the whole English-speaking +world—not the Empire only. And the whole stood on a museum and library +representing that larger evolution of the occidental civilisation which +showed them they were merely children of the past. Professor Geddes +pleaded for museums in which every city displayed its own past and +present, but related itself to the whole of Europe and the whole +occident.</p> +<p>One or two practical questions of great importance had <span class="pagenum">p. 119</span> +been +raised; but, with all respect, he submitted that they could consider +what was practical and practicable without requiring to go into the +question of taxing land. That was a matter of political opinion. It was +as if they were discussing the geology of coal, which they could do, +without reference to coal royalties. Mr. Weymouth was with them on the +subject of preserving old buildings; and he thought there was a great +deal to be learned, if Mr. Weymouth would descend the valley of the +Thames once more. It was of great importance if he found a great city +at +the tidal limit. Going down the Thames and the Tay, they would find, at +the last ford of one, the old Abbey of Westminster, and at the last +ford +of the other, the old Abbey of Scoon. The kings of England and Scotland +were crowned there because these were the most important places—a point +of great historic interest. As a matter of practical interest, he might +mention that Scoon and Westminster alike passed out of supreme +importance when bridges were built across the river below; and he would +next point out how just as Perth became of subordinate importance when +the great Tay Bridge was built, so it became a tremendously important +question to London, as it might in turn be much affected by the making +of a great and a new bridge much further down the stream. This study of +the descending river had real and practical, as well as historical +importance. He had been about considerably in the great cities of the +United States, and had been struck by the amount of good endeavour +there. It was not, however, by denouncing Tammany that they could beat +it, but by understanding it. They must understand the mechanism by +which +the Celtic chieftain ruled his clan, and they must deal with these +methods by still other methods; and they might often find it more +satisfactory to re-moralise the chieftain than to destroy him.</p> +<p>Professor Geddes concluded by saying that he appreciated the +admirable +suggestion of Mr. Still towards the evolution of civic unions. He was +sure Mr. Still had there an idea of great significance which might be +developed.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> +<span style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:<br /> +<br /> +</span><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1">[1]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> e.g., Erskine Beveridge, LL.D., Bibliography of +Dunfermline.—<i>Dunfermline, 1902.</i> 8vo.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2">[2]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> "Sociological Papers," Vol 1., pp. 103-118.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3">[3]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Fig. 1.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4">[4]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> For a fuller justification of this thesis as regards +Switzerland, see the writer's "International Exhibitions," in +<i>International Monthly</i>, October, 1900.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5">[5]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> For a fuller review of these, compare the writer's "City +Development," in <i>Contemporary Review</i>, October, 1904.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6">[6]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> A fuller study, upon this method, of the essential origins +of pastoral evolution, and of its characteristic modern developments, +will be found in the writer's "Flower of the Grass," in <i>The +Evergreen</i>, +Edinburgh and Westminster, 1896. See also "La Science Sociale," +<i>passim</i>, especially in its earlier vols. or its number for Jan. +1905.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7">[7]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> La Nomenclature Sociale (Extrait de La Revue, "La Science +Sociale," Dec. 1886) Paris, Firmin-Diact, 1887.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8">[8]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Demoulins, La Science Sociale d'apres F. Le Play 1882-1905; +Classification Sociale, "La Science Sociale," Jan. 1905.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9">[9]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Tarde, "L'imitation Sociale," and other works.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10">[10]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> For the sake of brevity, an entire chapter has been +omitted, discussing the manifold origins of distinct governing classes, +whether arising from the Folk, or superimposed upon them from without, +in short, of the contrast of what we may broadly call patricians and +plebeians, which so constantly appears through history, and in the +present also. These modes of origin are all in association respectively +with Place, Work, and Family, or some of the various interactions of +these. Origin and situation, migration, individual or general, with its +conflict of races, may be indicated among the first group of factors; +technical efficiency and its organising power among the second; +individual qualities and family stocks among the third, as also +military +and administrative aptitude, and the institutional privileges which so +readily arise from them. Nor need we here discuss the rise of +institutions, so fully dealt with by sociological writers. Enough for +the present then, if institutions and social classes be taken as we +find +them.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11">[11]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> The use of <i>lore</i> as primarily empirical, and derived from +the senses, it is traditional; it is well therefore to restrict it to +this, and to revive the old word <i>lear</i>, still understood in +Scotland in +these precise senses—intellectual, rational, yet traditional, +occupational also.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12">[12]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Without forgetting the many institutions and workers in +almost all departments of the field of civics, the rise of definite +surveys and of scientific groupings like this Society, without ignoring +also the many admirable workers and institutions of social endeavour, +and their progressive integration into Social Unions, Institutes of +Service, and the like, I may be permitted to press for the need of +uniting both types, the scientific and the practical, into a single +one—a civic museum and active centre in one. Of this type, my own +Outlook Tower at Edinburgh is, so far as I am aware, the earliest +beginning; and, despite its rudimentary condition, may thus serve to +suggest a type of institution which will be found of service alike to +the sociologist and the citizen.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13">[13]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Cf. the writer's "City Development," Edinburgh and +Westminster, 1904.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14">[14]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to +note the practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition, +appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to +civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall. The Cottages Exhibition initiated +by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that +admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in +the directions of progress and propaganda advocated above.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Civics: as Applied Sociology, by Patrick Geddes + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVICS: AS APPLIED SOCIOLOGY *** + +***** This file should be named 13205-h.htm or 13205-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/0/13205/ + +Produced by Jon Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and Distributed +Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Civics: as Applied Sociology + +Author: Patrick Geddes + +Release Date: August 17, 2004 [EBook #13205] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVICS: AS APPLIED SOCIOLOGY *** + + + + +Produced by Jon Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere and Distributed +Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. + + + + + + + +_Civics: as Applied Sociology_ + +by Patrick Geddes + + + + +Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, +F.R.S., in the Chair. + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as far as +possible, concrete in treatment. If it is to appeal to practical men and +civic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for the +systematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be not +merely the product of the study, but rather be those which may be +acquired in course of local observation and practical effort. My problem +is thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise from +the experience of any moderately-travelled observer of varied interests; +so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic and +impressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards an +orderly Regional Survey. This point of view has next to be correlated +with the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquired +through some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise toward a +larger and more orderly conception of civic action--as Regional Service. +In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or [Page: 104] Civics, as +one of its main departments, may be defined as the application of Social +Survey to Social Service. + +In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, our +everyday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually become +more systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; while +our activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarly +approximate towards art. Thus there is emerging more and more clearly +for sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields of +application in city after city, the conception of a scientific centre of +observation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centre of +experimental endeavour on the other--in short of Sociological +Observatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasingly +co-ordinated. Indeed, is not such association of observations and +experiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here and +elsewhere? I need not multiply instances of the correlation of science +and art, as of chemistry with agriculture, or biology with medicine. +Yet, on the strictly sociological plane and in civic application they +are as yet less generally evident, though such obvious connections as +that of vital statistics with hygienic administration, that of +commercial statistics with politics, are becoming recognised by all. In +the paper with which this Society's work lately opened, the intimate +connection between a scientific demography and a practical eugenics has +been clearly set forth. But this study of the community in the aggregate +finds its natural parallel and complement in the study of the community +as an integrate, with material and immaterial structures and functions, +which we call the City. Correspondingly, the improvement of the +individuals of the community, which is the aim of eugenics, involves a +corresponding civic progress. Using (for the moment at least) a parallel +nomenclature, we see that the sociologist is concerned not only with +"demography" but with "politography," and that "eugenics" is inseparable +from "politogenics." For the struggle for existence, though observed +mainly from the side of its individuals by the demographer, is not only +an intra-civic but an inter-civic process; and if so, ameliorative +selection, now clearly sought for the individuals in detail as eugenics, +is inseparable from a corresponding civic art--a literal +"Eupolitogenics." + + + +A--THE GEOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF CITIES + +Coming to concrete Civic Survey, where shall we begin? Not only in +variety and magnitude of civic activities, but, thanks especially to the +work of Mr. Charles Booth and his collaborators in actual social survey +also, London may naturally claim pre-eminence. Yet even at best, does +not this vastest of world cities remain a less or more foggy labyrinth, +from which surrounding [Page: 105] regions with their smaller cities can +be but dimly descried, even with the best intentions of avoiding the +cheap generalisation of "the provinces"? For our more general and +comparative study, then, simpler beginnings are preferable. More +suitable, therefore, to our fundamental thesis--that no less definite +than the study of races and usages or languages, is that of the +groupings of men--is the clearer outlook, the more panoramic view of a +definite geographic region, such, for instance, as lies beneath us upon +a mountain holiday. Beneath vast hunting desolations lie the pastoral +hillsides, below these again scattered arable crofts and sparsely dotted +hamlets lead us to the small upland village of the main glen: from this +again one descends to the large and prosperous village of the foothills +and its railway terminus, where lowland and highland meet. East or west, +each mountain valley has its analogous terminal and initial village, +upon its fertile fan-shaped slope, and with its corresponding minor +market; while, central to the broad agricultural strath with its slow +meandering river, stands the prosperous market town, the road and +railway junction upon which all the various glen-villages converge. A +day's march further down, and at the convergence of several such +valleys, stands the larger county-town--in the region before me as I +write, one of added importance, since not only well nigh central to +Scotland, but as the tidal limit of a till lately navigable river. +Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great +manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river +system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the essential +unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple +geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental to +any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By +descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation +from its simple origins to its complex resultants; nor can any element +of this be omitted. Were we to begin with the peasant hamlet as our +initial unit, and forget the hinterlands of pasture, forest, and chase +(an error to which the writer on cities is naturally prone), the +anthropologist would soon remind us that in forgetting the hunter, we +had omitted the essential germ of active militarism, and hence very +largely of aristocratic rule. Similarly, [Page: 106] in ignoring the +pastoral life, we should be losing sight of a main fount of spiritual +power, and this not only as regards the historic religions, but all +later culture elements also, from the poetic to the educational. In +short, then, it takes the whole region to make the city. As the river +carries down contributions from its whole course, so each complex +community, as we descend, is modified by its predecessors. The converse +is no doubt true also, but commonly in less degree. + +In this way with the geographer we may rapidly review and extend our +knowledge of the grouping of cities. Such a survey of a series of our +own river-basins, say from Dee to Thames, and of a few leading +Continental ones, say the Rhine and Meuse, the Seine and Loire, the +Rhone, the Po, the Danube--and, if possible, in America also, at least +the Hudson and Mississippi--will be found the soundest of introductions +to the study of cities. The comparison of corresponding types at once +yields the conviction of broad general unity of development, structure, +and function. Thus, with Metschnikoff we recognise the succession of +potamic, thalassic, and oceanic civilisations; with Reclus we see the +regular distribution of minor and major towns to have been largely +influenced not only by geographical position but by convenient journey +distances. Again, we note how the exigencies of defence and of +government, the developments of religion, despite all historic +diversities, have been fundamentally the same. It is not, of course, to +be forgotten how government, commerce, communications, have +concentrated, altered or at least disguised the fundamental geographical +simplicity of this descending hierarchy from mountain-hamlet to +ocean-metropolis; but it is useful for the student constantly to recover +the elemental and naturalist-like point of view even in the greatest +cities. At times we all see London as still fundamentally an +agglomeration of villages, with their surviving patches of common, +around a mediaeval seaport; or we discern even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say its Place de l'Etoile, with its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest-rides, each literally arrow-straight. So the narrow +rectangular network of an American city is explicable only by the +unthinking persistence of the peasant thrift, which grudges good land to +[Page: 107] road-way, and is jealous of oblique short cuts. In short, +then, in what seems our most studied city planning, we are still +building from our inherited instincts like the bees. Our Civics is thus +still far from an Applied Sociology. + + + +B--THE HISTORIC SURVEY OF CITIES + +But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time. Though +the claim of geography be fundamental our interest in the history of the +city is supremely greater; it is obviously no mere geographic +circumstances which developed one hill-fort in Judea, and another in +Attica, into world centres, to this day more deeply influential and +significant than are the vastest modern capitals. This very wealth of +historical interests and resources, the corresponding multiplicity of +specialisms, more than ever proves the need of some means by which to +group and classify them. Some panoramic simplification of our ideas of +history comparable to that of our geography, and if possible congruent +with this, is plainly what we want. Again the answer comes through +geography, though no longer in mere map or relief, but now in vertical +section--in the order of strata ascending from past to present, whether +we study rock-formations with the geologist, excavate more recent +accumulations with the archaeologist, or interpret ruins or monuments +with the historian. Though the primitive conditions we have above noted +with the physiographer remain apparent, indeed usually permanent, cities +have none the less their characteristic phases of historic development +decipherably superposed. Thus below even the characteristically +patriarchal civilisations, an earlier matriarchal order is often +becoming disclosed. Our interest in exploring some stately modern or +Renaissance city is constantly varied by finding some picturesque +mediaeval remnant; below this some fragment of Roman ruin; below this it +may be some barbarian fort or mound. Hence the fascinating interest of +travel, which compels us ever to begin our survey anew. Starting with +the same river-basin as before, the geographic panorama now gains a new +and deeper interest. Primitive centres long forgotten start into life; +pre-historic tumuli give up their dead; to the stone circles the [Page: +108] worshippers return; the British and the Roman camps again fill with +armed men, and beside the prosaic market town arises a shadowy Arthurian +capital. Next, some moment-centuries later, a usurper's tower rises and +falls; the mediaeval abbey, the great castles, have their day; with the +Reformation and the Renaissance the towns again are transformed; and +yet more thoroughly than ever by the Industrial Revolution, with its +factories, railways, steamships, and all that they bring with them. +Thus, for instance, almost more important than the internal +transformation and concentration wrought by railway and telegraph, is +the selection, amidst the almost innumerable seaports of the older +order, of the very few adapted to the deep draught of modern ships. In a +word, not only does the main series of active cities display traces of +all the past phases of evolution, but beside this lie fossils, or linger +survivals, of almost every preceding phase. + +Hence, after many years of experiment and practice in teaching sociology +I still find no better method available than that of regional survey, +historical as well as geographical. Beginning with some popular +excursion of obvious beauty and romantic interest like that to Melrose, +we see with every tourist how naturally and fully the atmosphere and +tradition of the Border found its expression and world influence in Sir +Walter Scott. Thence, passing by way of contrast through the long +isolated peninsula of Fife, say to representative towns like Kirkcaldy +and Largo, we still see the conditions of that individualism of which +Adam Smith and Alexander Selkirk ("Robinson Crusoe") have each in his +way become the very prototypes. In such ways the connection of regional +geography, history, and social psychology becomes increasingly clear. +Again, we explore the other old Fife seaports, a series of survivals +like those of the Zuyder Zee, or again work out in the field the +significance of Stirling, so often the strategic centre of Scotland. +Again, Dunfermline, as early mediaeval capital and abbey, furnishes a +convenient object lesson preparatory to the study of the larger +Edinburgh. Here, again, its triple centre, in the port of Leith, the +Royal Castle, the Abbey of Holyrood, are the respective analogues of the +port of London, the Tower, and Westminster; while each city-group has +its outlying circle of minor burghs, tardily and imperfectly +incorporated into a civic whole. Again, such a marked contrast of civic +origins and developments as those of Glasgow and Edinburgh has to be +accounted for; and thus through such progessively complexer surveys we +reach the plane of modern civic problems and policies. Understanding the +present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to +understand the future as the development of the present? + +The impressiveness of the aspect of Edinburgh to its visitors is thus +not [Page: 109] merely pictorial. Be the spectator conscious of this or +no, it turns primarily upon the contrast of the mediaeval hill-city with +its castle ramparts, its fretted cathedral crown, with park and +boulevard, with shops, hotels and railway stations. But the historic +panorama is unusually complete. See the hill-fort defended by lake and +forest, becoming "_castrum puellarum_," becoming a Roman and an +Arthurian citadel, a mediaeval stronghold of innumerable sieges, a +centre of autocratic and military dictatures, oligarchic governments, at +length a museum of the past. So in the city itself. Here the narrow +ridge crowded into a single street all the essential organs of a +capital, and still presents with the rarest completeness of +concentration a conspectus of modern civic life and development; and +this alike as regards both spiritual and temporal powers, using these +terms in their broadest senses as the respective expressions of the +material order and its immaterial counterparts. Thus the royal and noble +castles of the Middle Age become with the Renaissance here as everywhere +something of palaces, while with the industrial revolution they have +become replaced by factories or transformed into breweries. So the +guidance of speculative thought, once concentrated in the mediaeval +abbey, becomes transferred to the Reformation assembly of divines, to +the Renaissance college; and again at the Revolution, is largely taken +over by the speculative encyclopaedists, of whom Hume and Smith were but +the most eminent. Nor are later developments less obvious. Of the +following generation, we have the neo-classic architecture which +everywhere dominated Europe after the French Revolution and during the +First Empire, while of the next generation's reaction against all this +in the romantic movement, the neo-Gothic monument of Scott is the most +characteristic possible representative. Again, just as in the Oxford +movement we had the (appropriately regional) renascence of the idealism +of the Cavaliers, so in Edinburgh we have naturally the simultaneous +renascence of the Puritan ideal, e.g., in the Free Church, whose +monument accordingly rises to dominate the city in its turn. The later +period of prosperous Liberalism, the heroic enthusiasms of Empire, have +each left their mark; and now in the dominant phase of social evolution, +that of Finance, the banks, the financial companies, the press are +having their turn as monument builders. Our Old Edinburgh is thus the +most condensed example, the visible microcosm of the social evolution +which is manifest everywhere; so that as a teaching model of +sociological development it may renew its educational attractiveness +when its improving hygiene has lessened its medical advantages. + +Setting down now these phases of historical development in tabular form, +we have a diagram such as the following:-- + + + ANCIENT | RECENT | CONTEMPORARY | INCIPIENT +---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +Primitive | Matri- | Patri- | Greek | Mediaeval | Renaissance | Revolution | Empire | Finance | ? ? ? + | archal | archal | and | | | | | | + | | | Roman | | | | | | + + +which, were it placed erect, we might now compare to the increasing +[Page: 110] nodes of a growing stem, or rather say the layers of a coral +reef, in which each generation constructs its characteristic stony +skeleton as a contribution to the growing yet dying and wearying whole. +I have elaborated this example of the panoramic aspect of Old Edinburgh +as a widely familiar instance of the method of literal survey with which +social and civic studies may so conveniently begin; and I press the +value of extending these even to the utmost elaborateness of +photographic survey: in my view, indeed, a sociological society has at +least as much use for a collection of maps, plans and photographs as of +statistics, indeed scarcely less than one of books. Of course, in all +this I am but recalling what every tourist in some measure knows; yet +his impressions and recollections can become an orderly politography, +only as he sees each city in terms of its characteristic social +formations, and as he utilises the best examples from each phase towards +building up a complete picture of the greatest products of civic +evolution, temporal and spiritual, of all places and times up to the +present. Such a parallel of the historic survey of the city to that of +its underlying geological area is thus in no wise a metaphoric one, but +one which may be worked out upon maps sections and diagrams almost +completely in the same way--in fact, with little change save that of +colours and vertical scale. The attempt to express the characteristic +and essential life and thought of a given region in each period upon a +series of maps is in fact the best method of understanding the everyday +map at which we commonly look so unthinkingly. + +Much of the preceding, I am assured, must be most unsatisfactory to +those who look at cities only from the standpoint of so many committees +dealing with police, water, finance, and so on; or to those who are +content to view the magnitude, the wealth and the population, the +industries and the manufactures of a great city without considering +whence these have come and whither they are leading; equally +unsatisfactory also, I fear, to those to whom civic dignities and +precedence, or the alternations of winning political colours, appear of +prime importance. I can only hope that some of these may, on +consideration, admit that the points of view I have endeavoured to +outline above may be worth some thought and study as elementary +preliminaries to their own more special and developed interests; and if +the society permit. I hope to approach these more closely in a later +paper. + +[Page: 111] The abstract economist or legalist, the moral or political +philosopher may also resent the proposed mode of treatment as an attempt +to materialise sociology by reducing it to concrete terms alone. But I +would reply that observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is +just the very means of preparing for it. It is the observant naturalist, +the travelled zoologist and botanist, who later becomes the productive +writer on evolution. It is the historian who may best venture on into +the philosophy of history;--to think the reverse is to remain in the +pre-scientific order altogether: hence the construction of systems of +abstract and deductive economics, politics or morals, has really been +the last surviving effort of scholasticism. Viewed as Science, Civics is +that branch of Sociology which deals with Cities--their origin and +distribution; their development and structure; their functioning, +internal and external, material and psychological; their evolution, +individual and associated. Viewed again from the practical side, that of +applied science, Civics must develop through experimental endeavour into +the more and more effective Art of enhancing the life of the city and of +advancing its evolution. With the first of these lines of study, the +concretely scientific, our philosophical outlook will not fail to widen; +with the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to +deepen also. + +As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have naturally +approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic survey, +its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these +to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, even +of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice +co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more +concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger +than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the +needed practical division of labour in the city's service. When the +first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly +diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who +at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated: the +evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link +between them. + + +C--THE CITIZEN IN PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT + +Leaving now the external survey of the city by help of its material +framework, its characteristic buildings and predominant styles, for the +deeper psychological survey of the citizens themselves, we may +conveniently begin with these also in their process of development--in +fact, our method compels us to this course. We enter then a school; and +if we bring fresh eyes we may soon be agreed that the extraordinary +babel of studies its time-table and curriculum reveal, is intelligible +from no single one of the various [Page: 112] geographic or historic +points of view we have traversed from mountain to sea, or from past to +present. But this unprecedented conflict of studies becomes at once +intelligible when viewed apart from any and every definite theory of +education yet promulgated by educationists, and even acquires a fresh +theory of its own--that of the attempted recapitulation of the survivals +of each and all preceding periods in their practical or speculative +aspects, particularly the later legends and literatures, their rituals +and codes. Thus, the inordinate specialisation upon arithmetic, the +exaggeration of all three R's, is plainly the survival of the demand for +cheap yet efficient clerks, characteristic of the recent and +contemporary financial period. + +The ritual of examinations with its correlation of memorising and +muscular drill is similarly a development of the imperial order, +historically borrowed from the Napoleonic one; the chaotic "general +knowledge" is similarly a survival of the encyclopaedic period; that is, +of the French Revolution and the Liberal Movement generally; the Latin +grammar and verses are of course the survivals of the Renaissance, as +the precise fidelity to absurd spelling is the imitation of its proof +readers; the essay is the abridged form of the mediaeval disputation; +and only such genuine sympathy with Virgil or Tacitus, with Homer or +Plato as one in a thousand acquires, is truly Roman or Greek at all. +The religious instruction, however, re-interpreted by the mediaeval +Church or the Reformation, has still its strength in some of the best +elements of patriarchal literature; while the fairy tale, by which all +this superincumbent weight of learning is sometimes alleviated, is the +child's inheritance from the matriarchal order. Finally, the apple and +the ball, at the bottom of this whole burden of books, complete the +recapitulation; as the one, the raw fruit; the other, the ready missile, +of primeval man. Our child then is heir of all the ages more fully than +he or his teachers commonly realise. The struggle for mastery of the +schools is thus no temporary feud, but an unending battle; one destined +to increase rather than diminish; for in this there is the perpetual +clash of all the forces of good heredity and evil atavism, of all the +new variations also, healthy or diseases. + + + +[Page: 113] D--THE APPLIED SOCIOLOGY OF THE PRESENT + +The city and its children thus historically present a thoroughly +parallel accumulation of survivals or recapitulations of the past in the +present. Few types nowadays are pure, that is, keep strictly to their +period; we are all more or less mixed and modernised. Still, whether by +temporal or spiritual compulsion, whether for the sake of bread or +honour, each mainly and practically stands by his order, and acts with +the social formation he belongs to. Thus now the question of the +practical civics, that is, of the applied sociology, of each individual, +each body or interests may be broadly defined; it is to emphasise his +particular historic type, his social formation and influence in the +civic whole, if not indeed to dominate this as far as may be. We are all +for progress, but we each define it in his own way. Hence one man of +industrial energy builds more factories or slums, another as naturally +more breweries to supply them; and in municipal or national council his +line of action, conscious or unconscious, remains congruent with these. +Representative government fails to yield all that its inventors hoped of +it, simply because it is so tolerably representative of its majorities; +and there is thus great truth in the common consolation that our +municipal governments, like larger ones, are seldom much worse than we +deserve. Each social formation, through each of its material activities, +exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and +ideals wins also its place and power. At one time the legal and +punitive point of view, directing itself mainly to individual cases, or +the philanthropic, palliating sufferings, dispute the foremost places; +and now in their turn hygienic or educational endeavours arise, towards +treating causes instead of waiting for consequences. Such endeavours are +still undeniably too vague in thought, too crude in practice, and the +enthusiast of hygiene or education or temperance may have much to answer +for. But so, also, has he who stands outside of the actual civic field, +whether as philistine or aesthete, utopist or cynic, party politician or +"mug-wump." Between all these extremes it is for the united forces of +civic survey and civic service to find the middle course. [Page: 114] We +observe then in the actual city, as among its future citizens, that our +action is generally the attempt to mould both alike to some past or +passing social formation, and, therefore, usually towards the type to +which our interest and our survey incline, be this in our own city or +more probably in some earlier one. Even in the actual passing detail of +party politics we are often reminded how directly continuous are the +rivals with puritan London, with royalist Oxford; but still more is this +the case throughout the history of thought and action, and the intenser +the more plainly; for it is in his highest moments of conviction and +decision that the Puritan feels most in sympathy with the law or the +prophets of Jerusalem, the scholar with Athens; or that the man of +action--be he the first French republican or the latest +imperialist--most frankly draws his inspiration from the corresponding +developments of Paris. It is a commonplace of psychology that our +thought is and must be anthropomorphic; a commonplace of history that it +has been Hebraomorphic, Hellenomorphic, Latinomorphic, and so on by +turns. + +This view has often been well worked out by the historian of inventions +and discoveries, of customs or laws, of policies or religions, as by the +historian of language or the fine arts. What we still commonly need, +however, is to carry this view clearly into our own city and its +institutions, its streets and schools and homes, until either in the +private spending or public voting of the smallest sum we know exactly +whether we are so far determining expenditure and influence towards +enlarging, say, the influence and example of renascent Florence in one +generation or of decadent Versailles in another. There is no danger of +awaking this consciousness too fully; for since we have ceased +consciously to cite and utilise the high examples of history we have +been the more faithfully, because sub-consciously and automatically, +continuing and extending later and lower developments. + + +E--CITIES, PRESENT AND FUTURE + +Hence, after a Liberal and an Imperial generation, each happy in their +respective visions of wealth and expanding greatness [Page: 115], the +current renewal of civic interests naturally takes the form of an +awakening survey of our actual environment. First, a literal mapping of +its regional elements, and then an historic interpretation of +these--not, alas, merely or mainly in terms of the cities of sacred or +classic tradition, nor of the Mediaeval or Renaissance cities which +followed these, but as stupendous extensions of the mediaeval Ghetto, of +the Wapping Stairs, of the Lancashire factories and of the Black +Country, relieved by the coarse jollities of Restoration London, and +adorned for the most part, with debased survivals from the Italian and +the French Renaissance. There is thus no more question in our civic +discussions of "bringing in" or "leaving out" geography or history; we +have been too long unconscious of them, as was M. Jourdain of his +speaking in prose. + +But what of the opening Future? May its coming social developments not +be discerned by the careful observer in germs and buds already formed or +forming, or deduced by the thinker from sociological principles? I +believe in large measure both; yet cannot within these limits attempt to +justify either. Enough for the present, if it be admitted that the +practical man in his thought and action in the present is mainly the as +yet too unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still +working within the grasp of natural conditions. + +To realise the geographic and historic factors of our city's life is +thus the first step to comprehension of the present, one indispensable +to any attempt at the scientific forecast of the future, which must +avoid as far as it can the dangers of mere utopianism. + + +F--LITERATURE OF CIVICS + +No discussion of the preliminaries and fundamentals of Civics can omit +some consideration of the vast and ever growing literature of cities. +But how are we to utilise this? How continue it? How co-ordinate it with +the needed independent and first-hand survey of city by city? And how +apply this whole knowledge of past and present towards civic action? + +The answer must plainly be a concrete one. Every city [Page: 116] +however small, has already a copious literature of its topography and +history in the past; one, in fact, so ample that its mere bibliography +may readily fill a goodly volume,[1] to which the specialist will long +be adding fresh entries. This mass of literature may next be viewed as +the material for a comprehensive monograph, well enriched with maps and +illustrations, such as many cities can boast; and this again may be +condensed into a guide-book. Guide-books have long been excellent in +their descriptive and historical detail, and are becoming increasingly +interpretative also, especially since Mr. Grant Allen transferred his +evolutionary insight and his expository clearness from natural to civic +history. + +[1] e.g., Erskine Beveridge, LL.D., Bibliography of +Dunfermline.--_Dunfermline, 1902._ 8vo. + +After this general and preliminary survey of geographic environment and +historic development, there nowadays begins to appear the material of a +complementary and contemporary volume, the Social Survey proper. Towards +this, statistical materials are partly to be found amid parliamentary +and municipal reports and returns, economic journals and the like, but a +fresh and first-hand survey in detail is obviously necessary. In this +class of literature, Mr. Booth's monumental Survey of London, followed +by others, such as Mr. Rowntree's of York, have already been so widely +stimulating and suggestive that it may safely be predicted that before +many years the Social Survey of any given city will be as easily and +naturally obtainable as is at present its guide-book; and the +rationalised census of the present condition of its people, their +occupation and real wages, their family budget and culture-level, should +be as readily ascertainable from the one, as their antecedents +understood or their monuments visited by help of the other. + +But these two volumes--"The City: Past and Present,"--are not enough. Is +not a third volume imaginable and possible, that of the opening Civic +Future? Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of things +as they have come about, and of people as they are--of their +occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals--may we +not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly +suggest, something of [Page: 117] their actual or potential development? +And may not, must not, such discernment, such planning, while primarily, +of course, for the immediate future, also take account of the remoter +and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and +correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve? Such a +volume would thus differ widely from the traditional and contemporary +"literature of Utopias" in being regional instead of non-regional, +indeed ir-regional and so realisable, instead of being unrealisable and +unattainable altogether. The theme of such a volume would thus be to +indicate the practicable alternatives, and to select and to define from +these the lines of development of the legitimate _Eu-topia_ possible in +the given city, and characteristic of it; obviously, therefore, a very +different thing from a vague _Ou-topia_, concretely realisable nowhere. +Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal +city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris, +have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is +one thing, a plan for our city improvement is another. + +Some concrete, if still fragmentary, materials towards such a volume +are, of course, to be found in all municipal offices, though scattered +between the offices of the city engineer and health officer, the +architect and park superintendent; while the private architect and +landscape gardener, the artist, sometimes even the municipal voters and +their representatives, may all have ideas of their own. But though our +cities are still as a whole planless, their growth as yet little better +than a mere casual accretion and agglomeration, if not a spreading +blight, American and German cities are now increasingly affording +examples of comprehensive design of extension and of internal +improvement. As a specific example of such an attempt towards the +improvement of a British city, one not indeed comprehending all aspects +of its life, but detailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and expressing +that continuity of past and present into future which has been above +argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline +Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent +study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for +consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a +moderate and readily intelligible [Page: 118] scale a very marked +combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing +activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook. + +That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has been +above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology is +thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet +it is one not lacking in generality of application. For what we have +reached is really the conception of an _Encyclopaedia Civica_, to which +each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and +its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet +more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the +awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the +production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire--life ever +producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature +reacting upon the ennoblement of life. + +Apart altogether from what may be the quality and defects of particular +volumes, such as those cited as examples of each part of such a proposed +civic trilogy, one as yet nowhere complete, the very conception of such +a possible threefold series may be of some service. For this would +present a continuous whole, at once sociological and civic--the views +and the resources of the scholar and the educationist with their +treasures of historic culture, of the man of action with his mastery of +immediate affairs, of the thinker with his vision of the opening future, +now all co-ordinated by help of the design of the artist, and thence to +be gradually realised in the growing heritage of the city, the enlarging +life of the citizen. + +NOTE--As an example of the concrete application to a particular city, of +the sociological methods and principles indicated in the above paper, +Prof. Geddes exhibited an illustrated volume embodying the results of +his studies and designs towards the improvement of Dunfermline, under +the Trust recently established by Mr. Carnegie. This has since been +published: + +P. GEDDES. City Development. Park Gardens and Culture Institutes; a +Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. With 138 illustrations. +Edinburgh, etc.. 1904. + + + + +[Page: 119] DISCUSSION + + +The Chairman (MR. CHARLES BOOTH) in opening the discussion said: + +The paper we have just heard read is one of the most complete and +charming papers on a great and interesting subject I have ever heard. I +think you will all agree in this, and I hope the discussion which +follows will emphasise and, if that is possible, add to the wealth of +ideas that this paper contains. + + + +MR EBENEZER HOWARD (Founder of the Garden City Association) said: + +I have read and re-read--in the proof forwarded to me--Professor Geddes' +wonderfully luminous and picturesque paper with much interest. He has +given us a graphic description of the geographic process which leads to +the development of the city. We see vividly the gradual stages by which +the city grows and swells, with the descent of the population from the +hillsides into the valleys, even as the river which flows through the +city is fed continually by the streams which flow down to it. But is +there not this essential difference between the gathering waters of +heaven, as they pour into the great city, and the gathering tide of +population, which follows the path of the waters? The waters flow +through the city on, on toward the mighty ocean, and are then gradually +gathered upward into the soft embraces of the clouds and wafted back +again to the hills, whence they flow down once more to the valleys. But +the living stream of men, women, and children flows from the +country-side and leaves it more and more bare of active, vigorous, +healthy life: it does not, like the waters, "return again to cover the +earth," but moves ever on to the great city, and from thence, at least +for the great majority, there is no chance of more than, at best, a very +short stay in the country. No: the tide flows resistlessly [Page: 120] +onward to make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our +overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge +more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie +near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and +the task of the social reformer more and yet more difficult. + +But surely there must be a way, could we but discover it, of imitating +the skill and bountifulness of Nature, by creating channels through +which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so +that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into +the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the +twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown +city. + +This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the +historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation +lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks. +"Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not +preparing also to understand the future as the development of the +present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that +while the age in which we live is the age of the great, +closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those +who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that the +twentieth century will be known as the period of the great exodus, the +return to the land, the period when by a great and conscious effort a +new fabric of civilisation shall be reared by those who knew how to +apply the knowledge gained by "Social Survey to Social Service." What +are the signs? What words can we place under the head of "Incipient" in +Prof. Geddes' diagram? I would suggest, for one of Prof. Geddes' +interrogation marks might be substituted "Decentralisation of +Industry"--as a great, but yet incipient movement, represented by Port +Sunlight, Bournville, Garden City. For there are now many agencies at +work making for industrial decentralisation. Industries are being driven +out of the great towns by the excessive rents and rates which have to be +paid there--by the difficulty of obtaining adequate space for the modern +factory, a one-storey building; and for the homes of our workers, which +must be vastly different to what they now are if England is to maintain +her place among the nations. And while factories are being driven from +the city, they are also being attracted to the country by its +newly-discovered potentialities. Thus Messrs. Lever Brothers, crowded +out of Warrington, established an entirely new town on a new site at +Port Sunlight; and, because the site was new and raw, it was therefore +possible for Mr. Lever to plan his little town with a single eye to the +best and most desirable conditions, alike from an industrial and a +health and housing point of view. And the same is true of Bournville. +Bournville is one of the most beautiful villages in the world, largely +again because of the potentialities of a new site acquired for the +definite purpose of building thereon a village in which overcrowding +shall be deliberately and permanently prevented, [Page: 121] and in +which work inside the factory may be varied by work in the garden. Now +that these successful experiments have been carried out in this country, +is it not time that the idea of establishing new industries on new +sites, and of surrounding those industries with healthy homes, should be +carried forward on a larger scale, with wider and more concerted +aims--carried forward, too, in such a manner as to make it possible for +the small manufacturer to take part in a movement which has proved to be +so beneficial alike to employer and employed? It is out of this thought +that the Garden City idea has grown, an idea now in course of being +fulfilled. Three thousand eight hundred acres of land, or nearly ten +times the area of Bournville or Port Sunlight, have been acquired in +Hertfordshire, two miles west of the town of Hitchin, and on the branch +line of railway between that town and Cambridge. State aid has not been +sought; that would indeed be weary work. But a company has been formed, +through the untiring efforts of the Garden City Association; plans for +the town have been carefully prepared, plans which, of course, have +regard to the contours of the land (which were first taken, showing +every change of level of five feet), to the preservation of its natural +beauties--its trees and the picturesque villages of Norton and Willian; +to the necessity for railway sidings and railway station, now, thanks to +the Great Northern Railway, already provided; to the making of roads of +easy gradient and of suitable width, affording access to different parts +of the estate, actual work on which is progressing; the careful guarding +from contamination of our water supply, already proved to be abundant; +the provision of a reservoir of suitable elevation, now in course of +construction; a system of drainage, about to be started with; the +provision of parks and playgrounds within the town, as well as a wide +belt of agricultural land around it; sites for homes for 30,000 persons, +with good sized gardens. About six cottages have already been built, not +by the Company but by private enterprise, while many others are just +about to be started upon; the setting apart of sites for schools, +churches, and other public buildings, while plans are in preparation for +lighting the town, as well as for providing it with motive power. + +The programme which I have sketched out is certainly not too bold or +comprehensive for the British race. If a hundredth part of the +organising skill which the Japanese and the Russians are showing in the +great war now in progress were shown by ourselves as citizens in our +great civil war against disease and dirt, poverty and overcrowding, we +could not only build many new cities on the best models, but could also +bring our old towns into line with the new and better order. Prof. +Geddes wishes well, I know, to the Garden City Association, a +propagandist body, and to its first child, the Garden City Company; and +I am sure you will all unite with me in the hope that the best and most +lasting success may crown the generous gift of Mr. Carnegie of L500,000 +to the City of Dunfermline, and reward the efforts of the Trustees and +of Prof. Geddes to make, by the application of modern [Page: 122] skill, +science and art, the ancient city of Dunfermline a centre of sweetness +and light, stimulating us all to higher and yet higher efforts to secure +civic, national and imperial well-being. + +MR. C.H. GRINLING said: + +Like most of the audience, doubtless, he came not to speak but to draw +ever fresh inspiration from Prof. Geddes. But there was one aspect of +the subject he would like to bring out and emphasise. He referred to the +sociological institute, which, under the name of the Outlook Tower, had +grown up in connection with the School of Sociology which Prof. Geddes +had founded and developed in Edinburgh. That institute was at once an +organisation for teaching and for research, for social education, and +for civic action. It was, in fact, a concrete and working application of +the principle indicated in the paper as the very foundation of +Civics--"social survey for social service." And, seeing that the Outlook +Tower was an institution designed in every respect for application to +any given locality, he urged the Sociological Society to advocate its +general extension, so that no region should be without its own +sociological institute or Outlook Tower. + +If one individual could accomplish so much, what could not be +accomplished by the sociologists of our day who would concentrate +themselves, each on his own locality, not necessarily to do the work, +but to give the inspiration which would call out the work of collecting +just that material which Prof. Geddes suggested all through his paper +was one of the great needs of our time? And so one hoped that papers of +this kind would not merely lead to discussion, but to workers +accumulating results of this kind, giving the inspiration to others, and +thus laying up treasures for the sociologists of the future for their +interpretation. Thus, the Sociological Society should be not only the +one scientific society in constant touch with all the leading brains +over the country, but it should be an inspiration, as Prof. Geddes has +himself been, to groups of workers everywhere for just the kind of work +which the Sociological Society has been founded to develop. + + +MR. J.M. ROBERTSON said: + +I would first add my tribute to this extremely interesting and +stimulating paper. It recalled confabulations I had with Prof. Geddes, +many years ago, when he was first formulating in Edinburgh those ideas +which have since become so widely known. I would like, however, to +suggest a few criticisms. The paper is, broadly speaking, an application +of the view of a biologist to Sociology. It is not so much an +application of Darwin's view as that of Von Baer. Prof. Geddes has +characterised his paper as one of elementary preliminaries, but he has +really contributed a paper that [Page: 123] would form part of a +preliminary study in a series of studies in Sociology. The paper does +not quite bear out its title: "Civics: as Applied Sociology." The +application has not begun. The somewhat disparaging remarks on +encyclopaedias of general knowledge, further, might well be applied to +the scheme of an encyclopaedia of the natural history of every city and +every village as an original centre. This atomism will not help +Sociology. Had he to master all that, the sociologist's life would be a +burden not to be borne, and we would never get to applied sociology at +all. There is a danger, too, in following this line, of fastening +attention on one stage of evolution and leaving it there. The true +principle is that evolution is eternal and continuous; and I think harm +may be done, possibly, when you take, say, the phenomenon of the +communication of general knowledge in schools and call it a derivation +from the French _Encyclopedie_. Why leave it there? Where did that come +from? If you are going to trace the simple evolution of civic forms, if +you are to trace how they have come about, it will not do to stick at a +given point. This is a survival of that. That is a survival of something +else. The French _Encyclopedie_ will have to be traced back to the +encyclopaedia of the mediaeval period; and even to the still earlier +period of Isidore of Seville. Then again, there is a danger, I think, +analogous to the danger met with in early botany--the danger of +confusing a resemblance with a relationship. It is extremely interesting +to speculate that the Place de l'Etoile is an evolution from the plan of +the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but +it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection. +The thing is not proved. + +Of course, the vital question is not this tracing of evolution. The +question is: Is "Civics" to be only the study of forms? If so, Sociology +is a dead science, and will effect little practical good until it is +vivified by such suggestions as Mr. Crane has put in his paper. Mr. +Walter Crane brought in a vital question when he said: "How are you +going to modify the values of your civic life unless you grapple with +political problems?" I am not forgetting that Prof. Geddes promises to +deal in another paper with the civics of the future; but I insist that +it will have to grapple with political questions. As he says, a city is +not a place, but "a drama in time." The question for the sociological +student of history is: How has this inequality of wealth and of service +arisen, and how is it to be prevented in the future? That is the problem +we have to study if we wish to make sociology a vital interest. A +definition of progress is really the first step in sociology. Prof. +Geddes' next paper should give us a definition of progress, and it is +better that we begin to fight over a definition of progress, in order to +get a dynamic agreement, than that we should multiply the archaeological +study of many towns. I admit that it is very interesting. In travelling +in South Africa, I often tried to gather how communities began; what, +for example, was the nucleus of this or that village. It was surprising +how very few had an idea of any nucleus at all. I deprecate the idea, +however, that [Page: 124] we are all to amass an enormous accumulation +of such researches. Mr. Booth's single compilation for London is a study +for years; but Mr. Booth's admirable investigation of the difficulties +of life among the poor of London does not of itself give any new impulse +to the solution of the problem of London. It merely gives exact +knowledge in place of general knowledge. The problem of sociology arose +on the general knowledge. I fear lest the work of sociology should run +to an extension of this admirable study instead of to the stimulation of +action taken on that particular knowledge, or on more general knowledge. +We all knew there was plenty of poverty, and how it was caused. We all +had Ideals as to how it was to be got rid of in the future; but the +question is: Is the collection of detail or the prescription of social +method the kind of activity that the Sociological Society is to take up? + +SIR THOMAS BARCLAY said: + +I am not sure that I agree with Mr. Robertson that it is desirable to +define either "progress" or "civilisation." On the whole, their chances +lie rather in the great variety of ideas of what constitutes them than +in any hard-and-fast notion of their meaning. They are generalisations +of what is, rather than an object towards which effort should tend. But +neither do I agree with Prof. Geddes' restriction of "civics" to the +mere outward part of municipal effort. In America the word "civics" is +applied to the rights and duties of citizens, and I should like to see +Prof. Geddes include in Civics the connection between citizen life and +the outward improvement of cities. I am sure, however, Professor Geddes, +as a practical man, will deal rather with realities than theoretical +views on the subject for which he has done so much himself. Edinburgh +owes more than many are willing to admit to Prof. Geddes. I think Ramsay +Lodge one of the greatest embellishments of the Castle Hill in +Edinburgh. I hope he will now be successful in doing something still +more admirable for my native town of Dunfermline. My friend Mr. +Carnegie, whose native town it also is, I believe intends to show by an +object lesson what can be done for all cities. Prof. Geddes is helping +him in this work with his suggestions. I hope they will be carried out. +In America there are several very beautiful cities. No one can ever +forget Washington, which is truly a garden city. No money is spared in +America to beautify and healthify (excuse the barbarism) the habitations +of the thousands. A beautiful city is an investment for health, +intellect, imagination. Genius all the world over is associated, +wherever it has been connected with cities, with beautiful cities. To +grow up among things of beauty ennobles the population. But I should +like to see Prof. Geddes extend his projects for Dunfermline to the +population itself. Most of you know what Mr. Henderson did to utilise +the Edinburgh [Page: 125] police in the care of children. The future of +the country depends upon them. The subject is too serious to continue to +be left to the haphazard mercies of indifferent parents. Every child +born is an agent for good or for evil among the community, and the +community cannot afford to neglect how it is brought up, the +circumstances in which it has its being, the environment from which it +derives its character and tendencies. Necessity may be the mother of +invention, but need of food and insufficient clothing develop in the +child an inventiveness that is not for the good of the community. It +seems a matter of too great an importance to be left even to private +initiative, as was done under Mr. Henderson's regime in Edinburgh; but +everywhere else, or nearly so, very little is done by even private +initiative for the protection of the children against their vicious +environment. In short, I do not think that civics, in the sense in which +my friend Prof. Geddes treats it, is a complete subject at all. Civics, +to my mind, includes everything that relates to the citizen. Everywhere +something is being done in one direction or another to make them +capable, prosperous, and happy. In America happiness is taught in the +schools. Every schoolmaster's and schoolmistress's first duty is to set +an example of a happy frame of mind; smiling and laughing are +encouraged, and it is not thought that the glum face is at all necessary +for the serious business of life. In fact, the glum face is a +disqualification; is associated with failure, and bad luck and +ill-nature. In Germany the schoolmaster is in the first place a trainer +of the body. One of his chief duties is to watch and prevent the +deterioration of the eyesight, to promote the development of the lungs, +to prevent spinal deviation. The second part of his business is to watch +over the character of the child, and only the third part is to ram +knowledge into the poor little mind. And wherever you go over the world +you will find something in the course of being done in civics, as I +understand the subject. I thank Prof. Geddes for what he is doing for +Dunfermline, and hope he will understand "progress" without requiring to +define it. + + +DR. J. LIONEL TAYLER + +(Author of "_Aspects of Social Evolution_") said: + +While agreeing with Prof. Geddes in his belief in the importance of +institutional and geographical studies as a basis for the investigation +of the development of cities, it yet seems to me that these studies +cannot prove of supreme value to society unless they are accompanied by +a detailed examination of the _natural_ characteristics of all +individuals who have been born into and existed in, or merely dwelt in, +these surroundings. It is not enough to trace out, however accurately, +the various stages of a town's growth from its commencement to the +present time, because _the cause_ of [Page: 126] the evolution of any +city aggregate lies deeper, is in large part animate, and not inanimate, +in character. The value of the surroundings depends at least as much +upon the capacity of the individual citizen, singly and collectively, to +utilise what he or she is brought in contact with as upon the +peculiarities of these surroundings themselves. Place, tradition, social +organisation, individual development, education, are factors in town +evolution that cannot safely be overlooked, and they all vary from age +to age and in place and place. + +If it were possible to completely exchange the inhabitants of a large +town in England with those of an equally large town in France two groups +of changes would become more or less rapidly observable: (1) the French +and English citizens would adapt themselves, as far as they desired and +were able, to their altered conditions; (2) the characteristics of both +towns would gradually change, in spite of geographical position, in +response to the altered human needs. Similarly, a town composed of +individuals who are naturally uncultured and unprogressive will tend to +preserve its uncultured and unprogressive characters more than another +that has alert citizens to carry on its activities. Every profession and +every trade tends to foster its own social atmosphere; and towns will +vary with their industrial life, and individuals favourably disposed to +this atmosphere will come to the town, and those unfavourably inclined +to it will leave. _These changing citizens, as they act upon and react +to their surroundings and vary in their powers age by age, are the real +evolvers of the conditions in which they dwell_; hence the citizen must +not be omitted from our study if we are to understand city growth. + +In other words, I think that every investigation of civic, and for that +matter country life should be studied from two aspects: (1) to note the +peculiarities, growth and development of the material, non-living and +non-thinking elements in the problem--the buildings, their geographical +position, their age, their fitness for past and present life, and the +distinctive local features that are evolving or retrogressing with the +multiplication of some trades and industries and the decline of others +in each area that is studied; (2) the change in the quality of the +citizens themselves through racial, educational, and other factors, +noting how far ideals are altering, not only in the mass of individuals +taken as a whole, but also by examining the changing outlook in every +trade and profession. With these two parallel lines of investigation to +study, we could then determine how far environment--social and +climatic--how far racial and individual characteristics have been +powerful in the moulding of the fabric around us. + +With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the +vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social +life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, +knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds +us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, knowing +the [Page: 127] intensity of the different national desires for progress +_and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires_, we could +realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in our +civic life. + +PROFESSOR EARL BARNES (in moving a vote of thanks) said: + +For years I have been accumulating a debt of obligation to Prof. Geddes +for ideas, suggestions, and large synthesis of life, and it gives me +special pleasure to voice the feeling of this meeting concerning the +paper read to us this afternoon. To me, as an American, it is especially +interesting to hear this presentation of life as an organic whole. Life +is but a period of education, and if there is nothing behind this +present moment of life it is all extremely insignificant. To an +American, who has lived at No. 1067 in 63rd Street, Philadelphia, and +at No. 1718 in G Street, in Washington, it is profoundly interesting to +think of the possibility of a man's so living that his whole existence +shall be significant, so that the realities of his world, geographical, +geological, and material, and all that long development of humanity +through the historic past--that all these things will be really and +truly significant to him. Prof. Geddes has himself shown us that is +possible. Any man who has gone to Edinburgh and seen the restoration of +the old life that has been carried out there under his hand knows it can +be done. I suppose we all came here to hear Professor Geddes speak on +practical affairs because his name is now connected with the plans for +making a city that shall be really expressive of all its potentialities +to all of its people. I am personally profoundly grateful to him for his +paper; and I move you that he be given a very hearty vote of thanks. + +The Chairman. (MR. CHARLES BOOTH), in closing the discussion, said: I +myself entirely agree with what Mr Robertson has said as to the extreme +difficulty of bringing investigations of the kind referred to, to +practical conclusions--practical points. Practical work at present needs +the most attention. I perhaps am too old to do it, but I feel the +attraction of that kind of work, and that was one reason I was sorry Mr +Loch had to leave before we could hear what he might have to say. The +description I have given of London does seem to be a foggy labyrinth I +agree, but nevertheless I cannot but think that we do require a complete +conception if we are to do the definite work of putting different people +in their proper places in an organic whole, such as a city is. I do not +think we can do without it, and I regard the paper of this evening as an +important contribution [Page: 128] to that complete conception which I +feel we need. I should like each worker and thinker to have and to know +his place in the scheme of civic improvement; and I think it perfectly +possible for every man to know what it is that he is trying to do, what +contribution it is that he ought to give to that joint life which is +called here civics, which is the life of a city and the life in the +city. One man cannot possibly concentrate it all in himself. Within a +society such as the Sociological Society a general scheme is possible in +which each individual and each society shall play its acknowledged and +recognised part. It does not follow that the work done in one city can +apply as an example to another. Individuality has too strong a hold; +but each town may work out something for itself. I have been very much +interested in the work which Mr. Rowntree has done in York, on which he +was kind enough to consult me. He entered upon it on quite other grounds +from mine, but so far as the ground was common between him and me we +tried to have a common basis. Those of you who have not read Mr. +Horsfall's volumes on Manchester would do well to do so. Prof. Geddes +gave us a vivid picture of a larger regional unit which culminates +geographically in the city as industrial climax. In his particular +instance he referred, I take, to Dundee. In Dundee there is at this +moment an inquiry being started, and I am in communication with those +who are doing it, and I hope it will add something to the completeness +of the picture we have of that city. In Dundee they have excessive +difficulties in respect to crowding and female labour. What I suggested +was, that they should make a special study of such circumstances as are +special to Dundee. Labour there is very largely sack-making and jute +manufacture, and there is a great deal of girl labour; and that is one +of the special subjects that will be considered in that inquiry. + +Then, with regard to the preservation of such of the natural beauties +that do remain even quite near to busy town centres, surely it is of the +greatest importance that they should be watched and protected and +preserved. Prof. Geddes has contributed a portion of his practical work +to that practical question at Dunfermline. His charming volume on +Dunfermline ("A Study in City Development") shows what beautiful +features there are near Dunfermline, and how much may be done to +preserve and improve them in ways that are most interesting to study. +His use of photography in this matter is extraordinarily successful. +Prof. Geddes has photographed a scene as it now is, with its background +and distance and its squalid foreground, already ruined by the debris of +the city--old tin pots and every [Page: 129] kind of rubbish--thrown +down by the side of the stream, which is naturally beautiful. By +manipulating the photographic plates he wipes out that which he does not +want and introduces other features, including a little waterfall; and +you have, instead of a miserable suburb, a dignified park. Well now, +that is practical work. It has in it that element which he has described +by a question-mark in his diagram, the element of forecast. You have the +same idea in Manchester, in Mr. Horsfall's work. They have laid out +their map of Manchester and shown in what way it may develop, so as not +to spoil the beauty that remains on two sides of Manchester. There is +really exquisitely beautiful natural scenery close to Manchester, which +may be entirely spoiled or preserved, according as a forecast is made +and forethought taken. This is not a question on which there is reason +to think that people will disagree. The difficulties are always supposed +to be financial. It is a sad thing that we should be so hampered by our +methods of finance that we throw away opportunities to retain these +actual beauties which undoubtedly add to the actual money value of a +district. I cannot suppose that the way in which cities are laid out +with narrow streets really results in an increase of value. The +surroundings of our cities are undeveloped estates, which we have only +to agree amongst ourselves how to lay out, and everybody would benefit +by such joint action. There is an excellent illustration in regard to +that in Mr. Horsfall's work in connection with Germany. It must be said +that from Germany there is a great deal to learn in civic matters. In +one of its towns the properties lie in extraordinarily long strips. It +is the final result of properties having been measured by the length of +the plough's run. When that method is applied to town sites, it is not +convenient for streets; and there are some quarters in this German town +ruined in this way, and the people have agreed together to improve +matters. Every owner is to be given credit for his share in the total +value of the improvement that is found to accrue from the re-arrangement +of these undesirable divisions, and any difference of opinion as to the +just share and proportion is to be referred to an impartial arbitrator. +All the owners will gain, though some a little more than others. That is +an example that we may do well to try and follow, and in some way or +other improve the money value, and social value, and hygienic value of +towns, and if necessary compel the carrying out of improvements when +some few might be disposed to hold out against them. + + + + +[Page: 130] WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS + +From PROF. BALDWIN BROWN (Professor of Fine Art in the University of +Edinburgh) + + +I am glad of this opportunity of saying how cordially I agree with the +method adopted by my friend Professor Geddes in dealing with the life of +cities. He treats the modern community and its material shell as things +of organic growth, with a past and a future as well as a present, +whereas we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour of +some exigency of the moment. A historic British town has recently +furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection. The town +possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at a +time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great +Britain. Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall +and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing a site +for a new elementary school. No doubt, in that school, books "approved +by the Department" will instruct scholars in the past history of the +burgh, but the living witness of that history must first of all be +carefully obliterated. All the rest of this ancient and historic +enceinte was condemned a few weeks ago to complete destruction, merely +on the plea that the site would be convenient for workmen's dwellings. +The monument has now been saved, but it has taken the whole country to +do it! + +Here were chosen officials, governors of no mean city, absolutely +oblivious of these important interests committed to their care, and all +for want of having drilled into them these broader views which Professor +Geddes puts forward so well. + +He has himself done practical work in Edinburgh on the lines he lays +down, and I have lately had occasion to note, and call attention to the +advantage to the city of much wise conservatism in regard to our older +buildings which he and his associates have shown. + +In Edinburgh we have the advantage that our older monuments, [Page: +131] in which so much of the past life of the city is enshrined, are +firm and solid; and it takes some trouble to knock them down. Hence for +some time to come we shall preserve here object-lessons in civic +development that will be of interest to the country at large. + + +From MR. WALTER CRANE (President of Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society) + +Professor Geddes' very interesting "Study in City Development" is highly +suggestive, and shows how great a difference thoughtful and tasteful +treatment might make in dealing with such problems. It is sad to think +of the opportunities wasted, and of the more ignorant and often too +hasty clearances for traffic which have often been apparently the sole +motives in city improvement. The conservation of historic buildings, +whenever possible, the planting of trees along our streets, the laying +out of gardens, the insistence upon a proportional amount of air and +open space to new buildings would go a long way towards making our +bricks-and-mortar joyless wildernesses into something human and +habitable. + +Whether, under favourable circumstances and the rare public spirit of +private owners, much can be done, or to any wide extent, so long as +absolute individual ownership in land and ground values is allowed, +seems to me very doubtful. We cannot hope to see great social +improvements without great economic changes, but every effort in the +direction of improving the beauty of our cities is welcome to all who +have the well-being of the community at heart; and such work as Prof. +Geddes is doing should arouse the keenest interest and the earnest +attention of all who realise its immense social importance. + + +From MR. J.H. HARLEY, M.A. + +If sociology is ever to vindicate itself as an art, it must be able to +analyse and explain the present, and to some extent at least to cast the +horoscope of the future. It must feel its way through all the tangled +labyrinths of city life, and show us where we have arrived and whither +we are going. But this is exactly the part of Professor Geddes' Applied +Sociology where he becomes most vague and unsatisfactory. "Enough for +the present," we are told, "if it be admitted that the practical man in +his thought and action in the present is mainly as yet the too +unconscious child of the past, and that in the city he is still working +within the grasp of natural conditions." Now we must all be willing to +admit that the present is the child of the past, and that we cannot +adequately understand [Page: 132] the present until we have led up to +the present by the study of its antecedents more and less remote. But +what Professor Geddes fails to bring out is that it is only in the +present or the more immediate past that the City has really become a +City in the modern sense of the word. The City as City is a product of +the Industrial Revolution. Its huge and casual assemblages of human +life, its overcrowding, its poverty line, its East End and its West End, +its infantile mortality, its trades massed in their own particular +districts, it aliens, its criminals and its vices--all these problems of +social pathology arise from the fact that the conditions of modern +industry have brought people together who have few interests in common, +and who were compelled to arrange themselves in some kind of decent +order within a limited area, without sufficient time being given to +evolve a suitable environment, or to prepare themselves for the +environment which they actually found on every side of them. London in +the past, therefore, cannot help us so very much to solve the riddles of +London in the present, because London in the past had not developed +these social growths or offered a mature ground to those social +parasites which make us sometimes despair of being able to get much +insight into the London of the present. + +The fact seems to be that Prof. Geddes conceives sociology too much as a +primary and too little as a secondary science. He defines applied +sociology as the application of social survey to social science, when +social ratiocination or social philosophy are needed before one can be +said to have gauged the extent of the influence which this comprehensive +science may have in our actual practice or on our Budget of the future. +No doubt, "observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is just +the very means of preparing for it," but this preparation must be made +in the various specialisms which make up the complete or encyclopaedic +science of sociology. To me it seems an unwarrantable narrowing of the +scope or significance of sociology to say that there is no better method +available of teaching it "than that of regional survey, historical as +well as geographical." Surely "regional survey" Is the appropriate +method in the very simplest and most concrete parts of the complete +science of sociology, and even when we come to history proper we must do +very much more than make a regional survey. It is very interesting, no +doubt, to "survey" history in the course of a summer ramble to the ruins +of some old monastery, but unless the monks had kept records of what had +been done there in bygone days, the mere outward survey will not carry +us further than Prof. Geddes is carried in the very general map which he +makes of the whole field of history. In other words, history, in any +proper sense, demands more than "survey" in Prof. Geddes' sense of the +word. It calls to its aid linguistics, criticism, archaeology, +jurisprudence, and politics--there must be comparison and criticism as +well as "survey." History is the laboratory in which the sociologist +sees his social experiments working out their [Page: 133] results, and +history is to the sociologist what experiment is to the physician, or +the comparative method to the biologist. + +This being so, the scope of "civics" as "applied sociology" is immensely +widened. The present is the child of the past, but we see that it is +only in the present that such ancient groups as the colony of Hanseatic +merchants in Old London have shown us what has been the ultimate +significance of their embryological life. The modern city bristles with +sociological problems which demand a knowledge of most of the +specialisms included in the complete science of sociology, and almost +invite us to cast the horoscope of the future. We see, as Booth and +Rowntree saw before us, the poverty line like a fiery portent at every +point of our study, and we are led finally to ask ourselves whether M. +Arthur Bauer was not right in choosing the title "Les Classes Sociales" +as the most characteristic title he could give to his recent and most +suggestive analysis of the general characteristics of social life. + + +From MR. T.C. HORSFALL + +(President, Manchester Citizen's Association, &c.) + +The teaching of the paper seems to me to be most sound and helpful. The +town of the future--I trust of the near future--must by means of its +schools, its museums, and galleries, its playgrounds, parks and +gymnasia, its baths, its wide tree-planted streets and the belt of +unspoilt country which must surround it, bring all its inhabitants in +some degree under the _best_ influences of all the regions and all the +stages of civilisation, the influences of which, but not the best +influences, contribute, and have contributed, to make our towns what +they are. + + +From H. OSMAN NEWLAND + +(Author of "_A Short History of Citizenship_") + +The failures of democratic governments in the past have been +attributable, in part, to the lack of intelligence and +self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in the +government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to +grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as +an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much +less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta +citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it +scarcely rose above Municipalism. In more modern times, civic education +has had to encounter the same difficulty as in America, where the young +citizen's first duty is to salute his flag, and as in London, where +"Civics" is distributed in doles of local [Page: 134] history in which +the municipality plays a part altogether out of proportion to its +relation to the country, the age, and the world. Civics, as the applied +sociology of each individual and each body of interests, has but begun +to be dreamed of; and before it can be properly developed it is +desirable, if not necessary, that the general public should know +something more than at present both of the historic development of the +"civic" idea, and of the psychology of aggregations as differentiated +from the psychology of the individual. Not until we can make "the man in +the street" a conscious citizen, instead of a political automaton, shall +we be able to enlist his sympathies with "Civics"; and without those +sympathies the sociologist's "Civics" will, I fear, be but partial and +inaccurate. + + +From MR. G. BISSET SMITH + +(H.M. Registration Examiner for East of Scotland). + +There is an elusiveness here and there in this paper which has helped to +confirm me in the opinion that it is well to emphasise the fact that +Prof. Geddes is not only a dreamer of lofty dreams but a doer and a +practical initiator. He has expressed himself not only in words but in +art and in architecture, and in educational organisation; and he has in +many ways, sometimes indirectly, influenced scholastic and civic +activities. + +If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has +only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?" +"_Circumspice!_" There stand the settlements he initiated, the houses +beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of +his ideas, an encyclopaedia in stone and in storeys. + +We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts +towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is +"concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with +ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society. +And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of +its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the +necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied +Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we +have to ask is:--(1) What actually are the generalisations of the +present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable sociological +testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the +touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer to +these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion. +But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to +clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose +occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the +reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present condition +of the people." + +[Page: 135] No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of +"The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of +_population_; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. Charles +Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all +readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely +suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population +must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of the +characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential material +of a study of its whole civilisation." + +Accepting Mr. Branford's definition of _occupation_ as "any and every +form of human endeavour, past, present, and future," we see that +occupation must have a large place in the description, explanation, and +forecasting of the evolution of cities--such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, +Dundee--in the scheme of survey outlined so sweepingly in "Civics." + +"Life and Labour of the People in London" contains several general +observations almost equally applicable to our largest Scottish cities, +with the demographic conditions of which my official duties give me +special opportunities for becoming familiar and for regional survey. + +In the concluding volume of that great contribution to sociology Mr. +Booth (page 23) remarks:-- + +"Many influences conspire to cause the poor to multiply almost in +proportion to their poverty, and operate in the other direction in the +case of the better off, almost in proportion to their wealth. But," says +Mr. Booth, "when we bring the death-rate into account this law no longer +holds." + +With the poor living under bad conditions in crowded homes the net +increase is diminished. To those of us who are hopeful of improvement by +eugenics it is pleasing to note that Mr. Booth--somewhat unlike Mr. Kidd +in his well-known "Social Evolution"--is optimistic in his conclusion +that "on the whole it may fairly be expected that concurrently with a +rising standard of health we may see a fall in birth-rate as well as +death-rate, and thus have no cause to fear, as the result of better +sanitation, that the largest natural increase in population will ever be +contributed by the lowest class." So the heritage of the city may grow +not only in quantity but also in quality. + +From PROFESSOR W.I. THOMAS +(Professor in the University of Chicago, U.S.A.) + +From the standpoint of its applicability to new countries like America, +Professor Geddes' programme is inadequate because of its failure to +recognise that a city under these conditions is formed by a rapid and +contemporaneous movement of population, and not by the lapse of time. +[Page: 136] The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely +one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of about +two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic +development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a +population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological +standpoint therefore becomes of more importance than the historical. + +PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply + +I am sincerely glad to be able to express myself in substantial +agreement with the majority of my critics, only asking them in turn to +recognise that this is but the first half of my subject--an outline of +civics as in the first place a matter of science, a geographic and +historic survey of past conditions, a corresponding census of present +ones--here discussed and insisted on as affording the needful base for +their demands upon civics as an art, that of effective social service. + +In this respect various critics have in fact anticipated large elements +of this future portion of my paper, so that in general views, at least, +critics and writer are not so far apart as would appear were the +preceding pages submitted as a comprehensive outline of the subject, +instead of as its scientific introduction merely. + +Of criticisms strictly applicable to this paper as it stands, there are +really very few. I am confident that the chairman must be quite alone in +too modestly applying to his great work that description of London +itself, with which the paper (Section A, pp. 104-107) opens, since his +volumes offer really our first effective clue to the labyrinth, and his +method of intensive and specialised regional survey, the intensest +searchlight yet brought to bear upon it. + +Taking, however, a concrete point of criticism, such as that of the +monumental planning of modern Paris as derived from forest rides, the +critic need only walk through any French forest, or even to consult a +Baedeker, or other guide-book, with its maps of any historic dwelling +and its surroundings, from Chantilly or Fontainebleau to minor ones, to +see that this plan, originally devised for the pleasure, success and +safety [Page: 137] of the hunt, and later adapted to domination and +defence, became next appreciated as affording the finest possible +perspectives of the palatially rebuilt chateau. So that it is not at all +a fantastic hypothesis, but an obvious and inevitable conclusion that +Napoleon's and Haussman's plans were not at all invented by them for +Paris, but were directly imitated from the familiar landscape +architecture of the preceding century, which again was but the simplest +development from the spacious forest rides of older hunting nobles, laid +out without any thought of the architectural and city developments they +were destined in later centuries to determine. + +The citizen of Washington had till lately often forgotten that the +magnificent perspectives of his city are due to the French +landscape-architect (Major L'Enfant) whom Washington imported for the +express purpose of laying out his capital; yet it is no less clear that +this most magnificent of the New World city plans is derived from Old +World forest rides, than that its monumental edifices descend from +Renaissance and classic exemplars. + +I plead indeed for such studies of the plans of any and every city from +the point of view of its natural development. The too purely abstract +and subjective sociology of the dwellers of great cities like London +would in this way be helped by the facts of their own topographic +history, already well known and clearly explained by geographer and +historian, towards again feeling with the naturalist that even the +modern city is but the most complex evolutionary expression and +development of the life of Nature. + +This view I take to be indeed a commonplace in France; but I account for +its apparent unfamiliarity to English readers from the fact of our +scanty forests in this island being left practically wild, our nobles +not inhabiting them, but the cultivated pasture and arable regions +below--planting trees indeed, "plantations," but seldom woods, and +practically never forests at all. This again brings out the fact that +the French nobles, despite our urban associations with regard to them +have belonged far more than ours to the social formation and tradition +of the hunter--while ours, despite their love of sports, are yet +fundamentally squires, i.e., essentially and historically approximating +to the peasants of their villages. The bearing of all this upon their +respective history will be obvious. Here again we have the origins of +the vivid contrast of the English or so-called naturalistic style of +landscape-gardening with the more formal French tradition. Yet in a very +true sense we see the former to be even more highly artificial than the +latter. [Page: 138] The English citizen who may even admit this way of +looking at the contrasted city plans of London and Paris may fail, +unless he has appreciated the principle here involved, to see why London +and Paris houses are so different--the one separate and self-contained, +with its door undefended and open upon the street, while the normal +Parisian house is a populous, high-piled tenement around a central +court, with high _porte cochere_ closed by massive oaken doors and +guarded by an always vigilant and often surly _concierge_. + +A moment of historical reflection suffices to see that the former is the +architecture of a long-settled agricultural place, with its spreading +undefended villages, in which each household had its separate dwelling, +the other a persistence of the Continental fortified city crowded within +its walls. + +But beyond this we must see the earlier historic, the simpler geographic +origins of the French courtyard house as a defensible farmyard, of which +the ample space was needed nightly for defence against wild beasts, if +not also wilder men, against whom the _concierge_ is not only the +antique porter but the primitive sentinel. + +I may seem unduly to labour such points, yet do so advisedly, in order +to emphasise and make clearer the essential thesis of this portion of my +paper--that every scientific survey involves a geographic and historic +exploration of origins, but that of the still unwritten chapter, that +the far-reaching forelook, idealistic yet also critical, which is +needful to any true and enduring contribution to social service, is +prepared for by habitually imaging the course of evolution in the past. + +Speaking personally, as one whose leisure and practical life have alike +been largely spent in the study and the preservation of ancient +buildings, I may say that this has not been solely, or even essentially, +from an antiquarian interest in the historic past, but still more on +behalf of a practical interest--that of the idealistic, yet economic, +utilitarian, because educational and evolutionary, transformation of our +old cities--old Edinburgh, old Dunfermline, and the like--from their +present sordid unhygienic failure; and therefore industrial and +commercial insufficiency, towards a future equalling if not transcending +the recorded greatness of the civic past. + +It has, therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of +evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would +otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as +Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon +Civics as Applied Social Science. + + + + +[Page: 139] PRESS COMMENTS + +_The Times_ (July 20, 1904) in a leading article, said: + +In the paper read on Monday at a meeting of the Sociological Society by +Professor GEDDES--an abstract of which we print--are contained ideas of +practical value to be recommended to the study of ambitious +municipalities. This is the age of cities, and all the world is +city-building. Almost everywhere is a flow from the country town-ward. +China and India may be still, in the main, lands of villages. But the +West, Russia perhaps excepted, is more and more peopled by dwellers in +cities. In a dim sort of way many persons understand that the time has +come when art and skill and foresight should control what so far has +been left to chance to work out; that there should be a more orderly +conception of civic action; that there is a real art of city-making, and +that it behoves this generation to master and practise it. Professor +Geddes truly said the land is already full of preparation as to this +matter; the beginnings of a concrete art of city-making are visible at +various points. But our city rulers are often among the blindest to +these considerations; and nowhere probably is to be seen a municipality +fully and consistently alive to its duties in this respect. London may +be left out of the question. Still a province rather than a city in the +strict sense, wanting what, in the view of the early master of political +science, was an essential of the true city, that it could "easily be +overseen," with a vast floating population, it will be some time before +it can be dealt with as an organic whole. But the rulers of such +communities as Manchester and Newcastle and York ought long ago to have +realised, much more than has been done, that they are not so much brick +and mortar, so much rateable area, so many thousands of people +fortuitously brought together. They have all a regional environment of +their own which determined their origin and growth. They have all a rich +past, the monuments of which, generally to be found in abundance by +careful, reverent inquirers, ought to be preserved; a past which ought +to be known more or less to all the dwellers therein, and the knowledge +of which will make the present more interesting. Even when old buildings +have disappeared, ancient roads, pathways, and streets can be traced; +place names keep alive much history; and the natural features reveal to +the practised eye what must have been the look and condition of a town +in past ages. Professor Geddes gives a sketch of what he conceives the +vast and ever-growing literature of cities will one day be. Even if the +comprehensive monographs which he foreshadows are never [Page: 140] +written, it is not surely fanciful to expect that, with education +universal, almost every dweller in our old towns will acquire some sort +of that feeling with which a member of an ancient family looks upon its +ancestral house or lands--will, even without much reading, have some +sort of notion of his predecessors and a certain pride in his membership +of an ancient community. If he has not the good fortune to be a De Vere, +a De Bohun, a Howard, Mowbray or Cavendish, he may perhaps be a citizen +of a town which flourished when some of these families were unknown. + +Such pride, or, as the lecturer preferred to term it, such "growth of +civic consciousness and conscience, the awakening of citizenship towards +civic renascence," will be the best security for a worthy city of the +future.... + +Professor Geddes glanced at the opening civic future, "the remoter and +higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly +needed foresight and statesmanship involve," the possibilities which may +be easily realised if only there be true civic pride, foresight, and +unflagging pursuit of a reasonable ideal.... It remains to be seen what +our cities will become when for some generations the same spirit of +pride and reverence shown by old families as to their possessions has +presided over all civic changes and developments.... Ruskin somewhere +points out the mediaeval love of cities, unwholesome, dirty, and +forbidding though they were. He did not teach his generation that that +affection might with more reason attach to the modern city if its people +knew what it had been and steadily strove to make it better, if there +was in every large community patriotism and a polity. + +DR. J.H. BRIDGES in _The Positivist Review_ (Sept., 1904), said: Under +the title, "Civics, as applied Sociology," Prof. Geddes read on July +18th a very interesting paper before the Sociological Society. The +importance of the subject will be contested by none. The method adopted +in handling it, being in many ways original, invites remark ... + +What is wanted is first a survey of the facts to be dealt with--a +regional survey. This point of view has next to be correlated with +corresponding practical experience acquired by practical civic life, but +"aiming at a larger and more orderly conception of civic action.".... +Students of Comte will not forget his well-known maxim, _Savoir pour +prevoir, afin de pourvoir_. + +What is to be the area of survey? Prof. Geddes decides that the City may +be taken "as the integrate of study." Whether any modern towns, and, if +so, what, may be taken as integrates in the sense which would +undoubtedly apply to ancient Athens or to mediaeval Florence, may be +questioned; but it is too soon to interrupt our author.... Every one who +heard the lecturer must have been fascinated by his picture of a river +system which he takes for his unit of study; the high mountain tracts, +the pastoral hillsides, the hamlets and villages in the valleys, the +market town where the valleys meet, the convergence of the larger +valleys into a county town, finally, the great city where the river +meets the sea. The lecturer went on to advocate the systematic study of +some of the principal river-basins of the world for the purpose of +examining the laws which govern the grouping of cities. All would agree +that much instruction might be derived from such [Page: 141] a survey, +provided two dangers be avoided. One is the exaggeration of the +influence of the environment on the social organism, an error into which +the Le Play school have sometimes fallen; as when, for instance, it was +sought to explain Chinese civilisation by the rice-plant. The other +danger, which needs much care and thought to avoid, is the accumulation +of such a mass of irrelevant detail as renders (perhaps sometimes it is +intended to render) all generalisation impossible. Thinking men are at +last beginning to regard the accumulation of memoirs as one of the +principal obstacles to scientific progress. On the pretext of "more +evidence," conclusions are adjourned, not merely _sine die_, but _sine +spe diei_. Yet so long as man is man, he must, and will, have +conclusions; be they final or otherwise. + +From the physiography of the city we pass to its history ... + +In this part of his subject he has, as we all know, many precursors and +fellow-workers. The remarkable series, entitled "Historic Towns," +instituted by Prof. Freeman, is known to most. The study of towns was +the life and soul of Mr. Green's historic labours. Eloquent and powerful +pictures of the great cities of the world fill the greater part of Mr. +Harrison's well-known volume, "The Meaning of History"; and the student +of universal history (a few of these, it may be hoped, are still left) +finds them very stimulating and helpful. The special note of Prof. +Geddes' method is that he does not limit himself to the greater cities, +but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with +their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely +to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of +his observation. In biology, the study of any single organism, however +minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of +structure or function. As for instance, many forms of heart must be +examined before the laws governing blood-circulation could be revealed; +so here. Countless, indeed, are the forms of cities; even limiting our +field of observation to those that have grown up in the last century +they are numerous enough. Their differences and analogies would +doubtless repay analysis, always supposing that we are clear how far the +modern town, as contrasted with the mediaeval or Graeco-Roman city, can +usefully be treated as "an integrate." This raises large questions of +nation, of groups of nations, finally of Humanity, which cannot here be +touched. + +Meantime, from the teacher's standpoint, there can be no question at +all, among those who look upon education as something more than a +commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with +the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there +perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the +history of our race. Historic memories survive in our villages far more +widely than is thought. The descendants of the man who found the body of +Rufus in the New Forest still live hard by. The builder whom the first +William set to build Corfe Castle was Stephen Mowlem; and the +Dorsetshire firm of Mowlem still pave London causeways. A poor woman in +a remote hamlet, untouched by tourist or guide-book, has shown me the +ash-tree under which Monmouth was seized after Sedgemoor; a Suffolk +peasant, equally innocent of book-knowledge, has pointed Out "Bloody +Mary's lane," through which that bugbear of Protestants passed three +hundred years before on her way to Framlingham. The abbey immortalised +in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern +England, is surrounded now by the same villages that Jocelyn tells us +of. The town named after St. Alban, with its memories of Cassivellaun +and Julius Caesar, of an old Roman city, of the Diocletian persecution, +of the great King Offa, founder of the abbey that was to become [Page: +142] at once a school of historical research, and our best epitome of +mediaeval architecture--all this, with the monument of the author of the +"Novum Organum" crowning the whole--sums up for us sixteen centuries of +history. + +Professor Geddes for more than twenty years has adopted this method of +teaching sociology in the open air; "in the field," as geologists would +say.... + +This is much more than the study and the description of buildings and +places of historical interest. His aim is first to study the way in +which a city grows, always having due regard to its physical +environment; secondly, by comparing like with like, as a naturalist +compares the individuals of a species, or the species of a genus, to +throw light on the laws which govern civic development, and thus to help +forward and direct civic action. + +All this is set forth with greater fulness in the Report which Professor +Geddes has been asked to write for the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. The +purpose of the Report (printed, but not yet published) was to suggest +the way in which the revenue of the Trust, amounting to L25,000, should +be spent for the benefit of this ancient and historic town. The scheme, +with its many pictures, real and ideal, of workshops, parks, +culture-institutes--physical, artistic, and historical--will deeply +interest even those who reject much of it as Utopian. But it is at least +a Utopia specially adapted to a given place and time, one in which every +feature of landscape and history is made the most of, one in which a +beginning can be made at once, leaving room for further developments as +occasion may serve. Moreover, it is penetrated through and through with +the Republican ideal of bringing the highest truth within the reach of +all. + +Comte has pointed out, in the fifth chapter of his "General View of +Positivism," and elsewhere, that it is not enough to enunciate sound +principles of social renovation unless they can be rendered visible and +palpable. "The principal function of art," he says, "is to construct +types on the basis furnished by Science.... However perfectly the first +principles of social renovation may be elaborated by thinkers, they will +still not be sufficiently definite for the practical results.... But, at +the point where Philosophy must always leave a void, Art steps in, and +stimulates to practical action.... Hence, in the future, systematic +formation of Utopias will become habitual; on the distinct understanding +that as in every other branch of art, the ideal shall be kept in +subordination to the real." + +Now, the Dunfermline Report is an admirable example of art thus allied +with science for social service. It is an ideal picture, strictly +adherent to local colour and conditions, of an ancient city prolonging +its vitality into the present and future by providing a very high form +of training for its citizens, a training not of intellect only, but of +the senses, of manual dexterity, of imagination, of Republican +sympathy--a training in which "laborious inacquaintance with dead +languages," infusing into the few touched by it a tincture of caste and +militarism, gives way to comprehensive study of the evolution of Man, +preparing the whole, and not a section merely, of the new generation for +social service. + +Such a Utopia as this may be looked upon as fulfilling the true social +function of Art; standing midway between theory and practice; inspired +by thought, and stimulating action. Only the social artist has to look +to it that his thoughts be not merely true but adequate, lest he +degenerate into a mere decorator. How far will a series of "regional +surveys," like those of [Page: 143] Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree +in York, carry us! Not so far, I fear, as Professor Geddes seems to +hope. Cities in our modern life are organs inseparable from a larger +whole, the nation; and before the life of cities can be much changed, we +have to ask ourselves, What is the national life? What is its ethical +and religious standard? What is its practice as to the acquisition and +distribution of wealth? And, again, What is to be the intercourse of +nations? Is it to be war or peace? + +Mr. Carnegie has given half a million for the benefit of a town of +30,000 inhabitants. Magnificent as the donation is, it is not too much; +not nearly enough, indeed, for the full realisation of Professor Geddes' +scheme. Still, wisely used, it might accomplish great results. What we +have recently sunk in the work of suppressing two free States in South +Africa would have made it possible to do for three hundred towns what +has been done for Dunfermline. Half of what we are now spending on our +army and navy would enable us to endow thirty more of such towns +annually. + +Mr. ISRAEL ZANGWILL in _To-day_ (Aug. 10, 1904), said: The Sociological +Society is forging ahead at American speed; the professors jostle one +another, and Geddes treads on the heels of Galton. After "Eugenics," or +the Science of Good Births, comes "Civics," or the Science of Cities. In +the former Mr. Galton was developing an idea which was in the air, and +in Wells. In the latter Professor Geddes has struck out a more novel +line, and a still more novel nomenclature. Politography, Politogenics, +and Eu-Politogenics, likewise Hebraomorphic and Latinomorphic and +Eutopia--quite an opposite idea from Utopia--such are some of the +additions to the dictionary which the science of Civics carries in its +train. They are all excellent words--with the double-barrelled +exception--and still more excellent concepts. But I fancy the general +idea of them all could be conveyed to the man in the street under the +covering of "the human shell." This shell of ours is the city. It is the +protective crust we have built round ourselves. In a smaller sense our +house is our shell, but in a larger sense each house is only a lobe of +the complex and contorted whole. Geography shapes our shells from +without, and the spirit of our particular community shapes it from +within. History tells us how it has been shaped in the past, Art tells +us how it should be shaped in the future. Professor Geddes, in fact, +envisages our civic shell as becomes a brilliant biologist, who also +happens to be a man of historic imagination, ethical impulses, and +aesthetic perceptions. For the human shell is not merely geometrical and +architectural, like those of apian or beaverish communities; it holds +and expresses all those differences by which we are exalted above the +bee or the beaver. It is coloured with our emotions and ideals, and +contorted with all the spirals of our history. And all these +manifestations of humanity may be studied as systematically as those of +the lower orders of creation, which have till recently monopolised the +privilege of pin and label. The old lady who admired the benevolence of +Providence in always placing rivers by the side of large towns was only +expressing in an exaggerated way the general failure to think of Civics +scientifically. The geographers, in whom may be found the bases of the +science, have always pointed out that the river system is the essential +unit for investigation. From source to sea goes the line of evolution. +And yet even the peasant hamlet at the source depends, as [Page: 144] +Professor Geddes reminds us, on the hinterland of pasture, forest, and +chase; and the hunter is the germ of the soldier and the aristocrat. The +whole region contributes to the ultimate city, as the whole river to the +ultimate sea. The Professor says, justly enough, that we should try to +recover the elemental or naturalist point of view, even for the greatest +cities. He sees London as "fundamentally an agglomeration of villages +with their surviving patches of common around a mediaeval seaport." This +is accurate vision; but when he discerns "even in the utmost +magnificence of Paris, say, its Place de l'Etoile, its spread of +boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its +radiating forest rides, each literally straight," I cannot help +suspecting the over-ingenuity of a prolific intellect. The view of +London as a growth from embryos, and the view of Paris as the outcome of +atavistic instinct, belong to different planes of scientific thinking. +That Haussmann in reconstructing Paris was merely an unconscious hunter +and woodlander, building as automatically as a bee, is a fantastic +hypothesis; since cities, if they are to be built on a plan at all, +cannot avoid some unifying geometrical pattern; and there are not very +many possibilities.... In the department of Eu-Politogenics we shall be +confronted with the problem of consciously overriding what evolution has +unconsciously evolved, and building towards a fairer future. No doubt +much of our creation will be imitation, and Professor Geddes is +particularly suggestive in bidding us, at least, to be aware which of +the tangled strands of influence we desire to follow; but a measure of +artistic free-will remains. With the development of a corporate +conscience we should be able to turn out far more satisfactory shells +than many that have blundered into being. "Garden City" is only a +particular application of the science of Civics.... + +Eu-Politogenics concerns itself, however, with more than the mere +configuration of our human shell. Its colour and the music it holds are +considerations no less important. But they are too important to touch at +the fag-end of an article. Professor Geddes must, however, be +congratulated on a stimulating paper, and upon his discovery of Eutopia. +For Eutopia (unlike Utopia, which is really Ou-topia, or no place) is +merely your own place perfected. And the duty of working towards its +perfection lies directly upon _you_. "Civics--as applied sociology" +comes to show you the way. + + + + +CIVICS: AS CONCRETE AND APPLIED SOCIOLOGY, PART II + +BY PROFESSOR GEDDES + +Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of +Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, +W.C., on Monday, January 23rd, 1905, the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, F.R.S., +in the Chair. + + +A--INTRODUCTION: THE NEED OF CIVIC SURVEYS + +To the previous discussion of this subject[2] the first portion of this +present title, "Civics as Concrete Sociology," would have been more +suitable than the second, (that of "Civics as Applied Sociology") +actually used. For its aim was essentially to plead for the concrete +survey and study of cities, their observation and interpretation on +lines essentially similar to those of the natural sciences. Since +Comte's demonstration of the necessity of the preliminary sciences to +social studies, and Spencer's development of this, still more since the +evolution theory has become generally recognised, no one disputes the +applicability of biology to [Page: 58] sociology. Many are, indeed, +vigorously applying the conceptions of life in evolution, in +geographical distribution and environment, in health and disease, to the +interpretations of the problems of the times; while with the +contemporary rise of eugenics to the first plane of interest, both +social and scientific, these lines of thought, bio-social and +bio-geographic, must needs be increasingly utilised and developed. + +[2] "Sociological Papers," Vol 1., pp. 103-118. + +But Comte and Spencer, with most other biologically-minded sociologists +have been more at home among biological generalisations and theories +than among the facts they arise from, and hence it is ever needful to +maintain and extend a first-hand contact with these. I seek, therefore, +to press home the idea that just as the biologist must earn his +generalisations through direct and first-hand acquaintance with nature, +so now must the sociologist work for his generalisations through a +period of kindred observation and analysis, both geographic and +historical; his "general laws" thus appearing anew as the abstract of +regional facts, after due comparison of these as between region and +region. + +May not much of the comparative sterility of post-Comtean (or at any +rate post-Spencerian) sociology, which is so commonly reproached to us, +and to which the difficult formation and slow growth of sociological +societies and schools is largely due, be thus explained? Is it not the +case that many able and persuasive writers, not only knowing the +results, but logically using the generalisations of Comte or Spencer, as +of old of Smith or now-a-days of List in the economic field, are yet +comparatively sterile of fresh contributions to thought, and still more +to action? In fact, must we not apply to much of the literature of +recent sociology, just as to traditional economics, the criticism of +Comte's well-known law of three states, and inquire if such writers, +while apparently upon the plane of generalised science, are not really +in large measure at least arrested upon Comte's "metaphysical stage," +Mill's "abstractional" one? + +Conversely, the revival of sociological interest in this country at +present is obviously very largely derived from fresh and freshening work +like that of Mr Francis Galton and of the Right Hon. Charles Booth +especially. For here in Mr. Galton's biometrics and eugenics is a return +to nature, a keen scrutiny of human beings, which is really an orderly +fruition of that of the same author's "Art of Travel." Similarly, Mr. +Booth's "Survey of London" is as truly a return to nature as was +Darwin's Voyage, or his yet more far-reaching studies in his garden and +farmyard at home. [Page: 59] Is it not the main support of the subtle +theorisings and far-stretched polemic of Prof. Weismann that he can +plague his adversaries with the small but literal and concrete mice and +hydroids and water fleas with which his theories began? And is it not +for a certain lack of such concrete matter of observation that the vast +systematisations of M. de Greef, or M. de Roberty, or the original and +ingenious readings of Prof. Simon Patten leave us too often unconvinced, +even if not sometimes without sufficiently definite understanding of +their meaning? The simplest of naturalists must feel that Comte or +Spencer, despite the frequently able use of the generalisations of +biology, themselves somewhat lacked the first-hand observation of the +city and community around them, and suffered thereby; this part of their +work obviously not being on a level with the historic interpretations of +the one or the psychological productivity of the other. And if, without +warlike intent, I may yet strike a conspicuous shield or two within +these friendly lists, is it not this one element of concrete observation +and illustration which is sometimes lacking to give its full effect to +the encyclopaedic learning and the sympathetic insight of one of our +recent papers, to the historic and poetic interpretations of another, or +to the masterly logic of a third? + +Before the polemics of our educationists, the voluminous argumentation +and casuistic subtlety of our professors of economics and ethics, yet +more before the profound speculations of the epistemologists, the mere +naturalist observer can but feel abashed like the truant before his +schoolmasters; yet he is also not without a certain deep inward +conviction, born of experience, that his outdoor world is yet more real, +more vast, and more instructive than is theirs. And this impression +becomes strengthened, nay verified and established, when he sees that +the initiative thinkers from whom these claim to descend, have had in +each and every case no merely academic record, but also a first-hand +experience, an impulse and message from life and nature. Hence the +contributions of Locke, of Comenius, and of Rousseau. Hence the +Physiocrats found economics in peasant life; and thus too Adam Smith +renewed their science, with due academic logic, doubtless, but from his +experience of Glasgow and Kirkcaldy manufactures and trade. Even the +idealist Berkeley owed much of his theory to his iridescent tar-water; +while surely the greater ethicists are those who have not only been +dialecticians, but moral forces in the world of men. + +In such ways, then, I would justify the thesis that civics is no +abstract study, but fundamentally a matter of concrete and descriptive +sociology--perhaps the greatest field of this. Next, that such orderly +study is in line with the preliminary sciences, and with the general +doctrine of evolution from simple to complex; and finally with the +general inquiry into the influence of geographical conditions on social +development. [Page: 60] In short, the student of civics must be first of +all an observer of cities; and, if so, of their origins and +developments, from the small and simple beginnings of which the tiniest +hamlet is but an arrested germ. The productive sociologist should thus +be of all investigators a wandering student _par excellence_; in the +first place, as far as possible, a literal tourist and traveller--and +this although like the homely Gilbert White or the world voyaging +Darwin, he may do his best work around his own home. + + +B--INITIAL METHODS OF CONCRETE SURVEY + +Hence our civic studies began (vol. 1, p. 105) with the survey of a +valley region inhabited by its characteristic types--hunter and +shepherd, peasant and fisher--each on his own level, each evolving or +degenerating within his own region. Hence the concrete picture of such a +typical valley section with its types of occupation cannot be brought +too clearly before our minds.[3] + +[3] Fig. 1. + +What now of the causes of progress or decay? Are not these first of all +the qualities and defects inherent in that particular social +formation?--though we must also consider how these different types act +and react, how they combine with, transform, subjugate, ruin or replace +each other in region after region. We thus re-interpret the vicissitudes +of history in more general terms, those of the differentiation, progress +or degeneracy of each occupational and social type, and the ascending +and descending oscillations of these types. In short, these occupational +struggles underlie and largely interpret even the conflict of races, +upon which Mr. Stuart-Glennie and other sociologists have so ably +insisted. The fundamental importance of these initial factors of region +and occupation to all studies of races and types, of communities and +institutions, of customs and laws, indeed of language and literature, of +religion and art, even of ideals and individualities, must be my excuse +if I seem to insist, in season and out of season, upon [Page: 61] the +services of Le Play as one of the main founders of sociology; and this +not only _(a)_ on account of his monographic surveys of modern +industrial life--those "Monographies Sociales" from which our current +economic studies of the condition of the worker, of the family budget, +etc., descend--but _(b)_ yet more on account of his vital reconstruction +of anthropology (albeit still far from adequately realised by most +anthropologists) through his renewed insistence upon the elemental +rustic origins of industry, family types, and social organisation alike, +from these simplest reactions of man in his struggle for existence in +varied and varying environment. + +It does not suffice to recognise, with many economists, hunting, +pastoral and agricultural formations, as states _preliminary_ to our +present industrial and commercial, imperial, and financial order of +civilisation. This view, still too commonly surviving, is rather of +hindrance than help; what we need is to see our existing civilisation as +the complex struggle and resultant of all these types and their +developments to-day. So far, therefore, from leaving, as at present, +these simple occupational types to the anthropologist, or at best giving +him some scant hospitality within our city museum, we are learning to +see how it is at one time the eager miner, or the conservative shepherd, +or at another the adventurous fisher or hunter who comes concretely upon +the first plane of national, imperial or international politics, and who +awakens new strife among these. We not only begin to see, but the +soldier frankly tells us, how the current sports of youth, and the +unprecedented militarism of the past century, are alike profoundly +connected with the hunting world. Hence the hope of peace lies not only, +as most at present think in the civilised and civilising development of +international law, or of culture intercourse, excellent though these +are, but also in a fuller and complete return to nature than has been +this recent and persistent obsession of our governing classes with the +hunter world almost alone; in short, in adding the gentler, yet wider, +experiences of the naturalist, the sterner experiences of other +occupations also. Nor does such elementary recognition of these main +social formations content us; their local differentiations must be noted +and compared--a comprehensive regional survey, therefore, which does +justice to each local variety of these great types; speaking henceforth +of no mere abstract "hunter," but of the specific hunting types of each +climate, and distinguishing these as clearly as do our own milder +sportsmen of deer-forest and the turnip field from themselves and from +each other. After such needed surveys in detail, we may, indeed must, +compare and generalise them. + +Similarly for the pasture, the forest. Every tourist in this country is +struck by the contrast of Swiss towns and cities with our own, and notes +[Page: 62] too that on the Swiss pasture he finds a horde of cattle, +while in Scotland or Yorkshire he left a flock of sheep. And not only +the tourist, but the historian or the economist too often fail to see +how Galashiels or Bradford are developments of the wool hamlet, now +familiar to many in R.L. Stevenson's native Swanston. Again, not only +Swiss wealth, but Swiss character and institutions, go back essentially +to the high pasture and the well-filled byre. That this rich Swiss +cow-pasture rests on limestone, and the poor Scottish sheep-grazing upon +comparatively unmouldering and impermeable gneiss, is no mere matter of +geologist's detail; it affords in each case the literal and concrete +foundation-stone of the subsequent evolution of each region and +population, and this not only in material and economic development, but +even in higher and subtler outcomes, aesthetic, intellectual and +moral.[4] It is for such reasons that one must labour and re-labour this +geographic and determinist aspect of sociology, and this for no merely +scientific reason, but also for practical ones. Nowhere perhaps have +more good and generous souls considered how to better the condition of +their people than in Swiss, or Irish, or Scottish valleys; yet it is one +main reason of the continual failure of all such movements, and of such +minds in the wider world as well, that they do not first acquaint +themselves with the realities of nature and labour sufficiently to +appreciate that the fundamental--I do not say the supreme--question is: +what can be got out of limestone, and what can be got out of gneiss? +Hence the rare educative value of such a concrete sociological diagram +and model as was the Swiss Village at the Paris Exposition of 1900, for +here geographic and economic knowledge and insight were expressed with +artistic skill and sympathy as perhaps never before. Only as similar +object-lessons are worked out for other countries, can we adequately +learn, much less popularly teach, how from nature comes "rustics," and +from this comes civics. But civics and rustics make up the field of +politics; they are the concrete of which politics become the +abstract--commonly the too remotely abstract. + +[4] For a fuller justification of this thesis as regards Switzerland, +see the writer's "International Exhibitions," in _International +Monthly_, October, 1900. + +For final illustration, let us descend to the sea-level. There again, +taking the fisher, each regional type must be traced in his contribution +to his town. Take for instance the salmon fisher of Norway, the whaler +of Dundee, the herring-fisher of Yarmouth, the cod-fisher of +Newfoundland, the coral fisher of the AEgean; each is a definite varietal +type, one developing or at least tending to develop characteristic +normal family relations, and corresponding social outcomes in +institutions; in which again the appropriate qualities and defects must +be expressed, even as is the quality and twist of the hemp in the +strength of the cable, or as is the chemistry and the microscopic +structure of the alloy in the efficiency of the great gun. [Page: 63] +Our neighbouring learned societies and museums geographical, geological +and the rest, are thus avowedly and consciously so many winter shelters +in which respective groups of regional surveyors tell their tales and +compare their observations, in which they meet to compare their +generalisations from their own observations made in the field with those +made by others. So it must increasingly be for this youngest of +societies. We may, we should, know best our Thames valley, our London +basin, our London survey; but the progress of our science implies as +increasingly varied and thorough an inquiry into rustic and civic +regions and occupations and resultants throughout the whole world +present and past, as does the corresponding world survey with our +geologic neighbours. + +I plead then for a sociological survey, rustic and civic, region by +region, and insist in the first place upon the same itinerant field +methods of notebook and camera, even for museum collections and the +rest, as those of the natural sciences. The dreary manuals which have +too long discredited those sciences in our schools, are now giving place +to a new and fascinating literature of first-hand nature study. +Similarly, those too abstract manuals of civics which are at present +employed in schools[5] must be replaced by concrete and regional ones, +their abstract counsels of political or personal perfection thus also +giving place to a corresponding regional idealism which may then be +supplemented from other regions as far as needs demand and circumstances +allow. + +[5] For a fuller review of these, compare the writer's "City +Development," in _Contemporary Review_, October, 1904. + +C--GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINISM AND ITS DIFFICULTIES + +To interpret then our tangle of ideas, both of the city and its +citizens, let us now bring more fully to our transverse valley sections, +and to each occupation separately, the geographical view-point which we +have found of service to elucidate the development of towns and cities +upon its longitudinal [Page: 64] slope. But this is neither more nor +less than the method of Montesquieu, whose classic "Esprit des Lois" +anticipates and initiates so much of that of later writers--Ritter, +Buckle, Taine, or Le Play. Once more then let their common, or rather +their resultant, doctrine be stated in terms expressing the latest of +these more fully than the first. Given the region, its character +determines the nature of the fundamental occupation, and this in turn +essentially determines the type of family. The nature and method of the +occupation must normally determine the mode of its organisation, e.g., +the rise and character of a specialised directive class, and the nature +of these occupational chiefs as contrasted with the people and with each +other. Similarly, the types of family tend to develop their appropriate +types of institutions, e.g., for justice, guidance, and of course +notably in response to social environment as regards defence or attack. + +Thus at this point in fact we seem to be pressing upon the student of +sociology the essential argument of geographical and evolutionary +determinism, in fact inviting him to adopt a view, indeed to commit +himself to a method, which may be not only foreign to his habits, but +repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy of +this determinist view of society for at least the past five generations +has not carried general conviction, why raise so controversial a +suggestion, in the guise too of a method professing to harmonise all +comers? Yet this is advisedly done; and as no one will deny some civil +importance to geographical factors, let patience be granted to examine +this aspect of the city's map and shield, and to get from it what it can +teach, under the present assurance to the philosophic and idealist +critic that his view of other factors, higher and deeper, as supreme in +human life, and therefore in city making, will not be forgotten, nor +excluded from consideration when we come to them. All that is really +insisted upon here is that if anything of naturalistic method of +evolutionary conception is to be permitted at all, we must obviously +proceed from this simple towards the more complex, and so begin with it +here and now. + +It is the appropriate slope or steppe, the needful rainfall, that +conditions the growth of grass, this which conditions the presence of +herds or flocks, and these again which determine the very existence of +shepherds. These granted then, not only do the pastoral arts and crafts +arise, but the patriarchal type and family develop, and this not only +with their hospitality and other virtues, with their nomadic tendencies, +at any rate, their unfixed land-tenure, very different from the +peasant's, but their slow and skilful [Page: 65] diplomacy (till the +pasture is bared or grown again, as the negotiator's interests incline). +The patriarch in his venerable age, the caravaneer in his nomadic and +exploring youth, his disciplined maturity, thus naturally develop as +different types of chief and leader; and it is therefore not until this +stage, when all is ready for the entry of Abraham or Job, of Mohammed +the camel-driver, or Paul the tent-maker, that any real controversy can +arise between the determinist and his opponent, between the democratic +and the great-man theories of history, towards which these respectively +incline.[6] And at that stage, may not the controversy stimulate a +fruitful analysis? After all, what is the claim of free-will but to +select among the factors afforded by a given set of circumstances? And +the utmost stretch of determinism to which geography and civics may lead +us obviously cannot prove the negative of this. But whether the +psychologic origins of new ideals be internal to the mind of genius, or +imparted by some external source, is a matter obviously beyond the scope +of either the geographer or the historian of civics to settle. Enough +surely for both controversialists if we use such a means of tabulating +facts as to beg the question for neither view; and still better if we +can present the case of each without injustice to either, nay, to each +with its clearness increased by the sharp edge of contrast. If the +geographical determinist thesis on one hand, and its ethical and +psychological antithesis on the other, can thus clearly be defined and +balanced, their working equilibrium is at hand, even should their +complete synthesis remain beyond us. + +[6] A fuller study, upon this method, of the essential origins of +pastoral evolution, and of its characteristic modern developments, will +be found in the writer's "Flower of the Grass," in _The Evergreen_, +Edinburgh and Westminster, 1896. See also "La Science Sociale," +_passim_, especially in its earlier vols. or its number for Jan. 1905. + + +D--NEED OF ABSTRACT METHOD FOR NOTATION AND FOR INTERPRETATION + +Not only such general geographical studies, but such social +interpretations as those above indicated have long been in progress: +witness the labours of whole schools of historians and critics, among +whom Montsquieu and his immediate following, or in more recent times +Buckle and Taine, are but the most prominent; witness the works of +geographers like Humboldt, Ritter, Reclus, or of developmental +technologists like Boucher de Perthes and regional economists like Le +Play. The main lines of a concrete and evolutionary sociology (or at +[Page: 66] least _sociography_) have thus been laid down for us; but the +task now before us, in our time, in such a society as this--and indeed +in such a paper as the present one--its that of extracting from all this +general teaching its essential scientific method, one everywhere latent +and implicit, but nowhere fully explicit, or at least adequately +systematised. + +It is in fact only as we can agree upon some definite and orderly method +of description that our existing literature of social surveys can be +adequately compared or new ones co-operatively undertaken. Hence the +importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have so +largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means of +escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static) +presentments of the general methodology of social science into which +sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely +ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this +would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, as +indeed also the comparative unattractiveness of our studies to the body +of specialist scientific workers, not even excepting those within what +we consider sociological fields. + +The history of each science, be it mathematics or astronomy, botany, +zoology or geology, shows us that it is not enough to have the +intelligent observer, or even the interpretative thinker with his +personally expressed doctrine. This must be clearly crystallised into a +definite statement, method, proposition, "law" or theory, stated in +colourless impersonal form before it is capable of acceptance and +incorporation into the general body of science. But while astronomer and +geologist and naturalist can and do describe both the observational +results and their general conceptions in literary form, requiring from +the ordinary reader but the patience to master a few unfamiliar terms +and ideas, they also carry on their work by help of definite and orderly +technical methods, descriptive and comparative, analytic and synthetic. +These, as far as possible, have to be crystallised beyond their mere +verbal statement into formulae, into tabular and graphic presentments, +and thus not only acquire greater clearness of statement, but become +more and more active agencies of inquiry--in fact, become literal +_thinking-machines_. But while the mathematician has his notations and +his calculus, the geographer and geologist their maps, reliefs and +sections, the naturalist his orderly classificatory methods, it has been +the misfortune and delay of political economy, and no small cause of +that "notorious discord and sterility" with which Comte reproached it, +that [Page: 67] its cultivators have so commonly sought to dispense with +the employment of any definite scientific notations; while even its +avowed statisticians, in this country especially, have long resisted the +consistent use of graphic methods. + +I submit, therefore, for discussion, as even more urgent and pressing +than that of the general and abstract methodology of the social +sciences, the problem of elaborating a concrete descriptive method +readily applicable to the study and comparison of human societies, to +cities therefore especially. To do justice to this subject, not only the +descriptive labours of anthropologists, but much of the literature of +sociology would have to be gone through from the "Tableau Economique" of +the Physiocratic School to the "Sociological Tables" of Mr. Spencer, and +still more fruitfully to more recent writers. Among these, besides here +recognising specially the work of Mr. Booth and its stimulus to younger +investigators, I would acknowledge the helpful and suggestive impulse +from the group of social geographers which has arisen from the +initiative of Le Play[7], and whose classification, especially in its +later forms[8], cannot but be of interest and value to everyone whose +thought on social questions is not afloat upon the ocean of the abstract +without chart or bearings. + +[7] La Nomenclature Sociale (Extrait de La Revue, "La Science Sociale," +Dec. 1886) Paris, Firmin-Diact, 1887. + +[8] Demoulins, La Science Sociale d'apres F. Le Play 1882-1905; +Classification Sociale, "La Science Sociale," Jan. 1905. + +Yet with all respect to each and all these classifications and methods, +indeed with cordially acknowledge personal obligation and indebtedness +to them from first to last, no one of these seems fully satisfactory for +the present purpose; and it is therefore needful to go into the matter +afresh for ourselves, though utilising these as fully as we can. + + +E--THE CITY-COMPLEX AND ITS USUAL ANALYSIS + +In the everyday world, in the city as we find it, what is the working +classification of ideas, the method of thought of its citizens? That +the citizens no more think of themselves as using any particular +sociological method than did M. Jourdain of talking prose does not +really matter, save that it makes our observation, both of them and it, +easier and more trustworthy. + +They are speaking and thinking for the most part of [Page: 68] People +and of Affairs; much less of places. In the category of People, we +observe that individuals, self and others, and this in interest, perhaps +even more than in interests, commonly take precedence of groups. +Institutions and Government are, however, of general interest, the state +being much more prominent than is the church; the press, for many, +acting as the modern substitute for the latter. In the world of Affairs, +commerce takes precedence of industry, while sport runs hard upon both. +War, largely viewed by its distant spectators as the most vivid form of +sport, also bulks largely. Peace is not viewed as a positive ideal, but +essentially as a passive state, at best, of non-war, more generally of +latent war. Central among places are the bank, the market (in its +financial forms before the material ones). Second to these stand the +mines then the factories, etc.; and around these the fixed or floating +fortresses of defence. Of homes, that of the individual alone is +seriously considered, at most those of his friends, his "set," his +peers, but too rarely even of the street, much less the neighbourhood, +at least for their own sake, as distinguished from their reaction upon +individual and family status or comfort. + +This set of views is obviously not easy of precise analysis of exact +classification. In broad outline, however, a summary may be made, and +even tabulated as follows:-- + +THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES. + +PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES +(a) INDIVIDUALS (a) COMMERCE (a) MARKET, BANK, etc. +(Self and others). INDUSTRY, etc. FACTORY, MINE, etc. + SPORT. + +(b) GOVERNMENT(S) (b) WAR (b) FORT, FIELD, etc. +Temporal and Spiritual and Peace +(State and Church). (Latent War). + +Next note how from the everyday world of action, there arises a +corresponding thought-world also. This has, +[Page: 69] of course, no less numerous +and varied elements, with its resultantly complex local colour; But a +selection will suffice, of which the headings may be printed below those +of the preceding scheme, to denote how to the objective elements there +are subjective elements corresponding--literal reflections upon the +pools of memory--the slowly flowing stream of tradition. Thus the +extended diagram, its objective elements expressed in yet more general +terms, may now be read anew (noting that mirror images are fully +reversed). + + + PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES + +"TOWN" (a) INDIVIDUALS (a) OCCUPATIONS (a) WORK-PLACES + (b) INSTITUTIONS (b) WAR (b) WAR-PLACES + +"SCHOOLS" (b) HISTORY (b) STATISTICS AND (b) GEOGRAPHY + ("Constitutional") HISTORY + ("Military") + (a) BIOGRAPHY (a) ECONOMICS (a) TOPOGRAPHY + + +Here then we have that general relation of the town life and its +"schools," alike of thought and of education, which must now be fully +investigated. + +Such diagrammatic presentments, while of course primarily for the +purpose of clear expression and comparison, are also frequently +suggestive--by "inspection," as geometers say--of relations not +previously noticed. In both ways, we may see more clearly how prevalent +ideas and doctrines have arisen as "reflections upon" the life of +action, and even account for their qualities and their defects--their +partial truth or their corresponding inadequacy, according to our own +appreciative or depreciative standpoint. Thus as regards "People," in +the first column we see expressed briefly how to (a) the individual +life, with the corresponding vivid interest in biography, corresponds +the "great man theory" of history. Conversely with _(b)_ alone is +associated the insistance upon institutional developments as the main +factor. Passing to the middle column, that of "Affairs," we may note in +connection with _(b)_ say the rise of statistics in association with +the needs of war, a point connected with its too empiric character; or +note again, a too common converse weakness of economic theory, its +inadequate inductive [Page: 70] verification. Or finally, in the column +of "Place," the long weakness of geography as an educational subject, +yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated. We might in +fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of +ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less than +those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly +unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent +oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring +elements of the manifold "Town" life from which they derive and survive. +Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate +problem--that of understanding "Town" and its "School" in their origins +and simplest relations. + + +F--PROPOSED METHODICAL ANALYSIS + +(1) THE TOWN + +More fully to understand this two-fold development of Town and School we +have first of all apparently to run counter to the preceding popular +view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that +reached from the side of science. This, as we have already so fully +insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally _replacing_ People +and Affairs in our scheme above. + +Starting then once more with the simple biological formula: + + + ENVIRONMENT ... CONDITIONS ... ORGANISM + +this has but to be applied and defined by the social geographer to +become + + + REGION ... OCCUPATION ... FAMILY-type and Developments + +which summarises precisely that doctrine of Montesquieu and his +successors already insisted on. Again, in but slight variation from Le +Play's simplest phrasing _("Lieu, travail, famille")_ we have + + + PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK + +It is from this simple and initial social formula that we have now to +work our way to a fuller understanding of Town and School. [Page: 71] +Immediately, therefore, this must be traced upward towards its +complexities. For Place, it is plain, is no mere topographic site. Work, +conditioned as it primarily is by natural advantages, is thus really +first of all _place-work_. Arises the field or garden, the port, the +mine, the workshop, in fact the _work-place_, as we may simply +generalise it; while, further, beside this arise the dwellings, the +_folk-place_. + +Nor are these by any means all the elements we are accustomed to lump +together into Town. As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold +complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must +carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of +this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use. +Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ +and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their +inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our +common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists +have alternately done--too literally losing or shirking essentials of +Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk and +Place also. + +Tabular and schematic presentments, however, such as those to which we +are proceeding, are apt to be less simple and satisfactory to reader +than to writer; and this even when in oral exposition the very same +diagram has been not only welcomed as clear, but seen and felt to be +convincing. The reason of this difficulty is that with the spoken +exposition the audience sees the diagram grow upon the blackboard; +whereas to produce anything of the same effect upon the page, it must be +printed at several successive stages of development. Thus our initial +formula, + + + PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK + +readily develops into + + FOLK + + PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK +(Natural advantages) (Occupation) + + PLACE + +This again naturally develops into a regular table, of which the [Page: +72] filling up of some of the squares has been already suggested above, +and that of the remaining ones will be intelligible on inspection:-- + + PLACE FOLK WORK-FOLK FOLK + ("Natives") ("Producers") + + PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK + + PLACE WORK-PLACE FOLK-PLACE + +So complex is the idea of even the simplest Town--even in such a rustic +germ as the "farm-town" of modern Scottish parlance, the _ton_ of +place-names without number. + +The varying development of the Folk into social classes or castes night +next be traced, and the influence and interaction of all the various +factors of Place, Work, and Family tabulated. Suffice it here, however, +for the present to note that such differentiation does take place, +without entering into the classification and comparison of the protean +types of patrician and plebeian throughout geography and history. + + +G--ANALYSIS CONTINUED.--(2) THE SCHOOL + +Once and again we have noted how from the everyday life of action--the +Town proper of our terminology--there arises the corresponding +subjective world--the _Schools_ of thought, which may express itself +sooner or later in schools of education. The types of people, their +kinds and styles of work, their whole environment, all become +represented in the mind of the community, and these react upon the +individuals, their activities, their place itself. Thus (the more +plainly the more the community is a simple and an isolated one, but in +appreciable measure everywhere and continually) there have obviously +arisen local turns of thought and modes of speech, ranging from shades +of accept and idiom to distinctive dialect or language. Similarly, there +is a characteristic variety of occupational activity, a style of +workmanship, a way of doing business. There are distinctive [Page: 73] +manners and customs--there is, in short, a certain recognisable +likeness, it may be an indefinably subtle or an unmistakably broad and +general one, which may be traced in faces and costumes, in tongue and +literature, in courtesy and in conflict, in business and in policy, in +street and in house, from hovel to palace, from prison to cathedral. +Thus it is that every folk comes to have its own ways, and every town +its own school. + +While the complex social medium has thus been acquiring its +characteristic form and composition, a younger generation has been +arising. In all ways and senses, Heredity is commonly more marked than +variation--especially when, as in most places at most times, such great +racial, occupational, environmental transformations occur as those of +modern cities. In other words, the young folk present not only an +individual continuity with their organic predecessors which is heredity +proper, but with their social predecessors also. The elements of organic +continuity, which we usually think of first of all as organic though of +course psychic also, are conveniently distinguished as the +_inheritance_--a term in fact which the biologist seeks to deprive of +its common economic and social senses altogether, leaving for these the +term _heritage_, material or immaterial alike. This necessary +distinction between the inheritance, bodily and mental, and the +heritage, economic and social, obviously next requires further +elaboration, and with this further precision of language also. For the +present, let us leave the term heritage to the economist for the +material wealth with which he is primarily concerned, and employ the +term _tradition_ for these immaterial and distinctively social elements +we are here specially considering. This in fact is no new proposal, but +really little more than an acceptance of ordinary usage. Broadly +speaking, tradition is in the life of the community what memory is for +its individual units. The younger generation, then, not only inherits an +organic and a psychic diathesis; not only has transmitted to it the +accumulations, instruments and land of its predecessors, but grows up in +their tradition also. The importance of imitation in this process, a +matter of common experience, has been given the fullest sociological +prominence, by M. Tarde especially.[9] Thanks to these and other +convergent lines of thought, we no longer consent to look at the +acquirement of the social tradition as a matter requiring to be imposed +upon reluctant youth almost entirely from without, and are learning anew +as of old, with the simplest and the most developed peoples, the +barbarians and the Greeks, to recognise and respect, and, if it may be, +to nourish the process of self-instruction, viewed as normal +accompaniment of each developing being throughout the phases of its +[Page: 74] organic life, the stages of its social life. Upon the many +intermediate degrees of advance and decline, however, between these two +extremes of civilisation, specific institutions for the instruction of +youth arise, each in some way an artificial substitute, or at least a +would-be accelerant, for the apprenticeship of imitation in the school +of experience and the community's tradition, which we term a school in +the restricted and pedagogic sense. This whole discussion, however, has +been in order to explain and to justify the present use of the term +"School" in that wide sense in which the historian of art or +thought--the sociologist in fact--has ever used the term, while yet +covering the specialised pedagogic schools of all kinds also. + +[9] Tarde, "L'imitation Sociale," and other works. + +Once more, then, and in the fullest sense, every folk has its own +tradition, every town its school. + +We need not here discriminate these unique and characteristic elements +to which the art-historians--say of Venice and of Florence, of Barbizon +or Glasgow--specially attend from those most widely distributed ones, in +which the traditions and schools of all towns within the same +civilisation broadly agree. Indeed, even the most widely distributed of +these--say from Roman law to modern antiseptic surgery--arose as local +schools before they became general ones. + +Similarly for the general social tradition. The fundamental occupations +and their division of labour, their differentiation in detail and their +various interactions up to our own day, at first separately considered, +are now seen to be closely correlated with the status of woman; while +all these factors determine not only the mode of union of the parents, +but their relation to the children, the constitution of the family, with +which the mode of transmission of property is again thoroughly +interwoven. + + +H--TOWN AND SCHOOL COMPARED + + +"TOWN" FOLK + + + + WORK + +PLACE + +SURVEY + + CRAFT-KNOWLEDGE + +"SCHOOL" CUSTOM + +We may now summarise and tabulate our comparison of Town and +School,[10] and on the schema (p.75) it will be seen [Page: 76] +that each element of the second is printed in the position of a +mirror-reflection of the first. This gives but the merest outline, which +is ready, however, to be applied in various ways and filled up +accordingly. A step towards this is made in the next and fuller version +of the scheme (p. 77). It will be noted in this that the lower +portion of the diagram, that of School, is more fully filled up than is +the upper. This is partly for clearness, but partly also to suggest that +main elements in the origins of natural sciences and geography, of +economics and social science, are not always so clearly realised as they +might be. The preceding diagram, elaborating that of Place, Work, Folk +(p. 75), however, at once suggests these. Other features of the +scheme will appear on inspection; and the reader will find it of +interest and suggestiveness to prepare a blank schedule and fill it up +for himself. + +[10] For the sake of brevity, an entire chapter has been omitted, +discussing the manifold origins of distinct governing classes, whether +arising from the Folk, or superimposed upon them from without, in short, +of the contrast of what we may broadly call patricians and plebeians, +which so constantly appears through history, and in the present also. +These modes of origin are all in association respectively with Place, +Work, and Family, or some of the various interactions of these. Origin +and situation, migration, individual or general, with its conflict of +races, may be indicated among the first group of factors; technical +efficiency and its organising power among the second; individual +qualities and family stocks among the third, as also military and +administrative aptitude, and the institutional privileges which so +readily arise from them. Nor need we here discuss the rise of +institutions, so fully dealt with by sociological writers. Enough for +the present then, if institutions and social classes be taken as we find +them. + +These two forms of the same diagram, the simple and the more developed, +thus suggest comparison with the scheme previously outlined, that of +People, Affairs, Places (p. 68), and is now more easily reconciled +with this; the greater prominence popularly given to People and Affairs +being expressed upon the present geographic and evolutionary scheme by +the ascending position and more emphatic printing (or by viewing the +diagram as a transparency from the opposite side of the leaf). + +In the column of People, the deepening of custom into morals is +indicated. Emphasis is also placed upon the development of law in +connection with the rise of governing classes, and its tendency to +dominate the standards previously taken as morals--in fact, that +tendency of moral law to become static law, a process of which history +is full. + + GOVERNING + ========= + ========= + CLASSES + ======= + ======= + ^ + | + FAMILY TYPES + ============ +---------------------------------------------- + INDUSTRIES + ========== + ---------- +---------------------------------------------- + (FOLK-PLACE) +REGION (WORK PLACE) ------------ +====== ------------ (TOWN) + | ====== + | + V +-------------------------------------------- + | + V +SURVEY ("SCHOOL") +====== ========== +!--LANDSCAPE (CRAFT-TRADITION) + ----------------- + (FOLK-LORE) +?--TERRITORY ----------- + | + | + V +--------------------------------------------- + | + V +[NATURAL [APPLIED [SOCIAL +-------- ======== ======= +SCIENCES] SCIENCES] SCIENCES] +--------- ========= ========= + | + | + V +------------------------------------------- + | CUSTOMS + V ------- + MORALS + ====== +GEOGRAPHY ECONOMICS ------ +--------- ========= & + LAWS + ==== + ==== + +In the present as in the past, we may also note upon the scheme the +different lines of Place, Work and Folk on which respectively develop +the natural sciences, the applied or [Page: 78] technical sciences, and +finally the social sciences, and the generalising of these respectively. + +Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its literal +and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that +aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural +sciences--but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they +really are, each a _geolysis_--so these sciences or geolyses, again, are +tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of +the evolution of the cosmos. + +Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the +evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic +process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt +to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we cannot +really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant; or +Lister and his antiseptic surgery better than as the shepherd, with his +tar-box by his side; or Kelvin or any other electrician, as the thinking +smith, and so on. The old story of geometry, as "_ars metrike_," and of +its origin from land-surveying, for which the Egyptian hieroglyph is +said to be that of "rope stretching," in fact, applies far more fully +than most realise, and the history of every science, of course already +thus partially written, will bear a far fuller application of this +principle. In short, the self-taught man, who is ever the most fertile +discoverer, is made in the true and fundamental school--that of +experience. + +The need of abbreviating the recapitulation of this, however, sooner or +later develops the school in the pedagogic sense, and its many +achievements, its many failures in accomplishing this, might here be +more fully analysed. + +Still more evident is this process in the column of Folk. From the +mother's knee and the dame's school of the smallest folk-place, the +townlet or hamlet, _ton_ or home, up to the royal and priestly school of +the law of ancient capitals, or from the "humanities" of a mediaeval +university to the "Ecole de Droit" of a modern metropolis, the series of +essential evolutionary stages may be set down. Or in our everyday +present, [Page: 79] the rise of schools of all kinds, primary, +secondary, higher up to the current movement towards university +colleges, and from these to civic and regional universities, might again +be traced. The municipalisation of education is thus in fact expressed, +and so on. + +Leaving the schools in the main to speak for themselves of their +advancing and incipient uses, a word may be said upon the present lines. + +As a first and obvious application of this mode of geographic study of +cities appears the criticism, and; when possible, the amendment of the +city's plan, the monotonous rectangularity of the American city, and the +petty irregularity more common in our own, being alike uneconomic and +inartistic because ungeographic, irrational because irregional. With the +improvement of communications, the physicist's point of view thus +introduced--that of the economy of the energies of the community--is +only beginning; the economy of fuel, the limitation of smoke and fogs +being symptoms of this and pointing to a more economic organisation of +industrial activities generally. But this next carries with it the +improved efficiency of the producers themselves, with whom, however, the +standpoint changes from the mere economisation of physical energies to +the higher economy of organic evolution. The convention of traditional +economics, that the productive capacity of the actual labourer is the +sole concern of his science, thus gives place to what is at once the +original conception of economics and the evolutionist one, viz., that +the success of industry is ultimately measured neither by its return in +wealth of the capitalist nor in money wages of the labourer, nor even by +both put together, but in the results of industry upon the concrete +environment, the family budget, the home, and the corresponding state of +development of the family--its deterioration or progress. The +organisation of industrial groups or of representative institutions +found conducive to the well-being and progress of these prime civic +units, the families, may now be traced into its highest outcome in city +government. The method of analysis and graphic statement thus outlined +may be shown to be even capable of useful application towards the +statement of the best [Page: 80] arguments of both progressive and +moderate parties in city politics. + +Passing from Politics to Culture. Culture, the needs of this also become +clearer; each community developing a similar general series of culture +institutions, from the simplest presentation of its geography, +landscape and architecture, to the complex development of industrial, +technical and scientific instruction; and for provision also for the +institutions of custom and ethic in school, law, and church. Just as +place, occupation, and family are intimately connected in the practical +world, so their respective culture institutions must more and more be +viewed as a whole. Civic improvers will find their ideals more +realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social +development of which all the departments of action and thought are in +organic relation, be it of health or disease. The view of theoretic +civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied +sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social +survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed +in many cities being begun. + + +I--DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL, AND ITS REACTION UPON TOWN + +The reactions of the School upon the Town are observed in practice to be +of very different values;--how are these differences to be explained? + +From the very first the school is essentially one of memory, the impress +of the town-life, even at its best and highest individual quality and +impressiveness, as in the work of a great master, the observation and +memory of which may long give his stamp to the work of his followers. +The fading of this into dullness, yet the fixing of it as a convention, +is familiar to all in arts and crafts, but is no less real in the +general lapse of appreciation of environment. Most serious of all is the +fixation of habit and custom, so that at length "custom lies upon us +with a weight heavy as death, and deep [Page 81] almost as life." This +continual fixation of fashionable standards as moral ones is thus a +prime explanation of each reformer's difficulty in making his moral +standard the fashionable one, and also, when his doctrine has succeeded, +of the loss of life and mummification of form which it so speedily +undergoes. + +Of conventional "education," considered as the memorisation of past +records, however authoritative and classic, the decay is thus +intelligible and plain, and the repetition of criticisms already +adequately made need not therefore detain us here. + +For this process is there no remedy? Science here offers herself--with +senses open to observe, and intellect awake to interpret. Starting with +Place, she explores and surveys it, from descriptive travel books at +very various levels of accuracy, she works on to atlas and gazetteer, +and beyond these to world-globe and "Geographie Universelle." With her +charts and descriptions we are now more ready for a journey; with her +maps and plans we may know our own place as never before; nay, rectify +it, making the rough places plain and the crooked straight; even +restoration may come within our powers. + +Similarly as regards Work. Though mere empiric craft-mastery dies with +the individual, and fails with his successors, may we not perpetuate the +best of this? A museum of art treasures, a collection of the choicest +examples of all times and lands, will surely raise us from our low level +of mechanical toil; nay, with these carefully observed, copied, +memorised, and duly examined upon, we shall be able to imitate them, to +reproduce their excellencies, even to adapt them to our everyday work. +To the art museum we have thus but to add a "School of Design," to have +an output of more and less skilled copyists. The smooth and polished +successes of this new dual institution, responding as they do to the +mechanical elements of modern work and of the mechanical worker-mind, +admitting also of ready multiplications as patterns, ensure the wide +extension of the prevalent style of imitating past styles, designing +patchwork of these; and even admit of its scientific reduction to a +definite series of grades, which imitative youth may easily pass onwards +from the age of rudest innocence to that of art-knowledge and +certificated art-mastery. Our School of Design thus becomes a School of +Art, a length a College, dominating the instruction of the nation, to +the satisfaction not only of its promoters, but of the general public +and their representatives, so that annual votes justly increase. Lurking +discontent may now and then express itself, but is for practical +purposes negligible. + +[Page: 82] The example of art accumulation and art instruction is thus +naturally followed in other respects. For the commercial information of +the public, varied representative exhibitions--primarily, therefore, +international ones--naturally suggest themselves; while so soon as +expansion of imperial and colonial interests comes upon the first plane, +a corresponding permanent Exhibition is naturally instituted. But when +thus advancing commercial instruction, we must also recognise the claims +of industry in all its crafts and guilds, and in fact the technical +instruction of the community generally. Hence the past, present, and +promised rise of technical institutes upon increasing scales of +completeness. + +In the rise of such a truly encylopaedic system of schools, the +university cannot permanently be forgotten. Since from the outset we +have recognised the prime elements of the school in observation and +memory, the testing of these by examinations--written, oral, and +practical--however improvable in detail, must be fairly recognised, and +the examining body or university has therefore to be adopted as the +normal crown of our comprehensive educational system. Teaching, however +is found to be increasingly necessary, especially to examination, and +for this the main field left open is in our last column, that of People. +Their lore of the past, whether of sacred or classical learning, their +history, literature, and criticism, are already actively promoted, or at +any rate adequately endowed at older seats of learning; while the +materials, resources, conditions and atmosphere are here of other kinds. +Hence the accessibility of the new University of London to the study of +sociology, as yet alone among its peers. + +Hence, beside the great London, maritime, commercial and industrial, +residential and governmental, there has been growing up, tardily indeed, +as compared with smaller cities, yet now all the more massively and +completely, a correspondingly comprehensive system of schools; so that +the historic development of South Kensington within the last half +century, from International Exhibitions of Work, Natural History Museums +of Place onwards to its present and its contemplated magnitude, affords +a striking exemplification of the present view and its classification, +which is all the more satisfactory since this development has been a +gradual accretion. + +Enough then has been said to show that the rise of schools, their +qualities and their defects, are all capable of treatment upon the +present lines; but if so, may we not go farther, and ask by what means +does thought and life cope with their defects, especially that fixation +of memory, even at its best, that evil side of examination and the like, +which we often call Chinese in the bad sense, but which we see arises so +naturally everywhere? + + +[Page: 83] J--FROM "SCHOOL" TO "CLOISTER" + +The preceding view is, as yet, too purely determinist. The due place of +ideals, individual and corporate, in their reaction upon the function +and the structure of the city, and even upon its material environment, +has next to be recognised. For where the town merely makes and fixes its +industry and makes its corresponding schools, where its habits and +customs become its laws, even its morality, the community, as we have +just seen, sinks into routine, and therefore decay. To prevent this a +twofold process of thought is ever necessary, critical and constructive. +What are these? On the one hand, a continual and critical selection +among the ideas derived from experience, and the formulation of these as +Ideals: and further, the organisation of these into a larger and larger +whole of thought; in fact, a Synthesis of a new kind. This critical +spirit it is which produced the prophets of Israel, the questioning of +Socrates, and so on, to the journalistic and other criticism of life +to-day. The corresponding constructive endeavour is now no mere School +of traditional learning or of useful information. It is one of science +in a new and reorganised sense; one of philosophy also, one of ideals +above all. + +As from the Schools of the Law, as over against these, arise the +prophets, so from the technical and applied sciences, the descriptive +natural sciences, should arise the scientific thinkers, reinterpreting +each his field of knowledge and giving us the pure sciences--pure +geometry henceforth contrasted with mere land surveying, morphology with +mere anatomy, and so on; while instead of the mere concrete encyclopaedia +from Pliny or Gesner to Diderot or Chambers, vast subjective +reorganisations of knowledge, philosophic systems, now appear. +Similarly, the mere observations of the senses and their records in +memory become transformed into the images of the poet, the imagery too +of the artist, for art proper is only thus born. That mere imitation of +nature, which so commonly in the graphic arts (though happily but rarely +in music) has been mistaken for [Page: 84] art, thus modestly returns to +its proper place--that of the iconography of descriptive science. + +Thus from the Schools of all kinds of knowledge, past and present, we +pass into the no less varied Cloisters of contemplation, meditation, +imagination. With the historian we might explore the Cloisters of the +past, built at one time from the current ideals of the Good, at another +of the True, at another of the Beautiful; indeed, in widely varying +measures and proportions from all of these. How far each of these now +expresses the present, how far it may yet serve the future, is +obviously a question of questions, yet for that very reason one +exceeding our present limits. Enough if in city life the historic place +of what is here generalised under this antique name of Cloister be here +recognised; and in some measure the actual need, the potential place be +recognised also. Here is the need and use, beyond the fundamental claims +of the material life of the Town, and the everyday sanity of the +Schools, with all their observations and information, their commonsense +and experience, their customs and conventions, even their morals and +their law, for a deeper ethical insight than any rule or precedent can +afford, for a fuller and freer intellectual outlook than that which has +been derived from any technical experience or empiric skill, for an +imagery which is no mere review of the phantasmagoria of the senses. In +our age of the multiplication and expansion of towns, of their +enrichment and their impoverishment, of the multiplication and +enrichment of schools also, it is well for the sociologist to read from +history, as he then may more fully see also around him that it is ever +some fresh combination of these threefold products of the +Cloister--ideal theory, and imagery--emotional, intellectual, +sensuous--which transforms the thought-world of its time. + +The philosopher of old in his academic grove, his porch, the mediaeval +monk within his studious cloister's pale, are thus more akin to the +modern scientific thinker than he commonly realises--perhaps because he +is still, for the most part, of the solitary individualism of the hermit +of the Thebaid, of Diogenes in his tub. Assuredly, they are less removed +in essential psychology than their derived fraternities, their [Page: +85] respective novices and scholars, have often thought. It is thus no +mere play of language which hands on from the one to the other the +"travail de Benedictin," though even here the phrase is inadequate +savouring too much of the school, into which each cloister of every sort +declines sooner or later, unless even worse befall. + +The decay of the cloister, though thus on the one hand into and with the +school, may also take place within itself, since imagination and ideal +may be evil, and theory false. That examples of all these decays abound +in the history of religion, of philosophy, of art also, is a commonplace +needing no illustration. Nor should the modern investigator think his +science or himself immune to the same or kindred germs in turn. + + +K--THE CITY PROPER + +Now, "at long last," we are ready to enter the city proper. This is not +merely the Town of place and work and folk, even were this at their +economic best. It is not enough to add the School, even at its +completest; nor the cloister, though with this a yet greater step +towards the city proper is made. For though this is not itself the City, +its ideals of human relations, its theory of the universe and man, its +artistic expression and portrayal of all these, ever sooner or later +react upon the general view and conduct of life. Hence the Academe of +Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, the mediaeval cloister and the modern +Research Institute, have been so fertile, so creative in their influence +upon the city's life, from which they seemed to be retired. Hence it is +ever some new combination of the threefold product of the +cloister--ideal, idea, and image--which transforms the world, which +opens each new epoch. Each new revelation and vision, each system of +thought, each new outburst of poetry and song, has moved the men of its +age by no mere mechanical pressure of economic need or external force, +by no mere scholastic instruction, but in a far subtler way, and into +new and unexpected groupings, as the [Page: 86] sand upon Chladon's +vibrating plate leaps into a new figure with each thrill of the +violinist's bow. + +Instead of simply developing our morals from custom, and therefore +codifying them into law as in the school they are now boldly criticised, +as in part if not in whole, hindrances to a better state of things. As +this becomes more and more clearly formulated as an ideal, its ethic +transcendence of convention and law not only becomes clear, but the +desire for its realisation becomes expressed. This may be with all +degrees of clearness of reason and vividness of imagery, yet may remain +long or altogether in the plane of literature, as has Plato's Republic +or More's Utopia--standard and characteristic types of the cloister +library as we may call it, one of inestimable value to the world in the +past, and perhaps in our time needed as much as ever to help us to see +somewhat beyond the output of the busy presses of town and school. Yet +our ideal, our "Civitas Dei," "Civitas Solis," need not remain +unrealised: it may be not only seriously planned towards realisation, as +was Platonopolis of old, but bravely founded, as has been done in cases +without number, from the ancient world to modern communities, by no +means wholly unsuccessful. Though in our great industrial towns, our +long settled regions, such new departures seem less easy, the +principle remains valid--that it is in our ideal of polity and +citizenship, and in our power of realising this, that the city proper +has its conception and its birth. Again, instead of simply deriving our +thought from experience we now project our clarified thought into action +and into education; so that from cloister of philosophy, and from its +long novitiate of silence, there grows up the brotherhood of culture, +the culture city itself. Similarly in art, we no longer imitate nature, +nor copy traditional designs. Art proper appears, shaping bronze and +marble into images of the gods, and on a burnt and ruined hill-fort +renewing the Parthenon. In general terms, instead of simply adjusting, +as in the school, our mental picture to the outward facts, we reverse +the process; and with a new art conception, be it good or bad, we +transform the outward world, like wax under the seal. Thus from the +[Page: 88] cloister and chapel of the musician, the studio-cell of the +artist, the scriptorium of the poet, comes forth the architect, +remodelling the city around his supreme material expression and home of +its moral and material reorganisation, its renewed temporal and +spiritual powers. Of this, the city proper, the Acropolis of Athens, the +Temple of Jerusalem, the Capitol and Forum of Rome are classic and +central examples, and in the mediaeval city, pre-eminently the +cathedral; though beside this we must not forget the town house and its +belfry, the guild houses, the colleges, the great place, the fountains, +the city cross, and if last, still best if good at all, the streets and +courts and homes. Returning once more to the history of educational +development, we have here a means of unravelling the apparently +perplexing history of universities. For the university past or present +has but its foundations in the school, with its local and its general +tradition, whatever may be the accordance of these with well-ascertained +fact, its true novitiate can only be afforded in the cloister of +reflection and research, of interpretation and synthesis; while for its +full development it needs the perpetual renewal of that generous social +life--that inspiring intercourse "of picked adolescents and picked +senescents"--which has marked the vital periods of every university +worthy of the name. + + Realisation in + ACROPOLIS } + CATHEDRAL } CITY + UNIVERSITY } +(EU)-POLITY + ^ + | CULTURE + | ^ +Rise towards | +Formulation | ART +and Realisation, Rise through ^ +through | + { Politics { Action Rise to + { Church Militant { Education expression + ^ ^ ^ + | | | + | | | + | | | + | | "IMAGERY" + | | AESTHETICS + | | (Beautiful) +SOCIAL. ECON. POL. "IDEAS" + ^ SYNTHETICS + | (True) +"IDEALS" + ETHICS + (Good) Criticism, Selection, + Re-synthesis, in + HERMITAGE + ACADEME + CLOISTER, etc. + +In summary then, to the town has been added the school, with its +advantages, its increasingly obvious limitations also, which it is for +the cloister to remedy--even the advantages of the barrack finding a +main element of its claim in this no less than in its professed training +as regards citizenship. But here also it is for few to remain, albeit +free for each to return at will. Ideals, to survive, must surely live, +that is, be realised; hence for full life one needs "to meditate with +the free solitary; yet to live secular, and serve mankind." + + TOWN | CITY + FOLK | POLITY + | + WORK | CULTURE + | +PLACE | ART +-----------------------------+-------------------------------- +SURVEY | IMAGERY + | + KNOWLEDGE | IDEAS + | + MORALS | SOC. ECON. + | IDEALS + LAW | ETHICS + SCHOOL | CLOISTER + + +L--THE CITY COMPLIED: TOWN, SCHOOL, CLOISTER, AND CITY PROPER + +In course of this fourfold analysis, it is plain that we have reached +the very converse--or at all events the [Page: 90] complement--of that +geographical determinism with which we started, and that we have +returned to a view corresponding to the popular one (of "People, +Affairs, Places," p. 69), which we then set aside for the reasons given. +The "great man theory" of history, at best less crudely stated, thus +reappears; in short, to the initial thesis we have now the distinct +antithesis. It is time, therefore, to bring these together towards the +needed synthesis. Hence to the page (p. 77) on which was summarised the +determinist view of Town and School, we now require the complemental +statement upon page (p. 87) of Cloister and City proper. Nor must we be +content, with too many controversialists hitherto, to keep in view only +one at a time; but by folding back the pages of print between these two +half-schemes, as the book lies open, to take in both together. + +We may thus finally compress the essentials of this whole paper into a +simple formula-- + +TOWN | CITY + | + FOLK | POLITY + | + WORK | CULTURE + | | ^ +PLACE | | | ART +-----------------|----|----|---------------------- +LORE | | | IMAGERY + v | | + LEAR | IDEA + | + LOVE | IDEAL + | +SCHOOL | CLOISTER + +or most briefly-- + +| TOWN | CITY ^ +| -------+--------- | +v SCHOOL | CLOISTER | + +[Page: 91]--noting in every case the opposite direction of the arrows. +The application of this formula to different types of town, such as +those already indicated in the former instalment of this paper (Vol. I., +p. 107) or in the present one, will not be found to present any +insuperable difficulty. It must, however, be kept clearly in view that +the city of each day and generation subsides or decays more or less +completely into the mere town anew, as the cloister into the schools. +The towns and cities of the world are thus classifiable in terms of +their past development and present condition. + + +Summary + +Condensing now this lengthy, yet compressed and abbreviated series of +analyses into a single page of summary, we may briefly define the main +aspects and departments of civics from the present point of view. First +then, comes the study of civics as fundamentally (and ever anew) an +orderly development--at once geographic, economic, and anthropologic in +its nature--a survey of place, work, and folk--and these not merely or +mainly as broken up into the fine dust of censuses and statistics, nor +even of the three too separate sciences above named, but as a living +unity, the human hive, the Town. + +Corresponding to this objective and organic life we reorganise its +fundamental subjective life. This is fundamentally, and ever partially, +the record and reflex of the life of the hive, the Town: of all its +general and particular environment and function, its family type and +development; and however overlaid by imported culture or by decayed +ideals, it is fundamentally expressed in local knowledge, in craft +tradition, in kinship and its associated kindness, in habits and +customs, and their developments up to morals and laws. Simple terms +corresponding to place, work, and folk, are hard to find; say, however, +till better be suggested, that in close relation to the maternal arms in +which general social thought and its utmost pedagogic developments +alike begin, it is place-lore, work-lear, and folk-love, which are the +essentials of every [Page: 92] School.[11] That existing educational +machineries may not adequately recognise these is not of course the +question here. + +[11] The use of _lore_ as primarily empirical, and derived from the +senses, it is traditional; it is well therefore to restrict it to this, +and to revive the old word _lear_, still understood in Scotland in these +precise senses--intellectual, rational, yet traditional, occupational +also. + +These three terms, lore, lear, and love are thus well related to their +respectively deepening levels of sense, intelligence and feeling; and +their respective relation is thus more plain to the imagery, the theory, +and the idealism above defined as the essentials of the Cloister. The +psychology of the processes of poetic, philosophic and spiritual +awakening and renewal is in these days being approached anew, both from +the individual and social side, but cannot here be entered upon. + +Finally and supremely arises the City proper--its individuality +dependent upon the measure and form in which ideals are expressed and +harmonised in social life and polity, ideas synthetised in culture, and +beauty carried outwards from the study or chamber of the recluse into +the world of art. + + + +Practical conclusion + + +The investigation of the City thus tends towards the practice of +citizenship. Thus social survey prepares for social service, as +diagnosis towards treatment and hygiene; and these react fruitfully upon +our knowledge and understanding anew. Beyond social observations, and +the needed observatories for making them more adequately, we need social +activities and the laboratories for preparing them, or at least the +leavens of them; or, again, in happier phrase, at once simple and more +synthetic, we need some shelter[12] into which to gather the best +[Page: 93] seed of past flowerings and in which to raise and tend the +seedlings of coming summers. We need definitely to acquire such a centre +of survey and service in each and every city--in a word, a Civicentre +for sociologist and citizen. + +[12] Without forgetting the many institutions and workers in almost all +departments of the field of civics, the rise of definite surveys and of +scientific groupings like this Society, without ignoring also the many +admirable workers and institutions of social endeavour, and their +progressive integration into Social Unions, Institutes of Service, and +the like, I may be permitted to press for the need of uniting both +types, the scientific and the practical, into a single one--a civic +museum and active centre in one. Of this type, my own Outlook Tower at +Edinburgh is, so far as I am aware, the earliest beginning; and, despite +its rudimentary condition, may thus serve to suggest a type of +institution which will be found of service alike to the sociologist and +the citizen. + + +M--THE HISTORIC CITY-COMPLEX + +The criticism may have already arisen in the reader's mind that the +"Town" and "School" of our analysis are by no means so simple as we have +assumed them. Our surveys of antique towns ever disclose the material +survivals, at least the vestiges, of the cloister or the acropolis of +the past, of its cathedral or its forum. The processes of our +industries, in what is now their daily artisan routine, include, repeat, +condense, what were yesterday or longer ago living inventions, each +instinct with Promethean fire. The hackneyed ornament of our homes was +once glowing with beauty, radiant or dark with symbolism. So it is for +our everyday customs and institutions, and so for living languages; our +own, perhaps, most of all. These, of course, are facts made familiar by +investigators of all orders, from the scholar and antiquary of old, the +historian and philologist of yesterday, to the geographer or the +sociologist of our own time: witness Mr. Spencer's masterly treatment of +their main results. How, then, shall we correlate this process of all +things growing old with the analysis of cities above attempted? In other +words, how shall we interpret the course of their historic evolution, +their renewed growth and decay, progress and degeneracy, their present +condition, crowded with residues of the past, with those potentialities +which our outline discloses? This is the more necessary since this +fourfold analysis applies in principle to all human groupings from the +simplest village to the Eternal City. To this, indeed, we have in +principle already traced it, onwards from our primitive valley section +with its humble hamlets, its fundamental occupations. Returning then to +our main diagram, with its four-fold analysis of the City so soon as we +have completed this, and [Page: 94] carried its progress up to the level +of city life proper, we must next turn over the leaf and begin a new +page, with place and work and folk once more. This simplest of acts +expresses with graphic significance the very process of history; for in +closing our diagram page its "Cloister" has been folded down on the +"School," our cathedral and forum, our "City" proper upon the "Town." +Thus it is that the ideals and the achievements of one day and +generation and city are ever melting away, and passing out of sight of +the next; so that to the joy or sorrow of the successors the new page +seems well nigh bare, though ever there comes faintly through some image +or at least blurred suggestion of the fading past. Hence each page of +history is a palimpsest. Hence our modern town, even when yesterday but +prairie, was no mere vacant site, but was at once enriched and +encumbered by the surviving traditions of the past; so that even its new +buildings are for the most part but vacant shells of past art, of which +now only the student cares to trace the objective annals, much less +penetrate to the inner history. So for the decayed Renaissance learning +of our schools, for the most part so literally dead since the +"Grammarian's Funeral"; and so, too, for the unthinking routines, the +dead customs and conventions, and largely too the laws and rituals of +our urban lives. Hence, then, it is that for the arrest and the decay of +cities we have no need to go for our examples to the ancient East. These +processes, like those of individual senility and death, are going on +everywhere day by day. + +Upon the new page, then, it is but a complexer "Town" and "School" anew: +we have no continuing City. This too commonly has existed at its best +but for the rare generation which created it, or little longer; though +its historic glories, like those of sunset and of after-glow, may long +shed radiance and glamour upon its town, and linger in the world's +memory long after not only these have faded, but their very folk have +vanished, their walls fallen, nay their very site been buried or +forgotten. Upon all these degrees of dying, all these faint and fading +steps between immortality and oblivion, we may arrange what we call our +historic cities. Obviously in the [Page: 95] deeper and more living +sense the city exists only in actualising itself; and thus to us it is +that the ideal city lies ever in the future. Yet it is the very essence +of this whole argument that an ideal city is latent in every town. Where +shall we in these days find our cloistered retreats to think out such +ideals as may be applicable in our time and circumstances: the needed +kinetic ethics, the needed synthetic philosophy and science, the needed +vision and imagery and expression of them all? + + +N--THE EVILS OF THE CITY + +Disease, defect, vice and crime + +I have spoken little of town evils, and much of town ideals, primarily +for the reason that even to recognise, much less treat, the abnormal, we +must know something of the normal course of evolution. Hence, the old +and useful phrase by which physiology used to be known, that of "the +institutes of medicine." Sociology has thus to become "the institutes of +citizenship." + +Often though philanthropists forget this, diagnosis should precede +treatment. The evils of the city, by the very nature of our hypothesis, +demand special survey, and this no less thoroughly than do the normal +place and work and industry. It is only our most permanent intellectual +impulse, that of seeking for unity, which excuses the cheap unitary +explanations so often current; as, for instance, that social evils are +mainly to be explained by intemperance, as for one school of reformers; +by poverty or luxury, for a second and third; by Tammany or other form +of party government, by socialism or by individualism for yet others; +that they are due to dissent or to church, to ignorance or to the spread +of science, and so on almost indefinitely--doubtless not without +elements of truth in each! + +Yet let me offer as yet another explanation of civic evils, this more +general one--distinguished from the preceding by including them all and +more--that not only is our "Town" in itself imperfect, but the other +three elements we have been characterising as school, cloister and city, +are yet more imperfect, since disordered, decayed, or undeveloped anew. +It is because of each and all of these imperfect realisations of our +civic life, that the evils of life sink down, or flame out, into these +complex eruptions of social evils with which our human aggregations are +as yet cursed. + +Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with ignorance +and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too +separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of +being viewed together, and largely even treated together. They are not +unrelated, but correspond each as the negative to that fourfold +presentment of ideals we have hitherto been raising. To this ideal unity +of healthy town, with its practical and scientific schools of all kinds, +with its meditative cloister of ethical and social idealism, of unified +science and philosophy, of imagination and drama, all culminating in +the polity, culture, and art which make a city proper, we have here the +corresponding defects in detail. + +The evils of existing city life are thus largely reinterpreted; and if +so more efficiently combated; since the poverty, squalor and ugliness of +our cities, their disease and their intemperance, their ignorance, +dulness and mental defect, their vice and crime are thus capable not +only of separate treatment but of an increasingly unified civic hygiene, +and this in the widest sense, material and moral, economic and idealist, +utilitarian and artistic. Even the most earnest and capable workers +towards civic betterment in these many fields may gain at once in hope +and in efficiency as they see their special interests and tasks +converging into the conception of the city as an organic unity, and this +not fixed and settled, nor even in process of progress or degeneration +from causes beyond our ken, but as an orderly development which we may +aid towards higher perfection, geographic and cultural alike. + +Our modern town is thus in a very real sense, one not hopeless, but as +hopeful as may be, a veritable purgatory; that is a struggle of lower +and higher idealisms, amid the respective expressions and outcomes of +these. Indeed, in our own present [Page: 97] cities, as they have come +to be, is not each of us ever finding his own Inferno, or it may be his +Paradise? Does he not see the dark fate of some, the striving and rising +hope of others, the redemption also? + +The supreme poetic utterance of the mediaeval world is thus in great +measure, as each thoughtful reader sees, an expression of impassioned +citizenship and this at one of the golden moments of the long history of +city life. This expression--this exiled citizen's autobiographic +thought-stream--is resumed at every level, from youthful home and local +colour, from boyish love and hopes, from active citizenship and party +struggle, to the transfiguration of all these. Hence these mystic +visions, and these world ambitions, temporal and spiritual; hence this +rise from cloistered faith and philosophy into many-sided culture; hence +the transformation of all these through intensest symbol-visions into +enduring song. + +Am I thus suggesting the _Divina Comedia_ as a guide-book to cities? +Without doubt, though not necessarily for beginners. Yet who can see +Florence without this, though we may pack below it Baedeker and Murray? +Or who, that can really read, can open a volume of Mr. Booth's severely +statistical Survey of London, with all its studious reserve, its +scientific repression, without seeing between its lines the Dantean +circles; happy if he can sometimes read them upward as well as down? + + +O--A CIVIC SYMBOL AND ITS MEANING + +But such books of the city, whether of the new and observant type, from +Baedeker to Booth, or of the old and interpretative Dantean one, are too +vast and varied to keep open before us. Even the preceding open page of +diagram is complex enough with its twofold, indeed four-fold city; and +we are called back to our daily work in the first of these divisions, +that of the everyday town. Since its subjective aspects of school and +cloister may fade from memory, its higher aspect also, that of city +proper, how can we retain this fourfold [Page: 98] analysis, and how +test if it be true? Take then one final illustration; this time no mere +logical skeleton, however simple or graphic, but an image more easily +retained, because a concrete and artistic one, and moreover in terms of +that form of life-labour and thought-notation--that of current +coin--which, in our day especially, dominates this vastest of cities; +and hence inherits for the region of its home and centre--"the Bank" +which has so thoroughly taken precedence of the town-house and +cathedral, of the fortress and palace--the honoured name of "City." The +coinages of each time and place combine concrete and social use with +statements of historic facts; and they add to both of these a wealth of +emblematic suggestions: but that is to say, they express not only their +town, and something of its _school_, but much of its thought also, its +_cloister_ in my present terminology. + +So before me lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side +stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild, +"_Non marte sed arte_." Here then the industrial "Town" and its "School" +express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been above +defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since +Perth _(Bertha aurea)_ had been the northmost of all Rome's provincial +capitals, her re-named "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald +must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the +Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic +dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On +the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard, +since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of +1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the +banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, and +one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual +strife with the feudal nobles, "_Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege_." Here then, +plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty +provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only of +the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find +clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole [Page:99] four-fold +analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been above labouring for. +For what makes the industrial Town, what can better keep it than +strenuous industry at its anvil? How better express its craft school, +its local style and skill, its reaction too upon the town's life in +peace and war, than by this Hal o' the Wynd by his forge? Nay, what +better symbol than this hammer, this primitive tool and ever typical +one, of the peaceful education of experience, form Prometheus to Kelvin, +of the warlike, from Thor to modern cannon-forge? Turning now from Town +and School to Cloister, to the life of secluded peace and +meditation--from which, however, the practical issues of life are ever +renewed--what plainer symbol, yet what more historic or more mystic one +can we ask than this of the lamb with the banner? While of the +contrasted yet complemental civic life of fullest, broadest action, what +expression like the Roman eagle--the very eyes of keenness, and the +spreading wings of power? + +So rarely perfect then is this civic symbol, that I must not omit to +mention that it has only come to my notice since the body of this paper, +with its four-fold analysis of cities as above outlined, was essentially +finished. Since it thus has not in any particular suggested the +treatment of cities here advocated, it is the more interesting and +encouraging as a confirmation of it. It is also to my mind plain that in +this, as in many other of our apparent "advances in science," and +doubtless those in social studies particularly, we are but learning to +think things anew, long after our forefathers have lived them, even +expressed them--and these in their ways no less clear and popular than +can ever be ours. That we may also again live them is once more +curiously expressed by the same symbol; for its re-appearance is due to +its having been appropriately revived, in a fitting art form, that of +the commemorative and prize medal of the local arts and crafts +exhibition, held in the new Public Library, under civic auspices. Little +scrutiny of this last sentence will be needed to see the four-fold +completeness of the civic event which it describes. + +For just as we have seen on the old coin the hammerman [Page: 100] and +his motto answer to the town and school; so now on its reissue to the +renascent local arts and crafts, with their commemoration in this +library. And as the greater motto, that of widest policy, corresponds to +the cloister of reflection and resolve, so we note that this new impulse +to civic betterment is associated with the new library--no mere +school-house of memory, but also the open cloister of our day. Finally, +note that this impulse is no longer merely one of aesthetic purpose, of +"art for art's sake," nor its execution that of a cultured minority +merely; it announces a re-union of this culture and art with the civic +polity. What fitter occasion, then, for the striking of a medal, than +this renewal of civic life, with municipal organisation and polity, art +and culture, renascent in unison. That such events are nowadays far from +exceptional is so true that we are in danger of losing sight of their +significance. Yet it is amid such city developments that the future +Pericles must arise. + +We thus see that our analysis is no mere structural one, made +post-mortem from civic history; but that it applies to the modern +functioning of everyday life in an everyday city, so soon as this +becomes touched anew towards cultural issues. Furthermore, it is thus +plain that civic life not only has long ago anticipated and embodied our +theories of it, but once more outruns them, expressing them far better +than in words--in life and practice. In this way the reader who may most +resent these unfamiliar methods of exposition, alternately by abstract +diagram or concrete illustration--which may seem to him too remote from +ordinary life and experience, perhaps too trivial--may now test the +present theory of the city, or amend it, by means of the ample +illustrations of the processes and results of social life which are +provided by his daily newspaper, and these on well-nigh all its fields +and levels. + +Note finally that it is the eagle and lamb of temporal and spiritual +idealism that form the "head" of this coin, the craftsman and anvil but +the modest "tail." The application is obvious. + +Thus even numismatics revives from amid the fossil [Page: 100] sciences. +For from this to our own common coinage, or notably to that of France, +America, Switzerland, etc., the transition is easy, and still better to +that of the noblest civic past, both classic and mediaeval. Without +pursuing this further here my present point is gained, if we see, even +in the everyday local details of work and people, the enduring stamp, +the inextinguishable promise, of the flowering of our everyday +industries and schools into worthier ideals than they at present +express, and of the fruition of these in turn upon nobler heights of +life and practice. It expresses the essential truth of the popular view +of the city; that in terms of the formula--People ... Affairs ... +Places--above referred to (page 69). It also explains the persistent +vitality of this view, despite its frequent crudity, and lack of order +in detail, in face of the more scientific treatment here at first +employed, that in the elementary geographic order--Place ... Work ... +People. For though this objective order be fundamental, it is the +complementary subjective evolution which throughout history has ever +become supreme; so that our scheme must combine the outward geographic +presentment with the inward psychological one. This may be graphically +expressed by changing the order of presentment from that used +hitherto:-- + +Town | City City | Town +-------------------- to ---------------------- +School | Cloister Cloister | School + + +P--FORECAST OF CITY DEVELOPMENT. SPECIAL AND GENERAL + +The dual and four-fold development of the city, as above sketched, is by +no means far advanced in most of our present towns or cities, which have +obviously but scanty expression of the ideas shadowed forth for the +modern equivalents of cloister and cathedral, of academe and acropolis. +But this is to say that such towns, however large, populous and rich +according to conventional economic standards, are to that extent small +and poor, indeed too often little better than cities by courtesy. Yet +their further development, upon this [Page: 102] four-fold view of civic +evolution, though in principle the same for each and all, has always +been, and let us hope may always be, in large measure an individual +(because regional) one. For if each human individuality be unique, how +much more must that of every city? + +In one concrete case, that of Dunfermline, I have already submitted +definite suggestions towards the realisation of the civic Utopia, and +even architectural designs towards its execution,[13] so that these may +at any rate suffice to show how local study and adaptive design are +needed for each individual city, indeed for every point of it. It is +thus, and thus only, that we can hope to have a city development truly +evolutionary, that is, one utilising the local features, advantages, and +possibilities of place, occupation, and people. Of course, it is needful +to supplement these by the example of other cities; but it is no less +needful to avoid weighting down the local life with replicas of +institutions, however excellent elsewhere, if really irregional here. +With the re-awakening of regional life in our various centres, and of +some comprehension of its conditions among our rulers, they will cease +to establish, say, a school of mines in Piccadilly, or again one of +engineering and the like in South Kensington. The magistrates of +Edinburgh have long abandoned their old attempt to plant mulberries and +naturalise silk culture upon their wind-swept Calton Hill; albeit this +was a comparatively rational endeavour, since a population of Huguenot +refugee silk weavers had actually come upon their hands. + +[13] Cf. the writer's "City Development," Edinburgh and Westminster, +1904. + +Similarly, it is plain that we must develop Oxford as Oxford, Edinburgh +as Edinburgh, and so on with all other cities, great or small--York or +Winchester, Westminster or London. And so with Chelsea or Hampstead, +with Woolwich or Battersea. Has not the last of these grown from a mere +outlying vestry, like so many others, into a centre of genuine vitality +and interior progress, indeed of ever-widening interest and example; and +all this in half a generation, apparently through the sagacious +leadership--say, rather the devoted, the [Page: 103] impassioned +citizenship--of a single man? And does not his popular park at times +come near giving us a vital indication of the needed modern analogue of +cathedral and forum? Civic development is thus no mere external matter, +either of "Haussmannising" its streets, or of machine-educating its +people; the true progress of the city and its citizenship must alike +grow and flower from within albeit alive and open to every truly +fertilising impulse from without. + +Yet since national interests, international industry, commerce, +science, and therefore progress are nowadays and increasingly so +largely one, may we not in conclusion foresee something at least of the +great lines of development which are common to cities, and generalise +these as we are accustomed to do in history? Witness the Classical, +Mediaeval, and Renaissance types to which historic cities +preponderatingly belong, and within which we group their varied +individualities, as after all of comparative detail. + +Here then it is time to recall the presentment of ancient, recent and +contemporary evolution already outlined in the part of this paper +previously read (Vol. I, p. 109), dealing with the historic survey of +cities. We have now to face the question, then postponed, indeed left in +interrogation-marks--that of seeking not indeed sharply to define the +future order of things, yet in some measure to discern such elements of +progress as may be already incipient in the existing order, if not yet +largely manifest there. Such elements may be reasonably expected to grow +in the near future, perhaps increasingly, and whatever be their rate of +growth are surely worthy of our attention. + +Contemporary science, with its retrospective inquiries into origins in +the past, its everyday observation of the present, is apt practically to +overlook that the highest criterion and achievement of science is not to +decipher the past, nor record the present, not even to interpret both. +It is to foresee: only thus can it subserve action, of which the present +task ever lies towards the future, since it is for this that we have to +provide. Why then should not Comte's famous aphorism--"_Voir pour +prevoir, prevoir pour pourvoir_," become applicable in our civic studies +no less than in the general social and political fields to [Page: 104] +which he applied it? In navigation or engineering, in agriculture or +hygiene, prevision and provision alike are ever increasing; yet these +are no mere combinations of the preliminary sciences and the fundamental +occupations, but obviously contain very large social elements. + +It is proverbially safe to prophesy when one knows; and it is but this +safe prediction which we make every day of child or bud, where we can +hardly fail to see the growing man, the coming flower. Yet do not most +people practically forget that even now, in mid-winter, next summer's +leaves are already waiting, nay, that they were conceived nine months +ago? That they thus grow in small, commonly unnoticed beginnings, and +lie in bud for a period twice as long as the summer of their adult and +manifest life, is yet a fact, and one to which the social analogies are +many and worth considering. + +While recognising, then, the immense importance of the historic element +of our heritage, renaissance and mediaeval, classic and earlier; +recognising also the predominance of contemporary forces and ideas, +industrial and liberal, imperial and bureaucratic, financial and +journalistic, can we not seek also, hidden under all these leaves, for +those of the still-but-developing bud, which next season must be so much +more important than they are to day? It is a commonplace, yet mainly of +educational meetings, to note that the next generation is now at school; +but how seldom do we recognise its pioneers, albeit already among our +own contemporaries? At any rate we may see here and there that their +leaven is already at work. + +In this respect, cities greatly differ--one is far more initiative than +another. In the previous paper (vol. I, p. 109), we saw how individuals, +edifices, institutions, might represent all past phases; these, +therefore, often predominate in different cities sufficiently to give +its essential stamp. Why then should we not make a further survey and +seek to see something of the cities of the future; though we may have to +look for these in quarters where at first sight there may seem as yet +scanty promise of flower? + +[Page: 105] To recall an instance employed above, probably every member +of this Society is old enough to remember incredulous questionings of +whether any good thing could come out of Battersea. Again, how few, even +in America, much less than in Europe, a few years ago, forsaw the rapid +growth of those culture-elements in St. Louis, of which the recent +World-Exposition will not have been the only outcome? + +Only a few years earlier, it was Chicago which, for New England no less +than for the Old World, seemed but the byword of a hopelessly +materialised community. So Birmingham or Glasgow has won its present +high position among cities in comparatively recent times; so it may now +be the turn of older cities, once far more eminent, like Newcastle or +Dundee, to overtake and in turn, perhaps, outstrip them. But all this is +still too general and needs further definition; let us attempt this, +therefore, somewhat more fully, in the concrete case of Glasgow. + + +Q--GLASGOW AS TYPICAL OF CIVIC TRANSITION--FROM "PALEOTECHNIC" TO +"NEOTECHNIC" + +My own appreciation of the significance of Glasgow was first really +awakened over twenty years ago by William Morris, who in his vivid way +pointed out to me how, despite the traditional culture--superiority of +Edinburgh, Glasgow was not only the Scottish capital, but, in his view, +in real progressiveness the leading and initiative city of the whole +United Kingdom. And this for him was not merely or mainly in its +municipal enterprise, then merely in its infancy--although he expressed +this development in the phrase "In London, people talked socialism +without living it; but in Glasgow, they were socialists without knowing +it!" Despite all the ugliness which had so repelled Ruskin, the squalor +which moved Matthew Arnold to the fiercest scorn in all his writings, +Morris's appreciation arose from his craftsman's knowledge and respect +for supreme craftsmanship. The great ships building upon the Clyde were +for him "the greatest achievement of [Page: 106] humanity since the days +of the cathedral-builders," nay, for him actually surpassing these, +since calling forth an even more complex combination and "co-operation +of all the material arts and sciences" into a mighty and organic whole; +and correspondingly of all their respective workers also, this being for +him of the very essence of his social ideal. + +For these reasons he insisted, to my then surprise that the social +reorganisation he then so ardently hoped for "was coming faster upon the +Clyde than upon the Thames": he explained as for him the one main reason +for his then discouragement as to the progress of London that there East +and West, North and South, are not only too remote each from the other, +but in their occupations all much too specialised--there to finance, +there to manufactures, or here to leisure, and so on; while on the Clyde +industrial organisation and social progress could not but develop +together, through the very nature of the essential and working unity of +the ship. + +Since Morris's day, a local art movement, of which he knew little, has +risen to eminence, a foreign critic would say to pre-eminence, in this +country at least. Since Ruskin's savage response to a Glasgow invitation +to lecture--"first burn your city, and cleanse your river,"--a new +generation of architects and hygienists have not a little transformed +the one, and vigorous measures have been taken towards the purification +of the other. That the city and university pre-eminently associated +with the invention of the steam-engine, and consequently with the advent +of the industrial revolution throughout the world, should, a century +later, have produced a scarcely less pre-eminent leader of applied +science towards the command of electricity is thus no isolated +coincidence. And as political economy, which is ever the theory +corresponding to our phase of industrial practice, and there some of +its foremost pioneers, and later its classical exponent, Adam Smith +himself, so once more there are signs at least of a corresponding wave +of theoretic progress. Students of primitive civilisation and industry +have now long familiarised us with their reinterpretation of what was +long known as the stone age, into two very distinct [Page: 107] periods, +the earlier characterised by few and rough implements, roughly used by a +rude people, the second by more varied tools, of better shape, and finer +edge, often of exquisite material and polish. We know that these were +wielded more skilfully, by a people of higher type, better bred and +better nourished; and that these, albeit of less hunting and militant +life, but of pacific agricultural skill, prevailed in every way in the +struggle for existence; thanks thus not only to more advanced arts, but +probably above all to the higher status of woman. This distinction of +Paleolithic and Neolithic ages and men, has long passed into the +terminology of sociological science, and even into current speech: is it +too much then, similarly, to focus the largely analogous progress which +is so observable in what we have been wont to generalise too crudely as +the modern Industrial Age? All are agreed that the discoveries and +inventions of this extraordinary period of history constitute an epoch +of material advance only paralleled, if at all, in magnitude and +significance by those of prehistory with its shadowy Promethean figures. +Our own advance from a lower industrial civilisation towards a higher +thus no less demands definite characterisation, and this may be broadly +expressed as from an earlier or _Paleotechnic_ phase, towards a later or +more advanced _Neotechnic_ one. If definition be needed, this may be +broadly given as from a comparatively crude and wasteful technic age, +characterised by coal, steam, and cheap machine products, and a +corresponding _quantitative_ ideal of "progress of wealth and +population"--towards a finer civilisation, characterised by the wider +command, yet greater economy of natural energies, by the predominance of +electricity, and by the increasing victory of an ideal of qualitative +progress, expressed in terms of skill and art, of hygiene and education, +of social polity, etc. + +The Neotechnic phase, though itself as yet far from completely replacing +the paleotechnic order which is still quantitatively predominant in most +of our cities, begins itself to show signs of a higher stage of +progress, as in the co-ordination of the many industries required for +the building of a ship, or in the yet more recent developments which +begin to renew for us the conception of the worthy construction of a +city. As [Page: 108] the former period may be characterised by the +predominance of the relatively unskilled workman and of the skilled, so +this next incipient age by the development of the chief workman proper, +the literal _architectos_ or architect; and by his companion the rustic +improver, gardener and forester, farmer, irrigator, and their +correspondingly evolving types of civil engineer. + +To this phase then the term _Geotechnic_ may fairly be applied. Into its +corresponding theoretic and ideal developments we need not here enter, +beyond noting that these are similarly of synthetic character; on the +concrete side the sciences unifying as geography, and on their more +abstract side as the classification and philosophy of the +sciences,--while both abstract and concrete movements of thought are +becoming more and more thoroughly evolutionary in character. + +But evolutionary theories, especially as they rise towards +comprehensiveness, cannot permanently content themselves with origins, +or with classifications merely, nor with concentrating on nature rather +than on man. Nature furnishes after all but the stage for evolution in +its highest terms; of this man himself is the hero; so that thus our +Geotechnic phase, Synthetic age (call it what we will) in its turn gives +birth to a further advance--that concerned with human evolution, above +all subordinating all things to him; whereas in all these preceding +industrial phases, even if decreasingly, "things are in the saddle and +ride mankind." This age, now definitely evolutionist in policy, as the +geotechnic was in theory and in environment we may term the _Eugenic_. +For its theory, still less advanced, the term _Eupsychic_ may complete +our proposed nomenclature. + +Thus then our conception of the opening future may be increasingly +defined, since all these apparently predicted phases are already +incipient among us, and are thus really matters of observed fact, of +social embryology let us say; in short, of city development. + +In summary, then, the diagram of the former instalment of this paper +(vol. 1, p. 109) + + ANCIENT || +Primitive | Matriarchal | Patriarchal || + + RECENT || +Greek and Roman | Mediaeval | Renaissance || + + CONTEMPORARY || +Revolution | Empire | Finance || + + INCIPIENT + ? ? ? + +[Page: 109] has thus its interrogations filled up. Omitting the +left-hand half, that generalised as Ancient and Recent in the above +diagram, so as to give more space to the Contemporary and Incipient +phases, these now stand as follows:-- + + CONTEMPORARY || INCIPIENT +Revolution | Revolution | Empire ||Neotechnic | Geotechnic | Eugenic + +To elaborate this farther would, of course, exceed my present limits; +but I may be permitted to say that long use of this schematic outline, +especially of course in more developed forms, has satisfied me of its +usefulness alike in the study of current events and in the practical +work of education and city betterment. I venture then to recommend it to +others as worth trial. + + +R--A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL--A CIVIC EXHIBITION + +How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our +observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and +our practical policy--i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be +selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these +applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if +this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, +how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? +At this stage therefore, I venture to submit to the Society a practical +proposal for its consideration and discussion; and if approved, I would +fain hope for its recommendation to towns and cities, to organisations +and to the public likely to be interested. + +Here then is my proposal. Is not the time ripe for bringing together the +movements of Civics and Eugenics, now here and indeed everywhere plainly +nascent, and of setting these before the public of this country in some +such large and concrete ways, as indeed, in the latter subject at +least, have been so strongly desiderated by Mr. Galton? As regards +Civics, such have been afforded to America during the summer of 1904 by +the Municipal Section of the St. Louis Exhibition; in [Page: 110] +Dresden also, at the recent Towns Exhibition; and by kindred Exhibitions +and Congresses in Paris and elsewhere. + +All these have taken form since the Paris Exposition of 1900, with its +important section of social economy and its many relevant special +congresses. Among these may be specially mentioned here as of popular +interest, and civic stimulus, the _Congres de L'Art Public_; the more +since this also held an important Exhibition, to which many Continental +cities sent instructive exhibits. + +Other exhibitions might be mentioned; so that the fact appears that in +well-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the +great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly +brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with +their associated congresses. + +With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon +Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among us; +with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a +real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic +education and action? + +Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important +exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits +have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the +picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of +their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present +conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering +them. + +Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" might +readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the +excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions +in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an +exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they +may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely +abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the +discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to +raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in freshening +lights. + +[Page: 111] At this time of social transition, when we all more or less +feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of +sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual +appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic +Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, of +the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic +Exhibition.[14] + +[14] Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to note the +practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition, +appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to +civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall. The Cottages Exhibition initiated +by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that +admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in +the directions of progress and propaganda advocated above. + +Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that +_Encyclopaedia Civica_, into which, in the previous instalment of this +paper (vol. I, p. 118) I have sought to group the literature of civics. +We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in +universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the +mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of +these. We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future, +and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already +struggling towards birth. + + + + +DISCUSSION + + +The Chairman (THE RT. HON. CHARLES BOOTH) said: + +I feel always the inspiring character of Professor Geddes' addresses. He +seems to widen and deepen the point of view, and to widen and deepen +one's own ideas, and enables us to hold them more firmly and better than +one can do without the aid of the kind of insight Professor Geddes has +given into the methods of his own mind. I believe that we all hold our +conceptions by some sort of tenure. I am afraid I hold mine by columns +and statistics much underlined--a horrible prosaic sort of arrangement +on ruled paper. I remember a lady of my acquaintance who had a place for +everything. The discovery of America was in the left-hand corner; the +Papacy was in the middle; and for everything she had some local +habitation in an imaginary world. Professor Geddes is far more ingenious +than that, and it is most interesting and instructive and helpful to +follow these charming diagrams which spring evidently from the method he +himself uses in holding and forming his conceptions. That it is of the +utmost value to have large conceptions there can be no doubt--large +conceptions both in time and place, large conceptions of all those +various ideas to which he has called our attention. By some means or +other we have to have them; and having got them, every individual, +single fact has redoubled value. We put it in its place. So I hope that +in our discussion, while we may develop each in his own way, the mental +methods we pursue, we may bring forward anything that strikes us as +germane, as a practical point of application to the life of the world, +and especially anything having an application to the life of London. I +would make my contribution to that with regard to a scheme that has been +explained to me by its originator, Mrs. Barnett, the wife of Canon +Barnett of Toynbee Hall. The idea concerns an open [Page: 113] space +which has recently been secured in Hampstead. It is known to you all +that a certain piece of ground belonging to the trustees of Eton College +has been secured, which extends the open space of Hampstead Heath in +such a way as to protect a great amount of beauty. The further proposal +is to acquire an estate surrounding that open space which has now been +secured for ever to the people, and to use this extension to make what +is called a "garden suburb." It is a following out of the "garden-city" +idea which is seizing hold of all our minds, and it seems to me an +exceedingly practical adaptation of that idea. Where it comes in, in +connection with the address we have just heard, is that the root idea is +that it shall bring together all the good elements of civic life. It is +not to be for one class, or one idea, but for all classes, and all +ideas--a mixed population with all its needs thought for and provided +for; and above everything, the beauty of those fields and those hills is +not to be sacrificed, but to be used for the good of the suburb and the +good of London. I hope that out of it will come an example that will be +followed. That is a little contribution I wish to make to the discussion +to-day, and if I can interest any one here in forwarding it, I shall be +exceedingly glad. + + +MR. SWINNY said: + +Towards the close of his lecture, Professor Geddes remarked that the +cities of America inherited a great part of their civilisation from +Greece and Rome and the Europe of the Middle Age. I believe that thought +will lead us to consider the point whether this geographical survey +should precede or follow a general historical survey. Now, if we +consider that a river valley in England, with the towns in that valley, +are part of the English nation, and that the English nation has shared +in the general historical evolution of Western Europe, it would seem +that the first simplification the question allows of is: What is there +in the historical development of that city that is common to the whole +of Western Europe, and what is peculiar to its position as an English +city? And the second simplification that the problem allows of is to +consider what part of the evolution of a particular city is due to its +peculiar position in that river valley? So that it seems necessary first +to get a general idea of the historical evolution of England and the +West; and then you can proceed to consider what is due to the part +played by the city in that evolution. Thus you have to consider not so +much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect +of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as it +affected that city. + + +DR. J.L. TAYLER, + +[Page: 114] referring to Professor Geddes' remarks on the working +craftsman and the thinking craftsman, said he believed that in a country +like England, where the prevailing tendencies of thought and action were +of an essentially practical nature, many people who now felt contempt +for higher mental ideals would alter their views, if this idea of the +_causal_ relationship between thinkers and workers could be driven home. +If business men and women could be made to realise that in the higher +regions of pure science there were always to be found some thinkers who +belonged to the same craft or trade as they themselves, they would +naturally tend to rely on these thinkers when dealing with problems that +necessitate a wide mental outlook. + +Moreover, the thought that students of great mental powers studied the +objects with which working craftsmen were in daily contact, could not +fail to deepen, refine and purify their more practical and, in some +respects, grosser aims; while the knowledge that every science-study had +an industrial as well as a scientific aspect would make the thinking +craftsmen more alive to the needs of everyday existence. + +Such conceptions, if spread through all classes of our community, would +inevitably change the feeling of distrust of learning into one of +healthful enthusiasm, and give in addition a unity and direction to our +various life pursuits which might in time generate a true modern +national spirit; for it is precisely this divorce of mental and +physical, of theoretical and practical, class and individual +effort--which such a thinking and working craft theory would +rectify--that destroys our efficiency by creating an unreal chasm +between refined and unrefined, learned and unlearned, where there should +be only a progressive evolution from the lower to the higher, from the +immediate practical to the ultimate ideal. + + +THE REV. DR. AVELING said: + +There was one point that the lecturer made which, I think, might be a +fit and fruitful subject for discussion. He said that we were the +product of the city. To a great extent that is undoubtedly true; but on +the other hand, he advocated an improvement in the conditions of +environment, to be brought about by our own endeavours. Therefore, the +city can be shaped and made by us. What, then, is the exact value to be +given to the seemingly contradictory doctrines that the individual is +the product of the city and also that the city is the product of the +citizen? The establishing of some fixed relation between--or the +adjusting of the relations of--these two causes of social progress would +be, I think, interesting to the philosopher, and useful to the +economist. The problem is [Page: 115] without doubt a difficult one, but +its solution would be of great value. I do not venture to offer any +answer to the question I raise--I merely state it. + + +MR. A.W. STILL said: + +We have been passing through a period in which the city has created a +type of man so wholly absorbed in the promotion of his own individual +interests that he tends almost entirely to forget the social obligations +which ought to make the greatest appeal to him. We may take some hope +from what Professor Geddes has said, that the time is coming when we +shall bring the force of our own characters to bear on our environment, +and endeavour to break away from conditions which have made us the +slaves of environment. I know the lovely little garden city of +Bourneville intimately, and some of the experiments in other quarters. +But in the common expansion of cities, I have seen that as the people +get away from one set of slums, they are creating new areas which will +become as degraded and abominable as those which are left behind. It has +always seemed to me that there is room for good work by some committee, +or some body of men, who would be voluntary guardians of the city's +well-being, who would make it their business to acquire all that +knowledge which Professor Geddes has just put before us in terms so +enchanting, and would use all the ability that they possess in order to +lead the minds of the community towards the cultivation of the best and +highest ideals in civic life. I do not think it need be regarded as +impossible that, from an association of this kind, such a movement as I +have mentioned should spring. I conceive the possibility of each group +developing into a trust, capable of acting in the interests of the city +in years to come, exercising a mighty influence, being relied upon for +guidance, and administering great funds for the common good. If we could +get in each of our populous centres a dozen thoroughly intelligent +broad-minded men, capable of watching all the streams of tendency--all +the developments of civic life, bringing their judgment to bear on its +progress, and urging the public to move in the right direction, a great +service might be rendered. At least once a year, these little groups of +men might meet together at some general conference, and, by the exchange +of their opinions and by the mutual helpfulness of intellectual +intercourse, raise up and perfect civic ideals which would be a boon to +this country. We suffer at present, I think, from the too great +particularisation of our efforts. We get one man devoting himself +exclusively to a blind asylum, another seeming to take no interest in +anything but a deaf-and-dumb institute or the like, and yet another +devoting himself to charity organisation. It is all excellent work, but +the difficulty is to get broad, comprehensive views taken of the common +good. To reduce poverty and to check physical degeneracy, there must be +an effort continuously made to [Page: 116] raise the tone of the +environment in which we live. The home and the city need to be made +wholesome and beautiful, and the people need to be encouraged to enlarge +their minds by contact with nature, and by the study of all that is +elevating and that increases the sum of social responsibility. + + +MR. E.S. WEYMOUTH said: + +He found it somewhat difficult to see what was to be the practical +outcome of civics if studied in the way proposed. Would Professor Geddes +consider it the duty of any Londoner, who wished to study sociology +practically, to map out London, and also the surrounding districts, with +special reference to the Thames River Basin, as appeared to be suggested +in both Professor Geddes' papers? Looking at civics in its practical or +ethical aspect, he was bound to confess that, though he had acquired a +tolerable knowledge of the geography of the Thames Basin, he did not +feel it helped him materially towards becoming a better citizen of +London. Would Professor Geddes wish them to study, first, London with +its wealth side by side with its squalor and filth, and then proceed to +study another large town, where the same phenomena presented themselves? +What gain would there be in that proportionate to the labour entailed? +In his own case, so disheartened had he felt by observing that all their +efforts, public and private, for the improvement of their civic +conditions seemed to end in raising considerably the rents of the ground +landlords of London, while leaving the bulk of the population engaged in +a hard struggle for their existence, that he had for years past found it +difficult to take much interest in municipal affairs, so long as the +rates and taxes were--as it seemed to him--put upon the wrong shoulders. +And for the study of civics, he had preferred to turn to those cities +where efforts were being made to establish communal life on what seemed +to him juster conditions. In 1897, he was struck with the title of an +article in the "Daily Telegraph." It was headed, "The Land of Beauty, +Society without Poverty, Life without Care." He found the article was a +description of Durban in Natal. The writer attributed the prosperity of +this town to the fact that the suburbs were kept in the hands of the +community, instead of being handed over to private owners who would +absorb all the unearned increment. Even if this eulogium betrayed +exaggeration still a student of civics might feel that the economic +conditions of that town were worth studying. Similarly, in New Zealand, +the adoption in 1891 of the tax on land values brought prosperity to the +towns, and changed the tide of emigration from New Zealand into +immigration. Again, at home they had Bourneville, Port Sunlight, and +that most interesting of all present-day experiments in this country, +the Garden City, all of these being founded by men with ideals. He could +not help feeling [Page: 117] that a student of civics, possessed of such +a fair working knowledge of the city he lived in as most of them might +reasonably lay claim to, would make more real progress by studying the +success or failure of social experiments, than by entering on the very +formidable task that seemed to be set before them by Professor Geddes. +However, when they left abstract civics, as they had it portrayed to +them in these papers, and turned to the architectural or the historical +side of concrete civics, there should be no better guide than Professor +Geddes, whose labours in Edinburgh, and whose projected schemes for the +improvement of Dunfermline, were becoming widely known. + + +MR. TOMKINS (_of the London Trades Council_) said: + +If before any person was allowed to serve on our different public +bodies, he should be required to attend a course of lectures such as +those given by Professor Geddes on civics, that would surely be a means +of developing his social interests, and would tend to eliminate that +self-interest which too often actuated public men. There was nothing +more difficult than for workmen to-day to be able to take larger views. +The workman's whole business was now so different from what is was in +the days of the arts and crafts guilds of the Middle Ages; they now +found him ground down into some little division of industry, and it was +quite impossible for him to work in his own way. Thus he got +narrow-minded, because concentrated on some minor process. He was kept +at work with his nose to the mill the whole time, and it became too +exhausting for him to try and take these larger views of life. He often +thought of the amount of talent and energy and practical beauty which +was wasted in our workshops to-day. Referring to the Garden Cities of +this country and the United States, Mr. Tomkins said the idea of getting +great Trusts to use their money in a social spirit, and not merely to +get the workers tied to their mills, was really something which opened +out a vista of grand possibilities in the future; but if any movement +was to be successful it would be necessary to teach the great masses of +workers, and to create a real sound social public opinion amongst them. + + +PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply + +Professor Geddes, in replying to the discussion, said he entirely agreed +with the point made by Mr. Swinny, and he should just like to correct +what he had said in his lecture by reference to what he meant by a civic +museum. In Edinburgh, he had in his museum a large room, with a +geographical model [Page: 118] of the old town with its hill-fort, and +so on; and he hung round this maps and diagrams of historical and +geographical details. On the opposite side of the room, he had a symbol +of the market-cross, which stood for the centre of its municipal life, +of its ideals and independence of environment. Around it was grouped +what represented the other side of the city; and here he might answer +another point, and say that they could never settle the great +philosophical controversy of determinism and free-will. They would +always incline when young to the novel of circumstance, and later, to +the novel of character, but they should always feel that life was a game +of individual skill with interfering circumstances. These diagrams of +his were only the page split. On the one side, he meant to push to the +extreme the idea that the place makes us, and on the other side, that we +make the place. By what process do men struggle towards the selection of +their ideals? They find themselves within the grasp of their +environment, their whole heritage of culture, of good and ill, the whole +tradition of the past; but they must select certain elements of +these--the elements that seem to them good, and so they might escape +from the manner of the city. Pointing to a drawing of the old Scotch +bawbee, Professor Geddes said it was not a very dignified symbol of the +coinage of the world, but let them mark how it had on the one side the +hammerman at his work, with his motto "_Beat deus artem_," and, on the +other side, a larger legend, with the eagle of the empire and the lamb +of Saint John. + +To return to his civic museum: the room below the one he had described +was the larger museum for Scotland, and in the room below that, again, +the museum for England, Ireland and America, the whole English-speaking +world--not the Empire only. And the whole stood on a museum and library +representing that larger evolution of the occidental civilisation which +showed them they were merely children of the past. Professor Geddes +pleaded for museums in which every city displayed its own past and +present, but related itself to the whole of Europe and the whole +occident. + +One or two practical questions of great importance had [Page: 119] been +raised; but, with all respect, he submitted that they could consider +what was practical and practicable without requiring to go into the +question of taxing land. That was a matter of political opinion. It was +as if they were discussing the geology of coal, which they could do, +without reference to coal royalties. Mr. Weymouth was with them on the +subject of preserving old buildings; and he thought there was a great +deal to be learned, if Mr. Weymouth would descend the valley of the +Thames once more. It was of great importance if he found a great city at +the tidal limit. Going down the Thames and the Tay, they would find, at +the last ford of one, the old Abbey of Westminster, and at the last ford +of the other, the old Abbey of Scoon. The kings of England and Scotland +were crowned there because these were the most important places--a point +of great historic interest. As a matter of practical interest, he might +mention that Scoon and Westminster alike passed out of supreme +importance when bridges were built across the river below; and he would +next point out how just as Perth became of subordinate importance when +the great Tay Bridge was built, so it became a tremendously important +question to London, as it might in turn be much affected by the making +of a great and a new bridge much further down the stream. This study of +the descending river had real and practical, as well as historical +importance. He had been about considerably in the great cities of the +United States, and had been struck by the amount of good endeavour +there. It was not, however, by denouncing Tammany that they could beat +it, but by understanding it. They must understand the mechanism by which +the Celtic chieftain ruled his clan, and they must deal with these +methods by still other methods; and they might often find it more +satisfactory to re-moralise the chieftain than to destroy him. + +Professor Geddes concluded by saying that he appreciated the admirable +suggestion of Mr. Still towards the evolution of civic unions. He was +sure Mr. Still had there an idea of great significance which might be +developed. + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Civics: as Applied Sociology, by Patrick Geddes + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVICS: AS APPLIED SOCIOLOGY *** + +***** This file should be named 13205.txt or 13205.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/0/13205/ + +Produced by Jon Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere and Distributed +Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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