Civics: as Applied Sociology/Part 1/Press Comments

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 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 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 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 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 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.