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 728 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

is seen in Darwin's transition from the Origin of Species to the Descent of Man, We have been told that the sociologist is an individual who has failed to make a career in one of the prelimi- nary sciences, just as, according to Disraeli, the critic is a person who has failed in literature. In point of fact, this doubtless is often true; but the contrary proposition still more widely holds, that the successful mathematician, physicist, or naturalist is just an arrested sociologist.

Returning to the question of legal and political definitions, we have to note that these are to the psychologist and sociologist an essential part of the raw material upon which he has to work. They are points of departure in his observations, and often supply valuable clues in his researches. What definitions of the "city" are available for the purpose ? They differ, of course, from coun- try to country; but whether propounded by a lawyer, by a poli- tician, or by the man in the street, they belong, in the eyes of the comparative psychologist, to the folklore of their country. In short, they are pre-scientific. In England, the legal definition of a "city" is, as everyone knows, a place which is or has been the seat of a bishopric. In other words, a city is essentially a cathedral city. To this we must return later, merely noting it now as for the sociologist a great "pointer fact" (in the phrase of Tylor). In the United States of America the conception of a city is, in ap- pearance at least, of a more material kind. In that country there is no lack of resources of observation, for it is a place where a crop of new cities is grown annually. The progress of city-mak- ing may be seen as a matter of almost daily observation in new and rapidly developing states of the Union, like Oklahoma and Alaska.

VI. There is perhaps no more representative type of American civilization, and also therefore of the dominant phase of the con- temporary western world, than the American railway engineer. He is the true Viking of the times, and is already on the way to plant his forges, and open his lines of communication, all around the margin of the Pacific Ocean. What is the conception of a city in the mind of the American engineer? Direct items of evi-