Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/553

 THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY 539

(droit du marche), which have frequently served as criteria for historians, were even in the Middle Ages lacking to many aggre- gations termed "cities" in the texts," and which were sufficiently important to be classed as such.

The most serious of the unilateral definitions are those based upon some functional characteristic. Every aggregation which is the seat of special activities, regardless of what those activities might be, has sometimes been called a city.^^ The abstract specialness of the activity is taken into consideration independ- ently of its concrete content. Still other and more careful writers have demanded the presence of definite determined and concrete activities, and notably of certain industrial activities.^ ^ In an offhand way the historians of the present define the mediaeval city by the existence of a market. But the history of the localiza- tion of industries proves satisfactorily that no industrial activity is a universal and exclusive characteristic of the city. The ancient cities, as Sombart, following Biicher,*^ points out, were generally consumption cities, even the greatest of them. And in modern

"See, for example, Planiol, "Les villes de Bretagne au XVIII^ siecle," Nouv. rev. historique de droit, 1894, P- i34-

^ Muller-Lyer, Phasen der Kultur und Richtungslinien des Fortschritts, 1908, p. 133.

"Adam Smith said (Wealth of Nations, Book III, chap, iii [French transl., PP> 475, 485]): "Cities are inhabited chiefly by artisans and tradespeople." A large portion of this article will go to prove the falsity of this statement, so far as it concerns the Middle Ages. See, especially Sombart, "Der Begriff der Stadt und das Wesen der Stadtebildung," Braun's Archiv, 1907, XXV, 2: Cities are "aggregations of men dependent upon the products of outside agri- cultural labor for their subsistence." But this proposition, as that of Smith, is true only for relatively modern cities. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie, II, 406, also defines the city as an industrial and commercial center. Sieveking, "Die mittelalterische Stadt, in Vierteljahrschrift fiir Soc. und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1904, II, 190, defines it as a center of exchange.

" See, £tudes d'hisioire et d'Sconomie politique, pp. 342, 343. Cantillon held a more correct view when he wrote (Essai sur le commerce, p. 20), "The assemblage of several wealthy proprietors of land, who live together in the same place, suffices to form a city." Sombart would reply that these purely consumers live wholly from the agricultural labor on the outside. But it will be shown in detail farther on that among many peoples agriculture holds a con- siderable place even in the cities and in their centers. This is a fact too little known.