Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/737

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME V MAY, IQOO

Number 6

THE CITY IN HISTORY.

In every system of social philosophy from Aristotle to Spencer the relation of city growth to national progress has occupied an important place. While the diversity of interpreta- tion becomes less marked with the more recent writers, we are still far from a consensus of opinion.

The interest of the philosophers, as of the people of ancient Greece and Rome, was centered in the city. Beyond its limits life was stunted and incomplete. With the simpler concept of life which ushered in the Middle Ages a reaction against the conventionality and artificiality of city life makes itself felt. The city is looked upon as the center of vice and crime rather than as the focus of the elevating and ennobling pleasures. " Return to nature," which is the cry of the eighteenth century as well as of the sixth, expresses the revolt against the excesses to which the temptations of city life had led. Not until the changes accompanying the industrial revolution had demon- strated' that economic progress and city growth were connected as cause and effect, do we find a marked change of attitude. With the evolutionary philosophy of the present century the city is again given a position of importance among the factors of advancing civilization.

If we turn from the interpretation of philosophers to the facts of historical development, it is evident that concentration of

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