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.
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 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.
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.