Civics: as Applied Sociology

by Sir Patrick Geddes

From MR. T.C. HORSFALL

(President, Manchester Citizen's Association, &c.)

The teaching of the paper seems to me to be most sound and helpful. The town of the future—I trust of the near future—must by means of its schools, its museums, and galleries, its playgrounds, parks and gymnasia, its baths, its wide tree-planted streets and the belt of unspoilt country which must surround it, bring all its inhabitants in some degree under the best influences of all the regions and all the stages of civilisation, the influences of which, but not the best influences, contribute, and have contributed, to make our towns what they are.

From H. OSMAN NEWLAND
(Author of "A Short History of Citizenship")

The failures of democratic governments in the past have been attributable, in part, to the lack of intelligence and self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in the government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it scarcely rose above Municipalism. In more modern times, civic education has had to encounter the same difficulty as in America, where the young citizen's first duty is to salute his flag, and as in London, where "Civics" is distributed in doles of local history in which the municipality plays a part altogether out of proportion to its relation to the country, the age, and the world. Civics, as the applied sociology of each individual and each body of interests, has but begun to be dreamed of; and before it can be properly developed it is desirable, if not necessary, that the general public should know something more than at present both of the historic development of the "civic" idea, and of the psychology of aggregations as differentiated from the psychology of the individual. Not until we can make "the man in the street" a conscious citizen, instead of a political automaton, shall we be able to enlist his sympathies with "Civics"; and without those sympathies the sociologist's "Civics" will, I fear, be but partial and inaccurate.

From MR. G. BISSET SMITH
(H.M. Registration Examiner for East of Scotland).

There is an elusiveness here and there in this paper which has helped to confirm me in the opinion that it is well to emphasise the fact that Prof. Geddes is not only a dreamer of lofty dreams but a doer and a practical initiator. He has expressed himself not only in words but in art and in architecture, and in educational organisation; and he has in many ways, sometimes indirectly, influenced scholastic and civic activities.

If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?" "Circumspice!" There stand the settlements he initiated, the houses beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of his ideas, an encyclopædia in stone and in storeys.

We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is "concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society. And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we have to ask is:—(1) What actually are the generalisations of the present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable sociological testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer to these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion. But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present condition of the people."

No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of "The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of population; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. Charles Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of the characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential material of a study of its whole civilisation."