none. The method adopted
in handling it, being in many ways original, invites remark ...

What is wanted is first a survey of the facts to be dealt with--a
regional survey. This point of view has next to be correlated with
corresponding practical experience acquired by practical civic life, but
"aiming at a larger and more orderly conception of civic action."....
Students of Comte will not forget his well-known maxim, _Savoir pour
prevoir, afin de pourvoir_.

What is to be the area of survey? Prof. Geddes decides that the City may
be taken "as the integrate of study." Whether any modern towns, and, if
so, what, may be taken as integrates in the sense which would
undoubtedly apply to ancient Athens or to mediaeval Florence, may be
questioned; but it is too soon to interrupt our author.... Every one who
heard the lecturer must have been fascinated by his picture of a river
system which he takes for his unit of study; the high mountain tracts,
the pastoral hillsides, the hamlets and villages in the valleys, the
market town where the valleys meet, the convergence of the larger
valleys into a county town, finally, the great city where the river
meets the sea. The lecturer went on to advocate the systematic study of
some of the principal river-basins of the world for the purpose of
examining the laws which govern the grouping of cities. All would agree
that much instruction might be derived from such [Page: 141] a survey,
provided two dangers be avoided. One is the exaggeration of the
influence of the environment on the social organism, an error into which
the Le Play school have sometimes fallen; as when, for instance, it was
sought to explain Chinese civilisation by the rice-plant. The other
danger, which needs much care and thought to avoid, is the accumulation
of such a mass of irrelevant detail as renders (perhaps sometimes it is
intended to render) all generalisation impossible. Thinking men are at
last beginning to regard the accumulation of memoirs as one of the
principal obstacles to scientific progress. On the pretext of "more
evidence," conclusions are adjourned, not merely _sine die_, but _sine
spe diei_. Yet so long as man is man, he must, and will, have
conclusions; be they final or otherwise.

From the physiography of the city we pass to its history ...

In this part of his subject he has, as we all know, many precursors and
fellow-workers. The remarkable series, entitled "Historic Towns,"
instituted by Pro