er what is due to the part
played by the city in that evolution. Thus you have to consider not so
much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect
of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as it
affected that city.

DR. J.L. TAYLER,

[Page: 114] referring to Professor Geddes' remarks on the working
craftsman and the thinking craftsman, said he believed that in a country
like England, where the prevailing tendencies of thought and action were
of an essentially practical nature, many people who now felt contempt
for higher mental ideals would alter their views, if this idea of the
_causal_ relationship between thinkers and workers could be driven home.
If business men and women could be made to realise that in the higher
regions of pure science there were always to be found some thinkers who
belonged to the same craft or trade as they themselves, they would
naturally tend to rely on these thinkers when dealing with problems that
necessitate a wide mental outlook.

Moreover, the thought that students of great mental powers studied the
objects with which working craftsmen were in daily contact, could not
fail to deepen, refine and purify their more practical and, in some
respects, grosser aims; while the knowledge that every science-study had
an industrial as well as a scientific aspect would make the thinking
craftsmen more alive to the needs of everyday existence.

Such conceptions, if spread through all classes of our community, would
inevitably change the feeling of distrust of learning into one of
healthful enthusiasm, and give in addition a unity and direction to our
various life pursuits which might in time generate a true modern
national spirit; for it is precisely this divorce of mental and
physical, of theoretical and practical, class and individual
effort--which such a thinking and working craft theory would
rectify--that destroys our efficiency by creating an unreal chasm
between refined and unrefined, learned and unlearned, where there should
be only a progressive evolution from the lower to the higher, from the
immediate practical to the ultimate ideal.

THE REV. DR. AVELING said:

There was one point that the lecturer made which, I think, might be a
fit and fruitful subject for discussion. He said that we were the
product of the city. To a great extent that is undoubtedly true; but on
the other hand, he advocated an improvement in the conditions of
en