tailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and expressing
that continuity of past and present into future which has been above
argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline
Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent
study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for
consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a
moderate and readily intelligible [Page: 118] scale a very marked
combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing
activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook.

That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has been
above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology is
thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet
it is one not lacking in generality of application. For what we have
reached is really the conception of an _Encyclopaedia Civica_, to which
each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and
its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet
more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the
awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the
production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire--life ever
producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature
reacting upon the ennoblement of life.

Apart altogether from what may be the quality and defects of particular
volumes, such as those cited as examples of each part of such a proposed
civic trilogy, one as yet nowhere complete, the very conception of such
a possible threefold series may be of some service. For this would
present a continuous whole, at once sociological and civic--the views
and the resources of the scholar and the educationist with their
treasures of historic culture, of the man of action with his mastery of
immediate affairs, of the thinker with his vision of the opening future,
now all co-ordinated by help of the design of the artist, and thence to
be gradually realised in the growing heritage of the city, the enlarging
life of the citizen.

NOTE--As an example of the concrete application to a particular city, of
the sociological methods and principles indicated in the above paper,
Prof. Geddes exhibited an illustrated volume embodying the results of
his studies and designs towards the improvement of Dunfermline, under
the Trust recently established by Mr. Car