llecting
just that material which Prof. Geddes suggested all through his paper
was one of the great needs of our time? And so one hoped that papers of
this kind would not merely lead to discussion, but to workers
accumulating results of this kind, giving the inspiration to others, and
thus laying up treasures for the sociologists of the future for their
interpretation. Thus, the Sociological Society should be not only the
one scientific society in constant touch with all the leading brains
over the country, but it should be an inspiration, as Prof. Geddes has
himself been, to groups of workers everywhere for just the kind of work
which the Sociological Society has been founded to develop.

MR. J.M. ROBERTSON said:

I would first add my tribute to this extremely interesting and
stimulating paper. It recalled confabulations I had with Prof. Geddes,
many years ago, when he was first formulating in Edinburgh those ideas
which have since become so widely known. I would like, however, to
suggest a few criticisms. The paper is, broadly speaking, an application
of the view of a biologist to Sociology. It is not so much an
application of Darwin's view as that of Von Baer. Prof. Geddes has
characterised his paper as one of elementary preliminaries, but he has
really contributed a paper that [Page: 123] would form part of a
preliminary study in a series of studies in Sociology. The paper does
not quite bear out its title: "Civics: as Applied Sociology." The
application has not begun. The somewhat disparaging remarks on
encyclopaedias of general knowledge, further, might well be applied to
the scheme of an encyclopaedia of the natural history of every city and
every village as an original centre. This atomism will not help
Sociology. Had he to master all that, the sociologist's life would be a
burden not to be borne, and we would never get to applied sociology at
all. There is a danger, too, in following this line, of fastening
attention on one stage of evolution and leaving it there. The true
principle is that evolution is eternal and continuous; and I think harm
may be done, possibly, when you take, say, the phenomenon of the
communication of general knowledge in schools and call it a derivation
from the French _Encyclopedie_. Why leave it there? Where did that come
from? If you are going to trace the simple evolution of civic forms, if
you are to trace how they have come about, it will not do to stick at a
given point. This