therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of
evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would
otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as
Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon
Civics as Applied Social Science.

[Page: 139] PRESS COMMENTS

_The Times_ (July 20, 1904) in a leading article, said:

In the paper read on Monday at a meeting of the Sociological Society by
Professor GEDDES--an abstract of which we print--are contained ideas of
practical value to be recommended to the study of ambitious
municipalities. This is the age of cities, and all the world is
city-building. Almost everywhere is a flow from the country town-ward.
China and India may be still, in the main, lands of villages. But the
West, Russia perhaps excepted, is more and more peopled by dwellers in
cities. In a dim sort of way many persons understand that the time has
come when art and skill and foresight should control what so far has
been left to chance to work out; that there should be a more orderly
conception of civic action; that there is a real art of city-making, and
that it behoves this generation to master and practise it. Professor
Geddes truly said the land is already full of preparation as to this
matter; the beginnings of a concrete art of city-making are visible at
various points. But our city rulers are often among the blindest to
these considerations; and nowhere probably is to be seen a municipality
fully and consistently alive to its duties in this respect. London may
be left out of the question. Still a province rather than a city in the
strict sense, wanting what, in the view of the early master of political
science, was an essential of the true city, that it could "easily be
overseen," with a vast floating population, it will be some time before
it can be dealt with as an organic whole. But the rulers of such
communities as Manchester and Newcastle and York ought long ago to have
realised, much more than has been done, that they are not so much brick
and mortar, so much rateable area, so many thousands of people
fortuitously brought together. They have all a regional environment of
their own which determined their origin and growth. They have all a rich
past, the monuments of which, generally to be found in abundance by
careful, reverent inquirers, ought to be preserved; a past which ought
to be known more or less to all the dwellers therein,