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 is a survival of that.  That is a survival of something else.  The French Encyclopedie will have to be traced back to the encyclopaedia of the mediaeval period; and even to the still earlier period of Isidore of Seville.  Then again, there is a danger, I think, analogous to the danger met with in early botany—­the danger of confusing a resemblance with a relationship.  It is extremely interesting to speculate that the Place de l’Etoile is an evolution from the plan of the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection.  The thing is not proved.

Of course, the vital question is not this tracing of evolution.  The question is:  Is “Civics” to be only the study of forms?  If so, Sociology is a dead science, and will effect little practical good until it is vivified by such suggestions as Mr. Crane has put in his paper.  Mr. Walter Crane brought in a vital question when he said:  “How are you going to modify the values of your civic life unless you grapple with political problems?” I am not forgetting that Prof.  Geddes promises to deal in another paper with the civics of the future;