Play school have sometimes fallen; as when, for instance, it was sought to explain Chinese civilisation by the rice-plant.  The other danger, which needs much care and thought to avoid, is the accumulation of such a mass of irrelevant detail as renders (perhaps sometimes it is intended to render) all generalisation impossible.  Thinking men are at last beginning to regard the accumulation of memoirs as one of the principal obstacles to scientific progress.  On the pretext of “more evidence,” conclusions are adjourned, not merely sine die, but sine spe diei.  Yet so long as man is man, he must, and will, have conclusions; be they final or otherwise.

From the physiography of the city we pass to its history ...

In this part of his subject he has, as we all know, many precursors and fellow-workers.  The remarkable series, entitled “Historic Towns,” instituted by Prof.  Freeman, is known to most.  The study of towns was the life and soul of Mr. Green’s historic labours.  Eloquent and powerful pictures of the great cities of the world fill the greater part of Mr. Harrison’s well-known volume, “The Meaning of History”; and the student of universal history (a few of these, it may be hoped, are still left) finds them very stimulating and helpful.  The special note of Prof.  Geddes’ method is that he does not limit himself to the greater cities, but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of his observation.  In biology, the study of any single organism, however minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of structure or function.  As for instance, many forms of heart must be examined before the laws governing blood-circulation could be revealed; so here.  Countless, indeed, are the forms of cities; even limiting our field of observation to those that have grown up in the last century they are numerous enough.  Their differences and analogies would doubtless repay analysis, always supposing that we are clear how far the modern town, as contrasted with the mediaeval or Graeco-Roman city, can usefully be treated as “an integrate.”  This raises large questions of nation, of groups of nations, finally of Humanity, which cannot here be touched.

Meantime, from the teacher’s standpoint, there can be no question at all, among those who look upon education as something more than a commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the history of our race.  Historic memories survive in our villages far more widely than is thought.  The descendants of the man who found the body of Rufus in the New Forest still live hard by.  The builder whom the first William set to build Corfe Castle was Stephen Mowlem;