converse weakness of economic theory, its inadequate inductive [Page:  70] verification.  Or finally, in the column of “Place,” the long weakness of geography as an educational subject, yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated.  We might in fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less than those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring elements of the manifold “Town” life from which they derive and survive.  Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate problem—­that of understanding “Town” and its “School” in their origins and simplest relations.

F—­PROPOSED METHODICAL ANALYSIS

(1) THE TOWN

More fully to understand this two-fold development of Town and School we have first of all apparently to run counter to the preceding popular view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that reached from the side of science.  This, as we have already so fully insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally replacing People and Affairs in our scheme above.

Starting then once more with the simple biological formula: 

     ENVIRONMENT ...  CONDITIONS ...  ORGANISM

this has but to be applied and defined by the social geographer to become

     REGION ...  OCCUPATION ...  FAMILY-type and Developments

which summarises precisely that doctrine of Montesquieu and his successors already insisted on.  Again, in but slight variation from Le Play’s simplest phrasing ("Lieu, travail, famille") we have

     PLACE ...  WORK ...  FOLK

It is from this simple and initial social formula that we have now to work our way to a fuller understanding of Town and School. [Page:  71] Immediately, therefore, this must be traced upward towards its complexities.  For Place, it is plain, is no mere topographic site.  Work, conditioned as it primarily is by natural advantages, is thus really first of all place-work.  Arises the field or garden, the port, the mine, the workshop, in fact the work-place, as we may simply generalise it; while, further, beside this arise the dwellings, the folk-place.

Nor are these by any means all the elements we are accustomed to lump together into Town.  As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use.  Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists have alternately done—­too literally losing or shirking essentials of Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk and Place also.