The Neotechnic phase, though itself as yet far from completely replacing the paleotechnic order which is still quantitatively predominant in most of our cities, begins itself to show signs of a higher stage of progress, as in the co-ordination of the many industries required for the building of a ship, or in the yet more recent developments which begin to renew for us the conception of the worthy construction of a city.  As [Page:  108] the former period may be characterised by the predominance of the relatively unskilled workman and of the skilled, so this next incipient age by the development of the chief workman proper, the literal architectos or architect; and by his companion the rustic improver, gardener and forester, farmer, irrigator, and their correspondingly evolving types of civil engineer.

To this phase then the term Geotechnic may fairly be applied.  Into its corresponding theoretic and ideal developments we need not here enter, beyond noting that these are similarly of synthetic character; on the concrete side the sciences unifying as geography, and on their more abstract side as the classification and philosophy of the sciences,—­while both abstract and concrete movements of thought are becoming more and more thoroughly evolutionary in character.

But evolutionary theories, especially as they rise towards comprehensiveness, cannot permanently content themselves with origins, or with classifications merely, nor with concentrating on nature rather than on man.  Nature furnishes after all but the stage for evolution in its highest terms; of this man himself is the hero; so that thus our Geotechnic phase, Synthetic age (call it what we will) in its turn gives birth to a further advance—­that concerned with human evolution, above all subordinating all things to him; whereas in all these preceding industrial phases, even if decreasingly, “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”  This age, now definitely evolutionist in policy, as the geotechnic was in theory and in environment we may term the Eugenic.  For its theory, still less advanced, the term Eupsychic may complete our proposed nomenclature.

Thus then our conception of the opening future may be increasingly defined, since all these apparently predicted phases are already incipient among us, and are thus really matters of observed fact, of social embryology let us say; in short, of city development.

In summary, then, the diagram of the former instalment of this paper (vol. 1, p. 109)

ANCIENT                 ||
Primitive | Matriarchal | Patriarchal ||

RECENT                   ||
Greek and Roman | Mediaeval | Renaissance ||

CONTEMPORARY          ||
Revolution | Empire | Finance ||

INCIPIENT
? ? ?

[Page:  109] has thus its interrogations filled up.  Omitting the left-hand half, that generalised as Ancient and Recent in the above diagram, so as to give more space to the Contemporary and Incipient phases, these now stand as follows:—­