[Page:  111] The abstract economist or legalist, the moral or political philosopher may also resent the proposed mode of treatment as an attempt to materialise sociology by reducing it to concrete terms alone.  But I would reply that observation, so far from excluding interpretation, is just the very means of preparing for it.  It is the observant naturalist, the travelled zoologist and botanist, who later becomes the productive writer on evolution.  It is the historian who may best venture on into the philosophy of history;—­to think the reverse is to remain in the pre-scientific order altogether:  hence the construction of systems of abstract and deductive economics, politics or morals, has really been the last surviving effort of scholasticism.  Viewed as Science, Civics is that branch of Sociology which deals with Cities—­their origin and distribution; their development and structure; their functioning, internal and external, material and psychological; their evolution, individual and associated.  Viewed again from the practical side, that of applied science, Civics must develop through experimental endeavour into the more and more effective Art of enhancing the life of the city and of advancing its evolution.  With the first of these lines of study, the concretely scientific, our philosophical outlook will not fail to widen; with the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to deepen also.

As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have naturally approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic survey, its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, even of philosopher and moralist.  Again, since in everyday practice co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the needed practical division of labour in the city’s service.  When the first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated:  the evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link between them.

C—­THE CITIZEN IN PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT

Leaving now the external survey of the city by help of its material framework, its characteristic buildings and predominant styles, for the deeper psychological survey of the citizens themselves, we may conveniently begin with these also in their process of development—­in fact, our method compels us to this course.  We enter then a school; and if we bring fresh eyes we may soon be agreed that the extraordinary babel of studies its time-table and curriculum reveal, is intelligible from no single one of the various [Page:  112]