MR. SWINNY said: 

Towards the close of his lecture, Professor Geddes remarked that the cities of America inherited a great part of their civilisation from Greece and Rome and the Europe of the Middle Age.  I believe that thought will lead us to consider the point whether this geographical survey should precede or follow a general historical survey.  Now, if we consider that a river valley in England, with the towns in that valley, are part of the English nation, and that the English nation has shared in the general historical evolution of Western Europe, it would seem that the first simplification the question allows of is:  What is there in the historical development of that city that is common to the whole of Western Europe, and what is peculiar to its position as an English city?  And the second simplification that the problem allows of is to consider what part of the evolution of a particular city is due to its peculiar position in that river valley?  So that it seems necessary first to get a general idea of the historical evolution of England and the West; and then you can proceed to consider what is due to the part played by the city in that evolution.  Thus you have to consider not so much the city as a result of its immediate environment, but the effect of its environment in modifying the general course of civilisation as it affected that city.

DR. J.L.  TAYLER,

[Page:  114] referring to Professor Geddes’ remarks on the working craftsman and the thinking craftsman, said he believed that in a country like England, where the prevailing tendencies of thought and action were of an essentially practical nature, many people who now felt contempt for higher mental ideals would alter their views, if this idea of the causal relationship between thinkers and workers could be driven home.  If business men and women could be made to realise that in the higher regions of pure science there were always to be found some thinkers who belonged to the same craft or trade as they themselves, they would naturally tend to rely on these thinkers when dealing with problems that necessitate a wide mental outlook.

Moreover, the thought that students of great mental powers studied the objects with which working craftsmen were in daily contact, could not fail to deepen, refine and purify their more practical and, in some respects, grosser aims; while the knowledge that every science-study had an industrial as well as a scientific aspect would make the thinking craftsmen more alive to the needs of everyday existence.

Such conceptions, if spread through all classes of our community, would inevitably change the feeling of distrust of learning into one of healthful enthusiasm, and give in addition a unity and direction to our various life pursuits which might in time generate a true modern national spirit; for it is precisely this divorce of mental and physical, of theoretical and practical, class and individual effort—­which such a thinking and working craft theory would rectify—­that destroys our efficiency by creating an unreal chasm between refined and unrefined, learned and unlearned, where there should be only a progressive evolution from the lower to the higher, from the immediate practical to the ultimate ideal.