INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS: a study of SURVIVALS AND TENDENCIES IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY m 51 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library nM51 .B82 Interpretations and forecasts: olin 3 1924 030 223 329 The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030223329 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS By the same Author: ST. COLUMBA : A Study of Social Inheritance and Spiritual Development. One shilling net. Edinburgh : Patrick Geddes and Colleagues. INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS: a study of SURVIVALS AND TENDENCIES IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY BY VICTOR BRANFORD, M.A. SOMETIME HONORARY SECRETARY OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY LONDON : DUCKWORTH AND COMPANY 1914 lif&7^ r7\ TO The Founder of the University Halls of Residence — and to their Residents, Past, Present and Future — In Edinburgh and in London ALSO TO THE Anonytnotts Donor whose generosity made possible The re-erection of Crosby Hall On the site of Sir Thomas Mores garden, As the Great Hall of an Incipient College. PREFATORY NOTE Of the author's many personal obligations in the production of this book, there are two of outstanding proportions which dwarf the rest. One is to Professor Geddes and the other to Mr. William Macdonald. To both of them the book has a relationship pertaining to the filial. That, in the case of Professor Geddes, is mani- fest throughout the text. To Mr. Macdonald the writer is indebted not only for having taken care of the passage of the book through the press, but even more for having lavished a large generosity in an editorial supervision of the text at an earlier stage. V. B. National Arts Club, New York, November, 1913. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Chapter I. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. § I. The Perfect Citizen ... 9 § 2. The Social, the Socialistic, and the Sociological ... ... ... ... ... 30 §3. Education: Social and Sociological ... ... 47 Chapter II. THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. The Science of looking around and the Art of creating Eutopias ... 63 Chapter IIL THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. Matriarchs, old and new ... ... ... 99 Chapter IV. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. § I. The Morality Play and its Revival ... ... 140 § 2. From Masque to Opera ... ... ... 161 §3. The Eugenic Theatre .. . ... ... ••■ 175 Chapter V. THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. What He Was and What He Made 204 Chapter VI. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITIOxN. § I. The People and their Rulers ... ... 235 §2. Children and Citizens at School ... ... 255 § 3. The University : Youth and Age in the Cloister ... ... ... 284 § 4. Citizens in Action 301 Chapter VII. TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. The University Militant and the City Resurgent ... ... ... ... ... 324 Chapter VIII. CONCLUSION. § I. From Social Settlement 10 Civic Politics ... 368 §2. Eugenics and Civics ... ... ... ... 386 § 3. The Civic Synthesis ... .. ... ... 403 CORRIGENDA. Page 22. For Sydneys read Sidneys. ,, 288. „ sybils „ sibyls. „ 305. „ sybilline „ sibylline. Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields — like those of old Sought in the Atlantic Main — why should they be A history only of departed things, Or a mere fiction of what never was ? For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. — I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation — and, by words Which speak of nothing more than what we are, Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep Of death, and win the vacant and the vain To noble raptures. Wordsworth. INTRODUCTION. Well-nigh a generation and a half have now passed since Spencer surveyed the sociological field in his " Study of Sociology." Great trans- formations, for the better and the worse, have been wrought in the interval. There has been — for an instance of the worse — a world- recrudescence of militarism, with its accom- panying moral reversions and its intellectual and economic reactions. But on the other hand are visible the symptoms of a regenerative ferment at work. A quickening spirit penetrates everywhere. Cities have awakened from slumber to self-consciousness, and are reaching towards the finer aspirations of civic life. The laborer in his workshop and the artist in his studio are not such strangers as they were. The politician and the social reformer are being brought together by the expanding pressure of their once isolated spheres. There is an ever-growing cult of life in all its protean manifestations. Old religions have revived ; new ones are emerging. New types of drama are developing in a renewed theatre. There has been an effervescent libera- tion of woman's energies and ideals into public life. The doors of the school are being opened, and the child is beginning to seek its lessons in the beauty and wonder of the open world. 2 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Indeed, the call of the child is hearkened to as never perhaps before. The human child and the living city, are they not drawing near to the focus of evolutionary thought, as culminating expressions, the one of life individual and the other of life communitary ? And if so, then the adaptation of the city to the needs and potentialities of the child becomes again, for science as once for religion, the dominant pre- occupation. In this and other ways, the theologian and the scientist are finding common ground in the evolution idea. The scientist of the passing order forged the evolution theory as a rough tool of excavation. He used it to dig out a knowledge of origins cosmic, organic and social ; but also, and with a good deal of hearti- ness, to undermine the foundations of the structures of traditional belief that seemed to stand in the way of his investigations, and were therefore viewed by him (too arbitrarily, it is now confessed) as merely cumbering the ground. The coming scientist, indeed the scientist who is beginning to arrive, has sloughed this pre- occupation with a particular animosity ; and while, like his predecessor, he is concerned with origins and survivals, he is now determined to enquire into tendencies and initiatives. From being the navvy of foundation work, the evolu- tionist is thus in the way of becoming a master- builder, with plans and ideals. In short, the old antitheses Creation versus Evolution, and Evolu- INTRODUCTION. 3 tion versus Creation are being replaced by a larger dynamic synthesis, that of Creative Evolution. With these transformations in men and affairs, in thought and action, what of the corresponding changes in sociology itself? The most notable, undeniably, is the establishment of two new studies in the very centre of the sociological field. Of these twin studies, one. Eugenics, was fore- shadowed by Spencer, but of the other. Civics, he had no foresight. With their advent, there appears on the horizon a re-orientation, not only of sociology, that is, the economic and ethical sciences ; but also of biology and psychology, the life and mind sciences ; and even of physics and aesthetics, the use and beauty sciences. By adopting Eugenics and Civics into his scheme of studies, the sociologist has, more than before, a concrete basis and a definite objective as well as an orderly method, on which to invite — one may even say, demand — the full contributory co- operation of the cultivators of the preliminary sciences, biological and physical, who have hither- to, as a body, held coldly aloof from him. With this gospel of a Good Race and this vision of the City Beautiful, science may at length claim to complete its circle. It may claim that it becomes truly evolutionary, and is prepared to begin the long-deferred concentration of its many interests and endeavors on human needs and social purposes. The resulting prospect is that of 4 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. unifying the whole body of science, and of re- stating this as a system of evolutionary ideals ; so that there is opening before us a wealth of interpretations and forecasts, which he who runs may soon be able to read. To select and exhibit samples of this oncoming evolutionary crop — this product of science begin- ning to function as a spiritual power — is therefore the purpose of this book. It seeks to achieve this purpose by applying some of the leading generalizations of sociology to an examination of current, recent or historic events, lending themselves to convenient illustration. It seeks, in the interpretation of such events, to discern significant survivals and tendencies ; and in valuing these for life and work, it holds to no sharp antithesis between the archaic and the progressive. The evolutionist who looks forward as well as backward is the last person to treat survivals with undiscriminating disrespect. Social survivals, apparently the most useless and even reactionary, he learns to respect, for he discovers that, though they are sometimes sources of festering decay, they are also one of Nature's ways of gathering and storing the spiritual momentum needed for a new leap of the species in ascending the spiral of evolution. As to the origins of the book itself, and the particular movement from which it is an issue, a word must be said by way of acknowledgment INTRODUCTION. 5 as well as of explanation. The student of socio- logy may approach the problems of his science from the " preliminary sciences " of physics and biology, with Comte and Spencer, or from the side of geography, travel and industry, with Frederic Le Play. Or he may, with most subsequent workers, approach his field from the side of history, philosophy, psychology, politics, or economics, or even, as is increasingly frequent, from religion, education, or literature. The endeavor here is to give illustrations of all these approaches to sociology, and to show that they each and all, if pursued far enough, converge on certain central truths. But to explicate these central truths, to arrange the manifold approaches in orderly method and present both the principles and the method as an evolutionary doctrine, has now for more than a quarter of a century been the main aim and theme of the Edinburgh School of Sociology, to which the writer is attached by training, by sympathy and by common endeavor. Thus far, the work of its founder — Professor Geddes — is better known for its experimental application of sociological principles to the reform of Education and the betterment of Cities than for any systematic exposition as yet published. The main insist- ence has been on the correlation of both these practical aspects, on the combination of studies with citizenship. It is the ethic of the school that with the unifying of thought should go on 6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. the organizing of citizenship, each process being needed to fertilize and make efficient the other. The University and the City should thus be linked, and their co-operation rendered conscious and effective by the needed School of Sociology, at the same time an Institute of Synthesis. Tovirards this, the Edinburgh " Outlook Tower " is an experimental beginning. It constitutes one of the few^ examples as yet possessed by any modern community of the laboratory of the working sociologist, with its fields of observation and experiment set out in storey below storey, from Neighbourhood, City and Region through- out the widening world. Such being the outlook and formula of the school, its many practical applications and endeavors may be imagined from the maxims, that Life without Labor leads to folly or to vice ; that Labor without Education leads to stupidity or to crime ; that Education without Citizenship leads to all the diseases of the body politic. The influence of these conceptions runs as a refrain through the present volume, and gives to it whatever continuity and freshness of view it may possess . but into any presentment of the systematic work and teaching of this Edinburgh school of socio- logical effort and thought, this book does not explicitly enter. It should be further explained that the papers from which it is to a large extent made up, were INTRODUCTION. 7 nearly all prepared in order to serve some momentary purpose in the propaganda of sociology. They bear trace of their diverse audiences and occasions in an inequality of tone which it has not been possible entirely to remove. Some are slight for their topics, having been written to conciliate and popularize ; others, perhaps, are heavy for what they hold ; and systematic interconnection, though certainly not lacking, does not always appear on the surface of the page. Just for that reason, however, the writer would fain bespeak the reader's endurance, to the middle if not to the end. For clearly it is not from any two or three papers, perhaps least of all the earlier ones, that the compass of the implicit doctrine is to be judged, or an adequate return for the reader's attention is to be hoped for — but from the book as a whole, with its repetitions and returns. And from the book as a whole mainly, perhaps, in so far as it illustrates a sociological way of looking at things, of thinking about them, and trying to understand them. INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Cha-pter I. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY § I. — The Perfect Citizen.'* r^ITIZENSHIP we mostly associate nowadays with nationality. In ages less sophisticated, citizens were the components of a city. It is time to be recalling this anew. What is a city and who are citizens, were matters discussed by Aristotle in a work which has perhaps exercised more influence on the occidental mind than any other single book, with the possible exceptions of Homer's Iliad and Vergil's ^neid. Into this comparison, the Hebrew Bible does not enter, if only because that is not a book but a whole literature. In the leading English school of Statecraft, the text- book to-day is Aristotle's Politics, as it has been during all the formative period of " Con- stitutionalism " in Law and Politics. Radiating * Address to a Woman's Club. 10 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. from many sources, but above all from its central focus in Oxford, its influence has become world- wide. We see the product of its thought — as interpreted by commentators — shaping political destinies not only in Western Europe and North America, but wherever constitutionalism is prac- tised or aimed at. The lawyers, politicians, and soldiers who created the Republic of Brazil, and their would-be imitators, the Young Turks, called themselves Positivists, and are so con- sidered by many accredited followers of Comte. It would more accurately (though of course not fully) describe their effective mental pedigree, to designate them the offspring of Hegelian Com- mentators on Aristotle's Politics. A large strain of the same spiritual parentage may, whether they know it or not, be attributed to the politicians who are endeavoring to establish a " modern " constitutional regime in Russia and Persia, in China and Japan. Let us turn for a moment to Aristotle's own thought and words about cities and citizens, as nearly as we may get to them without the aid of commentators. After a comparative study of many cities, based on much travel and long meditation, Aristotle elaborated a theory of civic life and formulated a practice of civic develop- ment. Civics as theory he considered the most synthetic of sciences. Civics as practice the most SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY, n architectonic of the arts. In his synoptic vision of the city, he saw it as a process in which four types of social operation tended to co-adjustment. He saw the Labour of the People who maintain the outer life of the city ; he observed the Public Functions of the citizens who direct the polity of the city ; he perceived the Meditations of Philosophers who study and compare the polities of cities in order to discover the ideal polity ; he recognised the Efforts of Teachers to educate for citizenship. In proportion as all these — the four natural elements of civic life — work together harmoniously, the city comes into being and creates for its citizens the conditions of "the good life," which is the life of public virtue. Man, being by nature a civic animal, can only fulfil the purpose of his being through citizen- ship. As citizen he is the noblest of animals ; otherwise, there is no animal so savage, sensual and gluttonous. Such in baldest outline is Aristotle's theory of the city. Since the Revival of Learning, many a generation of commentators and trans- lators have worked their will upon it, and persuaded the world to accept certain funda- mental modifications. For city they have sub- stituted " State " ; for citizen, " Politician " ; for polity, " Constitution " ; for civic, " Politi- cal," and for the science and art of Civics 12 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. they have substituted " Politics."*' In the evolution of the Greek city, there came, to be sure, a moment of expansion vi^hen the word City no longer expressed the realities of the situation ; and for this phase, the rendering of Polis as " city- state " became advisable or even necessary. But for political philosophers to drop the word City at this point — as Aristotle's translators and com- mentators have done — and meditate only on the "State," is much as though anthropologists, in their studies of Kinship, should agree to discard " kin " as negligible and decide henceforth to direct their observations solely on " ship," and concentrate their interpretations on the same entity, treated dialectically in English and French, and mystically in German. In perpetrating this capital literary fraud, the commentators and translators have, it is charitable to assume, been themselves the victims of a social process. They have, half unconsciously, responded to the call for a theoretical justification of that subordination of the cities by the centralizing national " State " - Governments, which has continuously gone on since the break-up of the mediaeval order. But how strange a perversion, what an irony of fate, that the endeavor to * The earliest English translation would appear to be that of " J. D." (1598) in which ttoXis is invariably rendered either "citie" or "citie or common weale.'' The substitution of "state" for "city" seemingly became general in English translations towards the end of the i8th century. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 13 found a science of cities should, during many centuries, have effected the diversion of men's minds from concrete realities of the living city, and substituted in the focus of human attention, a set of dubious abstractions ! Throughout the nineteenth century, the as- tounding growth in wealth and population, and the apparently ever -increasing intellectual and moral dominance of London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, each within its own imperial sphere, might be thought to attest the unhindered con- centration of national interests in megalopolitan state capitals. But viewed more closely, the struggle between state interests and civic in- terests is seen to have been no one-sided victory for the former. The inevitable, though long- delayed, revivance of regional capitals and minor cities also began to manifest itself con- spicuously during the past century. First the ancient cities of Germany led the way towards a renewed and higher conception of civic activity. Largely by the aid of Prussia (whose ambition of Teutonic hegemony it suited for the moment), they recovered somewhat of their lost mediaeval freedom and dignity from States and Princi- palities weakened and discredited by the Napoleonic wars. Next in time after the restoration of something of home rule to German cities, there was the great revival of local self- 14 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. government* in England. Finally towards the end of the century, came the opportunity of the old regional and provincial capitals of France to begin their struggle of liberation from the long dominance of Paris and its Imperial Government, crushed and humbled by German hosts. And as in their rebirth the Germ'an cities have con- tributed so magnificently to the resources of civilization, in pure and applied science, in accelerated and intensified social well-being, in town-planning, and civic art, so to-day what we call the renascence of France is perhaps, in respect of its best and most lasting content, but an expression of the creative activity of cities and citizens re-awakening to opportunities and responsibilities. There is an idea amongst students of the subject, amounting to a super- stition in some minds, that French cities occupy a laggard's place in the Town Planning move- ment. It may be, French cities have insufficiently cultivated either housing reform or beautification by parks and civic centres, or municipal owner- * The surviving ineffectiveness of local self-government in British cities, as regards deeper social issues, and their consequent low status in beauty, organization and social efficiency, are described and analyzed by Dr. Howe in his latest book on cities, a remarkable contribution to comparative civics. Of the British city, Dr. Howe writes : " Parliament has always treated it as an alien thing, much as it has treated Ireland. . . . The city does not command the thought of the nation, the interest of the press or of literature. . . . Even to-day, with the city the most portentous problem of the Empire, the literature of the city is very meagre. . . . The city is neglected by the university, by statesmen and by publicists. It does not interest the ruling class, or the public opinion made by that class." {European Cities at Work, p. 325. New York, Scribner, 1913.) SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 15 ship and far-sighted planning of extensions, which have been the respective specialties of English, American and German cities. But for more than a generation past, the leading pro- vincial cities of France have striven with English determination, American energy, German thoroughness and French insight, to equip themselves, each with a full complement of culture institutions — from theatres to universities — modernized, correlated and adapted to local and regional needs. And what if this prove to be central to the art of city design, the very essence of the matter, without which, town planners, what- ever their expertise in other parts of the subject, are but halting beginners in the understanding of cities and therefore but of moderate competence in the ordering and the development of them ? All the foregoing civic tendencies of the decentralizing counter- movement in the politics of the nineteenth century continue, though may be fitfully and not unimpeded, in the twentieth. But where, for the moment, are we to look for its dramatic centre, in this abiding rivalry and interplay of Cities and State Governments? Perhaps at the two extremes of our occidental world, i.e., in America and in Eastern Europe. The thraldom of cities to state governments touched its limit in the United States of America. It was the primal misfortune of the early i6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. American cities to come to birth at a time when the idea of the State as supreme political entity endowed with spiritual as well as temporal authority, was winning its great doctrinal triumph. One constitutional result of this exal- tation of State Politics, and of the correspond- ing lowering of speculative interest in the City and its government, was the American practice which became an evil habit, spreading from east to west and from north to south, that made cities dependent for their charters on state governments. That deprivation of freedom, that curtailment of dignity, might alone account for the sub- sequent rise and growth of civic corruption in America, even had there not been other pre- disposing causes at work. With the current of civic reform now running strong throughout America, there naturally goes an insistent demand of the cities for Home Rule ; and in at least two of the States, its champions have won for the cities the right to frame their own charters. But the struggle of the cities for political freedom is only one aspect of an impending contest pregnant with large issues. There is beginning to be conspicuous not only a civic consciousness, but also a rising sense of inter-civic solidarity ; witness the growing demand for municipal bureaus of information and research, clearing houses through which the SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 17 cities may pool their experience into a common fund and thus, each learning from and contri- buting to the lessons of the others, all share in an enriched common life. As this inter-civic unison develops, we may expect to see the cities collectively recognizing, as belonging to them- selves and the regions they dominate, many of the economic, vital and social problems at present evaded or mishandled by state governments in America and national governments everywhere. Consider such problems as the conservation of resources natural and human, the socialization of transport, the moralization of business, the adjustment of town and country, unemployment and misemployment, child labor and child welfare, motherhood and divorce, recreation and leisure for youth and women workers. For the concrete handling of these and similar com- plexities are there not needed the experimental initiative and the co-operative endeavor of many cities and their respective regions ? And where more likely to be found the needed impulse for such organized initiative than in America, with its tra- ditional defiance of convention and its multiplicity of state governments discredited by prolonged orgies of legislation, so often mischievous when not futile, venal when not wild-cat in grain ? Do we not need to renew the old Hellenic method of working towards larger social inte- 1 8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. grations through the Federation of Free Cities ? Is not the tenuousness of our modern political repertory associated in no small measure with the loss, since mediaeval times, of that classic method of social unification ? Were it available to-day as a constitutional formula what simpli- fications for instance could be straightway introduced into the Balkan imbroglio ! May we not, in the incipient future, owe its recovery, if not to American, then to Greek cities themselves, which having escaped the Scylla of oriental despotism are now confronted with the task of avoiding the Charybdis of occidental state politics ? Thus throughout our western world may be seen — from San Francisco to Salonika, from Bergen to Buenos Ayres — the resurgence of cities and the renewal of civic ideals. It would be strange if, given this stimulus, social investigators and thinkers were not concerning themselves with the implied observational and speculative problems. That many sociologists are indeed actively so engaged must be manifest to all students of recent work in this field. And there is perceptible also a growing endeavor towards a unified doctrine of cities, based on a comparative study of their structures and functions, their origin, growth and decline, their revivance, development and uplift. In short there is SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 19 arising alongside the revived practice of civic statesmenship, a school of civic sociologists. To develop the nascent science of cities and to bring it to bear on the tasks of civic statecraft is the aim of modern as it was of ancient civics. Cheated of its birthright, Civics has had to re- appear on the stage of thought as the youngest, whereas it is really the oldest, of the social sciences. But by the recovery of its real ancestry, Civics is revealed rather as the Patrician than the Parvenu of the sociological circle. In its re- birth it has happily appeared as twins, for we have now the sister science of Eugenics. And herein emerges what is perhaps the chief difference between the Aristotelian conception of civics and the modern evolutionary one. The four elements of civic life in Aristotle's analysis reappear in that of an active renewer of modern Civics, as Town, School, Cloister and City proper. Now Aristotle denied the title of citizen to the artisans and husbandmen who do the work of the Town in factory or field, the traders who buy and sell in its markets, the merchants and manufacturers who organize its business. He denied the title of citizen to the teachers in the Schools, and equally to the philosophers who meditate in the Cloister. The noble title of citizen he allowed only to the men whose virtue is attested by public-spirited activity in directing the corporate life of the City. 20 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. On the whole confirming rather than question- ing this allocation of civic status, the evolutionist nevertheless tones down the gradations well-nigh to the point of obliteration. Evolutionary civics, like theology, has a message of hope for the humble and lowly; for the mighty, a word of warning. To the modern student of civics. Becoming is more important than Being ; and most important of all is the selection and development of tendencies, so that Becoming may be guided towards its higher spiritual ends, lest peradventure it lapses to the lower animal ones. The postulate of evolutionary biology compels the eugenist to affirm an organic and psychic potentiality of citizenship in every normal member of the species. Similarly for every normal occupation ; the evolutionary sociologist here sees a possibility of developing that potency towards an ideal realization. These to be sure, are formidable sayings ; and lest they be dis- missed as high-sounding verbiage let us proceed to an illustration. Let us take the case of two individuals whose potentiality of citizenship will under certain conditions be unquestioned. Let the first of such conditions be an assumption of healthy parent- age, of good normal physique, and average pedigree. And average pedigree let us define as descent from a stock with small tendency to tip SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 21 on either side of the pivot of respectability ; that is, with no known tendency to vice or to crime, and none to genius either. Let our selections of potential citizens be made from the two limits of the social scale ; in brief, let them be a laboring woman's baby and a peeress's. Two such average infants chosen on the conditions we have laid down, will, it would be admitted, be undis- tinguishable by any ordinary investigation. On the other hand, the difference between the peer's son and the porter's at (say) 12 years of age may be as great as you like. Assume a similarity of stock and a similarity of temperament, the difference that has now intervened between the plebeian and the aristo- crat is a social one. And, to narrow the issue, let us say the difference is educational. In one case, the home life, the school, and the social milieu have combined to transmit and impress upon the youths that well-known code of manners, customs, habits and outlook, which characterizes the patrician order, and in the other that which characterizes the plebeian. In the one case it belongs to the sanctities of the boy's life — the point beyond which he does not think of looking to find anything finer or further — to play fair, and play hard and play long, and not to eat green peas with a knife. In the other case, the line and final things are, to " help mother " and 22 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. not to be too much troubled about washing hands. The achieved individual difference, then, is a difference of social heritage. Education, in the sociological sense (its full and proper one), is the complex of means by which a particular social heritage is transmitted to the individual. Out of the past history of his own and allied groups, the individual has his present and his future made for him by his parents, his teachers, his associates, his wife and his children. "What — if anything — is left of him, not thus accounted for, is all that can be credited to his own free choice. At its best, the patrician type is thus socially differentiated from the plebeian by its richer social inheritance, and by whatever variety of urge with which its mothers, conscious of tradition and of the family ideals which it brings, inoculate their sons. The Philip Sydneys and the Admir- able Crichtons, those fine flowers of the Renaissance aristocracy, were just the best- educated young men of their period. They belonged to a social regime in which the youth was turned out each day fully equipped to make a sonnet or pierce a scoundrel's guard, to write a defence of poetry or lead a forlorn hope, to draft a state paper or start on an exploring expedition into unknown lands. Such was the norm of the type from which has descended (albeit in double sense) the social SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 23 formula of aristocracy ; that is to say, the educational prescription, which, acting on the raw material of stock, produces a given pattern of personality. In so far as citizen, the patrician is thus a specialized type, conforming to that part of the civic environment which embodies and transmits his particular social tradition. It is true, as a matter of contemporary observation, that the norm of this social species tends to fall to a sub-normal variety, which specializes on play. At every point of life it cultivates the play impulse : physically from baseball or cricket to big game, intellectually from gossip to Greek verses, emotionally from baccarat to business ; and then it has its great synthetic games of mating and war ; and in peace times, the public play in which there are latent and blended, war, business, sport, and sex ; I mean the great game of Ins and Outs called Politics. In a survey of a representative modern city — say London — how does the evolutionary sociolo- gist nowadays envisage the contemporary aristo- plutocratic type, its habitat and mode of life, its forms of nutrition and reproduction ? Must he not see it, with its congeners and imitators, adapted, as perfectly as fungus to jampot, to the " West-end " of the city with its palatial treasuries, the " town houses " (not civic homes) of each semi-sacred " Family " ; its Pall Mall 24 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. clubs, luxuriously disguised compound of the Tavern and the janissary Barrack, and with ample contiguous provision for the "irregular" menage; its Theatres, Music Halls and Concert Rooms, offering a brief nocturnal flight to Elysium, Mohammedan or mystical according to taste ; its shopping emporia abundantly stocked with the choicest products of every clime and industry, a continuous fair for the convenience of men, the delectation of children, and the corrup- tion of women ; its suburban educational annexes at Eton and Oxford ; its rural extensions as Country Mansions with their sporting appan- ages, to which there is brief seasonal return. Thus nurtured, the youthful scion of aristocracy, and his mimetic variant, the plutocrat, become, not citizens, but "men about Town." The im- puted civic status is defined by that designation with sociological precision. In natural sequence, to " go into the city " means the pursuit of a per- sonal career of money- making, and that most frequently by the devious short cuts of financial manipulation. In equally natural sequence,' the return to public life is made by abandoning the " city " (the juice being squeezed out of the lemon), and next proceeding to transform the financial counters and social ideas acquired in the " Market," into the corresponding political tokens, which needless to add are rhetoric and votes. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 25 With the money-changers thus established in the precincts of the Temple, by law and custom of their natural leaders, what wonder that under this supreme historic degradation of the city, the People are for the most part content to remain Townsmen and are easily persuaded that citizen- ship centres and ceases in the polling-booth ? Happily, not even a modern Capital City is exhausted by a survey of the activities of "educated" townsmen of West-end, and "un- educated " townsmen of East-end. There is another quarter of the city which, embodying and transmitting a particular tradition, serves as a milieu, in which a different kind of citizen is educated, also individually true to type. There are those whose education, whose social environ- ment, trains them to specialize on the joys of the inner life, yet with as unerring certainty of return as a retriever fetching game ! The library, the studio, the laboratory— each a specialized precinct of the modern cloister — with their accumulated store of apparatus and tradition, constitute the training ground of the intellectual and the aesthetic types, among whom we may sometimes also find the mystic as poet. The Latin Quarter and Montmartre, the more re- spectable and attenuated Chelsea, Kensington and Hampstead are, by the compulsive power of their call to certain temperaments, virtually the 26 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. civic apparatus which selects and educates this specialized variety of citizen. There is a fourth great co-ordinate type of citizen specialized from the body of the people, and again by definite educational processes trans- mitting a definite social heritage. Take away the shops, the factories, the markets, the workers' dormitories, with their associated institutions for the cure of disease, the consolation of destitution, the alleviation of defect, the repression of crime and the cultivation of vice ; take away the west- end mansions with their recreational outfit of parks and gardens, theatres and concert halls, and their schools and colleges too ; take away the Latin Quarter ; take away all these and ask, what is left of the city ? There are left the Homes of its Citizens, and — to name only the traditional civic institutes of the spiritual power — the Churches and their culmination in the Cathedral. The makers of homes (the housewives) have but a secondary interest in the life of industry and business, the life of play, the life of meditation. Their aim is to bring together the characteristic products of the other quarters of the city, and transmute, harmonize and orchestrate them as that specialized environment which makes the home what it is, or at least should be — an abode of spiritual repose and uplift, in which the motive of activity is a blend SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 27 of affection and duty. The social formula of this is just " what every woman knows." Now try to extend the same formula in application to the whole city and the whole body of citizens, and you have the task of the Bishop as highest expression of Citizenship. The existence of those surviving marvels, the cathe- drals, is archaeological evidence that the civic task of the Bishop was once for a moment all but, if not quite, achieved. In those days the Bishop was the shepherd of the citizens and in the cathedral close he was wont to fold his flock. To-day his representative is My Lord Bishop, in England holding office of the Temporal Power, and consequently selected in the image rather of the Cabinet than the Carpenter. Pile up into Dantesque imagery whatever your mental horizon can compass of the ugly and the useless, the morbid and the confused, the sordid and the futile, in the industrial cities of England, and you will have a pictorial representation of the civic arrears which now confront the Anglican Bishop. In Scotland, where a bishop is re- garded as an anachronism, though no longer expelled as an impudent intrusion, he is, or was called a tulchan bishop. A tulchan is the dummy calf, stuffed with straw, which is given to the cow for her comfort, when her calf is taken to make veal for the table of the rich citizen. 28 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Not to elaborate the illustration further, let us generalize its detail, and so return to the principle from which we set out. The generalization claimed is, that through the office of sociology may be discovered a formula for the detection of the imperfect citizen, and the making of him (if caught young enough) into a more perfect one. The plebeian of the mere " town," the aristocrat and the plutocrat of the mere "west-end," the intellectual and the emotional of the artist and student quarter, are each the imperfect citizen of a fragment of a city. They inherit at best but a fraction of that social heritage, which the City as a whole embodies and transmits. At worst they are arrested under one or other of its burdens of accumulated evil. The perfect citizen is the one who, arising out of the people, comes into the experience and meaning of a day's work, but receives also the heritage of play, of art and culture, of religion and public service from the other civic groups. Each individual approximates to full citizenship just in proportion as in organic growth he approaches the norm of his species, and in social function achieves an in- corporation of the culture-heritage of his own occupation, with that of his City, and of both with the world-heritage of humanity. To corre- late and to realize these two ideals is the joint ambition of eugenics and civics. The Ladder of SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 29 Perfection, if we would remake it for use to-day, must issue from the workshop of those two new craftsmen of the spiritual power, the eugenist and the civist. There is a determinism of race, of stock, of breed, which tends to make each one of us tall or short, dark or fair, grave or gay, courageous or timid, as we have ancestors of one or the other kind. But do we not, all of us, have ancestors of both kinds? Is not the pure human stock an unknown variety, a non-existent entity existing only as an imaginary (and thus both useful and dangerous) standard of reference ? Let us, there- fore, without denying the need and the usefulness of investigating varieties of stock with the eugenist, assert with the civist, that it is possible for the city to evoke and develop latent tendencies ; and so, within increasingly known limits, determine the character of its component citizens. Sociology, like its predecessor theology, holds to the doctrine that no stocks are so bad that they may not be redeemed, that no stocks are so good they cannot be improved. And further, it holds that human stocks, as they come under the social influence of the city (and no stocks are fully human till they do), are like the strings of a harp from which the Spirit of the City strikes harmony or discord. What are the laws of this civic music? Some of them are 30 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. known, some are unknown. It is the purpose of civic sociology to utilize the known laws, to discover the unknown ones, and ever to work towards a growing and rising harmony of city life. § 2. — The Social, the Socialistic and the Sociological.* A scientific doctrine, like any other, has to be judged by its fruits ; by the results of its appli- cation in science, and (finally) in practical life. During recent times there have emerged three supreme scientific doctrines, two of which have already debouched upon practical life with incomparable weight and volume of influence. There was first the doctrine of Energy, central to what is called by its cultivators and exponents Physical Science, though an arbitrary and restricted meaning was thus put upon the term " physical." The fruits of that doctrine are seen in that ever-extending prevalence of the machine, which we call the Industrial Revolution, and which, after partly taking away the use of our hands, has of late partly enabled us to fly — at our own risk. Next there emerged the doctrine of Life in Evolution, central to what its cultivators and * Address to a Woman's Club. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 31 exponents call Biology ; again putting, though not so obviously, a restriction upon the term. First-fruits of that doctrine are seen in the ever- growing transference of medical care from the cure to the prevention of disease, from the occasional restoration of health to its systematic maintenance. We live in the midst of a veritable cult of health, which in individuals (usually laymen with a dangerous little knowledge of their own anatomy) may even be a craze. So to the Industrial Revolution has succeeded a Hygienic one. Next, there is even now emerging the doctrine of Society in Evolution, central to what its cultivators and exponents call Sociology. The fruits of that doctrine are as yet but visible in the bud. The tree itself is in truth but a young and tender sapling, albeit upon an ancient stock. Accepting, as so far to the good, the doctrine of Energy with its attendant Industrial Revolution, and the doctrine of Life in Evolu- tion with its attendant Hygienic Revolution, the sociologist hopes for a Moral or Ideal Revolution ; a revolution in the outlooks and the practices of human communities — rural and urban, national and international — through which Health and the Machine will be put to nobler uses, in more social applications, working to more ideal ends. 32 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. We cannot yet forecast with precision, what the fruits of sociology should be ; but we may at least be more clearly acquiring the mental attitude their cultivation demands. Recall the " Com^die Humaine " of Honore de Balzac. He was a master of social observers, a great master of the pen as well. Yet there was, and is still, and must remain, a certain dubiety as to his place in Literature. In his own day Sainte-Beuve, the most penetrative and comprehensive of critics, could see nothing in Balzac but a vulgar and voluminous writer of crude romance, for the ruck, as it has been said, of contemporary readers. Such a disparity between this incomparable literary power and that incomparable critic's valuation of it, points to an unfortunate conjunction of talents, ex- plicable in some degree by reference to their time. To say nothing more of Sainte-Beuve, the truth about Balzac is that he appeared at that parting of the ways when literature and science — in the wide non-academic sense of science, as whatever is of knowledge, and relates to life — after inclining for several centuries to unite, decided foolishly and unfortunately to separate. Balzac is one of the few bold and far-seeing spirits who, contending against the drift of that age, worked for the obstructed but inevitable re-union of science and literature. Buffon had SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 33 provided him with an example and an impetus, having produced in his " Histoire Naturelle" a masterpiece at once of literature and of science. What Buffon did for natural history — for the sub-human communities and species inhabiting the earth along with us, for their collective living and their individual characters and mode of action — that, said Balzac, has to be done for human society. And here it is well to remember — the term Natural History should remind us — that the word history means a description, a full account, not necessarily a narrative of by-gone occurrences. That, then, was the task he proposed to himself ; the task of describing the varieties of social man and his mate, and of telling the story of their interplay as groups and individuals in the game of life. With this conception of Man as making his own drama, Balzac started on his quest of disentangling and clearly presenting the manifold scenes of the human comedy. French society, he said, " is going to be its own historian. I only need to be its secretary." Now history, as we ordinarily understand it, is unfortunately too much in the hands of those who believe it is practically finished ; that it is something lying in the past, and that it can be brought into our minds and laid down, like a carpet in a corridor, both ends nicely hemmed. 34 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. That is not the kind of history Balzac meant, when he said French society was its own historian, but that which Goethe saw weaving on the loom of time. For this kind of history a new word is wanted ; and that word is Sociology. Some dispute whether it is Comte who made sociology, or Spencer, or both, or neither ; or perhaps still someone in the future. But the truth is, it is human society that has made sociology, and is still making it ; while philosophers can but look on and try to understand what it is doing, and what may be the method amid so much that to some seems madness. No wonder, therefore, that sociology has been slow to emerge as a science ; the more so since professed philosophers have too much neglected the study of history, especially in this living and growing sense. What strange states of mind this makes possible, let three veracious anecdotes from one's own experience attest. A university professor of philosophy came to join the Sociological Society, because, as he confessed, he had been "converted to sociology." It turned out that he thought sociology was socialism ! — a confusion far from confined to universities or philosophers. A social reformer of European reputation, wrote offering to come over from the continent to address the Sociological Society in London. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 35 We accepted with alacrity, and asked the title of his paper. He replied, " How to Start a Co-oper- ative Bakery." An excellent subject, but not the precise goods we deal in ! Our friend was confusing social with sociological ; again a confusion not confined to continental social reformers. When recently the post of secretary of the Sociological Society was vacant, one applicant claimed consideration on the ground that he was a Fabian and that he had been through typhoid fever ! By that he doubtless meant that in addition to the merit of being a socialist, he had suffered an experience of slum environment, first- hand and thorough- going. Here was a compound fallacy, which confused all the three terms, social, socialist and sociological ; and that triple con- fusion is not confined to would-be secretaries ; and might even be found here and there in an actual and esteemed member of — some other Sociological Society at least. Here, then, we have three distinct words with a common and honourable ancestry and with enough mutual likeness to create, as we see, scene after scene for the unending comedy of errors. Can we now briefly define the essential characteristics of the social, the socialistic and the sociological ? Let us answer the question by asking another. 36 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Who are the most social, the most completely- socialized beings amongst us ? Surely the great artists. They may be disappointed lovers, like Beethoven, seeking refuge in solitude ; or dis- illusioned idealists, like Watteau, playing the cynic, as sharply as their indefeasible if defeated qualities will let them. Yet intensely social they remain, with the essential sense of companionship, the desire to communicate and to receive : all seeking an audience through their works, and often finding if seldom keeping it. When they do, they make a spiritual society of their 6wn. Their worshippers create a shrine ; they may even build a temple for the cult, as the Wagnerians have done at Bayreuth — for them a true city of the spirit accordingly. The picture of Watteau called " Gersaint's Shop Sign" (now in Berlin Museum) when first put up over the shop for which it was painted, drew such crowds of Parisians that they blocked the roadway, and it had to be taken down. Yet Watteau's audience was intermittent and sporadic : like that of most artists, it never got itself organised into a society. It is one of the ever-recurrent tragedies of history, that to the great artists, who see so far and so deep, and who feel so much, and therefore have treasures to communicate, there has not been revealed the secret of society-making. Must it not become SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 37 the hope and aspiration of sociology to discern this secret of social creation, and render it available for the great personalities of Art and Science, as they appear with their human needs and their divine endowments ? If we can discover the formula, the process for making a society — that is, an effective spiritual community — then (may we not say so ?) we shall have God on the side of the small battalions. But to return to Watteau. He was received into the Academy under the official designation of " Painter of F6tes Galantes." Posterity has endorsed that title ; he is the idealist of the Park and Garden in social use. The French aristocracy of the 17th and i8th centuries anti- cipated in their way our experiment of the Garden City, as the Garden Setting of life. Is not each an attempt of the older Adam in man, and the young Eve in woman, to get back to Eden ; with some differences, and the advantage of having already plundered the Tree of Knowledge. Some may say that these aristocrats did it, as men are said to risk sudden death, for want of something else to do. Be that as it may, of all the gay company of grandes dames and of noble seigneurs, with their attendant poets, painters, musicians, that lived and played in the gardens of the Luxembourg, the Tuileries, Ver- sailles, Watteau it was — though he was neither 38 INTREPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. born nor bred to that world — who most com- pletely caught the spirit of the time and place. As boy and youth, he had equally caught the spirit of the folk, in their game of life, as he saw it in his native town of Valenciennes. If we did not know him as the great painter of fetes galantes, we should still think of him by his early work, as the painter of the strolling comedians in the market place of Valenciennes, and of the saints whose images and history had spoken to him in the church, when on feast days and Sundays he sat and worshipped beside his mother. How sensitive he was to this side of life his biographers remind us. As an apprentice he took part in the decoration of a new church of St. Nicholas. The work of painting the patron saint fell to him. Apprentice though he was, he did not need a model ; because, said he, " I know my Saint Nicholas by heart." Watteau in Paris was more of an aristocrat than the aristocracy : in Valenciennes more a man of the people than the folk themselves. Admit then that the great artist is the most social of beings, in that he responds most completely to the social medium in which he happens to be placed, and most fully expresses its ideals. The musician, the painter, the poet — these, above all, are the "social animals," as a student of Buffon or Balzac might have privilege SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 39 to say. Because of this it is that musician, painter or poet so often breaks his heart in solitude ; and must ever do so while in this hard and selfish world of ours there is perennial shortage of love and friendship, and so much of what there is badly bestowed. Them we meet with ignorance and stupidity ; like us, too, they may lack knowledge and want perception. Tout comprendre, cest tout pardonner. It is a hope and aspiration of Sociology to explain all types of personality, to find a provisional justification for all social situations in which men are sincere. By this understanding of rivals and adversaries, of aliens and foreigners, of artists, poets even, strangest of all though they be, we take the essential step towards sympathy and science together. Sociology seeks, in Spencer's noble phrase, to replace " the religion of enmity by the religion of amity " — by a cordial social sense which will extend through all our separatisms, at home and across the world. Come now to the sociology of the socialistic ; and for illustration a trite story : that of the little boy who put his hand into a choice Sevres vase and could not get it out again. In his dis- tress he called to his mother. Reluctant to break the precious work of art, she said, " Now my boy, straighten out your hand and give it a sharp tug ! " " But mother," the boy whimpered, " if 40 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. I do that, I shall drop my sou ! " That boy was not a socialist : the socialists would say he was a well-advanced individualist. Controversy aside, we may all agree he was suffering from the mental disease diagnosed as Economic Obsession. Now, of socialists there are many varieties, and of socialism many meanings. If you mean by socialism that, even though it cost more, it is better that water and gas, roads, bridges and drains, telephones, tramways and perhaps even some of the theatres and music halls, and all the dancing saloons, public houses and pawnshops, should be owned by the municipality than by private persons or corporations, then sociology, I take it, has nothing to say but — " Amen." Or if you mean by socialism, the ideal of maximis- ing voluntary co-operation, then sociology is also with you. But neither of those is classical socialism. For there is, we must remember, a classical Socialism, even as there is a classical Political Economy. Of the latter, it has been wittily remarked, that it ought to have been called middle-classical. Accepting that dis- tinction, one might define the former as anti- middle-classical. For what Karl Marx essentially contributed to the theory of civilization was a proof that, on the Ricardian premises, the people who should be subjected to minimum subsistence were not the wage earners but the profit makers SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 41 and interest receivers ! Hence, in the impartial survey of the sociologist, the Ricardian and the Marxian economics accurately counterbalance, and precisely cancel each other. What, then, they may both ask, is his doctrine? It is the first of his postulates, that labour is for life and not life for labour ; hence he is concerned to secure real instead of money wages, even for the capitalist ! The moral truth about socialism is that it mistook itself for the complete champion of the working class, because its hostility to the middle class was inspired by a warm and genuine sympathy for the worker, and informed by a painstaking investigation, if limited by inade- quate insight, into the place and function of labour in social evolution. Marx and the other founders who made socialism a classic doctrine in the history of economic theory, were idealists, insufficiently equipped either with natural or human history for an evolutionary understanding of present-day facts. They lived in a time when the Economic Obsession was running through the western world like an epidemic, as indeed it still runs to this day. They caught the infection of that spiritual plague, without knowing where it came from. But it was a gift from the enemy ; from the wage-paying, serf -holding, eighteenth-century factory-owner, whose successors they set out to 42 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. destroy. They caught the infection ; and in the agony of their distemper, they confused sovereigns with sunshine, money with what money will get for you — if you know how to spend it. They assurned that if everyone was assured of money wages, he would necessarily get real wages.* It is just here that the sociologist must in- tervene with a query. He observes the skilled artisan too often spending his regular wage (it may be — especially when his family are working — the income of a professional man) in maintaining a house without adequate space, without beauty or permanence, without furniture worth the name, without garden or flowers, without music, without literature. He observes the prosperous tradesman content to pass his days without ever a sight of the sunrise, and believing to the end of his life, that the practice and the appreciation of poetry are twin forms of mental weakness. He observes the great capitalist toiling daily in a dreary cage known as an " office," and rewarded for his life's labour, by enslavement to a stomach which resolutely declines to digest. The real wages of such a millionaire are, for many an one of them, slow physical starvation with his nose * Socialists of to-day seldom fall into this particular trap. But the economic bias of the original doctrine survives in contemporary socialist thinking, both as quality and defect. Socialists rightly assume that every social problem needs its economic statement and that this is funda- mental to the issue. But they err in assuming, as implicitly they habitually do, that because economic values are fundamental they are also supreme. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 43 over the fleshpots, like the great banker in Zola's n Argent, whose dinner was a glass of milk and a biscuit : admirable diet for a saint training for Paradise, but cruel punish- ment for the master of a chef receiving the salary of a university professor. But there is no need to go to classic fiction ; the news- papers tell how a world-famous millionaire contrives to keep himself alive, and so main- tain his mental picture of his millions, by daily doing the morning's work of his gardener's labourer. Observing these things, the sociologist does not — he could not if he would — accept the historic postulate of socialism, that there is a necessary correlation between money wages and real wages. That belief is, he holds, but an infection from those dark ages of thought in which orthodox economics and its prophets of Manchester flourished unrebuked. It is a super- stition ; unfortunately one into which the man of warm heart and tender conscience is specially prone to fall, since he is eager to make everybody comfortable, and give every man his due forth- with. But that is really too short a cut ; a destination so desirable is apt to be somewhat more remote. The way of salvation which is to be travelled by society as a whole, and by every individual in whom the social consciousness and 44 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. the social conscience have come to life, is along the road of historical study and interpretation — the study of that living Past which is ever creating the conditions of the Here and Now, and which gives us some indication of the best possible What Next? The conclusion we have thus come to is, that as the sociological is not the social, neither is it socialistic. What then is it ? There is a Hamp- shire story of a stranger who asked his way, and was directed : " Go on till you come to a parson, and turn to the left ; then go on till you come to a bishop, and turn to the right." " But," expostu- lated the stranger, " the parson and the bishop won't be standing there until I get to them ! " " Oh, don't you know," said the native, " in Hamp- shire we call a signpost which points but doesn't tell the way because we can't read the directions, a parson. And a broken signpost, that neither points nor tells the way, we call a bishop." Let it not be rashly inferred that sociology, when we get to it, is to be a spiritual or a direct- ing power after the manner of these Hampshire parsons and bishops. Rather it seeks to make good, in all matters that lie within its field and range, their respective and typical imperfections. Still less let it be thought that sociology has any SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 45 resentment against religion, or even against the imperfections of parsons and bishops, be they human or wooden ones. On the contrary, it is in their human field, if anywhere, that sociology has aspirations of a mission to fulfil and not to destroy. Religion is for sociology, at the very least, matter for sympathetic valuation, apprecia- tion, and respect ; its uses undeniable and undenied. Only of the partisan exponents of religion, sociology makes the reluctant criticism that they are most of them — like our socialist friends — deficient in historic perspective and in scientific completeness. Only as they acquire these have they the requisite resources for guid- ance in that surviving medley (and melde) of the Past which we call the Present, and by selection from which we have to shape the Future. It is in having some such resources, but only in pro- portion as he has them, that the sociologist may begin to offer a little guidance, even now, to those who wish to know what the world around them means. The artist is the person who in the ordering of the Present and the shaping of the Future selects from the Past primarily by his emotions. The socialist selects by a partially informed and keen but narrowly conventionalized intellect. The sociologist at his best, and surely still more his successor in the future, strives to call to his aid the collective resources, so far as he 46 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. can summarize and relate them, of history and of science. To organize and to develop these resources of guidance — all that history enables us to under- stand, and all that science enables us to under- stand and to do — is the problem of sociology as a science ; and to apply them in life is its task as an art. As science, sociology is young and immature, but hopeful : as art, it is only now in our own day struggling into birth. Its faith is catholic, in the sense of incorporating the ideals of all times, and the essential message in all religions. Sociology believes in the Hebrew Bible. But it believes that the sacred writings of inspired Hebrews did not come to an end among apocryphal books at a disputed date B.C. It would add to the Hebrew canon, the works of the God-intoxicated Jew Spinoza, some writings of the prophet Marx, and all the songs of Heine, not forgetting the best utterances of that living prophet, who seeks to lead his people from ghetto captivities to a new Zion, Israel Zangwill. Sociology likewise believes in a sacred and living tradition of Greek culture and of Roman culture. It values Mediaeval culture and Renaissance culture as well ; all these and more with us, as ours to realize and use in and along with all the present culture we have, and all the future to which we can attain. The unifica- SUMli ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 47 tion of these for the ordering of life, and their orchestration for its enrichment and its uplifting, is the work that lies to the hand of the sociologists of the opening future. § 3. — Education, Social and Sociological.* In attempting an address on Sociological Edu- cation, one is met by the formidable difficulty of having to define what one's subject is. There are various orders of education with which we are all familiar, and nobody questions either their subject-matter or their object. Legal education, for instance, is for the lawyer — in case he should have need of it — though we know that ignorance of the Law excuses no one but the lawyer. Commercial education is for those who — most of them — will never be merchants. Classical education is to give the sons of well-to- do families a permanent distaste for the classics. But what, and for whom, is sociological edu- cation? And what is sociology, anyhow? as one says in America. It is admittedly an ill- composed word, and if we do not take care, may give rise to a " nice derangement of epitaphs." Let us take warning by some illustrious examples. There is the story of a child at Sunday school who, being asked what Solomon was famous for, replied, " For his love of animals." "What," ♦Address to a social gathering of artisans and their wives. 48 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. said the teacher, " makes you think he was fond of animals?" "Because," replied the child, " it says in the Bible he kept 600 porcupines." The late Sultan of Turkey is accused of a similar confusion between the words dynamo and dynamite, which induced him to interdict any example of the former from entering his dominions. This shows how unfamiliar words no less than people may incur unjust and damaging suspicion owing to the bad repute of their kindred. The marks of kinship between the words sociology and socialism are very obvious ; so we need not wonder if a good many of those people among whom socialism has an alarming repute, confuse sociology with socialism. It marks an essential advance beyond this stage, to confess that one does not know anything at all about it ; and boldly, yet modestly, ask the question — " What is Sociology " ? There are doubtless some amongst us men, who are old enough — a woman, of course, is never older than her smile, and that is eternally young — to remember a game once popular, but which, I fancy, has now disappeared from the home. Some one of the company was asked to retire from the room. In his absence the others thought of some object, which the absentee, on his return, was expected to discover by a series of eliminating questions. If you remember, the first question SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 49 was always : " Is it mineral, vegetable, or animal ? " This time-honored classification of things was supposed to exhaust the world of realities ; for, since the alchemist's days, and perhaps still in schools, nature has been divided into these three kingdoms. I do not remember what happened if the company tried to puzzle the questioner by thinking of such things as the Minimum Wage, the latest Royal marriage, Wagner's operas, the Balkan War, Washington's habit of telling the truth, and the like. Clearly these are all realities past or present, but they do not belong to any one of the three kingdoms. The truth is, of course, that beyond all these there is a fourth kingdom — the social. And as mineralogy is the science of the mineral kingdom, sociology is, or at least has set out to be, the science of the social kingdom. We easily distinguish between mineral and mineralogical, even taking both as adjectives. And in the same way we must distinguish between social and sociological. A youth apprenticed to the trade of the miner or the manufacturing chemist, is getting an education in minerals, or, as we might say, a mineral education. But if he gets a Whitworth scholarship and goes to the School of Mines, then we might say he was getting a mineralogical education. His apprenticeship is the practical or mineral training, and his student- so INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ship the theoretical or mineralogical training. But do not let ] us forget — for in talking of sociology we can least of all afford to forget — that theory is something not opposed to practice, but supplementary to it ; something, too, without which practice is incomplete or not properly begun. Theory is the theory of practice ; and practice, at its highest, is the practice of theory. If that be a hard saying, not clear to-night, it may be to-morrow morning, if we will condescend to sleep on it. Since a sociological education, then, must be preceded by a social apprenticeship, let us first speak of that. A boy's social education begins at his mother's knee. As he grows up, he becomes sometimes more and sometimes less social, according to the number of his years and the kind of boy he is. Yet in either case there normally comes a time when he falls in love. He then becomes interested — actually or potentially, according to his effective mental preparation and available resources at the coming of the crisis — not only in one not himself, but in music and flowers, in pictures and poetry, instead of football, billiards, and the other leisure occupations of the young and untamed savage. This displacement of interests means that his social education has notably advanced, and that consequently his mind is SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 51 being formed. In course of time he may have the culminating fortune of marrying a good wife. He then becomes, if not a social being, at least something approaching it — a domestic animal. His social education still proceeds. Begun by his mother, it is resumed and continued by his wife, and will be completed by his daughters. It is true that in their set plans for his cultural advancement, wife and daughters are sometimes influenced by conventional errors, as when they seek to " better him " — to improve his social status (and thus their own) — by attaching to his name an honorific suffix, such as J.P., or even M.P. ; and perhaps some day even a handle as well. This mistake, however, arises entirely from their too generous estimates of the social value of the persons already in those positions. The mistake is one, fortunately, that is not liable to be made in every family ; and in any case the set plans of wife and daughters make a very small part of all that they are doing to educate the legal head of their house. They are doing so from the beginning and all the time, mostly without knowing it, and merely by being themselves in a natural and abundant way — though often also by explicit instruction and encouragement. In the one case, in educating him unawares by merely forming the moral or human milieu in which he lives and from which he must receive S2 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. some of his qualities, they recapitulate within the home the historic process of social psychology, i.e., the way in which types of people have been made. In the second case, in educating him by explicit instruction and encouragement, they are attempting more directly their proper work in the world : a necessary form of woman's work which there is no one else to do, or at least to do so well, as is shown by the estimate which the greatest and wisest men have placed upon it in their own life- history. Many famous examples of this might be cited ; but the thing to note about them is that they are not so much famous in the sense of exceptional, but rather conspicuously typical. Perhaps the most highly educated of all men was the incomparable Dante, who spent his lifetime in effective tutelage to his lady teacher, the divine Beatrice. From Socrates to Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, great masters of thought in every age have told us how the highest and rarest part of their culture came to them through a woman. In spite of these testimonies, George Meredith had the infelicity to say that " the last thing to be civilised by man will be woman." In this bitter saying, Meredith himself so far displayed a defect in his sociology, for the very opposite is its essential truth. Man is the last animal to be domesticated by woman ; SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 53 who, as anthropologists agree, effected the domestication of her other more tractable and domesticable animals in prehistoric ages. The extent to which this last, most difficult feat of domestication, is still to do, is a measure of the arrears of civilization. Its normal course is clear ; it proceeds through the social education of men, by women, for children. Here an obvious question arises — How is the social education of women effected ? Mary, Queen of all accomplishments and of Scotland, was married for State reasons to Darnley ; but preferred the company of Rizzio, the musician. Without putting the moral judge out of court, we cannot but see in this bright companionship the normal feminine quest of graciousness in human life, the ever womanly revulsion from the crude, the coarse, the dull, the violent. Or leaving this selection as dubious and tragic, Elizabeth Barrett fell in love with Robert Browning the poet, before she saw Browning the man. She had to take the man as a husband, in order to get the poet for a lover ! Martin Luther, it is often harshly said, engineered his way from Catholic monk to Protestant divine not a little by the choice of Katharina von Bora. To Diderot, greatest of encyclopaedists, the Empress Catherine was his " best friend," but also some- thing of a teacher. Though there were more 54 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. brilliant conversationalists in Paris in the second half of the i8th century than have ever come together at any place before or since — except perhaps in Athens under Aspasia — Diderot went all the w^ay to St. Petersburg to have some conversation with his remote instructress. Once when the argument got close, Diderot, you may remember, so far forgot his state of pupilage as to set up the plea that Catherine had an advantage over hira, which was not of the nature of logic. " Fi done," replied Catherine, plea- santly descending from her educative throne, " Conversation is surely on equal terms between men like us ! " Descartes, the greatest thinker since Aquinas, if not even since Aristotle, wrote his best books for the edification of the Princess Elizabeth, the sister of Prince Rupert ; and it is easy to believe him when he says, that she alone of all his readers fully understood his thought. At any rate the professional philosophers, who are merely men, still write books, from time to time, to clear up the matter for one another ; which no woman, so far as I know, has done. On good historic grounds, then, we see that poets and musicians, artists and scientists, philosophers and priests, exist to provide teachers for princesses, and friends for queens, in the various sovereign positions of life. • The mis- fortune is that there are not enough of such men SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 55 to go round ; and so the princesses of our homes — the sisters and daughters of England and Christendom — have to put up with an inferior sort of liberal education. Partly for dearth of the higher types, and partly out of compassion for lower ones, they freely admit to their drawing- rooms bankers and stockbrokers, merchants and lawyers, actors and politicians, dancing masters, millionaires and other half-educated men. It is true that this defect in our civilization, with its resulting blemishes on our social life, is mitigated in great degree by the fact that, in the social education of woman, one baby is worth a hundred philosophers. Nevertheless it remains perhaps the chief misfortune of our times that, since the Puritan- Cavalier duel exterminated so many of the finer types of both sorts, the women of the English aristocracy have tended to accommodate themselves too perfectly to the two surviving male types distinctively of their milieu — the sportsman and the lackey — and are content to put up with a standard and type of the "gentleman," which makes too scanty demands for his full culti- vation and equipment in the qualities of his kind. Return to our newly married couple. At first, they are all the world to each other, and do not want to see a soul besides. Then there comes a time, one evening, when Angelina sighs and says, " I wish a friend would drop in." And Edwin S6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. replies, with grim emphasis, " Or an enemy either ! " They want the companionship of a third person. Two people, in short, do not make a society, any more than a couple constitute a herd. As the old academic proverb goes, it needs three to make a college. It takes three people — and an ideal — to make any spiritual movement, any real society. There must be the inspirer — poet, prophet, or, best of all, the right woman: — the thinking mind, and the practical leader. History is rich in illustrations of this. The French Revolution, in so far as we may refer it to personalities at all, was prepared by Diderot the thinker, Rousseau the inspiring prophet, and Voltaire, who with all his destructive satire and protective persiflage was at bottom a man of action and a leader. The Italian Revolution of the igth Century was achieved by the unison and co-operation of Cavour, the thinker, Mazzini the prophet, and Garibaldi the leader. But here we at once think of the Redshirts, Garibaldi's daring thousand, ready, as their leader's sword pointed, to go anywhere and do anything. The example reminds us that something was wanting to our triad formula. The full truth is that for any great movement four elements are needed. Not only the Thinker, the Inspirer, and the Leader, but also — to give it urge and assurance — the People. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 57 A further illustration ; not quite from con- temporary politics, forbidden here, but from what is already political history — a recognised approach to sociology. The Free Trade Move- ment in its day in Great Britain achieved its end ; and we can now say that it did so because it had a complete social outfit for its purpose. Its " people " were the cheaply-maintained wage-earners who wanted cheaper food and more of it. Its " chiefs " or leaders were the manufacturers who wanted cheap workers, and more of them, all cheaply fed, to make goods yet cheaper. Its thinkers or " intellectuals " were the professors of Political Economy. And its prophets or "emotionals" were those princes of persuasion, Cobden and Bright. The tetrad was thus complete. If any hesitate to assent to this explanation of the result, and say " All that is not a permanent foundation of economic policy" — so much the more chance for the sociologist to come in between the Free Traders and their rivals to-day, and to judge how these latter now stand in comparison. Since they have not so far succeeded in coming into power, our analysis suggests as at least one reason for this — their manifest incompleteness in the needful four- fold combination. Of Leaders they have many ; and even People are not wanting. But what of the two elements of the correlative spiritual power 58 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. requisite to constitute a society or vindicate a movement? The truth surely is, that a faith which believes the world was created wide and various in order to make foreigners pay your taxes, may be strong in Emotionals but is apt to be weak in Intellectuals ! To return to the educational process. The married couple (who have been kept waiting in mutual boredom by our digression) only become a really social unit when the children begin to arrive. The domestic triad becomes a spiritual community when the Father is the thinker, the Mother the inspirer, and the Child the leader. And the People ? Well, then the whole family, in so far as workers each in their own way, makes up the People — since all the parts are freely transposible in a well ordered (family) comedy. Parents are not socialized by their children. They are, if I may coin a hideous word, sociolo- gized by them ; if only by being compelled, for the first time, to make some survey of social facts for their own and their children's use, and draw conclusions and guidance from them. When paterfamilias is confronted by the problem of careers for his boys, he is again on the threshold of his sociological education. A mother in- stinctively desires that her son shall be a hero or a saint. That he can be neither on an empty stomach, she is well aware. But she is also aware. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 59 though less explicitly, that too mtich solicitude for the boy's physical comfort may ruin his chances of becoming a noble man. And that is why, in the selection of a career for her son, a woman thinks first of its nature, while a father thinks first of its income. A good mother dreams rather of her son as a clergyman on ;if 200 a year than as a shopkeeper on ;^2,ooo. Obviously she is right : assuming, of course, that she is thinking not of social status but of spiritual distinction, and that there is an inner refinement of the clergyman making him a more social and therefore a more moral being — in a word, more perfectly organized — than the average trader is presumed to be. As for the father, as mere man he is slower to learn his sociological lessons, and gathers less by intuition. Most husbands are so ill-educated sociologically, and bring so little perception of their own to bear, as to believe that they provide an income for their wives ! The truth is, of course, that by the miraculous arts of which she alone has the secret, woman transforms the metal tokens or paper counters, which a man calls his wages or his salary, into all those things which distinguish Home from Lodgings. There are some occupations in which women working alongside men and doing the thing as well or better, get half the pay of men. A women secretary, for instance, will only get a 6o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. hundred a-year for the same mental competence which earns for the man two hundred. This, as the feminist maintains, is doubtless an in- justice to woman ; but the feminine politician, when she becomes a sociologist also, will view the problem from a different angle ; less as an economic wrong calling for revindication, and more as a case for womanly counsel and guidance. She will specialize less exclusively on the question How to raise the salary of the woman secretary ; but consider also, How to teach the man to spend his. In point of fact, do not women commonly get more real wages out of £"ioo a year than men out of ;^200? Women are — when they are not party politicians (in which case they are past preaching to) — sociolo- gists enough to know that real wages are very different things from money wages. Counted in money tokens, the income of the whole British Nation per annum, is estimated at some ;^ 1, 500,000,000. In the whole population there are perhaps 20 million able-bodied adults of both sexes who are doing, or should be doing a full day's work. On an equal division the weekly wage would be about 30/-, not the woman secretary's i^ioo, but only £']^ a year ! Equal division is not the economic order of the day, however. Reward according to merit is just as remote from our practice ; and, if introduced, SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 6i would probably give as little satisfaction. We have Shakespeare's authority (and perhaps even deeper sources of conviction) for saying that if each of us were rewarded according to his merits, none should escape whipping. In any case, all such arguments involve a vast begging of the question. What really enables the world to go on with its day-to-day production, is not the wages of that day's work, great or little, but the heritage of impulses, knowledges, habits, aptitudes (manual and moral), accumulated by countless previous generations, inherited by the ever passing generation, and by it transmitted to its successor. In this vast heritage, with its infinite accumulation of resources surviving from the immemorial past into the present, it is surely evident that the particular contribution of even the greatest inventor is an insignificantly small fraction compared to the whole. Of the greatest of inventors and organisers it may be said they truly earn 30/- a week ; but would it not be con- troversial to make the same affirmation of every Cabinet Minister? In any case, income is to be measured, not by quantity of money, but by quality of life : not by the standards of Mammon but by the those of the Ideal. Real wages are not in money, nor even in bread alone ; but in scenery and sunshine, in the flowers of the field and the garden, in 62 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. facility of travel, at all events through the dream-world of dawn and the gloaming ; in inheritance of music and of poetry, of books and pictures ; in the play of animals and the com- panionship of children : in the ecstasy of solitary thought and resolve, and the uplift of social in- tercourse ; in wonder and in worship ; in the passion of mystery and the mystery of passion ; in conversation and friendship ; in knowledge of the past, observation of the present, vision of the future — but above all in the richest of blessings, the opportunity freely to give and freely serve. These are the elements of real wages ; and they differ from money wages in this, amongst other things : of money wages, the more one man takes, the less remains for the others ; whereas of real wages, each may receive an ever fuller measure without diminishing the balance available for the rest. Indeed, the more real wages each gets, the more there is for all the others. Our good friends who have come to- night, to make music for us, receive as their reward, the expression of our enjoyment : the more we enjoy their music, the better musicians they, the better critics we, the richer all. It is thus a prime object of education and of social trans- mission to tell each of us how to inherit fully and provide real wages, first for our children, second for our neighbours, and thereby also for ourselves. Missing Page Missing Page Chapter II. THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST* The Science of Looking Around, and the Art of Creating Eutopias. I. In submitting the proposal of the Civics Committee of the Sociological Society for a survey of Chelsea, I shall more particularly address myself to those aspects of a Sociological Survey which will, I hope, appeal to Utopians. Survey — the word is not a blessed one. To some of us it may recall trying interviews with an uncomplaisant official called an Income Tax Surveyor, who is hard to convince that 2 and 2 make 3. But there are many other surveys going on besides that of the tax-gatherer. The greatest and oldest of these in England is, of course, the Ordnance or Topographical Survey. We all know what that means in a certain way ; but may still have to learn the true way of regarding it, as a preliminary to the right way of using it. * Address to the Chelsea Association (London), a public society of Local Betterment, re-constituted from a previous private group called "The Utopians." In so far as a discussion of sociologic Method, the address aims at combining for popular presentation (o) the Geographic Method of Le Play {La Science Sociale, serie XIV., Jan, 1905); (bj The Historic Method of Comte {Pos. Phil, bk. VI., ch. iii.); (c) Geddes' con- ception of Eutopia, as the realizable utopia. 66 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. an aeroplane to be constructed, or a new ex- plosive to be discovered. From this enslavement to war service, the scientist tends to emancipate himself, as, with his further outfit of biology and psychology, he attaches himself more and more to the service of hygienist and agriculturist, parent and teacher. But not until he rises from physics and chemistry, from biology and psy- chology, into sociology does the scientist become, qua scientist, a true citizen as well, with a con- structive Peace Policy of his own. This progressive emancipation of the scientist, then, is illustrated by the Ordnance Survey. But even here it needs direction and acceleration by the aid of a wider public. Let us, for instance, do anything we can to encourage the growing use of these maps by schoolmasters, for the education of their pupils in knowledge and command of their own region. From geography to sociology, the progress is easy when such a beginning is made. Geographers of the more social kind, like Dr. Herbertson of Oxford, are already using the Ordnance maps as a basis for Surveys, at once sociological and geographical. Of these an admirable specimen is the survey of Salisbury and its district, by Miss Hardy, recently issued from the Oxford School of Geography, and important not only for what it conveys and exemplifies, but also as con- THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 67 stituting a new type of graduate thesis — one leading to citizenship. To return, however, to the school-room : the Board of Agriculture, it should be widely known, issues special copies of the Ordnance Survey Maps at a cheap rate for use in schools. In the hands of that new type of teacher, at once naturalist and geographer, who is beginning to appear, the Ordnance Survey map of the child's own district is made to serve as the basis of Nature studies. The facts of Natural History, the distribution of plants and animals, observation of weather, &c., are set down on the map, which thus becomes a naturalist's map — if an amateur naturalist, all the better — as well as a geographer's. And those who have gone so far in their observations will desire in the natural course of things to go still further, and take others with them. The most interesting of all orders of fact remains to be observed and mapped : the inter-relations of Place, Work, and People, such as the distribution of industries and occupations, the density and quality of populations and their migrations, the uses and abuses of Soil and Scenery, of Forest and Stream, of Moor and Mountain — all these may be set down on the same map, which thus becomes a Sociologist's Chart as well as a Naturalist's and Geographer's. "With such transition from Nature studies to Social studies the learner of 68 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. social education is actively advancing.* Starting from the socialization of the Ordnance Survey, and the emancipation of the scientist for human service, we thus come into sight of the socialized citizen, who, if he does not take all knowledge to be his province, takes his entire province (or county) to be knowledge for him. II. Already there are many fragments of the coming Sociological Survey, independently arising. There are, for instance, the annual Survey of the Inspectors of Mines, the national stock- takings by the Board of Agriculture, the Census of Production, the surveys of slums and tene- ment-areas, of drainage and refuse, by Sanitary Inspectors, of Factories and Workshops by Factory and Labor Inspectors, of Civic Hygiene and of school children by Medical Inspectors, &c. All these, it is true, stand in clamant need of co-ordination, systematization and extension. But they are there, and of manifest promise and potentiality ; and the more their unification and extension is effected, the nearer we shall get to that wide, clear vision of the Land and the People which is the prime requisite of the statesman's task. * Miss Penstone's " Town Study ; suggestions for a course of lessons preliminary to Civics " (London : National Society's Depository, 1910), makes an excellent introduction, concrete and historic, to civic sociology. THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 69 Of all the isolated fragments of the needed Sociological Survey, there is one which, although it is — next to the Ordnance Survey — the oldest, still remains the most primitive, and thus of least social value w^here it should have most. This is the Census of Population. In addition to merely arithmetical questions like those as to the number of persons in a dwelling, or biological questions like those as to sex, the census does ask indeed some social questions of a rudimentary kind. And the first— as one would expect in a community in which respect for social superiors is a component of the national religion — the first is as to your "rank." There- after follow questions regarding your profession or occupation, and, your "condition as to marriage." A bold Government in the reforming days of mid-century went so far as to add a further social question, " What is your religion ? " but the answers were not encouraging and the question has for many decades been omitted — except for Ireland, the people there being sufficiently truthful and intelligent to answer accurately and usefully, and being also so satisfied with their religion that they are quite willing to own to it. In addition to all these Official Survej's, as they may be called, there are many unofficial ones in process, the best known of contemporary 70 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ones (and perhaps the least used) being Mr. Booth's monumental Survey of London, now completed and embodied in some score of volumes. Mr. Booth's and the analogous surveys like that of Mr. Rowntree in York, modelled on Mr. Booth's, make an advance on the official surveys, in that being domestic and civic, instead of individual and national, they get nearer to the heart of things. Moreover, by mapping his results, Mr. Booth made a notable advance in survey method. For in doing so, he took the initial step towards that concrete synthesis, for lack of which all scientific thinking suffers, viz., the correlation of Geography and Sociology. These two large fields of knowledge respectively synthetize (more or less) the natural and the human sciences, but independently, and each from its own differing and even antithetic point of view. To bring them together, there is no better way than the mapping of social data. Imagine the gain in the value of Government statistics if the returns of population and manu- factures, agriculture and mining, along with the births, deaths and marriages, were all mapped on the I inch ordnance sheets, and on the same sheets the Income Tax returns and the Death Duties ! Many popular panaceas might in con- sequence suffer in public estimation, for we should have a knowledge, concrete and definite. THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 71 of the facts and tendencies of poverty and riches. But a deed of statesmanship would have been done tow^ards standardizing our official statistics, which at present are, most of them, incommen- surable as between one Department and another. However, for that desirable consummation, we shall presumably have to wait till our politicians have received a little education in elementary science. In the United States they are nearer to that statistical ideal, not because of the superior edu- cation of politicians there, but because men of Science have been sufficiently in touch with public affairs to secure, long ago, a footing in Washington. The lead which the United States Government took in the eighteenth century, in being the first of the nations (with the dubious exception of Sweden) to institute a periodic census, has been maintained by continuous efforts to bring other statistics to bear on the central question of quality as well as quantity of population. III. While the Booth type of survey is admirable in giving a picture of the economic and material condition of the family, it remains deficient (despite the endeavors of its final volumes) in the more difficult task of describing and esti- mating the family's life of leisure, its spiritual 72 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. condition — what might be called its cultural status. Here a very real advance has been made by Dr. Lionel Tayler in a more intensive survey of this immaterial and spiritual kind upon which he was for many years engaged, in a North London district.""-'' Here the difficult problem is to discover some method for observing and recording what the French call the etat-cTdme, i.e., the thoughts and emotions, the habit of mind and life, of persons in their interior and intimate relations with one another and with surroundings. The sort of question this more intensive survey has to put before itself, is — How can we decipher and record people's ideals, their characteristic ideas and culture, and the images and symbols which habitually occupy their minds ? Another of these intensive or cultural surveys now fitfully in progress is the Eugenic Survey initiated by Galton, the founder of Eugenics. The positive and constructive aim of this is to discover and record who and what are the most valuable family stocks in the community. Are our essential and true Dukes or Leaders, for example, the Bentincks or the Brownings, those * Some of the results of Dr. Lionel Tayler's intensive survey are given and his methods indicated in his book " Aspects of Social Evolution ; Series I.. Temperaments," and also in his papers to the Sociological Society — vide especially "Sociological Papers" Vol. Ill, 1906. THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 73 of the house of Devonshire or those of the house of Darwin ? All the foregoing sorts of surveys are directed towards an observation and record of things and persons and institutions as they are. There remains, of course, the question, How they came to be as they are ? and the historic or evolu- tionary survey is directed towards answering this. But the historian, as we too often see, works in isolation from the observer of contemporary facts, and hence the two surveys do not usually fit, with the result that no satisfying answer emerges. In some happy instances, the historical and contemporary survey are made part of the same problem.®' A fine example of this is Stow's classic "Survey of London." Another striking example is afforded by Stow's contemporary, Purchas, whose book has the remarkable title " Purchas, his Pilgrim ; or Microcosmus, or the Historie of Man, with the Methods of his Generation, the Varieties of his Degeneration and the Necessity for his Regeneration." Here is a title, at least, to make the sociologist's mouth water. It contains within a nutshell a com- prehensive and challenging statement of the central problem of his science. This is. How to *An admirable instance of the combined historic and contemporary Survey is Miss M. F. Davies's " Life in an English Village — an economic and historical survey of the Parish of Corsley, in Wiltshire.'' (London — Fisher Unwin, igog). F 74 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. prosecute our study of the Generation and the Degeneration of Man, so as to make it effectively serve the supreme social purpose of his Regenera- tion. It is just here, to be sure, in presence of the manifold tokens of Degeneration of all sorts, that the social surveyor is asked : What use is your proposed Survey going to be in the task of bettering the environment and uplifting the race ? How do you propose to pass from the description of things and persons as they are, to the advance- ment of them as they should be ? In what way will your survey help towards this ? Well, it is a question, ultimately, of the psychology of Idealism and what its working powers in individuals and societies are. Thanks, largely, to American investigators of childhood and adolescence, the scientist is now able to give a pretty satisfactory answer to this question — and so, you see, is creeping up to a level with the priests and prophets of old and contemned religions. IV. In addition to the public and private surveys of which we have taken some note, there are other surveys always going on, of a more personal and introspective kind — the surveys which, whether we know it or not, we are each of us constantly making of ourselves and our own surroundings. From infancy upwards, are we not continually THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 75 building up a picture of ourselves and our world, out of the impressions which our senses gather for us from the places, people and events around us ? And, further, when we retire into our cell — and every place of solitude or darkness is a cell — and make what Shakespeare calls an " interior survey of our good selves," we let our emotions play freely upon our accumulated impressions ; and out of these elements contrive for ourselves an ideal scheme of life. In short, we are each of us his own Utopist. The misfortune is that, our impressions being so often of things defective, of types degraded, our ideals are correspondingly base, or limited and selfish. Being most of us ashamed of our own Utopia, and very properly so, we speak scorn- fully of Utopias in general, and especially those which, by making us feel mean, put us at a disadvantage. In other words, the expression of contempt for Utopias is not unconnected with a desire to conceal from ourselves the disagreeable truth, of which we are more than half aware — that we are a poor set of creatures hobbling about the world, each of us a utopist with a wooden leg ! In this connection the loafer is a particularly valuable specimen for observation, since he differs from those of us who imagine ourselves to be active and useful members of society, chiefly in this, that he, unflinchingly, Missing Page Missing Page 78 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. comes fully into view. It is to gather together and unify all the many fragments of partial surveys, to amplify and co-ordinate those now in progress, to initiate new surveys for filling in gaps, and to develop the whole towards an ever-growing accuracy and completeness. V. The sociological survey is for social service. The engineer, before he can make his railway, must be furnished with an accurate survey of the line of route as it actually exists. So the sociologist's survey should furnish the statesman with an accurate picture of the Land and the People as they now are in their being and becoming. But, to be sure, the sociologist's work does not stop there. The engineer does not build his line by mere contemplation of the preliminary survey. The impelling vision of the finished railway, the knowledge of his craft, and the co-operation of his group are all needed and are called upon. How much more must the corresponding requisites for the statesman, in his vastly more complex task, be recognised and brought to serve ? Here a metaphor may be taken from an art that is nearer to the sociologist's than that of the engineer. The sociologist has to furnish the statesman with both score and baton, by which a number of THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 79 isolated singers may be orchestrated into a chorus. The fragmentary and detached surveys we have been considering, are musical scores composed in differing keys and notations : to harmonise them is one of the aims of the Sociological Survey. One of these fragmentary surveys awaiting sociological incorporation is that of the Geolo- gists. The social utility of the Geological Survey is illustrated by the story of the midland landowner who, against the advice of the geolo- gists, insisted on wasting a fortune in boring for coals near Northampton, being convinced " that where God had sent iron -ore. He had also sent coal to smelt it." The Geological was the first of the surveys to be initiated in the name of science — unless indeed we say this honor belongs to the astronomical surveys made with modern instruments of precision. The initiation of the Geological Survey has special significance for sociology. Its essential founder was Thomas de la Beche. An impressionable youth, brought up by his widowed mother amid the picturesque cliffs and the romantic scenery of the Devonshire coast, he hesitated, at adolescence, between the call of War and of Geology. In obedience to the family tradition, he had been prepared for the army, and received his commission in 18 14. But his own choice of a career, and the commission 8o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. which it brought, belong to the more memorable year following. The year 1815 is memorable to geologists, not because of Waterloo (for that, in the cosmic sweep of geology, was but a momentary faction-fight between rival groups of artificial cave-dwellers ! ) but because a certain land-surveyor, William Smith, published then the first Geological Map of England. Those times were the heroic age of geology. It was then that men were first fully deciphering the marvellous story of the Earth's crust. To a young nature-lover reared in such a nursery — such an environment of region and time — the heroes determinative of career would naturally be not Wellington, nor even Napoleon, but Werner and Hutton, William Smith and John Playfair, Lamarck and Cuvier. To follow in the footsteps of these, to unravel the story of his Devonshire cliffs, to fill in the clamant blanks in the geological maps of his native country, to aid with more accurate knowledge his friends the Cornish miners, all these called to the youthful De la Beche more insistently than the glories of war could ever have done. He forsook the military profession, and adopted the incipient and dubious career of a geological surveyor. His work in field geology, and that of the group of ardent young geologists he gathered round him, grew in the course of half a generation to such THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 8i dimensions, and became of such wide importance, that national assistance was sought and the private organisation became a Public Department of the State. Now history repeats itself — always with varia- tions. There has been growing up in the private and unostentatious way of scientific beginnings, a sociological survey which seeks to extend and to utilize, to unify and to apply, all the disparate fragmentary surveys, alike those of more scientific and those of more practical origin. And here in Chelsea, there is happily no need for me to remind you that the De la Beche of this incipient Sociological Survey is Professor Geddes. In a recent address to the Utopians of Chelsea, he indicated the method and illustrated the aims and applications of the Civic Survey. The title of that address was an epitome of the project — " Chelsea, Past and Possible."* He pleaded for the organisation of a group of Chelsea people representative of all interests, cultural and practical, historic and idealistic. Such a civic group would bring together records of the past, presentations of the present, projects and suggestions for the future. Such a three-fold collection — by its very existence, and still more by the coming together of its collectors and * Printed in " The Sociological Review," for October, 1908, and re-printed in " Utopian Papers '' (1908), edited by Dorothea Hollins. 82 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. organisers, the civic surveyors, as w^e might say — would tend to unite those usually disparate groups, the antiquarians and historians, the artists and aesthetes, the practical citizens and the social reformers. In the admirable begin- nings of a Chelsea Gallery in the Public Library, and the admirable architectural Survey of Chelsea buildings by Mr. Phillip Norman, we have already the elements of a Civic Museum upon the antiquarian and architectural side, which now only needs this fresh department to make it of fuller civic interest and practical value. Out of the activities and inter- dependence of all these civic surveyors, would gradually arise a Civic Policy of Betterment, at once idealistic and yet realisable because grounded on a study of the local Past, a knowledge of the Present, and conceived and directed by the very spirit of the Place. In the case of Chelsea, the historic tendencies, the facts of topography and the cultural possibilities of the local and adjacent institutions all unite to give Chelsea the essentials of a University City, and consequently the true Civic Policy should be directed to the development of this specific regional potentiality. That would be, not the vague and imaginary Utopia, but the clearly imagined and realizable Eutopia of Chelsea.*' * As further examples of analogous studies towards this union of regional sociology and- practical policy, see Geddes' " Edinburgh and its THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 83 VI. The city is the focus of a region which has its complement of ancillary towns and villages, each with its own rural area. The web of inter- relationship between all these has to be observed and interpreted. The civic survey must be sup- plemented by the rustic survey,! ^.nd both together compound and generalize into the Regional Survey. But the problem of survey for service does not stop there. Each region is again an integral part of a larger whole, and our survey is incomplete and inadequate until it reaches, traverses and transcends the widest political boundaries. For the unity of our globe, ordained from its Creation, cannot be annulled by Parliaments or Potentates ; and in the web of Region " (Scot. Geog. May, 1903), and " Civic Survey of Edinburgh,'' with illustrations by F. C. Mears, in " Transactions of the Town- planning Conference," published by the Royal Institute of British Architects, London. 191 1, and reprinted for the Civics Department, Outlook Tower, Edinburgh, and Crosby Hall, Chelsea, Also for Dunfermline, see his " City Development " (Edinburgh, 1904). For a statement of the general theory of civic surveys, see his papers on Civics, in the " Papers '' of the Sociological Society, Vols. I. and II„ 1904-5 ; and especially " Suggestions for a Civic Museum," in the " Sociological Papers," Vol. III., 1906. For a fine example of the thoroughness with which the civic survey in U.S.A. is made, as a preliminary to Town- Planning Schemes, see " Report " by Goodrich and Ford to the City Plan Commission of Jersey City. t An admirable example of the Rustic Survey and the derived policy of Rural Regeneration is afforded by the work of Dr. Marcel Hardy, a pupil and colleague of Professor Geddes — see " Botanical Survey of Scotland" (Scot. Geog. Mag., May, 1906), and "Scotia Rediviva" (Scot. Geog. Mag. , May, 1909) ; a larger work covering the same ground more fully has been published by Dr. Hardy in French. To judge from a bibliography given in Gillette's " Constructive Rural Sociology" (Sturges and VValton,'N. Y., 19 r3), the rustic survey idea would appear to be making considerable progress in U.S.A. 84 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. its history we are all enmeshed, even though struggling to be free. The pattern woven by history is so variegated, and seemingly confused, that many think it separates and antagonises more than it unites ; but the sociologist not only with his predecessor, the theologian, asserts his faith in its essential unity, but begins to decipher this, indeed, with increasing certainty. He believes that the riddle of history may be read, and that man may increasingly control his social tradition, so as to possess more and more the heritage of good, and more and more also cast off the burden of evil. To devise, plan and to create institutions of research for the study and the experimental and practical mastery of these, the complexest of problems, has indeed, albeit in older forms, been one of the great quests of the human race. In the age-long succession" of such endeavors, from the oldest Temple Observatory, and throughout the varying history of schools, colleges and universities, libraries, museums and laboratories, these initiatives are ever being renewed. One of these with the most compelling claim upon our attention, both by reason of its comprehensive scientific endeavor and its promise of good works, is the Outlook Tower at Edinburgh — perhaps the first Sociological Obser- vatory and Laboratory definitely thus designed. To profit by that example, and develop in THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 85 Chelsea (and every other living borough) a Civic Museum, growing in completeness into an Outlook Tower or Sociological Laboratory, is thus quite in the ordinary line of progress, that by which our existing museums, libraries, galleries and the like have actually come about. To try to grasp all its multiplicity of aspects in a single visit to the Outlook Tower in Edin- burgh, as some have rashly endeavored, is to court disappointment, for such a feat would be beyond the veriest encyclopaedist. But its underlying idea is simple enough. Let us con- sider first, however, the state of a city which has no Outlook Tower. Conceive a city with a telephone system in which there are twenty-four sub-stations but no central exchange. Of the group of persons connected with sub-station A, but a few individuals of marked energy and initiative would introduce into their house all three extra and separate sets of instruments necessary to connect with sub-stations B, C and D. Still fewer would complicate their private lives and affairs by connecting also with E, F and G. While anyone who personally main- tained connections with all the twenty-four sub- stations would be regarded as wasting his time and frittering his strength by an excessive diffu- sion of effort. Now suppose all the persons connected with sub-station A are business men, 86 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. those connected with B lawyers, C medical men, D engineers, E artists and musicians, F literary men, G teachers, with the rest of the alphabet reserved for the several sects of the clergy. And if it be a university city, suppose the Greek alphabet just suffices to denominate the addi- tional sub-stations required for the academic scientists, historians and philosophers, provided on the same principle of allocating one sub- station for each group of which the individuals understand each other's outlook upon the world sufficiently to be on terms of familiar inter- course in the desires of the heart or the interests of the mind. Now introduce the further com- plexity of a long-distance telephone system, of which the lines, again without a central ex- change, connect all the foregoing groups in each city exclusively with the similar groups in other cities, so that everywhere throughout the nation business men hold intimate communion only with business men, engineers with engineers, and so on. Is not the situation thus imagined a fair symbol of the mental and moral atmosphere of our contemporary business and professional classes ? Is it not observable that these, in the modern city, tend to be segregated into incipient castes, each specialized on its own outlook upon the world, its own traditional view THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 87 of life and labor, and too much limited to that by occupational blinkers ? True, there are general removals of blinkers periodically — as on Sundays, holidays and general elections — sup- posedly to give an all-round view and to afford each isolated group some acquaintance with the respective outlooks of other groups. But the prejudices of sectarians, the idiosyncracies of tourists and the animosities of electors would seem rather to show, what was scarcely in need of proof, that it is safe to take the blinkers off a blind horse. VII. The best efforts of Education (in the primary sense of drawing out all-round human capacity) have been directed to counteracting the tendency of occupations, ranks and classes to drift apart and to anchor themselves each to its own sub- station of the social system. To the moderate extent to which they effectively carry on this humanizihg educational agency, the universities, with their offshoots, the learned societies, the British Association and the like, do constitute a central exchange of mental and moral inter- communication. But what proportion of the population in a modern city makes use of this central exchange? Ask a cabman in London, in New York, or in Chicago to drive you to the University, and you quickly discover, that even 88 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. for those of the working classes who make their living by a knowledge of local topography, the University of their city is, in such metropolitan cases, as good as non-existent. Again, what of the resultant culture ? What effect has it upon those presumably trained to use this central exchange — the body of university graduates? What criterion is available as a test of their capacities for common understanding and sym- pathy, not to speak of synthesis and co-operation? The purpose of a broad and humane culture is to awaken in each individual, and to maintain in working order throughout the phases of his life, the triad of faculties which are latent in every member of the species ; and which are patent in the open wonder of the natural child, in the pervasive sympathy of the unspoiled woman, and in the eager instinct to labor and to learn of the man who is not habitually overfed. Happily, this triad of culture characteristics is in some degree combined in the best university graduates. Moreover, their culture is valued by this academic elite, not only to attain a personal distinction of character, but also to make large co-ordina- tions of thoughts and counsels, large combina- tions of men and things, and these in the service of the public. They and their families and associates are the governing classes in England ; and this not, as popular criticism believes, THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 89 because of their economic and social privileges, but because their privileges give them access to a mode of life, a training and a culture which make for co-ordination and combination. And those who co-ordinate govern. Yet surely the co-ordination by which, in the long run, must be valued the worth of a given civilization, is that of the living city itself. Now the inco-ordination of the modern city is seen in its waste of energies, human and mechanical, in its misdirection of talent and repression of genius, in its vulgarization of adventure and debasement of initiative ; and all this is becom- ing one of the scandals of history. London, for instance, could find no better use for Francis Thompson — finest of later Victorian poets — than that of a cab-ranner. Lest that instance be put out of court by the practical man, who sees no social value in a poetic imagination, let us sup- plement it by an example chosen from another end of the mental scale, and from a city more frugal and less unorganized. There are problems of applied mathematics, upon the solution of which the world of invention still waits, which, in the opinion of the late Lord Kelvin, would have been solved by the young Norwegian mathematician, Abel, if his university and city of Christiana had not, in effect, allowed him to die of starvation and neglect, aggravated, as in 90 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. all such cases, by its inevitable moral sequel — a broken heart. The truth is, the average modern city probably falls short of reaching an efficiency of, let us say, 25 per cent, as an organization for concentrating either the powers of men or the uses of things upon even the practical problems of civilization. Its lack of any adequate working co-partnership or even understanding with the university — the university as it should be, its organ of know- ledge, of interpretation, of skilled application and vital synthesis — leaves both with the inefficiency of a family in which the parents are divorced. The resulting degeneration, like all paralysis of functioning, is not simply in terms of loss and deprivation. Positive evils ensue. Deprived of its shepherd, the flock becomes the prey of wolves. Lacking the vision of the uni- versity, the city becomes a breeding ground for all the tribe of charlatans, from patent- medicine men and palmists up to panacea- mongers, political, social or religious. The university, having lost its ancient vision of the city, in its own way suffers no less gravely, perhaps all the more, since its present and dominant ideal, that of becoming " a well-endowed moral vacuum," began to subjugate the imagination of the suc- cessful and retiring capitalist, who feels his own time for expiatory masses is approaching. Its THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 91 choicest domain, the garden of philosophy, tends to alternate between barrenness and the abundant but empty fruits of sophistication. Of the many abstractions and pseudo-syntheses which have issued from academic philosophy in modern times, what are most but survivals or revivals of scholasticism ? So palmistry and patent-medi- cines are survivals of primitive folklore ; while of social panaceas, the ancestry may be traced all the way from fetichism to the French Revolution and thence into later outcomes, of rival crude- ness, imperialisms and socialisms alike. Do not reflections such as these drive us to recognize that there is something radically amiss in the relations of university and city ? And even if we take the universities at their present best, is not this maladjustment associated with their over-absorption in the specialized researches — scattered, fragmentary, overwhelmingly analy- tical — of a culture of which it is the fatal tradition to separate the "humanities" and the "sciences"? Cloistered from the modern city, and "thinking imperially" of ancient cities, our university leaders have failed to perceive and to realize the living city itself, in its being and becoming, its rise and decline, its striving and fainting. But is not this living city just the pulsating effort of mankind to compound and use, for the making of a home on the planet, the 92 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. practical applications of those very powers which the universities hold apart — the humanities and the sciences ? In short, the University has failed to develop among its manifold Institutes of Research one which should unite them. Look- ing to the City as a whole, it must needs be at once synthetic and analytic — it must unite morals with economics, aesthetics with physics and psychology with biology. VIII. The Outlook Tower may be most readily approached as a tentative institution devised to link citizen and scholar, townsman and gowns- man in a common study of the living city, in a common endeavor to understand the phases of its life, and thereby to aid and to guide its development and, it may be, control its destiny. The maxim, that to understand the doctrine, one must lead the life, is of course peculiarly a civic one. The student of civics must be also an active citizen. In other words, there are needed not only all the humane and scientific cultures of the universities, but also the impulse and the experi- ence of every type of good citizen. Let us, therefore, bring together representatives of all these. But how secure their joint interest and ensure their participation in the common quest ? It would be a beginning if each in turn could THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 93 make visible to all, his own specialized outlook on the world, and thereby evoke a sympathetic understanding by the others of his own lot in life and his part in the subdivision of labor. To work out the conditions of such a wide intel- lectual and moral collaboration is the first aim of the Outlook Tower. It aims to supply a framework and demonstrate a mode of co-opera- tive endeavor, whereby each city may construct its own Central Exchange or Clearing House of outlooks — a true and functional civic-centre. Thanks to a quarter of a century of experimenta- tion in Edinburgh, outline plans and provisional specifications are becoming widely available, by which every city, with the goodwill of its citizens, and at small cost, may have its own Outlook Tower ; that is, its own Civic Observa- tory and Civic Museum. And in these plans, will be found a place and an orientation not only for the outlooks of the arts and the sciences, of the industries and the professions, but also of the woman and the child, of artisan and laborer ; even those of rustic industries also, of peasant and shepherd, of miner, forester and fisherman. All these outlooks our Tower, as a working Institute of Synthesis, must impart to the citizen. It must fix them as a habit of mind in his moral constitution ; it must vitalize the resultant culture into a unified faith by, and through, a 94 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. synoptic vision of the city and its region as a whole. Working still through visual and con- crete methods, the Outlook Tower seeks further to direct the mind's eye of the citizen beyond the limited horizon of his own Neighborhood to that of City and of Region ; and thence extend his vision, stage by stage, to the larger outlooks of Nation, of Empire and Language, of Occident and Orient, and thus of all Mankind. Along with each of these widening outlooks there is the corresponding survey to be made of the Present and of the surviving or recoverable Past. The corresponding vision of the Future is also to be sought. Our Outlook Tower, thus beginning in its upper stories as Neighborhood and Civic Observatory and Museum, develops, as you descend, storey by storey, into an Observatory and Museum of Region, Nation, Empire and Language, Occident, Orient, Mankind. For the making of such surveys, manifestly many workers, even whole generations of workers are needed. But already there exist as we have seen, accumulations of material from which each city may select what appeals to it ; witness that missionary offshoot of the Outlook Tower, the " Cities and Town Planning Exhibition " now upon its wanderings, and recently a feature of the International Exhibition of 1913 at Ghent. And the various collections once set agoing THE <:iTIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 95 by the joint activity of student and citizen, become an impulse at each point to their own further growth. If sociology is ever to win and hold the place it claims, at the very head of the observational sciences, it must be based upon such actual and definite surveys, city by city, region by region, people by people ; and it must justify itself by comparing, classifying and generalizing them. In the degree that it helps towards this, our Outlook Tower becomes a laboratory of pure or theoretical sociology, and so far justifies the aspiration — every citizen his own sociologist. But it goes further, and aims to be also a Laboratory of Applied or Experimental Soci- ology. Through its harmonization of outlooks on life and labor, the way is prepared for that unity of thought which is the pre-requisite to unison in action. To each step of our Parnassus there is the set of associated outlooks, which again combine to yield the survey of that order. But these surveys are not only of present actuali- ties, but also as far as may be of the past conditions which have produced them. Our surveys should thus reveal, in the whole complex of social and moral, mental and physical phenomena with which we are dealing, those which have special significance as tendencies or as survivals. By selection amongst these, we are 96 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. in a position to affirm what there is of good that may be encouraged, guided, and perhaps controlled towards definite ends, and also what there is of bad that may be discouraged, perhaps eliminated, possibly reversed. From this vantage ground, a detached summit from which the evolutionary process is discerned with increasing clearness, the adjustments required to effect this betterment, or that prevention, are, in principle, however complicated in practice, relatively matters of detail. In the affairs of the social and mental world, as in that of the physical, we have to control nature by obeying her, as to be sure, farmers and breeders have long been doing in the organic world. So, our surveys, as they grow in com- pleteness, extend our knowledge of what is, and eventuate in power over what may be. From each order of Survey, therefore, there emerges a Report or Plan of Action with specific indications of what to do, and verifiable admonitions of what not to do. Here then are the culminating uses of our Outlook Tower as Clearing House of Social Initiatives, as Station of Storm Warnings, as Laboratory of Applied Sociology, alternating judicious experiment with careful observation. From its whole set of ac- tivities, compared, co-ordinated, and generalized, city by city along all the chain of such initiatives THE CITIZEN AS SOCIOLOGIST. 97 which some day the sociologist hopes to see encircling our globe, there should be gradually built up the respective Eutopias of Neighbor- hood, City, Region, Nation, Language, Occident, Orient, Mankind. There again, the Exhibition above referred to begins to initiate for other cities than Edinburgh. Of the Reports with their specific policies or plans of action which issue from the various kinds of Survey, a type has been indicated in the tentatively outlined civic policy or eutopia of Chelsea. By way of drawing a concluding inference from that, let us recall Swedenborg's saying, that the end of the senses was to see God. That may serve as a motto for the sociological surveyor ; for, translated into his phrasing, it yields the maxim that " the end of the social survey is to make us see Eutopia, and seeing, create it." The reward, therefore, of the socio- logical surveyor is to become a eutopian. If we ask what has actually been the reward of surveyors, we get different answers. Stow devoted a lifetime to his Survey of London ; and, having spent all his means thereon, was rewarded by a grateful Sovereign— with a license to beg ! Purchas, too, consumed all his worldly goods in the compilation of his Survey ; and the reward he received was to be left to die in a debtor's prison. But every movement must have its 98 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. martyrs ; and these, with many others remembered and forgotten, were the martyrs of the Social Survey. An earlier Surveyor than either Stow or Purchas was William the Conqueror, who rewarded himself for his survey — which he called " Domesday Book " — with half the good manors of England. Now the sociologist surveys a kingdom greater than England, a kingdom indeed without geographical limits ; and he may reward himself by acquiring a half of all its good manners, yet leave plenty for the rest. And manners, 'tis true, make the man. Civic surveys then need workers, more even than funds, and in course of such work no less than with geological surveys or the like, the surveyor is rewarded both by discoveries, by a scientific education, and by opportunities of public service without end. Chapter III. THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST.* Matriarchs, Old and New. I. The title of this lecture — "The Citizen as Psychologist " — has been chosen chiefly in defer- ence to the susceptibilities of the scientific world. For the scientific world entertains a devout conviction, to which some respect is due, that the professors of psychology are the people who best know how our minds work. My own con- viction, equally devout, and probably yours when you come to think of it, is that the persons who * One of a series of lectures to a London group of working men students, under the title "Civics and Eugenics." In these an endeavor was made to indicate something of the contribution, actual and possible, to citizenship from each of the main arts and sciences. And the idea was set forth that the unification of all these contributions is what the civic sociologist aims at. The grounds on which this particular lecture is selected for insertion here, are two. It is given as an illustration of sociological analysis in application to one of the most complex of modern problems — the readjustment of the feminist factor in civilization. It also naturally falls into place here in the general scheme of the book. The previous chapter (II.) starting from the concept of social types and family stocks, their functions and environment (the "Place, Work, Family" of Le Play; the "Race, Moment, Milieu" of Taine) moved towards the concept of the city, and the city viewed mainly from the point of view of "Intellectuals" and "Chiefs." The present chapter starting from the concept of Personality, its uniqueness and creative r61e, moves towards the concept of the city, and the city viewed mainly from the point of view of " Emotionals " and " People." The subsequent chapters are largely occupied with the question of adjusting all four groups (the "People," "Chiefs," "Intellectuals" and "Emotionals" of Comte) into a working co-partnery and the full incorporation of each into civic life and culture. loo INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. study our minds most carefully, and are usually better acquainted with our motives than we are ourselves, are our mothers, our wives, and even our daughters. In short the actual, as dis- tinguished from the professed psychologists, throughout the world and in all ages, are women. In entire honesty, therefore, one should call this lecture " The Citizen as Woman." To woman, I suppose, the central and domina- ting factor in the universe is her own personality. She is to herself unique, and it is this differentia- tion from all other women that constitutes her personality. Now this conception of personality as the unique, comprehensive and explanatory fact in her own case, she applies equally to all the individuals within her range of observation. She credits the individual, qua individual, with all that there is of him, for better or worse, as if he were the sole specimen of his kind, and not a mere point of attachment for the common qualities and accidents of his social species. To the eye of the woman-observer, in whom the gifts of womanhood are unspoilt, every man reveals his personal character and history almost on presentation. His record of thought and feeling and action, all of good and evil that he has done or imagined, is sculptured on his face or betrayed in the detail of his manner and conduct, waiting to be read and interpreted. And just these THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. loi things — evidences of character and ideals, of temptations resisted or accepted — are the matter of which women are the speciahzed readers and interpreters. It is because they have this faculty of plucking out the heart of each man's mystery — of divining how it is with him, or might be were the conditions given — and can direct it to the ends they desire, that women are everywhere the chief forces in the social world. Mohammed's saying, that we are all in the power of women for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, altogether under-estimates the realities of woman's influence, on every plane of social life, and at all the stages of individual development. Language itself, perhaps, as a systematized mode of expression, had its main origin in the striving of woman to understand the signs and marks of emotion in men and children ; to evoke in them such emotions as she liked, and to repress such as she disapproved. The influence of women on the historical development of certain languages ancient and modern, as notably Latin and French, is in fact a topic of the text-books. But beyond this, common observation supports the scientific claim that women retain, and must always retain, on the whole a greater mastery of speech than men possess, because to men language is a secondary mode of expression difficult to acquire freely and utilize fully. It is natural, as Bagehot I02 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. remarked, that when a philosopher and his cook go abroad, the cook should be twice as rapid as the master in acquiring the foreign tongue. Woman is everywhere potent as a moral force, as indeed the fundamental embodiment of the spiritual power. But her ascendancy is masked in many ways in our western civilization, more especially in the moral anarchy of the modern metropolis, where the obvious and public pre- valence of men and money surreptitiously squares its differences — settles, as it were, rather meanly out of court — with the undeposed fact and influence of women and morals. In other words, the spectacle which western civilization presents to us is that of a mammonised patriarchism com- pounding with illicit remnants of a prehistoric matriarchy. And yet, to discover a simpler form of society in which the natural dominance of woman is frankly accepted and clearly expressed, we need go no farther than the nearest fishing village. For our present purpose, however, there may be more profit, as well as the entertainment of travel, in going a little farther off. II. Of all European countries, I suppose, we incline to think of Spain as the most backward in civilization, with the possible exception of Turkey. But if we take the status of woman THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 103 as a test of civilization — and there is none more true and searching — then we shall be driven to a different conclusion. Consult the local directory of a Spanish town, and you find a double column of names, where we would print but one. A married woman is described by her maiden name as well as by that of her husband — a sure indication of the higher status of woman. But to see how this conception of " woman's sphere " works when released from the cramping pressure of old social conditions, come for a moment to one of the most inaccessible of the Spanish Americas. When you enter a village of Paraguay and wish to purchase sup- plies, you must observe a very different etiquette from that to which you are accustomed in the rougher usage of European markets. Approach- ing a farmhouse, you seek out the oldest woman amongst its inhabitants, knowing that in her you are treating with the head of the house. You open conversation with all the marks of deferen- tial courtesy, and beg for hospitality in the shape of a cup of tea. The rather complicated apparatus for brewing Paraguayan tea having been brought out, you find yourself amidst a formal social event, and conduct your conversa- tion and manners accordingly. As the ceremony develops you incidentally inquire if your hostess can oblige by allowing you to purchase a fowl ; 104 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and thereupon, she being complacent, you make your bargain and depart. This proceeding is typical of buying and selling, of trade and business, where and whenever this economic function rests freely with the woman of a com- munity. Mere business is subordinated to social usage ; trade is humanized, and the woman, in buying or selling, remains still a personage, a natural centre of essentially spiritual power or reminder. Follow the women-folk of a Paraguayan village into Asuncion, the capital. The women of the villages within a certain radius of the capital, come to the city to market twice or thrice a week. Some tramp in on foot, marching with long easy swinging steps, their baskets poised with firm and secure balance on their heads. Others drive in with mule-cart. Many are carried by the special 4 a.m. " Milk " train of the local railway. They bring with them much more than their merchandize, much that they would not and could not sell : their social civilization, namely, and the better moments of their souls. To be sure they bring in fruit, fowls, eggs, vegetables, and what not, for sale in the public market place. But they bring also their babies, and all things necessary for a day's outing, together with a certain spiritual intention as we shall see. The mere sale of the produce THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 105 they have brought, and the purchase of the goods they are to carry back from the city stores, all this soon appears to be but incidental to a day in town, which for them is what going-to- market means. These family groups of women and children fairly take possession of the city for the day. After the early sales are over, they turn from their stalls, and suddenly the market- place is transformed from economic to social uses. In short, they attend to their toilet and that of their children, and then begin to prepare a meal. The feast being finished, and the rite of conversation duly performed, they leave the market-place, which has thus served in a very real sense as their public drawing-room, their social club."* The " new " woman in London and Paris, and New York, with her club and her latchkey, is, it would seem, not so new as either she or her critics are wont to think. But mark a difference. With their departure from the market-place, these veritable matriarchs of Paraguay, enter upon what we might call the higher citizenship. Follow them, and you will observe that most of them make their way to the Cathedral, which is close by, and which of set purpose in the civic design of Catholicism and its founders, casts * Since the above was written recent " improvements " in the Asuncion market, with consequent changes of custom^ make it necessary to read some of the descriptive details retrospectively. rl io6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. its sacred and protecting shadow over the market-place. III. Now, why women, all the world over, so persistently follow the practice of church-going, even after it has been largely abandoned by men (in Asuncion as elsewhere), is a question on which some light is thrown by sociology. Let us enter the Cathedral, and, merely as impartial students of science, make our observations. Watch carefully the faces of the silent wor- shippers. As the ceremony proceeds, they become transfigured ; they are lit up by some inner arousal ; all the beauty and spirituality which was before obscured by age and hardship, or latent in youth and inexperience, becomes mani- fest in the shining faces. It is clear that these worshippers are being raised up into a new world. You may say that they have soared into the empyrean of all their better thoughts and aspira- tions, and are momentarily at one with their ideals. You may say, if you like, that for a sacred interval they are in heaven. The fact of transfiguration, the evidences of this uplift of life, this welling of an inner fountain, are at any rate demonstrable realities : things that we can see to-day, can go back and verify to-morrow. The next thing is to try and discover something of the meaning and purpose THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST, 107 — the significance, relations and tendencies of it all. Let us begin by asking — what is it that gives to the conception of Home its sanctity ? Is it not the accumulated memories of love and service and sacrifice so ever-present and all-embracing, of beauty and order and tranquillity so pervasive and continuous, as to pass, at the time, without remark, and to give the feeling that life was naturally so ? Is not woman the essential creator of this wonderful thing — Home ? As mother and wife she has done it ; as maiden she instinctively looks forward and prepares to do it. It is not done by mere passes of a magician's wand. Think of the vast expenditure and outpouring of all that is supremely and sacredly human — all that is essentially spiritual and in its nature and aspects divine — implied in the daily care and tending of children even within one city in the course of a week or a day, from the morning preparation in tidiness for school to the putting them all to bed again each night ! Think of the multitudinous intellectual co-ordination of detail incidental to the gathering, the cooking, the serving of a meal ! Think of the foresight and the planning necessary to the smooth and balanced routine of the household as a whole, in health and sickness, in prosperity and adversity ! Think of the actual labor, the sheer rriusculai io8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. exertion in maintaining it all from day to day ! It is clear, when we reflect on its difference from the outside world, that Home is not created and maintained without the existence of a fostering Providence. And if woman is that providence, she is so partly by nature but even more by art, albeit an art which she has incorporated or translated into human nature itself. By evolution from an immemorial tradition, woman has acquired and perpetuates the secret of identifying labor with love, and both with life. She is master of an art by which labor and love become the very expression of life. We may express this in another way by saying that, for her, routine is ritual. Ritual we might define as the habitual performance of duties because, in a supreme sense, we like them : because we " find ourselves " in them. There is something in a woman's routine of duties in the home, which gives it also the character of a ritual of con- tinuous prayer and praise. " Good is the Lordship of Love," for it not only " draws away the mind of his servant from all things mean," but it also perpetually lifts up the heart with the joy of devoted service. Now, a tradition like this, so contrasted with the fierce and emulative activities of the world of business and labor, sport and politics, does not grow up and maintain itself without sanction THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 109 and sustenance from a belief that it is grounded in the very nature of things and assured by the logic of history. That faith is supported, that assurance given, by the symbolism and the ceremony of the Cathedral and its service. From the holy water in the baptismal font to the sanctified elements of the communion table, the ritual symbolizes and idealizes the central facts of the home life and routine. Are we not now in a position to understand something of the transfiguration we have seen on the faces of the Paraguayan women? It is there because the doctrine, the ceremony and the ritual of the Cathedral are related to the life of their homes and their markets ; and because doctrine, ceremony and ritual together are capable of lifting the experiences of daily life into that intensity of emotional reality in which these worshipping women feel themselves transcending time and space, and become partakers of eternity. Better a moment in the ecstasy of the ideal, than a cycle of common content or contention. We see, then, how the subordination of the economic to the human side of existence in the Paraguayan social order, allows for the natural idealization of the Home in the Cathedral, and relegates the market-place to its proper, albeit indispensable, position, as an extension of the kitchen. Each woman who is in distress will, in no INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. the cathedral service, be consoled, will be com- forted by the feeling and conviction that Nature, reinforced by the whole momentum of civiliza- tion, is somehow on her side, and casts round her its supporting arm. If she comes not sadly but joyously, all the powers of the arts — music and architecture, color and song — will be con- centrated in intensifying her joyousness, in uplifting her to the world of ideals and of happy convictions which is her Paradise. In brief, these women use the market for its proper urban function ; they also use the Cathedral for its proper civic function. The two are inter-related as food and shelter are related to music and painting and to all the processes of beauty and culture and morals. Search for New Cathedral. IV. That the Cathedral, even at its best, is in- adequate as the Art-Synthesis of this age, and consequently is ineffective in its appeal of arousal to many of the best equipped and noblest minds, is undeniable. But for the moment what we have to observe is that in a particular social order it works. It does in point of fact lift up its congregation from the otherwise sordid cares of the market into a world where the highest THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. iii self has a moment of flowering. The Cathedral is, for such, an effective embodiment and trans- mitter of the social heritage of ideals, and, by that very fact, an awakener of the best which is in each woman. Without leaving the Spanish-speaking cities of America, we may observe initiatives towards the readjustment of what we might call cathedral functions. Consider, for example, Havana, the capital of the beautiful island of Cuba, which so strongly appealed to the poetic soul of Columbus. He loved the island, and christened it " the Queen of the World." Havana, in its lay - out and in its civic life, is a representative city of the Spanish culture. It has its market-place and its Cathedral centrally disposed and not far apart. Striking from the market-place towards a point of natural vantage runs the customary Prado, or broad tree-lined boulevard of social promenade, always with its beautiful shaded walks (some- times — as in the case of Havana — a triple avenue), its grassy lawns, its flowerbeds and borders, and sometimes its fountains and statues. The Prado of Havana has its fitting destination in a lovely promontory jutting into a bay almost comparable to the Bay of Naples for splendor of scenic panorama. On this cape, which in ancient Greece would have borne the temple of some appropriate idealization of Man or Nature, ri2 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. you find only a band-stand in a gardened space. But to that on certain days comes the spirit of the Muses, transforming it for the time into a temple of innocent delights. On these after- noons the entire city shuts its shops, says good- bye to business, and gay throngs assemble for an event which, though called simply an open-air concert, has in it, assuredly, something of a religious service in its ministration to the gentler and more beautiful in man. As they sit listening to the music, and gazing over the entrancing tropical bay, you know that the women at least have left the earth and ascended to the dream- world of the soul-kingdom evoked by the strains of harmony. And where woman climbs, men, at least young men, and sometimes old ones, dare to follow. Watching this scene, with its blended elements of aesthetic back-ground and spiritual arousal, may not, must not, the sociological observer affirm that here is a cornerstone ready for the building of the new Cathedral ? The art of the musician and of the gardener (who, of old, in the designing of the Cathedral Close, contributed not a little to the whole) are here working together for the uplift of life. Nature does its part magnificently, in earth and sky, in the heart of youth and maid, mother and child. But, the other arts, where are they ? Where is the living THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 113 painter, the singing poet, the working sculptor, the co-ordinating dramatist ? Are they each of them elsewhere creating visions of life and so making some beginnings of the new cathedral ? If so, where is the master of the supreme civic art — the architect ? Is he assembling" the materials and preparing the plans for a living cathedral which shall orchestrate the v,hole circle of the Arts and the Sciences of its day ? V. Let us continue our search for the scattered fragments of the new Cathedral. Where else shall we look to find women, if not in control of the city, yet in a position of relative ascendancy ? In our own contemporary English cities, I suppose, it would be admitted that the society in which woman traditionally counts for most is that of the Quakers. The history of that sect shows them to be a real patriciate, a more spiritual aristocracy than we can parallel in English history since the middle ages. The well-known contemporary initiatives of the Cadburys and the Rowntrees and other Quaker notables in industrial amelioration, in civic betterment, in social investigation, are but the continuation and development of a long-continued social tradition of the communion to which they belong and of its families. But who are the 114 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Quakers historically ? The group is a small but persistent survival of a particular spiritual departure from the normal Puritanism of Re- formation England. I cite, therefore, the Quakers as samples of a certain type of society, repre- sentatives of a particular social tradition. Let us follow this social tradition across the Atlantic, where it sought to establish a society and build itself cities in the free and open theatre of the New World. There is no better known story than the exodus of English Puritans to North America, where different varieties of them founded the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. In the early annals of Boston, a conspicuous place is held by a remarkable woman called Anne Hutchinson. She was penetrated by the idea, held by children, rejected by men, tenaciously clung to by some women, that theory and practice should square ; that what you profess on Sunday, you ought to practise on Monday. Energetic in self-application of this doctrine, and not less insistent on its application to others, she became a moral super- viser of the city. Her critics called her a She-Pope. The sociologist might designate her a Civic Matriarch. More simply let us think of her as the first modern American woman. Boston is still full of Anne Hutchinsons — it is still a Puritan City. Philadelphia has its quota. I THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST, 115 might cite you the case of one who is organising the housewives of Philadelphia into a league of ladies pledged to do their shopping only at the white-list firms. A warehouseman wanting to have his shop on the white list has to ask the league to send one of its inspectors to see that the conditions of employment are all right ! Here is a fine example of the Temporal Power beginning to come hat-in-hand to the Spiritual Power, so that in America its Emperor, Mammon^ may not be so far from Canossa as he thinks. But let us return to Boston. Come with me for a moment into the salon of a representative Boston lady. Using the privilege of the socio- logist, let us re-create that of the late Mrs. Ole Bull, the widow of the great Norwegian violinist, who raised the simple folk-music of his land intO' a true culture- music, and thus became also one of the most notable initiatives in the develop- ment of that Norwegian drama and literature which has so deeply affected Europe. A young woman from Wisconsin, in a concert audience enraptured by the playing of the great violinist then on an American tour, said to her mother, " If I ever marry anyone it will be Ole Bull ! " She did marry him ; and I allow myself this personal anecdote because it typifies not only the independence of the best American women of to-day, but also illustrates that universal iiO INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. chaiacter of woman as an active agent of social selection. Be it mate or acquaintance, priest or pedlar, she selects and rejects by an art so re- fined and so subtle, that both chooser and chosen are more often than not persuaded that they have changed parts ! What do we see, then, in this Boston salon? On a Sunday afternoon there used to meet there, representatives of well-nigh every sort and condition of man to be found in America or elsewhere. Mark, to begin with, that this is widely, universally typical, that it is what woman has done throughout the ages, and continues to do. By the psychic power and pull of sex and sympathy, by knowledge and charm and intuition, she gathers together all these varying types which are apt to be discordant and clashing in any other atmosphere than her own, but which, harmonized by her reconciling spiritual influence, make the stuff of civilization. To- morrow in the market-place these m^en may fight like tigers, in the civic or national forum they may chatter like dead sea apes ; but to-day in the woman's salon they behave and converse like human beings and citizens. There are, of course, many other agencies and instruments devised by woman in the interests of civilization — which word, let us remember, literally and properly means the making of citizens. THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 117 One more illustration of this culture-process, again taken from America. There the "Woman's Club " means usually a different thing from what it does in Europe. A very frequent form of it, one distributed widely through the cities and towns and even the villages of the United States, is a periodic gathering of a few women for the reading and the study of Poetry. Tennyson, you may remember, achieved popularity in America before he did at home. There is a letter of Mrs. Browning written in the forties of the 19th century, in which she records her impression, received from reading a local newspaper sent to her from Nebraska, that the two chief topics of interest in that remote part of the world were the merits of Tennyson's poetry and the color of his waistcoats ! Perhaps the interest in his waistcoats prevailed among the young men rather than the young women of the population. But even so, it reflected in some degree the more strictly cultural interest in his poetry, and that was all to the good at a time when the high critics of the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews were scoffing at his contributions to English literature and predicting an early demise of the new poet. VI. Now these literary clubs have of late shown a tendency to develop into Civic Improvement ri8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Associations. From poetry to the tidying up and beautification of town and city, village and hamlet, is an easy natural transition. For what is the function of poetry but to expel from the mind base, ugly, confused and mean images, and fill it with noble, beautiful, clear and vivid ones. In the movement towards the recovery of her fuller matriarchal functions — in the advance from domesticities to civics — poetry is a natural short-cut for woman, and is the more eligible because by taking it she may avoid the devious, brambly, and futile mud-path of politics. And her arrival at that goal will be all to the gain of Poetry and the Poet also. Through public association with woman crusading for civic order, cleanliness and beauty, the Poet may hope to come into his own long deferred kingdom. In the company of woman the practical, who means to get things done, he may for the first time since Lucretius come to an understanding with the man of science. Then, with the Master of old Romance in alliance with the Master of new Magic and the two working together in the service of Woman and the City, the world of bumbledom and bossdom will begin to have a sense of general subversion, or in briefer American, if not quite poetic, phrase — to get shocks ! Here attention may be called to the remark- THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 119 able recent developments of the Park system in American cities. When the woman and the poet take to walking abroad in the city together, they demand and get not only Parks, magnificent \n extent and rich in natural beauty (in Philadelphia the great park runs to some 6,000 acres !) but also Park-systems and Park-ways (mark the words !) which mean the linking up of the minor city parks and gardens by a system of tree- lined avenues and gardened spaces — a fairy network garlanding the city. But without dwelling on the significance of the ideal of the Park-way and the Park-system (indeed it is obvious), let me hasten to a concluding illus- tration of civic transformation wrought under the influence of Woman or the Citizen as Psychologist. When the woman and the poet call to their aid the architect, and when the architect sets to work under the stimulus and direction of that twice-spiritual call, then a long stride has been taken towards the building of the New Cathedral. The culminating social institution of American civilization, and as yet her most magistral contribution to practical civics, is the great Public Library. Here, as so often in the history of America, the leadership of Boston, her social inventiveness, penetrating vision and power of initiative, were made manifest to all. In her 120 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Public Library, with its worthy architecture and decoration, she created a veritable Temple of Literature for the people of the city. And now its ever-growing effect on American civilization is seen in the fine rivalry of American cities for the possession of the best equipped and most magnificent Public Library in the States. In all these Libraries, the Children's Depart- ment is a special feature. This is no mere collection of boys' and girls' books of the hackneyed kind, tales of adventure and courage, or improving studies (all fictitious) of what little girls may do and become — when they're good. It is a whole series of representative collections : books of literature and science of every sort, within the comprehension of the young, rather than merely written for them ; illustrative material such as pictures, engravings, maps, charts, globes, exhibited in abundance — and all arranged in instructive and rational order through specially designed suites of rooms. You have but to look at the mural decorations and you realize, if you have not already done so, the understanding and forethought and care that have been given to the planting of the tree of knowledge in a Children's Paradise — one from the tasting of which, happily, there need follow no fall and no expulsion. In the central room (it is really a large hall) of the Children's Department in the THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 121 Boston Library, the upper part of the wall space is devoted to a series of remarkable mural paintings. There are, if I remember rightly, fourteen of them ; and running continuously round the four walls they make a frieze impressive by its majesty of size, its beauty of line and color, the uniqueness of its subject. Here are depicted scenes from that immortal epic of adolescence — the Quest of the Holy Grail. The adventures of the questing knight — his temptations and his triumphs — are told as they have never hitherto been told : by the brush and the imagination of an artist (the late Mr. E. A. Abbey) who, if he was not great on all occasions, was so here, for he was afforded a great opportunity. Given the city with its tradition of Puritan aspiration, its record of deed and culture — how impossible not to feel that these noble paintings, set where they are to accumulate impressions on the child mind, will help the youth of Boston to maintain and advance the best traditions of the City ! For the mural decorations of her temple of Liter- ature, Boston, it is to be noted, came to Europe. In addition to the series by Abbey (who though a born American was a Londoner by career and residence), there are sets of paintings of colossal scale by Puvis de Chavannes — greatest of French civic painters — and by Sargent, who by birth is a son of Boston, though a European by education 122 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and adoption. Washington, however, has pro- ceeded on a principle of civic policy sounder in the long run, if less satisfactory in immediate result. There is no surer lesson from civic history than that, through the decoration of public buildings, the local craftsmen make a town into a city, and the city at the same time makes craftsmen into artists. Washington has done well, therefore, in appealing exclusively to native artists (though not exclusively to regional ones — for that other cities may hope and prepare) to supply the paintings, mosaics and decorative coloring which animate the vast wall spaces and ceilings in the immense halls and palatial corridors and stairways of the magnificent architectural pile of its Public Library. Unity has been given to the decorative scheme by the endeavor to represent on wall and ceiling in one large rendering throughout the building, the history of Literature and Science, and within this grand theme, the minor one of the evolution of the Book. Relevant sculpture and carving are freely used to supplement and heighten the decorative scheme. VII. "But what" — with disturbing recollections of the criticisms, cheap and uncharitable, frequently levelled by a certain class of people at the THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 123 Public Libraries among ourselves, we may natur- ally ask — " But what of the uses of these sumptuous civic edifices ? " Pay an evening visit to the Washington Library, and you see in the spacious halls and sumptuous corridors, couples and groups conversing and promenading. No mere students these, on the arid search for examination-knowledge, but men and women, youths and maidens instinct with life and vivacity and the moral and intellectual spirit of the place. It is a citizen's salon, spontaneously arising out of the opportunity given by the atmosphere of culture — by the background of symbolism and of beauty — to woman's instinct to assemble her friends wherever the fine arts can reinforce her efforts to refine and civilize man. The American cities spend lavishly to make their Libraries into Treasure- Houses of Beauty, civic organs of refining suggestion acting upon all who enter. The expenditure is worth while if only as an impulse towards providing the woman of the people with something that approximates to a Drawing - room. For the City may thereby harness to its chariot one of the greatest forces of uplift and spiritual refinement within our western social order. But other and more obvious results are great and manifold. I shall single out one only by way of illustration. It was one of Carlyle's 124 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. most pregnant counsels — "We must constitute a University of Books." The book resumes, embodies and transmits the heritage of knowledge and of ideals. What could be more important than the creation of an organization for the care, the selection, the transmission of this heritage of humanity ? What public function in most cities is more carelessly performed when not completely ignored? What university has instituted a professorship of Bibliography ? In all these things Europe has much to learn from America. With their marvellous mechanical contrivances for cataloguing, indexing, etc., they are learning to throw open the storehouse of knowledge and make it accessible to all. The Librarian takes on a new dignity and a new and higher useful- ness in these new Temples of literature. More than a Professor of Bibliography, he becomes Master of the Sources of Culture. Through the book selections he makes, and the counsel he gives to readers, his educational influence grows, and it is inevitable that something of the dignity and authority of the Priest should attach to his office. Among the American Librarians is thus arising, in fact, a new spiritual order. New departments are growing up in the universities for the training of these priests of culture ; and in one case a whole college is specialized on that function. THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 125 Here, then, is a veritable University of Books ; and it is significant that most of the students are women. Librarianship is a growing pro- fession for women in America. Recall that in some cities of antiquity, there were Colleges of priestesses, the vestal virgins, entrusted with the guardianship of the sacred flame. But what is it, if not Literature more than aught else, that keeps alive the sacred flame of modern civilization ? And what more intimate throughout history than the association of woman with literature? The Muses were not feminine for nothing. The highest literature doubtless has, little of it, been created by woman, but it has most of it been created for her. The poets and the romancists, where they have not written in supplication of woman, have, whether they knew it or not, written in her service. Every great work of art, it has been said with judicious exaggeration, is either a prayer to a woman or a distant echo of a half -forgotten prayer. Only, if we take our theory of literature from that generalization, it is well to remember that there are two kinds of prayer. There is the prayer of petition and there is the more effervescent prayer of praise and thanksgiving. The latter as a literary motive, is neatly indicated in the French concep- tion of "femme inspiratrice " — crudely translate- able into woman the kindler of lofty emotion. 126 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. The oldest literature, the parent perhaps of all the rest, is doubtless that inimitable combination of Poetry and Romantic Fiction, the Fairy Story. How the fairy tale arose, what may be the share of woman in its evolution, and what part may have been played by man acting under the guidance and inspiration of woman, is one of the most interesting of sociological speculations. There is a certain theory which has its special grounds of appeal to the student of eugenics. This theory conceives the fairy tale as an endeavor by primitive or matriarchal woman to do two things — (i) as an attempt to apply a carefully built-up scheme of social and sexual selection, not only in the choice but also in the education of a mate for herself, and a father for her children. What were the tests she applied ? Recall some of the typical fairy stories and you will recognize the repetition of such tests as the avoidance by the hero of gluttony, his repulse of the seductive houri, his discovery of the heroine under an ugly and repulsive mask, and thereafter freeing her from wicked enchantments and restoring her to her proper form. (2) As an attempt of the idealizing woman to escape from the material side of life, to enter into and enjoy her ideal world, to create for herself and her children an Earthly Paradise. Then, given this dream world of the gloaming, with its correspond- THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 127 ing Tartarean horrors, woman is in possession of a whole system of supplementary rewards and punishments by which men and children may be encouraged or depressed, lifted into Elysium or dropped into the bottomless pit. Imagine now, a combination of the woman and the priest in this game of old-world eugenics, and you begin to realize what a potent engine was this stereo- scopic device of the two invisible worlds in the early education of the race. And when we note how the selective and educative process was addressed to the mental and moral qualities of man and child even more than to physical qualities, our respect and adrtliration for these early practitioners of the eugenic art increases. It was, in fact, essentially a eupsychic rather than a eugenic art — an art for the making of beautiful souls as well as handsome and healthy bodies. From these early times and remote specula- tions, let us return to those cities of America, in which we have seen growing up a special association between women's poetry clubs, betterment societies, and the new civic Temples of Literature. Looking at them again, we find a confirmation of what we have affirmed. For is there not here being renewed on a higher spiral, the matriarchal endeavor to- wards a finer culture and selection of men ? Do we not see in that remarkable develop- 128 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ment, Child Study, in which America leads the world, a renewal of the old eugenic alliance of the woman and the priest ? For the American psychologists of childhood and adolescence, with incomparable leadership from President Stanley Hall, are surely preparing a new Messianic cult : an expectation of the Child as the Maker of the Future, and a faith in him. A combination of the intuitional psychology of woman with the rational psychology of the male scientist is calculated to go far. VIII. In a former lecture I tried to show how there has grown up a tradition so far-reaching as to appear like a conspiracy of social usage, supported by art and literature, which tends to determine woman's ideal of a hero after the pattern of the hunting or predatory type of man. But, on all sides at present, we see evidences of woman's revolt against this tendency. It has been facetiously said of the women who become nurses that many do so because they cannot get on with their relatives or their lovers. There is, to be sure, a grain of truth in the observation ; and the same might be said, I suppose, of the other working sisterhoods, the schoolmistresses, the lady- gardeners, the secretarial typists, or the women librarians. But wDmen are raising this THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 129 revolt, first of all perhaps, to procure greater economic freedom, for that is their indirect and immemorial way of affirming the claims of the ideal, in social and sexual selection. The historic student of feminism may well doubt if the extremist women who are agitating for a vote and who have imbibed the crudest political doctrines, do really, in their hearts, believe that they can reform society by themselves becoming political counters after the foolish fashion of men. But however that may be, what is certain is that there springs perennially in the woman's heart, the conviction that her son will successfully put his hand to the work of salvation. And what she does demand, is that the Temporal Power — the Powers that Be, as a matter of course, and that somewhat blindly and bluntly condition the being of all of us — shall provide her with a stage and means for the realization and exercise of her own more spiritual power, her faculty and attributes as woman. That requisite of feminine personality is, in the women of the rich classes, supplied in high perfection by the country mansion with its art treasures, and its park and gardens. Along with the increase, within the civic domain, of woman's influence and that of her friends the artist, the poet and the educationist, we see ever increasing attempts to provide public parks, gardens, picture I30 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. galleries and concert halls, libraries and assembly rooms. All these are milieus of amenity, they make in their degree and kind for the liberation and adornment of the spirit. But though they do certainly in part supply for the women of the people the place of the noble lady's park and gardens, they do not provide a substitute, or at best a very incomplete one, for the mansion itself. The very core of her need is a with- drawing-room, wherein she also on occasion, as hostess of entertainment, may express and be herself. All the requisite background and apparatus of art and beauty must be there as a personal setting, for it is an essential part of the very means by and through which her personality works and exerts its spiritual effect on man and child, and on other women. The vast sj^read of the suburban villa with its spacious and decorative drawing-room, its minia- ture park and wood and garden, evidences the comparative success of the well-to-do middle classes in dignifying their womenkind, in giving them the addition and attribute of ceremonial surroundings. The " garden city " and " garden suburb" movement is extending the same prin- ciple and applying the same uplift to the possessors of still slenderer purses, and is happily doing it with more recognition of civic needs and interests. But nowhere is there as yet THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 131 adequate recognition of the need to provide the woman of the people with this cultural environ- ment necessary, on occasion at least, for her full dignity as a spiritual power. But if our foregoing analysis is sound, then here is an essential step towards the needed incorporation alike of the working classes and of woman into contemporary culture. Of suggestions that have been made to meet this deficiency, there is one which seems to me to amount to a real social invention. Not a few cities have of late, in the growth of the public park movement, come into possession by gift or purchase of old mansion houses. One of them is Dunfermline, Mr. Andrew Carnegie having bought and presented to his native city, Pittencrief Park and Mansion. With this gift Mr. Carnegie presented to the Dunfermline citizens, the general problem (in his own words) — " What can be done in towns for the benefit of the masses by money in the hands of the most public-spirited citizens ? " As a first instalment towards the cost of an experimental solution, Mr. Carnegie simultaneously placed at the disposal of the city the sum of half- a- million sterling. In a moment of insight the City Fathers handed over the general question to Professor Geddes. His answer is given in a book called " City Development." This book would 132 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. be notable, if for no other reason than for this — that there, for the first time in the history of sociology, are brought to bear on the culture problems of cities and city life the full resources of the science, and a definite policy of city development formulated therefrom. The book is compact of detailed suggestions unified into an orderly scheme of development. The particular suggestion I single out here, is that there should be reserved in Pittencrief Mansion House a drawing-room to be at the disposal of " any and every citizen on the simplest conditions of application to the Trust, to be able to obtain the use of this for a short period of hours, morning, afternoon or night, there to entertain at her or his own pleasure, and in their own way, instead of in their own homes." The deep significance of this use of an old Mansion House with all that it implies of tradition and social precedence is set forth in this further citation. " Each plain working woman in Dunfermline, who chooses to claim her turn of this drawing-room and organize her little social function, thus for the time being, takes for it, social precedence of all else in Dunfermline. She thereby becomes, for the time being, the Lady of the Mansion House, the first lady of the city representing not only Trustees and Donor, but her own long line of predecessors to queen and THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 133 saint. That before long the demand might exceed the limited accommodation is no objection to the proposals, but the recognition of their expediency. The Mansion House will bear such enlargements as have been prepared for it by various architects, and even where such new wings are daily and nightly overcrowded by their happy circles, there is room, on the lawn or hard by, for a new mansion altogether, such as has, indeed, been planned already. " Here too is use for the gardens and garden- houses and for the many and stately open-air apartments of our formal gardens, for our woodland nooks. Each may have its fete champetre, and each of these should reconcile the qualities of old aristocracy and new democracy, and thus avoid their defects, so uniting courtesy and grace, with the hospitalities of home. Each such bright experience of true merry-making would thus be an education in bettered social living. " Of the commonsense regulations which would naturally arise for all this — the possible trifling registration or cleaning fee, the order of priority of application, or ballot, and so on — I need not here speak. Let me, in conclusion, plead that special preference be here given for wedding applications, since in no respect is the spacious- ness and beauty of the, Mansion House more at 134 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. advantage over the ordinarily too narrow and small-roomed home. To make the old Mansion House a wedding-house is also, surely, specially fitting in a city whose essential history dates from a happy wedding." I feel I cannot better summarize and reinforce the gist of what I have tried to say in this lecture, than by still another extract from the same book. It is taken from a chapter again referring to this use of the Mansion House, and also to suggestions in regard to the park and its woods, walks, stream and glen. The writer (in a chapter reviewing his whole scheme of lay-out for the Park and its related groups of culture institutions, as it would affect in turn each order of citizen) says : — "We may now come to Woman. Of her special interests within this scheme I have already spoken, first and last from the bettered homes of the neighboring street and city to the Mansion House, with its expression of that levelling up both of her sex and the other, in which the ideals of democracy and aristocracy reunite. Yet for her also other ways in this labyrinthine design will be seen to open. What park-maker can forget that not the least real, if tacit, of his instructions — in fact one of his most practical civic responsibilities — is to lay out better sur- roundings than are offered by the streets alone, THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 135 or by most places of amusement, for the meeting and resort of young men and maidens. Here again, as ever, his task is to combine the too long separated standpoint of the poetry and the romance of life with that of its deeper issues, and use both again to ennoble that of the every-day world. Here least of all can we forget this where the very boundaries of our historic glen and park run like the refrain of a ballad, ' from Wooer's Alley to Lover's Loane.' Here, surely, we have justification and worthy use for our purified stream, our romantic waterfalls and restful glades, our flowery field- paths and blossomed seasons, our merry tennis-courts and rose-hung bowers, our stately old wedding-house also, for whitest lilies and for bridal orangery, for evergreen foliage and golden fruit." Postscript. The foregoing chapter has aimed at afi&rming and illustrating how modern science reinforces with added conviction and increased resource, the older conception of the city as concentrating and diffusing, throughout the community, a life of the spirit, as the pulsing of the heart gathers and distributes the life-blood of the individual. The Cathedra] (and, as we shall see in the two succeeding chapters, the Theatre also) may thus be viewed as a necessary type of civic organ, 136 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. which, so far as in its working it ministers to the heart's desires and satisfies the mind's require- ments, gains power to subordinate Market and Workshop and to elevate the Home. Such civic institutions, it is an inference from history, arise and develop when priest and woman, thinker and artist, poet and musician, being in accord as to the meaning of the world and the purpose of life, can bring their joint humanizing influence to bear on the workers and their directors alike. Enquiring into tendencies of this order, we found the American Public Library to be of high signi- ficance. In the growing succession of these, there has appeared (in the interval since the chapter was written) one even more magistral than its predecessors. It seems, therefore, fitting to remark on its characteristics and possible reaction on its city. The recently finished New York Public Library is perhaps the noblest monument erected to the Muses in modern times. It probably also em- bodies their most efficient organization. It may well be doubted whether there is to be found else- where on the globe, so comprehensive a range of world literature and science, in book and periodi- cal form, assembled in orderly fashion and pre- sented with utmost facility of reference. Certainly no other modern city has been so lavish in the ambition of providing for its working "intel- THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST, 137 lectuals " at once a workshop perfectly equipped bibliographically, and a home at every point of its labyrinthine ramification, installed amid all the tranquil beauty that the spacious dignity of architecture can create. On the building of this stately pile and the adornment of its precinct, the city has expended over two million sterling — nearly the price of a Dreadnought ! In so vast an undertaking, decorative blemishes were bound to occur. But most of these are easily remediable ; as for instance, by the simple substitution of (say), Michael Angelo's " David " for the uncatalogued Roman Emperor — who might be Vespasian or even Titus himself ! — to guard the portals of the Hall of Jewish Literature. The pedestalling of colossal lions on the Fifth Avenue fagade, how- ever, is a less incongruous piece of symbolism than at first sight appears. The gentle reader who, approaching the Library from that side, has run the gauntlet of Fifth Avenue on a spring afternoon when the plutocracy is in full automobile career, and has survived, may be said to have repeated in person the historic adventure of the prophet Daniel. A time may come when the Fifth Avenues of metropolitan cities will be reduced to civilization, and automobiles recog- nized for what they are : viz., private express trains, requiring subterranean tracks in town and 138 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. special roadways in the country. Then will he spear of Pallas dethrone the lions from their pedestals, and even a Homer may arise to sing the deed. But to return to New York and its Library. In order to give this remarkable institution its full cultural and civic value, two things are wanted ; and as they are typical of similar needs in all other great modern cities, it may be of general interest to specify them. In the first place, this Temple of the Muses needs to become the live wire interconnecting with the city and with each other the three isolated Universities established in New York City, each a jealous sentinel of its own acropolis. The second desideratum (and this is a way of realizing the first) is a readjustment of adjacent buildings to purposes congruent with the functions of the Library. A first step to this would be the provision in its vicinity of suitable housing accommodation for the " town " if not for the " gown " students of its own city ; also for those whom its unique combination of aesthetic and intellectual resources may be expected to attract from other cities, and in course of time, it may be, from other countries and even continents. In the replanning of New York, now actually commencing, these two aims will doubtless some day find a place. THE CITIZEN AS PSYCHOLOGIST. 139 The making actual of this potential Latin Quarter would be within sight, could there be ensured a succession of town-planning Mayors, of the type of the civic statesman who, as "President of Manhattan," recently directed the destiny of inner New York. And that ideal is far from un- thinkable. For the reawakening of the civic spirit in America is bringing types of men to the front in whose personality the claims and points of view of town and gown — of city and university, of economy and education, of business and science — are truly balanced and richly combined. Under rulers of the type of President McAneny, the re- surgent city becomes a veritable laboratory for the experimental solution of that most complex of modern social problems, that most ancient and persistent of human feuds, the reconciliation of Temporal and Spiritual Government. Chapter IV. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE § I. — The Morality Play and its Revival.* It is not every dramatist to-day who would be content with the conception of drama held by Dumas. All the equipment he desired for the dramatist was, you will remember, two trestles, three planks, a couple of actors and a passion. That formula merely translates into an art dictum, and so would consecrate, the point of view of the extreme individualist ; of the man who thinks the world ought to stand still till he is cured of a toothache, or something else that is at odds with his body or his mind, his personal vanities, hatreds or desires. Dumas' theory of the drama was the antithesis of that underlying the Miracle Play, the parent of the very Morality Play of which the tradition is so well continued by Miss Buckton's "Eager Heart." The modern theatre prides itself on its independence of the Church. That independence it owes, in a sense, to the Morality Play, which was the stepping stone of escape from ecclesiastical control. It flourished in the late 15th and early i6th centuries, and has the special merit of having * Address to the " Incorporated Society of Eager Heart " THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 141 throughout that " transition period " maintained the religious ideal freed from sectarian dogma. Then came the glories of the Elizabethan drama, which soon developed beyond that primitive phase of interest in religious and ethical ideals. Shakespeare w^as not a dramatist ; he was The Dramatist. We know it, not by the bias of British chauvinism, but on the disinterested authority of Lessing and Schiller, to say nothing of masters of criticism more recent. Since that historic climax, it is admitted, dramatic art has developed, but — so these Elizabethan idolators assure us — in little more than the technique of stage craft. Since the Morality Play lost its hold upon the people, we have had four centuries of experiment in what is called Legitimate Drama. Where are we to-day, as the result of these adventures ? There are those who think that in eliminating the religious and ethical ideal, the dramatist threw out the baby in emptying the bath. Some, like Ibsen, have consequently gone in search of it, and believe they have not returned empty- handed. How far have they really succeeded in their effort ? Have they got the baby in the tub again? Or are they like little girls making believe with dolls ? What criteria are available to estimate the evolutionary rank of dramatic art — the essential 142 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. cultural worth of any historic phase of it ? The question is more manageable if we ask — What was it that gave such vitality to the Mystery or Miracle Play ? What was it that enabled it to hold the stage of Western Europe for several centuries ? In the museum attached to the Opera House in Paris may be seen a model of the stage of a Mystery Play. In the centre is Heaven, with God seated on the throne of judgment surrounded by angels and saints. On his right is Earth, and on his left is the Mouth of Hell, with the Devil carrying off victims to torture. Sometimes the three stages were arranged one above the other, thus making a working model of the Universe as known to mediaeval cosmologists. The theatre was thus a microcosm of the real world of space. The Miracle Play itself epitomised what was known of the origin, history and destiny of man. Of the Miracle Play there were many varieties, and from a comparative study of these we may construct the " type " of the species. This dramatic type was built up on the following lines. It began with a scene in Heaven. God Almighty Himself appeared on the stage and explained his system of physics, morals and metaphysics for the government of the world. Here was presented to the popular mind a work- THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 143 ing version of the patriarchal philosophy of the ideal : God as the perfect and omnipotent Father. But (until modern times) no culture was considered adequate without a theory of evil — its origin, its nature and effects, and its counteraction. The Miracle Play, faithful to the patriarchal traditions, showed evil as dis- obedience to God ; and the theory was naturally illustrated by the vis.ible ejection of Satan from Heaven. The next scene would as naturally be laid in Hell. The Devil — a comic as well as a wicked character — would be seen complaining that the heat and dirt of the lower regions were ruining his complexion. Each scene was (and this is a vital point) a collective performance, organised, staged and played by one of the craft guilds. The Hell scene was customarily allotted to the cooks — the middle age was for Christian Europe the boyhood of humor. Following the scenes showing the origin, purpose and working of Hell in the scheme of things, would come the Garden of Eden. God conversing with Adam and Eve in unclothed innocence, gave opportunity to set forth in dialogue the story of Creation — the building of sun, moon and stars, of the Earth with all its plants and animals, culminating in the making of man — and finally of woman, with the implication that in the making of Eve, the crown had been set upon 144 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. God's creative work. The insight of Burns into the significance of Nature's order of creation was anticipated by the mediaeval playwright : — Her prentice hand she tried on man, An' then she made the lasses, O. Next, the Temptation and the Fall into Sin, presented with dramatic realism, supplemented the theory of evil with a theory of what is and must remain to man the most interesting of aU phenomena — and therefore the most clamant for interpretation — the phenomenon of Sex. After the expulsion from the garden paradise of pre-sexual innocence, would follow a succession of scenes depicting fallen Humanity in travail for its Redeemer. The great events in the history of the world — the deluge, the life of the patriarchs, Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, the declamations of the Prophets, the deeds of the Saints, etc., were shown as incidents in the scheme of divine punishment for sin, but also as stages in the process of divine Redemption : altogether a moral dra- matization of world history. And just as the Hell scene was allotted to the cooks, the scene of the Deluge, with the building of the Ark, would be allotted to the shipwrights. Lively dialogue was expected between Noah and his wife : she angry because her curiosity as to the purpose of the ark was not satisfied till the last moment — THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 14S the moment of entry, when its purpose could no longer be concealed. In retaliation, she scofEed at Noah for taking a hundred years to build what was after all only a big barge ! She showed her contempt of such small public affairs as the universal Deluge by positively declining to enter the Ark until she had had time to go and pack her trunks ! Sometimes the number of the scenes would run into nearly a hundred, and the whole play take a week to perform, going on all day. Most of the episodes were illustrative of the life-history of Jesus — towards which climax all antecedent history constituted the preliminary and prepara- tory steps. At every point idealism was supported against a back- ground of realism. The moral tension was relieved by frequent humor. There were stock characters of comic type like Herod, the bombastic bureaucrat ; Pontius Pilate, the garrulous, bibulous and amorous magistrate. There would be a scene depicting the descent into Hell after the cruci- fixion. Satan is mightily perturbed when he sees Jesus entering Hell as a Deliverer. Then hearing Jesus declare his intention of delivering from Hell only the good, Satan is re-assured, and consoles himself with the remark that there will be plenty left ! This scene, called the Harrowing of Hell, opened, in the York cycle, with a speech 146 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. from Adam. He discerns a beam of light showing in the distance, and wonders what it portends. Eve divines the situation with a woman's wit. The light she sees is from the advancing Christ and she announces that the hour of their deliverance is at hand. Adam then gives vent to an oration expressing his relief at the prospect of release from Hell after 4,600 years of incarceration ! The Middle Ages were precise in their chronology. The closing scenes showed the Ascent into Heaven, then the crowning of Mary, the Return of Jesus to judge the quick and the dead, the combustion of the world, and the gathering of the good into Paradise. Are we not now in a position to answer our question as the prolonged and universal vogue of the Miracle Play ? In summary, what it did was this. It gave the Story of Man, beginning with his innocent joy in Nature's garden of delight ; then the temptation of sex and the fall from primal perfection into sin. It showed the long historic struggle for redemption, ultimately achieved by the supreme sacrifice of a saintly hero ; it rounded off its conception of Life by the idealization of Woman and the elevation of Man. It was more than History dramatized ; it was the philosophy of history idealized, but kept real and correlated with Cosmography — for the stage, as we have seen, was more than a symbol, THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 147 it was a model of the known world. The Mystery Play, in short, was the mediaeval epic of Man played upon a background of realistic Nature. The mediaeval theatre was thus at once a place of amusement and School of Culture. It was the Music Hall of its day and at the same time — in combination with the associated cathedral — the people's University. The play was inter- spersed with songs grave and gay. But the lyric note was sounded in due subordination to the epic. So, too, while the humorous and comic motive was included, it was subordinated to the tragic, and the whole was blended, by its dominating supernatural reference, into the higher unity of a Divine Comedy. If Dante had not existed, he would have had to be invented, as the consummating poet of the middle ages. Thus a meaning and a message was given to life, to history and the world. And so we have a form of amusement essentially recreative in all senses, because it unifies the dispersive elements of personality besides giving interest or ecstasy to the passing hour. In Aristotle's theory of the drama, it is the function of tragedy to make us forget our petty personal cares, to purify us by the emotions of pity and terror. What was the theory of the monks who wrote the Mystery Plays and of the 148 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. craftsmen who played them, we do not know, or whether they had one at all. But in their practice they used for purification and ennoble- ment not only the emotions of pity and terror but also those of hope and joy. But the historical significance of the Miracle Play is mainly lost if we do not realize that its triumph lay in supplying the individual with dramatic emotion by making history real, vital, con- temporaneous and prophetic. And therein lay the secret of co-operation between mediaeval Church and Stage. For it was the work of the Church to show a man how, whoever his father or mother might be, he could still choose his own parents. The good catholic selected his pedigree from the calendar of saints. The Miracle Play was the lay version of the church liturgy. In their division of labor, the one stressed the epic and the other the lyric note ; but for both, the life of the individual was a part played in the drama of the race — a canto in the Divine Comedy. For two to three centuries the Miracle Play held the cities and the villages. In the fifteenth century it began to lose its hold. In the six- teenth it was gone. Galileo's telescope had looked into the starry spaces and failed to find Heaven just where the theologians had located it. Uniformity of belief had departed. People THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 149 took sides on the question as they still do. Some said telescopes did not see far enough or deep enough. Heaven was there all right, though the astronomers could not see it. Others said theologians had done to the Heaven of the poets what the geographers had done to the island Utopia of St. Brendan. This they had inserted in their maps of the Atlantic Ocean, thereby inducing the Governments of Spain and Portugal to resort to a treaty to decide it ownership ! Others, however, said Heaven and Hell were but devices of priests and of women — of priests to terrorize the bad and exalt the good ; of women to encourage and reward their lovers and their children, or repel and punish them. Here, then, was a new body of knowledge, new conceptions of the world which art and literature must needs take account of. The Drama soon adapted itself to the changed situation ; the Morality Play was born of the new adjustment. And the address of Heaven being temporarily lost, its high personages were replaced on the stage by the abstract figures Justice, Virtue, Truth, and the like. Uncertainty attaching also to the latitude of Hell, the Devil and his attend- ant evil spirits were replaced by personifications of Vice, Intemperance, etc. The same tendency to abstraction substituted for the visible model universe, which the stage of the Miracle Play ISO INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. itself constituted, personified stage figures called Astronomy, Geography, etc. The process of abstraction went even further ; it replaced the external objective paradise by an inner vision of the ideal. Now it will be allowed that the social and intellectual conditions of the 15th and i6th centuries which dictated the transition from the Miracle to the Morality Play, largely, and in general, hold still in the twentieth. We are still without agreement as to the latitude of Paradise. For not all will accept the eschatological impli- cation of Carlyle's dictum that " here or nowhere is your America " ; nor Geddes' discovery of Eutopia, as not Nowhere but Anywhere — or at least anywhere that a child can grow lilies and roses. There would doubtless be more general agreement that Hell is to be found in the city slums on Saturday night, though there may be difference of opinion as to where the boundary of the slums is to be looked for. Not always, I think, in the city's East End or where poverty and precarious livelihood have most obviously done their anti-social work upon the dwellers in some squalid alley, street or district. Away in the west, it may be, there is another kind of slum, the crystalline inferno of vacuity and vice. There is still room, therefore, for the Morality Play, as at least a transitional form of drama, in THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 151 the general uplifting of life. But more than this. Its deepest significance, its lasting merit as a contribution to our spiritual block and tackle, lies elsewhere. It is a discovery of contemporary psychology, that the tendency to abstraction, and the tend- ency to rest there, express a normal phase in the life of the individual soul, in its progress from outer sanctions (of external persons and gods as authorities) to the inner sanctions of conscience. Presented to the mind at this transitional phase of its growth, the Morality Play is fitted to function opportunely and effectively as a drama of moral arousal, an awakening call to the further ideal. It may thus itself become a veritable miracle play ; for the essential miracle is the conversion from material and selfish to spiritual and altruistic prepossessions and tendencies. Thus the high social service of plays like " Eager Heart." There is a story of a good Samaritan who whenever he found an individual without a soul presented him with a copy of Emerson. As an alternative remedy, the soulless person may be sent to a performance of " Eager Heart." This is not the time and place to go into the natural history of Idealism. Indeed the pro- fessional psychologists, for whom it should be the supreme aspect in the study of their subject. 152 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. are only now beginning to warm themselves at that hearth. But even already there are certain truths that will pass without challenge, so let us follow these as far as they will take us. It is the instinct of the worm to burrow, of the serpent to crawl, of the lark to soar and to sing. All these instincts have their analogue in man. The analogue of the lark's instinct to soar and to sing is the craving for that uplifting emotion we call an ideal — a vision of the might-be. In these uplifting emotions is the stuff of religion, which is the ideal conceived as an established certainty, a process in being. Now there is a moment in life when idealizing instinct, with its religious potentialities, begins to swell and to surge through our whole personality. We call that moment adolescence. The Morality Play has, it seems to me, an essential place and function in building up a drama of adolescence, which, were it constituted, would be the play of the school- ground continued into the battlefield of life. Its appeal is to the soul at the moment of leaving the assured realities of childhood to essay its flight into the unknown. But the soul is timid and will not soar, unless fired by a vision of the goal. It is now that the thrill of a great purpose does its work and launches the soul propulsively on its quest of the ideal. In this work of arousal the Morality Play THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 153 may take a part. It can sound both the epic and the lyric note ; and these may be com- pounded, developed, and orchestrated into those symphonies of feeling, action, thought — thought, feeling, action, that we call Love and Heroism. In order to round off my thesis I must revert for a moment to the Miracle Play. This was essentially the play of the people, and as such it carried one important social and cultural impli- cation. Largely in and through the expression of pure play, the people of the middle ages took on some of the qualities of an aristocracy. The capacity for play is the mark of aristocracy, since it is the expression of energy, freedom and unconcern. But the perfect knight can love and pray as well as light and play. Here emerges the idea of a spiritual aristocracy characterized by the higher play of mind and soul. This has its normal reserve of energy for spiritual exercises and the life-giving games of poetry and music, art and science, as the other has its nor- mal reserve of energy for muscular exercises — as thence too often to the death-dealing games of sport and war. What, then, is the part of the drama in the making of such a spiritual aristocracy? If the Morality Play is a drama of adolescence, then its purpose is limited to the sphere of 154 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Initiation — using that word in its proper religious sense of transition from the stage of Novice to that of Initiate ; and that implies preparation and sequel. There must be com- plementary dramas of special appeal to the three main phases of life that precede and follow adolescence, i.e. to childhood, to maturity and to age. And in the development of a spiritual aristocracy, those, with the drama of adolescence, must dovetail in orderly sequence and unify into a correlative and associated life drama of the individual and the race. And even further — Drama when it is fully alive, as it was in Hellenic and again in mediaeval times, purifies and strengthens Man by showing him, not only as a spectator of, but also actor in the world process. It must therefore give him a conception of Man in Nature and in History which blends with, unifies and enhances his own life- drama taken in its largest, that is, its religious sense. And this is what the Miracle Play, in combin- ation with the Church, did for the people of its day. There are certain other resources, as yet inad- equately used, available for the re-making of this living drama of Man in History, of Life in Nature. It is told of a great French poet of the 19th century decadence, that his habits at a certain stage of his later life moulded themselves THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 155 into a daily routine which was almost a ritual, so charged was it with emotional intensity. In the morning he wrote a hymn to the Virgin Mary. In the afternoon he went to the cafe and drank absinthe to intoxication. In the evening he went home and beat his mother. Not to think too ill of those victims of inverted idealism, the decadents, we may take this story as well exaggerated rather than as fully true. I cite it as an instance of the danger of mere arousal unpreceded by preparation, unfollowed by the food of dramatic emotion, and by the material of purposive action. The hooligans of our city slums are adolescents awakened to great issues but unsupplied with great opportunities. It depends probably far less on hereditary instinct than on environment and the use you make of it, whether the lighting of the adolescent flame invokes the hero or the devil, the poet or the drunkard, the lover or the lunatic. Such are the risks of evocation, if you begin and stop at the stage described by an American lady-student of Browning as "the high ethereal wave impulse, with goosefiesh and quiver and all that." A London newspaper recently had a leading article which began with the assertion that the House of Commons was no place for Idealists. It then went on to say with approval, " We had an idealist there the other day, but he was iS6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. carried out by order of the Speaker." In a column of that utilitarian philosophy of history, called " leading articles," the writer then went on to prove that the ejected idealist got no more than his deserts. Probably he did not. It is too frequently the case that idealists bring idealism into disrepute. And this they are so often driven to do by the unreality of the mental images that go to make up their ideals. These mental images are real enough to their possessors, often to the point of obsession. But they are wanting in that relation to the common stock of human experience that can give them an abiding reality for the Race. Carry that process to its logical conclusion and what happens? A time would come when we should each of us be enthroned in a heaven of our own undistinguishable from a madhouse. There was a lawsuit involved by a railway accident not long ago. One of the eye-witnesses was asked to describe what he had seen. He said, amongst other things he had seen a blue busticle. "What," asked the astonished judge, " is a blue busticle ? " And no further definition could judge or counsel get out of him. There could be no doubt that the witness had seen a blue busticle. It is as certain as that Swedenborg actually did see its ghost leaving a dying body. Both Swedenborg and the testifier THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 157 to blue busticles saw just what their imagina- tion, flaming up in a crisis, selected from their stock of mental images and composed into a momentary vision. The idealist might be described as a person who has the habit of playing — playing re- creatively — with his mental images : of re- arranging them into new situations, of composing them into higher unities, grander visions. Will not the same definition serve for the dramatist ? The theatre surely is a place where you can buy a ticket into a world of visions, and thus the modern rivalry of church and stage derives from the fact that they offer incompatible paradises. But given an adequate supply of persons with this habit of recreative play with their mental images, we might affirm that the correlative advancement of church and stage, the harmonious adjustment of idealism, and realism, depends on three things. It depends firstly on observing the rules of the game, secondly upon enriching the stock of mental images, and thirdly upon eliminating the blue busticles. What then are the true resources for the re-making of living drama — where to-day do we find the rules of the game, the stock of accumulated and accredited images ? You may not like it, but the answer is — in Natural Science 158 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and in Human History. By natural science is meant the growing body of ordered knowledge, belief and vision, which constitutes our working model of the world of Nature (with Man enmeshed therein) as it was, is, and is becoming. By Human History is meant the sum of verifiable experience accumulated in the strivings of Man to enjoy and to subdue Nature, to construct Society, and to become master of his fate. In this defi- nition it is needful to stress the word " verifiable." By that is implied that there must be no appeal to blue busticles. It is clear that history in this sense takes account of Kings and Dynasties, Peoples and Customs, but it takes even more account of religion and poetry, art and science, as all these have been, are to-day, and might be to- morrow. In short, the heritage of ideals is the supreme object of history — as the sociologists are beginning to understand. The theologians, too, the traditional custodians of ideals, are beginning to seek in that point of view the re-instatement of their subject in the hierarchy of given experience. Paul Sabatier — a veritable Modem Father — has said that the Philosophy of Religion must be drawn from History and Psychology. By History, he obviously meant human history ; in claiming Psychology he committed himself to Natural Science. In any case, the occidental mind is now THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 159 definitely oriented to that direction. There are many ways of serving God. But they do not include turning back when you have started on an errand. Our sense of Nature, our experience of Man, our feeling for the Ideal, are things that come to us, we do not quite know how. But we should all admit that in their preservation, transmission and cultivation, there are three institutions of para- mount importance. These are the School, the Theatre, and the Church. In co-adjustment or in rivalry, these three institutions have, whether they know it or not, grown up as specialized agents of social transmission. When they are in discord and rivalry, ideals decay, licentiousness flourishes, blue busticles abound, and the Devil walks abroad rejoicing. It is, perhaps, in the nature of things, that the School and the Church can never be in perfect accord with the Theatre ; and that is as it should be. For the Drama, working by pure play, is beneficently adapted to be the cutting edge for its two fellow institutions in the path of progress. If this seem an extravagant claim, bethink you that about a generation ago the metropolitan city of the western world, the real international capital of culture, was a Bavarian townlet called Bayreuth. In the march of civilization, the place of the Drama is in the vanguard. i6o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. It is the place of honor. But also, let us acknowledge and remember, it is the place of danger. Its spiritual importance explains the periodic capture of the theatre by the enemy of mankind — that organized army of temptation collectively and conveniently spoken of as the Devil. It is not for nothing that you find, in Paris and elsewhere, the banditti of pornography camped round the Opera Houses. There is every need for the frontier fortresses which the Incorporated Society of Eager Heart aims to build. Indeed, it is as a representative of an allied group seeking to build a citadel of ideals in Chelsea that I have, I believe, been asked to address you. The new Crosby Hall will be the Common Hall of one of those Schools of Adolescents which are known as Colleges. It should be, therefore, a natural theatre for the Morality Play. And, transmitting the mediaeval spirit, it will serve to remind us that there have been times in the history of the western world, when Drama, Education and Religion have co-operated in the uplifting of Man, the idealization of Woman and the understanding of Nature. And those have been the times when men, at one such period built the Parthenon to enshrine the Ideal Maiden, and at another erected the Cathedrals to the glory of the Ideal Mother. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. i6i § II. — From Masque to Opera."* In a former address to the Incorporated Society of Eager Heart, the thesis was put forward that drama is the play-rehearsal for life at its intensest. And life at its intensest was defined as the effort to rise on those high waves of emotion, which theologians predict as normal in the heaven of the next world, and poets and artists try to realize in this. It was contended that Drama, either in alliance with or antagonism to established systems of reiligion, has necessarily a religious function. In short, it was maintained that the theatre, as Play- House, was and is one of the social institutions by which the race instinctively organizes access to such heaven as it can at any given culture-period legitimately conceive or desire. These propositions were illustrated by reference to the Miracle Plays of the Middle Ages and the Morality Plays which, at a time of social and intellectual transition, succeeded them. To-day I put forward the same theme, but now illustrated by the dramatic types of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — the pastoral comedy passing into the masque, and this into the modern opera. Let me ask you to cast your mind back to the year 1634. That year is midway between the * Address to the Incorporated Society of Eager Heart. i62 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ascent of Charles I. to the throne and the begin- ning of the Civil War in 1642. Shakespeare had been dead eighteen years ; Ben Jonson was still alive ; Milton was in his twenty-sixth year, and the influence exercised on him by his master was then at the flood -tide. For, as you know, Spenser's Faerie Queen — the poem of the chival- ric ideal — had been the dominating literary influence in Milton's first period. To continue and develop the Spenserian expression of the chivalric idea — love and purity — was the literary ambition of the adolescent Milton. I take the year 1634 for two reasons. There was played at the Court of Charles that year a notable masque. The play was composed by Davenant, who, three years later, was to succeed Ben Jonson as poet laureate. The costumes and scenery were designed by Inigo Jones. As was usual in the masques at Court, the women's parts were played by the Queen and her ladies. What were these masques to which the theatre of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conformed? What was their dramatic type ? Picture an Olympus designed and constructed by the most skilful and imaginative architect of the day, embellished with gold and ivory and gems, upholstered in the richest stuffs of oriental looms. Picture this Elysium of the classical culture peopled by the goddesses of the Graeco- THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 163 Roman pantheon, all of them gowned in resplen- dent garments, crowned by millinery from the artists' studios. These Junos and Minervas, Muses and Graces, Nymphs and Naiads fascinate us by their beauty, charm us by their manners, beguile us by their songs, interest us by their conversation, sparkling with wit and informed with the finer sense, at least, of all the learning of the age. Entranced by this vision of para- disaic personalities, and the sound of their voices, the duller spirit of man is drawn upward into the empyrean and finds the secrets of new speech, a power of utterance not unworthy of that audience. Listen in what accents he pours forth a sacramental hymn to his divinity : Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine ; Or leave a kiss but in the cup. And I'll not look for wine. If that was not written by Ben Jonson for one of his many masques, it was at least an expres- sion of the very spirit of the masque in its most triumphant moments, its mode of sublimated devotion and halcyon happiness. Such were the masques played at the Stuart Court. They came to us from Italy. Like the best and the worst of the Renaissance, the masque came through a woman, and through the poets and artists who herald her approach or i64 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. follow in her train. It will illustrate the cir- cuitous and fortuitous route of the Renaissance, that the masque — in its elaborate and relatively perfected form — should have come to this country via Denmark. It came with Anne of Denmark, the bride of James the First, and with Inigo Jones, the Italian trained Englishman whom she brought with her to take care for the adornment of her English home. In Italy the masque or pastoral drama (the Masque differed from the pastoral in its more systematic use of /accessory music and scenery) had of course many and complex origins ; but enough here to say that it had come to fruition in the " Aminta " of Tasso, produced in 1573. In this play was pre- sented an idealization of the Court of Ferrara. Tasso was in his twenty-ninth year — an adoles- cent still, and in the full flush of his passion for an unattainable princess of the Court, Leonora d'Este. Working with the spiritual heritage of his kind (transmitted chiefly through Vergil), the poet's vision was striving to recreate in adjust- ment to his own time and circumstance a Latin Elysium, a pagan paradise, with goddesses duly enthroned for veneration. Musical drama of this type had no sooner made its appearance, than first Italy and then Europe perceived that a miracle had been wrought — the miracle of apotheosis. In half the courts and the palaces of THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 165 Western Europe, the great ladies set about organizing their poets, musicians and artists for the conquest of joy, for the march to heaven by the new route. True, many found it difficult to reconcile the new pagan with the remnants of the old Christian heaven. It was indeed no easy matter, and Tasso himself, like many others, went mad in the vain effort. The perilous fascination of flight into that empyrean is vividly set forth by one of the most gifted of modern poets : — O ye that look on Ecstasy The dancer lone and white, Cover your charmed eyes, for she Is Death's own acolyte. She dances on the moonstone floors Against the jewelled peacock doors : The roses flame in her gold hair, The tired sad lids are overfair. All ye that look on Ecstasy, The Dancer lone and white, Cover your dreaming eyes, lest she {Oh, softly, strangely !) float you through These doors all bronze and green and blue. Into the Bourg of Night.* But let us return to 1634 in England. In that year the Earl of Bridgewater was installed in a castle on the Welsh border as Lord High Keeper of the Principality. This earl had a young daughter, Lady Alice Egerton, who had a music master, one Henry Lawes, who had as friend a * From Rose and Vine, by Rachel Annand Taylor (John Lane). i66 INTERPRETATIONS AND EORECASTS. poet in a Buckinghamshire village — John Milton by name. These three, along with the young lady's brothers, had already co-operated in a masque performed for the delectation of the young people's grandmother. Now, a grand- mother, when she is a real grandmother, is no duenna, but the sibylline repository, arbiter and transmitter of that code of conduct which is the distinquishing mark of aristocracy — to wit. Manners. It is her approval and praise which constitute the supreme social sanction in an aristocratic regime, signalizing the young actor's success in the Comedy of Manners played on the stage of real life, and formerly, in palace and mansion, rehearsed in the domestic theatre. It is true that the private theatre has, in the two centuries and a half since the Civil War, been in abeyance as a regularized institution of play in the palaces and the mansions of England. Is it not equally true that the " manners " of the normal English nobleman have during that period tended to gravitate from those of the poet to those of the stable-boy ? And, correspond- ingly, the women of our English aristocracy, having removed the poet from his place of privilege as instructor and friend, and so in the noblest sense their servant, now find it difficult to adjust their behavior towards any men who are neither sportsmen nor lackeys. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 167 It was different in 1634. The young people of the noble house of Bridgewater, having gradu- ated in the granddame's school of manners under the dramatic pupilage of a musician and a poet, essayed a bolder flight. Milton wrote the words and Lawes the music of a masque for them to play in Ludlow Castle in celebration of the high office conferred on their father. The words of this masque survive as Comus, though not so called by the poet. In the judgment of Taine, and perhaps Continental critics generally, this work is Milton's masterpiece, which is to say that it touches one of the high-water-marks of human achievement in the whole range and history of literature. Now, let us ask what were the distinguishing marks of this dramatic piece ? Wherein did it transcend the norm of its species ? How did it differ from the customary masque? As in other pastoral drama, the shepherd is the deus ex machina. As in other pastoral drama of the Renaissance, the sylvan mise-en-scene is peopled by the rustic divinities of the classical pantheon. But unlike other pastorals, Milton's shows no ideal of happiness in that innocent sensuous enjoyment of Nature's Utopia, in which the pastoral drama sought escape from the realistic heaven and hell of the theological miracle plays. There survives in Comus — in its tendency to personify moral qualities — some- 1 68 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. thing of the metaphysical abstractions of that intermediate form of drama — the Morality Play. What gives Comus its formal qualities is, that Milton devised a series of dramatic situa- tions evoking from the players action which, if real, would have filled both actors and audience with a sense of ideal achievement, with its attendant uplift of spirit. His characters thus preserved their individuality, but were felt also to be personifying types of universal preva- lence. His idealizations were thus also concrete and human. The heaven of ecstasy he presented was felt to be realizable under the definite and actual conditions of life in which the actors were implicated. The play of the stage did not cease to be play, yet was none the less a serious rehearsal for an epic life — provided that mode of life constituted the ideal of players and audience. Now, aristocracies at their best are groups of families united by an epic urge. Broadly speaking, those conditions held in Elizabethan England and in the first generation of the Stuarts. Here, then, we have Milton directing the play of the second generation of Stuart nobles, and, therefore, in a very real sense their educator. In this he was continuing what Spenser and Sidney had done for their parents and grandparents. In the making and maintaining of true aristocracies, THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE, 169 yve are again reminded the part of the poet is a vital one. Absolutely undistinguishable are the babies of aristocratic from those of plebeian nurseries, nor is it to be denied that there is craven and noble blood in the family stocks of all social orders. It is the social heritage, and the occupations that go with it, which ultimately differentiate the peer from the peasant. In the aristocratic trinity of Fates, while the Grand- mother is the custodian of Manners and the Mother is the custodian of Romance, it is the Poet who is the custodian of Ideals. He it is who selects from the social heritage a set of ideals, and by adjustment to his own generation, ensures their transmission. And combining, like Milton, the lyric and epic into the dramatic form, he holds a master-key to the soul. Let us carry forward our formula and test it on the drama that grew up after the Civil War. About the year 1680 there was a fashionable dancing-master, one Josiah Priest, who had in Chelsea a boarding-school for young ladies of quality. He engaged a poet, one Nahum Tate, and a young musician, Henry Purcell, still in his teens, to write and compose a musical play for performance by the young ladies of his school. Thus was produced in Chelsea y^neas and Dido, the first English opera, a drama ip which there was no speaking, all the parts being sung. M I70 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. In Italy the masque had already passed into the opera. And here in England, two or three generations later, the same transition was being made — the musician of genius here, as elsewhere, fulfilling his historic role of adjusting the rivalry of the old and the new heavens, and only await- ing the co-operation of a great dramatic poet to create new and living paradises peopled by new and living embodiments of holiness and heroism. Let us pause for a moment at this turning point in the evolution of drama and observe the personality of the leading dramatic persons. Dancing is perhaps the oldest, and certainly one of the noblest, of the arts. But the dancing- master is not exactly the person we should ask to select our poetry for us, still less for our daughters. The particular dancing master of Chelsea was, to be sure, an eminently respectable one. He chose for his dramatist — the Poet Laureate. Now poets may be forgiven intem- perance and improvidence, but not snobbery. For that means the precise reversal of the poet's office ; it means that the poet ceases to be the master of brave ideals and becomes the slave of abject temptations. And sad to relate, this particular Poet Laureate was an intemperate and improvident snob. And the young ladies of quality, whose dramatic initiation into the patrician code of manners was about to be made, THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 171 who were these ? They were the granddaughters of the men and women who survived the Civil War. We can to-day see these mothers and grandmothers in the portraits of Lely at Hampton Court and in the National Portrait Gallery. Let us quote a few lines of the des- cription by Taine, who, more than any other historian, has looked through the documents of English Art and Literature with the eye of the sociologist. Says Taine : — "When we alternately look at the works of the court painters of Charles L and Charles II., and pass from the noble portraits of Van Dyck to the figures of Lely, the fall is sudden and great ; we have left a palace, and we light on a bagnio. " Instead of the proud and dignified lords, at once cavaliers and courtiers, instead of those high-born yet simple ladies, who look at the same time princesses and modest maidens, instead of that generous and heroic company elegant and resplendent, in whom the spirit of the Renaissance yet survived, but who already displayed the re- finement of the modern age, we are confronted by perilous and importunate courtesans, with an expression vile or harsh, incapable of shame or of remorse." Here in sharp contrast to their immediate pre- decessors are the personalities of the generation after the Civil War. That decade of internecine 172 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. strife in mid-seventeenth century was one of the most disastrous wars in history. In all wars it is the noble types of both sides who volun- tarily march out to slaughter each other, leaving behind the ignoble, or the comparatively poor in spirit or in fulness of life, to father the next generation. But the long-protracted Puritan- Cavalier duel in England was particularly calam- itous, both for England and the world ; for it destroyed a promising possibility of uniting the supplementary and contrasted culture of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and evolving therefrom a new patriciate of the spirit. The young Milton, inheriting the Puritan ideals of the Cavalier poet, SpenSer, and dramatizing them for the play of young nobles, was symbolic of a national situation charged with high poten- tialities. But after the mutual extermination of the flower of each side, what was left ? For the Cavalier, love without purity — which is lust or lewdness. For the Puritan, purity without love — which is death or prurience. Out of this social wreckage came the Drama of the Restor- ation, precisely as the maggot from its grub, the worm from its burrow. It was a drama of lust for the classes, lewdness for the masses. Naturally there was no one to replant the play- trees cut down by the Puritans. And where children are denied the traditional games of life, they in- THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 173 stinctively act a drama which is a preparation for death. It was then also that London acquired the reputation it still holds as a world-market of prurient literature. It was thus entirely appro- priate and symbolic that the high-born young ladies of 1680 should be performing a drama of snobbery to the order of a dancing master. The great Purcell, to be sure, is a redeeming feature. But such a situation cannot be redeemed by the musical genius alone. Music, because it is the most emotional of the arts, is also the one most in need of intellectual guidance, most in need of the inspiration of high purpose and clear insight. It is easy to diagnose the dominance of the dancing master and the poetry of snobbery in the drama of the late seventeenth century. It is easy to trace the continuance of these factors in the drama of the eighteenth century. We laugh at the story of Voltaire's visit to Congreve. In the reception of his guest, Congreve insisted, as host, on sinking the poet in the gentleman. " If you had only been a gentleman," retaliated Voltaire, " I should not have come to visit you." Might not this story, without losing any of its point, be adapted to some of our representative poets- — lyric as well as dramatic — of the nineteenth century ? The dramatic situation to-day has perhaps a closer resemblance to that of 1680 than 174 INTERPRETATIONS -AND FORECASTS. we are aware. Is the dancing master completely dethroned from dominance over the education of the daughters of the aristocracy, the gamekeeper and groom from that of its sons ? Because if not, then these worthy instructors of manners will, if not in name, yet in type and in reality, inevitably be found pulling the strings of the puppets on the public stage. The instinct of the public for discovering and worshipping the veritable heroes of its kind, is nowhere surer than in the theatre. To indicate the survival — if they do survive — of such elements in our theatre of to-day is not of course to offer a complete diagnosis of the contemporary dramatic situation, still less to forecast its development. The Incorporated Society of Eager Heart is thus but one of many symptoms of a dawn- ing era in which the drama may be destined to play as high a part as ever before in the making of a new spiritual aristocracy. To trace out the roots of this hopeful dramatic movement from the past, to see and try to co- ordinate its present manifestations, to foresee, and possibly therefore to help to guide its future development — all this, useful and necessary as it would be, is beyond the scope of the present address. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 175 § 3. — The Eugenic Theatre. The account of the Outlook Tower given in a previous chapter has, perhaps, left the reader cold. Unalluring, maybe, has seemed its promise of interpreting the varying outlooks of life's many windows. How, one might ask, would it " make good " in the case, for instance, of the Historian ? How will it interpret his outlook, so as to ensure the approval of the historical special- ist and yet arouse the practical man from his deepest superstition, that the past is dead ? To select carefully your collection of history books, and supplement it by the masterpieces of histori- cal romance, and by maps and pictures ; to present the stream of history visually and chro- matically in synoptic charts ; to invoke the aid of artist and sculptor for making real the procession of heroes and the coming of the saints ; to organize expeditions of investigation and pilgrimages of arousal ; to see the living past in the present, and to foresee its making of the future ; to conserve monuments of local tradition and utilize their power of evocation for contem- porary uplift — all these activities issue from the historian's vision and have for many years past been exemplified in the work of the Edinburgh Outlook Tower. Their accumulated resultant on the life and record of its own city and country 176 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. could be shown to be not inconsiderable, and their influence farther afield to be appreciable and confessed. But the activities of this and other educational agencies notwithstanding, the great bulk of our fellow-citizens in Edinburgh, as elsewhere, persist in closing or half closing their eyes to all these historic outlooks. What other modes of appeal are available? There is one more ; one which in its vividness and sense of reality comes nearest to life itself — the dramatic. Let the historian dramatize his vision, then he will not lack an audience. As he becomes conscious of his high civic role he will gain what he needs even more than specta- tors : that is actors, and many of them, to show forth and make real the images of his dream. This is no airy conjecture, ventured for assevera- tion's or encouragement's sake, but a statement of recently proved fact. An example of this civic arousal through the dramatization of history is afforded by the Edinburgh Masquers — latest progeny of that very Outlook Tower which we are discussing. The occasion of their birth was a simply festal one, that of celebrating the semi- jubilee of the University Halls of Residence, which with their associated educational and civic activities are in a way the parent of the Outlook Tower itself. In the first six months of their doings, the Edinburgh Masquers, with their vivid THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 177 sensuous appeal, have probably done more than the parent institution during the previous decade towards arousing both City and University to the historian's outlook, its interest and meaning for life, its significance for social direction and uplift. They produced a Masque of Learning which after its performances to crowded audiences in one of the largest halls in the city was repeated, to their delight, before ten thousand children from the public schools ; and further showed its vitality by internal development, growth, and scission, the original masque being rapidly replaced by two, a Masque of Ancient Learning and a Masque of Mediaeval and Modern Learning. Of these, in turn, several performances were given on an even larger scale, for the partici- pating players who appeared on the stage had grown from five or six hundred to nearly a thousand — a scale comparable to that of professional pageantry. A change indeed from the customary modest scale of appeal by the Outlook Tower,'-- whose gatherings too often have been of the kind that would not have startled Mark Twain's German Professor, habituated to * It is significant of the wider appeal exercised by this dramatic method that the two booklets of the Masques (" The Masque of Ancient Learning and its Many Meanings," and the corresponding '■ Masque of Medieval and Modern Learning," still obtainable through booksellers or from the Outlook Tower, Edinburgh, price 6d. each) ran into a circulation of thousands in less time than the writer's previous works took to get into hundreds. 178 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS, address his audience as "Sir," until it proved a shock to have to substitute " Madam." Of the overjflowing of the Edinburgh Masquers to London and their success in there pre- senting the Masque of Mediaeval and Modern Learning in the Great Hall of the University, or of their possible developments in other fields of drama and in other cities, it is not pro- posed to speak here : but only of the particular features which make of the Edinburgh Masque a new variant in dramatic type. Its distinction derives not merely from its evocation of active and specialized co-operation, spontaneous and honorary, from groups that do not customarily combine on that footing, as of scholars and savants with artists and musicians, and these with professional and business men, each and all bringing their womenfolk into the concert of players, or more frequently being brought by them. Such social re- groupings have everywhere characterized the recent revival of historic pageantry, which have thus aided both archaeo- logical accuracy and opulence of display. The distinction of the Edinburgh Masque is to have used these resources both of historic evoca- tion and of contemporary arousal towards shaping in some measure the opening future, alike in the personal growth of the citizen and in the development of his city. Its distinction THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 179 is to have done this with no diminution but rather enhancement of recreational quality and spectacular effect. To grasp its principle of design, one must first realize the sort of historian whose outlook is here dramatized. It is not the too simple historian who, for instance, tells you that the notable events in English history in the years 1665-6 were the Plague and the Great Fire of London. These occurrences are doubtless interesting incidents in the domestic chronicles of the English nation ; but they do not look beyond it, and are the subject matters of the annalist or chronicler rather than of the historian properly so-called : the student and interpreter of human evolution. For him, the years 1665-6 are rather made memorable by the fact that a young Cambridge collegian then dreamed a wonderful dream, which came true. There is, indeed, a connection with the Plague. In consequence of its outbreak the students of Trinity College were "sent down" for the summer term. In other words, they were given an opportunity to meditate and dream ; and the tranquil beauty of a ripening orchard thus became for one at least of the rusticated students a truer cloister than his college shades. For the local piety which preserved through five generations the apple tree that evoked Newton's i8o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. dream was sound in psychology if not an ex- haustive statement. Every youth has his dreams, and their kind and quality are determined by the personalities who have touched his imagination ; by the tradition in which he has been nurtured, and by the accident and circumstance of his life. Given the Greek tradition, then in active revi- vance, of reading the riddle of the heavens by careful observation of the facts ; given the succession of impressive personalities recently engaged on the problem from Copernicus to Galileo ; given the central mystery of planetary and solar motion, still but partially solved; given, finally, the mind of a young and ardent mathematician steeped in all this varied heritage — and what more passionate quest could there be for him than that of further insight and accuracy of knowledge? There is but wanting, to a youth so preoccupied and so prepared, the one incalculable spark of appropriate circumstance that shall suddenly light up his mind and let him glimpse the culminating generali- zation. The falling of an apple may well have suggested to an adolescent, fresh from contact with Descartes' new Geometry (the immediate inspiration of Newton's genius, as he himself tells us) the grand generalization that Galileo's formula of the falling stone was but the special case, the terrestrial manifestation, THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. i8i of all celestial motion. What he saw in his orchard dream was the moon falling to the earth, and the earth to the sun, just as Galileo saw the stone falling to earth from the leaning tower of Pisa. Of the heavenly bodies, Newton's dream was that " they are all falling bodies, but going so far and so fast that they fall quite round to the other side, and so go on for ever." The Law of Gravitation, it would seem, is not so remote and mysterious, either in itself or its origin, as is sometimes thought. It belongs to the moral discipline of science that what is seen in the ecstasy of vision must be translated into the cold notation of the intellect before the solitary joy of creative imagination can be supplemented by its due social sequels of happiness in communication to others and glory of success in acknowledged achievement. Some twenty-one years of mental labor were required before the Principia of the middle-aged pro- fessor of mathematics demonstrated to the world the complete Law of Gravitation and realized the dream of the young Newton. The Mission of manhood grew naturally out of the Quest of youth. What is "success in life?" "A dream of youth realized in riper years." Recalling in later life the early stages by which he reached his first clear ideas of gravitation, Newton wrote " all this was in the two plague years, 1665-6, for i82 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. in these years I was in the prime of my age for invention."* This instance is typical of that abiding human drama which the evolutionary historian sets forth for our delight and edification. The historian alternates between two moods. In one he sees the procession of generations, each fitting uneasily into the mould which its predecessor filled : each mould strained and cracked by overwear, yet ever being repaired, reshaped, with the material gathered by the passing generation in its own fleeting struggle for life and love. That is the tale of Man, as conditioned by cir- cumstance and determined by tradition ; and this the historian tells in his impersonal mood as institutional history. But without forgetting this view and its limitations, the historian has another mood. In this he sees the succession of great men : those towering Personalities who create for their time and place the conditions of life and progress. The tale of the human race thus told becomes a saga — the tale of giants, with Newton for one. This is the personal, the bio- graphic, the Plutarchian mood of the historian. And it becomes epic and potentially dramatic as he thinks out around his hero the scheme of * Though our interpretation is not incompatible with the popularly accepted one, we have had in mind rather the more judicial view of Adams, himself co-discoverer with Leverrier of the planet Neptune, a discovery based on the validity of this Law of Gravitation, and itself a sublimely impressive re- verification of its truth. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 183 parts in the play and tries to decipher the general plot and the hero's place in it. But since the time when the mediaeval synthesis of history was dramatized for popular presentation as the miracle play, the dramatic mood of the historian has never again dared to express itself in large and comprehensive sweep. As historians gain in the courage and in skill pro- portionate to their knowledge, they will give us, if not new drama, yet new drama-stuff, from which the theatre will gain immeasurably in power and enrich life anew in literal recreation. Tendencies only latent in the mediaeval theatre, and even in that of Greece, it may yet express and realize more fully. Of such tendencies in the mediaeval theatre we tried to see something in the first section of this chapter, and shall return to this later. Of complementary tenden- cies in the Greek theatre something may here be said, since these modern masques are expressing the renewal of some essentials of both Greek and mediaeval drama. Close to the religious life of the people as in mediasval times, the theatre of the Greeks yet made its appeal in more direct and human way. In its opening ritual of the bull — symbol of strength and creative power — and by dithyrambic song and dance, it started from the organic side of adolescence, frankly expressed, but also idealized. i84 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. A bull led by young men, guided by the Graces — what combination of symbolism could be at once more subtle and more simple? Acknow- ledgment of sex as the fundamental force, at once of high personality and of social uplift, was thus its point of origin. To discover its culminating destination, we must do more than observe and estimate the accomplished work of its organizers and dramatists, for the seed they planted never came to full fruition. Its growth was arrested and its culmination frustrated by the social disasters of too imperialistic ambitions. Thus viewing Greek drama as a social process towards a goal foreshadowed but never reached, we may picture something of that goal by selecting certain tendencies of the process and following them to their logical or rather sociological developments. Greek, like mediaeval drama, was played only at periodic religious festivals, but, unlike it, was staged with all the ceremonious dignity of a high civic function. Thanks to the pens of scholars and the spades of archaeologists, we can now picture with considerable fulness the part played by the Attic Theatre in the life of the people. How deeply it penetrated Hellenic life, individual and social, the modern playgoer must find it hard to realize. Its nearest equivalent to-day is perhaps the Welsh National Eistedd- THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 185 fodd, and to think of that helps us to grasp the central and significant fact that, in the case of the Greeks we are dealing with what is at once a folk-drama and a culture-drama. Almost every village had (a point for our rural revivalists of to-day) its theatre, in which were played not only the pieces of rustic festivity but also the tragedies of the great dramatists. But here we are concerned with what took place in the great Dionysiac Theatre at Athens. There was a festival each Spring at which were presented, by the leading dramatic poets, a succession of tragedies and comedies continuously succeeding each other throughout the day from morning to evening for about a week. Each play was performed only once during the festival, and in the best days of Greek drama was never afterwards repeated. The price of a seat for a day was about four- pence, and that sum could be had for the asking from the Public Treasury. But this custom of subsidy did not arise till later, when the city became Imperial and proud, and the people became beggarly and humble. Hollowed out from the southern slope of the Acropolis was the vast auditorium, to hold nearly 30,000 spectators accommodated, irrespective of rank and wealth, upon uniform tiers of stone benches, severe, cushionless, backless. A single row of armchair i86 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Stalls, interposed between these benches and the orchestra, afforded the only places of distinction. In these sat the representatives, neither of the aristocracy, nor the plutocracy, nor (with insig- nificant exceptions) the bureaucracy, but the priests of the Olympian Gods, and of their lesser fellowship of divine beings, some, like the Graces and Muses, of yet loftier spirituality than the Olympians themselves. Conspicuous in their centre was enthroned the richly-robed priest of the God in whose honor and worship the plays were performed, Dionysus. For he it was, we must remember, who expressed and ideal- ized the organic and spiritual significance of adolescence. The Theatre itself was an adjunct of his temple, and the play an extension of his ritual. The dramatic poet was, in effect if not in name, a lay priest of Dionysus. The ordinary word for a play, and more especially for that ordered sequence of plays which ^Eschylus initiated and his successors feebly abandoned, was a teaching. The commentators inform us this usage arose through the dramatic poets teaching chorus and actors how to perform their plays. Without denying this, we may still suppose the Greeks had wit enough to see that a poet may be a teacher in more senses than the duller ones. Now ^•Eschylus, the real founder of Greek THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 187 drama, was no mere poet, still less mere playwright. He was a soldier who had fought at Marathon, at Salamis, and at Platsea. He was a citizen who had doubtless served in office and looked to serve again. But there are many ways of serving your city. iEschylus, it is clear, was that kind of poet who is essentially concerned with the making of citizens, and of poetry and plays as a means to that end. His own plays he described in true and vivid metaphor as " scraps from the banquet of Homer." In other words they were the dramatization of heroic history, such history as was known to the Greeks and rated by them heroic. Then as now people could be at once pious and stupid ; so it is not surprising to learn that not a few orthodox Greeks were wont to com- plain that the plays had nothing to do with the God Dionysus. They could not see the connec- tion between the presentation of historic heroism and the awakening of the idealism latent in con- temporary youth. But the founders and builders of Greek civilization were psychologists enough to know that " who shapes the dream, decides the deed." And if they were ignorant of the doctrine of descent by natural selection, they at least promoted the practice of ascent by epic selection. Lucian, by a happy anachronism, puts into the mouth of Solon expounding the i88 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. institutions of Athens, the saying that young Athenians were educated by being taken to the theatre to learn types of personality to imitate and to avoid. But what of the other gods of the Olympic Pantheon, who presided vicariously over the Greek theatre in due subordination to its central divinity — Dionysus ? May not these too be interpreted as expressions and idealizations of the visions of life that appear in the changing dreams of the human cycle ? Though the tide of life and love runs strongest in youth, it is not then only we fashion dreams of perfection out of memory and aspiration. All the other phases of life, from infancy to age, have their visions of an ideal, imagined by self or others. Given the tendency to conceive human life at each of its phases as it might be at its intensest and highest, there emerge as natural sequels the efforts of art and literature to present and symbolize these imaginative creations and the endeavors of religion to realize them. Mr. Edward Car- penter's interpretation of the " Gods as Race Memories " (in his Art of Creation) is perhaps the best known of several recent attempts to work out the general formula of the process. From another, constructed in the more monographic way of science, we may select an answer in terms of evolutionary biology and THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE, 189 psychology to the question — who were the Olympians ? " Without disrespect to their anthropologic and poetic traditions, or to the scholarly dis- cussion of these again in active progress, it is their organic and psychic essentials which here vitally concern us. For the Greek there de- veloped what for us is again dawning in our ideals of eugenics and of education ; for him vitally expressed in a vision of divinities — beings at once normal and ideal, human, yet super- human ; and far beyond those earlier and simpler idealizations of occupation and place which were foreshadowed in Apollo, the divine shepherd, the musician, the healer ; in Athena of the olive and Demeter of the corn. Goddesses and gods thus expressed each the ideal, or super- norm, of a phase of life. This vivid and creative intuition has, since Greek days, too much seemed but a mythological dream, but must none the less reappear in evolutionary thought. Each goddess, each god is the essential and charac- teristic, the logical and necessary, expression of the corresponding life-phase of woman and man. Man as lover, idealist, poet has ever created the goddesses. He worships each perfection of womanhood ; he defers to her bright intuition, bows before her ready spear of woman's wit, and yields his apple to her compelling charms. 190 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Each in his turn a Paris has his three-fold vision : Aphrodite, Pallas, Hera are no further to seek than of old. On either side arise other goddesses, of younger and of older phase. There Artemis, the maid, still unawakened to sex, running free in nature, and Hebe, the winning and willing child ; here again Demeter, ageing, saddened and grey, patient, helpful and wise. "So for her part woman creates her types of the gods : first the father, in patriarchal perfec- tion stands complete, then Eros, the babe of inmost longing. Between these appear Hermes, the boy-messenger, swift and eager, soon giving place to Dionysus, the youth awaking towards manhood, thrilling to woman, wine and song. After Apollo, master of himself, comes Ares, armed and active in the struggle for existence. Later, Hephaestus, with his mastery and skill, yet limited thereby. Seated now in their series, the Olympian circle is complete. ""■■■' How far may the conception of Olympus above set forth help us to discern the educational process of Greek drama ? The answer turns perhaps on the vexed question of how person- ality, which is unique, is related to type, which is general. Minor critics and playwrights are for ever contesting whether the characters of * " Mythology and Life : an Interpretation of Olympus ; with Applica- tions to Eugenics and Civics.' ' P. Geddes. Sociological Review, Vol. VI. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 191 drama can be both personalities and types. But for the student who is neither critic nor play- wright, it may be sufficient to accept what iEschylus practised and Diderot preached.* What was it that yEschylus practised ? The Gods sat immobile in their stalls, in constant danger of petrifying into idols. The imagination of the dramatic poet roused them into life and activity on the stage. Dionysus himself was sent forth in every age, at every periodic performance, to recreate the heroes of the race. These, thrilling again to wine, woman, and song, manifested in the sight and hearing of all, the glories and the perils of ambitious dreams and epic deeds. Thus was Dionysus made to fulfil for ever the purpose of his being, in the awakening of youth, in the consoling of age, and in stirring the hearts of maidens and mothers. * The confusion between personality and type rests on the same fallacy which confounds generality with generalization — as, for instance, in attributing to woman a low power of generality because she apprehends order in complexity more by intuition than by classification and generali- zation. The concept of type is necessarily reached by the slower and more roundabout method. Its gain is in the more definite knowledge of, and hence increased power over, that complex of processes by which the heritage of good and the burden of evil are transmitted from generation to generation, making or marring personality in their passage. Type is something not opposed to personality, but its social correlative. The analysable elements of personality compose on re-synthesis into the social concept of type. To discern the type of a given personality is not to exhaust its content, for there must always be a (continuously diminishing) residuum unanalysable. It is to reveal what is discoverable in the genesis of personality, and so, by comparison, classification and generali- zation, reach a formula useful for education and social transmission. For the sociologist, type is to personality what for the biologist heredity is to variation. For a study of social inheritance from the point of view of biography, see the writer's .St Columba (Outlook Tower, Edin- burgh, 191 2). 192 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS, In further illustration of the art of ^schylus, take the part of Athena in The Eumenides, the culminating play of his great tetralogy. The goddess is made to show the way out of an apparently hopeless social situation — a tangle of successive crimes, with ever complicating re- sultant of evil reactions. Now, there have ever been among men, from Rhadamanthus to Romilly and onwards, good jurists to secure justice. But it needs a woman's intuition and wit, combined with woman's sympathy, charm, and tact, to secure justice and also accomplish the higher social task of reconciling the disputants. That is what Athena does in The Eumenides. And she does it by saying and doing just those things which a woman can say and do when she is neither Artemis nor Aphrodite, neither Hera nor Demeter, but Athena herself. The part is strangely like and yet unlike that of Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare, being neither aided nor limited by a goddess in the stalls, has created a personality which perhaps for most of us is more interesting during the fleeting moments while the play runs. But the im- pression fades sooner from the memory because, not manifestly type and symbol also, the personality does not so readily relate and attach itself to the permanent images of the mind, to the deepest feel- ings of the heart, and to the ultimate issues of life. THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 193 It is good to have Portia occasionally rescue the rich and generous young citizen from the moneylender. It is better to have the continuing aid of Athena Polias in the abiding vv^ar of the city against our hundred-armed giants and our Gorgon Sisters. Against those giants, the modern city father can no more hope to contend success- fully than could Father Zeus, unaided by the spear of Athena (whom, by the way, a not unlikely and profoundly significant tradition declares to have been the daughter of one of the giants themselves !) Against Medusa, the knightly citizen of to-day can no more hope to venture successfully, than could young Perseus, unequipped with the mirror of Athena. But the modern city having preferred the cult of Mammon and Moloch, of Silenus and Priapus, to say nothing of other strange unholy deities, has thus driven out Athena Polias. How can her resentment be appeased, her just wrath averted, her immanent presence re-invoked ? Happily her memory has been kept green by the poets. Her image was vividly present to at least one modern poet : — A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea, A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory, That none from the pride of her head may rend ; Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary, Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame, 194 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend, A light upon earth as the Sun's own flame, A name as his name — Athens, a praise without end. The University, 'tis true, has maintained her worship as Alma Mater, though with the fitful- ness and feebleness of an esoteric cult. Poor and intermittent must needs be academic gifts, while the riches of the city pour lavishly into inimical shrines. Let the Arts of the University combine in her service with the Crafts of the City ; then may we gain the aid of Athena in the holy war which each generation of citizens has to wage for its own salvation against the ever-renewing races of giants and Gorgons. It may be taken as an augury of that approaching alliance of Temporal and Spiritual Powers against the forces of evil, that the Goddess recently re-appeared in the concluding scenes of these Edinburgh and London Masques, where university and city are brought together into fraternity and partnership anew. To return to the Attic Theatre, let us consider a concluding illustration of how the Greek dramatist presented images of personality which, being also symbols of divinity, bore with them the irresistible appeal of all effective idealism, itself our deepest sense of reality. Take the character of Hephaestus in the Prometheus Bound, and THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 195 by way of heightening its lights and shades, again contrast it with similar types in Shake- speare. A palpably human craftsman, obedient to Zeus, his master, but of noble independence in thought and tenderness in sympathy, the divine Hephaestus was instinctively felt by every Greek craftsmen, be he freeman or slave, to be an elder brother, a leader, a loadstar for the work of life. Against this attractive personality, put those pitilessly realistic representations of The Midsummer Night's Dream, or indeed of almost any other Shakespearian play in which the voces populi are allowed to be heard. Bottom, Snout, and Starvling were doubtless types of the derelict craftsmen of Shakespeare's day, but they could not with decency be called personalities. They seem too often an attempt — cynical or accusing, who shall say ? — to portray and give character- istic utterance to a life in which humanity has fallen in upon itself in a gibbering collapse of its qualities. In staging his debased craftsmen then, Shake- speare may be justified and commended as play- wright and psychologist, but hardly honored as poet. It belongs to the high role of the latter to recreate in living activity for each passing generation its gods and goddesses. Of these ideal beings, do not the poetic creations we call myths (than which there is nothing deeper 196 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and truer) all tell us of divine cycles, punctuated by struggle and death, resurrection and epiphany, which they endured. For the mighty work of apotheosis there is needed the archi- tectonic genius of poet and dramatist to con- centrate and vitalize the labors of many artificers — even of the scientist who slays by analysis, of the historian who conserves in fragments, of the priest who enthrones in mausoleums, of the artist who too often remakes into idols which the people ignorantly worship. The continuing co-operation of all these and many others there must be if religion is to be maintained as a working faith and not to decay into lifeless formalism. Hence our example of Newton as a type and culture-hero of our race, and one of its highest personalities. Nothing surely can be more conspicuously unique than the Law of Gravi- tation, for, as Lagrange in commenting on the laurels of Newton regretfully remarked, there is but one universe. Unveiled mystery there must needs therefore be in the personality of him who revealed its mode of working. But is not the same true in degree, of every personality — that it contains an unanalysable residuum of mystery ? Without denying the dramatist's right to stress that aspect of personality and make fullest use of it, one may yet plead with THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 197 him to accept and use the sociologic conception of Newton as avatar of Dionysus and therefore a recurring type of known formula and widest educational applicability. For among the infinitely varied avatars of Dionysus, there is one in which occurs a miraculous transmutation. The heroic quest is achieved by feats which are apparently intellectual only. But the emotional element is subtly interwoven and wonderfully transformed. In heroism of this type, sex is made (as an illuminating French saying puts it) to pass through the brain. Athena takes over and completes the work of Dionysus. In being shown conformable to that type, Newton is further re- vealed as an instance of the link that unites saint and hero. Undeniably, his personality is there- by enhanced and consequently raised to still higher dramatic potential. Now history, modern, recent and even con- temporary history no less than ancient, is compact of similar resources awaiting poetic treatment and dramatic presentation. The practical task is to bridge the transition from the cold analyses of psychology and the lifeless re-syntheses of sociology to the warm and palpi- tating creations of poet and dramatist ; with whom come novelist and musician, artist and sculptor — in fact, all who create or evoke visions of life. There is, however, a preparatory work igS INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. to be done in forming a human medium and educating an audience. With that intermediate aspect of the task who are those chiefly con- cerned ? Is it not the Educationist and, even perhaps before him, the Eugenist ? From its earliest days, there has always been raised against the current exposition of Eugenics the pertinent objection that neither the founder himself, nor his continuators, have formulated with sufficient precision the ideal types they desired to realize. To breed perfect citizens pre- supposes a concurrence as to ideas of perfection which is not yet in evidence. To this objection, Galton himself was wont to submit the common- sense reply that every organized and accredited group of citizens should be left to formulate its own ideal of perfection. The doctors, the lawyers, the merchants, the craftsmen, for example, should each severally ascertain and declare the best con- ceivable of their order. So far, good. But this again raises a host of prior questions. Take a single one to illustrate the complexity of the task. Given, let us say, to take contemporary instances, Lister and Browning, as each in his own way, and for his guild, a nearly perfect per- sonality : how generalize his well-combined mental, physical and social qualities into type and present the resultant as visual symbol? Further, how present, dignify, and, in antique THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 199 phrase, sanctify such types and symbols alike for their own groups and for others ? Even to state this question is to show that the central problem of eugenics reaches into the deep issues of art, science and religion. How to define the ideal types and how to sanctify them afresh in the consciousness of each passing generation — is not that the central problem of Eugenics, making it continuous in substance and concerns with Morals and Religion, whose central problem is perhaps no other ? And until they discover some approximate working solution, the eugenists in their doings will too much resemble the wander- ings of explorers without map and compass in a trackless desert. They will find nothing and lose themselves. Let us therefore commend to the eugenist the Olympic Pantheon as a vital and cardinal direction. Let us commend to the educationist the evolutionary conception of the child as heir of all the ages, and that in no vague sense, but in the definite one of a call to succession, probation and achievement in a potential life cycle of determinate human phases. These may ascend as divine avatars, descend as infernal devilries, or oscillate (as for most of us) feebly and indecisively between the base and the noble issues of life. Let us commend to both the eugenist and educationist the path blazed for us by the Greeks in their 2O0 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. initiative outset towards a Eugenic Theatre. And since, with them already, it was an educa- tional one also, it should be called a Eupsychic Theatre, if we might have that word so much needed as complement to Eugenic. For It takes the ideal to blow an inch inside The dust of the actual ; and your Fouriers failed Because not poets enough to understand That life develops from within. Assemble then eugenist, educationist, and evolutionary historian, and concentrate them on the problems of social repertory. May they not prepare a banquet that should tempt even those reluctant guests, the poet and dramatist, to come ? Think of the illimitable resources available now for the first time in the long record of art and literature. The nineteenth century was the first age which learned to appreciate and tried sincerely to understand all preceding ages. It did not, like the mediaeval age and most others, treat with scoffing contempt its immediate predecessor in the succession of epochs. It did not, like the Renaissance, turn back with fascinated gaze to one past epoch singled out for idolatrous imitation. It did not, like the eighteenth century, imagine that the world was now for the first time fully made up — like a diagram arranged or a piece of mechanism finished and working — and as little did it THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 201 suppose, with the equally confident malcontents of that age, that it could cut itself adrift from the past and rewrite the present as on a cleaned slate for good and all. It did none of these things, but confronted existence with a temper that was daring, generous, hopeful, and inex- haustibly docile to all truth. Wherefore, surely, the sympathetic knowledge of the past which the learning and science of the nineteenth century painfully amassed or heroic- ally won, it behoves the imagination and the art of the twentieth to use joyfully for a deeper understanding of the present and prepara- tion for a nobler future. For that adventure the creative genius of poet and dramatist are mani- festly needed, and nothing else will do. There is a peculiar and definite relation between the dramatic poet and the scientific specialist, rarely though either sees it. Neces- sarily synthetic because directly mimetic of life, drama must needs assemble all the ingredients and factors of life in order to attain its purpose of re-compounding them into new and maybe higher unities. The dramatist is thus the com- plement, the counterpart, the corrective of the eternally-dividing specialist. The specialist, if he would not lapse into hopeless isolation, must himself cultivate the dramatic mood. Let him begin his own recovery of the full stature of 202 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. humanity by laboring towards the materials, the documentation of the dramatizer, whose task is to re-compose into visible unity, and show forth to all, the living whole which they have first mastered by dismembering. May one submit in passing that the masque is a convenient inter- mediate form, on which the specialist who is conscious of good-will " unexercised and un- breathed" may try his 'prentice hand? At any rate, we return to the contention with which this section opened : that each and all the main out- looks on Man and his World must be dramatized, and the people thus be incorporated into contem- porary culture. In the present revival of pageantry there is much preparatory stuff of renewing drama, and the elements of this are independently emerging on all sides in the professional theatre itself. Amid these manifold initiatives the Masques of Learning are notable because of a more conscious and deliberate reaching out towards a drama of the ascent of man — a drama to be played by the people, but with adequate co-operation and leadership from intellectuals and emotionals, and therefore with full potentiality of finding and making true leaders — and even poets — amongst the people themselves. The age of ascent by epic selection is not finished. It is beginning, and it will advance as we appreciate THE SOCIOLOGIST AT THE THEATRE. 203 the social value of the poet as giver of dreams ; and thus inspirer of deeds, O'Shaughnessy's ode is a document of science no less than a gem of literature : — We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams ; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams : Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory : One man with a dream, at pleasure Shall go forth and conquer a crown ; And three with a new song's measure Can trample a kingdom down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth. Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself in our mirth ; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth ; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth. Chapter V. THE MEDL^VAL CITIZEN.- What he Was and What he Made. In the archives of the City of Burgos, in northern Spain, there is said to be recorded a Minute of the City Council which runs somewhat as follows : " Resolved to build a cathedral of such magnificence that future generations will say we were mad to have begun it." The glorious edifice thus conceived in the civic pride of a Spanish city was commenced under a French master mason, finished by a German architect, and dedicated to the use of an English bishop ! In this anecdote is concentrated the distinction between the mediaeval and the modern man. The former was a citizen, a European and a Christian, the latter is a politician, a nationalist and an idolater. Can we invoke the living spirit of the mediaeval citizen and discover, by what he may tell us of himself and his works, what manner of man he was and what he did ? Are there among the resources of science, spells and incan- tations by which the sociologist may rival the * Address to the Home Reading Union, delivered in the Hall of the Skinners' Company, one of the surviving mediaeval guilds of London. THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 205 creative feats of the magician ? Let us see. But at the outset we must premise the remark that the incantations of sociology are addressed to the spirit of institutions and not of individuals. The latter evocation is for the psychologist, though we need not be above borrowing his magic wand on occasion. Of mediaeval institutions, jve may take the Guild as type and exemplar. Let us therefore state our case indirectly, and ask — what was the spirit of the guild and what did it contribute to, and derive from, the spirit of the mediaeval city. I. First of all, where are we to look pre-eminently for some clue to the spirit of the guild in the mediaeval city ? What one means by the spirit of a corporation is something analogous, in that collective organization, to what, in the individual person, we call character, temperament, ideals. We look for evidence of a man's character and temperament in the routine of his life, in the way he writes a letter, in the way he takes his break- fast and what he eats ; but still more do we expect to find symptomatic evidence from his mode of conduct in crises, in the presence, say, of a runaway horse in the street, or at the bed- side of an infectious patient. We look for evidence of his character in his public utterances. 2o6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and not less in what he says to his wife at home by the fireside. And so for a corporation. We have to look for evidence of its spirit in its ordinances, in the routine of its organization, but still more in what it does in emergencies and in times of stress and excitement. Let me take, as an instance of what I mean, the rebuild- ing of St. Giles, at Edinburgh, in the twelfth century, after it had been burnt down by the English in one of their periodic raids into Scotland. The cathedral — it was only a collegiate church in those days — was partially destroyed, but no sooner had the English army retired from Edin- burgh, than the City Fathers came together, consulted with the clergy, and asked, "What shall we do to get the High Kirk rebuilt ? " They put themselves in communication with three masons, whose names you will find in the excellent monograph by Dr. Cameron Lees on the history of St. Giles. With these three masons the city made a contract that they should build five chapels round the restored nave. The city provided the scaffolding and the money to pay for the work, but nothing else. There was no architect, there were no plans and specifications — but there was a resolve and an ideal. The authorities said to the masons, " The monks of Holyrood have a fine chapel, the chapel of THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 207 St. Stephen. We like it, and we wish to have five chapels more or less resembling that." The three masons went down to Holyrood to look at St. Stephen's chapel. They came back up the High Street and started forthwith on the chapels for St. Giles. They were architects as well as masons. In fact they built like bees. I would have you note that the contractors bound them to build these five chapels in " a mason-like way " — a significant phrase which instantly suggests to us that there must have been more in the character of being a mason in those days than we find it easy to realize now. And so we are brought at once to the question of the cor- porate morality of the guild. II. What was meant by corporate morality ? It meant that if any member of a guild did a bad action, the action reflected on every individual member of the guild. It meant also that a good piece of work by a guild brother reflected credit on all the members. Let me read to you an ordinance of the Bakers' Company of London, which will illustrate the sort of penalty they themselves inflicted on members who did not act up to the standard of corporate morality. I take this from the admirable book of Mr. Way, who went round to all the City halls of the London 2o8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Guilds making delightful drawings of them, and published them accompanied by Mr. Philip Norman's descriptive and historical account : " If any default shall be found in the bread of a baker of the city, the first time let him be drawn upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to his own house through the great streets, where there may be most people assembled, and through the great streets that are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging from his neck. If a second time he shall be found committing the same ofFence, let him be drawn from the Guildhall through the great street of Cheap in manner aforesaid to the pillory, and let him be put upon the pillory and remain there at least one hour in the day. The third time he shall be drawn and his oven shall be pulled." In further illustration of this corporate morality, I will read from Mr. George Unwin's " Gilds of London " an ordinance of St. Stephen's Guild, expressing a common usage as to the conduct of members of the Guild : " If any one of them be a common brawler, or given to quarrel, or be a vagabond or night -wanderer, or use dice or brothels, or be guilty of any crime whereby the brethren or sisters may incur scandal .... he shall be admonished once, twice or thrice, and if he be delinquent the fourth time, he shall be wholly expelled from the brotherhood." THE MEDIAEVAL CITIZEN. 209 From Mr. Way's book I quote a record of an actual punishment inflicted on a misbehaving apprentice of the Guild of Drapers : " One, John Rolls, having been guilty of a grave offence, was brought before the master and wardens on a court day, when the case being proved, two tall men, their features concealed by hoods, entered the room with two pennyworth of burchen rods, and there, wiowten any word spekyng, they pulled off the doublet and shirt of the said John Rolls, and there vpon hym (beyng naked) they spent all ye said rods for hys said unthryfty demeanour." You will notice that the chastisers of John Rolls wore hoods. These hoods may have been merely masks to conceal identity, or they may have been something more symbolic. The hood once had a central place in craft symbolism, as it still has in certain surviving guilds. One recognises the university of an officiating clergyman by the colour of his hood — scarlet from Oxford, green from Durham, white from Edinburgh, and so on. Besides this, there are of course distinctions of form and colour for different degrees in the same university. But, broadly speaking, the hood marks the Master of Arts and its colour indicates the university. Now a degree of Master of Arts meant of old a licence to teach : that is, to practise the occupation 210 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. characteristic of a university. It was the insignia of the passed apprentice, declaring him as having mastered his craft. The universities are just surviving mediaeval guilds which have succeeded in maintaining in common usage the dignity and insignia of their craft. In the mediaeval city the manual workers had also their distinctive cos- tume and mode of signifying and dignifying the rise from apprenticeship to mastership. The rivalry of Town and Gown, the contempt of the student for the craftsman and the countering resentment — all this arose when the craftsman lost the dignity of his mastership and had no longer the insignia which' brought him within the same system of moral values, and entitled him to the same corporate pride as the academic masters still possessed. The surviving guilds of London are called Livery Companies. By the courtesy of one of them, we are met to-day in a noble hall, whose dignity and beauty owe so much to the series of paintings by which Mr. Brangwyn has decorated its walls and commemorated the history of the Guild. The " Livery " of the Guild is, or should be, for the individual member, what the Hall is for the Corporation, the expression of a worthy and dignified place and function in the service of the city and the life of the community. Unfor- tunatelv it has come about that, by the THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 211 mercenariness of menials and the pretensions of plutocrats, the idea of livery has been perverted, its symbolism degraded and its social usefulness well nigh ■ lost. It is surely for the masters of academic arts, whose livery still gives personal dignity and prestige, to aid brother craftsmen of the civic arts to recover theirs. The guilds had once not only a special cos- tume, but all the paraphernalia of a great and dignified corporation. I quote from Mr. Way a description of the Merchant Taylors' Company's crest : " It was a holy lamb within a sun. The original crest was ' A pavilion purple, garnished with gold, being within the same, our Blessed Lady, St. Mary the Virgin, in a vesture of gold sitting upon a cushion azure, Christ, her son, standing naked before her, holding between his hands a vesture called tunica inconsutilis (seam- less), his said mother working upon that, one end of the same vesture set within a wreath gold and azure, the mantle purple, furred with ermine.' " This, you will observe, is a very different sort of crest from the lions and tigers emblazoned on the shields of the fighting aristocracy. Instead of a beast of prey, we have an idealization of a little boy holding a skein of wool for his mother. That is the spirit 'of the guild : social service actuated by a sense of supreme spiritual relation, 212 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. making work not a task, but an opportunity for joy. Again, regarding the guidance of conduct, let us turn back for one moment to Mr. Unwin and read : " If any of the brethren," runs the ordi- nance of a certain guild, " be at discord, which God forbid, then the plaintiff shall make the plaint to the masters of the Brotherhood, and if the masters cannot agree, the plaintiff should go to two or four of their other brethren, and if all these cannot make them agree then it shall be well and lawful for him to go to Common Law, and if the plaintiff act contrary to this ordinance he shall pay to the box for his trespass two shillings." It was not that in those days there was any lack of law and lawyers. But the spirit of the guild preferred to do its own peacemaking in its own way. III. In speaking of the crests of the guilds I did not refer to the masons' crests. But they are particularly significant in themselves, and for our purpose. The armorials of the French guild of stonecutters, for instance, are " on azure, an ascension of the Son of God from a mountain, the whole in gold." What is this but a general- ized version or vision of the cathedral? These men were indeed the cathedral - builders — the THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 213 logeurs du bon Dieu. The names of the architects who designed the cathedrals are thought to be, most of them, lost. Naturally, because, speaking generally, they did not exist. The cathedrals were built by groups of masons, each one of whom carried the vision of the cathedral in his own soul. Where labor is architectonic, great buildings grow. They are not made. Not only were the cathedrals built by the guilds. They were also largely maintained by the guilds. In support of this I may quote the following extracts from Dr. Cameron Lees' "St. Giles," and I ask you to take them as typical : (a) " Each member of the craft, for the period of his life, and according to his means, was ' to put helping hands ' to the support of a chaplain, and to the repair and ornamentation of the altar. Every member of the craft receiving an appren- tice was to pay five shillings for the same purpose, and 'no apprentice should be received by any one of them to the said craft of skinners, unless he has been taken in like manner bound, that after the expiry of the years of his appren- ticeship, he shall put helping hands in like manner to the reparation of the said altar — the apprentice also, before he shall be admitted to the craft, shall swear and become bound, so soon as he shall come to the freedom of his apprentice- 214 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ship, not to receive any apprentice unless he shall pay five shillings to the said altar.' {b) "In 1498, merchants and craftsmen, for the purpose of assisting the authorities to keep order in the streets, were ordained to have in their booths, ' defensabil geir, sik as jak, sellet, bur- gandynis, gluifis of plait, and ane hand axe or sword under the penalty of £20 for the kirk wark ' {i.e., for additions to or repair of the church fabric). {c) " In 1496, the hammermen or smiths received a grant of the chapel of St. Elois, which had been founded shortly before. They were to pay forty shillings towards upholding divine service at the altar of the chapel, and reparation of the orna- ments thereof, ' and all men of the craft were to pay to the uphold of divine service at the said altar weekly and dayly, and ane honourable chaplain thereof to the craft.' " Towards the building and maintenance of the cathedrals, I do not of course mean to deny that a great part in the total contribution of resources came from the feudal aristocracy, from the merchant princes, and from the ordinary ecclesi- astical sources. On the contrary, it was- just because all classes co-operated generously and spontaneously, faithfully and loyally, that the mediaeval cathedral so perfectly expressed the spirit of the mediaeval city, and the city — at its THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 215 best — SO perfectly expressed the spirit of a great civilization. What I am emphasizing is the type and character of the guilds and their craftsmen, who handled and brought together into a whole, with a meaning and a consciousness of great purpose, the elements of stone and wood, of metal and glass. As the contents of her drawing- room reveal to the observer the character of his hostess — and even her mental and moral history — so, from the decorative features of the cathedral you may read the spirit of the guild and its crafts- men, of their city and their times. Let us take, as an illustrative item, the great east window of York Minster. The accounts for the construction of York Minster — extending over nearly a couple of centuries (if I remember rightly) — are preserved and may be seen in the printed records of the Surtees Society. It is a good many years since I looked through those accounts. But I think one might fairly read from them the story of the east window, somewhat as follows : — There was in the city of Bristol a small Master Glazier (employing perhaps one or two journeymen and as many apprentices), whose work was appre- ciated as much in York as in his own western city. To this Bristol glazier, the monk in charge of construction wrote " we want an east window to fill so many square feet, and we w^ant it by such and such a date. What is your price ? " 2i6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. The Bristol glazier replied (I think it was about) " £20." The tender was accepted, and a simple contract was signed, binding the glazier to deliver the goods at the specified date, and of workmanlike quality. I do not believe the Bristol glazier received any particular instruc- tions as to the subject to be represented, or its mode of treatment. It would be taken for granted that every working glazier knew as a matter of course what should be shown in the stained glass of an east window of a cathedral, and further, it was taken as axiomatic that, to leave the general design and its details to the free play of the workman's personality, was the most likely way to get a masterpiece. One of the ideas of the Cathedral was to unite under a single roof all the Guilds of the City. This was to be effected by giving each of them an altar, or sometimes even a side chapel, of their own. The guild would thus construct an altar or a chapel dedicated to its own patron saint. It would also maintain a special priest attached to the service of the altar or chapel. In Antwerp museum may be seen to-day a painting of Christ, by Quintin Matsys, which was originally a painting made for the altar of the Joiners. Quintin Matsys painted that picture for seventy-five florins. About a century later it was taken from the cathedral and sold to the THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 217 Corporation of Antwerp for fifteen hundred florins. A century later, Queen Elizabeth tried, and failed, to buy it for one of her palaces for three thousand florins. I cite this as an illus- tration of how the economic value of a craftsman's work may grow, when it is produced, not for a market, but for an ideal. You may serve God, and make merry, at the expense of Mammon. IV. I propose now to speak of how to read the cathedral as an index to the life of the craftsman, of his family and his city. Let us enter it, so to say, by the stage door.* If the mediaeval Theatre was the Playhouse of the Cathedral, it was also the Playhouse of the Guild. Now there is no better indication of the social status of a people than the character of its drama. A habitual interest in drama that is at once epos and tragedy is a sure mark of high social and mental level. If in addition you find a people not content to be passive spectators of professional actors, but themselves organizing the play and supplying the performers from their own ranks, you know you are dealing with a real Patriciate. This is * In speaking of the stage door of the Cathedral, one is not of course to be taken quite literally. The Mystery Play was performed sometimes on a temporary stage erected in the precincts of the Cathedral. Sometimes the stage was fitted up on a big wagon that moved through the town, the performance beginning perhaps at daybreak and going on all through the day till dusk. 2i8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. what the guilds did. And you cannot escape the implication that the craftsmen had some of the essential qualities of an aristocracy. The Miracle or Mystery Play which, for some centuries, constituted the stock performance of the medi- aeval theatre, was (as it might be called in later dramatic language) a Masque of the Ideal in History. It was presented by concerted action of the guilds of each city. In illustration take the following scheme of co-operation amongst the guilds of the city of York for the play of Corpus Christi in 1415. It was compiled by the Town Clerk and is reprinted in " Everyman, with other Interludes, including eight Miracle Plays" (J. M. Dent). Here is the scheme of the play and the list of guildsmen performers : I. Tanners. — God the Father Almighty creating and forming the heavens, angels and archangels ; Lucifer and the angels that fell with him into hell. II. Plasterers. — God the Father, in his own substance, creating the Earth, and all which is therein, in the space of five days. III. Carde-Makers. — God the Father creating Adam of the slime of the earth, and making Eve of the rib, and inspiring them with the spirit of life. IV. Fullers. — God prohibiting Adam and Eve from eating of the tree of life. V. CoupERS. — Adam and Eve with a tree betwixt them ; the serpent deceiving them with apples; God speaking to them and cursing the serpent, and an angel with a sword driving them out of paradise. THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 219 VI. Armourers. — Adam and Eve, an angel with a spade and a distafi assigning them labour. VII. Gaunters. — Abel and Cain killing sacrifices. VIII. Shipwrights. — God foretelling Noah to make an ark of light wood. IX. Fyshmongers, Pessyners, Mariners. — Noah in the ark with his wife and three children, and divers animals. X. Perchemyners, Bukbynders. — Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac ; a ram, bush, and angel. XI. HosYERs. — Moses exalting the serpent in the wilder- ness ; king Pharaoh ; eight Jews admiring and expecting. XII. Spicers — Mary and a doctor declaring the sayings of the prophets about the future birth of Christ ; an angel saluting her. Mary saluting Elizabeth. XIII. Pouterers, Founders.- — Mary, Joseph willing to put her away, an angel speaking to them that they should go to Bethlehem. XIV. Tylers. — Mary, Joseph, a midwife, the child born lying in a manger betwixt an ox and an ass, and the angel speaking to the shepherds. XV. Chaundelers. — The shepherds speaking by turns ; the star in the east ; an angel giving joy to the shepherds that a child was born. XVI. GoLDSMiTHES, Orfeures.^ — The three kings coming from the east, Herod asking them about the child Christ ; with the son of Herod, two counsellors and a messenger. XVII. Gold-Beters, Mone-Makers. — Mary with the child and the star above, and the three kings ofiering gifts. XVIII. Masons. — Mary with the child ; Joseph, Anna, and a nurse with young pigeons; Simeon receiving the child in his arms, and two sons of Simeon. XIX. Marashals. — Mary with the child, and Joseph flying into Egypt, by an angel's telling them. XX. Girdellers, Naylers, Sawters. — Herod com- manding the children to be slain, four soldiers with lances. 220 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. two counsellors of the king, and four women lamenting the slaughter of them. XXI. Sporters, Lorymers. — The doctors, the child Jesus sitting in the temple in the midst of them, hearing them and asking them questions. Four Jews, Mary and Joseph seeking him and finding him in the temple. XXII. Barbers. — Jesus, John the Baptist baptising him, and two angels helping them. XXIII. Vyntners. — Jesus, Mary, bridegroom and bride, master of the household with his family with six water- pots, where water is turned into wine. XXIV. Smythes, Fevers. — Jesus upon the pinnacle of the temple ; Satan tempting with stones ; two angels ad- ministering, etc. XXV. C(oRvisoRs). — Peter, James and John ; Jesus ascending into the mountain and transfiguring himself before them. Moses and Elias appearing, and a voice speaking from a cloud. XXVI. Elennagers. Simon the leper asking Jesus if he would eat with him. Two disciples ; Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Jesus and wiping them with her hair. XXVII. Plummers, Pattern - Makers. — Jesus, two apostles, the woman taken in adultery, four Jews accusing her. XXVIII. Pouch-Makers, Botillers, Cap-Makers. — Lazarus in the sepulchre, Mary Magdalene, Martha, and two Jews admiring. XXIX. Vestment-Makers, Skynners. — Jesus upon an ass with its foal ; twelve apostles following Jesus ; six rich and six poor men, with eight boys with branches of palm trees, constantly saying blessed, etc., and Zaccheus ascending into a sycamore tree, XXX. Cuttelers, Blade-Smyths, Shethers, Scalers, Buckle - Makers, Horners. — Pilate, Caiaphas, two soldiers, three Jews, Judas selling Jesus. THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 221 XXXI. Bakers, Waterloders. — The supper of the Lord and paschal lamb, twelve apostles ; Jesus, tied about with a linen towel, washing their feet. The institution of the sacrament of the body of Christ in the new law and communion of the apostles. XXXII. CoRDWANERs. — Pilate, Caiaphas, Annas, forty armed soldiers, Malchas, Peter, James, John, Jesus, and Judas kissing and betraying him. XXXIII. Bowers, Fletchers. — Jesus, Annas, Caia- phas, and four Jews striking and bastinadoing Christ. Peter, the woman accusing him, and Malchas. XXXIV. Tapisers, Couchers. — Jesus, Pilate, Annas, Caiaphas ; two counsellors and four Jews accusing Christ. XXXV. Littesters. — Herod, two counsellors, four soldiers, Jesus and three Jews. XXXVI. Cukes, Waterloders. — Pilate, Annas, Caia- phas, two Jews, and Judas carrying from them thirty pieces of silver. XXXVII. Sauce-Makers. — Judas hanging himself. XXXVIII. MiLNERS, Tiel-Makers, Ropers, Cevers, Turners, Hayresters, Bollers. — Jesus, Pilate, Caiaphas, Annas, six soldiers carrying spears and ensigns, and other four leading Jesus from Herod, desiring Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be crucified, and then binding and scourging him, putting a crown of thorns upon his head ; three soldiers casting lots for the vesture of Jesus. XXXIX. Shermen.— Jesus, covered with blood, bearing his cross towards Mount Calvary, Simon Sereneus, etc. XL. Pynners, Lateners, Paynters. — The cross, Jesus extended upon it on the earth ; four Jews scourging him with whips, and afterwards erecting the cross, with Jesus upon it, on Mount Calvary. XLI. Bouchers, Pulterers. — The cross, two thieves, crucified, and Jesus suspended betwixt them ; Mary, the mother of Jesus, John, Mary, James and Salome ; a soldier 2 22 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. with a lance and a servant with a sponge. Pilate, Annas, Caiaphas, a centurion, Joseph of Arimathea and Nico- demus taking him down and laying him in the sepulchre. XLII. Satellers, Sellers, Glasiers. — Jesus destroy- ing hell ; twelve good and twelve evil spirits. XLIII. Carpenters, Joyners. — The centurion declar- ing to Pilate, Caiaphas and Annas, with other Jews, the signs appearing on the death of Jesus. XLIV. Cartwrights, Carvers, Sawyers. — Jesus rising from the sepulchre, four soldiers armed, and three Marias lamenting; Pilate, Caiaphas and Annas; a young man clothed in white sitting in the sepulchre and talking to the women. XLV. Wyedrawers. — Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene with spices. XLVI. Broggers, Wool-Packers, Wadsmen. — Jesus, Luke and Cleophas in the form of travellers. XLVII. EscRiviNERS. Lummers, Questors, Dubbors. — Jesus, Peter, John, James, Philip and other apostles; Thomas feeling the wounds of Jesus. XLVIII. Taillyoures. — Mary, John the Evangelist, two angels and eleven apostles; Jesus ascending before them, and four angels bearing a cloud. XLIX. Potters. — Mary, two angels, eleven apostles, the Holy Ghost descending from them, and four Jews admiring. L. Drapers — Jesus, Mary, Gabriel with two angels, two virgins, and three Jews of the kindred of Mary, eight apostles and two devils. LI. Lynwevers. — Four apostles bearing the shrine of Mary, Fergus hanging upon it with two other Jews and one angel. LII. Wevers of Wollen, — Mary ascending with a multitude of angels ; eight apostles, with Thomas preach- ing in the desert. THE MEDIAEVAL CITIZEN. 223 LIII. HosTiLERS. — Mary, and Jesus crowning her, with a great number of angels. LIV. Mercers. — Jesus, Mary, twelve apostles; four angels with trumpets and four with a lance with two scourges ; four good and four bad spirits, and six devils. Now the above list, and the vast scheme of action which it unfolds, merit serious study. For such study, it is of the first importance that we should understand, and give due value to, the relation of the players to the cathedral itself, which was to the mediaeval theatre something of what /Egean sky and sea, altar of Dionysus and enthroned Olympians, were to the audience of a hillside theatre in ancient Attica — the symbolic link with ultimate things. But to begin with, look at the list carefully, and observe how it reveals, even to the most cursory inspec- tion, the mediaeval dramatic performance as a co-operation of the guilds at work in achieving a co-operation of ideas. It was a Concert of the Crafts in the culture service of the City. Here were trade unionists lifted from sectional and material to civic and cultural levels and interests. Here, assuredly, were co-operators not inhibited and stunted by any " tuppence-halfpenny on the brain ! " The problem, then, is How did the cathedral and what it stood for thus enter into, unify and uplift the life of the mediaeval craftsmen ? We 224 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS, must not be satisfied with vague answers in general terms — such as, that the cathedral and its ritual moved the believer by thrilling him with the hope of heaven, by terrorizing him with the fear of hell, by tranquillizing him with the assurance of salvation. The problem is to see in detail, and in general view, just how the emotional system of hope and fear, of thrill and serenity, of ecstasy and agony awakened the inner life of the individual craftsman and corre- lated it with the outer life, of home and work- shop, of city and of civilization, of nature and humanity. Of the ways in which the cathedral worked, we have seen that one was the drama as miracle play, and this species of drama we have defined as a masque of the ideal in history. To justify this characteristic, some further examina- tion of the miracle play becomes necessary. V. The Miracle Play was a dramatic presentation of natural and human history as given in the Hebrew Bible. The making of the world and of man, the story of their past and the certainties of their future, as these great mysteries appeared to the poets, historians and prophets of Israel, were the invariable theme of the miracle play. An infinitude of variation in the detail of the story and staging was allowed to local initiative, THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN, 225 and was liberally practised, but the grand central theme remained the same. Now what were the essentials of this conception of Man and the Universe ? The cosmology of the Hebrews did not markedly differ in structural features from that developed in other early civilizations. Indeed, archaeological research has shown how derivative it was from neighboring and earlier religions. But read the nature rhapsodies in the Book of Job and see how deeply the Hebrew mind was penetrated ; first, by the sense of a sublime world-drama in process and, second, by a feeling that in relation to this grander unity in which all creation held together and moved, the sub- sidiary dramas of individual life and human history have their meaning and their purpose. True, that in a people of pastoral origin and long patriarchal traditions, such a conception was natural enough. But the unique distinction of the Hebrews is to have generalized and unified their own tribal history into a symbolic interpre- tation of the life of man as idealist and the history of the human race as humanity. From Moses to the prophets, and from these to the carpenter of Nazareth and the fishermen of Galilee, the Hebrew people produced a succession of seers and teachers who were at one in uphold- ing this great parable and preachment. All of 226 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. these felt and experienced, afiirmed and taught that the fulness of life is in the mystery, the process, the ecstasy, the agony, but first and last the progress, of its ideals. Thus the very meaning and purpose of personal life and of human history became interpretable as a con- tinual endeavor to express, to symbolize and to unify, for the individual on one scale and for the race on another, the sublime drama of the birth, the struggle, the death, and yet through all the renewal and ascent, of the ideal in humanity. The Hebrews did not invent drama — that great achievement was left for the Greeks — but they attained to a dramatization of yet deeper meaning and wider reach ; one into which all others can be gathered up as subservient or resultants, or as the parts into the whole. What the Hebrews invented was the presentment of life and of history as the never-ending drama of moral perfection. Isaiah's picture of a servant of the ideal, despised and rejected of men, and dying for his nation's salvation from their sins, became for the mothers of Israel the model of filial perfection, and so inevitably the objective of the individual and of the race. The long educa- tional effort by which this extraordinary uplift of the soul was achieved, is told in their litera- ture. And thus the Hebrew Bible has come nearest to becoming a world-literature, just THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 227 because, of all national literatures, it came nearest to satisfying the heart's deepest desire. VI. Now the man of the Middle Ages was very far from being an ideal man. And he knew it. He knew himself for a creature with moods of soaring aspiration and passages of high endea- vor, in the long intervals of which he was a creeping, grovelling, guzzling animal in grievous need of redemption and of interceding saints. Indeed, the mediaeval European was remarkably like the modern European, save that his moral sense was more alert and he had more aptitude — and means — for making humiliating comparisons. If less astonishing in some of his deeds, he was more ambitious in his dreams, and paid willing homage to unattainable per- fections. Knowing himself and revering the saints, he did not need Darwin's doctrine of organic descent to inform and convince him that there flowed in his veins the blood of unre- generate ancestors ; that characters vermian, reptilian, bovine, asinine, simian and carnivorous all held carnival within him. To this mediaeval man^ — consciously animal and urgent to be human at least — in his moments of tenderest emotion, was told, by noble priests and saintly women, the wonderful story of an ancient people, 228 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. chosen from amongst others for a divine purpose, devoted to the ideal. The magic shafts of such a conception, of vocation and purpose, and of a divine relationship in human affairs, w^ere aimed at his heart when he brought his bride to church. They were driven in when he came with his child to be baptized ; they went right home when he brought his mother's remains for burial. At a funeral everyone is, for a moment at least, a mystic. Thus operating on his mind at times of maxi- mum impressionability, the mediaeval church educated mediaeval man into the certainty that the dream of moral perfection was no mere invention of a passing order, but had the sanc- tion of Nature and the assurance of History. He was persuaded that by adoption he might inherit the spiritual legacy of the Chosen People — of a Newly Chosen people, as he was apt to think it — and thereby substitute the continuous quest of the ideal for its intermittent and infrequent pursuit. That was to be attained in the reali- zation of a plenary Christian sanctity of life and thought. As for the possibility of the transfor- mation, was it not sufficiently attested by the long array of saints and heroes which generation after generation emerged from all ranks and classes within the bounds of Christendom ? What created, then, the wonders of the middle THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 229 ages was a faith and belief that the known resotirces of Nature and History were adequate to the planning of the public and private life of the plain citizen, so as to make habitual and systematic those high conditions of which the soul was cognisant at certain intense moments : in the love of man for maid, of father for wife and child, of son for mother. Here was the source of the essential Miracle that wrought (by a service at once social and divine) the recurrent trans- formation of animal into human qualities, and of these into heroic and saintly ones : that built those marvels of organic order and beauty, the medicEval cities : that expressed the abiding spirit of them in the erection and maintenance of the Gothic cathedrals, and made the symbolism of these express and unify, not only the meaning and intention of Nature and the trend of History, but also the idealization of Maid and Mother, of Son and Father. The Miracle Play was assuredly well named. The cathedral was the art synthesis of its age, expressing its faculty and aspiration. In its external shell of stone and wood, glass and metal, it figured to the eye the variety and glory of the cosmic drama and the multitudinous human struggle to play in it a worthy part. In its ritual, the arts of music and painting, of drama, liter- ature and poetry, in united and harmonious 230 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. appeal to eye and ear, to memory and hope, repeated and enforced the message and the urge. The everyday sense of immanent higher reaUty, which resulted from it all is well illustrated by the story that it was customary, in a street accident in the mediaeval city, for the crowd that collected round the victim, to encourage him with the exhortation to " think of Jesus and be of good cheer." VII. After our lengthy digression into the psycho- logy of conversion, we are, I hope, in a better position to understand the vogue and the sig- nificance of the Miracle Play, in the life of the mediaeval craftsman. It was his personal and corporate rehearsal, in the free and spontaneous impulse of play, for the greater civic feat of cathedral building. I do not mean, of course, that he consciously related them in this way, or normally thought of the one as a preparation for the other. But I do mean that what the cathe- dral did for the city, by its architecture and decoration, its services, and above all by its highest feat of synthetic urge, the Mass — the same, in homelier fashion, the miracle play did for the guild and the individual craftsman. The Guild, the Theatre, the Cathedral, the City — these were the steps in the education of the worker. They were the stages of a process of THE MEDIEVAL CITIZEN. 231 creative evolution of citizen's personality and city's institutions. They opened for the worker a career, moral and social, by which, in a cres- cendo of self-expression, he might rise to be successively craftsman and artist, gentleman and scholar, mystic, citizen. The Guild incorporated the worker into the high tradition of the craft. The Theatre incorporated him into historic cul- ture. The Cathedral incorporated him into the city. And the City incorporated him into that world of mediaeval Christendom of which the nations of Europe were the families. The Cathe- dral, as we learn to read its beautiful legend, tells us for its time and its region the story of the City that Jack built. They could not read and write, these craftsmen who built the cathedrals and staged and played the mystery drama. But is there in our contem- porary civilization any group, even amongst the most cultivated classes, who, for their time and period, reach a similar level of culture — to say nothing of practical performance having endur- ing worth ? Who to-day is adequately equipped in contemporary knowledge of how the universe and our planet were made and how they work ? The astronomers and geologists you answer. Who are adequately versed in contemporary views of natural and human history ? The biologists, psychologists and historians, no 232 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. doubt. Who have mastered and unified con- temporary theories of the meaning and destiny of civilization ? At this let a few sociologists be supposed to hold up audacious hands as having a claim. But when we ask who unites the learning of astronomers, geologists, biologists, psychologists, historians and sociologists ? And who, moreover, reconciles such unified know- ledge with the wisdom of priests and the intuition of women ? Echo only answers Who ? But to this level of culture the mediaeval citizen did practically rise, for his time and his civili- zation, and as craftsman he expressed its resultant in life and labor. What wonder that with such unification of resources there went an exaltation of man and his chief product — the city. In the resultant uplift, the urge of life to live to its intensest and utmost found expression in the creation of the mediaeval city and the flowering of its spirit in the cathedral. " What- ever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might, for there is no knowledge in the grave whither thou goest." Chapter VI. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION* Following our study of the mediaeval citizen, his dreams and deeds, let us turn to the modern citizen and consider what he has and what he wants. What the modem citizen has in unique and, from the standpoint of any preceding period of human history, in undreamed-of measure, is the control of natural forces. The collective resources of this newly-acquired and virtually creative power we call science. What the modern citizen wants is the knowledge and the impulse to use this newly-acquired and creative power for the perfecting of himself through the fulfilling, if he only knew it, of the heart's desire. The modern citizen, of whom we would speak with all respect, is yet, in regard to his total resources, in the sad dilemma of Buridan's ass. He sees around him, addressing him from their proper points of vantage, diverse varieties of humane and generous ideal — even the appeal of * Based on two addresses to university students, one to Professor Bailey's class at Yale and the other to Professor Wenley's class at Ann Arbor {University of Michigan). Q 234 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. the City Beautiful is visibly among them — all of which he recognizes more or less clearly as belonging to the heritage of religion and literature and art. But standing back from these, and set apart as if opposed, he sees more vaguely the whole thaumaturgy of science in the keeping of its ministers. It also, he understands, has much to say to him, but " accept this and you must renounce that ! " he has been told. This deterrent proclamation has so much effect, that it keeps him from getting what ought to be the average man's share of the value of either faculty and domain, let alone of both. It declares and perpetuates a fictitious antithesis bequeathed to the hapless modern citizen by the blunders of mediaeval ecclesiastics, the ignorance of Renaissance pedants, and the illusions of eighteenth century romantics. These illusions, that ignorance, those blunders continue to flourish and still largely determine the course of education, the valuations of life, and the trend of politics. But happily the signs of a transition towards a more vital and synthetic order are increasingly manifest. To examine some of the more significant of these tendencies, to set them over against the antithetical survivals, and to indicate ways of advancing and developing them, is the purpose of the four sections of this chapter. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 235 § I. — The People and Their Rulers. That the industrial world is undergoing a deep and far-reaching change, indications are not far to seek. Most conspicuous of objective manifestations is the tendency to replace steam power, derived from coal, by electric power, derived from water sources. But whatever the source of its energy, the electric dynamo is, in respect of social reaction, a profoundly different type of machine from the steam engine. The steam engine has multiplied the energies of mankind beyond the dreams of romance. But on the moral side it has been, if not an evil genius, yet the most potent instrument of popular miseducation. Its usage has habituated two or three generations of Europeans and Americans to acceptance of dirt, noise, and waste as normal accompaniments of the industrial process — a system of education in which the favored inhabitants of Great Britain had well nigh another generation's start. On the other hand, the electric dynamo, wherever it goes, acts as a missionary of the contrary educational ideal, for the very conditions of its efficiency are cleanliness, silence and economy. As the monument of the earlier steam age was the factory, so the most characteristic contribu- tion of the later steam age to architecture and 236 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. civic adornment has been the railway station. The monumental aspect of the steam railway station, and likewise its aesthetic and hygienic qualities, are well summed up in the characteri- zation of M. Agustin Rey, a leading advocate and exponent of town planning in France. M. Rey proposes as its accurate and proper architectural designation the title of Smoke- Hall. Taking them as symbols of the passing steam age and the coming electrical age respectively, contrast the nearest smoke-hall with a railway station of truly modern type, one which has not only been electrified, but also architecturally reconstructed in the spirit of electricity. For choice, take the terminal station of the premier railway system of the foremost railway-building nation. Now the remarkable thing about the Pennsylvania terminus in New York is not at all its magnitude and its magnificent proportions of space and almost temple-like structure — impres- sive as these are — but something quite different. Of its essential qualities, we would select two as characteristic of the nascent electrical age it heralds. The first is the almost hospital-like perfection of hygienic cleanliness attained throughout its labyrinthine body, the second is the tranquil beauty of its noble central hall. There the conversation of resting travellers and THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 237 the footfall of hurrying ones resound in un- broken echoes from lofty dome and spacious walls, undisfigured by commercial art. But mural decoration there is, and that of the appropriate sort, which unostentatiously uses the artist to express the meaning and the message of the place. On some half-dozen panels of monumental size, artist and geographer — a combination in itself typical of the new order — have united to produce a series of representations — at once maps and pictures, works of science and of art — -showing the region served by the Pennsylvania system and its place in country, continent and globe. To foresee the possible service of electricity to civic hygiene, and beyond that to civic adornment, imagine the characteristic architecture of the steam age — the smoke-halls, the factories and warehouses, the grimy tenements throughout the inferno of the industrial cities— similarly purified and trans- formed ! The increasing tendency to get work done by electric power, though doubtless the most con- spicuous, is yet but one in a whole cycle of objective changes in that relation of man to environment which we call industry. What of the corresponding subjective changes ? Here we should get different answers from different people, according to their kind. Those 238 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. interested in the philosophy of labor might point to the growth of syndicalism ; others, looking to the elemental origins of philosophy itself, might instance the revival and growing influence of those rural ways of regarding things (so apt to seem negligible to town-reared politicians), of which Sir Horace Plunkett affords the most illustrious of contemporary examples. Still others interested in correlating art with work, and both with life, might point to the oncoming of a type of elementary educa- tion that addresses itself to conduct and life, and so is interested, for example, more in providing music and dancing for the workers' children than in drilling their minds in pretended mental gymnastics. But most would probably retire upon recourse to the vague but prevailing phrase, " labor unrest," as a symptom of changing mentality in the industrial world. Now this is a symptom which appeals to the sociologist, because he can read it more ways than one. Eager for full and impartial diag- nosis, he reads it as an index to the mental and moral state of those who use it, as well as of those to whom they apply it. And who are those who use this phrase of " labor unrest " ? It would seem to be current among all classes of the population except the laboring class, and therefore presumably implies a conception of THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 239 labor generally held, except by laborers. " Labor unrest " being regarded as an abnormal pheno- menon, the state attributed to labor as normal is by implication that of being at rest — like a sleeping top. If so, what is the corresponding normal state imputed to the non-laboring classes? Is it not that of being "at leisure"? Such, unless our diagnosis be incorrect, are the passive or static social ideals conceived by the non-laboring classes as appropriate to their own state and that of the workers respectively. What are their corresponding active or dynamic ideals ? For labor, is it not that its disciplined ranks should follow where they are led? And where are they being led ? The objective of a movement is discoverable not on the face of things, but in the minds of the leaders. Now an ideal, if it means anything, means definite direction towards an objective we really, not merely ostensibly, desire to reach. To discover the direction whither, in the higher class scheme of life and society, the people are being led, we thus need to examine the social ideals of the directing classes themselves. And to find their real and not nominal ideals, we should have to search and probe the Life of Leisure ; for it is there, where economic pressure is relaxed, that essential springs of personality are uncoiled and deeper motives of conduct operate. Thus we 240 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. are led to a field of contemporary observation in which journalist and novelist, moralist and mad- doctor have as yet had more to say than the sociologist. The authorities of greatest traditional weight in this field are, to be sure, the theologians and clergy in all ages and countries, and they have ever agreed that the leisure life of the well-to-do classes stands in great and grievous need of reform. As this is one of the few matters on which theologians are in accord, their conclusion is accentuated. Few modern theologians, how- ever, go so far as to endorse the ancient con- viction that the acquisition of riches — assumed to be a perennial preoccupation of most of the directing classes — marks not the road to life and well-being, but that to death and damnation. In any case, are not such ancient, not to say archaic, moralizings remote from the matter? Are they data with which the science of sociology can usefully deal in its interpretation of current events and its reading of contem- porary social evolution ? Let us see. There are two recent treatises of remarkable insight and originality which may perhaps be called in evidence. The latest sociological study of " Leisure " — the only one as yet which treats it in the truly detached and monographic way of science — THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 241 affords significant clues. It is not an accident that the same author'-'"' has traced the evolution of "Business Enterprise," and worked out with unique clearness the tendencies of industrial development. Seeing human life as an oscilla- tion between the poles of Labor and Leisure, and following this thread through the complex warp and woof of civilization, he finds, in the tenden- cies that make for the divorce of Labor and Leisure, a main, indeed a sufficient, cause of those periodic reversions to barbarism and savagery in the most advanced and progressive of contemporary societies, which it has puzzled the students of Comte and Spencer to account for. Mr. Veblen closes his investigations as he began them, in the indicative mood, and with punctilious scientific correctitude, he leaves his generalizations there. Yet there is not much left either of " the leisure class " or of " business enterprise," as either is commonly understood, when Mr. Veblen has done with them, and the reader, yielding to ethical impulse, will probably rise from perusal of these two volumes of masterly analysis with a conclusion remarkably like the old theological pronouncement, dis- credited for his country and time though it may be, that " the love of money is the root of all evil." * Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class and Theory of Business Enterprise. 242 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Is then sociology — the final and culminating addition to the circle of the sciences— about to forsake its allegiance and, running to the other extreme, become more theological than the theologians ? Could a thought be uttered more revolutionary for some scientific minds ? Its emergence may at any rate serve to remind us how far we have travelled from our starting point. From an examination of " labor unrest " as a symptom of industrial transition, we have been led on through theories of leisure and business enterprise to an explanation of certain anti- social reversions, and finally to debouch upon a new aspect of the old conflict between science and religion. In the situation to which we are thus introduced, the industrial transition itself assumes minor rank, as but an act of a larger drama, that of Social and even Religious Transition. Indeed, are there not on all sides apparent, symptoms of those deep-seated changes in the foundations of things which mark eras of tran- sition ? Is there not perceptible the travail of re-birth in all departments of life and thought at home and abroad throughout the civilized world ? The human race, it would appear, is striving to force its way through one of its recurrent nodes of transition. The heat of friction and the fever of creation intensify the THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 243 conflict of the expiring old order with the new order struggling into being. The awakening of China, the industrialization of Japan, show it to be the world-order that is being transformed. The fires of re-adjustment between East and West, lighted by the Russo- Japanese war, smoulder in India and Egypt, threaten conflagration in Persia, flamed out yesterday in Tripoli, to-day in the Balkans, and may reappear to-morrow where the devil deter- mines. At home in the West we see the ferment of transition at work within each country in the intensification of national animosities, in the embitterment of class struggles, the shifting of the landmarks of thought and feeling, the fracture of continuity and good understanding between the older and the younger generations, and in arousal of new as well as old hostilities of sex. May it not seem to the student of history that nothing short of a unique assembling of resources, and of a well-nigh unprecedented change in the fibre of governments and the temper of peoples, can avert a recurrence in Europe of the widespread conflagrations that have accompanied every epochal transition of the past two thousand years ? Where then are we to look for, and how utilize guidance and resources towards, a peaceful adjustment of the new order 244 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. to the old ? How are men's minds to be diverted from obsessions of conflict to ideals of co-operation ? How are their hearts to be weaned from national and class enmities to international and racial amities ? How turn men's hands from the manipulation of money to the making of man ? How deflect collective energies from the despoiling of cities to con- structive citizenship ? Assuredly there is no lack of such wisdom as may be found in a multitude of counsellors. The more conservative and traditional parties in Church and State are leavened with idealists sincerely desirous of change, and sometimes wisely preparing for the sacrifices entailed by its advent. In the ranks of applied science there are social hygienists sweeping clean alike the debris of the past and the waste of the present with the new brooms of bacteriology, psychology and all their purificatory rites ; of dawning faiths and philosophies there are many preachers and teachers, offering themselves as birth-helpers of the spirit. Is not the very latest philosophy, above all others, a Doctrine of Change ? The seeds of prophetic wisdom are germinating, for are there not everywhere young men and maidens, old men, it may be even children, who see new visions of life, or seek to recover old ones ? The reviving cult of the mystic life in religion and in THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 245 art, the renascence of vitalism in science and literature, may not these, if they can be nursed through the diseases of infancy and saved from the excesses of youth, furnish a magician's wand to the evolutionary statesman-educator when he comes into power ? Turn now to such existing organizers of pro- gress as we possess, such accredited leaders as have earned the right or assumed the respon- sibility of guiding the forces of transition. Those who co-ordinate govern. How far are these progressive leaders co-ordinating the movements of to-day towards the reconstruction of to-morrow ? How far are they assembling the resources of betterment ? How far orches- trating their performers towards a new uplift ? Grant them purity of motive, strength of character, power of organization, passion of purpose, yet what adequate sociological prepara- tion, we ask, have these progressive leaders as yet had ? What experience in the valuing of survivals, in the discernment of tendencies, in the selection of initiatives ? Have they as yet established the needed contacts with the best personalities and movements alike of the passing and the incipient order ? What power have they of communicating the magnetism of those contacts ? Have they really any clear vision of the opening future, strengthened by grasp of 246 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. the present, warmed by sympathy with the past ? Does not a survey of the larger movements of would-be reconstruction show them mostly in severe isolation, often in actual antagonism, seldom diagnosing with adequacy the ills they combat, never perhaps doing historic justice to the systems they seek to replace ? It needs only to instance the reconstructive efEorts of old Socialists or new Syndicalists, of passive Pacifi- cists or militant Feminists. Temporary coalitions of any of these or other progressives in the whirligig of politics, are no doubt thinkable, even possible. But could these as yet integrate into any approximate unity of thought, still less compose into any deep-seated harmony of feeling ? For if not, such parties are without the spiritual pre-requisites to unison in action. Moreover, weighted as they are for the most part with a bias of pessimism towards the past, and of optimism towards the future, do not such contemporary seekers of progress lack the historic insight needed to understand and sympathize with either the idealists or prac- ticians of older, more traditional and conser- vative groups? Yet these latter are the necessary allies of the progressives, in a concerted movement through the present anarchy of transition, if the new order is to be achieved by peaceful re-adjustments. Little wonder then THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 247 that most despair of new leadership and fall back on an ever-increasing parliamentary and bureaucratic re-adjustment — a patchwork of makeshifts at best. Viewed down the long vista of history, the governments of the world are seen to have been mainly of two kinds. According as the gover- nors have played upon the moral and emotional interests of their people, or upon their sense of loyalty and acceptance of leadership in practical affairs, governments have tended to be either priestly or patrician dictatures. Inter-actions, combinations, and alternations of these, with the reactions they have provoked, and the popularist and intellectualist initiatives they have alternately encouraged and repressed, make up the historic dramas of government. The same processes and tendencies are visible from the theocracies and empires of antiquity to the semi-sacred royalties of seventeenth century France and to the autocratic patrician ministries of eighteenth century England with their unstable successors of to-day, more than ever sown with the seeds of internal disruption, and dragged hither and thither by the clash and clamor of popularist or intellectualist parties. But the instabilities of the situation do not end there, for the popularist and intellectualist parties, themselves ill-defined, are seen to be 248 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. honeycombed with factions struggling amongst themselves for survival, and all again are com- peting for influence with a renascent militancy supported in the traditional churches, to say nothing of the host of new religious sects actively multiplying outside the ecclesiastical pale. From this anarchic medley of temporal and spiritual powers there is threatened, as some fear, or promised, as others hope, emergence of a dictature essentially proletarian, but tinged with intellectualist interests and ideals. Imagine, for instance, in France (ever the laboratory of occidental civilization in political experiment) the Socialists, the moderate Syndicalists, with a leaven of Bourgeois Pacificists, sinking their differences sufficiently to enter into a common organization, would not the reins of govern- ment be within their grasp ? Assuming the tactical possibility of a Proletarian Dictature on those or similar lines, could such a government hope to normalize itself by incorporating the directive and emotional elements, industrial, artistic and educational, political, social and religious, supplied by these groups ? When is a government, for the sociologist, a dictature? Plainly, if it aims, explicitly or implicitly, at the dominance of any single one of the four persistent elements of all societies — the " people, chiefs, intellectuals and emotionals " in THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 249 the terms of Comte's well-known analysis. Conversely, a government approaches the normal and stable, the healthy and the just, in the degree in which it succeeds in incorporating all these four elements into a progressive and orderly community. The transformation of our changing dictatures into normal governments (i.e., into living, working, evolving polities) is thus a necessary sociological ideal. To work out the conditions of its possibility and realization is one of the main purposes of the social sciences. Of the complex of conditions involved, one at least stands out with distinctness. In political changes, as in moral conversions, great renun- ciations are called for. B3' the renunciation of the Daimios, Japan showed what its patrician class was capable of. Why not also that of the West ? Again, the role of sacrifice has been burnt into the inmost fibre of labor, in West and East alike, by age-long habituation. Is it not conceivable that there may again arise a spiritual impulse which, in the very spirit of the Nazarene carpenter, would renew this sacrificial role, even impart to it a sacramental office ? Clues then there are of many kinds, even un- familiar clues towards the needed type of transition government. The sociologist thus begins to see before him a problem — and task — too rarely considered by 2SO INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. politicians, that of political conversion. In addressing himself to it, he is helpfully en- couraged by his brother evolutionists of the natural and psychological sciences. The former point to the marvels of metamorphosis in organic life ; the latter to the still more trans- cendent ones of awakening, of conversion, re-moralization in human life. The practically established truth that genius is born of stocks often by no means obviously gifted, and perhaps still more often seemingly deteriorate, more than parallels the metamorphosis of grub into butterfly. But since cabinet ministers are seldom either gifted or deteriorate, how, pray, can we rely on the laws of heredity to correct the deficiencies of Governments ? That question might provoke the student of eugenics to answer brusquely with another : " Have you heard of Charles Darwin ? He published a book called The Origin of Species. That was more than fifty years ago. Since then no naturalist believes in the fixity of species. The human race is a species, and is perhaps the most modifiable of all. Therefore, the old obscurantist dogma of the unchangeable- ness of human nature is gone for ever. It has given place to the hope of an uplift, or the fear of a downfall, of the species : not merely of individuals and families, classes and com- munities, mark you, but of the species.''' THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 251 Fortified by evolutionary aspirations and sug- gestions, the sociologist turns hopefully to those florescent periods where in the course of two or three generations a great, and, in fact, universal uplift has been wrought in a people by a happy combination of spiritual and material resources. The uplift of Periclean Athens, of Medicean Florence, of Elizabethan England, belong to the data of evolution no less than to the events of history. They are also, in evolutionary perspec- tive, rehearsals for a future performance ; for though of this the time cannot be fixed, the coming may be prepared. Its advent cannot be expected to occur accidentally or incidentally, any more than could Peary or Amundsen hope to arrive at the Poles of Earth without urge of vision and organization of travel, utilizing to the fullest the efforts and resultants of their many unsuccessful predecessors. And, further, the origin and causes of indi- vidual genius and social uplift are no longer for the evolutionist wholly veiled mysteries. He recognizes these phenomena as episodes and stages in the plot and scheme of an evolving drama. He sees them as tendencies of human and social life, manifesting themselves in a favor- able milieu. And now he is learning to search for the god in the machine [i.e., in the environ- ment) which sets free the coiled spring — of Life. 252 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. And this is no vague quest, but the opening of an ordered and definite research of his science, which has long been accumulating manifold resources towards this particular exploration. The philo- sopher of history and the theologian have also their specialized resources, for they have long been travellers on that road. They both were evolu- tionists of human life and society, in fact if not in name, before the naturalist became an evolu- tionist of organic life. It was, as naturalists themselves tell us, the eighteenth century philo- sophers of history who, by their doctrine of human progress, taught them the habit of evolutionary thought. The secular masterpiece of evolutionist literature, the culmination of this historical philosophy of progress, was Gondorcet's Esquisse dun tableau historique des progres de risprit humain, written in 1794. And now, after too long delay, the sociologist claims it as a privilege, and recognizes it as a responsibility to accompany each of these three travellers — biologist, historian, and theologian — by turns. Yet the sociologist has also his own way of looking at the phenomena of genius and uplift. He agrees with the plain man, that the essential thing about the poet is not that he is born, but that he sings. Should not, therefore, a practical policy of eugenics concern itself with the evoca- tion of song rather than with the elimination of THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 253 deaf mutes ? Otherwise the eugenist is open tcx the criticism made on the ultra-Darwinians by Samuel Butler, who could not see how the death of his aunts and uncles accounted for himself being there ! The eugenist, if true to his evolutionary faith, takes for granted the "coiled spring," but this as a quality of life, and not as an exclusive or vastly predominant possession of privileged classes. Let him, therefore, begin by waking up the god in the environment that can release the spring of life and liberate its spirit. How, indeed, can he otherwise discover that which he sets out to search for — higher kinds of human life? Now suppose there is not one evocatory god of the environment, but a whole pantheon. Suppose that, after the youthful Eros, the two most evocatory towards liberation are the twin deities, Labor and Leisure — the Castor and Pollux who in their alternating role of humans and immortals work and rest, and thus guide every voyager over the ocean of life. It should not be difficult for the eugenist either to make these suppositions, or to act upon them. For the call of life to express itself through love and labor is ever sounding in his heart, and the sociologist is at his ear reminding him of two things. The first is that the environment of man differs from that of animals, in being a 254 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. mixture of (let us say) three parts spiritual to one part material. The second is that this spiritual environment is a historic and a social heritage, and that it evokes the best or the worst in human life, it liberates the spirit of good or of evil, according as it is well or ill- chosen from the illimitable reservoirs of the surviving past. Reaching such sociological positions, the eugenist, in a chastened mood, calls to his aid the educationist. But of educationists there are different kinds. Which of them is to be the working partner of the eugenist in the re-making of the people and their rulers alike? Between the schoolmaster of yesterday, with his paymaster and social complement, the politician, and the evolutionary psychologist of to-day, with his ally the sociologist, there is a world of difference. The transformation of the former pair of educa- tionists into the latter is plainly incipient, proceeding for the most part with well nigh im- perceptible steps, yet at times also by obvious new departures. It is, perhaps, of all the phases of the contemporary transition the one most fraught with significance, most charged with promise for the future. Beyond and beneath the needed process of political conversion, educational con- versions are also needed. And, as we shall see later, these are in progress, and at many points. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 255 Pedagogues and professors, dons and bureaucrats believe and tremble — here and there even a British parent begins to turn in his sleep. § 2. — Children and Citizens at School. There is no field in which the symptoms of transition are more marked, both in character and direction, than in elementary education. The child is creating around its interests a new social grouping, in which are conspicuous different types of personality and different orders of interest from those hitherto dominant in the world of education. The old struggle of classes, sects, and parties was for the mind of the child, because, whoever captured that, possessed its body. By stamping and engraving it with the requisite shibboleths and dogmas, by penetrating its tender substance with rules and regulations driven in as with hammer and mallet ; then by swathing and bandaging it, as carefully as if it were a Chinese lady's foot, the child mind can be made perma- nently conformable to the standards of each group that desires the labor of its body and the homage of whatever soul may be left to it. The old type of elementary school teacher became the docile instrument of a veritable " Kinderraub " — indeed, of a triumvirate of Kinderrauber. There were the political raiders, experts in the trade of driving voters in droves to 2S6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. the polling booths ; the industrial slave-holders who profited by the holocaust of children ; and the social conquerors, the amiable masters and mistresses of many menials. The last-named members of the triumvirate were more to be pitied than blamed, for they at least knew no better. It was genuinely and sincerely their idea of elementary education to inflict a mental paralysis, which could not be recovered from — -a trained submission, complete as that of the most domesti- cated species of the lower animals, and so inherently suitable to the " position in life " of the lower (human) classes. The reign of this triumvirate was coincident with the age of economic " progress by leaps and bounds." Its triumph came when the British nation was persuaded to apply the principles of material quantitative progress to elementary education. This educational system was appro- priately called " payment by results " — the pay- ment being in cash to Mammon, the results in lives to Moloch. In date, the climax of the system may be credited to the two half genera- tions on either side of the Franco -Prussian war. It was the period in which was germinating that finely-adjusted compound of industrialism and militarism which has since flourished so luxuri- antly, and which shows that the great law of social evolution formulated by Comte and THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 257 Spencer needs modification. But that " belongs to another treatise." The wreckage of this child- destructive educa- tional system, human and material, encumbers our cities and litters every countryside. The survivals of the system in custom and habit of thought still distort educational practice — -mis- direct educational policy. But the monumental architecture by which the Kinderraub period specifically commemorated its conquests may be seen in its school buildings. Its typical school — if you look at it with insight — externally and internally, in immediate surroundings and in neighborhood, you recognize as a true synthesis of the three most characteristic institutions of the age : the factory, the barrack, and the prison. It is significant of the new social grouping which is now mustering for the rescue of the child, that among leaders in the assault on this old type of school are women and artists, and that with both are associated the evolutionary scientists. The peripatetic exhibition of School Decoration initiated at the Edinburgh Outlook Tower, and recently seen in Chelsea at Crosby Hall, and at Manchester, showed the artists ready to take their part,,and only needing a little encouragement from the civic and private patrons of art to be fairly launched into the movement for converting the school from the prison into the 258 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. palace of the child. With the mural decorator inside the school, and the gardener breaking up the asphalted or cemented playground for a flower border to be cultivated by the children, the transformation is well under way. The making of school gardens has gone furthest in France, where there are many thousands attached to village and even urban schools. But whoever would realize the possibilities of even the smallest of beginnings with the slenderest resources of playground-gardening in urban schools, and the consequent joy and uplift in the life of the child gardeners, has only to turn to the book* in which the pioneer of the movement in London sets forth the results of her experience. The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth, We are nearer God's heart in a garden, Than anywhere else on earth. The educational world is alive and throbbing with similar initiatives. Though it must not be forgotten that the majority of children and teachers are still too much as they were, the difficulty of illustration is nowadays that of selecting from an embarrassing wealth of effort, individual and collective. We hear much, for * School Gardens, by Lucy Latter. (London : Cassell and Co.) A stimulating little book, appropriately dedicated to the evolutionary biologist whose teaching had inspired the authoress. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 259 instance, of the Montessori method. Here is woman's sympathetic impulse and synthetic aptitude picking up the threads of the old evocatory idea of education — from Comenius to Froebel — and carrying it through the labyrin- thine maze of newer scientific knowledges, making it available for the understanding, the awakening, and the development of child life. Using old traditions and new skills, Signora Montessori, by making defective into normal children, causes us to wonder what marvels of human flowering might not result, if kindred resources were applied to raise normal children to higher levels of vision and power, rather than, as we now see, to depress them in the large way of national education. Would she not indeed be a real Fairy God- mother who, rescuing needlework from its humble place as the Cinderella of the manual arts, could make it a means of joyful adventuring into the dream-worlds which open to vision as the girl grows from child to bride ? It is nothing less than this, we are assured by one of the most penetrative of educational reformers, that has been done by two instructresses of the Glasgow School of Art, aided by a little science, much art, and a sympathetic evocation of the creative genius that is latent or patent in every child. In a remarkable essay, contributed as a preface to 26o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. their book,* Miss Margaret Macmillan unfolds the magic r61e of the needle in educational method. We are presented with a philosophy of clothes compared with which even that of Sartor seems unimaginative and superficial. For these ladies are contributing a philosophy of the use of clothes, while Carlyle's was, naturally enough, the man's version of their misuse. Miss Macmillan's account of the tender little craftswoman, combining work and play under the gentle guidance of the needlework artist, is a revelation of child capacity in initiative and in constructive performance. No summary or extract can do justice to the wonderful picture Miss Macmillan gives us of little girls designing, planning, shaping, creating things of use and beauty out of the simplest and cheapest materials. The secret of the process would appear, in cold psychological analysis, to be this : — Old sewing mistress becomes new needlework artist, by first putting herself to school with the craftsman- designer in his studio and with the child-psycho- logist in her laboratory. By the former she is initiated into the romance of design, and made acquainted with the resources of the Manchester warehouse. By the latter she is initiated into the mysteries of the child's dream-world, and given * Educational Needlework, by Margaret Swanson and Ann McBeth, with preface by Margaret Macmillan. (Longman, igii.) THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 261 the key to some of its inner chambers. Designer's studio and Manchester warehouse develop the dreams and supply the stuffs, and woman's sympathetic insight discovers which of the myriad chambers of life the child is dimly longing to furnish. The needs of home and of self afford the opportunities for converting dream into deed ; and the work is done by the child's instinctive urge and energy to make real its dream life. The school mistress shows her mastery of method by assembling the whole resources available and giving them out as raw material, all in due appropriateness and correlation to the expanding mind, the warming heart, the developing hand of the child in its striving to become a creative personality. Here, then, is an instance of the new social grouping around the child and a sample of its pro- ductivity. The Kinderrauber triumvirate of old shrivelled and shrunk the schoolgirl into sweated seamstress and evoked from her, when a poet was found to put the thoughts of her heart into words for the world to read, only The Song of the Shirt. The artist of the needle, the craftsman -designer, and the evolutionary psycho- logist are a new triad and evoke a different type of song : as frontispiece to the book cited there is pictured a bridal robe of rare beauty. The song which our educational trio would evoke is 262 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. not, to be sure, the epithalamial ode which the contemplation of that robe might extract from the poet. It would be a song of the triumph of their teaching, in the flowering of their pupil's personality, of which the promise and potency was made manifest by the designing, planning, and making of her own bridal robe. Thus, without neglecting the marvellous productivity of mechanical looms, we have travelled far from the factory, farther still from its congruent educational ideals of success through competitive examination on mimetic learning. Following, indeed, the guidance of the embroideress, we have reached the very opposite pole of idealism. In the past, woman has ever held, romance has ever proclaimed, and evolutionary science now re- affirms, that success in life is in terms of successful mating ; and hence we must surely create an education adjusted to that view of life, and thus reverse the dominant contrary view, competitive, mechanical, mammonistic. Yet the new educational situation is far from ended by the coming together of woman, artist, and scientist, each in creative role. See how the plot thickens when they are joined by the historian and the dramatist, with helping hands from the nearest Social Settlement. Some three or four years ago there was performed in East London a " Children's Pageant." It was a series THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 263 of scenes illustrating the dramatic episodes in the history of the City of London. Historians chose the scene, and two or three dramatic poets gave their aid in composing suitable dialogue. But all the parts were played by children of East London, none over fourteen years of age. Kings and Queens, as well as political and literary heroes of the nation, mingled with historic citizens, as the sequence of memorable scenes in the story of the city came upon the stage. The representation of these high per- sonages by slum children afforded an unforgettable lesson in the latent possibilities of dramatized education. It was Canon Barnett's story that, calling to one of his helpers, he was answered by a voice from the dressing-room, " I can't come, because I'm keeping order among a dozen kings and queens." That story will appeal to all educationists who have had the good fortune to witness one of these children's pageants or masques as expressing no mere jest but a happily- phrased reality. One such educationist has declared that in the development of these historic masques for children resides the possibility of a revolution more far-reaching because more subtle than that of 1789. His thesis is that, while the French Revolution exposed a make-believe aristocracy, the children's pageants are exhibiting the real 264 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. one. In every child is the stuff of aristocracy. By that we mean the high potentiality of child- hood for uprise or downslide, according to cir- cumstance and opportunity. A child's mimetic powers are tuned to the pitch prevailing in what- ever concert room it happens to be an occupant of. Its creative genius moulds its own person- ality on the model of whatever performers happen to be staged there. Give a boy, for part, Bill Sikes or Philip Sidney and he will play either role with impartial perfection, but also with the possibility of their differing effects on career and character. We do not mean that the model will make the man in the sense of giving him his qualities outright as a product of imitation. But it will largely determine the bias or ply which the boy will give to the stock of qualities he has — what he will get out of them — what he will make of them, and therefore of himself, in disposition and career for life. The social repertory with which conventional instruction endows children is usually in inverse proportion to their intensity of make-believe. Their powers of spiritual absorption are thus not only starved but left open to the lower types and examples common to degraded life and debased literature. By historic pageants and masques in schools the child's social repertory can be in- definitely enlarged, and its personality enriched THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 265 and developed beyond the boldest conceptions yet stated by contemporary educationists. In the child's theatre, where the play and performance are spontaneous, there should be nothing of that note of falsetto, weakening to the imagination and therefore dangerous to ideals, which almost inevitably insinuates itself into the acting of adults. There is a realism lost by the adult in the child actor's embodiment of a noble historic character commemorated and expressed in language fittingly poetic. There is at least for the moment a virtual reincarnation ; and it remains for educators in school and home, and for city and nation, to contrive the conditions under which this wonder-working process may be continued and developed in character and career. It was not difficult, for instance, in the East London pageant to see that the girl who played Queen Elizabeth (and who began by curtly telling Shakespeare to hold his tongue, but ended by quoting him with rapture) was herself getting a real initiation into queenship. But restore the slum child to her slum environment and what scope is there for the queenly impulse ? Under the crushing contradiction of the outer real world to the inner dream world, the queenly emotion may not simply die down ; more likely it may flare into its very opposite — the evil fire of the furies. 266 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. It is clear, therefore, that the child -theatre has its necessary sequel and counterpart in the read- justment of the city itself to child life. But is not that a task so stupendous as to be impractic- able in the case of modern industrial cities ? Are not the available resources too insignificant ? What, then, are the resources available and what are needed ? Organizers of the child- theatre know what large results can be achieved with the slenderest means. In the case of the East London pageant the stock-taking would be brief. There was the initiative suggestion from a surviving mediaeval city (the idea of child- pageants originated in Rothenburg) ; two or three historians and a poet or two, a handful of enthusiastic teachers and settlement residents ; tuppence ha'pennyworth of calico and tinsel — and the children did the rest. They made a sordid hall into a veritable Temple of Youth, and, for the moment, Whitechapel into a City of the Spirit. For did not their performance show the offspring of a deteriorate — but not degenerate — population, born and bred in the vastest and most desolate of slums, to be as awake to the call of a great heritage as if to the manner born ? Having thus renewed the lesson of the mustard seed, can we apply it to the larger problem of civic readjustment to child life ? The generosity of American cities to educa- THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 267 tional purposes is almost proverbial, so we need not be disconcerted to discover at the outset that an amount declared to exceed ^8,000,000 has recently been expended by a few^ American cities on civic playgrounds for children. The move- ment for a systematic distribution of playgrounds through the city began in Boston, but has been carried furthest in Chicago (where, to be sure, it was most needed), which spends, we are told, an average of ;^i,20o jjer annum on the maintenance of each of seventeen civic playgrounds. These sums, which seem formidable in themselves, yet sink into insignificance in comparison with, say, the cost of a war. Statisticians differ as to the cost of the Boer War, but probably none put it at less than a quarter of a billion (;^25o,ooo,ooo). Suppose the nation set forth on a peace campaign of corresponding magnitude, such as the re- housing of the whole working-class population of the United Kingdom (and so ensure that every child is reared in a decent dwelling), it could, according to a recent estimate, do so in a single generation at an annual cost of less than the present yearly national expenditure on army and navy. Putting aside, however, these futurist aspira- tions of transition from Kriegspiel to Frieden- spiel, from social war games to constructive peace play, let us return to the simple actualities 268 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. of the present. As an instance of economy in civic adaptation to child life, let us cite the case of the '' Open Spaces Committee " of the Edinburgh Outlook Tower, which has discovered an almost magical formula for converting waste spaces of the city from dumping grounds of refuse into gardens and playgrounds for slum children. You first find an enthusiastic and capable woman gardener ; she begs some roots and plants and a little mould from her friends or from the city gardeners ; you collect a few sovereigns for the lady gardener to engage some of the unemployed, or even unemployable ; she harnesses a tandem of street hooligans to her apron strings — and again the children do the rest. But the spirit of economy is ever present, even in America, where there is genuine endeavor to combine use and beauty to moral purpose. Situated in a New York public park (where a location was given by the city, open and respon- sive as all American cities are to educational initiative) may be seen one of the many new types of school which so freely germinate on American soil. It is, of course, a voluntary school, and its aim is to use the constructiveness and idealism of boys towards reversing the current economic process, and thus make workshop and factory subservient to Home. A woman's skill and instinct of economy in beauty discovered a THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 269 domestic use for that debris of workshop and factory — packing cases. Without prejudicing aught of the workman's moral lien on the contents, his schoolboy son may appropriate the packing case to his own purposes. The name " box furniture " sounds anything but romantic, yet assuredly a new chapter has under that title been added to the romance of waste products. For the manufacture of aniline dyes from coal tar is hardly a more surprising extraction of beauty from ashes than the domestic furniture — sufficiently strong yet simply beautiful — which Miss Louise Brigham teaches her young pupils to make from packing cases.* Is not this American initiative in the education of boys a parallel to that of the Glasgow needle- work artists for girls ? Do not both combine work with play in purposive effort, just as the nature and capacities of children demand ? Do not both contribute an initiatory " rite of passage " (in the penetrative phrase of Van Gennep) from childhood's play of personality to youth's more serious quest of mate and home, and so bridge the passage from education to citi- zenship ? Yet, it may be asked, do they not both, as educational processes, exhibit the same defect of inadequate attention to intellectual training ? * Box Furniture, How to Make a Hundred Useful Articles for the Home, by Louise Brigham. (New York : The Century Co., igio.) 270 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. The last is a question that may be referred to the relevant authorities — the educational psycho- logists. From these we are beginning to learn that we think with our hands as much as with our brains — that, in short, the secret of thought is in the correlation of muscular and cerebral activity, which, to reach high efficiency, must be co-adjusted in childhood and concurrently de- veloped throughout life. The idea that thought, whether in the impulsive creation of genius or the tranquil flow of philosophy, is a product of leisure we are beginning to detect (if not yet abandon) as the superstition of an intellectualist age. The explosion of that deep and long per- sistent superstition is being prepared alike by psychologist and sociologist, who are combining to work out the complementary conception that thought, where it is real and not sophistical, is a product of life — life that alternates between labor and a congruent leisure. With the rise of this psychology of hand and head have appeared a number of private schools, fraught thoroughly with the idea of making experimental application thereof in practice. There are at present in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain per- haps a dozen or more of these "occupational" schools, as they are well called, because they utilize and develop the child's eager instinct to be at home in the productive realities of daily THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 271 life, and the child's potentiality of technical acquisition by mimetic play. Among many varieties of these experimental endeavors to make education a play rehearsal for life, two types of school are conspicuous. In one of these — the " craft " school, as it might be called — the professed teacher regards the neighboring master craftsmen — the farmer, shep- herd, mason, fisherman, carpenter — as possible colleagues, with whom a friendly alliance in the education of the child may be made, alike to the technical advantage and moral profit of the pupil. In the other main type — the "recapitu- latory " school, as it might be called — an effort is made to place the pupils in a set of conditions that will give them a spontaneous feeling of familiarity and mastery, it may be even leading to re-discovery, of the great determinative steps in the evolution of industry. In a class of boys and girls, for instance, combining play and work with spindle and distaff, at least one of the little spinners is likely to re- invent the spinning-wheel."*' Thus from recapitulation in school may youth pass to real invention in field, farm and workshop ; and so in adult life, escaping the sordid fate of * As example of an occupational school tending to tiie " recapitu- latory " type, may the cited the " Home School " at Highgate, near London, founded by Mr. J. C. Hudson. Here also may be mentioned Dr. Cecil Reddie's " Abbotsholme," in Derbyshire, which has long represented the endeavor to apply "occupational" principles to English secondary education of the so-called " public school " type. 2 72 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. most individual labor, assume the dignified role of a creative part in the social technodrama, and become even a reincarnated Prometheus. The whole set of occupational schools may be viewed as experimentally working out the genesis and education of a new Patriciate. There has ever been implicit some recognition of the principles of cerebro-muscular psychology in the educational practice of aristocracies, from Persia of old, with its educational ideal of speaking the truth, drawing the bow and riding the horse, down to that of England to-day, of which the most effectual schoolmasters for " the classes " are, to be sure, the gamekeeper and the groom (and why not also the sailing master?) But note a vital distinction. The groom cannot be master of the young squire in the art of horsemanship, and at the same time his social inferior, without degrading the relation of man to horse, with all that implies of moral reversion. The rise and decline of chivalry is not acciden- tally associated with the practice and cessation of knightly apprenticeship to horsecraft. To restore dignity to both groom and horse, and so re-establish in due proportion the moral value of both as educational assets of the community, there is one way, and one way only. The apprentice recognizes and profits by his master's essential superiority, alike technical and moral, not until THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 273 he tries to do all that the master does — feed, tend and train the horse as well as ride it — and knows that he wins not his spurs till he succeeds. By no other way than the trials, failures and triumphs of some real apprenticeship to the Masters of Crafts, may the youth of a nation enter upon an elementary education that is at once technical and social, intellectual and moral. Here, as psychologist and sociologist are increas- ingly coming to see, is the true technical school, and one which is also a school of manners and of morals. To tap and utilize something of the vast educational resources latent amongst the masters of all the crafts on sea and land, in farm and workshop, field and fold, is the aim of that alliance which we have seen the " occupational " schoolmasters are seeking to form with the friendly craftsmen around them. The cultural purpose is expressed in their formula of " the three H's," an education of hand, head and heart — in place of the traditional " three R's." Cannot a system of education be designed and developed capable of imparting to personality the bearing and beauty of the aristocrat, the moral dignity of the craftsmen, the culture and vision of the thinker, and add thereto the urge and uplift of citizenship ? Is that aspiration towards the perfect citizen a pedantic chimaera, or is it a necessary ideal of evolutionary culture ? To 274 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. raise these questions is to pass from the domain of elementary to that of higher education, and from that again into civics, which investigates the relation of the school to the city and the social organization in which it is an element. It may help to clear up some old-established con- fusions in this field if we remember there is another type of school very different from what we ordinarily understand by the term. We speak of the Glasgow school of painting, the Manchester school of economic thought, the Leyden school of theology, the Kantian school of philosophy, the Italian school of music, and so forth. This kind is a continuation school for adults, but it is not less a dame's school for infants and children, since in the same sense we speak of the tradition and milieu which mould a man's mind, form his manners, and so determine the large lines of his conduct, as his "school." The common language does not seem to possess an educational epithet to designate this type of school. And, sociologist and psychologist having foregone their privilege and neglected their duty to supply the needed adjective, let us adapt from biology a word which, though formidable at first glance, conveys the simple idea behind the edu- cational process. Let us call this type of school phylogenetic"* — literally a race-making school, * In biology this term is purely descriptive as yet, because biologists have hitherto been dealing so especially with origins. Now, however, that they are turning to the study of tendencies, the word must increasingly take the active meaning suggested for it here. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 275 or, better, a tribe-making school. For there are schools which make tribes and races not by blood relationships but by social and traditional ones. We ask what is style, and are told it is the man himself. But what makes the man himself this particular kind of stylist ? We can go a long way in answering that, by tracing out the phylogenetic schools through which his mind has travelled in the formative period of its wander- years. And so in all cases an investigation of mental history and the growth of emotional life would disclose a whole round of phylogenetic schools to which each individual has been put, consciously or unconsciously, by his parents and teachers, by his fellows and associates, and, most important of all, by himself. Now, suppose we look into the current English public school theory at its best. This assumes that aristocracies are not different from other social groups in inborn characteristics and human qualities, but are essentially developed by means of certain superiorities of their phylogenetic schools, which indeed specialize on conduct, courage, and co-ordination — the education of the three C's. Similarly we might search out and define the specialized phylogenetic schools of the other social elements in our fourfold analysis, so far as such yet exist— those of the " intellectuals," the "emotionals," and the "people." Of course. 276 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. in so far as such schools do not exist the problem confronts us — How to devise them. The larger question would then emerge : How correlate and unify all these into a truly evocatory school of citizenship ? That plainly would imply a higher than patrician kind of co-ordination, because one aiming not at class leadership but at the uplift of the community, with its wider range of personalities and its richer potentiality of directive genius. Thus the question of co- ordinating educational and social reform comes to the first rank of urgency. What, indeed, are the prospects of any real and intimate association of educational and social reform ? Upon the answer to that will depend our expectation of seeing the national school system penetrated, leavened, and finally trans- formed, by such initiatives as we have been considering. Some beginning towards the com- bining of these educational initiatives with one another, and with the corresponding agencies of social reform, can alone supply the needed leverage for the propulsion of public opinion. To give dignity and beauty to the life and labor of woman in the home, of man in the factory and field ; to subordinate the economics of the market to the ethics of the church ; to replace the limitations or exaggerations of sects and the pedantries of academies by the realities of a THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 277 living culture ; to clean up the debris and con- fusion of the industrial cities and enrich their civic life with order and beauty — to achieve these ends is the purpose of innumerable organi- zations concerned with the tasks of betterment and uplift. Running disparate courses as nearly all of these organizations do, they not only lose greatly in practical effect, but each struggling movement lessens its own chance of survival in the fierce conflict that has to be maintained, not only against positive evil, but also against reaction and inertia. Still, the beginnings of a spontaneous integration are clearly perceptible. These are concentrating around a double focus. The Town-planning Endeavor is one focus, and the Culture of Child-life is the other. Round these two complementary centres of interest are developing new social situations, and of high co-ordinating power. The care of the living child and the planning of the city — here, surely, are the natural, definite and concrete objectives which tend spontaneously to concentrate the emotion of women and artists, the knowledge of scientists and philosophers, the thought and care of educationists, the energies of labor, the power of statesmen. Do not the idealizations of religion attest the validity of the belief that the human child, in its simple and tender beauty, is the crown and glory of individual evolution ; that 2 78 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. the 'city in its complex of institutions is the cul- mination of the evolving social life ? The fairies of mythology, the angels of religion, as they come between gods and men, declare that if the child is below divinity, it is yet above humanity. And, similarly, the city at its best is, for poet and painter, the foreshadowing of heaven ; at its worst, for theologian and social reformer, the working model of hell. The forms of new learning which call them- selves Eugenics and Civics are (in spite of initial crudities) the most synthetic of scientific studies, just because they gather round these two supreme objects of human reference and observa- tion, the growing child and the actual living city. The spreading interest in eugenics and civics is just beginning to assemble, in the enterprise and pursuit of common quests, repre- sentatives from the whole circle of the sciences, arts, and industries. So in the world of practical effort, note how the new Child- Welfare Associations now arising are the most widely comprehensive of all extant organizations working towards these social ends and, already, can count their diversely assorted and heartily collaborating people of good will by the thousand. They are thus veritable ferments of social unification. They bring together for concerted action not only the most THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 279 divergent of social reformers, and mingle these with individual conservators, but intersperse both with the official representatives of govern- ment and municipal departments. But higher stages of co-ordination manifestly need promoting. The tendency of eugenics, as yet, to run in isolation from civics is the counter- part of the comparative separateness of biologists from educationists, and both from town-planners. The same isolating factor is at the root of both segregations. The eugenists and the education- ists, though unlike in being concerned, the former mainly with the outer life and the latter with the inner life, yet have this in common, that both, by the very nature of their interests, are preoccupied with the individual. They both, to be sure, constantly and emphatically proclaim the social point of view as dominant over that of the individual. Yet they forget it also ; for there is too often implicit in their social con- ception the half truth, no better than a fallacy, that a community is but an aggregate of indi- viduals, and that it undergoes reproduction by the proliferation of family stocks. This, of course, is a merely organic and psy- chological conception of evolution, and not yet social evolution at all ; and if eugenists and educationists manifest the tendency to be domi- nated by it, that is partly a defect of their 28o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. qualities and partly a survival of the old Adam. It has to be corrected by the complementary conception of civics : that a community is an integrate of groups, institutions, and traditions, and that it advances through the succession of generations. We all need for a time to think less with the biologists in terms of individuals and aggregates, as if humanity were but in herds ; and more with the sociologists in terms of human integrates and generations. The dis- tinction turns on the fundamental difference between the organic and the social inheritance, between what a man inherits from his parents and what he derives from his social group ; what he shares with his blood relatives and what he has in common with the men of his own genera- tion ; what he transmits to the offspring of his body and what he passes on to the succeeding generation of his group and community. The confusion of these issues, of mind and body, of spirit and matter, too seldom socially, so often biologically considered, is one of the most widely disseminated fallacies of the age, and perhaps the most pernicious and dangerous error now in vogue. Even the clearest heads amongst the pioneers of eugenics fall victims to its insidious allurements, and become the potential ministers of its sinister and anti-human direc- tions for political and social practice. Of the THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 281 travesty of intelligence which it seems to require or to induce, the illustrious Galton himself supplied a deplorable instance when, having calculated that the son of a judge has eight (or was it eighty ?) times greater chance of eminence than the son of a laborer, he attributed the superior prospects of the former to his inborn qualities ! This fallacy may be viewed in another way, as springing from a confusion of family and tribal stocks with phylogenetic schools. Its present victims — the educated middle-class people who are under obsession to it — forget that in the fullest phylogenetic sense we are all children at school from the cradle to the grave. Our parents are just our first school - teachers, handing on to us a social heritage so intimately mingled with congenital qualities and defects, limitations and capacities, that to unravel them will need all the resources of a critical soci- ology. But exceptional moral qualities are also needed in the student of human inheritance. He must purify himself from the bias of class and party, nation and race ; for here, even more than in family heritage, there is the temptation of pride and prejudice to mistake social survivals and tendencies for organic qualities or defects. The student of human heredity must, above all, strive to rise from the level of his own generation 282 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and survey his facts from the standpoint of history, and with detachment as sincere and serene as his soul can achieve. Then he will see how an infinite variety of phylogenetic schools, regional and national, civic and racial, with their sub-varieties of class and sect, go on trans- mitting from generation to generation their too disintegrated fragments of the vast social heri- tage, which, in its totality, is co-extensive with the human race. And in the mode of this social transmission, we begin also dimly to see, there is a generational rhythm, which subtly parallels the laws of heredity and variation in organic transmission, but of which the analysis as yet invites confusion at every point. The psychologists everywhere are exhibiting a healthy tendency to turn social psychologists, and this not only helps to correct the current liability to confuse the organic with the social inheritance, but also gives special qualifications to expose this standing source of fallacy. The similar corrective before the eugenist is to turn student of civics. Educationists and town- planners have likewise their corresponding and supplementary sets of defects, which may be corrected by the same simple method of friendly intercourse and joint endeavor. A step towards this is the custom, incipient in some places, of making evening use of school buildings as THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 283 meeting- ground and place of assembly for all interested in child welfare and social reform. Under the title of the Social- Centre Movement, this practice is spreading in America under the inspiring leadership of Mr. Charles Ferguson, and is thus capable of going far. We see then that there are tendencies at work bringing together the two most evolutionary and synthetic of scientific groups — eugenics and civics — into a larger unity ; and also making for the union and co-operation of these with the two most architectonic of parties in the contem- porary world of social and educational reform, viz., the town-planners and the organizers of child-welfare. A further advance in that direc- tion would be made if it could be shown that the two more speculative subjects are — or should be — related to the more practical pair as science to art, as theory to practice ; that indeed eugenics and civics should constitute the neces- sary doctrinal basis from which the child-welfare associations and the town-planners may move forward to larger triumphs. For does not each of these fourfold movements offer tasks for all four classes of the community, for people and chiefs, for intellectuals and emotionals ? It is only by the co-operation of all, that we may hope to win from the contemporary chaos of confusion, a theory of life and its corresponding 284 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. practice, whereby, adapting our cities to children in the present, we shall ensure the survival of both in the world-struggle of the future. For the child of to-day, is the father of to-morrow's citizen. The grand work of co-ordination that confronts us, is thus the bringing together of the four groups — eugenists, civists, town-planners, and child-welfare organizers — in common purpose and for concerted action. For the observation of survivals and the dis- cernment of tendencies in so large a problem, we have naturally to pass from the preceding con- sideration of the transition in elementary educa- tion. It is time to ask what corresponding movements are afoot in the specialized institu- tions of the higher culture — the universities? from what general conceptions do these at present draw their inspiration ? and, it may be, what more synthetic doctrine do they yet require ? § 3. — The University: Youth and Age in THE Cloister. In a survey of the institutions of higher education, it is easier to recognize archaic sur- vivals than to discern evolutionary tendencies. From Salamanca to Oxford, and from Oxford to the latest American University, examples of the former abound. But this has also to be remarked THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 285 of the universities, that there too are evident, and at many points, the marks of transition and the signs of renewing life. There is, to be sure, no record of any university having offered a chair to Darwin ; yet against this, nearly two genera- tions later, may in a measure be set the crop of evolutionary philosophy which M. Bergson, from the College de France, is sowing throughout the universities of the world. The jibe which Landor put into the mouth of the youthful Milton in conversing with the aged Galileo in Vallambrosa, was also meant for his own time, one not wholly out of sight of ours : — " An academician, a dung- hill cock, and a worm are three sides of an equilateral triangle." There are in the tradition of universities, things deadening and things quickening, things dignifying and degrading. The very word ' academic ' has come to be a synonym for fossilised learning and futile logical canvassing of unrealities — the products of clois- tered inaction. But the products of the cloister in action are sometimes world-shaping. For illustration there is no need to go back to the Abbeys of Clairvaux and Monte Casino. The spiritual re-making of Germany after Jena, and of France after Sedan, largely by their respective universities, are well-known instances occurring in the most recent past, the latter really in our own time. There are evidences of a similar 286 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. process of regeneration at work in Russia to-day, though there the Government is as yet too ignorant and too impenitent to accept, much less to seek, the moral and intellectual aid of the universities. The survival- value of a doctrine launched from the academic cloister into a world fitted to receive and use it, may be exemplified by the persistence and prevalence of Hegelianism. Not only in Germany, but in all other countries of the West, Hegelian conceptions are still dominant in contemporary politics. Liberals and Conserva- tives, Democrats and Republicans, Socialists and Feminists, do their political thinking in terms of the familiar dialectic. They are all Hegelians, knowing it or no. Their political categories — and by implication their social ideals — culminate in the contrasted pair, Individual and State. These they reconcile in a higher synthesis which combines both in a larger unity. For some — the Hegelians of the extreme Left — this unification is Socialism. For others — the Hegelians of the extreme Right — it is Imperialism. For others again, it is a blend of both, peculiar to themselves or their group. An intellectual cult, with a re- sulting world-politics, has thus arisen out of the unifying, inspiriting message which an ageing Berlin professor addressed to the youths of Germany, eager for a doctrine which would con- THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION, 287 centrate their minds and kindle their hearts to the renovation of a disintegrated Fatherland. An ardent disciple acclaimed the Hegelian categories as new gods at the memorable festival in 1826, which thus appropriately recognized their author as more than a philosopher — as, indeed, a demiurgic creator of " Powers and Dominions, Deities of " — earth. The historian of mythologies may see in the resultant growth and extension of the Hegelian cult, a justifi- cation of this extravagant imputation. But for the historian of universities, the rise of the Hegelian cult holds a different mean- ing and conveys another message. It illus- trates the essential role of the university in the transmission of culture and in the evolu- tion of ideals. That role is not merely the passive one of conserving the heritage of culture and transmitting it from generation to generation. It is above all active and creative. As supreme guardian of the social heritage, the university is concerned to use this for awakening the latent idealism of youth, and for directing it to the definite and special needs of the oncoming generation. Now those who combine experience of the past with vision of the future, are manifestly the sages of the passing generation. Like all other human products, the sage's wisdom ripens and his vision clarifies just in proportion as such 288 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. wisdom and vision find the proper field and scope , for their expression. Their natural seed-bed is the mind of awakening youth, which, without this selective sowing, is wont to lie fallow, or prove fertile in weeds. The essential function of the university is to bring together, for the transmission of experience and impulse, the sages of the passing and the picked youths of the coming generation. By the extent and fulness with which they establish these social contacts, and thus transmit the wave of cumulative experience and idealist impulse — the real sources of moral and intellectual pro- gress — the universities are to be judged. In all walks of life, in every social grade and class, in the whole circle of the legitimate occupations, manual, mental and moral, there are mature men and women — sages and sybils — of moral purpose and specialized knowledge, who can generalize their unique personal experience, so that it fits into the mosaic, and contributes an enrichment to the pattern of human culture. Each of these is a potential tutor or professor in the university of their city or region. How can he or she become a real one ? Every youth and maiden awakening to the issues of life is heir of all the ages, and therefore a potential student of the university. How, again, can he or she become a real one? These are the essential problems THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 289 which University Extension sees and seeks to deal with. Their full and effectual solution implies our learning to conceive the university as the whole community in its culture aspect. It implies that the prevalent academic or cloistral conception of the university be supplemented by the addition of civic functions. And this, to be sure, would be no new departure, but a return to earlier usage. Happily there are many indications of reviving contacts and interpenetrations of University and City. But before examining the drift and mean- ing of these, it may fortify our faith in the civic functions of the university, and clarify our inter- pretation of contemporary survivals and tenden- cies, to digress briefly into historic data. It is at once the method of organic and social evolution — reculer pour mieux sauier. Like its predecessor, the mediaeval monastery, the early university was an aristo-democratic institution. It sought to provide a common culture — and that the best of its age — for persons of all classes, independently of wealth or social status. But as the monastery was of more rustic, so the university was of more urban character, and, indeed, expressed the adjustment of the monastic type to the more complex conditions of 290 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. city life, as this was re-awakening after an age- long winter sleep. Between the decay of ancient and the rise of mediaeval cities, the monasteries kept alive, in the West, the civic ideal of creating a milieu for the life of the spirit. With the growing acceptance of this ideal, there re- appeared an era of comparative peace, a time of security and democratic culture — the conditions necessary for the co-operation of classes and nations in the supreme art of city-building. The instinct of the peasant is to build sooner or later (unawares becoming a citizen in doing so), for it is his way of storing wealth, and at the same time using it to express his mastery of nature and to symbolize his communion with her inner mysteries. Under the protection and inspiration of priest, monk (and also of friar), the mediaeval peasant, turning craftsman, began to recover and in many ways transcend, the specialized skill of his ancient and classical predecessors. The vision of the heavenly city uniting all good souls after death, was translating itself into the city beautiful on earth, needing their co-operation in life. But how initiate and maintain the concert of thought and action ? — how continuously renew the emotional urge ? — how keep in sight the common goal? — these are vital questions in labors so vast and complex as the making and THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 291 maintenance of every true city. "What the mediaeval city — at its best a marvel of beauty — w^as we now know ; thanks to the research of recent archaeology. No fortuitous assemblage of architectural masterpieces like the palaces and temples of an Oriental despot ; no mere per- fected effort of instinctive creation like the bee's hive. Still less was it a confused medley of conflicting resultants of human passion and inhuman labor, like the modern town miscon- ceiving itself a city because it herds a multitude. The mediaeval city in its growth and expansion, has now been revealed to us, by careful and in- formed research into its definite origins as, in its main features, the planned execution of spaciously conceived designs.* With the architectural aspects and economic particulars of that design, we are not for the moment concerned, but with the moral pre- suppositions, the social condition, the aesthetic and intellectual preparation — in a word, the educational or cultural system, once an actuality and a power — which made possible its realization. Examining the remnants of mediaeval archi- tecture, of craftsmanship and of learning, as evidence of the environment in which they originated, we constantly discover that, amongst workers and scholars alike, the * Camillo Sitte, Der-Stadtebau. (Vienna, 1901.) 292 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. normal flowering of personality was effected and matured through the expression of ideals, social, civic or moral. To a less, though to a considerable extent, the same is true of the feudal aristocracy, as is evidenced by the rules of chivalry, too infrequently though these may have been observed in practice. From the first interpretative examination of mediaeval culture — Joseph de Maistre's Le Pape — down to the latest sociological analysis,* the material grows for a picture of mediaeval society, as continuously dominated by a great purpose. This purpose was the endeavor so to combine moral, aesthetic and intellectual resources as to inspire the various classes and communities of Christendom with a set of ideals relevant to their particular functions, and yet uniting them in a common culture. Three institutions — the Church Militant, the Popular Theatre, and the University — developed as the specialized organs of this Higher Education for life ; and for the life of all. The voluntary partnership of the Church and the Guilds created the Popular Theatre and maintained it as at once the playground of the people and a school of civic and social culture. Training in the free atmosphere of dramatic representation, the people there spontaneously absorbed and again transmitted the heritage of * Chatterton Hill, The Sociological Value of Christianity. (Black, 1912.) THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 293 culture and ideals, adapting it, in each genera- tion, even in each locality, to its particular needs of time and place ; and so the people were able to re-express it with more abiding visible splen- dour and beauty in the building of Cathedrals and the making of Cities. Thus there arose a system, in which the education of the individual was effected largely through the making of cities and the co-operative maintenance of their insti- tutions. That the design of the mediaeval city was so largely a spontaneous resultant of the citizen's mode of life, was in itself the crown and con- firmation of profound planning and far-reaching systematization operating from above. A re- markable succession of moral and intellectual leaders devoted themselves to the grand problem of unifying the whole culture resources of Christendom for the guidance and uplift of life. In the division of labor requisite for so immense an undertaking, the Cloister specialized on the moral approach to the problem, and the University on the intellectual approach — each thus following the bent of its respective rustic or urban origin. So far from the monastic and academic methods of the middle ages being purely dialectical and abstract, as the eighteenth century historians thought, we are beginning to see that they were, at their best and in reference 294 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. to their time, concrete and experimental, i.e., evolutionary. This is indeed, in a degree, now generally recognized as regards the monastery and friary, but less so as regards the universities. Otherwise historians of philosophy would make more use (for example) of the significant fact that Thomas Aquinas failed to complete his systematization, because of the too frequent calls to leave his chair in the University of Paris, and take his seat at the Council Boards of Christendom. The most generalized lesson which the student of the middle ages spells out is perhaps this : that in the specialization of spiritual services to the community, the University arose alongside of the Cloister, and that both functioned usefully so long as they retained their sense of interconnec- tion with each other, and of practical relationship to the community, both directly and through the Secular Church ; but that all three organs withered as they fell apart from each other and from the everyday life of the city and the com- munity. The cities themselves thus becoming isolated from their proper spiritual organs, entered on that process of random expansion and contraction which has fitfully continued through the centuries, and is only now beginning to be regulated in these days of reviving Town Planning. Forbidding though the accumulated THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 295 burden of evil may be, yet the future is brightened by the prospect of a newer and higher art of City Design, in which resources, moral and intellectual, as well as material, may be made available for the life on earth, beyond the dreams of the mediaeval cloister. Eutopia, the modern successor of the Renaissance Utopia, is no vague vision in the clouds, but an image of increasing clearness on every horizon. But to complete our historic diagnosis. The mediaeval university had its period of flowering in the recovery of remnants of ancient learning, and in the synthesis of these with the knowledge and thought of its own age. It thus contributed to the enrichment and uplift of the civic and social life of its day. From its withering fruit, its dying scholastic philosophy, dropped and germinated the seeds of modern science. Then after an evanescent refiowering at the Renaissance, came the academic pedants of classical scholar- ship. These surrounded themselves with a high wall of sterile formalities, by which they fenced out the city from the germinating seeds and from all save the withered husks of academic learning. The not infrequent breaches made in that wall during succeeding centuries, sometimes by the student from within, and sometimes by the citizen from without, the university authorities have generally done their best to repair. The 295 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. resulting isolation of the University and the City has been effectively maintained for centuries; hence citizens starved of culture, and students deprived of social purpose ; and thus have they familiarized the world with an infinite variety of deteriorate types of both. The city has been quickening to a sense of its need of nurture, earlier than the university has repented of its deed of deprivation, or recognized this as its Great Refusal in many senses. The spontaneous rise everywhere of extra-mural culture-institu- tions of every kind, from the older European Academies and Learned Societies to the municipal Libraries and Museums, the Technical Institutes and Art Galleries of yesterday and to-day — all these may be held to mark the independent effort of cities to take up the university role ; and to organize for the body of citizens a full culture inheritance in which all might share. But these fragmentary institutes of a partial culture have lacked the creative urge of a unified vision. In a word, they have been insufficiently inspired by the true spirit of the university at its best. They are, as it were, bastard faculties awaiting legitimation by the reunion of their parents — the City and the University. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 297 Of various movements aiming to bring, to- gether academic and civic life into closer union, there are three which, though not commonly associated in men's minds, have yet each and all a deep underlying interconnection. Of this trio, first in time came Eugenics, an unfamiliar and unaccompanied pilgrim ; then in unrelated and unconscious succession, the University or Social Settlement ; and finally came Civics to complete the triad and unite all three into a w^orking Faith and Practice. Emerging from their birth-place in the cloisters of science. Eugenics and Civics have, as synthetic studies, sought the aid of the university, in the general sense at least, for investigation and research. As doctrines of life and conduct, they have appealed alike to students and citizens with a set of evolutionary ideals, which imply the closest union between studies and citizenship. For long a solitary study and concern of Galton — himself always a solitary worker — Eugenics is assuredly a fruit of the hermit's cell. Civics, on the other hand, has been for over a quarter of a century the main pre-occupation of at least one school of workers, and indeed a school which without undue violation of the historic sense may be called a variant of the cloister. Its initiator was the founder of the Edinburgh School of Sociology, and simultaneously of the University 298 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Halls of Residence in Edinburgh. Now this group has one of its many roots in the University or Social Settlement movement, with which it is linked by the interpenetrations of a whole generation of common effort. Promulgated first in the universities as an impulse of civic emotion, the social settlement idea had only to find lodgment in the youthful minds of a group of evolutionary naturalists to act as a ferment of sociological with biological synthesis. That, broadly, was really the psy- chology of the situation, out of which this revival of social studies in Edinburgh, some twenty-five years ago, took the form of a little School of Civics, uniting the sciences and the humanities in the common conception of Civic Evolution. It will be evident that this conjunction of evolutionary naturalist, sociologist, and student- citizen must have invented Eugenics, if it had not already existed. But with a difference : this doctrine, born and developed in isolation, has carried into its worldly career the defects as well as the qualities of its original solitude. True, as Carlyle said, " No Thebaid eremites, no melodious Dante." But many refinements have to be wrought on the ideas of St. Anthony and on the practices of his pig before the former will compose into a Divine Comedy, The man Galton, by virtue of the simplicity of his life, his rigorous THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 299 self- discipline, and life-long devotion to an ideal, would, under a dispensation that truly fitted titles to deeds, have ended his days not as Sir Francis but as Saint Francis. So the lustre of the initiator is not to be held as dimmed by the eugenic crudities of some of his nominal disciples. Still, if one would penetrate to the truly evolu- tionary spirit of eugenics, a surer guide than Galton may be found in the veteran pioneer of the evolution doctrine — Alfred Russel Wallace himself. In his own life a more socialized type than Galton, Wallace naturally emphasized that aspect of eugenics. His counsel to those who would make experimental application of the doctrine of evolution to the human race is briefly this : give your women economic freedom, assure them access to the sources of culture, and you can safely leave eugenic experimentation in their hands. Here are a method and an ideal of eugenics which, while not in the least limiting the sociologist, appeal to him because of the assurance given that social reform and education are not counter-strokes to evolutionary progress (as too many unregenerate biologists still fear) but are, indeed, among the very instruments of its natural realization. In that faith, strengthened by his own parallel reading of human progress, the sociologist is compelled to the generalization 300 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. that selection in the transmission of social ideals is the necessary pre-requisite and preparation alike to a theory and an art of eugenic selection in man. In short, the civic sociologist has now to persuade his biological brother that his hopes and aims of a theory and art of eugenic selection in man must be preceded by a clearer vision and choice of social ideals. The university must guide and control the Eugenics Laboratory ; not vice versa. But the university of to-day is far from awake to its trust as guardian and moral assessor of the social heritage of experience and ideals ; and this, without doubt, is one of the chief reasons why the city is so seldom a " fount of the good life." That vision of the civic ideal, so clear and well-expressed, came to Aristotle, let us remember, by his discerning and generalizing, from the vantage-ground of his own academic cloister, the best tendencies of the actual city. It ex- pressed a truly evolutionary ideal which might justly be crystallized and commemorated by a new coinage, for general use. The hard-shell eugenist, whose biological materialism is recalcitrant to civics, might still yield something to sociology and idealism, if the bitterness of re- treat were softened by the poetic thought that euzenic® rhymes well with eugenic. Eugenia is ' ■^ TTciXis . . offcra (JveKo) toO eS f^v. (" The city exists for the good life.") Aristotle, Politics, I., 2 — 8. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 301 the proud and haughty Beauty, queening it in her own circle of devotees, exacting of service, scornful of rivals, indifferent to the outer court. But Aristotle's Euzenia is the wise and gentle, yet beautiful and witty Hostess, eager to welcome the highest and purest to her salon, yet giving her best freely to all. In other words. Civics should and must come before Eugenics, and assign it its limited sphere and subordinate role ; even as, for both alike, the life of the citizen comes before that of class, family, or even nation. For if there is no bias more distorting than national chauvinism, there is no discipline more moralizing than that of good citizenship. The practical summary is, that the eugenist's gospel of a Good Race must be inspired by the vision of the City Beautiful as fount and field of the Good Life. Each civic school as it arises, each school of sociology which stresses and centres upon Civics, while reaffirming the emotional impulse of the Social Settlement, will thus assert, with a yet fuller emphasis, the intellectual value and the practical necessity of linking the University with the City, in the life of student and citizen. §4. — Citizens in Action. Of the many evidences of an awakening of the civic spirit of the universities in the nineteenth 302 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. century, the Social Settlement was perhaps the first to sound a clear note. It was a double intima- tion. It voiced the common sense of Fellowship between student and citizen. It sounded also a trumpet-blast of Restitution. The mediaeval cities had been looted by the new nobles of the Renaissance, actively aided by the surviving remnants of feudal aristocracy, all intent on adornment of the palaces which were everywhere replacing, in town and country, the castles and fortified strongholds rendered obsolete by gunpowder. But, worse than the despoiling of Abbey and Church, Cathedral and Guildhall, these noble pillagers robbed the craftsman of his soul. The mediaeval inheritance of culture had been shared by the craftsman, who was con- sequently artist and citizen as well. But the Country Mansion and the Town House have no need of citizens, and almost as little need of artist-craftsmen. What they need is artists in moderation, craftsmen in plenty, and servants in abundance. To the private partition of public property by the new aristocracy, therefore, succeeded a class redistribution of the culture-inheritance — the share of the latter left to the "laboring class" being homilies on pious acceptance of the state in life in which it had pleased the gods of many earthly mansions to place them. The process of THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 303 civic denudation and proletarian degradation was completed by the vast proliferation of " county families " in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries throughout western Europe, but above all in England. Thus was the English city swept if not garnished, for the entry of seven new devils from the Industrial Revolution. The civic conscience of the nation had, from time to time, been pricked by the call to resti- tution before the days of the social settlement. The social settlement was, indeed, but a symptom, that the call had penetrated and awakened a collective response in those strongholds of the Renaissance spirit, the older English Universities. Their rebound was superb. No other word surely could describe the march of a small but widely representative academic band to restore to East London its lost inheritance of art and culture. True, no such large ambition was explicit in the scheme. The leaders of the movement were too modest to proclaim any purpose but such as came from the natural impulses of sympathy and good-fellowship. But the succession of picture and art exhibitions, concerts, social and literary gatherings, which have gone on at Toynbee Mall, from that day to this, tell their own tale of neighborhood uplift. They were the first and remain the most characteristic products of that faithful company of Student-citizens in Action. 304 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. The immediate stimulus of their example in other universities and cities testified to widespread recognition of the policy and possibility of civic revival implicit in their personal and humane adventure. The spread and development of the settlement idea has created or encouraged new combinations and alliances charged with high potentiality. It has, for instance, given an impulse and a frame- work of organization to groups of cultivated women, in whose sympathetic medium the most diverse types — workers and capitalists, thinkers and artists, parsons and poets — not only mix and melt, but fuse and recrystallize into richer com- binations of purpose and power. From the crucible of the Woman's Settlement is arising the incense of a spirit affirmative, militant, creative — ambitious to remake the city in the image of its ideals, and ranging beyond civic limits to still wider horizons. Here is one of the sources from which the renascent spirit of the city may regain something of its lost influence in the councils of nations. And thus escaping the too material dominance of its own market-place from within and of the mansions of the county families from without, the resurgent city itself may again come to play a leading role in the determination of the world's affairs. Without ceasing to be what she has been for THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 305 over half a generation — the true "Abbess of Chicago " — Miss Jane Addams, the Head of Hull House, the most effective and influential of all social settlements after Toynbee itself, was recently impelled by the sheer pressure of a social and civic crisis into a responsibility of national leadership.* Was that an evanescent and isolated, not to say a premature, manifestation ? It was at least auspicious of change in types of American leadership. The transformation of State Politics into Social and Civic Policy is proceeding normally, and also along many lines. But educative and purificatory processes have much work to do before the political crowd becomes responsive to the civic ideals of Jane Addams. Nevertheless, her adventurous incursion into national politics would justify itself if only by the prophetic vision it invokes of a sybilline senate, in which abbesses of the future will redress the political balance upset by that arch anti- feminist, King Henry VIII. ! Before the des- truction of the monasteries, the representatives of the Spiritual Power had an actual numerical preponderance in the Upper Chamber of the English Parliament, for the Abbots sat there ; and the right to do so was enjoyed by certain * In helping to launch the new Progressive Party, which at the Presi- dential Election o£ 1912 thrust itself in between the Republican and Democratic parties. 3o6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. abbesses, and used personally by at least one, if by proxy more frequently. True, modern politicians have little respect for Lords Spiritual, and less for monastic cloisters, whether cleric or academic. Would their respect be increased, if it could be shown that the in- effectiveness of modera Governments in dealing with the complex ills of their peoples, derives mainly from the historic fact of lawyers and politicians having arrogated the functions of a spiritual power without being able to perform the realities of it ? The truth is, that the cultivated classes have, in the course of the past three or four centuries, gradually lost the very sense and meaning of a spiritual power, as a guiding and humanizing influence in public affairs. This is true of occidental society as a whole. It is true of Protestant more than of Catholic countries. It is perhaps most true of the English middle class of distinctively utilitarian traditions, the traditions in which Spencer, the immediate sociological successor of Comte, was born and grew up. In that class, that age, individualism reached its furthest limit, touched its rankest growth. It was at once a sample of this self- centred individualism in action, as well as a personal defect characteristic of his whole circle and tradition, that Spencer should have set aside, half unconsciously and half deliberately, THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION, 307 his predecessor's ground-plan of sociology, and scornfully neglected most of the best material he had accumulated for construction, as well as under-valued the generalizations he had won. The sociologist has now to search out the fragments of spiritual powers which have been growing up spontaneously and in isolation, since the breakdown of the mediaeval attempt to co- ordinate the University with the Monastery {i.e., the intellectual with the moral life) and apply their joint product, of wisdom and virtue, to the uplift and guidance of life, individual, civic, and throughout the community of Christendom. Of the three types of Lords Spiritual {i.e., moral and intellectual leaders) performing in the mediaeval concert, two — the Bishop and the Abbot — seldom or never played quite in tune ; and the third — the College Head or Warden, the University Rector or Principal — was never admitted to a leading part in the orchestra. But instead of scoffing at their discords and so failing to recognize that there was any concert at all — as students of history have too often done — the most strictly modern of sociologists will find at least this use for these mediaeval experiments towards the making of a spiritual power, that its types afford him clues in his own search for dispersed fragments thereof in our society to-day. Where are we to look for the modern 3o8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. analogues, if any, of the mediaeval Bishop and Abbot ? To what extent are their nominal and lineal successors in cathedral and abbey, real and functional ones ? What new growths serve old needs ? What old services are performed by new ministrants ; what are left undone ? Turning aside for the moment from the formidable difficulties of such enquiries, we may find it easier to trace the functional descendants of the College Head and the University Principal. Do not these survive in undimmed mediaeval lustre — as their detractors maintain with scorn, and others with pride — the former in Oxford and Cambridge, and the latter in the Scottish Universities ? But if so, they are wonderfully successful in concealing that passion for synthesis and its application in life, which was a leading characteristic of the mediaeval scholar. It is a striking example of the law, that social filiation is independent, not only of organic descent, but even of institutional continuity, that heads of universites in the United States often come nearer than their European confreres^ to realizing essential tendencies of their mediaeval prototypes. Public opinion in America demands of its " College Presidents" (the name is significant of the difference in function), that they shall be citizens as well as educationists ; that they shall regard their office as implying a civic as well as THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 309 an academic mission. It is expected of college presidents, not that they should serve on muni- cipal or other councils, but that by way of advice, warning or exhortation, the wisdom of their cloistered and therefore detached and disciplined experience, should, as counsel, be at the disposal of citizens. The rise of Dr. Woodrow Wilson from the presidency of his university to that of his state and nation, and the retirement of President Taft to a Yale professorship, are thus but conspicuous examples of this virtual re- appearance of Lords Spiritual in the American constitution. To the everywhere prevailing confusion between Council- meetings and Counsel-meetings, there are few exceptions in the distribution of public functions. The relationship that has spontan- eously developed between the American college president and the public, is one of those rare exceptions. For the high value set on his utterances recognizes that counsel is valuable, not only in proportion to the wisdom of the counsellor, but further that such wisdom depends largely on practised detachment of personal and private interests from public and social ones. The choice of a college president to be Mayor of New York at a crisis in the history of the city, and now, under a similar strain in national affairs, the elevation of another college president 3TO INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. to the headship of the nation, may be interpreted as popular recognition that habits and ideals fused into character in the disciplined seclusion of the cloister, persist and are effective for the common good when called into full public service. Having proved themselves w^ise in counsel, it was naturally believed that Dr. Seth Low and Dr. Woodrow Wilson would be virtuous in council also ; for wisdom in counsel is knowing what to do, and virtue in council is doing it. The proper relation of a living university to its city and nation implies, in short, that the collegian when he goes into public life becomes truly the Citizen in Action. " There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth and that a man givetli himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and a flatterer." When Francis Bacon uttered this dictum his far-seeing mind antici- pated that flower of latter-day German meta- physics — the philosophy of the As If."*" A friend's insight is better than our own, for he can think and feel as if he were ourselves. Whereas it is just ■because a man is himself that he is incapable of practising in his own case the imaginative and moralising ritual of the as if, and consequently his advice to himself is not based on real disinterested- * Vaihinger Die Philosophic des Als Ob. There is an excellent summary an G. B. S. Mead's Quests Old and New (Bell & Sons, 1913). THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 311 ness any more than that of the flatterer. Change the as ifoi the detached counsellor into the because of the dependent counsellor, then the mere possi- bility of moral disinterestedness disappears and with it the very essence of spiritual power. We are wise in counsel and therefore virtuous in council, just in proportion as we have carried into life and practised on behalf of others, the child's habit of sincerity in the game of make believe. The more complex a society, the more it needs types of personality thus habituated to altruism in the giving of counsel, in contrast to those specialized on the enforcement of authority. Organized to work in concert in the application of common ideals of life and conduct at all social levels from peasant to emperor, such counsellors and teachers constitute a Spiritual Power in the sociological sense. It is only by grasping these underlying truths that we can realize the supreme contribution of the mediaeval endeavor towards civilization. The intellectual heritage bequeathed from the middle ages may be in some respects but insignificant compared with that which comes to us from ancient Greece. Yet with mediaeval experience to guide us, we can see the fallacy inherent in that ideal of Greek thought, which misled so many of her statesmen and became an obsession of Plato — — the conception of an Intellect ualist Dictature. 312 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. The mediaeval leaders of thought and feeling, whatever their shortcomings in other respects, grasped, for the first time in the history of man- kind — and tried to realize in social organization — the truth that the Spiritual Power depends in the long run for its efficiency and influence on its being kept separate from the Temporal Power, and conversely. The modern States of Europe violate that principle in the most thorough-going way im- aginable, when through the direct action of an executive department and a hierarchy of officials and inspectors, with their codes and regulations, they seek to determine the course of education and thereby largely fix the mental type of the succeeding generation. And as Governments instinctively desire docile taxpayers, they are necessarily hostile to every type of evocatory education, and inevitably aim at its contrary. In short, they are driven to concentrate on the establishment and maintenance of a system of education, repressive of initiative, and productive of minds uniformly plastic to the stamp and seal of the Temporal Power. From such educational postulates, it is thus but a normal and natural result that the cultural distinction between a recent Conservative Government in England and its Liberal successor, should have turned upon whether a Racing Peer or a Foxhunting Squire THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 313 should as Minister of Education impress his mental pattern upon the child-mind of the nation ! In respect of cultural ideal and educational practice, there is little to choose between the great States of Western Europe, whether mon- archical or republican. Their Ministries of Education have as their inner purpose scholastic regimentation, and so are all built on the same type — that of an organized subordination of the moral to the political power. The same socio- logical indictment cannot be framed so sharply against the smaller States of Europe ; and some may claim many provisoes ; but even amongst these, any official educational initiatives which there may be are mainly directed to securing technical efficiency in the applied arts and sciences. We need to go as far afield as Washington to find an altogether different type of Educational Ministry. There the Education Department is without either administrative or financial control of the schools ; but it has developed into an Intelligence Department for them, a clearing house — at once local, regional, national and even world-wide — of educational experience and ideas. In short, instead of a temporal tyranny it is becoming a moral influence. Now, the discovery of a State Department of Education sincerely 314 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. devoted to educational ideals is, to the sociologist, a find like that of a new species to his brother naturalist ! It interests him above all as a spon- taneous experiment towards the solution of the great problem bequeathed by the Middle Ages — that of subordinating politics to morals. For he predicts its future growth in usefulness to be in proportion as it succeeds in educating not only the children in the schools but ministers in their cabinets, deputies in their parliaments, and the citizens whose ill-considered votes placed them there. If a State Department can thus be transformed from a nest of bureaucrats into an outpost of the University Militant, what other wonders of spiritual metamorphosis may we not hope for in a country where the universities are becoming alive to their civic and social mission ! Already a voluntary co-operation in observation and research is spontaneously arising between some of the more active American Universities and the Department of Education at Washington. As this tendency grows it may, under the grace and furtherance of relevant ideals, develop into a concentration of the universities on the educa- tional problems of the nation. And with that thought there looms upon the horizon the vision of an Inter -University Council of Education, which by counsel and not by command would serve as a THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 315 culture authority. And, moreover, if it could be saved from the cravings which beset moral authori- ties, of seeking the purse and sheltering under the sword of the temporal power, such an organiza- tion would naturally become the germinal nucleus of a real Spiritual Power for the new time. In all the nations of the West, the universities already incorporate, by the bond that unites graduates to their alma mater, the elite of the learned and professional classes in the particular community. To bring together these scattered and isolated personalities of the moral and intellectual order, and give them collectively the influence that radiates from a spiritual power, two things are needed. One is a common doctrine of human life, with corresponding outfit of social ideals, and the other is an adequate sense of inter-university cohesion. And these possibilities seem less remote of realization if, instead of ambitiously conceiving their achievement on a national scale, we modestly postulate the birth of the new spiritual power as, in the first place, civic and regional. Coleridge's coinage of "clerisy," to denote the whole body of sages and savants, lay and clerical, scientific and aesthetic, throughout the nation, failed to survive because his generation was incapable of picturing a " national church " thus constructed. But that feat of imagination may, in due course, be per- 3i6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. formed, and greater triumphs of human integra- tion be conceived, and even realized, if meantime universities but develop the local ambition of being each something of a "clerisy" to its own city and region. It is surely by envisaging such possibilities of civic and social services, that the universities of the world can be more fully awakened to the collective responsibilities of their latent resources, of which but the merest fraction is at present developed and utilized. Not in ancient or modern endowments (though funds are needed, and on the largest scale, for the work to do) are the essential resources of universities to be assessed ; but in their evocatory power on youth, their influence on manners, the dignity they impart to age, the eagerness of alumni to render them service, the pacific internationalism of their con- tacts, their universal recognition as sanctuaries of intellectual freedom, their Promethean linkage of the generations. The universities are, in short, severally for their cities and regions, collectively for the human race, great spiritual reservoirs, and these of potentialities undreamed. That they are in fact so largely paralysed by conventionalities is but an aspect of that state of torpor from which they need to be awakened to their re- sponsibilities and their powers. The long isolation from the city, which THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 317 formerly held the universities in a winter sleep, is being replaced by a more deliberate inter- penetration of the civic and the social life around them. But the transition from cultivated passivity to creative activity is as yet fortuitous, sporadic, incidental. It is far from being animated by consciousness of purpose, directed by knowledge of latent resources, spurred by deter- mination to utilize them fully. Only as the university becomes conscious of its role in the drama of civic and social evolution, will its latent energies be roused by clear vision of an epic purpose, and definite grasp of ordered means. The grand responsibility which has been committed to the charge of the universities by the inexorable edict of history, is that of utilizing the whole past experience of the race, for the guidance of its future evolution, and the making of peace and a home for humanity on the planet. No longer the mere burden of the scholar, the Social Heritage will become the hope of the people and the resource of the statesman, so soon as the university is actuated by the ideal of using it for the uplift of the species. As the university becomes inspired by this motive it will in no wise slacken the movement of analysis, the specialization of research and division of labor, which have so greatly aided the advancement of knowledge and the progress 3i8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. of discovery in the nineteenth century. But it will welcome synthetic studies with renewed ardor. It will fearlessly foster their experimental application to life and labor at all levels, in- dividual, civic, national and inter-national. It will not be content passively to receive the customary fraction of youth, which chance, privilege, or the official mandarinate selects for higher education. It will reach out to the limit of its diocese, and scorning all class and occupa- tional distinctions, will gather in, as students, alike the ^lite of youths and maidens ; and, as teachers and inspirers fit for these, the sages and sibyls who can give to opening lives a meaning and a message. It will no longer be content to return its alumni to their respective social niches, be- smattered with a fragmentary culture adapted to class partisanship. It will equip each with a culture deliberately chosen to adjust personal vocation to civic service, so that the social heritage thus transmitted becomes a harmony that unites instead of a thousand discords that sever. The renovated university will attach to its own corpor- ate life, and filiate into one culture community, all those disparate fragments of renascent, post- mediaeval. Spiritual Powers, scattered in isolation throughout the academic diocese — the societies, academies, and institutions concerned with in- struction and education, with science, art, and THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 319 literature, with betterment and uplift by every moral and material means. The leaders of this culture - confederation, though they may not be ambitious to constitute a spiritual power in the old sense, will yet hold and exert the influence that flows from a concert of idealists in action, with the people for chorus. The people themselves, carrying into life the ideal of the university and equipped with the skill of its faculties — they in their several tasks and vocations, occupations, and functions, public and private — will collectively be the Citizens in Action. And as the work of the world comes to be done less by laborers for hire, less by men of business for gain, and more by citizens in generous activity, there will be decreasing reason for the existence of officials drawing salaries in the name of government, and for politicians seeking place and power as guardians of the people. This growth of education for citizenship means an increasing Resorption of Government — resorp- tion into the body of the community from which it has got separated, and which in this unnatural separation it exploits. So, returning to our initial question — that of leadership and guidance through the current transition — we reach a con- clusion confirming what was before hinted at : that the best Government will be the one which 3ZO INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. most steadfastly sets before itself the ideal of preparing its own euthanasia. Where, then, does it debouch, and in what eventuate, our long pilgrimage through Town, School, Cloister, City — our speculative advance of Man from Labor through Education to Citizenship? What does it mean for the indi- vidual pilgrim here on earth, that Resorption of Government we would fain set a-going? Responsibility divorced from resource stupefies, weakens, and depresses. But responsibility arouses, fortifies, uplifts, when quickened by a definite ideal and adequate resource to realize it. The putative distribution of governmental func- tions throughout a complex modern community by means of votes and rhetoric is, for the mass of citizens, at worst a political fraud, at best a responsibility without the means of right action. It is only as there is a genuine Resorption of Government through political conversion from above, and through educational conversion from below, that there can arise a real citizenship, in corresponding measure, for each and all. Thus the euthanasia of Government, by resorption, will proceed from the re-birth of the individual in Citizenship, and also aid his growth and development. It is thus a vitalization of society. THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 321 a renewed process of social genesis — in a word, no mere Revolution, but a re-birth, a veritable Regeneration of the City, a Eu- genesis of Man towards the citizenship of Plato's noblest dream.* There are many charts of Pilgrim Ways in the Ascent of Man, as it is already recorded, or as it may be forecast. To this cartography of the Pilgrim's Progress every age has contributed ; but none more actively, few with more conscious social intention, than the present. Collating old charts with new, we have now discerned, in out- line, two main pathways, and these convergent ones. In the one case the preparation of this road of pilgrimage is through our Political Conversion ; and its pathway leads through the voluntary and gradated Euthanasia of Govern- ment and into the fair cities of Eutopia. Thither, too, leads the other pathway. The entrance for it is by means of our Educational Conversion, and it leads through the Uplift of the People, region by region, city by city. True, we seem at present to be living in a period in which the very opposite tendencies predominate : tendencies of metropolitan and governmental centralization, in which every country, at least when reviewed from or towards * The idea of Rejuvenescense in application to whole populations is worked out with remarkable clearness, simplicity and eloquence by Mr. George Sandeman in a small book, Social Renewal (Heineman, 1913, price 2S 6d). 322 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. its capital city, seems to be following the historic example of Napoleonic France. Yet is it not in France itself that the need of decentralization has become most felt, and that a regional awakening has therefore most fully begun ? Nor are similar examples of this return movement lacking in the British Isles, as notably in education, from the rise of provincial universities to the educational initiatives of individual groups, schools, and even parents. The long-delayed revival of citizenship is also discernible at innumerable points ; and though this be in the main as yet but of sporadic and isolated endeavors, yet City Pageants and Town Planning Schemes and Exhibitions show how the process in being may become generalized. For all such movements an Information Bureau, an Experimental Station — in fact, a clearing- house of thought and action — is next needed ; and not only in London, but for each of its boroughs, and still more for cities everywhere. Of such beginnings not a few are already in progress : for instance, in London the Sociological Society and the Institute of Social Service, and in Edinburgh the Outlook Tower. All these are but germs, however, of a needed fuller co-opera- tion of scholar and citizen towards a network of schools of citizenship. These, too, are arising, and appropriately of varied type : witness those in connection with the new schools of Domestic THE PRESENT AS A TRANSITION. 323 Economy, as at King's College, London, and at Edinburgh ; or again the widely different socio- logical and civic departments of the Universities of London, Liverpool, and Birmingham ; while a yet fuller result is promised by that notable co- operation of the City of Glasgow and its Univer- sity towards the founding of a new department of Social Science. In such ways are developing the germs of the future University Militant, itself ap. expression and fulfilment of the City Resurgent. The fulfilment will make itself manifest in the renewal of a civic role, for each and all of our four social types. For worker the dignity of service honorific, because admittedly civic; for woman, artist, and poet the sanctity of a creative life inspired by dreams at once civic and personal ; for " chiefs " the moral grandeur of civic leader- ship through self-renunciation ; for thinkers, the constructive role of civic planning. With increasing uprise of these evolutionary latencies into conscious activity of civic service, there will develop a growing power of each generation joyously to realize the ideal of life more abundant in each phase of the human cycle from childhood to age. Chapter VII. TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA The University Militant and the City Resurgent. From our study of the Present as a Transition in the foregoing chapter, certain leading ideas have emerged. In particular, there has arisen the suggestion, with corresponding impulse, of a re-birth in citizenship by the moral process of Conversion. Like its archetypal form in religion, Civic Conversion may be usefully described in archaic phrase as a spiritual union or sacred marriage. The partners of the union are the spirit of the city and the spirit of the university. And since these spirits exist only as they are embodied in living persons, their marriage means the social union and co-operation of citizen and student. The resultant progeny is the citizen-student — a personality not only regenerate, but new, creative, and of higher type, and in whom are realized qualities which were but latent in those separate embryos, the citizen and the student. In the enriched personality of this more developed being, there is the dignity that is given by responsibility, the power that TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 325 comes from knowledge, and the impulse created by vision of an ideal. With the increase of personalities of such type, there goes a decreasing need of civic and academic regulation by external authorities. The more any given group — from a learned academy to a presidential convention — is leavened by persons of knowledge and goodwill, who can express or repress them- selves as the general interest demands, the less need of rules and chairmen and all the apparatus of governmental compulsion. It is not the mere spirit of passive tolerance, but a creative urge towards realizable ideals, that liberates those tendencies we have postu- lated as working towards a resorption of government. We now pass on to a study of the same tendencies by examining some further American illustrations of readjustment to a new era. Nowhere are more conspicuously mani- fested than in America, alike survivals of the old order and tendencies towards the new. It offers, therefore, a rich field for the study of the present as a transition. Selecting our illustra- tions first from the point of view of the university, and then from that of the city, we shall see that in America, as in Europe, Town and Gown, so long held apart, are being brought together on the common ground of the arts and the sciences. And amongst these the unification 326 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. of the theatre shows signs of becoming in the new world, as in the old, a compelling factor. Emerging in a utilitarian era, the civilization of America necessarily displayed the qualities and defects of its age. It exhibited them with characteristic energy, not to say exaggeration of effect. The separation of art and industry, of intellect and social life, of business and morals or religion, which has devastated Europe since the Industrial Revolution, has yielded in America an even more unfailing and predictable supply, organized on the most correct com- mercial principles and poured out in prodigious quantities, of the ugly and the useless, the morbid and the confused, the sordid and the futile. Now, some unification of its characteristic thought and activities, its common feelings and aspirations, is insistently demanded by human nature, and is invariably realized by the half instinctive effort of human solidarity. Where then is this to be found? This unintermittent American flow of ugly industry and vapid art, of confused thought and morbid life, of sordid business and arrested morals — this ever-extending progress and unison of all that is futilitarian — is not its typical conglomerate the up-to-date American city itself — Pittsburg or Chicago, Winnipeg or Vancouver ? Happily, where this paleotechnic confusion TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA 327 has gone furthest, the reaction against it is likely to be most conspicuous, and therewith the beginnings of an attendant revival, synthetic and vital. It should not, therefore, surprise us if to America we have to turn for the most impressive illustrations of the incipient order : the order in which scholar, artist and citizen will return into their triune fellowship of old, and, from the present entanglement of broken threads, reweave the web of citizenship. I. In a continental survey of universities from, say, Vienna to San P'rancisco, where are we to look for those most fully awakened to the call of citizenship ? Is it not among the vigorous and youthful institutions of that American Mesopotamia, the fertile region embracing some half-dozen States lying between the rivers Ohio and Missouri ? Here in this potential world- garden of " the middle west " are at least four or five universities equipped and endowed on the scale of the foremost British ones ; perhaps inferior in academic resources only to those of Paris and Berlin, and surpassing all old-world centres in efforts to realize the conception of a university as the whole regional community in its culture-aspect. The foremost pioneer of this ambitious adventure has been the University of 328 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Michigan. In characteristic American phrase and purview, the central ceremony of its academic year is not Commemoration, but Commencement. In America even the universities are forward- looking institutions. There, Alma Mater, in graduating her alumni, is not so much bidding farewell to departing sons, as consciously sending them forth armed and braced for the citizen's career and duties. Of the manifold and varied relations which this University Militant maintains with its state- wide community, let us choose two examples as symptomatic. Universities all over the world, by their competitive system of entrance scholarships or similar encouragements, have developed a well-established routine of influence on the coming generation through a mandarin selection of drilled and docile minds. The University of Michigan is not free from this Chinese method of enfeebling the mentality of its community. But in common with most American Universities, it has developed also a contrary and corrective principle of dite selection. By organizing remunerative bye-occupations exerciseable con- currently with academic studies, and by a system of loans to poorer students of both sexes, repay- able in the prosperity of subsequent careers, the university encourages initiative, develops personality, enriches the community in moral TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 329 valuation, and widens the reach of its own influence. It will be observed that the principle of finance involved is precisely and accurately the opposite of that on which modern banking is established. The security that determines the loan is in the one case quality of meiu . in. tlj-^- other it is quantity of goods. "Tt is"wortE"wTiile to enquire incidentally how these two systems of banking stand in respect of "safety," that much prized virtue of the commercial banker. So far there would seem to be record of but a single loss in the Michigan ledger, and this resulted from the premature demise of a borrower whose professional career was cut short by consumption. Like co-operative banking, which is its economic counterpart, academic banking touches a substantial element of productive security overlooked by the commercial or joint-stock banker. Sir Horace Plunkett, the British protagonist of co-operative banking, is a standing bewilderment to the joint-stock bankers, for he has achieved a paradox darkly mysterious to their philosophy of life. By combining the credits, or more frequently dis- credits, of peasants individually semi-solvent or insolvent, he founds co-operative village banks, by the hundred, in Ireland, which in practice are discovered to be institutions of first-rate credit. The explanation lies in a factor which commercial 330 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. banking overlooks, and would resent the invitation even to consider — the uplift, to higher economic potential and productive efficiency, which results from moral cohesion, and this even among men who stand normally on the poverty line, or within it. Through this system of financing the careers of an elite of its young aspirants, the University of Michigan is manifestly moving towards a new principle of social selection, one which departs in method and ideal from that of our utilitarian age, and approaches more towards the process we have described as " epic selection " in the drama of ancient Athens, and which we saw dawning again in that of seventeenth century England. The Michigan method aids the university also to fulfil its assential purpose of linking the genera- tions by contact of picked adolescent with picked senescent. The University Bank of Careers, as we might call the semi-official academic loan fund, draws its capital from voluntary subscrip- tions. And who are the subscribers and donors ? They are generous souls from all parts of the State. But often they are old men and women, veterans of the industrial army, many of whom may never have seen even the outside of a university. None the less heartily they send their contributions — it may be but a dollar or two — believing that is a way of laying up treasure TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 331 where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where directors do not break through and steal ! Aiming to become a Spiritual Power, penetrat- ing with its influence the life of every member of its regional community, irrespective of age, sex, and occupation, wealth and rank, the University of Michigan is striving to play upon individual hearts and minds with the whole gamut of the arts and the sciences. With such an avowed policy of academic militancy, there naturally arises, as typical instance of its mode of working the practice and custom of using the Musical Faculty as no mere body of pedagogues and experts, but as a living organ of the University, a-thrill with the impulses of soaring life. A series of Faculty concerts, running throughout the winter session, draws audiences from all parts of the State of Michigan, and even beyond, who journey on periodic pilgrimage to their culture metropolis, the little city of tree-lined streets with the quaintly appropriate name of Ann Arbor. Thus does the Musical Faculty symbolize and make real, for all the lay members of the academic diocese, the University in its emotional unison with the life of the people and its power at once of uplifting them and enlarging itself. Each spring these winter concerts are gathered to climax in an open-air musical festival on the University Campus. Then to the arousal of 332 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. music is added the spectacle of massed collegiate buildings, grouped amid leafing trees and verdant lawns ; the moving power of the scene being enhanced by the gay plumage of dames and the rival splendours of academic robes. In such a concentration of arts is triumphantly signalized the meaning and the message of the University. That characteristic feature of American univer- sities, the Campus, contrasts disadvantageously with the gardened architecture of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges in the mellowing qualities of age and in opulence of the gardener's art. But it contrasts also, and more favorably, in its endeavour to express in manifest form the unity of academic life and purpose. The Campus, by its visual appeal as a continuous park including all the buildings, palpably reminds us that a university is a university, and not a congeries of colleges, each struggling in its vain and unfortu- nate effort to be a little university in itself. True) the criticism may be made that this unity of the university, expressed by the Campus and its architecture, is so far but a material unity of construction and aesthetic effect, and this at best not perfect. But is not that better than no visible unity at all ? And will not those who have gone so far seek to go further ? Are they not becoming more ready, and before long it may be deliber- ately, to search out and seek to realize that TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 333 synthesis of thought, that unison of feeling which are to carry further the concerted activity of Departments, Institutes, and Faculties which Is beginning ? To realize this orchestration would indeed make the university efficient — hencefor- ward a living and integral unity. But it is not likely that in an age as yet of specialized and isolated academic institutes, the one institute which will have its specialism in uniting them all can arise without deliberate and careful planning. To set up this common signpost and centre, this spiritual telephone-station and conference-room — this philosophic chapel yet practical clearing- house — is a problem not yet put by pious founder or president to their architect, nor is it one soluble by their present methods. Yet that such planning is looming ahead is evidenced by many signs, direct and indirect ; amongst others the interest which American Universities have evinced in that still too solitary endeavour towards this needed institute of synthesis — the Outlook Tower in Edinburgh."*' Wisconsin, another mesopotamian university and the most militant of them all, has addressed itself directly to the task of imparting education and counsel to the Governments, congressional * The American Jouvnal of Sociology, one ot the organs of the University of Chicago, published as early as 1896, from the pen of one of its professors, an account of the Outlook Tower as the " World's First Sociological Laboratory." 334 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and municipal, of its State. Thus, throughout a region as large as that of a European nation, and very soon to be as populous, the Public Authorities are becoming habituated to draw directly upon the academic stores of knowledge and powers of generalization towards solving the problems of legislation and administration, public economy and finance, hygiene and agri- culture, and other baffling interpenetrations of individual and communitary life. When recently the State legislature was puzzled over the thorny question of railway rates, the University was, as a matter of custom and established practice, called upon for information and advice. More- over, when the time for action arrived, the State sought and obtained from the University the service of men eager and determined to carry into the general life, and make valid in the teeming world of work and affairs, the spirit and the method of the laboratory. Now note what this innovation means, and how it looks to different classes of people. For the man of the laboratory, the fundamental issue in the question of railway rates is neither what the traffic will bear, as directors and shareholders think, nor how much the railway companies can be squeezed, as traders and politicians think. It is how to deliver the goods with safety and speed and with minimum expenditure in terms of TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 335 matter and energies. This laboratory solution thus inevitably wears a strange air of unreality when posted in those abodes of fictitious values, the market-place and the forum. But the house- wife, concerned about the price of beef and boots, already appreciates the new spirit and its method ; so her menfolk too begin to understand them. Again, when recently the great city of Mil- waukee — the industrial capital of the State — ■ became alarmed about the public health of its half- million inhabitants, it promptly appealed to the relevant Faculty of the University, which thereupon appointed its own commission of hygienists, who were granted not only powers to investigate what should be done, but powers also to do it. In such ways, then, are being expressed and diffused, throughout the State of Wisconsin and beyond it, the militant conception of the university, as an organ of reasonable and voluntary guidance amid the labyrinthine mazes of communitary life. But this is a great socio- logical event — one of cardinal import in the present world-transition. What we see emerging in this interaction of university and city are the beginnings of a real Spiritual Power, growing up alongside the Temporal Power, like the Church beside the State of old, both in due correlation, yet also each — here is the condition of safety — in adequate independence of the other. Hence 336 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. many remarkable happenings. The spectacle, for instance, of venerable Mayors with their accompanying Aldermen and Town Councillors from remote American cities (including the proud eastern metropolis of Philadelphia) all turning students and " going west " to the University of Wisconsin, to attend a course of lectures and demonstrations on the Art of Municipal Govern- ment J Here, in fact, were Emperors arrived at Canossa, who had come, however, not as reluctant penitents but willing pilgrims. And thereby did they not only rehearse a necessary historic ritual of the ages, but exemplify also the sociological principle of " political conversion " with its resultant rejuvenescence. For a university which can metamorphose City Fathers into under- graduates has undeniably discovered the formula of an elixir vita. II. Westwards and southwards beyond the Missouri, and contrasting in natural features with the fertile plains of the American Meso- potamia, is the mountainous and desert State of Arizona. The winning of oases from its arid soil and the maintenance and development of their inhabitants, is and must remain the dominant preoccupation of public policy for that region. And this is no mere matter of irrigation and TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 337 reclamation ; but of bringing to bear resources and traditions, spiritual as well as material, in order to create a regional civilization, which may yet rival the desert-cultures and desert religions of old, why not even transcend them ? Thus the making of the desert to blossom as the rose is not only a fit and worthy objective for the University of Arizona ; it is the very task which confronts it, with relevance arresting and supreme. So have discovered for themselves its students, liberated from the inhibitions and aridities of academic tradition by the call of the more hopeful desert. " The president of the Territorial University of Arizona at Tuscon was asked," says Mr. Charles Ferguson in his remarkable exposition of The University Militant^'' " Why do not athletics flourish in your institution ? " Replied the President, " Our faculty here have gone in for the regular sports that are in vogue at eastern colleges, and have tried to interest the students in that sort of thing. But it is no use. The students have absorbed their minds in a bigger game than football, the game of besting this desert here with the tools of science. And they are away every holiday with the engineers and irrigators to the bottom of the mines * The University Militant, by Charles Ferguson. (Mitchell Kennerley, New York and London, 191 1). 338 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and the tops of mountains, training for the match." For these students of Arizona, the "drudgery" and " monotony " of labor, those bogeys of the educated classes, are replaced by the dramatic interest of a creative process. And what is done in Arizona to-day may be repeated to-morrow in Aberdeen or where you will, right down the alphabet, provided two conditions are satisfied. The first is to regard the industries of a region collectively as the ^pcTjjinrj rama of its in- habitants : for, as we might say in parallelism with the plea for the dramatization (or play-making) of education, we need the corresponding drama- tization and play- making of all typical pro- ductive work. The second condition is a consensus of parents and teachers, to give free course to that eager instinct of youth which longs to express itself in the mastery of environ- ment. True, there are needed for the fulfilment of both conditions many " conversions," and of more than parents and teachers. Let us begin by noticing that the President of Arizona University, in encouraging his students to follow their manly impulse to substitute reclamation camp for foot- ball field, had himself undergone that regenera- tive process we have called Educational Conver- sion. His dictum may be cited alongside the testamentary counsel of the heroic Scott, of TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 339 Antarctic fame, bequeathed for the education of his son — " Try to interest the boy in natural history : it is better than games." Games are admirable in their place, but their place is not everywhere ; and in any case there are, as we have just been reminded, games of higher order and more vital significance. We may thus with confidence predict that the boy who has obeyed the call of the wild, and has found his games amid the play of the animal world, will by that very preparation be more likely as youth to satisfy his play-impulse in the adventurous services of modern knight errantry. He will man the lifeboat and the fire brigade ; he will reclaim the desert and defend the distressed. He will put the quest of adventure before the hunt for food, but will dig none the less heartily for that. He will put the quest of love before the conquest of money, but will reckon all the more honourably for that. Beyond the heroic tendencies of youth come the hardening phases of manhood. How with the onset of manhood rise into the epic dignity of citizen-in-action ? The resultant in character, however opulent it be, of intimacy with nature, habituation to courageous action, and devotion to adventurous service, is all needed, but it does not suffice. For the deeds of citizenship there are needed also dreams of the city perfected, as 340 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Paradise ; knowledge of its evils, as Inferno ; and experience of its purificatory passages, as Purgatory. And moreover, all these educational processes must be set agoing during the formative period of adolescence, if their resultant deeds — steps in the civic ladder of perfection — are to be realized in maturity. Hence the need on which we have so repeatedly insisted, that the life of the university must intertwine with that of the city. Going forth equipped with that double experience and outlook, the student carries with him the ever-renewing seeds of rejuvenescence, because his immediate worldly career and his role as citizen are but the comple- mental aspects of one joyous and abiding adventure — the living of a full life in desire and deed-;-continuous with the dream of adolescence. The alternatives as yet commonly offered to modern youth, of contrasted careers, devoted either to private gain or to public usefulness, is, like so much of the utilitarian philosophy, based on a fictitious dilemma. From the poets must the universities learn that to civilized adults, as well as to children and to "savages," there is open for travel that Third Way that was shown to Thomas the Rhymer. He was shown the two Ways we know so well — " the narrow road, so thick beset wi' thorns and briers " and " the braid, braid road " — but also a third : — TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 341 And see ye not that bonny road That winds aboot the ferny brae ? That is the road to fair Elfland Where thou and I this night maun gae ! No education can substantiate a claim to be " Higher " that does not direct the path of youth to this Third Way of living a Man's life, which happens also to be the way of individual re-birth in citizenship. But this unifying of public and private life by means of education, is capable of being viewed from a different angle, and seen as " political conversion " ; and then it implies, to be sure, a miracle indeed. For it means nothing less than the substitution of the ideal to serve, in place of the ambition to rule, as the motive- impulse toward public life. And yet service through citizenship, though seemingly a renun- ciation, is no servile self-repression, but its very opposite ; the flowering of personality in creative work dignified by civic association, and thus of permanent influence and example, even where not rising to leadership. To the moral uplift that goes with sacrifice, there may thus be added the intellectual satisfaction of unity, the aesthetic joy of creation, and the social dignity of influence. To encourage such educational tendencies in all classes of the community and throughout the phases of each individual life, is to bring insensibly into operation that large 342 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. and pervasive process of social leavening that has been called the Resorption of Government — and this in all the myriad forms and aspects of Government at every level of the political, economic, and social system. But in order that the Resorption of Govern- ment, with its consequent civic re-birth of the individual, may begin in student days, the University must recover the ancient vision of the City. It must take account of the city as its own material setting, worthy or the reverse, and of the quality of the human life lived therein, as the nearest spiritual reality with which it has to do. That there is a trend in that direction, we have collected many instances to show ; albeit of most, even in America, it might be remarked that they envisage everything civic thus far except the city. Consider, for instance, the city of Madison, capital of the State and also seat of the great University of Wisconsin, whose mili- tant activities we have observed with admiration. Founded on a site of rare beauty, in a region of great natural resources, the city of Madison started with the momentum of every advantage imaginable by the utilitarian mind, and with no restraint of despised mediaeval custom, or other archaic survival, to impede the free flow of influence from its modern university at one civic focus, and of guiding control from the State TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 343 Capitol at the other. The city of Madison was manifestly destined by nature and art to be a model capital of the political rigime. How it realizes its destiny you may see in a short walk from the University to the Capitol. Between these two poles of wisdom and authority, there sprawls, indifferent to beauty and economy, an untidy township, whose mean streets and dis- articulate frame are to the costly magnificence and fictitious unity of the Capitol, what the sordid evils of the modern nation are to its lordly fabric of legislative enactments. Lacking a vision of the ideal city, and thus without impulse to realize it, citizens perish and politicians flourish in the new world as in the old. Nowhere perhaps is more dramatically displayed than in Madison, Wisconsin, the remoteness of State Politics, in their essential origin and unreversed tendencies, from the vital problems of civic life. Nowhere perhaps is more diagramatically made visible the leeway which even a progressive and militant university has to make up in its recovery of civic vision and cultural influence.* These present disharmonies of the social spirit and dislocations of its body need not however * Nolen's The Planning 0/ Minor Cities (New York, B. W. Huebsch, 1912), vividly portrays the city of Madison as it is in its present disorder, as it might have been had it followed the natural lines of regional development, and as it may still be when the politician makes room for the civic statesman with his attendant town-planners. 344 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. discourage us. For the civic outlook of the university is everywhere widening to the larger vision ; and the complementary trend of the city is not less manifest. With some final illustrations of the latter process, we will close our prolonged study of the Present as a Transition. But first let us concentrate our impressions of the actual university militant into a viewpoint, from which may be caught a glimpse of its possible future, if it can reverse certain tendencies and advance others. Ill Suppose the shade of Dante, with some modern Vergil for his guiding, could visit the Campus of Michigan University during its spring festival, what course would their conversation be like to take ? Wandering down arborescent avenues that wind among multitudinous collegiate buildings, they would come upon those institutes of specialized research which are the essential features of a modern university. They would see the Laboratories of Physics and Chemistry, of Physiology and Psychology, the Institutes of Engineering and Metallurgy, of Preventive Medicine and Psychiatry, of Economics, and so forth. How would the Vergilian guide explain to the mediaeval mind of Dante the inner purpose and social filiations of all these institutes, whose work and products are at once theoretical and TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 345 practical, academic and civic? He would probably find it convenient, for an introduction, to designate them the chapels of newer guilds of craftsmen called scientists. He might point there to the Chapel of St. Pasteur, here to that of the Venerable Claude Bernard ; there to the Chapel of St. Adam of Scotland, here to that of St. James of Harvard. "And where," might the eager and wondering Dante ask, " are the chapels of the old guilds of handicraftsmen whom I knew? " " Long ages ago," would reply his guide, " the craft guilds were broken up, and their property confiscated by kings and nobles, who wanted to be each a Pope and a Caesar. The sacred images of the guilds were melted down to make coin for these same kings and nobles, or they were carried off to add to their loot-collections of curiosities, now called objects of art or bric-a-brac. For centuries, in consequence, the craftsmen had no guilds. Now, however, they are re-established in a manner ; but instead of having chapels attached to cathedrals, they meet in taverns, called to-day public-houses or saloons." " And do the women members of these guilds also meet in public-houses or saloons ? " " The modern craft-guild, or trade union as it is called, does not have women members, except in rare cases." 346 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. "The modern bishops, then, have such great influence, that they can give to the widows and orphans, the women and children of the city, all the protection and care they need ? " " Bishops, at least in England and in America, have little influence. They are appointed directly or indirectly by Chiefs of the Temporal Power — called in England politicians and in America millionaires — who are naturally wont to nominate to this office persons of their own kind, but of less weight and ability than them- selves. In any case, Anglican Bishops are too occupied with their other concerns to look after widows and orphans. They have a round of strenuous duties that engross their every day. In the morning they dictate repressive letters to over-zealous clergy who may be unwisely think- ing for themselves, or trying to do good in a disturbing way. In the afternoon they travel by automobile to confirmations in remote villages. And in the evening they dine with the neigh- bouring nobles or magnates for the encourage- ment of the surrounding poor, who are greatly interested and gratified by this attention." " It seems to me, the souls of these busy bishops will win straight to Paradise on the happy day of their death ! But tell me more of these new scientific guilds, with their strange detached chapels. I would fain see the TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 347 Cathedral Church to which they belong. Come, let us seek it out amid these many buildings." "This place, O Dante, which you naturally mistake for a cathedral close, is the precinct of a modern university. It is called by the Americans who invented it a Campus. And as to those chapels of the scientific guilds, they do not belong to any church. No cathedral or col- legiate church unites them with each other, nor do they commonly take active part in the life of city and community." " Who, then, were all the men and women in festal attire whom we saw on entering this university Campus ? They were listening to that wonderful music, whose harmonies seemed of a strange beauty such as never before have I heard. I had thought all these people were waiting for the Cathedral Precentor to come and marshal them in procession for some holy festival." " How shall I explain ? You must know that since the age of the Great Dissension, which happened after you had left the earth, religion has no longer united but separated the Christian peoples. First the men of the speculative life broke away from the church, and formed chapels and convents of their own throughout Christen- dom, called Academies and Learned Societies. Next the nobles of the northern countries reverted to Pagan beliefs, and being no longer restrained 348 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. by Christian piety or holy fear, boldly took away the lands of the church. They still retain them — both the lands and the Pagan beliefs. Then the artists and sculptors broke away, and attached themselves to the Pagan nobles. Finally the people forsook their spiritual Mother, and constituted innumerable sectarian conventicles of their own, many of these being dedicated to the perpetuation of an individual vagary, or to some quarrelsome love of difference among folk really thinking much alike. The moral disorder being thus complete, the politicians arrived. They sought to perpetuate the system in all its parts and working, called it Progress, and appointed themselves its ministers — on ample salaries." " And what were the Mystics doing during this dismemberment of the Spiritual Power ? " " They also retired into cloisters and hermit's cells of their own. And there they turned musicians. They invented a new kind of sacred music which is given at performances called concerts, such as that we found in progress when we entered this Campus. These concerts have mostly in the past been held in sordid secular halls ; but now more and more frequently they take place in the beautiful new parks of the people, which then, like this Campus to-day, renew something of the spirit of the old time cathedral close. This new and enriched music TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 349 has come to be called " classical " — but none the less it is entirely modern. It is especially modern in that it has restored to contemporary life the means of bringing together in decorous assembly all persons rich and poor, high and low, learned and ignorant, and for the time being transport- ing them with rapture to a common heaven." " Tell me more of the use that is being made of this new sympathetic magic, in the cause of the larger reunion and the general uprise of Christian peoples." "The cities are making use of it to reunite and hearten their peoples. But not as yet the universities. For the scientists who work at intellectual unity are not musicians ; the musicians are not scientists, and the philoso- phers are neither musicians nor scientists. The University of Michigan is a leader and example to all others in breaking away from the academic tradition which honours and advances politics as the highest of studies and barely tolerates music as the lowest within its ken. This university is restoring music to its place as the Queen of the Arts. It is using the musical faculty as the harbinger and waymaker of a large and lofty ambition." " Is it that the university hopes to build, amid the leafy lawns of this Campus, a cathedral to unite all individuals in one elevating life and to 3SO INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. incorporate also the guilds alike of the sciences, the arts, and the handicrafts therewith ? " '• Doubtless that falls within the more remote plans and projects of the University. But mean- time its efforts, apart from its musical festivals, are centred on the preliminary work of creating by education a regional communion of feeling and thought, of belief and aspiration about life and labor, about the world and the way it w^orks." " The University thinks that if there is unison of feeling about deep things, and unity of thought about first and last things, then the people will co-operate in the building of a cathedral ? There is wisdom in that. But I recall that for the building of cathedrals in the old time, there was needed not only the planning of wise men, but also the dreams of mystics and the daring of craftsmen. Remember that hundreds of church steeples fell in ruin to the ground, before the masons learned to build a cathedral tower that stood four square to all the winds. Bid the universities have courage." " It is true they have need of courage ; for they are at present hindered by a haunting fear. The magicians of the scientific guilds have discovered many new and wonderful secrets about the mysteries of life, and as to how the world works. They have discovered these TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 351 secrets — so it is said — by taking the world to pieces. And now there is fear in the academic mind that the pieces may not fit together again ; or if they do, then the remade world will prove to be so different from the present dreams of the people, that the shock of disillusionment may shatter the foundations of the social fabric." " I perceive, then, that the modern university has not produced amongst its philosophers a Thomas Aquinas to tell them in the language | of their own time and generation how the world | of God, the world of Man, and the world of | Nature are interrelated in one orderly universe." i " Assuredly if an Aquinas did appear he would not be understood by the Faculties. The theologian and the scientist have each developed a specialized language all but unintelligible to the other, and but feebly comprehended by the man of letters. The universities have discouraged translation from the language of one Faculty into that of another. And all endeavors towards a common language for the three Faculties of Theology, Arts, and Science they have stoutly repressed." " And the Poets and the People — what of their language ? " " The Poets have departed from the traditions of the early humanists in that they now acquire little of the theologic tongue and less of the 352 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. scientific. As for the People, the babel of modern languages has not only isolated them from the university, but even divided them into two classes ever drifting further apart. The old countryman still speaks his own local dialect, racy of the soil. But the townsman has been taught an abstract, formless, imageless jargon, made out of the detritus of the languages of Theology, Letters, and Science." " So that the Poets do not speak either to the people, or to the priests, or to the philosophers, nor these to the poets ? " " That is so. While the poets are telling each other their dreams in lotus land, the priests silently despair of sympathy, the philosophers clamantly despair of synthesis, and the people suffer and desj^air of synergy." " I would have them all remember, what surely the people already know, that there is something prior to synthesis and synergy, and even to sympathy, in the making of life spiritual : and that is sorrow, which is the seed of sympathy. They should remember that before the great age of Christendom there came first a time of suffering — suffering not only by the people but by every- one. From that emerged the social cohesion and the awakening for the great things that followed — first the Mystery Drama of the Passion of Man, and therewith the Monasteries, TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 353 Cathedrals and Friaries — even the Cities and Universities." "You mean, if I read your thought aright, that what' you, Dante, suffered and did in the long years of preparation to create your vision of the Divine Comedy, that also should the poets and prophets suffer and do to-day. You mean that those who have the gift of vision and can use it to stir and direct the uprise of life in others, should themselves live fully and learn all things by living, at all cost — to comfort and the creature that craves it." " It is indeed what I have said in the Vita Nuova. But if that could be written again, it would be necessary, I perceive, to change some things and add others. From what you have told me of these new guilds of science, I imagine it is from them that the poets and prophets of the present day must learn the deepest mysteries of life and love. And these mysteries must be shown to the people by the poets and the prophets in their own way — the immemorial way of art and of religion. That is the way of appeal to the people ; to women and to all who live humanly, love deeply, and think truly. If these be given true vision of life, there will be born a generation which, having faith in man and sympathy with nature, will recover the ecstasy of life and the power of miracles." 354 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. " Then your message — the message of Dante to the universities of to-day — is this : That when the Mystery Drama of the Passion of Man is again a-playing, the cathedrals will be again a-building." " Yes ; they will rise to the harmonies of this music of life as did the walls of Thebes to the lyre of Amphion." IV. It is time to turn from the dreams of the univer- sity to the actualities of the city. Repeating in another way what was affirmed at the opening of this chapter, we observe that on the cities of America the Industrial Revolution has stamped its sign manual in an all-pervading ugliness and confusion, monotony and waste. Multiply those attractive elements indefinitely and there looms up before your gaze, the goal of that progress, which for long was almost the sole American civic ideal — the City Big. A swift and sudden reaction in our own day has checked, none too soon, this direction of advance and re-oriented the civic aspiration of America towards the older and opposite ideal of the City Beautiful. In a mood of lavish adorn- ment and with incredible rapidity, the cities garlanded themselves with parks, and ringed their suburbs with parkways. They dreamed of TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 355 grandiose civic centres and spacious boulevards. Many cities planned ambitious reconstructions, Hausmann-like in scale and character ; and a few are proceeding to carry them out. The movement towards the City Beautiful is far from having exhausted itself. It is still in salutary progress as an aesthetic act of repen- tance. But another wave of civic emotion has surged into the focus of attention and is running high through the length and breadth of a nation which is a continent. More heavily charged with more complex and positive purposes, this new movement has for its watchword — the City Better. It expresses itself in three great lines of activity, determined by the problem which it con- fronts. The achievement of the City Better is taken to postulate at once a moral re-birth, a new economic co-operation, and — as a pre- liminary to both — a re-investigation of social conditions. These several implications of the ideal, then, have given origin and imparted direction to three distinctive currents of civic enthusiasm. One of these, guided by a succession of remarkable Mayors — veritable City Fathers — is sweeping clean the Augean stables and re- placing by administrations of efficiency and economy, the old reign of municipal corruption which became a burden as well as a by-word. Another main current of redemptive civic activity 356 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. (bringing fresh power to the already existing housing reform and sanitary movement) is organizing a co-operation of the municipal authorities with the railways and the industries in schemes of transport reconstruction within the city area ; in order that, for instance, it shall no longer take three days to get a truck of wheat from a western to an eastern railway terminus in Chicago, with vile defacement of the city as an incident in the process. As the first current in the City Better move- ment is primarily moral, and the second economic and hygienic, the third is fundamentally in- tellectual. A new social imperative, entitled "Know your City," is gathering momentum, and winning acceptance far and wide. Under its impulse and sanction there is everywhere astir a penetrative spirit of enquiry into the facts and tendencies of city life. Its literary productivity ranges from the comprehensive " Pittsburg Survey," whose half-dozen impressive volumes achieved a world publicity, down to the locally exhibited map of sewers, wells and waterpipes resulting from the " sanitary survey " of some western townlet suddenly awakened to the mean- ing of Hygiene. The growing prevalence of the " Social Survey " in America is attested by many events of peculiar interest. When, for instance, stockholders of a great Industrial Trust take to TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 357 demanding from their Directorate a " social survey " of labor conditions in their mills by way of supplement to the annual balance-sheet — as was done recently in the case of the Steel Cor- poration — who shall deny that the day may be approaching when, by the Man in the Street, even though it be Wall Street, dividends will be reckoned no longer in dollars alone, but also in life and welfare ? There we talk of remote possibilities, but there are a crowd of others much nearer than that one. The significance of the "social survey " as we find it here and now, lies in the proof it affords of a general spontaneous awakening of citizens to civic consciousness and of a con- sequent resolve to know and to do. The move- ment is not one being forced upon the cities from without. It has, happily, external sources of guidance ; but the formative impulse determining its many and diverse crystallizations works everywhere from within. In a recent paper to a learned society,* the acting-editor of that admir- able journal of applied sociology, The Survey, said " I have before me four closely typewritten sheets, thoroughly covered with the names of cities and organizations which are either em- barked on surveys, or are considering surveys, or would like to know more about them." * Paul U. Kellog, "The Spread of the Survey Idea." Proceedings of the American Academy of Political Science. igi2. 3S8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. And once the " survey idea " has touched the imagination of a city, what wonderful transfor- mations — at least in social re-groupings and liberated energies — may be wrought ! Let the story of Syracuse tell."*' In a city of 150,000 people, within the State of New York, the clergy, the local philanthropic agencies, along with the employers (acting through the Chamber of Commerce) and the working men (acting through the Trades' Council), all come together and enter into a co- partnery for the execution of a "preliminary survey " of their city. They allocate the costs in proportion to the collective means of their re- spective organisations, two-fifths being borne by the Chamber of Commerce and a fifth each by the other three groups. They call to their aid men of specialized experience from other cities, and thus obtain the services of the most com- petent experts in Housing, in Child Welfare, in Prison Reform, and other fields of inquiry and betterment. Volunteers for the detailed work of investigation and organization are forthcoming, and there springs into being a little army of physicians, clergymen, lawyers, students of the local university, municipal officials, journalists, and plain citizens, all metamorphosed for the * Shelby M. Harrison, A Social Survey of a Typical American City. Ibid. Also The Newburgh Survey : Department of Surveys and Exhibits. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1913. TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 359 time being into " Civic Surveyors." For Com- mander - in Chief, modestly designated the " Survey Director," is obtained the executive head of that admirable initiative, the Department of Surveys and Exhibits of the Russell Sage Founda- tion in New York City. The five weeks' campaign of active investigation which thereupon ensues, carries the " Survey " to the stage of Report. To give publicity to the findings of the Provisional Reports there is organized a " Know-your-City " week. It begins on a Sunday morning with sermons from forty pulpits on the responsibilities of citizenship. On Monday the schools take up the tale, and amongst other juvenile contri- butions is the reading of the prize essays selected from over a thousand, all written by the pupils on " How to make Syracuse a better city." Daily there are conferences on concrete local problems in the afternoons ; in the evenings, mass meetings at which the Reports are read and discussed. An exhibition of maps and charts, pictures and photographs of actualities, plans of improve- ments, is no unessential display of the " Know your City week," but the very centre on which its efforts focus. For by this graphic appeal is the surveyors' vision of the City, as It Is and Might Be, most fully evoked also in the mind of others and transmitted to the general body of the citizens. The Exhibition of Civic Surveys and 36o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Reports is indeed at once a representation of fact, an evocation of dream, and an impulse to action. Such is the story of Syracuse and its "Prelimi- nary Survey." In the comprehensive sweep of its beginnings, in its simultaneous mobilization of all powers and purposes, it could, of course, be matched in but few other cities as yet. Nevertheless it is indicative of a movement de- monstrably in progress at a hundred other places. Its importance for the student of survivals and tendencies lies in the general truth which its interpretation yields ; in its significance as one of the signs of impending transition from the abstractions of public life to its realities, from state and national politics to civics and region- alism. Contrast the difference in organization, in mode of working and in educational process between the two systems. Instead of mystic caucuses, mimetic war of faction-fight, fevered elections, partisan orations, postulation of irre- concilable rights, appeals to unverifiable abstractions, we have affirmation of definite responsibilities, citizens in co-operative activity, surveys of actualities, reports in reference to con- crete problems and specific issues, plans of possible improvements, appeals to the sense of order and to vision of the City Better. In passing from state politics to civics and regionalism there is also no small difference in cultural status ; a TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 361 difference comparable, let us say, to that between an Australian Korroborree and the spring festival in the Dionysiac theatre at Athens. The Australian method of expressing the personal ideal and commingling it with the social is worthy of all respect ; but we prefer the Greek. The new social and civic politics has, to be sure, its own special perils. Action proceeding from faulty and inadequate diagnosis may be as mistaken, and as lastingly unfortunate in its effects, as action proceeding — after the amazing manner too plentifully exemplified in the political action of past and present times — from no de- liberate diagnosis at all. In face of this peril there is particular need to remind organizers of social politics that the surveys and exhibits, reports and plans, of the incipient civic order will be free from the surviving defects of the passing political order just in proportion as they embody the surviving qualities of past and passing orders. Hence in so vast a problem, so complex a task as the adjustment of the present to the future, the Historic Survey must have a primary place ; and this the more needed the fewer the city's visible monuments or reminders of historic cultures, local, or of elsewhere, may be The making of a city - plan for Chicago or for Winnipeg thus demands in its preparation a preliminary historic survey more rather than less insistently than 362 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. would be the case in planning for Florence or Paris. For the newer the city, the more likely its inhabitants are to re-invent the defects of old civilizations, unless they be protected against the virus of evil by social transmission of the heritage of good. The Social Survey, then, so full of promise for the future of American cities, must, if it would contribute adequately and take its due place in the city-planning movement, be further developed to include and incorporate the Historic Survey ; and this, of course, in no mere archaeological sense, but in the widest culture- meaning. That it will be taken in that meaning, where it is taken at all, there is cheering assurance on hand. For the phrase "city-planning," which has won acceptance in America, over the rival English form of " town-planning," already expresses, in its content, the wider range and higher ambition of American civic aspiration. In the best examples of the survey deliberately prepared for city- planning, there is varied recognition of social aspects and at least an affirmation of the historical point of view. In the survey, for instance, of Jersey City, by Messrs. G. B. Ford and Gooderich, perhaps the most intensive and detailed pre- liminary survey yet made for city-planning anywhere, there is actual investigation into recreational and culture needs and possibilities. TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 363 and there is insistence on the study of historic tendencies as a necessary pre-requisite to sound city-planning. V. Thus is being prepared the way for a further phase of the civic renaissance in America. The leaders of this advance now incipient are looking even beyond the conception of the City Better. How to advance from the City Better to the City at its Best is their preoccupation. Manifestly something more is needed than surveying and reporting ; more even than the planning and executing of material improvements. The Muses must be invoked to arouse the ideals of person- ality ; and that the creative urge of personal ideals may be guided towards civic expression, old institutions must be renovated and perhaps new ones devised. In that direction go not a few movements now in fitful progress, in so far as they obviously can be given a meaning and a message (and thereby a lasting vitality) by imparting to them a civic reference and role. As examples of such movements may be cited the renascence of pageantry, the revival of folk-song and dance, the return of processional festivals, the increasing vogue of the acted drama in school and college, the growth of repertory theatres in regional capitals. All these are aids to the 364 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. flowering of personality and so to the enrichment of communitary life. But the problem remains, How to orient the expanding personality that it may seek expression and outlet in assisting the rebirth of the civic spirit, and in its maintenance. To the discussion of this question a cardinal contribution has been made by a recent American book"*" As the ostentatious misuse of Leisure in America provoked the critical and analytic study of Mr. Thorstein Veblen, to which reference was made in a previous chapter, so the many American initiatives towards the redemption and the right use of Leisure have brought forth their generalization in the constructive and synthetic study of Mr. Percy Mackaye. His ardent propa- gandism for a " civic theatre " is not to be confounded by analogy with the movement for a National Theatre in England, from which it differs as civic from state politics,. It differs too in essence from the Municipal Theatre of Germany, and goes far beyond the rising Repertory Theatre in constructive social aim. For the Civic Theatre, Mr. Mackaye claims no less ambitious a mission than conscious and deliberate leadership in co-ordinating the whole circle of the arts and the sciences in a long- overdue reorganization of leisure. With Jane * The Civic Theatre, by Percy Mackaye (Mitchell Kennerley, New York 1912.) TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 365 Addams he sees, in horror and indignation, the scanty and hard-earned leisure of youth and maiden in the great cities diverted from in- stinctive quest of adventure in the House of Dreams, and entrapped by commercially organ- ized supply of vulgar or base temptation, w^hich aims at substituting lust for joy and debauchery for gaiety. With William Morris he sees, in shame and contrition, the dull and drab festivities of Labor habitually divorced from beauty and left joyless in leisure, because forsaken by Art, which neglects the comforting of Lazarus, being en- grossed in the service of Dives. With Gordon Craig and Huntly Carter he sees in hope and encouragement, dramatist and actor, musician, and artist, struggling to liberate themselves from a Commercial Theatre and striving to re-make it in the name of the Muses. In all these energies, unused or misused, these potentialities un- awakened or basely stirred, these strivings imperfectly directed, Mr. Mackaye sees the very stuff of civic uplift ; and to the Universities and to the Cities he appeals for aid in his mission of reconstruction. The Universities of America have built for their athletes vast and costly stadia. Some, like Harvard, have commenced the ascent from Olympia to Parnassus by >occasionally devoting them (the stadia and the athletes) to higher 366 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. purposes in open-air drama. Here Play and Pageant have been given with splendid magnifi- cence before immense concourses of spectators. Let the Universities continue their arduous ascent of Parnassus, urges Mr. Mackaye, and in course of time and travail they will be enabled to make a worthy return to the People who grant them endowment. What, he submits, the People want from the Universities are the true Masters of Arts needed for leadership in creating the repertory of the Civic Theatre, in organizing the players for performances, and in training the citizens for chorus. By plays and pageants, festivals and pro- cessions, by folk drama and culture drama, the Civic Theatre is to achieve the uplift of the People through the redemption of leisure. To the Cities its advocate utters the prophetic warning that no city-plan is adequate to future requirement which fails to find a place for the Civic Theatre, and for one designed on large and generous proportions : a spacious portico for pageant, masque, and processional, a great central auditorium for historic and romantic drama (from ^schylus to Shakespeare and Rostand), and two lateral auditoriums dedicated respectively to the Intimate Theatre (from Moliere to Ibsen and Brieux) and to the Educational Theatre for plays to children and by children. In the focus TOWN AND GOWN IN AMERICA. 367 of the city-plan thus envisaged stands the Civic Theatre, and grouped around it are its ancillary institutes of popular culture : schools of art and music, library and museum, concert-hall and picture-gallery, with their several activities all vitalized through local and functional associa- tion with the unifying art of Drama. By the creator of this vision, there is foreseen in the cities of America, a " chain of civic theatres stretching from New York to San Francisco," each with its complement of subsidiary culture institutes, developing a " redemptive ritual of joy," and so uplifting the body of citizens, as for their cities did the cathedrals of old. Chapter VIII. CONCLUSION. § I. — From Social Settlement to Civic Politics. If asked to name the most significant event of the third generation of the nineteenth century, the sociologist would look around for something calculated to appeal to the mind of a child-like questioner, and at the same time fitted to satisfy, in some degree, his own more exacting conception of what an event " most significant " should comprise. He would instinctively wish to find some simple domestic human fact for a beginning of the story, and then to be able to show the influence of that domestic human fact expanding and deepening through the years, till at the close of the generation it encircled the globe with a chain of institutions representative of the most vital tendencies of its period. Such an event, one ventures to submit, our indulgent sociologist might discover amongst the obscure happenings of the year 1873, the year when a certain young Oxonian cleric took home his bride to a vicarage in the centre of laboring London. The event was more than the marriage of the Barnetts — it CONCLUSION. 369 was the espousal of two great traditions. The broad and benignant culture which has its institution in the University was mating with a bride trained in Octavia Hill's civic renewal of the eternal feminine postulates : that good people are to be found in good homes, and that Fine Souls do not come out of the home unless you first lovingly put the Fine Arts in. Here then, surely, in a domestic event in Whitechapel, the sociologist might claim to have found that for which he was looking. For Life and Learning were there making that compact with Love and Labor, out of which the creative spirit is ever renewed. Every ideal event materializes in a new institution, and the resulting new institution in this case was the University Settlement. Later on, when the churches actively supplemented the initiative of the universities in the maintenance of the movement, it was called the Social Settle- ment. To-day the chain of such settlements literally encircles the globe. Canon Barnett became the General of an Order of which the Houses, though not numerous, have yet a foothold in the great cities from Paris to Chicago, and have extended even into India and Japan. The word "settlement" has taken on a new and higher significance. It has hitherto meant, in law, a form of contract ; in colonial history or in politics it has meant new regional habitats and 370 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ways of livelihood. From these traditional static and mundane conceptions the young men of the universities are afforded an honorable escape by the social settlement. Their entrance into that Order is no search for a livelihood, still less a form of contract. It is an act of faith in a spiritual adventure. The settlement provides the student with what he needs to complete his moral growth— a personal Quest and a civic Mission.* The initiative of the Barnetts in setting up Toynbee Hall (so called in commemoration of one of the Oxonian- Whitechapel colleagues, who early sacrificed his life to the Mission but won all the laurels of the Quest) bore immediate and abundant fruit. It had this instant success because its fundamental principle — that the student should be also a citizen — systematized a spontaneous movement, already making itself apparent in diverse ways and places. It synchronized especi- ally with an outpouring from the universities, of ardent souls singly aroused to the desolation and dreariness of the industrial cities, the misery and poverty of their inhabitants. The burning zeal of these initiators, and the devotion, energy, and self-sacrifice of their followers, bore witness to a veritable re-birth of the Franciscan spirit in * The conception of the Quest, the Mission and the Pilgrimage as educational and social determinants of the phases of life, is set forth in the' writer's St. Columba already cited (see page igi, note.) CONCLUSION. 371 nineteenth century England, and added to the effective moral agencies of the community, groups of men — mostly young men — who could quite properly be described as Franciscan Friars of the humanities, social and cultural. This advance, from the cloisters of thought into a world in all senses uninviting, had thus its impulse at first mainly in a great awakening of the sympathetic emotions. Later, the move- ment took on new aspects. For the effectual treatment of evils, it came also to be seen, there was needed a fuller investigation of their causes, a deeper knowledge of social origins and ten- dencies. In the phase of inquiry and learning which thereupon ensued, the classic work of Charles Booth (organized and carried on partly from Toynbee Hall) was one valiant and characteristic initiative ; and another was the "Summer Meeting" of University Hall, Edin- burgh, and its associated School of Sociology, though these latter, to be sure, had — as we have seen — many and complex origins and wider applications. Beside the Fran- ciscan phase there was thus reappearing what — still using these most convenient and suggestive categories of the spiritual " civil services " of pre-Reformation Christendom — we may describe as a Benedictine one : a phase of patient and exhaustive study of social con- 372 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS, ditions and factors ; and these increasingly from the historic point of view, albeit now tending more to its developmental form. Amongst the manifestations of the reviving Benedictine spirit, it may be claimed, were the Sociological Society founded in London in 1904, and its off-shoot the Eugenics Education Society, established in 1908 ; while, as evidence of the universality and spontaneity of the movement, may be noticed the formation of sociological societies in America, Germany and various other countries in the immediately succeeding years. The corresponding organization of sociological research in France had, as usual, preceded the rest of the world by half a generation or more. The Institut International de Sociologie was in- stituted in 1893 ; and even this was not the first endeavor of its kind, for already in the sixties there was a sociological society of Positivist origin at work in Paris, of which John Stuart Mill was a member. Institutions like the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (actively at work in the sixties and seventies) and the Fabian Society, whose influence on the present generation both in thought and action it would be difficult to exaggerate, are also entitled to amply respectful reference in this connection. At the same time, due discrimination is to be observed. And the CONCLUSION. 373 fact in regard to them both is that they were essentially pre -sociological in character ; in the sense that their researches, in the one case color- less, in the other partisan, were alike unillumined by reference to the constructive and directive formulae of the main founders of sociology. They were true-hearted mariners, but they put to sea without a compass. All these and many other culture groups (such as the Christian Social Unions) do affiliate to the settlement idea in that they postulate the union of studentship and citizenship. They more or less definitely call for a comprehensive correlation of life and doctrine, personal and social. They stand for a recovery of the Cloister : an institution mislaid during the Renaissance, lost during the Protestant Reformation, exaggerated yet limited by the counter- Reforma- tion, forgotten in the subsequent juristic regime, but now being re-established for every form of scientific research. They urge its experimental application to secular life. In the nomenclature of their mediseval predecessors, they are some- thing of Regulars and something of Seculars ; in short they are — as we have already seen — Friars. And in so far as they are Sociological Friars, they seek enlightenment from all the manifold sources available for the regeneration of cities and their inhabitants. What, they ask, are the social 374 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. resources of science and literature, philosophy and religion — what do they all mean in the end — for man in society ? Where are these resources to be found — how may they be orchestrated for practical use — how unified into a vision of the personal and social ideal ? To answer these questions satisfactorily (that is, in terms of full modern culture, and all the recog- nitions and powers which it implies) the socio- logical friars must be more than Franciscans. They must transcend the tradition, yet rival the spirit of the Benedictines. Their aim will, in fact, ap- proximate rather to that of the Dominicans, whose endeavor was to adapt traditional ideals to the needs of their time by harmonizing them with the foremost learning of the age. The first Dominican groups were, by the deliberate policy of the founder, moored alongside the Universities. With the Jesuits at their best, the sociological friars have also many analogies. Those early Dominicans, being extra-mural lecturers, were naturally regarded with no friendly eye by the official teachers of Paris, Bologna, and the other great academic centres, whose learning and doctrine they challenged. But in the course of two generations they fought their way into academic power, transformed the teaching of the mediseval university, and vitalized its brief moment of flowering. CONCLUSION. 375 That a similar transformation of contemporary universities is not only needed, but is the essential spiritual requisite of the age, many believe. What testimony is there that it is impending or possible ? The Settlements have, it is contended, been planted as ethical fortresses of the Univer- sities- in the cities of the plains. Not content with these, will the Universities go on to build their " Outlook Towers " for vision and prophecy, for knowledge and direction, on the hill-tops ? Will they create these or other Institutes of Synthesis (veritable restorations of the Temple Observatory of old) where will be revealed to the devout student that vision of unity — unity both of man on the planet and of the knowledge which he gathers — which is on every side denied to him amid the dispersive specialisms of the universities of to-day ? A survey of educational endeavors is not without encouraging symptoms of a Dominican ferment being at work. In the United States, for instance, we have noted the signs of a remarkable transformation ; for at Washington the Ministry of Education is no politico-social machine, but is really educational. Thus it has come about, and may be cited as a symptom of general transition, that the effective head of the educational world in the United States is no centralizing bureaucrat enthroned in ceremonial awe, but the working 376 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. chief of the foremost educational institution, to wit, President Stanley Hall, of Clark University. For he — for the first time in modern history, by an unprecedented service of illuminating insight and exact science — is actually awakening parents and teachers to the realities of the living child, and the marvellous potentialities which adoles- cence brings to all, for good or evil. The deepest of civic impulses, again, comes perhaps not so much from municipal reforrners, active and preva- lent though these are in the cities of America, but rather from Jane Addams, of the Hull House Settlement in Chicago. For she is actually awakening the citizen to all that is implied and all that is demanded by that perpetually renewed quest of " life more abundant " by youth and maid of each generation, who at present are nightly drawn into the streets of the city by the belief that the fulness of life is there, that it is a paradise — till they find, or it proves, mostly an inferno. With such notable examples of leadership, in school and city, passing into the hands of psychologist and socio- logist, what wonder that after an experimental initiative in the direction of a "Municipal University " Mr. Charles Ferguson should be claiming for the University Militant® the * The University Militant^ already cited, page 337 ; Jane Addams' Spirit ef Youth and the City Streets {Macmillan and Co., New York) ; Stanley Hall's Adolescence (Appleton, New York and London) ; three recent American books of world-significance. CONCLUSION. 377 direction of the national politics in America. And with the translation of a University President to the Presidency of the great Republic itself, who can deny that the ferment is working there at least ? That such translation is no accident of a super-heated political crucible, but the very sign and seal of a social process in being, we have en- deavored to show. And to reinforce that conclusion let it be noted that the important thing about Dr. Woodrow Wilson from our present point of view, is not so much his academic position or his intellectual and literary gifts, as the fact that a militant and leavening civic spirit is what has characterized his policy and influence within the University itself, and has radiated thence into the community. He has been the citizen professor if not quite the sociologist president all the time. In Europe a similar transference of influence, and consequently of power, into the hands of new spiritual types may readily be exemplified. In Brussels, M. Waxweiler, with his Institut de Sociologie, is making students into sociologists, and sociologists into captains of industry. M. Otlet, with his Institut de Bibliographie, also in Brussels, has discovered, and is now happily applying, a great secret in the democratizing of culture. For, with the superb organization of bibliographical resources which he has achieved, A I 378 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. he puts the Town Student, with only his free evenings and free libraries, almost on a level with the Gown Student, who has all day long in which to go from one university professor to another. In Edinburgh, Professor Geddes, with his " Town and Gown Association," has made a bold endeavor to link together the academic cloister and the civic forum into a militant-culture fraternity which has already on the Castle Hill planted its Outlook Tower — this germ of a new type of institution which has received inter- national recognition as at once a sociological observatory, a laboratory of synthesis, and a citadel of concerted action. From this actual civic outpost of the University Militant occasional culture missionaries have during the past quarter- century sallied forth with a peculiarly pervasive gospel of evolutionary idealism. From the "Nature Study" movement (largely initiated here), with its kindred advocacy of school gardens, to the uniting of science and the humanities in a sociology at once local, regional and world- wide in its purview, at once concrete and symbolic in its method and expression — something has been contributed towards the long-overdue metamorphosis of education from being the desic- cation into being the development and culture of life. But more than this. By its itinerant " Cities and Town Planning Exhibition," by its CONCLUSION. 379 civic laboratory and sociological observatory, by its doctrine of the realizable Eutopia of every- where instead of the illusory Utopia of nowhere, much is being done to guide and hasten the re-awakening of the civic spirit from its long post-mediaeval slumber, and so for the purification and ennoblement of cities in due course. And most recently, University Hall, Edinburgh, has celebrated its semi -jubilee by a " Masque of Learning," which with unique insight and unexampled pageantry has dramatized the Heritage of Culture, and indeed constitutes a veritable discovery of the Sociological {i.e., the Educational) Theatre. A missionary off-shoot in London — the University and City Association — has experi- mentally endeavored to continue the parent tradition of believing that learning and life and labor should be inseparable — that, in fine, educa- tion and housing are correlative approaches to citizenship. Unless the Ideal build the house, school and college but labor in vain. Thus the preservation of the fabric of Crosby Hall (the last remaining of the great halls of mediaeval London) when its space was wanted for "city" purposes, and its subsequent removal and re-erection as the common hall of an incipient collegium, growing up on the site of Sir Thomas More's garden in Chelsea — all this was no mere act of archaeo- 38o INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. logical piety nor happy utilization of a chance opportunity. It was the outward and visible manifestation of that inward and spiritual grace known to laymen as an ideal. It was a deliberate act of congruent educational and civic policy, dealing inevitably with a conjuncture which arose in its time, and which presented a test of the adequacy and honor of the ideals enounced. The city at its best, as it has sometimes been achieved, is a confederation of artificers and artists, statesmen and prophets, united by the heroic urge of creating a milieu out of their own mental imagery. The rarity of the achievement is due largely to the fact that human bees have such a wealth of imagery for the cells, such a poverty of plans for the hive. How to harmonize the cell and the hive, the home and the city — how- to evoke the personal ideal and to socialize it — are not these the central problems of practical religion ? And their solution, if we take St. Augustine, as presumably he intended to be taken, literally, means the building of the City of God on earth. But how to do this here and now, each of us for our own time, our own life, our own home, our own city ? Who, even, are our own exem- plars in past or present, showing it with acknowledged fulness as an individual achieve- ment ? Each must answer for himself ; but one CONCLUSION. 381 indisputable exemplar is easily pointed to, and may be taken as typical. Most would agree that when Sir Thomas More wrote his Utopia, he — though making, it is true, no definite plans for his own hive — was indeed creating that stuff of architectonic vision, without which the citizens do not get beyond the making of bricks to the making of cities. What, then, was his secret ? Where, in the conditions or occupations of his life, may we find the source of More's illumina- tion ? Where, if not in the intimate and ordered combination of Regular and Secular life — in the' habitual alternation of cloistered contemplation in the garden retreat at Chelsea, and active participation in civic, social and political re- sponsibilities in the city of London ? For at Crosby Hall — his city residence — he was at once man of affairs and genial host of artist and scholar. Sheriff of London, Lord Chancellor. In other words. More combined and unified in his own personality the essential functions of University and City. Out of the scholar's historic retrospect, crossed and fertilized by the citizen's activity and every- day perceptions of things around him, came the dreamer's vision of the future. The utopian fore- cast charts out— boldly, or too boldly, but with a sense of direction and with hope and faith — the path of progress. But it must be informed 382 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. by knowledge of the past, inspired by experience of present needs. And if historic knowledge and con- temporary experience be adequate, the dreamer's vision is of How to do well what needs doing ; in short, of Eutopia, or the ideal place realizable here and now. Otherwise the chart is false, the goal illusory, the vision an unreal nowhere or Ou-topia. That, if we may accept the exegesis of Professor Geddes, was the message of Sir Thomas More. And if we recall that to the pioneers of the Renaissance, scholarship was no humanism unless salted by wit and humor — what more natural than that one of the greatest of humanists should seek to drive home his message by a not too cryptic pun ?* Are we then to discover, in the reiterating cycle of learning, contemplation, and civic activity, the formula of perfect citizenship ? Would the University and the City, if we could unify them by a harmonious adjustment of the spiritual and the temporal phases of life, make the institutional model of collective activity? The answer to that must of course depend on what is meant by the University and the City. Where, for instance, it will be asked, in this Eutopia of thought and action, would be the worker and the woman, the artist and the poet, * It may indeed be cited as a supporting fact, that in the first ItaUan edition of More's Utopia the spelling was Eutopia. CONCLUSION. 383 the priest and the preacher? Taking the University at its best and largest, can it hope to incorporate all these into contemporary culture ? The University, with all its defects, is yet, we must admit, of all modern institutions the one that most fully approximates to a comprehensive Trusteeship of Culture. To what institution, if not to the University, is to be committed the mission of preserving and assessing, transmitting and developing, unifying and harmonizing our whole spiritual heritage of ideas, images and ideals ? This spiritual heritage of ideals, ideas, images enshrined in poetry and literature, in science and philosophy, in art and religion, in architecture and music, constitutes for each generation its apparatus of evocation or of re- pression. Failure to use it for evocation means, practically, that it becomes an agency of repression. Unless recreated afresh in the living personalities of each passing generation, the stock of ideals, ideas, images, is at best but the dead re- pressive stuff of idolatry and superstition. At worst it feeds the furnace of evil into which the repressed soul is wont to flame up, when touched by the torch of adolescence. Civilization means not a state but a high-tension process. It means the recreation of culture by each generation, on pain of lapsing into barbarism. The reality of higher education (in other words, the social and in- 384 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. tellectual worth of the universities) is measured by the extent to which every class in the community is incorporated into the culture of the age and the race. And the incorporation can only take place by a system of instruction and life, that secures the awakening, in each youth and maiden, of the creative activity of a personal ideal, a sense of social relation and an aptness for social service. The doctrine of evolution not only assures the faith, but compels the belief, that every normal human being is rightful heir to the ideals of his race, and is indeed only human to the extent of his actual inheritance of these. Without them, he is kept out of his estate of humanity. Where, then, are to be found the tools, the material, the opportunities of creative careers for all, each according to his kind ? In the struggle of the race with its material environment, the city is no permanent conquest, but the symbol of a mastery that has to be re- newed by each generation. If, then, on the remaking of the cities structurally and ideally, by and for each generation, depends the con- tinuous evolution of culture, then the effective union and co-operation of University and City is seen to be the most vital of problems and a problem at once educational and practical. Sociology, if we look to its origin and history CONCLUSION. 385 and larger tendencies, rather than to its some- what disorderly contemporary phase, may be thought of as the systematic study of resources for unfolding, evoking and realizing evolutionary ideals ; ideals, that is, which are truly in line with the tendencies of an unhindered outward and upward development of man's conditions and powers. In the definite and concrete appli- cation of sociology to the actual problems of citizenship are to be found those experimental exercises, by which alone the student of social science may develop into the practitioner of social art ; and so become qualified to expedite the process of betterment and uplift on a larger scale of action. From this point of view the city and the university, unified by the needed Institute of Synthesis, together make the natural laboratory of the working sociologist. Trained therein, and going forth equipped with the resources yielded by Eugenics and Civics in the coming time, our architects will rise to be architectonic and their Town Plans develop into City Designs. The Town Plan presents a topographical analysis of Site and Structures ; the City Design tells of Sacred Ways, of Towers, and of Temples. It thus imparts a sense of spiritual direction, it awakens to clear vision, and stirs to creative realization. The Town Plan is the guide of the city's external and secular existence ; the City 386 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Design is the dream of its inner and sacred life. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime ; And leave, if nought so bright may live. All earth can take or Heaven can give. § 2. — Civics and Eugenics. The recent establishment of a Chair and Laboratory of Eugenics in the University of London marks a stage in the penetration of the University by that element of social gospelling, virhose progress, it has been submitted, is the true measure of an assured civic culture.* This advance is to be directly credited to the main sociological movement in Great Britain. For it was under the auspices of the Sociological Society that Eugenics, after being long an almost in- dividual study, an unregarded scientific interest if not an obsession of Francis Galton, was * The foundation in the University of London, of two chairs of sociology by Mr. J. Martin White, coincidentally with the formation of the Socio- logical Society, was a step towards bringing British universities abreast of Continental and American ones in sociological equipment. The posthumous foundation of Galton was a step in advance of other universities. What is now needed is the corresponding exemplary be- ginning in the setting up of chairs and laboratories of Civics. The schools of Town Planning and Civic Design initiated by the universities of Liverpool and Birmingham only need their complement of correlative historic and synthetic studies, to become institutes of the most far-reaching influence. Nor should the initiatives in these directions of the Edinburgh Outlook Tower and of Crosby Hall, Chelsea, be longer ignored by the larger institutions of higher education which overshadow them. CONCLUSION. 387 honorably recognized and launched on its public career as a branch of applied sociology along with Civics, in fact postulated as its twin corre- lative at the very moment of delivery. The one, it was pointed out, deals primarily with the citizen, and the other with cities ; and problems of population and problems of housing need only to be stated in the more general terms of organism and environment for their scientific and practical inter- dependence to become manifest. Together they supply the missing link for uniting the student — with whom, of course, we class the scholar and the savant — and the citizen. That goodwill and a common moral purpose are sufficient to bring together the student and the citizen, is the dogma of the University Settle- ment. So far, true ; but to keep them together in concerted action, a common doctrine is clearly also necessary. And further, such common doctrine, to be effective and lasting, must arise from the sure ground of Science and History. The efforts of the city reformer are frustrated and his plans ineffective so often, just because his interests and perceptions, and his powers of generalizing upon these, so rarely rise from slums and public-houses, artizan dwellings and streets, or parks and public buildings, to the City as a Whole ; and still more rarely from this plane and purview, or the merely abstract political one, 388 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. to civics or the comparative knowledge and Vision of Cities. So, too, the reformer in his rustic applications, is apt to be limited by a pre- occupation concentrated on cottages, allotments, and small-holdings ; on wages, markets, and tenure. Seldom in the literature of rural revival does there come into view the living unity of the Village, itself a being so strangely related to the life of the city, as at once source and reflex. The four social elements of " Town," " School," " Cloister," " Cathedral," which unite to make the life of the city, are all present in germ in the village. The "parochial mal-adjust- ment of Hodge, landless and leaderless. Squire, Tory and tariffist. Schoolmaster, secularist and socialist. Parson, retrospective and reactionary, is but a special case of that perennial evil of cities, the inco-ordination and consequent corruption and debasement of People, Chiefs, Intellectuals, Emotionals. Again, the social reformer, for all his moral earnestness and immediate human sympathy, similarly fails so often to tap the resources which science holds for him, and remains limited in outlook, because he does not habitually see, beyond the persons and families of to-day, that procession of generations which makes the life of villages, cities, nations and of humanity, and which by its unity and continuity supplies innumerable relevant lessons CONCLUSION, 389 and the supreme encouragement to profit by them. In the measure that he does see this, he becomes a student of eugenics. Civics and eugenics, eugenics and civics — environment and organism, organism and environment — here is a convenient jingle to remind the social reformer that he needs to become also a biologist and a sociologist if he would do his day's w^ork well. Civics and eugenics — the vision of the City Beautiful and the Gospel of a Good race — these are the two magic formulae, the two liberating conceptions by which the social reformer may be enabled to enter upon a longer and more effec- tive life, continuing his ca,reer henceforth as the Sociologist in Action. The limitations of the sociologist are, of course, precisely the equal and the opposite of those of the practical social reformer, whose complement he therefore is. His "science" is so often in- definite and even inhuman, and therefore no real science at all, because it lacks an adequate basis in concrete and comprehensive observation of actual persons and houses, of definite villages and cities. His "principles" are so often mere abstractions, and therefore not verifiable general- izations at all, because the impulse of social reform has not been quickened in him by an insistent sense of the always human reference and subject-matter of his discourse, however sheerly 390 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. intellectual that discourse may have been made by elaboration and remoteness. The truth is, social reform and sociology are two moods, very much as the sexes are two moods. They are sterile apart, but fertile in citizenship if united in a personal unity-in-duality, one human synthesis of knowledge, one certain urge of social purpose. But in order that they should prosperously unite, sociology also must undergo its readjustments and enrichments, so as to make itself fit and worthy. It must be cleared of all suspicion of being an affair of abstract debate and empty generalization, and must become a unified and evolutionary study, publicly related to those preliminary sciences whose applications in housing and hygiene, in education and aesthetic betterment, the social reformer not only habitually uses, but is actually beginning to unify for himself — sans le savoir — in the practice of Town Planning, or in the better phrase customary in America, City Planning. The significance of the Town Planning move- ment is indeed vast and manifold. But from the point of view here taken it is this: that the social reformer is, by his Town Planning move- ment, spontaneously advancing to meet the sociologist. The situation is charged with dramatic interest, if it can be shown that the sociologist is, through eugenics and civics, CONCLUSION. 391 spontaneously advancing to meet the social reformer. The theological view of man has traditionally been divided between an interest in his Past and a (much more anxious) interest in his Future. The scientific view of man has, through the influence of the evolution-doctrine as first ex- pounded, been hitherto mainly limited to a (largely controversial) interest in his Past. " Concentrate on the study of origins, and leave present conditions to chance and possibilities to the future," has been the motto of the biological arriviste, and has thus too largely sterilized biological research since Darwin's day. But with Galton's conception of eugenics a new thought was introduced into the discussion of organic evolution, and has already resulted in a tendency to emphasize interest in the future of man. The doctrine of organic evolution ought long ago to have resulted in that tendency. Admit human ascent from lower types of life, it follows there is in human development a potency of ascent towards yet higher human types. Thus there emerges from the doctrine of organic evolution the conception of a potential race ideal ; and close behind it come the inevitable and eager questions, " What are, then, the conditions which would favor the organic evolution of a higher type of social being? And how far 392 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. may we hope to create such conditions even now? " Starting with these questions, Galton began his approach to sociology from the assured ground of science, viz., that of the accredited biologist, known to the Royal Society and the British Association. His first communications to the Sociological Society® were altogether from this standpoint ; but note the rapid ascent to the tripod. His last communication was entitled : Eugenics as a Factor in Religion.\ Here in a memorable paper Galton — a veritable prophet of Eugenics — boldly claimed for it "a place in every tolerant religion." No wonder that Dr. Saleeby — on whom no mean morsel of the prophet's mantle has fallen — in his excellent expositions^ and recent developments of eugenics, is moving more and more towards a position in which the focal place in eugenics is held by the conception of "the expectant mother" as the most sacred charge committed to humanity, and a being fraught, even in the humblest home, with mystery and with promise for the race. The coming of eugenics thus offers a great opportunity, but also a great temptation. The danger is that the eugenist may proceed to * Sociological Papeys. Vol. i., pp. 45-85. ■f Hociulogical Papers. Vol. 2, pp. 52-53. J Parenthood and Race Culture: an outline of Eugenics. (Cassell, 1909). Woman and Womanhood. (Heinemann, 1912). CONCLUSION. 393 action without first undergoing due preparation and enlightenment. Unless he has himself undergone conversion, and so exemplifies in some degree the New Man whom eugenics, like religion, aims at producing in multitudes, the eugenist is in danger of being prompted to propose measures which may eventuate less in the sanctification of Motherhood than in the slaughter of the Innocents. There is, it has been profoundly and too truly remarked, a Herodian as well as a Magian Eugenics, and the former, as of old, makes most noise in the world. How is the Eugenist to be converted ; how is his Magian outlook to be assured ? Coming into sociology from biology, the eugenist brings the assured hope of an evolutionary ideal ; but he is also weighted with the organic burden of his own animal ancestry. His ideal of the gymnast and the warrior, as the most perfect human machines, needs supplementing by the ideal of the poet and the mystic as the greatest human powers. In general terms, this immanent tempta- tion of the eugenist is to confuse the organic with the social inheritance. As a corrective to this he must be converted to Civics — which is essentially the doctrine of the social inheritance. For the living city, at its best, is the " group heritage, clearly realized, nobly acted on." Civics is thus the complementary study to B I 394 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Eugenics, and like Eugenics it starts from the assured ground of science. The locus classicus for this doctrine, as for the doctrine of Eugenics, is the first two volumes of the Proceedings of the British Sociological Society. Here, by definite planning and deliberate policy, Geddes's earliest papers on Civics were put side by side with those of Galton on Eugenics. In these papers the city is first viewed in rela- tion to its geographical surroundings and to its own historical antecedents. The city is presented first as a culminating phase of the evolution of a particular region, such as the river valley of the Forth, Thames, or Tiber. So far, Civics is an approach to Sociology from Geography ; is in fact a study in geographical determinism. Next, however, cities are interpreted as continuously developing endeavors of the race towards the realization of certain social ideals. Of civic institutions, this doctrine affirms that as they em- body and transmit the social heritage of the race, so they contain a definite potency of future development. Civic evolution in this view, no less than organic evolution, suggests certain ideals ; and Civics as applied sociology, aims at defining the conditions under which these ideals may be approximately realized. Thus, then, do studies in civics and eugenics combine in working out an evolutionary idealism, CONCLUSION. 395 latent alike in the developing human organism and in the civic group and environment. The congruent practical policy which that idealism projects, implies the study of actual and definite cities and of the family " stocks " which inhabit them. The latter task of course falls to the eugenist in the mutual division of labor, and we have already named one valiant living worker in that field. The former, the definite study of city by city, has been initiated by Geddes, and in the cases of two cities at least (Edinburgh and Dunfermline) it has been carried farther ; result- ing plans for city improvement have been broadly drafted, and a general policy of betterment formulated and at points may be seen in progress accordingly. In the Dunfermline book the problem was to devise, for a particular city, a practical policy which, as eugenics, would be effective towards regenerating the bad citizen, and towards aiding and enhancing the human value of the good one, and, as civics, would be effective in creating a milieu adjusted to this purpose. The method of civic envisaging and projection of plan which the book seems to exemplify is all that calls for reference in this place. The needed regional studies, geographical and historical, are first made and correlated with the corresponding general sciences. Having made his civic survey, the 396 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. student retires, let us say, into his meditative cell. He takes with him a carefully built up store of mental imagery — definite mental pictures detailed and concrete, yet general and synthetic — of the given city and its inhabitants, as evolving towards definite ideals or degenerating towards their negation. (His conception of evil is as defect of ideal.) Thus entering his solitary cell — like a good monk, on an empty stomach, a full, clear, and active head, and an overflowing heart — the student of sociology re-emerges into the world as civic statesman. The time for survey is over, the time for service has begun. The observer has had his turn. The man of action is getting ready, with a programme and a policy. Somewhat after this manner must the same transition always be made, and the genetic man . of action find his inspiration. If his previous life has been satisfactory, if aspiration and abstinence have done their preparatory work in due alterna- tion with feasts of nature- impressions and abundance of good sociological works — then, to the student thus disciplined there will, step by step, be revealed in the solitude of his cell the secrets of the great mysteries. He will seek and find answers to the questions : How to guide and control the evolutionary processes observed in the city of his studies ; how to hasten and facilitate their progress towards ideals ; how to check and CONCLUSION. 397 even reverse their tendency towards degeneration. These answers, flashed into unity in the ecstasies of vision, will make the policy of civic betterment for that particular city. And this will be pre- sented in no vague utopia of good wishes towards the world at large, but definite plans of city development — the plans of a regional eutopia. The special signification of this book on Dunfermline lies in its being the first thorough- going and systematic attempt to work out for a concrete case, a definite and historic city, an application of the evolutionary science of city development. Man as craftsman, and as soldier, as artist and as educationist, as stateman and as philosopher, as poet and as priest, has con- tributed to the making of cities. But the scientist, in so far as he has contributed at all, has done so as engineer and mathematician, as chemist and electrician, as physician and hygienist ; never until now — in any large way — as evolutionary biologist, and as sociologist. This last, most momentous, perhaps, of all endeavors to search out and utilize the secret of civic creation, waits for its realization in the future. But the initiative of the writer, as seen in his practical work in Edinburgh and to some extent in London, and as set forth in his civic writings — most of all as yet in his Dunfermline book — marks an era in science and should mark an era 398 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. in practice. For it means the incorporation of the city, and all that it stands for in civilization, into the domain of science. The city has, to be sure, been conspicuous in the record of religion, of art, of literature, and of history in its widest range. What, in fact, is all recorded history but the drama of successive efforts and failures of the race to adapt itself to city life, i.e., to determine its material environment and create its own spiritual con- ditions, as it would have them be? What is religion itself but the recurrent effort to establish on earth here and now a city of the ideal? What is literature but the accumulated spiritual reservoir of the race, by and through which the individual may prepare himself for the highest citizenship? What is art but the perennial endeavor to make the material shell of the city symbolize the aspirations and the ideals of the best (and some- times of the worst) citizens of an age ? Science alone has not known her, the city in her shining unity. That, may be, is because science is young and immature, and has so far grown up accustomed to the presence of the money-changer in the Temple, as a normal defilement. But in such ways as this of civics, we may everywhere foresee and even begin the purificatory work, preparatory for the time when, with the advent of Eugenics, the Child will have ejected the CONCLUSION. 399 money-changer and restored to the city the allegiance and the homage of the human pilgrim of the opening generations. The essential is thus to explore and map out in a new science and art of Civics, the culmin- ating field and concern of science. The city, when seen through the eye of the citizen naturalist, appears as the highest and most com- plex unity of Nature. And if so, it logically and necessarily affords the culminating object for Science, whether of observation or practice. But how are the sociologists (who, after all, are never quite certain whether they are the Ishmaelites or the Israelites of science) — how are they to take possession of the promised land thus mapped out for them, and enter upon the domain of Civics, visionary and concrete, as of right ? They have not, to be sure, lacked the discipline of forty years sojourn in the wilderness. It is, at least, as long as that since Spencer proceeded to assemble the tribes for an exodus from the orderly Egypt of political philosophy, in which they had been left by the passing of the prophet Comte. But Spencer was a Moses who failed to ascend Mount Pisgah, and so achieved not even the vision of the sacred city. It has indeed become a reproach against Spencer that he led sociologists into a blind alley — always the narrowest and most perplexing kind Missing Page Missing Page 402 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. of the Dominican, both as to priority of inception and privilege of attack. But it is time they came to an understanding. It is essential that the Emotionals of social reform unite with the Intellectuals of sociology, towards the making of the new Spiritual Power required to give education and counsel to the Chiefs ; to offer a purpose to philosophers ; to clarify the inspiration of poets and artists, and thereby to incorporate into the culture of the age the body of women and of workers. Singly and in isolation, as they have hitherto stood, the two wings of the pro- gressive army are easily defeated by any temporary combination of reactionary and subversive interests. The social settlement has in a measure taken the university to the city, but it has not brought the city to the university. The test of Spiritual Power is — can it draw to itself and incorporate in its purposes the Temporal Power, by the in- visible hand of the Ideal ? What brings the Emperor to Canossa is the conviction— reluctant though it be — that there, and nowhere else, are the keys of St. Peter. And if — as the world be- lieves — the old keys are worn and rusted well nigh beyond repair — yet the pattern is there, and new ones must be made that will work. For the gates of heaven cannot be forced by those who are without, nor of hell by those who are within. CONCLUSION. 403 In fine, it is submitted, that combining the emotional urge, the moral discipline and the practical energy of the Settlement, with the doctrinal resources of Eugenics and Civics, the sociologist may find that for which, indistinctly though he perhaps knows it, he is searching. The true metal, to wit, out of which may be forged anew the keys of whatever St. Peter has charge of the gates of our social heaven and hell. §3. — The Civic Synthesis. To give an exhaustive or even adequate exposition of the Synthetic Social Doctrine initiated under the designation of Civics and Eugenics, has been no part of the purpose of this book. What has been attempted is to sketch its main features, indicate the sources for its study, illustrate its point of view by reference to current questions, and forecast some of its antici- pated reactions on life and thought. A final word may be said as to its place and function in the field of recognised sociological studies. The advance of the sociological specialisms since Comte is unfortunately counterbalanced by an admitted sterility of general sociology, certainly since Spencer. Now it is contended that in eugenics and civics are already developed truths and viewpoints capable of restoring to sociology its lost power of verifiable generalization. By 404 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. incorporating eugenics and civics into the body of the science, sociology may reverse its present dispersive tendencies and re-enter upon a career of scientific and practical usefulness. The con- sequent co-ordination of its ever- multiplying specialisms would not be the only fruit of the new phase. By its fructifying contacts with literature and drama — and even with theology — on the one side, and with education and social reform on the other, the doctrine of eugenics and civics will impart to sociology powers of reacting on life and character more deeply and intimately than it could otherwise hope to do. The professed cultivators of sociology have perhaps insufficiently discriminated between the coming of Civics and Eugenics as an event, and the philosophical valuation of the contained doctrine. Surely, however, these two aspects of the question, the one historical and the other dis- cursive, have to be estimated separately and from different points of view, before we can reasonably presume to allocate to the new studies their sociological status — or to refuse them any. There has undeniably been on the part of those concerned for the interests of general sociology, a precipitate tendency to regard Eugenics and Civics as naive intrusions from Biology, bringing new dispersive specialisms into the already over- crowded sociological field. Now that may be CONCLUSION. 405 true, in a measure, of Eugenics taken by itself. But of the two studies taken together it is precisely the opposite of the truth. The present return to the study of Civics arose, as in the drive of things it was bound to arise, when the mind of an evolutionary naturalist became penetrated by the conception of the City as expressing the climax of the unfolding drama of man struggling to become master of his fate. Suppose the procession of cities in history to be the instinctive and ever-renewing effort of the human Prometheus to play the role of liberator — and to that end becoming a creator — in the evolving world drama. Given such a clue to the reading of the process, imagine its reaction on the outlook of the Darwinian biologist. He will continue to see the human drama as a struggle for existence amongst men contending singly and in groups. But he will also see the plot involved yet clarified by a factor more permanent in its changing varieties, and therefore more observable ;. more definite in its complexity, and therefore of higher evolutionary potentiality, than the con- genital or herding groups we call family, class, nation. These are transcended in concreteness, and definiteness of organized continuity, by the historic cities, as the aeroplane and its pilot transcend the schoolboy and his kite. Why, then, has the evolutionary naturalist 4o6 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. made so little use of this clue ? Why has the natural history of Jerusalem and Athens, of old Rome and mediaeval Florence (to say nothing of contemporary cities) been so neglected or, with a few conspicuous exceptions, been treated as a study of mere material foundations ? It is because the official naturalist, priding himself on his intellectual detachment, has in reality been a too faithful reflex of his social milieu. In his emphasis on origins rather than ten- dencies, on forms of structure rather than ideals of function, on competitive struggles rather than co-operative strivings, he has been — as we are now coming to see — no impartial interpreter of nature, but the unconscious apolo- gist of his time and place and social class. He has been born into a world which treats the Hebrew conception of the " Holy City set on a hill," and the Greek conception of the city as fount of the " good life," as at best matters of archaeological knowledge (and, even as that, the concern of academic camps mostly uncon- genial to him, if not pointedly hostile) and not as essential and undying ideals, impulses by which every city must live. He has been reared perhaps in a home whence the father issues daily to compete with rivals in a "City" which is of Mammon; a home wherein the mother ostentatiously con- CONCLUSION. 407 serves the relics of antique rites, religious and social, taking special care to keep them dry ; where the daughters furtively worship in the pantheon of the poets, when they are not more openly and obediently cultivating the earthy rudiments of " good form " in class room, play- ground and drawing-room. Nor during his pupillary period of boarding out has our evolu- tionist fared better. He has doubtless been educated in a school, where Nature with its sciences and its industries, is set on one side marked as "modern" to indicate its oddity and imperfection ; and on the other, claiming the cachet of " classic," are set the Humanities, with their literatures and histories, their politics and rehgions, very thoroughly and expensively untaught. Happily, however, with the recovery of the Civic Vision and the Civic Impulse, the evolu- tionist is learning to escape his social limitations. He will, indeed, so far continue to interpret success in life in terms of struggle and survival. But his survival-values will change as he comes to see the evolving drama in terms of cities, con- tending, to be sure, singly and in groups for the things of the body, but also as the co-operative strivings of humanity to realize its dreams. The evolutionist, without ceasing to be a naturalist, will thus, in his civic vision, come at length 4o8 INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. to attach supreme survival-value to the creators of noble dreams. That is how religion tradition- ally estimates the saint and the prophet ; literature the poet and the artist. Civics thus tends to bring together the scientist and the man-of-letters, and makes the theologian in- telligible to both, as the traditional, if frequently erring, custodian of ideals. All three will doubtless continue to dispute as to what ideals are to be selected for sanction, and even what tempations for elimination. Yet the prediction may be hazarded, that in the forthcoming trian- gulation of the spiritual world, the scientist will march with more equal step alongside the theologian than with the man-of-letters. For was it not a naturalist who remarked that the theologians have the finest body of poetry extant, if only they would cease to treat it as prose? Civics is adding to the many-chambered temple of knowledge a Common Hall, in which the scientist and the theologian will meet for friendly intercourse after their prolonged and historic bout of recrimination, wherein they girded at each other so famously and so ineffectively, the one from the humble security of the foundation- cellar, the other from the lofty insecurity of the many-pinnacled roof. The inclination of the eugenist to put on the garments of religion has already been noticed. CONCLUSION. 409 In its more explicit idealism, eugenics comes nearer than civics to theology ; which it closely resembles, also, in its readiness to confuse ideals with temptations and to materialize both. Some of the advocates of Herodian Eugenics are be- coming veritable reincarnations of the priests of Moloch. On the other hand, the foremost of the Magian Eugenists are preparing to re-write the gospel of St. John in terms of evolutionary idealism. That these two sects should com- mingle in the same group, and the two sets of ideas be held sometimes even in the same head, will seem less astonishing when it is recalled how prolonged and arduous were the labors of the Hebrew prophets in restraining the people from combining the worship of Moloch with the worship of Jehovah. Eugenics owes indeed its greater popularity partly to the ease and fasci- nation of the subject matter, but partly also to the facility of its adjustment to personal points of view and class prejudices. The popular exposition of both doctrines was begun simul- taneously, but eugenics has thus far enormously out-distanced civics in the favor which consists in being selected for attention, alike with the few and the many. Hence the greater need to examine and to promote the congruent and supplementary doctrine which, starting from the same evolu- tionary data and viewpoint as eugenics, impels C I 4IO INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. to an idealism more definitely social, more con- cretely civic. It is only by advancing together that students of eugenics and civics can hope to work out, and get accepted, the cryptic scheme of survival-values on which the upw^ard movement of evolution in humanity would seem to depend. Nor in this partnership of research can the theologian be spared. For in the sacrificial rites of religious ceremonies and in the sacramentalism of theological doctrine there lie respectively the practice and the theory of the greatest of human experiments hitherto made in searching for the clue to this very problem of Ascent. To the sociologist's cry of " the failure of biological sociology," the apt retort and com- plement has been made by a naturalist — " to begin operations " ! With the appearance of Civics and Eugenics there is now emerging an integrate body of doctrine as to the origin, place, and purpose of man, which utilizes alike the resources of the natural and the social sciences. It is neither Comtist nor Spencerian ; still less is it Darwinian. It selects impartially from the founders of sociology and of biology, from their successors and continuators, such formative material as can be adjusted to its purpose. This purpose is the observation and understanding of CONCLUSION. 411 cities and their inhabitants in the living present, the deciphering of their past, the foresight, and, as far as may be, the determination of their future. For the study of a problem so immense, for the undertaking of a task so magnificent, are manifestly needed, not only the services of many generations of investigators and workers, but also the concerted contributions of all specialisms and expertises, extant and to be created. Let the general sociologist regard Civics and Eugenics as critically as he likes, but sympathetically instead of with destructive intent. He may then see in their central conception a precipitate, round which the dispersive specialisms of sociology may gradually crystallize into a Human Science, complementary and corrective to the Cosmic Science of the naturalist. Not until these two poles of life and thought are linked into a working bi -polar system can the moral anarchy, the intellectual confusion, and the practical disorder of our times cease, and give place to an ordered march of civilization. q EXCEPT THE LORD build the House, their labour is but lost that build it ; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. I will not sufier mine eyes to sleep, nor mine eyelids to slumber, neither the temples of my head to take any rest, until I find out a place for the Temple of the Lord. . . Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place, Thou and the ark of thy strength. . . For the Lord hath chosen Zion to be an habitation for Himself, He hath longed for her. O Lord, who shall abide in thy Tabernacle, or who shall rest upon thy holy hill ? Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life, and doeth the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth from his heart. . . . He that sweareth unto his neighbour and disappointeth him not, though it were to his own hindrance ; he that hath not given his money upon usury nor taketh reward against the innocent. Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in itself. . . O pray for the peace of Jerusalem ; they shall prosper that love thee. Her foundations are upon the holy hills . . . very excellent things are spoken of thee, thou City of God ... all my fresh springs shall be in thee. Out of Zion hath God appeared in perfect beauty. ei BY THE WATERS of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, O Zion. . . If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. fl AND I, JOHN, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Psah cxxvi (Bk. Con Prayer Psalr Psah XV. Psah Psah Ixxxv Psaln Psal CXXXl Ret INDEX. INDEX Abbey, Mr. E. A., and the Boston library, 121. Abel, Norwegian mathematician, wasted, 89. Adolescence, its significance and claims, 152-3, 155, 365, 376, 384. Addams, Miss Jane, 305, 364-5, 376. ^SCHYLUS, 187 seqq. Aquinas, Thomas, 294, 351. Aristocracies, how formed and differentiated as social type, 22-3, i65, 168, 272, 275. (See also Daimios). The type potential and capable of more general realization, 20, 217-18, 264; dictature of, in France and England, 247 ; deterioration of, 55, 166, 211, 347-8 ; recent pre- vailing type and its influence, 23-5, cf. 247. See Eugenics, Personality and Social Heri- tage. Aristocracy, Spiritual, the mak- ing of a, 153-4, 168, 174. Aristotle : influence and history of his Politics, 9-13 ; his civic ideal, 300 ; his restriction of citizenship, 19 seqq. ; his theory of drama, 147-8. Arizona. See University Militant. Artists, asocial and apprehensive type, in natural alliance with women, 36-9, iig-22, 129, 257. Arts, Masters of, as favoured survivals, 209-10 ; and the Civic Theatre, 366, cf. Crafts. As If, philosophy of the, 310. Asuncion, 104. Athena, her task in the Eumenides typical, 192 ; the Aider of Cities, 193-4- Athletics. See Games. Augustine, St., his city of God and the civic ideal, 380. Bacon, Francis, quoted, 310. Bagehot, Walter, quoted, loi. Balzac, his Comedie Humaine, ■12-3 "Bank of Careers" of Michigan University, 328-31. Barnett, Canon, 263, 368-70,401. Barnett, Mrs., 368-9. Bayreuth, 36, 159. Beethoven, 36. Bergson, 285. Bible, 46, 227. Biology, social results of the study, 31. Bishop, the, his task, 27, 346. Blue Busticle (a dragon of the mind, of imcertain shape), 156-7. Boer War, cost of, 267. Booth, Mr. Charles, his survey of London, 70-1, 371. Boston, Mrs. Hutchinsoni at, 1 14 ; Mrs. Ole Bull at, 115-6; public library, ug-21 ; children's play- grounds, 267. Box Furniture, educational, 269. Brazil, 10. Bhigham, Miss Louise, 269. Bright, John, 57. Brownings, the, 53. BucKTON, Miss Alice, 140. BUFFON, 32-3. Bull, Mrs. Ole, 115. Burgos, its cathedral, 205. Busticle. See Blue. Butler, Samuel, quoted, 253. Cadburys, the, 113. Campus (Academic) its signifi- cance, 332. Canossa, its call to the Temporal Power eternal, 1 15, 336, 402. Capital (city), its typical quarters 25- Carlyle, his "University ol books " now being realized 124-5. Referred to, 150. INDEX. CDXV. Carnegie, Mr. Andrew, 131. Carpenter, Mr. Edward, his in- terpretation ot the Gods, 188. Carter, Mr. Huntly, 365. Cathedral, the culminating church, 26, 229-30 ; its relation to human life, 105 11, 135-6, 228-32; to medieeval city, 214-15, 223; to mediaeval drama, 217 seqq., cj. 367. The New, 1 10-15, 119.349-54- Catherine II. and Diderot, 53-4. Cavour, 56. Centralization, apparent ten- dencies now making for, 321-2. Chavannes, Puvis de, 121. Chelsea, a5, Si-ii, 85,97, 160, i6g. Chicago. See Jane Addams ; also 267, 356, 361- " Chiefs, people, intellectuals, emotionals" (Comte's social analysis), 56-8, 99 (note), 248, 275, 283,323. 3S8, 4°'- Child, the social interests now centering on, 255 ; a prey in the past, 255-7 ; what is' being done for, 257-72 ; the further steps, 272-84. Children, and American libraries, 120. Child Study, the renewal of an old eugenic alliance, 127-8. China, 10. Chrichton, The Admirable, 22. Christian Social Union, the, 373. Church. See Cathedral and Re- ligion, for objective and sub- jective aspects. CnuRCH-and-Stage, their alliance inherent, 147-8, 154, 157, 159-60, .217, 292. Citizen, the mediasval, 204-232 passim; cf. 291-4; the modern: his resources and dilemma, 233-4; ^iid the way out, 235-323 ^osst'w ; in action, the, 310-319, also 301-23 passim; the perfect, 28, 273, 340-1, 380-82, and 9-30 passim ; as Sociologist (= his attempts to envisage and control environment to ideal ends), 63-98 passim. Citizenship, distinct from nation- ality, 9 ; Aristotle's limitation D 2 of, 19 ; the evolutionist comment on this, 20-22, 29-30 ; 383-4, and passim under Eugenics, Social Heritage, University ; needed schools of, 276, 322. City, the, is focus of a region, 83, 135 ; man's supreme work, 232, 290 ; and the most complex unity in nature, 399 ; the domain of a yet ungathered human science fit to correct and com- plement the cosmic science of the naturalist, 411 ; its purpose through the ages, 91-2, 277-8, 300, 380, 405, cf. 89-91 ; must be ever renewed and regained, 384 ; Aristotle's analysis of, 11 ; Geddes's restatement of this, 19, 388 ; importance of the city in ancient civilization, 9-1 1; its modern subjection to state, 11-13 ; current renewal of its spirit and powers, 13-18. (See City Re- surgent passim). Now brought within the domain of science, 397-9 ; why thus far overlooked by the evolutionist, 406 ; dis- tinctive social quarters, and associated moral types, in a modern capital, 23-8 ; its now prevailing inco-ordination and waste, material and human, 89 ; due to divorce of university and city in modern life, 87-92 passim ; cf. 193-4 ; contrast mediaeval, 291-6 (cf. 302) ; current renewal of their relations, see University Militant passim ; Outlook tower, etc. ; the modern industrial, in United States, 326, 342-3, 354 ; repentance for, sec City Big. City Hig (from) to City Better, 354-60, and Best, 363 seqq. City Resurgent, the, 354-67. Civic Survey. See Survey (social). Civic Theatre, the, 364-7. Civics, the authentic subject- matter of Aristotle's Politics, and so an early science long lost, 9-1^, 19 (see also City); as a scientific and synthetic doctrine of life, initiated and developed by Geddes, 5-6, 297, 394 ; some indications of the doctrine, 393-9 CDxvi. INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. (and this book passim, see pp. 4-6) ; aims at unification of relevant knowledge and resource, social illumination and uplift, and sectional reconcilement, 99 {note), 92-3, 408 and passim ; as the doctrine of the social heritage, its problem and con- cern, first, last and all the time, is the maintenance of human ideals, 28, 291, 363-4, 380. See also Sociology (civic) and Cul- ture ; for relation to eugenics, see Eugenics. Civilization, a process, not a state. 38^; how its worth is to be judged, 89. Civil War, English, its dete- riorating effects, 55, 171-3. " Clerisy," Coleridge's expression for the spiritual power, 315. Cloister, a culture - precinct, normal in a complete city, 19 ; how localised, and by whom frequented, in London, Paris, etc., 25 ; the mediaeval, 293-4 > contemporary recovery of, 297 (cf. 300), 373. CoEDEN, Richard, 57. Coleridge. See Clerisy CoMTE, and sociology first and last, 34, 403 ; his analysis of society into four social groups, 99 [note), 249 ; his work under- valued and his results set aside by Spencer, 306-7 ; and by later sociologists, 400-1 ; referred to, 52, 241, 256. CoNDoRCET, Marquis de, and the doctrine of social evolution, 252. CoNGKEVE, Richard, in setting the gentleman above the poet, ex- pressed his milieu, 173. Conversion, Educational, 254, 320 21, 338, 341 ; political, 320- 21,341. Co-oRDiNATioN, its intellectual and social value, 87-9 ; results of its lack in modern civilization, 89-92. Country House, the, its place in social evolution, 24, 302. Craftsman, see Citizen, medieeval, and Guilds, cf. 195. Crafts, masters of, 273 ; cf. 209- 210. CRAFTS-Schools, 268-73. Craig, Mr. Gordon, 365. Crosby Hall, 160, 257, 379, 381, 386. Culture (of a given age), what it means and does, 88 ; the in- corporation of all classes of the community therein (especially women and the workers) the aim of civic sociology, 28-9, 202, 384 ; how this was achieved in mediaeval Christendom, 230-2 ; cf. 290-3 ; has to be re-created in the lives of each generation, 383-4- CuLTUHE-quarters, see cloister. Dante, 52, 147. "If Dante came to Michigan," 344-54 Darwin, Charles, social and political significance of his work, 250. Davies, Miss M. F., 73 {note). De la Beche, Sir Thomas, his vocation and work, 79-80. Descartes, 54, 180. DiCTATURE, what it is, 247-g, 311. Diderot and the Empress Cathe- rine, 53-4 ; and the revolution, 56. Directing Classes, ideals of the, 239-40. Dionysus, 186-7, i9') i97- Drama, the Greek, its subjects and aims, 187 seqq., 147-8; the mediaeval, 140-60, 217-32, 292; the modem, 140-41 ; the Re- storation, 172 ; Must draw its material from natural science and human history, 157-9 ; an agent of social transmission, 159-60; resulting value in elementary education, 263-6; see also Theatre, Church-and-Stage, Masque, Miracle, Morality, and Eugenic Theatre. Dumas (pire), his requisites foi drama, 140. Dunfermline, Mr. Carnegie's gif( to, 131. See Geddes. " Eager Heart,' 140, 151, 160, 161, 174. INDEX. CDXVll. Economic Obsession, socialism and, 4.0-42. Edinburgh Masque. See Masque of Learning. Edinburgh, sociology at, 5-6, 297- 8,322,378-9,386. Education, control of, by the Temporal Power and exploiting interests, 255-7, 312-13 ; better example of United States, 313- 14.375-6- , . . Education (process of) : its aims, 30-22, 87-8 ; the social education which makes human, 50-58 : the sociological education which makes civic, 58 seqq ; the present transition in elementary, 255-84 ; (initiatives cited : Montessori method, 258-9 ; idealism through needlework, 259-62 ; evocation of personality through masques and pageants, 262-6 ; crafts, occupational and recapitulatory schools, 268-73) ; relation of this to social reform movements, 276-84. Educationist, the, and the eu- genist, 198 seqq., 254 ; and the town-planner, ^yj-g, 282-3. Eisteddfodd, Welsh National, 184-5. Electric and Steam Power, their social reactions, 235-7. Energy, the doctrine of, 30. Epic Selection, primitive, his- toric andstill possible, 126, 201-2, 328-30. Eton, 24. Eugenics: its initial aim defined, 72 ; its larger reference, 28-9, 198-g, and cf. 392 ; an idea from the hermit's cell, 297, 298-9, 386 ; though first defijiitely pro- mulgated alongside of civics, 387, 394, 4O9 ; it bears the marks of its hermitic and biological origin in a reluctance or failure to reach the plane of social conceptions, 279-80, 298-9, 393, 400 ; its appeal to tlie more caste-bound middle class mind has given it a quick vogue, 253, 409, cf. 406 ; but resulted in developments that are reaction- ary in social tendency and irrational in argument, 280-81, 393, 409 (cf. 299) ; so falling below the ideals and intelligence of historical and even primeval culture-aims and methods, 127, 198-200, see also Citizen (medi- aeval) passim ; the eugenist will remain a lost soul and scientist until he attains a clear vision, and makes a right choice, of social ideals, 299-300, 392-3, cf. 19S-201 ; for this he must come to Civics and be reconstructed, 278-84, 300-1, 393-5, etc.; then from being fragmentary, nega- tive and repressive, eugenics will become integrate, positive and evocative of life more abundant and better, 252-4, 20, 29 and passim. {See Civics, also Salee- by). Eugenic Theatre, dramatising the historian's vision of great personalities and ideals, 182-3 : well begun by the Greeks, 182- 96; modern resources for, 197- 203. EupsYCHics, the complementary conception needed for a true eugenics, 200. EuTOPiA ( = definite policy of local betterment) 82, 97, 150, 295, 379, 382 {and note). Euzenia and Euzenics, 300-1. Evolution, doctrine of, 30-1. Fabian Society,means well, 372-3. Fairy Tale, suggested origin of, 126. Feminists, 243, 246. Ferguson, Mr. Charles, 283, 337, 376- Ford and Goodrich, Messrs., their survey of Jersey City, 362. France, civic revival in, 15 ; sociological movement in, 372. Free Trade Movement (English), 57- French Revolution, 56, 263. Friars, Sociological. See Socio- logical Friars. Feiedenspiel v. Kriegspiel, 65, 267-8. CDxviii. INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. Galileo, and the Miracle Play, 148; also at 180. Galton, Francis, founded eu- genics, 72, 386; did not create all his nominal followers, 299 ; but drawn at the heels of some of their absurdities, 280-1 ; in spite of a saintly character, 298-9 ; and true intuitions of the religious issue of the doctrine, 391-2 ; his answer to the enquiry Which perfection? 198. Games, a pastime too thin for really live young men, 337-9. Garibaldi, 56. Geddes, Prof. Patrick, his school of sociology and doctrine of the civic synthesis, 5-6, 378-9, 403-1 1 passim ; his analysis of the city, 19 ; the Chelsea survey, 81 ; his writings on regional sociology, 82-3 [note) ; his " City Develop- ment,'' 131-2, 395-7 ; significance of the book, 397-9 ; one social suggestion from it, 132-5; his interpretation of Olympus, 189- 90. Referred to, 150, 297-8, 382, 401, 405 ; see also Outlook Tower. Gennep, van, quoted, 269. Germany, civic revival in, 13-14 Glasgow, idealistic stitchery at, 259 ; social science at, 323. Governing Classes, what makes the, 88-9. Government, two forms of, 247 ; its prevailing usurpations, 306, 312-13; see also Resorption of Government. Grandmother, the art of being a, 166, 169. Gravitation Theory, the intel- lectual preparation for Newton's, 180. Guilds, spirit of the, 205, 211-12, their corporate morality, 207-12 ; built the cathedrals, 206-7, ^nd helped to maintain them, 213- 15 ; their altars and chapels therein, 216 ; their hoods, liveries and crests, 209-12 ; cf. 292. Hall, President Stanley, and child study, 128, 376. Hampstead, an art and culture purlieu, 25. Hardy, Dr. Marcel, 83. Hardy, Miss, her survey of Salis- bury, 65. Harrison, Shelby M., on the Syracuse survey, 358. H AVA N'A , the sociologist at, in - 113 Hebrews, their contribution to the heritage of ideals; 224-7. Hegel and Hegelianism, 10, 286-7. Heine, Heinrich, 46. HEPH.ESTUS, the divine crafts- man, 190, 194-5. Herbertson, Dr. A. J., 66. Heritage (social) ; see Social heritage. Heredity, see Inheritance. Hill, Miss Octavia, 369. Hill, Mr. Georges Chatteron, his sociological study of religion, 292. Historian, the Evolutionary, his outlook, r&le, and a new resource, 175. '79) 182-3, 200. History, what it is, 33-4, 179 ; its supreme concern the heritage of ideals, 158, which the historian views and presents in two ways, 182-3 ; from history (and science) are to be drawn all true doctrine of life and stuff of uplifting drama, 44-5, 84, 387 ; its repre- sentation in masque, 176 seqq., cf. 182, 197. HoLLiNS, Miss Dorothea, 81. Home, a creation of woman, 36, 59; how related to the cathedral, 107-9 ; how (occasionally) un- related to reality human or divine, 406-7. Home Rule (civic) movement, 16. Hooligan, the, 155. Howe, Dr., quoted, 14 [note). Hudson, Mr. J. C, 271. Hull House, 305. Hutchinson, Anne, 114. Hygiene, modern vogue of, 31. Ibsen, 141. Idealism, fair, foul and fatuous 74-8, 151-60. Ideals, the heritage of, 158, 168-9, 195-6, 224.7, 292, 383. INDEX. CDXVIX. Income, see wages. Industrial Revolution, the, 30, 326. 354- Isaiah, his great bequest of ideals to the people, 226. Isolation, of studies, professions, social classes, 85-8; see also Outlook Tower, Synthesis, University. Inheritance, organic, a mere fraction of the total formative human inheritance, 279-83 ; cf. 29-30, 155, 169 ; see also under Eugenics and Civics, Person- ality, Social Heritage. Japan, 249, 369. Jones, Inigo, 162, 164. Jersey City, the town-planning survey of, 362. JoNSON, Ben, 162, 163. Katharina von Bora, 53. Kellog, Paul U., quoted, 357. Kensington, its cultrural char- acter, 25. KiNDERRAUB, and the Kinder- rauber, 255 7, 261. "Know your City'' movement, 356-9- " Labor Unrest," 238 9. Lagrange, quoted, ig6. Landor, Walter Savage, on universities, 285. Latin Quarter, a cloister, 25. Latter, Miss Lucy, 258. Lawes, Henry, 165. Lees, Dr. Cameron, quoted, 206, 213. Leisure, 239-41, 270; projects for the redemption of, 364-5 ; cf. 253. Le Play, Frederic, his approach to sociology, 5, 99 (note). Lessing, 141. Libraries, Public, the culmina- ting social institution of Ameri- can civilization, 1 19 ; the Boston library, 120-1 ; Washington ditto, 122-3 ! *he new order of librarians, 124 ; women and the libraries, 125 ; and literature, I2b ; the New York library, 136-9. LlvBRY, mediaeval honour and modern degradation of the term, 2IO-II. Loafer, his ideal, 75-6. Low, Dr. Seth, 310. Lucian's view of the purpose 6f drama, 187-8. Luther, Martin, 53. Maistrk, Joseph de, 292. McAneny, Mr., " President of Manhattan," 139. Mackaye, Mr. Percy, and the civic theatre, 364-7. Macmillan, Miss Margaret, 260. McBeth, Miss Ann, 260. Madison (city), 342-3. Manchestbk, 257, 260, 261. Manners, the mark of aristocracy, 166, 169. Marx, Karl, and the classical socialists, 40-42 ; referred to, 46. Mary, Queen of Scots, how a type of the ever-womanly, 53. Masque, the coming of, 162-5. " Masque of Learning,'' the, 176-9, 183, 202, 379. Matsys, Ouintin, 216. Mazeini, 56. Mead, Mr. G. R. S., quoted, 310. Meredith, George, his dictum regarding woman, 52. Michigan, see University Militant. Mission, the, and the Quest, 365 ; cf. 181. Mill, John Stuart, 52, 372. Milton, John, and his Masque of Comus, 162-g; 172. Miracle Play, preceded the morality, 140 ; the type described, 142-6 ; secret of its long vogue, 146 8, 183 ; cause of its decay, 148-9 ; the modern parallel to this, 150 ; was the play of the people, 153, 217-32 (passim). Monastery, what it did, 289-90. Montessori, Signora, 259. Montmartre, 25. Morality Play, its rise, 140, 149; an art-form specially relevant for the adolescent, 150-53, 160. More, Sir Thomas, his significance as a type of citizenship, 381-2. Morris, William, 365. CDxxii. INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ceptions regarding it, 34-5, 47-8 ; attitude towards socialism, 42-4 ; towards religion, 29, 44-6, 77 (see Theologian). Sociology, General, why it has failed to advance since Comte and Spencer, 399-401 ; by incor- porating civics and eugenics it will achieve its unification, ac- quire vital substance, purpose, and direction, and the power to Goon! 3, 403-4, 407.8, 411-12. Sociological Friars: the Francis- cans. 370; Benedictines, 371-2; Dominicans, 374869^; cf 401-2. SocialTransmission, the agencies and process, 159, 279-82. Sociological Movement, the, 372, and Ch. VIII passim, SocioLOGicALSociety, theLondon, 35, 322, 372, 386, 392, 394. Sociologist, his vision and faith, 20, 28-9, 84, 250-52, 274- 84, 299-300, 384. Refers social wayseekers to the house of history for direction and hope, 43-4- Specialist (Scientific), what he needs, zoi-2. Spencer, Herbert, his " Study of Sociology" a stopping-place, 1, 400, 403, 410; foreshadowed eu- genics, but had no foresight of civics, 3, 399-400 ; how influenced by his individualist milieu, 306- 7; see aiso 34, 241, 257. Spencer, Edmund, 162, 168. Spinoza, 46. Spiritual Power, the, 57, 102, 105. "5. 139, 306 sm-< 311-12. 315-16, 319, 331, 402. State, substituted for city in academic teaching and political practice, 11- 13; the current counter movement, 15-18; see also Chap. VII. passim. Steam, see Electric. Stocks (family), the prevailing eugenic view of them to be corrected by the civic concept of education and the psychological concept of choice, 29 30,250569^., see Eugenics ; do not make up the community, 279-82. Stow's " Survey of London," 73, 97- Survey, the historical, 73 ; most needed in town-planning for places without a past, 361-2 ; RusTiC, and rural regeneration, 83 ; Social, begins with study of local and economic condition (70-72), but is not complete or truly civic till it takes stock also of the historic process, the per- sonal resultant, and ideals, 73-8, cf. 81-2; Social, an active move- ment in United States, 355-363 ; Sociological, many existing fragments and beginnings of, 68 ; its purpose, to prepare the know- ledge which will give the power to modify favourably environ- ment and ideals, 75-9 ; cf. 97 ; Regional, 83. Surveys (physical and statistical), the ordnance, its origin and pro- gress, 63-5 ; significance of its history, 65-6 ; the use of its maps for sociology and education, 67-8 ; other (official) perpetual surveys, 68-9 ; in United States, 71 ; the geological survey and its lesson, 79-82. Survey, The, American journal of applied sociology, 357. Swanson, Miss Margaret, 260. Swinburne, A. C, on Athens, 193- Syndicalists, 246. Synthesis, Institute of, the need of the age, 85-95, 322, 349-54. 385- Syracuse (U.S.A.), its social survey, 358-60. Taft, Mr. W. H., 309. Taine, quoted, 99 (note), 167, 171. Tariff Reform, see Protectionist movement. Tasso, his Aminta, 164-5. Tate, Nahum, 169.70, 173. Tayler, Dr. Lionel, his study of mental types, 72. Taylor, Rachel Annand, quoted, 165. Theatre, related to school and church, 147, 159-61, 292; of the INDEX. CDXXIU. Greeks, 183-6 ; the mediasval, 147, 217 seq^. ; the modern, 141, 160 ; the civic, 363-7 ; the eu- genic, see Eugenic Theatre. Theologian, the, a pre-Darwinian evolutionist and a sociologist unawares, 252, 84 ; now at peace with the scientist, 2, 408 ; and the natural comrade of the sociologist in his search for the social heaven, 408-10 ; cf. 402-3 ; see also Rsligion. Theory, see Practice. Thompson, Francis, why wasted, 89- Town, one element of a city, 19.25- . . Town and Gown Association (Edinburgh), 378. Town- Planning, its relation to educational and social reform movements, 277-8, 282-4, 3^2 ; to the sociological movement, 390 ; has its further goal in city design, . 385-6 ; cf. 362. Toynbee, Arnold, 370. Toynbee Hall, 305, 370, 371. Transition (the Current), evi- ■ dences of, 242-3 ; what guidance for ? 243 seqq. Tulchan Bishops, 27. University, a surviving mediseval guild, 2 to; historic examples of its influence, 285-9 ! its intel- lectual role synthetic and cul- tural, 87-9 ; reason for its failure in this regard, 90-92, 194 ; con- trast the mediasval synthesis, 289-96 ; its social r61e active and creative, 287-9; its real riches, 316 ; its supreme vocation in our time, 316-19,323; the true test of its worth, 383-4; its service of the civic theatre, 365-6. University and City Association (London), 379. University Extension, 288-9 I see also Settlements. University Militant (in United State.s), 327-54 passim ; what it IS doing in Michigan, 327-33, 349: in Wisconsin, 333-6; in Arizona, 336-9; a school of citizenship, 340-4 ; and the ends it makes for, 323; c/. 365-7, 376-7. University Halls (Edinburgh), 176, 379- Unwin, Mr. George, quoted, 208, 212. Uplift, historic periods of, 251. Utopias (subjective), 75-6 ; vision- ary, 379- Utopians, the Chelsea, 81. Veblen, Mr. Thorstein, on "Lei- sure" and " Business Enterprise,'' 240-2, 364. Verlaine, Paul, a warning ex- ample to the qualifying idealist, 154-5- Village, its living unity and components ignored, 388. Voltaire, 56 ; and Congreve, 173. Wages, may be in money or realities, 42-3, 61-2 ; inequality of men's and women's, 59-60 ; not the important factors of production, 61. Wallace, Dr. Alfred Russel, on eugenics, 299. Washington (City), its public library, 122. Watteau, 34-8. Waxweiler, M. Emile, 377. Way, Mr. T. R., quoted, 208-11. " West End," the, as habitat and mode of life, 23 ; cf. 150. White, Mr. J. Martin, founder of chairs of sociology, 386 [note). William the Conqueror, his survey of England, 98. Wilson, Dr. Woodrow, 309-10, 377- Winnipeg, 361. Wisconsin, see University Militant Woman, the home-maker, 26, 59, 107-8; generically a psychologist, 99-101; the social educator of man, 50, 116 ; maker and moulder of language, 101-2 ; everywhere a moral force, 102 ; her status in Spain and Spanish America, 102-6; why she cleaves to the church, 106-10; her ambitions as mother more spiritual than man's, 59, cf. 129; the con- CDxxiv. INTERPRETATIONS AND FORECASTS. ventional male types are beneath her, S4-S ; the current revolt against this, 128 ; her influence in the United States, 114-28 passim ; the ' ' Woman's Club " and the study of poetry, 117; the resulting civic improvement crusades, 118-9; relation to the libraries, 125 ; to primary and formative literature, 126-7; l^^r trend to refinement, her claim to milieus of amenity, instinctive and indefeasable, 53, 128-30: wanted, a civic drawing-room for working dames, 130-35 ; her part in current educational initiatives, 257-62 ; and social settlements, 304-5. Women, when economically free, will see to eugenics, 299; their incorporation into the culture of the age essential, see Culture. York, the Miracle play at, 218. Young Turks, the, 10. Zangwill, a prophet in Israel, 46. Zola's L'argent, 43.