If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has
only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?"
"_Circumspice!_" There stand the settlements he initiated, the houses
beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of
his ideas, an encyclopædia in stone and in storeys.
We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts
towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is
"concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with
ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society.
And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of
its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the
necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied
Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we
have to ask is:--(1) What actually are the generalisations of the
present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable sociological
testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the
touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer to
these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion.
But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to
clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose
occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the
reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present condition
of the people."
[Page: 135] No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of
"The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of
_population_; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. Charles
Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all
readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely
suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population
must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of the
characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential material
of a study of its whole civilisation."
Accepting Mr. Branford's definition of _occupation_ as "any and every
form of human endeavour, past, present, and future," we see that
occupation must have a large place in the description, explanation, and
forecasting of the evolution of cities--such as Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Dundee--in the scheme of survey outlined so sweepingly in "Civics."
"Life and Labour of the People in London" contains several general
observations almost equally applicable to our largest Scottish cities,
with the demographic conditions of which my official duties give me
special opportunities for becoming familiar and for regional survey.
In the concluding volume of that great contribution to sociology Mr.
Booth (page 23) remarks:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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