All this is set forth with greater fulness in the Report which Professor
Geddes has been asked to write for the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. The
purpose of the Report (printed, but not yet published) was to suggest
the way in which the revenue of the Trust, amounting to £25,000, should
be spent for the benefit of this ancient and historic town. The scheme,
with its many pictures, real and ideal, of workshops, parks,
culture-institutes--physical, artistic, and historical--will deeply
interest even those who reject much of it as Utopian. But it is at least
a Utopia specially adapted to a given place and time, one in which every
feature of landscape and history is made the most of, one in which a
beginning can be made at once, leaving room for further developments as
occasion may serve. Moreover, it is penetrated through and through with
the Republican ideal of bringing the highest truth within the reach of
all.
Comte has pointed out, in the fifth chapter of his "General View of
Positivism," and elsewhere, that it is not enough to enunciate sound
principles of social renovation unless they can be rendered visible and
palpable. "The principal function of art," he says, "is to construct
types on the basis furnished by Science.... However perfectly the first
principles of social renovation may be elaborated by thinkers, they will
still not be sufficiently definite for the practical results.... But, at
the point where Philosophy must always leave a void, Art steps in, and
stimulates to practical action.... Hence, in the future, systematic
formation of Utopias will become habitual; on the distinct understanding
that as in every other branch of art, the ideal shall be kept in
subordination to the real."
Now, the Dunfermline Report is an admirable example of art thus allied
with science for social service. It is an ideal picture, strictly
adherent to local colour and conditions, of an ancient city prolonging
its vitality into the present and future by providing a very high form
of training for its citizens, a training not of intellect only, but of
the senses, of manual dexterity, of imagination, of Republican
sympathy--a training in which "laborious inacquaintance with dead
languages," infusing into the few touched by it a tincture of caste and
militarism, gives way to comprehensive study of the evolution of Man,
preparing the whole, and not a section merely, of the new generation for
social service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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