This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as far as
possible, concrete in treatment. If it is to appeal to practical men and
civic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for the
systematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be not
merely the product of the study, but rather be those which may be
acquired in course of local observation and practical effort. My problem
is thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise from
the experience of any moderately-travelled observer of varied interests;
so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic and
impressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards an
orderly Regional Survey. This point of view has next to be correlated
with the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquired
through some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise toward a
larger and more orderly conception of civic action--as Regional Service.
In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or [Page: 104] Civics, as
one of its main departments, may be defined as the application of Social
Survey to Social Service.
In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, our
everyday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually become
more systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; while
our activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarly
approximate towards art. Thus there is emerging more and more clearly
for sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields of
application in city after city, the conception of a scientific centre of
observation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centre of
experimental endeavour on the other--in short of Sociological
Observatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasingly
co-ordinated. Indeed, is not such association of observations and
experiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here and
elsewhere? I need not multiply instances of the correlation of science
and art, as of chemistry with agriculture, or biology with medicine.
Yet, on the strictly sociological plane and in civic application they
are as yet less generally evident, though such obvious connections as
that of vital statistics with hygienic administration, that of
commercial statistics with politics, are becoming recognised by all. In
the paper with which this Society's work lately opened, the intimate
connection between a scientific demography and a practical eugenics has
been clearly set forth. But this study of the community in the aggregate
finds its natural parallel and complement in the study of the community
as an integrate, with material and immaterial structures and functions,
which we call the City. Correspondingly, the improvement of the
individuals of the community, which is the aim of eugenics, involves a
corresponding civic progress. Using (for the moment at least) a parallel
nomenclature, we see that the sociologist is concerned not only with
"demography" but with "politography," and that "eugenics" is inseparable
from "politogenics." For the struggle for existence, though observed
mainly from the side of its individuals by the demographer, is not only
an intra-civic but an inter-civic process; and if so, ameliorative
selection, now clearly sought for the individuals in detail as eugenics,
is inseparable from a corresponding civic art--a literal
"Eupolitogenics."