Coming to concrete Civic Survey, where shall we begin? Not only in
variety and magnitude of civic activities, but, thanks especially to the
work of Mr. Charles Booth and his collaborators in actual social survey
also, London may naturally claim pre-eminence. Yet even at best, does
not this vastest of world cities remain a less or more foggy labyrinth,
from which surrounding [Page: 105] regions with their smaller cities can
be but dimly descried, even with the best intentions of avoiding the
cheap generalisation of "the provinces"? For our more general and
comparative study, then, simpler beginnings are preferable. More
suitable, therefore, to our fundamental thesis--that no less definite
than the study of races and usages or languages, is that of the
groupings of men--is the clearer outlook, the more panoramic view of a
definite geographic region, such, for instance, as lies beneath us upon
a mountain holiday. Beneath vast hunting desolations lie the pastoral
hillsides, below these again scattered arable crofts and sparsely dotted
hamlets lead us to the small upland village of the main glen: from this
again one descends to the large and prosperous village of the foothills
and its railway terminus, where lowland and highland meet. East or west,
each mountain valley has its analogous terminal and initial village,
upon its fertile fan-shaped slope, and with its corresponding minor
market; while, central to the broad agricultural strath with its slow
meandering river, stands the prosperous market town, the road and
railway junction upon which all the various glen-villages converge. A
day's march further down, and at the convergence of several such
valleys, stands the larger county-town--in the region before me as I
write, one of added importance, since not only well nigh central to
Scotland, but as the tidal limit of a till lately navigable river.
Finally, at the mouth of its estuary, rises the smoke of a great
manufacturing city, a central world-market in its way. Such a river
system is, as geographer after geographer has pointed out, the essential
unit for the student of cities and civilisations. Hence this simple
geographical method of treatment must here be pled for as fundamental to
any really orderly and comparative treatment of our subject. By
descending from source to sea we follow the development of civilisation
from its simple origins to its complex resultants; nor can any element
of this be omitted. Were we to begin with the peasant hamlet as our
initial unit, and forget the hinterlands of pasture, forest, and chase
(an error to which the writer on cities is naturally prone), the
anthropologist would soon remind us that in forgetting the hunter, we
had omitted the essential germ of active militarism, and hence very
largely of aristocratic rule. Similarly, [Page: 106] in ignoring the
pastoral life, we should be losing sight of a main fount of spiritual
power, and this not only as regards the historic religions, but all
later culture elements also, from the poetic to the educational. In
short, then, it takes the whole region to make the city. As the river
carries down contributions from its whole course, so each complex
community, as we descend, is modified by its predecessors. The converse
is no doubt true also, but commonly in less degree.
In this way with the geographer we may rapidly review and extend our
knowledge of the grouping of cities. Such a survey of a series of our
own river-basins, say from Dee to Thames, and of a few leading
Continental ones, say the Rhine and Meuse, the Seine and Loire, the
Rhone, the Po, the Danube--and, if possible, in America also, at least
the Hudson and Mississippi--will be found the soundest of introductions
to the study of cities. The comparison of corresponding types at once
yields the conviction of broad general unity of development, structure,
and function. Thus, with Metschnikoff we recognise the succession of
potamic, thalassic, and oceanic civilisations; with Reclus we see the
regular distribution of minor and major towns to have been largely
influenced not only by geographical position but by convenient journey
distances. Again, we note how the exigencies of defence and of
government, the developments of religion, despite all historic
diversities, have been fundamentally the same. It is not, of course, to
be forgotten how government, commerce, communications, have
concentrated, altered or at least disguised the fundamental geographical
simplicity of this descending hierarchy from mountain-hamlet to
ocean-metropolis; but it is useful for the student constantly to recover
the elemental and naturalist-like point of view even in the greatest
cities. At times we all see London as still fundamentally an
agglomeration of villages, with their surviving patches of common,
around a mediaeval seaport; or we discern even in the utmost
magnificence of Paris, say its Place de l'Etoile, with its spread of
boulevards, but the hunter's tryst by the fallen tree, with its
radiating forest-rides, each literally arrow-straight. So the narrow
rectangular network of an American city is explicable only by the
unthinking persistence of the peasant thrift, which grudges good land to
[Page: 107] road-way, and is jealous of oblique short cuts. In short,
then, in what seems our most studied city planning, we are still
building from our inherited instincts like the bees. Our Civics is thus
still far from an Applied Sociology.