"TOWN" (a) INDIVIDUALS (a) OCCUPATIONS (a) WORK-PLACES
(b) INSTITUTIONS (b) WAR (b) WAR-PLACES
"SCHOOLS" (b) HISTORY (b) STATISTICS AND (b) GEOGRAPHY
("Constitutional") HISTORY
("Military")
(a) BIOGRAPHY (a) ECONOMICS (a) TOPOGRAPHY
Here then we have that general relation of the town life and its
"schools," alike of thought and of education, which must now be fully
investigated.
Such diagrammatic presentments, while of course primarily for the
purpose of clear expression and comparison, are also frequently
suggestive--by "inspection," as geometers say--of relations not
previously noticed. In both ways, we may see more clearly how prevalent
ideas and doctrines have arisen as "reflections upon" the life of
action, and even account for their qualities and their defects--their
partial truth or their corresponding inadequacy, according to our own
appreciative or depreciative standpoint. Thus as regards "People," in
the first column we see expressed briefly how to (a) the individual
life, with the corresponding vivid interest in biography, corresponds
the "great man theory" of history. Conversely with _(b)_ alone is
associated the insistance upon institutional developments as the main
factor. Passing to the middle column, that of "Affairs," we may note in
connection with _(b)_ say the rise of statistics in association with
the needs of war, a point connected with its too empiric character; or
note again, a too common converse weakness of economic theory, its
inadequate inductive [Page: 70] verification. Or finally, in the column
of "Place," the long weakness of geography as an educational subject,
yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated. We might in
fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of
ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less than
those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly
unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent
oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring
elements of the manifold "Town" life from which they derive and survive.
Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate
problem--that of understanding "Town" and its "School" in their origins
and simplest relations.