But such books of the city, whether of the new and observant type, from
Baedeker to Booth, or of the old and interpretative Dantean one, are too
vast and varied to keep open before us. Even the preceding open page of
diagram is complex enough with its twofold, indeed four-fold city; and
we are called back to our daily work in the first of these divisions,
that of the everyday town. Since its subjective aspects of school and
cloister may fade from memory, its higher aspect also, that of city
proper, how can we retain this fourfold [Page: 98] analysis, and how
test if it be true? Take then one final illustration; this time no mere
logical skeleton, however simple or graphic, but an image more easily
retained, because a concrete and artistic one, and moreover in terms of
that form of life-labour and thought-notation--that of current
coin--which, in our day especially, dominates this vastest of cities;
and hence inherits for the region of its home and centre--"the Bank"
which has so thoroughly taken precedence of the town-house and
cathedral, of the fortress and palace--the honoured name of "City." The
coinages of each time and place combine concrete and social use with
statements of historic facts; and they add to both of these a wealth of
emblematic suggestions: but that is to say, they express not only their
town, and something of its _school_, but much of its thought also, its
_cloister_ in my present terminology.
So before me lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side
stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild,
"_Non marte sed arte_." Here then the industrial "Town" and its "School"
express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been above
defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since
Perth _(Bertha aurea)_ had been the northmost of all Rome's provincial
capitals, her re-named "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald
must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the
Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic
dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On
the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard,
since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of
1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the
banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, and
one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual
strife with the feudal nobles, "_Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege_." Here then,
plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty
provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only of
the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find
clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole [Page:99] four-fold
analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been above labouring for.
For what makes the industrial Town, what can better keep it than
strenuous industry at its anvil? How better express its craft school,
its local style and skill, its reaction too upon the town's life in
peace and war, than by this Hal o' the Wynd by his forge? Nay, what
better symbol than this hammer, this primitive tool and ever typical
one, of the peaceful education of experience, form Prometheus to Kelvin,
of the warlike, from Thor to modern cannon-forge? Turning now from Town
and School to Cloister, to the life of secluded peace and
meditation--from which, however, the practical issues of life are ever
renewed--what plainer symbol, yet what more historic or more mystic one
can we ask than this of the lamb with the banner? While of the
contrasted yet complemental civic life of fullest, broadest action, what
expression like the Roman eagle--the very eyes of keenness, and the
spreading wings of power?
So rarely perfect then is this civic symbol, that I must not omit to
mention that it has only come to my notice since the body of this paper,
with its four-fold analysis of cities as above outlined, was essentially
finished. Since it thus has not in any particular suggested the
treatment of cities here advocated, it is the more interesting and
encouraging as a confirmation of it. It is also to my mind plain that in
this, as in many other of our apparent "advances in science," and
doubtless those in social studies particularly, we are but learning to
think things anew, long after our forefathers have lived them, even
expressed them--and these in their ways no less clear and popular than
can ever be ours. That we may also again live them is once more
curiously expressed by the same symbol; for its re-appearance is due to
its having been appropriately revived, in a fitting art form, that of
the commemorative and prize medal of the local arts and crafts
exhibition, held in the new Public Library, under civic auspices. Little
scrutiny of this last sentence will be needed to see the four-fold
completeness of the civic event which it describes.
For just as we have seen on the old coin the hammerman [Page: 100] and
his motto answer to the town and school; so now on its reissue to the
renascent local arts and crafts, with their commemoration in this
library. And as the greater motto, that of widest policy, corresponds to
the cloister of reflection and resolve, so we note that this new impulse
to civic betterment is associated with the new library--no mere
school-house of memory, but also the open cloister of our day. Finally,
note that this impulse is no longer merely one of aesthetic purpose, of
"art for art's sake," nor its execution that of a cultured minority
merely; it announces a re-union of this culture and art with the civic
polity. What fitter occasion, then, for the striking of a medal, than
this renewal of civic life, with municipal organisation and polity, art
and culture, renascent in unison. That such events are nowadays far from
exceptional is so true that we are in danger of losing sight of their
significance. Yet it is amid such city developments that the future
Pericles must arise.
We thus see that our analysis is no mere structural one, made
post-mortem from civic history; but that it applies to the modern
functioning of everyday life in an everyday city, so soon as this
becomes touched anew towards cultural issues. Furthermore, it is thus
plain that civic life not only has long ago anticipated and embodied our
theories of it, but once more outruns them, expressing them far better
than in words--in life and practice. In this way the reader who may most
resent these unfamiliar methods of exposition, alternately by abstract
diagram or concrete illustration--which may seem to him too remote from
ordinary life and experience, perhaps too trivial--may now test the
present theory of the city, or amend it, by means of the ample
illustrations of the processes and results of social life which are
provided by his daily newspaper, and these on well-nigh all its fields
and levels.
Note finally that it is the eagle and lamb of temporal and spiritual
idealism that form the "head" of this coin, the craftsman and anvil but
the modest "tail." The application is obvious.
Thus even numismatics revives from amid the fossil [Page: 100] sciences.
For from this to our own common coinage, or notably to that of France,
America, Switzerland, etc., the transition is easy, and still better to
that of the noblest civic past, both classic and mediaeval. Without
pursuing this further here my present point is gained, if we see, even
in the everyday local details of work and people, the enduring stamp,
the inextinguishable promise, of the flowering of our everyday
industries and schools into worthier ideals than they at present
express, and of the fruition of these in turn upon nobler heights of
life and practice. It expresses the essential truth of the popular view
of the city; that in terms of the formula--People ... Affairs ...
Places--above referred to (page 69). It also explains the persistent
vitality of this view, despite its frequent crudity, and lack of order
in detail, in face of the more scientific treatment here at first
employed, that in the elementary geographic order--Place ... Work ...
People. For though this objective order be fundamental, it is the
complementary subjective evolution which throughout history has ever
become supreme; so that our scheme must combine the outward geographic
presentment with the inward psychological one. This may be graphically
expressed by changing the order of presentment from that used
hitherto:--
Town | City City | Town
-------------------- to ----------------------
School | Cloister Cloister | School