the travelled zoologist and botanist, who later becomes the productive
writer on evolution. It is the historian who may best venture on into
the philosophy of history;--to think the reverse is to remain in the
pre-scientific order altogether: hence the construction of systems of
abstract and deductive economics, politics or morals, has really been
the last surviving effort of scholasticism. Viewed as Science, Civics is
that branch of Sociology which deals with Cities--their origin and
distribution; their development and structure; their functioning,
internal and external, material and psychological; their evolution,
individual and associated. Viewed again from the practical side, that of
applied science, Civics must develop through experimental endeavour into
the more and more effective Art of enhancing the life of the city and of
advancing its evolution. With the first of these lines of study, the
concretely scientific, our philosophical outlook will not fail to widen;
with the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to
deepen also.

As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have naturally
approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic survey,
its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these
to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, even
of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice
co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more
concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger
than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the
needed practical division of labour in the city's service. When the
first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly
diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who
at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated: the
evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link