er way to Framlingham. The abbey immortalised
in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern
England, is surrounded now by the same villages that Jocelyn tells us
of. The town named after St. Alban, with its memories of Cassivellaun
and Julius Caesar, of an old Roman city, of the Diocletian persecution,
of the great King Offa, founder of the abbey that was to become [Page:
142] at once a school of historical research, and our best epitome of
mediaeval architecture--all this, with the monument of the author of the
"Novum Organum" crowning the whole--sums up for us sixteen centuries of
history.

Professor Geddes for more than twenty years has adopted this method of
teaching sociology in the open air; "in the field," as geologists would
say....

This is much more than the study and the description of buildings and
places of historical interest. His aim is first to study the way in
which a city grows, always having due regard to its physical
environment; secondly, by comparing like with like, as a naturalist
compares the individuals of a species, or the species of a genus, to
throw light on the laws which govern civic development, and thus to help
forward and direct civic action.

All this is set forth with greater fulness in the Report which Professor
Geddes has been asked to write for the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. The
purpose of the Report (printed, but not yet published) was to suggest
the way in which the revenue of the Trust, amounting to L25,000, should
be spent for the benefit of this ancient and historic town. The scheme,
with its many pictures, real and ideal, of workshops, parks,
culture-institutes--physical, artistic, and historical--will deeply
interest even those who reject much of it as Utopian. But it is at least
a Utopia specially adapted to a given place and time, one in which every
feature of landscape and history is made the most of, one in which a
beginning can be made at once, leaving room for further developments as
occasion may serve. Moreover, it is penetrated through and through with
the Republican ideal of bringing the highest truth within the reach of
all.

Comte has pointed out, in the fifth chapter of his "General View of
Positivism," and elsewhere, that it is not enough to enunciate sound
principles of social renovation unless they can be rendered visible and
palpable. "The principal function of art," he says, "is to construct
types on the basis furnished by Science....