s, the city
and poverty were taken as matters of course. Comfort was not a classic
consideration. The being alive to conditions, sensitive to suffering,
eager for diminution of the world's woes, is a modern thought, a Christ
thought. Sociology is an application of Christ's teaching. He founded
this science. Rome was the monster city of the empire, and possibly
the monster city of ancient geography, and contained approximately, at
its most populous period, two and one half millions of inhabitants.
Man is gregarious as the flocks; he seems to fear solitude, and flees
what he fears. Certain we are that in America, one hundred years ago,
less than one-thirtieth of the population was in cities; now, about
one-third is in city communities; and European cities are outgrowing
American cities. In other words, at the present time, cities are
growing in a ratio totally disproportionate to the growth of
population; and this, not in the New World simply, but in the Old.
London has nearly as many citizens as England had in the time of the
Puritan Revolution. Men are nucleating in a fashion foreboding, but
certain. A symptom of the city life is, that he who is city bred knows
no life apart from his city. He belongs to it as essentially as the
Venetian belonged to Venice. The community is a veritable part of the
man's self. Note this in Jean Valjean. It never occurs to him to
leave Paris. Had he been a tree rooted in the soil along the Seine, he
had not been more stationary. Men live, suffer, die, and hug their
ugly tenements as parasites of these dilapidations, and draw their
life-saps from such a decayed trunk. This human instinct for
association is mighty in its impulsion. Not a few, but multitudes,
prefer to be hungry and cold and live in a city to living with
abundance of food and raiment in the country. Any one can see this at
his alley or in his neighboring street. It is one of the latent
insanities of the soul. The city is a live wire, and will not let go
of him who grasps it. There is a stream of life pouring into cities,
but no stream flowing into the country. The tide runs up the shore and
back into the deep seas; not so these human tides. They pour into the
Dead Sea basin of the urban community. Jean Valjean was a complete
modern in his indissoluble identification with the city. As a matter
of course, his was the criminal instinct, superadded to the gregarious
instinct, which hides in a city labyrint