Civics: as Applied Sociology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 145 pages of information about Civics.

Civics: as Applied Sociology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 145 pages of information about Civics.

I feel always the inspiring character of Professor Geddes’ addresses.  He seems to widen and deepen the point of view, and to widen and deepen one’s own ideas, and enables us to hold them more firmly and better than one can do without the aid of the kind of insight Professor Geddes has given into the methods of his own mind.  I believe that we all hold our conceptions by some sort of tenure.  I am afraid I hold mine by columns and statistics much underlined—­a horrible prosaic sort of arrangement on ruled paper.  I remember a lady of my acquaintance who had a place for everything.  The discovery of America was in the left-hand corner; the Papacy was in the middle; and for everything she had some local habitation in an imaginary world.  Professor Geddes is far more ingenious than that, and it is most interesting and instructive and helpful to follow these charming diagrams which spring evidently from the method he himself uses in holding and forming his conceptions.  That it is of the utmost value to have large conceptions there can be no doubt—­large conceptions both in time and place, large conceptions of all those various ideas to which he has called our attention.  By some means or other we have to have them; and having got them, every individual, single fact has redoubled value.  We put it in its place.  So I hope that in our discussion, while we may develop each in his own way, the mental methods we pursue, we may bring forward anything that strikes us as germane, as a practical point of application to the life of the world, and especially anything having an application to the life of London.  I would make my contribution to that with regard to a scheme that has been explained to me by its originator, Mrs. Barnett, the wife of Canon Barnett of Toynbee Hall.  The idea concerns an open [Page:  113] space which has recently been secured in Hampstead.  It is known to you all that a certain piece of ground belonging to the trustees of Eton College has been secured, which extends the open space of Hampstead Heath in such a way as to protect a great amount of beauty.  The further proposal is to acquire an estate surrounding that open space which has now been secured for ever to the people, and to use this extension to make what is called a “garden suburb.”  It is a following out of the “garden-city” idea which is seizing hold of all our minds, and it seems to me an exceedingly practical adaptation of that idea.  Where it comes in, in connection with the address we have just heard, is that the root idea is that it shall bring together all the good elements of civic life.  It is not to be for one class, or one idea, but for all classes, and all ideas—­a mixed population with all its needs thought for and provided for; and above everything, the beauty of those fields and those hills is not to be sacrificed, but to be used for the good of the suburb and the good of London.  I hope that out of it will come an example that will be followed.  That is a little contribution I wish to make to the discussion to-day, and if I can interest any one here in forwarding it, I shall be exceedingly glad.

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Civics: as Applied Sociology from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.