Chapter 7
In the everyday world, in the city as we find it, what is the working classification of ideas, the method of thought of its citizens? That the citizens no more think of themselves as using any particular sociological method than did M. Jourdain of talking prose does not really matter, save that it makes our observation, both of them and it, easier and more trustworthy.
They are speaking and thinking for the most part of [Page: 68] People and of Affairs; much less of places. In the category of People, we observe that individuals, self and others, and this in interest, perhaps even more than in interests, commonly take precedence of groups. Institutions and Government are, however, of general interest, the state being much more prominent than is the church; the press, for many, acting as the modern substitute for the latter. In the world of Affairs, commerce takes precedence of industry, while sport runs hard upon both. War, largely viewed by its distant spectators as the most vivid form of sport, also bulks largely. Peace is not viewed as a positive ideal, but essentially as a passive state, at best, of non-war, more generally of latent war. Central among places are the bank, the market (in its financial forms before the material ones). Second to these stand the mines then the factories, etc.; and around these the fixed or floating fortresses of defence. Of homes, that of the individual alone is seriously considered, at most those of his friends, his "set," his peers, but too rarely even of the street, much less the neighbourhood, at least for their own sake, as distinguished from their reaction upon individual and family status or comfort.
This set of views is obviously not easy of precise analysis of exact classification. In broad outline, however, a summary may be made, and even tabulated as follows:--
THE EVERYDAY TOWN AND ITS ACTIVITIES.
PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES (a) INDIVIDUALS (a) COMMERCE (a) MARKET, BANK, etc. (Self and others). INDUSTRY, etc. FACTORY, MINE, etc. SPORT.
(b) GOVERNMENT(S) (b) WAR (b) FORT, FIELD, etc. Temporal and Spiritual and Peace (State and Church). (Latent War).
Next note how from the everyday world of action, there arises a corresponding thought-world also. This has, [Page: 69] of course, no less numerous and varied elements, with its resultantly complex local colour; But a selection will suffice, of which the headings may be printed below those of the preceding scheme, to denote how to the objective elements there are subjective elements corresponding--literal reflections upon the pools of memory--the slowly flowing stream of tradition. Thus the extended diagram, its objective elements expressed in yet more general terms, may now be read anew (noting that mirror images are fully reversed).
PEOPLE AFFAIRS PLACES
"TOWN" (a) INDIVIDUALS (a) OCCUPATIONS (a) WORK-PLACES (b) INSTITUTIONS (b) WAR (b) WAR-PLACES
"SCHOOLS" (b) HISTORY (b) STATISTICS AND (b) GEOGRAPHY ("Constitutional") HISTORY ("Military") (a) BIOGRAPHY (a) ECONOMICS (a) TOPOGRAPHY
Here then we have that general relation of the town life and its "schools," alike of thought and of education, which must now be fully investigated.
Such diagrammatic presentments, while of course primarily for the purpose of clear expression and comparison, are also frequently suggestive--by "inspection," as geometers say--of relations not previously noticed. In both ways, we may see more clearly how prevalent ideas and doctrines have arisen as "reflections upon" the life of action, and even account for their qualities and their defects--their partial truth or their corresponding inadequacy, according to our own appreciative or depreciative standpoint. Thus as regards "People," in the first column we see expressed briefly how to (a) the individual life, with the corresponding vivid interest in biography, corresponds the "great man theory" of history. Conversely with _(b)_ alone is associated the insistance upon institutional developments as the main factor. Passing to the middle column, that of "Affairs," we may note in connection with _(b)_ say the rise of statistics in association with the needs of war, a point connected with its too empiric character; or note again, a too common converse weakness of economic theory, its inadequate inductive [Page: 70] verification. Or finally, in the column of "Place," the long weakness of geography as an educational subject, yet is periodic renewal upon the field of war, is indicated. We might in fact continue such a comparison of the existing world of action and of ideas, into all the schools, those of thought and practice, no less than those of formal instruction; and thus we should more and more clearly unravel how their complexity and entanglement, their frequent oppositions and contradictions are related to the various and warring elements of the manifold "Town" life from which they derive and survive. Such a fuller discussion, however, would too long delay the immediate problem--that of understanding "Town" and its "School" in their origins and simplest relations.
F--PROPOSED METHODICAL ANALYSIS
(1) THE TOWN
More fully to understand this two-fold development of Town and School we have first of all apparently to run counter to the preceding popular view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that reached from the side of science. This, as we have already so fully insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally _replacing_ People and Affairs in our scheme above.
Starting then once more with the simple biological formula:
ENVIRONMENT ... CONDITIONS ... ORGANISM
this has but to be applied and defined by the social geographer to become
REGION ... OCCUPATION ... FAMILY-type and Developments
which summarises precisely that doctrine of Montesquieu and his successors already insisted on. Again, in but slight variation from Le Play's simplest phrasing _("Lieu, travail, famille")_ we have
PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK
It is from this simple and initial social formula that we have now to work our way to a fuller understanding of Town and School. [Page: 71] Immediately, therefore, this must be traced upward towards its complexities. For Place, it is plain, is no mere topographic site. Work, conditioned as it primarily is by natural advantages, is thus really first of all _place-work_. Arises the field or garden, the port, the mine, the workshop, in fact the _work-place_, as we may simply generalise it; while, further, beside this arise the dwellings, the _folk-place_.
Nor are these by any means all the elements we are accustomed to lump together into Town. As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use. Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists have alternately done--too literally losing or shirking essentials of Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk and Place also.
Tabular and schematic presentments, however, such as those to which we are proceeding, are apt to be less simple and satisfactory to reader than to writer; and this even when in oral exposition the very same diagram has been not only welcomed as clear, but seen and felt to be convincing. The reason of this difficulty is that with the spoken exposition the audience sees the diagram grow upon the blackboard; whereas to produce anything of the same effect upon the page, it must be printed at several successive stages of development. Thus our initial formula,
PLACE ... WORK ... FOLK
readily develops into
FOLK
PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK (Natural advantages) (Occupation)
PLACE
This again naturally develops into a regular table, of which the [Page: 72] filling up of some of the squares has been already suggested above, and that of the remaining ones will be intelligible on inspection:--
PLACE FOLK WORK-FOLK FOLK ("Natives") ("Producers")
PLACE-WORK WORK FOLK-WORK
PLACE WORK-PLACE FOLK-PLACE
So complex is the idea of even the simplest Town--even in such a rustic germ as the "farm-town" of modern Scottish parlance, the _ton_ of place-names without number.
The varying development of the Folk into social classes or castes night next be traced, and the influence and interaction of all the various factors of Place, Work, and Family tabulated. Suffice it here, however, for the present to note that such differentiation does take place, without entering into the classification and comparison of the protean types of patrician and plebeian throughout geography and history.
G--ANALYSIS CONTINUED.--(2) THE SCHOOL
Once and again we have noted how from the everyday life of action--the Town proper of our terminology--there arises the corresponding subjective world--the _Schools_ of thought, which may express itself sooner or later in schools of education. The types of people, their kinds and styles of work, their whole environment, all become represented in the mind of the community, and these react upon the individuals, their activities, their place itself. Thus (the more plainly the more the community is a simple and an isolated one, but in appreciable measure everywhere and continually) there have obviously arisen local turns of thought and modes of speech, ranging from shades of accept and idiom to distinctive dialect or language. Similarly, there is a characteristic variety of occupational activity, a style of workmanship, a way of doing business. There are distinctive [Page: 73] manners and customs--there is, in short, a certain recognisable likeness, it may be an indefinably subtle or an unmistakably broad and general one, which may be traced in faces and costumes, in tongue and literature, in courtesy and in conflict, in business and in policy, in street and in house, from hovel to palace, from prison to cathedral. Thus it is that every folk comes to have its own ways, and every town its own school.
While the complex social medium has thus been acquiring its characteristic form and composition, a younger generation has been arising. In all ways and senses, Heredity is commonly more marked than variation--especially when, as in most places at most times, such great racial, occupational, environmental transformations occur as those of modern cities. In other words, the young folk present not only an individual continuity with their organic predecessors which is heredity proper, but with their social predecessors also. The elements of organic continuity, which we usually think of first of all as organic though of course psychic also, are conveniently distinguished as the _inheritance_--a term in fact which the biologist seeks to deprive of its common economic and social senses altogether, leaving for these the term _heritage_, material or immaterial alike. This necessary distinction between the inheritance, bodily and mental, and the heritage, economic and social, obviously next requires further elaboration, and with this further precision of language also. For the present, let us leave the term heritage to the economist for the material wealth with which he is primarily concerned, and employ the term _tradition_ for these immaterial and distinctively social elements we are here specially considering. This in fact is no new proposal, but really little more than an acceptance of ordinary usage. Broadly speaking, tradition is in the life of the community what memory is for its individual units. The younger generation, then, not only inherits an organic and a psychic diathesis; not only has transmitted to it the accumulations, instruments and land of its predecessors, but grows up in their tradition also. The importance of imitation in this process, a matter of common experience, has been given the fullest sociological prominence, by M. Tarde especially.[9] Thanks to these and other convergent lines of thought, we no longer consent to look at the acquirement of the social tradition as a matter requiring to be imposed upon reluctant youth almost entirely from without, and are learning anew as of old, with the simplest and the most developed peoples, the barbarians and the Greeks, to recognise and respect, and, if it may be, to nourish the process of self-instruction, viewed as normal accompaniment of each developing being throughout the phases of its [Page: 74] organic life, the stages of its social life. Upon the many intermediate degrees of advance and decline, however, between these two extremes of civilisation, specific institutions for the instruction of youth arise, each in some way an artificial substitute, or at least a would-be accelerant, for the apprenticeship of imitation in the school of experience and the community's tradition, which we term a school in the restricted and pedagogic sense. This whole discussion, however, has been in order to explain and to justify the present use of the term "School" in that wide sense in which the historian of art or thought--the sociologist in fact--has ever used the term, while yet covering the specialised pedagogic schools of all kinds also.
[9] Tarde, "L'imitation Sociale," and other works.
Once more, then, and in the fullest sense, every folk has its own tradition, every town its school.
We need not here discriminate these unique and characteristic elements to which the art-historians--say of Venice and of Florence, of Barbizon or Glasgow--specially attend from those most widely distributed ones, in which the traditions and schools of all towns within the same civilisation broadly agree. Indeed, even the most widely distributed of these--say from Roman law to modern antiseptic surgery--arose as local schools before they became general ones.
Similarly for the general social tradition. The fundamental occupations and their division of labour, their differentiation in detail and their various interactions up to our own day, at first separately considered, are now seen to be closely correlated with the status of woman; while all these factors determine not only the mode of union of the parents, but their relation to the children, the constitution of the family, with which the mode of transmission of property is again thoroughly interwoven.
H--TOWN AND SCHOOL COMPARED
"TOWN" FOLK
WORK
PLACE
SURVEY
CRAFT-KNOWLEDGE
"SCHOOL" CUSTOM
We may now summarise and tabulate our comparison of Town and School,[10] and on the schema (p.75) it will be seen [Page: 76] that each element of the second is printed in the position of a mirror-reflection of the first. This gives but the merest outline, which is ready, however, to be applied in various ways and filled up accordingly. A step towards this is made in the next and fuller version of the scheme (p. 77). It will be noted in this that the lower portion of the diagram, that of School, is more fully filled up than is the upper. This is partly for clearness, but partly also to suggest that main elements in the origins of natural sciences and geography, of economics and social science, are not always so clearly realised as they might be. The preceding diagram, elaborating that of Place, Work, Folk (p. 75), however, at once suggests these. Other features of the scheme will appear on inspection; and the reader will find it of interest and suggestiveness to prepare a blank schedule and fill it up for himself.
[10] For the sake of brevity, an entire chapter has been omitted, discussing the manifold origins of distinct governing classes, whether arising from the Folk, or superimposed upon them from without, in short, of the contrast of what we may broadly call patricians and plebeians, which so constantly appears through history, and in the present also. These modes of origin are all in association respectively with Place, Work, and Family, or some of the various interactions of these. Origin and situation, migration, individual or general, with its conflict of races, may be indicated among the first group of factors; technical efficiency and its organising power among the second; individual qualities and family stocks among the third, as also military and administrative aptitude, and the institutional privileges which so readily arise from them. Nor need we here discuss the rise of institutions, so fully dealt with by sociological writers. Enough for the present then, if institutions and social classes be taken as we find them.
These two forms of the same diagram, the simple and the more developed, thus suggest comparison with the scheme previously outlined, that of People, Affairs, Places (p. 68), and is now more easily reconciled with this; the greater prominence popularly given to People and Affairs being expressed upon the present geographic and evolutionary scheme by the ascending position and more emphatic printing (or by viewing the diagram as a transparency from the opposite side of the leaf).
In the column of People, the deepening of custom into morals is indicated. Emphasis is also placed upon the development of law in connection with the rise of governing classes, and its tendency to dominate the standards previously taken as morals--in fact, that tendency of moral law to become static law, a process of which history is full.
GOVERNING ========= ========= CLASSES ======= ======= ^ | FAMILY TYPES ============ ---------------------------------------------- INDUSTRIES ========== ---------- ---------------------------------------------- (FOLK-PLACE) REGION (WORK PLACE) ------------ ====== ------------ (TOWN) | ====== | V -------------------------------------------- | V SURVEY ("SCHOOL") ====== ========== !--LANDSCAPE (CRAFT-TRADITION) ----------------- (FOLK-LORE) ?--TERRITORY ----------- | | V --------------------------------------------- | V [NATURAL [APPLIED [SOCIAL -------- ======== ======= SCIENCES] SCIENCES] SCIENCES] --------- ========= ========= | | V ------------------------------------------- | CUSTOMS V ------- MORALS ====== GEOGRAPHY ECONOMICS ------ --------- ========= & LAWS ==== ====
In the present as in the past, we may also note upon the scheme the different lines of Place, Work and Folk on which respectively develop the natural sciences, the applied or [Page: 78] technical sciences, and finally the social sciences, and the generalising of these respectively.
Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its literal and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural sciences--but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they really are, each a _geolysis_--so these sciences or geolyses, again, are tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of the evolution of the cosmos.
Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we cannot really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant; or Lister and his antiseptic surgery better than as the shepherd, with his tar-box by his side; or Kelvin or any other electrician, as the thinking smith, and so on. The old story of geometry, as "_ars metrike_," and of its origin from land-surveying, for which the Egyptian hieroglyph is said to be that of "rope stretching," in fact, applies far more fully than most realise, and the history of every science, of course already thus partially written, will bear a far fuller application of this principle. In short, the self-taught man, who is ever the most fertile discoverer, is made in the true and fundamental school--that of experience.
The need of abbreviating the recapitulation of this, however, sooner or later develops the school in the pedagogic sense, and its many achievements, its many failures in accomplishing this, might here be more fully analysed.
Still more evident is this process in the column of Folk. From the mother's knee and the dame's school of the smallest folk-place, the townlet or hamlet, _ton_ or home, up to the royal and priestly school of the law of ancient capitals, or from the "humanities" of a mediaeval university to the "Ecole de Droit" of a modern metropolis, the series of essential evolutionary stages may be set down. Or in our everyday present, [Page: 79] the rise of schools of all kinds, primary, secondary, higher up to the current movement towards university colleges, and from these to civic and regional universities, might again be traced. The municipalisation of education is thus in fact expressed, and so on.
Leaving the schools in the main to speak for themselves of their advancing and incipient uses, a word may be said upon the present lines.