Read before the Sociological Society at aMeeting in the School ofEconomics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market,W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt. Hon. CHARLESBOOTH,F.R.S., in the Chair.
This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as faraspossible, concrete in treatment. If it is to appeal to practical menandcivic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for thesystematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be notmerely the product of the study, but rather be those which may beacquired in course of local observation and practical effort. Myproblemis thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise fromthe experience of any moderately-travelled observer of variedinterests;so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic andimpressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards anorderly Regional Survey. This point of view has next to be correlatedwith the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquiredthrough some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise towardalarger and more orderly conception of civic action—as Regional Service.In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or p. 104 Civics, asone of its main departments, may be defined as the application ofSocialSurvey to Social Service.
In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, oureveryday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually becomemore systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; whileour activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarlyapproximate towards art. Thus there is emerging more and more clearlyfor sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields ofapplication in city after city, the conception of a scientific centreofobservation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centreofexperimental endeavour on the other—in short of SociologicalObservatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasinglyco-ordinated. Indeed, is not such association of observations andexperiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here andelsewhere? I need not multiply instances of the correlation of scienceand art, as of chemistry with agriculture, or biology with medicine.Yet, on the strictly sociological plane and in civic application theyare as yet less generally evident, though such obvious connections asthat of vital statistics with hygienic administration, that ofcommercial statistics with politics, are becoming recognised by all. Inthe paper with which this Society's work lately opened, the intimateconnection between a scientific demography and a practical eugenics hasbeen clearly set forth. But this study of the community in theaggregatefinds its natural parallel and complement in the study of the communityas an integrate, with material and immaterial structures and functions,which we call the City. Correspondingly, the improvement of theindividuals of the community, which is the aim of eugenics, involves acorresponding civic progress. Using (for the moment at least) aparallelnomenclature, we see that the sociologist is concerned not only with"demography" but with "politography," and that "eugenics" isinseparablefrom "politogenics." For the struggle for existence, though observedmainly from the side of its individuals by the demographer, is not onlyan intra-civic but an inter-civic process; and if so, ameliorativeselection, now clearly sought for the individuals in detail aseugenics,is inseparable from a corresponding civ