592 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
challenge it, and in at least one case, that of the noble Academic Aula of Edinburgh, carry the challenge back to the best days of the Renaissance. The current resuscitation of Old Edinburgh, more unnoticed just because more organic, is hence a still deeper sign. First came the opening up of the cathedral, the rebuilding of the city cross, then of the castle gates and Par- liament Hall. Now the old courts and closes from Holyrood to Castlehill are slowly but steadily changing, and amid what was and is the most dense and dire confusion of material and human wreck and misery in Europe, we have every here and there some spark of art, some strenuous beginning of civic sanitation, some group of healthy homes of workman and student, of rich and poor, some slight but daily strengthening reunion of democracy with culture ; and this in no parliamentary and abstract sense, but in the civic and concrete one.
The Edinburgh School of Art has been equally successful in reviving old Celtic designs and discovering new Celtic artists, but it is a marvel to the visitor to find how much of their activity is due to the inspiration of the scientist Patrick Geddes. Whether in his own apartments, in the university halls, in the historical procession to be the crowning art work of the castle hill, or in the architectural improvement of the old town, every- where is seen the hand of the master. The redemption of Cyprus and the teaching of botany at Dundee, the reconstruction of Edinburgh and the printing of books, the teaching of art and the scientific collections of the Outlook Tower, are all reconciled in the personality of the man to whom synthesis is the chief function of contemporary science. He has said: "While our studies are nothing if not historical, they must begin with the present day, and the past be seen by help of the present; while our studies are nothing if not geographical, they must begin at our own doors ; and while nothing if not scientific, they must still begin with art !"
The Outlook Tower, at once school, museum, atelier, and observatory, may fitly be called the world's first sociological
laboratory.
Charles Zueblin. The University of Chicago.
