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public iparfts 299 



valuable legacy of the past, to recognize the needs of 

 the present and the immediate future and something of 

 the potentiality of a more distant time and circumstance. 

 Perhaps the retention of the valuable features is the 

 most important because it has a definite and deter- 

 minable value about which there can be no mistake. 

 Let us not, therefore, lose our hold on the past when we 

 study our civic designs. Moreover, while modifications 

 will naturally suggest themselves in view of changed 

 conditions and requirements, there will still be the 

 possibility of retaining much of the old features in 

 conjunction with the new, combined together in one 

 unified whole. The difficulty with many city planning 

 designs is that they are not sufficiently conservative 

 of the old and valuable conditions already existing and 

 show often indications of a willingness to let go too 

 readily old-time features. There are, likewise, various 

 dominant ideas of even contradictory characteristics 

 which should pervade the whole city plan and co-oper- 

 ate together to make an ideal extension of the lives of 

 individuals. It should be remembered that "men do 

 not form a community . . . merely in so far as the men 

 co-operate. They form a community . . . when they 

 not only co-operate, but accompany this co-operation 

 with the ideal extension of the lives of individuals where- 

 by each co-operating member says, ' This activity which 

 we perform together, this work of ours, its past, its 

 future, its sequence, its order, its sense, — all these enter 

 into my life, and are the life of my own self writ large.' " ^ 



'Josiah Royce. 



