THE URBAN COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 769 



an equally independent position by which it was enabled to establish 

 its own maritime law and to spread it among all maritime nations; 

 when the Provencal and French cities, at the time of the great wars 

 with the English kings, appeared as independent powers, and when 

 in Germany Liibeck and its allies engaged in northern European 

 politics with the supremacy over Scandinavian empires. In Ger- 

 many the development was furthered by the assumption that the 

 monarch, by virtue of his imperial title, was at the same time 

 the lord of the world; even the recognition of their belonging to 

 the empire did not, therefore, diminish their independence. This 

 period of the independency of the cities was followed in Germany 

 by an epoch (about from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century) of 

 rising princely territorial power which forced the cities into the 

 greater organism, justifying their despotism by their utility. In 

 a third period beginning with Stein's municipal order (Stein's 

 Stddteordnung') an attempt is made to reanimate the free forces of 

 the citizens and to retain them nevertheless in connection with the 

 state. In four years Prussia and Germany will celebrate the cen- 

 tennial anniversary of this law enacted in 1808; but we stand, 

 nowadays, still in the midst of the attempt which had then only 

 been begun. 



The relations between city and state go far beyond politics and 

 administration; it is only a section from the problem of the relations 

 between large centres of population and the community of the 

 people. As an example of the influence of a capital upon the entire 

 country, always the position is mentioned which Paris holds in France. 

 Not only the three great French revolutions have originated in Paris, 

 but also literary taste, theater, painting, sculpture and architec- 

 ture, the fashions are dictated to the country by Paris. The very 

 contrary relations exist in America. The founders of the Union have 

 placed the seat of the government in a city which should be nothing 

 more but the seat of the federal authorities. And, although Wash- 

 ington has developed, contrary to the intentions of its founders, into 

 a metropolis and enjoys to-day the just reputation of being one of the 

 most beautiful cities of the world, yet this urban community has 

 never been of much political importance in the history of the Union. 

 Its inhabitants, excluded from the right of voting, are rather bound to 

 let themselves be ruled than to claim predominance. While in the 

 position which Paris ta-kes in France there is still a faint remembrance 

 of the ancient city-state, Washington represents the strongest logical 

 contrast. Also in the whole intellectual life of the American people 

 there is no movement that has taken its issue from the population of 

 Washington. 



