CHAPTER XIII 



TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 



A. INTRODUCTION AND PRELIMINARIES 



REGIONAL SURVEY, NATURALISTIC AND HUMAN.— In 



our long series of summer schools at Edinburgh, with which began 

 many years ago that movement now widely developed in Britain 

 and in many countries of Europe, we started from the first with the 

 association of biological with social studies, and these alike on their 

 direct observational bases, from nature in country-side and sea-shore 

 to botanic and zoological gardens, museums, etc. And similarly in 

 everyday life in coimtry and town ; so from its simplest occupations 

 in hamlet and village to the elaborations of industry and com- 

 merce, and the further development of culture in great cities. In 

 such surveys, year by year, we came to have the collaboration of 

 eminent geographers, both naturalistic and social; so with the 

 geologist, the oceanographer and meteorologist, of ecological and 

 other botanists and zoologists; and similarly from the anthropolo- 

 gist, the antiquarian and the historian, to the social economist, the 

 hygienist and physician, the educationist and cleric, the magistrate 

 and administrator, and sometimes even the philosopher, the 

 moralist, and the student of comparative religion. In course of these 

 surveys arose our beginning of a school of nature-study and 

 sociology in the Outlook Tower, with its many studious (and even 

 practical) interests, ranging from its immediate outlook over Nature, 

 City, and Region, and below these, storey by storey, to Scotland, 

 British Isles and the English-speaking world; and thence again to 

 an outline of Western history and civilisation, and their current 

 events. Beyond these to the East, and finally towards humanity; 

 from simplest origins, to civilisation in progress towards its various 

 aims and ideals. Yet all alike environed and conditioned by Nature, 

 and more or less re-conditioning it. Such an outline, far from 

 being in any respect complete, is none the less an indication of an 

 attitude in thought and life, and in education uniting these, which 

 seeks to combine the specialised advances of the science. And this 

 at once in their naturalistic, their systematic and evolutionary 

 treatment, so appealing at once to the amateur and to the specialist 

 and even from the children of the schools, the passing tourists, to 

 the meditative student of life and the critic of society. Geography 

 and Philosophy are thus (in principle, however imperfectly in 

 detail) unified as Geosophy; and Biology taken at its widest, and 



