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TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1385 



with Psychology, thus becomes seen as a Biosophy in the making. 

 Here, then, is an endeavour towards the enrichment of our simple 

 everyday thought-world of place, work, and people — people, work 

 and place ; in which we are all involved throughout life — and indeed 

 as ordinary life. Even when we withdraw from this, to think in 

 solitude, such outline-synthesis is of service, and towards steps 

 further. 



The regional botanic surveys, as of Languedoc under Flahault, 

 and of the late Robert Smith and Dr. Marcel Hardy, extending from 

 Dundee, have given impulse to the widened and intensified surveys 

 of the Ecological Society. In fact, this Survey method, rising as it 

 does from observed details to their interpretation, has long been 

 increasing in extension and in refinement, so that schools of geo- 

 graphy, as at Oxford, etc., and of sociology, as at Le Play House, 

 etc., have increasingly been applying and advancing it; and it has 

 long been arising in Training Colleges, especially the more progressive 

 feminine ones. It aims, too, at covering regions and reaching their 

 cities, as notably by means of their museums, already frequently 

 becoming civic and regional. Thus a recent temporary social exhibi- 

 tion, of "Place, Work, and Folk" at Aberdeen afforded so suc- 

 cessful a co-operation of naturalistic and social interest, as to 

 justify organisation towards a comprehensive and permanent one. 

 Kindred beginnings, even further advanced, are widely in progress, 

 much as with public libraries in the past generation and before. 



To make this needed intimate association of nature-study and 

 social survey j^et more clear and concrete, it is here worth while 

 to recall an actual programme, carried out some good few years 

 ago in the first of such summer schools in India; and realised 

 co-operatively, and to the satisfaction of its students, by means of 

 morning lectures and frequent outings devoted to the understanding 

 of the town and its neighbouring villages, etc., and with afternoon 

 lectures and excursions in Nature. The place was the sublimely 

 situated and locally and racially interesting town and neighbourhood 

 of Darjeeling — that Tibetan frontier district into which Dr. Hooker 

 ventured on his productive and famous Rhodendron quest of well- 

 nigh a century ago. His arrest, for trespass within that land so 

 jealously interdicted to foreigners, helped notably towards its 

 annexation; and it has since been the "Hill-Station" of Bengal; 

 famed for its mountain-landscape, the finest in India or perhaps the 

 world; and important also for its tea- plantations. 



This parallelism of biological and social studies will be seen as 

 obviously applicable, day by day, at any point where nature and 

 social life are alike easily accessible, though from great cities whole 

 excursion days are needed for nature and village survey. After such 

 twofold survey, the kindred ideas of biology and social science are 

 readily realised; and as valid generalisations, cleared henceforth of 



