TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1387 



daily parallelism. In this actual harmony of studies wiU be seen to 

 lie a three-fold thesis, for East and West alike: (i) That the needed 

 renewal — of Education — with reunion of its dispersed endeavours 

 towards reorganisation of its deteriorated or insufficient methods — 

 lies primarily in and through a corresponding renewal of social 

 feeling, and thus towards Citizenship; in which (2) the economic, 

 political, and other divergences and conflicts of the present may 

 be progressively harmonised. (3) All studies and surveys, whether 

 naturalistic or humanistic, thus lead to Social Service; and realise 

 themselves in this; while each and every Service requires active and 

 continued Survey, to make it adequate, and keep it effective; 

 much as in war. Action and Thought, City and University, thus pro- 

 gressively interact ; in and towards fuller Life— that of Society and 

 its Members, mutually advancing m their evolution; whence 

 Achievement twofold, both naturalistic and social. Civilisation and 

 Nature are thus unified, within the concept of Life in Evolution; 

 and of this as advancing, day by day, through labour and experience, 

 guided by design, and realised in deed. How then are we to justify 

 this large programme, and its ambitious forecast of policy? First 

 concretely, in survey, and thereafter more interpretatively. Here, 

 then, in striking parallelism, are our concrete surveys, each with 

 beginnings of interpretation too. 



RUSTIC AND URBAN THOUGHT.— Returning, however, from 

 such resulting close parallelism of these Surveys in themselves, 

 one notable result is to clear up the distinctiveness of rural and 

 urban thought, and their respective significance. Nothing has been 

 more characteristic of the development and expansion of our 

 industrial age, with its commercial, financial, political, and military 

 developments, than the predominance of the life and thought of 

 great cities over those of the rural world; indeed so far that the 

 urban mind often wonders if the rural world can be credited with 

 any mind to speak of. How, indeed, should a man who has spent 

 the time of his mental development amidst the woods and fields, 

 and dealing with living, growing objects, subject to laws he but 

 vaguel}^ discerns, and over which he has too little control, look at 

 the world in the same light as one who has passed his days in the 

 city, where the movements he sees are mostly those of mechanism, 

 and the objects on and with which he works and comes in contact 

 are inanimate, and much more directly under control. Yet in his 

 slow way the rustic, quietly watching his crops grow, is more of a 

 biologist, and even of a philosopher, than he knows; and in his 

 work he is far more versatile, and thus more widely experienced, 

 than the townsman. For the old English labourer and his fellows 

 over the world have ever been masters of many different difficult 

 tasks; hence the one real boast we remember of our late friend. 



