RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 81 



ceeded in making our cities very far from what 

 they should be, without unity of plan, without 

 consideration for the general convenience, quite 

 unfit to serve many of the purposes of civilization. 

 And there have sprung up in England, France, 

 Germany and America, not merely a few, but 

 hundreds of societies pledged as far as may be 

 to remedy these evils, to make our cities more 

 orderly in arrangement, more healthy, more 

 cleanly, free from the thousand nuisances which 

 make our lives dull and ugly, free from palls of 

 smoke and the blatant vulgarity of pushing 

 advertisements. Here indeed is a movement 

 which stirs the pulses of men ! Here are ideals 

 which can only be attained by method and 

 thought, that is to say by science. But the 

 science by which they are to be reached is not 

 mere constructive skill, nor the art of gardening, 

 of paving or of building. It is essentially human 

 science, and has a place in all three of the sections 

 which I have mentioned. We want to know with 

 accuracy what purposes men work with, what are 

 the laws of health, what contributes to beauty and 

 what overwhelms us with ugliness. We want 

 also to study social conditions, the tenure of land, 

 the divisions of employment in a locality, the 

 needs of future generations, in order that we may 

 learn to subordinate the interests of individuals 

 to the general good, and to make our societies 

 really healthy and progressive. Unless the laws 

 of man and of society are first considered, our 



