Introduction

Professor Patrick Geddes in his sympathetic universalism expounds the ideas and social values of Indian temples and their ritual. This is true humanism, and very admirable is his definition of a temple as "the power-house of a folk and its faith". Professor Geddes recalls a shipyard in Dumbarton, which drew up its rules in collaboration with its hands, and where the workmen themselves proposed a reduction of their wages in a dull period. In method and outlook it is a representative sample of Geddes' writings, chosen almost at random from an immense mass of fugitive pieces. These, if collected, would compose into a series of volumes treating all the main aspects of life, mind, morals and society. The admirable city surveys of the Geddesian school reveal an overwhelming complexity and diversity of life which only some force as crude and intense as war-fever can weld to even a temporary cohesiveness.