AN INDIAN EXAMPLE.

The article examines some reports on planning in Indian cities which are considered an outstanding value to the literature of civics. The three concrete features of the reports under review are the concrete sociological method which they exemplify, their demonstration of the manner in which all the important abstract conclusions of social and educational science can be vitalized and applied, and, their practical suggestions for the solution of town-planning problems. There are few abstract generalizations on the nature of men and of society in these reports; but they teem with examples of concrete observation and suggestion. The intimate relation of these two features of the reports to their suggestions on town planning will be evident from what has already been said. Each city reported on is an organic whole, whose life is subject to the conditions laid down by the natural environment within these conditions exhibits its own characteristic and unvarying tendencies. but this life has in no case found complete expression; the tendencies are seeking to clothe themselves in new forms suited to the age; the struggle toward harmony with the changing natural environment must be maintained. The problem before the town-planner is to assist this process; and to do so adequately he must start from concrete sociology as his basis, and be able to take account of all these varieties of human life which are set forth in the abstract generalizations of the specialists.