Biotechnics : the practice of synthesis in the work of Patrick Geddes

variety, unashamed of provincialism, co-operating in friendly rivalry towards a rich growth of national life. This ideal can never be achieved where the State has seized upon the control of education and imposed an organised cult of State worship upon what should be the free and manifold spiritual life of a nation.’ There follows the paragraph I have already quoted about building up a federation. He continues: ‘Let the great teaching bodies and first of all the universities come into touch with life under its various beneficient activities. Break up the monopoly of London, send men to study the aspects and products of Nature in regions where they can be seen at first hand. Find equivalents for the hunter’s passion, the war-instinct, in rude and noble tasks which call out these misused powers for the good of society. Let journalism learn its vocation, which is the daily priesthood of truth, not sensation and scandal-mongering and the advertisement of mischievous, trivial, or cheating information. ‘The churches have their duty, also, which regards, and in the best annals of the past never neglected, the consecration of men’s earthly life, here and now, to spiritual holiness. You must begin with “place, work, folk”, and go on to “polity, culture, art”. Never divorce these from one another, as men did in the 19th century; or if you do, the “place”, will become hideous, the “work” slavery, the “folk” degenerate, the “polity”, despotism, the “culture’’, vanity, the “art” vicious. “You have brought your analytic genius to a stage where it acts as pure destruction, and is exploding mankind by means of its scientific achievements into a horror that has no name. Try now synthesis. The world of beauty has perished, or is perishing under your devilish inventions. Build it up again out of life, by the spirit, as the city of Mansoul, as reaching unto Heaven as the City of God. ‘For this make free use of the public credit for social investments; but don’t pay the tribute called “market rate of interest”; create the credit against the new social assets, charge it with an insurance rate and a redemption rate, and pay the bankers a moderate commission to administer it through their system of interlocking banks and clearing-houses; the present unacknowledged use of the public credit by bankers must be recognised