THE MONOGRAPH OF THE COMMUNITY II5
whose procedure we are pleased to call evolution. A careful and pains- taking study of the rural community will throw a flood of light upon both past and present. Within its narrow circle conditions have their origin which eventually give rise to momentous problems of national life. Thence flow and thither ebb those tides of social activity which determine the existence of the state and shape the destiny of a people. It is there that many of the social forces can be studied in their sim- plest forms and upon their most circumscribed fields of action. There, if anywhere, will it be possible to subject them to a searching analysis. By a coordinative synthesis of the results of a large number of such studies, made in accordance with a common plan, with a different com- munity as the subject of investigation in each case, the essential characteristics of the rural community can be determined, and it can then be assigned to its proper place among the classified phenomena of associate life.
[For specimen studies of American communities see "Conditions of the Western Farms," by Arthur F. Bentley, Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series XI, pp. 285-370. Ttiis study is made from the economic standpoint and falls largely under the head of economic history and the economic subheads of the analysis of present conditions in Cheysson's schedule.
Another study which partially develops certain of the subheads of the schedule with reference to a given community is An Analysis of the Social Structure of a Western Town, by Arthur W. Dunn, University of Chicago Press.
In the first three chapters of Book II of S.mall and Vincent's Introductiott to the Study of Society may be found a study covering quite completely the general field covered by the schedule of M. Cheysson. In A Catechism for Social Observation, Professor C. R. Henderson presents (pp. 29-49) a study of a rural community, and the same monograph contains a schedule similar to that of Cheysson. The two sched- ules may be used together with profit and convenience. See also Professor Hen- derson's Social Elements, Appendix, for "Directions for Local Studies." — Tr.]
