They will not leave even the tubes of babies' feeding-bottles to an off-hand opportunism.
Among these newer efforts town-planning is one of the better known.
Most of us now admit that if some scores of dwellings have to be run up for working-men or city-clerks--or even for University teachers in North Oxford--they can and should be planned with regard to the health and convenience and occupations of their probable tenants.
Town-planning has taken rank as an art; it is sometimes styled a science and University professorships are named after it; in the London Conference of 1910 it got its _deductio in forum_ or at least its first dance.

But it is still young and its possibilities undefined.

Its name is apt to be applied to all sorts of building-schemes, and little attempt is made to assign it any specific sense.

It is only slowly making its way towards the recognized method and the recognized principles which even an art requires.

Here, it seemed, a student of ancient history might proffer parallels from antiquity, and especially from the Hellenistic and Roman ages, which somewhat resemble the present day in their care for the well-being of the individual.
In enlarging the lecture I have tried not only to preserve this point of view, but also to treat the subject in a manner useful to classical scholars and historians.